The Greatest Sin

“SEND WORD TO OLYMPIADA! ARCADIA IS UNDER ATTACK! CALL THE DIVINES! WE NEED AID!”

Fer sniffed the air within the Divine Library as she took another step forward. “Oh sister sister!” She called out. Her beastmen from outside where barking orders at each other, and further on the two other teams were buying time causing chaos. “Sister!” Fer shouted again. “ANASSA! Show yourself.” She growled.

Anassa appeared from behind a bookshelf. A false Anassa, Fer knew it immediately. There was nothing real about the woman. Her smell was off, too weak and too pleasant. Anassa had always smelled like death and delusion and pride, this one simply smelled wrong. “You’re here.” Fer said as she looked at the vision of her sister. Imprisonment had not changed Anassa by even a hair, she still moved like an inviting spider, its venom hidden behind a lovely façade.

“I see you’ve not changed.” Anassa said as she smiled. She took a step, a pretty leg revealing itself from within that red dress of hers.

“Neither have you.” Fer replied. “Where is your body? I got the instructions you gave your students.”

“Third floor.” Anassa replied. “There’s defences.”

“Just Sentinels I heard.” Fer replied as Anassa giggled. A soft chuckle.

“To you maybe.” The vision shook its head. “It’s like in the olden days.” Fer looked at the vision and both of the Goddesses shared a wicked smile. When compared to the other sisters, only Anassa understood Fer when it came to predator-instinct and bloodlust. Little Kassie sometimes awakened it within her, but she was far too serious to really let it loose.

“It is.” Fer said as turned away. “It’s good to see you, even if it’s only a fake.” Anassa clicked her tongue.

“And here I thought I had mastered this.” She looked down at herself. “There’s little to do here.”

“Don’t worry.” Fer took the first step on the grand red staircase. The bookcases were mere delusions as well, the whole inside was practically overflowing with the smell of falseness. “There’s plenty to do outside.”

“Oh I’m sure there.”

“Dad’s returned.” Fer said as she crossed five steps of the staircase with merely a single stride.

“I know.”

“That’s good. Kassie, Nene and Olephia are back too. We have Baalka but she’s been cursed.”

“Maybe I can help with that.” Another Anassa walked next to Fer appeared from besides Fer and kept the pace. The Goddess of Sorcery was shorter than Fer by a head.

“We were hoping you could. Dad and Kassie have a big thing going in Arika.” Fer came to a stop where the staircase split to the left and right. “Which way?”

“Right.” Anassa said. Fer turned right as her ears quivered. The Library started to monitor her the moment she took that first step right.

“You said there’s a hundred sentinels?” Fer confirmed.

“All five models, twenty of each.” Fake Anassa replied as she threw a lock of black hair behind herself. “I can’t do much against them in this state, they’re reinforced with antimagic.”

“And if you’re freed?” Fer asked and that Anassa smiled wickedly as she crossed her arms. That was answer enough. “Are they the same?”

“The same as back then.”

“Then we’ll go slow.” Fer replied. She patted the six vials of blood in her belt. “Guess who these are from?”

“Kassie?”

“Kavaa.” Fer said and Anassa’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“We have Kavaa?”

“And Iniri. And Helenna. Atis is dead. Leona is dead.” Fer listed the names off as Anassa’s smile became a grin. Those red eyes would be shining right now, but this was a fake. A good fake, mortals would have never seen through it, even Kassie would need a minute to confirm.

“Leona?”

“Yes.”

“Dead?”

“Neneria and me.” Fer said with the hint of grin. “I’ll tell you later, but she’s gone. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“I would not believe it if Kass told me.”

“Neither would I.” Fer as the stairs became a corridor. There were windows here, tall enough for Fer to walk through with room for more. The sky outside was rapidly growing dark with stars. The ground had become a silhouette to the fires going on outside, orange flames that cracked and whipped into the night sky as they devoured century-old trees and buildings. “That’s my pack there.” Fer pointed to it proudly as she looked pointed for this fake Anassa.

