A crescent moon rose above a crescent town. The town’s lights faded one after the other, leaving only blinking construction lights that studded the wall. An open field separated the thickest part of the wall from the wall of the forest.

A shadow flickered at the edge of the forest. Closely behind it another figure stumbled.

“The glow above the town has stopped,” Seeker whispered, “We must move. Silently. Please.” She began to move through the grass. The gravel path was still beneath it but, unlike the forest, the grass had grown through it.

“Very well. I will exercise caution.” Rex answered, much less quietly. Now was not the time to exercise his legs.

He leapt into the air and landed with two more limbs than he had jumped with. The four arachnid legs only lightly disturbed the grass. The liquid had quite a bit of practice being silent, even if Rex lacked this same experience.

His actual feet hung just over the grass so that they would not make any noise.

“Lead the way,” Rex said, gesturing in front of him.

Seeker lightly nodded and sidled through the grass without even a swish to mark her path.

Rex was left with the problem of how to follow her. His hand, fingers still pointing in front of him, dripped with a shimmer in the moonlight.

A thin line weakly wobbled towards the advancing figure of Seeker. She had not gone so far that he could not guess where she was. It searched for the figure it knew was there.

The liquid dropped onto her shoulder as a light hand would tap. She looked behind her and saw Rex still a good distance away.

He urged her on again, with the string stuck tight to her.

She felt cold drips down her shoulder. Each drop grabbed softly but firmly. She could not see anything at all but knew that no other could cause this.

A puppet on a short string. Every twitch and movement observed under scrutiny by the blind senses behind her. She knew that this was a move without malice and was for direction, but humans like to be the puppet master.

It was very hard to concentrate on silent movement with what was essentially a leash clasping one shoulder.

The wall cast its shadow in the darkness with the light from the moon. Seeker naturally reached the manmade cliff first and placed her hands on the cold metal wall.

The leash detached from her back and retracted to the looming figure. Rex could feel the cold air radiate from the wall in front of him.

The tower’s mass loomed in presence, even without its height being visible. It was a different presence from the trees or the tall grass, even if those were also large. It gleamed.

Even without the ability to see. Rex could feel the chill and the presence.

Despite this, he disregarded this triumph of human engineering over nature.

Seeker stood facing the wall with her hands on her hips. She typically grappled up and rappelled down the other side, but her equipment was either broken or thrown in her pack that she had left behind. Throwing away that pack had been a mistake, even if she was otherwise occupied.

“Sigh,” she said.

Rex cocked an eyebrow but remained otherwise unfazed at the vocalized onomatopoeia.

“I don’t really want to hike around the whole wall,” she grumbled, “not after the exhaustion to get here.” She, being rather physically fit, meant predominantly the mental exhaustion.

“Okay” Rex replied with a serious nod, oblivious to this.

Seeker made a grunt of confusion before feeling a tug on the back of her cloak. Suddenly, she felt quite a bit higher than she should be.

On the smooth metal face, Seeker looked like a kitten hung from its mother’s mouth.

Rex dangled as well, with the extra baggage in his right hand angling him slightly to the left.

He hung more securely than she, however, as his tendrils rooted deep into the metal structure and solidified.

To a gigantic observer, perhaps they would look like a spider scaling a face with surprising ease. To the observer, perhaps the wall would look impossibly smooth and they would marvel at the feat of smaller creatures.

In fact, the wall was impossible to scale in most circumstances. That was why it had been built. The citizens almost never left and built no opening to ensure this.

Rex did not muse on these hypothetical giants, even if he may have appreciated it in the past. He had enjoyed introspection but if had examined within himself, he instinctively knew that he wouldn’t like what he saw.

He simply continued upwards, leaving exact holes every meter as a marker.

Seeker held her collar to prevent it from constricting her.

“Could you hold me another way?” She asked, somewhat hopeful of not being strangled.

He thought about this. He did not have enough arm strength to grasp her coat in any comfortable way so he could only let her hang. Unless…

“Sure,” he responded and held her.

She stiffened. She had not expected this.

Sure, she had wanted him to hold her in a way that would not strangle her, and this was physically more comfortable. She just hadn’t thought of how he might actually hold her.

Physically comfortable I suppose. But mentally? She looked down at her body.

If a cocoon was clear enough to see its interior, she imagined this would be the general image. She would, however, stay the same upon her emergence from the cocoon, if not worse for wear.

The liquid was wrapped close around her body and gave a softness greater than any bed she had slept in. But in the corner of her brain, a very loud voice shouted that any small thought from her carrier could turn her into something that dripped and pooled rather than moved.

