Left. Right. Left. Right.
The Word-bearer couldn’t get his walker’s energy projector working. Each time he sent the mental command, the machine seized up and threw an error message about some obscure firmware limiter that could only be disabled with a high level of cognitive pressure. “Always with the fuckin’ cognitive pressure this, cognitive pressure that…” the Word-bearer muttered angrily under his breath as he paced through the gantry bay. There were six gantries to either side of the bay, and two more at the far end of the room, bringing the bay’s ability to service walkers to a total of fourteen.
While thirteen of the gantries functioned just fine and presented no problems whatsoever insofar as correcting minor issues with the walkers such as adding armor or outright printing simple weapons onto the frames wholesale, there was one gantry that wouldn’t run no matter what he or any of the Skull-battalion members tried. The issue was simple - there was an inactive, and as far as they could tell, entirely nonfunctional walker taking up the gantry. It was stuck - its hands were locked around the top portion of what looked to be a hunk of plating, which had been stabbed into the floor of the gantry. Even doubled-over as it was, the dead walker still stood almost as tall as the G-Kaiser. Further compounding the problem, the walker and whatever it was holding had been crusted over by a layer of hardened resin and nanofilament, presumably from a gantry malfunction long ago.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
For minutes the Word-bearer paced in front of the gantry in his own walker, wondering what to do. Frustration built in his heart, until he couldn’t bear it any longer and lashed out at the immobile machine, grabbing at its hands to try and pull the piece of metal free himself. Its locked-up fingers crumbled apart at the force of the G-Kaiser’s grip, giving way with little to no resistance as the Word-bearer took hold of the… Handle?
Out of the hunk of half-molten plating, where the dead walker had gripped it, a substantial handle protruded, the wielder’s metal hands having shielded it from whatever encrusted everything else. Gripping the handle without so much as a thought, he heaved upwards with all his walker’s might.
The walker strained.
The crust surrounding the object cracked, then exploded apart as he finally yanked it free. It was no slab, but rather a gigantic sword, likely the inactive walker’s weapon. It was as long as the G-Kaiser was tall and then some, and almost immediately slammed to the ground after the temporary burst of strength wore off.
It was too big to be called a sword. Massive, thick, and made from some sort of polished black stone. Indeed, it looked like someone had taken an ancient obelisk, carved it down to a vaguely sword-like shape, and stuck a livingmetal rod into the bottom as a handle. Its surface was covered in bizarre human glyphs, which he couldn’t read at a glance, despite being fluent in the written form of the human tongue.
Most of the prospective pilots that were within the blade’s range scattered, but the Word-bearer wasn’t aware of his surroundings. Struggling against its weight, the G-Kaiser lifted the sword up so its sensors could make out something etched into the blade. The hieroglyphs shifted and slithered around on the polished surface, changing shape as though just picking the sword up had altered its nature. In seconds, the Word-bearer could not only make out what the symbols said, but he knew what it meant and that what it said was true, for better or for worse.
Three thousand slain at the altar of conquest.
A six-armed titan of steel, broken and bound.
Mouthless, it screams suffering and rapture in equal measure.
A reluctant tyrant, unaware of his own callousness.
Threefold are these evils that stand at your gates,
wielding ten thousand enslaved as their hammer.
I am but a mirror.
You are the sword.
Cleave and smite.
Until the other six fall.
G-Kaiser pinged him with an approval request for an incoming firmware update. With no hesitation, the Word-bearer accepted. A hurricane of data blew past him as though being sucked in to fill a void he didn’t know was there, and a confirmation message flashed in his mind’s eye.
Firmware update: Successful.
Physical limiter override: Successful.
Mind-machine interface recalibration: Successful.
Power output reroute: Rerouting…
Seconds passed, and with each one that did, the gigantic sword seemed to weigh down the G-Kaiser less, its arms straining less to hold it up, the Word-bearer could feel the machine becoming lighter on its feet than it was even when he first got in.
The message changed.
Reroute successful.
Rebooting...
The light insides the cockpit faded into black. He felt the walker shutting down, freezing in place as its joints locked up. He sat in the dark for seconds, then minutes. Even as Skull-battalion members began to gather around their motionless commander to investigate, the Word-bearer sat there, nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The interface flashed to life as G-Kaiser’s new firmware booted up. Its designation flashed in his mind’s eye as it had before, but it was different now.
Type-7218b Zero-Emission Anti-Army All-Cleaving Prophetic Sword “G-Kaiser Acala”
He wanted to make the walker open the cockpit hatch, so that he might muster the pilots who had found their walkers and head to the surface, but there was one more barrier standing in his way. One more demand the machine had of him.
System ID required.
No System ID found.
Beginning emergency System ID assignment...
Please choose a designation.
He didn’t remember what his name was.
For all these years, he had been The Word-bearer. That was his role, his sole alias under the service of the Ecclesiarch. There was a gap. A gangrenous wound in his memory spanning the years preceding his service, as though a chunk had been ripped out when the Ruler’s Blessing first took hold of him. He knew he hailed from a relatively obscure branch of Clan Karuta, as did a majority of the original Truthseekers who had come here - indeed, it had been a Karuta expedition that founded Canyontown. All these things and more he remembered, but… Not his own godforsaken name.
