From within the flames of the ruined hive, something like a mechanical exoskeleton steps towards us. As it walks out of the inferno the light of the flame shone from behind it, casting a shadow over its imposing figure. The red light that glows behind its singular mechanical eye sends a shudder down my spine.
What the hell? I thought this was a fantasy setting. So where the hell did this robot come from?
The machinus' right arm shuddered, and an awful grinding noise could be heard as it attempted to initiate some long broken function. When that didn't work, it took the direct approach.
Giving me almost no time to react, it lunged toward me. The thing was impossibly fast, moving as a blur to my eyes. I barely had enough time to bring my reinforced arms up in a boxer's guard before its iron fist hit me like a freight train.
The sheer weight of that blow took me off my feet, sending me flying backward. Hitting the ground, I tumble until I feel my back slam into a stone wall, knocking the breath out of me.
"Stein!" I hear someone yell, and barely open my eyes in time to move my head out of the way of its mechanical heel as it smashes the stone behind my head to rubble.
A projectile shatters against the back of its head as it gazes down at me, and its head swivels on an axis, toward Talon. "Come on, let's see what you can really do." The usually calm scholar says with that same manic glee I saw before in his eyes.
"Have you lost it, man!?" Redina yells as she throws herself in front of Talon, weapon at the ready. "We're supposed to be protecting you."
The machinus leaps into action, assaulting Redina with a flurry of attacks she's barely able to fend off. Talon ducks around her, swerving past her right side, and launches a rapid series of spells at the enemy before them. "Don't think just because I hired you you're better than me, girl."
"What'd you say, jerk? Ah-" The machinus, unfazed by Talon's assault, grabs the blade of her sword as her concentration wavers. The metal folds beneath its grip, and yanking it from Redina's hand, it uses the handle of the now worthless blade to whack her alongside the head. As she crumples, it turns its gaze back to Talon.
"Domain expansion. Page 32, scion of the depths." I feel the bounds of the domain wash over me, and I see Talon's book flips itself open as he holds it in one hand. With the other, he makes a handsign. "Gather, my subjects." As he dodges a renewed assault from the machinus I notice little streams of water flowing in the cracks of the cobblestones.
The trickles of water grow in size, and the water starts to freely flow over the street until we're all standing in a massive puddle of flowing water. Getting my feet back under me, I ready my weapon and stumble to where Holeria and Morvin are standing in a daze. "You two going to stand there all day? It's not a good time to space out."
"What are we supposed to do against that thing?" Holeria asks, "I can barely even keep track of its movements."
"Me and Talon will work at keeping it occupied. Try and strike at its joints when it gives an opening. Magic doesn't seem to be doing much, so put all your remaining mana into reinforcement. Holeria, get Redina out of there." Seeing them both nod I spring back into action.
For his part, Talon seems to be doing a pretty decent job of keeping it occupied on his own, freely using water manipulation to attack it. But nobody's mana is infinite, and I get the feeling the relentless assault is likely draining his reserves rapidly.
Talon blows it back with a wave, and it screeches to a halt as it grinds against the stones. As it prepares to leap back towards its prey I take a swipe at the back of its knee. To my dismay, I don't even scratch it.
Dodging a wide swing, I dash over to where Talon stands, gathering floating water in his palm. "Can you damage it if I distract it?" I ask.
"If you can distract it. If you're only capable of those weak attacks I fear it'll decide you aren't worth the time."
Where did this condescending attitude come from? What happened to the amiable scholar?
I don't bother voicing my complaints, instead going on the offensive. Despite how fast it is, it seems to be limited to punches and kicks, which I can deal with. Crane's Dance. Loosening my grip on my blade I settle into a relaxed posture. This was a stance Arim had taught me specifically for dealing with unarmed opponents. Traditionally this stance was meant to be used with a short blade, but I wasn't about to complain about the extra reach of my sword against an opponent strong enough to effortlessly bend steel.
