The compass pointed forward.

  So we walked straight ahead. I didn't have any other clues, and the ravine didn't exactly come with a map.

  The bridge from the teleport platform led to this narrow path along the left wall. Maybe four feet wide. Metal. Bolted together. The kind of walkway that looks fine until you notice there's no railing and a pretty serious drop on your right.

  Mira was floating. Lucky her.

  Kitten Cowboy walked right down the middle like he owned the place. His tail was doing that perfect balance thing.

  The hare was not having a good time.

  "This is fine," the hare said from behind me. It was absolutely not fine. The hare was plastered against the left wall, shuffling sideways. Ears flat. One eye closed. The other one locked on the drop with pure terror.

  "Look forward," I said.

  "My eyes are forward," it said.

  "One eye is forward. The other one's staring at the drop."

  "I'm keeping an eye on it."

  "That's not helping."

  "IT'S THE ONLY THING KEEPING ME ALIVE."

  You can't argue with hare.

  The path went on for a while.

  Long enough for me to start noticing stuff. The walls were moving when you looked close — that slow breathing thing I'd seen from the platform. Up close it was way creepier. The metal wasn't just settling like old buildings do. It was deliberate.

  I tried not to think about it.

  Sparks kept falling from the ceiling. Constantly. A few hit the path ahead and bounced into the void. One landed on my shoulder. I smacked it off. Left a hot spot on my skin but didn't burn.

  I could see the giant magnetic towers from here — three of them across the ravine, stuck to the opposite walls at different heights. They all hummed. Every time I got within like thirty feet of one, my brick did this weird thing. Just a little tug toward the tower, like it wanted to go say hi.

  Good to know.

  Eventually the path got wider.

  Not all at once — I wasn't watching and then suddenly, boom, highway. The path got safer, then scarier again, then I looked down and there was actual floor instead of a two-hundred-foot drop.

  Actual floor.

  Still metal. Still bolted together. It stretched between the ravine walls and went farther than I could see. The ceiling was lower here — still high, just not ridiculous. It looked like something got built under the ravine instead of just hanging off the sides.

  The compass needle pointed straight at it.

  "Is that a building?" Mira said.

  I stepped off the path onto the floor. It rang under my destroyed boot. Like stepping on a drum.

  I thought about using my Spectral Thread to repair. But I couldn't decide—should I use it on my sash or on my boots?

  Whatever. I'll think about it later.

  I looked at what we'd found.

  Big. Wide. Made of iron and bolted plates, same stuff as everything else but thicker. No windows — just flat walls with vents up top and these massive rolling doors in front. Three of them. Each one big enough to drive a car through.

  The doors were open.

  Inside was dark.

  There was a sign above the doors. Metal letters bolted to the wall:

  IRON RAVINE FACILITY NO. 4 — LOGISTICS AND DISPATCH

  "Warehouse," I said.

  "Factory," Mira said.

  "Warehouse-factory," I said.

  "Factory-warehouse," she said.

  We could've done this all day, so I gave up.

  I stood at one of the open doors and looked inside.

  The inside was massive. Way bigger than it should've been based on the outside. Which meant either some construction trick I didn't get or magic I didn't want to deal with.

  The floor was smoother but still metal. Thick columns everywhere, holding up a ceiling full of chains and industrial lights. Lamps hanging on long cables. Some were on, some were dead. Made these pools of yellow light with long shadows between them.

  Crates everywhere. And I mean everywhere. That's why it looked so huge. The crates were enormous. Stacked three, four high in places. Each one the size of a small car or bigger.

  In the back, more stuff. Things under tarps. Equipment. Pipes along the walls. Something really big and still in the far corner that I decided to ignore for now.

  The compass wasn't freaking out. Just sat in my hand, needle pointing somewhere deeper in.

  "Something's in here," I said.

  "Oh yeah, something's definitely in here," Mira said, landing next to me.

  The hare had calmed down now that there were walls on both sides and no visible drop. It sniffed around. Nose twitching like crazy for a second, then stopped.

  "I don't smell anything," it said.

  "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" I asked.

  "If I can't smell anything weird, maybe there's nothing weird."

  "Or whatever's in here doesn't have a smell."

  The hare stared at me.

  "I really wish you hadn't said that," it said, trembling again.

  I walked in.

  The floor went pong under my boot. Nice sound.

  I walked down the first row of crates, looking around. Some had their lids cracked open. One was fully open and empty except for packing material that looked like rust. Same color and texture anyway. Maybe that's what it was.

  "What do you think this place is for?" Mira asked, floating next to me.

  "Shipping, probably," I said.

  "Shipping what?"

  "Mystery stuff in giant boxes to mystery places," I said. "Very mysterious."

  We walked deeper into the warehouse.

