Story continued from:

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Ednath came to his senses slowly. He felt very tired, but The Blood Beast would allow no sleep; not while he was in danger.

His leather airman's jacket had been torn to shreds and his once white tunic was now strips of cloth dyed red; slowly turning black and brown from the drying blood. However, he felt no pain for the first time in hours as the constant assault of metal blades had finally come to an end. He could feel a warmth in the air which made the seat they had just locked him into even colder in comparison.

Ednath let out a howl, "Oi, now the real torture begins?"

Nothing answered but an echo.

He looked around himself and tried to focus his eyes. His ears rung. The room was literally crawling and twitchy... the walls seemed to melt and move before his confusion as he began to realize it was a massive host of the creatures that had imprisoned him. The ringing was indeed not from his own ears, it was the voices of a thousand of them or more.

Was his demise a mere spectacle for them? Perhaps justly so, he considered darkly.

He had done them wrong, and had broken his word. Perhaps his slide into insanity should be ended now, before some greater horror is brought into the world by his own previously unwilling hands. For the first time in months, Ednath felt no will to fight, and he wept uncontrollably as he thought of his wife and children.

He was prepared to die, maybe even welcomed the release, but who would be there for /them/? His son was surely in a sorer state than he, and the ladies were a integral part of the workings of the farm, but they certainly were ill prepared to run it on their own. He couldn't even imagine doing it by himself! And it had been so long that the fall harvest had surely come and passed. Ednath felt complete hopelessness.

A bright light fell upon his eyelids and he worked to shut it out. Something spoke to him in a gentle human-like voice, "Dear man, open your eyes for me."

Something metal touched his chin lightly and lifted his face to the light. He squinted his eyes open and took in the sight of a great machine in the space before him. It was like the insides of the most amazing elephantine clock ever had taken angelic shape and floated impossibly, seemingly held aloft with wings of wire filigree that spread out to meet with the teeming mass of mechanical life that composed the walls around them both.

There was a humanoid central form that seemed to move independently of the thousand appendages spreading out of the angelic body. This form moved close to him and the rest followed a bit behind.

"Hello, Ednath."

"Wh- who are you? What is going on?"

The creature smiled, revealing rows of shiny silver fangs behind the copper face plate, "You may call me The Undertaker, fleshling." The angelic form spread out and nearly filled the space of the room, "I am going to be taking you on a wondrous journey!"

Ednath sighed and looked at his restraints. The seat he was in was wrapped around his arms and legs with hundreds of small segmented metal fingers. He realized he wasn't sitting on the chair so much as was embedded within it.

Then he heard a whisper in his ear from behind. "Don't worry, you are safe now... and we will make it quick." The chair was one of /them/ and was speaking to sooth him.

The Angelic form continued above, "Assembled masses, I will be using the old tongue tonight as we have a very special guest with us!" The mass of the wall shifted and seethed and gradually the ringing became mixed with a clamor of human voices.

"This humble creature before you is called Ednath Ventorin. He was discovered in the deep of Our Forest seeking a supper of royal guardian Grishel's pet chameleon." The fanged smile disappeared now, "The Master Grishel demands compensation for the loss! One organic life... for one organic life!"

The collected masses cheered as Ednath sobbed openly below. "Of all the reasons and ways to die...", he muttered.

The Angel swung around to him again, the brass form in the center gesturing at him extravagantly, "However! This is no ordinary man, not ordinary at all. This is hardly even a man any more!"

The crowd fell silent.

"This biological mass before you is the remains of a man that has been infected with a plague not seen since before The Last War!"

The crowd shifted and the interior of the room grew a little larger.

"This body is host to a strain of nanotech machines unlike our own, they are as a virus... but where a virus kills this plague keeps the body going indefinitely! This virus feeds off blood and grows exponentially, drawing blood from new sources and rewriting the brain to accept these desires as its own."

Voices began coming from the crowd, mostly in the native tintinabulation of the clockwork Niminians, but finally the human voices joined the chanting, "End the misery! End the misery! End the misery!"

Ednath had taken enough, "JUST KILL ME!" he bellowed.

The room fell into an uproar of noises. The angelic form moved closer to him and ran a hand through his hair softly, "You misunderstand, dear man, we are not going to murder you outright. We are not monsters!"

The centerpiece of the angel put its face near to his ear and whispered, "The Empress has granted a special favor to you for returning the Skyfarer's Daughter. You are to become one of us."

And as it backed away slowly, two of the teeming appendages reached out and placed a necklace made of ornate metalwork resembling ancient sorts of keys with a small cameo on them around his neck.

"The Memorium is in place, begin the transfer process!"