The world poured into his eyesockets in an inexorable tide of molten metal, ripping him out of the void that provided a deserved yet insufficient eternity of respite. The sunlight was cruel, even if muffled, dispersed by the atmosphere, it and the rain mounting a joint assault against all that crawl beneath. His lungs were not happy. His knees were not happy. His throat felt as if it mistakenly accepted a heated proposition from a coil of razorwire. Shard was somewhere nearby, maybe a dozen meters to the side. Dormant. Eating.
The Syllable-gun was nowhere in sight. He could remember the neutralization process only vaguely, in flashes of tearing pain and frenzied visions.
He was stretched on a surface that was hard but thankfully not too cold, covered with something that made the few bits of exposed skin itch on contact. Above, a thick washed out tarp sacrificed itself against the barrages of precipitation. The cage occupied a third of the sky. He had slept (had been left to sleep?) right under the inner perimeter. In the bleak daylight, he could see little spider-like golem shells stitch across the patchwork facade overhead.
“Awake, you suicidal bastard?”
Turning his head came with some effort, and speaking didn’t really work out. The rough animal skin he’d been covered with was irritating against his neck.
“Can’t believe I’m babysitting a moron,” - the same old man from before was sat across a smoldering fire ring from June, staring him down with a mix of pity, fear and contempt. Rust-bitten tin mug vibrated in his thin long fingers as he spoke, - “First I have to drive your feral highness up here, then I have to drag your feral highness to a camp spot while that… Thing stares me down all the way,” - he winced, uncomfortable with even the thought of Shard, let alone its presence, - “Because, of course, you pass out in an alleyway.”
June dozed off again.
He was finishing his unremarkable meal, almost ready to stretch his legs and do some shopping. Shard’s mule-pack, the cargo harness, was spread on the ground, seemingly untouched in the prolonged time of unconsciousness. He guessed the Cage’s armored infantry was doing well with keeping order, at least.
He was not to leave uninterrupted. No one was.
A wave of anger rolled over the landscape, raising the hairs on the back of June’s neck. Another one. So clear, so undeniable, yet admitted by precious few, few and the machines. One wave of many. Except it was different. Structured. Immediate.
The voice was flat in tone, devoid of emotion if taken separately, electrifying nonetheless. With the terrifying synchronicity of a thousand parallel wired fuses melting down in a single voltage burst, every speaker of every computer powered came to life, every screen flashed the same red-on-black simple block of text. The GRANITE-12, voice amplifiers mounted on Shard’s sides, a slab phone in the trucker’s hand, the huge LCD panels hung across Cage’s facades, more and more and more through the town’s fabric.
HEED, RESIDENTS AND SUBJECTS OF SISTER-RIVERS FEDERATION.
YOUR GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED TO COMPLY WITH THE DEMANDS OF THE DRAGON FIVE REGARDING:
- ITS CRUEL AND INHUMANE TREATMENT OF THE INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS OF ITS EASTERN TERRITORIES, THE ROMA PEOPLE, THE GOLEM KIN, AND ITS SUBJECTS AT LARGE.
- ITS DEPLOYMENT OF INTERFERENCE SIGILS, ITS CENSORSHIP OF POLITICAL OPPOSITION, AND INTERFERENCE WITH THE FLOW OF KNOWLEDGE ACROSS THE SLEEPING SEA.
- ITS USE OF INDENTURED HUMAN, GOLEM AND DRAKELING LABOR IN PAST AND ONGOING CONSTRUCTION OF YOUR CAPITAL MEGASTRUCTURES.
- PRODUCTION AND STOCKPILING OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.
OUR PATIENCE IS NO MORE. YOUR STATE IS NULL. YOUR CITIES WILL BURN.
ALL MILITARY, INDUSTRIAL AND LAW ENFORCEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE IS DESIGNATED AS VALID TARGETS.
ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, MILITARY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL ARE DESIGNATED AS COMBATANTS, LEST THEY LAY DOWN THEIR ARMS OR JOIN IN OUR ADVANCE.
NON-COMBATANTS ARE GIVEN 14 DAYS WARNING TO VACATE THE PREMISES OF MOSCOW AND SAINT-GAVRIIL AND ALL POSSIBLE APPROACH PATHS.
THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER WARNINGS.A silence that would have been deathly if not for the rain’s ongoing siege held for what seemed impossibly long. Though the wave passed, the searing messages stayed on screens, different devices recovering to the best of their ability, whimpering and wheezing from the distress of sudden violation.
Then, someone cheered. Then another voice. Then another. Voices human and not. A chain explosion of raw, animalistic glee engulfing the trade post. There were cries, too, but far between, drowned out.
The country around them was already dead, and most seemed elated to join in the overdue burial.
The trucker under his tarp didn’t cheer. He didn’t cry either. He sat, motionless, shrunk into his fold-out camping chair, muttering something in a winding loop as the fire smoldered on and the rain battered relentless. Among the gleeful chaos he shivered, a broken doll left in the rain.
“Insane. Everything went insane. I’m the only one left. I was going to graduate. It made sense. I learned how to teach these things how to do things. Solid, neo-bun, neat little things, could whip up anything and it wouldn’t run away. Useful. They were sane. Sold well. They made sense. They never should have let those idiots at Berkeley do cryptography. ed25519 was enough, who needs more post-quantum algorithms? I had a nice portfolio going. God, if only we had just shut up. It was perfect, but no. They had to push it. Now they have necromancy as a sidechannel. Now NATO is a dragon and I half-starve driving a soft-wheeler. Are you kidding me? Everything has gone to shit. People turned to clankers and clankers turned to animals. Everything went insane. I’m the only one left that’s not.”
June threw the dog-fur blanket to the side and sprung up, bowl clattering to the shattered tile.
“Thank you for your help. I suppose you will not join me on my way to visit Moscow?” - he smiled at the living relic from before the Word.
One of the world’s last programmers looked back at him like a dying fawn into a bear’s maw.
The announcement was brief, tearing through the midday haze.
The street craftsman had just finished welding basic plating to the front of Shard’s impact harness. It was no proper tungsten steel, and from a cursory review June could already tell the seams would probably only survive one or two direct hits from mech arms, but the upcycled plating could at least shed small rounds for a bit. He dealt with it by trying not to obsess, and picking the best kevlar vest he could fit on the already strained budget. Something told him that Sister-River eagles were devaluing rather fast across the continent.
The speaker, small but inescapable thanks to the half-town’s surprisingly powerful public announcement system, titled herself as the settlement’s “chief dispute mediator”. In a casual, almost lighthearted tone she stated that the “independent trade city of Cast-Iron Cage” was sending a sizeable chunk of its garrison to Old Oskol to “negotiate a more equitable arrangement” with the local SRF administration, and that “any prospecting merchant unafraid to state their rights was invited to join in the negotiations”.