He couldn’t even hold onto his title as Word-bearer, that onerous title that marked him as the servant of a dead cult leader. Perhaps he might take a page from Armless’s book, draw on his immediate surroundings.
“Confirm designation: Acala.” he croaked out loud, his voice echoing inside the cockpit.
Designation confirmed.
Emergency System ID generated.
Cleave and smite, Acala.
The cockpit finally slid open as the G-Kaiser stood upright, almost effortlessly hefting the sword onto its shoulder. Sending out a wide-band sortie command to every walker in the immediate area, Acala used his waker’s in-built speakers to also amplify his own voice, so that everyone in the gantry bay and Vault of Truth itself would hear, not just the pilots currently inside their walkers.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
“Calling all pilots! If you’ve found a walker, take your machine to the Vault door! All others, continue searching!”
Thusly he called out as he walked, repeating himself a total of three times as he went just to make sure. After sending the Gatekeeper a request to open the door, he waited in front of it, looking out into the vault while he did so. After all, the G-Kaiser had sensors in the back. By the time the door had opened wide enough for a walker to pass through, a total of one-hundred and thirty-seven walkers had gathered, a solid fifth of them having been at least slightly modified in the gantries with either extra plating or simple printed-on weapons - slug-throwers, blades, bludgeons, even plasma projectors.
The door was finally open wide.
In a symphony of colossal footfalls, they began the march to the surface.
The cargo lift could only fit two to five walkers at a time depending on the size of the individual units, but that would have to be enough.
The first to step onto it and begin the ascent were the G-Kaiser, the Dygenguar, and a third walker whose form resembled some sort of hunched-over, long-armed thing completely encased in plating, its head crowned with a glimmering, circular crest, just below which sat a cyclopean sensor cluster, outwardly a polished silver sphere. Its forearms and lower legs were heavily plated, but besides this it lacked any sort of visible armament. Thus it stood besides them on the lift, its arms crossed over its chest.
----------------------------------------
Driven onward by the pressure of impending attack, Armless and his companions departed into the hidden tunnels in the city’s walls. All of them, save for the Accursed Bartender. Upon him was laid the task of warning the townsfolk on this side of the canyon - or rather, to find a Deserter Chaplain and let them do the rest.
Vezkig, meanwhile, was simply left to slumber in the back room. He had done everything he could, now was his time to rest - attack or no attack.
And so, the trio of Armless, Fulgent, and Red-eye was left to sprint through the tunnels, fueled by either the supreme vitality of a warrior-caste, or in the case of the latter two, the nigh-inexhaustible physical stamina of a void-powered metabolism.
Over the topmost walkways, then downward to the town hall once more, they quickly made their way to the town hall’s back rooms, where, as they had expected, they relatively quickly found Nesgon alongside three Deserter Chaplains, currently in the process of rationing performance enhancer injectors and restorative solution canisters. Or rather, watching over the process, as Canyontown’s defenders were trusted to simply take as much as they were supposed to - the old dragon and the chaplains were only there to help clear up any confusion as to which was which and how to apply it.
Of course, this orderly process was interrupted by the skull-faced man and his masked companions, who drew eyes even from those who had met them previously. “I’ve heard of your return, I trust the trap-laying operation went well?” the old man queried, still blissfully unaware of the direness of the situation at hand. Armless nodded a simple “Yes,” before continuing with “Gather every able-bodied fighter and form a defensive perimeter, the Igrons used some sort of sacrificial magic to transport their forces just beyond the horizon. If it weren’t for Amalgam’s sensor array, we wouldn’t have known it before it was late.”
“How deep they won’t sink…” Nesgon rumbled under his breath, anger evident in his voice. Almost immediately, he turned to the nearby chaplain and simply gave a nod, prompting the chaplain to run off at superhuman speed and begin barking commands. The two other chaplains followed suit when prompted, heading off in different directions. The soldiers present, meanwhile - some three dozen warriors in full casement - swiftly took their rations of pharmaceuticals from the cargo containers and marched off, heading to their respective chaplain.
“They’ve been like a well-oiled machine since the preparations started. I scarcely have to do more than give the command, it’s almost disheartening,” the old dragon remarked as he watched his soldiers go, clearly proud of what they’d achieved in such a short amount of time since the Ecclesiarch’s death. Turning to face the trio, he continued with “To a mind smothered by the Ruler’s Blessing, freedom is as invigorating as the water of life. One liberated from its influence can never be brought under another’s, unless they are the direct descendant of the original user. I wager that’s why they want to wipe us out, given that they’re so inbred they can’t ever produce direct descendants. But that’s enough derision of our foe, what is your plan?”
A simple nod and a faint flash of his eye-lights preceded the skull-faced man’s simplified battle plan.
“I will wipe out as much of their front line as possible by utilizing the energy repositories I’ve planted to fire a wide-area multi-pulse attack at a range far exceeding either our or theirs range of effective engagement. After that, I will try to goad the leader into a walker duel and hopefully emerge victorious. If I find myself unable to win…”
Armless turned to Red-eye.
“We cheat. I’ve felt your gun, and I’ve seen what it can do. It can crack a walker’s plating.”