Factory Core

by Jared Mandani

  “I will wait out here,” he said, “to escort the structure back to the Overlord once you get it moving. All of you, go inside and help the others, as they have requested.”

  “As you command, my lord,” said the demon warrior, and he and the rest of the demons charged inside the structure, whooping wild battle cries with excitement and triumph.

  Once they were all inside, the doors continued to yawn wide open, and Grakk’n had an eerie sense that he was being watched … and that the structure, somehow, was waiting for him to enter as well. He stood his ground though, and refused to budge.

  After a while, the doors slammed shut. And then, coming from inside the building, he heard the sound of screaming.

  CHAPTER 10

  Ser Greenfield awoke to the noise of banging on his door. He groaned as he opened his eyes; his back ached and he had not slept well. The dwarves had tried to accommodate him by putting a number of their beds together to give him a large enough sleeping area, but he had still not managed to sleep comfortably. Now, the novelty of feeling like a giant had worn off.

  “Ser Greenfield!” yelled a voice from the other side of the door. “Rise, hurry!”

  “Okay, okay,” he grumbled as he rolled out of the dwarven beds and scrambled to get dressed. “What is it that’s so urgent that you’re dragging me out of bed at this ungodly hour anyway?”

  “The Factory Core has returned to the city! Come and see it!”

  Now Ser Greenfield’s attitude did an about turn; he forgot all about his weariness and sore spine as excitement took over. After hearing about the Factory Core the previous day, he had become very eager to check it with his own eyes before returning to the world of Men. And now he was about to get a chance to do just that.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said, his tone urgent as he pulled on his black leather jerkin and brown leather boots. “I’ll be out soon.”

  Once he was clothed, he hurried out of the room, where he found two dwarven guards waiting for him.

  “Archwright Bomfrey sent us, Ser,” one of them said. “He said he wants you to see the Factory Core. So come with us.”

  “Take me to it,” said Ser Greenfield eagerly.

  The guards led Ser Greenfield out of the palace, through the city, and into the vault deep below the Great Workshop where the Factory Core had been built. When Ser Greenfield finally laid his eyes on the weapon he had heard so much about, he was a little underwhelmed. Archwright Bomfrey and a number of other prominent engineers and inventors were gathered around the structure, talking in excited voices, taking notes, and scribbling eagerly in thick tomes.

  Bomfrey saw Ser Greenfield approaching the Factory Core and he walked over to greet the human, wearing a broad smile on his bearded face.

  “Ser Greenfield, welcome,” he said, beaming. “This is it! This is the Factory Core, and its first solo combat mission was a success. A resounding success! We are now sure that the Factory Core, fighting alongside our warriors, will be able to hold off the Demon Horde long enough for us to successfully evacuate our entire population.”

  “That is good news, Archwright,” said Ser Greenfield, but he wasn’t looking at Bomfrey while he spoke; instead, his keen eyes were taking in every minor detail of the Factory Core. He still failed to see how this unassuming looking building could represent such a potent weapon … but he knew that appearances could be deceiving, and if this structure—this sentient structure, as bizarre a concept as that was—had held its own against a contingent of demon warriors, then it certainly had to be a potent weapon indeed.

  A new notion was forming in his mind. One that he did not want the dwarves to get any wind of, one that he knew he would need to keep utterly secret.

  He wanted this weapon for Merador.

  With such a mighty weapon in Merador’s hands, the city-state could begin to conquer and expand. Long had the Men of Merador harbored desires of an empire, of subduing rival cities of Men. And if this strange dwarven weapon was everything the dwarves said it was, it could prove to be a vital tool in laying the foundations for such an enterprise.

  Of course, he dared not breathe a word about it to the dwarves; even the slightest whiff of suspicion could destroy this weak fledgling alliance between them. He knew that it would be best to feign disinterest and skepticism about the Factory Core, and pretend that he thought it was a mere trifle, a curiosity. Nothing more.

  “Wonderful news indeed, Ser!” said Bomfrey, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Would you like to witness what this incredible weapon is capable of?”

