Chapter Text
“Torse!” Vair strides toward him, nearly trips on a toddling escapee from the creche, steps carefully over the child, and grabs Torse by the arm. “Come. Dex and Sis spotted something strange.”
Torse straightens to attention. “They asked for me?”
“No.”
“Hmph.” Torse slumps.
“They said that Fess and I should bring a third warrior to investigate. You’re here. You’re a warrior. Now there are three of us. Come.”
“Do not include me out of pity. I should—” he casts about, then picks up the wandering child by the gaps between two long spikes. The child whistles happily. “I should bring this one back to the creche.”
“I have never done anything out of pity in my life,” Vair huffs, gears churning at the allegation. “You need practice, so you’re coming. Don’t waste time.”
“Fine.” Torse sets the child back down with a gentle nudge in the general direction of the creche.
He follows Vair, embarrassed by his own outburst. Vair’s informality with Dexter and Sinister grates upon him. He knows it is not nepotism, slack given to the lover of their child; it is merely behavior that might be tolerable if Torse did not find Vair so irritating otherwise. Vair has been a full-built warrior barely longer than Torse has, and yet here he is, an afterthought, taking secondhand orders intended for others.
Perhaps it is because Vair, for all her flippant nicknaming, is better at following orders. This irritates Torse even further.
Vair brings him to Fess, who waits by the gate leading out of the Escutcheon. In the light of the great brazier, Fess’s charred and dented body shines in glory. Oft-repaired survivor, defeater of a dozen dreadnoughtomata, the first in Torse’s lifetime to see the Amphereon itself and live to tell the tale—Torse has long grown out of his hero worship, but it is nevertheless an honor to undertake a mission by her side.
She greets them both with a nod and points the tip of the harpoon loaded into her arm toward a metallic churning in the distance.
“Naughtomata,” Fess says. “Too many to have simply caught an unfortunate scrap forager. And the fight is still ongoing.”
“Whoever it is, they’re holding their own.” Vair bounces with excitement.
“Why are we only three?” Torse asks, concerned. “If the full might of the Queen is bearing down on these poor souls, we should rally more forces.”
Fess shakes her head. “Extraction is a delicate task. The goal is not to win, it is to get in and out. And we know nothing about the target of the attack. This is information gathering, rescue if warranted, not a battle.”
“Understood.” Rescue. Torse has known a life of helplessness. The thought of a rescue tightens the spiral of his mainspring, energizing every gear in his movement. He’s going to save someone. He can save someone.
Once upon a time, the proud people of the Aganti Zernai were a nation whose lands stretched from the Adamant River across the vastness of the prairie of tall cobalt grass, whose woody stems burned hot and long, producing a fragrant smoke that all Aganti Zernai were designed to smell. They knew the scent of hearth and home. They knew many things about their world and their neighbors, too. When the Corrodi Primarch came to town to peddle their corruption, as they did once or twice a generation, the Zernai of that community piled their local braziers high with grass until the flames flared so brightly that the Corrodi flinched from them and the smoke hung like victory itself, sweetening the air for days.
By the time Torse was built, the rivers of Zern were nothing but legends. Though he retained his ancestors’ capacity to smell, he had never smelled the cobalt-stem smoke, and therefore had smelled almost nothing at all. No longer was there land for the Aganti Zernai to call their own: no towns, no neighbors, no freedom to walk across the stretch of waste and woe that once was called a prairie. The Corrodi no longer flinched from anything.
And high in the sky, the Queen and her Straka.
Warriors of the Aganti Zernai are not built for stealth.
This rarely matters. Zern is not a quiet world. The undead howl as if each is reliving the moment of their death for eternity. Lava flows never meet the barrier of a body of water but travel onward, melting the foundations out from under mountains of centuries-old scrap until implosions and iron avalanches echo like the distant sounds of war. The wings of the Straka beat and beat and beat and beat.
This constant cacophony masks Torse’s heavy footfalls. Even if it did not, the fight ahead would do the job.
He and his fellow warriors reach a ridge above the battle. Naughtomata crawl over one another to strike or shoot or grasp at their targets. Combatants are not yet visible, but their vehicle is.
“Fuck,” whispers Vair, “that’s a Zoodian ship.”
“Repurposed,” Fess dismisses.
“New,” Vair insists.
For Torse’s part, he knows next to nothing about ships or Zood. In the legends of centuries past, there were aerial vessels in Zern—before the Straka spread its wings across the sky and the path to Zood fell closed. That is all. For a Zoodian airship to appear, new and functional, would be impossible.
If it is impossible, the question is moot, and if it is not, he will find out one way or another when it becomes important. Torse leaves his fellows to their argument and instead watches the throng of naughtomata. The crowd eddies around two central points: the base of the ship, and a spot some two dozen feet away from it, a hidden wavebreaker forcing the tide of violence to recede, if only temporarily.
“Their target is not on board,” Torse surmises. Visual sensors straining, he tries to catch a glimpse of whoever is so effective at repelling the Queen’s hordes. There is no light amid the fray to indicate the presence of another beacon; if this means there is an alternative to be found to repel the naughtomata, their dwindling fuel stores might stretch that much further.
“How can you know—Torse!” Vair shouts, startled, as Torse vaults over the ridge and sprints down the slope.
He slides down the steep incline of long-corroded refuse, coasting precariously until he comes to a point where he can push off with all his strength. Torse hurtles over the heads of the unquiet dead, lands among them, and takes the slim opening he saw from up the hill.
A boxy, half-disassembled body that was once a repair bot—there are so few healers now, Torse aches at the waste—jabs a reciprocating saw forward at the end of its one functional arm. The buzzing teeth hit the iron gate of Torse’s chest and skid away near-harmlessly. He will have some scratches to apply a phosphoric tincture to later, but it is minimal damage in comparison to what the weapon might have done to its intended target.
Torse slams his fist down into the naughtomaton. Blades puncture, knuckles crush, and long-ago rusted cogs scatter across the ground to become one more addition to the scrap-polluted wasteland.
He turns to face the individual he flew into this hellish melee to save. Up close, the sight of her stops him in his tracks.
“You’re not a machine,” he blurts in blank astonishment.
“You can talk?” she replies, equally startled.
“What? Of course I can fucking talk.” Torse takes a searing laser shot to the shoulder, growls, and throws the dead medic’s corpse in the direction of the sniper. “We need to get out of here.”
