He could hear the machines once more, and knew they were somewhere out there, very close. Too close. Something would have to be done about these intruders from the Evil One's encampment. It was too dangerous to let them have free reign of his home.

Slip was his name, or that was the name he remembered. His thoughts had grown somewhat dimmer in recent years, more like dreams than actual thoughts, but he did remember some things with great clarity. Among the clearest of these memories were his family, who grew more and more idealized in his mind with every passing year as he forgot their faults and petty squabbles, until soon all he had left in his mind were the good times they had shared. And every memory of his family, the only peace he found in the hot and wet world, was cut off sharply by the images of the robots, who came and destroyed and left all things cold and metal in their wake. It was the robots that had made him lonely, and it was the robots who would pay. Them and whoever, or whatever, sent them, for Slip was not so far gone that he didn't realize that robots must have been sent by someone.

The robots were flying in, and Slip marked their progress with his ears, which had grown hyper-sensitive from long years of silence and fearful listening. There were three of them, moving along at a steady pace, not hurried. Every now and then one of the robots would fire its energy weapon, which caused the air to crackle with static and stink from ozone. As Slip paid attention to the details and drew upon his memories of past robot excursions into the swamp that was his home he realized that they were chasing someone, playing their twisted version of a game of tag. The shots kept whatever they pursued running on the path they chose to follow, and in the muck of the swamp their casual pace was all that was needed to keep up with some poor soul afoot.

Slip decided to even the odds.

Booby traps, booby traps, he thought, his primitive reptilian mind coming alive once more. Where did I set those booby traps?

The memory eluded him, making Slip scowl in annoyance. He had not used his mind actively for too long, and such details eluded his conscious memory. Thus he would just have to rely on unconscious memory (which was how he avoided his own traps) and upon the instincts that had grown so powerful with the passing years. This was not such a bad thing. After all, he had been using memory and instinct for most of his life, and thus far he had survived and had every indication and intention of continuing his survival. And he knew that would mean the destruction of the robots that plagued him so.

* * *

Panting, Quiver ducked behind a tree and then jumped a log as she ran from the hoverbots, her pack slapping against her shoulders. How far they had been chasing her she could not know and she feared the answer, since she was getting tired much faster than she had expected. It was the damp of the swamp, she guessed, and all the molds and funguses that filled the air with their spores, making it hard to breathe. She had lived all her life in the mountains and she just wasn't used to the humidity, to air so thick that it clung to her like a second skin. Especially not the humidity of the Great Eastern Swamp, lying just alongside the far eastern edge of the Great Mountain range, north of Dragon Home and south of Glass Mountain. The Eastern Swamp was easily the lowest point on the face of Mobius, and paradoxically it lay next to the very highest points on the planet. And it was in this very low place that Quiver, a mountain lion who had never gone below the foothills in her life, now had to run and dodge and hide for her life.

A blaster bolt came wickedly close to Quiver's legs, and she darted off to one side and then to the other, adopting the tactics of a non-anthropomorphic rabbit when it runs from predators. This was a tactic that the hoverbots were not completely used to, though they had seen it a few times before, and so for a few minutes they wove from side to side through the cypress trees as their quarry splashed deeper and deeper into the swamp and into the water, giving her a short lead on them. It only took so long, however, before the hoverbots grew wise to their quarry and resumed a simple straight-line course to counter the weaving, spreading out sufficiently to prevent her from bolting off the straight course they forced her to follow. Robotnik, they knew, was watching their performance from afar, as he often did when he needed entertainment after a hard day of ravaging the planet. And they all knew how he would react if his entertainment was disturbed in any way. Being a world conqueror was a stressful occupation, after all, and the robots were well-acquainted with what Robotnik did to their kind when he was suffering an acute attack of stress. Thus they were intent on their quarry, every calculation of their metal minds bent on keeping the game going for as long as possible, keeping the excitement on for another few moments, until their master tired of the chase and let them perform their usual programming in such cases: either the roboticizer or a hot blaster-beam through scorching fur.

