“Now you youngsters listen to ol’ Aca now: never trust the walls.”

“Old man, you’ve been saying that for the last year. The walls don’t have it in for us.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it, kid. The walls just want you to think you’re safe. Now that you all find the mines so ‘undaunting’ the spirits of the earth’ll make you pay for your hubris.”

“Whatever, old man.”

-Final known conversation with a group of 24 miners

*=====*

“Argh…” Fury groaned, “Is there really a way to fix this?” he asked. A pulse of mana emanated from behind him, but they all ignored the mistress as she did her work. Fury never understood the lich’s odd enjoyment she seemed to derive from raising undead, but it was far from his concern. His sort-of-sibling, Jel, stepped forward and rested her two lizardman hands on his shattered spike-arm, “You know how to?”

The shy pyrausta nodded, “I-I think so… I was testing something f-from the book we found. I think it could work, b-but I don’t know for sure.”

Fury rolled his eyes, “Just do it, Jel,” he said, “If it fails, then it’s my punishment for breaking my arm like that,” he growled. His maneuver was stupid and reckless and got him hurt; his heart burned with his namesake due to his mistakes, but he pushed it down and sighed, “Did you test it out before?” he asked.

She nodded, glancing to Pride shrugging, “W-We did. Pride was okay with c-cutting his arm to help me practice.” Her hands began to glow with green-red mana and Fury could feel his arm-spike tingling. Looking down, he saw as it began to slowly grow before his eyes.

Fury raised an eyebrow at Pride, who pointedly ignored his gaze, “Huh,” he said, ignoring the second pulse of mana and annoyed grumble behind him, “He’s a weird one alright,” he stated. The pyrausta was one of the few that acted exactly as his name would suggest; he was arrogant, rude to anyone apart from the mistress and her friend, and believed himself to be the wisest one among them. In spite of that, he routinely helped Jel with her magic studies, helped the mistress when asked, and did not try to parade his attitude around. 

Jel, seemingly understanding everything he was thinking, nodded, “I think so t-too, but we’re all a-a bit weird. I mean I-I can’t stop stuttering, no matter how hard I try.”

Fury agreed with her stuttering issue —it was a big issue— and nodded, “You do stutter a lot. But what I’m saying is that, honestly, we don’t really fit as neatly in with our namesakes as the mistress may have thought when we were mindless husks. Despite that, Pride’s always acted the part.”

“W-Well,” Jel interrupted, “Perhaps it’s because we were told about these p-potential issues that w-we outgrew them,” she proposed, “I mean, A-Aerolat telling me how bad it is for an undead to b-be envious of h-her mistress set me to look for answers from the mistress h-herself. Maybe the i-idea that he has something to b-be prideful about is something t-that he built his personality on?”

Fury shrugged, “Whatever it is, he definitely drops the act for the weirdest things.”

“Maybe it’s n-not an act.”

Fury simply shrugged, pulling his spike-arm from Jel as the tip was finally sharpened, “I dunno, but thanks for the fix, Jel. I’ll make sure you don’t have to again,” he said with determination. Looking around, he noted what every other death knight was doing; Pride was standing to the side playing with a ball of blue mana in his hands, Idle was standing next to a wall with her head pressed up against is, Tisiphone and Allegra were having an argument while Megaera was standing between them moderating. 

Another pulse of mana, stronger than either of the ones previously, washed against Fury’s back, causing him to turn around. The mistress stood there, glaring at the burnt remains of the ‘magnum opus guardian’ they had ‘defeated.’ To Fury, they had simply caused a lot of minor damage that, by all rights, should not have hurt the thing, then it fell over and died. The mistress’ glare was something he could somewhat relate to, as he had no clue as to what those things were. After a moment, the mistress kicked the stone head of the statue, “Why can’t I raise these things?” she said aloud. 

They all paused, staring at the statue. They were used to the mistress being able to raise anything and everything, but hearing her claim such a thing impossible gave Fury pause. Megaera, however, did not share his reaction, “Mistress, you cannot raise this creature?”

