Fragments Regarding Legate Trunnion, Apostate
Reflections of Blessed Bumaro 34:1-24
Archives of the Doctrines of the Faith
- Sing, goddess, of the Legate's folly. Of her creations, the metal that lived and breathed. Of how she was lead astray from MEKHANE's path. Of how she broke herself. And of how she brought misery to the once brilliant Mekhanite Empire.
- The peoples cried. The divine smith was one of MEKHANE's chosen. She was a Basileon of her Empire. Why would the goddess turn her back on one of her beloved? What deep treason could cause this pain and destruction?
- For, once, the Legate was the paragon of divine inspiration. From under red-pillared Amoni, she smelted, she hammered, she built. Her hands were guided by the muses of the machine. And from these same hands came the greatest creations. The Sacred bronze hooved Bulls, the golden wings of the Horai, the fearsome charriots mounted upon their swift wheels. And the greatest of them all, the towering Colossi.
- Thanks to six-armed Trunnion's craftsmanship, the steel legions crossed the wine-dark sea and marched against Dread Adytum, populated by untold horrors. And thanks to her craftsmanship, the city was felled, crushed beneath the heel of the stalwart Colossi she had built.
- But there were flaws in her design. She hadn't listened to MEKHANE's words clearly. For her colossi fell too, towering no more. One by one, they were prey to the hybris that inhabited their pilot's hearts. Wrath overcame them. For that is an unequivocal sign of the heresy sown deep in the Legate's hands. And her greatest creations were laid to waste.
- But this treason was still unknown by wánax Bumaro of the steel brow. The way home was long and treacherous, yet once he was safely standing on the sandy shores of the homeland, the first to receive him was the smith. She had been waiting for the arrival of the steel legions for many long, bitter nights. And upon seeing her, metal-clad Bumaro said:
- "Hear me, my beloved Trunnion of the powerful hammer. The creations shaped by your hands were the greatest ever shaped by mortal hands. The towering Colossi brought great pain and destruction to the chanting walls of Dread Adytum. Its sorcerer king cowered upon their sight. None of the flesh beasts he unleashed upon us were match for the might of our legions. But their power was insufficient, for in the end, all of them were broken in the assault."
- Thus spoke Bumaro of the golden brow. Then, he pointed to the black ships making landfall on the far end of the shore. And atop them, there lied the wrecks of the last of the Colossi. And thus could the Legate see that the wánax spoke true.
- "Oh, steel crowned Bumaro, how could this happen? How could the mighty Colossi, spawned from divine inspiration from the Goddess herself, fail?"
- "Mekhane hasn't revealed those truths to me," the steel wánax declared.
- "Neither has she revealed them to me," the divine smith spoke.
- And the megaron was filled with silence. The iron priests were unmoving. The mighty metal-rich Earth didn't shake nor rumble. The stillness of the Goddess was a troublesome matter for the two basilei.
- "I suspect her voice is silent now. My eyes can see it, the Maker doesn't speak to you anymore. You must atone."
- The divine smith made silence, now. Listening to her wánax. He spoke again, breaking the quietness.
- "And it is unnacceptable. Trunnion, my dear legate, MEKHANE has to reach out to you. We cannot afford stillness no longer. The Empire needs to be remade after this bloody war. It needs to be remade in her image. Break the silence. Break the stillness. For the world is her anvil and we her hammer."
- Bumaro thus spoke the truth of the Goddess, and six-armed Trunnion heard it loud and clear.
- And so, the divine smith left the bronze palace. She passed through the endless halls, the lesser workshops and the courtyard where young warriors eager to prove themselves jumped over sacred bronze-hooved bulls.
- But everything was silent for her. She had always heard the voice in the past. Everywhere in ships parting the sea, in the fires of the furnace, in the whirring of machinery. But not anymore. MEKHANE'S voice, once thunderous, now lay dormant for her.
- The entrance to the divine workshop was a grand door, tall as wide as ten men and as tall as thirty men. If an army of mortals tried to open it, it wouldn't bulge. Such was the might of the legate's creations. She pressed her six hands upon it, and slowly, the entrance opened for her. Silently.
- She walked down the path to her workshop, where the voice of blessed MEKHANE would be clearer. A thousand times She had spoken to her in the bowels of the earth. And she hoped She would speak a thousand times more.
- But the Goddess only spoke to those who had been cleaned. The first room of the complex was the bath, full to the brim with molten rock extracted from the depths of the island and mixed with the molten metal used to craft her holy creations. A thousand acolytes waited for her on the other side, born, raised and sacredly modified within the confines of the temple. When she dipped inside the pool, the exhaust pipes grafted into their throats opened, letting out steam in a cacophonous melody. Their singing usually akin to the voice of the Goddess, was silent for six-armed Trunnion.
- Under the lava and the mixed metals, she walked, all of her impurities erased by liquid iron and bronze. She prayed in her mind. She prayed for without Her, Trunnion wasn't fit to be a basileon of the Empire. For without Her, Trunnion wasn't anyone. But still, MEKHANE was silent.
- On the other side, she rose. The accolites had stopped singing, their throats now being the silence of the Goddess. Trunnion passed through them, walking deeper into her labyrinthine workshop.
- And the Silence followed.
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