“You want to talk about unoriginal? I saw what shirt you were wearing when we met. Corruption, corruption, corruption.”
Casey laughed, her veil rippling from the force of her voice. “Can’t argue with that.”
The wagon rattled as it hit a fallen branch, the burnt wood crumbling as the wheel pushed over it.
“You think people are looking for us, back home? Friendspace has to be in trouble, right? Players climb into their video game pods, and don’t come back out?”
“Maybe. This is Friendspace after all. Probably all kinds of conspiracy nonsense spreading on there already. My gran thinks the royal family are reptiloids because someone else liked something and it popped up on her wall.”
“They can’t avoid something like this though. Or well, you would hope not.” Casey sighed loudly. “I still wonder where all the other players are? It can’t be just us and Erwin. Even if they got scattered across the aether lands, we should have found someone.”
“Who knows? Did Friendspace even really know what they were doing?” Alex leant back, stretching his hands across the top of the bench. “You never know, if we do get ourselves a working airship maybe we can go looking for others like us.”
***
Anaya adjusted herself, the borrowed armour not sitting well on her frame. She was toned and athletic, strong tight muscle attached to her frame. The armour had been made for someone larger, a heretic who had never seen true battle in their lives. It was a necessary sacrifice, Emilia’s portals were strictly limited, only capable of transporting to her domed abode and back to her original location. This restriction had spat Anaya out in Emilia’s office, making the militia uniform a requirement.
The visor on the helmet dropped into place with a click, covering Anaya’s mechanical eyes. She had to admit, despite its poor fit, even this basic armour was much better than anything her people had. The tough metal still allowed for surprising movement, and the shirt made of tight metal links was a revelation. If Anaya was ever welcomed back to her people, she had a lot of new ideas to share with them.
She stepped out of the office and into the hallway. Anaya hadn't been in this Tower before, but she had a rough idea of where to go. Wandering the halls and riding the elevators down continuously had worked during her initial escape, and Anaya had no doubt it would work now. Her footsteps echoed as she strode down the corridor until she reached one of the rickety-looking contraptions that allowed passage between the floors. She ducked as she entered it, the long spear that Emilia had given her taller than the entrance.
The weapon was impressive, Anaya had to admit that. It was well balanced, and its tip was razor-sharp. It was the strange secondary function that intrigued her the most though. There was a lever on the side of the spear, and a round drum at the butt. Pressed the lever tight launched the tip of the spear, the point opening on impact to grasp what it struck. A tightly wound metal cable kept the two halves attached, and pulling the lever outwards caused the drum to hum loudly as it wound the cable back in. Anaya understood its design immediately, the weapon allowing its wielder to grapple onto a skewered machina or to climb difficult terrain.
The elevator clanked as it came to a stop, Anaya stepping out into a bustling corridor. Despite her time spent in the Towers as a prisoner, she hadn’t seen much of the populace. It was still strange to her to see so many non-humans, different races intermingling with one another. The songs of her people maintained that it was the non-humans who had led the charge on slaying Berat-Kor, and therefore considered them the most blasphemous of the heretics. Anaya was finding it harder each day to reconcile that creed with what she saw. She had been cared for by a non-human doctor and priest when she had first arrived at the Towers, injured from battle with a machina. The people she saw in the hallways were just trying going about their daily lives, some nodding to her as she passed. They didn’t seem like the crazed heretics from the stories of her youth.
“You there?” demanded a voice, bellowing across the corridor to Anaya. They were wearing the same armour as Emilia had given her, marking them as a member of the militia. They strode forward, a weapon Anaya had learnt was called a rifle hanging from a strap over their shoulder. “This is my section. What are you doing here?”
“I’m on a mission from the…” Anaya wracked her brain for the words Emilia had told her to use, “Grand General. She wants me to deliver a message to a scout waiting at the base of the tower.”
