Dark Convergence - By Dave Gross
Nemo
The wagon creaked as the team pulled it along the muddy path winding south from the Dragon’s Tongue River. The horses snorted plumes of mist in the cool autumn air. A pair of half-shuttered lanterns glowed on the wagon’s front posts on either side of the drivers’ seat. Their yellow light reached just beyond the hooves of the lead horses, barely illuminating the leafless branches of the surrounding woods.
Canvas tarpaulins covered the wagon’s bulky cargo, except for a giant mechanikal limb lying on top. Lantern light glimmered over brass gears connecting the upper and lower lengths of the steel-and-chromium arm. A double-pincer formed a clawed hand at one end, while a ruin of mangled gears and axles jutted from the other.
High on the driver’s seat sat two hulking figures, their cowls pulled low over faces muffled by scarves. Through the wool, the driver whistled “The Last Maiden of Caspia” as he held the reins loosely in hands encased in blue steel gauntlets. The passenger sat silent and still but for the jostling when the wagon’s wheels dipped into ruts and bounced over roots.
The driver’s eyes widened as he spied something moving onto the road ahead. He stopped his whistling.
“Uh, oh.”
With a sound of ratcheting gears, blue-white lights appeared on the path before the wagon, moving in two distinct figures. Two humanoid shapes stepped forward, glowing panels set into their legs, arms, and torsos. On each head glowed a single unblinking eye, brighter than all the other lights upon their bodies except for one: a stylized icon of a woman’s face on each chest.
The driver reined in the team as six more figures stepped into the wagon’s path. The interlopers remained ten yards away, stepping back to maintain their distance as the wagon slowed and halted.
“Who’s there?” The driver opened the shutters on the nearest lantern. Light shone on the steel bodies of the intruders.
They looked like fanciful suits of armor inhabited not by men but by brass mechanisms. Heavy steel blades jutted from the backs of their right hands, a compact battery of six firearm barrels on the left. They raised their left arms in unison, pointing them like pistols at the driver and his passenger.
“Halt!” called a flat, mechanical voice.
“I just did,” said the driver. “You can see I don’t want any trouble.” His voice echoed deep and muted, as if from inside a steel helm. He turned toward the sound of coiled springs and heavy footsteps approaching from behind the wagon.
An enormous machine emerged from the woods to block his retreat. With every step of its four crustacean legs, its internal mechanisms whirred and clicked. Lantern light warmed its chromium-plated surface as it turned its ovoid torso to keep the apparatus on its right shoulder trained on the driver. A rack of razor-sharp saw blades fed a whining compartment inside the contraption. At the end of its left limb, a symmetrical pair of heavy pincers clenched and released—an operative version of the arm lying on the wagon’s bed.
“Step down,” said one of the clockwork soldiers. The tenor of its voice was the same as the first speaker’s, but its cadence differed. “Make no sudden moves.”
The driver looped the reins around the brake and raised his armored hands. “I promise you’ll have no trouble from me.”
As the driver uttered the code phrase, Artificer General Sebastian Nemo emerged from behind the tree where he had been hiding. He flicked a switch on the side of his storm armor. A dull thrum rose to a high whine as lightning flickered on the galvanic coils on his back. Tongues of electricity cast the bare branches of the trees into stark relief against the night sky. Nemo’s white hair floated on the static field, his blue eyes brightening as the charge increased.
At the same time, five heavy blades crackled with lightning beside him. Six blue-armored soldiers rose from the concealment of the camouflaged ditch, dry leaves rustling as they slipped out from beneath the tarpaulins.
Just off the path behind the wagon, Storm Chaser Caitlin Finch and another half-dozen Stormblades appeared. The men held heavy storm throwers at their waists, the storm chambers keening as the guns’ coils glowed brighter.
A brilliant, white flash rose to the north. An instant later, a heavy impact shook the ground, followed by another. A gradually accelerating rhythm thundered up the path behind the wagon.
The wagon driver shrugged, his hands held high as he spoke to the clockwork intruders. “Now I’ll keep my promise, fellas, but I can’t speak for