Two darkened hearts were to become one, but they were separated by the threads of Fate.
Now they find themselves stranded in a cold, hostile world alongside only a handful of survivors, ruled over by a dark, omnipresent force.
Though they are not to...
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We found ourselves wandering the halls of the dark factory, a looming dread surrounding us and our every move. We had not seen the machines for a good half-hour now, as if they were waiting for something. An ambush always seemed imminent, but never came. At times, I could have sworn I heard their characteristic clicking and whirring, perhaps primitive forms of communication with one another. All I could do was hold my sword at my side and follow Jolly, who remained up front due to having armor. Despite having the ability to come back to life, that did not make me any harder to kill.
The plan was simple: either find Nemenera, the golden armor, or find a way out of here. The first way would be the most painful, and the most likely way to let us escape. This compounded my feelings of foreboding. The way we were not seeing any of the metal men that had attacked us earlier was disturbing. It reminded me of how prey animals scattered and hid when a predator was nearby. Nemenera was nothing short of a predator.
"Scrag," Jolly said in a low voice. "Look at the wall over here."
Upon the wall, written messily in dried blood, were the words: 'IT DOESN'T LET YOU GO'.
I almost gagged at such a disturbing, grim sight. It seemed the only things this industrial unit produced were heartache and destruction.
Then, at the end of the hall, shone a light, bobbing slowly up and down, growing closer. The stomping sounds of large metal boots hitting the ground one after another resounded throughout the hallway. Then it, no, he came in to view.
"I am Nemenera, Guardian of Thalor!" it bellowed, his golden armor bathed in the dim red light of the molten river below.
All I could do was run. I turned and began running away as fast as my legs could carry me. This was not the plan. We were at a massive disadvantage. Jolly ran beside me, and despite the weight of his gear he seemed to keep pace quite well.
As luck would have it, while running my foot caught on one of the openings in the grate below, causing me to trip. My face collided painfully with the metal below, and as I extricated my foot, I could hear him getting closer.
"Coward!" he roared. "Will you not fight blade-to-blade, o Theris, or are you simply too weak?"
I pulled my foot out from the grate and kept running. From the pain in my sole, I could tell I was seriously wounded. I had to keep running, had to find an open area where I could lose him. No matter how many insults he threw at me, no matter what he called me, I would not let him catch me.
I was met with a choice suddenly, to go left or right. The sign that pointed left read 'Living Quarters' while the other, that pointed right, read 'Foundry'.
Wait, a foundry?
And just like that, I had a plan.
I turned right and began to run as fast as my legs could carry me. In the back of my mind was the quiet hope that the warden would follow me. I looked behind me and sure enough, he took the bait, for better or worse. Having him follow me instead of Jolly was far better than the alternative.
I found myself running down a metal ramp in to a large, open space, the rivers of molten metal right below me now. The heat, although it had been nothing to sneeze at on the higher levels, was now scalding down here. Being nude, I thought that it would afford me some comfort against the sweltering heat of the forges. This theory was quickly proved incorrect.
This room was different from the others. Four wide catwalks converged circularly in the middle of the room, leaving a large pit that descended perhaps infinitely down, filled with molten metal. In the center of this large pit, however, was a large raised metal platform, one that was most likely used for transporting metal down in to the liquid pit, judging by the control panel that abutted the railing surrounding the center opening. Perhaps I could trick Nemenera in to falling in to the molten metal, thus ending his wretched existence for eternity.
If there were one place in this accursed factory that could kill this beast, this was the place.
When Nemenera entered the room, he did so with unmatched anger.
"You!" he proclaimed accusatorily, as if he were about to judge me for my past evils, imagined or real. "You... will... die!"
He began rushing toward me as quickly as he could, which was far too fast for my liking. He charged forth like an enraged bull, and I dodged to the side just in time to see his telescoping spear shoot past me by nothing more than a hair's breadth. I was between him and the side railing that was the only barrier to me being sent screaming in to the fiery river.
I struck out with my sword, trying to slice through his plated arm, glistening gold in the firelight. All it did was leave a nasty, but sizable gash in the plating. He cried out in pain, which gave me enough time to push him away from me.
He budged just enough for me to make a mad dash for the center of the room, and toward the raised platform.
"You have gotten lucky too many times, marked one!" Nemenera shouted. "You will not land another strike!"
