Chapter Fifteen: Quietus
The ground around the machine exploded, the TSF racing past and leaving the cloud's of dirt and shrapnel behind.
The sand coloured machine skated across the war torn land, explosions and gunfire ringing through the air as countless ship's drowned the sky in dogfights. The ground a few meters Infront of the machine exploded, jumping over the newly made crater it began zig-zagging as it charged it's target. The war hound class titan fired it's weapons at the mecha, the agility and speed the humanoid weapon had, whoever, rendered most of the towering machine's shots useless.
Dodging another close call the surface based fighter aimed it's rifle, smoke exploded around it as a grenade soared from the weapons underslung barrel and hit the massive machine's leg joint.
A thunderous explosion soon followed, the titans leg obscured by a cloud of smoke and dirt. The war hound turned to face the smaller machine and fired, the shot however missed, not because the TSF moved out of the way if the larger machine's projectile but rather that titan itself was moving.
More specifically, falling.
The war hound, missing a leg, naturally fell over rendering it defenceless to a large extent. The right propulsion unit of the fighter rotated, the top now facing forward a panel receded and a handle popped out, grabbing it with it's left hand the mobile weapon yanked out what looked to be a considerably long chain comprised of multiple circular devices.
Throwing it's arm back, the mecha drew more of the chain out with it reaching a considerable length before it threw it's arm forward, letting go of the handle and letting the chain be carried by force as it neared the crippled war machine.
A red dot lit up on the first part of the chain as it reached the titan, magnetically sticking to its head and soon followed by the rest of the chain as the rest of it's parts continued to light up with a red dot.
The smaller machine turned and suddenly sped off away from the fallen machine, the titan itself had moved so as to prop up it's right weapon.
A loud thud accompanied it's heavy drop as the war hound aimed at the distant machine.
Though, it wouldn't get the chance to fire.
The chain of linked mines exploded.
/
"Boring..."
She looked over the battlefield.
"Why is this so boring...?".
The land was hidden by an almost endless sea of corpses, The ruined remains of war machines dotted this land of the dead like withered flowers in a rotting field.
She sat upon a small hill of dismembered bodies, A bored expression on her face as the girl played with her white hair. She was covered in red and white armour that looked unfitting for such a battlefield, her handiwork proved otherwise as her red eyes gazed through and less at the her surroundings.
She felt exhilarated when she saw the sheer numbers of the enemy force that foolishly challenged them. Soon afterwards however, She had quickly soon fell to frustration out of how little challenge there was.
Foe after foe fell before her blade, Over and over. Only ending when she had ran out of bodies for her weapon to sink it's teeth into.
That frustration had changed.
Disappointment.
That flame of excitement and carnage that she indulged in had been snuffed out just as quickly as it had been ignited.
"Quietus".
She lazily turned to look at him, Her red eyes gazing into his cyclopean red orb.
"Hmm?...What is it, Agravain...?".
Standing behind her was what appeared to be a drone, Though once you looked past it's head you could tell that there was a difference. It was clad in black armour reminiscent of a knight while the shoulder's held atop them a furred brim of a cloak that hung to his ankles, White and azure in contrast to his black plate.
"I take it you've had you're fun?".
She sighed annoyingly at the remark.
"If you could even call it that, All the attempts at speeches were a buzz kill already. Then there was most of them trying to run away that really killed the mood...".
There two stood for a time in silence, looking over the silent remains of the bombastic battle between the abyssal legion and the Imperial guard regiment of kronus.
Until quietus spoke
"Is father back?".
"...No, Lord hades has not awoken. You must come back to the fortress, It concerns you're sister".
She turned to face him properly, Brow peaked at the news.
"And what about her?, She's still in her pod so she's not going anywhere... Right?, Agravain...".
/
Neon blue fluid dripped from torn fleshy cables that hung loosely from an
unpiercable darkness, A sizable pool of the multi-purpose liquid had formed in the room. She stood there in the ankle high pool looking where a massive machine once stood, Behind her was it's opposite. A mass of metal and glass that had blossomed like a flower in bloom, For a time it was once everything she knew.
