'I should have known you had something to do with this,' Conan Doyle said, cautiously approaching the man. 'Gull couldn’t have come up with anything quite this elaborate on his own.'
Sweetblood slowly glanced up from Hephaestus’s hoard. 'Ah, Arthur,' the mage said with the slightest hint of a smile. 'It’s about time you got here, I was beginning to worry.'
Conan Doyle seethed. All of this, from beginning to end, had been a part of some scheme of Sweetblood’s. Even Gull, the poor, mad, twisted bastard, had been manipulated. Sanguedolce had been his teacher and mentor in the mystic arts until the man’s sudden disappearance in the early part of the twentieth century. Conan Doyle and Gull had both been his students. They knew better than anyone that Sweetblood was the most powerful mage in the world, but he was also cunning.
'What have you done, Lorenzo? What is it that you so desire that you had to orchestrate all of this?'
Sanguedolce waved off his inquiry, continuing to search. 'Give me a hand, Arthur. I need you to help me find something.' He picked up a bronze helmet, studied it momentarily, and then tossed it over his shoulder where it noisily clattered to the ground. 'You’re good at that, aren’t you? Finding things that don’t wish to be found?'
Conan Doyle fumed.
Sweetblood had secreted himself away in a hidden chamber, gone missing by choice, creating a magical chrysalis that would mask his power while he was entombed within. He claimed to have discovered a creature of unimaginable evil and power, out in the farthest reaches of space. The DemoGorgon. The evil had sensed him, had located him, and Sanguedolce claimed that his power would act like a beacon, drawing the DemoGorgon to Earth by its hunger to feed upon Sanguedolce’s innate magick. The sorcerer had hidden in hopes that that unimaginable evil making its way across the universe would lose interest if his power were not there to entice it.
For the safety of the world, and all those who lived upon it, Sanguedolce had not wanted to be found. But Conan Doyle had done just that, searched for his former mentor and located him. The chrysalis had been shattered in the process, the mage was released from his self-imposed confinement, and now, according to Sweetblood, his power was drawing the voracious DemoGorgon ever closer.
Conan Doyle knew Sweetblood blamed him, and he accepted some of the responsibility. But if the arrogant bastard had bothered to inform his students, they might have avoided the doom that now seemed inevitable.
'Since your revival, I’ve made frequent attempts to contact you, to discuss the impending threat and to apologize for my misunderstanding of your — '
'Misunderstanding?' Sanguedolce interrupted. 'Is that what you’re calling it?' He moved away from a wall stacked with crates overflowing with golden chains. 'An evil the likes of which this world has never seen moving inexorably toward the planet because of your.. misunderstanding.'
The last word rolled off his tongue with disdain.
Conan Doyle longed to lash out against the his former teacher, to remind him that his own pursuits of forbidden power had been what had captured the attentions of the DemoGorgon in the first place, but he held his tongue. Now was not the time.
'What are you searching for, Lorenzo?' he asked again.
Sweetblood had returned to his objective, carefully moving about the room, delving into every nook and cranny. 'Use your head, Arthur. What in Heaven’s name could I want here? With the DemoGorgon on the way, what might be useful to me if I want to create something, a weapon, anything that might prove useful in combating it?'
Conan Doyle understood. Even before his question had left his lips, he had come to the answer. The idea of it made him catch his breath. 'You’ve come for the Forge of Hephaestus. All of this has been about the Forge, about fighting the DemoGorgon.'
'Don’t worry,' Sanguedolce said, laughing softly. 'It’s not some sudden noble urge. When the evil comes, it is going to come after me first. If I can destroy it, the salvaging of this pitiable, corrupted world will be only a by- product.'
He focused now on a particular section of bare wall, oddly free from clutter. 'What have we here?' he asked, laying the flat of his hand against the wall — all muscle and membrane — tilting his head to one side as if listening. 'Yes,' the arch mage hissed, stepping back away from the wall and extending his arms. 'This might very well be it.'
