“It was your clan’s fear and weakness that led the Serpent down this path of vengeance.”
Asura’s words were truthful, but also dishonest. Though it shared its honest beliefs, it knew that sharing them up-front would merely give Shell something to rebut, and so it leveraged the same type of deceitful language that nobles so often relied on.
It spoke such poison into Shell’s mind for what felt to him like a few minutes, but what was in reality hours upon hours, over the course of which the two of them gazed upon everything the outpost’s sensor arrays could see, among which were the split peaks of Canyontown.
Through the ancient structure’s eyes they witnessed the site of their defeat, tracing the path by which they arrived to that accursed place, all the way back to the ritual arrival site some eighteen kilometers eastward from Canyontown’s gates.
The arrival point was a circle hundreds of meters across, arcane sigils melted into the desert surface in glass. As the two watched, they saw telltale light rise from one of the sigils as reality shuddered above it. A sound between the breaking of glass and tearing of flesh was accompanied by the screams of seven sacrificial victims. There was a flash of light and a small burst of exotic particles, and in the circle there now sat something vaguely resemblant of a zero-latency communications array.
It looked like a three-sided black-stone obelisk that had been carved out in the middle, so that only its edges pointed toward the sky like some sort of bizarre tuning fork. Around the three-pronged tuning fork there was fitted a series of seven rings stacked atop one another, all made from a mixture of salvaged electronics and printed polymer. They were held up by nothing other than their own diameter being narrower than the obelisk’s widest point.
Arcs of void energy leapt between the structure’s three black-stone prongs and the seven rings came alive, levitating but a few centimeters apart from one another. The apparatus shuddered as a pillar of visible exotic particles rose from its tip, barely twice its height. Asura didn’t know what the apparatus was, but Shell knew. He had designed it, when he was still the Machinist.
“A navigation beacon. Its transmission is invisible without a zero-latency comms array tuned to receive from it and it alone.”
“Another assault force will be arriving to that point.”
“Likely.”
“Larger than yours.”
“Possible. Do we intercept? They will likely have forward scouts.”
“Perhaps, just to test our strength.”
So it was that Shell and Asura stepped away from the console, returning to the Chamber of Statues. They willed one of their subjects to rise, to take up watch at the console and warn them once something arrived at the beacon, and the puppet did as ordered.
In the meantime, they took to unveiling the means to extract the remainder of their to-be army from within the great pyramid’s walls.
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Seventh faded into nonexistence for a brief moment, only to be yanked back into awareness by a buzzing heat inside his head, precisely where he had felt pressure just before he passed out. He saw the Second Twin standing at the machine’s terminal, staring directly at him. In his haze, he tactlessly remarked that she had “Eyes like a sky full of stars.”
The remark was met with a brief moment of visible surprise, a series of blinks, and a remark of “Another injection, cognitive function is still impaired.”
The First Twin nodded, pressing something on a PDA, which was soon followed by another wave of spreading warmth and a sudden burst of awareness. Before he could apologize, the Second Twin remarked “Good, you’re awake. We had a small mechanical failure, which put you out of commission for a little over seven minutes.” with a rather annoyed tone when she mentioned the duration.
“There’s still plenty to be done, so let us continue on with the operation.”
Without so much as a warning, Seventh heard drills and blades spinning up, then felt them sinking into his back in that unnerving, painless way that had already become familiar. Minutes passed and turned to hours, and he figured out what they were doing without asking.
“Why just reinforce it? Why not replace my spine entirely?” he asked.
“Frankly, we don’t have access to enough livingmetal of sufficient quality to manufacture a synthetic spine better than the one you already have,” the Second Twin answered, frustration evident in her tone.
“That being said, we have enough to reinforce it,” the First Twin finished.
And so, the operation continued, and Seventh eventually dissociated from reality, entering into a state of thoughtless meditation. The horrific noise of the machinery carving him alive became just soothing background noise, much like the pointless bickering of his siblings during their meetings.
Then came the whirr of the staple-gun to yank him from serenity, followed swiftly by the thud of a huge staple into his back. One after another , the machine shot staple after staple, and yet, there was no squelching of flesh - rather, there was the clacking of mechanisms engaging with one another as the staples connected to the cybernetic interfaces which had been added to his spine and onto other portions of his back.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
He lost count after sixty-seven, and the machine just kept going for minutes more.
When it was done, he opened his mouth to question what the meaning of it was, but before he could ask anything, the Second Twin pressed a button, and he faded again. When he woke up, he felt both fuller and emptier than before. Where had once been the weak golden glow of his blessing, there now seethed the fire of void energy, spilling forth into his lazarus organ and through it into the rest of his body.
