19 – Spiders

There was a thin wire connecting the mountain’s console to a small tablet in Mekano’s hands. He was holding it up with his thick digits, brown and scaly, for everyone else to see. Ishrin studied the text with a stoic and impassible expression on his face, however his emotions were clearly visible to all, shown by the behavior of Liù, his pixie. She flew up and down the air nervously, fluttering and humming in reflection to her master’s troubled mind. The others didn’t know if the two had a telepathic or empathic link, or if Liù could simply read her master well due to the two spending so much time together. None asked.

Preliminary activation sequence: 29%

Atmospheric magical saturation: 42% [THRESHOLD: 80%]

Executing directive 1.

“What does this mean?” Asked Lisette. “What is directive one?”

“I’m afraid Mekano cannot answer that.” Mekano said. “Mekano does not have access to the systems from this terminal. Now Mekano will work to open the door.”

After the half avian, half lizard man said that, he turned around and went back to fiddling with his tech.

“Do you have any idea what any of this is? I have no issues blowing up the mountain, if I need to but… you know, maybe the quest items are hidden somewhere in here.” Ishrin said.

“I know nothing more than you do about the quest, however, I do know something about this mountain. I think it’s safe to assume that it’s the same mountain as the one in the records I read.”

“Do tell.” Ishrin was interested.

“There were records,” the adventurer sighed, “I found them early on after I assumed my position at the Noctis guild. Records of an ancient battle between a Hero, and something. Something big. Something dangerous. That something – and it’s never mentioned what it actually is – needed to be stopped at all costs. The hero won in the end, although at great cost, and sealed the evil away never to be found again. Or so the records say.”

“Do you believe this evil that was sealed away…” Ishrin began.

“It was the mountain.” Lisette finished.

“Who was this hero?” Ishrin asked.

Melina’s voice was solemn. “She was the Third Hero of our age. Her chosen name was Willow, and she was bestowed with the greatest of heavenly powers: the legendary System. She sealed this mountain away 500 years ago, vanquishing an evil that threatened to swallow the world whole.”

“A system…” Ishrin muttered. “I have heard of these… strange magical devices.”

The party spent some time in silent contemplation, waiting for Mekano to finish his job with the door. They said nothing, each of them with their own thoughts occupying their minds, theories and ideas popping up to justify what was happening. Ishrin sometimes asked questions about the hero, and he learned that Heroes always came from other places in times of great need. They were bestowed with heavenly powers of various magnitudes, always fit to resolve the crisis they were sent to fix. And then, they left, moving on to greater purposes, to far away lands, to help others who were in need. Or so they claimed. Perhaps they had other motives, other quests. Perhaps they were just like him, tools used by bigger agents, held hostage with the threat and promise of something they wanted and cared about if only they did what they were told.

Willow was the last hero to have come to Prima Luce, this world.

“Willow…” Ishrin rolled the words in his mouth, savoring the taste that they left on his tongue. There was something about that name that reminded him of something, about the way willow was translated in his mother tongue, about a strange consonance with another name he remembered.

Liù chimed, but the sound was pained, melancholic.

“Don’t worry cutie.” Ishrin smiled. “I won’t abandon you. I was just thinking of a past long gone.”

Indeed. It had been almost 6 centuries since he last saw her. Since—

“Mekano is done.” A voice cut through his thoughts.

“Ah, nice.” Ishrin said after clearing his mind and putting on his best smile.

The door whooshed open.

“Thank you Mekano. Your help was very appreciated.” Melina said.

“Indeed.” Lisette said.

“Mekano is happy to help! Mekano will be seeing you, beautiful girls Lisette and Melina, once fate or old friend Ishrin wills us to be together again. Whichever happens first. Mekano just hopes it won’t be too long.”

Ishrin laughed. “Sleek tongue. Say what, I’m interested in learning more about technology. You’ll have to teach me, one day.”

“Ah,” Mekano smirked. “I guess Mekano could do that. But Mekano would need to be summoned here with a real body, you know? Not as a ghost like Mekano is now.”

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“Sure. Just wait until I call, okay?”

With that, the ethereal apparition of the strange man that was Mekano disappeared.

“Did you just… use us as bait?” Melina complained.

“If he’s horny like that, I might just as well take advantage of it.” Ishrin shrugged.

“I’m not into… whatever species he is.” Melina said.

“I am not either.” Lisette said.

Ishrin shrugged again. “That’s his business. I didn’t make any promises.”

“Right.” Melina said. “How did a ghost interact with matter like that? I thought ghosts couldn’t touch material things.”

“Mekano has special means. That’s why I summoned him. Anything else?”

“No,” Melina shook her head. “We can go.”

Beyond the door was another long tunnel of ice. However, the deeper they ventured inside the impossible mountain, the more the technological aspects of its making became harder to spot. They were more sophisticated, less damaged, and more integrated with the structure of the rock until they appeared completely natural to the eyes of the adventurers. Only Ishrin, who had visited many worlds where technology had been the focus of civilization rather than magic, could still spot the machines in the walls. But even he was having trouble understanding what they were there for.

