The Strider didn't walk so much as it stomped.
Each step of the massive six-legged engine sent a tremor through the cockpit. The suspension—made from the hydraulic spines of some forgotten beast—groaned in protest as they navigated the dunes of jagged metal.
Kael sat in the gunner's seat, his hands gripping the controls of the roof-mounted turret. The glass bubble around him offered a 360-degree view of the Rust Plains.
It was horrifyingly beautiful.
Under the dirty gold light of the Aureolus, the sea of scrap looked like a desert of bronze and iron.
They passed hills made entirely of shields. valleys filled with crushed chariots. At one point, they stepped over the wing of a dragon—not a real dragon, but a flying machine made of canvas and aluminum, preserved perfectly in the dry, static-charged air.
"Reading a thermal spike to the North-East," Voss's voice crackled over the intercom speakers.
"Scavenger pack. Small fry. Ignorable."
Elric was strapped into the navigator's chair below, looking green. "Ignorable? I see them! They look like wolves made of knives!"
"They cannot penetrate the hull," Voss dismissed. "The strata is getting deeper. We are crossing into the Second Era deposition layer."
Kael watched the "wolves" lope alongside them. Voss was right; they were constructs of blades and wire, snapping at the Strider's armored legs but finding no purchase.
"What happens in the Second Era layer?" Kael asked.
"Bigger wars," Voss said simply. "Bigger weapons."
As if to punctuate the statement, the horizon shifted.
A mountain of debris ahead of them began to rise. Rust cascaded down its sides in an avalanche of noise.
"Seismic activity?" Elric squeaked.
"No," Kael said, his grip tightening on the turret triggers. "That's not a mountain."
It was a Dread-hulk. A fortress on tracks, half-buried for who knows how long, now waking up. It must have been from an industrial age timeline—it was covered in smokestacks and grinding gears, its "head" a massive singular cannon the size of a bell tower.
And it had been repurposed. The grey organic paste of the Void Scavengers oozed between its armor plates, animating the dead machine.
"Evasive maneuvers!" Voss shouted, his calm facade finally cracking.
The Strider lurched sideways, narrowly avoiding a shell the size of a horse that slammed into the ground where they had been standing. The explosion threw a cloud of shrapnel into the air that rained against the cockpit glass like hail.
"It's targeting us!" Elric yelled.
"It wants our reactor!" Voss replied, fighting the controls as the Strider scrambled up a dune. "We have the only refined power source for fifty miles!"
The Dread-hulk turned, its tracks screaming. It was slow, but it was inevitable.
"I'm shooting!" Kael roared. He spun the turret, lining up the crosshairs on the Hulk's central cannon.
He squeezed the triggers. Twin beams of white energy—same as Voss's rifle but thicker—lanced out. They struck the Hulk's armor, scoring black burns across the metal, but did nothing to slow it.
"Too thick!" Kael yelled. "We need to hit the joints!"
"It doesn't have joints!" Voss snapped. "It's a tank-class!"
Another shell whizzed past, close enough that the shockwave cracked Kael's glass bubble.
"Voss!" Kael shouted into the comms. "The reactor! Overload the output to the legs!"
"That will fuse the servos! We'll be stranded!"
"Better stranded than dead! Do it!"
The Dread-hulk was charging its main cannon again. A red light began to gather in the barrel.
"Do it!" Kael screamed.
He felt the hum of the Strider change. The vibration in the floor became a teeth-rattling buzz.
"Injecting coolant directly into the combustion chamber," Voss warned. "Hold onto your teeth."
The Strider surged. It didn't just run; it leaped. The mechanical legs blurred, driving them forward with terrifying speed. They shot up the side of a massive, rusted carrier ship, using the hull as a ramp.
The Dread-hulk fired.
The shell obliterated the carrier ship beneath them. The shockwave caught the Strider in mid-air, flipping it.
The world spun—sky, rust, gold light, sky—and then they slammed into the ground.
Kael was thrown against his harness, the breath knocked out of him. The Strider rolled, metal screeching, before coming to a rest upside down.
Silence.
"Status," Kael wheezed, tasting blood.
"Hull compromised," Voss's voice was glitchy. "Legs 3, 4, and 6 are non-functional. We are... mobility kills."
"Are we alive?" Elric moaned from below.
"For now," Kael said, unbuckling his harness. He dropped to the ceiling of the cockpit (now the floor). "But the Hulk is still coming."
He looked out the shattered glass. The dust was settling. The Dread-hulk was a mile back, churning through the wreckage of the ship it had destroyed. It was searching.
"We walk from here," Kael said. "Grab the weapons. We need to lose it in the Crash Site."