by Jez Cajiao
“He’s your Lord…Lord Jax…” Flux said, confusion clear in his voice.
“We swore to Barabarattas…” The elf said slowly, “He’d never come for us; nobody would…”
“He did,” said Bane simply, nodding towards me.
“I thought they were your men?” Flux asked me, looking over.
“No. I want to recruit them, though,” I replied, catching the looks of awe on their faces.
“You went through all this to recruit people you don’t even know?” Flux asked, and I shook my head.
“My friend Oren vouched for them; that’s enough for me. Besides…I told you I’d not leave a child here to the goblins.”
“You want to…recruit us? You came here, killed the goblins and…you just want to recruit us?” the elf asked incredulously before a dwarf shoved him aside and stepped forward.
“Ye knew Oren? Prove it,” he said, eyes locked on mine.
“I know Oren,” I corrected him, “You Decin?” I asked, and he nodded. “He said the story about the lich is bullshit.”
I said, remembering Oren’s comment about the purple robes Decin always wore, and Decin swore, shaking his head and looked around at the other prisoners. An elf behind him started to laugh.
“None o’ you fuckers believe ‘im. It were a lich!” With an indignant glare at the lot of them, he turned back to me as the group seemed to relax. “Ye say yer know Oren… when’d ye see ‘im last?” he asked hopefully.
“About four hours ago. He’s sworn to me and is flying a warship now. He’s my right hand, in charge of all the ships I command…you want to see how high you can rise?” I asked and saw the flash of a grin on Decin’s face.
“Depends…how many ships yer got?” he said, and I grinned back at him.
“I’ve got two, a Warship, and a nice little abandoned one by the lake outside; my engineers got her fixed up,” I said, hoping I wasn’t lying through my teeth.
“Ye stole ma ship an’ want me to swear loyalty?” The dwarf growled, and Flux cut him off with a snap.
“He came here with a team of six to face hundreds of goblins to save your life, dwarf. What did your old lord offer?”
There was a long silence as the prisoners looked at each other. The elf who’d been laughing clipped Decin across the back of the head, hard.
“You’ve always been a bloody fool, D,” he said affectionately shaking his head, then he looked at me. “We come as a package, Decin and I. Is this a problem?” I noted the way his hand quested down, and Decin’s lifted to grip it without a thought, the automatic response of a long-term couple to their partner seeking reassurance. I couldn’t help it.
I grinned at them, glad to see that someone had a partner they were drawing strength from.
“I’m happy to have you both; how about your crew?” I asked, looking at the rest and receiving firm nods in return. “Glad to hear it! Now, how about someone finds me a healing potion before I bleed to death? We can cover all the Oaths and shit once we’re out of here and have a beer in hand.”
I turned and staggered a little as I walked toward the corpse of the matriarch. My health wasn’t too bad, sitting at a third of its maximum, and my stamina was at a quarter, but my mana was in the single digits still. Oracle flew over to me, sitting down on her usual perch of my shoulder, and gave a little shiver that caused all the blood covering her to fall straight through her…onto me.
“What the… thanks, Oracle…” I muttered and she went red as she realized what she’d just done.
“Sorry, Jax! I didn’t think…” She whispered to me.
“Ah, don’t worry about it. Thanks for coming for me,” I said, smiling up at her gently. I’d felt her drop everything and speed straight to me when I’d lost my temper.
“Anytime,” she whispered back, leaning down to kiss my cheek before taking off, flying to inspect the bag the matriarch had been rooting in.
Bane was there almost as quickly as Oracle, and he dug in, pulling a few variously colored potions out, dropping them aside and moving on as Oracle directed. It took hardly any time before he pulled out a deep crimson one and jumped to his feet.
He was at my side quickly, popping the cork out and raising it to my lips carefully so that I could take a drink. It felt a bit weird having someone else literally giving me a drink, but considering the heavy cut on my right arm, and the broken wrist on my left, it was the best and quickest solution.
