Knuckles stood up and took stock of their surroundings. They were high on the volcano's windward slopes, the dark ground made darker by the angle of the sun, already below the island and sinking below the surface's horizon a mile below. Close enough to the lava fields that an orange red glow from the exposed magma supplied some replacement for the fading daylight.
Eggman was not here. Knuckles could feel a tug, a call, towards the Master Emerald. An uneasy disturbance, but nothing like the frantic need it would have been had there been an actual enemy presence here. Indeed it could almost be just his own anxiety reflected back at him, or some reaction to his recent absence.
Still, he longed to have eyes on it again to be sure, completely sure, all was well.
"This way." He led off diagonally across the slope, past the hot springs and around to the opposite side of the hill. The crater wall was higher here, more intact. This side of the volcano had not seen active flows in as long as Knuckles could remember, but their traces remained. He led the way into the lava tube network, letting the entranceway seal behind them and pausing just inside to check the ancient indicators for temperature and pressure. Tails watched curiously.
"What units are those using?"
Knuckles blinked. "I don't know what you mean."
"How hot is hot?" Sonic asked, but it seemed to be a joke – in any case Tails ignored it so and Knuckles did too.
"They look incredibly old," Tails was still lingering, peering at the devices. "Who design-" He cut himself off, guessing the answer. "You don't know."
"No," Knuckles admitted. "Come on. I've checked the route we're taking. It's safe."
Sonic looked around and Knuckles recognised the eyes of a practised navigator of trouble as the hedgehog's glance paused on the geyser outflow vents, on the almost concealed supports of the rock deadfall, on the slightly scuffed trigger points in the ground.
Sonic's eyes returned to Knuckles himself and the hedgehog raised his eyebrows. "Not sure you use that word the same way most people would."
Sonic was smirking but Tails outright laughed.
"Oh and you do, Sonic?" The fox sprang lightly into the air before either of them responded. "Which way, Knuckles."
Knuckles beckoned and led off without further comment.
It was an effort of will not to turn down the path to the nearest shelter – he was bone weary. The day in Oil Ocean seemed to have lasted a year at least and the time since he'd first woke to robots on his Island might have been a century.
But this close to Hidden Palace and the Master Emerald 'bone weary' didn't matter much and he was uneasy enough that he had to see it before he had any chance of sleeping. Even if it meant leading Sonic and Tails back there too.
He caught that last thought as it rose in his mind and squashed it down firmly. He did not distrust Sonic, he was not a threat. Knuckles glanced across his shoulder at the hedgehog loping effortless alongside him and got a cheery grin back, oblivious to the momentary lapse.
The air grew steadily warmer and the light redder as they ran on, until they were crossing bridges that swayed in the warm air over rivers of magma. Up wooden trestle staircases spanning gaps in cut-stone steps and leaping arches across black chasms with only the faintest streamer of crimson light winding at the bottom to give any clue of their depth.
Knuckles took mental notes on automatic as they ran, alert to any change in the conditions, whether they matched the sensors reports, where the wood had been baked so dry it threatened to become brittle, whether the traps were still concealed effectively, anything that might need attention.
And always, always for any sign or sense of trespass.
Even so it came as a shock to find it. A visual intrusion so abrupt that he startled as though it had been a shout or a blow instead of a sight.
Sonic reacted more to his own reaction than the sight but also came to an abrupt halt.
"That's some cheek," he remarked staring at the metal fence that barred their way. Or at the 'no entry' sign specifically perhaps.
It hung there like outright mockery, in lurid, Eggman colours.
Knuckles tore it down, taking half the fence with it, and hurled it, with more force than probably required given that it landed in the nearest lava flow.
Knuckles clenched his fists, but there was nothing except the pathetic fence to hit and it barely counted even as a barrier. He settled for uprooting another panel of it before a sudden urgency drove him through the gap and onwards.
"Knuckles? What's up?" Sonic asked, once again at his side. "Eggman?"
