Ethinium's Vault (Steam & Aether Book 1), page 33
“I agree,” Bixby said. “Let us retreat back to the garden upstairs.”
Everyone rushed back up the steps and into the giant atrium. They scattered at the top, some heading right, others to the left.
Rip stopped and said, “Hey! Anybody know how to kill it? Is there a core or something? There’s got to be a way.”
Twig poked his head out from behind a walnut tree growing nearby.
“Lad, if dynamite don’t do it, nothing will.”
“You can’t believe that,” Blair said, her head poking out from behind another tree nearby. “Dynamite is not the answer to every problem.”
“Begging milady’s pardon, but in my experience, yeah. If it can be blown up, the problem’s generally solved.”
“He’s got a point, Lady Brooke.”
“Shut up, Bobby.”
Rip stood a few feet from the top of the staircase, watching as the mud monstrosity quickly mounted the stairs.
“Ripley . . .”
He heard the note of concern in Blair’s voice.
“Don’t worry. I’m going to try a couple experiments.”
The golem’s foot reached the last step, and with a final squish it pulled itself onto the floor. Rip stood in front of it, arms loose at his side and staring up at its face.
“You . . . are ugly.”
The mouth opened again, dripping rivulets of muck. A couple of worms dropped out and splattered to the floor. It bellowed in rage, an echo from the stairs bouncing back up and amplifying the roar of its voice.
Rip sniffed.
“You stink, too.”
The golem rushed him with surprising speed.
77
Rip drew one of the heavy Webleys and aimed carefully at the charging mud golem, looking for its center mass.
Unlike previous rounds, the enhanced bullet ripped all the way through its body, splattering dirty muck out the back.
But the golem did not stop.
Rip raised an eyebrow and pulled the hammer back once more. He crouched in his shooter’s stance as the thing came closer. This time he aimed for its face, right at the gaping hole of a mouth.
Blam!
A slimy cloud of sludge blew out the back of its head, but still the monster charged.
“Well, I don’t know where the core is. It’s not in the chest, and it’s not in the head, evidently.”
He reached inside his wallet and pulled out one of the grappling guns Dame Anderson had given them. He looked up, aiming for the girders around an open window high above, and fired.
The grappling hook soared upward, sailing outside for a moment before curving back down and finding purchase on a steel girder. Rip flicked a switch and the reel kicked in, winding up and taking him with it.
He levitated out of the way just as the golem arrived, swishing muddy arms in the air where he had been standing a second before.
Rip flicked a switch and the reel stopped, holding him steady about 20 feet up. The golem looked to its left and right, confused.
“Shall we try dynamite again?” Chance whispered from behind a tree.
Blair said, “Not while Ripley’s hanging directly over him!”
“There’s gotta be a way to kill this thing,” Rip said from his perch above the golem’s head.
“Urgh?”
The golem looked left and right at the sound of his voice, but could not see him.
“How old do you think this creature is, Colonel?” Sharp said.
Bixby stuck his head up from behind a bush. His eyes narrowed as he studied the mud golem.
“Well, certainly if Fitzwilly saw it, that was almost 200 years ago. I think it’s safe to say the construct is older than that. Presuming this is the same one, of course.”
“He doesn’t know,” Finley said. She sat near the top of the stairs, watching everything, arms wrapped around her knees.
“I say, Lady Finley,” Sharp scolded from the branches of another tree nearby. “That is hardly a safe place to observe the proceedings, dangerous as they are!”
She waved him off.
“That thing’s after the Sergeant, or whatever else catches its eye. I can make haste long before it reaches me.”
Rip smiled at her as inspiration struck.
“I just need to catch its eye.”
He dug in his pocket for a coin, pulling out a couple. He stared at them for a moment, then looked over at Blair from her position behind the tree.
“What’s the difference between a penny and a farthing?”
“A farthing is one quarter of a penny.”
“A quarter of a penny? You people haven’t experienced inflation, I see. Okay, a farthing it is.”
He put the other coin back in his pocket and carefully aimed, then tossed the coin down on top of the mud golem’s head.
“Urgh?”
It looked up, both eyes glowing bright red.
Rip pulled out a Webley again and clicked back the hammer with his thumb. He squinted and aimed carefully, then fired a shot through the golem’s left eye.
