Chapter Thirty-Eight - A Deeper Dive

“The limpet, amusing as she may be, is a bit of an idiot at times.”

***

As we dove deeper into the facilities under Silvershire, the overall condition of the tunnels and passages actually improved somewhat. I suspect the absence of humidity and the higher temperatures has something to do with it, though that was mostly speculation.

“Why is it so dry and hot here?” the limpet asked.

“We’re deep underground,” Ruolan said. “It’s natural.”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, actually,” I said. “But I suspect you’re asking as a sort of rhetorical complaint as opposed to a genuine question. Do you want me to explain geothermals to you?”

“Uh,” the limpet said. “Will it help with my magic?”

“Not in any significant way, no.”

She shrugged. “Then I’m good. Could you tell me more about magic things instead?”

“I suppose I could,” I admitted. It was my favourite subject. “So far your spell list is rather simple.”

“Spell list?” she cut in.

I noticed that the dwarves and even the two humans were paying attention. “That is your list of known spells for which you have all the material and mental capabilities to cast.” The limpet nodded and I moved on. “Most of the tier zero spells you have are concentrated within the venerable school of Necromancy. A powerful and versatile form of magic, but one that does have its limits.”

Ruolan missed a step and almost tripped over nothing as she turned to face me. “She knows Necromancy?”

“Hardly. She knows two weak spells. She can’t even raise the dead yet. I wouldn’t go calling her a necromancer. Now, as I was saying. Necromancy is powerful, but it does have some key weaknesses. Notably, it only works on the living and unliving.”

“Isn’t that everything?” the limpet asked.

“Of course not. Things don’t always neatly fit onto the scale of alive or unliving. Elementals are astral beings. They’re not alive in the way a human might be, nor are they undead, for that requires something to have been alive before. The gods are technically living things, though using necromancy against them doesn’t work as well as against the average sentient. Mechanical beings, golems, magical artefacts, enchanted beings and a few others are resistant to necromancy, or downright unaffected by it.”

“That sounds limiting,” the limpet said.

“How many elementals do you run into in your day-to-day?” I asked.

She rubbed at her chin. “Okay, yeah.”

I reached down and pat her head, much to her obvious consternation as she pouted quite fiercely under the attention. I suspect it was more because I was doing so in front of others than anything else. Children.

Eventually, our path down the decrepit but mostly-intact passages lead us to a door. Not a simple one, but a massive blast door made of thick rusty steel. Twice as tall as I was, and thrice as wide, it stood like an impassable barrier before us. The golden rune inlaid into it were still intact, what with gold being resistant to aging.

“Mah, look at that craftsmanship,” Wrench said as he tugged at his beard. “Impressive work.”

“It’s a bit square in my opinion,” Apprentice Yi said.

“That’s because your opinion is both stupid and uneducated,” Hammar said. “It’s not the form that’s impressive, it’s the functionality.”

Ruolan stepped up and inspected the door without touching it. “Any idea how to open it?” she asked.

“With a crow-bar?” Yi asked.

“Mah! Hammar’s right, you’re a fool lad. Those enchantments look like they’re meant to open the door to specific people only.”

“That’s correct,” I said as I took in the rune schema at a glance. “It’s even knock-proof. If you knock it sets off that rune right there. It’s a... magnetic one? I suspect that it drops a sort of deadbolt preventing the door from opening.”

“Can we touch it?” Ruolan asked.

“You’re asking me?” I retorted.

The woman sighed. “You may have dabbled in some dark things, but the dwarves seem to trust you, and you seem to know your magic.”

“A fair assessment, I suppose,” I said. “And yes, you can touch it. See those marks in the corner there? Those would electrocute you on contact, but the links have rusted through, and I’m not sensing any magic in the places where the rune schema suggests the capacitors ought to be.”

“Mah, that means we can force it open.”

“Like with a crowbar?” Yi asked.

It earned him a look from the dwarves, which he responded to with a smug smile.

The party shifted about until the strongest members were gathered at the front and gripping the edges of the door to pull it apart. “On three,” Ruolan said before starting a count-down.

Though, if she started at one, then it was more of a count-up. Oh hoh!

They grunted and swore and generally accomplished very little.

“Papa?” Alex asked over the sound of Yi’s groaning.

“Yes Alex?”

“Can I help them?”

I considered it for just a moment. “As long as your actions don’t interfere with your duties as a butler, you’re free to do as you wish,” I said.

Alex nodded, a smile blossoming before he walked up to the door. He slid both hands in the crack between the doors, then with an almost effortless motion, tore the doorway open. “Please come in,” he said before stepping past.

The party stared after him until the last of his maid skirt disappeared into the darkened room beyond, then they rushed after him.

“What in the hells is that guy?” Yi muttered.

“Oh,” I said as I entered last.

“What’s wrong, Master?” the limpet asked, though she wasn’t looking my way. She, and all the others, were taking in the colossal chamber. We were above it, on a catwalk that surrounded the room and the large metallic sphere in its centre. The walls were braced with pillars and the floor far below covered in a few necromilimeters of stagnant water.

A few automata were braced against the walls in little hangars, and there were alcoves in the sides where workbenches sat.

