The Cure - II [Exemplary]

[Proto Man]

Proto Man found himself in Darkshire a few hours after exiting the Dante Verse.  The guards at the gate seemed almost nervous as they ushered him into the city.  Were they new?  They were present in his records of the town’s active guardsman, and they didn’t seem comfortable after he stated his identity.  He didn’t bother to ask them questions, because he rarely got anything out of anyone in uniform.  The only people who seemed to know anything in this town were Dobson and whoever he had swirling around him on a given day.

As he walked down on the larger and more central streets of the city, Proto Man glanced around and realized that the place looked a little deader than usual. The sun was still high in the sky overhead, and despite the perpetually cloudy weather, there still should have been people milling about.  This was prime time to the street markets to be open, but there was barely a soul to be seen wandering down the cobblestone path.

After a few more minutes, Proto Man arrived at the small building that served as the closest thing to a medical clinic that Darkshire had within its battered walls.  Essentially, the place was just the house of someone who specialized in herbal remedies and anatomy.  Most societies would have called the woman an apothecary or a healer, but in Darkshire, she was just one of a few individuals with better knowledge about treating wounds and mixing chemicals.  Proto Man wasn’t sure why Darkshire lacked anything close to a modern medical treatment facility, especially given its history of being the center of a perpetual warzone.

A knock on the door summoned the young-looking woman who tended to the wounded.  It took her a few moments, but she eventually smiled at the preteen machine.  “Hello, Blues, I haven’t seen you for a while.”

“I was at that contest thing,” he replied as she ushered him into her home.

The remark caused her to furrow her brow.  “I don’t recall hearing about you.”

“I didn’t make the cut,” Proto Man muttered, shrugged his shoulders as he was lead through the woman’s living quarters and into the back half of her house, which doubled as the convalescence and treatment area.  “I guess it’s for the best…I don’t think you should be killing people for sport.”

“You got a good head on those shoulders,” the healer said with a smile as she pulled away a piece of carpet that doubled as a privacy veil.  The curtain slid away to reveal Mireya Vasquez, her eyes glancing out through the window at the little side street that stretched out behind the apothecary’s home.  At hearing the cloth shuffle away, the half-night elf twisted and grinned at the sight of the red robot.  “Blues!”  She shouted, swinging her feet over the bed and hopping down to embrace her companion.  “I heard you got into a scrap with a giant beastie.”

“Something like that,” Proto Man replied as he reached into his bag and retrieved the scale from the defeated Tarrasque.  “It was called a Tarrasque… some type of giant monster with lava for blood.”

“Is it dead?”

The android shrugged his shoulders.  “We all saw it plunge into a fissure in the earth, but there wasn’t a corpse or anything like that.  Just a bunch of pieces of its shell, like this one.”

“Explains the quake a few weeks ago,” Mireya responded as she strode over to a small cabinet and threw it open.  “Did you just return?”  She asked, glancing over her shoulder at the boy as she pulled out her repaired armor.

“Haven’t been her more than ten or fifteen minutes,” Proto Man answered as he watched the woman quickly don the mixture of leather and chainmail armor.  When she finished, she swiftly stowed over a half dozen knives across various parts of her anatomy.  The manner in which she moved bordered on the erratic.  “Are we in a rush?”

Mireya grabbed her glaive and slid it between a pair of hoops.  “This town hasn’t been the same for the last week and a half,” she whispered, her eyes glancing around the open curtain to confirm that the healer was gone.  “This place hasn’t been the same… a town champion was murdered a few days ago, and his head was left in the town square.  I heard they’re trying to pin it on Dobson and some other members of the town guard.  People are whispering about a possible coup against the mayor or a possible liquidation of the garrison.  Can you believe it?  All the darkness outside this town, and they’re on the verge of going at one another’s throats.”

“Should we help?”  Proto Man asked, his expression growing grim as he walked over to the woman’s window and peaked outside.  Her words certainly explained the changed atmosphere that had fallen over the town.

“Your girl is, but I haven’t heard about her in days.”

“My girl?”

“The one with the plague.  Whirda.”

Proto Man nodded his head.  “So you don’t know if she’s okay or not?”

“I heard she met with Dobson a while back, but the drama is all behind closed doors for now… I don’t know if you and I marching up to Town Hall would do any good.”

“So what’s our move?”  The android asked.  Ever since failing to defeat Cindy, he felt as if he was slowly starting to lose control of his life.  First he’d been imprisoned, then he had been left in the facility, and now he was arriving back at Darkshire to find that yet more things were out of his control.

“I say we finish what we started,” Mireya said as she rested one of her slender hands upon the circle of runes etched around the android’s wrist.  "It won't matter how the situation in the Town Hall plays out if the entire Moors are destroyed."

[Proto Man]

As night started to fall across the Pale Moors, Proto Man sat in a small room near the northern wall of the town. It wasn’t anything special, but Mireya had befriended the owner over the course of her recovery, and due to the building’s proximity to the walls, she had requested they use it for the night. The situation in town was still tense, and the pair of primes wanted to be on their way out before the sun came up again. Once word spread that Proto Man had returned from the Dante Verse, they expected to be pulled into whatever sort of struggle was happening behind the closed doors of the town’s inner circle.

“What are you working on?” Mireya muttered as she crouched down behind Proto Man and looked at the little device on the desk in front of him. It appeared to be a little metal bowl with an antenna sticking out the middle.

