Kain stood upon the cliff, staring down at the valley below with his mouth agape. The sight of thousands of robots, things that he never thought he would see in his life, lying broken and torn shocked Kain to his core. ‘I’m… not on Earth, huh?’
Luna cried out in wonder, ‘Woah! There’re so many! Ohh, brother, look over there!’ She pointed a paw toward the center of the field where a large metallic monolith with five sides stood. It was a few hundred feet tall and one side was a few hundred feet long at the base, becoming narrower as it climbed into the air. It was a black metallic color, shining slightly in the sunless environment. It would have stood as a monument to invention and ingenuity were it not for the gashes and tears that dotted the exterior monolith. The damage ranged from holes a few feet long to the giant gash that spanned two sides of the five sided tower and spanned tens of feet. The largest gash reached the ground, not sparing the earth its fury, digging a deep trench into the soil that still had yet to heal. Along the tower, splatters of red blood painted the breaches and other parts of the wall. Kain could see a story just by seeing the sight in front of him; a civilization advanced enough to create legions of robots to do their bidding creates a base in the forest for some unknown purpose, and while there, a horde of beasts with tyrannical strength slaughter everyone. It looked almost picturesque for how gory and bloody the image was.
‘These robots may have been strong, but they were obviously outclassed. There’s only the blood of the inhabitants of that tower, so I can assume they wer-’
‘What’s a robot?’ Luna asked innocently. Kain had said the word before when looking at the tree-like one so she was curious, but didn’t want to break his focus. Now that they saw all of these ‘robots’ lying dead in a field, Luna was itching to know what they were.
Kain replied quickly, ‘Robots are metal machines built by others to complete tasks given to them. In my world they were nowhere near this advanced, so I have no clue as to how they specifically work. Just think about an animal that listens to whatever you tell it to do and cannot bleed because it has no blood, but must be manually healed by either you or other robots.’
‘That’s… Really cool! Can they do anything I want? Do they always have to be repaired? Can they have children? Can they-’
‘Luna… I don’t know. As I said, they are more advanced than the ones I knew on Earth, so they may or may not be able to do that stuff; we’ll just have to see what we can understand from their broken shells.’ Kain said with an exasperated sigh.
‘Then we’ll just have to do that then!’ Luna declared, jumping off of Kain’s skull-pauldron to slide down the cliff. Kain grabbed her by the scruff of the neck before she could get beyond his reach, ‘Hey! I want to see those cool robot things!’ Luna said, pouting.
‘It might be cool, but it might also be dangerous. Did you forget your cautious instincts when you became sentient?’ Kain scolded. He pulled Luna to his chest, holding her, while pulling out Mouse.
‘I didn’t forget… This stuff is just so cool.’ Luna pouted. Kain chuckled and slid down the cliff, which was a few dozen feet high, and braced his legs with energy when landing. His strengthened legs absorbed the impact, only kicking up a cloud of dust. Kain surveyed around the area, looking for potential threats. Among the shattered robots there were also defensive formations: a metal barrier that gave protection to everything but the tall robot trees, a large shell with four entrances that allowed for the robots to take cover from the air, there were even a few holes with a metal covering that looked like grass. The grass that the covering was designed for was very green and not a bit blue; it seemed that the grass had changed between that point and whenever the sheet was manufactured.
Among the robots, Kain noticed that they were all colored black and got a better look at the ones he did not see, while also seeing new ones. The large millipede robots were 30 feet long and 5 feet wide. They also had many side compartments that opened up to reveal storage space. In the ones that Kain examined, he only found rocks, dirt, and bones; it was likely that the robots were transporting materials from construction around to construct more fortifications. They also had weaponry that extended from the top of the body, but Kain had never seen a gun that did not use bullets before; he knew that the weapons did not use bullets because they had no ammunition compartment. Kain concluded that the millipede bots were used to transport materials, weaponry, or anything else, only being used in a combat role in the case of emergency or ambush.
The robot that looked like a large eye was about 2 feet in diameter, so 1 foot in radius. They were large camera lenses that were able to float around, if Luna was to be believed. They had no weaponry as far as Kain could see, as the only place to put it would have been in the ‘eye’ of the creature. It was perfectly round with no protrusions except for the occasional gash that were common traits of all of the robots there. They seemed to be surveillance bots to Kain, which was an opinion Luna agreed with when remembering her time around the base before it was all destroyed.
