Blaze of Embers

by Cam Baity

  Oh well. Nothing to be done about that now.

  He thought about the stories of the Shroud, how he had blown Phoebe off when she said that this was the place you go when you die—the place that Makina called home. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. Now that he had seen Her—the Great Engineer, the Everseer, the Mother of Ore—with his own eyes, he wondered what else he had been wrong about.

  This was going to work. It had to.

  Micah took a few steps into the wall of mist, dead mehkan plants crumbling beneath his boots. He glanced back at Phoebe, careful not to move too far away and lose sight of her in the fog. This was it, the spot he’d seen from the camp, but what was he supposed to be looking for? He had no idea what to do next. Everything slowed down inside of Micah. Every part of him felt weak and helpless again. The dam inside him began to crack. His eyes grew hot and his vision began to blur. What was—

  A chill ran up his spine.

  There was the whisper of a vague shape in the sea of gray. Micah blinked rapidly behind the mask to clear tears from his good eye as he tried to peer into the impenetrable Shroud. Something was there, dead ahead. Standing. Waiting for him.

  He inched closer. It was motionless, broad and bent, shaped like a giant hook. He strained to make it out. His heart felt like it would propel itself from his chest.

  There, emerging from the Shroud, amidst a field of petrified red mountain growth, were the ruins of an ancient arch.

  He had found it. A strange mix of exhilaration and abject terror seized Micah as he recalled the words of the Accords, spoken by Tik outside the Housing of the Broken.

  And their forsaken home atop the Ephrian Mountains, where living blue does not reach and rust red is the crowning peak…

  …did the Great Engineer name Rust Risen.

  The Foundry Auto-mobile careened through the abandoned streets, headlamps slicing the night like bayonets. Margaret had never seen Albright City so empty. People were heeding the curfew, and every window they passed was dark. Only the sky seemed alive as Aero-copters circled like a colony of hungry bats.

  The Dialset at Plumm Estate had rung in the dead of night, alerting Margaret that she was to report for duty. This was the first time the Foundry had sent an Auto for her, and she had a sinking suspicion why. She was an officer of the Foundry’s special engineering corps, stationed in Trelaine, a prominent nation of the Quorum. And enemy of Meridian.

  Downtown was a ghost of its former self, as if the entire population had vanished. Margaret glanced out the window as they drove past Paragon Park. For the first time she could remember, the spotlights illuminating the chrome statue of Creighton Albright were off. She adjusted her uniform restlessly as the Auto turned onto the bridge that spanned the silent black bay and led to Foundry Central.

  Usually, the Cable Bike Link-Way and Auto lanes were packed with commuters, crammed so close that it would be impossible to walk between them. Tonight, all was chillingly vacant, save for hulking military vehicles and black-and-bronze Foundry Autos speeding about. Streamers, confetti, and concession wrappers littered the bridge—a stark reminder of Saltern’s final campaign rally.

  And there was the Crest of Dawn, or what was left of it. Instead of the dazzling, iconic sunburst soaring above the city, a mangled calamity of twisted beams and gap-toothed rays dangled overhead, dully reflecting the still-smoldering cinders. Smoke poured from the Crest like blood from an arterial wound, and teams of Foundry workers and emergency services attended to the disaster site.

  Margaret knew that they would have the Crest back to its former glory in no time. Nothing could keep Meridian down.

  Her driver was waved past several security checkpoints as they entered the sprawling complex of Foundry Central. Margaret sat straight-backed and at attention as they snaked through a series of guarded barricades and parked before an immense, windowless structure of white steel. Her eyes widened when she recognized it. Two crisply uniformed privates opened her door, saluted, and ushered her into the Cube.

  Margaret had heard stories of this place, but she never imagined she would be allowed inside. The Foundry was renowned for its strict adherence to security protocols. Employees were only permitted in quadrants corresponding to their work and were never allowed to set foot in any other part of Foundry Central. Yet the recent attack must have caused them to bend the rules, because before Margaret knew it, she was being rushed through its featureless white foyer.

