Vent

“Lizard?” Mechanical eyes stare at her out of a steel grey skull.
“Don’t come too close.” Steam pours from his joints and mouth. “My reactor’s overloading. Needs time to vent.”
“It just – dissolved.” The air is strangely heavy, oddly dense. She can guess why.
“It was never precisely real.” His voice is threaded with static. “Matter clustered around a controlling consciousness. When consciousness left, the matter discorporated.” He’s never sounded more like a machine.
“Does- that hurt?”
“Does what hurt?”
Then they feel the ground tremble. The thick air fills with the sound.
The march of heavy, metal feet.