Factory Core Read online

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  EPILOGUE

  Factory Core

  The Dwarven Secret Weapon

  By Jared Mandani

  Factory Core is © 2019 by Jared Mandani

  This book is a work of fiction, and any similarity to persons, institutions, or places living, dead, or otherwise still shambling is entirely coincidental.

  Thanks for purchasing this book. Happy reading!

  PROLOGUE

  “We shouldn’t have mined this deep,” muttered Dombur, pushing his brass-rimmed goggles up onto his forehead and wiping the dripping mud from his chubby jowls. He shut down his steam-powered rock-blaster drill. “There’s something beyond this wall of rock … something that I have a very bad feeling about.”

  Ambrek—who at the tender age of thirty-eight was far younger than the eighty-seven-year-old foreman Dombur—glared at the older dwarf through his own brass-rimmed goggles. Those were double glazed, with the space between layers of glass laced with a type of phosphorous that provided illumination and allowed the dwarves to see in the inky blackness of the darkest spaces beneath the earth.

  “What’s beyond the wall is mithril!” said Ambrek, his eyes aflame inside the bubbles of the goggles—and not just from the green glow of the phosphorous. “All that other stuff is just superstition. Stop worrying about made-up monsters; there’s nothing but rock and minerals this far down! And do I need to remind you just how valuable those minerals are … and how much gold we’re going to have when we retrieve them from the depths? Now come on, let’s get back to drilling!”

  Like Dombur, Ambrek was covered in dust from pulverizing the rocks with their rock-blasters—steam-powered drills and jackhammers with mithril tips that could smash through any rock or stone. Dombur’s mining company had bought the rights to mine this shaft—which had been abandoned for over a thousand years—from the Dwarven King, Odok-Kram, an ambitious ruler who had overturned a number of laws that had banned the mining of certain ancient shafts. The oldest dwarves, those old hands who had lived past the age of two hundred, had warned the mining companies against tunneling this deep. Their great-great-great grandfathers had passed down tales of terrifying, unnamed things that dwelled in the deepest depths of the earth … but over time these stories had passed from fact to fiction, and were now regarded by most—especially young dwarves like Ambrek—as pure myth and superstition.

  Even so, over the last few days of drilling and tunneling, the team of miners had started to hear things in the dark; they had begun to feel as if there was a presence in the shadows … A malevolent presence. Aside from the intense heat and the claustrophobic nature of the space, there was something else, something they couldn’t put their fingers on … Something that scared them, and had them waking up from terrifying nightmares in cold sweats.

  A few of the older hands, like Dombur, had started to get pretty shaken-up, jumping at the slightest noises, and grumbling about stories their great-grandfathers had told them. And ever since the day before last, Dombur and a handful of other older dwarves had started to suggest cutting their losses and abandoning the project altogether.

  The driving ambition of the younger dwarves like Ambrek, however, pushed them on. Ambrek could smell that mithril was near … he could almost taste it. And he wasn’t about to let any superstitious old-timer prevent him from making his fortune.

  “We should stop,” muttered Dombur, shaking his head. Through the darkness, Ambrek could see Dombur’s face quite clearly with his phosphorous-enhanced goggles. And there was an unmistakable look of fear on that pudgy, heavily-bearded face. “I don’t want to go on. This was … this was all a mistake, Ambrek. We should just stop and go home.”

  “No,” snarled Ambrek, driven by the potency of his greed.

  While Ambrek was younger than Dombur, his father owned the mining company, and this gave the younger dwarf the kind of authority that would usually be reserved for senior dwarves. Whatever he said was what the others had to follow.

  “Put your goggles back on, and turn your rock-blaster back on,” he said coldly to Dombur. “Now.”

  Dombur winced and slowly shook his head, but he knew he had no choice. He pulled his goggles back down over his eyes, and was about to start up his rock-blaster, when a strange, unearthly sound echoed through the tunnel. It was like a scream, a howl, a shriek and a roar all rolled into one … and it scared the heck out of the miners.

  “What the hell was that?” yelled one of the older dwarves from the back.

  “Nothing!” roared Ambrek. “It was nothing! Now turn on your rock-blasters and go!”

  Before fear and panic could gain momentum, Ambrek turned his own rock-blaster on and gritted his teeth as he started jackhammering the wall of rock in front of him. Bits of rock and stone flew out in clouds of debris as the steam-powered rock-blaster tore through the earth. Reluctantly, the other miners also started up their tools and began pulverizing the rock, tunneling deeper and deeper into the ground.

  The heat was beginning to become unbearable now; all of them were drenched with sweat, and the air itself felt as if it was becoming difficult to breathe in. There was a strange smell that seemed to permeate the atmosphere as well … sulfurous. And the scent of smoke, and fire.

  Inside his chest, Dombur’s heart was pounding. Not from exertion, but from a deep, debilitating fear. He couldn’t explain it, but it was getting more and more intense, to the point where it felt as if it would paralyze him completely. Panting and gasping and shaking, he dropped his rock-blaster onto the dirt.

