Deities of Brass IC

((Because of time-zones, I am very lucky to arrive home from school to chat for a few minutes with those who stay up late. As a result, I'm putting the IC up early on so that you can all get established and the like without waiting on me to make it.))

Sparks flying out from the point of light mere inches above her gloved hands, the water turning to steam finally stopped as the ember went from white to red to a dull brown. Taking a moment to admire her hard trained weld, she glanced around at earlier works, just barely holding together. This was the first weld she had actually performed in one go. A few weeks of training and experience couldn't match other's skill, but then there were no others. She was probably hired out of desperation.

Sliding her thickly tinted goggles onto her head, she removed her gloves, stuffing them in one of the pockets of her kilt and hammered the covering back on. A small lump where the weld was formed in the copper plate, but was of no concern to her. A few moments of picking up and sorting her tools, more to stroke her snakes, brown like the dirt, but shining like the pipes she repaired, and she was slithering back home.

The crude metal doors shifted out of the way with the grinding of gears, promptly resealing once she had made her way through. Her home wasn't the best of places, but it was a much better cave than her island. Near the ceiling some distance away, the glass piping she had 'borrowed' was glowing with a soft green light, gas smouldering away as it slowly pumped in from the tank beside the water wheel.

"I think it's time we paid a visit to Mr Carter." Idly changing into her 'surface' clothing, she replaced her goggles and headed for the only ladder. Climbing with just arms wasn't too much trouble, given she could twist her lower body in such a way to prevent it from sliding back down. The veins showed through her pale skin as she struggled upward.

Relief finally came when the heavy cover slid off to the side. Pulling herself out, she quickly dusted down her dress and fixed herself up before recovering the hole with straw. People in this time seemed to be too busy with their own lives to take notice of strange people with metal appendages, or at least that's how she saw things. Good enough for her, humans weren't very clever anyway...

Lilith strolled down a dirt road, well, just on the side of the road. There was a rather large thicket of trees on the right side, so that way she would be hidden until she chose to be seen.

Then a movement caught her eye… it was a human, specifically a young man. He was off to London to find work; he was striking out on his own for the first time. But all of that did not matter to Lilith; to her he was food, plain and simple. After scanning the area quickly to check for other humans, she stepped out of the shadows and in front of the man.

“Hello, human. Answer my riddle and you may pass.”

The human gasped and fell backwards, eyes frantically darting around, searching for anyone that could help him. “Wha- who… what are you?!”

She sighed, no matter the era, humans always seemed to be imbeciles, “I am Lilith, the great Sphinx, punisher of humans, teller of riddles… yada, yada, yada, you get the idea. Now, answer my riddle correctly and you may pass, fail and… well, you die.”

The man nodded numbly, silently praying that this was all some crazy dream.

Lilith grinned maliciously and said, “What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?”

“Um… well, let’s see. Is it a – no, no, it’s not that,” the man was staring blankly ahead, his mind racing, “Is it a… um, I really don’t know.”

“Well, as not being able to even provide an answer is the same as failing to answer correctly… it seems you shall not be passing by me,” Lilith sneered, taking a slow step forward.

“N-no, please! I’m just going to London, I need a job… I haven’t lived my life yet! Please, please spare m-”

His cry was cut off as Lilith’s fangs met his throat.

Daedalus was in heaven.

This new world was filled with gears, grommets, pipes, and other mechanical doodads. Daedalus was used to mechanical doodads.

However, Daedalus still wasn't happy. The sadness of losing dear Icarus to the sun and his foolishness... the regret of letting Perdix fall off the cliff... He still had the bird branded on his skin. It hurt when he thought of Perdix.

Daedalus's new workshop was in a junkyard in Dover. He had all the parts he could want. Daedalus has already built some marvelous machines (for instance, a little mechanical lion that devoured flies). He adjusted his eyeglasses and flipped down three lenses, before taking a small wrench and adjusting a part in a small bird. These tinkerings were placeholders for whatever ideas were absent in Daedalus's mind. He built them until he could find inspiration to build something new.

Daedalus sighed when he eyed a pair of glinting wings. The metal feathers shone in the dim sunlight. The wax was barely visible, but Daedalus could make it out.

Daedalus had no idea why he hadn't gotten rid of them yet. They reminded him too much of Icarus's untimely demise. However, he had a feeling he would need them someday.

Cogs... So many... blooming cogs, lining the shelves around the room. Of all sizes and gauge, it could easily be mistaken for a shop of cogs. But he needed them so. Just the right size cog for his watch. There it was, a missing piece of the puzzle, a key to his chest, a catalyst to the primordial soup, a single idea for the imagination.

"Manure! Manure! Manure!" He kicked the chair back in a rage, pacing around for a moment. Why why WHY! Nothing worked! Nothing! His fist smashed against the sturdy wooden doorway. It took a moment for his relatively weak nerves to kick in and send him frolicking around the room, trying to find any piece of cloth not contaminated with oil to protect his bleeding knuckles.

