- And burst out the other side. I trip over and face plant in some dirt. Globs of flesh and goop splatter all over my back.

Huh, that was a quick ride. I thought I’d be plowing through a mile of flesh given how big the kraken hive is. I stand up and brush the dust and goop out of my feathers. Jeez, I’d expect the Zerg to keep their space a little cleaner than this. Did bug lady teach them any manners?

Wait… Where’s bug lady?

I look down where I just landed. There’s a griffon shaped impression in the dirt, but no bug lady. One would think she’d get compacted in the ground from my body weight, but there’s nothing here to suggest she was ever under me. The heck? Did she escape that? She was trapped in my bear hug, and I didn’t see her do any tricks with her horn. Where the heck did she go?

As I try to figure out where that pain in the ass went, something weird grabs my attention. The bug lady is gone, but so are the rest of the Zerg. The goop covering the ground isn’t here. It’s all dried up dirt. None of the big Zerg structures are anywhere to be seen. It’s mostly dead trees from here to the horizon. There aren’t any Overlords drifting above me. It’s all clear sky. Well, it’s not all that clear. The sky is pretty hazy. It’s got a sickly brown tint to it. I can barely see the sun through this brown soup of a sky.

Hold on a second, the sun? As in one sun, singular…

Didn’t this world have two suns?

Something chitters behind me. I flip around and come face to face with the biggest bug I’ve ever seen in my life. It looks similar to a caterpillar, except browner and uglier. It’s rearing back and standing on its hind legs, no doubt to look more intimidating. On its face are a bunch of little feeler antennae and several black, soulless eyes. Ugh, this thing smells as bad as it looks. What were the Zerg thinking when they made this ugly bastard?

“Can I help you?”

The ugly caterpillar makes a sucking sound from the back of its throat, and then it spits a sticky wad at my face. I wipe the putrid substance with a swipe of the claw.

“I see. So we’re still on not good terms.”

Behind the caterpillar, I notice a Zerg structure of some sort. It’s a boil, of course, with tubes and holes going all over it. The tubes look like they’re pumping something. Inside the holes are what look to be white eggs. One of the eggs pops, and another creature pops out. This one looks like an ugly caterpillar too, except it has a shell that bulges above the shoulders and it has large pincers that look like they can take off someone’s leg.

“Huh… I thought you Zerg had more teeth.”

The ugly caterpillar spits in my face again. Again, I wipe the substance off with a claw. It appears we’re using primitive forms of communication to speak. If that’s what’s going on, then the course of action should dictate us devolving into fisticuffs. Considering how many bouts of fisticuffs I’ve won in the past hour alone, I’d say this is a pretty stupid move on the caterpillar’s part. Then again, I don’t think it can do anything other than make stupid moves.

“Can you” -

Another wad of mysterious substance nabs me in the face. Fisticuffs it is! The Tyranid blade comes out and I decapitate the caterpillar on the spot. Two halves hit the ground. Its legs squirm and substance pours out of its maw as the death throes take over. I’ve learnt my lesson, can’t be civil with the Zerg.

A pair of jaws clamps down on my arm. Ow! The creature that came out of the egg mere seconds ago is now pinching down on the wrist the Tyranid blade is attached to. I punch the thing in its many eyes, which makes it let go of me. Before it gets another bite on me, I stomp the crap out of its shell.

But it’s not over yet. Once the biter is nothing but mush, another wad of substance hits me in the face. Oh come on! I thought I killed the spitter. The two caterpillar halves are still squirming in front of me, so I know it didn’t do the spitting. I glance up to see... Oh for Grover’s sake!

There are more biters and spitters, all pouring out of the boil nest thing. The spitters are lobbing wads at me, and the biters are making a full frontal stampede for me.

Is this it? Is this all the Zerg? I check for anything else that may be coming for me. Other than a couple other boil nests I didn’t see behind the first, this is it. This is all the Zerg I got to deal with.

Screw this. I punch a biter before it gnaws at my leg. This is just a nuisance. I’ll let the Protoss deal with this if they really want these Zerg gone. Let them get wadded in the face!

I turn and split for the great open desert away, making tracks away from the pesky caterpillar Zerg. Goop wads splatter behind me as I make a break for it. After a couple seconds of running, I look back to see the bugs that were chasing me turning back around to head back to their nests. Ah good, they were protecting their territory. That means they won’t come and turn me into a snack.

I’ll let them retreat. For now I’ll keep running until… I don’t know, until I meet up with the Protoss again, I suppose.

