Chapter 49: Ever the Guardian

Minkus knew things weren’t moving as quickly as they seemed, but he was still reeling. Kikka had murdered the asura he’d nearly saved—she’d murdered him. Why did she do that? Why would anyone do that? She’d told them why, he supposed, but— well, that still didn’t make any sense to him. He wanted it never to make sense to him.

The gun almost shaking in her hand, Kikka glared at Minkus with an unabated fury. “I told you to surrender the device now!”

Unsure what to do, Minkus looked between her, the guard, and Penny. The guard’s attention was trained on the human, but both of the others had their eyes on him.

That was strange. Why was Penny watching him instead of the two people with the guns?

He met her eyes and recognized a twinkle of desperate mischief as she flicked a glance past him to the guard and back again. She shrugged apologetically and leapt.

Minkus could barely keep up with what happened. Kikka cried some furious demand. Penny’s gun went off twice before she slammed into Minkus’ side, spinning him around and thrusting him face-first at the guard. The guard’s weapon went off in a blinding flash, and Minkus felt the rush of air blowing off his back. Two more cracks of gunfire went off by his shoulder, and the guard stumbled backward, dropping his weapon and falling to the ground, suddenly on fire. In the other direction, Kikka lay on the ground, convulsing, her gun stuck to her hand in a thick, pale substance that went part way up her arm.

As he mentally grappled with the situation, Minkus grabbed at his own weapons, trying to draw them in all directions at once. Just behind him, one hand on the projector pack, Penny still held a smoking pistol in her outstretched hand. 

He turned, wide-eyed and stop brandishing his weapons. “What just happened?” 

Penny made for the energy rifle the guard had dropped. “Sorry, Biggie. I saw you had your body-shield magic on, so we used it. Now we can finish what we came for.” She rose with the weapon and approached Kikka.

Her convulsions at an end, the female  clawed at the gunk splattered up her gun arm. An expression of fury had returned to her otherwise delicate face even before she spotted Penny’s movement toward her. The recognition of that twisted it to pure hate.

A  high-pitched scream at the other end of the room stopped them, and Minkus and Penny both snapped around.

The haze was all but gone now. There was a gunshot, the clang of steel on stone, rabid chittering, and stone-shattering crashes. Amid it all, Minkus could see the golem, hunched and drawing both its fists back up from the stonework floor. Yult’s form lurched away from it, and something large moved across the machine’s bulky shoulders. Whatever that was, it chittered and howled before lunging off the construct at the staggering crusader. The golem straightened, and Minkus only briefly saw Crusader Yult’s response to the creature before a rising corona of purple light drowned him out. For that moment only the silhouette of the golem was visible. Jinkke yelled something, and though Minkus couldn’t make out her words, nothing else suddenly mattered.

“Penny.” Minkus looked at her, feeling the pallor touch his own face. “Jinkke.”

His friend stopped, feet from the struggling, cursing krewe leader, and Minkus watched a wild series of thoughts cross his friend’s face. Her attention shifted from Kikka, to the far end of the room, and back again. He couldn’t read her, until he could.

Penny turned and  shot the struggling guard again, this time with one of her electrocution rounds, and he convulsed as Kikka had. Penny left the small fire from the incendiary round burning in his shoulder and shoved her pistol back in its hip holster. She snatched up the energy weapon and took aim at Kikka. “This’ll only take a second.”

Minkus flailed, lunging for his friend’s rising arm. She was going to kill Kikka, right there, right then. He was watching it happen. In truth, even something inside him whispered that Kikka deserved it, that this was justice. And maybe it was—or at least it would have been, in someone else’s hands.

“Penny, no!” Minkus grabbed the end of the rifle, drawing it away from Kikka and whirling himself into its aim.

“Penny!” Minkus cried. “My sister and Yult are in trouble, and so are you.”

She tried to tug the weapon free, but he held on. His mind kept skipping to Jinkke, but his eyes finally met Penny’s, and he refocused. “Penny, you can’t do this. You— just please don’t do this! My sister needs us, and this— it’s not right.”

She wrenched at the rifle again, and Minkus saw her fight to hold the anger in her dark eyes. She wanted it, lusted after it, and he didn’t know if—

There was another flash of light, so bright it tinted the walls purple for a fraction of a second, drawing everyone’s attention. Kikka laughed, Minkus felt his heart stop, and Penny broke.

“Damn it!” she cursed, tucking the rifle under her arm and drawing an explosive from her pouch.

Minkus sputtered a cough. “Penny, what are you doing?”

With a grimace, she lit the device and threw it   between the krewe leader and her fallen weapon. “Keeping her in place.”

The fuse fizzled out, and the casing burst, throwing more glue across Kikka’s torso, arm, and hand. It strung out in thick bands, only getting more obstructive the more she moved.

“How dare you!” the asura spat.

She went on as she struggled with the sticky substance, but Minkus didn’t really hear it. He released a breath and cast a wearied glance at Penny. She met his gaze and nodded, unable to keep the grief off her face as she shrugged. “You win, I guess.”

He tried to smile, but as they turned, both of them recognized the golem again, stock-still and hunched forward. It was reinitializing after having fired the mursaat weapon again.

“The plan,” Penny murmured. “Gods, the plan.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him back before he could get moving to Jinkke. “Minkus, stop.”

He looked at her with more heat than he intended, and immediately stopped. “Apologies,” he sighed. “I just—”

She waved the apology away and jammed a hand into her tool bag, wrenching out two palm-sized steel cylinders—her killswitches. “Look, your sister and I, we have a plan. While that thing’s restarting, I’ll overload its power system with one of these. That should shut it down at its source.”

“Excelsior. I will help Jinkke.” Minkus tried to tug her forward again, but she held him in place. Magic or not, he was exhausted.

Penny shoved one of the killswitches into his hand. “Take the other one,” she instructed, waving a hand expressively. “You have the field emitter and magic and all that, which makes you our best bet if I fumble it—gods know I’ve done that enough.” She tried to smirk, but it faded away quickly. “OK. Go get your sister.”

