Chapter Text
“...The Archcustodian, I presume,” Divayth mused, spreading a heel as though to brace for impact.
“A safe wager,” Caliya agreed, tightening her grip on his elbow. She glared at his unbudgeable frame. “How are you so solid?”
The wizard glared over a spiked shoulder and rolled the captured limb out of her hand. “A poor time to ask, my dear, but since you haven’t stopped doing so for weeks, this armor, unenchanted, weighs enough to be unwearable by most of the elven races. And a considerable percentage of the less-barbaric specimens of men. The magic imbued within removes encumbrance upon the wearer without affecting interactions with external sources. I find it light as a feather. You find it heavy as a garden statue.”
Caliya also found it a failed attempt to distract the wizard from whatever he was planning.
“Target perceived. Engaging.”
The Archcustodian announced its intentions in a surprisingly soft and ladylike voice. A red glow flared along the edges of its angled body and spread down its eight brass legs, illuminating thousands of glyphics and sigils powering its heavy form. The width of it spanned the entirety of the corridor, and its aft crest barely cleared the distant ceiling, supporting the scholar’s theory about the lofty halls in a way she rather wished it didn’t.
“Retreat, Ms. Derynval, you’re in no state to handle this opponent, and neither is the rest of the expedition,” Divayth ordered. His power whipped through the hall as punctuation, blending into and displacing Lord Seht’s placid omnipresence.
He had a point. But it stuttered the gears in the scholar’s chest as she herded the others behind her and started them all down the only remaining path. If this wasn’t what she was meant to oppose, what more could there be down here?
And how could a woman whose entire life had come to this been left so unprepared?
The spider raced toward them with a speed belied by its sheer mass. Divayth had hardly enough time to conjure a ward thick enough, and the force of the impact pulled an audible snarl from his bared teeth.
“If you think I’m giving ground to you, you belligerent bucket of bolts…” he muttered into the ringing silence as it backed away, audibly logged an obstruction error, and hunkered down to try again.
The wizard drew back his arm and snapped it forward with a crisp flick. A lash of molten fire cracked across what should have been the automaton’s chassis.
Instead, a blaze of defensive arcane might flared to life, sweeping around the spider and encasing it in a crisp spherical ward. Its glowing red shifted to a rich purple-blue.
“Opposition encountered.”
No, not arcane might.
Divine.
“Protective of your pet projects, Sil?” Divayth chided, coiling his magic to try again.
The Archcustodian charged a second time, meeting his shield in a stalwart kagouti-rush. A different and very unsettling crack preceded a worrying exhale of what might have been pain.
The wizard didn’t have a quip for that blow.
It slowed Caliya to a stop. She turned and watched Divayth lash out a second time, his tornadic thunderstorm ricocheting off an unyielding orb. Deafening strikes of lightning charred glowing slag holes into the hall's brass as they were turned aside with ease.
And the Archcustodian backed away to batter his defenses again.
“Reinforcement request submitted,” the spider hummed. “Primary target exceeds expected parameters.”
Divyath’s quiet snicker held a note of clear pride.
“REQUEST RECEIVED.”
More pneumatic hissing and the spin-up whines of distant engines.
No.
This couldn’t happen.
Not like this.
The scholar up-shifted her pistons. Under no circumstances was Caliya Derynval going to abandon Divayth Fyr and allow him to duel this colossal construct and whatever it was about to add to its ranks, alone. This was her purpose here; it had to be. Master wizard or not, everyone had their limits, and he seemed to have hit one of his own with that impenetrable shell protecting it. Wall panels slid open throughout the corridor around them, revealing more-reasonably-sized side-passages—empty for now, but the clattering echo of metal-on-metal footfalls suggested that wasn’t going to be the case for long.
“Keep going!” she told the others, at least some of whom had slowed when they noticed she wasn’t still pushing them forward. “Stick to the main hall, don’t make any turns down a smaller one!”
That would lead to the heart of this mess. And something large and inflexible inside her soul told her she was right.
The Archcustodian slammed its sharp forelegs into the grate in rapid succession, rattling the floor as though seeking a better grip. Divayth sent a gale of wind whipping Caliya's way in some attempt to stop her from approaching, but she cleaved it and did not slow.
“In case you hadn't noticed, this purchased time is for you as well! Keep moving!” the wizard snapped.
His foe found whatever footing it was searching for, and launched into another ramming charge.
Divayth bared teeth and braced, pouring power into the ward with both shining palms.
"Funny, I was just thinking about buying some time, myself," Caliya replied, forcing her tingling left hand into a loose curl. The wizard’s power rasped at her soul but Lord Seht's was still there too, thrumming through brass and flowing in pipes of steam and oil around them.
She dropped to a crouch, using her good hand to flatten the other against the grate. The scholar could never match her partner in arcane muscle, but she had other tools at her disposal, and this realm was still home, after all. The crash of spider and ward staggered the automaton backwards as Divayth pulsed his power upon impact. The collision’s force still dented the floor around him into a shallow crater.
And the wizard took a reluctant knee.
"You have one chance," he seethed. There was something frightening in his pinning glare. "Be useful, or I'm taking us elsewhere to puzzle this out."
Their opponent was already regaining her senses.
The dovahfly perched behind Caliya's ear took flight, skimming down her arm to fit itself into her augments and lay flat. Pain lanced up the limb, white hot in its holy purity, as the magic suppressing her nerves unlocked. Another clue that she was right. That this was Lord Seht’s intention for her. She leaned all of her body down onto her wrist to ignore the searing burn, pressing power through the floor, seeking to meld herself with her patron’s ever-gleaming grace.
