Zan saw the smoke from the war engine clear as day despite the darkness. Whatever coal the engine was burning, it was enough to stand out even at midnight.

“What do we do?” Jiehong asked.

Zan felt weak and low. He was going to ask Jiehong that same question.

“How would we even fight it?” Zan said hopelessly.

Jiehong shrugged, though Zan only say his buddy’s gently moving shape.

“Do you remember anything about the last time you fought a war engine like this?” Jiehong asked.

Zan thought back. Though only a week or a little more ago, it felt much longer. Zan probed every frame of his memory from then to discern a weakness. Something he saw back then which, perhaps, made no sense, which might make sense now, with his relative wealth of experience.

Nothing came to mind.

Head filled with blank, Zan was about to order their retreat when he said, “Maybe there is a hatch?”

“A hatch?” Jiehong asked.

“Like how… so the troop transports? They have behind them that handy little weak point we target when our swords are on fire, right? The exhaust pipes. Maybe these things have something like that? Or maybe a service hatch we can climb up and use to infiltrate the command pod?”

“We don’t have any magic left…”

Jiehong was right on that regard. He didn’t have any magic left. Jiehong didn’t have any magic left. No grenades… maybe one or two smoke grenades, if that.

“True. We are running low on resources,” Zan admitted. “But we have one thing working to our advantage. The grand old cover of night!”

Zan and Jiehong moved swiftly through the dark.

Though the dual darkness of both the forest and the forest at night would cause anyone else to fumble in front of them like a slug on salt, by now, Zan’s eyesight had adjusted; they could see in front of them, but only just so. Only enough to move with relative ease through the forest. Emphasis on the relative…

“I’m back up, then?” Jiehong asked Zan.

Zan didn’t need anytime to consider it. “Yeah. It is too dangerous. I have the idea in my mind what needs to happen. Only I should need be put in that kind of danger with so little to go on. You can risk your life to save my ass if it comes to that. So, I will count on you, you hear?”

“Loud and clear, bud. I’ll be here, crouching low behind you, waiting for the signal.”

Zan wasted no time in pursuing the large invention. Why was a war engine here? Zan had no clue. The last time he had encountered one of these, it had been when he discovered the order and the buried command center. So, why was one here, of all places? Thinking back, the valley where he discovered the command center was well out of the way of anything noteworthy in a military situation. Could something precious, like the command center, be buried here?

Thinking such thoughts as Zan stalked the war engine, Zan didn’t really have the energy to think about the logic of the enemy. Not when, with every step closer to the war engine, he found the earth shook alongside every step it took. Zan’s consciousness rattled in his body like a loose stone before long.

Just behind the war engine, Zan had to plan his next step well.

Right behind the machine, Zan observed its patterns. Its movement.

It did not appear to be doing anything complex. It only was walking forward. Not under trees or over trees. It wasn’t taking side-diversions to support the nearby outposts. The one and only thing it was doing was barreling on through the forest, trampling anything and everything underneath.

‘Makes it easy for me,’ Zan said to himself.

Rushing ahead without regard for his own safety, Zan charged into the undefended space beneath the war engine. Crashing sounds; stomping; the rattle once more of Zan’s soul with each thunderous step.

Flung on more than a few steps as he prowled underneath the dreaded enemy machine, Zan righted himself without delay, and was back in his stalking mode before long.

Though feeling beyond the pale, Zan had no choice but to push himself to his absolute limit. He focused his attention and tried to shove away from his concentration all those worrisome thoughts, like if the machine would unexpectedly step on and kill him. Those thoughts weren’t productive, so he did not dwell upon them.

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More or less, notwithstanding those moments where he had to scramble and avoid certain death, Zan stood underneath the exact middle belly of the engine. He stared high above, trying to discern anything like a service hatch. With a machine this big, it had to have golems inside operating it. Those golems surely had to enter the machine through some door, some mechanism. So, where was it?

It was useless. Zan found nothing like a hatch. It was too dark to see anything.

Except for one thing.

He gleamed something in the nick of time. Though faint, Zan saw, or thought he saw, a faint, ever so faint glow coming from inside the bulbous core of the war engine.

The furnace! Zan exclaimed.

‘Thank you eyes for finally adjusting!’ Zan said to himself. ‘But how to get up there? Boy, was that not a question I want to answer…’

Then Zan remembered from his last encounter.

Ladder-steps. He had seen handholds, a rudimentary ladder going along the interior legs the previous time he encountered this invention. It would be hard to work his way to a leg and not become flattened, yet he had to do it.

