Tri smiled as she watched the horizon. The night had been long and boring, with both she and Pandoran spending the hours organizing the undead they found into battle squadrons, but morning had finally come. Both she and Pandoran organized the new undead into escort groups for the Necromechs, and their underlings were milling about the shattered outpost, some sparring, some just standing around, and others just waiting.
Thankfully, to Tri anyway, they would not need to wait much longer. With the rising sun behind them, she could see a column of Clockworks making their approach to the outpost. Instead of being the messy hodge-podge of disparate designs she had seen from the Clockworks previously, the forces arrayed against them were uniform in design. There were two types, one being the big transports she had seen before and the other being a large, armored, walking, lightbulb shaped Clockwork with a large cannon at the base of the bulb.
She internally smiled. There were ten of each Clockwork, so the column was no pushover. That was when the bulbous tanks began to fire their cannons. With her enhanced sight, she could see the things being shot out of the cannons, and they were not artillery shells. They were little mechanical spiders-- she was pretty sure they were called ‘Fulcrums,’ but no one would call them that while having an arachnophobic attack-- and all ten of them were hurtling towards her at high speeds.
She actually laughed as she saw it, and fired her beam gun at the one that reached the apex of its arcs. The little thing, probably just manufactured, exploded into a shower of red hot metal. The force of the shot knocked it off course, narrowly missing the spider bot flying nearest to it. Instead, the bot fell to the ground and barely kicked up a plume of sand as it landed.
Tri did not have time to laugh at the little bot, as she had more targets to shoot. The second one went down just as easily as the first, but Tri only grazed the third and had to put another shot into it to put it out of commission for good. The fourth was moving so fast that it took three shots to nail it in the center of mass, but by the time metal scraps rained upon the ground, the spiders were landing all around her.
They skittered all over her, trying to pull her armor apart like scavenger birds. It was a bit disturbing, but it was far more infuriating. She ripped the one going for her helmet off of her shoulder and slammed it into the ground. The one grasping at her necromass valve met a more gruesome fate, being crushed in her hands with a fair bit of effort. Suddenly, two spikes plunged into her eye lenses and her sight was-- temporarily-- robbed from her.
Instead of deterring her assault, the loss of her sight only bolstered it. She roared, ripping the little bastard off of her head and throwing it to the ground, stomping it to scrap. She felt the last three skitter around her body, trying to find purchase on her armor, but she did not let such a thing come to pass. “Get off of me!” she roared, grabbing one by its leg and pulling the damn thing in half.
There were a pair of whines and she suddenly felt the two spiders remaining fall from her back. It was good news, as well, as she could feel her soul realigning the metal on her back plates into place. She sighed, “Thanks, guys,” she said, knowing that there were at least one or two of her siblings around her. She focused her mind onto regenerating her eye lenses, regaining sight a few moments later-- at the cost of a good portion of her stored mana to run the weird spring above her pelvic strut into overdrive.
She looked around to see almost her entire squadron of Talonecs standing around her, guarding her once-sightless person. She internally smiled-- again, due to the lack of facial muscles-- and turned to see Pandoran rising from the light cast onto the ground by the rising sun, “Damn, you look rough,” he said, “You alright?”
She nodded, rolling her shoulders to get test the gear alignments in her body, “Yeah, good enough. Little bastards clung to me so I couldn’t shimmer away without bringing them for the ride,” she lamented. That was one of the main downsides of their shimmer ability. Whatever they were holding on to-- or were being held onto by-- would get brought along with them as they shimmered. Granted, if they were ever fighting organic enemies with the ability to be bewildered, it could be easier to fight them in the shadows because of the sheer confusion such a change would bring, but that was hardly worth being the unwitting taxi of a robot spider.
Pandoran nodded, then gestured to the still-approaching Clockwork column, “Well, either way, I’ve taken the liberty to get both of our squads into proper order, so we’re ready to fight,” he said, pulling out a light crystal from his belt-- of which both of them made for themselves-- and put it into his beam gun. The weapon hummed to life as he pulled a homemade mace from beside his crystal pouch, “You ready for this?” he asked.
“I’ve been itching for a real fight, not what those damn spiders were trying to pull. So yeah, I’m ready,” she replied. He nodded, then disappeared in a flash. The other Talonecs around them did the same and Tri had little reason to do otherwise. She shot forward, riding the omnipresent errant light, and smiled internally as she could feel how busy reality was.
