As he had expected, almost none of the data he managed to extract from the left arm made sense. Vezkig’s precious cyberdeck kept spitting out gibberish he either couldn’t read, or didn’t make any sense out of what he suspected to be a far greater context. What little he could make out only confirmed his hopes as to the arm itself, but didn’t help any to ease his concerns for his friend’s state.
Vezkig had spent decades attempting to replicate one of the legendary arms, but while he understood the underlying principles that went into building one, he simply lacked the materials, equipment, and he had to admit raw skill to construct such a masterwork. And so, he simply settled for creating a lesser equivalent, with the blueprint for what he envisioned its ideal form as stored within, marked as the limb’s original form, with the far-off hope that it would somehow trick a self-repair system into doing the heavy lifting. Its attachment to his body allowed the human’s self-repair system to be put to task “repairing” the arm into its intended form, restructuring it from the inside out through continued use until it had finally reached a form worthy of the title Dragon-head.
Despite his experiment’s success, Vezkig feared the near-constant strain may have contributed to the state Armless was in now. As he typed away at the cyberdeck’s mechanical keyboard, the engineer caught the occasional glimpses of his own reflection. Fulgent was right, he was monstrous. Pitch-black veins bulged from his skin in, tracing what had been his markings long ago. The effect was less noticeable in other areas, but it seemed to be ever-present all across his body. It didn’t matter, though. Physically, he felt great.
The click-clack of the keys consumed his world for what seemed to be hours as he tried to extract any useful data whatsoever, if the coming and going of people was anything to go by. He made little to no progress in understanding the underlying causes for the human’s state, but what he did find were two timers.
EMERGENCY SELF-REPAIR: 6:42:16
METAMORPHOSIS PROTOCOL: 16:68:19
The first timer ticked down, second by second, minute by minute. It occasionally jumped up or down by a couple seconds, but it was generally stable. The second timer, on the upper hand, jumped up and down hours at a time, frequently and seemingly at random. It even hit zero a couple times, counting into the negatives only to jump back up.
With a sigh, Vezkig placed his cyberdeck on the ground and stood up. The wounds on his feet had crusted shut quickly, and now just standing up no longer made black blood seep out under his own weight. As he looked around and reoriented himself in his surroundings, the diminutive engineer saw that the room was far emptier than before.
There were still four worship-addicted Thinkers, busying themselves by drawing elaborate markings on the chitin-like casing around Armless’s body using bright lilac paints and blue paint. Off to the side, arrayed around a table, there were a number of people, only some of whom he could recognize at a glance from where he was.
Nesgon’s distinct helmet. Fulgent’s metal-feathered head. Karzon’s third eye, surrounded by spiraling scars. A couple other heads, each scarred in such a way that they were clearly of the Distorted. Listening to the Old Dragon speaking, he got up and began walking towards them, the hard crust at the bottom of his feet tapping against the floor. The smell of sandswimmer meat, rainbloom flowers, and fruity stimmix hit his nostrils as he passed the worship-addicted. “So that’s how they made the paints,” he thought.
“While we do need to recuperate our losses and send extraction parties down to get more nanofilament, the surviving Igron force must be found and dealt with before they can entrench,” the old man said, giving Vezkig a nod of acknowledgment as he hopped up onto a chair. Karzon did much the same, whilst everyone else was almost entirely focused on what looked to be a holoprojection of a map, detailing Canyontown’s surroundings and the supply depots that surrounded it. There was only one to the north, and a path from the gates toward it had been marked out on the map.
Nesgon continued on, explaining his view with “The contents of a supply depot can easily sustain a camp of five thousand long enough for a supply caravan from the Oasis can reach them the slow way. If they establish a supply chain we will be fighting not just their military strength, but also the economic strength of a city at least three hundred thousand strong.”
Nesgon turned to face him as he approached. “Have you learned anything?” the old man asked, clearly hopeful but also aware of how unlikely a positive answer was. With a sigh, Vezkig explained “It’s almost all nonsense data, far as I can tell. He’s gonna wake up in ‘bout seven hours, more er less.”
He followed it up with a question of his own, asking “What’re y’all plannin’? As he swept his gaze across the faces of those present, reaching the end of the table and returning to Nesgon.
The old man reiterated what he had just explained, informing Vezkig as to the fact that the Igron force had been split in transport, with the majority of their infantry now likely busy regrouping and building up a campsite around a supply depot to the north.
“They’ve likely brought portable sensor arrays, so anything bigger than an assault rover will get picked up from far enough that they will be able to fire off a zero-latency transmission to call for reinforcements,” Nesgon said.
Vezkig understood. “So yer gathering the strongest individual fighters.”
A nod. “Yes. Red-eye is still unconscious, so he’s out of the question. Those present are currently my chosen team,” Nesgon explained, reaching over to the map to manipulate it. “Load miniatures,” he said, and beneath his finger there appeared a rover, flanked on either side by two small walkers, each barely as tall as it.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“The plan is to determine the locations of any long-range communications equipment, and if possible, destroy it before returning. Two teams of the smallest, fastest walkers we currently have available will accompany you and if necessary cover your retreat. I’d hoped to have Armless as an asset, but…”
The Old Dragon turned his head to make clear that he was looking at the human-shaped statue, being painted as elaborately as any monument to heroes from long ago. “...I do not think it would be wise to gamble on his awakening, let alone place all our strongest warriors on a single rover. Furthermore...”
