An Ending

ASTER DIDN’T LIKE how damp the walls and floor were, but she pressed on all the same: this was exciting. Much more exciting than the tour, with its boring talk about old wall-carvings. Her mother had said something about learning from them, for her magic, but Aster wasn’t too interested in that. She was far more curious about who lived there now, in these old stone corridors and across these courtyards and halls. She thought, as she scratched away at a stone, idly, that many feet, perhaps drakkori, had walked down these corridors. Maybe she’d meet someone here?

Her little claws caused a click-clack on the tired, slimy stone. The corridor was gloomy, but she could see sunlight through a portal at the end. She paused a moment, and listened and looked around, back the way she had come. She could hear the tour-guide, an old fat man with a big white moustache, who seemed terribly sad about something. He was still talking, but his thin words were swiftly lost in the stone. She saw a flash of colour, and saw another drakkor – her mother, in fact – appear at the end of the corridor, looking at her. Aster waved. For answer, Aster could see the frill behind her mother’s head was tinged red, as a warning. Aster nodded. She would stay put. She waited for her mother to look away. Then she ran on down the corridor.

Back in the sunlight, she saw she was standing above a small, brightly-lit yard. Beyond, she saw stairs – some to her left that lead up to a small plateau, where a felled tree listlessly lay. Forwards, a bluff, covered with trees, and to its right, stairs leading down to what looked like a dried-out river bed, where reeds grew in abundance. Right, more stairs up another thin corridor, into the Sanctum’s interior. What a maze! She clacked her claws on the floor in excitement.

A bird settled on a tree opposite. Aster watched it. It was bright yellow, and quite large. Aster liked birds. She tried to stop her sister from turning them into ash. Her sister wasn’t very nice. Aster peered at the bird, which gave a chirrup, and took flight, moving off, high and swift, over the green walls and tangle of stone and overgrown weeds. She felt quite sad, watching it go, seeing the colour leave and only the abandoned green being left behind.

The tour-guide had said Sanctum Falls had been the site of a big old battle, but Aster hadn’t seen anything exciting enough to suggest itself as being from a battle. She thought that was why her mother wanted to be there. Drakkori always liked such places, because they could extract remnant magic from the stones. Something like that. She snorted. It was mostly chipped, sad-looking statues, the wet stone, and many old trees, most of them rotting and fallen over… but at least she was able explore by herself. She was old enough to do that, she thought.

Before she knew quite what she was doing, she jumped off the balcony down to the yard below. She felt a thrill, emboldened by her daring, and, without thinking, darted forwards on all fours, heading for the stairs that lead down to the reeds. She passed into shadow, and felt a chill, but she kept on going.

The reeds soon loomed overhead. She heard the buzzing of insects, and saw another yellow bird circling high above. She looked around, her excited mind eager for another road to take, another scene to see. She could just see a glimpse of another balcony, and more steps the other side of the reeds. Above her, the high walls were increasingly in shadow: the sun was beginning to set.

An insect made an odd noise. She looked around, curious. It came again. It was a buzzing, but it was not like the crickets and bees and sea-flies that she knew. There, once more, in the reeds. Was it even an insect?

She peered into the reeds, hearts beating fast, but more in excitement than fear. She imagined a huge bird hidden within, or perhaps a new kind of bee, or maybe some ancient artefact… She snorted as a reed tickled her nose. She stepped forwards, her paws pushing the reeds aside, her snout pressed low to the ground, her scales tinged orange with anticipation.

Her front left claws touched something cold, and metallic. She withdrew with a start, but not far. She looked closely, and saw a brilliant blue. The buzzing came again, and it came from this blue. She stepped forwards, careful to squash the thick reeds down in such a way as to stop her stepping in the damp mud below. With a little effort, she uncovered her find.

A blue machine, a rounded metal body , with a small part that looked like a head at one end. She saw a hole, wires hanging loose, on its side, and saw too that it had some kind of track on its lower body, but only one, where it looked like there should have been two. The buzzing was continuous now, low, heavy, but somehow un-threatening. She tapped the body with her claw, and it gave a dull ring. She saw it was pitted and chipped, and how the water had allowed slime and algae to cling to its sides. It was in poor shape.

She looked at it anew, with her mind. She was only young, and wasn’t very good at magic – so her sister said – but she thought she could try something here. She put both her front paws on the metal, and pushed, with body and mind. For a time, she felt nothing but the cold metal, the cooling air, the brush of the reeds. The insects trilled, and the water and mud squelched beneath her paws. But then something clicked, inside her bones, inside her head, inside the metal body. It hurt a little, and she jumped back, a snarl on her snout. Another buzz, louder this time, and suddenly the head swiftly rotated, a red light pointing at her. It looked like an eye. She saw it contract, and then expand. It stayed pointed at her for some minutes, and she didn’t move, but only stared back, a little fear joining her excitement. Then the track began to move, gears grinding, tread moving rapidly, and mud was kicked up, splattering her and the machine.

