It took several minutes, but eventually his scream for vengeance died down. He stood at the edge of the mountain, heaving in place as though he were out of breath, though no breath had passed into or out of his throat in millennia. The outburst hadn’t dispelled the wrenching pain that grasped at him, but he could bear it now. “You’ve gone through worse,” a faint voice echoed in his mind. Was it an echo of his past self, or just his own attempt to push himself past this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to.
He turned his gaze from the horizon to the town below. Many were staring upwards, squinting, trying to catch a glimpse of him. He even recognized Auntie standing in the door of her shop, and for a moment, he thought she might’ve locked eyes with him. There was fear in the people’s eyes, but there was also something else.
There was awe, there was hope. There was a need. Red-eye’s past self was right. They needed more than just a hero, they needed an icon, someone or something to blaze a path towards a brighter future in these dark times.
The Ecclesiarch. The Old Dragon, Nesgon. The Liberator, Armless. The Chaplains. Even people like Auntie. They were icons all, great pillars that protected the hopes and dreams of those who couldn’t protect themselves.
“Even if we do bring the Igrons to justice, what then?” he thought to himself, only to almost immediately answer his own question with “I’m still homesick for a world that might not even exist. This one will have to do. It’ll just take some work.”
As he sat down on the edge of the cliff, feet dangling from it, he gazed down onto the walkway, focused his senses, and he saw that the people on the street weren’t grimacing as they searched the cliff edge for his figure - they were smiling.
Vezkig’s voice sounded from behind him. Collected. Calm. Cautious.
“That’s… Some dragonfire y’have there,” he said as he slowly walked towards Armless’s perch. The human let out a chuckle, but didn’t respond. Vekig walked up and took a seat beside him, looking down over the town.
“Y’came here t’ let it all out, huh?”
Armless nodded. “Yeah. Couldn’t risk it anywhere in town.”
“No kiddin’, we felt the tremors all the way down in the bar. With that sorta raw power, no wonder y’can make that machine-abortion walk.”
Vezkig looked up at Armless, considering something. He wound his arm back, and loosed a surprisingly powerful punch into his side. “That’s for burnin’ up the old man’s insides as bad as y’did,” another punch, “and that’s for bringin’ up the bioforge in front of her.”
The human didn’t even budge, but he did feel it. He wagered if he really put all his strength into a strike, Vezkig could probably knock out a full-grown warrior. Another chuckle rumbled from his voicebox, gravelly from the strain it had been put under.
“She wants me to do what I did to Nesgon, attach an additional limb to her back to house the firing mechanism of her rifle, and connect it to the lazarus organ substitute so it could function as normal,” Vezkig spoke up, once again explaining his thought process as a means of dealing with the stress he was under.
“If the machine works as my memories suggest, it should be possible.”
“And what if it doesn’t? What if the only tools I can safely use on ‘er are the surgical beds?”
He’d have to question the VI in regards to pharmaceuticals eventually, asking it for help with the operation would simply be another article on the list. “I won’t be able to be there for the whole procedure though,” he thought. An idea sprung into his head.
“I will designate you as Chief of Medical and make the VI speak to you via radio. That way, it can guide you along as you operate.”
Vezkig turned his head fully this time. “You think I’m some sort of med student?!” he questioned, jokingly pretending he was angered by the suggestion and delivering another playful punch to Armless’s side. This time, his cybernetics whined at the strain.
“Please don’t hurt yourself,” the human advised.
“That’s just fuckin’ rich comin’ from you, mister “Lemme just drop my skin here,” eh?”
“It was damaged beyond repair.”
“What ‘bout the armor then, eh? Most o’ it was barely even scratched!”
“I… Why didn’t we salvage it?”
“I did, all the segments I could find are in the rover. Red-eye told me he plans on usin’ one o’ the smaller pieces to print a better barrel for his gun. I still don’t get it.”
“What?”
“How much he’s changed. I don’t think it was just burnin’ out the blessing that did it, either.”
“I don’t think he’d appreciate being questioned about what happened after he got dragged out of town and left to the elements.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t appreciate that sorta wound-pokin’ either. Well, y’just come down once you feel better. Everyone’s waitin’ at the lift an’ Red-eye’s gettin’ antsy,” Vezkig said as he got back up and began walking towards the trapdoor.
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Armless considered taking some more time to mull over his thoughts, but in the end got up to follow before the engineer was even halfway to the trapdoor. As he descended the trapdoor and down the stairs, he was met with the waiting faces of the comrades who would delve into the ancient ship alongside him. Red-eye, the Marksman, and the Word-bearer.
“...Rika’s still gone?” he asked as they filed into the elevator. The response was a sigh of “Aye.” from Vezkig, followed by a proper explanation of “She said she needed some time to think, then ordered five bottles o’ stimmix.”
“Drowning her grief in stimulants,” the Word-bearer croaked with a surprisingly tactful tone, “though I can’t say I blame her.”
The caged cabin began to plummet downward, entryways of other floors whizzing by the cage. For minutes, they simply stood in the lift as it rocketed through the mountain and into the depths. The only words uttered for the rest of the trip were a simple remark of “Wonder when they cleaned it up,” from Red-eye when they passed one of the bloodstained floors, the bisected Truthseeker’s upper half gone.
