There had been times when patrolling the vast expanse of Zone 3 that the only thing keeping Meilyr warm had been the fluid pumping through Lancelot. Lake Baikal, at this time of year, was pleasantly clement by comparison. Even so, he was sat in the cockpit of his mighty Armour Frame, waiting to plunge into its cold depths. The clattering of the Adamantite mine continued in the distance, disturbing the tranquil waters and distorting the red bands of Lancelot's sigil in their mirror surface.
Meilyr regarded it through the visor, lost in thought for all of a moment before one of the Mirror Drones picked up movement elsewhere. A hangar on the side of the base opened, and the Percival boosted over the short distance to the shores. It raised an arm, and Meilyr heard Elaine's laugh come through the comms.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, big guy! I'd thought we'd have some time to chat before going for a dive. I've still got your souvenir from the old homeland tucked away."
Meilyr couldn't help but smile. Elaine was, as ever, glib and entirely disinterested in propriety. He tried not to have favourites among his subordinates, but it was difficult not to like Elaine. She wore the legend of her seat well, and took great pride in the pink shield with yellow crosses that many seemed to balk at when they saw the Armour.
"There can be time to mingle later, Elaine. His Majesty is interested in the readings under the lake. He trusts only us to investigate."
"I suppose we don't get the seat for nothing." He could hear the grin in her voice. "If some sea monster comes out, we can wrangle it."
"I doubt that will be the case."
"Really? Not even one of those water balloon seals they have here? Just imagine one of those, but massive."
Meilyr rolled his eyes. The one under his stitches dragged through a spurt of moist issue, and he felt the cold slick of it in a way that made him want to rub at the stitches. "Ready to begin dive, Percival?"
"You're no fun, Lancelot," Elaine groused, "Yes, on three?"
"Three," he began, and sat back more comfortably against the spine slot. He felt his - that was to say, Lancelot's - extremities shift, and he recalled the way Junji had moved that old Ector so fluidly. Had Abernathy picked him up already?
"Two," Elaine said, and he saw her pose Percival as if to dive. It won a small smile from him.
"One," they said together, and Meilyr stepped forward to let Lancelot stride into the water. The beach gave way rapidly to depth. With a thought, he activated the underwater atmosphere mode. The Pridwen Array shimmered, plastered to the metal of the frame, and soon he was entirely underwater. He could feel the water press in against his chassis, looking for a way in to the sealed breastplate like an enemy with a striking sword. Beside him, Percival descended nobly, posed with one leg bent, one extended, helmet turning to pierce through the clear water. Fish flurried away from them as they sank down.
The pressure sensitivity kicked in as they went down several feet. The light continued to pierce from up above, but by forty meters, the rays of light began to thin, and their world gradually grew dark. Meilyr flicked on his floodlights and saw Elaine do the same.
"Creepy," she said through the comms. "With respect, His Majesty better not have sent us on some goose chase down here. Or a seal chase."
"His Majesty has need of confirmation on the item scanned here by the research department. That he trusts us is an honour." There was a slight creaking as they sank yet further. Meilyr kept an eye on the depth reading. Fifty meters... sixty...
"I would never say otherwise, Lord Emmerich," she said, and the switch back to his title was a strange one, but he didn't see the point in questioning it. "But it wouldn't hurt him to give us more information about it, would it? Why need us? I wasn't being serious about the sea monster - even if it feels like, sinking down like this."
"There have been insurgents across the various Zones. If our researchers picked up on some activity, there is a chance those emboldened by the death of prince Hector could be listening."
"With respect, Lord Emmerich, I keep a secure and tight base here. I wouldn't allow-"
"So did Prince Hector, and those who sought to help him."
"Oh, come on, it was that Seven that got him, wasn't it?" He could tell that she was talking to take her mind off of the growing darkness. "She's being held in custody now, right? Doesn't look like there's any link between her and others."
Sometimes, Meilyr forgot that, trusted and capable as Elaine was, she was not part of Arthur's innermost circle. He raised a hand to touch his stitched eye, feeling it shift slickly against the lid. For a second, he saw a flash of Elaine hurling herself from Percival's hand, reaching out to grasp a tumbling Princess Ajax-
"But, if that is the case... are the rumours of Civil War true, then? Just between us?"