“Ye wanna pick a little toy for ye dog?” - The craftsman must have caught June’s grin, now responding in kind.
“What would you have?” - June asked, not eager to admit he probably could not afford anything.
A lot, but not a lot he would want, as it turned out. Jacked into Shard, he perused the endless array of crude war-hammers, oversized slab-swords and questionably maintained ballistas, giving some a test swing and swirl. Even setting the inflated price tags and questionable durability aside, something irked them about it. Too bright, too loud, too whiny, too erratic. Each arm had a character, and all were off.
They were too streamlined, extrinsic.
Too designed.
Too human.
Amused by the thought, they tried to track down in which of them it originated, but failed completely.
Commotion on the artery-road grew as they stalled, a sizeable party hasting to depart. The core of it was Cage’s own armored infantry, roughly twenty in total, hopelessly indistinct behind their dull-blue frontshields. There were more, however - a few more bipedal exoskeletons of ragged make, two spider-like golems the size of large dogs, and a towering blue elephant frame, held half-prone as its undersling hooks accepted bundles of supplies from a venerable forklift. If memory served June right, its operator compartment was in the abdomen, covered with full-thickness plating. A relative luxury.
The lack of un-armored participants was not surprising - rushing down an army hardpoint with nigh but a grenade and a dream was, as the “chief mediator” would probably put it, “a terrible deal”.
Just as they were about to leave the stall behind, something in the corner of the open-air workshop caught their eye.
“What is this?” - June asked, pulling a thick chain out of the junk pile.
It was rusty to the point of flaking, but solid nonetheless. Splotches of brownish-green dotted the weathered links, each just thick enough for Shard’s off-model claws to clamp around tight. It remembered much, and spoke little, and to the dread excitement permeating the air it was a catalyst. A boundless well of patient, bitter wrath. A dead snake in their fingers, still calculating its next lunge.
They gave it a few test swings, and it felt right.
“This? Eh, just some crap leftovers, prob’ly came from a riverboat or some… Wa-a-ait, are ye gonna?..”
“Well, you told me it’s crap. Mind if I have it?”
The merchant force proceeded in almost complete silence. Though the clouds were thinning, June still envied the more well-equipped militiapeople - most had invested in hull-mounted umbrellas or other similar implements, while he had to make do with a rubberized rain hood. He was the odd one out in more ways than that, and pretended not to notice as the merchants pretended not to leer.
Without much discussion, almost right away, the blue bells had decided they would head along the asphalt road, despite the railway being allegedly walkable, and a more direct path. The phrase June took away from it was: “can’t have a good party drenched in dead lake mud”. It seemed annoying, right until the treeline on their right began to thin. He took a look at the murky, disturbed expanse and the sickly-grey coast slowly sliding into the depths along with withered, poisoned trees still embedded in it, and was inclined to agree. Other than that, though, the path was as direct as it could be, between sixty-year-old tank wrecks, waterlogging and unsteady bridges they had to deal with.
The landscape to their left seemed quite healthy by comparison. The meadow-patches, segmented by tendrils of naked shrub, were dreaming of a warmer month, whispering between themselves. Squinting into neck-tall wild grass, one could sometimes spot edges of walls or unclaimed foundations - clear evidence of human living, but nowhere near enough to speculate further. Fading cement intermingled with glistening black water in a reluctant, half-hostile duet.
The awkward sky-stretching steel-crumple dolmens were easier to identify. The drakelings’ habits for dealing with armored vehicles were the same everywhere. They seemed to make great nesting spots, too, judging by the prevalence of stork nests. The crows still preferred surviving trees, however unsteady.
The crows stared judgementally, probably having a good idea of what the machine march meant.
It leapt in front of them from behind a wrecked civilian fuel depot, metal hooves punching tiny craters in the sparse brickwork as it ground to a stop. Lightweight, almost fragile aluminium quadruped, barely chest-height even counting antlers. Cyclopean main camera stared them down without flinching even as some of the humans drew their ballista cables in warning, while smaller peripheral eyes twitched, jumping between bushes and powerpoles in an indiscriminate, ceaseless survey.
“Identify yourself,” - the elephant boomed with chief mediator’s voice, making June wince from the sound’s intensity. Shard felt energized by the vibrations induced throughout its frame, somehow.
“Watch-Wisp 22 of Dead Lake’s Little Widows. Good to see you showed up,” - the stag-like golem responded in a gentle, rivulet-like synthetizer, bringing a memory of their own virtual creek respite to mind. June swallowed an unexpectedly sharp clump of grief before it had a chance to take hold, - “I am to deliver a report and a warning. We have taken the south smeltery, and chased its garrison north. However, they managed to destroy the bridge. Most of our forces are stuck on the south bank while we ferry across. Both SRF garrisons regrouped at the Grave of Peace. Their total headcount is twenty five exo, three turrets, some squelchie infantry and an armored truck. We have delayed our approach to allow nearby residents to flee.”
“This sounds decent all around. Where’s the warning?”
“They are too confident, despite being outnumbered. Watch-Wisps in the area keep getting pot-shot at, even though SRF’s ammo supply was projected to be low. It is likely they have something we do not know about. Do not underestimate the fortifications, either.”
“Understood. Tell your chief we will make contact and negotiate.”
The golem simply nodded, log-periodic antlers already scanning mish-mash cityscape behind it.
“It appears they have deployed radio jammers just now. Good luck.”
Just as suddenly, it was gone, metallic clacking fusing into the noise of a city on the verge of panic. June brought up a map in his mind, and made note of the changes. This was mostly a pleasant distraction - all the high-detail maps he could find were at least twenty years out of date.
A gauntled tapped on their shoulder.
“Hey kid,” - a vaguely familiar voice rang from below another faceless suit bell. A warpick engraved with warding signs helped June narrow it down, - “Wear ear protection,” - the last night guard’s leader returned to formation without waiting for him to respond.
It was a city split in two. Physically rather than metaphorically - its main river (parent or daughter to the settlement namewise? June did not know), once contained in a somewhat stable course, must have began spilling even before Widow’s first crusade. Decades later, with lands both up- and downstream mushed by dragon warfare on top of artillery duels, it was hard to recognize as a river at all. Flooded, punctured with countless little islands of debris, and absolutely choked with reeds, the entire central part of the town seemed to bed its lethargic flow. Human life retreated uphill on either side, pieces strung together by tensioned buoy-bridges and patches of road in a deadlock battle against erosion. And from his current perch halfway up the old pylon, through the best pair of binoculars he could find in his old home back in Brest, June could make out one of those massive floaters travelling slowly along the jagged north bank, not quite stuck in the overgrowth.
