The Unmaker

Emilia's eyes fluttered open like stuck window shutters.

Her skull throbbed. Her ribs ached. Her whole body felt like a collection of mismatched parts someone had sewn together wrong. The first thing she noticed was the dull crimson glow of fire painting the edges of her vision. The second thing was the warm weight pressing down on her entire body, as if the gods had dumped a statue on her for good measure.

She blinked hard.

Debris. The sandstone alleyway she was lying in reeked of charred flesh and broken pride, and a whole chunk of sandstone roof had collapsed over her. The pain in her sides flared bright, and she gasped, but when she shifted—expecting to be crushed—the pressure didn't worsen.

Something was… holding the debris up?

She rubbed her eyes groggily, and there Muyang was, bent at the knees with his arms braced overhead against the falling world. His massive shoulders trembled, and blood soaked down his waist where a jagged iron pipe had gone clean through him. The end of the pipe scraped the ground behind him, pinning him in place like a flagpole. He looked like one of those old gargoyle statues back in Amadeus Academy. Majestic, immovable, and utterly tragic.

And he was shielding her.

He was the only thing standing between her and getting crushed by the weight of an entire building.

"What…" Her voice came out hoarse. "The hell are you doing?"

His head tilted back slightly. His face was caked with ash, lips cracked and bloodied, but he managed a small smile.

"I am glad you are still alive, Miss Emilia."

The answer shouldn't have hurt as much as it did, but it did. Her heart stammered. Her hands trembled. Somewhere in her gut, something icy unfurled: panic and shame all coiled up into a sick knot.

She was supposed to be the strongest. The most confident. The one who'd walk into any stage of any Hasharana Entrance Exam and blow the heads off any bug she faced. Instead, she was trapped here, and being protected by someone she'd looked down on.

She curled her fists into the sand.

So much… for dominating the exam.

She felt the tears sting her eyes before she could stop them. What the hell had she been thinking? She'd seen her dad fight. She was sure he never shook like this. Never folded like this. She looked down at her own trembling fingers and wanted to punch herself in the face.

"I'm sorry, big man," she muttered. "But I don't… I don't know what we can do now."

Muyang didn't say anything at first. Then he grimaced and adjusted slightly, the metal pipe groaning against the stone.

"I know," he said curtly. "Could you help me pull this out?"

Her head snapped up.

"What?"

He didn't flinch. His voice stayed steady. "The pipe. I cannot fight like this."

"You'll bleed out!" she snapped. "That thing's holding you together right now!"

Muyang simply nodded. "Yes."

"That's not an argument—"

"But there is a saying in the far north," he said gently, as if he hadn't just suggested impaling himself further. "It is not about living forever, but… about being able to live with oneself forever."

Her lips quivered.

"If I stay here," he said, voice barely audible over the fire, "if I let others fight while I wait to be rescued, then… what sort of man would I be? What good lady would want a coward like that for a man?"

…

She'd heard that saying before. In a different voice. Gruffer. Smoked out with age and cheap whiskey. Her father, after a long march, had tossed his staff aside and leaned back like the old war hadn't taken half his ribs. He'd said it to her while she was trembling over her first kill, like it was just a truth the world ran on.

You don't fight to live forever.

You fight to live with yourself.

And now here was Muyang, pipe sticking out of his guts and propping up a crumbling roof over both their heads, repeating the same damn words like they were ancient scripture.

She didn't know what to do with it.

So she laughed.

Not because it was funny, no. Not even because she wanted to. But just because it was the only reaction that made sense. Because everything else was broken and burning and ridiculous, and somewhere in this whole damned mess, this stupid beetle man with his polite voice and ruined body was quoting her father like he'd earned it.

She laughed until her ribs hurt. Until her hands shook. Until she could finally speak again.

And when she did, her voice came out strange, cracked around the edges but steady enough to say:

"Okay, dumbass. Let's do this."

The sandstone roof beneath Otto's broken body was cracking slowly, but steadily. Very steadily. Each shift of the stone felt like a clock tick closer to his fall, and he knew he had to leave soon if he didn't want to collapse with the roof, but…

That was easier said than done.

