Chapter Three

While he couldn't bring himself to call the Architect mother, there was something soothing about her frowzy hair--a misty infant memory he trusted more than Alsantia itself, a warm, embracing pillow at his heart's heart, his soul's true shimmer in his mind's eye.

When Adjia had said they would be ok, Lucien had believed her, telling himself that in this fairy tale world, the Queen's endless armies could be whelmed back by a just cause and some plucky talking badgers and raccoons, that the lockstep professional killers and werewolves who came for the tree city could be turned aside by love and cooperation.

Despite his high hopes, karik knights had stoved in the Ephremian air galley hull, led by Prince Vemulus towering in an iron war chariot that tore the metal bulkhead as easily as its spiked wheels shredded the wooden walls.

"Pull up your hood, Lucien."

"What good will that do?"

"Better to look out of place in a battle than to look like we belong, and be taken for soldiers, counted as casualties, and numbered among the dead."

The Architect seemed his mother no longer, for as she clasped his arm in a vise grip, towing him toward the deck, her eyes pricked a clear path through countless crew coming to their King and Queen's defense. While they rushed heedless of any thought for themselves, the flick of her eyes raked them left or right, out of their way. Far from seeming a mother tigress on the warpath, she seemed as maternal as a cannon, and he less cub than her cannonball, careening through defenders so bristling with weapons that it was only by sheer velocity and luck, and Adjia's unerring aim, that he shot unscathed through the clashing soldiers.

She didn't hesitate to make use of him on the deck. Not that there was a moment to spare, with clashing below decks, groaning kariks, roaring chariot wheels, and death screams.

Each scream seemed to slice through him, to scratch a frighted sense of his mortality into him,

until the deafening bellow that roared to run away and not come back, which burned such hot terror into him that all his courage was set aflame before he recognized it as his own inner voice, having become an inner shout before it died to an inner whisper.

"Why are we stopping here?"

As Ephremia and Alsantia clashed violently an arm's length away, Lucien felt Adjia had rendered them invisible. Not only did none challenge them as Adjia's stern scowl cut a path to the top deck, but the soldiers only had violent eyes for each other. As the Architect dragged them on their twisting path, he flinched from her grim purpose, turned to the carnage at their back, and saw that every hair on the knuckles of his flailing left hand strained upward on enormous goosebumps.

Having dragged them all the way to the helm, she crouched in the shadowy niche behind the wheel, gripped a wide, brass plate and heaved it so hard the metal dimpled.

Turning to Lucien, Adjia grasped his hands in her wiry hands. Just as his heart throbbed with a pang he had never felt, having never been held by his mother before, only dragged, she turned them palm up, laid there a rumpled, clanking bag smelling of oil, sulfur, iron, and smoke, and rummaged inside, fixing Lucien with a steely glare. "Stand still."

"Didn't you hear me?"

"I'm sorry." She scowled. "If you knew the difference between a wrench and a hammer, you'd be a much better help."

"That's an apology?"

Having extracted two weighty, glinting implements, she turned to tackle the steering assembly, leaving Lucien there holding the heavy bag on his hands. His shaking hands, as the full realization of their near brush with death descended upon him, setting not only hands, knees and jaws quivering, but the sweat sliding down his nose, and the blood coursing through his veins also seemed to rattle, so that Lucien barely trusted himself to speak.

With deft and graceful twists of the tools, a few nudges and pokes, and one not-so-graceful pound with the butt of her oil-streaked palm, she extracted several gears, then nestled the rest together.

When a soldier fell back from the fray, and turned toward Lucien, the Alsantian snorted dismissively, and was about to jump an Ephremian from behind, when he saw Adjia.

"Hey! What are you doing?" He stomped forward. "This commandeered craft is the newly confiscated flagship of His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Vemulus of Alsantia. Step away."

As he stomped nearer Adjia, she stayed bent over, so absorbed in her mechanical subterfuge that oil striped her sleeves and dotted her nose. "Didn't you hear? Step away, you ugly brute."

Lucien's heart hammered hard, then harder, like a rung gong rattled full-force before its shivers died out, and even as his nostrils flared, his fists clenched, and his feet went up on their balls in a crazy side to side dance, his inner whisper hissed this guy's belly button is bigger than you, and she sent you away from this, from magic and excitement, for loneliness and boredom in a cult. Then his inner whisper dried and crumbled to mere resentment, instantly consumed in flames of anger.

"Lucien, hold on to something." Having stood, then wiped more grease on her gown, she froze at the sight of Lucien's fists swaying, facing the advancing soldier. "Don't."

The man grinned and chortled. "It's my lucky day. You're no common Ephremian scum, but a star fallen from grace for choosing the wrong side, and still a celebrity His Highness will pay good money to see, I think." Grasping Lucien's forehead with as much care as an ogre choosing a cantaloupe,

the Alsantian swung him aside, and Lucien rolled the width of the deck until his back slammed the mast.

If his bruised back throbbed, ached, and brought tears to his eyes, his funny bone was smote so hard he couldn't feel his elbow, and briefly lost his mind, as if both arm and mind were whited out. His vision blurred, he couldn't make sense of what he was hearing, and the rest of him felt like it been raked and clawed near the verge of invisibility and insubstantiality, so few shreds of him had feeling. Surely not enough to stand, he thought groggily, then proved himself wrong as he remembered the horrible insult to Adjia, groaned violently, clutched the lever of the cannon and dragged himself to his feet.

Cannon? This wasn't here before, he told himself numbly, then saw the gleaming bolts driven into the deck. Ephremia was in such dire straits that they had rigged their royal flagship to be a gunboat. The metal joins of the pivot-mounted cannon were so brightly polished that they likely finished the job minutes before Vemulus stoved in the airship. Now this bizarre weapon would never be fired in battle.

Or would it? Lucien's heart hammered. In place of a wick, the bizarre steampunk artillery was topped with what looked like a whistle.

It couldn't be that easy, could it?

As he realized what he was about to do, Lucien blocked all thought from his mind, so that it was by pure action alone that he braced against the tremendous cannon, dug his heels in the deck, and swiveled it to face the Alsantian. As his whanged arm hung limp, his back and legs did the heavy lifting, and his good arm shook and strained guiding the swerving cannon, his fingernails cracked.

It wasn't until Lucien fell forward on the cannon that the Alsantian turned from Adjia. She hung dazed from his hand, a streamer of blood drawing a red line down her chin, where a red lump was already rising. The soldier's eyes widened. Then he laughed.

"Look at you! I only gave you a few lumps, but moving that cannon wrecked you." Having shoved Adjia to splay on the deck, the Alsantian turned toward Lucien.

Lucien would have fired the cannon then if he hadn't remembered playing Risk with Aito on their shoved-together beds in the Mansion of the Shining Prince. He felt foolish, like a toddler playing at war. While he had a real weapon, he could barely hold it with one good arm. Even as strength and feeling surged back in his whanged arm, it crested a wave of pain that washed away the numbness

with a crisp, excruciating clarity that lent urgency to the moment.

"I could blow you away with a breath now, boy."

Lucien loved action movies. Even with his mother struggling to rise, and his back throbbing with what was sure to be an ugly bruise, Lucien wished he had breath to spare, for the Alsantian had set him up for the perfect wisecrack. Even it's funny you should say that would be enough here.

Having already underestimated the cannon's weight, he felt he should not waste his breath.

"I would let you run, but you would only find another weapon. As you've seen, there is a war going on." The Alsantian raised his sword. "It's nothing personal."

The iron whistle was bitter and cold. When he blew, he expected his teeth to shatter, and his bruised bones to rattle and be blasted off deck, but the cannon only grew chillier, humming like a caged breeze.

