Artwork, stories,

and history from the world of

Too Many Bones: Unbreakable

written by: Ryan Howard

illustrated by: Anthony LeTourneau
designed by: Sarah Swindle &
Bree Lindsoe

1
 produced by
Chip Theory Games
Chip Theory Games is a board game design
and publishing firm based in Plymouth,
MN. Known for top-of-the-line components
paired with deep strategic gameplay, Chip
Theory has produced some of the most well-
loved titles in tabletop gaming.
The Cog Book is our third foray into the
immersive lore of our Too Many Bones
franchise, featuring a brand new story that
links up the previous books and games in the
series with the third standalone title in the
franchise, Too Many Bones: Unbreakable. As
is our tradition at Chip Theory, each book has
been lovingly designed to feel like a found
object from the world of Daelore, full of art
and lore that brings this chapter of the Too
Many Bones story to its conclusion. Like the
other two lore books, the Cog Book is sold at
a loss in order to bring our fans further into
the world of the games and to thank them
for their support of this game series over the
years. Without you, none of what we’ve made
would be possible.

Adam Carlson Josh Carlson

COPYRIGHT © 2022 CHIP THEORY GAMES

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
2
 Contents
MAPS....................................................................... 4
NOTE FROM RIFFLE.............................................. 8
PROLOGUE............................................................. 10
PART 1: DOWNFALL.............................................. 12
Crash...................................................................................13
Lahar....................................................................................25
Machinations......................................................................34
Ascent..................................................................................42
Undefeated..........................................................................50
Irreplaceable........................................................................60
INTERLUDE - NOTES AND DISPATCHES............ 68
Timeline................................................................................69
Record of Escape.................................................................78
PART 2: RISE........................................................... 97
Figment.................................................................................98
Polaris..................................................................................113
Gale......................................................................................123
Static....................................................................................130
Carcass................................................................................138
Mirawatt..............................................................................139
Duster..................................................................................159
EPILOGUE............................................................... 172

3
4
5
6
7
 Hello, reader.

If you’ve stumbled upon this tome, you’re likely interested in

Gearloc history—or perhaps Gearloc current affairs, which are
affected by history and will themselves become history in due time.

My name is Riffle. During the period of turmoil

Gearlocs called the Age of Tyranny, I endeavored
to be its silent chronicler, telling the true
stories of that period’s greatest heroes and
most odious villains and influencing the
tide of events behind the scenes. When my
information proved voluminous and useful
enough, I ultimately stepped in to help more
directly.

This book is intended to be a companion

piece to the more well-read texts on this
time period—the volumes now known
as “The Liberation Logbook” and “The
Waterlogged Book,” and the epic poem
“The Automaton of Shale”—as well as
the interactive stories of indeterminate
origin, with names like “Undertow”
or “Unbreakable,” that have been
disseminated throughout Daelore.

This volume is primarily

concerned with the vast,
cavernous expanse
beneath Daelore
known as The Break.
The first part of
this book recounts
the story of what befell
8
Gearloc freedom fighters Stanza and Duster when they were
pursued into that lawless hole by Nobulous Grint. The second
part tells the tale, heretofore not put to paper, of the events within
The Break that led up to the Gearloc heroes’ epic final attack on
the last remnants of what Nobulous wrought. I have collected
this information via observation, espionage and interviews with
the principal players—although, as you’ll see in the following
pages, some of my interview subjects were more forthcoming
than others.

In between these two halves, I have also placed a collection of

notes and salvaged scraps of documentation on the history of
Daelore as it relates to The Age of Tyranny, as well as the origins
of some of the lesser-known Gearloc freedom fighters. These may
be more or less of note to some scholars than the more structured
historical account, but you must permit the prerogative of the
author in this case.

I also feature as a character in this story, but given that large

portions of it do not concern my activities directly, the main
narrative portions are written in third person. Though I will
steadfastly stake my claim that the text found in these pages is
accurate, I would never deny lending my advocacy to the right
over the practical, the empathetic over the pragmatic, and the
just over the status quo. I have christened this tome “The Cog
Book” because each of the characters featured in these pages had
some necessary role to play in the larger machine of cooperation
that led to the terminus of this centuries-long struggle, a role
which would have been for naught without all of those pieces
operating together for a greater purpose. Also, the book has a big
cog on the cover.

9
 The funny little Gearloc fidgeted with his goggles as he spoke,
his long, wispy beard lightly fluttering in some unfelt breeze.
Mirawatt simply took it in, leaning against her workbench,
stunned by the weight of the man’s words.

“... I know it’s a lot to hear from a stranger, but you’ve seen my
proof. I must insist; it’s of the utmost importance that you come
with me right now.”

Mirawatt slammed a fist down on the bench.

“Figment, you must realize that you’re asking a lot of me here!”

she snapped.

Her companion tilted his head deferentially. “I do,” he said. “But

it’s no more than you’ve ever asked of yourself.”

Mirawatt looked away as Figment continued.

“You’ve given your whole life—many lifetimes, in fact!—to

keeping Daelore safe from the threat of Nobulous Grint,” he said.
“I’m telling you that you’re needed just one extra time.”

Mirawatt took a breath. “And you’re saying you’ll return me back

here when you’re done?” she asked. “Right here, right now?”

Figment nodded. “I’ll have to keep myself to short jumps

from here on out, but the machine’s got enough juice for you,
absolutely. In fact—” he punched a couple of buttons on the shaft
of the staff he was carrying “—I’ll program it in right now. If
something happens to me, or if the orb runs low on energy, you’ll
be returned to this spot automatically.”

10
Wiping her hand across her brow, Mirawatt took another breath
before looking up, her gaze steeling before Figment’s eyes.

“All right. I’ll do it,” she said. “Give me a minute to pack some
essentials.”

“No need,” Figment said, smiling as he returned his goggles to his

face. “Everything you have is already there!”

“Oh. Right,” Mirawatt said, shrugging. It was all she could think
to do.

Figment peered more closely at his staff and began fiddling with
it. As he adjusted some knobs, the kobold orb at the top of the
staff began to glow, and the large machine on his back began to
hum and rattle. Mirawatt glanced at it with concern.

“Not to worry,” Figment remarked, raising his voice to be

heard above the ruckus. “It’s not the jump that does you in; it’s
everything else!”

“What does that me—”

Before Mirawatt could finish her sentence, Figment grabbed her

hand, and the pair flashed out of existence. A second later, there
was another flash, and Mirawatt reappeared, looking significantly
more haggard and perhaps a touch older. Looking around, she
collected herself, dusting off her clothes as if she didn’t quite
know what to do.

Eventually, she wandered into her kitchen, deciding to do some

dishes until inspiration struck. A few minutes later, a klaxon
sounded, one she’d been waiting years to hear. Duster had found
her entrance to The Break.

11
12
Chapter 1
Crash
Down, down, down they fell, the Gearlocs’ screams
intermingling with the shrieking scrapes of metal on metal.
The automaton that emerged from The Break was locked
in an antagonistic bear hug with Nobulous’s machine-beast
hybrid. That perversion of nature, meanwhile, was snapping
its jaws at the robot, attempting to bite off or through one
of its insulated cables. With a massive heave, the beast was
able to free its left arm from the robot’s grasp, rearing back to
strike its foe.

WHAM!

Before the blow could be delivered, the quartet of

falling bodies slammed into a rocky outcropping, which
immediately crumbled beneath the sudden impact. In no
time at all, they were falling again, the interlude in velocity
so brief that the Gearlocs did not have time to register their
dislocated bones.

With a deafening whir, the robot activated a giant chainsaw-

like device attached to its right appendage. Seeing the
incoming attack, the beast attempted to halt the blow with
his now-free left hand, gripping the robotic arm right
below the saw and pushing back with all its might. As
this happened, Duster was vaguely aware that the sound
of Nobulous’s voice within the beast was becoming more
indistinct and warbly, tinged with static.

“Command—zzrt—recovery tac—zzrt.”

WHAM! 13
14
The Gearlocs and automatons bounced off the rock wall,
which had begun to slope inward. The force of their
percussive contact bounced them back into open air again.
Stanza continued to scream, her voice growing hoarse, while
Duster fumbled for her dagger. As her arm was pinned to
her side by the robot, her efforts were unsuccessful.

Trying again to free itself from the clutches of the mech,

Nobulous’s creature tried to shimmy its large, gorilla-like feet
between itself and the robot. In this effort, it began crushing
Duster’s legs, causing her to scream anew.

As they continued to fall, their surroundings grew ever

darker. Before the creature could complete its maneuver and
push away from the robot, the mech wrenched its arms to
the left, causing all members of the unwilling party to twist
in the air.

WHAM!

After that, all was darkness.

­­—

Duster’s eyes fluttered open. She tried to sit up, but her body
ached and her head pounded. Wincing from the pain, she
groaned involuntarily.

“Yup, I’d say, ‘No sudden moves,’ but I’m guessing your
body’s already doing that for me,” a wry voice spoke from
out of view. “If you’re lucky, you won’t have any permanent
injuries, but you’ll probably be sore for a while.”

“Wha… what happened?” Duster moaned, her mind

a jumble.

15
 “Well, I don’t know if you recall, but you were up at the edge
of The Break, communicating with Gasket and downloading
my memories, when you were approached by a figure of
ill repute,” the voice joked. Out of the corner of her eye,
Duster could see a female Gearloc figure busying herself at a
workbench, polishing various already-polished instruments
in an absent-minded ritual.

“Ringing any bells, or is your bell too rung?” the voice

continued. “A big, mecha-monkey monster, with Nobulous’s
voice coming out of it? That thing and
Gasket—my hydromech—started
fighting, and all four of you
plummeted down into
the depths.”

Duster tried to focus. This was

starting to sound vaguely familiar.
Then, she remembered: all four of
you.

“Stanza!” she yelped, her eyes

flying open.

“Your friend’s OK, too,” the voice

reassured her. “She woke up a couple
days ago. She’s been very suspicious
of me—hardly left your side before an
hour or so ago. She wanted to see the
lay of the land down here so she could
start plotting your eventual exit.”

Duster pushed herself up on her elbows,

just in time to see the female figure punch
a button wired into her workbench. The
16
voice that came from the figure was the same that had been
speaking to her.

“Gasket, voice mode,” the woman said, pausing briefly.

“Hello, Ms. Stanza. Your companion is awake, so why don’t
you come back in here and say hello?”

The woman turned to look at Duster. Her face bore the

markers of experience: a bit leathery, with eyes that had seen
a lot, framed by close-cropped hair. Her countenance struck
Duster as familiar somehow, but deja vu had been in ample
supply lately for the Gearloc rogue.

“Stanza will be here in a few minutes,” she said, smiling

in a way that made Duster think she was stretching some
seldom-used muscles.

Duster tried to take in her surroundings and found a room

with metal walls that appeared to have been welded together.
She was on a makeshift cot, one of the only concessions to
comfort to be found in the environs. It appeared as if every
speck of free space was occupied by some kind of shelving,
which held all manner of science and engineering materials.

“As I was saying, you fell down here, to the bottom of

The Break, but fortunately, Gasket was able to turn the
Abomination—that’s the name of Nobulous’s minion—so
that its body broke your fall,”
the woman said. “I got to
the scene as soon as I could,
expecting to find the worst, but
when I got there, the two of
you and Gasket were lying in a
heap, and the Abomination was
free-climbing the wall back to
17
 the surface. Apparently, Nobulous must have an automated
homing sequence built into the beast if he loses its signal
while it’s on remote control. I brought you back here, and
that’s where you’ve been since.”

Duster heard a clattering and looked toward the open

doorframe, which, she noticed, was the width of four
Gearlocs. Stanza rushed in, started to embrace her, and then
dropped her hands awkwardly before looking over Duster’s
injuries and making repeated inquiries to her health. Behind
her, a giant mechanism of steel and steam lumbered through
the doorway and set itself in place. It was bipedal and had
two arms, but there was no face that Duster could ascertain,
and various bits and bobs of weaponry and piping poked out
of its frame at every conceivable angle.

I remember that thing, now, Duster thought. Gasket.

“Duster’s fine,” the woman told Stanza. “I told you she

would be.”

Stanza raised an eyebrow. “How’d you know her name?” She

turned back to Duster. “Did you tell her your name? I didn’t
tell her your name.” Duster shook her head.

“I know her name because I know Duster, though she

might not know me anymore,” the woman said. “My name’s
Mirawatt. I think I’m the person you came here to see.”

Stanza and Mirawatt helped move Duster into a crude

kitchen, where Mirawatt dished up a simple but surprisingly
flavorful soup (“It’s lava bat stew,” she told the pair). Duster
drank the broth slowly, glaring over the bowl at the person

18
who’d rescued her, a person she’d known once and was now
beginning to recognize again as her brain put together some
long-jumbled pieces.

“You built this thing, didn’t you?” she asked, pointing to the
mechanical implant that had been on her left arm for as long
as she could remember. “You built this thing on my arm and
you abandoned me when I was nine!”

Mirawatt’s lips flattened into a line before she spoke.

“I did put that thing on your arm, Duster, but I didn’t

abandon you,” she said. “Or at least, I tried not to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Stanza scoffed.

“Well, I don’t know how much Duster’s told you about

herself, Ms. Stanza—maybe she doesn’t really know that
19
 much herself,” Mirawatt replied. “But she’s special. She
has a rare gene that allows her to survive biomechanical
augmentation without being physically corrupted. Nobulous
wanted the gene, so he tracked her down when she was a
child and extracted some of it. I was guarding the Great
Machine, Duster, but when my contacts told me what was
happening, I took a risk and stole you away from his lab,
faking your death so he wouldn’t think to keep looking for
you.” She shook her head. “I knew you could never have a
normal life, but I wanted to keep you away from the short,
hellish existence faced by those unlucky enough to enter his
experimental orbit.”

Duster held up her arm. “This sure looks like an experiment

to me,” she said.

“That’s fair,” Mirawatt replied. “Like I said, I knew you could

never have a normal life. You’d either be fighting Nobulous,
captured by Nobulous, or on the run from Nobulous. I
installed your arm mechanism in the hope you’d pick the
first option.”

She pointed to a small port on Duster’s wrist. “As you may

have figured out when you plugged your arm into my socket
up there on the ground, your mechanism is a kind of key.
The machinery of my design interacts with the living genes
found in your body to create a unique activation sequence
that I’ve encoded within my devices in and around The
Break. It also means that someone couldn’t just chop your
arm off and use it; you need to be attached and alive for the
key to be operable.”

“Thanks for that,” Duster said, dryly.

20
Mirawatt straightened up in her seat. “I can say I’m sorry
this all happened to you, but I can’t say I’m sorry I did it,” she
said, gesturing sharply toward Duster’s arm. “The Gearloc
people needed you then and they need you now.”

Duster scowled, giving Stanza time to interject. “So you just

installed that device and left her to the literal wolves?” she
asked, eyebrow raised in hostility.

Now it was Mirawatt’s turn to frown.

“What do you take me for?” she barked. “That would have

been unspeakably cruel and unspeakably stupid. No, I raised
Duster myself, taught her as many survival skills as I could,
but when she was still little, we were out on a foraging run in
Halloway Forest and got attacked by a horde of apes.”

She looked down.

“To this day, I’m not sure if they

were acting of their own
accord or if they were
being controlled by
Nobulous,” she
continued.

21
 “We were separated, and I couldn’t find you. I looked for a
long time, Duster, as long as was safe… but the Gearloc people
needed me, too. As Nobulous’s attacks in the region got more
and more frequent, I was eventually forced to hole up down
here permanently. I couldn’t risk him breaching The Break.”

“If you were going to spend your days with a robot, you’d
rather it be with one you could control,” Duster spat.

Mirawatt’s eyes shone. Her next words were soft, almost

trepidatious.

“If you want to believe that, it’s your right,” she said. “No one
could argue you haven’t been ill-treated. I tried to do the
right thing, and I’m sorry you got caught in the middle
of that.”

Silence settled on the table as Duster sipped a sullen

spoonful of soup. Mirawatt cleared her throat.

“Regardless, you didn’t come for me to try to justify my

actions,” she said, picking up her own bowl and depositing
it in a rusty metal sink. She disappeared through a nearby
doorway; Stanza and Duster could hear sounds of items
being shuffled and tossed. A minute or two later, Mirawatt
returned bearing a small chest, which she plunked down on
the table.

“You came for evidence to expose Nobulous,” she said. “I

have some.”

Duster picked up the chest and unlatched it, revealing

several loosely-stored sheets of yellowed parchment.

“Some things I salvaged from the Council when my husband

and I made our escape, plus some other things I managed to
22
steal from Nobulous’s labs over the next couple of centuries,”
she said, a sad look in her eyes. Stanza’s eyes snapped to
Mirawatt’s when the elder Gearloc said “centuries,” though
Duster took it in stride. She’d learned the effects of the Great
Machine when she downloaded Mirawatt’s memories.

“You’ll find some personal communication from Nobulous in

there, as well as notes from Council meetings discussing his
advancements,” Mirawatt continued, her voice curdling on the
final word. “There are also some diagrams from his labs that
show his notes on creating many of the spliced monstrosities
that now roam the Daelorean countryside—particularly the
dread krelln Barnacle—and some notes on—”

She was cut off by a deep rumble that echoed through the
compound into their bones.

“That sounded close,” Duster said. “Earthquake?”

Mirawatt held up a finger, head cocked to the side.

23
 A few seconds later, an alarm began howling from
another room.

“Nope,” she said. “Something’s out there.” Reaching under

the table, she gripped an unseen object before pulling
a hidden crossbow into view, prompting the other two
Gearlocs to yelp.

“As much as I’d like the two of you to get word of Nob’s
crimes to the masses, I may need your help out there, if
you’re able,” she said, calling the second half of the sentence
over her shoulder as she strode from the room. “These
attacks can be nasty.”

Left alone in the room, alarm still blaring in the background,

Duster and Stanza looked at each other—the former
quizzically, the latter with concern.

“Are you good to fight?” Stanza asked.

Duster pursed her lips, as if taking a mental tour of her

bumps and bruises.

“I think so,” she said. “Maybe just a little stiff.”

She rose from her seat.

“We’d better get out there,” she remarked.

“Mirawatt didn’t
look like she was
waiting for us.”

24
Chapter 2
Lahar
Duster caught her breath when she set foot outside
Mirawatt’s makeshift home for the first time. The air was
consumed with a damp chill, and her surroundings were
entirely rocky, both slick and jagged. The only light to be
found was emitted from some ramshackle electric lamps
Mirawatt had erected outside, as well as the faintest bit of
daylight emitting from the sky far above The Break. Looking
up, Duster could see a sliver of daylight, and she shuddered
at the thought of her body falling from such a height.

It’s a wonder we weren’t hurt worse, she thought.

About 20 yards in front of her, Duster could make out

the dim form of Mirawatt standing on a rocky path. The
machine called Gasket stood next to her until she turned to
it and barked an instruction; what it was, Duster couldn’t
hear. After Mirawatt finished giving her command, Gasket
was off, bounding over rocks and quickly disappearing into
The Break’s eternal night.

“Where’s it off to?” Duster asked as she and Stanza pulled up

next to the elder Gearloc.

“Seeing about some reinforcements,” Mirawatt replied.

“Come on, this way.”

The trio rounded a few bends until they were no longer in

view of the compound. Occasionally, new, stronger rumbles
would shake their makeshift thoroughfare.

25
 “So, what are we up against?” Stanza asked, nervously
fiddling with her luitar knobs.

“I have some guesses, but we won’t know for sure until we’re
—” Mirawatt slowed to a halt. Peering into the darkness
ahead, she punched a button on her belt, extinguishing the
meager lamplight.

“What are you doing?” Stanza hissed. “Did you learn

echolocation down here?! Most Gearlocs can’t see in
the dark.”

“Shhh,” Mirawatt breathed. “Look up ahead.”

26
Squinting, Duster gazed beyond her immediate
surroundings down the path Mirawatt had been leading
them. At first, she didn’t see anything, but as her eyes
adjusted to the dark, she could see a red glow coming
from somewhere down the path—faint at first, but steadily
increasing in size and definition all the while.