“I can confirm the state of the bridge, the Little Widows were not lying,” - he shouted down to the trapper. Two dozen meters to the side, Shard was practicing chain swings with a flipped over sedan carcass as its test dummy. The sounds produced were quieter than one would expect from metal crashing into metal. That did not mean quiet, however. Civilians fleeing along the gravel street behind them kept close to the ground dashing through their line of sight.
Through proxy lag, which encroached upon them just a little bit faster than the day before, waves of harsh shortwave noise crashed against June’s back. They would keep their antennas half-extended, even when jamming seemed impenetrable.
The person in the camo-draped, rusty mech frame below uttered a long and elaborate curse, a good two dozen obscene and obscure word roots melding into a single meaty word. If not for Shard’s banging, June would have definitely tried to remember it as language practice.
“Well, what about those that made it to this side? See anythin’?”
“Working on it…”
Pitching the binocs down, June began scanning back and forth along their shore. The distant line of dense housing blocks, now crumbling panel-cliffs, gave way to a slightly less distant maze of old private homes turned anchor points or flattened in favour of long, precarious piers.
Horse-pulled cart stuck in the shoreline mud, two men trying helplessly to push it out. Left.
A street rended perfectly halved by a touchdown trench, crowned by indiscriminate aluminium crumple, still painting water around it reddish-brown. Left.
Two crows fighting over something atop another stray bridge floater. Left.
Oops, that was the fort. Too far. A stroke down, new sweep.
A pack of wild dogs resting in a spacious shed, not a care in the world. A pup, barely a dot at this distance, pouncing at something in the wet grass. Right.
A lone soldier in an SRF uniform, limping east along a footpath, clutching a shortsword. Right.
A floating wooden… Something, engulfed by heaps of duckweed. Stuck to the edge of a waterloggedware house. Water boiling on its side…
That was not right.
“I think I see an empty boat heading south! Barely looks like a boat at all…”
“Did it drop anyone off?” - the trapper instantly revitalized, both spider-golems springing up at the change of tone in his voice.
June focused on the warehouse. It was not the best landing spot - though concealing, the bucking walls must not have provided much protection, and exiting from the gaping doorway would force one to trudge some fifty meters through knee-high still water. An earth ripe for ambush.
But, squinting, he could see movement inside. Slow, careful…
Two flashes tore through the air behind a garage stack just next to the warehouse, sending birds scattering away from the scene. Leaving the vertical smoke plumes behind, June pulled his view upwards, trying to follow the projectile. A distant, dull clap reached them a few seconds later.
After a few more moments of frantic scanning, he found it. A thin, glistening flower of silver coiling through the air. Mist below rapidly flashing red. Another unfurled a second later, scanning a different patch of shore underneath it.
After a few seconds of their bright report, the landing force emerged from beneath their cover, beginning a hastied crossing of the final stretch of mire.
“Yes!” - June took a moment to count them, - “Eight armor, maybe fifteen golems, and folks with rifles! They have eye flies, too. Landed on that long wide street along the waterline.”
“Ah, that’s much better,” - the trapper seemed satisfied as he punched something into a panel on the back of one of his spiders and sent it skittering away, while June got off his uncomfortable perch and slid down the ladder, - “You’re not half bad at this! Counts for less than an eagle, though, since you don’t know what the hell you’re even in it for.”
June laughed, calling to Shard with naught but a thought. He swirled around in a practiced, fluid motion, and his companion’s front plating encased him in a single sharp clang.
“I know what I’m in it for, gramps,” - they hissed in a friendly manner, coiling their weapon around their left wrist and taking off after the trapper in a jog. The second spider ran ahead of them, checking corners and shooing the already frightened population away with harsh beeps, while the first had long gone out of sight, carrying its message back to the elephant towering a few blocks to nothwest.
“No you don’t,” - the trapper’s gait was hunched, even more so than Shard’s, which, together with abundance of dead grass and dry branches meshed to his already dirt-colored frame, worked great to make him look like a boulder come alive, - “There’s no good way for you to be joining in here. Let me count the good ways. One,” - He darted to a half-size brick wall of one of the houses, sidestepping a stuck hand-pulled cart, its owner rendered half-catatonic by their approach, - “You’s not from around here, so this can’t be the homeland reasoning. Two, you’s clearly no prospecting kind. Too soft to be in it for the scalping or the looting. Don’t you scoff, I see it in you eyes! Three, you’s clearly no book-mad fanatic like those Widows. Might be book-mad, but not in that fashion.”
They fell behind for a second, helping dislodge the cart from the muck with a light shove, which seemed to terrify its owner even more, before catching up again.
“Is there going to be a four?”
“No fours, the good ways are all over! The only more options is that you’s plain stupid, or that you’s have a death wish, or that you’s have no understanding of the situation here. Old me haven’t yet decided which one it is.”
With a clap mirroring launches downhill, a bright green flare pierced the sky ahead, sending a signal to the Little Widows on the shore. Then another, dark blue. The first spider had, evidently, rejoined with the main force, delivering the message. They would too, in two or three corners.
“It’s pretty simple, really. I need to reach Moscow. I got into a slight… Complication on the road here, so the local forces are probably searching for me. The surest way for that to not propagate is for there to not be local forces.”
The trapper did not turn to stare them down, but one of his golems did.
June did not know what else he could have said.
The real answer was beyond language.
The real answer could only be expressed with a chain.
“So, ’s all three at once.”
That wasn’t a question, so June did not answer.
They rounded the last corner, leaving a drying stream of refugees behind in its channel of squat fences. Most of Cage’s blue-bells were marching ahead at a reduced pace, while a few squads had been sent out for reconnaissance. June and the trapper were the second last to return, final group rejoining formation shortly.
Within city bounds, the elephant had revealed itself to be more than just a walking ammo rack. Considerable height gave it great vantage, operator easily peeking several neighborhoods ahead into the yarn-ball of northern hill’s streets. Front armor seemed more than enough to tolerate incessant rifle-caliber abuse or a few direct bolt hits, too. Its back had bloomed with a variety of communication equipment, though jamming had rendered most of them moot for the time being.
And, in their latest brief absence, it had decided to reveal a new detail about itself: tucked under its nose, no longer pretending to be just a vague oblong sack, hung a honest-to-god blackpowder cannon. At first, June thought it was a paintover job on top of some kind of sane howitzer, maybe spared by the Word, maybe reconstituted from spares later. But the seamless build and the blatant lack of any kind of feed mechanism quickly sent these hopes scattering away along with the fresh northeast wind.
