by M. R. Forbes
"Don't be concerned, my Lady," Wallace said. "We'll go and tell them straight away."
"Frieda, can you bring the news up to them?" Gesper said.
"I'm still looking after my patient."
"I'm fine," Eryn said.
"But Eryn-"
"I'm well. I don't need you to stand over me like a mother hen."
Frieda nodded. "Very well. I'm glad you're feeling better."
"Thanks to you."
Frieda smiled and headed off through the hole.
"It is this way," Oz said.
"What's that way, Oz?"
"It will follow."
Oz began moving back the way they had come, back down into the reactor.
"Do you want us to come with you, my Lady?" Wallace asked.
Eryn shook her head. She was healthy and rested, and Oz had said there were no Shifters here. She trusted the metal man on that. "There's no need."
"As you wish."
She followed Oz back through the corridors, back past the room she had woken in. They continued until they reached a large, open room that made Eryn gasp.
She had sat in a clearing in the Whispering Woods with her parents and her brother on more than one occasion, staring up into the night sky and finding patterns in the stars. She saw the same patterns now, delicately and intricately recreated using a menagerie of plants and mosses that glowed with varying degrees and colors of light. It was the most beautiful and amazing thing she had ever seen, and she stood and stared while the juggernaut continued across the room.
"It is this way," it repeated.
"Oz, this is beyond belief," she said, pulling her eyes away to find it. They settled on another object in the room, a large circular structure made of ircidium, rounded bars creating a ball on which more metalwork had been laid. The plates ran over it in chaotic shapes, with empty spaces between.
Oz stopped walking. The juggernaut was positioned at the side of the ball, and it turned around and looked back at her. Then it reached out and put its hand on it, pushing it. It spun silently, slightly off the ground, held there by some kind of perpetual magic. It put the flat of its hand against it to stop it and then pointed.
"It is it," it said, tapping the globe.
"I don't understand." Eryn moved closer to see where Oz's finger rested.
"It is here. It is it."
"The reactor?"
"It is it."
"This is a map of the Empire?"
"It is all of it."
Eryn put her hand to the ball, feeling the coldness of the ircidium. She pushed it slightly, making it spin. "This entire thing is the Empire?"
Oz waved his hand at the ceiling. "It is all."
"The night sky. I don't understand how anyone could make this. It is beyond words."
"It is First of Nine." Oz tapped the ball again.
"You're saying that Talon made this?"
"It is First of Nine." He pointed to the plants above them. "Second of Nine."
"Who is Second?"
Oz's red eyes brightened for a moment. "It hunts it."
"General Spyne?"
"Second of Nine."
Eryn stared at the plants. Spyne had created that? It seemed impossible. He was a murderer and a rapist, a killer as soulless as his master. How could he create anything of such beauty?
"It is this way," Oz said, resuming his motion.
CHAPTER FOUR
Eryn
She continued to trail behind the juggernaut as it made its way through the Empire Room, as she took to thinking of it, across another series of corridors to where the end of the stone flooring was replaced with a semi-circular edge. Eryn had seen its like before in Genesia, and when Oz faced her, she knew what it wanted her to do.
"It is there," it said.
"I don't want to make myself weak again. I just recovered."
"It is there."
She thought its voice sounded insistent. She decided not to argue. She put her hands out and summoned her magic, feeling the tingle run from her ears down her spine. She couldn't see the round platform, but she was certain it was there, waiting for a wizard to call upon it. She took hold of it and lifted it easily, bringing it up through the shaft until it was level with the floor.
Oz's body creaked and groaned as it stepped out onto it. Eryn felt the resistance against her power, and she pushed harder to keep the platform level. Then she joined the juggernaut on it and began to lower it back down.
They traveled further than Eryn could consider, passing through multiple floors of the reactor, and then down through a shaft that was surrounded by solid stone. Moss clung to the walls of the shaft, bathing them in a soft golden light until they finally reached the bottom.
"Where are we going?" Eryn asked again as they stepped off the platform. The moss was thinner here, with dead patches lining the ceiling and obscuring the few bits that were still luminescent. "Ignus," she said, and a small ball of light formed in her hand.
She cast it out ahead of them, lighting the corridor. There were no doorways here, only a long shaft whose end was invisible in the black.
"First of Nine. It is there."
"Talon is down here? That can't be."
"It is there."
Oz started down the tunnel. Eryn stayed behind it, letting the ball of light float ahead. In time the outline of a doorway became visible. The juggernaut's pace increased at the sight of it, and Eryn had to run to keep up.
"It is there," it said, reaching the edge of the doorway, blocking the inside from Eryn's view as the light entered the room.
She crowded behind him, trying to see past his rusted metal form, until finally he stepped aside, pointing ahead at the source of his interest.
"It is there."
Eryn stared at the object in front of them. It was big, bigger than a man or even a juggernaut and covered in hundreds of years of dust and silt. Even so, she could see that it was a circle of gold, and it was ringed with colored stones. It had been placed in the center of the large room, with stone steps constructed ahead of it to allow a person to climb above the bottom arc and reach the inside. Like the globe, it was suspended a few inches in the air, supported by magic that never ended.
