Necromancer Dreams of Mechs Chapter 67: Chapter 73

Read chapter 67 of Necromancer Dreams of Mechs by Magic on NovelPedia.

Chapter 67: Jamestimus Prime Both of us smacked down onto hard rock. We let out aching groans that were quickly replaced by yelps as the heat registered. The stone we had landed on was superheated, glowing a dull, angry red. We scrambled up, looking out over a lava-pocked wasteland of jagged obsidian and burning rocky spires. I turned to look at Nathan and frowned. Then, I looked down at myself. Both of us were wearing our school uniforms—crisp white shirts, blazers, and ties. In this hellscape of fire and brimstone, we looked like two kids who had taken a very wrong turn on the way to detention. I started to laugh. It was too absurd. “Bro, pull yourself together!” Nathan snapped, shaking my shoulder. His eyes were wide with panic as he looked at the rivers of magma. I just smiled, feeling a familiar hum in the air—a frequency I’d felt before in the Estate’s deepest code. “Calm down, dummy,” I said, shoving his hands off me. I grabbed his shoulders and spun him around. “Look what’s forming.” The entire sub-dimension shuddered. The lake of lava a hundred yards away didn't just ripple; it began to spiral inward like a gargantuan drain. The sky, a bruised purple-red, cracked with green digital lightning. Then, the ground beneath the lake detonated . A geyser of molten rock shot five hundred feet into the air, and out of the spray rose a hull of blackened, reinforced obsidian. It was a massive, orbital-class pirate dreadnought, but it wasn't made of wood. It was a machine of war—all hydraulic pistons, glowing heat-sinks, and jagged metal plating. Instead of sails, towering masts of green necro-plasma flickered like tattered flags in a solar wind. “Is that... a spaceship?” Nathan stammered, his school tie flapping in the hot gale. “Not just a ship,” I whispered, my eyes glowing violet as I watched the code rewrite itself in real-time. “It’s a Dread-Rig.” The ship cleared the lava and hung suspended for a heartbeat before the transformation began. It was a deafening, rhythmic sequence of grinding tectonic plates. The bow of the ship split in half, sliding down to form massive, clawed mechanical legs that slammed into the wasteland with enough force to vaporize the stone. The mid-deck rotated, pistons the size of redwood trees locking into place to form a barrel-chested torso. The masts retracted, re-emerging as shoulder-mounted cannons that hummed with world-ending energy. The Mecha-Pirate Colossus stood tall, a thousand-ton god of the forge. It reached back, drawing a two-hundred-foot Chain-Cutlass from its spine. With a roar of venting steam, it plunged the serrated, white-hot blade into the ground, sending a shockwave of displacement that flattened every spire for a mile. The pressure of the mana was so intense it warped the air and some light around the mech, but all we could do was stare up. “I need this,” I whispered, then, the "bridge" at the center of the mech’s chest hissed open. A figure didn't climb out—he launched. He was a streak of charcoal and embers, falling like a meteor until he slammed into a three-point landing ten feet in front of us. As the smoke cleared, the man stood up. He was seven feet of pure, broody intimidation. Clad in heavy, star-forged plate armor and a high-collared captain’s coat that bled liquid lava from the hem, he looked like a nightmare born in a volcano. His beard was made of smoldering embers, and his eyes—the eyes of Nathan’s father—were pits of molten gold. Jamestimus Prime crossed his armored arms, the metal groaning. He looked at us, his brow furrowed in that classic, "I'm-not-mad-just-disappointed" dad look. “Nathan. Allen,” he rumbled, his voice sounding like a mountain collapsing. “You’re late. And you look like you were dressed for a math test.” Nathan’s jaw hit the floor. “D-Dad? You’re... you’re a freaking robot?! How is that even fair?!” The hard expression on James's face broke, and in a flash, the "God of Lava" dissolved. He was the same old guy who used to take us to the movies