[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 228 – Ruins of Alzahan

“Where’s the snacks at, man?” Komachi asked the vast space.

A few piles of strange, ruined automatons littered the intricately carved floor. Gold-and-blue metallic limbs, many terminated in drills, axes, pincers, and fists, reached in vain towards the ceiling-tall windows that looked out onto…absolute, oppressive nothingness.

Sam came to slowly. His whole body felt oddly numb and ethereal, like a brisk wind might blow him away. He expected pain, wounds…something. Not this insubstantial sensation.

Slowly, as Same awoke, the feeling came back to his body, starting with his broad chest and moving outward to his extremities.

A glance at his HP and MP told him that–physically–he was just fine. Which truly shouldn’t have been the case. He had a litany of injuries, some of them quite severe. Now they were gone. More curious of all was how low his MP was.

Komachi shivered. “It’s cold…”

Instinctively, Sam reached out with half-numb fingers and swept Komachi up, holding her next to his body.

He groaned softly, more just to hear his voice than anything, and despite every ounce of his spirit telling him to just close his eyes, he rolled over onto his back.

When nothing snapped, broke, twisted, or otherwise told him that he was in danger, Sam sat up slowly with Komachi held tightly to his armored chest.

Wherever this was, it was eerily silent, except for their own voices that echoed faintly back at them. Combined with the harsh cold, this expansive chamber felt more like a graveyard.

The sensation of emptiness was pervasive, and his ears rang with the oppressive sound of silence.

Getting his feet beneath him, Sam gently dumped Komachi into his breastplate and put one hand to the sword handle peeking over his shoulder, only to realize that it was gone.

“I swear, I need to get a sword that has some teleportation magic on it,” Sam grumbled.

Komachi huddled close, purring intensely. “You’re the only thing that’s warm, Sam.”

He looked down at her, tucking his chin in so he could see her fluffy golden-furred face. “You’re right. It is pretty damn cold here. Good thing I run hot, eh?”

She nodded. Her eyes were wide pools of blackness. It wasn’t like Komachi to be scared, but this was uncharted territory.

They were somewhere hidden within the Maelstrom. A place Sam had been sure was only death. Sam had the sneaking suspicion that they weren’t in Kansas anymore. Or, more appropriately, Il’dran’s First Layer.

Sam looked up and down the hallway. Each way was lined with marching columns ringed with golden filigree.

“One way’s as good as the other,” he said, striking off in a random direction down the hall. At least if he met a dead end, he could turn right back around and go the other way.

“You don’t happen to have any weapons stashed away somewhere, do you?” Sam asked without much hope.

“Ehh.” Komachi scratched behind her ear and reached inside her bag. “Don’t think so. Lots of muh stuff is with Chompers and my merchant stand.”

“Thought so.”

They walked down the hall in silence, though really it was just Sam walking with Komachi hitching a ride as usual.

There was a pervasive darkness about the strange structure. The windows he came across didn’t look right. They were far too big. You could have driven a tank through them and still had room to spare.

Each window looked out onto the same empty scenery. The only difference was that sometimes a barrier shimmered over the frame. Sometimes it was tinged green, others purple or blue.

Thick pillars segmented the windows, looking more like arches you would find in some ancient Arabic castle than…wherever Sam was.

There was a light of sort, or else Sam wouldn’t have been able to see at all, but it was odd. He couldn’t make out much beyond ten or twenty feet ahead of him at any one time.

Almost as if the light was being eaten once it was far enough away from him. Sam couldn’t make heads nor tails of what was going on, but he felt something was very wrong here.

The silence stalked them wherever they went. The halls curved slightly, suggesting that he was in a tower of some sort. Only, sometimes they didn’t curve. And just when he would expect to find a doorway on his left when the windows had always been on his right…they switched places.

“This place has no rhyme or reason,” Sam said. He winced. His voice sounded so loud in the velvety silence.

They walked for what felt like hours, aimlessly poking into rooms and doubling back when the debris of metal limbs and automatons grew so thick that they would have had to wade through them.

Without a weapon, Sam wasn’t keen on seeing how many of those creatures might be alive. He knew he could fight still, but he’d feel a lot better once he had a proper sword in his hand.

Some of them had weapons resembling thick, stubby swords, but they were half fused to the automatons’ limbs, and often mangled besides.

Komachi emerged from his breastplate and poked her head out, ears twitching. “Hey, try that way!”

With a shrug of his wide shoulders, Sam followed Komachi’s suggestion. It looked no different than the other halls or rooms, and yet instead of opening up onto a small interior room as the shape would suggest, Sam was met with a very different space.

This room was wider and vaster than anything he’d seen so far. It was practically a cavern. With the encroaching darkness, he couldn’t see the walls nor the ceiling of the room, and yet he felt compelled to move forward.

As he entered the cavernous room, a faint series of sigils lit up on the floor. They sparked and faded, lit up again, and faded once more until they were barely emitting any light.

They reminded Sam of the dying embers of a fire after all its fuel was burned up.

“Whatever magic this place has is goin’ out,” Komachi whispered.

In the distance, another faint luminescence made itself known. Sam tentatively moved closer, straining his ears to pick up any noise aside from the deafening sounds of his own metallic footsteps.

There was nothing.

It wasn’t until Sam approached a towering archway that he saw what was causing that glow.

