Mori was extremely confused. It was a unique feeling when she thought about it. There were scant few times when she was not in on a joke, and it seemed to her that there was a joke she was missing as the weird Clockwork lady laid on the ground, cackling like a crone on cocaine, “Alright, what did I miss here? I feel like I’m the butt of some joke here,” she said in her best annoyed tone.

The Clockwork lady kept laughing, soon regaining control of herself and smirking up at Mori, “I’m not telling you,” she replied, her tone much softer than before, “But, you got your point across. You don’t want to kill me. Yet, anyway,” she said, eyes turning serious, “So, who are you? And why did you send your… armored undead to bring me here?” she asked.

“I’m not telling you,” Mori retorted in her best impression of the Clockwork lady, “Not until you answer a question or two I have myself. First off, what's your name? I don’t want to just call you the Weird Clockwork Lady anymore.”

“I do not have a name, as most consider them, but I have a model number instead. I am E-X52, or just X52,” she explained, still lying on the ground, “Now you answer one of my questions. Why-”

“Nope,” Mori said, cutting X52 off, “You attacked me randomly, so I at least get a second question. Why were you being attacked by those Headhunters?”

X52 paused, eyeing Mori for a moment, “I don’t think it’s in my best interest to share that with you,” she said, “If you forgot, we are still enemies in this scenario. The only reason I am not attacking you is because I can’t hurt you and you show no interest in doing the same to me. I would rather be pretty much anywhere else right now.”

“But…” Mori cut in, “There is somewhere you obviously don’t want to be in. Like the Hive?” she guessed, smirking.

X52 growled, looking at Mori with some amount of hatred, “I won’t say anything,” she said simply.

Mori observed the woman for a long moment, smiling soon after, “Ah, you can’t lie, can you?” she asked, deriving some amusement from seeing X52 flinch ever so slightly, “Or is it that you just don’t want to?” 

X52 only stared at the opposite wall, ignoring Mori’s presence completely.

Sighing, Mori picked the woman up and placed her on the slab bed, pulling out a chair from next to the bed to look at the woman, “Alright, look, I don’t know why you’re here, why you can’t lie to me, why you found my little incorrect deduction so funny, what your goal is, what you’re capable of, or even what the point of your existence is, but I know this for sure: I am a lich, therefore I can spend hundreds of years interrogating you if I find it interesting enough. And I find it fascinating. You know what else I know? I know that, if the Clockworks find this place, they won't spare you-- the Headhunter was proof enough of that. So, we can do this two ways.” she said, putting up two fingers.

“One, I can just kill you, take whatever you’ve been hiding from me, and wash my hands of all of this.” she listed, lowering one finger, “Or two, you can answer my questions and we might be able to reach an understanding. I wasn’t kidding when I said that you appearing at my doorstep and the Hive being erratic was suspiciously coincidental. If you being there makes the Hive less dangerous, then I’m all for it. So, let’s start with the basics. Why were you being attacked by the Headhunters?”

X52 looked up at Mori for a split second before looking away. Mori simply stayed put, perfectly still, waiting for the Clockwork to say something. Finally, X52 looked back at Mori, “I… lost control of my Forgeheart.”

Blinking, Mori gave a confused look, “You… lost control of your Forgeheart? How?” she asked, propping her head on her knees.

“I don’t know!” X52 shouted back, “Sure, he was getting pretty sassy with me, but I thought that was just because Mother knew that… I would work well with a personable Forgeheart… but how was I supposed to know he would turn on me! Or that he was just waiting to break the binds Mother put on him?” she ranted, pausing when she finished, “I… You-”

Mori held up a hand, “Alright, so the Forgeheart broke free from both you and the Goddess of Clocks. This led to the Clockwork forces in the Hive taking off the gloves, in a way. So… why did you guys have the glove on in the first place? I mean, three Infiltrators in the mountains were able to use mana and magic. You’ve been holding back all this time, haven’t you?”

X52 looked uncomfortable once more, shying away from Mori’s gaze and looking away.

“Alright, I guess the answer to that question is pretty… important. We can talk about that another time. Or drop it altogether. Anyway, next question… what’s with the heart you’ve been carrying around? Not even the medics seem to have noticed it.”

“Oh… yeah…” she mumbled, looking at the heart-like thing in her hand, “It’s… the heart of my sister, X41. She met an unfortunate end during some mission or other and I was supposed to defend the Forgeheart as it rebuilt her body…”

“But that went up in smoke when the thing went evil…” Mori finished, putting a finger on her chin, “One final question. Why are you attacking Granulous?”

