Chapter 46: No one expects you to go through the wall

“Try again. Try to mean it.”

“Things are gonna be okay.” Demarcus says, adding a firmness to his words that fades into awkwardness, shifting his weight from foot to foot like a lanky white boy at junior prom as he looks at his friends’ faces staring at him, deep in thought.

A moment passes, and Izzy speaks up.

“Yeah, I'm not feeling it. What's the wording again?”

“[Morale Boosting Words].”

“Hm. Maybe our morale isn't actually all that bad? I feel like I, of all people, would need it— what with the leg and all— but I don't feel anything when ya say that— beyond the normal amount of encouragement, of course.” Izzy clarifies.

Demarcus’ shoulders sag slightly, and he chances a glance at Cy as, internally, he disagrees that Izzy is the one most in need of comforting words.

Mato interjects as he softens some dry rations with Cy, who is heating broth with a controlled flame in his palm.

“It's a good skill. I hope ya never need it to work. If ya did, that'd mean we're really in the weeds. Your other skill, [Reassuring Presence] is definitely workin’— though, havin’ ya with us was already reassurin’”

Cy snorts at the obvious attempts to comfort or ‘suck up,’ and Mato nudges his leg with a foot and gives him a look.

“Yeah but it's more like… I understand that you'd fight for me, how strong you are. And not just physically— I dunno it's— a weird… subconscious thing.” Izzy expounds, growing slightly embarrassed at her explanation.

“What about my skill? [Enhanced Art: Blood, Sweat, and Tears]. I kinda get an… intuition of what it does but— nothing specific.” She asks.

“Dunno.” Demarcus admits, sitting down with the group as Mato shrugs.

“Cy, you probably know, right? You've seen versions of us from the future, right? Ya gotta know what the skill does.”

Cy keeps his eyes pointedly on the flame in his hand, and rushes to answer.

“Nope.”

“You haven't seen me use it, or does Mr. Know-it-all not actually know what it does?” Izzy asks.

“Oh I know what it does, don't even have to see it used to know that, I'm just not gonna tell you.” Cy answers, then, after receiving their frustrated glares, takes a long sigh. The flame shifts and flicks with his breath.

“There's a reason why I'm not gonna tell you— not because I'm an asshole. Solely.” He cuts off Izzy's retort.

“Skills have some wiggle room. They're a part of you. If two people had the exact same skill, it'd be slightly different for both of them. Part of that is because intent and interpretation are a— small— factor in a skill's effects. So, if I told you what it's supposed to do, it might affect your interpretation and, in turn, limit what the skill could do. So, why don't you tell us what you think it does?” Cy condescends.

Demarcus rolls his eyes at Cy's weakness for explaining things, and catches Izzy doing the same. They share an amused look before Isabella answers.

“Well, I think that it makes any ‘art’ I put blood, sweat, or tears into— better? That's the sense I get, but I do wonder if it means effort in general or if I actually have to bleed or sweat for it.”

“That makes sense.” Mato responds as Cy gestures with an open palm in a ‘there ya go’ gesture, setting down the pot of broth.

“Any art ya put effort into is better anyways.”

“How d’ya think it makes it ‘better’?”

“I don't know.” Izzy admits, slightly frustrated and picking at her bandages.

“It could do anything; make my playing better, add some instrumentation, magically change what I sang to something better— but who even decides what's better? Me? Art is subjective.”

“Either you or the Great Work. It's supposed to be all knowing, might actually objectively know what makes art better.” Cy snides.

“Now eat. Soup’s getting cold and this bread is dry as hell. What is this, cornbread?”

The group eats in frequent silence; amicably and otherwise. When they finish, they pack up, and Demarcus slaps his dirty and sweat-reeking helmet onto his head as Cy unseals the metal double doors he had recovered and welded shut with a spell.

They step back out into the hall, where the mounted turret locks onto them and resumes its impotent clicking like a boomer at an office computer. Cy's [Light] spells drift to either side, illuminating the beginnings of that pale green-grey hive to the left, and the high-ceilinged stone hall to the right.

“So, left or right?” Cy asks.

“Bit of a false dichotomy. Could go forward.” Izzy says, pointing at the short metal door in front of them, with the odd hole to its side.

“You wanna try and break into the sealed door with a machine-gun turret mounted on the ceiling above it? With a bum leg so you can't run?” Cy asks, leading the witness.

“I'm just saying it's an option.” Izzy mutters, indignant.

“You did say that sign says it's the person in charge’s office. Maybe we could find out what this place is?” Demarcus remarks.

“I said no such thing. All I said was this character is a prefix that means whatever this sign is describing is in charge of the next character. This could be the fuckin— main pump room for all I know!” Cy quickly exculpates, avoiding promises like the plague.

“Either way, the main anythin’ is useful. But yer right, I don't like the security in place around it. Or the fact that that gun’s still workin’ despite no lights or power bein’ on anywhere else.”

Mato rubs his thumb over the handle of his knife, thinking, his old habit snapping him out of his thoughts when the knife doesn't feel the same as it did back on Earth. He quickly remembers this isn't the same knife he had for 40-something years as a park ranger, that this isn't his mountain, and that the 3 kids are looking at him.

He looks back at them, an eyebrow quirked in question, and Demarcus just keeps staring, then asks him directly.

“So, what's the plan?”

Demarcus watches Mato look away from him, his gaze lingering on Cy, then quickly looking between the 3 of them as he picks up on something.

“Hm? Yer askin’ me?”

“I mean, I say we go in the door. The curiosity is killing me. But you would know how to best do that.” Izzy remarks.

“Yeah, man, you know what you're doing. At least, more than the rest of us. Experience counts for something, you'd catch some mistakes at least.” Demarcus says.