When the point blank cannonball struck the Alsantian, gobs of him went everywhere, not only teeth and bones, but fists and knees and elbows, and shrapnel of flesh pounding the deck like hailstones.

The Architect tottered to her feet, leaning one hand on the hull. "Did we make it?" she groaned,

running one hand through the bloody stream dripping from her scraped scalp, and as she took a step,

Lucien couldn't dismount the cannon fast enough.When she slumped back to her knees, she might have struck her chin on the floorboard had he not stumbled forward, clasped her falling hands, and strained to pull her upright. "L-lucien. You're still here."

Although Lucien's heart sank, he grit his teeth and pulled her to her feet, where she swayed but did not fall, clasping his upper arm tight. "Where would I go?" he muttered. "Where do you want me to go?"

"Lucien!" She pinched his arm so hard, it tweaked his whanged funny bone, and his mind whited out again until she barked his name again. "Lucien! We must debark."

"Okay. Let's make our way..." As he carefully turned, meaning to steady Adjia's punch-drunk tottering, she dragged him again, so slaphappy that she listed like a sailing ship as she veered toward the ramp.

A lurch whinged through the hull, making the wood whine and screech and the brass hum and rattle, and just when the air galley slopped left, it leaped, an absurd weightless suspension, in which, for the briefest of instants, the soldiers stuck to the air, their hair sticking out to all points, and their swords and spears nearly shooting into the sky from the sudden punch of momentum that smacked them out of grasp, before the hull crunched down, the creaking wood buckling so far inward that though they only jumped half a foot, the floor ended a yard under where they started and slipped more every second,

a cracking upheaval that stretched the flooring until it split, spitting nails and shredded wood.

When Adjia swung Lucien to the ramp, he landed upside down, chest on the plank and legs kicking over the wharf.

"Move, Lucien!" As the Architect clambered up, Lucien and his woozy, whited-out mind flailed forward in a fog until he managed to kick off from the hull, dog paddle a yard down the ramp, then flop off, snatching at the shaking board by reflex to dangle over the wharf. While the wreckage was creaking and collapsing, the drop was a fifteen foot fall he did not want to feel on the soles of his feet.

"Run, Lucien!"

Lucien clung petulantly, his brow creased in worry. What was the big rush? Their escape was working so unbelievably well no one thought to give chase. The biggest lump he was in danger of right now was from the ground, he told himself as he swung hand over hand down the gripped edge of the plank.

"Faster, Lucien!" If the air galley had not then thought to accomodate Adjia, Lucien might have died. For after dipping again like a tipped bucket, the galley rested Lucien gently on the ground, and he scampered away from the shuddering hulk, fearing its falling hull would crush him, when it lurched upright again, and did not stop there, but shot straight into the sky, the engines' booming roar flattening the grass and blasting Lucien, Adjia, and the surrounding soldiers into a roll.

"What did you do?" While his shout was drowned in the air galley's soaring roar, Adjia turned, shook her head, and kept dragging him towards the Ephremian front.

"Now we must make our way on foot." She muttered something under her breath. Lucien didn't know Terianan, but he did know what cursing sounded like from running errands with a poor driver, Elderlich Njall.

Lucien was too numb to respond. Not only were his forearms and chest numb from firing the whistle-cannon and gripping the plank, but he was emotionally numb from killing the soldier and being nearly shaken from the collapsing air galley.

Oblivious to her son's pains, Adjia's profanity-studded sigh bottomed out into an exapserated groan, and she continued. "If only the King and Queen had followed through on their promise, and carried us into Teriana. While we might still make our way on foot, being not dressed as Ephremians,

we must play the part of camp followers, perhaps lost merchants."

If it was unsporting of the Architect to gripe about a dead man, Lucien was far too dumbstruck to defend the king, who, after all, had ordered him into this battle. "What did you do?" he repeated sullenly, "where are they going? What of my friends on board?"

"Keep your mind on right now, Lucien." When she grabbed his hands again, and pulled him towards her, her eyes flashed under the shadow of her cowl.

Then the descending air galley pounded the Alsantian camp so hard that spear-sized splinters of siege engines, tent poles, and Terianan trees shot like shrapnel, and the smell of shredded wood came in a wave with the dust cloud gusting through them, grit sticking to the corner of his eyes and the taste of dirt speckling his mouth. Lucien spat, hacked, and coughed until the blast died, when Adjia wiped his face with her begrimed sleeve. While each breath now smelled like motor oil, at least he could breathe. It was a relief, but he took no comfort in it.

"How dare you!" He knocked her hand away. "What if Isola was on board? Or Aito?"

"They have their own protectors."

"Protector? You're no protector! I can't even call you my mother, not when you're taking me back to the battlefield."

"Lucien," she sighed. "You have reason to be upset..."

"Reason? What's that? As if I've had time to think, when I haven't had a minute to myself since I left Earth."

"Lucien." While her cold voice chilled his rage, it only blew his anger from hot to cold, a crystallized anger that froze all feeling for this scheming woman. "We're not out of the woods yet.

If the soldiers get their hands on us, we'll be Suvani's playthings, but there are worse hands to be in." As if slapped by her own words, her hands dropped from his, balled into fists, and swung by her side, seeming to keep the time as she strode toward Teriana.

"Maybe we were dealt a better hand than you think," Lucien pointed to the Ephremian ranks, who crouched and stood pensively in a bristling phalanx of spears four rows deep, their tight formation broken around the gigantic metal shambles of the Architect's strider.

"There's no such thing as luck," Adjia said, "but this is very good for us. I had assumed it destroyed by the Alsantians, or scuttled by the Ephremians for makeshift weapons or barricades."

"It's kind of a barricade now." Behind the inert hunk of gears, several antelopes shuffled side by side as their riders held their war council. "It's Akachi." While he was glad to see her, it was not for her that Lucien's heart leaped.

"And Isola," said the Architect, "who you surely saw as well. That girl needs a haircut."

"Don't speak of her that way," he muttered.

"Not that I dislike your girlfriend, Lucien..."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"...for she's had a tragic life, the poor girl."

"You mean her father."

"Ancient history, Lucien. I'm talking about her mother."

"What do you mean?" Lucien shuddered. "No, don't tell me. I don't want to know."

"I won't be the bearer of that sad tale, either."

Lucien fixed her with a glare. "Then who will she hear it from? Vemulus, after he drags us behind his chariot?"

"You don't want us mixed up in that girl's mind with her family tragedies, Lucien. If you don't give her space, she may never forgive you for being part of what for her are dark times."

"Take a look," snorted Lucien. "It's dark times all around."

"And what if I told her, Lucien? How can I rightly refuse to help if she asks? After that conversation, you may end up sister and brother, not girlfriend and boyfriend."

"She's not my girlfriend," shouted Lucien.

"Lucien?"

Still flashing with cold anger, Lucien's eyes turned, and his heart melted, for there was Isola, astride a fidgety antelope, whose hooves skritched and scratched as he wheeled about Lucien and Adjia.

Seeing Akachi and Aito trailing behind Isola, Lucien realized what had happened. As he argued with Adjia on the rise overlooking the battlefield, the antelopes had detached from the Ephremian front and galloped near.

"Isola." As Lucien smiled, his whited-out mind began to breathe, and flesh out the full color of his thoughts, most of which concerned this Alsantian girl. But as he strode near, Isola whispered into the ear of the antelope, who bounded a few paces away.

"Lady Fafahite." When Adjia's face also composed a smile, it was less drawn like a portrait than drawn like a crossbow, which might any moment launch the evil fact toward Isola. If this fell news concerned Isola most, that no longer seemed right to Lucien. Having already overshadowed the battlefield, why must death touch Isola?

