Jace felt truly alive.

Reborn, in fact.

He activated the three boosters that made up the dragon’s wing motif and watched the rearward facing camera as blue and white flames gushed out of each thruster bell. He adjusted each and every thruster on his machine to throw himself into a spiral as he zipped toward the ocean at a speed that blew down trees and threatened to crack apart the skies with the sonic booms.

Jace looked down at his hands. Not too long ago he would have had to use his split fingers for a stunt like this. And even then, he wasn’t sure he could have pulled off this maneuver.

The Trahir system was truly incredible. Jace was almost disgusted at himself for thinking he could exist without this device. Just by thinking, he could move the machine as naturally as he could move his own body. In fact, Jace thought to himself, it was almost more natural to make movements with the machine. Dancing by yourself is all well and good, but when you find a partner that can match you step for step it’s like a completely different experience. Jace was certain: the Trahir system was his one and only partner.

He was comfortable in MACs up until now, sure, but this was a comfort far beyond anything he could have possibly imagined.

If felt as if, at any moment, Jace would melt away into pure bliss and become one with this machine.

Jace was truly euphoric.

~The trees to the right Jace~

Jace redirected the main thrusters and twisted his machine off in a tight circle to the right. The g-forces should have been extreme, but Jace hardly felt them. As he and his machine looped through the trees, he held out his right arm, the arm affixed with the dragon-like claw, and scythed through the world in front of him. Trees fell to the ground in a spray of cool autumn colors and disturbed dew. But his claws didn’t just slice through the forest. A chunk of metal, the top half of a MAC, fell to the ground and was immediately submerged in the muddy soil.

Jace never heard the explosion that followed. He imagined the sound was likely still chasing after him.

“Thanks friend, we make a good team.”

~We really do. Above you Jace~

Jace smiled widely. He found the relationship he’d been looking for all this time. No more loneliness. No more fear. No more misunderstandings. Jace had taken his final step and had ended up exactly where he belonged.

He directed his energy output into the thrusters on his feet and shot up straight into the sky. The incoming artillery shells seemed to move in slow motion as Jace wove his way in between each futile attempt at resistance.

When the last shell in the salvo was behind him, he took a quick moment to appreciate the beauty of the day. The low-hanging rain clouds that seemed to consume him submerged his machine as if he were diving into the ocean. Far above, flashes of lighting arced this way and that, creating beautiful golden cracks in the heavens.

The rumbling and roaring of nature tried its best to intimidate Jace. But, Jace wondered, what on Earth was there left for him to fear?

~Not a thing~

Jace felt a deep warmth within him. He cut the power and began to plummet down to the ground below. On his way down he scanned the forest floor for heat signatures. He marked out as many as he could get with a single charge of his beam cannon. Briefly, Jace wondered which ones were friends and which ones were foes. Jace quickly realized how stupid of a question that was.

His only friend was here beside him.

Jace activated the charging mechanism on the metallic and blocky device that looped around his left arm. The power filled the cables that connected the power source to the actual weapon that was in his left hand. He used the dragon wing propellant tanks to shift his position in the sky as he fired the weapon, dragging the green light across each and every target he marked. The rain around his machine completely disappeared as the heat of the gun evaporated everything around Jace. The green beam down below traced the land in the set pattern, leaving behind burning husks and explosive pops that looked miniscule from Jace’s position high up in the sky.

He wasn’t sure what he was killing down there, but he made good use of the beam.

He activated his boosters once more to halt his plummet and stopped himself above the tree line where he turned once more to the horizon.

Skyscrapers seemed to rise out of the waters making for an apocalyptic scene. It seemed like a city had been submerged by the rising ocean.

~People still live there~

Jace felt a strange gnawing in his stomach. He waited there, hovering in the sky above the trees, and tried to understand this strange feeling. The smoke birthed from the destruction Jace caused began to rise above the canopy of the forest and consume him. Down below, hues of oranges and reds were clear signs of the forest fire that had been started.

Jace stayed immobile in the air, listening to the pops around him as munitions landed too close…

No, Jace thought, they weren’t the pops of explosions. It was the crackling of the fire beneath him.

~Jace~

“It’s hot…”

Jace wasn’t sure why, but the crackling of the fire seemed to infect his brain. He looked at a screen that showed the wispy flames that licked at his feet. Each time the tip of the flame grazed his companion, it felt like Jace himself was being burned.

The smoke had grown so thick now. Jace felt as if he couldn’t breathe. His lungs were working harder and harder to pull anything in and each breath became shorter and shorter until he began to hyperventilate. In the dim, artificial glow of the cockpit, Jace could have sworn he saw smoke begin to pour out of his own mouth.

