It had been only days since the madman’s execution at the Big Sister’s weapon. Since then, the Machinist had sent one of his chaplains to Orsha’s quarters to deliver a message, which arrived very early in the morning. The message was in the form of a simple piece of paper. The messenger warned him to be careful with it, as the ink would smear away easily. It read as follows:

Do not judge my sister’s actions too harshly, our noble bloodline has been a touchy subject since long before we were brought into this world. The youngest were conceived with assistance from the technology of the Many-Limbed Ones, my three older siblings and I were conceived through more… Archaic means.

Please destroy this message once you read it.

He did as was asked, spending the remainder of his morning repairing his armor. Of all things the Igrons had servants do, it seemed they retained some sort of tradition dictating that the wearer of a particular powered armor must perform repairs and modifications themselves, even if most of the actual work in producing the base modules had already been done by servants anyway. Even the designs for battle damage ornaments were done by servant artists, but the work was attributed to the wearer because they were the ones who did the finishing touches.

Even the menial task of replacing paling synthfiber muscles was harder than performing “repairs”. “They even left a printed guide!” he thought to himself, despite using it extensively.

In the end, the damage Red-eye had caused to his suit was repaired with garish, heavily embossed, golden-coloured alloy to fill in the gaps. Not more than a few minutes after he finished working on his suit, the intercom at his door buzzed. He expected a chaplain or an even lower-ranked messenger, but it was the Machinist himself.

Stiffening his posture, Orsha opened the door to meet the noble face to face. Before he could even speak a greeting, the Machinist cut straight to the point, as measured and collected as ever.

“An emergency war council has been called for, you’re needed in the main meeting room,” he said before his eyes snapped from Orsha’s face to his newly-repaired armor, and he continued with “And I see you’ve repaired your armor, splendid. I trust you know the way from your quarters to the meeting room, yes?”

Orsha nodded, “Of course.”

“Good,” the Machinist nodded in response before walking off down the hall at his usual measured, brisk pace.

After leaning out the door for a moment, he returned to his quarters and closed the door, intending to just get in his armor and go to the meeting. As he opened it up and stepped in, he felt the everpresent burning sensation flaring, the pain permeating his being as his inner network of livingmetal expanded and threaded itself deeper into his tissues.

His face contorted into an agitated grin. With an annoyed grunt, he walked to the lounging room, heading straight for one of the stimmix synthesizers. Somewhat forcefully, he tapped in a code for the strongest stimmix variant he had discovered so far, impatiently waiting for the ancient machine to pour the faint orange mixture into a cup before kicking it back and drinking it all at once.

It felt electric and warm going down, and he staggered back briefly as it took effect. Much of the liquid evaporated in his stomach over the course of a solid half-minute, steam coming out of his nose as a prolonged, involuntary exhalation. As unpleasant as that was even when he was ready for it, the mixture’s rejuvenating effects helped numb Orsha’s pain to a bearable level.

He put the cup back and turned to get into his armor, but before he left the room, the thought of the meeting being particularly long crossed his mind, and he chose to take a large, half-liter cup to the meeting just in case. He wasn’t sure whether the other Igrons knew of that particular mixture, but he figured it would either go unnoticed, or serve to set him apart.

Finally, Orsha got into his armor, put on his helmet, and took his drink from the synthesizer, capping it with a silicone lid.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

Rushing through the halls, over staircases, and into the very same meeting room he had been ushered to when he first arrived, Orsha found himself in the crossfire of five panicking nobles. As before, only three of them truly participated in the conversation - the Twins and who he thought to be the Seventh remained silent, the former allowing their nervous mental states to show as clear as day, whilst the Seventh remained composed, motionless, and silent, simply observing the situation and listening.

The moment all present were seated, and the helmets came off, the room quieted down and the eldest among them - the Big Sister - stood from her seat. Towering over them as she scanned the table before speaking, her piercing gaze settled on Orsha.

“I apologize for calling a meeting so suddenly, but following the execution, several of the former Truthseekers still loyal to our clan have come forward with information regarding the so-called “Serpent of the South” and his little band of upstarts. The archeology settlement known as Canyonton is positioned over rather expansive human ruins, which were previously assumed to be mostly empty. However… This information is supposedly incorrect. The ramifications of our little brother lying to us aside, the ruins supposedly hold a large stockpile of armaments, powered armor, and walker-type vehicles, plus who knows what else.”