There were tree-like robots that were much more prevalent than the other types of bots. They had thick armor, a foot thick made from some extremely tough metal, that surrounded their ‘trunks.’ At the top and bottom of the ‘trees’ were numerous arms or ‘branches’ that could split into smaller arms or combine into thicker arms. The trunks of the trees were about 15 feet tall and 3 feet thick. Were they standing on their arms, though, they could have potentially stood at 30 feet tall. Luna mentioned in her memories that they surrounded the encampment, blocking out the sun from peering in. He concluded that she had only seen the exterior of the defense, missing out on the large tower in the center, so she may have seen something wrong. Though, there were many of these types of robots at the base of the monolith in the center of the camp, so they may have tried to do what Luna said they did by climbing on the tower. Beyond temporary defense, Kain theorized that these robots may have been maintenance bots, seen by their arms that could perform tasks of both strength and dexterity.
The robots that left the deepest impressions on Luna were the ones that took the form of a spider. They were small by the standards of the other large bots, only being 7 feet across at its widest, but they had all incredible armor. At its thickest on the top of the bot, the armor was a foot thick, but it was barely existent on the bottom, presumably to make space for the inner workings of the bot. Its eight legs were thin, but made of a sturdy material, and shaped like slightly curved blades. On some of the ones closer to the outer edges of the encampment, they had dried, blue blood on their legs. They had eight eyes like normal spiders which may have housed weaponry that Kain nor Luna were knowledgeable on. Apart from their legs, their only weapons were two nozzles protruding from the front of their faces. Kain noticed, while looking at some of the more broken ones, that the weapons on their front were similar to the weapons of the millipede: they had no need for ammunition. They looked very fearsome and, unlike most others which were only colored completely black, the spider droids had red accents that reminded Kain of black widow spiders. He guessed that they were the main combat force and made up the bulk of the fodder, especially with the capability to climb vertical surfaces.
The second to last type of droid Kain and Luna saw were giant crab bots. They had excavators instead of normal claws, were 15 feet across and 7 feet tall, but aside from that, they simply looked like giant crabs made of black metal. It took Kain longer to figure out the function of these types, but they seemed to be purely for excavation and terrain manipulation. At the time of their end, most were simply torn to shreds near whatever fortification they were building.
The final bot did not seem like a bot at all. They were humanoid in shape, with long snouts like those of dogs, being 9 feet tall at their shortest and 11 feet at their highest; upon closer inspection, Kain realized that these models were indeed sets of supremely advanced armor, obviously drenched in blood without their pilot in sight. They all were jet black with blue accents, and on the inside, there were padded barriers, eliminating the possibility for discomfort. There seemed to be many pieces of equipment along the legs and arms, but Kain had no expertise in the area, so he had no way of using it. When he was about to wrap up, he noticed a detail on the helmet: there were medium sized holes at the sides of the forehead with a strange mechanism attached. He pushed a broken piece of metal through the hole and discovered that it moulded its shape to fit whatever was inside. He struck the now-elongated helmet at the protrusion, but the scrap metal he used chipped upon impact. Kain contemplated, ‘They used better armor for this area than anywhere else… What would have gone here that was so extremely important?’ He searched the armor again and noticed a similar design, but bigger, at the back of the armor. The positioning of the extendable piece would suggest that their intended pilots would have had tails of some kind. Beside one of the pilots, there was a sword that looked like a jet balck bastard sword with a two-sided blade and a long handle. Every armor had some weapon near it, but not all were in one piece. Unlike its peers, the sword was nearly undamaged, only having a few scratches. Kain took it with him and made a note to look for an easy way to carry it.
‘Well, that’s all of the different types we could find. What do you think, Luna?’
‘I think they’re all really cool! They look so powerful, even without whatever those weapon things you kept talking about.’ Luna replied, beaming in interest.
‘Well either way, they had no chance against whatever descended upon them.’ Luna began to softly shake in fear, but Kain did not notice. ‘Whatever they were, they left not a drop of blood here, not a corpse, nor any bones. They either ate all of their comrades when they died, or none of them actually did di-’ Luna’s shaking became stronger, and Kain noticed, ‘Oh, sorry. It’ll be alright, they’re gone now.’ He held her up to his face while her beady eyes began to accumulate tears, ‘It’s okay. I’m here with you now, okay?’
Luna took a few moments to calm herself, almost starting to cry again, but calming herself again, ‘T-Thanks… Thanks big brother…’
‘Alright, the only thing left to look at here is the giant tower. Ready to find some new toys?’ Kain said with a smile.
‘Y-Yeah! I’m ready!’ Luna replied in an enthusiastic tone as she finally calmed down after remembering the one-eyed monster. With their resolve re-affirmed, they looked to the giant metal monolith.
