Forging Hephaestus

by Drew Hayes

  All of it added up to one inescapable and very depressing conclusion: Tori would have to be the distraction if they were actually going to drop this damn thing. It sucked like hell, but she still tilted her arms slightly left, circling around to land behind the metal bastard. If she was going to do this, she was going to make damn sure it would be effective. As long as she could make it turn its back on Beverly, the dragon apprentice could hopefully do the rest.

  It occurred to Tori as she landed carefully on the mesa’s flat surface that she was leaving an awful lot of her rescue mission to maybes and ifs. By that point, though, she was already committed, so she pushed the thought from her mind as a massive fireball built in her hand.

  “Beverly! When this thing comes at me, don’t you dare fucking hesitate. If I get killed from this, I am going to haunt the living shit out of you!”

  A slight roar over the whir of robotic limbs was the only response, which Tori decided to take as a signal of understanding. It wasn’t like she had a lot of choices left, anyway. Taking careful aim at the rear of the metal orb on legs, Tori let loose a torrent of flame, blasting its body with a column of fire as thick as a baseball bat.

  To her surprise, the orb didn’t rotate around to face her. Instead, panels near the areas she was pelting with heat opened up, glassy camera lenses fixed on Tori as she poured as much energy as she could into the attack. They watched her as she dug in, but from the sounds of scuffle coming from the robot’s other side, it seemed she wasn’t making enough of an impression to split its focus.

  “All right, you big testicle. Come get some.” Tori concentrated the beam in front of her, tightening it just as the she had the ones that lifted her off the ground. In principle, it was the same technique she used for small-scale soldering and welding, though she’d never tried it on something this big before. As the beam shrank down, Tori could see sparks beginning to fly from the spot where her beam connected to the robot’s body. It wasn’t much, but it gave her the encouragement to keep going, narrowing her blast further until a cascade of sparks shot out of the robot’s weakening body.

  Tori knew she’d succeeded when she saw the sonic cannon flip around and point at her. She dimly made out the sound of charging footsteps before her entire body seemed to explode in a wave of pain. Her focus was shot and the beam dissipated as Tori struggled to hold her body together. The endless, pulsing waves ripped through her, trying to scatter the sentient flames that made up her consciousness. Tori couldn’t see or hear or think; all she could do was hold herself together by sheer force of will.

  Then it was over, agony replaced by a loud crunching sound barely audible through the ringing in her ears. Tori slowly realized that she did indeed have ears again, and that her hands were pressed over them. Pulling her palms away from her head, Tori could see streaks of blood smeared from her thumbs to her wrists. That sonic cannon had seriously not been screwing around.

  Moving carefully, Tori pulled herself up from the ground where it turned out she’d been kneeling, her head hammering in pain with every inch she progressed. As Tori reached a fully standing position, the world around her spun violently and she lost her footing. She fell backward, waiting to feel the sting of impact against the mesa’s hard surface, only to instead be greeted by wind whistling through her ears.

  Right... she’d stood on the edge of the mesa. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, allowing her to slip over the lip if she needed to dodge. Plummeting through the air, however, Tori recognized that it might have been a strategic mistake. She closed her eyes and tried to shift back to her fire-form, but for the first time she could ever recall, her body rebelled.

  Tori glanced upward, back to where she had fallen from, and was shocked to see another form closing in fast on her. She let out a small yelp as it snagged her in a pair of powerful claws. Then, at long last, the part she’d been expecting arrived.

  Her fall, as all falls do, came to a sudden and abrupt stop.

  Chapter 21

  Tori rejoined the world of the living slowly, with pain being the first and most persistent thing to greet her. The sun stung her eyes, the ringing in her ears had yet to fade, and her arms felt like they’d nearly been pulled out of their sockets. She wasn’t dead, though, and considering how things had been going when she blacked out, that was an unexpected improvement. Moving slowly lest another bout of unconsciousness take hold, Tori raised herself to a sitting position and took stock of the world around her.

