Cradling that weapon in his arms was a strange thing. Its surface was blood-warm, the fibers of its 'wood' foreend swelled relaxed as though a beating heart resided in its magazine in place of munitions. It fit here, in the steel below. The surface, ragged hot, the air sticky and wet with some aerosolized oil that has converted into a crimson fog through which only the ignited flares atop towers can be seen. The clang and groan of unseen mechanics permeated the surface, something to perceive beyond uncomfortably hot sands and sticky red atmosphere.
Luckily, escaping the surface was far from difficult. One only needed faith in crossing the red haze, faith that may one day they would encounter... something. A picked door in the side of some refinery-tower, a broken grate covering ventilation shaft, a simple sinkhole into the below offered safe enough passage into the twisted steel maze.
One could spend forever in the red haze above and never meet another soul, no, such pleasures are only reserved for those foolish, desperate, or adventurous enough to sink below, through those doors into the tar-black abyss, down the heaving ventilations shafts in their sticky, chemical-laden breathing, sucking in and taking the leap down that great hole, were greeted with Walls that swelled and receded in time, a slow, even breathing, and piping that pulsed with some unseen pulse. Where dim hallways lit some hanging organic fixtures revealed their glistening wetness. Hallways emptied into rooms, lighted the same, sickly yellow lanterns formed of distended bladders, industrial lamps with black-boned cages over isinglass bulbs. What else to light but new horrors. Stacks of coffin-shaped iron boxes that smelled of meat. Machinery held together by bolts and sinew, blood-oil leaking from loose fit-parts, marred fasteners holding the ordeal together, a maquiladora of meat and metal that was seemingly the entire planet.
What dared live down here.
The weapon was far from for show. There was good reason to carry such a strange device, despite its unnatural existence. The things that crawled and scuttled down here really were the children of this place, twisted organic forms cut apart and refastened as though they were machine. Bellows made lungs, cameras made eyes, joints replaced with bearings and actuators ended digits ended in rusted iron with jaws snapping on springs, their flayed skin reaffixed with sinew line and rivets. They gasped and heaved, glared through unfeeling glass, and once aware of some interloper from the above, they sprung, gnashing, snapping, a blind, rabid fury that would only be put down with overwhelming firepower, provided by that living weapon cradled in those arms.
Down. Down we must go into this place.
Through the winding caverns, through snapping pistons and unguarded presses. Through the hoards of mechanically revived savages.
Deeper, deeper still.
Its beating heart must be found and ruptured, its brass lungs must be punctured, and this planet must die.