Tora Steals Things

“Arrrgh! Fine!” Tora threw his hands up, frustrated. “I’ll throw a legendary fuckin’ sword away for some weird stone pup!” He hauled the sword off the floor, grateful for his resistant gloves keeping its sparks at bay. The dog golem leapt from FPS’s arms and followed.

“Damn what a waste of a sword,” he grumbled as he dragged it into the hallway proper. “Alright, ya weird pup,” he called to it and its tail spun in anticipation, “GO FETCH!”

The sword flew from his hands down the hall and the dog blinked out of existence. Neither he nor the elementalist stayed to see where the sword even landed.

*

To Tora’s relief, they didn’t see the dog golem again after that. Their search proceeded as before, running into the occasional golem doing an odd job, an assortment of misplaced magical items, no living staff, and a bunch of empty rooms.

Hours passed. It had to be somewhere just past noon, but it was hard to tell within the windowless halls of the lab. Neither of them had thought to bring food with them. They ended up raiding another kitchen, one that blissfully had a solid floor. FPS hadn’t liked it, but his stomach had made a stronger argument.

It didn’t feel like they were making any progress. At this rate, they were acting more like two hungry rats roaming around this rich asshole’s lab than a pair of would-be professional thieves. They hadn’t hit any real security besides the locked entrance door and the dog golems from earlier either. Tora was starting to wonder if that was all old boy Rakak had.

Then they found the door.

Bigger and more imposing than the other doors, and completing blocking off the end of the hall. More importantly, it was locked. A console alike to the one outside stood to the side of it.

Higher security was a promising sign, but also troubling—Tora hadn’t had much luck with the console outside. He winced, trying to recall how he’d gotten the password screen to appear last time.

All he could remember was smashing the keyboard.
“Fuck it,” Tora grunted. He smashed his hand into the keys.
The password screen popped up.
“That really should not have worked.” Tora frowned.
The password screen blinked expectantly with four blank spots.
“Oh a password! What could it be?” FPS spoke with the cadence of an excited child

evidence of an escaped ‘experiment’ like the kind you read about in adventure books. Maybe one of the mesmers got loose, came out of their experiments with unrivalled power, and exacted revenge or something? Or maybe his imagination was getting the better of him—the containers before him showed no evidence of any kind of escape. They were all fully occupied.

Occupied and strung up with wires like puppets. His eyes followed the wires up and out of the containers, across the ceiling and over to a far corner of the room out of sight. He followed it cautiously as FPS continued to report his findings.

“There’s blueprints here,” FPS called from another table. “Looks like golem work?”

“So what, like, time golems then?” Tora called back as he weaved his way around a cluster of peculiar glowing metal towers.

“It appears so. I’m only seeing design work here though.”
“Right.”
“Do you think any of this has to do with your sister’s work?”
“My sister…?” Tora blinked, stopping before a frozen scientist forever stuck working

on one of the glowing towers. For a moment he thought of his real sister, Hayle, and blanked trying to recall his other ‘sister.’ Then it came back to him. “Oh right, Bolli, uh, hm.” The frozen scientist was blocking his way, he swerved back, tried another route. “Ya think Rakak wanted her amulet for this time shit?”

“Didn’t that nice lady, Mrs Rhin—”
“Rhin was a guy.”
“Oh right. Mr Rhin then. Didn’t he mention something about Rakak showing

interest in Bolli’s work on energy filtering?”
“Energy filtering, yeah, “ Tora agreed, as he made his way around another tower.

Bright purple light grew stronger the closer he got to the source of the wires. “Energy filtering through, uh, mortals? Mortal bodies. Wait.”

Tora stopped, looked back up at the wires he’d been following.
“Oh fuck me,” he said under his breathe.
“I suppose magic is a type of energy, isn’t it?” FPS mused loudly.
“Fuck me.” Tora scrambled around a stack of boxes, packed with golem limbs and

pieces.
“And there was that other thing Mr Rhin said Bolli worked on—wasn’t that time

magic related?”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” The thief was moving faster, leaping over and around strange

equipment and frozen workers. He made one last swerve around a shelf of tools and found himself nearly blinded by purple light. With cautious steps, he positioned himself

”This doesn’t bode well, Miss Bandi,” FPS stated, watching with deep concern as Tora paced up and down the hall. They were outside the frozen lab room now, having seen far more of it than either cared for.