Minkus gripped the killswitch alongside his magnet focus, though he didn’t give much thought to what it really meant that he had it. The killswitch, the golem, the blast they’d just seen, even Crusader Yult—those things were all important, very important he knew, but the front of his mind was centered on his sister. She had to be safe before he could address the rest.

He jumped back into motion, speeding across the field of scattered, broken equipment as he scanned for Jinkke. Going wide past the immobilized golem, he caught sight of the norn, up and fumbling around just beyond it. There was relief at that somewhere in the back of his mind, but his senses stayed fixed on his quarry: blond hair under a shiny steel cap, bobbing motion, frightened cries or nervous analysis—any sign of Jinkke.

He started calling her name, jumping the stone remnants of a holding cylinder’s base. He called again, eyes and ears still searching.

Somewhere nearby, he heard her hiss, “Minkus, quiet!”

His ears shifted, his eyes followed, and he spotted her big eyes glimmering impatiently at him from the shadows. She peeked out from behind a fallen cylinder cap that leaned precariously against the western wall. He slowed himself and slipped in beside her, wrapping her in an unplanned embrace.

She pushed him off and raised a finger to her lips.

“I am so glad you’re safe,” he whispered. “When that blast—”

Finger still raised, she shushed him, quietly, urgently—even fearfully.

“What’s happening?” he breathed, shrinking in imitation of both her posture and volume.

There was a throttled bellow outside their cover, and it quieted him better than any instruction she could give. He peered past Jinkke, following her now pointing finger around the edge of the thick, steel disc.

There was Crusader Yult, eyes shut and beating at the side of his own head with his empty hand. He still held that massive sword, dragging its great weight behind him as he lumbered unsteadily across the shattered and still shattering glass of a fallen containment cell.

“No,” the lumbering norn snarled, “I didn’t— no, not real. You’re not real!”

Minkus didn’t know who he was speaking to, but before he could formulate the question, the skelk weaved back into his field of vision as well —he’d forgotten all about the creature. Severely injured, half its bounding movements had devolved into a pained slither through the field of broken glass. It leapt back up at the norn’s chest, one leg hanging limply as it bit into the crusader’s shoulder.

Minkus gasped, nearly hopping to his feet as rejuvenating magic surged into him.

“Just wait,” his sister whispered, pulling him back. He fell back in beside her, and the flow slowed as they watched.

The norn bellowed again, furiously, but instead of grabbing at the deranged creature, he torqued his thick body and swung the greatsword about him in a wide, uncontrolled arc. It knocked away steel debris and cables, but altogether missed the skelk tearing at his armor and upper arm. It was like he didn’t recognize the creature’s presence at all. “Leave me alone,” Yult cried. “I honored you. I swear I honored you!”

He froze, eyes suddenly alight with madness, and threw his weapon aside. Lunging, he slammed himself into the wall, smashing the skelk between stonework and the momentum of his huge, muscled body. It shrieked, fell, and dragged itself clear. But the norn did it again, his breastplate and the hammer at his waist ringing out against the stonework as he slammed his body into it a second time. Then he screamed, doing it a third.

“Jinkke, why are we standing here?” Minkus muttered. “And what is he…”

Minkus heard his own words trail off, the answer to his unfinished question seeming to fumble upon him.  “Oh no. Did he—”

“Receive a concentrated blast of mind-altering magic?” Jinkke finished. Her gaze fell to the floor. “Yes, he did.”

“Are you alright?” Minkus asked, suddenly turning from the struggle before them to scan his sister for injuries.

“Only he was hit,” she said.

“But—” He paused, finding the question harder than he anticipated. They’d only known Yult Fjornsson for a day, but Minkus wanted to believe they remained allies. “Has he hurt you?”

“Oh. No,” Jinkke said, shaking her head and putting a hand to her brother’s shoulder. “No. I think he was struck perimetrically. The effects seem to scale with exposure, so— he’s not all gone. Not yet. If we simply avoid his trajectory, we can still execute the plan. Penny told you the plan?”

Minkus nodded, more by instinct than conscious response. He leaned out to glance at the crusader again.

The norn had stopped heaving himself at the wall. Now he gripped his sweat-glistened head in both hands and ranted to himself again. “It’s not Pypp. It’s not Pypp. He’s not— all of you, shut up! Just shut— argh!” He dropped to a knee, and screamed. The skelk had come at him again, latching onto the back of a thigh.

Then, above the sounds of the crusader and the skelk, something else reached Minkus’ ears. It was a whir of energy and activating servos. Minkus and Jinkke both leaned out, and the golem righted its posture, lights flickering and flashing back to life.

Penny must have failed to find a place for the killswitch, because as the golem shifted, Minkus saw her bolt, sprinting out from behind it and flying for any cover she could find, nearly stumbling over her own feet. The golem’s head swiveled in the direction of her movement.

“Smoke and sparks,” Jinkke hissed. There was a touch of judgement accompanying her anxiety.

Minkus looked at Penny, at the golem, and back at the norn who now leaned against the wall and pounded it with open hands while rasping curses at nothing. Possible courses of action rippled unevenly against Minkus’ brain, the tide of a jostled pool. Only one stayed with him, though: he saw the peaceful face of that healed male asura, just before Kikka killed home.

“I can heal the crusader,” Minkus said, ducking back out of the golem’s view and turning to his sister.

“What?” she asked, genuinely confused. He forgot she hadn’t been there. “The damage,” she argued, “it’s not complete, but is irrepara—”

“I am going to heal him,” Minkus repeated, as though that explained it better.

“I’m sure you will,” Jinkke said. It was her mothering voice. “But our priority is disabling that golem—you asserted that, and you were correct. If we don’t, none of us will depart this facility with our mental faculties intact.”

She was right, of course. The golem did need to be stopped. But he had the capacity to help their ally now, and that, he convinced himself, would be most helpful toward their greater goal.

“You’re right. I know you are,” Minkus said, turning a serious eye on Jinkke.

“But?” she asked, working to soften her naturally critical expression.

“But he came to help us.” Minkus explained. “That makes him our friend now, and I can help him. I need to help him.”

