They found the remains of the outpost an hour later; it was hidden well within the vegetation. But whatever magic rituals that were meant to assist in its camouflage was broken in places and that left parts of the exterior exposed.

Seras and Athena approached the hole in the outer wall warily. They had watched it for any sign of life and found none, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be any survivors here.

The prosthetic limb had been the first sign of people they had found. The second was a crater in the ground caused by some sort of explosion, and the third came when they found a corpse.

The man had been savaged and disemboweled.

The issue was he wasn’t flesh and bones, at least not wholly. There were obvious signs of limb replacement, his head for one hadn’t been bone, instead it was a patch work of metal and wire. Seras even saw the remains of clockwork gears through one of his eye sockets.

In the camp they found the ruined remnants of strange machinery. Aspects of both magic and technology blended together to accomplish some eldritch task. But what wasn’t broken into pieces looked to have been melted down intentionally.

“What is this place?” Athena wondered.

“Some sort of secret research outpost?” Seras posited.

“With metal aberrations?” she asked incredulously.

“Hey, I take offense at that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Seras, these, things, are nothing like you. Even if you’re both artificial in making. That would be like comparing a living person to ghoul just because they both had flesh.”

Seras couldn’t really fault that logic. The 'aberration’ as Athena put it, was off putting to Seras and her sensibilities. She had seen some extreme body mods back on Ruin. Men with no faces, just a red glowing eye. Women with extra arms and a neck that could turn a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

But this was just wrong.

They ventured further in until they found the corpse of something other than the metal aberrations. It was the charred remains of something far larger than the first two Star Gliders they had battled, but still clearly the same species.

That was just the first one they found.

Two more were strewn across the camp, one had huge chunks ripped out its side, its truck sized skull cave in by some brutal impact. The third was so shredded up they could only recognize it by the size.

And in between either of them was the ruined and melted remnants of a metal monstrosity to haunt Seras’ nightmares.

It stood of long girder-like legs, its arms were long whip like appendages with serrated teeth sticking out of each joint. And its head was little more than a macabre impression of a skull with wicked drill-like teeth.

There were other Star Gliders around, some as large as the first two they had fought. Most much smaller and were likely the iron rank version of their species.

“So, the aberrations set up a camp in here for some reason. And then maybe pissed off the native Star Gliders, or maybe the Star Gliders are just that aggressive?” Athena guessed.

“Right, but who are the aberrations? Where did they come from? And why were they here?” Seras asked out loud. What she left unsaid was whether or not there might be more.

These things and Seras were not the same, but they were alike. And a part of Seras yearned for that small connection. Being so far removed from what she considered normal made her feel a small part of kinship with these things.

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anyone like this besides you. You’re sure they’re not your people?”

Seras shook her head vehemently, “not a chance. Look at them, their construction’s crude and shouldn’t work, but it did. That means there’s some major magic involved, and my world has no magic.”

She approached the dead aberration and stared into the dim red orbs that served for its eyes.

Then the orb flickered.

Seras backed up in alarm as the aberration began to shift, its metal joints creaking loudly. It looked at her, and she saw the flickering remnants of a soul behind its cold artificial eyes. Then they felt an aura from it burst forwards, it crushed them with unshakable authority, a potency Seras had only felt from Director Arlee.

Silver rank.

Then the aura faltered, whatever stored power it had faltered, and dropped to bronze, then iron, before it winked out completely. The soul behind its eyes went out.

But its flare hadn’t been pointless, because all around the camp began to fill with noise. Metal creaking, the roar of what sounded like an engine, and the rumbling of dirt.

Around them cog work golems began to activate and emerge from their hiding spots. Their eyes each glowed with a malevolent red light, and Seras and Athena were at the center of their ire.

Eight golems were fully active and able to move about. While four other golems had shuddered a tried to get up, but lacked the functionality to do so

But eight was enough since each of them were bronze rank.

Seras didn’t hesitate, she tackled Athena around the waist and used her power to teleport them out as far as her range allowed.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

They appeared back in the foliage outside the camp and tumbled to the ground. Neither wasted any words and just ran. They heard the sheading of metal and the rustle of foliage as the golems chased behind them.

Seras clamped down on her aura as much as she could, not daring to waste power on her smart camo with its uncanny aura masking power. They ran together in straight line; they didn’t know this area well enough to try and hide.

