The Hundred Reigns 270: King of Spiders (12)

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The Attic door to Chrom Cruak’s lair stranded them in the middle of the Navarran desert.

Well, somewhat. The door opened up at the summit of a massive stone stairway buried in the sand and onto a platform jutting out of the pyramid’s eastern face. A massive, black tablet glowing with otherworldly runes served as the only form of entrance inside the building. Only endless sand surrounded them otherwise. 

“Does this make you feel nostalgic, Shabram?” Simon inquired once they stepped out of the Attic door with Silk in tow. The wooden portal looked rather out of place in this desolate landscape. “To see Navarre again?”

“A bit,” Shabram admitted upon staring at the dunes. She had recovered enough from Louis’ deadman switch to accompany him to this very important gathering. “I do miss dancing among these sands and feeling the wind on my skin.”

“I didn’t think the feared leader of Endymion’s Imperial Intelligence would be so… sentimental,” Silk mused as she smoked dreamshade from her pipe. “You cannot imagine the efforts we made to hide from you.”

“I will take that as a compliment,” Shabram replied with a pleasant smile. “I must say, I am impressed that your organization successfully managed to keep so many operations under wraps.”

“Our organization, now,” Simon replied. “I’m pleased to see you well again, Shabram. I was concerned for your health after the… incident.”

“Your Majesty is very kind. My household appreciated the gifts you sent us.” And by household, she meant Aegio. Simon noted she avoided mentioning her son in Silk’s presence. Better be safe than sorry. “However, I can tell Your Majesty remains sullen.”

“Many matters occupy my mind,” Simon admitted. “Especially those in Endymion.”

It had been a day since he unsealed the Kish Palace for Vouivre and allowed her to recover the Two-Tailed Fish, but he could only think of Lauriane. A part of him knew she would take Louis’ death badly, considering how much importance she put on family and how she reacted to Simon’s own near-death experience in Muse, yet to go so far as to form an alliance with Vouivre and supply her with biological weapons… 

His sister’s emotional wounds ran deep, and Simon faking his death to better act undetected might have only exacerbated matters. 

Should I contact and comfort her? Simon wondered. He felt guilty letting Lauriane believe he was dead, and he feared the casualties that would result from whatever biological weapon she gave Vouivre, but his sudden return would raise so many questions and bring countless complications… I can’t. I have committed to obtaining the Crafter’s Crestone. I must stick to my plan rather than let emotions cloud my judgment.

He couldn’t afford to reveal his hand now. 

Simon focused back on the matter at hand as the tablet slid aside on its own, revealing a corridor into the pyramid. A strange creature stepped out of it. Its body belonged to a white lioness, with two feathered wings growing out of its back, but the head belonged to a human woman with long red hair. Her yellow, catlike eyes and sharp canine fangs identified her as a monster that simply mimicked humanity. 

A gynosphinx. This was Simon’s first time seeing one of these rare creatures. 

“Greetings, lords and ladies,” the gynosphinx said with a melodious voice and a perfect Endymian accent. Sphinxes were exceptionally good at learning various languages to better lure prey into their paws. “I come to you on behalf of His Glorious Majesty Chrom Cruak the Unbroken, First of His Name, Rightful King of Navarre, and Sworn Foe of the Elven Tribe. My master bids you welcome and awaits you inside. Please follow me.”

“No riddle?” Simon mused. Gynosphinxes were infamous for toying with their would-be prey with tests of intelligence, either ensnaring the souls of those who failed or letting go of those who impressed them. 

“Alas, His Majesty would not want me to waste time.” The sphinx gave Simon a smirk full of fangs. “I would love to match wits with the Overlord in my free time, however.”

“Maybe later,” Simon decided. “Please lead us.”

The sphinx invited them inside, with the tablet sliding back behind them to close off their escape path. Simon immediately received a notification that teleportation was now negated due to enchantments woven into the structure. They walked into a chamber lit by mana crystals and protected by statues of winged-lions whose heads turned towards the group as they walked by. The mosaics on the walls shifted in various patterns as well, with Simon detecting miasma coming from them. Silk had picked up on that as well, and kept her hand close to her grimoire. 

“The air…” Shabram looked up at the ceiling with curiosity. A faint breeze carried the smell of mint and perfume through the corridors. “How can the wind blow inside this building?”

“This pyramid harnesses the energies of the four elements, the same way the megaliths regulate them worldwide,” the sphinx explained with a tour guide’s patience. “This particular section is dedicated to the mastery of Wind. His Majesty is currently overseeing certain repairs to our systems.”