With a sigh Jinkke shook her head, then touched her forehead to his plated shoulder. Leather and steel were between them, but he could hardly tell.

“Go,” she said. “I’ll— well, I’ll do what I can to help Arkayd.” She gulped back a sudden and visible anxiety.

Eyes widening, Minkus threw up a hand and nearly got his objection out, but his sister beat him. “Don’t you dare!” she snapped. “If you’re being a heroic fool, so am I. Smoke and sparks, I’m already at the center of this madness! There is no way—”

He raised his hands in surrender, feeling the blush in his own cheeks. “Alright. Alright.” Then, on a strange instinct, he went on. “Just— please be safe. I—”

“I comprehend.” Jinkke said, her indignation replaced by a soft smile. “I love you too, Big Brother.”

Giving her one more smile, he checked that the projector pack was still running and collected himself. He drew magical rejuvenation, jumped awkwardly into the open, and ran headlong for Yult. Jinkke moved behind him, and Minkus glanced back to see her take aim at the golem that was now in pursuit of Penny. There was an explosive clap, and Minkus knew the golem’s fist had been launched again, away from him and away from Jinkke, but toward Penny. Everyone here was in such jeopardy, but he forced the fear away and set his attention on Yult.

He was only paces from the crusader, who’d driven himself back to his weapon and was reaching for it, his face contorted in turmoil and purpose as he dragged the broken skelk behind him. Not quite dead, it clawed at the ground and the norn’s forearm with that horrid tenacity all the test subjects here had displayed, a tenacity Crusader Yult now seemed to share with it. A thick trail of blood extended behind them, spilling as much from the norn’s arm as the entirety of the beast. He screamed a string of norn curses as he went, stopping twice to rant and sob at thin air.

Minkus took the last steps slowly, uncertain if the towering soldier had even caught sight of him in his periphery. “Crusader Yult?” he asked.

The big man stopped in his tracks, beginning to reach a free hand for the sword he’d thrown aside. Without turning his head, he scanned his surroundings, as though uncertain where Minkus’ voice had come from. His countenance grew dark as he gripped the sword’s hilt in one hand and squeezed down on the skelk’s neck in the other.

Minkus took another step, not stowing his weapons, but flipping them to a reverse grip and raising his hands in an attempted signal of peace. “Crusader, how— um, how are you feeling?”

The norn’s head snapped around, pupils narrowed below his shelf of a brow, and he glared primally at Minkus. “I know you,” he growled.

Minkus couldn’t decide if it was a statement or a question. “Yes, Crusader. You do. I—”

“You— you’re asura— but you’re not Pypp.” He shook his head, and when he brought his eyes back to Minkus, there was a sober grief in them. His eyelid twitched. “You’re not Pypp,” he confirmed.

“No,” Minkus agreed. “I’m not. I’m Minkus, Minkus the Large. We met yesterday, and I— well, I want to help you.” He took another half-step toward the norn, finally lowering his own sword to the ground. He didn’t believe the crusader would harm him.

Fjornsson sneered, eyes going feral again. “You.” He rasped the word in accusation. Minkus didn’t know who the norn thought he was now, but he was suddenly grateful he’d held onto his focus.

Fjornsson squared to him, but the skelk in his hand had a fit of energy, flailing from head to tail and slipping free. Yult’s attention flew from Minkus to the mad creature, and as it spun on him again, he laid hold of his greatsword, carving a wild arc through the air and smashing the weapon down, more into the ground beneath the beast than into the beast itself. There was a thick squelch as the blade hit the skelk broadside and rang out against the stones. He did it again. And again. And again. The norn pounded the animal’s midsection flat amid its gurgling protests. Minkus tasted bile.

As the norn’s pounding slams slowed, he shifted a wild eye back to the asura, and Minkus made a snap decision: this was not the time for patient compassion.

“SP-1,” he called, taking a slow step back from the crusader, “defense field.” He saw the spark of the emitter overhead, and two sides of a shimmering dome wrapped around him, tinting the world outside in a calming shade of blue. It felt like waking beneath the tide of the Tarnished Coast.

He didn’t have time to appreciate it, though. Denying Crusader Yult’s madness any further time to grow, Minkus lunged forward, driving the magical dome through the norn and wrapping the huge man’s leg in a tight bearhug. The soldier convulsed just like the healed asura had, but with the massive size difference, the movement threatened to throw Minkus off him entirely. Still, he hung tight, waiting and hoping for a similar peace to set in.

It took several moments, but it came. The norn’s seizing stopped. He tottered and fell aside with a slap and clatter of muscle and armor, and Minkus still clutching to his leg.

Minkus waited another moment, slipping free of the fallen norn but not yet powering down the Seer-essence field or moving far enough away to remove its influence from his patient. Unlike the asura before, the norn was not unconscious.

“Crusader?” He barely got his voice above a whisper. “Crusader Yult? How— uh, how do you feel?”

Fjornsson made a noise, something between a growl and a moan, and he raised a shaky hand to his head. “By the Bear,” he spat. “What just happened? What was that?”

“Well, it probably depends.” Minkus rose to a knee. “Do you mean the madness from the jade magic or the healing from the seer magic? Both were likely… jarring.”

Clear cognition was still returning to the norn, piercing through whatever shadows the agony had left in his mind. He stared at Minkus and blinked a few more times.

Minkus shrugged uncomfortably. “Probably both,” he said, reaching for his ear. “But it’s alright— you’re alright now. You were healed.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Minkus heard the pounding sound of stone feet and Jinkke’s cry of warning, but nothing registered to him faster than Crusader Yult’s enormous hand lashing in at him through the energy field. Adrenaline shot through Minkus, with defensive courage from the deep magics riding tight on its heels and sparking to life along the surface of his body. He had just time to feel the static tingle of the defense before it blew away, absorbing and redistributing the momentum of the norn’s strike. The crusader was temporarily repelled, but he came again, reaching and taking hold of Minkus this time. He swung the asura wide even as he himself rolled away from where he’d lay just a moment before, and Minkus watched the tumult of the room swirl past him. There was a thunderous bash that rattled nearby debris, and Minkus shot a glance over the norn’s sheltering arm as he fell.

