A deep, bassy twang split the air as Kenva loosed another arrow. The projectile lanced straight towards the warded, artificed bolt-thrower that was swivelling to get an angle on Ianmus. The timing was perfect. Right as mana built up in its charged rails, her arrow slammed home, twisting the metal. Contained force violently erupted, the entire construct splintering in a detonation of arcing sparks.

  Kaius ignored the boom, steadily taking steps backwards as his sword flowed in constant motion, striking bolt after bolt from the air. Most he knocked aside with simple mastery of the blade, but for shots that came from closer than a few paces away he leaned on Mercurial Reversal to get his blade into position in time.

  Kaius looked down. Just two more flights. They were almost there. He could see the doors: reinforced steel, like everything else they’d seen in the Imperial ruin. At this point, it felt odd even calling the place a ruin. Other than the destruction they’d seen at its entrance, the entire structure seemed in almost perfect condition, from the ward-lights to the overwhelming violence of its defences.

  Their descent had been harrowing, a gauntlet of volley after volley in an unending wave. As swift and powerful as they were, they had taken wounds. Thankfully, Ianmus and Kenva had been spared anything more than violent knocks when he and Porkchop interposed themselves between shots that would otherwise have slipped through their guard.

  With their armour, the two of them had taken little more than broken bones — a trifling thing to heal with their enhanced recovery skills. Still, it was a drain on their resources, swifter than their regenerations could keep up.

  They weren’t in danger of running low just yet, but it was concerning. This was little more than the first line of defence, and what they’d seen as they crossed the other ten landings during their descent made it clear the place had more to give.

  Each landing had a door — double doors, thick and reinforced. They were, thankfully, not locked, and as they passed they’d taken a peek to be sure no automata were racing to meet them. Each revealed something different.

  Half opened into simple hallways that split and branched before revealing anything notable. Others opened into atriums filled with layered defences that were battered and torn, the strewn bodies of ancient dead revealing more desperate victims who’d tried to fight their way out of the death trap they’d found themselves in. They still had yet to spot anything that could direct them to a location of importance: no armouries, quarters, maintenance areas, or workshops.

  That wasn’t surprising. Few such places would abut directly onto an interior stairwell. Plus, they knew their true goal lay in the very bowels of the facility. The lack of visible automata grated on Kaius.

  Where were they? Automata were the most famous line of defence in any Imperial construction. Yet, even peeking into other halls, all they’d seen were more bolt-throwers.

  Some turned as soon as they opened doors; others had been broken by the millennia-old conflict whose evidence lay everywhere. Hells, there were even bodies on the stairs. Most had fallen with bolts in their backs or the tops of their heads — rusted steel still lodged in bone. They’d been trying to get up and out.

  He wanted to know why.

  Kaius shoved the thought aside as a flare of warning came from his bond, joined by an ethereal vector as his skill showed him the path of an attack that would strike his ribs. Pivoting on his front foot, he cut out, a clang of squealing metal echoing off the hard stone walls as he sheared straight through the bolt. It ricocheted away in a shower of sparks, slamming into the wall behind him. Peering to his left, he saw they were little more than a dozen long strides above the bottom of the stairwell. Close enough.

  “Over the edge!” he roared.

  With their enhanced bodies, the impact would do little more than sting.

  They leapt over the railing. Air rushed past his face as he fell, his stomach lurching. A heartbeat later, he hit the ground, bending at the knees to absorb the impact. Despite their agility, it was still loud. Porkchop, with his weight, hit the ground like a boulder. Kaius was half surprised the stone floor didn’t crack.

  He kicked forwards. Slamming open the double doors at the bottom of the stairs, two artificed bolt-throwers were waiting, protruding from the ceiling on either side. They fired; Kaius cut.

  Ferrous bolts clanged as he deflected them with his blade. As his team rushed after him, Kaius raised his hand. Two nails erupted, one after the other.

  They slammed into the bolt-throwers’ rails, disabling the devices in showers of sparks. Porkchop was the last through, slamming the door shut with a paw. Kenva and Ianmus moved quickly, disabling the other visible defences within sight.

  Kaius breathed, slowly lowering his sword as he looked around. They were in a wide hallway, similar to what they had seen far above, yet this one was braced with columns and arches supporting the structure. Much like the hall directly after the reinforced entrance to the facility, metallic bulkheads had erupted from the floor, providing cover for would-be defenders who could fire upon anything entering from the stairs they had just left.

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  Yet, in a strange inversion, those very defences had hampered the facility’s personnel. Dead bodies littered the ground, clawing their way towards the stairs. There was evidence of bolts, yes, but also more visceral, physical damage — yet more evidence that mobile automata existed somewhere in this facility.

  The personnel, too, looked different from those above. Far fewer were without armour and weapons, and bodies seemed to have fallen in squads and formation. A few held what looked like handheld versions of the very defences that had been firing upon them.

