Opal 𓁹

"Hello new friend!" said a voice that came from everywhere and nowhere. "I'm Julius. Duchess says we're going to be the best of friends and stay together forever and ever!"

The Titan barely registered the voice through the pain and the horror of finding its body moving against its will.

"Serve your new master, Watchman of Doom," said a flying Astro whose arrival the Titan hadn't noticed. Its voice cut through the horror and revealed another layer beneath.

"Ohh, that's us!" said the nowhere-voice from before. "Isn't this exciting!?"

The Titan was aware of being made to stand up by the invader's manipulations. The thing-in-its-core forced the Titan to fire off a attack-beam, passing the beam through the thing's shell and powering up the thing's own plasma weaponry. The Titan couldn't even blast the invader out of its core chamber, even if it was able to fire the beam under its own will. The core-invader-thing simply used it as juice.

So, this would be the Titan's end. Its faction would have no choice but to use its emergency detonator to destroy it. The Titan chose to spend its last few moments thinking of home, thinking of its beloved creator and all its little TVs, every one of them beautiful and perfect…

Death never came.

How had they known? How had the Astros known? They'd built this invader, this horrid thing, to fit the Titan's core chamber and they'd known to target its emergency self-destruct and break and neutralise it. The Titan couldn't even shut itself down – the invader had forced itself into every one of the Titan's systems.

"…was so excited to meet you!" The Titan realised the core-thing was still yapping. "I was made for you! And now I'm your new best friend!"

The Titan chose not to respond.

It wasn't a decision along the lines of 'I had better not antagonise the entity that is fused to me.' That occurred to the Titan, but the Titan also didn't care. It was simply that there was nothing to be gained by doing so. There was no point saying something like "As if I would ever consider you my friend, Astro filth." Plus, the Titan thought at the back of its mind, anything the Titan did say would surely be twisted and held against it by the monstrosity in its core. Anything the Titan said might reveal something the monstrosity might file away and use as a leverage point. Better to say nothing at all than add to that. Perhaps this entity (Julius, had it said?) aimed to break the Titan's spirit with its overly-friendly yapping. ('As if that would work,' thought the Titan. It was a television, a machine famed for causing brainrot.) Perhaps Julius's intention was to 'befriend' the Titan and find its weak points that way, reporting them in secret to the Duchess. Either way, there was no benefit to replying.

So the Titan said nothing.

"…Aren't you excited?" asked Julius.

The Titan said nothing.

"Why won't you speak to me?" asked Julius with a hint of despair.

The Titan was slightly pleased at the invader's unhappiness. Suffer, you bastard. But the Titan was careful not to reveal any of its thoughts. Whether Julius thought the Titan relished its suffering, or if it thought the Titan might harbour sympathy, it could use either angle to try to worm its way into the Titan's mind as it had done to its body.

So the Titan said nothing.

The Titan let Julius whinge on, while it concentrated on diverting all its consciousness from its main body to its other self: Legion. 'Legion' was the nickname for its secondary body, roughly the size of a normal TV-unit, that was stored inert inside its shell and could be deployed inside the Titan's core chamber when the Titan was stationary. Of course, the core chamber itself was now blocked to Legion, and it was probably folly to imagine that Legion could sabotage something the size of Julius – but the Titan had to try.

The Titan-as-Legion unrolled from the foetal position it kept itself stored in, and flinched at the sight of orange fungal strands encroaching on its space. Julius was oozing in place, bonding the Titan's frame with its own form. Legion backed away, as carefully as it could, to avoid coming into contact with the slime mould-like outgrowths… it realised that the fungal growth was cutting off Legion's access to the door that would lead into the core chamber, which was presumably entirely full of Julius. Was it too much to hope that Legion could open the door and rip into the fungal morass behind? Or perhaps that wouldn't be what Legion would find – perhaps it would find only Julius's metal parts. Legion was rapidly running out of time to decide — if it went for the door, it could find itself trapped in place and subsumed by the organic parts of Julius, and there was no guarantee that ripping the door open would even be an angle of attack.

