Draith
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Chapter 104 - Crash Test
🕑 Added 2025-05-19 14:00:11 +0000 UTCAfter our quick survey, we reconvened at the bluff. The others were all waiting for us, which told me we'd been watching the whale pod even longer than I'd realized.
Selvi wasn't even out of her harness when she started talking, though it was closer to babbling, with how quickly she was speaking. "Can you believe it? We actually saw leviathans. Sure, they were just babies, but still. And what the big one did. I’ve never seen a working like it."
"Yeah, was pretty amazing," I agreed, a smile forcing its way onto my face.
"Leviathans, master Perth?" Calbern asked, his eyebrow raising a degree. “I’m familiar with the word, yet the meaning escapes me.”
"Big swimming creatures that can use water magic really well," I said as I started undoing my own harness. "Like, better than a Pegasus-souled, I'd bet."
"And that's just the little ones. Pretty sure we only saw a young adult. I've heard the ancients can summon waves large enough to drown entire cities. Walls of water tall enough to black out the sun," Selvi said. She said it with the sort of excitement Bevel had shown when she'd found out about her glider. A sort of childlike innocence that somehow didn't grasp the sheer horror of what she was suggesting. It was honestly a little strange on the normally taciturn woman. Not bad, just… strange.
"And… do you believe these leviathans will be a threat?" Calbern asked, turning to me after blinking once at Selvi.
"Not-"
"Of course not," Selvi gasped, stepping closer and pushing a finger into Calbern’s chest. "Leviathans are the gentlest beings on the planet. Everyone knows that."
Behind her, the other Tethered were nodding, though none seemed comfortable enough to say anything.
"Ah, so they shall not be able to assist us with this endeavor either," Calbern said, returning us to the matter at hand.
Specifically, the ant-like machines that hadn't slowed one iota since we'd first spotted them. Even then, they continued, in and out of their little doorway, somehow never running into each other despite the tight timing. "You'd think they'd slow down the farther they spread," I said, narrowing my eyes as the thought occurred to me, Eagle Eyes responding to zoom in on the busy machines.
"I believe they are fashioning more of themselves. It is challenging to discern one from another, however…" Calbern paused as he pointed towards the line leading to the north, the same line he'd followed. "We managed to catch several in a rockslide. While they were not destroyed, neither were they left unmarred. This is the third time we've seen them return and depart, and two new untarnished machines have joined them since."
"So… the longer we wait, the more of them there are going to be?" I asked, not needing an answer. "Great. Guess that means we need to at least cut down their build speed."
"That was my thought, master Perth," Calbern said, inclining his head, though not in my direction. Instead, he inclined it towards the far mountainside above the bunker.
"You… want me to drop a mountain on them?" I asked, with a bit of a chuckle.
"It performed admirably the first time," Calbern replied with a shrug.
“Cause no one’s ever had that sort of idea fray on them before,” Selvi muttered.
"Yeah… I think that might do more harm than good. What if these things just grab all that broken up mountain and shove it down their metaphorical gullets? Pretty sure mountains don't always come apart as neatly as the last one."
"Ah. I had failed to consider that," Calbern said, frowning.
"Couldn't you just do that thing where you make it all solid with your staff?" Selvi asked. "Doesn't seem like they're that strong, if they're not even trying to mine the area."
"And if I did it while one of them was hauling a load of stone through, it wouldn't even take much mana," I agreed. "Don't suppose you found out if they can jump when you dropped the avalanche on them?"
"Indeed, they can. No more than twice their height," Calbern replied, as though that was a totally reasonable distance to jump.
Still, I should be able to hover at more than double that height while being close enough to do my work. “Alright, let’s get to it.”
Just to be certain, Calbern and I took off, following one of the machine-ants all the way from their bunker. One of the busted up ones. It was hauling away stone from the avalanche, so it made it an ideal target. As soon as it collected its payload, I started my work. It was tricky, using the staff while gliding. And if I'd been attempting actual detail work, I was pretty sure it would've been impossible. At least at my current level of skill.
By the time the busted up rollerbug got back to the nest, I'd reshaped its bundle into a nice thick wedge. The ant-machines didn't tend to slow as they entered their perfectly formed nest, instead looping around to the south of the entrance in a wide arc. Which meant that when it reached the opening, one that hundreds of rollerbugs had gone through without any trouble in the last couple hours, it went in at full speed.
Which meant it drove the stone wedge in hard. Hard enough to shake the valley as the boom echoed through.
For the first time since we'd spotted them, the rollerbugs stopped moving.
All of them, at once.
Before I had time to think about what that might mean, I was in motion, swinging the staff back and forth in wide motions while Calbern and Selvi held my glider steady. With each wave of the staff, I stretched out the inside of the wedge, lodging it fully in place. It was similar to using a rivet to hold sheet metal in place, except instead of smacking its tail, I was doing it by hand. Since they’d shown no inclination to mine, the splayed ends should hold them in place even longer. Assuming they reactivated.