Putting myself within reach of the machinus I take a defensive stance. Predictably, it rushes at me with a simple right jab. Dodging to the left by a hair's breadth I swing my sword up in a slash that connects under its arm. Jumping back, a jet of highly compressed water sprays past me, grinding against the metal faceplate. The machinus raises a hand, defending for the first time against an attack.
From behind it, a figure looms and an axe is brought down against its shoulder. The machine shudders as the stream of water dies off. Looking back toward Talon, I see him gathering more water into his now empty palm. I guess he can only compress so much water at a time.
Morvin backs off after landing his attack, and the machinus' head whirls, looking at each of us in turn. Again it does something with its right arm, but the only thing it does is produce the sound of a stalled motor. It lets out a screech, falling to one knee. Then it starts violently slamming the ground all around it, splashing water and sending stone fragments flying.
It stands back up, then grabs the plate that serves as the outer covering of its arm, the metal rusted and caked with centuries of sediment, and rips it off. With the outer shell of its arm removed I once again hear the whir of a small motor, and a blade extends outwards.
The head swivels to Morvin, who yells, "Stein, take its focus!" I dash toward the machinus, readying my sword for a swipe at its neck when it makes a lunge for Morvin. Despite our plan going awry, Morvin is ready for the attack.
The machinus does a single diagonal slash, and blood sprays through the air. Morvin had been ready for the attack, it just didn't matter when that ancient blade cut through both axe and bone like paper. A hand holding half of the axe handle reaches up to his chest, where he looks at the massive gash across his shoulder and torso. With a pained look, he falls to his knees.
Holeria screams from off to the side. The machinus pivots and makes to swing its blade at me, even though its arm blade can't hope to cover the close to two meter gap between us.
Dodge.
Through instinct alone, I duck out of the path of the blade as it detaches from the arm and swings in an arc through the space I had just occupied. With a whir the blade gets drawn back in with the wire it's attached to and reattaches to the machinus' arm. Looking down at the stone it had cut through I see a perfect line through the cobblestones.
"No time for spacing out," I hear from my other side. Talon is next to me, a newly formed ball of water in his hand. "Go see to your comrade. I'll occupy it for a moment."
I nod, but before I can move he also says, "Oh! And we can't break it, at least not completely. By some miracle, its personality module still works. And I want it. Badly."
"We don't really-" I'm cut off by another ranged attack from the machinus as Talon steps forward and unleashes another jet of water aimed at its exposed arm.
Like I care about capturing the damn thing when its already taken half of us out!
Rushing to Morvin's side I turn him over from where he had been lying face down. By some miracle that disastrous blade had been stopped by the heartstone embedded in Morvin's chest. Bringing out a bundle of bandages from my pouch I call out, "Holeria! Get over here!"
The girl who had lost her feet from under her at some point slowly gets up and shakily walks over to me. "Hold this here, into the wound. I need you to put pressure here." Holeria's gaze drifts past me to where I know the machinus fights with Talon. I take one hand off where I'm applying pressure and slap the girl across the face. The pain brings some focus back into her eyes. "Pressure, here. Now." Wordlessly she does as instructed.
Turning back to the fight, I stand and pick my weapon up from where I had dropped it when I feel a hand on my shoulder. Glancing to my left I see Arim, covered in soot, standing next to me. "What's the situation?" He asks, gazing at the mechanical monstrosity Talon is facing alone.
My mind whirls as I compress information, "It's tough, I couldn't even scratch it. That blade can cut through almost anything and it can use it at range. It may be weak at the arm where it's missing armor." Hearing splashing behind me I turn and see Vurt kneeling next to Holeria, helping give Morvin first aid.
"Good. We'll take it from here, support us from a distance," he says, stepping forward.
Bodelee is next to him and I hear him say, "Domain expansion. Might of the forge." A domain that makes the air feel warm and stuffy engulfs me. Hefting a giant all metal hammer over his shoulder he says, "Let's avoid your domain if possible, Arim. We have enough injured as it is." Arim nods before they both leap into combat.
The machinus sees the two of them make a combined rush at it and swings its extended blade at them in a wide arc. Bodelee slides under the blade, while Arim does a twisting flip over it, taking a swipe at the connecting wire with his curved blade as it passes under him.