“Is that lava?” Duster asked.

“There are lava flows in The Break, but not in this area,”
Mirawatt said. “This is Cinder, and I know what he’s after.”

Before the other Gearlocs could ask her to clarify, she’d

turned the lights back on and scurried on ahead, crossbow at
the ready. Duster drew her long dagger and turned to Stanza.

“I hope you’re tuned up,” she remarked.

After rounding a couple of bends, the Gearlocs found the

source of the glow, though what it was, Stanza and Duster
would have been hard-pressed to say. It had arms, legs,
glowing eyes and a gaping mouth, but beyond that it seemed
to lack concrete definition. Its body, thrice the height of
a Gearloc, appeared to be made of a volatile mixture of
grime, dirt and algae, though its skin also glowed red hot,
suggesting to Duster that its interior must have some sort of
magma component. A glance at the creature’s feet seemed
to confirm the hypothesis, as its footprints left behind small
pools of melted volcanic rock with every step.

Looking around, Duster spotted Mirawatt, who was

scrambling up an embankment on Duster’s left. Rather
than loading an individual bolt into the crossbow, the elder

27
 Gearloc pulled a canister out of her knapsack and attached it
to the weapon.

“Don’t get too close!” she shouted down to the two on

the ground. “Cinder will burn you to a crisp if you’re not
careful!”

She pointed in the direction the footprints came from.

“We just want to drive it back that way!” she called. “We’re
not prepared for a full-on assault!”

Sheathing her dagger for a moment, Duster rummaged in

her supply pouch for her throwing knives. Stanza found
a nearby boulder to stand on and began to play her luitar
with an over-the-head strum, altering the soundscape of
the cavern with a ragged powerchord blasted in Cinder’s
direction.

“The River Deep,” Duster thought. She’s trying to wear down

the creature’s defenses.

Cinder screamed, slowly bringing its hands up to an area

Duster guessed housed its ears. Sensing the monster’s
moment of weakness, Mirawatt took the opportunity to
fire her crossbow, lodging a bolt in her enemy’s side. Upon
impact, the arrow vanished in a puff of crystal, leaving a
clump of ice to bloom where the projectile struck. Cinder
looked down, balled his fists, and closed his eyes. The area
around the ice bolt glowed even brighter, quickly melting
away the attached impediment. Free to move once again,
Cinder turned, lumbering toward Stanza as the bard
continued to shred.

Staying low, Duster ran to a point not too far from the
monster’s right flank. From this vantage point, she began
28
hurling her throwing knives into Cinder’s side, waiting about
a second between throws so the pain would be a constant
distraction.

If the projectiles hurt, Cinder barely showed it, continuing

to walk toward Stanza, whose playing had grown louder and
more manic.

She’s just making it angrier, Duster thought.

Stanza seemed to reach the same conclusion, because

around that time, she began vamping on the luitar until she
could find a suitable song transition. What followed was
something mid-tempo and heavily rhythmic, complete with
her amplified slaps on the body of the instrument. Almost
immediately, Cinder began to slow, caught up in the trance
of the number Duster knew as “Forever Mine.”

29
 The monster had nearly slowed to a complete stop when, as
if from nowhere, the shadow of a Gearloc streaked through
the air, connecting a hearty kick to the side of Cinder’s head.
The creature roared in pain and fell to one knee; meanwhile,
the new assailant landed gracefully on his feet, planting his
hands on his hips in a pageant of self-satisfaction. Duster’s
quick survey revealed that this Gearloc was wearing boots
and gloves made of a thick and flexible skin (she guessed
dragon), torn and dirty linen clothing, and a pair of
mechanical bracers, which sparked wildly with electricity.
His thick, tousled hair framed a taunting grin, which he
pointed up at the lava creature.

“Banditry, Cinder?” he called. “That’s hardly a square deal!

If you need resources, then you should barter, or at least
challenge your foe to an honest fight!”

30
Cinder did not seem to care for this advice, swiping its
outstretched arm toward the Gearloc attacker, who leaped
out of the way. Upon landing, he began bouncing up and
down on his toes, as if to show he was ready for anything.

“No fancy stuff, Static!” Mirawatt called from her perch. “We
just want him to leave!”

The Gearloc signaled back to her with a mock salute. “Your

lips to God’s ears—or my ears, anyway!” he said with a laugh
that Duster found a little too loud, given the circumstances.

Cinder rose to its feet. To Duster’s surprise, though Stanza

continued to play “Forever Mine,” it no longer seemed to
have the same effect on the creature.

That kick to the head knocked Cinder out of sync with her
playing, she thought.

Her fears seemed to be confirmed. When it became obvious

to Cinder that Static was playing hard to get, the monster
turned its attention once more to Stanza, who was forced to
back off as she continued to play. Opening one of its fists,
the monster dumped a deposit of lava in front of Static,
forcing the Gearloc to jump back and leaving Cinder free to
approach its musical prey.

She won’t be able to regain control in time! Duster thought,

bolting toward the monster and her friend.

“Careful, Duster! Careful!” Mirawatt shouted, surprising

Duster with her frantic tone. The assassin, however, could
not heed her warning.

31
 If I complete the mission but lose Stanza, I won’t be able to live
with myself, she thought.

She arrived just in time. Stanza continued to play heroically,

backing against a wall, but Cinder raised a fist to strike her
down all the same. Darting in behind,
Duster drew her blade and slashed
at the area she believed could
house Cinder’s knee, causing
the creature to howl and leaving an
avenue for Stanza to escape. Duster
turned to get away herself, but before
she could, she was struck by a wild
swat of the monster’s hand,
charring much of her
clothes (and a bit of her
skin) and hurling her
body against a
nearby wall.

Duster’s ears rang. She could

hear faint screams reciting
her name from multiple
directions; though she
tried to raise herself up to
acknowledge them, she found
she lacked the ability. All she
possessed at this moment was a
deep and abiding weariness, one
she’d sensed behind her eyes for
years and years, one that, absent her
ever-present focus, was now finally
allowed to walk astride the contours of
her mind.
32
She felt a thudding vibration in the earth and knew Cinder
must be approaching her. Mustering her strength, she turned
her head toward the creature. She wanted to face down
that which would finally end her adventure, and she easily
located it; Cinder was only 10 arrow lengths away. As she
turned, she could see lava flowing like blood from the place
where she’d cut the monster, and she smiled at a job well
done. Then, without warning, Static appeared again, this
time applying a series of furious chops on Cinder’s other leg.

The gloves are heat resistant, Duster thought, almost

absent-mindedly.

Cinder roared again—or at least, it opened its mouth and

Duster felt the air vibrate; conscious hearing was beyond
her at this point. Then, as she gazed at Cinder’s angry visage
pointing skyward, Duster saw a bolt lodge itself in the
monster’s chin, instantly followed by the telltale puff of ice.
As she drifted into unconsciousness, she thought that there
must be a better way to get some shut eye.

33
 Chapter 3
Machinations
Though she was scarcely aware as she wavered in and
out of sleep, Duster could later call to mind hazy images
she believed were memories. Stanza rushing to her side.
Mirawatt cradling her head. Static yelling, “Flee, foul
beast!” at a departing Cinder. And, eventually, Stanza
and Mirawatt carrying her body on a makeshift stretcher
(crafted from Static’s shirt) a few hundred yards, where
they entered a large metal hatch hidden by a boulder.
When she awoke in earnest, Duster took note of a fresh
bandage on her burned shoulder and lifted her head to
once again take in her surroundings.

The hidden chamber was filled with an assortment of odds

and ends—tools, workbenches, textbooks and even an old
Gearloc chess set, with gemstones adorning each piece—but
it was dominated by the hulking frame of a machine, tall as
a trollmother and wide as an elder dragon. Diodes, lights,
gears and knobs covered its every surface, which appeared
to be made of a jet black metal. The device was almost
silent, though Duster thought she could hear a faint hum
emanating from it. Judging by the faint layer of dust on it,
she guessed it hadn’t been actively used in a long time.

“Oh! You’re awake,” Stanza said. “You’ve got to stop doing

this to me, or I’ll have a heart attack. Unconscious people
can’t perform CPR.”

Her statement was framed as a joke, but Duster could see

the light shining off her friend’s eyes and knew that she was
getting well and truly worried for her.
34
“For now, you’re stable,” Mirawatt said, looking at the floor.
“Gasket and Static have gone back to guard the compound
so we could treat you here and I could fill you in more on
Nobulous’s plans.”

Duster coughed a bit before speaking.

35
 “Where did you dig up this Static guy?” she asked. “I don’t
think most tyrants are all that interested in a fair fight, and if
I’m being honest, neither am I.”

The side of Mirawatt’s mouth sloped up in a knowing smirk.

“Static’s got a lot of ideas about fairness, but you can count
on him when you’re in a tough spot,” she said.

“But where—” Duster began before being cut off by Stanza.

“Never mind that guy!” she said, gesturing toward the device
that loomed over the room. “What is this thing?”

Mirawatt’s face grew solemn.

“This is what Cinder was after,” she said. “This is the Great
Machine. It was crafted about 500 years ago by Nobulous—
and, I’m ashamed to say now, by myself and my husband,

36
 Synchro, who’s
since left this
world behind.”

Duster nodded,
thinking back to
when she and her newfound
friends had found the strangely
preserved corpse of Mirawatt’s
spouse while journeying through the
Daelorean wilds.

“500 years?” Stanza asked. “I don’t get it.”

“I’m the remnant of a generation long past, Stanza,”

Mirawatt said. “When I was the tender age of 65
or so, Synchro, Nobulous and I started work on a
biomechanical project that could extend the natural lives of
Gearlocs. We weren’t trying to create lifespans like… well,
like mine. It was just to give Gearlocs, all Gearlocs, a little
more time before they shuffled off the mortal cog. Or at
least, that was what Synchro and I wanted.”

Her eyes darkened.

“Nobulous soon grew obsessed,” she said. “He was in our

lab in southern Daelore constantly, tinkering and testing the
machine non-stop. He even started capturing goblins and
orcs and experimenting on them. The Gearlocs used to be
at peace with most Daelorean peoples; I think a lot of those
folks’ antipathy toward us can be traced back to Nobulous all
those years ago.”

“And you were just an innocent bystander,” Stanza drawled

sarcastically, crossing her arms.
37
 “Not quite, but we did try to stop him,” Mirawatt said.
“When I figured out that his true goal was immortality, I
realized his quest would have terrible consequences. When
used for its intended purpose, the machine’s side effects are
negligible, but if it was supercharged to provide decades of
vitality to a Gearloc… to create artificial order in a biological
system, it required an equal amount of entropy. To do
what he wanted would have required sacrifices of innocent
creatures, to say nothing of the terrible impact he’d have on
the environment.”

“And yet, here we sit in what I’m guessing is a Gearloc-made

scar in the land,” Duster said.

“Too true,” Mirawatt replied. “One night, during one of

his errands away from the lab, I sneaked in and disabled
the machine—or, at least I thought I did. When Nobulous
returned, he had almost the entire Gearloc Council in tow,
promising that he was ready to give all of them everlasting
life. Despite my attempts to stop him, he tried to override my
shutdown modifications and turned the machine on himself
and his companions—far beyond the highest power level it
was ever intended to go.”

She pointed up at the top of the machine. Duster noticed a

large gash in the metal she hadn’t seen before.

“When the machine split open, it split the world open,”

Mirawatt continued. “Those who were in the machine’s
immediate radius—Nobulous, Synchro, me, and the council
members—we received vitality far beyond our natural share,
but the consequences were catastrophic. The Breaking of
Daelore caused widespread environmental devastation
throughout the continent, but especially in Southern
Daelore, where it destroyed animals, plants and people and
38
led to long-term genetic mutations in various species. But
Nobulous didn’t care. Ever since, all he’s wanted is to use the
machine again.”

“Why would he need to?” Stanza asked. “He’s immortal

now, right?”

“Not quite,” Mirawatt said. “The Great Machine infused

him with many more years, but even his artificial vitality
fades over time. To prevent another Day of Desolation, I’ve
kept the machine down here, hidden away and guarded by
force fields, so it will be safe from him and whatever other
monsters learn of its existence, like our molten buddy out
there. To continue surviving, Nobulous has resorted to even
more disgusting forms of genetic experimentation. Almost
every part of him, save his devious brain, has been replaced,
either by artificial mechanisms or patchwork organisms of
his own design. Either way, his new body parts are the result
of ruthless testing on society’s less fortunate, all grist for the
mill in his endless struggle against death.”

Silence settled on the room as

Stanza and Duster processed
the magnitude of what
Mirawatt had
told them.

39
 Before long, however, the Break-bound inventor broke the
silence again.

“Even if he had been able to get to the machine, however, he

may not have been able to use it,” she said. “That’s where you
come in, Duster.”

“Me?” the assassin asked. “How?”

“Even though The Great Machine extends your life, it is

not without consequence to most users,” Mirawatt said.
“Nobulous still lives, but the side effects of his long life have
been great. Bouts of muscle weakness, organ failures that
would kill a normal Gearloc—and yet, since the force of
life still flows unnaturally through his veins, he is able to
survive those maladies, at least long enough to repair them.
However, I have not had those same problems. Eventually,
I realized that the answer was found in my cells. I have the
same rare gene you do, the one that allows us to interact
safely with biomechanical devices. Nobulous needed
someone else with the gene before he could use the machine
safely again. That’s why he kidnapped you.”

Duster could feel her blood pumping in her ears. It was as if

a million nagging questions she’d had about herself her entire
life had all crashed into place over the last couple of hours,
but rather than providing clarity, all that those answers had
given her was an even greater sense of disorientation.

“Well, wait just a minute!” Stanza yelped. “Why don’t you just
destroy the machine and burn those diagrams you showed us?
If this is so dangerous, why not just rid Daelore of it entirely?”

“Because I believe the Day of Desolation can still be undone,”

Mirawatt said. “It will take time—years, probably—but if
40
the machine is manned by a skilled handler, I believe the
widespread environmental effects can be reversed. Perhaps,
in time, The Break itself could be restitched. I’d have done
it by now, but I can’t drop my guard too long. Nobulous
is always watching, always waiting for me to lower my
defenses.”

“Is that why?” Duster said, arching an eyebrow. “Or are you
still leeching off the effects of the machine?”

Mirawatt sighed, placing a hand on one of the device’s many

unusual contours. “When you’re as old as me, Duster, it
seems silly to say that I’m an old woman,” she said. “But it’s
true. I’m only in as good a shape as I’m in because of my
gene. I keep the machine tuned up; it’s still operating on
standby mode, but I’ve never turned it on myself again. One
day, not too long from now, Daelore will finally be rid of me.
I’ve been holding out all this time for one reason: I’ve been
waiting for someone like you who can help me end all this.
Someone who can continue my work even after I’m gone.”

“But you volunteered for this!” Stanza exclaimed, slapping a

steel work table. “You can’t just draft Duster into your way
of life!”

“You’re right; I can’t,” Mirawatt replied. “You can take my

evidence and leave. Go find Nobulous and bring him down.
That will be good enough for most folks. You have to decide
what you want, Duster: revenge on those who wronged you,
or a chance to make a better world.”

41
 Chapter 4
Ascent
Duster wanted to leave as soon as possible, but Stanza and
Mirawatt insisted she take time to recover. The next week
included a lot of sleep and rest, including waking up a few
times to find Mirawatt hovering over her, pointing some
strange therapeutic device of her own invention at one of
Duster’s wounds or bruises. Stanza, she was told, spent
most of her free time training and going over exit strategies
with Mirawatt. She did not see Static again; she overheard
Mirawatt tell Stanza that the hand-to-hand specialist had
“returned to his own devices.”

When Duster was awake, she was sullen, preferring to be

lost in her own thoughts and speaking little, especially
to Mirawatt. She hadn’t explicitly told the elder Gearloc
she’d never return to The Break, but she’d also made it
clear that the invitation to carry on her predecessor’s work
was not particularly welcome, especially given how much

42
blame for her current circumstances Duster placed on her
erstwhile mother figure. Mirawatt, for her part, seemed to
understand, keeping out of Duster’s way while making sure
she and Stanza were supplied with all of the food either
could want (“Given the limited ingredients down here, she’s
not a bad cook,” Stanza mused one day as she munched on
mushroom-stuffed manticore).

On the day they were set to leave, after Stanza had laid out
their exit route and contingency plans on a series of crudely-
drawn maps, Mirawatt called Duster aside for a moment
before the party could depart. Stanza narrowed her eyes,
but Duster waved her off and retired with Mirawatt to her
workshop.

Before Mirawatt could speak, Duster held up her hand.

“I know you want an answer about what to do with the

machine, and I’m sorry to say that I can’t give you one,”
she said. “It’s your life, you’ve been guarding the thing, and
I can’t say what I’ll do after all this is over—even if I’ll be
around when all of this is over. It’s going to be up to you.”

Mirawatt smiled. “That’s fair,” she said. “I think I’ll keep it in

one piece for now. Not actually why I called you in here.”

She stuffed her hand into her pocket as she continued

speaking.

“I can’t presume I have the right to consider myself your

parent, but factually, I was your guardian for a few years, and
you’ll always be important to me,” Mirawatt said, looking at
the ground. “That doesn’t mean I need you to reciprocate.
Kids don’t have an obligation to feel one way or another
about their… about the people who took care of them.”
43
 Duster pursed her lips and shifted from one foot to another.
I’d rather be fighting an owlbear, she thought.

“Anyway, I just wanted to tell you one more time that I’m
sorry for the way things worked out,” Mirawatt continued.
“Parents, guardians, even the ones who do their best still end
up doing things that hurt their kids, and goodness knows I
could have done better.”

Mirawatt sniffed, and Duster thought she could see a hint

of moisture wicking the sides of the elder Gearloc’s eyes.
Suddenly, she felt a surge, not of positive feelings and
forgiveness, but of sympathy, a knowledge that what Mirawatt
was telling her was sincere and hard to express. She opened
her mouth to offer some word, perhaps of comfort or
absolution, but before she could, Mirawatt pulled her hand
out of her pocket.

“So, um, I had something I wanted to give you before you

left,” Mirawatt said. “You … you don’t have to take it, but I
saw the last one I gave you was gone, so I thought I’d offer a
replacement.”

Duster looked down into Mirawatt’s outstretched hand and

drew a sharp breath.

“My dagger gem,” she said, staring at the bright green stone
in Mirawatt’s palm. “Where did you get this?”

“You don’t remember?” Mirawatt said. “Ah, I suppose not.

Long time ago. When we fled down here, one of the only
belongings Synchro and I cared enough to bring with us was
a fancy Gearloc chess set Synchro’s father gave him. You may
have seen it in the workshop.”

44
Duster nodded. “It just didn’t look familiar,” she said.

“Well, you were obsessed with the thing when you were
a kid,” Mirawatt said. “Loved the jewels on the top of the
pieces, so I gave you one to put in your dagger. To be honest,
I was a little afraid to give you this one. I saw the red one
you have in there now and worried that you’d thrown
mine away.”

Duster found it a little hard to speak. “No … no, it was

broken,” she said. “This one was a gift. From a friend.”

Mirawatt’s ears drooped, just a little. “Oh. All right,” she

said. “Well, you can just hang onto it for now.” She smiled
a thin smile. “I can’t play chess against Gasket, and Static’s
terrible at it!”

Duster returned the strained smile and pocketed the jewel.

“Thanks, Mirawatt.”
45
 It was a brisk but not overlong hike to one of the lifts
Mirawatt had built for easy egress out of The Break.
Mirawatt’s primary lift had been damaged in the battle Duster
and Mirawatt waged before falling into the abyss, and the
inventor had taken the extra step of disabling it entirely, in
case Nobulous returned and attempted to use it himself.
Fortunately, she had multiple backups around the area, so the
trio (plus Gasket) had their pick of which exit made for the
most expeditious escape. To be safe, Stanza selected a lift a
half-day’s distance above ground from where they’d fallen in.