Of course, none of this was any fun whatsoever for Quiver. She ducked beneath a log, only to have the 'bots rise higher; tried to dodge off the wet path they were driving her down, only to have one or the other of the robots on her sides come up and make the way impassable with a stream of energy. Cat-and-mouse was the name of the game. By virtue of her ancestry Quiver considered it an unfortunate name, but nevertheless that was what she was being subjected to. And she knew only too well what the cat always did to the mouse at the end of such games.

The robots were intent only upon their prey. If they had been functioning under their usual programming they might have noticed that the birds and insects around them had grown silent and been on their guard. After all, in the endless cycle of life that makes a swamp, there is never any time of silence except in the moment right before the pounce.

The hoverbot on the left had just dipped in a little closer to the ground to get a good shot near the cougar's legs. It had time for only one shot, and then quite abruptly a thick but springy branch filled its visor-view. The left hoverbot's companions suddenly became aware of a marked change in their companion, and as they turned to look they couldn't help but notice that the hoverbot in question was flying along without its head. They stared in bemused stupefaction at this new occurrence, pondering its implications with their primitive metal minds, until their companion flattened itself against a tree in a small explosion and a shower of sparks.

"Hoverbot three-four-six terminated," reported the middle hoverbot, though it supposed that the metal monarch of the Death Egg already knew that.

"KILL HER NOW AND FIND THAT SABOTEUR!!!" came the bellowing roar of the enraged Robotnik. "If you don't get them both I shall melt you down and make you both into toasters!"

"Acknowledged," beeped the robots in unison, a crackle in their voices betraying the mechanical equivalent of a nervous gulp. They leveled their wrist-blasters at the point where they had last seen the mountain lion. Unfortunately for them Quiver had long since made herself scarce, and was now hiding inside a fallen log several yards from the path she had been running along. Realizing that a toaster's existence wasn't nearly as fulfilling as their present one, the hoverbots turned on their search beams and began to comb the swamp.

* * *

Now they are watching, thought Slip, allowing himself a little introspection, and they will be ready for the next time.

Not that it would do them any good, piped up Slip's ego, since he had crisscrossed the whole swamp with traps and pitfalls that only waited for someone to set them off. But Slip's prudence countered with the fact that the machines had recently been getting very good at spotting his traps, and had almost spotted him more times than he cared to think about. When he took time to think. Instinct told him that he would need to lure the robots where he wanted them and then ambush them. He would have to set off the traps himself. But to lure them he would have to reveal himself to them. That was unacceptable. Once they knew he was there, whether they actually got him that time or not, he was just as good as caught. The robots would know the identity of the thing that had been plaguing their operations in the swamp, and once they knew that it was only a matter of time before they would hunt him down and take his life or his will. Thus, Slip found himself forced to think once more, his head aching a little from the prolonged use of his under-worked neurons. What kind of bait could he use that would be certain to draw the robots, but would let him work in peace without fear of discovery? Since the machines were notoriously single-minded there weren't many things to choose from, for they only sometimes would follow a false lead, and they never chased animals unless they had orders to do so from Loud Voice. And then he remembered what Loud Voice had said to the machines. Slip gathered that Loud Voice, whoever he was, was the leader of the machines that plagued his hot and damp world. His voice would come over their talk-boxes at times and he always shouted, hence the name Slip had chosen for him. What was it that Loud Voice had told the robots to hunt down? Not just him, there was someone else, and the robots would want that one just as badly as they would want him.

The girl!

Having found the answer to his dilemma Slip let his instinct take over once again, his nose working the ground as his eyes searched for spoor, however slight. This girl would not remain hidden from him for long.

* * *

Under the circumstances, things could have been a whole lot worse. Quiver was aware of this, and was very grateful to whatever divinity had graced her with continued existence. That she was shoulder-deep in the mud and water of a swamp inside a mostly-submerged hollow log didn't matter nearly so much to her at that time as staying alive. That occupation, in fact, was one she had decided to adopt wholeheartedly.

