Chapter 4: Chapter 4- Husks

Clockworks. Through either stories or first hand experiences, everyone knows what Clockworks are. Most of the time, unless you have first hand information from places like the Sugal Empire or the Avereus Plains, you will have a skewed view of what a Clockwork is. 

The ignorant consider them to be a ravenous hive of barely intelligent machines placed onto the surface of Granulous by the Gods of the System to bolster our strength through survival of the fittest. They are unequivocally wrong. Clockworks are highly intelligent, zealous, and resourceful beings sent here by the Demon Goddess in an attempt to destroy our world. 

I do not wish to scare the faint of heart among my readers, as the threat of the Clockwork Menace is not unassailable. That is what I wish to show in this guide, so we may wipe them from the face of Granulous.

-Foreword of ‘The Clockwork Foe’, written by Ul’gard the Orc-kin

 

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As Mori looked around, she found a wealth of metal, parts, and other materials. The plane that was buried in the sand was gutted, almost all of the mechanical innards taken by someone. As she explored, she found signs of forced entry, torn seatbelts, and pools of blood. Luckily, there were no bodies nor were there any signs that the previous passengers of the plane died, so she breathed a sigh of relief. 

After finding little of value in the plane, Mori walked over the Clockwork machines that were strewn about some distance away from the crashed aircraft. They were all in some state of disrepair, but their wounds varied wildly; some were frozen, others were fried by fire, and others still were torn apart by gunfire. The only outliers were the large crafts that laid shattered further away than the other, more human-like machines. They were like vans with spherical wheels protruding from their undersides that glided along the sands of the desert, carrying pods on their sides. There were over 50 humanoid corpses and 3 larger crafts scattered around a thousand feet of battlefield. 

Apart from the husks, there were tracks in the sand that attracted Mori’s attention. “Hmm…” she wondered aloud, “A giant trench carved out of the sand with Clockwork machines in that direction and a bunch of tracks going the other direction. Hmm… Let’s follow the tracks once I’m done here,” she said to herself. Once she finished making her plans, she gathered up all of the humanoid husks near two of the three shattered craft and began to inspect the machines. 

Both the humanoids and the crafts were fascinating pieces of both engineering and rune work. The bones, the joints, the power system, the ‘brain’ of the thing, the eyes, the gun, even the legs of the humanoid were all amazing to Mori; even more so due to the influence of [Mechanical Affinity]. The right arms of the Clockworks had a gear-operated rifle built into it, while the left arm had welding and cutting tools in their fingers. She jury-rigged the tools in the fingers and was ready to make use of them. After taking the tools from the arm, she began to look at the large craft-type machines. Unfortunately, none of them had a surviving middle portion, so she could only judge the front and back portions of them, but she was still left amazed.

The front of the machine was made to house only two things: the eyes and the four gatling guns. Apart from the two parts, the rest of it was entirely made of armor, layered to allow for the greatest amount of protection. By contrast, the backside was a large store of spare parts, locked behind a panel Mori was able to open by pure chance while playing with the inner workings of the machine. The parts ranged from arms, legs, plates, and even a spare Clockwork ‘brain.’

“Nice!” she shouted, counting her lucky stars for the find. Looking at the other transport, she found the hidden compartment to be entirely blown out, leaving nothing to be salvaged. Sighing, she laid out the usable parts on the sand and began to think, “What to make…? I definitely need to take a gun or two, maybe even modify the gatling gun to make it more portable,” she thought aloud, “But where will I even put it? Maybe I can… Actually, first, I should just figure out how the runes work.”

As she said so, she let the whispers of the runes filter back into her soul. They told her how mana changed forms and how it worked together in runes and how they all needed a medium to be truly effective. Taking all of the information in, she wanted to learn how the Clockworks’ runes worked. Unfortunately the whispers said nothing about how to identify runes, so she was stuck to figure it out on her own. 

First tried to feel the runes with her finger, the bone lightly scraping on the metal. She felt nothing other than the sense that mana was within the runes. She tried again and again, but nothing to her. Eventually, she tried to put mana into her fingers and feel the runes. As she did so, she felt something different. It was like the idea was close to her mind, just on the tip of her non-existent tongue, but she was not close enough. After a few moments, she tried to will her mana closer and tried to feel the thoughts behind the runes. The mana peeled from her fingers, turning into tendrils of her perception, and pushed into the runes. They glowed dull, like a lightbulb without enough power, and she felt their meanings.