“Ah, fair enough. Thought for a moment someone was trying to muscle in on my territory. Lot of shops around here, and they're willing to pay for a little extra special protection if you know what I mean?” The man winked exaggeratedly, his visor rattling as he moved his head.
“I’m not sure I do?”
“Of course, you do. Everyone is afraid of what might happen if another army turns up. Scared enough to pay a little extra for someone to stick around and protect their homes and business if something happens instead of rushing to the front. Everyone is doing it.”
“If everyone is doing it, who is actually going to the front to defend if it happens?” Anaya understood what the man was saying, and it sickened her. The people here were terrified, scared of what would happen to them if the Chosen besieged the bones. Whilst they were her enemies, something about them being extorted like this felt wrong.
“Not my problem. Anyway, good luck with that message, eh? Don’t want to piss off the general.” The militiaman was trying to move Anaya on, uncomfortable with her questioning his larceny.
“Of course,” Anaya said, nodding to the man. “Have a good day.”
***
Tracking the target wasn’t difficult. The caravan had trampled its way across the countryside, leaving a long trail that was easy to follow. The wheel tracks were deep, compacted ash pressed deep into the earth. If this was the level of stealth she could expect, then it would be easy for Anaya to follow the knights. Her only issue was one of pace. She would have to hope she could take paths impossible for the wagon, to make up time through difficult terrain until she caught up.
Scattered throughout the black around her were tiny patches of long lavender coloured grass that had escaped the wrath of the fire. Anaya hadn't seen the area around the bones before it had been touched by the searing wildfires that had ravaged it, her solo hunts into the forest had never come this far, and she had been unconscious when she had been brought through it. Anaya wished she could have seen it. She imagined it must have been beautiful.
Anaya adjusted her loose armour and began to walk across the scorched landscape. Her walk towards the burnt stumps of the forest ahead was announced by a loud crunch, the ash beneath her feet leaving footprints behind her. Anaya stopped, then leapt to the side, carefully putting her boots into the tracks left by the wagon. She didn’t think anyone would be following her but leaving evidence of her passing wasn’t good practice.
As she got closer to the edge of the forest, a strange noise began to fill the air. It was a kind of loud grinding like metal was being pressed against metal. It sounded pained, frantic, a mechanical scream coming from beneath the burnt husk of a tree. Anaya readied her spear, gripping it with both hands as she approached the source of the noise.
Beneath the shell of the tree was a small machina. It had a maw made of whirling gears, a fat body and four stubby legs. The thing had stepped onto one of the tree’s burnt roots, the plant giving way and dropping it into a hole beneath. One of its back legs had gotten tangled in one of the still flexible roots. The hole was filled with fresh earth where the machina had tried to dig its way free.
Anaya understood how it felt. She was the same, trapped in a situation she couldn’t get out of. She had considered running, fleeing from the Towers and her new benefactor, but had no idea where she would go. At least working for Emilia put food in her belly and a roof over her head.
“I know, little one. It is hard.” Anaya lifted her helmet, revealing her machina eyes to the stricken monster. She chipped away at th
e edge of the hole with her spear, widening the opening so she could reach inside. “I know. It’s ok, I’ll help.”
The machina released a hiss of steam, an angry rebuke to Anaya’s movement.
“It’s fine. It’s fine. Look at my eyes. You know me. We are kin.”
The machina began to calm, its grinding cogs slowing, its squealing coming to a stop. It looked at Anaya though it had no obvious eyes. It let out a long high pitched whine and brought its body as close to the dirt as it could.
“Ok, let me just…” Anaya slowly, and carefully, began cutting through the tangled root with the tip of her spear. It was tougher than she expected and took a few tries before it finally came loose with a loud snap. “There we go, all free.” She pulled herself out from the hole, stopping to dust off the dirt and ash that now covered her arm.
There was a scrabbling noise from beneath the tree as the machina followed. It brushed itself up against Anaya’s legs, gears whirring happily in its mouth. Anaya knew what this was, she could feel it, all Chosen could. Their implants allowed them to survive the aether, but also bond with machina in a way that wasn’t possible otherwise.