“Couldn’t agree more.” This Zoodian flesh-woman—Vair was right and will be insufferable about it—flips a switch on a small device the size of her palm. She slaps it into the broken access panel of an advancing swordsman; small pistons shoot out, attaching the device to the naughtomaton’s machinery, and the whole body shudders to a halt as if as dead in movement as it is in soul.
“This is how you’re keeping them at bay.” Fascination is eclipsed by disappointment. A useful tool, but not the win he hoped for. The mechanics back at the Escutcheon will have more to say to the visitor than Torse will.
“Torse, what are you doing, you moron?” Vair roars over the heads of the Queen’s puppets. Ah, that’s right. It will not only reflect badly on Torse if he gets them all killed.
Vair is in the process of throwing naughtomata bodily out of the way to clear a path. Torse wonders where Fess has gone, and has a hot flash of worry that she has fallen somewhere in the fray.
It is a moment that passes quickly.
The harpoon Fess keeps loaded in her arm embeds itself in the side of the visitor’s ship. She pulls herself airborne on the retractable cable, zipping over the fight like Torse did but—he must admit—much more gallantly, hits the flank of the vessel, and rappels down to get into shouting range.
“Are you alone?” Fess shouts.
“Uh, kinda!” the Zoodian woman calls back. “Professor Comfrey MacLeod, at your service! You’ve put quite a dent in my ship, there!”
“To prevent a dent in your skull,” she replies. “I am Fess. Vair, throw her.”
Ever the follower of orders, Vair lifts her into the air, preparing to unceremoniously shot put the first Zoodian to visit Zern in centuries.
“Well, hey now, buy a gal a drink first,” Professor Comfrey MacLeod quips the moment before she goes flying.
Fess catches the visitor and shoots upward on the harpoon cable. Professor Comfrey MacLeod whoops ecstatically, neglecting to hang onto Fess as securely as she should.
The crowd remains thin after Professor Comfrey MacLeod’s sudden absence from the ground she had been holding. Torse begins to wade through the clamor toward the ship. He abruptly feels a tug around his waist and nearly activates the rotary saw in his forearm before he realizes whom it is attached to.
“Uppies,” Vair says cheekily, hoisting Torse up off his feet and barreling forward to part the horde of undead with the simple physics problem of sheer mass and acceleration. Torse thinks of the child he picked up and sent toddling to the creche and lightly seethes, arms crossed, as he hangs on for the ride.
Atop the ship, Professor Comfrey MacLeod stomps thrice against the frame of the zeppelin balloon and shouts into a portable radio hooked to her hip.
“Sylvio, Onion, emergency rise!”
“You said you were alone,” Fess groans.
“I said kinda. I was alone outside! Wanted to get the lay of the land before the boys followed me out, which was one hell of a called shot.” She wheezes the last few words in the midst of a laugh.
As the ship begins to rise, Torse wraps his hand around a landing skid. Vair clings to him as if he is a living safety clip. He is quietly pleased with himself for having gotten hold of it first. They take off, dangling beneath the Zoodian vessel.
The throng of undead scrambles in pursuit. Torse watches naughtomata give fruitless chase as Vair switches their positions and carries him slowly up the side of a moving vehicle hundreds of feet above the ground. He is not worried about falling. There are many ways to die in Zern, but the negligence of one’s own clanswoman is not among them.
Though the naughtomata are slow, they are persistent, as Professor Comfrey MacLeod readily observes from the deck of her airship. A long piece of fabric around her neck flaps in the wind. Torse wonders why she covers herself at all, let alone with what is practically a garotte-in-waiting.
“We’ll give ‘em the runaround, don’t you worry,” she says. “Welcome to the Zephyr. Anywhere I can drop you fine folks off once we shake them?”
“We do not need to hide,” Fess replies. She glances warily at the rust-red clouds that may at any time conceal feathers and talons. “And we should spend as little time as possible in the sky. May I direct your pilot to our compound?”
“A safe haven in Zern! Aren’t you just full of surprises? Be my guest.” Professor Comfrey MacLeod opens a door into a small cabin. Fess has to duck as she enters. Torse does the same. Vair does not fit at all.
“Are all of your people so small?” Vair asks, peering through the open doorway.
Professor Comfrey MacLeod laughs. She curls where she stands and slaps her own knee, which badly startles Torse. He holds himself still, taking his cues from Fess, who observes the act of self-injury with single-minded purpose.
“Vim-nox.” Fess abandons Professor Comfrey MacLeod in order to rejoin Vair. “About twelve klicks. You will know it when you see it. We three will remain together at all times until the mission is complete.”
“You’re the type to skip the glad handing, huh? Fine by me. I’ll give Sylvio the run-down and be back with you lickety-split.” Professor Comfrey MacLeod continues on further into the cabin, announcing herself to her crew as she nears them. “Tally-ho, boys! Hope you polished your shoes, because we’ve got a surprise inspection.”
Torse follows Fess back to the deck. He cannot resist the urge to trail his fingertips along the wall as he passes. Steel panels, as cool and smooth as he has always imagined water to be. Not a single spot of rust.
“Zoodians. I told you.” Vair churns loudly with smugness.
“We see enough of their wreckage. Sooner or later something intact had to come through.” Fess glances over the gunwale to observe the distance they have gained from the battalion of naughtomata below. The scrambling brutes seem to be giving up the chase. Torse, though he is hardly as seasoned a warrior as Fess, knows this is the point at which they are in the most danger. When the naughtomata retreat, it is because they have been ordered to.
“You trust these Zoodians to enter the Escutcheon?” Torse asks.
“Trust is easier to come by when faced with necessity. If the Queen has her eye on this crew, I want to know why. They may have their own aims. But we know that she does not control them.”
“And they seem easy to kill,” Vair adds.
“Yes, and that,” Fess agrees.
Torse nods. This is why Fess leads missions such as these. The circuitous calculus of need and faith yet eludes him. When he looked at Professor Comfrey MacLeod, he did not see a resource nor a threat. He only saw someone in danger at the hands of the enemy and acted accordingly. As his mother was fond of saying, back before a Corrodi Primarch ripped out her spine while he was still in the creche getting accustomed to the attachment of his very first blades, it would behoove Torse to look before he leaps.
“The one known as Professor Comfrey MacLeod should be disarmed first, if it comes to that. I witnessed her defensive machinery firsthand.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Professor Comfrey MacLeod says. Torse turns and sees her leaning casually against the doorframe. When the three Zernai immediately ready their respective bodily weapons, she puts her hands up. “Woah, hey! It’s a figure of speech, kids. Though if you want a friendly tussle when we get where we’re going, I won’t say no.”