Another problem was the ever-present magical haze, that rendered his magic vision completely ineffective. He made a mental note to visit Dwymer once back in Noctis, to add a Vision and a Clarity rune to his helmet. Or perhaps Sight and Focus. He would need to ask the dwarf which ones are better.

“Watch out!” Melina’s voice cut through the silence.

The three members of the party threw themselves to the sides of the narrow tunnel, with Melina – who was leading at the front – backstepping and only narrowly avoiding a section of the wall as it literally exploded in a shower of ice shards and pieces of metal. Three small machines, shaped like spiders of many mechanical limbs with a triangular heads and a single red eye, appeared from the where the wall had been destroyed. Without pause they each selected one target and lunged at them, propelling themselves into the air with small rockets spewing flames under their metallic frames.

Lisette unsheathed her twin blades before the spider could even reach the halfway point in its trajectory. The metal robot was met with the sharp edge of one such blade, swiping the air in a horizontal arc with extreme velocity and precision. However, the metal was too strong and the spider was not cut in half but merely sent flying into the wall with speed. The wall reacted, the ice shifting, and machines appearing underneath, helping the spider to adjust the angle and bounce back, headed for Lisette’s head. She swatted it out of the air again, dancing around the other two members of the party who she knew were busy with their own fights, then she took a stance and came to a full stop just as the spider prepared to jump again.

She studied its shape, and the two opposing enemies lunged at each other. This time, however, thanks to the magic armor Ishrin gave her that boosted her speed, Lisette corrected her trajectory at the last possible moment. The spider hadn’t predicted this, its circuits instead telling it that Lisette would have kept going at it from the front and found itself flying towards the far end of the tunnel. Before it could come to a stop and turn around, a blade severed two of its limbs, leaving it limping on the ground. Then the flat of the other blade pushed it down and Lisette stomped on it, using her heel and the other sword like a hammer to crush the robot.

The sound of circuits dying, metal bending and the smell of smoke told her that it was dead.

Melina reacted similarly to how Lisette had. She immediately reacted to the arrival of the robots by sending a blade of magic to destroy the one lunging at her. Differently than Lisette’s blade, her magic found some purchase, and damaged the machine. However the damage was light, most of the magic just sliding off of the strange metal the spider was made of. She mentally checked how much accumulated charge her reactive armor – the one Ishrin made with the ritual – had and found it to be enough. The next time the robot lunged at her she just punched it, willing the armor to release as much charge as it could into that one hit. The robot was sent flying into the wall, but its velocity was too great for the wall to react. It impacted the ice and tumbled to the ground as if stunned. Melina didn’t know if it was dead, so for good measure she prepared to cast another wind magic, this time slow and precise, like a thin needle that stabbed the robot over and over until it was nothing but scrap metal.

Ishrin didn’t see the robots coming, due to his clouded magic vision, and the fact that they were mostly technology and not magic. They barely glowed under his magic gaze, impossible to spot through the fog of magic that enveloped the tunnel. He was the last one to react, but his reaction was the most effective. He raised his right hand, palm facing the robot, and the machine stopped mid-air, barely having crossed a third of its whole trajectory. It oscillated in place for a small fraction of a second, as if tugged by many forces, before Ishrin closed his hand into a fist and the robot underwent a rapid compression that left it as a small ball of scrap. A single spark of electricity fizzled out into smoke as it fell on the floor with a clang.

“It begins. The mountain is actively hostile now.” Melina said.

The other two nodded.

“Maximum concentration from now on.” She said.

“Yes boss.” Lisette replied.

“Okey-dokey.” Said Ishrin.

The tunnel finally opened up to a large underground room.

Here, the whole internal structure of the mountain could be seen like a hollow structure that surrounded a frozen lake, with bright light coming in from the damaged section that had been destroyed by the hero of old. Forcefields and mechanical doors sealed the section off as best they could, but they were insufficient at keeping the light and the magic of the outside from reaching the lake inside.

In the middle of the lake there was a monolith, and inside the monolith a light shone impossibly bright, and from there a beam shot up to the far away ceiling, hidden by the mist. There were sounds of hissing and beeping, the hum of machinery coming from inside the monolith. The blue glow invaded the space and the air, almost palpable solid as it was in the chill bite of the cold. The ice reflected the shadowy images of far away stalactites and the snow that had accumulated, coming from the hole in the rock.

Before the great monolith of stone and ice, covered in rags and dark as the night, a lone figure stood tall on the thin sheet of ice of the lake. It was curved, but even then it was taller than most men, imposing yet thin and knotty, as if an ancient tree had dried up and left its shriveled remain to stand guard there, alone. With wooden movements, slow and strained, the figure extended one of its long arms towards the three interlopers, and pointed at Ishrin.

“You.” It said with a cold whisper that seemed to come from everywhere. “Are back.”