Halls of Ivory

Chapter 18 - The Locus Orchestra

They ran back as quickly as they could. "Enemy army approaching! Enemy army approaching! Tight formation, unexpected numbers! Get our Watchknight notes out!"

The minister rushed to the line of dolyaks to reach for the bags while the Commander filled in the troops. "Listen, everyone! There is an army of Watchknights - mechanical soldiers, marching our way! Ready yourselves for battle, ditch any bows unless you can imbue your arrows with ice magic and spread out these notes to get an idea where to aim!"

The notes he was referring to, were heavily simplified illustrations made from the blueprints they found in Jennah's palace. They lined out where the machines' weak spots were, namely not on the head, but inside the torso as well as the gears on their shoulders.

Everyone scrambled to adapt. Swords were put away and swapped out for hammers, siege weapons were moved backwards and people completely unfamiliar with steam creatures or mechanical constructions tried to make sense of the notes. All the adventurers from all over Tyria got out their sharpening stones and tuning crystals and ate whatever special rations they had for before a battle.

The recently joined Norn too were looking at the papers that were hastily passed their way. All five of them sat together studying a single piece of paper while Bardulf scratched his chin. While the Commander ran about helping spread the notes to more soldiers, the Norn forcefully grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to the circle of Norn. "You, that picture tells us to aim at these points, all of them with these gears and cogwheels. What is the importance of those pieces?"

"They're how they operate. The Watchknights aren't people, they're just mechanical constructs and the machinery turning is how they 'breathe'."

"So if those gears were to stop moving, the entire machine would stop moving?"

"I guess so."

The Norn got up and all the others followed him. "Then we may have a means to slow them down. We will need some space for this." They let go of the Commander and made for the open field ahead. Guided by movements of arms and staves, entire chunks of earth ripped themselves off the grass and a tornado formed, ripping them into smaller bits and trapping them within the motions of the conjured winds.

Logan inspected the shape of the fields leading to the Queen's Forest. Right where the steep slope from the river ended, the elevation was at its highest compared to everything further down. Fighting here instead of down by the lake would give them the high ground, so he decided: "Everyone! This is where we make our stand! Hide the catapults and the ballistae and set up defensive positions at the top of this field!"

Rather than retreating, the Sylvari from the center of their original arrangement paced ahead and climbed up to both sides of the walls separating the steep path down to the river from the more elevated plateau and planted seeds along an arc to both sides. Within seconds of being planted, giant flowers the height of a grown man sprouted from within the grass and aimed their bloom at the winding path around the mountain. Two other Sylvari led their troop of hulking treants further down the hill until they no longer blocked the path of the flowers.

Before the Commander could behold the spectacle any further, the agitated voice of an Asura bickered at him from behind his back. "You! Yes you, Pact Commander! We heard something about a tight formation! How tight are we talking?"

As expected, it came from the vaguely ballista-like 'golems' sent to help them by the Inquest. The clusters of black and blue metal and stone interspersed with lines of blue and red light floated up the field and close enough to him for the onboard camera to point at him directly.

"They said there's so many of them, they have to cram themselves together just to not fall off the slope over the lake!"

"We might be able to help. We took pictures of those blueprints and conducted an analysis of our own. One of the first things we noticed was that the internal clockwork in most of their models relies on a very cheap alloy which is subject to arcano-magnetism. So we equipped the S05 and S06 versions of our Siege Golems with a targeted arcanomagnet. If you can get us a clear shot, we may be able to greatly reduce their numbers."

So he ran ahead to follow up on this suggestion. "Leigheara! Move the treants aside so the golems have room to fire." The hulking forest elementals crawled aside, giving the golems reason to take position up on the hill, only a few steps ahead of the steep way up, barely enough for people to rush back and forth behind them.

The Seraph took position near the treants to be the next to hold off the watchknights and the Separatists brought out wooden boards to provide some improvised cover to push them back with without getting struck in the process. They took position down the hill to the left and right from where the Sylvari turrets were planted. Grell's Warband forsook their position entirely in favor of climbing up the mountain by a small stretch to take position to fire from there.

Then, they came into view. First, they marched around the mountain until a significant portion could see where the army was waiting for them, then they began to run at them. The Norn unleashed their tornado, now larger in scale and more saturated with dirt ripped from the ground right through the rectangular cluster of machines, following their entire path around the mountain, sending many of them stumbling and falling to the ground and slowing the advance of the rest.