“I meant no threat,” Torse mumbles apologetically. This is why he often chooses silence. If only Vair had not said the thing about these Zoodians being easy to kill.
“No harm done.” Professor Comfrey MacLeod peers at him closely. “What’s your name again? You’re Fess, and Fess called you Vair…”
“Torse,” he replies.
“Got it. Very nice to meet you, Torse. Wasn’t sure if that was a name or an insult,” she tilts her head at Vair, “coming from this one.”
Vair’s chest produces the echoey, rhythmic grinding of laughter. It sounds like it must hurt, Torse has always thought. He wouldn’t know; he has yet to encounter anything that motivates him to try for himself.
The visitors dock their vessel in the shadow of the Escutcheon fastness, well within the radius of the beacon’s light. Two men of flesh emerge from the steering cabin, one taller and thinner, the other shorter and sturdy. Professor Comfrey MacLeod introduces them as Sylvio Dufresne and Onion St. Clay.
“Simply divine to meet you,” Sylvio Dufrene exclaims, grasping Torse’s hand and lifting it up and down repeatedly. “There’s a scarcity of friendly faces in Zern, at least in our experience.”
“Friendship is the most rare and precious resource to be found here,” Torse agrees. He does not comment upon the idiomatic paradox. Only the wicked and the dead have faces, or so the saying goes. Such an aphorism must not exist in Zood.
“Well, here’s to a diamond in the rough!” Sylvio Dufresne twirls the end of his mustache.
Onion St. Clay takes his turn to shake hands with all three warriors. Torse startles at his grip—the man’s hands are solid brass, with intricate joints and steam pistons not unlike Torse’s own. Onion St. Clay chuckles and winks.
“What a place!” exclaims Professor Comfrey MacLeod. “Not exactly subtle either. Since you’re not hiding, what’s keeping your unneighborly neighbors out of your business?”
“Naughtomata cannot stand to be illuminated by the Lights of the Zernai.” Fess nods toward the beacon. “This one, like those that endure in other surviving enclaves of our tribe, has burned continuously for generations. Its glow enables our freedom from the Queen’s tyranny. At least here in the Escutcheon. Were it ever to go out, and any of our people survived the experience, perhaps we would consider subtlety. As it is, we practice open rebellion with pride.”
“You’ve got some moxie, all of you.” Professor Comfrey MacLeod approaches the beacon curiously, appraising its light and heat, its intricate brazier, its beauty.
Fellow Zernai slow in their tasks, peering at the visitors. The quiet grinding of whispered confusion echoes around the plaza. Roundel has been moving the same barrel of oil from one spot to another for minutes, shamelessly staring.
“You expressed surprise that we can talk,” Torse says, indulging in his own curiosity. “Why?”
Professor Comfrey MacLeod looks up at him. A moment passes before she seems to remember where she is.
“Oh! ‘Scuse me, didn’t mean to offend you. We’ve only had run-ins with—what’d you call ‘em, naughtomata?—naughtomata before. Compared to them, you’re practically a chatterbox, big guy. But since we’re asking questions,” she straightens and turns to Fess, “I’m grateful for the deus ex mechina, don’t get me wrong, but why risk your hides to get us out of there?”
“Anything of interest to the Queen is of interest to us. If she thinks you’re a threat,” Fess’s gears click with wry amusement, “maybe you are.”
Professor Comfrey MacLeod shows her teeth. She laughs, nods, and asks, “Can a lady get a tour of this place? I like to be wined and dined before I plot an insurrection.”
Fess, leader that she is, has more important duties. Word of their mission and the unexpected guests acquired therein must be reported to Dexter and Sinister. As such, Torse is given the honor of showing Professor Comfrey MacLeod around the Escutcheon.
“Here is where we perform the funerary disassembly of our fallen.” He gestures to the closed door of the charnel workshop.
“Mind if I take a peek?” Professor Comfrey MacLeod is already touching the handle. Torse places his palm firmly against the seam of the doorframe.
“Intensely. This place is sacred and solemn. If I die while you are here, you have my permission to witness my dismantling. Our honored dead have not given such consent.”
“You’re a hoot and a half, you know that?”
“I am not,” Torse grumbles.
Onion St. Clay laughs. Torse wonders about Zoodian humor. It must be strange.
“So when you kick the bucket, you’re melted down for parts?” Professor Comfrey MacLeod whistles. “Brutal.”
“We do not have the luxury of wasting what is still of use. We carry those we have loved and lost in our hearts. Preserving an inanimate body the way one preserves a memory would be frivolous.”
“Got it, got it. To my way of thinking, a little frivolity makes life worth living, but different strokes.” She steps away from the door with an adequate show of respect. “What do you do with all the bits and bobs from your decedents, then?”
“They are typically repurposed for building children.”
“You have kids around here?”
“We do,” Vair interrupts, uninterested in acting as a tour guide but very interested in nagging Torse. “Torse can easily guide you to the creche.”
“Well, let’s skedaddle! I gotta see these baby robots,” Professor Comfrey MacLeod demands jovially.
Despite Vair’s teasing, Torse takes no offense at the implication of immaturity. He is no longer a child, but he nevertheless enjoys spending time around the children. He is comfortable here among the innocent, among the precious future of the Zernai.
“A whole prickle of tiny metal porcupines!” Professor Comfrey MacLeod coos. She scoops up a child, avoiding the sharp points with a startling amount of dexterity. She expresses no hesitation whatsoever about the proximity of the child’s spikes to her puncturable flesh. “I’ve known a few automata in Zood, but I’ve never met one of their little tykes. So, I’ve got two big old questions burning a hole in my pocket, if you don’t mind the third degree.”
A second child attempts to climb up Professor Comfrey MacLeod’s leg. Onion St. Clay picks them up. There is a palpable sense of relief among the Aganti Zernai that at least one of their guests possesses appropriately-equipped hands for the job.
“Mm?” Annulet nods, hovering carefully near the breakable child and the more-breakable flesh woman.
“What’s with the quills?” she asks, allowing the child in her arms to tug curiously on her earlobe. “And how come they’re all so small? Why not just make ‘em tall to begin with and save yourselves the work later? No, wait,” Professor Comfrey MacLeod interrupts before Annulet can reply, “let me guess. Spikes so they don’t get nabbed by anything, size so they’re harder to spot. How’d I do?”
