Zelsys continued to prepare, pouring the overwhelming majority of her power output into Thundercannon and the assembly of Fang Rippers revolving in front of it. They had been merely spinning before as they normally would, but the more power she poured in, the more violent their revolutions became. They were no longer recognizable as collections of blades, but as shining rings of white-blue death, each having a number of notches equal to its number of Fangs.
The Six-legged Revenant had regenerated by now, and was once more coming after Zero. The machine reached out, and its arms, in defiance of mechanical limitations, extended out to grasp the two Fang Spears Zel had sent over. With the motion of their return to normal, Zero's arms also subsumed both Fang Spears, replacing the old pilebunker rods. Zero vanished from its place with a sonic boom, smashing into the Six-legged Revenant. Shockwaves erupted from their clash, only for Zero to fire its pilebunkers and obliterate two of the Six-legged Revenant's arms. The machine proceeded to vanish yet again, blasting itself to the side and behind the Six-legged Revenant. Floating right behind the Revenant even as it tried to turn to face Zero, Zero blew apart the Six-legged Revenant's torso with a rapid sequence of pilebunker strikes. While this took place, Zero also resumed firing on the Sacrificial Revenant. Zero's aura-wreathed slugs now tore into their target with full force, ripping chunks off of the aura construct with each shot. It was no longer just annoying enough to get its attention; instead, Zero was harming the Sacrificial Revenant badly enough to force it to go on the defensive.
EVOLVED PROTOTYPE
GORE-DRINKING VICTORY DEMON
ULTRA-HIGH-PERFORMANCE ONE-MAN TANK
UOT-014-02 BLOODY ZERO G-3 REFIT -DELIMIT PILOT FUSION-
By only a hair's breadth, Strake managed to distinguish what was himself, and what was Zero... But that line had grown so thin and blurry it may as well not be there. Any sense of pain was gone, there was only heat, drive, and Zero's endless fury, growing in intensity just as quickly as the engine's power output.
Strake had already thought of himself as a dead man walking. This was as good a place to die as any. Were his head clear, he would've scoffed at that idea. It wasn't. He thought it was, but it wasn't.
A screaming, flaming wrecking ball, zipping around at speeds that would kill any pilot. Zero had already been monstrous, barely fitting the description of "war machine", but that term couldn't even partly apply to it at this point. In every sense of the word, Strake and Zero had collectively merged to reach the transcendent point where an entity could no longer be impeded by mortal strength. Zelsys had noticed it many times throughout her short life, and though she wasn't quite sure where the demarcation line laid, she knew it when she saw it. It was one thing to be stronger and tougher than any single normal human, to wield a giant slab of metal like it was a sword - normal field cannons could still put someone like that down. Someone like that was still human.
Strake had just taken the final step on the tenuous path between man and something more - something beyond human, or perhaps inhuman, just like Zel's invocation of the Living Storm at Ubul's Tomb. The question was whether he could come back from his tribulation.
Wasting not a single moment after dispatching the Six-legged, Zero blasted up into the air, rocketing towards the Sacrificial Revenant while still firing its cannon. The weapon ran out of ammunition halfway through the flight. Zero's arms shot out, growing countless additional forearm segments to reach their prey, swinging the Revenant around as Zero flew. With thunderous force, the two collided, and a gale-force shockwave washed over the rooftops. Like a python, Zero squeezed and squeezed, but the Revenant wouldn't budge, so the machine instead unwound its arms and swung the aura monstrosity into the ground before flying down towards it. While Zero's left arm remained lengthened to that absurd degree its right snapped back to normal with a thunderclap. Even the left began rapidly shortening as Zero closed the distance, remaining always just long enough to keep the Revenant pinned in the crater which its impact had created.
Zero's landing was an explosion of gore, flames, rubble and aura.
Nothing remained of the Revenant, besides the hyperdense sacrificial aura which had given it form. It scattered through the cloud, wailing wraiths flying out, only to be sucked in. The dust cleared, revealing Zero standing, legs wide, arms dangling from snapped joints... With its frontal armor gaping like an open maw. It was wrong - mechanically impossible, even. Not only were there no joints there, that area had been reinforced with experimental compound plating made from damasite cold-iron alloy, adamant bronze, and azoth-auric amalgam.
Regardless of what engineers through possible, the machine had opened its cockpit as if it were a mouth. Within it, Strake sat, pierced through the back by thick cables. Barely recognizable as human, he was enveloped in furious, blood-red flame, his eyes blank, his body charred black. His clothing had long burned away, and his shoulders were shrouded by a commander's coat made of flame. It was unsettlingly similar to Strolvath's Hellfire Mantle, yet it surpassed that form by order of magnitude in intensity.
As the machine drew in the wailing souls and shreds of aura that had once made up the Revenant, not only did its arms snap back into proper position - pulses of red light flowed through the cables into Strake. Once the Six-legged had been devoured, Zero's frontal armor closed shut.
Then, there came the ring of a bell.
Not the Cathedral Bell, but one from a church elsewhere in the city. Then, another, and another, five in sequence from all different directions. In total, there were five churches across Eberheim, and despite having been swept by the Order's men, they hadn't been emptied. Entombed within the bell towers, long-dead men carried out a timeless duty, ringing the bells and presiding over the faithful in silent vigil, watching through statues of themselves. Watching. Waiting. And now, acting.
Akaso
If you’d like to read ahead, consider heading on over to the Patreon! You get up to 20 advance chapters for both Retribution Engine and Cherno Caster.
I’d also greatly appreciate it if you could rate my story, maybe even leave a review or advanced review!
For a link to the discord, check the synopsis.
