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Chapter Text

It had been a few weeks since my departure from the Rig in the Ice, my mind still occupied by poor Nansen’s fate, though I had other worries to attend to: winter had gripped the lands for three weeks, and this one seemed much harsher, and much colder than those of the last years. There had been an inexplicably warm season which ruled the climate, but it seemed then that this blissful period had ended – autumn alone had already been as frigid as the coldest nights of the recent winters. Thus, as I wandered along the convoy which accompanied my travels southward, soon reaching the unfamiliar shores of the equatorial lands I had last crossed nigh-on two decades ago, I kept watch for thick winter clothing to stave off the creeping effects of frostbite – I had no need for them before due to the little oil stoves we carried on one of our sleds, though considering my intentions of wandering alone, some thicker garments were in order. I had no flesh to blacken from cell-death, but my internals were affected all the same: oil coagulates into goopy sludge unable to cool or lubricate worn mechanisms which give rise to movement, to life. The cold kills the mechanical as it did the biological half a lifetime ago.

Eventually, after separating from my group to head west towards the looming mountain ranges, I found the remains of an old Berghardt expedition, hailing from the long-past days when we searched for new colonies to trade and relate with. Most returned empty handed, others in reduced numbers, some not at all – it seemed this group’s grim fate was as most had feared: machine-hunters, their telltale puncture wounds and oil-smears found in plenty across the dozen carcasses, each individually drained of their blood. All of them bore winter clothing upon whose sleeves were stitched our church’s insignia; I took one of the explorer’s garments as my own, equipping it overtop my trusted black coat. In mere minutes, my internals calmed from their cold-induced worries.

From my time, which I’d plenty to spare, I took a good two hours to bury my fallen comrades according to our church’s holy rites; they had perished in ordained duty, and thus shall join the divine nought of the hollow sun. I wonder at times if my defiance of the clergy’s wishes for me to stay and curate the stories and histories collected by others disqualifies me from reaching the void heavens, but these anxieties are quickly quelled: how often had I taken part in prayer? In repentance? In offerings of mind and body to the holy duties of the good church? Details and number counts are all long-lost to memory purges, though I know for certain they ought to “out-bless” my mild misdemeanours.

My lucky find could not have come a day later, for the climate turned for the worse not twelve hours afterwards, when I sat beside a campfire during the night. My old oil reserves suffered greatly from the frost, which led me to renew about half of what my veins contained; within my satchel, I always kept a little supply of fresh drone oil to keep me going on my more expansive travels. Exchanging it was as simple as always, for I needed only hook up the plastic line to the can and upper port, and open the drain on my backside which soon leaked with black sludge – the worst of the weather had yet to come, and yet my lifeblood approximated the consistency of tar rather than oil. In some ways, this was similar to a blood transfusion, with the exception of the drainage – had a human been in need of one, they’d be lacking blood, not exchanging it. I wonder now if this process I did then had ever occurred within human hospitals… Blood poisoning? Yes, that could work. Contamination of the fragile blood supply was surely severe enough to warrant some kind of renewal.

After completing my regular oil change, I slept away the frigid nighttime as the fire beside me crackled warmly, then dimmed to nothing more than a wispy glow as the sun rose. With the star awoken, so was I, ready for yet another day of travel. I must say, and excuse my choice of words, that it was fucking cold. The frost sapped away any energy it could grasp at, cooling even my most insulated internals as ice crept up my exposed visor. I did not feel the cold, no drone could meaningfully do so, I simply knew it; digital gauges which measured the state of my internals read out dozens upon dozens of values – most of little use to me – though one set in particular was of greater interest: the exact temperatures at which my pumps and processors worked during the moment. Should they have fallen below a certain value, and should my oil have coagulated into clumps within the precisely machined pumps, it would certainly have spelled my doom. Such damages could only reasonably be repaired at a doctor’s machine shop, when I knew I was in the good hands of the church back at home. I knew the risks of pursuing yet unrecorded tales and legends, bands and colonies, but, of course, this did not stop me. My lifelong hunger for adventure and putting into word the world around me had scarcely stopped. Still, I somewhat abstractly “felt” the biting cold nipping at my extremities, for my movements had slowed, and the pressure in my veins rose to unusual heights – flow resistance of returning oil had increased due to the thickening which occurred as a direct consequence of the frigid exposure.

The mountain peaks loomed ahead ever-present – beyond them, my hope for finding fellow drones which ought to share their history, their tales, their experiences, and for me to enact my ordained duty to gather them all to be preserved in the library of Berghardt. But first, before heading over a pass I had been informed of before my departure (which inspired this whole adventure in the first place) something else entirely rose from the horizon: a jagged skyline of a forgotten city. Perhaps my maps had been outdated. After all, satellite views were lost to the cataclysm, and the few paper maps our explorers could haphazardly scrounge together hailed from the early days of Copper-9’s colonization. I knew for certain my coordinates – longitude and latitude were easy enough for me to discern – and had triple referenced them with every map of the area I’d saved. Still, no noted signs of the strange city presented themselves. This was unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected, for the reliance on old world maps died along with the society that saw use in them.

I did not change my heading, for I was getting impatient and, most unfortunately, cold; the sooner I had these travels over with, the sooner I could return to my trusted home.

I stood within a field of snowed-on rubble, lit by a warm twilight on my backside. The dim sun had fallen just below the horizon, now providing orange illumination instead of white which fell beautifully onto a towering skyline of abandoned, nigh-toppled skyscrapers looming in the near distance ahead. The city to which I had travelled was of no particular interest to me – it had simply been on the way. But nevertheless, its presence would certainly be of great use. Stocking up on consumables such as oil and pencils (since I keep breaking them… damned flimsy things…) is always a welcome occurrence, especially in a place such as this, equally devoid of drones and machine-hunters alike.

Soon, as I came upon a complex of concrete ruins on the very border of the city, I noticed a shine on the ground entrenched in an odd, snow-less circle. Looking closer, the shimmer revealed a spot of liquid which had not yet frozen. An unusual sight, especially considering how cold it truly was; this was no mere water, for within it swirled sickly colours and glistening particulates which reflected back the lowly light of my visor. It could be wrong, but I believe my sensors picked up on faint fumes which rose from the incongruent splotch.

