The mechanical whine was a shard of ice in the warm, living air of the forest. It was wrong. An obscenity. After the profound silence and the deep, geological songs of the Sea of Glass, the sound was a violation.
For a heartbeat, they were frozen, three figures poised on the edge of two worlds—the dead, reflective plain at their backs and the teeming, vibrant life ahead. The whine grew louder, resolving into the distinct, insectoid buzz of repulsor fields.
Mara moved first. Instinct, honed by a lifetime of evasion, took over. "Down!" she hissed, shoving Elian and Corvin behind the thick, gnarled root of an ancient tree that breached the soil like a petrified serpent.