Only after it was secure did I take back control of my glider, floating higher as I took in the aftereffects of the rather simple plan.
Sure enough, the rollerbugs were still motionless. It wasn’t exactly what we’d been hoping for, though it was close. I was a little disappointed that they weren’t all smashing into the now sealed entrance.
While I was debating if we should attack them while they were locked up, the curious wyvern took action.
Maybe it had grown tired of waiting or maybe it had thought it'd found a moment of weakness.
But it was suddenly swooping down.
It almost received a full-power Lightning Bolt to the chest before I realized it was going for one of the rollerbugs. Without slowing, it plucked the rollerbug off the ground and lifted it high into the air. Then, circling over another, it let go.
They smashed into each other with a screech of twisting metal.
The wyvern didn't wait, roaring in triumph as it moved to the next of the rollerbugs.
I doubted it would get them all, but it had at least proven they were inactive. And that they weren't too hard to break.
Nodding at Calbern, we started wrecking them ourselves.
Selvi got a lot of practice lassoing stationary targets from the air, since at first we stuck to methods similar to the wyvern. Not that Selvi could lift one with just her own glider. But she’d secure one, then we’d lift it in a web between us using rope from my storage ring. Rope I'd been expecting to use while exploring the ruins around the Infinite Forge.
The only reason I wasn’t unleashing the Storm, as Nexxa might say, was my desire to hold onto my mana. If they suddenly woke up. I didn’t want to be empty. Still, that didn’t mean I wasn’t using it at all. Whenever I was full, I'd destroy one with a Lightning Bolt, lowering the power each time.
It didn't take much. By the end, I realized I could break them apart as fast as we could find them, and we abandoned our efforts to drop them, to Selvi’s disappointment. At that point, several of the other wyverns had joined us in destroying the inert rollerbugs.
Trapped in the avalanche, we approached the last of the rollerbugs. I didn't even use Lightning Bolt on it, simply hitting it with Spark. It didn't shatter the rollerbug, like Lightning Bolt tended to, though it did sag.
Finally free of the risk of an army of the things falling on us, I took the time to inspect the rollerbug more closely.
“They’re actually kind of pretty, when they’re not destroying everything,” Selvi said from above with the other Tethered.
I tilted my head, but I couldn’t really see it. They were a mottled grey, which would help them blend in with the stone of the mountains. At least when they weren’t zooming along the mountain trails at speeds that would terrify any sane person. Every part of them seemed to be attached to the complicated enchantment in the center of the wheel. It was more than just enchanting though. There were a series of heavy duty gears, almost cog-like, though the teeth were a bit too fine.
Those seemed to be the only moving parts, other than the arms. And each of the arms was a complicated mess of metal. Again, they seemed to be partially mechanical, but most of their function was provided by complicated enchantments. Unlike the women-turned-golems, these enchantments were easy to read. They were also more standardized in size than I was used to, with rough edges. An unnecessary loss of efficiency, unless the creator was as bad as Balthum.
The ends of those limbs were made of a single sharp piece, one that looked like it’d been cast in a mold, with no welds and only the barest amount of grinding.
Everything about the rollerbug screamed mass produced to me. And that… was interesting. Especially the enchantments. There hadn’t been anything I’d read about mass producing enchantments. Far as I’d understood it, it shouldn’t be possible.
Again, I was forced to remember that what I thought I knew wasn’t necessarily true.
“Anything of interest, master Perth?” Calbern asked, still strapped into his glider, despite having landed a short distance behind me.
“Lots. I wanna get this back to Inertia, if we can,” I said, pushing to my feet before looking it over.
Since they were light enough we could fly with them suspended between us, it shouldn’t be too much to bring it back to Inertia. Especially if I broke it up. I used Shape Tool and Jet to remove the limbs from wheel first, sticking them in my storage ring after transferring most of the rest of the contents to the pendant.
Honestly, I wanted as many of these rollerbugs as I could get. Even if literally nothing was salvageable, which I doubted, considering the wheels alone would be incredibly useful, they represented a wealth of material that would be hard to come by without proper production facilities. Materials Inertia would be clamoring over.
However, as we were leaving the avalanche with our prize firmly secured, a massive shockwave rolled through the air, sending us spinning, and nearly causing us to crash the wheel into the mountain.
After we recovered, I turned to find an actual mushroom cloud rising from the direction of the Infinite Forge.
Somehow, I suspected our wedge had just been destroyed.
Comments
Druid
I suspect it's more along the lines of the Forge being out of control in some way.
Munirah Hutchinson
I think something has infested the forge.
