Tom carefully landed Hope in the middle of the castle courtyard, opposite the other Giant Armor which had touched down a few moments earlier. Tom reached forward and pressed on the transparent surface in front of him. It popped open and the circular struts of the cockpit faded into firm, blue-grey solidity.

He looked down to see Taka running towards him, carrying the ladder. Tom waited anxiously as Taka put the ladder up, then scrambled down and ran over to where the pilot of the other Armor was talking to Brask.

The other boy was about Tom’s age, with piercing green eyes but a calm, easy-going look to him. As Tom neared, he heard the boy explaining that Tom had just happened to come across an isolated nest of Trych, and judging from their reaction to the second Giant Armor, they weren’t likely to follow the Armors back to cause any more trouble,.

Tom waited for the other boy to take a breath, then asked excitedly, “Are you from Earth, too?”

Brask turned with an arched eyebrow as the boy looked at Tom and grinned. “Yep,” said the boy. “My name’s Adam. Nice to meet you.” Adam put out a hand, and Tom shook it with enthusiasm.

Adam turned back to Brask. “There’s something else, sir,” Adam said, all professionalism again. “There was a giant Trych there. As big as Guardian or Hope. It attacked Tom, but it left when I got there.”

Brask’s eyebrows shot up, but he remained motionless otherwise for a few moments. “Very well,” he said, “well done. I’ll get more detailed information from you later.” He looked at Tom, then back at Adam and said, “Why don’t you and Tom go to the kitchen and eat something, and you can explain things to Tom.”

Adam flashed a thankful grin at Brask, then gave Tom a bright-eyed look and pointed a thumb at a nearby door. “Kitchen’s that way,” he said. “Wanna race?”

Tom made it to the door before Adam did—just barely—and threw it open and gasped. It was a huge room, full of people and food. There were five or six tables at which white-clothed women chopped vegetables and folded dough. A dozen loaves of bread cooled nearby, tendrils of steam hovering above them. Two massive fireplaces held several bubbling, rattling pots. A few heads turned to glance at the boys, but everyone was too busy to pay them much attention.

Adam grabbed a few biscuits and some mugs of water, then guided Tom over to an empty table where they sat and Tom chowed down.

“I’ll bet I know some of your questions,” Adam said, still grinning, “so I’ll just answer those now. Yes, I’m from Earth, near Chicago. I was transported here about…geez, a few weeks ago now. Brask told me about the Trych and my Giant Armor, and it sounded important, so I decided to stay. I’ll be back in no time, anyway, so it shouldn’t matter.”

Tom nodded. “So why did they send for me?”

Adam looked down at the table. “I, uh…I’m not quite enough,” he said in a soft voice. “The Trych have swarmed the castle a bunch of times since I got here, and I can only take on so many of them at once. Plus, they’ve been attacking more and more lately. That’s why we had to dig up your Giant Armor.”

“Dig up?” Tom asked, swallowing half a biscuit.

“Yeah, both the Giant Armors come from a huge pit near here, where they’ve been kept in storage until they’re needed.”

Tom nodded, noting that this jived with Brask’s explanation. “The people here keep them? Like, they’ve been holding on to them for a while?”

“I…don’t know, actually,” Adam said, blinking. “I’ve been so busy, getting used to Guardian—that’s my Giant Armor—and fighting the bugs. Lemme tell you, I sleep real good at night.

“So,” Adam continued, smiling around a mouthful of biscuit, “you’ve decided to stay?”

Tom thought for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I have.”

He wasn’t completely convinced. The history and background of the Giant Armors didn’t line up. He wondered what they were trying to hide. Maybe he was being paranoid, and people were just glossing over details.

For the next few hours, Adam gave Tom a tour of the castle. The corridors seemed to go on for miles. It was just like Tom had seen from the air: three rings connected together, each ring with six sides, and a tower everywhere that two sides met. But each side was the size of a mansion on Earth, three stories tall and full of rooms on either side of a wide hallway. The towers were massive things, the inner ones roofed with gleaming brass domes and the outer ones flat and staffed with guards.

There were a hundred little reminders that this wasn’t Earth. The windows were round and filled with a thin bluish glass held together by thin spider webs of some silvery metal. Each floor was covered with dozens of overlapping patterned carpets. And all the rooms were huge, with twenty-foot ceilings.

That night, Tom lay in his bed, wide-eyed. Sleep would not come. He thought about the bugs, about his Giant Armor, about his own bed back home. He thought about what he’d said to Adam earlier that day. He said he’d stay. And now that he’d said it, he wouldn’t go back on his word. He just wouldn’t. Besides, these people needed him. Fear coiled around his heart, and he turned on his side and tried very hard not to cry.

Tom awoke to the slam of his bedroom door opening. He surged up in bed to see the maid from earlier rush into his room, then stop short when she saw he was up. “The Trych!” she said, her eyes wide. “They’re coming!”

Tom threw his covers aside. The maid scurried out of the room and called over her shoulder, “You can wear those clothes in the corner.” A simple white shirt and pants hung on a wire strung across the window, so they glowed in the moonlight. He shrugged out of the nightshirt he’d been given and pulled the new clothes on. A small part of his mind noticed how loose-fitting but comfortable they felt.

He rushed out the door to find the maid waiting impatiently in the hall. She motioned for him to follow her, and they made a mad dash down the halls and stairways of the castle. They met only a few people running on their own errands. Through the windows, he could see frantic figures dash across the courtyards on one side and through the crowded streets on the other, carrying torches high above them.

