Silence fell. Postures froze. Eyes widened. Vezkig snapped awake at the word “Igron”. Any and all sense of levity was instantaneously drained from all present. Armless willed the message to play again.
“Exile-town razed, everyone dead, Clan Igron did it! Used assault rovers, sacrificed speed- and machine-blessed! Warn the Old Dragon!”
Again.
“Exile-town razed, everyone dead, Clan Igron did it! Used assault rovers, sacrificed speed- and machine-blessed! Warn the Old Dragon!”
Again.
“...razed, everyone dead, Clan Igron did it!”
Armless felt a wrenching pain grip his insides, one he couldn’t simply mute, far beyond any pain physical damage could inflict. He would’ve screamed to the heavens in despair right then and there, but he knew the harm such an outburst could cause.
“R-razed?” Vezkig questioned in utter disbelief, confirming Armless’s assumption that the Exile-town was the very same town he’d walked into, the same town he had defended, the same town for whose people he had done all this. They were exiles on the edge of civilization, perhaps criminals, perhaps undesirables, there wasn’t a single figment of his ancient mind that cared.
Nesgon’s voice resounded, measured and controlled even in this perilous situation.
“That is… Horrific news. The Igrons are-”
“-The Ecclesiarch’s family?” the human interjected, and his voice was like the very seething flame that burned within him. It wasn’t even a question. It was a demand for an answer, a demand that was quickly fulfilled with a simple “Yes.” from the Old Dragon. Vezkig stared off into the middle-distance, but quickly broke out of the stupor with a shake of his head. He turned to Armless, and when he spoke, the uncertainty was gone from his voice. The same clinical cold he’d exhibited during the operation replaced it. “We must tell the others,” he said.
“If I know even a shred about how the Igrons operate, they’ll come after Canyontown next,” Nesgon rumbled. Armless nodded in agreement and downloaded a copy of the sound file before turning and walking out without so much as a word, expecting the others to follow. They did, correctly assuming that he would head towards the bar. They didn’t however assume he would do so through the Town Hall, in full view of everyone. He refused to answer questions and almost unnaturally slithered his way past everyone who tried to stop or slow him to talk, walking through the hall and across the walkways faster than many men could run.
The Deserter Chaplain remained somewhat behind and tried to calm down the unrest Armless’s downright furious passage left in his wake, explaining to concerned townsfolk that “A very important message has been received and must be shared with the other liberators in person.”
The human barely even waited for the bar’s front door to open, sliding his way through it and seamlessly weaving through the crowd of patrons that naturally began to form around him the moment he entered. He saw Rika at the bar and he met her glance with his own. She raised a bottle in greeting, but her relatively positive demeanor faded into concern when she noticed the barely-contained cocktail of wrath that stewed under his surface.
He didn’t even bother opening the back room door legitimately, instead mentally brute-forcing his way into the mechanism and using his Administrator privileges to make it open. For all the fury and wrath that the message had spurred on within Armless however, he still had the self-control to wait. He waited for the others to catch up so they could all enter without risking the bar’s patrons slipping into the back room, but he waited not a single solitary second longer before he finally made the door slide open, slipped through, and willed it to slam shut behind Vezkig, who was the last to enter.
Red-eye was finally awake, his feet kicked up at the table and a bottle of stimmix in his hand. The Marksman was sitting across from him. She seemed to be halfway between on-edge and relaxed. The Word-bearer had finally returned from wherever he’d disappeared to, and was drinking alongside them. They turned to face the new arrivals, and their demeanors immediately turned serious at the sight of an angered Armless, calm Vezkig, and noticeably worried Rika. Rika didn’t get worried. Not unless something terrifying was present, like a murderously angry human.
“What’s going on?” Red-eye queried apprehensively, as if he expected the response to be a gunshot.
Armless took a seat at the table, slamming Apeiron’s muzzle to the ground as he did so. Without waiting for the others to seat themselves, he played back the message with a foreword of “A zero-latency transmission arrived a few minutes ago.”
His voicebox let out a few seconds of meaningless noise before it reconfigured itself to replicate the message, though the replication was still strongly tinted with the anger that sizzled within his chest. The replicated voice was more powerful and growl-like.
“Exile-town razed, everyone dead, Clan Igron did it! Used assault rovers, sacrificed speed- and machine-blessed! Warn the Old Dragon!”
Rika’s eyes went wide. She looked to be well past the verge of tears, and slinked away into the bar, despite Vezkig’s protest. The Marksman froze in place, then slowly curled up clutching her rifle and didn’t move. One could see some of her undamaged scales turning a deep black.
Red-eye didn’t say anything, and instead opted to simply hold his head in his hands and stare into the half-empty stimmix bottle before him. His lilac left eye darted around wildly, betraying an inner panic.
The Marksman, curled up as she was, looked to Vezkig with a demanding gaze not unlike a starving animal. He began to shake his head, but stopped himself halfway through the motion, got off his hoverslate, and walked over to her to whisper something into her ear. Armless’s sensors picked up the words “I will try,” but he ignored it, focused on keeping his own emotions under control rather than listening in on the emotions of others. Red-eye let out a long sigh as he raised his head, looked around the room, and focused on Armless. “They’ll come after us, you know,” he said in a reiteration of the no longer hypothetical conversation they had in the armory.
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“So what, we just lay down, welcome them with open arms, and hope they don’t wipe us out just because-” the Word-bearer began to antagonize in an attempt to vent his anxieties, but was quickly silenced when Vezkig finally snapped at him with a calm statement of “Shut up for once. You’ve no right or reason t’ be like this towards someone who’s fought n’ bled for us. Yer shit-flingin’ won’t help anything.”
