The portal drone was producing other drones. It was constant, one new drone every few seconds, but the drones it had just created…

Two more portal drones.

That explains it.

The mist was dropping, snow and suspended dust falling away. It made the view clearer. I could see a hundred feet out, maybe.

There were a good ten portals near us already, each producing a new machine every few seconds. Many of those were new portal drones.

I flew into the three closest to us. My forcefield tore them up in the half-second before I landed in a crouch.

Rain flew at a speed I couldn’t rival, straight for another set of portal drones. He stopped himself mid-air, then slashed out with a sword, delivering a kick to sever the silver lines.

Sveta grabbed onto me to help hurl herself forward, grabbed Rain, and threw him again.

The grappling claws were getting more intense. Sveta was helping, but—we were wading through an army that compounded itself every minute.

One grapple-claw latched onto me. The rectangular box that was attacking me opened up, revealing the meat that coated the inside of the box’s walls, and the creature within, half-melted, burned, with empty sockets for eyes, human in silhouette, reached for us with a club-like hand.

The grapple claw that had a grip on me was attached to a cable too thick to cut through with my forcefield teeth.

I reached for the grapple claw, and gripped it with forcefield hands.

Crushing it between multiple hands, I freed myself, then went on the offensive, smashing the bot into the craggy ground right behind it.

As the dust and snow fell away, I could see the various colored lights across this clearing. Eyes, cameras, and sensors. In a way, the ring of buildings around the park served to give us more of a perimeter. A hundred of the meat lockers, a dozen giant laser cubes. Two hundred smaller boxes. Thirty portals.

All by design.

Dozens and dozens of the machines were tossed into the air, like a wave. I looked, and saw the Goddess Giant flying toward us. She destroyed every one that was within her range. Lasers focused on her, and she avoided the beams.

“What would you do without me?” Chris asked, still with the hard ‘t’.

“Thank you, Chris,” Precipice said.

The Goddess Giant attack was a momentary respite. A chance to breathe, and to wipe away blood where claws had dug into my flesh as part of getting their grip.

I looked back in the direction we’d come.

The Simurgh was gone. Heroes had mobilized, pushing in against the Machine Army. Because we had to get them before they took root.

“Where did she go?” I asked. I would have checked the device in my eye, but it was dark, no better than my eye without the device.

“Wardens’ headquarters,” Chris said.

It wasn’t a surprise.