Trebuchet was nimble for its size, but when it was moving in a straight line, it was even faster. It was the first to reach the Steward, but its trident was deflected by two of the monster’s bladed limbs. Baron’s flail swung towards its head simultaneously, but it raised another arm to block the swing. The force of the attack broke bone, crippling one of its four arms.
When the human opened its mouth, black energy coalescing inside it, Aria remembered a previous warning from Quill that more advanced humans could use Code techniques.
Aria dashed in to grab Meteor and pull it out of the way, and Trebuchet dashed around to the side. The Steward unleashed a chaotic blast of dark Code in a sweeping cone, burning away trees in its wake. The others evaded it, and Baron’s barrier held, if only barely. Its prey intact, the human advanced, slashing at Baron as Aria and Trebuchet moved in to flank it.
As they pressed the attack, the broken arm twisted and bulged unnaturally. The bone fused back together at an angle, and the limb grew a second blade. It wasn’t just regenerating; it was giving itself more weapons.
Aria stayed back, peppering the Steward with Dynamic Bolts, but it didn’t seem to be doing any real damage. Baron endured its barrage of attacks from the front, and Trebuchet stabbed it in the side, but the bleeding from that wound was short-lived. Its flesh quickly tightened around the holes to stop the bleeding, and thickened into a carapace that even Trebuchet’s trident would have difficulty piercing. In a surge of power, it caught both Trebuchet and Baron with another Code blast, hurling both of them back. Then, it turned and crawled towardsAria with terrifying speed.
Knowing that Meteor was right behind it, Aria stood its ground. When the Steward swung, it knew instinctively that its body wouldn’t hold up to the human’s strength and sharpness. Aria jumped to the side, narrowly avoiding a slice that would have cut it in half, in favor of taking a blunt blow that knocked it clean through a tree. It couldn’t protect Meteor, and Trebuchet and Baron were too far behind to intercede.
Your value is measured in death. If you can’t kill, then you have no reason to live.
A familiar voice echoed from Aria’s memories.
You aren’t a person. You’re a tool to be discarded if it malfunctions. Never forget that.
Then, Aria lost consciousness.
Meteor knew that it had been a bad idea to tag along with the iterators. Its parent had always warned it to stay away from even the weaker humans until it was an Alpha. It had thought that a simple fight against a few Worms might be the kind of engagement its reactor needed to spark an awakening, so it had chosen to join in as a calculated risk.
Looking up at the human towering over it, Meteor knew that it had miscalculated. This was a foe it couldn’t possibly survive.
When the Steward knocked Aria aside with a single attack, Meteor accepted that it was probably going to die. Saga would never even be aware that it had survived the duel meant to kill it. Still, if it was going to die, it resolved to keep fighting for as long as it could, just to spite whatever killed it. It took a step forward, its parent’s sword raised for a hopeless final swing.
Before the human attacked, four bolts fired from its side, bending at 90-degree angles along complex paths. Each one hit it in a different eye.
As the Steward roared in pain, Meteor looked to see where the attack had come from, and was surprised to see Aria back on its feet. However, something felt different about it. Its faceplate was blank, and its movements lacked the slightly chaotic energy it usually brought into combat. Instead, it sprinted forward like an automaton, discarding all unnecessary movement.
While closing distance, Aria launched half a dozen more Dynamic Bolts in succession, each one aimed precisely at one of the human’s vital points. It raised its blades to protect itself from strikes against its eyes, throat, and estimated locations of its most vulnerable internal organs. Aria, an Alpha, was somehow taking control of the flow of battle against an enemy that even Betas had struggled against.
Sadly, this miracle couldn’t last. While Aria delivered a storm of punches against the Steward, all it took was a single well-placed attack to cut it down. A blade swung down, neatly severing Aria’s left arm and left leg. Even so, it didn’t flinch, merely using the moment to counterattack with a technique Meteor had never seen it use. Its right hand was wreathed in Code, forming a shimmering blade, and it stabbed it several times through the side of the human’s head.
It was stopped, but only briefly. When the human didn’t die, the technique fizzled, and it grabbed Aria by the wrist, ready to tear off its other arm. The others were back on their feet, but wouldn’t be back in time. Meteor was the only one in the position to act.
Without thinking, it acted.
Aria snapped back to reality to find that it was missing two limbs, and was caught in the human’s grasp. However, what woke it from its trance wasn’t the human. It was the sudden surge of Code energy behind it.
Before it could turn to look at the source, Meteor was on the human, breaking its arm with an undirected burst of raw Code. It dropped Aria and began scrambling to grab the machine that was crawling around its body, stabbing it repeatedly with its sword. When a machine awakens or upgrades, it always comes with a temporary surge of power, pushing it beyond its normal capabilities, and that surge was enough to let Meteor easily evade the human’s grasping claws.
While it had the human distracted, Meteor’s sword wasn’t enough to do any real damage. Fortunately, distracting it was all that it needed to do.
A brilliant, three-pronged ray of light burst through the Steward’s chest, carving out a hole a full meter wide in its wake. It shrieked in agony, clawing at the hole through it, somehow still alive despite the crippling blow. Behind it, steam rose from Trebuchet’s trident, most of its power expended on one technique. Meanwhile, Baron trudged forwards, its flail fully extended behind it. Code gathered around each of the spikes as it advanced, and when it delivered the vertical swing, it moved so quickly that Aria could barely follow its arc. It came down and pulverized the human’s head, finally killing it.
Silence fell over the forest as the battle came to a close. None of them could think of anything to say in the aftermath of the fight, and the silence was eventually broken by the sound of an approaching machine. It was Journey, the third Beta from Quill’s class.
“Is everyone alive?”
Aria waved with its remaining arm. “Nothing that can’t be fixed. What about on your end?”
“Sorry… I found Fable. It’s dead.”
