As for the Deterrence Fields, the guardians of that place simply didn’t pay him any mind, just as they hadn’t paid any mind to other travelers. The Armor of Pure Purpose, though it was undoubtedly an artifact of incredibly advanced arcane machinery, did not give off the sort of essentia signature that would provoke the automata into acting. Finding the gutted wrecks of those infernal machines of theirs proved to him that he was on the right path, and more importantly, provided something for his armor to latch onto.

They lit up like fireworks in his field of vision, the deadpan of his armor ringing out.

Potential sympathetic link found.

Bond strength: 34%

Bond decay: Rapid

Suggestion: Retrieve sympathetic link for improved tracking.

After ripping the steering handles off of one of the strange machines, it was down into the sinkhole; he simply jumped in, smashing down at the bottom in a great burst of dust and detritus.

Aeshador pulled the trigger.

A ray of blinding-white screamed out of the trinket in his hand, carving a deep hole in the cave wall - as deep as he was tall, at least a meter, and as wide as his arm.

The moleman let out a satisfied cackle at the power of his new toy, but a bitter undertone tainted it; its true value so far outstripped his previous estimation that he felt himself still in debt to those surface-dwellers.

“Eh, I’ll pay it off if they pass through again…” he murmured to himself.

Aeshador pulled the trigger.

A ray of blinding-white screamed out and ineffectually bounced off the silver surface of that monstrous armor, gouging a channel in the ground. Utter pandemonium unfolded all around him; half of the townsfolk were fleeing, and the other half were desperately trying to power through their fear to mount a defense.

Its wolf-like head spun to stare at him, and it dropped the guard which it had previously picked up like a ragdoll.

Stomping towards him without any particular urgency to its gait, the silver demon thundered in an inhuman voice: “...YOU. YOU LOOK AUTHORITATIVE. CAN YOU UNDERSTAND ME, MOLEMAN? ARE YOU THE ELDER HERE?”

Aeshador had always held himself as a man of principle, willing to die to protect his charges, even if his death did no more than buy them the time to escape into the Labyrinth.

Gritting his teeth and using his other arm to stabilize his aim, he aimed into the monstrous armor’s eyeholes. Click. It barely turned its head, just enough that the beam bounced off.

“I WILL NOT GIVE YOU A THIRD OPPORTUNITY, MOLEMAN. SPEAK, OR DIE. AN EASY CHOICE, I SHOULD THINK. NEED I PROMISE THAT I WILL LEAVE YOU TO YOUR PATHETIC EXISTENCE IF YOU TALK?”

“Geddafuckouttahere!” he slurred in a panic, popping off another shot. It was barely aimed; more to make himself feel better than anything. It didn’t help much. Spears and arrows tipped with cold-iron rained down on the intruder from a nearby rooftop, soon followed by a spray of conjured oil and a bombardment of fireballs from their shamans. All throughout, the Silver Knight just… Took it. He didn’t even acknowledge the assault, let alone retaliate.

Covered in burning oil as he was, he came within spitting distance of Aeshador and stopped. Yellow eyes with cornerless, upside-down triangles instead of pupils stared out from inside the helmet, burning with a hatred so pure it surpassed any reason; hatred directed somewhere else. The way he stared down at Aeshador was absent, his mind dwelt elsewhere even in this moment.

Indeed, Aeshador had always held himself to be a man of principle, thinking that he would fight an intruder to the death, but his survival instincts had a different idea.

Unable to withstand the pressure, he exploded: “Waddyawant?! The fuckd’you want from me, huh? You tell me to speak an’ don’t say what you fuckin’ want from me, you mirror lookin’ ass motherfucker! C’moon!”

With each exclamation, he blasted the man in silver for emphasis, to no effect.

No sooner did his own reaction sink in did the armored monster give a hate-filled answer: “A TALL, BROWN-SKINNED WOMAN WITH SIX BRAIDS. DID SHE PASS THROUGH? SHE TRAVELS WITH A BLONDE, A NORTHMAN, AND A-”

“Androgynous redhead. What’s it to you?” Aeshador interrupted. The heart-scrambling fear gripping him had reached the point of dissociation; his body thought him dead either way, so it just up and abandoned the fight-or-flight response.

“THEY PASSED THROUGH HERE, THEN. YOU WILL TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW OF THE PATH THEY TOOK, OR I WILL FLATTEN THIS PLACE ALONG WITH EVERYONE IN IT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

“Alright, alright, y’don’t need to fuckin’ tell me twice, ey? So there’s this place called the Shiftin’ Labyrinth…”

Aeshador had thought himself too principled to give up a friend to an unknown intruder, but his instincts didn’t care about his personal beliefs. In the end, the silver monstrosity left them with two dead, half a dozen injured, and more structural damage caused by their own efforts than his intrusion.

The moleman dreaded to think what it would take to pay off this debt, should even one of those four ever return here.

Lacking an experienced guide, Von Wickten found himself ambushed time and again by the Labyrinth’s guardians. They proved little challenge. Even a bizarre construct of flesh with two torsos, four arms, three crow’s heads, and plates of blackstone all over couldn’t stop him… But it did engage him for some time. Its strength and resilience was such that he could set loose against it and not annihilate it in a moment, more than could be said for its two-headed lessers or the chained, skinless, crawling things that so pathetically stalked some of these halls.

The mere thought of actually using one of the techniques he knew in his past life was enough to spur his armor’s logic automaton into action. In a split-second, a deluge of information flashed in his mind’s eye.

LOADING ARTS…

AVAILABLE ARTS:

BLAZE SCHNEIDER

CURSEFLAME DELUGE

ENTOMODRAGON TAIL

ENTOMODRAGON MAW

ENTOMODRAGON FLAMESTINGERS