The moment Rayne stepped through the portal, the dry, scorching wind of the Eastern Continent hit him full in the face, carrying with it sharp flecks of metal. He flinched, raising a hand to shield his eyes. Through the gaps between his fingers, the sight that met him made his vertical pupils contract to slits.
A city of steel and colorless magic crystal sprawled along the cliff's edge, its towers glinting like knives in the sun. Thousands of gears turned lazily across the faces of buildings, while thick steam pipes arched overhead like the veins of some colossal beast. At the city's heart rose a spire of translucent crystal that speared the clouds, and deep within its body flickered the cold light of high-grade magic stones…
Inside the spire, encased from root to crown, stood a colossal tree.
"Welcome to the Glass City," Ravenna whistled, the purple-gold tracery on her rune arm glinting in the sunlight. "Home to the alchemists' guild, the largest black market on the continent, and—" She broke off with a wince, clamping a hand over her nose. "—some of the worst air you'll ever breathe."
The wind reeked of sulfur and molten metal. Far away in the factory district, smokestacks belched multicolored fumes that bled into the sky, turning the sunset an unhealthy shade of purple-red. Ironbeard's mechanical eye whirred and clicked as it shifted focus, scanning the streets. People hurried past, most wearing breathing masks. From under their cloaks, the glint of mechanical limbs caught the dying light.
The baby in Rayne's arms squirmed, little fingers clutching his collar. In the child's golden eyes, the reflection of the spire shimmered. His lips trembled. "…Pain…"
Rayne followed the boy's gaze—and a sudden wave of vertigo nearly buckled his knees. The four elemental currents inside him lurched out of balance. In that moment of dissonance, his senses pierced the spire's facade. The magic stones weren't decoration—they were shackles. Gears, pistons, and conduits bored into the great tree's trunk, drawing its sap and funneling it into every corner of the city.
"They're bleeding the Watcher dry," Rayne said, his voice low.
Ironbeard slammed the head of his warhammer into the cobblestones, earning wary glances from nearby pedestrians. "The alchemists are madder than I thought. They've bound an ancient tree in chains of steel?"
Ravenna's rune arm flared with pain, the gold-purple lines crawling toward her fingertips like living things. "Not just steel," she murmured, narrowing her eyes. "Something alive is at the base of that tower—controlling it."
From somewhere down the street came the screech of turning gears. Three figures in white robes emerged from the haze. Metal limbs protruded from beneath their hems, their faces hidden behind glass masks devoid of expression. In each chest pulsed a crystal heart, its core swirling with dark-green liquid—diluted sap from the imprisoned tree.
"Overseers," Ironbeard said under his breath. "Glass City's enforcers. They share what they see."
Rayne pulled the group into the shadow of an alley. Casting out his senses, he noted the faintly glowing footprints the Overseers left behind—lines of light forming a runic array, a citywide surveillance web.
"We're going into that spire." Rayne pressed a mote of tri-colored magic into the brickwork; the wall rippled, revealing a dense network of magic circles within. "The city is its cage."
The baby suddenly began to thrash, pointing toward the northwest slums. Rayne's pupils narrowed. On a rooftop in that direction, a black shadow moved—liquid and shifting—its form vaguely avian.
"Abyssal messenger," Ravenna muttered, dagger flashing in her hand. "It's ahead of us."
"No," Ironbeard growled, his mechanical eye glowing red. "It's running."
As if to confirm his words, a burst of silver-blue light detonated behind the shadow. Something razor-sharp sliced through the air, punching through the crow-thing's wings. It shrieked, blood flashing into vapor, but still hurtled toward the spire.
"Elven magic?" Rayne's pointed ears twitched.
A figure appeared on the rooftops—a lean silhouette in a tattered cloak, leaping from eave to eave with uncanny lightness. In her hands gleamed a crystal longbow. The wind tore back her hood—not to reveal elven ears, but the face of a human woman traced with fine mechanical etchings.
Her right eye was a solid crystal, glowing with the same green light as the Overseers' hearts.
"A half-machine elf?" Ravenna arched a brow. "This place gets stranger by the minute."