“It’s just a little booster for my wireless signal,” the robot replied matter-of-factly as he popped open part of his bracer and fished out a little wire. He connected the end into the base of the device and chewed on his lower lip for a few moments until a little green light turned on and the dish started to sway back and forth. “I’ve been having an issue reaching Tier Six, so I’m hoping that this can boost my signal strength.”

“Science,” Mireya spoke apathetically as she walked over and dropped into an uncushioned chair. She reached down and grabbed her glaive and a sharpening stone. As Proto Man fished through signals in his head, the half-night elf started to methodically sharpen her blade. “This is all the science I need,” she added to herself as she tuned out her companion to focus on her own prep work.

“Anyone there?” Proto Man asked aloud, his eyes scanning the list of servers and connections listed on his internal display. “I’m trying to hail the Community Center… can anyone hear me?”

He stopped talking as the booster continued to sway back and forth. It took close to three minutes, but he finally got a response. “Hey, Blues, is that you?”

“Elec Man?” Proto Man said as his system automatically fine-tuned his settings to optimize the call quality. “How have you been?”

“Ehh, we’ve been better, Blues.”

That wasn’t the answer that Proto Man had hoped to hear. “What’s the matter? The Empire?”

“It’s not that,” the other Robot Master interjected. “We may have… We may have lost our sister.”

Proto Man furrowed his brow. “What do you mean you lost her?” He asked, more confused than anything else. Roll didn’t seem like the type of individual to wander off into the streets of Tier Six and lose her way.

“We’ve pinned her location to the Dataverse, and while she’s still very much alive and okay, we can’t get in touch with her. None of us lack the capability to reach her, either…”

“But she’s okay? Can she reach you guys?”

“We know she’s okay and that she’s somewhere called File Island. That’s about it. We were trying to contact her, but that Dante Abyss thing sucked up all the bandwidth for the entire tier. I’m not sure how we’re able to have this conversation at all, since no one else in the facility can access the Dataverse.”

“Should I come back?” Proto Man asked, prompting Mireya to grunt and glance over at him. The android knew it was impossible, but he didn’t want to sound heartless.

“No,” Elec Man answered. “We all know you’re doing some good work in the Pale Moors, which is why we didn’t want to tell you about this.”

“That’s why I tried to get in touch with you guys… I’m not sure I can take care of this myself.”

“What do you mean?” Elec Man asked, sounded confused. “I figured that the town of Darkshire would be sending you out into the Moors at the head of an army or something. That Blight thing has been ravaging across two verses for a few years now.”

Proto Man chuckled. “Yea, you’d think that, but they’re too busy trying to hang one another. My friend and I are going to do this alone. I was hoping you guys had managed to get those teleporters up and running.”

There was silence on the other line for a few moments. “I mean, they’re mostly operational… You telling me you’re going to be deputizing us, Blues?” Elec Man snickered.

“Yes.” His older brother responded without a shadow of a doubt. “I’ll need all of you helping Mireya and I.”

“Oh, well I suppose we can manage that. It’s just a matter of making sure we can synch up the equipment here with your location. That may take some time and will require us to do a little extra-legal maneuvering around the data blackout. Give me about two days, and we should be able to lend a hand.”

“Got it,” Proto Man replied as he disconnected from the channel. He swiveled around and saw that Mireya was already outfitted with her weapons. “Ready to leave?”

“Forty-eight hours until the robotic cavalry arrives? I’ll make sure nothing is left when they get here,” she said with a grin.

Proto Man nodded his head. “Let’s hope you’re right. I need to work on some other things, so give me an hour or so.”

“I’ll go make sure our exit is clear,” the hybrid night elf replied as she slipped out into the darkness.

An hour later, Mireya was creeping back toward the small house when Proto Man slipped out through the door and let it gently shut behind him. “You ready?” She asked as she did a quick once-over of the robotic youth. He didn’t seem to be packing any additional weaponry, but he was wearing a necklace with a whistle at the end of it. The woman raised an eyebrow and gently flicked the little trinket.

“It’s a dog whistle,” Proto Man replied as they started toward their designated exit from Darkshire.

[Proto Man]

The hinterland that surrounded Darkshire was surprisingly tame. Once out of the city through an old mine that extended half a mile toward a depleted iron supply, the pair made their way to surface and onward toward the desolate extremes of the Moors. By the time the sun started to peak over the horizon, they had left the city far behind them, with nothing but memories of it to occupy their thoughts as they crossed through a lightly forested landscape.

It wasn’t until the sun started to fall again that a conversation began between the two.

“So you and Whirda fought against elves?” Mireya asked softly as the two slipped out through a copse and found themselves staring out across a mostly empty expanse of rolling hills.

“Evil elves, yea,” Proto Man replied as he paused to scope out the area. A glance up showed him that more time had passed than he thought, and for a moment, he felt terrible that he hadn’t spoken earlier. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy talking with Mireya (she was far more approachable than Whirda), but he had become so utterly lost amidst the changing landscape that he forgot she was even there. “They called themselves Drow… have you heard of them?”

His companion shook her head. “No,” she replied as she mulled a thought over in her head for a few moments. “Just night elves and non-night elves… I didn’t think there’d be a whole collection of them out there.”

“Well the Omniverse is essentially a cosmic dumpster,” the android shot back as the two continued their trek. “I’m somewhat surprised there isn’t more overlap amongst inhabitants.”

“I guess it was a good idea to leave the Moors,” Mireya mused as the two faded back into silence. A glimpse back at the horizon showed that nighttime would be fast at hand soon, and with Darkshire nearly two days behind them, they would have to rest and play defense for a few hours.

