Millennial Mage

Tala laid on the ground, surrounded by slowly leaking, broken constructs of metal and magic.

That was actually pretty exhausting. What the rust?

The ten heavily armored automata had required her to get in close and hack through their defenses a little at a time, all while evading the ones she wasn’t currently assaulting.

The stupid things had had wells of power that were entirely too deep, and had that power directly connected to their own integrity-defending magics, rendering her disintegration breath ineffective, at least not at its current efficiency.

The automata were too quick to cut their losses and seal off limbs for the void-blades to reasonably drain them.

They had just enough magical weight to make enacting workings directly on them infeasible.

She’d tried to hold them in place to deliver punishing blows, but they’d worked together to wriggle free or otherwise minimize the damage.

Thus, most of her hits had sent them flying away, allowing that target to heal while she fought the other nine.

Throughout, they’d struck her with armored, empowered fists and mostly mundane blades.

The attacks had hurt, but only occasionally made her bleed, sometimes internally, sometimes mixing her red blood with their purple vital fluids to splash across the ground.

Thus, the fight had turned into a contest of endurance.

It was no surprise to Tala that she had won in the end, but it had taken a couple of hours.

That was dumb. She was no longer panting.

Honestly, she’d never needed to breathe heavier, but her body still had that reaction to extended, strenuous activities.

How can something requiring such precision, and filled with so much action, have been so boring?

-Repetition?-

It had been incredibly repetitive.

-They knew you to be an unstoppable force with what they had available, so they sent a delaying force?-

Yeah… that would be my guess from their actions as well. She sat up.

Even knowing that this hold was delaying her for some reason, she still wanted to prepare. Sure, she could go sprinting off to find whatever they were doing, but a half-hour more of preparation would set her up so much better for whatever this place had in store and shouldn’t mean the difference between success and failure.

-Deep within the bowels of the guild hold, the ‘Tala-destroyer’ neared completion. They just needed twenty more minutes. Their best minds were at a loss: How could they delay the invader? Little did they know, the invader was delaying herself.-

Rust you, Alat. I’m trying to be wise and methodical.

-Definitely the wise choice. This won’t be the point at which, in a poetic twist, your standard brashness would have been the wiser course.-

Tala glared at nothing in particular, making it very clear that the look was intended for Alat.

-Fine, fine. Do what you want.-

I was going to anyway.

Tala pulled out a set of one-inch tungsten spheres and hesitated.

You know, instead of tying these on after, I can skip a step by… She applied her will and power to the garments, and a small flap of leather extended from the front of her elk-leathers.

She held one ball in place on either side.

First, she reduced their downward pull, then she amplified the gravity between them.

Soon enough, they were holding themselves in place, the bit of leather all that separated the two.

Tala was able to let go, and they stayed in place.

Ha! That’s great.

She moved just a bit, and they tried to roll off the leather to get closer together.

No! No, no, no. She grabbed them, forcing them back in place, as their pull still wasn’t that strong yet. This was just a test, after all.

The tie had held them just fine. Why was this different?

It was a raised ring.

With that realization, Tala caused a circle of elk-bone to grow within the leather, encircling the point where the two balls pushed closest.

Eh? She moved a bit, and the spheres swayed back and forth a bit. She pulled the leather tab back in, until the two were held tight against her, and that seemed to work.

Alright! Let’s do this.

-That was well thought through.-

Why, thank you, Alat.

Tala ended up fully amplifying all ten sets of magic-marked tungsten spheres, placing five on her front, and five on her back using leather with embedded bone-rings as spacers and to hold them in place.

She had done them one set at a time because while she could do more than that, it would slow down the amplification a corresponding proportion, thus not actually being faster in the end.

There we go! Let’s see what we have to deal with next.

Tala moved through the park quickly, checking each building she passed, but finding them empty.

The buildings were the heart and soul of the guild’s daily operations, just as the book had described them to be. They were offices, meeting rooms, laboratories, and libraries. There were storage buildings, cafeterias, and even living quarters scattered throughout the parklike section of the hold.

A few were locked, but Tala opened those with a small application of force.

As she finally approached the far side of the space, she came around a turn in the path and saw the door to the next area.

In front of it stood a dozen of the much more heavily armored automata, standing in groups of four, each group around what looked like a Mage variant, containing even more power than the few she’d seen so far.

You have got to be rusting kidding me.

They hadn’t reacted to her presence, so she had a moment.

In that moment, she had a thought, and she opened up Kit.

“Terry?”

Terry flickered into being on her shoulder, looking around.

“Do you want to fight some metal people?”

He gave her a deeply incredulous look before vanishing once more.

By the traces of dimensional power evident to her mage-sight, he returned to his playing and hunting within Kit.

“I guess not, then.”

Fine. How do I want to handle this?

She could just blast the fifteen units in the head, but she didn’t know what lay beyond them.

-Really? You’re not going to—oh.-

Tala gave a sly grin as she did just that, putting her preparation to good use.

First, she flipped the targets on three of the sets of spheres on her front as she took a spinning step to expose her back and do the same with four sets that were fastened there.

