It was hard to describe just how small John felt as that ancient fungus-infested juggernaut stomped towards him leaving steaming craters in the ground where it walked. Several tons of ancient artifice, twisting muscle-like roots and unnatural fungal growth pulsating with an invisible suffocating cloud of Si, along with a much more visible cloud of steam and spores. It stopped perhaps a dozen feet or so from John, though with its immense size that distance was probably the span of one or two of its steps. He realised then it was staring at him, taking him in with its unreadable red lens, trying to determine… something. Looking closer at the angle of its head, or at least what he assumed to have been its head, it seemed to be looking at a part of him in particular. His right arm… the presently dormant ARTOS. Or at least he had assumed it was dormant until the eyes had uncannily all moved to the gigantic mechanical threat. Memories of a past not his own re-surfaced in his mind, the same disjointed contextless scenes of war that had bombarded him months ago, before his connection to the Relic somehow irrevocably changed on a fundamental level he did not entirely grasp. There was recognition there, before the fall of the old order, this or something like it had been recognised as among the principal symbols of the might of old America.

A name floated to him, recalled from somewhere in the jumbled mess of memories that until now had proven too ancient and impractical to serve him any real usage. A Lord of Liberty, a machine built for the sole purpose of serving inescapable judgement.

And as the red lens narrowed and the pulses of Si grew stronger, boiling away the top layer of his slimy sweat almost as fast as he could replenish it, he already knew he had somehow failed whatever criteria it was searching for. He began to move then and there before it even gave a hint of its intent, which proved to be the right play.

Moving with speed totally unsuited for its rusted state and gigantic size it slammed into the ground where he was standing fast enough to displace the air around the metal fist, creating almost a vortex from the spores and steam spewing out of its vents.

Reacting almost as quickly Cobalt transformed in an attempt to help him, holding back far less than she did against the two forest folk that had attempted to confront him earlier. Bony wings erupted from her back along with vicious spines across her whole body, her claws extending to their full length of vicious sharpness, the only part of her not transformed being her face as it seemed the gas mask on her could not shift to accommodate the changes accordingly. She began to dash at the giant machine, only to be grabbed by the elder.

“You are not the one who has been judged. Stand down girl.” The furred giant who could probably rival the golem growled, leaving no room in their tone for a counterargument.

John could not afford to focus any more on what was going on over there however as another fist moved towards his position. Time slowed, his body instinctively repeating the same pattern that had allowed him to activate Adrenaline Rush himself previously. Slowed to a reasonable pace he was able to weave beneath the massive limb, and actually prepare a counterattack.

He lashed out with his right arm, force multiplied by his speed. A loud ringing noise filled the air from the impact once time resumed its usual pace, the strength of his hit sending vibrations through him. Yet all it had achieved was put a dent in one of the plates.

Before he knew what was happening he felt a strong, massive arm grab him. Crushing his chest and making it difficult to breathe. He felt its blazing eye sear into him, waves of heat and Si bubbling away at the protective layer of slime on his skin. His gills felt like they were continually being stabbed by a red hot iron, his head was spinning, it was getting hard to breathe. Was this how it felt to die? How did Magni… Alexander… even Eld- Rusty Aurelium feel in their last moments?

His skin began to crack at the seams, the eye focusing on his old scars reopening as the iron hand simply sealed tighter and tighter around him. John felt as though he were about to split apart, some threads of silver and red began to spool out of the wounds twisting like parasitic worms against his singed skin. Vision starting to fade removing everything but what was right in front of him from view, his delirious mind incapable of properly directing his focus, he began to see once more the strange threads of power connecting him to everything that was metal.

Lightning cracked across his body, and a wave of power pried apart the fingers gripping him. He could see the strings tying it all together, how the force danced to the rhythm of something incomprehensibly vast tying together the entire world, and how his own electricity altered its tune. Screaming partly in agony, partly in exertion and partly in triumph. He tore off loose screws from the rusted plating and sent chunks of armour sloughing off, exposing in places its insides of writhing fungal fibres growing on choked machinery and layers of ancient wood. The threads exposed from where old scars had torn apart, began whipping violently around him, slicing away at whatever soft tissue was too close.

Somewhere along the line, he had felt the connection beneath the metal plates of his right arm and how it wound up his spine and into his brain. It felt like the charred fragments of some great vine regrew into a half dozen branching stems, more easily dislodged while young, but with the potential of becoming something more than the original could ever hope to become. There was something blocking the node at its root in his arm, but in trying to get a better grasp on what it was he made a fatal mistake.

He took his eyes off his opponent.

With a slam he was thrown, rather launched, into a great tree embedding him into a crater in its cabin sized trunk. Knocking his mask slightly ajar and getting him a lungful of viciously toxic spores. With his new power he tugged at the metal at the edges of the mask, keeping it secure for now. But cracks spread across the glassy eyes, and he knew if anything tore the plastic or broke the lens he could do nothing about it. There was little time to dwell more on that, the machine was charging at him, and terribly fast at that.

In a panic he forced himself out of the crater and tree, just in time to avoid a collision that reduced it to sawdust and splinters. From within the cloud of dust and steam he could see the baleful glow of the blood red eye. His skin was too dry to conduct anything of real use, and he could practically feel every blood vessel in his head every time he tried to summon the psychic power. He had pushed himself a bit too far it seemed. Attempting any trick he could muster he tried to alter the shape of his right arm, to transform ARTOS into something, anything that might be able to get him out of this predicament. But it didn’t seem willing to listen to him, each attempt only succeeding in making the movement of the fibres dancing across his wounds to hasten.

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Come on, talk to me you kracking bomb-cursed bastard! Useless scrap of metal, help me out here! He cursed in his thoughts.

