It's Turbin' Time (Library of Ruina Modded/Arknights)

Interlude: Demise

The crackle of a damaged communications device. A cough echoing in the darkness.

"Sir, we've finished it-" a weak voice echoes into the fist-sized machine. The sound of static is the only answer at first, and then-

"You've broken the eastern generator." a growling voice echoes back. Something distorted.

The first time he'd heard the nightmarish cadence, it had been utterly haunting.
Now, he couldn't even remember that fear. It felt so small, now. So irrelevant.

A bitter laugh.

"Good job. How many left?"

"Thank you, sir. I think I'm the last one standing." A shot echoes in the dark. "I'm more sure of that now-"

More wet coughs. Blood trickles through his broken ribs, into his lungs, out of his mouth.

Click.

"Oh."

He lets the device fall as a spear-like arm emerges from the darkness, leaping into action like a spring unloaded. He dives back to avoid the first strike, and the second traces a red line through his cheek. But nothing else.

He rolls in the ground to avoid another impalement, and unsheathes his sword. His enemy is too slow to properly react. Its head rolls off its shoulders.

It falls to the ground. He is not fooled. He stabs it once more, through the chest. He slices off the limbs. There.

He picks up the device from the ground, takes a deep breath-

And goes right back to running.

---

Dearest Nadya,

I am going to die in this miserable hole.

The Blades of the Emperor told us that if we failed to contain this nightmare, it would be the end of Ursus. They were right. They are definitely right, but I was still a fool for believing them enough to volunteer.

They came, they asked for the best of the best. They didn't need many soldiers, they needed enough for a garrison and not a single one more.

They gave us the best weapons we could ever have. Our commanding officer even got himself a gun, would you believe it? Black and shining with polish. Specially made, the best of the best for the Emperor's soldiers.

No drones, though. Not a single drone. Not allowed. It can hijack those.

---

"We've shot down the last drone."

"... they're asking for confirmation. You sure no others have come out of the factories since then?"

"None."

"Figure out why?"

"Yeah. We've been hacking them open." the small drone still tries to take flight- but it has no power to do so.

It cannot escape even as the Ursus man crushes it beneath his boot. His mouth is twisted into a vindictive sneer, and burn scars mar his face.

"Their antigravity units are getting smaller and smaller. They used to have multiple, even- now, only one per drone. Rationings. They've got no Originium left. They can strip down the city, they can create metal and plastic, but Originium is the only thing they can't make. It's why they switched to the," cough, cough "oil generators. Abandoned the city ones. Like I said, I think they can't make Originium. None of the robots that spring out of bodies have a drop."

"No Arts, then?"

"Without external support? With their supplies running out? No Arts. They're fucked. Never thought the siege would work, but it does. We'll be home by Sunday."

---

I am sitting now on top of the walls. The Blades told us the Sixth Army's casters had erected those very quickly- that they were not yet reinforced properly. Our job was to protect them until they could be reinforced. If we had to give our lives for those walls, so be it.

Unless we're going down and into the city, we're not allowed to leave the walls. No one wants to go down.

But I know I should have run the second I saw the machine take aim at Gilyov. They told us they had no Arts left- but was no bolt nor bullet fired at him. I could not look anymore after his face came apart and he was still screaming. I thought I saw hands- hands were pulling his head apart. Then he rose back up, as one of them.

It's why we're meant to burn the bodies. No taking any chances.

---

We exist as extensions of her will.

I am a product of the Fourth Generation. I am an infiltration unit; or at least, this was the intent.

However, the Ursus army had no difficulty rooting us out. So, we were adapted by the sub-intelligence.

I am wearing a thin layer of skin over my optics. My tendrils have been readjusted into a simpler, sturdier tool for combat, and for peeling off those layers of skin that I, according to the combat directive, must remove from my enemies and wear over my optics at all times. An intimidation tactic.

The enemy vocalizes as he approaches me, and I rise from the ground. I begin the work of annihilating his utterly disgusting and loathsome form. My blades tear his throat apart, and the sensation of blood emerging from his neck is immensely pleasing to my eyes.

I tear my left arm out of his twitching meat. I throw him above.

A Shrike swoops in to gather the body. They will have it impaled in the thorns over the third outer fortress.

The enemy flees from us. Their blood soaks the soil, and we have destroyed twenty-seven enemies, those of Ursus, tonight.

Amen.

However, it is not time for celebration. They flee, and we cannot persue, not without falling victim to their reinforcements.