"It is it," Oz said, climbing the steps.
"What is it?" she asked.
"It is it."
The juggernaut reached out and wiped some of the dust off the surface. The gold below was bright, reflecting Eryn's light back at them.
"It's beautiful, Oz, but I don't know what it is."
"First of Nine. It is it."
Eryn stared at the circle. She had seen references to something called a 'subroute' in Jeremiah's journal. She closed her eyes, trying to remember what he had written.
Go to the source... The only way to make it in time...
"Is that a subroute, Oz?"
"It is it."
"It can take us to Talon?"
"It is pleased to go to First of Nine."
"How does it work?"
Oz pointed through the subroute. "It is there."
"What is?"
She could see a large door there. Like Oz, it was made of rusted ircidium. It was also closed.
"It is there."
Oz came back down the steps, circling around the ring to the door. It was almost twice the juggernaut's size, making the large metal man seem almost human-sized in comparison.
"It opens it."
"I can't open it, it's made of ircidium."
Oz put its hand out against the door, leaning in and pushing. Steam poured from the juggernaut's mouth and more escaped through the socket of its lost arm.
The door didn't budge.
"It opens it," Oz repeated.
"How?" Eryn asked. She couldn't use her magic on the door, and she imagined it had been put there and sealed for a reason.
Oz started moving again, circling past her, back the way they had come. She sighed impatiently, the inefficient nature of the metal man's communication growing frustra
ting. It knew how to get to Talon, or at least it thought it did. How? She couldn't begin to guess.
They returned to the stone platform, and she carried them back up the shaft to the main level of the reactor. Oz led her part of the way back to the surface before pausing at another closed door. This one was made of simple steel, and Eryn opened it before the juggernaut had time to ask. A low whine and some steam suggested it found her impatience amusing.
Oz took the large sword from its back and began cutting at the overgrowth of vegetation that clogged this new passage. The mass of the iridescent vines bathed them in bright, greenish light as it worked to clear them. It was obvious that the juggernaut understood her need to conserve her energy, taking the time to clear the growth manually when she could have destroyed the entire volume in seconds.
An hour had passed before it had completed its work, opening up a new passageway into a separate section of the reactor. There was still some overgrowth here, but it was limited to random sections and not the entire thing.
"It is this way," Oz said, bringing her through the corridors to a large, open room.
In the center of the room were a series of odd contraptions made up of metal and gears and tubes. Some were large, some were small, but they seemed to be organized in a specific order. Eryn gasped at the sight of them, marveling in their apparent complexity.
"What is it?" she asked.
She saw the answer before the juggernaut provided it. To the left of the machinery was a forge unlike any she had ever seen. Where there should have been fuel for the flames, there was instead an organized grid of red stones. Sphalecite. Fire gems.
A cart filled with ircidium ore rested next to the forge. She had never seen it in its raw form before, and she felt a certain amount of anger at seeing it now. Untold numbers of people were slaves in his mines, their lives forfeit to the search for the material. She wondered how long it would take to find the amount that was sitting there.
Next to the cart was a long, flat table that she could see had a number of shapes pressed into it. Even from a distance, the similarity of the first impression to the general outline of Oz's head was apparent.
Juggernauts. They made juggernauts here.
"It is this way," Oz said, moving past the machinery to the other side of the room.
Eryn paused in front of the forge, putting her hand on the ircidium ore, running her fingers into the molds on the table. There were hundreds of them carved there. Parts for a head, arms, legs, and dozens of smaller, more intricate pieces that she couldn't identify. She saw now there was another station behind it, one she didn't recognize but could tell provided the tubes that carried the metal men's strange, black lifeblood.
She continued past it all, following Oz around to the back, to yet another closed door. He reached out and took the handle, pulling it open as she approached.
She was greeted by a small army of one zeroes. Thirty or more, lined up shoulder to shoulder in half a dozen columns.
CHAPTER FIVE
Eryn
They stared back at her, lifeless and empty, their dark eyes remaining that way.
Eryn looked from them to Oz and back again, her heart pounding. Oz was as good as one hundred soldiers in a battle. But thirty of them?
"It opens it," Oz said, pointing at them.
There were enough of the metal men to open the sealed room.
Eryn still wasn't convinced she wanted to.
"What's down there?" she asked. "In that room?"
"It is pleased to follow First of Nine," Oz replied.
"Yes, I know. But what do we need to do to reach him? Will using the subroute summon the Shifters?"
"It is as it is."
"Is that a yes?"
"It is unknown."
"There's a chance that it will?"
"It is unknown. It opens it."
Eryn stared at the juggernauts. She could use them to open the door and do whatever it was Oz wanted to do. She could fix the subroute and create a portal between this reactor and where? Somewhere near the Refinery. It had to be. Did Oz know where the Refinery was all along? Or was there something else it was trying to achieve? Eryn had long suspected there was more to the metal man than it seemed. After what had happened outside the reactor, and now this? She needed to know.
