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    Metal growled in distaste as Kaius dragged one of the limbless, still-living worker drones into the room they had chosen to make their base of operations for the foreseeable future.

    Now that he was no longer being pursued by a horde of automata, and far less frantic for it, Kaius could see that the place was more than just a kitchen. It was an oddity of a space — part cooking area and part workshop. A dizzying array of tools lined one side; the back of the room’s racks of shelving held the decaying remnants of boxes. Some looked like they had once been food that had decayed to dust, but others held stranger things: scraps of metal and rotted cloth.

    Grunting slightly as the stump of one of the drone’s legs got caught against a desk, Kaius looked down at the creature and heaved. Gods, the things were heavy — unsurprising given they were made of solid steel. He could manage it just fine, but it didn’t mean lugging them around was pleasant.

    For all that had been amputated and forcibly removed, the creature seemed utterly unconcerned with its fate — other than its attempts to wiggle its metal stumps threateningly at him.

    He supposed it wasn’t too surprising. As sophisticated as it was, the machine was artifice — not truly alive, at least he didn’t think it was. There were hints: none of the automata seemed to use skills, and while they had levels each type was of identical strength to all the others, without variation. They all carried the same class. They were even less lifelike than depthsborn. He supposed it would be hard to outdo creations of something as powerful and flawless as the system.

    Kaius shoved the automaton against one wall and hurried over to Ianmus, who was struggling with one of his own.

    “Gods, did they make these things out of solid lead?” the mage gasped, barely dragging one into the room as he heaved with all his might.

    Kaius chuckled, grabbed the worker drone around its boxy body and lifted with his legs. He couldn’t deny they were hefty, but the benefits of his hybrid class had shown themselves again. Hells, even Kenva was handling her own drone. Then again, she did have plenty of physical stats — most of her struggle came from being relatively slender and short compared to the rest of them. With the worker drones’ torsos being large, it was an awkward burden.

    “Show off,” Ianmus muttered.

    “You’re just jealous of my Strength,” Kaius shot back, grunting slightly as he dropped his package.

    Porkchop, dragging fully half of the remaining specimens behind him, snorted disdainfully. The tied together remains were loud, metal scraping the floor with a horrid shriek that drowned the alarm still filling the barracks.

    “What now?” Porkchop asked.

    “I need to cycle,” Kaius replied. He could still feel his pillars flaring within him. It had been hard to resist devoting his full attention to it as soon as they’d finished their fight, but there had been more important matters at hand.

    “I do too,” Ianmus said, followed by the rest of the team nodding in agreement.

    “If I remember correctly, it shouldn’t be too lengthy once we get it going. Let’s do it in shifts. I don’t mind going second so I can keep an eye on those drones,” Kenva said.

    “I’ll wait with you,” Porkchop replied.

    “Thanks,” Kaius said, giving his friends a grin. He wasn’t going to argue if they wanted to help.

    Not waiting another moment, he dropped to the ground. Closing his eyes, Kaius fled inward and leveraged his Authority to press in on his pillars. Pressure slammed home, heightening the flare that was already there. Essence flowed through his triumvirate.

    It was like pouring alchemist fire over a camp stove. Where once his pillars had nibbled haphazardly at the power within him, now they drank deep.

    From their time in the crucible, Kaius knew that refinement was less revelatory than the initial process of founding his aspects and embodying them, but he still wondered what had caused that initial flare. Had it been the pressure of their non-stop fight? Something deeper — frustration and worry at being trapped deep within an imperial ruin?

    It was hard to say, but regardless he felt his aspects solidify far faster than before he’d started cycling. The value of authority that came from embodiment was obvious now: the pressure forced his essence to saturate his pillars while the act of cycling provided far more than would otherwise have been present.


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    Little by little, his pillars grew denser — tougher. While he didn’t have an exact feel for it, he got the impression he’d taken a notable step toward a breakthrough.

    For now, satisfied, he opened his eyes and saw Ianmus next to him, blinking as the mage finished his own cycle.

    “How long were we out?” Kaius asked, turning to where Porkchop and Kenva rested by a nearby wall — watchful eyes on the drones they’d dragged in.

    “Not long. A quarter of an hour, maybe? A little bit more.”

    “Thank the gods,” Kaius said. When Xenanra had first told them of cycling, he’d been worried they’d need to devote days or years to make any notable progress.

    “You guys go ahead. We’ll keep watch,” Ianmus said.

    Porkchop and Kenva nodded, quickly hunkering down and letting their auras crush in tight to their skins — a mirror of what Kaius had done minutes before.

    He met Ianmus’s eyes and the mage sighed, leaning back on his hands. “Well. Trapped again, huh?”

    Kaius couldn’t help it. He laughed and shook his head. “We do seem to be making a bit of a habit of it, don’t we?”

    The half-elf smiled wider. “We should probably work on that.”

    “We probably should. It was a damn good fight though.”

    “That it was. By the headmaster’s beard, those centurions were nasty things.”

     

    Kaius nodded — gods’ damned tougher than some champions they’d fought on the final layer of their delve. Honestly, it was still incredible that such creations were the work of men. It only made him more curious how the Empire had fallen if it could call upon armies of silvers and silver constructs to defend itself. At least they knew where their vulnerable cores were now.

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