Mato feels a bit of the genuine trust coming from them as Demarcus says that, though he isn't sure he can live up to it. He looks back at Cy, assuming the firestarter would have something to say about it or something to prove, but the boy just shrugs.

“Don't look at me, I'm just the chaperone.”

Demarcus watches Mato digest their expectations, swallow some protestations, and start really thinking about the problem.

He turns to Cy.

“Firstly, gotta ask, ya got an easy way to get into the door?”

Cy shrugs.

“I mean, probably.”

Cy approaches the door, knocking on it with two knuckles. Then he sits cross-legged on the floor, getting bug juice even further on his traveling pants. He closes his eye and breathes deep, almost looking meditative. He stands back up, brushing at his pants and grimacing, before giving his assessment.

“I'd have to blow open the door. The alloy it's made out of would be… unpleasant to have to melt through. Honestly, it'd probably be easier to go through the wall around it. This is just granite. One of the more durable stones but easier than the door. But that's not the problem.”

He turns back around.

“The problem is that I'd be doing the work for you. Sure, you'd get some credit for teamwork and leadership, ‘utilizing my abilities’ or some such, but c'mon, you're just leaving levels on the table if ya have me do it.”

Isabella scoffs.

“Ugh. The levels aren't the important part here, it's the— the adventure. I just wanna see what's behind the door, I don't care if I level from it.”

Demarcus subtly nods along to that, with Mato just raising his eyes back to Cy.

Cy looks frustrated for a moment, then pensive. He speaks quietly, under his breath.

“You should. You really should care.”

The group looks confused or concerned before he perks back up.

“But hey! That attitude is kinda punk rock, the whole ‘I do what I wanna cuz it matters, not for some incentive’ thing, so, good job!”

“Fine, fuck it, I'll open it, but you gotta make the decisions, Mato. So, what'll it be? Bomb or melt? And door or wall? Keeping in mind that melting stuff is mana-intensive as all hell and I'm already a little cooked from earlier. We could also try thermal shock or cutting with pressurized water but— I'm not as good with that and experimenting would probably burn through my mana just the same.”

Mato just looks at Cy’s saccharine grin for a beat, not sure what he's looking for but knowing when something is up. Then he thinks about it, and answers.

“Melt the wall.”

Demarcus nods, and whispers an aside to Izzy.

“A lotta security stuff is built around doors. No one expects you to go through the wall.”

Cy sets to work, having them back up back into the workshop because, in his words, ‘lava is hot.’

The wall begins to glow a dull red, then orange, then melt away as a bright yellow. Flame licks off of it, catching on dust particles in the air as Cy flows it away from the stone wall to the side of the door.

The molten rocks runs like molasses, flowing out from the wall slowly forming a divot and instantly setting the dead bugs on the floor alight. It flows around Cy’s ankles, and he seems completely unphased by the localized heat, a temperature measured in the thousands of degrees. He just seems focused.

Slowly, that small divot becomes a conical hole, the diameter starting at around 6 feet and ending at just shy of a foot, 2 feet deep. All that shifted stone slowly pools around Cy’s feet, dispersing outwards before he makes a crushing motion with his hand, and it flows back into a tight hill of molten rock. Cy shifts his spell, and the hill of cooling lava rolls to the corner on the other side of the door. The group is transfixed, watching as he follows it, and Mato almost jumps to shout something as Cy leans down to touch it.

His fingers touch the glowing slope of orange granite, and the outer shell of the rock quickly dims. Demarcus’ jaw clicks open as Cy’s fingers steal the orange glow of the lava.

His fingers brighten, the bones within visible as if a light is shining through them. The molten rock slowly dims from the outside-in, the core of it holding out longer, and with every degree of temperature they drop, Cy's fingers grow hotter. The heat seems to travel up then until his whole hand glows, flowing with his blood into his chest. The glow stops at the edges of his neck and clavicle, beneath the hood of his green traveling cloak. He takes a deep breath, and as the last of the heat leaves the rock, his body dims.

Quite literally spellbound, Demarcus is the first to move, beginning to shout something before Cy holds out a hand yelling for him to stay back.

“This whole room is still incredibly hot. Give me a second.”

He touches a few more things; the door, the floor, the hole in the wall— until all that's left is a hole, a much cleaner floor, and a pile of cooled granite, obsidian, and melted bug corpses.

Cy brushes his hands against each other and gestures them back in.

“The hole is only a foot wide but it's enough to see through, and Demarcus can break through the rest of it.”

The group tentatively steps in, until Demarcus runs up and shakes him, screaming as Cy scrambles to push him away.

“That was so fucking cool! Bro, you're an actual Wizard!”

Cy pushes him back, a small [Telekinetic Throw] from a flick of a finger adding enough force to break him free.

“Not a [Wizard]. Those guys are all ritual and storing magic in items and stuff. And that was, like, two spells; [Molten Meld] and… [Siphon Heat]. C'mon, let's look at the hole.”

Izzy barks back at the shifty-eyed [Mage], wonder at the magic overtaking her snark.

“How many spells do you know?”

Cy squints back from where he crouches in front of the hollowed wall.

“I know a lot of… nature spells. Now please, there's a perfectly good hole right here that you people are just ignoring.”

The group gathers around, staring into the hole as Cy drifts a [Light] spell through it.

Mato snatches Cy’s arm, pulling it down from where he directs the light.

“Hold on a sec.”

They pause, eyes trained on Mato.

“D’ya hear that?”

Their heads quirk, ears trained. Demarcus takes off his helmet to hear better, before Izzy whispers.

“Yeah, no, I do.”

Cy and Demarcus look at her and Mato. D shakes his head and Cy begins casting some spell, but stops as Izzy begins flicking her forefinger down, conducting to a beat.

