New Era’s Mould 2 – Hold the Ground [Scarlett POV]

“Fuck!” Scarlett cussed. “We are evacuating!”

“What happened?” Hailey asked.

“Front door security is dead. A Lorylim took the shape of a little girl, ate them, and has now breached the skyscraper.”

“Wait, you had people at the front?” Delicia asked. “I thought there were robots?”

“The robots aren’t as versatile,” Scarlett shot back. “Takes a human brain to properly navigate all situations.” The point was made while she activated various security measures all around the tower. High-energy lasers emerged from hidden compartments in the walls, burning holes into the fused mass of bodies that was now crawling through the vast foyer of the Thorne HQ. The security guards had all been made to join the mass.

“Isn’t Magoi still here, how did they make it through his lock on the Protected Space?” Hailey asked.

“Either they were already in here or he’s slipped up.” Scarlett rolled her jaw. She did not like to be reminded that Magoi was still out there, stupidly putting himself on the line so the idiotic few could evacuate. A waste of talent and of a long-term ally to have him stick his neck out for the stubborn. “Doesn’t matter which one. We are out.”

The last few of their ongoing experiments were shut down. They had just gotten word that John had been located anyhow, so anything else they were working on were just improvements on AM. The Autonomous Machine’s current model hung disassembled within the great Combi-Assembler that the three of them had designed together. A masterpiece of magical engineering and alchemy, powered by the Rose of Artifice.

The enormous machine clicked and clacked quietly. Enchanted oils lubricated massive pistons that operated the dozens of chambers within. A few seconds were all it took for AM to be reassembled. The almost bird-like, angular head of the humanoid weapon tilted. Oculars whirred. The joints of long arms and digitigrade legs went through their automatic test sequence. It looked like it was twitching. The rotational joints in the plated arms lifted slightly, then went back down.

The wall that led into her office opened up, mechanisms coiling and hydraulics pulling at the demand of the protocols her technomancy executed. A series of if statements and conditionals working in perfect concert with each other, allowing them quick access to the short hallway that connected the hidden office to the almost as hidden teleporter.

Through her cameras, she continued to follow the blob that was now taking root inside her tower. The harassment of the lasers and turret guns seemed to hardly do anything to it. It swelled with mass provided from outside of this reality. Eyes blinked, turning into mouths whose tendril tongues tore the annoying machines out of the wall. Unpleasant patterns opened up on the surface of the mound of liquifying flesh and overstretched skin. Hands extended to all sides, ending in claw-like teeth that scratched at the ceiling.

‘Its directly below us,’ Scarlett realized. ’53 floors down. Still, that cannot be a coincidence.’

“HATE! HATE! HATE!” AM’s synthetic voice screeched and charged forwards. Through her connection with the machine, Scarlett saw what the ocular perceived. It was a faint, practically invisible disturbance right by the teleporter pad.

“YOU KNOW NOTHING OF HATE!” The unstable screech met the synthesized voice of the machine a second after the grey dagger slammed into the centre of the Transport Station’s outpost. The blue light of the floor piece flickered, then died. The perpetrator drew her weapon back just as AM rammed into her at full ****.

“Shit!” Hailey cursed out loud. Light blue ice began to cover her entirely, enveloping her in a full plate armour.

“Not good, not at all good,” Delicia agreed and activated one of her mutagens. It turned the shortstack into a chimeric thing with a protective carapace and massive claws.

Scarlett clicked her tongue and pulled her suit into position. “Guess we have to solve this one ourselves.”

AM and the formerly invisible enemy exchanged several blows. It ended with the machine taking a kick to the torso, sending it flying into one of the reinforced walls. The assailant then turned to the trio of researchers.

She was covered head to toe in slimy mould. It crawled over her skin constantly, moving in pulses around her like a trypophobia inducing bodysuit. The holes in it did not give view to skin, but to holes crawling with pieces of Lorylim matter. Here and there, pieces of a thin, lead-grey skeleton were visible.

All of the pulsing mass moved steadily from her open stomach to her back and head. Crippled wings crawled up her spine, before fading into nothing. Her head was a fucked up, four-parted maw. Something like a face still sat behind those degenerated, teeth-lined flaps of slimy flesh. The only thing still pure about the monstrosity before them was the curved Astrotium dagger in her hand.

