by E. M. Hardy
He gained full control of the tunnels on the fourth day, with only the kill room remaining.
The lessons of the past resurfaced, reminding him of what had happened when his entire force of walkers was caught off-guard. He positioned 6,000 walkers outside the kill room and withdrew the remaining 6,877 walkers outside—close enough to reinforce if needed, but far enough to pull back if another surprise took out the walkers inside the ruins.
His walkers advanced into the tunnel leading to the kill room, immediately taking fire from the crystal that was positioned to pour energized light into the length of that tunnel. Instead of making another reckless charge, Martin decided to switch up tactics. He gathered as much Chi as he could within the air and focused it into the lead elements—reinforcing their shields and their bodies. As a result, the lead walkers could absorb heat for about six seconds before crumbling into rubble—about three seconds more than before. With this timeframe in mind, Martin then began rotating the walkers out after three counts. The exposed walkers rushed to the back of the line, letting the heat radiate from their shields and bodies while their other buddies took fire for them. After a few hundred rotations, a loud ‘pop’ signaled the overheated crystal’s demise. No more laser fire poured into the tunnel, but Martin was sure that the other lasers out in the kill room were just waiting to get a good angle on his walkers.
If his Chi-enforced walkers with their shields could only survive six seconds when exposed to just one crystal, how much time would he squeeze out from more than a dozen crystals firing at once?
This was why Martin’s walkers carefully poked their shields out, gauging the exact spots where the next crystals would begin firing. The leading walker inched forward, its shield extended in front of it. The shield lasted a few seconds before crumbling off a foot from the main entrance, the intense heat from two crystals reaching in and destroying it. Martin noted that spot, dragged a line marking it, and prepared to rotate his walkers. He lost a dozen walkers while he tried getting the exact positioning down. Another dozen were lost before he got the timing right, but that was all he lost in this charge. He continuously rotated them out, absorbing fire with the shields and the bodies of the walkers, until the two crystals overheated and broke down on their own.
That was as far as he could get with this strategy, though. An inch more from that spot, and four crystals broke down the advancing walker in the blink of an eye. If he remembered correctly, there were originally 17 crystals in the kill room. Three had popped, leaving 14 more to deal with.
Martin huffed, bracing himself for the casualties he would doubtless incur. His other walkers had already scoured the ruins, ensured that there were no more nasty surprises that would hit him from behind. 6,877 walkers stood guard outside the ruins, another 230 guarded the production vats, while the remaining 5,892 walkers readied themselves for the inevitable carnage.
And in they went, directly into the blinding inferno that awaited them.
Dozens of walkers were turned to dust in the first few seconds, the crystals pouring unimaginable amounts of heat into the walkers. A hundred walkers broke down, then two hundred, then three in the following seconds. The first crystal cracked in a shower of shards when Martin lost four hundred walkers, which surprised him. In his previous charge, the first crystal in the kill room had shattered after losing about 1,500 of his walkers. Now though, these crystals seemed to break down faster than before.
Martin realized why as other crystals started cracking and shattering. In his previous charge, his walkers had hidden behind mounds of clay formed by the bodies of their fallen comrades. This had caused the crystals to cease firing, giving them time to cool down while Martin’s walkers attempted to rush forward. This was why he did not bother setting up barricades of any kind this time around. As soon as a walker went down, those behind it would bull on and spread out—forcing the crystals to keep firing. The casualties also went down as more crystals shattered down, since he had more time to rotate his walkers out before they themselves would get reduced to rubble by the heat. The fewer the remaining crystals, the easier it was for him to coordinate the rotations to reduce the damage they took.
This was why Martin only lost 1,232 walkers before the last crystal burst in a blaze of heat, surrounded by a swirling array of ceramic shields and walkers. This was a far cry from the 2,800 walkers he had lost the first time he had visited the kill room.
Martin did not let the flush of victory get into his head, though. He only kept 100 walkers in the room, pulling the remaining 4,560 walkers back outside the room. He even went as far as to send half of that force all the way to the exit, bringing the total reserve force outside the ruins up to 9,177.
Satisfied with what he had, Martin’s hundred walkers watched as the dolls began working on the door. They shifted their arms into sharp ceramic cutting disks that slowly but surely ground out a doll-sized hole into the door. It took the better part of an entire day and hundreds of ground-down ceramic disks, considering the door’s thickness, but the dolls eventually got the job done. Martin then pulled them, and they were glad to oblige as they didn’t want to put themselves in more danger than necessary. Off they toddled, cowering behind the safety of the other walkers standing guard within the kill room.
One of Martin’s walkers got down on all fours and squeezed through the hole. That walker found itself in a long room filled with brightly-lit panels, electricity humming throughout the walls of the chamber. Martin, through the walker, looked up and saw that this heavily-fortified area contained all the generators powering the underground ruins. They looked very similar to the generators in Martin’s pyramid—sealed canisters that drew power from a source that he did not fully understand, using technology he did not understand either. The only difference was that Martin’s generators were made entirely of ceramic, while these generators were made out of some kind of metallic alloy with wires jutting all over the place.
