Clockwork Clashes

Moira’s focus was locked on the spear-wielding robot, which she knew wasn’t the wisest decision given the lack of backup, but her opponent was surprisingly competent. Its attacks flowed smoothly from one to the next and any opening it gave her was quickly closed, sometimes too rapidly for her to capitalize on.

‘I’d hoped I wouldn’t need to rely on my full power, but no plan survives contact with the enemy,’ she ruefully thought, her eyes flicking up to the rooftop for a moment. The attacks from the archer hadn’t been able to pierce her armor and defensive magic, but if the cannon fired again, she wasn’t sure if such an attack could leave her ****. ‘There are too many enemies, and with Donnelly and Newman missing, I can’t afford to waste any more time. Blessed Lady, guide my hammer to strike true!’

Golden light shone around Moira like a corona as power flooded through her. A clarity of mind settled upon her, dulling her worries slightly. She couldn’t help anyone if she was caught up in a single engagement.

The golden light flowing around her seemed to give her mechanical opponent pause for a moment, a lull Moira was not going to leave unpunished.

With enhanced speed, Moira rushed forward, shield raised as both a block and a battering ram. To the construct’s credit, it realized the danger it was in and attempted to disengage, stepping back while using its weapon to maintain distance between them, the silvery spear jabbing at her in an attempt to find any weak point it could exploit.

A thrust of the spear was met with by the bulwark of her shield, sending a shower of golden sparks upon contact, some of which flowed down the weapon’s shaft. Moira felt her power begin to slip away and she snapped her defense-bearing arm upwards, forcing the spear high and breaking contact with it. With the machine’s chest now exposed, Moira swung her hammer in an upward stroke. It was far from the optimal way to employ her weapon, but the blow, backed by her blessing-enhanced strength, easily knocked the drone off its feet.

Before it hit the ground, Moira adjusted her stance into a proper one, hammer raised high above her head. Once the drone’s back hit the road, Moira brought down a powerful strike with a cry of, “In the name of the Lady, be gone!”

Her hammer caved the construct’s chest in, accompanied by a flash of golden radiance. Metal caved under the **** of Moira’s blow, crushing the machine’s internal workings. Its limbs twitched for a few moments before falling limp, signaling its deactivation.

The light around Moira faded and she took a few heavy breaths as she backed away from the drone. She did her best to ignore the pooling warmth between her legs as she surveyed the area. Right as she looked up for the machines above them, the cannon was thrown off the roof. A few seconds later, the archer was similarly thrown into the air by way of a vine coiled around its arm.

“Gryff?” Moira wondered. That was the most likely option as it looked like her whip had tossed the archer down. A further examination of the area made her think it was the dark-haired girl’s doing as she was nowhere to be found and someone just showing up was unlikely.

Moira noted the two remaining drones were down, seemingly stuck to the ground. Taking another steadying breath, Moira purposefully marched towards the nearest one, and with a grim expression on her face, brought her hammer down on its head. What little movement it was capable of ceased a moment later.

She repeated the execution on the last one, putting the one she batted away earlier out of its misery.

'Oh Blessed Lady, Moira began to pray, her head bowed, 'I thank you for the strength that allowed my allies and I to triumph over these foes. And, if it is in your designs, that Donnelly and Newman are not beset by a task they cannot overcome.'

Her intercession done, Moira looked up to see Gryff exiting the building she had thrown the constructs off.

"Great, we beat the ones here," she said in a hurried tone. "Now we've got to find John and your girl."

"A moment, please," Moira insisted. "If we move too hastily, we could meet a worse fate. Newman is still in control of the barrier so he is well, and I put my trust in the Order’s quartermasters that Donnelly is likewise in good condition."

"So we just chill out up here?" the shorter girl snapped with a glare.

"Of course not," Moira fired back in a clipped tone, finding her patience tested by Gyrff's attitude. "But if we just jump down there, there's a chance we could set off further collapses. And we have a way to reach them first before anything like that."

"And how do we do that? Some Order secret technique?" Beth asked in a dismissive voice.

Moira simply reached into her shield's pocket space and pulled out her phone.

"We call them and hope they aren't engaged in battle," Moira calmly explained, causing Beth to gape like a fish for a second before her face grew pink with blush.

"Oh, yeah, right. Phones are a thing," she muttered in an uncharacteristically small voice, intently looking at something in the far distance behind the redhead.

Taking some pity on her junior, Moira softly said, "The heat of battle can make us forget the simple solutions at times. We just have to try and maintain composure so the people counting on us can be at ease. Now, let's get in touch with our wayward companions, shall we?"

She didn't wait for Beth's response before she brought up Rowan’s contact and called it. Right as the first ring sounded, the ground shook beneath their feet and a lurid red glow flashed from the hole down.

