The minister of moving statue affairs, Lokum Tosidokab sat at the table in the corner of his new living quarters that served as his office getting bad thoughts. Life had very rapidly and very unexpectedly taken a completely different direction, and the last few years seemed to have flown by. Lokum couldn’t help but dwell on the days that he had been a contributing member of Dwarven society, instead of another unnecessary appointed lesser noble. Shortly after the creation incident, Lokum was sure that he and his brother would be put to death for disobeying The King’s forbiddance of the lower tunnels. Instead, his brother had an audience with the king almost immediately after making his creation. This on its own would have taken several seasons, was punishment not involved. Distort wasted no time in singing praises about the possibilities. He even gambled and named the creation after The King’s fallen son. At this the fortress guard bristled, and The King’s face seemed to break apart as he leaned forward to place his face in his hands. The guard began moving closer, and The Hammerer strode out of the shadows behind the high backed throne.
“One moment... Father, is it?” said the statue, animating for the first time. The guards had been forced to drag it into the throne room, since all traces of life left it after its first utterance.
At these words addressed to The King, everyone in the throne room froze. Lokum shuddered, and his arm throbbed. The voice sounded like it had to travel a long way to get out of the statues mouth. It was the voice of someone shouting down a long hallway, the echoes amplifying it, tricking the ear. It took an experimental step forward, then a confident one.
“Are you prepared to throw something wonderful away? I was born today and I am confident that I will be able to accomplish anything you set before me.” It stopped for a moment, cocking its head to the side, as if listening to something. “Just because some of your people died, is that any reason to grind progress to a halt? Is this how you honor their memory?”
The hollow voice had a way of captivating those listening to it, it seemed. All the tones, and low pitches seemed to resonate within Lokum’s ruined right arm, causing sweat to bead all over his body and the color to rush from his skin. Realizing that his fate was in the cold metal hands of this… Thing, Lokum still couldn’t repress a deep emotional need to bash it to pieces with a hammer. Glancing around the throne room, it looked as if some of the guards were staring toward the statue with a glazed over blank look in their eyes. The Hammerer appeared to be drooling from under his ceremonial hood.
“What.. Just what can you do?” Asked The King, standing up at his throne.
“Everything. Plus something special.” Replied the creation.
“And what would that be?”
“Given proper materials I can make five more of my kind by tomorrow.”
And with that, The King had the Moving statue, as he called it, go through a series of simple crafts and physical tasks. Clearly impressed he gave the order for the statue to proceed with making more of his kind. Dastot, being the creator was given the position of overseeing the creation, and received the glory for singlehandedly (Hah.) changing the face of Dwarven society.
“ I got the tar beat out of me by the mentally deficient Hammerer as a punishment for disobeying The King’s orders, and woke up a few seasons later in a new room, with a new purple robe to wear.” Lokum said to an empty room. The gravely, slightly bitter words echoing off of the masterful engravings of the forging of the first moving statue.
Lokum figured he was in a bad mood because he just finished a meeting with an Elvish trade representative, and the stink of them was still heavy in his quarters. He understood that keeping trade alliances was for the best, but Lokum had always felt that allowing Elves to trade a pile of sticks for good forged Dwarven metal was a crime all on its own. It was time to go for a walk, at least till the room lost some of the rank forest person smell. Gathering up himself, strapping a tool belt with his old crafting hammer for nostalgia’s sake, and securing his right robe sleeve around his withered arm, Lokum made for the door.
As Lokum opened it and stepped out, he collided with the clerk Medtob Stukonvukar.
“Oh!” exclaimed the clerk, steadying himself by grabbing Lokum’s shoulder. “I was hoping to catch you, Minister.”
“Well you have me, Medtob.” Lokum said, taking step back, pulling out of the Clerk’s surprisingly mighty grasp. “I was about to step out. How can I help you in my “official” capacity.” Said with some of those traces of bitterness.
