The Ecclesiarch had a substantial portion of his caravan stationed outside Canyontown so as to allow him to be the sole focus of his return parade, including several hundred assault rovers and dozens of standard rovers. After the High Chaplains removed his body from the pit and the still-loyal Truthseekers present in town left, less than half the original convoy remained, with many having simply separated themselves from those still loyal to the Ecclesiarch, gathered a number of rovers, and driven off for parts unknown.
A single day.
It took them the grand total of less than a single day to reach the oasis.
Of the Truthseekers still loyal, the speed- and machine-blessed were gathered and distributed equally amongst the rovers, given unlimited stimmix rations, and told to make the rovers go as fast as their bodies would let them, and that any injuries sustained in the process would be repaired with high-grade prosthetics stronger than the original. “We must bring his holiness to his clan before the next sunset,” one of the High Chaplains proclaimed. Orsha had never seen so many men so eager to work themselves half to death for no more than the promises of bettering their standing and appropriate medical care after the fact.
Orsha found himself sat at a long table with half a dozen other Warriors, all of them wearing full casement armor even more heavily adorned than the Ecclesiarch’s, each having taken their helmet off so they could talk face to face with who they perceived to be their peers - that being other, similarly self-absorbed nobles. They all looked ridiculous, like plucked straight from old murals. Their scales were shiny, metallic colors, their head-spikes were contorted and artificially made to grow bent-back to replicate an archdrake’s horns, and their eyes all shone with that sickly golden light.
There were at least a dozen and a half people in the room, as the nobles each had two guards that stood immediately behind them at all times, dressed in similarly lavish armor as their masters. Even he had been assigned the High Chaplains as guards, as the Ecclesiarch had marked him as one of his representatives in the Right of Heresy, and thus he was the noble’s most direct surviving representative. Nesgon was assumed to be either dead or very near death from void energy exposure. The nobles said such things as though it was a good thing, they thought the new leaders of Canyontown would have done far worse to the elder and would inevitably desecrate his corpse. The last part was spoken almost eagerly, the implication being that they could use it as further justification for a hostile retaking of the town.
Somehow, the lack of pain was worse than any pain he could’ve imagined.
Every beat of his heart, every damnable tendril of livingmetal threading itself into his tissues as though some sort of scaffold, every time his body expelled a piece of shrapnel and it clattered to the floor. Even the air against his healing wounds. He felt the pain like it was muted. A thumping, persistent sensation, muted like sound played through a damaged speaker. His implants burned with the unholy light, yet the pain had gone from nearly unbearable to barely intense enough that he couldn’t entirely ignore it. They said he was chosen. That the so-called “Mad Artificer” had replaced his lazarus organ with a blacktech equivalent, and that somehow weakened his blessing enough to let him harbor the fire of the void without burning up. They kept giving him those sideways looks like he was some sort of curiosity.
He’d always known someone had done something to save him when he was very young. Tenuous strands of memory still dwelled in the back of his mind, the ones he’d locked away to cope. The choking smoke, the eye-watering stench of burning polymer and spilled albumen from broken eggs. The sight of the nearly skeletal, curled-up things that would have been his siblings, laying dead in pools of their own yolk and blood. The frantic sway of someone carrying him out of the fire at full sprint. The sting of disinfectant, the wrenching ache of metal and polymer being substituted where his lazarus organ had once been.
It had all come back after they brought him to the oasis. After they ran him through all those scans and tests to figure out how he survived in the desert without any sustenance for as long as he had, why he constantly gave off trace amounts of void energy despite clearly not having been burned by it.
After they stuck him full of blacktech under the pretense of repairing wounds. He didn’t think to protest at the time, the Ecclesiarch’s Blessing had muddled his mind. Not enough to stop him being reluctant, but just enough that they managed to convince him into agreeing to the operation in his dehydrated haze.
Even as he sat there and downed another bottle of that disgusting swill they called “Authentic Reserve StimMix” he couldn’t help but wonder, was this how Armless lived? Was this all-consuming numbness what permeated the human’s days? It was as though every emotion and sensation, good or bad, was faded and muted. He was certain the guilt for what he’d done combined with the memories of his dead siblings would’ve driven him mad, were it not for the numbness. If the Ecclesiarch hadn’t made such a show of things, perhaps the skull-faced man would’ve kept his composure and refrained from murdering the noble.
His hololens eye allowed him to take in the room in its entirety without having to visibly look around, which would’ve undoubtedly attracted more attention from these predatory demigods. He could feel their blessings slithering around him, but they either chose not to grasp his mind or weren’t able to. Of the six others present, only two were actually speaking aloud, one was a relatively lithe male Warrior with flowery designs on his armor and his “horns” stemming just above his eyes, whilst the other was a huge female whose armor was decorated by battle scenes and whose “horns” were effectively an armored crest that started between her eyes and ran all the way to the back of her head. Two others who looked nearly identical were communicating nonverbally, while one was anxiously waiting their turn and one wasn’t paying attention, or at least they seemed not to be. Like siblings at the dinner table. Now that he thought of it, they all looked alike, even more so than they would if they were just from the same bloodline. He decided to ask, once the talking died down.
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“It truly is a shame. I wanted to see how he’d look after metamorphosis.” the lithe one said.
