Thick hardened steel, built to withstand war and violence, slammed home with a basso thunk. Kaius felt the jolt in his marrow, despair welling within him like the door itself was a guillotine, and his fate had been just as sealed as he watched it close.

  With the despair came frustration. How? Why? Their entire descent, the facility hadn’t reacted to their presence and now it sealed itself? Had it been a trap? A ploy by the automata to lull them into a false sense of security?

  “Gods’ rotten fuck,” Kaius cursed as he ran forward.

  There had to be a way through, a way to destroy the door or subvert its mechanisms — anything. They couldn’t be trapped. Not now, and not here!

  Kaius couldn’t get the image of the impassive Centurion that had watched them from behind the descending door out of his head. It might have been made of steel, but Kaius could swear its stance oozed delight as they were sealed in.

  For all the blighted feelings in his belly, he knew he had to get a grip. They couldn’t succumb to despair, not when more than two dozen of the lesser worker drones still separated them from the steel barrier that had locked them into the barracks.

  The automata scurried towards them on arachnid limbs, headless torsos of armour and magic, their many arms tools with murderous intent.

  “What do we do?” Ianmus cried, desperation cracking his voice.

  “What do you think?” Porkchop growled. The resonant sound of anger filled the hall and drowned out the high-pitched warble of the alarm. “We kill the creatures of metal — and then we escape.”

  There were no more words after that. There was no time for them. Not as the steel wave of artifice spilled forward.

  A razor-sharp calm fell over Kaius as he slid fully into battle focus. Escape, for now, was secondary. The how and why didn’t matter. There was only the blade in his hands, his team at his back, and the promise of violence before him.

  Kaius focused utterly on the nearest automaton, now only a few strides away. Scowling, he slid into a high guard and leapt forward, driving off his back foot. The press was so tight that his advance was hampered by a dozen whipping limbs. Chisels and hammers battered his armour, scratching and striving for the softness of his flesh. Pain bloomed — blows struck his ribs, shoulders, and arms, deep bruising and cracked bone making themselves known as his health plummeted.

  The silent fury of the automaton’s assault mattered little. He lanced out with A Father’s Gift, the crystalline edge of his blade punching home into the automaton’s core.

  **Ding! You have slain Imperial Worker-drone - level 151 Living Tool! Experience Gained! Reduced Experience for slaying a foe of significantly lower level!**

  The notification brought no joy. For all the automata were easy to slay now that they knew their weak spots, the press was tight. Each and every steel monstrosity halted their advance for precious moments, slowing them while the door continued its inexorable descent.

  From the depths of their bond Kaius felt, rather than saw, Porkchop slam into the automaton’s front line. The ground rippled under each step, orichalcum claws tearing through limbs and shaking the worker drones even as they were smashed flat. Flowing in instinctive synchrony, Kaius stepped in — slapping aside three blows aimed at his neck while allowing others to fall on his armour as he cut down an automaton that tried to pincer Porkchop from the side.

  Breathing hard, he moved on, severing limbs even as the powerful strikes of his back line fell upon the worker drones in an unending volley. It was senseless violence—driven by anxiety and frustration at the sudden turn of their fates. He knew that. They weren’t acting smart or using tactics, but the worker drones were weak and they were strong, and so the automata fell like wheat before the scythe.

  Yet now that they were no longer embroiled in a desperate flight through the facility, Kaius could feel his aspects flaring bright. He didn’t have the time or focus to analyse it, but he could feel that spark of essence within him flowing through his pillars as they soaked up the barest fraction of that power.

  The sudden stress of uncertainty had kick-started the process of refinement. They would need to finish this quickly if they were to maximise the opportunity by cycling in the aftermath.

  The sensation was startling — unlike anything he had experienced before, even under Xenanra’s guidance when he had first cycled. It had been a simple movement of essence then. Now, with instinctive hunger, his pillars tore into that mote greedily, gnawing on it as they sought to toughen themselves. It was almost nothing, yet in that flow of energy he could tell that his pillars had been strengthened — an infinitesimally slight amount, but it was there. Refinement.

