Randidly felt his images straining underneath the pressure from the vivid colors. Their influence seeped through his skin and fixated on his inner world. The hues jostled around him, like a rowdy crowd at a live music venue, metaphysically elbowing him in the small of the back and leaning against him. All three of his images flared, doing their best to push back the shining opals and oranges from crowding into Randidly’s interior.

The process wasn’t easy. Whatever formed the foundation of the colors of this place, it rubbed very violently against the edges of his images. Soon he felt raw and exposed, even before he took a single step through the liquid rainbow. Randidly’s expression twisted. This is a path? A Sea of Dreams? For having such a lofty name, it sure is a rough experience.

Randidly took his first step forward and a spike of forest green color slammed against his chest. For a brief second, his focus clouded. Along with the color came a surge of emotion that didn’t belong to him. The impression was vague, but Randidly felt like he stood on a snow-dusted mountain and sucked in a chill breath. He felt the air sharply in his lungs.

Liberated. That was what he felt. He felt unmoored and freed from a great weight, standing with the wind whipping around him-

Then the sensation passed, leaving him buffeted by the colors. Randidly rolled his shoulders. The emotion polishes the image. The vague impressions offer suggestions for improvement, without being too specific or critical. Also, emotional confusion forces you to be very specific in the way you motivate yourself and populate the image with emotion.

“Alright then. Let’s do this,” Randidly licked his lips and stepped forward. A ruby scythe came at his neck and a hammer of glittering silver smashed at his chest.

*****

BA-Zeta finished polishing his modular arm saws, the glossy brass shining in the candlelight of the basement storeroom. Then the mechanisms of its forelimbs folded inward so that mechanical hands replaced the weapons. Feeling strangely unsure of himself, BA-Zeta raised its fingers and drew them across its face. The sensitive fingertips perfectly mapped the small dents and scratches that covered the fabricated metal faceplate.

Although the material was difficult to damage, the last several months had been transformative. Zeta would almost expect that its alloy was unavoidably mutated beyond the original brass from which it was cast.

However, the Brass Automaton’s attention didn’t long linger on its own face. There was another that dominated his mind, dancing in the corner of his eyes like a make-believe shadow, so every time it twisted, the automaton hoped to see it. A face seen through the thin strip of sky perched atop an alley and across several hundred meters of distance. Even with high Perception, Zeta did not know if it would be possible for another to have seen that face. Its lens system went well beyond what was possible for the human eye.

A face for which it now proposed madness. Zeta didn’t know how to feel that its friends accepted the strange impulse so easily.

There was a knock at the door. “If we are going to do this, we need to do it now.”

“My preparations are complete.” BA-Zeta stood up. It walked to the door with its hands still creating a perfect topographical map of its face while recalling a different face and lowered its hands before it opened the door. No need to advertise how emotionally turbulent it was.

The lanky and red-haired Zack Krum leaned against the door frame. He looked Zeta up and down and seemed to somehow detect hesitance in the automaton’s still form. “Not that I’m doubting you, but I just want to ask again: Are you sure? If we do this, it’s going to become a whole thing. Like a legal thing.”

BA Zeta’s ocular lens refocused and it raised its chin, noticing this chance for some gentle human trash talk. It did not investigate why it had chosen this coping method. “Do you lack the requisite spine?”

Zack chuckled. He turned away and waved a hand as he walked back through the small hallway of their underground tenement to the main room. “I really wish you hadn’t learned that. But fine. If someone needs rescuing, I’m willing to do it.”

Zeta followed after Zack into the central room. There, Todd kneeled on a cushion with his head lowered. Around him, a half dozen small bits of wood with extremely minute Scrawls across them. The bits of wood flowed with his will and tapped against different objects. In the same way that Zeta used its fingers to catalog his face, Todd memorized the room.

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Todd looked up at them as they entered, likely due to the noise of their steps. His eyes were grey and inert. The flesh around them was oddly purpled and bruised, even now, months later. “So, adventure?”

“Adventure,” Krum confirmed, sparing the automaton one more glance. Zeta remained impassive. That expression on the woman’s face, leaning against a balcony, disconsolate and isolated, those strange features, clearly all alone in the world-

Todd’s head tilted to the side. With that preternatural canniness he now possessed, he seemed to have noticed something in the automaton’s stance as well. “Zeta, do you have a crush? Can you have crushes?”

