Metal growled in distaste as Kaius dragged one of the limbless, still-living worker drones into the room they had chosen to make their base of operations for the foreseeable future.

  Now that he was no longer being pursued by a horde of automata, and far less frantic for it, Kaius could see that the place was more than just a kitchen. It was an oddity of a space — part cooking area and part workshop. A dizzying array of tools lined one side; the back of the room’s racks of shelving held the decaying remnants of boxes. Some looked like they had once been food that had decayed to dust, but others held stranger things: scraps of metal and rotted cloth.

  Grunting slightly as the stump of one of the drone’s legs got caught against a desk, Kaius looked down at the creature and heaved. Gods, the things were heavy — unsurprising given they were made of solid steel. He could manage it just fine, but it didn’t mean lugging them around was pleasant.

  For all that had been amputated and forcibly removed, the creature seemed utterly unconcerned with its fate — other than its attempts to wiggle its metal stumps threateningly at him.

  He supposed it wasn’t too surprising. As sophisticated as it was, the machine was artifice — not truly alive, at least he didn’t think it was. There were hints: none of the automata seemed to use skills, and while they had levels each type was of identical strength to all the others, without variation. They all carried the same class. They were even less lifelike than depthsborn. He supposed it would be hard to outdo creations of something as powerful and flawless as the system.

  Kaius shoved the automaton against one wall and hurried over to Ianmus, who was struggling with one of his own.

  “Gods, did they make these things out of solid lead?” the mage gasped, barely dragging one into the room as he heaved with all his might.

  Kaius chuckled, grabbed the worker drone around its boxy body and lifted with his legs. He couldn’t deny they were hefty, but the benefits of his hybrid class had shown themselves again. Hells, even Kenva was handling her own drone. Then again, she did have plenty of physical stats — most of her struggle came from being relatively slender and short compared to the rest of them. With the worker drones’ torsos being large, it was an awkward burden.

  “Show off,” Ianmus muttered.

  “You’re just jealous of my Strength,” Kaius shot back, grunting slightly as he dropped his package.

  Porkchop, dragging fully half of the remaining specimens behind him, snorted disdainfully. The tied together remains were loud, metal scraping the floor with a horrid shriek that drowned the alarm still filling the barracks.

  “What now?” Porkchop asked.

  “I need to cycle,” Kaius replied. He could still feel his pillars flaring within him. It had been hard to resist devoting his full attention to it as soon as they'd finished their fight, but there had been more important matters at hand.

  “I do too,” Ianmus said, followed by the rest of the team nodding in agreement.

  “If I remember correctly, it shouldn’t be too lengthy once we get it going. Let’s do it in shifts. I don’t mind going second so I can keep an eye on those drones,” Kenva said.

  “I’ll wait with you,” Porkchop replied.

  “Thanks,” Kaius said, giving his friends a grin. He wasn’t going to argue if they wanted to help.

  Not waiting another moment, he dropped to the ground. Closing his eyes, Kaius fled inward and leveraged his Authority to press in on his pillars. Pressure slammed home, heightening the flare that was already there. Essence flowed through his triumvirate.

  It was like pouring alchemist fire over a camp stove. Where once his pillars had nibbled haphazardly at the power within him, now they drank deep.

  From their time in the crucible, Kaius knew that refinement was less revelatory than the initial process of founding his aspects and embodying them, but he still wondered what had caused that initial flare. Had it been the pressure of their non-stop fight? Something deeper — frustration and worry at being trapped deep within an imperial ruin?

  It was hard to say, but regardless he felt his aspects solidify far faster than before he’d started cycling. The value of authority that came from embodiment was obvious now: the pressure forced his essence to saturate his pillars while the act of cycling provided far more than would otherwise have been present.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Little by little, his pillars grew denser — tougher. While he didn’t have an exact feel for it, he got the impression he’d taken a notable step toward a breakthrough.

  For now, satisfied, he opened his eyes and saw Ianmus next to him, blinking as the mage finished his own cycle.

  “How long were we out?” Kaius asked, turning to where Porkchop and Kenva rested by a nearby wall — watchful eyes on the drones they’d dragged in.

  “Not long. A quarter of an hour, maybe? A little bit more.”

  “Thank the gods,” Kaius said. When Xenanra had first told them of cycling, he’d been worried they’d need to devote days or years to make any notable progress.

  “You guys go ahead. We’ll keep watch,” Ianmus said.

