Floor 55
The Dragon Ruins
“Dragons! Are there actually dragons, dad?”
It was the first thing I heard when we arrived on the next floor. Lisa almost clung to me in excitement as she asked the question. She’d seemed to have given up on watching over Rosalind and instead was far more interested in a fairy tale.
“Not on this floor,” I told her, my gaze looking past her and at the Architect, “where’s the relay station at?”
Rosalind responded to my question by pointing off to the east. A plain stretched out in that direction, and a forest comprised of oaks was in the middle.
“Lisa, Mika, listen to me. Your job is to take control of the portal and wait for news from me.”
Lisa immediately argued with me, “You need us to beat up all the Architects!”
I put my mechanical hand on top of her head and rubbed it. “If the shell is destroyed I’ll make sure you know it, and then you two need to retreat back home,” I told her, and then I looked at Rosalind again, “is Eon your only ally on this floor?”
“Correct,” Rosalind replied, “expectations of other assistance should be negated.”
“You and I should be more than enough so long as it’s still…” I trailed off a bit there, and then figured out how to word it the way I wanted to, “if it’s how I was taught while growing up.”
Rosalind’s eyes narrowed at how I’d paused, but she chose not to ask any questions. Instead she headed off to the forest, her pace slow enough that I could easily catch up.
“Father,” Mika suddenly said, “be careful. She might be leading you into a trap.”
I tapped the chest of the shell at that comment. “She’ll regret it if that’s true. Now get going, and make sure Lisa doesn’t do anything dumb.”
Lisa glared at me, but she chose not to voice her displeasure. Instead she pulled out a small device from her pack and looked at it.
“Come on,” Lisa said as she put the object back into her pack, and then she started to head off to the south.
Mika gave a little smile, and then she ran off after her sister. They headed off into a somewhat rocky looking area, and I figured that the portal had appeared in the canyon that ran through the south.
It didn’t matter to me, though, as I had something else to deal with. I turned to the east and ran to catch up to Rosalind. When I was next to her she quickened her pace, and soon we were running quickly across the plain.
“Why’d they choose the forest?” I asked her as we ran.
“What is disagreeable?”
I sighed inside the control room at her words. The Architects were always tedious to talk to. “The forest isn’t very thick or large, and there are a lot of mountains on this floor that’d be better spots.”
“Built on dragon catacombs.”
That bit of information caused me to slide to a stop. Rosalind almost tripped as she also decelerated, her eyes a little wider than before from surprise.
“They’re digging up the dragons?” I asked, my tone a bit aggressive.
Rosalind nodded in response to my question as she took a step back. “This is significant?”
My hands clenched into fists. While I’d teased Lisa before I knew that there were no more dragons. I’d made certain of that.
“We need to make sure no dragon bones have been sent to the higher floors,” I told Rosalind as I resumed walking, “otherwise your little rebellion won’t stand a chance.”
“Explain,” Rosalind said as she matched my pace.
I shook my head at her request for more information. “Only after Samara has agreed to our partnership.”
The rest of our run to the forest was one of silence, as though Rosalind kept probing for more I refused to explain. If someone had followed in Helim’s footsteps, it would only lead to a situation nobody wanted.
Once we reached the treeline our pace slowed, and we slipped amongst the trees as stealthily as we could. After we’d gone in a dozen feet or so Rosalind held up one hand.
“Detection systems,” she said, and with a flourish of her left hand a small round object appeared in her grasp.
I’d seen the Architects form objects from nanites before, but it always amazed me how quickly they could do it. “What’s that for? Some sort of jammer?”
Rosalind actually rolled her eyes at my question, and then she lifted the object to her mouth. “Eon, darken sensors.”
I didn’t notice any difference, but Rosalind deconstructed her small radio and walked confidently through the forest. I followed after her, my left hand near my hip in case I needed to draw my sword.
Ahead of us a wall with a dark matte came into view, and when we got closer to it I saw that it spread to the left and right a total of twenty feet. Dead center on the wall was a metal shutter, and next to that was a type of scanning device.