“How long have you served him?” Simon inquired as they passed through multiple chambers and vaults. Everywhere he looked, he saw undead guards with pale masks standing watch, petrified giant beetles he was pretty certain would animate to attack intruders, stone golems, and other creatures. Chrom Cruak keeps an army’s worth of soldiers here. 

It didn’t surprise Simon that the mummy king would keep the true depths of his resources hidden from Valravn, but still, he might prove a bigger player than Simon anticipated. And this game already had too many of them as it was. 

“Since before his unjust Severance,” the sphinx replied, hissing the last word. “It will be my pleasure to stay by his side when his retribution finally comes to pass, and his rightful rule is restored.”

Simon had read that sphinxes could turn into stone monoliths to ‘hibernate,’ so it didn’t surprise him that this one was older than the Doom. Still, Chrom Cruak must have been a truly great ruler in his time to inspire such loyalty from a man-eating predator.

Their journey ended in a chamber suffused with Wind-aligned mana. The chamber’s decorations mostly followed an avian theme, with falcon and owl-headed statues keeping watch over murals representing herons flying with the wind. A highly advanced, and yet somehow primitive-looking, altar of enchanted machinery occupied the center of the room. They found Chrom Cruak there, engraving runes on a ten-foot tall, pyramid-shaped block of green manalith. 

“Is that a Megalith?” Shabram inquired upon seeing the glowing energies coursing through the structure.

“No,” Chrom Cruak rasped without looking from his work, his hammer carving one symbol after another on the pyramid’s surface. “But it is the closest mortals can achieve. A replica.”

“Impressive,” Simon said, his gaze following the machinery. Cables channeled miasma from the depths below into the crystal pyramid, which then refined the power into wind mana. “I see how it is. You’re recycling Hashtur’s power.”

“Yes… it is one of the true Megaliths’ purposes. Keep mana cycling, prevent miasma from accumulating… preserve souls from turning into undead.” Chrom Cruak set aside his tools once he finished and faced his guests. “Welcome to my abode, Overlord… what news do you bring?”

“I have secured Vouivre’s support by entrusting her with the Two-Tailed Fish,” Simon explained. “She will support us in the operation.”

Chrom Cruak nodded. “The dragon queen will be a powerful ally.”

If she doesn’t get herself killed first. “With her on board and the Two-Tailed Fish secured, I believe we’ve accumulated all the resources we can without confronting any major faction,” Simon explained. Seizing the other crystals would require challenging the likes of Remedia, Endymion, or alerting the Oracle. “We’ll have to claim the Crafter’s Crestone with our current forces.”

“You held up your end of our bargain… so I will fulfill mine,” Chrom Cruak said. “What do you need from me?”

Simon opened his Inventory and brought out approximate schematics of the Crafter’s Tower, developed from intel gathered from his own Abyssal Chronicle, Imperial Intelligence, and Bert’s own experience with the place.

“This is the Crafter’s Tower,” Simon explained. “While many believe it to be a mere building, it is actually the Crafter itself; some kind of enormous, sentient structure capable of harnessing the Noble Crestone. The entire structure is its body, allowing it to observe what’s going on inside its confines and use its Perks accordingly.”

“A living Dungeon,” Chrom Cruak guessed. “Such beings often arise spontaneously from extraordinary circumstances… this could be an artificial replica.”

“They are very rare entities,” the sphinx commented. “They can sense anything happening within their confines, but may only focus on one spot at once.”

“However… such creatures cannot use a Class,” Chrom Cruak rasped. “This Mechanical Tower is a unique construct… we cannot assume anything.”

“But we can assess its weaknesses and capabilities.” Simon pointed at its base. “The Earth Megalith at the bottom powers the building, which my foresight indicates can be destroyed with a Magic Eraser strike.”

“Impossible,” Chrom Cruak replied. “No Techniques should be able to unwind the Mana Mother’s spells, unless…” The mummy studied the schematics more closely. “The fools in Muse must have drained it dry… it may crumble on its own within years.”

“Even if it does, the Mechanical Tower has redundant magical generators,” Simon said. “Considering how giant golems work, I suspect it has multiple mana cores split across the structure.”

“Yes… the building is too large for energy to flow only one way.” Chrom Cruak pointed at his Megalith replica. “My pyramid needs nodes… batteries. Should the core power source fail… then they take over until the problem is resolved.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Simon confirmed. “Do you think you could design a way to cut the power?”

