Caius ran across the desert of ash and grey. He did not stop or slow even through he had run longer and harder than he had ever managed in his life.
He feet were a blur beneath him, barely touching the ground before springing onto the next step. Sometimes to break up the monotony he sprang forward covering great gulps of distance in wild jumps. On and on he ran leaving the factory and those who would soon hunt him far behind.
His world became a blurred mesh of grey. He was sprinting without stopping yet he wasn't tired wasn't sweating or sore in the slightest his muscles didn't burn. The only sign that he had exerted himself was a growing emptiness in his gut, a hunger that gnawed at his insides.
He knew that if he stopped, if he slowed and was found by those behind he would be killed. He had to reach a place where he could hide and be safe. A place where he could fill the pit growing within him.
He reached an edge to the desert a break in the endless grey wastes, the buildings were sot stained black, chimneys belching black smoke. It was perfect. Moving more like an animal than a man Caius scrambled up the first wall and slipped amidst the building's down narrow streets. His hunger was starting to border on pain now a raw thought twisting ache in his guts.
He saw a laborer, not so different to those that worked his shift and imagined leaping on the man, crushing his skull with a single hammer blow and then dragging the kill off somewhere dark and quiet to feed. Saliva dripped from his mouth at the imagined taste of dead flesh marinated in years of struggle and toxins.
Caius shook himself banishing the hunger touched images> He wasn't a cannibal wasn't a monster despite the transformation that he had undergone. Ignoring the hunger he slipped into the complex and found a niche amidst a network of pipes that would be difficult for anyone larger than him to get to and curled up to sleep.
It was dark, there were no stars in the sky no light of any sort to be found above.
Caius floated above a green black ocean, the ocean was oil and ash lit by flickering candle flames floating on its surface. They seemed so small against the sea of industry and history yet Caius knew in his bones they were important. They had value even if it was not seen or recognized.
Something was beside him, a glow of a brighter light not tied to the ocean of oil but not of him. The other light drew in on itself and before Caius eyes bone and muscle, skin and hair formed layer by layer until a strange creature hung next to him.
It was small barely coming up to Caius's knee, with four legs, a coat of red white fur, pointed ears and a bushy tail. Its eyes were the same green as Caius's own now where and they betrayed intelligence. The creature cocked its head and spoke in a voice soft and female.
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"Welcome home, good hunter. What can this humble servant do for you?"
Caius's stomach growled and the ache of the hunger reared its head.
The creature seemed to take this as a answer and walked on the empty air/void down towards the ocean and Caius was compelled to follow. It spoke as it walked soft words seemongly to itself.
"Yes, yes you must feed, you have expended a good deal of energy. You need a full meal of emotion to regain your strength. This forge of machines and making hardly lacks for raw material but you always had a particular pallet hunter."
The creature alights on the ocean and stands as if it were solid ground. It examines the lights around it carefully then picks and snatch's one in its jaws. The red furred animal, it's jaws lit by light, returns to Caius's feet and presents its find to him.
"Hmm this should sate you, a nice mix of the raw stuff and lighter illusions. The dreaming soul of one of those Tech-priest's, take your fill oh Unchaste Hunter and may your strength return."
Caius touched the light and the world around him began to change. From the void and the ocean sprang numbers and symbols that Caius could only begin to describe. The symbols spread and replicated falling like rain drops and rising like smoke, gathering together into larger shapes all centered on the candle-flame of light presented to Caius.
The shapes have color and texture Caius finds himself in something he vaguely recognizes as a hospital - or a nightmare version of one. There were blanks screens and monitoring equipment. There were beds and examination tables.
There was also a headless, armless body, hanging from the wall, with its insides spilling out and its spine gleaming white. The arms were pinned to the floor with needles, with the skin cut open and pinned aside and the muscles unwound from their bone framework.
On a table next to it, there was the head the skull was cut open and the brains were set on a pedestal, still attached to the head by the veins and and metallic wires.
The eyes were optics the mouth and nose covered by a breathing apparatus identical to the one that had covered Caius's lower face. To the left was another body cut open like for autopsy on an examination table, this body bore more visible augmentations. The arm's missing on the first body were here replaced by cybernetic limbs wired into flesh and bone. A control console with blinking lights protruded from the bodies stomach.
There was a third body, and a fourth, and a fifth - each more and more heavily augmented. The crown jewel though, was the body in the enormous glass tube that lay at the end of the row. This one was was a pure machine with no visible flesh anywhere. It floated in the tube's fluid a red cloak draped around it.
Caius knew he was looking at the form of a Techpriest.
Sitting before the tube and somehow at the center of this place was a young man with optics for eyes, head shaved bald, breathing mask firmly in place. He was the same person whose body lay in several places across the room. He was looking up at the finished all mechanical form and was so still Caius might have mistaken him for a statute if he was not breathing.
"Is this what I want to become?" the young man asked himself reaching out and not quite touching the glass of the tube. "Is this how far I am willing to go in service to The Machine Spirit?"