“Thresta, Third of Darkness,” Scarlett reported out loud, a hand in her breast pocket. She played with a small metal box, considering opening it up and lighting one of the cigarettes inside. Each was soaked in a potent mix of combat stimulants and narcotics. Tools to use, but not tools to use mindlessly.

The Metracana reacted to her name by twitching. “Th… T… Thir--- Tia---- I am….” There was something there that still struggled against the control of the goddess of chaos. To no avail. Unlike the Metracanas on their side, these still relied on parts of Tiamat for normal function. An easy way for the disgusting mother to sink her claws in and make flesh malleable.

AM surged back into the fight. Heat radiated from the extremities of the machine, the Legendary core powering up the incandescent heat. All systems overclocked, the machine sliced at Thresta. In her madness, the corrupted Metracana still reacted at impressive speed. AM sliced at the dagger – cutting off its own fingers in the swipe.

‘Got to put in an Astrotium contingency in the attack routine,’ Scarlett thought.

Hailey and Delicia jumped into the fight. They weren’t combatants, but they were bodies of considerable might. A spear of ice in her hand, the enigma engineer took position behind the sturdier body of the alchemist. Scarlett watched it all with her red eyes. Circuitry flashed constantly within, while she coordinated the defence systems in the modular skyscraper.

Thresta’s movements were blurred, even on the highest shutter cameras Scarlett had around. She ducked and weaved, leaving fuzzy afterimages. Claw swipes of Delicia and AM missed, as did the pokes by Hailey’s spear. It was a difference in speed and skill. Whatever Tiamat had done to her daughter, it had pushed her to a competitive level with the haremettes present, without compromising on the combat instincts the Third of Darkness would have gained over her long career.

‘Bothersome,’ Scarlett thought and began to walk. She was of no use here, certainly not as a physical body. Best to extract herself from the situation. A wall next to her shifted down. Mechanisms within formed an improvised staircase.

She tilted her head just a moment too late. A launched projectile ripped the majority of her left ear clean off. “Hate.” “Hate.” “Hate.” “Hate.” The words droned from the creatures that had waited for her. Humanoids, as much covered in the slime mould as Thresta was. Their physiology betrayed a male origin. Broader shoulders, narrower hips, harder angles, but all of that was just a remnant buried under the Lorylim matter. Interestingly, them being male apparently diminished the connection to Tiamat. That was Scarlett’s theory as to why these two Metracanas lacked the wings and the four-parted maw that was so closely associated with the Mother of Chaos.

‘Judging by the armaments…’ Scarlett scanned over the twin swords the two Metracanas held. Each of them had one and they were similar in their curved form to what Ehtra had reportedly been armed with in her corrupted state. “I got Kerelex and Xerxes here.”

Scarlett felt something squirm around the edges of her ruined ear. A quick alternative view from a camera immediately confirmed the presence of a Lorylim infestation. Her constitution was enough to slow it, but not enough to outright defeat it.

The two Lorylim Metracana at the bottom of the stairs regarded her with cautious glares. A high energy laser ripped through the corridor from behind the redhead. A precision strike that burned away what remained of her ear. As a side benefit, it struck one of the Lorylim in the chest. It only dried out the fungal liquid for a moment, dealing no meaningful damage.

In accordance with its priority protocols, AM appeared at Scarlett’s side. Internal mechanisms whirred as it changed its target lock to the two enemies before her. Simultaneously, the redhead pulled the metal box out of her breast pocket. She was just about to open it when one of the two Metracanas launched another projectile at her. The box was ripped out of her hand, along with a segment of her thumb.

The pain made Scarlett’s muscles twitch for a short moment. “I will have to hire new security if you make it through.” Taking manual control of AM, she had the machine take off the rest of her thumb before the corruption could seep deeper into her. “Go.”

AM assailed the Metracanas immediately.

“Scar, your thu-“

“We can fix it later,” Scarlett interrupted Delicia. The alchemist had managed to disentangle herself from Thresta once an overenthusiastic strike by Hailey had collapsed the floor. Enigma engineer and Third of Darkness were still fighting. “Go support AM. I will continue my efforts to get out. Fight to retreat. Momo should have dispatched Eliana by now.”

“O-okay!” the bratty maid stammered.

‘What is the world coming to?’ Scarlett thought sarcastically and walked away, while Delicia threw herself into the fight with the Second and Third of Hatred. Even as she moved, she intervened in the battles.