Knuckles shook his head. "Something colder. Stranger. Machines?"
"The Ruby?" Tails asked.
"I don't… know."
Knuckles sped up, sidestepping a scatter of spike-bombs that had been wedged perilously in the geyser outlets, and inadvertently making Sonic leap even further aside to avoid being shoulder-barged aside.
Sonic, for a wonder, didn't remark on it and Knuckles ignored the trap itself. Whoever or whatever had placed it was more important than dealing with it right now.
He skirted the lava lake at a flat sprint, the hot air drying the sweat in his quills as as quickly as it could form. Sonic was a half pace behind, and the speed apparently sufficiently effortless that he felt the need to narrate their surroundings, commenting on the scale of the cave, the lava, the heat, the twinkling starlight that could just barely be seen now and then through open outlets. Tails was airborne, surfing in the hedgehog's slipstream, a hand on Sonic's shoulder for a tow.
"What's that?" Tails' voice momentarily raising over the top of Sonic's made Knuckles look round.
What had caught the fox's attention was another intrusion into the landscape. It looked like the bottom half of one of the giant robots, a giant walker, cut off abruptly had what would have been waist height.
"Someone been wading around knee deep in lava down here?" Sonic said.
Knuckles detoured a handful of steps out of his way and leapt to launch a flying kick at the device in passing. It toppled into the lava and sank beneath the surface.
"Not any more."
He ran on. Past where the lake broke up into a ragged patchwork of flows, subsiding below the rocky ground only to ooze up again a few paces later. Bridges and less-tended scaffolds criss-crossed it, reaching almost to the roof in places where it once again sloped down to become more tunnel than cave.
He stumbled, caught himself and stopped. It wasn't just the light that had become erratic – the contrast between bright red and black cave playing trick with his depth perception. There was debris on the floor. Rock that looked like it had been chewed up and spat out.
"There's something-" he started an explanation, a warning to the others but didn't finish it before something enormous crashed through the rock overhead and plunged huge drilling point, arms-length deep into the crust of rock below.
The extremely narrow crust of rock below. With the magma flowing close beneath it.
Knuckles scrambled back and away as the metal itself heated to a red glow.
Sonic hauled him the rest of the way clear and then hesitated.
"It – doesn't seem that interested in us?"
Knuckles watched the thing.
"No. But that won't matter if it breaches the crust. It would destabilise this whole area."
"And someone already wrecked the 'wading knee deep in lava' gadget..."
Knuckles glared at him. "It didn't belong here."
Sonic raised his hands.
"Okay, okay. It's your train-set."
Knuckles stared at him and was about to ask what in the skies he was gabbling about, but realised Sonic had already moved on to a new topic.
"So what do you suggest we do about it?" he asked. "I mean I'm not one to turn down a good sess of robo-smashing but that looks hot, and toasted quills smell terrible."
Knuckles stared. Fighting the urge to smash it in spite of the risk, but Sonic was right, the metal was red-hot.
I think it's fully automated," Tails said. "There's no one in there. Not even one of the bots."
"It intends to flood this area with lava." Knuckles was guessing but thought it was feasible. He knew the tunnels and this was a choke-point. If you wanted not to be followed, this was the place for it.
"Ideas?" Sonic asked again, tapping a foot.
Knuckles pointed further up the tunnel.
"Get ready to run."
Sonic scoffed and no doubt there was a remark coming about his state of readiness but Tails cut it off.
"What are you thinking?"
Knuckles crouched and raised his fists. "I'm thinking that just this once we should give it what it wants."
He leapt into the air and twisted to bring both fists down adding the force of the leap to the blow he delivered to the ground. Cracks spread and divided, fractalling out from the point of impact.
"Run!" he ordered.
No one needed telling twice and he readily grabbed Sonic's hand as it was thrown out in the split second before the hedgehog took off in an instant sprint.
