Catherine’s Perspective

I arrived at the gate to find a growing crowd of Avonside militia and Eleos knights. In the middle of the knights, Ryn, Grace, Adam, and Troy all stood, having an intense discussion with a guy in the militia uniform.

“Hey,” I called as I trotted up to them. “Steel Ones?”

Troy cleared his throat and nodded affirmatively. “Yes, They’re about two hours away from arriving here. We plan to meet them out in the valleys, keep them from destroying anything important.”

“Okay,” I nodded, glancing anxiously from face to face. “What do I do?”

“Did you ever finish that big shield spell you were working on?” Ryn asked hopefully. “If you can take care of shielding our people, it’ll free me up to fight properly.”

“I did, yes,” I said, relief flowering in my stomach. Thank god, I didn’t have to teleport around throwing explosions and shit. That was definitely Ryn’s wheelhouse, despite how bad she was with conflict. Since these were just dumb robots, I was actually rather excited to see her unleash her full potential.

“Awesome!” she grinned, turning to everyone else. “We have a plan, then?”

“I don’t know why you’re smiling,” Otho called as he arrived with the obrec rangers. “We’re all about to die.”

“Very optimistic!” Ryn snorted sarcastically. “I have faith in everyone here. Plus, all of our combat-ready knights have prototype magitech rifles equipped with canisters from the uh… what was it called again?”

She asked the last of Claih, who stood with her finely crafted rifle on her shoulder. “Faerah Conflagration. They explode in fire and molten iron shrapnel.”

“Yeah, those things,” the magenta mage smiled, and with a flourish, she formed a blade of darkened energy. “Plus… I don’t have any quandaries about unleashing everything I can possibly throw at mere robots. I am… excited, honestly.”

“Let’s rein that enthusiasm in just a little,” the older looking dude in charge of the militia said seriously. “This is a battle for life and death, not a game.”

“For you, maybe,” Ryn muttered under her breath. I think I was the only one who heard her, and I found myself nodding slightly. The way she and I had been working our butts off for all of these people, and then the reception some of that help had received… it made me want to disappear into my grove for a few months. Let them see how long they lived without us.

Carefully, I stepped over to my mage sister and took her hand, then leaned in against her arm. Ryn was just a normal trans girl underneath all the power, same as me, but she was under so much more pressure. Everyone looked to her for this and that, for medicine, for safety, hell, even for mundane shit like coffee.

“It’s time to get moving everyone,” Troy called to the massed crowd, taking the reins. Everyone seemed to be looking to him as our leader, even the obrec and avonsiders. “We’re going to make our way down through the southwestern valley for fifteen minutes. Once there, you’ll get your orders regarding the ambush.”

His little speech done, he turned and began to walk, confident that the rest of us would follow.

Ryn turned to me as we walked and gave a grateful smile. “Thanks, Cat.”

“We’ll teach them,” I whispered. “We’ll teach them to treat us with kindness or to fear us. They get to choose which.”

“Oh, trust me,” Ryn muttered cynically. “After this, it’ll be the second one.”

Ten minutes later, when we were almost to the site that Troy and the militia guy had chosen for the ambush, both Ryn and I twitched. We shared a glance, and I saw her eyes cloud with mage sight. Something ahead of us had used magic.

The valley was like many in these mountains. A fast-moving river twisted its way across the bottom, carrying snowmelt from the high peaks to either side of it. From that river, the ground rose, the picture of an exponential curve, until the rock and earth could no longer sustain the ascent against gravity. Hardy pine trees clung to the river, while the slopes housed tough scrub that sheltered within any available depression. Then there was the wind, which scoured the upper faces clear of anything taller than a foot.

“Troy,” Ryn called, drawing his attention from the militia dude. “Magic ahead, powerful.”

“Friend or foe?” he asked, striding across the windswept mountain grasses towards us.

I shook my head and glanced up at Ryn. "We can't tell. It was a single spell."

"Felt like teleportation, though," she told us, opening her mouth slightly as if she could taste the scent of it on the wind. “Short range, obviously. Possibly a combat blink.”

