Chapter 7
Instead of eyes, their blunt, snout-like faces were split by vertical slits of searing violet light.
"Catacomb sentinels," Lennox cursed, dropping into a firing crouch. "Automated quarantine units! They aren't guarding the door from the outside, Wynne—they're programmed to prevent anything from leaving!"
"Or anything from entering," Wynne spat, shifting her grip on her dual daggers.
The nearest manticore lunged. It crossed the forty feet of flagstones in a single, earth-shaking bound, its massive front talons of serrated iron coming down like twin portcullises aimed directly at Wynne's skull.
Wynne didn't retreat. She stepped into the arc, dropping low, her boots skidding across the damp stone as the talons pulverized the granite inches from her shoulder. Her right blade, coated in anti-magic ichor, flashed upward, burying itself to the hilt in the soft copper nerve-bundle behind the construct’s front joint.
The beast shrieked—a dry, grating scrape of metal on stone—and its foreleg collapsed.
Wynne vaulted over its back, driving her left-hand stiletto straight down through the ventilation lattice covering its mechanical core. She twisted the blade, rupturing the pressurized stasis fluid within. A geyser of burning white oil sprayed across her vambraces, hissing against the leather, but she ignored the blisters, ripping the blade free as the construct went limp beneath her boots.
"Wynne! High flank!" Lennox roared.
Two more of the constructs hit the chamber floor simultaneously, their impact sending a concussive shockwave through the flagstones that knocked Wynne off balance.
One of them charged Lennox, its heavy iron tail sweeping in a horizontal scythe. Lennox dove flat, releasing his bowstring from the ground. The crystal-tipped arrow took the beast squarely in the glowing violet slit of its face. The ward-breaker head detonated, blinding the construct in a flash of azure lightning, but the sheer momentum of its charge slammed into Lennox's shoulder, throwing the veteran scout violently against the base of the Great Seal.
Lennox hit the iron door with a sickening crack, his recurve bow splintering in two beneath him. He coughed, a spray of dark blood painting his beard, but his short-sword was already in his hand, blocking the manticore's descending brass jaw with the flat of his blade.
"Lennox!" Wynne turned to sprint toward him, but the fourth golem intercepted her path.
It didn't leap; it reared back, its ribcage plates sliding open to expose a glowing, pressurized core of concentrated necrotic fire.
The air distorted. A high-pitched, deafening whine filled the catacomb.
"Look out!" Lennox screamed, kicking desperately at the blinded construct pinning him to the vault gate.
The blast of violet fire roared from the golem's chest, a localized beam of pure, disintegrating thaumaturgy that superheated the air into a vacuum.
Wynne threw herself sideways, tucking her chin into her chest as she rolled across the shattered granite. The beam grazed her left shoulder, vaporizing her dark wool cloak instantly and scorching the boiled leather down to the bare skin.
A searing, blinding flash of heat tore through her arm, but as the beam missed her vital core by a fraction of an inch, the sigil over her sternum flared like a dying sun.
A violent, crushing blow dropped her to her knees.
It wasn't heat. It was the sickening, phantom sensation of her entire left collarbone and scapula being pulverized between two anvils.
The tether was doing it again.
It intercepted the lethal heat, converted the trauma into blunt internal devastation, and slammed the weight straight into her chest. Wynne choked on a lungful of blood, her vision swimming with darkness, her fingers spasming around the grip of her daggers.
*He's doing it on purpose,* the voice screamed in her mind, poisonous and unyielding. *He’s feeding off the carnage! He built these toys to soften me up, to make sure I crawl to his altar on my knees!*
"I won't... crawl," she hissed through teeth stained crimson.
She forced her legs beneath her, fighting the crushing weight pressing against her lungs. She rose, swaying, her amber eyes burning with a rabid, predatory ferocity that defied mortal anatomy.
The golem’s core was cycling down, venting plumes of black, sulfurous smoke as its plates slid closed to recharge.
Wynne didn't wait for it to recover.
She surged forward, abandoning form, abandoning caution. She leaped onto the construct's snout, driving both daggers simultaneously into the narrow gap between its neck and shoulder plating. She threw all her weight into the leverage, wrenching the blades sideways with a savage scream.
The iron plates sheared away with a deafening screech of tearing rivets. Wynne plunged her bare, gloved hand straight into the exposed mechanical throat, grabbing the cluster of braided silver ley-wires, and ripped them out by the roots.
Arcs of violet electricity surged through her body, locking her muscles in agony, but she held on, tearing the wires free until the construct’s internal core detonated with a muffled *whump*. The massive stone manticore buckled, its legs giving out as it crashed into the floor, pinning its own shattered head beneath its bulk.
Wynne rolled clear, coughing up another glob of thick, metallic fluid, and spun toward the gate.
Lennox was barely holding on. The blinded construct had pinned him against the iron doors, its massive talons gouging grooves into the stone flanking his head. His short-sword was bent at an unnatural angle, trembling under the manticore's crushing weight.
More scraping sounds echoed from the high alcoves.
Six more pairs of violet eyes flickered to life in the darkness above. The reserve sentinels were waking.
"Wynne!" Lennox wheezed, his face purple from the pressure on his throat. "The latch! The ouroboros! It's keyed to your frequency! Put your hand on the serpent!"
Wynne didn't hesitate. She sprinted past the thrashing construct, drawing her stiletto, and drove the flat of the blade into the golem's exposed knee-joint. The beast roared, staggering back half a pace, giving Lennox just enough room to roll out from beneath its belly.
Wynne threw herself at the massive iron gate.
The ouroboros wheel sat at eye level, cold as glacier ice. The moment her glove brushed the serpent’s carved scales, a brilliant, blinding jolt of violet light surged through the metal.
The gate did not just recognize magic; it recognized *her*.
The sigil over Wynne’s heart flared in instantaneous resonance. A piercing, resonant chord—like the striking of a massive silver bell—reverberated through the stone foundations.
With a thunderous groan of counterweights and ancient pulleys, the thirty-foot iron doors split down the center. A vertical seam of blinding, pale-silver luminescence parted the darkness, revealing a wide, arched threshold leading into a solitary inner sanctum.
"It's open!" Lennox shouted, scrambling to his feet. He picked up his broken bow, using the stave to club a descending sentinel across the jaw, though the wood shattered into splinters. "Wynne, get inside!"
"Lennox, with me!" she yelled, reaching out to grab the shoulder of his tunic.
"No!" Lennox shoved her back, straight through the glowing threshold of the vault.
Behind him, three massive stone manticores landed in the antechamber with concussive crashes, their violet eyes locking onto the open breach. Two more were crawling down the pillars, their iron talons gouging deep furrows into the granite.
"The release mechanism on this side is broken!" Lennox shouted, his voice strained as he threw his shoulder against the manual locking lever built into the exterior wall. "If I don't hold the secondary brake, the counterweights will drop the portcullis and lock the whole level down from the outside! These things will swarm you before you clear the hallway!"
