Note from the author:
When I first started the story, the Usurpation protagonists weren't going to be much more than early opponents for the heroes to defeat as they worked their way through the invaders' ranks. Esme in particular would've just been a lieutenant of Marshal Orion without going too deep into her as a character. As you can probably tell, such plans have since changed, and Team Far Lands has developed quite a bit since their introduction. Judging by the reviews I've seen, I think I've handled them well- and on that note, I'd like to thank everyone who's been reading and reviewing so far once again. The feedback means a lot to me.
And now for a very loaded chapter. Enjoy!
Chapter 45: A Lost Cause
The church was fairly prominent, a cobblestone building towering above most of the other structures in the town. No Illagers were present, all of them having left their posts to fight off the Usurpation team, so Esme was allowed to walk in unhindered.
There was a metal trapdoor in the middle of the room, covering something in the floor. Through the grates she could hear running water below. Esme pulled a lever to open it, revealing a ladder, and climbed down into the darkness.
"What are you hiding…?"
At the bottom she reached a dim, narrow corridor that echoed with the sounds of the water. Puzzled, Esme followed along it until she reached a sealed iron door. There was no lever to open this one, so she broke it down with her pickaxe and stepped into a very perplexing room.
It was an enormous, cube-shaped chamber made of obsidian. Pillars of water drained from the ceiling and into a shallow trench in the floor, arranged in a ring around the centerpiece of the room. Esme could see iron bars behind the water, and realized this was another prison, one with a single large cell. She didn't know why water of all things was needed, but what intrigued her more was what she could see inside the cell.
The inhabitant wasn't a human or a villager, but a large black mass which sat in the middle of its cage. If it hadn't shuddered and shifted around, she might not have even thought it was alive. Esme stared at it, and as she took a step closer the thing moved again, craning its head up.
"Who? Who there?"
It was a rough, airy voice, one that was hard to understand. The creature hadn't moved from where it lay curled up on the floor. The most Esme could really make out was a pair of bright purple eyes, which she saw glowing behind the pillars of water.
"Don't want to eat. Go away," it rasped. "Don't hurt me!"
Whatever it was, Esme felt sorry for it. She looked around the chamber and spotted a chest sitting beside the cell, as well as a tower of stone blocks. There was a ladder attached, and it appeared to be tall enough to let an observer overlook the prisoner from above the water pillars. Esme inspected the chest first, finding a few books inside. She flipped one labeled 'Directions for Containment' open and frowned at the notes within. Her grasp of the Inlanders' written language was beyond that of many other Usurpers (or, whatever she was now), but even she had trouble comprehending the rough handwriting.
"Protocol… secure her- you're a girl, then? Okay… iron bars surrounded by water… okay, I get all of that. Let's see, it says… constant drips from above to keep her still?"
Puzzled, she kept going to the next page.
"Weekly feeding… monthly cage cleaning. Douse her with a bucket of water before entering the cage."
She stashed the book in her inventory, collecting the others in the chest while she was at it.
"Not hungry. Not hungry. Go away," the creature whined, lowering her head again.
Esme climbed the ladder to get a better idea of what was happening. At the top, she found a row of wet sponges set up over the cage, each letting out drops of water every few seconds onto the prisoner. Through a small gap in the cell, she could also see why the water was so integral to the Illagers' containment strategy: whatever the creature was, every time a drop of water landed on her it would hiss and sizzle against her body. The larger drops caused her to make a labored, agitated grunt on impact, and she fidgeted even more.
"Is the water burning you?!" she gasped.
The creature groaned, curling up further. "Don't want to eat! Don't hurt me!"
Esme's heart ached. She had no idea what the prisoner was, or whether she was dangerous, but she couldn't find it in herself to leave the poor thing alone. "I'm not one of them, I promise. My name is Esme. Do you want me to let you out?"
That didn't get a reply. After a few seconds of waiting, Esme decided to take matters into her own hands and leaned over from the ladder, breaking the sponges with her pickaxe. She then placed leftover wooden planks over the spots where the water pillars originated, cutting off the flow on one side of the cell. By the time she'd climbed back down the ladder, the creature had stopped whimpering but still hadn't moved.