It bellowed in anger as the glowing stone shattered.
It swiped up in the air with long slimy arms, screaming in rage. But Rip remained safely out of reach.
“I think I figured out what its core is!”
He had to yell over the deep roars of the golem as it tried to swat him down.
He grinned at Finley and said, “You said, ‘Whatever catches its eye.’”
She raised her eyebrow and smiled.
“If it works, it works, Sergeant. Results are the important thing. Congratulations.”
He nodded and cocked the gun again, this time intent on taking out the golem’s second eye.
“If that’s not the core, or one of the dual cores, then at least it won’t be able to see us.”
He aimed straight down, tracking the eye in his gun’s sights.
The golem stopped suddenly, and the deep rumbling roars ceased. Its one good eye locked on Rip, dangling from the grappling hook’s rope with his gun aimed down. The two froze for a moment.
The golem bolted for the stairs, abruptly moving faster than ever before.
They heard its squishing, wet steps going down . . . down . . . until finally they could hear it no more.
Chance and Twig came out to greet Rip as he let out the line and slowly came back down to the floor.
“Good job,” Twig said. “You scared it off.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever heard of someone scaring off a garden golem before,” Bixby said with a smile as he and Sharp joined the little group along with Blair.
For her part, Finley remained near the stairs. She did not stand up, even when the monster raced past her.
“Well, to be fair,” Sharp said, “there aren’t many records of encounters with garden golems. Or any golems, for that matter. Even if we were to return to Doctors’ Commons right now, we’d be giving lectures in the Lyceum for a week, answering all kinds of questions.”
Rip tried dislodging the harpoon high above, but he soon gave up and left the rope dangling.
Turning to the others he said, “You know, I wonder if this is where the legend of the Cyclops came from. Some giant golem or something got an eye taken out and wandered around with just one. Does your world have the Cyclops?”
“Yes,” Sharp said. “Homer. The Odyssey. We’re quite familiar.”
“But you don’t know Achilles?”
“If everyone is quite finished chitchatting,” Lady Finley said, finally standing up, “our mucky friend has left us a perfectly good trail to follow.”
She pointed to the stairs, where muddy footprints led down.
“Right,” Bixby said. “Everyone ready? Let’s go after it.”
78
The group cautiously moved down the stairs, maintaining formation.
The deeper they went, the darker the way grew until only dim light remained.
Rip felt his [Night Vision] ticking up, and he had a flash of gratitude toward the sisters for their boons.
He could appreciate, though, Blair’s warnings about how such benefits might lead someone to want more and more power. These skills were probably the tip of the iceberg in terms of what vampires could do.
Certainly that mist trick is pretty formidable, he thought. On the other hand, silver is an easily available kryptonite.
He went down a few more steps, thinking about it.
The whole drinking human blood thing is a turnoff, too. But the boons are nice. No arguments, there.
“This is a right rotten quandary,” Twig said, interrupting his thoughts.
Everyone stopped and looked at the two infiltrators in the middle.
“I can’t see a bloomin’ thing. Is the rest of the way like this? I’d like to ask permission to light my torch, if it pleases the colonels. And the lady, if you please.”
Bixby said, “The map indicates Level Two under the stairs is used as a mushroom garden in these parts. One presumes that is the reason light is limited in this area.”
Blair took a quick sniff of the strong, earthy smells wafting up from below, mixed in with the scent of horse manure.
“Disgusting.”
“I just can’t see anything, Colonel. I doubt anyone else can, either. Excepting of course the Verez sisters.”
“I do not think using a torch would be a very wise thing to do right now, Mr. Twig,” Sharp said. “We’ve already wounded, if that’s the word, the garden golem who is apparently the guardian of these parts. Using a light would only alert it, or perhaps others, as to our location. It would be best if we could sneak through the mushroom garden and make it to Level Three without incident.”
“Talking probably attracts attention, too,” Finley said from her spot in the back, higher up on the steps.
Bixby said, “Indeed. Let us stay close to the girls, and remain alert. Should we get into a pitched battle, everyone feel free to light their torches at that point.”
Twig did not argue, but Rip could see the frown on his face. Chance could too, standing nearby. He slapped the other man on the back to help cheer him up.
The party continued their descent.
