Chapter 3: Harrak (1/2)

Dawn came over the defunct metropolis.

Viv crawled from under the tarp and blinked at the strange sight.

That was not her barracks.

Then it all came back to her. The new world. The interface. The huge monsters.

The huge monsters.

She scanned her surroundings but there was nothing out of place. The morning light was pale and wan, and it made the surrounding stones look like ivory.

Instead of rushing up, she forced herself into breathing exercises. She had to think first. There were many questions and she had few answers. Some of her priorities were easier to determine than others.

Magic? Cool, but later because she had no idea where to begin.

Determining how she came here and going back to her squad, her friends and family, the world she had left behind and where she had spent so many efforts carving herself a place to hopefully find happiness?

Later.

The first priority was survival.

How would she achieve that?

She had to leave. She would die if she stayed. It was not just the monsters, but also the lack of food and water.

One thing was clear. Those who had made camp there had done it despite the lack of cover, and that meant that this place never saw rain. Rain would cool a body quickly. It was also unpleasant. She did not believe that magic would change that. She also did not believe that someone would bother with a rain-repulsive shield or something when there were so many buildings around.

This place was also dead as a doornail. She had not seen a single dried up patch of grass. No renewable food source.

So, she had to leave.

In order to do so safely, she needed to find a water source. Without water, she would die within two days.

That desert looked pretty empty. She had to find it here. It did not rain, but there could be an underground cistern.

In dark places.

She also needed boots. It was alright now that the ground was either flat or made of sand, but walking in the desert meant, perhaps, stones, and walking on that with the equivalent of heavy socks would be bad.

She also needed more food.

She took a brick of travel ration and removed the cover. The food was an unappetizing brown brick, and about as solid. She nibbled on it and managed to dislodge a few crumbs but it was going to be an uphill effort.

It tasted alright, to her surprise. It was like jerky but sweeter and more granulous. She immediately thought of Pemmican, a type of travel rations originally used by America natives like the Cree nation.

She had about three or four kilograms of food, give or take. The effort of hiking for hours meant about two thousand calories per day would be nice though she could probably stretch it. One hundred grams of Pemmican was a bit under a thousand calories so she had between fifteen and twenty days of food… actually that was not too bad. She would run out of water long before that became a problem.

Alright so, water and boots via underground cistern.

Yesterday’s idea of finding barracks was looking more appealing by the moment. If they did have smaller doors, perhaps the big Necrarchs could not fit in and barracks would definitely have boots, food, and a water reserve. That was worth a shot.

Willpower +4

Acuity +6

Focus +3

Stats adjustment completed. Skills assessment in progress.

Ah, yes. The weird magic.

Come to think of it, she had been too dismissive once before. Perhaps there was a way for her to get an edge.

But first, she had to pee.

Viv walked out of the circle.

Immediately, a sense of fever overcame her again, though it was manageable. Her bones itched. It was rather disconcerting.

“What’s going on?” she asked the interface, but it ignored her. Asshole.

Viv walked into the nearest building. It could have been a restaurant at some point, she thought. There was a large opening along the main room as well as a door. A long stone counter split it in two and she saw an open door to what could be a supply closet. All the furniture was ruined, but she found scraps of metal and ceramic that confirmed her hypothesis. She laughed when she entered the closet: there was a chair made of what looked like solidified sand with a circular hole where the ass should be, and another hole in the ground under that. The expedition members had had the same idea, it seemed; they had made a toilet.

Viv marveled at the smooth fabric of the skinsuit as she was closing it again. It was really good at keeping the heat in. The only problem was that she had to pool it around her ankle to denude her butt.

[Faded skinsuit of the Imperial Protector (enchanted): this is all that remains of the once legendary squad. Most of the enchantments were lost in the cataclysm, but the durability remained. It still possesses a minor self-repair function.]

Nifty.

Actually…

“Give me my stats,” she ordered.

Physical

Mental

Power

8

Focus

24

Finesse

16

Acuity

28

Endurance

15

Willpower

24

She inspected the various elements.

[Power: your strength and defense, your impact on the physical world. Reaching multiple of tens grants you additional benefits. Current benefits: none]

How arbitrary.

[Finesse: your coordination, agility, speed, and precision. A measure of your control over your own body. Reaching multiple of tens grants you additional benefits. Current benefits: improved balance and precision]

Hmm.

[Endurance: the ability of your body to endure and recover from abuse. Current benefits: you can stay active for forty-eight hours at great cost]

Well that was weird. But helpful. She could already operate for long periods of time thanks to her training and a few tricks she had picked up along the way, but that would certainly help in a pinch. One thing that bothered her was the seeming overlap between power and endurance in terms of defenses. Was defense not one’s ability to endure abuse? Bah, whatever. This line of thought would bring her nothing for now.

