I will paint your likeness upon the world.

– Inapithian prayer

“Try it now!” Astrid calls.

Drew's response comes a moment later, couched in between some intense profanity. “Still nothing!”

It has been a very long night. Astrid is not sure what time it is right now, only that it has been several hours since the sun began to peek over the horizon, and she has yet to sleep or eat. Sometime earlier, they had migrated outside, Drew enlisting the help of several people she has never met to tow the motionless sentinel out of the garage.

The midmorning sun beats down on their backs. Astrid's body is drenched with sweat, and she has discarded her overalls for a pair of shorts. She crouches on the sentinel's metal thigh, arms deep in a nest of circuitry, doing her best to keep her skin from brushing the sun-heated surface. Drew sits in the cockpit, shirt tied around his waist, sweating even more profusely. For the past several hours, the two of them have been trying to determine why the engine will not start, to limited results.

Astrid licks her lips and peers into the tangled mess of wires. Beyond this single panel, she can make out the white of a coolant tube, half a dozen switches and connectors, and a handful of components that she has yet to identify. It is an enormous effort to keep her tired brain functioning, let alone solve the problem of why the sentinel will not start up. She flips a pair of suspicious-looking switches and crosses her fingers. “Try now!”

Drew's answer comes a moment later. “Nope! Nothing.” He leans out of the cockpit. “I'm not even sure I'm doing this right, to be honest. I'm just the team strategist. Wendy's the only one who has worked with this kind of model before.”

Astrid bites back the question that she has wanted to ask since last night. Where is Wendy? The last time Astrid saw her was when they were walking back from the scrapyard together. She's the team leader, Astrid thinks bitterly. Shouldn't she be here, sweating along with the rest of them? She's probably off somewhere getting sleep. Astrid scowls and turns a dial with far more force than she intends. The knob of the dial breaks off in her fingers with a loud snap.

“Um...” Astrid says, unsure how to break the news that she may have broken something to her similarly irritable teammate.

A moment later, the sentinel shudders underneath her, hard enough that her teeth buzz. The air is filled with an almighty roar of an engine, followed by Drew's excited whooping.

“It works!” He yells, leaping out of the cockpit and sliding down the treacherous metal surface to land next to Astrid. “It works!” He throws his arms around her, then seems to realize both what he is doing, and the sheer amount of grease covering Astrid's skin. He releases her, scratching at his head and looking embarrassed. “I mean, it works. Awesome. I knew it would eventually.”

Whether from exhaustion or joy she does not know, but Astrid is unable to stop herself from breaking down into laughter. She slides off the sentinel's leg and collapses on her back on the concrete, unable to stop laughing. Above her, the sky is a brilliant blue. “We did it. We really did it.”

“Hi guys.”

The words are quiet to the point of being barely audible over the engine, but carry enough weight that Astrid immediately looks up. Standing at the edge of the garage is Sylva. Somehow, despite being inside the entire night, she looks far worse than Astrid feels. There are huge bags under her eyes, and she sways slightly on her feet. She is dressed in a long black skirt and a tie-dyed top, and strapped across her back is an enormous case almost as tall as she is.

“Syl,” Drew says, immediately growing sober. “Are you—”

“Yes,” she says. “I'm ready.”

Astrid and Drew stand to the side as Sylva approaches the sentinel. She sits down and unhooks the enormous case from her back, placing it in front of her. She undoes the clasps, and from within she draws a beautiful keyboard. Each of the keys is a pristine black or white, all of them polished until they gleam.

As all of this happens, Drew grows increasingly agitated. When the piano keyboard comes out, he shakes his head, murmuring, “I can't do this,” and retreats, running inside the turret. A few seconds later, a door slams.

“What's wrong with him?” Astrid whispers aloud, having lost any ability to censor herself.

“Drew's got some feelings about magic.”

Astrid jumps. Wendy has appeared seemingly from nowhere, standing a few feet away from her. She motions for Astrid to follow her, and the two of them retreat a few dozen paces. Sylva remains on the ground, carefully tuning her piano.

“Nice of you to finally show up,” Astrid murmurs, hitting Wendy with her best glare.

