Getting through the immense bulkhead sealing the observatory proved rather simple. While it was nigh-impenetrable from the outside, all of the mechanisms to open it were on the inside. Having realized that, Fizzy directed Krak and Krum to place several of the vibroglass bombs they’d brought with them at what seemed like key structural points. The multi-colored prisms were promptly charged and detonated, sending cascades of destructive resonance through the dense metal surface. The tungsten plating was largely unaffected, but all the aforementioned moving parts practically exploded from their sockets, effectively blowing the hinges off the cogwheel-shaped door. Fizzy then ran up, grabbed one side of it with both hands, put her foot up against the wall, and pulled for all she was worth.

The twins were immediately skeptical of this direct approach. Even if she was a metal construct, moving something many times her weight seemed impossible. And they would be right if this was the same Fizzy that they faced off previously. However, now that she was 11 Levels into War Golem and had Axel’s blessing bolstering her STR by half, the enormous slab of metal was forced open with an ear-rending grind. Once sufficiently out of place, the multi-ton door tipped over and fell. It smashed straight through the floor and continued to tumble down through several of the tower’s uppermost layers, leaving destruction in its wake.

“I see this is not a subtle plan of attack,” Krak pointed out.

“I don’t do ‘subtle,’ meatbag.”

With the way forward open, Fizzy charged down the short hallway and kicked open the door to the elevator. Surprisingly, the cabin had only now started its descent, no doubt recalled by its disembodied owner. That was perfectly fine, however, as the golem never intended to bother with something so slow. She looked back to the twins, cracked a 50,000 GP smile, and jumped into the shaft. The war golem grabbed onto one of the steel cables, which instantly snapped under the extra weight and force. The gnomes could do little but look over the edge as both the golem and the cabin were now in freefall, bouncing all over and wrecking the walls of the shaft until they crashed with a deafening din.

“Now that I think about it,” the sister spoke up again, “I really should have questioned why she asked how good we are at rough landings.”

“Well, you know what they say,” Krum sighed, “hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

“No, I don’t. Who’s ‘they’ and what does ‘twenty-twenty’ mean?”

“I’m not sure. A whale said that to me in a dream. Sounded right, didn’t ask.”

“Oh… What’s a whale?”

“Explain later. Let’s go!”

“Right behind you.”

The hunters followed their illustrious leader down, though they did not fully submit to gravity as she did. They rapidly hopped from wall to wall, using whatever handholds and ledges they could see to control their descent. Sounds of battle echoed from below just as Krum and Krak caught up with the golem. They found Fizzy had already wrenched open the doors at the bottom and the twins unhesitantly went through, intent on joining the fray. It then quickly became apparent that their assistance was not necessary.

As the name implied, the war golem seemed designed primarily for combat unlike the part-artistic, part-industrial intentions behind its commonly constructed cousin. Fizzy was already in top gear, with both eyes alight in a green blaze, an orange glow seeping between her radiant plates, and a perpetual sheathe of electricity surrounding her to boot. Her opponents were a long-legged, spider-like type of automata that clung to the walls and ceiling of the lavishly decorated hallway. They were clearly trying to keep out of the Paladin’s reach while bombarding her with built-in freezing beam weapons. It was a sound way of taking down a golem, and was she still her old self, it might have actually worked.

The new and improved Fizzy had absolutely no difficulty with these tin bugs, especially with the voices in her head pitching in. The original manned the Magitech Cannon in her shield arm, Plus generously applied pressure via Magnetize and Geomagnetic Grip, and Minus cut loose as she chased them down with primal instincts and powerful legwork. This team effort made the war golem look absolutely unstoppable as she simultaneously leapt up to crush bugs with one hand while the other blasted them with balls of plasma and a third, invisible one tossed them around the room. She was so proficient at breaking the bots that they barely had a chance to focus their freezing beams on her, on top of her heated frame shrugging off any ice that threatened to bind her movements.