[Focus: the ability to shape your thoughts without getting distracted. Essential in casting complex spells. Current benefits: ability to cast spells, Inspect skill ]

Looks like all those years spent studying were finally paying off. Or not. Maybe she was a retard and every human here had all their stats over thirty.

She hoped that there were humans left. The bodies had been human, she thought. Except perhaps the king. The sleeping bags were also human-shaped.

Moving on.

[Acuity: the ability to think fast and accurately, and to infer and deduct. Essential in casting quickly. Current benefits: increased processing speed, temporary perceived time slow]

It was strange that her physical stats were so low compared to the mental ones. She suspected that it had something to do with how magic interacted with bodies here. The Necrarchs she had seen should have collapsed under their own weights, light bones or not, and the first one had pretty much cracked stone like eggshells. Their bodies were probably reinforced with magic while hers was not, or at least not yet. The interface had mentioned improved stat acquisition speed. That meant that they could be increased.

Alright.

[Willpower: the ability to maintain control of your thoughts. Essential in casting powerful spells. Current benefits: mana shaping, mild resistance to mental effects.]

Self-explanatory.

So, she could think faster for a limited time. That was useful to have. What else was there? Oh, yes, her magic thingie.

Current status:

Mana distribution:

Current attunement: 0.22%

Viv frowned.

That part had changed, had it not? The black mana thing.

[Mana distribution: between the eighth month of gestation and birth, the child’s body adapts to the mana currents around him or herself. The distribution is fixed for life and offers different affinities for spellcasting. Someone born in a desert will show increased red mana distribution, while someone whose mother was at sea before birth will shift towards blue mana. Everyone receives some life mana from their mothers.]

Oh.

Oh no.

Ooooh shit.

She fucking knew it, this was a brand new body!

Wait, no. She could have been transported and her body was only now taking mana.

Ah fuck who was she kidding. This was a new body, made without hair.

She had died.

Then, everyone would know.

Mouq would be mad, and the rest of her unit would be majorly pissed off. Her brother Damien would be inconsolable. Dad would not give a shit and capitalize on the tragedy while Mom would start drinking again. Laure and Rachida would probably feel guilty for a long time. Fraise and Gevaudan would never find out why she never went online anymore.

Viv felt tears well for the first time in a year. She pushed them back. She could not even afford to lose the fucking moisture.

Ok.

She was not dead.

This was a world of magic, she would find a way back and return, and maybe come back again if they had dragons. Who knows? But nothing would matter if she could not find water and get the fuck out.

Ok, what else?

[Mana channels (budding): metaphysical organs used to channel magic. Their development is essential to spellcasting and skill use)]

“And how do I even do that?”

Silence.

Ah, well. Next.

[Extreme compatibility: represents your latent ability for magic]

Nice. And not a short-term benefit just like the rest.

[Divine spark: luck. You have received a spark of divine essence from Emeric, the God of Luck. It has integrated with your soul. You are lucky!]

Viv’s gaze traveled to her black skinsuit, which a corpse had been wearing a day ago. It then settled on claw marks in the nearby walls, the dead city, the calamitous pyramid. She still felt the feverish haze that permeated this place from inside the protective circle. She stared at her meager belongings.

You are mildly dehydrated.

“Get fucked.”

Rather than walking in a random direction, Viv started making expanding circles from her home base, making sure to always know where it was. She also changed her approach. The danger did not come from being spotted from the streets or from the air — that she knew of — it came from inside the buildings. She was still not sure how the creatures might perceive her, so she kept to the middle of the road and made no noise.

Most of this district was occupied by smaller, official-looking buildings. Peering through the gaping holes where windows used to be, she could spot halls and smaller rooms that could have been workrooms or personal quarters. There were large signs carved into the walls by each gate, damaged but still readable. She saw scrolls, pens, wands and other things like a weird thing that could have been a sort of cereal. She guessed that she might be in the administrative quarter.

She stopped to rest at midday by a dried fountain. She did find a water outlet, or at least she thought it was one, and that made the possibility of underground cistern more real if the local population had been unable to materialize potable water out of thin air.

The lack of water was making itself felt now. She could barely munch on the brick of food she had brought with her. Not enough saliva.

The early afternoon brought more of the same, but soon, she noticed something good between two smaller buildings.

“Well, would you look at that…”

[Old Empire war golem (destroyed): the remnant of an extremely dangerous war machine. War golems were one of the most powerful tools in the Old Empire’s arsenal.]

It was fucking power armor! No, a humanoid robot. It must have been as tall as three men when active and, well, vertical.

The architecture might have been brutalist and squarish, but this thing was a work of deadly art. Its legs were heavily armored at the front, its arms were powerful and far apart and its chest had been protected by a formidable plate that slightly protruded in the middle. A bit like a conquistador cuirass. One of its arms ended in sharpened claws and the other was a normal hand.