Contrary to her expectations, X52 showed no sign of wanting to keep the reason a secret, “First of all, we are hardly ‘attacking’ this world. If we really ‘attacked,’ then Kel’rk’ath and Sa’ar’kik would have sent their armies in to counter us long ago. I won’t tell you why, but I will say this:” she leaned sat up and leaned forward, looking into Mori’s eye-flames, “The scale of warfare that is happening in hundreds of dimensions, right now, is so far beyond the lives of a scant few billion mortals that even calling what we are doing right now a skirmish would be an insult to whatever faceless cosmic force caused this war in the first place. This world, and the next, mean nothing.” X52 leaned back, sighing, “Do I get to ask questions now?”

Mori stared at the Clockwork woman for a long while, her words replaying in Mori’s head. As the words sunk in, little by little, Mori could only find herself disgusted, “Are you serious?” Mori asked, “You consider the lives of anyone innocent to be ‘scant!?’ Are you fucking psychopathic!? What’s wrong with you,” she screamed, standing, “Explain how any number of innocent lives can ‘mean nothing?’”

A moment of silence passed, with Mori glaring bloody murder at the stunned X52. After a moment, the Clockwork woman sighed, “You misunderstand what I’m saying here,” she said, “You do not understand the scale of the war, in both number and method of fighting. Souls, like everything else, are resources. every soul that dies in this world goes directly to your gods. Did you know that?” she asked. Mori paused for a moment, wanting to retort but unable to, “And when I say that this world means nothing, I mean it in the perspective of this great war. This world is completely controlled by your gods. There is no way to enter this world through most normal means. It is impossible. 

“The only way to come here is to use a method of dimensional travel that exists independent from the Rift. Few have such methods and fewer with enough versatility to be used normally. Either way, It is not the location of this world that is important. Nor is it the faith. Nor the resources. The only thing here for us is souls. That is, if they can be taken from your gods. I- Wait… I’m taking this off track. Let me get back to the main point. This world is meaningless because it has little of what anyone needs on the cosmic scale, and there is no way to even attain what is here.”

Mori met X52’s eyes for a long moment, soon sighing. She pulled her chair back and sat down, “Fine, you aren’t wholesale slaughtering people. You’re just sending them to the gods. I… can accept that.”

“It hurts, huh?” X52 asked, “Learning this.”

Mori looked up, “How would you know?”

She chuckled a little, “You know, the gods don’t just keep the souls of the newly dead on ice forever. They make use of them. Mostly to wipe clean and put into newly born children. Reincarnation and all that. The resulting person is a bit stronger, which is nice. But, what do you think happens when a god finds someone extraordinary? They are brought into that god's army. And, once they learn how things are run in the grand scheme of things around here, they have a similar reaction to you. It’s not… ideal, but it’s how things have been run for the last few hundred years. Or the last thousand years. I don’t know. Even the gods are worn out, you know. Mother may be able to remember what started the war, but no one else can, apparently. Either that, or they’re so burnt out that recollection is a strenuous task.”

“I… why share all of this with me? What’s your angle? I try my best to stay chipper, but I’m not that naive. Why tell me this?”

X52 looked Mori in the eyes, chuckling, “I… don’t know, really. Maybe it’s that I just want someone to share the fatigue of this whole thing with. I don’t know. Can I ask a few questions now? I have a few things I want to know.”

Mori nodded slowly, “...Sure.”

“Thanks. Okay, most of what I wanted to ask, you’ve already answered, one way or another, so I just have two questions,” she said, “First, where did you get all of that adamantite and the Armband of the Champion? Second, what was the thing you sent out in the desert?”

Mori looked down at her green   set of armor, apparently called adamantite, and the armband embedded in the center of her chest and tilted her head, “I raided a reliquary for it. Some god or other-- I already forgot his name-- put this stuff in there along with this weird monster in an orrery. Do you know what this stuff is? Oh yeah, and the undead is a weapon we’re making to fight your Hive. Well, not ‘your’ hive, but my point still stands. Other than that… I would tell you if I knew you better.”

X52 shrugged, “No offense taken. Anyway, about your armor… adamantite is one of the strongest metals known to the gods. And that armband is one of the stronger defensive artifacts created by Ei’vit’net. You are… nearly immortal like this. With your soul in the middle of that, it will be very, very difficult to kill you… Now I’m realizing how bad of a situation I’m in…”

Mori smiled, chuckling, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m not planning on killing you. Well… I think I will have to speak to the gods for this, but I won’t kill you. That’s for sure. Why don’t we-” Mori tried to continue, but an explosion rocked the building, stone crumbling in some places. “What the hell was that!?” Mori shouted, dashing out of the room, leaving the door open for X52 to pass through.

She barged her way outside, only to stop in her tracks. On the horizon was something Mori never thought she would see before. It was massive, almost as large as their small outpost but so heavily armed that she had no doubts that it could demolish mountains.

Mori did not even consider standing her ground. She raised her left hand and shot two pulses of death mana, then a third after a beat. Her undead all snapped their heads to her, then bustled about. She had very little, if no time to get everyone evacuated before the flying fortress killed them all, and she was not going to waste time gawking.