The Asura speaking through one of the golems made himself much louder than before and announced: "Diverting power to arcanomagnets! Fire!" The runes on several rings on the base of the golems' cannons began to light up and turn and a surge of magical energy struck out from the center. There was no projectile or the like to be seen, but a visible wave of Watchknights, right through the center of the rapidly approaching mass, was launched backwards, causing one row to stumble the next to a fall like a line of domino pieces.

The Charr snipers did what little they could to shoot down some of the machines marching and running on the sides. The treants raised their arms to jump the first wave of arriving watchknights and the Seraph raised their hammers and halberds to bring them down on any watchknights trying to surround the treants.

The Norn ripped bigger chunks of earth out of the fields and launched them onto the constant stream of reinforcements, staggering it and burying many of the attackers.

The minister shouted: "Seraph! Back off!" Logan summoned one more spherical barrier to launch the Watchknights out of the way before leading his soldiers further back to where the Separatists stood. When the machines followed them, they were met with targeted shots from rifles and the guided beams of mesmers, aimed precisely to jam and dismantle vital mechanisms in their clockwork.

When the next wave shielded from the Separatists' fire got to them, the outlaws and guards both were in a good position to pick up the boards, charge back at the machines and leverage the enemy's momentum into a strong motion back into the others. When they had gotten far enough to knock over the Watchknights in the front, they dropped the boards and swung their hammers and halberds down on the startled machines.

"Preparing a second shot!" the Asura announced. They had to back off before long, so the Watchknights were closing in on the golems. Logan used his barrier to throw them back while more soldiers rushed to his side to help crush the machines. "Duck!" Everyone in front of the golems got down and a wave like the first broke from the cannons. This time it hit the Watchknights point blank, catching a much larger wave of them all the way to the lake.

This was where their advantages wore thin though. The machines in the front swarmed out and more and more soldiers were forced into head-to-head combat with them. Several of the treants had been overrun by the stream of watchknights climbing over the piles of broken machines. And one of them had grabbed onto one of its assailants and got its arm ripped off during the golems' second shot.

The Commander couldn't help anyone conventionally. Attacks with his axe would do little to stop the cogs and any of his marks would achieve nothing in stopping them. So all he could do was run over to where their earlier skirmish happened, hastily place down catalysts around himself and use what little preparation he had made prior to the day of their departure, to form as many bone minions from the Shining Blade's bodies as he could.

When the treants wore out and the machines swarmed the top of the hill, he sent out his little army of monsters to swarm the Watchknights attacking the Seraph and Separatists.

"They're running out of reinforcements!" the Asura announced. And he was right, the stream of Watchknights was coming to a close. The rows charging up the hill now were the only ones left. "We've charged up for a third shot! Get them off the Golems!" Several Watchknights were already banging their swords against the golems, trying to stop them from working.

The minister charged at them with his lit-up sword glowing in bright orange and chopped away at the limbs of one of them until the arms came off, Rytlock crushed another one's limbs until it couldn't move and the Charr snipers helped with two other watchknights. Once the machines were ripped off of the golems, the Asura screamed! "OUT OF THE WAY!" With one more wave fired from the metal juggernauts, the Watchknights were caught in a much more devastating surge, tossing them against each other and onto the piles of their defunct peers.

The soldiers on both sides cheered at the turn of the tide and descended upon the stragglers until the last of the Watchknights were destroyed. Logan raised his hammer and chanted: "Victory!" and Seraph and Separatists alike did as he did.

The scouts climbed back up to get an eye on the enemy and soon passed an announcement down to the Charr to repeat to the men at the front:. "The Shining Blade are retreating! There's one 'thing' holding position but otherwise, the way to Shaemoor is open!"

Logan acknowledged the statements repeated throughout the troops. "You heard them! Put the wounded to the back and treat them there. Everyone else, pick your shields or other weapons back up and re-assume formation! We will lead the way. Once we've secured a position outside the garrison, we bring in the siege weapons!"

With the leaders out front, they marched ahead again, to the rise around the mountain, where they saw just what was holding position. A bipedal construct similar to the Watchknights, but green and with four arms, each holding an enormous sabre.

The tribune grumbled. "They saved the bigger ones for last!" As soon as they came a little closer, it began to move, stumbling about left and right as it approached them. "It's moving around way too fast, the golems can't hit it like this!"

It closed in on them very quickly and readied all four of its weapons. When it swung down its first sword on Logan, he parried it with a perfectly timed invocation of his barrier, launching the arm back and staggering the entire construct. Which gave the others time to brace themselves for the other three attacks. The moment Logan had blocked its first attack, he asked: "Any ideas?"

