Cog-worked

The Machine stopped and raised its head. Far away ahead of it the glinting of light that the Machine had seen, the glinting which had given it a purpose had resolved itself into an impossibly high tower sticking like a dagger out of the heart of what seemed to be a city. The walls glowed with light, all lit up by huge balls of glowing light hanging from chains and below them was what looked like a thick band of forest and farm land. It was too far away for even the Machines eyes to resolve details, but it did not need to the light was what drew the Machine on. The Light meant other creatures, and for some reason the Machine felt driven to reach a place with more people. It didn't have a word for the feeling, the empty desolation inside it, but it knew if it reached the City it would be gone. It set off again placing one foot in front of the other over and over again.

It was badly damaged, one of its legs was twisted and broken, the struts tangled and the pistons misfiring. Its chest too showed signs of damage, huge rips in the armour over the cog-work motor that drove it, tiny cogs transferring power from even tinier cogs that were inscribed with runes to force them to be permanently moving. Its face was dented, the featureless plate beneath its eyes crushed inwards by the impact of a fist. Part of the crest that surrounded its head had been carved off, and occasionally it had to put one of its hands down to the ground to keep from falling over. It couldn't remember how it had come to so much harm, but it didn't actually matter all that it cared about was getting to the city.

Out here far from the city there was very little moisture so the ground it traveled across was dusty, but the light from the tower was enough to let a few resilient but grey grasses to grow here and there. They were the only living thing the Machine could see but they didn't fulfill the drive it felt so it kept trudging on.

Slowly but surely it covered the distance, one foot after another, one step following the next. The forest came closer and closer, and the Machine could see figures in among the trees. It sped up, trying to reach the figures as it knew it had to. As it rushed towards them however they pointed towards the Machine, and scattered into the trees running away from it and disappearing. The Machine didn't understand, and let loose a howl of frustration, the sound echoing from the walls in roll of sound. The sound of it surprised Machine, the sound louder than it remembered, and it shook its head trying to clear it standing on the plain short of the forest.

The figures had all gone, and the Machine stood for a moment before heading forwards. It was so close to its goal, and the thought of it drove it into a loping run, two of its four arms used as legs and the pistons on its back elongating and contracting its back like some kind of loping predator. It covered the ground surprisingly fast and as it reached the trees one of the plates from its back deployed covering its head and it shoulder charged the trees from its path splintering them and leaving them wrecks in its path. Here and there it saw animals, and what looked like farms but it had its eyes locked on the wall rising far above it.

It leapt, and the claws on its hands deployed as it hit the wall above the top of the trees. Hand over hand it began to drag itself up the wall, feet unable to find purchase on the single block of stone that made up the wall. The Machine however could climb by slamming its claws into the rock, raising sparks and raining shards of rock below. The Walls were not that high only about six time the height of the Machine, and it quickly covered the distance finally getting its hands over the lip of the wall and dragging itself onto the top of it. The Machine looked left and right, drinking in the sight of the city laid out before it. Down below there were other lights, street lamps, and even lanterns carried by the denizens of this place.

The emptiness it felt inside it had been replaced with a kind of savage joy at seeing so many other creatures. The Machine finally gave voice to a howl that rolled out across the city like a siren. It turned to look along the length of the wall and saw some tiny figures rushing towards it, but as they did so something whirred on its shoulder and they laid down to sleep. The Machine decided to leave them and instead stepped off the wall, dropping the short distance and landing with all six limbs flat to the ground to spread the impact.

It must have surprised the people below, as the Machine landed the people scattered and ran. It attempted to tell them that it was sorry but the sound came out as a roar of anger and frustration which did nothing to slow them down. It stretched out a hand towards the nearest, a young girl who had been selling shawls, trying to get her to stop.

Blades deployed unbidden from the back of the Machines arm as it reached for her. They struck with devastating precision and force, hitting her in the lower back and throwing her clean across the square it had landed in. The Machine was shocked, It had not even remembered the blades were there, and had certainly not told them to deploy. As the others ran it moved over to the girl.

