Warsinger James Baldwin (read this if TXT) 📖

of the hall was a forest of pillars made of pure rose quartz, which towered up into a polished golden dome like a grand piano organ. It was a church made for a titan... the titan who knelt in front of the pillars like a knight meditating in front of an altar, head bowed against the hilt of a pair of swords that were five stories tall.

Withering Rose was at least twice the size of Nocturne Lament, built on a scale that was so overwhelming it stopped us in our tracks. It was easy to picture this thing wading through the ocean, battling kaiju and kicking down skyscrapers. Yet despite her size, everything about her was built for grace and speed, from her streamlined head, to the fluted lily-like contours of her armor. A long metal mosaic trailed from her back like a cloak or a wedding train. As we cautiously resumed our approach, the details of her form came into sharper relief. The intricate engravings, the detailing on the flexible plates that flowed down along her spine... and the battle scars of the Drachan and Aesari Wars. Long, twisted claw marks, places where her aurum shell had been burned and warped from magic, and - most alarmingly - gigantic tooth marks. There were twin rows of them on her upper right arm, top and bottom, where something proportionate to her size had grabbed her and worried the limb like a shark.

“Wow,” Rin said softly.

“I…” Suri breathed. “My gods. They had to build TEN of these? Just to fight the Drachan to a stalemate?”

Karalti caught my arm, eyes widening.

“What have we gotten ourselves into, Hector?” Suri looked back at us.

“We're about to get ourselves into a Warsinger.” I hung back nervously. Like Nocturne Lament, Withering Rose had a hinged jaw... and if this magitech artifact was like her prototype predecessor, she had an efficient industrial-grade meat grinder concealed under that elegant helm. “This is your show, Suri. Just be careful.”

Beautiful as she was, the Warsinger had a subtle aura of menace: an aura that intensified as we came around the front of it and saw what Withering Rose had been keeping vigil over for so long. There was no altar at the front of this great hall - just a single sarcophagus. It was made of plain slate, much larger than the one we'd found in Karhad. The bas reliefs showed scenes of war... of a woman who looked like Suri standing over the piled corpses of bird people, and of Withering Rose and other Warsingers battling against twisted, multi-limbed, writhing monstrosities straight out of a Lovecraftian nightmare. The Drachan.

Suri had an odd expression on her face as she walked around the sarcophagus, taking in the illustrations, before stopping at the side of it. She gingerly laid her hands on the edge of the lid, and closed her eyes.

“It's strange,” she said. “When I was younger, I wanted the whole world to end, you know. I hated everyone and everything. But I feel… I feel connected to this woman. We share a story. The Khemmemu Dynasty tried to erase Sachara and the Fireblooded and everything my ancestors did to protect this world, just like Nicolas and Jacob tried to erase me. But somehow, we're both still here. And so is Archemi.”

I nodded, and squeezed Karalti's hand. Neither of us said anything as Suri slid her palms over the edge of the sarcophagus.

“Looking at the damage on this thing, I don't know if we can beat 'em,” Suri said. “But I think I'm willing to give it a go, if we can figure out how to use her.”

“I’m guessing the answer might be inside there.” Karalti nodded to the sarcophagus. “Open it. It’s okay.”

Suri set her feet, then pushed forward. She had to put her weight and all of her strength into sliding the lid off the tomb. It budged up, scraped along the edges, and toppled off the side, revealing... nothing, other an inscription in Old Aga.

“I'm pretty sure I can translate that,” Rin said. “Okay... let me see. “To enter the Heart of Knives, you must leave everything behind save for your Name - capital N. Once you are inside, you will lose everything: even that.”

“Your Name is your Words of Power. They’re written into your body and your blood,” Karalti said. “Same as mine.”

“Erm.” I grimaced. “Given this coffin does not and has not ever had a corpse in it, I have some questions about this whole 'once you're inside, you lose everything' stuff.”

“We either do this or we don't. Hold onto my gear.” Suri began to unequip her armor, stripping down until she was down to her base layer. She dumped her entire Inventory on the ground - it appeared in a convenient, but extremely large cloth sack.

“I'll carry it,” Karalti said. “I'm not holding much anyway.”

“Thanks, kid.” She turned to look up at Withering Rose. “Rin: any idea how I'd get into this thing?”

“You have to find the cockpit,” Rin said. “And open it, I guess. Nocturne Lament doesn't seem to have been built with a cockpit, so I don't know where exactly you'll find it... but I have a feeling it's not in the head.”

“Not unless the ancients were dumbasses,” I said. “Powered armor sat the pilot at chest-height and kept them out of the head, if the machine even had one. The largest types had the pilot sit off-center, so that they were less likely to get shot through the vital line if something managed to penetrate their armor.”

“The name 'Heart of Knives' would suggest something like that,” Rin said. “Check the left-hand side of the chest?”

“Actually, you know what? It’ll be in the neck,” I blurted. “Blood flows to the heart through the jugular. The entry is probably through the neck, behind the gorget. It's a well-protected area, and gives access straight down into the chest if that's where the cockpit is.”

Suri smiled at me. “Well, aren't you a clever boy? I'm going