Bang! The elevator crashed to a stop. Ajax got off, grumbling. "I really hate this place. And it seems to hate me." He said, hopping over a steel pipe as he did so. Ajax took in the scenery. "Looks like a workshop of some kind." He muttered to himself as he gazed around. The cavernous room he was standing in seemed to hold tons of refuse and junk, scrap metal and half-finished Mecha Knights, old, scratched swords and crushed guns. There were several large machines looming above him, too. No sign of hostile life forms... yet.
Over the past week or so, Ajax had been trying to get out of the enormous tunnels and caverns, ever since he landed on this cursed planet. Just one misstep, and he had landed in an elevator and plunged beneath the surface, with no sunlight and little to eat. Every room he landed in had brought newer and more dangerous enemies. Giant wolves, mechanical treelike giants, pixie-like devils, and more. The first few battles he just ran for his life, until he found the gun. Nicknamed Piece-maker, this gun had saved his life on more than one occasion. Capable of sucking energy out of the very air to create bullets, it blasted anything that got close to him to pieces. It looked like this: The handle and trigger set together, then the long, thin barrel with a blade clinging to the underside.
The elevators were unfortunately random. Some rushed him up several stories, others down. Ajax was so lost he had no idea how far he had traversed. And now he was here in a junkyard, just to search for a new elevator with the hope of getting out.
“Might as well look around while I’m here.” Ajax thought out loud. “There could be some intact weapons.” He approached the first junk pile, which mostly held discarded garments and shields. Ajax spotted something shining at the top of the stack. No, glowing! He stumbled up the stack, tripping over broken shields and tattered cloth. It was a long cloak with stars embedded and sewn on the front, glowing radiantly from the stars. It felt strangely warm, like his hands had been immersed in a vat of lukewarm water. Ajax tugged it, but it seemed to be caught on something. Or something was holding on. The junk underneath the garment exploded, knocking Ajax over backward and sending him down the hill of trash, still clutching the garment. He looked back up the junk pile to see a Mecha Knight rising from the debris, a tattered piece of cloth still clutched in its metal hand. “HAS MY LIGHT!” it bawled, releasing the scrap of cloth from its fingers and rushing at him, heaving a giant sword behind itself. Ajax scrambled out of the way of the enormous sword as it crashed down where he had been standing a moment before. The sword looked less like a sword and more like a long, thin, rather sharp club. The Mecha heaved the sword-club up again to take a swing, intent on retrieving its “light”.
Ajax fumbled for his gun, drawing it and clenching the trigger, then aimed at the Mecha Knights chest. BANG! A small orb of green light blasted out of the barrel, knocking the Knight backward and cracking its chest plates. The club thing hung in the air for a split second, and then crashed down on the Knight, cleaving it in two and effectively snuffing out the blue light of energy on its chest.
“Whew,” Ajax huffed. “Glad he didn't get me with that club thing. It looks handy.” He walked over to the giant sword, and hefted it on his shoulder after he clipped Piece-Maker back on his belt. All of a sudden he heard a strange humming sound, a sound he had come to be wary about. Dropping the club from his shoulder, he glanced around, one hand on his blaster. The humming stopped, and nothing moved at all. Ajax hefted the club back on his left shoulder, and heard the humming noise again. This time he glanced at his shoulder, and gasped. The silver panel there was glowing a light gold, and so was the sword! Just the wide tip, but it was still glowing. Ajax removed it from his shoulder, but the sword continued to emanate a golden light. On a whim, he smashed the club as hard as he could on the ground in front of him. There was a rumble, the ground shook, and a pillar of golden light shot from the sword, straight up in a searing blast. Ajax dropped the sword and stumbled away, convinced he had just woken every monster in the room.
Lots of nothing happened for a few minutes afterward. No sudden screeches or growls, no dark shadows looming, and so on. Ajax calmed enough to take a closer look at that silver pad on his shoulder. Something had activated when he touched the sword to the pad. It somehow made it super powered.
As far as Ajax knew, that silver pad had always been there, throughout training and all aboard the Skylark, though the trainers had never mentioned it before. He tried touching Piece-Maker to it, but nothing happened. So while he was down there, and no monsters seemed aware of him, he set about testing his two weapons. Ajax discovered the best way to use the Troika, as he remembered now from weapon training, was to swing it in a wide arc in front of him, then spin around with it to strike again.
As he was fiddling with his blaster, aiming and fooling with the trigger, he found that when he clenched the trigger halfway, the humming started again, and when the humming had reached its peak, Ajax pulled the trigger all the way back. A huge orb of glowing green energy exploded from the barrel, knocking Ajax a few feet back. It burst against a machine, making a large dent in its side like a crater.
The machine buckled on its side and toppled like a tree. It crashed to the ground with a resounding CLANG!!! A wave of machine parts rose up and sent garbage flying every which way. If monsters hadn't heard the light pillar, they certainly had heard this.
Unfortunately, Ajax was right. A creature burst out of the darkness, wielding a large machine hammer. It looked like a cross between a dog and rat, wearing dirty, sooty clothes and yellow tinged goggles.It hurled itself at Ajax snarling and screaming curses all the way. Its hammer slammed into Ajax’s chest, hurling him backward onto the floor. The creature continued to advance, still snarling. Ajax leapt up and swung his Troika in a wide arc, smashing the creature back several feet and knocking it prone. It did not get up again.
Breathing heavily, Ajax stumbled into a sitting position, then reached into his pocket to pull out a red and white circular capsule. Popping it open at the seam, he poured the powder in it down his mouth. The aches in his chest instantly vanished. Only then did he notice the cloak on the floor next to him. Ajax had forgotten all about it in the excitement.
Picking the strange garment up, he felt the strange warm feeling wash over his hands again. This time, Ajax slipped it over his head and let the warm feeling cover his entire body. It was immensely comfortable, like slipping into a vat of hot water after having been drenched in ice water. He flipped the hood up and gazed around the room again. He could see traces of what looked like magic, little sparks shivering on certain tools or machines. Glancing at his gun, Ajax noticed that its entire barrel was covered in the sparks, suggesting pure magic.