Realizing what was about to happen, Zan’s face drained of blood.

‘Heartless! They would kill a child?! And with a cannon shell, too! Monsters!’ He raged at no one except for the cruelty of the situation.

Now, up and fully ready to commit to the battle — the many tedious of minutes of him lying in the tall grass trying to remain unseen, mildly restoring his energy reserves — he rushed to the little girl, then stopped. What am I going to do?! I can’t fight this thing, I can’t… but I can swoop that girl into my arms and return her to the woods. If I don’t get blasted apart in the process.

Taking the risk, for it was the honorable thing to do, he pounded his legs at full blast. He gained an immense distance quickly. As he thought, though, the war engine was targeting him, the huge billows of earth falling upward, all the signal he needed to move his legs with all his life.

Cursing with more eloquence than a sailor fighting a kraken on the high seas, he practically had his eyes closed, trusting his fate to the gods; he had to keep them closed as he ran, otherwise seeing the sums of earth dislodged, knowing that earth could have been his broken body, would have caused him to soil himself and pass out. Not an honorable way to go…

With his eyes open, he saw he was about half-way through the gap, then he glimpsed something. Though only a moment’s notice, it was enough time — he saw another way stone!

His body reacted before he could even think of what he was doing; all thoughts of the kid, the war machine, even his own safety, went out the window. He reversed, practically leaped on the stone, and brought his hand to its surface, imbuing it with a generous amount of magic. Way stones were common in his region but not in others; imbuing them with magic often resulted in boons from the Gods. Or unexpected effects which usually aided the weary.

A flash of light.

This was all he remembered as he heard a loud sound explode from everywhere all at once.

With no idea what it was or what it was about — the way stone? — he remained rooted in place with his terror. Tightly, he kept his eyes closed as the cacophony washed over him and, as it seemed, all of his country.

What he heard made no sense. It was as though a thousand trees burst along with a damn and he stood between both in exactly the wrong location. When he pried his eyes open, finally forcing himself to proactivity, he saw the four-legged war machine flayed open with a gaping hole in its middle while flames consumed its many processed hulls.

Standing up, he found it impossible to remain upright. He fell several times because of his wobbly legs. Before him was a massive smoking hull, as though it were an industrial boat from one of the great trading ports of the world. Yet it was no boat.

And he had no clue what destroyed it.

Seeing a bright haze below, he stared downward at the way stone. Seeing the stone now, it glowed like a thousand fireflies. Bright enough to be seen in the late afternoon. But the unexpected aura did not end there. For, several other lights also glowed radiantly. Noticing for the first time how each light connected to a way stone, and how the way stones arranged in a circular formation surrounding the meadow, the war machine lay ruined in the exact middle. But the wreck was not alone. Huge slabs of the wreck fell further to the ground while a structure emerged from the earth and displaced the giant engine.

Rushing back several degrees so as to not be hit by the debris, he covered his face with his arms as the secondary explosions continued to prick the (surprisingly) combustible wooden machine. Glancing around, he also saw the now illuminated way stones form an almost spectral tether between each other and the center-most structure emerging from the earth. Is this magic? Thought Zan.

Unable to move, he watched as the structure hitherto hidden within the ground finished its ascent. Sliding to its full height, he heard a mighty clicking sound reverberate, as if giant gears and bolts unseen by the human eye moved into place and stuck, fulfilling their one and only function.

Calm.

No more explosions. No more loud… chaos.

Only silence. And the spackle of dancing fires as the war engine continued to burn.

Stepping forward, he did not know if he had been called or summoned, but whatever one wanted to call it, he felt a compelling force. That force was ushering him toward a door which materialized in front of him, seemingly, as he strode forward. Lines beneath the door's surface previously blocked etched themselves free, dislodging huge slabs of topsoil. Appropriately compelled, he entered through the materialized door. Inside, he saw a highly advanced interior forged from sleek reflecting materials.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Walking further into the structure, he entered a staircase which was barely large enough for a man. He walked for what seemed an odd amount of time for such a short hallway, almost as if time or space bent weirdly here. He entered a room. In front of him, lights from above turned on, as if touched by a magical flame. Behind him, the thick metallic door closed shut. Hissing steam released from it as gears moved inside; he tried to paw the door open, but nothing he did mattered.

He entered the room's middle to see more lights turned on. Illuminated by unseen fires, he had no clue how technology such as he saw now worked. But he knew enough about ancient tech to understand there was nothing in his personal experience which gave him insight into what he was seeing now.

