Chapter 1009 (1/2)
They came at night, without any fanfare to speak of.
Tatiana stood at the Southern wall of the Erickson Steel compound and looked down over the sparse trees and grassland below her. A small wind came, lightly touching Tatiana’s hair and causing the grass below to sway. The only noise in the night was the soft rustle of grass. Then they arrived.
The first group came silently, which such abruptness that Tatiana had to blink. These Riders were different than the ones she had seen in the past. Their steeds were tall and long-legged, possesses none of the brutal horns or preter-natural agility that she remembered. They simply looked like lumpy horses, calmly grazing the grass below the compound’s walls.
These initial Riders kept their arms folded and weapons sheathed as they studied her, almost a dozen of them in all. Then, seemingly satisfied, they turned and regarded the dark grassland behind them.
Next came the rumbling. It built slowly, while Tatiana waited alone on top of the wall and the dozen outriders milled about below her. It was a hum, then a buzz, the a rumble, and then a roar.
Out of that rumbling darkness next skittered a strange variant of the Riders with additional legs and a ridiculous amount of mobility. They hopped and scrambled up toward Erickson Steel’s walls. They didn’t move in formation, but came in some sort of strange circling wave. As Tatiana looked down over them, her eyes were drawn into their beguiling shifts and woven movements of their current-like formation.
Then, as the roar had reached a volume that it had begun to resonate in Tatiana’s chest, the final column careened out of the darkness. These Riders were perched atop hulking monsters of muscle, moving rigidly in tight groups and columns. Despite their obvious power, they managed to control their momentum to an incredible degree.
As they came closer, their wide hoves smashing the various undergrowth in the sparsely vegetated landscape, Tatiana had a brief moment of fear where she believed they would simply smash into Erickson Steel’s walls. The reinforced concrete would crack and disintegrate, and then the Riders would continue charging, leaving a wide swathe of destruction through the core facilities of Erickson Steel…
They would not stop. They were more freight train than an actual train, bound together in a tight knot of weight and momentum.
But of course, they slowed before that could happen, falling into an easy canter up to the gate. The rumbling drifted off to silence, leaving the night empty except for rustling grass.
Tatiana’s mouth quirked upward. “Was this for dramatic effect?”
“Nah,” Randidly leaned against the wall next to her, having simply appeared there a few moments ago as though he had been standing there for hours. Tatiana privately believed he was relying on pure Agility rather than stealth, but it was hard to tell with Randidly. “Mostly this was to see how tight control I can keep on them if I make my orders explicit. Honestly… it went better than expected. One less reason to worry about what comes next.”
Tatiana opened her mouth to reply, but then she paused. Narrowing her eyes, she carefully examined the Randidly next to her. Same short black hair, same lithe musculature, same piercing emerald eyes… but standing beside him, Tatiana felt like this was not the Randidly that she had once known. The air… felt different.“You… how long have you been away?”
Long enough to completely lose the desperate edge he had before… Tatiana thought idly. Or has he simply gotten better about hiding it?
“Quite a while,” Randidly chuckled. “A year. And I’ve learned a lot in that time. For one thing… ah, by the way, I have a project that is going to take up a lot of space; is there any land around here that we own but we haven’t built anything…?”
Tatiana opened her mouth. The thing he had learned but then got distracted from wasn’t patience or elaborate manners. She then closed her mouth. She reconsidered her question. She opened it again. “Weren’t you the one who bought all this land…? And how much space do you need?”
Randidly ignored the first question. “Quite a bit. The more the better. If I need to, I can simply dig down into the Earth to open up enough space… but I’ll need to do that later for the final assembly. It will be better if I have some surface area to begin with.”
“I’m sure we can find you something….” Tatiana rubbed her temples. “By the way, both the Order Machina and the Order Ducis arrived earlier today. I sent away Machina, but the Order Ducis is within the compound, per your orders. Will they also need some sort of base area to set up a headquarters…?”
Randidly grinned down at the Riders who continued to stand without any movement as the two discussed. “Heh, more than a headquarters. They are going to be setting up a training camp nearby in addition to a headquarters within the Erickson Steel compound… So yea, we will need space for that too. Will it be easy to expand the walls here?”
Tatiana sighed. “So basically, all you want right now is more land…? Well that seems doable but… the government is insisting that we give the land back to them and rent it from now until we move away from this location. They want to make a Village here, for Erickson Steel. Or at least that’s what they claim, but I bet it's just to get a leash on us.”
“Huh. Well, that should be fine…” Then Randidly smiled wolfishly. “Just make sure we own the mineral rights to the land. The rest will work itself out in the next month.”