At last they came to the second level, and here before them in weak light they found garden squares as before, spread out in a huge room like a giant chessboard. The difference, so far as Rip could tell: these plots had rows of mushrooms rather than the trees and crops up above.
“We shan’t need to tarry long here,” Sharp said. “Behind us should be a similar set of stairs leading down to Level Three.”
As he whispered this, they heard the sound of a voice drifting over from somewhere deeper in the mushroom garden.
“We should look into that,” Liza said, tilting her head and listening.
Rip found himself wondering if her hearing was as good as her eyesight.
“I can’t see a thing,” Twig grumbled.
Sharp said, “Girls, go and investigate if you think you must. Do not engage unless you have to. Join us at the top of the next set of stairs. Everyone else, follow me. I think we can make our way around unassisted. And without torches.”
The Verez sisters nodded and faded into the gloom. Rip took a couple steps to follow them, but Blair reached out to grab his arm. They locked eyes in the dim light.
“I’m going to follow them. It’ll be alright.”
Reluctantly, she let go. She watched him disappear in the darkness before turning to follow Lady Finley toward the back of the wide staircase.
Rip had no trouble following the girls, his [Night Vision] clicking up another notch as he walked.
One thing they excelled at, he thought, was moving quietly. He noticed his footsteps seemed loud in comparison, the leather soles of his boots softly scuffing the floor. Their steps made no noise at all, as far as he could tell.
Soon, the voice grew louder. They came to an intersection between squares, and the girls cautiously peeked around the corner. Rip joined them and looked, too.
The man they had seen earlier on the stairs fussed over the mud golem, standing on a small A-frame ladder, his arm deep inside the shoulder.
“What have they done, Kipouros? How did they manage to break your eye? It should not be possible. It should not. I will fix it, Kipouros. I will fix it and you will see as good as you could before. Now, where are the rest of the shards? How did they do this? It has never happened before, that I know of. I must . . .”
He continued, quietly muttering and fishing for fragments of the shattered eye in the giant’s body.
Rip looked at the sisters, who watched the old man intently as he worked. Their eyes never wavered from him.
Rip found himself wondering if bloodlust would overpower them. After all, here was a human and they needed the nourishment.
Soon after that thought, another one manifested itself. What if they turned on him, too?
The rational part of his mind found himself doubting that would happen. He had spent enough time with the girls to develop considerable trust.
Nonetheless, he took a step back and put some space between himself and the two vampires. Just in case. Their eyes remained laser-focused on the old man.
Liza noticed his movement and finally stopped staring at the worker.
She whispered, “He is no threat.”
Hilda sighed and nodded. She too turned from the old man.
“I hope somebody attacks us soon,” she whispered. “A real person this time, and not something made out of mud.”
Liza nodded, commiserating with her.
Together, the three made their way back to the stairs and the rest of the party.
79
Rip and the girls found the others in their party waiting atop another set of stairs heading down, directly behind those going up. Light glowed toward the bottom, promising easier passage. Or at least one well lit.
Bixby asked Rip for a report, and he described the scene as best he could recall. The girls listened and added details of their own while he summed things up for the nobles.
“Kipouros?” Sharp said. “Seems like an odd name for a golem.”
“Kipos is Greek for garden,” Finley said. “Kipouros means gardener. It’s rather generic, but not a bad name at all under the circumstances.”
Both men stared at her.
“Did neither of you take Greek in college? This is quite basic.”
Sharp shrugged and said, “I did, but I slept through most of it.”
Finley stared at him.
“What? It was too early in the morning. I was out late quite a lot during my college years. I spent considerable time discussing weighty matters with others in my class. Mostly at the pub, late at night.”
“I took Remun,” Bixby said. “It’s a bit more modern. Helps with language skills and whatnot.”
Finley said, “Hmph. You should have taken Greek, Remun and a Continental language. I took French, myself.”
“I took French,” Blair interjected. “Beautiful language. Terrible people.”
Finley gave her an appalled look.
“Some of my best friends are French!”
“Oh? I’m sorry.”
When Finley turned away, Blair made a face at her.
“No one chooses to study Hungarian. It is so sad,” Liza said, pouting.
Everyone stopped and stared at the vampires for a moment.
Sharp said, “Right. I suppose we really should be going. Let us head down to the next level, everyone. Back into formation.”
