“Master, the tear is unstable. Our window shrinks.” Szilard’s voice, a dry rasp through his new sonic emitter, cut across Tibor’s idling barrels. He stood beside Dovjen, bony fingers tapping across a salvaged data-slate flickering with amber schematics. The surrounding air rippled, light shearing into jagged, violet fractures.
[Crucible Aegis: 'Void-Scar Anomaly' hazard zone initiation: 120 seconds. Environmental degradation: Critical. Hostile entities inbound.]
“Understood, Szilard.” Dovjen glanced over the smoking Loyalist crater, his voice flat. He pointed toward the repurposed warp-drive rift. “Bato, go.”
Bato, clutching a patched, steaming espresso maker against his grease-stained apron, stammered, “G-go? Wh-where are we going, Dovjen? What about the latte? It’s almost done!” He glanced from Tibor’s iron bulk to the splitting air.
“Home,” Dovjen said, resting a palm on Bato’s shoulder. “To the counter. Szilard aligned the drift.” He nodded toward the Augmented Troll padding at his heel, optics glowing dull crimson. “Secure the perimeter, boy. Let nothing follow.”
The troll rumbled, vibrating the broken deckplate. Its three-meter bulk pivoted, steel greaves clanking into place behind them. Tibor had already stepped into the rift, his spiked silhouette swallowing static as he vanished.
“The counter?” Bato swallowed, stepped forward, and plunged through the threshold with his brewer.
Szilard followed, his skeletal frame disintegrating into drifting motes before reassembling ahead. Dovjen took a single glance at the scorched slag heaps behind him. The interface had declared war on his quiet life.
Dovjen stepped through. Geometry folded inward, then planted him on the scrubbed floorboards of his back-alley coffee den beneath the ribs of Bastion Veszagrad. The air smelled of burnt chicory and hot grease.
[Crucible Aegis: Hazard Zone 'Void-Scar Anomaly' established. Initializing assault wave: 'Skitter-Horrors'.]
Chittering scraped the heavy plating overhead. An iron rhythm rattled down through the dead beast's rib cage, followed by hundreds of chitinous needles raking across the welded roof.
“Inbound,” Tibor said, his shoulder emitters whining up to pitch. The overhead girders groaned under skittering claws. The troll slouched beside the bar, claws gouging grooves into the timber.
Szilard traced glowing sigils across the doorframe, binding them into salvaged force emitters. “A localized purge swarm,” the lich said, skeletal fingers scrolling the tablet's red feed. “Tens of thousands.”
Bato had already hooked the steam wand to a battery. The brass unit hissed, bubbling milk in small, frantic spurts. “Dovjen? Milk's frothing. You want this now?”
Dovjen unfolded a webbed lawn chair and dropped into it. “Right on time, Bato. Pour it.”
A segmented mandible ripped through the cafe's outer sheet metal, multi-jointed legs scrabbling for grip. Tibor didn't adjust his stance; twin cobalt lances detonated from his shoulders, flashing the invader into drifting ash and carbon grease.
More carapaces slammed the breach. Tibor anchored his heels into the floor, tracing steady arcs of blue fire across the alley. The troll pounced into the opening, snapping spines between iron gauntlets and crushing skulls beneath its knuckles. Szilard’s barrier flared green, cooking the stragglers to cinders before they touched the bar.
Dovjen watched from the lawn chair. Each kill registered as a pale lilac spark on the tablet's display before vanishing into vapor. Thin streamers of pale mist coiled up from the ruptured carapaces outside, drifting across the threshold.
Bato set a chipped ceramic mug on the small folding table beside him. “Whole milk. Cinnamon on top.”
Dovjen lifted the mug, breathing in dark roast and steam. He took a slow sip while Tibor bisected another three skitterers with a horizontal sweep of blue light.
[Crucible Aegis: 'Void-Scar Anomaly' Entity Eliminated: 12,437. Soul Residue Harvested: 12,437 Units.]
Dovjen fixed on the glowing blue runes. *Soul Residue. Harvested.* His thumb traced the porcelain rim. These were not just pests; they were raw material.
“Szilard,” Dovjen said over the gun cracks. “Explain the slag tally. Does the Aegis register these remnants as usable power?”
Szilard paused mid-cast, skull cocking sideways. “Usable for what, Master? They are disposable system byproducts. Scrapped fuel. They cannot sustain anything durable. Certainly not an orbital barrier.”
“Yet they count as essence,” Dovjen said, sampling the foam. He watched the lilac mist leak through the rafters. “And the spawns are boundless. If the interface generates them endlessly, the intake is inexhaustible.”
Szilard’s skull jerked toward the screen’s spiraling count, then back toward the smoke. “Master… you mean to skim the Crucible’s own construct feed? It would flag the diversion within minutes.”
Dovjen took another sip. “Then we build cleaner intake lines. The interface rewards ruthless output. We give it what it wants.” Margit’s slaughter of human refugees could end. He would grind the Crucible’s own fodder into juice instead.
[Crucible Aegis: Soul Residue Harvested: 78,903 units. Void-Scar Anomaly entity generation rate increased by 200%.]
The tally scrolled past ninety thousand. Bato wiped spilled ground beans off the counter with a damp rag. Outside the threshold, Tibor and the troll kept the breach clear with rhythmic swings and concussive blasts, while Szilard scribbled bypass formulas into his slate.
A concussive crack sheared the overhead truss. Iron sheeting buckled downward, dumping plaster and severed conduit across the linoleum. A body slammed onto the floorboards between the tables—Margit, her gray trench coat shredded, left forearm bent sideways, collar drenched in dark blood.
“They found me,” she gasped into the dirt, staring up at Dovjen. “The wardens... they know about the shield.”