An explosion tore the wall open and Cecilia dashed through the breach, everyTrait she had burning through her mana reserves. She came into the room beyond the wall and noticed three things immediately. The first was that every single Clockwork in the room was active and firing their guns. The second was that they were not shooting at her. The third was the massive behemoth of groaning steel and raging fury in the center of the room in the process of crushing a Clockwork with a massive slab of stone.
With a grim look, she darted forward, planting two blades into the neck of a Scout firing its gun. Before it began to fall, she swiped her blades outwards, separating the heads from two other Scouts.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a Crasher in the process of whipping its tail to her direction. She did not let it finish, ducking low and swerving around the holding bays of a dozen other Clockworks and cutting the tail off from the base.
A small tingle in the back of her mind was the only thing that saved her from being bisected, letting her dodge under it Crasher’s claw and return with a slice that cut deep into the metal of it, ruining the gatling gun. Despite her best efforts, she had finally met something that could stand up to her new daggers.
Just as she was about to pull her weapon free from the claw, the other claw of the Clockwork tore towards her, and though it was just too fast for her [Danger Sense II] to notice, she saw it coming. Throwing herself into a roll, she wretched the dagger from its place in the Crashers claw and plunged them both deep into its head.
A sudden bright blue light exploded from behind the steel mecha and nearly blinded Cecilia. Something she had learned during her time with her Traits was that light attacks, like bright flashes or the lances wielded by that lich, were not things she could dodge without predicting that they were coming beforehand.
Whatever the light blinding her was, it was no different.
The low booms of gunshots being processed by her brain quickly stopped for a moment, returning two-fold an instant later. She searched for her next target even as she blinked the stars from her eyes, meeting the glowing eyes of a Sniper perched height on a tower of vertical holding bays.
A bullet grazed her cheek as she began receiving her fair share of attention from the bots, ducking and dodging and weaving and rolling out of the way of bullets. She reached the bottom of the stack before all of her team even entered and leapt up. She climbed the tower like an ice climber would, using her daggers as ice picks. Just as she reached the top, she felt something stir.
The next thing she knew, she was falling from the tower, pushed by some unfamiliar force. She looked up, seeing the Sniper steadying its arm-bound gun with its other hand. Enhanced mind or not, strengthened or not, she was unable to do anything, even as she watched the complex mechanism in the arm of the Clockwork prepare to fire the round.
Then a giant slab of stone slammed into the tower, crushing the Clockwork.
Surprised, her eyes frantically looked around to the source, only to see the steel monster winding down from throwing something over its head. Her eye caught something from the side, a tell-tale flashing of mana, and she spun herself to the side. Placing her feet on a small stack of holding bays, she launched herself towards the flash.
It was an Infiltrator, hands molded into a pair of swords, it was just about to leap at Cecilia’s savior when she plunged her dagger into its elbow. It hissed, slashing wildly at her. A quick calculation later, she let go of the dagger and dropped to the ground, moving to slash the Infiltrator’s knees.
A moment later, she saw her spare hand flying off of her newly-created stump of a wrist. The sword that took her hand was different, however. It was alright with flames burning so hot that she could see the clocksteel melt from the intensity.
Every instinct in her was screaming to dart away, but she needed something before the spiteful bot turned into a flaming heap. She quickly sheathed her dagger and plucked her falling hand from the air next to the flaming blade. Challenging herself a bit, she dodged around as the Clockwork slowed to take her other dagger, having to pull it from the wound of metal with force, even as her severed hand was in her other one.
Normally, a person with human ancestry would be completely traumatized from losing a hand, though it did not affect insectoids or others who originate from uplifted animals. She had seen it happen before in others. A lost hand would have put most out of action for a few hours from shock alone, not to mention the fact that their ability to do pretty much anything was cut in half.
Even then, Cecilia felt surprisingly little as she held her severed hand.
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She leapt behind her new team just as she deactivated her Traits, breathing a sigh, “Ouch,” she commented as the seared flesh of her wrist stump sizzled like meat over a grill.
The elf alchemist on her team turned to her just as she threw another clay pot at a bot, “Oh hey why’re yo- Oh by the Creators!” she cried, “Are you alright!?”
Cecilia thought for a few moments on it, “Been through worse,” she said. She had been through worse even before knowing what real pain was, though it was just emotional before the lich.
“Alright, alright, calm down, calm down,” the elf repeated, rummaging through her bag.
