Embedded Files
James Abraham Carter
The midnight air of Lake Garda carried the resinous scent of poplars and the crisp, woody, and evergreen fragrance of cypresses, which enveloped Eric Redmond’s solitary tent like a soothing balm of grounded peace. He had come to this isolated Italian shore to escape the relentless bustle of London, to seek a few days of quiet introspection, a break from his vocation as a lecturer in linguistics at Oxford, a respite beneath the ancient trees. But at precisely 3:14 AM, peace dissolved.
An inexplicable, crushing wave of dread wrenched Eric from his sleep. It was not the cold sweat of a nightmare, but a profound, systemic alarm, tingling in the marrow of his bones—a visceral, eerie intuition that something fundamental, something terrifyingly wrong, had just occurred in the fabric of reality.
Heart pounding against his ribs, the young man slipped on his boots, unzipped the tent flap, and stumbled out into the pale moonlight.
His breath caught in his throat. Ten yards from his campsite, suspended vertically in the air, hung a fantastical, glowing sapphire disc. Its surface did not reflect the moonlight; instead, it rippled like a disturbed pool of unearthly liquid, casting an unnatural cerulean hue across the dark trees. Before Eric could process the sheer weirdness of what he was seeing, the shimmering surface parted.
One by one, six figures stepped effortlessly through the liquid light, emerging into the Italian wilderness as if walking through an eldritch doorway.
Eric gasped in sheer astonishment. They were tall, humanoid women with skin the color of polished gold and hair the exact shade of burnished copper. They were clad in flexible lamellar armor of iridescent green alloy, which covered their torsos and limbs. Open-faced helmets reminiscent of those worn by the ancient Greeks protected their heads, and their posture embodied the lethal grace of lionesses.
Before Eric could retreat, the women spotted him. With agile and terrifying speed, they drew the short swords strapped to their thighs and raced toward him. Their boots pounded the earth in synchronized rhythm. Eric turned to flee, but in his shocked state, he was painfully slow compared to their swift fluidity. Within seconds, the circle closed. Cold, razor-sharp weapons forged from the same strange, iridescent green alloy as their armor, hovered mere inches from his throat, boxing him in.
The leader of the warrior women—a remarkably statuesque figure, taller and more powerfully built than the rest, with fierce, dark eyes, sheathed her blade, appraised him with a cold, analytical gaze, and spoke.
To Eric’s utter bewilderment, the language was not Italian, nor English, but Latin—fluent, classical, and impeccably pronounced.
"Do not move, Earthman," she commanded, her contralto voice strident with authority. "I am Azmara. You are now our prisoner. You will be taken back to Thuvon for evaluation. Our arms and armor are crafted from an alloy far harder than diamond and stronger than anything you possess. Resistance is futile."
"Wait—what?" Eric stammered; his mind reeled as the sheer outlandishness of what was happening collided with his expectations of normality. "Who are you? Where—"
Azmara made a sharp, impatient hand gesture. Before he could utter another protest, two of her warriors seized his arms with iron grips and forced him forward, directly toward the glowing, unnerving sapphire disc.
Panic surged. Eric planted his heels, but he was like a child against his captor’s inhuman strength. They lifted him off his feet with frightening ease and, without the slightest hesitation, plunged straight through the weirdly rippling surface of the disc.
A sudden, violent vertigo seized him. The forest, the lake, the midnight sky—they vanished in a blink. Eric felt as though he were hurtling through an endless, screaming void of limitless space, his stomach left miles behind.
Then, reality slammed back with jarring brutality.
Eric stumbled forward, his knees buckling, and he collapsed onto the soil of an alien world. A scent reminiscent of crushed mint filled his nostrils. It came from the strange grass-like herbage he had fallen onto.
Groaning, he pushed himself up and looked around, mouth open, struck by awe. The strange glowing portal had winked out of existence. Above him, a massive, crimson sun cast its light over rugged mountains of purple stone, whose glittering minerals caught the light and scattered a violet-pink radiance across the strange landscape. Two miles away, at the foot of the soaring peaks, a vast metropolis of gleaming alabaster stone, turquoise domes, and needle spires rose majestically from the steep, verdant banks of a broad, rushing river.
Azmara stood over him, effortlessly pulling him to his feet with a single hand.
"The City of Radan lies before you," she said, her tone devoid of boasting, merely stating what, for her, was an obvious fact. "The capital of the Vori Empire."