Zelsys continued to prepare, pouring the overwhelming majority of her power output into Thundercannon and the assembly of Fang Rippers revolving in front of it. They had been merely spinning before as they normally would, but the more power she poured in, the more violent their revolutions became. They were no longer recognizable as collections of blades, but as shining rings of white-blue death, each having a number of notches equal to its number of Fangs.
The Six-legged Revenant had regenerated by now, and was once more coming after Zero. The machine reached out, and its arms, in defiance of mechanical limitations, extended out to grasp the two Fang Spears Zel had sent over. With the motion of their return to normal, Zero's arms also subsumed both Fang Spears, replacing the old pilebunker rods. Zero vanished from its place with a sonic boom, smashing into the Six-legged Revenant. Shockwaves erupted from their clash, only for Zero to fire its pilebunkers and obliterate two of the Six-legged Revenant's arms. The machine proceeded to vanish yet again, blasting itself to the side and behind the Six-legged Revenant. Floating right behind the Revenant even as it tried to turn to face Zero, Zero blew apart the Six-legged Revenant's torso with a rapid sequence of pilebunker strikes. While this took place, Zero also resumed firing on the Sacrificial Revenant. Zero's aura-wreathed slugs now tore into their target with full force, ripping chunks off of the aura construct with each shot. It was no longer just annoying enough to get its attention; instead, Zero was harming the Sacrificial Revenant badly enough to force it to go on the defensive.
EVOLVED PROTOTYPE
GORE-DRINKING VICTORY DEMON
ULTRA-HIGH-PERFORMANCE ONE-MAN TANK
UOT-014-02 BLOODY ZERO G-3 REFIT -DELIMIT PILOT FUSION-
By only a hair's breadth, Strake managed to distinguish what was himself, and what was Zero... But that line had grown so thin and blurry it may as well not be there. Any sense of pain was gone, there was only heat, drive, and Zero's endless fury, growing in intensity just as quickly as the engine's power output.
Strake had already thought of himself as a dead man walking. This was as good a place to die as any. Were his head clear, he would've scoffed at that idea. It wasn't. He thought it was, but it wasn't.
A screaming, flaming wrecking ball, zipping around at speeds that would kill any pilot. Zero had already been monstrous, barely fitting the description of "war machine", but that term couldn't even partly apply to it at this point. In every sense of the word, Strake and Zero had collectively merged to reach the transcendent point where an entity could no longer be impeded by mortal strength. Zelsys had noticed it many times throughout her short life, and though she wasn't quite sure where the demarcation line laid, she knew it when she saw it. It was one thing to be stronger and tougher than any single normal human, to wield a giant slab of metal like it was a sword - normal field cannons could still put someone like that down. Someone like that was still human.
Strake had just taken the final step on the tenuous path between man and something more - something beyond human, or perhaps inhuman, just like Zel's invocation of the Living Storm at Ubul's Tomb. The question was whether he could come back from his tribulation.
Wasting not a single moment after dispatching the Six-legged, Zero blasted up into the air, rocketing towards the Sacrificial Revenant while still firing its cannon. The weapon ran out of ammunition halfway through the flight. Zero's arms shot out, growing countless additional forearm segments to reach their prey, swinging the Revenant around as Zero flew. With thunderous force, the two collided, and a gale-force shockwave washed over the rooftops. Like a python, Zero squeezed and squeezed, but the Revenant wouldn't budge, so the machine instead unwound its arms and swung the aura monstrosity into the ground before flying down towards it. While Zero's left arm remained lengthened to that absurd degree its right snapped back to normal with a thunderclap. Even the left began rapidly shortening as Zero closed the distance, remaining always just long enough to keep the Revenant pinned in the crater which its impact had created.
Zero's landing was an explosion of gore, flames, rubble and aura.
Nothing remained of the Revenant, besides the hyperdense sacrificial aura which had given it form. It scattered through the cloud, wailing wraiths flying out, only to be sucked in. The dust cleared, revealing Zero standing, legs wide, arms dangling from snapped joints... With its frontal armor gaping like an open maw. It was wrong - mechanically impossible, even. Not only were there no joints there, that area had been reinforced with experimental compound plating made from damasite cold-iron alloy, adamant bronze, and azoth-auric amalgam.
Regardless of what engineers through possible, the machine had opened its cockpit as if it were a mouth. Within it, Strake sat, pierced through the back by thick cables. Barely recognizable as human, he was enveloped in furious, blood-red flame, his eyes blank, his body charred black. His clothing had long burned away, and his shoulders were shrouded by a commander's coat made of flame. It was unsettlingly similar to Strolvath's Hellfire Mantle, yet it surpassed that form by order of magnitude in intensity.
As the machine drew in the wailing souls and shreds of aura that had once made up the Revenant, not only did its arms snap back into proper position - pulses of red light flowed through the cables into Strake. Once the Six-legged had been devoured, Zero's frontal armor closed shut.
Then, there came the ring of a bell.
Not the Cathedral Bell, but one from a church elsewhere in the city. Then, another, and another, five in sequence from all different directions. In total, there were five churches across Eberheim, and despite having been swept by the Order's men, they hadn't been emptied. Entombed within the bell towers, long-dead men carried out a timeless duty, ringing the bells and presiding over the faithful in silent vigil, watching through statues of themselves. Watching. Waiting. And now, acting.
Akaso
If you’d like to read ahead, consider heading on over to the Patreon! You get up to 20 advance chapters for both Retribution Engine and Cherno Caster.
I’d also greatly appreciate it if you could rate my story, maybe even leave a review or advanced review!
For a link to the discord, check the synopsis.