  The shock of it was enough to jolt Kaius from mindless aggression. They were trapped, yes — but they had supplies, time, and resources. From the state of the facility and its defences, it was clear that it was not inviolate. There must have been some limitation to the lockdown that had sealed them within. Otherwise, they would not have seen bodies strewn throughout the facility. If whoever had seized control of the automata could simply confine the ruin’s occupants and starve them out, none would have survived. There must have been a way around the lockdown. They just had to find it.

  Kaius’s mind raced even as more worker drones fell upon him. Catching a trifold stab from one automaton above, he levered his blade and flung the blow aside before flooding it with stamina — layering a Bladerite and Mercurial Reversal before lopping off its limbs with a crackling detonation of arcane energy.

  If they wanted out, he needed to understand Imperial artifice. Not to the point of recreating it — that would take decades and Skills he didn’t have — but enough to disable it. That was manageable, and he had the perfect subjects of study right before him.

  “Try to disable a few of them without breaching their cores. As many as possible. Crush their limbs — leave them functional!” he roared.

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  His team didn’t question him, but he knew they’d heard. The flow of battle shifted. Porkchop tore into their forces, crushing spider-like limbs of steel with blow after blow as he surrounded his arm with a jagged orichalcum bludgeon — a changed version of his Jadecrash.

  Ianmus and Kenva shifted their shots — arrows and lances of light searing through joints and exposed limbs, starting with the automata closest to Kaius and Porkchop.

  Their change in tactics slowed their progress — a harder slog than simple destruction. Previously, one well-placed blow just above the automaton’s hips was enough to disable it, but now he needed the cores intact.

  It was impossible to block every blow, not when he had to focus on the removal of fourteen limbs to disable a single drone. Yet he weathered strike after strike, trusting in his skills and armour to keep him hale as he fought on.

  Hacking blades skittered off his vambraces. Chisels and awls hammered his belly. Each blow was hard, packed with mechanical strength — a constant drain on his health that he wouldn’t have risked if the manpower of their opponents wasn’t so limited.

  For all its flexibility and versatility, scalemale had a failing — it allowed the force of blows to punch through.

  At least, it should have.

  Seconds from victory, with only four worker drones left, Kaius hacked off a multi-jointed limb at the shoulder — right as he was hammered in the ribs. He shifted to minimise the injury, one blade was not enough to block everything.

  Right as he expected to feel the surging heat and blaring pain of a cracked rib, his armour stiffened slightly, dispersing the force of the blow across a wider area. A chime sounded in his mind. Even without reading it, he knew what it was as he felt a surge of power within his soul space.

  Tempered by Dissonance. The constant assault had been enough for it to break through.

  Kaius grinned and redoubled his pace. Instantly he felt the change. There was no increased bonus to his speed or general movement, that was obvious, but his armour had changed. It felt tougher, blunting impact just that much more effectively. The constant drain on his health lessened. A slight consolation for now, but a grand boon for all future battles.

  Growing more reckless, with his defences secured, Kaius picked up his pace. His team reacted, pushing their assault. The automata fell swiftly, leaving the hall silent except for the shrill alarm and their panting breaths.

  Kaius swept his gaze over their surroundings. The remains of automata littered the floor — most twisted and broken, but just over half a dozen dismantled, their limbs tangled and flattened by Porkchop or ripped off entirely by Kaius’s blade.

  Yet despite the end of the automata, the frenzy of battle did not leave his team. Porkchop most of all — Kaius could feel the desperate frustration surging across their bond. His brother charged forward to the steel door that had sealed them in.

  A howl of fury left his throat as he reared up, hammering his orichalcum claws into the steel again and again. Metal shrieked in agony as sparks flew, yet the damage was only superficial. Magic flared within the barrier, reinforcing it as Porkchop left nothing but hair-thin scratches in its surface.