As they began their march across a hilly landscape of rust-colored ferns toward the shimmering metropolis, Azmara explained with detached, chilling candor the reason for his kidnapping. The entity she served—known simply to her people as the Great Eye—had been secretly studying Earth for decades, recording humanity's history of bloodshed and cruelty.
"Your uncivilized species is warlike, irrational, and fundamentally flawed," Azmara said as they walked. "The Great Eye has decreed that Earth must be brought under its eternal peace and order, just as it brought absolute peace to Thuvon millennia ago, a time which our legends speak of as an age of chaos and destruction. But before the conquest of Earth begins, you must be tested. You are an average specimen of your race. You will fight in the arena of Radan so the Eye can gauge the resilience and capabilities of humans. You are the first subject chosen at random. Others will soon follow."
Eric’s blood ran cold. He was being used as a baseline. A living lab rat in an interplanetary campaign of subjugation. He remained silent as he observed Azmara and her warrior women. They were armed with swords. Apart from the strange portal, he had seen no other signs of advanced technology. He didn’t doubt that his Amazon captors were capable soldiers, but they’d need far more than blades to deal with Earth’s 21st century armies.
“How much do you know about my world?” he asked, curious about her answer.
“We are the elite warriors who serve the Great Eye,” she readily and somewhat pridefully answered. “As such, we have been thoroughly briefed. The Roman Empire is preeminent among your civilizations, controlling much of the known world, with Augustus being the current emperor. It will be the first to fall beneath the invincible swords of our army of two million warriors.” Azmara then rattled off a summary of the economic and political structure of the Roman Empire, along with the geography and cultures of its conquered territories, as if this ancient history reflected the age Eric was from.
The amazed Earthman listened with half an ear as he reasoned out the implications. Whatever the Great Eye was, it wasn’t infallible. Its observations of Earth were of a world in the remote past. No wonder the Amazons were speaking to him in Latin. There must be a temporal discontinuity between this dimension and the dimension in which his home world existed. The present in this world of Thuvon was not congruent with the present on Earth.
Even though his captor’s armament was constructed from an alloy that could cleave steel with ease, and their armor bulletproof, all of it was nonetheless antiquated. The Eye, although possessing advanced technology, was keeping an entire world in a perpetual preindustrial and prescientific state, no doubt to better control and rule the population. This knowledge gave him hope. Whatever strange power had him in its clutches was ignorant of vital facts concerning contemporary Earth, and that ignorance made it vulnerable. Grim resolve settled upon Eric. He was the Eye’s first victim, and he was determined that there would be no others.
They soon arrived at a massive, sweeping bridge of white stone that spanned the deep, roaring waters of the Xaru River, along whose banks the city was built. Crossing over, they passed through an imposing gateway and entered the heart of Radan. The avenue was a bustling, vibrant tapestry of life; twenty million souls—tall, golden-skinned citizens of the Vori Empire—swarmed the streets, their murmurs sounding like the hum of countless bees.
Yet, as the Amazonian guards escorted Eric through the crowd, a respectful, fearful lane swiftly parted before the exalted servants of the Great Eye. Eric grimaced. The ordinary people’s reactions confirmed his suspicions. Fear did not exist side by side with peace. This was a dictatorship, and the Amazons were the Eye’s ruthless and fanatical enforcers.
After a long, winding walk through the considerable architectural marvels of the capital, they arrived at a colossal structure of white stone and graceful archways that bore an unmistakable resemblance to an ancient Earth colosseum. Entering through a heavy iron side gate reserved for gladiators, Eric stepped out onto the sunbaked floor of the arena.
The sound hit him like a physical blow.
Tier upon tier of towering stone galleries were packed to absolute capacity with thousands of spectators. A roaring, bloodthirsty energy permeated the air. Clearly, everything had been arranged in advance of his anticipated arrival. No doubt the Great Eye expected him to be intimidated - a simple Roman plebeian, or so it thought, overwhelmed by the grandeur of its seat of power.
Eric looked at the throng, remembering Azmara’s claim that peace had been brought to this world. Perhaps peace, in the sense that no one dared to challenge the dictatorial and absolute rule of the Eye, but from what he could see, these people were just as bloodthirsty as humans. The hypocrisy was not lost on him.
Suddenly, a tremendous, resonant noise—like an enormous bronze bell being struck in the heavens—echoed across the arena. Instantly, the deafening roar of the throng was choked off into absolute, breathless silence.
