The chaplains there present and all those not consumed by the roar of their weapons froze in place, a sort of self-contained bubble of silence forming around the skull-faced man. He had begun to speak, seemingly to answer the Old Dragon’s request for counsel, only to sort of… Stop.
He remained steadfastly standing, but his stance quickly changed. A quiet whine issued forth from the joints of his legs as they briefly struggled to hold up all his weight on their own. Their inner safety mechanisms engaged and locked his joints altogether, causing him to lean on the tremendous form of his right arm, the rock-like crust on its exterior rendering it comparable to a stone pillar. The light in his eyes flickered out into nothing, the glow that suffused the rest of his body dimming to a bare minimum. The two exceptions seemed to be his arms. Most notably, the exposed power source on Apeiron’s upper half, and eyes of the dragon-head ornament on his left shoulder, both which continued to shine at their brightest. Before anyone could stir themselves to do or say something, a voice sounded from the human’s static form. It sounded like him in tone, but it was off. Robotic.
“Sufficient operational data on third-party limb modules “Apeiron” and “Aegis Shesha” collected.”
“Metamorphosis Protocol transfer successful.”
“Safe location reached.”
“Beginning full integration and calibration of third-party modules.”
“Estimated time until operation resumes: Nine hours, thirty-six minutes, five seconds.”
“Four. Three. Two...”
The voice faded as it continued to count. The Deserter Chaplain which Nesgon had entrusted with commanding the firing line spoke out first, questioning the machine-voice’s mention of having reached a safe location.
“We’re in the middle of a battle, how is this safe enough to just shut down like that?”
He was right. It wasn’t safe. At least, not for most of the individuals who found themselves upon the high walls, and not for many of those in the line, protected by the supreme armor of their walkers as they were. None of them could know for certain, but the reason was simple, an emergent property of the manner in which his unrestrained mind interacted with human technology.
Stripped of limiters and bestowed with the authority of an Administrator, Armless’s overwhelming cognitive pressure combined with his own perception of safety when surrounded by his comrades. As far as the human was concerned at that very moment, up on that wall, he was safe. That alone was enough to let his body shift from combat mode to self-repair mode.
Nesgon had seen similar things in the past. Warriors who suddenly fell unconscious after battles, only kept on their feet by their exoskeletons. “He needs rest,” the old man stated simply. His subordinates - those of them not preoccupied with firing at the enemy, that is - gave strange looks. They clearly wanted to ask if they should just pick the human up and carry him somewhere, but still held enough reverence for the human that they took time to consider whether asking such a thing was a good idea. Before any of them could stir themselves to speak the question out loud, the Old Dragon stepped forward and unceremoniously wrapped his arm around Armless’s waist, housing his stiff form onto an armored shoulder with an audible grunt. The servomotors of his suit’s joints whined briefly before the powerful synthfiber muscles took over in concert with Nesgon’s own herculean strength. “Rejoice,” he told the Deserter Chaplain with a joking sort of bombast, gesturing with his free hand. “You get to command the firing line a little longer.”
With these words, the old man began to cautiously carry the stone-still sleeping human across the walkways, heading to the town hall. The powerful cabling that held them up strained under such concentrated weight, but held fast.The Deserter Chaplain let out a quiet sigh, then returned to picking out targets and barking orders. He knew just as well as everyone else in the firing line what they had seen only minutes prior, and he hesitated to mention it by name just as all of them did. If it came to light that one of the six stolen dragon-heads was used in open war against the Igrons, they would be able to drum up support from the Karutas under the guise of recovering a stolen artefact. The risk of such an information leak was next to none, but still not zero.
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The Battle for Canyontown continued for hours more, the all-consuming rage of the attackers rendering them predictable and relatively easy to deal with.
Fulgent progressively advanced towards Canyontown over the course of the battle. By the time the dust settled and there were no rovers left to smash, she was seen walking through the field of rubble towards the town gate. A continuous stream of high-temperature air rose from her body as she walked. Her metabolism aggressively shunted excess heat to the metallic feathers on her back, which shone bright orange in the dimming sun.
The walker pilots of Skull Battalion had all returned by this point, many of them dragging along smaller walkers that had been immobilized by unfortunate plasma bolts. In fact, most of the small walkers had suffered some sort of damage in the battle - despite this, not a single pilot was lost. As many flaws as the mass-produced, malformed walkers had, they were all equipped with impressively resilient cockpits.
Many were severely wounded, well past the point of being able to move, and no fewer than a third of those who participated in the battle would need a prosthetic limb or two. But they would all live. In total, a little more than half of Skull Battalion had reached the surface in time to join the battle. Out of those who participated, eighteen would require a limb replacement or restorative surgery, and twenty-one others would need multiple doses of restorative serum in concert with days or weeks of recuperation.
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Those of Skull Battalion who proved to be pivotal in the battle would become the new Skull-Team 1, among them Acala, Skull-1, Skull-14, and two others. One piloted a walker barely twice the height of a grown warrior which was particularly lightly armored, but possessed maneuverability unequaled by any other walker thanks to its diminutive size and powerful thruster systems. It had no on-board ranged weapons, but on its forearms and forelegs it had curved nanolith blades which it had used to wrench open enemy rovers.