“I can’t see outside.” Anassa said flatly.

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed.” Anassa said as she guided Fer to the door. “This is the way up to the second floor, they’re all in there.”

“All of them?”

“Elassa said they decided there was no point in making room after room and that a hundred sentinels were challenge enough to stop anyone.” Fer took a deep breath as she moved her fingers to the door handle. She stopped a moment from it. She hated this little part cowardly part of hers, it had been the same in Jungle, where the air suddenly became sour as it became hard to breath.

She looked at Anassa who was simply watching her. Kassandora would have got her moving. Fer wished Little Kassie was here, she always knew what to say. “Do the Sentinels keep you contained?”

“No.”

“Okay.” So all of them didn’t have to be defeated then. Fer drank a bottle of Kavaa’s blood. It was for healing, but it strengthened far better than mortal blood did. She felt her fur mat even more, her clothes tore as her natural golden coat burst through them. Her hands felt lighter, she heard Kavaa’s slow and careful voice in her head, every word weighed and measured. It wasn’t Kavaa though, it was Fer. “In we go.” Fer said as her voice cracked.

The moment Fer opened the door was the moment her instincts kicked in. She heard it before she saw, the sharp twine of bowstrings and arrows being shot through the air. All thought and fear, all doubts and anxieties left her as the beast within took over.

Fer fell to the ground with a roll, into the room. Outside would be bed, she had to get deeper in. Arrows raced past her head, one clipped and ear. The wound closed immediately, Kavaa’s blood was to thank for that.

Fer scanned the room in a single blink. It was a huge hall, with no windows, no decorations, no furniture, nothing, simply stone on stone. Lighting crystals hung suspended off the ceiling, plain and unadorned, simply being fixed by a steel ring and chain. And then the sentinels, massive hulking automatons hand-crafted by Theosius, God of the Forge.

They stood on four thick legs each, with four arms pointed in each direction. With great bulbous bodies of bronze-mithril alloy. They had no heads, instead a little sensor made by interconnected lens made a ring around the body. Even if one part was damaged, it could still see, even if the automaton itself was blinded, others would relay signals to it. During the Great War, they were hurled by giants into opposing armies or onto walls. Fer had usually avoided them back then.

She dived and along the ground to grab an A model by the legs. Armed with a greatsword, this was the beast-hunter model. That false vision of Anassa rose into the air and moved out of the way. The sentinels all ignored her. Another bowstring sounded as the machine above Fer started to move. Fer grabbed the legs, twisted the joint and brought it down. Five arrows penetrated through the core, stopping merely an inch from her face. One down. Ninety-Nine to go.

Fer kicked the ball at another two machines. Two with swords, C-Models, for crowd control. Four arms, a spinning glaive in each one. One of the machines took a heavy step, glaive angled down and impaled the ruined construct to stop the hunk of metal in its path. Fer bit her tongue as she looked away and towards the target she was sliding that, she was sure that would have worked.

An axe came swinging towards Fer, ready to split her like a log down the middle. Fer rolled, her knees slammed into the wall, she pushed back. Another sentinel took a step forwards, the sound of the impact lost in the din of the hundred other machines moving about. They had crowded around Fer now, the arrows had stopped coming, that was good. Being under constant ranged fire set off some animalistic instinct to flee and run within Fer. The stone tiles cracked as Fer searched for an opening, she gave a single to the hovering Anassa and then found it.

Fer roared, her nails turned into claws, her hands grew in size, she jumped into the air and pushed off from the wall into a spinning glaive. Claw wrapped around the robot’s wrist, she twisted like a snake in mid, using the single connection to the automaton as leverage and nimbly bent to avoid the flurry of blades coming down onto her. Her core bent, she kicked the machine right in its stomach.

