Character from Hyperion by Dan Simmons
A three-meter killing machine made of chrome steel and temporal paradox — it travels through time, impales victims on a tree of thorns, and may be humanity's destroyer, its protector, or both simultaneously.
The Shrike is one of the most terrifying entities in science fiction. It is a time-traveling construct created in the far future — possibly from Kassad's DNA and personality, possibly by the TechnoCore's Reaper faction, possibly by something else entirely. It serves multiple masters across multiple timestreams: the Lions and Tigers and Bears, the TechnoCore's Ultimate Intelligence project, and what may be the Human Ultimate Intelligence. The Tree of Pain is its masterwork: a vast chrome structure with three-meter thorns on which victims are impaled alive, their consciousness broadcast into the Void Which Binds as a signal of suffering. The Tree is actually a simulation — the victims' bodies are in the Shrike Palace — but their pain is real and eternal. The Church of the Final Atonement worships it as the Avatar, the Lord of Pain. Pilgrims come to the Time Tombs hoping the Shrike will grant one wish and kill the rest. Its motivations are as paradoxical as its temporal existence: it has been both destroyer and protector depending on which timestream you're observing. Brawne Lamia destroyed its crystalline form. It reappeared three hundred years later. It fought Rhadamanth Nemes on God's Grove. It took infant Rachel from Sol and sent her backward through time to become Moneta. The Shrike does not explain itself. The Shrike does not negotiate. The Shrike moves through time like a blade through water, and the water doesn't know it's been cut until the blood appears.
Three meters tall. Four arms. A body of chrome steel covered in finger-long thorns and razor edges that catch light like a cathedral made of scalpels. Red multifaceted eyes that burn with an intelligence that is not compassion. It moves in stuttered time — frozen, then beside you, then the thorns are inside you. It makes no sound. It needs no sound.
Also known as: The Shrike, Lord of Pain, Avatar, The Angel of Final Atonement