The vision popped like a bubble. Meilyr lifted his hand away. "No," he said, "insurrectionists are a fact of life in the Empire. They are often a result of harsh governance, and measures must be taken to help soothe and integrate the people there into our fold."
Elaine's snort of derision buzzed across the comms, surprising in its harshness. "We probably shouldn't be calling them after numbers then, should we? Or make it impossible to actually get an Avalonian passport, or..."
His eye squelched, wet and uncomfortable. Meilyr raised a hand to it, pressing lightly with his fingertips. As he did, he once more saw Elaine, standing shoulder to shoulder with Ajax now, both of them holding a black stained dress between them. He tried to push past it, focusing instead on the readouts on his depth meter. Seventy. Lancelot's powerful beams cleaved through the depths. A large eyed seal swam up to them, nosed at one of his Mirror Drones, turned elegantly in the water, and swept away. "I wasn't aware you harboured such feelings, Elaine."
"It's all one to me what the Emperor does with the lands we conquer, Meilyr. Things could be a hell of a lot worse, but they could be a hell of a lot better under us too. Doesn't take a genius to see it, nor a sympathiser to say it. What can I do? He sends me out, I do my job. I can't make the world a better place for them."
'No,' he thought, 'but Arthur can.' This was all part of his plan. Meilyr had to trust it. Arthur knew something about the world - something Abernethy had been painfully close to unearthing. He needed the injustice to exist before it was wiped completely from the world. That was his grand design. His, and Marabelle's. If only Elaine knew. If only Meilyr could tell her and Junji both.
The vision came back to him. Junji, braced in a white Armour Frame, blazing and brilliant. Bright light radiated out from it as it took on a new shape through the Adamant Link, and changed to his needs. The sword it carried lengthened, turning instead to a spear...
"What the hell is that?"
Meilyr lifted his hand away. He felt a slight resistance as he did, tugging at his stitches. It was impossible to see from this angle, but he absently flicked his mind to Lancelot's internal camera. It showed a thin, stretching strand of something black extending from between his lids and the tip of his finger. He pulled his finger further away, and the strand broke, subsuming into wisps of smoke that soon vanished in the air of the cockpit. For a moment, I looked almost like a small hand, forced to release its grip on something it had been holding onto for dear life, curling up beseechingly to the sky.
He ignored the prickle of dread that crept down his spine, tingled with the needles pressing to his central nervous system, and bound him to his machine. Lancelot pulsed with revulsion, the minute motion making ripples appear in the water. Annoyed, Meilyr pulled himself back under control, and looked through his visor.
Growing out of the depths was a long and spindly outcrop of dark rock. It extended upwards like some filamentous root, unfurling at the tip like the pad of a finger. Meilyr checked the depth. "It's twenty meters below us. That tracks with the data his Majesty shared." He opened his greaves and pauldrons. "Engaging thrusters." As he felt the fuel catch and spark, giving him a burst of directed speed, he heard Elaine confirm the same. Lancelot blazed red and white, Percival pink and yellow as they burned through the depths of the lake and towards the unnatural structure.
It was much larger than it had appeared from up ahead, but thin. The two Armour Frames could land on the outstretched tip, but not stand side by side. Something humped and hummocked, easily three meters in height and breadth, sat at the tip of the long slide that led down into the black depths.
"Cover me," he said.
"From what? The seals?" Elaine snorted. "We'll be fine. I thought it would be deeper than this."
"It travels down considerably deeper."
"Well, we'll cross that bridge when it comes to it."
Meilyr struck out. The hummock he headed towards glittered in the beams of Lancelot's floodlights. It wavered in the water, rippling in iridescence. As he he got closer, his eye widened, the other pulling at the stitches.
"This is Adamantite."
"What? All of it?!"
He reached out with one of his gauntlets. The pulse he felt between Lancelot and it was a deep, thrumming sensation, like feeling the bass of an overloud song through his body. His eye seeped again, and once more a vision flittered across his sight, overwhelming what was in front of him.
His own head, and fingertips prying their way out from between the stitches on his eyelid.
He pulled his hand back and squeezed his eyes shut. The slick ooze stuck fast, almost lovingly, before slipping to his tear duct and being washed away there, draining back into his sinuses. He focused instead on what he could see from the visor.
"I'm not certain. Much of it. Which means we'll have to get the mining facility to look into this."
