Clockwork Revenant - Chapter 8 VIII. Meeting the 409 part 1

It took Iro nearly half a minute to process what he’d just been told. Even then, it still made no sense to him.

1159? Three hundred years later? But how? That simply wasn’t possible. He refused to believe it.They had to be trying to pull some sort of elaborate trick on him. Maybe they suspected he was an enemy, and were trying to fool him into giving into giving away his ruse or something.

But, what motivation would the Captain have to lie, if he didn’t believe that Iro was an enemy combatant? And how would the younger man know to be in on it with his reactions to Iro’s statements?

That was harder to explain, as he thought about it.

Assuming what the Captain said was true, how was such a thing even possible? How could he have just traveled 300 years into the future? And how in the tap-dancing fuck had he ended up in a body made of clockwork? Magic couldn’t do something like that. At least, not that he was aware of….

As he continued to think about what he’d just been told, the ramifications started to dawn on him for the first time. If what he was being told was true… he was alone. Everyone he’d ever known was hundreds of years dead. The nation he’d served didn’t exist anymore. And there was no guarantee that anything he’d ever known previously as a point of reference still existed, either.

If he’d had the ability to, Iro would’ve cried.

As it stood now, he at least knew he was alive, and while not safe, per se, he didn’t appear to be in any immediate risk of harm. The Captain had also, for whatever reason, left him unbound when he’d left. Had he forgotten to bind Iro back because of what he’d just heard? Or was he testing how Iro would handle the additional freedom?

Was he free to leave the tent? And if so, what was stopping him from just fleeing the camp while it was still dark?

Outside the tent, he heard a couple voices laugh, and then a few cheers and the clink of something metal. He stood slowly, and walked his way over to the tent entrance, and peered out of the flap. From the look of things, we was in one of the tents he’d seen earlier. About a dozen or so paces away, he saw half a dozen shapes sitting around a brightly burning fire, drinking and talking. From what he could see, there were three humans, a dwarf, an elf of some variety, although from the angle he couldn’t tell which kind, and a smallfolk tightly wrapped in a cloak. A halfling or a gnome probably. It all struck Iro as very odd. He’d never seen the races get along much at all, much less fighting for the same side and laughing and bonding as friends. The whole thing was very, very strange.

As he looked out from the tent entrance, one of the humans seemed to notice him, and nudged another next to him, who Iro recognized as the younger man who’d accompanied the Captain a few minutes earlier. The man said something into the Sergeant’s ear, and the Sergeant looked in Iro’s direction. He turned back to the man and said something, and then stood and began walking Iro’s direction.

Shit.

Iro ducked back into the tent, and returned to his seat. A moment later the Sergeant entered, and looked at Iro.

“The soulspeaker will be here tomorrow morning. In the meantime, Captain Vrataski’s put me in charge of keeping an eye on you,” Joren said. “I would appreciate it if you made that easy on me.”

He turned, and motioned with his thumb out towards the direction of the fire.

“You’re welcome to come join us by the fire. Just understand that if you do anything that raises any alarms, my squadmates and I won’t hesitate to fill that metal body of yours full of holes,” He said.

Iro nodded. “Seems reasonable enough,” he said.

“Glad we understand each other,” Joren said. He stepped through the tent entrance and held the flap open, motioning for Iro to exit the tent. As Iro walked out of the tent, he felt all eyes on him, and several of the bodies around the fire leaned in to speak quietly to each other as he fo