Seras’ ears began to pick up a crashing sound behind her, and from the growing noise she could tell it was gaining on them. Not enough time had passed for her to use teleport again, so all they could do was run harder.

Seras knew that it would come down to a fight, so she prepared by summoning her rifle to her hand. Seras stomped down, twisted around, and as she was still sliding from the force of her run and sudden stop she took aim and fired.

Bang!

Ping!

In the brief moment she had to shoot Seras had only aimed for the center of its frame, that proved to be a foolish decision. Because the center of its chest was fully protected by heavy plating, it had taken and deflected her bullet. And now she was left to stare down the charging golem as it barreled into her.

It was a vaguely humanoid creation, but the legs folded the other way, and one of its arms had a dangerous looking saw attachment. Its head was mostly human, except it had no jaw or mouth. It looked like the entire jawbone section had been removed and the hole patched up with a sloppy weld.

As ramshackle and uncanny as its frame looked it had the speed and power of a bronze ranker, all with the benefit of essentially being in full plate armor. In the brief moment between her shot and her observation of the golem it had closed the distance and was right on top of her. It swung down with the whirling saw blade, and Seras only narrowly avoided it by crouching low and rolling just under it.

For all its speed and power, it was still an unrefined creation. It could run, chop, slice, and bend, but not with the same range or practice as Seras could. Her body was nearly top of the line and cutting edge, all from a world that had spent over a century refining and improving the art of robotics and human augmentation.

Seras leapt from her roll and back peddled as the golem twisted all the way around and lurched towards her. She had just enough time to raise her rifle and shoot again, this time she aimed for the glowing red eye in its head using her [control bullets] and [structural reinforcement] essence abilities.

Bang!

Crack!

This time the bullet wasn’t deflected entirely, instead it hit the eye just a little to the left of the center. The eye didn’t break, but the glass shattered into a dozen different slivers of glass. Its sight hadn’t been taken out, but it clearly had some effect as it didn’t track Seras as she slid past the charging golem.

She slid the bolt back and fired again, this time aiming for its neck. She reasoned that to have the same range of motion as a human it would need to be less armored. It was evidently the right vein of thought, but Seras had made one critical mistake. She forgot there were more than one golem.

“Seras!” Athena screamed in warning. Her voice was so intense that it cracked as she tried to get Seras’ attention.

Even with the warning Seras did not have enough time to avoid the lance strike from the second golem, nor the jet of flames from the third. But it was enough to move just enough to avoid outright death.

The lance went through her leg, and the jet of flames coated her whole right side.

Biolite upper left thigh damaged. Repair time six hours and-,

Biolite Smart skin damaged, 43% of total artificial epidermis inoperable. Repair time ten hours and eleven minutes.

The lance hit right on the titanium alloy that was her bones and was fortunately deflected off to the side. The jet of flame however had completely burnt through her clothes and melted her smart skin, Seras couldn’t even feel the pain as all the nerve receptors on that side of her body were destroyed with the skin.

She must have looked like a vision of horror. Melted skin, turning black and smelling of burnt rubber, metal bones and black artificial muscles exposed in places. Seras knew for a fact that part of her face was gone because she could now poke her tongue out through where her cheek should have been. She could even feel the smooth surface of metal jaw bone with her tongue.

Seras should have been horrified or terrified for herself. One flame attack from a bronze rank combatant had reduced her to this in a mere moment of inattention. But Seras had only one thought. “Athena, don’t heal me!” Seras shouted out, her voice a little weird as she was missing part of her cheek.

This kind of damage was manageable, for her, but not Athena. She would be plunged into instant unending pain with her fleshy tissue exposed to the air. Also, Seras really didn’t want to see a third degree burn victim right now.

The Golems had both rounded on Seras and were staring at her blankly with their red eyes. If she didn’t know any better she would say they looked confused, they stared at her exposed artificial muscles and metal bones and hesitated.

Seras wasted no more time, she ran to Athena and once again reached out and teleported them away. She could have done this before when the two other golems had ambushed them, but Seras chose to take the attacks to give her and Athena a clean escape, rather than being forced to avoid death from three golems for another minute.

Her teleports were limited, while the skill could eventually grow to have the power to move her many kilometers it was currently limited by her rank. She had only a few hundred meters to work with, but interestingly enough the ability was not limited by line of sight. If Seras knew a clear space she could safely jump to then it was all fair game. And while they had been exploring one side of the asteroid, there was a whole other side just below them.