"How could they not have known about it?" Elaine said, "It's not like it's far from their operations - unless this is some response from their methods? I know the veins can grow crazy when the workers aren't treating them right."
"It's entirely possible that it was just overlooked in the wake of the structure itself. Elaine, send a message back to base. We have further to dive."
"Aye, captain." He saw the blip on Lancelot's sensors that picked up her opening the channel. He listened vaguely to the conversation; Elaine was clipped and precise as she ever was when relaying information, short and to the point with little room for misinterpretation. He couldn't help but smile; all that time with Ajax had no doubt put her in both Penny and Achilles' company, and those two could wheedle the twist out a corkscrew if they saw a single opening.
He also saw that his heart rate had spiked on the readout. It was embarrassing to be so affected by one of his own visions like that. He had never seen something so obviously hideous, even if he knew there were more things on heaven and earth than made sense. Arthur went into that place of infinite possibility often, and Marabelle...
Meilyr was not here to waver. He was here to explore. And so, he boosted up and over the untapped seam of Adamantite. "Stay here until the team come out, Elaine, then join me below. I will be sticking to the structure; if it branches further down, I will await you there. Contact me if anything unexpected happens."
"It does feel kinda like a trap, huh?" Her couthy words were back. Meilyr smiled. "Just a big pile of it here. It makes me think of one of those ugly fish that lure prey in. Well, if any insurrectionists have their eyes on it, they'll find it hard to shake me from this perilous seat."
"Never has there been a goodlier knight," Meilyr said, amused.
"Well, at least until they shoehorned Galahad in, huh?"
A spurt of black against his eye. Meilyr pressed his fingertip to the lid again. Faintly, semi-opaque, he saw Junji in that shining, metamorphosing Armour Frame again. He rubbed it away and landed down beyond the seam of Adamantite, lightly stepping onto the rest of the thin outcropping. It sloped far down into the murky depths. Meilyr set his greaves on it and marched Lancelot down into the depths.
It was a slow, eerie walk. Fish darted silver-bright in the floodlights, unafraid. Once or twice he saw the round but sleek forms of the seals as they dove and hunted. The depth reading only grew as he walked in the dark, feeling the water press first warm, then cooler and cooler against his chassis. Inside the breastplate, the cockpit creaked, moving and expanding to keep up with the shifting change in pressure.
At around a depth of two hundred and fifty, Meilyr came to a branch in the path. One curved around and out of sight, roughly on level with its current branch. Another two continued further down out of the range of his floodlights. He checked the comms link.
"Report, Percival."
"Mining operation team have just arrived. I'll be starting my descent as soon as the defence unit are in place."
"Understood. I've arrived at a branching pathway and am awaiting you. It's two hundred and fifty two meters down from surface level; follow the path."
"I know how deep this lake is, but it still surprises me," she said. "I'll be right with you, Lord Emmerich. Don't let the seals bite Lancelot to bits."
"I don't think the seals are much interested in -"
Something pinged on his radars. Meilyr swung Lancelot around in time to avoid the pulse blast. He boosted upright as the blast burrowed into the rock he had been standing on, rippling it with an oilslick of colour along its cracks. Elaine was shouting into the comms unit; Meilyr ignored her for now. He released his Shallot Relay again, letting the Mirrors access their own points of light. They shimmered in the water like flares in the dark; one immediately went down as the pointed tip of a spear sliced through it. He tsked at himself as he drew Arondight. The sword blazed in the dark and sliced away another pulse blast. The Pridwen Array was busy keeping Lancelot protected against the depth changes, and so he lifted out Lancelot's own physical shields. The three red slashes on it blazed bright even in the dark water. Felt its weight as if he held it in his own arm, at this point too joined with his machine to readily differentiate between the two.
"I'm under attack," he told Elaine, voice calm, "One enemy. They're moving in the dark." He caught another blast with his shield, whirling his sword to pare back another. "Locating them will take some time. Go at the pace you were going."
"With respect sir, screw that!" He heard the scraping of rock over the comms as Percival no doubt slid down them. "Percival approaching! Leave some of that coward for me."
"We'll see," he said, amused, and caught sight of the Armour Frame in the depths. It was slighter than Lancelot, but built much the same; in the murky black, its own dark chassis was almost perfectly camouflaged. Attuned to Lancelot as Meilyr was, he could pick out the rainbow sheen as his Armour's sensors detected the working adamantite in its chassis. Someone less attuned to the Adamant Link wouldn't know where it came from.