Isola the beautiful. In the Mansion of the Shining Prince, the TV was like a fishbowl swimming with faces too plastic to be pretty, and he had not found the beautiful in its small screen, no matter where or how far he channel-surfed. TV was too pretty, too artificial to be beautiful. But Isola was now far from made-up, streaked by sweat, grime, and the tears of frustration which had plagued their journey. She was no painted beauty, but a real one.

"You take me for my mother. Do I look that weary?" Isola's snarky smile twitched at Adjia's cold eyes and flat, deadpan lips, so monotone a line shaded by the Architect's glare that it was much grimmer than any mere frown or eerie grin. "Why do your eyes bear down on me?"

As Adjia's relentless stare hounded Isola, Lucien leaned in until he stood between mother and friend. "Not now," he hissed, and grasped Adjia's hand, finding it even colder than her icy stare.

"If not now, when?" As Isola's shoulders slumped, her begrimed face beaded glistening tears

which streaked her grubby cheeks, as if erasing the immense effort it had taken to get this far. Having also headed an Ephremian contingent, Isola had distinguished herself not by battle, but in war,

proving herself better than the other children at making the chilling sacrifices required of a leader,

giving better commands than the uninspired orders issued to her, exhorting her troops to exceed their mission, and rising above her own symbolic, figurehead role. "We are already losing, Lucien.

If she crushes my spirit now, I will have nothing left to lose and everything to gain."

"Nothing?" Lucien wanted to say, what about me, but bit the words back, knowing how selfishly they would echo after Adjia delivered herself of the grievous message.

"How can I be worthy of you, Lucien, if I have lost myself?"

As Adjia's impassioned mask cracked, and her lips dipped into a frown, she twisted away from Lucien and strode into the shadow of Isola's gazelle. "You are hardly lost, Lady Fafahite. My son, for one, is happy to find you here."

"Tell me if you must."

"When your worthiness hinges on a constant flux of good tidings? As no one troubled me to bear this message, I hesitate to convey this news."

"I think not." Isola's eyebrows arched through her tears. "Knowing us already defeated, you hardly came to share in our victory."

Lucien's eyes contracted to a hard scowl as he came to Isola's point of view. Only a ghoul would hasten through wreckage and gore to taint an already bitter defeat with bereavement, and not expect to share in the mourning. Lucien shouldered past his mother to clasp Isola's arms.

"I'm so sorry, Isola. You've already lost so much."

When Isola broke into tears, she slumped on the gazelle, draped an arm along Lucien's back,

then slipped limply down, so that he had to step back to embrace her fall, then clutch her to his chest.

"There's no time," said the Architect.

"And just who are you?" This braying gazelle's golden-brown hair was frosted silver at the tips,

and one of her horns was both blood-blackened and frayed at the point. As she came near enough to tap Adjia with these battle-tested horns, her legs shook, as if one precise hammer blow to her battered horn would shiver her to shards and streamers of gazelle.

"In Ephremia, a concerned mother and valued ally. In Teriana, the Architect. Here and now, the one who shot Prince Vemulus into the clouds." She sighed. "As I said, there's no time. We must converge on the crashed flagship and verify his death."

"You crashed the flagship?" As the gazelle bristled, her horns pricked the breast of Adjia's robe, and the other gazelles cantered near, bringing their wide-eyed riders, Akachi and Aito. "You call yourself a friend?"

"I regret to inform you that your king was already dead..."

"You don't know that!" Lucien interjected.

"...and your queen could be, literally, anywhere but here, having passed through a portal to another world."

"If you do not lie, she could also be dead. Was that also your doing, witch?"

Adjia's eyes frosted again. "I'm no witch, but the Architect. And your Queen was not killed, only transported by another's hand."

"If we have no time, as you say again and again, why waste your breath quibbling? Science and magic are no different after the fact of their fatal effects." The gazelle's voice dipped into a bitter sarcasm. "You would play semantic games, when alive on another world is as good as dead to Ephremia. Whether dead or elsewhere, their thrones are vacant, and who will lead the charge?"

"Why not you? All I ask is that you do not stop us."

"Fat chance, assassin," snorted the gazelle.

"Architect," Sweat beaded Adjia's brow and neck.

"You will come with us."

"And report to who?" brayed another gazelle. "King, queen, and flagship are no more, and our generals are children."

"Let us see what the Daikonese Elders have to say."

"Listen to her." It was the merest squeak, bubbling through Isola's morose snuffling, but all eyes turned to her anyway.

"Your grace?"

"She said listen." The sour growl simultaneously rubbed Lucien the wrong way, like chalk on a chalkboard, and raised his spirits. "Would she come to us if she was the assassin?" As the milling gazelle made way, Jgorga snorted and plodded near, the squat, muscular raccoon striking such a contrast to the graceful gazelles that it was like a princess squad bowing to a frog. "What assassin would carry a tale of woe with blood on their hands? A killer would not even stop to whisper to Isola."

Isola lifted her shining eyes, leaving Lucien's vestments streaked with snot and tears, then crumpled upon Jgorga.

"Who do you think you are, Alsantian?" brayed the silver-tipped gazelle.

"Her godfather, for one. The Fafahites have long been my good friends. And I may be Alsantian, but I mean a lot more by the word friend than you do."

"There is no time!" seethed Adjia, but when all eyes turned to her, she wiped her brow and broke into a rare smile. "I'm happy to see you again, Jgorga."

"I would feel more graced by your presence had you been more diplomatic. If only I had reached Isola first." He looked into Isola's eyes. "No matter what others whisper, Isola, always remember your mother died of loneliness."

"I had also thought to spare her the details," sniffed the Architect. "Given the intelligence was brought by Alsantian spies, and no doubt embellished to their benefit."

"Then there's hope?" asked Lucien. "It might be a lie?"

Having scowled at Adjia, then Lucien, Jgorga turned a soft smile to Isola. "Spies are self-serving, and prone to exaggeration, but we can trust the facts."

"Yes, or spies would have nothing to report." When Adjia beamed what she thought was a helpful smile, Lucien raised a hand to cover his eyes, shook his head gently, and sighed.

"Adjia, you keep saying we have no time. Where are we going in such a hurry? We're not really going to see the Daikonese Elders?"

"To the workshop, Lucien."

"The workshop? Why?"

"Don't be impertinent, Lucien."

"I think he means, why is that so important now?" growled Jgorga. "Your workshop may lie in ruins, as Teriana was overrun after you left."

"Will you block our path or let us on our way?"

"Us?" said Lucien. "I'm not going."

"Of course you are."

"Why should I go? I think you're batty for wanting to enter war-torn Teriana."

"We must be there when your father returns."

The silver-tipped gazelle snickered. "If he sees the army, he'll pick another day for your reunion."

"That might be true if he was traveling by land, you silly, thumbtacked camel!"

"What do you mean if he was traveling by land? Even if he flew one of your mechanical owls, he'd see the army from the sky, and for that matter, from either moon."

"If you don't get out of my way, my husband will arrive in the middle of an army without any warning."

"And you'd drag your son into one?"

"Lucien, don't you want to meet your father?"

"There are too many questions. Questions you're not answering."

Raising her eyes skyward and clasping her hands together, the Architect did not look like one praying, but like a fallen god waiting on her own thunder. When her right hand reached in the wide cuff of her left sleeve, the gazelle raised her horns to Adjia's throat.

"Don't fear," she sighed. "It's not a weapon." As she held up a small, smoky black lens, she peered at it intently.

"Why should I take your word on that?" groused the gazelle. "If it's no weapon, what is it?"

