Location: The Chamber of the Heart, Inside the Geo-Titan.
Time: 10:35.
The bridge was ten feet wide. The drop was two thousand feet down into a churning river of molten rock. The enemy weighed four tons and was built to kill gods.
The Praetorian Prime charged.
It didn't run like a man; it galloped like a mechanical nightmare. Its four steel spider-legs hammered the light-bridge with pneumatic force, causing the hard-light surface to ripple and distort like water disturbed by a stone.
"Split!" Dante roared.
He dove left, sliding on the slick surface. Valerius dove right, rolling into a crouch.
CRASH.
The Praetorian plowed through the space where they had been standing. Its Pile-Bunker arm—a hydraulic spike the size of a telephone pole—punched the air. The shockwave alone nearly blew Dante off the edge.
"Prime!" Dante shouted, scrambling to his feet as the bridge stabilized. "Weak points!"
"Analysis: Armor plating is Adamantine-Alloy. Impervious to small arms. Impervious to standard alchemy. Weakness: The Joints are exposed to allow mobility. And the Core Processor is shielded only by thermal glass."
The Praetorian drifted, its spider-legs digging into the hard light for traction. It swiveled its humanoid torso 180 degrees with a sickening whirrr.
It raised its Flamethrower arm.
WHOOSH.
A stream of blue, alchemical fire engulfed the center of the bridge.
"Valerius!" Dante yelled.
The elf was trapped. The wall of blue fire blocked his path to Dante, and the massive robot blocked his path to the exit.
Valerius didn't panic. He jumped.
He vaulted over the railing of the bridge, hanging by one hand over the magma, two thousand feet of death below him. The fire roared over his head, singing his white hair. As the flame died down, he swung back up, momentum carrying him behind the Praetorian.
"I am behind it!" Valerius shouted, stabbing his scrap-spear into the robot's rear leg joint.
CLANG.
The spear shattered on impact. The Adamantine armor didn't even scratch.
The Praetorian's Riot Shield arm spun backward, backhanding Valerius with the force of a wrecking ball.
CRACK.
Valerius flew ten feet, skidding to the edge of the bridge. He gasped, clutching his ribs, blood leaking from his mouth.
"THREAT ASSESSMENT: PEST. ELIMINATING."
The Praetorian raised its Spinning Saw. It advanced on the downed elf, the blade screaming.
Dante looked at his arm. He had one shot of Chronal Glimpse left for the day. He couldn't waste it on a dodge. He needed a kill.
"Havoc!" Dante screamed into his comms. "Do you have a shot?"
Three hundred yards away, Havoc lay prone on the bone-platform. He looked through the scope of his heavy rifle. The heat shimmering off the magma made aiming a nightmare; the target was dancing in the haze.
"The heat haze is terrible, Boss!" Havoc yelled. "I can't lock onto the head! It's moving too fast!"
"Don't shoot the head!" Dante's voice crackled. "Shoot the floor! The bridge panel directly under its front right leg! It's flickering!"
Havoc adjusted his aim. He saw the glowing hard-light panel Dante was talking about. It was flickering, damaged by the pile-bunker strike.
"Copy that," Havoc grunted, exhaling slowly. "Say goodbye to gravity."
He squeezed the trigger.
BOOM.
The heavy anti-material round crossed the cavern in a split second.
The bullet slammed into the bridge panel right as the Praetorian stepped on it.
SHATTER.
The hard-light disintegrated.
The Praetorian's front right leg plunged through the hole. The machine lurched forward, off-balance. The spinning saw missed Valerius's head by inches, carving a deep groove into the floor instead.
"Now!" Dante sprinted forward.
He didn't aim for the robot. He aimed for the environment.
Above the bridge, a massive brass piston—part of the Titan's internal engine—was pumping rhythmically. Down. Up. Down. Up.
Dante slid under the Praetorian's legs, dodging the flailing limbs. He slapped his hands onto the bridge surface directly beneath the piston.
"Ramp."
He transmuted the metal grating of the bridge supports (not the light itself, but the physical frame holding it). The metal warped, twisting upward to form a jagged, forty-degree incline directly under the robot's belly.
The Praetorian, already stuck in the hole, was forced upward by the growing ramp. It struggled, its legs scrabbling for grip on the slick metal.
It was now standing directly in the path of the descending piston.
"WARNING: VERTICAL COMPRESSION IMMINENT."
