The Machine God

Chapter 272

What Lies Beneath

Alexander sat on a barrel at the edge of the docks, legs dangling, and watched the sun sink toward the horizon.

The harbor spread out before him. A dozen ships in various sizes, the smaller ones tied to the wooden piers, the larger ones anchored further out where the bay deepened. Their hulls rocked gently with the tide. Lanterns were beginning to flicker to life along the masts as the light faded.

In neither the world he came from nor the one he’d awoken in as a superhuman had he ever seen anything quite like it.

He imagined this was what Earth must have looked like a hundred years ago, before skyscrapers and hover vehicles replaced the skyline. When people still crossed oceans under canvas and wind.

Though the ships of both his Earths probably didn’t have magical runes stitched into the sails, glowing faintly as the daylight dimmed. And they probably didn’t have wizards standing at the bows of even the smallest boats, waving wands to send gusts of wind billowing through the rigging.

Alexander took a slow breath of salt air and let it out.

The view was beautiful.

Since arriving on Earth 1, he’d seen so many sights he could never have imagined before. He’d seen worlds from above the clouds. Seen Jupiter up close. Visited alien space stations.

But there was just something about the simple beauty of the ocean and the sun disappearing for the night. Maybe he needed to move his workshop to the beach, so he could see this kind of view more often.

Droney beeped.

Alexander huffed. “You’re so impatient. Is it really that bad being my stomach?”

Droney didn’t respond. It felt like the equivalent of a dog turning to face the other direction.

Alexander untucked his shirt. “Okay, fine. But only because you deserve to see this view.”

Droney fell out.

Alexander caught the little drone with Metallokinesis and leveled it out, rotating Droney so it could take in the scene. Someone on a nearby fishing boat jabbed his friend in the ribs, then pointed. The other man turned and stared.

Alexander ignored them, and peeled off the baggy shirt, dumping the rolled clothes he’d used as padding on the ground. With a thought, he pulled his own shirt out of the ring and dragged it over his head. Then he pulled out his armor pieces one by one, equipping them as he went. Chest piece. Right-hand gauntlet. Boots. And the long black leather jacket.

Glancing down at his pants, he considered changing those, but decided to keep them. The fishermen were still watching, and he wasn’t an exhibitionist. It was a close call though. He was not a fan of the wizard world’s tailoring skills.

The sun vanished behind the horizon.

“Time to go.”

Alexander slipped off the barrel and headed for the city center, carrying Droney beside him as he went.

The streets were quieter now. Market stalls were being packed up. Stores were closing windows and blinds.

There were still a lot of people though. Everyone noticed him immediately. A couple crossing the street stopped and stared. A merchant pulled his blinds open again to watch him pass. A group of teenagers on a corner went silent, their conversation dying as Droney floated past at shoulder height.

Alexander kept a steady pace down the main street. Even if they thought Droney was a spirit familiar, his dark armor and the leather jacket must have looked so strange to them. Alien, even.

A woman pulled her child closer as he passed. An old man sitting on a bench outside a shuttered bakery watched him with narrowed eyes, then looked away. Two men carrying crates between buildings set them down and waited, motionless, until he’d turned the corner.

People didn’t run or panic, but they did move out of his way, some instinct buried in their minds recognizing that whatever was about to happen, they didn’t want any part of it.

Droney beeped softly. An observation.

“Yeah,” Alexander said. “They’re scared.”

Maybe it was because they saw something foreign in him now. Maybe it was something simpler than that. Maybe they just feared anyone that walked through their city like they owned the street. The Empire had probably taught them that lesson long before he arrived.

The central square opened ahead of him. Cobblestones stretched wide between the surrounding buildings, empty except for a stone fountain at its center with glowing runes powering the water.

Beneath the square, buried under layers of stone and earth, the anti-flight ward’s node pulsed faintly.

