‘Then, it looked at me with its one black eye. I… I don’t know anything else about it; all I remember is the one black eye.’ Luna shook and shuddered, almost crying once again as she recounted her experiences.
Kain consoled her in a gentle tone, ‘Calm down, okay? It’ll all be alright… You can stop at any time if it’s too much. You’ve said enough already.’ He had been trying to get Luna to tell her story calmly and not to push herself, but it had been met by limited success. Luna really felt connected with Kain for one reason or another and wanted to tell him her story, one which she had recalled in its entirety when dreaming, so Kain’s curiosity could be sated.
‘I-I’m okay, I’ll b-be fine…’ She started to calm down, but recalling her experience with that terrifying eye made her begin to shake again.
‘No, you’re not fine, Luna. You’re shaking again. Whatever it was, it scared you. I’ll just try to summarize. You used to live in a completely normal world, one where the sun rose and set. In it, there was a group of metal monsters that worked together to slaughter endless threats and do something in the forest. Is that correct?’ Luna nodded her head with tearful eyes, so Kain continued, ‘You lived near the monsters as they only attacked large predators or other monsters that invaded their land. One day, you heard the ground splitting, felt energy rising, and saw a blinding blue light. When you regained your vision, you heard a battle happening where the monsters were, and they were losing. Once you built up the courage to escape, you saw that…’ Luna began to shake again ‘...thing, that killed every creature there. Is there anything incorrect?’
‘No… No, that's all correct. I’m… sorry, it’s just that the thing was-’
‘No need to apologize. I don’t know what it did to scare you like that, but I’ll comfort you and protect you like a brother would, that sound good?’ Kain held Luna’s tiny furry body in front of him so he could look into her eyes.
‘Sure… that’ll be nice,’ Luna began to calm herself, ‘By the way, what’s a brother?’
‘You… don’t know what a brother is? I thought that rabbits had large litters.’
‘What do my littermates have to do with it?’ Luna looked at Kain innocently.
‘Ahh… okay, a brother is a sibling, or a littermate as you call them. We humans find family important, and we help our siblings and family to our greatest ability. Most of us anyway. So I would treat you like a sister, alright?’ Kain smiled at Luna. To him, she was a poor rabbit who got thrown into having sentience by what he believed to be his own fault. If she had not licked his blood, then she would have not been forced to evolve her mind. For causing it, Kain believed that he should protect her like a sibling, because they now shared blood in a way.
‘R-Really… then why can’t you be my brother?’
‘We can’t be siblings because we are, one, different species, and two, come from different parents.’
‘Well… can’t I just call you brother then?’
‘Hmm… Calling close friends by ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ is, as far as I know, more of an eastern thing to do in my world, but I don’t see why not.’ Kain gave another soft smile and hugged her small body.
‘Hehe… You’re being more loose around me now!’ Luna’s terror from earlier had passed now that the one eyed creature was not being talked about. ‘Well, I told you my story, now my brother is going to tell me his story, alright?’
‘I- Ahh, what’s the point arguing, you told me your story, I’ll tell mine. I lived on a planet called earth, you see…’ The two spent a while talking through the mental link that they somehow discovered. During this time, Kain became much more proficient in extending energy to the point that he could cast a cloud in a few seconds. While they were talking, they got to the subject of Kain’s childhood, a time full of bad memories for Kain. Luna had her own opinions as well.
‘Why didn’t you ask for some help!? Your parents were nice, so why did you keep it bottled up inside?’ Luna asked with an disbelieving tone. There were many things that she failed to grasp like the concept of school, bullies, or detention, but none of it mattered when she heard that her big brother was being an idiot and not asking for help.
‘What was the point? They couldn’t do anything about it, so there’s no need to waste their time with something so trivial.’ Kain shot back.
‘I don’t know how the human world works, but make sure you never bottle up anything around me, okay? I’m your little sister, so I should be able to help you.’ She looked adorable to Kain when she was angry and he couldn't help but chuckle when he replied.
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‘Alright, alright, I get it. No keeping things away from you.’ He rubbed her head and scratched her ears.
‘Mmmh- fine, that’s good enough.’ She said while looking like she was pouting, ‘Anyway, go on with your story.’ They continued until Kain finished telling the story. ‘Wow… there are other worlds, huh. *yawn* Anyway, I feel tired, I’m going to sleep now.’ She began to meandre off when Kain picked her up and hugged her while leaning up against a wall.
‘Unless you don’t want to, you can stay here. It’ll be warmer.’
‘I don’t mind…’ She said in a tired but cheerful way.
‘Alright, good night, Luna.’
