Holy carp! I made a pendant. Its been a while. I am feeling a bit of frustration at the moment and that seems to fuel my art. Hence, you all get to be entertained XD and finally...


Story continued from:

[link]

The young clockwork woman locked the door to the grand hall behind her quickly. She knew that there would be a lot of confusion out there, but little action in response to it.

Sirinni had already began walking past the rows of sentient tapestry when she noticed *it*. Something about the room was specifically different, like the illumination around her was struggling. The lights were... convulsing?

She paused briefly to take a closer look at some movement near her. She tilted her face and moved in. She could see tiny spiderlike macines unplugging and replugging themselves into the complex woven circuits of the tapestry. They were frantic in a way she had never witnessed on other sentient tapestries before.

Was it something to do with processing Ednath?!

A shiver ran down her spine as she slowly came to the realization that screams of terror were coming from the crowd outside in the grand hall.

She looked down at the Electri-core in her palm and frowned. She had been looking forward to talking to him, but now things seemed suddenly dangerous and complicated in unexpected ways! She stuffed Ednath back into her satchel and looked around the room as if it would help her to decide a proper course of action to take!

The flickering of the lights was becoming more and taken with a red hue. While the other colours of the tapestry flickered away independently, every single crimson light flashed in unison, creating a darker and more foreboding space as the seconds crept past her.

A quick series of loud pops echoed in from the grand hall.

Sirrini was just about to turn the handle to peek out into the hall when someone or some thing began pounding on the door and screaming out with a tintinabulatory voice.

Shuddering in fear now, she sobbed through a scream and began running mindlessly to the other entrance of the now nearly fully crimson lit sentient tapestry room.

Outside in the hallway, there was a mass of confusion. shapes moved in the darkness. The floor lights had gone out and the clanking and rattling of clockwork bodies filled the air with an unholy clatter beyond just the shouts and cries for help.

Sirrini's mind had never been prepared for such a thing! Nearly in a mindless state of shock, she moved as fast as she could through the crowd. This was one time her size was to her extreme advantage, although she still had to contend with larger bodies smashing into her or pushing her around, she seemed like she was moving quicker than the rest.

There was no time to consider what had just happened, although she feared the worst. The city itself had become infected with the nanomachine virus when it had absorbed Ednath's consciousness.

The torso of a Niminian woman slid across the floor and came to a rest before her. The ladies eyes flashed for a moment and then fell on Sirinni as they faded out. A sick repeating clicking sound came from her where an even tick-tock should have been. The woman's mouth worked silently for a few seconds like she was saying something, and then she was still.

Sirinni looked away and bent down to take the poor woman's silver winged Aerinaria necklace off. Her family would want her memory storage unit to be preserved, and Sirinni had a feeling that anything left down in this hall was going to be lost for good.

Feeling utterly hollow and numb, Sirrini finally reached the lift at the end of the hallway, and found it moving up and down quickly, with a few half crushed bodies twitching and leaking oil underneath it.

"Oh no!" she moaned and felt a feeling in her chest like her mainspring had suddenly come uncoiled.

A surge of the crowd pushed her violently towards the lift. She pushed back on the bottom edge of it with all her might, but it pulled up and away too rapidly. Her fingers wrapped around it instinctively and the lift pulled her upwards toward the ceiling before she could react accordingly.