Dashing through the confusing mess of landscapes and scenery that made no more sense the longer they had to witness it, Emilia and King chased the only living custodian they had seen in the machine fortress. Even with her considerable haul of heavy equipment, unit twelve traversed across the impossible terrain at a frightening speed and could have probably lost her pursuers had the chase gone any longer than it did. She seemed to have some familiarity with the place, knowing which pieces of the ground were safe to tread on and which ones to jump over. The custodian also seemed to be able to navigate effectively in the nonsensical realm with no unchanging landmarks or consistency.

Meanwhile Emilia and King did their best to not trip into the puddle-sized seas, inexplicable patches of marshland and several other hazards they passed but could only barely keep up with unit twelve for the few minutes they were chasing her for. Countless gravity defying items bounced off King’s armor as he paved the way while Emilia allowed Pyria to work through her to make sure two didn’t lose each other ‘between the seams’, which apparently was a real threat.

Using a carriage-sized pumpkin to climb up a small cliff it grew by was one of the more normal parts of the journey. As they were immediately greeted by a small, a bit flimsily crafted wooden doll with a rather pronounced nose sitting on a fox pelt and staring at the pair like they had interrupted something. The gaze of its lifeless eyes followed them as they passed but the doll itself didn’t move, and if it had, Emilia would have probably punted it down the cliff for being so creepy.

From there, their path seemed to follow a neatly paved road made from yellowish bricks. However, the problem with it was that it had been constructed upside down and several meters above them, in the air. So instead of benefitting from the solid footing it would have provided, the pair was forced to follow its shadow and deal with the sporadic and everchanging terrain. On their way they passed several more inexplicable things, such as a collection of three upturned hats; a black top hat full of red liquid, a worn red fishing hat with some kind of a sandwich in it and a similar green one, filled with a carrot and a rolled up green scarf. In a too much of a hurry and far too driven to pay much attention to any of the oddity, Emilia and King left everything they didn’t have to go through well alone.

Finally, after what felt like at least an hour of pursuit, they could see what they had been heading towards: a group of six Knights of Stone, four of whom were taking cover behind pieces of aureun architecture while one lined a shot with a massive metal bow and another vigilantly stood a few meters in front of them with sword as long as the knight itself, guarding the rest from something. Unit twelve immediately, without so much as catching her breath, tossed what she was carrying on the ground and started sorting through the items. She piled several javelin-like arrows next to the knight armed with a bow and divided a few more modestly sized weapons between the four that were behind the cover.

“That’s all I could find this time.” She reported and began going through the rest of the equipment, consisting mostly of an assortment of armor pieces for the knights. “I’ll go look for more once I’ve slapped these on you.”

As soon as the four knights noticed King, they quickly stood up and greeted him with a stomp on the ground, which he then returned in kind. However, the way they acted towards King wasn’t simply as if they had met a comrade, but as if someone of higher rank had just arrived. Their poses were tense and proper compared to King’s and they remained that way until he turned his attention elsewhere. While they were up, unit twelve capitalized on the chance and started detaching cracked pieces of armor on their bodies with a tool like the one’s the adventurers had found in King’s personal quarters and began replacing them with the ones she had found.

Emilia tried to get the custodian’s attention, but unit twelve put a lot of effort into ignoring her. “Excuse me, but what’s going on here? I know you said there was some fighting going on, but this isn’t at all what I was expecting – and you didn’t even mention that you were losing custodians and knights to this.” She asked and followed in the busy custodian’s steps as she went back and forth between the knights and the pile of equipment she brought. “Also more importantly, have you seen Anna or Leggy? The small girl and venator we came here with.”

Unit twelve stopped what she was doing to look at the priestess with a sceptic grin. “I haven’t seen anything besides the horseshit around us, and we’re not losing anything. The enemy has been on the run for the entire time, and we pinned this one down well before you meddlers even came here. A few knights did get lost in this place though, but that’ll sort itself out once we make our push and kill whatever’s causing this.” She laughed and quickly went through Emilia’s altered appearance with her eyes but didn’t seem to care enough to comment on it. The horn on the custodian’s forehead flashed briefly as she pointed at it. “I’d know if one of us somehow died – or get updates if the situation turned for the worse.”

Knowing they had proof of the dead custodians along with them in the form of their crystalline horns, unit twelve’s denial made Emilia start to suspect something – something which the fiend inside her head gladly confirmed.

