The Plains of Tassanna
an excerpt

Somewhere deep in the jungle that formed the northern border of Pehr's land, the metal thing stood, keeping its sad and lonely watch. Its skeleton-like understructure, once covered by materials cunningly designed to mimic the smoothness and elasticity of human skin, had long been since been exposed by the ravages of time. It was now covered with a grey-green coating of moss and lichen. This substance had built up in microscopic layers over eons to form what seemed at first glance to be almost a furry, organic musculature, though the original designers had used fluid-filled bladders to give weight and shape to the metal thing's appearance. The overall impression the metal thing gave, now, was of a thin and wasted corpse left leaning against a canyon wall, long abandoned and forgotten.

At its feet and in a ring some fifty feet around it lay countless bones, some so ancient they had become nothing more than dust, mixing with the rich jungle soil to form a kind of chalky grey paste. No plants grew within this circle, no living thing made its home here; No beetle crawled, no earthworm slid, no rodent scurried, ant clambered, or creature moved within the ring, above or below the ground. The earth here had been poisoned by some long-forgotten people, in some long-forgotten past, for some long-forgotten reason. The methods and materials they had used in this toxic exercise lived on, like the metal thing, even ages after the land beyond the mountain pass, a land the metal thing had been left to guard, had become home to little more than the wind that screeched through its ruins like ghosts.

Still, the metal thing was not completely forgotten, not completely abandoned. There were those who knew of its existence, and who typically gave it a wide berth, except in times of need. When the blessings of the gods were required, the metal thing would entertain visitors, and extract its payment in the blood of their chosen sacrifice. These offerings were not made lightly, but the metal thing had never yet failed to take what was given to it. The bones that formed the blasted, shattered perimeter of its arc of influence were testament to this fact.

At times, the metal thing received visitors of an entirely different sort, and this was one such event. One of the wild boars that Pehr's people so prized had wandered deeper into the jungle than its brethren usually ventured. Seeking the delicious fungus which grew sometimes on the roots of jungle trees, the boar had moved ever inward, its keen senses guiding it toward patches of land that boasted the correct level of dampness, the correct amount of shade from the tropical sun. Eventually this searching had led it to the metal thing's domain.

There was nothing there for the boar, of course. Nothing edible grew in the metal thing's poison garden, but on the opposite side the creature could discern the most subtle of aromas, the delicious prize that it sought, and in record numbers. It had only to cross, and while this land smelled foul to the boar, it was not so toxic that a short walk was impossible. The boar trotted into the field of bones at a brisk pace, intent on the delicious prize that awaited it less than fifty yards away.

The metal thing's response was instantaneous. Moss-covered and derelict though it might have been, its internal workings were still functioning at some level, and it jerked alive with the screech of metal on metal, moving from its leaning position to full standing, its arms thrown back. Tiny motors located below what had once been its cheeks whirred and spun, attempting to contract simulated skin and muscle that was no longer there.

"W.LC.M.FR..ND!" it howled at the boar, its voice a grinding, buzzing warble that might once have sounded human.

The boar stopped dead in its tracks, huddling suddenly low to the ground, preparing to flee. It could not know that by entering the metal thing's domain, it had already ensured the rapid cessation of its life. It could not know that the metal thing's sensors and motors and inner workings allowed it to react, even now after millennia of disrepair, at speeds far beyond those the boar was capable of.

"PL..S..PR.S.NT.Y..R.P.SS." the robot screeched, and the boar turned and began its lumbering attempt at escape, squealing in terror.

The metal thing lurched, knee-joints howling in protest as it dropped into a crouching posture, its arms swung low toward the ground for added stability. Its eyes, previously covered by a series of triangular, moss-coated plates, opened to reveal centers that burned like the brightest sparks of a volcano. Death poured forth from its eyes, even as it screeched its last words to the creature desperately attempting to escape.

"P.SS N.T PR.S.NT.D. .C.SS .S D.N..D. PL..S. L.C.T. TH. V.S.T.R C.NT.R T. .BT..N PR.P.R CR.D.NT..LS."

The boar was a dead lump of meat, its bristly hair smoldering, twin smoking craters bored through its side, long before this sentence was finished. The metal thing, after a moment, returned to a standing position, and then leaned again against the side of the canyon. Its eye-covers slid shut. Its skeletal shoulders slumped.

"TH.NK Y.. F.R V.S.T.NG." it said, and then it was silent, as it sometimes went for months, or years, or even decades in between encounters of this type.

At a safe distance, yellow-green eyes took all of this in. The sacred circle remained unspoiled. The boar had passed into the arc of death, and had paid the price that all that trod upon the ground there must pay. All was as it had ever been, since first the watch had begun.

Above the metal thing, past the canyon, the wind wailed its ghostly dirge. A tiny bug came to the edge of the metal thing's domain and stopped, sensing the polluted soil in front of it. Turning around, it trundled off the way it had come, and so was spared the boar's fate, and the fate of all those whose bones littered that tainted ground.