The V8 engine roared. The rhythmic percussion vibrated in my teeth. Thick black smoke and hissing steam turned the shattered warehouse into a purgatory of steel and sulfur.

  Below us, the Truth Mage recovered from the noise. His pristine robes were stained with soot. His aristocratic face twisted with pure rage. A Magister of the Academy, forced back by rusted industrial garbage.

  "Destroy that scrap!" the Mage shrieked.

  He didn't weave a complex matrix. He needed immediate destruction. He thrust his staff forward and cast an Explosive Fireball.

  The highly compressed plasma shot upward like a miniature sun, streaking straight for the Centurion's massive chest cavity. Right beneath our boots.

  "Brace!" I yelled, throwing my arms up.

  BOOM—!

  The fireball detonated dead center. A shockwave of blistering heat washed over the open platform, singeing my hair. Orange fire and billowing smoke instantly swallowed the lower half of the chassis.

  Near the breached doors, the City Guards cheered. They lowered their halberds. Nothing survived a direct, point-blank evocation without a magical shield.

  The smoke dragged away through the hole in the roof. The cheering stopped dead.

  The Walker was still standing.

  I coughed through the acrid smoke and looked down. The explosion had left a blackened, scorched crater on the Centurion's chest plate. It hadn't even burned through the oxidized surface layer.

  I wiped grease from my goggles and glared down at the dumbfounded Mage. His jaw hung open.

  There was no miraculous anti-magic ward here. This was ten inches of solid, enchanted black steel. A thermal spell against a siege chassis was like throwing a lit match at a bank vault. It was a metallurgical mockery of mysticism.

  "The armor is too thick!" the Mage shouted, his eyes frantically scanning the beast. Then, he spotted the vulnerability.

  Hanging from the torso to the massive thighs were the black, steel-braided hoses we had just bled. "Aim for the veins!" he commanded. "Cripple it!"

  The guards snapped out of their stupor and raised heavy military crossbows. The Mage began to weave his fingers in tight, rapid circles, constructing a precision Wind Blade.

  "Julian, we're sitting ducks!" Amelia screamed. Her hands were locked onto the distributor. Her face was deathly pale as the V8 greedily drained her mana.

  "Hold on!" I roared back.

  I had no steering wheel. No electronic assist. Just four heavy, crude iron levers connected directly to the hydraulic manifold.

  I planted my boots wide on the vibrating deck, gripped the two right-side levers, and yanked the "lift" valve backward with pure, agonizing arm strength.

  The high-pressure pump shrieked. Boiling troll-fat surged through the lines. CRACK-GROAN—

  The massive right leg, rusted stiff for decades, was violently yanked upward by three thousand pounds of pressure.

  But I underestimated the fluid brutality. I opened the valve too fast. The five-ton steel leg jerked high into the air, blowing past a normal stride.

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  The center of gravity vanished. Fifty tons of iron lurched right. The control platform violently tilted at a thirty-degree angle.

  "We're tipping!" Amelia shrieked, her boots sliding on the oil-slicked deck. She grabbed the railing, squeezing her eyes shut.

  "No!" I gritted my teeth, tasting blood.

  I threw my entire body weight onto the "down" lever, forcing the iron bar toward the floorboards against immense back-pressure.

  Deprived of hydraulic lift and hit with terrifying downward thrust, the suspended steel leg fell. Fifty tons of mass. Gravity. And the raw thrust of the V8 pump pushing it down.

  It wasn't a step. It was a localized meteor strike.

  CRA-KOOOM—!!!

  The giant steel foot slammed into the reinforced concrete floor. The ground shattered. Slabs of concrete buckled upward. A visible shockwave of jagged debris, dust, and displaced air blasted outward in a perfect ring.

  The guards aiming their crossbows were thrown backward like bowling pins. They screamed, tumbling through the air, their weapons clattering against the walls.

  The Truth Mage lost his footing and slammed onto his back. His concentration shattered. The half-formed Wind Blade backfired. It exploded outward, shredding his pristine robes and slicing a bleeding gash across his cheek.

  "It's too hard to control!" I gasped, my arms trembling.

  Trying to accurately stomp agile targets with primitive on/off valves was suicide. We were just as likely to crush ourselves.

  We didn't need precision. We needed pure kinetic energy.

  I looked at the street ahead. A dozen recovering guards, heavy wooden barricades, and an armored City Guard carriage blocked the alleyway.

  "Amelia!" I yelled, pointing straight ahead. "Full Power! Everything you have!"

  Amelia bit her lip and dumped her remaining mana core into the copper distributor. The V8 gorged itself on fire mana and unstable dust.

  BRRRRRAAAAAAAAP!!!

  The engine unleashed a terrifying, ear-splitting roar. Two-meter tongues of raw orange flame shot from the straight-pipe exhausts. The cooling water hit a critical boil, sending a geyser of white steam shooting into the sky. The heat radiating from the block felt like an open oven.

  I stopped trying to walk. I shoved both forward-thrust levers to their absolute maximum and pinned them there.

  The fifty-ton crippled golem didn't take a second step. Driven by overwhelming, simultaneous hydraulic pressure, it moved with crude, physics-defying brutalism.

  Like an enraged steel rhinoceros, it simply shoved itself forward. Its iron feet ground against the concrete like tank treads.

  It hit the warehouse's load-bearing brick wall. The wall didn't slow it for a fraction of a second. Bricks, mortar, and heavy support beams shattered like wet cardboard, exploding in a massive cloud of dust.

  We burst onto the cobblestone street.

  The heavy wooden barricades turned into matchsticks beneath the scraping feet. The Walker slammed broadside into the parked armored carriage.

  SCREEECH. The carriage, built to withstand magical blasts, folded like a crushed tin can beneath the sheer mass. The wheels popped off. The iron frame was flattened into the cobblestones.

  "Monster! Run!"

  The guards' discipline completely shattered. Seeing their barricades and armored transport casually crushed into dust broke them. They dropped their halberds, abandoned the bleeding Mage, and scattered into the narrow side alleys, screaming for their lives. No one stands in front of a rampaging, fire-breathing siege engine.

  We plowed through the blockade in a blinding storm of smoke, steam, and flying brick fragments, carving a path of total destruction. We left the furious, humiliated Truth Mage far behind in the dust.

  We tore through three city blocks before the control console shook so violently it threatened to tear my arms out of their sockets.

  I yanked all four brake levers back, slamming the valves shut. The Walker skidded forward on its massive momentum. Its iron feet carved two deep, smoking trenches into the street before agonizingly grinding to a halt in an abandoned intersection.

  The engine panted frantically. The cooling tank was bone dry. Acrid white smoke poured from the cylinder seams.

  Amelia collapsed onto the cold steel deck, her chest heaving. Her face was the color of ash. One more minute of high-frequency ignition, and her core would have dried up completely.

  I looked down at the hoses connecting the torso to our thighs. The high-tensile steel wire had snapped in half a dozen places. Sharp metal wires stuck out like porcupine quills. The thick rubber underneath bulged dangerously, expanding and contracting like a beating heart. It was seconds away from a fatal blowout.

  "We made it out..." Amelia whispered weakly, staring at the smoggy sky.

  I wiped cold sweat and engine oil from my face, leaning heavily against the scalding levers. My muscles cramped so badly I could barely open my hands. I looked down at the battered, foul-smelling behemoth.

  "It's strong," I said hoarsely. I felt no joy of victory. Just a deep, lingering dread at the physics we were playing with. "But it's an untamed beast. If we don't build a high-precision transmission, next time we won't need the Academy to kill us. This machine will tear itself apart."