“Thank you, Bane,” I said after I’d finished it, and Oracle called him back to the bag, indicating a mana potion she’d spotted.
“This one next, Bane. It’s a weak one, but it’ll be enough to start with.” I felt the healing potion spreading out and starting to work, my arms tingling at first, before the bones in my left started shifting, and I hissed in pain.
The potion must have been a greater healing potion or something similar because it had me feeling great in under a minute, bones fixed, blood regenerated, and wounds almost all closed.
Bane had held the second potion for me again, and I soon confirmed it was a weak one, unfortunately, as it only restored twenty mana and barely boosted my regeneration in that area at all.
It was enough, though.
I quickly assessed the people that were standing around. Mainly the things they needed were a hot meal, a bath, and a metric fuckton of booze. They all had minor wounds, and one guy had nearly shredded the skin on his arms trying to get free to help in the fight. I resolved to watch him, as anyone that determined was either going to be an asset or a nightmare.
“Does anyone have an urgent need for healing?” I asked, and received a chorus of head shakes, noting the concerned looks Bane, Flux, and Cheena were giving the little Mer they’d freed.
“Flux, in a few minutes I’ll be able to use that water spell and channel it long enough to be useful. For now, though, there’s still that last group of goblins...”
“Where are the green skinned little bastards?” one of Decin’s men growled, reaching down and pulling a short sword free from a goblin corpse. The rest of the crew immediately armed themselves and clamored to join in the fight.
“There were only a handful, hiding in a room they’d barricaded at the end of the corridor…” Cheena said, and in seconds, the room was mostly empty. Almost the entire crew had gone running and limping, determined to cleanse the area of the goblin infestation. The only people left in the room now were Decin’s partner, who I learned was called Hanau, the four Mer, Oracle, myself, and an older woman who’d started examining the dust-covered figures embedded in the wall, while totally ignoring me.
I looked between her and Hanau with a raised eyebrow, and Hanau laughed briefly.
“You’ll soon find that while I love the battle of wits in trade, I have no interest in physical violence, Lord Jax, and Riana there loves to learn. She’s our chief engineer, mainly because she’s always digging into something she shouldn’t, or she’d still have a job in the city…”
“That ship’d be lucky to get anywhere by winter, if not for my fixes, Hanau; don’t think I didn’t hear you.” Riana replied, shooting Hanau a glare that could have frozen a lake solid in summer.
“Why did you ask if there was a problem with you and Decin coming as a package?” I asked Hanau quickly, trying not to smile as I guessed I was seeing two friends giving each other grief to relax.
“Well, Lord Barabarattas issued a declaration that cross-race relationships were an abomination, and I wanted to see where you stood on it.”
“I don’t give a shit who you’re boinking,” I said honestly, “All I care about is if you’re loyal and trustworthy. Where you’re sticking whatever is up to you.”
“It’s true…Jax doesn’t care about that kind of thing; besides, he likes me!” Oracle said, bouncing up and down on my shoulder and damn near giving me a concussion with her impressive chest.
“I wonder why…” Hanau said with an open smile.
“Oh, it’s because I went through his brain, I foun
d out what he likes, and…”
“I think Hanau was being sarcastic, Oracle…” I said, cutting her off and getting a laugh from the tall elf.
“It is! It’s a relic!” came a shout from the corner, and we all looked over to find that Riana had climbed atop a pile of rubble to examine one the dust-covered figures more closely. Our conversation effectively derailed, we gathered around Riana as she finished wiping a section clean of dust and the funk of centuries.
Revealed under her hand was a diamond set into an ornate pattern in the middle of the figure’s chest.
I blinked, recognizing a sight I’d not expected to see here, and Oracle took off with a flutter of wings. She landed on the figure’s chest and grabbed onto the diamond, her hand sinking into the stone effortlessly. When she pulled it back, my mana dipped by ten points.
