“This could be a trap,” he thought, “an attempt to get me out of the walker. Collapse the tunnel on top of us, maybe.”

Once more, it all came back to honor. He knew a human tactician might have thought of this, but he wasn’t so certain the lizardmen could even consider such ambush tactics within the context of their honor code.

He made the walker kneel on its left knee, causing the knight to shrink back and confusedly fidget about before reciprocating what he had perceived as a gesture of respect. Armless dispelled the confusion by saying “It’s not a gesture, I just do this so I don’t drop as hard when I leave the cockpit.”

The knight and his bodyguards were already halfway to a kneeling position when he said it, and they chose to complete the gesture regardless before returning to a standing position.

“Amalgam, status report. Disengage dataplugs and open the cockpit hatch.”

It rumbled in his head, as it had done so many times before. “Affirmative. Status report: Pilot structural integrity at seventy-eight percent. Assimilation subsystem fully functional. Optimization of third-party upper limb module ‘Aegis’ in progress. Integration and optimization of prototype upper limb module ‘Apeiron’ in progress. Center of gravity adjustments successful. Disembark protocol engaged. End of status report.”

The hiss of escaping gas. The clang of glowing-hot dataplugs on the cockpit floor. The fading of Amalgam’s sensor suite into his own, from a surprisingly well-lit cave to a dimly-lit cockpit. The hatch sank inward, slid out of the way. He stood up and stepped forward, allowing himself to drop out of the cockpit feet-first, as he had done before.

He felt himself accelerating and the ground approaching faster than he expected. With a thunderous noise, he impacted the elevator, sending reverberations all throughout the structure and kicking up dust from the cave floor. The force of impact caught him off-guard and sent him into a half-kneeling position, forcing him to use both the fist of his left and the muzzle of his right arm for support. He didn’t feel any structural damage, but as he stood up, he felt that his body was heavier. Denser. Apeiron’s weight no longer pulled him to the right nearly as much. Despite this, he didn’t feel slower, moving wasn’t any harder. If anything, he felt more present. He also felt his armor plating - at least the plates that hadn’t been decoupled - being displaced. They retained mostly complete coverage thanks to the way they interlocked and overlaid one another, but they had clearly been displaced, obvious even to an outside observer. His appearance seemed to stun the armored dragon-man, let alone his bodyguards, as well as his companions. Thanks to his field of vision, he could see a large portion of himself even from his own perspective, and he could tell that the carapace over his torso had become even more pronounced. More notably, the shoulder-plate of his left arm had shifted even more, alongside its overall proportions. It was longer, but still substantial, even bulky. Its fingers had become less like claws and more like what he remembered human fingers to be, more like what the people he had seen in the video fragments had. He could close his hand without plates scraping against each other and claws digging into his palm. The plating over most of the arm besides the arm remained as it was before, much to Vezkig’s relief. The etchings were still gone, and the greatest change was the shoulder-plate, which had begun changing to vaguely resemble a draconic skull. Vezkig kept his eyes effectively glued to the skull from the moment Armless dropped out of the walker, visibly intrigued by it beyond the usual scientific curiosity he had exhibited previously.

The knight gave a brief nod, then turned and began to briskly walk down the tunnel, his bodyguards following suit, their eyes glued to Armless until the very last moment. Armless walked along, as did the others. Rika followed, fuming as she was, as did Vezkig and the Word-bearer. Red-eye and the Marksman had boarded the rover just before the group entered the fortress, but only the Marksman exited. In fact, Red-eye didn’t so much as make a noise while the knight and his guards were within earshot, and made no effort to even peek out of the rover.

With each step, they were led deeper down the tunnel, and with each step, the all-consuming silence weighed more heavily on all present. The only things to fill the void of sound were the whine of the knight’s exoskeleton and the sound of footfalls.

Floodlights mounted on the walls made up the majority of the tunnel’s lighting, casting stark, distorted shadows. They were led past several side tunnels, which were illuminated mostly by smaller bulbs and LED lights, and similarly simple lighting methods. Some tunnels went on for a while and out of sight or simply ended in a dead end after a few meters, while two had metal doors set in the stone itself. The knight led them to one of these doors, approximately two thirds down the tunnel and on the left.

Upon the right side of the door there was a security hololens, much like that which Vezkig had at his door. There was a hole just above it, with a thin black cable running from it, up the doorframe, on the wall, and deeper into the tunnel. Vezkig seemed to notice this, as he made a face that conveyed befuddlement and disgust whilst the knight raised his gauntleted hand to the lens. It came alive despite no noticeable external input, briefly scanned his hand, then emitted a distorted beep. The door whined and moved in a slow, choppy manner, but it opened, sliding open sideways in two parts with the sound of metal scraping stone. It had to have rows of rudimentary hololenses embedded in the frame, as the door projected a three-layered white-noise hologram, which Armless remembered was nearly impenetrable to a wide variety of basic sensors, not only of the optic, but also thermal and electromagnetic variety. “Holoshrouds in the doorways aren’t much help when the walls are damp rock,” he thought.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The knight walked in, having to duck slightly so his head wouldn’t bump up against the top of the doorframe, while his bodyguards took up positions at either side of the door. Armless followed, as did the others. The room was… Surprisingly nice. It was a square, approximately ten meters across. Its stone walls had been smoothed over and covered over with metal plating, while the ceiling and floor were covered with printed polymer panels. It had a low “glass” table and an L-shaped sofa in the left corner across from the door, polymer shelves in alcoves carved into the walls, even a refrigeration unit and a stimmix synthesizer, albeit a borderline antique model, if what was left of his memory were anything to go by. Facing the table from the other side, its profile turned towards the door, there was a large padded chair on wheels, one that someone could probably lay in if they leaned back far enough.

