While Ianmus watched on with curiosity, Kaius pawed over the slain remains of a worker drone. They were odd up close. Now that they were no longer charging at him, with their multi-jointed limbs whirling in a violent flail, it was much easier to take in the fine details of their construction.

  Whoever had designed these things was either a madman, a genius, or both. They seemingly pulled inspiration from multiple creatures of the natural world, armour construction, and various other disciplines.

  Their lack of a head was most striking. It was such a simplistic part of flesh and blood creatures, but its absence was stark — nor did it have any visible ways of detecting the world around it. There were no lenses or mechanical eyes. Instead, the top section of its torso was made of angled, conjoined plating built to deflect blows. Much of its body was like that — some bizarre melding of carapace and heavy plate, layered and overlapping slabs of steel, with tolerances so tight he doubted he could thread a hair between them.

  If they were even separate objects. Kaius frowned, drawing his belt knife and picking at a seam between plates.

  As sharp and fine as his blade might have been, he could find no purchase. Even a hair-thin gap should have given him some kind of tactile feedback.

  It was a solid whole, then.

  Strange. He could have sworn that he’d seen several of the worker drones pivoting and shifting through their bodies to leverage greater transfer of weight during their strikes.

  Some sort of enchantment, perhaps, that allowed plates to selectively slide over each other or seal tight?

  Regardless of how it was done, the default state had to be one of rigidity. As the destruction of the creature's core had divested it of all mana, any enchantments that had powered the effect had failed.

  His eyes drifted down the torso to where it flared out to an octagonal base where its spider-like limbs were attached. There was a hole there — the remaining evidence of where Kenva had shot out this creature's core.

  It provided easy ingress, but at this stage Kaius was interested in how the automata were put together and constructed. He would need to know the makeup of its internals, and how to disassemble them if he wanted to safely evaluate the still-active drones that they’d disabled and were sitting in the corner. There was no point taking the easy way out if it didn't help him when he most needed it.

  Its legs and arms, as varied and unsettlingly monstrous as they were, were of low priority to him. Those he could pick apart at a later date. For now, he wanted access to the thing's guts. Would they be made of slabs of inscribed steel? Would it be cogs? Would it be a heart of cogs and veins? Alchemical transfusions? He didn't know, but he was eager to find out.

  He did have one advantage. He had one surefire way of getting into the creature's chest, especially since the durability had no doubt drastically reduced with their deaths.

  If his knife wouldn't work, his sword would.

  Kaius rose to his feet, drawing his blade before he held it point level with what would have been the creature's sternum if it was made of blood and bone.

  Ianmus raised his brow. “Quite the precision implement you've got there.”

  Kaius rolled his eyes. “Not like we have anything better to use at the moment. I suppose there's Kenva's knife, but that can wait for more delicate work that requires it. For now, I just want to crack one open. I'm not trying to preserve the internals just yet — just locate where they are.”

  “A reasonable approach,” Ianmus replied. “But if that's the case, why not use one of Porkchop's kills? He damn near splattered the things. Wouldn't have much issue investigating their insides.”

  Kaius shook his head. “That's the issue. They're a little too squished. Things might have moved around. Ideally, even if things get damaged, I still want to be able to tell what they are. Hard to do that if they've all been shattered into a thousand fragments.”

  Ianmus shrugged. “Well, you're the closest thing we've got to an expert down here. Don't let me hold you back.”

  Kaius smiled and drew his blade high. For all he’d told Ianmus that damage didn’t matter, he still wanted to minimise it, so Mystic Rend would be of no use — far too catastrophic. No, what he needed from his sword was to be tougher and sharper than it already was. His Bladerite would work perfectly, reinforcing the already considerable strength of its enchantments.

  Stamina flooded into his blade and the runes on its fuller burned with a powerful radiance.

  Kaius brought his blade down. The shrill screech of tearing metal filled the room, drawing a wince from Ianmus. The sound managed to startle Kaius. Shit, he hoped that that hadn't distracted Porkchop and Kenva from their cycling. With his blade buried a handspan in the drone's armoured chest, Kaius looked over to see the rest of his team sitting there peacefully, still absorbed in their meditation.

  He might have caught the end of one of Porkchop's ears twitching, but even if he had, clearly the disturbance hadn't been enough to break his focus.

  Satisfied that he could continue, he pulled his sword free with a scrape, aligning it with the bottom edge of the slot he had punched into the steel. A few more times, and he could adjust his angle by 90 degrees.

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  Slow going, but if he did it right, he’d be able to cut out a stride-by-stride square from its chest, giving him the access he wanted. Hopefully, if he was lucky, that would be enough for him to identify which structures he would need to avoid in later bisections of the artificial mechanical creatures.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, turning to Ianmus as he raised his blade once more.

  The mage nodded, hurriedly covering his ears. Another shriek of metal on crystal filled the air.

  ….

  “Come on, you rat bastard,” Kaius muttered, eyes closed as he reached elbow deep into the worker drone's chest cavity. He’d been digging around in its chest for the better part of half an hour. It was a quagmire of mythical proportions inside the beast — full of artifice, alchemy, and mechanical construction they had no frame of reference for.