The golem’s huge, projectile fist had slammed down right where the two of them had been. It slid past them, driving glass, steel, and half a skelk with it. Minkus lost sight of it as he struck stone and rolled away from the weapon and Crusader Yult, who he now realized had saved him.

“Have to get up,” Yult groaned, not moving much. “Have to get up.”

Minkus nodded. He didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded, and clawed himself to his feet alongside the big soldier.

“SP-1,” he said, now convinced the healing had in fact worked. He couldn’t waste the essence they had. “Dis—”

“Big Brother, no!”

Minkus spun toward his sister’s voice, but the tumble had disoriented him. Which way was she? He gripped his focus and the killswitch, the only weapons he still had on hand. Searching despite his discombobulation, he finally found her after a second.

“Look out!” Penny called from somewhere else.

The room finally stopped spinning, and Minkus realized his sister and his friend were in different directions: Penny toward the room’s entrance and Jinkke farther back into it. And splitting the distance between them was the towering golem, one arm still missing its hand. The construct’s visual receptors were focused not on Minkus, but on Fjornsson, still laid out on the ground. But that, he suddenly realized, wasn’t why Penny and Jinkke were yelling at him. It wasn’t the golem’s gaze they were concerned with; it was the waxing violet glow at its chest.

“Chaos-element two, emanation levels zeroed,” the golem’s vocalizer declared. “Reinitializing imbuement system.”

“Oh, no,” Minkus heard himself say. He was already in motion, though, lunging back at the norn crusader as the light in the golem’s chest flared, blinked out, and erupted into a beam of searing energy that pushed the golem itself back half a step.

“No!” he screamed, thrusting himself and his sister’s magical shield between the weapon and its target. There was a second, blinding flash of light, where the mursaat curse met seer protection, and the world around Minkus disappeared.

For several moments, he tried to blink the world back. At least he thought he did. Was he mad now? He didn’t know what that would feel like, but blackened sight and ringing ears didn’t seem out of the realm of possibilities.

Faintly he heard his sister scream. Penny responded, more a demand than an echo of Jinkke’s fear, and there was the rapid patter of feet, getting louder with every heartbeat. Minkus groped blindly, finding— the ground? He pushed himself up. Had he fallen? Darkness gave way to pulsing stars, which gave way to faint shapes and outlines of the world he’d seen clearly just seconds before. The ringing faded, replaced by sounds of scrabbling, cursing, and something like a sparking sizzle.

Hands were suddenly on him, sliding up and down as if scouring him for information. “Big Brother, are you alright?” his sister all but yelled in his ear.

He reeled, shocked by the sudden return of the world’s volume. “I, uh— yes— I think I am.” Her face came slowly into focus.

“Oh, excelsior,” she sighed. “You terrified me. Don’t do that again!”

“I think your shield worked,” he said, offering a faint grin.

She glanced at the pack with a wince and raised a corrective finger, but a thought hit him.

“Crusader Yult!” Minkus interrupted. “Is he alright?” He turned from his sister to the blurred face of the norn half risen behind him, one hand at his temple.

“I’m at least no worse than I was,” Fjornsson groaned. “I owe you my life twice now, Minkus the Large.”

“Real touching, everyone,” Penny broke in. She grunted like she was straining at something. “And of course I’m glad you’re alive, Biggie—good job there—but I need a hand. This thing won’t be turned off forever.”

Minkus’ mind snapped back to what had happened, back to the golem, the beam, and what he suddenly knew Penny was doing. Jinkke helped him to his feet, and they both assisted Crusader Yult—as much as two asura could.

“Where the hell do I put this thing?” Penny spat. One foot on the golem’s knee-plating, she’d pulled herself up within view of its chest and neck, snaking around it in search of something.

“The haphazard device has several missing armor plates,” Jinkke retorted. “How difficult can it be to insert it in one of them?”

“Do you know where the power core is in this thing?” Penny snapped back. “Because I sure as hell don’t.”

“This was your strategy!”

Penny grimaced down at her. “Why don’t you be a good, little genius, and help me find it?”

“All of you, shut up!” Fjornsson barked, rolling his shoulders, clearly in pain. He wrapped a huge hand around Penny’s arm and pulled her free of the golem. “You need to see its insides?” 

Before awaiting an answer, he took up his greatsword, breathed deep through flared nostrils, and rammed the end of the weapon through an exposed window and up beneath a plate of its chest armor. With a guttural cry, he yanked at the hilt once, twice, and a third time, prying the attached plate away from its frame one inch at a time. It groaned each time, as the norn peeled it back like a steel nutshell. Penny’s eyes went wide.

Before he could bend it away even the width of the killswitch, though, the sound of energy rushed once more to processors and servos, sending a pang of fear through Minkus. He saw the sentiment on everyone else’s face as they backed away from the reawakening golem.

All except his sister, that was. She stood still, ears perked and eyes alight with discovery as she visually scoured the construct. Minkus knew that look and the thousand observation-inspired calculations it hid. 

He almost jumped back to grab her when Jinkke’s expression turned suddenly critical. She stepped away with the others. “The pelvic casing?” she scoffed. “They put the power core in the pelvic casing?”

Light blinked in the golem’s photoreceptors, and Minkus grabbed his sister’s hand. Thinking as quickly as he could, he all but dragged her back to the upturned containment cap he’d found her behind a minute before.

“The pelvic casing!” Jinkke barked at Penny as Minkus pulled her past. “The mush-brains put it in the pelvis!”

Minkus slid Jinkke into cover and glanced back over his shoulder to check on Penny and Yult.

The golem’s initiation sequence hadn’t quite completed, affording the two of them some time to ready themselves. The norn had gotten some distance between himself and the construct before turning to raise his weapon. Penny must have turned back even faster, presumably at Jinkke’s insistence. Minkus only just caught sight of her lunging back at the golem and ramming a hand into the exposed innards at its side.

“That is not the pelvis!” Jinkke called, glaring past Minkus at the human.