She was badly injured, her back covered in blood and unable to move her legs. Clamping one of its hands firmly over its arm to prevent the blades deploying again the Machine reached forward and as gently as it could turned her over. Her face was covered in blood from the impact with the wall, running out of her mouth and over her lips, but her eyes were terrified. The Machine let out what was intended to be a keening wail but what sounded was a triumphant roar. The blades in its arm hammered against the grip it had on them as it tried to lift the girl to try and find someone to help her, to help the Machine undo the mistake it had made. She fought against its grip, and then as it gently lifted her there was a whirring at its shoulder and a line of red holes appeared in her chest.

Shocked the Machine dropped the corpse and tore at its shoulder ripping the evil whirring mechanism from it and hurling it hard against the floor. Sparks flew as the whirring clicking thing continued to fire scattering sharpened cogs all over the square, as if it had a mind of its own. The Machine brought one foot down on it and crushed it into scrap metal, but there was nothing to do for the girl, the cog-flinger had done its work perfectly, piercing both lungs and the heart, something the Machine realised it knew almost instinctively. It let loose another keening howl, which in fact was a roar that caused all of the windows nearby to rattle. It lifted the body of the girl it had killed and then sat back on its haunches crumpled face plate looking down at what it had done.

The Cog-worked was still in the market square it had landed in when the Patrol reached it, holding one of its victims like a trophy as Linnet and the others used the side roads to surround it. Somehow it had come to damage, the cog rifle on its shoulder had been torn off but there was no sign of whoever had caused it. Given its repeated challenging roars they would no doubt find whoever it was in the wreckage. Linnet unshipped her patrol spear, deploying it to its full length and checking it was loaded. The spear lacked most of its usual advantages, the hawthorn and amber would have no purpose against one of the Cog-worked, and her armour, massive and usually impervious to most things would not be enough against the strength of that things weapons. Even in the huge layered leather of the patrol armour, the approaching watchmen looked tiny next to the creature, that towered over them at least three or four times taller than the tallest of them. The bronze dog mask she wore covered the fact that the sight of the thing had turned her chalk white.

At Linnet's command the assembled watch attacked. Eight of them fired huge rifles at the machine, causing them to stagger back from the recoil and punching holes in the things armour. Linnet heard it roar as she burst in to a run trying to cover the distance between them as fast as possible, not an easy task in the patrol armour she wore. Several of the watch threw grappling hooks, tying them off to buildings as soon as they were sure the hooks had taken. The creature roared again, blades and other weapons deploying from it in mechanical precision, but strangely it still held the corpse to its chest as if unwilling to let it go. Linnet didn't care, she and the other running watchmen reached it and fired the pikes they carried. Most of the heavy shots bounced off its hugely thick armour, and several of the Watch were killed as it swept a bladed arm through them, bodies crumpled and flew through the air, others killed by the blades it carried.

As the thing roared again however Linnet skidded under its flailing arms and ended up staring up into its faceplate. There was the imprint of a gauntleted fist imprinted in the plate, human sized but an impossibly hard blow. The creature looked down at her and then strangely offered the corpse to her as if asking her to take it, all the while making fresh corpses with its other weapons. It didn't matter why it had not just killed her however, as she could see that the chest plate was also damaged, and inside it could see the glowing working cogheart of the machine. Without thinking she thrust the spear directly into the hole and there was a horrific shriek of metal shearing through metal just before the spear was ripped from her hands and drawn into the cogheart.

Metal meets metal. Cogs shatter and pieces of spear break away. A piece of amber the size of a thumbnail is popped free of its mounting and impossibly catches fire. Hawthorn splinters absorb oil and jam springs. The cogheart is failing, jams place strain on cogs, that place strain on smaller cogs, all the way down to the tiniest. The tiniest cog in the machine is a thing of brass with a single hair wrapped around it and a word inscribed in minuscule writing upon it. This cog is always moving, forced to move by the endless wellspring of power that it is bound to, but as the jams begin to increase the strain on it increases and increases. It slows at first, then finally stops, the hair snaps and the word fades.

The Machine could feel the end coming. The cogheart had died, and the last few moments were her. It gave the dead girl to the leather covered thing with the dogs face in front of it. It even managed to pat the thing on the shoulder without killing it, thanks for what it had done. Then the Machine lapsed into silence, the ticking stilled, the cog unmoving.