Come here, Wolf.
The voice cut through the static in my head. Smooth. Metallic. Solid.
Aria.
I looked at her.
She was the only thing in this grey wasteland that lookedreal. She walked in the center of us, her gait slightly uneven because of the metal leg, but relentless. The light of her markings cut through the gloom, pulsing with a rhythm that was faster, sharper, than any of ours.
She reached out a hand, the flesh one, toward me.
I moved to her instantly. I didn't think about it; I was a magnet, and she was the North Pole. I pressed my massive head into her palm.
The contact was electric.
It wasn't magic, exactly. It wasmemory.
Her skin smelled of sulfur from the forge, but underneath that, it smelled of her. When she touched me, the static in my brain cleared. I remembered that my name was Flynn. I remembered that I liked knives, and bad jokes, and the way the light hit her hair in the morning.
"Stay with me," she whispered. Her voice had that strange double-tone now, human and harmonic. "Don't chase the shadows, Flynn. They aren't real."
They sound real,I projected back, feeling the shame curl in my gut. I was the scout. I was supposed to be the eyes and ears. Instead, I was jumping at dust motes.
"They're just echoes," she said, scratching behind my ear, right in the spot that made my hind leg twitch. "Look at me. I'm real."
She didn't stop walking. She couldn't. We realized hours ago, or maybe minutes, time seemed broken here, that if we stopped, the floor started to eat us.
Aria moved from me to Kaelen, but she didn't coddle the Dragon, instead she smacked his flank with her metal hand.CLANG.
Kaelen jerked, his head snapping up, his nostrils flaring.
"Eyes up, Kaelen," she ordered. "You are the Vanguard. If you drag your tail, I'm going to step on it."
Kaelen huffed, a puff of weak grey smoke escaping his jaws. But his eyes cleared. The milky film receded, revealing the golden slit-pupil. He grumbled, a low vibration that traveled through the floor, but he lifted his tail.
She moved to the rear, dropping back to walk beside Thane.
The Bear was struggling. He had sunk to his knees in a patch of particularly soft iron. He had stopped trying to pull himselfout. He was just staring at the horizon, waiting to become geology.
Aria grabbed a handful of his fur. She didn't try to pull him out; she wasn't strong enough to move a Titan-Bear. Instead, she leaned her forehead against his massive shoulder.
"I need a wall, Thane," she said softly. I could hear her because my ears were tuned to her frequency like a homing beacon. "The wind is cold here. I need you to block it."
There was no wind. The air was dead.
But Thane blinked. The concept ofprotectionwas etched deeper into him than gravity. He grunted, a sound of immense effort. Muscles bunched under his fur, rolling like boulders under a tarp. He ripped his legs free of the iron muck, shattering the crust, and took a step. Then another. He positioned himself on her left, blocking the non-existent draft.
She was herding us. She was a sheepdog moving four monsters across a wasteland, keeping us from wandering off into oblivion.
And it was killing her.
I could smell it.
Under the scent of the forge and the sweat, there was something new. Something sharp and acidic. It smelled like ozone leaking from the sky before a storm. It smelled like stress fractures.
I fell back a few paces, letting Kaelen take the lead, and watched her.
Every time she touched us, every time she shoved a memory into our feral brains to keep us human, the light in her metal arm flared blindingly bright, then dimmed to a dull, throbbing purple. She stumbled more often. Her breath hitched in her chest, a rattling sound that scared the hell out of me.
