ASHEN REIGN: Episode 3
A giant, all-too close.
“Hold, hear the shots?” Elys held out his hand and Desnum crouched, listening intently. They were some way back to the colony and Desnum was craving real food and a fire to sit by. Every small inconvenience such as this was nothing but a hindrance to making that happen, and each time something did hold them up, his humours dropped ever lower.
He could hear the gunshots now, numerous and violent and scattered with the clatter and whine of tearing metal. Elys said they were ground troops but plenty of them. The fight was on the lower levels, right where they were headed.
“Noooo,” Desnum groaned lightly, careful not to annoy his mentor. Elys spent ninety percent of the time in a state of stoic awareness, and the only thing that truly annoyed him was groaning.
“There’s another route. I haven’t taken it in a while, but it’ll likely be a lot better than this one sounds. Come on.”
They made their way upwards instead. The walk became more arduous, though Elys assured Desnum it would level out before long. And it did.
Which was when they happened upon an enormous steel cave situated in the side of a grey, seemingly endless wall.
“I’ve never seen this,” said Elys, studying the opening as much as the expanse of impenetrable grey that surrounded it. It was hard to make out, as if the encompassing buildings had been melted together. “But this is the way back, and if there’s an opening there must be a way through.”
They entered the yawning tunnel of gunmetal grey. The walls were lined with wiring, panels and electronics of unknown significance.
“Too big for human construction.”
“The AIs made it? The ones out there making those mechs fight?” asked Desnum.
“Has to be. We have nothing that could bore a hole this big.” Elys scratched his head. “But why? It’s thrown me for a loop, I won’t lie, kid.”
“Maybe just to get through?” Desnum wondered aloud. “Maybe they just had to get to the other side.”
“This wasn’t here before though. None of it. But it looks centuries old. Doesn’t make any sense.”
They continued through the darkness, lit only by the DogWalker’s blue headlamp. Patter of black water. The combination of low visibility and the interminable echoing of their footsteps painted Desnum’s desires to be home in an acute and uncanny dread. He couldn’t stop shivering. Elys walked as steadily as ever, though even he held his jacket close, and Desnum could swear he caught something new in the old man’s eyes, something that looked an awful lot like fear.
Thankfully it wasn’t long before the tunnel expanded even further and they realised they had arrived at a room. In the centre was a ring of consoles around a tall slab of what looked like greenly-glowing onyx, and upon closer inspection they realised the console was turned on. Whatever facility this was must have been running on auxiliary power, and looked to be almost out. It was oddly familiar, the glowing node. Elys could swear he’d seen it before. Not in a building, though, but a…
“Des, don’t touch tha..!”
It was too late. The boy had sauntered straight into the centre of the room and began fiddling with the broken consoles. One of the monitors lit up, broken LEDs causing half of the screen to be decorated with streaks of pink and white. The other half, however, displayed a black background overlayed with block yellow lettering spelling NUS.
Elys’ fears were confirmed. They weren’t in an old facility at all. They were inside of a dead god.
“Run, kid! Get out now!”
They were inside of a fallen Titanus.
Elys slapped the DogWalker’s ‘chase mode’ setting on as he passed, legs flailing for the tunnel as fast as his primal instincts allowed. He turned for a second to make sure the boy was behind him. Thankfully Desnum’s instincts were just as strong, as he was a mere two steps back, sprinting like a Trooper Prime. The tunnel rumbled and a low hum penetrated the air as the gargantuan fossil whirred into life again. It would fail. Elys’ had heard what happens when a Titanus’ central core is damaged but idiot humans try to activate it anyway. NEURO-REAPER Dynamics managed to transport one of the ‘dead’ colossi to one of their strongholds in the eastern hemisector around twenty years ago. They were doing their usual thing, ripping and harvesting the thing for potential neurodrives and general raw materials, when one of the Reapers themselves, inky-black humanoids that crawled on six bladed limbs, managed to activate the central core. The heat-blast decimated over half of the square-miles of stronghold they had. Still a relatively small loss for one such as NRD, though very bad news for Elys and Desnum.