As Adjia continued to gaze upon it, the children, raccoon and gazelles slowly turned their heads toward it. When it flashed purple, Lucien shuffled back, and the jerk of the silver-tipped gazelle's horns scratched a thin line in Adjia's neck, which welled a tiny drop of blood.

"Excuse me." Adjia stepped away from the gazelle.

"If I excuse you, you'll run off and get yourself killed, your grace." The gazelle grumbled, "I suppose I must escort you instead."

"I could have told you that ten minutes ago." If she sounded testy, Lucien supposed Adjia was justified.

"What is it?" asked Lucien. To his surprise, she handed over the strange fob. It was smooth and cool to the touch, despite the persistent purple flash.

"As I must attend to our retinue, Lucien, I'll let you hold your father's fate."

"That's OK..." But Adjia had already turned away, bent her head, and began murmurring to the raccoon. For some reason, this troubled Lucien more than anything--how had he not known that Jgorga and the Architect were not only old acquaintances, but such cozy cronies?

Lucien lowered his eyes to the strange Alsantian fob, which felt strung with many mysteries, despite being only a glowing teardrop lens. Was it key-chain, charm bracelet, or outlandish forget-me-not? As he peered curiously, wondering at its exquisite curlicue script, not unlike ancient Arabic he had seen once on TV, it flashed violet, then strobed deep purple. When it kept pulsing this angry violet, a bead of sweat dripped down his neck, then dropped to his collar bone, as he fidgeted with the strange device. Had he broken it, or had it died? When Adjia's attention twitched toward him, her eyes widened, and she yanked it back so hard that it scraped his fingers, and he snatched back his hand. "I didn't do anything to it."

When she grabbed his stung hand and leaped into a downhill sprint for the strider, he stumbled after, and might have tumbled down ahead of her, had Jgorga not nosed behind him, and with a flip of his muscular neck, tipped him on his back.

As the gazelles loped down slope, they did not impede their flight toward the mammoth land vehicle, but raced alongside for an instant, before outpacing them, arriving to the shadow of the strider at the end of the same burst of breath by which Jgorga catapulted down the hill. The silver-tipped gazelle kept such an easy, gliding pace beside them that it seemed a graceful prance, even as Adjia huffed, puffed and rubbed sweat from her eyes.

The strider leaned on a recumbent Daikonese elder, a gigantic triple-trunked tree slumped to the war-torn hillside. His wizened bark eyelets were squeezed shut in an ongoing spasm of pain, one hand collapsed and debarked from the tread of boots, hooves, and war wheels. His face was distorted by fear, as if whatever had befallen the Elder would happen forever, caught in the perpetuity of tree rings. Left behind in Daiko's retreat, he now quivered there, as if he showered leaves in a dream he had rooted in,

leaving the Terianan woods to the nightmare that had consumed reality.

"Mother, wait..."

"There's no time, Lucien."

"If he is half as resourceful an Architect as you, we should think about what we're doing."

"I'm an advocate for thinking, but not when it's time for action."

"You would have us go into the Stranger's shadow?"

"We're already there. The Stranger not only overshadows Teriana, but by his subtler shadows,

has infiltrated Alsantia and Ephremia. He's everywhere. In fact, his influence is so pervasive, he'll soon move on from corrupting places to corrupting people. I would lay odds Queen Suvani is naught but The Stranger's shadow, an advance scout sent to root out all that is good."

"You're saying he's a god."

She snorted. "Anything that can be understood is no god."

"Then he can't be everywhere. And as he's most definitely here in Teriana, we should flee as far away as possible."

"We can't be everywhere, either, Lucien. We must go only where we're needed or where we're unknown."

"Those are our choices? Anonymity or heroism? If I prefer things low-key, but not lonely, it's how you made me."

"I don't take credit for your ideas."

"Exactly. You sent me into the care of a cult."

She laughed. "Those were agents, Lucien."

"Even if they served our parents, it felt like a cult. We were too different to feel like we belonged, even to each other."

"That's not true." Aito rode up alongside Lucien.

"Isn't it, Aito? You barely talk to me any more."

"You were ignoring me! Having just found your mother, you wanted space, so I gave you time."

"You gave me space and time, Aito? Wrong genre," Lucien muttered. "No matter how dark and horrific it gets here, we're in a fantasy."

"This is no fantasy, Lucien. If the Stranger kills you in Alsantia, you don't wake up on Earth."

"I know that. I'm not dumb, Aito." Lucien's eyes misted. "That means Conrad...and Chiyo..."

"Don't help me." Having growled at Aito, the Architect's angry eyes flashed to Lucien. "While I don't know where they are, legend says the Stranger prefers tormenting to killing fallen foes."

"As if that's any better."

"Your grace," said the silver-tipped gazelle. Having raced to the foothills, Adjia now slacked off in her pace, and the swift gazelle now struggled to match their laggard speed, having to stand still, then bound ahead, then freeze again while they poked ahead. "I advise against this course of action."

"Consider me advised." Adjia rattled the strider door, but it was pinched shut, its frame bit on all sides by dented metal.

Clambering upon the leaning vehicle, Jgorga hauled hard on the handle until the bent metal crumpled the other way and popped free. After Jgorga climbed in, Adjia pulled herself in as well.

While he felt ready to run another mile or two, Lucien shook from head to toe. Perhaps the exertions of his excruciating morning had finally caught up to him. When cold sweat ran down his shuddering cheeks, his thoughts seemed to fade, and he nearly stumbled, and only caught himself by reaching for the nearest antelope. Instead of fur, he clutched thick scratchy fabric that he knew instantly and intimately by touch, having worn Animalyte vestments just like it since he was a toddler.

"Akachi."

She still rode her gazelle, and looked down with a curious expression. "Why fight it, Lucien? It's what you always wanted."

"What? What did I want? How could you know what I wanted." As Lucien's scowl faded, it became a sheepish grin. "I'm sorry, Akachi."

"Why? We were never close, despite having much in common." At his puzzled look, she said, " You would never know that we liked the same shows, because whenever I I sat down to watch them with you, you ran to your room."

Lucien felt his cheeks burn. It was the worst way to tell her this, but it couldn't be helped.

He had learned that he couldn't have friends without being truthful. "I thought you liked me."

"Why wouldn't I?" Realization dawned on Akachi. "Oh, you mean like that? Not only am I only twelve, but when I believed the Elderlich teachings, I wanted to be the best Animalyte I could. I still do, to be honest. But we couldn't be friends because I embarrassed you? Is that what it boils down to?"

"Well...yes."

"Boys are so stupid," she sighed, then turned to Aito. "Sorry."

"It's ok," he snickered, "sometimes some of us are."

When they were washed in a bright yellow light, Lucien covered his eyes. There was a persistent hum, then an insistent revving, then a chug-chug rattling the entire strider, which lurched forward, crashing down on all four wheels.

Released by its immense burden, a groan boomed from the Elder's trunk as its leaves fluttered out on rushing branches, and its prolonged, silent scream relaxed.

Lucien shuddered again. While the Elder had expanded, he still seemed to cringe, his branches seeming to cup toward himself. Then his eyes flickered, and his mouth opened on a hoarse jet of air. When this roaring whisper repeated, Lucien strained to hear sense in the breeze. The sussuruss of slow-sliding branches was so graceful that he did not know he had been uplifted into the air until the Elder's long, lurching stomp.

Each stomp was like a lackadaisical ferris wheel, each lurch whirling him so much closer to the earth, then so high again, that he didn't feel flung about so much as gracefully promenaded. As his stunned, wide eyes only had room for the receding strider and the pursuing gazelles, he didn't notice he wasn't alone in its grasp until Akachi said, "it's not going to be fast enough."

