Wait, I think I remember it now. Damien said as Yuriko and the others walked down the branching hallways. The override command.

‘The what now?’

Override. The key to any of these public doors. It’s simple really, a pattern recreated by the Anima, set at a pulsing frequency, performed within the override area.

‘What are you talking about Damien?’

How to open the door, child. The man sighed. I remembered how to open the door.

‘And you just remembered it now?’

I only remember bits and pieces of my long, long life, Damien said softly, just barely enough really. And now, I remember this place. It took a while, even after hearing the fortress’ name. Synkrasia. Huh, that brings a lot of this back.

‘You know what this city…fortress is for? In the first place, what’s this doing in Rumiga?’

Silly child, Synkrasia predates your Empire’s presence.

‘Pre-Shattering then? Not that I doubted that. The Warforged alone…’

She lay her hand against the metal door and prompted Damien to tell her how to open it. Instead, it felt as if she recalled an old memory, one made when she’d been a toddler. But the pattern her Animus needed to pulse to open the door, any door really, was obviously from Damien.

Her Animus sunk past the metal door, most of its volume compressed to bypass the substance. The door was mostly solid, with a chamber behind where her palm lay. There were mechanisms along the edges that probably had to do with how it moved. She also realised that with a bit of a push, she could extend her Anima for a couple of inches or so beyond the door. It was as flat as the outside though, no knobs or levers. A pity, if there had been a latch on the other side she could have simply flipped it.

As it were, she made her Anima pulse. Three short pulses, a long pause, two short pulses, a short pause, and a final long one. The door slid open and Yuriko sighed. Through her Anima, she saw the others freeze with their jaws agape.

“What are all of you waiting for? Get in.”

Gwendith gave her a lingering stare as she passed through the entrance. Yuriko kept just outside, ready to fight if need be. As soon as the dozen teams, nearly sixty people entered, Yuriko stepped inside and palmed the door close.

The long rectangular room was a communal bedroom of sorts, with a dozen double bunk beds against the wall. Each bed still had mattresses and blankets and looked as if they were just made up. Everything was covered in a layer of dust though.

“Achooo!” Marron sneezed, and he was echoed by nearly everyone. He fished out a kerchief from his pocket and used it as a mask.

There were three other doors in the other corners of the room, and Yuriko was about to head towards the one directly opposite when Faeril stopped her.

“Please keep that door unlocked,” he yelped.

The door they entered had slid to a close. An auditble beep indicated the lock engaging.

“Can you…?” he started.

“Of course,” Yuriko answered. He was probably worried about the return path. But since she could open and close the doors, there shouldn’t be an issue, right?

Either way, she repeated the pattern and added another one to set the door’s default to unlocked rather than locked whenever it closes. Afterwards, she headed towards the opposite door and opened it, which revealed another branch hallway. All of these branches led to the same hub cluster didn’t it, and they’d have to pass that centre to go to a different cluster? Or did it go to the trunk hallway that would eventually lead towards the Inner Court?

Which did mean they’d have to fight at the hub one way or another.

Ah, well, that was why there were a lot of them. One or two teams per hub would try to lure the Warforged away while the rest go through. There were five such hubs they had to go through. The other option they had was to just fight through the horde of Warforged and forcefully get to the panel that Lucian and his ilk had tripped a couple of years ago.

That was probably the easier way, Yuriko mused, but would probably wipe out everyone in the team. If she went alone, she could do it, but then, she didn’t know where to go. When she brought up the idea a couple of days ago, not only did her brother and Gwendith protest vehemently, Faeril also said that the guide didn’t want to suicide. It made more sense when she found out this morning that it was Lucian and his group who were the guides.

So, instead of doing this the easier way, they were stuck with the hard way.

She could probably follow the miners from the chasm as they made their way into the Inner Court, too. Oh well.

They went across several blocks, with Yuriko opening up the way half the time, until they finally reached one of the paths that Lucian had used two years ago. Then, they arrived at the hub area. If they’d just gone down the branch hallway, they would have reached the hub that much sooner, but each hallway was nearly a longstride, and the risk of early detection was too great. Once they reached the hub, though, the plan proceeded without a hitch.

Five warriors ran directly across the hub, then into the side hallway that they had initially entered from. The drones went after them, with the pelters shooting their arm casters. The rearguard projected an Animus Protective Field which stopped the solid slugs cold, though it only took less than a dozen hits to exhaust his Animus. That was more than enough time, however, and the rest of them hurried through the now empty hub and into the main trunk hallway.

Soon enough, they came to the next hub and followed the side hallways to go around the cluster. Then, they repeated the distraction and another team lead the guardian drones away. Unlike the first team, they would circle around the block and barricade themselves into a safe room, hopefully after the pursuing drones were out of sight.

The pattern repeated three more times without issue until they arrived at the gate between the garrison and the Inner Court.

‘We’ll have to rush through here,” Lucian said.

The garrison was more or less underground, although the entire city was technically that. The other districts were inside the huge cavern with the projection of the Radiant Sun. The Inner Court was segregated from the other three districts with tall walls, but the garrison area was strange in that it seemed both part of, yet different from the Inner Court.

