“Welcome, pitiful one! Welcome to your long-sought destination! I hope the journey was worthwhile, for this place will be your tomb!”
Heltia heard hinges squeal behind her as the massive slab of metal and wood slammed shut with a boom that echoed through the galleries of the vast chamber. She stood straight, head tilted back, meeting the gaze of the black-armored giant who loomed before her.
For a moment, neither moved. Then Heltia swayed, drawing a ragged breath.
The road had been hard. Sweat mixed with dirt and blood traced a branching line down the side of her head, and her face was pocked with spatters of red and darker red and black. Her long hair was matted to her scalp, though it splayed around her neck and back in an unkempt tangle, and a bruise shaped like the brow of a helm gleamed purple and red on her forehead; the helm itself was at the bottom of a chasm with the corpse of the ghoul who had taken it from her. It was clear where plates and whole sections had been torn away from her armor—her entire left leg was exposed, as was most of her right arm. Scratched, bloodied skin was visible through ragged pennants of chainmail and leather.
She still held a sword, badly notched, with half of the cross guard almost split from the hilt. Two unoccupied dagger sheaths dangled from her belt. She shrugged an empty quiver from her shoulder, and it slid to the flagstones. Her bow was long gone.
“I see your journey was uneventful!”
The shadow laughed. Holding his two great swords—cruel, sweeping Viscera and ponderous, stocky Corpora—and crowned with his horned black helm, Mens Mala, he could only be Kallaes, King of Doom, Lord of Enemies. Heltia had left Palloren as prepared as any warrior could be for the long journey to the Infinite Armory, but Kallaes’ many minions had been prepared as well. Now, as she finally stood in the fabled Hall of Implements, she feared it would come to naught: the fierce fight had depleted her of everything but her strength of will, and even that was waning fast.
Without turning her head, her eyes flickered across the boundless martial treasure that surrounded her. Sparkling swords lay on marble altars, and glowing halberds leaned against stone pillars. Daggers glistening with magical poisons sprouted from barrelheads like porcupine quills, and a tremendous axe was stuck into a great round tree stump the size of a dinner table. There were shining breastplates and gauntlets sparking with electricity, spiky helmets and boots with flapping wings, and stranger implements still: gleaming cubes that flickered with pulsing energy, bottles whose contents swirled with darkness blacker than night, and magical books with fluttering pages, all but alive. She couldn’t help a quick glance at a nearby shield, glowing runes of protection walking across its riveted face.
“Choosing to meet me here, amongst all these instruments of your ruin! I never thought you were so eager to end your life, Kallaes!” Slowly, she tensed her muscles and pivoted her left foot, seeking firm purchase on the stone. She’d have to be fast…
Kallaes clashed Viscera and Corpora together; they rang out with a shrill clap, off-key and grating, like a broken tuning fork. He pointed Corpora at Heltia, then at the shield. “You won’t make it,” he said in a voice that somehow hissed and boomed all at once. He lowered the sword. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead, and long before you ever saw this place. Hold fast a moment before you charge to your doom!”
She almost went for the shield. A moment later, she turned her foot back, though she kept her muscles taut.
“Better!” said Kallaes. “Look at yourself. Your armor is in tatters. Your quiver is empty. And I’ve seen sharper blades on shovels!”
He shook his head. “There’s no sport in it, Heltia. Squashing you like a bug…the Wicked Council would accuse me of wearing you down with my minions so I could claim an easy kill! Who could think of such a thing?” His features were shadowed beneath the jet black iron of Mens Mala, but his chuckling laughter made the cruel joke clear.
He gestured at the wealth of armaments displayed throughout the room. “I’ll give you a moment. Arm yourself with something exotic. Something you won’t mind dying with!” He barked a laugh, then grew serious. “Be quick! This is no stay of execution, just an opportunity to accessorize your last moments!”
Heltia had hoped to find the Hall empty, to be able to arm herself again and recover before facing the King of Doom, but he had been one step ahead of her. She knew he could not be trusted, but she had no choice. She didn’t stand a chance against him in her present state.
She hesitated for half a second before running towards a column. She winced, expecting a killing blow to come from behind at any moment, but the Lord of Enemies held true to his word. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, spinning Viscera and Corpora in elaborate patterns, barely paying attention to what she was doing.
The circumstances weren’t ideal, but she hadn’t been idle. Even as he spoke, she’d kept scanning the room, searching for something that would turn the tide.
