Steamforged Sorcery - B2 Ch 5 (Patreon)

Angel made his way up to the edge of the hole and peered down into it. He wasn’t particularly surprised to find that he couldn’t see the bottom. The black abyss stared back up at him, almost tempting him to jump.

He shuddered, tearing his gaze away from it. The shadows enveloping the room made it hard to see much beyond his nose, even with the light from his magic. He pulled the small toy out from his travel pack and activated it.

Green light sprang forth, but it was only marginally more effective than his previous strategy. Whatever was on the pedestal was still out of sight.

“I’m going to go check it out,” Angel decided. “Stay here. I don’t want to have to carry you out if something starts falling apart.”

“Are you sure?” Lilian asked, doubt filling her words. “It might be a better idea to just leave. If everything is completely dead, surely someone’s come through here already. We didn’t find anything worthwhile, so even if there was something, we probably don’t have a way to access it since the catacomb is totally deactivated. It can’t exactly shift the rooms anymore.”

“If it’s deactivated, we won’t have any trouble at all,” Angel replied, raising a hand and starting down the thin pathway suspended above the pit. He took each step carefully, shifting his weight at a steady, deliberate pace.

The path held. It turned out to be a good bit longer than he had thought at first glance. By the time he started to grow close to the circular platform, Lilian looked like she’d shrunk several inches.

Angel held his light up as he reached the end of the path. The small pedestal was nearly as tall as he was. Faint gray lines of deactivated Old World Magic wound up it, coming to a stop around a cube the size of a very fat toddler.

One of the cube’s corners was chipped and hairline cracks ran along its side. Angel approached it, raising his right arm and brushing it with a metal finger. It gave no response. Not even a smidge of purple energy appeared.

“Well?” Lilian called. Her voice echoed through the shadows and Angel winced. He didn’t know why, but it almost felt disrespectful.

He gave her a thumbs up, then carefully wrapped his hands around what he was now certain to be the catacomb’s core. With a grunt, he lifted it up and off the pedestal. It was heavy, but not unbearably so – especially with the added strength of his right arm.

Angel turned the core over in his hands. All the sides were covered with patterns of Old World Magic – some of which he recognized, and a few he didn’t. Angel spent a moment memorizing the patterns.

When he was finished, he turned his attention to one pattern in particular. A small circle of runes in the center of one of the sides looked strikingly similar to those he’d used for a charging port on the chopper they’d taken from the Buried God.

“I wonder,” Angel muttered, cradling the cube with his right arm as he set the glowing artifact to the side and brought a spark of magic to his hand.

“What are you doing?” Lilian called.

“Science,” Angel called back. “I might be able to recharge this thing, at least for a moment.”

“Why would you want to do that? It’ll try to kill us!”

“And I can handle anything it can throw,” Angel replied confidently. “We’re at its core. One tap with my fancy hand and it dies again. But if it’s alive, maybe it’ll give us something in exchange for saving it.”

“Catacombs don’t have feelings, Angel! It can’t be appreciative. Have you lost your mind?”

“Don’t know until you try,” Angel replied. “How many people do you think had the chance do something like this in recent years? Probably almost none.”

“Because nobody is that stupid!”

“One person is,” Angel said, bringing the spark of magic to the port. The energy slipped out from his fingertips and vanished into the small rune circle. Lines of Old World Magic flickered, turning from gray to white.

Angel frowned as the energy started to fade again. He examined the rune circle again. One of the cracks ran straight through a rune. The damage was so small that it was nearly invisible, but the rune was destroyed all the same.

He pulled out his scribe and collected some sand from the ground, forcing as much of it as he could into the crack. Then, using the scribe, he traced back over the rune. The fine grains of sand weren’t the best material to fill a crack, but the magic flowing through them yanked them into position.

Another spark of magic sprung to Angel’s hand and he raised it back to the core. The energy slipped into the cube once more. Lines lit up across it again, tracing across its surface and wrapping around the entire cube.

A low hum rose up from within it. Faint vibrations traveled through it down into Angel. The sound grew louder and Angel raised it, placing it on the pedestal. The energy traveled down into the pedestal, twisting down the sides.

As soon as the magic touched the ground, it stopped. Several moments passed without further change. Then the humming started to fade. The core twitched, rising up into the air above the pedestal and hovering in place.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Angel observed. “Hello there. I don’t suppose you’ve got any goodies for me?”

The cube twisted, flickering with light. It almost reminded Angel of a large, cubical eye examining him. They watched each other for a few moments. Then the core let out a whining hum.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Angel said. “So if you could just point me in the goodies I get in exchange for bringing you back to life…”

The lines of Old World Magic on the pedestal changed color, going from white to dull yellow. A low creak emitted from the pit below them and the ground started to rumble.

“Oh, come on,” Angel said. “Are you really going to do this? You do realize that I can blow you up with one touch, right?”

The light flashed red, then green.

“Angel?” Lilian called as the rumbling grew closer. “Maybe it’s time to undo whatever you just did?”

“Hold on,” Angel replied, peering down into the darkness. “I think something is coming.”

“That’s the problem!”

The light flashed green again. Angel cocked an eyebrow at the cube and held his right hand up. He was pretty sure that it wasn’t about to try to kill them, but he wasn’t about to take any chances either.

The rumbling grew louder still. A metal plate rose up from the shadows, grinding to a halt against the right side of the small circular platform. Another plate followed after it, stopping beside the first. Plate after plate followed, forming a pathway that led off to the other side of the chasm.

“Well, this is either some goodies or a particularly creative trap,” Angel observed. “Lilian, you might as well come over now.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” She called, walking across the pathway.

“Not in the slightest, but I am curious,” Angel replied. He waited for a few minutes as she made her way over to stand beside him, then slowly approached the new path that the core had formed.

He put a bit of weight on the platform. It held firm. Angel glanced over his shoulder at the core behind him. “I swear, if you try anything even slightly funny, I will make sure to come back and wring every last drop of energy out of you.”

Green flash. Angel rolled his eyes and started down the path, his arm readied to shoot out a grappling hook. Lilian followed behind him. Their new path led them through the darkness for a little over a minute before reaching a small tunnel in the wall.

Angel scanned it for traps before slipping inside. The walls were plain metal and contained no machinery whatsoever, which was rather strange for a catacomb. He and Lilian descended deeper into it, their eyes peeled for whatever the catacomb was leading them to.