Perr’ok watched with envy as one of those large walking factories from the anvil worked—metal extruded from small nozzles formed into solid sheets, intense torches fused the metal, cogs and gears, shaped from the same extruders, slotted into place as mechanical arms manipulated a hundred different components at once. It took a full hour, but Perr’ok now stood before a fully complete War Walker.
He was still workshopping the name.
It wasn’t quite the same model as the refurbished walkers he had dragged back from the old orc settlement in the Underworld. It was smaller, the weaponry looked more geared to pummeling rather than slicing and chopping. And it wasn’t… all that sturdy-looking. The refurbished ones hadn’t been pretty, but he had done his best to polish them up. With the shadow armor, most orcs hadn’t wanted to try their hand at utilizing them. Only a small handful. Instead, they ended up being used by mostly human pilots.
This one was rough and hastily produced. The factory machines from the Anvil did good work, they just didn’t have the time to grind down the edges and file away the burs. They still did the job in an hour where it would have taken Perr’ok weeks. He was sure that, if they had the time, the visitors from the Anvil would produce something utterly unimaginable.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just time they were lacking.
“No more!” Perr’ok called out again, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Make something else!”
The factory didn’t stop its whirring arms and oozing extruders. Perr’ok wasn’t sure it could understand him. He wasn’t sure it could hear him. The thing lacked ears.
“We don’t have any more pilots! They’re just going to sit empty!”
“Whaᛏ is the problem?”
Perr’ok jolted, turning with his metalworking hammer in hand. With all the chaos going on, sudden noises had him on edge. The foundry was deeper than most of the surface chambers, which was probably the only reason it hadn’t yet been beset by enemies.
But there was no threat in front of him. Who stood there, head tilted slightly. With the machine’s blank face, it was difficult to tell if she was looking at him.
“Would you tell that thing to make something more useful?” he asked, lowering his hammer. “The other factory things are making replacement bodies and body parts for your people, but that one is still producing walkers.”
Who turned, regarding the lonesome walker as it fused two metal rods. “So?”
“It’s a waste of its time. We don’t have pilots for more walkers. I’d say that your people could use them, but I figured you people would just plug your black boxes directly into the machines, no need for the pilot compartment.”
“An accurate assessment,” Who said with a curt nod of her head. “Why no more pilots?”
“We only had ten of those other walkers. They’re mostly with Ilya right now. There wasn’t much point in training more than a dozen pilots while the machines we had were still malfunctioning.”
He looked around the room with a heavy scowl. There were a few of his smiths running around between their anvil guests, but they were mostly dealing with more mundane matters of armor and weaponry. Reports were coming in of the shadow scythes failing after too much contact with enemy forces. With the portal to the Underworld cut off at the moment, they couldn’t replace the shadow scythes, so to keep the army fighting, they needed good old-fashioned equipment.
Most of them could pilot the walkers. From their time working on the refurbished models, they knew enough to utilize them. But they were too busy with their own duties.
“If the factory were to produce regular equipment,” he said, slowly turning back to Who. “the smiths could take over the walkers.”
Three sat empty at the moment. Eight were with Ilya. Five more were already elsewhere in Fortress Al-Mir, hopefully proving effective.
Who turned slowly, looking around at the smiths in the shop. “There aren’t enough walkers for everyone. What will the remainder do with their task taken away?”
“Most are orcs,” Perr’ok said, showing off his tusks. “We know how to fight without fancy machines.”
“Hmph.” Who turned aside. Offended?
Before Perr’ok could ask, she focused on the one factory unit. A blast of noise came from somewhere deep inside her. It was unintelligible, as if she were shouting every word possible at the same time. The pitch and volume changed slightly, warbling and screeching different notes amid the cacophony. As suddenly as it started, the sound cut off.
The manipulators and extruders on the factory slowed. It started to rear up, large actuators in its legs moving, but stopped just before crashing into the ceiling. As it lowered, it let out its own noise, deep and reverberating. Perr’ok felt it in his chest. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Like the thumping of the noise was interfering with the beating of his heart. Thankfully, as with Who’s noise, it went silent after only a few seconds.
She responded in a few clipped chirps. The factory replied in a long, single note of a deep horn.