This aggressive exchange of energy and fervent implementation of rapid motion left the lavishly decorated hallway in a state of pure chaos. The sight of this high-speed mess left Krak and Krum stumped for several seconds as they tried to make sense of it. This proved a potentially fatal mistake as some newly arrived laser-spiders focused on the easy targets. Thankfully the brother’s own Champion of Chaos had seen enough of them to predict that a beam was about to encase both their heads in ice. The warning gave him just enough time to shove his sister out of the way while he himself ducked, narrowly avoiding the heat-sapping blasts as they flew over him. The shock shaken off, Krak immediately turned her own energy weapon on the enemy and melted through their spindly legs with her pinpoint marksmanship. The rookie Paladin then bobbed, dodged, and weaved his way over to the crippled automatons and finished them off by stabbing his enchanted blade into their bulbous bodies. The magical vibrations released from his weapon violently ripped through the lightweight spider-bots’ internal mechanisms, leaving them as broken and useless husks.

The group were thus able to handle the swarm of automated constructs, the relatively narrow confines limiting their numerical advantage. They were even making some progress towards their next objective, albeit very slowly.

“There is no end to them!” Krum shouted.

“Sure there is!” Fizzy shot back. “Just hang - Holy Light! - there!”

“I’m leaving if they don’t let up in three minutes!”

Despite Krak’s warning, she and her brother stuck with the rampaging golem as she tore her way through Katya’s forces for nearly double the stated deadline. That was how long it took for them to make it to the other elevator down the hall and around the corner. By the time they reached it, the building’s interior was starting to resemble an actual war zone. Debris littered the floor, the air was full of smoke, the artwork and furniture were mangled beyond recognition, and every surface was either dented, scorched, frozen, full of holes, or any combination of the above. And yet, despite Fizzy’s insistence that Katya most assuredly did not have an infinite supply of minions, circumstances suggested otherwise. Not that it mattered much now that they made it this far.

The golem kicked open the sliding doors and signaled for the twins to go on through while she kept the defenses busy. The gnomes did as instructed and descended in the same hippity-hoppity fashion as before. It was a good thing they had Zephyra’s boon staving off their exhaustion, otherwise that protracted battle might have ended up in an accidental slip and a broken neck. That said, neither had made it out of the skirmish unscathed, with Krum in particular suffering some severe frostbite. Without all the feeling in his limbs, the rookie Paladin did indeed mess up his footing and nearly dropped straight to the bottom, but was able to grasp onto the dangling steel cables in the middle of the shaft. He figured this was a good moment to tend to his injuries and quickly chanted a Holy Light. Unfortunately he butchered the invocation and only produced a few golden sparkles that did little beyond clear his sinuses of snot. Krak caught up moments later and lightly bonked him on the head with the butt of a silver flask, which she quickly turned around and dumped the healing potion within all over him.

First aid taken care of, the hunters finished their descent quickly and without further incident. Once at the bottom, the revitalized Stonesinger invoked a Skill called Song of Steel, forcing the doors blocking the exit to burst open. The chamber beyond was dimly lit and full of a thick white fog, but seemed to be devoid of enemies. That was good enough for the twins, who quickly called out to Fizzy that the way was clear. The golem jumped down the shaft as before, but this time she intentionally caused as much collateral damage as she could. She broke railings, ripped off panels, blasted the walls at random, and generally destroyed anything within reach of her weapons. When she eventually slammed into the bottom, she was followed by a deluge of debris that stacked up high enough to completely block the passage. She nearly got buried in it, but managed to escape into the room before the worst of it caught up with her. The twins apparently had the same idea as they tossed a pair of crystal bombs in as soon as she was in the clear. A couple of loud pangs and a whole lot of groaning metal later, the elevator was well and truly sealed off.

It was only once the dust and commotion began to settle that the trio were able to collect their thoughts and assess their new surroundings, at which point they finally realized something.

“Gah! What is this?!” Krum complained, suddenly shivering. “Why is it so cold down here?!”