  She kept her eyes locked on her escorts, doing her best to act like she belonged, as they passed a concentrated swarm of decorated generals and army brass.

  This was the primary operations center for both the Meridian Army and the Foundry’s Military Division—this was where they came together. The Foundry provided the nation’s entire defense infrastructure, and hence had a vital role in orchestrating its proper implementation. The twin hierarchies could be confusing, but they worked seamlessly, a precise machine dedicated to upholding Meridian’s status as an unparalleled superpower.

  Margaret was led down a flight of stairs to the biggest steel door she had ever seen in her life. It parted silently, revealing a warehouse at least five stories tall. It was a military factory lined with parallel Computator workstations, all attended to by hundreds of uniformed officers, the navy blue of Meridian mingling with the gray-and-gold of the Foundry. The workers faced the massive far wall, which was lit up by dozens of projection screens that broadcast maps, schematics, and scrolling statistics that meant nothing to Margaret.

  “Officer Tanner,” one of the escorts whispered. “This way.”

  He led Margaret across the central command room of the Cube, weaving through the commotion so quickly that she had trouble keeping up. They passed through a door, down a long white hall, and into a compact room with a single table. Six of her superiors sat there staring at her, three in blue, three in gray.

  “Officer…Tanner,” said one of them, referring to a dossier. He was a middle-aged man with dark skin and steel-gray eyes—a Meridian general, judging by the stripes and color of his uniform.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered directly and saluted.

  She glanced at her hands before locking them at her sides, relieved to see that they were not trembling.

  “I am General Freemont, your new commanding officer. Everything you see and hear in this building is confidential. You are to discuss details with no one but me or other officers specifically designated by me. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your upgraded clearance is temporary,” added a gray-uniformed Foundry commander. “You are limited strictly to the main floor of the Cube. You are not permitted anywhere else in Foundry Central. Is that understood?”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Good,” Freemont continued. “According to our records, you have been engaged as a junior engineer on the Rodeau dam project.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your chief supervisor is currently otherwise occupied, but she imparted to us her utmost confidence in you. You have been summoned to brief my team on your work, specifically your structural analysis of the integrity of the dam and its relation to the Thielly power plant.”

  Margaret’s mouth was dry and, she realized regretfully, hanging open.

  General Freemont’s lips twitched, not quite a smile. “Yes, Officer Tanner? Something you want to ask?”

  “Apologies, sir.” Margaret steadied her nerves and cast a glance at her superiors. “Is this what I think it is?”

  He tilted his head back and looked down his nose at her.

  “We are going to wipe Trelaine off the map.”

  Crunch.

  Another crunch.

  Micah felt like each step was going to break him. He couldn’t possibly go any farther. But somehow he did. Phoebe’s gangly body was draped over his shoulder in an awkward fireman’s carry, and he staggered under her weight. Between her, the field pack, and the useless Dervish rifle, just staying on his feet was torture.

 
; How much longer could he keep it up?

  His mind was as vacant as the Shroud, drained as dry as the rusted thicket underfoot. Though his legs burned, they moved automatically, dragging him up and up the red summit, deeper and deeper into Rust Risen. He had been climbing for so long that it must have been nearly dawn, because the gray fog was growing brighter. And aside from the occasional stump of a corroded column or carved fragment from a crumbled slab of ore, there was nothing here.

  Rust Risen was no more. All that remained were disintegrating relics.

  And Micah with his disintegrating hope.

  He adjusted Phoebe’s body, shifting her weight to his other shoulder. Her limp arm dangled, patting him on the back, as if urging him to keep on walking. So he did.

  Crunch.

  Surely his legs would give out on him this time.

  Another crunch.

  Still he went on. Higher and higher.

  Every step was an attack on the alien silence. The void around him felt open and vast, infinite, like he was fighting to trek across the sky itself. Step by agonizing step.