The twins looked him over, saw that he was conscious, and pressed something again. Void lightning arced between the staples in his back as they came alive one after another, indicator diodes lighting up in lilac as they did. Seventh suddenly found himself keenly aware of thousands others within the hangar - he saw through their eyes, heard through their ears, he could think with their brains. Of them all, nearest to him was the greatest of them all, a colossal intelligence more vast than any organic mind, contained within an armored shell and utterly subservient to him alone.
At that moment, he was no longer Seventh.
“Did it work?” the twins asked.
Legion smiled, and gave a nod.
“Outstanding,” the Second Twin proclaimed. “We need to perform some tests to make sure, but first, we must get you cleaned up. It will be a few days before you can embark, as per the other clans’ demands.”
And so, still riding the high of his newfound place as the heart of a swarm intelligence, Legion followed his sisters’ directions, ever so cautiously walking in his half-butchered state towards a different door, one which led deeply into the surrounding stone, towards the city’s main water reservoir.
Trailing blue mixed with black as he walked, the Twins led him through a clinical-looking hallway, a near-perfect replica of human architecture. They stopped at a rather bulky door, at whose side there was a large interface. The First Twin typed in an obscenely-long code, to which the interface beeped in an affirmative tone. The Second Twin stepped in and typed in an equally long code of her own, and only then did the door stir into motion.
It slowly rose as steam poured out from the other side, through another holoshroud that obscured what lay beyond. The First Twin stepped through, while the Second beckoned Legion to follow before doing so herself.
He took a bloodied step through the door, expecting some mad laboratory full of equipment. His nose was filled with the smell of herbs and stimulant mix carried upon humid air, his ears with the sound of running water, and his sight obfuscated by magenta light scattered by the constant fog that filled the room.
Legion took another step as he re-oriented himself, and found that the ground beneath his feet was immaculately carved stone, slick with condensation. The source of the steam was not some mad doctor’s clone vat, and the smell of herbs was not medication.
An outlandish suspicion cropped up in his head, and before he could swat it aside, a single sound confirmed it. The tell-tale sound of someone jumping into a pool of water.
This was a bathing cave.
“Wh-”
The Second Twin emerged from the fog, having shed her usual clothing in favor of a jet-black, skin-tight garment rather reminiscent of the same undersuit he wore under his armor.
“Get in,” she stated flatly, gesturing towards the barely-visible edge of the pool before walking towards it herself. Legion obeyed, still dumbstruck by the circumstances he suddenly found himself in.
As he sank into the warm liquid of the pool, he found that it was not water - at least, not all water. When the slightly viscous fluid enveloped his lacerated form, Legion felt even the few remaining discomforts fading, ribbons of blue spreading out from him, carrying pieces of dead tissue into the depths as if some invisible force within the liquid was pulling the detritus from him as he soaked.
Legion took a deep breath, and sank deeper into the liquid. He had no choice but to wait, so he would.
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He was just a Builder. His life had always been simple, and he had always just done his best to live as best as he could. Through sheer misfortune, he suffered voidburn, as a result having been made a slave and sold to the one named Ecclesiarch. That was where his memories blurred.
The years that came after were a gold-tinted haze of constant labor, interspersed with flashes of unfettered hedonism as bright as they were short, each having occurred whenever the Ecclesiarch left Canyontown for more than a few hours.
One day, during one of the short periods of freedom - one which he was busy drinking away - unrest began to spread. A walker that had been dispatched alongside a raiding party was seen approaching the city gates, with none of the warriors in tow - just a single rover.
He didn’t see who was within either of the vehicles until the Ecclesiarch returned, and by then, his memories became a haze again. When next he woke from the torpor of the Ruler’s Blessing, he was in the audience around the fight pit.
The flames of the void lapped at his face, whilst a skull-faced monstrosity with a giant cannon for an arm screamed at the Ecclesiarch with the thundering fury of an angered god. And yet, the Ecclesiarch fought the creature man to man. A part of him told him to keep quiet, to make sure he wouldn’t be executed by the victor if he happened to cheer for the loser.
He took a breath and waited, waited until the skull-faced man struck the Ecclesiarch, and at that moment, he let out a supportive roar.
He had been just a Builder, all his life. Destined to labor, born into it.
Yet here he was, his pain gone and his body surging with strength through the arcane machinations of human alchemy. He knew there was a war to come, he knew he might very well die fighting for a false idol. And yet, he didn’t care.
He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, all he knew was that he was free.
So it was that he steppd into the town hall, brazenly requesting to be trained with a servo-suit and an accelerator.
“I’ve always had a good aim with the plasma cutter,” he said. “I figure I might do some good as a marksman.”
The armored figure at the other side of the table gave him a look, tapped something into his PDA, and gestured towards one of the side doors. “‘Down the hall and to the right, look for Fulgent,” the chaplain said.