It stank, reeking of rot; the putrid puddle singed my sensors of smell. Whatever this was, it didn't get here on its own – its… owner was nowhere to be seen, neither was I prompt on finding out its whereabouts. It was dark already, and it'd only get darker as the night progressed. Staying out here wasn't a good idea, this I knew well, but I could not muster the strength to leave the repulsive curiosity alone. It called to me in some way, beckoning me closer.

My curious nature got the better of me; I outstretched my hand, touching the anomaly with one of my fingertips. The strange goop felt sticky and slimy, almost tar-like as its warm texture soon burned my polymer skin like a well-fed flame. Faint smoke rose from my appendage, quickly accompanied by a searing, burning pain which radiated outwards into the rest of my body.

In a fit of panic, I unthinkingly smeared the vile concoction onto my jacket, relieving me of my pain – the plundered garment which now bore the acidic mixture seemed to melt under its influence: the affected fibres formed into a singular, stinking mass which drooped under its own weight. I wanted to discard the item then and there, thinking I was still in danger, though thankfully my hasty actions seemed to somewhat neutralize the toxin. It was still so terribly cold, and I’d not fancied sustaining frost damage, so I chose to keep my jacket on.

I had little time to ruminate on the ooze’s origin, for not soon thereafter, out of a dark spot in the ruins near me emerged a dreadful sound, one so unnerving it shocked me into stillness. A chattering and a creaking, a clicking and a crack. Like a tree bent and swung in a great storm, a sound like churning branches echoed into desolation's wake. As the cacophony of sickening sounds drew near, I scrambled back into action and ran away as fast as I could into the concrete spires of the broken city.

Through decrepit buildings and half-fallen skyscrapers I dodged and weaved, the terrible soundscape behind me getting only closer as I hurdled over dusty desks and vacant window frames alike. A tapping of too many legs, a gust of wind blown by great wings lifts laying snow and shifts the still falling flakes, a wall of heat rose in temperature second by second, flashing the loose, airborne ice to steam.

It followed me relentlessly, tracking me without mercy nor effort, though I desperately tried to shake its attention. Throughout my maddened flight, I turned abrupt corner after corner and leapt from one office building to the next, to little avail; the raging rampage drew but closer and the yellow light only strengthened in its luminosity. A storm of thought brewed within me: How could this be? What is this thing? How is it following me? Then, an idea.

It was the jacket, the putrid fluid upon it still singing the fabric. I tore it away from me, leaving it behind in the trodden path, and as I ran along, the raging wave of sound grew quieter, eventually falling into silence.

I was cold, but I was alive.

A machine-hunter of a size and function never before known to me had followed my lowly shape through tight corridors and claustrophobic alleyways alike, ceaseless in its chase. What had saved my life was my intuition, and my accidental stroke of genius: Had I smeared the putrid fluid onto the ground instead of my disposable jacket’s thick fabric, I would have surely not removed it in its entirety. Its smell would have attracted the thing until it had reached me. Had I not touched it at all, then, while its chase might have been less intense, I would have had nothing to distract it from my person had it caught up.

I admit, I did not directly see the thing, for the only glimpse I was allowed was one of a yellow light-array entrenched in deep shadow. But what I realized in that minute moment of observation was only that it was large. Thus, I was not content in finding out its true intentions, for I already knew them: hunger was to be satiated, and rubble wouldn’t do.

I write this now as I sit beside a rumbling campfire; I had no intentions of staying the night after my gruelling encounter, so I trekked steadfast throughout the night into the nearby woodlands, and set up a place of rest there. It is still bitter cold, but I know from experience that this cold spell cannot last much longer than the few weeks it already has. Winter is ending after all – a good few weeks have passed since my departure at the Rig – though I hold out little hope for snowmelt. My limited meteorological knowledge tells me that the next few days ought to be a little nicer, but not so much that I need not fear the cold: Tomorrow, I must return to the city and gather a coat warm enough to get me across the western mountain range. I had passed by these tempting peaks once before on my pilgrimage oh so long ago, though I had never before seen the lands beyond – I remember my duties, and hold them dear to me.

…The fire is getting hungry, I ought to feed it lest it go out. I’ll write of tomorrow whenever I have the time.

Chapter Text

What I experienced after that horrifying encounter in the nameless city near which I had found myself was beyond anything I could have ever anticipated. What occupied my mind was the very real possibility of death; I had sat trapped between a dead city occupied by a monstrous machine-hunter out for my warm, relatively clean oil, and a desolate frostland too cold for me to venture beyond the horizon line. My bearings would seize from frost damage having never left the looming presence of the broken skyline. Thus, I had no choice but to venture out into the silent roads which bore witness to the remains of a decade-long dead population of drones. My mind raced to imagine myself among my unlucky kin, but my anxieties were never justified, for I found within this city neither death nor hardship, but a friend I now hold dear to my heart.

The town laid silent. Hesitant footsteps atop the hard snow crunched with every meagre advance I made, no matter how little weight I placed upon my shaking feet. The cold was getting to me: movement became difficult, slow and cumbersome as the automatic damage prevention embedded in my code moved to lessen the wear of my well-worn parts. I had adjusted it in years long past, for used replacement parts laid plentiful in unwilling graveyards such as the one I wandered in. One need only look to the nearest dozen of drone-wrecks to be able to almost entirely reassemble oneself. Still, being unable to completely be rid of the function, my movements had slowed to a methodical crawl.

I rummaged through dozens of clothing stores, though none in this almost equatorial city had stocked winter garments. Not a single store harboured jackets thick enough to feel at ease during even a mild northern autumn; a terrible disappointment, my frustrations underlined by an ever-dropping temperature gauge glaring upon my display. Attentive at every little noise the windy city produced and weary from the frost, I snapped my view towards each unannounced disturbance, standing in perfect silence to await the chattering, the clicking, the creaking and the crack of the unseen monster which occupied the forefront of my mind. Nothing came from the silence; each and every terrified tense-up was met with nothing but needless fear.

