Now why had they sent him here?

That was the question that ran through his brilliant mind as he struggled to extricate one metallic foot from a bog. This place was as infuriating as it was interesting, but it was hardly the place for him to discover what he sought so it begged the question why had the Dreamers sent him here? He had been to such places before of course. Back when he was a real boy, so to speak. But as a metal man of significant weight traversing through a sticky bog towards the forest edge as the sun dipped below the horizon was not on his list of things to do. Not anymore. He was George Elmore the inventor. No, he was the Clockwork Man, the guardian and the traveller. What he wasn’t was a bloody adventurer. 

“Oh for the love of-“ That grating voice emanated from the thin slit in his smooth metallic face, as his one glowing eye briefly dimmed and the telescopic eye extended, as if searching for something. The left hand shot out, beneath his splendid (if somehow oddly distended) Victorian jacket and shirt something popped and suddenly a hook shot forth from over his wrist, hurtling forward and slamming into a sturdy tree trunk about half-way up. It was out of the bog at least. With a tug, he retracted the hook still attached, pulling himself from the water and almost leaving one of his boots behind in the process as he flew through the air, making an odd sight indeed.

Now he perched precariously in a tree high above the semi-saturated floor, wondering what nightmares night had in store for him. At the very least, he wouldn’t be getting bitten by bugs. And if any animals showed up he could always shoot them with his pistol or blow them to pieces or something equally fatal. It was nice to have options when one visits such natural places of danger and beauty.