The Skitter drone moved like a shadow given form. Its long, slender legs picked paths across the vitrified plain with an uncanny, insectile grace, avoiding loose scree and skirting the deeper fissures. On Isaac's tactical map, its progress was a swift, darting line, painting in details of the barren landscape—rock formations like broken teeth, the carcass of some immense, unidentifiable beast half-sunk in the glassy crust, a dry riverbed of pure black sand.
It maintained radio silence, sending only periodic burst-transmissions of condensed sensor data. The first four kilometers were tense but clear. No Gloom signatures larger than a stray, burrowing grub appeared. The Major Gloom Convergence to the east remained a distant, pulsing threat, but its patrols did not range this far south.
Then, as the Skitter crested a low rise, the target resolved on its optical feed.
It wasn't a wreck. It wasn't an outpost.
It was a graveyard.
A field of identical, hexagonal pillars, each three meters tall and carved from the same grey basalt as the Bastion, stood in silent, perfect rows. Hundreds of them, stretching across a shallow basin. Many were toppled, shattered, or scarred by immense heat. In the center of the field stood a larger, circular platform, upon which lay the source of the signal: a Bastion Watchtower.
Or what was left of one. It was a squat, three-tiered structure, its upper two levels sheared away as if by a colossal blade. The remaining base was cracked and leaning, but a single, flickering light—a pale blue stabilization field—still glowed weakly from a shattered console within. It was this dying light, this last gasp of a dead sentry, that had pinged his scan.
Signal Source Identified: Watchtower Theta-14. Status: Critical/Collapsing. Core Function: Long-Range Surveillance & Communication. Remaining Power: <1%.
A surveillance outpost. Its eyes were blind, its voice silent, but its heart still feebly beat. And it was surrounded by graves.
The Skitter moved closer, hugging the ground, its sensors sweeping the area. The graves were not decorative. As it focused, Isaac saw the System analysis scroll over the feed.
Structure Identified: Bastion Infantry Stasis Crypt.
Status: Breached. Contents: Depleted.
Structure Identified: Bastion Armory Cache.
Status: Breached/Scavenged.
This wasn't just a memorial. It was a forward depot. A pre-positioned reserve of troops and matériel, meant to be activated in the event of the Bastion's fall. A last-ditch failsafe that had failed. The Gloom had gotten here first, centuries ago. The crypts were empty, their stasis fields failed, the soldiers within likely turned to dust or worse. The armories were hollow shells.
But as the Skitter circled the leaning watchtower, its enhanced sensors picked up a deeper reading, from beneath the platform itself.
Sub-surface Anomaly Detected. Energy Signature: Dormant/Shielded. Probability of Intact Bastion Hardware: 72%.
Something was buried. Something the initial Gloom wave might have missed, shielded by the tower's failing core or simply too deep.
Then, a new warning flashed, not from the Skitter, but from the passive scan linked to his Nexus. A Gloom signature, previously dormant or masked by the tower's residual energy, was stirring within the graveyard.
On the Skitter's thermal feed, heat blooms appeared at the base of several of the intact crypts. The ground itself seemed to heave. Then, forms pushed up through the ash and shattered stone—not from within the crypts, but from the earth between them.
They were humanoid, but elongated, their limbs too long and jointed wrong. Their "skin" was the color of the blasted earth, cracked and dry. Where faces should be were smooth, featureless planes of stone, save for a single, vertical seam that glowed with a faint, sickly green light. They moved with a syncopated, shuffling gait, converging on the watchtower. Grave Wardens.
Entity Identified: Gloomspawn – Category: Effigy (Tier-1). Threat Assessment: Moderate. Adaptive camouflage. Emits localized seismic pulses. Engages at medium to close range.
Six of them. They weren't patrolling; they were rising in response to the Skitter's proximity, guardians of this necropolis.
The drone froze, its camouflage protocols maxing out. It became a still, grey rock against grey earth.
The Effigies shambled in a loose circle around the tower, their head-seams pulsing. One stopped, directly over the sub-surface anomaly. It stamped a foot. A ripple of force, visible as a distortion in the air, shot out from the impact, making the dust jump. A seismic pulse. Probing.
The pulse washed over the Skitter. The drone's systems hiccupped. Its camouflage flickered for a fraction of a second.
Six stone faces turned in unison. The vertical seams blazed with green light. They had seen it.
"SD-002, abort mission! Maximum speed retreat, vector north-by-northwest!" Isaac commanded, his voice tight.
The Skitter didn't need telling twice. It uncoiled from its frozen pose and sprinted, legs a blur. It was fast, far faster than the shambling Effigies.
But they didn't chase. The one that had stamped raised both arms and brought its stone fists down onto the ground with a sound like a cliff collapsing.
THOOM.
A visible shockwave, stronger than the pulse, radiated out in a ring. The ground in front of the fleeing Skitter erupted. A spike of solid rock, sharp as a spear, shot up from the vitrified crust directly in its path.
