The Lost Voices (OLD VERSION - New Version to Come)

CHAPTER 9... ANVILS (PART 2)

Recording 3: I'll Come Home

8-21-1620 A.R.

Location: Brickshaw, Terrarin 

As each of them stowed what they brought along, Malien's mind kept trickling back to he and his father's journey to that volcano. Had it really been five years ago already? Eighteen didn't feel that far away, and he wasn't old or anything, but five years was five years, right? Everything seemed so surreal.

Leaving home with his best friend and two girls he somehow felt responsible for? It was to protect people like them, but he also knew it was so he could find something new. Something that didn't require his father. Unfortunately, now he wasn't totally sure who that was either. What kinda man was his dad to upheave the world around him? Someone that refused to sit still, refused inaction? It sounded so different from the father he knew. Not that his dad was quiet or lazy, but he never left home.

If it was to better his practice, he brought Malien and Kala along. If it was to stand up to someone, he still brought them along to show them what a backbone looked like. Everything. He believed that his kids were all he served, all that he needed to upheave and act for...right?

Malien found himself sighing inwardly as the clock wound backward in his mind, all the way to Frayix. 

*

Frigid winds tore across the summit's feet, stinging Malien's face as his father pressed onward before him. The icy gales coursed across the snow ridden path, warping around the massive pines in harsh swells of biting powder. Even the wildlife seemed to instinctually avoid the raging storm as best it could. 

The only tracks were their own and any animals that passed them were barely capable of movement. It tore at Malien's heart to ignore the feeble creatures, but he knew if they aided every passing mouth, he and his father would end up frozen too. So, he refocused on their goal and forced his body through the blizzard.

Snapping branches came into Malien's peripheral as one of the pines came crashing down. He and his father leaped out of the way, only to find their eyes on what had toppled the tree: a growling cog-beast. 

The creature was a disfigured amalgamation of a wolf and a lion, stitched together by humanoid metals that made it stand upright. Its muscles were taut, the veins in its neck were like stony dirt, and blood-crusted iron spikes broke from its back in strict rows. 

In two quick motions, the beast hunkered down and leaped for his father. Leor had already drawn his two-handed machine-blade, the Domitor, and crouched low to dodge the creature. Blinking, Malien somehow missed when his father got two shallow gashes on the beast. It, however, roared defiantly with a screech that made him imagine teeth against a grindstone.

Leor's eyes shifted colors, soon resembling the blankets of white around him as he slammed a gloved hand into the snow. Short, bulky pillars of ice exploded from the ground in rapid succession, making a beeline for the cog-beast. Seemingly frustrated by the assault, the creature sprinted toward them and attempted to break through, but was caught in the stomach by one as it formed. 

Stunned by the blow to the gut, other pillars started appearing around it, but these came from the bitter air and clamped down on its legs to freeze them in place. Then, before Malien could lift a finger to help, Leor charged the beast with his sword's motors revving together in mechanical unity. In a single, vicious slash his father split the cog-beast's chest open and his machine-blade's mystical function took effect. 

Bluing frost poured from the wound, freezing the creature solid from the inside-out. It was both an instant and nearly painless death as the beast quietly faded.