"Holy shi-"
The wooden automaton took one stride forward with its powerful legs, its plate shaped head face to face with Solstice, and the rest of its body only inches apart from Solstice, there really was no distance between the two. Being so dangerously close to the automaton put Solstice's body into overdrive and his mind into a frenzy of unorganized thoughts and emotions.
Solstice strained every muscle in his legs, his core and his upper body to push himself away as far and fast as he possibly could within the short time frame he was granted to react. With such intention to move away, Solstice's body felt slightly lighter than normal as he dashed backwards.
'What?'
He did not have the privilege to explore that odd feeling however, as he looked at the spot he had previously been standing in. The wooden automaton was there, except its body had somewhat unraveled, with wooden tendrils that went back into place to repair its human-like structure. Solstice had seen enough though to understand what it attempted to do.
Before it put itself back together, it had unraveled itself into the perfect size and shape to fit around Solstice's body. It was going to envelope Solstice's body, and kill him from the inside like an iron maiden.
"If it grabs me I'm dead"
Solstice took hold of his rapier and took an impromptu stance. This really was a bad match up, rapier's were meant to pierce, the automaton was made out of thick wood so the rapier would most likely snap in half if he tried. Nonetheless, it was still his only weapon, maybe it carried some hidden magic, afterall, the body and person he's inhabiting is definitely not an ordinary human either.
The automaton raised its left arm, its lengthy fingers turned into sharp knives and began to extend slowly at first, then they explosively shot forward with extreme speed towards Solstice. Solstice dashed to the side just in time to not be impaled by its sharpened tendrils, but he did not get out of that attack unscathed either. It was not too bad, three of its fingers gave Solstice a shallow cut on the left side of his abdomen.
Those tendrils never stopped moving, moving around like a group of snakes, they set a trap quickly around Solstice. Two wrapped around to meet his right side, another two to his left side, and the last one snaked behind him.
'Damn'
He had to move in towards the automaton to avoid the blade chasing his backside. This was pretty much a death sentence, the automaton was only using one of its arms for the bladed tendrils, it still had an entire other arm to use which Solstice had no doubt expected it to use after he moved in close enough. Knowing that no matter what he did it was going to be painful, a maniacal grin found Solstice's face and he gritted his teeth in preparation for the crazy decision he was going to make.
Defying the violent urge to simply give up, Solstice gritted his teeth and started taking long strides with the powerful legs of his body, forward.
Timing, Solstice was betting everything on his timing. Full sprint into what seemingly was death, a crazed smile still stuck on his face, Solstice mentally braced himself for any consequences.
'Can't mess this up'
Just as Solstice expected, the wooden automaton's other arm rose and its bladed fingers pointed at Solstice like a rifle ready to be fired at any moment. As the distance became shorter and shorter between the two, the creaking of the wooden finger blades were apparent as they were cocked back for maximum acceleration.
Then they fired.
Solstice instantly dropped his weight and let his body fall as quick as possible, maneuvering to attempt to slide underneath the front line attack. It worked surprisingly well, only suffering a couple of slices on his face. Solstice succeeded in avoiding the front and back line but now he had to confront the main body as he was now only a couple feet away, still with the majority of his body on the ground, his positioning was not the best.
The automaton opened itself again, preparing to take Solstice hostage within its confines. Solstice without so much as a second thought instantly jutted the rapier into the ground to stand himself up. With his feet planted on the ground as much as he could manage, Solstice used whatever stability he was able to create to bolt to the side.
Solstice moved out just in time, gracelessly as he tripped over himself slightly. Looking at his left hand, his rapier had snapped in half but he considered it a worthy sacrifice, he's still alive because of it. This one brief exchange told Solstice just enough how this exchange would come too if he kept fighting.
There was no way he was going to win, he would just become nutrients for that bastard.
'Run'
That was all Solstice could think and do, his only real option to survive, so that's what he did. Luckily, his current body was extremely good at this, so it was not too hard to hit his full speed and maintain it.
The problem was, the automaton was fast as hell, Solstice only being slightly faster, with a seemingly limitless endurance as well. Not to mention, it seemed pissed off now since its prey was running away, as if it was only leisurely fighting before.
Solstice was now running at maximum speed in the direction of the knights, only problem now was, he was actually forced to run instead of pacing himself.
He had continued to sprint for a full hour now and was starting to feel very drained of energy. It was already an amazing feat that he was able to keep it up, but with his starved and damaged body, he wouldn't be able to continue it for much longer. The only one that didn't show any signs of fatigue from the marathon was the automaton, it was very much still chasing Solstice down to what seemed like no end.
'Where the hell are the knights!'
