Like several illustrations in this book, there are no dinosaurs anywhere to be seen here. And none could ever reach this point, as it lies deep within the earth, in the otherworld of the faery folk. But several elements needed to be seen here, including Queen Arina, newly returned to her natural form, and the team of robots that have dwelt in her husbands forge for a thousand years. I chose to call these mechanical men by the name used in the Iliad to describe the servants of Hephaistos who help in his forge, automata (singular automaton, and in Greek αὐτόματον), as this was where the idea of robots in a fantasy story came from. Homer also calls them tripodes, “tripods”, presumably because they had three legs. I tried three legs on my automata, but it just didn’t work out. There are five of them, Gold (in the center), Bronze (in the left foreground), Silver (in back to the left) and Iron (back to the right). There is also a Lead, but he didn’t look very good and can’t get around easily, so he didn’t make it into the illustration.

The book is much larger than I originally planned, as there is another large book to be encountered early in the next novel. But I won’t be able to show that grossly-oversized book, so I made this one too large too. I like ridiculously large books—expect more in this story and others to come.