Chapter 8
ARIENNE
She set out from the twisted house into Danras, carefully peering up and down the street when she reached the corner. From this distance, it seemed as if the object was standing still and staring with its strange not-eyes.
It looked like a giant metal insect, but with four legs instead of six, and it had all kinds of things on its back—fragments of furniture, old clothes, broken awnings.
Human remains. All covered in red dust. It was giant, and Arienne could only guess at how large it would have been originally, without all the junk tacked onto its body.
“A little gigatherion, made of trash…” Arienne found herself murmuring aloud while thinking of the behemoth of the Empire that had struck Arland’s dragon down from the sky.
Could the two machines truly be related?
Arienne could still faintly hear the familiar hum of a Power generator, so there was no doubt that the monster was a Powered machine that carried its own generator.
But there was no balance or symmetry to the wretched object before her, which would’ve been the hallmark of a human-made device.
Arienne held her breath as the monster began moving again.
There were three arm-like appendages coming out of its torso.
Unlike its legs, these had no clear joints, and they flailed listlessly like sluggish whips.
Two of these appendages ended with pincers, and one had a grass-cutting blade, or perhaps a saw.
It was hard to tell through all the rust on it.
In the room in her mind, Aron the donkey brayed. Startled, Arienne shouted into the room, “Be quiet! What happens if…”
What happens if the monster hears you … But of course, there was no way the thing could hear something inside her mind.
“… Tychon wakes up!” she finished, shoving that thought aside.
Why am I trying to sound rational to a donkey? Arienne calmed herself and took a quick look at the baby Tychon. He was blissfully asleep. Aron, as if to keep watch, had lain down next to the crib.
The donkey turned his head toward her and brayed again. Arienne ignored it and closed the door.
She refocused herself. The trash monster seemed to be looking for something, bathing anything within its false sight with blue light.
One of its pincers reached into a window and withdrew an old pillow the size of a person.
Arienne suddenly wondered if the monster was looking for her and became frightened.
The monster hacked away at the pillow with the bladed arm, and a chill ran down her spine.
She imagined being stretched apart by the two pincers and then stabbed to death with the rusty blade; then she quickly tried to erase the image from her mind.
Arienne tore her eyes from the monster itself and studied its surroundings.
The street the monster stood on must have been built after the Empire had annexed Danras—it was as straight as if drawn with a ruler and wide enough for four carriages to pass side by side.
The monster took up that whole street on its own, standing on its four uneven legs, rummaging about with its three arms. No, four arms, Arienne realized.
One more had appeared and was reaching for an alley.
The still-audible humming from the monster was so very familiar to her.
She’d heard it when she had gone down to the basement of the Imperial Academy to steal Eldred’s corpse.
And it was the sound she heard when she put her ear to Tychon’s chest in the room in her mind.
It was definitely the sound of an active Power generator.
But how did a Power generator, neglected for a century, continue to function? And did the Empire’s Office of Truth not think to reclaim the generator after the fall of Mersia?
What dreams would the dead sorcerer in that generator have had for these long years?
Her curiosity rose. But right now, it was more important to not attract the attention of that thing.
The monster, like a ragpicker collecting old clothes in a basket, added the mangled pillow to the trash on its back.
The sight of it doing so made Arienne imagine her own dismembered body in place of the pillow and she shook with fright.
She should stay hidden, and once the monster was gone, she would leave Danras.
Who would’ve imagined that Mersia, this land of the dead, would harbor such a thing?
This mission never should’ve been taken on alone.
She should go back to Arland, come up with a foolproof plan, and return with people who could help her.
There was no point in ending up like that pillow just now.
Reaching Danras was accomplishment enough, and no one could accuse her of not doing her part.
King Loran would not blame her—she might even praise her.
But that was the extent to which Arienne was willing to listen to her inner excuse-maker.
Hadn’t Loran thrown herself into a volcano to make a pact with a dragon?
Hadn’t she fought a squadron of Powered chariots, then finally bested an Imperial gigatherion?
Even if she couldn’t do the same, Arienne knew that she must not make excuses for herself now when she had come so far.
Her breath quieted, Arienne crawled toward an alley and drew herself flat against a wall.
All of her attention was concentrated in her eyes and ears.
It felt like the moment she peered out of the alley, the blue-light gaze would be staring right at her.
She took a slow, deep breath. Slowly leaning around the corner, she tried to see where the monster was.
Its whip-like arms were still rummaging through the houses.
There were—surprisingly—even more arms now.
Eight? Ten? They flailed so energetically that she couldn’t count them, and each one was longer than the one before.
They seemed to have no purpose in particular as they writhed and twisted in the air.
The image reminded Arienne of an uprooted tree stood on its crown.
The rootlike, twisting arms of the monster reached into windows and doors and the alleyways between rows of twisted houses, as if looking for something it had lost, collecting garbage and wearing it on its body for some unknown reason.
“What is it looking for?” she muttered, forgetting to be stealthy.
Rather, what had its original orders been, and who had given them?
The trash monster was far from human and made no sound that could be called language or expression, but Arienne could still feel the desperation in how it moved its arms. It was impossible to know what it was looking for, but there was definitely no possibility of finding it here.
If it had been searching for a century and still hadn’t found it, it likely never would.
The thought made her a little sad. She took a small step toward the street.
But she couldn’t take the next one. Something had wound itself around her ankle.
Arienne’s head whipped around and looked down—one of the monster’s arms had come from behind her in the alley and grabbed her.
She had thought it was safe because it was a dead end, but the arm had come through cracks in the walls.
Suddenly, it lifted her up and hung her upside down as she screamed, the glass orb around her neck knocking against her face.
But even as she panicked, she was thinking of the flaming sword in her mind, the twin of King Loran’s Wurmath and the very one that Arienne had used to kill Lysandros and slice off Eldred’s arms. Feeling Power gather in her mouth, she spoke the spell, and the monster’s arm dropped to the ground like a piece of fish from a cleaver.
Arienne fell flat as the arm released her, but she didn’t wait to regain the breath that was knocked out of her, instead racing out of the alley.
As soon as she stepped into the street, the lights of the monster shone upon her. Arienne stared into them, almost blinding herself, and the writhing tentacles froze. Then, the unbalanced four legs began to move. The giant monster was coming toward her.
Without pausing to think, she turned and ran.
The footsteps of the massive monster made the ground shake. But what scared her most was how the hum of the Power generator grew ever louder. Not quite a beating heart or a drum, but just as regular.
As she ran, something crashed not far in front of her and shattered to pieces.
Arienne didn’t pause as she instinctively blocked the bouncing fragments.
It was large, like a piece of furniture, but if she stopped to go around it, the monster would gain that much more ground.
She had to step over it. She leaped into the center of the debris.
And the ground gave way beneath her. She thought it was simply the furniture giving way at first, but then she continued to fall down, down into darkness.
The road had collapsed under her, perhaps because of the crash, and Arienne now expected nothing but death.
Who knew a perfectly serviceable-looking road would harbor an endless hollow underneath …
Her annoyance nearly overwhelmed her fear.
She mourned not only her life, but that of Tychon and the donkey Aron—if she died here, they would disappear along with Arienne’s consciousness and the room in her mind. Loran’s mission would end here, too. There was no one else who would take it over.
She glanced downward as she fell. It was dark. She smelled water. In this lifeless desert?
Suddenly, her body hit the surface of water. Her breath was knocked out of her once more, immediately bubbling toward the surface like an escaping ghost.
Arienne tried with all of her strength to move her body, to reach the surface. But she had no air, and her consciousness slowly began to drift away.