Fully illuminated, the room before him was of modest size. Directly in front of him stood a large table made from materials alien to his daily life. Behind the rectangular table was a half-circular table with many buttons, levers, and softly humming tiles which a more educated person might have recognized as a keyboard (of sorts). Though to him, it was another strange piece of technology.

From the side walls, two figures emerged. The walls themselves shifted, turning over an operating table with a humanoid figure strapped down. ‘Human-like’ however, was the proper term, for what had laid before him was not an actually human. It looked like an Expanse soldier except instead of it being made of wood, its body was of shiny metals.

Waiting for it to move while still in battle mode, he expected the device to awake and attack him — he was inside its home, after all.

But it never did.

Several minutes crawled by. But nothing happened. Daring to step forward a few more paces, he investigated the contraption. Beautiful, he whispered. What jeweler could have made this? The number of gems and precious ores here is incredible!

Sweat continued to slide off his forehead and drip onto the machine. Thinking nothing of it until the machine lit up and made noises, he scuttled back.

“Please do not drip any more of your fluids on me — aye, ey, ey!”

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Chapter 9.5 (Bonus Chapter)

For the first time in Zan’s life, he was to come face-to-face with a fate beyond his wildest of imaginations.

However, let us wait a moment before we discover alongside Zan what this destiny implies. Let us first leave through the command center’s rusty walls. Walk like a ghost further backward yet and cross the automotron soaked ground. Let’s flop and turn our sights to not what used to lie in front of us — the command center — but what lies on our backs.

Through the forest and across the river, we fly. Further up a hill, we bound like phantoms hot on the town, the command center now to our backs and concern.

When we reach the top of the hill, we relent. For, another one of destiny’s chosen awaits. We settle upon a mysterious group of gentlemen. Three dressed in regal, black armor, with dread color so intense, life itself could drain from someone for daring to step too close…

And next to the regal black, an imperial engineer under the employ of the (New) Woodland Expanse.

The engineer, like the pitch-void folk huddled around their leader, are enemies of Zan and his simple people. Enemies who hold strange ambitions about the land and its inhabitants. A class of folk who believe themselves better than the unwashed riffraff besmirching the earth with mediocre deeds and pathetic fetes.

Grotesque? Many would say, of this dimension and others. Yet, it is enemies like these whose minds we must now gleam.

Let us now enter the mind of this engineer.

Welcome yourself.

Introduce yourself, engineer…

My name is Rictus Dawson…

Wait…

Why did I say my name? Why does anyone do anything? I shook off my strange and violent vertigo and focused on my job.

I observed the target with my seeing lens. A village youth. Unremarkable. He entered the submerged structure.

“Milords,” I said, approaching the eccentric group of High-Borns. “The target has entered the structure. We were too late, it seems. I give you my apologies but would like to remind you the failure of your objectives does not correlate to a failure of my services.”

In professional business, it was beneficial to be upfront.

As always, however, the High-Borns paid me no heed.

They whispered in their corrupted tongue. I genuinely attempted to pay them no attention. Like every such attempt, however, I failed. It was impossible for me to not glance a hundred curious snippets of indiscretion. With each glance — a sway of a robe, a glint of a blade or jewelry — I formed complex theories about who these people were. How they seemed so familiar, yet so alien. I figured each glance would bring me to some peak of understanding. It didn’t — in fact; it made the opposite happen: a torrential confusion reigned in me day and night about who these people were and how they could afford to pay a campaign fee at the height of an invasion. It made little sense.

Could they be Libertines? With combat abilities? With magic to rival powerful kings? Libertines were many things, but not that. So, I had only one question in my mind as they spittled their aristocratic tongues at each other. Who were they?

As suddenly as they spoke in their confusing code, they broke off, and resumed talking as the hippest youths of my nation might have at a school function. I would know. I had kids of my own, so I knew how they talked to one another. Always making up slang and pretend-languages, mixing the two into it became a paracosmal mess…

Outside of their labored code-language, they addressed me as any young person would to an adult who didn’t speak the hip-language. They said, “We understand the terms of your condition, good sir. Worry no more over this or future laborious matters. We weren’t able to get here in time. Such a shame. We wait and watch!” Once they finished speaking with me, they returned to their monkey-mouthing with one another.

What more was there to do? I would get paid, regardless. Were these people looking for something? “I will chart us a new course, then?” I had to ask because the clients were bad at giving me direction, which impacted my ability to help them.

As a response, one of them, not the same which spoke to me a moment ago, came to me and grunted aggressively while pointing at the ground. He was crossing his arms. Then he angrily pointed at the ground, like he was a mole or meerkat. Was he trying to tell me they wanted to stay put?

“I will prepare camp?” I asked.

He gave me a thumb up.

Who were these weirdos?