"I-it's okay," Esme told her. "The Illagers- um… the bad people won't hurt you anymore. I'm going to open the cage now, okay?"
Still nothing. Sighing, she swung her pickaxe at the iron bars, breaking apart a hole in them until it looked wide enough for the creature to fit through. "There, it's open. You're free to go."
"I found her!"
Esme jumped back, snapping her gaze toward the entrance to the obsidian chamber. An IR3 agent in battered havenite armor and wielding an iron sword stood there. Two others entered behind him, and Sir Paolo brought up the rear. He stared at Esme with a frown.
"There you are. Overseer Fornax says you've been marked for execution."
She tensed up, drawing her broken sword. "Where's the rest of your team?"
"We're all that's left," Paolo hissed. "The guards proved stronger than expected, and now I'm being told that you destroyed the Titan? Did they all die to those Illagers for nothing?"
"Fornax wanted me to sic the Titan on defenseless civilians! Your agents were killed just so Fornax could see if I could bring myself to kill the innocent! Does that sound right to you?"
Paolo glared at her. "Innocent? They're Inlanders, Esme! Enemies! They're the ones who've kept us out for generations, it's because of them that we've all had to grow up in the wastes! How could you betray us like this?"
Esme's shoulders slumped. "I used to think my place was to do whatever Fornax asked of me, without question. I wanted to think she had what was best in mind for me, for all of us. But… if the Usurpation Army's idea of a worthy cause is needless slaughter, and if we- the people it was formed to save from the wastes- are nothing but expendable to those at the top, then I don't want to be a Usurper!"
The three agents blocked her way out, awaiting instruction. Paolo and Esme locked eyes, staring each other down in tense silence. She thought she could see something in his face, a small hint of conflict, a suggestion that what she'd said might have gotten through to him.
But his expression hardened, and his grip tightened on his sword. "You really have lost your way. Take her down, agents."
Esme backed up, trying to think of a way out. She couldn't dig through obsidian fast enough to get away, and there were no other exits. Armed with a pickaxe and half a sword, she doubted her chances against the four opponents, and while Sir Paolo did not have a Genesis Core the odds still weren't in her favor.
"Is this it? Was it all a waste?"
In her brief freedom from the Usurpation, what had she accomplished? The townsfolk wouldn't be able to avoid capture forever, and it wasn't like they trusted her. Had all she done been incurring the wrath of Fornax, who'd marked her for death for not complying?
"If that's what it is… then even if I have to die here, I'm not dying for HER. She never really cared about me, did she?!"
Paolo remained where he was by the door with one agent, while the other two began to make their way around the cage toward her. Esme backed up, clutching her broken blade in grim defiance.
"Free…"
Everyone's gazes snapped to the cage, where the enormous black creature was pulling herself upright. Without the water and the bars on her side blocking the way, Esme could finally get a good look at her, yet she was left with even less of an idea of what exactly she was seeing.
The prisoner was humanoid in the loosest sense of the word, bipedal and with two arms hanging low as she struggled to balance herself, but everything else about her was practically alien. She stood almost as tall as the Warden from Tenebyss, and while her limbs weren't nearly as thick they were still broader than any human's. She wasn't wearing anything, not that it really mattered; her entire body was covered in pitch black scales speckled with the occasional dark gray where water had burned through. Her hands and feet each ended in four dulled claws, and her face was unnaturally elongated, looking more like a snout with rows of long, sharp teeth. Esme had seen the glow of her eyes before, but now that she had a clear view of them she could see they were entirely purple, not just her irises. As she began to stumble toward the hole in the cage, a long tail dragged behind her.
"What is that?" gasped one of the agents.
Esme could only watch in awe. The prisoner exited her cell, each step shaking the obsidian floor, and looked her way.
"Saved me," she said after a moment, her eyes fixed on Esme. Then she turned, slowly moving her violet gaze to the four Usurpation soldiers clutching their weapons. "Now, I save you."