They emerged into the madness of the courtyard. The smoke from half a dozen fires burned his eyes, wafting on the surprisingly cool air of a summer night. It sounded like what Tom remembered when he’d first been transported here: people yelling at each other over a faint, never-ending buzz. Archers stood all over the courtyard, looking up, each with a bucket of arrows squatting patiently next to them. They were accompanied by dozens of Trych bodies. A few teenagers hauled big swords around the courtyard, finishing off any wounded Trych.

Above them, hundreds of Trych circled like a storm cloud.

But in the center of the courtyard stood Hope, like a tower. Taka and Alyas stood nervously beneath it, their eyes glued on the bugs circling above them. Alyas in particular held her whole body taut as a bowstring, while Taka tried to appear brave as his hands gripped the ladder. As soon as they saw Tom running towards them, both relaxed visibly.

Tom hit the ladder and clambered up as fast as he could, the wood bouncing as he went. He got to the top and vaulted inside, nearly getting his foot caught as he twisted around and shoved his legs down into their holes. As he straightened up, he could hear Alyas chanting unevenly below. The front of the cockpit closed and the armor around him faded away. All he saw now was Hope’s huge gold forearms.

He arched his back and willed himself to float upwards. As he did so, he glanced to the right and saw the white of Adam’s Giant Armor rising into the night next to him.

“Hey, Tom!” Adam’s voice filled the inside of Hope.

“Woah! You can talk to me?” said Tom.

“Yeah! You ready?”

Tom thought a moment. He wasn’t, really. Fear coiled around his heart. But he wasn’t about to admit that to Adam, so he forced himself to say, “Um, yeah, I guess. What do we do?”

“Swing out your arms,” said Adam. “Hard.”

Tom threw out his arms as though he was throwing balls to the ground. Huge blades sprang from Hope’s forearms and locked into place. Each blade was about half as wide as Hope’s arm and a good ten feet long.

Tom grinned and yelled, “All right!”

The Trych swarmed down like water into a drain. Tom flew up and sliced at one, cutting it neatly in two. He swirled and began cutting through them, not letting any get close enough to latch on.

Slice followed slice, and stretched on for several minutes: swing, slice, watch bug fall to the courtyard below. Tom stayed low enough that none of the bugs could get under him and into the castle. But new bugs just kept coming at him, and the cloud of Trych never seemed to thin.

He began to thrust Hope forward, trying to clear out more of them. This was easier; they weren’t expecting him to attack. But he glanced back and saw Trych begin to swarm in behind him. He turned and hacked away at them, bug corpses falling like rain on the courtyard below.

He blew out a frustrated sigh, then glanced over at Adam’s Giant Armor, which was on the other side of the castle, doing the same thing. An idea came. He called out, “Adam, can you hear me?”

“Yyyyeah,” came Adam’s voice, a little distant and distracted. “These things just don’t give up, do they?”

“No, but I’ve got an idea. Start attacking them. Keep near the outer wall, and keep moving along the wall. Take out as many Trych as you can, but move fast.”

“What for? They’ll start coming in on me from behind.”

“Trust me, I’ll get to them before that happens.” He heard nothing. “Look, just try it, okay?”

Adam paused. “Okay. Here I go!”

Tom sliced through a few more Trych, then looked back over at Adam. He was flying to Tom’s right, around the castle wall, and dozens of Trych were falling before him. The ones he left behind hung back, as though surprised. Tom knew they wouldn’t stay that way for long.

He flew forward along the wall opposite Adam, staying on the opposite side of the castle from him. He began impaling and slicing through Trych. He continued around the wall towards the place that Adam had just left, where Trych were beginning to pour in. He attacked furiously, cutting them to pieces, worried more about breaking up the pack than getting every single one. They began to crowd him, and a few were able to hack away at his armor before he shook them off and sliced them in half.

He broke through and continued around the walls. He glanced over at the other Giant Armor. Adam was just finishing off the rest of the Trych that had crowded in where Tom had left. It was working! Tom and Adam were circling the castle, fast enough to keep the Trych from getting through.

“Keep going,” shouted Tom as he continued around the wall. Both Giant Armors continued along the walls, slicing through Trych as they went. They went faster and faster, killing more and more of them as they got used to the speed. Soon they were a circular blur, weaving along the castle walls, blades flashing like lightning strikes.

They couldn’t get to every bug on the walls, of course, but the bugs couldn’t mass at any one place before a Giant Armor returned to slice through a few more of them. And both Armors stayed close enough to the inside of the castle that the Trych couldn’t descend into the courtyards below.

Tom drew breath in ragged gasps now. His arms ached from the constant swinging, and the inside of the cockpit smelled like a gym locker. Finally, slowly, it began to get easier. There were fewer Trych to cut through on every pass. The bugs began to thin out, and Tom slowed down as the Trych slipped away from the castle walls, buzzing back into the forest. Within a few moments, even the buzz had faded away, and he was left with the murmur of the people below.

Tom floated back down into the courtyard, and men scattered to give him room. He managed to find a spot empty of Trych and human bodies and set Hope down. He waited for his breath to ease as he looked around for Taka to come out with the ladder. Tom leaned forward, pushed the door open, and watched tiredly as the Armor became solid again around him. The ladder clacked up against the front of the Armor, and Tom somehow managed to climb out, and half-slid down to the ground. Brask was there, and he opened his mouth to ask a question, then closed it when he saw Tom’s exhaustion. Brask called a servant over, and as he put an arm around Tom to help him, they looked up to see Guardian float down into the courtyard and land with a whump. Its chest opened, and Adam leaned out, and all Tom could see was an expression of astonishment on his face. Astonishment and…something else, something that made Tom uneasy, but he was too tired to analyze it.

The servant led Tom to his room. Tom barely saw the castle around him, and as soon as he saw his bed, he clambered into it and instantly fell deeply asleep.

Leave a Reply