My body felt awesome. I couldn't stop bouncing. Couldn't stop throwing punches and jumping and just wriggling inside my new form, like a happy puppy.

  I tried to pull my mind back on track, to stay focused and alert as I wandered down the metal tunnel.

  I'd been walking for a while, just reveling in the changes to my body. I'd turned off the straight track I'd followed until now. That ventilation shaft had been following the corridor and I needed to check out the rooms, see what was in this place.

  It was darker down these side passages. The main route had had vents spaced evenly and the hallway below had been naturally lit through ornate windows but these other rooms were different. Many were pitch black, giving no clue what might lay within. I'd run across two so far that had windows to let in moonlight and let me see a little.

  One had been another workshop, like the one I'd woken up in, but this had been for metal working. The space had been littered with forges and anvils, arcane machinery in the process of being put together or dismantled and more fantasy chemistry sets. But whoever had worked here hadn't been constructing cute little metal dolls, the half made machinery here was much larger. One piece, suspended on another sling like I'd woken in but this time man-sized, held the metal shoulders and head of some sort of machine warrior, with a metal spine trailing from the neck and dangling with wires.

  The second seemed to be a kind of small chapel or prayer space. There were two rows of wooden pews facing a stage with an altar. Behind the altar was a large stained glass window which lit the room in a rainbow of prismatic light. Though I couldn't see what image, if any, was depicted there from my angle in the ventilation above.

  I'd also fought another rat. I hadn't even drawn my sword. This rat had run at me, like the other that had turned into my hardest fight so far, except this time I'd heard it coming and reacted easily. As it had come barreling out of the dark in a mad rush I'd ducked cleanly, slipping beneath the beast as it dove, then I'd dashed straight in, delivering a crushing, metal shod heel to its throat and stepping back again. The rat had mewed and coughed as it choked on its own throat, and then it had died. Just like that.

  Clearly Carver and Easel gave me more of an advantage then I'd ever realized.

  I walked down the dark metal tunnel, my leather shod soles padding almost silently. I'd descended down a sloping exit at one point to a lower floor. I'd just been searching aimlessly, not even really sure what I was looking for.

  Honestly, what I really needed was knowledge. A how to guide on how to build a body. Dummy's guide to puppetry or Arcane automatons 101. Short of that I'd take anything, any knowledge at all I could get my greedy little puppet hands on.

  As I walked I spotted a light ahead, different from the others. At first I thought the orange red glow coming up from the vent must be sunlight but it didn't feel like it had been long enough for dawn to be here yet.

  I approached cautiously, apprehensive but bubbling over with curiosity. And hope. I moved forward in a crouch, going from making hardly any noise to none at all. Carefully lowering each foot, heel first then rolling to my toes, easy and clean, not even the scuff of leather on metal to let out the tiniest hint of a noise. I couldn't help but smile in the darkness, delighting in my newfound agility even as the fear and adrenaline and a dangerous new mystery pumped through my non-existent veins.

  I approached the vent and knelt at the edge, peering inside. Then I froze, fear and something like disgust coiling in my gut and icing me over.

  Below me was a workshop but nothing like the others I'd seen. This was more like a factory floor, massive and lit by lanterns, the glass encased flames giving the rooms light a flickering, unreal quality.

  Below me were… creatures. I wasn't sure how to classify them at first glance. Some were humanoid, wearing working clothes for the most part, overalls and dungarees with billowy button down shirts, like old fashioned farm hands or something. A few of these wore hats with wide brims that disguised their faces but others didn't and I could see what they were.

  There was a ‘man’ working directly below me. He wore battered blue jeans and a dirty white shirt, loose and with the sleeves rolled up but his arms… his arms were rotten. A sickly blue green colour with scabby breaks in the skin. His hair was greasy and dead looking. He worked at a kind of assembly line with other shambling, zombie creatures. They were assembling some sort of mechanical box. The man would open the box's lid and fit a sort of clockwork piece, a bronze gear attached to a rod. He'd twist and set something inside with a click. Then he'd close the lid. He slid it along and accepted another identical box, then he'd start the whole thing over.

  There were dozens of long tables with more zombie workers assembling clockwork mechanisms. There were forges too, like in the metalworking room. Large open front fireplaces scattered around the edges with smithing tools but instead of zombies the things working these were complete versions of the metal men I'd seen in the workshop. They hammered at glowing metal on anvils, stoked forges with huge, old fashioned lung bellows and lugged finished pieces of metal work over to piles.

  Mixed in amongst these groups of workers were other ‘things’. They walked the corridors between zombie assembly lines and checked over the piles of accumulating metal, no two exactly alike. They were humanoid for the most part, though a few walked on four legs instead of two. Over by the forge to my left was a huge stone man, 12 feet tall easily. It peered over the shoulder of a metal warrior, then it turned with a creak of stone on stone and stomped down the line of forges.

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  Below me trailing between the assembly lines was a massive dog, long and thin, probably 6 feet at the shoulder. It was hairless, seemingly carved from smokey grey white crystal. It poked its snout over a zombie's shoulder, making it freeze in its work, and huffed in a breath through its nose, snuffling at the unfortunate zombie for a second before moving off with a lithe grace.