However, as he walked into the room and took in more of his surroundings, something felt off. There was a 3D printer off to the side, right next to the door, and above it, racks and racks of printed plates, skeletal segments, and joints, the plates nearly identical to those on the knight’s armor. He saw a few basic servomotors, ones that were clearly made recently rather than ripped out of salvaged servo-suits. Above those, there hung bundles upon bundles of light grey synthfibers, old and subpar to be sure, but they looked far better than the ones keeping the knight’s armor going.

Whilst the knight walked towards the padded chair, his steps became slower, his gait more labored. Vezkig’s eyes were wildly darting around the room, Rika was staring holes through the “Gilded Butcher”, and the Marksman appeared to be… Calm, for once. The youngster even allowed himself to shift around and didn’t constantly keep fiddling with his rifle, instead just having it slung over his shoulder on a makeshift strap that he had attached to it during his short time in the rover, likely having removed it from one of the cargo containers.

The knight almost fell into his chair, sinking into it as though he were deflating. It was like, in that single moment, every year of exhaustion had caught up to him all at once. Even the colour in his eyes seemed to have faded, but that could have very well been a trick of the lighting. He gestured towards the sofa with a tired hand, rasping “Take a seat, please.”

Armless obliged, as did Vezkig and the Word-bearer. The Marksman walked over, but simply leaned up against the wall, while Rika stayed put, still staring holes into the dragon-man.

He sat down near the corner of the sofa, resting Apeiron on the left side of it so as not to risk damaging the fragile-looking “glass”. Vezkig sat next to Armless, and the Word-bearer next to him, which still left enough space for one more to take a seat.

The dragon-man nodded slowly when all were settled in their spots, and began speaking. Slowly. Methodically. Entirely lacking the energy and bombast from earlier. “As I said earlier, I am sure we have many things to discuss. My name is Nesgon. I need not know your names, and frankly, it will be better for all of us if I don’t. You, however…” he trailed off, fixating his gaze on the Word-bearer.

“Have I not seen you before? I take pride in remembering the faces of all those who ever served under me, and I swear on my father I’ve seen you before,” he said.

The Word-bearer nodded, and let off a nasty cough before speaking. “I was assigned to lead the expeditionary force which was sent to raid the nearest town South of this mountain after they failed to meet the desired tithe of food and the previous requisition party had been met with…”

His gaze flicked towards Armless, then back to Nesgon. …”Overwhelming force. I was a Word-bearer, before all this. Skull-face over here,” he said, his eyes flicking back and forth once more, “burned the Ecclesiarch’s “Blessing” out of me, along with my own.”

The tone with which he said “blessing” along with the exaggerated air-quote gesture he did conveyed perfectly the sheer disdain he held for the Ecclesiarch, and if he was being honest with himself, Nesgon couldn’t hold him in a bad light for that.

The Word-bearer wasn’t telling the full story, Armless knew that, but he still told Nesgon more than he’d expected him to.

The old dragon was taken aback at the brazenness displayed by a former Word-bearer in referring to a mythical, deific creature in such an informal and demeaning way, but there was no offense on his part. He was amused at the thought of the righteous indignation and fury that such an attitude would have caused, were he only a few centuries younger.

“Well, your own words have proven you are no longer deluded by the Ecclesiarch, that is for sure,” he said, a tinge of humor having snuck into his tone, but it was gone as quickly as it arose. His eyes shifted from the Word-bearer to Armless, fixated on the two pinpricks that served as one of his only means of facial expression.

“Now… I am sure you, of all present, have the most pressing questions. Ask.”

Armless stared ahead in thought, opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again before he spoke. “The Gilded Butcher?” he questioned.

Nesgon let out a huff, and something approaching a sad smile twisted the corners of his maw as he closed his eyes for a few seconds. Perhaps it was to gather the resolve to answer.

“I… I am old. You wouldn’t believe how old. Older than the Empire as it is now. The meaning of honor was different, in my time, before the Empire became what it is now.”

He opened his eyes, and looked into Armless’, the pain of dredging up millennia of memories he’d worked to forget evident in his voice and his face alike.

“Surrender was not justifiable, under any circumstances. Being a frontline officer, it was my responsibility to perform… Morale adjustments via battlefield execution. I had a weapon designed solely for that purpose.”

The sorrow in his voice was even more evident, now. The soft rasp he previously spoke in became a growl, undercut with a slight gurgle. Being a reptile, he couldn’t shed tears in the way a human could, without tear canals to do so with. But he was trembling in his chair, his claws gripping at the thigh-plates of his armor hard enough to make the metal creak. He was straining so hard, it was making whatever he had instead of vocal chords bleed.

“It tracked every shot fired and associated them with the vitals trackers of my subordinated. Every comrade slain was counted, and with each milestone, the high command added more etchings and inlays to that instrument of fratricide. I...”

The trembling stopped, and his voice returned back to a quiet rasp

“I was the only one to ever run out of space for more etchings.”