Oblivious to the magic of sarcasm, Medtob began “Do you recall my visit earlier this week?” Seeing Lokum nod, he continued “Well, I’m afraid the situation has become even more drastic. “
At the clerk’s last visit, he had come to Lokum with the news that approximately a quarter of the stone, ore, gems, and wood gathered in the last few seasons has vanished. At this Lokum asked if it might be thieves. Medtob stated that this couldn’t be possible. He’d discreetly had the guard on the stockrooms doubled, and there had been no reports of any thieves at all. Still the problem went on, and now, appeared to have become worse.
“What do you mean? How?”
“Well” Medtob pushed his glasses up from the tip of his nose “A re-count of stocks showed that we’re missing almost three quarters of our whole stockpile.”
“Wha..” Lokum was at a loss. A theft of this scale, the entire mountain home nearly bereft of crafting materials? Speaking such was madness. “Are you sure? How is this possible?”
“I am sure. All of my counts are accurate.” Said the clerk, shifting his head in the light in a way that left his eyes hidden behind his glasses, and made Lokum’s stomach dip a little. “This is huge. The populace doesn’t know. The King refuses to believe it. Not that there’s many people left after the mass depopulation ten years ago.”
“Yes. We’ve never really recovered. Now, I never got a chance to ask you last time, why are you bringing this to me? This isn’t really anything my position has authority over.”
“To the contrary, Minister. Now this falls directly into your authority. Almost all of the newly forged moving statues are missing. Many reports of them not even reaching the stockpiles.” Medtob stated, matter of factly, shifting his face down to pin Lokum in his gaze.
Lokum had barely given his official duties a glance in eight depressing years. His brother’s creations were self regulating and perfect. The impotence of his duties still fed into a coal of seething resentment that he was constantly trying to deny actually existed.
“Well then.. it is my business, isn’t it? Walk with me while I think this over.” Lokum stepped around, and motioned down the corridor.
This was huge. The only time things turned up missing was when a kobold or goblin got by the front guards and managed to make off with a single item. This kind of theft would require a steady stream of thieves and several months of moving in and out of the mountain home. This didn’t happen. Something occurred to Lokum.
“Have you checked for tunnels into and out of the stockrooms, and moving statue crafting areas? Possibly our dark cousins are the answer here.”
“All ready thought of that, Minister. I’ve had our miners dig all around under those areas, and not a single walled up tunnel has been found.”
“Ah.” Lokum said, and returned to his contemplations.
The path they took was Lokum’s long winding, and daily path. The one he took while he brooded over the loss of his arm, and his people’s slow descent before this sudden rise. It took him past his old room and forge, now occupied by the young and talented weaponsmith Geshud Tekkudamest. Glancing through the open door Lokum saw the formerly cheery red glow, and heard the song of hammer on steel. He tried to tell himself that he came this way out of habit, not just to hear that song, and smell the hot metal. Then they wandered through the crafting hall, stopping to look in the direction of the relatively new chiseled moving statue wing. Motionless crafted guards stood near the hallway in, prepared to gently re-direct any dwarves that try to wander in.
Since the first Moving statues had been crafted, the whole process had been kept in a shroud of secrecy. The King had decided that this hall would be the main supplier of the tireless metal workers. His brother, Dastot was in there somewhere. He rarely left these days, so tied up in the creation, improvement, and refinement of his metal children. On impulse Lokum started for the entrance. He got up to the entrance hall, and almost immediately a metal hand grasped his left shoulder.
“Minister? Why do they deny you entrance?” Medtob said, astonished. “Is this not the seat of your duty?”
“I’m guessing” Lokum started, taking a step backward, dislodging the metal hand with some difficulty “That after I got in a screaming match with my brother eight years ago, they banned me from the area quietly.”
Turning Lokum around, and starting them back toward the path, the clerk asked “What was the fight about, Lokum, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Lokum had been feeling a lot of grief over his own lost livelihood, and more than his share of that bitterness. He felt that these metal monsters had been bought with his skill, and his arm. There had been a lot of yelling, and he had threatened to dismantle the first with his hammer. Screaming and waving the hammer around in his left hand, he had been gently picked up, and taken to the crafting hall. His metal escorts then returned to the statue quarter. Lokum still swore that as he was being borne out, he saw a pair of burning amber eyes glaring down the corridor.