Fortunately for the android and the half-night elf, they weren’t disturbed during their ‘sleep.’ When the sun started to peak up behind the cloudy sky, Proto Man gave his friend a tap on the shoulder to pull her out of whatever state elves went into when they ‘slept.’ Just as she had watched over him while he powered down to give his system time to renew itself and his firmware time to update, he had guarded her over the last few hours.

Feeling ‘fresh’ and rejuvenated, the twosome continued into the Pale Moors.

***

Informational Observation Log 003 – Day 7

Mireya and I have been marching for nearly a week straight. It is very fortunate that neither of us requires the full sleep regimen of a human, and her elven constitution means she can get by on very little food. I think we might be beyond the point that Whirda and I reached on our first journey out into the Moors, because things no longer look familiar. My topography app shares the same thoughts as I do, as it has no more matches as we press forward into terrain that is new to us.

We’ve yet to encounter any substantial opposition.

After our first ‘break,’ we didn’t encounter any other living organisms for nearly three additional days. Fortunately, they were not drow or sentient undead. Most of them were beasts—some posed threats to our safety, but for the most part, we were able to avoid confrontation with the ‘wildlife’ (if such a term is even applicable). On the afternoon of the fourth day, we took a ‘siesta,’ as Mireya calls it, but we were interrupted by some sort of mob of skeletal snakes. We managed to quickly disperse the horde before it overwhelmed us. Although we suffered no long-lasting injuries, we were reminded of Snake Man, and though neither Mireya nor I wanted to mention it, I’m sure we wore the sadness on our faces for the remainder of the day.

The fifth day was marked by a strange occurrence—a river. I’ve become so accustomed to the rolling hills and blotches of forest, and Mireya must have felt the same way when we stumbled across the winding stream. Although the water was a dull shade of green and there seemed to be no aquatic life, we took a short break to, for all intents and purposes, play around in the water. Despite its appearance, the water wasn’t toxic (see the attached files for toxicology reports), and based on its temperature, I’m sure it would have been quite refreshing to have splashed on one’s face.

Mireya promised me that she’ll take me fishing once we ‘take care of business.’ For whatever reason, she doesn’t seem to want to verbalize our intention to go storming into the bastion of a powerful hellion that’s probably filled with minions and other sorts of hazards to our health. Although I suppose the former provides us with more benefit of the doubt. The funny part? I’ve already been fishing pre-Omniverse, but I didn’t want to spoil my friend’s aspirations. I believe she’s just trying to think ahead to rosier times, because it helps her to come to terms with the high probability that she will die and I’ll be tortured for a few years (this immortality thing is unpleasant).

Ah well, the sun appears to be attempting to once again pierce the clouds as it floats up from the mountains in the east. With any luck, we’ll reach our destination in one piece, although part of me is beginning to believe there is a reason why our journey has been rather tame so far…

I can only hope I’m being ‘paranoid.’

-end entry-

[Proto Man]

Informational Observation Log 007 – Day 19

I’m not quite certain where we are in the Moors. The maps I’ve downloaded are not up-to-date, and none seem to have great detail about this region. I know we are heading in the correct direction based on collated accounts from the soldiers who fought Diablo, but other than that, we’re essentially ‘running blind.’

Mireya mentioned the other day how we’re following in the footsteps of ghosts. I wasn’t aware that ghosts left foot prints, but I suppose her metaphor is nevertheless an accurate one if you crunch the numbers. History states that nearly a thousand soldiers didn’t return with the Kingdom’s Grand Army, so if there are ghosts that haunt the Omniverse, I imagine there’d be more than a few of them in the area.

I wonder what they did with all those bodies after the battle? Is the Black Gate some massive gravestone, littered with the rotten corpses of the Kingdom’s former finest?

The last few days have been uneventful… We skirted around some packs of roving monsters, and at one point, we even came up close to some sort of village. We had nearly walked right into the village square when we realized that the ‘citizens’ were monsters of some sort, with melted flesh and glowing eyes. As we slipped back into the woods, we noticed they were stockpiling raw meat that still clung to humanoid and animal bones.

The closer we get to our destination, the more the climate continues to change. There are more conifers, and my sensors show that humidity has declined sharply. Mireya has been pretty amused, because regions like this are hard to find in the Tangled Green. It’s a shame, because in my world, all she would have to do is take a walk through any part of upstate New York. There are more than enough pine and spruce trees up there…

-end entry-

***

With a grunt, Proto Man twisted his head around to glimpse into the dense forest. Over the last few days, they’d traveled deep into a taiga. The somewhat withered trees that seemed to be the namesake of the massive region around Darkshire had vanished, and while the atmosphere wasn’t any more welcoming, it was a nice change of scenery. The terrain had also leveled out, so they’d been able to make up for time they had lost while navigating around a handful of less than desirable attractions in the region.

“It’s cold,” Mireya whispered as she emerged from the trees. She had some sort of dead animal cradled in the crook of her elbow. The complaint—and by this point it was legitimate complaining—was rooted in reality. After all, the temperature had fallen toward ‘the low teens’ in terms of degrees Celsius, which meant they were just a chilly night away from entering that area where water started to freeze. “How much longer do you think we have to go?”

“Not sure,” Proto Man replied, his expression somber as he discharged a burst of fire into the pile of sticks, leaves, and branches that formed the center of their camp. “A few days? A week? I think we’re close, but the primary documentation on the Black Gate doesn’t talk a whole lot about pine forests.”

“You think we’re lost?”

The android shook his head. “We’re still going in the right direction… I just think that the terrain has changed over the last few years.”