They fell head first into the underside of the asteroid, which was now the ground as the gravity here was weird.

Seras rolled over and got to her feet as soon as possible and surveyed there surroundings. This side of the asteroid was much like the other, glittering stars, glowing alien plant life, but most importantly there were no golems.

Yet.

Seras didn’t know who made these golems, but she could see more than a base robot’s patterns. These things weren’t programed in a way that she would recognize, they were too adaptive for that. And the fact that they actually paused and stared at her exposed machinery meant they had thought, not much given how she had tricked them, but enough.

Seras wondered if they had an intellect like that of monsters. Monsters were born fully grown with their instincts fully realized, some were even reported to have human-like intellects. Those were the rare smart silver and gold rank monsters, far more deadly than other monsters because they could think.

“We need to move.” Seras said to Athena as the girl got off the ground.

“Where?”

“Away. Right now they’re in a search pattern, we need to move further out, that way if we need to fight its only one. I think I can take one even with my weapons as they are.”

Athena nodded, “I saw that.” She looked at Seras and didn’t flinch away as she saw how badly burned she was. “Why did you tell me not to use my power?”

Seras scowled. “Now’s not the time,” she retorted.

“Now is exactly the right time. I need to know if there’s something going on that I need to be concerned about. Did the attack do more than just burn you?”

Seras turned away from the woman and tried to gauge which asteroid was closest to theirs. “Look, it's just a bit of burning, I don’t even feel it since the sensors are busted. It will repair in a few hours, not worth you taking on.”

Seras couldn’t see Athena’s face, but the silence itself spoke volumes. Punctuated by the sudden influx of relief as Seras’ pain vanished. Seras felt a tension in her shoulders ease, only to redouble as she realized what it meant.

She wheeled around on Athena, ready to berate the woman, only to be stopped in her tracks by what she saw. Athena’s own body now resembled Seras’, but where hers was only ruined synthetics Athena’s organic flesh bled readily from the wounds. Her cheek had a hole in it and freely bled, the blood dribbled down her neck and onto the intense, nearly charred remains of her skin.

“The fuck!” Seras snapped.

“What?” Athena retorted. She gestured to herself “I heal faster than you, this kind of damage will be gone in an hour or two.”

“That’s not the fucken point,” Seras snapped.

Athena made to cross her arms, only for her remaining arm to fall past where a second arm would have held it in place. It looked akin to taking a step and not realizing there was a fall. Athena saw Seras’ sympathetic wince and clenched her fist, “then what was the point, huh? Trying to spare me from doing the only thing I can to help?”

Seras scowled, “maybe I was just trying to be considerate for once in my life, you’ve already taken too much.”

“Fuck you,” Athena barked.

“Excuse me?”

Athena seemed to regret her words the moment she said them, but whether out of stubbornness or persistence she chose to double down. “You heard me. You wanted to be ‘considerate’, that’s shit, and you know it. You just don’t want to feel bad about me suffering for your mistakes.”

Seras pushed her hands through her head in frustration, “what do you think considerate means?”

“It means considering my feelings, not just yours.”

“You have said it yourself; you hate your powers, you hate how they make you suffer endlessly, you’ve already lost an arm for me, what else are you going to take?”

“As much as I need to. Or have you forgotten that we’re both stuck down here?”

Seras glanced around, “no, but I don’t see what that has to do with this. I’ll get us out of here, just need to find a place to escape these golems.”

“Yes, and when that goes wrong, or something else comes around, we’ll need to fight again. Except only one of us is any good in fight, while the other gets to stand in the back and watch uselessly. You keep getting hurt, and I don’t think it's for a lack of caution. That’s just what happens when two half-baked iron rankers try to survive in a bronze ranked zone.”

“Look, I get that you care, and I appreciate that, but I can handle this.” Seras pleaded.

“Seras, I watched you get snapped up by a plant monster, I saw some space whale thing chewing on you, and just now you had a hole in your face. My power sucks, it hurts everytime and you don’t get used to the pain. But it’s so much worse to just stand back and watch someone else fight and suffer when you could help.”

Seras turned her back on Athena. By all rights she should be able to tell Athena ‘No’, that it was her pain. But the look on the woman’s face was too much for Seras to reject. “Come on, we need to move. That asteroid is closest.” She said without looking behind her as she began to move.

It wasn’t like Athena would just walk away from her now, like it or not they were in this together.