A Man's End.

[SummeryGuy 73]

Grover knew that there was no turning back.

 

For he, once a man with feelings, had just finished torturing an innocent, young, male elf in the middle of the desert for his own enjoyment. He simply wanted to rob the elf and leave him be. But the elf had no mina. 
Instead, he took blood.

He grabbed the elf's arm, and held it up, then driving a knife through his victim's bicep. The elf cried and screamed, begging for mercy. 
But Grover laughed.

But Grover smiled.

But Grover didn't feel.

He dropped the elf, and squatted down. He took out a cloth, and then dug his metallic finger into the elf's wound, collecting their blood as a trophy. He'd wipe his finger on the cloth, the dark red, violent liquid staining the material, now serving as a memory. 

Grover would look the elf in the eyes. 

"Elf. If you manage to not bleed out and survive, I want you so speak my name." Grover's machine-parts would klank and whir as he spoke.

With one breath, he'd look at the elf as they cried and met his gaze with pure horror and pain. The elf begged. Grover ignored. 

"My name. I do not have a name anymore. I am no longer man."
He'd pause.

"I am Machine."

 

And so, with one final motion, he'd carve the letter M into the elf's leg as they screamed in pain, tears streaming down their face. 

When Grover mounted his horse and left his victim bleeding out in the desert landscape, the very last human part of him knew he should feel remorse. But again. He was more machine than man, and that last part of Grover Reid was no more. Grover was dead, and the machine that carried his body around was all that remained. 

There was no such thing as Grover Reid anymore.