A scowl spread across the face of half-night elf as she sat down on a log next to her robotic companion. “I suppose that makes sense… A prime could have wandered out here and gone summon happy.” The woman smirked as she jagged a sharpened branch through her food and dangled it over the flames.

“I think we’re probably a few days away from the Frozen Fields, which might have to do something with it as well.”

Mireya nodded. “An entire verse where it’s below freezing most of the time? No thanks,” she declared as Proto Man smiled and shook his head. “Hey, don’t shake your head at me! You’d be shaking in those oversized red booties if you could feel cold.”

“Nah, I’m made of sturdier stuff,” the android said as he stuck out his tongue, prompting the hunter to smack him on the knee.

***

Informational Observational Log 009 - Day 24

We had a pretty nice day today, if I dare say so myself.

The taiga hasn’t grown any thinner and the temperature is still low, but Mireya hunted some large bear two days ago. She came back wearing its still blood-spattered skin. I tried to highlight how absolutely insane she looked, but she just poked my nose. Is the cold that bad? Is the heat?

Humans are weird.

After that, we were able to cover a lot more ground. If my sources (as fragmented and somewhat unreliable as they may be) are correct, we should be very close to the Black Gate. I don’t know if I believe it… Shouldn’t there be corruption or disease or death all around us if we were close to the lair of the Archdemon? Entire days worth of land in the Tangled Green had been rendered sick and death by the effects of the Blight, but this region of the Pale Moors seemed… almost normal, if such a word could be applied to any place in his verse.

I wonder how much longer we have until--Give me a second, that doesn’t sound like Mireya.

***

“Mireya?” Proto Man asked, his voice thick with doubt as he turned his focus to his right. After nearly a month of marching, he knew the sound that the hybrid-night elf’s feet made when they crunched down on a branch.

Before he got a response, the tree that stood before him exploded like a bomb.

[Proto Man]

Before he had time to regain his senses, Proto Man had an axe swinging down at his skull. Twisting to the left, he threw out a leg, catching the attacking darkspawn in the shin. The monster howled as it dropped to a knee, but a quick blast of energy threw it back into the trees, where it made no more sounds. No sooner had he risen back to a vertical position than various indicators started to pop up on his internal display, alerting him to threats in his proximity.

Little too late for that now.

Proto Man spun around and rushed forward, throwing himself forward as his current track of forest came to an abrupt end a few meters ahead. As he hit the ground, he rolled into a crouch and spun. The barrel of the Proto Buster started to flash as the darkspawn came tearing out of the tree line. Bracing the base of the weapon, the android winced as one of the creatures nearly got within swinging range of its jagged sword.

As the smoking gun arm slung down to his side, Proto Man saw another flash on his internal display. A snarling darkspawn stormed out of the forest and thrust a blade at him, but before it could get close enough to do real damage, a spearhead tore through its back. The blighted monster hit the ground with a dull thud, and Mireya wrenched her weapon free from its corpse. Once she was done, her eyes seemed glued on something behind Proto Man, so the machine slowly turned around.

In front of the pair, the landscape had been deforested (if trees had ever existed at all), and the soil was a strange shade of grey. Far off in the distance, a massive gate loomed over the dead fields. Although it was a little over a mile away, the structure was enormous, and even at this distance, Proto Man could see some of the detail that had been placed into the giant pillars that supported the arch.

“That’s the Black Gate,” Mireya whispered, stating the very obvious. “Never thought I’d wind up standing here looking across the fields at that thing.”

The machine shrugged his shoulders. “It’s just a giant archway now… the real threat is lurking somewhere nearby,” he muttered, referring to the Archdemon whose base of operations was supposed to be located near the landmark.

“Is this where we call for that backup?” Mireya asked as the two started their march toward the Black Gate. At this point, Scylla had to know they were coming, so they had nothing to gain by wasting their time lurking in shadows.

“I’m working on it,” Proto Man muttered as a loading bar in the corner of the screen notified him of the time it would take to properly establish a link with his half-brothers in Coruscant. As they walked, he touched a finger to the whistle hanging from his next. The device was likewise coded properly, so if they were set upon by a large horde, he could rely on it to buy them some additional time.

“What you think are odds are to beat this thing?” Mireya whispered.

Proto Man laughed. “Do you want the actual odds or my personal opinion? I can give you both.”

The half-night elf shook her head. “Nevermind.”

[Proto Man]

As they drew closer, it became clear that they had somewhat underestimated the enemy forces gathered near the Black Gate. Nestled near the base of the colossal monument were strange structures that resembles huts of some sort. Even at a distance of about a thousand yards, they could spot the dark figures moving around inside the ‘camp.’ Proto Man wasn’t close enough to get any real data, but he figured there had to be a little over one or two hundred individuals.

“Damn Darkshire should have given us an army,” Proto Man seethed after relaying the information to Mireya. “This is going to be terrible.”

“I see that,” Mireya said, indirectly reminding the machine that she had naturally better night vision than he did. “We’ll need to scatter them or something… prevent them from clumping up on us.”

“Pull them in separate directions and try to mop up stragglers?” Proto Man inquired, waiting for a nod before he continued. “What if they’re more disciplined than that? Or if they have aerial troopers or magic?”

Mireya scowled. “There are too many variables here to deal with all of them. We’ve got to hope that an initial attack will be enough to disorient them. I mean, you running in there guns blazing should certainly do the trick,” she added with a coy smirk.

“Lovely. I get to be the spearhead?” He asked as Mireya brushed some dark blood from her weapon.

