Esgona and his mother just stood there, terrified at what Aryu had done. The machine’s scream ceased instantly as it got proper footing. Its head swung wildly, looking for Aryu like a top on a stick.
Aryu was in the same state as before, tense and ready for another attack. The story of its arrival no longer mattered. His fear was being overrun by adrenalin and the rush of what he'd just done. If he had cut through it so easily, he had all the faith in the world that he could overcome another assault.
The eyes, those crazy, unreal eyes, narrowed and locked in on Aryu’s own. “You are as stubborn and useless as the rest of your kind, boy!” The voice was not calm but was certainly more human than that scream had been. “You WILL come with me, or I will burn this village to the ground, with or without you in it!”
Suddenly Aryu regained focus and remembered the blast from the night before. His left shoulder seemed to ache at the sudden remembrance. This thing was not lying. It had the power. He lowered the sword, keeping it at the ready. “I'm willing to guess I could cut you down before you had the chance to give the order.”
“Perhaps that is true,” Aryu could almost see the smirk on the featureless face, “but what about the army that follows me, Aryu O'Lung'Singh? I doubt you could stop every one of us. You must know by now we are coming, and it is only by luck and our good graces we haven't destroyed your home like we have everything else.”
“I really doubt your graces are good.”
“Huh, good and bad are simply a matter of perspective, fool. All it took was this brief conversation to give the order. This town now has five minutes until it is destroyed, and that's an order that can only be deactivated by me.”
Aryu started to think it was a poor choice to antagonize this thing, his original fear returning as the situation played out.
“For the sake of the Gods, you idiot.” Esgona came forward, hobbling as he now did. “Haven't you done enough? Look at this place! Look at its people! Look at me! You! It was all because of you. We surrendered to them to keep us alive, you had damn well better do what...”
Aryu laid him out on the ground with the most forceful and emotion-fueled punch he could muster. Now was not the time to tolerate Esgona and his juvenile bickering. As an established and proven man of Tan Torna Qu-ay, this boy had said enough. Besides, telling Esgona to shut up was obviously a useless gesture.
Sia yelped as he went down, rushing to his aid as blood began pouring from his mouth and onto the ground. She held his hand while looking up at Aryu. “Please, Aryu, do as it says; we're the only place that's safe. That's why there are so many others here; they know we're safe if we have you. That's all they wanted. You and only you can stop this!”
Tears filled her eyes. Her straight black hair, which had started neatly pulled back, was falling around her face. So much seemed to have happened here, and Aryu didn't even know where to begin. He just stared at the two of them.
“Four minutes, Aryu. Make the most of them.” The chipper edge was returning to the thing’s voice as it regained command of the situation. It made Aryu sick.
He looked back to the thing silently, studying it, still as horrifying and grotesque as the first time he saw it, but now loathing mixed with his fears. “Why me? Why am I so important?”
“Well, I believe that would have been explained had you allowed us to do so in the first place. As it stands now, you have less than three and a half minutes to agree and come with me. I will not waste any more time on this matter. My life, as it were, is very much expendable. Yours, and those of your fellow villagers, however...”
Things just seemed to be going from bad to worse. Aryu, filling more and more with contempt as he did so, sheathed the sword and rested his wings against himself. A beaten man. “Where am I going?”
“Away, that's all that is important right now. Three minutes left.”
“I need to see my parents before we go.”
Clicking started again in its head, longer than previous times. “Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Toma and Riva O'Lung'Singh. No, you may not see them.”
Aryu’s blood boiled. “You had better give me a good reason why, or I'll have....”
“They're gone, Aryu,” said a quiet voice from below him. Sia was looking at him, sadness in her eyes. “They left the day after you and Johan. They never said anything to anyone. They simply vanished.”
Aryu was lost to emotion once more. There was too much to process. Pure, raw egotism emanated from the mechanical man. “The loss of your parents was unexpected, Aryu. We wanted them alive. We had many questions for them about you. But we cannot locate them. I can confirm that they are no longer in this village, and as such, you no longer have a familial connection to this place. The choice sounds simple, and the clock is ticking. Come with me and we may still find them.”
Aryu heard nothing past Sia’s first words. Without thinking, without feeling, without a moment’s thought to anything but the faces of his loving parents: the mustached face of his father or the wavy-haired gentleness of his beautiful mother. His first instinct was that it was lying, but that only made Aryu madder. His parents had