Where did the Protoss go anyways? My Gilda senses pings for Ordeas, but they come up blank. That’s strange. They ping for Ceretel, as if I want to deal with his crap again. Nothing. Uh… Saltair, the guy with the Phoenix? Once more, nothing.

I don’t want to do this one. Bug lady? Gilda sense returns a negative on her location. That’s a relief.

Where the heck did everyone go?

“… The little bird really is mad. Can she not hear all the voices?”

Uh… Is someone talking to me? That can't be it. There’s no one else here! That voice had to be the wind, unless those bugs can talk…

Hold off on that thought. I see something. Something is coming up on the horizon. It’s blocked by all the haze, so it looks fuzzy from this distance. It’s long and gray. Kind of looks like a wall. If it’s a wall, then thank Grover there’s someone else in this planet! Someone had to build that wall, so I can’t be all alone here.

Hmm, doesn’t look like something either the Protoss or Zerg would make. It's too blocky. Let’s hope whoever built that wall also built hot showers. Baneling goop is not good for my feathers.

As I get closer, it becomes more obvious the wall is indeed a wall. The haze makes the details difficult to see, but I can pick out ramparts and structural reinforcements. It doesn’t look like a castle wall, so its not griffon or Equestrian. For how long it is, it’s not very tall. I’d say it’s about a ten foot high strip of concrete that goes a long way either direction. Ten feet isn’t much for a wall. Someone can easily climb over it with a ladder. Maybe it’s just to keep the bugs out.

A few seconds later, and I step on something metal. I skid to a stop and turn back to investigate. Whatever I stepped on is covered by a layer of sand. Maybe the Protoss left something buried.

I brush the sand off to reveal a long, metal strip. It goes off in either direction, just like the wall. Bits of it are gleaming from under the desert some ways off from here. Odd. I keep brushing away the sand to reveal more metal bits. There are steel rods sticking out from the metal strip’s side. Further digging reveals there’s another metal strip connected to the ends of the rods.

Two metal strips running next to each other, connected by a bunch of metal rods. Hey, I know what this is! These are rails! Trains go over these. Right now I’m standing on a semi buried railway. Huh, this is an interesting find. I’m assuming these rails belong to whoever built the wall over there. I don’t think the Protoss use railways, but at least I know I’m dealing with an industrialized civilization. No doubt they have hot showers.

One question. If these are rails, then where’s the tr-

A locomotive rams me up the ass with a loud clang and carries me down the tracks. We’re going so fast the wind is threatening to tear my face off. Over the roar of the wind and the fact my ears fused with this metal beast on impact, I can hear the inner workings of a high torque multi-engine diesel powerhouse pulling cargo wagons with thousand ton payloads at breakneck speeds. It’s a deep growl accented by the clickity clacking of going over the rails. This train stops for no one.

Oh hey, I found the train!

I peel myself off the front of the train. The mass of my body left a large griffon shaped dent in the train’s plow. When my spine realigns itself after the impact, I grab what I can get a hold of and climb up to the train’s top. Once I’m up on the roof, I get a nice view of the landscape around me.

There’s a lot more going on than I thought. It’s not just desert. There are forests and plains, and a few ridges lining the horizon. From up here, I can see more caterpillar boils dotting the desert. Some are in groups of two or three. On the other side of what I think is a lake, there’s a whole field of those boils sticking out of the ground. It’s no Zerg hive, but it is an acne epidemic scarring the landscape. I’m glad I didn’t come out of that mess.

But that’s the outside of the wall. The inside is a whole different ball game. The inside of the wall looks like a sea of machines. There are rows upon rows of blast furnaces billowing smoke from their chimneys. Right next door to those are rows upon rows of big metal boxes with gears and pistons sticking out on top. Those gears and pistons are all moving and spinning at crazy speeds. All of these machines have some sort of doohickies coming out of them, whether they be metal plates or fully constructed engine units.

Am I looking at a factory? Oh. I am. This was not what I was expecting.

The train makes a sharp turn towards the wall. I fling off the roof, and I only save myself by grabbing a railing on the side. The train finishes the turn as fast as it starts it, and I climb right back up on top. Jeez, if I was a passenger inside this thing, I’d be smacking my face against the window every time it made a turn like that. I clutch my claws tighter to whatever I can grab. Not letting that happen a second time.

