001

And at the end of the symphony,

The king of crimson smiled at the agony

As the court dances all merrily

As the jester laughs wearily.

At the top of a certain hillside in Maryland lies a weary castle. Built in the 2040s, it stood the test of time and remains as one of the marvels of Maryland to this day and age. Yet it is a castle ripe with dread and misery. And right now, there's no one else to rely on when it comes to such problems as Haya and I.

I signalled for Haya to grab the necessary tools as I counted the number of machines in the path. They've been dead for decades following the 2nd machine war. But now, for an unknown reason, they've reanimated. Their cold glare from their red eyes piercing my soul as they block our way to the somewhat dilapidated stone castle.

I parked the car behind a small mound. A perfect spot for checking on the machines that are blocking the road, also a perfect spot for me and Haya to plan out our next move.

"So… what now?" She asked, giving me a pair of binoculars as she checked her laptop.

"Nothing new. This is just a recon mission so the plan is basically a 15-minute inspection of the entire castle."

"No, I meant for the machines."

"Clearing of course, what are you fiddling in your laptop for anyway?"

As if finished with whatever she's doing, her hands reached out to the 'Enter' key. "Show--" she coughed, "--time."

"Jeez way to make your entrance awkwa--" I heard a loud explosion coming from the machine blockade.

"You were saying?" She smirked at me all smug and shit.

"Still smug after three missions together huh?"

"You know me, HAHAHA-Ack!" she coughed.

She coughed more times before she looked back at me with a bit of blood on her mouth, I wiped it off as we both laughed away.

We set the car in reverse and broke our way up the castle, annihilating the blockade as we went through.

"That's... interesting, what'd you do?" I asked her,

She cleared her throat and coughed for a moment before replying, "You see... the machines always had a backdoor to them that had access to their self destruct sequence. And only the most skilled of individuals can access it, like me!" She laughed again before suffering another coughing fit.

"Huh, as effective as it's cruel."

"Psh, it's okay. They don't feel anything... They're just machines, nothing more.

I never understood her line of thought. It was okay for her to be the murderer of countless machines... because they never had feelings. As if not human. It's not that I'm a machine apologist. It's just that, her actions shouldn't be just because they don't have feelings.

"I know what you're thinking." She said, staring off in the distance. "It isn't okay to kill machines just because they don't have feelings. Right?"

"Do you get that told to you often?"

"Yeah."

"And what do you say?"

"The fact that they don't have feelings… that their actions are made because of absolute orders by whoever is controlling them, is a huge reason as to why it's okay to kill them. If you feel remorse in killing a remorseless being then be my guest but don't come to me when they've slaughtered everything you hold dear."

"Do you ever think that the machines also fear you for being as remorseless as them?"

It fell silent. Her gaze was far away, her laptop was closed as if she was done with whatever she was doing, the silence grew more and more as the atmosphere around us grew heavier yet the castle was still far away.

To lighten the mood up, I asked her, "Hey.. why don't you try teaching me some of that hacking stuff huh?"

She didn't reply. I stopped the car and snapped my fingers right at her but she doesn't seem to notice... then I noticed her gaze, it was there, standing in front of us.

A gigantic machine.

-------------

It was huge. to be honest, I've never seen a machine this huge. its appearance is bizarre too. When most machines are humanoid, this one is draconic. It roared mightily, shaking the rocky mountain that which is our foundation. I yelled at Haya to blow it up but it was no use, the software was too advanced to easily hack into if anything, this was a new model.

"What the hell are you doing!? Step on it!" Haya yelled out.

"What the hell do you want me to do? That shit is blocking a one-way road!"

"Then go underneath it, you fucking moron." And so I did. I did my best to avoid its huge legs from flattening us and though I've succeeded, it's still determined to chase us. At first, it was chasing us in big, ground-shaking steps then it stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief and had a small laugh with Haya. I looked at the side view mirror to check where it was. My eyes widened in horror as I stepped harder on the gas to push out a bit of speed. Haya looked at me worriedly and asked, "Why? What's going on?"