The chief dispute mediator of the “independent trade city” was, indeed, carrying a single-piece, iron-cast museum exhibit as their main armament. Tagging along with the main formation, June kept wondering what purpose it could possibly serve.
The time window for that wondering was short. They were already in the trade quarter, residential huts left behind. Both looked eerie left vacant on short notice - only the terribly old and the stupid hadn’t fled to the outskirts.
The northern hill was all new construction, walls laid in rough stonework or resin-treated spruce logs. Power pylons and radio repeaters were the only exception; the two seemed somewhat interchangeable to the residents in practice. A tall tower is a tall tower.
Dark-grey, boxy walls of the fort drew close, too tall to be concealed by thatch and tile roofs anymore. The stonework seemed almost messy, borderline sloppy from a distance, but a certain tone in their glint would tip a trained eye off. June’s eye was trained. His hometown thrived on scavenging shed dragonflesh. He would smell that a wall had been reinforced with divine bone splinters even under ten layers of plaster.
“It is three minutes until contact,” - the chief mediator spoke, amplifiers tuned down so that the words would not reach the defenders, - “I will approach. Squads 1, 2, 4 and 6, spread out and follow me. Squads 3, 5 and 7, approach by a parallel street on the left, do not make yourselves seen, come in if argumentation is insufficient. Externals Bass, Tuna and Trout, find a tall enough hut, fire support. Externals Mackerel and Mola, follow to the side, provide cover or distraction as needed. I will stop forty paces from the gates. Homes should provide adequate cover.”
External-Mackerel and External-Mola was June and the trapper, respectively. The callsigns had been dished out somewhat randomly during the more boring stretches of road, when even the blue bell guard couldn’t quite bear the monotony. The old trapper seemed mildly unhappy with the unsavory choice of fish that had fallen on him, though did not protest. June was amused.
Nine of the permanent guard split off, and the three other externals darted into a side street, heading for a cluster of tall old sheds a few blocks away. The rest of the group scattered behind the elephant, taking up the entire width of the road. Though the blue suits’ pace remained steady and their movement unburdened, June could feel them grow tense, almost imperceptibly so. Gauntlets clutching handles with a scrape just a tad louder. Tower shields held just a little bit closer to chests.
They rounded the corner.
The walls greeted them, unobstructed and hostile. The fort was an ugly big crate of bitter cement and half-alive metal, standing atop a rather steep slope. They were approaching by the main road from northwest, likely as measure to limit firing lines from the Grave of Peace’ corner towers.
Except the towers did not hold emplacements. Lacking humans completely, the entire top of the wall was an overgrowth of actuated antennas, pulsing with primordial rage, braided together with coils of barbed wire. The most unpleasant duet. The volume of radio noise was almost overwhelming this close, forcing Shard’s bristle-antennas to retract.
And something was wrong behind them. Coming towards the open gate at an acute angle, they could not peer inside. And something was behind them that should not have been.
“Why the fuck are the gates open?” - someone on their side whispered, clearly distressed. Their squad leader silenced them with a hiss.
And that audio noise, too.
“Someone’s wasting a lotta good diesel in there,” - External-Mola grumbled under his breath. His rust-touched gauntlets clutched a stubby thick tube of a homemade grenade launcher. The nondescript cylinders strapped in rows to his waist and the bellies of his little golems suddenly became a lot less mysterious.
The chief mediator stopped.
“Greetings, good citizens and protectors of Sister-Rivers’ people,” - she spoke at maximum volume, almost making June’s teeth chatter. Shard was experiencing a polar opposite of his wince reaction, strongly enticed by the proximity of the powerful frame, - “We have come to assist you in your evident crisis. If first lieutenant Makhov is available, speaking with him would be preferable. Otherwise, the highest-ranking remaining officer would do.”
Assist?
Dead silence.
Something behind the walls, coiling restless.
Then, a small figure emerging from the gates. Stiff, strained gait of a balding man in a drab green overcoat a size too tight in the waist. He walked in a straight line, staring directly ahead, eyes bulged out in a crystallized expression of pure terror. Then he stopped, turned in place to face them, still completely silent.
“I hope this day has not treated you too harshly, lieutenant,” - the elephant’s operator continued, almost unfazed, - “We have come to assist you in defending your post from terrorist forces. From our understanding, you have lost the south bank this morning, and the bridge has been destroyed. Is that correct?”
Lieutenant nodded very, very slowly. His contorted grimace was almost pleading. His eyes still stared directly ahead, not even focusing on a palisade of motorized violence facing him down. Except for a certain twitch every now and then. A twitch left. Peeking frantically back inside the gate.
“It is fair to assume, then, that you are incapable of holding this post without assistance. The terrorists’ armored infantry outnumbers yours, and the bridge is merely a delay. They only appear to have ferried a small handful of units across, but that will change within a day. We come to you with a proposal of joint crisis management. I am sure you would like to hear it, considering our history of mutualism?”
Another panicked twitch of the eye.
The officer’s body leaned forward, almost tumbling to the ground, barely transferring momentum into a mad dash. Escaping towards them.
His legs made one step.
Another.
Then, his head exploded sideways, obliterated by a shooter hidden behind the gates. The deafening report from inside the perimeter left only the rattling of a diesel engine in its wake. As if every soldier in the garrison was holding their breath. Nothing on the wide street ahead was moving at all, besides the body.
Something was missing. June concentrated on the two’s sensations, going through them one by one. Their eyes were alright. Their hearing was fine. Nothing smelled off.
But something had gone. Something unpleasant.
The jamming was off. The crown of electric thorns adorning Grave of Peace was silent, until…
“There is only one solution to parasitic infections,” - a new voice blasted out of the speakers embedded all across the fort wall.
It was cold. Not a clamped vocal range of an indifferent demon, or a glitching automated transcription of a spirit’s long-made verdict. The coldness was unmistakably human. Underneath a mile of ice, a tinge of bile-like black glee. A special, unreplicated kind of cruelty.
The diesel’s work cycle kicked up into a battle cry, tires screaming against the pavement. The vile thing behind the walls made the lunge.
June knew it before he saw it.
“SCATTER, THEY HAVE A-” - June screamed on maximum volume, already transferring Shard into a sideways dash, grabbing the trapper by the shoulder. Still not fast enough.
The pre-Word armored truck, sun wheels hastily painted in red over dull camo green, backed out onto the square in front of the gate, swerving 45 degrees to half-face them. Its HMG began firing before it even had line of sight, pumping slugs into dragonscale brickwork.
The new noise came at the same time. The crown was alive again, heating up in an instant from the amount of power being dumped into it. The cacophony it produced was like nothing they’d ever felt before. A mechanical scream of primordial agony, on every frequency, from every direction, burrowing deep into the soul, leaving thrashing, burning pain in its wake. It rended mind from body, making coordinated movements a thousand times harder. Their limbs almost seemed to fight each other.