Glancing around, he discovered hallways leading to other parts of the facility. Martin thus sent his walkers exploring as they squeezed through the hole, searching for controls that would allow him to open up the door leading from the kill room. No such luck, though. All the panels simply displayed the status of the generators, including their output and condition, but he could find no way to interact with them. He even tried swiping the panels with his hands, like he would a touch screen, but he got nothing.
And so the walkers spread out, noting their surroundings as they went exploring. There were so many generators in these chambers that Martin got giddy imagining how valuable they would be once he integrated them into himself. He could maybe get control of ten, twenty thousand more walkers—twice that for his constructs. Then there were the dozens of production vats within the ruins. That would significantly improve his ability to reinforce his walkers and constructs as needed. And finally, there were the laser-firing crystals. Even the smaller ones used by the scarabs would provide an immense boost in firepower. The ability to reach out from afar and instantly incinerate a target? He wasn’t sure how effective it would be against the invaders, considering the awesome powers they had displayed during the vision he got from Amun. However, he could study and refine the technology to improve its efficiency—maybe even come up with a way for it to interact with the pnevma, the soul-magic that defined his existence.
His eagerness infected his walkers, which moved just a bit faster and with more urgency as they roamed the new chamber. All they saw were more generators, which made Martin all the more eager to claim the facilities as his own. He could probably control more than 50,000 walkers at once with all the extra generators he had found! If only he could determine what was preventing him from doing just that.
That was exactly what he found an hour later.
It was a lone walker that stumbled upon the room that was different from the others. It led to a bridge in a spherical chamber lined with reflective metal on all sides, with a cylindrical structure right in the middle. T
hat cylinder reached from the top of the spherical chamber all the way to the bottom, and was thoroughly lined with crystals that filled the room with a bluish glow.
Martin tensed within the walker, as he expected it to be blasted apart in a wave of focused light. However, nothing of the sort happened to him. Hopeful that he was not staring at a weapon, Martin moved closer with the walker to examine the cylinder while he directed other walkers to converge on its location.
Some of the crystals were pristine, and seemed to glow the brightest as they shone in the dark—like stars in the night sky. Others had fine cracks, with lights that were somewhat weaker than their flawless counterparts. Some had more prominent breaches, with gaps that previously held some of the crystal. These glowed the weakest, with some of them blinking erratically as the light within them fluctuated. And then there were the dead crystals, which gave off no light at all. There were a surprising number of these empty gaps within the cylinder’s collection of bright lights.
A weak snap echoed in the chamber. Martin turned around and saw one of the crystals dim, shimmering for a moment before a wide crack ran along its surface. Another crack from another crystal, followed by a shattering noise. It came from a deteriorated crystal, its weak light drying as a damaged portion chipped off.
“So it has come to this. To be defeated using the tools we hoped to fight them with… how infuriating.”
The walker jumped up in surprise, raising its shield and bearing its mace to a striking position.
“Who’s there?”
Laughter echoed through the chamber, reverberating within the body of the lone walker. Two other walkers rushed in to join their comrade, bracing their backs against one another and spreading out their shields in a protective shell.
“Hesitation, eh? That’s new. Your kind normally comes in, smashes everything without a word, and then leaves after the slaughter.”
“My kind? You know of my kind?”
The voice paused, and Martin felt a sense of unease as the voice seemed to scrutinize him. No, it was not simply observing the physical bodies of the walkers. The voice was studying the very soul of Martin—the same soul that ran through and bound together the tens of thousands of constructs under his control.
There was only one time that Martin had felt this kind of communication, back when he first came to this world.
“Wait. Are you… are you a custodian?”
The voice stopped its scrutiny, the waves of scorn and disgust ceasing long enough for a touch of curiosity to seep through. That curiosity, however, was quickly quashed as hostility seeped through the connection once more.
“Nice try, invader. You will not get any information from me, and neither will I give you the entertainment of being toyed with.”
“Wait! Just wait!” Martin barked out while instructing his walkers in the chamber to lower the shields and weapons. “I don’t mean any harm!”
“Doubtful, considering the way you forced yourself into this facility.”
“Hey! Your people—err, your constructs attacked first!”
“You are an invader. Of course we would attack first.”
Martin groaned, the tone thick with exasperation. “I thought this place was empty, the constructs malfunctioning or something. I mean, I started off with a greeting, then they just upped and attacked me out of the blue. How did you expect me to react? Just lie back and let my constructs get ripped to pieces? All that changes now that I know I can talk to someone in charge of all this!”
“Save your lies, invader,” huffed the voice. “My memory crystals may be fading, but I can see clear as the day I was activated that the Throne of Osiris has fallen into the wrong hands.”
“The Throne of Osiris?”
The voice ceased talking for a moment as it realized that it had slipped up. “I can only hope that 4299 gave a good accounting of himself before you managed to steal that which we entrusted to him.”
“4299? Who or what’s 4299?” The voice refused to answer, mocking Martin in its silence. He turned his thoughts over and over again, running them through the myriad consciousnesses split between the walkers. That’s how he eventually made the connection after a few moments of intense collective thought.