Duster was silent, thoughtful on the ride up (though she

took careful note of a slot on the machine that seemed to
correspond with her arm mechanism). She let Stanza do the
double-checking with Mirawatt on the correct route back to
Obendar, the best crossings to avoid Nobulous sentries, and
the locations where one could forage
the most savory toughshrooms (the
Halloway Caverns, right off the west
bank of the Sibron, for the curious).
Her fellow Gearlocs’ words
blended in with the buzz of
the lift as she considered the
last few days and tried again
to remember more about
her childhood than the
briefest snippets.

I should say something to

her, she thought. Before we
part ways, I’ll say something
to her.

46
In a few minutes, the lift crested the lip of the cliff. Duster,
Stanza and Mirawatt shuffled off, and Gasket clanked behind
them. There was a brief pause as Stanza and Mirawatt stared
at the ground.

“Uh… Here, I’ll show you,” Mirawatt said. “The path starts
over here.”

She took a few steps toward the treeline. Duster heard a

sputtering sound, like the ignition of gunpowder, and
glimpsed a large, fast-moving object in the corner
of her vision. Turning, she was just in time to
see a large ball of fire smash into the lift,
immediately unmooring it from the
metal elevation mechanism Mirawatt
had bolted to the chasm wall.

“Wha-?” Stanza interjected as the

clangs of their falling transport
echoed from the pit.

At that moment, several things

happened at once. Instinctively,
Duster and Stanza reached for
their weapons. Mirawatt ran
back toward the group before
diving for cover behind a
nearby boulder, drawing her
crossbow as she did so. Gasket
stepped in front of Duster and
Stanza, shielding them from
the forest, and extended its arms, as if preparing for a
confrontation.

47
 While the combatants known to Duster arrayed themselves
for conflict, several new figures emerged from the trees.

“It’s mechs!” Stanza hissed, peering around Gasket’s frame.

“Lots of ‘em. Some I’ve never seen before!”

Duster poked her head around Gasket’s other side. Stanza

was right; there were indeed several bots of various shapes
and sizes at the edge of the clearing, slowly advancing on
their position. What she was more interested in, however,
was the elderly Gearloc who appeared to be leading them,
arrayed in the center
of the oncoming
wall of metal.

48
He looked familiar, but Duster couldn’t place him. He was
bald on the top of his head and appeared to be trying to
make up for it on the sides, where his locks sat fluffy and
long and intermingled with his sideburns. On his right
eye, he wore what appeared to be a makeshift mechanical
monocle, with a lens that whirred and clicked as it moved
about in its socket, inspecting the scene before him. He
opened his mouth to speak, and the voice that issued forth
was thin and high-pitched and a touch nasal. He raised his
hands in the suggestion of conciliation, as if doing so would
cause the other Gearlocs to forget about the battalion of
robots assembled at his side.

“Now, now, we were just removing your means of escape!” he

called out. “There’s no need for things to escalate any further.
The Gearloc Council is kind to fugitives who agree to pay
their debt to society, and given the fact you have something
we very much would like to possess, leniency is even
more certain!”

Mirawatt poked the end of her crossbow around the boulder

so it was pointing in their assailant’s direction.

“What do you want, Gavenkog?” she called.

“Gavenkog!” Duster muttered. Now she remembered.

49
 Chapter 5
Undefeated
“Who’s Gavenkog?” Stanza hissed.

“Gearloc Council member,” Duster whispered back. “Always

seemed like one of the lower level lackeys to me. Wouldn’t
have taken him for the type to be put in charge of something
like this.”

During their exchange, the conversation between Gavenkog

and Mirawatt continued.

“I think you know what we want, Mirawatt—and you’re still

looking lovely, by the way,” Gavenkog said.

“Luck of genetics,” Mirawatt called back. “Either that, or the

rejuvenating power of a life spent not licking a boot stained
with troll dung.”

50
Gavenkog narrowed his eyes and forced a rictus grin to
his face. “Now, now, there’s no need for that. We can speak
plainly here. Nobulous wants Duster.”

He turned his gaze in the assassin’s direction.

“You’ve caused a lot of trouble, m’lady,” he said with a

humorless chuckle. “Organizing the Ebon, spreading
sedition against the Council, fugitive from justice,
destruction of Gearloc property… quite the rap sheet. And
yet, Nobulous has extended his mercy to you, so I’ve been
authorized to take you in unharmed.”

“Sweet of you,” Duster spat. “Look, I know you’ve got a lot of

mechs here. Maybe you’ll kill all of us, but maybe you won’t.
Maybe we’ll kill you before you can.”

She held her dagger out at her side, ready to spring

into action.

“Willing to find out, or would you rather just tell Nobulous

you didn’t see anything while you were out and about?”
she asked.

In an instant, Gavenkog’s face morphed into a scrunched

up scowl.

“Listen here, you foolish child! All of you!” he preened. “I

may be Nobulous’s loyal servant, but that doesn’t mean I’m
a lowly foot soldier! Why do you think he sent me to
find you?”

“All his interns died?” Stanza piped up.

“Clerical error?” Duster added.

51
 “You’ll get those when all your interns are dead,”
Stanza replied.

Gavenkog puffed out his cheeks in a slow exhale. “Fine.

Fine!” he growled, raising a finger and glancing at the bots
on either side of him. “Retrieve them. Duster alive. The
rest… I don’t care.”

He stood still, but his metal compatriots marched forward as

one, rending the air with the clanks and creaks of their
metal frames.

Duster hopped on Gasket’s back

and motioned for Stanza to
do the same. As her friend was
climbing up, Duster spoke to
the iron behemoth, hoping it
could understand someone
other than Mirawatt.

“Let’s get to Mirawatt,” she said.

“We have a better chance if we
stick together.”

To her relief, Gasket rumbled

to life and began lumbering
toward the large boulder
where his master hid. Poking
her head above Gasket’s
shoulder, Duster spied
Mirawatt slamming a
new cartridge
into her
crossbow
and firing the
52
weapon toward a creature that looked like a mechanical
hound dog. Noting the glowing orange tips on the bolts,
Duster smiled in satisfaction as a projectile lodged itself in
the robot dog and immediately began melting it from within.

As Gasket approached Mirawatt’s position, the hydromech

was blocked by three incoming bots. One had the same basic
shape as the dog Mirawatt had dispatched, but it was more
lithe and abstract. It shifted balance from foot to foot, as if
dancing to unheard music encoded on its circuitry. Another
mech hovered above the ground uncertainly, its hose-like
mouth hanging loose in front of it like the proboscis of a
large bug looking for an opportunity to land a bite. The
third bot sent shivers up Duster’s neck; it was clearly some
kind of mechanized Gearloc, with dead red eyes that flitted
analytically between its three potential targets.

As one, Duster and Stanza dropped from Gasket’s shoulders

and flanked their robotic protector. Duster held her blade
high, and Stanza’s luitar pick was at the ready.

Just another battle, Duster told herself. All it is.

Stanza raised her pick above her head and slammed it

down on her fretboard, belting out the opening chords
of “The Breaking of Daelore” in the direction of the trio’s
attackers. Duster never understood why many of Stanza’s
songs also worked on mechs (“It’s science” was all Stanza
would say, with a smirk), but this one was no mystery. Loud
and abrasive, the vibrations from this tune could take apart
a poorly designed mech in seconds. Nobulous’s mechs,
however, were not poorly designed.

When the first wave of the song hit the mechs, they
shuddered but pressed forward. The insectoid bot buzzed
53
 toward Stanza, while the dog and Gearloc-shaped enemies
made a beeline for Duster. With a choonk, a hand-like
projectile flew toward the pair, a hefty chain connecting it
to Gasket’s left arm. Duster saw that Gasket was aiming for
the Gearloc automaton, but the bot rolled out of the way at
the last minute, leaving Gasket to catch the dog in its recoil.
The buzz saw on Gasket’s right arm roared to life as the
hydromech pulled in its hostile cousin, ready to make new
scrap metal for Mirawatt’s lab.

As the Gearloc bot drew closer, Duster spotted the model

number G-800 in a small script on its lower torso. The G-800
curled its right hand into a fist and lunged at Duster; she
dodged out of the way, but the punch caught her in the side,
causing her to grunt in pain. Steadying herself, she looked up
to see the robot dog, having evaded Gasket’s saw, ramming
into the hydromech. Stanza continued to wail on her luitar,
and the hose on her attacker flew off, but Duster could see
another mech approaching her friend. She couldn’t see
Mirawatt.

Snapping her attention back to the fight at hand, she saw

G-800 coming in for another strike. Rather than dodging,
this time she raised her dagger, hoping the mech wasn’t
made of tough enough stuff to hold together against a blade’s
edge. Her parry dented the bot’s armor, but didn’t break it.

Daring to dart her eyes away for a moment, Duster caught

a glimpse of Mirawatt. The elder Gearloc was firing bolts at
a rapid pace, which was clearly attracting attention. Several
mechs were approaching her location, a new one quickly
replacing each fallen compatriot.

They’re trying to separate us, she thought. Picking us off, one

by one—or I guess, just trying to pick me off.
54
Swiping forward with her dagger, she slammed her blade
toward the side of the G-800’s head. To her shock, the mech
reached out and grabbed the dagger’s edge mid-swing, using
his other hand to go for her throat. As the bot lifted her
off the ground by her neck, Duster felt a wave of panic and
nausea, knowing that she would likely pass out soon in the
G-800’s technologically-enhanced grip.

Thinking quickly, she rolled her eyes back in her head,

feigning unconsciousness, and felt the vice on her neck cease
its constriction. In one quick motion, she yanked her blade

55
 from the G-800’s hand, activated her dagger’s vibroblade
function, and plunged it into her attacker’s eye. A shower
of sparks shot out of the socket, singeing her hand, but the
gambit had the intended effect: The G-800 let go of her
neck and tumbled backward. Duster caught herself and ran
toward Mirawatt.

As she began moving, she quickly tried to assess the state

of the fight. Having destroyed the first mech she’d dealt
with, Stanza was now at close quarters with two new robots.
Duster considered diverting to assist her friend, but before
she could decide, Stanza flipped a switch on her luitar, and
an arc of electricity sparked along her blade. Grabbing the
neck of the instrument, Stanza swung it across her body. The
blade’s impact on one of her foes careened the mech into
the other, leaving both bots a convulsing heap. Meanwhile,

56
Gasket was finishing the process of stomping the dog mech
into the ground, though Duster noticed that several nozzles
around the hydromech’s feet were leaking fluid.

While she still wanted to reach Mirawatt, she noted with

satisfaction that the four of them appeared to be winning.

We’ll spend tonight licking our wounds, but we should have

this in hand, she thought. As she continued her approach,
she looked around to find Gavenkog. Eventually, she spotted
him, and from the way his eyes were scanning the horizon,
it appeared he was looking for her as well. In short notice, he
caught her gaze and then raised his eyebrows, followed by a
wicked, wicked grin. Duster frowned. Was there something
she was missing?

Pow! Duster saw stars and tasted blood as something solid

and metallic collided with the back of her head. Struggling
to keep her balance, she attempted to wheel around and face
what had hit her, but she stumbled and fell. Looking up, she
was stunned to see the G-800 leering down at her, eye socket
still smoking where she’d stabbed it.

The bot reached down to grab her again, but Duster

lashed out, kicking its legs out from under it. As the G-800
attempted to clutch her, she dug into a pouch on her thigh
and grabbed a small, impact-triggered EMP. The G-800’s
mouth chittered and clacked as if it meant to consume her;
Duster stuffed the EMP into the bot’s mouth and rolled away
as a small explosion lit up its skull.

Stupid. Stupid! she scolded herself. Never assume you know

the full capabilities of one of Nobulous’s new models. Dizzy,
she slowly got to her feet, but the scene had changed around
her in her minute-long struggle with the G-800.
57
 Stanza was being backed toward the cliff by another mech,
this one taking the form of a metallic crow. Her luitar had
cracked, likely due to her double-bot attack. Gasket had
destroyed the dog bot, but the effort had left it almost
immobile. Clearly, its legs would need repairs before
meaningful progress could be made. And Mirawatt…

When Duster saw Mirawatt, her stomach felt cold and

heavy. Finally overwhelmed, the old Gearloc appeared to
have been overpowered by a mech Duster had seen before
and now recognized as a prototype of the Abomination that
had attacked her and Stanza. The automaton had a firm grip
around Mirawatt’s torso, despite her ongoing attempts to
wriggle free.

Turning back toward Gavenkog, Duster saw the council

member approaching her, wearing a smirk the way one might
wear a fashionable scarf. She raised her dagger again, but

58
Gavenkog followed her hand with his gaze, and a bolt of red
energy shot from his monocle.

The beam burned her wrist, and the force of it knocked the
weapon from her fingers.

“You had the upper hand, you know,” he told her as she
eyed escape options, knowing there were scant few places
she could run where his eye could not follow. “Nobulous
wants you alive, and you could have done something noble,
like throwing yourself off that cliff or threatening to slit
your throat unless we let your friends go. But I knew you
wouldn’t. It never even entered your mind, did it? You’re
more like us than you want to admit, Duster. Whatever it
takes to survive.”

His gaze dropped to Duster’s midsection. Duster heard some

sort of a mild scuffle to her right, but she couldn’t afford to
look away. She felt like one of the rodents she’d hunted and
eaten on lean days in the Daelorean wilds.

“Nobulous wants you alive, but no reason you have to be able

to walk,” Gavenkog said, baring his teeth. “If it makes you feel
any better, I’ve been practicing with my eye beam, so I’m sure
it will only be one puncture before the deed is done.”

The roving monocle came to a stop. Duster thought she

could see the glow of the beam gathering inside the device,
but at that moment, a blur appeared in front of her, and she
heard an anguished “oof!” Looking down, she saw Mirawatt’s
body crumpled on the ground.

59
 Chapter 6
Irreplaceable
Duster stared at the form in the dirt, mouth slightly ajar
in incomprehension. Mirawatt lay still, unnaturally still,
and a small wisp of white smoke wafted off her body from
some unidentifiable entry wound. Gavenkog’s face showed
his equal shock at this turn of events, but instead of being
accompanied by Duster’s inescapable feeling that something
had just been irreparably broken, the council member’s
complementary emotion was that of extreme irritation.
Impatiently, he turned 90 degrees to curse at the bot that
had let Mirawatt go, but his words caught in his throat at
what he saw.

The Abomination prototype lay in a sparking heap next to

the boulder where Mirawatt had taken cover. Its neck had
nearly been severed from its body, and standing over it was
the creature that had done the severing: A hulking beast of
a Gearloc, clad in a variety of hides and furs and wearing a
beard that no blade had tamed for many years. Holding a
large hunting knife in one hand and what appeared to be a
handheld meat hook in the other, the enigmatic figure bored
his beady-eyed glare into Gavenkog and mouthed a lone,
gravelly word: “Run.”

Gavenkog took a faltering step backward, eyes darting

around the battlefield as he did so. Though he’d had the
upper hand but a moment ago, his margins were slim, as
his victory had cost him most of his mechs. Adding a fresh
Gearloc into the mix was an unforeseen complication, to say
nothing of the vengeful motivation his accidental, potentially
60
mortal, wounding of one of their party might inspire. After a
moment’s pause, he pursed his lips and gave a shrill whistle,
then turned tail and trotted into the forest. The bot that had
cornered Stanza gave up its post and followed behind
its master.

61
 Duster was aware of all of this only vaguely, and after the
fact. In the moment, she couldn’t wrench her gaze from
the old Gearloc lying on the ground—and she was so very
old, Duster could see that now, now that the mask of hardy
bluster had been forcibly dropped, so old and vulnerable and
yet forced to act so young and brave. As Gavenkog retreated
into the woods, Duster dropped to her knees and attempted,
gingerly yet quickly, to turn Mirawatt over. Faintly, she could
hear footfalls approaching her on all sides—
Stanza running up behind and gently touching
her where she’d been struck by the G-800, the
lumbering footfalls of Gasket on her left, and
the almost impossibly light tread of their
new savior.

Upon turning Mirawatt’s face to the sky, Duster

let out a ragged exhale. Her old mentor’s eyes
were open, but hazy; the smoke Duster had
seen before was coming from a cauterized gash
in the elder Gearloc’s chest. After a moment,
Mirawatt’s gaze caught Duster’s, and a small
smile fluttered to her lips, almost as if
she’d expected this to happen—as if
what was happening was worth it, if it
meant that Duster could look on her
with affection one more time.

It’s not worth it, Duster thought.

Mirawatt’s breath was rattly and weak. She bit her lip in
thought, as if weighing whether she should say something,
before thinking better of it. She slowly reached up to her
neck and pointed to a thin leather strap that hung there.
Furrowing her brow, Duster reached down and pulled the

62
strap into the open; a large, ornate key with an impossibly
complex bit at the end hung from the makeshift necklace.
Mirawatt motioned toward Duster, indicating that she
should take it.

“Wha… what’s it for?” Duster asked, unable to conceal the

tears that had begun to fall from the edges of her eyes.

Mirawatt reached up and tapped Duster’s forehead.

“But what if I don’t know?” Duster said. “I was going to come

back! I wouldn’t have been able to stay away; don’t you get
that?! What are we supposed to do now?”

Mirawatt smiled again, sad but affectionate. Her finger

dropped to Duster’s heart, where she tapped again, before
moving her finger to her own heart and repeating the
63
 motion. Then, before Duster could reply, the light left
Mirawatt’s eyes. She was gone.

Duster stared out, into anywhere, eyes almost as vacant as

those of the departed. For once, she not only did not know
what to say or do; even her instinct, the thing that kept her
alive when she was out of conscious ideas, seemed to have
left her.

“I’m sorry, Duster,” Stanza said, stroking her friend’s hair.

“You need to leave,” the new Gearloc interjected, gruff and

affectless. “I’ve been scouting. More patrols all around. His
was the weakest.”

“What about Mirawatt?” Stanza asked.

“Leave her with me,” he said. “She was my friend. I know

what to do. Take the bot.”

Duster looked up at Gasket, who had inclined its head

downward to “gaze” at its former master. The mech had no
face to speak of, and yet to Duster it seemed to carry an air
of melancholy, as if its reason for being had been abruptly
removed.

Duster sniffed.

“Gasket, uh, what do you say?” she asked. “If we can find
somewhere safe nearby, I can fix you up.”

The mech looked down for a few more seconds before

straightening up and extending one of its arms to Duster.
Gratefully, she grabbed on and lifted herself up, immediately
finding herself in an embrace with Stanza.

64
“I’m gonna need you, please,” she whispered in Stanza’s ear.
“I’m gonna need you.”

“Of course,” Stanza whispered back. “As long as you need.”

The bard let go of her friend and turned to the other

Gearloc.

“Thank you, uh… what was your name?” she asked.

“Carcass,” the Gearloc said.

“Thank you, Car—wait, you said ‘Carcass’?” Stanza asked.

Carcass simply stared back at her.

“Well, regardless, thanks,” Stanza said. “If you’ve been

scouting, do you know a good way out of here?”

Carcass pointed to the northeast.

“... OK,” Stanza said. “Well, I guess this is goodbye, then.”

“Where will she be?” Duster broke in. “When all this is
over… where will she be if I want to come visit?”

“Come back here. I’ll find you,” Carcass replied. “Now, go.”

And so they did. Duster’s arm draped over Stanza’s shoulder,

Gasket limping along, the trio slowly exited the clearing and
disappeared into the trees, headed in the direction crudely
laid out by Carcass. Before the edge of The Break was fully
out of sight, Duster looked back one more time to see the
Gearlocs they’d left behind. The big one bent down and
carefully picked up the smaller one, cradling her as one
might a child, and walked off toward the horizon.

65
 Two years later
Sweat flecked on her brow as Duster gazed on the
lifeless visage of Nobulous Grint. She’d searched for his face
for so long that she’d begun to wonder if she’d ever see it
again. Then, finally, she and the other Gearloc resistance
leaders—they called themselves “the Rogue Council”—were
able to crack that puzzle deck they’d received all that time
ago. That had led them here, to a cavernous laboratory
Nobulous had built near the edge of The Break. Briefed
on the hideout’s contents by the puzzle deck’s creator, an
enigmatic Gearloc named Riffle, the Rogue Council had
burst in and fought tooth and nail, including another
showdown with the Abomination that menaced Duster and
Stanza two years earlier.