The extra distance meant more speed, which meant more penetrative power, though the acceleration was much slower at the start.

There, half used.

As she finished her twirling step, she saw the results.

Twelve headless armored automata were falling. One of the Mage variants was swaying with a hole through the middle of its head, though the damage seemed to be healing.

The final target of one of her spheres was another Mage variant.

Tala cocked her head in surprise as she saw a purple barrier fully formed before it, cracks clearly radiating out from a point of impact, and her tungsten sphere pressing deeply into a divot in the magical shielding.

What kind of shield is that?

-Probably some rusting conceptual slag.-

Tala just grunted.

She wasn’t worried about the damaged Mage variant, as the sphere targeting that one had clearly done a through-and-through, likely slowed down by a partially formed shield.

It’ll come back— As she was thinking of it, the sphere returned, arriving even before the armored bodies hit the ground.

The returning sphere smashed through the other side of that automaton’s head, and the resulting damage, added to the original hole, seemed to be more than it could heal as it began collapsing too.

I really, really like having a bunch of these pre-charged. I’m going to get more.

-Probably wise, yeah. They can call you the ball girl, and you can cover yourself in tungsten spheres.-

You’re making it weird, Alat.

Tala tilted her head back and exhaled as the one unoccupied Mage variant tried to rain fire down upon her.

Her breath canceled the attack out, completely.

Enough stalling.

She sprinted forward, and as she did so, her mage-sight showed her a blaze of power, just in time.

Behind the mostly down enemies, four weapons of some kind unfolded from the walls and fired all in one smooth motion. There were two on either side of the door.

And they didn’t mention static defenses in their book? What the rust is wrong with these people?

Beams of crackling purple energy struck at her at speeds rivaling her tungsten spheres.

Blessedly, she’d had her defensive plates in front of her in a defensive pattern, and she was able to jerk them into place to take the blows. The unknown material held up beautifully to the almost purely energy-based attack.

Unfortunately, there were only three defensive plates, while there were four incoming attacks.

Flow was already in her hand, and she tried to interpose the weapon between herself and the attack, empowering it to take on the form of a void-knife.

The beam was too coherent, however, and while a large part was sheared away and devoured by the void, at least a third simply deflected to the side and downward, hitting her hip and incinerating a hole straight through her.

It wasn’t a large hole, as the void-blade had eaten up quite a bit of the attacking magic, but it was still about the size of two or three fingers held together.

Her body did not like that, not one bit.

To complicate things, the wound had somehow introduced the foreign power into her system, as it now partially focused in on her spell-lines and tore through those channels, as well.

Tala’s mind immediately felt like it bifurcated.

My rusting leg, too? Couldn’t it have just taken my arm again? She raged against the pain, fighting to stay lucid.

She calmly assessed the threat even as she stumbled, her running stride utterly thrown off by the temporary crippling of one of her legs.

You have to be kidding me! She screamed internally at the odd agony, feeling her native magical sense screaming out in pain at the foreign power continuing to assault her from within.

The weapons were charging up again for another shot. It looked like they could fire every couple of seconds.

Get the rust out of my leg. She seized the power within her and wrenched the foreign magic out, sending a purple bolt of lightning arching to the ground behind her.

Those weapons weren’t in any way sapient. They were items, wielded by no one. Created to be a passive defense. Their magical density was passive as it followed the commands within. They didn’t have the power to resist on their own.

Crush. She executed the working four times in quick succession, once on each emplacement.

They weren’t meant to be physically robust, and the single working was sufficient to rip each from their mountings and send them crashing to the ground, power arching off them in every direction, reminiscent of the way it had looked when Tala had expelled the power from her own body.

Rust you too, you stupid weapons. The hole in her hip sealed up after the hostile power was expunged, taking longer than it should have, while still being ridiculously fast.

Her stride solidified as she once more sprinted forward.

The scripts around the injury are strained. Whatever magics are in that power, they don’t play well with others.

-Yeah. That’s not good.-

Well, I’m glad I got rid of the source?

-Let’s just hope there isn’t anymore.-

Aside from the one enemy wholly dominated by holding off one of her tungsten spheres, there was only one more Mage automata, and it had decided to do something new.

A bolt of arcane, purple lightning struck out at her, and Tala had to laugh.

It was trivially easy for her to break the magical hold on the power with her aura as it came close, causing the power to jump down to the ground, rather than continue forward to strike her as the caster had clearly intended.

Before the thing could recover from its miscalculation, Tala reached it, and plunged a void-sword Flow down into its body, sucking out the power in an instant.

Tala was feeling a bit vindictive, so she just left the blade in there for a bit.

To her surprise, the automaton began to distort, pulling in on itself before seeming to vanish into the void-sword now simply held vertically in the air before Tala.

Well… That was unexpected.

-Did you notice that the pull on your power to maintain the form greatly diminished near the end, there?-

I did. She didn’t know what it meant, but she’d noticed. Was it getting power from the material it absorbed?

-Possibly.-

Every time she used one of Flow’s void-forms, she became more grateful that she hadn’t taken a blow from the thing. Who knows what it would have done?