"If only Jed and Wingtip could see me now," she whispered to herself, conjuring up images of the shock on her old friends' faces if they had been present. Quiver had been to the Royal Palace once when she was three, and was so impressed by the style of life there that ever after she had affected a daintiness in her habits, a strange thing for a people as wild as the mountain lions of the Eastern Mountains. Everybody knew she hated water in any form except as a drink. A drink to be sipped at that, instead of gulped or lapped as many of her kind were wont to do. Still, dainty or not, being wet was better than being caught or killed, and so Quiver stayed put.

It seemed like an age passed as the hoverbots floated about, their search beams finding their way into almost every nook and cranny of the dark cypress swamp as the light of the day faded into an inky night. One of them dipped so close to the water as it passed her log that it brushed the surface, its light cutting the darkness in two. The metal monster turned its yellow eye towards her and Quiver was certain it could see her, and wouldn't have been surprised if it heard her heart, so loudly did that organ pound in her ears. But the moment passed, and so did the hoverbot, continuing its search of the swamp. Eventually the robots widened their search, spreading themselves further out as they scanned the water for life and movement, moving farther and farther away from Quiver's hiding place until they were out of sight in the thick cypress forest.

Quiver watched and listened in fear and anticipation, and then when she heard the sound of the hoverbot engines recede to a safe distance she started to climb out of her hollowed log to make a break for it. She had barely reached the drier land and was just about to run when she heard the sound of a snuffling nose, and felt the breath of a living creature on the back of her neck. The mountain lion girl's first impulse was to scream, but a scaly claw clamped over her mouth before she could make a sound and she was dragged hastily back into the water and into the log she had just abandoned.

"You no scream, I let go," said a raspy voice from the thing that held her captive.

It took Quiver a moment to realize what had just been said, so badly formed were the words of the voice. But when she deciphered the words she gave a nod, and the claw released its grip. Turning in the water, slowly so as not to make much noise, Quiver squinted at the dark shape that had taken her captive, its features mostly obscured by the dark night. She was surprised to see that the unknown creature was shorter than she was, and a little scrawnier to boot. She guessed that if she needed to she could take it, whatever it was, but she decided for now to wait and see what it would do before she took any rash actions that they both might regret.

"Who are you?" whispered Quiver.

The creature cocked its head to one side, as though confused by the question. Quiver decided to try a different approach.

"What is your name?"

This time the creature nodded in understanding.

"Slip," it said. Or at least that was what Quiver thought it said. It was very hard to pick out the words when this being spoke.

"My name is Quiver," whispered the mountain lion, extending her hand.

Slip started at first, as though expecting Quiver to strike him with the extended hand. But after a moment of thought, its head cocked once more to one side, the being extended its own scaly claw and grabbed her hand, giving it a single hard shake and then letting go as fast as it could. Quiver thought about how strong the creature's grip was, how fast and fluidly it moved, and of the shiny black claws on its hand, and reconsidered her view on how easily she might win a fight with the being. It was obvious that whatever it was, Slip was a tough character. But tough or no, at least Slip seemed friendly enough for the time being.

"Need you help," said Slip, glancing over its shoulder.

It was Quiver's turn to look suspicious. She had just been assaulted and taken captive by a scaly monster, had just made as formal an introduction to the creature as could be managed, and now it wanted her to help it. But under the circumstances, with hoverbots hunting for her blood, she was willing to take any chance that might get her out of her predicament in safety. The mountain lion began to realize not for the first time just how strange the world she lived in could be.

"What kind of help do you need?"

Slip considered this. Quiver realized suddenly that the short lizard-thing hadn't thought through this part of its plans yet.

"Let me guess," she quipped with a little grin, "you don't know."

"Know," hissed Slip irritably. "No words to say. Not use voice in ten year. Been all alone."

"Ten years!" gasped Quiver. "How did that happen?"

"Robots."