The woman snickered. “You’re the one who is covered in metal armor!”

Proto Man smiled faintly as the upload completed. A beat later, they were joined by six faces that the Prototype Robot Master hadn’t seen in over a year.

“This place is miserable,” Cut Man groaned.

“Blues!” Guts Man shouted, pushing passed his smaller siblings and scooping up the red robot in a bearhug. “Too long, little tiny friend,” he said as he squeezed Proto Man until the other machine thought his metal spine was going to crumble like a soda can.

“Nice to see you too, Guts,” Proto Man gasped before be dropped back to the ground. As he brushed himself off, he glanced up at the six Robot Masters. “So the situation is a little more complicated than I thought it would be.”


“What’s the matter?” Elec Man inquired as he and the others all started to take note of the encampment. “Oh.” The electricity-themed machine muttered.

“My estimates are between one and two hundred, but I can’t be certain,” Proto Man responded. “Either way, we’re going to be outnumbered by a very large margin.”

“Are we outgunned?” Flame Man questioned.

The prototype shrugged his shoulders. “There’s at least one prime that leads them, but other than that, I have no idea what type of soldiers might be waiting for us. With any luck, they’ll just be a mass of grunts, but we won’t know for sure until it’s too late.”

“Didn’t know this was a suicide mission,” Cut Man grunted, his expression a little more sullen than his siblings.

“It’s not suicide unless you get destroyed.” Ice Man followed up his remark with a hearty laugh, but it was obvious that Cut Man was going to drink the koolaid.

The orange and white machine let out a sigh as he dropped onto his haunches. “I guess it’s been a decent ride.”

“We’ll win,” Bomb Man shouted as he held out a hand and summoned one of his namesakes into his outstretched palm. “TIME TO DROP THE BOMB!”

Before anyone could stop him, the mohawked demolition’s expert broke into a mad dash toward the Archdemon’s encampment.

“Damn it,” Mireya shouted as she sheathed her spear and drew a pair of curved swords. “Now or never!” She screamed as she went rushing forward to support the machine.

With a nervous look on his face, Proto Man broke into a dash as the rest of the Gen 1 Robot Masters followed in his wake.

[Proto Man]

The previous Archdemons had been corrupted Old Gods... powerful entities from a period of lost history twisted and made insane by the Blight. Tarnished by the darkspawn, an Archdemon in turn united their separate consciousnesses into its own hive mind and proceeded to turn them into a full fledged army capable of scouring the entire world of anything that stood in their way.

Scylla was no dragon and no Old God.

Born a woman in a dying world called Thedas, she had grown up on stories about Blights in centuries past. Creatures called darkspawn, men rejected from the Maker’s throne, had corrupted the Old Gods, one by one, in increasingly desperate gambits to remake the world. The efforts had failed, although many nearly succeeded, but in the end, the final Old God was killed at the hands of the Grey Wardens. Thedas prospered for centuries, but eventually, the world started to wither.

She had been born with the ability to touch the Fade, but the institutes that used to hone (or even contain) magical individuals had died away a few generations before her birth. She grew into a young woman with no real control over the power she wielded, and her gifts resulted in her isolation from a society that could no longer understand her. It wasn’t her fault that the elements obeyed her commands or that minds were susceptible to her will.

It was in that isolation of her youth that she came to learn the history of the Blight. The stories and historical records told of a world that, despite being far more violent than hers, was more alive. How wonderful must it have been to go through each day as if it were your last? Her community was a decaying corpse. Everyone there was already dead on the inside, and they were just waiting for the next natural disaster or crop failure to push them into oblivion.

If there had been a Blight tomorrow, the entire society would have just rolled belly up. What new Thedas could have emerged had the darkspawn taken over the world?

That dream was one of the things she clung to when she arrived in the Omniverse. Diablo had been sealed away years ago, but the Pale Moors was still a vicious and vile place of nightmares. Even though they’d conquered their ‘monster,’ the place had never recovered. She had visited Darkshire to find it a sullen, morose place where the citizens waited for their inevitable deaths. What type of society was that? The people there would have been better off dying rather than living in a rotting carcass. It reminded her of her putrefying and decaying world and how wonderful it could be to start the entire thing over from scratch.

So Scylla aspired to cleanse the Pale Moors, and what better way to do that than with the Blight of legend. She created the darkspawn… piecing them together from history books and crafting the contagion that would be her Blight. She watched it spread across the Moors and into the Tangled Green, transforming everything in its path into something purer and simpler. The darkspawn knew nothing beyond survival and her will. Certainly such an existence, sheltered and protected as part of a singular entity, was preferable to limping through life as the living dead.

The Omniverse was a chaotic and terrible place.

She was saving the Omniverse from itself...

So why did they fight against her will?

Here, in the shadow of Diablo’s tombstone, Scylla had her home, and it was here that she would break apart the little tin man and his friends who had harassed and murdered the people she had saved. She had felt every darkspawn they had destroyed, and there was nothing that would please her more than to welcome them into her loving arms, even if that required smashing their skulls apart first.

Even as the first bombs exploded amidst the encampment, the Archdemon Syclla willed her children to attack.

She would cleanse these attackers, as she had done for many before them.

It was up to her to free them from themselves.

***

Bombs rained through the sky, exploding with enough force to shake the earth as their grinning creator whipped them toward the darkspawn. The first salvo had been devastating, with most of the primitive structures being set on fire or simply blown to pieces along with dozens of darkspawn.

