Caleb stared at the woman before him with utter shock plainly written on his face. She was nothing like the woman they had left at Green Oasis. She stood tall, confident, and had a wild gleam in her eyes that spoke her disregard for her own safety. She wore a leather duster and had oddly bluish skin, which was something he knew that few had. He waved at her after a second, “Hey… Ursula… how did you do… that?” he asked, tilting his head at the shadow beneath her.
“Divine gifts, so, what’s going on around here? I was bringing my new… friends-”
[Friends?] a voice said in Caleb’s mind, [That’s an odd term for the eyes and ears of the other gods.]
Ursula seemed to want to argue, but four more figures rose from the shadows behind Ursula. Two of them were humans, though one had a blindfold wrapped around his head, another was a person entirely made of shadows, and the last was a literal statue of a person, walking around without any issues. The blindfolded human sighed, “Some of us are not the eyes, Zhanuk,” he said, “And there is a truce at the moment. We were all ordered to refrain from antagonizing each other.”
A raven suddenly dove from high up, landing onto Ursula’s shoulder and glaring at the blindfolded man, [None of us have seen peace, watersight. You cannot truly say that you want to ‘get along’ and ‘be friends’ with everyone else.]
“You are one to talk,” a whispered voice spoke. Caleb turned to the shadow person, “You and your pet human have been fraternizing with everyone here.”
Ursula pouted, “Can’t I just be nice to you guys? What’s wrong with that? What do you think, Fly?” she asked, taking a shielded lantern from her duster and opening it. The flickering flame within suddenly surged forward and manifested into a sixth person, a fire person.
The fire person shrugged, [I am a Candle of my gods. I do not care what you do, Bloodseeker.]
“Fine… what about you Eidolon?” she asked the stone person. The statue looked between her and the other people there and shrugged, pointing to Fly, “Can’t you guys please be nice to each other?”
The final person, a woman with a massive grin on her face, giggled. She walked over to Ursula with a swagger that Caleb would have called seductive if she at all appealed to him, “Come on, Bloody, we’re having a grand old time! Besides, I could be quite nice to you if I wanted to be…”
“I already said maybe, Zuccia. Another time,” Ursula replied, shaking her head, “Anyway! We’re getting off track! Caleb, can you bring us to meet the lich here? She’s got a good amount of favor with the gods and we wanted to introduce ourselves.”
The seven supposedly divine-backed beings all looked at him with some invisible pressure to accept. Save for one, who he felt trying to seduce him. After a moment, he turned with a sigh, “Fine, fine. But, I’m not exactly part of her crew yet, so I can only ask to bring you in. Come on,” he said, walking towards the doors. As if sensing his decisiveness, the doors opened as soon as the group he headed approached.
Immediately, he could sense a dense feeling of wrongness coming from the hangar beyond. It was the same feeling he got from the undead, which proved to be correct as soon as he walked into the hangar. All around them, the legion of undead machines stood in neat lines, headed by people with gray skin. Or skeletons. A few of them were skeletons. With gems fused to their spinal chords. Among them all, however, there was a familiar face, one that he had seen quite recently. As soon as they entered, the people and skeletons all turned to stare at the newcomers, and a voice rose from the small amount of murmuring, “Caleb! There you are!” someone shouted. Caleb turned to see Natalia walking towards him, but she was different. Her skin was pale and gray and her eyes glowed with light, but that was it, “Who’d you bring along?” she asked as she approached. Her stinger wagged behind her, as if the tail of an excitable dog.
Caleb turned to his tag-alongs, and they simply shrugged. He sighed, “Well, there’s Ursula,” he said. Natalia’s face showed that she had no clue who Ursula was, “She’s one of the Earthborn that was supposed to be back at Green Oasis. Then there’s a bunch of other people who I’ve never met. Also a talking bird. But that’s not too weird.”
[Hey! Sure, it’s a bit different from what you people expect, but that’s no reason to say stuff like that!] the raven raved.
Natalia stared at the bird for a second, then shrugged, “Meh, whatever. Not the weirdest thing I’ve seen around here. I mean, you’ve seen Crave, haven’t you? Now that’s strange. Either way, are you guys taking Mori’s offer?”
“Offer…?” the shadow man whispered, “What kind of offer?”
Natalia turned to the shadow man, “To leave. Granulous, that is. I didn’t know she knew such an interesting assortment of people.”
“She doesn’t,” Caleb cut in, “They’re… divine ambassadors? Something like that. I couldn’t stop them, so… I’m just bringing them along.” He really did not want to know what a living shadow, a fire person, a talking raven, a living statue, two humans, and a manic Ursula could do to him.
“Huh. Cool. I was helping retrain the ‘necs, as they’re called. Something about mana-deflecting shields. I dunno, all I know is that these guys need some retraining. So, I’ll leave you guys to it! See ya!” Natalia shouted, returning to the hundred Immortals she left and began to speak to them in a shout. Caleb would have been able to hear it if the other people and skeletons did not begin to shout as well.
Caleb led the small group out of the hangar bay and into the winding hallways of the interior of the moving fort. After a few moments of silence, he heard a dull thud behind him, along with a somewhat loud grunt. He turned to see Zuccia recoiling from bumping into the stone person, who was looking up with the same expression he always had. “Hey! What’s the big idea?” Zuccia said, rubbing her nose, “That hurt!”