The air was absolutely freezing to the point where his skin actually felt like it was on fire. Krak was handling the sudden drop in temperature better, but only by a bit. As for the golem, her Engine of Destruction had heated her up so much that her normally white frame had turned completely orange. She practically sizzled and steamed as the frigid air washed over her. The twins noticed this and huddled closer to her in an effort to warm up. It worked, but the golem’s sharp glare told them this course of action carried a risk far worse than a bit of frostbite. The gnomes wisely decided not to push their luck and backed off. Matters of personal space settled, Fizzy turned her attention back to the room, growing more confused as she looked around.

“Weird. This should be the source of those vibrations Tony picked up, but I don’t see any power generator. Or much at all, really.”

The enormous circular chamber was rather empty at a glance, though not all of it was visible due to the thick white fog permeating it. Some of it had been blown away by the explosive entrance, but it was slowly creeping back to fill the space around the intruders. Thankfully it did not seem to be toxic since the twins showed no adverse reaction to it. They did get quite damp all of a sudden though, suggesting the mist was little more than condensed water. The only thing it accomplished was to freak Krum and Krak out since they had never seen this phenomenon before. Tascuna did not have naturally occurring clouds or fog, after all. There wasn’t a lot of moisture to go around even in the overgrown jungle region, and the air was rather thin besides. Thankfully the twins were able to adapt almost instantly to this foreign environment, just as Fizzy knew they would. She knew better than anyone just how quick-witted gnomes were, regardless of where they were from, and those two were the closest thing to adventurers on this Gods-forsaken rock. If anyone could handle the strange and alien workings of Katya’s inner sanctum, it would be them.

“So what do we do now?” Krum inquired.

“Hm. Not sure. I think I see something on the other end there.”

The construct pointed into the dense mist, and the hunters could just barely make out some blinking red and blue lights on the far wall.

“Whatever it is, we need to handle it quickly,” Krak said. “The diversion force had to fall back about a minute ago.”

She knew this since she had been kept in the loop via rocky-talky this whole time. The reports said the attackers had to retreat since Orrin’s overpowered Hero Skill ran out of time and left them far more vulnerable to mortar fire. Furthermore, Katya’s grunts had started targeting the enchanted totems they were leaving all over the place and rendered the attackers open to chemical warfare, which she quickly unleashed upon them. With their formation buckling and certain defeat fast approaching, they wisely decided to retreat underground with Tony collapsing the tunnels behind them. By the time they got away they had around sixty casualties out of two hundred and fifty combatants, though most of those were shortly before they pulled back. All of those updates had been relayed to Krak in her native tongue, so Fizzy had no idea how bad things had gotten up there. Nor would she care even if she did. The meatbags had served their purpose of distracting Katya and splitting their attention long enough to get here. The only question left was where ‘here’ was.

“Time for Plan B?”

Okay, maybe there was one more.

“Might as well,” the golem shrugged.

Krak quickly sent word to begin preparations for the contingency while Fizzy spread her Metallopathy through the floor, walls, and into the ceiling. She’d gotten a lot of practice with this sort of thing ever since she rode the mag-rail, and was able to quickly grasp where those vibrations Tony reported were coming from. There were some heavy machines on the floor directly above this one that were churning like mad. It seemed as though whatever was up there was producing an obscene amount of freezing mist that was then funneled down here through a series of large vents. What was producing it and why it was being sent here, Fizzy could not immediately tell. As per usual, Katya’s devices were far too complex, intricate, and non-metallic for this sort of observation to determine their purpose. She’d have to get elbow-deep in those things to even hazard a guess at their function.

The golem would not get a chance to do so.

“You continue to impress, devochka.”

Katya’s voice crackled through the air, prompting the trio to raise their guards and go on high alert even though they were still unable to find any trace of an enemy.

“Are you certain we can’t put this mess behind us and cooperate once more?” the otherworlder offered.

“Really, bitch? Really?!” the Paladin’s voice cracked. “You tried to enslave me! How stupid do you think I am?!”

“My hand was forced! By the big freak! I would not have done that eef I knew he was the rat!”

“Tough tits. Even if that were true, my boss says you gotta go, so you gotta go!”