The large one responded with surprising eloquence, stating “Look at it from the bright side. At least his death is a suitable cause to retake the frontier and expand our influence without risking political backlash from the other clans, not to mention his… Contribution.”
At the final word, she looked to Orsha. He decided this was the time to ask his question, before they could question him instead. It would make him come across as brazen and rude, but it would also make clear that he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. At least, that was his thought process to justify what would be suicide to anyone of lesser standing than the six nobles.
“I must apologize for asking such a question, but as you all likely know, I was very literally born in the middle of nowhere. I’ve noticed that you share certain traits, and I wonder, are you from the same clutch of eggs?”
The silence that swept across the room was palpable. All present froze, and the large female who had looked at him seemed to shrink in her seat. It was like he had struck them with enough force to drive them into the ground. The lithe one began stuttering out a response, “N-n-n-not quite, but something of that nature, yes. We were to… Succeed the Seven Archdrakes, since they’re rather… Absent.”
“Would that make me the new…”
“Sixth, yes,” the lithe one confirmed again, “b-but that’s no matter right now, as that was shortly after the great isolation, before we figured out certain vital technologies.”
“Like digging up blacktech and simplifying it for our own use,” the large one added, much to the lithe one’s chagrin.
“It’s not blacktech, stop using that heretical term! They called it voidtech, and so will we!”
“Wouldn’t using their own words in vain be more heretical?”
“I- That’s not the point!”
“What is your point, then?”
Whereas the thinner one quickly lost his cool, the mohawk-horned “big sister” remained the only one to retain her composure, quickly turning what appeared to be a touchy subject to a petty argument to lighten the mood. Soon enough, the attention was gone from him and the nobles entered into a new discussion, the Big Sister once more leading with the topic.
“Now, regarding our involvement in the southern frontier. The exile-town has proven more than troublesome all things considered, so I think it only fair to send a task force to deal with the issue.”
“Deal with the issue?” Orsha questioned.
The Big Sister turned to him with an impeccably practiced reassuring smile, “Yes. To enforce the rule of law, protect the town from any potential attacks from the deserters, make sure there’s no violent retribution against us. We weren’t involved with our brother’s little pet project, you must understand.”
He nodded in agreement, and decided he’d listen in for the time being. Seconds passed, then minutes. The nobles quickly slid into a mind-numbing discussion of managing the possible economic and political ramifications of annexing a frontier territory even with a sufficient justification. Orsha couldn’t help but zone out, and he noticed that the twins had done the same. In reality, only three of the six were actively engaged. At some point he felt attention being directed towards him in the conversation, and so began to pay attention again.
“...and thanks to the coordinates that the new Sixth so graciously provided, we should be able to dispatch a high-speed task force and have them reach the exile-town within no more than two days,” the Big Sister said.
“I’ll send word and have the rovers ready by sundown. Say, how’s the preservation of little brother’s body going?” the third participating noble piped up. His gauntleted hands were clasped in front of his face, his eyes piercing and focused even through the golden glow. His “horns” stemmed from just above his temples, twisted upward, went over the back of his head, and ended in tips pointing upward just behind his head. His armor depicted figures that resembled Armless’s walker in various poses. Arms crossed, a single hand pointing upward, holding a double-handed sword at waist height.
Orsha would swear he caught the Machinist’s eyes flickering to look at him, for but a brief fraction of a second. The movement was far too quick for his living eye to catch, but the hololens they’d replaced his left with managed to pick it up.
“We’re still running some of the preliminary procedures, but he’ll be as good as new for the funeral,” the Big Sister said.
They were all so… Stilted. It had become obvious that the nobles were keeping up appearances. But why was speaking about their brother’s death the part that seemed the fakest? Orsha wagered that it was because they were trying not to seem celebratory about the opportunity to gain more territory and political power. The Machinist turned to Orsha, his eyes a thousandfold more interrogatory than his calm, collected tone of voice.
“Would the Sixth happen to have any ideas in regards to how the Blacktech-obsessed Madman managed to build a homunculus actually capable of harboring and projecting the cursed light? You lived alongside him for several decades at least, isn’t that right?” he quizzed. It wasn’t an honest question, it was a demand for answers. The Machinist was prodding to see if Orsha knew more than he let on. He chose to simply state the truth as it was.
“He didn’t build anything. The skull-faced man stumbled into town one day, no arms, just a mask and rags for clothes. The town elder took pity, gave him some stimmix, and sent him off to the so-called Madman’s shop, where I assume the aforementioned madman provided him with new arms. He antagonized a supply requisition squad in the town square and killed the chaplain where he stood. I joined his group when he left town in hopes of reaching civilization.”
“No no, I’m quite certain it’s some sort of particularly well-preserved authentic homunculus, or maybe the engineer figured out how to replicate a small facet of what allows humans to harbor the cursed light,” the Big Sister rebuked without hesitation.
“Why’re you so adamant on your brother’s murderer being a homunculus?” Orsha questioned.
A silence fell over them again. The six nobles all exchanged looks before their eyes converged upon Orsha. The Machinist lowered his arms into a crossed position on the table, slightly leaning forward on them as he stared.
“...It has to be a homunculus. If the exiles had a human on their side, there wouldn’t be a body left to bury.”
Was it… Fear in the dragon-man’s voice?