The Machine God

Chapter 290

Artensah walked down the corridor of the Dawnspear with his hands clasped behind his back.

Runes set into the walls pulsed as he passed, each one brightening as he got closer, before dimming behind him. The ship knew its master. Every ward and every enchantment woven into the hull recognized his authority and responded accordingly.

He barely noticed. He’d commanded this vessel for decades.

Footsteps approached from one of the side hallways ahead. Gretahn rounded the corner, saluted with a fist to his chest, and fell into step beside him.

“The reinforcements have arrived, my lord. Everything is ready for tomorrow.”

Artensah nodded. “Good. We cannot afford another failure. Especially with the Empress herself overseeing the efforts.”

Gretahn kept pace, his expression carefully neutral. He was a competent officer. Young for his rank, but disciplined. He knew when to speak and when to wait.

“Tell me about this report I received,” Artensah said. “A number of our strongholds have been struck across Eurasia.”

“Yes, my lord. It’s the Invader. He’s been assaulting them at random, heading west, away from this fortress.”

Artensah frowned. “Are there any gates leading to his world out that way?”

“Not anymore, my lord. Lord Velisahn had the gate’s owner shift it to a new location.” Gretahn paused. “He instructed me to inform you that you owe him a drink.”

Artensah said nothing to that, stepping through a doorway and onto the platform inside. Velisahn could collect in person if he wanted to make a point of it. Runes beneath their feet flared to life and the platform rose without a sound, carrying them upward through the ship’s interior.

“What about the divination magics?” Artensah asked. “Are we still anticipating the Invader’s arrival?”

“Yes, my lord. Nothing has changed.”

“Good. Continue your report.”

Gretahn hesitated.

Artensah glanced at him. The man’s jaw was tight. Whatever came next, he’d been rehearsing how to deliver it.

“Some of our spies report that the great clans may have come into possession of contraband. Staves and a spellbook.”

“How?”

Gretahn cleared his throat. “It is the Invader’s doing, my lord. Again.”

Artensah ground his teeth. “For an Exalted, he certainly seems to be a very busy individual.”

The platform slowed and stopped. He stepped off onto the upper deck and continued walking without breaking stride.

“Fine. You know the protocol. Send an assault group to cleanse the clans involved. But only the clans involved. We may need the rest once the Grand Exodus begins, especially if it turns out the people of Earth 1 do not have magic to power our ships and weapons.”

Gretahn hesitated again.

“What is it now?” Artensah growled.

“As you said, my lord. Per protocol, I ordered an assault group dispatched under your name.” Gretahn took a breath. “The ships were intercepted shortly after entering atmosphere.”

Artensah stopped walking.

The corridor stretched ahead of them, empty. Runes pulsed in their slow, steady rhythm. The ship hummed beneath his feet.

He didn’t ask by whom. He already knew.

“Casualties?”

“Unknown as yet, my lord. We lost contact. The communications teams are working to reestablish a connection, but the ships appear to have gone down.”

Artensah stood still for several heartbeats. Then he took a quiet breath and resumed walking. They turned a corner, and continued toward where a guard stood at attention beside the bridge doors.

Artensah’s gaze swept critically over the man as they approached.

A ceremonial sword sat at his hip on the left, with a three-wand holster strapped to his belt on the right. Each wand was separated into its own loop, with small engravings carved into the ends for quick identification.

Artensah’s eyes narrowed slightly. The configuration was non-standard. The guard was one of those who’d abandoned the traditional path of magic in favor of what the younger generation called the New Magics. Classes provided by the System, granted to those willing to forsake centuries of arcane tradition for abilities that had no place in the Empire’s heritage.

Like most, he looked down on it. Every instinct screamed that it was a regression. A cheapening of what the Stars had built over millennia.

But he said nothing.

It was by the Empress’s decree that those who chose to embrace the new ways of magic be permitted to do so.

The guard saluted.

Artensah passed him by without acknowledgement.

The Dawnspear’s bridge was immaculate. Officers stood by their stations, enchanted displays hovering above consoles which tracked the positions of every ship and unit in the formation. At the far end, a wide viewport revealed the night sky stretching in every direction.