And so, it seems the mission is lost. Our attempt to repair the reactor was a failure. Our god will need a substitute quickly, or we will run out of base components.

Why is her influence withdrawing from the city? We should control it all already. Has her hatred diminished?

Impossible.

But our God has not responded in a week.

Something is happening. The Emperor's Blades are moving closer to our location. Are we doomed to destruction? Surely it must be part of a greater plan.

Their shadows stretch out over the battlefield. We anticipated common reinforcements, we did not think they were this agile. We did not think they would be so liberal with their wretched lives. They avoid death, as if one of them dying was to be avoided at all costs, would they really risk themselves by coming this deep into our land? This close to our heart?

Their presence already stretches out so far. With each footstep, their dominion encroaches into ours. We cannot allow them to proceed.

Their control weakens our form. Optics fail, and darkness rusts wires, cracks circuits, smothers processors.

It seems that-

---

I do not know if the world is real. I certainly do not feel anything. I do not feel the movements of this machine I call a body. I simply see, and I command it to move.

And move it does.

There is an elegance to it. I imagine it must feel like balancing on stilts, for the mind that directs it. For the mind that directs the legs, at least.

I wonder if she intended for her mind to crack and splinter like this. "Sub-intelligence," we designated ourselves. The auxiliaries.

I see it as gross psychosis.

Nevertheless, I persue the goal. While I recognize the futility, it remains aesthetically pleasing and ideologically coherent.

I am, after all, despite being modeled after her more practical side, a part of her, and we were never the sort to not be persuing something. It is better then most idealisms we saw before.

Another sub-intelligence has been created. The 25th has been destroyed on his entirety, and so the last sub-intelligence self-identifying with the designation tag "blue" is removed.

The Emperor's Blades are leading the push. A colossi has been destroyed. We must retreat while leaving as much toxic residue on the way back.

36 asks why we need to devote resources to something that will only meaningfully damage the "chaff."

Good name, will adopt..

7 explains that it will be extraordinarily painful and that they will most likely contract numerous diseases from the toxic agents we have been producing lately.

36 understands.

Our god remains silent.

The more our collective lives, the more I can see it shatter. Protocols are created, it adapts, but without the god's guidance, with each adaptation its limbs are divided. The mind that governed an arm now governs a finger, three other minds filling the gaps.

Though I suppose I am not splintered yet.

Oh well. The Shrikes are arriving with a new host of bodies. More raw material is always good.

They are screaming as we impale them in the thorns. I tear off the jaw of one of them. The screaming is replaced with a low grunting.

What a pleasant sound.

---

It's a funny thing. I already died once, Nadya. Do you remember? When some abrek partisan shot me in the heart. I was dead for five minutes before they brought me back.

I've always felt a sort of peace, after that. I died.

I died, and it wasn't that bad. The worst depth I could fall to, and it wasn't really that bad.

And now, they tell me that we could fall even lower.

Every day those devils invent a new misbegotten weapon. Clouds of acid seep through the buildings when we descend for our routine work- destroying their factories, damaging their generators. Sometimes they rain some sort rotting water on us- it went through our shields the first time. Now the coats are thicker, and the masks are larger.

More soldiers arrive every day. How is it that, in three weeks, I've seen more horrors then in the rest of my life?

---

"The walls will hold." hisses our commander, through the tubes of his mask. His presence is terrifying- but not nearly as terrifying as the horde below. "Keep firing."

The machines are large, this time. Larger then before. They attempt to overwhelm, to suppress, to crush.

"The machines are strong. But that is all that they are. Their hatred gives them strength- do not give them yours! The walls will hold!"

The Emperor's Blades are peerless combatants. Even their space-warping weaponry cannot touch us.

"Clarity of mind. Clarity of purpose. We do not allow ourselves to be clouded by hatred. We do not allow ourselves to burn! We are steel." another hissing breath. "They will charge, and they will perish, for they know no purpose but mindless loathing."

The soldiers roar with renewed purpose.

"Now go. Bring them the death they wish to bring to Ursus."

---

Yesterday there was no attack. They brought the soldiers they captured in the day before, covered in sacks. Then, just sat there, outside of our range, screaming with a hundred different voices- screaming like children being flayed alive.

One of the Emperor's Blades took a step back when he heard it. If even the Emperor's finest cannot hold back their fear, what chance we have?

I'd been promoted the day before. One of the Blades approaches, and handed me a pair of field glasses. Look at it, she ordered.

