Framework of the Frontier, Sain Artwell [read me a book .TXT] 📗

Ember’s question. “You can browse the remaining coffers for weapons, anything to give us an extra edge, no matter how thin.”

The smallest smile visited Ember’s eyes. “Okay. Come let’s hurry.”

“Yep. Pack up.” Standing up, William bit down the hurt of his knee and pretended the heat was caused by excitement. He took a chug of vitality elixir and put it away.

“You poor delusional bastards…” Orien cleared her throat, giving him a serious frown. “Now, being honest, we’ll skip the realm when that monster shows up. I’ve seen those things. You have zero chance. Zero! But…” She scratched her neck, averting her eyes. “…my hubby lives thanks to her. I won’t throw our lives off the cliff for you, but we’ll help you go out in blazing glory.”

William laughed. “Thanks for the faith.”

“You’re welcome,” the triton grinned. “Alright. Hoofsies and Ember, so, hoofsies, go hunt us some masks. We’ll do the packing. Meet you at the core room.”

Moments after the three faun left, the rest of them had the camp in their backpacks. William took a few more jogging steps towards the core room than he probably should have; the knee continued to thank him even on a normal walking pace. Besides, the hurry was wasted, because they ended up waiting a good half an hour for the masks to arrive.

Never before had time given him such an acidic burning in his guts. She’s already gone, said a voice in his head. The leviathan is already raping her and putting a chestbuster spawn into her. Or maybe it’s multiple of them. God, fuck, is she going to be alive when it happens? Of course she is, she said it’s death at childbirth. So basically, she’s birthing some oversized tentacle monster and getting ripped in half from the hips.

He needed to get out of this place. Out of his head, but without a blessing. All of those would be needed to have the slightest hope fighting the leviathan. William squeezed his left knee until a flash of white pain numbed unnecessary worries.

“What’s wrong?” Duhie placed a hand on his shoulder and peeled his fingers off of the knee. “Oh no… Poor Ranger, you mustn’t do that.”

“I’ll be alright, thanks. I took some elixir.” William stood in an attempt to fake it, but couldn’t hold his expression still.

Duhie frowned. “Oh dear, it’s not an all cure or a healer substitute. It speeds your natural recovery, if you’re resting.”

“Yeah? Well… tough luck. I’ll buy a dapper cane or something.” William spotted Ember and the rest of the hunting party scaling the twisted streets. “Or worst case, I buy one of those prosthesis legs, but I’ll think about that later when my girls are safe.”

Equipped with fresh warm slug faces, William took the men to help him drag empty coffers up against the golem forge. It took much sweat and cursing, but they flipped two of them upright to serve as a foundation for a makeshift scaffold. Lowest of the cores embedded in the granite monolith sat over twenty feet high and the ones near the ceiling probably more than seventy.

“Let’s lift one between them.” William breathed deep, trying to ignore the constant burn radiating from his knee. “Ember! How’s the rest of the loot looking?”

A blonde bush of hair peeked up from behind the elevated central platform of the statue. Ember gave him a small wave and shouted back, “Uh, same as yesterday. More items with various dimensional magic patterns. It would be risky to use them without proper research, but… I think these are boots that allow quick dashes through space. My teacher had a similar item. And here’s one set of big gloves with a similar, if a little different pattern. Also there’s lots of cultural items. I think these are board games.”

“Oh, sweet. Those boots sound cool.”

“Yea, but… Well, ‘never try out dimensional items without instructions’. We really really should not try them out.”

“Right. Well… Keep on looking!”

“We will. Good luck to you too.” Doubt flashed on Ember’s face.

We’ll never make it like this.

“You ready to continue?” Trotto patted William’s shoulder.

He gave the troll an absentminded nod. “Just a sec.”

What’s the time? Must be noon already. Isha is coming to pick Rulu up any moment now, if he hasn’t already. She’s already gone.Think of something, anything? Brain start braining! William hit his forehead, but his brain kept on being clogged up by stray thoughts, fears, doubts, Rulu, regrets, Ember, more doubts, and a soul gnawing guilt.

How the fuck did someone found an empire on top of a place filled with stacks of magical holo-movies, out of control golems, and a bunch of alien slugs? Nah, that’s not it. It’s the tunnels. The tunnels. ‘They say it gave him access to secret corridors to every corner of Nibir, and each of its portals.’

Portals.

“Ember!” William sprang up and regretted it instantly, but continued, ”Rulu will be taken to another realm, right? Through a portal?”

“Yeah?” She paused, staring back at him. “R’lyeh lies a few realms away from here.”

“You said this Maze is… well, this place predates Iram, including the magic items, corpses, creatures, and golems here, correct?”

“Uhu.”

William felt like he was almost on to something. “So… Okay. The Dragon Emperor’s hallways or whatever don’t have golems, but he’s likely able to control the doors regardless, yes?” When Ember nodded, he pushed on, “So, in my home, we had these things you call computers and electronics. I’m hoping magics are an analogous system, but if we could get to the source where the golems are getting their security clearance codes from we could access every door freely and… take over the Maze? If this place has a door to every corner of the Frontier, we could cut Rulu and Isha off at the gate to… where were they going?”

“Emereld Sea, most likely,” Orien helped.

Thoughts raced rapidly