Jackal Among Snakes

“More fool me…” muttered Durran as he followed in pursuit of a pale-skinned man in a spacious cavern.

“Did you say something?” asked his escort, looking back curiously. He had red eyes and dark hair, marking him as one of the humans in the caverns below the mountains between the Burnt Desert and Vasquer.

Argrave and Durran had both shared similar thoughts about this man, Dario. They’d been under the impression that checking out the subterranean mountain people to look for a lead would be a waste of time. But as it turned out, Elenore had risen to where she was for a reason. There was a lead in these dank caverns—a lead his allies were more than willing to show him.

“After you show me his workshop, is there anyone that knew Dario? Someone I can talk to?” Durran asked, moving a little closer to his lead.

“Well…” the escort, a prominent man in their leadership structure, narrowed his eyes. They lingered on the glaive that he used as a walking stick. “It depends on what you want from this man.”

“I wouldn’t harm my ally’s people, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Durran said with a fatigued shake of his head. “I bring this glaive everywhere. Don’t worry about it. These days, I use this sword,” he said, tapping the blade on his left. “It’s positively divine. And it’ll remain sheathed, no matter who I meet, rest assured.”

“Members of our communes claimed that you used necromancy in removing Fellhorn’s influence from the land,” the escort noted. “We fought together to erase the Vessels, but there’s something to be said about those that would use the dead for their own end.”

Durran nodded. “Those were desperate measures. And I’ve been straying away from those magics, these days…” He focused on the man leading. “But if you’re so defensive about these people, why are you willing to give up Dario?”

“Because he left the communes,” the escort said simply. “He had no one tying him to this place. But one day, he became very… frenetic. Agitated. And after a near-disaster with a rockfall, he left to the mountains. It’s not the first time that cave-ins have dissuaded our people from the deep-dwelling life. But down here is still kinder than the surface. Or was, until the Vessels drained the aquifers. Now that they’re dead, we see little need to engage with others. Still, we owe you some favors.”

The pathway opened up into a mountain commune. Their people were casually relaxing in a serene and beautiful place, where elaborate structures of jade bore pillows. The black-haired, red-eyed people of the mountains lounged lazily while golden golems patrolled the place, both tending to the elaborate farms of edible greenery growing deep beneath the earth, and watching out for any intruders. Durran recalled their golems in battle, resisting the Vessels of Fellhorn to liberate the Burnt Desert. These mountain people each had golems enough to form a true army… but they lived in disparate places they called ‘communes,’ lounging, philosophizing, and using machines of war as common laborers.

According to Argrave, Gerechtigkeit would commandeer these golems at some point. These peaceful, if lazy, people would be torn apart by the creations that were maintaining their lives of calm bliss. They had a great deal of time before that happened, fortunately, and Elenore was well focused on this matter.

“Are you coming?” asked his escort, prompting Durran to follow along into a red building carved out of the rock.

The building that Durran entered finally gave some sign that these people did some labor. But by ‘labor,’ this place was that which built their laborers. In the back, he felt a strong heat. He and the escort neared its source as the pressed inside. A huge furnace billowed smoke, heat, and intense light. It seemed to be idle now, but it was kept warm nonetheless. Several people sat by the furnace, using its light to read books.

Durran saw countless metal casts on the wall. Arms, legs, torso—the golem-making process had been made completely efficient, it seemed. The power that these deep-dwelling people could possess was quite alarming. It had been immensely difficult to persuade them to help Durran against Fellhorn and Titus, though—he couldn’t imagine it’d be easy to get them to do more. Even now, they languished in contentment. Their population was perhaps two thousand, and they did little more than exist. Their creations had earned them that right.

“This side-room here was Dario’s. It doubled as the storeroom for unpowered golems. Dario was assistant to the golem master, helping him pour the metal, make more golems, the works.” the escort explained. “I’ll wait out here. You look for what you need to. I’d say not to break the golems… but I don’t think I need be worried.”

Durran thanked the man and stepped inside. The place was dark, but he used spell light to illuminate the area. The wyvern bone glaive caught the spell, and the blade itself started to glow like a lantern. Huge figures to his left made him flinch, but he quickly relaxed when he realized they were silent and still golems. Long rows of golems stretched out endlessly in this square area. Golden, gleaming, yet ready for use at a moment’s notice… the only bottleneck was powering these things. Apparently, it took many years to generate enough power for some golems.

