Брендон Сандерсон - Cytonic

Scud. I had hundreds. They might be valuable, but that deal felt like a bargain. “I’m in,” I said. “I need information about this place. And I need to find…something called the Path of Elders?”

He cocked his head. “Where did you hear of that?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Ah, espionage, is it! Well, I shall keep my tongue then, Spensa Nightshade. I know of the Path of Elders. Following it leads one to some of the first entrances into the nowhere, left by the most ancient cytonics. Traversing it won’t be easy, but—”

He was interrupted by the sound of branches snapping in the forest. The ground began thumping.

“I thought you said it would go to sleep,” I said.

“It…should have.” Chet turned his head toward the noises. “I say. It is coming this way, isn’t it? Never fear, I can tame the beast again. It is not…”

He trailed off. A coldness emanated from the same direction. A kind of…chill that penetrated my soul. And a sound reverberated in my head. No words. Just a low hiss, accompanied by an intense wave of hatred.

“I think,” he said, “perhaps we should be away. With haste.”

“Agreed,” I said, jumping to my feet.

Chet took the lead, faster this time, and I followed as best I could. He slid across a fallen log, then hit the ground and moved with a light, quick step, ducking through a group of fronds. M-Bot zipped after him. I slid over the log awkwardly, then stumbled through the same plants, barely staying upright.

We fortunately hit a patch of less dense jungle, letting us pick up our pace further.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “I’ll note a nine from you on the rating for that insult of mine. Great, with a little room to improve. How does that sound?”

I grunted. The noises behind us were getting closer.

“Chet said that thing eats electricity,” M-Bot said. “It…won’t eat me, will it, Spensa?”

I just focused on trying to keep up with Chet, who waved me forward, then hurried through the underbrush. I barely avoided tripping.

“You know,” M-Bot said, his volume turned down low, “it’s rather inconvenient that you humans need your aspiration apparatus in order to communicate. Often when you’re working hard, you also have important things to say. But you can’t say them, or risk interrupting your oxygen intake.”

“Point?” I asked, puffing as I ducked under some vines.

“Oh, no point,” M-Bot said, doing a loop-de-loop through the vines. “Merely making small talk. With a small voice. Ha! You know, I’ll bet that given some more time to evolve, your species would have fixed that problem with your lungs. I can appreciate making use of existing hardware and giving it a new function, but there are other areas of your body that make noise when air is pushed through them. Wouldn’t it be so much more efficient if you could communicate that way instead?”

It was best not to encourage him when he got like this, though I was happy to hear him acting more like his old self. When I’d first found him in the drone, slow of speech and feeling betrayed, I worried I’d never get him back. Then after his bout of angry emotions…well, hearing him making fun of human biology was a relief.

The sounds from behind us grew even louder. I charged forward and met up with Chet, who had paused to wait for me. He took off again as soon as I reached him.

“Something’s wrong,” he said quietly. “The grig shouldn’t be following. This is bad, Spensa Nightshade. Very bad…”

A loud snap sounded behind us. It was closer now. Too close. Terrifyingly close.

Don’t look, my warrior heritage whispered to me.

I looked anyway.

The thing was back there, moving with an incongruent grace. It slid its mouth-neck among the trees, whiskers along its length feeling the way for its larger body to follow. The eyes on its torso at the base of its trunk were now glowing white. Just like the eyes of the wounded alien. And the delvers.

I felt the cold sensation increase, a pressure on my mind, as if it was reaching toward me, searching for me. It knew me.

“Chet!” I shouted, turning toward him. Somehow I’d managed to avoid tripping. “It’s right there !”

He leaped through a line of shrubs. I followed and broke out of the jungle, then pulled up hastily as I realized I’d not only reached the end of the trees, but the end of the land itself.

An expanse of open air extended before me, broken by distant masses of earth and stone that were floating there, idly drifting. We hadn’t been in an ordinary jungle, but one that grew on a giant floating chunk of ground.

And there was no path forward that I could see.

Chet immediately took off to the right, running along the edge of our fragment of land. “This way!”

I scrambled after him but risked a glance back. I was rewarded with an encouraging sight: though there was a meter of open space between the jungle and the cliff, the monster was wider than that. So while we could run on a straightaway, it had to maneuver around trees and tangles of foliage, its trunk-mouth-nose thing wagging angrily.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, hovering along beside me, “I am not enthused by my first experiments in self-determination. My chronometer details that since my awakening, I’ve spent a frightening amount of my time lost, pouting, or being chased by interdimensional monsters.”

I nodded but kept running, trying to save my breath.

He zipped out a little farther ahead of me. “If you were to rate my mastery of emotions on a scale of one to ten, what would you give me?”

I grunted.

“I’ll pretend that was a three,” M-Bot said. “I know it wasn’t optimal, but for a newly awakened robot, you have to admit that I did a fine job. In fact, all things considered, I think I deserve higher than a three. I feel bad that you’d rate me so low, Spensa.”

I glanced over my shoulder again. The beast had fallen behind, but I could still see those eyes glowing on either side of its trunk.

What… I felt the word pushed into my mind. What have you…

I redoubled my efforts anyway, and with a burst of speed caught up to Chet. “Where,” I managed to say. “Are. We. Going. ”

He pointed ahead. “Another fragment up there. You see it? I’m hoping we can leap from this one to that one, and thereby escape the beast.”

Tons of these fragments hovered about, all on the same plane, at the same elevation. Like they were scattered pieces of a puzzle on an invisible table. Ahead, a tan chunk of ground was drifting near, separated from our chunk by only a few meters. Seeing it highlighted to me that there wasn’t much rock under my feet. Did sections of these masses break off? Was it dangerous to be this close to the edge?

We ran anyway. And as we drew closer, I saw that the distance between our fragment and the tan one was larger than it had looked. Clearly farther than a person could jump.

Chet ran beside me, and his expression fell as he obviously realized the same problem. “Miss Nightshade,” he said, glancing toward the monster, “I fear I might have led us both to our dooms. Would you prefer to try to hide in the forest or stand and fight?”

“Neither,” I said, feeling that beast’s mind pressing against mine. “M-Bot? Want to earn a ten out of ten on saving my life?”

“Ooooh,” M-Bot said. “Ten is way higher than three. I mean, depending on your frame of reference, of course.”

“Go attach your light-line to that other fragment,” I said, panting, “then come back! Meet us by that boulder up ahead, where the two fragments are closest to one another!”