When it brought down all three other sabres, the Commander, Rytlock and Aldryn dodged them, but not without the latter reflexively launching a wave at the arm. "Run!" he shouted, and everyone did as suggested. The wave from his shield didn't freeze the entire Watchknight, only the arm it hit, but that was enough to buy them a few moments to gain some distance.

They could only barely get to the site of the previous battle by the time the machine had gotten control of its arm back and pulled all its sabres back out of the ground. They rushed around the mountains of broken Watchknights, but by the time the automaton got to the first one, it demonstrated how easily it could skip over them with a single, very wide step.

Seeing how long a step it took, gave the minister an idea. Logan announced: "Large enemy approaching!" Just in case anyone hadn't noticed, while they waited for the machine to arrive. When it climbed over the last pile of Watchknights and planted its foot firmly on the ground, the minister swung his shield and froze the front leg in place.

Once it had followed with the other foot and tried to move on from the pile, it tripped and collapsed to the ground. "Step back!" one of the Norn announced. They had beheld the spectacle and in response, ripped another chunk of earth off the ground, which they caused to spin in the air faster and faster and compressed into an increasingly solid cone.

With everyone out of the way, they launched the cone with an unexpected speed and precision, lodging it inside the automaton's torso. Its arms flailed about a little, but besides that, its gears soon ground to a halt, leaving it just another piece of broken clockwork upon a pile of broken clockwork.

"Now, the path to Shaemoor really is open!"

They urged the army to assume a more tight formation and Logan rallied a troop of shieldbearers to go to the dolyaks to fetch their largest shields and man the front as they approached the garrison. If the Shining Blade would shoot at them from the ramparts, they were ready for it.

They marched ahead unhindered, all the way to the trampled battleground in front of the garrison. The snipers followed them from a close distance but soon climbed back on the mountain to get a good position to shoot from above. Once they made sure there was no-one hiding around any corners outside the garrison, they announced that it was clear and the rest of their troops followed them.

Shaemoor Garrison was a wide, but very simple castle with two floors, the second one consisting almost entirely of a rampart with very little cover. But the problem for an attacking force was that it was surrounded by a moat, and the only drawbridge connecting it to the Scaver Plateau in front of it, was raised from inside. They had prepared to make a makeshift bridge but there was still the matter of getting past those walls. That was what the catapults and ballistae were for.

Supply troops took to accompanying the siege weapons with buckets of water, just in case the Shining Blade tried to take them out with burning arrows.

Ahead of the dolyaks came the siege golems and upon their arrival, the Asura speaking through them had some choice words. "What are you doing? Get out of the way, we can blast open these walls from here!"

When the shieldbearers carefully moved to the sides, the golems came closer. "Focusing power back into the main cannons! Time to test out how well these things perform their prime functionality!" The siege golems emitted a loud whirring noise. The orbs at the end of the 'barrels' began to glow, all runed rings at the cannons' bases lit up and spun like crazy, flashes of lightning flickered between the orbs and two spots on the golems' surfaces. "Fire!"

A blast of blinding, white light shot from the golems to the walls of the garrison, causing a chunk of it to rip itself out immediately. Cracks formed at the beams' impact sites and spread rapidly, emitting a bright glow not long later and eventually sparking explosions of their own along the full length of the cracks, causing half the wall to crumble completely and launching bits and pieces of it both to the inside as well as the moat beneath the garrison. "Half a wall in two shots! A very good result!" He suddenly shouted at someone who was presumably behind him. "Write it down, damn you!"

The moment the Separatists realized just how devastating the Asuran weapon was, they wasted no time rushing to the dolyaks to fetch the longest wooden boards they could find. One enemy - an actual person this time, peeked outside through the giant hole in the wall and only escaped a shot from one of the Blade warband snipers, because she immediately retreated upon seeing the army forming up outside. Separatist suppliers came along with ropes and hooks, handing one end of each rope to others while binding the other to themselves and then charged over the bridges to test whether they held. Once it was certain that they did, the frontmen of the army charged after them under chants of war cast from the rest of the army.

By the time the Commander and the others followed, fighting had broken out in all the corners of the garrison. As soon as Rytlock and the minister joined the fray, the enemy couldn't keep them at bay for long and were routed within a minute. Logan ordered the Seraph to rush up the stairs to lower the bridge.

"Ignorant fools!" As soon as all immediately visible Shining Blade in the bailey had been killed, they turned their attention to the source of a voice taunting them from within hiding. "Mindless oafs, all of you!", the increasingly shrill voice called out and its source soon stepped forward from under one of the arcs leading to the garrison's interior hallways. It was a woman in Shining Blade armor, with clumsily smeared lipstick and a manic look on her face. Her short, blond hair was roughed up and she seemed legitimately out of it from how she lumbered across the ground - enough for them to hold off on killing her out of pity.