  Ser Greenfield shrugged. “I suppose it would be interesting to have a look,” he said casually, carefully masking the keenness that now burned in his core.

  “Come, come, let us show you,” said Bomfrey, leading Ser Greenfield over to the entrance.

  Just outside the front doors of the Factory Core, a large number of dead demons were piled up. Many of the corpses were missing heads and limbs, and it was apparent to Ser Greenfield—a warrior himself, and a veteran of many battles—that anything that was able to inflict such damage to demons was indeed a weapon worth capturing.

  “Looks like the demon warriors came off second best against your Factory Core, Archwright,” he remarked casually, staring at the pile of mutilated demon corpses that had been dragged out of the structure.

  “The monsters didn’t stand a chance,” boasted Bomfrey as he led Ser Greenfield into the structure. “Not a chance in hell. Not against a weapon like this.”

  “How did it kill them?” asked Ser Greenfield as Bomfrey began to lead him through the halls. Ser Greenfield was quite amazed at how maze-like the interior of the structure was, and how much larger and more complex it seemed from the inside, compared to how it looked on the outside.

  “Oh, through a variety of means,” answered Bomfrey. “There are a great number of different weapons built into the Factory Core. Yet, its true strength lies not in the array of weapons built into it, but the fact that it can continually upgrade them. It can develop and construct brand new weaponry based on its observations of the enemy it is fighting, and its analysis of what tactics work best against them.”

  Ser Greenfield was now beginning to understand the true scope of the Factory Core’s effectiveness, and the full extent of its prowess. A sense of true awe was coming over him, but he did his best to disguise this, of course.

  “That is quite impressive, I suppose,” he remarked, shrugging with a pout. “But me, I am a traditionalist. I’d prefer a squadron of well-trained, heavily-armed knights on warhorses. We Men have no need for such fancy, overly-complicated machinery; a good knight with a stout heart and a strong sword arm remains one of the best weapons of the Above World.”

  “Forgive me, Ser,” said Archwright Bomfrey somewhat snidely, “but your knights have not faced a screaming mass of demons in underground tunnels. Our dwarven warriors are just as brave and skilled at fighting as your human knights, but for all their courage and martial skills, the demons have been crushing them in battle … until now. This weapon,” he continued, spreading his arms wide as if to take in the Factory Core in its entirety, “has single-handedly changed the course of this war.”

  “Are you perhaps not getting ahead of yourself, Archwright?” asked Ser Greenfield. “I mean no offense, but this thing has only fought in one skirmish on its own so far. That is by no means conclusive proof that it will single-handedly win this war.”

  Archwright Bomfrey smiled strangely. “And I mean no offense to you, Ser, but I do not think you have even begun to understand the true potential of this magnificent weapon. We have not even scratched the surface of what it can do. But come, follow me. Let me show you what controls this whole structure.”

  Bomfrey led Ser Greenfield through the labyrinthine interior of the Factory Core. The knight deliberately lagged behind Bomfrey, forcing the dwarf to slow down. Ser Greenfield was pretending to simply be observing, but he was actually committing to me
mory the interior, and trying to create a map in his mind about how to get from the entrance to the heart of the Core.

  “You really don’t need to examine every little detail, Ser,” said Bomfrey, with annoyance starting to color his voice.

  “Oh, I’m just interested, Archwright. You haven’t shown me any of this thing’s weapons yet, so I’m just trying to find them. Are they hidden in the walls? Activated by secret levers, or concealed trapdoors in the floor?”

  Archwright Bomfrey chuckled humorlessly; he wasn’t about to give away the secrets of the Factory Core so easily. He didn’t really suspect that Ser Greenfield had any kind of ulterior motive, but he nonetheless was not going to simply reveal all of the details he and his fellow inventors had worked so hard on, for so many decades.

  “Don’t worry about the weapons, Ser Greenfield,” said Bomfrey, “there are enough of them in here. And yes, they are hidden in the walls, floors and ceilings … everywhere inside the Factory Core, in fact. But it would simply take too much time to show you all of them. And time, I’m afraid, is a commodity we don’t have much of at the moment.”