  Past the first row of crates, then the second. The lights started getting weird here. The flickering was making these weird light patterns between the crates and it was starting to bug me.

  The compass kept pointing forward.

  I looked around while we walked. Checked the gaps between crates, looked up at the stacks, watched the shadows move when the lights flickered.

  Kitten Cowboy slowed down.

  He was being more careful now. Taking slow steps, leaning forward a bit, sometimes testing the ground with one paw before putting his weight on it. His ears were moving all over the place, listening to everything.

  Cats just know when something's off.

  I slowed down too.

  Mira looked at me and I nodded up at the ceiling. She looked up, checking it out.

  The hare went totally silent. It was pressed right up against my left boot like it wanted to crawl inside.

  We stopped between two stacks of crates.

  Everything was quiet.

  Then I heard it.

  Super soft. Super fast. Coming from somewhere on the right, behind some crates.

  A giggle.

  Short and snorty, then it cut off. Like someone trying not to laugh, failing, then instantly regretting it.

  I stopped.

  Waited.

  Another giggle. Different spot this time. Left side, higher up. Definitely someone trying to be quiet and completely failing at it. That high-pitched, squeaky sound. Not an animal, not a machine. A giggle.

  Then a third one from farther back.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I knew what was happening. Whoever was giggling had been watching us, following us through the crates, and was trying really hard not to laugh because they were about to do something.

  Suddenly I noticed everything at the same time. The flickering light on the left showing two big shapes that weren't crates, that were the wrong shape for crates, that had wheels. The sound of an engine running so quiet I'd totally missed it. The smell the hare said wasn't there, but now I could smell it. Rubber and oil and something alive under it.

  "GET BACK," I yelled, grabbing Mira's arm and yanking us behind the nearest stack.

  The hare was already gone. Didn't wait to be told. Just ran, ears flat, moved so fast it basically disappeared.

  Kitten Cowboy pulled out his gun.

  And then the crates on the left exploded.

  The crates crumpled and flew sideways. The top two went airborne, crashed to the floor like twenty feet away and broke open, spilling packing stuff everywhere like confetti.

  A forklift drove through the gap it just made and stopped.

  It was bigger than a normal forklift.

  Let me be clear. When I say "bigger," I mean it actually mattered. This one was tall as a two-story house. So wide it could barely fit through the warehouse doors with like a few inches to spare on each side. The metal forks sticking out front were as long as I was tall and made of iron so dark I couldn't even see the tips in the shadows.

  Sitting in the driver's seat (the little enclosed cabin with thick glass windows) was a goblin.

  Big knobby ears and big shiny eyes and that greenish-gray goblin skin. This one was wearing overalls. Tiny overalls with little brass buttons. And it had on a hard hat that kept sliding forward over its ears and it had to keep pushing it back up.

  It looked angry and happy at the same time, which apparently goblins can just do.

  It made a sound. Pure excitement.

  "KEHEHEHEHEHE!"

  Two more forklifts crashed through crate stacks on both sides.

  The second one came from the right, knocking over a whole row, crates rolling and bouncing everywhere. The third one dropped down from somewhere. I had no idea how, didn't see how, no clue how a forklift even got up that high. But it dropped and slammed into the floor with this huge metallic CLANG and just sat there with its engine running loud. It also had a goblin inside, also grinning, also wearing a hard hat at a weird angle.

  All of us in a warehouse that was now kind of on fire because one of the crashes hit a lamp and an open crate of something flammable.

  "You picked the wrong person, goblins. Never drive forklifts at someone who's already driven forklifts at someone!"

  One of the goblins revved its engine in a way that clearly meant something.

  "They're doing the whole dramatic pause thing," I said.

  "Should we run?"

  "We can't outrun a forklift," I said. "Even a big one."

  The hare peeked out from between two crates on my left. Just its face. Its eyes were super wide in that way they got when it had thought about all the options and they were all bad.

  The first forklift started moving.

  Not fast. Turns out goblins are careful drivers. The thing rolled forward at a speed that was meant to be scary. Slow enough to give you time to really think about what was gonna happen, fast enough that you couldn't just stand there.

  The metal forks were at chest height.

  "Mira," I said. "Light it up."

  She knew what to do.

  Mira's hand came up from behind my shoulder, already glowing. She made a small fire bolt in her palm and threw it.

  It hit the front of the forklift.

  Small impact. A puff of flame. Some burn marks on the paint. The goblin inside looked down at the burn mark on its hood.

  Then it looked back up.

  Then it started laughing.

  Not a normal laugh. The kind that just keeps getting louder. The giggling from before, but fully unleashed now, pouring out of the cabin through the glass.

  "Oh, that's really annoying," Mira said.

  "Do it again," I said.

  "It didn't work..."

  "The glass," I said. "Not the metal. The glass."

