BRUTALATOR 1
The quiet was deafening.
Nothing moved.
He broke the silence.
Underneath his breath lay the oral tradition carved from a thousand years of bloodshed by his ancestors. The words that both were his heritage, and would form his legacy. The man shaped mass grave responded.
Kahn slammed a rune. The arcane mechanisms whirred to life, and the 20m metre monster began screeching a cacophony of noise. It sang of death. It promised it. The automaton was all bone, blood, fire and iron. It was Kahn’s birthright, and the throne upon which every ancestor he could ever know had commanded from. The beast returned to life.
The goliath began to lumber forward, gears of metal grinding against ligaments of bone. The hiss of magic could barely be heard below that great writhing mass of noise. The giant stopped lumbering. It started sprinting. Kahn realised he was trembling with anticipation, and he couldn’t stop himself.
“It’s coming right at us!”
The scream came from one of the tiny frame rapidly losing distance from Kahn and his machine. The goblins’ little junk pile was pathetic. Kahn could smash it to pieces with his bare hands. Half a dozen of those frames would not be worth remembering after Kahn’s work was done.
“Move, for the love of anything, MOVE!”
The voice had as much authority to it as a goblin could possibly have. There were no forests to hide in. They were fish out of water, completely lost amongst the plains. Maybe they’d come for cheap thrills, hoping to catch a caravan or some travellers. They had not expected to find a butcher.
His frame was only a second from impact now. Kahn pulled down on a lever and brought the machine into a fighting stance. That levers handle was the femur of his great grandfather. He had turned these very plains red.
The orcish frame moved with more elegance than a dancer. With an impulse from his right hand, his frame produced the great axe. That axe had felled giants. Some of the storytellers even spoke in hushed tones of the time that axe had left a chip in the great dwarven gates of Nidavellir. The weapon was shaped beautifully, like the wings of a butterfly set on a rod of pure silver. It was freshly polished with bone.
The goblins were circling him now, all 6 of them now. The gaunt green machines had almost nothing in common except a general shape. Their exteriors were paper mache shells of any metal they could scavenge. Some had pots and pans visible on their surface, all rusty and scarred. They had a low centre of gravity, and their pathetic weapons could not scratch Kahn.
“I am exultant” the orc muttered under his breath. He would rid the world of these creatures, and continue his epic.
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One of the goblins broke rank and stabbed at him with its copper blade. It sputtered forward haphazardly. The uproar of gears suddenly shifting and clashing at odd angles in that cheap machine drowned out even Kahn’s frame for a moment.
He flicked a switch, made of index bone. He chanted a short phrase, invoking the name of a thrice great uncle, and pressed a rune. Then he twitched the muscles in his legs, and in his right hand. These motions took Kahn no more than half a second.
The great orcish machine took a wide step, and took the great axe in a two handed grip. Then, a moment before the goblins blade made impact, the orc stepped around him, pivoting on its heels. Kahn’s frame screamed terribly, all the bones that made the machine up rattled. It almost seemed like that great monster was laughing. It brought the blade down, and split the goblin in two.
“He got Glipneed!”
“That bastard!”
“What do we do boss?!?”
“I don’t wanna die”
All of the screaming came at once, only one of the frames remained radio silent. Kahn saw the runes on its surface glowing a soft orange, the one for volume amplification active. No words, came, their leader was deliberating.
“A rare trait for a goblin” Kahn muttered under his breath. He stalked forward, sweat rolling down his brows. The heart of his frame was a furnace.
“Alright men, we can’t out run this thing, so we’re gonna have to out fight it, on my mark!”
Finally hearing from an authority figure, a pregnant pause swept the goblins. Their machines had been slowly stepping back from the orcish frame ever since their comrade had met his end.
“I’m too young to die boss, I got a family back home”
The one closest to Kahn said this. The orcish frame marched closer towards him.
“Then we won’t die, will we? If we take that thing down, we’ll all be living a care free life in the big city, now come on, charge!”
Nobody moved. Then the goblin with the family began to move careen forward, it’s posture shifting to take hold of the knife above it’s head. Kahn began to recite an ancestral prayer. An old buckler fell off the goblin machines shoulder, revealing more rusted pieces beneath. It hit the floor and made a tinny thud. All hell broke loose.
The goblins charged in, all at once. They were more well trained than Kahn had surmised. One came in from the left and swung its copper blade in a wide arc, attempting to take out Kahn’s knee. A press of a rune, and the orcish frame stepped over and onto the blade, pinning the goblin in place.
Next came another running stab, aiming for the machines groin, where its leg actuators lay. The orc pulled a lever, and a slender blade of bone shot out of his frames wrist. A few more twitches of muscle and he parried then dispatched of that oncoming goblin. But two more took his place.
The third machine was more hodgepodge than any of the others. Kahn could see the leathery skin of the goblin through the cracks in the machines armour, and saw pools of sweat forming on his brow. It went to swing at him. Kahn’s machine knee the goblin machine as it approached and crushed the creature piloting it. In the next motion, he brought his axe down on the trapped frame, its blade still trapped beneath his feet. It exploded in fragmentation, the pieces harmlessly hitting the orcish machine.
The last assailant went for an attack, but it was far too late. Kahn finished his ancestral prayer, and pressed on a rune. His machines outer shell was a perfect mosaic of ancestral bones, accented with patches of well worn and finely polished bronzes and steels. The frames face was that of the reaper. It opened its mouth, and burning death surged out. The final goblin was slag metal before it hit the floor.
Kahn looked out into the horizon and saw what would be the deceased commanding officer well in the distance. He’d turned tale and ran as soon as the fighting had truly begun.
“No matter. I have time”
Kahns machine returned the great axe to it’s holster, and continued marching on through those dreary plains. The landscape was tinged orange from the setting sun. Behind him lay viscera and scrap metal.