  “I can’t … go on,” he gasped. “We have to … stop … this is … a mistake.”

  “I said no!” roared Ambrek from the front as he continued to pulverize the rock wall. “We aren’t going to—”

  Suddenly a sheet of rock gave way in front of him, and Ambrek disappeared with a scream into the thick cloud of smoke that billowed out of the hole. All of the dwarves froze, rooted to the spot with shock. And then, from inside the smoke-belching hole, they heard Ambrek scream again … but this time it was a howl of intense agony.

  Blood sprayed out of the hole, and then Ambrek’s severed head came hurtling through it.

  As the head bounced along the rock floor, the other miners watched it roll to a stop in pure shock and terror.

  “Run,” Dombur managed to gasp through his paralyzing fear. “
Run you fools, RUN!”

  As the miners threw down their tools and tried to scramble for the exit, though, the smoke from the hole started to clear, and light blazed into the mining shaft—an evil orange and red glow, the glow of inferno. And then something else emerged from the hole.

  Dombur stared in sheer horror at the demon as it pulled its body through the gap in the rock. Its skin was scaly and blood-red; its potently-muscular body four times that of a large dwarf, and easily twice the size of a human warrior. Its face was like that of a man’s, but twisted and distorted in proportion, with a huge hinged jaw that opened up like a snake’s, to reveal a long black worm-like tongue, and a mouth full of black, shiny, dagger-sized teeth. On its back were two leathery red wings, like those of a dragon, and on its hands were long, sickle-shaped claws.

  The most terrifying thing about the creature, however, was its eyes: they were pure black, darker than any darkness Dombur had ever witnessed, even in the deepest mining shafts, miles below the surface of the earth.

  The demon stared at Dombur for a few moments as the other dwarves ran screaming up the shaft. Then, with a terrifying roar, the demon was on him.

  CHAPTER 1

  It had been fourteen months since the demons had broken through into the Dwarven Realm. Or, rather, since the greed of the dwarves had unleashed the demons from their subterranean prison. During that time, the Dwarven Clans of the Northern Below World had united to fight the scourge of the Demonic Horde, but the war had been going badly; the Dwarves had been beaten back by the seemingly unstoppable might of the demons, who had both numbers and strength on their side.

  Leading the Alliance of Dwarven Clans in the fight against the Demonic Horde was General Khazum, a battle-scarred dwarf who had fought both above and below ground, against enemies ranging from humans and elves to cave trolls, orcs and goblins. Despite his one hundred and fifty-three years, General Khazum still walked with a ramrod-straight back. And although his long hair and bushy beard were mostly grey, with only a few streaks of black remaining in them, his grey, deep-set eyes still burned with the fire of a much younger warrior, and the thick, knotty muscles of his short limbs were still solid with physical power.

  He had journeyed from the front lines of the war to meet in the Dwarven capital city of Karak-Drang with one of the Dwarven Alliance’s most senior wrights: Archwright Bomfrey. Bomfrey was Archwright of all the various inventors’ and engineers’ guilds of Karak-Drang, and as such he occupied a position of immense power in dwarven society, in which crafters were given enormous prestige. Indeed, Archwright Bomfrey’s authority was second only to the King’s Council.

  General Khazum had come to the city in such a hurry that he was still wearing his battle armor. Made of heavy steel, augmented in key areas with mithril, it was decorated with bronze and copper-filled etchings. The full suit of plate armor was also enhanced in joint areas—shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles—with small steam-powered pistons, which added immense power to the general’s swings of his heavy, double-bladed battle-axe, which at the length of five feet was a good foot taller than him. He used gunpowder-based weapons as well, of course, but was at heart an old-school dwarven warrior who preferred to engage his enemies at close quarters with his axe—which, like his armor, was ornate in style. It was covered in bronze-filled etchings of ancient runes, which gave it power, and added a frost bite to the blades that made it doubly effective against demons (as demons had a weakness to ice-enhanced weapons.)

  As he walked into the Council Chamber of the palace, he pulled off his full-face helm and dropped it ominously onto the floor. The clang of the heavy steel helm hitting the floor rang and echoed through the huge hall as Khazum approached the huge marble table, circular in shape, around which King Odok-Kram, Archwright Bomfrey, and other powerful members of the king’s council and the guilds were seated.

  Khazum bowed before King Odok-Kram, a young king who at the age of ninety still sported a head full of bright ginger hair, and a thick auburn beard without a hint of grey. The king acknowledged General Khazum with a subtle nod.

