Rimelion: The Exploiter

We spent the next twenty minutes filling the hole back in.

Well, most of us did.

Katherine shoveled with the same destructive enthusiasm she’d used to dig, launching dirt in arcs that landed on everyone except the hole. Lucy had abandoned her shovel entirely and was using her hammer to push mounds of earth around, which was about as effective as it sounds. Lucas worked in sullen silence, each scoop precisely placed, as if doing it correctly would retroactively undo the chaos.

Frozna’s wolf sat at the edge, watching us with what I was increasingly certain was judgment.

“Lizzie, help!” Katherine called up to the falcon-cat circling overhead. Lizzie chirped and dove, snatched a pebble, dropped it into the hole, and flew away. “Good girl!” Katherine beamed.

“That was one pebble,” Lucas said flatly.

“Every pebble counts!”

I carefully placed the crystal emitter back where I’d found it, settling it into the earth and packing soil around it. The pale blue glow pulsed faintly through the dirt, like a heartbeat. Whatever this thing was, it was working. Still anchored to the old system Shad had described.

I stood up, brushing my hands clean, and stared at the half-filled crater we’d made.

“This isn’t a side quest,” I said. Everyone paused. “The thing that dug here,” I continued, “was a farming enhancer.”

Katherine tilted her head. “So?”

“So the mines are where we need to go anyway. For the temporal shards.” I gestured at the emitter buried beneath us. “The grandmaster’s mana pulse didn’t just mess up the farms in Altandai. It rippled outward. Hit the old systems here, too.” I pointed toward the distant mountains. “And I think it woke up whatever’s been sleeping in those mines for the last century.”

The pieces were clicking together, and it matched from I remembered from the future. I did not know what activated them back then, but they were dormant. Until last week, when the grandmasters’ desperate mana pulse ripped through the region and switched everything back on.

“The golems surfaced because they felt the disruption,” I said. “They came to check on the emitters. Maybe protect them. And the temporal shards I need to fix our focus crystals?” I looked at each of my teammates. “They’re inside those golems. In the mines.”

Katherine’s face split into a grin so wide it was almost concerning. “Dungeon!”

“It’s a mine,” I corrected.

“Dungeon mine!”

Lucy planted her hammer on the ground and leaned on it with theatrical gravity. “So what ye be sayin’, Captain, is that the monster quest and the crystal quest be one and the same?”

“Yes.”

“A two-fer!” She slapped her knee. “The sea provides!”

“We’re on land.”

“The land provides!”

I turned to Frozna. “Can you track where the golem came from? It had to leave a trail.”

She was already looking at her wolf. The animal raised its head, sniffed the air, then padded toward the edge of the field. Its nose dropped to the ground, following something only it could sense. After a moment, it stopped and looked back at us, tail still.

“He’s got it,” Frozna confirmed. “Northeast. Toward the hills.”

“Then we go.” I tossed the ice shovels aside, letting them shatter into glittering fragments. “Fill the rest of the hole on the way back.”

“We’re not going to fill it,” Lucas said, already walking.

“No. We’re not.”

The trail was impossible to miss once you knew what to look for.

The golem had carved a path through the terrain like a plow through soil. Broken roots jutted from gouged earth. Stones had been shoved aside or cracked in half. Grass and brush lay flattened in a wide swathe that led northeast, climbing into the rocky hills above the town.

Frozna’s wolf loped ahead, nose down, moving with purpose. Lizzie soared between the trees, occasionally circling back to chirp something at Frozna that apparently meant “nothing interesting” because Frozna kept walking without comment.

Katherine set the pace, which meant the rest of us were half-jogging to keep up. Her greatsword bounced against her back with each stride, the black steel catching sunlight through the canopy.

“Slow down,” I called.

“No! Adventure waits!”

Lucy walked beside me, humming a tune that was either a sea shanty or something she’d invented on the spot. Knowing Lucy, both. “Fifteen men on a dead golem’s chest,” she sang under her breath. “Yo ho ho and a temporal shard.”