While Zeta inspected all his joints for these signals he missed, Krum smirked. “My thought exactly. Out of nowhere, Zeta suddenly wants to cause trouble in the headquarters of one of the Zones? But you know, it’s going to be awfully sad if the robot is the first one of us to land a partner…”

Todd used his hand to gesture vaguely to his eyes. “I mean, I don’t have much chance. So it’s really just you that is dragging his feet-”

“You have an impressive battle scar. Not as cool as a jagged scrape across your face, but still very prominent and manly,” Zeta noticed the way Krum’s eyes changed as he said this. His shoulders rolled forward and he looked at Todd intently. And if Zeta could feel the protectiveness rolling off of him, definitely the increasingly sensitive Todd would be able to. “You held down the Patron of Grey for a split second, for god’s sake. Long enough for Ma’am Donal-”

“Let’s not have this talk again,” Todd lowered his gaze and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. Even Zeta felt a pang as he witnessed his insecurity. “Anyway, Zeta’s getting anxious. Let’s move while the guards are still rotating to the new shift.”

Zeta was not exactly feeling anxious. But he was glad that Todd opted out of the conversation before Krum could go on another rant about Todd’s value and how he needed to stop being so hard on himself. The automaton wanted to rescue that woman as soon as possible.

However, perhaps Todd is right. I desire her liberation beyond normal parameters. Could I be anxious? BA-Zeta followed after the others, Zack Krum in the lead and Todd close behind, his small pieces of wood tapping against the floor and walls. Zeta scrutinized his emotional core, but the Engraving created by the Ghosthound remained as mysterious as ever.

Before they walked up the staircase to the alley, all three pulled cloaks over their bodies. It wouldn’t help much when they left the designated areas, but the longer they could put off the alarm sounding the better.

They quickly joined a line of other figures, dressed in various affluent outfits. In contrast to the trio’s silence, most of the others were talking and laughing, excited to be headed to the market. They passed through the tight spaces between neat buildings and out into a crowded thoroughfare, where stalls had hanging silks in a riot of colors. Stooped old women snapped their fingers, lighting candles within paper lanterns, letting the red and orange and yellow flimsy constructs float up with the sun peeking beyond the horizon.

Casually allowing his ocular focus to rise with the lanterns, Zeta noted at least fourteen grim-eyed guards watching from the nearby rooftops. You would be first met with a stern but friendly local, guiding you back to Zone Seven’s public markets, but if you insisted on pushing beyond that individual, you would quickly stub your toe on a steel plate. Their suggestions would become insistence very quickly.

Noticing the same thing, Zack shifted the sleeves of his robe and flashed several quick hand signs. Too many eyes to sneak. When we go, we just need to go fast.

Next to them, Todd nodded without raising his gaze; his sharpened senses allowed him to witness the discussion through other means. The three pushed forward, keeping their gait casual as they joined the throng of people for the opening of the market. Above them, the guards' eyes flickered as they turned to greet their replacements.

The corner of Todd’s mouth quirked upward. He called several of those small pieces of floating wood to his hands and whispered something. Zeta’s nostrils instantly detected smoke. Just as quick as he had an inkling as to Todd’s plan, the small bits of smoking wood zipped away. The flash and flap of eye-catching tapestries and banners did a lot to cover up the strange movement.

Even Zeta had some difficulty following the small bits of debris. But he didn’t miss Todd’s soft words. “Be ready.”

Those tiny pieces of wood scattered, each finding an object. A few went toward some of the paper lanterns, one to a wide crimson carpet, another to the side of a stall, and the most ambitious settled on the side of a building.

Like some ominous disease proliferating behind the scenes, no sound was made as the Scrawl’d bits of charred wood carried Mana and spread the contagion of the Scrawl. Likely the working was so slight that even a Skill generated to detect other Skills would miss the activity. BA-Zeta’s internal engine whirred in its chest as it walked with deliberate slowness.

He pictured that face, those cheekbones, the lonely glitter in her eye-

Crack!

The entire market swayed in unison, heads swiveling to look at the side of a nearby building that had abruptly shattered. The eyes of the nearest people widened as a huge slab of brick began to crack and splinter off, ready to fall down on their heads. But just was they were about to panic and shout to warn others of the danger, several paper lanterns exploded into massive fireballs. A wooden stall collapsed sideways, blocking the foot traffic. A massive rug shredded itself into a half dozen pieces that spun themselves into fabric stakes that zipped sideways, impacting the guards.

As the anarchy erupted on the street, three cloaks fluttered to the ground, their occupants abruptly gone.

The race had begun.