Demon possessed humans were chasing her, and they would push their hosts until they died. Yanis couldn't stop, couldn't rest, despite the fatigue setting in. Who knew how long the forces behind the demons had been gathering them. The family members of the possessed likely had joined them or were killed. They wanted Yanis dead and they wanted to make sure nobody uncovered what was going on here. Yanis knew these master specters did not care if they created more ghosts in the process of ensuring her death.
Yanis climbed upwards through the rubble of the old city, hoping that the scavengers had left some relic of the galactic war that she could use to fight off the demons. She heard them below her, pieces of rubble pulled loose carelessly clattering down the slope as they climbed after her.
The conclusion of the chase seemed inevitable, really.
Finally Yanis reached the plaza she had lit the corpse candles in, the scattered remains of her camp fire greeting her. She glanced about, looking in some slim hope that there was an obvious solution. Her armor would ward against any incorporeal attacks, which she guessed was why the demons hadn't possessed her directly. As the chilly grip of despair slowly squeezed her heart, she looked at the fallen colossus.
"Is this what it felt like for you?" Yanis said aloud, eyes stinging with tears behind the faceplate of her helm. She did not want to die yet. She had centuries ahead of her. But maybe the scavenger families hadn't stripped the colossus or had avoided it out of superstition, she finally thought. Taking a deep breath as she heard the first of the possessed catching up with her, she ran through the rubble-strewn streets towards the torso of the fallen colossus. The possessed would catch up to her if she didn't push herself. Adrenaline and fear gave her a much needed surge of energy, her armor feeling lighter on her than it had moments ago.
---
The colossus had plenty of damage and hand-holds from the massive amounts of fire it had taken before the etheric cannons had struck. Yanis pulled herself up by deep scratches, impact craters, and chipped edges, reflecting at how there were no signs of aging or corrosion. Not even the odd weed growing in crevices. Here and there she saw disturbing things in the rent places, things that looked eerily like muscles and veins rendered with in magical alloys by cunning artifice.
Finally she reached the top, where the pectoral muscles would be on a human being, and she saw a great vista open before her, the wind howling and clearing the fog here. She could see that the colossus was missing its head and arm, as well as a great rent across the chest. She knew the possessed were closing on her, and that she was fading fast with the fatigue of the last sixteen hours of wakefulness. She had little left in her, and she guessed that if the Machinists built the Colossus like the Concordia built Titans, the pilot's harness would be in the center of the chest. She forced herself that way, seeing the chasmic gash across the chest corresponded where she thought the harness would be.
She heard the clatter of heavy footsteps approaching as she reached the precipice and saw a mangled human-like machine in what she assumed was the pilot harness. She stared for a moment, shocked at seeing the corpse of a Machinist Immortal. Like their Colossi, the Immortals were disturbingly human in shape and form, more like the somatons of the Old Empire than the Concordia's mass-produced servant somatons. It was so fundamentally alien compared to anything Yanis had encountered in her life, and she was overcome with a sense of awe.
She was awoken from her sense of wonder when she was tackled by a possessed woman, the two of them falling into the pilot's harness. Yanis fought back, punching and grappling with her armor-clad arms, grasping for the small knife across her chest. She could hear things and lights began to flicker on around her as the colossus responded to her presence. As she got her knife free and plunged it into the neck of the hissing and screeching possessed, a calm androgynous voice spoke in a language she hadn't heard since her Purifier training. Two more possessed lept onto her, making her struggle all the more desperate. Blows rained down upon her with demoniac strength.
"Power core started. System check initialized. Primary Sensors offline. Right arm offline. Internal repair programs initiated. Structural integrity at 55% and rising." The voice was speaking in the language of the Old Empire. Yanis felt the world shift and move around her as the colossus began to move. A hand belonging to her grasped onto something as the whole thing lifted itself up out of its reclining position and stood, shaking off many of the possessed that had started clambering down into the cockpit.
Those few that remained clinging to the edge, Yanis obligingly severed their hands with her sword now that the war machine was upright and not moving. She could see floating displays come on around the spherical cockpit, showing what she assumed was some kind of threat assessment or motion tracking. When Yanis had finished dispatching the lingering possessed, she climbed over to the harness, vision spattered with starbursts from the pain in her ribs and sheer exhaustion.
