Cleaning blood off of his hands, Alfwald started to pick up the pieces of what he could, looking around the town for anyone still alive or anything worth keeping.

  “You killed everyone”

  “Yup!” the armor answered back “Its what I’m best at, you should thank me for doing my job well”

  “These were my neighbors, now get off of me, I have to do something”

  “What are you going to do? You didn’t find armor of fixing, only the armor of breaking.”

  “Is there an armor of fixing?” He asked, suspiciously, as though this might all be some big job played on him.

  He felt his own arms shrug. Well, that won’t be helpful. The armor could move his body as easily as he could and he didn’t know if he’d win in a contest against it, but he would have to try. From the look of it, nobody in the town had managed to overcome or escape it. Everywhere he looked something was destroyed, on fire, or dead. Thankfully the sheep seemed to be spared, along with most of the other animals that hadn’t fled or been trapped in a building.

  “Why did you leave the animals?”

  “They’re no fun to kill, they only can bite or scratch, they don’t even shoot arrows, isn’t that obvious?”

  “These people were peaceful, they barely fought back” he was angry, trying to stomp away, but the armor made his steps lighter, almost as though it found the entire situation humorous.

  “Yeah they were no fun either, the only one who wanted to play was that blacksmith, he got a good dent on me, it's still settling out, look” The armor twisted his body to the side to show him the dent in its hip. At that moment, the dent popped up, fixing itself “Oh much better”

  “So who do we kill next, little sheep?”

  “Nobody! I was supposed to be cleaning, this is the opposite of cleaning. You’ve made a mess of the entire town. It’ll be years before anyone can live here and the actual sheep- I’ll thank you to stop calling me one you bastard, are all around in the moors, they’re going to get stuck or hurt. We have to take them somewhere else, a nearby town, anything. Same with all this stuff, its just going to all rot here and people could use the food and firewood and the animals, too.”

  Alfwald pushed against the constraints of the armor with his entire body, trying to push it in one direction, as it pulled in the opposite. He felt his muscles straining against the metal and the creaking of it, losing the battle against his own movement heavily until he had had enough.

  “You will move as I say you move!” the armor demanded of him, the first time its calmness had broken since it overtook him.

  “You have no control over me, you’re not even a person” he fought back, managing to punch himself in the side. It hurt, truly, but the dent in the armor, exactly where the one that had just been repaired gave him a sense of accomplishment.

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  His helmet tilted back in frustration without his consent and his body stomped itself away to grab the nearest toppled cart. His hands flipped it in a second while loading up large logs and sacks of grain.

  “Thank you” he murmured

  “....so we can kill the next village right?” came from inside the armor, hopeful for more bloodshed.

  “Absolutely not”

  “As you wish, little sheep, you’re in charge” it said, picking up more of the heavy packages and loading them onto the cart.

  They went from home to home, loading up carts of what hadn’t been burned or destroyed, and thankfully, there was quite a lot of it. Together, they gathered up four donkeys and two huge, overloaded carts full of supplies.

  “Where are we taking all of this anyway?” the armor asked, with a sigh.

  “The next town over”

  “Oh yeah about that, is there one in the other direction because that town might not be in great shape either…”

  Gathering the sheep took hours, and by the time everything was loaded, the adrenaline from the day had worn off and Alfwald started to remember his bodily needs. Such as needing a bathroom immediately.

  “You burned the outhouses too?” He yelled, and it echoed off the inside of the helmet which he could still not raise fully.

  “Yes”

  “And why in seven hells would you burn the outhouses?”

  They explode, just a little. From all the gas” the helmet replied, obviously far too entertained for his misfortune.

  “Great, I am going to have to pee in this suit for the rest of my life aren’t I?”

  “Do not pee in me” It was suddenly dead serious, or as serious as a little voice in your ear could be. Was he actually dead? Was he going crazy alone after his entire village was slaughtered?

  The armor popped away angrily, as though it were throwing him forward, and he landed on his hands in the mud, finally free of the cursed metal prison.

  He immediately dipped behind a burned out cottage and relieved himself before heading back to the wagon, leaving the armor in the dirt where it belonged. Hopefully it would rust out and become a relic soon.

  “Where are you going?” It questioned from the ground, the voice smaller now that it wasn't booming against his ear.

  “Anywhere you're not” Alfwald turned and felt himself be struck from behind, like being hit with a boulder, but all over his body at once. The armor worked its way down his arms again and he was trapped once more.

  He let out a scream of frustration as loud as he could and the helmet flipped up angrily.

  “You don't have to yell in my ear” it sulked.

  “You don't have ears, you tremendous twit! You idiot!”

  That's unkind, it sulked more and wrapped its arms across his chest in a defensive pose.

  “Give me my arms back” he grumbled.

  “No.”

  He thrust his arms forward but they held to his chest tightly, until he was wrestling himself in what must have looked like the slowest breakdown a man could have, the clinking and grinding of metal against metal highlighting how hard he was struggling.

  Finally the armor released his hands suddenly and he was slug backwards again, but it did not let him fall, so he was stuck swinging them in the air, bent backwards, trying to find some semblance of balance.

  He sat down, finally, after another struggle with the ferociously stubborn pot of tin he was stuck inside, and began to strike his flint against a small rock. Sparks came, and he blew onto them gently and pressed them with some shredded bits in f stick until smoke came.

  “Oh so you can start a fire?”

  “If I don't want to die, yes, I have to cook something”

  “Please don't die inside of me.”

  “Why not? You're going to kill me just from the struggle of doing anything worthwhile.”

  “Yes, but if you die you'll stink. Actually, you already smell quite a bit. Have you heard of washing?”

  This made him laugh, head in hands, like the men they drag away to the asylums. He was crazy, he had to be. Nobody argues with their clothes.

  “How can you even smell?” He finally retorted, continuing to laugh.

  “An inanimate rock could smell you, you're rank. You don't need a nose to know there's sheep poo and sweat all over you. If you'd used the facilities in me I would probably have killed you”

  “Oh but then I'd stink even more!” he laughed again, though he felt it even crazier to be laughing near the corpses of his entire village.

  This thought made him quiet for a while, and the armor seemed to notice, and stayed quiet with him for the entire meal.

  Once he was done, he stood without anything fighting him, and began to pack up his own things. His cleaning material, the yarn he made hats with, the little carvings he had from his late parents, and gathered water from the well.

  Alfwald looked at his little cozy cottage, the one he’d hoped to raise children in, the one he’d been a child himself in, and said goodbye. He hoped he would be brave for this, but he sobbed all the way to the carts. Then he continued to cry for each person, each home, and his own rotten luck.

  “You're getting your tears all over me you disgusting fool” the armor said, but it quieted down to a grumble when his tears refused to stop.