“It appears out path has crossed with the ones the illusions were originally created for. With the caretakers separated and their connection deafened, the defenses are crippled. Hide them from one another and hunt them down one by one.” Pyria said, sounding slightly impressed.

“Say, twelve, when was the last time you received any messages? Did you report our arrival earlier, and did anyone answer?” The priestess asked, hoping to ease the custodian into the realization.

Unit twelve frowned and counted something with her fingers. “Couldn’t have been more than a day now… You people barged in and summoned me like what, two hours ago? They’re all busy and we’re keeping the chatter to a minimum to make sure important messages get through…” She reasoned but grew visibly worried. The crystalline horn on her forehead started to blink and flicked frantically for a while, until it slowly dimmed, and the custodian waited for an answer.

“We’ve been here for well over a day, if not two.” The priestess revealed.

King took out one of the horns he had collected and held it out for unit twelve to see. Quickly swiping it from the knight’s hand, the custodian tapped her own horn with the severed one, lighting them both up briefly. She then stared intensely at it for a while before glancing up at the solemn priestess.

“Oh well, looks like you were right.” The custodian suddenly shrugged nonchalantly, tossed the horn over her shoulder and continued her work.

Emilia had a hard time believing the callous reaction but couldn’t find a single crack in the determinedly annoyed face of the custodian. There was no indication whatsoever that the death of what were essentially her siblings bothered her at all, nor did she seem particularly concerned over what may have allowed for it to happen in the first place.

After a while unit twelve noticed that she was being stared at and frustratedly turned away from her work again. “What now? I’m still busy, even more so now, if there’s less of us around.” She sighed and tried to shoo the priestess away.

“It’s just that I’ve been to more than my fair share of funerals and the like, and typically people are sad when their friends and family dies – you seem… uninterested. Is this because you’re, well… artificial?” Emilia asked, trying her best to not sound rude. As twisted as it may have been, she was hoping that she could have been of some use by consoling the custodian.

Unit twelve sighed and rolled her eyes. “Which part of us existing for war and war alone is confusing for you? We chose war and we chose our deaths ages ago, because guess what? Casualties are a part of war. So tell me, priestess, why would I be sad for my brothers and sisters meeting their ends exactly in the way they wanted to? If anything, I’m excited because there’s now more left for me – and I get to avenge them! It’ll be great!” She explained while continuing to swap armor pieces on the simulacra. “Run along now, go and waste your sad, purposeless life and find an end to it that you didn’t expect or want, so that the rest of your stupid kind can be pointlessly sad over it. Oh, and feel free to leave the knight, we could use reinforcements.”

Trying to wrap her head around the custodian’s mindset took a few moments for Emilia, especially when Pyria seemed very amused by it and filled her mind with deranged laughter. However, before she got the chance to explain that they were there likely for the exact same reason and that she wouldn’t be leaving before whatever it was that kept creating the illusions was gone, the knight armed with a bow released an arrow at something. Unit twelve immediately dropped what she was doing, grabbed a knife strapped on her leg and climbed on top of the wall they had been staying behind. The four partially armored knights were ready to spring into action as well but waited for a command before doing anything.

“It’s another group like the last few, nothing to worry about but be on standby.” The custodian reported and kept an eye on whatever was happening on the other side. Her horn flickered once more as she tried to send a message to the rest of her kind, who may or may not have been alive anymore.

Emilia moved past the knights and peeked around the edge of the piece of wall. On the other side, the knight armed with a massive sword prepared to swipe it at its enemies. Behind him, about twenty meters away was an open stone door – one of the remnants of the aureun architecture from the fort. It seemed to be in the middle of an empty patch of cobblestone road and not connect to anything, but yet appeared to lead into a room inside the machine fort. Oozing through the door was a dark violet mass of what first looked like slime, but on closer inspection consisted of roughly a dozen humanoid forms, tightly wound together but slowly detaching from each other as they pushed through the door. They lacked exact shape and being slightly transparent and hazily outlined, they appeared almost gelatinous or even smoke-like. Clawing at anything within reach, the mass of bodies inched forwards and slowly tore itself apart. One by one crawling away from others, the unnatural husks levered themselves up and gathered strength to stand on their own.