“Hmpf. Very well. If you will not see reason-”

The golem just barely ducked out of the way of something that came flying from the mist. It grazed the top of her head, producing a deluge of sparks before slamming into the collapsed blockage behind her, then flew right back whence it came.

“Then I will use force!”

A strange figure burst out of the freezing fog. A fleeting glance revealed it was human-like in shape and size, though mechanical and covered in what seemed like tungsten plating. That was all Fizzy saw of it in the split second before she had to throw up her shield to block its fist. The blow proved much heavier than expected, almost impossibly so. It lifted the war golem off her feet and sent her crashing into the pile of debris. The twins dashed to the left and right of the enemy, with the brother preparing a Spell while the sister took aim. The construct swung its other arm at Krak and launched its blocky fist at her with a burst of flame. The huntress attempted to block the rocket punch with her rifle, but it smashed through her weapon and buried itself in her gut. She was still alive, though in horrible pain and unable to draw breath. Krum managed to finish his incantation in the next moment and sent out a Sonic Slice with a swing of his blade, but the flying sword strike simply bounced harmlessly off the automaton’s armor. The machine then dashed towards him and sent him flying with a bone-crunching kick to his midsection.

Fizzy burst out of the rubble she’d been buried in and charged head-first into this thing. The bipedal machine’s wayward fist flew back and snapped into its elbow just in time to be swung at the inbound golem’s face. This time the Paladin did not block or dodge, but slammed her forehead into the punch with all she had. The clash produced a deafening gong that blew apart the freezing mist for a few moments, though neither side was backing down as face and fist continued to push against each other. At least until the golem’s wrench came swinging at the automaton’s legs, forcing it to leap up and away to avoid it. The compact jet pack strapped to its back then kicked it, sending it crashing down onto Fizzy with a double-handed overhead strike.

“Shield Wall!”

A flash of red and an impeccably timed Martial Art completely diffused the force of the blow. The oversized wrench found its quarry this time as its mechanized jaws clamped down hard onto the automaton’s arm. The grip wasn’t strong enough to crush the limb, but plenty to hang on tight as Fizzy flipped it over her head and tried to slam it into the ground. The construct detached its own arm at the elbow, allowing it to escape into the air completely unharmed. That was unfortunate, but better than nothing. At least the Paladin succeeded in breaking the discarded limb by smashing it into the surprisingly durable floor and stomping on it for good measure.

“Ha! One down, one to… Oh, come on!”

Fizzy’s boastful cheer was cut short when she saw another forearm fly in from the mist-covered edge of the chamber and take the crushed one’s place. This one looked much bulkier than the other, with a strange half-pipe device adorning its length as if it were a shield. The golem wasted no time and hurled herself at the dark gray automaton, intending to interrupt it before this new part could finish integrating. She did not succeed, as the aforementioned shield-like device buzzed to life and stopped her swing with a shimmering blue barrier. Another heavy punch nailed her in the face in the next moment, catching her momentarily flat-footed and sending her flying yet again. The golem bounced back almost immediately, looking significantly more pissed off as she went after it again.

“You like eet, devochka?” Katya taunted over the intercom. “I call this model the ‘Queen Armor, Mark 426.’ Ees not perfect, I know. I made eet as a hobby, not thinking I ever have to use eet. Still, it’s amazing what you can do with enough power and a few hundred thousand hours of development, no?”

Fizzy didn’t have the luxury of listening, as she was putting her all into trying to bring this thing down. That barrier proved troublesome for her to get through, and this so-called Queen seemed impervious to her Static Field. It showed no signs of breaking down or malfunctioning even though it got a nasty jolt every time it decked her in the face. It was also infuriatingly quick. The golem would not be able to keep up with it at all if she didn’t have the benefit of Axel’s divine boon. It wasn’t just the machine’s movements that were an issue, either. Its reaction speed was undoubtedly superior to Fizzy’s. To make matters worse, her Champion of Chaos was unable to predict its movements with its usual accuracy. The Skill required visual information to do its thing, and the golem’s eyesight was constantly obstructed by one thing or another.