Her piercing gaze swept across them, eventually settling on the Machinist.

“Even if every single ex-Truthseeker in our ranks is an honorless liar, we cannot risk this being the truth.”

“So,” the Machinist began, clasping his hands in front of his face, “you propose we form an annexation force without informing any of the other clans?”

“So they can block us until the heretic degenerates come knocking on our gates?!” the Thin One exploded, but a simple look and a slight shake of the head from the Seventh seemed to not only silence him, but make him shrink into his seat.

“We must weigh the possible repercussions of taking action without consulting the other clans against the damage the skull-faced man could cause,” the Machinist cut in, looking to Orsha with a questioning gaze as if to prompt him to speak. Orsha simply raised his drink and began to take a long sip through the slit atop the lid, giving the Machinist a subtle nod to signify that he should continue speaking.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The noble did just that, continuing on with “You traveled alongside them for some time. Beyond the homunculus and the engineer, were there any individuals of import among your group?”

Finishing his sip, exhaling steam, and putting the cup back down, Orsha did all he could to keep his living eye on the Machinist whilst his hololens allowed him to take in the flabbergasted reactions of the Thin One and the Twins. The former seemed bewildered, whilst the twins were amazed, child-like wonder twinkling in their frog-like eyes.

He held no animosity for the other Igrons, but… Something about the Seventh didn’t sit right with him. He’d expected to dislike the Thin One, but his unsavory demeanor came across as par for the course for the more spoiled of nobles. No, it was the Seventh that kept him on edge - he couldn’t help but feel something wrong bubbling under his surface. Different from the other six. Was it perhaps to do with the fact he had felt every other noble’s blessing passively grasping at him except for the Seventh’s?

At last, the exhalation stopped and Orsha finally spoke, breaking the tension he had built up. “Besides myself, all those who joined us were notable. There was a shrouded, androgynous sharpshooter with an ancient accelerator rifle, there was-”

“How ancient? What did it look like?” the Thin One interrupted, earning him a scornful look from the Big Sister, which he retorted with “This is important, trust me,” before turning back to Orsha and asking the same thing again. “The gun. What did it look like?”

Orsha was about to meticulously describe what it looked like, but then he remembered - his hololens eye could project images from his memory, even if they could get distorted over time. Dredging up a deep focus from his core, he focused on what he remembered the rifle looking like, and pushed the image out through his left eye. A burning sensation rose through his head as he did it, but it was less like fire and more like a dull heat thanks to his drink.

His eye flickered to life, and the projection cast itself a foot in front of him - a good look at the rifle he had caught before they even left Exile-town, showing the front two thirds of the weapon. The smooth curved and bladed feathers that sprouted from its body, the savage beak at its muzzle, the bandage-wrapped hands that grasped it.

The Thin One squinted and leaned forward to get a better look, and his eyes widened.

“That’s not good,” he said.

“Do you recognize the weapon?” the Machinist queried, and the Thin One nodded slowly. “Y-yes. It was an artifact recovered by the Iktha clan some time before the great isolation. It was said to have cost ten thousand slaves their lives before it could be contained due to a void energy burst it released when the original containment unit was breached. Some of our informants claimed it was lost a few decades back, but the info was discarded as hearsay."

“So it was stolen?” the Big Sister queried.

“It’s possible. The thing disappeared in the same month as a minor noble’s third daughter…” the Thin One said to her before refocusing on Orsha. “Did you see it fire? What did it sound like? What did it do?”

“The Marksman was a monster in battle,” he said. “The marksman would point it at a warrior, the sound of hammer striking anvil would resound, and the warrior would explode with spikes of black metal from the inside out.”

“Yes, that checks out with what our informants gathered from the Iktha’s test archives… It’s the Fulgent Impaler. This is bad,” the Thin One said, genuine tension evident in his tone during the last three words. Then, in the span of no more than three seconds, he dropped back into his seat and the tension was gone. Like his mask had just slipped. “Who else?”

Relieved, Orsha dropped his focus and allowed the hologram to fade. “There was the largest warrior in town, Rika. Taller than most elders, liked shotguns and cleavers,” he said, “the most impressive thing about her was her speed blessing, which seemed to be far stronger than the extent of her markings would suggest. She could move faster than the eyes could see.”

“An exceptional talent, but not unnatural,” the Machinist remarked, “who else?”

“A man named Red-eye.”

“Red-eye?”