The drone tried to juke, but at its speed, it was impossible. It slammed into the stone spike. The sound of shearing metal was a short, sharp shriek in Isaac's audio feed. The visual feed spun wildly, showed a cracked lens view of the dead sky, then went dark.
Alert: Scout Drone SD-002 (Skitter) – DESTROYED.
Cause: Environmental Hazard/Enemy Action.
Silence in the Core Chamber. Isaac stared at the static-filled corner of his vision where the drone's feed had been. Eighteen Essence, 8 Salvage, 1 Crystal. Gone. For data.
And what data did he have?
1. A dead watchtower with a dying core.
2. A graveyard of emptied reserves.
3. A sub-surface intact cache.
4. Six Tier-1 guardians with terrain-manipulating abilities.
5. The confirmation that the Gloom had anti-scout measures.
It was valuable intelligence. It was also a picture of a target more defended, and more tactically complex, than the Nexus had been.
He couldn't assault it. Not with Militia. Effigies that could raise instant cover and create kill zones from a distance would butcher his formations in the open plain. He needed range, indirect fire, or overwhelming mobility.
He looked at the Manufactorum schematics. The mortar had been a start. He needed more. He needed the Barracks upgrade. He needed the Grenadier unit it would unlock. A soldier that was indirect fire.
But the upgrade required salvage he still didn't have. The trickle from the Nexus continued. SD-001 reported a hopper 15% full of volatile crystals. In a day, maybe two, he'd have enough for the processor. Then a few days after that, enough refined salvage for the upgrade. A week, minimum.
He couldn't wait a week. The Effigies knew they'd been probed. The Gloom Convergence to the east would eventually shift patrols. The southern graveyard was a ticking clock. The intact cache beneath it could hold anything—a functional vehicle, a power core, weapon schematics. It could be the breakthrough.
Or it could be a box of rust.
He had to know. And to know, he had to risk more than a drone.
He called up the design interface again, his mind working coldly around the problem. The Skitter had been fast, but fragile. The Effigies used area-denial. He needed something that could survive a seismic spike. Something low to the ground, heavily armored, and just fast enough.
He modified the Salvage Drone schematic once more. "Create variant. Designate: 'Armadillo' Scout. Emphasis on frontal and undercarriage armor. Lower profile. Reinforced legs. Sacrifice speed and sensor range for durability and seismic dampening. Primary mission: subsurface scan and physical penetration of light obstacles."
The system rendered a drone that looked like a flattened, armored pillbug with six stout legs.
Design: Scout Drone ('Armadillo'). Cost: 22 Essence, 12 Salvage (S/M), 2 Crystals.
Capabilities: Moderate speed, high durability, seismic-dampened chassis, basic excavation tools, short-range ground-penetrating radar.
It was more expensive. And he couldn't build it. Not yet.
But he had a new resource about to come online: the volatile crystals. The System analysis of them scrolled in his memory. [Volatile Crystal Fragment: Unstable Gloom/Geomantic energy matrix. Potential for directed energy release.]
Could they be weaponized? Not just as bombs, but as… ammunition?
He cross-referenced the crystal data with the projectile schematics. The Manufactorum could fabricate the mortar's Projected Charges. What if he replaced the reinforced fragmentation body with a casing designed to contain and directionally focus a Volatile Crystal's energy? A crude energy shell.
"Design a mortar round using a Volatile Crystal Fragment as the payload. Goal: On impact, unleashes a concentrated blast of disruptive energy, ideally with area-denial or anti-fortification properties."
Designing… 'Disruptor' Shell Schematic Created.
· Cost: 1 Volatile Crystal Fragment, 1 Essence, 0.5 Salvage (S/M).
· Effect: On detonation, releases a localized shockwave of Gloom-disruptive energy. Effective against entrenched positions and energy-based constructs. Minimal fragmentation.
It was a shell that turned the enemy's corrupted energy against them, or at least scrambled it. It might be useless against the Amalgams, but against the Effigies and their seismic pulses? It could be a counter.
He had no crystals yet, but SD-001 was harvesting them. He had a plan formulating: Build the 'Armadillo'. Send it back to the graveyard. Use its ground-penetrating radar to map the subsurface cache precisely. Then, with a mortar team armed with standard and Disruptor shells, suppress the Effigies while a combat team secured the cache.
It was a multi-step, resource-intensive operation requiring units he didn't have and shells he couldn't yet make.
He stood in the center of his chamber, the silent map before him. The Nexus glowed. The eastern Convergence pulsed. The southern graveyard was a tomb of secrets and stone guardians.
He was the commander of a handful of units, trapped between three points of interest, each requiring a different key he had to forge himself.
The watchtower's last light flickered on his map, a silent plea or a final warning. He had seen the graves, the guardians, the glint of something buried. The graveyard was watching him back.
And he would have to answer. Not with a whisper from a drone, but with the thunder of industry. Soon.