Free of her prison, she stretched out her back and shook off a few lingering drops of the Burning. The room was large enough for her to stand upright for the first time in ages. She didn't know how long she'd been there, or how she'd arrived to begin with. All she remembered was the Burning, and the bad people who'd tormented her with it.
But the bad people were nowhere to be seen that day. Instead, someone new had come, someone with the same skin color as them but with different clothes, different tools, and different shapes to her head and body. And she didn't sound like the bad people either: they were loud and cruel, she was soft and kind. The strange one had opened the cage and stopped the Burning from flowing. Now she was cornered by four other strange ones, each looking ready to harm her. The prisoner may not have known who her rescuer was, or who the people after her were, but she owed the strange one for breaking her out. She stood tall, baring her teeth at the four enemies as they clutched their long metal sticks. The two in front each took a step closer, preparing to attack.
She lunged, taking the first by surprise with a swipe of her arm. Her claws, dulled from trying to wipe away the Burning which always fell on her, were not sharp enough to break through the metal he wore, but the blow hurled him into the black wall. He crashed into it and fell, and didn't get back up. The second charged, swinging the metal stick at her. It connected with her side and broke in half, barely leaving a mark. She brought a fist down on the cloaked person's head. A "crack," a gasp, and the bad one dropped.
The air stunk with fear. Her eyes narrowed at the last two, who'd backed away toward the exit after seeing their fellows die. She leaped after them, grabbing the pair before they could make it through the door and dragging both back into the chamber. One of them stabbed at her with his stick, finding a gap in her scales where the Burning had worn them down. The sharp end pierced her hide, and she roared in pain before slamming the cloaked person on the ground as hard as she could. She squeezed her hand around the last one, feeling the metal he wore crack and bend around him. But he was cleverer than the others: he reached his stick out to the Burning and swung it toward her, sending searing droplets of it across her face. With a howl, she dropped him and tried to wipe it away before it could sting her eyes. Her foe took the opening and stabbed her in the back, his Burning-covered blade sizzling against her scales and making her roar again.
She turned, swinging her arm out in a rage but missing him. He splashed her again with more of the vile substance from around the cage, and enough of it got onto her knee that she was forced into a crouch, desperately trying to wipe it off even as it stung her claws and hands. The man drew nearer, hitting her with more of the Burning every step he took as he prepared to strike her one last time. But he'd neglected her tail, which she whipped around when he'd gotten close enough. It collided with his head, and the force actually made him spin before he dropped. He was dead before he hit the ground.
"You… you killed them…"
The strange one- Esme, she'd called herself- had slumped against the wall, her hands over her mouth and her eyes wide. She looked like she was going to be sick.
"They hurt you," she replied. "I save. Yes?"
Esme, staring at the ceiling, just gave her a nod and stumbled away toward the exit. She paused before entering the narrow hall, then looked back at the prisoner. "Can you fit through here? I… I'll widen it for you…"
She watched Esme swing her curved metal tool at the black rocks forming the walls, to little effect. Impatient, and seeing no progress, she stepped forward and pushed Esme aside as gently as she could. Her arms and legs felt weak from spending so long curled up in that cage, but without the Burning to keep her subdued she was still strong enough to smash through the black blocks with ease. The gray ones behind them were even easier to destroy, and it didn't take her long to break a path all the way to a point where the tunnel led upwards.
"L-let me go first," she heard Esme say. Confused, she squeezed herself against the wall to let her pass.
She watched the strange one climb up the tunnel using a set of wooden handles on the wall, unable to shake her fascination with the small creature. What was she, if not one of the bad ones? She'd said something about Usurpers, but the prisoner had no idea what that meant.
Once Esme had reached the top, she followed by smashing apart more stone blocks and climbing the wall after her, clinging to narrow cracks in the rocks until they'd switched to a softer, orange material she'd never seen before. It broke even easier than the stone. She caught up to Esme, emerging through one last layer of rocks, and found herself in another stone room with a wooden door. She broke through that as well…
The prisoner had never seen the world beyond her cage. She was under a vast, endless expanse the same color as the Burning, but it wasn't painful to her scales. It felt dry, warm, and soothing. All around her were things she'd never seen, other materials in strange shapes and sizes. The smells were different, too, nearly overwhelming her snout at the rush of sensations. She squinted, unable to look directly at the glowing thing high above her. What was it? What was anything? And where did she belong now?