66
The battle was fierce. Nobulous had taken plenty of time to
prepare in the year since he’d fled Obendar, faced with the
increased scrutiny of the Gearloc public after Stanza and
Duster had begun sharing Mirawatt’s evidence throughout
the city. In the end, however, the attackers prevailed, and
now Nobulous lay dead on a rocky outcropping outside the
lab, frame no longer so haughty in death. Duster stood alone
over his corpse now; the rest had wandered off to celebrate
or patch their wounds or investigate what he’d left behind.
She felt as if she needed to look after it a little longer; he’d
cost her so much throughout her whole life, and it would be
just like him to spring up and slink off when nobody
was looking.

So it was that she was not at the mouth of the cave when
another Gearloc walked out of it. She was aware of this new
voice only tangentially; only after it had spoken did the prick
of recognition reach her brain.

“Greetings, friends,” the Gearloc said. “It’s nice to finally

meet in person. As you probably already know, I’m
Mirawatt. Welcome to The Break. There’s still a lot you have
left to learn.”

At that moment, Duster felt many things, as if awash in

a hurricane of conflicting input. Elation, shock, anger,
and confusion all jousted in her mind, but none emerged
victorious. Instead, the dominant force was dread: a
realization that whatever was to come, the mission to
restore Daelore would not end with Nobulous’s death. Not
by a long shot.

67
 timeline

Based on my
research, the
following represents
an accurate timeline
of major events
related to Nobulous
Grint, The Breaking of
Daelore, and the Age of
Tyranny.

BBD = Before The Breaking of Daelore

ABD = After The Breaking of Daelore

68
15 BBD: Nobulous, Mirawatt and
Synchro, all in their 60s at this
time, begin working on The Great
Machine, which can extend life
signs in organic matter for small
periods of time.

1 BBD: Mirawatt secretly attempts

to shut down The Great
Machine after learning that
Nobulous is planning to
supercharge it in an attempt to
become immortal.

0 ABD: Nobulous activates The Great

Machine, annihilating much of Southern
Daelore and creating The Break and
The Abysmal Cavern. This is known as
The Breaking of Daelore or the Day
of Desolation. The Day of Desolation
creates a mass extinction event for
Gearlocs living in Southern Daelore,
separating the survivors from the
northern Gearlocs of the Deepwood.
However, the effects of The Great
Machine do benefit members of the
Gearloc Council, allowing their lives to
be extended by extreme amounts.

69
 1 ABD: Mirawatt discovers within her the existence
of a rare gene which counteracts the effects of
biomechanical fusion. She realizes that young,
healthy Gearlocs with this gene could fight back
against Nobulous’s tyranny. Fearing for their lives
after Nobulous learns of Mirawatt’s discovery,
Mirawatt and Synchro flee the Deepwood. Mirawatt
escapes to The Abysmal Cavern and uses her gene to
protect the remains of the Great Machine, putting
up a giant energy shield around The Abysmal Cavern
keyed into her biological signature.

100 ABD: 125 ABD: Nobulous discovers

Searching for a semi-sentient strain of
experimentation krelln and begins performing
subjects that unspeakably cruel experiments
won’t be missed, on the creatures. It’s believed
Nobulous begins that around this time, he
systematically accidentally enhances the
collecting krelln consciousness of the giant
for study and krelln now called Barnacle,
experimentation. who escapes Nobulous’s labs
and returns to the Sibron.

70
131 ABD: Nobulous
temporarily abandons
his krelln research
after an incident in a
makeshift underground
lab called The Drowned
Caverns, in which he
accidentally unearths a
monster too destructive
even for him to contain.

298 ABD: Nobulous

begins building
secret underground
labs around
Daelore,
particularly in the
southern jungles.
He also replaces 299 ABD: Nobulous
his heart with a hunts down and
mechanized device. kills Synchro
while Synchro
is gathering
materials outside
of The Break.

71
 400 ABD: Around this time,
Nobulous ramps up work on
his labs, creating all manner
of beasts for study and to
intimidate his enemies. Some
of these beasts get loose
and begin encroaching on
the Deepwood, further
decimating and isolating
Gearloc populations
that still had not fully
recovered from The
Breaking of Daelore.
444 ABD: Mirawatt
builds the first
iteration of Gasket.
451 ABD: Tink
becomes one of
the first Gearlocs
to move to the
human-dominated
city of Obendar,
where he founds
a mech company
called GEARBOT.
72
458 ABD: As the attacks
on the Deepwood
get worse, Nobulous
begins establishing
a Gearloc base
of operations
in Obendar and
coordinates a
hostile takeover of
GEARBOT from Tink,
allowing him to ramp
up production on
mechs considerably.
460 ABD: The attacks
on the Deepwood
become so bad that
the various Gearloc
settlements begin to
lose contact with
each other. Some of
the settlements are
believed to have been
wiped out.
470 ABD: Seeing an opportunity to prey on the
weakened Gearlocs, a loosely-affiliated group of
“tyrants” known as the Ebon begin encroaching
on the Deepwood. Other independent tyrants
also begin menacing the Deepwood as well as the
rest of Daelore, either sensing the opportunity
for lawlessness or in an attempt to get revenge
on the Gearlocs for the scourge of Nobulous’s
creations. Around this time, Nobulous begins
working on his own biomechanical tyrants to
fight back against the Ebon, but he loses control
of several of them, and they begin menacing
southern Daelore. This is the beginning of what
Gearlocs refer to as “The Age of Tyranny.”

473 ABD: Mirawatt learns that a young

Gearloc named Duster carries the rare
gene that would allow her to interact
with biomechanical fusion without ill
effects. Fearing what Nobulous would
do to the child, Mirawatt steals
Duster away, fakes her death and
begins work on implanting her with
biomechanical implants.

478 ABD: Duster and

Mirawatt are separated
during an attack by
Nobulous. Duster escapes
and survives on her own.
73
 480 ABD: The Gearloc
settlement ruled by
Nobulous and the Council
of Eight, now numbering
about 100 Gearlocs, moves
to Obendar. Over the
next several years, other
Gearloc settlements learn
of the increased Gearloc
presence in the city and
begin to move there
themselves, until Gearlocs
become the largest minority
population in the city.
497 ABD: Duster gains
control of several
sects of Ebon and uses
them to wage war on
Nobulous, all the
while spreading the
word of the Council’s
treachery. The Gearloc
Council begins issuing
propaganda about
Duster, fabricating
evidence of her
academic history,
early life, goals, and
motivations.

495 ABD: Hoping to regain control

of the geopolitical situation in
Daelore and realizing that the
effects of the Great Machine
are finally starting to wear off,
Nobulous founds the Gearloc
Council Internship Program with
his son, Robulous Grint. He also
begins experimenting on Gearlocs.

74
500 ABD: In an attempt to kill two birds with one stone,
Nobulous and the Gearloc Council select a group
of smart, brave Gearloc adventurers to venture into
northern Daelore to defeat the various Ebon and
tyrants. However, Nobulous also leaks word of the
Gearlocs’ whereabouts to several of the tyrants.
Nobulous hopes that this strategy will eliminate the
threats to northern Daelore and to the secrets of the
council—especially Duster—while also thinning a
group of Gearlocs he believes could potentially question
his rule. Around this time, five Gearlocs escape from
Nobulous’s labs, and Nobulous neutralizes the remaining
members of the GCIP.

75
 501 ABD: The group of Gearloc adventurers meet Duster
and learn of Nobulous’s evil deeds. They return to
Obendar to accuse Nobulous publicly, but Nobulous
captures them and orders them executed. The
adventurers escape and travel north to raise support
for a resistance movement against Nobulous, while
Duster escapes with the dissident bard Stanza and
travels south to learn the secrets of Nobulous’s labs.
As they travel south, they accidentally make contact
with Mirawatt and are plunged into The Abysmal
Cavern after being chased by Nobulous. Meanwhile,
after gaining strength and numbers, the original
group of Gearloc adventurers begin seeking out and
destroying many of Nobulous’s most vile tyrants,
linking up with the Gearlocs who escaped from
76 Nobulous’s labs in the process.
502 ABD: After emerging from The Break,
Stanza, Duster and Gasket reunite with
the other Gearloc fighters and track
down the rest of the tyrants in Southern
Daelore. All that is left is to find
Nobulous, who goes into hiding as the
resistance movement grows…

77
 The following are personal papers collected from Nobulous
Labs after the death of the institution’s founder. I believe they
will be of note to those researching the Age of Tyranny.

Nobulous’s Journal - Research Day 182421

Perhaps I’m going mad. My refusal to kill the stupid test

subject may be my undoing. She had been morphing into
something else entirely, a more interesting and useful
creature. It was a step in the proper direction, to be sure, but
the little piece of refuse deserved so much worse.

In my haste to work on her, I failed to see that I was actually

giving her a great gift. Superior senses compared to your
typical Gearloc, superior strength—an entirely new persona
in many ways. I’ve sent some drones to track her, but the real
pity is what she took on the way out.

Syringes, vials, toxins... the things she was constantly stealing

before her capture functionally mean very little. They’ll be
replaced in short order. Her animal, however... the animal
she so easily tamed in captivity—that is another matter
entirely. Before it was placed in her cell, it had been our most
successful fusion. Our beloved “pigadillo”: the unbridled
ferocity and savagery of a warthog combined with the
impenetrable armor of an armadillo.

I’m a fool for allowing her to get anywhere near it. I had
hoped it would incite rage or fear, the emotions I believe will
bring out the subject’s enhanced violent instincts. Instead, it
became a mount suitable for a frenzied escape.
78
79
 Regardless, our efforts continue. We have four creatures
captured, fresh from the Deepwood. We must choose today’s
fusion attempt carefully. I’ll have the interns handle it; they
have so much to learn, and quickly. If they botch things up,
perhaps I’ll experiment on them tomorrow instead.

Nobulous’s Journal - Research Day 182422

Ah, sweet success!

I hate to admit it, but maybe these interns have a sliver of

skill hiding in their tiny little brains after all.

What a gorgeous pairing. The golden veins of the golem

seem to be working in tandem with the thick skin of the troll
brewmaster, creating an amazing effect. This new creature
is exhibiting abilities we have not yet seen outside the
laboratory.

80
It seems smarter than your average troll and much more
resilient than your average animated pile of rubble. I think
I shall call it a Wiser Golden Troll Ultra. I must study it
further!

The youngest of the new interns—his friends call him

Helix—has quite taken to his work in the lab. After his
“mishap” while loading the last troll into its tank, he’s been
doing everything possible to get back into my good graces—
as if that were possible. For the time being, however, I need
all the help I can get, so I’m gifting him his own workspace.
I fear it’s premature for such a thing, but it’s rare to see this
much potential and determination this early in one’s career.

Given our “turnover” rate here, I feel it may be best to

accelerate his access to some of our most potent agents. He’ll
begin tonight.

Nobulous’s Journal - Research Day 182423

Helix is pathetic. When given his assignment yesterday,

all he cared to speak about was the escaped Gearloc. He’s
an embarrassment. An imbecile. All that matters is what
comes next: an infinite and glorious future. Dart’s escape is
meaningless, and if Helix doesn’t stop asking about her and
that traitorous hamadillo soon, he’ll be grist for the splicing
machine. For now, he’s been placed well outside his comfort
zone, researching electrical fields’ effects on apes. An
ancillary benefit is that I plan to gain some outstanding new

81
 insight on electrical fields’ effects on unsuspecting Gearlocs
as well. Perhaps he’ll be more compliant tomorrow.

One of the other interns, Gerbil, has been spending

countless hours in the dissection room. It’s an unusual place
for an intern to want to spend their time, but I’ll take it. Her
confidence is going to get her into trouble if she’s not careful.
Perhaps some detention time in the preparation room will
prove if she’s as talented at stitching some of these parts
together as she is at severing them.

The other girl, Flan, is much too eager to please. She hovers
around me incessantly for the entirety of each day, like
a familiar pet you keep around because you don’t have a
better one yet. Yes, she knows her way around almost every
device in the lab, but that doesn’t offset or excuse her social
ineptitude. She’s likely on the other side of this door at
this very moment. These interns must learn that success is
earned with hard work and initiative, not by warming my
doormat. A trip down to the abomination containment
chamber may be in order to give her a dose of reality. I am
not to be trifled with, and I am not to be deterred.

Interns. How I despise them.

It matters not. Huge progress is being made. The fact that

our Wiser Golden Troll Ultra was markedly smarter than
any other troll we’ve spliced gave me an idea that I needed to
test on my own, without the prying eyes of my minions. The
result was fantastic

I don’t like to brag, especially within my own research

notes... but I’m very, very good. The Trollape confirms
what I’d been so close to proving years ago (if Synchro and
Mirawatt hadn’t gotten in my way). We can preserve the
82
mind throughout the splicing process! I knew
this was possible! I need
Gearlocs to
test on, but
I must not
rush this, as
I may become
impatient and use
one of my interns
for the task, which
would be inefficient.
I’m locking the Trollape
away until I have a
chance to further study
its mental stability and
memory capabilities.

Time to see what the mechs

have dragged in today, although
it appears all interns are busy working
off punishments I assigned them. I need to stop doing
that. Looks like I’m on my own again.

Nobulous’s Journal - Research Day 182424

I visited the dissection room today to oversee Gerbil’s

progress. She was evasive while I was present, speaking
haltingly and practically refusing to make eye contact. Good.
Better to be feared than constantly plied with questions and
nonsense. While I was there, however, Flan kept scurrying
83
 in to ask my input about all manner of trivialities, like what
colors I preferred for our spliced subject filing system.

Obviously, the subject was of little importance, and she

will be punished for wasting my time (but since she asked,
I picked burnt umber for failures, mint for successes, and
periwinkle for “needs work”).

Anyway, back to Gerbil. Her lack in conversational skills

notwithstanding, she has proven to be a most prodigious
dissector. Upon my arrival, she had organs from all
manner of beasts neatly laid out for my inspection, each
one categorized both by organ type and species of origin. I
believe tomorrow I’ll actually make time to test her skills in
reconstruction; the only question is which beasts I should
have her combine.

P.S. Why do I keep signing the bottom of each of my journal

entries? Force of habit?

Nobulous’ Journal - Research Day 182425

I don’t know what we should call it yet, but this feathered

dragon shows horrific potential. I never thought the
combination of a bone dragon’s resilience with the
elusiveness of an Honor Griffin would result in a being of
such ferocity… but that’s why we conduct these kinds of
experiments. Truly, there is no balm more soothing, no
mistress more tender than the scientific method.

84
I have sent Flan to clean up the viscera left in the lab after the
feathered dragon’s brief interaction with a minikin geophage.
This should remove her from my presence for a blessed
several hours.

Tomorrow, I think I shall go check on one of our newest

interns to join the team. The others call him “Slank.” He’s
spent his first day in the apothecary, brewing various
concoctions to be used on test subjects. I’m not sure he yet
realizes my ultimate proficiency in this area. I think I shall
rather enjoy this visit and the look on his face when I ask
him how to mix an immortality serum. Ha! Sometimes, I
think I missed my calling as an entertainer.

85
 Nobulous’s Journal - Research Day 182426

I find speaking to Slank… unnerving. When I entered

the apothecary yesterday, I found him wearing a stained,
moldering apron, combining potions in a beaker amidst
a cluttered workstation. Above where he stood hung a
rough-hewn wooden sign with the words “Slank’s Special
Place” painted on it. Upon my arrival, he fixed me with an
unblinking, devilish grin and put his finger to his lips. He
then finished his final mixing regimen before presenting me
with his latest work, saying: “Want to live forever?
Drink this!”

I almost fed him to our feathered dragon then and there for
spying on me in my office… somehow doing so with the
door securely locked. I don’t believe it was coincidence, but
something stayed my hand long enough for him to force
a breathy laugh (in so doing, he filled my nostrils with the
smell of a chewed mint toothpick) and say: “Just yanking
your ear, Nobby, this should help with your splicin’.”

The solution was serviceable—a consumable potion that will

mildly strengthen spliced subjects’ sinews, allowing their
muscles to hold together better after the rigors of surgery—
but to be perfectly honest, I’ve found myself too unfocused
to examine it with my usual precision. Aside from the
toothpick, the apothecary smelled old and wet, and Slank’s
insistence on working barefoot in the place meant that I
could hear his spongy footfalls echoing about as he walked
the room. Something about him is just not right, almost
as if he himself is a concoction of these chambers. I splice
creatures of all kinds, and this is the one that unnerves me!?

I hate interns.

86
I will put my hatred aside for now. Under his charge, no
more toxins and test tubes have gone missing, so as long as
the work progresses, I will overlook… everything about him.
I must turn now to the topic at hand: selecting the next two
beasts to recombobulate.

Nobulous’s Journal - Research Day 182427

This furryous wyrm is the most cracking success story this

lab has seen to date! A combination of a furious gorilla and a
bog wyrm, it showed no signs of deterioration before being
87
 confined to the holding cells. I hate to admit it, but maybe
Slank’s concoction did aid the process a bit.

The interns seemed to sense the significance of the splice as

well—especially after two of them were sent to the infirmary
with wounds that have yet to close. Blood everywhere
means messy interns! The others came by to watch the
demonstration as I let my newest bot creation try to take
a piece off the wyrm. Ha! No chance! Even with the bot’s
immunity to poisons, the wyrm snapped its weapon in half
like a twig while simultaneously shearing off its left wheel!
After 10 seconds of the bot just smoking as it spun in circles,
I declared the Furryous Wyrm the victor. Note to self: I must
devise a better self-righting mechanism for that bot!

I think we need more of this type of team-building to get

things clicking here in the lab. Maybe pitting interns against
their creations could bring a new twist to their job, in a fun
and jovial kind of way. Of course, it would be better if they
were working, but this would allow them to take some extra
pride in what I’ve accomplished when they or their co-
workers get mauled or eaten.

It may well be that this experiment, combined with Slank’s

muscle strengthener, will be a moment historians look back
on as the tipping point in my study of immortality. With any
luck, one of those historians may even be me!

88
Nobulous’s Journal - Research Day 182428

I observed Helix for a while through two-way glass today,

thus shielding myself from the effects of the electrical
field he’s working on. He reported recently that he was
experimenting with stronger voltages, with the hope that
these would more quickly stimulate our sewn-together
corpses back into something approximating life. His efforts
appear to be successful; I saw a boglin (a bog and goblin
splice) practically leap off the table.

Helix’s ears do seem to be twitching more, however. It’s hard

to know how long he will last with such a high exposure. I
should really provide him some back-up. Gerbil will do. I’m
just glad I stayed on my side of the glass. The testing was
completed hours ago, yet I feel like I can still hear a faint
buzzing when he
walks by.

It’s my hope that the

stronger electrical
current will allow us
to reanimate larger
creations. Perhaps we
should test the theory
on a bulkier midsize
beast. Helix would
probably have some
thoughts on how
aggressive we can go
at this point.

89
 Nobulous’s Journal - Research Day 182429

It’s days like these when I think about entirely shredding the
intern program—or at least shredding these interns. Helix is
a backwards-looking nincompoop, Slank’s proficiency in the
apothecary doesn’t make up for the unsettling sounds and
smells that emanate from his quarters, and Flan simply will.
not. leave. me. alone.

Her incessant babbling made it so I could barely concentrate

during the demonstration of the Alpha Howl today. It’s as if a
barrage of syllables cannot help but tumble from her mouth
at every moment! Her only cessation of speaking is to hear
my answers to her insipid questions, during which she stares
at me like a wide-eyed fawn. It’s no wonder Gerbil skipped
the demonstration today. The others must be driving her
mad! Though it’s odd that she wasn’t at our team exercises
this morning either... I’ll have to ask her about that.

