ENGINEERS CREATE THAT WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN

Ulrik's bronze gaze diverted from his task of building a mechanized gate for just a brief moment, but what he saw held his attention longer than he had anticipated. A winged runt appeared to be escaping. With a grim expression on his lips and a violent flash of his leonine tail, the engineer abandoned his task for the moment and urged the thickly corded muscles on his massive frame into a brisk trot. The stallion's ears ticked forward, but not in an expression of pleasure or joy; no, the attention he was giving was malicious, offering a brutal juxtaposition to a gesture normally considered gentle.

Cloven hooves carried him to the side of the mountain, thick snow swirling around his figure and catching in dark lashes. The engineer strode up boldly next to one he recognized from a long time ago to be Descaro. He and the bay had fought for the supremacy of unicorns on different shores before, and he offered a quick nod of recognition. A sky of stars and color illuminated the mountain as arcs of shock pierced the sky with resounding cracks. The rumble of thunder echoed through his chest and awakened him.

The machine at his heels struggled against the cold of the snow and the wetness that seeped into even sealed circuits. A whirring noise could be heard faintly above the roar of nature. With a swift tick from his lips, Ulrik shut of the machine, having found a tiny little switch that provided remote power to the metal hound. Descaro taunted the fiery winged one with words, and the engineer offered a slight smirk in response.

His mind gathered the correct information from the mountain, scouring for a path that his hooves could manage without feathers. Ulrik sprang to life, curling his hindquarters beneath him and launching his body up on a ledge. Cloven hooves skittered across the snowy surface, but the toes provided him the stability of an over-sized goat. With a slight grunt, he wound his way up the mountain, bounding, climbing and skittering until he finally reached an adjacent ledge to where the pegasus, he hoped, was still waiting.

"Get back down there where you belong, skyrat," Ulrik growled, his voice deep and graveled with a thick, brutal accent. Bronze eyes bored into red with little ounce of sanity. Ulrik was indeed mad. Wildly mad. Genius often bordered on the line of madness, and he managed to straddle that line. "You do not want me to make you. Ask the beloved seer of the Throat, Cassiopeia, if you do not believe me." Was she still sporting that limp from her encounter?