Tista and Morok went full Hekate and Tyrant, slowly absorbing the world energy through their wings.

"I guess Lith’s paranoia must have rubbed off on me." Solus sighed in relief when they walked through the entrance of the keep, and nothing happened. "Whoever Teneb’s mysterious enemy was, we can cross Emperor and Divine Beasts off the list.

"Yet do me a favor and keep your weapons sheathed. There’s no telling what might trigger the intruder alert."

When she turned around to look at her companions, Solus noticed that most of them now exceeded the two meters (6’7") of height, making her, Quylla, and Menadion look like small children in a group of adults.

"Gods, if I hate it when you do this." Quylla sighed. "You make me feel like back at the academy, when I was a malnourished little girl."

"Who cares about that?" Menadion shrugged. "Someone is tall, someone is average, and someone is a sexy midget. Am I right, Solus?"

"Yes, I mean no!" She grunted. "Speak for yourself, Mom."

"She’s right, Ripha. Solus is too fat to be sexy." Morok nodded, making Quylla giggle and Solus’ eyes almost pop out in outrage.

"I meant that I forgot that now I can shapeshift as well, you jerk!" Solus focused on her life force as a whole rather than just the human threads and shapeshifted into her Divine Beast form. "As for you, Quylla, how can you laugh when your husband calls another woman sexy?"

"He didn’t." Quylla shrugged. "Ripha called herself and you sexy, you denied her claim, and Morok jumped at the occasion to tease you a bit. As simple as that."

"Simple my-" Solus’ words died in her throat as the lights of the Armory turned red and alarms blared with deafening noise.

The sensory arrays of the underground fortress had perceived the anomaly that Solus was ever since she had stepped inside the Armory. Yet until that moment, her tower side had remained hidden under her human life force and shielded by her cloaking rings.

That and the many differences between the modern enchantments of Menadion’s tower and the Black Throne’s ancient ones had confused the Scout Golems enough not to sound the alarm, yet the Scouts had never stopped looking for a sign of the enemy they had been created to fight.

Shapeshifting had brought Solus’ tower side to the surface, and the defensive system’s reaction was instantaneous.

All the dormant Golems scattered throughout the Armory stirred, and the many arrays that enveloped the cave became active, their runes now visible to the naked eye.

***

A few hundred meters underground, in front of the final vault protecting the Adamant reserves stored inside Armory number 7.

"What in the gods’ names did you idiots do?" Uragar snarled as a force field suddenly erupted from the armored door, cutting his enchanted tools in half and almost severing his host’s arms at the elbow. "I told you to sit tight and touch nothing!"

"I didn’t even pick my nose!" Akhton snarled. "Nobody has moved a muscle since we got down here. You are the one who messed up, old fool."

"I did no such thing!" The Book of Knowledge gestured for his companions to get away from the vault just in time to avoid a massive heat ray that turned the wall behind them into a molten crater. "Have you already forgotten what I told you earlier?

"If I had triggered the alarm of the safe, the defensive system would have detonated the whole room and buried us under tons of rubble. Since that didn’t happen, one of you dumb flesh bags must have activated another failsafe."

"Believe me, I don’t like defending these ignorant runts, but I can assure you they didn’t do more than pace around, eat, and drink." Salanoth said. "Which leaves only one conclusion."

"We are not alone anymore. Someone else must have triggered an alarm!" Jorl said as the heavy stomping announced the arrival of a battalion of Soldier Golems. "Get ready to fight. Cast your best spells and signal when you are done.

"No matter how old those constructs are, dealing with so many of them will be a nightmare without Frost Soul."

"But once we activate it, we won’t be able to cast new spells or rely on our equipment." Akhton completed the phrase for the Storm Griffon. "I’m ready."

"Same." Jorl shapeshifted into his Upyr form, his lion fur turning into a black hide and his beak’s edge becoming jagged.

"I was crafted re-" Uragar’s host doubled over in pain as the cursed book collapsed to the floor in a seizure.

"Something’s wrong!" The eyes of Salanoth’s host rolled back into her skull. "I can’t-" 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

The cursed ring’s host collapsed as if she had just had a stroke, and her Upyr features reverted to a human.

"Are they dead?" A Titania asked. "Since when can living legacies die? Aren’t they supposed to be immortal as long as their vessel is intact?"

"The humans are alive." Jorl kneeled, putting his fingers at the hosts’ throats and finding an irregular, frenzied pulse. "The problem is the cursed artifacts. According to my breathing technique, they are suffering from a major case of mana poisoning."

"That makes no sense." Akhton turned towards the entrance and noticed the elongated shadows of the constructs approaching in lockstep. "Cursed or not, enchanted items feed on world energy.

"World energy can’t poison anyone, or every form of life on Mogar would be long since dead!"

The Bastet-Upyr was right, yet he underestimated how thorough the Invincible King had been in his preparations to fight the Black Throne. A mage tower was just an incredibly powerful artifact of colossal size.

Teneb knew that to fuel his most powerful abilities, the Black Throne needed vast amounts of world energy that he would conjure via a temporary geyser before attacking the Armory.

It was the reason the Immortal King had looked for a way to poison the well from which the Black Throne was bound to draw unsuspectingly, and one that would only affect a cursed object, leaving Teneb and his army of constructs free to fight to their full strength.

Salanoth and Uragar were no mage towers, but their nature as cursed objects was more than enough for the Cursed Carrion array to infect their pseudo cores and the world energy stored in their mana crystals.

"Incoming!" A Sphinx-Upyr yelled as the first line of Soldier Golems appeared from around the corner.

The large, stumpy legs of the constructs disappeared, turning them into square blocks with two frontal magic cannons. The second line of Soldiers elongated their legs to step on the sitting Golems before making their legs disappear as well.

The third line of constructs did the same, blocking the only corridor leading out of the vault with a solid wall comprised of Soldier Golems ready to unleash a volley of hyper-compressed elemental energy.

"Do not falter!" Jorl infused himself and his remaining allies with a bolt of Life Maelstrom. "Frost Soul, now!"

Unfortunately for the Upyrs, the already active arrays of the Armory recognized the threat posed by the corrupted water element and sealed it within a thin stasis field. The Firewall formation finished charging up its crystal cannons and released a barrage of high-density fire element.