His blade can't cut the wire, but it does whip the blade way off course, in which time Bodelee rushes forward and slams his hammer into the side of the machinus. The machine brings its left arm up in a guard, and as the hammer connects there's a flash of amber light and a shower of sparks.
The machinus is sent sliding backward, its arm glowing a vivid orange, metal slightly deformed. "Damn that thing is tough," Bodelee says, scowling.
The machinus leaps into action, rushing Bodelee. Bodelee stops moving, and stares at it head on as Arim jumps in to intercept. The machinus tries to brush Arim aside, but Arim's refined movements avoid its lethal swipes while battering the exposed inner workings of its arm.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Bodelee makes to strike from behind Arim, but the machinus predicts his move. As Bodelee's hammer comes around the machinus reaches out its mechanical claws and grabs the moving head of the hammer and twists, horribly deforming the metal.
This thing's reaction time is out of this world. But what is it that's bugging me more about it?
Arim and Bodelee begin to lose the upper hand as the machinus starts adapting to their movements, and that's when it hits me.
The thing is adapting to us as it fights.
Bodelee only hit the thing once, but that one hit was enough for it to register his weapon as being dangerous, so it destroyed it before he could land another hit. Same with the tag team maneuver they had just tried, it resembled earlier when Talon had attacked it from behind Redina. So we needed to hit it with something new, something decisive, but what?
To begin with, what can I even do to hurt that thing? My weapon doesn't scratch it, and I don't have any magic prepared to deal with that kind of armor. I need to slow it down.
I look over to where Talon is watching the battle develop. The manic glee has left his eye, and he's watching with a cold, calculating gaze that I haven't seen from him before. I think to myself this guy must have way more screws loose than I initially anticipated.
Running over to him, I ask, "What else can you do with your water?"
He eyes me, "I have the might of the sea at my disposal, but it's proving less effective than anticipated. This one has been remarkably preserved. I don't like the idea, but-"
"Can you freeze your water at will?"
"Hmm. Now that is an interesting idea. I'm not sure how effective it will be, but it's worth a shot." He extends his hand, toward the fighting. The water at their feet begins to flow faster and faster. Arim and Bodelee, realizing something is amiss, jump back, away from the machinus.
The machinus, too preoccupied with attempting to butcher them, either doesn't notice or doesn't consider the water enough of a threat to care. The longer this fight draws on the more I realize Talon is right, the machine does have a kind of personality. It's difficult to explain, but it's there. Like a rabid animal, it feels like it has this frenzy within its cold dead eye.
Talon makes a hand motion and the water at its feet rushes forth and up, covering the machinus in a massive orb of water. Talon's eyes and muscles strain, and as he snaps his finger the mass of water instantly freezes. The machinus is caught in an odd pose inside the giant ice sphere. The red light behind its eye flickers for a moment, then shifts toward Talon.
Arim and Bodelee pull back to where Talon and I are standing. "I highly doubt that'll hold very long," Arim says as the ice around its blade begins to melt, then seems to boil.
"It doesn't have to, and it won't fall for that trick again. It's adapting to everything we throw at it, so we need to wrap this up, fast." I say.
"Got a plan, kid?" Bodelee asks.
"We use ice to throw it off balance. The core of fighting is footwork, and that thing is no different. We take away its footing, we'll have an opening."
"Glad to see you actually listened to all those lectures I gave during training," Arim says.
"Since it adapts inhumanly fast, each of these will probably only work once, so you need to be ready for them in advance. First, Talon, watch how it pivots. When you get the timing down, freeze the water around its feet, if you can encase his feet in ice for even a moment, it should be enough to disrupt it, giving us an opening."
The machinus had melted most of the ice around its bladed arm by this point, and moved its fist forward within that tiny space hard enough to shatter the ice in its way.
"It'll probably adapt by putting enough force into its pivots to shatter any ice you create. So second, make distance and force it to come to you. When it makes its move we freeze the ice under its feet, denying it traction."
The machinus had broken the ice around the entire top half of its body by this point.
