They walked. Before the desert sands seemed endless, but soon the red sea started to speckle with bits of grass, showing signs of their near exit. However, it was not quite. Heat shimmered in the distance, turning stone into phantom rivers, the air thick with mirages. The Ravager walked with deliberate heaviness, each step sinking deeper than it needed to, as though his very body remembered the rhythm of war but forced itself into patience.
S3bastian clanked beside him, patched with salvaged plating that rattled like a loose suit of armor. "Do you know what I miss?" S3bastian announced one morning, stumbling theatrically over a dune ridge. "Carpets. Thick ones. Red, preferably. Honestly, any rug would do. Something civilized underfoot instead of sand in every crevice of my plating."
The Ravager's optics remained fixed on the horizon. "You would complain of comfort if you had it."
S3bastian gasped with mock indignation. "I'll have you know, comfort is the foundation of civilization. If mankind and omnic-kind can't agree on that, then what hope have we?"
The Ravager did not reply.
The Ravager said nothing. His optics stayed fixed on the horizon, where wisps of smoke curled above mudbrick rooftops clustered around the husk of a long-dead wind turbine.
By the time they approached, the village had noticed them. No cries of alarm this time, no rifles or carbines lifted against them. Instead, the lanes emptied like water draining from a cracked jug. Doors slammed shut. Curtains twitched. Mothers gathered children inside with hurried whispers.
Silence spread. An entire village watching from behind shuttered windows.
S3bastian exhaled a whistle through his vocoder. "Marvelous reception. Nothing says hospitality like abandonment."
The Ravager paused at the edge of the square. In the midst of the stillness, a single figure moved. An older woman stooped in her garden, a clay jug tilted awkwardly in her hands. Her arms shook from the weight, and the water fell wide of the roots, soaking the dirt uselessly.
She tipped the jug again, missing entirely. With a sigh, she adjusted her grip, only for her stick to clatter against the stones. Blind eyes stared past the world she couldn't see.
S3bastian glanced at the Ravager. "Well, someone has to intervene, or those poor plants will drown before they drink."
The Ravager stepped forward. His heavy frame filled the lane, shadow spilling across the garden. The woman did not flinch.
"Allow me," he said, voice low and deliberate.
She froze, then turned her clouded eyes toward the sound. Slowly, she released the jug. The Ravager caught it easily, his hand engulfing the clay vessel. Kneeling, he poured the water in a steady stream, each root drinking fully.
The woman tilted her head, listening. "Precise," she murmured. "More careful than my own hands."
S3bastian bent at her side, scooping up the fallen stick. "And elegant too, if I may say. My companion is nothing if not efficient." He tapped the stick against the Ravager's arm plating. "Though not exactly subtle."
The woman smiled faintly. "Selene," she said. "That is my name. And you?"
S3bastian flourished. "I am S3bastian, butler, raconteur, part-time gardener. The tall fellow here, his name is still… under construction."
Selene chuckled softly. "Then let us call him friend, for now. And if you have no roof, I have one to spare. Too large for one old woman. Stay, if you will."
The Ravager hesitated. He had expected fear, suspicion, exile. Not an invitation. At last, he nodded once.
"Thank you."
They stayed. Not one night, but several. Selene asked little of them beyond what her blindness made difficult.
The Ravager carried water from the ditch, split wood, and patched cracks in the garden wall. S3bastian, with great reluctance, learned to sweep without scattering dust into every corner and to chop vegetables without embedding the knife into the table.
"Do you know what I find insulting?" he said one afternoon, holding up a bent ladle. "That I, a construct once capable of plasma detonations, am now relegated to stirring soup. And yet, I must admit… I rather like it."
Selene laughed from her chair. "Explosions make for poor company. Soup, however, keeps one alive."
At night, they sat by her hearth. She insisted on cooking, ladling bowls of stew from beans and dried meat. They sat politely, bowls in hand, even though they never touched the food.
Selene seemed to sense the difference but said nothing. Not yet.