That was another concern. Before, Solstice was only barely keeping a jog pace with the intent to catch up to the caravan but also to not meet them. Right now, he threw that plan away, even if it meant having to deal with the hostile bunch later. He would much rather face humans than whatever the hell the automaton was.
Luck struck however. Solstice began to smell smoke, which was hopefully coming from a camp that had been made from the group.
And that's when Solstice and the automaton came upon the camp, but something was very wrong.
There was a grand total of seven people left from the entire caravan. Five were ordinary knight soldiers with their chainmail armor and longswords, they were roughed up slightly with a few nicks on their armaments. One of the full plated knights remained, the one wielding the flail although, his plate armor had been warped and dented, there was blood leaking from the slits of his helm. There was one other person who was not a knight but Solstice didn't have much time to examine the last human to account for.
The knight wielding the flail was the 1st to react to the reveal of both Solstice and the wooden automaton.
Superhuman. That was the word that best described the speed of the flail knight. He moved so fast that the wooden automaton itself was caught off guard and it suffered a powerful blow for its negligence to be prepared. A flick of the spiked ball landed square in the abdomen of the automaton, caving it in, countless splinters flew in every direction due to the impact.
The wooden automaton staggered, almost looking bewildered at what happened, although it truly was hard to tell what it was thinking since it had no facial features.
The flail knight did not look too good though. His previous battles seemed to give him egregious wounds beneath his armor and he began to cough up some blood that dripped down through the slits in his helmet. Solstice swore he could audibly hear him wheezing ever so slightly as well, but that's when three of the standard knight soldiers finally reacted to the situation, and entered the fray to assist the flail wielder.
The other two, had their keen eyes set on Solstice, yet they decided to stay put having the other human survivor hidden behind them. Out of the two, the one of short stature was particularly examining Solstice.
"Go on ahead and help them, I can keep an eye on the Drifter"
It was a very immature voice, upon closer inspection of his facial features, Solstice realized that he was a mere kid, about as old as him in the real world, maybe a year younger. Too young to be a full knight, moreso a squire, yet here he was in full knight attire. Nonetheless, his words felt more like an absolute command, not towards Solstice but to his fellow knight.
His fellow responded.
"Keep the Lady safe, don't let him get close to her"
The knight ran to assist in the battle with the wooden automaton, but not without a distasteful glare as he went past Solstice.
Solstice turned back around to view the fight. It was not over, but he felt as if there was no way the automaton would come out on top. There was only one reason why he felt this way.
It was the flail wielder knight.
'Strong'
Superhuman might've been an understatement when describing him.
The automaton was throwing everything it had at the flail wielder, even now sprouting extra tendrils out of its back, something that it didn't reveal to Solstice, in an attempt to pierce through the knight. Despite the knight's haggard body, the heavy plate armor, he continued to dominate the fight, weaving in and out of the automatons' attacks landing truly devastating blows with his flail. Sometimes he would choose to even bash, punch and kick the creature with his domineering strength, he could probably kill it without his weapon and only his bare hands.
Now that the other knight soldiers entered to help him out, mainly to chop away incoming attacks from its sharp tendrils, allowing the flail wielder to close distance or get a breather, it was clear that the humans would win this battle.
It was not going to go down without a fight though.
One of its wooden tendrils slipped to the backside of one of the knights. It quickly wrapped its snake-like tendril around the knight's ankle and picked him up, the knight now hanging upside down. Despite only using one measly tendril, it flung the knight soldier into the flail wielder, the collision killing the soldier immediately and sending the superhuman knight crashing to the ground.
The three remaining knight soldiers consolidated around the flail wielder, the most sturdy positioned in the front and the other two set to guard the sides, acting as an iron defense, not allowing any harm to come as they waited for their superhuman ally to recover.
The automaton continued to be unrelenting but each attack only became weaker, it took a lot of damage from the attacks dealt by the flail, portions of its human-like body blown apart, slowly regenerating but decreasingly so. However its will to cause as much harm to the humans still unwavered, the automaton decided to give the rest of his energy into a frenzy of attacks.
The iron defense of the humans consisting of the three remaining knight soldiers now started to waver, but it did not matter anymore, their superhuman ally recovered enough. The three soldiers began to walk forward, only dealing with fatal attacks, ignoring ones that would only do so much as cut, pushing forward towards the automaton. The flail knight stood behind the moving iron wall, waiting till they got close enough for him to enact one final blow to finish the battle.
"Hey miscreant, the fight is about to finish, get over here, right now"
Unlike before, the immature voice of the inactive knight soldier had felt commanding and directed to only his fellow, this time the command had been directed to Solstice. Strangely enough, Solstice's body began moving on its own, he tried to resist it but in the end he wound up standing right next to the young knight soldier.
"Listen to me and you'll live, don't, then they will kill you after they're done with that forest dweller"