The mistress shook her head, “No, I can’t. For whatever reason, it’s like this thing was never alive to begin with; the mana just… doesn’t take root.”

Megaera thought for a moment, before nodding, “Perhaps it was never alive to begin with?” she guessed. To Fury, the claim was absurd; it moved with a purpose, therefore it was alive, that is what he considered being ‘alive’ to be. Obviously, either Megaera was right and he needed to revise his definition of what ‘alive’ truly meant, or something else was at play that did not allow the mistress to raise the statue, “Mistress,” he said, “Has there ever been anything that prevented you from raising a creature?” 

The mistress brought a finger to her chin, deep in thought, “Well, there is the fact that purified clocksteel can’t be used for raising undead and things like tanned leather and butchered meat are the same. The thing about that, though, is that I think the issue there is that the ‘material’ has been transformed from corpse to meat or leather or metal. Maybe they’re different things, but in this case… this is a dead body, nothing else. I think Megaera is right, this isn’t ‘alive,’ per se.”

“Then what is it, mistress?” Idle asked, still pressed against the wall. 

The mistress brought another finger to her chin, “Maybe,” she began, “This is an advanced magical construct. Like a golem from pop culture. I mean, it’s a thing that does a thing without being alive, so what else can it be?” she wondered aloud, “But in that case, what is a Clockwork? What is being alive?” she ranted, pacing around the not-so-body of the guardian. 

Idle’s head shot out suddenly, “Mistress, behind you!” she cried. The lich wasted no time in turning around, gauntlet outstretched, and firing a blinding beam of light into the wall Idle pointed at. With their vision, they were able to see the wall charring under the onslaught. The wall was suddenly blown aside by some sort of force as another statue strode out just as the mistress’ beam was dying down. Another lance of light sprang from the gauntlet, slamming into the creature’s head and carving deep into it. The mistress, however, did not let up her assault on the statue’s head, even as it began moving its head in a desperate attempt to dodge the beam. With a final flare of the heated beam, the head was carved clean through and the statue fell, the light in its joints gone. 

The mistress sighed, “Well, looks like they have the courtesy to die when their head isn’t working,” she grumbled, “That took a lot of mana. Like, a lot of mana. Jel, Pride, can you two do something like that?” she asked.

They glanced at each other, nodding, then back to her, “Somewhat, mistress,” Pride declared in his usual slightly haughty tone.

The mistress nodded, “Good. If we run into any more of those, it looks like we’ll have to melt straight through its head. Alright, we’ve spent long enough here. While I want to raise one of those stone guys, it was not meant to be. Let’s move,” she said. They all fell into their positions, slightly more tense than when they started. 

Idle snapped her head to Fury’s right, “Fury, right!” she called. He braced himself as the wall burst open, revealing another adult wyrm. Scoffing, he breathed fire into its open mouth. It recoiled, charging forward at Fury, but he was ready for it. Jumping over its maw, he sprinted to its tail end and was about to cut through it when it began to thrash about, throwing him off. As he soared through the air, he saw Allecto, the one death knight who understood the need to fight to improve, slamming the barrel of her rifle into the wyrm’s tail. With a blast, the wyrm reared up one final time and fell dead. 

Fury, after landing on a patch of soft sand, sighed as the mistress went to raise the wyrm. He was looking around at the other death knights, who were keeping their vigil against the walls, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Looking to the side, he saw Pride standing there. There was a subtle look of pity in his eyes, almost to the point of disgust, but just barely before it, “Stop being so bull headed, Fury,” he lectured, “You’ll get killed that way. Again.” With his words said, he walked off. Fury stared at the retreating figure of Pride in confusion. He had no idea why the arrogant pyrausta gave him such advice, but he understood that he had a point, even if he never wanted to admit it. He had been reckless and not thinking the consequences through. He stupidly stabbed into the side of a wyrm as it passed him, he stupidly stabbed into the leg joint of a stone statue, breaking his arm in the process, and he stupidly tried to copy Idle’s feat without understanding the main differences between them; she was able to proactively tell if the thing was going to move with her precise hearing while he was able to breath fire. He should have kept bathing the creature in fire while his siblings did their parts. He made sure to remember that, while he was a strong, intelligent undead, he still had his strengths and weaknesses. And, while he would be more careful in his fights, he was far from willing to let any more opportunities to fight pass without at least an effort to have them fight; they needed to grow, after all. With a sigh, he stood as the wyrm was raised, burrowing underground with her command.