“They’re intact!” she cried, meeting my eyes with a huge smile on her face. I looked from her to the stone, remembering similar designs I’d seen strewn about the Tower. I frowned, then blinked, my eyes going wide as I studied the row of figures. There were ten of them; three stood with enormous crossbows braced across their chests, five had huge shields resting on the ground against their left sides, and hammers brandished in their right. One had a sword and shield similar to the others, but its carvings were markedly more ornate, and the final one was different in almost every way.
Where the other nine were bulky humanoids covered in armor and carrying weapons, the tenth was slimmer, with four arms spaced equidistant around the torso and three legs making it look like a tripod. The head was weird as well, making me think of an Indian deity I’d seen depicted; it had three faces, each looking in a different direction, so that it covered the full three hundred and sixty degrees of vision.
They were Golems, nine ‘War’ class and one ‘Servitor’. They weren’t as ornate as the broken ones I’d seen in bits around the Tower, not most of the them anyway, but these were intact, and judging from the dip in mana when Oracle touched the first, they were able to absorb mana from a direct source.
“They can be fixed?” I asked, and Oracle shook her head, still staring at the line of treasure.
“They don’t need to be fixed Jax. They’re intact, they’re just sleeping. All they need is mana to reawaken them…maybe the collectors are also intact! They must have shut down when the Tower did. Seneschal probably shut down all the collectors, not just the Tower’s … do you know what this means?” I shook my head, and Oracle went on,
“It means there are more out there! This was the fourth waystation, one of the closest to the Tower and used as a rest point and place for people to stay when they visited the lake… which means there are four other stations like this out there, and their Golems might be intact as well. We need to find them!” My head was suddenly filled with visions of Golems. We wouldn’t need that great an army if we had dozens of these, surely? But the next second, Oracle ruined the wonderful dream.
“They have huge mana requirements when they’re in battle, but if we can get the local collectors working, that would charge them up, and then we could send them to the Tower. They could refill their cores completely and help so much! And I think this one is a Complex or Level Three Servitor; it’d have to be able to operate independently to be here, so it must be!”
“You’re sure it’s not a Level Four?” I asked quickly, my hopes of upgrading the Genesis Chamber leaping to the front of my mind.
“No, I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel the same. Until it’s awake, though, only Heph would know for sure.”
“Dammit… okay, how do we reawaken them?” I asked, trying to dismiss the disappointment that flared. There was no use complaining; these were an amazing find!
“We need mana, basically. To reawaken a fully dormant Golem takes about a thousand mana for the most basic, and it doubles with each level, so the ‘King’ or level seven take about sixty-four thousand mana.”
“Feck,” I muttered, “How do we go about reactivating the mana collectors?” Oracle started scanning the room in confusion.
“If they are here…the control room must be here too, or nearby. I know they were built to a template, but I never saw it. Sorry, Jax. All I know is that they wouldn’t be far from the control room in case they were needed…”
“You know what these are?” interrupted Riana suddenly. We’d forgotten all about her, and she’d been practically bouncing on the balls of her feet listening to us. “You know about the relics?”
“They’re Golems.” I said absently, gesturing to them, “We’ve a load of damaged ones back at the Tower, and we’ve built some of the lowest or ‘Basic’ class Constructors and Servitors. What do you know about them?”
“You’ve got more? And you can build them?!?” she gasped, flying across the room in just a few steps to grab my arms and stare into my eyes intently. “I need to see them. I’ll swear anything I have to; just let me work with them!”
“You’re an engineer, right?” I asked her, getting a fervent nod. “And an archeologist, I guess. You’ll need to speak to Heph and Seneschal, but I’ve no issue with it.”
“Who are they, and what’s an archeologist?” she asked firmly. “You will tell me everything you know about this.”
“Riana!” snapped Hanau, stepping in close and grabbing her arm to tug her free and glaring at her before turning back to me. “I apologize, Lord Jax... Riana is an asset to the crew, as skilled as she is with both ancient magics and modern technology. She sometimes forgets herself, however…” Riana’s face blanched when she realized what she’d done, and she started stammering an apology, until I held up a hand to stop them both.
