Rust-Colored Skies // The Endless Spark
Chapter 3 // Chapter 1
(4250)
Chapter 3 // Chapter 1
(4250)
Gewehr had always found the sounds of machinery soothing in troubling times. When his deft hands worked careful tools and slowly roused life into inert mechanisms, his mind was often plunged into a strange and wonderful fugue. Without thought or mindful purpose, his ancient hands would whittle and lathe, lever and join, weld and spark, spark, spark! Great showers of dancing lights would be cast against his still form, clattering harmlessly against his steel chassis.
The metal man, soft-spoken and soft-hearted, was hunched against the workbench of a quiet and lonely space. There was little light other than the work lamp that craned across the length of the bench, and the firefly sparks that emanated from his pneumatic hammer as it crunched and clanged away at the metal Gewehr fed it. It had been a long and lonesome night, and there would be many lifetimes more of them in his future.
Of course, the mechanical nature of being a demvir had its benefits. For all that time had been Gewehr's companion once, he now found himself intermittently longing for that solitude once more. People were infinitely more complex than rock and stone, or the steady clang-whir of a pneumatic pickaxe in his hands.Thus would he steal away to his workshop when his mind grew too overwhelmed by the din of civilization, where he could once again revel in that simplicity.
Today his reveries and enjoyable solitude were broken by the spell of his mind. Gewehr had not taken his name willingly, as with much of his life. He did not ask to awaken, he did not ask to be gifted with still and steady hands, and now he did not ask to make weapons of war and death. Yet still his hands worked, his mind half-trapped in that wondrous silence while the rest tormented over the task.
Stock and barrel, action and cylinder, and a trigger to turn men into ghosts. The rifle was taking form, carved of golden glittering ores and dark ashen wood. The torment of his mind span in circles with the drills and screws, never stopping and never reaching its ultimate destination. It was no less than he deserved.
Gewehr non Ici was no less than he deserved.
Straightening his back, the automaton allowed the darkness to fade from his mind and behold his works. It was, from an objective standpoint, a marvel of engineering and technology. It was a mixture of pre-terra regia chemistry and post-terra regia metallurgy that sat on his workbench to remind him of his potential, and why shouldn't it?
Gwreichionen had nothing but potential for harming others, as it turned out. Gewehr was the forest fire that would raze away his sins, or so he hoped.
Shuffling away from the corridors of his mind, the demvir reached out with nimble hands of steel-capped yew. His form was similarly lithe and compact, a veritable runt amongst his kind. The bright colors of his form were marred by black powder and soot, a fire hazard that Gewehr might have happily set ablaze… but could not.
Gwreichionen would have, but Gewehr could not, would not. That was his selfishness, to this day, that drove him to turn his hands into war-makers and death-dealers. Every bullet he would put into the man he'd mistakenly helped would ease one ember of shame in the pit of his soul.
The machine was assembled with practice. Its multi-cylinder design was unique and inspired, a long-barreled and levered revolver was tested with all the gumption of an old-west desperado. This was the fourth he had created, and the first his tastes had deemed suitable for hunting with.
An old cloak was thrown over the weapon, hiding it amongst the drabness of the abandoned building he'd squatted in as a workshop. Gewehr shifted to another table, carefully lit by a dim bulb overhead. Swinging in the draft that pervaded the house, the bulb granted a dismal glance into Gewehr's surroundings in the shantytown he'd found himself in. Mould grew from the corners, infecting its surroundings as the damp rains outside pounded sheet after sheet into the rotting woodwork. Heedless of the howling winds and crashing rain, Gewehr sat at a single stool before the table, smeared in black powder. Then, with still and steady hands, he descended again.
His mind roved and crashed with all the intensity of the storm about him, distracting him from the mundanity of packing bullet to powder. A darker pall grew about his thoughts this time, seizing like a vice to choke out all others. The black powder swirled in mists that meant little to the steel automaton. What use had he for clean air, for fresh oxygen? He drank of that dark, odious ember that pushed him forward: hate.
It was a revolting feeling, Gewehr had discovered, to hate something so purely that it choked out all else. Yet all at once it invigorated him, drove him to craft terrible and powerful things. He fed from that hate, directed at so much all at once.
