Any doubt that might have once existed in Kaius’s mind had long since fled: this Imperial ruin was military. Whether it was official Empire forces or a privately owned bunker of some ancient noble dynasty had yet to be seen.

  The defences were too heavy, and the place was far too reinforced for it to have been made for simple civilian use. That, and the signs of active combat, were too blatant.

  As they pushed further through the entryway, the palisades and bulkheads only grew, and strange, shattered remnants of what might have been automatons were scattered across them.

  The signs were fragmentary and rare, but they were there: lengths of metal attached to gearing, shards of breastplates too oddly shaped to have ever been made for a man, and scraps of crossbows and bolt-throwers that had only bolted hardpoints, without handles.

  They moved in formation — Porkchop taking the front, with Kaius moving as his shadow, and Ianmus and Kenva closely behind them. With a slight bend, they weren’t able to see the far side of their destination — a design choice likely intentional for defensive purposes.

  Yet as they picked their way over scrap and rubble, they reached the end of the tunnel quickly and stopped fast.

  Their tunnel opened into an atrium, lit by the same scattered and flickering ward-lights that lined the tunnel, though these ones seemed to be in better condition. Fewer were broken, and at any given time a full third of them were on at once, though the flickering would still have been disorienting for anyone who lacked their stats and ocular skills.

  The room was immense, towering far overhead and stretching wide. It almost looked like some sort of reception, with rows of benches and tables and an immense U-shaped desk in the centre of the space, with mezzanines flanking the walls to each side and across from them.

  It looked like someone had dropped war magic right in the middle of it. Furniture was scattered and broken, and divots had been scoured into the stony ground. Scorch marks abounded.

  Metal tables seemed to have been flipped and used as cover, holes punched through them with dents peppering them as if they had been hit by bolt after bolt — though they saw no signs of the projectiles themselves. There were more complete remains of the strange automatons they’d seen hints of in the tunnel.

  The creatures had been fixed in place, jutting from holes in the floor and walls where they dangled limp on cantilevered arms. They weren’t creature-like as he’d expected from guild descriptions, but closer to fixed, self-directed ballistas. Though instead of recurved arms, they had strange rails bolted to the sides of their firing channels, each one inscribed densely with runes.

  Each and every one had been sundered utterly, more than half of them little more than shattered kindling in twisted metal, with the rest cracked and rendered inoperable.

  Watching the defences closely only stoked the churning knot of anxiety in Kaius’s stomach. The evidence piled on — something had been trying to break out.

  Those autonomous defences were not pointed towards the entrance they had just come from. Instead, they pointed into the centre of the facility and up towards the mezzanines. Yet other than those fixed points, they still saw no bodies, nor any of the famous mobile automatons that Imperial ruins were so well known for.

  Kaius frowned. They had a lot of ground to cover, and everything they saw pointed towards danger. They needed a hint — something to follow.

  “We search the ground floor first,” he said. “Give word if you spot anything out of place. Who knows what we could find down here.”

  They swept the wreckage swiftly, leaning on their senses to pass over everything they could. More corridors exited the atrium, sized closer to what could be found in a keep or a castle than the immense tunnels they’d just left. They were left well enough alone, he’d have had to have been a moron to place their backs to something that might still hold threats.

  Finding nothing on the first floor, Kaius nodded his head towards one of the mezzanines. It seemed like their next best bet.

  Kenva spotted the bodies first. She hissed, jutting her head towards the stairs as Kaius peered over a nearby desk to find nothing but piles of dust that might once have been paper.

  Looking over, he saw what she was looking at: ancient bones, dozens of them spilling down the stairs, desperately clawing their way forward. They were fragile, yellowed with age, and covered in the ancient remnants of what might once have been standard-issue gear. Cloth and leather had long since rotted away, leaving only rusted scrap, but the similarities were everywhere. Three sets of light armour — one only identifiable by tiny, almost completely faded strips of chain — while yet more bodies wore breastplates and greaves, and others had fallen in bulky heavy plate.

