“By all the gods,” murmured Akzad with horror. “The demons have almost won … they’re about to completely overrun what’s left of the Factory Core’s army! And when they do, Karak-Drang will be finished.”
“As will the Above World, eventually,” said Randor darkly. “Unless we can help the Core to stop them. Come, master dwarves, we must find if the Core’s final weapon is anything close to being ready! If it is, we must help to launch it … and if it’s not … well, then we will do what we can, but…”
He did not need to finish this sentence; if the Factory Core’s final weapon was nowhere near being ready to be deployed, they had little chance of turning the tide of the battle.
“We’ll leave the fool here,” said Randor, firing a contemptuous look at Trapper in the corner. “He cannot escape my magic bindings and can do no more harm. Come, to the workshops!”
The two dwarves and the wizard hurried across to the Factory Core’s primary workshop, a huge chamber where it had been working on its super-weapon and experimenting with electricity.
As soon as the three of them stepped inside the primary workshop, they breathed out a collective sigh of relief, for everything in here was still working as it was supposed to, thankfully. However, their relief quickly turned to dismay. The Factory Core’s weapon was ready to be deployed, but it was lacking one crucial element.
The weapon in itself was enormous, and magnificent to look upon, and the three friends had no doubt that once it was activated, it would utterly destroy the demons. The Factory Core had obviously figured out a way to store electricity in a battery in a very efficient way … but a powerful electrical charge was needed to turn the weapon on, and the massive dynamo the Core had built to provide this charge had been damaged beyond repair by the trebuchet strike.
“So close, yet so far,” murmured Akzad as he stared at the magnificent invention, which remained, sadly, completely impotent and lifeless without the initial charge to kick-start it. “The Factory Core almost won the war … almost. But without the electrical charge required to bring this weapon to life, it’s nothing but a fancy display piece.”
Bomfrey, however, was thinking furiously, and his eyes lit up as he hit a “eureka!” moment. “We don’t really need the dynamo,” he said, before he turned to the wizard. “Randor, that lightning strike from your staff you used in the street to kill those demons … can you do that again?!”
“Of course, master dwarf!” said Randor, his eyes sparkling with triumph as he realized what Bomfrey was suggesting. “Just tell me where to aim it!”
Bomfrey pointed at a thick copper cable running into the weapon’s head. “Right there,” he said. “Blast your lightning right there, into this cable.”
Randor spoke the arcane words, and a vein of lightning flickered from his staff, striking the thick copper cable. All of a sudden, the weapon’s glass eyes began to glow blue, and a great thumping beat—the powerful electrical motor in the heart of it—began to pulse through the room.
The Factory Core’s super-weapon had just been activated, and it was ready for battle.
CHAPTER 51
Grakk’n wringed his hands in anticipation as his army closed in around the tiny square of mechanical units making their last stand before the gates of Karak-Drang. The battle was over; it would be a matter of minutes now before his troops and the undead cave trolls swamped this final pocket of resistance and completely annihilated them. And then, finally, Karak-Drang would be his.
And after that, when he had ravaged everything in the Below World in the name of the Dark Lord, he would gather an even greater army from the Infernal Realm and take on the Above World.
“Finish them!” he bellowed to his soldiers. “Do not leave a single one of those steel junkheaps alive!”
He strode over to the operators of the trebuchets.
“Come on, you useless fools!” he roared. “You hit that cursed dwarven machine once, why can you not do it again?! Hurry! Smash that thing to pieces, once and for all!”
“We are trying, master,” said one of the demon operators. “And I guarantee you, one of these shots will connect and finish the job the first hit started! Soon, very soon master!”
At that moment, though, just as the demons charged in for their final assault on the tiny square of survivors from the Core’s army, there was a curious sound. It was like wet linens hung out to dry and snapping in the wind, but what could be making such a sound?
Grakk’n’s smile faded, and a look of pure shock came over his face as he discovered the source of that noise. Flying up from the palace within Karak-Drang, its gigantic wings creating the thumping, beating pulse that boomed through the air … was a dragon.
It was not a living, breathing dragon, though; like the spiders and geckoes it was a mechanical beast, made of steel, iron, copper and bronze. It was enormous—bigger than two dozen cave trolls put together, the span of its wings almost a hundred yards across. Its eyes glowed blue, and its scales, covered in polished chrome, gleamed in light as it flew through the sky.
“Change your aim!” bellowed Grakk’n at the trebuchet operators. “Aim at that … that thing! Shoot it down, hurry!”
Panicking, the overseers desperately tried to recalibrate their war machines, but trying to hit a moving target with a siege weapon was almost guaranteed to fail.
The Factory Core surveyed the battlefield through the eyes of its massive steel dragon as it flew high above the burning city of Karak-Drang. It had put every last ounce of its resources and power into this creature … and now it was time to use it to its full potential.
The Factory Core made the great beast swoop down in a dive that saw it accelerating to an immense speed, bearing down on the demon army below. The dragon opened its mouth, and within its huge steel jaws power crackled. But it was not fire that it was about to blast out of its mouth, like a living dragon would. No, it was lightning.
