[Exemplary] Family of Steel - Carved from the Blighted Oak

[Proto Man]

After gathering up all the faux confidence a preteen machine could muster, Proto Man stepped off the bank and into the river. Almost immediately, his internal sensors started to blink to indicate that his feet were suddenly experiencing a cooler surrounding temperature than the rest of his body. The application was designed as an early warning system for extreme heat or cold to ensure that Proto Man’s inability to feel heat or cold like a human didn’t lead him to exposure himself to dangerous environments.

Once he was certain he was standing on solid ground, the android continued forward. The current was stronger than he would have expected given the size of the river, but it was nothing he couldn’t easily manage. Each step was slow and calculated to ensure he didn’t trip over a rock or anything else beneath the water. After a few paces, the liquid was up to his neck, and the robot found himself dreading having to go underneath the surface. It is just water… you’re good. Clenching his jaw to keep his mouth shut, Proto Man took the next step, bringing the water up to the bottom of his visor.

Before he could walk under the surface of the river, something flashed on the corner of his HUD. Proto Man jerked his head in the direction just in time to watch as a black shape slammed into his chest. The impact shattered his footing and caused him to bowl over backwards. Before he could right himself, the current had grabbed hold of him and he was being pulled downstream. Even worse, he the undertow was also acting to drag him into increasingly deeper waters.

Everything was black, aside from the warning indicators trying to inform him that he was upside-down and being dragged by something not of his own designs. Proto Man quickly dismissed the boxes before planting his good hand down into the riverbed in an attempt to find purchase on something or anything. After a few more stressful seconds, his hand slammed into a giant rock embedded firmly into the ground. He quickly clenched his fingers as hard as he could, and fortunately for him, the rock didn’t shatter under his strength. With a dull thump, Proto Man’s legs passed over him, and he pulled himself close to the rock.

Just as soon as he thought he had a chance to relax, something wrenched at his right leg, causing him to lose his one-handed grip on the rock. Before he knew it, he was once again at the mercy of the river.

***

He’d lost track of Proto Man somewhere near the river. Through some means unknown to Snake Man, the Prodigal had managed to give his Search Snakes the slip. The last information the little machines had to relay was that they’d watched the other Robot Master attempt to manually ford the River Animus.

As the serpentine machine mulled over the other robot’s actions, he started to respect the ingenuity of the prototype android. Had Proto Man summoned a boat or raft through omnilium, he would have been simple to track, so he had risked his own well-being to ford the dangerous, turbid river to escape continued surveillance. The tactical choice was brilliant given the fact that there were probably many more eyes and ears on Proto Man.

I will find you, Prodigal… you may be intelligent, but subterfuge is my forte, not yours.

***

The River Animus was mighty.

At its widest, the Animus was nearly seventeen miles wide and around a hundred and fifty feet from surface down to riverbed. Its drainage basin covered nearly two-thirds of the Tangled Green, spanning a multitude of ecosystems and habitats. It was hard for anyone to travel anywhere in the verse and not come across one of the mighty river’s tributaries or feeders.

Due to its scale, the river supported dozens of settlements throughout the Tangle Green, from small, ‘native’ villages all the way to the homes of the ninjas and night elves. The river provided clean water and a fresh supply of food for most of year. For several months out of the year, the increased rainfall would cause the river to flood and turn into a fast-running death trap for anyone foolish enough to fight against a force of nature.

Many worshipped the Animus and revered its ability to go from a gentle giver of life to a monstrous devourer of all things.

It was that season of the year now, and a young night elf woman found herself wandering down what was now the new edge of the river. A few months earlier, she had been about twenty feet to her left and leisurely skipping stones in the crystal blue waters. Now she was looking out at the giant, submerged trees. They were the survivors—their less sturdy brothers and sisters had already been consumed by the river.

As the elven woman wandered along the edge of the Animus, she expected very little to happen. The rainy season tended to curtail the constant hordes of wandering goblins.

Unfortunately, the elf’s idyllic stroll alongside the rain-engorged river came to an abrupt stop when part of it exploded upward. A quarter mile from shore, there was a brilliant flash of yellow light that started beneath the surface. A moment later, a beam of energy erupted out from the river at an almost forty-five degree angle, bringing a column of frothy, steaming water along for the ride. It took the elf only a brief moment to see the red, human-looking shape at the apex of the beam, which fizzled away after a few moments. Two heartbeats later, there was the sound of cracking wood as a tree tried to absorb the impact of the human and failed miserably.

***

Blergh… Proto Man shook as he stood up off the ground. With his good hand, he pried off his helmet, causing close to a quart of water to cascade down the rest of his face and onto his body. From what he could tell, he hadn’t sustained any serious injuries, despite the fact that rocks had torn at his suit and left garish wounds in his plated areas. Where to? After a short delay to recalibrate his position, a path flash to life on the android’s HUD. While he wasn’t as close as he would have been a few miles upstream, Proto Man could still reach the puck quickly if he kept up a nice pace.

Little did the preteen android realize, he had acquired a new stalker following his liberation from the river.

***

Mireya Vasquez always felt her most natural when she was by herself in the jungles of the Tangled Green, far removed from the rest of elven society. Due to her nonexistent father’s non-elven lineage, she was an outsider in Yggdrasil, but her complexion, accent, and mannerisms likewise made her ‘the other’ in the majority of Camelot’s various duchies. She’d been in the Omniverse for a few years now, and she had yet to find a place to fit in.

Now she found herself trailing a child decked out in plates of armor who’d seemingly blasted himself up out of the Animus River. From what she could tell, he was following some kind of trail. Every now and again, he would pause and readjust his direction by a few degrees. As the boy kept moving forward Mireya had to wonder if he knew that he was heading deeper and deeper into one of the most unpleasant parts of the Tangled Green.

The taint from the Blight had grown over the last year and a half, and from what the night elves’ leader said, it could potentially overwhelm the entire Tangled Green if allowed to spread unchecked for much longer. Mireya herself had never encountered any of the blighted creatures, but she had also been smart enough to skirt around said regions when she was out and about. Now, however, she was finding herself succumbing to curiosity, and while she was no cat, she also knew in the back of her mind that things could go sour at any moment.