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The holy silence of the fortress was broken.
With an exhaled breath, the gleaming eyes of screens blinked open: gears of fingers twitched, blood pumped through the sinew of wires and cables to ignite the brain once more after their thousand year coma. Lights flickered on simply out of habit; anyone who needed to see to navigate was long gone. The corridors lit up with swirling waves of dust, the breath from the ventilation sending them crashing down the length of the room and away. The beating heart murmured, yawned, and reached out its fingers to their factories, beginning to nudge buttons and breathe life into their conveyor belts as if the fall of an entire civilisation hadn't happened. Every camera was an eye, and every door the touch of an insect against skin, which is why they had to be precise.
The red gazes of patrollers swept the halls, illuminating dust motes and the metallic emptiness of a fortress long dormant. They drifted along their set paths, an endless loop of hunting for an enemy that had no name, no body, and no identity. The doors opened, the patroller floating in to continue their work to the next chamber. The camera watched, satisfied with its progress and passing off the dark streak that smudged their periphery as a glitch.
Nothing to be concerned about.
Their attention turned, and the patroller vanished in a split second. An impossible event, but restarting production was more important. Such an event can be logged as an anomaly.
~
"Baal, this is Paimon, do you read me?"
"B-Wh... What the fuck..? We don't need code names!"
"But it's a serious mission!"
The shadows stretching across the corridor warped, twisting to form the profile of a gigantic bat,
"They're robots! They don't know who we are!"
"What are you two arguin' about?"
Taab let out a hissed grunt of annoyance, rubbing her temples within the sanctuary of the second dimension,
"Sabre's being distracting."
"That's on you, you wanted to bring 'im."
"For experience! Now both of you shut up! If we alert the system, they're gonna start turfing out more machines."
Sabre huffed from the elevator lobby, hunkered down with a compact screen and an earpiece. He watched Taab slink into the corner chamber, snatching up the patroller to be devoured by the shadows and lessening the number of obstacles they would face by one.
Taab was the first one to hear of the fortress reawakening, an ancient factory slash battleship half submerged in a great pillar of ice towards the west of Kelaso village. A shift in the earth had sent the spear piercing the heavens, and the snow falling from the exposed carapace. Fortunately it had only just stirred, so enough time to get in, disable the core computer, and get out with very few machines emerging.
But they had to be precise.
"If you have to be so stealthy, why am I here?" Sabre adjusted his uncomfortable seat; he had never been very good at shape shifting and this tiny screen was a menace to his back.
"Every team needs muscle," Taab whispered as her ethereal body wound around a length of pipe and slipped deeper into the fortress, "if something unexpected happens, we've got you."
He grunted in response, watching through the fuzzy gaze of the security cameras.
"Go down a floor 'n the room on the right can disable the laser sensors." Jack murmured, body flush against the ceiling, fingers intertwined with the network pumping through the bones of the building. Minute keys unfurled from his fingertips, threading into the sinew of the fortress like acupuncture as his mechanical mind reached and grasped the ethereal brain of the network surrounding them.
Taab twisted and crawled her way along cracks in the walls, slithering into a hair's breadth gap to emerge into a dark chamber lit from beyond its walls.
"Here," she murmured, "factory control room?"
"Right on the money, Baal." Jack chuckled, craning his neck back to watch a hover patroller pass below him, gaze sweeping the ground.
After all, what dangers could come from above in a fortress like this?
"Oh, shut up." Taab grunted as she headed to the console, wiping away an uncomfortably thick layer of dust and something slimy.
Below her, conveyor belts rumbled as mecha robo components tumbled across them. Mechanical arms reached down with a delicacy juxtaposed by their chunky geometric fingers to pick up fallen pieces and send them on their way deeper into the fortress.
"It looks like they're combat centric," Taab murmured.
"Yeah no shit." Jack adjusted his position, other hand prising open another panel to expose the wires within.
"But this is proof, jackass." She hissed, "we can presume all we want, but this is concrete evidence."
"You guys fight sooooo much." Sabre readjusted his position for the umpteenth time, "you're both so alike, so why don't you just get on?"
If they had been together, his point would have driven directly home at the identical expressions both of them flashed in response.
