Flashes of sparks reflected against Iron Lord’s lenses as he stood unmoving before the assembly line. The Merchants have finally got their shit together to bring precious hulking mobile factories to the front lines, ensuring that the Horde will no longer have to stop and wait for a resupply. The Council only agreed to this under Iron Lord’s personal assurance that not a single one of these gigantic, six-story-tall moving trains would not be put in danger. He also sweetened the deal by offering the Council slaves and materials. While they have taken the materials, the stubborn old fools have refused to take slaves or bondsmen from the ranks of Reclaimers, sticking to the outdated tradition of not offending any existing nation.

Fools, all of them. Times have changed, and with Mad Hatter here, nothing and no one will stand in the Horde’s way ever again. Iron Lord quenched his dissatisfaction, hearing a familiar clanking noise on the floor behind him.

“I had thought you would be playing with your new toy,” he said.

“All at the right time, my friend,” Brood Lord laughed, coming closer. Drozna stepped into the room after him, stopping near the entrance, and Iron Lord sent a command to his bodyguards, ordering them to stay outside.

“Does she still have limbs?” Iron Lord asked, barely caring. He tore the limbs of his own slave the moment Macarius refused to bow. Now the fool served as an example of what happens to anyone refusing the Gilded Horde.

“Of course she still has them!”

“Foolish. A slave of her caliber will try to escape. Had I been her, I would’ve tried already.”

“And this is precisely why the guards know just what I will do with them if Janine…”

“Slave,” Iron Lord cut him off. Slaves have no names, deserve neither a past nor a future. Only an eternity of servitude. And the sooner you make them realize it, the better.

“Janine,” Brood Lord continued with a smile, “disappears. My friend, you know nothing of cruelty! Your mundane methods create only cripples, while mine are so much more delicate. As long as Janine has her limbs, she has hope of escaping me. This tiny, desperate thought will sustain her even in the darkest time, making every torture I will inflict upon her ever so painful. Even stones crack, and given time, I will make Janine into a proper pet, eating out of my hand and killing at my command.” The khan stopped, tilting his head. “But enough of me. What is this horror?”

He pointed at the assembled frame behind a screen made of armor glass. The Merchants were secretive people, doing their best to stay outside of the clans’ politics. They supported no one outright, trading even with outsiders and valuing only profit and progress. The Mad Hatter’s coming changed it to some extent, but even now they refuse to reveal the full scope of their secrets to the Horde. Deadly biological viruses, cybernetic secrets, exotic weapons—even Iron Lord hardly knew everything his people possessed.

But his stance among them improved, and the Council deemed it fit to reveal to him some of the most precious mysteries. This compartment served as an isolated cell, complete with its own generator and assembly machines. Currently, they were busy putting together a massive four-armed suit of armor made purely out of steel, wires, generators, and meters-long threads of artificial muscles, leaving no space for a normal pilot.

On a metallic slab next to it lay another massive body. One of his bodyguards and his foolish son, Mehmed. The boy made a mistake and charged ahead of Iron Lord, eager to prove his superiority against the foe. He had lost his arm and had most of his inner organs turned into mush, barely surviving. Unfortunately for him, the Horde has no means of treating someone without a heart, and Iron Lord had no intention of keeping what was essentially a vegetable alive.

So he used Mehmed. Artificial limbs coming from the ceiling had removed the helmet, revealing the pale head beneath. An array of saws, needles, hooks, and other instruments came down, first removing the skin, then cutting through the skull. With surgical precision, saws severed the connection between the brain and spinal cord.

After carefully extracting the still-living brain, the nimble limbs placed it into a nutrient solution, locking it within a reinforced jar. Next came wires, piercing the frontal lobe and connecting the person to the sole camera on the jar. A crimson light appeared in the camera, and the small device rapidly moved around, never stopping for a second. Iron Lord glanced at the display, satisfied to see the brain waves doing normal. His son was still alive.

Long tendrils lifted the jar and moved it toward the assembled frame, placing it inside a cavity in its chest. More tendrils made out of fiber-muscles joined it, joining the jar’s wires with the sockets within the suit of armor. A metal finger moved, propelled into motion by a thought.

“Something the Merchants bought from a people known as the Bento Tribe,” Iron Lord lied. “Supposedly, this technology allows a brain to wield the suit of steel as easily as its former body. Although the sellers had warned us against going straight for the brain, recommending a gradual cyberization."

There was no trade, but Iron Lord would sooner die than admit the failure of his people. The Merchants had an infallible reputation to uphold; anything else meant a sign of weakness, and clans were looking for it to come down upon them.