Others were watching, and they reeked of fear at the sight of her like Esme's attackers did. They weren't the same, though, with warmer skin tones than her or the bad ones and much different clothing.
"More enemies?" she asked Esme. "You stay. I save you."
"N-NO! You don't have to!" The reply was frantic, with Esme jumping in front of her with her arms out to either side. "They're not the bad people, just leave them alone."
Whatever she might have thought, the watchers didn't look any less nervous at the sight of them both. She looked down at Esme as she turned to address them. "The Illagers and the Usurpers are… are dead," she told them. "You're safe now. I'll just… be going."
They whispered to each other, but Esme didn't speak to them again. Instead she turned and looked up at her. "Uh… thank you for saving me down there. Do you have somewhere safe to go? I don't think these people will let you stay here."
She thought about it, and very quickly came up short. She remembered nothing about herself before being stuck down there, surrounded by the Burning and trapped by the bad people. At a loss, she just shook her head and said, "Follow you."
Esme blinked. "Follow… me? You want to come with me?"
"Yes. I follow you. Keep safe. We go… you and me. What we do now?"
Her question didn't get an answer right away. Esme stared at her with a face scrunched in confusion. Just as she was about to repeat herself, her new friend cleared her throat and looked away, in another direction.
"Well… there's somebody else who I want to help. He's the only person I think I trust right now, but he's with… he's with other bad people. I have to find him."
"Okay. I help you. We go together. Find somebody else. Yes!" she exclaimed with a satisfied grunt. "You go! I follow!"
Esme gave the other people one last look, then started walking between their buildings along the warm, soft ground. She followed, appreciating the heat and the light all around them, so different to her dark, cold dungeon. Wherever they were going, it would be fun. She could tell.
"What's your name?" Esme asked when the last of the buildings were behind them, and only the long orange world was ahead. "I'm sorry, I should have asked you that sooner."
She growled. "Bad people… call me Dark Beast. Am Dark Beast."
"Well, you don't need to be called that anymore. Maybe… let me see here." Esme held a brown and white thing, flipping it open with a pleasant rustling noise. She stared at it, turning over other thin white things before she stared at the black squiggling lines on its surface with a frown.
"I don't think I know this word. Dargan? Drag-On? Dragging?" Esme squinted at another squiggle. "And-Er… wait, no, I think… End. Ender, it says. Like the Forge? Well… you do look similar to their robes. Maybe there's a connection…"
Something clicked in her head, and she excitedly beat her tail against the soft ground. "An-der! Am Ander!"
Esme closed the rustling thing and looked up at her. "Did you just remember that?"
She grinned. "No! Like sound. Ander. I like Ander sound."
"Uh… o-okay, sure. I'll call you… Ander."
"And you Esme! You… what are you?"
Ander, as she'd decided, looked at the strange one with an eager smile. She was still wondering what she was, if not the same thing as the bad ones. As they kept walking, with the giant glowing ball above them, Esme stared at the ground. She only replied with a mutter which Ander could barely hear.
"I'm… not sure what I am anymore."
Did Ray dare think traveling in the Nether had become boring?
His mission to escort the two Ender Forge members largely consisted of walking through winding tunnels carved deep in the netherrack, where none of the local monsters had made their homes. No skeletons, no pig beasts, nothing was down there to impede their progress. It was just a long, slow march through the stuffy corridors, one which they'd been on for the last day with just a few breaks in the middle. At least now Commandant Red wasn't looking over Ray's shoulder the whole time.
"Did your men dig these tunnels?" he asked one of the masked and robed Forgers, a stout man with a gravelly voice who'd introduced himself as Dominic, at some point during the march.
"No. The Mouth of the Banished King has used them to move troops and informants around the continent unnoticed, but we believe they date back further than even the original Ender Forge. There are many tunnels like it, sprawling around the continent."