The wall comes at us fast, then we wiz right by it. The land goes from sand to machinery in a quick snap. I’m assaulted my smoke plumes and the sound of grinding cogs and hissing pistons. Yep, this is definitely not Protoss. I sort of knew I wasn’t on the same planet anymore, but all this just confirms it.

Something zips past my head. I turn to see what the heck that was. A silver dot flies away from me as it heads to some unknown part of the factory. That was odd. I wonder what that thing was.

Not a moment later, something hard smacks me upside the head. I tumble to the train car behind the locomotive, almost falling in between the two. The metal thing that clogged me in the head clatters past me and scrapes across the car. After fixing the massive crack in my skull, I head over to the metal object and pick it up to examine it.

It’s a weird little thing. It’s sort of like a tube with a fan in the middle of it. Little metal arms are sticking out of its sides, and it has a couple little blinking lights in a few places. The fan tries to spin up again, but it only shoots out sparks when it tries.

Weird little thing. I toss it off the side of the train and it disappears in the field of machinery whizzing by us. How did I end up on this odd little world?

Definitely a new world. I don’t think the Zerg things by the boils are actually Zerg. The machines here are definitely not Protoss. The last place I was at had two suns, not one. Yep, different world. Explains why everyone disappeared on me.

Crap, I’m not on the same planet as the Protoss, which means the Protoss can’t send me home! I got myself stuck on a different planet and I don’t know how! Now how am I going to get back to Equestria?

Metal squeals. I lurch forward when the train hits the breaks. The machines blurring past us become a little less blurry. The deceleration doesn’t throw me off like the sudden turn, but it does come out of nowhere. While it’s slowing down, I see a fork up ahead in the tracks. I latch on before it makes another sharp turn, but at least the train is going slower this time. It crawls up next to a large rectangle of burning furnaces. The nearest furnace is probably a good twenty yards away, but I can feel the heat wafting from all the way over here. It kind of looks like a graveyard full of tombstones that are all portals to Tartarus.

Here’s something weird I noticed. There’s no one operating any of these machines. A lot of the machines I passed are running on their own, but there wasn’t anyone there to run them. Sure, the whole point of letting machines do the work would be to let them go without help, but they still need an operator to at least do maintenance. The only thing I’ve seen is that metal fan thing I hit and I don’t think it was doing much.

Wait… What if that fan thing was the operator? What if I hit someone really important and now that important person is dead? What if that was their king? Oh boy, the locals won’t be happy if I killed their fan king. That would be bad. I, the emissary for the once great Griffon Empire, may have committed regicide. Last thing I need is a bunch of metal fans chasing me out of town. That happened to a friend of mine at a rock concert.

The train hisses to a stop. I guess this is where I get off. Oh boy, hope the locals don’t gut me when I step out. Before I get so much as a foot off this train, the roof of my train cart falls out from under me. I fall into a pile of shiny rocks inside the cart. Wasn’t much of a fall. Just surprised me.

Oh haha, very funny. This is what I get for hitting the king. I claw my way up to the top of the pile and poke my head out of the cart. Maybe this is just a local custom they greet all newcomers with. Hey, the Protoss shot magic bolts at me when we met. I’m not a stranger to weird greetings.

The shiny rocks rumble, and the pile I’m standing on shrinks. I’m about to grab the ledge when the rocks pull me under. Everything in the cart shifts around, and a moment later I’m buried underneath sparkling rubble. Okay guys, you can stop this weird greeting of yours. Getting buried alive is one of my phobias! I roll and tumble in the rock pile. I’m sure all these rocks bashing me from all sides would kill a normal griffon, but I’m glad I’m the exception. I get to have all the fun of baseball sized rocks hitting me in the head without the downsides!

A minute of rocks brutalizing me later, something grabs my ankle. I shriek in surprise. I hope that’s not a local. Please don’t sacrifice me to your gods! Something yanks me out of the rocks, and I land out in open air with dust settling all around me. The thing lets go of me, and I sputter a cough and I push myself off the ground. Would it be a bad thing to say I preferred when Ceretel was stabbing me?

I stand up and brush the dust out of my feathers. Baneling juice, shiny rock dust, life is driving me to the point where I’ll kill to get a shower. I’m only half joking.

Why are the machines moving?

I’m in the middle of all the big furnaces, and they all are moving past me. Am I missing something? I look down at the ground. I’m standing on some metal plates with yellow arrows painted on them at regular intervals. The arrows are still, but the ground next to them is moving past me. Wait a moment… No, the ground is still, it’s the arrows that I’m standing on that are moving.