  She looked at the cabin. Glass windows on three sides, held in by metal frames. The fire bolt was small enough to fit through the gap in the frame if she...

  She threw again, at an angle.

  The bolt went through the top edge where air gets in and hit the dashboard inside.

  The interior caught fire.

  This time the fire was serious. The bolt hit something flammable in the cab (a rag, a map, something) and the whole interior lit up in a second. Flames spread across the dashboard, up the side panels, across the ceiling of the cab.

  The goblin's laugh turned into a scream.

  It tried to get out. The door handle. It couldn't find the door handle. It was thrashing around inside the burning cab, hands smacking the glass, leaving dark smears. The fire caught its overalls. Then its hair. Then the screaming got louder and less coherent and the forklift started rolling sideways without direction because nobody was steering it, just an engine running with a burning goblin inside.

  It hit a crate stack, and the impact slammed the cab door open from the outside.

  The goblin fell out.

  It hit the floor and stopped moving. The flames hadn't gone out. The smell was awful. I'd smelled worse but it wasn't something you got used to.

  The forklift rolled another ten feet and died against a column.

  "That" Mira said, looking at the cab, "was gruesome."

  "Yeah…" I said. “Deserved.”

  Neither of us said anything else about it.

  The second forklift, which had been doing a flanking maneuver and wasn't watching forklift number one swerve, crashed into its back end with a sound like a car wreck in a metal factory.

  Goblin two, thrown forward by the impact, slammed face-first into the steering wheel. It came up with its nose bent wrong and blood running freely over its lips, soaking into those tiny overalls. It was still conscious. Still pissed. But slower.

  The third forklift came around from behind.

  Kitten Cowboy had been waiting for his shot.

  He took it when the third forklift rolled into view. He was sitting on top of a stack of crates (four of them, stacked up) and I have no idea when he climbed up there. Maybe fifteen seconds ago? Cats are sneaky like that. He was just sitting there with his legs dangling off the edge, gun out, totally calm.

  Then he went still.

  Like, really still. I'm pretty sure he stopped breathing.

  The third goblin was driving straight at me and hadn't even looked up.

  Two seconds.

  He fired.

  The shot didn't just crack the front window. It went through the already-weakened glass and hit the goblin in the upper chest. The goblin jerked back hard into the seat. The forklift immediately lost direction — the wheel spun free, the engine still running — and the whole machine drifted sideways and crashed into a column hard enough to buckle the front chassis.

  The cab went quiet.

  Inside, the goblin wasn't moving.

  Kitten Cowboy blew on his gun.

  I started running.

  Okay so here's the thing about improvising weapons.

  You don't need some big plan. You just look at what's around and make fast choices before everything goes wrong.

  Right now I had: three forklifts (one burning, one crashed into a column, one damaged). A ton of crates. Metal floor. Chains hanging from the ceiling. Some lamps on cables, half of them broken. Crate lids all over the place. And a bunch of metal bolts that fell out of one of the broken crates (each one about thumb-sized).

  I grabbed a handful.

  Opened my hand and used Pocket Sand.

  The skill works with anything. Sand, rocks, whatever. It takes what you've got (if there's nothing in your hand, it sprays anything accessible in your environment) and launches it out. The bolts shot from my hand in a wide arc and hit goblin two right in the face. Blood from its broken nose spread sideways. The goblin grabbed its face with both hands, staggering out of the cab, making this wet gurgling sound through what used to be a nose.

  I ran at forklift two.

  The goblin was halfway down the ladder on the side when I reached it. I grabbed it by the back of its overalls and yanked. The brass clasps held, so the whole goblin came with them. I threw it to the ground. It hit hard, rolled, tried to get up. Moved slower than before. The nose was bad and getting worse.

  It raised its fists anyway. Tiny fists, all blood-slicked. Still trying.

  I pulled the brick.

  I hit the goblin with it.

  Once. That was enough.

  The goblin's head snapped sideways and it dropped face-down on the metal floor and didn't get up. The brass clasps on its overalls caught the light. Its hard hat was somewhere on the ground two feet away. There was blood on the brick.

  I wiped it on my boot. The boot had holes in it but it still worked for wiping.

  I was already moving toward the remaining forklift.

  The hare was still alive.

  I'd lost track of it. It always went quiet during fights, which made sense. It wasn't a fighter. It stayed alive by not being where the fighting was.

  Right now it was on top of a stack of crates three rows back, watching everything with huge eyes and ears sticking straight up.

  Then it looked down.

  Goblin two was dead. Goblin one had burned. But goblin three — the one from the column crash — had not died from Kitten Cowboy's shot. Badly hurt, moving wrong, one arm hanging. But it had hauled itself out of the destroyed cab and was dragging itself between the crates, leaving a dark smear on the floor behind it.

  It found the crate stack the hare was on and started climbing. One-handed. Slow. But climbing.