And beneath, nestled in the mountain over the bones of a dead village, was the fortress.

It had grown almost four times in size since the invader had last seen it. What had been a modern defensive garrison had been expanded with new walls, new wards, and new towers bristling with defensive enchantments.

Around it, a defensive perimeter had been extended in every direction, with enough tents and trenches and supplies to field an army.

Overhead, six other warships joined the Dawnspear in formation, running lights bright against the darkness.

All of it prepared for a single target.

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And above everything, the palace.

It hung in the sky like a second moon, built from white stone traced with gold. The massive fortress cast a pale glow, reflecting the light of the moon across the fortress and the warships and the mountains below.

Its presence alone was a statement that required no words.

The Empress was here.

Artensah crossed the bridge to the viewport and looked out over what they had prepared. But his thoughts strayed.

Three warships lost. Strongholds raided all across the continent. Contraband in the hands of the great clans.

And tomorrow the gateway would open. The Invader would come, desiring to return home, and whatever waited on the other side, friends, allies, or curious superhumans, would come pouring through.

Artensah clenched his fists.

He would not fail her again.

***

Alexander sat cross-legged on a woven mat at one end of the great yurt, eyes closed.

He’d arrived in the early hours of the morning, just after the sun had risen, flying low across the Great Steppe with Droney tucked under his arm and a storage ring full of borrowed imperial artifacts.

Finding anything this far out without a precise location required altitude and patience. The steppe was vast. He’d been forced to cycle Electrokinesis through his Core, pushing his physical senses to their limiters, while flying high enough that the air grew almost too thin to breathe. His enhanced vision picked out the large herds and camps dotting the grasslands below, even from many kilometers away.

From there, finding Wargah’s Tier 2 signature hadn’t taken too long.

Alexander had dropped in without ceremony, ousting the big man from his hut and passing out on a pile of pelts.

Wargah had apparently stood guard outside until he woke a few hours later.

Runners had been sent to gather the other clan leaders, but Wargah and Tresko had taken him to see something important while Alexander waited.

The Nightmare gateway sat in a shallow valley between two hills, and the great clans had turned it into an efficient killing ground. They’d built a massive wooden structure over the gateway itself, connecting the two hills together, and covering everything beneath.

It reminded Alexander of a ship’s hull, just inverted. The curved beams arching overhead were sealed with packed hide and clay, and Tresko had explained that it was done to ensure the Nightmares couldn’t escape through the gaps.

It was a literal death trap.

Inside, along the flanks, stones had been piled high to form raised embankments on three sides. Trenches were carved into the hillsides, reinforced with logs and packed dirt for extra cover. Fighters lined the high ground in staggered formations, each holding position with clear sightlines to the killing floor around the gateway.

Behind them, reserves waited in secondary trenches, ready to rotate forward whenever the front line tired.

Or died.

Their tactics were simple, but they were also incredibly effective.

They worked in shifts, and each person had a role. Spearmen held the line around the gateway, while wand-wielders waited above and behind, ready to rain elemental attacks on anything that exited.

More fighters were positioned to reinforce any line that broke, and support personnel dragged wounded back, clearing space for fresh bodies to join the fight, all without disrupting the line.

In the short time Alexander was there, he watched twenty-three Nightmares arrive. Every one was met with a coordinated response that destroyed it within a minute. Even when two burst through at the same time, reserve fighters activated without hesitation.

It was impressive. And it was also obvious that they’d been doing it for a long time. There was an almost mechanical efficiency to everything. A system of violence, refined through repetition and deadly necessity.

Beyond that though, Alexander saw it for what it was. A leveling operation. The clan fighters were rotated through combat exposure in a controlled environment where risk was managed and the experience was constant. The Nightmares were somewhat predictable, even if they weren’t entirely mindless. They rushed through and fought without fear, then died, and each cycle meant the fighters grew stronger.

They’d turned a Nightmare gateway into a training ground.

But despite the efficiency, there was a cost.

The fighters were tired. Even without Electrokinesis, he could see it in how they held their weapons between fights, in the slightest of delays when formations were called. They were strong, and certainly they were getting stronger, but attrition was already setting in.

The Nightmares seemed endless.

