[-=Nox=-]

It was hot and getting hotter. The unbearable heat within the mech was starting to drive me crazy. At least I figured out how to activate the water rune. It was connected to a tube filled with water that was now residing in my mouth. It didn’t help that much by itself. The healing spells that Yul kept occasionally firing at me were only a small relief. She was an extremely low-level healer, so they weren't amazingly effective, but little by little June's body was becoming less of an undead abomination with far too many organs held together by Necromancy and more of a healthy foxkin… with some extra organs.

The atmosphere inside the machine was rather tense as I kept sending death glares from where I sat down at Yul.

I was still extremely mad at her. Mad that June was gone, mad that we no longer had a ship or a crew or even two obedient Archmages to call upon. Damn it all! I’ve successfully acquired so many awesome things and now I was reduced to almost nothing once again! The little idiot healer had the audacity to imply that losing June was my fault. My fault! As if! I wasn’t even awake when it happened!

As an immortal divinity I had long given up on trying to understand humans, but while I was stuck within Yul's body something had happened. I had grown to like June. Not having her around was hurting on a level that I didn't know was possible.

I couldn't understand the cause. This pain is too alien to me, that much was proven by the fact that it wasn't being converted to pleasure. Was I trapped in a mortal form for too long? Just what was this feeling? Was this because her soul had synchronized with mine perfectly and was thus very precious to me? More precious than anything I had ever owned or created? I didn’t feel this much dismay over the loss of my Void Empire! I was feeling more stressed out than I had ever been in my unnaturally long life.

I knew that I could mess around with June’s brain, to try to change it with magic to make myself feel better. I could try to sever all of these bothersome emotions, make them go away forever. However, this was June's brain. The fact that I might have accidentally, horribly, irreversibly changed her just by being in here, by desperately trying to bring her from death was causing me vast quantities of concern. Concern that I shouldn't have felt when it came to my minions and yet... here I was. Full of uncontrollable irritation. Full of worry for whatever had remained of June.

There was a lot of damage in June’s mind. I was too late. I had failed. My trip across the Sextant-controlled city took too long. I didn't know what or who would emerge when it was time for me to leave this body to its rightful owner. I wanted to hurt, to vaporize Yul on the spot, but the damn Sextant collar wouldn't let me use magic without permission from its masters. June's body was perfect for me, much better than the incompatible, useless, level one White aura Yul. If it wasn't for this damnable collar I could do many great and amazing things, as well as devour whatever I desired using June's body as a vessel. Her body kept gathering Shadow mana and I kept converting it into the Void, gaining power.

Yet… I knew that I could not stay in June forever. I really wanted to know if there was something… anything left of her in here. I wanted to talk to her, to teach her more Void magic, to hear her laughter even if only just once more. And not least of all, I wanted to hold her in my arms again. Damn these bothersome, distracting human feelings!

Yul marched the modified test dummy mech around the Sextant camp in increasingly wide circles. I tried to distract myself from the heat, tried to think about what Yul told me. The Dryads… my own terraforming systems had apparently grown a spine over the passing millennia and were now using me as a weapon for their own needs. Giving them all female, human-style interface Avatars seemed like such a great idea six thousand years ago… Argh!

I wiped sweat from my face. I had no idea where on Magraterra we were exactly. I kept my eyes wide open, looking for anything that I could remember. The desert was annoyingly bright and was making my eyes water as I blinked without stopping. There was nothing that I recognized, just vast white sand dunes all over the place, stretching out for thousands of kilometers in every direction. Double Argh!

This place wasn’t made for humans to exist on. I had no idea what sort of horrid things had evolved from the bio-weapon systems left unattended for six thousand years. There were numerous security systems in place that had kept them from getting out on their own, but… lots of things could have broken or been sabotaged on purpose... considering how disrespectful and vile the dryads were acting.

One of the nearby, white dunes suddenly exploded and a huge, crystalline centipede emerged from within. It made a noise akin to a thousand violins being rubbed together as thousands of its crystalline legs scraped against each other. I was all out of Arghs at this point.

My hands snapped to the gun, turning it towards the crystalline monstrosity. Let's see what this baby can do. I pressed on the trigger. Glass spheres shot from the barrel, pummeling the centipede.

“Yeah, bitch, you like that?!” I yelled, feeling excited at the prospect of murder. The fight had marginally distracted me from my internal suffering, given me an outlet for the rage that I was feeling at the unfairness of the universe.

The oversized, crystalline critter was not deterred by the gunfire, shrugging off the explosions of glass even as its legs shattered.

“Too bad the Sextants didn’t make these glass balls explosive,” I commented, pondering how much damage the balls would do if they were filled with a mixture of separated Light and Void mana that would combine on impact.

The centipede rushed towards the mech. I stuck out my tongue, evaluating its status.

Crystalpede

[Race]: Silicoid

[Level]: 79

[HP] : 10240/11000

The damn thing was pretty high level! The crystalpede had reached us far quicker than I had expected it to. The glass spheres created by the gun weren’t doing enough damage to it.

“Grab it!” I yelled down to Yul.

“On it!” She replied, moving her arms, looking at the beast through the glass portholes all around the cabin. I watched as the arms of the test dummy mech wrapped around the centipede, attempting to crush it. A crystal head managed to squeeze itself into the open porthole from which my gun was sticking out. I leapt out of the seat, sliding down the ladder before it could bite me in half.

“Pull it out! Pull it out!” I yelled at Yul as the monster clawed its way into the cabin.

The healer was trying to pull the centipede out, but she was failing catastrophically at this job. The long, horrid thing was inside the mech now, coiling around the inner walls, cutting off escape before coming closer. The idiot girl stared stupidly at the crystalline monster circling around her, wrestling its lower body with the thick arms of the mech momentarily forgotten.

It had finally gathered enough of itself within the confined space to become a threat to her. It leapt towards Yul who was frozen in fear and restricted in place by the ring chains. She screamed as jaggedy, crystal jaws closed over her head.