“Please stop.”

“Never.”

Lucas fell into step on my other side, hands in his robe pockets, a resigned acceptance associated with our group activities. “So,” he said. “Autonomous mining golems. Active for a hundred and sixty years?”

“Dormant for a hundred and sixty years,” I corrected. “Active for about a week.”

“And we’re walking into their mine. With no map. No intelligence on what’s inside. No plan beyond ‘Katherine hits things.’”

I grinned at him. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Inspiring.”

“Come on Luka, don’t be such—” I teased him.

“Stop!” he buried his face in his hands. “Pearl teased me long enough. If you repeat it, the name will stick!”

“Good name!” Katherine winked at him. “Girly name!”

At the ‘girly’ a shiver went down my spine. Karzi was dead, and Katherine was my friend. I let out a long breath and got my smile back. “Luka.”

Lucas groaned.

“Luka the Windprincess,” Lucy added from behind us, savoring every syllable like fine wine. “Has a proper ring to it, that does. Rolls off the tongue like a ship name.” She stroked her chin thoughtfully. “I could commission a vessel. The HMS Luka. Small, lightweight, handles well in a breeze—”

“I will electrocute you.”

“Ye’d have to catch me first, Luka.”

Lucas turned to Frozna with something approaching desperation. “You’re not going to start too, are you?”

Frozna regarded him with her usual calm expression. Her wolf padded alongside her, unbothered by the drama. She seemed to consider the question seriously for a moment.

“No,” she said.

Lucas exhaled.

“Luka is a good name from I come from,” she continued, perfectly deadpan. “Very popular. For girls.”

Katherine howled with laughter, slapping Lucas on the back hard enough to make him stagger. “Even Frozna says!”

“That’s not—she’s not—” Lucas sputtered, straightening his robes with aggressive dignity. “It’s not a girl’s name. It’s a diminutive. Pearl used it because she thinks she’s funny, and she’s not, and none of you are either.”

“Diminutive,” I repeated. “Like... small? Cute?”

“That is not what I—”

“Small and cute!” Katherine agreed, looking him up and down. “Like Windprincess! Very fitting!”

Lucas’s eye twitched. “The transformation has nothing to do with—”

“Luka the small, cute Windprincess,” Lucy announced to the trees, spreading her arms wide. “Scourge of the skies! Terror of the... gentle breezes!”

“I have a legendary-tier ability that could flatten all of you.”

“Aye, but ye’d have to say the magic words first.” Lucy clasped her hands together and fluttered her eyelashes. “‘By heart and horizon—’”

“Don’t.”

“‘—let the wind remember me!’” Lucy finished with a dramatic twirl. Katherine applauded.

Lucas turned to me, his expression a perfect mixture of betrayal and exhaustion. “You started this. You fix it.”

I held up my hands. “I’m a queen, not a miracle worker.”

“You’re a menace.”

“Menace Queen,” Katherine corrected proudly, as if this were a real title. “Best kind.”

Lucas picked up his pace, pulling ahead of the group in what was clearly a tactical retreat disguised as enthusiasm for the mission. His shoulders were tight, his stride stiff, and his ears were red.

I watched him go and felt a twinge of guilt. Just a twinge.

“I know he turned me, but… too much?” I asked Frozna quietly.

She watched Lucas’s retreating back, then glanced at me with the faintest curve of a smile. “He is walking faster. Good for the pace.”

I snorted.

The terrain climbed steadily. Farmland gave way to rocky hillside; the soil thinning as we ascended. Pines and hardy oaks crowded together, their roots gripping the stone like fingers.

Signs of the old mining operation appeared.

First, a rusted rail track, half-buried in dirt and weeds, ran parallel to our path. Then a collapsed wooden support beam, the timber grey and split with age, propping up nothing anymore. An overturned cart lay on its side in a ditch, wheels missing, the metal frame orange with rust and fused to the earth by decades of rain and neglect.