The creature had chosen her. It wasn’t the powerful mount she was used to, but Anaya was glad to have companionship.
“Ok, you can come with me,” she said, bending down so her head was close to the machine’s. It would be a crazy thing to do if she didn't sense the creature’s desire to serve. “As long as you don't make too much trouble. I don't know what kind you are, must be something local. So, you need a name. Let's go with…”
The creature whirred its cogged maw happily.
“Driller. That seems like a good name, don’t you think?”
The machina scuttled about in a circle. Anaya took that as an acceptance of the name. She shouldered her spear, swinging the strap over her head and turned back towards the wagon tracks.
“Come on then,” Anaya said. “We’ve got work to do.”
Chapter Seven
At the swamp’s Edge
The feeling of dirt beneath his feet was something Alex had missed. It wasn't something he had been conscious of missing as the caravan had trundled across the sea of ash and cinders. The journey had taken longer than he had expected. The size of the former forest was deceptive when travelling by airship. It had taken only several hours to reach what used to be the forest's edge but manoeuvring the long wagon train through the twisting hillside previously hidden by trees had quickly taken a toll.
Nearly four days to reach the edge of the swamp. Alex calculated the time in his mind, adding the extra days to his estimate. He had expected to have been gone a week at most, but it was starting to look a lot closer to two. It wasn’t a massive issue, he had packed a prodigious amount of supplies, taking advantage of the infinite pocket dimension that operated as his inventory. Every time Alex had gone on a guild expedition, he had taken the provided rations. There was enough in his inventory for months and whilst stored in the void they didn’t seem to spoil, frozen in time until he summoned them again.
The caravan had come to a stop at the edge of a cliff, the swamp stretching out before them. The ash had given way to fresh soil as they had approached, the swampland spared the ravages of the flames. Alex assumed it was some combination of the lower elevation and the damp terrain that had stopped the spread.
The swamp was just as Alex had remembered it. It was a hard thing to forget, the vast sea of putrid water and gigantic mushrooms, their caps stretching out over the murk like a canopy. The collected fungus were different shades of grey, giving the swamp the sensation that it had drained all the colour from the world. The air had the unmistakable smell of damp to it, a pungent aroma that hit the nose as soon as you approached the edge of the cliff.
Alex had only been here once before, to hunt a machina known as a slitherwyrm. The creature had hidden under the mire, the waters of the swamp surprisingly deep. So far, their journey had been an uneventful one, the forests bigger machina moving on to find prey in other regions and the handful of smaller machina that remained were wise enough not to attack an entire caravan. The creatures here would be a problem. The wagons would be forced to slow down as they made their way through the difficult terrain and would be tempting targets for hungry beasts lurking beneath the surface.
“You remember the last time we came here?” Casey said. She was standing next to Alex, her hand on the hilt of her katana.
“How could I not? I’m still getting water out of my boots.” Alex lifted his foot and shook it, jokingly miming shaking non-existent water loose. The metal of the sabaton clattered as he did.
“Still amazes me that Erwin survived out here for as long as he did. It kind of makes me hopeful, for others to have managed wherever they landed.”
“Frankly I’m amazed Erwin managed to survive three days, let alone three months.” Alex stepped away from the edge and turned, beginning the short walk to the wagons.
Casey followed him, her veil swishing as she spun around. “And yet he managed it.”
“We’ve been here just over six months now, Case. It’s a long time for someone to survive anywhere. I hope they have, I really do, but we’ve got to accept that the longer it takes, the less likely we are to find anyone else.”
The wagons had been assembled into a circle; a fire started in the centre by Cassius. He nodded to his two companions as they stepped through the makeshift wall and then tossed another block of firewood into the blaze. Night was coming, and the temperature was starting to dip.
“Everything look alright?” Cassius said, poking at the base of the fire with a long knife.
