“Sorry. Just hold on.” The halfling nodded toward the buckling stone wall and the thing picking up speed toward them. “Because that’s happening.”
Tate’s mouth dropped open. “I didn’t know the walls could do that.”
A cracking boom echoed through Peridosh’s wide miles-long chamber. Shouts of surprise followed as magicals ducked and tried to find the source. The ground trembled again, making everyone stumble into each other.
“What’s happening?” Ember shouted.
“I don’t know, but we need to stay away from the wall!” The rumbling stopped before the halfling finished yelling. Her last words echoed in the sudden silence, and everyone in the marketplace froze in anticipation.
“Wait.” Cheyenne cocked her head. “Do you guys hear that?”
“No.” Tate turned to study her. “But that doesn’t mean shit, does it?”
“Shh.” The halfling stared at the wall where the churning thing behind it had stopped moving. The rumble grew until it doubled in intensity. It’s coming from everywhere.
“What the fuck are you morons doing?” Bhandi stumbled toward them, swinging her arms from side to side as she turned with each step. “I thought we were getting’ outta this—”
“Christ, she went hard tonight.” Yurik shook his head and pointed at the troll woman. “Hey, just stay right there.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Bhandi staggered forward and finally noticed the devastation in the wall across the tunnel. “Did you do this?”
The rumbling grew louder, and Yurik nodded. “Yeah, I hear it now.”
“You can’t just go around blowing up walls like some wall-blowing Rambo party.”
“Bhandi, get away from the wall.”
“Bite me!”
Dislodged pebbles jumped around on the stone floor as the trembling picked up again. Ember wheeled toward the opposite wall, and Cheyenne rolled her eyes before leaping to grab Bhandi’s arm. “Get away from the wall.”
“That’s my arm, Goth drow!” Bhandi whirled and wrenched herself out of Cheyenne’s grip before lifting both fists in front of her. She squinted with one eye and couldn’t keep her fists from swaying wildly in front of her face as she stepped toward the wall. “I’ll fight you for it.”
“The hell you will.” Cheyenne leaned away from the troll woman’s sloppy swing and snatched Bhandi’s arm again. “You need to—”
The other side of the tunnel exploded behind them with a crack of stone and a thick plume of dust and pebbles. Cheyenne whirled and found the source of all the rumbling, clicking, and thin metallic squeaking. Two-thirds up the wall of the cavern, a cone-shaped piece of metal spun as it pierced through the last bit of the stone and cement that had been hiding it.
“What moron thought it was a good idea to dig their way down here?” a magical shouted gruffly from the crowd.
“That’s probably one of Surgil’s fucked-up inventions.”
Low chuckles filtered across the crowd as the magicals realized the threat wasn’t nearly as bad as they’d expected.
An ear-splitting screech of metal on metal came from the digging machine poking out of the wall. The corkscrew nose stopped spinning and split apart like a hatching egg. Six long, glistening black appendages like unfolding crowbars burst out of the wall beside the split face of the machine. The cavern filled with a desperate scrabbling sound before the contraption pulled itself free from the wall and dropped almost a dozen yards to the ground with a clang.
“That doesn’t look like Surgil’s work.”
The black legs heaved the metallic body off the ground, and the machine creature hissed and clicked, gears grinding as silver lights blinked on and off behind the split digging nose.
Cheyenne stared at the thing that clacked warily against the stone floor, scuttling back and forth like a confused crab. It’s looking for something.
An electric green light bloomed in the center of the split digging cone, then the machine launched a ball of churning green fire into the center of the crowd.
Screams went up from the gathered magicals, followed by rallying shouts of anger and surprise. Peridosh’s wide avenue filled with flashing lights as the magicals unleashed attack spells in return. Blue flames and crackling red spheres and a barrage of metal shards blasted the black and silver carapace of the machine standing at the end of the tunnel.
A series of harsh, grating clicks rose from the contraption’s split cone, then it rose on the six nimble metal legs and scrambled toward the gathered crowd.
“What the hell is it?”
“Bring it down!”
“Hey, watch out!”
The machine ignored all the attacks as it reached the first row of tables along the left side of the avenue. It skittered forward, lifting tables and booths and carts with its thin metal legs and flinging them aside.
“Ember!” Cheyenne darted toward her friend, whose chair was pinned between a broken table and a metal shelving unit that had fallen behind her.
The machine-creature raced toward the fae, flipping random items in all directions. It caught one of its legs beneath Ember’s chair and tossed her aside before Cheyenne thought to slip into her drow speed. When she did, she wrapped her arms around her friend and took Ember to the other side of the avenue, setting her gently down beside a stack of crated supplies. Then she stepped back into the center of the wide walkway and hurtled black spheres at the creature.
Cheyenne’s magic blasted into the side of the machine suspended within her drow speed. The sparks flared in real-time across the metallic surface, then a series of clicks and squeaks and whirring mechanisms rose from the contraption. Black and silver lights flashed within the black metal carapace, and the machine’s sharp, flexible legs clacked against the stone floor in enhanced speed until the split-open digger-beak pointed directly at the halfling.
Her eyes widened. “Shit.”
The machine leaped toward her, another round of green flames building from some mechanism within its inorganic core. Cheyenne sent the black tentacles of her magic lashing from her fingertips with one hand and curled them around two of the thing’s glinting legs. She managed to
