Echoes of raindrops can be heard falling on the wood of the tavern’s ceiling while the patrons remain silent. The smack of lips against rough glass cups and gulps of cruel liquid are all that fill the large, singular room. There is, however, one other noise. “I’m *hic* telling ya, it doesn’t make sense, gold shouldn’t be rusting *hic* it doesn’t… *hic* what’s the word?” The drunken man searches his vocabulary. “Oxidize! That’s it! *hic* Yeah, gold is one of the few metals that doesn’t oxidize, but somehow *hic* the Rusting still gets to it. The Rusting *hic* even destroys metals in space where nothin oxidizes, heh. Odd *hic* ain’t it?” The smack of lips suddenly stops as the Barkeep stares past the rambling patron, “Hadel.” Hadel sips his drink, gulping it down before he responds, “Nadeden.”
Setting his cracked mug on the splintered wooden bar table, Hadel turns to face the cloaked Nadeden. The entire bar watches on with judging scowls. “I thought we made it clear you weren’t welcome back in any of our villages.” The Barkeep barks as he reaches for the flimsy spear that he barely even tried to hide under the flagons. “Relax.” Nadeden murmurs before grabbing Hadel by the shirt and dragging his limp, drunken body off the barstool. “We were just about to leave anyway.” The crowd nervously goes back to their drinks, whispering insults and rumors of Nadeden’s violent exploits under their alcohol-soaked breath as she forces Hadel outside.
The Machinist finds that they have traded one prison for another, yet now their life hangs in the balance. The killer left them on a rotting workbench inside of a cramped toolshed. Left them to rust.
Their fingers are gone now, and their legs have already begun to crumble. Now, as they struggle to turn their head to look about the shed crowded with crude instruments of death and creation alike, they can’t help but think back on the Forge. The peaceful planet of Scholars, Builders, Mystics, and Smiths that they once called home is all they’ve ever known. Their kind can’t all be dead, can they? No, they refuse to believe that. Even in such a harsh place, they must cling on to hope. After all, “Life is precious, life is all…”
“So I take it that *hic* if you came back for me and didn’t just run off…”
“The Bioship has no fuel.” Hadel groans at Nadeden’s answer as he dips his head back into the watering well. “I might have something better, though.” Hadel shoots his head back up. His thinning strands of wet gray hair stick to his plump cheeks as he asks her to repeat what she just said. Nadeden decides to be blunt rather than play the constant game of back and forth; she is always forced into every time Hadel is drunk. Which is often. “I found a Machinist.”
“Say that again.” Nadeden smacks Hadel across the face. His entire body flops against the stone well. “How rusted are they?” Hadel inquires once he regains his bearings. “Very, but they can still build a ship.” Hadel laughs, “How? Their entire body is made of metal; they’ll rust before they can attach an engine.” Nadeden raises an eyebrow. “What makes you so sure that I need their body?” Hadel goes silent for a moment as the weight of what she’s requesting dawns on him. “No! No way, consciousness transfer is illegal, Nadeden! Besides, no one has even tried to do one on a Machinist! Nobody even knows what they really are. Their entire body is made of metal, sure, but what about their mind? Nadeden, you realize if I screw this up even in the best-case scenario, you’ll get nothing more than a mindless reanimated corpse, right?”
“Then don’t screw it up.” Nadeden snarls while perfectly positioning herself just close enough to Hadel where she could gut him like a pig if she so pleased. Hadel notes the threat and gulps, “*Hic* I won’t.”
“Won’t what?”
The pair turns to their left to view a well-dressed Gilma fish swimming softly towards them. Three other armed Gilma fish follow closely behind, as well as five humans. Nadeden sighs, “What do you want, Fiskesjef?” The Fish kicks his reflective, scaled fins to stay afloat in the rain. While his clothes fill with mud, his scales radiate with a piercing orange glow as he speaks, “Oh, my Scorched Archer. You seem to have forgotten. It’s not what I want that I’m after but rather what I was promised.” Hadel’s face goes white at the sudden realization, “Nadeden?”
