Never had Klane thought that a land that appeared so alive could hide so much death. He’d been traveling northeast for hours now, his leaf taking him as far down a distributary of the Amethyst River as was possible, before it fanned out into a series of small creeks that were no longer able to carry him on. The sheer curiosity of what lay at this end of the Amethyst River had propelled him onward, and now that his jaunt had come to an end he wasn’t sure what to do.
From where he stood, gazing down into the small valley, he watched grasses sway to breezes he couldn’t feel. Heather blanketed the sloping hills like a lilac blanket, obscuring jagged and misshapen boughs of what seemed like black trees, until a thick veil of mist made things more than a half-mile out completely indiscernible. Just beneath the thin layer of virulent greens and purple heather laid layers of peat—decaying vegetation built up into an oddly fine mulch. He was staring at a graveyard of plants. It felt kind of odd to tread atop them, as if it were disrespectful to the vegetation’s former glory. The aroma of sweet flowers around him mixed strangely with the rot of the peat, an almost manure-like scent. Massive snowcapped mountains in the distance surrounded the valley, hiding it from the rest of the world like a jealous lover. A few specks hung on the horizon before blackened, angry clouds. He couldn’t tell if they were skyships, or something else.
A cracked sign groaned in the wind, covered in flaking paint and barely secured to the crooked post that held it. Clockwork Marsh. Operated by Clockwork Mining Company The sign read. Keep Out! was scrawled across the bottom in red, written in sloppy, half-hearted slaps of paint as if it had been an afterthought.
“Well, that wouldn’t be much fun, would it?” Klane asked the sign. It creaked quietly in lonely reply.
It was getting colder out. Klane shivered, and shrugged his fur-lined coat slightly tighter. He turned his attention back to the snowcapped mountains miles away. A storm was coming his way.
“Clockwork Marsh Mining,” Klane muttered. He remembered some mention of the company and this valley by some of his village elders. Wizened, bearded gnomes who’d been around for decades longer than Klane himself. A generation of gnomes who’d been more adventurous and daring than any today. Any except Klane himself, that was.
The black trees littered the otherwise flat, unremarkable landscape. A few raised platforms and other apparatuses stood on stilts above the undergrowth, connected by wide walkways cobbled together from lashed wooden planks and metal struts. Large drills and saws on thick timbers, and actuated arms, hung in suspension, waiting for their operators to return from a break that never ended.
Supervisor huts and other small, roofed structures atop the platforms sat empty, windows blackened, and in a few cases shattered. The mining company had closed but never fully left, it seemed. At least it could mean safety from the rain.
“What happened here?” Klane asked, tapping his lip as he started down into the valley, in a hope to recall stories that he’d heard through the years, since he was a young gnomekin. Disasters, weird unexplained accidents in the mines, and tales of workers snapping in unprovoked mental breakdowns came to mind. A multitude of tales he’d been regaled with, replaying themselves in the sandy, quiet voices of their teller.
The dirt path vanished beneath a thin layer of peat before shifting to reassuringly solid, wooden planks. His boots rang hollow over the walkway, suspended a few feet above the moorlands. His reflection journeyed on with him, shimmering and rocking in the blackened pools of water that gathered around the piers, which held the walkway aloft. He hadn’t realized the lush growth hid swampy waters beneath.
As Klane ventured forward the mists engulfed him, narrowing his vision to only a few yards in either direction. Wood creaked, metal groaned, and long-lost spirits seemed to whisper. He found it a rather exciting feeling. A fine layer of water coated his skin, wetting his coat, which wicked away the excess. What he’d assumed to be the boughs of black trees turned out to be the rusted arms of machinery, fractured, lichen-covered bones of mechanized industry jutting up from shallow, watery graves.
Klane noticed something he hadn’t expected. The absolute last thing he would have counted on seeing in the graveyard of metal and plant. A light.
