Powering the Waygate – The Maker’s Perch

“It is time then. Let us activate the waygate,” Freya said. “You will find the first switch inside the Makers’ Perch in the western edge of the basin. Beware. The titans used the perch to watch over their creations. Many of their stone servants still guard the place.”

The entrance to the Makers’ Perch was cut straight into the mountain wall at the basin floor, unremarkable enough that I nearly walked past it.

Murals lined the corridor walls, faded but deliberate, depicting things I had no context to understand. The view through them was the North Sea. I have stood on enough coastlines to know that the sea never once holds still, and this one did.

The Perch Guardians stirred at my approach.

“Many of their stone servants still guard the place,” she’d said.

They weren’t stone. Whatever the titans had put in that hall, they’d changed the design after she stopped checking.

The first guardian swung. I caught the blow on my mace haft, and the impact jolted through both arms. I pivoted, drove the greataxe into the seam where its shoulder plate met torso. Metal shrieked and the arm dropped, trailing sparks instead of blood.

The second one’s fist caught me across the ribs before I could fully twist away. A rune, burning itself into flesh. I snarled, used the pain, brought the mace around in an arc that caved in the side of its head.

By the time I reached the Activation Switch Gamma, my shoulders burned and a pattern of glowing marks traced my forearms. The mechanism responded to my touch, gears groaning to life somewhere far below.

The remaining guardians froze. Their eyes tracked me as I withdrew, but no attack came. Their vigil, apparently, did not extend past the switch itself.

I made my way out slowly. Whatever power the titans sealed here felt enough to turn the tide of what was coming.

One switch had woken something deep under the western basin, and the machine would not answer until its twin turned too, across the map at The Maker’s Overlook.