Tall and stately and untouchable as death disrobed, the metal figure walked that storm-washed field of battle. Rain coursed through the tree-root-branching insignia cut into its breastplate, leapt in white spray from the sharp joins of its hips, the only sound it made as it stalked among the dying and those still trying not to join them.

It carried no weapon. It teetered terrifying enough that some tried to attack it anyways, but their bullets ricocheted like raindrops, their blades skipped as harmlessly from it as the torrent did, and men soaked in storm and blood turned back to fighting each other, the only threat they could understand and kill.

The figure climbed to the highest point of the carnage, across corpses and new creeks trying to be born from the storm. Those who caught sight of its climb through that carnage, corpses and creeks of blood and rain, saw only an omen, or maybe even something as harmless as an arbiter. Someone’s impervious means of surveying the battlefield, a threat only to the future further away than the ends of their swords, and so, no matter at all.

None of them understood. None of them had time to understand before the figure lifted its articulated arms high, holding itself as a perfect silver line of what could have been greeting or prayer to the storm. None of them had time to fear before the first bolt of lightning struck its upturned hands, discharged through that living rod into everything that had been too foolish to flee.