The elevator shuddered to a halt with a final, groaning protest that vibrated up Trenn’s spine. Before them loomed a massive wooden gate. Taller than Trenn, and wide enough for two people to pass, it sealed the corridor in its entirety.

  Mara’s rigid posture didn’t change, but her amber eyes narrowed. “How do we get through that?”

  Ezy vaulted from the Stomper’s cockpit, her steel-toed boots clanging on the platform. She marched to the gate, a small, defiant figure in the vast, silent landscape.

  “I’m the daughter of the Captain of the Bee-Riders,” she declared, pulling an ornate brass key from her belt. A triumphant grin split her freckled face.

  “I stole it from her office.”

  Mara let out a low hiss. “If one of my people stole from a clan leader, they’d be exiled before the next moonrise.”

  "That’s because you Guardians solve every problem with a border," Ezy retorted. "It’s always about whether or not you’re allowed in the forest," she said, rolling her eyes.

  "Provided she even found out," Ezy said, sliding the key into the lock. "Mom couldn't report the key stolen without admitting I could get to it in the first place." Using both hands, she turned it.

  The mechanism shrieked, a dry, grating sound of metal unused for centuries. They stepped through, and the atmosphere shifted instantly. The air was hotter here, thick with the taste of dust and undisturbed stone.

  Ezy put her shoulder to the gate and heaved it shut. It closed with a deafening, final CLANG that echoed once down the tunnel before being smothered by the profound silence of the deep earth.

  The tunnel here was a cavernous artery, its vaulted ceiling lost in the darkness above, wide enough for a dozen ore trolleys to pass abreast.

  The hum of the Stomper, the scuff of their boots, the faint creak of Trenn’s armor. Everything was unnaturally loud in the oppressive quiet. Trenn’s amulet pierced the darkness.

  The colossal, hollowed-out husk of a boring machine dominated the space. Its diamond drill-head had dissolved into a pitted, sponge-like lattice of metal, and a wide furrow was gouged through its chassis.

  As they moved past the dead machine, countless smaller passages branched off from the main thoroughfare.

  “This silence,” Mara growled, her voice a low rumble that was swallowed by the immense space. “I don’t like it. It feels… hungry.” Her ears twitched.

  “We’re approaching the forge’s habitation district,” Ezy said. “The drilling crews lived in sealed quarters down here for cycles at a time, before we reached the island’s surface.”

  The main tunnel widened, flanked by rows of doorways carved directly into the rock, their brass numbers long since tarnished a sickly green. Through an open door, Trenn saw a small, stone room, a petrified mug sitting on a dusty table, a child’s broken clockwork toy lying on its side on the floor.

  And everywhere, there was that same honeycombed corrosion he’d seen on the boring machine. It crept across the doorframes, pitted the stone floors, and consumed the leg of a metal bunk bed, leaving behind a delicate, sponge-like ruin.

  Their path ended at a wall of rubble. A solid choke of interlocking stone and twisted iron beams that sealed the wide path completely.

  The Stomper crunched to its edge. Ezy did some mental calculations. “I can clear a path through this rubble,” Ezy said. “But one wrong push and who knows what comes down. We’d be a footnote in the next geological survey.”

  Trenn stepped forward. “Give me a second,” he said, putting his hand to the black amulet at his chest.

  “Let me be your spotter.” He closed his eyes, threading his clairvoyant sense forward.

  The rubble was a frozen explosion of stone and twisted metal. His sight sifted through the cracks, looking for a path. Pressure points. A keystone.

  While Trenn’s mind was adrift, Mara stood as their rear guard. Her bow armed, her amber eyes sweeping the oppressive darkness. “I don’t like this,” she growled, her voice a rumble swallowed by the silence. “Nothing this big should be this empty.”

  Trenn’s clairvoyant gaze found what looked like the main support—a massive, bent iron beam wedged diagonally. Removing it would cause a complete collapse. “Ezy,” he said, his voice strained with concentration, “There’s a thick iron beam, ten o’clock, near the top. It must not move. But push the large rock under it… No, the—yes, push that one.”

