The World Which Is, CH 92

“Brandon, get in close. The way I remember it, that thing is geared for range with those guns. It can pivot on the leg joints so it can hit you hard, but it lacks flexibility. If you can damage the joint and keep it from spinning, it will have to maneuver around to keep track of you, which will keep it from firing at us. Helen, Silver, our job is to keep its attention while Brandon damages it. But if you can break something, Helen, do so.”

“If that’s things fireproof, me and Silver are going to be useless.”

“Its armored, but I don’t remember it being fireproof.”

“Beyond being made of metal,” Brandon points out.

“The joints aren’t.”

“How sure of that are you?”

I shrug. “As sure as I can be when my only source of information is the movie that thing is based on, which I was a kid the last time I watched. The joints need to be flexible, and metal can’t grant that.”

“As a reminder,” Brandon says. “It’s possible it won’t acknowledge you if you’re outside its detection range, even when being attacked. Since the goal is to distract it from me, keep track of that, and do what you can to not get yourselves killed if you need to step out of cover to get its attention.” He chugs a potion. “Sis, don’t worry about burning me.”

We nod, and we each take a door frame as our cover.

Being our heaviest range hitter, Helen gets things started by fireballing the automaton. I can’t even see scorch marks on the metal when the fire dies away, but it turns in her direction.

We have its attention.

Brandon runs at it, and I shoot an arrow at the torso joint. He ducks under its gunfire, then ducks out of my sight where the corridor widens. The automaton tracks him, breaking the arrow that embedded itself where I’d aimed.

Silver plays a series of staccato notes as I shoot more arrows, and small explosions pepper its surface. It turns to us and lets loose a barrage of bullets.

“Everyone okay?” I call when it stops.

“Yes,” Helen says.

“I took cover,” Silver replies.

“No!” Brandon yells, followed by two rapid impacts. “You’re supposed to keep its attention!”

I leave cover and fire arrow after arrow, trying, and failing, to get the automaton’s attention. Small explosions accompany Silver’s music to little more effect.

Helen speaks those cursed magic words and I have to focus through the discomfort of them slipping through my mind to keep shooting.

That explosion gets its attention.

“Fuck!” Brandon yells as the automaton fires in the corridor again ripping off walls, but further down.

“You said not to worry about burning you!” she yells.

“I didn’t know you had something hot enough to almost overwhelm my fire protection potion!”

“That’s what happens when you spend all you time away from home. The rest of us grow in power!”

Something hits metal with enough force that I expect Brandon to curse in pain, but what follows is another impact.

I break cover and shoot again. I aim as best as I can at the torso joint as it spins, attempting to slam a thick arm into Brandon, but he dodges that. Until it takes a step toward him as he moves. That impact sends him into the wall hard enough he doesn’t immediately stand. An icon appears next to him on the team list.

“He’s stunned!”

Helen speaks magic again, and Silver music builds.

The explosions aren’t at the same time, but close enough they stagger it. Then it turns in our direction.

Another barrage of bullets. More of the walls destroyed. And the destruction’s moving toward us.

Fuck.

“We need to hurry this! The barrage is moving closer to us each time! When it reaches us, I don’t think there’s anything we can do to survive it.”

“Why would it do that?” Silver asks, the music building again.

I curse. “It’s a fucking timer. Actions movies always have something like that.” I break cover and shoot. “It raises the tension for those watching.”

“I hate those things then,” Helen grumbles, before magic words pierce through my mind.

This time, the explosion isn’t fire, but steam.

I glare at her. “How am I supposed to shoot something I can’t see?”

“It’s not like your arrows have much effect,” she replies calmly.

I’m about to point out that’s all I have, but Brandon cuts me off.

“Thanks, sis!”

She smirks.

Brandon’s debuff’s gone. Fists hit metal.

I send my bow to inventory and equip my sword and shield.

“Don’t go in there,” she warns. “You aren’t heat proof.”

Fists hit metal again. Metal hits armor and Brandon’s health flashes, dropping well below half.

“There we go,” he says.

“I kind of wish I could see him fighting,” Silver says.

His health steadily drops.

“I’m going to need it distracted in three, two—”

I switch to my bow.

“—now!”

Helen snaps fingers, and the steam vanishes.

I shoot arrows; Helen and Silver send explosions at it. The small ones steadily moving toward an arm join.

It turns, and fires before they reach it.

We take cover and more of the walls vanish.

“Can you do that again?” Brandon yells.

Helen speaks magic, and I do my best to ignore it. She finishes, and nothing happens.

“Really?” Brandon yells. “You chose now to make up a new spell?” he dodges the automaton’s swings.

“It worked once, didn’t it?”

“Once isn’t doing me much good!”

I line up my shot, take my time. Brandon has it with its back to us, well distracted, and that arm looks somewhat loose already. I ignore the sound of the impact, Brandon’s grunt. It raises its arm, standing otherwise still.

I loose the arrow.

It embeds itself in the shoulder joint to the point I can’t make it out.

The arm doesn’t come down.

It pivots and I curse, ducking back. The bullets ravage the corridor, then the ceiling, moving past us.

Brandon is under the arm. Shouldering it up.

It pivots, sending him off his feet, and we attack it again. I can’t aim with the fire explosions, so most of my shots hit metal, and the few places where they embed into something, I don’t think it does anything.

When my quiver is empty, I quickly bring up my inventory to refill it and stare at the empty slot.

