I picked it up by the wiring. “Come on, let’s get back inside. I don’t like the look of this one bit.”
“This is the Technomancer’s work,” I said as we walked up the drive. “It has to be. No one else would create something as fucked up as this.”
“I agree,” said Astrid grimly. “What do you think it means?”
“It means he’s got the mansion under surveillance.”
I thought back to the scene we’d been able to harvest from the Technomancer’s ghost drone. He had been talking about building up his forces and complaining that he didn’t have enough strength to attack the dungeon yet. This sentry meant that he had not given up on us, however, and I suspected it meant he was getting closer to being able to attack.
“We’ve been having fun over the last few days,” I said as I sat round the big table with Astrid, Belinda, and Selena. Kyrine stood behind my chair, her hand on my shoulder. The ugly skull drone was lying on the table in front of us.
“This here means that we’re in danger of an attack imminently. I’ll have a look and see if there’s any information we can glean from it, but I think I’ve probably fried anything it could tell us when I hit it with my Storm Sphere. From now on, though, we’re going to take turns watching from the new observation towers. Kyrine can detect anything within the mansion’s grounds, but not outside. I’ll take the first watch, then we’ll take turns, in three-hour stints, watching the road and the sky. When the Technomancer comes, I want to know about it before he gets to the gates.”
We divided up the watches and Kyrine joined me for the first watch. Nothing new happened, but we saw the two remaining sentry skulls moving their slow watch round the outside of the mansion. Once, I thought I saw a shambling figure moving around the wooded area where I’d shot the sentry down, but I didn’t know what that meant. Was it just a bum, looking for a place to sleep? Or maybe a teenager from one of the nearby houses, looking for a discreet place for a spliff?
I didn’t know, and the figure left again soon after.
After my watch was over, Astrid came out to take over. She’d brought a rifle with her, and a set of binoculars, the better to watch the roads from a distance.
It felt suddenly that we were on a war footing, and I was pleased that we had watch towers and enough people to man them. When Amanda got back, we would have even more.
Kyrine and I took the skull up to the workroom and examined it, but there was nothing new to be learned from it. Kyrine viewed it with distaste, and when I suggested she absorb it she shook her head.
“I’ve got a better idea for getting rid of it,” she said.
We walked downstairs to the main hallway, and Kyrine led me back to the small, unremarkable door that led to her core chamber. It was situated in a corridor that led off the main hallway, and when she pushed it open, we found ourselves on a long flight of rough stone stairs, leading steeply downward.
In silence, I followed her down. Heat grew as we descended, until we came out in the core chamber. It was a high, curve-roofed cave of black stone. In front of us, a wide pit of bubbling lava stretched from wall to wall, spanned by a long, narrow bridge of black stone.
In the middle of the lava, on a black stone platform reached by the bridge, stood Kyrine’s dungeon core. It was a massive red crystal, turning slowly and reflecting the glowing light of the lava from a million different facets.
Kyrine took the skull from me. She swung it up in her hand and hefted it with all her strength out over the lava. The horrible thing carved a white arc through the air, trailing its black wiring behind it.
The heat off the lava was so intense that the skull burst into flame a full three feet above the surface. It fell burning for a moment then hit the lava. There was a flash of flame and it vanished beneath the bubbling surface.
Without a word, Kyrine turned and marched back up the stairs. From the look on her face, I could tell that she had developed a passionate hatred of the Technomancer and all his works. She was a dungeon, an ancient, powerful, and sometimes bloodthirsty entity, and yet she was a creature of honor. She would never have tortured and exploited beings to create minions the way he did.
I could tell from her looks, and from the emotions that pulsed along our psychic connection, that the Technomancer would receive no mercy at her hands. Given the chance, she would take pleasure in destroying him and everything he stood for.
So would I.
Chapter 18
Amanda arrived back at the mansion first thing the next morning. She was driving a new car, a sleek, beautiful two-door Ford Mustang in a deep forest green. The car gleamed in the morning sun as it purred up the drive, and we all went down to meet her and have a look.
Even Belinda, who had been on watch, came down to check it out.
“What a beast!” Selena said enthusiastically, slapping the shining car’s bonnet. “This is one of the new magitech hybrids?”
Amanda nodded proudly. “That’s right. It’s fucking fast! I gave it a go on the highway just outside the city. I hit 128mph, and I could feel it had a lot more in it.”
“Woah,” I said, looking inside at the soft leather seats and tinted side windows. “This is great. Is it new?”
She nodded. “I went to