“Is it… is it inside me? Am I on fire?”

Jace struggled to pat himself down, but his arms wouldn’t obey.

~Jace~

This all felt so familiar. The smells of death and destruction and endless waves of flame-fueled heat… Jace had been through this all before. He clawed away at his own memories, searching for something significant that he was now certain was hiding from him.

~Jace~

It was as if there was a leash around Jace’s neck. Jace was snapped awake by the feeling of whiplash. He briefly wondered if his neck had been broken. The voice of his comrade was loud now. It boomed in his head and bounced off the walls of his skull, making for an endlessly looping command:

~There is nothing for you in the past. If you feel so good today, that must mean your past was awash with suffering. Let’s go Jace. Let’s forge onwards. A comfort that will overwrite all those horrors of the past is on the horizon. That’s what you want, isn’t it Jace? Comfort~

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Jace’s mind honed in on his companion’s words. Jace sunk deeper into his seat and immersed himself fully in his new home. He was comfortable, and there would be greater comfort in the future. The past… the past was nothing but misery.

Jace and his friend were certain of that.

Jace thought to apologize to his friend, but before he could get a word out, Jace saw something bursting through the white and gray smoke that had swallowed the forest below and the sky above.

~This one Jace. Free it. Free it and bring it the comfort it so desperately desires. Free it and bring this world the comfort it so desperately deserves~

Jace tried to pull the same maneuver he did to escape the incoming artillery barrage. He began to boost into the sky but was quickly thrown off course by a burning tree that had been thrown at him.

It appeared like a line of blood red and super-heated orange that sat within the endless smoky sea. It grew and grew until it was too late for Jace to change course. The burning tree that was shedding embers as it flew collided with Jace’s legs.

Jace was too surprised to keep up.

How the hell did he manage to dodge artillery shells and yet a tree moving multitudes slower managed to hit him? Maybe it was because he was lost in thought. Maybe Jace needed to stop thinking.

But he wouldn’t be able to get away with that either. The log had enough force to spin Jace and the golem until they were facing down to the forest floor rather than up to the sky. Jace was too slow to power down the thrusters on his legs and the short distance to the ground beneath was covered in a fraction of a second.

Jace tried to stand up as quickly as possible, but parts of the golem had been buried within the softened dirt. Before he could fully free himself, a metal rod with a booster attached pierced through the wall of smoke. Jace only barely managed to twist the core of the golem, escaping the weapon that would have skewered him.

~He’s skilled~

“He’s skilled and he knows the land. This won’t be easy.”

~But you can do it~

Jace wasn’t so sure, but when he saw the figure walking out of the smoke, a deep rage overwrote any feelings of anxiety or doubt.

The MAC had been mutilated.

Defiled.

Tainted.

These ingrates had made a mockery of something so beautiful.

Jace’s hate combined with his companion’s as they stared at the torturous sight in front of them. Overwhelming bloodlust seemed to flood into the cockpit. The fire and the smoke seemed a million miles away as Jace’s eyes focused on the blighted sinner in front of him.

~Free them~

The machine’s core was nearly all that was left of the beautiful creature that once was: a spherical orb that sat in the middle of four limbs. Three of the limbs had been clearly cannibalized. Whatever armor was there before had now been replaced with plywood and sheet metal. Complex mechanisms had been replaced with wooden cogs and pulley systems. A large container was slung onto the back of the monstrosity and held an assortment of crude spears. The right arm of the creature had been designed to move in only a single throwing motion. The left arm would load the spear while the right arm would wind up. The left leg still seemed to be mechanically intact although it was nothing more than a metal skeleton that was left completely uncovered. The leg could easily function as another arm, and this one would be far more dexterous than any of the other cobbled together pieces. It was likely the arm that threw the tree. Some sort of gyroscopic stabilizer must have been housed within the core of the machine to allow it to stand entirely on one limb.

Like it was now.

The core of the machine spun in a tight circle with three of its limbs tucked in close, increasing speed. The left leg released a large boulder it was holding that came hurdling toward Jace.

Jace still had a leg trapped within the Earth beneath him. He was using both arms to try to dig himself out, so he activated the energy weapon on his left shoulder. It ate up a lot of power, but Jace needed to focus on winning this fight, not on how to survive the day.

An enormous quantity of energy was funneled into the assortment of metal wires that sprouted from his shoulder and draped around the right side of his machine like a mesh paludamentum of ancient Rome. Electric currents, striking blues and golds, arced between each conductive wire, turning the mesh shoulder cape from crossed wires to a fabric of deadly-beautiful currents of electricity. With nothing more than a single thought, each individual wire was allowed to move freely. They swiped away at the air around Jace and his friend, making trails of death-scented lighting.