She still hung and swayed by two small threads connected directly to the climbing figures back. The threads did not look as though they would even hold a regular sized cocoon, but nevertheless, he climbed, and she was pulled up behind him.

He seemed to be dragging her to his lair at the center of a web as he continued upwards on eight limbs. The four outer limbs made a *shiik-shiik* as they moved while the other four dangled.

It was her house, her lair in the city, but she could not brush her thoughts aside.

A few meters from the top of the wall, the top two limbs stretched out to the top and twisted and bent into a shape that resembled fishhooks. The two remaining thickened to bear the imbalance.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

They dug into the thick metal plating at the top of the wall and pulled with an invisible exertion.

“Dead weight,” grumbled Rex under his breath. The weight was, fortunately, still alive.

Seeker, who was previously resigned to being tugged up the entire wall, felt herself swing from front to back in a deliberate, purposeful movement. She hadn’t quite thought about what Rex would do with a hanging weight below him when he got to the top.

She looked upwards with blank eyes. “Uh,” she stated.

The cocoon whipped upwards, tracing an arc leading directly to the top of the wall.

The air whistled around Seekers exposed head. She had still not quite grasped what was happening, except that the top of the wall was coming very close.

Her mind raced. She was stuck on a deadly path and she didn’t even know what it was that set him off.

There was a sharp thud and then a dull silence.

She opened her eyes to see cold metal only a few centimeters from her mask.

She exhaled in short, uneven bursts, almost a chuckle or laugh if it was taken several levels higher in the measurement of emotional expression.

Many small columns of liquid stuck to the ground and held her suspended.

The liquid must have absorbed the shock, she thought after seeing the liquid attached to the forehead and chin portion of her mask. At least one form of it, she thought as she shivered.

Although the cocoon that was previously restraining her had melted away, she was powerless to move without a solid connection of her own to the ground. She sagged, entrusting her weight to be suspended by the columns, and waited.

She did not wait for long as Rex sprung upwards in a theatrical fashion. He landed on his own feet as the legs sucked back into himself.

Rex felt like an ancient intelligencer or some other agent from the films before even his time.

The wind that waved his wispy hair and the feel of cold metal on his skin made him suck in a breath. It felt much different from the natural air of the forest

Rex was familiar with metal, grass and trees were much farther from his realm of expertise. He wasn’t even that familiar with humans even with that being his realm of expertise.

He worked behind a desk with anatomical models and robot arms. Hardly a social occupation.

Typically, however he had nothing to do with the humans themselves. He was no psychologist. He believed that it was what was on the actual inside that counted.

He sensed the area that Seeker occupied using the ichor he had placed around her.

She hadn’t moved.

“What are you doing lying around up here? Let’s get you up.”

Rather than hoisting her up with an outstretched hand like any other good meaning bystander, Rex commanded the columns to force her to the feet.

Seeker fell in reverse.

Her body rose backwards, staying perfectly straight, to a standing pose.

She stumbled as the supports detached and slithered back to their host.

While it was true that she had some time to gather herself from her brief wait lying just above the ground, she was still shaken.

The many lamprey-like tendrils that had supported her had occupied her attention.

She did not seem to move as she stood stoically but she knew that her heart was racing, and her knees were shaking.

This was in comparison to a normal human, however, as her knees barely moved.

The only thing abnormal about her heart rate was that it should be much faster after having been flung about and stopped so suddenly.

She regained her calm and peered over the wall. She saw a trail of holes punctured deep and a bit of a trail cut through the tall grass to the forest.

Even with my warning, he left such an obvious trail.

The trail was insignificant to any other eyes, especially from the top of this massive wall.

Hardly any person was ever up here and even if they were, they would not pay any attention to the sides but nevertheless, Seeker worried.

She wanted to introduce him to the townsfolk slowly, not have him appear as a shadowy monster that climbed unclimbable walls and took people in the night.

Even if he did those things, it was important that others learned that he was most likely capable of feeling regret and he didn’t seem to realize the awful things the liquid had brought.

She walked over to the other side of the wall and saw darkness.

No lights lit the town except the few that adorned the wall. Even those that had come with the wall seemed to have little purpose other than to add some texture to the blackness of the night.

She could see each house in the gloom of the night, and she could even see pedestrians moving by moonlight. The darkness here made no difference to Seeker and the citizens had that same gift.

Why waste precious resources on unneeded light when residents could work, day or night. Those who chose to work were few, however, compared to the number of houses.

The darkness was especially eerie to a people that were afraid of being taken unseen by a supernatural power.

Daylight, while it made hardly any difference to them visually, carried with it a comforting warmth that the night lacked.