Before she departed on her journey, she’d read every bit of lore she could find about the legendary weapons in this place, and there was one that intrigued her beyond all others. As luck would have it, she spotted it, just within a short sprint.
It was certainly not a typical sword, and was perched upon a tripod of mismatched metal supports. It had hollow tubes in place of blades, but none looked any sharper or more dangerous than a pointed stick. A thick metal ribbon curled off to one side, disappearing inside one of the boxes. The weapon’s hilt was protected by a small shield where the cross guard should have been, with another handgrip to the side, like a cockeyed claymore.
It looked as threatening as a rotisserie. But she’d dug deep and found that, although only the very oldest catalogs of the Infinite Armory referenced this particular weapon, its power was described to be immense. Part of her quest was to find out more about this strange device, and why it had been forgotten—or deliberately ignored. And there was something that told her it might be her only chance against Kallaes.
If this was her one chance in a million, she was ready. She dropped her ruined sword and hoisted the weapon from its cradle. “I’ve made my choice, Advocate of Chaos!” she cried. “Face your destiny at my hands!”
Kallaes was already striding towards her, twin blades spinning in whirling, intertwining patterns of flashing steel, the air itself singing as the razor-sharp edge cut the dust into ribbons. “Your choice is moot, Maiden of Steel, for your destiny is—“
If he finished his statement, Heltia couldn’t tell, for at that moment, a deafening noise filled the Hall of Implements, and a tongue of white fire erupted from the infernal device as she brought it to bear on her foe. The noise was like a mountain collapsing atop ten-thousand shrieking harpies, and the fire was brighter and hotter than the heart of any forge she had ever seen. The arm of yellow-white light stretched towards Kallaes, ignoring his spinning swords and the thick armor that covered his massive body. It touched him with a slender white-hot finger.
Kallaes exploded.
There was a flash, followed instantaneously by the appearance of a misty red cloud that swirled in a vortex of shredded metal and bone. The cruel, curved blade of Viscera went flying off and bounced into a barrel of arrows, scattering them across the floor, while the bulkier Corpora dropped almost straight down with a clang that was almost audible over the roar. Heltia guessed that a dark blur might have been Mens Mala sailing through the air like a football launched from a trebuchet. At the opposite end of the hall, dust and debris erupted from a wall as the weapon’s stream of death continued in an invisible line, ignorant of the destruction it had already wrought.
The King of Doom was gone.
Heltia took her finger off the small red bump on the front of the weapon’s hilt. The blaze of fire stopped at once, and smoke curled languidly from the front of the weapon’s spinning metal tubes. Gradually, they slowed to a halt, the steel still glowing red in parts.
She realized she’d been holding her breath, and exhaled. A strange, pungent smell suffused the air, and she coughed as she breathed in. The noise had been deafening, and the subsequent silence was doubly so. Her ears rang, and her hands twitched; the thing had rumbled and shaken like a horse at full gallop.
She gently placed the weapon back upon its stand. The whole thing had taken two, perhaps three seconds.
She looked around. The only evidence that Kallaes had ever existed was half of a metal boot and a large, damp, reddish oval sprayed across the ground, dotted with metallic flakes, all smelling strongly of copper and the same sharp scent that wafted from the weapon.
Against all odds, she was alive. She looked around at the gleaming weaponry on display, the most devastating assembly of implements of death and war and destruction that the world had ever known, then down at the thing that had destroyed Kallaes. The “machinegun”, the books had called it.
The legends were true: it was far more powerful than any weapon she could imagine. Perhaps too powerful.
She pondered. In the wrong hands, such a weapon would be unstoppable. It might be best if the “machinegun” never left this place—or was unmade entirely. It looked like it had a lot of moving parts. She wondered if it would still function if a few of them were missing.
First, though, she needed to see to her wounds, and she realized with some surprise that she was absolutely ravenous. She wondered if any of the Infinite Armory’s healing remedies came in the form of a sandwich.
The issue of the machinegun aside, there was still the question of what she did want to take with her. Heltia looked down at her empty scabbards and wrecked armor, then at the uncountable variety of replacement options arrayed around her. How could she ever decide?
She thought back to the books of lore, to the many unusual and esoteric items. Not all were instruments of destruction: armies, it was said, marched on their stomachs, and there was allegedly a whole wing of the Armory dedicated to logistics. An idea came to her, and she smiled for the first time since entering the Hall.
She set off through the columns, treading lightly around the growing pool of blood that marked the final stand of the Lord of Enemies, looking for something to eat. As she walked, she kept her eyes peeled for something called a “jeep”.