  Ezy maneuvered the machine, its metal feet crunching on the debris. It raised a fist and placed it against the stone. The moment it applied pressure, a deep groan echoed through the tunnel. Dust rained down from the ceiling. The weight shifted.

  “Stop!” Trenn yelled, his eyes flying open. “Stop, it’s wrong! Push it, and the whole tunnel—.”

  Mara’s head snapped aside. A faint skittering echoed from the gloom.

  “Incoming!” Her bowstring twanged, and her arrow pinned a beetle-like creature to the wall.

  “Iron Flies!” Mara snarled, her eyes flicking from the pinned insect to the pitted, sponge-like corrosion on the nearby wall. “That honeycombed pattern… They eat metal by dissolving it with acidic secretions. The Stomper'll attract them!”

  Trenn closed his eyes again, forcing himself back into the chaos of the rubble, the skittering of the approaching insects a frantic drumbeat in his ears.

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  His senses dove deeper, ignoring the large, obvious pieces and searching for the subtle lines of force. He found it—a cluster of smaller, interlocking rocks wedged beneath a larger slab.

  “Ezy, new target,” he said, his voice urgent as three more sets of glowing red eyes ignited in the gloom. “Look lower, to the right. There’s a flat slab of stone the size of your cockpit.”

  Mara’s bow twanged. “Running out of time, Smooth-Skin!” Another arrow flew, another insect fell with a clatter.

  “Ezy, you need to lift that slab, not push it,” Trenn commanded, his voice rising over the clicks of the approaching swarm. “Get under it. A steady, upward pressure at a forty-five-degree angle. It should shift the smaller rocks and create a cascade, but a controlled one.”

  The Stomper maneuvered the rubble, its multi-plated feet finding purchase on the uneven stone. It braced itself, its metal hands finding a grip under the designated slab, as three more Iron Flies scurried into the light.

  “Ezy!” Trenn yelled.

  The Stomper’s hydraulic arms whined as they took the strain, lifting with a steady, controlled force. A deep groan vibrated through the floor as the slab shifted, the sound drawing another half-dozen insects. Mara loosed two more arrows in a fluid motion, and the ceiling shifted above them, a heavy cascade of dust raining down. It was now or never.

  A deafening CRACK started a controlled avalanche that shook the tunnel.

  Dust settled in the beams of the Stomper’s lights, revealing a jagged, triangular passage. The wound in the collapse was large enough for them to squeeze through.

  The passage bled into a forge chamber so vast it could have swallowed the Guardian Lodge. Colossal, eaten machinery stood in the gloom. Spongeous forge-hammers hung motionless. The heat was a tangible pressure, radiating from the stone in shimmering waves.

  A rhythmic grating clawed at their nerves.

  "What is that?" Ezy said.

  It was a tableau of forgotten slaughter. A dozen automatons lay in a defensive circle, their bodies broken and devoured from the inside out. One was frozen in the act of reaching for its fallen comrade, its brass fingers inches away.

  Around them, the walls crawled with Iron Flies. Dozens of cat-sized insects swarmed every surface.

  The swarm’s multifaceted eyes ignited as one, locking onto their single, metallic prize. A living carpet of chitin detached from the wall and surged toward the Stomper.

  Mara exploded from the side, a blur of white fur moving on all fours. She launched herself into the front ranks of the cloud, becoming a spinning blender of claws and fury. Carapaces shattered like glass, and twitching husks rained down around her, but the main body of the swarm flowed around her like a river around a stone.

  Seeing her about to be enveloped, Trenn drop-kicked Skate. The grey sphere shot past Mara and plowed a brutal furrow through the swarm, scattering insects like bowling pins. But the gap he created closed instantly, the tide of ravenous creatures pouring over their dead without pause. Skate ricocheted wildly off the far wall, momentarily out of his control.

  The first wave of Iron Flies slammed into the Stomper with a series of heavy, metallic thuds.

  "Get off my paint!" Ezy roared from the cockpit. She slammed a control, and the Stomper’s upper chassis erupted into a whirlwind of cerulean steel. The spinning arms batted insects from the air and dislodged those clinging to its torso. For a moment, it worked.

