Multiple Reasons for Trouble (1/2)

Oh, this was personal, now.

Threadbare's little girl had grown up to become a Steam Knight. She wore a giant suit of mechanical armor, animated by a combination of magic and engineering. She'd named her armor Reason. After a complicated series of events, Threadbare and Celia had decided to turn reason into an armor golem, and give her sapience.

Now they were fighting copies of her. Which meant that someone had managed to control or fool Reason into walking into one of the dungeon's enemy control pillars.

But Threadbare had neither time nor inclination to vocalize any of this, because Reason's copies were attacking him with everything they had.

Fortunately they didn't have much.

“They're level nine!” Called Graves, once he could see through the steam. “Flagged as mid-bosses!” He threw a few more mana bolts at the increasingly-battered and scratched up suits of armor. The magical attacks blew open one of their cockpits, revealing nothing inside.

There wasn't much point to armor piercing attacks, when your target was nothing but armor, really.

“Also the floor is still opening up!” the Mousewife screamed. “Oh oh oh, there goes my Portmantel!”

“Portmanteau,” Threadbare corrected, dodging nimbly between the legs of the bolt-throwing Reason duplicate, and slashing at the cables in its ankles.

CRITICAL HIT!

The armor toppled, as Threadbare sent the last of his animi forward, trying to distract the remaining golem. “Hurry! Get past,” he told his friends as he put his arms to the fallen Reason and pushed, pushed with all of his bear-like strength, plowing the twitching armor into its twin and forcing the two of them against the wall. He couldn't look back, dodging the blade as it dipped low, slashing and trying to behead him, but he caught the sweat-and-bone-dust scent of Graves and the lilac-and-cinnamon smell that was the Mousewife as they surged past him. Only then did he spare a glance at the far corridor to find that yes, it was opening up over the lava pit below, and no, he didn't have much time left before it got to them.

So he cut and ran, taking a hit on his arm that spilled stuffing as he fled after his friends.

The last of Graves' animi leaped past him as he went, battering and slowing the sword-wielding midboss until the floor opened beneath it as well, and the two midbosses fell in a heap of dark oak splinters, disappearing beneath the lava.

Threadbare glanced back in time to see both of them shoot their arms up from under the lava and give him dual thumbs up, and though he couldn't figure out why, the motion made him sad.

But the golems that died had not the true Reason, and he pushed the worry from his mind. The real Reason was sitting safely... well, somewhat safely... in the Core Chamber.

It was still the principle of the thing. And Threadbare was now fairly convinced that whoever was doing this was either too callous to care that they were having friends fight each other, or cruel enough to enjoy the torment they were causing.

The bear found himself getting angry. And when they made it to the T-junction, he stopped the others. Taking a breath for a long sentence, he pushed down his distaste for taking the lead as he spoke. “I think... I think we need to end this quickly,” Threadbare told them. “Whoever is doing this seems to like fooling people and using traps. The more we search and explore, the more chances they have to kill us with a nasty trick. We should find the end boss and the core chamber and end this, instead of triggering every trap we come across.”

“But what about the children?” the Mousewife asked, hugging her tail to her.

“I've been giving that some thought,” Graves said. “We might be better served by pressing ahead. I think there are one of two possibilities here... either our foe doesn't care about the children, and has them tucked away in a non-risky situation, or they will be used as bait or the stakes for one of our later challenges.”

“But even if it's the first one, they're not entirely safe,” Threadbare said. “They might be tucked away in a non-risky situation, but they're children. If they go exploring they could trip a trap or wander into something meant for us.”

There was a long pause as each of them thought of the golem juveniles trying to handle the lava room, or the Mimic Mimics.

“We need to go kill that guy! Quick!” the Mousewife screeched, hopping up and down. “Those poor babies don't know any better!”

“We don't know it's a guy,” Graves cautioned.

“I have a feeling it is,” the Mouswife sniffed. She pulled a long hat pin from her bonnet, and strode down toward the dark hallway. “And I'm going to give him such a poke!”

Hastily, Threadbare got in front of her, and Graves scrambled to keep up with the little toys. “Glowgleam,”he muttered, holding up a glass device that cast beams in all directions through metal-bounded panes as he held it aloft.

“I hear someone talking... no, shouting,” Threadbare said, and hurried down into what was definitely a natural cavern.