Oh, I’m moving on a conveyor belt. That answers my question. New question, where am I moving too?

The belt carries me down through the field of furnaces, or if you want have fun, tombstone Tartarus portals. It’s mouthy, but sounds awesome. Lot hotter down here than it was up at the train. Not as hot as that burning blimp I had to go through, thank Grover for that.

Out of nowhere, a large, metal claw grabs my throat. Ack! I did not see where that came from! With the strength of a hundred bulls, the claw lifts me up and chucks me into the open mouth of a furnace. I latch on to the mouth edges, not thinking how hot they could be. My talons get deep roasted in my attempt to stop myself from getting chucked in a metal melting fire. Good news is I don’t need to worry about trimming my nails ever again. Bad new is AAAHHH! MADAFAACKMMMMMAA!

I push myself off the mouth and land at the base of the furnace. Blowing air on my talons helps a bit with the sting while my nerves repair themselves, but only a bit. Son of a bison, when will the griffon abuse end?!

The metal claw that grabbed me swings over my head and drops a bunch of shiny rocks in the furnace. The claw is connected to an arm, which is connected to a base, and the base is sitting right next to me. Stupid thing was hiding between the machines! That’s how it snuck up on me. I kick the claw when it’s swinging back. The claw falls on the conveyor where it moves away from me. At some point another claw picks it up and tosses it in another furnace. Burn, baby, burn!

King or no king, I need to find the guy who runs this place so I can give them a piece of my mind. There are safety hazards everywhere!

A loud bang cracks through the air. Almost the same instant, a bunch of sparks fly off the furnace, and something nasty stings me in the knee. I wince, but I’ve had worse. The tentacles fix up the knee sting, and a tiny metal ball pops out of the hole in my knee cap.

I trace the bang sound to somewhere behind me. Standing by the train is a figure holding what looks to be some kind of magic shooter. The figure is standing on two feet like a Protoss, but there’s nothing about him that looks Protoss. He’s got fewer angles, no gold or blue. Instead, he’s dressed in what appears to be metal plates with an orange hard hat on top. I can’t see his face. He’s got a metal face protector or something like that.

Hard Hat aims the magic shooter at me. Ah, I see what’s going on. “Hey, what gives? What gives you the right to shoot at me?”

The figure perks up when I talk. He looks a bit confused to the fact I can use language. But his confusion doesn’t last long. He shrugs, puts away his magic shooting, and gets out a shorter, stockier tool that looks like a different kind of magic shooter.

The front of the creature’s new weapon lights up with the sound of a violent bowel movement. In the same moment, a bunch of invisible wasps sting me in the chest, splattering my goop all over the floor. Out of reflex, the shield comes out, and the bees turn into a pitter patter against the hardened flesh.

More metal balls spill out of the holes in my chest. Alright, that isn’t a magic shooter. It’s something else entirely. It’s not frying my flesh. It’s going inside me. Feels like it’s giving my tentacles a work out. Welp, baddie identified, doesn’t want to talk. My skin morphs into chitinous armor, the shield goes away, and I charge Hard Hat head on. Another bang from his big shooter. The armor doesn’t completely stop his shots, they dig into the scales, but it puts up enough resistance to not pierce my fleshy bits.

The Hard Hat notices his attack doesn’t stop me. He pulls out a handful of metal spheres and tosses them in the air. The spheres light up either green or red, and little legs and antenna pop out of their heads. The spheres make some buzzing sounds and they all fly around Hard Hat.

The flying spheres confuse me for a moment, that is until they start flying towards me. The green ones stick around the Hard Hat and fire magic bolts at me. Those fizzle against my armor. The red ones fly over my head and shoot lightning bolts out of their bottoms. Those are the ones that get me.

Zap! Ow. Zap! Ow. Zap. Ow! These aren’t as bad as those shocks Blackwatch gave me at my scone shop, but they’re still not fun. Retreat!

I trip over a claw machine as I scramble to get out of the range of the spheres. The red ones keep dive bombing me and take every chance to shock my ass. The claw machine falls over, and I squeeze through a gap in the furnaces. The heat is wafting over my back, and the spheres are diving through the gap above me to give me some nasty shocks.

The field of tombstone furnaces ends at a train track. Right as I’m about to step on the rails, a massive train goes flying inches in front of my face. The wind nearly blows off my feathers. Okay, lessoned learned, watch where I’m going in this place. I ignore the swarming spheres for a moment to make sure no other trains are coming, then I run over the tracks to an open paved clearing.