Hours passed: The sun rose from the horizon to glare upon me almost perfectly above my head, then ventured back to meet the horizon. It laid low once again to my traumatised dismay; memories of just the day before, having marinated in a bath of imperfect recollection, flooded back to meet the anxieties and fears boiling beneath the lid one calls the conscious mind. Delerium set in as I wandered the streets, still jacket-less, though now also aimless as I hoped to find my warm salvation upon the corpses of my kin, having searched every clothing store I could find. But alas, none of any use to me were found. “Strange”, I thought, increasingly aware of my own mortality as my fingers became difficult to move, “How had these drones survived such temperatures wearing nothing but t-shirts and short trousers?” But perhaps that was the wrong question to ask, for surely they simply could not have lasted more than a day dressed as they were. No, a different explanation was in order: These drones did not survive the first weeks after the cataclysm, did not make it through the hardship the temperate and polar regions endured. They must’ve been dead long before they were drained of their oil.

But now that I got a good look at one… no, these drones weren’t drained at all; no puncture holes decorated any of the carcasses no matter where I looked, no matter how closely I observed. Dead drones hailing from the times before the cataclysm, still full of their original, regularly changed drone-oil, laid out freely in the open. I had won the lottery, but a mountain of gold helps little when freezing to death.

In the twilight darkness of the setting sun, I wandered deliriously through the silent streets, barely able to keep myself upright, almost unable to take any steps at all. I ran on overdrive: in a fit of desperation, I had overclocked all internal systems at my disposal, running on deteriorating, strained hardware, uselessly observant sensors, and processing with more power and speed than I could ever hope to feed it data with. My eyes picked up on things too minute and minuscule to even properly render, sent that incomplete information off to processing, and spat out analytic data so useless it barely even qualified as junk. An information overload, a sensory explosion of no importance nor consequence which provided me with more ways to picture my imminent death than my sapient mind could hope to cope with in a thousand millennia’s years’ time.

I was in hell, and hell was cold.

But then…

In the distance, my faltering systems spied a hunched shape bent over the snow, retching as it puked boiling black sludge onto the barren asphalt. The distinct crunching of polymer panelling rung true in my ears: the sound of a feast, the telltale soundscape of a successful machine-hunter enjoying its prize.

I stopped, my servos on strike as they refused to move at my command. The machine-hunter perked up attentively, staring me down with a familiar yellow glow in the shape of an X, though, after a few moments, it faded into a pair of yellow eyes, their expression unreadable. With caution, it slowly arose from its motionless, leaking victim and started stepping towards me. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t: my legs no longer moved, no matter what was at stake.

“HALT!”, I shouted at the shape which drew near at a slow pace, my voice box barely able to vocalize the coommand at all. “I- S-SAID S-STOP!”, my voice shook, but the machine-hunter approached steadily. Thus, fearing for my life, I attempted to draw my revolver from its chest-holster. But alas, even my arms refused to function; I drew it, but was unable to aim it forwards. Not that it mattered, for my fingers were already too stiff to act long before this.

“N-NO! P-P-PLEA-SE! L-LEAVE ME- A-ALONE!”, I shouted in despair, yet my pleas remained unheard by the divine and the mechanical alike. It approached. I shouted. It approached. I begged. It approached. I was silent. I closed my eyes, resigned to my obvious fate as the light faded from my overworked sensors. Darkness took me, the frost won, the hunter approached; I was but a statue of brittle steel stood steadfast before looming death.

And then, it embraced me.

A warm hug radiated heavenly heat across my frail shape, loosening seized servos and liquefying sludgy oil, returning me to a state of comfort and bliss I had long forgotten. As my systems returned to their status quos, my audio sensors picked up on a voice: female, kind, remorseful.

“I’m… so, so sorry…”

Chapter Text

The apology stunted me.

I’d heard pleas and promises before, spoken as the last words of unfortunate hunters made prey, all of them ingenuine. Attempts to sway our venatores’ goals were as futile as counting snowflakes – never did that old trick work, for we heard the poisoned spittle hiding in every word, and we felt their scathing lies of desperation. I had, and have, no doubts that each of them pleaded earnestly, for surely their machine-instincts approximated our own, but no matter what they said, no matter what they promised us, their wastes of breath fell unchangingly on deaf ears.

But this? This was new; a genuine, heartfelt apology worth recognition of the highest order – often, our own people failed at such basic niceties. Though I stood in embrace for a decent while, awaiting the normalization of – and obsessively tweaking – my many systems, I knew within me that I was in the company of the reaper. Conspiracies formed: this hunter surely wanted only to warm my sludge-like blood to a consistency it could consume – it wanted to kill me, and I would play no willing part in it. As soon as I felt capable of it, I pushed the conniving demon away, taking aim at its core with the revolver I still held in my hand – its hammer quickly primed, my finger placed nervously on the lightened trigger.

Even today, I still shudder at the memory of this first true observation of the one I now call my friend: a horrible amalgamation of steel and flesh alike stood solemnly and silently mere feet away.

What towered before me was a machine-hunter of a unique stature, draped equally in a white, oil-stained coat and long, ashen hair. The bands upon her head reflected back the usual yellow lights, though these seemed… poisoned, almost, by cross-like pupils that shifted around, observing each and every silent object in its vicinity until they came to stare upon my lowly, hollow-eyed shape. But paranoia crept as I felt another observer staring me down. So, I looked downwards, past the visor and the insect-like mandibles that flanked it, to look upon its horribly misshapen, mutated arm; Raw flesh winced as it tried in vain to hide from the frost, spikes and teeth-like formations jotted outwards from exposed musculature and its hand – by god, its hand! – bore bone-talons as the tips of fingers, its backside decorated solely by a great, twitching, lidless eye which stared hatefully into the far reaches of my soul.