The mistress had them moving quickly, marching through the wyrm hive. Along the way, they ran into the corpses of dead wyrms, including the two giant wyrms, which were raised into zombies in short order. With Idle’s help, they soon found the rest of the wyrms, all fighting against a trio of statues in front of a side room. The statues, however, were not like the nearly naked humans they had contended with before, but were each unique. One, wearing a set of stone plate armor and helmet, held a broadsword and tower shield, blocking the attacks of the wyrms. Another, wearing a flowing cloak nonetheless made of stone that shrouded its face with a hood, held a bow made of stone, string and all, with a quiver of rocky arrows slung along its waist. The final, wearing flowing robes like the second and a broad-brimmed hat, held a staff with a number of runes on the head. All of their faces were shrouded in deep darkness that not even their sight could penetrate.

None of them wasted any time when they saw the statues. The mistress shot a beam of blinding light at the staff-wielding statue’s hand, cutting deep and making the statue lose its grip. The staff fell to the floor and the mistress sent a wave of mana to it, propelling the stone staff as large as she was, to her. With its staff gone, it slowly pulled a dagger from its belt and began to walk up behind the shield-wielding statue. 

Once the staffless statue began to move, Fury and Idle began to harry the bow-wielding statue, scratching its surface and dodging the glowing white arrows that were fired at them. The statue seemingly stopped trying to shoot them after three attempts, knocking them both back with a surprise swing of its bow and sending them flying through the air. Before they even got up, the undead wyrms burst from the ground and began wrapping around the statue. Idle and Fury shared a look and sprinted towards the statue. They took arrows from the quiver and began to stab them into the statue’s joints. Some broke, but the white stone was much stronger than the marble-like stone of the statues. Just as they were about to stab arrows through the statue’s neck, the light glowing in the darkness under its hood faded and it fell forward.

They turned away from the statue as they received the instantly-ignored system message and looked upon the remnants of the other statues. The shield-wielding statue was nearly melted by Pride and Jel’s flames while the disarmed statue was frozen and shattered by the mistress’ new staff. The other wyrms were all shot in the tail courtesy of the three zombie sisters. “Well,” the mistress said, grinning at her new staff, “Looks like we still have some stuff to do. First, though,” she said, pointing them to a room that the wyrms were protecting, “We have to deal with these things.” They walked into the room, which seemed to be a brood room based on the amount of wet, moist eggs clumped together in the corners of the rooms. In total, there were three dozen eggs, each the size of a human adult, stashed there. They did not hesitate to burn the room to a crisp. Any eggs that escaped the flames through luck were all smashed. The mistress also electrocuted the broken eggs, ‘just to be safe,’ as she said. 

With all of the eggs destroyed, they left the room and walked to the last room in the large combat arena they had fought through. The path was winding and steep, but they were able to traverse it well enough with the help of the wyrm zombies. Eventually, they reached the bottom and came upon a massive chamber. It was over twenty feet tall in height and seemed to be carved out by something other than the wyrms they had eradicated. Instead of being a circular tunnel, it was a large square room. At the far end, however, was something different than the sand and rock they had become accustomed to. A marble brick wall, decorated by ornate columns and five wide pedestals, stood. In the center, a massive door made of dark wood blocked entry. For a moment, they all stared at the wall before the mistress took a step forward, only to stop suddenly. 

With a final sigh, she turned to them, “I was right, this is the work of a god. Because it just had to be…” she sighed.