Olaron stood outside amid the gray rocks of the cliff, his chrome chassis flaring brilliantly as lightning flashed in the distance. Rain, wind, and wave pounded the shores of Crathon's largest continent. For a moment he was blind as a massive wave smashed against the rocks, throwing foam and water into the air and blasting away loose debris from the cliff's edge.
He peered across the gulf and witnessed distant flashes, followed shortly by the shattered lines of lightning and the crack of thunder.
"So" he thought "They have begun"
Crathon's surface was mostly ocean, and large volcanic vents around its equator, combined with the frozen poles, created conditions perfect for a never ending series of massive storms. However the storms he saw in the distance, far inland, were of a different nature. They were abrupt and short lived, yet their power dwarfed those that set the norm across the planet.
He didn't need to see what was happening to know what was causing it: the discharge of heavy weapons. Not the conventional ones used by the Vathari, but the weapons of the Fabricators, exotic and terrible feats of power and destruction. Each flash or shock wave was a by-product of firing, the storms the result of the titanic amounts of energy that bled into the air as the blast traveled through it.
He knew that somewhere inland across the inlet, two Fabricators were locked in a duel to the death. A friendly one, at that, as neither appeared to have escalated to nuclear weapons, at least not yet. Olaron knew these beings well, one was the legendary Thiril, one of the first Fabricators to turn against the Oncari. The two he faced were a younger sort, born during the battle for Oncar itself, pushed in to battle against their kin, only to turn against their creators the moment their shared form and its swarms of subsidiary units came online. Those two were Rethul and Quaya, brother and sister, created as a counter to the more singular-minded first generation Fabricators, they were two beings who shared the same existence. Their main form was a massive mobile factory that was armed to the teeth and capable of creating swarms of more conventional vehicles. This was in a stark contrast to Thiril's tall bipedal form, one that many of the first Fabricators assumed when they began their rebellion.
The battle had likely devastated its immediate surroundings, both from stray or deflected shots, and the wounds in the land created as the combatants repaired their bodies in the midst of combat. Olaron's place in all of this was as moderator. The two Fabricators were dueling out of practice, and for safety were acting through replicas of themselves. Olaron had a direct monitor of their connections to their respective combat forms, and as soon as a connection would be severed, he would call the victor as whichever one was still standing.
Alas, the battle had raged on and off for many days, and he was sure they still had a good week in that area before they moved to the nearby mountains, where one of them would likely gain the upper hand. And since such duels were always held on worlds with little more than an orbital presence, Olaron had very little to do, and he never did fancy counting stars, or rocks, or waves, or rain droplets. So he settled for watching the endless battle, at least until the orbital station came within range again, and he could talk to someone, or something. For by now, almost anything would be better than standing out in this endless rain, viewing a distant and endless war between giants.
Home 