The banter died out and the group reformed with the sisters once more leading the way.
Far below, light glowed at the base of the steps. Everyone started walking down, moving at a quick clip, and the light steadily grew brighter.
No one said a word. Rip decided to refrain from commenting again on the lack of safety measures with the extraordinarily wide and steep staircase.
At last they reached the final steps, making it there without incident. The girls stopped and the others pulled up behind them.
A flat and featureless gunmetal gray floor stretched out before them, several football fields in size. Rip found himself impressed with the sheer enormity of this underground space. The ceiling loomed high above, shrouded in darkness, making the space seem even larger.
Unlike the two garden levels, this floor was not segmented into square plots. But a square pattern of lampposts kept the area very well lit. Every 30 feet, in a perfect grid, a lamp stood with a flame burning on top.
The gaslight did not flicker, shining behind four-paned glass enclosures. Faint air currents drifted past, barely noticeable and not affecting the flames at all.
Those on the steps ignored the lamps, though. What drew everyone’s eyes were the shiny new robots standing in neat rows. Hundreds of them stood perfectly still, arranged in symmetrical formation beneath the lamps, heads angled down and arms hanging loosely by their sides.
“I say,” Bixby said softly. “We certainly seem to have discovered what happened to all those parts the Rats worked so hard to prepare.”
Rip nodded and said, “Yup. These are all enhanced.”
“How can you tell?” Finley asked from the back.
“[Mechanical Discernment].”
“Ah, yes. That would do it.”
“What are those disks on their chests?” Chance said, pointing at the closest one.
Rip squinted at it and frowned as his skill kicked in again.
He said, “Each robot has a five inch silver plate on their chest. Really good silver, too. Very pure.”
Hilda said, “What? Why?”
She and Liza had horrified expressions on their faces.
“We don’t know, girls. Our biggest question now,” Sharp said, “is what to do. This certainly needs to be reported, and probably long before we try and make it down past Level Five, or however deep we’re going.”
“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that, my good fellow.”
A tall man, dressed in a black leather overcoat and wearing a peaked black cap, walked around the back of the stairs. Twelve elite sewer troopers followed him, dressed all in black and each carrying a broomhandle submachine gun. They pointed their weapons at the group.
Everyone rushed back up the steps and into the giant atrium. They scattered at the top, some heading right, others to the left.
Rip stopped and said, “Hey! Anybody know how to kill it? Is there a core or something? There’s got to be a way.”
Twig poked his head out from behind a walnut tree growing nearby.
“Lad, if dynamite don’t do it, nothing will.”
“You can’t believe that,” Blair said, her head poking out from behind another tree nearby. “Dynamite is not the answer to every problem.”
“Begging milady’s pardon, but in my experience, yeah. If it can be blown up, the problem’s generally solved.”
“He’s got a point, Lady Brooke.”
“Shut up, Bobby.”
Rip stood a few feet from the top of the staircase, watching as the mud monstrosity quickly mounted the stairs.
“Ripley . . .”
He heard the note of concern in Blair’s voice.
“Don’t worry. I’m going to try a couple experiments.”
The golem’s foot reached the last step, and with a final squish it pulled itself onto the floor. Rip stood in front of it, arms loose at his side and staring up at its face.
“You . . . are ugly.”
The mouth opened again, dripping rivulets of muck. A couple of worms dropped out and splattered to the floor. It bellowed in rage, an echo from the stairs bouncing back up and amplifying the roar of its voice.
Rip sniffed.
“You stink, too.”
The golem rushed him with surprising speed.
77
Rip drew one of the heavy Webleys and aimed carefully at the charging mud golem, looking for its center mass.
Unlike previous rounds, the enhanced bullet ripped all the way through its body, splattering dirty muck out the back.
But the golem did not stop.
Rip raised an eyebrow and pulled the hammer back once more. He crouched in his shooter’s stance as the thing came closer. This time he aimed for its face, right at the gaping hole of a mouth.
Blam!
A slimy cloud of sludge blew out the back of its head, but still the monster charged.
“Well, I don’t know where the core is. It’s not in the chest, and it’s not in the head, evidently.”
He reached inside his wallet and pulled out one of the grappling guns Dame Anderson had given them. He looked up, aiming for the girders around an open window high above, and fired.