Sweetblood weaved a pattern in the air and it took crackling, sparkling form. The pattern seared itself into the wall, and it fell away to dust, disintegrating in an instant. There was a room hidden on the other side.
'No secrets can remain hidden forever,' Sanguedolce said with a twinkle in his icy blue eyes. 'We’ve learned that, haven’t we, Arthur?'
Something moved swiftly within the darkness of the hidden chamber and Conan Doyle reacted instinctively, leaping across the room to tackle Sanguedolce, knocking him to the ground.
'Have you lost your — ' The arch mage began just as the sword blade swung out from the darkness, cleaving the space where Sanguedolce had just stood.
'If the Forge is as valuable as you say,' Conan Doyle said, climbing from atop his mentor. 'Only a fool would assume it’s been left unguarded.'
The creature that emerged from the hole in that wall was at least ten feet high. It was a warrior, but not of flesh and blood. Not of bone and sinew. The guardian of the Forge was fashioned from bronze, a mechanical man, and he wielded an enormous sword. Fire from Hephaestus’s Forge burned in the empty hollows of its eyes and mouth.
The creation of Hephaestus turned its head and let out a battle cry very much like rending metal, launching its attack upon them. The automaton moved stiffly, and Conan Doyle wondered whether the wondrous device wasn’t feeling the effects of time’s cruel passage.
Conan Doyle ducked beneath a swipe of the sword’s blade and dove at a pile of weaponry, hoping to find something to stave off the bronze robot’s attack. He needed a moment to collect his thoughts, to summon a spell that would destroy the guardian. The blade he raised was little more than a dagger to the gods, but it made an unwieldy sword for an ordinary man. He managed to lift a piece of unfinished armor plating and use it as a cruel shield, blocking the bronze guardian’s sword as it come down toward him. The force of the blow nearly drove him to his knees. Conan Doyle lashed out with his own blade, hacking away at the metal man with little effect.
The guardian’s attack was relentless, and Conan Doyle could barely gather his thoughts enough to strike back. It was all he could do to defend himself. Magick was his only hope. When next the automaton raised his sword, Conan Doyle found the opportunity to unleash his spell.
The guardian roared, fiery sparks spilling from the sides of its open mouth as it brought the blade down again. Conan Doyle dropped his own weapon and raised his hand, shouting the final words of the incantation. The air bent and distorted as invisible power jumped the distance between them, and then the ancient machine was blasted backward into the many, carefully balanced crates of jewelry. The wooden boxes teetered and swayed, tumbling down upon Hephaestus’s bronze sentry, burying him beneath a deluge of handcrafted baubles.
Dust undisturbed for countless millennia billowed in the air and Conan Doyle squinted through the roiling haze for a sign of his foe. As the dust began to settle, he saw that the guardian had been buried beneath the avalanche; only a bronze hand sticking out from the rubble.
Conan Doyle dropped his makeshift shield onto a nearby pile of assorted weaponry and glanced about for Sanguedolce.
The bronze automaton erupted up from the wreckage, tossing it aside as if it were no more bothersome than collected raindrops.
The guardian reached for him, its large, segmented fingers closing in a vise-like grip upon his shoulders and neck. Conan Doyle gasped. Explosions of color danced before his eyes as his brain cried out for oxygen, and he feebly struggled to wrench those fingers from his throat.
A resounding clap of thunder filled the room, and Conan Doyle dropped heavily, painfully to the ground, precious gulps of air filling his greedy lungs. As his vision cleared, he saw that the mechanical man still loomed above him, arms extended, segmented fingers bent into claws, but now something was missing. Stunned, Conan Doyle gazed at the empty space above the mechanical sentry’s shoulders where it’s head had been. All that remained was a jagged, smoking stump.
Conan Doyle picked himself up, rubbing the feeling back into his neck.
'Quickly now, man,' he heard Sanguedolce call, and he glanced up sharply to find the arch mage standing at the ragged entrance. His hand still glowed white from the forces he had just released against the guardian of the
