Nandroid Witchhunt VII

	Prudence fled through the woods for hours, the full moon having long dipped to the horizon she stumbled through the dark on starlight and intuition alone, her only guide the compass she could no longer even see. Shadows jumped and snarled at her at every turn and even a moment’s stop to wind up seemed a death sentence. Resonating through the woods was a mournful crying, the same note vibrating into Prudence’s spine as she inched nearer the town, cresting hills and valleys in the dark as even the stars were occluded by cloud. In pitch black she could do little but keep moving, tripping every few meters and taking care to shield the pastor. Time and again in the dark the cries grew nearer but Prudence evaded their seeming epicenter, shimmering air revealing itself deep into the black beyond as she dipped and juked every which way, always following the needle home.
	At last, mercifully, she broke the treeline once again onto the main road to Salem. The air was growing colder by the mile as she hobbled along the cleared pathway, hardened ruts in the mud doing little to help her on her way as she collapsed forward. She waved her hand around in her apron for the key and wound herself up again, feeling no stronger than she had before. Her limbs became lead and the weight of the pastor on her back quashed her every movement. Prudence would wind herself up only for her strength to leave her, the key spinning backwards each time as she tried desperately to get up, the chilling air doing nothing to help her. The wailing neared.
With a last-ditch snap of the wooden key Prudence locked it into place, her springs taut for the last time as she rolled the pastor off of her back. Standing up as her springs and gears shrank in the cold, a fog rolling in from either side of the road. At last the duo were surrounded in a silent cloud, a chilled vaporous blanket consuming any iota of sound as Prudence whirled around, one hand at her sword and the other already pointing the pistol off into the distance. The crunching of hoarfrost in the distance creeped through the mist, heavy boots trodding on the freezing ground as Prudence spun slowly again, focusing in on the rhythmic croak of the approaching enemy, each step just an inch closer until a face emerged from the mist.
	“Prudy, it’s okay,” he said. She froze. Her old master’s face, and then his hulking frame, broke through the fog as he stepped closer, his boots mashing the ground beneath him. “You’ve done your job, now just leave the pastor and we’ll go back to town, okay?”
	“You-You were supposed to be gone, you’re dead,” she wept. “You’re not real!”
	“How can’t I be real when I can do this,” he said. He slid up to her back and produced from nowhere another backplate, identical to the last, and slipped it into place like it had never left, like *he* had never left. “Or this.” With a swift elbow strike to the small of her back Prudence crumpled under her own weight, her legs frozen and immobile as she tumbled backwards. Staring down at her was a robed woman, her face young still but creased and, as Prudence narrowed her eyes, aging by the second.
	“You’ve done a lot to interfere, here, and I must commend your work, frankly,” she spat. “Though most of the credit does go to your dear master, your maker, that wily rascal. I’ll be taking this, too dangerous in the hands of someone with vengeance on their mind.” The witch bent over and fished around in the apron for the compass, stealing it away into a satchel.
	“Oh! And what’s this?” She pulled the pistol out too before throwing it aside with a wet slap, the pan jostling as it tumbled away. “You were so very close, but now - now it is time to rebuild.” It began to snow, fat heavy flakes drifting down from on and hitting the ground like little footfalls. Prudence gazed up into the opening sky, little specks of ice dotting her cold cheeks as she writhed powerless on the ground, the snow sticking around her as her machinery ground to a halt. A little click sounded next to her and she awaited the end.


	At once the forest was illuminated with another shower of spark and flame as the crack of pistol fire rang in the dark, a woman’s shriek echoing into the night before being cut short, a body slumping into the thickening drifts of snow as the weather turned to a blizzard. The pastor collapsed again onto the ground as the haze of smoke lingered and condensed in the frigid atmosphere. Prudence felt her very core seizing up as time stretched and ebbed, the smack of the pastor back to the ground signaling at least part of her failure - she’d failed to get him home safe, her eyes closing on the world in defeat.