Each house, while looking individually different, shared the same building materials.

It was an odd contrast to the wall as there was not a speck of metal on any house.

There was concrete, brick, stone, wood, but no metal.

One would expect that with the amount of metal poured into the wall, they would be able to afford some small implements of metal for railings or decorative elements but there were none of these.

The wall was truly the most striking aspect of the town, but it was not completely solid through.

Every hundred meters, the top of the wall had a hatch, setting up a picture of gigantic rivets.

The closest one to the pair creaked as it began to open.

“Shh. Something is coming,” Rex put his finger to his mouth.

Seeker gazed at the hatch that had unclasped. A shiny head poked upwards.

“Hide yourself!” Seeker whispered to Rex before adding an even quieter “Please?”

Rex scuttled to the side of the wall and jumped downwards.

He clasped himself to the wall like a starfish and poked crystal hooks into the wall to hold him.

He heard the awful sound of metal scraping on metal before a series of ringing thuds.

Couldn’t be the hatch. That was already open.

The thuds, what he now assumed to be footsteps, continued.

Seeker watched the body shamble towards her. That shining head was followed by a shiny body. It was vaguely humanoid in shape but was clearly wrought of metal.

It stumbled over its clunking metal legs and held a bundle of metal plates and beams in one arm.

This right arm was similar to that of a human but with only three fingers on the hand. It looked like it might have once been streamlined but pockets and dents were scattered all over.

The left arm was much different. It was bulky with only a thin pipe on the end instead of a hand. Rubber tubes extended from where the wrist would be and receded into the back of the robot.

Its lack of visual balance made it seem almost comical.

It stomped roughly to where Seeker stood.

One singular eye studded the bald head. It looked like an old diving helmet backlit by blue.

It creaked downwards to look at Seeker. The eye’s light increased in intensity until it dimmed to the level it was before it had lightened.

It stared for a few seconds longer and then creaked back to its forward-facing position.

The footsteps clunked to where Rex and Seeker had clambered onto the wall. The three-fingered hand set down its metal bundle and carefully selected several pieces of small sheet metal.

As it clasped the pieces in its hand, two hooks flicked out of its chest. Simultaneously, the metal feet tilted backwards at the ankle and the heavy body started to fall down the wall.

As it fell, the two prongs hooked onto the wall with a click.

Attached to the hooks, a metal wire extended to lower the robot to the nearest hole left by Rex.

The massive left arm began its work as the right arm pressed the metal piece to the hole. A thin copper-like wire extended from the tube with a whirring noise.

There was a high-pitched *Zizz* and a bright flash of light and before long, the robot was working on the next hole.

Seeker sat down on the top of the wall.

“Please stay hidden. We do not know if more will come.”

“What was that thing?” Rex inquired.

He guessed that it was a robot but with only the audio to work with it was hard to determine the exact purpose of its creation.

“A guard of sorts, I would assume,” he continued.

“No. It is what created this wall. It and its many brethren,” she corrected. “It took the parts of metal from a ruin and the surrounding area and, by some command that we did not entirely intend, built this massive wall.”

“From the footsteps, I would imagine it would be quite an accomplished guard if the scenario happened to present itself.”

“It will scan those in its path for recognition and will typically issue a loud warning sound but otherwise, not as such.” It was a shame, she thought, that these hulking metal men served only as constructors near that very dangerous forest.

“They are actually very inconvenient,” said Seeker, with a slight humph. “They will take nearly any scrap of metal not attached to them for the wall.” As a non-professional engineer, it was difficult to hide her inventions from the “resource patrols” of the autonomous creations.

There was a faint whirring sound from the side of the wall. It got closer and closer until the construction droid had pushed itself back up the wall.

It picked up the bundle of metal and made its way in the opposite direction it had come.

Rex clambered up and looked in the approximate location of the retreating silhouette.

“Where is it off to now?”

“The unfinished section. Every day, these constructors travel to find any metal they can to process and stick on each end of the wall.”

Seeker was sure that someday the wall would be complete, and, on that day, she was not sure what the people inside would do. There was no gate and hardly any way up for anyone without a grappling hook.

Seeker only hoped that they were not so stubborn to isolate themselves to that point of no return.

There were farms inside the wall and some wells or water supplies, but without a way to get out, any failure could be fatal.

Seeker looked down to the city. It was still as dark and unmetallic as the last she looked.

Rex looked once again towards the robot. He looked at his chest and formed two prongs.

“I have an idea that will not damage the wall.”

And then he jumped.

“But what about…”

She would have finished but two thin lines once again grabbed her shoulders and yanked.

“Sigh,” she said as she fell.