Hate for his mentor, who had failed to warn him of the infinitely complex world he'd been loosed into.
Hate for himself, who had harmed hundreds for the unknowing crime of helping the wrong person.
Mostly, though, did his hate stir and roil for the man that had tricked him, used him, and had the audacity to spend his gifts on rampant and unchecked greed. An avaricious want for violence, for money, for power, for more, more, more!
A small mistake, a tremble in the still and steady hands that Gwreichionen was so proud of, and Gewehr stilled. He placed down his tools, his sieve and small hammer that ping-pinged against the tip of each round as it was fitted into its shell. The hands continued to tremble, and Gewehr glared balefully at them through cracked lenses; a mismatch of blue and green oculi that had been twice replaced from their original yellow over the many years of his life.
Clenching his hands into fists, Gewehr stood suddenly, knocking over the stool he had sat upon before stolidly marching to the door that separated him from the elements. Outside, a barge flotilla of shanty-houses awaited, full of vagabonds and miscreants and the other refuse of civilization.
Throwing wide the rotting, rain-slick door, Gewehr stepped out onto the flotilla's deck, stalking swiftly through its narrow corners to where small boats had been lashed onto its side as docked merchant ships. A long, patchwork cloak draped to his knees as a makeshift poncho, made of various patterns and textiles, and barely kept the rain and wind out.
Gumboots sloshed against puddles of collected water across the barge's surface, sticking to mud from spilt soil. Greenhouses were common aboard such flotillas as these, with a lack of greens often stirring rumors of scurvy and other biological diseases. Gwreichionen might've worried for the populace, but Gewehr struggled to displace the swirling emotions that struck more at him than the weather ever could. There was only one place on the flotilla he could flee this maddening emotion, and he set a burning pace as he descended into the bowels of the largest barge. The crew was a motley mix of pirates, but they regarded him little since he had ingratiated himself to a particular member of theirs.
The enlil was holed up in his own workshop, same as always, and had the uncanny understanding of demvir that often aided Gewehr through rough patches in his mindset. Knocking in that way that the bird-folk always knew him for, he awaited patiently, and was promptly rewarded. Swinging wide, the bright-blue plumage of an aging jay was stuck amongst the youthfully roguish face of Notus Virens.
A bright grin stole over Notus' features for a moment, before diminishing into a grimace. A moment later, he broke the silence with an incomprehensible accent borne of a life alternately at sea and in the air. "Go on then."
Voice trembling in a bright, plaintive tone, Gwreichionen, rechristened Gewehr non Ici, stuttered out the only sentence his mind could process.
"I'm going to kill them all!"
A peal of thunder rumbled into the depths of the workshop, and the aging jaybird sighed, before turning to permit the inflamed engineer inside. The demvir's mind was all cogs and flywheels, circuits and joints. He heard Notus offer a chance to wash up through the keening shriek that continually buzzed in his head. A stiff nod later, and he was wiping himself down haphazardly with a clean rag, barely indulging long enough that the soot and black powder that decorated him had turned into inky lines that streaked down his steel chassis. Mentally, he was forcing himself to occasionally jolt to the here and now, and away from the consuming need that killed and inspired his craft.
He knew where he was: aboard the Mistral. A wrought-steel cargo barge that concealed the buccaneers that operated it under the stern eye of their captain, Caterva. The Mistral had taken on a number of small vessels over the last few weeks of its voyage, turning the flat expanse of its deck into a makeshift shantytown. In return for protection payments, the captain and her crew were willing to look the other way in regards to the more enigmatic or unsavory backgrounds of her passengers. As sea spray whipped across the top decks, lashing against wood and tarp, below the crew made the engines rumble and purr with coal and arcane ore. Terra regia engines were a cut above the likes of a cargo barge, just another insidious trap that the Mistral used to lure in its preferred prey of privateers and brigands.
As far as ships went, the depths of the Mistral was maze-like and terrifying to navigate, and Gewehr quickly found that he could not recall how he had made his way to his host's workshop. Speaking of which…
The machinated crafter continued to force himself to avoid the sympathetic glances that Notus Virens sent his way as he stooped over a workbench he had appropriated from the man. The ageing corsair, decorated in bright blue plumage that covered his body from thigh to neck, hadn't stopped his infernal caresomeness since Gewehr had stumbled addle-minded to his door on the first night he'd stayed in the shantytown.
