Chapter 27 – A Nation’s Secrets

At a certain point the stone walls ended, giving way to narrow rooms that were hewn from the mountain itself.

Blue magelights lit their path as they ran. They encountered some heavy blast doors designed to keep out intruders, but Frost got them open with a few taps of his wand.

The path split in half. One led down into the bowels of the earth, the other sloping upward. Frost supported himself against a wall, huffing from the physical exertion.

“What way now?” Frost asked.

“We should split up, cover both angles,” Hunter said. “We can’t let our prey escape.”

“No,” Cat said firmly. “Splitting up puts us at risk. We don’t know what kind of surprises this place still has in store. Gotta stick together.”

Hunter rounded on her and jabbed a finger in her face. “Listen here, kid. This is my hunt. My last one. I’m going to do this my way. So you and the tyke can take the upper path. Frost and I will go below.”

With that, Hunter started down the lower path, pulling Frost behind him by his collar.

Aeva sighed, hands on her hips. “Stubborn.”

“Whatever,” Cat said. “Let him have his way.”

They veered onto the upper path.

***

Septum waited, foot tapping on the unswept floor.

He wasn’t used to waiting on others.

Merith Whittler, of all people, had contacted him unexpectedly, asking to meet. Off record. The absurdity of the request, coupled with his desire to know exactly what the old bat was after, had led him to accept.

She had him waiting in an old, abandoned dance studio, which he could only imagine was meant to be ironic. The place was thrown into half-murk, the power barely working, and he could smell mouse droppings in the dank, stale air.

Shuffling footsteps punctuated by the rhythmic tapping of a cane made him perk up. Septum turned to face Whittler as she walked through the door. Her red blazer was draped over her shoulders, and she looked as though she had missed some sleep, judging by the flared sections of her aura and the dark circles under her eyes.

She wasn’t upset or anxious, however. Rather the opposite.

“You look well,” he lied.

Whittler smiled a wolf’s grin. “You too, Couldess.” Also a lie. She didn’t bother hiding her emotions.

“This was foolish of you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you were true to your word and didn’t bring an escort.” There were no additional auras in the area, only the low hum of anima which flowed through the building itself. “I could delve into your mind and turn you into a puppet. No one would ever know the difference.”

“Is that really your plan?” Whittler asked, raising her eyebrows incredulously. If anything, her smile grew. “How predictable. I’m afraid you can’t do that.”

“Can’t? Why?”

“Because you’ll need my full faculties for the war that is coming.”

“Which one?” Septum asked. “There are rather too many for me to tell them apart, these days.”

“Your war with Linton Granhorn and the old gods,” Whittler said. She hobbled a little closer. “It will soon come to a boil. Regardless of the lies you like to tell, you are not equipped to deal with it.”

“If you came just to taunt me, please, spare me,” Septum said, holding up his hands.

“No, no. Nothing of the sort. I have a proposal for you.”

Septum became aware of a faint ringing sound coming from outside the studio. It took him a few seconds to place it.

A transceiver.

“That for you or me?” he asked.

Each minister of the Concord had a special protocol tied to each of their personal anima signatures. Whenever a call came for them, it would be directed to the transceiver station in closest physical proximity to their person, assuming one was in range and connected to the grid of the caller.

“It’s for you,” Whittler said. “I’ve diverted all calls to my assistant for the day.”

Septum sighed. “Give me a moment, then.”

He went outside and found the transceiver. It was a bent, twisted thing, the receiver covered in a sticky substance. He used a napkin to pick it up and held it a few centimeters from his ear.

“Yes?” Septum asked.

“We have a breach,” Drakemyth’s voice blared, crackling badly. “The Bluebirds.”

“You’re certain?”

“I’m certain. I have them on feed. They’ll make it here soon.”

“Alright, Drakemyth, I’m sending you backup. I can have it there in a couple of minutes. Expect it through the portal in your master workshop. Keep them occupied until then.”

“Understood,” Drakemyth said. “I won’t let them get away.”

“That too. But most importantly, try not to die, old man. I’d miss your insubordination.”

“Sir.”

Drakemyth hung up the call.

No parting witticism, Septum thought. He really is rattled.

Whittler hobbled out in front of the studio as he let the receiver dangle drop.

Septum motioned to his black rumbler, parked out the front of the condemned building. “I need to return to the Arcanex. Can you give me the condensed version?”

Whittler rolled her eyes and walked towards the rumbler. “Very well. I can be flexible.”

***

Hunter moved through darkened tunnels. The ardent light radiating from his blade—Greytusk—pooled around them and helped guide their way.

The passages widened, and Frost began to complain of a smell. They encountered four scientists. Hunter took them out with Greytusk.