The last Mage variant didn’t even look her way as she walked up and stabbed the barrier with Flow, breaking it and allowing her sphere to slam into the head.

Tala then decapitated the thing, just to be sure. After all, the sphere had only made a large hole, and she didn’t want it to recover somehow.

I wish I got some sort of signal, or notification when my enemies were dead. That would make things so much easier!

-Yeah, just keep hitting them ‘til you hear a DING-

Yeah. Tala grinned. That would be nice.

-I could offer that, but you and I sense the same things. I feel like it would just be annoying.-

That’s true, yeah. She sighed. I suppose it’s just not to be.

She quickly collected her tungsten spheres and began re-amplifying one set, placing the other sets in their pouch.

-You aren’t going to recharge all of them, are you?-

No, I feel like that would be a foolish delay. Besides, I still have three sets. This one makes four.

-Good, good.-

When the set she was working with reached proper power levels, she nodded to herself and walked up to the massive doors.

After a moment’s examination, Tala pulled her knee to her chest and kicked the door with her bare foot…

The door held and her own strength threw her backward, tripping her up and causing her to fall onto the ground.

“Ow…”

-Why did you do that?-

I was curious if I could?

-Fair enough? But you could have done something to enhance yourself, you know. Increase your weight, mirror void into a shoe, something.-

Yeah, I could have. They’d already discussed it and firmly agreed that mirroring void into herself would be a very bad plan, at least for now. But I wanted to see if I could on my own.

-You wanted to see if you could kick down one of the most secure doors, within a very wealthy guild’s hold?-

I didn’t think it was likely, but I still wanted to know.

Alat sighed. -You do you, I guess.-

Tala climbed back to her feet and pulled out the keyring. Ready?

-What? Why are you asking me? I’m not going to be doing any— oh, you’re mocking me again.-

Just poking. Tala grinned as she put the key in the lock and turned it.

The door vanished, revealing a simple thirty by thirty-foot cube-shaped room, the walls lined with the white steel.

In the center stood exactly what she expected, while not being what she expected at all.

This was the last defender of the hold, an automaton of the highest caliber, designed as the final failsafe to protect the core, which lay behind the doors on the far side of the room.

Apparently, the critical equipment and research materials were also behind that door. So, Tala was incredibly excited to open it.

Tala had expected the defender to be massive, for some reason, even having read a description of it.

‘State of the art combat programming, each portion of the armor more defensive than a squad of the armored variant. Able to chop through the lesser versions with a single swing.’ That last part is actually the most telling. Even Flow had some trouble cleanly cutting all the way through.

No, the issue was that Tala had imagined a hulking thing, a juggernaut of strength and defense.

What stood before her was a figure that was thinner than she was, while being about the same height.

It looked alien, like an emaciated child that had been stretched to the height of an adult. The covering, while still white, had subtle purple lines running through it, like inscriptions or spell-forms.

They didn’t make sense to Tala’s mage-sight.

I don’t know what else I expected. The unknown medium and material would make interpretation difficult even if I was a master inscriber, which I’m obviously not.

Its face looked human, if subtly off. Its eyes were, as expected, purple, and the back of its head seemed to house an orb of some kind.

Tala had a sinking feeling that she knew what the orb was, even before her mage-sight made it obvious.

It looked almost identical to Rob.

Was Rob an early version that they pawned off to recoup costs and cover their tracks?

-This is a crafting guild, the idea that they sold off some of what they created is just logical.-

Not to mention that Rob was obviously odd and experimental in many regards. It makes sense that it came from a place like this, I suppose.

The orb, more than anything else, was a housing for an embedded fount.

This thing would not be running out of power.

Seems like they dealt with the self-destructive desires?

-And the chatty-ness.-

The eyes somehow seemed to be staring through her, even though they had no pupils, so Tala couldn’t have said what they were looking at in either case.

To get her mind off of how freaky the thing looked, Tala decided to continue her banter with Alat. In any case, see? They weren’t delaying me at all. There is only one.

-Or, this is part of the delaying tactic. And something even worse is being finished behind those doors.-

Tala growled. Fine. We’ll be fast, then.

She willed two spheres to eliminate the threat, one aimed for the head and the orb at its back, the other the core and the heart of the automaton’s magical functions.

-You know that probably won’t work, right?-

Would be better if it did.

The snap in the air had an off echo, and the automaton was suddenly standing in a different position, a sword held in a high guard, edge rippling with purple energy.

This energy was purple in rank, simply in the color it gave off to her mundane eyes, just like everything else about these automata.

Tala had felt her two workings vanish, the blade having deflected or bisected the spheres, and the energy in the weapon having dispersed the magical signature Tala had based the gravity amplification on.

Well, I should have thought of that possibility.

Strangely, the automaton didn’t move further, seeming to just continue to stare at her.

It was slightly eerie, just highlighting the inhuman nature of the thing.

-It didn’t react until the spheres entered the room.-

That just means it’s even faster than it seemed. “I don’t suppose you’ll just let me pass?”

It still didn’t move, but its mouth opened.

Rather than a nutcracker like motion, this model seemed to be capable of more biological looking facial movements. “That depends, what are you offering?”

Huh… I was not expecting that.