Now it was alone.
It's twin torn from this metal womb and spirited away to parts unknown by parties unknown.
He was standing in the entrance looking on as she processed what to her may have been up until now an impossibility.
"DNA type: Double Helix. Biotype: Mammalian. Species: Homo Sapiens/Human. Two Male, One Female. Method of access: Unknown. Means of infiltration: Unknown."
Along side agravain was something that had walked out of the stuff of nightmares.
A knife like head with a chin of similar length, The only noticeable facial features on it's 'face' were the needle like teeth of it's mouth. A segmented neck lead to it's hunched over body, A large torso of segmented chitin with a series of large spikes running along it's exposed vertebrae. Six arm's were in both sides of it's body, The closest two were emaciated skeletal arm's seemingly locked in a scheming or contemplating gesture. The other four were equally spindly but more built with the middle pair ending in a pair of large three digit claws. The farthest pair terminated in what looked like one's best interpretation of a madman's attempt at making medical equipment.
Below it's torso and continuing from below the ribs onwards was a centipede like tail with four of the limbs closest to the torso replaced with more skeletal arm's.
This situation made no sense.
Within the abyssal legion agravain was ultimately the second in command, His original duties as both general, Which has since been given to the newest addition to their force's, And administrative came with the same omnipotence and omnipresence Hades had when within the fortress. The very possibility of something like this should have been impossible... yet.
It happened anyways.
"Our intruders, Malebolgia. Was there anything they had that is within the archives?".
"Cross-reference yielded no results. Organization?, Technology?. Unknown. All possible explanations have been investigated and exhausted, All except one".
He thought over his fellow A.I's cold word's and was visibly taken aback.
"Treachery?, Impossible. Not even those spirit's can overcome the programming of their containers... Unless."
"Unless the betrayal wasn't direct" Quietus spoke, She turned with venom on her tongue.
To the subordinates of hades, Betrayal even the very concept of it, Was alien. Thus this ruled out -.
1. Agravain.
2. Malebolgia.
3. Quietus.
The remaining suspect's then two had narrowed thanks to simple logic.
Zero too shared this inherent loyalty and even if he could use his sorcery to remove it, Still would have no reason to betray him.
BB, She was still in her self imposed isolation and even then she was before that almost obsessive in monitoring Hades for the slightest sign's of him 'Waking up'.
Asura and Ra too were out of the question, Fanatically loyal by design and too honourable respectively.
Thus this left the servants that zero and Hades had summoned as their suspect's.
Taking in the restrictions there were only two out of the eight that stuck out.
Nobunaga for obvious reasons. But even then the strategist that unified an entire nation would know the futility of fighting against an army of immortal machines.
Thus left only one.
Quietus had beat agravain at identifying their traitor.
"Galahad".
Her desire to kill was ignorable, A cold hate flowed from her lips as she spoke that name as though it were a curse upon the world.
He had always kept an eye on the grail knight, While he was summoned Purely for his noble phantasm, A shield that repelled all things, The unwavering wall's of far off Camelot. Galahad was kept around because they couldn't figure out how to remove the noble phantasm and was simply left to his devices, Before now he was one of the strongest members of the legion practically second to Hades himself.
"The other's mustn't learn of this, Not until hades returns".
As far as they were concerned, The fortress was impenetrable, Unconquerable. Those who would seek to destroy them would throw their bodies at it's wall's and would find only defeat, It was almost fact that the abyssal fortress was invincible.
Until now.
Ultimately, It was less the others and more BB and Hades that would be the problem. One was possibly unstable or increasingly so and the other...If agravain was sure of one thing, Hades's reaction would be... violent at best.
"Malebolgia, Send you're staff to scour everything for anything that they could have left behind, They are still human, They would have made some form of mistake" He turned to quietus, The young woman seemingly caught up in her rage "Quietus" She glanced at him.
Good.
"Be ready, I'll make sure you get at him first".
She was already off before he was close to finishing his sentence.
Ultimately, All they could do was set up more and more spears around themselves as it seemed more and more likely that their leader would continue to slumber.
Indeed.
All they could do was wait and hope.