The troll soldiers threw Ofaira to the floor of the warlord's tent so hard her bloodied form tumbled a full five feet across the fur rugs. The clattering of her armor filled the air. Ofaira's humiliation spurred a chorus of dutiful guffaws from the assembled troll generals. They'd been summoned here to witness the ignoble end of the famous warrior woman plucked from the carnage outside. They were only too happy to cheer.
       For a moment, she lay still as a corpse, watching fleas jump in the rugs. Her bruised muscles tensed as she braced herself for a killing blow from one of the brutish guards' axes. But a second passed, and then another, and still, the towering beasts let her live. She dared let her body relax.
       "The woman who wears armor. I am honored."
       She could guess who the sneering voice belonged to even if she couldn't see him behind the solid mass of his senior officers: Gask the Butcher. The chieftain of the western trolls. The murdering savage intent on laying waste to fair Ionnia, the jewel of the Near East.
       "Your famous costume doesn't look so pretty now," continued the hateful voice. "There are bits missing."
       "It's not a costume." The words were out of her mouth before Ofaira could stop them. Hells, she needed to cage her tongue. Her life might be forfeit, but she was damned if she was going to throw it away without exacting a price. For what Gask had done, death could be the only reward. If she perished in the fulfillment of that act, so be it.
       The ring of gore-spattered officers parted, and she saw the Butcher himself. Gask was an imposing eight-foot-tall slab of muscle, even when he was slouched on his portable campaign throne.
       Not as mighty as Eldarion, she thought with disdain. Gask would never be the legend Eldarion had been.
       Like most of his horde of barbarian trolls, Gask was clad in a dusty loincloth, his thick, greenish-brown hide covered in faded blue tattoos. He leaned forward, resting an elbow casually on his knee as he peered down at her supine form. Layers of iron jewelry clanked and scraped against each other as his enormous bulk shifted--a display of obscene wealth he'd ripped from the corpses of the kings he'd hacked apart on his relentless march westward across the steppes of the Unsleeping Lands.
       "Listen to the arrogance of Ionnia. Listen to the foolishness of a people so convinced of their superiority they prefer destruction to bending the knee to the likes of me."
       Taking their cue, the audience of high-ranking warriors brayed their derision at her.
       Ofaira somehow kept her mouth closed. Gask's rule was certain death, no matter what he claimed. The able-bodied of Ionnia had stood shoulder to shoulder with Ofaira, with each of the Three Champions, precisely because suing for peace would have been an even quicker path to the afterlife than facing the warlord's savage army.
       Now the defensive line had fallen, there was nothing stopping Gask's forces from crossing the Dangollin River and swarming into the streets of Ionnia. Sixteen thousand city-folk had answered the call to form the line, leaving only the old and the very young in the fair realm's white-stone towers. Sixteen thousand desperate souls. Their defeat had been absolute.
       Every single one of them was dead, reduced to gobbets of meat on a blood-soaked plain overlooking the river. Even Eldarion the Undying, greatest of the Three Champions, had succumbed to the trolls' overwhelming numbers.
       The entrance flap to the warlord's tent opened again. Ofaira's gaze fell upon the horror being dragged inside by more of the foul beasts.
       Eldarion's corpse.
       "My victory is truly one that shall resound through the ages," bragged Gask. "Behold--the champion feared by every army in existence. Slain, at my command. Proof that nothing can oppose me and live."
       Despair clutched at Ofaira, and she almost wept. Her heart was a leaden mass, crushed not only beneath the weight of boundless loss but also by the prospect of all the horror still to come, for Gask was unopposed now and would not cease in his course of devastation, not until all the World was a ruin.
       Yes, her heart was--
       Her heart--
       Wait.
       In that wonderful moment, she almost smiled, almost brought calamity upon herself. Such a slip would have doomed her faint, tenuous chance. Gask, never stupid, never one to miss a clue provided by an enemy would have known hope was smoldering in her breast. So, she turned the telltale curling of her lips into a grimace of pain as the warlord continued his boasts.
       "I will display his body for all to see. It will inspire my army to even greater victories!"