Yet after the first array of explosions, the corrupted creatures seemed to regain their bearings. Many had found cover, while others were falling back to defensible positions. Bomb Man grit his teeth as crossbow bolts and arrows started to ricochet off his ceramic titanium body. Behind him, he heard the thud of his siblings’ boots on the ground. A beat later, bolts of lightning, balls of snow, blasts of fire, beams of energy, and a flurry of scissor-shaped projectiles.

Even as the darkspawn were mowed down in that initial flurry, they were replaced by even more of the growling, black-skinned monsters.

“Break apart!” Mireya shouted as they drew closer to the camp, and just like that, the eight individuals splintered off into opposing directions, trying to make themselves all viable targets to the horde of darkspawn now spilling forth from the camp.

For his part, Proto Man fell directly back as his allies splintered apart. As the ‘spearhead,’ it was his job to thrust forward and deal with whoever or whatever ‘Scylla’ was. A few darkspawn continued in his direction, but they were blown apart by a rapid trio of bombs. Glancing over his shoulder, the red robot grinned at the mohawked machine with the passion for explosives. A look forward showed that their tactic seemed to be working for the moment: Most of the darkspawn were giving chase to the other Robot Masters, which left Proto Man with an almost straight shot into the heart of their little base.

[Proto Man]

The Prototype Robot Master rushed right into the mouth of the monster, letting the Proto Buster clear a path with a rapid succession of concentrated blasts. Those darkspawn that tried to stand in his way either dove away or absorbed fatal energy bursts to their face or chest. Although a few of the creatures lashed out as he ran by, Proto Man shrugged off the blows as he continued toward the Black Gate.

Nestled underneath the massive dead gate was an elevated platform that spanned the distance of the two support pillars. At the center of the elliptical stone platform, a large and jagged chunk of red stone gave of a faint crimson glow. The preteen machine raced up the steps, and when he reached the landing at the top, he found himself standing a few feet away from a relatively simple-looking woman in black and red robes.

“Hello, Blues.” Her voice seemed strangely fragile, as if a strong gust of wind would break her into pieces. “I see you’ve made it.”

“Who are you?” Proto Man asked as his system started to scan the woman.

She smiled, her thin, pale lips seeming to vanish as she flashed a mouthful of perfect white teeth at the preteen machine. “You know me already, Blues.” Although soft, there were subtle hints of something cruel beneath her tone. “You’ve been dedicating all this time to my undoing, haven’t you?”

It was then that the android realized he was looking at the entity responsible for all the pain and suffering that had befallen the Pale Moors and Tangled Green over the last few years. He was looking at Scylla, the Archdemon.

“What were you expecting?” The woman inquired. “A demon? A winged monster?”

A smirked flashed across the youth’s features. “Kind of,” he answered genuinely as Scylla grinned. “I mean Archdemon tends to imply a demonic creature, you know?”

“A title, sweet child.” Scylla glanced out into the encampment. Flames licked up from ruined buildings, and the ground was already bruised and broken. “You’ve brought death and destruction to my little home.”

Proto Man scowled. “You’ve brought death and destruction to my big home,” he answered, eliciting a gentle chuckle from the woman. She took a step forward and held out a palm. After a moment of silence, a sphere of swirling black energy hummed to life.

“I bring peace, Proto Man.” She whispered, her soft voice somehow carrying itself over the wind even as the sound of the nearby melee intensified. “Peace and freedom from a life of pain and anarchy… The Blight exists to comfort and cleanse the Omniverse, not to hurt it.”

The youth scowled as the Proto Buster started to hum, light sputtering out from its barrel. “Tell that to Wood Man,” he retorted as he lifted the firearm. “My brother begged me to kill him after your cleansing turned him into a tortured monster.” With a violent flash, a lance of yellow energy erupted from the weapon. Even with little time to react, Scylla was able to launch the sphere of darkness, which collided with the Finish Buster. The two opposing forces struck one another, but rather than an explosion, both seemed to simply cancel the other out. Scylla’s sphere swallowed the buster blast and vanished, leaving nothing but empty space between the two adversaries.

“You can’t defeat me, Blues, I am your better.” Although she was insulting him, there wasn’t a shred of malice in her voice. It was almost as if the woman had been lobotomized and was unable to articulate any complex emotions.

“I’ve done a lot since I was brought to this place,” Proto Man replied as he stared at the Archdemon. “While you’ve been holed up here, I’ve been wandering the Omniverse… growing stronger and better than I could have ever hoped to be before.” The air around the machine seemed to shimmer as his body started to vent excess heat through the armored pads he wore. “I promise you that I will defeat you or tear you down with me.”

Scylla laughed softly as a coat of flames gradually washed over her lithe form. “I’m going to tear you apart, Blues. I’m going to break you down and let you watch as I accepted your family into my own.”

“Never.” Proto Man rushed forward, his body vanishing in a burst of white light as his system overclocked. His fist was the first to emerge from the white light, and behind it, the strong and muscular body of an adolescent Robot Master. The punch he threw connected with the woman’s chin, but despite her size and almost skeletal appearance, it barely staggered her. As she stumbled, she turned her eyes toward him, and for the first time, Proto Man saw something akin to emotion burning behind the aura of flames. A thin hand shot forward, and with it, a stream of electricity that seemed to form from thin air. Like a battering ram, the column of electrical energy struck his chest, throwing him back onto the steps that led up to the platform.

[Proto Man]

Recovering quickly as a second bolt of lightning screamed down toward him, Proto Man threw out his buster arm and released a rapid charged burst of energy.

