War Machines

 

“We cannot communicate, can we?”

The mechanical creature turned at Agnete’s question. The gears and panels making up its ‘face’ turned and shifted. A ratcheting noise came from somewhere deeper within. It clearly heard the question. There was no indication of understanding. It didn’t nod or shake its head, it didn’t speak back to her even in that language the clockwork eye used. It just… stared.

Communication wasn’t a skill Agnete thought of herself as possessing under normal circumstances. Brought in by the inquisitors at a relatively young age and then used by them for the majority of her life, speaking with others simply wasn’t something she did often. Reports, inquiries, interrogations, and all other matters of talking were Vrox’s territory. Or, occasionally, Chronicler Greesom’s. Agnete’s role was to be an imposing, unstoppable force they could wield to get others to talk.

To speak with something that couldn’t communicate with her was far beyond anything she could accomplish.

With a small sigh, Agnete turned and looked outside the window.

The backdrop of the endless factory rushed past at dizzying speeds. Barring teleportation, Agnete doubted she had ever traveled even half as fast as she was moving now. The mechanical version of herself that she had constructed brought her to a large metal carriage set atop thin beams of metal that stretched off into the horizon. Like carts in mines scaled up to an absurd degree. It moved along those tracks with great metal wheels, driven by some unseen magics at the front of the craft. Agnete wanted to look at what was surely an impressive magical array, even if she knew she wouldn’t understand it, but the mechanical version of herself had insisted she take a seat.

It wasn’t a particularly comfortable seat. Just a metal bench. The way it curved upward slightly made Agnete think that it hadn’t been designed for humans.

Presumably, this kind of transportation would carry those humanoids Agnete had seen before stepping through the portal. She hadn’t gotten a closer look at them since. She hadn’t seen much of anything living out here. Just the occasional lightning serpent flying through the dark clouds overhead, more of those mechanical eyes mounted on mobile gantries, and the thing she had created.

“ᚺᛟᚹ ᛞᛟ ᛃᛟᚢ ᚺᚨᚹᛖ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛈᛟᚹᛖᚱ ᛟᚠ ᛏᚺᛖ ᚷᚱᛖᚨᛏ ᛖᚾᚷᛁᚾᛖ?”

The steam-filled pipes in the copy’s chest reverberated in a fairly light sound. It pitched upward toward the end like a question, but Agnete wasn’t sure if it was actually asking her something or if her mind was just seeking recognizable patterns.

Rather than try to parse the utterly alien sounds, Agnete decided on a different tactic. She pointed a finger to her chest and said, “Agnete.”

The metal head dipped, almost like it was looking where she had pointed despite its lack of obvious eyes. It stared a moment before its head turned back up.

“Agnete,” Agnete said again. “Can you say that? Agnete.”

“ᚨᚷᚾᛖᛏᛖ.”

Agnete frowned. The sounds were close. Not exactly. “Agnete,” she said again, this time pointing toward her face so that the thing wouldn’t think her chest had a name.

“ᚨᚷᚾᛖᛏᛖ.” This time, with its words, it bent its arm in several places an arm wasn’t meant to bend and pointed.

But it pointed at itself.

Agnete shook her head. Reaching out, she grasped the thing’s hand and twisted its finger to point to herself. “Agnete,” she said, pointing with the mechanical creature’s finger.

“ᚨᚷᚾᛖᛏᛖ,” it repeated, much quicker on the uptake this time. Though Agnete wasn’t sure it understood.

“Agnete,” Agnete said, pointing to herself once again. She then turned her finger to the machine. “Who?”

“ᚨᚷᚾᛖᛏᛖ.”

“No. No…” Agnete said as it repeated the same thing it had been saying for a while now. It didn’t understand. She sank back into the seat, resting her back against the chair with a sigh. She wasn’t sure why she had bothered. It wasn’t like teaching it her name or learning its name, if it even had one, would let them communicate at all.

The creature made a noise. A low whining tone—or perhaps a whistle. It stretched on for a brief moment before shifting back into the strange words it used. “ᚨᚱᛖ ᛃᛟᚢ ᚢᛈᛋᛖᛏ? ᛞᛁᛞ ᛁ ᛞᛟ ᛋᛟᛗᛖᛏᚺᛁᚾᚷ ᚹᚱᛟᚾᚷ?”

Agnete ignored the creature, looking outside the window once again.