“Yeah? No shit!” Tora shot back. Panic and frustration was making an ugly cocktail in his guts. “This obsessive rat’s been workin’ on time freezin’ battle golems this whole time! Shit, this is probably been old boy’s life’s work! He’s been tinkerin’ at this shit fer years!”

“Using Bolli’s research.”

“No,” Tora stopped. “Failin’ without her research. I mean, this is it, ain’t it? This is the result of what his own work got, ya?” He gestured at the abandoned halls around them. “A fucked up lab stuck in time, a hall of rooms hastily emptied and locked away, and not a damn livin’ soul left t’work fer em cause he can’t get any help willin’ t’risk this shit!”

“Right,” FPS nodded, thinking. “The Inquest from earlier—they said they wouldn’t give him more krewe.”

“Fuck I shoulda known when we saw Inquest. Course they’d be keen t’get their hands on a time warpin’ golem! If they get one that works…” The thief returned to pacing.

“Perhaps they’d use it against the dragons?” The elementalist offered. He didn’t sound confident.

“And then use it ‘gainst everyone else.”

FPS didn’t argue—they both knew enough about Inquest to know they had nothing but ill intentions when it came to other races. Subjugating the rest of the world was exactly the kind of thing they’d use a weapon like this for.

Tora stopped at the end of the hall, peering through the doorway leading out.

“And now old boy’s had Bolli’s amulet fer days. If that thing has her research, we got bigger problems than just stealin’ it back. Damn, now I’m really wishin’ he only wanted a new coaster.”

He sensed FPS beside him, peering out into the next hallway along with him.

“Miss Bandi, I fear this is too big a job for a humble dog walker,” he said. “I’ll need to contact Headquarters—”

“Headquarters?”
“…I’ve said too much.”
“Right. Ya think ya got time fer that?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.” Tora walked out into the next hall. There wasn’t any use standing

They followed the serving golem carefully from afar, watching it wobble its way to its destination. It lead them down several winding hallways, multiple stairwells, and finally down a narrow hall at the lowest level of the lab. The two watched as the golem turned into a wide open room and waddled across its electric generated floor.

The floor was exactly the same as the one in the kitchen Tora had fallen through. He winced at the sight of it. It didn’t help that the back walls were built in much the same manner, just massive gaping holes of sky covered in a thin translucent electric field Tora did not trust. Without the stone beams holding it all together at its edges, the room would just look like open air with floating furniture. As it was, it more gave the impression of a giant glass pyramid. A fragile pyramid—in his mind’s eye, Tora couldn’t help but see himself breaking right through it.

He’d have to deal with that unease later though, for now he and the elementalist were carefully hidden back at the edge of the entranceway and out of sight. They watched quietly as the golem found their target: old Rakak, working diligently at some kind of console/desk that took up the wall on the left side. He cursed and spat, fidgeting with the various buttons, knobs and levers spread out over the console. Numerous holographic screens hovered above him, displaying all kinds of graphs. A prominent one in the middle displayed a screen FPS and Tora were quite familiar with at this point: the password screen awaiting input.

The serving golem clumsily placed its tray of delights on an empty space of the desk as Rakak tried another password. A loud beep sounded as it failed. He snarled, nabbed the sandwich off the tray and scarfed it down in a huff, ignoring the golem entirely.

The golem cleaned a number of empty trays beside the angry asura—seems the guy was stress eating—and waddled away. In a panic, Tora readied another stealth spell as it approached the hall. To his surprise though, it turned and walked the opposite way down the hall. He let out a sigh of relief and turned his attention back to Rakak.

“Damn you, Bolli,” Rakak growled between bites. He tried another password. It failed. The shrivelled asura stomped his feet in frustration. “Must you get in my way even in death?!”

FPS and Tora exchanged looks—had he not gotten as far along in his work as they’d initially feared? The thief scanned the rest of the room more shrewdly. Beyond the desk and holographic screens, there wasn’t much else in the room besides a big stone pillar in the centre. On the desk itself, however, at the far end of it, was a glass tube, and floating within that glass tube was a very familiar bit of jewelry: Bolli’s amulet.