Up high, safe from mortal danger, his body remained new as to a baby. Down low, he was scarce fifty by the standards of the ignorant men around him, yet he had barely the strength. Sitting down in the chair once more with a groan, he looked down at the watch again, staring at it, as if his life depended on it. For in a way, it did...

Forged from the essence of time itself, brought back from the time of it's creation to the time of my power, it has taken us, back to the point of it's creation. It does not merely represent time, it is time... He slowly wound the gears up, watching the hands spin as the gears meshed together in a silent symphony.

"I will return to you, Hera... By my blood, I will return..." He closed his eyes as he closed the watch case up, screwing it down with a small knife.

Bloodthirsty cries filled the air.

"WHEAT!"

"BARLEY!"

"SORGHUM!"

"I WILL GRIND YOUR BONES!"

"I WANT MOTOR OIL!"

When the farmer heard these angry bellows, he immediately turned his head.

What he saw shocked him. Steam-powered tractors, with enormous harvesting blades, but something was wrong.

In place of the normal cabs that would have served as a driving quarters for these furious engines, there were enormous human heads that seemed to be made of different grains. Their features seemed to shift when the wind blew on them, like the grass on the rolling plains. Their faces screamed blood, blood, blood.

These were grain spirits, or karpoi. The farmer squinted and said, "Bloody..."

"DEATH TO AGRICULTURE!!!!" screamed the deranged spirits. Their combine harvester bodies plowed through the fields, all grinding their way to the farmer. The man's eyes widened and he ran into his barn. Heavily breathing, the man locked the doors and slammed the bar down on the latch. He held his body against the door.

He heard a buzzing sound that got louder and louder.

The man barely had any time to jump out of the way before the doors exploded. Chunks of red wood rained down on the animals, causing cows to fly into panic. They mooed in fear and blasted through their stables, before running out the other wall and smashing it to smithereens. The farmer caught the tail of a passing cow and climbed on, running for dear life.

The karpoi were partially grain, partially mechanical creatures of the Earth. Picture a steampunk combine tractor with a human head, and you'll have pretty much a good idea of what they look like.

The cow ran as fast as it could, mooing and bucking, but the farmer held fast. However, the karpoi were gaining, threatening to mash him and... GASP! Harvest him!

The cow mooed and bucked, throwing the man into a wheat field. The combine-tractor-monsters circled around, looking for him, but unfortunately for them, the grass was much too tall. They went around making loops and circles and paths (later on, people would wonder how these crop circles have come to form) before giving up on their agricultural prey.

The karpoi rolled away from the grain field, before dissipating into tornadoes of grain and iron.

Brian was not an ambitious man. He had, in his youth, dreamt of adventure, of creatures that stalked the innocent during odd hours of night and of noble quests with considerable rewards. These fantasies had been dispelled during Brian's time at the university, where he had learnt to see the world in more logical terms. This stance had carried the man, who stood at just under six feet and was of slight build, through all of his working days, and all he had time for in his old age were his wife and his fishing.

He was currently occupied with the latter, on a rather stormy, blustery evening - but Brian was not one to back down from a challenge, not even after having his wits scared out of him by a disturbing hallucination of some deep denizen entering the bay, no, certainly not. After all, he had just felt a tug on the line when the first stormclouds appeared, and though he'd been fighting for the massive creature for many minutes now, Brian was not about to relinquish such a beast as must be on the other end of this line. Pull the boat, it almost did, as the waves grew larger and the rain came down heavier. Brian's hat was lifted off his head, but the howling wind did not deter him. This fish was a fighter, that much was damn sure - it was all Brian could do to keep himself from being pulled into the water... God, was it strong! Any more and the line would surely -

Brian balked, face whitening in terror and eyes bulging forth with widened pupils. The thing had raised itself from its watery domain, and how massive it was. This was no fish as he'd seen before, no, and Brian could swear it almost resembled a woman, a cadaver, floating eerily in the storm-churned waters...

The thing raised its head and looked at Brian.

He stared - surely, this was not any corpse, but a living, breathing person... but how could they have made it this far out and still be alive?

Perhaps... no, it couldn't have been a mermaid. Could it?

Brian was not a man of superstition prior to this moment, yet could not help but recall his dreams of mercreatures from his boyhood. He opened his mouth to greet the lady - whose curious face seemed almost angry - and it was a merciful thing that he never knew the cause of his death. For at that moment did the unseen force of some horrid monstrosity rendered the boat in two, consuming it, smashing, crushing, chopping the thing into bits as it dragged the craft downwards, vivisecting its sole occupant. The blood was not visible in the raging waters - indeed, after a moment, the only sign that the fisherman Brian had ever been there at all was the slight, contented smile on the woman's face as it gently pulled the hook that had tangled itself in it's hair and sank beneath the waves once more.