  The hare and the goblin made eye contact.

  "AAAAAAHHHH!" the hare screamed.

  The goblin didn't say anything. It was past talking.

  The hare ran. The goblin climbed. Not a chase, really — the goblin was too wrecked for a real chase. But it was persistent in the specific way that things are persistent when they've stopped caring about consequences.

  The hare got to the edge of the crate stack. Saw the drop. Turned around.

  The goblin pulled itself over the top edge.

  They were face to face.

  The hare had very strong hind legs. Built for it. The kick connected directly and with everything the hare had, and it wasn't a small amount.

  The goblin went off the edge of the crate stack.

  The drop was about fifteen feet to the metal floor.

  The impact when it landed was bad.

  It didn't get up after that.

  The hare looked down at it for a long time.

  "I didn't know you could do that," I said.

  "Neither did I."

  [SKILL ACQUIRED: KICK (LEVEL 1)]

  The hare has unlocked a new combat skill through necessity and panic. A powerful hind-leg strike capable of launching enemies backward.

  Mira landed next to me.

  The warehouse smelled like burning and copper. The lights kept flickering. One of the crate stacks we'd knocked into was still slowly leaning, making this long low creak that was going to resolve one way or another eventually.

  "Is that it?" she asked.

  "I think so," I said.

  She looked at the first forklift for a second. Then looked away.

  "I kind of respect how dedicated they were," she said, and I could tell she half meant it.

  "They really committed to the forklift thing," I agreed.

  I checked the compass.

  Still pointing forward. Deeper into the warehouse, past the mess and the wrecked machinery and the smell.

  I put the compass away.

  Rolled my shoulder. The one I'd landed on when I jumped out. Hurt but still worked.

  "Alright," I said.

  I picked up one of the big bolts from the scattered crates and put it in my pocket. Never know when you'll need something.

  "Let's go."

  [COMBAT COMPLETE]

  [ENEMIES DEFEATED: FORKLIFT GOBLIN x3]

  Pocket Sand (Level 3): Quest progress: 7/10

  Delayed Reaction (Level 4): Activated.

  [EXPERIENCE GAINED: 150 XP]

  [TOTAL: 665 / 4,000]

  [ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: "Forklift Certified"]

  Operated heavy industrial equipment against enemies. Safety violations: Several.

  Reward: Forklift Driving

  [SKILL ACQUIRED: FORKLIFT DRIVING (LEVEL 1)]

  You have gained basic proficiency in operating forklifts and similar heavy machinery. Maneuverability increased. Ramming damage bonus applied when using industrial vehicles in combat.

  We kept walking.

  The warehouse stretched on longer than it had any right to. More crates. More broken lights. The metal walkway eventually widened into a proper floor, and the ceiling got higher, and the whole space opened up into something that felt less like storage and more like a showroom.

  Then we saw it.

  The room ahead was massive. Cathedral-sized, if cathedrals were made of corrugated metal and had oil stains on the floor. And right in the center, lit up by a ring of overhead spotlights like it was on display at a car show, was a forklift.

  But not just a forklift.

  This thing was just slightly smaller than the ones we'd fought. Maybe ten percent less mass. The kind of machine that looked like it was built to lift serious weight. The paint job was pristine — bright yellow with black safety stripes, no rust, no dents. The forks themselves were thick and solid, each one about as wide as my forearm.

  The lights overhead made it gleam.

  "Oh," Mira said.

  "What do we have here," I said.

  Kitten Cowboy tilted his head. His ears went forward. Interested.

  "It's beautiful," I said.

  I walked up to it. Slowly. Like approaching something sacred.

  The cab was higher up than the others. I had to climb a short ladder on the side just to see in. The seat was padded. Actual padding. The steering wheel was wrapped in some kind of grip tape.

  There was even a cupholder.

  I let out a low whistle.

  "What are you doing?" Mira asked from below.

  "Appreciating the beauty." I said.

  I ran my hand along the edge of the cab. The metal was cool and smooth. Just a really, really nice piece of machinery sitting in the middle of a warehouse for no reason I could figure out.

  I climbed down and stepped back to look at the whole thing.

  The forklift sat there under the lights like it was waiting for someone.

  I looked at Mira. Then at Kitten Cowboy. Then at the hare.

  "Well," I said, "we've got a new vehicle."

  Mira blinked. "We're taking it?"

  "Obviously."

  "Do you even know if it runs?"

  "I got Forklift Driving Level 1," I said, patting the side of the cab. "I think we'll figure it out."

  Kitten Cowboy jumped up onto the hood and sat down, tail curling around his paws. He looked at me. Then at the forklift. Then back at me.

  He nodded once.

  I climbed back into the cab and sat down in the driver's seat. The cushion was very comfortable. I put my hands on the wheel.

  And I started driving.