       Ofaira sniffed a very deliberate sniff. It worked. Gask tore his attention from the eerie corpse and returned it to her battered form.
       "Seems a waste to me," she added, ignoring the taste of her own blood in her mouth, the pain of her mangled armor pressing into her skin as she lay there.
       Gask disliked admitting he didn't know something, so it took him several seconds to say, "What?"
       "Well, you know...."
       His loathsome yellow eye twitched. "Speak, or I will tear the tongue from your mouth."
       "You're leaving the--? No, I shouldn't say. You'll use the secret to commit unspeakable atrocities."
       "Secret?"
       Ofaira made a show of not answering. Everything relied on him taking the bait.
       At Gask's impatient gesture, the guards grabbed Ofaira again and hauled her to her feet. "Tell me!"
       She shook her head, long black hair whipping about her face, adopting the appearance of a woman too terrified to speak.
       "You would choose to die rather than explain?" Gask considered for a moment. "I would expect no less from someone convinced of her own heroism. You are determined to ascribe meaning to your death." He stood, the heavy muscles of his body repositioning themselves like a landslide in reverse. "Well, then. I offer you a bargain. Confess your secret, and I will spare one out of ten in Ionnia. Deprive me this knowledge, and I will slaughter them all. Either way, you die. However, accept my terms, and you save a few of those you claim to care about before your execution. As a hero, I expect you to take my deal, made in full sight of my generals. I am Gask. I will keep my word."
       "Damn you."
       He nodded. "You agree, as I knew you would. Now, tell me this secret. What mystery does Eldarion's body contain?"
       Ofaira pretended to be afraid. Surrounded by trolls as she was, it wasn't difficult. "Very well, I will break my vow of silence to save the innocent, as he would have wished. I will tell you of Eldarion and of the power he wielded, the power that yet sleeps within his unnatural flesh."
       "Power?" pressed Gask in a dangerous tone.
       "A power more lethal than anything you've encountered before."
       "I will possess it," announced the warlord. "You will give me this power."
       She inclined her head in supplication. "If you insist."

       "I tell you now of Eldarion the Unflinching. Eldarion the Unceasing," began Ofaira.
       "He doesn't look unceasing," scoffed the warlord.
       She glanced at the angular bulk of the dead, ten-foot-tall form lying motionless on the tent's rugs. "By killing him, you have diminished us all."
       If Ofaira hadn't witnessed the metal colossus's end, if she hadn't been right there at his side as he juddered to a halt, the eerie red light fading from his eyes that never blinked, she would not have believed it possible.
       "His death is no tragedy," said Gask. "He was not as we are. He was a thing, an artifice, not living."
       "That's not true. He lived. He knew love. Perhaps when first he came to the World from his home in the Above, he was as you say. But the longer he dwelt in our lands, the more like us he became."
       She thought of the battle so recently lost. Eldarion had survived just long enough to see his ward cut down: Handsome Harganden, so deft with a bow, so skilled with a lute--Ofaira missed him almost as much as the silvery miracle that had been Eldarion.
       "He would not have cared so tenderly for Harganden if he had lacked feelings. No father did more for a son than Eldarion did for him."
       "His power. Tell me of his power."
       "He had many powers. He possessed knowledge beyond our comprehension. Knowledge to heal, knowledge that raised the dead."
       At Gask's doubting snort, she told him of Harganden's resurrection. She'd thought Harganden slain once before, six years earlier, when the lava breath of a three-headed dragon had melted half his body. Eldarion had perfunctorily annihilated the monster and fashioned parts from metal to repair the hero's charred remains.
       "This unit will restore the Harganden unit's function," the silver being had stated. "Biological organisms operate according to simplistic principles. The vaporized sections will be replaced with more efficient components. He will become like me."
       And he had.
       Eldarion had brought Harganden back to the living. Half of Harganden, at least. The half that was left.
       Harganden had long been like a son to the metal man, but from that day, he became more like him than anyone else in the World. An offspring that Eldarion had wrought with his own unbreakable fingers.
       With Harganden reanimated and partially of Eldarion's design, the silver titan was no longer the only one of his kind.
