by E. M. Hardy
The jinn were running out of steam as well, their rock bombardments and veils of shadows slowly lightening up as they exhausted themselves.
The human troops also began slowing down their attacks as they ran out of fresh ones to replace their weary counterparts. Casualties started piling up as well thanks to the reckless assault meant to gather the attention of the rogues.
All this took pressure off of the rogues, which doubled their focus on Martin’s walkers. Without the veils of shadow, the hieracos quickly identified the walkers that pierced deepest into their formations. The dwindling barrage of thrown rocks and loosed blood-arrows allowed the androsphinxes to get in close, and begin mauling the walkers massed at the entrance of the captured pyramid.
One androsphinx managed to gouge out a large hole in the defensive formations of the walkers, allowing the smaller hieracos to pile into the breach and begin ripping Martin’s walkers to pieces. He managed to stabilize that breach by sending in walkers with blood-blades and reinforcing with pike-wielding walkers.
Two other andros managed to close in and open up additional breaches in his formations. Another andro got close enough to create a fourth breach, and Martin’s carefully-crafted defensive formation ended up shattered as the hieracos flooded inside their tightly packed formations.
His walkers may have the advantage when formed up and holding their ground, but in situations where hieracos could savage his walkers from all directions? No, walkers caught out like that were as good as gone, given enough time.
But not just yet.
His remaining twenty-five thousand walkers outside the pyramid arranged themselves into defensive postures multiple levels thick. The outermost layer of the formation was gone, the walkers fighting toe-to-toe with the hieracos, but the layer after that one stood tall and strong.
Tower shields reinforced with extra mud created a miniature wall of sorts, while an array of pikes bristled out from behind them. Not that those formations helped when the andros managed to come crashing in. Still, the pikes helped seal the gaps quickly enough to prevent the hieracos from swarming in all at once.
It was the most effective defensive posture Martin could adopt with his walkers, considering the fact that they were surrounded by millions of rogues in all directions. The pyramid covered their rear, providing a solid wall they could buttress themselves against. The surviving walkers presented concentric rings of pikes, blades, and shields—a defense in depth to punish any rogues that attempted to push their way in.
The only problem was that the rogues had the numbers to spare, and then some.
They continued piling on the beleaguered walkers, pulling reinforcements from pyramids dotting the landscape and from the pyramids built beyond the horizon. Twenty-five thousand walkers were slowly whittled to twenty, then fifteen, then ten, and were eventually crushed completely after a sphinx broke apart the last ring of pikes and shields.
Night came, and the rogues focused their attention on the pyramid itself. They clawed out the sealed entrance, climbed up the walls of the pyramid, and cracked through the recently-repaired sections of the pyramid.
The walkers inside the pyramid held their ground for three more days after that, plugging up the corridors with the ruined rubble of fallen hieracos. They only fell when the hieracos began tearing holes through the pyramid itself, clawing through the walls to tear out the invading walkers. Not even the dolls were spared, with every last one hunted down and cut apart.
To their credit, the allies hit the rogues as hard as they could to draw their attention away from the pyramid.
The chang gun bombers ran out of explosive crystals long before they ran out of fighting spirit. The same could be said for the samurai archers that loosed arrows as fast as they could bind the blood to the projectiles. The exhausted sahirs and martial artists took turns casting their respective spells, albeit with long gaps in between bursts.
It just wasn’t enough to pull the rogues off of the pyramid… and yet Martin didn’t mind, not any longer.
That’s because he got exactly what he wanted out of that engagement. Or more precisely, he found something valuable enough to offset the loss of fifty thousand walkers in such a short but brutal exchange: how to sculpt crystalline formations into memory lattices that would serve as extensions of his pnevmatic network.
In other words, he could now build his own pyramids from scratch.
The dolls accomplished their mission on that first day, successfully attaching a physical connection from Martin’s network to the blasted pyramid. The dolls did this as they ambled their way toward the room containing the massive crystal column. His dolls began swarming the shattered crystal the moment they entered the room, breaking down and reassembling the structure as they brought Martin to the column.
He half-expected to encounter a half-crazed Custodian of some kind when he connected to the pillar—just like the one he encountered in the underground base where he first encountered laser scarabs. He felt nothing of the sort this time around. The crystal was dead, damaged beyond repair and disconnected from the rogue network. He could probably have repaired the crystal given the time and resources, but his dolls could afford neither with the rogues sieging the pyramid.
The dolls instead translated the information they got from the crystal as they sent it back to his core. They revealed that the crystalline latticework of the column served as a transmitter of some kind. It functioned very similarly to the ceramic nodes within his obelisks, which repeated the signal originating from his own pnevmatic core located within the Qleb Sierra Pyramid.
Not only that, but the memory crystals contained within also served as a foundation of sorts, like a smaller version of Martin’s physical core within the Qleb Sierra. The dolls learned how to duplicate the rogue pyramids starting from the crystal column, from the walls and corridors to the generators and vats within.
Martin gasped when he realized the enormity of this discovery. This was a game-changer in so many different ways.