I paused at a signpost. The wood was so weathered I could barely make out the letters, but someone had carved them deep enough that time hadn’t completely erased them.

THALVIREA MINING COMPLEX — PROPERTY OF THE ALTANDAI GRANDMASTER COUNCIL

Below it, in smaller text:

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY — VIOLATORS WILL BE PROCESSED

“Processed,” Lucas read aloud. “That’s not ominous at all.”

“Probably meant fined,” I said.

“Probably meant processed.”

Frozna paused beside an old shelter, half-collapsed, its roof caved in and walls leaning at drunken angles. “Workers lived here,” she observed. “Many of them.”

I looked around and saw what she meant. Not one shelter but dozens, stretching along the hillside in uneven rows. A workers’ settlement, built for the miners who’d operated the complex before the grandmasters automated everything.

Before the golems took their jobs.

Before the town started dying.

Something heavy settled in my chest. A long time ago, this hillside was alive with people. Now it was ruins and rust. I thought I could escape the job replacements in Rimelion. The economy was relentless, no matter the realm.

“Come on,” I mumbled.

We kept climbing.

The trail widened as we approached a ridge, the golem’s path merging with the old cart road. The trees thinned, and the mountainside opened up ahead of us.

Katherine stopped first, shading her eyes. “There!”

The mine entrance sat in the face of the mountain like an open mouth. A proper industrial entrance, a carved stone archway easily wide enough for two carts side by side, with old rail tracks leading straight inside.

The stonework was still impressive, precise geometric cuts from magical shaping.

But the heavy metal gate that had once sealed it shut was torn open from the inside. One half hung from a single hinge, twisted outward like something massive had punched through it. The other half lay twenty feet away in the dirt, partially embedded in the ground from the force of its landing.

Fresh scrape marks scored the stone around the entrance. Metallic dust glittered on the ground. And from somewhere deep inside, barely audible over the wind, came a low, rhythmic hum.

Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.

Like a heartbeat.

“Something is working in there,” Frozna said, her wolf pressing against her leg, ears flat.

“Many somethings,” Lucas corrected, staring into the darkness beyond the gate. “That’s not one machine. That’s an operation.”

I stepped forward, feeling the buzz I’d sensed at the farm intensify, thrumming through the soles of my boots and into my bones. The same magical frequency, but amplified a hundredfold.

I turned to my team. “Here’s what I think we’ll find inside. Mining golems at the bottom, basic workers, they dig, they haul, they’ll probably try to dig through us if we’re in their way. Warrior golems for security, the things that have been attacking farms. Built to fight. And overseers.” I held up my hand. “The overseers are what matter. They run sections of the mine, and they’ll have temporal shards inside them. I need those shards intact.”

Katherine nodded, gripping her sword hilt. “Kill overseers. Get shards.”

“Kill overseers carefully. Get shards intact.”

“Ya, ya. Carefully.” She made a dismissive gesture with one hand.

That did not fill me with confidence.

Lucy cracked her knuckles, grinning. “How many shards ye be needin’, Yer Majesty?”

“Five.”

“And how many overseers?”

“I don’t know yet.” I looked into the dark mouth of the mine. “But however many there are, we can’t afford to waste any.”

Lucas asked the question I’d been hoping to avoid. “What happens if a shard gets damaged in the fight?”

I met his eyes. “Then it’s useless. Corrupted temporal shards can’t be repurposed. Every shard we break is one we can’t use.”

Silence.

Even Katherine’s grin dimmed slightly. Slightly. “So... careful,” she repeated, and this time it sounded almost as if she meant it.

“Careful,” I confirmed.

I looked at the torn gate, the darkness beyond, the faint rhythmic pulse emanating from the depths. A mining complex built by grandmasters, operated by golems for over a century, dormant for most of that time, now suddenly awake and running without purpose or oversight.

I took a deep breath.

“Let’s go.”