In truth, the Merchants have hired a group of mercenaries upon hearing of a nation of cyborgs. An entire nation made of normal humans elevated far beyond their natural limits through sheer technology. Stronger, faster, and more durable than most abnormals and capable of thriving in harsh environments, the Merchants rightly desired to own this precious knowledge. To say the mercenaries failed is to say nothing. Not only were they captured, but the elders, the rulers of this mystical tribe, had arrived in force in the Merchants main capital, throwing the council into disarray.

Their arsenal had failed to stop the steel golems from arriving in their city; energy beams were absorbed by the steel skin; viruses failed to make an impact; and the elders walked straight through missiles and gunfire unharmed. The Merchants were half-ready to detonate nukes in order to escape potential torture when the elders offered them a deal. The Merchants had sworn never to reveal the location of the Bento Tribe and gave up all the secrets and knowledge of technology they had gathered over the years. In exchange, the elders gifted some of their own knowledge to Iron Lord’s people.

This transaction greatly benefited both the Horde and his people. Augmented lungs, organs, and even hearts were now in abundance, saving countless lives. But Iron Lord has his eyes on a greater prize. Deep within, he was a human. No matter the amount of augmentation, his days were numbered. Hindered by his own body, Iron Lord has already started noticing signs of cognitive decline in himself. It became hard to remember the birthdays of his sons and daughters, all the treaties he had signed, and the plots he was pursuing. Sky, he even started to forget the name of his first wife!

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To earn profit, one must always adapt and improve. The Merchants lived by this creed, and Iron Lord has come to appreciate it too after dunking his first pureblood with his new body of steel. His once frail, stupid, worthless body was reborn into something far greater. And Iron Lord loved his new body; he loved hearing the beeping of his armor and the scratching of steel armored plates against each other, he adored having omnidirectional vision linked to his biological eyes; and he felt intoxicated swinging Patience and taking lives. If he can keep on living by discarding his mortal shell all together, he will do so in a heartbeat.

He wished to live forever. Barring that, even a hundred more years would be nice. But Iron Lord wished to live as his own person, keeping his personality intact like Mad Hatter, who refused to give in to her twenty-five-year-long insomnia.

“Gradual?” Brood Lord raised a brow. “Why?”

“I suppose we shall find out soon e…” The systems of his armor gave out a warning sign of a spatial anomaly.

Iron Lord’s hand grasped the khan by his neck, slamming the bastard into a wall with enough force to dent it. Looking through the cameras on his back, Iron Lord saw a line of broken reality lingering in the place where he stood a moment ago. His shoulder cannon moved, firing once and causing Phaser to howl in pain on the other side of the tear. The spatial tear and metal floor around it disappeared in the electric discharge, leaving a faint smell of ozone in the air.

“I’ve had enough of you!” Iron Lord slammed the other khan into a wall. He looked at Drozna, who was tensed. “Step up to me, and I will disassemble you.” He almost wanted the fool to take a step and deal with this once and for all, but his rival raised a hand, stopping his minion and smiling innocently into Iron Lord’s lenses. “Brood Lord. Remember, once and for all. In this war, we have to go as a unified front. My hands are full with coordinating this conquest already. I will not tolerate any further miserable attempts at assassination. Try my patience again, and I will wrangle your head off, consequences be damned. Are we clear?”

“Crystal, Iron Lord Khan.” Brood Lord bowed his head, never once stopping to smile.

Iron Lord wanted to smash this smiling face, sink his fingers into the eyeballs, and pull the head aside. Brood Lord was an upstart, a mutated pureblood who murdered and betrayed his way to the top. And now the fool has his sights at his position. Sadly, the little sadist had his uses…

“Father…” A voice groaned from behind the screen, and Iron Lord dropped his rival, rushing to look at the frame.

It moved! Mehmed lived as nothing more than a brain, controlling the convulsive metal fingers with nothing but his thoughts! Legs moved, trying to stand up, only for the frame to realize that joints were not yet fully assembled. The chest hatch opened and closed again, reminding Iron Lord of a wild bird locked within a room. The frame moved its arms, trying to reach the brain jar.

“Mehmed? Boy, how are you feeling? Can you function?” Iron Lord asked hurriedly.

“My body!” Mehmed wailed, his synthetic voice echoing from the walls. “Body, body, body! Father, I can’t feel anything!” Mehmed raised himself on two arms. “Anything, please, oh Sky, please let me feel anything. Just a morsel, something, pain, warmth, cold, please, please…” His dynamics kept spitting out pointless pleas. “AM I ALIVE?!”

Walking on his metal knuckles, he came to the medical slab, dragging his gigantic legs behind him. Disconnected wires were spitting electrical sparks. Mehmed grasped his former body with another set of arms and raised it in the air, shouting when his three-fingered arms spasmed, popping his empty skull and splashing some bone and blood against his armored corpus. Another hand crumbled the leg, snapping it like a straw. Mehmed raised the body above his head, drippling blood into the open hatch.