Good enough to stop magic. Good enough to stop artillery fire. Good enough to stop Kassandora. Almost good enough to stop Fer, almost.

Bronze-mithril alloy screamed as Fer tore through it. Her legs were cut by the sharp metal but she found it. A soft cold crystal, beating and pulsing as if the machine had an artificial heart. She twisted, kicked and downed the machine.

Up, down? Up, she would be open, in the air, it was harder to twist and the sentinels would down her with arrow fire. Fer rolled between two machines, axe and sword coming down just too slow to catch her. She twisted, rolled and found a battery of the B-models. The ranged ones, with two crossbows fastened onto each arm; eight in total. Those long arms, thick as a man’s leg from the golden armour they were clad in twisted and curled like spider’s legs.

One kick to the left, two to the right. Fer grabbed another sentinel. Its blade slid along her arm, spraying blood but it didn’t matter. When a boar charged a wolf, it didn’t matter if the boar was bit back. Fer’s arm pierced through the thick armour. The machine powered down as she spun to avoid another spinning glaive, hand still wrapped around the inside of whatever metallic entrails Theosius stuffed into his machination.

Fer felt the muscles of her stomach give out, scream and tear and rupture as she twisted. Kavaa’s blood ignited within her stomach as she devoured its energies. The Goddess of Beasthood roared and launched the machine at the battery of ten ranged models. Arrow and bolt penetrated alloy as Fer rushed after the machine for cover.

Two sentinels were crushed by the impact of the first. Two more were crushed by Fer’s herself as she crashed into the machine, steel twisted out of place as Fer kicked off the robot without a thought. A moment later, the place she had been standing was peppered in a hail of bronze arrows. Her arm tore through the core of one, her jaws ripped the legs of another and brought it down. Her tail broke a steel arm as she twisted and brought another machine to the ground.

In a dozen seconds, Fer had brought down ten of the machines and she tore through them like a dancing dervish of claw and bloody matted fur and tooth. She stood, her foot cracking the last core under its weight as she looked at the machines surround her again. Sentinels were dangerous, they learned and adapted like people did, nothing like the simple dwarven automatons that could be fooled endlessly with the same simple trick.

Fer counted her kills, about fifteen as she stood and watched. The automatons formed a line, spears extended. One took a step forwards. Fer preferred hunting people compared to robots as she pulled out a vial of blood from her belt and downed it. Humans had emotions, you could tell what they were thinking by smell, these things only smelled like metal and magic. Only fifteen down and already through a vial of blood. Anassa came close. “If you just free me, I’ll clean this mess up.”

Fer nodded as she kept taking heavy breathes. The robots moved as one again. Blades started to whir and spin as her eyes scanned the door from the other side. E models back there, guardians, armed with spear and shield and making a tight barrier around, she would have to break that to get to Anassa.

Fer roared again as Kavaa’s blood started to burn up within her, wounds closed, her heart beat faster. She took a step forwards, fell to the ground and found the opening as one of the robots moved to slam down where it predicted she wound land.

Fer twisted, grabbed and snapped a spear as she pirouetted through the air. A sword cut her calf, blood didn’t even spray as Kavaa’s blood kept burning inside her. She threw the broken spear like a javelin at the E-models. It dug deep into a shield but didn’t go any deeper. Arrows penetrated into Fer’s stomach as she landed next to the ten remaining sentinels armed with crossbows. A fit in one, her head through another. One she dug both her claws into and tore in half. Those halves sent two more to the ground in a wreckage. Fer downed another vial of Kavaa’s blood. Good thing she had Kassie to tell her to double what she brought. The danger of being shot at disappeared as she crushed the core of the final-crossbow armed sentinel under her foot.

These machines had served in the Great War. They were nothing like the middling modern mages outside, they were worthy of that title.

Fer stood up and roared as the rest made another cordon around her. Half the blood had been drank and only thirty machines were there to show for it.

It would be a hard fight.