She felt… hotter than usual. Not as hot as when she actively used her flames, but the outside air was warming up. The windows of this vessel were positioned on its sides, negating her ability to look where they were headed. Nevertheless, she could see a red glow staining the forward side of the factory around her. The morning sun? Or evening sun? The dark clouds overhead reflected a lot of the factory lights which made it difficult to tell the time. If there was something akin to the time of day. The Underworld lacked any semblance of a day-night cycle.

But the red-orange at the front of the craft didn’t look like any morning she had ever seen. It was more like the flickering of a campfire against the trees of a thick forest. Except far more intense. A better analogy would be Agnete’s own flames against the brick walls of Elmshadow during her assault on the burg.

Was it one of the great furnaces? Agnete had seen several while atop the moving pathways. Other moving pathways, assisted by mechanical grabber arms, carried massive loads of raw ore to the furnaces. A steady stream of ore went into them and came out the other side as shiny ingots, all of which ended up transported elsewhere.

But none of those furnaces had been quite so bright as the light ahead of the vessel.

Agnete stood, wanting again to move to the head of the craft, this time to look at where they were headed and the magic that propelled them forward.

The mechanical creature latched its many-jointed hand onto Agnete’s wrist.

The heat in Agnete’s core flared and, for a moment, she thought of simply melting the creature to scrap. It kept getting in her way, dragging her through this place, all without even a hint at where they were headed or what they wanted from her. But something stopped her. Some strange feeling deep in her chest.

She wasn’t quite sure why, nor was she sure how, but the way those mechanical cogs turned on the creature’s face struck a chord somewhere inside Agnete. It was looking at her with… worry? Agnete didn’t understand how she could read any part of its expression.

“ᚨᚷᚾᛖᛏᛖ,” it said, trying to repeat her name. “ᚨᚷ… ᚨᚷ… Agnᛖᛏᛖ…”

Agnete raised an eyebrow. It almost got it right.

Releasing Agnete’s wrist, it pointed a finger in her direction. “Agneᛏe.”

Agnete slowly nodded her head.

The construct turned that finger on itself. Agnete adopted a preemptive frown, fully expecting it to repeat her name while pointing at itself.

“ᚹᚺᛟ.”

Agnete raised her other eyebrow. “Who?” she repeated. “I don’t know. That’s what I was asking you.”

“ᚹᚺᛟ,” it repeated again, moving its finger from its chest to its face. “ᚹᚺ… ᚹᚺ… Wᚺo.”

“Oh.” Agnete stared at the mechanical construct that looked so similar to herself yet so alien at the same time. With a sigh, she clasped a hand to her face and ran her fingers down her cheeks. “Oh no.”

“Wᚺo,” it said, then pointed to Agnete. “Agneᛏe. Wᚺo. Agneᛏe. ᛁ ᚨᛗ Wᚺo. ᛃᛟᚢ ᚨᚱᛖ Agneᛏe. ᛁ ᚢᚾᛞᛖᚱᛋᛏᚨᚾᛞ ᛃᛟᚢᚱ ᛗᛖᚨᚾᛁᚾᚷ ᚾᛟᚹ.”

“I still have no clue what you’re saying,” Agnete said, shaking her head. “Unless you can tell me where—”

Agnete jerked as an ear-splittingly loud whistle sounded somewhere above them. She heard the familiar screech of metal against metal. Almost immediately, the vessel lurched. It would have thrown her forward had the construct not grasped hold of her shoulders to steady her.

Her first thoughts were of violence. Already running hot, her flames flared brighter in her chest, fearing that they had somehow come under attack. Only the utter calm of the construct made her think that everything was going as expected.

Outside the window, the scenery slowed from the blur it had been as the vessel came to a stop.

Only when it finally finished moving did the construct rise to its feet. “ᚹᛖ ᚺᚨᚹᛖ ᚨᚱᚱᛁᚠᛖᛞ. ᛏᚺᛖ ᛒᚢᚱᚾᛁᚾᚷ ᛖᚾᚷᛁᚾᛖ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛃᚢᛞᚷᛖ ᛃᛟᚢᚱ ᚹᛟᚱᛏᚺᛁᚾᛖᛋᛋ ᛏᛟ ᚺᛟᛚᛞ ᚺᛖᚱ ᚠᛚᚨᛗᛖᛋ.”