  Then Micah slipped on some debris, and down he went. He collapsed, twisting to cushion Phoebe’s fall. He hit the ground in a burst of flaking red brush and groaned as her full weight thudded down on top of him. He was done—knew that he wouldn’t be getting up again. So he lay there and didn’t move. He watched the moisture of his breath and sweat and tears clouding the visor of his facemask, felt the undergrowth scratching at his Durall coveralls. Felt Phoebe’s head lying heavily on his chest.

  Felt her dead face staring up at him.

  Micah dared to look at her with his unswollen eye. Her hair was a tangled mess, but her eyes were thankfully closed. Despite the dark bruise that ringed her neck, and the old bandage on her forehead where she had knocked it in the Foundry boat, she looked serene. Like she had known this was going to happen all along. Like she knew all he had done, all he had tried to do. And she forgave him.

  This wasn’t such a bad place, he thought, glancing around. It was quiet, even peaceful in a weird sorta way. It felt right. He put an arm around her.

  He was ready to die.

  Crunch.

  He blinked his uninjured eye.

  Another crunch.

  Micah jerked his head up, heart pounding.

  Nothing. The same scenery as before—Shroud in every direction, a few sad-looking ruins poking through the fog.

  Was there more rubble around him now than there had been a few minutes ago?

  He eased Phoebe off him and placed her carefully on the ground, then got to his feet. There was a rustle behind him, and he spun. An agitated patch of mist came to rest. He wasn’t alone out here after all. Micah felt dread gathering within him. This place was less like a peaceful graveyard and more like a haunted one. Coming to Rust Risen had been an act of desperation, but he had nowhere else to turn.

  Crunch.

  Micah’s blood turned to ice.

  Crunch.

  All around him. Closer. And closer. He hadn’t thought this through at all.

  If the stories were true, then he might have just made the worst mistake of his life. After all of Tik’s talk about Rust Risen, about the horrors that once dwelled here, and he had come on purpose? Knocking on the devil’s door, hoping for…a favor?

  What the hell was he doing?

  They were coming for him. Micah wanted to scream. He whipped his Dervish rifle off his shoulder and wielded it like a club. A pinprick of light pierced the fog, bobbing back and forth. He strained his vision and saw more of them in the distance, drifting in the murk like fireflies. Heading right for him.

  He turned in a circle, saw more of the lights. They were surrounding him. Skeletal shadows. Tall—upsettingly tall. Angular. Moving in slow, erratic jerks. Micah backed up, gripping the rifle tight, and bumped into a pile of rubble. It shifted. He fell to the ground, scurried away. The rubble rose. And rose. A gaunt figure unfolded. Its black mouth yawned open. A yellow light burned on its crooked head, as it did on the other phantoms that closed in around Micah. A single fiery eye burned in each shadow.

  They were here.

  Micah had found the Uaxtu.

  I yet live.

  Black sky reddening. I ooze down from the mesas. Trail of sizzling CHAR gore behind me, eating into the metal ground. Can barely walk. Sealed up my new bullet holes, sculpted my not-skin back together. My body melts the rounds, leaking lead.

  Wounds given by the men Mr. Goodwin sent to kill me.

  His parting gifts. Gifts I will repay a hundred times over.

  I was Kaspar, his pride and joy. I was the first. Others tried. Mr. Goodwin and the Greencoats put the living metal into four others before me. But I was the first to survive, to endure the agony. To conquer the metal and become the Dyad.

  Then Dr. Plumm. And the children and the CHAR. Brought the Citadel down on me, mutated the metal within, changed me into this. This dripping, inside-out horror. Darkness made flesh. The last thing they will see.

  New senses bristle. Hair-trigger feelings. Detect the electromagnetic field of the Depot over the next hill like a buzz of flies. Taste the tang of bonding rounds on the air. Conflict there. Burning tech. Fallen soldiers. Dead mehkans by the score.

  My not-skin tickles with hunger, longs to bathe in war.

  I control the urge. Save it. Almost light now, hurry my descent. Must get into the Depot. Magnetic defenses are down. They will be distracted by the creatures. Can use my CHAR, burn my way in. Mr. Goodwin won’t see me coming.

  I yet live.

  So that he may die.