Rosalind walked over to the scanner and put her fingers against it. A small light glowed as the system scanned her fingers, and then the shutter opened.
“I thought you had him turn off the sensors?” I asked as I crept up to the door.
“Detection network outside, but automated access system is separate,” Rosalind explained as she peered in the door.
I placed my left side against the wall near the door, and peeked inside the opened shutter. A ramp descended down with a gentle slope, and above off-white lights illuminated the entryway.
I darted inside the building and positioned myself as close to the left wall as I could. The rod that was in my hip was drawn out, and I grasped the handle in my right hand.
Rosalind stepped inside and the shutter closed behind her. She didn’t create any type of weapon, but her confident walk down the ramp meant one of two things. Either it actually was a trap, or she wasn’t afraid of who we might inside.
At the end of the ramp there were three doors, and Rosalind picked the one that faced north. Much like with the shutter she used her fingers on a scanner, and the system recognized and allowed her inside.
While I wanted her to go in first I knew that the door would close automatically behind her, and so I once again went through first. The room that I walked into was almost three times the width of the surface, and the walls were about twenty feet high.
Rather than any type of monitors or even input devices there were instead cords that hung off of the walls. Each cord ended in a metal square with a couple of prongs on them.
Inside the room there were three Architects. One sat in the center of the room, the chair he sat on connected to his arms and legs with tubing. The second was near the western wall, and had connected himself to one of the metal squares.
The third Architect was the troublesome one, as he was facing us when we entered the room. Much like the second he had a cord connected to him, but upon seeing us that was promptly torn off and cast aside.
“Unqualified reprobate,” the Architect said, his hands lifting up to aim at me.
Crude looking cylinders formed on top of the Architect’s hands, and a light within them started to grow. I’d already figured out what the attack was, and so as I swayed to the right the beams of energy flew past me.
The Architect’s eyes widened, and then he attempted to recover by aiming his guns at me again. Before his weapons could fire again I’d already closed the gap, and I swung the magic blade at his legs.
In the middle of the swing a blade of fire erupted into existence, cutting easily into the knees of the Architect. He opened his mouth, as though words at this point would matter, and I drove the fire blade into the center of his face.
By that point the other two Architects had noticed my presence. The one furthest from me, attached to the wall, detached himself but made no move to attack. The Architect in the middle stood up out of his chair, the tubing releasing with audible hisses.
The coordinator turned his head to look at me, his red eyes narrowed. He lifted up one hand and snapped his fingers, an act that caused two vertical slits to open in the walls. From each of the slits stepped out a familiar face, as a pair of drones emerged.
“Rosalind, you and Eon handle the drones!” I yelled at her, as I was far more concerned with the ruler of the outpost.
Rather than the magic blade I instead opted for the rifle, pulling it off of my shoulder with one hand. I pointed it at the coordinator and pulled the trigger, a thin and quick energy beam shooting from the muzzle.
The coordinator lifted up one finger, and out of the ground emerged a slim sheet of metal that blocked the beam. A second later he pointed that lifted finger in my direction.
I’d ducked down quick enough to avoid the sliver of metal that flew at my head. I rapidly pulled the trigger to chain off three shots of energy at the coordinator.
This time the coordinator lifted up all of his fingers and a wide sheet of metal extended from the floor, catching every single beam I’d fired. Though I couldn’t see the coordinator I knew that he could see me, one of the many advantages he had inside this room.
I didn’t even realize that my left foot had been ensnared before he started to squeeze it, as tendrils of metal had crept up from the ground and begun to wrap around me. An alert went off informing me of substantial internal damage to the foot, and so I purged it and roughly dove to the left.
The foot that’d been left behind was crushed into a tiny ball by the metal tendrils, the crunching sound sending a chill down my spine. Though I was using a fake body it was a noise that’d reminded me of some bad memories.
