They followed a familiar path into the foothills from the plains that led to the long, narrow canyon where Alderok Vektro had ambushed Glissa days before-from her perspective. It had not changed much, except for the occasional silver needle spire. There was more tree growth, but not much else.
She couldn’t say the same for Taj Nar. They had purposefully avoided flying too close to the fallen leonin city, and even from miles away it had been easy for Glissa to see why. The gleaming silver and white parapets of the city walls looked as if they had been melted by some great heat, and from a distance resembled grasping claws clutching at the distant moons. What was left of the city interior was little more than a burned-out shell of mangled leonin architecture. The palace was entirely gone, reduced to a mountain of rubble in the center of it all. Curiously, one of the odd needle spires punctured the rubble to pierce the sky above.
The mystery of the spires played in the back of her mind. They reminded her of something, and she couldn’t quite pin down what.
Instead of dwelling on the needle towers, which Bruenna had already said she knew little about, the elf girl asked the mage why Yert had not pushed the Dross forward to swallow the ruins of Taj Nar as well. Bruenna admitted she wasn’t sure. For some reason the mage was tight-lipped about the fall of Taj Nar or the details of how she found Glissa. Too much to go into, the mage told her. Later, when they got to Krark-Home.
“We need to drop down into that draw up ahead,” Bruenna said. “Helps keep the spy eyes from finding the exact entrance we’re using today.”
“Right,” Glissa said and followed the mage as she swooped between the steep iron walls lining the canyon trail. Bruenna pointed to a few specific greenish shrubs clinging to the sides of the walls. Glissa examined one more closely and saw a goblin in mottled green armor perched within the leaves, holding a short-bow trained on the Bruenna.
“Get down!” Glissa shouted and launched herself forward to push Bruenna out of harm’s way. The pair nearly crashed into a needle spire that appeared abruptly in front of them as they rounded the bend to avoid the goblin’s shot, but Glissa dodged the smooth silver surface at the last second.
“Are you crazy?” Bruenna shouted.
“Goblins,” Glissa gasped and reached for her sword.
“Those are the guards,” Bruenna replied as they floated slowly up the canyon, the urgency to reach the base momentarily forgotten. “I told you, the defenses keep us safe for now. And the guards are part of the defenses.”
“But they were getting ready to attack,” Glissa said. “This is where Vektro ambushed us-”
“I didn’t know you had a problem with goblins,” Bruenna replied.
That stung. Suddenly Glissa recalled where she had been going when she was originally diverted to rescue the Neurok mage. “Slobad,” she whispered. “Five years … is he-?”
“I’m sorry,” Bruenna said. “Glissa, after we lost you, entering the interior to save one lone goblin-even Slobad-was deemed far too dangerous. You haven’t seen these beasts Memnarch has unleashed on us, Glissa. And from the few scouting missions that have been able to get down there, we know the interior is crawling with even more of them. He’s got an army just waiting to replace every construct that falls on the surface with three more.”
“So Slobad … he’d dead,” Glissa said simply. She didn’t voice the thought, but a part of her hoped he was dead. The alternative-five years of endless torture as the poor goblin waited for a rescue that could never come-was too horrific to consider.
Slobad hummed to himself as he worked. His primary awareness currently occupied millions of tiny, insect-sized constructs. The scuttling brickbugs were each no bigger than a fly, but had no wings and crawled over one another in a thick, tangled pile. From a distance, Slobad knew (since he could also look at the scene through the eyes of any one of a billion other artifact constructs on the surface) the pile of brickbugs looked like a writhing silver blob. With surprising speed, that blob began to narrow at the top to a point, which slowly rose out of the central silver mass, like a plant yearning for the light. But this was no plant. Thousands of brickbugs effortlessly piled up, one on top of the other, as the mass took on the distinctive unnatural shape of a long, straight, silver needle spire.
With a thought, Slobad ordered all the brickbugs in the writhing silver needle to lock their tiny claws together simultaneously. He sent a surge of serum energy along the great skeleton of the web, of which the needle spire was about to become a part. The effect was not particularly dazzling: The spire shimmered for a moment then became completely smooth and solid. The brickbugs were still there, but the Guardian’s artisan had fused their exoskeletons into a solid, near-impervious material that was over forty percent stronger than darksteel.
The web was nearly complete. Soon the master would emerge from hibernation and take his place on the ascension platform, and Slobad would be rewarded.
Rewarded? Slobad’s a happy slave. A machine. He’s gonna change your oil, huh? Or were you gonna just walk out on your own two-oh yeah, never mind.
Slobad ignored the voice. He’d gotten quite good at ignoring things over the last few years. Pain, for one. A part of his mind, a clinical subdivision now permanently connected to a nearby myr, knew that his body was practically useless. His arms and legs had long since been removed to prevent fatal infection-something he had been forced to handle himself with his memnoid builder constructs and no anasthetic, thank you very much-and his sagging grey skin hung over a distended, malnourished belly and jutting ribs. His head looked like a skull covered in melted rust. His deformed jaw, repeatedly battered by Malil whenever the metal man felt the urge, hung open and rested at a twisted angle on his sunken chest.
A dozen pink crystals pressed against his skin, sending thin, steady streams of serum energy into his withered form and his still-vibrant brain-the only part of Slobad that had not become a mockery of its former self in the last five years. Fortunately for Slobad, he didn’t need food or water anymore. He now subsisted entirely on a dwindling supply of serum. He had a sneaking suspicion that Malil had been dipping into it lately, but he had yet to catch one of the metal men, even with the myr linked to his mind. Whatever the case, the serum would keep him going until the last strut was fitted into the web, and then it would run out. The great structure now spread from the rebuilt Panopticon to fill much of the open space in the interior, and lacked only a few key connections.
Once those were in place Slobad would rest, at long last.
Die, you mean, the voice sneered inside his head. It sneered a lot lately. He pulled his attention away from the pipefitter constructs and let his subconscious take over their basic operations, which didn’t require his full attention. Instead he focused inward on something he’d almost forgotten about.
A bitter, black little ball of self. The goblin he used to be, before the Guardian made Slobad his creature. You know where this leads. Been ignoring me too long.
No, Slobad thought, done what I must. The master-
Listen to yourself, huh? Sound like elf. Or vedalken. Or nim. The master, the master. You do not serve the master! Slobad’s old self raged. You are Slobad. You are no servant. You not remember, huh? He did this to you. Crab-legs. You got worms in the noggin. Little worms that spread your mind all over the world. Worms stringing you up to those memnoids, and myr, and who knows what else? Memnarch turned you into a toolbox. And turned your brain to mush, huh?
I don’t know, Slobad confessed, and he felt unfamiliar painful twinges on either side of his temple.
Trust me, the goblin’s old self said, It’s true. But I waited, huh? Waited for things to get close to the end. Hid myself in that big, messy, spread-out mind of yours. I knew she’d escape before the end.