It might have been better to save such sentimentality for a deserving recipient. He had been given only a brief moment to speak to Caterva, in the bridge which she presided over, and the magnitude of her convictions had left him ashamed.
As consumed as he was by his passions, Gewehr was not so-absorbed that he did not notice the way Caterva carried herself. The age and experience in her posture spoke of the same centuries he had borne witness to, if under vastly different circumstances. Caterva's history was one born of sea and salt, just as his was born of stone and fire. Stories were often all demvir had to their names, a sort of origin point they could cling to when needed. A home was whole orders of rarer for demvir, and Caterva showed remarkable character in opening the home she rightly ruled to others, much less to someone such as Gewehr.
Perhaps catching onto the downward spiral of the craftsman's thoughts, Notus coughed to clear his throat, jolting Gewehr to the present once again. The old jaybird gestured to the numerous parts and pieces that the automaton was now assembling in the shape of what appeared to be an arm. "Making another augment?"
Across from the first arm, the other half of the pair had bare circuitry exposed, and Gewehr regularly referred to it as he assembled and welded with the other. Issuing a low, droning rumble from his chassis in response, the demvir was struck by memories of a simpler time, and replied casually. "I need hands that will work when… when I cannot. These are automated."
"A drone?" Notus replied, mystified.
Gewehr nodded once, then returned to his work, leaving the jaybird to scratch at his head. In truth, they were an extra set of limbs that could be counted upon for menial tasks, rather than the intricacies of his craft. Shifting and levering, moving and holding, the most they might do is…
He could not repress the shuddering sigh that rocked his form, and he sat back from his work unfinished. Accursed, his mouth spoke before his brain could silence it. "I am making machines that kill, Notus."
"You are," came the reply, ever sure.
Gewehr's hands clenched into fists. "I should be making machines that help."
"You have," Notus answered, though Gewehr was not sure he had spoken a question. "Or did you forget what bought your passage aboard?"
How could Gewehr possibly explain the details of his muddied mind to Notus? That his deeds were a clarion call to the younger, still-alive parts of his mind. The ones that longed for life, for companionship, for a calling that did not end in blood.
"I have not forgotten." The patchwork demvir chooses to say.
A derisive snort followed the scratching of taloned feet against the floor, before the bench Gewehr sat upon was dipped by the weight of Notus sitting next to him. The words that followed were softer, though no less sure. "I've spent the better part of a lifetime trying to help Noi, and you spent three days. He still marvels when he wiggles his fingers without them falling off, you know."
Notus spoke of his companion, the energetic demvir Noi - whose damaged core could not sustain his form and doomed him to a lifetime of falling apart and replacing parts. Noi was young, he hadn't even seen the better part of a century since his awakening, and his plight for survival was one that Gewehr could sympathize with. Barely had moments passed after that revelation before a great swell of inspiration had struck Gewehr and - to the bafflement of both Notus and Caterva whom he was in the process of being introduced to - he'd demanded to help repair what he could. It was, of course, beyond the capabilities of any engineer in the world to fix the damaged core of a demvir. What was magnitudes less impossible was a very similar procedure to the one that Gewehr so-hated himself for to this day.
A small, rudimentary dynamo was fashioned from milder forms of terra regia to siphon a small portion of the energy that powered and coursed through the demvir, and then amplify it. Compared to the caelitium ore that demvir cores were fashioned from, the terra regia that was used was fool's gold, but it was useful nonetheless. Both its construction and the surgical nature of its insertion demanded absolute precision, the kind that Gewehr's hands could appreciate. Too much energy taken, and they'd kill Noi before the additional power could patch together his body. Too little, and Noi's body would not receive enough energy, his shambling nature accelerating until death. Then, of course, there was the surgery itself… one nick, one improperly wired diode, and either Noi would expire on the spot, or Gewehr would have created the world's most powerful bomb.
The parts of Gewehr that still dreamed had thrilled at it.
