A Witch in the Autumn
VR 39-9339, nicknamed Autumn, landed his back hard on the stone pillar with a terrible crunch, almost cracking the structure entirely due to his massive weight. He looked down on his forearm, where a small hole - the size of an apple - punctured right through the dense, protective metal. He cocked his head like a dog and flexed his arm to assess the damage. He could feel a slight delay from two of his fingers, but the construct seemed unfazed by the problem.
Volleys of coloured hues of energy boomed and whistled down at the invaders from the high ground as a group of metal giants - souls bound in stone and encased in armour - pressed onward to contest their foe. Despite the grievous wounds and scores of wreckage husks in their wake, the constructs known as Revenants were unfazed by the losses - cold and emotionless beneath the death mask of their creator. They just marched on, steadily and unflinchingly, pressing their luck and chance for a glorious doom.
Autumn jerked sideways as he caught the sound of an energy blast punctured right through a nearby Revenant, shattering its central core to a million pieces. It fell in an instant to the smooth, marble floor, and the five gemstones - red like blood and lodged within its armour - exploded in a burst of metal and flame just before the collapse.
Autumn stared what remains of the downed warrior - its broken shell left but a sour note of its passing that would never recover. A rush of fury replaced his abhorrent disgust as Autumn looked upwards at the killers in blue, pristine robes nestled above the second floor, their aim as accurate without waste of shot. Anger enveloped him - his mind wrought with murderous slaughter. Trail of white smoke billowed from the empty socket of his human death mask as Autumn chose his target.
The interior structure of the cathedral was massive - its decoration on the walls littered with black banners and ornate skulls adorned in liquid silver. Grey marble floors were strewn with broken husks of Revenants - their deaths paved the way for others to follow under a hail of baleful magic.
The Revenants were a terrible force to be reckoned with - a juggernaut of immeasurable strength forged in metal and flame. Hundreds - maybe even thousands more of unnameable realms - perished under their never-ending crusade to snuff all magic. But they were not entirely invincible. Encumbered in heavy-set of armour with no regard of their own, the Giants of Vatra drummed in unison, beating and stepping towards doom with silent determination.
While the situation may be bleak for Autumn, he was not dismayed at the slightest. Unlike his slower siblings, he was made for a different purpose.
A robed man suddenly plummeted to the ground with a sickly wet pop as a large hole the size of a cannon round was left on the victim's chest - his flesh cooked and bubbled from the intense heat. Leapt out from the confines of his cover, Autumn's leg kicked hard on the floor and charged into the open, sprinting faster and quicker than his slow, tenuous siblings. His helscorch carbine - a weapon compressed and empowered to light an entire village - discharged a small portion of condensed plasma, its shot alone taking another victim's head clean off from the shoulder. Without pause or relent, Autumn took down several more of them - each lethal round tore limbs, disintegrate heads and leave holes the size of small craters.
Already, Autumn progressed through the middle of the cathedral floor, dodging magical blasts and peeling his enemies away in a red vapour mist as all eyes turned to eliminate this unexpected threat. Bright colours of magic - childish and boor in nature - laid down at the giant construct, some struck home that staggered his movement. Yet magic alone would not stop the Revenant from killing his would-be killers, his mind bent on their destruction and those around it.
The Revenant pressed on to his assault, aiming and firing his weapon, not stopping one minute in the thick of it. He finally made his way across the opposite side of the cathedral when several brutish things blocked his path to the staircase.
The sight made Autumn stiffened not out of fear, but with an overwhelming sense of rage like never before. He glared at them, seeing their grotesque deformity of flesh and bone. Empowered with the death magics of the proclaimed necromancers from high atop, they were the twisted things of undeath immortality - their hideous, bulky bodies oozed and reeked of rotten meat. Outraged, Autumn spent no time with these monsters and unleashed his full wrath upon them.
Several of them quickly fell to the floor, unable the chance to react as their heads burst apart in fire and grey matter. When the rest came to respond, they wailed in monstrous shrieks and hurled themselves by the number. Autumn's gauntlet hands began to glow hot red as the darkness was washed away by the muzzle flash of his gun.
--
Autumn stood alongside his brothers and sisters just outside the square, watching from the far distance of the cathedral consumed in a blaze of light. Apart from the building, the entire city itself engulfed in a raging inferno - its idolatry altars and libraries purified by the hallmark handiwork of the Revenants.
All around him, the fire spread from structure to structure - voracious in its appetite to consume all life. The screams of dying mortals have somewhat calmed Autumn's unease, knowing that another follower, another practitioner of the dark arts, had met its end.
Yet despite his abhorrence and disgust, Autumn couldn't help feel a sliver of pity for the wretched fools - their lives spent on empty promises and want.
As he turned away from the cathedral to seek notable repairs of his armour, Autumn caught the unmistakable sound of footsteps, growing stronger and louder. In front of him - among the damaged, broken constructs - a hunchback machine came into view with a large black container lodged in its back. Its myriad, unnatural lenses for eyes peered straight on Autumn, studying and assessing the damage within the millisecond of its result.