I had a fucking treen of treen of them when we entered this ruin? How the fuck am I out now?

“I’m out of arrows!”

Fuck.

I look at Brandon, fighting it. It’s still too mobile. Helen and Silver can’t do the kind of precision that’s going to help.

I equip my sword and shield.

This isn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

“What are you doing?” Helen yells after me as I run for the automaton.

That is a good question.

Just what is the plan here, Dennis?

The joints. Take away its mobility, and Brandon has the strength advantage.

I hope.

I slam my sword in the knee joint, and it goes in with sparking. I shove to the side. More sparking.

Then I’m in the air, half my health gone from the kick. I lose more when I hit the wall, but comparatively little. I down a healing potion.

I need to start accumulating swords if I’m going to keep leaving them in the monster I’m fighting. Buy a treen of them, identical so they’ll only take up one slot.

Brandon dodges, strikes, evades. When a punch staggers it back, it almost falls from the leg not bending, so I’ve helped.

“You’re an idiot,” he says after a glance in my direction.

“Coming from you, that’s a compliment, right?”

He lobs something in my directing, and I catch the sword.

“Just how much junk do you have in that inventory of yours?”

“At my strength, I have the slots to spare. You good to get back in the fight?”

My health isn’t maxed, but it’s not going up anymore.

“Dennis is getting back in!” he yells. “Stop the fire attacks.”

As soon as the explosions stop, I run at the automaton, planting the sword in the other knee, but not staying around for another kick.

Then I scramble as it pivots, bullets destroying the wall as the trail behind me. I throw myself down and they pass over me, then keep going up to the sound of straining metal. I turn to watch it fall on its side. Then Brandon grabs the gun arm, planting his feet and pulling. More straining metal.

I run to him, pulling the sword out of the knee and slamming it in the shoulder joint. I yank on it; he pulls on the arm, and to a shower of spark, we both fall on our back; the arm clattering away.

We don’t get a reprieve. The other arm moves, and it pushes itself to its feet. I’m up, moving away.

Violin plays; staccato notes. Explosions pop in the knee joint. Then a large one shatters the leg in two and it falls on its side, bringing guns to bear on Silver and Helen.

I join Brandon and we shove it so it fires into the wall, then ceiling. It sends us flying, but as I get back to my feet, the explosions are going at it again, and the arm is blasted off.

“Stay away from it,” Brandon warns, panting. “It packs one hell of a punch.”

I let myself drop against the wall, watching it struggle futilely.

“Should we just leave it like that?” Helen asks.

“We need to kill it for it to count toward discovering more of the ruin,” he replies. “But there’s no need to rush it at this point.”

“It’s also how we get the experience,” Silver says, violin still to her chin.

Brandon chuckles. “If you want to keep playing a it, I won’t stop you. At this point, it won’t matter who kills it. We’ve all put in enough hit to get a good share.”

She starts soft enough I think it’s a piece to help us heal, but then it builds, and builds again.

“Don’t burn yourself out,” Helen warns. “We aren’t out of here yet.”

She doesn’t answer, the music still building. Then, with a discordant yank of the bow across the string, immediately followed by a deafening explosion, the song ends.

When the dust settles, the other leg’s blown off the body, but I can hear the mechanism inside the body still whirling.

“I’d hope for something more destructive,” Silver says, disappointed.

“How much mana do you have left?” Helen asks.

“A sliver. I controlled how much I fed into the song. We’re taking the time to rest, so I’ll have regenerated enough for whatever the ruin sends at us.”

“You want a go at it?” Brandon asks Helen, getting to his feet. She shakes her head.

He steps to it, and a large, and I mean half his size large, sledge hammer appears in his hands. “Then I get to have fun.”

He brings it down on it, over and over.

“I’ve gone up a level!” Silver exclaims.

“Must be dead, then,” Brandon says with satisfaction. The sledge hammer vanishes back into his inventory. “How long do you want to rest here?” he asks me.

I look up. “How dangerous do you think the roof is going to be?”

“It shouldn’t be. It was guarding the access, so there should only be the building’s reward.” He kicks away pieces of the automaton, looking around them. “No loot, again,” he whispers.

I push to my feet. “Lets go up and see what we’re dealing with as a ruin. We can rest there or come back down here.”

Brandon helps me with the door. It got bent at some point in the fight.

The sun’s warmth feels comforting after going through the building. Around us are partially destroyed buildings of all sorts.

Brandon grumbles something about the lack of reward there.

“That looks suspiciously intact,” Helen says, pointing in the distance.

I shield my eyes, and she’d right. I make out part of a squat building, with its walls unblemished by anything marking the others as having survived Armageddon.

“You don’t happen to have binoculars in there, do you?” I ask Brandon, and he hands it to me.

With that to my eyes, I slowly turn around.

“What are you looking for?” he asks.

“Confirming how circular the ruin is.” As best I can tell from here, and the partial map I drew, it’s pretty damn circular. The intact building’s off center, by… a lot. Not unexpected. Brandon said ruins don’t follow specific shapes or have the heart at fixed locations in them.

But with a perfect circle, I find myself searching the center, looking for…. I’m not sure what. Something’s nagging at me about all of this, but I can’t put my finger on it.

“At least now we know where we’re going,” Brandon says.

“Yes, we do,” I reply, focusing on a building barely visible among the others. It’s in the center, and it too looks in surprisingly good condition.