The route they took wasn’t exactly as secure as having a wall and a gate, but then again, the area had been abandoned for millennia. There was a courtyard separating the garrison from the gate, and it was filled with Warforged Drones. Oh, most of them were miner drones loaded with ore. There were only a few dozen pelters, hoplites, and crushers. The hoplites were the ones with the shield, while the crushers had blade and mace on either arm.

There was also no cover so they had little choice but a frontal assault. Oh, maybe they could wait for darkness, but she also had the feeling that it wouldn’t matter to the Warforged.

They can detect in the dark, Damien said helpfully.

Before she could formulate any sort of plan, Lucian and his thugs charged out of the hallway, screaming war cries and waving weapons overhead. The courtyard was barely a hundred paces across, so it took only a few seconds to cross.

Maybe they expected the Warforged to hesitate, even for a moment. And perhaps they did. For a split second, the Drones didn’t move, but then, the pelters swivelled and aimed in their direction, and the melee Drones formed a battle line.

The pelters’ bullets came in a fusillade, but the lead men’s Animus techniques enveloped them and deflected or absorbed the damage. By the second instant, Yuriko snapped out of her surprised state.

The sunblades and sunshards she used against the twisted ones had already faded away, but it was no matter. With her kinesis, she drew her ball bearings from the pouch hanging off her belt and started flinging them at the Drones.

The Warforged didn’t have much of an Animus Field, but the metal they were made of resisted Animus techniques almost as well as a Wanderer. That meant that she needed to use Empowered Strike through her ammunition. As she practised the skill, she was able to reasonably invest two to three lumens in less than a second. That was more than enough.

She imagined she could hear the squeal of bending metal as her balls struck the pelters. She could certainly see sparks burst from the impact zone. She continued shooting as she hurried to the front, while she split her attention between shooting and forming a sunblade.

Marron’s crescent bolts made short work of the hoplites, while Faeril used his bow to shoot arrows materialized from Animus. The battle lasted a few minutes, no more than ten, she thought. Not surprisingly, Lucian racked up most of the kills. He bludgeoned the hoplites and the crushers to bits, using his fists. Reddish Animus coated his arms, from his fists all the way up to his elbows. He used it to punch and block.

Gwendith had stayed close to Marron and refilled his jade cartridges. Yuriko had lost sight of Saki, but that was only to be expected. Desire’s hymns hung in the air and it made it easier to focus.

Faeril’s Animus arrows always hit the Warforged Drones in the centre of their torsos. That seemed enough to deactivate them, but she wasn’t sure what he aimed at. Her Anima perception couldn’t see through the metal unless she touched it and focused.

Once she reached melee range, she carved through her opponents, spending no more than a couple of seconds per Warforged Drone. None of their attacks could even crack her condensed aura, so there was a distinct lack of danger for her. Still, some of Lucian’s men, and a couple of the other volunteers got wounded. One in the arm, one got stabbed in the leg, and another got stabbed in the guts, lacerating his abdomen and nearly making his guts fall out.

The battle was over and they hurried across the gate. Yuriko only caught a glimpse across a field and thought she saw a palace in the centre. But they hurried towards the side buildings and hurriedly got out of sight.

Lucian led them into a maze of empty hallways, and they stopped to tend to the wounded once they reached a square chamber. Faeril’s hands glowed bluish green as he used his Animus techniques to put the gutted man together.

The others helped with bandaging the wounded, but Yuriko was mostly useless in that endeavour. Putting aside that her Recovery technique was more like the more advanced Regenerate than anything else, very little actually got past her condensed aura. And any wounds she got were held close by her kinesis.

She looked around the room instead. There was nothing here, no furniture, items, or weapons. It was a strangely bare room, although…yes, there was something on the walls. Her Anima perception allowed her to feel runescript engraving all over the surface.

And when she pushed her perception past the surface, she found even more runescript weaving. They were written using a different material from the walls, and there was Animus running inside them. It was thin, she realised, barely more than a trickle of power.

Huh? The surface engraving started emitting light.

Yuriko’s eyes widened.

“A trap!” she yelled.

Everyone bolted upright from where they collapsed to rest. Everyone but Lucian and his gang. The runescript light flared and golden light shone upon everyone. Then, they collapsed back on the floor, shivering and squirming in clear pain.

Yuriko’s Anima blocked the light, and she called Fri’Avgi to hand, pointing it at Lucian. The man smirked but slowly shook his head and held out his hands.

“You led us to this trap,” she spat out, her knuckles whitened from her intense grip.

“It’s not a trap,” he said firmly. “Look, they’re recovering.”

“Yuri.” Gwendith grabbed her shoulder.

“Eh?” Yuriko gasped. Gwendith hadn’t been affected at all. Ah, neither was Desire. Marron and Saki were on their knees, and her brother was struggling to his feet.

“You all should thank me,.” Lucian said grandly. “I’ve made all of you stronger.”

Yuriko snorted and sheathed Fri’Avgi before turning to help her brother and Saki to her feet. What happened?

Basic Body Forging. Damien said, used for getting civilians ready for service. It’s a good base to build on.

‘That can’t be ideal,’ Yuriko said to him.

What do you expect? This is merely an outpost. Ah, but I think the centre holds more secrets. That overgrown turtle must be one of the Old Guard. Hmmm, I don’t remember him though. Keep going, maybe I’ll remember more.

Yuriko just shook her head. She’d rather get back to Faron’s Crossing right now, but…a part of her enjoyed exploring these old places, too.