The demonstration itself was utterly terrifying. It’s rather

entertaining watching legs shake in fear when this thing
walks up to the glass. Yes, I allowed everyone to stay on my
side today. We’re losing too many needed hands. With the
program itself under scrutiny, I’m going to have to tread
more carefully with these four.

All in all, a successful day of splicing, and yet something

feels off.

90
Nobulous’s Journal - Research Day 182430

I think I need a vacation. A nice long sabbatical would do

me good. Helix has made some adjustment to his current
setup, causing the lights to flicker intermittently. Flan
continues to flutter about like some determined insect. I
keep slipping on the “extra parts” Gerbil fails to pick up after
her baddie deconstructions. And Slank’s eyes are what I see
when I close my own at night.

I can’t quite explain it. Slank hasn’t done anything prohibited

to speak of. He simply exists, and in so doing, his existence
chafes against my own. When I entered the apothecary
today, he held up two empty beakers to his eyes, making
his pupils appear uncomfortably large. I intuit that he
meant to indicate that I should be surprised by his latest
accomplishments, but instead, the only thing I could find
in my heart was revulsion. It’s difficult to imagine that I, a
man who has performed so many experiments that other
Gearlocs would find unspeakable, could be so disquieted by
the inscrutable actions of a simple intern, but I admit that I
am shaken.

Yes, I think a vacation will be the

best thing. Slank’s latest concoction
was a stronger version of the sinew
reinforcement potion, and I believe that
when it is combined with Helix’s new
electrical field, we will be finally ready
for larger creature configurations. If
tomorrow’s test goes well, I’ll liquidate the
four of them and take a break for a while
before I continue my greatest work of all.

91
 The worst of news came from above ground today. Some
of my strongest creations have started to fall by the hands
of some elusive Gearloc adventurers. These tyrant corpses
should be arriving in short order. Perhaps I’ll give the
interns one last attempt at working with the best of the best.
Surely with premium raw materials, they’ll come up with
something worthwhile.

If that weren’t enough, resistance to the Council has been

mounting, and I’m being forced to split my attention. If I’m
not dealing with rag tag adventurers rallying support in the
Deepwood, I’m having to send far too many mechs after
recent Obendar escapees surfing down the Sibron!

My work is being undone, and certain Gearlocs are getting

all too close to areas of Daelore I’ve worked far too long at
keeping off limits! The mechanical skeletons hidden away to
the south just need to be grafted with these new creatures!
With an army that’s much more adaptable, I’ll be free from
distractions—free to finally secure the immortality I am due.

Nobulous’ Journal - Research Day 182431

Those four—nay, those five!—have incurred the wrath

of the wrong Gearloc genius! They will rue the day they
crossed Nobulous, or at least they will rue it for all of the five
minutes between their capture and their swift and painful
demise!

It is almost too incensing to recall, but I must write this

down for reflection, lest I encounter similar pitfalls in the
92
future. This morning, all four of the interns gathered with
me to watch the latest demonstration: the bellowhowl, a
combination of the werewolf Mulmesh and the terrifying
troll Nom. A pity they fell in battle without fully disposing of
my enemies. But they’ll now have a second chance, working
together as one.

Given the recent improvements introduced by Slank and

Helix, I was optimistic about the success of the project.
When Helix activated the electrical field, however, all
manner of hell broke loose. The bellowhowl sprung to life
surprisingly fast, almost immediately, and unleashed an
ear-splitting roar that left everyone disoriented, even behind
the glass. Almost as quickly, the creature writhed in pain as

93
 its muscles rapidly expanded beyond normal size. Before
I could react, it tore its restraints away from the wall and
charged toward the operations room, smashing effortlessly
through the wall near where we stood.

I regained consciousness a few minutes later, my head aching

from a piece of brickwork that had come loose during the
beast’s rampage. The interns were gone, but in their place
was a piece of paper stained by Slank’s unmistakable scrawl:
“COURTESY OF DART.”

What makes my blood boil is that the note was pinned to

my shirt using one of Slank’s deplorable minty toothpicks!
I never thought I could summon rage at the level it exists
inside of me at this moment, but here we are. They think
only one monstrosity was created and released today, but
THEY HAVE NO IDEA.

After some investigation of these degenerates’ now-

abandoned workspaces, I have developed a working theory
for what happened. Rather than making off with the
purloined chemicals and equipment, Dart hid her stolen
goods inside the bodies of some of the dead creatures in the
dissecting room. Gerbil spent all of her time there in order
to extract the materials from the corpses while still doing
enough dissection that her subterfuge would escape
my notice.

One way or another, she smuggled these goods to Slank, who

was then able to make his own off-book potions without
any items being cataloged as missing. His sinew solution
really does work, but after I scoured the apothecary, I found
a few trace elements of some of the toxins Dart stole—most
notably essence of shockberry, which reacts in a volatile
matter when exposed to some forms of electric current.
94
95
 Slank must have modified his solution with the stolen
elements, and Helix’s updated electrical field was designed
to activate the altered potion inside the Bellowhowl. All the
while, Flan’s distractions were just that: distractions! A way
to keep me from focusing on the skullduggery occurring
under my nose!

After demolishing the observation room, the beast crashed

through one of the lab’s outside walls, allowing the interns
(and a few of my other spliced subjects) an avenue of escape.

This kind of setback is unacceptable. I’ll need to be more

reckless with the next phase of my plan, using the chaos
it will likely create to my advantage. It’s time to take the
splicing research I’ve gleaned here to The Break, where I can
begin implementing my methodology on the unspeakable
horrors below. Breaking the world doesn’t seem as
impressive an accomplishment when you’re on the precipice
of doing it again.

I’ve updated my mechs with shoot-to-kill programming for

all five of these interlopers and for all others standing in my
way. From now on, I work alone—well, alone and with Rob,
of course.

96
97
 Chapter 1
Figment
In one sense, Figment hoped Mirawatt, Synchro and
Nobulous didn’t mind him going through their garbage, but
in another sense, he didn’t really care.

“All artists steal,” he muttered to himself as he poked through

the scrap heap not far from the hidden lab that housed…
what, Figment wasn’t quite sure, other than that it was
the brainchild of the Gearloc race’s three most respected
scientific minds. “And it’s not like they’re using any of this
stuff, anyway.”

Though he was only about 10 years younger than the trio

whose detritus he was skimming, Figment had looked up to
the scientists most of his life—especially Nobulous, always at
the forefront of the group’s scientific announcements, always
the first name on their academic treatises, and the one who
had popularized the capitalization of the word “Gearloc.”
Not only was Nobulous brilliant; he was bombastic,
confident, successful—all adjectives Figment wished could
be more readily applied to his own description.

It wasn’t like he was a failure. Figment was a moderately

proficient inventor, finding time to work on his own
projects in between a steady, if not particularly lucrative,
job repairing common Gearloc gadgets throughout the
Deepwood. The inventions he felt satisfied with enough to
debut to the public were adequately well-received—a more
efficient steam-powered engine one year, an ebonite dowser
another—but nothing that would gain him any kind of
notoriety.
98
Part of him knew, though he was afraid to admit it even to
himself, that the recognition he received was commensurate
to his ability, or at least to the usefulness of his body of work.
And yet, another part of him believed that he’d have had far
more success if it wasn’t for the entire scientific community
being in the shadow of the Deepwood Brain Trust, a name
he’d coined for his intellectual idols-cum-rivals. Now in his
50s, he was well past the age when the Trust had first made
their mark on scientific history with their hydroelectric
generator. Even if he scored a hit now, he was worried he’d
be nothing more than a footnote, a piece of trivia about a
person who came up with something remarkable once and
never again.

It was with this motivation in mind that he’d begun covertly

following the Brain Trust around Daelore when he wasn’t on
the job. He wanted to see what they were up to, where they
got inspiration, in the hopes that he could strike on a
similar vein.

This tailing had done Figment little good for many months;
on the contrary, he started to lose jobs and time in his
workshop as his pursuit ate up more of his life. One day,
however, he managed to keep tabs on the trio as they
left the collection of Deepwood Gearloc villages for a
journey into the Halloway Forest. It was here that he found
their hideaway lab—when he’d stealthily tucked himself
away near one of the Trust’s conversations, he’d heard
Mirawatt affectionately refer to it as the group’s “Southern
Command”—and it was here that he begun examining the
cast-offs of what the three inventors were working on.

Very quickly, he abandoned his practice in the Deepwood

and began roughing it in various secluded spots in the
forest, hoping to keep unseen by both the scientists and the
99
100
area’s native apes, venturing only into the southern Gearloc
settlements when he needed to do an odd job to supplement
his food supply. It was on the return journey from one of
these visits that he happened upon the orb.

Kobolds tended to keep their own counsel, not much for

sharing their discoveries or even interacting regularly with
other creatures of Daelore outside their own. To wit, when
Figment accidentally stumbled upon one of the scaly lizard
people fighting off an ape attack, he settled in a nearby bush
to view a rare natural occurrence, the same way one might
read a travelogue.

In his defense, it seemed like the kobold had the battle in

hand. The ape had gotten its teeth into the reptile’s left side
for a brief moment, but the kobold rolled away, hissing a
curse in its native tongue and holding a milky white orb
high as it made strange gestures with its other hand. On
command, a bolt of something (Figment could not identify
what) shot from the mystical sphere toward the offending
chimp. To Figment’s shock, when the bolt hit the ape, it
quickly began to wrinkle, and then decay, before his eyes. In
just a few seconds, the primate lay still, a husk of the vibrant
and violent creature it was when Figment had come upon it.

As Figment continued to watch, breathless, the kobold

lowered the orb and pressed it to his side, where the ape
wounded him. In a turn even more surprising than the rapid
aging bolt, the whirling lights of the orb began to spin, and
Figment saw the area the orb touched begin to stitch itself
up—first the wound, but then the torn robe that covered it
as well!

Figment was transfixed. A kobold orb was a rare sight

indeed, and seeing one in action was rarer still. No one
101
 outside the kobolds knew where they came from or how
they were used, and many of Daelore’s more superstitious
denizens talked of them like they were magic. Seeing one up
close, healing what physics had rent asunder with no trace
of mechanical alteration, even a man of science like Figment
was willing to believe those people had a point.

Then, finally, his last shock of the day: Just as the kobold
appeared to be finishing its self-medication, a roaring gorilla
burst from the trees and was upon the kobold in an instant.
With a sickening crunch, it slammed a giant fist down on the
kobold’s skull, leaving a bloody dent on top of the reptile’s
head. As the kobold crumpled to the ground, it dropped the
orb; the gorilla glanced at it disinterestedly before gathering
up his fallen ape companion and disappearing back into
the forest.

Petrified, Figment waited for a few minutes to ascertain that

the kobold would not rise on his own and that his attacker
would not reappear. Eventually, he summoned the courage
to venture from the trees, tiptoeing up to the kobold to see
if there was anything to be done. He was a little surprised
when the kobold, clearly on its last legs, opened his eyes as
he approached.

Looking up at him, the kobold seemed to weigh what to do.

Then, with great effort, he turned his head toward the orb
and pointed at it from his prone state.

“Return thissssss…” he whispered, and that was the last

thing he said before he was taken by the darkness.

Figment was no ghoul, but he wasn’t sure how to return

the orb to the kobolds even if he wanted to (he did not).
As such, he became perhaps the first non-kobold to ever
102
possess an orb for a significant period of time, spending the
next two years or so trying to learn its secrets in between his
scrap yard raids and occasional Brain Trust eavesdropping
sessions.

After enough time spent listening in, though he couldn’t

ascertain what exactly they were working on—and he would
never dream of trying to claim their work as his own, even if
he could—he was able to learn the field they were practicing
in, and once he did, he couldn’t believe his luck. Whatever
the trio were working on was related to altering the natural
rate of entropy, which is exactly what his orb seemed
designed to do.

That is, it was what his orb seemed to

do as far as he could understand it.
The more Figment studied the orb,
the more certain he was that it was,
indeed, based on technology rather
than the supernatural, but it was a
technology so advanced that it might
as well be magic to a non-kobold.
His best guess was that it responded
to the bio-electric frequencies of
the kobold body, but since he didn’t
have a live kobold lying around
to experiment with, he had to be
content to tinker, hooking up the
Brain Trust’s cast-offs to the orb to
see if any of them could be used to
manipulate it.

Though he wouldn’t allow himself

to consider any of what he’d been

103
 doing to be a success, the truth of the matter was that he’d
made more progress in the field of orb study than any non-
kobold ever had—enough to write a book on the subject,
had he been so inclined. He’d even been able to recreate a
little of what he’d seen the kobold do, albeit on a very small
scale: causing a small patch of grass to wither away, or once,
in his crowning achievement so far, reverting a well-done
piece of owlbear meat to medium-rare. Eventually, after
accidentally giving one of his hands minor arthritis, he
rigged up an electrical rig for the orb, housing it at the end
of a long brass staff and wearing the control kit on his back.
Around this time, he also began planning what he ultimately
wanted to do with the orb.

He wanted his own entropy-based project to be completely

different from that of the Brain Trust. He also wanted it to be
more ambitious, which is eventually how he settled on
time travel.

“It’s simple,” he’d eventually explain to a blank-eyed Gearloc

named Tantrum, centuries later. “Entropy must increase
over time, right? But this orb can manipulate entropy. So
all someone would need is a way to create a field around
whatever you wanted to make travel through time and tell
the orb to keep entropy static within that field. You set that
on a timer, and boom! The world ages around you. And,
since everything in the field doesn’t progress forward in
time, once the field drops, it’s as if they’ve arrived at their
temporal destination only a moment later.”

Seeing Tantrum’s confused look, Figment shrugged and

admitted, “At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

Though he had a working theory for how the machine

would operate, bolstered by some ideas he’d cribbed from
104
the Brain Trust’s discarded materials, Figment’s central
problem remained: he couldn’t get the orb powered up
enough to manipulate. It had taken a lot of work and
energy to get it to do the paltry amount he’d managed so
far; to turn it into a legitimate time
engine without kobold assistance
would require a power output on
an unimaginable scale. This is
the situation he found himself in
that night at the scrap heap, staff
nearby, as he muttered to himself
and hunted for inspiration in
someone else’s trash.

After a solid half-hour

of hunting, he paused
as the faint sound of a
conversation approached.
Pricking up his ears, he was able
to detect Nobulous’s sonorous, haughty tones, but the other
voices were new to him. Gingerly, he scampered down the
scrap heap and grabbed his staff, hoping to get a closer look.

Staying on the edge of the forest near the middling shack

where the trio worked on their contraption, he spied
Nobulous leading seven or eight other Gearlocs toward the
building. From a distance, the entire party appeared to be
male and about as old as Nobulous, if not a bit older. The
other Gearlocs didn’t do much talking, preferring to listen
in reverence as Nobulous pontificated about something
Figment couldn’t quite make out.

As they entered the lab, Figment crept closer to listen.

105
 “... are, gentlemen: the future of the Gearloc race!” Nobulous
was saying, presumably about the formidable hunk of metal
and diodes he, Synchro and Mirawatt had been working
on. “With one usage at the right setting, it will render you
functionally immortal; with repeated treatments,
actually so!”

What? Figment thought. That doesn’t make sense. One of the

many mysteries of his orb was how it could reverse entropy
in one area without its energy output creating an equal
amount of entropy somewhere else. Like most things he
didn’t understand about it, he chalked it up to some kobold
technowizardry he couldn’t yet fathom, but the Brain Trust
wasn’t working with an orb. How could they compensate for
the entropy output?

“I see that Mirawatt and Synchro aren’t here to voice their…

objections,” another voice said, adding a sniveling giggle.
“Your doing, I trust?”

“Mirawatt and Synchro will see my side of things once we

get the Great Machine up and running,” Nobulous replied.
“I haven’t done anything to them, and I don’t wager they’ll
do anything to stop me once it’s turned on for the first time.
Science involves sacrifice, after all.”

Figment pursed his lips. Something about this didn’t quite

pass muster. Science involved personal sacrifice, for sure—he
certainly felt as if he’d sacrificed over the last few years—but
he didn’t ask that of others, certainly not of strangers who
didn’t know him from a trove in the ground. Regardless,
something deep in his psyche was telling him it was time to
leave, right now, before… something happened, he wasn’t
sure what. His curiosity prevented him from beating a hasty

106
retreat, however, which is why he was still dithering near the
shed when two pairs of footsteps crunched up to the door.

“What are you doing, Nobulous?”

Figment recognized Mirawatt’s voice, more fiery than he’d

ever heard it. Whatever goose chase or task Nobulous had
put her to appeared to have reached a premature end.

“Oh… hello, Mirawatt. Synchro,” the sniveling

councilmember said, suddenly obsequious. “We were just
lamenting your absence.”

“Stow it, Gavenkog,” she barked. “I know why you’re all

here. You want what Nobulous is offering, and cursed be the
consequences. Synchro and I have contacted each and every
one of you to let you know what will happen if this machine
is abused. You’re the ones in charge; you’re supposed to be
looking out for the rest of our kind!”

The one called Gavenkog spoke again.

“What could be more beneficial to Gearlocdom than secured

leadership?”

“That’s enough,” Nobulous broke in. “This has ceased to be

an argument. Hold them.”

Figment heard some scuffling sounds.

“I firmly believe you’ll be grateful once the machine has been

activated,” Nobulous continued. “We’ll know in a moment.”

Figment heard some metal scrapings, and then the ground

began to vibrate with a low thrum.

107
 “It won’t even work, you know,” Synchro shouted. “Mirawatt
disabled it.”

“An obvious lie,” Nobulous scoffed. “It sounds like it’s

working perf—”

Figment couldn’t hear the rest. Nobulous’s voice was

drowned out by a high whine that quickly became all-
consuming; Figment dropped the staff to the ground
and covered his ears. Looking down, he saw the power
monitoring gauge on the staff going crazy, as if interacting
with some invisible energy source. That’s when he noticed:
All around him, the world was getting brighter, as if it were
day, and then high noon, and then as if everywhere he
looked he was staring straight into the sun.

108
And then, for a split second, he saw a bright, shimmering
sphere form around him, and it was dark again. As his
eyes readjusted to the darkness, Figment blinked and then
scurried backward in shock. The shed was gone, but he also
wasn’t in a forest anymore. Outside of the patch of grass that
had been under his feet, the ground felt like wet stone. It
seemed darker than it had before Nobulous turned on the
machine, and Figment could scarcely see but for a brand
new light source: his orb, which was glowing atop its staff,
animated by some newfound fuel.

Figment bent over and picked up the staff from where he’d
dropped it. Everything appeared to be in order, so he hoisted
it aloft to get a better look at his surroundings, gasping at
what he saw.

The night sky was blotted out, replaced by a turgid swirling

smoke. All around him was blasted rock; what trees
remained were long dead and barren. As far as he could see,
the countryside seemed to be all of the same make —and
despite the darkness, he could see very far, at least when
the distance was illuminated by frequent lightning bolts
dropping to earth in the otherwise dry and lifeless air.

What happened? he thought. Was this me, or Nobulous?

Thoroughly disoriented, he began wandering back in the

direction of the nearby Gearloc village, unsure of what else
to do. When he arrived where he thought it was supposed
to be, however, he found nothing—naught save some scraps
of rubble so decimated that he didn’t know if they were the
remains of the town or some natural phenomenon. At this,
he dropped to his knees and pressed his hands against his
eyes, trying to comprehend what he’d entered into and what
to do about it. After a long time in this position, he got up
109
 and tried to retrace his steps back to the place where he’d
entered this new world.

He didn’t quite make it back to his position before he found

the chasm. Starting not far from where he’d first entered,
the crevasse was impossibly large and wide, flowing with
a river of lava as far as the eye could see. At this, Figment
began believing that he had truly left Daelore behind, as no
such geological anomaly existed anywhere in the area—or
anywhere else, as far as he knew.

110
Then, however, he found the monument, not far from where
he thought the lab had been. Blocky and flat, the squat stone
monolith stood out to him as something that was formed by
sentient hands rather than the capricious slings and arrows
of Mother Nature. Crouching down to observe it more
closely, Figment tumbled backward when he saw the words
etched on the side of the monument in crude block letters,
heralding what he’d missed in his time of transport.