"This isn't the same route we took to get to the badlands from Tenebyss, though," Ray said. "Why didn't we use one then? Is there not a tunnel between them?"
Dominic shook his head. "Most of the tunnels leading to and from Tenebyss have been discovered and filled in. The deepest, most secretive ones are intact, but ever since the Warden moved in, they have been too dangerous to use."
He would have preferred to not be reminded of that monster. His thoughts flashed to Samuel, and then to Blake, two important figures in one of the most harrowing days of his life. Ray wished he could return and find the former's body to give him a proper burial; the latter… he wasn't sure how he felt about the latter. He wasn't even sure if Blake was still alive. Had he escaped after all, if none of the Usurpation soldiers reported finding him?
"Does he know his friend is dead?" he thought once more, suddenly reminded of the boy whose journal Esme had taken.
His stomach turned the more he thought of that day, and he was glad to not be on the front lines.
Keeping track of time in the Nether was difficult, but the second Forger, a burly man named Clark whose black robes didn't fit his muscular figure very well, remarked their route would take them no more than a day to reach their destination thanks to the dimension's enhanced speed of travel. And by the time they arrived at another obsidian frame, dug into the wall where the tunnel stopped, it definitely felt like an entire day had passed.
"This will take us right into Granitetown," Dominic explained while his cohort lit the portal with flint and steel. "Our safe house is hidden in plain sight."
Not entirely reassured, but without much of a choice, he followed the Forgers through the portal. Ray emerged in a cramped room surrounded by chests and crates, lit by a flickering redstone lamp in the ceiling. The floor and the walls were both made of smooth gray andesite, lending the room a very cold feeling compared to the Nether's hot reds and browns. When he stepped away from the purple miasma, finding his bearings after the disorientation which using a portal always brought, he saw Dominic hastily place a stone block in the middle of the obsidian frame. The portal deactivated instantly, its ghostly whisper ceasing.
"Don't want it to make too much noise," Dominic told Ray.
An iron door swung open, and in stepped a tall villager woman wearing a simple leather tunic. "Ah, you're earlier than expected!"
The two Forgers saluted her, while Ray just watched from the side. She looked to be in her forties, her shiny black hair done up in a tight bun to keep it out of her face. Her complexion was darker than that of most Inlanders he'd seen, and her eyes were a deep violet.
"Senior Jasmine," Clark said when their salutes ended, "we've brought the sand."
"You're the first ones to arrive," Jasmine told him. "Senior Wallace should be here with the last of the materials soon enough."
Her eyes landed on Ray, and a grin crossed her face. "Oh? And who is our Far Lander friend?"
"Sir Ray, Usurpation Knight," he replied. "Overseer Fornax assigned me to guide your men through the Nether."
But he hadn't really needed to; their path was as safe as could be. He wouldn't complain about helping the Army's cause, but he failed to see why his assistance was so necessary for this task in particular.
"Much appreciated," Jasmine said. "It must have been a long march, come and make yourself at home while we await the rest of the supplies."
Ray and the Forgers followed her through the iron door and into what looked like a storefront, where tools and weapons of varying materials were arranged on the wooden shelves for perusal. The walls were still made of andesite, but the floor consisted of smooth granite slabs, a similar red to the havenite armor worn by the Usurpation. Black wool drapes covered the windows on the far end of the room, on either side of the acacia door. A stairway in the corner behind the granite counter led to a second floor.
"Do you run a business here?" Ray asked, looking around at the store's wares.
"It's a tool sale and maintenance shop, to keep funds coming in for us and give our Forgers a safe place to stay," explained Jasmine. "The store's closed today, so we won't be interrupted."
Clark turned to Ray. "You've never been to Granitetown, have you? Do you wish to see it for yourself?"
"I can't go out there, I stand out too much. The Inlanders will realize I'm not one of them."
Jasmine gestured to the stairs. "Just go up a floor, you can take a look outside from the windows and… I don't know, imagine how nice the place will be once you Usurpers are in charge."