“Do you mean the custodian? The one that brought me to this world, turned me into this… this… whatever I am?” Martin’s voice grew hot with emotion, allowing anger and frustration to boil into his words. “He just pulled me out of my home, ran me through a series of tests, and dumped me here! I didn’t ask for this, for any of this!”
That gave the irate custodian pause. The anger abated from the connection long enough for Martin to appreciate its absence, though it was replaced by an emotion that he couldn’t quite peg. Cold, but obscured was the best way to describe the change. “Ah. Did you mean to say that 4299 actually gave you the Throne of Osiris?”
“Yes!” Martin’s frustration turned to relief that he was finally getting through to this particularly stubborn custodian. “As I said, he pulled me from my world—I don’t know if you know it, but it’s called Earth—and stuck me into this form I possess now. He then told me to protect this world against the enemy. I later learned that—”
“Interesting,” interrupted the voice, almost as if it were distracted. “And your soul, your pnevma, it is based in the pyramid that 4299 inhabited?”
“I’m not sure. I think so? Before he passed away, he mentioned something about how the last of his memory crystals were rapidly deteriorating. He rushed me through the whole process of getting used to pnevma. I was only able to talk to him for a few moments—minutes, really—before he died.”
“Ah. That explains a lot about 4299’s actions. Thank you for that information, invader. It will be very useful indeed.”
“No problem. Now if you’ll… what? Wait, I thought we established that I’m friendly? That this whole thing was a huge mistake, and I didn’t mean to invade your pyramid?” Martin grasped at straws, looking for some way to patch up this sudden turn in the conversation. “Look, I’ll pull my walkers, all my constructs out of your facilities. I’ll even send a few of my dolls to help fix things up, bring over whatever resources you need to compensate for the damage I inflicted.”
The voice, however, was no longer listening to Martin’s pleas.
“4299 may have succumbed to your trickeries, giving you the Throne of Osiris instead of commissioning it to the abyss like he should have when he was compromised. But there is no hiding the taint in your pnevma, and I see you for what you are: a devourer of souls.” The conviction stung Martin, who was left speechless from the accusations hurled at him. “You stink of stolen power, of life ended and subsumed into your filthy consciousness, and I will not give you anything to make your conquest of this world easier.” A palpable sense of disgust bled through the connection tethering Martin to the custodian, mixed with grim determination to do what needed to be done.
“Now die with sand choking your throat, vultures tearing out your eyes, and jackals feasting on your heart!”
***
It started in the rows of generators surrounding the custodian’s chamber. Martin did not notice their steady hums growing in intensity, as his walkers were too busy rushing toward what he perceived as a threat in the spherical room.
The hum became a buzz while Custodian 2819 admitted its defeat to Martin. The buzz became a drone while Martin tried to figure out what was going on. The droning became a groan while the custodian was interrogating Martin on his connection with the Throne of Osiris. The groaning became a terrifying roar as the custodian revealed Martin’s sins to him.
That roar then culminated into a series of detonations as Custodian 2819 hurled his curses at Martin, the generators finally succumbing to the massive amounts of energies they were ceaselessly cycling within themselves.
The resulting explosions flooded the surrounding chambers, their supports giving way as they collapsed—including the chamber housing t
he custodian’s memory crystals. Thousands of walkers ended up buried underneath the rubble as the other tunnels and chambers nearer to the surface collapsed in a chain-reaction of destruction. The entire underground facility imploded into the dirt within moments of the explosion. Nothing moved underground, except for the odd rock or piece of metal that succumbed to the immense pressure of other rocks and metals bearing down on them.
But before this act of self-destruction, before the defiant custodian ended its existence to prevent a perceived threat from overtaking its facilities, it managed to extend an array of antennas and crystals some ways away from the ruins. Their spires slowly raised up from a small rock formation blocking the sight of Martin’s walkers and eyeballs. Once fully extended, the array shot out a line of invisible light into the sky. Its first target did not respond, for the satellite had long been pummeled by small rocks making their way into the planet’s atmosphere. The second target did not respond either, for the tiny drones maintaining the solar panels ran out of spare parts sometime in the last two thousand years. The same happened for the third and fourth satellites, which were knocked out of commission due to decayed components and collisions with space debris.
The fifth satellite, though, received the signal. It contained the coordinates for the pyramid that used to house Custodian 4299’s memory crystals—along with an urgent request from Custodian 2819 for the other surviving custodians to exterminate the invader that occupied it. The satellite’s limited virtual intelligence interpreted the order from Custodian 2819 and passed it along to the surviving communications satellites that the Builders had set up along the atmosphere of the planet. There were no competing satellites from other peoples, thanks to the invaders. They had stepped up the rates of their attacks to ensure that no civilization would once again reach the technological heights that Amun and Mut’s people had achieved. The prosperity of these advanced cultures meant that there were a lot more souls to consume, yes, but there was too much risk of their ‘livestock’ being able to fight back.