A braid of temporal kineticism. More like a rope, really. Threaded together with a god's might. Her borrowed divinity slipped through that glimmering sphere in a way Divayth's arcane assault could not, and she touched the Archcustodian within.
Spiders were not her specialty. But their clockwork principles were the same.
Find its brain.
Slow it down.
Its thousands of sigils shined a brighter white-blue than ever, then slowly faded to a purple almost too dark to see. Sluggish lethargy ruled its every movement as the scholar pulled a godly lasso tight around its momentum, and the automaton staggered about as though drunk.
"...De…synchronization…detected…"
"ERROR LOGGED," the grating voice replied.
Like the Hunter-Killers before, she could not stop it completely. But Caliya had done enough, for now.
She had bought them all the time Divayth could not.
Satisfied with the proceedings after a long and careful stare, the wizard gave a quiet nod and busied himself with his own ankle beside her, pouring golden healing into an unseen injury that seemed to cause more annoyance than pain. More healing power spilled into his other knee, and the scholar caught him adjusting a hip with some yellow sparkles as well. He met her gaze and dusted glowing motes from his palms as he rose.
"This armor has many uses," he dismissed, offering her a hand. She took it and let him pull her to her feet. "Hiding fault is a lesser-spoken-of advantage. And you'll continue to speak less of it if you wish to keep my favor."
"Are you alright?" she asked, looking him up and down. The Archcustodian continued to struggle with dizzy attempts at recalibration and log more errors some distance away.
Something flashed behind the wizard's narrow eyes.
"Consider listening, Ms. Derynval, I said speak less of it," he snapped, casting a single glance at their hindered opponent before turning his back and flattening a palm against the scholar's lower spine. "Shall I assume that little trick did you few favors, as well? You're bleeding again."
And so she was. Crimson glinted from the Clockwork dovahfly, spattered along its glassy wings.
But it didn't hurt, at least.
The clockwork bug appeared to have assumed full control of her arm.
Divayth pushed her along beside him, at a good clip now, away from the giant tipsy spider and toward their Undaunted friends. Another pack of wild automata had beset the group upon their retreat, though they were getting the better of their foes and had them nearly conquered by the time the pair arrived.
A few cracks of lightning finished off the remainder, leaving more smoking, glowing holes in the grated floor.
The wizard was mad.
"I've had about enough of this place already," he announced into the ringing aftermath, sweeping himself and his captured escort past the assembly without breaking stride. "Keep up, all of you. Those who dawdle will not be rescued."
She hadn’t even noticed he was healing her hand again, too.
The Archcustodian was no longer a looming threat. For all its prior speed, the spider labored now, held at bay in a manner Caliya found almost too easy to maintain. As easy as breathing, nearly. Some small part of her wondered if this was how Lord Seht himself handled his vast might. How Divayth Fyr manipulated the aurbic currents. More and more it seemed confirmed that this was, indeed, the purpose of her sudden and violent influx of converted power.
The idea kept her happy—or at least relieved—that she’d made herself useful to the expedition again.
At least, for a while it did, as reinforcement upon reinforcement was laid to waste by wizardly wrath and Undaunted might, until the angled corridors finally dumped them into a spacious oval dominated by a central platform tall enough to tower overhead. It forced their current path into a wide ring, the circuit only discovered when they’d traversed its circumference with just enough time for their sluggish clockwork stalker to join them and seal the exit behind her.
“Con…taminants…captured.”
There was a warp to her voice, now. An unsettling warble in her mechanical pitch. That divine shield still glistened around her brass as she bore down on the cornered expedition. And the scholar realized there was yet more to be done.
The dovahfly was her second hint. It disengaged from her hand and tugged at her hair, urging her upward, toward that wide, central platform. Her first had been something deeper, something larger—that same something that had been subtly guiding her here all this time. She disentangled herself from Divayth and stepped away, gauging the height and looking for anything resembling a hand- or a foothold.
“Keep it at bay or run,” she told them all, gathering power of a less godly nature in the smaller pockets of her soul. “I know how to stop it.”
“Do you, now?” Divayth needled dubiously behind her, but she was already leaping up pipeworks and spindles, three limbs working in concert with some assistive sticky magic to haul herself skyward.
A twist of might brought the wizard to her destination first, but his hand was not hers to take. From the edge of her vision his narrow frown passed, and only by sense alone did she know he was following closely.
His questions would be answered by deed, not by word. An unopposable sense of duty had hold of her soul, now. Her goal—a small dias, upon which sat a large squat brick of brass and glass. Gauges and dials, levers and switches, humming and clanking with quiet, repetitive rhythm.
And two small, parallel slots, not nearly as hidden as those outside the Cavern of Parturition all those weeks ago.
The dovahfly steadied her aim, zipping down her arm to lift it for her. A spark of divinity flinched the black-clad hand trying to stop her, sizzling up Divayth’s armor and pulling a sharp rebuke from the mer. More of the same encased her and the control panel alike, blooming from the scholar’s chest and body-checking interference away, directed by a will greater than her own.
As Seht’s first two Keys clicked into place, a third panel opened beneath, a silent summons to initiate the connection.
Her heart ticked with nervous necessity. There were no safeguards between her soul and this divine authenticator. Nothing to layer between herself and what was expected of her.
Between her life and what she must give it for.
Recessed actuators secured her thumb with cold efficiency.
The City demanded its creator’s credentials.
She did not feel the aurbic meteor slamming the barrier around her, and nor did its unflinching stillness allow the crash to disturb her ear. Divayth battered the faultless shell with ancient power and primal oaths sworn in rare tongues, but he would not reach her in time to stop what must come to pass.
Pain and power flowed through reshaped bones.
She barely had time for a breath before it was stolen.