Ajatar was faster, flying past Kain with her blades around her in a blur. She dove into the attacking homunculi with a will, spinning as she moved allowing her sword swords to slice down through their bodies like parchment. The liquid insides of the golems sprayed out like blood like the wounds he inflicted on them but they paid them no heed and kept up their assault.
An officer raised both hands, gathering to itself a focused burst of energy before directing it towards the grandmaster. Kain intercepted, the Reaver swinging wide with its own energies negated the burst with one slash.
Before any of them could launch another attack, Kain threw his right arm forward and showed them his own show of force. Amplified by the Serioli Gauntlet, his telekinetic blast knocked all the homunculi in his path down like trees before a fierce gale. They were sent tumbling before him, some of them crashing into the walls.
One of them tried to leap on Kain from behind, but he sensed its lunge and swung about quick enough to catch the homunculi in the air. Holding its head firmly in one hand, Kain proceeded to bludgeon any of the others who got near to him with its limp body. When he was finished with it, he tossed the body into three others charging at him.
He cried out, staggering forward, feeling blades bite into his body from behind. The homunculi relied on their sheer umbers for advantage, allowing them to get in closer to cut him with their blades.
Kain responded by lashing out with a leg, kicking the head off of one and then stabbing the Reaver through the chest of a second. Instinctively he dissipated into mist as more attacked from behind and he floated past his attackers until he was behind them instead. Before they could turn, the Reaver swung around and sliced them in half across the waist.
“Who commands these relics?!” Ajatar demanded, striking one across the mouth with her blade slicing off its jaw; its liquid insides pouring out from it face. “Homunculi haven’t been used to fight battles in centuries!”
“You don’t say?” Kain asked without pausing in his acrobatic dodging of blasts from the officers who, like cowards, stayed at the edge of combat directing energy strikes towards them.
“Not since the days of Raziel-Divus.” Ajatar added, then cried out in pain as the blades of these cowardly dolls struck her from behind; leaving a gash down her left wing and hip. She sank forward almost onto her knees and the homunculi raised their swords to finish her in with one strike.
Kain reacted without thinking, gripping the Reaver like a javelin and throwing it straight at them. With a crunch it tore the creatures off their feet and impaled them up against the side of the wall.
The weapon returned to his hand with a simple telekinetic command, letting the shattered remains fall to the ground.
Ajatar stumbled back to her feet in time to defend herself from the onslaught of the officers then turning their attention on her, a cascade of energy blasted in her direction. With her wing inured she could not swiftly enough to escape being hit so instead stood her ground, literally meeting fire with fire.
Falling forth the element discipline of flames she countered, a torrent of flame striking the oncoming projectiles and the two forces cancelled each other out in mid air.
The Reaver’s disappointed moans filled the air as it struck down soulless doll after soulless doll, denied a feeding by the cowardice of the enemy who preferred to engage through puppets.
Even with his strength and Ajatar’s elemental skill, he was quick to realise that they were at a significant disadvantage. The attacks of the homunculi before had been little more than sorties, ambushes meant purely to test his strength.
His enemy was no longer playing around however and thus had unleashed a considerable force against them.
Facing them one at a time was getting him nowhere and running the risk of being overwhelmed, especially if he had to keep dodging those officers energy projectiles.
The only way he was going to win this fight was if he could take most if not all of them out in one go. Not an easy feat.
“Warrior!” Ajatar shouted and he came out of his thoughts to summersault up over the swipe of a homunculi, avoiding the attack. He came down right on top of he creature, slamming its head into the ground through his chest torso. As he swung around, he saw looming above them the pulsing hot frame of Vorador’s boiler.
That was when he had an idea.
“Can you fly?” He asked, slicing his way through two of the creatures in his way. Ajatar flexed her wings, winced only slightly before parrying off another lunge by a homunculus.
“Just about.” She replied.
“Then be ready to take flight.” Kain shouted, leaping up to stamp on two more heads using them as stepping stones to latch onto a ladder on the side of the boiler. He slide the Reaver across his back and began to haul himself up towards the top of the ancient machine.
A few homunculi leapt after him, trying to pull him down. Kain kicked them off but a few started climbing the ladder underneath.
Reaching the top of the boiler, Kain hissed feeling the heat of the metal through his hands and feet. Apparently the bone and blood metal contents of this boiler could remain white hot without constant supervision; a testament to the Serioli techniques Vorador employed in this forge.
At the top were three valves with primitive looking pressure gauges beside them, only reading a small amount of pressure within the device.
Before him the homunculi were mostly gathered around the boiler, sensing him as the biggest threat while a few others were contending with the grandmaster, fighting in close quarters at the far end of the room.