“Zernai children begin their lives covered in defensive spikes to keep them safe, yes,” Annulet explains, “but not for precisely that reason. If the Straka comes, no mere sharpened metal will save you.”
“When you hear the wings beat, it is time to retreat,” the child held by Onion St. Clay sings, kicking their legs rhythmically. It has been a favored rhyme in the creche since long before Torse’s own time being small.
“Straka,” Professor Comfrey MacLeod repeats thoughtfully, glancing at Sylvio Dufresne, who leans in the corner with his arms crossed. “Funny thing. I’ve heard that word before. From—an old friend.”
“The Straka was once known in Zood, when the Queen used it to wage war upon our twin world,” Torse says. “It is only right that the memory persists.”
“Huh,” is all Professor Comfrey MacLeod says in reply. She pushes a spike away from her eye. “If these aren’t to tell the nasty bird to get lost, then…?”
“The spikes cushion them from impact as they learn to move. They also serve as a lesson. With the early adoption of both defense and weapon, children learn firstly to be cautious with what can hurt them, and secondly to take responsibility for their own capacity to hurt.” As Annulet speaks, another child in the creche stumbles upright and runs full-tilt into the wall. The loud bang of metal-on-metal rings around the room. The child falls backward, rocks on the tips of two posterior spikes, and falls into a seated position again. “They are initially built with less mass than their ultimate design for the same reason,” she adds.
“Ah, don’t give a baby a mech. Wait ‘til they’re older.” Professor Comfrey MacLeod nods in approval. “Good strategy. I did the same with my granddaughter.”
“Does she have spikes?” asks the child in her arms.
“Two of mine fell out!” adds the one held by Onion St. Clay.
“I’m going to lose all mine today,” declares the other, pushing back up to their feet in order to take another run at the wall. Annulet grabs that third child by the top of the head and lifts them a few inches off the ground, their legs still bicycling in the air.
“Well,” Professor Comfrey MacLeod says, “she never had spikes like yours, at least not any that I know about, but she lost all her baby teeth!” She pulls her lips back from her teeth and chomps them together demonstratively. “Now she has the big ones, just like me.”
“Baby teeth.” Vair, waiting in the hallway, considers the phrase with amusement. “Perhaps that is what we should call your spikes, Torse.”
“Hang on, kid,” Professor Comfrey MacLeod peers up at Torse, “are you a kid? You’re almost as prickly as one.”
“I’m an adult,” Torse growls. “Some of my spikes merely haven’t yet been damaged enough to be worth removing.”
“Torse is reckless but impossibly lucky,” Annulet says.
“And he’s a kid,” adds Vair.
“I am… younger than some of the other warriors,” Torse admits with reluctance. He chooses not to comment on the other assessment.
“You seem plenty capable to me, Torse,” Professor Comfrey MacLeod says. She sets down the child and, seemingly unheeding of the spikes that threaten her, claps Torse on the shoulder. “Nobody on my crew would begrudge you a few kiddie spikes after you saved our asses like that. Hell, the best pilot I’ve ever flown with was absolute aces at the age of eighteen. That’s barely grown by our standards, by the way.”
“Yes,” Sylvio Dufresne agrees. He addresses Torse, but he is looking at Professor Comfrey MacLeod. “You’d fit in perfectly, to my thinking. We all run on recklessness and luck.”
Life under the Queen’s regime is hard and often short. Torse’s mother was lost to him when he was very young. After his orphaning, when the daily labors of the Escutcheon’s adult population were complete and some of the other children were briefly reunited with families of make and model, Torse remained in the creche. There, Annulet allowed the children with no other home to pester her with endless requests. She would play-fight with some, practice fastening plates of metal with others.
To Torse, she would tell stories.
He listened to the legends of the Zernai with voracious attention. When the Corrodi Primarchs came to town, he often recited in a whisper to himself after the rest of the creche had fallen into their inert rest modes, it was enough to banish them, to simply know their wicked ways. These were the villains of his concrete world. In Torse’s beloved phantasmagoria of legend, they were still the villains, but with a key difference: the villains could be stopped. The Corrodi were thwarted again and again, plots vanquished, burning malice quenched.
In these stories of a mythic past, deep time, there was life abundant. There was bravery and cunning, there was love and sacrifice without a whiff of doom, there was a future.
All Aganti Zernai know that time is circular. It turns and returns. A fallen clock is upright twice a day. And yet, and still, there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Entropy creeps in. Hearts oxidize. A world fails to keep time with no one to wind it.
Young Torse dreamed of a key the size of a mountain, burrowing all the way to the raw heart of the Furnace. He imagined he could feel the heat in his hands as he and all of his fellows, every living Zernian, put the combined strength of their collective, raging will to live into the task of turning, turning, turning until time regained momentum.
A warning bell sounds the beginning of the end.
“What’s that?” Professor Comfrey MacLeod whips her head up toward the klaxon. The mechanics with whom she has been in deep conversation turn in an instant to walk away.
Around the plaza, Torse’s tribespeople march to their emergency stations with the unwavering synchronicity of a flawless gear train. Vair abandons the tour group, leaving Torse alone to reckon with the new variable of these recent guests. He is flustered by the unexpected burden and tries his best to hide it.
“Go inside,” Torse growls.
“If there’s danger, we can help,” Professor Comfrey MacLeod insists. “Our ship is kitted out with all kinds of doodads. We’re not gonna hide away if there’s a fight incoming.”
“There is no fight,” Torse snaps. “Not yet. We brighten the beacon, hide the children and the wounded, and wait for the danger to pass. When you hear the wings beat—”
“COMFREY MACLEOD,” hisses a voice that rings across the sky like thunder. There is no warning bell for this. No protocol. Every cog and coil in Torse’s body rebels—against whom, he does not dare to think. Against his better judgement, he reflexively turns toward the source of the sound.
“Torse! Don’t fucking look at it!” Fess throws herself bodily over him, pinning Torse facedown on the ground. Torse did not realize Fess was nearby. She ought to have better things to do than mind him like a child. “She sent her face! You know better.”
“I know,” Torse grinds out, ashamed. “I know. I won’t. I am not a liability.”
Slowly, Fess allows him to stand again. She nods once, then leaves to take her standard position in the first line of defense. Torse keeps his gaze on the boundary of the Escutcheon, refusing to let the sky into his sight. Hordes of naughtomata shamble just outside the light, lifeless eyes glowing amidst the red smog like furious stars.