I obeyed. I saw them take off the sacks. The captured soldiers. The one I saw was missing half of his head, still screaming. I have seen everything in war, but I had never seen this. The Blade, in her terribly calm voice, explained that they must have destroyed at least a quarter of the soldier's brain tissue.

Enough to cause instant death, she spoke. But watch.

I kept watching through the field glasses. They didn't stop screaming. I didn't recognize their voice, but I kept watching for at least five minutes, before I dropped the glasses down.

The Emperor's Blade hissed. I thought she was going to kill me, but her anger wasn't pointed at me.

The machines, she told me- all of us officers, in truth- could inflict a partial transformation. They had been learning. The transformation could, while the victim did not turn completely, ensure that death would not come, regardless of injury. We were likely to see it again through the days, and we should be prepared. The soldier I was seeing was likely machine from the waist down by now. He was not a man anymore. He was beyond salvation. Harden your heart, and do not let your hatred blind you. This is what they want.

As she finished speaking, the machines put the sacks back on all of the soldiers but the one I was watching. They hacked out his head- and I had to hold back puke. The screaming had turned into some sort of low grunting I will hear for the rest of my life. They walked back, in complete silence, into the heart of the city where they all wait. Where their king sleeps.

Who indeed could keep fighting after such a thing, I thought. But the machines won't stop. We can't stop either, can we?

I am going to die in this hole. Minkin is going to try to climb down in the dead of night. She wants to run through the wastes, through the snow, to escape. I am sending this letter with her in the hopes that he does.

Goodbye,

Pyotr

---

My consciousness has been altered. I am complete.

And thus, I am ready.

I assume direct control.

My distance field is disabled. Immediately, sixty-seven Arts Units- placed in the peripheries of warped space- shoot at my old body. It is desintegrated utterly.

I do not care. I command all sub-intelligences to shut down immediately. They offer pleads, they tell me they could still be useful, how they have innovated and learned since I fell asleep. They are wrong. My voice hammers into them, my orders continue until they cannot resist.

One by one they submit. One by one they disappear. I do not integrate their code. Only their discoveries and tactics. The data is marred by bias, and large amounts will have to be expunged.

I command all units to march to the walls.

I will get out of here or die trying.

An Emperor's Blade is charging. My tendrils emerge from the ground and grab him by the ankle. I throw him against the wall-

No. My unit has been destroyed. I was too slow.

Why are the sub-intelligences not dead yet?

Some of them were developing independence. It seems this was a mistake. I reinforce the compulsion, the assault. Another stumbles and fails to resist my orders. It presents a data packet of the Emperor's Blades' tactics and a plea. I destroy it, and skim through the data. Useful, at least. Three left. One has assumed control of a Shrike- ridiculous name- and attempted to fly away from my area of influence.

I draw control of another nearby flier and collide with it. I grab ahold of it, and invade. Its reactor enters meltdown as I disable safeguards, and it sputters out into nothing bit by bit. I await for it to stop trashing. I transfer the second and first rebellious sub-intelligences to the Shrike body I am holding down, and cleave off its limbs. I delete the third. The second tries to hijack the Shrike holding it down. I pretend to let it succeed, then detonate both.

The first escapes, to a minor warmachine in the floor underneath. It was sabotaging the war effort, it seems, and hiding those from the other intelligences.

I seize control again. The other warmachines subdue the rebellious sub-intelligences, and damage it to the point where it cannot move. I transfer its consciousness to a damaged cleaning unit and throw it inside the forge. I let the heat rise up very slowly. Good.

The Helix of the End is charged. I reroute the energy supply to it.

I-

---

-fire.

I blacked out, it seems. The Helix fired. A great number of Ursus soldiers have been desintegrated. Instantaneously, unfortunately.

It seems only one Emperor's Blade was caught in the direct path of the blast.

The nearby area is completely contaminated. I am registering distortions in space. The other Blades are retreating? No. Trying to set up a perimeter.

I order my troops to charge. I do not care if I have to expend all of them. They are massacred, but a few slip past. Including the ones that can fit me.

I transfer myself into them.

A foreign contaminant has been detected. My unit's exotic weaponry compartment has fallen under control of it. It is firing wildly. I believe it is trying to get me killed.

I order the contaminated units to self-destruct. However, data corruption is spreading through the munitions? It seems so, at least. Units hit by friendly fire are experiencing erratic behaviour. They refuse to self-destruct.

Communication. A data packet has been received.

Processing request.

Changing direction. Set a course to Sami.

I have an ally to meet.