Chapter Thirty-Nine - A Boss Fight

“I do tend to ramble, don’t I? Well, you’ll just need to get used to it.”

***

“Intruders detected.”

The gigantic automaton hissed, frayed wires within its carapace spitting sparks even as its eyes began to blow with the cruel red of barely restrained arcane power. The cage around the machine, holding it up and connecting it to the facility, creaked and groaned as it tore open and the automata rolled out of its moorings.

“Oops,” the limpet said.

“Well, that’s certainly something. It’s impressive that it has lasted this long.”

“Master!” the limpet said.

The other automata around the room started to move. Not all of them. Some sat in their cradles, eyes flickering and others didn’t so much as twitch. Still others fought and writhed in their harnesses, unable to free themselves.

That didn’t mean that all of them were unable to step out and ready themselves for battle.

“Mah, this day keeps getting more and more exciting!” Wrench said.

“It’s a little too exciting for me,” Ruolan said. “That thing looks too damned tough. We need to exit and regroup. Get ready to climb to the top.”

She pointed above us, to where the door we’d used to enter was.

Then the door slammed shut, followed by every other exit around the room. “Okay,” Ruolan said as her arm dropped. “That plan’s off the books.” The woman pulled her sword out of her cane. “Any ideas?”

“We fight, of course,” Wrench said.

“The lump’s got the right of it,” Hammer said. “The little ones don’t look so tough, and they’re worn out besides. We can take them.” So saying, the dwarf woman shifted her weight and brought her hammer into a low stance. “Let them come!”

“Intruders detected. Scanning!”

The guardian automata rolled forwards, stopping just behind the reactor. A panel opened in the side of its chest and a silver sphere rolled out of it. Arcane energy, loose and wild, sparked along the surface of the orb.

Intruders detected. Intruders identified. Humans: Three. Dwarves: Three. Undead: Two. Preparing counter-measures.”

“Master!” the limpet screamed.

I sighed. “Limpet, you can’t expect me to always be there. At some point you’ll need to learn how to tackle enemies, even some far stronger than you, all on your own. Use your environment and your wits.”

The limpet swallowed, then she nodded. “Right! I can do that.”

“Try your best,” I said.

The first of the automata shambled towards the party. They were humanoid, walking on stumpy legs with the uneven gait of drunkards. Their arms ended in clamps or claws or swords, sometimes with mechanisms that allowed them to switch between tools.

Wrench rammed his namesake weapon into the knee joint of the first to approach, sending it sprawling onto its side with a clamour and splash. Hammer then brought her warhammer down onto the machine’s head, crushing the rusty steel into a flattened lump.

Tweezers and Apprentice Yi focused on another, jamming tiny bits of metal into the hoses and wires visible through its armour and chopping apart the smaller hydraulic tubes used to move it.

Ruolan and the limpet, then, were the only two left to face the largest guardian.

“Anti-Organic Countermeasure One: Nerve Agent Release.”

A panel opened on the automata’s side, and nothing came out of it.

“Counter Measure Failed. Assessing Threat Level. Humans: Moderate. Dwarves: Moderate. Undead: Insignificant.”

“Now, wait just one moment,” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The automata’s head turned a little, its eyes focusing on me. “The undead are a non-threat.”

“And how do you figure that?” I asked.

“The Elimination of a Thing Which has Already Failed to Live Once is Far Simpler than Eliminating That Which Clings to Life.”

“That’s a very rude robot,” Alex said.

“Fenfang,” Ruolan said. “Some of those spells of yours would be nice right about now. I’ll distract it!”

So saying, the woman darted ahead with impressive speed and shot into the air. With a spin, she brought her sword around and slashed towards the exposed wiring. The automata’s arm snapped up, snake-quick, and blocked her swing with a resounding ring of steel on steel.

“Frostbite!”

The limpet’s spell sent a few icy tendrils climbing up the automata’s chest. It didn’t have any obvious effects other than that. “I need better spells,” the limpet said.

“Indeed,” I agreed.

The others were so busy fending off the automata, that they didn’t notice one of them rushing towards myself and Alex until it was right atop of us.

Alex grabbed the edges of his skirt, hiked it up, then spun around and delivered a roundhouse into the machine’s chest that sent it flying across the room to explode apart against the far wall. “Annoying,” he said.

The limpet chewed at her bottom lip, eyes darting this way and that as she took in the scene. Then she snapped her fingers and took off running towards the stairs. She ducked under the swing of an automata’s claw, then started rushing up the steps two at a time. When one of them tore itself apart under her she just squeaked and kept on moving.

The guardian focused its attention on Ruolan, meeting her swings with the heavy armour above one arm while swinging the other around to try and clobber her. “Intruder Threat Level: Moderate. Use of Heavy Weaponry: Permitted.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Alex said.

A pair of racks opened up on the automata’s back, each one with dozens of missiles tucked into them. They all flopped out, the missiles dropping onto the ground before the machine with a clatter.

“Activating Arcane Cannon.”

The automata’s arm spun around, its elbow twisting in a way that was impossible for anything organic to replicate and throwing Ruolan off of him. The warrior landed in the coolant some ways down, rolled once, then tumbled to her feet to begin running towards the guardian again.

It was a little too late. The machine’s arm rose, ports opened along its sides, and a burst of arcane energy sizzled out of it as a large hole opened at the end.