  Of what remained, it was just enough for him to tell that the styles were identical. Yet what was more concerning was that every single one bore the unmistakable signs of violence: heavy plate had been cracked and caved in, while those wearing medium armour had been completely sundered at points. Limbs were strewn, disconnected from bodies.

  Whatever fate had fallen over this facility, the stairs must have been run red with blood.

  “Hells,” Ianmus muttered — the only one to break the silence as they moved close.

  Kaius only grunted an agreement. Hells was about right, they’d been slaughtered.

  Crouching low, he looked around for whatever had slain these people. There were too many of them, and they were too scattered to have been an organised invasion force. No, this was the facility’s occupants, and they’d been caught desperately unawares. He looked around, and Sergeant’s Insight twinged.

  The fixed automata nearby are all facing the stairs, he thought.

  “Kenva. Look at that.” Following his gaze, her eyes widened.

  “The facility turned on them,” she said, drawing sharp looks from Ianmus and Porkchop.

  “It certainly looks like it,” Kaius said grimly.

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  Regardless of why, one thing was clear. Even if they hadn’t just gotten themselves locked in here, it had grown all the more important that they disable this facility.

  This was an armed force from the Eternal Empire. None of these guards could have been weak. How could they leave such a threat slumbering beneath a city full of people just barely eking by. He wouldn’t have it — not when he’d just made strides in attempting to strengthen them. He was no politician, nor a master of people or governorship, and he had little of the tools needed to truly change Deadacre for the better. This though? This was something he could do.

  As a thread of steel wove its way down his spine, Kaius rose to his feet. “We move on. Let’s follow the trail.”

  Picking their way through the ancient remains, they rose up to the mezzanine, where the floor lay carpeted with the dead. The sight halted them in their tracks. Not all the skeletons were armed and armoured. In the centre of the throng, bodies in little more than scraps of robes clutched the rotten and destroyed remnants of books and notes, small packs tied to their backs. Non-combatants. Though this place was no civilian ruin — he was sure of that.

  Which begged the question: were they researchers, artisans, or something else?

  The group seemed to have been spilling out of a side passage on the far side of the mezzanine that led deeper into the building, more fallen littering its flickering expanse.

  “Look,” Kenva said, pointing to those closest to the hall. They were facing outwards, towards the broken remnants of more fixed automata, these bolt-throwers more scattered and haphazardly placed than the ones in the atrium. “They were pincered — trying to fight their way out.”

  “This is bizarre,” Ianmus said. “I know few researchers or academics ever step foot in an Imperial ruin until it’s been practically razed to the ground by adventurers and tomb raiders. But even in first-hand accounts, I haven’t heard of sights like this. Violence, yes, but not their very own defences turning against them.”

  “A mutiny, perhaps?” Porkchop asked, looking around, still garbed in his Beastknight’s Hide and ready to pounce at the slightest hint of danger.

  Kaius nodded slowly. A mutiny or insurrection made some sense. But the question remained: had someone usurped the facility, or had it attacked autonomously?

  Following the path of bodies, they moved deeper into the facility.

  It seemed reasonable that something as important as the mana reactor would have been staffed and defended. If they followed the trail of destruction, they might find a way there.

  Their pace was slow as they crept through flickering ward-lights and did their best to avoid disturbing the dead. The very mana in the air seemed to reek of death — the imprint of so much localised violence persisting over aeons. Kaius was very, very glad that the formations and the facility had remained active, cycling and mixing the mana.

  With that much latent resentment, it would otherwise have been easy for death affinity to manifest. The only thing worse than facing a potential horde of autonomous defenders would have been fighting off the undead as well.

  As they pushed in, they saw more ruined fixed defences and stumbled across increasing numbers of pockets of human resistance left where they’d fallen.

  Yet for all the evidence of mobile attackers, there were no remains of autonomous mobile automata.

