Trees grew everywhere, a few body lengths between them at most. Tall, short, red, green, orange, yellow, thick, and scrawny. Branches stretched up and out, their leaves blocking nearly all sunlight from the forest floor. Bushes, lichens, moss and patches of flowers dotted dark earth, and a thick scent of soil, animals, and green permeated the air. After the open desert, the floor felt downright claustrophobic.
Ayn was still reeling. She’d been staring, open-mouthed, at the Sheyric look-alike when Kayara had grabbed her and dragged her into the portal. Currently, Kayara was chewing out Sheyric, who looked as despondent as usual, while Bren glared at the healer, and Baatar sniffed at some moss. Ayn didn’t bother listening.
The other Sheyric hadn’t had a hood on. His silver hair and purple eyes were on full display. He’d had full plate on as well. A far cry from Sheyric’s cloth, yet every detail of his face was the same. Was that why Sheyric had run into the portal?
It all seemed so odd. She wanted to ask Sheyric, but she’d promised to keep what he looked like a secret. Kayara had seen his face when he’d hit Near Death on floor four, though. Then again, he’d clearly been upset by it. Ugh. Why was everything so complicated?
Kayara’s tirade tapered off. A hum replaced the yelling, almost inaudible through the trees, yet it set off Ayn’s Sixth Sense all the same.
“Mobs!” she yelled.
Her party snapped to attention, all eyes, and a wolverine’s nose, scanning the area. They spun a circle.
“Where are they?” Bren asked.
The hum grew louder, crawling across Ayn’s skin like rough cloth, yet she couldn’t see a thing. “I don’t know.”
Baatar barked. A dark object the size of Ayn’s fist smacked him in the head and bounced off into a bush. The wolverine stood his ground, but a yelp from Kayara made him pivot and run to his master.
“Get close to me!” Ayn said.
A few more dark projectiles careened near Sheyric and Bren, hitting the dirt with solid thunks as their targets jumped away and into Ayn’s shield radius. The next few pinged off the Aegis.
182 POINTS OF ABSORBTION REMAINING
Ayn relaxed a little. Whatever they were, they didn’t hit terribly hard. The few that pinged off her shield lay a couple of feet away. They were roughly ovoid and dark brown. Something about the surface of the things seemed odd. One shifted, rocking back and forth a few times before sprouting a needle-like appendage. A chill went down Ayn’s spine as it sprouted eight more, then uncurled.
170 POINTS OF ABSORBTION REMAINING
161 POINTS OF ABSORBTION REMAINING
Ayn kept her eyes on the thing in front of her as it stretched out and chittered. A bug. A massive grasshopper with what looked like fangs for mandibles, and a carapace that shined in the diffuse sun.
The hum continued to grow as the projectile grasshoppers took potshots at the party. It had grown loud enough to set Ayn’s teeth on edge, and as more ovals turned into chittering bugs, the reason for the noise coming from all directions popped into Ayn’s head.
“Bren!” she said. “We’re going to need your best AOE fire spell.”
“Understo—holy hell.”
The source of all the noise came into sight. Hundreds of giant grasshoppers veered between trees, semi-transparent wings humming as they closed in on the party.
Bren beat out a quick rhythm on his drum. “Hydra’s Breath!”
He yelled the words with a lilt. Ayn didn’t know if that counted as singing, but the spell worked all the same.
A fireball bigger than Ayn’s head flew out, smacking into a cluster of bugs before splitting. The two new fireballs arced off, hitting separate clusters of mobs and splitting once more. Each hit sent up a shower of sparks and dark gray smoke. An acrid scent of fish filled the air. Before the fireballs fizzled out, more left the shield bubble, each veering off in different directions.
Disappointingly, although not unexpectedly, the forest didn’t catch fire. Without friendly fire, burning down the entire floor would have been an easy out, but of course The System was too smart for that.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
154 POINTS OF ABSORBTION REMAINING
Ayn looked away from the fireworks show. The early attackers had all unfurled and surrounded the party. Their fang-like mandibles scraped across the shield.
146 POINTS OF ABSORBTION REMAINING
138 POINTS OF ABSORBTION REMAINING
Kayara crouched down beside Ayn, then leaned forward. She stuck an arm out just far enough to stab one grasshopper in the head. There was a screech as the dagger sunk in, followed by an odd crackling noise as the grasshopper jumped back—without its head.
Kayara let out a disgusted yelp and flicked her dagger. The head stuck. Its mandibles still worked, clicking open and shut. Kayara slammed the head and dagger on the ground, used the dirt to scrape the head off, then stood up and kicked it into the forest.
While Kayara wrestled with the head, Baatar took note, abandoning his usual biting for swatting bugs away. Although good-sized for bugs, they still had little defense against the wolverine’s bulk, and the crunching sounds they made when his paw collided with them made Ayn think they wouldn’t be returning to the fight, whether they were technically dead or not.
