Magic of Mirstone

The Darklord and the Godmachine-2

“The union?”

“The Underlings Union. The U.U. finds you work, matches you up with overlords, wizards, lich kings, those types. When Jimmy here was looking for a goblin scout—”

“Galvanius! Not Jimmy!”

“—I got matched up with his Imperial Purple-ness,” Greez said with a snicker.

“Ah.” Krag turned his glance to Mille. “And you and your swarm elemental? How did you come to be here?”

Millie giggled. “Are you kidding? Jimmy and I go way back. We’ve known each other since we were kids. He’s a hoot!”

Galvanius tightened his lips and let out a long exhale through his nose. “All right, enough. How deep does this tunnel go? If we need to move the god machine from the treasury, we need to figure out how we’re going to lug it out of here.”

“It’s not far,” Krag said. “But tell me what this ‘god machine’ is. I don’t recall anyone else searching for it here—they usually just want the Treasure of Dirge.”

Greez’s eyes glistened at the word “treasure.” He chuckled to himself, his imagination already teasing him with the prospect of gold, jewels and priceless artifacts.

“Oh, it’s an amazing story! Tell him, Ji—I mean, Gal,” Millie said, catching herself.

Galvanius glared at her— “Gal” was arguably worse than Jim. “Fine. Some ancient texts from the archives in Laewaes described a mechanism from the Dawn of the Gods, a device that brought them from the celestial realm to our world. Most historians described it as a gods’ chariot of sorts, a heavenly transport. But there are those who say the gods didn’t come from another realm to our world—they came from our world. The god machine was a device that had the power to make a mortal a god. Naturally, such a device was deemed too dangerous by the elders of all clans and houses, and it was thrown into the Mouth of CharMaw.”

“Ah, yes, CharMaw…the Magma Blood-Mother,” Krag sighed, whether in fondness or sadness, it was difficult to tell. “Anything thrown into that volcano would surely be destroyed.”

Galvanius held up an index finger. “Or so the elders would have us believe. But you mentioned the Treasure of Dirge. Would the name Tyranimus Dirge mean anything to you?”

Krag’s eyes widened in recognition. “I was summoned from the lava at his behest.”

“I figured as much,” Galvanius said smugly. “It just so happens that our good friend Dirge was the same bloke commissioned by the Dwarven King to stash away a part of his royal treasure here in the Ash Mountains during the war between the dwarves and the elves, in case things went awry and the elves invaded Anghor. While excavating, Dirge stumbled upon an ancient machine unlike any he’d ever seen, in a cave underneath the Mouth of CharMaw. He couldn’t activate the machine himself, but he kept it with the treasury in hopes he could discover its secret someday. He died before ever doing so.”

“And how did you come to learn this alternate history of the god machine?”

“Soup,” Greez snickered.

Krag looked sideways at the goblin. “Soup?”

“No, not the soup itself. He means the lady who lives in the soup,” Millie said.

“I have a tutor, Lady Dissandra,” Galvanius explained. “She’s a master of the midnight arts and knows more about the ancient texts than anyone. But she’s in another realm, and the only way I can access her is to cast a scrying spell with…soup.”

Krag nodded in understanding, but then the corner of his lips twisted. “Why soup?”

“She says she likes the smell.”

“Ah.”

The conversation had helped the time pass, as the tunnel widened into a large, dark space. Krag put his hand against the wall, and ripples of firelight etched into the stone surface. Along the walls, fire crystals blazed to life in a warm, topaz glow. In a few seconds, the space was illuminated, revealing an expansive rounded cave hollowed out to shape a 100-foot high dome. It would have been a chamber worthy of a dragon’s trove of centuries-amassed treasure.

However, it was empty.

Although, not quite—a few copper coins were scattered here and there, a few gemstones glistened on the floor, and there was a set of cast-iron pans and a tea kettle stacked on what appeared to be a rectangular brick oven.

“What…am I missing here?” Galvanius asked. “Where are we?”

“The Treasure of Dirge,” Krag said as if it were obvious.

Greez’s eye twitched as if he was having the onset of a mental breakdown.

“Uh, Sir Krag,” Millie spoke up, “a treasure should have treasure in it, right?”

Krag glanced around the room as if finally seeing the barrenness. “Oh. Yes, well…it has been a long time, and there are creatures around here good at slipping through cracks and tunneling through rock.” He gestured upwards, and the group could now see several holes in the ceiling and along the cave wall. “Rock wyrms, stone scourges, small scavengers who grab a handful of coins at a time, but over the centuries, they must’ve subtracted more than I thought…”

A high-pitched scream escaped Greez as if it were his death cry. He collapsed, banging his fists on the floor. “I’m done, I’m done! We almost died a hundred times over, for nothing! I’m reporting this to the union!”

Swarmdog fetched a gold coin lying on the cave floor and dropped it next to Greez. The goblin sighed, plopping his head on the ground. “Good boy,” he muttered.

