45 – Doesn’t work twice

Lisette and Melina both stared down at the three towering automata walking towards them with slow, deliberate steps as if to mock them for being too weak. The two girls were standing together, side by side, their bodies coiled up springs ready to discharge all the energy they had even if they knew it was futile. Their enemies were terrifying hulking machines, powered by heat and steam, seemingly unbeatable. Covered in disjointed plates of metal that were sometimes sleek and shiny, sometimes rusty and coarse, there was no way to reach the vital components inside.

A deep laugh, sinister and guttural, emerged from behind the machines.

The automata stilled. They turned their heads around, spinning on their necks without moving their bodies and their red glowing orbs fixated on the source of the sound.

The laugh continued, and it sent chills up the girls’ spines. It was coming… from the crater?

“Well, well, well. It seems that I have gotten quite rusty, after a couple millennia spent being a nigh-omnipotent god.”

From the crater crawled out Ishrin, and his body was surrounded by a radiant halo, in the shape of a set of heavy armor that surrounded him a few centimeters away from his body. It was cracked, and crumbling, but even in its cracks shone the golden energy of protection, and the cracks seemed to be mending, the crumbling pieces returning to the armor and being reabsorbed.

“Sorry girls. I almost got flattened there. Call this a low-probability event.”

“Ishrin!” Melina yelled. “You’re okay?”

“I am! I mean, beside the fact that these guys have the same crystal tipped weapons that we also saw in Obscuria, that just so happen to be able to penetrate defenses regardless of Tier and that I barely survived thanks to a ritual I only cast today for the first time.” He said. Melina looked him, and a hint of a smile crawled on her face. If Ishrin was being his usual silly self, then it meant that all was good. Or at least, that things weren’t too bad.

“Say, how about we try again, maybe we win this time?” he said.

That was the cue that the time-out was over. All three automata turned their bodies towards Ishrin in unison.

“Joking!” Ishrin said rapidly, changing direction and homing in for the door. “Run!”

He dashed backwards, sliding underneath the automata’ legs and using one of them as a trampoline to launch himself in the air, and closed the gap between him and the rest of his team. Then they ran together towards the back of the room, and he pulled with his mind at a heap of scrap metal that had landed close to the entrance and freed the way. The automata were in hot pursuit, but the adventurers were close. They jumped, through the narrow passage that was the door leading back into the rest of the compound, too small for the automata to fit.

They landed and rolled on the ground, Ishrin sealing the door behind them. Finally they could breathe. They watched through the gaps in the scrap metal used to seal the door, with their backs tightly pressed against the lukewarm pipes, the automata on the other side of the door thrash and struggle against the thick metal of the room, trying to gain entrance to the corridor and failing. For a minute the machines struggled, but the team knew that they were safe now and took their time to regain their bearings, to search for a way out and around the room, to look around and see if there was any trace of the missing other team. Then all went quiet: the automata were missing, yet their alcoves were empty.

“I guess they gave up.” Ishrin said.

The ceiling exploded.

A giant hand, bigger than any of the appendages they had seen on the automata, reached down. Through the hole they could see a single, gargantuan construct of metal staring down at them from above.

“Shit. They didn’t give up! They fused together!”

The team scattered. There was only one automaton, and it couldn’t see them through the thick metal of the roof of the room. They had better chances if they all went in different directions while they thought about how to handle the situation. Every moment or so another section of the room exploded, a thick arm piercing through the ceiling and trying to grab them, destroying pipes and rusted machines scattered everywhere, filling the room with gases and warm air. They retreated further back into the compound with each blow, hoping to escape the reach of the monstrous machine, but it kept chasing them, tearing down the support beams that kept the ceiling of the cave above their heads from falling, and causing earthquakes that robbed the ground from under their feet. Giant stones came loose from above, entire sections of the Chasm broken loose by the machine’s violence, but the rocks shattered hopelessly against the automaton’s thick armor, not even slowing it down. More metal plates converged to defend its head, making the stones completely useless, and thrashing Ishrin’s team hopes that the thing would somehow be stopped by its own actions.

“We are getting pushed back all the way to the door!” Melina yelled.