  Porkchop and Kenva nodded, quickly hunkering down and letting their auras crush in tight to their skins — a mirror of what Kaius had done minutes before.

  He met Ianmus’s eyes and the mage sighed, leaning back on his hands. “Well. Trapped again, huh?”

  Kaius couldn’t help it. He laughed and shook his head. “We do seem to be making a bit of a habit of it, don’t we?”

  The half-elf smiled wider. “We should probably work on that.”

  “We probably should. It was a damn good fight though.”

  “That it was. By the headmaster’s beard, those centurions were nasty things.”

  Kaius nodded — gods’ damned tougher than some champions they’d fought on the final layer of their delve. Honestly, it was still incredible that such creations were the work of men. It only made him more curious how the Empire had fallen if it could call upon armies of silvers and silver constructs to defend itself. At least they knew where their vulnerable cores were now.

  “Hit hard too,” Kaius said, absently rubbing his ribs where a Centurion’s beam had gouged out a chunk of his lung.

  Ianmus frowned sympathetically as he sat up. “I saw that. You had me worried for a bit. I thought they might have had something important — but as usual you proved as tenacious as a cockroach.”

  Kaius snorted. He supposed there were worse comparisons.

  “At least getting beat up like that was good for something,” he said finally. “I managed to break Tempered by Dissonance through to Tier II towards the end of our fight.”

  Ianmus perked up. “Oh — what does it do?”

  “I haven’t actually checked yet.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?!”

  Kaius grinned at the eager gleam in his friend’s eye and did just that.

  Tempered by Dissonance:

  General Skill - Tier II

  Affinity: Martial, Destruction

  Type: Body Reinforcement, Armament Reinforcement, Evasion

  Level 201

  Heroic

  Harmony brings fullness, dissonance threatens dissolution. Unwoven like fabric, you are reduced to base threads and tempered in chaos, pain, and undiluted malice. Recomposed, you persevere, undaunted by the many terrors of the world. Garbed in new cloth, you advance unbroken.

  Tier I:

  Skill that increases the effectiveness of all forms of tactical movement, bodily resistance to injury, the integrity of defensive armaments and self-cast runic hymns. General encumbrance of Medium and Light Armour is reduced.

  Tier II:

  Armour now hardens in response to blunt impacts, spreading force across a larger area.

  Scaling of bonus integrity to armour and spells increased to Reasonable.

  Each level reasonably increases speed, power, and control of tactical movements.

  Each level reasonably increases integrity of worn defensive armaments, and effectiveness of self-cast defensive runic hymns.

  Each level moderately increases manoeuvrability of worn Light and Medium defensive armaments, and moderately decreases their weight.

  Each level moderately increases the effects of Endurance on bodily integrity.

  Evolved from: Adamant Body

  Originally Merged from: Block; Parry; Footwork; Toughened Physique; Light Armour Mastery; Medium Armour Mastery; Heavy Armour Mastery

  “Well?” Ianmus asked the moment he dismissed the notification.

  “A decent change,” Kaius replied. “It increases the toughness of my armour a little more now, and blunt impacts spread over a wider area to distribute the force. I noticed that toward the end — helped a lot with reducing my health burn.”

  Ianmus nodded, running a hand through his hair. “I almost find it more fascinating hearing about your and Porkchop’s changes — you get to see directly how the skill develops compared to an evolution where everything changes wholesale.”

  “It is rather fascinating,” Kaius agreed. Though he couldn’t deny he’d have preferred to be in the mage’s shoes — experiencing such a substantial increase in strength across all skills was quite literally unheard of. Not to mention avoiding the hassle of breaking a skill through to Tier II.

  “Now what?” Ianmus asked. “You gonna crack into one of our limbless friends? Work on breaking us out of here?”

  Kaius shook his head and pushed to his feet. “Not just yet. I want to see what I can learn from one of the broken ones first.”

  Jumping into the hall, he grabbed the remains of a nearby worker drone. Judging by the shattered remnants of wood in the hole torn through its core, that had been one Kenva had taken down. Grabbing it by two metal legs, he dragged it inside, careful to avoid jostling Porkchop and Kenva as he set it in the middle of the room.

  Ianmus pushed himself up and walked over, looking at the automaton curiously. “Where do we start?” he said.

  Kaius traced its overlapping armour plates with his eyes. No doubt its vital components were inside the armoured torso. “We figure out how to rip them open while damaging as little as possible,” he said.

  Strangspine and the ruin delve are finished on Patreon!

  https://discord.gg/NjsqGKHHaY