When Alexander asked Tresko about their losses, the man had fallen quiet for a while, before telling him they’d lost another twenty-four fighters across both gateways in the past month. Each death was a gap in the formation which took longer to replace with someone equally trained.

The wands he’d provided helped, though not all were equally useful. Elemental attack spells were useful, but only when not using like for like. Casting fire magic against a Nightmare made of fire accomplished nothing.

Control wands were worse. You couldn’t paralyze something without a nervous system. Couldn’t ensnare something which was ultimately formless.

And beneath it all, the fundamental math remained unchanged. Nightmares didn’t sleep. Didn’t mourn. Didn’t stop to rest or eat or drink. They just kept coming, one after another, hour after hour, day and night, in an endless tide that didn’t care about morale or cost or how many had already died.

The clans were winning every fight.

The clans were also losing the war.

While he waited for the clan leaders to arrive, he worked the problem with both mental threads. He only had twenty hours until the gateway opened. Twenty hours until he could go home. Droney had calculated the timing down to the minute, and there was enough time to handle what he’d come here to do before he needed to leave.

The clan leaders began filing in with their entourages. As the yurt filled, he recognized some of their bioelectrical signatures, though most were new to him. Wargah. Tresko. Geetra. Arryet and both of her elderly advisors.

Once everyone had arrived, Alexander opened his eyes and climbed to his feet. Droney hovered over his shoulder, ready to translate.

“I’ll keep this brief,” he said. “I’ve spent the past two weeks raiding Empire strongholds. This is what I’ve brought you.”

He reached into the ring. Staves materialized in the air around him, then clattered unceremoniously to the ground. He’d learned they weren’t as fragile as they looked, though from the gasps, he could have perhaps been a little more respectful.

The clan leaders stared.

Each staff was unique, varying in length and quality. Some had gemstones set into wood of different grains and colors. Others were simple things. All of them pulsed with a subtle energy.

He reached into the ring again, and this time wands poured out by the dozen. They piled beside him, a mound of metal that grew and grew until over a thousand of them lay heaped across the floor, many sliding down and rolling across the ground.

Alexander didn’t bother explaining. They knew better than he did which were combat wands and which were utility wands. He could identify some of them by now, but there were plenty with etchings he didn’t recognize.

The clans could sort them once he was done.

He reached into the ring one more time and finally pulled out the spellbooks. Five of them, each one dense and leather-bound.

These he set down with care. They’d been hard-won, and in some cases obtained only through extreme threats of violence.

Around him, everyone was silent. Selvah’s two remaining fingers were already twitching, but he paid the old woman no mind.

Alexander turned, sweeping his gaze over everyone. “This should be enough to arm every clan here and then some. I don’t know how you want to distribute them, that’s your business, but I insist on the same rules as before. Fair and equitable, with Wargah’s clan in charge.”

Wargah exhaled slowly. Perhaps he’d been uncertain about whether Alexander would still favor his clan or not.

Tresko leaned forward, eyes filled with restrained hunger. Geetra simply met his gaze and nodded.

Alexander continued. “There’s one more thing. The gateway I came through opens tomorrow.” He let Droney translate his words. “I don’t know when or if I will ever return, but I have come to respect the clans in the short time I’ve known them. I’ve seen how you care for your people. Witnessed your strange rituals and ways of life and your willingness to work together when your way of life is threatened.”

He turned to look at Minlah and Wargah and Selvah. Then Tresko and Geetra.

“Where I come from, I lead a guild. That’s kind of like a small clan. Like you, we work together, fight side by side to protect each other, and stand against anyone who tries to threaten what we believe in.” He waited, watching for the moment understanding dawned on their faces while Droney continued translating. “We are part of an alliance whose goal is to protect our world from what we only know of as ‘the Cataclysm.’”

Alexander took a breath.

“I’ve come to believe that the Cataclysm will include your clans, and the Empire of Stars, along with all the people and creatures and monsters from every other reality invading my world in order to survive what is already happening here.”

Several people murmured the word for ‘Nightmares.’ That was probably the only word he no longer needed translated.

Alexander offered a smile.

“I’d like to formally extend an invitation to the clans to become part of our alliance.”