“It’s sealed shut.” Ishrin said. “We won’t get it open in time.”

“We need to fight it!” Melina yelled.

“Indeed.” Lisette said. Her voice was calm even though her face was damp with sweat.

“Got any ideas?” Melina asked.

They came across another room, narrow with pipes and large pods full of thick green fluid everywhere. The robotic arm trashed and smashed the pipes and the pods, filling the room with fluid that sizzled and created toxic fumes. The adventurers were all too strong to suffer damage from the acid and its exhalations, but with enough time it was going to be yet another problem that compounded together with the rest to make their situation truly terrible.

“The next room is the last room before the door.” Lisette said.

“I have a ritual I can do, but it will take at least 20 seconds to cast it. Can you hold that thing off long enough?”

Melina and Lisette looked at each other.

“We will.” Melina said, and the two disappeared, dashing back into the fluid and gas-filled room, hiding in the corners, using the intermittent lights and shadows to their advantage.

The next time the automaton tried to grab them, they climbed on the arm and up. The machine tried to shake them off, ripping the whole ceiling of the room out in the process, and Lisette felt her grip weaken. She looked down, but she was suddenly several dozen meters up in the air, and all around her were rusty support beams covered in grease and gas condensations, with countless appendages coming from the automaton like snakes that were converging on her to catch her fall and kill her. She tried to hold on, but her hand was slipping on the smooth metal. She didn’t want to let go of her blades but if she had to, then…

Suddenly a hand, strong and safe tightly wrapped around hers. It was Melina’s, she realized with relief, and she was pulled up to relative safety on a better foothold, then saw that Melina nodded at her with a smile and dashed away again. Lisette did the same, avoiding the tendrils converging on her that only managed to hit the automaton itself, and she kept climbing up the body of the machine like a little ant causing all sorts of trouble along the way. Every time she saw something she could cut she did, plunging her blades that shone with a red aura of blood, and battle, and then she was out and away before the machine could react. Its body was too big for it to move fast enough, after all.

It was a losing battle, however. The damage they managed to inflict was negligible, and the automaton was more annoyed at the fact that it couldn’t seem to touch the two girls than anything else. As for the girls, all it would take for them to be taken out was one hit with those crystal tipped harpoons the automaton had for appendages, and the machine seemed to be adapting its strategy too, multiplying its tentacles and its harpoons, sending out flurries of attacks that were becoming harder and harder to dodge.

But it didn’t matter. They would only have to keep dodging for another few seconds. Their role here was to distract their enemy, and they were being very effective at that. The machine seemed to have completely forgotten about Ishrin casting his ritual from a hidden corner of the far room, and it only realized its mistake when it was too late.

The girls jumped off, gliding and sliding on the beams. The ritual reached completion, coming to life as a series of concentric circles around Ishrin that wound themselves tighter and tighter, until eventually he clasped his hands together and pointed at the automaton. It was hidden by what was left of the roof, but it wasn’t a problem. The circles exploded out in a cloud of energy, and from where he was pointing a ray of cold energy, so cold that the whole room was instantly frozen out and the very air became still, erupted out. It pierced the thick metal ceiling of the room like it was tinfoil and continued and towards the automaton. Where they ray touched, everything froze. At first it was the metal plates, losing their wetness to gain a sheen luster of frost, but then it spread to the joints, to the arms, and the movements of the automaton started to grow slow and clunky in a matter of instants, and the cold spread more and more, penetrating inside, robbing the machine of the heat that kept it alive, stilling the moving parts, condensing the steam into water, into ice that grew in volume and exploded its conduits.

The frost didn’t stop. The metal plates began to crack and crumble, too cold to resist the physical force of the ray and the weight of the metal they were supposed to support, and the giant hulking machine first collapsed to a side then, as it fell, it snapped in half.

A yell. “Motherfucker!”

Melina and Lisette turned around immediately.

The blinding light of the ritual dimmed.

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The outer circles crumbled.

Energies run amok, scattering through the room. They hit everything, forming icicles on the walls, freezing the gooey fluid that had flooded the room. Melina made a shield of wind to divert them, and protected Lisette with it too, but they couldn’t see what was happening.