“Maybe…” Chrom Cruak pondered the question for a moment. “Cutting the power would cause its redundant cores to take over… we are better off overloading the whole structure. Safeties would activate and shut everything down for a while.”

“You suggest adding more power?” Simon immediately saw an opportunity. “We have many Zodiac Crystals to do such a thing.”

“I can devise a weapon using them… but Crafters are tricky,” Chrom Cruak warned him. “The tower will eventually recover.”

Even so, a few minutes of shutdown might provide the opportunity they needed. “There’s another issue,” Simon said. “My divinations also inform me the Rogue can bypass the tower’s anti-teleportation defense, but that it will lead the Crafter to deploy a defense mechanism. A planar timebox.”

“I know of those…” Chrom Cruak grunted in disdain. “They were experimental seals designed by a pre-Doom Crafter to hold powerful monsters… but the design was discontinued. Their mana requirement was too high… and creatures like archfiends could use Domains to destabilize them from within.”

“I would appreciate any intel on potential countermeasures.” Negating the timebox should allow Silk to travel in and out of the Mechanical Tower after the initial infiltration. “These two ladies are currently expending many resources trying to access the building’s interior. They’ll pass along any useful intel they can gather.”

“Our newfound ties with the Bert Trading Company and the artifacts collected from Rhapta open up new opportunities,” Shabram said. “The Crafter famously collects pre-Doom items and technology. Sending intermediaries to the Mechanical Tower to discuss a potential trade would give us temporary access to the premises.”

“I have finished analyzing most of the artifacts,” Chrom Cruak replied. “We can surrender a few of them.”

The conversation moved on to magical items after that. It turned out that Rhapta’s tablets mostly included ancient alchemy studies specifically focused on the transmutation of flesh, bones, and stone into gold, which neatly explained how the lost city became coated in it. The research inside was passably interesting for Simon, but somewhat redundant. His own miasmic spells could already achieve the same result.

Otherwise, Chrom Cruak was particularly interested in the gear they confiscated from Alfador. “From your description… you slew the coward Erlking,” the king said with cold jubilation. “Good.”

“You knew him?” Simon inquired, which didn’t surprise him all that much.

“He was no King of the Wild Hunt when I faced him… a mere runt too proud of his meager sword skills.” Chrom Cruak crossed his arms. “The Wild Hunt is Illusea’s cavalry unit… I crossed blades with them centuries past. I wish I had been there to slaughter them with you.”

“Then you might know how to master their weapons,” Simon guessed as he confessed his issues. “Both his crown and spear burn me on contact, with the latter trying to fly away as soon as it escapes my Inventory. I’m starting to wonder if they have wills of their own.”

“They do,” Chrom Cruak admitted. “Godsthorn and the Crown of the Antler-King are legendary artifacts of the elven people… bequeathed upon each leader of the Wild Hunt. The faith they accumulated gave them spirits… not unlike eidolons.”

“That’s why their effects are so powerful?” Simon inquired, with Chrom Cruak nodding. Of course, this was the same phenomenon which created eidolons and powerful Libromancy spells. “I cannot replicate them?”

“No… but it might be possible to…” Chrom Cruak’s crimson eyes glowed with maliciousness. “Corrupt these artifacts.”

Simon frowned. “How so?”

“Taint them with betrayal, and stain their beauty with tides of blood.” A vicious smirk stretched beneath Chrom Cruak’s bandages. “Elven blood.”

—-------

Simon and his allies left the pyramid soon after, with Chrom Cruak promising to work on a weapon to overload the Crafter’s Tower. He wasn’t sure what to make of the ancient king’s guidelines about corrupting Alfador’s belongings, since he had no intention of bringing more Oracle attention to his operations, but it might be worth exploring in due time. 

“So?” Velvet asked the moment they walked back into Simon’s office, having waited for their return. “How did it go?”

“I don’t think he noticed anything,” Shabram said, grabbing a small device that used to be covered by her cloak. 

“None of them did, and we triggered no alarm,” Silk replied as she pulled out a copy of their secret weapon she had sneakily carried on her person during the entire visit. “It works.”

These particular, miniature pictoboxes—the fruit of Jym Coil’s labor—were rectangular devices that could be held within one’s palm. Small and grey, their design was minimalistic: one glass eye to capture an image, a metal sheet at the back to record it, and a button for the user to press to take the shot. It was entirely nonmagical and thus didn’t trigger alarm spells.