Wendy does not seem to notice. “Of course I showed up. I wouldn't miss Sylva's performance for the world.”

“That's not what I meant. Where have you been all night? We've been working our tails off!”

“I didn't want to get in any of your ways. Now shush.”

Astrid gapes. “You can't shush me!” She says furiously. “How dare you, after you've—” She pauses, noting that Wendy is paying her no attention. The other girl's gaze is fixed on Sylva, her hands clasped behind her back in an oddly respectful manner. Astrid turns, and sees Sylva placing her fingers on the keys of her piano. Hurriedly, Astrid mimics Wendy's pose. “So she's going to do magic?” She whispers.

Wendy nods. “Yes.”

“And somehow that magic is going to make this giant robot stand up, when the laws of physics clearly state that it should topple under its own weight?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Astrid is doubtful. From everything she has heard, magic is used for small things, like healing someone, or adding special effects to a play. Nothing like this. She half-expects that this whole thing is a farce, and in a few short moments she will be out of a job. Nonetheless, she watches, her interest piqued.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Sylva sits motionless in front of the sentinel. Set against the backdrop of its enormous mass, she looks very small. The air is filled with the sound of seabirds and the roar of the sentinel's engine, and the air around her wavers from the heat given off by the sentinel's armor. Sylva takes a deep breath, then begins to play. The melody is quick and bright, and Sylva's hands leap from key to key with a sprightliness that Astrid never would have expected from someone who just stayed up the entire night. There is an edge of sadness to the music as well, a discordant chord here and there that seem to speak of something dark.

“What is she playing?” Astrid whispers. It feels wrong, almost unholy, to speak in a normal voice during Sylva's performance.

Wendy shakes her head. “The Cry of Oriel. Oriel was the first angel made by the Creator. That's what Sylva tells me, at least. She's the only real religious one out of all of us.”

“Did Sylva write it?”

“No. The Cry of Oriel is a sort of prelude. An announcement of her intention.”

Sylva takes her hands off the keys. From within her keyboard case, she pulls out a battered sheaf of what looks to be sheet music, although it is entirely unlike any sheet music Astrid has ever seen. The staves are covered with so many corrections, explanations, and rewrites that the page itself is almost entirely black. Gently, as if she was cradling a baby, she sets the unreadable music on the ground in front of her.

“Here it comes,” Wendy murmurs, closing her eyes and bowing her head.

“Here what comes?” Astrid asks.

Wendy puts her finger to her lips, and nods to Sylva. “Magic.”

Astrid looks back at Sylva, just as the young woman puts her fingers back to the keys and begins to play again.

Astrid knows very little about music. All she knows is that this song is nothing like the previous one. It is not happy, or sad, or something that can be encompassed by such simple descriptors. The song is raw and unknowable. It thrums within her chest, and tears at her heart like an animal. There is no space for thought, and no space to breathe while Sylva plays, only space to listen and experience as everything but her song fades away. The world seems to slip in front of Astrid's face, perspective and depth grinding to a halt and the air tinging with a verdant green.

You huddle under the eaves of an abandoned church, as sheets of rain cascade past. A small girl with dark skin is sitting next to you, her keyboard on her lap. Heedless of the water misting on her face, she plays. The song is amateurish, to the point of having little melody to speak of, but she strikes each key with confidence, letting the notes ring out and mix with the sound of rain on concrete.

The scene changes. The same girl is there, but she is a few years older, playing the piano in the middle of an unfamiliar street. Her song is confident now, but mournful. The city around her is burning. Buildings with strange architecture are engulfed in orange and white flames, and screams echo through the air. Through it all, she continues to play, even as the buildings around her collapse, and tears spill from her eyes onto the keys.

The scene changes again. The girl is a young woman now. She sits on the roof of a familiar turret, her legs dangling off the edge. Behind her is an intense whirl of stars, bright as the fires that you saw before. Her song is fully formed now, thick with a terrible beauty and rage unlike any you have ever known. As you watch, she stops playing, and turns to stare at you. Bridging the gap between you, she takes your chin in the tips of your fingers and pulls you closer. Your heart skips a beat as she leans in, and her hot breath spills across your ear as she speaks a single word.