"Whatever, production seems slow," Taab continued as she craned her neck to view more of the factory floor, "I'm guessing they're still restarting, or some of the machinery has been damaged."
"Quiet on my end too."Jack's fingers retracted, turning their attention to the new panel and the plump cables that nestled within, "I'm gonna try a new path."
"So, why don't we just go to the Core and beat the shit out of it?" Sabre slumped back, tiny tail wagging in frustration.
"Cos it'll be easier getting answers and information while this thing is still active." Taab blew a great cloud of dust from the console, "we could learn about production, how these systems work, the significance of such buildings too."
"Yeah but that's dull." Sabre flopped back, gazing up at the indigo ceiling, smooth and pristine with not even a cobweb in sight.
"It's important." Jack chuckled under his breath, needle thin fingertips piercing the casing of the wires and snuggling up to the highway of information zipping through.
He suddenly recoiled as a shock jolted through his gears, juddering them for a skipped heartbeat before they whirred onwards again.
"Jack?" Taab pressed on her earpiece, "everything okay?"
"M'fine." He grumbled, shaking out his tingling hand, "just a shock, nothing serious."
Lights suddenly flared on, blinking into life down the corridor with heavy thuds of switches flipping. Jack dropped, slipping into the shadows between the crossroads.
"Taab?"
"I felt that too." The control room was illuminated, Taab reduced to a shadow on the wall, "Sabre, what did you do?"
"I ain't done nothing!!" Sabre shielded his eyes against the white lights flooding the lobby.
The hallway let out a deep groan, organs shifting as hidden doorways rose and machines stepped out to flood the corridors.
"Gods damn it." Taab hissed, watching the factory beyond the filthy glass roll on in double time.
So much for the element of surprise.
"Sabre, meet up with Jack on the third floor." Taab shrank back deeper into the shadows, slipping through the gap beneath the door, "I'll meet you at the Core."
"Got it." Jack lowered down as the mecha robos stomped past, gazes set across the hallway and scanning for the smallest shred of life.
Taab slunk along the pipes and cables making up the fortress's arteries; they had to speed up before this place started turfing its troops into the snow beyond. At a glance, depositing them into the frigid desert of the arctic wasn't so bad, but just one was enough to hurt people, and machines didn't get tired, or freeze.
It only took one.
A tremble ran through the pipes beneath her ghostly form, enough to spark her attention. She was drawing close to the core, but the hairs on the back of her neck prickled with danger that made her mind scream. The willpower it took to keep clawing her way along the pipes and not just snap away into the ether was crushing. Sharp, biting warmth tickled the edges of her body, and for a split, horrifying second, she felt her form begin to waver and melt. A hairs crack in the metal, a barely perceptible chink of light, and she flung herself through as the pipes rocketed with crackling energy that spat and snarled into the empty air.
"Of course there would be anti-Shadow technology..." she breathed, rolling into her full form as she landed. She felt foolish for not considering such a thing sooner; Shadows had existed during the times of the Ancients. It was highly plausible that those pipes had been slunk by someone just like her, just a few thousand years or so prior.
"Guys, there's anti-Shadow precautions in the pipes. Be EXTRA careful."
"Cool, but we're having a bit of trouble on my end!"
The flint of his rifle snapped, and a piercing bolt of magic sheared one of the robot's heads clean off. The hallways had suddenly swarmed, Jack forced out into the open as the sinew and cables he'd been traversing pulsed with electricity that made his gears grind. A barricade of felled machines, and the sight of his guns were the only thing keeping him alive.
Somehow, everything was going to shit.
"I'm almost to you!" Sabre skidded to a halt before a door that slammed in his face, control pad glowing a defiant red. His claws dug into the seal, pulling both doors apart as if they were made of cardboard before throwing himself through, four paws pounding against the metal floor.
"I managed to reach the central control room," Taab gazed up at the blinding blue glare of the screen before her, panels spiking off upon hinged supports and the desk an amorphous platform of gold speckled with buttons and dials, "I'll try and shut it off from-"
The screens flew by her face as she was yanked back and away, arcing through the air to slam down heavily into the ground. She sat up from the crater, blinking stars from her eyes.