“Alright,” she said. Her legs remained facing the factory, but from her waist up, she swiveled to face Perr’ok. “ᚠ. ᚨᚲᛏᛟᚱ – IO isn’t particularly pleased to make such uncreative equipment, but she agreed.”
“She, huh?” Perr’ok muttered, looking over the mass of mechanical arms, furnaces, extruders, and moving belts that covered the house-sized machine. She was a beauty, that was for sure. “Do all of your—”
Perr’ok cut himself off as a strange grinding noise came from overhead. He glanced up, watching as a few stray pebbles fell from the ceiling.
Who looked up as well, angling half her body. She didn’t stay still. With inhuman reflexes, she threw herself at Perr’ok. Hydraulic hands clamped down around his shirt and suspenders, gripping him tight. The momentum from her throw and her actuating arms raised her up and over Perr’ok. Despite his much larger size, she flipped him and flung him, throwing him toward the factory just as the ceiling gave way.
The egg’s impact sent a shockwave through the floor, toppling racks of materials and scattering tools in all directions.
Perr’ok pushed himself up, eyes wide as the egg’s thick tendrils began to unfurl. They reached out with unsettling speed and precision.
Overhead, the factory let out a low, blaring horn. It leaned forward, barely avoiding Perr’ok as he scrambled away, trying not to be crushed. A crucible on its… shoulder, probably, slid ajar. Intense heat and molten metal spewed out, spilling over the meat of the egg.
Perr’ok didn’t stick around to watch. Getting to his feet, he charged for the freshly made War Walker, climbed into the pilot compartment, and flipped several levers. Pumps started chugging and gears started whirring. Grasping the controls, he turned the machine and stomped forward.
The flesh of the egg had partially burned away, turning to black charcoal. Lifting his mech’s right arm, a spiked ball almost as large as the egg was, he brought it down, crushing the rest of it. The stray tendrils writhed and slowly went still.
Perr’ok turned, surveying the damage through the machine’s thin visor. The roof was shot. Everything else looked alright. The egg itself hadn’t managed much damage. All thanks to the quick reactions of the factory and Who…
Who?
Perr’ok turned the machine as a foreboding feeling welled in the pit of his stomach, shifting back and forth as he tried to get a good head count.
None of his blacksmiths had been caught near the collapse. The factory had rubble covering it, which manipulator arms were working to clear away. But Who?
Angling the machine downward, he saw it. The black metal of one of Who’s arms, twisted at an unnatural angle. It poked out between a group of bricks and earth. The fingers on the end twitched and jittered like she was trying to claw at the air.
The walker’s right arm was useless, but its left arm had grabbers. He used them to move bricks off Who, tossing them aside. He tried to brush away some of the dirt as well, but the manipulators weren’t as good at that. Lightly, carefully, pinching the exposed arm with the grabber, he gently pulled, only increasing force once he was sure he wasn’t damaging her further.
Her body slid out from under the dirt. It jerked and twitched. She looked intact, but the motion of her body wasn’t working properly. One leg kept kicking only to snap back into its original position. A grinding noise came from somewhere around her waist.
Perr’ok hopped out of the walker, rushing around it to stop over her body.
“Who?” he said, brushing away some of the dirt from around her smooth head. “Who? Please tell me you’re alright?”
She was moving. That was a good sign. Those black boxes were them and he knew that they were extremely hard to damage, far more difficult than the rest of their bodies, but… staring down at her body as it was, he wasn’t quite able to think of her as being alright.
He flicked away a small pebble caught in one of her exposed cogs. A rush of air spat out from the metal grate on her head as it started spinning.
“Agneᛏe built me,” she said, her tone a relief to Perr’ok’s ears. “I will not be so easily dispatched. I just have some foreign material grinding in my gears.”
Perr’ok let out a sigh. A strange release of relief made him laugh with that sigh.
The factory decided that it was her duty to repair the ceiling, raising itself high enough for its manipulators to reach. A few of the Anvil workers were running about, as were the blacksmiths. The egg wasn’t moving anymore. Nothing looked in immediate danger.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said.