“What the hell is going on?” Professor Comfrey MacLeod demands.
“If you wish to fight,” Torse unsheathes the longest blade in his forearm, “then ready your ship and fight.”
“You’re the boss.” She nods and leaves the Aganti Zernai to their own prepared defenses, inadequate though they may be in the face of a visit from the Queen’s own personage. Torse hopes it is all over before the Zoodians have time to get their skyship off the ground. He hopes Professor Comfrey MacLeod and her crew do not leave.
The sheer weight of the Queen of Zern’s personal ship displaces the air. Torse can feel it coming even before he hears it, the heavy drone of an ancient malevolence, its sole and burning attention striking the Escutcheon with the speed of a meteor. He has never seen the head itself—if he had, he would almost certainly not have lived to tell of it. The Queen has never visited this enclave in Torse’s lifetime. He realizes abruptly how foolish it was to believe that the beacon that holds back the naughtomata could do the same to the sovereign of the realm entire.
Less than a tick of his escapement after Torse has this realization, the Queen’s flagship that bears her face as its standard crashes through a sheer cliff face of the fastness. Torse ducks his head down and sprints toward it.
“Just resist,” Vair says, suddenly at Torse’s side again. She makes the claim with a boldness that Torse finds the opposite of reassuring. “As long as you survive the first one, it gets easier.”
“If,” Fess snarls, appearing at his other flank. “If you survive the first one. And if those around you survive after you turn on your own companions. Surivor’s guilt, Vair, is the type of shit that makes people naughtomatize themselves! Don’t look in the first place! Vair!”
The length of Vair’s stride quickly pulls her far out ahead of the other two even before Fess has finished speaking. Reaching the crumbling cliff first, Vair climbs toward the long, wicked whips of cords snaking down from the neck Torse cannot allow himself to look above. Vair grasps one of these cords and lets all her sheer mass drop. The head slows momentarily, dipping out of its flight path. Vair’s clawed feet skim the ground.
A rush of euphoric hope sparks up Torse’s spine. He deflects another writhing cord with his forearm blade and reaches for Vair. If he can repeat their move from the Zephyr, hang from her ankle as the flying craft struggles to get airborne and dig in the claws of his own feet this time, perhaps—
His hand falls just inches short. The cable cracks loudly in a whipping sine wave, shaking Vair loose. Torse breaks her fall. She breaks his gorget and two of his spikes.
“Ow,” Torse grunts.
“Fuck,” Vair swears shakily.
“Vair!” Fess’s strong voice orders. “Guard the beacon!”
Without another word, Vair clambers off of Torse and takes off running back toward the Escutcheon.
Lying on his back, Torse cannot avert his eyes from the sky. He remembers Annulet’s comment, impossibly lucky, when the ship that fills his vision is not the visage of the Queen of Zern, but the underside of the Zephyr. From the deck overhead, a giant fist on the end of a spring shoots out and punches the Queen of Zern right in her gilded jaw. Torse briefly considers trying out a laugh.
He forgets the impulse when a wave of naughtomata spills through the shattered cliff wall, shielded from the beacon by Her Majesty’s shadow.
The Zephyr flies low. Torse jumps high. He gets the height advantage by clinging to the landing skid again and slowly, effortfully hauling himself toward the deck. Dangling off the side of the hull, he is within earshot of Professor Comfrey MacLeod. He hears the snap of her scarf in the wind, her intake of breath. She gasps at the full sight of the Queen’s face. It must be worse than all of Torse’s nightmares.
“My fucking Gotch. That— That really is Lu— Oh, kid.” She speaks as if her heart is breaking. Then, “Oh!” she yelps. “Kid!”
It takes Torse a moment to understand that the repetition is directed at him. He is quite distracted by the long-limbed, insectoid naughtomaton that unfurls a segmented iron proboscis and catches him through the broken lip where his gorget was. The Zephyr veers sharply, dragging the naughtomaton off its feet. At the same moment, something flies from Professor Comfrey MacLeod’s hand. Two magnets on a tether hit Torse’s wrist and wrap around it, keeping him attached to the ship, as Sylvio Dufresne leans over the edge of the deck and fires a long rifle at the appendage probing Torse’s injury.
“That’s it, come on up,” Onion St. Clay says encouragingly. One of his own metal hands clamps tight around an anchor point on the deck, while the other grips Torse by the left pauldron and pulls him from the naughtomaton’s grasp.
“You had us worried there, kid,” quips Professor Comfrey MacLeod when Torse arrives up top.
“The Escutcheon, we have to keep her from—” Torse interrupts himself with a cry of anguish as, not expecting her target to make that hairpin turn, the impossible mass of the Queen’s head blasts past the Zephyr. Torse gives chase down the length of the ship, remembering when Vair challenged him to a footrace that he handily lost. He feels the same futility now.
The Queen’s head is turning. It is slow, slower than it should be, slower than he understands, until Torse notices one cable thinner and straighter than the others.
Down below, Fess has dug her claws into the ground. She leaves behind deep furrows as the Queen drags her behind, yet more scars upon the surface of Zern. Despite the strength of the foe, Fess is still miraculously upright. She strains at the end of her harpoon rope, demanding the Queen of Zern succumb to being leashed. Torse could fall to his knees and weep at the sight. He must not. There is work to do.
He sprints along the collapsible bridge all the way to the end of the still-extended spring-loaded fist. He is somewhere behind the ear of the Queen’s simulacrum face, hidden from the sight of her by her own sheer girth. He slices at the bases of the wicked cables, attempting to sever them before they can do more damage to the Zernai below. If she hits the beacon, all hope is lost.
Torse severs two of the cables. There is pride in damaging the tyrant even in such a small way. He will have to live with having done that much.
One cable, beyond Torse’s reach to even attempt to intercept, knocks Fess’s feet out from under her. She cries out when her harpoon cable snaps with a sickening screech that Torse can feel in his neck.
“Fess!” shouts Vair from her place guarding the beacon. Without thought, without resistance, Vair looks back, toward her fellow warrior, toward the thing that hurt her. Vair sees.
“No!” Fess screams as Vair’s joints lock up in rigid and mindless obedience.
Vair turns, places her strong hands against the edge of the brazier’s bowl, and tips the beacon over. Oil spills in a river across the ground, still flaming for mere moments until it spreads too thin not to die.
