Machines do not fear the rain.
But they do remember what happened in it.
And so does Emil Dufort.
The March to Liège
October 9, 1914
Outskirts of Liège, Belgium
Dawn broke gray and silent.
The convoy moved slowly—four Sanglier Mk IVs, two Typhon-class units, and at the center, the prototype.
Prometheus.
Its hull dripped with condensation. Its internal gears ticked softly in idle test-cycles. It made no sound beyond a low harmonic thrum—like a church organ thinking to itself.
Camille sat in the driver's chamber, fingers twitching above the console.
Bruno manned the targeting gyroscope.
Vera, perched in the support tower above, held a Faucon-grade periscope and a bolt-action rifle in her lap.
Ilse remained at Forge Libre's eastern command, tethered to Prometheus via experimental long-range acoustic relay.
Henriette watched the radio.
And Emil stood, as always, behind them all.
The Battlefield: Fog of SteelThe Germans had entrenched the hills beyond Liège with a full Fenrir Omega Division.
Roughly:
20 Lupus Rex units
6 unmanned drone-launchers
Mobile fortifications codenamed Wurmkessel—circular bunkers with AI-assisted mortars
1 rumored experimental mech: Garmr
No one had seen it.
But the fog made rumors feel real.
At 06:12, the lead Sanglier triggered a minefield. The blast left a crater, flipped the unit on its side, and killed two men inside.
Prometheus did not flinch.
Camille raised its elevation and began scanning forward using the newly integrated Active Sensor Array—a thermal-gridded scanner derived from Faucon optics.
It saw movement.
Not Lupus.
Not drones.
Something slower.
More deliberate.
First Contact06:24.
Prometheus locked onto three Wurmkessels concealed in the hillside.
Bruno rotated the cannon. Vera called out distance—640 meters.
Camille stabilized.
"Firing," Bruno said.
The railgun sparked to life.
It tore a shell the size of a wine barrel straight through the nearest bunker, igniting the ammo cache beneath. The explosion bloomed like an inverted sun.
The second Wurmkessel returned fire.
Mortar shell.
Missed.
The third launched drones.
Bruno locked again.
Another shot. Another corpse of concrete and steel.
"Effective radius?" Vera asked.
"Five hundred meters and growing," Camille replied. "It's learning their patterns."
Echoes in the RainAt 07:03, the storm came.
Not just rain.
Downpour.
Visibility dropped to twenty meters. The Faucons above pulled back.
It was now a blind battlefield.
And from the mist, a new sound arrived.
Not treads.
Not legs.
Something between.
The mud shifted beneath Prometheus's hull. Camille adjusted balance. Bruno swiveled the cannon left, then right.
Then came the first strike.
A magnetic implosion. Direct hit to the rear flank.
Prometheus rocked.
Alarm klaxons screamed.
Camille rerouted power. Bruno scanned.
Nothing.
And then—Vera saw it.
"North slope. Camouflaged chassis. It's—"
She didn't finish.
The shape that emerged from the rain was tall. Lithe. Lopsided in its gait. Four legs. Two arms. A single high-mounted rail launcher on the back.
Painted black.
Red markings across the core.
And on its chest, stenciled in silver:
Garmr
The Hound Unleashed
It moved like no machine before it.
Fluid. Evasive. Like a wolf stalking a bear.
Prometheus fired once. Missed.
Garmr closed the distance in seconds and launched a high-velocity shell—not at the hull, but at the sensor array.
Direct hit.
Prometheus was now blind.
Camille switched to manual targeting. Bruno tried to calibrate backup optics.
Too slow.
Another strike—this time to the treads.
Prometheus staggered.
But it didn't fall.
Camille rerouted drive to Mode 2—Terrain Glider.
The side panels extended. Friction weight redistributed. The V.A.T. slid sideways across the mud—dodging the next shot by inches.
Bruno laughed, wild.
"It dances!"
"Then let it dance until it kills," Emil growled.
The Kill SequenceIlse, voice crackling over the static of the field relay, uploaded Pattern Beta—a reactive logic loop enabling anticipatory combat modeling.
Prometheus reoriented. Shifted stances.
Suddenly, Garmr wasn't the hunter.
It was being mirrored.
Every feint, met with a twin move.
Every lunge, met with a glide.
Then Prometheus changed modes again.
Mode 3 – Artillery Spine
The backplate opened.
The main cannon retracted, split into dual-barrel configuration.
Bruno fired both.
One shell grazed Garmr's leg.
The second—
Direct core impact.
The entire center of Garmr detonated, flinging steel shrapnel in every direction.
One fragment pierced Vera's shoulder.
She didn't scream.
She chambered her rifle, aimed at the burning Garmr shell, and fired once—into the cockpit slit.
For good measure.
Aftermath
By 08:27, the battlefield was still.
Smoke curled upward into the mist.
Of the Fenrir Omega force, only drone husks and shattered Lupus carcasses remained.
Three Typhons survived.
One Sanglier burned.
Prometheus stood, battered but intact.
Its core systems still functional.
Its AI loop still adapting.
Its steel spine uncurled in the wind like a lion stretching after sleep.
Vera sat on the medical cart, shoulder bleeding, watching it idle.
"We didn't build a weapon," she murmured. "We built the future's threshold."
Emil sat beside her, soaked to the bone, arms limp.
"And we crossed it."
Telegrams from the World
The battle spread across Europe like fire.
The Austro-Hungarians filed an emergency motion for ceasefire discussion.
The Ottoman observers requested Forge Libre's presence in Constantinople.
The Americans sent engineers to observe.
And Berlin issued a single broadcast:
"The Prometheus Project will be neutralized. All costs accepted."
Emil didn't care.
He turned his attention eastward.
There was something else stirring in the Balkans.
And Prometheus would not be a tool anymore.
It would be the standard.
New Orders
Back at Foundry Echo, Henriette handed Emil a sealed report.
"Intercepted communique. Fuchs is not dead. He's gone underground. Berlin thinks he's rogue."
"Then who's running Garmr?" Emil asked.
"No one knows. That's the problem."
"Not a problem," Vera said from the infirmary. "A target."
Bruno grinned.
"Then let's give Prometheus its second test."