The spike pierced deep into the flesh of his hand, deep enough to strike bone, and something moved under his skin. Rial winced involuntarily, then realised there was no pain.

A voice suddenly filled the air around him, a voice in a language he had never heard.

It was curious language, one that it seemed Rial could almost comprehend. Certain words stuck in his mind that were reminiscent of his own.

The voices of the crowd rose in volume at the light show the treasure had become. The vivid colours that had appeared before were now warping and changing in front of their very eyes, brighter than ever, accompanied by the odd, foreign babbling.

Rial looked up and realised he was being approached. A corpulent man, breathing heavily, supported on either side by two skinny, tired-looking servants, had climbed onto the stage to claim his purchase.

Rial drew the treasure to his chest.

The fat man blinked as if unable to fathom the situation, then looked around for support.

"Give your new master the treasure, boy!" screamed Dexan, red in the face with fury.

When Rial made no move to do so the fat man's guards also clambered up, a pair of men and a pair of women, equally large and dangerous looking. They moved towards him raising barbed, serrated iron poleaxes.

The babbling of the thing in his arms had stopped.

Rial looked down at the unexpectedly silent object, fearing whatever he had done had already ended. Was that it?

The voice returned, this time fully intelligible.

"Ah, data analysis complete. Language calibration complete. How may I be of service?"

The voice was smooth and cheery, coming out of the air in front of Rial as if some invisible person were standing there.

As soon as it spoke the colours snapped away, its surface becoming a matte grey. It made the guards hesitate.

Rial had not understood the first half of the words, but the second half was clear enough.

"Um... help?" he said.

A strange, high-pitched humming sound came from... whatever it was, and Rial felt a tingling sensation run across his body.

"You are injured. Blunt force trauma and multiple lacerations, suggesting repetitive violence carried out against your person over the course of several days. You are also severely malnourished. Are you in danger?"

Screaming had started up amongst the people around the stage. Cries of 'demon!' ran through the crowd, and several were already fleeing. Others stayed to see what happened next.

The fat man was shouting at his guards to seize the treasure.

"Threat identified. Neutralising," said the strange, talking metal.

A sudden flare of orange-yellow poured from between Rial's arms, leading towards the guards in a thin strip before expanding to envelope them.

In later times Rial didn't want to remember the strange, pained shapes that contorted under the whorls of orange and red before they turned to merciful ash, but he often would in the early hours of the morning. Those mornings he would wake in a cold sweat.

Now those who had stayed to watch began to flee.

A sudden stream of transparent green poured over and forked around Rial's head, turning the world the same colour. Rial span to follow the stream, to see the frozen form of Dexan writhing on his horse, which reared and raced away.

Somehow Dexan remained suspended in the air, legs now straddling empty air. His mouth opened and shut slowly, and his eyes rolled alarmingly in their sockets. In his outstretched hand a blade hung, frozen in its path towards Rial's spine.

"Attempted rear assault, likely leading to serious internal injury and death. Would you like me to neutralise?"

Rial looked on in disbelief as green energy washed and fluxed around him. The square was emptying now, even Dexan's men in panicked retreat.

"Would you like me to neutralise?"

Rial was snapped out of his daze by the repeated request.

"Uh... what? What do I say?" he asked.

"You say yes."

This was the first time the voice had contained any sort of identifiable emotion other than low-level affability. Now it sounded different.

Now it sounded eager.

Rial looked from the weapon - for that is what he now knew it to be - to the man he had watched enslave and torture by the tens, by the hundreds. To the man who had enslaved and tortured him.

"Yes," said Rial.