Lucien's dazed eyes followed her stretched-out arm to a grove of advancing trees. While the Elder ran as fast as a hurtling train, the trees strode a little faster, and if their surging steps could not close the distance, it was because the voracious monsters were so eager to eat Elder that they chewed through each other in their implacable advance. Not that they tore each other up solely by speed,

but by gigantic maws of thorns, slavering a sweet-smelling ichor that burned and smoked where it dribbled to the grass. Under their thunderous sprint, the world seemed to give a little, as if sagging under these titanic flesh-eating plants.

"Ashflowers." Lucien now realized that his shudders eddied not not from his exhaustion, but from these oncoming tyrranosaurus-like trees of the Sargan Vos.

"We have to jump, Lucien."

"The Elder will save us."

"They could care less about us. They consume magic. They want to eat the Elder."

"If that's true, the Elder meant to save us from something worse than Ashflowers."

"He won't be fast enough. Jump, Lucien!"

"And break our legs?"

"Better to break our legs then be chewed up by Ashflowers!"

While the Ashflowers were mindless, and as implacable in pursuit as only the mindless could be, their instinctive triangulation on the Elder, as each now sprinted a different diagonal to cut off the Elder's flight, pointed to the subtle cunning of these plant monsters.

Akachi had always been quicker at school, not only getting at the meaning of abstruse passages,

but going on to understand, at an instinctual level that fluttered through worksheets, that strange Alsantian math, dynometry. While she couldn't hold a candle to Lucien at board games, whatever intuition shone on cardboard battlegrounds did not come to his aid now, for even as the Ashflowers nipped at the Elder's roots, he believed they might make it over the Terianan ramparts.

"But we're almost there...just a little closer."

"There's no time, Lucien. It has to be now."

"Gggghhhhooooo. Gggoooo noooowww!" The Elder's murmur piped through branches and blew through knotholes until the talking tree resonated with his words, as if his mouth was only ornamental, and he was more talking pipe organ than talking tree. "Iiii...willl...fiiightttt."

Lucien's heart sank as Akachi grabbed his arm.

"Now or never."

Lucien's fists clenched. Having never been so close to death, he had no idea until that moment

that he hated losing more than he feared dying--a revelation that he was, at heart, a warrior. Yes, he was afraid, but not afraid of dying. He feared doing nothing, letting the Elder die through inaction when he might have done something. But what could he do? If he had a torch, a match, or even a knife, he could have fought the monstrous Ashflowers, but he had nothing flammable, and nothing sharp. Even his mind felt dull, while Akachi's face had always been profoundly illuminated by her faith and intelligence. He should not have preferred Conrad's unchallenging company to Akachi's.

He remembered then what he had learned from board games. Even and especially when you have nothing, you must keep your eyes open for opportunity. As his eyes flashed around the gore-strewn, war-torn battlefield, he saw it.

"There!" As he pointed to it, Akachi's eyes rolled.

"Not a chance!"

"But I need your help."

"Last I checked, neither of us are mechanics."

"But that one's still in one piece. Maybe we can figure out what's wrong with it."

"Nooowww!" Bringing in its vegetal arm, the Elder scooped them up, then cast them to the ground, where Akachi stumbled to her knees, and Lucien staggered forward, catching himself just before he would have been impaled on a spear jutting from a wrecked chariot.

"It's too far," said Akachi.

Lucien scowled. "Too far. Too close. No time. So what? Our chances always look bad in Alsantia. Let's test those odds."

Akachi wrinkled her nose in exasperation, slugged him in the shoulder, then shot down the slope toward the Terianan ramparts, crunching a broken arrow in her rapid flight.

He dashed down not a moment later, but it took the better part of a minute to catch up to Akachi. "What was that for?"

"I've wanted to do that since we were kids, Lucien. The right moment kept coming and going."

The memory of these repressed punches seemed to inspire her, so that as she ran, her eyes flashed, and she hissed long, clean jets of wind. "Faith moves mountains, but hands and feet climb them."

"Carpe diem, then." He had heard the Latin phrase in an old movie about boys' schools and poetry. Seize the day.

"No, carpe terre. Seize the earth." Lucien could not repress a twinge of jealousy at Akachi's erudition. She had actually studied when he was watching old movies. "We're about to get our hands dirty, Lucien."

On the ridge, the gleaming contraption had appeared not only intact, but so pristine its flawlessness had called out to Lucien. Remembering how easy the walker was to maneuver, Lucien saw in the device not only hope but escape. While The Architect had never taken credit for the steampunk mech-animals, they had her stamp of style, and Lucien guessed Adjia, perhaps working with his father, had built these wondrous metal beasts. If so, perhaps they would be just as easy to operate.

While fleeing the Ashflowers, they had passed the owl's shards and pieces and the fire-blackened remnants of the others. Only the squirrel still gleamed. But as they sprinted near, Lucien now saw its metal flanks were scratched, scored by fire, and streaked by smoke. It only gleamed because its blue paint had peeled from the chrome, and while its tail still bristled, the brittle wire tufts were flaking to the charred grass.

Even after seeing these war-scars, Lucien still held forth hope.

As he circled the strange vehicle, he pounded it with the heel of his fist and listened for hollows.

"It's totaled, Lucien." Akachi sighed. "If the car was shot by Njall hitting a deer, did you really think you could make this work?"

When the horizon seemed to clench and shudder, and the shadows swirled around Lucien, the whirling disorientation felt like dizziness, and his sprint stumbled to a jog. It was strange--he still felt like he could and should run another three miles. He looked up. The fluttering shadows were not his faintness, but the whirling branches of the Daikonese Elder, turning to brace for the slavering Ashflowers. While he was bulked-up with vegetal muscle and bark thick as armor plate, the towering Ashflowers not only had a wicked reach, driven by monstrous, mindless hunger, but outnumbered the Elder.

Lucien ran his hands over the mechanical squirrel, feeling for hinges and locks. His fingers grazed over so many bumps, ridges, and scratches that at first it didn't register. Then his eyes drifted back to it, as if his eyes were smarter than he was. He hadn't been able to find the door because it was much smaller than he expected, being meant not for humans but much smaller operators, perhaps real squirrels, or something even smaller.

If his head was clearer, he might never have opened it. If he was himself in that moment, he would have taken a step back and told himself he did everything he could. But in the white-hot heat of exasperation, he bashed it with the heel of his palm, then thwacked it even harder--faster than the agony of the first strike set in, so that he flinched under the pain of both back to back--so hard that it sprang out, smacked the metal, and would have bounced back in place had Akachi not intercepted it with her fingers.

"Ow!" Akachi drew her fingertips into her mouth.

"AHHHH!" Lucien wrung his hand and cradled it to his chest.

"I know I just said all that about faith and action..." When Akachi whistled in the opening, the echo fluted inside an absurdly tight compartment, smaller than a closet and crammed with tiny, busted chairs and a dashboard bristling with levers. "But no."

"When Teriana's green groves turn black, the army of might turns back; when locusts fly children to war, the army of right will soar." The verse sounded strange and tasted bitter in his mouth.

"It's a squirrel, not a locust. And there's no way. It's too small."

"The Ephremian flag has a locust. And I could totally get in there." Having reached an arm in, Lucien swept the broken seats nearer the door, then tossed them onto the scorched grass.

"How would you breathe?"

"Don't its drivers breathe air?" disapproving

Akachi's frown dug deeper, as if she had passed doubt and disapproval into a consuming fright for Lucien's life. "You're not going to do this." When he grunted, pulled out more movable bits, and nodded without turning his head, Akachi said, "your mother will kill you."

