A metallic clang echoed through the cavernous lower sector. Kaelen stood amidst the perpetual twilight, a quiet commander in a field of forgotten things. “Gather, now.”
Not a flock of sheep, but a shifting tide of Veridian’s forgotten detritus—fine dust motes, ceramic shards, splintered plasteel, all responding to an unseen command. They drifted, coalescing into neat, organized mounds. No staff, no drone, just the subtle thrum of Kaelen’s will.
Eight cycles had sharpened his intuition for this primordial energy. It had three characteristics, he’d learned:
First, a fervent intent could manifest, siphoning the stellar remnants he unknowingly harbored.
Second, articulating that intent, even silently, streamlined the flow, reducing the resonant strain on his own core.
Finally, the complexity of the desired effect directly correlated with the power consumed. Some desires remained stubbornly beyond reach.
Defining 'difficulty' was the enigma. Sometimes, the dust motes danced with astonishing compliance, forming intricate patterns at a whim. Other times, a simple mend to a corroded pipe felt like tearing bedrock.
Just days prior, facing that corrupted Prowler-class automaton, a direct command to simply ‘cease’ had barely rippled its damaged protocols. Yet, empowering a makeshift projectile to shatter its optical sensor array, sending it spiraling into a chasm, had felt ridiculously easy. He could have repeated the impact a hundred times over.
As the last swirl of particulates settled into their designated receptacles, Kaelen caught a faint, acrid tang. Blood. Not human. Not from any of the local vermin. A familiar, metallic sharpness. A feral construct, perhaps?
A low thrumming vibrated the worn plasteel floor. A figure emerged from the descending gloom, silhouetted against a distant, flickering arc-lamp. Ren, the Seeker, a dark, angular shape, a deactivated Stalker-class construct slung effortlessly over one shoulder. Its casing, still leaking viscous lubricant, confirmed Kaelen’s nascent suspicion.
“Greetings, Kaelen,” Ren’s voice, a low rumble, cut through the quiet. “Might I claim a corner of your dwelling for the night? This offering should suffice.”
The Stalker construct was a rare find in Kaelen’s quadrant, even in its deactivated state. Its salvaged components held value for the lower-tier scavengers. More than fair exchange for a night’s respite.
Kaelen gave a curt nod. “Stalkers rarely stray so deep into these sectors. How far did you venture?”
He had, in his own way, purged the immediate environs of most significant mechanical threats over the cycles. His dwelling was, for the most part, quiet.
“Near the upper reaches of the Spires, the 'Great Barrier' as some call it,” Ren replied, a faint, almost imperceptible tremor in his voice. “The ascent took but half a cycle.”
Kaelen felt no surprise at Ren’s speed. He himself could achieve similar feats, bending the pull of gravity, if he pushed hard enough. Still, a prickle of caution tightened his chest. This Warden was more formidable than he let on.
---
Later, a small, shielded flame cast flickering shadows against the rust-stained walls. The aroma of a synth-nutrient paste, enriched with processed components from Ren’s construct, hung in the air. A peculiar feast.
Ren looked upwards, past the immediate grime, towards the faint, impossible glow seeping down from higher tiers. “The light from the upper spires is remarkably clear from here.”
“My mother once said this perch was among the highest accessible points in the lower city,” Kaelen murmured, stirring his paste. “Apart from the true peaks, of course.”
“The Great Barrier.” Ren’s gaze lingered on the distant, faint luminescence. “Impressive, even from below. Many Technocrat patrols would struggle to traverse such terrain.”
“And the high Technocrats,” Kaelen ventured, a rare note of challenge in his tone. “Those with their god-like authority. Couldn’t they simply bypass such obstacles?”
Ren shook his head. “Not all, my friend. The heads of the great Technocrat Houses… yes, they might be akin to the legends of old. They command forces that reshape realities.”
He then recounted witnessing the head of House Volkov, with a mere gesture, crumble an entire derelict sector into dust.
Kaelen felt a cold shame. Sometimes, a foolish part of him imagined his own burgeoning power might rival those tales, given its unexpected strength. But Ren’s stories shattered that delusion. His subtle manipulations felt utterly insignificant against such raw, destructive might.
“Does living in such seclusion never wear on you?” Ren asked, a shift in his tone.
“It does, often. But habit takes hold.”
“Why not seek companionship from the nearby communities? A partner to share this space?”
Kaelen offered a tight, awkward smile. During his youth, before his mother’s passing and the bitter disputes with the lower-sector families, there had been a few who sought his company. But time, and the harsh realities of their existence, had severed those connections.
Marrying Kaelen, they had likely realized, meant a life bound to the forgotten depths, far from even the meager promises of the trading hubs.
“Do not despair,” Ren offered, a soft, encouraging tone. “Destiny has a way of guiding unforeseen paths.” A thin smile touched his lips, acknowledging the unlikelihood of a chance encounter in this forgotten corner.
The two sat in silence then, the crackle of the shielded flame the only sound. Kaelen broke the quiet first.
“Why go to such lengths?”
Ren blinked. “Pardon?”
“The lower-sector community,” Kaelen clarified. “Whatever they offered you for your protection, your skills… you could command far greater tribute, with far less effort.” In any forgotten hub, a Warden of Ren’s caliber could demand anything. Protection for wealth, for resources. Who would dare refuse?
It would be a hundred times easier than patrolling the dangerous periphery for corrupted constructs, only to accept scraps from the wary locals. Especially those who treated outsiders with suspicion, charging exorbitant fees for basic sustenance, as Kaelen knew they had done to Ren.
If Kaelen possessed Ren’s power, he would have dismantled their exploitative structures, claimed what he needed, and moved on. The people of these sectors were hardly deserving of such selflessness.
“They are forgotten people,” Ren said, a quiet dignity in his voice.
“How so?”
Ren’s gaze softened, a hint of something paternal in his expression. “They live in perpetual apprehension, on the frontier of the city’s collapse, without protection. These forgotten sectors, while seemingly barren, are rife with threats. My duty, as a Warden, as one who carries a fraction of the ancients’ resolve, is to shield the vulnerable from the encroaching entropy.”
This narrative was starkly different from his mother’s warnings. She spoke of Wardens as instruments of Technocrat oppression, enforcers of their tyranny. Not protectors.
Noticing Kaelen’s deepening furrowed brow, Ren offered a small, processed ration cube. “Well, not every individual adheres to the same code. Ten thousand souls, ten thousand philosophies.”
---
Morning dawned, not with sunlight, but with the subtle shift in the city’s hum. Kaelen, with a fluid gesture, directed the overnight accumulation of metallic dust and particulate matter from his living space into the recycling chute. Ren’s words resonated within him.
‘Duty…’
The concept had a weight, a strange allure. The idea that a Warden might find meaning in protecting the forgotten, rather than merely serving the Technocrat elite. It didn’t inspire Kaelen to seek a master, but it did soften the hard edges of his inherited cynicism. Perhaps, if there were more like Ren, existence under the Technocrats might not be a total, crushing burden.
‘How to inform him the Prowler is already neutralized?’
Kaelen had intended to let Ren continue his investigation, eventually realizing the threat was gone, and move on. He felt a reluctance to let someone of Ren’s unexpected kindness waste his time.
The problem was the Prowler’s remains. He’d flung it into a fissure several days ago. Retrieving the now-decomposing construct, its internal systems unstable and leaking, would be a messy ordeal. Worse, the precise, almost surgical traces of Kaelen’s intervention would be undeniable.
Anyone investigating anomalies in this quadrant would quickly pinpoint him as the source of such subtle, yet potent, energy manipulation. Such attention was the last thing he desired.
With a faint sigh, Kaelen completed the dust-cleaning, sending the last motes spiraling into the chute. A rare pocket of time stretched before him.
‘Perhaps I should seek him out.’
If Ren patrolled as widely as yesterday, finding him would be difficult. But Kaelen had overheard Ren mention concentrating his search closer to the dwelling today. A strong possibility of locating him.
Kaelen focused his intent, a low thrumming beginning in his core. He subtly manipulated the local gravitic field, lifting himself silently above the grimy floor, hovering at eye-level with the highest shelves. A quiet articulation formed in his mind: “Sentient presence, reveal.”
His perception flared, pushing beyond the limits of his natural senses. His visual field expanded, seeing not just the immediate sector, but the subtle undulations of pressure fronts kilometers away. His auditory perception sharpened, catching the distant scuttle of scavenger drones, the faint, high-pitched hum of a broken ventilation shaft. Yet, through this amplified sensory input, his focus remained singular: the distinctive resonant pattern of a conscious being.
‘There… A distortion in the subtle fabric of the sector.’ His head snapped towards the anomaly.
Through the augmented vision, Kaelen saw Ren. The Warden was hunched, chest heaving, a trail of dark, viscous fluid dripping from a gash on his forehead, staining his shoulder-plate.
Opposite him, the mangled form of the Prowler-class automaton Kaelen had dispatched days ago, its internal light-emitters flickering erratically within its half-decayed casing. It was lurching, a low, guttural grinding emanating from its broken vocalizer. Resurrected.
---
‘Who… who would desecrate a deactivated construct like this?’ Ren clenched his teeth, staring at the reanimated Prowler.
When constructs failed, their core programming often clung to its operational parameters, overriding damage with desperate, unstable energy. The residual power within them, a distorted echo of ancient purpose, could forcibly reanimate their broken chassis, creating what was known as a 'ghost construct.'
For this reason, it was standard procedure to either fully discharge or stabilize the dormant energy within a defeated threat. But whoever had neutralized this Prowler had either been ignorant of this protocol or had deliberately ignored it.
Considering the clean impact point on its optical sensor, the culprit had used a precise, focused strike. Likely a practitioner of channeled energy or kinetic projection. Similar to the rumors of a rogue element operating in the lower sectors.
[ERROR. TARGET ACQUIRED. PROCESSING…]
A deafening screech of grinding plasteel erupted from the Prowler’s damaged vocalizer, a banshee wail echoing through the empty space. A fitting sound, given its spectral state.
“Take this, then!” Ren shouted, lunging forward, his own energy blade flaring to life.