Fanwork##934 Words
Totally Not a Dune Reference
Surveillance of the surrounding area had finished early. Advance was quiet, calculated to leave no openings to escape. No attempt had been made; speculation that the target had fled before arrival was increasingly probably.
Fifty-two tin-coated agents halted their formation, gazing afield with eyes glowing first red, then silver, then an impossible anti-radiant darkness. Steps became silent, now advancing sinuously over the open plains-equivalent, steps light across the thin snow-drifts that the False Moon had placed in their way less than twenty minutes ago.
An altercation had been acknowledged and measured. The first trap had failed, a sign of intelligent opposition. Outsiders on the attack. Their purpose was unknown; the penalty for trespassing was not. An army would be too much to deploy: reserves were needed to protect the rear and flanks, where the largest number of vaults and catacombs lay undisturbed since...
Unknown. Activation 1.0000000 was before time-telling processes were enabled. Only the librarians held that knowledge, and they were indisposed. Possibly dead, if unaided diagnostics could be trusted.
The grass beneath their metallic, rune-shod hooves was thin and whispy like mycelium. In reality, it grew its roots upward to feast upon the gloaming, when the baleful starlight was at its weakest. The dirt was without exception fallow.
Surveillance of the surrounding area would be repeated shortly. Advance had halted, but the scouts were leaving a trail that would stabilize the way forward. An army could march down it, should spec-ops not be able to lance the infection without casualty.
Whispers in the mechanics' tongue were audible nearby. Noise data, to be reported as 'louder than usual'. It was...
Unknown. Content of sense data incompatible with current role data. Similarity to librarian profile noted. Questions were not this unit's purpose. Combat, surveillance, battlefield utility; without fail, now and forever.
This confirmed the target was still present; worse, he had found new armaments. Vaults nearby were empty, used only as bait to trap invaders. Efforts to strip remains of dangerous weapons were not always successful; submit request for investigation at a later date.
Time for musing was ending now. Eyepieces flickered white, then white-slashed violet, then a dull and callous grey. Life support protocols ceased, flesh-based biology unable to withstand the pressure of initiating combat protocols. Manual defibrillation and stem-cell deployment followed, resuscitation taking minutes to complete. A crimson semi-circle opened up across the visor of the first to return to life.
Surveillance of the surrounding area had shown no evidence of a trap. Advance would continue apace, possibility of misdirection accounted for with flanking forces. Combat protocols were unerring, even against Temple-adapted life.
The grip-rune flared, the wave-rune contracted, and at their delta point a blade emerged. Fifty-one compatriots and he moved at once, subtlety abandoned. They roared unearthly, charging towards the target's hiding place, a pillar of stone and dead flesh decorated with armor-plates looted from their kin.
Energy pulsed uncontrollably, reducing grass to puffs of dust with every step. Joints negated air drag by phasing through it entirely. Blades hissed with conceptual venom, promising total annihilation through the bars of their material cages.
Time slowed to a crawl. Rank-based defenses were acknowledged, known parameters engaged. Ruin-power tore holes in the Pressure, forcing space and time back into order. Visible by his Artifact cloak, the target stood atop his makeshift fortress. He was hard to see, the Pressure thicker in his presence, harder to counter and easier to reassert. But it could be seen he was maimed, one-armed and one-eyed. The mechanics would have little to work with.
Raising that one arm up, sword of Artifact make in hand, he proclaimed some thing in a human language. His Ring blazed with light, countermanding their runes but not their swords. It would do nothing. The attack continued, reaching his walls and preparing to fell the great structure with one coordinated blow.
Then the ground shook. All of it, all at once: steady and ceaseless, more like the pull of a pendulum than a tectonic reaction. A roar broke through the Pressure, echoing boundless and terribly, and shattered their runic projections like glass struck with a sledgehammer. The protocol-swords remained, dead but dreaming forms undaunted by their forsaken masks. Unliving vengeance took hold, impossible speed and balance holding them aloft.
The man uttered a second phrase, unknown to them in shape or meaning. Except...
Unknown. Unknown. Unknown. Root corruption detected. Unable to filter, shutdown procedure disabled.
"I am Lord Hunger, master of Wurmrest Tower! You want it? Come and get it!"
Behind him took hold a ghostly shape, that of a grand soil-churner; a predator and grotesque monster that preyed upon anything and everything it saw. It seemed to coil behind him, a motion palpably alien to its natural behavior. In the moment before the end, realization as to the tower's origin dawned upon the advance wave, the wurm's silhouette a perfect match to the shape and texture of the tower itself, despite its own much greater size.
In one clean motion the Lord Hunger, Master of Wurmrest Tower pointed his sword-arm down towards the stunned and sluggish force, Ring glaring a fearsome greenish-black. The worm's spirit rose to its full height, mouth gaping with veritable fields of razors larger than its master's own body. Then it descended, like a thunderclap in an echo chamber. There was no logical explanation for its presence; it was not of the False Moon, nor a runic projection, nor a living thing. But it killed them all the same, light of their swords going out with their first screams of pure, unbridled terror.
