Hours, or perhaps days later (time was an anomaly in the Outlands), the technorunner found himself at the entrance of a small town, or a village, he could not determine which, nobody was insane enough to establish towns within the Outlands, only small villages and communities, the building structures — huge compared to the normal huts you find around there — were telling a different story though. The design of the structures was considered complex, they weren't something simple communities would make, one look at them and one could say that they were foreign to the Outlands, that you could only find similarities at the structures within cities.
The town was all but bustling, not a single soul or machine roamed its roads, the thought that this was perhaps a setup for an ambush by city hunters crossed the technorunner's mind, it would also throw light on the secret of the structures. He trod cautiously as he passed the entrance, there was no sign to confirm the identity of this "town". The thick snow covering the town stood out more than the mystery of the structures. In all his time out in the Outlands, which could have been years, the technorunner had never witnessed snow raining down on the dead land, only rain, it was only land deprived of the Black Frost, despite being the source.
As he pushed deeper into the town, ravaged structures began to emerge, shattering the facade that stood as the entrance, the town was not abandoned, it was razed to the ground, and it didn't take long for the technorunner to determine by whom. Mist, thicker than the one before, crawled once again into the ambiance, it swallowed the only remaining color of the world, like poison. This mist was different from any other mist one would encounter, and the technorunner knew that clearly.
He quickly strapped a vizor to his face, helping him scan the fogged environment. He moved furtively by the remains of the structures on the side, trying his hardest to walk away from the mist — it had a center after all. The sound of machinery pounding on the ground at a fast pace alerted the technorunner, he could hear the crushing steps ravaging everything in its way as it shifted across the entire town like a wolf chasing its prey, it was a machine, make no mistake, but it was no ordinary one. The technorunner figured that whatever that machine was, it was targeting him as its prey now, the best course of action in his mindsight was to face that machine head-on, and so he did. He pushed himself from the side and onto the main road once again, he removed the vizor buckled to his head, pulled the shotgun from his back, and closed his eyes.
When he was a child, he was always told that he had a certain gift like none other, his senses were sharper than any normal individual, if he wanted, he could see what the naked eye could not. Were these simply implants? Improvements to his body? These questions would frequently pass his mind as he got older, but he would not dwell on them, only embrace them to the extent.
His focus lied solely on the rumbling movements around him, he altered his stance in parallel with every coiling movement the machine made, aiming the shotgun on wherever he depicted it moved. Then there it was, for a few seconds, out onto the main road, and in the next few seconds, it would disappear again back into the mist and within the walls of the decaying structures, but the technorunner was one step ahead. The shotgun clicked, fired, and tilted backward, the shot struck the machine for sure, but where? The technorunner was about to find out.
A machine, resembling the shape of a giant lion, lied in agony as its mechanical legs were torn apart. It squealed and shivered in its place like it was an actual animal on the verge of death, the blood that stood as its life force was a mere gallon of oil, it seeped into the few gaps left out of the snow, forming small cracked tunnels of oil within the ground. A machine resembling animals was common in the Outlands, but this kind of machine, along with this kind of environment, stood out in a dangerous fashion that it set off all the technorunner's alarms. He was finally able to determine the cause of destruction to this town, base, or whatever it was.
The place was ravaged by none other than the Nyarlamancers, the most terrifying horror you could ever encounter in the Outlands. Were they humans? Were they machines? Were they neither? Such questions mulled over in yarns on their specification, they were known as a group of hunters, not city hunters, baring no recognition or identity to anything any individual would have seen on the face of the Earth. Wherever they step, they demolish, they capture the soul of whoever would stand in their way, leaving traces of nothing but their poisonous mist and the change of weather they influence, if it was raining, it would snow on their arrival; if it was sunny, it would be cold on their arrival, and such were one of the many abilities their tales spoke about. But that was all they were, just tales.
Nobody alive ever claimed to have met with their existence, because no one would be alive to tell the story, yet their existence made its way to the mouths of lepers, so many believed they were just urban legends. Deluded cults started to emerge, even within the caged cities, believing in the existence of the Nyarlamancers as an entity, that they were led by the Black Pharaoh who came to end our days, that meeting eyes with them would send one to insanity and, eventually, death.
Myths, or "folklore" as they say in Eldria, meant nothing to the technorunner, he was a man of facts, but the Nyarlamancers stood as something more than common folktale to him. He had witnessed enough of their wreckage to acknowledge their existence in some shape or form, and today, he might have very well captured one of their machines.
The machine trembled, the technorunner was disgusted by its animated facade. Humans to androids were one thing, but animals? Technology has come far, too far. This scrap of metal that pretended to be an animal was nothing but an automaton programmed to mimic the life it was based on, nothing else.
The technorunner kneeled and hooked back his vizor to scan for any good parts he could salvage. He had seen these monstrous machines many times, but never captured one, this was his first time to witness one up close. The technorunner reached his hand for what seemed to be the machine's base engine or heart as the vulgus would say, it was moulded entirely from elastanium, a metal that was strong enough for protection and real enough to make you feel that you held an actual body organ. It was used millennia ago for the first generation of androids. The technorunner's eyes widened at the sight of the elastanium, this metal was deemed extinct centuries ago, but of course, he only heard so from old men's skinder — not the best source when looking for facts. If he found the right market, he could sell this rare material for a nice sum of gemmira.
He rose to his feet as he rid himself of the snow that crawled to his attire. He placed the engine he recouped in his small belt bag. There wasn't much left of the town as the technorunner moved further into it, he could see the rest of the desert through the structures before, but now he felt completely exposed to it, with only scraps of metal lying on the ground here and there. He wondered when the mist would be cleared, the feral machine was slain, and his head slithered with pain from the vizor.
Out of nowhere, hands, covered in darkness with smoke surrounding its entirety, flooded out of the mist like ropes. Ghosts? Demons? If so, then there they were, crawling from everywhere as they tried to reach the technorunner, who was encircled within their grasp. He backed steadily and hectically moved his hands across his spine, around his belt, reaching for his flare gun. The technorunner pulled it, raised his hand in the air, and fired the gun. It let out a huge blaze that had almost reached the clouds, before bursting into huge illumination. The mist immediately cleared, and, the hands, the ghost-like figures, they were all completely gone.
The technorunner felt his knees tremble before he collapsed on the ground. That was close, he had thought, whatever he had faced, it surely wasn't something that was going to show mercy. Relief seemed into the technorunner's body as he finally removed the vizor off his head. He straightened his upper body to gaze at the area in his vicinity, there it was, exactly a mile away in the middle of the empty desert, right outside the other entrance of the town, a small hut, seemingly made from the same material that once shaped the structures of this town.
He got to his feet once more, and trudged forward to the outskirts of the town, towards the enigmatic hut.
