"Recycled?" Elric repeated, his hand tightening on his staff—a piece of rebar he'd scavenged from the pile. "We aren't scrap metal."
The machine-man, Voss, tilted his head. The lenses of his eyes whirred, focusing on Elric's chest, then Kael's arm.
"All things are scrap eventually," Voss said. His voice had a strange resonance, like it was being spoken through a copper pipe. "Flesh rots. Iron rusts. Only the data remains."
He lowered the rifle but didn't sling it. "You are... congruent. Intact. Most things that fall from the Up-World arrive in pieces. Or screaming."
"We're not screaming yet," Kael said, though his ribs were throbbing in time with his heartbeat.
"You killed that thing. Why?"
"The Scavengers are messy. They mix the eras," Voss said with a hint of disdain. "They weld Third Era steel with Fifth Era bio-matter. It interrupts the taxonomy."
He turned his back on them—a display of confidence or indifference—and started walking. "The High Tide is coming. If you stay here, the static will boil your blood. Come if you wish to function.
Stay if you wish to be soup."
Kael looked at Elric. The sky above them was darkening, the violet clouds swirling into a tight, bruising spiral. The air tasted increasingly metallic, like licking a battery.
"We follow," Kael decided.
"He's made of porcelain," Elric whispered as they stumbled after the stride of the machine. "Kael, he's a doll. A murder-doll."
"He has a gun," Kael reminded him. "And he knows where the shelter is."
They walked for what felt like an hour, navigating the treacherous dunes of debris. The scale of the Rust Plains was mind-breaking. Kael saw entire ships—ships that belonged on an ocean, not here—half-buried in mounds of plate armor. He saw siege engines the size of castles, crushed like toys.
"Where does it all come from?" Kael asked, his voice rough.
Voss didn't look back. "Everywhere. Everywhen. When a reality fractures... when a timeline is pruned... the residue falls here. To the Basin."
He pointed a slender, white finger at the horizon, at the source of the dirty gold light.
"The Aureolus," Voss said. "A dead star. Or a dead god. My memory banks are corrupted on the specific divinity. It catches the trash."
They reached a massive structure jutting out of the rust like a ribcage. It was the skeletal remains of a Titan—one of the great war-machines from the myths of the First Age. Its skull alone was the size of a tavern.
Voss placed his hand on the Titan's teeth. A blue rune flared, and the jaw creaked open.
"Sanctuary," Voss said.
Inside, the Titan's skull had been hollowed out and converted into a workshop. Bioluminescent moss grew in jars hanging from the ceiling, casting a soft green light over shelves and shelves of... junk.
But it wasn't junk. It was organized.
A shelf of left-handed gauntlets, sorted by century. A crate of sword pommels. A rack of laser-scarred breastplates.
"You're a collector," Elric said, looking around in wonder.
"I am an Archivist," Voss corrected, moving to a workbench covered in delicate tools. He set his rifle down. "I catalog the decline. I organize the entropy."
He turned to them. "Now. Payment."
Kael stiffened. "We have nothing. No coin. No food."
"I do not require nutrition. I require data," Voss said. He tapped his porcelain temple. "My database is... fragmented. The fall damaged my memory core. I need news from the Up-World. Who rules? Which war is fighting? Is the Sky-King still weeping?"
"The Sky-King?" Elric frowned. "There is no Sky-King. The Empire rules the North. The Kingdoms hold the South."
Voss paused. "The Empire. Interesting. A new variable." He pointed at Kael. "And you. You carry the stench of the Spire. And the Void."
"We fell," Kael said. "We're looking for someone. A man. He fell before us."
Voss went still. The lenses of his eyes contracted until they were pinpricks.
"The one with the burning sword," Voss said softly.
Kael stepped forward. "You saw him?"
"I saw him," Voss said. He picked up a rag and began polishing a cog. "He made quite an impact.
Crushed a dreadnought class walker with his landing."
"Where is he?"
"Gone," Voss said. "He didn't stay. He was... busy."
"Busy doing what?"
Voss looked up, and for the first time, Kael saw something like fear in the machine's artificial expression.
"Fighting," Voss said. "He didn't fall alone, flesh-thing. Something fell with him. Clinging to his back like a shadow made of teeth."
Kael felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. The First Sword hadn't just escaped. He'd been dragged.
"What was it?" Kael asked.
Voss shook his head. "Uncatalogued. An anomaly. But I heard it speak as they crashed."
"What did it say?"
Voss mimicked a voice—a deep, distorted growl that sounded like stones grinding together.
"Found you."