A dull thud reverberated as the cabin touched down and the five of them walked into the tunnels. Vezkig and the Marksman stayed slightly behind, neither of them confident in their ability to navigate the colossal ship’s corridors. Being former Truthseekers, the Word-bearer and Red-eye were both familiar with the ship’s layout, at least as far as the sections they had explored went. Armless simply continued building on his mental map the deeper he went, his auxiliary processors placing markers and pathfinding as he went.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Through the smaller tunnel, into the main tunnel, and to the gigantic airlock. Amalgam was still in its place, stone-still as before, and Armless didn’t wake it. Not yet. He willed the airlock to open, and in the span of a little under a minute, they passed through the airlock and were faced with the towering emptiness of the central cargo corridor. “Reminds me of the cathedrals back in my home city…” the Marksman remarked in hushed tones as she craned her neck in an attempt to peer through the high-up windows.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
To the right, towards the medbay. Its still-open door stared at them from the other side of the hallway as they approached, but the lower half of the homunculus was gone from the floor. Had it simply gotten up and walked away?
“A monument to man’s defiance of entropy.” the Word-bearer recited, looking around at the familiarity of a place he’d spent years driving mind-slaves into, a mind-slave himself at the time.
“Even in death it still lives, still rips apart the earth below and churns out its malformed children,” Red-eye completed the verse.
Despite not being Truthseekers anymore, they still held reverence for this place. Armless couldn’t blame them, it left an impression even on him, even if it did feel vaguely familiar.
They stepped into the medbay, the Marksman and Word-bearer both staying behind and more so peering in than truly entering the room. It was mostly as they’d left it, but the formerly bisected medical homunculus was now laid on the slate upon which Red-eye had placed its torso, mended at the gash with heavy-duty medical staples. The medbay VI sounded throughout the room instead of just inside Armless’s head, stating that “Welcome back, Ouroboros. The medical proxy has been successfully repaired and its ID markers have been updated.” as the very same homunculus he’d bisected days earlier sat up on a nearby medical slate, turned to face them, and waved. It was much less gaunt, and its empty hololens eyes projected cartoonishly expressive substitutes that almost made it look friendly. Almost.
Seemingly not unnerved by the creature, Vezkig quickly entered deeper into the medbay, the automaton’s gaze locked on him as he went. It had closed the lockers back up, and when the tinkerer tried to open one to retrieve more parts, it wouldn’t budge. Before Armless could override the lock, the VI advised “Please, use my database to find the parts you need. It will be faster than manually scanning them like you did last time.”
“No wireless mind-machine interface,” Vezkig muttered as he continued trying locker after locker.
“In that case, simply obtain a Provisional Medical Expert ID from the current Administrator to gain full access to this medbay’s systems, supplies, and database!”
The engineer shot his gaze at Armless. Not expecting, not requesting or demanding, simply knowing. He knew what Armless would do, and before another breath could pass, it had been done. The human had designated Vezkig as a Provisional Medical Expert, and left the rest up to the VI. Its voice sounded in the bay again, “Provisional Medical Expert “Vezkig” successfully designated. Welcome, Vezkig.”
“Uh, thanks. Y’mind openin’ the cabinets fer me?”
“Of course. One moment.”
The locker whose handle he’d been yanking slid open, he looked into it, then back at the medical homunculus. His gaze further shifted to Armless, and he said “I’ve got a handle on it, go on. You’ve got a vault to open.”
Armless reciprocated and simply walked out, questioning the Word-bearer as to the vault’s location to distract him from the Marksman, who used the opportunity to slip into the medbay. As he exited the room he queried the VI as to whether the door would open properly now that the mechanism had been unjammed. He instantly received an affirmative ping, and willed the door to slam shut behind the Marksman as he continued to question the Word-bearer. The frog-like man jumped at the sudden noise, and a gear in his head clicked as he looked between the door and Armless. He didn’t say anything, and instead just gave a knowing gaze as he explained the winding path to the Vault of Truth, and how it was a repurposed cargo bay that could be accessed through a side corridor deeper inside the ship.
They all knew why Armless had shut that door, but none of them mentioned it - they understood the matter of the Marksman’s severe state to be a sensitive subject, and chose to trust in Vezkig’s ability to leverage the medbay to “fix” her.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Out of the side corridor and deeper into the ship, the three comrades walked.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Deeper and deeper they went, hundreds of meters in, until they came upon a huge hole in the wall on the right side of the hall. It perfectly matched the shape of the town gate, and beyond it, there was a relatively small hole that led into a normal-sized corridor. The Word-bearer led them precisely into that hole, and down another set of corridors that wound around and round, numerous closed doors lining the walls, broken up by the occasional scribbles and discarded tools.
For several minutes, they walked like this, and eventually they saw a sign on the wall, surprisingly devoid of any graffiti.
STORAGE SECTOR 4B
It pointed them in a direction, and the trio followed it for a few more minutes, until they came upon a more specific sign just above a larger door.
CARGO BAY 4B-3
Armless willed it open as with the doors that came before, and beyond it they were met with what could only be described as a loading bay. A huge room similar to the outer airlock, with a door as tall as the room itself at one side, partly filled with logistical machinery such as oversized hoverslates and similar cargo platforms.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
It would take them some time to even walk across the loading bay, and as they walked, Armless reached out to whatever VI had control of the door. It was the same one that controlled the outer airlock and yielded to his request for the doors to open without any resistance. Despite this, there was something strange about how it spoke this time. It… Posed a question, and it did so with a subtle eagerness to its mechanical voice.
“Open the door.”
“Door cycling sequence in progress, Ouroboros. Are the knights of singing steel needed once more?”