Prior to this, neither he nor the dolls possessed the knowledge to create the pyramids and their facilities from the ground up. They only knew how to work with mud. The underground facility revealed how to cut crystals so their lattices formed energy-condensing batteries, nothing more.
This was why he was forced to scour the land for ruined pyramids and Builder facilities that his dolls could repair.
He tried building his own pyramids, tried expanding production vats and generators, but he simply did not possess the necessary knowledge to build them from scratch. The only thing he understood on an instinctive level was his core, the only thing he could manipulate with his will alone.
Everything else was up to the dolls, who handled all the minutiae of repairing and maintaining a pyramid. His most prized builders, the doll-like Shapers, could experiment with various designs to build simple infrastructure. Roads, ditches, canals, even bridges. They did not, however, possess the knowledge to build pyramids or their core facilities from nothing.
Until now.
The ability to arrange crystal lattices to hold a pnevmatic signal meant he could build new memory columns of his own. This meant new pyramids, which in turn meant more generators and more production vats. He could build and send more walkers in the field to hold off the rogues, prevent them from taking more territory.
He finally unlocked the most important secret of the rogues: a machine to build a machine that builds a machine that builds another machine to build yet another machine…
This revelation ignited a new fire within him, brought new hope to this hopeless scenario. His existing walkers and the allied army could buy time for him to bring his production up to speed. He could eventually field enough walkers to whittle away at the rogues, taking full advantage of their rigid programming to eventually grind them down.
His walkers could strike, retreat, adapt, and experiment while the rogues mindlessly swarmed at the limits of their control radius. The
allied army could train up more chang gun riders, develop a fully-fledged air force of its own, to strike at the rogue pyramids themselves.
They might even come up with new inventions like massive hot-air balloons capable of dropping dozens of bombs at a single time. They could use chi, prana, sahar, and blood-binding to modify these blimps, further expand their capabilities. They might even discover and develop entirely new branches of magical abilities, like Hobogetur and his Fate Riders.
And all this would be possible with the time he could now give the humans of the land. He would no longer be restricted to just a hundred thousand walkers now. He could build his own swarms of walkers to match the numbers of the rogues, build up enough constructs to negate the overwhelming industrial capacity of the rogues.
Numbers would be of immense use against the invaders as well.
He could already imagine his walkers and scarabs acting as cannon fodder, overwhelming the invaders from all directions. They could very well wipe his walkers out with a few charges from their knights, a few area-of-effect spells from their spellcasters, or a couple of bolts from their flying valkyries.
His walkers, however, would end up becoming an ever-present threat that they simply had to deal with at every step of the way. Millions of walkers springing up from the ground, attacking from the cover of darkness, tangling up their supply lines—all these little annoyances would add up to drain their forces dry over time.
His forces could distract the invaders enough to prevent them from focusing solely on reaping souls, from heading straight to the major population centers and slaughtering as many people as they could.
Martin was so wrapped up with the endless possibilities opened by his newfound ability to build pyramids, so engrossed in planning things out for the long run, that he didn’t even notice the explosion that ended his existence.
Chapter 10
Twenty-four hours earlier…
Cui Dai hesitated. The top Balancer in service to Her Imperial Augustness, one of their most capable and competent field agents… and she wasn’t quite sure she was doing the right thing.
No, she wasn’t really concerned about the torture being inflicted upon their prisoner. They could pop joints, break bones, tear ligaments, and burn nerves all day long if they wanted to. The healers coming in after every ‘session’ with the pain specialists made sure of that.
This did not bother her for she presided over many such sessions over her time with the Balancers. She also expected to do so for many more years to come.
What really set her off guard, however, was how the Rat under their custody was being a little too cooperative.
She nodded toward the torturer, who ceased raking the man over a pit of glowing hot coals. She held a hand up to the healer, who was just about to step in and heal the blistering skin. The man hesitated for half a heartbeat then stepped back. She could almost see the way his lips twisted in displeasure despite his face hidden behind the anonymity of his mask.
“Okuda… Repeat for me again what you planned to do with the crystal bombs found in your possession.” Cui Dai kept her voice flat, neutral, almost apathetic.
“I already told you a dozen times!” the man sobbed, forgetting the stoicism with which he bore the first few weeks of torture. The specialists cracked him a week after they started, and he began singing his heart out just to provide a short reprieve from his suffering. “They were supposed to be used against the empress during her—”
He screamed incoherently as Cui Dai pressed a red hot brand against his bare genitals. “You will address Her Augustness with respect,” she cautioned.
The man had stopped calling her liege by other more demeaning labels. They ripped this defiance out of him after they worked him thoroughly each time he dared disrespect her—like how he spat out her name just now.
This earned him another dose of pain and a little extra work for the healer after this session.
The man whimpered for a few moments, writhing in place as he struggled against his bindings. “We were supposed to use the bombs during the… the Empress’ wedding,” he whimpered, his voice much more subdued this time around.
Cui Dai’s nod signaled her acceptance, as well as her permission for him to continue.