"You have yet sustained closely to certain destruction." The hunchback declared in a mechanical, monochrome voice and wasted no time in its repair. Several metallic appendages protruded out from its container, tools meant to repair and restore equipped on the tip as they slowly descended on the giant.
"Stand by for immediate restoration." It continued, letting its claws do the work.
Autumn stared at one of the claws quickly fixed the hole from his forearm, nodding approvingly at the machine known as Gravel.
"You have my thanks," Autumn said, bowing his head slightly.
For a tiny fraction of the moment, the claws ceased movement, and Gravel looked up at him before it resumed the repairs. "Your appreciation is unwarranted," the machine said. "We do this for the good of the Dominion."
Autumn studied the hunchback and then nodded without a word, appreciative nonetheless.
The process of the repairs was extensive and for a Revenant required amount of time before the war-machine was fit and ready for war. But time was a luxury that Gravel could not afford - not when it has hundreds of Revenants that needed his attention. With a collection of extractible claws at its beckoning call - outstretched and outsource the assessment - they sped with an energetic grace of clockwork, filling holes, greasing joints and replacing Autumn's cracked mask with a brand new one.
It was all done in a matter of minutes, and as Gravel was close to completion, Autumn could not help but ask this simple question.
"How goes the city?" Autumn asked, not staring at restorer, but at his reforged forearm. He gave it a good stretch to measure its condition. "Has the war reached its conclusion?"
Gravel looked up at Autumn for a moment and shook its head. After a few minor adjustments to his leg, the automaton took the time to answer. "The war struggles," it finally said. "For persistence loomed among these meatbags like a plague locust..."
"Yet they all fall the same," Autumn added, remembering the last time of their conversation.
"Yet they all fall the same," repeated the hunchback. "Estimation grants us the fall be two days."
When Gravel said it, Autumn pondered at the news. "Hmm, two days," he stared at the hunchback. "Longer than expected."
"It is," Gravel agreed. "But, there is little fear among the soulless dead." After a few adjustments on Autumn's armour, Gravel stepped back from him, allowing his appendages to retract itself into the container. "The repair is complete. Wholesome you are once more," it paused. "I exercise...caution if you take heed in my advice."
Autumn gestured mockingly in surprise and chuckled. Clearly, he understood the message.
As the hunchback left to attend its next patient, Autumn heard the usual shouting orders of command. He gradually turned around to see rows of columned giants - their weapons raised and straightened with the leader, a fellow VR-39, in the lead. Before long, the leader boomed its next command, and a tide of metal marched in perfect unison, beating forward to root out what's left of the city resistance.
Autumn turned away from the group then shook his head, conscious of their earlier performance at the cathedral. The latest model, VR-41, were as fatalistic and dogmatic than their predecessors - incapable of reason in their blind, willful ignorance. Despite the flaws, he could not blame them.
After all, they were just following orders.
--
While the others took to the streets that carve their way with violent destruction, Autumn went to a different route, his feet striding along the dark, festering alleyways strewn with discarded materials and fallen debris of architecture. It was not the cleanest nor the safest path, but it was the shortest in leading Autumn to the heavy fighting. He was never the patient type to follow the tenuous method, harassing the enemy with a gush of flame and proceeding forth in locked columns of numbers. His preference was more on a quicker result.
Half an hour through the winding serpentine labyrinth of urban ruin, Autumn's pace began to lessen until the giant grounded to a halt, uncertainty gripping in his thoughts. Suspicion quickly hung like a cloak as he noticed something peculiar in the path ahead. When he took a moment to survey the scene, Autumn's distaste grew, realization dawning upon him.
It was an impossible thing to imagine that the Giant of Vatra would simply get lost along the way. He studied every secret passage, shortcut and forgotten trails throughout the city. And yet, the question gnawed at him like hound's teeth on flesh.
Had Autumn took a wrong turn? Was there something else that he missed or places undiscovered from the map charts? Was it some kind of trap?
As the last question drilled into his head, he felt it and cursed for not seeing it sooner. The giant had not been able to reach his destination was because something or someone was keeping him at bay. The decision was instantaneous as he turned around, trying to retrace his step. But he was too slow.
Autumn soon caught a familiar whiff in the smokey-ash air, sweet and palpable enough to recognize the foul works of magic.
Autumn's body stiffened, then motioned in the defensive, his metal joints creaked and groaned tensely with alert. His hands clenched tight on the barrel as he swerved his carbine around the place, searching for the source of the foe. He was no stranger to a good ambush, but the energy was different compared to the enemies he faced before.
It was an ancient thing - raw and wild like a kick of vintage wine. Unbelievably, it masked its magical presence somehow, able to avoid Autumn's detection. Unanswered questions began to circulate at the corner of his mind, but he ended them with a shake of his head, knowing that there would be time to answer once the creature was dead.
After minutes of unsteady silence, Autumn caught something of interest that wasn't the creature of magic. A single poster - recent and new - placed in the middle of the wall with the picture of a feline mammal in a crimson outfit. As he approached the sign, he noticed some writings below the image.
