Titanfall Preventing Disaster

[Pern]

Finding dwarvish bones in a dwarvish ruin was not as easy as Pern had initially hoped. The chamber and adjoining (and passable) tunnels were full of detritus from the battle that had taken place here eons before any of their own lifespans. More boulders and stone lay strewn in piles of rubble. Demonic skeletons were scattered about in the dozens. Pern had to wonder if the master of this golem had died in a cave-in down one of the impassable tunnels when her foot hit something solid and metallic.

"OUCH!"

Frey was not far ahead of her, a few yards down an open tunnel, and turned back to see, "What is it?"

"I've hit shomething ... I think it'sh a shield." Her golden eyes blinked into the darkness of the tunnel as she leaned down to pry the shield out of a pile of very large bones, "It'sh dwarvish."

"Any sign of a control rod?" Frey stepped back, his light feet easily carrying him over piles of bone and rock that Pern would have sent tumbling.

Pern handed the shield over to the elf and plunged back into the debris, plying bone from bone from armor plating from stray rock. An impressive dwarvish sword met her grasp next, sunk clear through a demon's skull. After a few more moments she shook her head, "Nothing. There'sh nothing elshe."

"We need more light," Frey grumbled.

Rather suddenly back in the chamber, the golem paused mid-air with a rumbling groan and filled the area with bright blue illumination from it's eyes and runes. All along the floor dozens of baseball-sized, rounded stones grew bright, glowing dots. Like pupils. Orc and elf both looked back towards the stilled battle and blinked at the light.

"Did you jusht..."

And then the golem resumed its attack.

 

[Heike Eisen]

Ringing in her ears. The world out of focus, distant as if her helm were a tunnel and the visor its opening and she standing halfway through its length.

Pulses of throbbing, aching pain in her back, a ceaseless thrum. The weight of Thorgritt's body upon hers. The sheer weight of everything, as it so felt after utterly having the wind knocked out of her. A groan that started as a rumble in her throat emerged through her parted lips, unable to be held back.

Heike saw the golem turning about. Squaring up to face her as she sat slumped against the wall, single arm rising up to bring its fist down for a crushing blow.

And then it stopped. Paused. This as blue lights illuminated from the eyes of the construct and along the runes of its body. Heike, aware only that she needed to GET UP, did not think much of it in that moment, and focused only on the immediate, the necessary. She rolled her body such that Thorgritt's corpse would slide off of her, gathered enough willpower to force herself back up to her feet, and stumbled away toward Stefan, getting what distance she could from the golem before it reactivated.

Her wits, back in sufficient capacity, allowed her to ask the mage, "What...happened?"

"I-I-I don't know! I worked, I felt it work, my spell, I did! It went through in some capacity, I know that for cer--"

Heike cut her attention away from him, supremely upset by the loss of Thorgritt, and called out to Pern, unbeknownst to her mirroring Pern's own question to Frey, "Was that you? Did you find the control rod?"

Then the golem unfroze. Turned its head and shifted its body to face her and Stefan.

"Suppose not!" Numa called, answering the posed question. "I'll keep looking! Hold that thing off!"

Stefan was backing up nervously, eyes locked onto the golem. Heike, feeling as though Stefan wasn't necessarily mistaken about his spell but with no true idea of what part of the golem had been weakened and furthermore feeling the trembling weakness in her legs and in her arms after so savage a blow that she had endured, opted to go defensive. To try and circle around the golem and to keep just out of reach in order to occupy its attention.

"Whatever it was that you did," Heike called out to Pern and Frey, taking a few quick breaths, "do so again if you can. Get the golem to halt once more."

Then, maybe, she'd have an opening to see where Stefan's inflicted weakness upon the construct was.

Pern

 

[Pern]

"I didn't do anything-" Frey replied, but Pern cut him off.

"Shay a command! Tell it to shtop!"

"But I ..." the elf looked back and for between the Knight and the Blacksmith, shrugged, and spoke up, "STOP!"

A lowing groan resounded from the golem as it stopped, still as a statue, in the middle of readying to lunge at Heike again.

"By the moons," said Frey with wonder as he watched, "it worked. Ha."

"It'sh the shield!" Pern stumbled over to him and turned the great bronzed shield in his grasp, "They built the control rod into the shield ash the handle! Ingenioush! You are itsh Mashter now."

"My brother is never going to believe me, ahem-" the elf stepped forward, hoisting the shield up properly so as to face the golem, "Stand down and let us pass."