  Protocol dictated that Khazum bow before Archwright Bomfrey too, but even though the warrior class was regarded as being below the class of inventors and engineers in dwarven society, Khazum was a proud dwarf and an even prouder warrior, and secretly loathed the engineers who hid in their workshops while he and his men died on the front lines. He fired a quick, cold glare at Bomfrey—who was thin for a dwarf, and fully bald, although the black beard on his jaw was thick, as were his extremely bushy eyebrows, which almost obscured the sight of his small but piercing blue eyes. Then, without bowing to the Archwright, he took a seat at the round table.

  Bomfrey growled wordlessly at this blatant slight and act of disrespect, but King Odok-Kram held up a hand to silence the archwright before he could say anything; there was no time for petty arguments now.

  “General Khazum,” said the king. “What word from the battle? Have our forces prevailed?”

  The look on Khazum’s face was both haggard and grim, and he shook his head.

  “There are too many of them, my lord,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice. “We had to fall back. The citadel of Bra’ack is … lost. The Demon Horde has taken it.”

  The king’s face fell. He gripped his forehead in his hands, squeezing his temples for a while. Finally, he looked up and spoke, and it seemed that in those few moments he had somehow aged a few years. “Then the vile creatures have taken yet another of our strongholds. They are almost here. Almost at the gates of our capital.”

  “We can hold them off if they reach the city walls,” said Khazum. “With our cannons, we’ll mow them down, cut them to pieces. They might be tough, but not tough enough to survive cannon shots. I’ve blown a few of those foul beasts to ribbons myself with well-directed volleys.”

  “You said yourself that there are just too many of them, Khazum,” said Archwright Bomfrey, barely able to disguise the contempt in his voice. “And after we exhaust our supply of gunpowder, what then? The Demon Horde has taken our sulfur mines; the gunpowder we have stored here in the city is the last gunpowder we have, and we cannot make any more, not without sulfur. What will we do when our gunpowder runs out?”

  “Then we fight them with crossbows, and once our crossbow bolts run out, with our axes,” growled Khazum defiantly. “And if our axes break, then with our bare hands. We fight these foul creatures until the last dwarf draws breath!”

  Before Bomfrey could respond, the king shook his head. “You are a brave warrior, General Khazum,” said the king, “and your fighting spirit is noble. But I will not sacrifice what remains of our race for pride. There comes a time when even the bravest and noblest of us must put aside our pride, and do what is right for the good of our people.”

  “Are you suggesting … surrendering to these disgusting creatures, my lord?!” hissed Khazum, the look on his face one of disbelief and revulsion. “Never! I will never submit to the Demon Horde! Now while blood still flows through my veins!”

  “I am not suggesting surrender, Khazum,” said the king. “But we must look at alternative options. It has become clear to me that we cannot win this war. The Demon Horde will win. The only question now is, how many of my people can I save before the demons take this city? And then, how do we take it back from the demons once we have recouped our strength?”

  General Khazum seemed relieved, at least, that surrender was not on the table. It certainly did sound as if the king meant to flee, though, which seemed almost as disgraceful an act as surrendering. Still, he could not think of a good counterpoint at this stage; the king was right: tens of thousands of lives were at stake here. And if the dwarves could retreat to a place of safety before the Demon Horde took the city of Karak-Drang, many of those lives could indeed be saved—even if that meant that Khazum and his warriors had to endure the humiliation of fleeing in the face of the enemy.

  Yet, even if these lives could be saved, he di
d have a very valid question to ask. “My lord,” asked General Khazum, “where are we going to retreat to? And how could we build the strength to retake our cities from the Demon Horde? It will take many decades, centuries even, before we can assemble an army strong enough to repel the demons.”

  King Odok-Kram smiled cryptically. “There is a way,” he said slowly, “but you may not like it. Still, I have discussed it at length with my council, and we are in agreement that it is the only way.”

  General Khazum’s face crumpled into a dark frown; he did not like the sound of this. “And what way is this, my lord?”

  “An Alliance.”

  “But we already have an alliance of all the Dwarven Clans of the Below World! What other alliance do you mean to suggest? Surely not…”

  The king nodded. “An alliance between us and Men, Elves, and Beastkin.”

  General Khazum’s face became a stormy mask of wrath and disbelief. “An … alliance … between us and … Men? Elves? Beastkin, even? May I remind you, my lord, that these scars I wear so proudly come from fighting the races you have just mentioned, in wars they started against our kind? Elves? You want me to fight alongside Elves?!”

  “I know, General Khazum,” said the king. “Believe me, this is not a decision that we have come to lightly. But you know the old saying: ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. And right now, the threat the Demon Horde represents is not just a threat to us Dwarves. It is a threat to all the races of this world. The demons care about one thing, and one thing only: death. Death and war and destruction. And we know that they will not stop until they have brought death to all living things in this world. It is true that we have had our … disagreements … with other races in the past, especially the Elves … but the threat that the Demon Horde poses to all life is simply too great to let our differences stand between us. We must put aside old grudges and rivalries, and unite. All the races of the living must unite and stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the foulness of the Demon Horde. If we do not, all will eventually fall before them.”