  The Uaxtu approached, lurching through the thick gray Shroud. The gaunt wraiths shuffled, spider-leg fingers twitching. Cyclops eyes flared bright.

  “Back off!” Micah choked and swung his rifle at them.

  But they did not stop. They limped toward him, creaking and groaning with every step. He stood protectively over Phoebe’s body and whipped his weapon back and forth. They were close enough that he could see metal bones jutting beneath rust-eaten hides. Their rotten skin sagged, tattered and flaking off in sheets.

  One of them reached for Micah with grasping needle fingers. He smacked it away with his rifle. The Uaxtu’s hand burst apart as if it were made of sand.

  The skeletal ghosts came to a stop.

  The creature Micah had struck raised its spindly arm to its face, inspecting the emptiness where its hand had been. The others approached, their long, wiry digits wriggling over their companion’s newly formed stump. With a rusty squeak, the Uaxtu angled their heads back at their attacker, lone blazing eyes betraying nothing.

  Micah steeled himself. He summoned all his courage and took a step toward the monsters. The rawboned giants towered over him, twice his size, their stares hollow.

  “I know who you are,” Micah barked. “Are the stories true?”

  The one-handed Uaxtu took a halting step and leaned its cadaverous body down to peer at Micah. On its jagged head was some sort of chipped crown, or maybe it was a ring of horns or antlers that had broken off long ago. Micah got his first good look at its flat face and realized he had been wrong—the creature had two wide black eyes, frosted with starlight-blue cataracts, but glimmering and intense.

  If those were its true eyes, then what was the fiery orb on its forehead?

  The Uaxtu parted its cavernous mouth, gulping like a fish taking water into its gills. Below its jaw was an accordioned throat sac that expanded and compressed like the bellows of an old, broken-down machine. The mehkan once again reached a hand lined with quivering, hair-thin fingers toward Micah.

  The other Uaxtu closed in. He tightened his grip on the rifle.

  “Either help me, or I swear I’ll smash every one of you.”

  The mehkan drew back, studying him with those milky, starscape eyes. Not with cruelty. More like…confusion. Micah lowered his weapon slightly.

  “Help me,” he said, mouth dry as their rusty flesh. He stepped aside to reveal Phoebe
. “Please…”

  The Uaxtu fixed their eyes on her. The giant mehkans shuffled closer, joints creaking and flaking as they bent down to inspect her body. Micah held his breath, ready to bash them again, as he watched them skim her cold skin with their antenna-like digits. One of the Uaxtu expanded its bellows and parted its fish jaws. Micah could see some sort of blunt tongue strike the inside of its mouth—and a deep bell tolled.

  A chill shook Micah.

  The tone was clear and pure, carving through the silence of the Shroud. The note rang on and on, sustained by the slow compression of the Uaxtu’s bellows. Others joined in, clucking their tongues to produce drawn-out bell tones—all different pitches that layered to create an ethereal harmony. Not threatening, or even mournful.

  Beautiful.

  Micah suddenly felt uncertain. These creatures were not what he had expected. Not at all what Dollop and Tik and the rest of the mehkans were so afraid of.

  The dozen or so Uaxtu slipped their arms beneath Phoebe’s body and strained, sheaves of rust crumbling off them as they lifted her. Micah worried that her weight might be too much for the fragile mehkans, but they managed to carry her through the Shroud, bowed with the effort. He followed warily, staying close to Phoebe’s side.

  All the while, the Uaxtu continued their otherworldly song.

  It was a long trek through the fog and up the mountain. The melodious bells mixed with the crunch of steps on the rusty brush. A gnawing pain of hunger began to twist at Micah’s gut, but now was not the time to stop and dig into his pack.

  The shadows of ruins grew more abundant. There were masses of decayed debris, sections of broken buildings. Micah jumped as he passed a tilted column that seemed to come to life, revealing itself as an Uaxtu, who added its own bell call to the song. Other crooked figures rose from the rubble to join the shambling crowd. They were all in states of decay—some were layered with mounds of corrosion and a kind of golden moss, while others were wireframe skeletons of rust.