Still, she was adapting. She managed to catch one of those heavy punches with her free hand while the other was hammering the wrench against the energy shield. Her wrist swung to one side while her fingers held tight onto those metal knuckles, and the barrel of her Magitech Cannon popped out from underneath. She managed to blast the thing’s punching arm point-blank before it could pull back. The tungsten plating absorbed most of the plasma, but enough punched through to ruin its internals and render the limb useless. The Queen automaton disengaged with those jump jets on its back, pulling a few dozen paces away from the war golem in an instant. Unsurprisingly a replacement flew in from somewhere, this one gripping a short sword-like weapon with a glowing orange edge.

“I admit, I may have devoted too much time and resources to some recreational things. A lot of the weapons I have for it are just so silly that they’d be completely impractical in a real fight. Still nice to fantasize about, though.”

Indeed, though that strange blade did indeed manage to cleave partway into Fizzy’s mithril shoulder pad, it broke immediately after when the Queen tried to pull it out. It was quickly replaced by another, even more dubious armament that was best described as an explosive flail. The heavy blow and the follow-up detonation heavily dented the war golem’s abdominal plates, but it too was also a one-shot-wonder. Neither of these weird weapons left any permanent damage that weren’t quickly mended by the constant stream of Holy Lights Plus was chanting. This was Fuzzy’s usual trick of being effectively invincible in prolonged engagements, but under these circumstances her MP was actually steadily dwindling. Between Static Field, Parallel Plot, and the healing Spells, the Engine of Destruction just couldn’t keep up. The fact that this frigid environment constantly drained the heat out of the golem contributed to the insufficient mana generation.

While the gearheads were duking it out, Krum had circled around to Krak and was tending to her wounds. The twins were wary of engaging that over-tuned automaton again considering how easily it nearly killed them. That didn’t mean they were going to sit this one out. Just the contrary. One of the reasons they came along on this mission was because they didn’t want to let some weird alien do all the fighting for them. They just had to be smart about it, though the speed and force with which the two constructs were clashing left them unsure of where to even begin to make a difference without getting instantly flattened.

“Okay, okay. Enough playing around,” Katya’s tone turned serious. “Let’s be crushing you now.”

The Queen’s experimental weaponry was abandoned in favor of an arm cannon of its own. Fizzy didn’t need her Skill to predict what was going to happen when that thing was pointed at her. Normally she’d try to use a Rebound to reflect it at its source, but her instinct told her that was a bad idea. So, she instead decided to employ the ability she’d been keeping secret since this assault began. The war golem vanished in a crackling corona of sparks moments before a pure white beam cut through the misty chamber. Her Lightning Warp delivered her directly above her target, which attempted to correct its aim and tilted its weapon upward, dragging it across the wall and ceiling. The radiant construct fell on Katya’s magnum opus before it could fully readjust and smashed that dangerous weapon with a downward thrust of her wrench. This produced a concussive blast that threw both constructs back and rattled the entire chamber.

Fizzy landed with all the grace of an inebriated troll as her head collided with the floor before the rest of her. She quickly rose to her feet and glanced over her shoulder to find that there was a long line-shaped gap in the chamber’s wall and ceiling, through which a whole bunch of rapidly churning machinery could be seen. It would appear that anything that beam touched just… vanished.

She has a fucking disintegration cannon?!

The Paladin couldn’t help but scream internally at this revelation, much as she had been throughout this entire fight.

“Who cares?!” Minus snarled. “I’m going to rip that thing’s core out and shove it up her ass!”

That outburst, while horribly unproductive, gave the golem an idea.

Go ahead and do that, then.

“Wait, really?”

Yes, really. Take over and show me what you’re made of. Plus, back her up.

“You got it! Let’s get ‘em, sis!”

“Fucking finally! C’mere, you cunt!”