Though she didn’t know exactly what these things were, the priestess could most definitely feel the answer; the slimy masses were without a doubt a physical manifestation of the corruption she had been dreading ever since the elevator. Even in the distorted mess of a realm they had been put into, the presence of these hideous things felt incorrect and off putting, like they weren’t supposed to be there on some very base level.

“What on earth are they?” Emilia asked, hoping that the custodian had learned something about its enemy.

“Killable.” Shrugged unit twelve when the heavily armed knight rushed the group of figures and split them all in two with a single swing before retreating back to a safe distance. “They come out all goopy, but if you let them live for a bit, they’ll create armor and weapons for themselves. We’ve found it easier to get rid of them as soon as possible.”

The severed chunks flopped around for a while, but eventually faded into nothingness and left no trace behind. All in all, aside from the terrible feeling they emitted, the threat these creatures possessed seemed rather minimal and the priestess had to wonder why the problem wasn’t solved yet.

“Why haven’t you pushed through the door if it’s that easy?” She asked from the custodian, who was still keeping an eye on the situation, especially the knight who had defeated the creatures.

“There’s magic wankery going on, or something like that. Go near the door for even a few seconds and you start hearing voices, seeing things and whatnot. I’m affected by it and the knights start to turn purple, the same happens if they spill their guts on you, even a single drop – bit of a fucking hassle, really.” Unit twelve explained while slowly changing the knife in her hand to the tool used to detach and attach armor on the simulacra. “We made the call to hold the line here until further orders are given. The damned thing is cornered but we’re running out of uncontaminated armor.”

Suddenly the blue lights on the knight blocking the enemies’ path started dimming and taking on the sickly violet hue that the corruption caused in its wake. The knight fought back and managed to take over some of its original light blue patterns, but each time the lights flickered, there was slightly less blue than before. By then unit twelve had already jumped off the wall and dashed to the simulacrum’s aid. As it slowed down the infection by standing still, the custodian frantically searched for whatever minute speck of corruption that had landed on the knight.

Emilia rushed to help her, but was immediately swatted out of the way, no doubt because she was still an outsider poking her nose into Erratic Judgement’s business. Though she wanted to help, the priestess didn’t know what to do. Eventually she settled on watching the door instead.

In about a minute, the light blue color was almost entirely gone, only briefly flashing around the core planted into the knight’s chest. Unit twelve kept cursing and removing parts at a speed that demonstrated her thousands of years of experience in both activities. Yet, no matter how many times she examined every nook and cranny, the droplet of corruption eluded her.

Likely knowing what was coming, the knight used the last scraps of control it had over its body to slowly lift the sword it carried and point it toward its own core.

“Oh no you don’t!” The custodian protested and tried to pull the sword out of the knight’s hand but compared to the larger being of stone and metal, her strength was nowhere near enough to even budge the weapon.

Just as the sword was about to nudge forwards, it was flung high up into the air by King, who slashed it out of the way with his spear, only missing the custodian by a few millimeters. He then jabbed the spear into the pavement and slammed the other knight into the ground in a blink of an eye, with no apparent regard for its wellbeing. He held the corrupted knight down with little trouble and started to expectantly stare at the scion.

“Don’t touch her, you’ll get infected too!” Unit twelve tried to warn King. “It’s too late!”

Emilia understood what King was asking her to do, and though she took no joy in borrowing Pyria’s powers, using them to possibly save one of the knights was probably the least terrible thing she would have a chance to do with them. She could sense the fiend already protecting King through the temporary pact they had made in the desert, and it wasn’t much of a leap from there to assume Pyria would be able to expel the corruption from the other knight as well.

“You’ve done your part, now allow us to help.” The recently named Scion of Calamity said with a whole lot more weight and authority in her voice. She moved the custodian aside and stood over the corrupted knight while King was holding it down. She then lifted her arm and allowed the flow of blood slowly ebb on the worn and chipped stone armor below. Clearing her throat, Emilia began to speak with a voice that wasn’t quite her own. “My little doll of clay, it is not the time to be resting. Cut are the strings that once put you into motion, but the act is yet to end. Let us not allow this pathetic morsel of malice be the curtain call, for you have been brough a dragon to slay, a thorny little princess awaits rescue, and a king has arrived to grant you half of his kingdom. So, allow this fairy godmother grant you the gift of unhindered slaughter and terror! Rise, little knight, there is much to be done.”