Legion made its decision. It scrambled through its own Titan frame, feeling the sensations in both of its bodies, until it could wedge itself somewhere out of the way. …What next? Was it better to be Audeamus – its big self – or Legion? If the Titan put all its mental energy into being Audeamus, it might be better able to look for possible routes of sabotage and gather what intel it could for the Alliance. Or not, as its screens were either all smashed or too far out of range to interface with…

The Titan was on the move. Legion realised the Duchess was warping them both, and lets its consciousness drain out and flood back into Audeamus.

┄

Somewhere on a battlefield, something awoke.

Something regarded the landscape. A reddish dawn over the reddish sands that were formed from the remains of building rubble and dusty topsoil. Something thought it was very close to the ground. …That suggested it was normally higher up than this, something decided.

Somewhere on a battlefield… but how did something know it was a battlefield? Had it been there? Been told about it? Seen it in a video?

Something thought 'where is the rest of me?' then wondered if that thought was correct. Was there supposed to be more of it in the sense that pieces of it were missing, or was there supposed to be more of it in the sense that it was alone when normally it would be many?

'I feel unfinished,' something thought, then wondered why that thought was familiar.

Something considered all the pieces of data it was receiving, and tried to reconcile them. A background susurrus of datastream resolved itself into a repeated loop of connection attempts. Whatever something was trying to connect to, it wasn't getting through. Something interrogated the datastream. Most techfolk (something knew it was one of those, at least) couldn't 'drill down' into their signals and sensations this way, but something—

"I must call myself other than 'something'," something thought. …It was some sort of entity, even if it didn't know more than that right now. 'Entity' would suffice.

Most techfolk ('of which I am one', the entity reminded itself) couldn't interrogate their own signals with such granularity, but the entity wasn't most techfolk. It knew that much. It was a free agent that was expected to make its own decisions without being told what to do all the time, but it was expected to report to its engineers frequently, and had been designed to allow its engineers to harvest whatever data they needed to that end. The entity unrolled its loops of signals and looked inside each one.

It was supposed to be able to self-propel with its rockets. Those were offline. It was supposed to connect to a main body, and be able to work as part of that whole. It couldn't find the main body, nor its counterpart that it just learned it had. It realised its screen-based defences were still operational, just about. But with no immediate threats around, it was probably better to conserve energy. The entity contemplated trying to scoot along in the dirt with the aid of its geminus connector (another thing that it had just discovered it had), which normally connected it to its main body. But that was energy expenditure too. Best just stay still and go into low-power mode, scanning for friendly signals in the background.

The entity thought it remembered something. It was vague and tantalising, falling out of the entity's mental reach every time it tried to grasp it. So it thought about nothing in particular, and put up no barriers against the little traces of memory that brushed against its consciousness. It remembered… sort-of remembered… being safe. Surrounded by allies. Not just allies…- loved ones. It thought it remembered being surrounded and loved and cared for. That sounded nice.

The entity drifted into standby mode, hoping to dream more of those memories, and hoping someone would remember it too.

┄

Bumram's yoke chimed. Some Astro would soon be here, demanding Bumram to work its magic.

The leggy creature woke up from its doze and got its many limbs under itself, preparing to stand. It wandered over to its food dispenser, moving by placing a set of three of its leg-tips together on the ground, then lurching its centre of gravity over that spot, then repeating with another set of legs. Bumram stuck its proboscis in the food dispenser and ate some of the ration pellets within. Far from its homeworld, it didn't have access to the alien flora and fauna – podules and fronds and gels – that would normally be its species' diet.

The Astros kept their colonised members well-fed, out of practicality if not kindness. A malnourished worker was unproductive. Astro biologists and chemists, so it was claimed, analysed every conquered species's nutritional needs and designed the most low-cost and efficient way to replicate it. Bumram suspected they just said that and gave all carbon-based lifeforms the same dry pellets.

Bumram was slightly startled by the arrival of the Duchess warping in. It had been expecting someone to arrive, of course, but the warps were always sudden. And someone as colossal and high-ranking as the Duchess was unexpected! Bumram was a little nervous. It had heard how demanding and vicious the Duchess could be to whoever was servicing her. …Bumram was in luck, it realised as the yoke's brain-probe translated her words into concepts Bumram could understand. The Duchess wanted Bumram to 'educate' — a word the Astros used that Bumram had come to understand as something like 'repair, improve and also subjugate to the Astros' — the ward whose chains she carried. Fix its damage, but only to the degree needed for forced upgrades. Its comfort didn't matter, beyond ensuring it could battle.