A soft, amber glow flickered from a porthole atop one of the platforms, red-orange coronas catching on the jewels of water suspended in the hazy air. A beacon for shelter, and perhaps someone interesting. The faint sound of clinking metal and a whistled tune, muffled behind wall and inclement weather. Despite his gut’s protest, he ventured forward toward the unknown.
* * *
“Hello?” Klane rapped his knuckles against a steel beam that supported a short, wide building that resembled a large brick. Giant, metal prongs, extending above the roof, bobbed and swayed in the slight breeze, fanning out at the top like spindly antlers.
Klane glanced over rusted safety rails that capped the second level of the mining platform like a crown. The walkway below, along with black, murky waters and floating vegetation, had vanished beneath a thin layer of mist. He could taste the smell of oils and fire, a bitter, smoky, metallic essence that seemed to be a hallmark of the mechanical.
“Hello?”
His greeting went unanswered.
He pulled his hand back from the beam and found it covered in a fine, black grime. Eh. Klane wiped the muck off onto his coat and regarded his surroundings a second time.
A large boring machine drooped overhead, a giant buzz-saw, most likely used to shear metal in half and cut about damn near anything else it wanted up as well. The teeth of its blades were partially rusted, bared to the elements like a predator waiting to launch forward and strike.
“Hello?” Klane continued across the platform, wrapping his fingers around Pride, his beloved sword, so small and lean— closer to a needle than a weapon of war, a traveling cobbler had once observed.
A spattering of light from an open doorway cut the gray ahead, catching the edges of the grating that made up the platform floor.
Klane crept forward, his steps light on the metal surface. It would be easy to slip here; he would have to be careful if things got any wetter.
A sound like an avalanche rumbled overhead, deep and terrifying in its closeness. Klane flinched, for a moment fearing that the big machine had somehow come to life. Pride was out at the ready before he could blink. Calm down.
The rumbling petered out into a steady roll, and Klane realized it was just thunder as the storm swept into the valley. Blue and purple lightning cut violent zig-zags beneath blackened clouds.
Klane noted his reflection in the covered windows of the building, jaw set tight, two small eyes stared back at him from beneath a mop of greasy black hair, his reflection wavering in the icy water which cascaded down in a steady stream as it kept pace. He poked his head around the doorway. Warm air hit his face, causing his ears and nose to tingle.
The room was cluttered with all sorts of gizmos and gadgetry. A low, plank ceiling added to an air of claustrophobia. Cogs and gears, sprockets and spindles littered the racks and workbenches that lined the walls. Mounds of scrap metal, screws, and nails formed their own mountainous landscapes on a large island that took up the center of the room. Strands of bulbous, yellow lights were draped around the ceiling, drooping low between rungs, which kept them tight against the few wooden pegboards nailed to the walls that were not obscured by piles of scrap.
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One of the far corners was condemned to darkness. Dangling bulbs covered in soot or blown out left jagged glass shards exposed. A skeletal, metal figure hung limp and lifeless, held up by chains and some metal frame next to a narrow archway, which led into a back room.
Klane ventured inside, glancing up into the gaps between the planking. Rafters and stowage space overhead. Humanoid forms hung limply from chains, ending in tangles of wiring at their waists. A few of them were missing arms, or heads. A couple of them had pin-shaped, elongated heads with a single lens in the middle like broken cyclopes—at least he thought that was what the one-eyed beasts were called, he’d always had a habit of mixing up the monsters of elder-gnome myth.
It’s like a metallic slaughterhouse. Klane shied away from the forms, gooseflesh forming up his arms as he cut as distant a path beneath them as he could, never leaving his back to them or letting the constructs leave the edge of his vision when he could help it.
There was a noise in an adjoining room. Someone, or something, lurked beyond.
