18 – Just Half of a Tank

Paco walked ahead with his head held low. He wasn’t sniffing for a scent. He simply kept low to the ground. Ashley watched his tail drag in the dirt as she turned the implications over in her mind.

“A tank is… how to explain it? It’s like a very big chariot, I suppose, but encased in heavy armor plates and fitted with long cannons. Armies use them in major conflicts,” Ashley said, her voice cut through the damp silence of the tunnel.

They continued descending deeper into the cavern. The last remnants of the forest light had long since been swallowed by the encroaching dark. Ashley kept her gaze fixed on the glowing, mechanical grooves pressed into the earth.

“A what?” Simon asked.

“Simon, come on. I’m certain you understand what a chariot is.”

“Yes. That is not my point,” the priest replied. “I don’t understand how a metal box pulled by horses could be of any use in battle. What happens if someone kills the horses? I suppose it can still fire, but it sounds terribly impractical.”

“No,” Ashley sighed. “There are no horses. It moves… using magic. Yes, let’s call it fuel magic.”

“I have never heard of such things. Is it the same variety as dark magic?”

“The things you do not know, Simon, would fill a library,” Aury said. A genuine, slightly teasing smile touched the edges of his porcelain mask.

“Oh, really? So you have seen one of these tanks yourself?” Simon countered.

“No. Not exactly,” Aury replied, pointing down at the heavy, notched tracks indented into the earth. “I have seen constructs like trains fitted with armor plates, but those used metal rails. These tracks are entirely different.”

“Yes, the dwarven trains. I almost forgot about those; they run over and under the Edgeworld Mountains. They are powered by runes and steam. It must be something like that, probably,” Ashley concluded, though her voice lacked conviction.

“Dwarves, you say? That doesn’t look very dwarven to me.” Simon pointed toward a form slumped against the cavern wall, resting at the very edge of Aury’s glowing halo.

All three of them stopped.

First the scent reached Ashley: ozone, cold metal, and the acrid smell of burnt plastic. A chemical fragrance that had no business existing this far underground. Or, for that matter, anywhere in this world.

Then the shape loomed out of the darkness. Ashley’s mind took a long, frozen moment to process what she was looking at.

“What is that?” Aury asked in a hushed tone. “It resembles a human encased in metal, but significantly larger, and it has no legs.”

“A freaking mecha?” Ashley breathed, straining in disbelief.

“More words that mean nothing to me,” Simon grumbled. He shook his head slightly, never taking his eyes off the construct. “So that is a ‘tank human’, then?”

“No. Um… You know what? It does not matter.” Ashley waved her hand dismissively. “Let’s have a look.”

They all moved in carefully. As they closed the distance, the lights brought the figure into agonizingly sharp focus.

It looked like someone had taken the upper half of a mech, dropped it onto tank tracks, and forgotten to add the rest. Its head consisted of a flat base topped with a perfect sphere.

Two glass orbs served as eyes, emitting a flickering, intermittent light that mimicked a dying neon sign. The head was fused straight into broad, armored shoulders,with no neck at all.

The wide torso featured two arms with multiple hydraulic joints ending in wicked, sharpened picks.

A jagged hinge on the machine’s side groaned as a small maintenance door in the torso swung open.

Ashley peered inside, and a sudden spray of sparks, bright and intense like an oxy-hydrogen flame, burst out into the dark.

“Hello?” Ashley tried, her hand loose at her side, ready to cast a spell if the construct moved.

“I do not think it’s safe to wake it,” Simon said, halting his advance.

“Yes, I believe that thing is unwell. It’s vomiting fire,” Aury noted, his sword shifting in his grip. “Might it suffer from the same fever as the dragoness?”

“What are you blabbering about? That’s no beast. It’s just a shell,” Ashley said, stepping forward and raising her voice. “Hello? Is anybody home?”

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The sparks stopped instantly. From within the metal torso came the sound of panicked movement and the clatter of tools falling against a metal floor.

“No,” a voice replied. It was high-pitched and chittering, punctuated by a nervous squeak. “Go away!”

Ashley glanced back at her companions. Even Paco’s reptilian expression appeared perplexed.

“We don’t want any problems,” she called out. “We only need to proceed down.”

A long silence followed. Then, a brown, fuzzy muzzle appeared at the edge of the opening.

The creature wore thick, round glasses crafted from murky, bottle-green lenses. Behind the frames, a rounded mass of fur stared at her, with only a vivid pink nose peeking out from the fluff.

“You cannot go through. Sorry,” the creature said, using a pudgy hand to brush the fur from his face.

“And why is that? We have business down there.”

A sharp click signaled a lever being pulled. The mecha’s rounded eyes, identical in shape to the creature’s glasses, erupted with light, flooding the entire cavern in a sickly green tinge.