“He was what became of the Truthseeker that the skull-faced man murdered. It seemed as though the fire of the void burned away his blessing, set him ablaze in turn, and made him think of it as liberation. It mutated him and he made himself some sort of techno-arcane void energy projector to exploit his mutations, which is what caused these,” he explained, gesturing towards the patched-up gashes on his chest plate and the horrific scarring of his face. “I count myself lucky, considering I’d seen him blow away five full-grown warriors with a single shot before I left their group.”

“So the skull-faced man can… Infect others with the void, even if they don’t have an existing receptacle like your synthetic lazarus organ?” the Machinist queried again, genuine concern showing in his calm tone.

“Yes. It doesn’t seem to work on everyone, as he burned a Word-bearer during another conflict and the man didn’t exhibit any void energy during my time traveling with them. In fact, it crippled him utterly - though I can’t say whether that was void exposure, or the fact he was exposed via impalement by crystalline shrapnel. At least, that’s what I was told was the case.”

“Was that everyone?” the Machinist asked one last time, and Orsha simply nodded, reaching for his drink once again as he felt the pain flaring again.

The discussion continued for several hours, and as before, Orsha spent most of it observing and occasionally correcting wrongful assumptions or filling information gaps where he could.

Much of the information he provided was wrong, and intentionally so.

He went out of his way to exaggerate the skull-faced man’s capabilities, which stretched his imagination to a significant degree considering the actual feats he had seen him display.

At one point he even focused as best as he could and replayed a facsimile of what he’d seen the so-called Serpent of the South do in his battle against the Ecclesiarch.

It was all distorted due to his state when he saw it, but one part came through as clear as day, clearer than any footage could’ve shown, for the tremendous wave of void energy Armless had released at that moment caused the memory to be sealed in Orsha’s very being, in the patterns of his livingmetal.

It was the image of the skull-faced beast screaming in fury, proclaiming his defiance of the natural law as he murdered the Ecclesiarch. Though his hololens couldn’t reproduce it, he managed to make his helmet serve as a speaker. The voice that came through was like a chainsaw put through a distortion pedal, but it was still intelligible.

“͞H̷um̼an͈͔̠s̳̱ have sto̷͖̳o̮͇̼d ̦i̟̳n ̡de̤̗fị̻ance̻ ̛̗͙o̡f̤͢ na͇̘̝tu̫̗r̼e ̹f̭̳̕o̞̩̖͜r͎ ̝m͎̟̤i̵͚̩͕l͉͡l̮e̳̝͔nṋi̭̟̼a.̧̘̳ ̺W͏hi̮̼ļs̞̭̗t͈ ̦̼̝t̨hi͢s̴ ̢bod̠̥y̮̩̱ o̪͓f̱̪ ̸͍̲m͝i͟ne ̟m͏ó̯͉v̫͚e̷s a͇̲͓͘ǹ͕̟͕d ̩̖̜t̯̰h̶͕e̹̠̳ ̛f̻͙ḭ͓r̕e͟ ̞͇i̱n͏ ̞me͏̦͖̣ ̗͈b̧u̧͚̤̥r̭n̵s͕̲, thḙr̞̤e i̦̩s͠ ͇̘no̟ ͕̦͠týra̞̞͡ṋṉ̲y ̀t̷̖̟̳h̠͞at̨̗̥̮ ̛̪wi͠ll͔͝ ͟s͔͡t̴an̞̥͕d.̪ I͙̤ a͉m̞̯̙ ̶̖ḿa̸̝̣n̲,̖̙̺ ̭͓̪a̴n͝d͈̲ ͓̱̺I͙ ̷͔ś͎̩p̸͎͖ͅit u͎͍̯p̡o̱̙ͅn̵̼̪ ̯ǹ̰atu̞͚̝re̡͉̬’̖̙s̛̥ ̬̠͍́c̡̜̗̻ṟ̻̗ųe̛l la̸̮͙̣w̞͖͝.”

With a slight tremble, the Big Sister gestured to him. “P-play that last part again.”

She didn’t have to ask twice. This time, it came through clearer.

"I a͟m man, a̧nd͜ ͢I spi̷t͟ ͞u͝p͠o̷n̴ ͜nat̶ur͘e’̷s c̀r̕u͡e̸l law.”

“This is no homunculus,” she remarked. “We’ve no choice but to act. All in favor of retaking Canyontown, say aye.”

A unanimous “Aye.” resounded through the room.