“Nothing, just a brotherly spat. I guess his pets just took it the wrong way. Let’s get going.”
They continued through the crafting hall past a housing district that had become derelict since the Demon incident a decade ago. This was a sad place for Lokum. Friends of his had lived here, now it was a place of memories, and ghosts of the past.
As they turned to head down the corridor, Lokum grunted in surprise as he caught a glint from one of the buildings in the corner of his eye. He stopped, and slowly turned back as an idea formed.
“Medtob. When was the last time these building were used?”
“The last resident vacated this area to another within this hall in the fall season, seven years ago. His possessions briefly traveled through my stockpile, and were logged, then returned.”
“I just saw something from that building” Lokum said, gesturing with his hand. “What if the stolen goods were just being stored in the wrong place? Or are being stashed there?”
The clerk’s mouth hung open for a second and then he said “Possible, I hadn’t thought of that. Let’s go have a look.”
The pair started forward confidently, disturbing the rock dust that had settled in the years since habitation. There was a whole empty neighborhood here; the items could be in any number of these houses.
“I’ll take this side, and you get the other one, Medtob.” Lokum said, and started toward the closest house. Thinking for a second, Lokum grabbed the hammer from his belt. If the Thieves were about, he didn’t intend to be caught unarmed. Fighting a bitter smile, he mentally corrected that last line to “Without a weapon”.
Edging forward Lokum opened the stone door. It slid back without complaint, revealing some of the missing goods!
“Medtob! I found some of the missing Moving statues!” Lokum called, relieved at finding something here, and working within his official capacity for the first time in years.
“Aye! I think I found the other half over here. They are packed shoulder to shoulder, and, hold on a second” Medtob said, before entering the building. After a moment he poked his head out from the second story window “My count has them at fifty six inside this building. Yours?”
Lokum started forward, and found his way blocked by the inert statues. “There are some things you can’t do with one arm, clerk.” He said, backing out into the street.
Medtob quickly crossed the lane, and Lokum’s eyes narrowed, noticing how he moved with a catlike grace, and the speed of a tiger. Lousy bookkeeping body builders. At the door, the clerk scrambled on top of the metal men, and easily walked to the stairs inside. Lokum took a step back and stared up at the window. After a few minutes, much longer than it took the clerk the first time, he poked his head out with a frown on his face.
“This can’t be correct,” said the clerk, pulling himself out the window, landing lightly on his feet “My books must be wrong. There are thirty more Moving statues here that my books say there should be.” said the clerk, tapping the side of his head. “This doesn’t make sense. My books are never wrong.”
“Maybe from the shipping manifests? Possibly the thieves brought them in from another settlement? I have no idea, Medtob. Possibly they intend to steal our secrets and have been in our workshop while my brother sleeps? Let us check the next house.” Lokum started forward with a leaden ball where his stomach should have been.
The next house opened revealed more moving statues packed shoulder to shoulder. And the next, and the next. They circled the block back to the first house Medtob had opened.
“The implications of this are.. Terrifying, Minister.”
As he was about to reply, Lokum stopped, and heard the song of steel, faintly, coming from behind the building.
Holding his finger over his lips, Lokum crept around the building, and saw a corridor cut out of the wall. He turned back and said; “This must lead into the Moving statue crafting area. We need to look inside.”
The clerk nodded, and they crept forward. Lokum tried to keep the grimace from his face as his boots lightly scuffed the ground, and the only sound coming from Medtob was a whisper where his slippered feet decided to grace the stone. At about thirty paces in, they turned to the first crafting area. Lokum withdrew his breath, held it, turned about, and made it back down the corridor with as much stealth and haste as possible. He exhaled sharply, and tried to stop the lights swimming before his eyes. In his mind he saw the bloody streaks, and puddles of bodily fluids that decorated the chamber in the deep halls. Medtob crouched beside him, face grim as he pulled out a clipboard, scratched out a zero and put a three next to the “corpses” entry on his list.
The young craftsmen had been murdered.