He lay face-down, his ribs screaming with every breath, one arm hanging over the edge of the roof. Ash fell on his skin like slow snow. The fires hadn't reached his building yet, but the heat was thick and had long since filled the air above the city, curling around his neck like a noose.

He blinked his one good eye. The right one wouldn't open anymore. Blood was seeping into the cracked lens of his goggles, blurring half the world in red. He coughed and regretted it immediately as well. A shudder passed through his ribs, and pain spread like spines through his chest.

Shit.

This… is bad.

He turned his head just slightly, just enough to glimpse a silhouette moving in the far distance. Thracia. The thinner, frailer Spider Sister was leaping from roof to roof, leaving him and the other participants behind as she headed towards somewhere else. Apocia, maybe? She probably wanted to regroup with her older sister so they could continue wreaking havoc across the city together.

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And what was he going to do about it?

His bullets could only shoot down one thread at a time. He wasn't brave like the others, so he couldn't get right into the Spider Gods' faces and face them in melee, so how? How could he possibly help?

Grit in his teeth, blood in his mouth, he pulled his dangling arm over the edge of the roof and rolled onto his back. That brought out a sharp gasp of pain. His rifle was lying next to him, half under his shoulder. His fingers were close. He just had to reach for it again.

He certainly tried. But his arms were folded over his stomach, and he couldn't bring himself to actually grab his rifle.

His breath caught in his throat, and for one heartbeat, he felt totally, bone-deep useless.

He wasn't really a fighter, and he'd always told himself he was the 'support'. That he belonged in the backline. That he was okay with that. That he liked shooting from cover, planning angles, and calculating shots with the patience no one else seemed to have.

But deep down, he knew that wasn't what his father had meant when he said Otto wasn't ready.

"You still think like a Pioneer," his father had said. "You still think you're meant to hide behind the shield of a god, but a Pilot doesn't hide. When a Pilot walks, the earth trembles, and the world watches. The whole crew holds their breath."

Otto's teeth clenched hard.

He'd hated hearing that. He'd thought it was arrogance. Hero worship. But now, sprawled out on the fractured roof of a dying city, half-blind and unable to lift a damn gun, the only thing he could do was play back the very final conversation he'd had with his father before leaving the house to take the exam.

"... But even a god needs a crew."

"Gigantitinia is not a god because it is strong. It is a god because ten thousand men run at its heels, replacing its broken limbs, swapping out its power cords mid-fight, feeding it bullets, cables, and holding it together when it should not be."

"Without their crew, a Pilot and their Organic Armour are nothing."

A long breath left Otto's cracked lips.

"That is the difference between a Pilot and a Pioneers. Pioneers and 'Makers' bring to life creations that are theoretically possible, but a Pilot stares at another god and thinks there can only be one. They look at the theoretically impossible and continue walking. They turn the impossible into something very, very real, and they inspire their crew to follow them through thick and thin, through hell and back."

"Why do you think they are called 'Eichongott', Otto?"

"It is because Pilots are their 'own gods', and men have no need to follow a god who does not believe they are the strongest god in the world."

In his memory, his father was smiling. Stern, but proud.

"Do you think I am being harsh on your desire to become a Pilot because I am looking down on you?"

"Utter nonsense."

"You have always been the 'god' of my world, and there is nothing I would not do for you. Even if you cannot be a Pilot, you are still my god. My one and only."

"But the First Maker did not dream of Swarmsteel. He slaughtered his own bug and cobbled together the first bioarcanic equipment in a snowy cave. The Second Maker did not dream of the systems. He designed them, tested them on his own body, and burned through failure after failure until it clicked. The Third Maker did not dream of an Organic Armour. He made his own god, and those who did not believe in the theoretically impossible were swept up in his current."

"They were men who were the gods of their own world."

"Can you set off to your final attempt at passing the Hasharana Entrance Exam with that same resolve in your heart?"

Otto breathed in hard through his teeth. His ribs ached. His spine screamed. But slowly—slowly—he managed to reach for his rifle, dragging it close like an oath he was finally ready to make.