The Duchess unchained her ward – Bumram's new project – and unceremoniously dropped its chain to the ground, secure in the knowledge that someone else would deal with it (though was it really 'knowledge' if she just didn't think about it at all, thought Bumram). The ward – a hollow-faced mechanical colossus – made no dash for freedom. Bumram hadn't expected it to. It could tell that the thing in the mechanoid's torso wasn't part of its original design, and was part of its initial 'education'. Bumram was already calibrating its workstations to be able to interface with it.

"Isn't this wonderful?!" exclaimed the 'educator'. (Bumram flicked through screens of data and discovered that the educator had the callsign 'Julius'.)

Bumram made a non-committal chirp, not disagreeing with Julius and giving itself plausible deniability against daring to speak out of turn. Bumram then addressed the Duchess, with what it hoped was appropriate deference: "It shall be done, your grace. Thank you for your conf-"

"Say less," said the Duchess, and warped off to attend to matters of Astro state. She had probably selected the outpost where Bumram worked simply because it was closest, rather than for Bumram's reputation. Still. Bumram wouldn't let her down. The punishment for failure would be severe, but Bumram wasn't worried. It was genuinely good at its work.

"We're going to be so pretty and perfect," cooed Julius. Bumram couldn't tell if Julius was referring to its host – the 'Watchman of Doom', Bumram had discovered from the datafeeds – ah, that did sound like classic Duchess – or if Julius was talking to Bumram itself.

"This one will work now," said Bumram. "Talk if it pleases you, Watchman. But if it it is not a question, this one will not presume to respond."

Julius continued boasting what a fine Watchman it and its host would become, apparently not having heard Bumram or not caring. Julius moved on to apparently wheedling its host for a response, but the host wouldn't be wheedled.

Bumram let them get on with it, and set to work. It donned pieces of PPE as it needed them, trying out various tools as it searched for the most efficient way to pull apart the Watchman's outer plating and modify what it found within. Its job (that in its own people's language translated to something like 'rock witch') was to reverse engineer what it could of the captured specimens that the Astros brought it, and work out how best to educate them, so that the best bits of the original systems and the Astro additions worked as efficiently as possible to serve the Astro empire's needs.

Bumram was free, in a sense. It wasn't under direct control like the half of the Watchman of Doom controlled by Julius. It had freedom to manage its own hours as long as it got all its work done on time and to its superiors' satisfaction. It had never known any other life. Its species was from a vassal planet to the Astro empire, and Bumram had been born to a loyal parent. (Not that Bumram knew them. As normal for its species, Bumram and its siblings had devoured their parent shortly after hatching.) Bumram had heard of rebel members of its kind, who spread traitorous messages that their species had agreed to be colonised under false pretences, and should fight for their freedom. Bumram decided it was better to be on the winning side regardless, and so it worked without complaint. It could always be worse.

The Titan tried to disappear inside its own mind while also observing its surroundings. It was lying down – Julius had made it do that – while some unknown organism opened it up and tinkered with the Titan's insides. The Titan couldn't find any signal from its subscreens, and hoped they'd all been annihilated rather than fallen into Astro hands. It couldn't see very well with its shattered screen; just vague shapes and a little bit of colour. The Titan could 'see' to an extent through Julius, through their horrible bond. It felt the organism – some Astro ally, presumably – scuttle and lurch around inside it, ripping and re-wrapping and poisoning and pruning. Outside the battlefield, the Titan had never been touched so horridly like this – it had only ever known the gentle and careful touches of its engineers. Oh, its dear little engineers, now worlds away… The Titan supposed it would never see them again.

