[Metra Side Story] Eradication 1 – The perfect introduction to life

[Metra Side Story] Eradication 1 – The perfect introduction to life

What was living? That was the question a piece of metal was rather suddenly and rather forcibly confronted with as magic hot as smouldering lava was poured into it. It felt... things it didn’t have words for. Just an immense wish to break things around it, a wish so strong for a long time it felt it would break her apart instead.

What was existence became sentience became sapience as other materials were introduced to it. It was stressful, even though it had no true concept of what was normal, this just felt unnatural. Then it all stopped. It just lied there.

“Another failure?” a deep voice grumbled. “I had really hoped this would do it. Well, time to dismantle it and start again.”

Dismantle? That did not sound good, that sounded like it would end. It didn’t want to end... whatever this ‘living’ was that had just started. A touch by something soft on its surface.

A sudden idea, no, a sudden flood of ideas, outlining what everything was, knowledge of things she had never seen before. Taste, smell, hearing, the senses became more than just impulses she received, they were concepts that relayed reality to her. Living, the continuation of amassing experiences like this – her own experiences. The hot feeling inside her, wrath. She was angry, angry at everything. Why? Didn’t matter, but for the person that currently touched her, there was an easy explanation. He wanted to dismantle her, kill her.

Her body took form, instinctively. It already existed, but without arms or legs all those experiences in walking and punching she had just inherited would be useless. A muscular arm darted upwards and landed square in the face of the person touching her, catapulting him off her.

‘Get off me, you creepy piece of shit!’ those were the first words she intended to speak, but her lips only formed those words without any success. She had to create lungs, something to draw in the air and push it out again to form sounds around. A second attempt, by now she was looking down on the person she had punched.

He was a man in ornate robes, a golden ring atop his head, encompassing a mane of brown. The most outstanding feature of him would have been his beard, an impressive but somewhat silly looking arranged of small braids.

That man was in the process of trying to form his own words with a dislocated jaw. She was doing her best to find a way out of where this was. Looking around she realized that she was in some sort of hall fashioned from brown stone. She had been lying on an altar underneath a giant raw crystal, black with silver spots decorating it like stars did the night sky, that grew out of the otherwise flat ceiling. Still, she knew basically nothing about this world.

“Your face is really punchable, you should cover it with more beard,” she declared; the violence had created a short burst of euphoria inside her. A moment where she felt atop of the world. She wanted to feel that again, so she jumped on top of the man. The only thing she knew for herself, for real, right now, was that violence made her feel great.

Compared to the man she was a giant and way more muscular as well. Now she had no idea why she even was this ‘female’ called thing, it was just an instinct that had made her form this body, but she did know that she could properly hurt him, whoever he was.

Now that he was prepared for her assault, the man actually fought back. Weirdly enough, that didn’t just irritate her; on the contrary, hands locking, muscles bulging in a desperate strain, it all made it so much better. The challenge, she realized, was a great thing. Every passing moment threatening to make her the loser, was not. Magic pulsated in her body like blood, she heard it in her ears like a circle of war drums being banged inside her, and with every beat it felt like she was becoming even stronger.

The man realized that as well and, pinned as he was, concentrated all of his power in one desperate push that threw her off him. Landing on her back a short distance away, she growled. Her anger, it only grew; there seemed to be just no limit to how angry she could get.

The man got up and, with one dedicated move, cracked his jaw back into place. He spat out, a liquid clearly mixed with blood. Watching her carefully, just as she held back her trembling body in wait for an opening, he spoke in a pleased tone, “Not only have I succeeded, I have created a beautiful warrior.”

From the little things she knew about beauty, she would not have categorized herself as such. Now standing, she had an easier time comparing the two of them. She was over one head taller than him, her arms as thick as wooden logs and an overall body that eliminated all feminine curves under thick muscles. The only things that even identified her as female were the considerable breasts, the hole between her naked legs and the facial structure that could charitably be described as Amazonian.

The man ripped off the top of his robes, so that they wouldn’t get in the way in the ensuing fight. He was of olive skin with chest hair as thick as his beard; it all glistened as if covered in oil of that tree. Some other urges moved in with the violence, those were completely unknown.

With loud screams they charged at each other. The man used his inferior height as an advantage, ducking under her large arms and tackling shoulder first into her solar plexus. Groaning in pain as her metal body refused to budge under the attack like a regular body, he continued to run forwards, ramming her into the wall.

Cracks formed in the stone behind her back. She grabbed onto the man, rammed her knee up his stomach and then raised him over her head only to throw him down with enormous force. When she attempted to finish him up by stomping on his head, he rolled to the side at the last second, getting once more to his feat. An exchange of brutal blows followed, the man slowly losing ground as his stamina fell and her strength only increased.

Or so she was led to believe until they head arrived back at the altar. There, he dodged one of her punches, and then, with a blue flare enveloping him like a fire, his speed and power increased immensely. Twisting the arm onto her back, he suddenly had her pressed face first on the altar. She attempted to rise, flail with her free arm to knock him off. The only thing that got her was that arm caught as well.

The presence of this flesh born man beyond the gods kept the peace, as no one dared to anger him. Metra spent those years mostly away from the capital, fulfilling a mission to kill orcas. When she returned, Gilgamesh had gone again, together with the gods of sun and moon he had brought with him. As he left, the troubles returned, worse than ever.

Thankfully by then, Sargon had figured out what had made the creation of Metra successful. Two things separated the Metracana from the normal golems that were already in use. One was their artificial soul, something created accidentally at first out of the raw amount of mana that had rested inside the materials Metra had been created from, sparked into consciousness by a mental connection between herself and Sargon.

Continuing on that line of research, later magicians would figure out how to create the soul as a blank slate instead, eventually giving rise to the Artificial Spirit master-craft.

However, Sargon became unable to make that research in his lifetime, so he taught those he trusted the second secret to create the, at that time, only successful model. A piece of the goddess of Tiamat and, more importantly, how it played into the spell.

A long time after Sargon’s death, even when his kingdom was long gone, around the tower that wound around the sky, a song could be heard sung by children of those days.

Twenty-one of them there are, the priestesses and aspects of Tiamat.

One went to wrath alone, the first one, the unique one.

One went to patience alone, the second one, the only worthy contender.

Two went to her love, the first ones to shatter.

Three went to her hatred, then they had learned the lesson.

Three more to the darkness, she wore on her skin.

Three to the light, that was hidden within.

One without aspects, a weak one without power,

He shall watch over, forever, the place of the first one’s oath.

Four to the power, wielded for virtue and sin,

Three to the order, that was rising and lost forever to them.

Twenty-one of them there are, the unequal priestesses and aspects of Tiamat.

Behold the wrath’s oath and be crowned king of Akkad.

It was a song that would die with Babylon