Magic of Mirstone

The Darklord and the Godmachine-3

Millie’s eyes grew wide. “Jimmy, I think we’re about to have a whole lot of pissed-off guests who want to eat our faces.”

Swarmdog whined, his form blurring as his insects began to fly into a frenzy.

Galvanius hefted the cylinder in his arms and turned to Krag. “Can’t you fill that tunnel with lava to incinerate them, like you said you did before?”

Krag shook his head. “I need to be within close proximity of the lava pool to control it. I’m too far away from it here. And I can’t detect any lava directly beneath this room.”

“And our only way out is blocked?”

Millie glanced around the cave. “No, I don’t think so.” She pointed straight up to the ceiling. There was one tunnel above them that looked wide enough for them all to fit through, a shaft that possessed a pinpoint of light at the other end.

Galvanius’s dread lightened. “There’s light up there. That tunnel might take us up to the surface…but none of us have any rope long enough to go all the way up. How would we reach it?”

“The better question is, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO TURN OFF THAT THING???” Greez shouted, still clutching his ears and writhing on the floor.

Krag looked up the ceiling shaft, and then down at himself. “I believe, if I have done my calculations correctly, I may have a solution. I would just need a few moments.”

Galvanius turned to Millie. “Millie, can Swarmdog give us some time?”

Millie’s sweet smile shifted to a wry grin. She turned to her hive-hound. “Swarmy…go for the eyes.”

Just as a cluster of gray-skinned, red-eyed goblins broke through the entrance to the room, Swarmdog dissipated into a shapeless blur and swarmed the intruders’ faces, tiny bugs biting at eyes and ears. The buzzing was so ferociously loud that it drowned out the yelps of dismay and pain from the creatures.

Krag picked up Galvanius under one arm, Millie under the other, and grabbed Greez by the waist and held him in his hand. He positioned himself directly under the shaft in the ceiling.

“I don’t suppose you plan to jump?” Galvanius asked. He had no idea how well golems could jump.

“Not quite.”

Suddenly, Krag became quite warm. When Galvanius looked down at Krag’s legs, he could see them heating up rapidly, glowing red to orange to golden yellow. The fieriness spread up the legs towards Krag’s abdomen, and Galvanius could feel the heat blazing through his armor despite his heat-resistance charm.

“Krag, what are you—” Before Galvanius could finish, he was suddenly shot up, as if ejected by catapult, towards the ceiling. He watched as Krag’s legs burst into a column of lava, sending them all skyward with the force of an erupting volcano. Their ascent was so fast that it took mere seconds for them to go through the ceiling, up the shaft, and break into the misty daylight at the surface of the mountainside. There was a momentary suspension of them being hurtled through the air, before coming to a heavy landing. Everyone rolled for several feet, but the ground was level enough that they each came to a stop rather than continue barreling down the mountain.

“Swarmy? Swarmy!” Millie got to her feet, despite having fresh cuts and bruises from the landing, and ran back over to where they had all exited the shaft. She continued to call for her pet while Galvanius and Greez rolled onto their backs and sat up, wincing and groaning. Galvanius still had the god machine in his arms, and he let out a sigh of relief. “At least it’s still in one piece,” he said.

“Unlike the rockhead,” Greez replied, looking over at Krag. Or what was left of him. Head, shoulders, arms, and chest were still there, but anything below was gone. Traces of hot lava dripped from the end of what appeared to be his ribcage, but it quickly cooled and solidified into stone.

Galvanius got up and dashed over to the golem. “Krag! Good gods, are you all right?”

Krag wheezed but gave Galvanius a strained smile. “Eh, it’s all just rock. More where that came from. Besides, you can fix it when you get that machine working.”

Greez flattened his ears against his head and pressed his hands over them. “It’s still making that noise! Shut it off!”

Oh great, more monsters will be here any second! And now we’re exposed on the mountainside! Galvanius thought. He ran over to Millie, grabbing her arm. “Millie, we have to go!”

“No! Swarmy is still down there!” she cried, pulling against his grip.

“He’s an elemental, he’ll be fine!”

“But what about Krag? He has no legs!”

“He’s a bloody rock! Who cares?? Let’s go!”

Millie wrenched her arm from his grasp and squared her shoulders. She crossed her arms and gave Galvanius a glare severe enough to turn shadows white with fear. “James Domhnall, you are a Dark lord. Which means you are responsible for your crew. Which means you do NOT run away like a coward, leaving any of us behind. That includes Krag. He got us away from the ash goblins, that makes him one of us now. So STOP thinking about only yourself and start being a leader!”

Galvanius could not figure out, for the life of him, how this small, curly-haired dwarven girl could rattle him to his core. But worse than that, she was right. Before he could reply, a sharp banging distracted him. He looked over to see Greez beating a goblin-sized smithing hammer on the god machine with wild abandon.

“Will—this—bloody—thing—shut—off??” He screamed in time to each blow with the hammer.

“Greez!!” Galvanius ran over and grabbed the goblin to yank him away. “If you break that machine, so help me gods—” He paused, blanching as he looked over to the ridge near where they stood, and saw dozens of gray, grimy clawed hands reaching from beyond the edge, scrambling to climb up.