Paying attention to her finger, and desperately trying to ignore and filter out all sounds that don't match it, Cy and Demarcus pick up on something.

Just beneath the rhythmic click-click-click- of the gun, is another sound, heard from the other ear, through the hole. Faint and distant, but noticeable because it is just off-beat from the gun.

Click-cl-thok-ick-click-click-c-thok-lick

All now aware of it, Demarcus mouths ‘what is that?’ to the group, and is answered by blank stares and shrugs.

Mato readies his crossbow, training it on the hole as Cy and Izzy back up behind him and Demarcus. Cy directs his [Light] spell back towards the hole, painting the stone in fiery oranges, reflecting off newly formed obsidian and casting the shadows on their faces into stark relief.

As it passes through, the 4 crowd around to see, faces squishing against each other, Cy spitting some of Izzy's curly hair out of his mouth.

Through the hole in the granite wall, with that syncopated rhythm driving their heartbeats into accelerando, they see stone. Stone walls, with some decoration and accoutrements, the edge of a raised stone flat surface— a desk, with a console and screens upon it, and an ancient faux-leather chair knocked over on the floor behind it. Everything visible is caked in a layer of dust. Odd lines where the dust is thicker and thinner in turns gives a strange impression of waves. The room beyond this visible left corner is blocked by the edges of the hole.

The sound continues, unchanged, despite the [Light] flickering and floating within the chamber it originates from.

The group exchanges glances, and Mato signals them to back up. They sidle and crouch back from the hole.

“S’far as I see it, we got two main options,” Mato begins, with a whisper.

“Either we break that hole open further, or someone peeks their head through.”

They consider for less than a second before Izzy rebukes.

“Sticking your head through is a great way to get it cut off.”

Cy cracks a teasing smile.

“I dunno… Demarcus, you're well-versed in putting your face on the other side of holes, what're your thoughts?”

Demarcus shoves Cy gently, still causing the little man to topple from where he crouched.

“Shut up.” Demarcus says, secretly happy that Cy is still joking with him, glad that his friend’s compulsion to verbally poke at people overrides his self-imposed social exile.

“But seriously, I think we should break it open. At least that way we'll all be standing on this side, ready. It could be that that sound isn't even anything, just a busted fan or some shit.”

Izzy and Cy give his optimism a deadpan stare, accidentally meet gazes, and have to hold back bits of laughter.

“Yeah, yeah, alright. Imma start busting the wall. Get ready.” Demarcus whispers.

His armor clanks as he comes to full standing. His party shuffles behind him, getting sightlines to the hole and door without getting in the way. Izzy sits against the molten rock, wounded leg extended, as she readies her hands above her guitar to put down a [Wall of Sound]. Mato keeps his crossbow level, a second bolt already in his other hand. Cy pulls his Pokin’ Stick from his fanny pack of holding, and sidles to the center-back of the alcove, turning his stance in an odd angle to try and have the halls to either side of them in the peripheral of his one eye.

Demarcus walks up to the conical hole in the wall, pulling his crowbar and leaning awkwardly to hook it on the lip of the opening. He yanks, breaking nothing, then pushes the crowbar further in so there is an impact from the hooked end as he pulls. Once more, with both hands, he yanks the crowbar back, and stumbles as shards of stone chip away from the hole.

The group tenses, waiting, but the repeating thok just continues.

Demarcus leans back in, sees the 3 inch triangular chip he broke free from the circumference of the hole, and moves to repeat the process all along the brittle edge.

Once, twice, and three times more before he says “ah fuck it.” and just starts hacking away at the stone.

Bits of granite fly back as he breaks away the thinnest edges of the hole. As it widens to a 2 foot diameter, he has to move to hammering. 8 minutes of progress, and he has to start chiseling with the flat end of his crowbar first. A large section of stone falls away, and Demarcus steps back, breathing heavy.

“Alright. That's about as big as I'm gonna make it. We'll still have to duck but, whatever.”

Mato claps him on the shoulder in approval, and they agree that Demarcus, as the armored member, should go first.

Cy keeps the fact that his personal barriers are stronger than D’s plain steel armor to himself.

Demarcus ducks low, having to muscle his large form past some of the sharp edges of the hole, thankful for the armor and muttering to himself about ‘making the fat guy go in the hole,’ but gets past.

The other 3 watch Demarcus right himself, widening his stance and clutching his crowbar at the ready. He looks sharply to the right, peering forward in the firelight, and see his jaw working in confusion and uncertainty.

He opens his mouth, shuts it, then speaks.

“Excuse me?”

The rest outside share quick glances of fear and uncertainty.

“Uh… you alright? Are you— a person?”

He winces at his own words and quickly turns back to the group. He desperately shrugs at them, his face twisted in confusion and doubt.

Mato shoots forward, slipping through the hole as Cy follows behind, and Izzy starts trying to stand, cursing to herself as she staggers on her wounded leg.

Mato enters and stops, keeping Cy stuck in the hole behind him and forced to peek past the stone and Mato’s ass. Demarcus snaps his eyes back to the origin of the repetitive sound as it suddenly stops.

Izzy desperately whispers “what is it?” Behind Cy, who opens his mouth to respond but never gets to.

What Demarcus beheld as he entered this small office, in the right corner of the room, next to 2 short dust-caked filing cabinets, was a rust-rouged and dust covered metallic form, short, stout, and hunched over. He stares at the back of it, and watched as its shoulder drew back, then punched forward, its eclipsed arm impacting with a thok. Then the other, pulling back with a small spark where the left shoulder ends suddenly, armless save for dangling wires and metal skeletature and scaffolding, still going through the motions of a punch that never lands.

When Demarcus speaks, and the rest follow into the room, the punching stops, and the figure goes suddenly still.