  A flash of anger flickered across Ser Greenfield’s eyes, but he hid it quickly so as not to arouse suspicion. “Very well, Archwright,” he said. “I was just making conversation, that’s all. Lead on.”

  Archwright Bomfrey took Ser Greenfield to the heart of the Factory Core, where the most powerful soul gems had been fused with the structure itself. Bomfrey explained the basics of how the core worked, and how the essences of the minds and souls of the ancient heroes trapped in the gems had now become the brain of the Core. After this, Bomfrey led Ser Greenfield to the main manufacturing room, where the Core built its armament and other items it needed to fight the demons. This was also where it modified and upgraded certain parts of itself, when such alterations ought to be done.

  “So, all of this is run on steam power, yes?” asked Ser Greenfield as he examined the complex machines and engines.

  “It is, yes,” answered Bomfrey, “like most of our dwarven machinery.”

  “And what creates the steam? Burning coal?”

  Archwright Bomfrey nodded. “Coal, yes … as is used for most of our industries.”

  “What happens when this thing runs out of coal, then?” asked Ser Greenfield. “Surely it will then become … well, useless, yes? If there is no fuel to power this whole thing, then it’s nothing more than an abandoned, inert building.”

  A cloud came across Bomfrey’s face; it appeared that Ser Greenfield had found a chink in the Factory Core’s armor, so to speak. Ser Greenfield noticed this look of dismay, and a spark of triumph gleamed briefly in his eyes. So, this weapon was not quite as invincible and infallible as these dwarves were making it out to be, it seemed.

  “That is true, yes,” admitted Bomfrey. “If the Factory Core runs out of fuel, it will … die, I suppose you could say. No, no, that’s the wrong choice of words. It will become dormant. It cannot ‘die’ unless the soul gems are removed from their sockets, and the magic of the runes that bind the heroes’ souls to the Core is reversed.”

  “And what if the structure itself was destroyed by some powerful weaponry?”

  Bomfrey laughed dismissively and scoffed. “Do you have any idea how strong and solid this construction is? It would take a titanic weapon to demolish it.”

  Ser Greenfield smiled strangely. “Humor me, Archwright. If such a weapon existed, a weapon strong enough to demolish these walls, would it ‘kill’ the Factory Core?”

  “I … I suppose it might,” muttered Bomfrey. “But let us not waste time talking about hypothetical things like this. As I said, no weapon strong enough to do such a thing exists either in the Above World or the Below World.”

  “None that you know of, at least,” said Ser Greenfield with a dry grin, getting in one last shot before a change of topic was forced. While he had steered the conversation in this direction with the hope of learning about the weapon’s potential weaknesses—if one wanted to use a weapon effectively, it was good to know about its flaws as well as its strengths—he had also enjoyed needling the arrogant Archwright, and cutting him down to size a little.

  “No,” muttered Bomfrey with a scowl. “But anyway, to get back to an earlier question, the one about coal, herein lies the genius of my invention.” The scowl vanished from his face, morphing instead into a smug smile. “You see, as the Factory Core is a living entity, with its own mind … it is also a learning entity. The importance of the fact that it is able to analyze and learn cannot be overstated.”

  “And why is this of such importance?” asked Ser Greenfield.

  “Because, Ser, it is always actively learning, looking for solutions not only to present problems, but future ones too. If it can find an alternative source of fuel, one which is more abundant and burns better than coal, well, then it will switch to that fuel instead. Do not underestimate the Factory Core; it is always looking for solutions to possible problems. Problems that we may not even yet foresee. Remember that there is not just one mind at work here in the Factory Core, but many … all fused together into one mighty and extremely powerful mind”

  “I see,” said Ser Greenfield, a strange light gleaming in his eyes. “Fascinating. Fascinating indeed.”

  CHAPTER 11

  As soon as Grakk’n heard the howls and screams of his warriors echoing from inside the building, he knew that they had been tricked, and that none of his underlings would be getting out alive. He glared at the Factory Core with hatred and loathing in his eyes; now he had a new enemy, and once Grakk’n had a grudge and a score to settle, he would obsess over it until he had had his revenge.

