"They're wrong about you," Mallie said, sitting cross-legged on a fallen log. Her bow lay across her lap, her fingers absently tracing the curved wood I'd crafted for her. "Everyone who knows you knows you'd never do something like that."
How did you find me. Out here? I asked, genuinely curious about her presence in my woodland sanctuary.
She grinned, a flash of pride crossing her freckled face. "I learned Tracer! Marked you and a few others I wanted to keep track of. It's a useful ability for an Archer."
I turned my eyeless face toward her, intrigued. Using Analyze, I examined her status:
Name: Malladay of Weath
Level 5 Archer
Still level 5, I observed. Must be difficult. To advance without combat.
"Yeah." She kicked at the dirt with her boot. "Can't exactly go hunting monsters around here like in the Hellzone. And the village is too peaceful for me to gain much experience." She paused, frowning. "Well, it was peaceful. Until..."
I nodded, understanding her unspoken words. Until the murders began. Until the villagers needed someone to blame. Until they found their perfect monster.
Antos sent for help. Again?
"He sent two riders to Millbrook. The baron ignored them, just like last time." Mallie's voice carried a bitter edge. "Fat lot of good having noble protection does us."
I resumed working on my project, letting the familiar motions of Assembly calm my troubled thoughts. The murders bothered me more than the accusations. Something about their brutality, the deliberate staging of the bodies...
It was unsettling. It was inhuman.
"What are you making?" Mallie asked, leaning forward to peer at my work.
Not sure yet, I admitted. Sometimes. Just need to create.
The truth was, I'd been building constantly since my exile to the woods. Scattered around my clearing were dozens of half-finished devices, each abandoned when the compulsion to create something new seized me. It helped quiet the darkness in my thoughts as well as the growing anger at being blamed for atrocities I hadn't committed.
Mallie reached for one of my abandoned creations; it was a curious L-shaped device of brass and steel. She turned it over in her hands, examining the hollow barrel and the internal spring-loaded mechanisms with keen interest.
"What's this supposed to be?" She held it up in front of her, pointing the barrel toward a distant tree.
Careful, I warned through Mind Speech. And. I'm not certain. What it does.
And I wasn't. The design had come to me in fragments, like so many things did. It was technical knowledge without context or memory. My hands knew how to craft intricate machinery that my mind couldn't quite comprehend. The contraption appeared designed to propel objects with tremendous force, though the mechanics and purpose remained a mystery to me.
"Like a tiny crossbow maybe?" Mallie squinted down the barrel. "But where would the bolt go?"
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Don't know.
"You've got loads of weird stuff here." She gestured at the clearing littered with my failed experiments. Mechanical arms with too many joints. Wheels that spun without touching. "Half of it looks like magic items, but different somehow."
She was right. My creations weren't quite magical devices, nor were they purely mechanical. They existed in some strange space between, guided by knowledge I couldn't explain.
With a shrug, Mallie tossed the unfinished item onto a pile of similar discards. It landed with a hollow clank among dozens of other mysterious contraptions, each one a puzzle I couldn't solve, all echoes of understanding just beyond my grasp.
"I have to go," she said after examining more of the junk I made. "My patrol starts soon."
I watched Mallie's retreating form through the trees, my mechanical fingers twitching with unease. She moved with the confidence of someone who'd survived a Hellzone, but she was still just a child. A brave, skilled child, but a child nonetheless.
The account of the recent slaughter haunted my thoughts. I recalled the witness's grisly details of how the Sholz clan was discovered, their corpses positioned with calculated care, their jugulars savagely ripped apart. No child should face such dangers alone, no matter what their level or class.
Wait, I called through Mind Speech, rising from my seat on the ground. The gears in my legs whirred as I strode after her.
Mallie turned, surprise crossing her freckled face. "Something wrong, No Eyes?"
Will escort you. Back to village.
"I can handle myself." She patted her bow. "You saw me fight in Qordos."
Different here, I replied, falling into step beside her. Unknown enemy. More dangerous than slavers.
My four arms each carried a different weapon. Two swords were in my main hands, two spears held by the secondary ones on my back. I was ready for any threat. The asymmetrical helmet I'd crafted swiveled, scanning the forest around us.
"The villagers will panic if they see you near their houses," Mallie warned, though she didn't object to my company.
Don't care. Your safety matters more.
We walked in companionable silence, my mechanical feet surprisingly quiet on the forest floor despite their complex construction. I'd designed this body to be fast and light, learning from my encounters with Chanos.
"You know," Mallie said after a while, "you don't have to protect everyone all the time. Sometimes I think you forget to take care of yourself."
I tilted my head, considering her words. Perhaps she was right. Since escaping Qordos, I'd thrown myself into defending others: first the refugees, now the village that feared me. Maybe it was easier than confronting the fragments of memory that haunted my thoughts, the lingering question of who and what I truly was.
But looking at Mallie, the young, brave, and determined Mallie, I knew I couldn't stop. Whatever I had been before, whatever the villagers thought of me now, protecting others felt right. It felt like a purpose. Like a duty.
Almost there, I noted as the village's wooden palisade came into view. I'll watch. From the treeline.
Mallie nodded, understanding my unspoken promise to keep her safe from the shadows. "Thanks, No Eyes. Be safe!"
I watched Mallie stride toward the village gate, bow ready and head held high. Her small figure radiated determination, and something in my mechanical chest tightened. If a child could face such dangers with courage, what excuse did I have to hide in my forest sanctuary, tinkering with useless contraptions?
My four arms flexed, testing the weight of my weapons. The villagers' fear and mistrust had driven me to isolation, but that ended now. I didn't need Antos's approval nor the villagers' acceptance to do what needed to be done.
Using Assembly, I adjusted the joints in my legs for silent movement. The mechanical limbs responded instantly, gears and wiring shifting to distribute weight more evenly.
I began my own patrol route, keeping to the shadows beyond the village's torchlight. While Mallie and the other villagers watched the streets and houses, I would guard the places they feared to tread. The dark woods where monsters might lurk. The overgrown fields where shadows moved in the moonlight. The abandoned barns and root cellars where killers could hide.
The western fields stretched before me, tall grass swaying in the cold wind. Beyond that, the forest loomed, darker and more ancient than my little clearing of discarded inventions. Whatever was killing villagers had to come from somewhere. Had to leave traces.
This is my purpose now, I thought, moving through the grass like a ghost of steel and shadow. Not to be accepted. Not to be understood. But to protect.
Let the villagers fear me. Let them blame me for the murders. I would guard them anyway, because that's what I had to do. Because something in my fractured memories told me this was right. This was what I was meant for.
I had been a protector once, though I couldn't remember when or how. But watching Mallie take up her bow to defend her home had awakened something in me. A duty. A calling.
The night stretched ahead, full of shadows to search and secrets to uncover. I moved into the darkness, ready to face whatever horrors might be hiding there.