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

[Proto Man]

When Wood Man appeared on the screen, he looked everything like an animated corpse. The slight luster of his exterior had faded, and cracks and fissures lined his faux wood exterior. A closer look revealed that those fault lines were actually black veins that occasionally seemed to glow a dull red.

“Hi… this is Wood Man.” The machine’s voice was ragged and wheezy. His once green eyes were now a mixture of black and red, and his ‘skin’ was an ashen shade of gray. Aside from the physical degradation, Wood Man bore several surface injuries, and an entire chunk of his head had been tore away, revealing the scratched skull beneath. “I can hear them whispering in my mind. Dozens… hundreds of voices all calling out to me from somewhere beyond the veil of reality. I was afraid at first, but I can drone them out now and then. I’m not sure how much longer I can fend off this disease. Robots aren’t supposed to know weakness or fatigue, but I feel both.

“But… but I shouldn’t focus on my condition. Th-there are other things that I must doc… document before the end.” Wood Man dropped back onto his haunches, and the recording device followed him down. “I found the darkspawn emissary, and to keep matters short, I lived up to my original role as a combat robot. I don’t believe it expected to face a machine, because many of its powers had little effect on me. Once I defeated its body guards, I was able to incapacitate the creature.

“From there, I attempted an extraction of intelligence from the darkspawn,” Wood Man sighed. “If I didn’t know my death was imminent, I wouldn’t be able to live with some of things I did to that thing and its retinue. Unfortunately, the emissary is not the source of the Blight. Like my brothers and me, it was a secondary… an all-to mortal individual trapped in the wonder and nightmare of the Omniverse.

“But I know who it serves!” Wood Man smiled, revealing a mouthful of yellowed teeth and blackened gums. “The Blight is linked to an ‘Archdemon,’ who not only serves as the source of the Blight but also as the leader of the darkspawn. Those voices in my head? The ones that scream and gnaw at my sanity? I can only guess they’re some final phase of the corruption process meant to draw the infected to the Archdemon. I wonder how long I have until I can’t resist the calls? Then what will become of me?

The sylvan machine shook his head, as if he was trying to shake the thoughts from his mind. “Sorry… so sorry. I need to focus on recording the pertinent intelligence. I’m not sure what the Archdemon may look like, but I do know two things.” Wood Man lifted an index finger that was losing the last digit. “It is not in the Tangled Green… take a look at this if you don’t believe me.” At that, the robot panned the camera to reveal a stack of darkspawn corpses. “They’re not elves or orcs or even ninjas. In my experience, the darkspawn always seem to retain some indicators of their past lives.” The camera zoomed in to reveal a faded logo on some of the creature’s chest plates and shields. “That’s the Darkshire coat of arms. It is my belief that the emissary had some of the oldest and strongest warriors with it. And where would they come from, if not the origin of the Blight?

“The second thing I know? The Archdemon is a prime…it simply has to be. The Blight is far too unnatural to have naturally started in the Tangled Green or the Pale Moors. If I had to guess based on my understanding of history, the Archdemon probably served Diablo. That would also explain the origins in the Pale Moors.

“Primes are immortal…I know this. But I also know it is possible to banish them from the Omniverse. While the Blight may be rooted in science, it seems like the only way to bring an end to it is metaphysical. When I was ‘observing’ the elves, I picked up the method they use to banish primes to the Underverse. It’s a series of glyphs used as a circle of power to channel the omnilium needed to banish a dying prime’s death shroud to the Underverse. The key word there is ‘dying’… it won’t work on a healthy prime.

“I have the glyphs to create the banishment circle, but I can’t say with any confidence that I will make it. If I was human, the pain I feel right now would be unbearable. I’ve never been so happy to be a machine, because it means I have a little more control over myself.” Wood Man stood up, and in the process, Proto Man noticed that his severed leg had regrown. In its place, a twisted, blackened branch of a leg had spawn from the former stump. The limb twitched unnaturally as its sinewy muscles flexed.

“I’m going to leave these records of my time in the Tangled Green. This case… someone may be able to learn from me and stop this Blight from overrunning the forest and its inhabitants. Tomorrow morning, I will start my journey back toward the gate.

“If… if it’s one of my brothers who find these recordings… I want you to promise me that you’ll destroy me. If I succumb to this infection, I want you to promise me now that you’ll destroy me. I know that the Omniverse is a perversion of our real world, so I want you to promise me you won’t let me wander around as one of those soulless beasts.

“Promise me.”

With that, the feed went dead.

Unlike Wood Man, Proto Man felt a much wider array of the human condition. The preteen android sat in front of the chest for a good long while before he had anywhere close to the strength needed to stand. As he rose up off the ground, he collected the puck and picked up Wood Man’s severed leg. On the other side of the leg, he saw that his sylvan half-brother had etched a various array of runes into his own limb. Common sense told him that he was probably looking at the glyphs used to banish a dying prime.

Glancing around his surroundings, Proto Man searched for a few moments until he found a sharp rock. After biting down on his lip (for moral support more than anything else), the android began to dig into the metal piece that covered his wrist and much of his forearm. It took a few minutes to get going, but once he did, it only took Proto Man half an hour to gouge the circular array of symbols into his arm. When he finished, he discarded the rock, which was stained red from the now marred paint of his armor.

Picking Wood Man’s leg back up, the red robot cradled it in his arm as he turned around and began toward the final puck. His now thoroughly mapped out GPS app told him he was traveling toward the location of the very first puck. As he walked toward what was undoubtedly the final of Wood Man’s hidden messages, the final words of the dying machine echoed in Proto Man’s head.

Promise me!

“I promise, Wood Man…” Proto Man muttered as he made his way back through the blighted forest. “I promise.”