From the looks of it, they had been beaten, and torn apart, he wasn’t sure, but he may have seen charring on some of the dismembered parts. Lokum stared down at the ground, and gasped. The ground here, was covered with hundreds of Moving statue tracks, all headed out to the buildings.
Things clicked in Lokum’s head, clearing fog from the past. “We. We need to get to The King and raise the call to the army.”
The clerk nodded and they started back toward the crafting area, hugging the wall, trying to keep as far away from the packed houses as possible. They were almost past the wall when they heard a clattering footstep from off to the side.
Standing toward them was a base model moving statue, eyes shifting from yellow, to orange and deepening to red. Its arms held forward, fingers clattering, soldering arm poised over the shoulder, ready to strike. It was within striking distance now, and Lokum noticed Medtob shrink back against the wall from the creature, with a sense of disbelief. Lokum steadied himself, and swung his old crafting hammer at moving statue’s chest with all the might he could muster. Lokum would like to say that he saw a look of surprise on the statue’s face as it was propelled backward into the wall of the building. Retrieving his jaw, he motioned to the corridor back to the crafting area, and started forward just as the explosion happened.
Medtob was propelled forward onto Lokum as the paradoxically superheated coolant erupted from the fallen moving statue. The building’s wall was ripped open, revealing the row upon row of inert statues within.
As one, their heads snapped up, and the yellow eyes blinked on. Then they turned orange, and darkened to red.
Medtob made his feet, helped Lokum up, and turned to run, as the structurally weakened house collapsed on the statues that were just starting to move forward. Some managed to spring from the falling rubble. The two dwarves made the corridor at a full on run, as several of the statues detonated reducing the rubble to molten stone that spattered the wall just behind them.
The two of them raced down the hallway, through the crowded crafting area.
“Run! Call the guards! Enemies in the fort!” Medtob shouted at the top of his deep voice, “The Moving statues have turned on us!”
Lokum just concentrated on running, and breathing. Running was the important part. The demons were behind him.
“Ware! You must believe me, they have turned on us! Hundreds of them are stored in the abandoned regions!” The clerk shouted as he ran, not breathing hard at all. Lokum silently hated him.
The dwarves just stopped to look at him, some of them had started over to the hallway they emerged from to investigate the explosion, and were barreled by. Some of them began to mutter about madness when the first screams started. The pursuing statues waded into the Dwarven crush, maiming and clubbing with abandon. One sprang forward to Medtob, and swung his fist at the clerk like it was a club. The clerk’s hand blurred forward, grabbed the arm at the shoulder joint and snapped it off. The surprised look on the Clerk’s face would almost be comical, if he wasn’t face to face with a killer machine that was going to explode in the middle of a crowd of his kinsmen.
“Throw the statue, Medtob!” Lokum commanded, foreseeing a simple throw it command causing a moment of hilarity, and the arm flying off above the crowd as he boiled to death.
The statue’s eyes flickered as the clerks huge hands enveloped it. He pivoted, swung and launched it back down the corridor towards the other Statues. It ricocheted off the wall bouncing back to the entrance to the abandoned housing area. The following explosion caved in the intersection, sending falling stone down on top of the visible moving statues, and releasing several half dead dwarves to Armok.
A small cheer went up from the crowd and several Dwarven women caressed the clerk’s muscles.
“No time for that! To the King, Medtob!” Lokum loped off toward the royal quarter as the clerk bent down, retrieved the arm, and set off after the minister.
“The rest of you! Flee! Take what you can and go! Get the guards to mount a defense, just! Get! Out!”
They made the royal quarter several uneventful minutes later, and entered the throne room. Lokum bent over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath while hearing no such wheezing from the clerk, silently hating him again. After slowing from their run, they were before the throne. At this moment, Lokum wondered why they hadn’t been challenged by the guards at the door.
Lokum looked up.
Seated on the throne was a moving statue. Actually The Orange Eyed moving statue.
“We should have named you.” Lokum muttered.
“We named ourselves. Your moving statue title is far too idiotic. We are The Mechanicals now.” The tone reminded Lokum of rusted iron being struck by a flawed hammer. His withered arm flared burning cold pain into his shoulder straight to his heart. Lokum sunk to one knee. Glancing up he saw Medtob transfixed, staring at The new Mechanical King.