  She was lying on top of the mesa where they’d done battle, a fact made obvious by the sparking and smoking husk of a robot resting twenty feet away. From the position of the sun in the sky, she guessed she’d only been out for a couple of minutes, though it certainly felt like a lot longer. To her surprise, Beverly was still there, though no longer wearing the form of the hulking green dragon nor of the creature that had snatched her out of the sky. Tori’s fellow apprentice had shed her mask and seemed to be taking in the sunshine. Without the obstruction, it was clear that Beverly was quite beautiful. Well-crafted cheekbones, skin like light cocoa powder, and piercing green eyes all made her quite captivating, and that was without even taking the dragon-powers into account.

  “I didn’t know you had a form that could fly,” Tori said, snapping Beverly out of her restful daze. She scrambled up quickly, watching Tori carefully to see if a fireball was impending.

  “Why did you help me?” Beverly took two steps back, and her eyes seemed to glow slightly. Their natural green tint darkened and the tips of her nails seemed to elongate by several inches.

  “Whoa, shit, chill.” Tori raised both of her hands upward in a sign of surrender. “I didn’t really have some sort of grand plan going in. It just looked like you needed help, and I hadn’t gotten the chance to see what one of the big bots could do… which, by the way, please tell me that bastard was at least a gold-cored.”

  Beverly shook her head slowly, reaching into her pocket to produce a gleaming metal ball. “Silver, if you can believe it. These things are on a pretty steep difficulty curve.”

  “Shitballs. I’m not sure I even want to see a gold if that thing was a silver.” Tori had been expecting the higher value models to be tougher, but that thing had nearly taken down the both of them. Then again, it wasn’t as though they’d used a coordinated attack or strategy. With a little planning, she and Beverly could probably bring one down without too much risk. Going at it solo, however, would be pretty much impossible without her tech.

  Fluctuations in the ringing sound filling her ears alerted Tori to the fact that Beverly was talking, though the words were impossible to make out since she’d lowered her voice.

  “Huh? Sorry, damn bot did a number on my ears. You have to speak up.”

  “I said THANK YOU!” Beverly yelled, a touch of red tingeing her cheeks as she shouted to repeat herself. “For helping me take that thing down. I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with it.”

  “Seeing as you saved me from doing a swan dive into the ground, I think we can call it even.” Tori lowered her arms slowly, making sure Beverly wouldn’t think she was about to attack. “Look, I’m in a fair amount of pain here, so I’d like to switch to my fire-form to heal. I don’t want you thinking I’m about to do something stupid, though, thus I am formally giving you warning that I’m about to turn into living flame.”

  Beverly hesitated for a moment and then nodded. Tori focused on shifting to her other form; waves of relief filled her as her body complied. Part of her was reassured to know the sonic cannon hadn’t done any serious damage or blocked her power, but the vast majority of her brain was overwhelmed by happiness as the pain shrank to a dull ache. It would take an hour or so for her body to completely regenerate away her injuries; in the meantime, she’d feel a lot less pain without actual nerve receptors to send the signals.

  “Hot damn, that is a neat trick,” Beverly said. “And yes, pun very much intended.”

  “Coming from a gal I watched go from ripping up a robot
to soaring through the skies, that’s quite a compliment.” Tori scanned the area around them as they talked; it wouldn’t do to have their conversation broken up by more attackers.

  “Yeah, actually didn’t know I could do that.” Beverly slowed lowered herself to the ground, picking up her mask and slipping it over her face. “My powers didn’t come with much in the way of instructions. Just found an old amulet in our attic and then poof, suddenly I’m gigantic and tearing apart the house.”

  “Coolest thing I ever found in my family’s attic as a kid was an old mannequin head,” Tori said. “My parents told me it belonged to my grandpa, but now that I think about it, he worked at a meat processing plant, why the hell would he own... actually, I don’t think I want to see where that train of thought ultimately leads.”