They came into contact with the hurled boulder. A rowdy orchestra of cracks and sizzles filled the air as the wires slapped the boulder and melted through the stone. Jace barely had time to take a breath before the stone had been sliced and diced into nothing more than pebbles.

In that moment, it was almost as if the boulder that had been thrown was merely a clump of tiny rocks all along.

However, the spear that followed the boulder was not so easily stopped.

The wires cut the spear into pieces, but the sharpened point still burst through Jace’s defense. It punctured one of the propellant tanks on his back and caused a massive burst of flame to roar out of the dragon’s wing.

Jace took advantage of the explosion to redirect propellant from the other two tanks into the punctured one. The increase in fuel was enough to rip Jace out of the dirt that had trapped him and launch him into the air, though he was only a few meters off the ground.

Jace didn’t have much power to work with at this point.

A small amount was directed into the thrusters at his feet, causing him to alter his course through the air as he grabbed onto a tree with his dragon claw.

It would have been the perfect opportunity to use his beam cannon to turn his enemy into a pile of dust, but Jace didn’t have enough energy left to power it on.

And-

~With your hands Jace, this has to be done with your hands~

Jace had put his full trust in his new golem companion. He would do this as he was told to.

The enemy cartwheeled back further into the smoke and only the sound of cranking gears and cogs gave a hint to its location. Another spear was surely being loaded in, and another object to screen the spear was certainly being located.

Jace wouldn’t be able to use his shoulder weapon again.

His beam cannon was essentially useless.

His propellant tanks were now thoroughly empty as well as wrecked. Although only one was pierced by the spear, the explosion had added gashes into the sides of the other two. Burning fuel still clung to the right side of the golem, endlessly smoldering on the metal surface.

~I’ll help, but let’s get this done quickly. Rest will be invaluable once this is all done~

Jace felt strange.

He looked at his arm. His brain was certain that it was boiling up and bursting at the seams. His brain was certain that something from inside was bubbling up and forming his body anew. His brain was certain that some foreign object had just been birthed inside of him.

But Jace’s arm looked normal.

However, the golem had changed.

The propellant tanks were repaired, stitched together with some viscous and glowing ooze that seemed to solidify and liquify endlessly, causing meat filled bubbles to rise and fall. Strange colored tendrils, painted in something that Jace’s brain couldn’t quite comprehend, slithered around in the cockpit and began pumping something into the heart of the golem. The generator of the MAC felt… it felt different now. Jace was sure.

But Jace had no time to think.

Something else had dug its fingers deep into the folds and wrinkles of his brain. They plucked at each individual cell and seemed to pilot the machine from there.

Jace still didn’t think, but for some reason he became so very comfortable. His eyes seemed to shut, and yet he knew that they were open.

He stayed like that for a while. He let his friend take the reins. It was so very nice. Jace didn’t have to do anything. All of the struggles of life were being left up to someone else and Jace… Jace could simply exist.

It was over all too soon.

Jace stared at the seven-fingered dragon claw that had been stuck wrist deep into the orb-like core of the enemy. Upon closer inspection, a strange slurry of human blood, filthy oils, and something else poured out of the machine.

~Now Jace, do it now~

Jace wasn’t sure why, but he knew exactly what to do. Or, maybe Jace didn’t know, but something else did. At any rate, Jace watched in pure amazement as the machine’s metal armor burst apart and the three makeshift limbs were turned to ash.

Bubbles of a meat-like substance burst through and left strings of muscle-like fibers that were woven in-between internal metal support structures. The remaining holes from the three limbs that had been jury-rigged on stayed as empty sockets. The machine, or maybe the creature, seemed to be incapable of regenerating entirely new limbs over such a short period of time.

The amalgamation of machine and monster rose up on the one leg that hadn’t been tampered with.

~There. Now we must free the others. The two valuable ones are nearby. One has freed itself and the other is waiting for us~

Jace barely heard himself as he uttered, “And then?”

~Oh Jace, there is more work to do. Much more. But we will finish, and when we do, you will be able to truly immerse yourself in that comfort I just showed you. Come now Jace, a better future awaits~

Jace turned toward the sunken city and began to move with the orb-like MAC now following behind, moving along with its one limb that had sprouted off into three individual tendrils at the bottom that scurried the creature around like an insect.

Jace had a strange feeling in his stomach, but the overpowering desire to meet the enemy that was staying near the skyscrapers that rose out of the ocean drove him forward.

Forward to a promised world of comfort.