The massive lizard's snarl faded, turned into an expression of… Pity? Sadness? 

“Oh dear. You truly believe you are one of them, don't you. He even built you a replica of the accursed destroyer. I will do my best to make your death painless. I am sorry, motherless child.”

Pity turned to anger as the armored giant noticed the diminutive inventor, who was now standing behind Armless, just behind the precipice of the door.

“And you, Vezkig… You will pay. Homunculi or suffering, your choice.” 

He had enough posturing. Armless stepped forward, brought the Gun to bear on the massive lizard. The inside of its barrel lit up with a baleful purple. A loud whine sounded from within, the light built, and…

He went blind for a split-second. A horrid scream ripped through the air as a burst of unstable, pinkish-white energy burst forth from the Gun, not losing focus immediately after exiting the muzzle, but never having been focused or properly directed in the first place. 

It ripped a conical crater into the soil in front of Armless, but the energy dissipated far too quickly to harm anyone. When the dust and the unworldly light cleared, the golden-eyed reptile was aggressively pointing towards Armless. He was yelling something about how Vezkig had committed a heresy of the highest order  against all that was holy, that he had tried to falsify divinity by forcing a homunculus to harness the unworldly light of the many-limbed ones.

His two lackeys had taken up firing positions, with their crude slug-throwers trained on Armless' head. 

Armless took another step forward.

Brrrt.

A rapid stream of surprisingly weedy gunshots rang out. Where he expected a series of thunderbolts, there came a belt of firecrackers going off in a metal pot. The small, fingertip-sized projectiles took a solid few seconds of continuous fire to even crack his mask. Soon enough, they ran out of ammo.

Once more. The Gun whined. A charge built up inside the barrel, much faster this time. The glow grew, then shrunk. From a floodlight to a laser pointer. And then… Pew. The noise it let off was much less a scream than it was a squeak. A finger-thin beam carved a small indent into the largest plate on the golden-eyed lizard's chest. 

That…  Was not the intention. In his mind, Armless had imagined the Gun focusing a thin beam that would punch through the lizard's heart. It seemed that, after all, his mind still hadn't fully synced with the weapon.

Thankfully, the recommended method of resolving that issue was continued usage.

Both of the gunmen backed off, attempting to get into better firing positions while reloading their weapons, pulling new magazines from the sizable pockets of their shorts. Goldeneye, however, stood his ground. Grinning. He knew Vez wasn't good enough to build a homunculus even remotely close to anything made by the many-limbed ones, let alone something approaching their kind in its capabilities.

He could've dodged the shot. The charge time for that pathetic replica was all too slow to be usable. But he knew it wouldn't do any real damage. That fireworks display beforehand was barely strong enough to kick up a dust cloud.

The huge lizard standing before Armless lashed out. A forward lunge, teeth and claws flashing, one eye trailing gold. Killing intent in the other. 

The Gun briefly whined. A pulse of Void energy entered Armless' system just as the thought of dodging crossed his mind. He jumped to the side, turning his body in mid-air to keep Goldeneye in his field of vision. His subjective perception of time slowed to a crawl, combat calculation subroutines coming online for the first time in decades. 

He expected Goldeneye to crash into Vez's shop, but the musclebound giant stopped himself with surprising grace. He used the inside of the crater Armless' first shot created as a jumping off point to make his followup lunge even faster than the first.

Armless willed the Gun to pull back, for it to build up charge inside its circuits without doing anything with it. 

Goldeneye lashed out at him as he approached, fully expecting the Gun to fire another weak shot.

Instead, it - and the arm it was attached to -  lunged forward.

The stake-like grippers at its muzzle slammed forward with a resounding thunk. They were to hit Goldeneye in the left shoulder, but as the draconian attempted to strike,  they were met with the underside of his armored forearm. 

It would've been an insult to armorcraft to call what it was encased in a gauntlet - a patchwork of roughly bent metal plates, bolted into scales and hide. The upper stake successfully penetrated into thick, leathery hide, while the bottom left one met solid metal and wedged barely halfway into a plate of armor, retracting before it could get stuck.

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Armless forced the gun to dump all its remaining energy into his power grid and forcefully straightened his left leg, embedding its foot into the soil. It ripped a track in the ground. Immediately afterwards he turned at the waist, using his leg as an anchor. A small cloud of steam vented out of his back as he smashed a quarter-ton of lizard into the ground.

Due to the sheer force of impact, both stakes were driven fully into his arm, blue blood gushing out around them. He grabbed at the Gun with his free hand, but before he could get a good grip, the stakes retracted. Thunk. Squelch. A geyser of blue began spraying from one of the holes - a major blood vessel severed.

The masked one ripped his contorted leg free of the ground. The Gun's power source glowed just a little brighter as the combination of muscle alignment and self-repair subroutines forced the limb back into a vaguely correct shape. His opponent bit off the claw on his left index finger, then plugged the most severe wound on his arm - though he stretched the hole wider, the difference in size did mean that he effectively stopped the bleeding.