I cycled through the options of my left arm, the magic system, and then I aimed my palm at the metal wall. A white hot lance shot from my palm and the bolt of fire pierced into the metal, melting through and going all the way through to the other side.
Through that hole I could see that I’d clipped the coordinator in the side, as a chunk of his torso was now burnt away. On the other side of his makeshift wall I heard him cry out in pain, and then suddenly the metal wall flew at me.
My brain almost burned as I forced the system to try and keep up with my thoughts, the crystals in my left arm rotating inside as I changed the configuration. A moment before the metal wall slammed into me it instead dropped to the ground, and the floor around me almost cracked as it became indented by about a foot.
“Magical abilities?” the coordinator asked, as he stared in what I could only hope was confusion.
I cancelled the increased gravity field around me, not wanting to burn all of the shell’s energy. Instead I gripped the bottom of the rifle and primed the grenade system. Once more when I fired it wasn’t a beam, but rather an orb of energy, and it flew at the coordinator slow enough that he should be able to dodge it.
As I expected he moved to the left in order to dodge the ball, and when he did that I threw the rod at the energy grenade. The contact with the rod caused the powerful explosion to happen right next to the coordinator.
He was thrown clear across the room and into the southern wall. The force of the impact was enough to leave a small dent, but the coordinator continued to stand even after that.
When I went to aim the rifle at him again he lifted up both his hands, his fingers outstretched in my direction. Ten thin strips of metal surged up out of the ground in front of me, each end ending in sharp tips.
I leapt up to the ceiling while doing a roll in mid-air. Halfway through the roll I shifted my localized gravity, reversing it, and my feet made contact with the ceiling. The ten metal spears hurtled through where I’d been standing a moment before.
Without warning one of the drones, missing a head, was thrown across the room at the coordinator. He turned and batted aside the corpse, and while he looked at who’d thrown the body I shot four beams at him.
Thanks to the distraction from either Rosalind or Eon two of the beams hit him, piercing through his shoulder. The other two were stopped by a metal sheet that’d extended from the wall.
Before I could do anything else my reversed gravity stopped, and my left arm went limp as the alarms started blaring in my ears. I ungracefully collapsed to the ground head first, but since the shell was a machine I didn’t need to worry about concussions.
My collapse caused the coordinator to pause in his attacks, but when I lifted my rifle and fired again he barely stopped the beam from hitting his forehead. While the metal he’d used to block the shot retracted he grinned at me.
That was when Rosalind came running in from his right, her hands covered in spiked metal gauntlets. She punched at the coordinator’s side, her blows striking barriers that the coordinator hastily threw up. Each blow dented the metal sheet it connected with, but none managed to get all the way through.
While she had the coordinator distracted I thumbed through the control systems on the rifle, and then settled on a different firing pattern. Once more I lifted the weapon up, making certain to aim so I wouldn’t hit Rosalind, and pulled the trigger.
A beam shot out much like before, but the coordinator barely even cared about it as he waved one hand at it. Another thin slice of metal lifted up from the ground to block the shot, but unlike the last time the beam didn’t cease. Instead the beam continued to be shot from the rifle, and slowly the metal it was hitting began to glow and turn red.
By the time the coordinator realized that I’d set the beam to continual fire it was too late, as it punched through the barrier and into his lower jaw. Unable to focus any longer all of the metal barriers he’d created vanished, and Rosalind unleashed punch after punch directly at his chest.
The coordinator collapsed under the pummeling, and the lights in the room went dim. Even then Rosalind didn’t stop as she crushed the coordinator’s skull with her hands.
“Looks like we won,” I said to her as I tried to stand up, though now that I was missing a foot that proved difficult.
Rosalind’s gauntlets vanished as she retracted her nanites, and she turned to look at me. Her red eyes stared at me, studying my missing foot and limp arm. For a moment I mentally hovered over the self-destruct system, waiting for the betrayal.
“Grandiose achievement,” Rosalind finally said, as she walked over to me and offered one hand, “you have my gratitude.”