The ground rumbled as the great machine came to a stop before him once more, taking a moment to seemingly just stare at him again for a moment before winding up a truly devastating punch. Flashes of his life danced before his eyes.

He saw once again that endless wasteland of scrap and ruin, distant echoes of countless writhing insects at the periphery of his awareness. And he saw himself… no… not quite himself. A half-transparent echo of himself, skin almost as pale as Magni’s was.

Artos? He thought.

[Connection… reestablished]

He snapped back to reality moments before the fist made its impact, time slowing to a near stop before it could punch him into a crater. His right arm moved without his input, launching towards the metal head of his foe and grabbing on tight. It retracted at great speed pulling him out of the way of the impact and onto the golem’s rusted head. The speed at which he was going causing the nearly foot thick steel to crack on impact, flakes of rust scattering into the wind. The threads whipping uncontrollably around his body, began to stitch his wounds back together, and for the first time in a long time he was feeling whole again.

Unfortunately, as much as his body had gotten stronger and more used to it, the Adrenaline Rush technique was still pushing a body already at its limit well beyond that point. The high inevitably wore off quickly, his body feeling like lead before time had the gall to resume its usual pace. Worse, turns out slamming into solid metal at supersonic speeds doesn’t tend to be good for ones health, several bones seemed to be cracked in places and were probably being held together by the same threads that had moments earlier been tearing him apart.

With the last of his strength he gripped on desperately as the golem flailed. Stumbling backwards as it registered the impact to its head, spores and searing steam spewing from cavities ripped open from its distended neck. A steady stream of scrap started to leak from the ring on his right arm and were directed by a will not entirely his own to aid his body in its movement. ARTOS substituting John’s exhausted body and mind for its own more precise control of their shared psychic power. In retaliation a deafening horn blow blasted through him shaking his bones and organs with its intensity, blood spewing from his ears as his sense of balance was shaken into uselessness. It was followed by a bellow of boiling hot steam, and even with the help of ARTOS John could no longer keep his body from sliding off the iron giant and onto the cold ground below.

Vision blurring as the blood red eye loomed overhead, John asked his symbiote. Any other tricks up your sleeve?

[All available resources being diverted to regenerative measures and radiation management. Alternative options are… limited…] It answered.

Well, shit. He did suppose he was outmatched from the start, he just wished it didn’t end like this. He closed his eyes, bracing for the inevitable.

But the inevitable never came. Instead there was the sound of clashing metal and the rush of a shockwave overhead, something blocking the force of a titanic impact. Opening his eyes once more he saw Cobalt standing at her full transformed height, holding the massive fist of the infested machine over her head with a massive effort. Her muscles practically tore out of her skin, her extended claws dug large gashes into the metal plating, wood and mycelium and though he couldn’t see her face he didn’t need to in order to know exactly what sort of expression she was wearing right now.

“GET OFF HIM YOU BOMB-CURSED SCRAP HEAP!” She howled, pushing aside the massive fist with enough force to actually make the giant stumble backwards. It stared at her with its glowing eye as she hung protectively over his battered form, a bestial growl escaping her throat as her skin instinctively shifted between different threatening hues and patterns.

“Are you aware the human is compromised?” The thing said in a crackling voice that seemed to echo both from the machine and simultaneously from the entire forest around them. Devoid of any human features like gender or accent, simultaneously artificial and oddly natural.

John blinked in surprise, and the minute twitch in Cobalt’s stance indicated she felt much the same. With more effort than he probably could have afforded to spend he felt the compulsion to ask. “You… you can talk? Why didn’t you kracking start with that?”

“All of these woods is one mind. Nothing enters our three million four hundred thousand and eighty two square miles without our knowledge. We felt your arrival yet we did not know where you came from.” It said in the same unnerving everywhere and nowhere voice. “We have observed you, and we have determined the female is pure. You however, parasite. We have observed your kind as you attempted your invasion of my body in the East. We saw your perversions against the flesh, we do not tolerate this.”

“So why… are you talking now?” He coughed, blood splattering against the ground.

“We want to be sure the other one is aware.” It answered clinically. “We prefer enlightenment over senseless violence.”

“Hypocrite!” Cobalt spat in utter disgusted defiance of the incomprehensible entity represented before her. “Cut the all knowing wiser than thou dox-shit! If you took some time to truly investigate rather than jump to conclusions you would realise your mistake! We are in this situation because you chose to jump to violence with a modicum of evidence to support your own bias!”

“YOU DARE!” The voice boomed.

“Oh I do!” Cobalt spat. “I’ve been with him the entire time, do you think I wouldn’t have noticed if my friend was taken over by a machine? I won’t claim that is impossible, I have seen it happen and it was a horrifying sight, but his relationship to the Relic has nothing to do with our enemy to the East! How about you actually take a moment to look for more than a few fucking seconds before going about some half-baked judgement!”

The ruby red eye burrowed into her with the intensity of the sun, and apparently finding something of enough merit to consider her words turned back onto John with easily double the intensity. He felt some invisible rays of Si pierce his skin, going straight through his muscle and organs to soak directly into his meridians and bones. It stayed there for a good few minutes, hunched over in silence as more fungal tendrils emerged from cracks in the shell, reaching over towards him and seeming to scan every corner the main eye might have missed.

There was a heavy silence for a moment, before it started speaking again.

“What are you?”

John tried to answer, but little more than a pathetic wheeze emerged from his mouth. The last of the adrenaline and other volatile hormones pumped into him wearing off and the pain suppressants taking their toll.

“How about we sit down like civilised individuals, and talk about it properly without beating anyone into paste!” Cobalt hissed. The last thing he heard before he let himself fall unconscious.