Steamforged Sorcery - Chapter 43 (Patreon)

“Looks like we found Vanessa’s ranged weapon,” Cowl said, plucking the device from Angel’s hands. The lights dimmed as his connection to it broke and the Hunter handed it to the girl.

Angel sighed. As much as he wanted to dissect it, Cowl was right. Vanessa sent Angel a questioning glance. He nodded and she took the artifact, turning it over in her hands in awe. With a grunt, Angel took the locket out of his bag.

“This one’s mine. Don’t get any ideas.”

“It’s just a clock,” Cowl said. “If there was anything to discover from it, your blundering would have already located it.”

“I do not blunder. Every move I make is calculated,” Angel scoffed, unwrapping the oilcloth and running through the tedious process of popping it open.

Their conversation fell off as Angel focused on the inner workings of the small artifact. He’d examined it so many times that he practically knew it like the back of his hand. As much as he hated to admit it, there was a good chance that Cowl was right. It was possible that the artifact was really nothing more than a broken clock. If that was the case, there was no reason leaving it intact. He’d learn more from breaking it open and taking apart the inner workings. Even if he destroyed most of the artifact, something was better than nothing.

Angel pressed his lips together. A point formed on his finger and he pressed it into the side of the clock face. Out of nowhere, it sparked. Angel yanked his hand back as a stream of faint white energy rose up from the clock and shot into his mechanical arm.

“Buried gods,” Angel cursed, staring at his hand. Something within it shifted and the Seeker narrowed his eyes, flicking the eyepiece down and examining himself.

Name: Angel

Level: 31 [14%]

Status: Forei- Healthy

Information accuracy: 100%

Strength: 13 [+1]

Intelligence: 46 [+4]

Nimbleness: 21 [+3]

Toughness: 10

Comparative Rating: Minor Threat

Weak point(s): Heart, Neck, Arteries… (100/100)

Element(s): Steel, [Unknown]

Magicore: None (43% Attunement)

Installing new module: 55% complete.

…

…

Energy source absorbed. Please provide further energy to expedite update progress.

“You slimy piece of shit,” Angel swore. “What did you do to my artifact?”

He poked the clock with a small amount of magic, but it did nothing. Angel swore again.

“Everything okay there?” Cowl asked, giving Angel an amused glance. The Seeker glared at him.

“Perfectly fine,” Angel said. Days of work – wasted. With a distressed sigh, he pressed his fingertip into the corner of the clock, where the face met the metal. The point emerged and he dragged it downwards, ripping the metal open and pulling out the clock face.

His worst fears came true. The inside of the mechanism was blackened and covered in soot. A small wisp of smoke rose up from it, curling past his nose like a mocking fart before disappearing into the air.

“What happened?” Vanessa asked, sitting up and bringing a mote of light to her hands. “Are you okay?”

“He blew his artifact up,” Cowl said, chuckling. “Good job, Seeker.”

“Stuff it,” Angel said, carefully trying to brush some of the ash free. It was no use. The intricate lines of Old World magic that had powered the artifact – whatever it might have been – were gone. He cursed, setting the artifact down and fighting off the overwhelming desire to punch the ground. “I’m fine, Vanessa. Thanks for asking.”

Angel irritably set the fried remains of his artifact down on the ground. For better or for worse, it was ruined. With a grumble, he laid down and rolled over, embracing the release of sleep.

Cowl woke Angel some time later. It wasn’t exactly morning, since there was no way to tell the time within the catacomb.

“Your watch,” Cowl said, walking over to his own sleeping bag and climbing inside of it. The Hunter turned over, facing his back towards Angel as he drifted off to sleep in record time.

Angel pressed his lips together as he sat up and caught sight of the shameful remains of the artifact at his side. He shook his head and pulled his bag closer to him. The artifact within it seemed to call out to him.

He glanced at Cowl again. The man’s chest rose and fell slowly, and Angel was pretty sure he was asleep. Slowly, he flipped the flap of the bag back and reached inside, shifting around within it until his fingers located the smooth wooden box.

Angel opened it partially, just enough for the dull red light of the relic to creep through. The urge to grab it and delve into its secrets surged through him, but he forced it down. After what had happened to the artifact, the mere thought of touching the cube filled him with dread.

Faint patterns danced across its luminescent surface, calling out for him to examine them. Angel licked his lips nervously. If he didn’t manage to get alone with the relic sometime soon, he was going to lose his mind. What was the point of having it if he couldn’t figure out what it did?

Angel closed the lid of the box with a silent snap. The time to examine the cube would come – and it would come soon. But it wasn’t today. Until he figured out how to control the Star Fragment, he wouldn’t be touching anything he cared about.

His watch passed peacefully. Angel counted out several hours before deciding that enough time had gone by. He woke Vanessa and Cowl, and the three of them ate a quick, rather depressing, breakfast.

“How much longer do you think we’ll be in here?” Vanessa asked, turning the relic over in her hands.

“No way to know,” Angel replied. “Could be minutes, could be a week. Depends on how much we annoy the catacomb. If it thinks it’s got a good chance at stealing our stuff, we might never escape. Once we do enough damage and steal enough stuff, it’ll be begging us to leave.”

“So why haven’t we been destroying the walls?” Cowl asked.

“No point. It doesn’t care about walls, it cares about magical artifacts, like the one Vanessa’s got in her hand. That was the catacomb’s, and now it’s ours. It’s not going to like that. If we keep it up, we might just get spit out.”

“Convenient,” Cowl said. “So we march onwards then?”

“We do. Carefully.”

They packed up their belongings and headed towards the single door at the far end of the room. As always, Angel spent a few moments examining it before he deemed it safe and slowly pushed it open.

Unsurprisingly, what greeted them was a long hallway that faded into darkness around a bend. They marched down it single file, with Angel taking the lead and Cowl at the back. A faint orb of magic in Angel’s hand provided them with just enough light to see the old, metal plated walls as they passed them by.

The air was stale and musty. The smell of rust hung low, sticking to their clothes and skin like a pestilent fog. As they continued deeper, it sloped downwards, descending farther into the earth.

Angel lost track of the exact amount of time they’d been travelling, but it must have been at least twenty minutes. It was difficult to keep a good frame of reference when everything looked identical.

Their reprieve finally came in the form of a large cavern. Faint glowing moss illuminated it, revealing two rectangular steel doors that stood easily two stories in the air. They were unadorned, with no apparent way to open them at their height. The machinery in the walls looked far older than anything else they’d seen. It was almost completely rusted, and many of the massive gears had toppled to the ground and laid broken in pieces.

“Wow,” Vanessa whispered. “If I wasn’t worried about getting brutally murdered, this would be amazing.”

“Welcome to being a Seeker,” Angel whispered back.

They stopped at the edge of the hallway. The floor was covered with a thick layer of gravel and fallen stone. There was so much that he couldn’t see a single spot of the ground beneath it.

“I don’t like this,” Angel said, frowning. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a catacomb room in this level of disrepair.”

“What’s that mean?” Vanessa asked. “Is it being old bad?”

“Hard to say,” Angel said. “That’s the problem. Predictability is good. When I can’t see the floor at all and the room looks this shoddy, anything could happen. There might be Old World magic traps on the ground. There might be magic elsewhere that’s not functioning correctly, which either means it does nothing or explodes violently. All sorts of things, and none of them good.”