Clockwork Corridors

The space behind the death machines was cramped, dark, and painfully loud, but they had room to navigate all the way to the end, where Uthien dismantled another panel to let them out. There they paused for Espa to apply healing to fix their ringing ears.

After that point, the catacombs changed: rather than dark, crumbling stonework the corridors were lined with metal in the Machine Men style, which included strange glass fixtures that gave off light now that the facility had power. Several seemed to be broken and at least half were noticeably dimmer, but there was enough light to walk without needing Aldan or Ophia to use magic. Pipes lined the ceiling, some of them venting steam from loose junctions. Everything was dusty and lichen and mushrooms had spread across segments where water dripped in, but the enchanted alloys had held up with barely any corrosion.

“Watch for these,” Aldan said, patting a metal ladder which ascended one wall to a trapdoor in the ceiling. “We’ll try to slip past as many hazards as possible; I don’t want to waste our energy fighting random clockworks before we reach the real target. There should be crawlspaces and side tunnels we can use to avoid most of them. Morenna, please alert us if we’re getting close to clockwork soldiers or other constructs. I’m following memorized directions which I can’t swear are completely accurate.”

“You got it.”

“Remember that clockworks don’t need to be facing us to know we’re here,” said Uthien. “They don’t have eyes; they sense by making sounds.”

“Sounds?” Espa asked incredulously. “I don’t remember hearing anything but…clanking and stomping.”

“You wouldn’t have—it’s a pitch well above human hearing. When active, they emit a continuous tone and then navigate by tracking the echoes; they can apparently detect the position of everything in range of the noise.”

“So…like me, then,” Morenna murmured.

“They can’t sense through walls the way you can, sister,” said Uthien. “Also there’s a known counter: those fighting the Machine Men used to set up huge metal gongs that would ring at a frequency that disrupted the sensors and left them confused.”

“I don’t suppose you know where one of those still is?” Rakkan asked.

Uthien shook his head. “I only have…partial, theoretical knowledge. Much about the Machine Men was deliberately suppressed. Many of the measures used against them were accidentally forgotten.”

“Well, that’s all right,” Ophia said primly. “I found a new one!”

Between Aldan and Morenna, they were able to navigate without running into enemies. Surprisingly, some of the side corridors they took to avoid dangers contained walls of dusty glass overlooking rows of clockwork soldiers, and other less-recognizable machines. All of them stood motionless, though Morenna confirmed they were activated because she couldn’t sense inside them. None reacted to the seven youths passing nearby; apparently the glass barriers were enough to defeat their sonic senses.

“The light mage who re-powered all this only knows how to do that,” Aldan said as they walked. “The Machine Men were able to control the clockworks through the enchantments on their heart crystals, but nobody’s figured out how to reproduce that. So…nobody’s holding the strings. By default they’ll defend this space against intruders, but they’ve been rotting for centuries so any we have to fight may act…erratic.”

“Erratic how?” Espa demanded shrilly.

“Well,” said Rakkan, “if all they wanna do is kill us, any off-kilter behavior is in our favor, right?”

“It means we may be caught off-guard if we try to learn and utilize their attack patterns,” said Uthien, adjusting his glasses.

“Do you know who or where this light mage is?” Ophia asked.

Aldan shook his head. “I also didn’t know Zaurgan had smuggled a whole tribe of dissidents into the capital. He’s careful what he reveals to whom.”

They passed through a doorway into another corridor lined on one side with glass. This time the windows overlooked a truly enormous cavern; most of it was still natural stone, though the Machine Men had erected support beams and lights. The floor of it was strewn haphazardly with various contraptions in various states of dissassembly. But against the far wall…

“Holy shit, is that a City Crusher?” Rakkan gasped, rushing forward to press his hands and face against the glass. “What’s it doing in here?”

The clockwork in question was truly colossal, sitting over three stories tall with its legs fully folded up. The six huge legs ended in heavy treads rather than feet; its comparatively squat body bristled with four currently folded arms, with a fifth even larger one attached to the top.

“The reason this facility is so intact,” said Uthien as they all crowded against the window to stare, “is that all this technology was obsolete late in the war. It had been abandoned by the Machine Men; they had only just re-started production here at the time of their fall, as they were desperate enough to use even creaky old contraptions. That’s why the heroes didn’t bother to destroy everything, just building the fortress up top to keep it secured.”

“You mean it wasn’t even the good clockwork soldiers that fought me into a corner?” Morenna demanded. “That’s just…insulting.”

“Sister, no one has fought clockwork soldiers in four hundred years,” said Ophia, patting her back. “The fact you survived was a great victory.”

“I don’t understand why that thing is here, though,” Espa said, still staring at the huge City Crusher. “How’d it even get in here?”

“They probably built it here,” said Uthien. “That looks like a factory floor to me; look how everything down there is half-built. It must not be finished, or they’d have used it when the factory was attacked. I’m not sure how they were planning to get it out; maybe through the wall? It’s got a drill on one of those arms… Unfortunately, it’s like Aldan said. We have no idea why the Machine Men did anything, or what they thought.”

“I suspect Uthien’s right,” said Aldan. “It probably doesn’t work. Still, let’s not go down there and check. Come, we’re almost there; what we want is through the door up ahead.”

One by one they peeled away from the windows, following him down the corridor. All but one.

“Morenna?” Aldan said, turning back. She was still standing with one hand on the glass, staring down.

“Trust,” Morenna whispered to herself. “I don’t… It doesn’t come naturally to me, to…trust. But… You need to know. If we’re up against a shadow mage, you have to know.”

“Sister,” said Ophia, stepping back toward her, “you have nothing to prove. You’ve done so much for us and asked nothing in return. If you have secrets you still need to protect—”

“It’s not about that,” Morenna said, frustrated. “It’s… You’ll be in danger if you don’t know. I’ve never faced another shadow mage before—I’ve never even met one. You have to…”

She trailed off, then took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders, and turned back to face them.

“There’s no such thing as shadow magic.”