Spooling from the screens in a wave of clicks were six mechanical arms, three fingers snapping at the end of each. Swallowing down her embarrassment, she sprang to her feet, shoulders clicking,
"Hold fast, I'll be as quick as I can."
Two tendrils shot through the air, snatching at nothing as Taab vanished in an instant. They hung, perplexed, cameras scanning the room as it made split second calculations that rolled up their monitor.
~
Sabre's claws scratched minute grooves into the metal as he sprinted down the corridor. Doors slammed before him, but bowed like paper as he burst through with barely a moment's hesitation.
"I'm almost at you, Jack!" He skidded around a corner, grinding to a halt as he came face to face with the hunched figure of a black dual axe, their stance bowed and blades glinting in the dim lighting of the facility. Like clockwork, it rose up, joints clicking and whirring as the axes spun and were snatched back into their grip with mechanical precision.
"Okay..." Sabre rolled his shoulders, "let's rock, big boy."
They immediately struck, axe swinging out with shocking speed. Sabre skidded back, arms raised to shield his head as black ichor trickled through his fur. His arms parted, eyes glinting with a wicked flash as he reeled back and countered with a punch that sent them flying back through the doors, and crashing into the next.
The dual axe rose torso first, clicking back upright as their ragdoll limbs realigned themselves. Sabre drew in a steady breath, senses slowing as he clenched his fists and lowered his body, mind focusing in on the stability beneath his paws and the strength pooling into his core.
The dual axe began sprinting back at him, gait pounding up to top speed as it swung both axes in unison. They slammed together, skidding back through the ruined doors of Sabre's wake, shrapnel shearing off of the warped metal. Their limbs locked, quaking under the sheer power that clashed between them as Sabre gripped onto the axe hilts and drew them face to face. Minute gears whirred within their eyes, staring ahead through him.
Their second set of arms reeled back, planting a hefty punch on Sabre's stomach that ejected a gasp from his lungs. He twisted to avoid the second strike, arms shaking as the axes slipped closer and nicked the edge of his ear. He reeled back, steeling his body for another strike as his lip curled, body thrumming with energy drawn up through the earth, holding his muscles taught and trembling. Their fist made contact, and he catapulted down, smashing their heads together and sending the dual axe slamming back whence they came and then some as they burst through two more doors and scraped through a third into the central hallway. They ground across the metal, sparks spitting from the mangled mess of their head as the lights in their eyes flickered and faded.
"JACK!" Sabre stumbled, ichor dripping to the floor. Once again he had misjudged his own strength, putting aside his defences in favour of the offensive.
A habit he was all too susceptible to.
He shook off the black droplets, leaping to all fours and through the doorway, pounding the metal as he ran full speed towards the central core.
~
Scanning... Null. Ocular receptors unable to locate the Shadow threat. Initiating fulgur wave...
The tiniest distortion, a barely noticeable warp in the upper corner of their receptors, and it was too late.
Taab reappeared, a knife thrown from her hand and sinking deep into the shoulder of one of the tendrils, crackling with infectious electricity that sent it snaking to the floor, motionless. She twisted in midair, avoiding the claws of an arm before springing off another to axel to the ground, flicking her wrist to spring three more knives up between her fingers. They snaked back around, Taab lifting in their wake and allowing it to spin her, casting the blades to thud in a line down another tendril. It jolted, movements jerking and uncoordinated; down but not out.
She flicked more knives ready, starting as one of the tendrils doubled back and grabbed hold of her arm, scattering the blades like metal confetti. Not missing a beat, she drew a hefty sword from the depths of her wings, shearing the arm in two. She cast the hand aside, flipping the sword as easily as if it was made of wood.
"Warning. You are trespassing a Xiang facility. Please wait, our security is on its way."
"You're joking." She let out a bark of laughter, springing up into the coils overhead, sword raised in hand.
~
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Jack snapped a reload, smoking shells tinkling across the floor in a melodic juxtaposition to the holes they'd just blasted through a machine's head. His scope swung, and another three shots fired off to send more machines toppling down at the far end of the corridor.