A creak grows as the humans shuffle in, forced forward by their comrades still ducking in the hole until all 4 stand on the left side of the room, dust flying up from their movements.

With a sudden snap and a scream of metal as joints rusted together finally give under pressure, the thing turns to face them as the party tenses. Mato almost pulls the trigger but maintains discernment despite the sudden movement.

It turns, and slowly rises with horrific metal screeches and snaps of joints unmoved in years shifting or breaking. The tense and nervous humans watch the flickering firelight catch and glance off the metal humanoid form.

What they see is a rusted and busted metal man— or, well, Dwarf. Its form is stylized and artistic. Hand-made, not manufactured. Metal slats and panels interlock like a camera shutter on parts of it, keeping a perfect seal— now broken and rusted shut— on certain openings. Its steel frame covers its internal structure, but holes and breaks reveal frayed and rusted inner workings. It is short, 4 feet and change, and wide. Its head is a metal impersonation of a bearded dwarf in a working helmet. Small panels and screws show places where it could be opened to work upon. The single arm, kept in front of it at a ready position, ends in an oddly shaped, wide and thick hammer— more of a curved mallet. The hammer is bowed, bent, and eroded into a deep groove where it had been repeatedly used to bash into something.

A terrible sound screeches from little speaker boxes set within the metal beard, followed by popping, then the voice of demons. The group tenses, even covering their ears as the robot attempts to speak, and its voice breaks and distorts like an old Singing Bass whose batteries had died decades ago.

Occasional individual words break through the distortion, the sound snapping back to normalcy whenever the robot tries to speak an undamaged sound, and are translated by the Great Work. But the incomplete or indecipherable words remain untranslated, and reveal hints of the gregarious and guttural language that the robot is trying to speak, beneath the warping distortion tainting it into sounding like a man fighting for his life in a truck stop bathroom stall.

“GWE— kzzt— Disrepair. Auxillory— KOF— functional, operating at 58— DREEEeeee— in emergency override. OoooooOooo— require confirmation. AAAAAEEEEnNnNnN— return to —NnNnNnN— for repairs or maintain current orders?”

The group lower their hands from their ears, looking shocked and confused between each other, and watch the metal dwarf, waiting to see what it will do.

When it simply stands, waiting for their response, they discuss with their eyes and silent gestures. Izzy shrugs aggressively, and gestures towards the robot with both hands. Cy shakes his head and purses his lips, holding up his hands to say he's staying out of it. Mato and Demarcus meet gazes as Demarcus opens his mouth, waiting for a bit to see if anyone protests, and then speaks.

“Uh… maintain current orders?”

The rust-bucket of a dwarf does half of some kind of nod, then seems to reset its stance. It stands for a second, then its head faltering and jaggedly moves, taking them in truly for the first time.

Its demonic voice erupts again.

“ZEEEE— unrecognized. Incident report sent to— OOOOAAAAA— reminded to wear their ID badges.”

Its head seems to kick with a shock, before turning with a snap to Demarcus in the far corner, then lands its gaze on each of the humans before it in turn with violent speed and precision.

“NnNnNnnnaaaaa— unable to distinguish— FREG— Response conflict flagged. Defaulting to RE-SHa-SHA-SHa-SHA— highest priority, designated ‘Scabs_response_frgworker’.”

The dwarven robot takes a limping step, then its slatted metal beard attempts to open, getting stuck on the left side and only revealing a triangle opening to internal machinery. The group leans forward, curious, and immediately lean back from the belch of sputtering fire that bursts forth. Demarcus’ eyebrows are only saved by the metal occluding his side.

Izzy and Cy aren't so lucky, eating the entirety of it. Izzy falls back with a scream as Cy just takes it, throwing a magical shield around Izzy a moment later.

Mato’s crossbow twangs, sending a bolt splintering off the metal chassis of the stout robot. Cy punches back a orange-tinted translucent bolt of force as he turns to Izzy. The [Magic Missile] misses and bursts against a wall with a cloud of dust as Demarcus reels on his feet, swinging his crowbar clumsily, but solidly, smacking the violent machine in the side of its torso, forcing its weight onto its right leg and sending it toppling as something in that leg breaks. It falls against the desk with a crack of stone, Demarcus’ hit not even denting the metal on the side.

Cy crouches over Izzy, whose hand shakes just above the edge of her neck, breathing hard.

“I know, I know— let me. Just lemme—”

He casts a spell, and forces his hand past her blocking arms to touch the burn on her neckline. She gasps a breath to scream but breaks it off as the heat from the burn fades to a pulsing wound when Cy siphons the heat from the burn.

In a single second, they both realize the burn could've been far worse if not for the jacket and her thick hair insulating most of her.

He hoists her to her feet as they turn to find Demarcus keeping a foot on the side of the robot, holding the hammer-arm tightly extended behind it as the hammer tries to fold in to change to something else. Mato has his knife out, trying to plunge it between the panels of metal in an armpit, but having to jump back from another belch of flame.

Cy moves to engage but Izzy catches his arm.

“[Heat Shield] me.” She says between breaths.

He casts the spell with a quirk of an eyebrow, and she shoves off from the wall she leaned against, hobbling forward with determination and frustration.

Izzy ducks beneath Mato’s arm, takes fire to the face with an instinctual flinch, but follows through to reach into the triangular opening in the robot’s beard. Her hands land against a rounded canister with a focused opening, feeling distantly warm. She tugs, and gets no purchase, even with a leg of leverage against its chest. Too solid. She changes tack, and begins dextrously rifling around, twisting or snapping anything she can get her hands on, getting cut against sharp edges of machinery, shocked from yanked wires, until she pulls back when she yanks loose a tube, filling the internal cavity with fuel that instantly ignites.

