An indeterminate time later, Dellen’s eyes opened. The pain in the back of his head had subsided to a dull ache, and his lower back was sore but manageable.

He pulled himself to his feet. He was on a support beam near the centre of a large cog. To make any progress, he would need to walk away from the central axis, out to where he might find an edge between cogs.

Standing, Dellen alternated his gaze between the infuser welded to the central axis and the support beam stretching out into the dark. He considered leaving the axis behind and trudging into the dark, but he had spent loops trying to get close to these explosives.

With a discontented sigh, Dellen walked back to the infuser.

He looked at the dials and controls, taking special care not to touch the column with even the smallest part of his body. He chewed on his lip. He didn’t know enough about Aetheric crafting to know how to disrupt the device’s function, but the clock, he felt he knew enough about the clock.

It was a timepiece, plain and simple; all he needed to do was work out how to set it or stop it.

Dellen ran his fingers up and down the sides, looking for a seam. He didn’t have any tools, an oversight he wouldn’t commit if he had to do this again.

Minutes of searching every inch of the clock’s surface failed to yield a hidden access point.

Dellen placed his left hand on the clock, sensing inside, feeling for Electrical Aether. All he felt was the ticks of the clock moving forward. He felt again at his pockets as though wishing he could find some tools. He was not carrying any, but he had one new tool, untested. He had just forged copper. He knew he was stronger.

With a sigh, he put his hands on the metal to either side of the clock face, dug his fingers in, and pulled. Metal dimpled under his fingertips. Shallow indentations grew deeper, and Dellen got more of a grip. He gritted his teeth, felt pressure build up his arms and shoulders, then pulled.

There was a long tearing noise, the face of the clock bent and separated from its frame. Dellen leaned into the pull, back arching out, his feet slipped into the column.

Chronometric Aether surged into his body.

Time stopped.

He tried to flinch away, but once again, he was in a battle with the Aether. It pushed at his feet, ignoring secondary considerations like his boots or flesh.

Aether ran into him, coiling over his metatarsals, twisting around his ankles, surging over his knees, and past his hips before it made contact with the darksilver nestled in his chest. A circuit of energy ran up and down his body.

Copper boiled.

Dellen felt the moment the vortex in his body called the copper home. Like a gas, it flooded into him, condensing in stripes around his bones, transforming flesh.

The clock from before burst forth in his mind, already on fire.

A new scream tried to crawl from his throat.

Dellen struggled to master the torrent rushing into him. It overflowed his attempts to stop it; he settled for corralling it, channeling it to his purposes. He imagined the Aether contained within his boots. The copper followed it.

Steelskin enveloped his feet and grew up his legs, organic flesh forged into the more durable replacement.

Burning fire pushed the copper higher, searing his bones. His shoulders bore intertwined threads of copper; his legs were wrapped in slender ribbon.

Copper ran through his body, forging its way through him, from thin strands in his feet to the fine weavings of copper on his ribs and the threads that wove between his shoulders.

The clock in his mind ticked again.

The facing on the clock before him tore free.

Dellen fell back, arms before him, holding the steel, feet connected to the axis.

The steel facing ran like liquid, burrowing into him through his fingertips.

Liquid steel churned through forging flesh, met with bone, and sank in. The steel was purified into iron, with carbon pushing its way out of his hands like a grim shadow gaining substance. Dellen’s forged shoulders drank the metal, incorporating it into his very being. His Spark Core summoned the iron deeper into his being, infused it with Aether, and dissolved it into what blood he had left.

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Aether-infused iron circulated through his body, precipitating on bones from head to toe but collecting within the bones beneath the steelskin in his legs.

Dellen’s fall continued, and his feet broke their connection with the central column.

He hit the support, and the scream in his throat found release.

Dellen lay there, waiting for his heart to slow. It gave solid thumps, feeling heavier than he ever remembered. He closed his eyes and just breathed.

Eventually, he found the presence of mind to get up. His first action was to take a step back from the column. The support bar was cold beneath his feet. The gaseous copper had eaten through the soles of his boots. Dellen looked warily at the three divots in the metal where copper had sublimated and invaded his body. He frowned; the metal at the bottom of the divots was a different color.

He tested his weight on his new legs, he knew they were heavier, but he felt lighter, stronger. A smile teased at the edge of his lips. Improvement through pain; he’d walked this path before.

Dellen looked at the clock before him. Stripped bare of the metal surrounding the face, he could see the inner clockwork. He stared intently at the exposed inner workings, trying to understand the connections of the gear work. He carefully examined the gears, springs, and levers that formed the heart of the clock. His eyes darted from one component to another, trying to understand which components were responsible for driving the hands forward and which would be triggered when the countdown ended.