  “Wait,” Kaius called out, drawing Porkchop’s attention.

  “Why?” his brother growled, though he dropped back to all fours all the same. “With our strength we can get through — I know it, especially if Ianmus uses one of his beams.”

  Kaius nodded. He understood the feeling of urgency, but they had to play this smart. “We still need time to recover. Listen — this is a setback, but ultimately what we wanted: a safe redoubt. Beyond that, who knows what artifice they’ve layered into their defences? We don’t want to trigger anything and draw a more severe response.”

  Hells, for all he knew, incorrectly breaching the door could call an army of Centurions down on their heads. That was something he would like to avoid.

  Ianmus and Kenva approached, picking their way through the bodies of slain automata. Kenva’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the de-limbed drones. “Time to recover, I understand —but longer than that, why? And why keep these ones alive?” She nodded toward the drones.

  “To study them,” Kaius said. “When we entered this place, there was something about the imperial formation in the door that felt strangely familiar. If their techniques are similar to anything I know, I might be able to use them to grow my understanding — enough that we might circumvent the security here, or at least stop ourselves from triggering an even larger response when we break out.”

  Ianmus’s eyes twinkled. “I won’t lie — the chance to understand even a fraction imperial artifice does sound rather fascinating.”

  Kaius grinned. He’d known it wouldn’t be a hard sell for the mage, but he switched his gaze to Porkchop and Kenva. Porkchop grumbled but nodded, while Kenva merely sighed.

  “It’s a reasonable enough plan,” she said, “but we’ll need to keep an eye on those things. Don’t want to find out they can repair themselves by them attacking us in our sleep.”

  “Of course,” Kaius agreed. But still, the risk was necessary. Without their cores, it felt likely that the drones they had already mangled would be far less instructive. “Come on. Let’s drag the active ones back to that storeroom. Seems like as good a place as any to make camp.”

  Their path set, they made the arduous trek of dragging heavy steel back the way they had come. Inwardly, Kaius hoped the alarm would turn off soon. If they were trapped here for days or weeks, it would drive him to the point of insanity.

  Pushing past it, he pulled up the notifications that had accumulated during their drawn-out fight through the imperial ruin.

  **Ding! You have slain Imperial Worker-drone - level 151 Living Tool! - Experience Gained! Reduced Experience for slaying a foe of significantly lower level!**

  …

  …

  **Ding! level 251 Imperial Kirithin Centurion - Living Weapon slain - Experience Gained! Bonus Experience for slaying a foe of Significant Strength!**

  …

  …

  **Ding! You have slain Imperial Worker-drone - level 151 Living Tool! - Experience Gained! Reduced Experience for slaying a foe of significantly lower level!**

  …

  …

  **Ding! Runeblade Helion has reached level 204 > 205!**

  **+6 Int; +5 Con, Str & Will; +2 Vit & Dex; +1 Free - from Class & Racial Traits!**

  …

  …

  **Ding! You have slain Imperial Worker-drone - level 151 Living Tool! - Experience Gained! Reduced Experience for slaying a foe of significantly lower level!**

  **Ding! Class Skill Notifications Consolidated!**

  ** Infused Glyph of Drakthar has reached level 208 > 210!**

  …

  **Latent Glyph of Vyrnthane has reached level 186 > 189**

  …

  **Latent Glyph of Eirnith has reached level 173 > 174**

  …

  **Mercurial Reversal has reached level 147 > 153**

  …

  **Runeblade Hymnfocus has reached level 106 > 108**

  **General Skill Notifications Consolidated!**

  …

  **Liturgical Bladeform: Primus Ordo has reached level 204 > 210!**

  …

  **Seargent’s Insight has reached level 203 > 205!**

  …

  **Tempered By Dissonance has reached level 200 > 201!**

  …

  **Spellblades Harmonic Control has reached level 208 > 209!**

  …

  **Greater Regeneration has reached level 207 > 208!**

  ….

  **Moment of Flow has reached level 204 > 206!**

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