The Word-bearer quickly quieted down, shrinking back in his seat somewhat. While the Marksman shot him an angry glare, Red-eye didn’t even acknowledge the disturbance, and neither did Armless as he only waited for the noise to die down before he responded with “Then they will burn,” only to finally look to the Word-bearer. “You know where the Vault of Truth is, yes?” he questioned.
“The Vault? Sure I know, but… You’re not considering what I think you’re considering, right?”
“Our best hope for any sort of victory is to not only open the Vault, but to delve into the ship’s deepest recesses to gather superior equipment. The Vault will be the first step.”
The Word-bearer thought for a moment, then piped up with “Why don’t you have the old man lead you there? He knows just as well as me.”
Nesgon swiftly retorted with “I will have to attend to my duties. It would take longer to get to the vault than it will take the Council to officially declare me as the Town Elder.”
“Shit, that’s true…” the Word-bearer croaked under his breath. He turned his gaze to Armless again and nodded. “Fine, I’ll lead you there.”
“Good,” Armless said. “But before we depart, I have a few questions. First, why did the voice in the message refer to the town as “Exile-town”?” he questioned, looking towards the Marksman and Vezkig as he did so.
The Marksman looked around nervously, while Vezkig let out a long sigh while he mulled over an answer. He finally piped up with a defensive tone.
“We’re exiles, or the children of exiles. They couldn’t risk makin’ us inta martyrs, so they shipped us off to the absolute edge of civilization, gave us the bare minimum we needed t’ survive ‘til folks forgot ‘bout us, an’ hoped we’d fade out o’ history. Why, does it matter that you’ve been fighting alongside outlaws all this time?”
The human slowly shook his head.
“It... Doesn’t. I’ve picked my allies, my enemies. I’ve made my choice, and I’ll see this through. Even if I am to become the serpent that swallows their world whole. We will strike terror into their hearts in a single stroke, even if I must burn myself alive to do it.”
This time, Red-eye responded, holding his hands in front of his face not unlike the Machinist did during the meeting Orsha had sat in on - though the others wouldn’t know such a thing. His tone was part logical, and part emotional - he was trying to talk some sense into the human before he did something he would regret.
“I understand what you wish to do, and I will stand beside you in the coming war,”he began.
“But.. Promise me one thing. Promise me you won’t become like the Igrons. Promise me you won’t take revenge on their subjects, promise me you won’t punish them for the crimes of their rulers.”
Armless would’ve put on a sad smile, were he able to. It was still evident in his voice when he responded, however.
“If I ever do, it just means Orsha was right to say I am a travesty against the legacy of mankind.”
He chuckled. “System, set minimum combat processor power level to combat-ready for the next six hours or until manually disabled,” he thought. His machine-self echoed the sentiment with an affirmative ping, and he felt himself automatically analyzing his surroundings and even all details available without so much as a thought. The resulting possible situations and strategies flowed just beneath the surface of his mind like great leviathans in an uncharted sea.
“I suppose it’s time for Ouroboros to stop eating itself, isn’t it? Nesgon, gather all able-bodied individuals and arm them according to their previously displayed combat capabilities. And ah… Is there a way to reach the top of the mountain?”
“Understood, and yes. Make the fast lift go up for as long as it can, then just walk up the stairs. Why would you want to go up there, though? The only thing up there are our wind turbines.”
Armless looked down briefly. “I need a moment to myself. I won’t be gone for more than an hour,” he reassured the old man.
“Very well.”
As he got up and walked over to the back door, Red-eye’s lilac eye looked to him with a questioning gaze. He rumbled “I just need to think.” as he passed, and in a little under a minute, he’d slipped through the one-third open door and disappeared into the tunnel network.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Left right left right left right.
Leftrightleftrightleftright.
The lift.
Its mechanisms whined as it rocketed to the summit. Dust fell from the ceiling when it abruptly stopped. The room was plain - a rectangular space filled with a mixture of salvaged or printed maintenance tools and replacement parts for the turbines. There were huge fins up against the wall, longer than Nesgon was tall. That didn’t matter.
Leftrightleftrightleftright.
He sprinted up the stone-carved stairs and impatiently forced the trap-door at its top to open, only to be struck by rays of sunshine as he stepped out onto the summit of the mountain’s left half. It was nearly flat, its surface smoothed by the elements. All around him, rows and rows of wind turbines built from salvaged ship parts and printed components stood, no two exactly alike, but all wired together and equal in function.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
With slow, measured steps, the human walked towards the edge of the mountain and gazed southward. He drew on Apeiron’s tremendous energy and empowered his eyes with it until they were blazing horns of lilac fire, and he amplified his sight as best as he could. There was no way for him to see Exile-town from that mountaintop, even if he could gaze at the horizon and see the face of a man walking over it. Somehow, being unable to witness the desolation for himself made the wrenching pain gripping his insides even worse. The serpent tightened its grip on his heart, and in response he let go.
He let go of all inhibition, all self-control, and allowed his emotions to control him once more. The pressure that exploded within him as void energy flooded his body was greater than any serpent’s grip.
Armless, the Ouroboros, the Serpent of the South, screamed out into the heavens and cried geysers of exotic particles.
He cried for vengeance until it became a howl, a roar, and his voicebox overloaded.
He screamed out, and his systems used that scream to vent the excess energy through his voicebox.
The Serpent of the South screamed.
He screamed and unleashed all the rage and sorrow that gnawed at his being as a seething pillar of unworldly flame, and his scream was carried on the wind.
The nobles of Clan Igron awoke in the morning wracked by terrible dread, and they didn’t know why.