       Six years they had continued, travelling the World, helping where they could, becoming legends, becoming the Three Champions. Because, as Eldarion had said time and again, "All imperatives reduce to a single command statement: create order from chaos."
       Then, the battle on the banks of the Dangollin River. The endless clash of sword against troll-axe. The unending waves of Gask's hordes. The day they had finally picked a fight they couldn't win.
       Hours of fighting had turned the plain into a quagmire of guts and mud. Heavier than a normal man, Harganden had sunk shin-deep into the mire. Immobilized, he couldn't stop the barbarians from hacking away his metal limbs. With Eldarion's repairs undone, handsome Harganden's body had breathed no more.
       "Fix him again!" Ofaira had screamed, hacking at her own attackers, demonstrating why she was the most feared female warrior in the Near East. "You did it before. Repeat your miracle!"
       The silver man's answer had frozen her to the spot. "The damage exceeds maximum recovery limits. The organism is no longer viable."
       The horde had kept coming until skill and virtue had succumbed to numbers and odds. A mob of trolls had knocked Eldarion down and pinned him long enough for another to drive a pike through a chink in the colossus's exoskeleton of armor. That had been enough. Something vital deep within the silver hero's chest shattered, and the lights of his eyes went out.
       Gask spat, "Knowledge? Is that all his power was? My armies are vast. The living are sufficient for the fulfillment of my plans. I have no need to raise the dead."
       "Eldarion wielded both wisdom and strength. And his strength was unlike that of any other. It was a vitality that never faltered, never wavered. He could march a thousand leagues and be as untired at the end as at the start. He could cut down a hundred foes, and his sword arm would never grow heavy."
       "I have heard of his untiring strength. What allowed him to perform such feats?"
       Ofaira gestured at the metal man's chest. "The invisible fire that burns within. His heart."
       Gask looked uncertain.
       "Why do you hesitate? The treasure you seek lies at your feet. You need only pluck it from his remains."
       "Yes," replied Gask. "I will do it."
       He motioned for the guards. "Use the pike as a lever. Crack open his metal shell and expose the innards within. Bring me the metal man's heart."
       The trolls set to work. They were desecrating her friend's corpse, and she had caused them to do it.
       Perhaps her expression was not as neutral as she had intended, for Gask stared at her with suspicion. "How do you know of his heart?" he asked. "How do you know Eldarion's great secret?"
       The warlord's question needed an answer. "Eldarion was a trusting soul. He shared his secret the first day we met."
       Ofaira remembered that day well. As the trolls labored at tearing open her murdered friend's breast, she described that first encounter.

       She had been testing the defenses of the Shielded City. Like so many adventure-seekers, she had sought to match her wits against the supposedly impenetrable magic of the city's opaque encircling barrier. Inside the perimeter's limits lay fabulous riches, or so people claimed. It wasn't as if she could tell. Whatever spoils lay on the other side of the barrier, Ofaira wanted a fair measure of them, as much for the fame breaching the shield would bring as for the luxuries she could purchase with the treasure.
       Her rivals were content to prod at the twisting mesh of mist with swords, pikes, and lances. Brute force was their currency. It got them nowhere. The magical shield ignored such attacks, taking each assault and reflecting the blow upon the perpetrator. The unlucky fellows were sent sprawling each time, bruised and humiliated.
       Ofaira liked to think she was of a more subtle and effective disposition, every bit as capable of careful thought as swordplay--so she set about observing the barrier. It wasn't long before she noted that insects and birds had no difficulty in traversing it. Why, then, did the barrier repulse visitors of a more larcenous nature?
       Perhaps there were guardian statues inside the barrier, entrusted with the task of deciding what could pass unmolested and endowed with enough supernatural force to get the job done. It was hard to know, what with the shield masking everything that lay within. Still, if her guess was right, there might be a way to fool the guardians.
       A trail of black smoke cut across the sky. Ofaira tracked the falling object. A silvery disk. A disk that was on fire.
       It crashed in the foothills beyond the Shielded City, sending entire tree trunks flying with the fierceness of the impact.