With that strange incentive in mind he followed Clark upstairs to another room, this one containing little more than a few beds and a torch on the wall. A tiny glass window installed in the roof allowed light from the setting sun to shine in, and it was low enough for Ray to peer through it at the surrounding city.
Were Incursia's aesthetic more consistent, it might have resembled Granitetown. The store was surrounded by concrete and stone buildings, each sleek and simple in design yet not as utilitarian as the Usurpation's. They were built to impress from sheer scale, with some towering as many as five stories high. Being in a dry, dusty region had clearly not impeded the residents' creative spirit, because even from the small view Ray had of the city he spotted decorative plants, murals, and statues lining the paved streets. But what interested him the most were the residents themselves. It occurred to Ray as he watched that he'd never actually seen the inside of an Inland settlement without it being under Usurpation control, or in the middle of a raid as was the case with that island village. Now that he was here, his presence unknown by the Usurpation's enemies, he could take in a bit of their way of life. Ray watched and listened carefully, catching a few scenes on the streets below.
"…need to buy flowers for my husband, can I borrow an emerald?"
"…where did you get that scarf? It suits you…"
"…drinks on me tonight, boys! You all deserve it…"
"…my youngest son is going to school for the first time…"
Street vendors doing business, friends and families spending time together, and workers commuting home from their jobs. These were ordinary people, going about their daily lives without worry. Or so Ray thought: the more he listened, the more Inlanders he could hear discussing graver topics.
"…no word from the Mayor about if the war will be over soon…"
"…my daughter is going off to fight…"
"…haven't heard from the Iron Garrison in a while…"
"…Luxmouth's struggling to feed its people…"
Ray stiffened at the last topic. The city which had briefly possessed both Bonemeal Cores now had neither, and it only made sense that their loss would result in a food shortage. Part of why the Usurpation had sought them so feverishly was because its own troops needed to strictly ration their provisions. But for as reasonable a consequence as it was, Ray had never really considered the effects of his actions in Luxmouth, and knowing the hardship the people there faced was in some part due to him gave him a strange, uncomfortable feeling.
Someone else caught his eye. Across the street, in a darkened alley between two of the neighboring buildings, stood a person adorned in black armor. They were a villager- he could tell that much by their head shape- but every inch of them was covered by the armor, including their face. Ray had never seen a villager so battle-ready; not even Illagers wore armor. Yet the person didn't appear to be ready for a fight, they were casually leaning in the shade and reading from a book, not paying attention to anything around them. The passersby likewise didn't spare the armored individual more than glances.
"Stop, invaders! We're here to save the day!"
Ray looked up the street, where a group of children were chasing each other with sticks. Villagers and humans, boys and girls, were united in some imaginary battle. It was hard to tell which "team" was which, if there even were teams, but as they drew nearer he could make out more details from their excited chatter.
"I am Steve, the Legendary Hero! And I have returned to stop you!" one boy boasted, raising his stick and trying to puff out his chest.
"No fair, you were Steve last time!" whined another boy. "You said it was my turn to be him!"
"We need more heroes anyway, you can be someone else," said a third child, this one a girl who rested her stick on her shoulder. "I'm already Alex, so why don't you be Diamond Gwendolyn?"
The second boy groaned. "A girl? I can't be a girl!"
"Why not?" asked another boy. "I'm being Granite Cassandra. Besides, Gwendolyn is super strong! Did you know she fought a Wither with just a sword made of glass?"
"You're making that up."
"Nuh-uh! It's true! And everyone knows she's going to beat the invaders, just you watch!"
Ray decided he'd seen enough. The conversation was making him feel strange, and backwards as the thinking was, he was beginning to dread the thought of the kids' hopes for the future being dashed when the Usurpation Army won the war. He backed away from the window, and the last thing he noticed was the alley across the street: the armored villager was gone.
From the other room, the Nether portal was heard hissing again for a brief moment.
"He is here!" Senior Forger Jasmine called from below. "Everyone, gather!"
"It's time," Clark said, heading down the stairs.
