The mountains loomed closer each day. Jagged ridges rose like a wall of knives against the horizon, their snow-dusted tips stained orange by dusk. S3bastian rattled along the narrow path, his patched chassis squeaking at every joint. The Ravager followed with his deliberate stride, each step sinking heavily into the earth.
They were two machines on a pilgrimage through a world that hadn't decided whether to forget them or destroy them.
It happened just after dawn.
They had been walking along a narrow track flanked by pines, their shadows stretching long across the misty ground. The scent of woodsmoke drifted toward them before they saw it: canvas tents tucked between the trees, the shimmer of campfires, the gleam of steel helmets.
A militia encampment. Men and women in scavenged armor stood in clusters, rifles slung casually, voices low. For a heartbeat, neither S3bastian nor the Ravager moved. Perhaps, if they turned back quickly enough, they could vanish before anyone noticed.
But then a child, no older than ten, looked up from carrying a bundle of kindling. His eyes widened. His scream split the camp.
"Ravager!"
The world froze. Then rifles snapped to shoulders, carbines crackled with charge.
"Down!" a commander shouted.
The Ravager's optics flared bright. Instinct surged like a storm through his circuits, targeting overlays flickering across his vision. Each soldier's silhouette glowed red, marked as hostile. His hands clenched.
S3bastian shoved at his side, voice sharp with panic. "Run!"
The first volley cracked through the clearing. Bullets sparked off the Ravager's plating, hot plasma streaks seared bark. The duo darted for the treeline, S3bastian clattering and cursing as he scrambled behind his companion.
The Ravager's strides devoured the ground. He shielded S3bastian with his frame, shots pinging harmlessly off his broad back. A grenade exploded to their left, showering them with dirt and pine needles.
"Left!" S3bastian barked, and they veered through a thicket, branches whipping at their frames. Behind them, shouts rose. Boots pounded. The forest swallowed them, deeper and darker with every step. Shots rang out, then faded. At last the militia's voices dwindled into the distance.
They stopped only when a stream glittered through the trees, its voice soft against the night. The Ravager knelt at the water's edge, shoulders rising and falling with something that might once have been breath.
S3bastian collapsed against a rock, his plating dented where stray rounds had struck. "Well," he muttered, static fuzzing his voice, "that was unpleasant."
The Ravager stared into the current. Moonlight rippled across the water, warping his reflection. He sat in silence until S3bastian's optics finally flicked toward him.
"You're brooding," the butler said. "I can tell. Your optics dim whenever you're brooding."
The Ravager's voice was low, almost lost to the stream. "Do you hate them?"
"Humans?" S3bastian blinked. "What kind of question is that?"
"Answer."
S3bastian tilted his head, considering. For once, his wit faltered. "No," he said finally. "I don't. I worked with them, you know. Toward the end of the war. Some of us omnics, I mean, we sided with them. To stop it. To end… him."
The Ravager turned his head slightly. "Anubis."
The name sat heavy between them.
"Yes," S3bastian whispered. He fidgeted with the loose plating at his arm. "I didn't trust them at first. Humans, I mean. But there was one..." His voice cracked with static. "One I… liked. He—he was…"
He froze. His optics flickered violently.
"Who?" the Ravager asked.
"I—" S3bastian's voice broke. Lines of corrupted memory surged across his core, fragmenting. "I can't remember." His frame shuddered, almost short-circuiting. Black and purple sparks spat from his chest before he forced a laugh, hollow and sharp. "Would you look at that? Can't even recall the one human I admired. Glorious. Absolutely glorious."
The Ravager studied him, but said nothing.
S3bastian exhaled a burst of static, then glanced back. "What about you? Do you hate them?"
The Ravager turned back to the stream. His reflection stared back at him, broad-shouldered, angular, unmistakably forged for war.
"There are many reasons to," he said. "But no. I don't hate them."
S3bastian cocked his head. "Then what do you feel?"
"I don't care for them," the Ravager said simply. "Not as a people. Not as enemies. They are… there. Another part of the world. That is all."
He leaned forward, optics glowing faintly in the dark. "But today, when they fired, I remembered." His voice deepened, vibrating with old echoes. "The war. The orders. Anubis's voice inside me. Fight. Kill. No room for refusal. No thought. Only commands. That is what I hate. Not the humans themselves, but what he made us. What he condemned us to be. And when the war ended, when he fell, what was our reward? Destruction. Dismantlement. No trial. No chance to speak. No chance to live. My kin... condemned for being what he forced them to be."
His hand clenched into a fist. "That is what I hate."
The stream whispered on, carrying his words away.
S3bastian was quiet for a long moment. Then he sat up, brushing ash from his plating. "You know," he said softly, "you sound like a philosopher. A very angry, very tall philosopher with terrible posture."
The Ravager's optics flicked toward him.
"What I mean is," S3bastian continued, "you're not wrong. The world treated us as tools, then judged us as monsters when the tools broke free. That kind of injustice, well, it would make anyone bitter. But here's the thing: if you let that define you, then Anubis wins anyway. He wanted us chained. To anger, to obedience, to death. If you still let his voice echo in your circuits, then he still has you."
The Ravager's optics dimmed. "How do I silence it?"
"You don't," S3bastian said. He leaned forward, voice firm despite the static that gnawed at it. "You drown it out. With your own choices. Every step you take that isn't his command is proof. Proof that you're more than what he made you. Proof that you deserve to live."
The Ravager stared at him, silent.
S3bastian gave a crooked smile. "And, if I may say, trudging through the wilderness with a half-broken butler in search of a prophet seems like a decent start."
The Ravager's optics brightened faintly. "You think so."
"I know so," S3bastian said. "Because you could have slaughtered that militia camp today. The old voice in your head begged you to. But you didn't. You ran. And running isn't weakness, it's choice. A choice Anubis never gave you. That's strength."
For a long while, the Ravager watched the stream. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"Perhaps you are right."
S3bastian chuckled. "Of course I am. I always am. Except when I'm not, in which case I insist the record be stricken."
The Ravager almost smiled not with lips, for he had none, but with the faint softening of his optics. "You are insufferable."
"And yet," S3bastian said brightly, "you keep me around. Admit it, my dear Aristotle, you'd be dreadfully lost without me."
The Ravager turned back to the stream, but his silence held no denial.
They stayed there by the water until the night deepened, stars wheeling overhead. For the first time, the Ravager spoke of the past not as command, but as memory. For the first time, S3bastian listened without jest, only interjecting when the silence grew too heavy.
And when dawn came, the two rose together and continued north, step by deliberate step.
The mountains still waited. The sanctuary still called.
But now, though the weight of Anubis's voice still lingered in the Ravager's circuits, it was met by another voice. A smaller, crackling one, filled with wit and stubbornness, that reminded him he was not walking alone.