The Survivors Part 1: The Masacre

by Brian McGoldrick

  Despite the greyish light having no obvious source, there are shadows in many parts of this cavern, including around the central column of stone. Moving out from the shadows, a mishappen figure lurches toward our general location. It stops and turns its head in a one hundred eighty degree arc.

  The figure is a construct, bipedal and roughly humanoid in shape, but much of it is twisted, broken, and corroded. As it drags its mangled left foot across the floor with each step, the joints in its left leg screech with the sounds of tortured metal. The left knee seems to only have a quarter or so of the range of mobility that the right one does. Its left arm was torn off at some point in the past, and now, the jaggedly shorn metal remains are heavily corroded. Most of the left side of the head has been crushed, and a single blood red ocular glows where the right eye would be on a humanoid.

  The construct keeps sweeping its head back and forth. Clearly it is searching for us, but for an unknown reason, it cannot find us.

  “Science or Artifice?”

  At the sound of my voice, the construct narrows the arc its head is traversing, but still seems unable to lock onto us. Does it only have functional auditory senses?

  None of the others responds immediately. They are just staring at the construct in near rapt fascination. After a couple minutes, Danleib stores his axe and shield in his bag of holding and takes out a massive maul.

  “That thing is probably somewhat of both. It looks like a combination of Artifice and engineering, but whatever is, we're going to have to destroy it. It has to be an automated sentry, but we're lucky its targeting systems seem to be broken. I really don't want to find out what those projectors on its wrist and shoulder do.”

  “The crystals?” There are two large crystals the size of baseballs on the back of the construct's remaining wrist, and a housing on the shoulder has one the size of a soccer ball. All three crystals are a pale blue color. On the left shoulder, there is a crushed housing that probably contained a fourth crystal.

  “Yeah. The only use I know for that type of crystal is energy projection. The facets direct the energy.”

  Cwichelm puts his axe away and takes out a heavy pick. Two of his crystal lasers float up above his shoulders. His smile is self-deprecating. “With the crystals in my lasers, they would be lucky to put a tenth of the energy that those crystals can channel. If the thing manages to lock onto us, we're dead.”

  Spreading out more, we approach the construct from three sides. The sound of our footsteps coming from multiple directions causes the construct to jerk its head around erratically. Whether it's controlled by an AI or an extremely complex sigil array, the construct's inability to detect with whatever else it uses for sensors is inhibiting its functionality.

  Stuck with an idea, I begin to pound my war hammer on the floor every few steps. Following my lead, Danleib and Cwichelm begin doing the same. Behind us, Dacbold takes out a crossbow almost as long as he is tall, and Agun starts picking chunks of metal out of one of the corroding piles and throws them around at random.

  Surrounded by more sounds it cannot locate a source for, the construct lurches in one direction after another.

  Clang!

  Danleib is the first to make a move. As the construct unsteadily turns in my direction, he leaps in close to it and hammers his maul into the back of its functional knee joint.

  The construct stumbles closer to me. Swaying to the point of nearly toppling over, the construct regains its equilibrium and turns toward Danleib.

  Thunk!

  My war hammer slams into the corroding metal below the knee joint on the construct's damaged leg. I don't hold back my strength in the slightest. Despite the corrosion, the durability of the limb is incredible. My hammer only leaves an inch or so deep dent in the armor plate. I jump back as the construct spins toward me, fanning its remaining arm far above my head.

  Fwoosh-crack!

  A crossbow bolt a solid inch in diameter slams into the construct's head, twisting it to side but not doing any damage.

  Crack!

  Cwichelm attacks the construct from its flank, and with his pick shimmering with silvery light, he sinks it six inches in the construct's damaged leg. Ripping his pick back out of the construct's leg, he backs up dragging the pick along the ground to make a screeching sound.

  “Steel is stubbornness.” I murmur the mnemonic under my breath and follow up with the mnemonics for the best force and impact buffs I have, casting them on my hammer. Other than creating Items of Power, the greatest strength of a Maker is buffs, the temporary enhancement of items.