Greez made one more wild swing with the hammer, and it hit squarely on the left eye of the symbol of Libraya Nor. The eye sunk into the machine, and a rusty, gritty whirring began to come from the cylinder.

The top edge of the cylinder cracked open slowly. From within, six copper rods, like the spines from a great lionfish, extended from the gap. When they reached about five feet in length, an iridescent sheen radiated from between the spines, the light creating a dancing rainbow effect across it like soap film. There was something cosmic, hypnotic about the swirling colors, and deep from within the cylinder came a sound, like a tinkling of bells or glass. As the ash goblins poured up over the ridge and advanced on the group, they came to a halt at the sight of the brilliant display of colors. They stared, entranced, at the mechanical fan of light and sound, and Greez ceased his frantic ravings to stare dumbfounded at it. Even Galvanius found himself oddly captivated by it, unable to move.

What happened next seemed to defy all mechanical physics.

The crack of the cylinder opened wider, and a copper carapace emerged from under the shimmering spinal fin. The carapace curled like a hook, and as it rose into the air, it revealed a thin body adorned with six thoracic legs, reminiscent of a dragonfly, but at the end of each leg was a robotic humanoid hand. The head was an electrum-plated pyramid, the apex pointed outward like a beak, with more runic engravings decorating its bright yellow sides. Four transparent, elliptical wings unfolded from its back, shining with the same polychromatic glassiness as the spinal fin. Finally, at the end of the long, skinny abdomen, four black-green tentacles with soft, downy cilia unfurled. The bizarre insectoid machine hovered in the air, free of its impossible small cocoon—a twenty-foot leviathan of reddish copper, electrum and adamantine.

“Oooh, how pretty!” Millie cooed, while everyone else was too thunderstruck to speak.

The collective awe was broken as a tall, growling orc leaped up from the ridge and landed among the throng of goblins. His tusks curled up from his lips in a permanent snarl, his hair matted in locks of ash and dirt, his skin covered in hardened gray and brown clay-like armor. He paused upon seeing the god machine, but rather than marvel, he flew into an unbridled rage. In his hand, he carried a stone club, and he raised it over his head as he came charging at the divine device.

Galvanius drew his sword from its sheath and plowed forward at the oncoming orc. He brought his sword up to block the orc’s swing, and while he stopped the club’s trajectory, the orc’s strength forced Galvanius down on one knee, his entire body rattling inside his armor. The orc smiled wickedly, bringing his club up once again to bring down on Galvanius’s head.

Before he could, a thick swarm of stingers and pinchers smacked into the orc like a battering ram. The orc reeled back, cursing, flailing to free himself from the blinding mass of insects that were sneaking between the cracks of his clay casing to eat at his skin.

“Swarmy!” Millie cried joyfully.

That’s our cue to leave, Galvanius thought. He sheathed his sword and turned to the god machine, racking his brain about what he was supposed to do with it now—put it back in its cocoon so he could carry it? Command it to follow him? Would it even take his commands? The machine hovered there, as if waiting for something, or maybe it was oblivious to everything around it.

“Uh, Jim…” Greez was slowly breaking free of the trance. “I think…we should go…”

Just as Greez was coming to, so were the other goblins. And they didn’t look happy.

Galvanius felt something wrap tightly around his waist. He looked down and saw that one of the god machine’s tentacles embraced him. He was slowly being lifted into the air as the machine began to ascend. The machine also grabbed hold of Millie, Krag and Greez, the last of which squealed and struggled wildly against his captor.

“Calm yourself,” said Krag, who dangled by his arm in the machine’s clutch.

“Calm myself??? I’m being hijacked by a giant metal bug!!” Greez cried.

Millie patted the metallic tentacle holding her. “I think it’s helping us escape.”

The ash goblins rushed them, but the god machine suddenly took off with an abrupt speed straight into the air, escaping the onslaught of claws, teeth and clubs. Swarmdog ceased his assault on the orc and flew off after the god machine. The monsters below screamed and cursed after them as the troupe flew off, away from the Ash Mountains and towards the vast plains that led to the Blackridge Sea.

*

Millie tilted her head to the side, her hands on her hips. “I take it you haven’t figured out how to talk to it yet?”

It was nearly dusk, hours since the troupe had fled their adversaries, and they had taken refuge in a dilapidated cottage where the god machine had, for whatever reason, chosen to deposit them. There was not much to the property, save an ancient oak tree, a stone well, and a patch of dirt that might have once been a vegetable garden. Cobwebs filled every corner of the dusty cottage, and given the disorder of the place—broken plates on the floor, a single stray boot, old oil lamps on crudely built tables—whoever lived here before must have left in a hurry. The troupe was able to make themselves comfortable, with Krag lying near a bookshelf where he read one of its ragged books, Greez falling asleep on the quilt-covered bed, Millie taking a bucket to the well so she could wash up, and Swarmdog romping through the grass like a happy pup. Galvanius, meanwhile, had pulled the god machine inside by one of its tentacles—a bit like pulling along a large alien balloon—and puzzled over it for hours.