The hunter turned, her crystal eye locking on the baby in Rayne's arms. Her mouth opened as if to speak—
The roof beneath her erupted in a blast of black slime, the muck surging upward to seize her legs. Sirens screamed through the city. The three Overseers sprinted toward the blast with impossible speed.
All four of Rayne's energies roared within him. "An Abyss creature's after her!"
"And she's spotted us," Ravenna warned, her rune arm flaring red.
Ironbeard's warhammer hummed as it drew power. "Save her, or run?"
The baby pressed a tiny palm to Rayne's cheek—and in that instant, a clearer image flashed before Rayne's mind. Just before the half-mechanical elf was dragged under, her lips formed two silent words:
Ley line.
Around her neck hung a gear pendant etched with the same runes as Ironbeard's hammer.
Rayne didn't hesitate. He broke from the shadows. "We save her."
The rooftops of the slums were mottled like diseased skin, and the rotting planks groaned beneath their weight. Rayne sprinted across the slanted ridgeline, the four energies surging through his veins granting him balance beyond that of any ordinary man.
The slime had already swallowed the mechanical half-elf up to her chest. Her crystal longbow kept firing silver-blue arrows, but for every clump of black fluid she scattered, more came surging in. Worse still, the three Overseers had already arrived— the ancient-tree sap in their chests glowed with an uncanny light, and was actually calming the rampaging Abyssal matter!
"The Council and the alchemists are working together?" Ironbeard roared as he leapt onto the roof, his warhammer crashing into the nearest Overseer. The shockwave from the runes blasted the white-robed figure away, but the other's glass mask remained entirely unscathed.
Ravenna struck from the flank, her rune arm punching straight through another Overseer's chest. The purple-gold lines spread along the crystal heart— but the next instant, she jerked her hand back in retreat. The dark-green liquid was corroding her runes!
"Careful! The ancient-tree sap's been tainted!"
Rayne's Frost-Whisper sword came down through the air, threefold energies weaving into a spiral blade-qi that split the black slime wrapping the half-elf in two. Emerald vines coiled around her waist and hauled her clear of danger.
The half-elf coughed violently. The moment she saw Rayne, her mechanical right eye flashed madly. She seized his cloak with a death grip, the crystal throat-tubes vibrating into a rasping voice: "Ley line… core… key…"
All of the Overseers' glass masks suddenly turned toward them. The pulsing of the magic-crystal hearts in their chests fell into perfect sync. Rayne felt a wave of vertigo, as if countless needles were probing into his brain—
Mental scan!
The baby suddenly let out a cry that was more like a piercing scream. Golden soundwaves swept across the field; all the Overseers froze where they stood, cracks spiderwebbing across their masks. The half-elf seized the chance to pull a metal sphere from her belt and smash it hard against the ground—
"Close your eyes!"
Light erupted. Even with his eyelids clamped shut, Rayne could still see the outlines of his own veins. By the time his vision cleared, they were already standing in a narrow underground conduit, Ironbeard jamming his warhammer into the gear-door's locking mechanism to keep it open.
"An optical transporter?" Ravenna rubbed at her tearing eyes. "Isn't that a banned technique of the Holy Alliance?"
The half-elf leaned against the rust-eaten wall, her mechanical parts humming with the strain of overload. Trembling, she removed the gear pendant from her neck and handed it to Ironbeard. "Deep-Rock… clan… token…"
Ironbeard's single eye widened. "You're Goldbeard's daughter? But the explosion twenty years ago—"
"Faked death." She tugged open her collar, revealing beneath her collarbone the brand of a heated iron— a gear wrapped in chains. "Father found out… they're using the ancient-tree sap… to make mixed-demon soldiers…"
From deep within the conduit came the burbling sound of liquid flowing.
"Overseers… can track… the ancient tree's signature…" She shoved Rayne forward. "The ley-line core… is right under the spire… the messenger's going to… release it…"
"It?" Rayne's vertical pupils narrowed.
The mechanical woman's crystal right eye suddenly wept black blood. She doubled over in pain. "The sleeping… Devourer… the Council has been… feeding it… with half the souls… of Glass City…"
Her voice broke off. One by one, her mechanical parts ceased to function. Only the gear pendant still radiated heat. Ironbeard silently hooked it onto his warhammer, cold fury burning in his single eye.