'Come one, Come All! The Red Witch is granting a wish to any lucky traveller! The only catch? You'll--'
Autumn did not finish his read as he tore it from the wall with one gauntlet, the heat from his grip scorching the parchment until it was nothing more than ash. He looked down at the palm of his hand and shook his head.
"Wish from a witch? Madness..." Autumn muttered under his breath, baffling to read such preposterous notion. And yet, the meaning of the words perplexed him. There was a small measure of curiosity as he pondered if it was possible.
As he was deep in thought, a wash of power - unlike anything Autumn experienced before - gushed forth from behind in the alley darkness. He turned around slowly as a lone dark outline of a figure emerged from thin air, its unworldly magic dominating the area.
Autumn remained his stare, his thoughts crystallized at the sheer weight of his encounter. Fear was a strange thing for a Revenant. They do not flee nor cower nor parley with any kind. But the way Autumn felt right now made him uneasy, uncertain for the first time if he could win this engagement.
And yet, despite the disadvantage, he was not going down without a fight.
In a flash, Autumn raised his weapon as plasma heat burst from the muzzle, sending three balls of death straight at the foe, hoping that one of them would hit the target. Predictably, the figure responded with a gesture, its hand the odd shape of an animalistic paw. Gentle light glowed from its fingers as the stranger swept the three plasma rounds with ease, the shot impacting and bursting a nearby structure in a cloud of dust.
For all his centuries in the theatre of war, Autumn had never witnessed a more terrible sight like this one. It was only a fraction of a second later before he unleashed a volley at the dangerous sorcerer. Light sparked and flew, blocked and deflected as heat raced all around them, leaving a wake of destruction. The figure motioned its entire body with the singular grace of a dancer, performing as if it was bending the elements.
Irritated by his ineffectiveness to lay a finger on the caster, Autumn looked down at the ground and then picked a random stone with one hand while discharging his weapon at the other. His hand clenched at the piece of rock as a strange form of light began to emanate from within. When the object glowed with unstable power, he threw straight at the creature and detonated it, exploding with such force it was enough to send him off from his feet.
As the dust began to roll away, silence reigned once more in the alleyway. The only sound left beside them was the fire that crackled in their toiled destruction. Autumn pushed himself to his feet, eyes affixed at the stranger, who remained still and lifeless on the dirt. He proceeded forward - cautiously and warily - at the creature with his weapon trained, ready to fire at the slightest hint of movement.
The creature on the ground had a small, lithe body, patches of fur like snow seared off from the explosion as well as the remains of its crimson coat and undergarments. With a careful examination, Autumn suspected the body to be one of the beastfolk, but he could not be sure to tell as the damage was beyond any recognition. Oddly enough, the only thing that didn't end up in ruin was the creature's hat, the tip slightly bent and laid on top of its face, hiding the bloody wreckage.
Autumn extended the barrel of his carbine and flipped the hat over. He peered at the creature's face and then suddenly cocked his head in confusion until a bleak realization dawned on him. The creature's head was not actually a head, but a melon-sized fruit in the exchange with a pen-mark that resembled a face with a tongue sticking out.
It was a trick. The creature was a dummy.
Autumn's head craned upward as the white beast stood within several inches behind the giant. It was one thing that Autumn despised more than being caught unawares, it was being outsmarted by one.
Outraged and without a moment's hesitation, the giant wheeled around with lightning speed, his weapon whirled to fire. Yet the creature was quick on its wit. With a flick of the wrist, unfamiliar power manifested around the caster as if chaos itself beckoned at its every whim.
When the giant faced the beast, he pulled the trigger, but instead of the intense heat of molten plasma, harmless bubbles came out from the muzzle instead, floating innocently into the air. He stood still for a moment, inability to comprehend what he'd just witness. His hollowed eyes gradually glanced down at the weapon and then quickly back at the beast-caster as a cheerful, feminine chuckle escaped from her lips.
Her sapphire eyes gleamed amusement from the firelight. Her smile was almost infectious. This creature, this woman of unimaginable power, gave no indignation nor fear. She was just...happy, joyous even...
And it made Autumn all the more despised her for it.
Black smoke plumed from the empty sockets of his death mask as the Revenant glared at her with contempt. He hurled his entire weight at the woman, arms outstretched, his weapon tossed aside.
As the giant was mere inches of contact, the red witch gave a snap of her fingers and vanished in a veil of mist right before his eyes. Autumn passed through the haze and planted on his feet, eyes scanning of the target. When he did spot her at last, he stiffened like a block of statue.
The red witch emerged at the opposite of Autumn as she used her powers to magically heft his helscorch from the ground, her power fuelling the device that gave a fierce and terrible light of crimson.
Autumn stared at the woman, dumbfounded and shocked that a creature of flesh could simply hold a Revenant's weapon. Before the giant could react - before he could do anything to stop her - it was already too late.
The Red Witch let her magic squeezed the trigger of Autumn's weapon and fired.