Behind them the roar of expanding pressure and the shriek of metal grinding against rock was deafening, a hot wind lent both air and urgency to their headlong progress down the tunnels and away.
Knuckles bellowed directions into the slipstream, calling out a route that would take them clear of any overspill from the lava threat behind them yet contained few enough trap triggers that he trusted Sonic to traverse it at this pace.
The air cooled as they descended out of the most active area and eventually Sonic came to a stop. A steady breeze still blew along the tunnel, the heat differential forming a microclimate of its own. The moving air and the bright light from the luminescent crystals showing through the worn tunnel walls, made it easy to forget how deep underground they were now.
Tails was looking around, wide eyed.
"This is awesome."
Knuckles made a sound of agreement. This part of the Island where the natural caves slowly transitioned into the built environment of Hidden Palace was beautiful. Like some physical equivalent of the balance between chaos and control. He wished he knew whether it had been on purpose.
Even the dangers looked as thought they been designed with thought to more than functionality. Before them, and presumably the reason Sonic had stopped, fountains of flame played across the walls and floor, sweeping rhythmically back and forth with more the air of ornamental fountains than the lethal barrier they were.
"Come on." Knuckles traced a hand over a pattern on the stone which would suspend the barrier long enough for them to pass and led the others around the next turn in the tunnel which was now almost a corridor. "We're nearly-"
He stopped both speaking and moving so abruptly that Tails collided with him and he stumbled forward.
The 'no entry' signs had been a shock. What he was looking at now was more than a shock. It was abject disbelief.
The cave before them was large and filled with great sweeping pillars where the rough rocks rose and smoothed into carved pillars without ever having been quarried away from their native place. Stairways rose to the upper levels, marble and crystal constructions winding up and around and between the pillars.
Except that almost none of that was visible any more.
Scaffolding and barriers obscured most of it. Mechanisms and robots moved busily around the normally still and silent cave. Towering amid it all was some construction too large and complex for Knuckles to even take in at one glance.
He stepped back, recoiling on sheer instinct and almost treading on Tails once again. He steadied himself with one hand on the glassy-smooth stone and stared.
Sonic's hand landed on his shoulder.
"I'm guessing this is new?"
Knuckles nodded, wordless with shock and growing fury.
"Want some help smashy smashing?" Sonic asked. "Looks like plenty to go round."
Knuckles glanced at the hedgehog, who was smiling but tensed to move instantly into action.
He looked back at the cave without answering, trying to process how best to tackle it without damaging the environment itself.
"Those are heat exchangers." Tails pointed at part of the confusing tangle. "He's using geothermal energy from the volcano to power this thing."
Knuckles wasn't familiar with the terminology but knew the concept. A number of the Island's systems used it.
"Where can I hit it to cut it off?" he asked the fox. "I need to stop whatever's going on here."
Dismantling it without damage could wait, stopping it without doing further harm was was mattered firstly.
Tails pointed and all three of them ran to the machinery. The first blow caused every robot in sight to abandon its task and descend on them.
"I've got 'em," Sonic called, blithely leaping towards the incoming horde. "Keep at it."
"Here," Tails pointed and Knuckles ripped away another chunk of the machine and discarded it.
"Okay," Tails said, "I think that'll do it. We should help Sonic finish off the-"
Tails eyes widened and some instinct drove Knuckles forward without ever seeing what was coming from behind. He dived to the ground, tackling Tails bodily off his feet along with him, as a huge robot with a white-hot flamethrower where its head should be hurtled towards them.
It missed, and Sonic caught in it mid-air as it turned back for another go, dashing it against the rock wall of the cavern.
Knuckles and Tails stood up.
"Thanks," Knuckles nodded at Sonic. "Tails. Where?"
Tails returned his attention to the machinery but had only been at it a moment when a spike of alarm shot through Knuckles as though the ground had been as abruptly electrified as the rail back on the flying fortress.