The grappling hook soared upward, sailing outside for a moment before curving back down and finding purchase on a steel girder. Rip flicked a switch and the reel kicked in, winding up and taking him with it.
He levitated out of the way just as the golem arrived, swishing muddy arms in the air where he had been standing a second before.
Rip flicked a switch and the reel stopped, holding him steady about 20 feet up. The golem looked to its left and right, confused.
“Shall we try dynamite again?” Chance whispered from behind a tree.
Blair said, “Not while Ripley’s hanging directly over him!”
“There’s gotta be a way to kill this thing,” Rip said from his perch above the golem’s head.
“Urgh?”
The golem looked left and right at the sound of his voice, but could not see him.
“How old do you think this creature is, Colonel?” Sharp said.
Bixby stuck his head up from behind a bush. His eyes narrowed as he studied the mud golem.
“Well, certainly if Fitzwilly saw it, that was almost 200 years ago. I think it’s safe to say the construct is older than that. Presuming this is the same one, of course.”
“He doesn’t know,” Finley said. She sat near the top of the stairs, watching everything, arms wrapped around her knees.
“I say, Lady Finley,” Sharp scolded from the branches of another tree nearby. “That is hardly a safe place to observe the proceedings, dangerous as they are!”
She waved him off.
“That thing’s after the Sergeant, or whatever else catches its eye. I can make haste long before it reaches me.”
Rip smiled at her as inspiration struck.
“I just need to catch its eye.”
He dug in his pocket for a coin, pulling out a couple. He stared at them for a moment, then looked over at Blair from her position behind the tree.
“What’s the difference between a penny and a farthing?”
“A farthing is one quarter of a penny.”
“A quarter of a penny? You people haven’t experienced inflation, I see. Okay, a farthing it is.”
He put the other coin back in his pocket and carefully aimed, then tossed the coin down on top of the mud golem’s head.
“Urgh?”
It looked up, both eyes glowing bright red.
Rip pulled out a Webley again and clicked back the hammer with his thumb. He squinted and aimed carefully, then fired a shot through the golem’s left eye.
It bellowed in anger as the glowing stone shattered.
It swiped up in the air with long slimy arms, screaming in rage. But Rip remained safely out of reach.
“I think I figured out what its core is!”
He had to yell over the deep roars of the golem as it tried to swat him down.
He grinned at Finley and said, “You said, ‘Whatever catches its eye.’”
She raised her eyebrow and smiled.
“If it works, it works, Sergeant. Results are the important thing. Congratulations.”
He nodded and cocked the gun again, this time intent on taking out the golem’s second eye.
“If that’s not the core, or one of the dual cores, then at least it won’t be able to see us.”
He aimed straight down, tracking the eye in his gun’s sights.
The golem stopped suddenly, and the deep rumbling roars ceased. Its one good eye locked on Rip, dangling from the grappling hook’s rope with his gun aimed down. The two froze for a moment.
The golem bolted for the stairs, abruptly moving faster than ever before.
They heard its squishing, wet steps going down . . . down . . . until finally they could hear it no more.
Chance and Twig came out to greet Rip as he let out the line and slowly came back down to the floor.
“Good job,” Twig said. “You scared it off.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever heard of someone scaring off a garden golem before,” Bixby said with a smile as he and Sharp joined the little group along with Blair.
For her part, Finley remained near the stairs. She did not stand up, even when the monster raced past her.
“Well, to be fair,” Sharp said, “there aren’t many records of encounters with garden golems. Or any golems, for that matter. Even if we were to return to Doctors’ Commons right now, we’d be giving lectures in the Lyceum for a week, answering all kinds of questions.”
Rip tried dislodging the harpoon high above, but he soon gave up and left the rope dangling.
Turning to the others he said, “You know, I wonder if this is where the legend of the Cyclops came from. Some giant golem or something got an eye taken out and wandered around with just one. Does your world have the Cyclops?”
“Yes,” Sharp said. “Homer. The Odyssey. We’re quite familiar.”
“But you don’t know Achilles?”
“If everyone is quite finished chitchatting,” Lady Finley said, finally standing up, “our mucky friend has left us a perfectly good trail to follow.”
She pointed to the stairs, where muddy footprints led down.
“Right,” Bixby said. “Everyone ready? Let’s go after it.”
