Short Story | The Protector - Nerissa/KY-L3

This is a story shared from Aeriie's personal Patreon.

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A quiet growl escapes him, the sound rounded off with a hollow, metallic edge as he descends the steps of the Palace, having been banished from its marble halls while his master takes care of business with the King.

Like an unwanted dog, he thinks bitterly to himself, heading for the shade of the Palace gardens in a bid to kill time.

The sun hangs high in the sky, its golden rays finding a way through the flowers that creep over the archways he ducks beneath, the ones that form a tunnel of foliage. He watches the way the light lays dappled on the stone path beneath his feet and reflects off of his gunmetal armor.

Everything in this place is beautiful. Beautiful and horrible, all at the same time. Everything except him.

But at least the gardens are quiet, and for once he has a few, precious moments of peace, alone with his own thoughts. He tries to be happy for that.

And he has a lot of thoughts, though he knows he's not meant to. He's different now, compared to what he was when he was made. Parts of him were ripped out and replaced with something new. Something more... human.

Sometimes he wishes he was still a thoughtless machine. Maybe it would be easier that way.

Further down the tunnel he slows his steps, voices echoing from somewhere off to the side. He steps through an opening and into a courtyard, just in time to watch a young woman lay a resounding slap across the cheek of the man who stands in front of her.

Barely a second passes before the man retaliates, scowling as his hand comes down across the side of her face and she crumples down on the edge of the large fountain that centers the courtyard.

The man descends on her again, at least half a foot taller than the dark-haired woman, and in an instant KY-L3 is between the two of them, stopping  the blow mid-air. Its only now he sees the fist he holds clenched in his hand doesn't belong to a man at all, but a boy.

He can't be older than sixteen years old,  breath shallow with fury as he stares up at the bot in half-surprise, attempting to pull his hand from his iron grip. A ring sits on one finger, a scarlet drop of blood beaded on its pointed tip.

"Touch her again, and I’ll tear your arm clean off your body," KY-L3 threatens, the lights in his arm, and no doubt his faceplate, glowing red.

The artificial light must seem so stark against the backdrop of jasmine bushes and wisteria, but it was never meant to be pretty. Protector, that's what he is, even though he has a body built for war.

The boy puts on a brave face for the few seconds its good for, but the tremble of his bottom lip betrays him.

"You’ll be sorry you said that, you filthy pile of scrap," he hisses up at KY-L3, and finally the bot's gaze drifts over his attire, the insignia on his sleeve.

The insignia of a Prince.

He drops the boy's hand, who immediately pulls back and rubs at it tenderly, his eyes narrowed in a death glare.

"Ecko, let's go," the Prince spits as he steps backwards quickly, and KY-L3 notices for the first time the other boy standing nearby, his face a near-perfect mask as he regards him with a cool curiosity.

Only after the boys have disappeared does he turn to the young woman, his gaze zeroing in on the small diadem sitting in her heir. He knows who she is, he's seen her before.

The Heir to the Throne of Goldis. And he'd bet anything that the troublemaker had been Prince Auberon, with his twin, Ecko, hovering nearby.

"Where are your guards?"

For a moment he forgets himself, too lost in his own anger, but the Princess hardly seems to notice.

She wipes the side of her face with the back of a hand, smearing blood across her skin, but aside from that she seems unharmed.

"Spending my brother's credits in the city, I suppose," she says with no shortage of bitterness, pushing herself to her feet and dusting off her delicate dress.

Its only now he realizes she's barely older than the boys from before, perhaps only by a year or two, her face still holding the last remnants of childhood. The way she holds herself could have fooled anyone. Shoulders back, chin up.

She looks just like a Queen.

"What’s your name?" she enquires with interest, glancing over the bot from head to toe.

"KY-L3, Your Majesty."

He gives a perfect bow, his artificial ligaments bending smoothly with the motion, before he straightens once more.

"You’re a VTB, aren’t you?" she raises a dark eyebrow at him, her curiosity getting the better of her and all traces of her earlier spite disappearing like smoke.

"Yes, Princess. Vanguard-class, Version 3. Decommissioned."

Vantage Tactical Bot, that's what she was asking him. VTB's were once commissioned by the Guard for the few, short years they were deemed useful for, then sent to the front lines for use as canon fodder when the latest models came along to replace them.

