"Bleed!" sang a voice like a hammer on an anvil, and with a high swipe a Brute's head flew clear of his shoulders. "Spray it!" The creature that had once called itself Meg was enraptured at the gushing red that coated its metal skin.
"Behind you!" shouted its Commander, but it could already sense the pulsing lifeforce behind it. In a quick turn, another fighter squirmed on its blade. It drank deep of the unfortunate man's energy, then let him slide off the blade, dead before he hit the ground. Something in what was left of its mind knew better than to luxuriate in the pleasure.
It understood little. Not the war in which it fought, victorious rebels mopping up the remnants of the Brutes now that the Tyrant was dead. Not what each of its victims in turn thought as an empty suit of armor advanced on them. Not even the thoughts of its Commander, who every night promised the girl whose name he'd never learned that someday he'd find a way to free her. It understood blood, and power, and the joy of fulfilling the Commander's orders.
But on this day, a day like so many others in the past, it was to remember something else. As it drove its sword into the chest of another terrified soldier, slamming him to the ground, it looked beyond him to the people he guarded, huddled without weapons in the burned remnants of a barn. And it saw a face.
It could not remember why this face was so important. A girl, her hair and skin brown like the Commander's, but her timid eyes as green as a Brute's. The thought sprang unbidden:
I know those eyes.
My next target,
it told itself.
When this one is dead
--it drove its sword deeper, out the man's back.
But it did not withdraw it.
Energy rushed through the metal monster, more energy than it could stand, but it held firm as it stared at the green-eyed girl. "Who are you?" it yelled out.
A voice behind it interrupted its thoughts. "Have you lost control of it, Tolliver?"
Its bliss only heightened as the voice of its Commander answered. "I'm waiting, Vyce. I need to know what she's doing."
The girl and the monster watched each other silently as the soldier's body vanished, flesh and bone drained away. When all was gone, the metal beast sank to its knees.
Blade and armor alike cracked and sundered, overwhelmed with too much power. At last they fell apart into a thousand pieces.
Fell apart and revealed a young woman, naked and trembling.
The green-eyed girl escaped in the chaos.
- - - -
Tolliver was alone now, except for the girl, but the voices of the rebels continued to ring in his head.
"What the hell do we do with her?"
"I've got one idea for such a pretty little girl."
"You're her 'commander,' Tolliver. You figure this out."
Tolliver had found no reply.
It was night, and it was his turn to stand watch. The girl stood by him--she had neither left his side, nor spoken a single word. He stared at her once more by the faint light of his lantern.
She was bare of hair as well as clothing, utterly exposed to the elements, yet she did not shiver in the night air. Her skin was flushed, red as blood, and her eyes were the color of steel, but she seemed small in the darkness, and something about her was very young.
She raised her head and stared back at him, and then gestured out into the night.
"I don't understand," he said.