However, Jym Coil had to make concessions to keep them small. The miniature pictoboxes couldn’t print pictures and instead recorded a single image on their back-sheets, which the user could overwrite with another. Spies would thus have to be extremely careful with what they pictographed.

The two prototypes had nonetheless perfectly captured images of Chrom Cruak’s wind pyramid and its supporting machinery. Simon considered this field test to be a complete success. 

“Since Chrom Cruak didn’t notice the devices, then we can assume the Crafter’s security systems won’t pick on them either,” Simon concluded. “While our spies will be limited to the tower’s guest areas, select pictures will hopefully help us find vulnerabilities.”

“Our main issue is locating the Crestone itself,” Silk pointed out. “We assume it’s somewhere near the top, but Bert believes the layout can change on its own.”

“Exactly. If Chrom Cruak is true to his word and finds a way to temporarily shut the structure down, then we’ll have an opening window where the Crestone will be stranded on a given floor. It’s just a question of finding the right one.” Simon could then lead a select team to recover and devour it. “This will leave the Sniper and other security forces as our last remaining source of concern, but Vouivre can take care of that.”

“Speaking of dragons, is it wise for me to remain quiet about their plans?” Shabram inquired. “A word of mine to Her Grace would kill their rebellion in the egg.”

“Vouivre and Dassein will immediately suspect us of being behind the leak,” Simon replied. As much as it annoyed him to let the civil war unfold again, Euphemia’s Church Party would never support his Muse-related operations, and he couldn’t risk alienating Vouivre until he grabbed the Crafter’s Crestone. “We’ll profit more from subtly exploiting both factions in the short term.”

It would also distract the Oracle for a time. Illusea was the only organization he hadn’t infiltrated by now, but he knew she would always plot to ensure the War Party never gained too much power. Voltobauta had confirmed to Simon that the White Unicorn had redoubled its efforts to plant agents inside Magvolia, likely to both reinforce the Stone Muse’s seal and hopefully recover the region should Endymian’s grip weaken. The Oracle had provided guidance on the matter, which suggested she might deploy elven soldiers to assist her human pawns. 

Otherwise, he would continue to distract Illusea with fake Overlords showing up in areas she knew harbored Zodiac Crystals like Cocagne and Lore. Since she believed him to be collecting them, he would keep feeding her paranoia and have her focus on fiends he had no interest in claiming.  

The world was his board, and he would keep the shell game going until the Zodiac Parade came upon them. 

—---------

Simon spent the next few weeks splitting his time between research, his preparations for the Mechanical Tower heist, and Velvet. He took the latter on two cabaret dates in Muse, both of which ended with them in bed to Silk’s utter disgust. 

Their encounters were mostly superficial so far. Velvet simply delighted in annoying and frustrating her twin by showing off with him and otherwise remained slightly guarded. It might take a little longer before she truly opened up.

Otherwise, the spy infiltration of the Mechanical Tower worked well. Agents of the Bert Trading Company brokered a meeting between ‘Carlo of Muse’ and a group of black market smugglers who just ‘happened’ to have obtained items from the pre-Doom Rhaptan civilization. 

Simon was very, very careful to cover his tracks there to prevent the Oracle or any other party from connecting the dots. Any group with stolen Rhaptan artifacts was sure to be involved in the Wild Hunt’s slaughter, after all, so Shabram used multiple layers of patsies to prevent identification. The complete chain of intermediaries would give a brain aneurysm to anyone looking at it.

The operation proved successful, and the spies gathered pictures of the guest areas’ jey cables and machinery. Analysis of the flow of power indicated the Crafter Crestone and ‘brain’ of the tower was likely located somewhere between the top floor—which housed the Musan Sniper and other defenses—and the guest areas above the airship bay. It should be a matter of weeks before they narrowed it down further.

Simon instituted an intense training regimen to ensure the Weavers were prepared for the operation and the eventual Zodiac Parade. Borsh was assigned as the organization’s representative to Vouivre and received an enhanced Automaton Crestone possessed by the Lord of Runes, to bolster his strength without tainting his soul; Renal, Velvet, and Silk were sent on a worldwide assassination spree to level-up quickly; Odette continued to develop her cult and accumulate as many funds as possible to fuel her abilities; and Voltobauta and Pallian joined the Honorius family coven for magic practice. There was no way the pirate king wouldn’t pick a few things from hanging out with Duchar.