She felt their meanings, understanding the concepts that laid behind the shapes. Runes that aligned with movement were present in all of the joints, but the most interesting part of them was the fact that they either took the energy to move the automatons from the moving gears or vice versa. The runes would take some time to fully understand for Mori, but she was easily able to take the runes from the metal they sat on, brass-like metal with the hardness of steel.

After another while, she laid out the movement runes on the ground with all of the gears she could find next to them. The next thing she did was look into the Clockworks’ power sources. The transports’ power sources likely resided in the middle section, so she had to make do with the humanoids’ bodies for her study. FInding a Clockwork with an intact power source was a tall task, but she managed to find only two of them. They were medium-sized cylinders made of the same brass-like metal but with foggy glass panes on their sides, slowly rotating colors shining through, and capped with ports for piping present within the automaton.

Without hesitation, she bisected the more dented cell, showing the latticework of runes that ran along the inner surface of the cell. It took Mori a long while to figure the path of mana out, but when she did, she was left with many things left to understand about the device, but she knew that it created more mana somehow. Looking to the sky, she saw that the sun had reached the middle of its arc to the horizon, leading her to believe that it was closing in on the late afternoon.

Sighing, she began to collect everything together and plan out her first creation. Prying a gatling gun off of one of the destroyed crafts, she knew how to operate it with one look. By pushing a gear into place, it would spin the gun and let loose a hail of bullets, of which she salvaged a great many of; luckily, the bullets in the rifles of the humanoids and the crafts were the same. 

She planned everything out, measuring every beam to be cut and every gear to be slotted into the device. She was planning on attaching a glove onto her right arm with the gatling gun attached to it and with a glove that housed all of the tools within the humanoids’ left hands. While planning, she grabbed a large blanket from the plane, which she used as a makeshift cloak. With her plan set and her materials laid out, she got to work. 

Beginning with the power source, she welded hooks to the power cell that would secure it within her ribcage, keeping it tight with her [Minute Skeletal Manipulation]. With the power cell secure in her ribcage, only being about the size of a human heart and the same size as her crystalized soul, she connected it to a rune that turned mana into movement with piping and connected the rune to a gear. Figuring that she did not want the gears to be constantly turning, she made a switch that would also act as the trigger for the weapon, as it would stop the gears from moving when deactivated due to the lack of mana. 

It took her another few hours to complete the device, with a few design revisions needed throughout the process, but Mori eventually had an arm guard with a gear-operated, sawed off gatling gun by the time the sky turned a shade of orange. With rings that connected the arm guard to her bones, it was both light and secure to her right forearm. She also added a port for the piping to her hand, which could allow her to use the tools in the humanoid's hands. When finished, she received a message from her Sa’rk system.

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[You have created a clockwork device through a rudimentary understanding of runes and intermediate engineering and mechanical knowledge. You have been awarded experience.] 

“All in all,” she said to herself, “Not that bad for a first creation. It’ll probably break with a good hit or two and it’s more than a bit bulky, but it’s fine. Now, let’s look at the power… what the hell is that?” Her burning eyes turned to the horizon, and she saw a cloud of dust moving towards her. It did nothing to deter her sight, however, and she saw into the cloud with the burning flames in her eyes. It was another Clockwork craft, moving in fast. Instead of five pods on each side, two larger pods were present on each side of the craft. It immediately became clear what was in them when four large mechanical creatures flung themselves out from their pods and onto the darkening sand. 

They were massive, 7 foot tall, heavily armored Clockwork creations with four massive scythe-like arms, thick, trunk-like legs, and curved blades for heads. As the creatures landed on the sand, with two of their arms used like legs, they dashed forward with terrifying speed, outpacing the transport that carried them. 

Stilling her momentary panic, Mori thought of what to do. Remembering the description of what a lich was, she searched her fingers for the irregular. Her left ring finger was the outlier, with a subtle, wavy pattern engraved in black and green and purple running up and down the finger that she failed to notice earlier in her interest in the Clockworks. 