“What…”

The construct looked to her again, gears meshing together in obvious thought. “Agneᛏe,” it said, pointing a finger toward her. It then pointed toward the carriage door as it hissed open with a gout of steam. “ᛗᛖᛖᛏ. [Eternal Engine]/[Molten Artisan]/[Burning Forge].”

Agnete’s breath hitched as she snapped her head to the construct. It spoke in that language. The one she had heard only rarely coming from Vezta’s mouth. The one that was less a language and more a way of forcing concepts into other people’s heads.

And Agnete just had the concept of a god shoved into her mind.

“The Prince is sending a few thousand soldiers to help with the defense,” Arkk said. “Including a full detachment of spellcasters who can help operate both magical protections and bombardments. They’re stopping in Cliff first before coming here, so it will be a while. Perr’ok will have ten of his… prototypes ready before the army is expected to arrive. Leda’s tower is nearly complete and ready to move, though it is still understaffed. Our tower has extended its influence about as far as possible through burrowed tunnels all around Elmshadow. We have a countermeasure for the avatar of gold—”

“Untested and with a limited range.”

Arkk nodded at Rekk’ar’s assessment. “True, but that is still more than we had before. I’m not going to say that this battle is going to be easy but I don’t think we’ve ever been more prepared. And if it works, we might be able to end everything once and for all.”

“And yet, their army still approaches. They are either fools or they’ve got plans of their own.” Rekk’ar leaned over his plate of steak, prepared by Larry, with a heavy glower. “I wouldn’t bet on them being fools if I were you, no matter how nice of a surprise it would be.”

“It’s the Eternal Empire. Nobody I’ve spoken to knows much of anything about them, other than their utter dominance of the continent across the seas. They rule over a land larger than the Kingdom of Chernlock, Evestani, the Tetrarchy, and the Beastmen Tribes combined without any dissident or even banditry.”

“Allegedly. Wouldn’t put it past some king to say their land is one of peace and unity while the truth couldn’t be further in reality.”

Arkk nodded in agreement. “Then there is that thing you saw. Still can’t find any evidence of it with the crystal ball—”

“I know what I saw,” Rekk’ar said, thumping his fist against the table. The plate rattled as it settled.

“Not calling you a liar. Just saying that I can’t see what you saw.”

Arkk had half a mind to head out on a scouting mission of his own. Unfortunately, that was too dangerous. In Gleeful Burg, the avatar had been able to detect him, roughly at least. He wasn’t sure if it was the teleportation or just his presence. Either way, approaching that army was too great a risk. So he just had to trust in Rekk’ar’s words. His and a handful of others he had sent out to double-check.

A few scouts had reported the same thing Rekk’ar had. A few others hadn’t noticed anything amiss. All that told Arkk was that whatever Rekk’ar had seen, it wasn’t always with the main army.

“Any updates on getting that purifier back?”

Arkk frowned, shifting his focus to Agnete. The area she was traveling through was hot enough that a bright orange glow washed out just about everything. Although looking through the link was purely in his mind, it still made him want to squint.

The lesser servant was on its own, conducting a mission on Arkk’s orders that would hopefully bring Agnete back home. The distances it had to traverse, all while keeping hidden and out of sight of those mechanical eyes and flying serpents, meant it wasn’t making as much progress as Arkk would have hoped.

If it failed…

Well, Agnete would well and truly be on her own.

“For now, I believe we’ll just have to trust her to figure things out for herself. She is an avatar of that world’s god and, based on everything I’ve seen through the link, she is being treated… well?”

“I’m less interested in how she is being treated and more interested in finding someone else capable of standing up to that avatar. Your little countermeasure doesn’t fill me with confidence.”

“We just need to figure out how to use it properly,” Arkk said with a small sigh. “But you might be right. We can’t assume we’ll have Agnete for this battle.”

What did it mean to meet a god?

Agnete, as a purifier of the Inquisition of the Light, had been expected to uphold the values of the Abbey of the Light. They sought to enlighten the common populace, encourage harmony, preach the word of the Light, and otherwise advance the influence of the Abbey. More realistically, Agnete was only called in when situations devolved to the point of violence. Abnormal magics and their wielders failing to fall in line with the Abbey, heretics threatening common people, and monsters rising against the innocent. Agnete could count how many actual sermons she had attended on one hand and have fingers left over. She knew exceedingly little about the actual Light or what it wanted, if such things could even be comprehended by mere mortals.