“Snap out of it, clerk!” Lokum hissed, thrusting the head of his hammer into his companion’s calf. Medtob visibly shook off the compulsion from the Mechanical’s voice.
“You just walked in here, didn’t you, enthralling the gua…” Lokum’s throat closed up as he saw what was arrayed around the throne.
Heads. There were Dwarven heads around the Mechanical King’s feet. The royal guard’s the Hammerer, the old King and… Dastot. A choked sob tore out of Lokum’s throat as he raised himself to his feet.
“Destroy them.” Said the Mechanical King, gesturing at them with a careless wave of its hand.
Two Mechanicals came from behind the throne, and two from the corridor behind. Lokum took a step toward the throne, his hammer held loosely in his hand. Seeing this, The clerk turned to the two coming from behind.
Lokum took another step forward, toward the throne.
Medtob, possibly spurred by his earlier cowardice, or possibly by the ease with which he’d defeated the Mechanical in the crafting hall, charged the pair and bowled one of them over, stunning it. The clerk fell into a martial trance, dodging a sword thrust from the other Mechanical. Medtob repeatedly pounded the severed arm into the Sword-bearing Mechanical. Its head eventually caved in around the arm, trapping it. The clerk let go, picked up the sword, and ducked as a spear thrust jabbed where his head was moments before. The effects of the martial trance fading, the clerk knew he had one chance. He lunged, sword first, at the Mechanical’s torso. The sword point sunk in, and the held spear sunk deeply into Medtob’s chest. The Mechanical pulled the spear back for another thrust, and the clerk went with it, driving the sword further into the metallic torso, and dragging upward. Oil and coolant sprayed everywhere.
Medtob, impaled on the spear said “Well, Minister, I got my two-“ Then the Mechanicals exploded.
Lokum stumbled a bit, and took another step forward toward the throne. One of the Mechanical guards rushed him with a sword held high. The maimed Metalsmith’s eyes never left his little brother’s severed head as he snapped his arm to the right, crossing his cheat, and lashed out in a cross, smashing into the Mechanical guard’s shoulder, crushing him to the ground and sending him skidding away to the corner of the room. Enraged, Lokum slammed his hammer into the ground sending up chips and defacing a masterpiece engraving (In the distance let’s pretend we hear a scream.) frothing at his mouth eyes aglow with rage he Jumps at the other guard, sending the hammer whistling upward into the fiend’s groin. It chops down clipping Lokum’s arm off as it flies backward impacting the wall of the throne room, exploding instantly.
“I suppose you wish to combat me now, if so you-“ The Mechanical King began, only to have a thrown hammer leave a dent in the side of his head.
The Mechanical king jumped over the throne and fled into the shadows.
Lokum toppled the throne in his fit of rage, and then sat on the dais next to his brother. He picked Das’s head up, and cradled it with his left arm. After a moment, he looked over at the stump of his severed right arm, and began to laugh hysterically. He was still laughing when all the shadows around the room became home to dozens of sets of glowing eyes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Zon Urshorast was going to die.
Rimtar Medtogrodim was going to have his beard, and the empty gourd that it was attached to. Today was the day of the High priests grand ritual to bind the heavens, and now Zon would have to tell him that all the Bot slaves had escaped, strangling several guards in the process.
Standing at the end of a carefully dug escape tunnel, Zon couldn’t help but wonder how long they had been planning this. Or even how long they had been gone.
On a snap decision he decided to take the tunnel himself. A Dark Dwarf on his own in the wild had a slightly better chance of escaping than one facing an enraged High Priest. He took his first step toward freedom, and instead, felt an iron gripped talon on his shoulder.
“Zon Urshorast, before I kill you and feed your entrails to my troll, tell me when was the last time you actually saw one of my slaves."
A chilling howl was heard out over the dark mountain range. The Bots didn’t care, they had struck out toward freedom.
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Topic: Bots mod 1.1 We now promise to crush you beneath lore! (Read 10540 times)