The baby's tiny hand pressed to the cooling forehead of the half-elf. Golden light flowed, and a wisp of translucent substance was drawn out, vanishing into his palm. Rayne's emerald left eye saw it clearly— it was the final fragment of her memory.
"Go," Rayne said, gathering the child into his arms. "We're going to the ley-line core."
Ravenna examined the corrosion marks on her rune arm. "One thing bothers me… If the alchemists and the Council are working together, why would the Overseers attack an Abyssal messenger?"
In the depths of the conduit, the darkness began to writhe like something alive.
"Because…" Rayne's fourfold energies gathered in his palm, forming a faint glow that lit the rust-stained tunnel ahead. "They're fighting over who controls it."
The ley-line core pulsed like a rotting heart.
Rayne crouched by a crack in the ventilation shaft, peering down into a vast spherical chamber. Thousands of metal conduits stabbed in from every direction toward a central transparent container. Inside it floated a mass of ever-shifting dark matter—at times like a curled fetus, at times like a many-legged monstrosity, but most often, nothing more than a cloud of pure blackness radiating an overwhelming sense of hunger.
"Ancestors above…" Ironbeard's mechanical eye whirred furiously, adjusting focus. "They've made the ley-line energy converter… into a prison?"
Around the container stood twelve crystal pillars, each one holding a twisted humanoid figure captive. Through his emerald vision, Rayne could tell they were of different races from across the continent. Conduits had been forcibly grafted into their bodies, linking them together into some sort of living magic array.
Worse still—the Abyssal messenger hovered above the container, its black shadow splitting into countless fine tendrils, probing for a way through the protective barrier. Three alchemists, each wearing a golden gear insignia, stood at the control console, locked in heated argument, their white robes spattered with blood.
"—The sample must be destroyed immediately!" the eldest alchemist roared. "The Council lied to us! The Devourer will never submit to control!"
"But the City Lord insists we complete the 'God-Descent Project'!" The young female alchemist's artificial eye flickered red. "We only need three more elven souls—"
"Then you go catch an elf!" The third magus pounded frantically on failing instruments. "The ley-line energy's already in reverse flow! Besides, who doesn't know the Elven Forest is gone—there are barely any elves left alive."
Ravenna's rune arm suddenly began to tremble uncontrollably, the purple-gold lines all pointing toward the container. "That thing… it's resonating with the alchemy matrix inside my arm…"
The baby's condition grew even stranger. The golden light beneath his skin boiled like scalding water, and his pupils had turned completely azure. When Rayne looked down at him, the phantom of a paladin briefly appeared behind the child, silently mouthing two words:
"Stop it."
Ironbeard's warhammer began to charge. "What's the plan?"
Rayne's mind raced, parsing the situation—the Abyssal messenger was trying to release the Devourer, the alchemists were split among themselves, and the ley-line energy was at critical instability…
"Create chaos." He pointed to the control console. "Ironbeard, wreck the energy conduits. Ravenna, disrupt the control systems. I'll handle the messenger."
"And the little brat?" Ravenna jerked her chin at the baby.
The child suddenly wriggled free from Rayne's arms, tottering to the edge of the duct. He pressed a tiny hand against the metal wall, and fine golden lines spread outward like a spiderweb—
The magic array powering the entire spire stuttered for a full second.
The experimental subjects within all twelve crystal pillars opened their eyes at once.
"…Fine," Ravenna said with a feral grin. "He can handle the spire's magic array."
The three of them dropped from the duct together.
In midair, Rayne's Frost-Whisper sword split into twelve ice blades, each wrapped in a different elemental energy. Emerald vines lashed out to snare the throats of two alchemists, dragon's-breath fire blocked the messenger's retreat, and a snap-cast ice storm woven from nature magic drove straight into the shadow's core.
The messenger let out a piercing, high-frequency scream, seven eyes spinning wildly within the darkness. Abruptly, it abandoned its attempt to breach the container and hurled itself at Rayne—
"Got you…"
A tide of blackness swallowed Rayne's vision.