“We were going to plant them along the roads her procession would have taken through the Red City. The Golden Leaf Teahouse, the Giant’s Belly Tavern, the Glowing Orchid Teahouse, and Wu Lin Merchandising are our hideouts in the city. My contact in the Imperial Guards include—”
“I didn’t ask you about your hideouts,” Cui Dai interrupted blandly, without emotion. “I am asking you what you planned to do with the crystals.”
“And I already told you!” screamed the man called Okuda. “We were supposed to attack the bitch’s wedding! Hopefully kill her, but failing that, at least show you Imperials that your precious Empress isn’t as invincible as she presents herself to be!”
Cui Dai grimaced from behind her mask and nodded toward the torturer to continue.
“I already told you everything you want to hear! What else can I say!? WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”
The masked man holding the handle of the gruesome rotisserie looked to Cui Dai, guessing that she meant to intimidate rather than inflict unnecessary pain.
He guessed wrong.
***
Cui Dai swung high, aiming for Yao Xiu’s head with one end of the staff and bringing the other end down to sweep her legs away.
It was a basic staff maneuver meant to put your opponent on edge, force them to either step into the swing to counter or step back to disengage. She even slowed her swing down enough to make it easier for her opponent to guess where it would come from.
No chi inserted into her muscles to bolster her reflexes, no blood channeled in the staff to empower its swings, no prana circulating through her core to bolster her strength. A simple swing powered entirely by the muscles of the body—a simple exercise for someone cycling chi and prana into their bodies.
Her student, however, was far too distracted to maintain the flow of chi around her and prana within her—much less respond with the appropriate counterstroke.
The mentor cracked the staff on her student’s shoulder, breaking bone in the process. Her victim dropped her staff and gasped out loud in pain.
Cui Dai noisily clicked her tongue as her apprentice knelt on the ground, biting her lip as she fought against the pain. She let the girl suffer for a few more moments before kneeling beside her and undoing the damage with chi.
“Honored master… I have to ask… is all the torture really necessary?” asked Yao Xiu, revealing a red, sweaty face when she removed her mask.
Cui Dai usually ended their sessions when she broke a bone or two. But they had the normally busy training grounds to themselves at this time, the oils of the lanterns burning low into the night. It would be a shame to pass up on such a rare opportunity for extra training.
“It’s not torture if I let you fight back,” she quipped as she finished healing the young woman.
“I… didn’t mean about the practice, honored master. I meant Okuda… the extended torture being inflicted upon him.”
“Ah,” Cui Dai said simply as she put away the staves they practiced with. She may have healed Yao Xiu’s shoulder, but she left the bruises alone. They would teach her to watch her shins even when parrying strikes to her arms and abdomen.
She contemplated adding a few more bruises to punish her inattention but reconsidered when she saw the lights of the oil lamps weaken and flicker.
Cui Dai silently patted the dust off her training robes, obviously meaning to ignore Yao Xiu’s inquiry. The girl, however, didn’t quite get the hint.
“He already admitted to everything,” she said as she stepped in beside her master and helped put away the other padded weapons. “He even gave the names of his colleagues and their secret identities in the city—with every single one running off after the attac
k on the warehouse.”
Cui Dai undid her own mask, pulling away the sweaty, oily tendrils of hair sticking to her face. “Many of the other Balancers agree with you, Yao Xiu. They believe Okuda has been squeezed for all he is worth, and that the next logical step would be to just make him disappear.”
She turned her gaze toward her apprentice, eyes set in a hard glare. “Yet I do not believe he is telling us the entire truth.”
Enin chose that moment to materialize from the Invisible World, followed shortly by Inqiz. Cui Dai’s bonded jinni donned a frown as she came into tangibility, inky wisps of ethereal smoke curling as she crossed her arms.
“I feel your conviction, partner, but I cannot see what use further torture would serve at this point in time. Shen Feng’s troops have combed the Red City, scoured clean every house within. Martin’s walkers have done likewise across the surrounding lands and have found no sign of the Rats operating nearby.”
“And like your apprentice said,” added Inqiz, interrupting Enin as he shook his head, “The agents that Okuda revealed to operate in the Red City disappeared after losing what must have been their one gambit at striking the Empress. Every single one of them, gone the moment his team was attacked. Torturing the man up to now… it seems a little bit petty, even for you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” shot Enin, visibly irked by the other jinni’s statement.
“Leave it, Enin.” Cui Dai thinned her lips as she wiped the last beads of sweat from her wet brow. “I cannot put my finger on it, but I just know something isn’t right.
“This operation, this whole thing… this isn’t typical Rat behavior. The Rats never exposed themselves so openly, so brazenly like this. They specialize in gathering information, bending ears, and sowing distrust… not stockpiling weapons and planning for a direct attack.”
Yao Xiu tilted her head thoughtfully at Cui Dai’s words, cupping her chin with one hand as she pondered Cui Dai’s words. “Yes, honored master. Now that you mentioned it, it does appear strange how the Rats are so openly exposing themselves this way. According to the reports filed away in the Balancer archives, the Rats normally operate in more isolated cells. They very rarely work in groups larger than three or four…”