  Fwoosh-crack!

  A crossbow bolt penetrates into the damaged shoulder of the construct, but it appears to do no damage. The construct does not even react to the attack.

  Crack-Boom!

  I chase after the construct and strike the knee joint of the damaged leg with as much force as I can muster. With the thunderous detonation from my weapon buff, the structure of the knee joint is cracked in multiple places, and it begins to seize up. As the construct tries to turn on me, it begins to fall to the side but saves itself with a twist and shuffled step. Considering that movement, its agility must have been frightening when it was undamaged.

  BOOM!

  Danleib jumps at the construct and falling from a height of more than ten feet hammers a massive overhand strike into the bent knee of the construct's good leg. Glowing gold from his weapon buffs, the head of his maul shatters the poleyn like piece of armor protecting the knee joint.

  Astonishment obvious on his face, Danleib barely gets his maul between himself the construct's terrifyingly fast return strike. The force of the blow sends him flying more than thirty feet before he hits the ground rolling.

  “Danleib!” Cwichelm's voice contains a clear note of fear, something almost never heard in the former marine pilot.

  Recovering its balance, the construct keeps twisting its head around, still unable to get a fix on our locations. Agun's continuous stream of thrown debris is doing more to keep it distracted and uncertain of our locations than anything. I like his way of thinking. He doesn't seem to have the need to be the big nuker like so many Casters and acts to support the team instead of being a star.

  Danleib grunts and shoves himself to his feet. Shaking his head to clear it, he looks in our direction. “That thing hits hard. It's at least six or seven times stronger than any construct or golem of its size I've ever encountered.”

  “I think the only time that thing is sure of our location is when we're actually hitting it, but it has no clue how tall or short we are. If you hadn't been in mid-air, that blow would have gone over your head.”

  Danleib turns his eyes toward me. “Are you sure?”

  I shrug. “Ninety percent.”

  Danleib starts banging his hammer loudly on the floor. The construct keeps turning its head back and forth in a small arc.

  “Good enough. You two attack, then back out and make noise.”

  Cwichelm goes for the mangled foot, tearing it open with his pick, and I go attack the knee that Danleib shattered the armor on, denting and deforming part of the mechanism.

  Bzzzt! Bzzzt! Crackle-Boom!

  As a field of lightning arcs up from the crystal on the construct's shoulder, we both dive away from it. After arcing over the construct's head, the lightning only forms a bit more than a half-circle on the construct's damaged side. Cwichelm is bathed in the ropes of electrical energy, but I'm not touched by it.

  “Aargh! That fucking hurts!”

  We make a clattering racket, as both hit the floor and roll to our feet. Still impotently searching for us, the construct's head keeps arcing, and it doesn't drop the lightning field.

  Cwichelm's displays a disgruntled frown. “There is more than electric in that damn lightning field. Something repulsed me at the same time the lightning tried to fry me. And how the fuck do you make that kind of crystal emit electrical energy! It's clearly a fucking light focusing crystal!”

  Danleib snickers. �
�That thing is not entirely the result of Artificing. Who knows what the hell the Maker did with it.”

  Cwichelm snorts. “Do you think you could do it?”

  Danleib shrugs faintly. “Just because we can't use everything that our bodies have in them doesn't mean this guy was any worse of a Maker than whoever made that thing.”

  I cast a spell that shifts vision to pattern sight and immediately feel a dull ache in my eyes. I hate looking at the world like this. It gives me a headache that can last for days every time I do it for more than a few minutes.

  The construct turns into a rat's nest of lines and blobs of Power that is completely meaningless to me, but the arcs of electrical energy are different. I can clearly see three types of energy, even if I can't tell which is what.

  I drop my pattern sight spell. “Use pattern sight. There are three kinds of energy in that lightning curtain.”

  At my words, both Danleib and Cwichelm grimace, but they still cast the spell.

