Good Plan
"How'd you get into our ship?" Fate asked, eyeing the old man with caution. "How'd you even find it? And why are you wearing my clothes?"
"I didn't just look at some of your memories earlier, boy. I looked at all of them. There was no way for me to filter what I saw, so I saw everything, including a way to get off this forsaken rock and make a name for myself under new, less insane employment. Also, I don't like being nude." Garrett explained patiently.
"And what made you think it was okay to break into my ship and eat my food?" Cait asked, gesturing to the fresh wrappers in the trash can.
"The way I see it, you two owe me," Garrett told them. "Not only did I let you live, but it also cost me my life. If it weren't for the emergency life-saving measures I'd mastered just weeks earlier, I'd be nothing but a mummy drained of moisture and life right now."
"So, what is it that you want from us?" Fate asked apprehensively.
"Not much. Just drop me off somewhere I can do some work. Ythmun once mentioned a 'police force for Embodiments,' so that might work."
"That'll have to wait," Cait said. "First, we have to kill a living palace and the master inside it. Then, we save this 'Samnul' hostage, and then maybe we can take you to the EPF."
"Samnul?" Garrett stuttered as his eyes widened. "He's been dead for over a day now. Ythmun ripped his lifeforce out and fed it to that ugly bear he keeps around."
"… Well, shit." Fate put a hand to his chin, thoughts racing.
'That means that one of those faces on Griffith was probably him. Too bad I never saw his face, on account of seeing through his eyes. But if he's dead, that's one less thing we have to worry about. We can take the whole palace down from above without worrying about killing him.'
"This may be a good thing," Fate said tentatively, explaining his thoughts.
"That is a lot easier than running through the awful palace and dodging tongues and hands the whole time," Cait said thoughtfully.
"Wait, what's this about a living palace? What are you talking about?" Garrett asked, scratching his chin.
"According to Ythmun, he spent the last few thousand years injecting spare lifeforce into the castle until it gained a life of its own. Now it has teeth and eyes and mouths and hands, and it's a pain in the ass to kill, especially since its high Personification Level means Cait can't just charm the damn thing."
"That palace is alive?" Garrett said dumbly, staring at the wall of the ship, in the direction of the palace. "That explains quite a lot. Always felt like someone was watching me, even when there was no one else around. How exactly do you plan to kill that thing?"
"This ship," Cait said crisply, heading to the cockpit. "Lasers and plasma will cook its fleshy innards if it doesn't melt the stone."
"Sounds like a good plan," Garrett said as he followed the duo to the cockpit. Fate used the machine in the back to reattach his pinky, a mildly painful process, then he and Cait sat down and strapped themselves in, advising Garrett to hold onto something tight.
They took off, climbing in altitude until they could no longer make out the details of the palace. When Cait felt they were high enough, she accelerated forward before making a sharp U-turn. She angled downward and slowed, pressing the buttons on her yoke and sending fiery balls of plasma and red-hot lasers through the air.
The first pass left scorched holes in a long strip wherever the lasers and plasma struck and set fire to the many gardens of the palace. The second reduced the guard towers and highest floors to molten stone, and the third left a large river of molten rock.
This only covered a small strip of the palace, about two hundred feet wide and as long as the structure itself, so Cait maneuvered sideways and went in for another bombardment in a different section.
A screech echoed through the air, strong enough to pierce through even the soundproofed cabin of the Shadow Jumper, which was a feat only powerful Embodiments could pull off. The non-melted portions of the structure quaked, towers and walls being ripped out of the ground and stretching into the air, still connected to the rest of the palace.
As the three of them passed by with another air strike, leaving glowing red holes in the stone, the palace stone morphed, parts clicking together and the two halves of the castle, divided by Cait's lasers, latching onto each other and becoming whole again.
As they watched, the various sections of the gargantuan palace rose into the air, towers grinding against each other and stone clinking against stone as the thing stood.
"Well, I'll be damned…" Fate whispered in awe. "He gave the thing the ability to move. I'd applaud him if it wasn't a batshit crazy idea."
Outside of the viewport was a vaguely humanoid creature made of dark stone. Its body was covered in organic eyes and gaping maws, fleshy hands and legs weaving and latching onto each other to form joints thick joints a thousand limbs thick between each section of stone.
It was so tall that its head nearly breached the stratosphere – an impressive prospect in and of itself, as the stratosphere on this planet was a thousand miles away from the surface – and it was so wide that they couldn't see anything else in either the left or right directions.
The eyes all over the construct turned at the speed of a snail to land on the approaching ship, its 'head' a smooth mound of stone thirty times the size of a house. It raised its hand, swinging it downward with the speed of molasses and the strength of a mountain.
"Evasive maneuvers," Fate suggested.
"Good idea," Cait replied, yanking on the yoke and barrel rolling out of the way of the approaching hand. She straightened the ship and turned around, face set with determination as she sent wave after wave of lasers and plasma at the golem.