"And third, a bluff. I don't know if that was the activation condition for the freeze or what, Talon, but that snap will be the signal for a freeze. By the third snap, it'll expect something, so use that moment to your advantage. That's it. Aim for the head. I don't know if that'll disable it but it should at least blind it if we break that lens."
Arim ruffles my hair, "Not bad for a rookie."
"Here we go," Bodelee says, his hammer somehow reformed in his hands. I guess enough time spent making weapons gives you enough know-how to mold steel with magic. At his words the machinus brings its arm down, shattering the ice still encasing its legs, freeing itself.
Arim and Bodelee sprint into action, going on a coordinated offense. Bodelee takes the lead, aiming his hammer for any part that'll stay still, but the machinus fluidly avoids every blow. Arim circles around, thrusting his sword at the damaged arm, but the machinus rotates the arm, and that infernal blade eats right into the metal of Arim's sword, trashing it.
Then, as it shifts its stance to avoid another hammer blow, a snap rings out, and its feet are frozen in place. Thrown off balance, the machine shudders. Bodelee's hammer finds its mark, sending a shower of sparks off the right knee. Arim, still in the motion of his thrust, releases his useless sword and grabs onto part of the arm's internal frame. Shifting his weight, he sends an upward kick straight into the armpit of the machine, creating enough force for the piece of unarmored frame in his hand to bend, then snap off completely.
The force of that upward kick breaks the machinus out of the ice encasing its feet, and as it lands it lashes out at Arim by flinging the wired blade at him. The blade grazes his cheek as he barely dodges out of the way.
As it steps forward to swing at Arim again, another snap rings out. The machinus slips on the ice below its feet and it does the splits as it loses traction. It reaches a hand out to try and move, but isn't fast enough to avoid the steel bludgeon that pounds against the side of its head from behind.
It skids against the cobblestones, then gets up on a bent knee. Its lens is cracked, and its blade hasn't retracted into its arm properly since Arim ripped a piece off.
Bodelee and Arim move in to finish it off. It flings the wire blade in a wide arc to fend them off, but it's slower than it was before. Bodelee dodges back away from its path with ease, while Arim ducks under it and grabs the back of the blade as it passes him.
Grabbing on to the wire with his other hand he yanks it with all his strength, pulling the machinus toward him. With a downward cleave, he spits the metal head in two with its own blade. The metal husk collapses onto the stone, the light gone from both halves of its broken lens.
Arim tries to cut its limbs off with the blade he's still holding onto, but the blade won't go through the armor. Arim takes a close look at it before tossing it off to the side. Seems like its preternatural cutting capability was powered by some internal mechanism.
Arim steps away from the now dormant machinus as Talon rushes forward to examine it. After poking around the inside of its head for a few seconds he dispels his domain, evidently satisfied it won't be getting up again. Bodelee waits a few moments before doing the same.
Arim walks up to me, "Alright, I think it's time you give me the full rundown of what happened."
***
Roughly half an hour later we've relocated into a building a block away from where we fought the machinus. We had checked on Vurt and Holeria's treatment of Redina and Morvin and thankfully found they both seemed to be stable. After moving them here I had given the trio the full story of what had happened overnight.
As I finished telling the story, Talon brought the husk of the machinus into the room where the rest of us were gathered around the fire.
"Do you have to tinker with that thing in here?" Arim asked, "Take it over to the next room."
"But the fire's in here."
"Make a fire over there."
Talon grumbled as he continued dragging the machinus past the doorway of the room.
"How come you guys are covered in soot?" I asked.
"We couldn't find any other way into the city. We had just returned to the surface to try and find that giant hole when we saw the smoke. Gotta say, I most certainly did not expect you lot to be ballsy enough to take care of the nest on your own. It made for a real pain in the ass to scale down those rocks with a face full of smoke, though."
I think most people would have died from attempting that, man.
Bodelee sat, poking the fire with a stick. I thought he seemed oddly quiet, so I ask, "Something the matter, Bodelee?"
