🐉 🐉 🐉
THE palace had massive ballrooms capable of hosting ceremonies with attendees in the hundreds, but using that sort of room for a small event would make for a dull, stingy event.
The banquet that night was held in a dining room that snugly fit just one long table. There weren’t many in attendance for tonight’s event, as the guest of honor, Julian, came so suddenly it was difficult for many to arrange their schedules for it, and the court still didn’t want to make everything too public just yet.
The court dignitaries and nobles came dressed in formalwear that was elegant without being pompous. There were only two empty seats, meant for two adventurers who didn’t come for some reason.
The guests nibbled hors d’oeuvres while engaging in pleasant conversation, which included political negotiations. The guest of honor arrived, and that’s when the night’s peace ended.
“Eeeeek!”
“Attack!”
The not-very-large room became crowded with golems, swords fused to their arms, looking like skeletons with metal plates of armor slapped on their bones. Each was about as tall as a human man.
They were made with reduced overall volume to work well with storage spells and magic items, but they still had both the dexterity and strength of movement to rival a high-level adventurer.
The royal guard—stationed as perfunctory security as prominent as a wall decoration—was silenced in the opening surprise attack.
One unlucky noblewoman who was too slow to flee was sliced in half through the torso with a massive blade, and her body collapsed in a pool of blood.
The gentlemen invited to the banquet were knights, and in that capacity, they had been trained how to wield a weapon, but none had seen combat in a long time. Besides, they were unarmed. They had no better choice than to run in a panic from the relentless golem onslaught.
But while they did—
“Haaaaaah!”
One attendee used superhuman strength to fling the long table at the golems. It didn’t matter what the situation was, he would deal with any enemy that came to attack. Handling a surprise situation was where adventurers truly shone.
“Dammit, really wish I had my armor right ’bout now!”
Timm pulled off the outer layer of his dress clothes, his boulder-like muscles bursting through his shirt as they flexed.
He swung a ceremonial sword dropped by one of the royal guard (the sort of weapon that sacrificed cutting ability and durability for beauty), striking out at a golem who evaded his table attack.
The golem met Timm with surprising agility, and they exchanged two rapid blows. It was a high-class golem with proper sword-fighting skills.
But that was until a fork Weyne threw pierced into the golem’s one, glass-like eye. Dinner had yet to be served, but the table was already set, and the utensils were now on the floor.
Weyne juggled five knives as he gathered them up, all of them mithril utensils for detecting poison. Mithril was light, sturdy, and easy to work with. It was a standard material for weapons.
He bolted towards the golem like lightning and plunged the knives into the golem’s joints so quickly his hands were a blur. It still stood, with rattling convulsions, but Weyne delivered a handstand kick to the back of its head, then snatched the magic lantern from the wall.
There was a long cord that ran from outside the room, coiled in a corner and connected to all the illumination in the room. It was a magic cable that supplied magic drawn from belowground to the lighting.
Weyne jerked that out from the lantern. He ducked below the sword tip of a golem coming at them, slipped around its back while holding the end of the cable, catching the golem in the rope and tying it up, locking its joints.
Then he stuck the end of the magic cable into a gap in the golem’s armor. There was a brief flash of blue-white light, the golem spasmed, and then it collapsed to the ground like a marionette whose strings were cut.
“Huh, never knew you could use a magic cable like that…” Timm remarked.
“You can overload the drive mechanism to destroy it. Lucky for us that sort of thing works on this type,” said Weyne.
The golems Timm had knocked over with the table climbed to their feet then surrounded the two, their steps in time with each other. They seemed more cautious, likely having determined Timm and Weyne to be a threat now that the golems were fewer in number.
The nobles who were too slow to flee were pressed against the wall, with the two adventurers protecting them.
Weyne kicked up another one of the royal guard’s swords and grabbed it, but he didn’t normally use swords. He would have a hard time handling a golem with the ability to stand against a head-on assault from Timm.
But they were right in the middle of the palace. If they could buy some time, more royal knights or the elite guard would gather here, crushing these measly ten-ish golems. The problem was the “buying some time” part.