Bren downed a mana potion, then continued his fireball assault. The swarm was almost on top of them. Bren’s volley had been excellent, and only a few dozen remained, but in return, the survivors spread out, making each fireball less effective.
Ayn put up a hand. “Let them come to us.”
Bren’s drumming stopped. The remaining mobs attacked the shield with singular focus. Ayn, Kayara, and Baatar separated their body parts for them. Not a single one died.
Ayn was left with fifty-nine points of absorption on her Aegis when the last mob fell, with hundreds of twitching, dismembered grasshoppers surrounding her.
Kayara spun on Sheyric. “You damned idiot. Do you mind explaining what the hell you were thinking?”
Sheyric hung his head and stayed silent.
Kayara didn’t let him off so easily. She continued to reprimand him, even letting Bren join the attack without so much as a glance. Ayn left them to it. It wasn’t that she wasn’t annoyed with Sheyric, she was, but the mobs felt more important than the healer’s secrets.
Ayn crouched down by a clump of bug parts. A head, a few legs, part of an abdomen. Each piece twitched independently. The head tried to chew air while the legs and abdomen wormed slowly over the dirt.
There was no blood, although a small amount of blue goo oozed from the wounds. A bit of acrid-smelling smoke wafted off the parts even though the fire spell had fizzled out. Strange.
Ayn grabbed a stick to prod the head and flipped it around. It didn’t take long to see the issue. “Uh…guys?”
The berating stopped. Ayn didn’t have to look to know Kayara was glaring at her.
“These aren’t alive.”
“After getting blown up and chopped to bits, I’d think not,” Bren said.
“They’re not gone, either, Choir Boy,” Kayara said.
“They’re robots,” Ayn said. “They’re not living, but I guess since they’re also still functioning, they don’t count as dead, either.”
Ayn speared the head on a saber and swung it around so the others could see its insides. Kayara and Bren recoiled.
“Look.” Ayn pointed at the grasshopper’s severed neck, where miniscule wires hung from tiny cogs.
Bren shed his disgust and stepped so close to the head Ayn feared he’d get bitten.
“Incredible,” he said. “I don’t think they’re robots, per se. They’re…little clockwork automatons.”
“What’s the difference?”
“What’s the…?” Bren’s face twisted up in horror.
“Save it,” Kayara said. “How do we kill them?”
Bren shrugged. “The automatons I know have a power source. Separate the parts from the source, and they quit functioning, but unless each part of these grasshoppers has its own power source—”
“Or it’s separate from them,” Ayn said.
“No. Clockwork isn’t advanced enough for external, unattached power sources.”
“Unless The System says it is.”
Bren sighed. “Right. I forget my original world knowledge matters little in this place.”
“Still helpful,” Ayn said. “Now we know to look for a power source.”
“Wouldn’t dismembering be fine? It’s not like we get experience by kill.”
“No, but we get items. Besides, I have a feeling there are larger creatures on the floor, and if the bugs are clockwork…”
“Everything thing else is, too.”
*****
Kayara had gone quiet again. With Sheyric being Sheyric, she’d demanded Ayn help her make him talk. Ayn hadn’t agreed or disagreed, instead wanting to focus on the floor. Honestly, she thought Kayara was in the right. Sheyric’s secrets dove straight from harmless to trying to kill them. Ayn wanted answers, too. She just didn’t know how to go about finding them without betraying Sheyric’s trust.
After carefully stepping around the gnashing and wriggling remains of the grasshopper swarm, they’d headed deeper into the forest. Tinny birdsong came from all around, as if the birds had their heads stuck in cardboard tubes. Or, Ayn supposed, had metal throats. A handful of copper-colored flashes in the trees and bushes alluded to other likely metallic forest creatures, but other than the swarm welcoming committee, nothing had attacked them.
Ayn immediately regretted jinxing herself as her Sixth Sense went off the deep end. A growl reverberated from behind them, so deep Ayn could feel it through her feet.
All five of them turned, shuffled into a protective circle, and dropped into attack stances like a well-oiled machine. Normally, it would have made Ayn proud. As she stared into two glowing blue orbs as big as her head, pride wasn’t the emotion that surfaced.
An unholy amalgamation of reptilian and machine stared down at them from between the trees. A narrow, crocodilian mouth covered in smooth, copper scales led to a sinuous neck, short legs ending in clawed hands, and stumpy vestigial wings attached by whirling gears. Ayn had to look up to see its glass eyes, and its body stretched out of sight behind it.
A dragon. Not just any dragon, either. One they couldn’t kill.
PRIMARY QUEST RECIEVED: SURVIVE THE CLOCKWORK DRAGON, AND DESTROY THE POWER SOURCE
“Run,” Ayn said.