“Flesh…” He said longingly and screamed again. “Why can’t I feel anything?! Father, father, I can’t feel a thing!”

“You have been reborn, Mehmed.” Iron Lord tried to calm him down. “Everything is okay. In time, you will come to appreciate the might of your new form…”

“Let me die!” Mehmed dropped his body and smashed his fists against the screen, making cracks. His synthesized voice kept cracking, trying to transmit his emotions into words. “I beg you! Just end this!”

“And here is the reason,” Brood Lord chuckled. “My deepest condolences, Iron Lord. The boy went mad. Do me a solid if I ever end up like him, just off me, will you? I mean, we have our differences and all, but surely…”

“Useless,” Iron Lord spat, hovering a finger over the self-destruction button. None of his children ever dared to interrupt him; he beat up this lesson into them with a mother’s milk. Then he stopped. Why should he waste a perfectly good suit of armor? “Mehmed. Do you remember the one who ruined you?”

“Yes!” Mehmed screamed. “She took my arm! She took my flesh! And her mutated, misbegotten kin bathed me in acid!”

“They are the reason you are locked in the steel coffin now. Will you let them be?” Iron Lord continued, and Mehmed stopped thrashing about; the lenses on his head focused on his father. “Mehmed, my boy. The Sky has given you a chance of retribution. Through its will, you have been reborn, stronger, better, and faster than ever before. With this body, you can end their entire bloodline and be reborn in the Sky’s embrace! Will you reject this gift?”

“N-nooooo,” Mehmed stretched the word, breaking into a sob and trying to cover his ‘face’ with arms. Iron Lord looked at him with disgust. A weakling and nothing more. “No one else must become like me.”

“Ensure it through your might. Brood Lord Khan will help you once your body is adjusted,” Iron Lord said in his last soft words and cut the audio feed for Mehmed, leaving the fool in utter silence while his body was still assembled. “He is all yours,” he said to Brood Lord. “Threw him into a trash bin or set him against Janine; I don’t care. I don’t want to hear his name ever again.”

“Didn’t ask, but sure, I’ll take it. Where are you going?” Brood Lord asked.

“To war. Some of us have a war to prosecute.”

Iron Lord stepped from the compartment, pressing a hand to his chin. What did he learn? First, the process was safe enough. Second, the test subject may go mad. Will he be affected? Iron Lord still had his reproduction organs and overall body, even if parts of his body were replaced with implants. He loved his wives and enjoyed a few precious moments they shared, be it cooking, tending to his useless children, or making new ones. Only his wives never judged him for not being a pureblood; only with them did he allow himself to be human. Will this attachment scar his psyche enough upon transference into a new state of existence? He can’t cut this attachment, no more than he can willingly kill himself.

More tests are needed. After the war, they will have slaves aplenty. He will cut and slowly change some of them into the steel, finding out the exact safe threshold, before ascending into the steel himself. His body will hold. It has to.

Horkhudagh joined him on the ramp leading outside. For the time being, the khan took on the appearance of a burned victim. His skin turned perfectly black and was cracking at every move, shedding pieces of dark ash everywhere he went. In between the cracks, flame danced across the wet insides, licking muscles.

“I take it Mehmed didn’t make it?” Horkhudagh asked, handing Patience to Iron Lord. “My condolences.”

“Beat it. He hardly matters. What of our forces?”

“More and more troops are arriving by the minute, and Reclaimers turned tail and ran.” Horkhudagh shrugged his shoulders, allowing a coat of flame to engulf him. “Honestly, I expected more.”

“Worry not; the time will come for the Flame Whip of the Sky to take to the field.” Iron Lord looked at the looming building to the south of Defiance, as the locals called this place. Well, they certainly showed themselves unworthy of the name.

Mad Hatter had already left, wandering the land on her own in search of this supposed God and an opportunity for slaughter. In her place, Brood Lord’s warriors were busy gathering wooden planks and carrying in the famous golden bull, preparing for the night’s feast and attractions. Iron Lord clenched his weapon a bit harder, knowing full well what sort of fun these degenerates would have.

He killed hundreds in his life, taking part in wicked punishments only out of obligation and to instill fear in his new subjects. Occasionally, Iron Lord performed torture, breaking fools for information. But when he tortured someone, it was always either to eliminate a threat or for a higher purpose. He wasn’t… like them.

“Should we stop it?” Horkhudagh asked. “Not to doubt the wisdom of our glorious leader, but degenerates make for a poor army. You saw it too, yes? Half of these bastards were busy looting mid-combat. I don’t mind getting a Brood Lord’s roasted side for dinner. Just say the word, and I’ll do it.”

“Ignore them,” Iron Lord said, hefting the glaive on his shoulder. He moved to his thunder bull. “We have a nation to conquer.”