Instead, she spoke of small things: the weather, the stubbornness of her herbs, the rhythm of the irrigation ditch. Her blindness had taught her to listen deeply. She never asked where they had come from, nor why they wandered. She let their silences stand.
And so the days passed with quiet routine. The villagers watched from behind shutters, whispering of the strange pair that tended Selene's house but never approached.
On the third night, as the firelight painted shadows along the courtyard walls, Selene stirred her pot and tilted her head toward them.
"You sit here every evening," she said, amusement in her tone. "And yet, not once have you lifted a spoon. Is my cooking so dreadful?"
S3bastian gasped dramatically. "Madam, perish the thought! Your cuisine is magnificent, if a tad heavy on cumin. But alas, we lack the… ah… necessary digestive accessories."
Selene smiled faintly. "Then you are not men."
The Ravager inclined his head. "No. We are not."
She set her spoon aside, folding her hands over the stick across her lap. "I knew. Your footsteps told me. Too heavy, too resonant. The way you breathe, as in there is none. I knew from the start."
The Ravager stilled. "And yet you welcomed us."
"I did," Selene said. "Because I have lived long enough to know what hate brings."
Her voice lowered, heavy with memory.
"I lived through the Crisis. One morning, they came, machines, marching from the dunes like a tide. My husband fought. My sons too. Only I survived, buried beneath the rubble of my own home. For days, I lay there, blind and broken, listening to the world burn. The whine of engines. The thunder of cannons. The screams of neighbors as metal tore them apart.
"When they pulled me free, my eyes were gone. Shrapnel, they told me. A small mercy, I thought. For I did not have to see what remained of my family."
Her fingers tightened on her stick. Yet her voice did not tremble.
"I should have hated you. All of you. And for a time, I did. But not long after, I met others. Omnics who carried me, who gave me water, who bound my wounds with more care than any soldier. They spoke gently. They grieved with us. In their voices, I heard people, not monsters. Different, yes, but still people."
The Ravager's optics dimmed. His voice, when it came, was rough. "And still, the world chooses fear."
"Perhaps," Selene said. "But not all. I learned something in those days: hatred blinds worse than shrapnel ever could. It leaves you deaf to kindness, blind to truth."
For a long while, only the crackle of the fire filled the courtyard.
Then Selene's lips curved into a small, wistful smile.
"There was one omnic I remember most. A woman of light, her voice calm as water. She called herself Aurora. She told me she wished to visit a sanctuary, hidden in the mountains. A place where seeds of peace might grow. She said one day she would go there."
The Ravager leaned forward. "Aurora," he repeated, the name like an oath.
Selene nodded. "Yes. Although I fear that she may have passed, there is still a hope that she still lives."
S3bastian tapped his chin with theatrical thought. "A sanctuary, you say? Wisdom carved on stone walls, a destiny waiting to be fulfilled. Sounds dreadfully like a story we're meant to walk into."
Selene chuckled. "Go north. The mountains wait. If you would seek meaning, you may find it there. Or perhaps you will find yourselves."
On the fourth morning, dawn painted the desert in copper and rose. The Ravager stood in the courtyard, shoulders broad against the light. Selene leaned in the doorway, her stick tapping softly.
"You leave today," she said.
"Yes."
She nodded, as though she had known the moment she met them. "Then go with purpose. Do not walk the world as a weapon lost. Walk it as a soul searching."
S3bastian bowed low. "Madam Selene, your home has been an oasis, your wisdom inconveniently enlightening, and your soup surprisingly tolerable. We thank you."
Selene reached out. Her frail hand brushed the Ravager's plating, resting against his massive fingers.
"You are heavy," she whispered. "Heavy with more than metal. Find a way to lay it down."
The Ravager lowered his head. "I will try."
Her smile was small, but real. "That is enough."
By the time the sun climbed high, the two figures had vanished beyond the dunes. Behind them, Selene returned to her garden, humming softly as she poured water carefully at the roots.
Ahead, the mountains rose like teeth against the horizon. And for the first time, the Ravager's steps carried more than endurance. They carried direction. Aurora. The sanctuary. Perhaps there, the burden he carried could finally shift into something new.