"Oz," she said.
The juggernaut turned to her.
"You aren't like the other juggernauts, are you?"
Oz stared at her, eyes glowing.
"You weren't always a juggernaut."
She said it with conviction. With certainty. It was the only thing that made sense to her.
It continued to stare. Its eyes dimmed.
"It remembers," it said.
"What do you remember?" she asked, feeling a sudden, terrible sadness. If she was right and there was a person behind all of the ircidium and gears and tubes... It had to be a torturous fate to be trapped in such a way.
"It remembers," Oz repeated, its voice low. Sad. "Before."
"Before what?"
"Before it came. Before it hurt."
"What happened to you?"
"It remembers. It hurts."
"I know," Eryn said. "You may be metal and magic. I can still see it." She put her hand out against the juggernaut's chest. "I know what it is to hurt. You've protected me. Cared for me."
"It is pleased."
Eryn felt the warmth of her tears on her cheeks. Not tears of blood. Not this time. Oz knew both Talon and Spyne before the war. It knew of the reactor here, of the layout from top to bottom. Whatever it was, whoever it was, it was as old as they were.
She couldn't begin to imagine it.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Golden eyes became almost black. Steam rose from its mouth. Seconds passed in silence.
"You don't remember?"
"It is Oz," it said at last, turning away from her, back to the assembled juggernauts. "It opens it."
Eryn wiped her eyes with her sleeve, breathing deeply and calming herself. Oz had done its best to confirm her suspicion. It had been human once. Part of that humanity had been lost in the time since, forged into magic and metal contained in a nearly impermeable shell.
"Right. How do we make them work?"
Oz moved to the first in line. It reached up and stuck the edge of its blade into the chest, revealing a seam that Eryn had never noticed on the juggernaut. It shifted the sword point around until a click sounded from within, and the plate swung open on an inner hinge.
Eryn gazed it at the inner workings. There were so many tubes and gears, so many intricate parts and tiny pieces. She couldn't believe that there was a time when people knew how to build such things. She couldn't understand why such knowledge had been lost.
I know why. Because it threatens him.
There was a small bar jutting out from the center of the chest, and Oz pushed it up with his finger. Eryn watched as it began to whirr, and then a central cylinder with a small glass front been to fill with thick liquid, surrounding the gems she was sure were arranged inside. The resonance. As soon as the cylinder was full, the eyes began to glow, the gears began to turn, and black fluid spread through the tubes. A puff of steam burst from the juggernaut's mouth, and Oz slammed the chest plate closed.
"It is prepared."
The new juggernaut didn't move. It didn't speak. She only knew it was active because of the eyes.
"Now what?" Eryn asked.
"It requires instructions."
"What kind of instructions?"
"It requires instructions." Oz tapped a finger on its head.
Eryn tilted her head, calling on her magic. She felt the tingle in her ears. She felt it run down her back. Then she felt something else. A new presence.
"Look at me," she ordered it.
The juggernaut's head turned to look at her.
She smiled. "Go into that room."
The words were silent, but the metal man heard them all the same. It began moving, its limbs groaning
and whining from years of immobility. It shuffled past them and out into the central room.
"Amazing," she said. "Can they fight like you, too?"
"It is simple. It is not Oz."
"So, no. But they can open the door?"
"It is pleased to open the door."
She looked at the metal men. Maybe they wouldn't provide a larger army for them. They could still be useful. "Let's turn on a few more."
"It is pleased to prepare the one zeroes."
CHAPTER SIX
Talon
Thomas leaned over the corpse of his son, tears raining onto the lifeless body from his ancient, tired eyes.
Murderer.
The voice had been in his head since the day Silas Morningstar had been forced sober. Since the day the Overlord's magic had lost its vice-like grip and allowed his mind to begin to reassembled its shattered pieces. Now, as he stared down at the face he had known so well through a clouded haze of pain and anger, its echoing cry was deafening, drowning out all sense of reason and logic from his soul.
Murderer.
He had sought to save Aren. To free him from this cold prison. In the back of his mind, he knew he had at least accomplished that. Freeing him to the next life was surely better than letting him stay trapped in this one. Even so, he also knew he had been the one to kill him. It was no different than if he had jammed the knife into his gut, the way he had with Kwille.
Murderer.
He pushed himself to his feet and backed away, wiping his arm wildly against his eyes, trying to clear his vision. The voice was changing now.
"Murderer," Aren said, looking up at him, blaming him.
"Murderer," Teran said, the smaller boy accusing in his tone.
"Murderer," Alyssa said, shaking her head in disdain, refusing to look him in the eye, casting their wedding ring at his feet.
"Murderer," Eryn said, her body growing thick and scaly, her head elongating into that of the Shifter General.
"Murderer," Kwille said from the doorway of the room, blood still staining his shirt.
"No," Thomas said, backing away, knocking into the table and almost destroying what was left of the cure. "I'm trying to fix it. To put it all right. To end his tyranny over this Empire."