She laboriously undid the harness around the Immortal's corpse, saying a prayer for the departed as she did so, trying to make sure she wasn't angering any possible ghost that might be attached to the alien machine. She knew this was a waste of breath, but the habit had been drilled into her during her apprentice mortician days. It was something she could not help but do. As much as she wished to treat a possible corpse with dignity and respect, she was in too much pain and too tired, and ended up managing to only get it half-way over behind the harness seat into what she presumed was a storage compartment of some kind. It was very undignified, but Yanis could take care of that later.
She prayed that there would be a later, though. Even with this alien weapon at her disposal, she felt death could still claim her. She sank deeply into the couch/harness and the machine seemed to know she was there, the straps and buckles fastening themselves securely around her. Her attention was caught and she waved her head in the direction she saw a glowing face in. Some kind of... spirit? It was hard to hear, but she thought it was asking what it should do. The only thing that she could think of, as she started to slide into the depths of unconsciousness, was a handful of words.
"I-I don't want to die." She gasped as her vision faded.
---
The possessed scattered as it took only five steps, collapsing the dying buildings around it and sending great shuddering tremors through the earth. Millions of psudeo-metal muscles creaked and groaned as it stooped to retrieve its severed arm. It held the severed limb to its mangled shoulder and the machinery began to reconnect and repair the damage.
The possessed recovered from the shock of seeing the ancient machine reanimated and now left their hosts to try and attack the colossus with their more potent immaterial forms, but the machine was proofed against them. Worse still, their ghostly vision revealed countless little gods bound to the mechanisms of the Machinist Colossus, and these spirits fought back. Lightning crackled around the colossus as the spirits and demonic ghosts battled. Winds began to rush the cloying mist away from the titanic form as it began moving yet again, the arm re-affixed to the chassis.. The great spirit within it saw humans fleeing the ruins, and saw these were not the enemy.
It stooped again, this time amidst lightning and clouds of dust, both hands plunging into the remains of a cathedral. From beneath, the colossus extracted its own head, its face a stern statuesque half-melted mask, and replaced it on its sheared neck. The hands adjusted the head as it reknit itself. The eyes opened, flooding with an eye-searing light.
With most of its systems restored, the great spirit known in an age past as Nara took stock of the situation. With the new pilot-captain stowed safely away and weapons being restored, Nara decided that the enemy were the wraiths attempting to breach the shell. The subsidiary spirits were doing well, but this quintessence starved world meant they would falter eventually for lack of energy. The etheric cannon would cause what Nara sensed would be unacceptable collateral damage according to the pilot-captain. Too many non-combatants would die.
With a flourish of an outstretched hand, a thousand points of sky-blue light emerged from the hand and rained down in arcing paths, tracing through the invisible corpses of the demons. They were outlined and illuminated when struck, their malevolent and twisted forms writhing in pain and terror. The howling of the demons would be enough to test the steel of the bravest human soul, but the face of the gargantuan golem remained unmoved.
Impassively, Nara systematically exterminated the demons that continued to fight it. The great spirit noted that many of them fled into some kind of immaterial singularity, but the task at hand did not require Nara to pursue them. Only the pilot-captain's continued survival mattered.
---
Yanis blinked her eyes a few times, unsure of where she was, aching everywhere. Bursts of light swam in her vision as she tried to take a deep breath and only got incredible pain for her efforts. That was probably a broken rib or two, she thought.
The voice spoke again, in Old Empire, it was subtly different, definitely feminine-sounding despite the hammering of her own heartbeat in her ears. "Good morning, Pilot-Captain. My name is Nara, and I am the Great Spirit that controls and coordinates the spirits inhabiting Titan 42001000. The prior Pilot-Captain called it Fist of The North Galaxy. What is your name, Pilot-Captain?"
Yanis was too tired to be scared, too tired to feel much of anything. It was an automatic response she gave. "Yanis Anstera, Fifth Degree Purfier Paladin of the Mortician's Guild."
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