She limps and staggers back, before being helped by Mato. The party stands back at the entry hole they dug, and just watch the trashcan fire that the dwarven robot has turned into.

Breathing, and the flickering fire, before Mato turns to Izzy, fussing over her and her burn. She smacks his hand away before relenting just enough to show him it's not that bad. Cy steps over towards the flaming robot, sucking the fire into a ball around his finger and suffocating it, then inspecting its workings. Demarcus had followed him, but now steps around the robot to where he'd originally found it, hunched over.

He sees rust and dust outlining the spot where it knelt, scraps of decrepit cloth, and something yellow beneath it.

Demarcus waves at Cy to bring the [Light] spell over, and Cy splits a second ball of flame from the first and diverts it towards D, keeping his primary light as he works. Izzy and Mato follow the [Light] to Demarcus, having mistakenly thought his gesture was asking them to get closer, and they see the same as him.

The flickering ball of flame floats above the metal frame of the robot and the shadow of the desk slowly lowers, revealing long, intricate, and thick yellow rods in odd slopes and curves. Mato is the first to recognize the dwarf’s bones, despite being far thicker than a human's, and lets out a breath through his noise.

When Demarcus notices, he flinches back from where he kneels over it, and Izzy tsks.

“Ooo. That's rough.” She laments.

Cy peeks up from his mechanical autopsy and his eyebrow raises, unsurprised, before he huffs with amusement at the sight of the skeleton ending abruptly above the neck, and the depression punched into the wall and lined with powdered skull where the robot was repeatedly hammering with its tool-arm.

The amusement fades a bit at the ancient stain of decomposition around the bones, old enough that even the smell has disappeared.

“See, this is what happens when you leave a golem with a task for years. Or give it some asinine order like ‘pound his skull into dust.’” He jokes.

“C'mon now, someone died.” Mato scolds.

“Demarcus, back away from ‘em. Leave ‘em be.” He waves D back.

Demarcus steps back, brushing his gauntlets against his legs, grossed out by the bones, until Izzy pipes up.

“Well, maybe check to see if it had an ID? The death-machine said we were unrecognized and need to wear IDs— I think.”

Demarcus nods and hesitantly kneels to check the skeleton. He talks to distract himself.

“It also called—”

“Just check ‘round ‘em, don't move the bones.” Mato interrupts with a pleading hand, kneeling to help look as Demarcus continues speaking.

“—us ‘scabs’; which, I don't get.”

Demarcus backs off as Mato carefully pulls away bits of rotting cloth, without moving the bones from where they rest.

“Maybe it's metaphorical. Like, we're the body's response to a rotting wound, or something.” Cy pipes up from behind the metal shell, where he pulls out a half-full canister and pries out a gemstone.

Demarcus nods along, thinking ‘that makes sense’, until Izzy replies “What? No. That makes no sense. What does that even have to do with this?”

Cy peeks up, eye narrowed in peevement. “Cuz we're scabs.”

“What?” Izzy asks, growing indignant at the confusion.

“It called us scabs.” Cy continues, as Demarcus’ head flicks between them.

“Yeah, what does that have to do with scabs?” Izzy asks.

“...What?!” Cy yells, like a man losing chess to a pigeon.

Mato half-stands to admonish them, but Izzy takes the initiative.

“Wait-wait wait, wait. Something is up. I don't think we’re saying the same thing. Pendejo, you said when I call you ‘pendejo’ it doesn't translate, right?”

Cy nods suspiciously, until his eye lights up and rushes to speak.

“Oh— define the word you're saying. We're saying ‘scab’ as in the hard coagulated blood that covers a healing wound.”

“I'm saying ‘scab’, spelled ‘e-s-q-u-i-r-o-l’ meaning the temporary workers that take the place of workers on strike.” Izzy hurriedly replies, a slight smile on her lips at figuring out the problem.

The gringos smack their hands to their foreheads or open their mouths in realization.

“Ooooh, scabs.” They say in unison.

“Homophone.” Cy says, ducking back beneath the chassis of the disemboweled union-robot.

“Fucking English.” Izzy mutters.

“Language.” Mato chides.

“Yes. Yes it is. 10 points to Mato.” Cy jokes, pointing a bit of scrap metal at Mato from over the robot his head is inside.

“Damn, I didn't know the— The System or whatever— could mess up translation like that.” Demarcus says, leaning against the end of the stone desk, then jumping when the crack down its center shifts.

“Well, it dudn’t do writin’. Like this.” Mato says, standing with a grunt and handing a small metal rectangle, slightly rusted, off to Izzy.

“That might be an ID, but can't read it. Best we got.”

Izzy pockets it into an internal pocket in her wyvern leather jacket as Mato looks softly at the bones.

“Not sure what to do with the remains. Could burn ‘em, but, dunno what these folks’ funereal rights are. Might be best to leave ‘em as is, lay a cloth over ‘em if we got one, let folks know what's down here when we get back up.”

Cy leans over the top of the toppled robot, and pockets some piece of it into his fanny-pack of holding, and glibs.

“Could just put the bones in a box and take ‘em with us.”

Mato shoots him a look, knowing that Cy is poking at him and challenging the importance of this— but treating the dead with respect matters, so he tries to enforce the boundary.

“This is somebody's loved one. Just cuz you don't care what happens to your body dudn't mean no one does. We ain't disturbin’ their rest more than we have to.”

“Well then our lungs are filled with somebody's loved one. Ship kinda sailed on not disturbing them when their skull got turned to powder and their body decomposed into the dust we've been kicking around in.”

Demarcus and Izzy come peeling out of the hole in the wall, Demarcus smacking his helmeted head on the short opening, covering their mouths and spitting and gagging dramatically once back into the main hall. Mato follows after, dragging Cy along with him, who shakes free from his grasp and turns over a small brassy orb in his hands.