That’s when sharp clacking footfalls came running down the hall. “I’m late! Timm! Weyne! Are you okay?!”
“Viola, should you be here?!” shouted Timm.
“This isn’t the time to argue about that!” she said. She wore a gown both the color and shape of a blue rose, her shoulders bared, running into the room with grace despite the heels she wore. And she still had her glass bottle bottom-glasses on even with that elegant outfit.
She waved the wand she had tucked under her arm and quickly incanted, “Narrow path beneath the azure sky. I who rush, who race, who dedicate. Heaven’s vengeance, far of reach and sure of strike, draft of lamentation, thy name endless though imbibed and measured…”
The golems obviously reacted to this and moved to interrupt her incantation, but Timm and Weyne already knew what to do. They quickly moved in to intercept the golems.
And that was enough to get the seconds they needed until the incantation was complete. That’s all they needed: a few seconds. They locked swords, kicked away golems, and even threw their swords at the end to delay the machines just a little more.
Then they dove to either side, opening a line of fire for Viola.
“Dance to the end, Honorless King! Tremendous Thunder!”
Light so bright it turned the room to the two shades of white and black leaped from Viola’s wand. Thunder roared, loud enough to leave your ears ringing. All the glass in every window of the room shattered, the gentle, warm breeze coming in from the night sky.
A colossal bolt of lightning leaped towards the golems, striking them head-on. The golem in front exploded into a rain of scrap metal. The lightning carried on, mowing down the golems behind the first, frying their internal circuits while flinging them away like pieces of lint.
One golem tried to stand back up after all that. Timm held it down with his foot, picked up the sword he threw a moment earlier, and brought the blade down on its neck. It jerked, and then moved no more.
“All right, now we hold out till the guard comes!” he declared.
“Yeah!”
“Yes, sir!”
The golems that survived clamored to their feet like zombies, black smoke rising from them.
✦ ✦ ✦
🐉 🐉 🐉
AROUND that same time.
“What’s that sound? What’s happening?”
Monica was in a room not that far from the center of the ruckus in a dining room that looked like a shrunken down version of the room where the real banquet was taking place.
She waited there alone, wearing a navy gown that almost looked like something you would wear to a funeral.
The building shook. A decorative plate on the wall fell and shattered. Screams echoed from somewhere.
This was the palace. How could this be happening?
“Who are you?! You can’t— Gah!” Then a scream came from nearby, followed by a heavy thud as something hit the ground.
“Ah?!” cried Monica.
Outside the room was a royal guard who was either her protector or her jailkeeper, it was hard to tell, but the door opened and someone who shouldn’t be in there pushed their way in.
He was a young man in his mid-twenties, tall with manly features. He wore a pure white tunic top loaded with decorative buttons and a cloak wrapped around his neck like a scarf, and was accompanied by a mechanical humanoid with a dark gleam. The sword fused to the golem’s arm was coated in fresh blood.
“What a wondrous occasion. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Julian Angus, Marquess Angus of the Martgarz Empire. And you are Lady Monica, I presume?”
Monica couldn’t even breathe while Julian gave a bow and introduction, superficially polite and perfect in execution, but nothing else.
Monica knew he’d been invited to the banquet, but little more. How did he know Monica was here? Why did he come himself to see her? And why did he bring a dangerous combat golem to a place like this? What were the screams Monica had just heard?
“Please come with me,” he said. “And please do refrain from resisting. I will have to hurt you somewhat if you do.”
“Stay away!” Monica backed away, refusing, and Julian quickly threw away his superficially polite attitude.
“You really haven’t been trained well, despite being the daughter of a bitch. …Capture her.”
“Ah!”
In response to Julian’s order, the golem reached towards Monica with a merciless, mechanical, and blood-covered hand. It pinned her down with quick yet unnatural movements.
“Agh, gah!” Monica gasped out choked sobs, not yet understanding what was happening to her.
The golem pressed her to the ground, almost like it was going to shove her right into it, leaving her unable to move an inch.
Julian crouched before her, looking down at her with a cold gaze. “Hmph. This is suited to the daughter of a bitch.”
In his hand was a leather collar gleaming with smooth, dark wickedness.