"Shit I was too tired to hear them. Rae, you okay?" A strand of Fiannah's long hair had come undone from her braided mohawk and now inconveniently dangled in front of her eyes. Inconvenient due to the three automatons approaching the Cleaver and the translator. Fiannah was holding Seb and trying not to feel the dull ache radiating from her left leg.

"I'm alright," Raelitha started. "But I'm not sure how long that'll last."

They can fucking try. The Cleaver said, in her mind. "Hey, don't worry. You got me." Fiannah turned her head back towards the woman with a smile. Rae thought the lady was either really brave, or really stupid. Maybe a bit of both.

The automatons were roughly spherical, and they moved quickly by rolling. However, now that they seemed poised to attack, they each extended six long legs ending on points to walk with, as well as two arms that could most easily be described as "crab-like" and a small bump where a head would be, the bump held the automaton’s optics. They were roughly 150 centimeters tall. Fia and Rae noticed the blood-red cores beneath the spheres' plates and Rae warned: "The core! You need to-"

The lady interrupted her, "to remove the plates and break the core." She chuckled, "this isn't my first tour of Larawe, Rae, I've deactivated dozens of these by now." Slight exaggeration. "Like I said, you got me."

The automatons were getting impatient, or at least that's what the situation looked like. Four of their companions lay smoldering on either door of the room, exploded by Cleaver Fiannah's kinetic trap incantation. The leftmost of the three finally charged, pincers primed to rip a chunk off Fiannah's flesh.

"Drebspranké!" Fiannah swung the quarterstaff and hit the orichalcum construct square on its side. The blue sigil of runes manifested itself adjacent to it. Fiannah barely ducked in time to dodge the strikes of their other two opponents. Falling to her left knee, she took her knife from her right boot and tossed it to Kraelitha.

"What am I to do with this?" She asked.

Fiannah responded that "just in case. If a core is easily accessible to you, you could smack it." The Cleaver rolled to her right in order to flank the opposing automaton to the one she had struck prior.

Its pincer snapped towards her and actually managed to tear a decent piece from her arm. She grunted in pain before thrusting Seb like a spear towards it and shouting: "Drebstrekken!" The arc of blue lightning crossed all three of the machines, briefly locking them in place, scorched. Fiannah then charged towards the rightmost one, and using Seb and the construct’s body for leverage, snapped one of its crab arms off, revealing a joint that bound it to the orichalcum sphere. She jammed Seb into it, pushed against it and sweeped its legs with her left. The automaton fell defenseless on the floor.

At that point the other constructs had started moving again, and they were cornering Rae, clutching the lady's knife so strongly that her palms hurt. Two pincers were about to strike when a couple of small projectiles hit the automatons, harmlessly producing a high pitched ping! Noise. "You guys thought we were done playing?" Fiannah taunted them, and primed her dart launcher again after firing. The bait worked to distract them from Raelithafor a few seconds.

The automaton she knocked over attempted to recover its spherical shape, but, while still looking at the other two, Fiannah twisted Seb in the arm joint, and propped the machine's front plate open. She chuckled. "Hey Rae! Wanna eat some crab?"

Raelitha was sweating and very confused, she just asked: "What's a crab?" That's when she noticed the red core shining, no protection around it anymore.

She rushed towards the automaton, but didn't notice the other two’s attempts at swiping at her. Fiannah dashed to swap places, parrying one strike with Seb, but getting another wound, a deeper one now, on her stomach. "Shit."

Rae took little time to, clutching the knife in both hands, fall handle first onto the core, making a small crack in it. She kept going at it until finally a large chunk broke off and the bright red light dimmed as the construct stopped moving. That's when she noticed Fiannah's arm bleeding, and the other automaton retracting its claw from her belly. "Fia!" She shouted.

The Cleaver smiled. "What? You think this little flesh wound is gonna make me keel over?" It very well might. "This is nothing!" She smeared some of the blood from her stomach on the optics of one of the machines, rendering it briefly blind; and took this opportunity to focus on the other one.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

As Fiannah moved to strike the other automaton, Raelitha ran towards the blind one from behind, jamming the knife in-between two of its back plates, close to the joint like she'd seen Fiannah do. Fiannah, who was attempting to hit the other automaton's optics with one of Seb's ends. They were small, very hard targets, but she had a plan.

Rae barely dodged another swipe when she felt a faint click where she had jammed the knife. She managed to get a small opening, and saw a portion of the core uncovered. But there was no room for her to get enough speed to swing at it. That's when the automaton landed a hit on her face. She let out air in shock and exasperation, at the same time as Fiannah's shout: "Drebspranké!"