“The beacon,” Torse says weakly. Wind howls through the gaps in his chassis. He is chilled down to the heart of him.
“Wait!” Fess shouts to the blockade crew, who are already sending out sappers from the fortification to incapacitate Vair. “I can talk her down! She’s still in there! Let me—”
In the absence of the beacon, the naughtomata advance. Fess, with her back to the approaching horde, does not see it coming. This is the lone, small mercy of her death.
Fess is skewered through the head and Torse roars. He stabs his blades into the Queen’s head in a pantomime of justice, heedless of efficacy, blinded by oil welling in his eye slit. He continues stabbing as the craft under his hands turns with no impediment, preparing to face him head on. If he weeps with enough anguish and rage, perhaps he will not see her at all.
The surface beneath his feet moves. The fist retracts, pulling him back toward the ship. Away from the Queen. He prepares to jump, to fall, to fight until his last gear shatters, but the voice of Professor Comfrey MacLeod rings from the helm.
“She’s here for us! If we leave, she’ll follow instead of going after your people!”
An eerie calm settles over Torse. It is like the drop in temperature deep underground, entering a clean cavern after a day in the boiling smog. He steps backward. His feet land with a thud on the deck.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, let her come. I will die as a splinter in Her Majesty’s eye.”
The Zephyr accelerates, gaining altitude over the shattered cliffs of the fastness. True to the word of Professor Comfrey MacLeod, the Queen retreats from the Escutcheon to chase her quarry. Torse waits with his eyes downcast, watching light gleam against the sharp edges of his own blades. He will know when she is near again. He will know.
“COMFREY!” screams the pursuing Queen.
“Everybody hang onto your butts!” Professor Comfrey MacLeod shouts. Torse tries to formulate a way to even respond to that, fails, and is quickly distracted.
Fire. Fire swells through the air, around the ship, across the sky. Everything is red and burning, and Torse has spent his whole life knowing exactly what that means. He thought of it often as a child: what it would look like, feel like, smell like, to be swallowed by the Straka. He mourns these strange and marvelous Zoodians before he thinks to mourn himself. From the moment the beacon went out, he gave up any expectation of surviving this day. As far as dying horribly goes, this is fine. This might as well happen.
And then the flame is gone. The sky is blue. The wind carries no ash. Torse reels. He looks up and out, and at the horizon is a familiar waver in a new and darker shade.
Professor Comfrey MacLeod claps a hand to Torse’s shoulder.
“Not about to lose your lunch, right, Torse?” She laughs, looks out at the same horizon and clearly sees something very different than he does. “Welcome to Zood.”
Still half-convinced he’s already dead, Torse buzzes with staticky, inarticulate sounds that are attempting to arrange themselves into the burning question, What the FUCK just happened?
“So,” Professor Comfrey MacLeod explains, mercifully interpreting him more or less correctly, “this is why the Queen is so obsessed with me. You strike me as a history buff, do I have that right? You know all about that time she waged war on Zood. The Queen of Zern would have blasted every Zoodian city off the face of the tube if it hadn’t been for the Flying Temple—sorry, Sunken Temple, damn thing fell out of the sky sometime when I wasn’t looking—if it wasn’t for Katur. The Zumhadi beacons of Katur put up a big invisible wall between Zood and Zern, ended the war, et cetera. Kind of like your beacons, hey! Beacons for everybody! We love a beacon.”
“I do not understand,” Torse grinds out helplessly, staring into the searing blue sky. “How are we here, if there is a wall?”
“That’s the trick! I figured out a path backwards through the gaps in the net. It’s complicated, high-level stuff. You seemed pretty checked out while I was talking to your scientist friends, but I can get into the nitty-gritty if you want…?”
“No, I— That’s enough.” Torse remembers himself and bows. “Thank you, Professor Comfrey MacLeod, for saving my life. For attempting to protect my home.” The shock of switching from death and destruction to total placidity has his wheels entirely unbalanced.
“Please, just Comfrey is fine. And you’re very welcome, Torse. Thank Sylvio and Onion too, while you’re at it. A crack shot and the strongest bookie in the CIR saved you as much as my piloting. God, what a fight! Now,” she reaches into a pocket and takes out a small watch, “let’s see when we ended up.”
Sylvio Dufresne and Onion St. Clay nod to Torse. They are both stretching, settling in, taking time to reacclimate rather than switching effortlessly from one mode to the next as Comfrey does.
“Thank you both. I would have—have shared Fess’s fate—” Torse’s voicebox catches and crackles; he turns the gear train behind it a full cycle to reset the pins, “if it weren’t for you. Now that the Queen is routed, I will return to the Escutcheon to withstand the siege with the rest of my clan. Your continued help would be most welcome, though you are under no obligation to stay once you take me back.”
Sylvio Dufresne and Onion St. Clay look at one another. Torse does not understand the shared look. He does not know what their faces are doing.
“Okayyy, let’s slow down a little there,” says Comfrey. She snaps her watch closed. “Uh. So, good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Bad news. Obviously,” Torse replies.
“I was afraid you’d say that. Now, listen,” she steeples her hands, breathing deeply through her nose, “I didn’t get too in the weeds about how traveling between Zood and Zern works. Do you know what a biangle is?”
“No.”
“We’ll get into that another time, then. The important thing is this: when you move through space, you also move through time. That’s true even if you’re standing still on a flying ship or a revolving planet. Usually, space and time are stuck together.” She presses her hands flat together. “But hopping between worlds, the way I have to do it now, they come… let’s say unglued.” Comfrey pulls her hands apart. Then she slaps them chaotically together, intertwines her fingers, flips her hands so the heel of one is against the fingertips of the other, and links them in parallel such that her middle fingers are facing in opposite directions, wiggling above and below.
“Why is this bad news,” Torse demands flatly.
“Because,” Comfrey sighs, “between when we left Zern and the date here in Zood right now— God. Haven’t had to do this one before, have we?” She chuckles and glances back at her crewmates.
“Comfrey,” Onion St. Clay says softly. “Go on, he’s got a right to know.”
“Tell me,” Torse urges. His heart is ticking as fast as it did beneath the shadow of the Queen’s head.
“We’re, uh. We’re looking at the better part of a century here. I’m sorry.”
Torse judders. The camshaft in his spine falls out of joint; the fire in his head licks tongues of flame through the gap in his faceplate.
“Woah, hey, Torse!” Comfrey shouts in alarm as Torse collapses to the deck.