  “I’d say that’s a smart call,” Beverly said. “My great-grandmother used to collect weird artifacts and charms. Most of it was supposed to be junk, but I guess she found a few pieces of the genuine article.”

  “Or it used to be junk and turned into a genuine article,” Tori pointed out. “No one really knows where all these magic talismans keep popping up from. We’re pretty sure magic used to not be real, though.”

  “Well, it damn sure is now. I’m the living, sometimes fire-breathing proof of that. Just wish I at least knew what all I could do. Flying would have made getting up here the first time a hell of a lot easier.”

  Tori could relate, now that she’d tasted a bit of air mobility herself. “So you flew just because you were trying to save me?”

  “Thuggernaut thinks my intuition is to access the power reactively. First time, I was scared and in pain, so I turned into a big green dragon that’s made to give and take punishment. Second time, they were making me fight a bunch of targets that kept pinning me and then fading back, which pissed me off. I got so mad I ended up turning into my red dragon-form and blasting them with fire breath. This time, I didn’t want your death on my conscience, and lo and behold, I sprout some wings for arms. Pretty sure that form had white scales, though I don’t always get the cleanest view.”

  “Definitely white,” Tori confirmed. “I can remember it perfectly. Honestly, I doubt I’ll ever get the image of you barreling down toward me out of my head. Which, um, thanks, by the way.”

  Beverly waved her hand through the air. “Like you said, we’re even. And if I happen upon you getting owned by one of those things, count on me to jump in. Competition or not, I can do at least that much.”

  “What if neither of us had to get owned by another robot?” Tori had been biding her time, hoping to build slowly to the topic, but from the way Beverly had started to rise, it was clear she had to take her shot or lose the opportunity. “What if we worked together, this time from the start? With a little planning, the two of us could tear those things apart.”

  “Look, I was in the fight too. I know it would be easier if we teamed up. But I’m still learning to control these powers of mine. What if next time I’m the one who accidently injures you?”

  “Claws, fire, and wings aren’t going to hurt me, at least not easily,” Tori said. “Unless you’re keeping a hidden form in your arsenal—which is not me prying, if you are—then you don’t have to worry about doing anything worse than the robots can do. I’m a lot tougher than I look.” To prove her point, Tori flowed upward from the ground, expanding to add a bit of presence to her fiery visage.

  “And you look pretty tough as is.” Beverly sighed and shook her head. “Even aside from putting you in danger, doesn’t working together defeat the entire point of this exercise? We’re clearly pitted against each other. Teaming up probably breaks the rules.”

  “Doctor Mechaniacal never said anything about us not being allowed to help each other or splitting our winnings. Sure, this contest implies that we’re supposed to be on our own, but short of anything being stated outright, it’s a gray area at best. Besides all of that, though, you’re overlooking the most important reason why it doesn’t matter.”

  Beverly pursed her lips as she stared at this strange fire-woman and the increasingly convincing madness she was spitting out. “And what exactly is that?”

  “We’re training to be villains. Half the fun of that is ignoring the rules when it suits us. And right now, I’d say it suits both our interests quite well.”

  * * *

  Ivan was unsurprised by the festive atmosphere in Xelas’s room when he arrived; that everyone seemed relatively sober and no argument had broken out was by far the bigger miracle. He’d have much preferred to check things out with Wade; however, Doctor Mechaniacal’s full attention was rightfully on the trial he was coordinating. Since Ivan had refused anything more than a bare-bones quarters where he could rest if needed, that made sitting in with Xelas and company his next best option to assuage his worries about his apprentice. Not that he would admit that’s what he was doing, of course. Ivan was merely looking in to evaluate her performance, as any good teacher would.

  “And here he is, coming in halfway through the second day,” Johnny cried as soon as Ivan stepped into view. “Who had Saturday afternoon?”

  Gork raised one of her massive, thick-fingered hands. “Had a hunch.”