“What the fuck are you doing?” they heard Ishrin scream, maddened, enraged, in pain.

They tried to move against the pressure of the icy wind.

One step.

Another one.

Slowly the energy turned to hail, then to snow, then to rain.

They could see him now, standing crooked and curved, around him the statues of four people encased in ice. One of them was closest to him, and it was holding a knife tipped with crystal.

It was Sir Westys. His head was free of the ice, but the rest of the body was encased in it. He had stabbed Ishrin while he was vulnerable and immobile as he cast the ritual, and had caused him to lose control of it. He was hit by the energies of cold and turned into an ice statue, his body trapped in thick magical ice, stuck in the motion of stabbing Ishrin. The knife itself was stuck, embedded in layers of shining gold ethereal armor, the same armor that had protected Ishrin when the automaton almost killed him, but the color was dull and weak and where the tip of the knife was, the armor was cracked.

The tip had gone deeper. So deep it penetrated his actual armor too.

Ishrin fell to his knee. Melina gasped, but she couldn’t rush to him surrounded as he was with ice. Lisette didn’t care about the ice, and ran to him, and marched in, struggling as the last white ring of the ritual spent itself against her armor.

“Ishrin!” she yelled.

“Ow.” He cried, reaching to his wound with a hand. He pulled out the crystal knife with a grunt and slammed it on the ground so hard it shattered. “Fuck, it hurts.”

Lisette stared at the wound, for a moment unable to think or move. She was holding him, but her mind was racing with garbled thoughts. She felt, somewhat distant, that Melina too was here, and she was massaging her back for some reason. Her back did hurt, actually. But why wasn’t Melina worried?

She looked again. There was no blood.

Ishrin was digging around his armor with his hand. Why was he putting his hand in the wound? Did some part of the crystal knife get stuck there? Did—

A blue light came out. It was the cube. It was Liù!

“What is—” she muttered.

Ishrin was fine. There not even a bruise there, just torn leather armor.

“Thank you, sweetie.” Ishrin said, smiling. “You did good.”

No problem, I protect you >:3

“It was all planned?” Lisette asked, dumbfounded.

“It was a contingency.” Ishrin said, groaning as he stretched. “It hurts like hell, but it works! Now I have two ways to deal with those crystal shit weapons.”

“The cube truly is indestructible, then.” Melina said, staring in disbelief. “Not even a crystal weapon can damage it.”

Ishrin got back to his feet and looked at the girls. They were clinging to him, he noticed, holding him tight. A warmness spread through him, but he felt a bit uncomfortable, like he didn’t deserve having these two people here, with him, so worried and…

“Aww, you’re so sweet! You were worried about me!” he joked, trying to deflect his embarrassment and his negative thoughts, but it felt like he was being an ass doing it. It was awful.

Fortunately Melina was always somehow capable of reading him just right. “Of course, we are, dummy!” she protested, smiling.

“I did indeed worry about you. Twice, today, in fact.” Lisette said. She too was hugging Ishrin, but one arm was also wrapped around Melina. “I worry about the both of you. You are my friends.”

Tears welled up in Melina’s eyes, and Ishrin saw that her tail couldn’t stop moving around.

“Next time don’t walk into an ice ring.” Melina said. “You made me worry!”

“I was worried.” Lisette said. “I did not care about the ice ring.”

“I did! I do care about you! Okay?” Melina said, punching Lisette lightly above the chest.

Lisette stared blankly. “You… do?”

“Of course I do! Dummy, dummy! Why are you two both dummies?”

Lisette shrugged. “I am learning. I think that Ishrin is a bigger… dummy than me.”

They laughed. And it was nice, it felt nice. They were closer than ever, they had been closer than ever for a while now, but they had never shared their feelings with the others. Everyone keeping them for themselves, out of fear perhaps. It felt good to finally know that they all shared this deep connection of love, and trust. Together.

“What do we do with them?” Ishrin asked, pointing at the four statues of ice. The sight of Sir Westys struggling to break free and failing was quite amusing, and the trio shared another laugh before letting go of the hug and returning to a more professional stance.

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