Another rumble, the golem pulled back into a stand, runes and eyes glowing balefully in the chamber.

"Amazing," Frey blinked up at the stone guard.

"Ish everyone alright?" Pern asked, looking around and letting her gaze land on their fallen comrade with a frown.

 

[Heike Eisen]

The heavy stomps of the approaching golem, rattling loose debris about the chamber and sending little quivers of vibration through the ground and up through Heike's feet and legs. She couldn't rely upon the thought that the construct was generally slow, that it was not a trained foe who could wield his intelligence as a weapon as well, no. She needed to regard the golem with the utmost caution, lest her fate be twined with that of the fallen dwarf.

And the massive construct, with its one deadly arm, made ready for a terrifying lunge. Heike shifted her footwork, bracing her body to vault out of the way.

STOP!

The command given, and the golem...obeyed? Heike blinked, in the immediate moment following unable to reckon that her good fortune was manifest in the world. Yet it was so. A small degree of time, a coalition of circumstances, was what separated her from being able to walk away from this encounter with only a collection of bruises and, as it was with Thorgritt, having this chamber be her tomb. Grappling with her own mortality again, after five years possessed of the unholy strength inherent with her Slaughtern vampirism, was more of a struggle than she had anticipated.

Heike glanced over her shoulder. Heard Pern's remark that the control rod had been built into the handle of a shield that the elf had picked up. And she let out a sigh of relief as the golem dutifully, much like a living statue returning to its pedestal, retreated and became still upon its stand--even if that glow remained.

Ish everyone alright?

Stefan just nodded vacantly, a heavy hand to his forehead as he was staring at Thorgritt's slumped body. Heike, lowering her sword but keeping it in hand, said, "What is done is done."

Both she and Numa circled around from their respective places in the chamber to gather briefly around Pern and Frey, each eyeing with two different characters of curiosity the shield in Frey's hand.

"So that was it?" Numa said. "Good thing you found it."

"And still we are yet to begin with our true task," said Heike, her eyes through her visor traveling over the dozen doorways ringing the chamber. Only five could actually be searched, and that at least was good for them. "The Archway that opens the mind. Let us see if we cannot decipher any clues before simply choosing one."

An extensive, manual search of perhaps each of the five corridors would be time-consuming, but that was their final option. Even an educated guess at which one was the path they sought for the collection of the six runes would be better than choosing one at random. Splitting up, as Heike had previously presented as an option, she no longer favored as viable. Not with what happened with the golem and Thorgritt.

So Heike, along with Numa and eventually Stefan, began to circle the chamber and to examine the archways for any contextual clues.

* * * * *​

Numa was a little disappointed that the control rod had been found by that elf before the golem could kill more of them. But that was alright. She needn't make some brash move to try and wrest possession of it from him, or anything else that would reveal her true intentions. No sense in taking such a risk if victory was not assured. If it came to it, it was enough to simply observe and report back to King Jürgen at the Crobhear Stone.

She could bide her time, for now. Idly examining this archway or that archway in search of these "runes." It wasn't like the sun would be rising in this dreary place.

And opportunity, after all, presented itself to the patient.

Pern

 

[Pern]

"Hold on to that," Pern told the elf, "jusht incashe."

Hard to say just how many of those golems were left in these ancient chambers. Frey nodded to both women and began to look around in earnest now that his life wasn't hanging in the balance between a rock and a hard place.

Pern was of a similar mindset to Heike. They could search each route one by one, but it did not feel like time was on their side. She pulled from her satchel a leatherbound journal and began to flip through the pages.

"Opensh the mind. Opensh the mind."

"Perhaps they meant it literally," Frey indicated with a gesture to his skull as if he were cracking it open.

"I find that ... unlikely," Pern smirked, "if the room where the portal shtone ish any indicashun, theshe dwarvesh were very deep into shiensh and magic. More likely it meansh a laboratory or ... perhapsh a library. Educashun. Learning. Experimenting."

Frey slowly paced from one opening to the next, stopping by the one closest to Heike. This one was partially blocked by fallen stone, but he could still see inwards. The elf climbed up the rubble pile blocking the opening to peer in, "Here, there's something."

"Booksh?" Pern asked.

"No, different color light. The air smells different, too. Help me move these stones."

 

[Heike Eisen]

"Then that will have to be our educated guess," Heike said.