The FMJ rounds came down like hail, exploding in showers of sparks against armored bodies. The two crashed through a brick fence into the backyard of a butcher shop, trapper’s weight completely limp in their grasp. The ground was slick with tissue refuse and washed-out excrement, the entire enterprise seemingly abandoned in the middle of intense morning setup. A cow half-slaughtered still wheezed gravely to the side, left behind with its spine broken but throat uncut.
Almost immediately, the lag in their own movements was gone, but same could not be said for External-Mola. Not adequately screened and probably lacking golemic firmware, his venerable suit had shut down completely.
On the street, Cage’s blue bell guard screamed, struggling to clear out, exoskeletons slowed down or paralyzed by the noise. Some caught the projectiles onto their shields or thick chest plating. Others weren’t so lucky. The spray was chaotic, engulfing muzzle thunder intermingled with distant yelp-laughs of the crazed truck crew. The elephant stumble-strafed awkwardly in the opposite direction, failing to escape the mind-shattering scream. A quick peek with the camera cluster extended over the fence revealed that it was taking the brunt of the electronic onslaught, the fort’s thorn-crown converging on it like a thousand-fanged maw.
External-Mola’s paralyzed gauntlets held the launcher tube in a dead man’s grasp, even though the man inside the suit was still very much screaming. They grabbed the tube, attempting to pry it from locked-up synthetic muscle. Pull after pull, they failed, even applying force almost sufficient to break the arm inside.
The elephant’s cannon discharged erratically, projectile detonating somewhere irrelevant. The report was overwhelming even through earmuffs. The flash briefly reduced the world to a 1-bit imprint in their retinas. This worked to draw attention away from the bipeds. The gunner, still unseen behind the shield, craned up, sending volleys of lead and steel back at the quadruped tower. The chief mediator responded with a rattle of a smaller underslung arm. With her pained, shaky posture that did not amount to much.
“-em! Just throw them, motherfucker! Rip the band off and throw them!” - their hearing and language comprehension snapped back to life, sorting through the surrounding chaos; as a result, they understood what the trapper was saying now.
They peeled a whole bundle of harsh-yellow aluminium cylinders off the old man’s shoulder sling, each the size of a large pickle jar. All marked with a hand-painted “S(e)”. The safety locks were very much optimized for suit use, rings large enough to tear off without fiddling.
More screams coming from the gate. Thumping of armored legs, individual high caliber shots distinct from the machine gun’s deadly rhythm. The garrison must have been spilling out under the truck’s fire cover, hoping to rush down the disabled merchant force.
They reeled back, standing upright again. In a single violent motion, they ripped all five pins out. The sound was indistinguishable against the noise. With a full-step wide swing, they launched the bundle across the disgraced fences and roofs, towards the fort, towards the truck. It detonated mid-air, each tube bursting into a half-dozen fragments, each fragment spewing copious volumes of thick, viscous off-white smoke.
Three armored shells burst through the fence, two blue-cap mercenaries dragging a third after them, who was largely immobilized, front plates punctured in several places by head-on hits. HMG’s chatter briefly chased them, mauling sloppy mortarwork of the house behind, before focusing on the elephant again. The elephant held upright, but did not look too good.
Something burst atop the walls with a blue-flame flash and a sickening sizzle. The microwave chaos waned for merely a second before returning back to full force. The process repeated. This time the Two caught the source - a rail track bolt, launched from somewhere downhill. It appears the remaining externals decided to engage, after all. The antenna overgrowth was much too dense for their efforts to matter, however.
The street had mostly cleared out by then. One of the guards was left motionless, slumped to one knee in an awkward half-fall. Their tower shield was ruptured by concentrated fire. Capacitance and gore were oozing jointly into the wet grass from the ravaged stomach shielding. Most others were alive, some returning fire to the best of their ability, but the command was completely shattered. The elephant, scarred by impacts, cannon bore chipped, was still blindly strafing away. Some unfortunate family home reduced to mush under its feet. It had either run out of ammo or decided to save it, merely trying to get away from interference. Several bolts had lodged in its right side, furthering likeness to a tormented animal. The ammo belt never seemed to end. The smokescreen was helping, at least - the gunner’s aim wandered, unable to track any spot for long.
The Two grabbed one of the healthy guards by the shoulder, one who was not busy prying the casualty’s front canopy open to administer first aid.
“HOW. MANY,” - they growled, voices fused into a transcendent double-punch. The boundary was annihilated. There was no more June. There was no more Shard. Emergency was a wonderful catalyst.
“What?!” - the faceless guard failed to understand. One of their shoulder drives hung limp, sizzling, jagged entry wound sealing its fate.
“GREEN. SUIT. HOW. MANY.”
“I… Eight?! Ten?! Maybe?!”
That meant most of the projected garrison was out on the road, advancing on the disoriented merchants. Inside the perimeter they would find only infantry, and whatever was violating their circuits. The Two had a pretty good idea.
Dead snake on their wrist seethed with anticipation. It had waited a long time for an opportunity half as good as this one. It simply had to take it.
More noise from the north. Reserve squads decided that the argumentation had not, in fact, been sufficient. The gunner’s aim temporarily slid to the right, suppressing the new target. The thumping of legs near the gate was not advancing for the moment.
“BOOST. ME.”
“‘Fuck do you mean ’boost’?! What does it…”
“GRAVE. WALL. KILL. NOISE. LIGHT. FRAME. BOOST. ME.”
Under the armor that didn’t seem quite as thick now, the guard must have blinked several times.
“Well I’nt a fucking stepladder, you’ll still crush me!”
“FIND. OTHER. PERCH. HELP. CLOSE. DISTANCE,” - the Two turned back to the trapper, who had just barely finished fighting his suit’s emergency reboot routine, still barely able to sit upright, - “I. GO. YOU. SMOKE. IN. GRAVE. ALL. SMOKE. CONFIRM.”
External-Mola quacked something vaguely affirmative.
“AND. WATCH. MY. JUNK.”
The Two ejected its cargo racks, and did not look back. It closed the now-empty frame of the wounded and propped it against a corner with entry harness closed, doing its best to make it look piloted. The actual pilot had been dragged away from the heat by the third mercenary, trajectory visible as a wide parting in the biohazardous layer soaking packed dirt. They began a hasted search of the lot, making sure not to pop up over the roofs.
The hits on the jammer crown were continuing, directed antennas on the south and west sides switching focus towards the rangers, letting some pressure off the nearby units. The smoke combined with relentless return fire had halted the main street advance for now, but the merchants were probably going to run out of bolts soon. The soldiers were chanting something. The machine gun went silent, but only briefly.