Dakka ground her teeth together as she swung her scythe through the air. Severed tendrils flailed about, splattering sticky blue blood across the tiles of Fortress Al-Mir. Flipping the scythe over, she lunged forward and ripped back, dragging the dark, shadowy blade through the oblong egg, horizontally bisecting it. The eggs lacked shells, possessing instead thick layers of muscle-like meat. It split with ease.
Smaller, worm-like tendrils spilled from the wound, slipping and sliding across the floor as they wiggled about. Dakka took a few deft steps back, retreating.
Mikk’ah wasn’t so fast on his feet. The worms flooded around his ankles. He swept his scythe down, cutting through dozens at once, but to no effect on the larger mass. The maws of the worms split into thirds, opening to reveal razor-sharp leech-like teeth. Teeth that latched onto his armor. He started stomping around, crushing more of them beneath his feet, but too many had gotten onto his armor. The dark shadowy greaves and boots started to wither under the worm assault.
Then he started screaming. Some of the worms must have squirmed into the gaps in the armor. As his armor withered and fell apart, more burrowed into his legs.
He wasn’t being teleported. Arkk had been teleporting everyone around, but he wasn’t teleporting Mikk’ah. Arkk would never leave one of his men to suffer, Dakka well knew, which meant that his teleportation must be failing.
Dakka made a snap decision. She stepped forward, crushing a few worms, and swung her scythe. The shadowy armor was all but impossible to damage with regular weaponry, but that wasn’t true for their scythes. It slid clean through Mikk’ah’s thighs, separating his legs from the rest of his body.
Mikk’ah’s upper half instantly vanished, off to Hale, presumably. His legs remained standing upright for a moment more before wobbling and toppling back into the mass of worms. They latched on, chewing through armor and flesh alike.
Dakka retreated once again, crushing the one worm that had latched onto her boot.
“Casters!” she called out. This wasn’t something she could deal with.
Unfortunately, there weren’t many available casters. They were dealing with their problems.
Although she had left the tower defense to Arkk and his spellcasters while she focused on the Eternal Empire’s foot soldiers, she hadn’t remained ignorant of what had been happening. She knew of the whale ships and the eggs they attacked with. She knew the eggs somehow absorbed magic from the very walls of the tower. She knew that Arkk and, later, Agnete had easily burned off every last one before they could do significant damage.
She had thought the attacks were laughable. An easy victory for Company Al-Mir. Maybe if they lacked Arkk or Agnete, both able to use powerful fire spells, the eggs would have taken down the tower with relative ease. But their enemy clearly hadn’t studied hard enough.
Dakka wasn’t laughing anymore. Fortress Al-Mir was too big. Too large and sprawling. Agnete had been able to envelop the entirety of the tower with her flames in one fell swoop, fending off the parasites in an instant. She couldn’t do that here. Worse, as they broke into Fortress Al-Mir, she couldn’t even attempt it. Sweeping flames across the surface might have worked if the eggs had just sat up there.
But they hadn’t.
They were inside the fortress, breaking it apart, room by room. Dakka knew because this was the third egg she had to deal with. One far, far too close to the ritual room where the teleportation rituals to Elmshadow—and elsewhere—were held. They were still moving personnel and equipment. They couldn’t allow the teleportation rituals to be interrupted.
The other eggs hadn’t split into worms, however. They had been smaller, more manageable. Less mature? The other eggs just held more meat and eggs—tiny, like those that belonged to frogs and fully inert. The worms must have been the next stage of those smaller frog eggs.
Her eyes flicked to the dismembered legs, currently covered in squirming, thrashing worms. She shuddered at the thought that these worms were yet another intermediary stage. Like larva before spawning into wasps.
A small gout of flames rolled over the largest mass of worms as one of the battlecasters finally decided to help out. It wasn’t much. Whoever threw the flames was no Agnete. It at least helped to stem the tide of worms flooding across the floor. Mostly. The most intense part of the flames killed off a lot of the worms, but the ones on the edges were still squirming forward. They were just squirming forward while on fire.
A vile stench filled the air.
Dakka moved her scythe in precise, quick flicks, just enough to slice worms in half without wasting energy. A few of the worms didn’t quite die. One took a second swipe to get it to stop moving.