The Cleaver had hit the optics with her invocation, rendering her new target also blind for as long as the runes were there. Now I just need to go around. And started dashing towards the automaton's back. When she did, she noticed Raelithaidly holding her bloody cheek. "Rae!"

The translator snapped out of her stunned state, and looked around the room. "Don't worry about me! I just got an idea." She jumped back while the machine attempted to clean its optics of the lady's blood, and crouched down. Looking back at the door she copied the runic sigil Fiannah had used for her trap invocation using her own blood.

"Drebstrekken!" Fiannah shouted again, this time she swung Seb like a club, hitting the construct's back as hard as she could, and succeeding in crushing in the back plate significantly. Now, all of her lightning was focused on a single target. It didn't destroy the core, but the energy generated plus the damage to the plate were enough to send it flying, finally exposing this one's weak point.

Fianna thrust at it with the staff again, once, twice, three times. Until she was finally able to crack it. A large crack, right about the middle portion of the core. It split open like a halved orange and the automaton fell inert on the ground. Fiannah didn't have the luxury to rest, she started towards the final target when she heard Raelitha shout: "Here!"

The Cleaver saw her sigil, drawn in thin lines of blood, right in front of Rae. She understood what her plan was. At this point, the automaton had finished fully cleaning its optics and was about to step over the runes. "Great idea, Rae." Fiannah slid into a crouch and touched the sigil with her right hand: "Soenripranké, asshole." She immediately backed off and pulled Raelitha away from the trap as the blood runes shimmered.

On the picosecond of the automaton's leg touching the sigil, surgically, all of the kinetic energy the trap generated struck one side of the machine's core, throwing it against its back plate. The force was enough to burst the orichalcum sphere open, shooting the core like a projectile. And so, the last automaton was deactivated.

Both women simultaneously collapsed on the floor, Fiannah breathing much more heavily than Raelitha. The translator crawled towards her protector. "Fia, hang in there. Do you have any bandages on you?" She asked.

Fia took a few seconds of heavy breathing and holding the gash on her stomach before responding: "yeah, about that. Your charming mentor took my bags. That's where my healing salve dispenser is. Luckily these aren't that deep, the biggest problem is how much magic I just used."

Raelitha looked surprised. "There's a limit? I didn't know."

Fiannah pushed herself up and propped her back against the amber colored wall of their rest site. "Not exactly. This is something we learned in the academy, and someone learned it beforehand in your people's ruins. There's a caloric cost to using runes. The food you eat gets converted into the fuel for the magic. This can be mitigated by eating a surplus of fatty foods like nuts or dairy. Heh, or storm carrier wings. It's the reason Cleavers and Wands pack double rations to most excursions. We use other sources for large or automatic devices. Thankfully the formulas can direct that energy pretty well"

Raelitha was processing all of that, and suddenly remembered the rune on her back. "Wait, but what about mine? I don't feel any different, and I'm constantly using it."

"Beats me, Rae. 'A Cleaver is a butcher's tool'. I'm not paid to deduce, I'm paid to keep my friend Caldor from dying, and I think I'm about to be out of a job, and a friend, if I don't find him soon." Fiannah sounded frustrated.

The Laraweian considered the expression Fiannah had used. "A tool? Is that how you see yourself?" Her eyes looked empathetic.

Fiannah thought for a second. "It's what the hardass that trained my class in the academy always said. She made it very clear that our purpose, the purpose of our guild, is to butcher. That's what they train us for. We're not good for much else."

Raelitha felt pain in the woman's words, but didn't think it would be wise to continue inquiring about this while Fiannah was hurt physically as well. She smiled and shook her head as if to indicate a change of subject. "Never mind I asked for now, we can discuss this later when we’re better rested, Fia. So, do you want to eat the rest of that disgusting electrocuted meat we ate before falling asleep?" She joked.

Fiannah smiled broadly, appreciating the small woman’s humor. "Excuse you, those were gourmet shocked crawler filets, alright?" They both laughed raucously. They both could feel each other's pain. Fiannah's vision of herself as a weak gutless noble and as a tool with a single purpose. And Raelitha's pain, being alone in the world, with no one save for Durkhann presumably left. Raelitha laughed the loudest.

"Welp" Fiannah said, stretching her arms. "I guess we should go look for your mentor and Caldor. Let's finish eating and go, okay Rae?"

"Okay Fia." Rae wore her sad smile.