  “I’m definitely getting the feeling this place is military,” Kaius murmured as he scanned their surroundings, “The hall splits in a T-junction, left and right.”

  “You think?” Kenva said, rolling her shoulders. With the draw weight of her bow and the amount of shooting she’d just done, the strain on her back must have been immense. “It was like we were up against an entire battalion of archers. What even were those things?”

  Kaius shook his head and shrugged. “Clever artifice, that’s for sure. I’ve never seen anything like it — certainly not produced in such quantities. Perhaps the dwarves have something similar. But the scale boggles my mind. Each one of those would take an artificer — even a strong and skilled one — days to make and inscribe.”

  “I can explain that,” Ianmus said. “Some Imperial ruins have shown evidence of automata that helped with construction. That would explain the standardisation, at least.”

  Kaius grunted. Even that was a marvel in its own right. An artefact to build other artefacts? So much lost knowledge, such a waste of progress. He couldn’t wait to pick apart an automaton and see how it worked. Even if the bolt-throwers weren’t the pseudo-living creatures of a true automaton, he had no doubt there was much he could learn from them.

  “I notice you didn’t make use of Eirnith, Porkchop only used his roar once. They don’t work against the weapons?”

  Kaius shook his head. “No mind to affect,” he replied. “I’ll need to get rid of a few of them so I can use the mana for other things. Even if we’re safe for the moment, I don’t want to take the risk. I’ll keep a few though — using all of them feels premature when we haven't seen a real automaton yet. They’re supposed to have levels, so I assume my spell will work — they are supposed to have something of a mind to them.”

  Ianmus nodded his understanding.

  Taking a couple of minutes to settle and recover some of what they had spent in their descent, they began to pick their way forward through the strewn barricades and bones that littered the hall. With the space available, they spread out, falling into their standard formation. They could manoeuvre and dodge far better now that they had some assurance of not being pincered from behind. Besides, with the height of the ceiling, Kaius would be able to shunt behind their back line if needed.

  A surprise waited for them at the end of the hall: signs — the first they had seen since entering. Stencilled directly on the wall and heading just out of sight around the corners. Plain Common, though in an unfamiliar archaic font. According to the directions, an armoury lay to their right, while the left led to crew quarters and something unfamiliar:

  Central Mainframe.

  “Central mainframe?” Porkchop asked. “What’s that?”

  “No clue. But it sounds important,” Kaius replied, looking at Ianmus.

  The mage shook his head.

  “So, left then.”

  As tempting as the armoury was as a source of loot and potential information, it was not their target and would likely be heavily defended. If it was locked, given the materials and sturdiness of the structure as a whole, it would take them considerable time to break in — if they could at all.

  Far better to pursue their goal of shutting the facility down. They could always loot it to the bones once they were done.

  Pushing on, they moved rhythmically. Snap-shots from Kenva and Ianmus destroyed bolt-thrower after bolt-thrower that littered the halls. Without a grand cluster like the stairs, they were easy to dismantle and little challenge. Yet as they pressed on, Kaius’s nerves grew as he heard a deep rumble emanating from all around them. More than likely it was ancient artifice — the beating heart of the facility that powered and kept it functioning — but it could just as easily have been the rumble of a defending force racing to meet them.

  It didn’t take long for the sound to be layered with the clatter of metal on stone far behind them, in the direction of the armoury.

  “Rotten roots. Let’s speed it up,” Kaius said, and they hurried on.

  Their hallway branched again and again as they turned the corner. Dozens of doors lined the sides. A few were ajar, revealing bunk rooms, each with a singular turret jutting from the ceiling. The defences went down quickly, with well-placed arrows and a single nail.

  Kaius glanced through one room. Bunks lined each side, with a small kitchenette and washroom in the back. The beds, rotted until they were naught but steel frames, held skeletons — each with a single spike of steel punched through each forehead. Cut down in their sleep, where they should have been safest.

  “Incoming,” Porkchop said from ahead, jolting Kaius from his thoughts, ears flicking.

  Kaius heard it a moment later — a new sound. Staccato cracks as something hard met moulded stone in a steady, many-limbed gait. He raised his blade into a high guard.

  “Ready yourselves,” he said, moments before a mockery of life wrought of shaped steel, gearing, and magic spilled around the corner. Six spider-like limbs erupted from its waist, propping up a torso with overdeveloped shoulders that looked closer to a blocky and angular armoured chess piece than anything else. Its head was non-existent, and in place of arms three multi-segmented limbs jutted from each side.

  Strangely, they had no weapons. Each limb tipped with chisels, hammers, kitchen knives, and other tools.

  The creatures still whipped them through the air with murderous intent.

  A heartbeat later, another six more joined the first.

  “Automata!” Kaius yelled, grinning. He’d always wanted to fight them.

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