When I woke up, it was still dark. This time of year, that wasnât too rare, but from what I could tell through the fabric of my tent and the slim gaps, it wasnât the murky blue of pre-dawn, but still the inky black of night. I couldnât hear anything going on, so I figured it was just a random case of waking up in the night, and rolled over to sleep again.
Until I felt it.
A vibration in the earth; faint but noticeable. It lasted for a couple of seconds, but it was a heavy, prolonged feeling, like the intense bass of a club speaker. I got up into a crouch, straining my ears. From in my bunker I couldnât see above the surface, and in the 20 seconds or so of stillness that followed, I wondered if Iâd imagined it, or if it had just been a one-off of some kind.
Thoom.
Maybe not the clearest onomatopoeia, but there it was again. The heavy shaking throughout the earth. I was wide awake now, hastily cramming everything into my bag. I had packed light, mostly because I wasnât strong enough to carry lots, and some tactical cramming of spare clothes and yanking of straps had everything more or less fitting.
Thoom.
That was closer, I thought. I pulled my tent town and roughly attached it to the outside of my bag. I checked all my pockets, pouches and the like for everything I felt like Iâd need, and made sure I had a firm grasp on my Payload Delivery System (the thing I mentioned earlier for shooting magic? Iâm going to be calling it the PDS for now).
All of that done in record time, I-
Thoom.
Shit, definitely closer. I could hear rustling and jostling outside as well, indicating that the others were awake, and ruining my chances of slipping away unnoticed. I peered around the âdoorwayâ, and though I couldnât see very well, the remains of a fire theyâd lit was enough to let me see them tearing down tents and packing bedrolls as well.
Thoom.
Like a gang of meerkats, they all looked up at once, heads swivelling in different directions looking out into the darkness. Tove nudged Alf, and I could see her pointing as she muttered something to him I couldnât make out. I craned my neck, following the line of her finger to whatever she was seeing. It was clearly up in the night sky somewhere, but all I could see were stars.
Thoom.
The others continued to pack, those who finished first now drawing weapons or helping the others. For her part, I saw Tove pull out a long, beaded piece of cord which she began to fiddle with, folding it over, pulling pieces of it taught, intertwining it between her fingers. In a lot of ways it was like a catâs cradle. Occasionally one of the beads pulsed with a soft, white-blue light, and I watched as she held it up, peering through it, looking at different parts of the sky. Finally, she shook her head and put the cord away, rejoining the others.
Thoom.
Still closer. The shaking was more powerful than ever, these short bursts that were now threatening my balance. I had no idea what was going on, but I needed to know. They were all deliberating now, debating their course of action, and though I couldnât hear everything, it was clear that there was a split between a) go and investigate, b) flee, or c) stay and hope this moved on. For my part, there was only one real option. I reached into one of the many pockets I had, and withdrew a slim wooden bead in my left hand.
It had taken me a long time to create my organisational system, and even longer to sew all the new pockets and pouches that I needed to keep it functional. Even longer again had been the process of getting all the movements automatic, but I now had a muscle memory that could find what I needed, when I needed it. As an aside, I will never forgive the fashion industry for what it has done to pockets on womenâs clothing.
I willed magic, my soul, down my arm, into unfeeling wood and metal, and felt in return the sensation of energy expended being pushed back into me, converted into something new by the channels carved into the bead. This was a fairly simple piece of magic, one that made me faster - faster on the scale of turning a walking pace into a jogging one, not being able to run at mach 3. It still felt like having caffeine injected into your veins though.
Thoom.
It was really now or never. I slipped the bead back into the right pocket, and dashed out into the darkness. There wasnât much point trying to be sneaky, I was carrying far too much for that. It was fast or quiet, and I was choosing fast. I clanked out of camp, my hastily-packed bag jangling nicely, and I could immediately hear the hue and cry going up behind me. Fairly certain I heard words like âstopâ and âwaitâ, but I wasnât here for that. As I got to the edge of hearing distance, I faintly caught âwho the fuck was that?â and briefly remembered I hadnât disguised myself. That wouldnât normally have been as much of a problem at this time of day, but everyone there was capable of seeing much better in the dark than me. Oh well, problem for later, if ever.
I considered expending a trivial amount of magic to provide a bit of light, but it wouldnât shine far at all, so would be more like a beacon for anything looking towards me, rather than illuminating where I was trying to go. It seemed much more prudent to just try and follow where the noise was coming from at any rate.
Thoom.
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Right on time, I thought. It was almost concussive in the sheer volume, and I actually had to take a knee momentarily. As I did so, I could just about make out the ground in front of me dropping away slightly, forming the bowl of one of the hundreds of craters dotted around this landscape.
Being up close to it, I could see that this one had something a bit off about it. Iâd been making my career out of looking at weird things in the floor, so I had a grounding in the fundamentals. The lip of the crater was very steep, practically perpendicular, and the same went for the bottom of the crater, flattening out almost instantly, so that the whole thing looked more like a wide cylinder had been carved out the earth than a typical explosion crater.
Thoom.
