Brass Automaton

17 - Tendrils of Time

Reese's eyes snapped open at daybreak, and she disentangled herself from her bedfellow. She silently dressed in her cloth uniform, and her hand caresses the leather armor draped over the back of a chair.

"Sneaking off?" a voice called from the bed.

Reese spun and took in the view. Sky walked toward her slowly, and her hands fussed with her curly blonde hair. With Reese's help, Sky washed the blood from her hair. After their night together, Sky stood unashamed of her nakedness. A flush rose on Reese's cheeks, and Sky smiled at the younger woman's embarrassment.

"As often as we bed, I would think you would be familiar with my body." Sky winked and retrieved her uniform from the floor.

A sharp knock on the door interrupted Reese's response. "Enter!" Sky shouted, and she continued to dress.

"Mi'Lady," a runner spoke, his blind eyes failing to discern the potentially embarrassing scene before him. "The chamber has been located."

Sky smiled. "Tell the elder sisters I will be there shortly."

The runner nodded and turned to leave. Reese let out the breath she had held. "Sky..." she began, but Sky held up a finger to silence her.

"Speak not of it, Reese."

"But, mother..."

"Your mother is not just your mother!" Sky shouted before regaining her composure. "The queen has too much to worry about," she finished her sentence with a whisper.

Reese couldn't meet Sky's eyes, and they suited up in silence.

"Snow will be in the chamber," Sky declared, ad grasped Reese by the shoulders. "We can talk to her then if that is what you want."

Reese nodded and followed her commander out the door, sure of the events to come.

* * *

Reese walked a respectful distance behind Sky as they entered the discovered chamber. Willow and Daisy nodded to Sky as she passed, ignoring Reese. It was only after Snow looked past them and saw Reese, that the women acknowledged the princess of a kingdom without a king or castle.

Snow smiled at her daughter and returned her attention to her most-trusted Sisters. She motioned for them to follow her through a shattered wall as the quartet stepped over debris. When Reese stepped into the breach, she saw it.

Hues of red snaked out as tendrils struck anything made of brass. Focusing on the center of dark magick was difficult. The colors shifted as ribbons unfurled and disappeared. It was the most beautiful thing Reese had ever seen, and that was saying much considering her present company.

The women studied the swirling vortex of unbidden magick unbound by time. They whispered in hushed tones and gesticulated wildly. Reese couldn't hear the conversation, but she knew each of the women, and it was likely that Sky, Willow, and Daisy wanted to use the portal to attack Ceridwen through time. The only surviving member of the Council of Nine would be the dissenting opinion. The imbalance of ideas was unimportant since Snow White was still their queen.

Daisy and Willow threw up their hands and walked away as Snow nodded to Sky. Sky produced a brass sphere, red tendrils from the portal licked its polished surface. Sky threw the sphere into the vortex, and as it pierced the event horizon, it floated, its machinations transforming the sphere. Steam hissed as the construct grew larger. All eyes were on the portal, so no one felt the shudder or the small shower of dust that rained down from the ceiling on all in attendance.

When the roof collapsed, only Reese had the presence of mind to draw her weapon. A brass hand reached out from the cloud of debris and dust seizing Reese's brass sword. The strength of the hand not only wretched the sword from her hand, but malformed the metal. A second arm appeared and shoved Reese back toward the swirling vortex and the construct that seemed to grow as it drank the dark magick.

"Reese!" Sky and Snow screamed at the same time. The brass man strode confidently toward the vortices and Reese.

Reese picked up a chunk of earthen wall and hurled it at the ambling behemoth. It batted away the piece with ease and continued its advance on the time portal. Reese found herself trapped between the machine and felt the touch of magick fingers on her back. She could hear her mother and sisters shouting over the din of the brass automaton and the noise from the collapsing portal.

The monstrosity reached with its brass fingers and seized the expanding brass construct. Reese worried that the automaton would somehow use the construct to absorb more magick, or prevent the destruction of the portal, and without forethought, she grasped the brass arm with all her might.

She instantly felt the magick throughout her being. She saw the chamber from an unnatural view. Sky was screaming, and her brass blade was lodged in the back of the metal man. A red glow surrounded her body, the automaton, and Sky. Reese heard and felt a timeless scream, not from herself, or Sky, but from the automaton.

* * *

Daisy lurched for Sky's scimitar, but Snow pushed her back and pointed at Daisy's brass gauntlets. Snow retrieved a sizable rock and brought it down on the glowing scimitar. The rock glanced off it, failing to free Sky from magick's embrace.

Snow felt rubble strike her back, and she scrambled out of the way as Daisy's brass gauntlets tore out a section of stone wall, and brought it down like a stone scythe, separating Sky from her scimitar at the wrist.

Freed from the magick, Sky collapsed to the floor, blood ebbed from her crushed wrist. Daisy looked to her Sister, and after a pecuniary nod from Sky, she closed her gauntleted fingers on Sky's wrist, twisting a collar on the gauntlet, causing It to glow with heat, searing Sky's injury to staunch the blood. The purchase of Sky's freedom complete. As Sky's vision faded, she saw tendrils of time tear apart her bedfellow ... and in a poof, Reese was gone. They then started on the brass automaton. As she lost consciousness, she knew Reese and the monstrosity were lost to the emptiness of time.