Viv remembered the first time she had seen a Mirage fighter jet in a base in Kandahar, two years before. She had been fresh from training then. The jet was not moving and it was not armed, and yet there had been no doubt in her mind that this was a tool of death. It was a visceral impression that she could not fully explain and she had been unable to fully relax until she was back at her camp.

This was happening again. The Golem might be deactivated now but it still bore the marks of the hands that had designed it to destroy things.

She came closer to inspect it. She had to. It was not just magical, it was not just one of the only remaining things still intact in this dusty grave of a city, it was something that her own civilization had not achieved. Earth did not have the safe and portable power sources required to move autonomous robots of this size. Magic could, apparently.

It was even more impressive from up close.

The few exposed mechanisms she could see looked well-designed and very-well made. All the protective plates were covered with fine engravings that could have been decorative or part of something magical. There were notches next to the gladiator-like metal head. The two most notable features, besides the thing being badass, were the claw marks covering the armored parts, and the cause of death.

The claw marks were consistent with what the Necrarchs had, at least the two models she had seen. They did not reach the golem’s back, nor did she see nicks on the articulations. It was possible that the war golem had fought similar creatures to a standstill. Or even Necrarchs. She had noticed the absence of human bones in the streets. There were too many inconsistencies to be sure, but she thought that the lack of bodies was connected to the Necrarchs. They could have come from them, or they could have consumed them or a bit of both.

As for why the golem was still mostly intact, she did not know. It was clearly old. Older than the expedition camp had been.

“Hmm.”

She climbed on the chest and confirmed what she had thought. The war golem had not been destroyed in battle. Someone had unlocked its chest cavity and then forcefully removed components with enough strength to tear off the delicate metallic framework. She inspected the strange parts that were left. They had…

They had letters…

Viv stumbled. She could read it. She could read the parts as if they were in her native language. She was absolutely certain that she had never seen those glyphs before.

Or had she?

She had. Several times. When the interface had started and here and there around town, half-faded.

She could have read if she had stopped and focused.

Gnnnnnn of course! The interface had said it! She had been granted Old Imperial as part of her bullshit welcome gift!

Skills assessment in progress.

She could not even show it. In any case, this could work. She bent and read.

‘Processing Unit’ one of those said. It was large, made of a strange cracked material, and surrounded by faded crystals.

‘Communication Module’

‘Mana shield and blast shield Modules’

Ah, the thing was shielded. Perhaps it had protected it from the fateful event. She had the distinct feeling that being inorganic to start with could have given one an edge in a catastrophe that had killed all life in at least a fifty kilometer radius.

More interesting though, was the fact that someone had removed what was obviously missing: the power source.

And that made her curious. Salvaged power sources could mean a great many things. In any case, the presence of a war golem meant war golem facilities and those had to be close to barracks of sorts. She would finally return to her natural habitat as a grunt if only she could find where that thing had come from.

She looked around and found nothing specific.

It was too soon to give up. She jumped down and circled the golem until she found something promising. Under the thick layer of dust was the mark of heavy impact, as if something ponderous had been dropped from some height. A ridge in the stone road led further into the city, away from the pyramid.

She decided to follow the general direction. Two street intersections later, she found another war golem. It was sitting against the wall of a sort of gazebo in a strangely human gesture. Its heavy helmet hung limply on its empty chest. It was similarly deactivated and showed traces of heavy combat.

This time, the processing unit and the power source were both missing and she struck gold. The entity responsible for the dismantling had left tracks in a nearby dried up bed of flowers. They were footsteps, and they were deep and golem-sized. Viv followed them.

Administrative buildings gave way to habitation blocs surrounded by tall walls. The large structures were guarded by imposing gates left open. Empty guard booths stood a silent vigil to those living quarters turned graveyards. The silence was oppressive. There was nothing but the wind and the ever-increasing feverish sensation that pervaded her body.

One day of solitude was fine. Too much had happened to give her time to settle anyway. It could change, though. How long would it take to escape this death trap? How long without talking to anyone?

She pushed the thought away to a dark recess of her mind, where the other things she could do nothing about lingered. Survival first. Mental health afterward.

More golems appeared, in various states of disrepair. One of them was missing an arm and parts of a leg. She also found her first power source, which was a large crystal with cylinders at the top and bottom, but the one she found was clearly damaged. The two parts were missing every time they were not ruined in every carcass she came across.

Her steps finally led her past one last bloc and in front of a large enclosure.

She immediately recognized a military installation.

“Finally.”

The only problem was the time. She could make it back to the circle alright, but it would be a close call if she started exploring right now, assuming the days were about as long as on earth.

Water was a tempting prospect.

She gazed up at a double set of open gates with miradors, and the two perimeter walls occasionally dotted with guard towers. The arch above the main gate showed two crossed swords over a large crystal and two dragon wings. Or bat wings, but she was hoping for dragons. What would be the point of magic without dragons anyway?