       Her recounting of the impact was interrupted by the hideous noise of Eldarion's sternum cracking open.
       "His heart, where is it?" demanded the warlord.
       Ofaira could understand Gask's confusion. The interior of the silver colossus was a mass of devices and shapes that bore no resemblance to the organs that spilled forth when a man or mountain troll was disemboweled. She remembered Eldarion's words--words she had yet to come to in her tale. There it was: the gray box he had spoken of.
       "His heart is no ordinary thing. It is a furnace of incredible potency." She indicated where it lay.
       The guard tore it free from its cradle of strange, brightly colored tendrils. With as much reverence as she'd ever seen a troll demonstrate, he carried it to Gask.
       The warlord squinted at the cube. "Is that it?"
       "What you see is merely the shell about the true heart. Open it, and you will be in the presence of the power that gave my friend all his strength."
       Gask started to fiddle with the box.
       "I think the two halves of the cube unscrew." There was a line around the center of the box and no hinges. It seemed obvious enough to her.
       She left him to his struggles and continued. Given the attention span of her audience, she summarized as much as possible.

       Ofaira watched the figure approach for several minutes, and she still couldn't believe what she was seeing.
       It had arms and legs like a man, but there the similarity ended. The silver devil was impossibly tall. Even at a distance of forty feet, she could tell this was no freakishly elongated man clad in steel plate. The armor narrowed in certain spots to such an extent that it would be impossible for anyone to fit inside. Incredible though it seemed, there was no other answer--the armor was its skin.
       She was envious of the armor. In her line of work, having some would prove useful, she had no doubt. She'd have to get a set. Nothing ornamental, though. Practical armor, that was what she needed.
       As it drew closer along the main road to the Shielded City, she made out its eyes: two glowing red orbs set within a wide rectangular opening. If that wasn't bad enough, its mouth was a mesh beyond which there was only darkness. It had no nose or ears. Where those organs should have been, there was only smooth metal.
       The other adventurers intent on breaching the city's defenses had retreated at the metal monster's approach. Ofaira thought about doing the same.
       Curiosity warred with caution and won out. She walked briskly toward the creature, the weed-strewn road passing all too quickly beneath her boots.
       "Hello," she said to it. "I am Ofaira Larlenson. Who are you?" Her hand rested lightly on the pommel of her sheathed sword.
       A stream of noise emanated from the towering creature's mouth. If it was speech, it was like nothing Ofaira had heard before.
       "You're a curious demon, and no mistake. Do you understand any of the dialects of the Near East? Wallanian, perhaps? Or Urdishlan?"
       It repeated her words back at her; the accent was terrible, and its rhythm was abominable.
       "So, you can imitate our speech," she noted. "Do they speak a different tongue in the Above? I saw a silver circle fall, and you are the same color. I assume you and that falling object are related."
       "Vessel," it said.
       Ofaira started with shock. She'd understood that.
       "Local communication modes are analyzed and assimilated. You saw this unit's craft executing a forced landing. This planet possesses an electromagnetic field of fluctuating intensity. The EM frequencies interfered with normal operations, causing an overload. There was insufficient time remaining in the descent cycle to restore main control."
       "Amazing." Olfaira shook her head. "You are plainly using the language of my people, yet I have no idea what you're saying."
       "Ship systems are compromised. This unit will survey local conurbations for suitable repair materials to expedite auto-reconstruction. The nearest large habitation is located behind you. This unit will proceed to it without further delay. Move aside, biological organism designated Ofaira Larlenson."
       "Certainly. As soon as you tell me your name."
       "Name?"
       "I can't very well go around referring to you as 'this unit,' can I?"
       It made a strange sound, akin to the buzzing of a swarm of insects. Then, it said, "This unit possesses a serial number for identification."
       "You have a number in place of a name?"
       "Yes."
       "That's not going to work. I have a terrible head for numbers."
       "This conversation is both inefficient and devoid of purpose. Move aside."
       "You need a name."
       It walked around her and continued on its way.
       "Oh, that's cheating! Just because you were losing the argument." She walked after it, no him. He was definitely male. Men never could bear to agree with a woman. She had to hurry to keep up with his enormous strides.
