He felt an overwhelming pressure build in his chest, his power output skyrocketing seemingly without any conscious effort on his part, despite the fact there was no energy coming in from Apeiron. No, it was coming from the strange module that had emerged from his stomach, that piece of nanolith vaguely shaped like a sideways dragon’s head.
The emotions he felt were no more intense than usual, and yet this was all it took to draw out all that energy. All that energy which he knew would destroy him from the inside out, and then… It was gone. The pressure, the heat, the strain. It was all gone. The belt’s “mouth” snapped open, from within it emerging a number of datacables, each as thick as a finger, each slithering across his body and plugging into its surface with seemingly no resistance. The world slowed to a crawl as he saw the slugs speeding towards him slow to a near-stop.
There was a pulse of void energy. In a fraction of a fraction of a second, he felt the crust that had formed over his head, chest, upper right arm and legs melting, turning to pitch-black nanite slurry. The rock-like bludgeon that was his right arm from the elbow down remained as it was, for some reason. The liquid nanites shifted and slithered about, spreading out to evenly cover his entire body save for the left arm.
A second pulse came, somehow entirely contained to his right side. He felt the nanites solidifying to a sort of flexible outer skin, in the process turning porcelain-white. As the pulse reached his chest he felt solid structures forming under the second skin, and from within it erupted three jagged spikes resembling ribs. The same thing happened when it reached his leg, and from just below his knee there emerged an upward-pointing, curved blade.
Finally reaching his head, the solidification pulse turned the layer of nanites on the right side of his face into something rather closely resembling the very mask he normally wore, only expanded into one half of a full helmet, its mouth already filled with jagged porcelain teeth. More strangely, he felt the geyser of void energy erupting from his right eye-socket crystallize, becoming a solid horn that bent backwards and traced the curvature of his head.
A third pulse began to solidify the liquid nanites on his left side into far thinner, matte-black second skin covered with thick plates of solid nanolith. As the pulse traveled and more and more plates took shape, elaborate images of dragon-heads began to take shape on the larger plates. The left side of his head became as though a masterfully carved helmet in the shape of a sneering dragon’s head, with wicked fangs, backwards-pointing horns, a shining lilac gemstone in the almond-shaped eye socket.
“It’s finished?” he wondered briefly before a few lines of non-verbal comms flashed in his head.
Self-repair Casement recycling successful.
Dragonrider Casement formation successful.
Then, it all came flooding in. The power output, the sensor feeds, the earth-shattering strength. As the casement bonded to his body, Armless instantaneously learned everything he needed to know. It wasn’t there to protect him from others, but from himself - it was a second power grid and muscular system, meant to shoulder vast energy strains for short periods. Among all that data, all that information, there was a voice file. It had the same markings as messages he had received from Apeiron. When he mentally sifted through it, it even sounded the same. “Full integration successful,” it said. He would’ve smiled, had he lips to do so with.
Armless let go of his inward focus, allowing the stream of thoughts and impulses to sweep him away. The bullets began to move again, the grains of sand continued to fall, and all around him the earth shattered beneath a concussive wave of volatile energy that erupted from him.
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The High Chaplains who had gathered to break through the heretic’s line had no fear of the ancient relic that stood before them. Security homunculi disguised as statues were far from uncommon in human ruins, they were well-known for their capabilities - far above any ordinary warrior, but still nothing remotely capable of standing against even a single High Chaplain. Even if its stone skin resisted slugs and plasma bolts, it wouldn’t survive the onslaught of nearly six-hundred warriors for long.
“Go forth and devour, Ouroboros!” the undoubtedly insane automaton howled. The honored chaplains were just about to channel their blessings in unison, to blow away this relic with overwhelming force, but they didn’t get the chance.
There was a blinding flash of light, immediately followed by a wave of concussive force strong enough to force them a step back. “Did the automaton just detonate?!” one of the chaplains exclaimed. Before anyone of equal rank could answer, a bronze-plated foot stepped out of the cloud, accompanied by a horrible dragging noise. Were the cloud of dust and sand not present, they would’ve seen a creature split down the middle - the left half a knight in glorious armor that could easily be mistaken for one of the archdrakes, the right a contorted monstrosity with skin of bone and a man-sized bludgeon for an arm.
A thunderous voice there sounded in their heads, an entire sentence somehow compressed into a hundredth of a second. It was not a challenge or a threat, it didn’t even sound like the stone-skinned beast. It was like a synthesized, female voice, proclaiming the glory of its god.
“Honored mind-slaves of Clan Igron! Rejoice and fall before the dragon-headed serpent who devours tyranny!”
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With a thought, the Serpent of the South exploded forward. Riding atop bolts of eldritch lightning and quickly approaching the speed of sound, he swung his right arm upward into the waiting line of High Chaplains. The frontmost chaplain’s chestplate buckled under the colossal force, fragments of gold and superalloy bursting off his body as his entire being was launched upward.
Armless followed, propelling himself upward with a short, explosive burst of thrust that scorched those below with toxic void energy. There was no strike, no blast of energy to follow. He soared towards the chaplain, and with the wicked blade on his right leg cut him open like a shellfish. Guts spilling out of his cleft-open, buckled armor, the High Chaplain went plummeting toward the ground.
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The eleven remaining chaplains below - arrayed in a broken circle - reacted with a trained resolve, channeling their blessings in perfect unison to create an outward gravity well aimed at the club-armed monstrosity.
A flash of purple. A geyser of exotic particles. “Smash!” the chaplains commanded at once, and so it was. Their artificial gravity well pulled in several kilograms of sand from below, accelerating it to a fraction of the speed of light. There was a deafening screech, a blinding flash of light as sand was turned to glass and glass to who knows what by the incomprehensible heat and acceleration. To outside observers, it looked as though a beam of pure light, as wide as a man was tall. “A siege technique is sure to destroy a single man…” one of the high chaplains thought, not entirely certain in his own thoughts as he felt a drop of blood leaving his nostril.