“Here lies Mirawatt

67 BBD - 501 ABD

Gave her life fighting the cruel tyrant Nobulous Grint

Fought to keep the darkness at bay”

Figment’s head was swimming. Though he was still confused

about the particulars, he began to see the shape of things.
This was Daelore after all, or what was left of it. Clearly, the
activation of the machine had dire consequences, as it had
led to Mirawatt’s long life (Figment didn’t know what “BBD”
or “ABD” meant, but he could do the math), an energy
output massive enough to activate Figment’s time machine,
and, he assumed, somehow to his dire surroundings. At
that moment, his desire for personal recognition seemed so
small, so petty.

After sitting still for many minutes, kept company only by

the wind and thunder, Figment made a decision: Whatever
it took, he would find Mirawatt, and together, they could
forestall this mess.

It took him many years, but eventually, he reached her.

111
112
Chapter 2
Polaris
Polaris squatted to peer closer at the large crack in the rock
wall of this section of The Break. She’d been summoned
by Gale, who had been out on patrol when the new fissure
appeared.

“So you’re saying this just opened up while you were out and
about?” she asked. “No preamble, no aftershocks, just boom
and there it was?”

“That’s what happened,” Gale replied. “You ever seen

anything like that in your rock collecting days?”

Though her back was to Gale, Polaris rolled her eyes.

“Rock collecting” was the term Gale used to half-jokingly,
half-derisively refer to Polaris’s self-taught discipline of
magnetobiology, which Gale, along with Static and Carcass,
the other Gearlocs who’d taken up residence in Mirawatt’s
old home, regarded as largely hokum.

But clearly real enough that Gale asked me out here to look at
this, Polaris reminded herself. Just relax. She may be one of
the soulless minions of orthodoxy for now, but with patience,
maybe she’ll see the true path eventually.

She leaned back on her heels and shoved her hands in the
pockets of her tattered lab coat.

“Can’t say that I have run across it in my studies, though

it is very interesting,” she said. “I think it bears further
analysis. You mind sticking around for a bit while I set up
my gear?”
113
 “I guess not,” Gale said with a shrug. “You think it could
have anything to do with the sinkholes opening up
around Daelore?”

“Well, from what you’re telling me, this was a very sudden
thing, and those disturbances have all been very sudden,
too,” Polaris mused as she pulled her homemade geologic
analyzer out of her knapsack. The knobby metal canister
was about a third of the Gearloc’s height, with a thick glass
readout and several antennae and hubs made from different
metals sticking out all over it. She sat on the ground and
began adjusting some settings below the glass.

“Of course, we don’t know if the sinkholes are really

geological in nature or if they’re just part of the unrest
around here,” she tsked. “Nobulous is an awful man, but now
that he’s gone into hiding, all the other nasties down here
have really been having their say.”

“All the other nasties are nasty because of

Nobulous,” Gale pointed out. “Heck, all the
other nasties are down here because of him.
There wouldn’t even be a down here if he
hadn’t made The Break!”

“Oh, would you relax, Gale?” Polaris

said. “I’m not saying I wish Nobulous
was large and in charge again. I’m
just making conversation.”

There was a lull while Polaris

retrieved a wrench and made
some more tune-ups on
her machine.

114
“You probably think about that stuff more than I do, eh?”
Polaris asked. “I came down here all by myself to research
the deep magnets of the earth, but you were born
here, right?”

Gale nodded.

“You ever wonder what life would be like if you lived in the
Deepwood or Obendar like most Gearlocs?” Polaris asked.

Gale shifted from foot to foot.

“Not really,” she said. “There have been Gearlocs in Southern

Daelore since before The Break, just not as many. We learned
to survive down here—or the ones that are still left
did, anyway.”

“What village are you from?” Polaris asked.

“I… I don’t actually remember,” Gale replied. “My parents

kept on the move. Lot of Gearlocs down here have to do that.
They were killed in this freak lava flow thing when I was
little. I don’t know that it was Cinder, but I don’t know that it
wasn’t, you know?”

“Oh Gale, that’s awful!” Polaris said. “I had no idea! I’m sorry
to pry.”

“No, no, it’s OK,” Gale said, waving her off. “Long enough
ago now. Mirawatt found me and took me in.”

“I always wondered how you knew her,” Polaris said, quietly.

“She really was the generous one, wasn’t she? If I hadn’t run
into her not long after I moved down here, I would have
been fried to a crisp for sure.”

115
 Gale nodded and tried to smile, but she didn’t say anything.

“I’m glad we get to pay her back a little by watching over the
machine, I guess,” Polaris said. “I just wish the Gearlocs up
above would find Nobulous and be done with him!”

She thought for a second.

“Say, one of those Gearlocs used to live with Mirawatt, too,

didn’t she?” she asked.

Gale nodded again. “Yeah. Duster,” she said. “Mirawatt didn’t

talk about her much, but I always got the impression she
was mourning someone. Made me feel like second fiddle
for a while—Duster is special in the fight against Nobulous
somehow, though Mirawatt never got into specifics. But
eventually… eventually I realized that Duster was just
different to Mirawatt. Not better.”

“Different, not better,” Polaris repeated. “That’s very

emotionally intelligent of you, Gale. You could write self-
help books.”

Gale smirked. “Thanks, I guess.”

“All right,” Polaris said, standing up. “I’ve got this thing
calibrated; let’s see what it tells us.”

She grabbed a small rod attached to the side of the analyzer

by an insulated wire. Pointing the rod at the fissure, she
moved the device left and right, occasionally pausing to look
at the displays on the analyzer itself.

“Hmm…” she said. “No sign of a rock fracture. Normally in

cases like this, you can see a clear rock edge where the stone

116
split, but surfaces inside look almost like they were formed
by cooling or erosion. It’s like this fracture was always here.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” Gale said, putting her hands on her hips.

“No, I believe you,” Polaris assured her. “It’s just strange,

yeah? Now—what’s this?”

Peering closer, she scrutinized a black, viscous sludge that

had started to seep from the crack.

“Gross!” Gale said. “It wasn’t doing that earlier.”

“Stay back from it,” Polaris said, scooting a little further from
the opening. She pointed the rod at the ooze. “Oh, that’s
strange.”

“What?” Gale said.

“It’s metallic,” Polaris said, studying the analyzer and letting

out a low whistle. “Let’s see… not magnetic, no healing
properties I can ascertain—”

“Because it’s a metal, not medicine,” Gale sighed impatiently.

Polaris tsked at her again.

“As I was saying, no healing properties, and the analyzer

can’t relate it to any known metals. Maybe it’s an alloy.”

“Whoa!” Gale cried, causing Polaris to jerk her head up

in alarm.

The ooze had reached the ground, and as it did, it began

to bubble and grow, looking for all the world like an
unholy loaf of rising bread. As it got bigger, shapes began
to protrude from the mass, forming arms, legs and finally
117
 faces, malevolent in intent. As the ooze hardened into two
troglodyte figures, the beings separated into distinct entities
and charged at the Gearlocs, snarls on their lips.

Upon realizing the nature of the ooze, both Gearlocs sprung

into action. Gale jerked her arm back in a cocking motion,
and a mechanism of wires, gears and turbines unfolded
themselves along her right arm. With her left arm, she
grabbed her staff off her back and held it at the ready.

Polaris reached into her pack and pulled out a small device
that looked something like an oversized glove. Slipping it
onto her left hand, Polaris flexed
her fingers, and a gleaming
metal sphere flew out of the
pack and hovered next to
her at eye level.

“You’ve been
down here a
lot longer than
me!” she called back
to Gale. “Ever see any
trogs do that?”

“No!” Gale shouted,

and then the battle was
struck.

Each troglodyte went

after one of the Gearlocs.
Polaris recognized the
one that went for Gale as
a breed the Gearlocs
called a goblodyte,
118
so named because of its similarities to the above-ground
goblins that dotted Daelore. Mirawatt had a theory that a few
goblins caught in The Break had survived with major genetic
aberrations, and the modern-day goblodytes were their
descendants. The monster hissed at Gale and swiped a claw
at her, which she batted away with a staff parry.

Polaris didn’t recognize the breed that faced her down. A

sludge similar to what had come out of the crack oozed
from its mouth, and as Polaris weighed her next move, the
creature opened its maw and belched a hefty serving of the
stuff in her direction. Yelping partly from surprise and partly
from disgust, Polaris dodged out of the way; the sizzle she
heard upon the substance hitting the ground reassured her
of her good sense in doing so.

Polaris held up her hand and jerked her fingers forward,

causing the sphere hovering next to her to zip toward
119
 the troglodyte and conk it on the head. Slightly dazed,
the monster waved its hands around as if swatting a bee,
knocking the sphere about and coating part of it in its
unknown drool. The ball wavered and sank a little in midair,
weighted by its new, non-magnetic coating. Rather than try
to salvage it, Polaris gave a flick of her wrist, and the ball
bounced off the wall behind the troglodyte, smacked it in the
back, and fell to the stony floor.

The troglodyte lunged at her, and Polaris pushed a button

on her glove. For a moment, small sensors she’d installed on
her back to enhance her biomagnetism switched on, keying
her into the magnetic energy of the area and dragging her
toward the wall and through the grasp of her opponent.
Both trologdytes were now between Polaris and Gale; Polaris
noted with a frown that while the goblodyte had been
severely bludgeoned, it was still standing and was in the
process of backing Gale against a rocky outcropping.

Why hasn’t she used her gale force winds yet? she wondered.
Then, she had an idea.

Lifting her hand up again, Polaris punched another button

and twisted her wrist. A
new sphere flew out of
the pack, this one a faint
gold in color, and flew
toward her. Before it could
reach her, however, she twisted
her wrist the other way, and the
sphere smashed into the oozing troglodyte’s
chest. Though not as dense as her normal iron
spheres, the gold sphere was made from a rare
metal that absorbed very little vibration, feeding it

120
back at the thing that had struck it, instead. The troglodyte
was bowled over, landing on its back right behind the
goblodyte who was menacing Gale. Seeing what her battle
partner had set her up for, Gale quickly extended her arm
and made a flat palm, activating the turbines on her arm
attachment.

Fwoom! A giant gust of air rushed out of the attachments,

pushing the goblodyte back. Just as Polaris hoped, the
goblodyte stepped on its fallen comrade and tripped, falling
backward and smashing its neck against the rock wall with
a crack. Lightning quick, Gale was on top of the other fallen
troglodyte, bringing her staff down on its head with a two-
handed strike.

“Let’s, uh… let’s get out of here for now,” she said, breathing
heavily.

Polaris nodded.

On their walk back to Mirawatt’s compound, the pair

discussed what they’d just seen.

“I’ve never seen trogs this close to the surface before,” Gale
mused. “Something’s going on in there that we don’t
know about.”

“Well clearly, what with the way they got here,” Polaris said.
“Maybe Nobulous’s doing?”

“Could be,” Gale said. “But we’ve been through his normal
labs. He’s not there anymore; they’ve all been raided by
Domina or Rok and Rol. Wherever he is, he’s got to be
operating at reduced capacity, and besides, I’ve never seen
tech that could do that.”

121
 “That’s true,” Polaris replied.

They continued to hash out theories until they reached the

compound. Upon their arrival, they walked into the kitchen,
where they were greeted by Carcass, who appeared to be
waiting for their return. Before they could say anything, he
jerked his thumb toward the workshop and strode off.

“Er… I guess we should go in there, huh?” Gale said.

Polaris shrugged. “Carcass isn’t a bad man, but his energy’s

all off,” she said. “It’s unsettling.”

“You can just say he could use some manners, Polaris,”

Gale remarked as they walked into the other room. “Not
everything’s magnets, you know.”

Their banter was stopped cold by what they saw in the

workshop. There were two Gearlocs standing there: one a
very short, begoggled, mustachioed man, diminutive even
for a Gearloc, holding a giant staff
with a large stone ball on the end.
He waved at them sheepishly,
aware of his intrusion. The other
Gearloc, however, was the one
that caused Polaris and Gale
to gasp.

“Hi, ladies,”
Mirawatt said
with a half
smile and a
shrug. “I guess
I’m back.”

122
Chapter 3
Gale
“So why not go back in time and kill Nobulous when he was
a baby?” the Gearloc called Tantrum asked.

“Tantrum, that’s disgusting!” Boomer, his companion,

chided him. “You can’t kill a baby!”

“Yeah, but I bet Nobulous was a really disgusting baby,”

Tantrum said with a wicked grin.

Gale sighed. She’d known that the presentation to the

above-ground Gearlocs would have a section where they
just asked Figment a bunch of time travel questions. It
was understandable; she, Static and Polaris had had the
same questions when Figment and Mirawatt arrived at
the compound a month and a half ago (if Carcass had any
questions, he chose not to ask).

“Well, at first, I tried to do just that,” Figment said. “Well…

not just that. I agree, Boomer, killing babies is gross. But I
tried to go back to when Nobulous was younger—hopefully
after he’d already contributed his useful inventions to
Gearloc-kind—and put a stop to The Breaking of Daelore
before it could happen.”

He waved his staff toward the audience of Gearlocs who had

recently done to Nobulous what he could not.

“The problem was the orb,” he continued. “I’ve been at this

for a few years now—or I guess I should say that I’ve aged
a few years as I’ve moved back and forth in time. I’ve spent
123
 almost all of my efforts in that stretch improving my tech
and learning how to better use this thing—I’ve even been
able to change my position slightly while I travel through
time—and still, I’ve never been able to manipulate it to
go back before The Break occurred. I think it may have
something to do with the energy output from the Great
Machine that powers it. Maybe it can’t go back to before the
time when it worked?”

He shrugged.

“Anyway, as one might imagine, kobolds in this day and age

are even less likely to talk to a Gearloc with a kobold orb
than they were before The Break existed, so I’ve been on
my own.”

“Well, why haven’t you attacked Nobulous directly in all

those years since?” Patches, a Gearloc medic, asked. “Why
were we the ones to do it and not you?”

Figment laughed. “Well, you just got done doing it

yourselves, and it took you two years, a hydromech, and
14 people to do it—15 if you count Riffle over there.” He
pointed at the quiet hooded Gearloc leaning against the wall
of the workshop, who nodded at him. “You think I was going
to be able to waltz in and do it all by myself? And that’s to
say nothing of the traps Nobulous has set up over the years
specifically to catch potential time travelers, or to keep any
from teaming up with Mirawatt. He was a paranoid sort, but
I think you all know that. I’m lucky I found an opening to
Mirawatt when I did. Took me a long time.”

Mirawatt broke in. “And besides, that’s not the only

problem. It’s good—believe me, it’s a relief—that Nobulous
is gone, but Figment didn’t bring me to the future to party.
124
125
 Unfortunately, he’s not the main problem. The main problem
is what he created. Gale?”

Mirawatt motioned her to stand in front of the seated

Gearlocs. As she approached the front of the room, Gale
caught Mirawatt’s encouraging smile and tried to meet it as
her mentor took a seat. It was still almost jarring to see her
back alive, and though Gale hadn’t told anyone, her relief
to spend more time with her was mixed with just a hint of
foreboding. When might she be forced to go back to the
point where Figment had plucked her?

Gale reached the spot where Figment was standing and

scanned her audience, trying not to make eye contact with
any of them. Staring back at her were Riffle, Mirawatt,
Gasket, the other three who’d been living with her at the
compound, and nine Gearlocs she’d never seen before today
(five more, a collection of former interns/experiments
who’d escaped from Nobulous’s labs, were back in Obendar
attempting to keep tabs on the rest of the Gearloc Council).
True to their culture, many of them were fully kitted out
with tech and gadgets, far more than the gust launcher
that was Gale’s only concession to the augmentation of her
traditional fighting skills. She took a breath.

“So, many of you have likely noticed some strange geological

events happening around Daelore since Nobulous went
into hiding,” she said. “Sinkholes, mild earthquakes, even
changes in the sizes of mountains or hills in some cases.” She
saw a few nods of recognition. “These changes have been
happening in The Break, too. Cracks forming suddenly, new
tunnels where there was just rock the day before, rapid lava
movement, and troglodyte activity all over the place.”

“Troglodyte?” Picket asked.

126
“You’ll see,” Riffle said from their corner.

“We’re still attempting to understand exactly what’s causing

them, but when Riffle came to us, we started to get a better
idea,” Gale said. “Riffle, as I’m sure you were able to glean
from the wild frogman chase they sent you on, is a sneaky
sort of person, and they managed to steal some notes from
Nobulous’s labs before he burned their contents. From what
we can tell, when The Breaking of Daelore happened, it
created… something.”

127
 “What do you mean?” Nugget asked.

“Something dark and something… aware,” Gale said. “We

know the Great Machine runs on entropy conversion, and it
seems the entropic energy output that created The Break had
a sentience to it—maybe some chaotic nexus of the lifeforce
that was sapped in its creation. Anyway, whatever it was, it
looks like Nobulous was keeping it contained somehow.”

“And now he’s not,” Picket said.

“That’s right,” Gale said. “These events are getting worse.

Contrary to popular belief on the surface, there are still a
few Gearloc settlements in Southern Daelore, but this thing
just destroyed another one. This is the force Figment believes
will destroy the world, and according to his calculations,
it’s somewhere around this time that the creature makes its
move: not long after Nobulous’s death.”

“I’ve tried to pinpoint it more precisely, but there aren’t a

lot of markers to pinpoint when exactly the end comes,”
Figment interjected.

“Our strategy is twofold,” Gale continued. “Mirawatt,

Figment—and you, Tink,” she said, pointing at the most
senior of the new Gearlocs, who smiled in recognition.
“You’re the scientists of the group, and you’ll be working on
modifying the Great Machine so it can siphon this thing’s
energy. Since I’ve lived in The Break all my life, I’m going
to be the chief of scout operations and combat training. I
know you all know how to fight, but The Break’s a different
animal. You’ll need to learn how to adapt, how to make the
environment down here work to your advantage. We’ll be
working on that and studying the movements of the other
warring factions down here.”
128
“Other factions?” Tantrum asked, gripping his axe hopefully.
“You mean there’s more?”

“This dark nexus wasn’t the only thing Nobulous was

keeping contained,” Gale said. “He ran The Break like his
personal empire, subjugating everything that lived down
here: the trolls, the orcs, and the bog and lava creatures,
too. Now that he’s gone, there’s a war going on for control
between all of those groups as well as someone who’s been
trying to leverage the scraps of what Nobulous left behind.
This person hasn’t shown themself yet, but we’re guessing it’s
one of the council members.”

129
 “Gavenkog!” Duster breathed, balling her fists. Gale stole a
glance at Mirawatt and wondered if she’d figured out yet how
she’d died, despite asking that nobody tell her. “He’s the one
council member we haven’t been able to track lately.”

“That would make sense,” Mirawatt said. “He was willing to

do just about anything for Nobulous, and with how much
personal infrastructure Nob installed down here, he can
move back and forth mostly undetected.”

“While they’ve mostly been involved in their own

conflicts since, we know it’s only a matter of time before
they focus more of their attention on trying to steal the
Great Machine—especially if and when they find out that
Nobulous is dead,” Gale said. “After the damage the force
field sustained a couple of years ago when Duster and Stanza
were here, it’s not been the same since, so some focused
sabotage could bring it down for good. Time is short, in
other words.”

There was a pause as the seated Gearlocs took all of this in,
realizing that their work was not yet done. Slowly, however,
each one of them looked up and back at her, gazes steeled,
eyes resolute. Gale smiled and smacked her palm with
her fist.

“All right,” she said. “Who’s ready to get to work?”

130
Chapter 4
Static
“So what happens when Mirawatt goes back?” Static asked.
“Can’t you just… not send her?”

He and Figment were surveying a little-traveled tunnel a

couple of miles away from Mirawatt’s compound. For the last
two months, the facility had been abuzz with preparation,
and Figment was on a rare break from modifying the Great
Machine so he could inspect the area where Static suggested
the Gearlocs could move it.