He didn't breathe, he was a machine, but his chest held taught as the crosshairs wavered in his grip. A slow breath out, a gentle flickering of the candle nestled in his chest.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
The precise sniping was faltering as more and more robots flooded into the hallways. Their corpses were enough to stem the flow slightly, but it was a matter of time.
Fluttering prickled in his periphery, Jack rising from behind his blockade to shoot down a hovering patroller, revolver gripped in an outstretched hand. The pounding of battle rushed through his circuits, charging them hot and fast and ready to react at a hair trigger. It was almost too much, the hammering in his ears and the white hot energy forcing its way through him, but he was made for this: he was entirely in his element.
He ducked back down as a machine gun rattled bullets across his shield, rising up to peer over the lip and return a stream of bullets.
"Sabre? You'd better be here soon..!" He murmured, into the silence of the communicator.
His eyes narrowed, a phantom reticle spiralling into his triangular eyes as he watched the robots in the distance falter, then draw apart.
A hefty cannon rested the shoulder of a nasty looking machine, much more humanoid than its comrades. The purple and black of their body glowed with a matt finish, eight dark holes in their centre giving a chilling impression of eyes. They crouched and took aim, a red hot glow building from within the cannon's maw.
"Shit." Jack murmured.
BANG!
~
Her sword sliced through the palm of the charging arm, sparks erupting in fireworks before it collapsed to the floor, fingertips twitching. The remaining three snaked through the air towards her, Taab's wings snapping out to drag her into the air. She threw her sword in an arc, nicking the edge of one arm as it swerved and struck out. She dropped, twisting to glance the snapping hands away as two crackling yellow blades appeared from the folds of her wings.
It was like a dance, each beat of battle a tick on the metronome within her chest.
This was taking too long, she hadn't heard from Jack or Sabre in a while and the bud of anxiety prickling the back of her neck was almost ready to bloom. She had to hit the source.
Taab flicked the knife from her hand, pinning one arm to the wall as she dove down like a dark bullet towards the main console. Her claws reached out, a breath away from seizing the desk and wresting control.
She slammed into the ground, the air bursting from her lungs. They knew her game, changing their trajectory in a heartbeat.
The arm pinned to the wall writhed, sparks of electricity dripping from the hole through it but unperturbed as it slowly forced its way down the handle of the knife. Like all combat, the tides changed in a single crash of the waves.
Between her claws, a single slender memory stick, moving from palm, to knuckle, to fingertip. A desperate reach, so close and yet so far to the port nestled beneath the underside of the console.
With one last wrench, the pinned arm broke free, dripping electric blood as their fingers snapped and they dove down towards her unprotected back.
~
BANG!
The cannon robo crumpled immediately as Sabre barrelled into them head first, sending them both crashing into the wall with a force that rocked the entire facility.
"GODS! Sabre, you BASTARD! I love you SO MUCH!" Jack sprang up onto the barricade, sweeping his cloak back to reveal a rumbling gatling gun grasped at his side. Smoke thrummed from its shining copper form, engine purring and eagerly waiting to be let off of the leash.
Sabre sprang off of the wall, powerful arms launching him over the heads of the machines as Jack released a cloud of bullets into them.
"Sorry I'm late." Sabre's claws shrieked grooves into the floor as he skidded to a halt, "had a heart to heart with a Dual Axe."
"And it took you this long?" Jack barked with laughter, mowing down the rows of advancing machines with ease, "you're getting rusty."
"Fuck off!" Sabre laughed, focusing in on the gashes in his arms. The ichor trickling down was sucked back up, the raw edges zipping up as if nothing had happened.
"Taab?" Jack's voice crackled over their comms, "we've got the corridor stable. Let us know what you need."
~
The control room rumbled as the whole facility shook, a split second calculation passing through the mind of the computer. And a split second was all she needed.
Taab lurched forwards, the memory stick clicking into the port nestled on the console's belly. It's minute ruby eyes glinted, and the arms froze, falling to the floor like great metal snakes. She flinched as one fell against her back, a hair's breadth away from striking her.
"Taab? We've got the corridor stable. Let us know what you need."