Before Minkus could act, either to hide or rejoin the fight, Penny leapt down off the golem and ran to join them, hopping over debris and   breathing hard.

“I said the pelvic casing,” Jinkke repeated, glaring at her. “Not the anywhere-you-damn-well please casing!”

“Yeah, I heard, you little pervert. But there wasn’t a gap there.” She rested hands on her hips, bent forward, and turned back to the golem. “I got as close as I could, so we’ll see what—” The confidence fled from her voice. “What the hell is he doing?”

Minkus followed her gaze to see Fjornsson rushing the construct, sword gripped reverse and rising over his head.

“Get out of there, you idiot!” Penny yelled.

The golem’s photoreceptors fully activated, and its back straightened. The head swiveled, scanning its environment again. It locked on Fjornsson, raising an arm—except, it was the one still missing its hand.

Before it recognized the problem in its attack, the crusader took advantage, lunging inside the construct’s guard with the tip of his greatsword sighted on a seam between its torso and pelvic plates. Minkus heard steel scream as the norn rammed the weapon down into the seam, snatched the hammer off his belt, and started pounding the big weapon farther down inside.

The golem didn’t miscalculate again.

Foregoing the retrieval of its separated hand, the golem used its good arm to wrap the norn in a mechanical bearhug. They weren’t too different in height, but the golem was nearly twice the norn’s width; it utterly enveloped him. Servos whined, metal groaned, and bones popped.

Minkus started forward, but Penny grabbed him by the backplate and tugged him back, yelling again at Crusader Yult. “That thing’s about to blow, you gods-damned—” 

Before she could finish, there was a flash from the construct’s exposed side, and a web of cracking electricity shot out of the towering construct, dancing and arcing to nearby chunks of shattered technology and torn wiring.

Yult screamed, the golem sizzled and contorted, and black smoke rose from inside it. Ozone overwhelmed the rest of the stagnant chamber’s odors.

Minkus, Penny, and Jinkke pulled hands away from their faces, quickly taking hold of their weapons. The golem stood still for a second, arms falling to its sides with a heavy thunk. Crusader Yult fell out of its grasp and crumpled to the floor, his weapons clattering down beside him. The golem didn’t immediately move but its eyes still glowed, the sign of its continued function.

“I told you,” Jinkke hissed. “The pelvis.”

“My ears,” Minkus gasped, interrupting what was sure to be another disagreement. “We have to help him!”

He rushed for the norn, dropped to a knee in the shadow of the golem, and pushed at the collapsed crusader. Getting no response, he felt at Fjornsson’s throat for a pulse and found it. “Thank the Alchemy,” he breathed.

Towering directly over him, the golem, Minkus realized, was still operational. As near to it as he was, he couldn’t even see the thing’s head beyond its barreled chest and the long greatsword still protruding from its groin. But neither did it make an effort to see him. It simply stood over him and the crusader, its right side moving spastically. It twisted at the hip repeatedly, torquing its upper body as though trying to force a deadened limb to unwilled movement. It refused. Even from his odd and unnerving vantage, Minkus could see it: the golem’s right arm, still missing the projectile fist, had been paralyzed by Penny’s killswitch.

Minkus looked back to the others. “I think it accomplished more than you think,” he said, pointing.

Penny saw it and straightened. “See, it did do something. The damn thing only has one good arm now.” That self-assurance Minkus had grown fond of entered her voice. “And— gods, did the norn do that?”

Minkus followed her gaze. She was looking at the construct’s pelvic armor, which had been peeled back at the corner, like an uncomfortably placed, steel flower petal.

“It’s not big enough yet,” Penny said, “but damn if  it’s not close. And we still have one more killswitch.

“We just need—” Penny rifled around in her hip pouch for a second and drew something out. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have another plan.”

Minkus felt a tired grin play at his lips. He didn’t really know what Penny was angling at, but there was no time to ask. Before he could get them to help move Crusader Yult aside, he noticed that Penny and Jinkke were backpedaling away in different directions, eyes no longer on him at all.

”Rerouting power,” the golem’s vocal box announced. Minkus gawked up at it. “Redefining primary target. Highest threat.”

“Which of us do you think that is?” Penny chuckled nervously, fidgeting with her pistol’s loader. 

The golem advanced, stumbling a step before finding equilibrium between its mobile and immobile limbs. One towering leg moved forward, and Minkus grabbed the norn’s right arm, rolling him back to his opposite side as the huge, stone foot slammed down where half of Fjornsson had just been. He then rocked the big man the other way, straining against the soldier’s overwhelming mass to push him out from under the next leg’s wobbling stride. The golem passed overhead, like a forest come to life, and Minkus caught his breath atop Yult’s unconscious form.

Penny swore, and Minkus looked back at her. Between the golem’s legs, he could see her backing farther away, until she reached the wall and turned to go back toward the room’s entrance. The golem tracked her movement.

“Highest threat? Me? No, come on. There’s a wizard and a genius in here. I’m just a shopkeeper from— shit!”

The golem’s left hand rose, opened, and exploded off its arm. As Penny turned to run, she saw the movement and dropped to a slide. The huge, open hand flew past, no more than a foot above and ahead of her, and smashed into the wall beyond. For a moment, it sat still beside its deactivated twin, and Penny stared. That moment was short; the whirring began, and the hand rattled back to life. Penny leapt up and took off, moving for cover behind the one test cylinder that was still somehow standing, almost at the end of the row. Through the grime that coated the inside of the glass, Minkus saw the flicker of a tail, the flash of teeth, and he knew something was still alive in there.

It wasn’t the only thing still alive, though. Another movement caught Minkus’ eye among the debris almost equidistant between him, Penny, and the golem. He squinted, and the squirming thing came into focus. He couldn’t help but gasp at the sight: the skelk was moving again—at least half of it. Two grasping forelegs drew it along across the fallen stone and steel. Gore and entrails dragged behind, where either Yult or the golem’s flung hand had ripped it in two. Its gurgling squawks were faint but definitely there, and it sniffed the air in Crusader Yult’s direction.