They reached the opening and the grey twilight of the city still stung their eyes after thirty-something minutes inside. They ran without a thought, the great mechanical canine following with ease in a feat of speed and agility that would’ve terrified Desnum if it weren’t for the obvious impending doom behind him. Why did he have to fuck with everything? Elys told him time and again how dangerous the city was and now they were running for their lives, because of him, and there was no telling if they’d make it.
Below them the conflict had ceased, and they saw the minute shapes of soldiers running in the opposite direction of what they now knew to be an awakening Titanus. Elys led Desnum the usual route home, now free from gunfire, and they went across stretching steel walkways without a word, the blackness of the lower levels watching them flee. Down another staircase and they found themselves in the labyrinth, narrow concrete alleys whose walls stretched up beyond the reach of sight. Thankfully Elys knew the way, and all Desnum had to do was follow through passages barely wider than his shoulders. If something happened while they were in here, the passage would likely crush them or seal them in forever.
They reached the other side, an opening of dizzying cityscape visible from a wide concrete platform, when the blast hit. The labyrinth groaned and rumbled as an orange glow eased down the corridors towards them. Elys pushed Desnum into an adjacent wall as a roaring blast of heat shot from the narrow passageway.
He felt his face blister as the passing surge drew all air from his lungs. Mere seconds felt like hours, and when the blast ceased he just knew he was cooked beyond recognition. Opening his eyes, however, he saw Elys standing over him with a look of utter triumph plastered on his red face.
“You little FUCKER.” He shouted down at Desnum’s limp, bewildered body. “You nearly had us there boy! Titanus. Who’d’ve thought it.”
“Gads.” Desnum coughed. “I’m…burned.”
Elys whistled and the DogWalker trotted out from the labyrinth’s exit, apparently unscathed. It sat down by Desnum and injected both men with a pale blue serum. They both sighed, the cooling serum working its way through their system and levelling their vitals. Once his brain stopped boiling, Desnum smiled too.
“We survived that then, eh penshie?” He laughed as Elys dragged him to his feet. The old man roughed him about a bit, including a noogie that rattled his brains around, but he guessed it was a small price to pay for levelling two city blocks.
They decided not to waste any more time getting home. However, as they began their descent to where their settlement, ‘The Clock’, lay, they saw something coming up towards them.
“What the hell did you two do?” the cat called up in its same smarmy tone. Elys hated to admit to himself that he was glad to see the thing alive. Desnum was visibly pleased.
The cat opted to sit atop the DogWalker, while the men explained their brush with annihilation as they walked.
“So, this one likes to go around fiddling with things, does he?” The cat said once they’d finished. “Not quite fit for a place like this, are you?”
“He’s learning,” spat Elys.
“The hard way, I’d say.” Seems like someone ought to have told the boy not to touch anything. Someone like his old, world-weary mentor, perhaps?”
“You know I can order that bot to throw you off that edge, right?” Elys said shortly, pointing out both the DogWalker and the sheer face into dark oblivion not two feet away from them, respectively.
“My apologies, you’re right, this is how we learn. Maybe not by destroying half the city, but learn by doing, yes. There is an energy to him, I will admit. Something behind the eyes, there. I can see why you’re training him.” Desnum shifted his shoulders uncomfortably as the cat spoke about him as if he wasn’t present. He decided to steer the conversation elsewhere.
“So where did you come from? Elys think’s you’re a construct made by some evil AI, like all those mechs and battledroids.”
“AI?” The cat eyed him. “No, I wasn’t created by an AI. I wasn’t born from another cat, either. I’m not entirely sure how I was made, though I do remember the word ‘apex’. Wherever that comes from. It was everywhere where I was born.”
“So what have you been doing?”
“Wandering, mostly. Surviving, same as you. Unlike you, however, I don’t have anywhere to settle down.”