She rolled over, breathing a hefty sigh of relief as her hand flopped against her stomach. In a moment or two the stick would do its job; completely overriding the mind of every machine in this facility. She blinked up at the screen overhead, watching the lurid orange flicker to violet as she slowly took control.
"The stick is in." She replied to Jack, "shutdown is imminent, so hold on."
"Gotcha!" Sabre's voice crackled alongside Jack's, "we'll be with you ASAP!"
'I've got about five minutes.' She thought, springing up to her feet to turn to the console. She tapped the keyboard, a login springing up.
V-E-S-P-E-R
The home screen sprang up with a soft jingle, a strange five pointed logo overlooking the background.
It was familiar.
She tried the search engine:
Draco Animam project
Multiple files sprang up, each in the strange geometric lettering of the Ancients' language.
"Timetable... Statistics... Manifesto..." she murmured. This would all be beneficial to her. A tiny thought flickered in her periphery, enough temptation to have her clicking back to the search engine.
'3 minutes left.' Her sharp claws clicked across the keys.
Bianca.
The loading bar thought for a moment, lingering on its path.
No results found.
She blinked,
Ignis Draconis
A group of files sprang up immediately, a single folder branching out into multiple:
Terra Draco: Flos
Tenebris Draconis: Nihil
Aqua Draconis: Nivis
Draco Caelum: Fulgur
Ignis Draconis: Sol
She entered, the screen filling with pages and statistics, and a diagram of Bianca.
Of who they knew as Bianca.
'One minute.'
Taab grabbed the files, dragging the Draco Animam project into the stick, casting the original files into the trash and wiping it clean. Her brow was puckered in concentration, typing fast and precise as she backed out of the stick, leaving the screen blank.
"Hello, my beloved lady Taab!"
Sabre kicked the door in, nose wrinkling at the carnage that coiled the floors,
"Wowzers! You really know how to do a number on these guys."
"I aim to please." Taab chuckled as she went over to where her sword was wedged into the wall, wrenching it free.
"Nice one." Jack slapped a high five into her palm, "that sure was a workout."
"Oh, I wanted to take my time." She flashed him a wink, Jack chuckling as he stuck a finger up at her,
"Bitch. Found anything good?"
"Not yet, haven't had a chance to look." Taab returned to the console, tapping the keyboard to bring up the login screen.
S-O-J-O-U-R-N-A-N
The screen bloomed with that logo, looking a bit like a flower,
"Earlier it said it was a Xiang facility," Taab drummed her claws on the desk.
"Shee-ang?" Sabre frowned, "that sounds weird, is that who owned this place?"
"I can guess so." Taab typed into the search bar, multiple folders springing up with hefty red symbols plastered across them.
"Damn, gonna take a bit to get into those." Jack scratched his head, "let's just take ‘em back to base for the others to deal with."
"I second that." Taab dragged the files to the main stick, "Oh yeah, and before I forget..."
She dragged an icon of a bat from the stick, depositing it on the desktop to let out a pixellated cackle and settle itself in to retain control of the console.
"Just curious..." Jack nudged her over, chunky fingers clicking across the keys.
Demon King Robots
The loading bar chugged, bringing up a few sparse folders and files with patchy, technical names. A few files seemed relevant, but it wasn't anything remarkable.
"I guess that this one wasn't a cross-console network." Taab shrugged, "perhaps for security reasons?"
"Eh, probably," Jack rubbed his chin, "depends when it's from too. Ah, we'll probably be back here so no worries."
"Yeah, I wanna get out of here." Sabre sighed, "I want a nice bath and a big meal."
"Seconded." Taab raised a claw, closing down the memory stick and extracting it from the console.
She twirled it between her fingers before sliding it into a pouch on her belt, the little bat engraved on it glinting wickedly.
"Man, talk about effort." Sabre's jaw practically unhinged with his yawn, "this happen every time you guys do spy stuff?"
Taab let out an undignified snort of laughter, "kinda? Usually we're a bit more subtle."
"Yeah, less of the whole standoff thing." Jack chuckled, "right, let's get this show on the road."
Taab lightly smacked the back of her hand to his, slapping a high five for Sabre as the three of them melted into the ground, returning to the shadows whence they came.