If I wasnât still kneeling, I would probably have fallen over. My head snapped up, looking in the direction it seemed to be coming from. I couldnât see far, but the skies were brighter back in those days, and there was just enough starlight to see by. There were more craters in every direction, but ahead of me, maybe 20 metres or thereabouts, was another of these shallow depressions, about a metre deep and 5 in diameter. Neither of them were perfectly circular, but staying low, I scampered over to the one ahead of me, and gave it a cursory examination. Identical. I looked forwards again. There was another.
Thoom.
The sound hit at the same time as clarity did. Worriedly, my eyes rose from ground level, looking above the horizon and recalling what Tove had been doing back at their camp. In the sky, 2 beads of light, I could now see, were not static stars, but swaying lamplights, fixed at an impossible height. I knew about giants (even if Iâd never seen one) but I knew that they didnât live here, and they certainly werenât that big.
Thoom.
I froze now, in a three-point kneel with a hand on the ground, and the other tightening on my staff so fiercely I could feel it shaking. I felt like a sprinter in the blocks, but one with the starting gun pointed at them instead of the sky. I still couldnât see what this was, but I knew definitively that it was vast, and obviously getting closer. Anything that could take steps this big could certainly outrun me, especially over long-distances, and if it was moving at night then presumably it could see at night too, giving it another edge.
Thoom.
Shit. There was no time for agonising and anguishing. I only had one real option: get closer. That probably sounds like the worst option, so let me explain. I had no idea what this was, if it was hostile, or if it cared about me at all. If it did, I was pretty much fucked. This thing had to be able to see, I assumed, and Denofell is a big open plain, blasted by wind and war. There are no natural features to duck behind to break line of sight, and on the uneven ground Iâd be liable to break my ankle moving at any speed in the dark. So, I couldnât run, and I couldnât hide. Fighting it was also out of the question, but if it was going to squash me, the running would just mean I died tired.
So, obviously, forwards it was. Iâll quit the thoom-ing here - I feel like Iâve got the point across.
The lights were getting more distinct as I got closer, and throwing out just enough illumination for me to see a bit of the face I realised it had. There was a sheen around the lamps, a glowing ring that spoke of metal - of brass. A thrill ran through me at that, and suddenly I was hyper aware of my prosthetic. It didnât matter that there were no nerves there, I could feel it anyway. It was psychosomatic, but that didnât make it less real. The sensation of my soul swirling through metal; of feeling the cold of the brass and the cold of the night, and a tingling, buzzing feeling from my right forearm down, a cross between pins and needles, and a hundred static shocks. My mouth had gone completely cotton-wool dry, and the cavernous pulsing of my heart in my chest was every bit as powerful, every bit of body-shaking as these titanic footfalls â and they were synchronising. I could feel my heartbeat falling into rhythm with this titan. Not a 1 to 1 match of course, but whenever that earthshaking boot came down, so too beat my heart. It might have been my breathing, it might have been a coincidence, and I might just have been making it up in retrospect, but whatever the case, I could feel my resolve, my conviction, growing firmer. I didnât need to approach. It was already coming this way. So I waited.
Iâd like to say that with conviction came calm, but that wouldnât be true. I was still terrified, but whatever the case, Iâd see it through regardless. My brain was racing still, and now that Iâd slowed down I could see my breath fogging in the air, the condensation shifting from plain grey to having the faintest tinge of amber, stained by the distant but closing lamplight eyes. Beacon-bright they were, direction focused by their housings and leaving me feeling increasingly vulnerable, and also increasingly insignificant. Sure, this could crush me with no difficulty whatsoever, but would it care to? Did my existence factor into its decision-making any more than a mouse crossing my path would factor into mine? Weâre all used to being the centre of our own worlds; having the capability to shape and sway others, but how could something on this sheer scale bring itself to think about me? Even between the tallest Goliath and the shortest Gnome there would be more equivalence. Common languages, shared experiences, ability to reach above knee height. Hel, even a gnome to a giant would be closer.
There was something unsettling about that revelation; a bone-deep sense of impotence I fought to shake off. I mostly succeeded, but still⦠mostly. It was like standing in front of a block of flats and expecting it to care about you. Unlikely, verging on insane.
I sat down on the lip of a crater, noting as I did that my feet didnât even touch the floor, and just stared at it. To be blunt, it was beautiful. Its form was sculpted and perfected in the way that only a machineâs could be; every aspect purposeful, whether that purpose was function or form. The face was smooth, unbroken by nose, mouth, or ears, elevating it to something almost alien, a look that would smack of crude facsimile if it wasnât so flawless and well-executed. The overlaid, lobster-like discs that formed the neck were technologically revolutionary, giving it the range of movement to tilt as well as rotate the head, and they flowed seamlessly, both around each other and into the collar and shoulders. Thick pauldrons rested on each shoulder, an interesting choice since the whole thing was technically armoured anyway, but which gave it a broad profile and martial, soldier-like form. There was too little light for me to see any lower than the top of its chest, but I could see that it was shaped with a central protrusion, a bevelled front like the prow of a ship parting all before it.
To my mind, something had taken the human form, my form, and refined it. Improved it. I was entranced, mind awhirl with ideas and only able to tear my eyes away to look at my own prosthetic and compare it unfavourably. My gaze roamed across its body, studying the illuminated bits and guessing at the specifics of the rest of the silhouette. Metal content notwithstanding, there was something magnetic about it, a force so spiritually powerful that it felt physical, and which compelled me. Compelled me to look, to learn, to approach, to understand.