Kei

  If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

  --Bruce Lee

  The steel giant dives headfirst for the shaft, screaming down with the roar of jet engines.

  Whoever or whatever is flying must have absolute confidence in their skills or be absolutely insane, because they don’t slow at all.

  They accelerate. The sound would be deafening to anyone – even me, normally – and the pressure wave of the air would toss me a hundred feet away even as I am.

  Except I slam hard into the interwoven branches of a solid wall of foliage, and Maze keeps me upright, if embedded in its hedge.

  And I stare blankly and almost in awe as the mech shoots straight down the tunnel into what I’d swear is another world. Or at least someone’s convenient basement universe.

  The ground shakes with its passage, but I’m out of the bushes and back on my feet as soon as the winds of its passing have faded. I rush forward, and look down the corridor into…

  Well, the city is gone now, except for one copy of the Library. But where the city once stood, check that, everywhere below me, I now see endless chains and gears and counterweights like the innards an endless clock filling everything below me.

  Not filling as in packed in. Indeed, there seems to be almost endless space. I can feel my Gift stirring as we both watch this inexplicable machinery, yet it says nothing.

  I get a sense the infinite clockwork is doing something, but I have no clue what.

  And as I watch, I could swear Dragons swirl through the vastness below me, heading towards the mech, which lands with a thunderous boom on its feet near the Library.

  I glance around. I have no way to fly down, and I’m sure rappelling would be a one-way trip, even if I had the equipment. Dragons or no, the only ground I see is a thin rim around the base of the Library. Everything else is space and chains and weights and gears. And Dragons.

  Then howls behind me are met with the roar and flash of burning plasma, and I spin back towards the passages of the Maze. I can’t see what’s fighting, except for the blinding light flaring through the hedgerows.

  Well, enemy of my enemy, and all that. I go to check. It’s not like I can do anything here.

  I rush over, under, along and occasionally through hedge after hedge as I run. As I do so, I can make out more and more of the battlefield, and my supercharged brain starts putting together snapshots and a map during my mad scramble.

  The drones have been fighting it out while I’ve been dodging them and running the labyrinth. But they’ve also been spiraling towards the heart of the Maze, doubtless tracing the path of my power as well as trailing my footsteps and the Hounds tracking me in turn.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Who, strangely, have yet to catch up.

  Or not so strangely, as I see how the battlefield has intensified in my wake.

  Quadcopters buzz above me, drones detonate everywhere in the sky like an endless fireworks display, and metal birds flock overhead like windborne leaves of brass and steel. Laser fire in red and green flashes everywhere, dazzling in its intensity, and I can feel the vibration of sonic weapons in my bones. Even more exotic, invisible energies are on the edges of my Enhanced senses right now – another reminder of how blind I am when my Gift is asleep or all-but silent.

  I slip along and between the paths, stealthy as I can be, while also hopping up to peer over the top of hedge after hedge. Gathering intel.

  The more I see, the less I understand.

  Drones are strafing growling targets in the labyrinth, Hounds are lunging up with impossible speed to snap them out of the air – sometimes even as they explode – and artificial birds seem to be ignoring everything and are now soaring towards the open shaft I just left. Oh, and hundreds of drones seem to be sniping each other, or simply crashing into each other or exploding when they’re close enough to their targets.

  And finally, I see a redheaded boy with a kind of parachute-kite – a parasail – soaring for the heart of the Maze as well.

  Anton. Well, at least I’ll have company. I double back. If nothing else, I want to warn him before he goes down the hole. If he’s expecting grass, he’ll be getting anything but a soft landing in there.

  While I spotted him some ways off, it’s clear I won’t catch him by following every twist and turn while he arrives as the crow flies. So once again I begin darting under hedges where I can, hopping them as I must and crashing through them when left no other option.

  I burst through the last barrier and halt myself before plunging off the edge into the nothingness just before my feet.

  “Anton!” I shout, hopping up and waving. Not the safest course, normally, but I won’t go over, and can easily catch myself on the edge if I did. I point at the gaping pit with no bottom. “There’s a hole!”

  Anton just gives me a grin and a thumbs up as he steers towards it. Then his gaze snaps over to meet mine. “Kei?” he asks, clearly startled. And clearly more shocked at seeing me than the hole to another universe laying just beneath his feet.

  I point again, desperately, in case he hasn’t gotten the point. “Watch out!” I shout.

  Then he sails – or rather, parasails – right past me and my warnings and right into said hole. He smiles broadly as he descends and I bite back a groan.

  Even if he can somehow land safely, I doubt we have a line long enough to haul him out of there, or a helicopter small enough to fit down the shaft. Maybe a bunch of quadcopters designed for delivering goods could be combined, but he’s a heavy kid. Maybe 300 pounds of solid muscle.

  The mech’s a dead loss, unless it can fly its dead weight back out of there.

  Also, there’s the small matter of the Dragons. I’m not sure anything going down this maw can escape theirs.

  I take one more quick look around, for any ideas that might be forthcoming. Or any help.

  Two distant figures are airborne and are sweeping drones from their path with nothing more than gestures as they, too, soar towards the center of the Maze. Yet they seem to be drawing even more interest from the drones than I am.

  Not all are hostile, but most are, and the deeper battle erupting around them is full of explosions. One of them, I see, seems to have literal angel’s wings, made out of pure diamond or something like it. The other is flying in power armor, and occasionally sweeps the air in front of himself with the split-second flicker of hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny laser pulses. Incoming drones drop like flies. Then he just waves, my other senses perceive something both electrical and magnetic, and tons of back-alley drones drop like they just took an EMP in the face.

  The keening of sharp-edged steel incoming fast warns me just before I lose my face.

  I duck and drop from the hedgewall, even as a fresh flock of thousands of living mechanical birds rush over on ringing metallic wings, then dive into the tunnel I’m working so hard to stay out of.

  I gaze after them as they dive, then peer more closely as they scatter, revealing a raging battle going on below.

  The mech is down there, as is, if my Gift-sharpened sight is clear, Anton. And another, darker figure who somehow strikes me as unknown, yet deeply familiar.

  I lean over the edge just a bit more, my eyes narrowing in focus.

  And miss the Hound as it bursts through the hedge behind me, clamps down on my right shoulder with massive jaws, and knocks me right over the precipice.

  And then I am falling into a universe of clockwork and chains, towards the battle and dragonfire raging far below.

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