“The swamp looks like the swamp,” Alex said. Some of the empty crates they had brought to help organise scrap had been set near the fire. Alex took a seat on one of them, the wood creaking under his weight. “Lots of mushrooms, water, and dirt.”
“That’s good for us then,” Simian said. The scavenger was sitting on a crate that had been pushed up against the wheel of a wagon, the man using the wheel as a backrest. He had one of the guild rations in his hand, a brown strip of dried root that had a faintly earthy taste. “If the fire had burned up this place too, then we were in trouble.”
“Simian is right,” Cassius said, shooting the older man a glance. He was loathed to agree with him. “We’re going to need a lot of those mushrooms for the balloons. Kind of difficult if they were all burnt up.”
“Mushrooms would have been fine, the ones we need are in caves to the north of the swamp. Our problem would have been a lot of angry machina with nowhere else to go.” Simian took a bit from the ration, chewing loudly as he continued to speak. “The ones that live in the swamp are, whatchamacallit, adapted to their environment. Not like they can just move on the same was the beasts in the forest did. This whole big smelly hole in the world would have been one massive fight. Good for scavenging once it's done, not so good for trying to survive.”
“There are some nasty machina in there.” Casey took a seat on the same crate as Alex. It was a tight fit, her armour pressing up against his. “Remember that massive one? Erwin had a name for it.”
“Rory,” Alex said. He wasn’t comfortable on the crate anymore, not with Casey pushing against him, but he didn’t move. Her closeness wasn’t unwelcome. “Big crocodile looking thing. Called it that because-”
“Because of the roaring,” the other knights said in unison.
“Exactly.” Alex watched as Cassius planted a metal spike into the ground by the fire, the shaft splitting in two, one half swinging upwards to form an arm suspended above the flames. A small pot was hooked onto it, swinging in the slight breeze. “We need to be vigilant.”
“What’s a crocodile?” Simian said. He was watching Cassius work with interest.
“It’s an Earth animal,” Casey said. Her body became a shimmering field of light for a brief moment, vivid pink filling the wagon circle. When it faded her outfit had changed to a simple pair of brown linen trousers and a white bl
ouse, over which she had placed a black waistcoat. “They’re aquatic creatures, they like to lurk under the water and snatch things that get too close. They’ve got a nasty set of long jaws, thick armour all over their bodies and they have this thing they do where they drag prey into the water and then spin really fast to shred them. The death roll it’s called.”
Alex removed his helmet, placing it onto his lap. He didn’t feel comfortable changing into his casual clothing. It wasn’t an issue of modesty, the glowing light obscured everything in that regard, but he suddenly realised that he still only had the basic linens he had arrived in the aether lands wearing. Seeing that Casey had taken the time to buy new clothes made Alex feel self-conscious.
“They’re kind of the perfect killing machines. They’ve not changed for millions of years,” Alex said.”
“Perfect killing machine, armour plates, sounds like a machina,” Cassius said. He picked up a jar that had been sat on the ground by his feet and opened the lid with a pop. Through the glass the jar’s contents were visible, beans suspended in a deep blue liquid. He poured them into the pot, the beans sizzling as they struck the hot metal.
“Close enough,” Alex said with a shrug. Explaining Earth life to natives of the aether lands was difficult, they simply had no frame of reference for most things. “Not something you want to mess with anyway.”
Silence fell over the makeshift camp as the knights made themselves ready for the coming day. Simian cleaned his rifle disassembling it into its constituent parts, whilst Alex and Casey checked the levels of supplies in their inventories. Cassius just tended to his cooking, stirring the beans occasionally. It was a welcome moment of serenity from the constant struggle of the last few months.
“Right, dinner is done,” Cassius said. He stepped over to a nearby wagon, climbing onto the front bench and reaching inside. He emerged a moment later carrying a stack of bowls. He returned to his pot, spooning out the beans and handing a bowl to each of his comrades in turn.
Aether Knight: Desolation: A LitRPG Light Novel Page 6