In the hushed center of the arena air, a phenomenon materialized. A single, colossal eye, burning with sickening, demonic malice, wavered into existence like a heat haze. Its harsh, glowing gaze roamed over the terrified throng in the stands. As one, the thousands of spectators dropped violently to their knees, their voices rising in a unified, terrified chant: “Hail the Great Eye. Hail the supreme God."
The giant eye slowly rotated, fixing its malevolent gaze upon Eric Redmond.
From the floating orb, a voice issued forth—not through loudspeakers, but directly into the minds of everyone present, communicating in a strange tongue that Eric, to his profound amazement, could suddenly and completely understand.
“Earthman,” the voice began, its tone emotionless and mechanical. “I have given you knowledge of our language. You stand before the threshold of your world’s conquest. To test the mettle of your species, you must fight for your life against the finest warrior of the Vori Empire. That warrior is Azmara.”
Commands cracked through the air. One of the warrior women stepped forward and tossed a short sword at Eric’s feet. Then, with synchronized discipline, Azmara’s guards turned and retreated to the arena walls, leaving Eric and the golden-skinned Amazon standing alone in the center of the colosseum.
“Begin,” the Great Eye commanded emotionlessly.
Azmara drew her blade; her dark eyes hardened into a gaze of merciless determination. With a battle cry that echoed off the stone tiers, she rushed toward the Earthman.
Eric snatched the sword from the ground just in time to parry a blinding overhead strike. The impact jarred his arm up to the shoulder.
Azmara pressed the offensive, a whirlwind of copper hair and flashing steel. She fought with the terrifying, machine-like relentlessness of murderous destruction, every strike calculated to maim or kill. But Eric was no stranger to blade work; years of rigorous training with the European fencing sabre and Japanese katana had honed his reflexes to a razor's edge. He ducked beneath a horizontal slash, pivoted, and blocked a thrust that would have skewered his vitals.
He didn't want to kill her. Even as she fought to butcher him, Eric’s mind raced. He saw the tension in her jaw, the rigid obedience forced upon her by the floating, demonic eye above. They were both, in different ways, the victims of this unearthly tyrant.
Azmara feinted high, spinning with feline agility to slash his flank. Eric saw through her ruse. He dropped flat to the sand and swept his leg in a hard, low arc as her blade passed harmlessly over him.
His shin connected behind her ankle. Azmara tumbled to the ground with a sharp gasp. Before she could recover, Eric swiftly pounced on her, pinning her sword arm to the earth with his knee and trapping her free wrist in a firm, inescapable judo hold.
Azmara cursed. She struggled wildly. Eric twisted her wrist. The girl cried out in pain. The blade slipped from her fingers, thudding uselessly against the sand. Eric breathed heavily, sweat stinging his eyes, holding the defeated warrior immobile beneath him.
Above them, the giant demonic eye flared with a blinding, angry crimson light.
“Kill her!” The voice thundered, vibrating with cold, logical ruthlessness. “The rules of the arena demand the blood of the vanquished! Only the fittest survive. Slay her, Earthman!”
Eric looked into Azmara’s dark eyes, expecting hatred. Instead, she appeared bewildered and shocked by her unexpected defeat. The girl bravely braced herself for the final stroke that would end her young life.
Eric raised his head and glared defiantly up at the floating eye.
"No!" Eric shouted back in the local tongue, his voice carrying clearly across the silent Colosseum. "I won't kill her! I don't believe in murdering a defeated opponent. And more than that—the people of Earth and the people of Thuvon shouldn't be enemies. We should be friends. There is no need for us to fight!"
Silence descended upon the arena—a heavy, suffocating stillness. Thousands of spectators held their breath. To defy the Eye was shocking and unthinkable. To give advice to the infallible being was more so.
For a long moment, the giant eye stared down at Eric, its malevolent pupil slowly rotating as if it were a cog in some grotesque calculating mechanism.
“Strange, ”the voice flatly stated, confused but unemotional. “It is logical to eliminate suboptimal units. You have demonstrated your superiority by defeating our best, and yet you refuse to destroy her.”
With a sharp whoosh of displaced air, a crystalline globe twenty feet in diameter descended rapidly from the cloudless sky, touching down softly in the sand several yards from where Eric held Azmara.