They entered into a room that held large glass tubes on each side filled with thick, bubbling liquid. Upon closer inspection, Hunter noticed human shapes floating in the turbid sludge, curled up in fetal positions. Every once in a while, the tubes would release a puff of steam.

“Yeah, this is where the smell is coming from,” Frost said, pulling his shirt over his nose and mouth.

Hunter made a horizontal slice through one of the tubes, the enchanted blade sinking easily through the glass. The tube cracked open, and Hunter backed away as a flood of foul liquid washed onto the floor, still bubbling. The human inside slid down, covered in a thin membrane. Male, middle-aged. Physically, there seemed to be nothing wrong with him, but Hunter detected no movement.

He nudged the man with his foot, slopping him onto his back. He wasn’t breathing.

“They’re all dead,” Frost said. “They must be keeping them here for storage. But why?”

“They’re making them into constructs,” Hunter said. “Turning corpses into the workforce of the future. Some of them will likely go on to be Ironhearts. Or they would have, if we hadn’t come along.”

“Such potential,” Frost murmured, looking over the tanks. “If only the MOW hadn’t gotten their grubby little hands on this technology.”

Hunter rounded on him, caught the lubbard by his collar and hauled him into the air, slamming him against a wall.

“Potential?” he hissed. “Constructs have no rights. We’re slaves. Shadows of our former selves. Lucid enough to feel despair, but powerless to do anything about it. We aren’t humans or kin. We’re metal and machinery, which means we’re products. Our masters can do whatever they want with us. Does that sound like potential to you?”

“I-I didn’t mean it that way. You know that.”

“I didn’t want to be brought back,” Hunter growled. “When they put me in this shell, all I wanted was to end it. They didn’t let me. I was too valuable a subject, one of their precious Ironhearts. They forced me to play their little games like a puppet on strings. They forced me to kill for them.”

“I know, chief. I’m the one who disabled your obedience protocols, remember?” Frost said. He tapped Hunter’s forearm. “Let me down, please. Let me down.”

Hunter released his grip, and Frost fell on all fours.

“Let’s move,” Hunter said.

With a twinge of guilt, he forced his racing mind to slow down for a moment. “I’m sorry. You helped me, and I’ll never forget that.”

He pulled Frost back on his feet, and the two of them kept going.

Hunter’s body was numb, only a trace of human sensation remaining, but his hands itched with a primal need to kill.

Not just anyone.

Drakemyth.

He had to die.

It’s time.

***

Cat struggled to keep up with Aeva. She was no slouch herself, but the wildkin’s long legs carried her forward with baffling speed.

Damn wildkin, Cat thought, trying not to show how out of breath she really was.

“Security’s been light so far,” she said, huffing. “Makes me feel kinda uneasy.”

They had only dealt with a pair of guards, who had been actively running away, barely even getting off a single round.

“We should count our blessings,” Aeva said. “If we are lucky, we can finish this swiftly.”

They ran into a large antechamber with a set of heavily reinforced doors on the opposite side.

They stared down thirty rifle barrels, guards lining the whole back end of the room.

Cat skidded to a stop, worn-down shoes sliding on the stone floor.

Instinct willed her into action. She threw her arms wide and called: “Ila Skolda!”

A hardlight shield, several centimeters thick, manifested in front of her, big enough to cover both herself and Aeva. It cost her a big chunk of anima, but there was no time for half measures.

The guards opened fire. The shield was peppered with bullets, putting hairline cracks in its glassy surface.

“This shield won’t last long!” Cat shouted over the noise. “We need a plan, and fast!”

“I have one,” Aeva said. “On my word, release your spell.”

She sounded confident. Cat felt less so. Her shield was already beginning to chip.

“You sure about this?”

“I am certain.”

Cat focused on maintaining her spell, pouring additional anima to repair the hardlight as it sustained more damage. To her right, Aeva got down on one knee and placed her palms on the floor. She closed her eyes and chanted, words blurring together.

“Uh, that better be one helluva prayer, because we’ll be dead in a few seconds if you don’t do something!” Cat said.

Aeva gave no response.

Cat gritted her teeth as her fingers were singed with the sheer effort of keeping the shield intact.

Several of the guards dropped their empty magazines to reload.

“Now!” Aeva cried, raising her head.

“Slifa!” Cat called. Her shield broke apart and shot out in a shower of razor-sharp projectiles, felling two or three guards.

Aeva’s body exploded with brilliance. She rocketed forward with a trail of fire behind her, a war cry escaping her throat. She crashed into the enemy lines. There was a brief flash, then a starburst explosion that threw the guards like ragdolls.

When she stood back up, smoke trailing off her, she was surrounded by blackened corpses.