Type-387-65 Evasive Hunter-Killer “Soulgain”
The second was a particularly well-rounded unit, whose performance in any field was inferior to many units, but whose all-round versatility filled in these gaps. It had no glaring weaknesses - it was a lesser version of what the Armorer was intended to build, even able to achieve limited and somewhat clumsy bouts of flight. It was equipped with a relatively powerful void energy generator, which served to fuel its onboard complement of weapons - a high-grade beam-type plasma projector embedded in the right arm, and a sword-shaped plasma cutter attached to the left forearm, which folded out and into its grip when in use, attached by a tube to enable for a higher degree of freedom in maneuvering the sword.
Type-78-2 General-Purpose Tactical Supremacy Walker “Charay”
As for the brave defenders who took up arms and joined the firing line high up on the walls… Out of a militia thousands strong, several hundred were caught by stray plasma bolts, and of these unfortunate souls, seventy-eight died, in most cases due to their heads being damaged beyond repair. As tradition dictated, they would be buried with a warrior’s honors. Their bodies would be incinerated, and the ashes spread over rainbloom flowers when the rains next came.
Those wounded in the fighting were, of course, given extra rations of stimmix and doses of restorative solution, by far expediting the healing process. One of the Builder-castes whose arm was destroyed by a plasma bolt remarked that “There’s no wonder the warriors are reckless if this is how quickly they recover.”
Armless’s unconscious, stone-still body was taken to the town hall back rooms, where he was left until the engineer known as Vezkig awoke from his slumber. He was somewhat delayed however, as he spent nearly an hour dosing the Accursed Bartender with restorative serum while chastising him for his suicidal overuse of the Curse’s prophetic power.
Despite the normally closed-off nature of the town hall’s back rooms, they were opened to the general populace for the purpose of rationing restorative solution. As a result, several worship-addicted individuals found their way to the human and began praying at his feet.
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Vezkig hadn’t felt this good in… Ever, actually. Despite the minor annoyance that the young Accursed one caused him when he nearly killed himself by overusing the Curse to “watch from a safe distance”, Vezkig felt great. The youngster said something about black veins, but Vezkig dismissed it as a temporary side effect of his using numerous doses of restorative serum to stay awake. He wasn’t sure whether the news of what Armless had done in the battle improved or dampened his mood.
“Can’t believe he actually manifested a dragon-head strongly enough to stop a living walker’s fist!” he thought as he walked the secret tunnels to make his way to the highest walkways. A hoverslate was following in his stead, quietly whirring along as it carried all the engineering gear he thought he would need, plus several doses of restorative solution in case he had to operate for long.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
“On the other hand, god knows what kind of havoc it caused him if he’s shut down as they claim…” Concern mixed with guilt spread through the clarity of his refreshed mind like blood in a glass of fresh water. His gait sped up and he progressively shifted from a brisk walk to an outright run, the hoverslate able to keep up with him without issue, even if it became quite loud as its graviton manipulation engine strained. It must’ve been a truly serious battle if even the titan of steel that was Amalgam had been damaged enough to enter self-repair mode. What if Armless’s self-repair system were to fail and he fell into a long-term period of inactivity? A thought flashed through his mind as he ran, “If that happens, Canyontown’s fucked… No Armless means no Admin access, no Amalgam, no political trump card...”
Left right left right left right.
If things were truly dire, he would inject the human with doses of performance enhancer to replenish his nanite reserves and forcefully speed up the self-repair process. It could cause serious issues and loss of performance later down the line if the inferior nanite strain were to outnumber Armless’s own and supplant them, but he had to consider it as an option.
He felt steam venting from his back. He didn’t feel tired, not even the creeping heat that was usually there. How far had he run? As he ran across the highest walkway, he didn’t look down - but had he done so, he would’ve seen dozens of walkers lined up along the main street and in the town square, and the townsfolk milling about marveling at the divine machines now that they had the time to do so. Having crossed the highest walkway, now jumping down sections of the stairway to the sound of loud metallic thumping and clanging. The metal grating bit into his feet and split them open, but he didn’t care. It didn’t hurt. He left black stains wherever he stepped from that point.
Leftrightleftrightleftright.
Into the town hall, through the doors, down the stairs. None stopped him as he had Armless’s IFF mark in his PDA. He followed navigation info that had been sent from Nesgon’s PDA, entering into one of the back rooms that were normally closed off to the general populace. The door hissed as it slid open and he burst through, trailing black ichor across the precipice. Some dozen and a half persons were present. Fulgent, Nesgon, Rika, and the Word-bearer among them, alongside a number of Deserter Chaplains and what sounded like at least four worship-addicted, all gathered around what he assumed to be Armless.
Some heads turned to look at him. Some of them went pale, or shifted to a mixture of bewilderment and slight terror. “You’re fuckin’ monstrous,” Fulgent remarked in a lighthearted mocking tone. One of the worship-addicted shot her a scornful gaze, but none others objected to her attitude, as they recognized both her capability in battle and her closeness to the Serpent of the South.
Nesgon stepped aside, revealing the state Armless was in. He looked more like a statue than a person, his body mostly crusted over with a segmented, iridescent black shell of solidified nanites. The only thing that was spared was… His left arm, the eyes of its dragon-head pauldron shining as brightly as ever.