Ray followed, and found a small collection of people had congregated in the storefront. Clark, Dominic, Jasmine, and three others were standing around a collection of items on the floor. The newcomers weren't wearing Forge robes like Clark and Dominic were, and were instead dressed in perfectly average Inlander clothing. Jasmine was speaking with a very old, wizened man whose white hair and beard clearly hadn't been groomed in some time. He balanced himself on a cane, standing with a hunch in his back. As Ray approached, the man's purple eyes squinted at the sight of him.
"Eh? So, this is the only one they sent?"
"Overseer Fornax of the Usurpation was clear in her request, Senior Forger," said Dominic. "He will suffice for our purposes."
"Is that so?" the old man drawled. He let out a hacking cough before continuing. "Yeh're the one who met Benedict, are ya?"
Ray cleared his throat. "I was with Commandant Red at the time. We traveled together afterwards, sir…"
"Senior Forger Wallace," he introduced himself. "And I've got the rest of the goods we need. Thanks for makin' sure our friends got 'ere safe and sound."
"With that out of the way, let's test our construction recipe. We need to make sure this will actually work." Jasmine looked toward Ray with a shadow of a smile. "I know! Why don't you do the honors?"
Everyone turned to Ray, who shrank back a bit at the attention. "Me? I couldn't, I don't want to risk messing it up."
"Please, I insist," she replied. "This will go a long way toward helping you Far Landers win the war. Won't it be nice to say you took the initiative?"
"Your Overseer even recommended you to build it for us," said Dominic. "Senior Benedict said she was quite sure you'd be the perfect one to do it."
He was quiet, and imagined for a moment how proud he would make Fornax by going through with it. Ray owed so much to her, and she was so accommodating… even if his recent experiences had made him question himself and the Usurpation Army, maybe doing this in her name would be just what he needed to regain his confidence. If beacons truly were ancient technology, perhaps even Esme could appreciate their use by examining whatever mechanism made it work. Everybody would benefit, and it could begin with him.
"Okay, I accept," he said. "What should I do?"
"Just follow these instructions," said one of Wallace's grunts, handing him a sheet of paper with a diagram on it.
"Use the materials we've collected," Dominic added. He dropped the blocks of brown sand on the floor.
Wallace hobbled over to Ray last, holding out three dark gray skulls to him. "These babies are the most important parts. Careful with 'em."
The Ender Forge members all backed away to let him work. Ray looked at the instructions and raised a brow; this didn't require a crafting table at all, it consisted of simply placing the items in a certain arrangement. The skulls and the sand blocks with their patterns resembling anguished faces gave a very different impression than that of a hopeful beacon. It looked more like he would be building a grisly monument.
"But… who am I to question it? This is ancient knowledge, so of course it wouldn't look exactly like how I imagined. I'll just build it, and then deliver my report to Incursia. Hopefully this is what we'll need to fend off the attack."
With his mind made up, Ray got to work. He placed one sand block on the floor, then another on top of it. Then he attached a third and a fourth to either side of the upper block.
"Good, and now for the skulls," said Jasmine. "Remember, stay close to it as it activates. Let your passion and willpower be embodied in this new symbol of the Usurpation Army."
Passion and willpower. Ray liked the sound of that. Excited by the possibilities, and already thinking of what he'd tell Fornax, he set the first skull into the top of one of the upper blocks. The second followed, and he paused for only a moment with the third.
"Things will be different now. I'll have my spark back."
Ray put the final skull down with a smile and backed away.
Immediately, his creation began to shudder, the sand blocks congealing together and absorbing the skulls into their mass as they started to hover off the floor. The beacon was changing shape, its sandy base solidifying into a black central stalk with bony, rib-like protrusions extending to either side. The skulls remained where they were, attached to the top of the device and connecting to the spine with more bones. He was confused and more than a little tense, but he didn't suspect anything until the skulls opened their mouths in unison and let out a sound like a raspy howl, as the air chilled until Ray could see his own breath.
"I think something's wrong," he began, turning to see the Forgers disappear through the iron door and slam it behind them. Confidence vaporizing, Ray looked back at the device- or rather, the creature- as it took form before his eyes…
And unleashed an explosion.