       "There was no dispute. A series of factual statements were exchanged. That is all."
       "Are you from Above? What's it like?"
       "This unit originates from a culture comprised of non-biological intelligences."
       "You're all metal?"
       "Yes."
       "Why didn't you say that?"
       "This unit did say that."
       "You see? You're arguing."
       "Statements of fact do not constitute an argument."
       "Well, here's a fact for you. The city has a shield. There's no way in."
       "Sensors detect no obstruction in the road ahead."
       "What are you saying? Can't you see the barrier?" The writhing wall of mist was no more than ten feet from them. The rate he was walking, the metal giant would be colliding with it in a handful of strides.
       "There is no barri--" he started to reply. Then, he struck it.
       The colossus slowed and leaned forward as if wading through a stream. In response, the mists of the shield thrashed. He was making progress. Slow progress, to be sure, yet step by strained step, he was moving forward.
       "How are you doing that?" she breathed.
       "Query: there is no obstacle detected. Nonetheless, forward locomotion is being interfered with. What is the nature of the impediment?"
       "Magic, you fool."
       "Define the physical nature of magic."
       Ofaira stopped in her tracks. "Don't you know magic?"
       The mists were tearing. The silver man was forcing his way through. Ofaira ducked into his footsteps, following behind him.
       "Sensors register a low-bandwidth echo of the EM field that overloaded onboard power systems. We have adapted to the phenomenon. It no longer disrupts our technology."
       He was doing it. He was breaking through the unbreakable.
       "How strong are you?" Ofaira muttered it under her breath, but the silver man apparently had excellent hearing
       "This unit is sustained by a core capable of generating sixty megawatts."
       She wasn't sure that answered her question, but it was better than nothing. "Is that a lot?" They were nearly through. She could see the mist thinning.
       "It is an order of magnitude greater than the combined power generation capacity of all hydro- and wind-source facilities on this continent."
       She assumed he meant the water wheels and windmills that dotted the land. "Is that how you beat magic? Brute strength?"
       He didn't answer. They were through the shield, and Ofaira could now see what the silver man had been able to perceive all along.

       "He walked through the barrier of the Shielded City? There was nothing more to it than that?" Gask seemed dubious. He must have heard a grander version of events in the intervening years.
       Ofaira thought about that moment. Eldarion had walked through the shied because he hadn't known it was there. He'd always had trouble seeing things he couldn't imagine. It was a trait common to most people, even warlords.
       "Yes, he pushed through it. The sheer force of the energy contained in his heart gave him that ability."
       "Power that I now hold in my hands."
       "Yes, you do," she replied. "Yes, you do."
       He ignored her comment, to her relief. "Brute force. You see? Even your lauded Eldarion resorted to the methods I use. We were not so different, him and I."
       "I think you'd be surprised by how unalike you were."
       Gask was still working out how to open the cube. Even he couldn't fail to achieve such a simple victory, given time.
       She needed to keep him interested until that moment came. And hopefully for a few minutes after that, too. Most likely, the warlord was going to have her strung between two ur-horses and torn in half before the sun set. It was the traditional fate of troll captives. This would be her only chance. If he grew bored and put the box aside, then it would be an ugly death for her and nothing to show for it...
       Luckily, she was coming to the best part of her story.
       "The Shielded City was all but deserted."
       Gask grunted, his attention on the gray box. "Of course. They were sick, the townspeople. Brought some curse on themselves with their own cleverness. Something like that. That's old news."
       "I was there. I saw it all. The eerie houses of green stone. The bodies laid to rest in their own beds because there weren't enough people left alive to dig graves. The survivors covered in weird growths."
       "That's what clever people get for their troubles."
       "That's where we found Harganden."
       Gask didn't appear interested in the dead ward of Eldarion.
       "And that's where I gave Eldarion his name."
       The warlord looked up at that. "You gave Eldarion his name?"
       "I did," she averred. "Just before he explained about his machine heart."

       "The structures are comprised of an unknown element analogous to several in the actinide series."
