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

[Proto Man]

From the darkness, the creatures rushed forth like a living wave of pestilence. Most of them had once been elves, but many were from species that Proto Man had yet to encounter. While his battle analyzer application told him they had once been ‘orcs,’ all the robot understood was the threat that the six-foot monsters represented. One let out a guttural roar as it smashed an axe into the skull of a straggling night elf. The woman’s slender form crumpled beneath the massive impact, and by the time she hit the ground, it was obvious she wasn’t going to stand back up.

Following the lead of the surviving night elves, Proto Man formed up with the rest of them to create a tight crescent. Three of the elves had brandished curved blades, and the other four had drawn rune-adorned bows. Without bothering to acknowledge the stranger in their ranks, the leader, who stood at the formation’s center, bared her teeth as she flashed a look to the archers. “Fire at will, Sisters!”

Proto Man watched with a degree of fascination as the women released a volley of faintly glowing arrows into the horde of encroaching darkspawn. Once the first quartet was out, it was joined quickly by a second, a third, and before too long, Proto Man had lost track. Despite the elves’ onslaught, the wave simply crushed its dead members under its boots, and before long, the night air was consumed by the cacophony of clanging metal.

Opting for a more efficient means of damaging the mass, Proto Man switched to assault mode and started spraying pellets of energy at the closest creatures. The rounds were too weak to kill anything, but they served their intended purpose of spreading around the pain. More than that, they distracted the creatures and made them set their sights on the four-foot boy with the gun for an arm. Around the android, a trio of night elves gathered. Without saying a thing, they formed a triangle around him and started lashing out at the same scorched darkspawn now vying for his throat.

“Watch out,” Proto Man yelled as his color palette shifted to orange and red. Just as they had formed around him without words, the night elves followed his instructions and peeled away just as the torrent of flames erupted out of the preteen’s weapon. The amassed darkspawn let out primal screams as they were turned into stumbling, flailing infernos. Those that didn’t die after the first few seconds were quickly dispatched by the nearby Sentinels.

Keeping his weapon primed, Proto Man turned and watched as one of the overpowered night elves was bludgeoned in the skull with a rock. The woman managed a faint whimper before collapsing into a lifeless heap. A few feet away, the other survivor was stabbed through the heart with an oversized cleaver. If he had blood, it would have run cold, but instead, Proto Man lifted up his gun once more and released a burst of atomic fire.

This time, the darkspawn that remained fled back into the blighted forest, leaving their dead and injured behind. As Proto Man watched, the three surviving night elves hacked the still-living darkspawn into an assortment of bloody pieces. Despite the fact that they’d helped protect him and vice versa, the android couldn’t help but feel a little off put by just how much pleasure they seemed to find in murdering the dying monsters.

When the night elves weren’t looking, Proto Man found the data puck inside a nearby dead tree and ran away as fast as his synthetic legs would carry him.