Before the old man could continue, through the room’s main door there burst a Deserter Chaplain flanked by three Builders in servo-suits. “T-the dead walker’s gone. Just a-a huge black stain in the sand.” the chaplain stuttered, her voice nearly a feral hiss.
From the Old Dragon’s throat, there sounded a prolonged, rumbling sigh. “Thank you,” he said, “take a ration of stimmix and return to your usual duties. Now, where were we...”
“Y-yes, sir.”
----------------------------------------
It only took a little longer to determine who would go on the mission, to prepare one of the repaired assault rovers that the Distorted had used, and for them to depart. Thankfully, there was enough clear space in front of the gates that they didn’t have to clear a path through the field of wrecked rovers, which many townsfolk were already busy picking through for salvage.
In the end, the task fell to Fulgent, Rika, Karzon, three of the Distorted - among which was the Armored One - and three ex-Truthseekers, all three wearing Full Casement. Only one of them had any significant ornamentation, and he was also the most visibly comfortable wearing the massive suit, whilst the two others had a sort of stiffness to their movements.
Rika took the place of driver, aggressively accelerating to maximum speed the moment they were in a flat area of land, skillfully avoiding areas with soft sand where a lesser driver wouldn’t have noticed quickly enough and possibly got the vehicle stuck.
Out of those present, the armored ex-Truthseekers seemed most on-edge. Partly because they were heading into what they thought may very well be a suicide mission, and partly because they were surrounded by what was, as far as they were concerned, a band of arcanely uplifted beings.
It didn’t help that one of them recognized Fulgent’s face. He was among the warriors that the Ecclesiarch had managed to recruit on his visit to the Oasis City - that is to say, citizens he had enacted the active form of his Blessing on in order to secure his loyalty and ensure the other Igrons couldn’t control him. He was also one of the few who had the fortune of being present within Canyontown’s walls when the tyrant was slain.
He recognized Fulgent as the third daughter of Clan Iktha, which was precisely why he was uneasy. He was well aware that the Machinist was in poor standing with his siblings, that they would only allow him warriors drafted from clans of equally unfavorable standing, among which the Ikthas were counted. Being a relatively small clan, there were only perhaps two or three people qualified to lead a force of their Warriors, and all of them had been directly involved in the absolute circus that had been the so-called “trial” leading up to Fulgent’s exile.
Considering the temperament she had shown up until this point, he wasn’t sure whether she would tactically eliminate the painted targets, or go berserk and bring the whole supply depot crashing down with that patently ridiculous death engine on her back.
As for Karzon and the other Distorted, he didn’t know what to make of them. Besides their leader and the Armored One, few of them ever spoke amongst themselves, constantly sharing strange looks as if that was all it took for them to communicate complex ideas. The exceptional frequency with which their actions lined up perfectly despite no prior planning didn’t help ease his suspicions as to whether the Distorted had some sort of supernatural means of nonverbal communication, or perhaps just some sort of proprietary comms implants.
At this point, human technology and void magic seemed like two branches on the same tree. No, not even that - more like two leaves on the same branch, or two spikes on a sand-bug’s shell.
And Rika… She was the most Warrior-like Warrior he had ever seen. Frankly, she was such a textbook specimen that were she to put on a heavily-ornamented suit of Full Casement, he could’ve been fooled into thinking her a young Warrior Elder. Were the circumstances different and were she not likely to just disappear at some point along with the human, he might have pursued her as a mate.
His train of thought led him to think of the human, of that embodiment of will that seemed to influence the world around him toward change just by existing. Even unconscious like this, little more than a statue, he felt an overwhelming aura radiating from the figure. If one were to tell him the human could come awake at any moment, leap out of the rover, and begin running alongside it, he might’ve very well believed them.
He was ready to believe just about anything about humans.
----------------------------------------
“The issue is, they’re willing to believe just about anything about humans! Any rumor, any ridiculous claim, if it’s embellished enough, the masses will probably believe it and blow it up even more!” the Big Sister roared, slamming her armored fists into the stone-hewn conference table. Without the Machinist to temper her… Well, temper, there was nobody able to effectively shut her down when she began ranting.
The Thin One chimed in with his own opinion, the words “Let us be thankful for how few of our subjects are resistant to our blessings.” dripping from his mouth.
He had disliked the Thin One before, but he outright resented that man-shaped creature since he had suggested and personally oversaw that ghastly transportation ritual. As it turned out, the noble had thousands of slaves he was willing to sacrifice at a moment’s notice. When his honor was questioned, he simply spat back that “One need not burden oneself with honorable combat against those who have no honor.”
Orsha could see a twinge of disgust in the Big Sister’s eye as her little brother spoke out, as she had also been present at the ritual, and as it seemed, she was also previously not familiar with this specific manifestation of old magic. “I understand the necessity for sacrifice, but I doubt the beatings before the ritual were necessary,” he thought as he continued to listen to the conversation, which had once more turned to the Big Sister rambling broken up by others offering up their ideas and requests, ones that would’ve gotten quickly shut down were the Machinist present.
“What of you, Sixth?” he heard the Big Sister’s rumbling voice. “What do you think would be best for my younger brother’s district of the city, should he not return? I would suggest we split it amongst ourselves for the time being.”
It didn’t sound like a question, even if she worded it like one.
He had just been told of an political assassination by proxy, and offered to profit from it.