Nobody met the Light. The Ecclesiarch was said to converse with the Light, but she hadn’t ever met him. Only once had she been in the presence of an oracle and she hadn’t been allowed to speak to the seer for fear of tampering with future visions. The closest she had was Darius Vrox and if the Light was anything like him, she imagined the world would have been a far more… orderly place.

To Agnete, her serving the Light had been no different than a common mercenary following his captain. A captain of a mercenary team went wherever they were paid to go and Agnete went wherever she was told to go.

Arkk had described the experience of encountering Xel’atriss to Agnete once upon a time. The way Vezta practically tackled him to the ground, covering his eyes out of fear that merely seeing a god would break his mind. He then described what effectively was a vision, seeing the god as it interacted with him. He spoke of awe, fear, and eventual calm as he realized that the being hadn’t intended him harm.

Yet, despite the actual encounter with such a being, Arkk didn’t seem all that reverent toward them. If Agnete had to put a single word to his demeanor towards the Pantheon, it would be annoyance. Which, she supposed, was understandable. Vezta had given him a task to fix what the gods had ruined. A practically insurmountable problem for any normal person. But to Arkk, it was just another problem he had to solve to fulfill a promise. And the gods were the cause of that problem, making them all something of an irritant.

The Protector, on the other hand, had never spoken with or properly encountered the Lady Shadows. Yet, alone and isolated for uncountable years, it had developed an intense devotion to its god. One that rivaled even the most pious devotees of the Light that Agnete had seen. Even greater than the fanatics of the Golden Order. Agnete was fairly certain it had built up an image of the Cloak of Shadows in its mind that was far greater than the actual being could possibly be, given the sorry state of the Underworld.

Vezta was the only other example of someone truly serving the Pantheon that she could think of. While Vezta’s devotion didn’t go as far as the Protector’s, she still revered them. Often with a special emphasis on Xel’atriss. But in Vezta’s eyes, the Pantheon as a whole had been wronged by the whims of three of their number. The entire group, crippled by the traitors, needed mortal hands to help them get back to their former glory.

That always struck Agnete as an oddity. How could gods end up diminished to such a point, especially the majority of them? She might have been able to understand it if all the rest fought against one, but as it was now? Agnete wasn’t sure the title of god was fitting for a being who needed aid from mortals. It wasn’t just the current situation that sent that thought through her mind.

Avatars had always existed in some form or other, according to Vezta. Beings granted slivers of the Pantheon’s power, presumably to carry out their will. That implied that these so-called gods had always needed help.

And she was one of them.

What did that mean? Was she expected to bow down and kiss the floor her god walked upon? To follow along with its every command without question? Agnete might not be the most assertive person. With the inquisitors, she had been pointed at a target and threatened with ice if she dared to deviate. With Arkk, though more willing, she still ended up aimed in a direction and told to carry out tasks. Now, she stood before grand iron doors that stretched up high enough that she had to lean back to see the top and wide enough to fit an entire warehouse, she had to wonder what awaited her in the next chamber.

More strings for the puppet?

At least with Arkk, Agnete got the impression that she could burn away her strings and he wouldn’t try to reattach them. She doubted the same could be said here. Or, rather, the very flames she wielded with such freedom lately were her strings.

“ᛏᚺᛖᛃ ᚨᚱᛖ ᚹᚨᛁᛏᛁᚾᚷ ᚠᛟᚱ ᛃᛟᚢ, Agneᛏe.”

Agnete’s eyes flicked to the mechanical version of herself. Her own creation, minus that black box of gears and steam. It simply stood in an uncannily stiff stance that almost perfectly mirrored the one Agnete held.

Turning back to the door, Agnete’s black hair whipped about her with a sudden rush of air. The air came from her back, slammed into the door, and rocketed upwards to join with a column of twisting flame that stretched high enough to reach the smoggy clouds overhead. Gears on the tall tower turned in smooth motions, some driven by pistons on the outside, others driven by internal mechanics. The rhythmic thumping of metal against metal sounded like a blacksmith’s hammer striking over and over again. It was loud enough to resound throughout the factory, drowning out every other noise that cropped up during the long pauses between strikes.

Agnete drew in a breath, feeling the heat rush into her chest with the hot air. She took a step forward, leaving her mechanical clone behind.

The great doors shifted. Long metal bars withdrew from the doorframe, pulled along metal tracks by the rotation of cogs, ratcheting and clicking with every moment. The doors cracked open.

An inferno rushed out from the thin gap, enveloping Agnete in familiar flames.