A sphere makes a bombing run for my head. Sparks pop out from its prongs. It swings down to shock me, but I slash it to pieces with a strike from my monster claws. Its metal bits clatter on the concrete. Two more spheres come down to shock me. Just like the first one, I slash them apart with overkill blades. The spheres don’t bother avoiding my strikes.

More and more spheres come flying at me. I break as many as I can, but for every one that I turn to scrap, five more come along to pump thousands of volts down my throat. You know, I opened up a scone shop and avoided Blackwatch for a year so I wouldn’t have to deal with this kind of shit. Yet here I am.

Another train comes rolling down the tracks. It smashes a few straggler spheres that are coming for me. Hmm, I could use that. I monster sprint towards the train and catch the last car before it escapes my reach. The train rips through the factory, leaving the furnace graveyard and all those zappy spheres behind. Those things try flying after me, but the train is just too fast for them.

I get on top of the train and run up to the main engine. Those collapsing roofs aren’t going to fool me twice. The smoggy wind whips past my face. The growl of the diesel engine gives me a nice foot massage. Oh, this is nice. A moment of quiet, or at least a moment where something isn’t trying to kill me. I haven’t had a moment like this since, oh… before that Protoss Zerg battle? Jeez, that was only a couple hours ago. Barely an hour, now that I think about it. So much shit went down that it feels like months.

And my scone shop, the attack on my scone shop was only this morning. Or maybe it was yesterday. I think I might have had a nap in that Nexus void, but that place was so dull and grey I have no clue if I did anything in there. So depending if I had a nap or not, everything that’s been going down has only happened over the course of either one or two days. Sweet mercy, I know I had a year to myself, but these couple day spurts of action are going to age me up fast. I’m going to be an old crow before I’m thirty.

Wait… I’m twenty nine. I’m going to be thirty in a couple months. That means I’m going to be an old crow within that time. Ugh, I’m twenty nine. No, these adventures of mine aren’t going to age me. I’m doing that well on my own. I feel like I’ll turn to dust at any minute now. It just… doesn’t sound right. Me, twenty nine. Wasn’t I going to be that rebellious fifteen year old forever? Row row, fight the pony power! That… isn’t me anymore. Where did the years go by?

Feels like yesterday I was chilling with Rainbow at her cloud house in Ponyville for the first time. Then we had the fight, and I went back to Griffonstone, where I tried to avoid that annoying rooster Christov and Mom pestered me about settling down with that nice rooster Christov. Jeez, that was years ago. According to griffon tradition, I should be a mom right now. In fact, I’m old enough to be packing school lunches for my kids. Twenty nine, man. Those kids would be a couple years away from their teenage years!

Me, a mom… No, I don’t want to think about that. I can feel the wrinkles on my face just saying that. If I had kids like I was supposed to, they’d be going through their rebellious teenage phase like I did, and I’m not dealing with that crap. Never having any griffon chicks. The scone shop is my chick, and I want to get back to my chick as soon as possible. Question is, how?

A cluster of metal balls blasts me up the ass! Ow! I get the message, save the midlife crisis when things aren’t trying to kill me! I flip around to see what shot me in the behind. Tailing my train is another train, and someone is riding the top of it. Hard Hat, and he’s aiming his big shooter at me.

Looks like we’re about to have a battle on top of two high speed moving trains! I let out a sigh. Teenage me would think this was the tightest shit. Me, right now, at twenty nine? I just want a nap. Why couldn’t some young kid get this Blacklight monster virus of mine? He’d have fun with it. These monster powers have done nothing but make me miserable.

I lazily grow out my shield when Hard Hat lets off another round of metal pellets. The shots impale themselves into the shield. I should be taking this fight more seriously, but I put myself into a mood now. “Hey, you wanna talk this out?” I yell over the shield. “I’ll pay for any damages I did. I didn’t break anything major, did I?”

Another boom of pellets answers my question. Will whatever god who’s looking down tell me if I even have the diplomacy skill? It’d be good to know if I should even bother.

Got to lose this guy. I hop down in between the gap of the engine and cart and break the connector with a tumor fist. Engine and cart separate, and the line of carts falls behind without anything to pull it down the tracks. Hard Hat's train plows through te carts, and the carts explode in big fire balls. Hard Hat’s train comes out of the flames with only moderate structural damage. Damn, what is his engine made of?

At least I got rid of the extra weight, so now the engine is gaining speed. Hard Hat falls behind as I accelerate away from him. Ha, I’d like to see him catch up with me now!

