An enforcement daemon doesn’t possess blood to spill. It possesses state registers to corrupt.
On the central stone base of Mount Taiyi, the Seventh-Rank Patch Daemon was trapped in a clockwork seizure. Its eight-arm-length humanoid dark shape, forged from mirror-polished silver alloy, shuddered with violent, high-hum oscillations that rattled the surrounding dark rock. Every forty split seconds, a loud, metal clack echoed from its torso as its internal magnetic solenoids tried to cycle, only to abort mid-stroke.
The air around the entity smelled of white-hot ozone and boiling stone oils.
Lin Tao walked across the frost-dusted granite, his iron-toed boots crunching rhythmically in the fiery scree. He kept his weight balanced on the balls of his feet, his four-inch cold-drawn steel metal pen held loosely in his right fingers, the star-white-gold needle retracted to its sampling length. The sub-zero alpine breeze whipped his soot-stained woolen mantle around his knees. It cleared the acrid smoke of burning graphite grease from his lungs.
Beside him walked Tie Shan.
The giant moved with the slow, unmoving grace of a mountain bear stalking an injured hunting beast. His shredded wool tunic hung in blackened tatters from his corded shoulders. He exposed bronze skin marked by blistered first-degree flash burns. The twelve-pound star-iron pry-bar rested across his broad forearms. Its midnight-blue surface reflected the dying violet twilight of the upper sky. His breath came in steady, deep cycles, his Iron-Bone marrow having absorbed the bone-shaking excess pressure of the storm.