Quiver looked down. She knew only too well what the robots could do to a family and a community. All alone for ten years. She could hardly imagine it, but it explained why it was hard to understand the lizard-thing when it spoke. After a moment of thought Quiver decided that it explained a lot of other things about Slip as well.

"What are you planning to do?" she asked after a short silence. "Are we going to escape from the hoverbots?"

"No escape," said Slip with a growl. "Robots must die."

"You want to attack them?" Quiver exclaimed quietly. "You're crazy."

Slip shrugged.

"Never said wasn't. Got one already."

"You were the one that made that branch swing?"

The lizard-thing showed a mouthful of sharp teeth as it grinned.

"Traps all over. Need you as bait."

Quiver blinked.

"Bait?"

"Robots dodge traps," rasped Slip, his face showing annoyance as he thought of it, his eyes staring into space. "Not work as good as before. Need lure them in, then use trap."

"Then why don't you be bait and I'll set the traps off?" said Quiver. "I don't like getting shot at any better than you do, after all."

Slip scowled.

"You be bait," he said.

That was the end of the discussion.

* * *

"Search showing negative readings," complained the lead hoverbot to the other over its communicator. "No sign of any large life forms."

"Search on this end negative as well," replied the hoverbot's partner. "Circling around to recheck my area. Will rendevous with you at point of origin."

"Acknowledged. Circling . . . Wait," the distant hoverbot's voice sounded as excited as a robot can manage. "Life form detected. Visual analysis complete. Target identified: mountain lion target alpha. Starting pursuit now."

The lead hoverbot halted in its flight and turned to face in the direction it picked up the radio signals of its companion.

"Coming to provide support," it intoned triumphantly. "Search and destroy."

"Acknowledged," answered the com link. The distant hoverbot began to give a play-by-play of its proceedings, so confident was it that it would catch its target before its partner arrived. "Underbrush is thick is this area, visual sensors experiencing difficulty. Shifting to infrared scanning. Closing to twenty feet . . . taking aim."

The roar of a blaster came over the comm.

"Underbrush too thick for distance shooting. Closing on target . . . fifteen feet . . . ten feet . . . five feet . . . target lock . . . aiming . . ."

Just at the moment that the lead hoverbot would have expected to hear a blaster, instead it heard nothing but static. The comm link of its companion had quite abruptly gone dead. After a moment's pause the remaining hoverbot began to check its sensors, running down the list of diagnostic checks on its companion. All of them showed negative, and the hoverbot came to the gradual realization that it was very much alone. Its self-preservation programming functioning on only a very superficial level, the hoverbot concluded that it would have to locate the mountain lion itself. Starting at the point where it had last received a radio transmission from its companion. As the hoverbot floated towards the fatal place, it began to radio back to the series of bunkers and hastily-constructed quickcrete buildings that served as the headquarters for the robots on this side of the Great Mountains.

"Headquarters, aerial SWATbot Gamma-Theta 345 reporting. Have lost Gamma-Theta 344 and 346 to saboteur attacks. Investigation in progress, termination of saboteurs given Sub-Hedgehog Code Alpha Priority. En route to last known location of G-T 344. Over."

"Acknowledged, G-T 345," beeped the comm, "Scanning for your signal. Will have positive location verification in fifteen minutes. Over."

"Acknowledged, HQ. Keeping channels open."

As the hoverbot made its way through the overgrown cypress swamp, forced close to the water by low-hanging branches, its audio sensors picked up a strange noise, one that it did not at first have any explanation for. As it drew closer to the point where G-T 344 had gone offline it gradually realized that the sound was laughter. Laughter and triumphant exclamations.

"We got that 'bot good!" said a female voice.

As the hoverbot drew closer its visual scanners determined that it was the mountain lion that had been giving them such a hard time. She was standing next to a plateau that rose about fifteen feet off the ground. Along the top of this cliff was a stand of trees that ran in a row parallel to the edge of the short plateau. Behind the mountain lion was a tree of the same sort as that on top of the cliff, sunken somewhat into the mud of the swamp. Deciding to observe for a time to see who the target female was talking to, the hoverbot floated behind the extended roots of a nearby cypress tree.