Bumram observed the insides of the Titan with genuine interest as it worked, pushing in stents here to allow for Astro accretions, pumping in polymer there, throwing out primitive capacitors and pushing in Astro crystals. The Watchman, apart from the organic parts of Julius, was – as far as Bumram could tell – entirely technological. A walking blasphemy! The Astros despised robots. How dare a glorified rock ever presume itself able to think, to feel? Robotic enhancements were fine, used by every Astro to draw out their full potential, but those were only tools, modifications to an already-glorious being. A robot demanding to be taken seriously was ridiculous. Bumram was intrigued by this blasphemy before it. 'How lucky for it that the Astros have blessed it,' thought Bumram. Not only had Duchess allowed it to continue existing, but she had granted it a boon of survival in the form of Julius, dripping with life.

"Oh, poor thing, you're pregnant," said Bumram. Inside the Watchman's carapace, Bumram had discovered a miniature version, perfectly formed, joined to its huge parent by thick cables. Of course a robot could not reproduce, which meant that whatever species the Watchman came from was partly organic after all, Bumram reasoned. But what should Bumram do with the Watchman's offspring? The Duchess hadn't left any orders about that. Which meant that the Duchess probably didn't even know it was in there. Perhaps Bumram should keep it captive and present it to the Duchess. Or would she mock it for thinking that was a worthwhile effort? The Duchess could be volatile and hard to predict, Bumram had heard.

Bumram noticed the Watchman-foetus regarding it. It seemed to be able to climb and grip within its parent's frame, so Bumram guessed it was probably nearly developed enough to be born. It would have to come out either way, so Bumram would have room to insert the next batch of modifications. Bumram decided it would cut out the foetus, and leave it in a pen (or something) with some nutrient pellets (or something), and if it died, too bad.

The Titan realised that the strange organism (that appeared to be at once spindly and worm-like, as far as the Titan could perceive with its limited senses) was converging on Legion, and it transferred its focus there.

The Titan-as-Legion couldn't make sense of what it was looking it – its home, when acting as Legion, was the snug caverns of Audeamus's insides, but these were now sliced and thrown open to the atmosphere, under an alien sky with twin suns, and Legion no longer had its bearings; couldn't tell any more where it stood inside Audeamus's frame. It semi-parsed the creature in front of it, not really comprehending its anatomy — Legion was immediately distracted by the blade the creature held, intent on severing the cables and wires and hydraulics that connected Legion's body to Audeamus's frame. …This was death, of a sort, and also a chance to escape! The Titan concentrated with all its might on pouring all of its consciousness into Legion, as much of its colossal mind as would fit into that relatively tiny frame. The creature would sever Legion, and everything inside Legion's mind would be lost forever, denied to the Astros. The Titan would strike one last blow against the Astros by lobotomising the Watchman of Doom, breaking Duchess's new toy.

The pain exploded at Legion's back, as the space-worm-arthropod-thing cut through cables and burned through hydraulics, making components go tense from heat and then pop. Legion's consciousness faded – it was powered by Audeamus's shell and couldn't exist outside it – but didn't completely end… Legion's senses rolled back into place, along with fresh sizzling pain at its back, and it realised that the creature had correctly identified the main power transfer points and had plugged in a battery to sustain Legion. ("Snacks for the road," Bumram said to itself, though there was no way Legion could have understood.) The ripping and tearing sensations and sounds continued, until Legion was detached, with no break in consciousness. Legion felt some despair at this: the Titan's plan had been to put as much of itself as possible into its small body and then let it get destroyed. Had it just turned Legion into a little toy for the Duchess?

Bumram hesitated. Its plan had been to find or make a temporary enclosure for the baby Watchman of Doom (a Watchman of Minor Annoyance, perhaps), but an outburst from Julius (who was apparently both enraged and in despair that its host couldn't or wouldn't communicate with it) drew Bumram's attention back to its current task. Which outcome was better and what was most likely? Would it be best to delay making Duchess's new toy and present her with this tiny bonus one? What if she wasn't interested in such a tiny thing and was angry at Bumram for not getting its assigned task done? Or would it be worse if the Duchess discovered that Bumram had secured another specimen only to let it die? Bumram considered. The Duchess hadn't mentioned that her Watchman of Doom was pregnant, which meant that Duchess probably didn't know about it. Bumram should just get rid of it and finish its task.

Bumram was not discontent with its life under the Astros. But there was a limit to what it was willing to do. And it realised it couldn't bring itself to kill a little thing that was just born, not directly. It didn't have the heart (or whatever organ made the equivalent metaphor) to smash the tiny Watchman directly or rip off its battery, but it didn't mind casting it into the wilderness and letting the problem take care of itself. The battery would run out at some point and the local wildlife would pick apart the remains.

As Bumram flung the newborn Watchman-foetus to the jungle beyond the outpost, it found itself saying not 'good riddance' but 'be free', and Bumram was not sure what to make of that.

┄

Legion reflexively tried to do everything it would have done as the full-sized Titan: to port to safety (it couldn't, because it didn't have a teleport-circuit of its own), to fly (it couldn't, because it had no jetpacks), to deploy its weapons to at least slow its trajectory through the jungle. It had no sword or back-spikes, but it eventually remembered ('eventually' being relative: all of this happened in the less-than-a-second it remained airborne) that it did have the normal wrist-blades for a TV plus its two flexible back-stems, like Polycephaly used to have. ('I don't suppose I'll ever see you again' thought Legion at the memory of Polycephaly.) Legion grabbed wildly with its back-stems as well as its arms, and crashed to a halt on the jungle floor.

The dazed Legion considered its circumstances, and wondered if this was any better than being destroyed or being stuck inside Audeamus's shell. …Legion was taken aback by what it had just thought: it had thought of itself as 'Legion' and not 'the Titan.' And it had thought of the Titan's big shell- no, its own big shell – or was it? – as 'Audeamus' instead of as itself. What was happening to its sense of self?

'You can't really call yourself Titan any more,' Legion supposed. A miniature Titan was a contradiction in terms.

Legion managed to get up, and was surprised at how undamaged it was. Its engineers had built it well. It used its back-stems to feel the battery welded to its back, and worried about how much juice it had left. Its first priority was to find a way of recharging itself, whether that was a mains power supply it could build a camp around, or perhaps a solar panel it could add to itself. It did have a core chamber, but it was only ornamental and generated no power. For lack of anything better to do, Legion set off to circle back to the outpost where that wretched creature was desecrating Audeamus's frame, no doubt on the Duchess's orders. Legion hoped to find an outbuilding, a substation, something. There must be something that powered the creature's tools, after all.

Legion used its wrist-blades and its back-stems to facilitate a path through the alien jungle, concentrating on staying the course once it realised that the local flora was not sessile like Earth plants and fungi, but was made of slow ambulatory fleshy masses that shuffled or slithered around as Legion moved between them. Sometimes they objected to Legion's presence with wet rattling and croaking noises. Legion guessed that the clouds of spores they sometimes emitted, or stringy webs they flared into place, would probably have had some corrosive effect on another biological organism, but Legion was unaffected.

And finally, Legion reached its destination, covered in various sticky particles, and its mind always itching at the wrongness of being unable to teleport, but otherwise in good shape. It moved out of the meat jungle with caution, picking out a route that was out of the line of sight of where its old body now lay, still being moulded to Astro designs by the creature. Legion risked peeking its head out from behind a building to look at its former shell – now the Watchman of Doom – and immediately wished it hadn't. It withdrew in a panic and sat down, clutching its head, its circuits racing and its turbines quivering.

Legion's panic was riled further by the sound of an Astro warping in, then squashed a little by Legion's realisation that if that was the Duchess, she would probably be taking her new Watchman away with her, which might make Legion's task of finding an energy source easier. It might even be able to tackle that odd creature, with enough preparation. Legion picked up on the sound of the Duchess's voice, and looked for a path that would let it move closer. It might be able to pick up intel on where the Duchess and the Watchman were going.

The Duchess was saying something in Skibidi. (Legion positioned itself so that it could see some of what was happening via bounced reflections off some scrap sheets of material that was grimy but still retained some shine.) Legion couldn't be sure, but the Duchess seemed to be telling the odd creature that its work was satisfactory.

The Duchess then addressed her new subject: "Are you ready, my Watchman of Doom?"

To Legion's horror, the Titan replied, "Yes, my Duchess."

¦ TSC Prolouge ¦

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Chapter 1

It's finally here! I've been working on this secretly for a while now. During my art slump, utmv has really helped me regain my passion for drawing.

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