Like opening a pressurized container, the younger Parallel’s pent up aggression practically exploded forth. She charged the enemy like a wild beast, not even bothering to pick up her weapon. She leapt onto the Queen unit while it was still recovering and began relentless hammering on its energy barrier with her bare hands. The automaton seemed caught off-guard by this primitive approach and wasn’t able to retreat in time before Minus somehow broke through her defenses and grabbed that damnable shield generator. The device was then promptly crunched into scrap, forcing the Queen to abandon yet another limb and retreat to safety with the aid of its jet-pack. Plus was ready for the maneuver, however, and nailed the propulsion device with a well-placed bolt of pseudo-plasma, causing it to explode spectacularly. The mechanized armor emerged completely undamaged, though its mobility had been drastically reduced.

Yeah, that’ll do, Fizzy approved. Keep it busy like this, I need time to think.

“Sure thing!”

“Fuck keeping it busy, I’ll smash it to bits!”

That’s the spirit.

While the trio was hyping themselves up, however, Katya’s masterpiece had already recovered. It had a new pair of hands, a chemical-thrower on its right and a large grabby-claw on its left. As for its back, it now sported a bulky, rectangular contraption that had a pair of mechanized arms, each of which held up a long box of some kind. The ends of these opened up and unleashed a total of eight missiles that bombarded the war golem in rapid succession. Minus emerged from the resulting flame and smoke holding one of the rockets she’d plucked out of the air, which she threw at the Queen. The automaton’s claw-arm grabbed it mid-air and swung it back towards the golem while stepping backwards, but a Lightning Warp saw the radiant construct dodge the swing completely while also appearing just behind her enemy. A charged and heated punch pierced straight through the portable artillery system while it was reloading and ignited the munitions within, causing yet another explosion. This move was anticipated, however. The Queen had abandoned the missile launcher moments before and retaliated by dousing the war golem in a deluge of liquid gas that threatened to freeze her to her core. Luckily Plus recognized the danger before it was too late and countered with Heat Exchange, forcing all the thermal energy she’d built up to flood her surroundings and blow away the dangerous chemical. Unfortunately this also allowed the ambient cold to seep into her frame and began icing up her joints. This was potentially devastating since she needed to move to generate heat in the first place.

It was at this point Krum and Krak decided to make their play. Having largely recovered, they noticed the alien construct struggling and quickly identified the lack of heat as the cause. The huntress drew her backup weapon - a simple slingshot - and loaded it with a fire crystal she would normally use to power her now destroyed energy weapon. Her brother cast a Vibration Charge Spell on it just before it was launched at the golem. It broke apart on Fizzy’s armored hide and erupted in a flash of fire that served to both thaw her out and jump-start her thermal generation. Unfortunately this reminded Katya that the meatbags were still around, and her automaton immediately retaliated by launching its grabby claw at them. It hit Krak in the chest and snapped shut around her torso, but Krum managed to jump in and cut the cable connecting it before the enemy could reel her in. He then reached for whatever vibroglass prisms he had left and haphazardly scattered them around to make the machine dodge and buy his allies some time. He was successful, although he had to hit the floor moments later as the Queen had rearmed itself with a pair of high-intensity freeze-beam weapons that nearly turned the Stonesinger into a gnomecicle. Minus and Plus then resumed their assault before their enemy could adjust its aim.

Meanwhile Fizzy had cut her mind off from the outside world completely. She was rapidly analyzing what she had learned about this android in an effort to formulate out a more effective takedown strategy than ‘hit it until it breaks.’ So far she had figured out a few things that weren’t immediately obvious. For starters, Katya wasn’t directly controlling this Queen bot. Brilliant and ruthless though she was, she was no fighter. She was probably giving it orders and deciding which armaments to deploy from the mechanisms hidden in the walls, but the automaton itself handled the actual combat. That was why tagging Minus in proved so effective. It had analyzed Fizzy’s controlled fighting style and was rapidly computing countermeasures, but it didn’t have data on the Parallel’s reckless and impulsive approach. Unfortunately there was little chance for another upset if Plus took over. The elder alter ego didn’t have the sort of aggressive mindset required to make use of such an opportunity.

