“You didn’t think I was only here to cut carrots and make soup, did you? I thought you trusted Emre?”
Truth told, Lojen hadn’t thought about it. There was no doubt his father would’ve thought about it. Void, his father probably planned most of it. Stupid, Lojen, stupid. “I… do trust him.”
“Good. Now,” reaching into his tunic, Wick drew out a tiny black box with a pair of wires attached to a replica keycard, “check out this new toy I’ve designed specifically for the job.”
The lapin lined the box just above the button mechanism, magnets on the underside clamping to the door, and then he slid the keycard into the slot. The buttons flashed red. Pressing a button upon the top of the black box with a paw, the red turned to orange and then green after a few beeps and clicks. The door swung inward.
Pocketing the keying box, Wick stepped into the darkened room with Lojen gingerly following. “Need to find the security terminal.”
White beams of light from canned aethecite orbs in the ceiling turned on when their steps touched the tiled ground, though the streams were a vertical cylinder, and they didn’t brighten the entire room fully. It left a path of lighted circles on the ground of shadows.
“What is this place?”
Row upon row of shelves lined the walls, most covered in glass shields. Objects of varying size sat upon them, an array of conquered goods. Pedestals stood just outside the beams of light, almost like soldiers lining a procession. Weapons, drakken ritual masks, Kanjan Pentax statues, and a multitude of other relics sat under rectangular glass shields.
“Where?”
“There.” Wick pointed toward the rear of the room.
“Praise Justice,” he whispered.
There, on a pedestal taller than the rest, held what Lojen could only describe as a circular disc of onyx-colored, braided steel in a full circle the size of a child’s ball. Within were four concentric circles, each made of gemstone in four separate colors. Sapphire, peridot, garnet, and emerald. Within the epicenter of the disc was a six-pointed star, which must represent the Pentax Gods and Nocturne. The top and bottom point broke no planes of the concentric circles, were thicker, and touched the outer braid. The other four points pierced one of the four circles, its point ending in the epicenter.
“The Seal of Terris,” Lojen said in awe.
Leaning against the pedestal was an object Lojen had always believed to be myth. The Hammer of the Forgemistress, of Mother Marrow, the Forger of Life. The Hammer’s haft was a good three feet in length, at least twice the normal length of a common blacksmith’s. Made of greenish iron, the haft was adorned with runes, which faintly glowed. The head of the hammer was a blocky rectangle of the same metal, but instead of a singular greenish color, it was a myriad of emerald shades.
Wick bounded into the room, finding a computer terminal powered by Aere and aethecite. His furry paws began tapping away on the keyboard of aetheric runes, his tongue askew from behind his elongated front teeth. There was a soft beep. “That’ll do it.” When Lojen glanced at him, he flicked his shredded ears over his shoulder. “Security shield is down. Let’s grab ‘em and scurry.”
As they neared the Seal and Hammer, Lojen spotted another pedestal nearby, one with something far dearer to him atop. His father’s wardkeeper horns. Two feet long, sloping in a delicate curve, thicker where broken, pointed in a tip. Black as the night sky, ridged, yet smooth.
“O Father…” Lojen smiled as he reached out to touch the horns when something dropped from the ceiling behind him in a grinding of metal on metal.
It attacked, throwing him viciously.
Lojen skidded across the ground, his shoulder enflamed as it sharply connected into a pedestal. He thwacked himself in the snout as his tail had a mind of its own.
In the glare of a canned light, a giant shadow rose on four metal limbs the length of a drakken’s matured height. Straightening upright, it was now supported by two, smaller additional legs which held up a bulbous V-shaped torso with blinking lights and a built-in combustion furnace, a small grate covering what appeared to be a smoke releaser. An oracular-like head of crystal blinked red and orange, orbs searching. Four arms ended in claw-like blades.
“What in the Arbiter’s bloody axe?”
The automaton launched itself, lightning quick, metal arms outstretched. He squealed like the Scurred Hatch Ruane claimed he was and dove aside, fleeing to the far end of the room. The automaton’s torso did a full twist upon its shorter legs, facing him. It clicked its metal blades, scratching the ground as it lumbered toward him. He narrowly missed one of the automaton’s blades as it whizzed toward his head but dodged in time. Lojen contorted his body to avoid another. A third almost skewered him squarely in the leg if it hadn’t been for his clumsiness as Lojen tumbled to the ground and rolled away.
Things went from bad to worse when the lights blinked out one by one overhead. Beam by beam disappearing, leaving only a solitary light shining down on him. Shadows cast about the room, surrendering everything to the imagination. He drew his drakken longknife and backed down the main aisle as he mumbled a prayer to Justice. Actually, it was a plea to help save his hide.
The door to the room slid open and Wick filled the void. “Lojen, where are you?”
“Wick, watch out!”
The automaton stalked on its four longer legs, the back two raised off the ground. Metal blades clipped the concrete. Snick-snick-snick-snick as it hunted, slowly as if for sport. Orbital red-orange blinked, searching, seeking. It pounced at Wick.
The lapin’s muscled legs bounded out of the doorway as the automaton landed right where he’d stood. Wick bolted down the aisle toward Lojen.
“What’re you doing?”
“Trying to save you, you idiot!”
A wheeze of smoke, a pressing of metal limbs, a turn of gears. The door slid shut, cutting off the much-needed extra light from the hall. The automaton disappeared into the shadows, the blinking lights on its head going dark. It was surprisingly silent for a metal beast.
Wick sniffed the air with his whiskers. “Where’d it—” The lapin was brushed aside by a metal arm and struck the far wall with a sickening thud.
Lojen reflexively parried the first two appendages, blades glancing off his longknife. His boots slued across the concrete as the full brunt of the automaton crashed into him, the metal fingers sharp as knives slamming into the ground, the auto-beast using them as leverage. He dropped his longknife as the metal and drakken collapsed in a heap.
An anger that Lojen never knew grew within him. A rage that started as a ball of fright drew in upon itself and flamed out in an inferno of white-hot fury as a song came to life within him. A wailing song. He could hear his father’s voice telling him to get up, to be worthy of his horns.
‘A wardkeeper is only as strong as his conviction, Lojen,’ his father had told him once. ‘Lose that, and you lose everything. Conviction drives us. Binds us to our wards. To the Pentax. It is all that you can ever, and will, be.’
His father’s words galvanized him. As did the song of wails.
“I will not yield!” he growled deep within his throat, dangerous and frightening both.
His talons dug into the metallic torso, gouging into its hull, smoke escaping from the inner furnace. The blades adorning the four limbs tried to bite into his body, but his exoscales protected him, strong natural armor. Pulling with all his strength, he ripped free the back panel of the automaton’s chassis in a gout of black smoke and sparks. The metal beast reared, releasing its hold on him, smaller legs kicking.
He screamed—roared really—in fury.
The automaton struggled backward, smoke pouring out of its destroyed forge, plumes of aethecite filled the room with sulfurous acridity. Lojen wrapped his massive claws about one of the metal limbs and yanked with everything he had. Gears ground, metal screeched, Lojen bellowed. The Hymn of War blaring within. Finally, the arm broke from the torso. Tossing it to the floor, Lojen sought another and pulled. The beast tried to stab at him with its remaining limbs, but a shape flew from the dark and landed upon the creature’s back. Wick had two dueling knives, shining silver in the single light of the room, and he drove them into the broken circuits of the creature’s metal brain, sparking and bolting electricity.
Down, the automaton went. Wick stabbing circuit boards, Lojen shattering rotating gears, both yelling at the top of their lungs. Smoke poured out of the metal furnace until it shuddered and went still.
