It was his second week on Mystique, the world of magic and technology, wasteland and sprawling metropolis with an interesting variety of flora. The Clockwork Man was quite at home in such a strange land, where technology and magic were pretty much one in the same. Though he could not say he was as of yet comfortable, it was a lot to acclimatise too, even when one happens to be a metal man sustained by magic. As if the very reality was a sharp sound the Clockwork Man, George Elmore, woke from his waking reverie. Just in time to avoid minor embarrassment, funnily enough, as he caught himself about to drop into a fifteen foot ditch. All around him was rubble, scrap metal, a massive city sized junk-yard. It was the perfect location for the poorer inhabitants of Mystique, lower classes of the Mystans, to live and prosper as best they could. They had a strange connection with technology, even the lowest could create machines far beyond what George himself used to be capable of. They had an inherent gift for Technomancy, a skill the Clockwork Man shared, and so it was that he found himself pursued by three young Mystans, and their robotic toys.

The smallest, and arguably the most talkative, saw him stop abruptly before the ditch. She giggled somewhat giddily and berated the automaton.

“You’re not very good at looking where you’re going are you metal man?” The young Mystan mocked him from somewhere behind, and he sighed inwardly. With what remained of his dignity, he kicked off from the ground, his dark metallic frame gliding through the air to land on the other side of the ditch. He straightened the Victorian jacket he wore and tilted his head in his form of a grin.

“Hey, no fair.” The girl shouted, while her two elder brothers just smiled and called their robotic aids to their side, using them to cross the ditch with little effort. The girl flew across far less gracefully, clutching hand-holds on a small but deceptively powerful old scout drone. When all the Mystans were safely on the other side George continued his quick, but slowed, stride towards the settlement in the scrap-plains far off into the distance. He noted with a cursory glance that the sun was soon to set, and the red moon of Mystique was rising on the far horizon. He quickened his pace ever so slightly.

“We don’t need no escort anyway metal man.” One of the older Mystans told him, though he was barely a teenager and the oldest of the group. George had found the three working on something which had caught his eye from the distance, but turned out to be little more than a seeing lens. The middle child had been trying to convince the others it was time to head home; he happened to agree with him and interjected to say so. The three had stared at him with something akin to fear, the memory hurt.

“I’m not an escort, I want to trade with your parents.” George explained, for the third time. It was a lie of course, and the children knew it. They were accustomed to automatons, machines with souls, but this was the first of his kind they had encountered. Their probing magic had irked him slightly, disrespectful technomancy, disgraceful. He had spat back at them with a sharp stinging blow which emanated from his Soul Crystal. They had apologized profusely of course, but just looking at him they somehow knew he wasn’t from their planet. He sympathised with them, he was a dangerous looking thing. Here he was though, escorting three children he had only just met, that instinct had never died in him even though near everything else had long since faded. He sighed inwardly and jumped on top of the discarded wing of an old jet.

From his vantage point, he saw the settlement in the distance, surrounded by corrugated walls and spotlights, it was a safe place, beckoning. He could also judge that it was a mere half an hour walk away at this pace, but with a feeling of what he guessed was dismay he noted the sun was already creeping below the horizon. Darkness was upon them, and like some cliché horror movie, that was when the monsters came out.

His first encounter with the Day Sleepers, or the Night Wakers, or the Broken Ones, they had many names, was three days into his excursion of Mystique. They were an odd assortment of machine, metal beast, magical automaton like himself, and other decrepit creatures. Their souls had been broken, or perhaps time had driven them mad. Regardless, they shut down during the day and recharged, and at night their only remaining function kicked in. They sought enemies, which was anything organic or hostile by his reckoning, and attempted to rip them apart. The settlers here had defences armed against them, but they were far from mobile, and so these children by his reckoning were in great danger. They should have been more careful, he thought sardonically, as he himself was unwilling to hide from the Broken Ones. 

“Hurry up.” He called, and they hastened. Darkness fell around them.