The entrance was large enough to accommodate four heavy trucks side by side and still have room for a bike or two.

She crossed them and the reason became immediately clear.

The interior of the base had hangars on one side and human-sized, one story buildings on the other. A massive opening led underground right in front of her.

Destroyed war golems laid and sat around haphazardly, gutted. They looked like a med student after-party. She counted at least thirty.

It was an imposing sight.

She turned to the right where the hangars lined up. They were imposing structures of steel sheet with a curved roof that reached to the earth on both sides. Hangars probably meant warehouses, bays, and large spaces where snoozing Necrarchs could come to gather so, fuck that. The smaller structures to the left were promising, though.

Her gaze returned to the opening in front of her.

Possibly water.

She walked, inspecting golems on her way in case one of them was merely playing at being dead. They were not.

She ended up facing a slope down to an underground bunker, with a blast door as thick as a bank vault hanging open.

[Faded Old Empire secured gate (enchanted): this gate was meant to stop artillery spells and arcane siege weaponry. Many of its enchantments were destroyed in the cataclysm.]

She made her way down, staying low and to the side, ready to fall back at the first sign of a white limb. The ground showed signs of passage. There was dust at the corner but none in the middle. None of those were clawed feet.

So far so good.

She stepped on the landing and peered in.

The bunker was a single room as large as one of the other hangars with concrete walls and floors and man-sized openings at the far end. It held many squarish bays with frames obviously designed to maintain golems in position. Most of them were empty, and the few that were not had their guests gutted like the others.

There was something in the center of the room. She had to make a double take to understand what was going on.

A single golem stood in the center of the room. Its chest was open like that of the others, but that was where the similarities ended. It was to them what a timber wolf was to a border collie, and it was not just the size. The armor was immensely more elaborate, and covered in gems and runes now faded. The hands of the construct were exquisitely made and looked strangely human, as did its face mask, which represented a handsome man.

The power source was exposed, but it still shone feebly with a pale blue light. Three small crystals were hooked to it via a set of cables, and a pile of darkened ones sat further away. All the processing units lay in neat rows to one side, laid on a tarp.

[Old Empire experimental war golem: one of the secret weapons of the empire and a dedicated mage and monster killer, this unique work by the grand engineer Irlefen has not been equalled since its creation. Extremely dangerous.]

It did look extremely dangerous. It also looked kind of dead.

The eyes of the thing flashed yellow.

//ORGANIC LIFEFORM DETECTED.

Nevermiiiiiiiiiind.

Time slowed as Viv turned to run.

//P-P-P-PLEASE. WAIT. PLEASE.

And stopped.

She took a few step backs to the entrance and looked again. The thing had not moved. Its eyes were a dim yellow, and she was not sure but they appeared to be sweeping across the room.

It was the voice that had stopped her. It was both mechanical and so very alive, a bit like a human voice gone through a synthesizer. She did not perceive despair in the tone but there was urgency in the rhythm, and the curious dichotomy had touched her. It had been a cry for help.

The language was Old Empire. It was a beautiful tongue, she thought, with many soft consonants and a tone that went up and down like a song. Perhaps loneliness was getting to her, but she had liked listening to it.

And finally, there was someone to talk to. Someone who may have answers.

A part of Viv wondered if the thing would stand up and try to kill her if she came too close, but she dismissed it. The experimental war golem was clearly on its last leg. It was also strapped to many heavy-looking pieces of metal that would hang from it and slow its movements.

She had to take risks.

“Hello?” she tried.

The yellow eyes swivelled towards her.

//GREETINGS CITIZEN, HAVE YOU NEWS OF COMING REINFORCEMENTS? ImperIaL FAMILY STAtU-U-US? COMBAT OPERATIONS IN PR-R-ROGRESS?

“Errrrr.”

//ERROR DETECTED. DIAGNOSTIC IN PROGRESS.

//PLEASE STAND BY.

//DECISION CENTER COMPROMISED.

//PURGING MAINFRAME.

//ATTRIBUTING PRIORITY QUEUE TO SECONDARY MODULES.

//GREETINGS CITIZEN, HAVE YOU NEWS OF REINFORCEMENT, ALSO, HAVE YOU NEWS OF THE IMPERIAL FAMILY, ALSO, HAVE YOU NEWS OF THE CURRENT STATUS OF THE HARRAKAN DEFENSE DIRE—

“Alright alright, slow down!”

//—EEEEECTOOOOOORAAAAAATE, AAAAALSOOOO

“Oi! Hold on a minute!”

Was the thing mocking her?

//REQUEST GRANTED. HOLDING ON.

It held on.

“Hmm. Ok. Huh, as far as I can tell this city is empty and has been empty for many years. It’s completely dead. There are no reinforcements coming, as far as I know. There is nothing to come back to. I am sorry.”