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In the brief moment between the chaplains channeling their blessings and the particle beam erupting, the dragon-head pauldron on their target’s left arm snapped open. In that fraction of a second the sneering visage of a great dragon took shape around Armless, embodied by the cursed fire of the void.
Igniting the thrusters on his legs and back once more, the Dragon-headed Serpent came rocketing down head-first, making no effort to dodge the impending particle beam - as fast as he was, even he couldn’t do such a thing purely on reaction.
So it was that the spectral dragon-head devoured even the particle beam, geysers of molten glass spraying out of its gaping maw and covering all in sight as it converted a small fraction of the particle beam’s kinetic energy into void energy, which was then fed directly into the very thrusters that pushed Armless against it.
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A deafening noise.
A blinding flash of light.
A pillar of hypersonic molten glass erupted into the heavens, a man-made bolt of lightning wrought to strike against a false god.
Then, from on high, the pillar’s ascent towards the heavens was halted, the particle beam splintered in the sneering maw of a dragon’s head made of void-fire.
Impelled by seething bolts of that un-worldly force, the skull-headed pretender cut through the particle beam, sending five geysers of molten glass splashing all across the camp as he rocketed to the earth and rammed directly into the chaplain at the very back of the circle.
The spectral dragon-head that enveloped him still intact, Ouroboros willed his dragon-head pauldron to close. The spectral dragon’s head mirrored the movement, and the body of a second High Chaplain crumpled under the spectral maw before the dragon’s head dissipated. Unshaken in their resolve, three of the remaining High Chaplains set upon him with their cleavers, fully aware of the man-shaped beast’s supreme resistance to gunfire. Nobles as they were, theirs were forged either of low-quality livingmetal, or reshaped pieces of black-stone.
The remaining seven did their best to step back and begin channeling their blessings once more in unison, to try and crush the beast into the ground with overwhelming gravity before it could escape.
Of the three cleavers coming at him, he entirely dodged one by bending over backwards in a way that would snap anyone else’s spine, then proceeded to block another by slamming the wielder’s hand with an upward swing of the mace that was his right arm. The speed with which that colossal thing snapped upward was entirely unjustified, its mass alone comparable to the body weight of a Builder-caste. Upon impact, the gauntlet of the chaplain who was struck crumpled like an old can in a trash compactor, blue blood bursting from the seams as the sheer force of the strike sent him falling backwards, his right arm up to the shoulder flopping about impotently within the pulverized exoskeleton.
The third chaplain brave enough to place himself into a melee had a very clear shot, his cleaver coming down cleanly at what looked to be a gap between the plates covering the left side of the neck. Before his swing could even reach its halfway point - blindingly fast by any other standards as it was - the bronze-armored claws of Ouroboros’ left hand sunk into his chest-plate, crumpling the superalloy as if it was a piece of sheet metal.
The dragon-head pauldron snapped open. Nearly instantaneously, a spectral dragon’s head came into being. It was far smaller this time, centered on his left arm, its jaws stretched just wide enough to completely envelop the chaplain’s torso. Before he could do whatever he was going to do, the seven chaplains who had stepped aside finished channeling their blessings, exclaiming “Pulverize!” in perfect unison.
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Armless felt gravity intensifying. Fivefold, tenfold, twentyfold, a hundredfold. As if tons of weight were being placed upon him in seconds, distributed perfectly evenly. He felt the sand beneath his feet being compressed until it turned to glass, his feet making imprints in it as it happened. He felt the anchoring reaction coming, the void energy within his body violently amplifying and wanting to lash out.
He let it go.
The dragon-head pauldron snapped shut, as did the spectral dragon’s head he had manifested, crushing the chaplain in its maw like an old stimmix canister. It didn’t de-manifest, however - it was a construct of condensed void energy, after all. Without his will to keep it in check, the anchoring reaction ran its course. Lilac lightning leapt between the fingers of his left hand as the dragon’s head slowly opened again, and from its mouth, there came seven tongues of lightning. Each struck one of the seven chaplains in turn, burning away at each of their blessings.
One stood tall, seemingly unaffected even as sparks still skittered across his armor.
Another was sent flying backwards, as if hit by a battering ram.
Three staggered back a step or two, but seemed to recover relatively well.
Two of them - the least decorated - slumped in place, only kept standing by the joint-lock function of their suits.
In the midst of the fray, the very moment the amplified gravity field dropped, the High Chaplain whose blade he had merely dodged previously came at him from behind, assuming he couldn’t see an attacker approaching from behind.
A backward kick. Buckled armor. Crushed bones. Ruptured organs. A High Chaplain laying on the ground, struggling to his feet.
There was a question, asked not with hatred or anger, not with fear or reverence - just simple, genuine bewilderment. It came from the very chaplain who remained standing even when struck with void energy, his armor covered in imagery of battles from ages past. He questioned not the nature of the creature that stood before him - he was no fool. He knew the works of man when he saw them.
“Why? They are heretics.”
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Having struck down more High Chaplains than many would meet in their lives only moments prior, the armored monstrosity returned itself to an upright stance. With a strange sort of serenity, the one called Ouroboros turned and answered, its voice resounding like the rumble of a great engine made to synthesize speech.
“The Ruler’s Blessing is no more than a curse. If this land’s people are to be free, it must be burned out at the roots.”
The High Chaplain let out a long, deeply regretful sigh. Were the circumstances different, he would’ve been willing to change his views.
But as the residual void energy faded, he felt the Ruler’s Blessing reasserting its grip on him.
Driving him to smite the filthy homunculus before him.