“I— I— I—” He clutches his head in his hands. Saws in his arms are spinning out of control. “Fly vex. Fly vex.”
“Kid, hold tight until we land, alright? I have some clockwork colleagues outside of Oda who can take a look at you—”
“Fly. Vex.” Torse lifts his head, focused like a concentrated beam of light on Comfrey. He repeats himself again and again, without hope that his begging is not obvious.
To her immense credit, Comfrey does what he asks. Even if it breaks him entirely, she allows him to know. This is a gift he will not forget.
They fly for over a day. Torse remains on the deck, staring out toward the swelling tide of Zern, motionless. The dark mass rises in the sky like a great serpent. He has had rare occasion to see the great body of Zood as anything other than a distant, convex backdrop to the rust-rotted mountains. Fess spoke of it when she told the Escutcheon the tale of her mission all the way to the Amphereon. The Corrodi hide in their foul warren under cover of ectic darkness. Zood, Fess said, hung above like a roof over the world.
Sylvio Dufresne joins him as night falls.
“Don’t you think you ought to get some rest?” he suggests.
“No,” Torse says.
“No, you don’t need to rest full stop, or no, you don’t think you do?”
“If I say it’s the first one, will you believe me?”
“Slim chance, dear boy,” Sylvio Dufresne replies. He has a cup in his hands with steam wafting gently from its contents. He takes a drink from it. Despite his skepticism, he does not push Torse toward some cabin or sleeping quarters. He simply stays with him in the falling dusk.
“The good news,” Torse says suddenly.
“Hm?”
“Comfrey said she had good news and bad news. I never heard the good news.” For the first time in several hours, Torse pulls his eyes from the sky. He looks at Sylvio Dufresne. “What was it?”
“I’m afraid I can’t speak for our esteemed captain for certain,” Sylvio Dufresne says slowly, “but I have an inkling, if you’d care to hear my speculation.”
“I would. I can ask Comfrey later, but I won’t leave this spot now.”
“Very well. If I know Comfrey, and I daresay I do, her good news was this.” Sylvio Dufresne clears his throat and pitches his rounded vowels into a sharper cadence. “You’re in the company of the best crew of misfits and ne’er-do-wells ever seen in any world. You’re welcome to stay, you know. With us. We won’t leave you out in the cold.”
Torse hums. “That’s disappointing. I had hoped the good news would be better.”
Sylvio Dufresne sighs. It might be a laugh; Torse is developing a keener ear for them. This crew laughs perhaps overmuch. Even Vair never did it this often.
The bulk of Zern takes up half the sky before Torse admits the truth to himself.
“What are we looking for?” Comfrey asks, peering through a spyglass.
“The lights of the Zernai,” Torse says brokenly. “The beacons.” The writhing body of his homeworld glows here and there with rivers of lava, cracks in the skin of the great serpent. That is all.
“Hey, big guy, lots of things aren’t visible to the naked eye.” Comfrey pats him on the back. “I’m sure your people are fine!”
“It is said,” he recites, “that the lights of the Zernai once sparkled upon the surface of Zern such that, even from Zood’s vimvex meridian, they were indistinguishable from the clustered stars of the galaxy. All is darkness now.” He lowers his head. “The stars have gone out.”
“Tell you what, I’ve got an observatory a little ways nox of here. We can take a peek, and if we see just one little fire, you’ll know there’s a candle burning for you back home. And who knows! That’s only the vex side. You lived pretty far vim, didn’t you? So to really be sure, you’ve literally gotta look on the bright side.”
Torse thinks Comfrey means this last remark as a joke. He does not laugh.
There is nothing more to see until they reach the observatory. Therefore, Comfrey is able to coax Torse away from his vigil on deck to her small workshop, where she finally looks over his injuries. He sits on a wooden workbench and glances around the room. Schematics and half-completed prototypes fill every inch of available space. Torse can see no rhyme or reason to the organization, but Comfrey reaches into piles and pulls out precisely the tools she needs without even looking, so it must make sense to her. For Torse’s part, he is no scientist, no mechanic, no healer. He seldom spent any time with the builders of the Escutcheon. This place reminds him of the charnel workshop—that, at least, he had frequent cause to visit.
“Look,” Comfrey begins, “I won’t pretend I’m not curiouser than a cat with eighteen lives about your engineering. Cards on the table, I wanna get to know what makes you tick.”
“Do not take me apart any further than is strictly necessary for repair,” Torse growls. “My body is my own.”
“I hear that. Observational notes okay? From the outside. For posterity.”
“Hm.”
Comfrey sets a wax cylinder in a recording device. As she flips a switch, it begins to turn.
“Sometimes my brain moves so fast, my mouth is the only thing that can keep up,” she explains. “And this way, you know exactly what information I’m keeping on you. Deal?”
“Deal.” Torse nods his consent.
She gets to work, describing for her own notes exactly how Torse has been injured. Her touch is steady and cool, confident in her movements. Neither wrench nor welding torch hurts beyond a brief sting. He has seldom been in such capable hands.
“Miraculous,” she declares, clearly speaking to the recording for her future self. “A machine just as complex as any living organism. A machine that is a living organism, mind and all. And a real swell guy, too! Got us out of a sticky situation on the other side of our tentacular acquaintance, I’ll tell you what. In possession of a conscious will, acting against the orders of— Of somebody with an agenda and a heart of flesh. Hard to come by in those parts. The flesh is, anyway. Everybody’s got an agenda, whether they’re made of meat or metal, right Torse?”
Torse rumbles in agreement. “The Corrodi Primarchs have peddled their wickedness for as long as the Furnace has burned.”
“Okay! Furnace!” Comfrey laughs in delight. “Sounds like you’re saying that with a capital F, am I right? We’ll come back to that, because wow, am I ever interested in an ever-burning Furnace that keeps the soul of a world alive! Is that a folktale, creation myth kind of deal—kernal of truth in all of those if you dig deep enough, I’m not knocking a creation myth, you’ve never met a bigger fan of a creation myth than me—but have you actually seen it?”
“I feel it.” Torse realizes it is true even as he says it. On the other side of an atmosphere, separated by the impossible distance of decades, he still burns with that primordial heat. “All of Zern share a connection to the Furnace.”