“I can’t keep her here forever, for a couple of reasons,”

Figment replied, leaning on his staff to help keep
his balance on the rocky terrain. “The first
reason is that while we don’t know exactly
how all this would affect the timeline, at
the very least it would likely lead to Duster
and Stanza’s deaths. Beyond their
importance to the cause, I would
never make such a fateful
decision for another
Gearloc.”

“Oh,” Static
said, his ears
drooping slightly.
“I didn’t think
about that.”

131
 He scratched his head.

“How do you keep track of all this stuff?” he asked.

Figment smiled. “I make a lot of charts,” he said. “Anyway,

the other reason I couldn’t keep her here if I wanted to is
because Mirawatt doesn’t want to be kept. She made me
promise to return her to the exact point where she left the
timeline.” He patted the staff. “If I don’t do it myself, it will
happen automatically.”

“Oh,” Static said. “Well, smarter minds than mine have it

figured, it seems!”

As the two trudged on, they saw more signs that this area
of The Break was not simply another patch of stone. The
ground got smoother; they passed platforms that appeared
to once hold lanterns or other gear; Figment even noted a
couple of crude charcoal drawings on one of the cave walls.

“I didn’t know you were an artist, Static,” he observed, a

playful smile tugging at his lips.

Static shrugged. “You can exist in a place like this just fine,”
he said. “I was just trying to figure out how to live in it. I
haven’t been back since Mirawatt died, though. Too busy.”

Figment nodded. “You lived here alone?” he asked.

“For a long time, yep,” Static replied. “Once I got old enough,
I struck out on my own. I lived in one of the Gearloc villages
down here, and I was tired of the constant attacks from orcs
and trolls and whatever thing got out of Nobulous’s lab
that week.”

He waved his hand in an arc in front of him.

132
“I found this little place where I could hole up and train,”
he continued. “Brought a couple of old, old books with me
about Gearloc fighting techniques—written by people I
think were the major Gearloc fighting practitioners before
The Break. I read them until they fell apart. I studied their
methods, and I added in new techniques to take advantage
of my environment.” He smacked his palm with his fist. “And
I went out and got a little first-hand experience. Fancied
myself something of a modern knight-errant!”

“Fascinating,” Figment said as the pair navigated past a

collection of round boulders that had been arranged in
ascending order of size. “A Gearloc going toe to toe with the
creatures down here, and with barely any equipment,
to boot!”

“Originally, I had nothing at all,” Static said, a small smile

betraying his attempt to conceal his pride. He clapped his
wrists together, causing a small spark to arc
between the metal bracers he wore.
“Mirawatt cobbled these together for
me once she discovered my living
situation. I was… a little scatter-
brained at the time, probably
had a concussion or two that
needed taking care of. Turns
out trolls are not felled by
punches alone. They need a
little encouragement!”

“What was the

endgame there, with
all your training?”
Figment wondered.

133
 “What did you hope to accomplish? Become The Break’s
avenging angel?”

“No, no,” Static said. “You have to remember, Break Gearlocs

have been isolated. Most surface-dwellers don’t know we
exist; I’d never even met one personally until Mirawatt. We’re
outnumbered and we don’t have support, not even the false
support the Council gives the ‘locs in Obendar to protect
their own hides. I wanted to give the Gearlocs down here
something to hold onto. A way to fight back, and to feel
unified.”

“Noble,” Figment said.

Static shook his head. “Nobility’s nothing without the

portfolio to back it up. I’ve taught a few other Break Gearlocs
the Way of the Gear—” he caught himself and blushed “—
that’s the name I gave the fighting style. But I’ve instructed a
few others, and we’ll see if it develops into anything more.”

Static, who was out in front,

reached a larger alcove
in one of the rock
walls and motioned
Figment inside. In the
glow of Figment’s orb,
the pair could see a couple
of large rocks at the perfect
height for Gearlocs to sit
on, as well as a makeshift
fire pit, the rocks
scarred black by years
of lapping flames.
The little inset was
domed, with the
134
ceiling above them reaching its highest point at just about an
arrow length above their heads. Static plopped himself down
on the rock on the right and motioned for Figment to do the
same on the left.

“Is this the visitor’s boulder?” Figment joked.

Static chuckled. “I moved it in here when Mirawatt started

calling.”

They fell into silence as Figment craned his neck to look

around the room and Static breathed in the dank scent of his
old home.

“I… I never thanked you for what you did,” Static told
Figment.

“No need, no need,” Figment said. “The whole of Daelore

was at stake. I’m not doing it for recognition. It’s my
portfolio, like you said.”

“Well, that is very noble of you,” Static said, flashing a smile,

“but that’s not what I meant. I wanted to thank you for
bringing Mirawatt back to us, if just for a little while. She’s
the thing that made it all tick, and it wouldn’t feel right to do
this without her.”

“Oh,” Figment said. “Well, I’m glad I could help in that

regard.”

The pair went quiet again for a while.

“Ha!” Static laughed. “I almost forgot why we came here. Do

you think my old abode will serve the machine well?”

“It just might,” Figment said, standing and taking a breath.

135
 “Turning its current location into a decoy would likely buy
us some time, although we’d still actually have to beat the
attackers to be successful. This place is out of the way, but
obscurity and security aren’t exactly the same thing.”

“Or when they can’t find the thing, maybe they’ll think we
destroyed it and they’ll turn around and go home?” Static
asked, hopefully.

Figment smirked. “Not without at least a couple of Gearloc-

shaped trophies to mount on a spike,” he said. He lowered
the top of his staff to the ground so he could better inspect
the floor of the room.

“In case worse comes to worst, I want to get Boomer down

here to rig this place,” Static said, referring to the group’s
resident demolitionist. “This place can easily be caved in if
we need it to be.”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Figment said, continuing

to move the orb to and fro. He chuckled. “I thought you were
just a master of fisticuffs, Static. Is this some cross-training
I detect?”

Static wrinkled his nose and walked over to Figment. “What

are you talking about?” he asked.

Figment pointed down. “I take it from the broken arrow that

archery didn’t make the final cut in the Way of the Gear?”

Frowning, Static bent down to pick up the split shaft.

Holding each piece in either palm, he moved his hands
closer to the light—and then, startled, dropped them.

“What’s wrong?” Figment asked.

136
“Sweep your light around the rest of the room,” Static
replied. “Quickly!”

Figment did so, a confused look on his face. Static scurried

over to one of the room’s far corners, where he uncovered
a cracked piece of stone that appeared to have been carved
by some crude tool. He brought it back to the center of the
room, a grim look on his face.

“I know you don’t have a lot of power left in that thing,

Figment,” he said. “But I think we’d better use it. That arrow
is orc-made, and this club’s from a troll, and there’s no
sediment or dust or anything on either of them.”

Figment’s eyes widened as Static came to his conclusion.

“Our enemies were here recently, and they’re working
together.”

137
 Chapter 5
Carcass
Carcass was a trapper. He kept to himself. He liked Mirawatt.
When she needed help in The Break, he came. He does not
like interviews.

138
Chapter 6
Mirawatt
The air in the workshop was disturbed by naught but soft
clanks and jingles as Mirawatt and Duster completed their
separate tasks around the room. The pair had not spent
much time together over the last couple of months, and even
less alone. This pained Mirawatt, who hadn’t seen Duster in
more than two decades—but then again, even though she
wasn’t clear on the particulars, she knew it had been much
less time since Duster had seen her. She smiled from her
spot on the workshop floor, where she looked up at the Great
Machine and cranked a wrench on one of its knobs.

Time travel, she scoffed internally. So silly. You can barely

sort what’s going on in your own head, let alone explain it to
somebody else.

Regardless of the cockamamie nature of her predicament,

it was also true, so Mirawatt tried to content herself with
the limited interaction she’d had with Duster so far until
such time as the younger Gearloc might decide to seek more
meaningful contact. She knew how her past “parenting”
might look to an outside observer—to anyone, really, other
than Mirawatt herself.

While Mirawatt worked, Duster was inspecting the contents

of the workshop, inventorying what kinds of tools and
improvisable weapons were on hand that might assist the
Gearlocs in moving the machine to another location. It
startled Mirawatt a little when Duster spoke.

139
 “I, uh, I haven’t been saying much to you since we got
Nobulous, huh?” she said, less a question than a statement.

“... It’s OK,” Mirawatt said. “I figured you would when you
were ready—if you were ready, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Duster said. “It’s just that I haven’t known how to say
what I want to say.”

“Oh,” Mirawatt replied.

“But I think I do now,” Duster said. “I wanted to let you

know that I’m not mad anymore. About what happened, you
know—”

“What I did,” Mirawatt finished for her.

“I… I might disagree still, with some of it,” Duster

said. “But I’m not mad. I’m more sad that
things turned out the way they did.”

“I am too,” Mirawatt said, sliding

herself out from under the
machine so she could look Duster
in the eye. Duster, however, was
having trouble making eye
contact.

“I get what you did,” Duster

said. “I get what you
thought you were
doing, and I
appreciate
it. I
wanted
you to
140
know because eventually, you’re going to see me again and
I’m going to be mad about it. It’s important you know that I
won’t stay like that forever.”

Mirawatt pushed herself up off the floor and took a breath.

“Thanks, Duster,” she said. “I really—”

They were interrupted by a shrill keen that sounded from

just outside the workshop door. Exchanging uncertain
glances, the pair walked to the door and were surprised to
see Figment and Static, the latter of whom looked a little
woozy while the former rushed toward them.

“What’s going on?” Duster asked. “Didn’t you just leave a

couple minutes ago?”

She glanced again at the disoriented Static

and then up at Figment’s orb, which was
swirling brighter and faster than usual.

“Oh,” she said, her face paling.

“Our enemies are already here!” Figment

said. “Or at least the trolls and the
orcs are. We found one of their
abandoned camps; they could be
any—”

A stone the size of a fist sailed

out of the darkness behind
Figment and slammed into
his back, knocking him to
the ground. As Duster
rushed to help
him get up,
141
 Mirawatt felt a fizzy jolt in the back of her neck. She reached
up to rub the sore spot, but as she did so, she saw her hand
and stopped. It appeared as if some shimmering liquid was
washing over her palm, though she could not feel it.

That rock must have hit the time machine, she realized,
rushing over to help Duster assist Figment. Sure enough, the
backpack Figment wore everywhere had a sizable dent in it,
so Mirawatt stuck her hand in his face to get his attention.
Seeing the tendrils flowing on her palm, he snapped his head
to look at hers.

“Don’t let me go back,” she told him. “Not now.”

142
Nodding, Figment scrambled to his feet and bolted into
the workshop. Mirawatt followed him in so she could alert
the other Gearlocs and grab her crossbow, while Duster
and the now-recovered Static stood at the ready for more
intruders outside. She pushed a large button by her favorite
workbench; her next words would be broadcast to a crude
speaker system inside her compound and to whichever
Gearlocs were present with Gasket.

“Attention Gearlocs,” she said. “The workshop is under

attack, likely from multiple assailants. We think multiple
factions may have converged here at once.”

“They’re working together!” Figment called to her while he

ransacked a tool chest for the right equipment, his backpack
sparking on the bench all the while. Mirawatt pursed
her lips.

“Be on the lookout for cooperation,” she said. “Arm

yourselves, and send any extra reinforcements you can
toward the workshop. Mirawatt out.”

Grabbing her crossbow from where it was propped up

against the Great Machine, Mirawatt started to stride out the
workshop door when the receiver crackled.

“Roger that, Mirawatt,” Picket’s voice came through. “The

compound is under attack, too. Looks like it’s Cinder and a
bunch of its boggy minions. You may have undersold how
big this thing is.”

Mirawatt pinched her forehead before pressing the button

again. “Roger,” she said. “They’re coordinating. Locking
down the workshop now; I’ll communicate again when I
can. Good luck, everyone.”
143
 Letting her hand off the intercom, she turned to Figment.

“After I go outside, lock this place up,” she commanded him.

He nodded at her, a worried look in his eyes. “If I don’t see

you again—” he started, before Mirawatt raised a finger.

“Just fix the machine and we don’t have to talk about it,”
she said before running out the door. As she rolled behind
a nearby stone alcove she’d hollowed out for just this
circumstance, she heard the door shut behind her, followed
a second later by a loud clamping sound she knew was the
mechanical deadbolt locking in place. Outside the door, the
situation was dire.

As Figment and Static had predicted, a swarm of orcs had

flooded the north tunnel and were headed toward the
workshop, interspersed here and there with huge trolls
that waded among their shorter co-combatants like they
were bathing in a particularly smelly river. In an attempt
to staunch the tide, Duster and Static had rushed up to the

144
tunnel’s narrowest point, where they were punching up and
cutting down baddies at a frantic pace.

Mirawatt frowned and selected a spiderweb bolt cartridge to

load into her crossbow. As Mirawatt readied her aim, Static
activated his charge gauntlets and slammed an outstretched
palm into an orc’s nose, turning the pitiable creature into
an electric projectile that careened into four of its following
companions. Static and Duster were making good work of
the foes in front of them, but Mirawatt knew that eventually
some of their enemies would slip through, and they would
be forced to fall back.

We need to hold out as long as possible until reinforcements

arrive, she thought. Her neck was buzzing again.

Her cartridge loaded, she peered out above the top of her
igneous turret and sighted down an orc who’d managed to
squirm her way past Duster’s left side. Her crossbow fired
with a shunk, and the bolt hit the orc square in the chest,
knocking the creature back into the tunnel wall. Upon
impact with the wall, the back of the bolt exploded in a
small puff, spreading an adhesive netting over the orc and
several others nearby. Satisfied with her first stop, Mirawatt
continued to look for potential dangerous targets or
breakthrough fighters that she could similarly wrap up.

Shunk, her crossbow thrummed. Shunk. Shunk.

The orcs were relentless, seemingly uncaring to the

possibility of falling on Duster’s blade. The assassin raked
her weapon left and right, slicing up torsos, limbs, and
anything else that pressed against her attack. Fallen orcs
were simply trampled underneath the crush of new foes,
or used by cleverer orcs as temporary shields as the mass
145
146
moved forward. Aided by Mirawatt’s suppressing fire, Static
and Duster were able to stay standing, but they were slowly
losing ground. Then, the first troll arrived at the front of the
invading force.

With a roar that Mirawatt could feel in the earth below

her feet, the troll swung his club at Static, who flipped
out of the way at the last second. The blow hit the ground
with a echoed boom, splintering both the stone floor and
the skull of an orc unfortunate enough to get in the way.
Static charged back toward the troll, attempting to run up
the creature’s swinging arm and box its ears, but midway
through his maneuver, the troll plucked him up with his
other hand, pinning him against the side of the tunnel. The
troll wound up for another swing with its club, and Mirawatt
fired, piercing the troll’s wrist with another spiderweb
bolt. Blinded both by pain and the bolt’s sticky strands, the
troll screamed, and Static swung himself so his feet were
positioned against the wall. He pushed hard and shot out of
the troll’s grip, headbutting the monster and hanging onto its
face with electrified gauntlets as the pair fell to the ground.

Unfortunately, this display of fighting prowess was removed

enough from the ground-level action that orcs began
pouring through the gap Static had left behind. Mirawatt
continued to fire, but she was quickly spotted by several
members of the encroaching horde, and the tide of battle
began flowing toward her. Shunk, shunk, shunk went her
crossbow, but the orcs were not falling fast enough.

As a pair of orcs approached her position, one unscathed

and one seemingly ignoring a bolt that had gone through
his shoulder, Mirawatt drew her knife for a close quarters
fight. Lunging at the healthy orc first, she swung at the air as

147
 her enemy jumped back. Turning to face her other foe, she
raised her knife, but before either could make a move, a thin,
rectangular projectile whizzed toward them, lodging itself
shallowly in the back of the orc’s head. The orc roared and
clutched at his wound, and Mirawatt delivered the coup de
grace before bending down to pick up the projectile. It was a
playing card—the Ace of Vitality to be precise.

Looking up, Mirawatt’s face broke into a relieved smile.

Gasket was lumbering toward the battlefield as fast as its
legs could carry it. Riffle clutched the hydromech’s back, arm
still posed in their followthrough to hurling the razor-edged
card. As Mirawatt watched, Riffle leaped off their perch,
somersaulting through the air as they removed a dagger
from their boot and landed, knife-point first, on a rampaging
orc skullsmith. Behind Gasket and Riffle were Gale, Carcass,
and Boomer, all of whom Mirawatt knew had been out
patrolling prior to her distress call. Gale saw Mirawatt and
made a beeline for her mentor; Carcass simply nodded at her
before joining Boomer on the front lines, burying his dual-
wielded meat hooks into a couple of orc torsos.

Seeing the uninjured orc preparing for another lunge on

Mirawatt, Gale took aim with her arm attachment, firing
148
a gust that knocked the orc to the ground and allowed
Mirawatt to close in for the kill. Upon reaching Mirawatt,
Gale inspected her for injuries as she relayed the current
circumstances.

“Haven’t heard from the compound since you were on,” she
said. “All the lifts we went to have been taken out, though.
They’ve been busy.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Mirawatt said. “The orcs and

trolls wouldn’t want to corner us down here. Why not just
drive us away and take the machine?”

149
150
“Why don’t you ask them yourself?” Gale said, nodding
toward the tunnel.

The narrowest segment was now littered with fallen orcs and
trolls, but the living, still undaunted and seemingly tireless,
continued to navigate the opening where Static and Duster
had been forced to retreat. Following Gale’s eyeline, Mirawatt
felt her stomach drop. Behind the current wave of troll and
orc foot soldiers, she recognized three faces she and Gale
had seen before on previous scouting missions: the grim,
angry visage of orc general Domina and the self-satisfied
savagery of troll siblings Rok and Rol.

Mirawatt took a breath. Provided the Gearlocs back at the

compound were able to fend off Carcass—and with their
training from Gale and Static over the last couple of months,
she felt good about their chances—the fighters who had
marshaled here should be able to eke out a victory.

But what will it cost us? she thought. Or who?

She picked up her crossbow and loaded a percussive bolt

cartridge into it, wincing as a particularly fizzy jolt of
shimmer coursed across her hand. She saw a large troll
approaching Boomer’s flank and fired a bolt at its chest,
knocking it to the ground on top of another troll’s leg. Seeing
that Domina had mounted the pile of troll and orc bodies,
Mirawatt wheeled around and fired another toward the giant
orc. Rather than trying to dodge the projectile, however,
Domina reached down and grabbed a passing orc, hurling it
toward the bolt. The resulting boom hurled the limp corpse
of Domina’s victim back down the tunnelway, but the general
was unscathed.

151
 As Mirawatt sighted up her opponent again, Domina made
a hand motion toward her. Realizing she’d left herself open
for an attack, Mirawatt whirled just in time to twist out of
the way of an orc charging at her left side, head down. She
recognized too late that the orc’s spiked helmet belonged to
Skewer, one of Domina’s deadly lieutenants. Though Skewer’s
attack missed her body, his headgear smashed into her
crossbow, shattering it in two. Cursing, Mirawatt drew her
dagger again and rushed after the orc, who was heading back
toward the crowd of Gearlocs arranged in a defensive circle
between the narrow tunnelway and the workshop door.

As she ran, Mirawatt saw Duster going blade to blade with

Domina, and Carcass and Gasket squaring off against Rok
and Rol, who appeared to have put their sibling rivalry to
bed in favor of strength in solidarity. Rol swiped a fist toward
Carcass, but the Gearloc ducked under it, looping his hook
around her outstretched arm. As if on cue, Gasket reached
over to Carcass and gave his back a powerful shove, causing
the trapper to swing on his hook in an arc under Rol’s arm
and then onto her back, where he pulled the hook loose and
tried to jam it into the top of the troll’s stony skull. As Rol
swatted above her head, attempting to knock Carcass loose,
Gasket fired its chain arm at Rok’s face, causing the elder
troll to tumble into his sister. Carcass jumped free as they
landed in a tangled heap near Domina’s feet.

Mirawatt dove to the ground and grabbed at Skewer’s feet,

bringing the orc down as she held fast to his ankles.