Pending fourty-eight hours of sleepless craftsmanship, and an additional sixteen hours of equally sleepless surgical engineering, and his success had secured him no small measure of loyalty from Notus. The avian enlil had demanded that the Mistral's captain grant him free room and board en route to Pelagia. With surprisingly little resistance, the enigmatic Caterva had accepted. Of course, perhaps he had not escaped her notice, either.
Gewehr's thoughts span in circles, clicks and whirs and the soft sounds of hand-worked machinery lulling him into the depths of his own mind. There, great and terrible machines subsumed the peaceful sounds of work, like the all-consuming beat of a synthetic heart. Then, a taloned hand gently laid across his shoulder, and Gewehr flinched away, the shutters of his eyes blinking rapidly as he was forcibly returned to the surface of reality.
Turning to look at Notus with mismatched eyes, he found the old bird shooting him a sad smile as he continued, "It's not easy taking responsibility for your mistakes, especially in ways that make us hurt. You're a smart man, Gewehr, with smarter hands. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the pain you put yourself through now is something you won't recover from."
"You don't know that." Gewehr rasped, though his voice lacked conviction. He so wanted Notus to be right, so wanted for there to be something after his mistakes and the blood he would spill to fix them.
But Notus had already said it best: Gewehr was a very smart man. His tone did not match Notus' optimism, but the demvir made his best attempt with a sullen, "Perhaps."
A dry chuckle came from the jaybird, and then the enlil patted Gewehr's shoulder one more time before turning back to the bench with a youthfulness that didn't suit his features. "Well then, let's see what you're going to stupefy me with this time, shall we?"
The half-assembled machines were not simple, but neither were they particularly complicated. However, as Gewehr looked over their splayed innards once more, another spark of inspiration rose within him. Perhaps Notus' company was more helpful than merely dousing his unproductive thoughts, and a fellow long-suffering artisan was precisely what he needed to push him forward.
Circuits once-crude were refined and expanded, their logic built into something of true beauty. Clunky fingers for squeezing triggers and emptying men of their souls would instead be given finely-crafted digits, as close as possible to the still-intact gifts that Gewehr retained from the times before he had adopted the self-cruel nickname.
Something like ambition or optimism had him pull aside one of the casings for the oddly-shaped drone, as he began to tune the terra regia inside each arm to each task the drone would have to perform. Each arm was attached to a y-shaped socket, three prongs would latch onto a surface and the necessary engineering to inform them of their tasks was largely based on the small cameras in the palm of each hand. Either camera, boosted in its ability to discern objects by the transponder that would be installed in Gewehr's own body, would inform the arm of its surroundings and allow it to act autonomously.
Of course, manual controls were the backbone of any failsafe.
The transponder attached easily as an external unit, though Gewehr longed to make the delicate machinery an internal installation. It was a dangerous idea, though, and one that was unforgiving of mistakes. A genius, Gewehr may have been, but infallible he most certainly was not. If it was damaged, at least he could repair it while it was outside of him.
Finally, the moment of truth came. With wiring still exposed as the demvir craftsman eyed the casing he'd pulled to one side, the transponder was activated. A long, thin antennae-like protrusion that rose from one side of Gewehr's cracked head casing shot up and emitted a shrill beep, before an answering guffaw from Notus informed him of his success.
Slowly, carefully, the hands clamped to the work bench contorted and stretched. A short while later, as Gewehr more finely manipulated them, they scooped up tools and began to administer their own casings. Dull grey paint had disguised the resilient titanium-aluminum casings as the simple steel of Gewehr's own chassis, and finally the self-flagellating man began to indent a small, simple name onto the side of the casing he'd kept to one side: Gwreichionen.
Gewehr's self-made debt to the jaybird's use as his muse would be repaid days later in kind, under fairer skies where seabirds bobbed along the horizon, eagerly using the ship as a port upon which to rest themselves. Sea waves lapped gently at the sides of the Mistral, the ship rocking back and forth as it bobbed amongst the ocean blue. With a clear, cloudless sky that turned the entire horizon into shades of azure that stretched on forever, many of the inhabitants of the shantytown aboard it had become more social. All manner of rejects, souls both unfortunate and unhelped by the wide world, mingled and conspired beneath the watchful eyes of the bridge crew.