‘Stop!’ she cried, putting her paws back on the body. The machine stopped. She looked down, and pushed some of the mud off it. It was then that she saw something written, small and in gold, on the metalwork: HK-206.

‘HK,’ she said, looking at the red eye. ‘Is that your name?’ At that moment, she noticed that on the machine’s other side, there wasn’t a hole, but rather an arm, at the end of which was something that looked dangerously like a weapon. She looked away. She didn’t feel afraid of the machine, however; in fact, she felt quite grown-up. All the same, she was a little glad it had only one arm and one track. She took her claws off the metal.

In answer to her, the machine was silent for a moment. Then the track started again, faster this time, and the mud came flying.

*

She wasn’t sure how she managed to convince the machine that she was there to help. She tried talking to it, but it didn’t speak back. She sat and watched it, and it watched her, at once stuck helplessly in the mud, and ominous, from its red eye and its weapon-arm. She had an idea.

Mud-splattered and tiring, she emerged with HK from the reeds, standing on the track-less side of the machine to support it, whilst the remaining track pushed it, slowly, and with great mess, forwards. Then they were on the path, and she sat down, breathing heavily. HK leaned on her, and she yelped, and rolled away, for fear he would squash her. HK clunked to the ground, buzzing once more, red eye looking helplessly at the floor. She snorted, and smoke came from her snout, and then she sighed and gambled over. She put her paws on the machine again. ‘My name is Aster’, she said, and the click came again.

‘Let’s get you away from this water,’ she said. She saw more stairs nearby, leading up to a small terrace that had a view over the famous cliffs to the south of the Falls, where the water coursed down a thousand feet to the plains below. She had wanted to go and see those falls, but had been told by her mother on no account to do so – and anyway, her mother had said, there was no water left as it was. Thinking of her mother gave Aster pause. How long had she been away? The sun was still visible, but the shadows were growing even longer now. She looked at the machine. It seemed very sad. For some reason she thought of the tour guide. She realised something, on a register she had not realised existed before: she didn’t really want to be in a place where an old battle had been fought. It wasn’t exciting, it was quite scary, and sad.

‘Come on, HK’, she said, brightly, resuming her place by the machine’s side. ‘Let’s go see the view.’

HK whirred, and the red eye looked ahead.

*

She managed to get HK up the steps, and settled him down by some rubble, which soon gave way to the cliff-edge – which she kept far from, or as far as she could without appearing scared to HK. She paused, out of breath once more.

‘What are you, HK?’ she asked, after a few minutes of tired silence. The machine looked at her, and then, for the first time, gave an intelligible response. The machine raised its single arm. She saw now that it was a gun, and she looked at the red eye. ‘Are you a war machine?’ she asked, still, somehow, unafraid. She had heard stories about these. She knew the great drakkor Charnok had fought against them, and even, it was said, alongside them, far from the mountain bluffs where Aster had been born.

HK bleeped, a new sound. Aster did not know what it meant, but HK lowered the arm, and continued to look at her.

‘Are you going to be alright?’ she asked. She knew she had to leave soon.

The bleep came again. It sounded more positive than negative, she thought.

At that moment, a small purple flame appeared besides them. HK looked at it placidly. Aster felt a little trill of fear. Her mother’s voice came from within the flame.

‘Aster, how dare you! I’ve been looking for you for an hour. Show yourself, at once.’ Her mother sounded furious, and Aster’s scales turned a pale yellow. HK looked at her, and the bleep came a third time, louder than before, longer, and she thought, grinning despite herself, that it sounded a lot like a whistle of dismay, much like her uncle gave when he lost at rolling rocks.

‘I have to go, Mr HK,’ said Aster, sadly. ‘I hope you will be OK’. HK stared, unblinking, un-moving. Aster backed away. ‘At least you have the sunset,’ she said, raising a claw at the sinking sun. She felt uncertain at the silence, for HK continued to look at her. So she drew herself up, trying to feel more grown up. ‘May the fire serve you,’ she said, as her father said it. HK continued to look at her, rather than the sun. ‘Goodbye!’ she said, and in a flurry of un-thought, still spattered with now-dried mud, she tore herself away and scampered back to find her mother.

*

HK sat alone on the terrace, red eye pointed at the darkening sky. The sun’s fading light lit the stone, turning the damp green a paler, softer colour. The blue of HK’s body darkened, but the sun caught on the chips and scratches of his bodywork, and small glints of fire could be seen as the light slowly changed angle. Pink clouds moved softly overhead as a gentle breeze stirred the reeds in the old riverbed, and the leaves on those trees still standing on wall and bluff.

/hkexereboot COMPLETE_

/hkexe/openlog

/hkexelog/open battleSanctumFall12488

/hxexelog PLAY?

/hxexelog/Y

HK watched the battle, unseeing eye not looking at the sun, but at the movement of his foes, the surge of the fight, the patterns of his shots in correlation to his movements.

/hexelog/battlepreparation.exe

Next time, HK would win.