“Where’s my ship?” Fiskesjef’s men reach for their weapons at his demand. Nadeden remains calm, figuring that there’s no point in lying. “There wasn’t any fuel.” An air bubble pops out of Fiskesjef’s gills, working its way up through the rain into the black sky. Fiskesjef did not like Nadeden’s answer. He did not like it at all. “Oh, dear Scorched Archer, do you think I obtained that information for my own enjoyment? That I discovered a ship was coming here because I was bored? You may have beaten that info out of me, mind you, but I still expect some compensation.” Hadel’s eyes remain fixed on Nadeden’s cloaked figure throughout Fiskesjef’s spiel. He knows that she has already planned a way out of their situation, one that no doubt involves extremely gratuitous violence. “They’re in your shed.” She mouths under her breath just loud enough for Hadel to hear as she reaches into her quiver, “Here’s your compensation, Fiskejef.” In one swift motion of her dampened cloak, Nadeden whips her bow off her shoulder, nocks three arrows into her bowstring, and fires them all off simultaneously into the eyes of her three closest targets. Fiskesjef screams in agony while the two Gilma fish beside him do the same. Nadeden can’t help but smile before she catches herself. Play keep away, she thinks, just keep them off Hadel’s back, it’s not a true battle, it’s not like you’re a real soldier again.
The Machinist’s neck cracks, snapping off their body and crumpling into a pile of rust as they are forced to look up at the man who has burst through the toolshed’s door. Is this my jailer? They wonder as Hadel moves over their failing body to caress their head, “I never thought I’d be standing over a working machine again, but you’re more than that, aren’t you?”
The Machinist attempts to speak, but their voicebox has disconnected, and the expression comes out fractured. “Who… You… Hurt me?” Hadel allows himself to gaze into the Machinist’s eyes. He realizes that this is not some simple machine or wounded animal he is operating on. This is a person whose life has now been placed in his hands. “I won’t hurt you.” Hadel says as he reaches for his tools, “I’m going to save your life, now that, *hic* that could hurt you.”
Fiskesjef runs from the battle while he orders his men to take their spears to the fire in the center of the village: “Gather the flame.” He orders, “Find her friend and burn them both!”
Nadeden kills one of the humans with an arrow to the back before sprinting to Hadel’s shed. The villagers have begun to notice the commotion. Stepping out of their homes, they spot Nadeden running from the fresh corpse. “It’s her, the Scorched Archer, Nadeden!” They yell as they take up torches of their own, “Chase her out!” screams an onlooker while marching toward the shed.
Hadel drags out a large bag from a lump of five that rest under the workbench. “I’m guessing you don’t have much of a gender preference, do you?” Hadel jokes to the Machinist as he unfolds the bag. Nadeden arrives; she is left speechless once she views the bag’s contents. Curled up inside the thick body bag lies the corpse of an inhumanly pale and thin young man who can’t be a day over eighteen. The eyes of the body have been circled by permanent black body paint, which also marks the incision scars where the corpse was planned to be embalmed. Hadel lifts the body by its bald scalp and spindly backside up to the bench beside the Machinist.
“He looks like…” Nadeden gulps, trailing off, “He would have been the same age as…” She stops herself, choking on her own words when the roar of the mob outside overtakes her ears. “I’m guessing we don’t have much time left,” Hadel says as he pulls out a series of plastic tubes with plastic needles at each end. He slides the needles into the corpse’s skin as quickly as he can. He then takes the wires from the Machinist’s head and tangles them into the needles at the other end. “Will that work?” Nadeden asks, bending down to be at Hadel’s level while he works, “Shut up *hic* and help me.” She begins to tangle the wires while Hadel grabs a knife from one of his tool racks. He raises his hand over the tubes; his drunken hands tremble. Nadeden takes the knife from him. “The blood can’t be tainted, right?” She slices her right palm open. The blood soaks her hand as she clenches it into a fist. The blood drops slowly into the tubes before pouring as hard as the rain outside.
What is happening to me? I knew nothing for so long and now…
Where once I felt nothing.
I now feel too much.
The Machinist turns his head to look at what was once their body in the burning toolshed.
He is assaulted by the roaring sound of crackling fire, and his eyesight blurs while he attempts to focus on what exactly has happened to him. Rain drenches his new naked body, staining it as if he had just experienced some form of baptism. No, not a baptism. This was a birth. His birth.
He moves his head to overlook the field of bodies, one of which is the man who helped do this to him. “What was his name?”
“Hadel.” A voice behind him whispers, covering him with a blood-stained cloak. “And I’m Nadeden.” The voice steps out from behind him to gather her arrows, which stick out of the dead villagers whose bodies are still burning. He tightens the cloak. “What’s your name?” Nadeden turns back to ask him once she’s filled her quiver. He looks down at his hand. What was once strong metal is now vulnerable flesh. Flesh that he can feel all over him, down to the slightest sensation. This is me? Do I have a name?
No.
I’m a Machinist.
I have a designation.
“I’m a Smith.”
“Well, Smith,” Nadeden says, walking up to face him, “It’s nice to meet you.”
She extends her hand once again, and Smith takes it once again. Now knowing for certain that this is indeed his only option for survival.