Minkus lowered himself over the fallen soldier and reconsidered his next move. He was exhausted. Under any normal circumstances, he’d probably feel the magic of compassion flowing into him, empowering and pointing him to revive the norn. He tried to open himself to it, but all he felt was his own heaving breaths. That, and the constant trickle of rejuvenation that he always had. That would be a far cry from what outright healing could do, but for now, it was all he had to give. Pinching his eyes shut, Minkus concentrated and surrendered—that was harder than usual—and the gift of his rejuvenation left him, moving on to the crusader.

Minkus slumped forward with a sigh. A moment ago, he’d felt dry, in kind of a spiritual sense, like a fern browned by a lack of sunshine. What came now was pure, physical exhaustion. All his wounds and worn muscles screamed their aching complaints at once.

Pushing it aside, though, Minkus watched and waited for Yult to wake up.

“I could really use some help here!” Penny cried from the other side of the standing cylinder. “Smalls,” she called, “would you please get this thing’s attention!”

With less hesitation than Minkus might have liked, Jinkke’s rifle cracked: once, twice, and again before she stopped to reload. All three of her shots twanged off the golem’s armor, twice in the arm, and once right in the head. The attack didn’t divert the construct from its course, but it did make it pause, looking aside at the second assailant. Penny took the short opportunity, popping around one side of the half-opaque, glass cylinder to fire a shot at the machine’s midsection. Minkus couldn’t see what she was doing, but she disappeared and reappeared again from the other side of the containment unit, with something in her hand that trailed a small thread of smoke into the air. As the golem looked back at her, she gave the explosive a ginger, focused toss, and it disappeared behind the construct right where her shot must have  landed.

Penny waited a breath and broke for the landing at the entrance of the room, drawing the golem’s attention once more. It trundled after her, the smoke of Penny’s explosive now rising over its shoulder—had she stuck it to the golem? The smoke trail weakened, and the bomb exploded, thundering hollowly against the construct’s armor. It swayed with the blast but didn’t topple, catching itself and redoubling its pursuit of Penny.

Surprisingly she laughed at it. “Eat that, you creepy, mechanical turd!” She shot a glance past it to Minkus. “The hole’s bigger now. You still have the kills— oh, shit.” 

From behind the golem, Minkus saw it a second after Penny did: the faint purple corona rising over the shoulders of the big machine. Fresh adrenaline hit him, and he nearly took off for Penny, when from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the half-skelk again. Its weave and wobble still angled it toward him and Yult. And the crusader was still unconscious.

Minkus spun toward his sister but paused. Could he really put her in harm’s way? No, of course not. She was already here, yes, but that didn’t mean he could—

Penny spat a curse, and Minkus stole a glance back at his friend. Climbing the steps to the entry landing, she barely kept herself a step ahead of the golem’s effort to trace her movement with its charging weapon. She was in trouble, even worse trouble than either he or his sister would be with that skelk, and he was pretty sure she’d done it to give him an opening at the golem’s power core. Pride flashed through him at the same time his resolution did. He had the field projector and the remaining killswitch. Whatever his condition, he was equipped for this.

“Jinkke!” Minkus called, snatching up his magnet and already stepping away. “Please watch Crusader Yult!”

“What?” she demanded, though she’d already started obediently toward him. “What are you doing?”

There was no time to explain, not fully. “The skelk,” he said, pointing to the crazed half-creature. “It’s still alive—sort of. Watch the crusader. I will help Penny!”

As fast as he was able, he sped off after the construct, eyes locked on the space just in front of it, between the readying cannon and Penny. That was where he had to put himself if he was going to stop another blast with the seer-essence shield. Jinkke yelled something after him, but Minkus couldn’t make it out. Something about the projector pack, he thought? About it working? He didn’t understand, though. It did work. He already knew it did. That was why he was going to use it again.

Minkus set the thought aside and pushed himself. His pulse pounded in his ears, and even just across the yards between him and the golem, his legs burned and wobbled. He didn’t realize how much he’d come to depend on the stamina his underlying magic usually offered him.

Even still, thank the Alchemy, he outpaced the golem. Penny had done her best to remain hard to hit, and it had bought Minkus the time he needed. “SP-1,” he gasped, leaping to the rail between Penny and the construct, “defense field.”

Being sure to keep far enough away from Penny that the field wouldn’t harm her, Minkus monkeyed his way over the railing and waited for the seer-essence field to burst to life around him.

He waited, and Penny continued to flee from its aim. She called something back at him, though, telling him to— get out of the way? That didn’t make any sense.  He and the projector pack were all that stood between her and the agony weapon.

Minkus kept himself in the construct’s line of sight for the second it would take the field to ignite. Then two seconds. Three. But nothing happened. No blue flare sparked overhead, no snap of energy brought the two sides of the dome together in front of him, and absolutely nothing stood between him and the neon sunburst he’d put himself in front of. Still, something kept the golem tracking Penny, not him. That was when he heard the subtle sparking sound again, just behind him. It was the same sound he’d caught after the first mursaat blast had struck the shield instead of Crusader Yult. It was louder now, though, more aggressive and erratic. Even here—maybe especially here—it made him curious.

Minkus twisted, straining to bring the emitter into his periphery. He saw it poked up from the top of his pack and… sparking wildly. It was more a lightning rod than anything else, and that was the moment both Jinkke and Penny’s warnings came into relief.

His mind raced, and his thoughts were just as wobbly as his legs had been a moment earlier. Did he really have no shield? He knew he had no shield, but why? It had worked the first time. It had absorbed the blast of mursaat agony magic and— and it broke? Had it broken that last time? How would he protect Penny? How would he protect Jinkke? They’d worked so hard on this device, to keep him— to keep them all safe. Had Minkus broken it? What was he going to do now? The golem. What was the golem—

His senses snapping into place, and he swiveled back to the construct just as its huge fist smashed down on the railing between them. Steel screamed and bent, collapsing under the weight of the strike.