Once Zan was underneath the machine, the issue was simply keeping up.

The walker took giant strides. After only a couple of steps, Zan had to run straight ahead to keep himself underneath its ‘belly.’ To get to the leg, but without getting himself killed while doing so, Zan slowly inched his way toward a leg. This took patience. And running. Some adjustment after so many steps were required as the path of the walker was not always straight. After an hour or less, Zan could not tell how long he had been slugging it out with this walker, trying his hardest to not become squished, Zan finally got close enough to the walker, at just the right time in its movement, to launch himself with all his remaining stamina, and grab hold on to a ladder rung.

Turns out, holding on was even harder than running.

Well, Zan thought, maybe not harder, but still damn hard. Zan held on as tight as he could, but the huge swaying motions of the legs as they walked were a force he hadn’t prepared to endure. For reasons unknown even to him, Zan had assumed he would have a much easier time once he was on a leg and moving up toward the belly.

Feeling the sway of the leg he was on as it prepared to move, Zan braced himself.

A giant whoosh, and a lunge, later and the leg was off.

Then with a crash, reverberations sending his bones into near shock, the leg was down, placed firmly into the ground. Around him, creaking and groaning from the engine’s other legs. The fire pit above.

Zan knew by now he couldn’t waste time.

With the leg he was on planted firmly in the ground, he had to climb. His limbs were shaky and like that of a spider trying in vain to make a web in a roaring waterfall.

Zan climbed and climbed. Yet he was slow, methodical.

If he heard the machine move, he planted his body firmly close to the ladder, entwining his limbs within the ladder’s rungs for extra stability. Once the danger passed with a fading of the sharp, agonized motions of strained wood and metal, Zan resumed his gradual climb.

He didn’t know how long it took him to reach the top.

All Zan knew was by the time he reached the top, the climb had become slightly easier, with the upper portion of the leg not demanding so much movements as the lower half. Strange construction aside, Zan was thankful for the engineering decisions taken. Right near the top, Zan now was at his final challenge. How to enter the cockpit?

His current position was at the very top of the leg. No more ladder points existed above him, only to his back, planted above the leg, embedded into the walker’s hull. Although movement was much easier above the mechanisms of the lower leg, he still had some gravitational forces to contend with. If the leg segment he was on was moving, these forces, Zan could tell, amplified and caused more of a shock to reverberate through the structure — and him.

Looking back, Zan saw the rung, the piece of metal, he would have to make a leap of faith toward. If he miscalculated, he would fall to the ground. If he was lucky, he would only break many bones. If he was unlucky, he would die.

Going over the bodily motions he would need to make, Zan repeated the motions to himself as he waited for the ‘step cycle’ to finish, which he counted as every leg being planted firmly on the ground before the next leg reared itself above. Running the physicality over in his mind, Zan thought his process out: turn my waist, reach for the sky, extend my body, gradually letting my entanglement on the ladder fade, and then grip — tightly! — the new rung. Then, fully detach once both hands are on the run. Should I curl my legs onto the rung as well? Is there space?

Zan didn’t have time to contemplate this issue further.

With a powerful thunk, the war engine completed its step cycle. Which meant all four legs were on the ground.

Knowing he couldn’t waste time, psyche himself out, and go any further into the energy negatives than he already was, Zan launched himself. Without thinking, he turned, grabbed, and with a split heart’s decision, hurried himself along the handgrips like a spider scurrying from a bird. Seeing at a glance there wasn’t any room for his legs upon the ladder rungs, Zan contented himself to have his legs flow freely in the air. Zan resisted the urge to look down and see how far he dangled in the night; he wouldn’t see anything, anyway. Though he would know, of course, the only thing between him and a grisly death was his two hands holding onto pieces of rusted metal for dear life.

His scurrying having been successful, Zan now found himself directly below the hatch which led into the cockpit. He could feel the heat from within waft through the side cracks of the cockpit.

Zan had a new problem, though. How would he enter?

If he had magic, a lot of magic, he would channel it all into his fist and attempt something like a powerful blast which would destroy the door. If he was more well-rested and had grenades still on him, he would plant one on the door, scurry off, and let it explode. But he had neither of the important bits for that plan to work, no grenades or resolve or energy. With magic drained as a slaughtered pig at harvest time, Zan’s options were dwindling fast. Hearing the groans of the war engine as it prepared for another walking cycle, Zan knew he had to act fast.

Suddenly, a crazy idea came to mind.

Zan knocked on the hatch. Yes. Knocked.

On the door.