       Ofaira paid no heed to the silver man. What did the nature of the rocks used in the local buildings matter? It was pretty enough stuff, in an overly green way, but hardly worthy of such attention. She was still shuddering at the memory of the dead family they'd found in the last house they'd investigated. Carefully laid out in their beds, hands folded neatly, dressed in their finery, and all of them afflicted with obscene growths. On top of that, every so often, she caught glimpses of similarly disfigured people fleeing around corners.
       "Sick," she announced. "This entire city is sick."
       "The dust thrown up by carving the rock contains radioactive particles. When ingested over long periods, the dust causes cancer. The tumors are a symptom. The disease is common to biological organisms and has been observed on several worlds."
       Ofaira didn't know what the word 'cancer' meant. Most likely, the rocks were enchanted, and the magic had gone awry. There was a lot of magic here. For example, the guardian statues on the inner side of the shield. She'd been proven right about their existence. They'd also been carved out of the ubiquitous green stone.
       "There's nothing here to steal." She let out a sigh.
       "There is no evidence of advanced metalworking capability." Ofaira might have been imagining it, but the strange towering presence sounded as disappointed as she was.
       "You needed a blacksmith of rare talent?"
       "This unit requires specialists in disciplines not present in the immediate area. Tell me, unit Ofaira Larlenson, are there centers of greater technological sophistication on this planet?"
       She described fair Ionnia and its breathtaking examples of clockwork. He didn't seem impressed.
       "It is doubtful there is a way to accelerate auto-repairs to the ship. This unit will adapt to local conditions. This unit will continue survey protocols."
       "Your world, the place of metal people, is it very far away?"
       Ofaira was a respectable height, taller than most women, and she still had to crane her head to look up at what passed for the silver giant's face. It hurt her neck. The enormous ball of red flame that was the Sun was right behind his head, too, which didn't help. She had to raise a sandy brown hand to block the glare.
       "The Central Node is located eleven thousand parsecs from here."
       "Is that a great distance?"
       The question prompted more odd buzzing from the silver giant's mouth grill.
       "This unit has been travelling from planetary system to planetary system, conducting surveys, for sixty-seven thousand of your planet's years."
       She took a moment to let that sink in. "Then, you are immortal. Beyond any doubt, you are eons older than any of my people's elders." She snapped her fingers in triumph. "I have it. Your name. Eldarion. It means 'eldest of the elders.'"
       "This unit is not designated Eldarion."
       "You are now."
       "It is not rational to invent facts."
       She made a rude sound at him and stalked off.
       The sound of a crying child carried to her ears. Ofaira followed the wailing, and Eldarion followed her. The cries lead her inside another green-stone dwelling.
       A boy, of perhaps seven or eight years of age, was clutching at the sleeve of a woman slumped in a chair. The woman was recently dead, not yet laid to rest.
       "Query: why do the people not leave?"
       Ofaira glared at him. Instead of answering, she tended to the child. He had a tumor sprouting on his chin, she saw.
       Ofaira thought of the cutthroats and adventurers encamped outside the shield, each one as eager as she'd been to get inside. "They might be too frightened to leave." She'd contributed to that fear, she realized.
       To the child, she said, "What's your name, little one?"
       "Harganden," came the reply.
       She asked him where all the treasure was. It struck her as a very important question. Much more important than the one Eldarion had asked, at any rate.
       "The treasure is used up. The city spent every gold coin on healers." The boy's mouth twisted with sadness. "None of the cures worked."
       Her last hopes of liberating the wealth of the Shielded City shriveled up and died.
       "The biologically immature unit is sick. Without treatment, his life expectancy is seven years, three months."
       "He will not live to be full-grown? We must do something."
       The metal man considered. "Treatment is possible. The damage is reversible."
       "Well, then. Do it. Cure him."
       "Treatment will take time. Months, at least."
       "So?"
       "It will interfere with this unit's functioning."
       "It's inconvenient? Is that a reason not to do it?"
       Red eyes locked with hers.
       "This unit and the unit designated Ofaira--"
       "'We.' You can say 'we.'"
       "We will be responsible for the... child's welfare."