It takes Astrid a few moments to come back to herself. Her heart is pounding very quickly, and she feels slightly dizzy. She raises a hand to her face, and realizes that her eyes are damp. What was that? She's never experienced anything like that.

She only has a scant few moments of silence to wonder before the sound of creaking metal drowns out her thoughts. There is a hiss as gouts of steam shoot from the vents on the back of the sentinel, wrapping it in a veritable cloak of impenetrable clouds, which stream out behind it like a cape. Ever so slowly, the arms uncurl, and the legs bend. It straightens up with a series of screeches, until it is fully upright, towering so high over all of them that they are trapped within its cool shadow. It is not pristine, or perfect; areas of it are still covered in moss and vines, the cockpit is little more than a metal cage, and panels that Astrid did not screw on tightly enough buckle ominously. Yet somehow, it is majestic.

At the feet of the sentinel, Sylva raises her fingers from the keys. Her arms shake, and she sways back and forth, as if about to pass out. Drew sprints past Astrid to Sylva's side and grabs her, so she does not fall. “Come on, Syl,” he says, hooking his arms underneath her armpits. His eyes are red, and his face is streaked with tears. “Let's get up. You've got to walk.”

“Was that all right?” Sylva says. Her voice, usually so strong and loud, comes out weak and whispery.

Even Astrid cannot miss the tenderness in Drew's eyes as he lifts Sylva to her feet. “It was perfect,” he whispers. The two of them limp off toward the turret, arm in arm. Astrid's heart seizes as they pass by, and she notices the purple bruises covering every single one of Sylva's fingers.

Astrid turns to look at Wendy. Unlike the rest of them, Wendy seems completely unaffected by Sylva's performance, and her face is free of tears. She strides over to Sylva's keyboard and carefully places both it and the sheet music back in their case. “All right,” Astrid says, moving to stand next to her. Her words come out more harshly than she intended; she is still angry about Wendy's lack of appearance earlier. “What was that?”

Wendy nods, as if she has been expecting this question. “You'll sometimes hear magi refer to magic as “The Art.” That's because magic and creation are two sides of the same coin. The time of creation is the time in which we are closest to the Creator. When someone dedicates everything they have to a work of creation, injects their very soul into their art, they are able to speak with her, and bring forth her will into the world. That's how Sylva explained it to me, at least.”

“So magic is just... caring about something a lot?” Astrid says, feeling slightly disappointed. “Then making some art?”

Wendy shakes her head. “It's not anywhere near that simple. Sylva once told me that she has been composing that piece since she was four years old. In the years I've known her, it's the only song I've ever heard her practice. Even Drew has never heard her play anything else, and those two have known each other since they were six. It changes every time she plays, but the underlying melody is still there. That's what magic is to her: Fourteen years, perfecting a single song. When she plays it, the world listens, and it changes for her.” Wendy

“Does every team do this?”

“Play a song? No. Every team has some kind of magus to get their sentinel of the ground, and they all have different means of using magic.”

“Will her song ever be finished?”

Wendy lets out a short, barking laugh. “You would have to ask Sylva. I doubt it, though. I don't think finishing the song has ever been the point for her.” She gets to her feet and stares at Astrid, a smile playing about her lips. “Later, though. Now it's time to do our part.”

Asrid shakes her head, ignoring the way her stomach flip-flops at doing her part for this insane sport. “One more question. Just one.”

Wendy rolls her eyes. “Ugh, fine. Anything to get you off my back. One question, and then we have to go.”

“I saw what Sylva did to her hands. She's putting her body on the line for this. Why does she do it? Why do any of you do it?”

Wendy smiles, but there is no mirth or happiness present in her face. “That's more than one question.” She steps around Astrid and heads back to the turret, calling over her shoulder as she leaves. “We all have our own reasons, and it's not my place to speak to Sylva's. I think the question you should be asking yourself is what your reason is.”

Astrid stares up at the steam-cloaked sentinel, the roar of its engine resonating through her chest and a soft breeze snatching at her hair. No matter how long she stares, the sentinel gives no answer.