The two crybabys who think breathing in a little bit of dead person is beneath them finish spitting and shuddering, and the group subconsciously gravitates towards the right hall— subtly led that way and away from the hive by Cy’s [Light] spell moving in that direction— walking along as Demarcus supports Izzy on one shoulder, whispering jokes of reassurance.

“It’s interesting.” Cy begins, turning over the brassy orb in his hands, letting his fingertips flow over a groove along its diameter.

“I’ve— ya know I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that. The golem, I mean.” He says, joyful puzzlement leaking into his voice.

“In what way?” Mato asks, eyes vacillating between watching the group and examining the walls of the hall they now walk down.

“Well, it’s got electronics. Beyond the copper wiring and the basic stuff, I mean. Microchips, processors, shit like that. But, also…” Cy says, tugging at the brass orb, until the top of it pops off like a plastic easter egg.

“Magic.”

He holds out the orb to show the group, and they see an inside like a glossy geode; square angles on colorful rock like bismuth, with a strange glowing liquid running through grooves like tubes or veins.

He closes it.

“I’ve seen some items that merge magic and electronics, like a pixel-based screen displaying inputs from an enchantment, but this… this is something else entirely. I dunno much about golems, but I know you let magic do most of the work. I know a bit about computers but— this is magic and technology entangled and interfacing to a degree that… I’ll be honest, I don’t understand. They built a magic computer, is what I’m saying.”

“Wow.” Izzy says, Cy’s earnest tone of voice granting her the appreciation more than any acknowledgement of the actual subject. “What does that mean? For us.”

“It means…” Cy says, resealing the orb before glancing back at her over his shoulder with a smug grin.

“We steal anything not nailed down.”

***

“No. We're not doing that.” Mato says, shutting the suggestion to loot down not even a second later.

“Listen, Mato, you're a smart guy, you've been around, but not here. This is a dungeon. Looting is actively encouraged! This is the find of the century! Okay, maybe decade.” Cy remarks, dismissively.

“That's not what's important right now.” Mato grits through his teeth, gripping his crossbow tight.

“Well we might as well do it! Shaft 6 is gonna be crawling with adventurers once this gets discovered.” Cy reasserts, staring at the back of Mato’s head as the [Ranger] takes point, head on a swivel.

Cy peers at the sides of the hall for another screen he can pry up, but only finds a door with a metal plate welded over it.

“This place is getting looted regardless so we might as well be…the… huh.”

Cy takes in his surroundings, and begins to pick up on the things he ignored once disregarded as “unlootable.”

The scorch marks on the stone walls, the sealed doors, the way their footsteps don't echo the same as the hall begins to clutter with tossed aside metal tables and barricades, the stains.

“You meant not important cuz we're in an old battlefield, didn't you?” Cy asks, and Mato silently nods from in front of him.

“You just picking up on that now?” Izzy whispers from behind him.

“Jeez, forgive me, my enthusiasm for discovery made me a bit focused. That [Heed The Omens] skill really comes in handy, huh?” Cy says, flippantly not lowering his voice.

He stands casually, fingers on each hand flicking apart and dividing his [Light] spell into dozens by siphoning off some of the flame. He raises his hand and the fires of each spell regain their intensity, and with a tossing motion, they fly down the hall.

His spells float with the flutter of flames, then one by one abruptly stop. Floating, logless campfires hover ominously, making a daisy chain of light down the hallway. The cluster of spells flying out and dropping one off at the edge of the prior [Light] spells reach, overlapping in the dim.

Efficiently, the hall before them is revealed. Dust and stone cover the floor, still cluttered with broken makeshift barricades, and even the occasional wooden board. Further down the hall, about 60 feet, the doors stop being welded shut. At the same place, the floor abruptly clears of dust and debris. Dark pools stain the floor before them, and suddenly cut off into pristine stone, leaving the shape of half a puddle.

Between each unwelded door, is a single metal hatch, flush with the stone wall, hinged to flap upwards. Along the walls above them are slapshod facsimiles; metal sheets attached to the wall by a single hinge, clearly new and unplanned additions. The amount varies unevenly between each door. One space has 2, while another, 4. One or two have copper wire exposed and torn from the wall, once having led to the hinges.

The hall continues beyond the 40-50 foot section where those flaps line the walls. The party see no more visible signs like the metal barricades or hatches past the odd section, but only Mato would have a chance to see it with his [Eagle-eyed] skill, and Cy stops summoning and maintaining [Light] spells after a certain point.

“Ominous.” Cy says.

“Well, that's obviously a trap. What the hell happened down here? Strike gone wrong?” Izzy asks.

Mato kneels, and brushes his fingers against a stain on the floor, finding it incredibly old and dry.

“Maybe it's a skynet situation. Golem rebellions happen.” Cy remarks, then notices a dark screen half hidden by a welded plate, and walks over to it.

Demarcus grips his crowbar nervously, then eyes one of the barricaded doors to their side.

“A lotta security stuff is based around doors…” Demarcus mutters to himself, looking back to the hallway, imagining the long corridor as just one long doorway.

He looks back at the welded doors to their sides.

“What was that, Demarcus?” Izzy asks him.

Demarcus strides forward, walking up to a door ahead of them, welded shut with the least wide plate.

“No one expects you to go through the wall.” He says, and slams the edge of his crowbar into the few millimeter gap between the door and the plate.

He pulls on it hard, warping the metal slightly and giving him more space to jam the crowbar deeper.

“Uh… I'm all for this, but— Demarcus that's a door.” Cy remarks.

Izzy's eyes alight as Mato startles from the sudden noise. “No, I get it.” She says. “Principle’s the same.”