Glancing around at the scrap heap of machines she had created in her project, she shrugged and pushed mana through the finger. Instantly, a sinister yet familiar feeling washed over her like a cold shower. The sinking feeling of death. WIth her right hand tightened into a fist, she spread the mana out to the husks that laid around her. The black, green, and purple mana that she knew very well seeped into the Clockworks and their parts. Some of the more whole machines rose to their feet with a lurch, while the piles of parts cobbled themselves together into metal monsters. 

[You have created-]

“Not now, system! I’ll read it later,” she growled, her voice becoming more threatening than her usual peppy attitude. The boxes that were appearing vanished with her words and she could focus on the coming battle. Seeing the Clockworks still dashing towards her, she smirked. “All of you!” she shouted, the raised metal undead looking towards her, “The ones that can shoot your guns, get behind cover and pepper those things when they're in range. Anyone else, try to pin their movements if you can’t kill them. Go!” 

WIth her orders given, her undead wasted no time in following her orders. Some of the humanoid Clockworks dashed behind the fallen transports or within them, while the others stayed low, waiting for a counter attack. Just as the undead were ready, the craft that was lagging behind opened up ports on its sides, revealing not gatling guns, but a pair of miniature cannons. With a resonant thump, they fired their shots. And missed by dozens of feet. Despite that, the shots kicked up clouds of sand, obstructing the view of the undead. 

Just then, the four Clockwork creatures arrived. The closest undead, one of the Clockworks Mori had pried a rifle from, was cut in half. As the large Clockwork was gaining its footing back after the swing, a pair of metallic monsters tackled it to the ground and began to beat on it. At the same time, the rest of the undead were being torn apart by the Clockworks, the only saving grace being their unnatural stubbornness that kept the creatures busy.

Mori growled and aimed her gatling gun at the closest Clockwork and let the bullets rain. At the same time, the undead with both ammunition remaining and functioning guns rapidly fired at the living Clockworks. Most of the shots simply bounced off of the Clockworks’ armor, but some managed to pierce the thinner parts of the Clockwork creatures. In spite of the damage, the creatures were not slowed. They tore through the undead with even more ferocity than before.

The battle continued, with shots being fired and cannon shells raining on the field, and Mori’s forces were shrinking rapidly. Soon, only a handful of undead surrounded her, protecting their Lich with their second lives. Just as the last undead was killed and Mori was left alone, an impact sent one of the Clockwork creatures sprawling on the ground. It tried to stand, but stumbled, falling as its leg shattered.

Despite Mori’s hopes, the creatures did not stop to mourn their comrade and attacked her once more. As she backed up and sprayed a Clockwork with bullets, she heard a voice call out from behind her, “Hey! Hold out your hand!” Without thinking, Mori held out her left hand. With a gust of wind, her hand was taken and she was picked up off of her feet, dragged forward and past the Clockworks. 

Looking to her left, a young woman was holding her skeletal hand while piloting a narrow craft that slid along the ground. It was the length of a small boat and the width of a motorcycle and left a cloud of kicked up sand behind it. Mori swung her body onto the back of the craft, sitting behind the woman, and let loose another hail of bullets. 

The bullets did little, but the creatures were unable to catch up to the craft. Another cannon shell landed next to the craft, almost tipping them over, but they were able to get away eventually. After a while and when the sun touched the horizon, the woman sighed, “Phew! That was tense! Anyway, what were you doing…” her words stopped as she turned to her passenger. With a sigh, the young woman pressed her head against the handlebars of her craft, “Please tell me you’re not a mean undead.”

With a giggle, Mori shook her head, “Nope. Also, I’m a Lich, so… there’s that,” she said with a shrug. 

The woman tensed for a moment, but sighed, “So I really just picked up a Lich? Ugh… what’s gonna happen with Ma?”

Mori laughed, “Who knows? I’ve never met her! Anyway, do you want to do introductions now or later?”

“Now, please. Not noticing the person I picked up was a Lich was bad enough, but not knowing the Lich’s name by the time I get home is even worse. So, you offered.”

“Mori Athanatos. Lich.”

The young woman laughed a bit, “Fara Notchings. Human.”

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