She continued with a disturbingly deformed smile on her face. "Your struggles are in vain, always have been! You cannot stop change, it is inevitable! The world changes whether you want it to or not! The wheel of progress cannot be unturned!"

The Captain of the Seraph replied to this rhetoric the same way he did with Anise. "We can change it for the better, and that's what we're here to do."

She spat in their direction, but could only muster so little force that it barely traveled two feet before it hit the ground. "You narrow-minded wretches don't understand! You complain that we hold no place for you and yours, but you and yours HAVE TO GO! THAT IS THE CHANGE WE SEEK TO ACHIEVE!" She spread her arms out and gazed up into the sky. "You hold no water to the brilliance of our order! The teachings of our consultant - the workshops -the lectures - they elevate us far above anything your feeble minds could comprehend! It is her genious that we have to thank for all the wonderful creations you so thoughtlessly destroyed!"

Suddenly the ground shook, enough to surprise everyone and for many to almost fall over. Except for the manic woman, she continued to chant while staring directly into the sun. "Behold! The culmination of Scarlet Briar's genious! And the genious of High Countess Anise and the Shining Blade!"

The ground shook a few more times, and from the northwest side of the moat - opposite from where most of the army was massing up - rose a colossal automaton. It was so huge that its standing height surpassed that of the garrison's ramparts. "Behold the Multiform Ambula - Ambuli - I don't know, the Matriarch! We call it the Matriarch!"

It climbed over the north wall of the garrison and placed its front feet - which upon closer inspection turned out to be hands - in the bailey. It had barebones plating, with the cables and chains of all its limbs sticking out at one point or another. Its plating was covered in a thin film of gold, much of which had worn off and all of which was darkened by uneven layers of dirt. Its deformed spine was on full display, with some substance coursing through it, emanating an unseemly green glow in its path.

The only indicator for where it got its name was a single loosely-hung metal plate in its middle, molded in the shape of a woman's chest - or at least a very generous take on one and a circular core glowed right beneath it. An uncanny frame resembling a human face hung off the upper end of its absurdly long, snake-like spine, its eyes emanating the same poisonous glow as the spine. But the only joints resembling human hands were attached to the opposite end of the spine.

The more lengthy arms closer to the 'head' ended in three sharp claws and the segments connecting those arms were separate from the chest. Two extra joints, one hanging off of each non-chest node of the frame, sported a long-barrel firearm and a flamethrower respectively. It was as though someone had peered into the worst nightmares of a madman and sculpted a machine in the image of what they saw.

The woman broke out in quackish laughter and began to run. Before she could get too far, Grell shot her in the head and then turned his attention to the monstrosity ahead of them.

Logan spelled out what everyone was thinking: "Move back out! Evacuate! That thing's way too dangerous to fight up close! Throw any disposables at it that you have! Clones, minions, anything!"

The Commander took that as his cue to cross the lowered drawbridge to the plateau, where there was soft earth he could summon undead minions from. He spread his open palm towards the ground and cast the invocation he had studied a few nights prior for this purpose, summoning a flesh golem - a hulking monstrosity with heavy bones and covered in sinew, one arm formed a large club out of the amalgamated bone of dozens of enemy soldiers and sent it to assault the metal colossus. Aldryn summoned multiple clones and while most people left the garrison, several Separatist mesmers joined them at the bridge to conjure more clones to throw at the machine.

While the flesh golem grabbed hold of one of its legs, the Commander proceeded to repeat the invocation from earlier, summoning an entire troop of various creatures of blood and bone to send into battle. The first wave of clones summoned by the mesmers tried jumping at its legs to climb up but were promptly shaken off, so the next one, they straight up summoned onto the Matriarch's central nodes.

Eventually, the siege golems raised the volume on their voices and announced: "Everyone out of the way? Good! Here goes nothing! The next shot is primed!" Once more the golems whirred, spinning lights heralded the deployment of its destructive ray. But as the Matriarch's attempts at shaking off all the clones and minions saw it stepping backwards, the shots from the golems missed it and hit the wall behind it instead.

When shots from the snipers hit both of its eyes, something in its 'head' broke open and a liquid that seemed to be the source of the green glow spilled onto the ground. "That stuff doesn't look safe to stand in, retreat!" Now, even the leaders and the mesmers left the garrison, fleeing through both the improvised bridge and the drawbridge.

When they did, the minister ran to the siege golems to talk to the Asura. "Can you aim these things on-the-fly?"

All they answered was: "I guarantee for nothing."