“Do it…” it spoke, my revolver shaking as it hung nigh-limp from my bewildered and disgusted self’s hand, aimed directly at her pumping heart – whether it, too, resembled the crude magnificence of a true heart muscle, or simply remained as a whirring core, I could scarcely bare to imagine. I took haphazard aim, placed my finger on the trigger, and looked into its visor one last time. What I perceived in that singular eye – for the other was instead a buzzing error message – was not hunger, not desperation, neither fear nor hate, but sorrow and acceptance, and a slight notion of recognition. There it was: the unsightly machine-hunter whose kind had stalked and attacked, hurt and terrified me, and whose monstrous kin – unseen as of then – occupied my mind even in this tense moment. I had it right where I wanted it. I had a loaded pistol aimed for its most vital machine-organ, ready at a moment’s notice – at even the slightest hostile twitch – to fire.

But I didn’t. The streets remained silent. The hunter yet drew breath.

“Wh-Who are you? W-What are you?”, I stammered nervously with frost-tremored breath. The sunken eye of the grotesque machine-hunter averted its gaze slightly, though its many other peepers remained affixed upon my own. “W-…W-Why didn’t you… No, no I know this trick. I won’t fall for it! There’s plenty of oil to go around, so get a move on before I waste a bullet on you!” The hunter looked deeply dejected, almost defeated as it wordlessly shambled away into the twilight-lit, snow-covered roads that weaved through the city like a spider’s web.

My grotesque and solemn saviour disappeared into the falling nighttime, and the cold had not gotten any more bearable: I soon felt the creeping icicles of death once more form upon my freezing soul as I inspected the torn corpse of my decade-dead comrade, whose vessel had been fed upon by the hunter. It laid in a shallow, warm pool of what once used to be its own blood, mixed that of the mechanical scavenger which boiled with vast quantities of heat. Instead of thick sludge like my own, it was thin like water, flowing into the little asphalt crevasses which laid hidden for years beneath a layer of permafrost.

I was cold, and oil burned. But I dared not blaspheme in such a cruel, ungodly way: immolating my kin – even if dead – is a divine offense of the highest order, often resulting in execution. None would know of my crimes out here, none would see the black smoke billowing from the unmarked city, but I knew, and know, that one day my conscience would lead to one final confession. The priests, though my service has been long and loyal, would never forgive such heinous actions.

Thus, though it made me terribly uncomfortable, I stripped the dying comforts of my hollowed-out comrade away from their haemorrhaging body, drenching the loose cloth in the thin, blackened lubricant, then wrapping the bundle around the scrap pole of a street sign before setting it alight. It wasn’t much, and it burned terribly, billowing soot and smoke akin to the countless chimneys of Berghardt, but it would keep me alive for now. I had no further plans, at least none that were simple, for I felt that, during my delirium, I had searched almost the entirety of this cruel and frostbitten townscape, turning up empty handed for each underequipped clothing store I hysterically plundered. Maybe I ought to sew together a warmer garment?, I thought to myself, terribly aware of what a task that would be. I had sewn before, though I had scarcely practiced it in nigh-on two decades. Neither had I an easy supply of thread or needle, and finding a Tailor of all things in this place seemed unrealistic to me. I kept the idea in mind, but did not act on it unless I somehow obtained more time.

So, I kept on searching, held warm for a little while by the roaring, sooty blaze beside my face. Soon, though, it diminished to but a little flame, then nothing but an ashen glimmer. I could not replenish my fire for long, for the fabric upon the dead’s backs was soaked in ice, unable to be set alight, and the cheap summer garments in the disappointing clothiers gave only seconds of flame before melting into sticky polyester puddles. Blasphemous was bloodletting, so I kept the frozen oil confined to the dead's veins. I was once again at the end of my wits, facing the looming grave of ice as its six-foot-frost-pit opened its dark maw in my subconscious. The gravedigger beckoned me, his shovel laid to rest, for its job had been done.

As the sun rose, its warming radiance could do little to soothe my plummeting systems. I looked directly at the blinding star, standing upright in the open street, when I saw a thin shadow shambling towards me. My frostbitten mind drifted towards ridiculous thoughts: lady death, coming to lay me to rest, silently approached for she knew that her presence meant but one thing. She would soothe me in her warming arms, and carry me into the empty afterlife where I would join those deemed blessed by the church. Those were the stories I had heard, and that was what my mind made of them.

The stories, however, neglected to mention her yellow glow.

Chapter Text

“I-I told you to g-get lost!”, I sputtered angrily, once more drawing my revolver, clicking the hammer back and taking aim, “I-I’ve nothing for you! T-There’s enough oil to g-go around, w-what do you w-want!?”

She lifted her arm, and with it, a bundle of cloth in familiar colours. “Is this yours?”, the hunter asked gently.

“T-That’s m-my JACKET!”, I snapped madly as I snatched my lost garment from the machine, quickly smothering myself in its blessed warmth, keeping my pistol aimed forward. When I returned to a steady stance, I demanded to know: “Where’d you find it? Why give it back? How did you… How’d you get past that… thing?” The memory of that mad chase hadn’t yet left me. This strange and grotesquely flesh-adorned hunter, which seemed to desire nothing but to keep me alive despite my hostility, had somehow snatched it from the monstrous machine that, not days ago, terrified me down to the metaphorical titanium bone. It even featured the now dry remains of the molten slag which formed from the stinking acid-mix.

As my gaze was affixed upon the silent machine-hunter, distrustful towards its unnerving hospitality, my mind drifted away from its sunken gaze and towards the spot of amalgamated fabric which now decorated my only defence against the frost. It had been the monster’s motivation, that which captured its interest so intently it allowed me to escape almost effortlessly, and now it hung once more from my shivering shoulders. A trap, I assumed as I darted my eyes and swivelled my head, looking and listening intently for but the slightest disturbance; winds howled slightly, my core whirred contently, tension swirled within us both.

The streets remained silent. Not a clicking nor a chattering broke the status quo, though soon, the hunter spoke once more: “It won’t be after you now. The smell’s gone when it’s dry.” It spoke the truth: the putrid fragrance of rot and decay was, indeed, gone, but her inexplicable knowledge of the monster’s hunting habits intrigued me in the wrong way: “And how would you know that, hunter?”

“Because the monster is me.”

It is safe to say, my eyebrows were certainly raised. This was unexpected, although, the more I looked at its grotesque body, the more I began to understand. I did not cross this notion out of the realm of possibility, seeing as this wasn’t my first encounter with a strange hunter, and although it seemingly presented no threat to me, I knew at all times that my life was yet in danger. “And of your squad?”, I asked, ready yet to fire if this indeed turned out to be a trap, “You lot always come in threes, so where’s the rest?”