And so, he got up. His gaze was entirely focused on the back of the abomination that so arrogantly dared to harm him. It seemed to be frozen in place, standing still.

A piece of ceramic fell to the ground. Another. And another. The homunculus turned its head, then its entire body. A solid third of what was under its mask was visible, its left eye - emotionless circle that it was - glaring at him from within a gaping, empty hole.

The circle became a pinprick and the homunculus broke into a sprint, cursed light shining from within that fake it had for an arm. 

Goldeneye had an exceptional blessing - where others of the warrior caste could bend the world to make themselves stronger or faster, he saw all as it was. And that light, it was no fake. Homunculus or not, somehow, this thing harnessed the power of the many-limbed ones. Even if it couldn't sunder mountains and shape the land as their god-machines did.

With a roar and a one-handed lunge, Goldeneye met the masked fake on his own terms. He met the replica with his own grip, grabbing its muzzle. From this position, even if the two stakes fired again, they would only go between his fingers - and they did. Only… Goldeneye noticed that what he took for cracks were in fact seams, and the stakes had joints.

Joints that opened up, and stakes became metal fingers. Metal fingers with the strength to lock around his hand and dig into flesh, to find seams in his armor and exploit them. And so…

He pulled his fingers out of the wound and let his left arm go. Muscles constricted and blood flow was cut off. His left arm came off from the elbow down. Where some could shed tails, his clan could shed entire limbs. A limb can't bleed if it's been shed. A dishonorable tactic to be sure, but it saved his life many times.

He knew this would give him enough of a window to strike the pretender down. And, in a way, it did.

His right fist met the mask, shattered it with the force of a vengeful demigod. The sheer force would've caused Armless to bend over backwards, were it not for the fact he anticipated the blow and allowed it to land, subtly moving his head back so the strike only hit his mask.

Another piece of ceramic fell to the ground. Another, and another. Piece by piece, his mask fell away, and piece by piece, Goldeneye's expression of righteous anger turned to disbelief. The Gun's stake-grippers let go of his arm.

No skin. No face. A pair of piercing, pink dots, set in gaping holes. A gleaming, metal skull, with a mismatched partial faceplate that looked like… Discolored, grey bone. 

This wasn't a homunculus, and Vezkig didn't build a single piece of it.

Goldeneye felt the cursed destroyer's muzzle slam into his stomach. He heard the whine, the stake-grippers digging into the seams of his armor, into his skin. 

He wanted to lash out at the creature before him, but… How could he? The Truthseekers sought out the legacy of those that chained the cursed light to their will, the many-limbed ones. His own life wasn't worth even a tenth of what one of theirs was. He'd already brought dishonor on himself by so foolishly striking against this one.

The skeleton-faced being which he, in his disdain for Vezkig, mistook for a mere homunculus, surged with unworldly power. He could feel the cursed light snuff out his eye. In his moment of impending death, Goldeneye became One-eye.

One-eye heard a whining noise building from within the Gun. It took all the will he had to choke out the words, despite the fact he was practically unharmed. It was that accursed light, it stripped him of his strength, of his second sight, burned it away and salted the wound.

“Wgh… Why defend them? They would not stand for themselves, n-ngho matter what we did, and so we lef to see- seekgh the truth. Thgey use your kind as bogeymen to scare children with, speak of you as though you were inconceivable horrors from beyond the veil of sanity. They will never truly see you as a hero. So why?”

Armless hung his head, the whine dying down for but a second as he thought. One-eye's weight pushed his feet into the soil, yet his posture showed no strain. He raised his gaze to meet One-eye's. His mouth opened, and he spoke.

“A hero is just a man, who knows he is free.”

The gun charged, focused, crackled with an immense tension and pressure building up within its firing chamber. At that moment, whatever limited intelligence the weapon had became fully synchronized with its wielder's will. 

A pillar of pinkish-purple light erupted into the heavens. A deafening scream could be heard for kilometers on end, carried on the wind. Armless allowed One-eye to fall to the ground, and turned his back on him. With slow, deliberate steps, he walked towards Vezkig's shop, ready to have his new left arm mounted. And Vezkig, well Vezkig was more than ready to provide. Word spread through town quickly, and though One-eye wasn't lying, the story that spread wasn't hushed whispers. It wasn't a reverent legend either, but… Armless wouldn't need to worry about getting into bar fights anymore.

One-eye's unconscious body,  missing an arm and with a gaping hole in its chest, was dragged out of town and left to the elements. His bodyguards didn't need to be made to leave - they ran away the moment Armless' mask fell off. 

The next day, a few of the town guards went to the spot where they had left the body to check on it, but it was gone. All that was left was a patch of blue desert flowers growing where a pool of blood once had been, and a word clumsily scraped into it. 

“FREE”