“Honestly, it’s all right. I like that enthusiasm; I can certainly use it! I’ll make this same offer to the rest of your crew later, it’s the one I make to all my new people. Join me, swear loyalty to me, and I’ll support you. That includes, for a select few, gaining access to our Hall of Memories. We have skill memories from before the cataclysm, several hundred of them, and depending on the abilities, desires, and loyalty of people, they may be given one or more of these. To answer your next questions, yes, I’m Lord Jax, the one that’s at war with Barabarattas, and yes, I claimed and cleared the Great Tower, making me the ruler of these lands. In the Tower were three wisps, all with knowledge of the ancient world. Seneschal is in charge of the Tower itself; he looks after the physical structure and maintains it, although at the moment, it’s more of a job of slowly repairing it, as it’s very badly damaged. Hephaestus is the master of Golems. He creates and controls them, and these ten will make him very happy indeed.”
“Lastly is Oracle, mistress of the Hall of Memories, and my companion.”
I said, gesturing to Oracle where she perched on the Golem’s chest still. She grinned at them and lifted off, starting to search the rest of the room.
“You...I mean…actual memories…and…” Riana sputtered, trying to decide what to ask first.
“Well, I never thought I’d see the day!” Hanau said, clapping her on the back. “Riana actually speechless, and not through apoplexy!” He laughed and gestured to the room. “What should we be looking for, Lord Jax?”
Before I could answer, there was a crash from the corridor and a series of screams, followed by the sound of battle. I swore and turned, sprinting for the fight. Realizing at the last second that my naginata was still buried in the matriarch’s chest and altering my direction to grab it, I yanked it free with a ‘shlurp’ as the lungs released the last of their hold on the weapon.
I kicked off the opposite wall again, maintaining my speed as I turned the corner, then slowed to a walk. The barrier at the end of the corridor that had been up earlier was down, and Decin and his crew were cheering at the sight of the last few goblins that had been hiding inside. They were dead; hell, they were very dead, from what I could see, and the room itself was open to see now.
I spotted what looked like a furnace and forge combination, and a dozen other bits of equipment I had no
names for. Riana was behind me, and I turned to her as we stopped near the door, Hanau cheering his partner happily.
“What can you see in here? That’s usable, I mean?” She pushed a few people out of the way and started hunting around.
The various loot stripped from the ship appeared to have been haphazardly dumped across the floor, making it difficult to pick anything out. “See what you can find, and then come find me in the last room,” I ordered Decin, turning around, and starting to walk away. Oracle hovered nearby, and I quickly spoke to her.
“Was everyone okay? I should have asked before…” I said, getting a brilliant smile from Oracle that set my mind at ease and my heart racing.
“They’re fine. Well, they’re all still wounded; I healed them as much as I could without using all our mana, but…”
“Well, it looks like the goblins are all dead now. We need to scout this place out, make sure it’s safe, then go get Oren and the ships to come up here, even if they have to use the cannons to clear a space to land,” I said, grimacing as I thought about blind firing the cannons to make space.
“We can search the ruins quickly, Lord,” came a voice from my left, and I spun around to see Cheena standing in the shadows.
“Fuck’s sake, I nearly crapped myself, Cheena! I swear I’m gonna make you guys wear a bell or something!” I snapped, my heart racing. I took a deep breath and shook my head before speaking again. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t snap at you. Yes, if you could scout the area that would be fantastic. Oracle, can you bring everyone up here? I’d feel a lot better if we were all together right now, and if we can restart the mana collectors, it’ll take a while to reactivate the Golems, or reawaken, I suppose I should say.”
“Bane will stay with you and T’lek, Flux, and I will scout the rest of the ruins. Not a single creature that isn’t loyal to you will survive, Lord.” Cheena said. She seemed to vanish into the shadows, and I had a sense of a second movement nearby. I spun, barely spotting a blur as Flux disappeared with her into the next room.