“Yeah, see—” Demarcus says, pulling hard on the un-budging crowbar. “—they want us to go down the hall, or expect that we will.”

He hoists himself to put his full weight on the angled crowbar, his feet leaving the floor for a second.

“Fuck that.”

The edge of the welded plate pops off from the wall as the metal strip attached to the stone wall that it was welded to is wrenched free from the stone with a violent crack.

Demarcus stumbles, his crowbar clattering to the ground. He scoops it up and breathes heavy, before gesturing to the door casually, trying to look cool.

Cy raises his fist with a cheer as Izzy claps supportively. Mato claps him on the shoulder and assists him in bending the metal, still half attached, until it's angled enough to allow the door to open wide enough into the hall.

The door opens with a scrape from disuse, then slams against the bent metal plate. Cy is waved over and bathes the room with a [Light] spell.

The group crowds around to see within, to find a nearly empty closet-like room— the signs of its previous contents being dragged from it still evident on the scrapes on the floor. Towards the back wall is a monstrosity of wires and metal leading into the right-side wall, centering around a strange series of slatted wheels along a cylinder.

“...the hell is that?” Demarcus asks, slightly disappointed that the door he chose didn’t lead to immediate salvation.

“Dunno, but it’s broken.” Cy says, and then pushes past them.

Mato reaches out to grab Cy’s shoulder, but fails to reach in the press of bodies.

“See this?” Cy says, pointing at a little handle on the device.

He grabs and pulls the handle, causing Izzy and Mato to stagger forward with a ‘No!’ as he slides out an insertable tray.

“This is like a mana battery. Relax, it’s dead.” He says, tapping the metal and cracked glass thing against the machine.

He tosses it over his shoulder, causing it to crack against the floor as he walks back out of the closet, ducking under Demarcus’ arm as Izzy pantomimes strangling him as he passes.

Demarcus follows Cy towards the next door along the wall, deeper into the hallway, hopeful that the trap is disabled if it's out of batteries. He raises his crowbar and feels someone grab his shoulder.

“Wait—” Mato begins, right before Demarcus’ right foot, and the floor it stands on, sinks a single centimeter.

In that single second before the pressurized hiss begins, Mato has a vivid recollection.

He remembers a rainy jungle, and a large torn up section of ground roped off with a sign that said “Warn. Trap.”

He remembers all the nights he spent staring in hindsight at the rope being different than the cord marines carried. The sign being just a rained on piece of paper. The poor grammar and improper signage.

He remembers the screams.

But now, in this moment, decades after the war and having already died once, he remembers that, sometimes, when you have a very obvious trap in a clearly defined spot, it's to make you feel safe walking outside the rope. Then the ground gives in.

In the time it takes to blink, there is a pressurized hiss, followed by a fwoomp of the air getting thicker. A black barrier filling your vision from the ground up making you believe for the briefest second that you blinked and forgot to re-open your eyes.

Demarcus’ vision goes dark, and the shouts of commands, questions, and confusion is cut through by a metallic clink of a dozen hatches on the walls opening.

Suddenly, shapes reveal themselves in the absolute black. Purple symbols that exist in perfect contrast to the dark— not as light, but just immune to the darkness, dark stars on the edges of a tiny void.

Demarcus turns to see one, and his mind—

Stumbles.

His eyes slam shut as the symbols brand themselves against his brain, stabbing deep and scrambling his cerebellum with a bar spoon. His tongue hits the floor and it tastes like Deja Vu and vomit. Then he vomits. Sounds echo from around him, distant, yet whispering a scream in his ears.

Something grabs him and his eyes foolishly open to see who, finding nothing but those same burning symbols on the walls of reality. The incestuous child of a migraine and a bullet to the head burrows its way through his eyes and he forgets that he’s screaming. A whirring squeal of metal sounds from far behind him, through the floor, until he feels the saw split his side open. The pain is a welcome distraction in comparison. His arms still move subconsciously, his brain jogging to catch up as he manages to process flashes of reality.

Him grabbing something hard.

It wrenched out of his grip as he tries to right himself.

His head snapping back as something strikes him.

Scrambling across the floor.

By the time he has something metal in his arms his brain finally starts to catch up.

The saw begins cutting into his armor on his forearm and he shifts his grip to grab it. His armored fingers snag on the blade and he pulls them back. He twists his arm wide to grab it closer to the base and holds tight on some metal pole. He forces it away from himself, failing to understand where he is as if his movements were mirrored, before shoving the whirring thing as far as his arms can extend. Something seizes against his chest and he grasps it with another hand, fingers tightening along a sharp blade. He forces it back, and kicks off to gain distance, scrambling to his feet.

He gets clocked in the side of his jaw, a hammer denting and deforming his helmet too tight around him from the blow. He lances out with a punch and feels nothing connect. He takes a wide stance, feeling around him with a searching leg and wide sweeps of his arms until he taps against something. He swings a fist into air, stumbling, and gets a blade across his armored chest.

Desperately trying to hit whatever is on him, Demarcus remembers.

His arm outstretches with an open palm, and he presses a button along the side of his hand. He keeps his hand outstretched and he feels a delayed impact against the palm of his hand. Crowbar in hand, he goes fishing for his assailant with sweeping feet and arms. Sounds echo from far away, sounds that should be nearby. His head still pounds from the sight of those symbols, the afterimage seared into the black of his vision.

His elbow taps against something, and he quickly grabs it. He begins and halts his swing in the time it takes for his brain to distantly realize he’s holding cloth against the telltale give of skin.

“ “ It’s D!

He yells.

The disorientation of the words confuse him for a moment, and he listens carefully for their response, lost in the fog.

The saw grinds against his back again, sundering his armor and almost making it down to flesh before he spins, double-handed smacking the thing away with his crowbar.

