The bridge wasn’t slender, but Jace still walked with his arms out for good measure as he crossed it. There were no railings, and one wrong step would mean his death.

  The metal of the bridge should have been scalding hot, but it wasn’t even melting the soles of his boots. It wasn’t perfect, but they crossed with ease.

  When they reached the other side, after nearly a half hour of half-walking half-running, they arrived at the central island. Jace stepped off onto the black mound of rock at the center. He should’ve been in the shadow of the massive central sphere, because now, it loomed many meters above them, but the light came from below.

  That is, unless the sphere sent a pulse of shield-aspect Aes up into the ceiling. A bar of blue light, a few meters thick, surged up into the ceiling and up through a tube, powering the entire rest of the tomb. When it shot up, it cast the entire dome—except for the area beneath the sphere—in ghostly blue.

  There were sixteen entrances at the base of the sphere, all inserted somewhere in its southern hemisphere, with high-ceilinged hallways and a maze inside, just like the other levels of the dungeon.

  A ring-puzzle like the one on the other side stood on this side of the bridge as well, and its rings had adjusted into the right orientation as well. The bridge wasn’t collapsing any time soon, not so long as they left the puzzle in the right orientation.

  “Well, I’d be willing to bet the core thingy is at the very center of the sphere,” Jace said. “Just like the other tombs. We’ve gotta get to the center as fast as we can.”

  “How much?” Lessa asked. “How much is the bet?”

  “Not the time, you two,” Ash grumbled.

  The longer they waited outside, the more time they allowed Rallemnon to get to the core ahead of them. Sure, he didn’t have a team of four, and that might slow him down when he encountered traps or automatons, he still had a sizable lead.

  Jace ran toward the nearest entrance. A steel causeway sloped up to the sphere’s side, and columns rose up to join it with the main structure of the sphere.

  But then Jace ran his hand along one of the columns and wiped off a layer of dust, revealing shiny steel below. The column was divided up into a more slender top half and a bulkier bottom half. “Is this a piston…?”

  “The entrances open and close?” Perril suggested.

  “Even if that was the case, they haven’t moved for centuries,” Kinfild commented.

  “I don’t like the look of this at all,” Jace said. “Second bet: when we take the Halcyon Spear and deactivate the dungeon core, they close up on us. We’ll be trapped inside, and eventually, we’ll run out of supplies. No way back out.”

  Ash shook his head. “I do not believe that. This dungeon has another purpose. You saw the paintings in the architect’s tomb, yes? It’s protecting a great weapon.”

  “Neither of those are exclusive. It can still lock us inside.”

  “No. A weapon is still meant to be used, and I can only guess the purpose of the weapons: to bring down the Wall. Perhaps after the Enemy had died out, or for some other reason. But if taking the weapon locked us inside, the weapons would have absolutely no purpose.”

  “Unless they didn’t want anyone to take them,” Lessa said.

  “In that case, they would’ve destroyed the weapons, aye?” Perril shrugged. “I hate to say it, but I’m with Ash on this one.”

  Jace sighed. “We don’t really have time to worry about this, I suppose. We’ll deal with it as it comes.”

  They walked the rest of the way up the causeway, then stepped into the tunnels of the upper sphere.

  The route Rallemnon took wasn’t hard to follow. Automaton scraps lay strewn about all through the tunnel, traps lay smashed and melted open. Rallemnon’s whistling glass gauntlets had left scores in the steel, obviously melted, though they’d cooled.

  At least, in the lower levels, they’d cooled. As they passed through the hallways and ascended through the sphere, the trail of destruction Rallemnon left behind still glowed with warmth. Faint red gashes and melt-marks turned glowing orange.

  Gates yawned wide open. More disk-puzzles waited on the walls beside them, embedded directly into the stone, but there was no way to revert the puzzle to its old form from the other side of the door. That was probably the only reason Rallemnon hadn’t blocked the way behind himself.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  They took stairways three steps at a time and sprinted around corners, boots skittering on the floors as they tried to turn. Jace had no idea how far they’d come, but he assumed Rallemnon had been charting as direct of a course as possible. Sure, he could track it, but he wanted all his techniques available if he needed to deal with an ambush.

  But, about halfway to the core—judging by the pressure he felt on his own system, and by how much Lessa was wincing—they arrived at a large chamber with an assortment of coffins arranged in a circle. Statues stood between them, resembling heavily-armoured guards. These were probably the main guards of the king who’d built this tomb, or soldiers of some sort.

