The Atlantian System: Creation

Shaking the cobwebs from her brain, she did a quick check for any broken bones, but other than a scrapped cheek and hands that were quickly healing, she was fine.

Satisfied that she wasn’t too hurt, She turned her head this way and that as if to confirm that she was, in fact, on the roof of HiTec and not on the pavement below.

“Holy crap,” Leta looked down at her fingers where the last lingering scabs on her palms quickly flecked away to reveal perfectly smooth, healed skin below, “I can use Magician’s Hands now to lift me.”

Her wonder was short-lived as the sound of an old door handle rattling as loud as the bay doors of an airplane hanger had her nearly jolting out of her skin.

Leta stumbled around the corner just as the door grated open and short; humanoid figures began to pour out.

Their skin color ranged from green to mustard gold and red, each a different shade from the others.

Though they would barely reach her thigh, they looked sinister and vicious, with sharp teeth like some deep sea predator. Their fingers were long and tipped with pointed nails closer to talons, and their skin looked like wet leather that could have been found on a toad. They had broad, pronounced foreheads like beluga whales as if to compensate for a much larger brain capacity and large pointed ears nearly as wide as their heads. Their lips were so thin they were almost nonexistent, and they had two slit nostrils where a nose should be.

Most sported tiny machine gears on chains as jewelers, while others had taken computer parts such as wired and motherboard fragments to weave around their torn fabric loincloths. Though each was a different color and had decorated themselves differently, every one of them had a pair of leathery wings at the base of their shoulder blades.

Pointed ears and folded wings twitched as the creatures crawled forward cautiously, some on hands and knees as they looked about, chattering among themselves.

As shocking as the gremlins appeared, Leta was more surprised when she could hear them speaking.

“Hot! Hot! Too hot!” One hissed as it picked one clawed paw up from the pebble-covered floor, which was practically scorching after being heated by the summer sun all day. Its voice was unevenly pitched, like a child halfway through puberty, but she quickly recognized the creature’s American accent.

“Idiot!” Another chastised the first gremlin, “Hurry and look.”

A third crept forward with its wing brought up to cover its head, hopping from one foot to another as it moved closer to the roof edge.

“What is?” A fourth growled from the safety of the stairwell.

“Transformer blew. Transformer really blew. Sparks and fire everywhere.”

“What caused?”

“Dunno. Can’t tell. It broke, though.”

“Drow gonna be mad.” The one that had tried to crawl on the hot rooftop worried, scratching at its chin nervously.

“Drow always mad.” The one at the stairwell shot back, “Not our fault. Accident.”

“What we do?” The lookout at the roof’s edge asked, “No cameras. No power. No talking.”

“Mundane take care.” The stairwell gremlin Leta was beginning to assume was the leader of the bunch retorted, “Big fire?”

Lookout nodded, “Big fire. Lots sparks.”

“Then they come quick.” The leader’s voice was undisturbed by the sounds of cars blaring below as smoke from the transformer filled the air with the smell of burning grease and ozone, “We do nothing.”

“No fix?”

“No fix.”

The other gremlins groaned as if they’d been excited to get their paws into a new mechanism.

“I no go back.” One of them with a belt across his chest grunted, “Drow is dumb. Treat us like rats.”

“Yeah. Drow big and dark.” Another chimed in from somewhere in the stairwell, “Think they scary. They just dumb. Think tech is silly.” As the gremlins argued about going below, Leta tried to peek around enough to do a head count. She could see four on the roof and hear the leader and the other one in the stairwell.

‘That’s six. Atreus said there were seven. Where’s the other one?’

“Hang on,” One of them sniffed the air, “It taste funny.” Its wings restlessly fluttered against its back as its head roared about like an owl, its slit nostrils widening as it took in the air.

“Funny how?” One growled as the banter on the merits of messing with Drow was quickly forgotten. The rest of the gremlins began to look around uneasily.

“Funny bad.” The first replied.

“I smell, too.”

‘Crap,’ Leta hadn’t guessed that they would have such a good sense of smell. ‘Jig is up, I guess. Time to play.’