He was already moving by the time Sonic asked what was wrong and stumbled to a halt because there was danger to the Island here too. Redirecting so much heat, drilling into the volcano in such a way could only be destabilising, but there was nothing more urgent than reaching the Master Emerald.
"I have to reach- There's something here. Right here. Robotic. But," Knuckles shook his head. "But it feels live a real person. Malevolent. I have to go. Now."
Sonic nodded, gave his shoulder and encouraging nudge. "Go then. It's okay. We got this."
Knuckles stared at him. Was he seriously considering this? But the pull was too urgent and he nodded brusquely, turned and all but fled.
He pounded towards the twisting marble and crystal stairway, hurtled up it, taking the steps two or three at a time. Alarm and fury tumbled together as he realised the was a huge section smashed away but was moving too fast to stop.
He flung himself into the air over the drop, a headlong, ballistic glide which sent him smashing into the cavern wall. He hauled himself up, hand over hand, feet kicking here and there for purchase and to further propel him.
He dragged himself over the ledge of the remaining staircase and took off into a sprint, that became a skip, hop and a jump to sidestep the trap triggers and tumbled uneven footing. He barely saw the tunnel, barely needed to, his attention was already ahead of himself already in the Hidden Palace, currently wearing its name so poorly.
Tails was still examining the machinery when Sonic returned and pointed out a spot without turning around or apparently noticing Knuckles' absence.
"There, should stop the main power take-off without causing too much damage elsewhere."
Sonic blinked. "Don't we want lots of damage?"
"Not while we're standing underneath."
Sonic stifled a smile at the fox's understated response.
"You make a good point."
He launched himself at the equipment where Tails was pointing, tearing through it in a shower of sparks and the abrupt whine of spinning down machinery.
"Done and done. Now where?"
"Up." Tails said.
Up was easier said than done and Tails was only able to follow Sonic's scattershot, twisting, route by means of frequent leaps into the air. To boost him over huge drops that Sonic only cleared by landing in a hands and knees heap on the other side, to save himself from being swept backwards into a pit by a conveyor belt that Sonic easily outran, to snatch himself up and out of snapping robot jaws that Sonic spindashed straight through.
Sonic glanced often at him to be sure, but Tails was entirely adept at this sort of thing now, fearless and agile and completely unabashed when a misstep needed him to shout to Sonic for a plan B or a hasty save. In turn, Sonic had no hesitation in throwing out his arm for a save when he himself needed snatching out of trouble.
There were robots but nothing they hadn't seen before, nothing they couldn't deal with, and as they got closer and higher to the main construction if became apparent what they were looking at.
"It's a rocket." Tails came to a stop to stare and Sonic skidded to a stop several paces ahead. "He's building a rocket inside the volcano!"
Sonic blinked at the thing trying to make his brain accept the scale of it.
"Knuckles is going to absolutely lose it."
Tails nodded, then frowned. "He said he didn't think Eggman was here."
Sonic shrugged. "Well his stuff is."
"Maybe," Tails said. He sounded doubtful. "He wasn't back at railhead warehouse when we looked either."
Sonic gave it some thought. It had been just robots more often than usual recently. Right now though he had nothing usual to do with that information.
"Come on", he said instead. "Whatever this thing is meant to do or wherever it's meant to go we need to stop it."
"Little Planet," Tails said suddenly as they moved off again.
Sonic looked round and then up. As they climbed, more of the sky above had become visible where the crater opened onto the sky and Little Planet was indeed visible once again though it had very definitely not been when they crashed down on the Island's slopes.
Sonic scowled, thinking of the bustle of day to day life there that had already been interrupted. The lively night-time village and how willing they'd been to muddle through and work out the meaning of each other's words. Or the city filled with partying people watching the fireworks.
"No way. Not having it. Come on. Run!"
The constructions towered up and out of the volcano and soon they were running on metallic service platforms, cranes and catwalks, rather than any remaining trace of the Island's own structures.