A tiny drop of cold water hit my cheek, and I glanced up at the overcast sky. Was it going to rain? That would definitely make things difficult. Well, for everyone else anyway. My skin had just absorbed the droplet.

Troy didn’t waste time with a reaction to the news. “How far?”

“A kilometer, maybe more, maybe less,” she replied, and I found myself again amazed by how strong her magesight was. I hadn’t gotten more than a direction from the short burst of energy.

“Fuck,” Troy swore, and turned back to the militia leader. “Less time than we thought. We need to get everyone up onto the slopes. Now.”

The slopes were littered with rocky debris from the high basalt mountains, many of which were perfect for use as cover. That’s where the massed defenders of avonside hid now, waiting for our mechanical enemies to arrive. Everyone except Ryn, who stood down in the center of the valley, her green and silver robes flying in the wind.

Time to do my job. It was a simple one, really, but crucial. Closing my eyes, I felt out with the thinnest tendrils of my power, touching on each and every boulder that was being used as cover. As I gained mental contact with them, I cast a spell, imbuing them with unnatural strength and resistance to heat. It would keep them from exploding under the assault of Steel One lasers, and any impacts they took would be similarly shrugged off.

Ryn saw me working, and when I cracked my eyes back open, I saw her nod in approval. There was no way I could have created actual shields of energy, but this? This I could do. I had to maintain contact though, and each hit would drain energy from my reserves. Eventually, the protections would fail. The rest of the battle was up to everyone else.

I could feel a tremor in the plant life around us now, they could feel something coming. Brushing a hand through the coarse grass at my feet, I asked it what it saw, like Ryn had taught me. I received flashing images of steel feet crashing down, crushing the vegetation indiscriminately, trees falling, life-giving sod flying.

Withdrawing my hand, I glanced down in the direction of the approaching enemy. Several hundred meters down the valley was a gentle curve and a dip that blocked our line of sight even up on the slope. Not that it mattered.

The kingbanes slowly came into sight, first with the shine of steel above the trees of the river. Ice filled my veins as the scale of the colossal robots really dawned on me for the first time. They had to be at least five storeys tall. Four legs supported their massive bulk in a square formation, connected by a small pelvis section that rose into a squat, bulky torso. The top of the mech, which I hesitantly labelled as the shoulders, was a massive slab of pitted steel. It was bevelled to deflect projectiles and housed a sensor array in its center.

Two short arms protruded from the sides of the upper portion, each one ending in an array of terrifying looking cannons. All over its metal body were even more weapons, smaller ones that would probably defend it against any attackers that tried to scale it. It really was a walking fortress, and there were two of them.

Not just that, though. All around its feet were several of the class of robots that we had seen and fought previously. They looked sort of like miniature versions of the bigger ones, but rather than flat angles, they sported curved hulls. I shuddered as I remembered just what a single one of them had done to a village full of people and the soldiers sent to protect them.

The smallest ones, which Otho had called crawlers, were the most surprising, however. They were squat, quadruped things like their larger cousins, but where they differed were the obvious heads on their shoulders. They were flat things, with what I assumed were eyes on the side of their heads, but it was hard to tell from this distance.

It raised so many questions, and I almost lost my concentration as a rush of thoughts came to an obvious conclusion. Somewhere, in the vast reaches of space, a race of sentient, probably biological beings had created the steel ones. They weren’t just an evolution of some machine intelligence, long gone rogue from its original creators. No, these things still bore the hallmarks of their creators.

When humans create robots, a great deal of the time, they try to make them humanoid. Sure, there are others, ones that look like tanks or dogs or whatever, but… these things. I could think of a few much more optimal designs and shapes right off the bat. Surely a machine intelligence wouldn’t make something in an image that had so obviously… evolved. I mean shit, they looked like crab-centaurs!

My observations would have to wait for later, though. I had shields to maintain, and I knew right away that I’d need all of my concentration and strength to withstand what was about to happen. God, so many people were going to die.