‘Good night… and brother…’
‘Yeah?’
‘Thank you…’ She said as she drifted to sleep, cutting the energy connection. Kain internally chuckled and soon drifted off to sleep while cuddling with the small sentient rabbit in his arms.
*=====*
‘Are you sure this is the right way? We’ve been walking for hours.’
‘Since when have I been wrong?’
‘We’ve only known each other for a few days at most.’ Kain said.
‘Well, that just means that I’ve never been wrong. Besides, if I’m right we should be… Ah! We’re at the second to last stop!’ Luna said while perched upon the skull-pauldron. Kain had been traveling to find the ‘Metal Hive’ with Luna on his shoulder for hours. He was beginning to doubt the sentient rabbit’s sense of direction when they happened upon the scene of the green ape massacre. Luna wanted to visit to see if there was anything that Kain could make use of, even if the chances of such were low.
They broke through the tree line and saw a field of smaller trees dotting the area. In between the trees, sticking out of the ground and in multiple instances fusing with the trees, green ape skeletons littered the greenery. Some were broken, some were shattered into gravel, and some were whole, but they were omnipresent in the clearing in the forest.
‘Just… what the hell…’ Kain was utterly blindsided by the sheer amount of green apes that had died in the clearing. He was sure that there were more because some of them had been shattered and there were others that had been ground into dust. Out of every skeleton in the clearing, one stood out amongst all others. On the far side of the clearing from where Kain and Luna emerged there was a giant blue flower, and in its stem and roots that curled around a tree, a lone green ape skeleton was bound while the flower used it as a plant pot. The flower was not like a rose, lily, or any other flower on earth; it had square petals, four to be exact, and they layered on top of each other in a way that made it look like a pattern of geometrical shapes where each large petal was just made of four more smaller petals which continued on into infinity.
‘Luna… It may look cool, but I can’t make anything else out of these bones that I don’t already have. Sorry.’
‘It’s alright, big brother. I kinda needed to pass through here to get to the Metal Hive anyway. I think that we should at least look around to understand what we’re going to find in the hive.’
‘You’ve got a point, I’ll look at a few skeletons, and then we can go.’ Kain replied as he walked to the nearest skeleton. It looked small, the runt of a pack if you would. Its snout was relatively short, looking like a goblin-pug more than just a normal goblin. It had few injuries on its skeleton; the only major injury was that a few ribs in its chest were shattered with cracks running through the rest of the rib and spreading into other ribs. Considering that the skeleton of a green goblin was shaped like plated armor, it was impressive that something shattered the layered armor and left such a gaping hole in the front. Whatever made the attack was powerful in a brutish way. He examined other skeletons, some of which seemed to suffer from both pre and post-mortem injuries: one had its skill shot through leaving a gaping hole in the forehead, one had its entire chest cavity pulverized, one even somehow had millions of tiny holes throughout its entire skeleton that, were it still alive, would have made it bleed to death in mere seconds. ‘Well, this Metal Hive is at the very least terrifyingly strong. There are so many injuries that seem to defy the laws of what could be possible that it confuses me…’
‘I knew they were strong! Good thing we’re going to the ruins of their hive to scavenge because we might get some cool stuff if we do.’ Luna said with stars in her eyes.
‘Well, if they are all living creatures, then it is unlikely that we will be able to do the same. But, either way, I’m starting to get excited.’
‘Yeah! Let’s go! I can’t wait to see it! We now need to go… that way.’ Luna said, pointing a paw in a seemingly random direction.
They walked for a few more hours, finding a few oddities along the way like a violet-blue fruit that tasted both supremely sweet and bitter at the same time, or a small waterfall that fish leapt from. But after walking for another hour, Kain saw the treeline close in. ‘Luna, here we are. Now let’s see what they have in store for us.’ Kain said with a smirk.
They broke through and saw the first signs of the Metal Hive. A long tree-like metal object lay broken in half on the ground near a steep cliff. It was not blood or guts that occupied the interior, but glass and metal components. Kain glared at them intensely. They were made up of many different metals, some of which he had never seen. There was gold, copper, silver, a red crystal-like substance, and a green metal all connecting in weird patterns and designs that reminded Kain of a circuit board, but different in how complicated and unrestrained the designs were.
‘This isn’t a bug or anything else. This is a robot. An advanced one. One that not even earth can make. Wait… she said hive so… that means that there are more?’ Kain rushed up to the cliff and gazed over. In the field below there were hundreds, if not thousands of robots. Some looked like spiders. Some looked like trees. Some looked like millipedes. Some looked like eyes. All of them, however, were torn apart, ripped to shreds, or crushed underfoot.