Minkus jumped back, but not before fingers shot open and closed back around him like a fat-fingered child gripping a doll. He heard steel creak under the pressure, only this wasn’t the rail; he felt his breastplate pressing into his ribs. Pain screamed through Minkus’ body as the armor bent, and the golem tossed him back into the middle of the testing room, where he bounced and slid to a stop. Something metal hit the ground and clicked away from him.

The golem’s footsteps approached behind him.

“Desist now!” a sharp voice screeched.

Minkus could hardly focus on the words, let alone determine who had cried them. It took everything to bypass the throbbing in his ribs.

He tried to get his hands under him, to lift himself up into position to see anything, but pain lanced through his left forearm. Nearly crumpling, he relied on his right arm as he fought to see what was happening now. Was Yult awake? Had Penny gotten to safety? Who was this new, screaming person? And where was the golem? 

That last answer came fastest. A massive shadow drifted over Minkus from behind. He bit back a cry and rolled to face it.

“Enforcer, halt current activity!” that same voice ordered again. This time the golem stopped, returning its foot to the ground and standing at attention. The violet aurora at its middle had subsided, and though his heart still pounded, Minkus found the space to draw a few ragged but much needed breaths.

 “I am going to scrap Vadd like the useless tool he is for the needless specificity of these commands!” Suddenly Minkus recognized the voice. It was Kikka. He craned his neck to see her. 

From his position she was upside down, but it seemed she’d stripped herself down to an undershirt to get free of Penny’s glue. Even that was half doused in the sallow, stringy adhesive and blotches of dirt and debris that she must have collected in crossing the devastated room. She looked as weary as Minkus felt, but it didn’t seem to stop her. She stood beside Jinkke and Yult, an energy rifle aimed at Minkus’ sister. She looked at him—more specifically, his sparking pack—and her fury flared to life.

“What have you done?!” She spat, turning her attention to the golem. “Of everything in this lab, you destroy the one device I did not create and have no schematics for recreating? The one device I want?? You’re as useless as your project overseer!”

The construct stood still, staring ahead with those lifeless, glowing eyes.

Kikka’s eyes moved down its casing, and her face twisted in amusement at the sight of knicks and dents where Yult had pounded away at the construct’s thick exterior. Her expression darkened again as her gaze passed over the raised plates the norn had pried apart. And when she reached the components in its yet unplated side, singed by Penny’s killswitch, her childish face roiled into a twitching grimace of rage.

She remained quiet, though: unsettlingly so, as she bent down to toy with a scattering of stonework rubble at her dainty, bare feet. Minkus had no idea what to make of this, but he took advantage, splitting his attention between her strange pause and the flow of rejuvenation that he’d surrendered to Fjornsson. It hadn’t been enough to rouse the norn, and now Minkus needed it more. His side stabbed with any breath he drew too deeply.

“And you,” Kikka suddenly screamed. “You!”

Something struck Minkus in the head. Heavy, jagged, and fast, it sent a sobering spike through his skull and down his spine, breaking his focus before he could request the return of his restorative flow.

“You might have thwarted everything,” Kikka went on. “Everything I’ve striven for, everything I’ve earned and deserve! Just like those astigmatic morons in command, always standing in my way, obstructing the progress they claim to enable!” Minkus refocused in time to see Kikka snatch another palm-sized stone off the ground and hurl it at him. It sent a wave of stars across his vision.

“You failed!” she barked, waving the rifle a little in her hand. “Despite your most infuriating efforts, you’ve failed miserably. In fact, in the midst of your hilariously catastrophic failure, you’ve brought me an additional gift for my research.”

“But you said it,” Minkus groaned. Talking seemed to amplify the ache in his skull and the knife in his ribs. “It’s broken.”

There was a pause and then a mirthless laugh. “You buffoon. I’ll just collect the scraps of that energy emitter off your cadaver and reverse-engineer it.”

“It’s far more complex than that,” Jinkke piped. It was a squeakier sound than Minkus thought she’d probably intended, but speaking at all from the firing end of a gun was brave. His sister was certainly brave.

“Its a unique design,” she said to Kikka, forcing steel into her spine. “A modernized application of highly outdated schematics, but exclusively used with a singular magical essence in mind. Even if you did manage to reverse engineer it, the odds of fumbling upon the correct emission fuel would be astronomical. You need our assistance.”

“I need no one!” Kikka screamed back. She was feet away from Jinkke. The volume was unnecessary. “If the two of you could engineer it, I have nothing to worry about. All I need to know is where you came from—who sent you. Was it central command? Those cowards would unquestionably hide behind the guise of the Vigil or any other organization if it would protect their political positioning, but even they wouldn’t rely on a bookah and a norn.”

“Who is central command?” Minkus asked. “Command of what?”

Kikka looked back at Minkus over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing. “So you actually are with the Vigil? Have those self-aggrandizing troglodytes finally run out of other crusades to burn their time on?”

“We’re not with anyone,” Minkus said quietly. “Just our friends.”

Kikka’s jaw tightened, her little nose twitching with the snarl that played at her lip. “Enforcer, ready all weapons and target nearest threat.” She backpedaled around Jinkke to position herself with both siblings in view.

The golem planted one foot forward, bending over him and releasing the latches on its one good hand. Energy funneled to the dish in its chest, and that deathly purple glow sprung to life again.

“Tell me who dispatched you four!” Kikka screamed.

Four. Minkus, Jinkke, Yult, and—Penny!

 Minkus gasped and rolled. After all his effort to draw the golem back away from his friend, he’d completely forgotten about her. He glanced back to see Penny at the far end of the landing. The human stood stiff, hands in the air and glaring hotly at…

 Minkus felt his heart sink into the pit of his stomach. While he’d been fooling with a broken projector and manhandled by the golem, he’d missed the guard who’d somehow gotten the jump on his friend. He trained a gun of some kind on her, and she no longer held any weapon of her own. Her usual defiance looked frail, only loosely masking fear.

Flipping his attention back and forth between his friend and his sister, Minkus wracked his brain for anything he could do.

“Who sent you?!” Kikka screeched again.