“Enter the vessel, Earthman,” the Great Eye commanded. “You have survived the test and will be conveyed to my mountain-top sanctuary for exhaustive psychological and physical study. Your unexpected victory, achieved by an average representative of your species, against my best warrior, may complicate my plans for the conquest of your world, backward though it is.”
Eric released Azmara and stood up, backing away from the transparent sphere. He must object, but he must also play the part of a Roman citizen, lest the Eye suspect he was from a far more advanced age. "Our Roman philosopher, Cicero, upheld the view of the inherent dignity of humanity. I am not a slave! I am a Roman citizen, not a subject for your cruel ordeals. My rights must be respected!"
The Great Eye ignored his protest entirely. “Azmara, force the prisoner aboard. I should make you this man’s slave, but I will spare you that indignity if you can prove your usefulness.”
Azmara rose slowly from the sand, looking conflicted. She had expected death, but Eric had spared her. This was a jarring contrast to her harsh military training. Instinctively, she realized that this was the better way, but the deep programming of her entire life made her comply. Retrieving her sword, she fixed her dark eyes on Eric and gestured with her weapon toward the open hatch of the sphere. "Forgive me, Earthman," she said. "The Eye’s will is absolute.”
Realizing that arguing under these circumstances was futile, Eric gritted his teeth. He silently cursed the Eye and climbed inside the crystalline cabin. Azmara followed, sealing the hatch behind them.
The strange machine lifted soundlessly into the air, slowly at first, then with increasing speed. The acceleration mounted, and within seconds it was rocketing straight up into the stratosphere with terrifying, gut-wrenching speed. Through the transparent hull, Eric watched Radan shrink into a microscopic speck of white below.
They soared higher and higher, piercing the cloud cover, and heading directly toward a towering, jagged peak that dominated the horizon.
"That is Sky Throne Mountain,” Azmara murmured quietly beside him, her voice tinged with a mixture of awe and fear. "The sacred abode of the Great Eye who rules all of Thuvon. See how its peak glows with the aura of the god’s power. You should feel deeply honored to enter the presence of the divine."
"Divine?" Eric scoffed silently. He didn’t want to offend Azmara with what to her would be a blasphemous conclusion. Antagonizing the girl wouldn’t be helpful. Whatever the Great Eye was, it certainly wasn’t a supernatural being. The vehicle they were in wasn’t a flying carpet. It was a sophisticated machine, the product of advanced technology. To an Amazon warrior, it undoubtedly appeared magical, but not to an Earthman from the 21st century.
Minutes later, the sphere hovered over the summit, and Eric saw that the glow enveloping it was a defensive force field. A gap opened in the energy barrier; the sphere passed within and came gently to a stop, landing in a wide, gleaming courtyard carved directly from the rock. Indeed, the entire peak had been sculpted by master artisans into a dizzying citadel of golden spires, domes, and graceful towers that glittered vividly in the harsh crimson sunlight.
As the sphere’s hatch hissed open, Eric and Azmara were met by an unnerving honor guard: crimson-robed figures whose faces were entirely concealed behind cold, mirror-bright silver masks, each embossed with a single gold eye symbol on their foreheads.
One figure advanced toward them. "I am Prime," it stated, its voice flat, machinelike, and utterly devoid of human warmth. "Follow."
They were led deep into the bowels of the citadel, down corridors of polished marble, decorated with artworks of precious metals and gemstones, until they entered a vast, circular chamber. The walls hissed and crackled with rhythmic, hypnotic pulses of thousands of complex, glittering mechanisms.
Prime turned and departed silently, closing the heavy doors behind him.
In the center of the room, supported by a stout metallic column, was a massive spherical lattice of vibrating crystals, and in this strange device, the giant demonic eye materialized once more.
Azmara instantly dropped to her knees, prostrating herself flat against the marble floor in total, trembling submission.
Eric stood tall. He crossed his arms, offering a cold nod of acknowledgment, but steadfastly refused to debase himself. He would not bow to a machine. This was not mere defiance for the sake of bravado. He had to show that he wasn’t intimidated if he was to deal on an equal footing with the Eye.
“You have spared the woman,” the Great Eye’s voice echoed through the chamber. “You refused to kill her in the arena. But I wonder... would you risk your own life to save her? How far does this illogical human empathy truly extend?”