“I don’t know. They abandoned me, left me to die in the snow.”, it answered solemnly.

“Then how come you’re standing here, in front of me, still breathin’?”, I pressed further, unsatisfied by the anomaly’s explanation.

“I was found. Some drones picked me up and brought me here, did…this to me” Its voice, poisoned by disgust at its own wretched deformations, continued further after a brief contemplative pause: “I woke up on a table, lights glaring down, machines ticking and beeping nearby, and a drone with a light on his head and knives and pliers in his hands bent over me… I killed him. I killed them all, tore them to shreds, left nothing but oily scrap behind.” The hunter looked down in shame, clearly remorseful in its actions. “If you’re going to kill me, do it. I won’t fight.”

Silence followed. The words it spoke resounded with truth; I had known liars, I had known the sound of misleading tales spun insidiously before my very eyes, and that day, that venomous shriek was perfectly absent. Betrayal, abandonment, terrible experiments of an unknown goal and the seething rage and bottomless despair that accompanied it all; its eyes reflected back the horrors it had lived through – that blank stare, that absent gaze, I had known it, seen it within my friend’s expressions all too terribly often.

I narrowed my eyes, took one more sharpened look and listen around, then felt that danger had truly passed. I lowered my revolver away from us, put my thumb on the cocked hammer, then pulled the lightened trigger which allowed me to slowly release the tensioned mechanism. “No.”, I said as I holstered my weapon, “You’ve had every chance to kill me, and you didn’t. Furthermore, you saved my life, even though it was your actions that nearly got me killed.” The hunter’s eyes were set alight with relief as those words left my person, clearly as stunned by my mercy as I was at its own. “What’s your name? You’re more lucid than the others – some are just like animals – so I’d like to call you by something other than hunter.”

“… It’s uh… L-13.”

“L-13?”, I asked in slight confusion, “You lot don’t get numbers, what’s with that?”

She – I shall from now on refer to L-13 as a “she” due to her lucidity and womanly voice – simply shrugged, clearly having either forgotten, or never been told in the first place. It didn’t matter much to me, for I found it to be nought more than another oddity upon the pile of many. Perhaps it was a serial number, but one of this kind was certainly a new development.

I asked her to accompany me back to the corpse she and I had desecrated out of desperation, for I had some burial rites to conduct before I continued on. She agreed, and so we walked together, sharing in each other’s company. I felt that both of us were in desperate need of it. Her imposing stature, radiant warmth, intimidating light-array and admittedly off-putting fleshy features – things which terrified me only a little while ago – now brought comfort as she loomed over me, navigating the eerie silence together as a newly formed friendship brewed between us; my guardian against frost-death was now evermore on my side.

Finding friends in the wastes was easy: all who weren’t out to kill me directly, but to survive in peace as I did, were automatically on my side of the fight against the common enemy: death, be it frost or wear. United against the sleepless foe: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Thus, as she was peaceful, she counted among the many friendly acquaintances my travels often brought forth.

I asked her many questions, all of them in some way prodding at her past, though little knowledge was gained from them. She remembered that she was a teacher, but could not tell me where or what she taught. She remembered the names and personalities of her squad, but not where they had gone after her abandonment. This intrigued me; I pressed further into the mystery that was her – hopefully equally friendly – teammates, upon which she obliged: “Well, there was SCI-14. She was our leader and… well, she didn’t like me much. Told me I was weak, told me I was faulty, told me I was useless because I didn’t do whatever she wanted. She spoke Russian a lot, and her English was heavily accented, so I could barely even understand her half of the time.”

The topic of accents brings me to this brief intermission – and I apologize for doing so, for her lacking any clearly transcribed mannerisms of speech is entirely my fault. Her accent seemed strange to me: at first, I couldn’t possibly place it, for what appeared to me like the all too common American most of my kind spouted hid within it a twist I had scarcely heard. She couldn’t tell me of her past life in detail, so she equally could not explain her accent’s origin, which left me to contemplate without help. At first, all my mind could muster was the usual suspect: Australian, whose practitioners often pronounced “a’s”, “u’s” and “o’s” similarly as “ah’s”. (I would, for example, transcribe the word “mate” as “mahte”, “truck” as “trahck”, and “gold” as “gahld”.) While these phonetic transcriptions may look silly, when read aloud with that aforementioned accent, their oddity dissipates into the realm of immersion. I aim to deliver my experiences as authentically to you, dear reader, as I had borne witness to them myself. This, of course, includes conservation, in which I find my partner’s accent to be of the utmost charming importance.

This leads me back to L-13. During and immediately after our acquaintance had been established, I attempted – and failed – to place her unusual accent. Today, however, at the time of writing, which is not soon afterwards, I did it: she spoke common American with a slight tinge of New Zealand-ian – also colloquially known among those highly-educated few as “Kiwi” – mixed in.

L continued: “Then there was X-15. He was… excentric, to say the least. A sadist at heart, he puppeteered the people he killed, doing them up in weirdly dramatic and “alive-looking” poses with wire and rebar, or whatever he could find around. He also spoke with an obnoxiously fancy British accent – like yours, but higher class… no offense.”

“None taken. I take pride in my ways of speech. It feels more… authentic to me, if I had to define it concretely.”, I assured her, my thoughts soon dwelling on SCI-14’s even stranger naming scheme – machine-hunters were only ever provided with a single letter, ashen hair, and black clothes to differentiate themselves. It made me wonder ever tantalizingly of L-13 and her absent squad’s true origin, but of course L could provide no answers, so I asked no further questions. Thus, we walked along in silence as I was lost in thought, though I am sure she contemplated my origin just the same. She did not vocalize her intrigues, but I could see them in the quick, inconspicuous glances she often threw my way. But since no questions were asked, no answers were given; silence reigned supreme, and we simply enjoyed each other’s company. 