Her scythe was starting to lose its effectiveness. The shadowy blade was mottled and small bits had fallen off. Quick, efficient strikes against the eggs and their tentacles helped keep them from absorbing the magic of her scythe, but it hadn’t come out entirely unscathed. She wasn’t sure if the worms also drained magic on contact or if they had to use their teeth, but it probably didn’t help.
Fighting like this wasn’t sustainable.
There were still more worms falling out of the ruined meat of the egg. A fireball from over her shoulder struck, but it just threw a bunch of flaming worms about the chamber.
Dakka clenched her teeth as she swiped two out of the air before they could reach her. The tip of her scythe snapped off as she scraped it along the ground again, cutting apart a few more worms. She never thought she would miss the cold certainty of metal after upgrading to the shadow scythe, but she wished she had her old axe. It wasn’t magical. It wouldn’t fall apart.
Another flame swept through the room, bringing the number of worms down to a level almost manageable for Dakka and the other orcs.
Just as she thought they might finish this one off, a fresh egg slammed through the ceiling. It crushed several flaming, living worms as it landed, but more than made up for the minor help it accidentally provided by thrashing about its tentacles. Dakka barely avoided getting wrapped up in one with some quick athletics. Juvvy wasn’t so lucky.
It pulled her in before Dakka could act, dragging her through the remaining sea of worms.
Dakka grimaced at the sight. Juvvy’s arms, thrashing about, and her legs, kicking, crushed worms. For every one she squished, just as many climbed into her armor, worming their way under her breastplate and through the gaps in her armor.
She screamed.
Her helmet got knocked off in the process. One worm burrowed into her cheek, latching onto her.
Before it could delve too deep, her entire body turned to stone. The tentacle immediately lost interest, leaving her where it had been dragging her across the ground in order to seek out a fresh target. The worms didn’t quite leave. While the one in her face popped out, the ones attached to her armor continued their feast.
Dakka shot an appreciative glance over her shoulder. Zharja hocked back before spewing caustic venom toward the fresh egg. The green-hued liquid sizzled and burned away at the flesh.
But it wasn’t enough.
A cold wind seeped through Dakka’s armor, pushing her forward a step. The cold turned harsh, pricking at the skin under her armor as though it were pins and needles. For all the pain, Dakka couldn’t help but grin.
The slick slime coating the worms and eggs turned an opaque white as it froze. Their movements slowed, their bodies shriveled. The larger egg took a little longer to be affected, but, starting from the ends of its thin tendrils, it slowly stopped moving as a solid encasement of ice covered it.
Dakka turned, fully ready to heap praise upon whichever battlecaster thought of using ice magic instead of fire, only to freeze—in shock.
A battered dragonoid stepped through the ritual chamber door, turning her head back and forth with ice-glazed eyes. She had found a spear somewhere, her one arm wrapped around its haft as she used it to support her body. Eventually, her sightless gaze came to a rest on Dakka.
“Where…” Priscilla ground out as she hobbled forward.
The last time Dakka saw Priscilla, she had been in the tower infirmary. Hale had been having difficulty regrowing her arm and her wing, citing some kind of unnatural magic clinging to the wound from whatever caused it. To the best of Dakka’s knowledge, the comatose dragonoid had been left behind when Hale and the dozen undead serving as her medical assistants had moved back to Fortress Al-Mir.
Which, she supposed, made sense for why she was coming from the ritual room.
“Where…” Priscilla said again as she stopped in front of Dakka.
“Leda?” Dakka said, saying the first thing that came to mind. “I’m sorry. She… didn’t make it.”
Priscilla went still, locked into place. With the ice coating her like scales, Dakka might have thought she finally succumbed and froze had she not known better. Only her lips moved, twitching into an expression that Dakka couldn’t quite parse.
The stillness left as quick as it came with Priscilla shaking her head. “I… see.”
“Are you alright to be up?” Dakka asked. “I didn’t even know you were awake.”
“I felt it… The Permafrost. It was only a moment, but I felt it in my bones, forcing me up.” She staggered forward, moving past Dakka. Her head swiveled as if surveying the frozen eggs and worms. A few of the worms cracked and shattered with the sound of breaking glass as she stepped upon them with her bare feet.
“I must… make amends.”