78
The group cautiously moved down the stairs, maintaining formation.
The deeper they went, the darker the way grew until only dim light remained.
Rip felt his [Night Vision] ticking up, and he had a flash of gratitude toward the sisters for their boons.
He could appreciate, though, Blair’s warnings about how such benefits might lead someone to want more and more power. These skills were probably the tip of the iceberg in terms of what vampires could do.
Certainly that mist trick is pretty formidable, he thought. On the other hand, silver is an easily available kryptonite.
He went down a few more steps, thinking about it.
The whole drinking human blood thing is a turnoff, too. But the boons are nice. No arguments, there.
“This is a right rotten quandary,” Twig said, interrupting his thoughts.
Everyone stopped and looked at the two infiltrators in the middle.
“I can’t see a bloomin’ thing. Is the rest of the way like this? I’d like to ask permission to light my torch, if it pleases the colonels. And the lady, if you please.”
Bixby said, “The map indicates Level Two under the stairs is used as a mushroom garden in these parts. One presumes that is the reason light is limited in this area.”
Blair took a quick sniff of the strong, earthy smells wafting up from below, mixed in with the scent of horse manure.
“Disgusting.”
“I just can’t see anything, Colonel. I doubt anyone else can, either. Excepting of course the Verez sisters.”
“I do not think using a torch would be a very wise thing to do right now, Mr. Twig,” Sharp said. “We’ve already wounded, if that’s the word, the garden golem who is apparently the guardian of these parts. Using a light would only alert it, or perhaps others, as to our location. It would be best if we could sneak through the mushroom garden and make it to Level Three without incident.”
“Talking probably attracts attention, too,” Finley said from her spot in the back, higher up on the steps.
Bixby said, “Indeed. Let us stay close to the girls, and remain alert. Should we get into a pitched battle, everyone feel free to light their torches at that point.”
Twig did not argue, but Rip could see the frown on his face. Chance could too, standing nearby. He slapped the other man on the back to help cheer him up.
The party continued their descent.
At last they came to the second level, and here before them in weak light they found garden squares as before, spread out in a huge room like a giant chessboard. The difference, so far as Rip could tell: these plots had rows of mushrooms rather than the trees and crops up above.
“We shan’t need to tarry long here,” Sharp said. “Behind us should be a similar set of stairs leading down to Level Three.”
As he whispered this, they heard the sound of a voice drifting over from somewhere deeper in the mushroom garden.
“We should look into that,” Liza said, tilting her head and listening.
Rip found himself wondering if her hearing was as good as her eyesight.
“I can’t see a thing,” Twig grumbled.
Sharp said, “Girls, go and investigate if you think you must. Do not engage unless you have to. Join us at the top of the next set of stairs. Everyone else, follow me. I think we can make our way around unassisted. And without torches.”
The Verez sisters nodded and faded into the gloom. Rip took a couple steps to follow them, but Blair reached out to grab his arm. They locked eyes in the dim light.
“I’m going to follow them. It’ll be alright.”
Reluctantly, she let go. She watched him disappear in the darkness before turning to follow Lady Finley toward the back of the wide staircase.
Rip had no trouble following the girls, his [Night Vision] clicking up another notch as he walked.
One thing they excelled at, he thought, was moving quietly. He noticed his footsteps seemed loud in comparison, the leather soles of his boots softly scuffing the floor. Their steps made no noise at all, as far as he could tell.
Soon, the voice grew louder. They came to an intersection between squares, and the girls cautiously peeked around the corner. Rip joined them and looked, too.
The man they had seen earlier on the stairs fussed over the mud golem, standing on a small A-frame ladder, his arm deep inside the shoulder.
“What have they done, Kipouros? How did they manage to break your eye? It should not be possible. It should not. I will fix it, Kipouros. I will fix it and you will see as good as you could before. Now, where are the rest of the shards? How did they do this? It has never happened before, that I know of. I must . . .”
He continued, quietly muttering and fishing for fragments of the shattered eye in the giant’s body.
Rip looked at the sisters, who watched the old man intently as he worked. Their eyes never wavered from him.
Rip found himself wondering if bloodlust would overpower them. After all, here was a human and they needed the nourishment.
Soon after that thought, another one manifested itself. What if they turned on him, too?