It raised its Merlin Array again, and Meilyr threw his sword. It launched out from the grip, tethered to the gauntlet, and smacked the gun from the Armour Frame's hands. He didn't wait a moment before leaping off of the stone bridge and tracking himself to the frame. He brought his shield up and slammed into the Frame's visor.
"A cowardly attack!" He shouted, sending his voice out from Lancelot. It rippled in the water around them. "Do me the courtesy of facing me knight to knight!"
A laugh eased out of the Armour - almost a giggle, eerily young. Its hands came down and started to glow; Meilyr whipped around behind it, gauntlet crashing down on the helmet and gripping tight. His sword retracted back in, holding the Frame in place. It was only the boosting of his thrusters that prevented them from sinking down into the depths.
Sweeping around in the water, the enemy Armour lashed through its own greaves to attack him. Meilyr shoved it away from himself just in time to avoid the strike. The rippling after effect of the plasma sword sizzled the water between them. The helmet of the Armour tilted to one side, the visor gleaming in a dull rainbow of light. The gauntlets came up, and the Armour beckoned with one uncurled finger.
Only a handful of pilots were able to move their Armour so fluidly. The Knights of the Round Table were among the few in the world who could move it as if they were moving their own extremities. He knew it shouldn't be a surprise that insurgents might have similar levels of skill, but being faced with it was another matter. A pity they had sprung a cowardly attack on him - otherwise he could have respected it.
He whipped Arondight around again. Its gleaming edge shone in the wavering beams of the floodlights as he cut it through the enemy Armour. It drove a wedge into the connectors around one of the pauldrons. Sparks flew and guttered out in the water and then figure bent backwards, raising up its other hand to the surface of the lake. Meilyr lashed at that one, and Arondight sliced through the oily shield of the Pridwen array straight through the gauntlet. It drifted in the water, then sublimated into a drifting smoke that soon dispersed.
Adamantite?
Meilyr stared. He knew he shouldn't; it left him open, it lost track of the fight. The enemy Armour took advantage of his shock and boosted back to the stone bridge. Plumes of black poured from the served gauntlet like a chimney belching smoke into clean air. It touched down on the stone, turn, and beckon with its finger again.
Percival burst into view with an extended fist as Elaine slid down the bridge. The crunch of metal on metal resonated through the water. Even in the low light, Meilyr saw how that strike broke connectors in the helmet. The pilot within was de-armed and blind, now.
They were still skilled. They tangled their Frame's slimmer greaves between Percival's still descending ones, and using the drifting weight of the water, threw her over the side of the bridge. It shot off down the right most path while Elaine boosted herself to stop from plummeting into the cold depths. Meilyr didn't even hesitate: he reached Lancelot's arm down and felt the added weight as Percival clamped on it, and together they hauled her back to the platform.
"Timely, Elaine."
"Couldn't pass up the chance. Thanks for grabbing me: wasn't expecting some enemy unit to move that fluidly. That's something I'd expect from you and Lancelot, big guy."
"I'm flattered. It was a very slick move." Slick. Like oil. Miasma? Meilyr's eye throbbed; for a moment, he saw Arthur, arms outstretched before a golden sky, plumes of black flooding from his lips, his nose, his eyes.
These were things he could bring up to his Emperor. He had no luxury to wonder now. Meilyr chased after the enemy Armour, Elaine on his heels. The bridge began to dip and curve on itself, winding down and then climbing back up. As he crested a corkscrew rise, he saw the glint of that oily sheen.
"Up ahead!"
"On it, sir!" Percival dipped to the side, thrusters pulsing to keep it upright in the water. Meilyr nodded and set Lancelot into dark mode, the lights among it dimming but for the hairline filaments of Adamantite on the chassis. With how bright Percival was in the murk, he could only hope the enemy and whatever back up it had would focus on it.
Sure enough, a propulsion blast shot towards Percival. Elaine twisted elegantly, as if she were one of the seals in the water, flowing with the environment, perfectly suited for being within its dark depths. Meilyr charged along the bridge towards it, outstretched his hand, and grabbed for the broken visor to bring the Armour down to the ground.
"Yield!" He shouted, through the comms link.
What came through from the other end was a droning, dull, monotonous voice.
I won't be denied. You are nothing.