Three mechanical puppets were activated inside the walls of the corridor that Hailey and Thresta clashed in. One was immediately dispatched, its head ripped off in one clean motion by the Third of Darkness. The second threw itself in the path of a knife swing, slowing it enough that the knife failed to penetrate the ice armour of the enigma engineer. The last stabbed the side of the Metracana. A minor inconvenience that Hailey attempted to exploit. Superior in experience and reflexes, Thresta moved aside, then gripped the handle of the spear. Hailey let go of it before she got stabbed.

AM and Delicia struggled against their two opponents. The coordination that one of the designers had with the machine was adequate. The coordination that two parts of a hivemind had was superior. Kerelex and Xerxes danced around their enemies, executing attacks in confusingly offset symmetry.

The mound of Lorylim matter spread through the skyscraper. Floor by floor, it broke through upwards, flooding the rooms with black mycelium. The core stem was several metres thick by now, its tip a mass of hands and teeth around a singular eye. Scarlett only caught short glimpses of it. The Lorylim knew where all of her cameras were located.

‘We are outmanoeuvred.’ It was a clinical analysis of the situation. No emotion in it, nothing subjective, just a simple, raw understanding of what was going on. They had deployed three Metracanas, the kind of Lorylim that could take out one of John Newman’s haremettes, especially the ones who had little to no combat experience. They had cut off all three escape routes. The teleporter was damaged, the physical way was out, and Magoi’s lockdown kept them in as much as it kept further Lorylim out.

Scarlett turned on her heel. Escape was impossible. It was more likely that she would enter the maw of another Lorylim waiting around the corner than actually make it out of the skyscraper. Under these circumstances, her fighting was worth something.

Combat by now had punched several man-sized holes into the floors and walls of the Throne HQ. The thick plates of metal that separated some segments of the modular structure were as easily torn through as the concrete cores. Exposed cables sparked yellow and blue, electricity and flowing mana discharging into the air.

Scarlett closed in on her workshop. Something in there would make for a suitable support weapon. One of Hailey’s experimental guns or maybe just some mecha-tendrils. Whatever she could find, she would use.

AM broke through the floor next to her. Scarlett raised an eyebrow at it. Cold annoyance flooded her system as she felt the connection with the machine go cold. When it fell to the ground again, it was nothing more than expansive scrap metal. Scarlett bowed down, ripping the Voidmarrow power core out of the chest chassis.

One of the two male Metracanas jumped up the hole a moment later. Scarlett greeted him with a cold stare. Confidence that kept the monstrosity from attacking her immediately. It must have looked like confidence outwardly. The truth was that Scarlett had simply run the analysis and regarded any emotion superfluous to the situation. Mild annoyance at having her home ruined was all she allowed herself to feel.

Long, shaggy hair swayed as the entire body of the Metracana trembled. Metal bones clattered against each other. This one had not enough hard materials in its construction to make an entire skeleton, causing half-formed ribs to shift like spider legs.

The creature threw its hand out. Scarlett felt a harsh pain in her right arm. She did not have to look to know that her biceps had just been evaporated, along with a chunk of bone. The blob of Lorylim mass launched at her splattered against the wall, where it turned into a quickly growing infestation.

“RED!” Delicia arrived on the scene just before the monster could launch its offensive.

Scarlett ignored both the alchemist’s concerned shout and the crawling feeling that crept over the bones of her right arm. Integral damage to her arm made it clear what she had to do. “Distract them,” she gave a simple order and turned towards her workshop. Delicia let out a surprised yelp, before facing both the Second and Third of Hatred with all that she had to give.

The redhead took hasty steps towards the Combi-Assembler. The intricate machinery stirred from its innate state. Scarlett manually rerouted the electricity network to assure the heavy construction was supplied with all the power she needed for as long as she did. All remaining robot bodies inside the facility were activated simultaneously, all to buy her the time she needed to assemble the schematics in her mind.

Calmly, she fed the Voidmarrow Core into one of the material tubes. Auto-forges within heated up, melting, casting, hammering, and treating metal all in the span of a few seconds. Arcano-tech processes reinforced by enchanted segments worked in beautiful coordination. Cables were woven together, tools attached to the assembling limbs, all while the central chamber shifted its dimensions. With a heavy, metallic clang, the access hatched opened. The heat of a furnace greeted Scarlett, blowing her long hair back.

She connected to the speaker system. “Hailey, return to the workshop immediately.”

If there was no suitable weapon, the scarlet rose would grow her own thorns.