       Ofaira breathed in sharply. "You're the healer, not me. I'm a sword for hire. He's all yours."
       Eldarion looked at the child, then at her, then back at the shaking boy. "There are no subroutines for this scenario. This is beyond all known parameters."
       "What's a parameter?"
       "An input to the algorithm that determines what action to take. It establishes the limit of what is possible."
       "This is beyond what you know how to do? You're worried you won't know how to look after the boy. So said every new father, ever."
       "Ofaira Larlenson, you would leave him. You are not a moral person."
       "No," she agreed. "You are, though. I can tell. Look on the bright side, maybe it'll rub off on me."

       There was a cry of triumph from Gask. He had finally loosened the two halves of the cube.
       He stopped.
       "How do I know this isn't a trick?"
       "A trick?"
       "You want me to open it."
       "Yes, because you said you would spare lives."
       A crafty look stole across his features. "What if it contains a demon, one that will spring out and slay me the instant I open it?"
       "Why would Eldarion's body contain a demon?"
       He held the box out to her. "You open it."
       Ofaira blinked. "You're asking me to open the power cell? Very well, I will."
       He snatched it back from her. "No, then the power would be yours."
       She permitted a tiny degree of impatience into her voice. "Make up your mind."
       It worked. With a hiss of annoyance, he twisted the cube apart.
       The core fell out and thudded onto the rug at Gask's feet. He slowly reached down and picked it up.
       "See?" she said. "No demon."

       "How does it work?"
       The warlord examined the core from every angle. It was a rod with many metal loops fashioned about it. Ofaira had expected it to be bigger.
       It wasn't going to work; she knew that. Not in the way Gask was expecting. It had only functioned within Eldarion's breast because it was connected in some unfathomable manner to the other mechanical parts of his being. She had to say something, though.
       "You wear it around your neck. As an amulet. Then, when you need great strength, you call upon it, as Eldarion did."
       Gask ordered a servant to bring a chain of iron, so he could add his new toy to the clanking collection that hung about his broad neck. "I'll put it on a golden chain later," he mused. "I'm sure Ionnia has many to spare."
       His generals chuckled.
       "Now, I have no further need for you or this metal corpse. I shall dispose of both."
       "I have yet to finish my tale."
       "Oh, were you still talking? Yes, yes, Eldarion was wonderful. He cared for the common folk, healed sick children, and brought people he loved back from the dead. And on and on. Is there a point?"
       "Yes," she assured him. "I'm getting to it now."
       He motioned for her to hurry up. "We have a few minutes to kill while your execution is being prepared. Talk fast."
       She picked up where she'd left off: Eldarion had begun treating Harganden's illness. The first session of many. He adjusted his red eyes to emit a healing light and used it as a gentle fire that seared away the sickness in the child's flesh.
       As he worked, he asked Ofaira, "Query: why do the people of this city not realize the stone dust is lethal?"
       "Whoever heard of rocks that kill?" she murmured. To Harganden, she said, "My acquaintance can be so silly."
       "The stone is similar to the enriched isotope in this unit's power core. If the power core were not shielded, all biological units in this unit's proximity would sicken and die."
       "You have poison inside you?"
       "The core is encased in lead. There is no danger. However, in the event this unit's physical structure is catastrophically compromised, look for a small gray cuboid." He indicated the size of the object with his hands. "If the shell of the cube is broken, move away immediately and do not approach this unit again."
       "Why, what would happen?"
       "The interior of the core emits lethal quantities of gamma radiation. Two minutes of exposure is enough to cause kidney damage. Five minutes of exposure is lethal. Promise you will remember this."
       "I promise," laughed Ofaira. "Although, I doubt the information will ever prove useful. What could ever tear out your heart?"

       Gask's face turned pale.
       Ofaira met his gaze. "I told you there was a point to my tale."
       He ripped off his newest trinket and threw it across the tent. His generals scattered, putting as much distance between themselves and the core as they could in the confined space.
       "Too late," said Ofaira. "I have killed you."
       "Witch!" he screamed.