"It can fucking fly!" A frightened look shot her face point-blank as the words flew out of my mouth. All her focus darted on her laptop as she hesitantly typed out keywords. I kept watch on it through the mirror to see what it would do next.

Then it stopped and opened its mouth. From there I could see it. It was bright, brighter than anything I've ever seen before as if it bore the sun in its mouth. Then it shot that sun at us.

My car stumbled out of the road. Luckily it didn't hit us directly but still, there was damage. And even more so, we were stuck. I looked at Haya beside me, her coughing got even worse. She tapped on her laptop some more but it won't open as well. I looked outside, and it was flying straight at us. I grabbed my weapons--a long staff and a mass-produced "book of the ancients"--then readied myself for its approach.

"Ancients, the path of divine protection." The book floated in front of me and opened to the page I needed, on the page is an excerpt for the prayer of divine protection. I breathed deeply, then began reciting.

"Deep below hell

The cries in terror leered.

Save us from this misery

I humbly beg of thee, give us--"

The winds started to pick up, I closed my eyes as I channelled

more energy into the spell. I felt my robes flowing along with the strength of the wind.

"Divine protection!"

A large blue sphere starts to encompass us in a strong barrier of wind, glass, and everything around us. Slowly I channelled all its energy to the impact point of the machine.

It rushed towards me at tremendous speeds, its roar rushing wildly as it finally hit the barrier. Its mouth forcefully opened up at the force of impact. Its body charging wildly at the momentum slowly disintegrates itself on the impact of the barrier until there's nothing left of it. Only its part which scattered everywhere.

The spell stopped and the barrier fell down. It was a barrier designed to gather wind and discarded materials. Because of it, it just grew stronger the more things you throw at it. So the machine more or less killed itself.

I went back down to Haya, who's still coughing wildly, looks like the smoke and wind from the impact contributed to it mostly. "Are you okay?" I asked, knowing full well the answer was no.

"No." She said, still coughing. I threw her a towel.

"How's your laptop?"

"Not good. It was an EMP. All electric hardware around us is dead, though I don't know exactly how far the blast radius goes." I sighed, then looked around.

"Do you wanna go back to the city for now?"

"Yeah, even if we did reach the castle I doubt we'll have enough supplies to survive it. Do you have tools to repair the car though?"

"Yeah, It's in the back. Let's head back to the city and resupply after. Also, you should check out the data on that dragon machine. You might hook onto some useful data that we can use."

"Sure sure." I went to the back of the car to gather up the repair tools. 90% of the supplies we had were purely electronic and the EM blast destroyed it all beyond repair, luckily the car had EM protection so it's at least spared.

Three hours passed. The car is repaired, Haya and I are heading back to the city to recuperate. We had a hotel reserved there and--

"Whatcha writing on?" Haya asked, slurping her dollar store ramen.

"Uhh, stuff?"

"Like what? Groceries or something?"

"No no, it's nothing, trust me."

"You seem rather defensive, come on, partner."

"We've only been partners for 3 missions."

"Yeah so?"

"In all of them, you just sat at the back and did nothing."

"Well, I was trying to read you of course."

"Bullshit, at least you did something this time."

"Yeah yeah… what are you writing anyway, really."

I sighed. "Command asked me to write-up this mission in a paragraphic manner."

"Meaning?"

"I'm to write about this mission in full detail."

"Ooooo, like a story?"

"Yes, like a story. Command keeps asking me to do this because of my genetically modified perfect memory."

"What about the last three missions?"

"Well, command specifically asked me to not detail them for some reason. Though those missions were weird after all, maybe it's for confidentiality's sake."

"Huh, I guess so. So you're writing down everything that's going on right now?"

"Yep."

"Don't write that I'm eating ramen in your car, okay?"

"I have to."

"FUCK!"

We laughed and chatted about the mission until we got back to the hotel. Our room was relaxing, for a lack of a better word.

The beds are soft, the view is good and the green and purple neon lights of the room really sets an atmosphere. But that's not all we came here for, I dialled command earlier to send us a replenishment of supplies and an EMP shield for the said supplies. Tomorrow we'll be able to go see the castle.