* * *
“Curses!” A frustrated voice, as slick and oily as the workshop they were in, swore from the other room. Klane inched toward the archway that separated the rooms, listening to continued grumbles and thumps. A faint mechanical whir hissed from the skeletal construct hanging from the metal frame in the corner. Klane eyed it suspiciously, able to see the slightest edge of a small, spinning gear in a gap of its neck. Thick cables ran from the base of the construct’s spine to electrical boards and circuit breakers bundled in the corner.
“What d’ya reckon we do, Gyro?”
Klane peered into the next room. A lanky, scarecrow-like figure hunched over a workstation bathed in white light and even more clutter. Mechanical limbs dangled from the ceiling here, too. Various arms, some with hands, others capped with drills or picks, dangled like the prime selections of butcher’s meat waiting to be claimed—like Wargim kept in his cold room back in the village.
Something touched Klane, a quick tap on the shoulder. The gnome jumped and yelped, wheeling about midair toward the construct in the corner. A ferocious battle cry escaped his lips which to Klane’s own ears sounded less like the roar of a lion than the mew of a kitten. The one-eyed metal construct rocked in its frame, bouncing against the back of the wall with tinny thumps. Klane leveled Pride in a defensive guard position, ready to spear the thing if it dared move.
“Who’re you?”
The voice startled Klane from his focus. He wheeledack to see a lanky form, a wrinkled, old man, hobbling away from a stool. His eyes appeared comically large behind safety goggles, milky-white as they studied the newcomer suspiciously. Klane could see his own face bent and distorted in the lens, wide-eyed and frowning. The old man’s lips were cut and scarred, cracked and dry, his face gaunt and covered in soot, closer to a scarecrow than Klane had first assumed. The tattered rags of what resembled an old, tarnished, orange miner’s uniform hung loosely from his body.
“M-my name is Klane.” The gnome straightened slightly, wishing away stammer.
“Klane?” The old man returned to the bench, shifting excitedly toward a small shelf that held a few books and beakers, along with other electronic doohickeys and contraptions Klane didn’t recognize.
The man shuffled a few things around on the shelf before pulling a misshapen ball. Klane squinted at the object as the old man staggered back.
He held a skull.
A few electrical plugs and frayed wires stuck out from its head like patches of frazzled, coarse hair. A roughhewn ruby filled one eye socket, a blackish-green, jagged chunk of malachite stuck out from the other. The skull’s nose had been replaced with an amethyst cone. Klane reeled back slightly as a scent of rotting flesh accompanying the skull overpowered the burning scent of electronics. He realized with horror that the skull still had ears and jagged scraps of singed flesh hanging loosely from the bone.
“Gyro, don’t be rude, you need to greet our guest here. Klang.” The old man had taken on an expression of madness, a demented excitement in his voice as he thrust the skull closer to Klane.
“K-Klane, good sir.”
The old man fell silent for a moment, his gaze shifting from Klane to Pride to his skull, Gyro. His voice dropped low, all cheer and excitement suddenly gone. “Can you put that sword away? It is bothering Gyro.”
“S-say again?” Klane cocked an eyebrow, alternating his gaze between the old man and Gyro. “Say again?” he repeated, more resolutely.
“Thee sword.” The old man pointed a crooked, arthritic finger. “Gyro,” he flicked the finger toward the skull, “does not. Like. It.”
“Oh.” Klane nodded slowly. “Right, sorry.” He slipped Pride back into the sheath, which hung too loosely from his belt. “It’s so rude of me to not have asked before, but I didn’t catch your name.”
“Not rude at all, Klane.” The old man waggled his finger. “Didn’t quite have the opportunity to ask with Aldo startling you.” He pointed to the quietly whirring construct dangling to Klane’s right. Klane still wasn’t sure if it had actually touched him.
“Right, Aldo gave me quite the fright. Sorry.” Klane half-smirked at the unsettling, one-eyed metallic thing this old man had named Aldo.