Runes suspended in the air formed a barrier over an intricately worked set of brass doors. For some reason that Sam couldn’t explain, he expected that they would hiss and slide open as if they were hermetically sealed.

Before he could approach, a woman’s voice called out from the darkness, “Don’t bother. You can’t get through. Nobody can ever again.”

Sam stopped in his tracks, once more putting his hand to the empty space above his shoulder where his sword should have been. He turned around slowly, but couldn’t see anybody in the darkness.

“Your eyes will adjust,” the woman said with a hint of wry amusement.

Focusing on her voice, Sam shut his eyes and inched forward. “And who might I ask is speaking with such authority?”

“The last Immortal Magus,” she said in haughty, regal tones. Her voice carried a magical weight that took a moment for him to shake off.

Rather than being compelled to kneel, he felt an urge to fight, as if he was standing inches away from an unseen monster.

“Fancy title,” Sam said, zeroing in on her location. “Do you have a name I can call you?”

“...You don’t recognize the calling.” She sounded stunned.

Sam moved a few steps closer. “No offense,” he told her, “but I don’t recognize much of this new world. I’m not originally from here. Assuming here is…where I was.”

Wow, that was a lot of words to say nothing at all. Good job, Sam.

Fortunately, she didn’t seem to be too put off. “And yet, you’re alive. Impossibly alive when so little else is in this dying world.”

“I do have an annoying habit of being alive when others want for less.”

The more she talked, the closer he moved.

Over here a few more feet, he thought to himself.

In Sam’s opinion, strange people talking to you from the shadows were never your friend. They wanted something. Either to hurt or to hinder, but he had never come across a person skulking in the shadows and thought “gee, what a lovely person” in all his years.

Besides, there was a growing sense of danger and wrongness about the place.

“So…that immortal title,” Sam said, gently tilting his head back and forth, trying to pick up on any other sound beside his voice. “I imagine it’s special, rare even?”

“Few survive the alchemical transformation to wield bestial magicks,” she said softly. If he was far away, he wouldn’t be able to hear her so clearly. Sam knew he was drawing closer.

Komachi tentatively sniffed the air, then skittishly hid back within his armor.

“Cool, cool,” Sam said. “Body horror is very ‘in’ these days, I’m guessing.” Sliding toward the sound of her voice, he opened his eyes, expecting her to be in front of him.

Instead, he stood before the strangest throne he had ever seen. Made of gold and azure metal, it was created from fused pieces of arms, hands, and automaton heads with smooth features.

As Sam stared at the gruesome throne, the Empress’ voice shifted to just behind it.

“You must forgive me, it has been a long, long time since…” She trailed off, unnecessarily ominous.

“Y’know,” Sam said, his guard up. “That’s precisely the sort of thing the villain says before they attack the hero, lady!”

Trusting his instincts more than his senses, Sam spun about and raised his hands defensively. If he was being stalked, there was no way she would still be behind the throne.

The immortal magus loomed above him, lifted by limbs of monstrous substance. She stared down at him, judging him for what he was worth.

As close as he was to her, Sam got an eyeful all right. The freakish tentacle-like limbs were the least of her.

With the darkness aiding her, she seemed to float in the air. Her long blonde hair was tousled like she had just stepped out from outside only moments ago.

Sam swore he could smell the heat of the day coming off her, which was supremely odd. It brought him immediately back to the hot summers he enjoyed back home. But she was clearly not human. The woman had a pair of obsidian-black horns growing from her head, with pointed ears and piercing gray eyes.

The woman was dressed for battle with black and brass armor that incongruently left her rather expansive tanned cleavage exposed to the air.

Standing as close as he was, Sam was keenly aware that he lacked a weapon, and that the woman before him had several strapped to her person.

That she was beautiful was an understatement. She radiated power and beauty in equal measure, wielding them like weapons. But what truly caught Sam’s eye more than anything else, was the single earring.

A large emerald the size of a quarter hung from a gold chain. It caught the ephemeral light, producing a soothing verdant glow. For some reason, it seemed so odd to Sam that she only had one earring and he found himself fixating on it.

“Where’s your other earring?” Sam found himself asking, unable to help it.

When in doubt, stall for time, Sam thought. He didn’t know how stalling would help, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

The woman started as if she had been smacked. The funneling ruby magic that had been swirling around her fist dissipated. “...What?”

Sam pointed. “You’ve only got the one.”

“You are not going to fight me?” she asked, curious and a little disappointed.

Sam shrugged his shoulders. “Do you want to?”

Lowering herself to her feet, she sauntered forward. Easily six-and-a-half feet tall, she managed to barely top Sam’s large frame.

Looking eye to eye, stormy gray eyes to bright sapphire blue, the woman cocked a brow. “For an Incarnate of War, you are a very strange man.” She reached up and touched the emerald earring. “The other earring is with my betrothed. The Emperor of Alzahan.”

Sam was expecting a lot of answers, but not that. “Then that would make you–”

“Yes,” she said with a feral grin more at home on a monster than a…well, whatever she was. “You stand before the Seducer of Terror, the Anchor of the Westwall, Singer of the Dawnsoul…Empress of Alzahan, Zarishna!” She spread her arms wide in exaltation.

Sam looked at her stoically. He had no idea what any of those meant other than Empress, and it showed.

The Empress dropped her arms. Her face fell, and she huffed out a lock of blonde hair that fell over her face. “Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“You may actually be of use then,” she said with unmistakable hunger.