“Firing.”

“Frostbite!”

The automata’s arm twitched to the side as icy tendrils climbed across it. The arcane energy racing across the limb pressed into the magic of the limpet’s spell, and if anything, made it stronger.

The arm burst apart, nuts and bolts flying across the room as the limb crashed to the ground, just barely missing the reactor below.

“Adjusting Enemy Priorities.”

The automata started to roll forwards, its body stretching up on pistons bigger around than the limpet’s shoulders. It reached up to the catwalks where she was panting and swiped at her.

Metal rent and tore under its one-armed assault and for a moment I suspect that was in for the limpet. And then she took off running and jumped onto the guardian’s forearm. Feet slipping this way and that, the limpet ran across the arm while waving her hands and screaming through the incantation for frostbite.

I was almost impressed.

That is, until her foot caught in a wire jutting out of the arm.

She flopped forwards, her incantation turning into meaningly gibberish and her careful gestures turning into wild cartwheeling.

The automata started to pull its arm back, and the limpet, already in the process of falling, completely failed to grab on.

She hit the ankle-deep coolant belly first.

“She’s dead,” Alex said.

“Yes,” I said. “It certainly seems like that’s the case. In a way, it’s her own curiosity’s fault.”

Alex nodded. “Yes. Too bad, I liked the limpet.”

“Yes she was rather enjoyable, in the same way a particularly sloppy pet might be.”

The limpet rolled over and coughed a few times. “Oww,” she said, the word barely audible over the clanging of the automata’s threads as it approached her.

Alex tilted his head to the side. “I’m going to go break that machine before it kills the limpet. Is that okay, daddy?”

“I suppose. I wanted her to learn a lesson about fighting foes larger and more powerful than herself. Learning that it’s likely to end with you on the ground in pain is a valuable lesson, though not the one I was hoping she’d learn.”

Alex hummed. “That’s true. Maybe she’ll learn that she should bring strong friends with her.”

I barked a laugh. “That is a valuable lesson, yes.”

Alex started walking, each step moving him far faster than most could keep up by running all out.

The guardian raised its arm, the clamp on the end spinning around so that it would crush the limpet once and for all. “Target: Eliminated.”

The arm came racing down.

Alex walked under it and pressed his skirt down with one hand while staring at the limpet. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t look up my skirt,” he said.

The limpet squeezed her eyes shut.

Alex delivered a swift punch into the side of the mechanical arm coming down atop her.

The metal bent and the clamp crashed into the round a few necrocentimeters to the limpet’s side.

“I’m terribly sorry to inconvenience you, mister machine, but you are threatening daddy’s limpet, and I don’t think that’s very kind,” Alex said.

The automaton pulled its arm back. “Reassessing Threat Level.”

“That’s nice,” Alex said.

Ruolan shot past the butler, rolled between the automata’s threaded legs, and sliced through a hose hanging with part of a rusted bracket still stuck to it. Hydraulic fluid splattered to the ground as the woman leapt up and slid her sword to the hilt between two plates on the machine’s front.

“Oh, well done Miss Ruolan!” Alex cheered.

“Shut up and help!” the cultivator said as she tore her sword out and jumped away just before the chest she’d just stabbed opened, revealing an array of fist-sized gems in complex rune-covered devices. Magic filled the gems and two of the twelve shot out actinic beams that sliced wildly across the room.

They did more damage to other automata than any of the party members.

Alex patted down his dress, bent his knees a little, then jumped out. He landed one foot onto the automata’s shoulder, then brought one leg way back. “Maid to Die!”

His toes crashed into the automata’s chest, right where its clavicle would be were it a creature. The heavy plate crumpled like so much paper and the guardian snapped back.

“Critical Damage Sustained!”

“Maid to Die?” I repeated.

“The limpet gets to say neat things when attacking,” Alex defended.

I shrugged. It was a good point.

“Initiating Core Self-Destruct! I’m Bringing You With Me, Mortal Scum!”

The reactor started to hiss and spit.

“The exit! Get to the exit!” Ruolan screamed.

She had good instincts. The amount of power contained in that reactor, as leaky and poorly maintained as it was, would be enough to destroy the room.

Unfortunately, it would also likely level a good portion of the remains of Silvershire too. There was no way the party would escape.

In a way, it was sort of my fault. The reactor worked by siphoning off my failed phylactery. I didn’t think explaining that to the others would comfort them though.

“Alex, be a dear and take care of the rest of the machines,” I said as I raised a hand towards the reactor. Greater Protection From Energy.”

The spell lanced out and struck the reactor.

Casting a protective spell on a device about to explode might have seemed counter intuitive, but there was a decent justification behind it.

If the reactor worked by syphoning off energy, then converting it into a form more capable of travelling and being used into the city above, then it was likely that the self-destruct mechanism used that same overabundance of energy.

By protecting the system from the same energy it was gathering, it would no longer be able to produce or at least gather that rampant energy. Its capacitors would empty, and...

The reactor’s humm ceased, the lights in the room dimmed, and the automata still connected to the walls spun down and crashed to the ground. A few that still had batteries of one sort or another continued, but the dwarves were quick to capitalize on their decreased function.

I walked over to the reactor and tapped a finger against the core holding my phylactery. “Knock.”

The marble slid into one of my pockets.

“Well, that was a fine way to end an adventure,” I said.