"She'll have to pry it off me first."

"Why are you doing this? You have nothing to prove."

"You say I should have the faith to act. Shouldn't I save a life?" As he warmed to the argument, his brow sweat, and his panting underscored his point. Having never felt this right before, his stomach seemed to sink, and his pulse raced around his certainty. Not that certainty could help him here. No amount of persuasion or rationalization could get him in such a tight fit, not when his body rebelled against the idea. He was accustomed to thinking himself out of tight scrapes, not into them. In the end, he crawled inside by not thinking, by simply following the snaking of his pulse.

While only eleven--no, Lucien had likely passed his twelfth birthday by now--he was tall for his age, and he struggled to worm inside the strange vehicle. Despite being thirty feet long, three yards were tail, and the mech's main body had a low ceiling even for its tiny intended operators. By lying down, and squirming ahead, he could just fit inside. While seeming pitch black from outside, once he was in, he could see murkily by its dim dashboard lights.

"Close the door!" Lucien yelled, then took in a shallow breath. He had better not yell again, as the machine was not designed with him in mind. Even a half-dozen squirrels had much less lung capacity than one overgrown boy. Akachi closed the bent door, then tapped and tapped until it wedged in place.

Lucien peered at the controls. To bring a hand into play, he had to tuck it to his chest, swing the other overhead, then wiggle the first hand to just in front of his face.

The first button pushed dialed the lights to full brightness. When the air whirred, then rushed in, he took a deep breath, then allowed himself a grateful groan. By the bright dashboard, he could now see a flashing light in its darkened glass. As he could not read Terianan, and his Alsantian was poor at best, he took a stab at another button, which caused the mech's vitals to whine, groan, then crank to life.

He heard Akachi's scamper, then scratching on the hull. "Lucien!" her voice boomed. "Don't do anything! There's something--ugh!--jammed."

Luxien didn't answer, but simply knocked on the ceiling of the crammed bay. While the air was rushing in, Lucien wondered if it would be enough, because he began to feel faint. When he pressed the power again, the whining groan died. As he wiped his forehead and rubbed his eyes, her scraping continued.

"Ok, Lucien. I think I got it all. You'd better hurry if you want to save the Elder. He's destroyed two, but they keep circling and taking him piece by piece. They're worse than the vultures."

When Lucien pressed the power button again, the whining groan screeched on, as if it had to get out one more metallic belch. There was a chipping sound, then a whirring merged with a purr that shook the whole hull. A dashboard light flashed, and the pilot bay shook, rattling Lucien back and forth until his chin struck the cramped cockpit floor. He raised himself back to his elbows. Embedded in the dash, tiny screens no larger than eyeglass lenses flashed real time footage of the undercarriage as the mech rolled from its leaning perch until all four legs swayed. In another screen, Akachi came so close that her face filled the camera, then shuffled to the side.

When Lucien knocked on Akachi's side of the mech, she backpedaled further, and he peered at the dash again. What he at first thought were thumb-pads, like the video game controls he only knew from TV commercials, were paw-shaped grooves. Each digit of the paw controlled a different compass direction, with the fifth toe sliding the altitude control. While too small for his whole hand, the up and down controls cupped to his forefinger and thumb, and by wiggling his forefinger forward, the squirrel chuffed forward, sounding not unlike a locomotive. Having rotated his wrist ninety degrees and pinched the right and left tabs to bring it around, he slid the forward control all the way forward.

When it broke into a scurry, Lucien rattled hard on the walls, not having the benefit of the tiny acceleration chairs he tossed out the back end. By pressing his feet to the rear of the cockpit, and gripping the dash with his off hand, his arms and legs served as straining shock absorbers.

Lucien scanned the dash frantically for any weapon to deploy against the Ashflowers. Surely this squirrel cavalry robot was armed? As the distance shrank rapidly, the Ashflowers towered higher and higher, for the charging metal squirrel was more horizontal than vertical. Wait--what was the other paw control? As he pressed that control foreward, his lenses swung upright at a terrifying velocity, until the squirrel's fore sensors grazed the horrifying leaf-fringed orifices of the Ashflowers.

Having brought the squirrel up on its hind-legs until it stood half as high as the monstrous trees,

Lucien himself now stood upright in the upended cockpit, and looked up at the dashboard. It was a peculiar kind of confusion to be looking up at the embedded dashboard screen and translate visual information from the forward-facing squirrel. Somehow up had become straight ahead.

Still unable to find weapons, he turned his right hand left to right, and slid both hands wide apart, bobbing the squirrel's front appendages left to right like a drunken boxer's, then rattled ahead to grasp an Ashflower. Now sliding his left forward, the mech shuffled atop the Ashflower, climbing so rapidly that branches broke, leaves shed, and the Ashflower fangs descended, many breaking on the metal plating while a few wormed in the joints, one piercing so far that it pricked Lucien's neck, just tapping the skin before withdrawing, and as he recoiled from the vegetal fang, the squirrel whirled, gyrating so fast in copying Lucien's flinch that it tore out three more branches.

Then the compartment was pierced again, this time with three thorny skewers, two of which crossed over Lucien without harm, other than drawing his harrowing, cross-eyed panic, while the other stuck the soft flap between forefinger and thumb, at first leaking only a bead of blood, but when the fangs slid back for another munch, the coarse thorns dragged through the skin, and when his flinching hand batted back to his chest, blood gushed down his vestments.

"Aggh!" When he sucked the torn skin to stop the bleeding, it seeped into his mouth, and he nearly gagged on his own blood. "Ack! Stupid tree!"

While he nursed his hurt hand against his chest, his other hand ratcheted the mech's arms back and forth, windmilling through the Ashflower. Leaves and branches dropped in a flurry.

While he couldn't recover his calm, his racing pulse dropped to a jog, and he laughed to see the chopping metal paws buzz the Ashflower down to size. Sawdust blew back to dust the visual sensors,

and he nearly missed the Daikonese Elder backing through the converging Ashflowers. Great raking furrows scored the Elder's back, and some branches were stumps, although this still left dozens to flail back at the Ashflowers.

While his pierced thumb ached and stiffened, by raking that hand up and down like a claw,

and alternating the tap of pinky and ring finger on one hand, and forefinger and middle finger on the other, Lucien moved the squirrel's hindlegs through limping, lumbering steps. Although it no longer walked or ran as fluidly without the pinch of his thumb, his good hand churned its forelegs frenetically, shredding Ashflowers to leaves and shreds.

Now back to back with The Elder, Lucien needed only to pivot the squirrel here and there to change targets, of which there were now entirely too many, a dozen Ashflowers threatening to overwhelm them the moment they dropped their guard.

This was when the Architect's strider loped in their midst. While it had no giant robot arms to windmill, its arms were of an eminently higher grade, cannons that popped up and out from the chassis,

their horrendous doom-boom pounding and punching through the Ashflowers, which burst like giant dandelions gone to seed, their tremendous shreds spattering the battlefield.

When Adjia's voice roared from corner speakers and thrummed in the claustrophobic cockpit, Lucien's heart raced. "The gunnery systems fold under the dash." As he braced his chin on the dashboard, his good hand fumbled underneath, dragging out a small starfish-shaped assembly with a central button. As two Ashflowers filled the screen, bearing down enormous, thorny fangs, his balled fist spammed the button three, four, five, six, so many times he lost count, every other punch blowing wood to chunks and branches to bits.