“I’m sure we have room?” Desnum said hopefully.
“Room isn’t the issue.” Elys said shortly. “It’s convincing McNeill and the rest.”
Desnum rejoiced that Elys was no longer showing any personal resistance to keeping the animal. Though the old man was right, convincing the leaders of The Clock would be no easy feat. Especially since their every action seemed to be motivated by greed.
“No way,” Desnum retorted, “they’ll eat him. We’ll have to keep him hush, undisclosed, unknown.”
“Well, we get wash-down time. You can hide him in your room for now. But he has to be quiet, and stay completely out of sight.” Elys directed this at the cat.
“Of course. Your hospitality is very much appreciated, gentlemen.”
They weren’t far from home now. Fallen pillars of concrete served as bridges across the caverns below. Ahead were flickering lights and the tiny black shapes of people moving within a scooped-out crater in the side of a skyscraper. Already they could see the great pendulum arm swinging within, giving the settlement its name.
They had found the place a mere five years ago, and no one to this day could say what its purpose once was. A floor tapering down in a great valley to a central strip of flat ground big enough to host their entire population. The pendulum swung perpetually across the valley, and rather than work out why, the settlers quickly discovered they could harness its constant motion into clean energy. This was the only reason they would settle in such an exposed location, even though mechs and stray bullets and the goddamn Torrent could get them anywhere they went. It was just a waiting game here, with only the plan to run if calamity ever struck.
The cat folded itself easily into Desnum’s satchel. They entered the main strip and a small rickety market bustled with people wrapped in heavy bundles of rags and jackets, some masked, some with weapons, all huddled into themselves as if the person next to them would rob them without a thought. Fires burned in steel waste cans and some engines and other machinery had been overclocked to work as heaters, glowing and whirring threateningly at passers by. They always made Desnum nervous, though none had blown up yet. Old men sat on steel frames of benches and played games that Desnum had never learned how to play, using tokens and old bone shards and sometimes even a real pack of cards. Some stall owners cooked bugs and small obscure mammals to trade to the citizens while others stockpiled water and homebrewed medicines. A few had stalls filled with low-tech items and some weapons and trinkets, all brought back to The Clock by the elusive and apparently brutal Scavelect, Mihaly. Desnum had never actually spoken to the man, but he was a legend in their colony. He had contracts with everyone in The Clock, and always delivered. People said that the reason he could achieve this is because he was prepared to do something no one else was, and that was to fight. He would actually take part in the insane conflicts around the city while out on his scavenging expeditions, and used his incredible strength and skill to bring home the good stuff.
Some desperate souls tugged at his and Elys’ sleeves in want of sales and handouts. Desnum felt disgust at them, and suddenly for himself. He thought of the three on the roof, how desperate they must have been. How ridiculously they fell. This place is chaos, he thought.
They had time to eat, change and hide the cat before McNeill sent a young, anaemic-looking girl to fetch them. Mihaly was sitting across from the project manager when they arrived, wearing his massive leather jacket with its full-zip hood pulled back to reveal a head of shaggy black hair above a scarred and haggard face. He smiled at Desnum, revealing blackened teeth. He left without a word to anyone and Mcneill told them to sit.
The project manager commended Elys and Desnum for a successful run. The data acquired from Node DC-4/924 had proved invaluable to the colony. He joked that their efforts were looking to rival that of Mihaly. He then nervously glanced to make sure his door was fully closed.
McNeill then went on to say that while (thanks to them) they had enough server power to run data streams through the bowels of this entire city should they so desire, the problem now was that they were running out of water. Elys would be taking the boy on water runs, starting tomorrow. He understood that water runs were more gruelling and dangerous work, and that Desnum was still wildly inexperienced, though needs unfortunately must, and they would indeed be required to begin water duty, starting tomorrow.
Elys said almost nothing the entire meeting. When they left the office he muttered a couple of expletives under his breath before returning to his usual light, stoic demeanour and saying simply, “...so, water duty.”