Was this Dario’s plan? An army of golems? It was powerful, sure, but they were beatable. With the divine armaments from Erlebnis’ vaults, Durran himself might be able to wrestle one. He looked around the warehouse, but there were only golems all to his left. On the right, dangling just beside the walkway, detached golem arms hung in long rows. Durran was going to dismiss their presence before he noticed they were strangely morphed. He held his glowing glaive up to them, where he deduced that their metal had been exposed to extreme heat and partially melted.

Durran tracked the long row of arms lining the side of the room, trying to find some order in the chaos. And he did—each of these arms were made of different material, it looked like. Some were worse melted than others. While following the row, he realized that each of these arms were different trials. Their composition got better and better, and after a long string of failures each hand seemed to be less melted than the others. By the end of it, there was considerably less warping. And for the last few… none at all. He touched an unmorphed one. It was extremely heavy, and Durran looked up at the thick chains keeping it up in the air. If this thing could move and function as a golem… the monstrous creations would be even more powerful.

Where the warehouse ended, Durran saw a well-used cast for a golem’s arm leaned up against an empty frame. The frame was about the size of a body, and though it had nothing inside it, Durran thought it looked like it could hold a suit of armor rather well. Just beside it was a huge golem, hunched over and immobile. Unlike all of the others to his left, this one was a dull green. Durran could tell that this whole thing had endured intense heat. And even from a distance, he could tell it was made of the same dreadfully heavy metal he’d just touched. There was a desk, too, on which documents sprawled ungracefully. Durran stepped closer to get a better view of them.

“I have a weapon trained at your back. It’s meant to kill gods,” said someone from behind. “Turn slowly.”

Durran felt his body seize up, and he turned his head first. In his peripheries, he saw a black-haired man crouching. His right arm was pointed toward him, and atop it an ungainly crossbow aimed right at his back.

Durran did turn slowly, as instructed. “Dario, right? Master of stealth indeed. I like to think I’ve got good hearing, but even in this silence I didn’t hear you.”

“Step to the wall,” Dario said quietly. “Face it, kneel. Place both hands against it.”

“You could’ve just killed me if that weapon’s half of what you say,” Durran pointed out. “But you didn’t. Why?”

“Nothing against you. You helped my people. Don’t want to hurt you. Need you to step away.” His eyes, though bloodshot, were focused intensely.

“Are you an agent of Gerechtigkeit? Are you from another world? Are you blessed by a god?” Durran rattled off questions, hoping to see some reaction that might betray truth.

“Enough!” Dario yelled. “Step away.”

Durran didn’t move. “If you’re telling me to step away, not leave… can I assume I’m near something you need? I got word from Elenore—you were making golem cores down there in the dwarven lands. Did you come here to make the golems you needed… or to tie up another loose end?”

He didn’t miss Dario’s expression shift slightly. “Last warning. Try nothing.”

Durran clenched his glaive, briefly wondering if he should risk it. But he didn’t know what Dario was actually looking for, and more importantly, Argrave had warned that this man was incredibly dangerous. He decided to play along and hopefully spot something that might give him some clue.

As Durran walked to the wall, he kept his eyes on Dario and contacted Elenore through her blessing. “Found Dario down in one of the communes. He came to his old workshop. Looks like he was studying heat-resistance. He’s got me—”

Dario waved his left hand, and the air shifted. Durran felt a twinge of pain in his head as the connection between him and Elenore snapped. He fell to his knees involuntarily rather than as he had been intending. The pain faded quickly, yet the connection with Elenore did not return. More than that—he felt the blessing bestowed upon him by Stout Heart Swan twist and writhe, subdued by a foreign and powerful presence.

He expected Dario to subdue him as he struggled, but instead, the artificer had leaned up against one of the immobile golems. His crossbow still aimed steadily as he bled from his nose and eyes.

“Told you to try nothing.” Dario shook his head, crossbow aimed even as he wiped away blood from his face. He succeeded only in smudging it, and the light from Durran’s glaive cast the man in an eerie light. “You people… seem determined to die.”

“I’ve been known to make a bet or two,” Durran returned, then reached for the divine blade on his waist.

Dario fired a bolt, and Durran put all of the strength he could conjure into his legs to roll away. The bolt, which was about a foot long, pierced into the wall just behind Durran. The whole of it seemed to vanish as it kept travelling through the dense stone. The ground itself rumbled from the tremendous force.

Dario reloaded a new bolt all too quickly, but Durran rushed into the huge array of golems, trying to hide. He chided himself in his head, thinking, Trying to hide? From someone who’s a master of stealth? Gods, Durran…

He kept a mental note of where that desk was. And he knew that he’d need to get to it. Dario had returned here for a reason… and he meant to find out what it was.

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