Galvanius scanned the room again, his heart dropping. “I don’t understand. Are there no more chambers? I was so sure it would be here…”

Millie shrugged. She looked at the brick oven. “Odd thing to have in a treasury. Maybe there were people guarding the treasure, and they built this oven so they could eat warm food. Which doesn’t sound like a half-bad idea.” She removed the pack she was carrying and rummaged around in it. “I still have flour and water. If we can light the oven, I can make us biscuits.”

“If you need to light it, I would be more than happy to accommodate,” Krag said. He lifted a finger and the tip ignited with a small tangerine blaze.

Galvanius groaned. “I don’t want biscuits! If you would all get your brains out of your stomachs, we need to keep looking—”

Millie interrupted him as she yanked open the metal door over the oven’s mouth. A flurry of ash sprang up, and she coughed as she swatted the debris away from her face. “Oh. There’s something in here.”

She struggled to pull out something covered in soot. When she finally did, it was an object four feet in length, shaped like a triangular cylinder, with each side of the triangle a foot wide. As she dusted the soot away, she revealed it was made of a lustrous green-gold metal, with strange markings all along its sides. On one end was an engraving of two hands, palms facing outward, each palm possessing an eye. The other end of the cylinder depicted a curled ram horn, and it encircled a full moon.

“The horn of Thealxethor!” Mille said, noting the horn-moon icon. “Keeper of Dreams! That’s one of Rachdale’s oldest stories. I always loved that one.”

Galvanius took the cylinder from Millie, although it was heavier than he expected, and the weight nearly threw him off balance. “And the other end, that’s the symbol of Libraya Nor, the Eyes of Truth and Deceit. One of the oldest gods in recorded history. This…this must be a clue! There must be something inside to direct us to the god machine…” He inspected the cylinder from top to bottom for a latch, or lock, or any means of opening it, but there was none. He grunted in frustration. “The clue must be in the engravings. If I can decipher it—”

Krag cleared his throat. “I should probably tell you—”

“If the icon of Thealxethor is on here, then it must have been engraved by dwarven metalworkers, although none of the glyphs on the sides look particularly—”

“Uh, Jimmy?” Mille nudged his elbow roughly.

Galvanius did not look at her as he said curtly, “Can you not bother me while I’m working?”

“I think something’s wrong with Greez.”

Galvanius tore his eyes away from the cylinder long enough to see that Greez was crumpled on the ground, his hands over his ears. His face was scrunched in pain.

“Would someone do something about that horrid whistle??” he cried.

Galvanius paused, straining to listen for any such noise in the cave. “What’s he talking about? What whistle?”

Krag sighed, exasperated. “As I was trying to tell you, it would seem that the cylinder was walled up inside that stove because it is emitting a sound at a frequency that is only heard by sensitive goblin ears. In fact, I recall now what happened when Dirge first summoned me…he commanded me to flood the access tunnel with lava as he was escaping a rather nasty horde.”

“A horde of what?”

“Goblins. And orcs. And goristros. It must be some alarm spell placed on the cylinder that attracts them.”

A ripple of terror crawled up Galvanius’s spine. “Just how far away can monsters hear this sound?”

Krag scratched his cheek. “We’re pretty deep in the mountain, but the acoustics are good and can carry the sound…Oh, if you’re asking if any nearby creatures would have heard it by now, oh yes, definitely.”

Galvanius strained to keep his wits amidst his panic. “And I assume there has to be a way out of this cave other than the one tunnel you brought us through, right?”

The golem crinkled the corner of his lips. “You know what they say when you assume…”

Galvanius dropped the cylinder, doing the only thing he could think to do. He pulled out his canteen of soup—although he realized he left his bowl and spoon back in the other cavern. He snagged the tea kettle off the oven, poured soup into it, and then desperately banged his knuckle on the kettle while reciting the scrying spell as quickly as possible.

Dissandra’s face appeared within the belly of the teapot, although it was fuzzier than usual as the spell had been done hastily. “Stop that banging, Galvanius! You’ll rupture my eardrums! Now what’s the problem?”

“I’m about to be attacked by goblins, I’m trapped in a cave with only one way out, and I don’t want to die!”

Dissandra raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re really bad at this, aren’t you?” She squinted her eyes as if she had a headache. “Let me guess. You found the god machine?”

“I found this triangle prism with glyphs on it, with the symbols of Libraya Nor and Thealxethor on each end, but right now I need—”

“And you triggered an alarm ward that makes it emit a sound that infuriates goblins?”

“Uh…yes?”

“And now your only exit has a throng of beasts coming through it because you were dumb enough to not check for any wards before you grabbed that thing?”

Galvanius stared blankly at her. “Millie grabbed it first.”

“Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is, congratulations! You found what you were looking for. The bad news is, you’re all about to be pulverized. Good luck.” Her face flickered out of sight, leaving a wash of blood-red in the bottom of the kettle.

While her declaration initially seemed useless, it did have one helpful effect. Galvanius looked at the green-gold cylinder lying beside him, and a new resolve steeled itself in his veins. This, THIS thing is the god machine…I found the god machine! I am not about to die now, not when I’ve found what I’ve been looking for all these years!

A soft echo of a hundred tiny claws scratching against stone whispered from the tunnel, along with what sounded like a chorus of infuriated goats.