The scraping of metal sounded out as its outer shell bore the sudden use of wind picking up around its lonely trek. The sun had moved a bit since it was commanded to seek, but not by much. Despite not moving very fast, it was no longer able to catch a glimpse of the buildings the living servants of the mistress were creating, noticing it disappear as it got further away. It was curious, but it was not commanded to observe that unreachable place where the sky met the ground.

It instead continued its trek in pursuit of any of the mysterious ‘people’ the mistress commanded it to find. While the mistress had graced its mind with the knowledge of those ‘people,’ as well as the ‘Clockworks’ it was supposed to kill, the undead felt some instinctual desire to fight, rather than save. For a moment, its mind debated disobeying the mistress, but there was no possible way to do such a thing. The mistress gave it new life, with barely any help coming from itself, which was a debt only to be paid in eternal service. It was fundamental to its being.

It continued to walk, scanning the sky-ground place for any signs of the ‘Clockworks.’ The sun in the sky, one of the things that the mistress gave it knowledge of upon birth, began to reach the ground-sky place, which was different from the sky-ground place, the blue sky becoming pink and red and orange for a while. In the dwindling twilight, it noticed something to its left. They were like it, metal beings wielding weapons. Though, most of them wielded weapons more complicated than its own. There were few, only a third-dozen.

It altered course, making its way over to the enemies while making sure not to burn through too much of the filling stuff. It not only fed it, but it also fed its body. As it approached the enemies, one of them noticed it. The enemy was, according to the graced knowledge, a ‘Scout,’ which was fast and could throw hurtful metal bullets. It threw its first bullet with a bang, sending the thing flying at it. The undead lifted its heavy shield of the same color as its enemies, barely paying the thrown thing attention. A little kick came from the other side of the shield as the bullet struck, but nothing else came through.

Seeing its opportunity, it dashed across the twilit sand, its hunk of metal called a shield raised. More of the bullets hit its shield, but none of them did any more than dent the shield’s first layer. The banging paused for a moment before more bullets struck the shield, nearly throwing the undead off balance. They came faster, slowing its advance, but leaving it time to peer over the protective metal. The one firing at it was a ‘Crasher,’ which was not good for it.

The first sign of the ‘missile’ was the bright ball of fire it saw emerge from the Crasher’s tail. The second sign was the high scream the missile let out as it approached. The undead knew that it was impossible to block the projectile and instead threw itself to the side. The screaming fireball sailed past it quickly, letting it continue to approach the small group of Clockworks.

Just a step later, something slammed into its shield and sent it skidding back in the sand. The undead looked at the offending Clockwork, finding something called an ‘Infiltrator’ standing opposite it. 

The Infiltrator sprinted forward, axe raised high above its head and falling at an alarming rate. Instead of backing off, the metal-clad undead rushed to meet the Clockwork, thrusting its large shortsword forward into the Clockwork’s chest. The metal of the Clockwork’s chest was less slashed or impaled and more crushed by the sheer weight of weight of the sword. Bits of metal flew and the undead continued forward to attack the Crasher.

Suddenly, it felt something stab through its side, piercing not only the metal shell but also the fleshy interior body that it was originally born from. Its head snapped to the side, concealed eyes meeting the peculiar Clockwork stabbing it in the side. It was a small, spindly thing with a dozen limbs all ending in spikes sharp enough to pierce its own body.

The familiar flow of mana began to swirl around it and the undead wasted no time in dealing with the Clockwork. It crushed the thing with the flat side of its blade, sending arms and spikes scattering all around. Another missile suddenly slammed into it, blowing its greaves open on its leg. The armored  mechanisms that made up the leg were exposed, but still functional, which was enough of a reason as any to finish the remaining enemies.

It sprinted forward, not heeding the amount of filling stuff it was burning to do so. The Crasher and the Scout attempted to escape, the later being crushed by its thrown sword and the former being pounded into the ground by a hard slam of its shield. As the sun finally set beneath the ground-sky place, it was left alone in the sand punctured and blown open.

It, instead of moving onwards, rested there, watching the metal of its body slowly, slowly grow back into its normal place. By the time the sun peeked over the sky-ground place, which was odd since it had gone down the ground-sky place before, the undead was fully healed and ready to continue on its adventure. As it marched on, it took notice of the fact that its sword and shield did not regrow like its body did.

Its march continued without until it was halfway through its two ground-sky sun times, when something odd caught its dead eyes on the sky-ground place. Tiny figures were fighting, which did not rouse anything from the simple construct. What did catch its attention, however, was the fact that one of the things was a Clockwork. What also made the undead interested was the thing the Clockwork was fighting.

It was one of the mysterious ‘people.’

She was somewhat different from what the mistress described a person as, but it was close enough to be considered one. Her skin was a somewhat familiar hue of blue while her finger-blades were green like the mistress’ armor. Her hair was the same type of yellow as the mistress’ friend, Fara, and her clothing was mostly torn, leaving just the bare minimum untouched. In one of her hands she held some weird heart-like thing while the other fought off the ‘Headhunter’ Clockwork opposing her.

It hastened its pace, making sure not to burn too much filling stuff so it was not useless in battle. It watched as the she-person dodged  under the large scythe-arms of the Headhunter, lashing out with her own dangerous natural weaponry, tearing gouges out of the Headhunter.

Just as it was about to arrive, the she-person shuddered and fell to her knees. The Clockwork, in the midst of an attack, clumsily slammed the she-person with the blunt side of its blade-arm, sending her flying a distance.

That was when the undead arrived. It charged the Headhunter, not bothering with the shield, and crashed into the Clockwork with its shoulder. The Headhunter was sent sprawling back away from both the she-person and the undead. Though it did not show, the undead was certain that there was some sort of damage done with the attack. 

It just barely had enough time to raise its shield to counter the overhead slash from the Headhunter as it bit into the top of the shield, backing away from the deadly grapple the other two arms had attempted to drag the undead into. As the Clockwork tried to regain its stance after the failed attack, the undead responded with a sideways slash as it tried to get behind the massive Clockwork creature.

Though the sword hit the Clockwork, the undead had nothing to show for it as the sword barely even pierced the armor of the Clockwork. Despite that, the undead was behind the Clockwork and was about to leap atop it when the Clockwork reared backwards. As the undead leapt, it saw the she-person jumping back from a slash on the Clockwork’s blade-like head.

The undead, though mobile, was not light at all and the extra weight on the Clockwork’s back pushed it down into the sand, at least one arm snapping. The Clockwork struggled, but it was unable to break free from the weight. The undead raised its sword high and stabbed down on the Clockwork’s back armor.

The back was less armored than the front or sides, letting the dulled blade stab into the Clockwork with the screeching tearing of metal. The undead tore into the opening, eventually killing the Clockwork and leaving nothing but a mutilated husk behind.

It did not celebrate its victory, instead scanning the area for the she-person. It found her not far from where the Clockwork laid dead, lying in the sand. The undead did not know what was wrong, but it followed orders. It picked her up, barely noticing how she stubbornly clung to the heart-like object in her hand, and began waking back, stepping over the other eight Headhunter husks left in the sand.