  And since this thing—this stone building made by those cursed dwarves—had fooled him and killed his warriors, he now had a personal vendetta against it. One that he intended to settle, even if doing so meant the end of him.

  As the demons continued to scream, trapped inside the structure, Grakk’n drew his dragon bone sword and pointed the black blade at the Factory Core. “I will find a way to destroy you,” he snarled. “You forget, you stupid lump of bricks, that in the Infernal Realm from which I come, there are things that can melt stone! I will find a way to turn you to rubble, and when I do, I will piss on your ruins! Gah!”

  He blasted out a wordless roar at the Factory Core and waved his sword at it one more time, and then took off into the darkness of the tunnels. After running for some time, he began to pick up hints of the sounds of battle. Feeling the need to let off some steam after his run-in with the Factory Core, Grakk’n diverted his path, heading toward the battle instead of making his way straight back to the Infernal Realm.

  As the sounds of combat began to ring clearer through the tunnels, a sense of dark excitement grew in Grakk’n’s chest. He lived for fighting and killing, and if he could hack apart a few dozen dwarven warriors right now, he would feel a lot better about the fact that the strange dwarven structure had just massacred his company.

  He got closer and discovered that it was a skirmish between a group of dwarves, and a squad of demons. The dwarves were using a tactic he had seen before: firing volleys of silver-coated musket balls into the charging mass of demons, while keeping a group of cannons, loaded with silver-coated grapeshot, in reserve.

  The dwarven warriors would slowly retreat, firing volley after volley into the ranks of their adversary, while drawing them closer to their group of cannons. And then, once the demons were close enough to the artillery, all of the cannons would be fired simultaneously, blasting the demon force to shreds.

  “Your tactics may have worked well for you before, dwarven scum,” growled Grakk’n as he observed the unfolding battle from a ledge overlooking the tunnel, positioned behind the dwarven lines. “But not today. Today, you die. Today, you all die!”

  A lesser demon than Grakk’n would have attacked wildly at this point, jumping down from the ledge and charging, shrieking like a mad thing, into the dwarves. Grakk
’n, however, was no fool. He knew that to do such a thing at this point would ruin his own strategy; he wanted the dwarves to think that they were winning, to think that they had the demons where they wanted them, right up until the last moment … and then he would pounce, overturning their strategy and leaving them to be massacred completely.

  He climbed quietly down the ledge—even though he was huge, he was capable of moving with great stealth when it was needed—and crept through the shadows as the battle progressed in front of him.

  The dwarves were doing well; the rifle-dwarves were retreating in disciplined order, pouring volley after volley of withering musket fire into the madly-charging masses of battle-crazed demons. Behind the groups of retreating rifle-dwarves stood their commander, waiting with his hand on the strings that would fire all the cannons simultaneously, when the demons got into range. Surrounding the commander was a core of bodyguards; the dwarves had learned that demon warriors knew which dwarves were officers, by virtue of the armor that they wore, which was more lavish, ornate and expensive than the armor worn by regular dwarven troops, and demon warriors would target the dwarven officers, hoping to capture them and take them back to the Infernal Realm where information could be extracted from them via torture.

  Grakk’n wasn’t interested in taking any prisoners here, though. He just wanted to kill dwarves. Lots of them.

  He edged his huge body through the shadows, keeping the footfalls of his clawed feet light, and doing his best to move through the tunnel without making a sound. He got closer and closer to the bodyguards and the dwarven officer as the battle raged on. Their eyes were focused on the fight in front of them, and the constant crashing of musket volleys went a good way towards disguising the sound of Grakk’n’s footsteps.

  Closer and closer Grakk’n crept, until he was only a few yards away from the rearmost of the dwarven bodyguards. Even then, with him almost breathing on them, they didn’t notice his presence; the booming of musket fire and the haze of gunpowder smoke, with its acrid scent floating in the air, provided excellent cover for the demon commander.