  “Have you got it yet?” Ianmus asked, hovering over his shoulder as an illuminating ray of light shone from the mage's finger inside the automaton.

  “Not yet,” Kaius grunted, shuffling over to reach a little deeper, even as the jagged edge of that steel carapace dug uncomfortably into his arm.

  Much like they'd been warned, the Empire seemed to have been obsessed with anti-tampering methods. Shattering the automaton's core had caused what looked like almost every runic formation and piece of artifice in its body to overload at once. What might have once been metal plating, levers, gearing, wires, and other bits of construction had been slagged to a semi-homogenous, unrecognisable mess.

  Oh, he'd still peck through it, chipping off what he could, but whatever runework might have once existed on or inside these structures had been utterly obliterated. He'd learnt a little, at least. Things got denser the closer you got to the core.

  Oddly enough, there seemed to be far less of the various cylinders and inscription plates within towards the top of its body. That, at least, gave him an angle of approach to try with his future attempts. That said, he had spotted something way up by its shoulders only a few minutes prior — a cylinder half the size of his forearm, sprouting what must have been hundreds of tubes and wires. It practically glistened compared to the blackened messes elsewhere in the creature's body.

  He'd caught it reflecting the light that Ianmus had cast for him, but it was proving elusive to reach. Some sort of internal structural fortification had halfway sealed it off — a compartmentalisation of its internals that had likely saved the structure from the deluge of heat that had happened when they'd ruptured its core. That, or it had been simple, dumb luck that had saved the component from destruction.

  There was a small gap in the housing that contained it, in just an awkward enough spot that he couldn't reach for it and look at it at the same time.

  Cursing under his breath, Kaius fumbled in the dark, tapping along the edge of the steel wall inside the creature's torso.

  Not there. Or there.

  His fingers brushed a crumbled edge, jagged enough that it snagged on his skin.

  There.

  Reaching through, he wrapped his hand around the structure that he had spotted, feeling tubes and wires crumple around it. It was cold to the touch, almost oil slick.

  “Got it,” he said.

  Yanking back, Kaius heaved. Deep inside the automaton, metal squealed in agony.

  For a moment, he thought his strength wasn't enough; that he would have to go through the delicate process of peeling apart the armoured segments on the creature's shoulder without damaging his prize.

  Then the connections that held the segment in place gave way, and Kaius slumped back.

  A bluish steel cylinder in hand, he raised it high, grinning to himself.

  “What is it?” Ianmus asked, shining his light over the object as he peered at it curiously.

  “No bloody clue, but it looks important enough to potentially have inscriptions inside. And, well, it's more intact than anything else.”

  A curious rumble pulled at Kaius's attention — Porkchop walking over.

  “So that's why you two were making all that racket.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Kaius replied. “I tried to be quiet, but it's a little difficult when you're hacking apart steel.”

  On the far side of the room, Kenva stretched and pushed herself to her feet. “It's no matter to me, as long as it helps us get out of here quicker.”

  “We can only hope,” Kaius said, rolling the cylinder in his hands.

  On closer inspection, it hadn't been totally spared from the surge that had destroyed the rest of the automaton's internals. There was charring and a slight softening of the metal at both ends of the cylinder, but the central two-thirds were relatively intact.

  He still had no clue what it did. The thing had to have half a dozen different kinds of conduits sprouting from every angle. Half looked like hoses with faint remnants of what looked to be some sort of sheening oil dripping free.

  The liquid reeked of alchemicals, acrid notes of cutting blades and discharging lightning overwhelming his senses.

  Putting it out of mind, Kaius continued turning it over in his hands.

  The runework had to be inside of it — internal construction had been the one constant he had seen with imperial artefacts.

  But how to get at it?

  Kaius tapped the exterior of the cylinder. It resonated with a dull twang — solid but thin. Oddly, it wasn’t hollow. A layered structure, perhaps?

  He turned to Kenva. “Do you mind if I borrow your knife? I need something sharp, but small. A sword won't work for something like this.”

  The ranger nodded, drawing the blade from her hip before she flipped it in her hand with a flourish and grabbed the flat of the blade.

  “Don't break it,” she said, passing it over.

  Kaius laughed. “I doubt I could if I wanted to. It's a second-tier artefact. I'd be very much surprised if anything these drones have will match up. Centurions might be a different matter though.”

  Holding the cylinder firmly, Kaius pressed the edge of the blade. There was resistance, but even if the steel of the artefact was alchemically treated, it was thin and of lesser quality than whatever Kenva's knife had been made from.

  It caved and gave way with a creak. Rocking the knife back and forth, Kaius slowly, delicately cut through the exterior face.

  Levering back the exterior layer revealed a dark grey metal, with regular blemishes running over its surface.

  “Ianmus, light — quick,” Kaius said, excitement making him eager. As the mage moved closer, the smudges interior on the metal grew clear. Runes — but he could barely make them out. They were smudged, metal warped by the same surge that had destroyed much of the automata.

  Useless, but there had to be something in the cylinder that was intact. These, at least, were preserved enough to be recognisable as runic work.

  He’d just have to keep pulling apart the mechanism until he found it.

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