"Hm? Nah, nothing much. It's just… weird. That scholar, Talon. I had him pegged as a complete egghead, yet it turns out he's a full on sorcerer."
"I wouldn't put too much thought into it," Arim said, "It's not uncommon for sorcerers to have a screw loose. It seems like our friend might just have more than one."
The conversation dies as we listen to the fire crackle. It isn't late, but I feel the fatigue of what feels like several days weighing down on me. I wondered if that fatigue was something I would have to get used to going forward.
But still, there was something that weighed on my mind more than tiredness. Curiosity.
"I'm gonna go see what he's up to," I say, getting up. Nobody says anything as I leave the room.
Going down the barren stone hallway, I turn into the next room and see Talon crouched next to the limp husk of the machinus, picking away at the insides of its skull with a set of tweezers. True to Arim's suggestion, he's made himself a little fire by which to see.
I rap my knuckle on the stone doorframe, "Mind if I join you?"
He turns to the door, a look of surprise on his face. "Uh, sure. Why?" It seems like his scholarly attitude has returned in full.
"I was wondering if I could ask a few questions about that thing, since you seem pretty knowledgeable," I say, nodding at the machinus.
A wry smile forms on his face, "You know, usually people aren't too concerned with the history of something that tried to kill them."
"Most things don't have as interesting of a history, now do they?"
He chuckles, "Now on that point, I would agree." He waves me over.
Sitting down on the opposite side of the machinus, I say, "Hope we didn't smash it up too bad for you."
He shrugs, "Honestly, it was a lot more functional than I expected, so it can't be helped. I believe it was crushed by the debris from that giant hole, making a nice little time capsule for it."
"What's the personality module thing you spoke of? Did it actually have a personality of its own?"
"Of course not, it's a machine. From what I've managed to gather, it seems like the original purpose of the machinus was a kind of peacekeeping force deployed by Prisna. The texts describe the southern nations at the time to be in constant strife, and I think they got a little annoyed by it. So they put a stop to the endless bickering, forcefully. The personality module recorded the mannerisms of its most accomplished knight, giving them a semblance of intelligence." He says all this while picking through its skull and tossing out random components that seem to be in his way.
I look to the blade that was also dragged in, pulled along by the wire connected to the machinus' arm. I pick it up and look it over, it seems simple in design, like two stamped sheets of metal around the blades 'edge.' I can't call it a proper edge, as it's dull. The blade is also thick, almost like a small wedge. It could maybe be used to chop firewood, but not much else.
"Ah, interested in that? I suppose anyone who works with a real blade would be. Sorry to say, but you won't get much use out of it as it is now."
"I was wondering how it works."
"It's an MC blade, mana current blade. The Prisnans were the most skilled oricite engineers to ever live, and they bent mana to the will of metal like nobody else could. "
"Oricite?"
"Hm? Never heard of it? It's a type of ore infused with mana. Anyway, see how the edge of the blade is a bit different than the rest? That's extremely high purity oricite. There's a little motor inside with another piece of oricite that sends little pulses of mana down the length of the blade. Using mana like that disrupts the physical matter of whatever it touches. You do that fast enough, like a hundred times a second, and you get a blade that can cut through almost anything. Their circuits were made out of the stuff too."
He yanks another part out of the skull, then says, "Ah ha! Moment of truth!" He reaches his instrument in and pulls on something, then frowns. Giving it a harder yank, I hear a little snap and he holds out a little chip, like an SD card, cracked down the middle. "Fuck," He says with a scowl, "That brute with the hammer broke it with his last blow."
"What of your ruins? Aren't there still things to be found there?"
"Also buried under the rubble. I couldn't tell before with the nest covering all the debris, but the collapse of the cave at whatever point destroyed most of the exterior architecture." He sighed, "I'll have to try and rent out an excavation team, which I'm not sure I have the funding for. I think I'll just make the most of this specimen here then move on." He pulled out a notebook and began jotting tidbits down while looking closely at the broken personality module.
He fell into silence and I felt his mood shift to one that wasn't so accommodating to questions, so I let him be and went back to the fire in the other room for a well deserved nap.