That aside, the Artificer had also largely deduced why this room was so cold. It made no sense to have a big empty refrigerator with nothing in it unless it was meant to accommodate the Queen. The most obvious conclusion was that Katya’s magnum opus suffered from severe overheating issues. There was no way a machine that high-spec didn’t burn through cartloads of energy to function. The question then became, where was all this juice coming from? The automaton’s frame was far too narrow for it to house a sufficiently powerful generator unless Katya had some truly revolutionary power tech crammed in there. But if she did, then she probably wouldn’t need the gnomes’ Heart of Light to fuel her big mystery project. Speaking of which, she previously boasted she already had a ‘reactor’ capable of utilizing that ridiculously large crystal. How did she develop one? She was clearly familiar with Tascuna’s power stones, but a mother-crystal was special. Unique, almost. For her to have a machine capable of harnessing that much magical energy was unthinkable unless she had a similar sample to work with.

It was this thought process that eventually delivered Fizzy to her revelation. All this time, Katya had been sitting on the cold-attuned equivalent of the Heart of Light. She must have built her control tower right on top of it, isolated it, then experimented relentlessly in an effort to harness its immense power. This freezing fog was likely a byproduct of that research. It had to be magically charged, otherwise it wouldn’t affect the golem as severely as it did. That meant the mist not only cooled the Queen model, but powered it as well. Thinking logically, why would this incredibly powerful unit be only found here, and not used to fend off the assault? The most likely answer was because it couldn’t function anywhere else. Though, assuming all this conjecture was accurate, another question popped up. Why would Katya bother with her campaign against the locals if she already had a source of power comparable to the Heart of Light? That was something Fizzy couldn’t answer with much confidence. But, if she were a betting girl, she’d wager that converting cold-attuned mana to electrical power was horribly inefficient, especially when compared to a massive lump of crystallized lightning.

Having pieced together the most likely circumstances, the Artificer then deduced where this Heart of Ice would be housed. She had indeed been accurate when determining the position of Katya’s buried power generator array, but had misjudged the depth at which it was located. In other words, it was all at the base of the control tower, likely a few floors above this bottom-most chamber. There was no telling what would happen if that mass of energy were detonated like the Heart of Fire, but it was safe to assume it would annihilate the otherworlder’s base of operations and leave her effectively powerless. Unfortunately, the golem presently had no way of reaching the theoretical Heart of Ice with that Queen on her ass. Defeating this thing would be much easier if she could eliminate its power source, but since that wasn’t going to happen, Fizzy decided to settle for the next best thing and sever the link between them. She knew just how to do it, too.

Now that she had something actually resembling a plan, the golem regained control of her frame and addressed her companions of convenience.

“Hey, meatbags! There’s four giant vents on the ceiling! Break those!”

Krak and Krum replied with vaguely affirmative yells while they ran for cover from the Queen’s rapid-fire grenade launcher.

“Ha! You actually figured eet out!” Katya crackled over the intercom. “You impress yet again, devochka! Such a shame your plan will not work!”

“I’d like to see you stop me, you worthless hack!”

Fizzy punctuated her words by grabbing her semi-frozen wrench off the ground and using it to clothesline the automaton as it charged at her with a high-speed drill attachment. She then finally managed to grapple the slippery bugger by the torso and hold it in place, all while Katya processed that unexpected insult.

“… What did you call me?”

“You heard me! Your work is garbage! Over a hundred years of experience and this is the best you can do! Absolutely abysmal!”

The Queen struggled violently against the golem’s shocking and sizzling form, but she wasn’t about to let it escape. She’d seen it do its modular thing far too many times, and knew just which parts weren’t detachable. Though she was certain the thing would somehow weasel out of its predicament, she could still buy time for the twins to do their part. Indeed, Krak had already destroyed one of the massive vents with her slingshot and a piece of vibroglass Krum had primed for her. Once they got the other three and this cold-charged mist was spent, the Queen would be easy pickings. However, while Fizzy had made some startlingly accurate assumptions using only limited information and her own technical knowledge, she had overlooked something. She was dealing with someone whose entire career could be summed up in two terms.

Namely, ‘mass production’ and ‘self-destruction.’

“Okay. Now, eet ees personal.”