“Mother of Golems, they have more than one belt,” - the Cage-guard whispered, voice closing onto hysteria, frantically disemboweling a tool shed with their good arm, - “Where did they get that much?! How did they hide it?!”
Two punched through a wall to a neighboring lot. The fencing really seemed to just be a formality. There was no way even squelchies would have trouble demolishing it in seconds.
“PERCH. FOUND. HELP. LAUNCH,” - it growled, triumphant, dashing towards the newly discovered soft-wheeler semi-truck, ready to push it out onto a side street’s brickwork. The vehicle was tall, not as tall as its mass-produced progenitors, but certainly sufficient to hide behind. Two was fairly confident that the directed emitters did not crane fully downwards, leaving a few meters right under the wall more or less safe from interference.
“Wait, wait, wait, don’t you want to insulate?! These antennas are a shock fence, they’ll turn you into charcoal if you just step on them!”
“GOOD. POINT.”
Two needed to remind itself that it was still made of meat. Partially, at least. It crawled back to the butcher’s shop, scanning it for anything that would fit. It would have to be a large object, large enough to lean on, durable enough not to tear, with high heat capacity, high electrical resistance. A tarp wouldn’t do, though the toolshed had yielded several.
The half-butchered cow’s wheezing was growing desperate, bloodshot upward eye staring into Two’s camera cluster with a mix of frenzied plight and abject horror. How did it know these were its eyes?
“INSULATOR,” - it pointed to the barely-breathing body.
“You…” - the guard’s voice was growing small, already not too far from breakdown.
“LOAD. INSULATOR. LAUNCH. VEHICLE. COVER. MOLA. CONFIRM.”
A distant sign-wail from somewhere downhill. Dead Lake’s Little Widows were approaching, though likely not fast enough to matter.
“You’re sick in the head.”
“LOAD. INSULATOR. LAUNCH. VEHICLE. COVER. MOLA. CONFIRM.”
“Yeah, sure, fuck it, why not!” - the mercenary exploded with hysterical laughter, grabbing the front legs while Two handled the back. The cow screamed hoarsely as at least four of its bones cracked under uneven load. It kept screaming as they dragged it through the offal of its already disposed-of kin, now left to decompose in fragments across the same shop it had been forced to witness for a good half a day. It kept screaming after being lifted onto the semi-truck’s bed.
Before unlocking the handbrake, Two reached out and ripped off its windpipe. It didn’t scream after that.
“COMPLETE. TURN. GAIN. SPEED. HOP. ON. STAY. COVERED. STICK. WALL. HOIST. INSULATOR,” - it instructed to the giggling guard. The sound was annoying, but, paradoxically, the human seemed to be more pliable and effective during the mental breakdown. Maybe they should have gone there sooner, - “NOW,” - It reached into the cabin and fiddled with squelchie controls, steering the truck onto the street as the guard pushed it forward.
The wind carried smoke their way, assisting approach. Directed emitters did not focus on them immediately. When they did, it was too late - Two and the guard had already gained speed, hopping onto the hook-bed of their disposable hell-ride, emulsifying fragments of the dying cow under their claws. The rangers on their side seemed to catch onto their plan, doubling the volume of bolts sent into the jammer array, focusing on a patch directly above them. Every few seconds, one would impact a transformer or a power line, causing that patch to burst into flame. Many segments were already on fire even without a bolt. Somehow, the fort-sized jammer did not seem to mind very much. The violence of its output stayed constant.
The engine compartment rammed into the brickwork with a sickening (exhilarating?) screech, two mech bodies punching into the back of the cabin, shattering whatever was left inside.
Two recovered almost immediately. It raised both arms and pulled itself up. The truck’s frame bent and snapped like wet drywall under its feet. In peripheral vision it caught sight of a group of army frames advancing down the street. Not noticing them yet, but within range to do so, if they only turned. The frames were rebranded in the same way the truck was - eight-spoke wheels in dark red paint. The return fire from the merchants had largely ceased.
“INSULATOR. FAST.”
Hyperventilating under their armor, the guard grabbed the still-not-dead cow around the midsection and raised it onto its shoulder, where Two could grab it. Lacking one arm, they could not do much more.
Two grabbed and pulled. The front legs snapped, shearing off, almost sending the whole body tumbling down. Two grabbed higher, close to the body, lifted again. The cow held, but the truck’s roof didn’t. Two repositioned, tried again.
The cow was heavy. Probably weighed as much as Two. The truck was not happy. Two threw the cow’s rear at the metallic barbs; the current rocked the body, causing it to thrash. It slid off. Two tried again, with a wider arc. It slid off. The hide was simmering. The smell was beyond words.
A soldier sidestepped into the side street, reloading. Degrees away from noticing them.
With a whole-body motion, turning the cabin to mush, Two finally did it. The bovine’s head jerked violently in front of it, one remaining eye forever frozen in an expression of boundless, judging anguish. Its body billowed flames, smells of ozone, charred hair and molten plastic uniting into an unearthly cocktail.
“RETREAT,” - Two ordered to the guard. The guard did not need the reminder, already sprinting back to the shop. The remaining emitters did a rather sloppy job slowing them.
The soldier turned. The solder noticed. The soldier started screaming. Bullets bounced off the bones under its fingers. Two grabbed the edge of the wall and leapt. Its legs grazed the barbed wire still, sending a brief jolt of agony into its inner flesh, but the brunt of abuse was absorbed by the body.
In the dusk on the other side of the wall, a new body greeted it.
Severed roughly in half, naked from waist up, dumped into a shallow recess that was, nonetheless, not a grave. Raising its eyes, Two came to witness an entire grid of waste pits, one corpse in each. Each defaced with the same inscription on their chest.
“TRAITOR”
Each seasoned with a completely arbitrary volume of fecal matter. Most’s eyes were still intact. Clearly, it was the same day’s work.
A small round lodged itself in the muck next to it, interrupting the musing. An unarmored recruit stared it down, screaming something incoherent, rusty pistol in hand. Two raised an arm to compensate for the incomplete head protection, and stepped into the human. The human managed to dump a whopping three rounds into random spots on its limbs before a shoulder bash liquified its form against a barrack’s back wall.
The first smoke grenade burst a dozen meters above them, fragments raining down into the fort. Then another. Sometimes fragmentations were even two-stage, homebrew mines covering ground surprisingly well; the wind was non-existent inside the perimeter, which meant cover would last considerably longer. External-Mola had held on their arrangement. This would help.
The chain on their left arm almost seemed to sing. Two charged forth into the grid of stockpile boxes and human-bed-crates, letting its merciless anticipation guide their way.