Chapter Text

We came to the silent body, whose hollowed-out wreckage I had looted to assure my own survival as I took the unfit clothing it bore – freed of ice from the boiling, tainted oil which had seeped into it – as the fuel of a blazing torch. The sight made me nauseous; I had never gotten over the sight of dead kin, especially of such grisly kind. Still, I fell onto my knees beside the cadaver, painted with its own, goopy oil the hollow sigil onto its visor, and recited the words:

“Ave, tenebre sol. Hunc puerum exspecta. Suscipiete benigne animan suam.”

“Wha- is… is that Latin?”, she ejected, bewildered at my solemn speech.

She startled me with her sudden excitement, for I had yet to get fully used to company; out of sheer reflex, my hand moved towards the grip of my gun, yet did not reach it before I stopped myself. “Yes. Prayers. Ritual rites which guide the souls of the fallen to the afterlife. Would you like to know what they say?”

“Oh, no need! I was a teacher before. Latin’s in my databank!”, L said, quickly staring off into space, “It’s uh… it’s…” In that moment, L’s eyes were flooded with distress. She was trying desperately to come up with a translation – any translation, no matter how small or inaccurate – searching through the boundless depths of her old memory banks like a madman with but one simple goal to spur her on: to look and search and rummage and discern until she found her prize, yet nothing but junk data and foreign code presented itself. She later told me that looking through her folders felt as if she was being watched, observed by the very intrusions which benignly took the place of treasured recollections. Unwanted auto-scanners observed me intently for signs of yellow light arrays and sharpened metal claws, for a stature befitting of a hunter, and the searing heat they exhumed. Nothing. I remained but a friendly face to her single eye’s impaired judgement.

Her heart sunk, I could see it. They had taken everything from her, turned her into what she was, tore away all they deemed unfit of the monster they twisted into existence. Her mind remained as mangled as her body’s wretched malformations – at least her code did not twitch. I wanted to comfort her, but I could not match the sorrow brewing within her. So, if only to distract her spiralling mind momentarily, I said:

“Hail, dark sun. Await this child. Kindly receive his soul.”

She looked at me expectantly.

“It’s the translation. A rough one, at least. Legend says the oracle spoke these words upon corpse of her dearest friend. That’s what the priests said, at least. None of us can actually speak Latin, and those few that can are forbidden from doing so.”

L seemed confused at this. Clearly she had never heard of the good church.

“I follow the faith of the black sun, whose great temple and miraculous oracle one finds in the blessed city of Berghardt, past the northern oceans, along the Iridium Ridge, near the foot of Tempest Peaks. We have spread the word of the good church far and wide, sending missionaries to outposts and satellite settlements, to industry and nomadic communities alike. We are everywhere in the north, intermittent and scattered here, near the equator, and sparse to non-existent in the southern lands where the weather is harsh, and resources are limited. I conduct these burial rites as a member of clergy, to allow this disturbed soul to once more partake in the blessed void of the black sun’s peaceful afterlife.”

“… What about the others?”, she curiously inquired, “Why don’t you pray for them?”

I had asked myself these questions before, soon consulting the clergy with worries they themselves had to translate from the oracle’s interpretive prophecies, and what they told me then was what I now relayed to L: “Because disturbing a body is a sin. Their souls are already on the path to the afterlife. They need only wait for the end, and they will find peace. I will serve penance when I am home. Thus it is decreed, thus I will follow.”

“Wait, penance? Like a punishment? That seems… bad. Why are you following this religion again?”

“The good church guides those who are lost, and brings them peace by assuring them of their fate. Prophecies foretell the coming of darkness: the black sun will consume all who wander the universe. We repent because we hope for peace when all comes to the inevitable end. We believe because the oracle speaks but the truth: she has successfully foretold the arrival of the lone kin, the landings of your kind – those who came from the stars – and the slaughter of our people at the hand of the machine-hunters. She has yet to be wrong, so who are we, us wretched kin, to doubt her?” I finished my prayer and stood up, holding out my hand as a sign of trust. “Come now,” I said, “I’ve a task to attend to. I need to cross the western mountains, record tales, myths, legends and stories, spread the word of the good church, then go back home in one piece.”

L found some semblance of recognition in my words. Yes, even machine-hunters like her knew deep within them the truth of the matter; the black sun laid dormant in the deepest trenches of her mind, swirling, festering unending. Her eyes spoke of understanding as if a divine revelation had been laid bare, been conclusively and irrefutably revealed to her unfit mind like the words of an unknown, yet innately interpreted language.

She grabbed my hand, finding comfort in my grounded vessel, then silently followed me through the city on my path to the looming mountains.

Chapter Text

We walked together for a good while; hours passed as if they were but minutes filled with light conversation, and nothing more. Descriptions of our surroundings, little recollections of past experiences, and my occasional prodding at her fragmented memory were what entertained us mostly. She seemed… absent, sometimes. I do not know just how much time had passed since she killed the scientists which made her into what she was, but I knew that it mustn’t’ve been long; I had made accidental acquaintance with her monstrous form only two days ago at the time. What truly caused this terrible shape to burst from her mere hunter’s body was a mystery to me, but I was scarcely eager to find out. Hunger, stress, fear, anger: all of these I had suspected as possible triggers, so I tried not to stir such emotions unreasonably.

“Hey,” L noted after a little stretch of peace, “I just realized, I never caught your name!”

“Oh?” I answered in turn, shocked at my forgetfulness, for we had accompanied each other by then for a good few hours, “Ugh, where are my manners?” I outstretched my hand, signalling for an introductory handshake “My name’s Shay Awenydd, member of the clergy of the church of the hollow sun, citizen of the blessed city of Berghardt, recordkeeper of the folkloric tales and legends which spring from the frostland’s inhabitants and, to you, a friend.” A warm smile drew across her face as she firmly shook my hand; equally warm was the rest of her radiant chassis, as was so often the case with machine-hunters.