  Some of the rooms they passed looked like labs or research stations, the equipment broken in the violent frenzy that had passed through. Hells, it almost looked targeted — like someone had tried to destroy anything useful.

  The loss was staggering. Even a single intact artefact they could scavenge would have been monumental for study.

  Peering at the wreckage of a complex wall of gearing and mana networks that seemed to have been intentionally slagged with fire magic, Kaius turned to Ianmus.

  “How often are working artefacts retrieved from places like this?”

  Ianmus paused, thinking. “Rarely. Very rarely. The ones that do make it out are often so degraded as to be useless, and fixed examples inbuilt into the ruins have a tendency to slag themselves when tampered with.”

  Perhaps the violence they’d seen here was wider spread than they’d first thought. Or maybe the Empire had been so paranoid as to deny anyone else the advantages they had.

  Continuing on, it wasn’t long before they caught something that held their attention: a stairwell, large and spiralling down into the deep, far out of sight — large enough that ten men could have walked abreast. The little they could see revealed yet more bodies, these ones frantically clawing their way upwards, half of them bearing shields that looked like they’d been held above them — broken and pierced.

  More alarming, the stairwell was brightly lit, with none of the flicker they’d seen so far. If there was danger, it was likely that any defences still active would be here. That mattered little. The stairs went down, and they knew with certainty that the mana reactor would be somewhere on the lowest levels of the Imperial ruin.

  “I don’t like this,” Porkchop said, his hackles raised.

  “It is rather ominous, isn’t it?” Regardless, Kaius was confident in their strength.

  Even if the Empire was advanced, he’d seen little sign that the fallen members of this facility were elites. There’d been signs of something strong — but he doubted it was caused by the massed defenders. Even long dead, the remains would have held evidence if they had been in the second tier or higher. What had killed those ancient warriors could well be a minor challenge at most for him and his team.

  Still, it was best to be cautious.

  They still had yet to see any true automata, and for all that the slain skeletons seemed to have been mown down in their desperate escape, the damage to the facility was severe.

  Hopefully, that was the sign of a group that did escape, led by powerful defenders, and not evidence of the strength of the facility’s automata.

  Kaius looked to his team. “I think, if we wish to be sane, now would be a good time to summon your keyseal, Ianmus.”.

  They had avoided it so far in an attempt to avoid the spell setting off any of the defences. At this point, Kaius was certain they wouldn’t be making it much farther without that happening anyway. After a few minutes, a glowing circle of overlapping sacred geometry glittered at the tip of Ianmus’s staff, and Kaius could see the seal pulling at the surrounding mana. With the expulsion of magic, all of them tensed, ready for violence, but nothing happened.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe we got lucky,” he muttered.

  Porkchop snorted. “Well, now we’re definitely getting attacked.”

  Kaius rolled his eyes, and they stepped onto the landing of the stairwell.

  In the very same instant, the ward-lights snapped red.

  They were ready for violence immediately, tension rising as a tinny, artificial voice sounded from all around them.

  Alert. This installation is property of the Imperator. Non-authorised individuals must surrender themselves for questioning or be subdued.

  Alert. Override ‘Broken Scepter Contingency’ is in effect.

  Kaius paused, keeping his grip and shoulders loose as a growing tension knotted in his belly.

  Alert. Life signs detected.

  The final sentence was punctuated by the grinding rattle of portholes sliding open along the walls of the stairwell. Fixed defences — fresh and gleaming, so unlike the broken remnants they had seen until now — unfurled, snapping towards them. The closest was right next to Porkchop’s head.

  He growled, smashing the thing with one paw as glistening crystals of orichalcum surrounded his limb. The artifice shattered utterly in a single swipe.

  “See? I told you,” Porkchop said as he roared out loud.

  Kaius cracked a smile. It hadn’t been a hard bet to make.

  “We descend! That mana engine has to go.”

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