  There wasn’t much time, but Jace couldn’t help himself. He pushed open all the coffins. They didn’t need any more cards, and neither was there anything good actually in the coffins. They each carried a rifle like Lessa’s had been before the modifications, and there was nothing more or less special about them.

  But, atop the brass sarcophagi, the warriors all carried a suit of armour. It was made of brass, with white marble decorative inserts. If he’d been a regular human, it would’ve been much too heavy for him, but with his current strength, he could lift it with ease. The cuirasses had rigid lines and practical joints.

  Jace ran between each coffin, assessing the armour’s strength. They all had attribute enhancements, but they were far from regular. When he stared at them, a tag appeared above them, reading [Luminian Praetorian hereditary cuirass: +20 Vitality. (Enchantment: will adjust size to fit wearer.)]

  But each had a different attribute.

  He darted between them until he found a cuirass that granted twenty extra resistance and took it, then cast aside his old armour and pulled the new cuirass on overtop his black sleeveless shirt. At first, it was much too big, but a ripple washed over it, and its size adjusted to fit his body, gripping him tight but not pushing too hard.

  “Anybody else want anything?” Jace asked as he ran to the next coffin and retrieved a pair of vambraces, each affording the user an extra five Vitality.

  “Too heavy,” Lessa said. “Even if I wanted it.”

  Kinfild nodded. “I am in the same predicament. I’m counting on you to keep their front lines tied up.”

  “I have equipment of my own, but thank you,” Ash said.

  Perril mused on it for a few seconds, rubbing her chin, but then said, “Should I plan on needing it?”

  Jace shrugged. “Well, if you stay with Kinfild and Lessa, and keep Ash and me healthy, then hopefully you won't get hit.”

  “Reassuring. I won’t hinder myself, then. Doubt and extra twenty or so Vitality is gonna get me out of a bind anyway, aye?”

  Jace tilted his head, then plucked a set of greaves from the next coffin and strapped them on. “I have no plans to let any of you down.”

  He kicked his legs and jumped a little to make sure his new armour was snug. The cuirass and vambraces filled him with the regular twinge of an attribute being modified, but his body accepted it right away—instead of him having to convince his body to catch up with the potential of the attribute.

  The greaves afforded him an extra five Agility each, which would no doubt come in handy. Overall, his attributes now sat at:

  [Attributes]

  Strength: 25

  Vital: 67

  Resistance: 92

  Agility: 43

  Potency: 1

  He hadn’t been expecting Agility to take such a jump recently, and he’d have to work on his Strength a little more, but that was a problem for another day.

  “Alright, sorry for the excursion,” he said. “Ready to keep moving?”

  The others nodded, and they set off through the hallways again. His new armour was heavier than before, but it didn’t restrict his movement at all. It had been made for elite Luminian guards, it seemed, and though it felt a little weird to wear it, he needed it more than their corpses did.

  Though they’d lost a little ground, and the wreckage of Rallemnon’s rampage had started cooling down, they recovered their ground quickly. It might have taken him days to get through here, but they did it minutes. They didn’t have to fight their way through. They didn’t have to puzzle open locks or disarm traps.

  When they reached the sphere’s equator, Jace knew immediately. Glass tubes filled with shield Aes ran outward, reaching out toward the outer ring and providing the ring of blue light.

  They followed the trail of wreckage and turned down what seemed to be a maintenance hallway. Tubes ran along its walls, and grates covered the floor.

  “Haven’t seen anything like this in the other levels,” Jace said. “And…I don’t sense any Aes in these tubes.”

  “Water and coolant,” Kinfild remarked. “What for, I do not know.”

  The maintenance tunnel led inward to the very center of the sphere, then deposited them on a ledge overlooking a spherical central room. At the very brink of the ledge was an automaton’s corpse. Its outer shell still smouldered and the gashes in its armour glowed white-hot.

  The spherical room ahead of them had about thrice the room of a high school gym, and though most of the floor was curved, there was a plane of flat ground near the bottom.

  All empty, save for a single coffin in the center with the carved relief of a Luminian on its marble lid.

  Above it, in the very center of the room, was a meter-wide star of blazing shield-Aes. Lightning crackled around it, and flecks of hexagonal amber shield-meshes appeared around it.

  That had to be the core.

  Holding up a hand, Jace shielded his eyes against the bright light. Just below the core, at the edge of the central tomb, stood Rallemnon, his metal hands on the edge of the coffin, cloak fluttering in the wind whipped up by the core.

  With a single heave, he cast the lid off the coffin.