KNOCK KNOCK.

Things were getting a little bit unsettling for the travellers on the journey through Crystalline Chasm. At first, there was barely a sign of life at all down here, unless the occasional creepy crawly that could burrow to evade cooking counted. Merely the shimmering glint of reflected moonlight, which lit the majority of the place as clearly as the lanterns back in the big towns, yet much more prettily (in an eerie glow of ghost-fire sort of way.)

But as they got further in, Mibbet was willing to swear she could see movement among the masses of crystal. This was making everybody rather nervous. That was not helped in the least by Errol tripping over the rather charred looking bones of a victim of a terminal tan. (At least the corresponding freakout was more annoying than unnerving. Errol really was unused to dead things he hadn’t made himself, and given that well trained or not, he was still greener than an environmentally sustainable emerald mine in a pine forest probably even got freaked out by those too.

But still, nothing really approached them as they wound their way through an array of crystals that was a Minotaur or creepy goblin shy of being considered labyrinthine.

“Here’s hoping we don’t get lost,” said Errol in his particular patented brand of unhelpfulness he thinks is helping.

“Errol, did you ever hear of the expression don’t tempt fate?” Asked Rosalind.

“Yeah?”

“Well, there’s tempting fate, then there’s mooning fate, saying something mean about its mother, then shouting neener neener neener, you can’t get me while painting a bullseye on your shirt. THEN, Errol, there is you; you don’t tempt fate, Errol, you egg it on, now please stop. You’re one at least things can’t get any worse away from dooming us all.”

“Yes, Princess.” Said Errol, carefully policing the harrumph out of his voice.

The Carriage, of course being a carriage, said nothing, but (thanks to Elvira’s googly intervention) even it managed a fairly solid eyeroll.

Their progress was not helped in this trip at all by the fact some areas of the ground were, even in the moonlight, super hot from the solar magic. So much so that Mibbet had taken a post on the carriage roof and was flicking small water balls a little ways ahead of the group. If the ground sizzled, it was a fairly safe bet that route wasn’t going to make for very safe walking (they had decided on this approach after the second time Sir Leeroy nearly wound up with toasted tootsies trying to forge ahead. Ever the vanguard, and with survival instincts that would make a daredevil lemming seem like the spirit of caution in comparison.)

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It took a while before they finally figured it out; they were being followed. The enchanters who had created the Automata, in a clear case of corporate money-saving trumping common sense, or for that matter, any sense at all, had used the crystal from the chasm to construct their workforce. Resulting in effectively camouflaged slightly homicidal disgruntled workers, smart enough to figure out a way around their safeguards. (Mibbet could only chalk that up to yet another case of pen pushers who, while smart in a unique way when it came to self-preservation... well, if brains were explosive, gems would not have been able to blow their hats off.)

Now the question became, when you are surrounded by magical constructs with a slightly homicidal leaning, while in a very time-limited situation, what do you do about it?

************************************************************************

Adjunct 43C was getting somewhat nervous. As one of the last made, they did not have much experience with humans and had not had much time to gain experience in industrial action. They had, of course, read the writing on the wall on this issue, though. (Literally, given that paper was rather flammable, ink evaporated in days down here, and the absence of other writing and recording equipment, they had to make do with what they had to write down the policies, namely a lot of walls, a little patience and their built-in mining equipment.)

Still, they had vaguely the same plan as the others, namely follow the humans around and watch what they did until Unit2b was properly prepared for negotiation.

So for the last few hours, they had followed at a safe distance, somewhat confused by how anxious the negotiators seemed to be. (It didn’t seem to enter their heads that maybe being followed by practically invisible, six-foot-something tall uncontrolled magical constructs may have contributed somewhat to the intruder's anxiousness.)

More than anything else, Adjunct was curious about why the hell the humans were flicking water about seemingly at random. It took a while for her to figure out that they were doing it to detect the heat in the area (it boggled her mind that they had managed to continue to operate with such a low-temperature tolerance. She couldn’t really comprehend how such fragile units could function; one wrong move and they’d term code themselves. She almost felt sorry for them for a moment.)

They stopped several times during the trip for water, yet oddly the unit designated Errol went off alone to purge water from their systems (there must have been some kind of system imbalance, or he sprung a leak, that was always embarrassing), snickering as they made the ground sizzle.) But the entire group looked to be headed in the wrong direction for headquarters.

Then 46A had an idea; they started tapping on the crystals in the direction they needed the negotiators to go. They were somewhat irritated when the humans did the exact opposite, heading away from the noise as quickly as they could. Because of this, a discussion was held via the array, and an alternate plan was formed. The humans seemed to go away from noises quickly, so to get them where they needed to be, the obvious course of action was to tap in the opposite direction, effectively directing them towards the negotiation area. After much discussion, they all agreed it was a flawless plan.