His rucksack sat just a bit further off to the side, and its flap snapped open under his shaking hands. He didn't have to look inside to find the compartment he was looking for: the one filled with rows of bullets, all neatly arranged.

The 'good' bullets weren't what he was looking for, though.

He reached for the ones at the bottom and pulled out a handful. These bullets were wrapped in cloth, slightly misshapen. Their casings were misaligned. Their primers were seated too shallow. They were the ones Dahlia had helped him assemble before the start of the second stage of the exam.

He stared at them for a while, and then a laugh rasped out of his throat. Even back then, of course he'd known these bullets were assembled disastrously. They'd spin wrong if he tried to shoot them. In fact, they'd probably detonate mid-air and blow shrapnel back into his face. That was why, while he couldn't bring himself to throw these defective bullets away because of how apologetic Dahlia looked for messing up their assembly, he'd also stashed them away in the deepest parts of his rucksack, never to use them in a real battle.

But now?

Against these irrational Spider Gods?

There was no point playing it safe anymore.

Exploding bullets that had just as much of a chance to kill him as they did his enemies were just what he needed.

Wisnu opened her eyes to darkness. Absolute, oppressive darkness. Her body refused to move. Every breath scraped through her lungs like she was inhaling flame. She couldn't feel her legs, but her fingers were still locked tight around the hilt of her sawtooth greatsword, the ridged handle biting into her palm.

She tried to shift.

A scream tore through her ribs as the weight of a collapsed wall shifted against her side.

She didn't scream again.

She cursed.

Not out loud—her voice was a dry croak barely fit for whispering—but in her mind, she spat words that would've made her attendants back at home faint in shock. They were the type of words she hadn't let herself think in years, not since she was a child hurling stones at scarecrows in the household orchard.

Pathetic.

Weak.

Her fingers twitched. Grit shifted against her skin.

Get up, she thought. Get up, get up, get up.

But she couldn't. She was pinned. Maybe by a wall. Maybe by a whole building. Her thin ant-plated armour—melted and cracked—felt like it'd fused with her bones. Her vision swam. Her mouth was full of iron and sand.

And she wasn't the only one still alive.

A sound beside her—so faint it might've been her imagination—made her strain her neck. There, within arm's reach, was another girl being crushed by the debris like her.

Blaire.

The Plagueplain Doctor's breaths were shallow, but still present.

Wisnu's fingers flexed instinctively on her sword. She didn't say anything. Part of her wanted to, but her voice stuck, because the words that rose up weren't orders or apologies. They were guilt. Shame. And she didn't know how to speak those.

She remembered the time she saw Blaire lurking over corpses in the colossal fungi forest. How easy it'd been, back then, to think: monster. And the way Blaire hadn't even really tried to deny anything—the way she'd just stood there, accepting whatever judgment was passed on her—suffice it to say, Wisnu had never seen someone so strong choose silence over defense.

And instead of questioning that, Wisnu had condemned her.

Now, lying half-buried under the same broken city, she realised what a disgrace she'd been.

Blaire had been saving them over and over again. No hesitation. No need for thanks. And Wisnu had never once said 'thank you'.

If not for Blaire, they'd all be corpses already.

… There's no way she killed anyone in the colossal fungi forest.

Wisnu shut her eyes. Pain prickled hot behind her eyelids.

I am a Noble-Blood.

I was supposed to stand for honour.

And now, she knew what it was like to stand for cowardice and disgrace.

"Forgive me," she whispered, her voice dry as dust. She wasn't sure if Blaire could hear, but then—

A rasp beside her.

Blaire stirred.

Wisnu blinked. Through the settling haze, she saw the doctor's head shift slightly. One green eye cracked open. It took a moment, but Blaire focused on her.

They locked eyes through grime, blood, ash, and silence.

Neither of them said anything.

They didn't have to.

Wisnu swallowed, coughed quietly, and then—slowly—she lifted her arm. It was pure agony. Her elbow screamed. Her shoulder ground like gravel.

But she moved and extended her hand.

Blaire watched her for a moment.

Then, with a twitch, the Plagueplain Doctor moved her own arm—syringe claws trembling—and reached out.

Their hands met in the dark.