Scylla twirled her other hand, and a wall of stone erupted up from the platform to absorb the oncoming projectile. As the makeshift barricade crumbled, Proto Man came leaping over it and smashed the side of his foot into her head. She dropped to her hands and knees and muttered something beneath her breath as the entire platform started to shudder. Before the Prototype Robot Master could react, giant stone fingers reached up out of the altar floor and closed around his legs, abdomen, and his gun arm.

“You can’t defeat me,” Scylla whispered as she rose up to her feet and wiped away a streak of blood from the corner of her mouth.

“I never said I’d do it alone,” Proto Man grunted as he grabbed the whistle and brought it to his lips. He blew through it for a few seconds before letting it fall from his mouth and back to his chest.

The Archdemon furrowed her brow as she waited for something—anything—to happen. When nothing did, she smiled and squeezed her hand, causing the stony fingers around Proto Man to likewise tighten their grasp. Before she could snap the Robot Master in half, something slammed into her back with enough force to knock her onto her backside. As Scylla’s concentration broke, the stone fingers around Proto Man’s lower body softened before melting back into the platform.

“What,” the woman groaned as she put a hand on the small of her back and started to pull herself back to her feet. Her response came in the form of a bark, and when she turned, she saw a robotic dog staring at her, its tongue hanging out of its open mouth.

“That’s Rush,” Proto Man chimed in. “In my world, he was built for my brother, but my version is clearly superior.” As if it agreed, the dog let out a few short barks.

“I’m not amused,” Scylla replied as she threw out a palm, hurtling a stream of flames at the Robot Master. Proto Man leapt over the fire and landed behind Rush.

“Show her what you got, Boy,” Proto Man replied as the dog barked and dropped down onto his haunches. The robotic mutt’s chest split apart, revealing one giant cannon quite similar the one his master wielded. “I call this one the Rush Buster,” the red robot smiled as a beam of energy erupted from the dog’s chest, catching Scylla unprepared. The blast carried the woman until she slammed into one of the might columns that supported the Black Gate. With a dull thud, she fell away from the unaffected stone and to the ground below.

Rush barked as his chest slid shut, cutting off the little plumes of smoke wafting up from the cannon. Proto Man relayed a standby order to the dog over their wifi connection and jumped from the platform. He landed silently on the ground and immediately spotted the location where the Archdemon had hit the earth. Before he could properly scan the surroundings, the ground beneath him turned to mud, forcing the machine to rush forward to avoid sinking into the spreading goop.

Amidst all the hops and lunges, Proto Man left himself wide open for a blast of electricity that sent him bouncing and rolling across the ground before he finally ran out of momentum. As he groaned and pushed himself up to his feet, Scylla stalked over to him, her burning figure a sharp contrast with the darkness that pervaded the rest of their surroundings. Proto Man rose to his feet and scowled as his opponent started to almost leisurely hurtle spears of ice at him. Summoning his shield, he hoisted it from the ground—a simpler task given his overclocked physique—and advanced toward his foe as the projectiles smashed across the surface of the bulwark.

When he felt the dirt beneath him start to soften, Proto Man knew what was coming next. Instead of dodging left or right and leaving himself unguarded and unaware, he planted the shield into the ground and sent it sailing forward with a vicious kick.

Scylla grunted as she summoned a burst of fire to halt the massive projectile. But when the shield dropped to the ground in front of her, Proto Man was standing right behind it, and the robot seemed to grin as he buried a set of knuckles into her gut. The impact folded her over the android, who pushed her upright and laid into her with a vicious right cross. After that, a solid straight kick to the chest threw the Archdemon onto her back. Scylla groaned as she found herself breathing with more difficulty. Pain across her ribcage told her that something in there wasn’t altogether correct.

Sitting upright even as her chest, face, and neck throbbed with pain, the woman focused on the android walking toward her. Much as she had earlier seemed almost lackadaisical while hurtling attacks at Proto Man, he now almost casually advanced toward her. Her fingers tore up the dirt as she clenched at the ground and forced herself up off her haunches. Up above them, the platform started to shudder as chunks of it broke away and fell toward the ground. It was only when the first of them neared the ground that the woman lifted a hand and ushered it toward her adversary.

The empowered machine scowled as he fired a rapidly charged blast, shattering apart the jagged slab of stone before it flattened him. As chunks of smoldering stone smacked into the ground around him, Proto Man’s vision overlay rushed to compensate for the decrease in visibility. It adapted just in time to throw out his hands to try and block against a second slab. The stone hit his palms, and although a half-dozen red indicators popped up around the edge of his display, Proto Man stopped the projectile, and with a grunt, he thrust it back toward its host.

Muttering something beneath her breath, Scylla scrambled away as the rock hit the ground where she had been standing and shattered into countless chunks. As she stumbled forward, she threw out a hand and fired a lance of ice toward the machine, who battered it aside with a leaf-shaped buckler mounted over his ‘normal’ wrist.

Once she had recovered her balance, Syclla dropped into a crouch and placed her palms on the ground.

A few yards away and trying to spot the woman through the thick dust, Proto Man wasn’t paying attention as the earth started to shudder beneath his boots. It wasn’t until it started to physically split apart that he threw himself forward, trying to escape the jagged fissure seeking to swallow him whole. Proto Man’s leap cleared him of the expanding hole, but before he could figure out what was going on, a blast of black energy struck his chest.

Like a bomb, the attack erupted against his body, shredding through the gray suit he wore, ripping into his organic layer, and even going so far as to compromise the integrity of his metal endoskeleton. The impact threw the red robot ten yards back, and when he did hit the ground, he landed on an elbow first, causing that joint and his shoulder to dislocate.