“He says that it is nothing to worry about.” The old man shifted away, creeping back toward his desk. “I wonder what the others are doing?” He tucked Gyro the Skull back into the messy shelf and settled onto his stool at the workbench, to fuss with something obscured by pages of blueprints and mechanical schematics.
Klane waited expectantly. A minute or so passed as he watched the old man, whose name he still hadn’t learned, mutter and tinker with things, oft times picking up the same wrench or straightedge just to set it back down before moving on to the next item. He was a broken machine, stuck in occasional repetitions.
“I’m sorry? The others?” Klane shook his head, glancing from the front room to this rear work area.
A gust of wind set the entire platform to creaking and groaning, rocking almost imperceptibly. Another basso roll of thunder preceded a violent spattering of rain against one of the port windows buried beneath wall-clutter.
The old man paid Klane no mind, only peering up slowly once the gnome was directly at his side. A wide grin, as if he had just struck gold, spread across his face.
“Hello there.” His eyes fluctuated in size, contorted by the lenses he wore, Klane noticed C.M.Co. had been embossed on the black, leather strap that secured the safety goggles to his head.
“Hey.” Klane gave a halfhearted wave.
The workbench was even more cluttered than he’d thought it would be. Sprockets, washers, and bleached bones covered the work area. Too large to be a gnome’s bones, Klane hazard a guess that they were probably human. There was no way to be sure. Bleached bones? The old man held a forearm with a hand still attached. Pallid skin ended in rough tears at the wrist, as if the bones were simply wearing a skin-colored glove. A few sinews of muscle extended to some wiring between the two forearm bones in a grotesque mix of the flesh and the mechanical.
“What’s that you’ve got there?”
“Just patching Baz up. Clumsy oaf had an accident again.”
“Oh.” Klane didn’t want to ask but curiosity, for better or worse, got the best of him. “Where is Baz?”
“He’s back in his room.” The old man pointed down a hallway, which Klane hadn’t noticed, hidden behind a support beam and a shelf of broken circuit boards. The opening was so cluttered that the only way through would be to shimmy in sideways. “You can go see him if you want. I told him I wouldn’t be back until I got this done. Is that thunder? That means lightning.” The old man held a hand up just as Klane was about to speak, cocking his head like a curious bird before grabbing Gyro and shuffling in toothy-grinned excitement toward the front room. “Let’s see if we can shock Aldo out of his slumber.”
“Slumber? I think it touched me earlier.”
“He’s in an odd state. Must have been an accidental spasm from unstable currents. Go on and see Baz.” The old man shooed him off.
Klane watched him crouch near Aldo, gently fussing with the wiring that connected at the construct’s spine, glancing periodically at the ceiling. All the while his lips never stopped moving as he talked to himself and the whirring construct.
“Think the lightning will do it, Gyro?” The old man asked the skull set at his feet, and waited patiently for an unheard response. “I think so, too.”
Klane immediately recalled the antler-like antennae that he’d seen on the roof and imaging that with the wind it would be whipping back and forth in a chaotic dance.
“I’m going to go see how Baz is doing.” Klane jerked a thumb toward the back room.
“Good, good. He will probably enjoy that. We haven’t seen a fresh face in a good while. Years it seems like, eh Gyro?”
Klane nodded and ducked into the back room, narrowly dodging hitting his head on a broken pipe that poked out from the ceiling at an odd angle.
The squeeze between the shelving and junk was as tight as he’d anticipated. Klane shimmied through, Pride clutched in one outstretched arm so it wouldn’t knock against every little thing. He entered a small, round alcove, barren save for thick cobwebs rounding off the corners of the ceiling. The back workroom was visible through slits in the shelving, where faint light filtered through. At the back of the alcove, illuminated by narrow bands of light, were two steel clam doors.
An elevator?
A tarnished call button was sunken into the side of the doorway nearly a foot about his head. Klane jammed the button in with his thumb, it moved easily from years of use, and waited as the sound of squealing cables and shuddering metal signaled the ascent of the lift.