  “Damn, I think I can tell which is the electricity, but I can't tell what that other energy is supposed to be.” Danleib seems frustrated.

  After almost twelve years, we still can't understand very much about patterns. Even with the memories of our bodies about patterns, they don't make sense to us. Of course, the Dvergar, whose bodies we have, didn't know a lot about patterns to begin with. Out of the seven of us in Dvergar bodies, Dacbold seems to be able to figure out the most, but that doesn't mean he really understands them.

  “Agun, try to punch a spell through that lighting!” Cwichelm has a perturbed air about him.

  “Alright.”

  Agun begins to draw a pattern. It only takes him a few seconds to complete it. The spell pattern isn't very complex, but the raw Power contained in it is obvious. As he finishes drawing the pattern, he pushes his palms through the center.

  Crack-boom!

  A shimmering silvery-grey ball of energy streaks toward the construct. A low roar of displaced air marks the ball's passage, and it slams into the lightning field around the construct. The energy's thunderous detonation fills the cavern. Even standing twenty to thirty feet away, Cwichelm and myself are both rocked backward by the impact wave, but the lightning curtain only deforms slightly.

  I glance at Agun, and he is panting like he just ran a 1000m race with sweat running down his cheeks. He didn't hold back on that Power with that spell, and he probably can't cast more than two or three of those in a short period of time.

  Looking at the other two Dvergar, they have the same grim expression as I do. If this construct was not already damaged, we would probably not be able to take it down in a straight up fight.

  Crack!

  With the construct facing Agun, Danleib charges in and hammers his maul into the still fully functioning knee. As metal inside the joint breaks, the construct sways and turns unsteadily toward him.

  Taking advantage of the opening, Cwichelm darts in, and his pick pierces a braided metal line that starts spurting grey fluid.

  Crack-boom!

  The construct starts to fall as it turns toward Cwichelm, and Danleib charges back in. His maul shatters part of the knee joint. As the construct pitches face first toward the ground in Cwichelm's direction, he dives to the side, to avoid being crushed underneath it.

  Grounding out into the ground beneath it, the lightning field loses its umbrella shaped coverage, exposing most of the construct again. With the knee joint on its good leg destroyed, the construct flops on the ground, unable to get either leg in a position to rise back to its feet.

  “We can finish this one off later. Let's scout out this area and make sure there aren't any more of them.”

  The other Dvergar nod in reply and we spread out through the huge cavern.

  The left and right sides of the cavern have open corridor mouths that lead into more fully finished corridors. On the opposite side of the column of stone, there is another spiraling ramp leading deeper into bedrock. The stagnant briny odor seems to originate from this ramp. There are cracks in the upper part of the chamber wall on this side, and the damp wall, floor, and ramp are covered with algae.

  “Those cracks must reach all the way up to the seabed.” Cwichelm scratches his bearded chin while staring at the upper part of the wall.

  “Footing is going to be bad if we try to go down there.” Danleib is looking at the tunnel.

  “Yeah. Any lower levels may be flooded too. How do old you think this place could be?”

  Danleib glances at me. “I can't even make a guess.”

  I snort. “Me either.”

  Cwichelm looks around the cavern behind us. “I have a feeling this may turn into a dead end. Why don't we take apart that construct?”

  At Cwichelm's words, Danleib gets a gleam in his eye. “Yeah. Why don't we?”

  We return to the construct to find Agun staring at it. As we approach, he doesn't look in our direction, seemingly lost in thought. Dacbold and I stand next to him while watching Danleib and Cwichelm disable the construct's joints one by one, until only its head can move.

  The lightning field is still grounding out beneath the construct, but it can no longer move to attack or defend.

  “Does that thing's proportions remind you of an orc?” Agun's soft words are barely louder than the crackling of electricity coming from the construct.