The automaton let out a shrill beep as it overloaded its miniaturized thermal reactor. Sensing something bad was about to happen, the golem fled to safety with Lightning Wrap. Shards of jagged ice burst outward from the android, encasing it completely and narrowly doing the same to her. In the next instant, several panels along the circular chamber’s wall slid open with sharp hisses. Four more Queen units stepped out, sucking up the freezing mist until it was barely visible. Fizzy, Krak, and Krum only had moments to take stock of the situation as the automatons raised their heavy firearms and took aim. The twins huddled together, with the brother erecting a Repelling Field in an attempt to shield the two of them from the incoming gunfire. The golem didn’t even bother to put up her guard and charged at the closest one. Why would she be scared of bullets? Her layered mithril hide made her all but impervious to physical projectiles. At most they’d dent her frame, which would buff out with a quick Spell.

However, Fizzy had failed to consider that Katya knew that, which was why she broke out the special munitions - the ones she had custom made well before coming to Tascuna. As the quartet of Queens opened fire, their high-caliber armor-piercing force-imbued mithril rounds peppered against the Paladin from all sides. Some hit at a shallow angle and ricocheted off her outer plating, and more still were either deflected or reflected by her chaotic patron’s divine protection. Most, however, found their mark and punched through her armor. A few lodged themselves deep in her inner layer and jammed her right elbow and left knee. Several among the hundreds of hits also triggered her Armor of Anarchy, negating the damage and lashing out with jolts of green lightning. These and the ones reflected by Physics Be Damned succeeded in jamming two of the four magical machine guns. The first volley ended shortly after since the shooters needed to either reload or reach for their back-up heavy pistols.

Fizzy managed to reach one of them despite her malfunctioning limbs, but it just jet-packed away before she could take a swing at it. As for the gnomes, it would appear Krum’s magnetic barrier and the acting High Templar’s blessings did little to protect them. Both twins were lying on the ground, bleeding heavily from numerous wounds with the Sun God’s one-time deathward already spent. The golem had them beat in the ‘full of holes’ department since she was the focus of the enemy’s fire. Thankfully Plus finished chanting a Holy Light that repaired most of the damage, but the magic failed to eject the foreign objects lodged in her joints. Her elbow and knee were still locked in place, leaving Lightning Warp as her only real mobility option. However, it still hadn’t been 10 seconds since she had to dodge the first Queen’s self-destruct.

In short, the war golem was a total sitting duck as the second volley fell upon her. Without many other options, she tried to hunker behind her shield as best she could. Though now an integrated part of her body, it was still an Artifact-grade magic item with a nigh-indestructible defense rating. It resolutely deflected even those specialized munitions, but Fizzy’s frame was far too bulky for it to cover all of her. The automatons corrected their aim and targeted the bits of the Paladin that were sticking out. They broke both of the spherical coils on her head and mangled both her legs below the knee. This left the war golem completely crippled and disabled her Static Field’s ability to lash out. Her arms, head, torso, and the all-important core in her breast were mostly intact, so this wasn’t over just yet.

“Hmpf. Such a waste.”

Katya clearly disagreed, judging by her arrogant tone of voice.

“Sixty seven thousand gold pieces’ worth of boolets and you still will not die. Though I suppose is not all bad. I can just melt you down and make new ones, no?”

She clearly had no idea how tricky mithril was to forge, otherwise she’d know that was practically impossible. Indeed, each one of those rounds had to be made meticulously by hand, hence the absurd price of manufacture. Still, it was money well spent as far as Katya was concerned. Even Fizzy had to admit they were worth every coin considering how badly they tore her up. Or at least she would, once she had the luxury of wasting brain power on such idle thoughts. At present her entire being was focused on two things - survival, and counting down the seconds left until her contingency kicked in. Granted, the latter could potentially work against the former, but she had faith it would all work out.

“Anyway, this has gone on too long,” the otherworlder continued. “Dasvidaniya, devochka. You will not be- Huh? Chto za huynya?!”

The Original Artificer’s attention was suddenly drawn to a most unexpected alert as her radar detecting something was incoming.

Something big, heavy, and with ‘Plan B’ painted on the side.