  And there were more, elemental creatures of stone or wood or metal, most shaped like men but a few like large cats or dogs or other, stranger creatures. Dozens of them spotted about the massive factory, overseeing what had to be hundreds of zombies and metal men. They're like the supervisors or something. What the hell?

  I continued searching about the room, trying to make sense of what was happening. Movement at the end of the room snagged my attention and then glued my eyes. There was something set up against the whole wall there. Some sort of massive machine, made of wood and metal and glass but all stuck together in a hodge podge, looking more like a pile of junk stacked against the wall. It was made up of wooden boxes and metal rods and gears and other things, hard to see, like leather and rope strung between and over it all. Parts were moving, though it was hard to make out at first. Glass openings in the ‘machine’ were lit with dull colours, in reds and oranges and yellows, flickering on and off or glowing bright then dimming, seemingly no order or rhythm to it. Parts of the thing were physically pulsing, the wood and metal bulging then contracting. I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

  Then a lone zombie worker approached the roiling mass, wheeling a wooden trolley with squeaky wheels, one of their assembled contraptions on top. It looked like a large wooden sea chest mixed with an accordion, the lid was rising and falling rhythmically, connected with material like a bellows. The zombie moved up to within 10 feet of the wall but then slowed, seeming scared as it continued to push its burden slowly towards the ‘thing’. Then something snaked out from the machine, a cable, I thought at first but then, as the thing coiled around the mechanism on the trolley it caught the light and I could see it was red and wet, pulsing and slippery. It wrapped the contraption and whipped back with deceptive quickness for its bulk, disappearing into the mass. It had been flesh.

  I almost ran right there, some sort of primal terror welling up in me at seeing this strange collection of machine and creature, with its cogs and gears and slippery tentacles. Leather wrapping and ropes that I know realized where skin and muscle. I would've gagged if I still had a stomach.

  But something held me there. I knelt low, metal chin stuffed between the gaps in the vents grate as I stared at the horror below. I could see a large metal wheel in the center of the mass now, rolling slowly. Its gears turned against other wheels and rods and pulleys that disappeared into the mass of metal and skin and wood and flesh.

  I started to really piece the thing together in my mind. The skin-like material stretched over parts of this thing, old and grey. The muscle-like straps around wheels, coiled like red rope. The coils of vein-like pipes running from one part or another, blue and pulsing slightly, as if filled with blood that was still pumping.

  I don't know how long I lay in the dark ventilation shaft and stared at the macabre scene. All I know was it was too long.

  As I lay there a word rang out. It was like a dozen voices layered over one another, hissing out into the large room and making everything inside it stop cold.

  “Intruder!”

  Everything froze, including me. The zombies all stopped in their lines and the metal men froze where they stood, some with hammers raised to strike.

  The Elementals all stopped too but then these all turned in eerie unison, their heads swiveling to face the grotesque machine against the wall.

  “It's there,” the hissing, many layered voice slithered out into the room once more. A tentacle snaked up, dozens of feet long, out from the machine and pointed straight at the vent in the ceiling, straight at a little wooden puppet laying stupefied. “Kill it!”

  The Elemental’s heads now all swiveled to look up at me.

  “Shit.”

  I ran for hours, feet pounding on the metal, fear pounding through my body. I twisted and turned round random tunnels, taking the slopes down whenever I saw one. I'd been close to the top floor when I'd seen the ‘thing’. I'd descended 6, maybe 7 floors so far. And I just kept running.

  What the hell was that? How did it know I was there? I hadn't made a sound and I didn't breathe or have a heartbeat or anything like that that could've given me away. I kept hearing that cold sibilant voice ringing through that room, “kill it!”. Those weird Elementals all turning to look at me, glowing eyes in metal and wood and crystal faces, all staring straight at me.

  I'd been feeling my vulnerability a lot since arriving here but nothing like that. It had been like being a mouse and seeing the eagle's eyes as it dropped from the sky. Its huge, razor sharp talons stretched out to rip and tear my life from me.

  I finally began to slow from my dead run. I stopped in the tunnel and just listened. Total silence. Nothing.

  I'd been too mad with fear to pay proper attention as I ran. I didn't even know if anyone had followed me. Though considering that evil voice and the way the Elementals had snapped too I was pretty sure they had followed. Or tried to at least. They were probably hunting for me right now, setting zombies and metal warriors to my trail.

  Great, just great. Now what do I do? I leant against the metal wall and dropped my head back with a clang. I could still taste the fear in my nonexistent throat. That ‘thing’, whatever it was, had been absolutely terrifying but there was also something about it. Something almost… familiar?

  Whatever, the new plan’s the same as the old. I stood from the wall and shook myself. I had things to do.

  I began walking again, more cautiously now, listening out all around me for monsters on my trail. The problem was if I did hear something all I could do was run. There was no way I could fight.

  I'd gotten to be a pretty good rat killer sure, I had a real bright future as an exterminator maybe. But I was still tiny. And frail. And oh so very vulnerable. And I was sick of it.

  Time to juice up.

  knowledge. Come back next week to read the next chapter of A Puppets Tale.