"Are ya sure this will work?" Rowan asked as Newman held a red crystal like the one on the back of his glove up towards the ceiling.

"Well, I'm not an expert in blowing things up, but the rocks here did give way to an explosion before so it should be repeatable," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "Just have to place a few Blaze Shards on the ceiling then detonate them.”

‘You say that so casually,’ Rowan bitterly thought before asking, “And you’re sure you have the mana for this?”

“Recharged off my battery,” Newman said. “And since I desynced from my wind spirit, I could get back to just under full. Three shots then a quick conversion for enough fire mana to trigger a big blast. All in all, still going to have about half my max mana when this is done for cleanup.”

He paused, his head tilted a little to the side, before continuing, “And I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve if that’s not enough.”

‘Of course you do,’ Rowan thought, her teeth grinding together. ‘Of course you just show up out of nowhere with more powers than anyone I’ve ever met. And only after what, a week?’

Rowan normally didn’t compare herself to others. She counted herself blessed to even be noticed by the Order. But it still stung that someone who hadn’t been a part of the Abyss for more than two weeks had more options available to them than she would likely see in her life.

She pushed down those feelings, like she did whenever she saw the more talented members of the Order in practice. Life wasn’t fair, but while the Lady did not gift her with power, she had with grit. She wouldn’t let herself fall behind her peers by slacking off.

“Let’s hope this move is enough,” she finally said aloud. “We should not work ourselves to the bone when there could still be problems above. Not that the Warden couldn’t handle what was up there, but best to be conservative in case there are more things about.”

“I don’t want to waste any more time down here either.” Newman chuckled before summoning up one of his screens and tapping it a few times. His wooden sword appeared in his hand and he presented it to her. “Here, in case it gets up here. And, um, if we don’t recover yours, I’ll owe you a replacement.”

Rowan took the sword from him, a frown on her face. She hadn’t expected him to so willingly give up his weapon, even with his apparent arsenal of other options.

‘Though, if his ability to generate items isn’t overstated, he could easily procure more,’ she mused.

“It works just as good as a metal one,” Newman quickly attested, and Rowan assumed he was trying to upsell his weapon based on her contemplative expression.

“I will trust you on that,” she said as she tested the weapon. It was slightly stouter than her usual blade, with its weight closer to the hilt than she was used to. But, her training hadn’t been with one weapon and she quickly grew used to the borrowed blade.

“Okay, guess we’re ready,” Newman sighed, lifting his crystal to the roof. “Fire in the hole.”

Rowan watched with bated breath as three red darts shot out from the crystal. They flew fast and embedded themselves in the ceiling. Newman nodded at her, then a second later, the three darts exploded with a muted roar, sending large chunks of rock downwards upon the boss machine.

Despite the flash of light, Rowan kept her eyes open and peeled above them, watching for any sign that the stone above them was compromised and about to fall on their heads. The sound of rock impacting upon rock filled the cavern was quieter than she would have thought, feeling the impact’s vibrations in her feet more than in her ears.

“Huh, that’s interesting,” Newman muttered, one of his screens in front of his face. “The rocks absorb sound. Probably why we haven’t heard anything from up top. Here, take a look.”

Voxstone
Naturally occurring rock that absorbs sounds and converts it into mana.

“As interesting as that is, we have more important things to worry about. Any sign we beat the machine?” Rowan tersely asked.

“It took some damage,” Newman reported. “Just over fifty but no experience ping so it's still kicking.”

He leaned over the edge slightly to survey the situation, right as a wave of blue-white light shot up from the dark below.

“Newman!” Rowan cried out as he was knocked back by the attack, arching through the air along with pieces of rent stone. He hit the ground with a dull thud and let out a drawn-out groan. His chestplate was cracked, several thin ones stemming from a deep one that stretched nearly all the way up from waist to shoulder.

“I’m okay,” he groaned. “Don’t want to get hit by that again. Took about half my remaining HP.”

He brought his hand to his damaged piece of armor, fingers running up the ragged cut. “And I think my armor isn’t going to soak up much more.”

“If it has this much power,” Rowan said, her breathing quickening as she looked to the chasm, “then I think we should try and escape. Throw whatever spells you can at it to slow it down then…”

The remainder of her plan went unsaid as the lip of the chasm exploded, a lance of light breaking the stone apart like a hard cheese. Then a robotic hand grabbed the newly formed divot and hauled its mass up.

Rowan beheld the mechanical champion, the fading glow from its right arm-mounted blade giving its metallic form a gleaming sheen. She lifted the borrowed sword into a defensive position as Newman made his way to his feet.

