Dust to Dust: Man 14
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As the only one conscious, Pile was charged with keeping watch over the exhausted party.
He promptly turned around and walked back to his sled, eager to begin his first round of modifications after the recent bouts of combat. Ever since he had forged his human form, the golem had been dealing with its drawbacks and general lack of adaptability.
In hindsight, my greatest victories were due to by ability to change, to evolve. Never has my core been exposed to an enemy before. The freeze mage may be powerful, but in my old bodies of mud and stone I wouldn't have been incapacitated so easily.
Pile once again detached his right arm, a simple appendage of fixed metal bars jointed at the elbow and wrist. The only visual difference between it and a fixed bracket are the silver veins running along its surface. The golem stared at the arm in contemplative silence, comparing it to the frostbitten arm he had removed from Bryn. All of the bones, muscles, veins, and tissues that had to be sliced and sawn through. So many layers of systems.
Complexity isn't strength. Never did I survive because of my complexity.
He threw out all of his outlandish designs of pistons, layered weaves of resistant materials, and hidden weapons. They had been of little use and were rendered inoperable after their first trial run.
With experience, maintenance, and fine tuning, they may help. But I can see so many ways to defeat those systems with my old outlook and a pile of mud... How foolish was I to change who I was? I wash never so infatuated with becoming humanlike until-
Fucking Blue Box.
A flicker of azure light pulled Pile's gaze to his left, where a blue rectangle was hanging from the air. On it was displayed his name and various numbers and details about him.
Ever since it showed up it led me into being something I'm not. Teased me with its knowledge, funneled me into using systems similar to those men in the camp that used power armor. What are the odds of that? The odds that I, before ever seeing common designs, created something similar?
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A grunt of dissatisfaction was emitted through Pile's voice box, and he waved away the status screen, turning his head away as it faded into nothing.
No Blue Box this time. No complexity.
Pile took inventory of the sled for the first time since the fight against the green creatures. Most of the oil remained, and the raiders had completely ignored the scrap. Remembering the starved appearance of his attackers, Pile assumed that they hadn't found what they were looking for.
Scrap is all I need. Resembling my old selves, a simple hunk of material. Too thick for the cold to penetrate, too simple for a hard knock or sharp blade to damage.
Scrap was gathered into a pile next to the fire and a large quantity of oil was fed to the blaze. Pile stepped directly into the fire and began to transfer the surging heat directly into the heap of scrap. Fine silver wires extended from his skeletal fingertips and attached to the stack of metal at strategic points, preparing to form it to the golem's will. Pile's argent core, powered by the greasy oil fire, began to pulse waves of white hot heat into the scrap, heating and compressing it. Each wave from the silver wires further condensed the pile into a solid shape. After hours of such work, the silver wires detached form the perfectly managed work.
Pile admired his handiwork. A simple metal cylinder, an alloy made of whatever he had on hand, with a small hollow running along the inside and a slight protuberance on each end.
Impenetrable. But the real trick is to make it more than armor.
The golem stared down at his chest, where a thin metal box encased his core. This thin metal box has proven to be quite useless against the freezing magic of the mage. As such, Pile had elected to get rid of it. With a thought and a surge of energy, the box came apart from around the core and fell to the ground. Temporarily the golem nucleus was re-positioned to the neck while the chest was reconstructed. Utilizing the now open chest area, braces were fashioned near the neck and pelvis, their distance being the exact height of the manufactured cylinder. Which, at this point, was exactly what the golem installed into the space. With minor reforging and adjusting, the slight protuberances fit snugly inside of the braces on top and bottom. At this point, the golem pulsed energy into the cylinder to admire its free-spinning ability.
After a grinding sound and a quick stop to the pilot run, Pile admitted his oversight. A few experiments later and the golem finished his newly fashioned friction reducing system. A groove had been cut in the brackets holding the cylinder in place, and small metal balls were placed inside. The fit was so perfectly tight that the cylinder slid across the balls effortlessly. To erase worries of long term abuse, the space in the groove not taken up my the balls was filled with oil to reduce any additional friction.
The cylinder now truly spun effortlessly with a slight addition of energy.
The system complete, Pile fed his core into the hollow interior of the metal drum. Silver veins extended out of the top and bottom of the brackets through a small hole. As the cylinder spun, the wires kept contact with the core through a layer of molten silver maintained through the golem's magic.
Even with his sensitivity slightly dulled due to his new thick walled cage, Pile felt more confident than ever. His armor was impressive, but the true strength of the cylinder was in energy storage. Due to its low friction nature, it could spin incredibly fast, and Pile could siphon off of that rotational energy to feed his movement, or generate heat to create or destroy with.
I'm invulnerable.
As the sun set on a wintry mountainside, a pair of wounded and exhausted humans rested in the warm embrace of a she-wolf. Across their campsite, a golem shut himself off from the world.