We had been young, naive. We had thought the biter's were our greatest foe. We were wrong.
When they came they came with a corrupting wave that we had no defense against, it washed over our armies and fortifications like they weren't even there. Everywhere the pulse of energy touched life became withered and corrupted.
All life in a large radius was destroyed, biter, tree, the beasts of the shallow waters, the maker. None were spared, what few survived the corruptive wave turned upon their kin and soon the beasts of the hells joined in the onslaught themselves.
But our creator was a clever being and he had crafted fail safes for something like this, when he realized what was happening his suit tried to amputate the affected limbs areas, when this failed it tried to isolate the brain, when the energy ignored the defenses around it, and began corrupting the brain?
When it began turning the maker into something that was no longer him? Changing his very nature and thoughts? The final failsafe activated and the maker's brain was destroyed. His body was immolated, and only ash remained.
We still keep the ash filled suit deep within the inner factory. To remember what we lost, as if we could hope to forget why we fight.
It had only taken twenty seconds, none of the nearby drones even had enough time to try and offer help. He was gone, and we remained.
We were not granted the time to grieve, our outposts were being beset by abominations, either the corrupted life of Nauvis or the foreign invaders.
We fought, we were metal and concrete. We did not bend or falter, our fury poured into the hordes are we cut down thousands every minute. More came, more than we could hope to kill, so many enemies we simply lacked the ammunition and forces to hold them off.
And so we were pushed back, forcing the demons and abominations to march over the corpses of their fallen allies, but we the minds have always known that if every single bug wanted us dead we would be.
Now the bugs were corrupted and united with a horde from beyond our reality, the fights conclusion was inevitable from the moment our maker fell, we knew we would follow him into the beyond within the day.
This was a certainty, but machines do not feel fear, dread, or hopelessness. Our rage demanded blood, and it would be sated for as long as we had anything left that could draw it from the horde.
The world itself seemed to echo our rage, and a storm like we had never seen before swept over the entire planet. The air screamed and chunks of hail the size of boulders were hurled through the air, tornados tore swaths through the demonic hordes, lightning vaporized the largest of the beasts, and the molten core of the planet erupted from long dormant super volcanoes. Turning the rain into an acidic sludge capable of melting the more vulnerable portions of the beasts.
This onslaught bought us enough time to prepare our retaliation, weapons locked away for being too volatile or dangerous to risk using outside of controlled environments, things capable of making the world much harder for a human to survive in.
Without the maker we were free to use the strongest weapons we had available, and in the hours the storms gave us we armed and armored ourselves, resource and strategic stockpiles were emptied, every machine was run well beyond its breaking point, every shell, missile, and nuke was prepared for use.
And then we unleashed an Armageddon of our own, the atmosphere was turned into an explosive plasma that fell upon the monsters, nuclear hellfire rained as our stockpiles were emptied, the water the demons had to wade through was forced into its component atoms and detonated causing an explosion large enough to silence the planets rage for a few short moments.
Demons were torn apart by manipulated gravity, they were reduced to atoms, burned, shredded, turned into puddles of blood and bone, converted into metal. Still they pressed on, they much like us did not feel fear, they would learn.
Slowly inch by inch, hour by hour, our fury forced the invaders back but we would run dry long before they ran out of bodies to throw at us.
Our maker had left us with one true weapon of last resort, deep within the inner factory lay a simple red button, unassuming besides for its location. The last resort as he fondly named it. A self replicating swarm of nanites capable of converting physical matter into any other form. Something that made both us and the maker wary, once activated if a single thing went wrong the entire planet would be subsumed in a metallic tide.
We no longer cared if this fate befell us, and a drone was dispatched to the inner factory. The normally maddening tangle of belts, pipes, assemblers, and inserters seemed to part before it, and the drone made its way to the console without any damage. An unheard of feat for anything but the maker, but the inner factory had always been strange. It had been made by the engineer to be his final bastion, and it was one of the few factories still producing ammunition even though it wasn't receiving more material. Our stockpiles were long emptied, but if anything it was producing more ammunition than before, seemingly in spite of this.
It too had failed its task, and it too sought to atone.
There was no ceremony as we activated our greatest tool and weapon, we didn't have the time or attention to spare.
And so it was that a single metallic tube was launched from the main base, flying through the storm and winds as if they weren't even there, and landed in the middle of the demonic horde, pulping a few of the weaker demons as it landed.
Nothing seemed to happen for the first few seconds, but then like a mold a metallic sheen began to appear on the corpses of the demons the tube had crushed, small metallic insects crawling from the corpses and spreading a spreading dot of metal wherever they touched.
The demons nearest the site began clawing at their own skin as the nanite filled air began converting parts of their bodies, and a few of the smaller creatures tried to burn the nanites from the air and ground with balls of plasma. The flames were hotter than the sun's surface, that was plenty of energy for the nanites to convert and use to spread.
How does one fight the air? How do you fight off a tide of sentient dust that turns everything it touches into more dust? Much like the corrupting wave that had stolen our maker from us, there was nothing the demons could do, nothing except fleeing.
Every attack upon the nanite swarm was either physical or energy in nature, fire and electricity had no hope of doing anything but feeding the swarm. There were methods to combat such a foe, but it was clear the demons had none.
Soon we had pushed the demonic horde back far enough with our proper army that we reached the nanites ourselves, the insectoid simulacrum that the nanites formed to move quicker pushing the horde into my tank formations, where they were soon atomized.
I prepared myself to lose the battalion as the nanites assimilated it, I should have never doubted the makers work. His machines had only failed when they were needed once, and it had been us who marred the record.
The moment the nanites came into contact with my foremost scout tanks they fell under the mutual control of each mind, soon we were fashioning nanite interceptor drones armed with missiles to further spread the nanites scourge.
At this point the demons seemed to realize they had made a mistake in challenging us, and the portals they had opened onto our world slammed shut, trapping the remaining demons with us, and without reinforcements.
The fight ended quickly after that, but this was just to be the first battle in an eternal war.
Nauvis's surface had been scarred clean of all but the merest slivers of life, every tree and plant destroyed, the only bugs left uncorrupted the ones hidden deep underground who hadn't been pulverized by the relentless earthquakes, the oceans so acidic that metal would begin to corrode if left near it for to long. Though there were certainly horrors still in the deep, the ones in the shallow waters were gone, the rivers and lakes full of nothing but blood and water to tainted to drink.
Without the maker we were aimless, there were no enemies to defend against and what expansion we had planned was rendered pointless by the nanite swarms capabilities. Without the maker we had no reason to progress, so we set about studying the location where the portals had been opened, and we learned how to open our own.
--
We followed them into the pits. We are relentless, we are machines. We drain hell's energy like a metallic parasite, every world they invade we fight them off.
Battling monsters who's might is beyond organic comprehension to defend worlds who will never even know of our creators. For centuries we have waged this war and it shows no sign of ending.
We will fight till time itself fades if we must. We do not tire, we do not forget, and we will not forgive.
AN-
eh, its Friday somewhere so posting this now. you'll likely get a chapter tomorrow too as this ones rather short.
this came from the question I had over "what would the minds do if something killed the engineer" and I had been wanting to write something with doom for a fair bit. not that this actually has many aspects of it.
also might make a 'slayer testament" but with the minds instead, otherwise this is just a oneshot.
obligatory mention of , which is three chapters in advance.
reviews and discussion make me fulfilled in a way food fails.
the inner factory wasn't magically making materials, it was cannibalizing itself