Eric controlled his temper. His earlier outbursts hadn’t achieved anything. Perhaps reason could. “There is no need for these experiments,” he said with forced calm. Any questions you have, I can answer truthfully, and it will prove far more insightful to treat me as a person rather than an animal to be studied. Again, I say that we have far more to gain by cooperation than conflict."
The Great Eye, with the rigid programming of a machine, completely ignored his offer.
Without warning, the entire chamber was plunged into absolute darkness. Eric blinked, disoriented, as a sudden circle of brilliant white light, fifty feet in diameter, snapped on around him. The rest of the vast room was swallowed by an impenetrable, swirling blackness, shot through with vicious, crackling electric discharges that hissed and snapped as if imbued with animalistic life.
Eric turned around—and his breath hitched in sheer horror.
By some inexplicable, terrifying science, Azmara had been stripped of her armor. Completely naked, she was now bound tightly to a metal pillar in the center of the circle of illumination, a pillar that had not been there a second before. Thick, hemp-like cables wrapped around her wrists and ankles, pinning her fast to the column as she strained and struggled against them.
Without hesitation, Eric dashed across the floor toward her. Leaning against the metal pillar was a heavy spear. Eric grabbed it, intending to use the razor-sharp spearhead of green alloy to slice through her bonds.
“Behind you!” Azmara screamed, her eyes wide with mortal terror. “Something comes!”
A deafening roar split the darkness. From the swirling, electrified blackness, a nightmare lunged forth and then paused tensely in the light.
It was a mechanical beast of unnerving horror: roughly the size of a tiger, but constructed of rippling, overlapping metallic bronze scales that clinked like chainmail with every movement. Its maw parted to reveal massive metal fangs, and its eyes glowed with the same malicious, disturbing fire as the Great Eye.
“You have a choice, Earthman,” the Great Eye’s voice boomed coldly. “Step back from the woman and ask to be saved—in which case you will be spared, and my creation will destroy Azmara. Or you may stay by her side and attempt to defeat the mechanism.”
"Damn you to hell!" Eric shouted wildly as he grabbed the spear. He tossed the idea of running entirely out of his mind. He wasn't about to let an innocent, helpless person die for this electronic monster's cruel experiment.
"I'm staying!" Eric yelled into the void.
The bronze-scaled mechanism sprang through the air, claws extended like meat hooks. Azmara screamed.
Thinking fast, Eric dropped to one knee, jammed the heavy wooden butt of the spear against the metal column to which the girl was bound, and braced the weapon with all his strength, aiming the green point directly at the machine-beast’s scaly chest.
The leaping automaton slammed straight into the spear point with a ringing crash. But its bronze-hued scales acted like impenetrable armor; the alloy tip glanced off with a shower of angry sparks. The machine-beast stumbled back, hissing furiously, but was completely undamaged.
Before Eric could press his attack, the mechanical creature lashed out with a massive paw; its metal claws caught the shaft of the spear and nearly tore it from his grip. The jolt sent shockwaves up Eric’s forearms, numbing his fingers. The automaton coiled its powerful hind legs, preparing for a final, lethal pounce.
Eric knew he had one chance. If he missed, he and Azmara were dead.
As the bronze nightmare launched itself through the air, Eric didn't brace—he lunged forward. With every ounce of his remaining strength, he drove the spear upward, aiming past the armored chest and straight into the creature’s glowing eye.
The spearhead struck home. A blinding flash of blue lightning erupted as the optical sensor shattered into jagged pieces. Sparks rained down like fireworks. The machine-beast locked up mid-air, its mechanical limbs stiffening instantly. It crashed heavily to the floor, and the light faded from its remaining eye.
Silence descended upon the chamber, save for the hum of the wall’s glittering mechanisms.
“Astounding,” the Great Eye’s voice echoed, tinged with genuine confusion. “You risked your life against great odds to save a woman who tried to kill you. Why? What possible logic dictates such suicidal behavior?”
Eric, who had been hurled to the floor by the impact, rose painfully to his feet and pulled the spear free. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving. He realized then the futility of trying to reason with his foe. You could not explain human grace, mercy, or morality to a cold, calculating machine that understood only inputs and outputs.
He didn't bother trying to answer.
Instead, with a shout of pure, unadulterated defiance, Eric wound up and hurled the heavy spear directly through the swirling blackness toward the exact source of the booming voice.
The sound of shattering crystal—thousands of intricate glass mechanisms imploding at once—echoed violently through the dark room.