“Myth it is. Well, that’s an after-dinner kind of conundrum. So, my fine Aganti Zernai friend, you said you don’t want me digging around in your guts—and I get it! I was squeamish about my first vivisection too. I won’t loosen a bolt on your body ‘til I get the go-ahead, you have my word on that. But if you don’t mind a routine exam now that you’re patched up, well, I could help you change your oil. Got some squeaky gears in there, I can hear ‘em from here. How often are you giving yourself a little TLC, greasing the joints and whatnot? I know, I know, I hear it. Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m asking literally. Then put your mind back in the gutter, because I’m curious about that too.”
Torse does not understand what gutters have to do with anything. As he is learning will be a frequent task in his acquaintance with the flesh and blood of Zood, he focuses on the part he can comprehend.
“It is… difficult to keep up with proper maintenance. Among all resources, we must be especially careful to ration our oil. Before… before, much of it was set aside to keep the beacon lit. Zern, you see, is hostile to all life.”
“Even your kind of life.”
“Yes. In days long past, there were renewable sources of combustion. Like the sacred grass that fueled the fire of the beacon originally. That was what warded the Corrodi away. It was only continuity from this ancient flame that gave it the power you saw to repel the naughtomata; it cannot be relit. The grass is extinct. There is no water to grow grass or wood, nor any to quench the iron of our bodies and homes when we forge them. It is a dangerous task, building. Creating. Living. Soon, it will all run out.” Torse looks to the ceiling and sees beyond it. The wide, dark scar of Zern. Perhaps, he does not say, it already has.
“And they still keep making new automata, huh?” Comfrey’s wonder pulls him back from the darkness. “Building generation after generation in hopes of resuscitating the dying world you inherited. Incredible. Life will out. Ha! How ‘bout that?”
“Hm,” Torse hums slowly, testing how the thought feels in his body. “How about that.”
“Gotta get another Zoodian crew together,” Comfrey remarks as she leads the way up the long spiral stair toward the telescope of the observatory. “Boy, this expedition is off to one hell of a start.”
“We meant to remain in Zern for some time,” Sylvio Dufresne explains, aside, to Torse.
“Well, now we don’t need to!” Comfrey declares. “Got our man from the inside right here.”
“Mm.” Torse is barely paying attention. Each step leads him closer and closer to a distant dot of light that must, must be there. One burning beacon still alight would do, even if he will never feel its warmth again. One drop of consolation in a reservoir of grief, that is all he hopes for.
The shutter of the observatory dome splits open with a heavy, mechanical hum. The very walls sing with the movement. Comfrey readies the instruments as the telescope rotates its wide, seeking eye vexward. Torse steadies himself.
“You know, uh,” Comfrey mutters as she adjusts dials with symphonic speed, “these eyepieces are really made for human eyes. I’m not sure if you’re gonna be able to see through that visor you’ve got there.”
“Let me see.” Torse stands behind her, neck craned to peek past the bulk of the telescope out to the sky beyond.
“Torse, remember what I said. Odds are they’re further vim—”
“Let me see.”
“Listen here, buster. If you’re gonna roll with my crew, you oughta learn to mind your damn manners.” Comfrey crosses her arms, but steps aside for him.
“Since when do any of us have manners?” Onion St. Clay asks jovially, chewing on the end of his pipe.
“You’ve only ever led a pack of ruffians for as long as I’ve known you,” adds Sylvio Dufresne.
“Yeah, well,” Comfrey mutters, “the new kid’s gotta learn when to piss off the right people.”
Torse meant no offense, and does not know what he did to cause it, but that is immaterial at this moment. He presses his visor slit to the eyepiece and searches.
It was foolish, to hope. He sees the great, impossible breadth of his own foolishness stretching across the sky, one telescopic eyeful at a time. He scans the span of Zern—so much of it is visible from here. He knows there is no place on solid ground from which to see the entirety of the braid, but the view he has is far too wide to allow him the comfort of self-delusion.
Without thought, Torse crushes the eyepiece of the telescope in his hand. Shattered glass tinkles as he falls to his knees.
“They’re gone,” he drones, only dimly aware of his own voice. The rage rises in him like darkness in the wake of a doused flame. Knives extended, his fist slams into the floor. Again, and then again. “I am alone. I am alone.”
He leaves horrible gouges in the stone platform of the observatory. It is a softer material than his blades, but not by much. The force of his blows chips and dents and dulls his knives. There is no use for them anymore, so why should these honed edges of which he had once been very proud serve as anything other than an outlet for his despair?
“Torse.” Comfrey MacLeod kneels in front of him, far too close to the jagged wound he is carving into the floor for safety.
Torse snarls like a mindless body. All rage.
“You know, you’re not the only one here from another world.”
“Yes,” he sneers, “I know. You are a Zoodian. We have come back to your world.”
“Not exactly.” Comfrey takes an abominable risk and places a hand on Torse’s heaving shoulder. “Hey, history buff. Ever heard of a little place called Gath?”
He recognizes the grounding measure: bring himself back under control by focusing on memory and thought, not base feeling. As if dragging the knowledge from the depths of a sinkhole, he answers.
“The origin of all life. The fabled wellspring to which there can be no return.”
Comfrey smiles at him. Sadly, he thinks. He has begun to see the contradictions upon faces of flesh in his brief time in her company. A smile can be sad; a laugh can be cold. It is all so inefficient, but in this moment, nothing makes more sense to him than nonsense.
“No return,” Comfrey repeats softly. “So, in a way, we’re in the same boat, aren’t we?”
Torse lifts his head, churning machinery falling silent in solemn wonder. He looks to Sylvio Dufresne and Onion St. Clay, who glance again at one another. Slowly, after a moment, they nod.
“Gath.” Torse places a hand upon Comfrey’s chest. Then, he touches his own. “Zern. You, too, are in interminable exile.”
“We’re all a lot more alike than we are apart,” says Comfrey MacLeod. She hooks her elbow around Torce’s upper arm and stands, giving him no choice but to stand beside her. “You’ll learn that. The more things change, huh? So, if you’re in the market for a new home… care to take a chance on us bozos?”
Torse nods. Still boiling with rage, still corroding with grief, he follows Comfrey down to her ship.
Years later, Torse will put the clues together slowly, and then all at once. When she told him of her homeworld, when she gave him the will to live with the assurance that he was not alone in his pain, Comfrey was already capable of traversing between Zood and Gath at will. This lie of omission that buoyed him up from the gaping maw of the abyss will sit in his heart like a faulty gear, silent and still until it ticks at the strangest of moments. By the time he knows this, she will be gone and unable to answer the many questions he cannot imagine how to ask.