Verdun held its breath.
The sky above the fortress city was pale with snowclouds, but the air near the Laurant Foundry shimmered with heat. Gargouille stood in the courtyard like a colossus carved from iron and rage — its left flank still crumpled from the Blaumeer engagement, its forward barrel stained black from carbonized propellant. Mechanics circled it like priests tending to a wounded idol.
Emil Laurant stood beneath it, coat heavy with frost, cigarette burning low.
He watched the welders seal the forward armor plate and tried to ignore the fact that the world had started to name his machines without his permission.
Reports from the eastern press had begun circulating. Words like "phantom engine," "smoke wyrm," and "Saint of Fire"had attached themselves to Gargouille. French troops in the trenches drew crude sketches of its silhouette on dugout walls. Some even carried hand-carved talismans of the twin-barreled skull.
Worse still were the ones that copied him.
A ministry-controlled prototype dubbed Chanteclair had debuted near Reims. Slower than Brèche, taller than Sévère, and armed with a twin mortar system. Its crew had been destroyed in its second deployment after poor handling led it into a minefield.
And yet, the Directorate paraded it through pamphlets and articles as "France's new war-hammer."
It sickened Emil.
They were playing at godhood.
Without understanding the price.
Fournier emerged from the workshop, rubbing grease from his hands.
"We'll need a new rear chassis plate," he said. "Preferably something not recycled from a rusted artillery truck."
"Too much to ask?" Emil muttered.
Fournier shrugged. "We're running out of raw steel. The ministry's started hoarding. Every factory between here and the Loire's been requisitioned for the Écraseur initiative."
Emil spat into the snow.
"They build statues while I build ghosts."
"You've seen the blueprints?"
"I've memorized them. It's a castle on treads. Four turrets. Six crew. Maximum impact. Maximum noise. They think loud is strong."
Fournier chuckled. "You sound like a bitter old sorcerer."
"I am."
That night, Emil walked alone to the observation ridge west of Verdun.
The front was quiet. Only the flicker of distant gunfire disturbed the horizon.
He sat on a half-frozen bench and lit a fresh cigarette. The smoke curled up into the stars.
He thought of his mother.
A seamstress, long dead.
She'd once sewn him a toy soldier from old uniforms. He had named it Saint Vauclain, after a man she claimed had invented unbreakable thread.
He hadn't known the difference between saints and generals back then.
Now, he wasn't sure there was one.
At 0400, a runner arrived from Paris.
Not a message. Not a summons.
A visitor.
Amélie Moreau, wrapped in a coal-gray cloak, stepped down from the ministry car with snowflakes caught in her hair.
"You're early," Emil said.
"You're late," she replied, handing him a sealed dossier.
He opened it.
Photos.
Blueprints.
And a field report marked with a red stamp: "S.D.T. FIELD TEST: PARTIAL SUCCESS."
"Stimme der Tiefe," she said. "They've finished it."
He scanned the report. "Sonar pulse with directional shockwave. Electromagnetic aftershock caused combustion failures up to 300 meters. Three French artillery posts collapsed from pressure alone."
"No fatalities?"
"One — a messenger's lungs ruptured."
Emil closed the file.
"They've gone from breaking walls to crushing organs."
She nodded.
"And the worst part?"
"What?"
"This wasn't a battlefield test."
He looked up.
"It was a demonstration."
Back inside the foundry, Emil cleared the table and began laying out new schematics.
Fournier watched, blinking sleep from his eyes.
"You're starting again?"
"I need a new hull design," Emil said. "One that splits."
"Splits?"
"Like a jaw. One chassis, two halves. Mounted on an extendable hinge. The core will rotate, the cannon pivot. It won't face forward. It'll face everything."
"You want omnidirectional fire?"
"No," Emil muttered. "I want judgment."
They worked for six days without rest.
The new prototype was smaller than Gargouille — sleeker, like a serpent. It had no fixed turret. Its firing mechanism spun within a rotating dorsal rig that could aim in 270 degrees. The barrels folded inward when idle, resembling a ribcage. Its tread base was curved — designed to glide over debris like a sled, not crawl like a beetle.
Emil named it Mandragore.
After the root that screams when pulled from the earth.
He didn't wait for permission.
On the seventh day, Mandragore was tested on the plains outside Clermont-en-Argonne.
Its weapon: a modified sonic burst cannon derived from reverse-engineered elements of the Doppelte Lunge. Emil had fused it with capacitor coils from an abandoned railgun project and tuned the output to oscillate just beneath bone-breaking frequency.
Target: an abandoned mill turned observation post.
Range: 400 meters.
Result: collapsed in four seconds.
Fournier whispered, "You've built a siren that doesn't sing. It screams."
Emil replied, "Good. Let them hear it."
On the eighth day, Paris called.
Director Lavalle's voice crackled over the secure line.
"We've seen the test footage."
"So has Berlin," Emil replied.
"We need a field deployment."
"I have the crew."
"No," Lavalle said. "You are the crew."
Emil smiled.
"Then I hope the world is listening."