“Body’s zilhavrum,” he muttered, a knife appearing in his hand and a display over his face. “Resists magic. Don’t know the cooldown on that ranged attack. Its mana is reading at ‘13’. It was up to ‘45’, so those attacks used ‘32’. So it might not have enough in the tank to fire again.”

Almost as if the construct took offense to that assessment, it shifted its stance and launched itself at them. Rowan braced herself and shifted the wooden sword to meet the machine’s charging strike. Wood met zilhavrum with a dull ‘thwack’ and Rowan’s legs bent slightly from the **** of the blow.

She ground her teeth and willed her mana into her limbs, invoking what skill she had in enforcement magic to strengthen herself. The pressure upon her lessened slightly and she pushed back, forcing one blade to the side in time to parry the second.

'I can barely keep up,' she thought, trying to keep a rising panic from overwhelming her. 'Is this all I can muster?'

Nothing in training so far had covered something like this. The Order wasn't some barely put-together mercenary band, each member looking out for themselves first. They were a unified ****, working in concert to keep the foul things of the Abyss from despoiling the good and innocent. Fighting alone wasn't something her instructors had focused on. They impressed upon her and her peers that they were to stand together.

‘And how have I honored their instruction? By getting ahead of the squad, ahead of the Warden herself,’ she lamented as her blade was knocked aside by the machine, leaving her with no way to defend against the stab aimed at her left side.

There was a slight shift in the air, a cool breeze breaking the stale air around her and a dark, womanly figure appeared beside her. Her hands were raised, an oval of shadow between her palms and the tip of the blade.

"We cut that a bit short, John," the new person said in a deadly serious tone. In some distant part of her mind, Rowan recalled that the Warden had told her Newman had some elemental in his service.

Newman himself dashed towards the construct, the knife in his hand held in a reverse grip. He swung wide to reach its flank.

"Needed the timing right," he remarked and jammed the short blade into the machine's right armpit.

A small shower of blue-white sparks fell like the construct’s blood. It tried to strike Newman with its elbow, but the slightest movement of the wounded arm caused more sparks to fall and the limb only twitched.

Newman's blade vanished as he pulled away, the weapon reappearing a second later. His elemental dropped the shield it conjured and made a swiping motion with one arm, a wisp of darkness coating her hand.

The line of shadow manifested over the construct’s chest, sending an echoing screech through the cave as it seemed to rake over the metal. The champion bounded back from them, its right arm hanging limp at its side, while its left was lifted to its chest, ready to slash.

“It seems the armor’s quite good at withstanding magic attacks,” the violet-haired elemental said to Newman.

“That’s zilhavrum for you,” he remarked before looking at Rowan. “You ok?”

“I’m fine,” Rowan breathed out. “Thank you. But how are we going to beat this thing? I doubt we’re going to be able to whittle it down by targeting its joints.”

“If I had more juice, I might have been able to just attack over the magic resist, or at least do enough damage that you could capitalize on it,” Newman lamented.

“John, I think you’ve been forgetting an option we have,” the elemental said. “My abilities are likely to not be of much use here. My mana would better serve to cast your Evocations.”

“You sure?” Newman asked his summoned elemental, something Rowan found to be a little odd. Most of what she knew about elementals was that their summoners held near-total control of what they could do when called from their domains.

‘I suppose him being new to everything means he still has modern mundane sensibilities,’ she mused.

Newman nodded as he stepped in front of his elemental and Rowan brought her blade up.

“With Senka’s mana, my fire spell’s going to have mana-sapping properties,” Newman quickly revealed. “Not sure how that’s going to affect it, but I figure it’s a good idea for you to know.”

Rowan nodded and she felt a shift in Newman’s presence, like a soft shadow cast by a cloud passing in front of the sun. Newman gasped and out of the corner of her eye, Rowan saw a flowing shadow running from the tip of his knife and up his right arm. One of his displays popped up in front of his face but she couldn’t see any of the information upon it.

Before any explanation could be given, their enemy broke their standoff, dashing back into the fray, left blade glowing with mana. Rowan snapped to block, meeting the strike with renewed vigor. An unconventional team they made, but a team nonetheless. They would be victorious if they fought together.

‘As long as it can’t use its right arm, we hold a significant advantage,’ she thought as she **** back the bladed arm. ‘Even with it being stronger than us, hobbled as it is, we can win.’

Then, a flash of light shone from the machine’s shoulder and its arm blurred into motion, sending a jab for her side.

Before Rowan could even try to defend herself, a wave of shadow shot between her and the blade, stopping the strike, before flowing around the weapon and forcing it away like a black tide.

“Oh yeah, I can make this work,” Newman declared. “Let's show this tin can who's boss!”