“Now, Boomer!” she screamed.

Boomer pricked up her ears and realized that the three

leaders of their opponents were now within mere feet of
each other. Quickly, she fumbled in her bomb bag to find an
152
153
154
explosive with a wide enough blast radius to take them out,
but as Mirawatt watched in horror, the demolitionist was
struck by a cacophony of impossibly contorted arms and legs
that had emerged from the same direction the reinforcement
Gearlocs had come a few minutes ago. As Boomer crumpled
to the ground, unconscious and bleeding, Mirawatt stared up
at this new aggressor, scarcely comprehending what she saw.

The creature’s torso and face—what could be seen of the

face, anyway—looked like a crude approximation of a tall
human being, covered only by a loincloth and more than its
fair share of rippling muscles. Above its brow, however, was
a misshapenly stitched mound of flesh which led to a mobile
abattoir of sewn-on arms and legs, writhing and convulsing
with every step the creature took. The monster did not move
of its own accord, however; standing in the middle of the
grove of limbs was Gavenkog, who piloted the experiment
(that this was a product of Nobulous’s lab, Mirawatt had no
doubt) by gripping onto one arm and one leg like a pair of
fleshy reins. Behind this grotesque pair, Mirawatt could see a
variety of other lab-birthed horrors. A walking, sentient test
tube approached her, while a lobotomized Gearloc wearing a
moldering headband lurched toward Duster.

Gavenkog and his appendage beast, however, did not stop

to fight the Gearlocs. Instead, the pair strode straight for the
workshop door, where the monster grabbed either side with
five oversized arms and began an attempt to rip it from its
hinges. Gale attempted to fight them off, trying approaches
from several different directions, but Gavenkog kept her at
bay with periodic blasts from his monocle.

As dire as the situation had become, however, it wasn’t

until Mirawatt heard Cinder’s roar that she knew they had

155
 lost. The gaggle of Gearlocs who had been defending the
compound rushed into the clearing, bloodied and gasping
for air, and Mirawatt could see the lava monster’s glow
illuminating the dark behind them.

“Too many… bog creatures,” Picket breathed, hands on

his knees.

At that moment, the stone around the workshop door

split with a seismic crack, and Gavenkog’s monster threw
the worthless barrier aside, nearly crushing a quiet hunter
Gearloc named Ghillie in the process. Mirawatt yanked off
Skewer’s helmet and jammed it through his thigh, pinning
the squealing orc to the ground so she could safely run into
the workshop. Before she could make it far, however, she was
stopped by an arm on her shoulder. She turned around to
see Gale.

“Duster still needs you, remember?” Gale said with a smile.

“Thanks for everything.”
156
Then, with a whoosh, Gale activated her gust attachment,
and Mirawatt went sailing backwards, breath leaving her
body as her back landed on hard, smooth stone. Dazed and
winded, she tried to get up, tried to stop Gale or get someone
else to stop her as she saw her young charge rummage in
Boomer’s bag and come out with a shrapnel bomb.

I can’t lose another one, her mind screamed.

Gale bolted for the workshop and disappeared inside. A

few seconds later, Mirawatt saw Figment thrust out of the
doorway, clearly another victim of the gale force winds. As
he hit the ground, Mirawatt felt another jolt of that ineffable
current run through her body; clearly, Figment’s harried
attempt at repairs had not yielded the desired results.

In the moments that followed, Mirawatt felt she had a

lifetime to miserably think on the exact nature of Gale’s
sacrifice. If she went after Gavenkog, the obvious target, she
would solve one problem but leave the surviving Gearlocs
with several others, namely a collection of underworld
tyrants who still had their hearts set on the Great Machine. If
her bomb was meant for the machine itself, however, well…
Mirawatt’s dream of restoring The Break would never come,
but the Machine’s dark power would be forever removed
from evil’s reach.

A muffled explosion sounded from within the workshop,

and a bright light began to glow inside the doorway. Tears
tumbling down her cheeks, Mirawatt knew Gale had made
the right decision.

Good girl, she thought. My good girl.

157
158
Chapter 7
Duster
The light glowed brighter and brighter, framing The Break
in a simulacrum of daylight and then burning even brighter
still. The combatants shielded their eyes, or merely closed
them while continuing their wild swings. Just as the light
seemed to reach its apex, however, everything went dark
—not a reversion to the usual dim, lamp-lit trappings of
Mirawatt’s slice of the abyss, but to pitch blackness, an
absolute absence of perception. This was true, and yet
somehow something else was true: though she could see
nothing, Duster could also see a face staring into her soul.

She later learned that all the other Gearlocs present had seen
approximately the same thing; as to their enemies, she could
not know. The face was ethereal, wispy, as if made of smoke
or steam, with hollow eye sockets and a jaw that seemed to
crackle with some unholy energy. Most of all, she noticed
the face’s expression: vacant, yet hungry, a void that desired
nothing more than to be filled by inexorable consumption.
Duster could feel the weight of the face’s gaze, knew that it
bore her naught but malice. She was without, and the face
resented all that was not within.

The face stared at her for a while; she could not say how
long. Then, it exhaled, a long, slow breath of relief that
sounded as if it had been pent up for eons. As it exhaled, the
face started to fade, and the normal spectrum of light began
to return to the cavern. Duster could not say exactly why, but
she felt a sense of dread, as if the face’s breath represented the
final key in a lock that should have never been opened.
159
 It took her a moment to notice that she was looking up at the
sliver of sky visible from the floor of The Break; sitting up,
she realized that she and nearly everyone else in the cavern
had been struck prone. Pulling herself into a crouch, she
could not see an orc, troll, or monster that was stirring, but
she also didn’t see Domina, Rok, or Rol. She crept up to the
doorway and peered around the edge of the frame.

Inside was a peculiar sight. The ceiling was charred and

cracked from where Gale had thrown Boomer’s bomb,
and the Great Machine lay broken in fragments across the
room—less blasted into smithereens, and more broken into
component parts, suggesting its original construction had
been a welding together of multiple smaller mechanisms.
Even more scattered were the shredded limbs of the creature
Gavenkog had ridden into the workshop; from the look of
the viscera, Gavenkog had maneuvered the creature to make
sure it took the brunt of the blast.

The council member himself had managed to survive, but

from the tableau Duster saw arrayed before her, there was no
guarantee that state would long continue. The old Gearloc
was backed up against a wall, his head swiveling to take in
every vector of the room. Also staring menacingly at the
other occupants were Rok, Rol, Domina, and some sort
of golem that Duster had never seen before. Lava dripped
from fissures in the rock creature’s skin, hissing as it hit
the ground. Based on the room’s other occupants, Duster
guessed that the golem was representing Cinder.

Gavenkog was holding forth about something, but Duster

was distracted from listening in by one last figure in the
workshop: Gale, whose bloody body was lying near the
workshop’s entrance. Her back and legs were filled with

160
shrapnel and contorted in ways Gearlocs were never meant
to bend; Duster longed to rush to her, to weep for her, but
she dared not while the ones who’d indirectly done this to
her were so nearby.

“We all knew it was going to come to this eventually,”

Gavenkog was saying, holding his hands up as ineffective
shields against potential incoming violence. “The explosion
changes nothing; if anything, it makes this part easier.”

161
 “You’re right, Gearloc,” Domina sneered. “It is easy. I’ll rip off
your ears and stuff them down your throat, and my orcs and
I will take the machine back to the Warspire Catacombs.”

At this statement, Rok and Rol growled something in troll

at Domina, then turned their heads to growl at each other.
Gavenkog tittered.

“Maybe you could take me, Domina—though my monocle

here isn’t just a dashing fashion choice,” the council member
said. “But you and I have Rok and Rol here to worry about,
too, and the boss of this—” he frowned uncertainly as he
gestured toward the golem “—fine specimen. And they
have us to worry about. If we’re all being honest, I think we
should admit that we needed each other to defeat the rest of
Mirawatt’s disciples, but I never intended on letting anyone
else walk out of here with the machine. I’m guessing none of
the rest of you did, either.”

Domina crossed her arms and scowled. Hearing no

discouragement, Gavenkog continued.

“There are still living Gearlocs out there,” he said, pointing

through the doorway. “We can’t fight without them coming
in here and trying to kill us, and I don’t trust any of you
enough to stick around and fight the ones that are left. I
propose a truce. The individual parts of this machine have
plenty of power on their own; let’s each take our share now
and live to fight another day.”

There was silence for a while as the five figures looked

at each other, each waiting for one of the others to make
the first betrayal. Then, with a passive grunt, Rol reached
down and swiped one of the larger pieces of the machine,
placing it over the head wound Carcass had given her. The
162
machinery whirred, and Rol winced a little as some clamps
on the edges of the part seemed to attach themselves to her
head. Then, she bolted out of the workshop, causing Duster
to scramble backwards to avoid being seen. Once outside,
Rol let loose an undulating roar, which seemed to rouse her
remaining contingent of troll followers from their slumber.
As her soldiers stood, Rol loped off into the blackness, soon
followed by her monosyllabic cadre.

Rol’s action seemed to seal the proposed agreement. Quickly,

guardedly, the other four figures in the workshop found
the four remaining largest parts of the machine and left the
workshop, treading carefully and making sure none of the
other three were about to stab them (or club them, or shoot

163
 them, or scald them) in the back. As they reached the edges
of the clearing—Domina and Rok at the narrow tunnel,
Gavenkog at a wider one, and the golem on the path back
toward Mirawatt’s compound—each one tried to rouse the
few of their warriors that remained. Those who still lived
rose groggily but obediently and slunk into the black. It
was only then that Duster could go to Gale, and she did so
immediately, cradling her head in her lap and cursing the
name of Nobulous, who had somehow managed to extend
his reign of tragedy beyond his death. To her surprise, she
realized that Gale was still alive, barely, breathing shallow,
ragged breaths. Duster thought about looking for Patches,
but her years of rough survival told her that Gale was already
too far gone.

As she wept silently, she became aware of a strange flickering

sensation to her left. Turning, she saw Mirawatt standing
next to her, body now fully awash in the strange tendrils
that had been overtaking it since Figment’s machine was
damaged. Mirawatt’s mouth moved, but Duster didn’t
hear anything. Realizing that she was now so out of phase
with her surroundings that she could no longer be heard,
Mirawatt locked eyes with Duster and pointed at Gale. She
then pointed at the back wall of the workshop and tugged at
a leather strap around her neck, revealing the key she’d given
Duster two years earlier.

She hasn’t given it to me yet, Duster corrected herself.

Duster stood, realizing that it was now the second time she
would have to bid Mirawatt her last farewell.

“I wish we had more time,” she told her. “But I guess I always
would have wished that, right? However much time you
have, you always want a little more.”
164
Mirawatt smiled at her and mouthed the word “goodbye.”
As she began to fade away, Duster remembered something.
Quickly, she pointed at Mirawatt’s heart, then tapped her
own heart. She wasn’t sure if Mirawatt had seen it. By the
time she finished the motion, the old Gearloc was finally,
truly gone.

Duster pulled the strap Mirawatt had referenced from

around her neck and looked at the key on the end of it. No
one else she’d shown it to had any idea of what it was for,
and she hadn’t asked Mirawatt about it, fearing that doing
so might alter the timeline somehow. She walked in the
direction Mirawatt had pointed, stepping around bits of
stone and mechanical debris to the back of the workshop,
which had previously been totally obscured by the Great
Machine.

To her surprise, when she shoved aside some bits of dangling

wire, she saw what appeared to be a keyhole. Trepidatious,
she slowly inserted the key and turned; a labored creak
sounded from the other side of the hidden doorway. By
now, she could hear the sounds of other Gearlocs moving
around outside the workshop, assessing their injuries and
checking on the well-being of their colleagues. As the key
ended its semicircle rotation, the doorway gave a loud clank
and partially dislodged from the back wall; Duster found the
seam and pulled on the ancient metal until it slowly swung
open, revealing the contents hidden on the other side. Her
vision adjusted; it appeared to be a collection of robotic
attachments, along with a yellowed note, preserved only by
lack of exposure: “In case you need to put me back together.”

Duster’s eyes widened. She ran back out of the workshop.

“Where’s Patches?” she yelled. “I need Patches right now!”

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 A day later, Duster removed her arm from the activation
mechanism that was plugged into Gale’s body, waiting
anxiously for Patches to wake up his patient. After the field
medic injected some unknown substance into her neck,
Gale’s eyes fluttered, then opened. She moaned; Patches had
told Duster the young Gearloc would likely be suffering
from a massive headache. Duster walked over to Gale and
looked down at her, putting her hand on her forehead in a
subtle encouragement to lie still on her makeshift cot in
the workshop.

“Did it work?” Gale asked, voice a little hoarse.

“You destroyed the machine,” Duster confirmed. “After

that… well, things didn’t go quite how we planned, but
ultimately I think you made the right decision. We’ll explain
it more later, when you’re feeling a little stronger.”

“OK,” Gale said. “Where’s Mirawatt?”

Duster grimaced. “We couldn’t keep her here, Gale,” she said.
“I’m sorry. Figment’s machine was damaged, and it sent her
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back to the time she came from. It was some kind of failsafe.
But she left you something, in her own way.”

Gale bit her lip. “What?” she asked.

Duster took a deep breath. “I’m going to help you sit up

now,” she said. “You were hurt pretty badly in the explosion.
It didn’t look like you were going to make it.”

“I’m surprised I did,” Gale confirmed.

“Well, you wouldn’t have, but… well, here,” Duster said,

lifting Gale into a sitting position.

The younger Gearloc gasped. Her legs had been amputated,

replaced with robotic limbs that were grafted onto her lower
torso and spine, where significant transplant work had also
been required. Her hands were still her own, but her arms
needed to be supported by multiple attachments as well,
including a modified version of her gale force winds device
that now permanently cloaked her right arm in miniature
wind turbines. More turbines were situated at her hips;
Duster saw Gale look down at them and close her eyes in
concentration. A moment later, the turbines moved as if of
their own accord.

“You turned me into… I’m a cyborg?” Gale asked.

“Mirawatt has been storing a cache of cyborg parts here in

the workshop, probably for years,” Duster said. “As she was
being sent back to the past, she pointed the cache out to me.
We think she brought the parts here so that Gasket could
prolong her life if she was seriously hurt.”

“Sounds like her,” Gale said, coughing. “Couldn’t endanger

the mission.”
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 “But when she saw what happened to you,
she gave the parts up,” Duster continued.
“I guess she thought the mission
could carry on better without her
than without you.”

At this, Gale stared off into somewhere

Duster could never hope to follow.

“I hope she was right,” she said.

The following week, Duster lurked on the outskirts of the

makeshift common area erected in
the hastily-built remains of Mirawatt’s
compound. The gathering—despite
Tantrum, Boomer and Picket’s best
efforts, the mood was too subdued
to qualify as a party—was the last
big get-together at the compound
before the Gearlocs would head out in an
attempt to retrieve the stolen pieces of the
Great Machine, and Duster wasn’t feeling
particularly talkative. Stanza caught her eye
and walked over, thoughtfully chewing on a
geophage truffle hors d’oeuvre.

“Carcass really missed his calling,” she said,

referencing the snack’s creator. “I guess if you spend
your days hunting your food, you want to make sure
it’s good.”

Duster smiled.

“So, you and me, together again, huh?” Stanza asked.

168
“That’s right,” Duster said. “Dart just sent word of another
unexplained earthquake near the Lost Armory, so it looks
like our nexus friend is still out there. Before we hunt him
down, though, we’ll need to get
those machine parts back. Who
sounds like a good fight: the orcs,
the trolls, the fetid ooze,
or Cinder?”

Stanza laughed. “Well,

considering I’ve already
crossed blades with Cinder
and Gavenkog and they’re
both still alive, maybe I
should try my luck with
one of the others,” she
said. “Have you and Picket
worked out the other team-ups?”

“We’re kind of letting everybody come to those conclusions

on their own—we actually hope a lot of them will do that at
this shindig,” Duster said. “The Lab Rats will stay together,
of course. Beyond that, the only pairing we know for sure is
that Figment and Gale will be heading out together.”

Stanza raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?” she asked.

“I think the two of them have felt a kinship since Mirawatt

left,” Duster said. “With Gale’s new augmentation and her
knowledge of The Break, she’s one of our most valuable
assets down here, and Figment feels like he can help support
her. He’s patched up the staff, but he doesn’t think it will ever
travel long periods again, so he’ll have to be content with
small jumps.”

169
 “He’s stuck with us,” Stanza joked.

“He seems OK with it,” Duster said, as the pair watched

Figment regale Ghillie with the story of when he accidentally
time-traveled into a Shalefist family reunion and ruined a
troll family’s casserole. “I think the life he used to have was
pretty lonely.”

Stanza put her arm around her friend.

“I’m glad you’re not alone anymore,” she said. “I’m glad I
know you, even with all of the stuff we’ve gone through in
the past few years.”

“I am, too,” Duster replied. “It’s hard, though. When it was

just me and Nightshade, I wished I had someone to talk to,
but things didn’t scare me as much. I didn’t have anyone I
cared about losing.”

“Yeah, I know,” Stanza said. She paused. “But you’ve got to

remember, that’s the trade we’ve all made. You care about
what happens to us, and we care about what happens to you.
We can all be afraid, and happy, together.”

Duster put her head on the bard’s shoulder. “Thanks, Stanza.”

***

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Note from Riffle: To experience the tale of the Age
of Tyranny in its proper order, do not finish reading
this book until you have completed the interactive
story known as “Unbreakable” in its entirety. Or go
ahead and spoil the ending.

171
 By now, you know all the stories of the Gearlocs ending the
Tyrant War. Their overwhelming of Cinder; their outstrategizing
of Domina; the epic three-way battle between ‘Loc, Rok, and Rol.
The vanquishing of the council, the daring raids in Obendar, the
destruction of Nobulous’s secret labs (and, unwittingly, of his son
Rob, who had been using one of them as a clubhouse) and the
final confrontation of Gavenkog’s machine-enhanced form. Most
of all, you know the story of the fight against the Nexus, how
Gearlocs were brought to the brink of death and back to defeat a
creature that fed on decay and fear.

You know how Daelore was saved, but you may not know how
Daelore was redeemed.

This book is my last work of archival; I want to spend what few

years I have left winning hands of Gearloc poker and getting
kicked out of pubs when bad sports accuse me of cheating. I kept
what happened after we defeated the Nexus a secret for many
years, but I think those involved deserve a little credit, now that
what they’ve done can’t be taken away by some orc or troll or
goblin—or, yes, some Gearloc—with too much ambition and too
little sense.

It’s common knowledge that The Break has gotten smaller and
less hostile in the years since Operation: Unbreakable. The
troglodytes have cleared out, Obendarian Gearlocs helped
re-welcome Southern Gearlocs to the surface, and trees have
started growing around The Break’s southern canyon again. As
the ground’s nutrients return and the earth beneath Daelore
comes back together, it seems like our land has committed itself
to healing.

172
Many attribute this new age to the vanquishing of the Nexus,
which spread its evil tendrils for centuries even while Nobulous
tried to contain what he’d wrought. But that’s not what did it.

If anyone had cared to look in the following years, they might

have found a hidden haven in The Break, one constructed from
remains of Mirawatt’s compound transported into Static’s secret
catacombs. They might have seen a contraption that looked much
like the traditional rendering of the Great Machine, albeit with
some modifications made by Tink and Figment following the
retrieval of the missing pieces. And for a long time, if they’d come
at the right moment on the day of their visit, they might have
seen a Gearloc who looked like the legendary assassin Duster—
declared missing, presumed dead after the battle with the Nexus
—plugging her arm into a specialized slot on the giant device,
powering the engine that helped remake the world.

It was a quiet life, and at times kind of a boring one, but Duster
always said she could use a bit of boredom after all she’d been
through. Besides, she had company—periodic visits by members
of the Rogue Council were always welcome, and the legendary
bard Stanza was always by her side. The two stayed together for
the rest of their days, a bond the Great Machine had no need to
strengthen and one it could never hope to sunder.

173
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