B4 Chapter 436: Beneath the Streets, pt. 1

Kaius entered his shared common room, Porkchop on his heels. He was dressed for battle, clad in scale mail made up from the second-tier artefacts they had found in their delve. His glyphs were charged with a variety of spells. Only Eirnith on his temples lacked many inscriptions. He kept a few charges of Zone of Discombobulation and Compel Obsession, just in case they ran into any beasts or creatures down there, but any dangers would largely be of the crafted variety, lacking the living mind needed for his mind magic to work.

While some automata could be broadly considered to fit that category, he’d struggled to find a reliable source on if mind magic would work on them. At best, he’d read in the archives that similar skills from other affinities sometimes might work to a lesser degree. In either case, he’d rather rely on the certainty of cold steel and bound lightning.

He’d even inscribed a singular instance of Starfall, in case they ran into something that needed the application of overwhelming firepower. He’d prefer not to use it. The explosive, wide-ranging devastation of the spell would be potentially catastrophic deep in an underground structure in an unknown state of disrepair.

Shaking his head, Kaius looked over to his brother — double checking they’d managed to get the ties on his under armour right.

As they entered, Ianmus and Kenva looked up, giving them nods.

Ianmus was ready to go as well. He, perhaps, had the easiest experience, with his robes, not having to spend time on the extensive buckles and straps that the rest of them were foisted with.

Kenva’s fingers were a blur, tugging on fasteners that ran down her ribs. She tightened her chain back cuirass so that it would move as fluidly with her motions as if it were made as a second skin.

“Are we good to go?” Kaius asked, nodding to the ranger.

“Yeah, I won’t be a second. Just these last ties.”

Today was the day that they’d begin their exploration. They would enter into the city’s underbelly. From there, descending into the highest levels of the installation, they would have a search on their hands. To evaluate the threat and potentially disable the Imperial ruin, they would need to find its most heavily armoured, defended, and hidden sections, all of which would be deep beneath the earth.

But before that, they had one more stop. Rieker and Ro had set a small team on gathering the alchemicals they had requested — mostly restoratives for their resources, but a number of others as well. Tonics that would let them deal with absent or toxic air. Common resistance potions for the threats they might find, and other things of that nature. They’d even requested a couple of vials of strong corrosives in case they needed to get through any obstacles without leveraging simple brute force.

Other than collecting those supplies, they already had everything they needed. They’d spent their afternoon hours the day before trawling the city for basic sundries: food and water, ropes and tarp — any form of mundane and cheap supply that might come in handy. While their storage rings were not enormous, such things barely took up any space and were well worth it, considering that they wouldn’t weigh them down.

They had, of course, spent some time in the guild archives. Much of what they found was information that Ianmus was already familiar with — indeed, that all of them were, to some degree, thanks to the ubiquitous infamy that Imperial ruins possessed. Excluding Porkchop, of course.

The largest, most universal dangers would be caverns and industrial runework that was decaying and growing unstable. If they were unlucky enough to find a heavily defended noble vault or military bunker, things would grow more complex. Advanced and highly sophisticated traps, both mechanical and runic, would be in unreliable states of repair. They could be pristine, preserved by automated repair mechanisms, or they could be liable to detonate at any moment, with the slightest breath disturbing them.

Among the most dangerous threats they could face would be the automata — artificed facsimiles of warriors and beasts. Supposedly they were almost like mechanical depthsborn — furious and incredibly dangerous, but not possessing a true mind or intelligence. They’d seen references to some that could be smarter, even use some crude amalgamation of language, but nothing more than isolated footnotes which couldn’t be verified. Unfortunately, Deadacre’s archives were nowhere near as expansive as what might be found in a guild hall located somewhere truly dangerous.

The guild archives had, at least, gone into detail on common ways that threats might be neutralised:tips on what to do when forced to pass through cave-ins and how they might be cleared without further destabilising the structure; notes on avoiding the use of spells around unstable formations, lest they detonate and other things of that nature. Unfortunately, Kaius had found no reference to examples of the actual runes or scripts used in Imperial ruins. He’d known that it was unlikely, but he’d hoped he might find something. The Empire had stretched across the continent and, for all that much of the knowledge it had possessed had been lost to the Shattering, Kaius wouldn’t have been surprised if there were principles that he could understand.

They had even found some good tips for disabling automata. The creations lacked health, much like the undead, and although they often had self-repair enchantments like his blade, in all but the most dangerous units such enchantments were slow — useless in combat. If joints and gearing could be fouled, movement could be disabled, making it easier for them to locate and destroy the central formation that animated them. Apparently, it was often hidden in the chest, and the head, unlike with most things, was not much of a weak spot — if they even had one at all. It was a simple housing for sensors.

“Ready,” Kenva said, buckling a reinforced flap over the exposed stitching of her armour ties. The ranger picked up a knife from the table beside her, twirling it through her hand before she slotted it into the sheath that was buckled at her waist.

Kaius nodded approvingly. Even if her class had evolved to be more focused on archery and she’d lost the melee components to her mastery skill, it would have been foolishness itself not to have some fallback option of last resort.

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Kaius nodded, and they left as a group. As they made their way down and out of the Dusty Stables, he felt a glimmer of pride and nerves twisting up in his chest. It would be their first proper venture into the city geared up like this. Even if they used all of their authority to constrain their Silver auras, it would be impossible to hide what they were.

Magic dripped from their artefacts with pulsating waves, and with the comforting weight of his armour he knew he would be unable to hide the ease he felt in its protective carapace. This would garner them a bit of attention if they hadn’t already had it.

…

Dozens of glistening crystal bottles lined the table in orderly rows, square and boxy of standardised make. Each held potent liquids of a riot of colours. Most were relatively identifiable: the oranges, yellows, and reds of health-related elixirs; the greens and browns of stamina; the blues, purples, and silvers of mana. But one row was far more varied.

A quick look with Truesight confirmed that they were utility tonics, clustered in sets of four.

He grinned. They were marvellous. While they weren’t second-tier tonics, most of them were rare, and a few were unusual—and they were plentiful. It was a staggering display of wealth for the average Delver. For them, it could, in a pinch, be just what they needed to tilt the scales at a pivotal time.

Apparently, a fair deal of effort had gone into their selection, picking ones of high purity and low toxicity. They would be able to take more of them before the foreign magic started to influence and foul their command of their resource pools.

“A mighty haul, isn’t it?” Ianmus said.

“It is,” Kaius agreed.

“Let’s just hope we won’t need them,” Kenva said.

“And what do you think the chances of that happening are?” Ianmus said, cocking an eyebrow with a smile.

“Bah!” Porkchop replied with a snort. “Zero. You know our luck.”

Kaius grinned and shook his head. That was very true. While statistically the vast majority of Imperial ruins were nothing more than long-forgotten and broken hovels — not war caches or deep estates teeming with treasures, lost magic, and danger — something in his gut told him that nothing would ever be so simple for them.

Right as he reached forward to start gathering the tonics, there came a knock at the door.