Warsinger by James Baldwin (most important books of all time txt) 📕

“Yeah. Hang back.”

I dropped to a slow crouch, weaving between the buzzing corpses. There was no other sound from any of the fetid, darkened passages, other than the distant rumble of sandworms and the soft hiss of sand as it streamed from the cracks in the ceiling. When I reached the corner, I pulled a small mirror from my Junk pile in my Inventory and used it to try and carefully peer around the edge of the hallway. But before I could see anything beyond a flash of steel, the Mechanical Turks opened up. A deafening barrage filled the crossroads, rupturing the opposite wall and sending chunks of stone raining down on the pile of bodies below. My response was hard-wired: get down and start counting bursts. On my belly, hands clamped over my ears, I counted a volley every five seconds. Even for a high-level player character, the blazing mana-infused musket balls were a lethal deterrent. The Mechanical Turks were firing in rows, loading, setting, firing in perfect unity. And Suri was right - they never seemed to run out of ammo.

After a short eternity, the firing squad stopped, and the corridor fell into a ringing silence. “Lahvan! Now!”

The Shade tensed against my will, briefly, before his resistance melted. He peeled out of the darkness and flowed down the hall. He rounded the corner, but didn't trigger the Turks. I closed my eyes to concentrate on him, and found I could sense some of what he did. The shadow passed through the four-deep ranks of machines, his form splitting and gliding over the enchanted metal. A clockwork metal sphere hung over the last two rows of Turks, twisted and turning in mid-air like some kind of nosy Lament Configuration. The clockwork machine was engraved with a pattern of blazing blue eyes, all of them restlessly scanning the hall in all directions. Lahvan escaped notice until he burst up out of the squad like an oil slick - at which point, the [Overseer] went from blue to red, and the first row of Mechanical Turks fired.

“Get that Overseer!” I snarled.

Lahvan wasn't strong enough to take it out, but obediently charged in anyway. The Golem generated a translucent, prismatic shield around itself as the Shade engulfed it, and soon the two were wrestling - shadow twining around the shield as the golem repeatedly shocked Lahvan with bolts of brilliant electricity. As it did, the Turks all turned around as one unit, aimed their muskets at them both, and opened fire. The rounds shredded Lahvan, but passed through him and struck the orb’s living construct core. It burned out in a sputtering shower of sparks, deactivating just as the shadow let out a sigh and collapsed, his HP spent. The Turks froze in position, some of them in the middle of loading balls into the ends of their muskets.

[You defeated Mechanical Turks! You gain 325 EXP! Karalti gains 325 EXP! Suri gains 325 EXP!]

[You lost Common Shadow Rogue Lahvan.]

“Hahahahah, yeah! Eat it!” When I turned back, Karalti looked pleased, but Suri looked… uncomfortable.

“Hector…” Suri said. “Was that what I thought it was?”

“Uhh. A shadow?” I rubbed my head through the Raven Helmet.

“Did you summon that?” she asked. “Summon as in ‘Necromancy’?”

“Yeah. I kinda did.”

“And you just sent him to his death?”

“Technically, it was already dead. The guy I pulled it from was also a dick.” I jerked my head down the hallway. “That gunfire’s probably attracting some curious baby sandworms right now, so maybe we can go before we're crushed to death? Pretty please?”

“Sure.” Suri sounded dubious. “Let's go.”

Suri and I both took muskets and several Phantasmal rounds with us. We followed a row of dim torches past open empty cells, until we reached the Warden's Quarters. Suri and I took positions by the door. She indicated for the mages to stand back, and mimicked a spell by wiggling her fingers. They nodded and took position.

Suri gently slid a large key into the lock. She tested it, joggling it back and forth, then began to count down with her fingers. Five, four, three, two... one.

I nodded. Suri turned the key, pushed the handle down, and opened the door just enough to kick it in.

“Down on the floor! On your knees! Now!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, sighting down the musket barrel as we all piled in after her into a filthy, disorganized mess of a room. Tables groaned under messy stacks of books, some open, some even just thrown on the ground. Empty dishes, tankards, cast-off sacks and waxed wrappers lay everywhere, massed up in loose piles around piles of artificing scrap and crafting materials of all kinds. There were rows of urine-filled jars, some with lids, some not. The smell in this close, stuffy little suite of rooms was almost as bad as the corpse-filled corridor.

And like the corridor, it was silent. The dead, leaden silence of an abandoned house.

“You've got to be fuckin' kidding me.” Suri's face flushed with heat as she dropped the barrel and began frantically searching the room, as brutal and thorough as a prison guard pulling apart a jail cell. We spread out, searching under the tables, in the closet, in all the other human-sized spaces. All we found was rotting food, soiled bedding, and a weird device that looked like a small Tesla coil with three pylons. The pylons were set at equidistance inside of a frazzled magic circle in one of the only clear spaces in the suite of rooms, and the burned plastic-and-wet earth smell of mana hung thickly on the air.

“Guess we know what Path one of or both of them were.” I held my breath, trying to choke out the gym locker smell. “Yeesh. They clearly forgot to build a bathroom here.”

Suri paced around the edge of the circle like a caged lion. “They were in here for a couple weeks, building this piece of shit, and then blew the corridors knowing it’d attract the