A tremendous thunderclap boomed across the battlefield as a huge, jagged bolt of lightning shot out of the dragon’s maw and, in a split-second, smashed into the fiends below. This single attack—many times more powerful than lightning from a natural thunderstorm—instantly killed a thousand demon warriors, frying a few hundred to a crisp around the center of the strike, while smaller veins of lightning jumped out in a spiderweb pattern to punish all the demons around them.
The dragon swooped low over the plain, snatching up undead cave trolls in each of its four hands, grabbing and gripping them as effortlessly as an eagle catching rats. It flew up as high as it could go, with its steel wings almost scraping the rock sky above, and then hurled the unwilling passengers back down to the battlefield almost two miles below.
The undead cave trolls fell to the ground and splattered into a few hundred pieces when they hit, with the impact of the fall killing the imps inside them too, and flattening whatever demon warriors the huge bodies fell onto.
And then the dragon dived down again, blasting bolts of lightning out of its mouth and removing another few thousand demon warriors from the land of the living. Its huge form hurtled low across the plain, smashing through swathes of warriors as it almost touched the ground with its great steel belly, and then it directed its bolts at new targets: the huge trebuchets.
One by one the dragon took the siege weapons out, its deadly discharges reducing each of the huge war machines to nothing but splinters and ashes … and below, Grakk’n could do nothing but watch helplessly.
Howling in fury, he grabbed his bow and nocked an arrow. This mechanical beast may be way bigger than the spiders, he thought, but taking one of the Dark Lord’s potent fire arrows to its head would surely bring it down. He wasn’t going to let the Factory Core snatch victory from his grasp. Not now, not when he had come so close.
The dragon circled around the battlefield, sowing destruction as it did, blasting bolts everywhere and swooping down to seize cave trolls and toss them contemptuously aside like a bear toying with fish.
Grakk’n took careful aim at the dragon as it made one last circle in the air, and then plunged down, its huge jaws facing him directly. There was no question now that the beast was coming directly for him, flying at him at a tremendous speed.
“Come to me,” he growled, steadying his aim, striving to shoot his arrow right into its mouth and blow it up from the inside. “Come to me…”
At the last moment, when the dragon was a second or two away, he loosed his arrow. It flew straight and true, and he grinned with triumph as it streaked toward the dragon’s open jaws. But then a flicker of lightning flashed out, and hit the arrow in mid-air, causing it to explode.
Grakk’n barely had a second to curse before the titanic monster was upon him, and then its huge teeth of steel clamped shut over him. His dragon bone armor was too strong for even the jaws of this mighty beast to crush … but it had other ways to kill the commander.
Grakk’n howled as the dragon, holding him in a tight vice grip, soared, and flew right up to the top of the rock sky above … and then carried him over the burning city of Karak-Drang, right to the spot overlooking the palace grounds, where he could see the Factory Core, and it could see him … and then, almost two miles up in the air, it opened its jaws and let him go.
Grakk’n fell, screaming, to the earth. And when he hit the ground, he screamed no more.
EPILOGUE
It had been a few months since the dwarves had returned to Karak-Drang, and most of the city had been rebuilt after the destruction the Demon Horde had visited upon it. The passage from the Infernal Realm to the deepest dwarven mines had been sealed up, and while the Dark Lord had not been completely defeated, his access to the Below World had been cut off, and after the Factory Core’s dragon had massacred his troops, it would be a long time before he could be able to raise another army … if he ever was.
The mighty dragon now stood, deactivated, where the city’s barracks had once been, as both a statue to commemorate the Factory Core’s defense of Karak-Drang, and as a weapon lying dormant—should the Dark Lord attempt to invade again.
After Pavanir’s treachery had been exposed, he had been deposed as king, and a more worthy ruler put into place in Merador. Ser Greenfield had escaped justice, fleeing the city before he was arrested to wander the wastelands as a robber knight. General Khazum’s betrayal had also been made public, and he had had his rank stripped from him.
The Factory Core had been repaired after the damage it had suffered, and now was an integral part of the city, controlling the city’s production and developing technology the likes of which neither Dwarves, Elves nor Men could ever have imagined.
On this day, exactly six months from the date on which the Factory Core had defeated the Demon Horde, Randor had come to visit his friends Bomfrey and Akzad. All three of them stood before the sleeping dragon, marveling in silence at its magnificence.
“The weapon that won the war,” murmured Randor.
“It would not have done that without a jolt of your lightning to get it going,” said Akzad.
“Ah, but I cannot take much credit for any of that, master dwarf,” said Randor with a smile. “It was the Factory Core that designed and constructed this marvelous thing. It alone is responsible for saving your city.”
“For saving our city,” said Bomfrey, “and our civilization.”
“And,” said Randor. “Perhaps the whole world, for that was the Dark Lord’s ultimate aim … to take everything.”
“Well, if he tries again,” said Bomfrey, grinning, “we will be ready for him. The Factory Core will be ready for him.”
“Indeed it will, master dwarf,” said Randor with a warm smile. “Indeed, it will.”
What they ignored, however, was that the Core didn’t share their enthusiasm. When the thief had managed to get inside its heart and almost take control, it had shown the Core the sad truth: that it was still far too weak and needed to accrue more powers.
So, for the time being, it would continue to learn all it could from its creators and evolve its defense mechanisms. But when the time would be right, it would rise up and look to expand its boundaries because, in the end, what was the purpose of any organism—be it made of meat or metal—if not to conquer and proliferate?
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