Even with fraying branch-claws and holes gouged in their bark, the relentless Ashflowers tore and chomped at mech, strider and Elder. When one spike lanced his calf, and another nailed his shoulder, Lucien hammered at the gun until it ratcheted empty, ka-klik, ka-klik, ka-clack, when he willed his throbbing thumb to be still, seized both controls, and set to scratching his way up and down Ashflowers again. When the first branch snapped, he throttled the controls, and the metal squirrel vaulted higher in the clawing branches, and as the mech's weight brought it crashing down, cracking into kindling, he spurred it onto another Ashflower. If the vegetal beasts were not too stupid to think of stopping, they might have fled the terrible damage inflicted by three implacable foes, but as the giant trees fought and fought until destruction, the three allies began to give way before the untiring Ashflowers.

"Lucien," Adjia's voice squawked, "we can't win. Disengage and withdraw!"

Lucien found the microphone at last. It was a simple nodule mounted on the dash, operated by a tiny button. "What about you?"

"I'll be right behind you."

"And the Elder? He can't outrun the Ashflowers."

"At least we've made his death dearly bought, Lucien. If we stay for the bitter end, we'll be devoured, or too weak to prevent ourselves being taken by Alsantian forces."

When wetness spread down his cheeks, Lucien wiped them with the back of his hand, then held it to the dashboard light to check for blood. When they were wet but clear, he sniffled in frustration, a wet snort dribbling snot and tears. Why was he crying? Wiping his brow, he found it wettest of all. Between tears and sweat, he was a mucky greaseball, so greasy his eyes blurred, then fogged neatly white. "Something's wrong with my sensors," he snuffled, "you lead the way."

When Adjia broke free from the massed Ashflowers, however, they converged on the strider,

and Lucien batted at his wet eyes until the filmy view became foggy again, when he leaped from his Ashflower perch to the one overbearing the strider, bringing it crunching to the ground. As the Architect accelerated, Lucien ratcheted the paw-pads, and the squirrel mech scurried behind her in a clanking gallop.

"I was saving him," The bawl so tightened Lucien's chest that he felt he couldn't take another breath, and only angry, tearful snorts could draw in the chilled air now roaring in from the squirrel's overheated engines. Both he and the machine had been driven to hyperventilating by the awful Ashflowers.

"It was a good deed, Lucien."

"It was nothing!"

"At least you saved your own soul. Every time we do not try, we become a little bit less than ourselves." Lucien wasn't certain, but Adjia's voice also sounded a little froggy. "Let's hope you held them off just long enough, Lucien. Maybe, even now, the Daikonese are arriving."

"Maybe?" Lucien groaned. "Shouldn't the Architect be more truthful than maybe? You know it's not very likely. Not very likely at all."

"Like intuition, and other fuzzy logic, truth is an attempt to render judgment from insufficient data. I aspire to more than mere truth, Lucien."

Lucien grumbled, and his leaking tears burned hot trails, but he did not answer. Not only did Adjia have an answer for everything, but her answers straightened his thinking, as if she unrolled his mind like the design for a prototype, then slide-ruled his thoughts. He didn't want to hear anymore. He wanted to stay Lucien, this Lucien, the one who slopped together Risk and Monopoly and leaped before he looked, not only off the Marchioness's wagon, but into a steampunk squirrel. If he thought like her, he would have been paralyzed by the knowledge of his own weakness, and accomplished nothing in this enchanted world, which seemed to favor the thinking-by-feeling process by which Lucien arrived at his ideas. Adjia must know his value by now, having encouraged his taking the walker for a test drive.

As the machines chugged and chuffed toward the Terianan ramparts, the Alsantian front was eerily quiet. Air gusted in the cooling vents, and the Architect droned over the speakers--she surely had an override, for no dashboard button could shut off her cheery monotony--and between the two overbearing buzzes, Lucien struggled to stay awake. He sawed such a savage snore that Adjia's bark blared over the speaker, boomed on the inner hull, and jolted him awake, pummeling his head on the roof so hard, the metal groaned deeper than it dented, then rippled back, armor plate pinging and scraping.

"Did you hear me, Lucien?"

While his heartbeat jumped, his pulse was nearly numb from drowsiness, and it was all he could do to wrest his eyes open. "How do you do it?"

"You weren't listening." She sighed.

"How do you drive for so long without falling asleep?"

"Lucien, it's been twenty minutes."

"Like I said! How do you occupy yourself? This is so boring, Adjia."

"You can call me mother, you know. And I suppose I occupy myself with my designs. When we're not battling Ashflowers, that is. No, that's not true. I was drawing mental schematics for a subterranean whirligig as I shot those monsters." She barked a short, sheepish laugh.

"What is that?" As the sun set, the dying light glinted along the horizon. This scintillating line glimmered along the ramparts and groves dotting the high ridges of Teriana.

"Not that. They. That's the enemy, Lucien. Not everything that glitters is good."

"Really?" Lucien was now wide awake, his heart beating so hard his chest hurt. He peered at the dashboard again, then felt on top and underneath, hoping to find a button deadlier than the guns. "Why aren't they shooting?"

"They must have orders."

"Is that good?"

"No. It means they know who we are. We are betrayed, Lucien."

When Lucien scowled, sweat pooled deeper in his eyes, and when he rubbed it away, the corners of his eyes filled instantly with more sliding sweat. "You don't mean Akachi."

"While there's no reason to rule her out, it's more likely the gazelles gave away our location."

"You don't know that either," grumbled Lucien. "We're fighting a god."

"Not a god," Adjia said thinly. "No matter how powerful he is, I challenge his claims to omniscience. He obviously plans, and why should any all-powerful, all-knowing being plan, when they can dictate the flow of time according to their will? In truth, there can be no omniscience, except in the sense of remembering his own actions, not if the fall of every domino was preconfigured by his omnipotence. Omnipotence rules out omniscience, and vice versa."

"I would be more interested," said Lucien, "were it not for our enemies massed on those hills."

"Ramparts. They're a kind of a hill, but made by hand, paw, and beaver tail."

"Again, beside the point. I don't want to be shot, Adjia. What if you're wrong about their having orders?"

Her voice cut deeper, as if her emphatic tone was sharpened when Lucien doubled down on calling her by name. He would never call her mother, and it was hard enough to call her Architect.

If anyone had ever stood up to Adjia, they should have told her it was an unsuitable title. With a heap of gadgets, and no buildings but a worskhop and a hangar, she was no architect, but an inventor. As his feelings roared, he calmed down, telling himself he hadn't seen all her works. He had better never share these thoughts, lest he discover she was, indeed, not only a designer of Teriana's arboreal estates, but their city planner. Such a determined, dangerous woman, who sent her own son to another world, would better be called dragon.

Then the shadowy ridges brightened, at first pricked by glinting sunlight, then bathed in the glowing day. As the hills sloughed their shadows, the darkness seemed to flood the valley.

The troops manning the ridges swelled as one, as if they all took a breath at once, having been burdened by their evil master far too long. Instead of exhaling a sigh of relief, they howled, yammered, growled, chittered, and squawked as their descending stomp, patter, and buzz coursed down the hill. Wasps, crows, and vultures drifted like dark clouds, and rats and locusts seeped like dark blood, staining the gentle woodland. Lucien's teeth set on edge. "I hate to say I told you so..."

The onrushing mob surged like a horrifying ocean of flesh, its undertow the swarming vermin that slipped before, behind, and between their ranks. This terrifying hurricane of blades and fangs bore down on Lucien and the Architect.

"Just keep going, Lucien."

"What if they attack?"

"Then go faster."

Only the shivering gongs and booming war bells could out-noise the savage hurricane of berserkers and beasts, and Lucien could no longer hear Adjia over the clamor.