Different kind of light, different character of the air--if such things were worthy of mention and they had naught else to go on, then, while they couldn't rightly confirm if this is what the cryptic voice had meant by the archway that opens the mind, at least it was evidence of some notable activity. And, moreover, while there did not appear to be some manner of definite time constraint upon them, still it was in their best interest that they find these runes quickly.

A nod to the elf Frey, and Heike began to help pull away the stones. Stefan came next, and lastly Numa, and all of them aided in removing the rubble, shoveling away at the small stones with both hands and with great heaving yanks pulling away the larger stones and working in pairs to haul the largest stones off of the pile to go tumbling down and away to the floor. Heike winced several times throughout the endeavor, the lingering aches and bruises left by the hard impact of Thorgritt into her and then the two of them into the wall born with pursed lips and only slight pauses. The pain she would not allow to concern her--Heike knew she had been the lucky one.

The endeavor was over, and the newly unsealed corridor lay revealed enough to enter.

Stefan wiped sweat from his forehead, Numa placed her hands on her hips, and Heike glanced to both Frey and Pern. Said, "If we encounter anything else, it is my hope that that control rod has more than one use."

A somewhat rueful smile, thinking of the casualty they had sustained, and then Heike stepped through into the new light of the unique corridor and walked at a cautious pace to what lay ahead.

Pern

 

[Pern]

Pern stood back, given the limited space to work, and opted to remain out of the way despite the fact that she was of an appropriate build to lift heavy objects and move them. When the way was clear she nodded a quiet thanks to the trio and followed Heike in through the tunnel.

"Frey ish right," Pern remarked as they walked through the gloom, "it doesh shmell different." Less like earth and more ... musty, undisturbed. The faint blue glow of the main chamber faded and the hue of soft green took its place at the other end. They eventually found the light to be coming from an invasive moss-like plant with glowing fibers and flowers. Beyond them, a greater white light emanated from the open doorway.

It yawned wide into another massive room, twice as large as the one the portal stone sat within, and filled to the gills with rows and rows and rows of books. Great arches of polished wood reached upward into a ceiling of crumbling stone. Some had already caved in, allowing further brilliant blue light to reach inward from the luminescent ceiling.

At the center sat a giant ... well, Pern wasn't entirely sure what it was (clocks were a rare thing on Arethil).

​

"My word..." she stepped in, looking around them in awe, "have you ever sheen anything like it?"

"Never," replied Frey, hoisting the weight of the shield and rod onto his shoulder.

"Well, I think we have dischovered our library. Look around for runesh."

 

[Heike Eisen]

"That's..." Heike began.

But how to finish? Incredible? Astonishing? Wondrous? That intricate and ornate circular construction, with craftsmanship whose beauty caught the eye at first glance, was a thing which touched upon a certain vagueness present in her mind, as if she had heard of such a marvel before but could not readily recall any specifics other than the mere hearing of it. Dwarven, perhaps, given the written script present in the previous chamber. An artifact lost to the ceaseless march of time, that much was certain--nothing that she would have been likely to see in Little Belgrath back in Reikhurst.

"A timepiece," said Stefan. Then, glancing to the others while Heike and Numa, at least, glanced to him, added, "That's what we called them. In the College. Not...not that I've actually seen a real one, though."

Well, I think we have dischovered our library. Look around for runesh.

"Right. Let's get to it."

Heike set off, as did the others. The room was quite busy, one could say, with a feast for the eyes in an assortment of colors and shapes and decorations, all in arrays of booklined shelves and piles of ruin from the caved-in ceiling. Those runes, more than likely, would be well concealed among the vast visual clutter, even if they were not intentionally hidden. And she expected it to be slow going.

It was. Enough for the painful echoes from her impact into the wall to abate some and for hunger to start its gradual creep into her stomach.

Then.

"Pern?" Heike said, turning over a pile of books that had fallen from a shelf close to the caved-in wreckage of the ceiling. "I think I may have found something."

The edge of a stone, a glimpse of a marking upon it, sticking out.

* * * * *​

Numa, in her own search around the clock chamber, had considerations to make.

These runes were the things that the Golden Blade Knight and the other mortals were looking for. Stealing one of the runes could be the disruption that King Jürgen sought to cause; the more the world was embroiled in its own chaos, the better for the Slaughtern Vampire Host and its goal. It would be risky, yes, her cover would be ruined if and when she showed her true intentions.

Numa heard the knight calling out to the scholarly orc. Ahhh...but if only she could find one these runes herself.

Pern