Talia of the Thornlands

03 The Dark Prophecy

She had been trailing the Machines on her journey to the warfront. The Machines were diurnal beasts, active during the day and huddling together outside empty towns or in caverns at night.

She had never seen more than six or seven Aggressors with a couple Gatherers at most at a time outside an active warzone.

The hallway that she found herself in after taking over Rury's Machine was vastly different from any cave on Thornland. It was filled with the beasts.

The walls of this artificial cave were metallic in nature. Even the duct she was inside was made of cold metal.

She had no concrete proof but in her heart she already knew it had to be the 'Sky Palace' – the air-borne hive of the Machines.

The 'Sky Palace' had brought the Machines to their world almost two decades ago. It had been a constant satellite in the Thornland sky since that day.

Thornlanders believed that injured Machines returned to the hive to recover.

The hive stayed afloat with a Harmony hitherto unknown to the inhabitants of Thornland and though it seemed stationary, the 'Sky Palace' was too high up to launch a direct aerial attack.

Talia told herself that if she was indeed within the mysterious hive, she would find some way to weaken the enemy from within.

When her body regained some semblance of control, she propped herself up on her elbows and resumed her tiring crawl inwards, towards the source of the Sap.

The ventilation ducts had a higher concentration of the Sap. She had sensed it the moment she stepped out of the Machine into that hallway.

Inside the ducts, its oozing aura seemed to be concentrated in a particular direction. Talia continued to follow it to the source.

*****

King Hesiod rallied the troops of the Western wing against the relentless enemy stream.

Repeated cycles of fire and water Harmonies kept the Machines at bay while the human troops attacked the weakened beasts with standard weapons. The combination seemed to affect the hardened metal armour on the Machines' bodies.

Continuous use of Harmony, however, was draining the fae troops quicker than expected. The weakened fae were sent to the recovery camps.

Queen Celeana had gathered healers and was in charge of revitalising the spent fae. She was also running the supply chain to the battlefields – the essential component that kept their soldiers armed at the warfront.

The Machines had tried to cut off her connections to cripple the Thornlandian troops. However, their intricate understanding of the landscape had helped the Queen and her aides survive these attacks.

Since the disappearance of Princess Talia, the King and Queen had accepted that the Dark Prophecy was now active.

Over the last sixteen years, neither the reigning monarch nor his queen had breathed a word of the Prophecy to their advisors. The war had begun too conveniently for them to convey the message.

However, now they could not help despairing at the closing words of the Prophecy. They decided against disclosing this message to the troops.

What man or fae could fight on knowing that their lives were for nought? That their efforts were mere scratches against the veil of Fate.

The Western wing soldiered on even as its leader lost all hope of victory.

The Queen had requested the assistance of the fae Elders in a desperate last attempt to thwart the advancing enemy lines.