Jak Koke: Clockwork asylum

Burnout hit the black water and should have died. Water like duracrete. His hot metal casing warped under the impact, and Lethe knew that much of his cybernetics were destroyed. But whether it was Lethe's presence or the Dragon Heart, the man's spirit decided to stay with his remaining flesh.

As Burnout's body sank into the depths of the Snake River, Lethe panicked once again, not in fear for his own existence, but because he couldn't imagine anyone finding Burnout's body in time to get the Heart to Thayla at the magical spike.

The memory of Thayla came to him as he sank. He remembered when he had first awakened and been named by her, the goddess of the light and the song. Thayla had stopped her singing to speak to him. A song so perfect, so painfully wonderful that he could not move.

She had stood on the hard, cracked ground of a stone outcropping, framed by a colorless sky. A deep chasm surrounded her on three sides, the chasm dropping away in front of her precipitously. Lethe had no concept of the depth of this chasm; he could not see the bottom. The outcropping thickened into a broad arc as it stretched away behind them, widening ever so slightly as it extended. Until finally it connected with solid land in the distance.

"This outcropping is the result of unnaturally high magic," Thayla had said. "The Chasm, here, is the gap between our worlds and those of the… the…" She faltered, pain evident in her speech.

Lethe remembered looking out across the abyss. In the absence of Thayla's song, wind roared around them, throwing her hair across her face. The far side of the chasm was barely visible in the blowing distance, but Lethe could make out a similar cliff at the reaches of his perception. He could see a similar outcropping protruding toward them from the land on that side. Darkness clung to the distant cliff, and as Lethe looked across that space, revulsion rose inside him. A desperate nausea as he glimpsed the creatures writhing on the other side.

"I am here to prevent them from completing their bridge," Thayla continued. "They are evil and horrifying and more powerful than we can imagine. If they can finish the bridge, they will come in droves. And when they come, they will destroy everything they can touch. They will torture us. They will make us all do things…" Again her voice wavered.

Lethe shivered at her distress. Her voice was powerful even in shock.

Thayla took a breath and composed herself. "As the natural cycle of mana increases, the Chasm will grow narrower. But these outcroppings are unnatural-spikes above the normal mana level. The result of blood magic. Our worlds are not ready."

"But your singing…"

She smiled at him, the light beaming from her and warming him. "My song stops them. You see, they cannot stand to hear it, and my voice carries even across the Chasm."

Lethe knew it to be true: her song was the light.

"There are those on our side who are working to accelerate the completion of the bridge, those who are puppets of the Enemy and who are trying to hasten their coming. Look." She pointed back down the outcropping.

At first Lethe didn't see it because it was so small, a shadow among shadows. But when Thayla began to sing again, filling the world with light and beauty, a tiny blemish of darkness remained. It was almost insignificant, and it lasted only briefly, but Lethe had seen it-a flaw in her song.

"They have found one who can withstand the song," she said. "She is not strong enough to stay long, but I fear her strength will grow. And when it does, others will come. They will kill me."

Lethe's spirit sank as Thayla's song died away.

"Unless you stop them," she said.

"How?"

"You must find the great dragon called Dunkelzahn. He came to me not long ago and told me that I would not be able to hold off the Enemy's forces for longer than a few hundred years. He said they would find a weakness in my song. He said he needed more time.

"Dunkelzahn promised to create an item that would keep the Enemy from crossing over prematurely. The Dragon Heart."

Thayla bowed her head. "But that was some time ago, and the dark spot is growing. I fear something has happened. Will you go and find Dunkelzahn? Will you bring the Dragon Heart to me?"

"I will," Lethe had said. "I promise."

Now, trapped inside Burnout's metal husk, sinking toward the cold heart of the river, Lethe wondered how he would be able to keep his promise. He couldn't move the cyberzombie and he had no one to help him.

Ryan Mercury certainly couldn't be trusted. Lethe had seen the human claim the Heart for his own. Mercury had succumbed to the power of the Heart; he had simply jettisoned any pretense of carrying out the quest Dunkelzahn had given him. He had refused to take the Dragon Heart to Thayla, and Lethe would never trust him again.

Perhaps the other gifted one, Nadja Daviar, could be convinced to help him get the Dragon Heart to Thayla. She had always helped him in the past. Yes, he thought, I will go to her.

Lethe willed himself to flee Burnout's body.

Nothing happened. He couldn't move.

By the goddess! What is going on?

Lethe kept sinking inside the unconscious metal corpse. Then he noticed a spectral mesh of magic, barely visible. Like a gossamer web of fine strands, the mesh held Burnout's spirit to his body. The web kept Burnout's spirit from leaving the too little flesh. It was part of the cybermancy that allowed the man to be alive even with all this hardware.

Now that same magic blocked Lethe from getting out.

Lethe struggled, exerting all his power against the magic that held him. The gossamer strands stretched and bulged, but they would not break. Lethe was trapped.

An inmate inside this metal asylum. This clockwork prison. 20 August 2057

The air in Hells Canyon blew hot and dry even in first rays of the morning sun. The fiery ball crested the peaks behind him as Ryan Mercury walked along the edge of the cliff face. The sun battered down on him with its relentless scorching blaze.

Ryan stood on the edge of the Assets Incorporated airstrip, a hidden ledge of rock cut into the eastern cliff face of Hells Canyon-deep in Salish-Shidhe Council lands on the border of what used to be Oregon and Idaho. The compound included a modest underground shelter, an old corrugated metal hangar, and some ramshackle storage sheds. Ryan had commissioned the expansion of the underground facilities, but so far only the command room had been completed. There was a lot of work to be done.

He looked over the edge of the cliff and down at the thin line of the Snake River a thousand meters below, taking a long drink from his water bottle and forcing himself to chew a soy protein bar. He wasn't hungry, and his stomach hurt so bad he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to hold anything down.

Ryan was two meters and 130 kilos of well-conditioned muscle, magically enhanced and accelerated flesh. No cyber, no bio. He swallowed, knowing he needed to eat in order to keep up his strength.

The buzz of Dhin's drones came to his ears. The ork rigger was remote-piloting the surveillance vehicles, scouring the canyon floor. Burnout must be down there, Ryan thought, and he must have the Dragon Heart with him. But why can't we find him?

Ryan and the Assets Incorporated team had been searching for the cyberzombie's body and the Dragon Heart for almost three days, with no progress. It was as if they had simply disappeared, swallowed into astral space or disintegrated into their constituent atoms and blown away in the hot wind.

The memory of his final battle with Burnout flashed into Ryan's mind. The colors of sunset, the sounds of wind. The canyon walls glowed deep crimson in his memory, and Burnout's chromed parts reflected the blood-colored light.