My train makes a sudden sharp turn. I’m not holding on tight. Since I can’t break the laws of physics, the train goes one way, and I go flying down the same vector I was before. My body crashes and skids on the hard concrete. Ow.

Hard Hat’s train takes the same bend, but he hops off before that. He’s holding a new shooter, but it’s different from the other ones. He aims high, as if he’s trying to shoot a bird out of the sky. Uh, dude? My eyes are down here.

A stream of yellow flame spews out from the shooter. The flame arcs in the air and descends on top of me. I jump out of the way right as it lights the ground up!

The spewing flames chase me as I run as fast as I can. Problem is when I check to see if I outran Hard Hat, he’s the same distance behind me, keeping pace and shooting fire at me. His legs are blurring like crazy in order to keep up with me. Oh crap, he has monster speed too!

Hard Hat chases me to a large tower thing. The tower has a bunch of pipes and tubes running all over it, and has three large cones situated on the top. Aha, an escape! I run towards the big tower thing. When I get to it, I jump over large gap that’s separating the concrete and tower. Apparently the tower goes deep underground.

The tower was a decent idea, as now Hard Hat isn’t chasing me with fire. Instead, he’s switched back to the small shooter. His shooter makes the bowel movement sound again. A line of sparks crawls up the tower behind me and goes over my back. Pain slashes me across my spine as the shooter finds its mark. It stings, but I can live. I’ll live longer if I just climb this tower.

As I’m making my way up, grabbing pipes and tubes, more red spheres buzz for me. They make little sorties around me, sending lightning arcs up my ass. BZZT! BZZT BZZT! Somehow, despite the constant shocks, I make it to the top. If anything those shocks are encouragement. I thought this would be safe, but of course the spheres can fly. There’s no where I can go to avoid them! I swat at them with my claws again, taking out a few, but barely thinning out the swarm.

Another bowel movement rips across the tip of the towers. I duck in the middle of the three cones, using the cover to avoid the attack entirely. It’s at least safe from his shooter. Maybe I can take him out from up here.

A sphere flies close to my face to shock me. Instead of destroying it with a monster claw, I snatch it out of the air. Its prongs send bright volts up my wrist, but it stops when I give the thing a bit of a crunch. The bowel movement stops for a moment. I take advantage of the moment and poke my head out of cover. “Hey, batter batter batter!”

Hard Hat looks up just in time to take the crumpled up zap sphere I chucked to the face! There’s a loud metal crack, and his body flashes a bright purple, a sign of a type of magic shielding I’m slightly familiar with. Hard Hat doesn’t go down, but he is holding his face and stumbling back.

I yelp up in joy. “Swing bat” –

A train plows into Hard Hat. Metal scrap and guts splatter all over the train tracks, and the train keeps rolling on.

- “ter… Oooh.” Even I felt that. His shield didn’t save him from that.

Moments after Hard Hat’s untimely demise, the zapping spheres fall out of the sky like dead flies. They rain on top of me, pitter pattering all over the metal tower. I hold my shield up like an umbrella to protect myself from the spherical downpour.

I guess really did kill the king after all. Eh, I didn’t like his fiscal policies. Too much fire, not enough support for small businesses. I’m sure the land will be better off without him.

The train that ran the king over pulls up next to the tower. The roof of the cart opens up, revealing a large, white cylinder with a bunch of buttons on the side. A large claw reaches over the cart and picks up the cylinder, and then the claw places the cylinder in an open hatch on the side of the tower. The hatch closes, and the train goes off.

Well, that’s the power of automation. The king dies, yet all the machines keep doing work without him. The land will be fine without Hard Hat. The factory survives.

An alarm goes off. Its blaring, rhythmic sound dominates the world. The tower shakes. I cling to a set of pipes out of instinct. Somewhere below me, far below me, a crackling roar grows from the depths of the planet. Its volume soon drowns out the alarm.

I think the locals are celebrating the king’s death. Maybe they’re implementing a new government system?

My stomach lurches when the tower jolts up. I try to stand up, but gravity seems to have tripled in the last moment. A hammer force wind presses down on my back. The surrounding factory falls away, taking the world with it.

Um… I think there’s more to this tower than I originally thought.

Author's Notes:

Achievements Unlocked:

Watch your step - Get hit by a moving locomotive

Golem - Survive a hit of 500 damage or more

Still Locked:

Right Out of the Lab - Complete the Tutorial