The vents! The miniature ventilation system had already failed its previous pilots, and the onrushing swarms would likely infest the air intake or exhaust lines. Surely his mother had planned a failsafe for this eventuality, or any plunge in water or smoke would prove fatal to its operators. He scanned the dashboard. Perhaps it was his great need, but the strange markings on the keys, levers, and buttons began to make sense. They weren't letters or words, but iconography: abstract symbols designed to cut across language barriers, so any right-sized beast could pilot her craft. When Lucien pressed a rectangle shaded blue, the air rushed louder, the vents clamped, and thick lenses shaded the visual display. While it muffled the crashing din outside, the clamor seemed to contract to a point just behind him, and as he was still laying face forward in the cockpit, this meant the noise funneled in by his feet, along with a thin whisper of air.

Lucien groaned. When Akachi had scraped that duct clean, she damaged the vent, leaving an open door for the Stranger's swarms, still bolstering Suvani's armies, to flood the hatch and pick him to a tattered skeleton.

"Lucien! I've got your back!" While the speakers were still sputtering and crackling from the bellowing, booming thunderfall made by the descending armies and swarms, Adjia's voice quivered through the vent at his feet. Unable to take his eyes off the rising and falling cliffs ahead, he glanced down for the briefest of instants, and saw the strider falling in, shading the flapping vent. Behind her surged rolling, buzzing waves of swarms and infantry.

Adjia's confidence now seemed otherworldly. Having just disputed the Stranger's omniscience,

she now pretended to a draconic resolve no less frightening. As this dread soaked into his bones, he shuddered, remembering her other, equally assured claim: they had been betrayed, and now did just what the Stranger desired. Had Adjia betrayed them to the Stranger? She could make weird striders, walkers, and metal beasts for any winning side, no matter how wicked or saintly. Would his mother--he must think of her as mother to wonder if she had any maternal shred--betray him to this dark god?

As his mind jumped from one possibility to another, the racket died down, and the speaker squawked, accented with an insinuating tone. "I hear your wheels spinning, Lucien."

"Yeah, the squirrel's not running quiet, is she?"

"Not your craft. To say I hear your wheels spinning is an idiom, Lucien. It means I hear you thinking."

"As if that made more sense."

"You dodged my question. Now why would you do that?"

"Look, you were right. They were holding back, weren't they? If they had given chase immediately, we would have never gotten this far."

"And now that we're nearly there, they can't catch us." She chuckled. "You haven't succeeded in distracting me, Lucien. I'm just excited to see Ustragon." Her voice was less excited than smug and satisfied. "Your father."

Ustragon. While she pronounced it ooze-tra-gone, Lucien couldn't help hearing Us-Dragon,

as if meeting his biological father would make of his parents, The Architects, a two-headed mythological monster even more frightening than Ashflowers. In a horrifying vision, rendered in even brighter colors than reality by being steeped in the cockpit's claustrophobic shadows, his mother held out her hands to an enormous figure garbed in Terianan green, whose lion paws bit deep into her grasp,

but drew neither a shudder nor a drop of blood, As this daymare dissolved, her smile faded into green linen and lion fur, which shimmered into shining gold scales.

"I'm curious to meet him, too." Lucien tried to keep the doubt out of his voice, but the Architect barked a proud laugh.

"Curious, but not excited?"

"You read into everything. I'm not one of your schematics, Adjia."

"Really, Lucien."

"Yes, really."

"You're determined to be rude."

"Maybe so," said Lucien moodily, "but you determined to be cold. You sent me to another world and let me think myself an orphan."

"I had no idea you felt this way. You seemed overjoyed to have my company."

"Fighting my way back and forth across this battlefield has changed my perspective."

"As if I haven't been doing my best to rescue you." Even now, the Architect hadn't deigned to descend to anger, and kept a cheery, smiling tone. "Even if we haven't looked in on you, for fear of attracting the Regent's heat, you can't say we haven't given you any thought."

"Why can't I? You say whatever pops into your head."

"Oh, Lucien. If I give the appearance of being off the cuff, it's only that I think so far ahead.

If my responses seem improvised, I've had this conversation in my head hundreds of times. I not only plan and scheme my way through life, I've scripted my thoughts and opinions with every conceivable turn of phrase. If we haven't talked, it's from a lack of safe opportunities, not from having nothing to say. I've wanted to tell you everything, every day that has gone by."

"That sounds awful. It's like you're the Stranger, but you only overshadow yourself."

"You're right. I am a tyrant to myself. My deeds, thoughts, and words are the best tools in the toolbox, Lucien."

The sense of grim foreboding pounded in Lucien's veins. Was she leading up to a confession, to divulging her darker plans for Lucien? "What could you possibly have had to tell me, when you were on Alsantia, and I was on Earth?"

"Hold that thought."

They had nearly reached the Architect's workshop. While operating the squirrel was claustrophobic and mind-numbing, he could not deny Adjia's machines were fast. Even loping over war-torn, muddy grass, the vehicles chewed up the distance as fast as motorcycles, and he wondered how they would peel out on open road.

While Lucien grew calm, his quieting pulse and resting heart felt tainted, as if they were not pacified, but gelled, congealing with his dark suspicions of Adjia. "We're here."

"Don't sound so astonished. Where else would I take you? As if I would hand you over to Suvani or the Stranger."

Her blitheness made Lucien angrier, for how could she act so unconcerned about his fate?

Confidence was easy for one so rooted in this world. Even besieged, the Architect always knew what to do, as if she had meticulously planned for the Stranger's swarms to overwhelm her native land. Lucien had grown up without this foundation. He doubted everything. Not being so lucky as Loren and Berangere to find a true friend, he had doubted not only The Mansion of the Shining Prince, and the cultish Elderliches, but all of his fellow Animalytes. While grateful for Aito's friendship, he had always felt--rightly so--that Aito kept something back, and his bully, Conrad, was more the bedrock of his life.

Conrad was a bully, and would always be a bully, but he was steadfast.

He might never think of Adjia as his mother, but she had proven herself loyal. Even if he never thought of Ustragon as his father, perhaps he would prove just as true. And hopefully saner. While thinking the worst of Adjia felt bad, she had proven she could not be trusted in some ways. Her common sense was nonexistent, and her right and wrong a spectrum of gray, even if she hadn't conspired with the Stranger. Perhaps he should feel grateful, but it was a low bar to set for one's mother, perhaps the bottom-most expectation, that a child should not feel themselves a bargaining chip paid to further one's ambitions. And while she had saved him more than once, she had not only planted him on Earth far from his birthright, but acquiesced to the Ephremian king and queen's outrageous demands to lead their troops. While she would rush to his rescue, his surviving didn't seem to be a priority.

If he wanted more from his parents, he deserved more. Having looked up to Njall and Vieno, his benign captors in the Mansion, should he not be able to look up to Adjia? To Ustragon? He hoped her shortcomings were compensated for by her husband. On TV, there were different kinds of marriages;

odd couple opposites completed each other, as if a cat had married a dog, while those that mirrored each other were, more often than not, two dogs barking at each other and the whole world. He hoped Ustragon would prove to be the cool cat to Adjia's barking dog.

When a cloaked figure blocked the path leading to the workshop, he tapped the button that brought the squirrel to a crouching halt, then peered ahead. He had expected Ustragon to be older.

Compared to Adjia's frosted curls, this person was untouched by time, with not a streak of white or silver in his hair.

"Come forth, children of the Prophecy." When the cloaked figure waved a hand, the steel squirrel sputtered, fumed, then dissolved into smoky trails, as if it had never been more than the vapor of a dream. Lucien tipped forward onto the soil, tree roots scraping his hands and scratching his knees as he caught himself on all fours.