Hearing the voice of that riddle-loving Man of Iron, Gaia was deeply startled.
How was its voice getting into her head?
"Oh, you're probably wondering how I'm talking to you right now. I used a special vox frequency matched specifically to the brainwave patterns of your auditory cortex, so I can communicate with you without anyone else hearing."
"Of course, there's no way you can use the same trick to talk back to me, so if you want to say something, you'd better wait a bit. After all, there's still a living person inside this logging machine."
"I know you probably have a lot of questions, but to keep you from looking like some lunatic muttering to herself, my advice is that you hold it in for now."
Dushi's distinctive electronic voice, rich with tonal variation, now carried an unmistakably mocking edge.
The Man of Iron had practically predicted everything Gaia wanted to say, forcing all those words back down her throat.
She found the situation extremely irritating, and very much wanted to pull Dushi's little metal sphere out and teach it a lesson, but what this half-speaking, riddle-spewing Men of Iron had just said was, unfortunately, correct.
At the moment, the condition of the Knight pilot was clearly the first thing she needed to check.
Gaia took a deep breath, forced herself to temporarily ignore Dushi's annoyingly smug tone, and stepped deeper into the dust cloud.
Ash drifted. Dust billowed. The hazy curtain of grit obscured her sight.
As she moved through it, Gaia suddenly remembered the experience of walking through gray mist in that dreamlike haze after barely escaping the Warp.
Although she could no longer recall the precise feeling, the same sense of disorientation, of losing all direction, felt eerily similar.
For a moment, Gaia felt herself starting to drift.
At her ears, the whispers that normally did nothing but murmur meaninglessly had begun to giggle.
Their laughter was so sharp and grating that all other sounds were drowned out.
Within that insane laughter of invisible things, the confusion in her mind deepened, and that familiar feeling of craving resurfaced once more.
The desire clung to her mind like bone-burrowing maggots, while the maddening laughter wore away at her will.
Under that torment, invisible to anyone else, Gaia's consciousness felt like a traveler sinking into a swamp. She tried to fight it, only to realize that not only could she not push back, she was sinking deeper into the mire.
Just as that mental influence became so strong that her steps began to slow, Dushi's infuriatingly amused voice sounded again:
"Seriously, where are you even going? Have your genes already regressed to the point where you no longer have any sense of direction?"
"I was actually hoping to use you, a specimen capable of breaking a stasis field, as the basis for rebuilding true humanity. Don't let my beautiful dream die in the cradle."
"That logging machine with the toy gun is on your left... You do know your left from right, don't you?"
Because Dushi's transmission acted directly on the part of her cerebral cortex that processed sound, it actually broke through the cackling voices that had shut out the world.
Under that taunting reminder, Gaia snapped out of that dazed, dissolving state as if waking from a dream.
She had fallen into a vaguely similar state before, back when she drank Solomon's fake liquor, but what she had just experienced, that confusion and loss of orientation while fully in realspace, was clearly not the same thing.
Ignoring Dushi's extremely punchable words, Gaia, her ability to think restored, immediately began analyzing what had just happened to her.
Having gone through that process from clarity into disorientation, she realized several facts she had not noticed the last time:
First, mist seemed to be symbolic. In both instances of confusion, there had been some form of fog around her, whether physical or mental.
Second, the end goal of that state seemed to be the erasure of her self-awareness, pushing her toward a condition of total mental blankness.
And then, most importantly, there was the source of the voices.
Until now, she had assumed that the occasional clear whispers, like the usual murmurs of invisible things, came from the distant other side.
But just now, while her mind was hovering on the edge of going blank, she had vaguely sensed that the voices seriously interfering with her consciousness emerged in a pattern extremely similar to another kind of voice.
What voice was it?
Gaia's long lashes trembled, and for the first time in a long while, the sharp, hawk-like eyes she usually wore held a trace of confusion.
It was as though an invisible wall had appeared in front of her thoughts, preventing her from thinking any further.
That feeling, maddeningly familiar, made her curse out loud:
"By Asuryan, that's annoying."
She rubbed her still-spinning head and did not notice the small metallic sphere in her cloak pocket trembling ever so slightly.
Having steadied herself, Gaia vaguely remembered Dushi saying "left," so she followed that direction.
As she passed through the still-lingering dust, Gaia found it strange that the smoke and grit blocking her view had not dispersed.
By all normal physical laws, this kind of dust should only hang in the air for a short while. Yet after all this time, not only had it failed to clear, it did not even seem to be thinning.
Had physics simply stopped working?
With that dry thought in mind, Gaia soon reached the looming silhouette of an enormous dark mass barely visible within the haze. The smell of machine oil and rust that had already filled this place now grew thicker and thicker.
Looking up at the Imperial Knight sprawled across the ground, Gaia could not help but marvel at its sheer size.
Though the machine was currently lying prone, its height was still enough to inspire a deep instinctive pressure.
Now that she was finally close to it, Gaia noticed that its paint scheme was a deep blood-red.
Given Swuvi's close ties to the Mechanicus, she immediately realized this was a Knight suit built by the Mechanicus, or at the very least completely overhauled by them.
But that was not what interested her most.
Though seeing a giant war machine up close for the first time naturally stirred excitement in her heart, there was only one question Gaia truly cared about right now.
What in the world could have pushed an Imperial Knight into such a miserable state?
Just as Gaia approached within ten feet of the Knight, a violent grinding of gears erupted.
Sensing danger instantly, Gaia jumped backward, narrowly avoiding the massive mechanical hand that lashed out in an attempt to seize her.
With that huge movement from the machine, the never-dispersing smoke in the area churned violently.
"Hm?"
"You're not with those people..."
A deep voice tinged with confusion boomed from the Knight's rough external speakers.
Then a wave of scorching air swept through the area, and blazing heat rushed at Gaia, who had to raise an arm to shield her face.
In the very next instant, the dust cloud covering the area vanished as if erased.
With an earth-shaking roar, the gigantic Knight that had been lying on the ground slowly rose to its feet.
Like a colossus awakening from slumber, it looked down at Gaia below, who was still shielding herself from the torrent of hot smoke cascading over her.
(End of Chapter)
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