“Son of a…” Proto Man grunted as made it to his feet and grabbed a hold of the momentarily inert arm. After jamming it back into the shoulder joint, he moved down and reset the elbow joint, which was close to complete failure. From the dust beneath the platform, he saw a shape slowly advancing toward him, but a blast of energy failed to hit a target. A moment later, Scylla erupted up from the ground in front of the red robot and put a hand on his wounded chest. There was a sparkle of electricity before a blast of electricity slammed into the compromised armor and punished the android’s internal systems.

His display flashed black for a few moments as his system tried to vent the electricity and preserve the integrity of his wiring. Throwing a palm forward, he caught Scylla in the chin before she could fire a second bolt of lightning.

As Proto Man stumbled backwards, a red shape dropped down behind him. There was a blast of fire that forced the Archdemon to retreat for a moment, giving the red robot enough time to lurch backwards and join Rush. Proto Man took a knee next to the dog, who barked as Scylla reemerged from the dust. The woman was smiling despite the bruises, blood, and dirt that now covered her once pallid visage.

“Running out of tricks, Blues?”

Proto Man smiled as he reached up and adjusted his helmet so it rested evenly on his head. “I got one that I’m sure you’re going to like,” he muttered as he placed a hand on Rush’s shoulder. “Rush Adapter Execute!”

Scylla winced as the teenager and his dog vanished in a flare of white light. When the light faded, Rush was gone, and Proto Man had undergone a second transformation. His body had reverted back to its preteen form, but his torso now sported a heavy-looking suit of red and white armor, with pauldrons that matched the design of Rush’s shoulders. The gray body suit had been repaired and replaced with a white version. Heavy plate covered his abdomen and previously ‘exposed’ portions of his arms. Extending from Proto Man’s back were two flat pieces of steel decorated with an orange panel of lights and a blinking blue bulb near the end. Just below where the robot’s sternum would have ended, a large orange light shined brightly amidst their dim surroundings.

After tucking some of his scarf into his helmet, Proto Man clenched and unclenched his fists as his system ran the final post-merge diagnostics. In this stage, he lacked the raw strength of being overclocked, but all of his systems were closer to be in balance, which probably made him a much greater threat.

“You changed your clothes.”

“A lot more than that,” Proto Man took a step forward and thrust a clenched fist toward his foe. When the arm fully extended, his hand broke apart and rocketed through the air like a red blur until it smashed into Scylla’s nose.

[Proto Man]

Before Scylla could recover from that first stunning impact, Proto Man had spanned the distance between them and driven a knee up into her sternum.

Extending his handless arm, Proto Man watched as the idle appendage jiggled on the ground a few times before skittering across the surface and hopping back into place. After a quick test flex of his wrist and fingers, he drilled Scylla with a savage punch that caused her right cheekbone to shatter beneath her skin.

The Archdemon fell back, but the Prototype Robot Master gave her no time to breath. He pressed his assault, burying a quick succession of blows along her face and thorax. Halfhearted bursts of electricity sputtered from her hands, and while a few hit the surface of the robot, he shrugged them off between strikes. After half a minute of bludgeoning his adversary, Proto Man broke away and watched as Scylla dropped to her knees.

“Still won’t… won’t win,” he gasped as she pitched forward and spit out a mixture of blood and saliva. She looked up at the preteen machine with weary eyes and, despite everything that had happened, she grinned. “My family will dest--” Scylla stopped mid-sentence when she saw the banged up group of people walking toward them, their identities obscured by the layer of dust and smoke that covered what had once been a settlement before being turned into a killing field. As they drew closer, the Archdemon realized that they were the robot’s allies… all of them. The elven woman with the weird accent held a severed limb in her hand, which she threw at the ground in front of Scylla.

“From the Tangled Green… with love,” she hissed, her eyes burning with more fury than a dozen suns.

The trounced Archdemon shook her head as she struggled and failed to rise to her feet. When she dropped back to her knees, she let out a frustrated grunt and looked at her attackers. “I… apologize.” She whispered.

“It’s a little too late for that,” Mireya rasped, clenching her hands tightly around her spear.

Scylla shook her head. “You are mistaken… I apologize that I couldn’t save all of you from yourselves.” At that, the half-night elf rushed forward and had to be restrained in the banged up and scuffed arms of Guts Man, who held the woman as she thrashed against him. “Don’t worry, Mireya… I’ll be back for you.”

Proto Man scowled as he stepped forward, lifting his rune-encrusted buster cannon. “I don’t think you’ll be back for a long time,” the Prototype Robot Master muttered as a pure white light started to build up inside the barrel of the weapon. The various runes started to shimmer as the ground beneath Scylla likewise began to glow white.

As if she now realized what was happening, the mangled Archdemon grit her teeth and glared at the preteen machine. “You better hope I never escape, because if I do, you will be the first person I hunt down.”

“I’ll be waiting.” Proto Man scowled as he braced the Proto Buster with his other hand. “...Banishment Buster!”

Like a bolt of divine justice, a beam of pure white energy erupted from the prime’s weapon. Scylla continued to glare at her adversary through the light up until her body collapsed into ash and was swallowed up into the ground.

Proto Man let his item swing down to the ground. The runes that once ringed it had faded away, leaving behind only a few incoherent scraps along its surface.

While he knew that machines didn’t have souls, the preteen machine hoped that Wood Man and Snake Man were now at peace.