"Tell me, are we the best team ever or are we the best team ever!" continued the female. "You really know how to time things."

The forest remained silent. Gradually the female began to frown.

"Hey, I'm giving you a compliment here. The least you could do is answer me."

Silence.

"Slip?"

Now the mountain lion target began to look around in fear and worry. She took a step towards the cliff, looking up at the stand of trees.

"Slip, if this is your idea of a joke, it isn't very funny."

When the silence persisted the mountain lion looked around in fear, and then sloshed her way to the cliff and began to climb.

"If that slimy reptile has abandoned me . . ." she began, grunting as she climbed. But the anger in her voice disappeared in an instant. "Then I guess I'm lost here forever."

She had reached the top of the rocky upthrust and rested against a tree. The hoverbot had cases such as these recorded in its memory, where a creature would lose its grip on reality after prolonged periods of stress and loneliness. Of course the hoverbot didn't know what these feelings were like, but it could recognize their effects. Deciding that the cougar was not a threat and that no reinforcements were immanent, the flying robot eased out into the open clearing where the cougar had been standing and began to float towards its target. It took a moment before the female noticed the hoverbot, but when she did she gasped and then threw herself hard against the tree she had been resting against. Not understanding this behavior, chalking it up to the behavioral aberrations that were only to be expected in a living creature, the hoverbot began to report its success to Headquarters.

"Have located target, closing fast. Subject is unarmed and trapped. Termination imminent."

Then, as the hoverbot drew up to the base of the cliff, it looked at the tree that the mountain lion female had been standing next to when she was on the ground. After a moment to allow the realization to come to its silicon mind, the robot discovered that the tree was in fact a thick pole of wood that had been cleverly disguised as a tree by green branches carefully tied to its surface. And under this pole, mostly submerged in the mud and only barely visible through the murky water, was G-T 344, smashed as flat as a proverbial pancake.

"Headquarters, I have located G-T 344. Aerial SWATbot has been terminated." The hoverbot took aim at the mountain lion on the cliff, who still struggled in vain as she pushed against her tree. "Termination of subject to be enforced now."

At that moment, just as the wrist-blaster of G-T 345 whirred with power before it would unleash a bolt of killing particles, the hoverbot saw a vine pull taut with a twang as it lifted out of the water. The vine had one end tied to another of the disguised poles to the right of the mountain lion, one positioned directly over G-T 345's head.

"Aerial SWATbot 345 signing off," said the hoverbot looking directly upward. A moment after that there were two new trees planted in the water at the base of the cliff, and not a robot to be seen. Only fourteen minutes and thirty-one seconds had passed, and HQ still hadn't gotten the location of the SWATbots verified. They never would.

* * *

"You had me really worried back there," said Quiver, leaning back against a tree in the small, dry clearing that Slip called his bedroom.

Slip only smiled at her, his teeth not quite as menacing now that she had gotten used to them. The young cougar had been studying the strange little creature, watching him move in fascination. She found him almost attractive, in a slinky kind of way, for his scaly body was well-formed and muscular despite its leanness, and his yellow eyes had a bright gleam of intelligence that seemed to see right through her without judging her in the slightest. Slip was a lizard of some sort, Quiver guessed there was some crocodilian blood in his ancestry, with a medium-sized reptilian snout and a long prehensile tail. His dark olive-colored back scales glistened in the light of the moon overhead, and his smooth, lighter colored chest and belly scales had a slight reddish tint as he set about making her a meal suitable to her more civilized tastes. This was harder to do than he had at first expected, but of course Slip didn't let the female know that. She made him feel strange, but he could tell she was in some sort of trouble in addition to the difficulty he had just rescued her from. He wasn't completely sure of his emotions right now and his instincts were a little confused with what to do with this strange new visitor. He had a strange protective urge whenever he looked at her, and somehow he knew that he had to help her, whatever her difficulty might be. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

"Here food," he said, handing her a piece of dried bark with an indeterminate reddish-orangish mass on it. His hands were a little sticky with the fixings of this new concoction, but he was happy with the smell of the result. And when he licked his fingers he found that the taste was pleasing to him as well.