Cecilia rolled her eyes, “I’m already calm,” she said calmly. For a moment, she realized that she probably should have been panicking just a bit, but she did not have it in her. From the look of it, she guessed that the elf had something to fix the detached hand problem.
Her guess was proven correct, as the alchemist produced a metal flask with a Mount Aekan logo on the bottom, making it one of the really expensive ones that keep whatever is in it preserved for months without letting anything else in. They were usually used for alchemists to store material-sensitive potions. “Alright, I’ve got something for you and- um.” The elf stared at her seared arm-stump for a moment, “Um… I can't do it when your arm is seared… But I could if… you cut the burnt part off- Wait!” Cecilia did not wait, chopping the burnt stump off. The elf stared for a moment, “I-Uh-Wha- Nevermind! Gimme the hand!”
Cecilia offered the severed hand, chopping the burnt flesh from it when the elf stared at it blankly for a moment. The elf rooted around her bag once more, pulling out another potion and sprinkling it on the hand, then the stump of her wrist. The flesh began to wriggle on both and the elf put the two together, pouring a generous amount of the sealed potion on them. Cecilia nearly twitched when she felt the tingling from her wrist turn into the feeling of her hand suddenly connecting to her brain once more.
Another few minutes later, long after the gunfire had stopped, Cecilia felt like her hand had never been touched, “That’s better. Thanks… What’s your name?”
The elf stared for a few moments, shaking her head when she finally snapped out of it, “Oh! I’m Vitnami… Um, are you really alright?”
Raaz walked up beside Vitnami, a concern somehow conveyed on his mantis-like face, [I agree. We insectoids are able to ignore it to an extent, but a lot of my kind lose themselves for a bit when losing a limb…] he wrote out, [Are you sure you’re alright?]
“By the Creators,” Cecilia mumbled, “I’m fine. I've been through worse, alright.”
“I wonder what’s worse than losing a hand,” a deep, metallic voice mused. They all turned to see the steel warcasket walking over to them with slow, measured steps. Cecilia had seen them before and she reaffirmed her opinion of them.
They were cruel inventions.
The crude, thick steel frame of the warcasket made the wearable coffin look more akin to a part taken out of a skiff than a suit of armor. The warcasket’s main body was roughly welded, with blocky pauldrons and thick, restrictive gauntlets. The head was barely even distinguished from the blocky armor around it, looking like the head of a mannequin with holes drilled into it for the eyes and nose.
Cecilia could hardly believe being stuck in something like that was once to be her fate. Nonetheless, she regarded him like her other teammates, “Well, imagine what that rumored lich could do.”
“Ah, sounds rough.” The man stood, watching as only a couple of soldiers filed in after him, “What happened to sparkly tits?” he asked.
One of the soldiers shook his head, “Didn’t make it. Stupid bitch decided to stand out of cover to cast her fancy spell.”
“Look on the bright side,” one of them said, “At least we don’t have a gui in our ears constantly screeching at us.”
The warcasket nodded slowly, “And now I don’t have to pretend to not talk to any of you guys,” he laughed, turning to the group of Green Oasis Auxiliaries, “The name’s Nib. You?”
“Cecilia,” she replied, stepping closer, “So, what’d you do to get here? I broke out before they could stuff me into one of those, but I doubt I’d have been as lucky as you.”
The Gribnik soldiers tensed a bit, turning to the man in the warcasket with eyes that screamed both worry and pity. Despite the looks all around her, the man began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, voiced echoing and metallic on his suit, “Oh? You’re from the Valley too? Not much of a surprise. Lotta guys get away from the snobs back home from what I heard. But, if you gotta know, I’ll tell you. Got caught trying to make off with a lotta gold all stashed in some duke’s manor or something. Stuffed me in here for it, too. Thanks for dealing with that infiltrator, by the way.”
Cecilia turned to the smiling heap of metal that was once a Clockwork, grimacing, “Yeah, bastard didn’t let me go unscathed. Thanks for the save from that Sniper, too. Something weird happened and it threw me off that tower.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
[Hey, guys,] Raaz wrote in the air, making a few clicking noises to get their attention, [Is it just me, or are there too many who can do magic for my liking? They shouldn't get like this, even if we’ve been in the camp for a week and a bit.]
They all slowly nodded, even the Chaotic Disciples who tagged along with their respective teams. Eventually, Vitnami looked up, “Is it just me or did the Sniper-Brothers just stop firing?” They all looked up, trying to hear the deafening booms of the cannons, only to find nothing.
Just as they were about to go back to their conversation, hundreds of booms, big and small, shook the wall and the ground.