A few shaken guards were still alive. Cat finished them off with slapshots, firing pebbles from her palms at a velocity approaching that of a firearm.

Once their foes were all dead, Cat took a rifle from one of the corpses, brushing off a fine layer of soot. She bid Aeva do the same.

“It will only be in the way,” Aeva said. “My divine aid is sufficient.”

“Whatever you say, big girl.”

They stepped up to the blast doors that into the next room. Cat gave them a tug. Locked.

“These must be Drakemyth’s chambers,” Aeva said.

“Judging by the security, I’d assume so. We just need to get through this door. Any ideas?”

“I… am uncertain. I am still, how do you say, getting the hang of this.”

Cat chuckled. “Stand back. I think I have just the thing.”

Aeva did as she was asked, and Cat placed an index finger against the sturdy locking mechanism.

“Hryna,” she said. An extraordinary heat formed at her fingertip, hotter than the fire she usually summoned, hotter than the fireworks Aeva put on display.

The metal mechanism went red, then began to melt, sloughing off in layers.

It was costly to maintain that kind of heat, but keeping it localized to a single point let her conserve a little bit of anima.

Eventually, the enchantments fizzled and gave way. The doors came open, sliding into the walls.

Beyond was complete, compact darkness. It was broken only by a single light, far away, which shone down on a smooth floor like a spotlight.

There, on a table, lay an object. Not just any object, she realized upon inspection. A crown.

The Crown.

***

Hunter wrestled with his darkened mind.

He was on the last step of his journey. He should have been ecstatic, yet only dread met him as they delved deeper into the castle.

They walked through a hallway with doors on both sides, seeming to continue endlessly.

“Maybe Drakemyth’s plan is to bore us to death before we reach him,” Frost said.

“We’ll get there,” Hunter insisted.

Looking into one of the rooms through the small viewing slot, he found an inactive construct laid out on an operating table, internals showing. Diagrams and texts were plastered all over the walls in a madman’s scrawl.

Hunter closed his eyes and tried not to recall how he had been similarly assembled, piece by piece. The mistake they made with him was inserting the soul core before they finished, so that he was awake and aware in a body that couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream. He could only feel anguish as they poked and prodded and torched him.

Of course, it hadn’t been a mistake to them. It was just another experiment, to see how much tampering an active construct could withstand before breaking down entirely.

More than they expected, as it turned out.

Unfortunately for them.

He hurried on.

They made it to an intersecting path. Left and right led to two larger rooms with double doors, while straight ahead would take them to an elevator.

“Which way?” Frost asked.

“Doesn’t seem like Drakemyth is on this level. We should head up.”

As he started towards the elevator, he found himself glancing to the right. Through a window, he caught a glimpse of moving metal.

He stopped in his tracks. Frost was almost to the elevator before he noticed.

“What’s up?” the lubbard asked. “Lost your steam?”

“I saw a live one,” Hunter said absently. “A construct.”

He found himself going to the room on the right.

“What about Drakemyth?”

“I need to make it right.”

“What do you mean? You want to free the construct?”

“Yes.”

Frost jogged up to him and fell into step. “Let’s do it. This is your get-well mission, after all. I’ve got your back.”

Hunter would have smiled, had he possessed the ability.

He reached the doors and punched open the lock. He wrenched the doors apart and entered the room.

A mountain of undulating metal met him. It was a vaguely humanoid figure, its tiny head pasted on a body like an overgrown gorilla, nearly brushing the ceiling. The massive construct had broken out of its restraints in the back of the room. Two dead scientists lay at its feet, beaten to a red mush.

The construct spoke, a host of voices clashing together discordantly so that hardly any of it could be recognized. “Hurts… can’t see… where am I?”

It hardly seemed to notice Hunter or Frost. It stumbled aimlessly around the room, knocking over tables and scientific equipment.

“What kind of unnatural creation is this?” Hunter asked. He thought he had seen the limit of Drakemyth’s cruelty. That assumption was soundly shattered at the sight of this blind, idiot monster.

Frost took a few careful steps towards the construct. He squinted up at it. “It appears as though the MOW has attempted to fuse multiple souls together into the same construct, creating this… sentient trash can.”

“By the Codes…” Hunter muttered.

“What do we do with it?” Frost asked. “It doesn’t seem violent, but we can’t just leave it here. Maybe I could…”

“Leave the room,” Hunter commanded, pointing at the door. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

Frost hesitated. “What are you planning?”

“I’m going to put it out of its misery. There’s nothing else to be done for it.”

Frost looked like he wanted to protest, but Hunter shot him a glance that shut him up. The lubbard reluctantly left the room and closed the doors behind him.

Hunter readied his sword.