"Good enough. Aim at the spine!"

"What part?"

"Any of them!"

With everyone out of the garrison, the wooden catapults started firing, but aimed slightly further up to try hitting the Matriarch. Two of them struck its 'head' and upper node, causing noticeable dents in its plating but only briefly pushing it back.

The army had no choice but to watch as the 'culmination of Anise's genious' climbed over the walls of the garrison and what they could only assume was a vicious poison bled from its eyes into the moat and from there, into the rivers of Queensdale.

For lack of time to hope that merely tipping it would draw his attention, the minister punched Logan's shoulder. "Captain, I have an idea! It's reckless, but it might just work! Follow me up the stairs!"

Without giving Logan a chance to respond, he raised his hand in front of his chest with his palm turned to the side and cast a spell that rendered both of them invisible. They resurfaced on the ramparts, right beneath the still climbing automaton. When an inhuman twist of its neck allowed its race to spot them, it brought in one clawed arm to try to grab hold of them. Logan summoned his barrier to repel it, while the minister swung his shield. He didn't aim at the arm though, but the node connecting its legs. Stuck by the upper part of each one's joint, its legs were unable to coordinate their movements and lost their hold.

The machine froze, presumably trying to find the best course to salvage its impending fall. "Take cover!" They bolted into the gatehouse, the only part of the upper floor that had walls, while the loud engines of the golems finished charging up and unleashed their shots, striking both the frozen node and the face of the disfigured giant.

The cracks, only seen in stone walls previously, burst and spread across the entirety of the colossus' frame, from the tips of its claws on one end to the last digits of its fingers at the other end.

Then, a shrill squeaking noise numbed out everyone's ears before a massive explosion of white light ripped the entire machine apart at its seams, spreading tiny bits and pieces of it in all directions. Many were injured by bits of shrapnel hitting them in the process.

As the smoke from the explosion slowly faded, everyone stood there. Silent. Motionless. Just like that, with a single explosion, the mechanical monstrosity was destroyed. And when they gradually wandered closer to the bridges, there were no Shining Blade waiting inside, no machines running or marching their way.

Logan raised his sword into the air. "Victory once more!" And men of both persuasions, Separatists and Seraph alike, joined him and chanted in celebration of seeing even the enemy's largest weapon defeated.

A testament to how far they had come. Whether Seraph or Separatists, the men of Kryta had put their differences aside and brought the Matriarch to a fall.

Mere minutes after a massive explosion shattered the ground all around the city, the doors of the queen's palace burst open. "High Countess!" shouted an agitated woman. She ran across the throne room, now cleaned up but not yet repaired since the attack, to Countess Anise, who sat on a bench plated in solid gold, positioned where once stood the throne of Queen Jennah.

"Countess Anise!" the out-of-breath soldier repeated. "They defeated the Matriarch! They're on their way to the gates! What should we do?" Anise was staring at the floor. There were still cracks in the marble ties from when the definitely-not-Charr stomped about. "Anise?"

"Quiet!" burst out of the countess. She didn't know what to do, Scarlet's Watchknights were all she had. The Shining Blade didn't have the numbers, the weapons or even the expertise to contend with either of those two forces, let alone both of them at once. At this rate, they were going to…she wouldn't dare to think about it.

But she had to. If things kept going the way they were going, the Separatists would get their way. She was afraid of what would happen then. What if they imposed their hateful policies on Kryta? What if id didn't immediately collapse under their leadership? Worse yet, what if Kryta prospered under their rule? She was afraid to even consider the implications.

"No!" she finally shouted with her eyes clenched shut for several seconds. "We can't let them win! We can't let ignorance and bigotry win the day!" She got up and walked to a set of crates in a corner, filled with various basic equipment she liked to have on hand while she 'temporarily' ruled over the city. "There mustn't be a future where these men rule Kryta. We have to stop them. At any cost."

She reached into one of the crates, pulled out a torch and lit its end upon a candle. "If we can't stop them from taking Divinity's Reach from us, then we must ensure that there is no city for them to take." She returned to the bench to pick up her sword with the other hand. "And if we can't stop their hateful and racially charged ideas from infecting the minds of the people, then we must ensure that there are no minds to infect!"

The soldier stood straight in expectation of an official statement. "Your orders?"

"Summary execution."

"Of whom?"

"Everyone. The whole city. Set fire to all the houses! Drag every last citizen out of their homes and slay them in the streets! Let the Separatists inherit nothing but charred stone and mangled corpses! Show the world that bigotry leads only to the death of all!" And without question, the soldier nodded and ran off to pass the order onto the rest of the Shining Blade.