Occasionally, shapes would appear in the waters below, curious marine-dwelling species that investigated the large ocean barge before leaving it as its wake sent them scurrying. The ship's crew - rather, those who had been relieved of duty after the unforgiving work shifts in the storm - dozed and lazed about the top decks of the Mistral, enjoying the good weather in the midst of their ramshackle town aboard the ship's main deck.
Some of the passengers were craftsmen and merchants by trade or passion, and in the two weeks since the Mistral embarked, had begun to quietly distribute and hawk their skills and wares. Among them, a motley assortment of living machines and a brightly-plumed avian had taken residence of the highest vantage the barge had to offer: the roof of the bridge.
There were no railings, but safety measures had long been eschewed by the gathered four. Amongst them, Gewehr non Ici looked from each angle as he observed the apparatus that his fellow engineer - the ageing but energetic Notus - had constructed wholesale. Sat upon a thick woolen blanket before him was a large engine. The burdensome thing had been awful to haul out into the sun, away from the cavernous depths of the Mistral's underbelly where Notus' workshop lay. Now, it was due for an inspection to see if the great beast would suit a sky-ship to match the Mistral. Notus hadn't voiced it, but Caterva had pulled him aside to simply state that creating his own airship had long been the jaybird's only dream.
Gewehr had felt the weight of his companion's silence deeply, and volunteered what he could in his own skills to the efforts. Now that he had visited Notus' works up close, the demvir could say with confidence that he could contribute little to what had already been built. The construction was laden with the kind of perfectionism that Gewehr rarely saw in their craft, and it spoke volumes of the care that Notus had for his work.
Rather, it was inspiring to see such a complex piece be so finely and intimately pieced together. Each gear and flywheel that clicked and whirred before the pistons began to churn and roil was a thing of beauty in his eyes. As the whole contraption rumbled to life, it belched out a roar of power and its entire form articulated at once, a perfectly assembled engine without a piece out of place.
Rising from his kneeling position, the shambling automaton turned cracked apertures to the jaybird corsair and his stern captain. Gewehr's voice was soft and tinny, a distinct hum-buzz constantly droned in the back of his words, but the words were steadier without the darker throes of his mind.
"It is a work of perfection. The skies will be proud to share its space."
Notus' smile - which had until now more closely resembled a grimace - quirked up so minutely that Gewehr nearly missed it, before he threw back his head and guffawed loudly. "Well then! If the perfectionist himself deems it so, then it must be!"
The uproarious celebration from the jaybird was matched by Iinoi Gel, Notus' erstwhile traveling companion. The formerly shambling demvir, who preferred to go by Noi, had become a patchwork of donated parts and pieces, and the homely look somehow suited him, Gewehr thought. Slinging a steel arm fitted with spruce furniture around the enlil's shoulders, he exclaimed his companion's success, "Well done, Notus! I knew you could do it!"
"I never had a doubt," Came the bittersweet enthusiasm from the observing Caterva. Buttoned up in her captain's coat with her hat drawn low over her brass-colored form, her stoicism unnerved Gewehr, her eyes often seeming to bore into the depths of his being, where he surely pitied her for being able to see.
But the morose engineer could not begrudge the affable Notus, and he nodded agreeably shortly before Noi yanked him by the arm into the celebrations. Calming the patchwork machina became the work of Notus, who pleaded for Noi to calm himself between loud chortles and hearty laughs. Even Caterva seemed drawn from her moods by the sight, and both she and Gewehr found themselves corralling the irrepressible Noi away from the edges of the bridge roof, as he ran laps and whooped at the realization of his friend's dream.
As the celebrations came to a close, the four strange souls found themselves standing around the still-rumbling engine, each with questions perched on their lips.
The straight-forward logic of Caterva arose, what would be the next step in Notus' dream? It was followed by the enthusiastic theorizing of Noi, how fast would it make the ship fly? Notus' own ageing ponderings were half-mumbled to himself, could he get away with calling himself captain when it was finished?
Gewehr, taking in the scene amidst fellows for the first time in many years, could only ask himself one thing: was it wrong of him to enjoy himself, here and now? Away from the sins he shared with the life-giving mistake he'd made years ago?
He had no answer.