The creation of the infiltrator was the most intricate work Elias had ever attempted. It required a fusion of all his evolved Dominions, a symphony of his dark arts.
From his Lord of the Wilder-Forge knowledge, he selected the material. Not steel, which was too common, nor iron, which was too crude. He chose a single, flawless ingot of purified silver he had refined from a rare lode. Silver was conductive, receptive to enchantments, and its signature was one of purity, a perfect camouflage.
He did not hammer it into shape. He used his power as a Geist-Binder to will it, slowly, over days, into its new form. It became a perfect clockwork beetle, no larger than his thumbnail. Its legs were articulated with microscopic precision. Its carapace was etched with runes so small they were invisible to the naked eye. It was a masterpiece of impossible, miniature engineering.
This beautiful, sterile shell was only the vessel. It needed a heart. A soul.
He went to his steel ravens. They were his companions, his children of the forge. They possessed no malice, only the cool, ordered intelligence he had imbued them with. He approached his first creation, the one he secretly thought of as his favorite. He didn't command it. He asked, a telepathic request that was more feeling than word. 'A difficult journey. A great purpose. I need a piece of you.'
The steel raven tilted its head, looked at him with its polished stone eyes, and offered a flicker of acquiescence. It trusted its creator.
Elias performed a delicate, painful act of spiritual surgery. He reached into the raven's essence and siphoned off a tiny, glowing spark. He did not take its whole soul, just a splinter, a seed of its consciousness. The raven shuddered, then settled, its inner light dimmed but intact. He had wounded his own creation for the sake of his war.
He took this spark of pure, ordered loyalty and brought it to the silver beetle. But before he placed it inside, he committed his most dangerous act. He retrieved the Heart of Rust.
Holding the corrupted artifact in a pair of magically-insulated tongs, he brought it near the silver vessel. He did not let them touch. Instead, he used his Reaper of Souls power as a fine filter. He drew upon the Heart of Rust's essence, not the raw, all-consuming plague of the Gutter-Rot, but a microscopic, refined sliver of its core principle: the principle of contagious transformation. He filtered out the death, the pain, the decay, and isolated the pure, conceptual instruction: 'That which you touch shall become like you.'
He wove this toxic, transformative code into the clean spark of the raven's soul. It was like dropping a single drop of potent black ink into a glass of pure water. The spark flickered, its nature forever altered. It was now a carrier. A catalyst.
Finally, he placed the corrupted spark of soul into the clockwork beetle's chassis. The silver construct whirred silently. A faint, almost invisible light glowed from within its seams—not the healthy green of his usual golems, but a complex, shifting pattern of silver and rust-red.
He had created his infiltrator. He named it The Seed.
The final step was delivery. He could not carry it there himself. Its transformative aura, however faint, would mark him. It had to arrive as a neutral object.
He summoned his Corvid-Mind. From his flock of real ravens, he chose the largest, strongest bird. He showed it the town of Vanguard, the black tower. He showed it a specific target: the slag heap behind the smelter, a place of waste and refuse where no one would look twice.
He wrapped the Seed in a small, insulating piece of leather and tied it carefully to the raven's leg. 'Fly,' he commanded. 'Do not stop. Drop this in the heart of the metal mountain. Then return.'
The raven took flight, a living messenger carrying a plague of magical industry. Elias watched it go, his consciousness stretched taut, following its journey. He felt the bird's fatigue, the buffeting of the wind. He felt it cross the invisible boundary of the Hegemony's null-field generator. As it did, the beetle on its leg went inert, its inner light extinguishing as the ambient magic was suppressed. This was expected. The Seed's shell was mundane. Its true power lay dormant in its spiritual code, waiting.
The raven, unburdened by any magical signature, flew unnoticed over the bustling town of Vanguard. It circled the smelter once, then swooped low over the mountain of industrial slag and waste metal. It released its cargo. The small leather packet tumbled down, coming to rest deep within a pile of worthless iron shavings and discarded machine parts. Its mission complete, the raven turned and began its long flight home.
Elias now had a sleeper agent in the heart of his enemy's fortress. A single, perfect, patient Golem, dormant and waiting.
Now, for the trigger.
He sat upon his throne in the Spire, a dark and silent king, and he focused. He could no longer pilot the Seed with Corpse Marionette, not through the null-field. But he didn't need to. He just needed to wake it up.
He gathered his own will, the immense, disciplined power of his Fortress Mind. He focused it into a single, tight beam of psychic energy, a lance of pure intent aimed at the dormant soul-spark of his creation. The null-field was a wall against raw magic, but a focused telepathic command was a different matter. It was a message, not a spell.
The beam of his will crossed the miles, slammed against the null-field like a wave against a dam. It was weakened, distorted, but a trickle of it pushed through, just enough. Wake up, he whispered across the void. Begin.
Deep within the slag heap at Vanguard, the tiny silver beetle shuddered. Its inner light, the color of silver and rust, flickered back to life. It was weak, its power severely dampened by the null-field, but it was awake.
It flexed its delicate legs. It pushed aside a shaving of iron. It did not need to move. It did not need to fight. Its purpose was far more insidious. It reached out one silver leg and touched a piece of rusted scrap metal.
And the scrap touched back.
A microscopic, invisible chain reaction began. The contagious transformation code leaked from the Seed into the metal. The scrap's chaotic, inert nature was overwritten. Its rust was not just rust anymore; it was an extension of the Seed's will. The scrap then touched another piece of scrap. And that piece touched another.
Slowly, silently, invisibly, a plague was spreading through the refuse of the Hegemony's industry. Elias was not building an army to attack the fortress. He was teaching the fortress's own discarded bones how to wake up, how to think, and how to become an army all on their own. The heart of the infiltrator had begun to beat, and its pulse was the slow, silent, patient rust of conquest.