“Awenydd? Does that mean anything?”, she inquired, upon which I answered: “Aye, ‘means “Poet” or “Soothsayer” in Welsh.” “Welsh!”, she exclaimed in delight, “I knew I recognized it! Gosh, how long has it been since I looked through those files?”, she laughed excitedly, though that giddy joy soon faded into a downtrodden stare. “…Doesn’t matter anyway…”, she mumbled with a gloomy voice, “It’s all gone…” I took immediate not of her sudden depressive demeanour, and patted her back with my hand in an attempt to comfort her. “It’s not your fault, L. None of this is.”, I said as we came to a stop, “I’ve known a few hunters in the past, talked to them, made friends with two or three, and none of them – and I mean none – had a say in what became of them. They all lost memories, they all lost friends and family, lost who they once were. But what they gained in this new life of theirs were memories they now treasure more than the ones they’d lost, and partnerships, even love, of greater worth than half-forgotten faces. Who you were in a life outlived may have made you, L, but what you are now bears no allegiance to the past. Let go of it. Be free of it. Find piece.”

The expression which then washed across her face like waves on a shore was undecided for a decent while; a mixture of sorrow, regret, anger, and eventual acceptance morphed her gaze into one of peace and turmoil alike. I knew I could not “fix” her, for a life as a hunter is inherently one of sorrow and sin, such as ours is one of hardship and toil, but I hoped that she may yet find solace in the knowledge that her life is not over, but simply headed on an untrodden path. She seemed resolute, thankful, so we left it at silence.

 “Wait-”, she blurted out almost involuntarily, “Shay, hold on. Hollow sun? Didn’t you say black sun earlier?” I let out a light chuckle: “Heh heh, yes, they’re more or less interchangeable. Officially we’re called the “Church of the Hollow Sun”, but most people just say black because it’s easier. And since the clergy doesn’t mind, neither do I. While yes, there is an etymological difference between the two, even the oracle’s Latin sometimes switches them up.” L nodded along in agreement, clearly indifferent to the intricacies of clerical naming schemes, for her question was born simply from the discrepancy in our conversations. I wasn’t much bothered, for I shared in her indifference; I knew the truth of the matter: naming divine concepts so foreign they bend the mind is futile and entirely meaningless. Be it hollow as a hole in space, be it black as the gaping maw of a cave, it did not matter in the end, for it was coming, and it was forgiving, and it was kind.

“Shay, you don’t seem all that bothered with… well, this…” L gestured broadly at herself, made visibly uncomfortable at the sight of the grotesque growths and malformations which covered her form. “…Well,” I answered, “I wouldn’t say I’ve seen worse, but you’re also not as special as you think you are. Machine-hunters have been long known to defy mechanical designs in favour of fleshy interiors.  I admit, the growths you sport are new to me, but they don’t seem to affect you, so I assume they’re benign. That dreadful eye on the back of your hand does, I regret to say, terrify me to no end, but other than that…” A curious thought crossed my mind, one I almost dared not to vocalize: “…Say, can you actually see out of that thing?”

L, seemingly as intrigued by this innocent inquiry as I was, waved her hand around and concentrated deeply on any possible video signals originating from the great eye. “…No, nothing.”, she said, audibly disappointed. It was a long shot, for I hadn’t seriously expected a twitching, orange eye to be compatible with computer hardware. My thought processes soon fixated on the light array upon her ashen-white head. I asked her if they still worked, for they each sported pupils like the eyeball in her hand. She sighed, clearly woeful of them: “Yeah, but they feel different. There’s more stuff now, more than there was before.” I beckoned for further explanation. “It’s more of a feeling than anything else. When I first saw you – when that thing was chasing after you – I couldn’t really make you out in detail. Your size and black coat were all that I had to go off of, and even then, my own size was skewing even that. So it felt both affirming and wrong chasing after you. When I saw you that second time in the open street, almost dead, I finally saw that you were a worker. And strangely, that made me calmer. I used to get excited to hunt at the sight of a drone, even if I rarely killed anyone without needing to. It felt so… strange, so… liberating. In a way, it’s actually helped me.”

I was glad that at least some good had come from her unfortunate experience as much as I was glad that it likely prevented my death. I wonder why these drones – which I had never seen, though I trusted her tale – had conducted these experiments on her in the first place. These awful growths of muscle-like flesh and twitching, insect-like mandibles are unlike anything I have ever seen. Surely simply killing a hunter, especially one on the brink of death, ought to have been more convenient than whatever result they attempted to hew from her. It cost them their lives, but I understand why they conducted them out here, in secret: such heretical experiments would’ve ended similarly if tried under the watchful eye of the clergy.

But, perhaps they had gotten closer to their goal than both of us had imagined. I ruminate now on what L told me: that the sight of my worker drone stature felt calming, rather than the expected instinctual excitement inherent to a hunter’s code. I suspect as I write this that these unseen, sadistic torturers attempted to change her nature from a hunter against drone-kind, to one against her own – a machine-hunter hunter. Rewriting lines of personality- and task-code were easy enough all things considered, so such methods wouldn’t be out of the question by any means. This would explain her fragmented memory and other incongruencies, but not why her “modifications” were insect themed.

We had left the city behind us. For two days, we trod the untrodden path to the base of the mountain pass to which I was headed. L asked me how exactly I knew where to go, so I pulled her close and pointed at the approaching range, explaining: “D’you see those two mountains there? The ones that are the same height?” L nodded after a short examination. “Those are the “Twin Peaks”. The man who revealed the passage to me – a grizzled pilgrim – told me to look between them, then travel southward along the edge of the forest until I come to a clearing between the trees. It used to be a road, but the cataclysm messed it up proper, became nothing more than a tree-tunnel footpath.”

“How’d did that guy find out about it? You said he was a pilgrim?”, L asked.

“Aye, there was a pilgrimage route through this way some years ago, but that was before my time. Poor recordkeeping and the work of machine-hunters left us without proper maps or charts. It’s the reason I’m relying on this old thing.”, I said, removing the outdated map from my satchel. I showed it to her, pointing at various inaccuracies I could demonstrate at the moment: “The obvious one is the city. See? It’s not even there. I don’t know when this map was made, but rest assured it’s ancient. Another one is the passage. It’s supposed to be an asphalted road, but it’s also not there. Sure, it was small and seldom travelled, but I’ve seen maps with footpaths marked on them. It’s awful, but this is all we have!”