Lilith saw the bustling city of London coming into view, a slow and malicious smile slithering onto her face. If that man earlier had been a snack, then this was a buffet. Luckily for them, she was still full from that snack. Bloodstains covered her mouth area, front paws, and chest; the only evidence still left of that young man travelling to the city for work.

She was currently hidden from view below a copse of trees; the only clue to her position her glowing eyes and the occasional glare of sunlight glinting off of her metallic wings. With a low laugh, she spread her wings and, with one downward stroke, she was airborne. She glided up to the nearest rooftop and looked around. Humans were stupid creatures, they never looked up, always assumed danger would come at them from their level. Well, they would soon see how very wrong they had been.

But how best to make up for all those years spent in a forced sleep? How best to remind those pitiful creatures that the creatures of myth live and they don’t all play nice?

Lilith sat down, sunlight giving a crimson sheen to her bloodstained fangs. She gazed over the edge of the rooftop, watching the humans going about their daily tasks down below. They looked almost like insects to her and, like insects, they would be crushed.

Charles Dickens sat at his study in London, writing a few more pages of "Bleak House."

All of a sudden, a shape flew overhead. Dickens ran outside and caught a glimpse of an enormous flying object. Charles Dickens rubbed his eyes. "Maybe Katherine was right, I don't get enough sleep," Dickens muttered to himself.

Upon further examination of the silhouette, Dickens found that it resembled a quadrupedal animal with large wings. The sunlight seemed to reflect off of them as if they were made of iron.

Charles Dickens thought it must be some sort of new invention or something. He decided to go to bed an hour earlier that day.

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Daedalus, back in Dover, had decided to attempt to find more about this time. The inventor decided to take a train.

Though he didn't know what they were called, they were newfangled railed chariots to him.

"Excuse me," he said to the stationmaster, "but do you mind telling me what these steam-powered, connected chariots are called?"

"Oh-ho, you haven't heard of a train before? That's bloody hilarious!" the stationmaster laughed. "Pardon my language, but that's just a bully hilarious notion, that someone doesn't know what a train is!"

"So this long line of angluar chariots is called a 'train?'" Daedalus asked.

"Yes, that is correct. Would you like me to explain the wonders of the pocket watch as well?"

"That would be a pleasure, but I really must mount the ch-- train, now." Daedalus stepped into the train. "What sort of horse could pull such an enormous amount of chariots? Only a great creation of Hephaestus could pull this 'train,'" Daedalus mused.

A whistle sounded. Daedalus's imagination was piqued. It was definitely not an enormous beast pulling the train, but a mechanical wonder, yet to be known to the ancient Greeks. Daedalus made a note to himself to investigate the driving force of the train.

Amongst the scraggly trees of the Thames Chase wood stalked Atalanta, seeking food and recreation the only way she knew how.

Ever since the peculiar incident, Atalanta's bow had become a most peculiar contraption of bronze metal - though she had tested its power and accuracy with one of the fancy new arrows, which were sleek and remarkably light affairs, and found the weapon quite superior to her old one. Atalanta did miss her old bow, however, as she'd been in possession of the skillfully-crafted bow for many a year and had grown fond of it.

Yet she simply could not resist the thrill of adrenaline that coursed through her body as she let loose a shot into the air, spearing a bird of prey directly through its eye. Chuckling with childish excitement, Atalanta ran to collect the fallen meal.

~~~

"But you don't understand, good citizen! I am a hero! The metal beast attacked me and felled me, and the streets are a-running with its kin! Yet you walk amongst them as if they were but tame creatures, and molest me for freeing the captive innocents from the monster's belly? Sirrah! Hear me!"

The policeman, scared out of his mind by the metal behemoth that had recently speared an unfortunate owner's Fiat after it had leapt into the car's path, held his handgun as steadily as he was able to - that is, with a similar vibrational frequency to those of the mechanical occupants of the laundromat.

"Now... see here, man... Put down the spear, and the shield, and the sword... and t-take off that bloody armor!" The officer's partner had booked it at the sight of the golem, yelling something about calling for backup. The policeman hoped beyond hope that he actually had, and that the boys had believed him.

"You misunderstand, man! The Gods have interfered! They have gifted mine self with glory, more than I have ever possessed - surely, you have heard of Achilles, hero of Troy?" He took a step too close, and the wide red eyes of Achilles, combined with his ferocious attire, steaming breath, and hollow, metallic voice finally broke the cop's nerve. A shot rang out, the offending bullet impacting Achilles' shoulder but doing little more than scratching the surface as the small pellet ricocheted with a ping.

The significance of the gunshot, however, as well as that of the device held in the quivering man's hands, was not lost on the bronze golem. "Insolent whelp! You dare to assault me, even after I have saved the good people of thine wondrous city?" Achilles hefted his spear and charged the man with a roar, as sirens sounded in the distance.