He identified the Aether battery that powered the timepiece and thought he saw how it connected to the infuser. With some trepidation, Dellen reached in, fingertips hovering over the connection that lay dormant, waiting to be activated when the clock counted down to zero.

A pluck of his fingers popped out a single lever.

The clock ticked on.

Dellen sagged with relief.

Dials on the Aetheric Infuser came to life, needles climbing from right to left.

Wide-eyed, Dellen lunged forward, hands outstretched toward the infuser and stopped. It was directly connected to the axis. He looked at the divots in the copper. The machine hummed.

Dellen hovered his hands over the ugly welds and infused as much Electrical Aether as he could manage directly into them. The metal of the welds heated up. He wanted it hot and malleable. Dellen kept pushing Aether; he was doing the same thing as the infuser, just in a more controlled and localized space.

The welds turned a dim red and brightened.

Dellen kept pushing Aether.

The infuser sagged, dragged down by its weight.

Dellen put his hands on the sides of the metal frame and, taking care to keep his feet away from the axis, pulled.

The infuser hummed and fell away from the wall.

Dellen staggered under its weight; it was bigger than he was.

It fell with a clang to the support beam beneath them, but it still hummed, a pair of cables stretched out of the wall and into the infuser. Gripping the base of the infuser, Dellen dragged it away from the wall until the cables running from it were taut.

He pulled harder.

The cables snapped.

The infuser continued to hum.

Dellen looked at it, then looked at the edge of the support. He shoved it to the edge. It teetered, tipped up, and dove into the darkness.

A sigh of relief left his lips. At least one cog was safe.

He frowned; he hadn’t heard the infuser hit bottom yet. With some unease, he stepped closer to the edge and looked over. There was no visible bottom to the darkness, no sign that he’d pushed anything off. Dellen shivered, then turned his gaze to the central axis; he wanted to be away from it.

Turning his back to it, he began his journey beneath the cog; the only sound accompanying his footsteps was the eerie groaning of the city’s machinery. He couldn’t help but feel an oppressive weight bearing down on him. Now that he’d saved the one cog, for some reason, he felt like it might collapse on him at any moment.

Dellen’s stride sped up. His legs felt stronger, even if it felt odd walking in his boots with their damaged soles.

After walking for perhaps four minutes, a haze of light appeared in the distance. Dellen’s heart quickened; nothing had changed, but seeing the light in the distance was reassuring. It made him feel like, maybe, he would be able to escape from under the city.

Further from the cog’s central support, Dellen could feel that the support structures under the city also moved in a complicated dance that was, if anything, more complicated than the spinning gears above.

Flying in the darkness with Tristan, he’d been focused on not crashing into anything and on finding signs of anyone below, but now that the sky was once again denied to him, he was forced to consider how to get higher.

Dellen kept walking, closing the distance between him and the haze of light. Two minutes later and the haze had solidified into a glow. Had it been day, Dellen was sure he’d see a curtain of sunlight spilling down. His path came to an end. The evening lights of the city were closer than he’d been since Tristan had abandoned him but still out of reach. He’d arrived at another pillar, one that didn’t connect to a cog above. Another support beam branched off about thirty feet below.

He looked around; supports were moving below him, and nothing above except the distant cogs.

Dellen stood at the precipice of the path, staring down into the abyss. He wanted to go up, but the way was barred, and he knew there was nothing on the path behind him. Reluctance gripped him at the thought of descending further beneath Copperopolis. Every instinct he had screamed for him to climb, get back to the city, back to the light, and find a way to the open sky.

He glanced at the path behind him. Going back would accomplish nothing. He had to move forward, even if forward meant going down.

The seconds ticked by, stretching into minutes and then hours. The light from the city dimmed further.

No better options had presented themselves. He’d waited for anything that might point him more in one direction or another.

Any direction was as good as another, any direction except back. Dellen looked at the supports below him stemming from the same column he stood upon. The closest support was thirty or so feet down. Even if he decided to move down, he didn’t have a plan for how best to reach the support.

He considered his options.

A thirty-foot drop onto metal was a sure way for a human to break their legs, but an aetherforged? Most of his bones were wrapped with copper or copper and iron. He just needed to make sure that he didn’t roll off the edge when he landed. He could try, or he could stay standing on the precipice for another few days, letting hunger, thirst, and fear gnaw at him, or, he could jump.

Dellen’s legs flexed.

A light flared in the distance.