Trinati had very little experience in the wide variety of reality that VII assured them existed, but she had always had a sense that people considered the stars to be lonely and the space around them similarly lonely. She would have called anyone who thought so dull. Because being in the light, riding with the photons and streaming towards literally anything, everything was so completely busy.
She shook those thoughts from her head as she reappeared in the material world on top of one of those bastard bulbs. It tried to buck her off, but she was far too annoyed with them for that to work. She raised her bayonet and sliced downwards, cutting nicely into the thin shell of the Clockwork. She grinned-- internally, of course-- and sent her fist through the shell, ripping delicate components from their deliberate places.
The Clockwork’s back right leg and gun immediately drooped, becoming useless. With no other way to attack, the thing continued to buck and she continued to ignore its attempts. She sent another punch into the components, but then did not stop. Her fist stirred through the Clockwork’s internals, bringing more and more functions to a clicking halt. After a moment, she ripped her fist, marred by scratches by many mechanical components, from the husk of the Clockwork.
Then she shimmered to the side, avoiding being riddled with bullets. Finally free to gather her bearings, she noticed two things. One, there were suddenly a lot more Clockworks running around than there were a moment before. Two, they were suddenly outnumbered. Almost all of the bulbs had been killed by the initial charge, all of them macabre sculptures of their power. Macabre if one was mechanical in nature. Most organics would have called it scrap at best and art at worst.
The Transports, however, were in a much better shape. Save for a few scorch marks and their fair share of slashes, most of them were still in working order. And firing twin gatling guns at Tri and her siblings. Which was not good. Worse still, they had all voided their troop compartments, which meant that fourty Clockwork hybrids were suddenly firing their weapons all around them.
A few Talonecs were nicked by the bullets, but thanks to their armor’s design they were only grazing shots. At once, there were no Talonecs fighting in the sand but instead a group of forty angry robots shooting their guns at every slight shimmer of light.
The hybrid Clockworks really looked like pains to deal with. Numerous. Armed to the gears. Their stupid magic shields. And, most of all, such a paranoid disposition to the very concept of light that they would have shot at the sun if their bullets would have reached. Just as Tri was ready to dive into the fray once more, a rain of shrapnel covered the Clockworks, sending most stumbling and even a few sprawled on the ground.
Tri took a glance to see the Necromechs marching towards the column-- more like a mob after the blitz attack-- of Clockworks, their mana shields out in front of them and the other undead hiding behind the purple veils. The Clockworks stood and returned fire, lighting up the early morning hours with the constant crackle of gunfire.
And then the Talonecs made a reappearance. There was an unspoken agreement between them all that they did not need to waste their time with shooting at the Clockworks and would instead deal with them like real knights. Slashing and stabbing them to death.
Tri barely remembered anything during that brawl. She remembered dodging an errant fist from one of the Scout hybrids and getting her eye lenses shout out again. That was about it. By the time her memory faded back into focus, they stood in a field of metal all torn to shreds; thankfully, none of it was bloody, which meant their victory.
Tri let out a cheer of violent bliss, not expecting to be answered, but was met with eight more similar cheers. There was a stilling at that, then she laughed, shouldering her rifle and waving upwards, “We got some new smart guys! Come on up and introduce yourselves.” The eight Talonecs who cheered-- visually identical to each other and everyone else there-- stepped forward, a few more confident than others. Seeing them, she hugged each of them and pat them on the shoulder, “Welcome to knighthood,” she said to them. They all nodded, gave their thanks, and went on their ways.
Pandoran shimmered up beside her in an instant and elbowed her in the rib struts, “Good one,” he said, snickering, “You’re a natural leader.” She shushed him, then turned to approaching mechs, “So, are we going to divide leadership now?” she asked, “Because we had forty two at the beginning, and now almost a fourth of us are knights. So…”
He shrugged it off, “We can figure it out later,” he answered, “For now, just let them revel in it. We both remember our first few moments of awareness, don’t we?” he chuckled. She responded in kind. She did remember. It was one of the best days of her life, one that she cherished almost as much as those first moments of existence, seeing the mistress watching over her, and knowing the difference between oblivion and life.