Artificial lights flashed around then, hazard warnings, alarms ringing and, too muffled to make out words, an artificial voice boomed words in a steady rhythm.
"Sonic, I think that's a countdown!"
Sonic looked around frantically. "Uh… Open to suggestions here, buddy!"
"I don' know," Tails shouted into the slipstream. "I think- oof!"
Abruptly he was knocked back, tumbling out of the air, his hand snatched from Sonic's towing grip. Sonic screeched to a stop, and doubled back before even blinking.
Tails was doubled over on the ground, winded but struggling to regain his feet. Sonic pulled him back up. He looked around for the source of the attack and was answered sooner than he'd like as something hurtled towards them.
He didn't recognise it at first, but it came to him once he was already in mid-leap and had had a second more to think about it – it was another of the strange, elaborate robots that had plagued them since the beginning of this bizarre run-around. But riding rodeo-style on an approximation of a standard motobug attack bot. A massive heavy spiked ball and chain whirled above its head and added to the twisted robotic equivalent of a rodeo performance.
And that thing could leap! Sonic dived aside and mentally replaced 'standard' with 'severely upgraded'. He rose into a crouch and in the same breath into a spring and the second breath into a spin to catch the thing mid-air.
Mistake, he realised and yelled aloud as he discovered the hard way what was propelling those huge leaps into the air. Fiery jets scorched quills and fur and Sonic batted at them, pained and furious at himself for the error.
Tails had shot into the air out of reach and was fidgeting there looking for a viable attack line amid the flames and whirling weapon and armoured bug.
The rocket glanced up at him and Sonic seized the moment to aim a blow at the back of its head. Sending it tumbled forward off it's mount. The moto careered wildly, undirected and Tails thumped down on top of it. Sonic glanced across to check and the robot itself flung the weapon, chain and all at his head. He ducked but the moments distraction let the think slap a hand down on a control panel on the rocket and dive through a hatch.
Sonic grabbed Tails and was after it like lightning. This was the chance to get on board and stop the thing from within if they couldn't from without.
No sooner had the hatch closed behind them though than he wondered if this was another error. The robot had collapsed on the deck but the rocket was firing up regardless, the metal around them vibrating with a dull and growing hum.
"Uh oh," Tails said.
The tunnels trembled and Knuckles' breath caught in his throat in a way that had nothing to do with his desperate sprint or the desperate climb, because he knew in his bones that the earthshaking shudder had nothing to do with the Island's own tectonics.
Somewhere some machine was doing harm to the very stone and earth of the place he was meant to protect and he couldn't stop it because something worse was close, was setting his nerves alight with panic and rage and a growing terror that he was pouring so much of himself into this flat out race to reach it that he'd have nothing left to fight with when he arrived.
But here and now the touch of chaos was everywhere, in every breath and pounding pulse of blood and he drew it in with as much furious intensity as every gasping intake of air that drove him onwards.
And it was enough. He reached the Emerald chamber and it was empty yet and he had a split second to press his hands and head against the silent, soothing surface of the gem before all hell broke loose.
A bang, so loud it was painful, coincided with the largest earth tremor yet and the floor buckled violently, throwing him off his feet to crash down dazed. He leapt back to his feet again way too quickly, leaving his head spinning and nausea ripping through him.
But he needed to be on his feet because right there was the danger, right there was the strangeness he'd sensed, this robot that wasn't quite un-alive but more to the point was right there. Standing there, practically on the Master Emerald. Touching and beckoning and for a moment Knuckles was struck silent and frozen in horror because despite the fact the Emerald was right there before his eyes, all he could feel was the memory of the crippling not there.
Then the touch of cold metal against the surface cut through him like ice-water as the robot summoned down some huge vile claw and Knuckles shook off the shock and charged forward.
He leapt at the claw first and struck it in the moment after it had grabbed and raised the Emerald. It was only sheer momentum that kept him on course because the split second loss of contact had snatched breath and several heartbeats from him, in a way that the wild panicked charge through the tunnels had not.