Demarcus desperately tries to find his friend again after having let go, but his hands just extend into nothingness, and his feet tap against stone.

“ “ Stay down and keep your eyes shut!

Demarcus shouts into the dark, ignoring the way his words delay and displace.

“ “ I’ll find you!

That metal thing is upon him again, and despite the saw eating into his back, he grabs it with both arms and tackles it to the ground. Holding it tight between his thighs, focusing intensely on the sensation of resistance telling him where it is, he swings down hard, again, and again, and again.

The saw arm breaks off, just barely eating into the flesh of his back, and the blade snaps. He feels the thing still shifting beneath him, so he stands with one foot holding it down, and feels the metal buckle with an echoing rend as he hits it with a [Power Strike].

His panting breaths sound from behind him, and he distantly ignores the pain from his cuts as he confirms his attacker is dead, and then sets back to finding his friends in the dark maddening abyss.

He finds another hammer to the face first.

A flurry of rolls, fists, bruises, and wild missing swings, and Demarcus has the hammer arm wedged against the wall and is repeatedly kicking the body it's attached to until it stops twitching.

The passing seconds that he knows his friends are out there, likely weathering the same, eat away at him. Demarcus thinks about how Izzy would hold up against one of the blades without his armor and unable to run, and his heart seizes with adrenaline.

He sees something out of the corner of his eye, and he wrenches his eyelids shut— then realizes they already are shut.

He keeps the thing in his periphery, trying to see just the tip of it, then realizes he’s seeing it even from behind him. Whatever it is, he’s seeing it in his mind.

He recognizes this.

[Loyal To A Fault] activates, and suddenly the sky is full of stars. Bright, white lights like beacons— hundreds of them— fill his mind. But the one he saw first still catches his attention, because it’s different.

A fiery red, small and fierce burns from behind him, and next to it twinkles a calm green glow.

His feet stumble beneath him as he sprints towards it, and the red and green lights grow, he gets closer and a feeling of relief, safety, purpose, that feeling of coming home suffuses him—

Demarcus suddenly trips and falls flat on his face as his movements, his senses, and his sense of direction come snapping back into his brain as he exits the black fog.

“Demarcus!” Izzy yells from in front of him.

“I got him! Y’alright? There’s more of them things comin’!” Mato says, grabbing and pulling Demarcus up from the floor.

“Can I open my eyes?” Demarcus asks.

“We’re fine here but—” Izzy says as Demarcus opens his eyes, seeing one of Mato’s lit torches on the ground illuminating the dying scraps of odd golems, varied in style like assembly-line robot arms or the stylized workers they saw before.

“—Cy’s still in there!”

Demarcus looks between Mato, a bleeding slash going down his arm but diligently checking Demarcus, and Izzy, guitar clutched in her hands and standing on her wounded leg, ignoring pain through the adrenaline.

Demarcus turns back and sees just a wall of buzzing black, like a swarm of silent mosquitos dense enough to block all vision. He puts a hand into it and watches it part like a wisp of smoke.

He closes his eyes again.

His mind fills with that sea of bright white stars again. One bright light lies dead ahead of him, but the sense of distance varies, and some blaze brighter than others, some are fading, some even dying. He takes a deep breath, confused for a moment, before remembering what his friend said.

“There’s gonna be a whole bunch of Cys, but only one of them is me. Only one of them is your Cy, okay? You’ll find me.”

He breathes out.

A single star crystalizes in his mind, and he walks towards it. One step, and another, until—

Demarcus’ head bonks against a wall.

He opens his eyes and confusedly stares at the wall of the hallway, slightly back the way they came from.

He turns back to see Izzy and Mato staring at him, equally confused, as Mato approaches and tries to force Demarcus’ eyelids open, muttering something about a “concussion.”

Demarcus shakes him off, and tries again, searching for his Cy. And once more, he feels a distant beacon, miles and miles away. Another star shines with it but, it feels so…

Alone.

He opens his eyes again, and heartsick and mystified, he turns back towards the wall of dark.

He focuses on finding Cy again, but doesn’t think about what he had said before, not trying to find his Cy. He desperately wills to find the Cy trapped in the dark, and the other beacon, nearby and dead ahead of him comes into focus.

He walks forward, and Mato catches his arm.

“Don't be stupid son, you're bleedin’ bad and ya can't just wander back in there.”

Demarcus’ steady gaze dissolves Mato’s assumptions about a concussion in an instant. He looks straight at Mato, jaw set, a burning star behind his eyes, and speaks.

“Hold them off here. I'm going to find him.”

A bit of fear flakes away from Mato, as he nods and lets go. Izzy and Mato exchange a glance, and ready themselves. No matter what comes out of that dark, they will hold it, for their friend asked them to. Demarcus walks off, unaware of the effect his [Morale Boosting Words] had.

Demarcus wades into the dark, arms outstretched, walking towards that bright light before him.

His hand brushes against something, and his heart jumps— before it stops as all his muscles clench with electrocution.

Demarcus desperately slaps open-palmed against the back of Cy as his friend tazes him with 1000 volts from a [Shocking Grasp] spell, until Cy gets the memo and lets go.

“ “ Oh my god I am so sorry!

Demarcus grabs Cy sternly, dragging him back towards Izzy and Mato until the air eases and they exit the dark.

Izzy slumps back against the wall in relief as the adrenaline fails her, and Mato tosses the relatively unscathed Cy aside to begin treating Demarcus’ wounds.

The four of them pant in the dark as Mato removes Demarcus’ armor, but as Cy works to dispel the magical darkness ahead of them, Demarcus just keeps staring at him. Even with his eyes shut, Demarcus just stares at the Cy before him.

And then looking at his Cy, 1000 miles in the distance, through a stone wall.