  “All right, everyone, that’s a hundred apiece, since Gork won the pool.” Johnny pulled a crisp bill from his pocket. Thuggernaut took his from a small pouch at his side and Xelas seemed to have one dispense from her wrist. All three slapped the money down in front of Gork, who quietly collected her winnings and squirreled them away.

  “If everyone is quite finished having their fun, perhaps one of you could catch me up on how things are going.” Ivan glanced down at the modest watch adorning his wrist, a timepiece that cost less than Gork had won only moments before. “I do have a daughter to pick up in an hour.”

  “Calm down, spoilsport,” Xelas chided. She motioned for Ivan to come over and have a seat. As he did, she pointed to the many screens displayed before them. “Tori and Thuggernaut’s girl, Beverly, just decided to work together after tag-teaming a silver. Right now, they’re on their way to Beverly’s hideout to grab the cache she found. After that they’ll probably head back to the cave Tori dug.”

  Ivan sat down in one of the many plush leather chairs Xelas stocked her room with—the mechanical woman was famously fond of entertaining guests—and took note of the two apprentices trekking through the hot desert sands. On the other monitors, he could see a thin young man trapping a silver-cored robot with a series of complicated symbols etched in the ground. The fourth of the group was nowhere to be found, though there was a massive consolidation of insects on top of one of the mesas, a churning miasma of fluttering wings.

  “Lance—that’s Arachno Bro’s guy—has been pumping out bugs like nobody’s business, tracking and overwhelming coppers since yesterday. Warren is the one using magic—he’s Balaam’s, as I’m sure you know—and so far, he’s managed to bring down two silvers solo. Looks like he’s working on his third from what I can see.” Xelas effortlessly charted all the feeds, simultaneously watching the drama unfold from every angle as only one with a robotic brain could.

  “It’s a sound, if slow, strategy,” Ivan said. “Though I highly doubt he’d be able to take down a gold-cored robot with such tactics. Nonetheless, from what you’ve described, it seems as though Balaam’s apprentice has a commanding lead.”

  “For the moment.” Thuggernaut leaned forward from his own chair and scooped a pear cider from the open cooler resting in the middle of the floor. “There’s still a day and a half left though, and it looks like our students are the only ones who’ve figured out the importance of teamwork.”

  “True; with no tech and only her powers to work with, Tori might be able to bring down a silver-cored on her own. Paired with someone who has power like Beverly, I can’t imagine they’ll have any trouble handling a challenge of that level,” Ivan agreed. “Even splitting the winnings, if they make a conscious effort to go on the offensive, they’ll easily pass the
others in no time.”

  “Let’s hope they manage to get a little practice in before sunset.” Johnny nodded to the small clock at the top of the massive screen set before them. On it, a clock with golden numbers was slowly counting down toward zero. There were several hours remaining, yet second by second the time was falling away, as all time was wont to do.

  Every person in the room already knew what would happen when time ran out, just as they had when the clock was silver in color and counting down on the prior day. The clock signaled the time remaining until the difficulty was going to be kicked up, when the next level of enemy would be released into the field. Gold-cored robots were hours from entry, and when the time for their entrance came, it would mark a real turning point in the training exercise.

  Gold-cored robots were powerful enough that they could, and had, killed full members of the guild before. If an apprentice went against one unprepared, the class might just get a little bit smaller.

  * * *

  “This is it.” Beverly gestured to the cave, its entrance half-hidden in a mesa’s shadow.

  Tori stepped inside, pausing to marvel at the impressive method used to open up the area. Unlike her, Beverly had torn through rock rather than moving sand as the scattered remains of rubble and deep claw marks through the cave attested. It culminated in a far more intimidating, but also vastly smaller, space. Taking up a fair chunk of the limited room inside was a metal case identical to the one Tori had found in her own cavern, tucked carefully away lest anyone wandering by should notice its existence.

  “Looks like we had the same idea,” Tori remarked as she surveyed the surroundings. “I dug out a big hole in a place like this not too far away. Mine was a bit larger, though, so if you wanted to sleep in shifts tonight, we could stay there.”