It took every bit of willpower he had to control himself and land on his feet instead of doubled over on his knees. To keep his eyes on the robot as it took off into the air, cracking with spillover energy. To stagger clear of the blast from the stolen and corrupted chaos long enough to recover his own breath, straighten his back and re-seize control.
The thing did not belong here. It was an intrusion, a disruption to the orderly links between Island and Chaos, and Emerald and Guardian. Outrage lent strength to his blows and the initial shock was washed away in mingled adrenaline and the blood-warming, strengthening flow of the energies.
Guardian, Chaos, Island, Emerald.
Robot invaders had no place in it. Knuckles landed a blow that drove the thing into a wall. Electricity sparked and flared over the metal surfaces and Knuckles recoiled warily. Electricity though, no longer the sizzle of chaos. He could wait for his moment.
The Emerald was at his back and his feet were planted on the ancient stones and he would end any threat here.
The sparks dimmed and the robot soared back into the air, scything about itself with a beam of cutting light that left scorch marks in the stone. Knuckles slipped around and past the beam, to weave his way towards the robot itself.
Only half his attention on even on the machine. The other half attended to the Emerald, to the flows of power, to soothing the unease of the momentary uprooting, to assessing whether he needed more from it to finally eliminate the robot that had caused that unease.
He struck again and was preparing himself to use just a fraction of the power so close at hand to destroy the machine outright when it abruptly retreated. Hurtling off to the ship that had snaked out the claw, now dangling useless and in pieces beneath it.
It fled. Engines roaring abominably loud in the enclosed space and tearing off through the smashed roof of the temple which had been ripped open to the rock and to the sky.
Knuckles hesitated, one hand on the Emerald unsure for a moment, whether he sought to soothe or be soothed but hesitating either way to follow, to leave, and then the moment passed and it was in any case too late.
He breathed deep and slowly, three long breaths and closed his eyes for three more.
The Island was quiet. Still. Empty.
His eyes flew open. Really empty.
He sought actively for the flicker of chaos that was the hedgehog. It was bright with urgency but… not as close as it should have been. Fading too. Was he in trouble?
Knuckles trailed his hand up and down along the Master Emerald's surface, tracing a facet-edge before recognising and stilling the anxious fidget.
"That hedgehog is not my responsibility," he tried out loud. But the thought wouldn't stick and he couldn't pull his attention from that fading flicker.
He sighed and pulled his hand away from the Emerald, breaking into a jog and letting his feet carry him to the nearest warp point. He paused a second to gather his wits beside it. There was no corresponding receiving end wherever Sonic was, and that would have have been a problem to anyone except a Guardian, but Knuckles had spent his whole life learning to direct power he didn't fully understand and he he could direct this too.
He composed himself and stepped up on the sunlight-warm orb as the power gathered within it.
There was none of the sick twirl of disorientation that the Ruby-driven teleporting inflicted. This was as easy as waking. Between one eye-blink and the next he was where the hedgehog was and Sonic was staring at him. Unharmed and open mouthed.
Tails was even wider-eyed.
"Wow! What?"
Knuckles frowned. They were both fine and that was incredibly irritating. He felt stupid. Why had he been so convinced they were in trouble?
"I thought..." He started and then with a wave of dismay the reason he'd felt as though Sonic was fading away to nothing. What he'd misread as some terrible mortal wound was simply distance.
Wherever the were, they were rapidly ascending away from the Island.
Acceleration tried to buckle his knees beneath him and Tails actually did sit down with a thud. Sonic staggered a moment made a face and sat down deliberately, and tugged on Knuckles' arm to encourage him to do the same.
"Might not be a bad idea," he said. "Not sure how rough the ride's going to get."
Knuckles sat and his lack of protest made Sonic give him a strange look.
"You okay? Want to trade explanations on the way?"
Knuckles sighed.