The force of those words, the utter, disdainful belief in them, shocked through him. For a moment, he almost believed it: he was nothing. Less than nothing. Not worthy to be in the presence of something so much greater than himself.
But he was not. He was Meilyr Emmerich, pilot of the Lancelot, First Knight to the Avalonian Empire, and lover of Junji Daigo. He would not be so easily swayed. Perhaps, like the ill-made knight his Armour was named for, he was not worth of such sights as the Grail, but he was still himself. He repelled the thoughts.
"Yield," he commanded, once more.
A garbled, burbling sound came through the comms link, almost like the laughing of some monstrous infant. The Armour Frame clutched at Lancelot's gauntlet with its remaining hand, and Meilyr saw a thin line of light near the cockpit begin to split.
His eyes flew so wide he felt the stitches on his right giving. "Stop! We're three hundred meters down - you'll crush yourself!"
That burbling laugh came again, and the cockpit opened. Slick, oozing tendrils of meat clung to the doors. The chair was a sprawling mess of gore and viscera, dotted with the sparkling remnants of what looked like white stone and gold filigree.
"What the hell is this?" Elaine's voice was a sharp hiss through the comms link. She came to a halt on the basin lip and walked Percival over the rest of the way. One of her Mirrors Drones swept down and scanned close to the cockpit. "Meilyr, did you-"
"It opened on its own," he said. His own Drones swept close. The tissue spread like spiderwebs across the metal, sprawling over the controls and packing into the Connector. He saw no glint of Adamant Spine glimmering in the gory tangle.
He looked away. His eye was beginning to seep. His fingers touched the slit between the stitches, and he remembered the sticky, almost tendril like way the Miasma had clung to the tip of his finger. Something about it felt akin to the flesh sprawled in the Armour Frame, and it unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
Several of his Mirror Drones scanned the environment. It was a small, cramped cave - that was, when one considered Armour Frames. It could have been one of many burrowed outcrops in this lake's depths, if not for the stone archway revealed by the lights of the Drones. It was an old, crudely carved thing: deep gouges cut old designs into the rock, weathered by water and time. It was sealed over with a thick stone slab.
"What is this?" Elaine said, coming to a halt on the edge of its basin lip. "There was nothing like this on the scans!"
"Three hundred and twenty four meters down," Meilyr said, "and in a cavern we can barely fit into. I'm not surprised it was difficult to see."
He reached out and put his gauntlet to the stone. Slick fluid covered his eye, and unbidden came the image of Marabelle, black, oily liquid draping her from hair to hem of her dress, turning to face a slight figure, draped all in white, a red flower in hair that drifted like smoke in the wind.
He lifted his hand away. "This is what his Majesty was looking for. Go back to base, Elaine. I will remain down here to ensure there won't be any other enemy Frames around."
"No, sorry, sir, you're expecting me not to want to know more about the meat paste in this enemy Frame?" That was why he liked Elaine: she was never subservient, even to him. She would like Junji, he thought, and then wondered why. He also wondered about the followup thought - would Junji like her?
He hoped so. It would be good if his friends and his lover could-
The flesh inside the cockpit pulsed. Meilyr caught it on the one Mirror Drone he'd kept focused on it. The enemy Frame raised its remaining hand and fired a blast that would have caught Percival directly in the cockpit had Elaine not moved at the last moment. It fired into the stone slab behind them, causing a rippling tremble to richochet through the cave they were in.
Meilyr slammed Arondight down into the Core. The Pridwen Array shrieked in a coruscation of rainbow light as he drove his sword down.
A fool to the end, he heard, as Arondight punctured the core and cut the flow of Adamantite through the Frame.
"What the fuck," Elaine said, and Meilyr couldn't blame her the curse, "What kind of sick stuff His Majesty researching down here?"
Meilyr breathed hard, smirking. "You are hurtling towards a disciplinary, Percival."
"Taking that tack, huh?" Elaine's sigh was harsh. She released a beacon. "Fine. We'll get this to the surface, map out this stupid little cave and archway, and find out more with the researchers on it. If his Majesty deigns to share."
Once again, Meilyr couldn't help but think that she and Junji would get along. That it was in disdain for his Emperor should shame him, but he found that he appreciated it. The differing views... it reminded him that they were all just human.
He gathered up the inert Frame, ready to begin his ascension back to the surface.