“No one did,” Minkus replied. He could hear the slowing of his own speech as he tried to divide himself between speaking to Kikka, finding the deep magics again, and coming up with any plan he could to get his sister and his friend out alive—he hoped one of them was doing that last part too. “The Vigil did help us, sort of,” he amended. “But we just— well, we just came. For our friends.”

Minkus glanced aside in time to see Kikka’s face sour at the word. “Your friends? What kind of simpering sentimental jargon is that? Friends have nothing to do with…” She suddenly trailed off, her face going slack as she stared at him. But the loosening tension in her face wasn’t indicative of sympathy. It wasn’t even pity. What Minkus saw in Kikka’s otherwise delicate face was sudden and unexpected comprehension, and that quickly twisted into mockery.

“My ears,”Kikka hissed, glancing to Jinkke, who glowered back at her with deepening anger. “He’s an atypical. Nothing about this insipidity is feigned, is it? He’s entirely serious.” She actually laughed. “He’s answering my inquiries in earnest.”

Even the mirth left her face then, leaving nothing but scalding contempt. Minkus had seen that look before too: the prouder the asura, the more it seared them when they missed his disability.

“Fine,” she spat, looking again to Jinkke. “If he lacks the wit to answer my question, you do it. Who sent you?”

“No one,” Jinkke confirmed. She thought about it a moment, letting a smirk curl her lip. She breathed a faint snicker and nodded toward Minkus. “Well, no. More factually, he sent us. He’s the reason we’re here, and he’s being entirely straightforward: we are here to liberate our friends, for no reason other than that they are, indeed, our friends.” She paused to smile at him. “No one—likely in a very literal sense—is a more loyal friend than my brother.”

Kikka blinked, gaping at her—at all of them. Her hands tightened around the weapon butted up to her shoulder. Even at his distance, Minkus could see the white of her knuckles as that tension spread back to her face.

In the back of his mind, Minkus was still casting out prayers to wherever the deep magics came from. Prayers for rejuvenation, for healing, for courage— for anything. As he did, he flashed a glance back at Penny, not really knowing who was in the most need at this point.

To his surprise, Penny was already looking at him. Or, no— she was looking beside him: just left of him, in fact. She nodded subtly, and he rolled a hair in that direction, one eye on the firm over him and the other on… the killswitch. That was what had clinked off across stonework when The golem threw him! It was within his reach, and so was the golem.

“You are all brainless, blathering imbeciles!” he heard Kikka scream. “Friends? Friends? Loyalty? What sort of insipid nonsense are you all retching up and expecting me to swallow: that you burgled into my facility, devastated my testing chamber, and threw my plans into disarray with no intent at all except to free one Alchemy-discarded Sylvari?!”

“And Scholar Yissa,” Minkus added. He was trying to keep everything in his head at once, but           he still couldn’t forget Scholar Yissa.

“And wrecking your little toy here,” Penny called, gesturing at the golem with a sudden gleam in her eye. “That was Biggie’s idea too, sure. But the longer this shitshow goes on, the more it looks like fun.”

The more they spoke, the brighter Kikka’s ire burned, but that comment, Penny’s comment, seemed to put her over the top. She stepped forward and slammed the butt of her weapon into Jinkke’s nose, knocking her to the ground with a sharp crack.

“Hey, stop!” Minkus yelled. Penny barked something too. “What are you—”

“What am I—?!” Kikka screeched in mockery, putting a foot to Jinkke’s chest and lowering the rifle’s barrel within inches of her bleeding nose. “What I do is none of your or anyone else’s concern! It’s you four imbeciles who’ve overstepped. It’s you who have meddled in my work, and it’s you who will suffer the consequences of it! You should have killed me when the Alchemy presented you with an opportunity.” She nodded to the guard across the room.

Jinkke met Minkus’ eye and confirmed in a look what he’d already felt. Kikka’s patience—if it could be called that—was at an end.

Minkus’ mind spun. What could he do? The magic—he’d never known he could hit its limits so hard, but he had. He didn’t feel it—Penny and Jinkke were each in jeopardy, and he didn’t feel it. The killswitch could put down the golem. He could stop it, escape it, and run to help the others. But he wouldn’t reach them in time; he couldn’t do the calculations like Jinkke would, but they were too far, and in opposite directions. The projector pack could— no, it was damaged. It would do nothing. It was— well, maybe it was something. Kikka has talked about it.

“Wait,” Minkus cried. “Just wait, please. You can have it. The— the pack I mean. I’ll give it to you.”

Kikka glanced over at him, and he could just see her suddenly cold sneer between those dainty braids. “Please,” she hissed. “You can’t bargain with something I’m already going to take off your corpse.” She gestured again to the guard before turning her attention to the golem. “Enforcer, fire. Full expenditure.”

Everything happened between the thumping beats of Minkus’ heart. The guard nodded, Kikka set her eyes back to Jinkke, and the thrumming light in the golem’s chest winked out above him. Penny swore, Jinkke squealed, and Minkus closed his eyes hearing nothing but the two of them. The darkness behind his eyelids was pushed out by a sudden starburst of light, and in that fraction of a second, he sought courage one more time, begging the source behind the deep magics to give him the protection he needed, as much as he could handle with what energy he had left.

And the source answered.

Minkus felt it. It was faint, but he felt it: that tingle that had raced across him just minutes prior and so many times before that in training. He felt it. Only maybe this wasn’t exactly the same, he realized. Something in it felt thin, just like he did; it felt— well, it felt like it had before he’d learned how to share it between himself and his friends.

Somehow Minkus knew—he just knew—that he had a choice. Only it was no choice at all. He let the protection go.

Time picked back up. Kikka’s energy rifle whined and fired, the crack of the guard’s pistol split the air, and Minkus blinked his eyes open to see a flourescent purple sun. It consumed the construct behind it, then burst forward.

As a hundred different thoughts pounded him at once, he held tight to just a few: barefoot walks with his appa and amma, skelk-skelk-ooze at the loch with Jinkke, and beers with Penny and Eddie. Above all, he held the knowledge that his sister and friend were safe.

Before he felt himself slip, Minkus sighed a thank-you.