Opposite us, and behind the reactor in the room’s centre, was an automaton the size of a lesser dragon, a machine with piston arms and a mechanical head resting on its chest in dormancy.

“I recognize this place,” I said. “Though I’ve never entered from here.”

Ruolan turned my way, her light, held high above her head, was barely able to illuminate half the room. “You’ve been here before?”

“When this chamber was first built, yes.”

“That was thousands of years ago,” she said.

“Yes.”

The limpet tugged at my sleeve. “What is this place?” she asked.

“You could say it’s the heart of Silvershire. It’s a magical reactor, to power all the machines and mechanisms of an industrial city.”

“Incredible,” Hammer breathed. “We should investigate it.”

Ruolan nodded. “It could be valuable. Look at the golems. They’re armed. These aren’t workers, they’re guards.”

“And guards are there to protect things, valuable things,” Apprentice Yi said.

We started to make our way down, using the ricketty steel steps that surrounded the room. We only descended in single-file, with Tweezers at the lead making sure that each step was sturdy enough to take our weight, and occasionally indicating a step that should be avoided.

At the very bottom, we stepped onto the wet floor with faint splashes. Hammer bent down to sniff the liquid. “Not water. Some sort of coolant.”

“That’s possible,” I said. “The reactor ran hot. Residual energy tends to be warm.”

I stepped into the coolant and sighed at the thought of having to clean out my socks later. It would be such a pain, but my curiosity drove me on. I did consider a water walking spell... after I stepped into the liquid.

“Yuck,” the limpet said.

“Indeed. Don’t drink it, it’s toxic. In fact, you probably shouldn’t touch it at all.”

Wrench looked up at me. “Couldn’t you have said that before we were all ankle deep in it?”

“Would it change anything? And besides, I suspect that after a thousand-odd years, the coolant might not be as effective.”

The party more or less split up. Most moved towards the reactor, myself included, but the dwarves, after casting one look at the device, moved to the sides of the room, no doubt to see if there were any tools laying around. The humans and I, limpet included, moved towards the reactor.

The machine was a behemoth of steel and cables and pipes. Some of the later had burst, and some of the cables were frayed and the cloth wrapped around them was in tatters, revealing the copper-y lines within.

The front of the reactor was open, a square panel half a necrometer wide set aside on the ground to reveal the inner workings of the machine.

There was a smaller core within, this one open as well, like a ball sliced in twain. Within that was a small round indentation. Empty, as if something small and round had once fit this in a pad of rusting iron and lead.

I sighed, a conclusion I was nearly certain of reached at last.

“How does this work?” the limpet asked.

“There might be some documentation left,” I admitted. “Silvershire’s academics would certainly cast protective spells over their manuals and such. Even I would need some time and effort to recreate a device like this. It certainly took them years. Nearly a decade.”

I moved over towards the back of the room. There was an office there, with the remains of a few panels covered in gauges and dials. There were also a few desks. I started to root around them, but found very little of any interest.

A cabinet by the back had more to look at. After accidentally tearing the door off, I found a few books. Some in tatters, but it was possible that they could be restored with the right spells. Some were nearly intact though.

“We will be taking those,” Ruolan said.

I looked over to find the cultivator eyeing the books. The one at the top read Silvershire Reactor One Emergency Procedures in boxy letters. “Will you, now?” I asked.

“That’s what the entire expedition was for.”

“To find the reactor?”

“To find anything of value down here. That device, that looks very valuable. I can’t imagine how much it cost to build, and if they were willing to pour so much into constructing and guarding it, it must be a tool of great power.”

“It is that,” I agreed.

“Was it a tool for cultivation? Like a nexus or some sort of chi gathering device?” she asked.

“No, just a magical engine.

“Just?” she repeated.

“Well, perhaps not merely an engine. It was the work of two of the local academies. Some of the best years of some very talented scientists were spent working on that device to perfect it. And once it ran, it changed the city forever.”

“We could rebuild it,” Ruolan said. “Not here, of course. This city is dead. But there are others across the Empire.”

I wasn’t about to step in the way of progress. I pulled out a small notebook from a pocket and tapped its spine against the covers of the more intact books. “May I keep these ruined books? There might be a way to salvage some little information from them.”

“I suppose,” Ruoland said as she took the books and shoved them in a satchel.

“Um. Master!” the limpet screamed. “I may have made a small mistake!”

I looked over to see that the limpet was stepping back from the reactor. A reactor that was starting to hum faintly, some of the wires running along it sparking and snapping.

“And what, exactly, did you do?” I asked.

“There was a hold, for a round thing, and I remembered the marble you gave me. You know, the one with the numbers on it?” She said in a hurry. “It fit perfectly in the hole, but then the thing snapped shut around it.”

“Mah, what’d you do girl?” Wrench asked as he splashed closer.

The reactor burped, then started to rumble. The room, previously lit only by the magical lights of the adventurers, came to life as the mage lights hanging off the walls came alive.

And then the automatons all around the room activated. The machines were speaking, but with their garbled, age-worn voices, it was impossible to tell what they were saying.

The huge guardian at the far end of the room had no such trouble. “Intruders detected.”

***