“Awgh, that sucks. I’m sorry, I guess? I probably killed a few of those pilgrims you talked about.” She apologized, but I was doubtful of her assumption: “When’d you drop?”, I asked. “I dunno, a few years ago? I didn’t keep count.”, she answered. “Then no, you didn’t. The last people to wander this way left two decades ago. It became too dangerous with the arrival of the hunters, especially since a great deal of them landed near the equator.” L was relieved at this. I assume she felt terrible if it were the case, for it was obvious she disliked killing. A life as an unwilling hunter is a terrible one; killing for survival when the sight of corpses and the weight of one’s conscience weighs heavily on one’s back I imagine is nothing short of torture.

The thought awakened within me questions about her future: “L, I’m curious, what will you do after we get to the path? I can’t imagine you’ll accompany all this time, since I’ve not enough oil to keep you going. Do you have somewhere to go?”

“…No, not really.”, she admitted in uncertainty, “I guess I’ll just… stay here? The city’s full of dead workers, so I’ll survive on them for a few years if I’m conservative. But other than that? I guess I’m just gonna hang around.”

Picturing this scenario deeply saddened me; I had made a great friend out of L, and the knowledge of her wasting away in a desolate place such as this would scarcely let me sleep at night. I knew something had to be done. I could not leave her here without a chance at a better life. I got her attention, took out my journal and said to her as I wrote: “I, Shay Awenydd, representative of the Church of the Hollow Sun hereby declare you, Serial Designation L-13 an honorary member of clergy. With this pass bearing my signature, you may enter the blessed city of Berghardt, repent your sins against the living and dead alike, and live freely among us as one of our own.” I placed my swung signature at the bottom of the page and ripped it from its binding, handing it to her bewildered shape. “I-… Shay I-”, she stuttered, “I don’t know what to say.”

I pulled L close and pointed eastward: “Look. Drain some fresh oil from a few bodies, bottle it, and take with you as much as you can carry. Head dead east until you reach Point Gizmo – it’s a huge radio tower, impossible to miss. It’s a good three weeks of foot travel away from here, so, assuming you can fly, it should take you a day or two, give or take. When you’re there: wait. A trade convoy should head through that way every few weeks. When you see them, lift your arms up and shout the words “Ave, tenebre sol.” They will calm down and ask you to state your intentions. Tell them I sent you, then show them the pass. If everything goes well, they should provide you with oil and take you back to Berghardt.”

L reread the pass a dozen times, unable to formulate even a sentence to save her life. Hesitation clouded her resolve; I could see it. I assured her: “You won’t be alone. A handful of hunters already live in our city, I’m sure to come visit you when I get back.”

Silence deafened the plane as she stared at the paper. Her eyes turned to me after a little while, soon embracing me as she did when she saved my life only a few days ago and shakingly uttered the words:

“Thank you.”

Chapter Text

I sit now within a clearing of the forest which encompasses the mountain pass, looking outward at the unmarked city which had nearly spelled my doom, though had also equally saved my life. Upon the line of disturbed snow which my companion and I had drawn, a thin line now shambles along it – though my ocular sensors are subpar and slightly mis-calibrated, I can make out the ever-present faint yellow glow which emanates from my solemn companion. It seems to me from my vantage point that she is yet undecided of her own fate; hesitation nagged at her when we parted ways in great spirits. I am happy to have made her acquaintance and hope to one day see her again in the familiar streets of Berghardt, for she, serial designation L-13, had not only saved my life, but incalculably enriched my supposedly standard journey which now reaches not its conclusion, but only its mere second hurdle. The story I have now conclusively noted down – which you, dear reader, have thus far partaken in – I fear will overshadow the actual goal of my mission, which I have yet to properly reach. The anxieties which have thus far nagged at me become harder to ignore by the second; what if nobody actually lives beyond these mountains? Or rather, what if their populations are spread too sparsely for me to properly examine? These communities hadn’t properly been traded with in nearly two decades, so I estimate their chances of survival without fresh Berghardt-ian drone-oil to supplement their needs to be slim. I fear that I will find nought but silence and drained corpses when I reach the landscapes beyond. Hopefully, if such is the case, I will be relieved of the other, greater worries which ceaselessly occupy my mind.

I remember now as I sift through my memory banks and audio logs L’s mention of her squad. They had abandoned her, left her for dead, and then travelled somewhere, presumably together. Although they count a measly two, the presence of a pair of machine-hunters, especially of such unusual making, is scarcely overlooked; I think back to the first landings, to the unforgettable emptiness in people’s eyes as they counted the days until they, too, would be taken away in the night by an unseen terror, joining their loved ones which had disappeared unnoticed to the tune of the reaper’s silent mow-step. Where they ought to have gone in the meantime is now the burning question which leaves me dreading the rest of my travels; To the North lies but the shores of the great northern ocean plains, impossible for an unprepared machine-hunter to cross. East- and Southward lie settlements along our trading routes, though all of them lie weeks of foot-travel away. While such a journey is possible for a hunter if flown, their arrival ought to have caused an unignorable stir – such urgent news travels at blazing speed to the town criers of Berghardt, and, if such a scenario were to have occurred, I ought to have gotten word of it either before I had set off, or at the latest upon my stop at the Rig in the Ice.

All that remains now is either their deserved death, or the possibility of my own; the unmarked city still lies in view, and the mountains appear scalable enough by foot, so winged flight ought to make quick work of them. The constant dread of making unwilling acquaintance with the rest of L’s uncaring partners now presents itself before me. I intimately know my luck, and loathe my awful recklessness as the mere imagining of curiosities-to-be-written-down glazes over my eyes in a layer of perilously lacking self-preservation.

I am tempted to turn back, cut my losses, return to my home empty handed if only to assuredly make it back at all. But I know that I would never forgive myself. I know that I, in my infinite wisdom, would be unable to bear the weight of this incomplete task, unthinkingly setting off into a journey akin to this one, though terribly underprepared. My chances of making it across the pass, noting down some folklore while avoiding the gaze of the – almost certainly present – machine-hunters, then setting my course homeward-bound are higher than they will ever be, lest I be accompanied by a party of venatores.

Still, worry poisons me.

I will write again when I reach the western foot of the mountains.