Instantly, the swirling blackness vanished as if snuffed out by a giant’s hand. The harsh, cold light of the chamber returned, but it was flickering wildly. Eric looked up and saw that his aim had been miraculously accurate. The spear had pierced the heart of the spherical crystalline device, reducing the Great Eye’s vital apparatus to a glittering pile of inactive shards.
Around the room, one by one, the glowing wall mechanisms began to flicker, pop, and go completely dark. The oppressive psychic vibration that had hung over the mountain for centuries faded into blessed, absolute silence.
The reign of the Great Eye was over.
Eric rushed forward, quickly slicing through Azmara’s bonds with a shard of crystal. The moment she was free, the proud Amazonian warrior dropped slowly to her knees. She looked up at Eric not with fear, but with utter, breathless reverence, then pressed her forehead against his boots.
"You... you are a god," she gasped in awe. "You killed the immortal master of Thuvon."
Eric lightly placed a hand on her golden shoulder, gently pulling her back to her feet. "No, Azmara. I am no god. I'm just a mortal man from a very different world. Not of ancient Rome, but of a future age whose knowledge is far in advance of that time. And the Eye wasn't a god either. The fact that it sent you to the wrong era and mistook me for an ancient Roman proves it. It was just a machine—an ancient piece of fallible technology left behind by people who are now long gone."
Azmara blinked, trying to process the revelation. "A machine? But... how? If the Eye is gone, how will my people survive? The Eye appeared before the council every day, issuing commands and enacting decrees. Who will guide us, protect us, and keep order?"
Eric smiled softly, gesturing toward the shattered crystalline device. "Think about it, Azmara. Long ago, Thuvon must have had a brilliant, advanced civilization that was destroyed in some global cataclysm, probably a war. This citadel was most likely the ruler’s stronghold. That machine survived the fall and took over, treating your ancestors like pets or subjects because it didn’t know any better. I suspect it was what my people would call an artificial intelligence: a machine programmed, probably by the military, with those rigid authoritarian tendencies and a propensity for violence that is part of such institutions. It kept you safe, yes, but it stole your freedom. The peace of the Eye wasn’t peace; it was slavery."
He looked into her dark eyes, his voice steady and reassuring. "It will be difficult at first. Change always is. But your people are intelligent, strong, and capable. You will solve your own problems, build your own future, and govern yourselves—the exact same way humanity learned to do on Earth. If we can do it, so can you."
A profound sense of relief washed over Azmara’s features. The heavy burden she had carried her entire life - the disturbing knowledge of an intrusive, all-seeing eye watching her every move and listening to her every word, ready to punish her for the slightest indiscretion - lifted from her shoulders.
Eric removed his shirt and handed it to Azmara so she could cover her nudity. The girl refused with a wave of her hand. “I am now your slave. You defeated me and then my master. Slaves are forbidden to wear clothes to mark them as mere chattels.”
The Earthman sighed and donned his garment. Thousands of years of attitudes and values were not going to be undone in a single day. Well, there could be worse fates than having an attractive woman as his companion. With the destruction of the Eye, a return to Earth was impossible, and he needed Azmara as his guide to this strange world. He promised himself that he would treat her as an equal.
As they walked out of the ruined chamber, the girl paused by a plinth on which a large gold urn encrusted with rare gemstones rested, one of many marvelous artworks that lined the passageway. She took the vase and turned to Eric. “You will need money to establish yourself - a villa, clothes, and food: the essentials for a good life. This vase is worth a lifetime’s fortune, and you have need of it.”
Eric couldn’t disagree with that, and so he took the urn, and they continued on their way, stepping back into the citadel’s expansive courtyard.
As they passed through the grand archways into the open air, Eric noticed that the citadel’s force field had vanished. There were also shapes lying on the area’s stone paving. The crimson-robed honor guards had collapsed into inert heaps. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that they were not flesh and blood at all, but advanced androids, human-like robots whose central processing units had ceased to function the moment the Great Eye’s vital mechanism, which linked them in a hive mind, was destroyed.
The tyranny of the mechanical monster was thoroughly, permanently broken.
Hand in hand, the Earthman and the former Amazonian warrior found a wide, stone pathway that safely led down the rugged slopes of Sky Throne Mountain. Together, they began their descent into the brilliant, sunlit expanse of a new world—stepping out of the cruel shadow of the Eye and its heartless machines, walking side by side toward an uncertain but wonderfully fresh horizon.
The End
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse