Light Eater: Iron Grid

Faren’s remaining eye scouted the horizon. She heard them before she saw them. A fleet of boilers roared in the distance. Then the smoke—deep and black, billowing from exhaust stacks—came into view. 

Kaelenhurst’s sirens sounded.

Volcanic ash and dust rose as spiked wheels ripped through the wasteland toward the towering, corrugated iron walls. Divinity no longer crackled atop the barbed wire-topped walls, replaced instead with a series of steam-cannons, full of pressure and loaded with heavy iron grapeshot.

Powered gears whirred as Faren raised a long stock of iron and wood, lining up the sights with the nearest Auto. She pulled the trigger, and with a click, a sharp crack tore through the air. A pressure valve over her shoulder hissed, as it compensated for the weapon’s recoil. The heavy steel spike tore through the skull of the driver, detonating his head into a fountain of thick, dark gore.

The Auto veered to the side and rolled. The pressurized boiler ruptured as it slammed into the Auto next to it, spraying a steaming-hot cloud of vapor over the tight web of cultists. Their vehicles tore through the steam, the flesh of their drivers scalding.

The cannons were manned moments later. The deafening hisses of pressurized steam suddenly releasing rained grapeshot over the remaining fleet of Autos. The iron balls tore through rusted iron and detonated boilers in puffs of steam and smoke.

A deep, low chug rattled the iron plating beneath Faren’s boots.

Then it appeared, through the haze of smoke and kicked-up volcanic ash—a behemoth of rusted iron and salvaged copper, eight spiked wheels digging into the earth beneath the thick blanket of ash. It roared with the power of two boiler-engines. Riveted armor plating shrugged off the grapeshot like it was nothing more than rain.

The armored mass of riveted boilerplate slammed into the gate, tearing through the steel with a loud groan. The smoke-belching titan ground to a halt inside the breach, deep ruts digging in the dirt behind it. For a long, bleeding second, the roar of the perimeter battle seemed to vanish, swallowed by the deafening ring in Faren’s ears. The screaming iron gate had finally gone silent, replaced by the rhythmic, heavy chug-thud of the idling dreadnought.

Faren gripped the railing, her mechanical gauntlets groaning against the iron as she fought to keep her feet. Inside the harness, her bad ribs throbbed with a white-hot spike of agony from the shockwave, her breath catching in her throat. Through the soot-choked air, her single green eye locked onto the breach.

Below her, the defensive crew stood paralyzed. Nobody reloaded. Nobody yelled. The safety in Kaelenhurst had just shattered with the ironwork, and in the sudden stillness, the only thing moving was the heat shimmering off the enemy’s iron wedge.

An iron hatch at the back thudded into the dirt.

Sunlight caught the tips of steel-tipped Pressure-Lances as the first wave of intruders rushed out of the back of the Behemoth. Strapped to their faces were respirators attached to glass tubes that burned a bright violet. With a twist of a valve on the facemasks, pure Divinity gas released. Breaths hissed as they deeply inhaled, the vapor scorching their lungs as crackling energy spread throughout their body. Blood vessels flared with the same bright violet, webbing across their bodies like humming copper wire.

“Hold!” Faren yelled from atop the wall. A breath later, she yelled again. “Release!” The defensive line answered with a hail of steel spikes that tore through the line of Berzerkers, massive exit wounds detonating in sprays of blood.

But the Berzerkers kept running. They closed gaps in moments, Divinity-enhanced blood and muscles propelling them forward. A cultist, his glowing violet veins pulsing beneath his soot-stained skin, lunged at a perimeter guard. The guard wore standard Kaelenhurst defensive gear: a thick, heavy coat of treated bull-hide beneath a buckled iron breastplate, with articulated iron pauldrons protecting his shoulders and a deep-rimmed iron kettle helm shadowing his face. It was solid, heavy armor designed to turn aside kinetic shrapnel.

It did nothing against the lance.

The cultist thrust the long, hollow pipe forward, burying the sharp brass nozzle into the gap where the guard’s iron breastplate met his shoulder pauldron. With a frantic twist of his wrist, the cultist slammed the manual release lever on the lance’s copper under-tank. A concentrated, blinding violet jet of unrefined Divinity erupted directly into the guard, the superheated pressure cooking him from the inside out. The thick iron plate of his breastplate turned a sudden, bright orange. The cultist wrenched the pipe free, the brass tip dull red, already scanning for his next target.

The next wave of intruders poured from the Behemoth, not with weapons, but tools. These were the Harvesters. They ignored the slaughter at the perimeter, scattering like starved insects toward copper conduits that crackled faintly with Divinity.

One of them rushed a nearby pressure manifold, carrying a manual pneumatic drill. With a frantic, rhythmically thudding hiss, they bored a ragged hole straight through the thick steel casing of the main line. A volatile, crackling hiss of pale violet gas spewed into the cold air. They had to hurry—if the pressure dropped too quickly, the emergency cutoff would activate, halting the flow of Divinity through the conduit lines.

The Harvesters didn’t waste a breath. They slammed a heavy brass tap into the breach, and attached long, braided copper hoses. The hoses hummed and stiffened as the Divinity surged through them, routing the stolen current directly back into the massive tanks inside the Behemoth’s iron chassis.

Faren cursed from the wall above, single eye watching the Harvesters go to work. Her fist tightened on her weapon. The cultists were draining the last stable reserves of Divinity Kaelenhurst had hoarded to jumpstart the ancient relic-engines. Without the reserves, the plan to restore the wasteland was lost.

With a hiss of her backpack boiler, Faren locked her power-gauntlets onto the iron railing and vaulted from the upper walkway. She landed on the dirt with a thud, vents releasing steam into the air with a loud hiss as the exosuit compensated for the fall. She didn’t bother checking behind her for the other guards—she ran, exosuit empowering every step forward, boiler shrieking. She sprinted to the primary manifold.

A Harvester working the brass tap looked up just in time to see her shadow looming over him. Faren brought her brass hammer down in a brutal, sweeping vertical arc, shattering the Harvester’s skull with a single hit. Next was the copper siphon. She reached out with her power-gauntlets, grabbing ahold of the siphon and tearing it free from the conduit.

A jagged spray of unrefined Divinity hissed from the broken seal, crackling against her iron greaves and coating the surrounding ash with a sheet of hoarfrost. At the sudden massive pressure leak, the emergency valve shut, halting the unregulated flow of Divinity through the conduit.

A glowing-veined Berzerker bared his teeth, huff-mask wheezing as he raised his motorized scrap-saw. He didn’t care about the gas or his dead comrade; his glowing white eyes were fixed entirely on Faren. His saw came down in a violent show of orange sparks, grinding against Faren’s hardened boilerplate armor. She turned and struck him in the jaw, shattering the respirator.

Faren knew it wouldn’t drop him. With an exosuit-enhanced leap, she aimed for a catwalk overhead, gauntlets wrapping around the iron railing and hoisting her up. It groaned beneath the weight of her heavy rig. From the height of the catwalk, she looked down at the courtyard. Only five guards remained to hold down the breach.

She’d honor their sacrifices later.