  The construct has a slight hunched back and legs that are a bit shorter in proportion to its torso than a human. The arms are also disproportionately long in relation to the legs, and the shoulders exceptionally broad. The head is in the shape of a skull, but that skull does have a protruding jaw structure similar to an orc.

  “Yeah, it does.”

  Pulling out hammers and chisel's, Danleib and Cwichelm split open the armor of the back of the construct's torso and pry it back. The armor was mounted on a skeletal frame that is shaped like a wire-work outline of the body, with structural supports crisscrossing through the body cavity. Inside of it, there are silvery-grey cables running between plates inscribed with spell sigils or formations and the motors that control the joints.

  Staring at the interior of the construct, Cwichelm scratches his head. “This thing looks more like a robot than the product of Artificing.”

  Squatting next to it, Danleib pokes around inside of the construct, as well. “I've never seen symbols like the ones used on these sigil plates. They give me the impression that they're more like circuit boards than magic sigils. Instead of Mana, there is electricity running through these platinum wires. This thing isn't built using any school of thought on Artificing I've ever encountered.”

  Confusion apparent on their faces, Danleib and Cwichelm look at one another.

  Standing up, Danleib looks around. “East or west? I'm getting more curious about this place.”

  “West.” Cwichelm starts walking toward that corridor as he answers.

  The rest of us follow behind Cwichelm until he stops about thirty yards from the tunnel. The same gritty dirt that was on the floor of the ramp leading down to this cavern spills outward from the corridor. Reaching down he picks up some of the dirt.

  From the cavern to where this corridor ends in a heavy door, which seems to be a blast door, there are no rooms off it, but there are ten unevenly spaced cross corridors that have rooms and other corridors off of them. The main corridor is a bit more than thirty feet wide and the same height. The blast door at the end fills it completely, with its frame obviously embedded in the surrounding rock.

  A panel that appears more technological than magical is embedded in the right side wall next to the blast door. Like the door, the panel's surface is tarnished, but the crystal keys in it still retain their glossy sheen. Pressing the keys, we don't get any response.

  “These look like LjosAlfar script.” Cwichelm is squinting at the keypad.

  “It is. It's the numbers 0 through 9.”

  While I already knew that Ahlred and Wihtred couldn't read LjosAlfar, I did not know that Cwichelm was unable to. Ljo
sAlfar and DokkAlfar use different languages. Because of the original Thorrin's experiences, I know them both, including their written forms, but not all the other Dvergar do.

  With an air of being offended, Agun stares at the door. “This body had developed a spatial awareness type spell that is rather interesting. He managed to scribe the spell pattern into his body, and its ability to detect solid matter from empty space works to a range of about a hundred feet normally. Since we entered this place, even though I can see what is right in front of my face, I can't detect anything. This door may as well not exist for all the feedback that I am getting from my spell.”

  “So, your detection spells are being completely blocked?”

  “It's more like I'm in the middle of a fog so thick that I can't even see my hand in front of my face.”

  After Agun's response to my question, I'm feeling a bit out of sorts. The structure of this underground complex feels more like a technological base than one built by a race that relies on magic. We never found anything resembling keypads inside the Labyrinth, but from the memories of this body, I know that at some point in the ancient past the Dvergar once used a Power based technology that they have since divested themselves of. Could the LjosAlfar be the same, and is this one of their ancient bases?

  “Alright, why the hell does a derelict subterranean compound have a technological keypad with LjosAlfar script on the keys and a blast door?” Cwichelm's irritation is audible in his harsh tone.

  “If you figure it out, let me know.” Danleib turns his back on the door and wanders off in the direction of the nearest cross corridor.

  Most of the rooms have sliding doors. While some are open, none of them are in working order, and many are so corroded they are little more than piles of rust in the doorway. In several locations, we find normal stairways leading up and down to more floors with similar layouts that do not connect to the big cavern or whatever is behind the blast door. No matter where we go, we find the floor covered to varying thicknesses by the gritty dirt.

  The corridor leading out of the opposite side has a similar layout, with the exception of a blast door at the end.