Dark red light, like congealed scabs of blood, glowed faintly within the shadows of the mountainous debris. Accompanied by a low hum and the teeth-grating screech-scraaape of metal on metal, the source of the light slowly revealed itself.
A Golem. Or rather, the wreckage of one.
Its torso was severely deformed, its left arm severed clean at the elbow, the stump revealing twisted conduits and an irregular crystal fracture. Its right leg was bent backwards at the joint, and it only managed to 'stand' up from a pile of shattered metal plates and books by leaning on its relatively intact left leg.
Most terrifying was the end of its right arm—not a hand, but a high-speed spinning, sharp metal disc with jagged, saw-toothed edges, like a giant razor. It cut through the air with a continuous, scalp-prickling shriiii—huuuum—.
Its armor plating was pitted and scarred with corrosion and impact marks, cracked in multiple places, revealing internal energy channels long dark or glowing with only the faintest red embers. It looked, Overall, it resembled a steel corpse, barely pieced together, as if unearthed from an ancient battlefield.
Yet, the few points of dark red light—from two irregular holes in the approximate head position, and deep within a massive fissure on its chest—were fixed on Erika with a dead, mechanical, and stubborn malice. The barely recognizable 'head' unit rotated slowly with a grating screech, the red lights in its 'eye sockets' tracking. Twisted metal plates at its jaw opened and closed with hollow clack-clacks, but only a few sporadic, weak, dark red sparks sputtered from its 'mouth', fizzling out quickly in the dust.
The wreckage was advancing. Dragging its backwards-bent right leg and maimed body with its one good left leg, it moved toward Erika with a slow, stiff, yet unwavering gait. It pushed aside debris in its path, hobbling, swaying perilously, yet with a horrifying, absolute, dogged slowness, spinning its razor of death as it closed in step by step. Each step made components within its ruined frame groan and clash under the strain, the sounds amplified in the silent scrapyard into a death countdown. Its metal feet sank into the soft ash and clutter with muffled thumps.
"Loren! The fissure! Open the way back!" Erika barked, his voice stirring faint echoes in the vast space. Before the words fully left his mouth, his body was already tumbling backwards and sideways on pure instinct. Almost simultaneously, the Golem's slow but wide-arcing razor swipe grazed the space he had just occupied. Shhhkrrrt! It sheared through a rotten wooden crate and the unidentified metal fragments inside as if through soft butter, sending splinters flying.
Erika's heart hammered against his ribs. Like a startled hare, he darted frantically through the landscape of junk—between towering, toppled shelving units, overturned metal cabinets, and mounds of ruined books. He used every feature of the terrain: shoving over a half-empty rack to block the path, ducking into a gap between two heavy crates, circling the base of a massive, rusting piece of unknown equipment. Every move kicked up clouds of dust and flurries of paper scraps. The Golem, though slow, was relentless in its pursuit. Its razor arm mercilessly cleaved through every obstacle—brittle wooden structures exploded into splinters, loose books became a blizzard of paper, metal shrieked and sparked under its touch. It was churning a path of destruction through the area, the air thick with dust.
Erika's stamina was draining fast. His lungs burned like torn bellows, and old wounds began to ache. He saw the Golem over-swing again, its razor burying itself deep in a hefty metal cabinet, momentarily stuck. An opening!
Gritting his teeth, he charged a few steps and slammed his shoulder with all his might into the joint of the Golem's sole supporting leg—the one that looked most unstable! Thump! Craaack! A dull impact followed by an ominous metallic crack. The Golem lost its balance. The massive wreck staggered backwards, its good leg scrabbling uselessly on the slick dust and debris before it crashed onto its back with a ground-shaking thud, sending up a thick plume of dust.
And in that moment of imbalance, perhaps due to the violent shift triggering some broken energy circuit, or by sheer chance, the energy it had been failing to coalesce in its constantly clacking 'mouth' suddenly, briefly, reached a critical point!
Fssssss—ZAAAAP!!!
A thin but intensely concentrated beam of dark red energy, its edges flickering with unstable jagged-edged light—no longer mere sparks, but a true beam of annihilation—erupted violently from the Golem's upturned 'mouth' in a fan-shaped arc skyward as it fell!
Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft—CRUMPLE-BOOM!
The beam punched through the crisscrossing metal beams, abandoned pipes, and heaps of debris high above, followed by a series of muffled penetration sounds and the localized crash of collapsing wreckage. Molten metal dripped down with a hiss, igniting some dry paper and sending up tendrils of black smoke. Dust and debris cascaded down like a miniature waterfall, burying nearly half of the Golem's body.
Miraculously, the beam had fired vertically upward, missing the ground entirely.
"Quick… hurry!" Erika himself was at his limit, kneeling on one knee, gasping for air, sweat and grime dripping from his chin. He stared fixedly at the Golem wreck, half-buried in dust, its razor arm still spinning idly from inertia, producing meaningless scraping sounds. The beam from its 'mouth' had dissipated, leaving only a residual energy hiss and the faint click-ticks of overheating components inside. But the single red sensor-light still glowed, and its broken frame was shaking, writhing violently under the dust, trying to right itself. It used its razor arm to lever against the ground, its one good leg kicking, clearly about to rise again!
On the other side, Loren, backed against a relatively stable metal cabinet, was pale as a sheet, sweat soaking his temples. Before him in the air, the pale thread of light representing the return fissure spasmed—extending, dissolving into motes, then stubbornly trying to coalesce again. The process repeated. With each failure, Loren's body shuddered, his lips white where he bit them. "I can't… it's too chaotic… I can't find the anchor…" he whispered despairingly, his voice choked.
And the Golem had already driven its razor arm Shklaaang! deep into the ground for leverage and, combined with kicks from its single leg, was beginning to lever its heavy wreckage up from the dust with a more contorted, yet frighteningly determined speed! In its 'mouth', the dark red light began gathering unstably once more—this time, aimed squarely at the nearly spent Erika not far away.
Erika's heart plunged into an icy abyss. Out of strength, with nowhere left to dodge. Facing the spinning blade-wheel and the imminent blast of death, only cold despair remained in his eyes. Had actively seeking a way out led only to dying at the hands of this pile of scrap?
At this critical juncture—
"Got it!!"
A hoarse, incredulous, and slightly bewildered shout came from behind him—Loren.
Erika didn't even turn to confirm. His trust in that sliver of desperate success in Loren's cry, and his raw survival instinct, overrode everything. Without a moment's hesitation, as the Golem's blade-wheel was about to touch him, he twisted his body violently, summoning a final burst of strength, and threw himself—like leaping for the only vine across a chasm—towards the sound of Loren's voice, towards where the fissure should be.
His hand caught Loren's arm in mid-air, and with all his remaining might, he yanked the stunned Loren with him, plunging towards that newly stabilized, pale,twisted fissure light!
Just as his body was about to be engulfed by that familiar cold, slick sensation of transition—
A sudden anomaly!
The fissure seemed to open far faster than before, even pulling at them with an active force. Yet, before any sense of wrongness could solidify into dread in Erika's mind, a hand—pale, long-fingered, and unnervingly steady—shot out from within the fissure itself. It didn't reach to pull. Instead, with an irresistible, precise force, it slammed flat against Erika's face mid-leap.
The palm was ice-cold, the pressure immense. Five fingers closed like iron bands over his forehead, the bridge of his nose, and part of his cheek, instantly halting his momentum and nearly choking off his breath. The touch was not the softness of flesh, but carried a deep, inhuman, cold hardness belonging to the Black Tower itself.
Then, a familiar, calm voice, sounding in this moment like an echo from the abyss, came clearly from just beyond the fissure's edge, each word falling like a drop of ice:
"Didn't I tell you…"
The speaker seemed to be right on the other side, face-to-face with them.
"…not to touch my things."
Quinn.
Their every move had likely been under his observation—perhaps even his tacit allowance.
And now, observation had ended. Intervention had arrived.
The hand pressed against Erika's face inflicted no further injury, but the absolute control it represented, the sense of omnipresent surveillance, and the icy accusation in the words, instilled a soul-freezing terror in Erika and Loren far deeper than the shattered Golem's blade-wheel behind them.
The hope of escape, within a hair's breadth of their grasp, was crushed utterly and effortlessly by this hand reaching out from the fissure.