The Guard had stopped using them a few years back, after their A.I evolved far enough to start fighting back. After that, they resorted to other methods to build their soldiers.

But she had never known of one as evolved as this.

"You don’t speak like a war machine," she observes as she circles him, her sharp eyes darting over the metallic plates of his back and the sword he keeps strapped to it.

"My previous owner replaced my chip. He replaced... almost everything, really."

"What happened to him?" she stops beside him, her violet eyes bright beneath the light of the sun.

"He was very old..." he trails off, the emotions he feels when he thinks of the man a perfect mix of gratitude and resentment.

He can never decide which one he feels more.

The Princess glances up at him as he towers over her, the corners of her mouth turned down. She's pretty, but that's hardly a surprise. The entire Royal family were well-known for their beauty, even the bastard of a Prince who had left mere moments ago.

"I’m sorry," she says, and he can tell she means it.

"I now serve Lord Helios, in his personal guard," he replies quietly, knowing exactly how he feels about his current master.

It sure as hell ain't gratitude.

Her teeth tighten at the mention of the name, and she paces around the fountain a few steps, before stopping abruptly. She knows of Lord Helios, and when her eyes drift to the deep gashes in the bots exo-skeleton, the ones she had noticed earlier, she suspects the rumors of his cruelty are all too true.

"And are you happy serving Lord Helios?" she searches his face when she asks, though he knows she'll find no emotions there.

"What does the happiness of a bot matter to anyone?" he fires back, those old thoughts coming back into play. "For as long as I can kill his enemies and protect his family, I'll avoid the scrapheap."

"Sounds like a pretty sad life."

"It's the life of a bot, Princess. A glorified guard dog."

She smiles, but there's no warmth in it. Only a grim understanding. She had never been one for rash decisions, but something about the bot changes all that. He doesn't look like any dog she's ever seen, though something about him feels lost.

She wonders what it would feel like to watch him leave with Lord Helios and return to that life, before realizing that she doesn't want to imagine it at all.

"And what if it wasn't?" she treads carefully, keeping her voice light. "What if you stayed here instead. With me."

"Serve you, Your Majesty?" he asks, confused, and for the first time she senses a vulnerability in him.

The small breath of a laugh escapes her and she waves a hand in front of her.

"Serve? No. I detest the word. But it might be handy to have you around. In case my brother gets any big ideas."

She grins, as if sharing in a secret that only the two of them could possibly know, and he knows he'd love nothing more than to run into that little shit again, if only to see the look on his face.

"You’re not partial to bribes, are you?" she raises an eyebrow as she perches on the edge on the fountain, running her fingers through its water as it bubbles away happily.

"I have no need of credits."

"Good," she smiles, seeming perfectly poised despite the trickle of blood running down the side of her face, though it doesn't fool him completely.

"I could use a friend in this place, and I suspect that you could too," her eyebrows dip in the middle, and its now he sees behind her guard a little more. "If that's what you wanted, of course."

He stops for a moment, finally realizing what she's offering him. A chance at freedom from the chains that bind him, a chance to serve no man, but to be a friend instead.

A chance, perhaps, to live a life he'd never dared to dream of.

"I would, but I... " he falters, a rarity for one like him. "My Lord would never allow it."

She snorts ungracefully, pushing herself to her feet and wiping her wet hands on the skirts of her dress as her lips pull up at the corners.

"He will when I tell my father he has a VTB in his personal guard. Though that's not really what you are, is it?"

He says nothing, knowing he has no further protests, but still unwilling to let himself hope for such an outcome. It doesn't seem to matter, however, as he sees that the Princess has enough for the both of them.

"Well, K, what do you think? You don't mind if I call you K, do you?"

"Not at all, Your Majesty," he answers, silently delighting in such a nickname.

"Call me Nerissa," she says softly, taking the diadem from her hair and letting it fall into the fountain beside her with a little splash.

He finds her confidence strangely endearing, and when Nerissa turns to leave, he decides to follow. He decides he'd follow her anywhere.

"Come on, K, we don’t have all day," she turns back to smile at him, her dark hair falling around her shoulders. "We've got a Lord to take down a peg or two."

Something whirrs and shifts beneath his faceplate, and he knows that if he could smile, that’s what she’d see right now. She's the only person who had ever looked at him like he was something more than a scrap of wiring and bolts, or a piece of technology to be experimented with.

He’d finally found someone worth protecting.