She was watching him, her face half alight with alarm. She had worked out what he was going to do.
Quickly Kain grabbed the valves and began to tighten them all, ignoring the pain and the steam that rose from his hands at contact. The proper operators of this device must have worn gloves but he did not have the time.
The gauges began to rise, steadily as the pressure inside the boiler was increased. The heat from within grew stronger and more jets of steam shot forth from the machine, one emission hitting a homunculi in the face and melting its head clean off.
Kain drew the Reaver, watching the gauges as the pressure built up to unbearable levels, the entire machine shaking almost with anticipation. Then he leapt forward, spinning about in mid air and sliced the machine down the front with the blade.
-
“Opening up the boiler I unleashed the full torrent of white hot blood against my soulless enemies. Their terracotta skin faired no better against it than bare flesh would have and it was interesting to watch their pitiful attempts to escape.”
-
In order to save himself, Kain had to enact the hastiest short range translocation he had ever done. The released pressures exploded outward, ripping the front of the machine to pieces. The resulting tidal wave of Vorador’s unique alloy hung in the air for a moment before spilling down.
Ajatar let out a yelp before she took to the air, only just avoiding the tide as it surged down over the homunculi. A few tried to run but it pushed them down to the ground and swallowed them whole. All of them were absorbed by the mixture, reduced to mere stains on the floor within moments.
Kain had to hold a hand over his nose, almost overcome by the smell of concentrated blood as the substance covered the entire room. Ajatar hovered in mid air, beating her wings to stay aloft.
Eventually she came down onto of the vats in the corner of the room and looked over the side to where Kain was hanging on by one arm.
“Unconventional.” She remarked after a moment of silence. Kain smiled at her choice of words, but then something caught his eye.
Glancing off, he saw something sticking out of the smouldering alloy on the ground. It was sticking half out of the red mulch. It was black and about arms length, round in shape with writing on one side.
It was the second Tablet of Dark Fable that he had been seeking.
Kain stared at it for a moment then he began to laugh.
-
“Of course! Where else could Vorador have assured the safety of the Tablet entrusted to his care with the upcoming attack by Moebius? He had thrown it into his own boiler where he no doubt assumed it would remain undiscovered by his enemies.”
-
Irony being of course in that finding it, he had put the tablet beyond his reach somewhat. He was not foolish enough to try walking to it across the spilled hot metal and the object was far too heavy to levitate using telekinesis.
There was a spot near the door to the forge that was elevated and the metal had hot reached there. Kain tensed himself for leaping over to it, his heal touching the metal.
He took a reflective step forward. That was very hot!
Ajatar watched him from the other side, spotting the tablet.
“I didn’t tell him to do that with it!” She sounded alarmed and shocked, dismayed by the steps one of her own had taken in carrying out her command to safeguard the Tablet. “What was Vorador thinking?!”
“Actually it was ingenious.” Kain told her. “Possibly he had to leave his forge in a hurry and so to protect the tablet and Ba’al’s work he dropped it into the place where he knew no one could get to.”
He did not say however that Vorador most likely had no way or even intention of retrieving it.
Kain raised his right hand and looked at the gauntlet he wore. If the artefact amplified his telekinetic abilities, then he might be able to drag the tablet clear.
Reaching out, he concentrated hard, focusing his thoughts on manipulating physical objects rather than just the bursts of force he had been using so far. The gauntlet vibrated slightly around him in response and the Tablet twitched.
Then it slowly began to move through the liquid metal towards him, inch by inch dragging it in his direction.
When he was about halfway across however, something burst forth from underneath the metal and seized the tablet with half dissolving hands.
Kain grimaced at the sight of the homunculi, barely able to maintain its own form yet still trying to carry out the will of its puppeteer. Such interference was feeble and fleeting and Kain did the thing a favour by putting it out of its misery with a bolt of kinetic energy to the head.
As the body fell back into the liquid metal Kain wrenched the tablet all the way over until it lay at his feet, droplets of Vorador’s alloy sliding off its surface. Despite the white hot temperatures it had endured the tablet had not suffered much damage.
The tablet was almost identical to the first he had seen, albeit with different markings across the surface.
Precisely what language had Ba’al been writing in when seized with the prophetic visions the Seer helped him unlock?
Looking at the tablet, Kain felt once again that strange feeling of detachment as his body moved on its own accord.
-
“The second tablet of Dark Fable lay before me. Destiny itself was bound in its rocky form. Reaching out I grasped it and did not let go.”
-
The tablet in his grasp was like fire, hot and scolding but he held on nonetheless. He quivered, eyes wide as the tablet began to break apart in his grip and the onset of its assault on its mind began.