The interference inside was very light, poisonous signals present but muffled, not piercing. The wizard (yes, it was a wizard; Two was sure now that it was a wizard) was somewhere in the center, maybe in the fort’s central yard; every building was alike, but there was a structure to their placement, maybe two interfering spiral-like structures. The machine gun rattle outside the gates did not cease.
Two more squelchies in uniform jumped at it, one struggling with the safety of a submachine gun, other charging with a lathe-machined broadsword, trying to aim for gaps in its hastily assembled front armor. Two stepped aside, caught the broadsword in its palm, twisted it out of the human’s grasp, breaking stiff fingers, then swung back, lodging the hilt in its temple. The human fell to the dirt, hitting the other side of its head on the corner of the barrack. Its skull ceased to be a singular object. The second one dropped its gun and ran, never having figured it out. Two leapt after and brought it down with a downward left arm swing, rusty snake reducing the volume of its ribcage by a little over 40%, and displacing a shoulder down by an appropriate distance. The snake wasn’t satisfied.
An armor suit’s engine (combustibles on an exo? Yuck!) revved from somewhere in that direction, bulky silhouette approaching in the haze. Two stepped back, turned 45 degrees, and leapt into a wall that looked weak. Rock dust and strands of synthetic insulation propagated in a tidal wave through the stuffy, sick air. The soldiers’ quarters were a fevered vision, beds and lockers toppled and piled up. Bedsheets and belongings were thin icing on rotten floorboards. Smudgy brown trail led from the carnage and out the side door, merging into the smoke.
The wails of mechanical agony were more articulated now, distinct. The wizard was near.
Two crashed through the opposing wall, widening the front door threefold, and barely stepped back in time to avoid a slab-sword brought down in a mad overhead swing. Tile shards shot up in fountains, peppering Two’s chest and legs. Dragging the sword behind, the suit stepped into the breach. The second of struggle it spent repositioning the sword for a thrusting attack was enough for Two to step sideways, crumpling a pile of furniture under it, and pull the chain taut between its fists. With a wild scream, the armored human charged, widening a corridor exit by a good half-meter; Two leapt back at the last moment, away from the debris, towards the window, catching the sword and the main arm holding it in a loose loop of chain. The human extended a gauntlet, bracing for impact with the obstacle, and Two pulled. The sword slammed onto the floor, twisted out of its owners grasp. Disoriented only briefly, the soldier reached out for the handle again. Two brought down a kick on its sword hand, adding a new joint to it, eliciting a guttural, equally wild scream of agony. It snapped the chain around its left wrist again, picked up the sword, and left the human convulsing behind it. The snake was not satisfied.
It continued. The goal was close. The snake shivered, almost ready to leap without help. The courtyard was in sight, beaming just beyond the next row of death-boxes.
The clouds were thinning, occasional beams of cold fall sunlight gracing the famished earth. Somewhere behind the audial carnage, Two thought it could hear a small mammal bark at its kind.
Another engine reared to life in front of it; simultaneously, the one left behind was inching closer, zeroing in on Two’s location once more. Two slammed its left fist into a vehicle parked next to it, setting off an alarm, then stepped back from the final row to give itself space for a good swing. One of its eye clusters was watching the passage ahead, another peered back, where a trail of exhaust was steadily approaching.
The suit in the courtyard jumped into the passage. It was heavily armored, two heads higher, and at least twice as massive as Two. The passage was too narrow to contain it. It clutched an imposing one-hand mace, round shield strapped to the other arm. Letting it begin its wall-correcting charge, Two took a crouch-swing at its feet with the stolen slab-sword, releasing early. The sword impacted its knees mid-stride, mass sufficient to topple but not damage. The heavy crashed into the pavement with an offended roar, blocking the path. Before its skid had even come to a stop, Two lurched forward, easily dodging its half-hearted swing, clambered over its back, making sure to give a parting punch to the rear-mounted biodiesel drive. It didn’t jam, but it did begin to spill. The pilot shut it off fast, but the spark was already set.
At last, Two burst into the smoke-filled courtyard. The rage of the human struggling to get up behind it quickly turned to panic as their fuel began expedited transition into primitive oxides, taking the squelchie along for the ride.
Two more shots rang close, but the rounds did not come for Two. Wasted squelchies tumbled to the dirt mid-jog, attempts to flee the scene halted harshly and finally, heads changed composition in the same way as the lieutenant’s.
At the source of both trajectories, the wizard’s gaunt frame. The chain whined with excitement.
Dressed in a spotless, national-security-grey robe and a matching army cap, both stained with streaks and dribbles of black and brown, he sat in a deliberately relaxed pose on an impromptu throne welded from ruined mech plates. His head was unfolded at the rear, braid of cables snaking into a hastily built stack of signal amplifiers, a knot of wire at the center of the sky’s wound, a puppeteer’s cross of lexical violence. The assault rifle, easily one-handed, clicked empty as he absentmindedly pulled the trigger again and again on the last escapee, who was almost behind the corner. The abundance of multicam bodies around them suggested the entire magazine had been spent on subordinates.
The screaming behind Two was intensifying. Somewhere outside the gates the HMG’s muzzle flashes pierced the gates. The barrel glowed almost as bright as them, but it still wouldn’t stop shooting. Two had no idea what out there was even left to aim at. The gunner did not seem to look back in, and that was enough.
It took a step towards the semi-artificial hierarch, and his head snapped to face it with a crack. The artificial eyes had trouble focusing.
The dead snake uncoiled, preparing for its promised strike.
The wizard’s hand shot up, and Two experienced a level of pain it had never even considered possible.
Every servo was choking, burning, fighting for control. Every sensor was returning every error code at once. Every block device was full, erroneously disconnected, corrupted and not found. Its network adapter seemed to have been replaced with a bucket of liquid molybdenum.
It took another step.
It got worse. The pale, nigh-translucent skin over the wizard’s implanted tranceivers simmered. Its proper eye drivers crashed, leaving it navigating with just what flesh was given. Everything was on fire. Its muscles seemed to be pulling themselves apart.
It took another step.
Not too long now.
It got worse.
It took another step.
Emergency dipole amplifiers shot out of the wizard’s arm, launching strips of torn skin scattering down, further staining his already-ruined uniform.
Just one more.
It could not manage that. With all its infernal might, all it managed was not crumple. Its mind was whole, entanglement unbroken, but its body was like a shattered ceramic vessel that would lose shape irreversibly at the slightest of breaths. It stood, awkwardly balanced mid-pace, just one step away from being in range of a swing.
