Rahhn the Flutist clawed his broken and sore body from his best and only friend's bronze-metal chest cavity. Rahhn’s tiny body ached terribly. He could barely distinguish his aches from the searing, phantom pain. The residual buzz and creeping soreness of working in tandem with her as he crawled away from the wreckage of his friend. His hands and knees sank into the muddy earth with unsatisfying squelches, the mud staining his previously decent attire. Every time the man breathed, a thorny, searing spike of red-hot anguish shot through his upper abdomen, causing him to wince and gasp pathetically. Somehow, through the pain, the buzzing, and the dizziness, he thought: I broke most of my ribs, I need medical attention immediately, I–

“Wait,” the small man started, his mind cloudy and his vision swimming. “Wait, wait, F–Fulcra!” He began to scramble back to his friend frantically.

Fulcra the Construct lay face up in the black mud, her bronze, oddly human-looking skin leaking golden light from various large cracks beneath her tattered clothes. Underneath, the delicate seams of her nearly invisible plating were larger than they should be. Fulcra’s clockwork eyes were open, the usual golden glow of Allegory and life behind them nowhere to be seen in the setting sun's light. Her body was mangled and blasted through, her mystical, alien internals showing their metallic sheen. Her left leg twitched like a dead insect, and her machinery clanked roughly. It was something so strange to come from someone who was considered “almost a Perfect Construct”.

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“Hey!” Rahhn shouted at his companion as he slipped and fell in the mud, his wraps and body becoming even more filthy in this Hahs Yrir-forsaken place, “Fulcra! Say something!”

There came no response. Her machinery whirring quietly and weakly as if giving one last breath of life.

“No, no, no, no, no, Fulcra!” He finally scrambled over to her motionless body. He grabbed her head in his shaking hands. Her long, brunette hair was caked with grime, the filth covering Rahhn’s hands as he held her.

“Not now, Fulcra!” He yelled at her as if commanding her to stay with him, his voice cracking and wavering, “You can’t…” A shaking, wheezing inhalation, “… you can’t die on me… I haven’t fulfilled my promise…”

“We rely on you, now, Rahhn from the stars.” They had said that.