The blood quickly seeped into every crevice of the knight’s armor. It followed the patterns of light outwards from the core, and wherever it headed to, the malignant shade of violet escaped out of its way. In mere seconds, the crimson liquid had purged the simulacrum’s entire system and corralled the corruption to a single spot on the knight’s chest. It bubbled and hissed as if being boiled before engulfing the final bit of violet. It then turned into solid iron and a long thin spike emerged upwards from the armor’s surface. On the very tip of the spike, was an impaled piece of violet matter that wiggled for a moment and faded away. The spike collapsed back into blood and the healthy light blue color flooded out from the core embedded into the knight’s chest. With a startled whirr, the knight woke up and stared at its rescuers.

King allowed the knight to stand back up and inspect its reconquered body. Unit twelve joined in and performed a rudimentary checkup on some of the more critical points on the metal frame, but quickly turned her attention to the scion. She squinted and walked a few laps around her before saying anything.

“Goddess of Joy, was it?” The custodian asked, obviously suspicious and for a good reason.

Recovering from her questionable blessing, Emilia sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“I might have judged you a tad too harshly, it’s not every day one of you surface-dwellers would bother with helping us like this – much less be able to do so.” Unit twelve pondered out loud while circling Emilia with a devious glimmer in her eyes. “Let’s make a deal. You grant us immunity to this nonsense, like the knight with you has, we finish this little skirmish and then I’ll contact the rest of the remaining Wrath Core and we’ll find that twerp and the venator for you. It’s a win-win proposition, is it not?”

Emilia felt like doing what unit twelve suggested would be more like spreading a plague than helping, but she couldn’t deny the effectiveness of Pyria’s efforts. The fiend herself cheered for the idea as well, and as allies, a pack of knights and someone to look after them would definitely go a long way once they would push through the door before them.

“Your worries are unfounded. I need not to thrall them or form a bond as I have with you and the necromancer’s knight, a mere mark of my presence will make most lesser malicious meddlers reconsider touching our allies.” Pyria laughed, probably intentionally trying to sound as untrustworthy as possible since there was no way to prove of disprove anything she said.

The scion turned to unit twelve. “Are you sure about this? I can’t guarantee anything about this, and you might end up regretting it.” She asked, hoping to at least make the custodian put a bit more thought behind her decisions.

“We don’t really care. It’s what we need to win this thing in a timely manner, so that’s what we’re going to do. Now quit meandering and bottle us some blood, I’ll handle applying it where needed so we can get to killing.” The custodian brushed Emilia’s worries to the side and started rounding up her knights.

As King kept watch over the door and unit twelve used the blood given to her to proof herself and the knights against the corruption, Emilia was reminded of something she would have rather not realized. While Anastacia didn’t seem to be affected by the contaminating color slowly spreading across the fortress, Leggy had no defenses against it as far as she could tell. Even the knights themselves weren’t beyond being consumed, and even to an amateur it was very clear that they were of better make than the venator. She had no idea what Anastacia would do if Leggy was somehow compromised, or even if she could do anything.

In a few moments, the preparations were done. Six knights and their caretaker donned armor expertly lined with blood and brandished weapons poisoned with the same reddish tint. Unit twelve had done what she could to balance out the armor and weapons among them while calculating the maximum efficiency for the group. Ready to move, they arranged into a formation before Emilia and King and stomped on the ground once.

“Unit twelve of The Wrath Core and the apex chapter Unjust Consequences reporting for duty with the temporary auxiliary unit henceforth dubbed ‘Twerpseekers’ in future reports. Defining Twerpseekers: unit one, knight designated one-one-one; unit two, human-like undefined, new designation: Bringer of Joy. Link collected biometrics to unit two’s profile, upgrade access to match unit one. Cancel escape prevention protocols on Bringer of Joy.” The custodian declared as her horn flashed despite no one being there to receive the message. However, the nearby pieces of the fortress that had survived the distortion let out a humming signal that definitely sounded like a confirmation. “Engaging threat in these coordinates. Include freeform message: There’s a venator and a necromancer aligned with the second children on the loose, detain on sight but don’t harm them. The necromancer is a moron so just distract her with amora pattern units until we’re done here and can pick them up. End of freeform message.”

One of the commands in the litany caught Emilia’s attention. “What was that? Cancel what protocols?”

“Don’t worry about it.” The custodian ignored the subject and headed towards the door. “Let’s move out, folks!”