  But the swarm was intelligent. While the whirlwind defense cleared the top half of the machine, a second wave scrambled low to the ground, avoiding the spinning fists entirely. They latched onto the Stomper's legs, their true target all along.

  A sizzling hiss filled the air, followed by plumes of acrid smoke. Trenn watched in horror as the Stomper's immaculate cerulean armor began to bubble and dissolve where the insects clung.

  The giant flies spat a chemical solvent that made the metal peel back like wet paper.

  “The armor’s failing!” Ezy’s voice crackled, laced with panic. “There are too many! We can’t fight them all!” Her Stomper staggered as a leg joint, corroded and weakened, buckled under the strain. “The heat! They’re avoiding the main forge conduit! We have to go deeper! We have to run!”

  The Stomper’s wheels activated with a screech, and it bolted down the treacherous path. The swarm’s single-minded focus was terrifying; they surged after the machine, ignoring the organic heroes completely, flowing around them like water around stones in a river.

  The retreat was a desperate, chaotic attempt at pest control. Mara ran alongside the fleeing Stomper, not engaging the swarm head-on, but physically batting and shoving the metal-hungry insects off its dissolving leg joints.

  "They're crawling right over me to get to it!" she snarled, a fly skittering harmlessly across her own armored pauldron in its haste to reach the more appetizing meal.

  Trenn, skating on Skate to keep pace, used his enchanted club not to kill, but to sweep and shove, trying to knock the creatures off their trajectory. He swung in a wide, desperate arc, connecting solidly with the carapace of one insect. It was sent tumbling through the air, and its dying, reflexive action was to spew a final gout of its acidic solvent.

  They fled deeper into the forge complex, following the increasing heat that radiated from the stone walls. The grating sound of a thousand pursuing insects echoed behind them, a wave of hunger at their heels. They burst through a final collapsed archway into a new cavern, and the heat became a physical blow. The air shimmered, and the rock beneath their feet was hot to the touch.

  On the ground nearby were the charred chitinous remains of burnt Iron Flies.

  At the cavern’s edge, the tide of giant insects had stopped. They skittered and clicked with frustration, a roiling sea of red eyes, but they would not enter the oppressive heat.

  Trenn and Mara collapsed against the cavern wall, their ragged breaths echoing in the sudden silence, as the Iron Flies retreated.

  Ezy vaulted from the Stomper’s cockpit, her face pale. She ran a trembling hand over the catastrophic damage to her machine. The legs were a ruin of melted armor and exposed pistons. The chassis was pocked with deep, honeycombed wounds that smoked with acidic residue.

  The ruined forge gave way to a collapsed cavern. Along the far wall, a sluggish river of lava flowed like molten honey, its hellish glow throwing their long, dancing shadows against the ancient stone.

  The chokepoint was ideal. Ezy maneuvered the damaged Stomper into a defensive position. Trenn and Mara began their work, tossing bundles of resin-soaked wood into a trail leading from the burning stream’s edge to the center of their killing ground.

  The last bundle landed with a soft thud. They retreated to their positions. An expectant silence fell, punctuated by the viscous bubbling of the lava.

  A flicker of fire detached itself from the main flow, a salamander of living flame. It slithered with a curious, serpentine motion to the nearest bundle and began to consume it.

  “Yes,” Ezy said. “It’s perfect! Keep eating, little fella…”

  But it stopped. The salamander recoiled, its fiery form shrinking as if in terror. It darted back toward the river in a desperate, panicked flight.

  The lava roiled, its surface heaving as if a great beast were stirring in its depths. The bubbling grew violent, thick gobs of magma bursting like boils. A low, guttural rumble vibrated up from the stone beneath their feet.

  With a heavy, sucking slush, the river erupted.

  A colossal wave of humanoid fire surged from the flow, its ten-foot form a roaring mockery of a man. Its shape churned with incandescent fury.

  It raised one blazing arm in a gesture of command. A pulse of heat, visible as a shimmering distortion in the air, flashed across the cavern. The entire trail of wood they had so carefully laid out erupted into flame.

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