Quiver's first reaction was disgust, but she didn't let this show on her face. Instead she smiled up at the standing reptile and accepted the magenta glob. It was fairly obvious that Slip was not in the habit of entertaining guests, but he had been so busy with making her dinner and seemed so proud of his creation that she knew it would hurt his feelings if she refused. And thus it was by an act of will that Quiver scooped up a small portion of the odd substance and placed it in her mouth, chewing tentatively. This portion was followed by a larger one in short order, and it took only a matter of minutes before her makeshift plate was cleaned.

"That was good," said Quiver with a smile, for it had been good. "What was that stuff?"

Slip scratched the underside of his chin, his head cocked once more to the side as he considered how to answer the question.

"You not want know," he finally answered. After a moment of thinking herself, Quiver silently agreed with him.

The reptile washed his hands off in the water next to the small rise of land where he slept and then seated himself cross-legged across from his feline guest.

"There troubles you got," he said, getting to the point. "You not in swamp by accident. Why you here? Why you not in mountains? Why you not home?"

Quiver looked at the reptile in surprise, and perhaps a little pain. But his eyes were kind and worried, worried about her, and she instinctively felt that he could be trusted with any secrets she might have. For all the sharpness of his claws and teeth and his bad grammar, she trusted this strange lizard being she had met so short a time ago, and trusted him fully. Somehow it felt like the right thing to do.

"It was the robots," she said, and Slip nodded, waiting for her to continue. After a moment, taking a deep breath, she did. "They came out of nowhere, razing the mountains, hunting us down. My people and the eagles joined forces to fight them, but it didn't do us any good. The metal monsters had bases on both sides of the Eastern Range, so there wasn't anywhere to run on the lowlands, and they had blasters and many of them could fly, so we weren't safe in the mountains either. They cut us off from our allies in the north, the wolves, and we couldn't fight them alone. And every time they caught one of our loved ones, we'd see them again as a metal zombie."

"My family go that way too," murmured Slip quietly.

"We had to do something, but there wasn't anything we knew how to do. Then something landed in the middle of our village, something important."

Quiver drew the green backpack she had been carrying around to her front and undid the straps that held it shut, reaching inside for something.

"It was this."

She held out a long-shafted arrow with red and black feathers. Slip took the arrow from her hands and turned it over, admiring the strange weapon. He could see that the head of the arrow wasn't stone or metal, but was made of a strange transparent crystal, carved in a delicate and beautiful pattern.

"It was a message, a summons," continued Quiver as Slip inspected the item in question. "My people have long held in their lore a legend of the call of the Last Legion. When things got darkest and all seemed lost then the arrow of the Gryphon would come and summon one of our number, either of the eagles or the mountain lions, to come and bring her back."

Quiver paused, and then reached out to the arrow in Slip's claws. He gasped when she touched the arrow's head and dropped the shaft hurriedly. The crystal arrowhead had started to glow, and continued to glow with greater intensity as the young cougar picked it up. She faced Slip, holding the shining arrow in front of her face, casting an eerie light on them both and making the shadows about them dance in weird shapes on the trees surrounding the little island.

"It chose me. And now I must go to the Glass Mountain and scale its peak to awaken the Gryphon once more and save my people."

Slip stared at Quiver, and then shook his head.

"Glass Mountain way is madness. Only death there. Too slick to climb, wind too strong to fly. Go that way and death come soon after."

Quiver set her jaw, putting the arrow away. The light winked out the moment she took her hand from the crystal.

"But that is where I must go."

Watching her determined face, Slip knew that the mountain lion would do just as she said, even if it did mean her death. He cocked his head to one side as his mind worked hard to understand, and then he shook his head, giving up on that endeavor. Instinct told him what he must do, and his emotions agreed with them.

"Then I come as well."

After all, it was what seemed right.