In the first golden age of man, the old gods took new forms and the new gods born from the second age of machines became almost as one with the old. The dark things, what few of them were left, still dwelt in the depth of the ocean, but their spawn had long since become dispersed throughout the world. Monsters still lived in the darkest forest and dwelt in the highest mountains, but many more wore the guise of men. Dragons now dwelt in mortal flesh, evidenced only by their twisted hearts and the taint left on all life they touched.

One such person as this caused to be assembled a great and terrifying vehicle. He baptized its engine - that heart of iron, clenched into a fist, beating at the center of the beast - in the blood of a thousand vermin. He stitched the seats with leather of human skin. The car sat low to the ground, wrapped in a sheet-metal skin as if it were those machines of men which vaulted the sky itself. He slit the throat of a child destined to become a king, and covered the car in an eternally slick and wet coat of red. He placed the soul of the child into the engine, and lit it aflame. His hellish creation came to life with a roar that shouted all the horrors it embodied, and it shot flames from its exhaust.

This sorcerer would drive his car from one end of the world to another, feeding it souls at every stop along the way. His car sparked the flame of jealousy in all mortal eyes, and his challenge was always the same. Any man who could out-race him would be gifted with the car, but all those who lost would forfeit their souls. Souls burn hotter than any fuel and, one after another, all would-be challengers fell to the car. Each soul made the beast faster - the engine pulsed with unnatural life and all the howls of the damned could be discerned when the sorcerer opened wide its throttle.

Well, the hellish car traveled for years and eventually went all the way across to the western lands. It made the journey with precious few challengers, and so long ago was its last race that the car was nearing emptiness. Almost all its souls had burned up, and the sorcerer knew he must find another challenger soon, for he was old, and could no longer trap the same pure soul which had first kindled the engine. For this reason, he did not think twice about his next challenger, but pounced upon the first victim he found.

Now Katy was not half again the age of the ancient sorcerer, but her car was even older than he. She had taken the car, called Firedome, from her father’s father. Each generation cared for the vehicle and it, in turn, sheltered them from the dangers of the open highway. Though they did not know it, the car (often likened to a family member) held some small part of one of the old gods - the Traveler. Like many old gods, he had become a part of the new world built by men, living in the highways and the great behemoths which lumbered across them. Time passed, as it often does, and though it was the flickering of an eye in slumber to the Traveler, the great monsters of the highway were replaced by small, plastic things, which had no life in them. The great open roads became choked with these contraptions, and so the traveler made his home in smaller spaces, further from mortals, where the potency of metal and fire, and of flat, empty roadways could still be found.

Thus it was, perhaps, because he was in such a desperate bind, or maybe nothing more than age, that the sorcerer did not see Katy’s Firedome for who it was. He knew only hunger as he saw the enormous winged car stopped at a light, and prodded his creation to growl low at her with all the wailing of the damned inside it. Katy looked over the liquid red thing of steel and death, but her heart was not filled with jealousy, because she drove Firedome. No false glamours could blind her eyes, and she could not want for anything so long as she had her car. She was not tempted by the monstrous sound, and was not frightened as it leapt from the stoplight in a blaze of smoking tires and flaming exhaust.

The sorcerer was sure he would have his due, and he was not without some small skill. He divined where Katy would stop for gas, and there he found the old Firedome and spoke to Katy, “That’s a fine machine you drive, but it’s a crime to reign it in. I know those old monsters and they like nothing better than to play. Well my beast there likes his fun too, and I’ll wager the title against your soul that we’re a faster pair than you.”

Katy looked over the sorcerer and his car, and she knew they were all of evil. Still, she said, “Well I know better than to trust anyone who’d wager for a soul, so I might be a foolish girl, but you look like you’ve done more wrong than ten of my lives are worth. I’ll take your wager and give you a lesson, and you can see how far down the road you get kicking dust off your heels.”

The sorcerer gnashed his teeth and spat. He glared with eyes like blood as they sealed their deal with a handshake, and together the two great cars drove out to the longest road across the desert. “From here until the mountains,” said the Sorcerer, and the race was begun.

The red beast shot fire. It screamed and yowled. It shook with such thunder that the desert itself quaked. The blood of the innocent king flowed from it unchecked. The Traveler’s ancient road cracked and tore under its tires. Asphalt melted and gravel flew. But its rage was impotent and its howling was all against no good end. Firedome’s engine came to life with a rumble sounding from deep below the earth. It launched with all the force of all the roads in the world, and there was nothing for the red beast to do but stand behind it and drop into the distance.

Katy waited until the sun neared the horizon before the sorcerer and his beast appeared. She heard the unhealthy knocking of his car first, and she knew that neither was much longer for the world. As the car came to a halt, its engine rattled its death and ceased to breathe, for in his desperation, the sorcerer had burned up every last soul the car had ever eaten. But though he had lived to see his failure, he had not lived to curse the name of Katy and Firedome. He sat dead at the wheel, his face twisted in rage, hands locked in a death grip.

Katy took the title of the red beast, and she blew out the last embers of its engine. She pushed it off the road, behind a high outcropping of rocks, and left it there. She returned home, feeling the proud hand of the Traveler at her back, ushered safely through the desert and the western roads by Firedome.

As for the beast, such creations can never be undone. It waits behind the mountain. The sorcerer has long since fallen to dust, and the beast is near buried beneath the sand, but it waits still for another innocent who will rekindle its fire.