Everything was slowly falling into place.

Otherwise, Simon experimented with his newest spells and eidolon. Gargunza had not only inherited his base form’s immense strength and ability to summon rain, but also gained the ability to buff others with his warsong, to see through nearby trees and plants, and even create the latter with every step he took. He was, in short, a living incarnation of the jungle. He would be a formidable heavy hitter. 

As for Lorimor’s Darkest Fear: The Thirteen Terrors of Man, experiments showed it summoned a hallucination of the target’s worst fear and would inflict Instadeath should they fall to its Terror effect. It might be situationally useful, though redundant with his other abilities. 

Unfortunately, Simon also faced some setbacks. His attempts at creating a miasmic version of Teleport stalled out, though he remained confident he could eventually achieve it through Libromancy; he heard word that Eole and the Adventurer were in Lore advocating for an intervention in Telluria; and a sudden increase in elf activities in Uyo forced them to relocate Granny’s dreamshade compound to the Darkwood rather than risk a confrontation.

And then there were the pictures.

Simon found himself staring at them in his office in utter confusion, checking each and every one of them while trying to solve a new mystery. He had taken the first from an Archer-enhanced pictobox in order to check whether or not it behaved like the others. The first image showed the exact same otherworldly sky and platform as all the other ones, with one tiny difference. 

The Sniper was gone. 

The machine had simply disappeared from the picture, and was nowhere to be seen within the frame.

Simon had thought it was an Archer-connected anomaly at first, but switching the crystal for the Goatfish’s or the Scales’ yielded the exact same result. The otherworldly landscape remained the same, yet the Sniper was simply… gone. 

Yet another mystery on my hands… Simon thought as he set aside the pictures. Had the Abyss finally consumed that cursed machine? Or had it moved to another corner of it? The truth of the reigns lies there; I can feel it in my bones…

A telepathic connection from Borsh intruded upon Simon’s thoughts. “Chief, uh…” the werewolf sounded surprisingly distraught. “The Valendre attack has begun.”

Oh right, today was the day when Vouivre and Dassein plotted to strike the south in a surprise attack. Their goal was to strike at the Lighthouse and nearby fortifications to cut the Church Party’s supply lines to Telluria. “How is it going?”

“It is… unbelievably worse than expected.” The sheer uneasiness in the werewolf’s voice was palpable. “That Alchemist’s weapon… It is terrible.”

Okay, that didn’t sound good at all. They couldn’t learn much about Lauriane’s bioweapon besides the fact it was extremely lethal. Had they underestimated its effects?

“Are you on the site?” Simon inquired as he focused. “Keep your eyes open.”

Simon used his Voyeur Title to see through Borsh, and he found himself staring at Hell.

There was no other way to describe the horrific scene in front of him. He immediately recognized the village of Agares on the border, where Borsh had been deployed to test the weapon on the Church of the Light’s soldiers. 

Simon had suspected it to be a mutagen of some kind, and he was half-right. The local Templars and priests protecting the holy site had indeed been polymorphed into shambling horrors. 

All of them. 

The living and the dead had risen together in an unholy army, their corpses growing pustules and tumors which now animated them. Former knights had tentacles growing out of their eyes and mouths; priests and civilians had merged together into many-limbed masses of rolling flesh pursuing uninfected victims to add to their collective; others had doubled in size, their mouths snapping open all the way to the torso to reveal squirming hand-tongues. Borsh watched one of them bite an uninfected victim, only for the saliva to turn the wound purple and immediately cause blisters to appear on their skin. 

“It is… it is transmissible?” Simon wondered in horror. “But most Templars are supposed to be immune to Disease, so how could it spread to them?”

“They transformed after death, when their Classes no longer protected them,” Borsh replied. The distance between him and the nearest building indicated he was staying a healthy distance away from Agares. “Everyone else changes within minutes of a bite. We were given a vaccine, but… I’m not sure if it’ll work.”

The implications left Simon horrified. The manufactured plague might sweep across the entire region within days or weeks depending on how long these creatures remained both active and virulent. The cost in lives would be unfathomable. What could Lauriane possibly hope to gain from this chaos?

Revenge. The answer was so terrifyingly obvious, considering how she had nearly annihilated the Worldtree to avenge Simon himself. Revenge on those who wronged her family, and on the world that took her brothers away.

As horrific as it sounded, a living Louis was safer for the world than a furious Lauriane. 

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