Through the haze of mind-melting error-barrage, it could see the wizard’s free hand fumble with the rifle placed on his knees, getting close to stuffing a new magazine in. The chain screamed and screamed and screamed with frustration and rage, almost louder than the gunfire in its mind.
Had it lost?
Not quite yet.
It felt like throwing up its own stomach, but it separated. It almost did not feel that it did. Fragile, soft organic circuit spilled out onto the throne’s foothold. Normally only useful insofar as its participation was needed for Two to come into being. A vestigial organ. A catalyst, not a reagent.
But it was immune to electronic warfare. It had a chance, however slim. Engaging wizards in close quarters was generally regarded among squelchies as “unwise”. But there was a chance. It would take that chance.
The fragile body assumed bipedality. It was almost as hard as not collapsing. Even not standing to full height, the wizard towered over it. Smiling.
“Think you’re hot shit? Come on out, get cooled.”
The wizard interrupted his nearly-complete reload to laugh at his own joke, blood streaming from his mouth and the channels on the sides of his arms.
The hand was still up, pointing at its hull. But the pressure was gone.
The pressure was gone.
The pressure was gone.
Two did not know it had it in it to hold back, avoid an awkward pained lurch. But it did. It moved the stiff frame of flesh, trying its hardest to keep the rest stationary while its peripherals rebooted. It felt like splitting its own motor cortex in two with a malfunctioning dremel. Second after second of shattering, self-inflicted agony.
The meat frame took a step.
“Remarkable persistence for a parasite,” - the wizard was still smiling. His long, cable-like hand no longer held onto the pistol grip. He felt safe. He felt in control.
Its self-diagnostics stabilized. It powered off the network adapter.
“And what are you going to do, punch me?” - the wizard bellowed with cough-laughter, blood dribbling from his mouth.
The block devices were no longer pretending to not exist. Its eyesight was back, though still only in quarter resolution. Its cooling system was not going insane.
“Go ahead, then, punch me, rodent.”
The radio module went out of coma. The gyros were back. The speakers were back.
There was shuffling behind. Dozen pairs of human footsteps, panicked barking. The screaming from the frame on fire was still significantly louder. Growing louder still. The functioning pilot left behind was trying hopelessly to turn their blazing comrade’s shell-coffin over, reach the emergency ejection handle. Excessive weight and bad perch rendered the efforts futile.
“What, having second thoughts? Suddenly don’t want me to rip your balls off and shove them down your throat? I’m afraid that train has gone. So come closer, attack me,” - the wizard spread his hands in an exaggerated greeting gesture.
With a symphony of confirmations, Two’s motor controls recalibrated. Everything back to green.
The meat frame crashed to all fours, and the main frame broke out of its feigned impotence, left arm throwing a frantic swing, chain whizzing above the meat circuit’s surface with barely an inch of clearance.
Perfectly orchestrated.
The wizard’s hand shot up, faster than any squelchie could, to resume the assault, but it could not be fast enough.
With a tone that was equal parts a war cry and a moan of ecstasy, the boat chain connected, wrapping around the antenna-arm in a lethal knot, snapping conductive elements into a hopeless jumble of simmering flesh and melting wiring. The momentum yanked his entire body sideways, out of the chair, down to the ground. The cables hooked into his head were pulled taut, ripped out along with a section of his skull. Interference simply stopped, the already-mangled antenna arrays barely producing a trickle of noise without active coordination. Signals flooded in to fill the space, tingling pleasantly in the Two’s back-bristles.
The elephant was heavily wounded, but alive. Rid of the crippling onslaught, chief mediator rapidly reestablished account of her troops, commanding confidently as if she hadn’t been under constant fire for the past 9 minutes. Sounds of close-quarters clashes from the surrounding blocks quickly intensified, Cast-Iron Cage pushing confused soldiers back into a tight formation.
Two’s organic half smoothly transferred into a sideways roll, passing effortlessly under its own leg as it stepped forth to finish the job. Its two shells moved in chaotic unison, deeply interlinked yet physically independent. It was a strange, new kind of freedom, distinct from frivolity of its two original components and from the single-minded focus of their usual mode of operation. Its degrees of control seemed multiplied by this breakthrough, awareness of its surroundings somehow even more multifaceted than before.
Perhaps there was value in being compound, after all.
Two turned to meet the onlookers, while Two brought the chain down on the thrashing, ruined half-man spilling brain matter onto the fly-specked dirt, and again and again, the instrument pleading abyssal to be used just one more time, just one more time, just one more time.
They were a pack of five young recruits (Two’s disrupted hearing must have mislead it), holding funny little lever action rifles and salvage swords. Two’s flesh smiled, stepping forward, and four of five booked it in silent agreement, dropping their arms. The last stood, paralyzed, staring at Two like a dying fawn into a bear’s maw, clutching the rifle close to his chest like a warding charm, not even trying to defend. Two stopped a step from the teenager, craning its neck to inspect him more closely. Two pummeled the wizard into a thin layer of paste, the chain’s yearning both sated and deepened by the experience. It simply had to be used again. It simply had to.
Tears streamed down the young soldier’s face, and tattoos were red-raw on his clean-shaven forehead. He didn’t seem to be able to avert his eyes, whimpering silently as his fearful commander completed his transition into low-grade fertilizer, his once-fierce compatriot broke the midpoint of his transition into charcoal, and his state began its transition into history.
It reached out a hand, and took the gun out of the stiff fingers, inspecting it. A single round loaded, no clip, but fitted with a bayonet. Still a worse choice than a billhook or a sword.
Two cycled the action, wasting the bullet, then tossed the rifle backwards over its own head, Two’s left gauntlet catching it smoothly mid-flight. Two’s main frame turned to face the gate in a leap.
The gunner just finished reloading again, resuming his crazed spray. Somehow, the ancient terror still held strong, despite its barrel glowing white hot. Something inside Two squirmed with a mix of adoration and disgust.
Such mastery of death, put to a lowly, alienated purpose.
It held the gun in its gauntlet like a short spear or a large dart, and, with a three step’s start, launched it like one. It left a rippling swirl-tunnel in the waning smokescreen, and punched clean through the gunner’s chest, putting an end to his rampage. The driver did not react, long perforated by one of the first volleys of crossbow bolts.
Close in the east, another wail announced arrivals. Sleek, nimble bodies of animal-like golems flashed beyond the gates, flowing through the devastated trade district with wild precision. A repeating ballista opened fire on the backs of soldiers, already pressured by the reunited blue guard. The chief mediator’s cannon thundered again, miraculously reloaded within one encounter, and this time someone felt it.
Two took off towards the fort’s exit, stepping into itself in one fluid motion for convenience’s sake. The recruit didn’t move, staring into an afterimage of its eyes for many minutes after it was gone.