Clockwork Revenant - Chapter 2 Ii. Orientation

It was nightfall before Iro stopped shaking and began to pull himself together. He sat in the oil-stained puddle as the clouded black sky hurled sheets of moisture, filling all of the seams, indentions, and cracks of the trench floor with water until it was a network of rusted metal islands between muddy brown lakes.

He tried to make sense of it. He may not remember much from before now, but he certainly wasn’t ever a fucking machine. He was almost completely certain of that. What little memory he possessed came in flashes and feelings, but what he did remember told him that while he was many things previously, inorganic was not among them.

But… how? How did this happen?

And second off, just where in the fuck was he?

The trench part of the equation seemed familiar enough. A trench was the last place he could remember being. But what little else he could put together over the last several hours of processing this new information told him little more than he’d known the moment he became aware in the darkness.

He knew he was a soldier. He served in the 182nd Spellrifle Brigade of the army of the Kingdom of Austeare. His commanding officer was named… Lestey? Lestair? Something like that seemed right. He vaguely remembered making a charge across a no man’s land and into an enemy trench. Another of being knocked off his feet by a blast of some sort, though whether mage or artillery were responsible, he wasn’t sure. He remembered the copper smell of blood and the rotten stench of sulfur and saltpeter from the boom of Orzenian cannon.

He remembered essentially nothing from before the war. Based on his presence in the Austearean army, he could deduce he was a citizen, but not from what part. If he was a frontline soldier, that meant he probably wasn’t a child or old. And he knew that once, at least, he had been a man. The rest sat behind the veil, and at least for now, he would have to content himself with what he had.

But, in the midst of this reflection, two facts became more certain to him than any others- First, he was a volunteer, not a conscript. Something had driven him to sign up and join the fight of his own accord. And second, he would kill every last Orzenian alive, or he would die trying.

Why he felt such genocidal hatred, of course, was completely lost on him. The cause was merited somewhere in his mind, but that part was now, whether temporarily or permanently, inaccessible. He decided it was better to trust such instincts than not, especially in situations like the one he found himself in now.

And what kind of situation was that, exactly?

Well, for one, he sat in the middle of a long-abandoned god-knows-where, without a living thing in sight, almost no idea who he is, and absolutely no idea how he ended up here.

Oh, and you’re a fucking robot now, Iro. Don’t forget that. Good luck sorting that particular puzzle out. Godspeed.

Hell of a place to be, really.

As he sat in the mire and rain and tried to take a more objective assessment, however, he realized there were some small benefits to his current situation. He didn’t appear to be in immediate danger, considering the duration of the undisturbed pity party he’d just been throwing. While he could still feel temperature, he did not seem to feel discomfort from the extreme cold. At least, not that he’d encountered thus far. He apparently had no need to breathe. And best he could guess, he probably wouldn’t ever need sleep again either.

All of this was definitely going to take some getting used to.

Finally, after gathering himself, Iro stood. The lip of the trench rose in front of him about 9 feet from the trench floor. While most of the nearby trench siding had now been removed, a short distance down his left a fixed turret position sat into the trench wall. The top and side of it were blown off and scattered all over the trench floor, probably from a cannon shot or fireball based on the scorched stone sitting blackened around the edges of the missing turret section. The firing platform and the stairs leading up to it were still intact, however, and Iro climbed the short flight up to the steel deck, and cast his eyes out over the nearby landscape for the first time.

Despite the darkness and the rain, the sorry state of the surrounding landscape wasn’t hard to see. Directly in front of the turret tower sat another trench line, perhaps fifty feet or so distant, followed by a wide open span of blasted earth scrubbed clean of anything but bare stone, mud, and the scorched remains of a few trees that served as the sole landmarks in the wasteland. Iro couldn’t see further in this light, but he knew with almost certainty that somewhere beyond that wasteland another series of trenches probably ran parallel to these, more gashes of rust and mud in the ground of God-Knows-Where.

To his left and right, Iro saw the trench line ran as far as he could see in either direction. In addition to the trench he occupied and the one a short distance ahead of the broken tower, he saw now that a third line ran some hundred feet or so behind this one. Perpendicular bends in the lines allowed each of them to intersect one another at intervals.

Behind him, past the final trench, Iro spotted something that sent a surge of excitement through his body. Half a dozen or so lights blazed somewhere in the distance, yellow-white pinpricks that flickered like stars. Lamps, perhaps? Light didn’t mean friendly or safe, Iro reminded himself, but he still couldn’t help but feel vaguely reassured by their presence. Light mean life, and that, regardless of its form, gave him hope. After staring out at the twinkling horizon for several moments, Iro hopped lightly off the tower platform, only to buckle the trench floor beneath him on impact and sink up to his waist in mud.

Right. He was made of solid metal. Of course that would happen. Well done, Iro. Maybe use your brain next time.

He added increased body weight to the list of things to keep in mind, and set about trying to remove himself from the floor. After several long moments of pushing and thrashing, he was finally able to extricate himself from the hole, the rainwater in the trench floor trickling in to fill the void he left behind. He pushed himself to his feet, pausing for a brief moment to pick out a stone that had lodged itself in his knee mechanism, and absentmindedly flicked it towards the back wall of the trench. The stone shot from between his fingers, striking the wall hard enough to embed itself through the steel with a sound of tearing metal. Iro looked down at his hand, and then back at the newly-formed dent in the wall, which now emitted a slender thread of steam. What on earth just happened?

It took him a moment to piece things together.

So, now he might also have to factor in absurd strength as well. Fun.

Iro shook his head. That would be something to figure out later. Right now, his biggest concern was finding out just where he was, and maybe find someone to tell him just what the hell was going on.

The lights seemed like a good bet, friendly or not. If they were friendly all the better. If not, well, apparently he could just flick rocks at them. Iro smiled to himself. Or, at least he would have, had there been any way for him to do so.

He set off towards the bend at far end of the trench, picking his way through the puddles and patches of slick metal. With any luck, the lights would have help waiting on him when he reached them.