The Praetorian tried to pull free, revving its engines.
"Valerius!" Dante shouted. "Keep it there!"
Valerius scrambled up, ignoring his broken ribs. He grabbed the Praetorian's shield arm. He couldn't hold the machine back—he wasn't strong enough. But he could jam it.
He jammed the broken shaft of his spear into the elbow joint of the shield arm, wedging it against the bridge railing.
The Praetorian jerked, momentarily pinned by the leverage.
WHOOOOOM.
The massive brass piston, weighing ten thousand tons, descended from the darkness above like the hammer of god.
It hit the Praetorian.
CRUNCH.
The sound was sickening—tearing metal and shattering glass. The Adamantine armor crumpled like tin foil. The Praetorian was crushed between the piston and Dante's ramp. Oil, sparks, and parts sprayed everywhere.
The shockwave shook the bridge, knocking Dante off his feet.
The piston rose again.
What was left of the Praetorian was a flattened pancake of scrap metal. The red light in its eyes flickered and died.
"THREAT... NEUTRALIZED..."
Dante collapsed on the ramp, panting. "I love industrial accidents."
Valerius pulled the spear shaft out of the wreck. He looked at the massive piston continuing its cycle, indifferent to the destruction it had caused.
"That was... effective," Valerius noted, wiping oil from his face. "But messy."
"Messy counts," Dante wheezed.
They walked past the wreckage. The path to the Axiom of War was clear.
The sphere pulsed slowly now, tamed by the manual override. It hovered in the air, a miniature sun of red mana.
Dante approached it.
"Prime," Dante said. "It's all yours."
"Initiating Interface," Prime responded.
Dante placed his mechanical hand on the surface of the sphere.
The reaction was instant.
The white runes on his arm flared blindingly bright. The red mana from the Engine didn't burn him; it flowed into him. It wasn't like eating uranium. It was like drinking liquid rage.
Dante screamed as his neural pathways were rewritten. He saw flashes of history—armies clashing, tanks rolling, empires rising and falling in the blink of an eye. He understood the physics of ballistics, the chemistry of gunpowder, the geometry of a kill-zone.
"SECOND AXIOM: INTEGRATED."
"UNLOCKING FUNCTION: THE ARSENAL. (Ability: Instant Weapon Transmutation)"
Dante fell to his knees as the connection severed.
The sphere was dark now. It looked like a dead moon. Its power had been drained, archived into the Tesseract in Dante's soul.
"Dante?" Valerius knelt beside him. "Are you ok?"
Dante looked up. His eyes were glowing red for a moment before fading back to grey.
He flexed his mechanical hand. He felt... dangerous. Not just strong, but proficient. He felt like he could pick up a rock and throw it with the accuracy of a sniper rifle. He felt like he could turn the air into a knife.
"I'm fine," Dante whispered. "I just... downloaded war."
"Good work, Scavenger."
The voice echoed from the entrance of the cavern.
Dante froze. He knew that voice. It sounded like gold coins falling on marble.
He turned around.
Standing on the far ledge, where Havoc and Silas were supposed to be guarding, stood a figure.
He wore a pristine white suit, unblemished by the ash or the grime. His eyes were like spinning gold coins.
Aurum.
And behind him, floating silently, were a dozen Gold Golems. They held Havoc and Silas by the throat, lifting them off the ground. Havoc's rifle lay broken on the floor. They had been ambushed by stealth.
"You really did it," Aurum smiled, his diamond teeth glinting in the gloom. "You shut down the Titan. And you unlocked the Axiom."
Dante stood up slowly. "How did you get here?"
"I followed the money," Aurum said, stepping onto the bridge. "Or rather, I followed the massive thermal signature of a dying god. And my Drill-Ship is parked just outside the crust."
Aurum stopped ten paces away.
"You have the First Axiom. Now you have the Second. You are becoming a monopoly, Dante. And in my city, monopolies must be regulated."
He pointed a golden finger at Dante.
"Hand over the Archive. Transfer the Axiom to me. Or I liquidate your assets."
One of the Golems tightened its grip on Silas's throat. Silas choked, his face turning purple, kicking his legs helplessly.
Dante looked at Aurum. He looked at Silas.
He looked at his mechanical hand, freshly infused with the Axiom of War.
"You want a merger, Aurum?" Dante asked, the Silvergrin splitting wide into a terrifying smile.
"Let's negotiate."