The rational part of his mind found himself doubting that would happen. He had spent enough time with the girls to develop considerable trust.
Nonetheless, he took a step back and put some space between himself and the two vampires. Just in case. Their eyes remained laser-focused on the old man.
Liza noticed his movement and finally stopped staring at the worker.
She whispered, “He is no threat.”
Hilda sighed and nodded. She too turned from the old man.
“I hope somebody attacks us soon,” she whispered. “A real person this time, and not something made out of mud.”
Liza nodded, commiserating with her.
Together, the three made their way back to the stairs and the rest of the party.
79
Rip and the girls found the others in their party waiting atop another set of stairs heading down, directly behind those going up. Light glowed toward the bottom, promising easier passage. Or at least one well lit.
Bixby asked Rip for a report, and he described the scene as best he could recall. The girls listened and added details of their own while he summed things up for the nobles.
“Kipouros?” Sharp said. “Seems like an odd name for a golem.”
“Kipos is Greek for garden,” Finley said. “Kipouros means gardener. It’s rather generic, but not a bad name at all under the circumstances.”
Both men stared at her.
“Did neither of you take Greek in college? This is quite basic.”
Sharp shrugged and said, “I did, but I slept through most of it.”
Finley stared at him.
“What? It was too early in the morning. I was out late quite a lot during my college years. I spent considerable time discussing weighty matters with others in my class. Mostly at the pub, late at night.”
“I took Remun,” Bixby said. “It’s a bit more modern. Helps with language skills and whatnot.”
Finley said, “Hmph. You should have taken Greek, Remun and a Continental language. I took French, myself.”
“I took French,” Blair interjected. “Beautiful language. Terrible people.”
Finley gave her an appalled look.
“Some of my best friends are French!”
“Oh? I’m sorry.”
When Finley turned away, Blair made a face at her.
“No one chooses to study Hungarian. It is so sad,” Liza said, pouting.
Everyone stopped and stared at the vampires for a moment.
Sharp said, “Right. I suppose we really should be going. Let us head down to the next level, everyone. Back into formation.”
The banter died out and the group reformed with the sisters once more leading the way.
Far below, light glowed at the base of the steps. Everyone started walking down, moving at a quick clip, and the light steadily grew brighter.
No one said a word. Rip decided to refrain from commenting again on the lack of safety measures with the extraordinarily wide and steep staircase.
At last they reached the final steps, making it there without incident. The girls stopped and the others pulled up behind them.
A flat and featureless gunmetal gray floor stretched out before them, several football fields in size. Rip found himself impressed with the sheer enormity of this underground space. The ceiling loomed high above, shrouded in darkness, making the space seem even larger.
Unlike the two garden levels, this floor was not segmented into square plots. But a square pattern of lampposts kept the area very well lit. Every 30 feet, in a perfect grid, a lamp stood with a flame burning on top.
The gaslight did not flicker, shining behind four-paned glass enclosures. Faint air currents drifted past, barely noticeable and not affecting the flames at all.
Those on the steps ignored the lamps, though. What drew everyone’s eyes were the shiny new robots standing in neat rows. Hundreds of them stood perfectly still, arranged in symmetrical formation beneath the lamps, heads angled down and arms hanging loosely by their sides.
“I say,” Bixby said softly. “We certainly seem to have discovered what happened to all those parts the Rats worked so hard to prepare.”
Rip nodded and said, “Yup. These are all enhanced.”
“How can you tell?” Finley asked from the back.
“[Mechanical Discernment].”
“Ah, yes. That would do it.”
“What are those disks on their chests?” Chance said, pointing at the closest one.
Rip squinted at it and frowned as his skill kicked in again.
He said, “Each robot has a five inch silver plate on their chest. Really good silver, too. Very pure.”
Hilda said, “What? Why?”
She and Liza had horrified expressions on their faces.
“We don’t know, girls. Our biggest question now,” Sharp said, “is what to do. This certainly needs to be reported, and probably long before we try and make it down past Level Five, or however deep we’re going.”
“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that, my good fellow.”
A tall man, dressed in a black leather overcoat and wearing a peaked black cap, walked around the back of the stairs. Twelve elite sewer troopers followed him, dressed all in black and each carrying a broomhandle submachine gun. They pointed their weapons at the group.