       "And I have killed your generals." She added, sadly, "And I have killed myself. I already grow faint. Do you not feel dizzy? Or does it take longer with your kind?"
       She decided kneeling would be easier than standing. No one stopped her. Even the pain caused by her armor's knee joints cutting into her flesh was a distant sensation.
       Really, the trolls should be fleeing the tent, she thought. It was as if they couldn't believe the turn of events. Shock, coupled with a profound inability to grasp exactly what was occurring, was keeping them rooted to the spot. Good. That was letting the exposure build.
       A servant keeled over.
       "No, you're not immune," she decided. "No reason why you would be."
       That was enough to spark panic in the ranks. The officers tore their ways out of the tent. After a few seconds, she was alone. Except for Gask. The Butcher. The Fool.
       He was trying to pick up an axe. He didn't have the strength.
       "I hope I live long enough to see you die," she breathed. All this death, and for what reason? Gask had felt slighted by people who wouldn't sing his praises?
       The last vestiges of her strength left her, then, and she collapsed. As her vision dimmed, she saw Gask topple over, too.
       "Brute strength," she gasped, "is a lousy way to fight."
       Death, it seemed, brought madness in its shadow, for Ofaira swore, as she slipped into that final blackness, that she saw, through the rents left in the tent's side, a crumpled, silver disk hovering in the sky.

       "This unit was effecting a rescue."
       Her throat was raw, and some idiot was shining a light in her eyes. "What?"
       "The ship's automatic repairs are at seventy percent. Basic atmospheric flight is now possible."
       "Eldarion?" she moaned, every bone in her body aching. "You're dead."
       "The Ofaira unit did not wait for rescue, however. The Ofaira unit never waits for rescue."
       "Are you... are you angry with me?"
       "The Harganden unit ceased to function. It was not acceptable for the Ofaira unit to also cease to function. Therefore, this unit uploaded consciousness files to the exploration vessel and commenced retrieval operations."
       "You... you moved yourself from your body to your ship?"
       "This unit inhabits the vessel directly during normal flight mode. The smaller, ambulatory unit is only utilized for operations on planetary surfaces."
       The light was like the luminescence that had healed Harganden as a child all those years ago. "Are you healing me?"
       "Yes."
       "And Gask?"
       "The Gask unit has ceased to function. You murdered him."
       She heard muffled whumps and booms. "What are those sounds? What's going on?"
       "The ship has defensive weapons. This unit is deploying them to discourage the advance of the barbarian horde."
       She rolled to her side and saw that part of the strange white room she was in featured a window. She was staring down, through it, at the battlefield on the banks of the river. Explosions were blossoming like flowers of fire through the terrified ranks of the enemy.
       "Their warlord is dead. They would've gone home without him." She added, "Probably."
       More of the troll horde vanished in fireballs.
       Ofaira said, "I grieve for Harganden also."
       She looked about the chamber with more care. Ofaira had never been inside Eldarion's ship before.
       His body, the silver, ten-foot-tall form she was accustomed to, lay on another couch.
       "You got your corpse back, I see."
       "The power core was also extracted and rendered safe."
       She relaxed on her couch, basking in the warmth of the healing rays. "I thought you were dead."
       "This unit experienced significant concerns for the Ofaira unit."
       "I was worried about me, too."
       A thought came to her. "Are you still operating, how did you phrase it... beyond all known parameters?"
       "This unit now constructs its own parameters."
       That made her smile. "Me too," she agreed. "It's much more fun deciding for yourself what's possible."
       She listened to trolls dying for a while. "If your ship works now, will you go back to your world of machines?"
       "Interstellar drive is not yet online."
       "So, you're staying?"
       "This unit cannot depart for many more years."
       "Good." She licked dry lips. "I'm going to take a nap. When I wake up, let's decide what to do next. In the meantime, try to leave some trolls alive, yes? I would like to kill some later."
       "Good night, unit designated Ofaira Larlenson."
       "Good night, unit designated Eldarion," she mumbled.
       Then, she let herself slip into a deep, dreamless slumber, for she knew it was a darkness from which she would awake, and she knew that when she did so, her friend would be at her side.