The stone person did not answer, and simply turned to a seemingly arbitrary direction and stared at it for a long moment. Almost as if on cue, a squadron of four Immortals turned a corner ahead of them and saw them standing there. The two groups looked at each other before a quartet of drones suddenly rose from the Immortals backs and began pointing around, as if communicating. The four undead nodded to their drones and went about their business, walking through the hallways with some objective or other. After a moment, Caleb’s group calmed down, “So… we should probably meet the ringleader of this place before we get shot at; those rifles didn’t look weak,” Ursula said.
“Agreed,” the blindfolded man murmured.
Caleb shook his head and led them to where he thought the core room was, which was near the dead center of the base. It took him a while, during which time the stone man seemed fixated on a certain place in the halls, but he eventually brought them to the large, glass-floored core room. In the center, a large, hydraulic arm held a core, who was moving around with the vigor of a child, “Yes! This could work! Especially if we fill the internal space with actually useful things! Mom, what do you think?”
Caleb turned to look at the blue-skinned, green-nailed woman who looked at the pedestal in the middle of the room. It had a miniature model of what Caleb recognized as a parthenon-like structure. The woman nodded, “Yeah, it could work, but that’s a lot of space wasted on the sides… What if you added turrets there? Maybe every other pillar was a small turret while you enlarge the corner pillars and turn those into bigger turrets?”
“I like that,” an energetic voice said. Caleb turned to see a skeletal figure wrapped in what looked like woven metal threads. It was an odd image, one that Caleb thought contrasted heavily with her original armor design, “But I think it would lose a bit of style if they were just turrets. And, yeah, building the turrets into the pillars could also work, but what if we took influence from the gods here? Like… VII, what kind of things are symbols of En’gem’ia?”
VII shrugged, then turned to the seven newcomers, “We can talk about that after we greet the guests, Mori.”
“Hmm?” she asked, turning, “Oh, hey there. Didn’t notice you. Sorry about that.” She stood, stepping forward without any concern about her safety, “So… who’re you? I mean, I know you, Caleb, but what about these… seven others? And yeah, I see you, bird…”
[Rude. I’m not just a bird,] the raven groused.
Ursula stepped forward, smiling to Mori, “Hey there. We’re the ears and, save for one case, eyes of our gods. I’m working for Hel’ga’thra personally, but these others serve different gods. So… seeing as how you’re working for Kel’rk’ath and Sa’ar’kik and she’s working for En’gem’ia… Can I presume you’re both part of the truce deal that’s going on?”
Mori’s brow raised a bit. She turned to the other blue person in the room, VII, who sighed, “We were the ones to start it. At any rate, what do you want? We have no quarrel with any of your gods at this moment.”
“Observation,” the shadow man said, “We wanted to see why a Deathtouched and an EX unit were working together. But, with what one of your liches said, I was curious about this… offer, you were giving people.” Caleb was surprised, even stunned, to hear that detail. He did not expect Natalia to be a lich. He was so stunned, he almost missed the other divine scouts agreeing with the shadow man.
Mori shrugged, “I made a deal with Kel’rk’ath and Sa’ar’kik. If I destroyed the Forgeheart, I got to take a hundred people with me to leave. So what? Also, did you guys really just walk in here?”
“Ah, no. That was me. I assumed we could take them if it came down to a fight, and let them through,” the core said, doing a shrugging motion, “I did not know they were divine scouts.”
“Oh, don’t be upset, Athy. I’ll teach you after this is all over. Okay, so you wanted to know what was going on because of your duties. So, where do all of us go from here?”
Mori rubbed her chin, thinking, then jumped up with a start, “Oh, they can help us!” she nearly shouted, “You guys are good at different things, so you can help us! I mean, I see one of Ei’vit’net’s statues over there, so he can help us with design. Hopefully.” The stone man nodded, but stepped forward and pointed to his bicep, then put his middle finger and thumb around it, “Arm… ring… Oh, you mean the armband?” The stone man nodded, “Yeah, I took it from one of Ei’vit’net’s reliquaries. He needs to defend those places better. And not put them in the middle of a world owned by other gods. But that’s beside the point… Do you want the other artifacts back?” she asked. The stone man wibbled his hand a bit, “No? Then what.” He just stared at her. “Can’t talk?” He shook his head. “Alright, we can deal with that later. So, what do the rest of you say? Come with us and help us take down the rogue Forgeheart!”
There was a long moment of silence, before they all spoke at once. They stared at each other, and Ursula stepped forward, “We will. But, you have to let us go wherever we want! And we want some rooms for each of us personally!”
Mori turned to the core, who nodded, “Alright, granted. Before we get started, Caleb, are you here to take the deal Eva and Mark took?”
Caleb nodded, “If you’ll have me…?”
Mori grinned, “Not a problem! Alright, everything’s dealt with, so, let’s get started!”
You have been putting out chapters at a very high rate. I'm not surprised it's beginning to wear you down.
Remember that you're making this story available for us, for free. Whatever "inconvenience" you taking a break might cause, remember that you do not owe us anything. You're more than entitled to a break of any length, and I'm very happy to see you take care of yourself!
I'd recommend considering a more lax schedule as well. Perhaps weekly chapters, or twice a week? Nothing would prevent you from writing as often as you want, but it'd lessen the feeling of "having to" write chapters every day to keep up with the schedule. Dunno, might work for you, might not.
Anyways, thanks for the chapter, greatly enjoying this story!