They’d bound the magic into an obelisk made of iridium. The moment he’d sensed it, he’d known he wasn’t leaving the city without borrowing it. He had some stored back at the lair, taken during the New York heist, but there was no way he could ignore an opportunity to triple his reserve of the precious metal.

Not when someone had just left it lying around in the open for anyone to grab.

Besides, Augustus could probably learn something from it.

Alexander held out a hand and reached into the earth with Metallokinesis. Two tonnes of metal began to rise, tearing through dirt and packed rock. The ground beneath the fountain bulged. The fountain tilted, water spraying across the cobblestones, as it lifted, then toppled over and shattered.

He frowned. He would have taken the fountain too, but he didn’t know what would happen once it was in the ring. It was possible the magic might still function, filling the ring entirely with water, and damaging some of his stuff inside.

All around him, people watched and murmured. But still nobody screamed or panicked.

The obelisk tore through the surface.

Alexander rotated it once, examining the various runes etched into each of its faces, then sent it into the ring with a thought.

The restriction on his flight vanished immediately.

Droney beeped. Elated.

Alexander launched upward, dragging Droney with him. Some of the crowd stumbled backward, gasping. Others grabbed at each other.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

He was above the rooftops in seconds, and the city spread out below him. Lanterns and torchlights lined the streets, holding back the dark. The harbor glittered to the south. And to the north, the Marquess Estate sat on its rise, walls and iron spikes silhouetted against the last traces of twilight.

Alexander arced high. The night sky would hide him from the guards below as long as nobody thought to look up, and at this hour, against a dark sky, in a city where flight didn’t exist, his odds should be good. What he’d done in the square would draw the attention of whatever authorities existed eventually. Someone would report the stranger who tore an obelisk out of the ground and flew away. But that report had to travel on foot before it eventually reached the Estate, and he intended to be done long before it arrived.

He killed his momentum above the mansion and dropped.

The roof was slate tile, sloped on four sides, with a small stone housing near the center where a stairwell led down into the building. He landed beside it without a sound, boots settling onto the tiles, Metallokinesis absorbing the impact perfectly.

He released Droney, and the little machine settled into position, its visor sweeping left and right. Guards patrolled along the walls, their torchlights flickering along the perimeter. The two Tier 2 signatures pulsed beneath his feet.

Alexander approached the door and flicked a finger. The door swung open, and he floated down the stairwell instead of walking, mapping the building and tracking its inhabitants as he went.

The rooftop stairwell ended at a landing on the third floor. A single corridor stretched left and right, connecting to the main body of the building. One signature moved along it, heading left to right. Alexander waited, hovering just inside the doorway, until it passed.

Then he shot across the corridor and through the archway on the far side, into the main stairwell. Wood steps ran down along the wall to a landing, then reversed direction for the next flight.

Nobody on the stairs. Nobody within two floors of them.

Alexander dropped. He took each flight fast, reversing at the landings without slowing, Metallokinesis keeping him inches above the steps. Third floor to second. Second to first. First to the heavy wooden door at the bottom that could only lead to the basement.

Droney followed, a silent shadow at his back.

He flicked a finger, and the door opened. He floated through the doorway, closing it behind him just as quietly.

The stairs ahead descended into darkness. They were made of old stone, rather than the dark wood of the rest of the house.

Alexander cycled Electrokinesis through his Core, ramping his senses to their full, and his vision cut through the darkness. He continued downward, and found a short hallway at the bottom, ending in a metal door. It was strange. The house had looked perfectly normal, for its time, but he could sense the metal alloy in the walls that the false inner and outer facades hid.

The door ahead was the first visible evidence of what he already knew.

He looked up at the ceiling and focused for a moment, tightening his senses, but keeping their touch subtle.

No changes in the occupants above. None in the surrounding guards. Beyond the walls of the estate, people were gathering at the plaza. Others were running, but so far none were heading in this direction.

Alexander returned his attention to the door. There were faint etchings in the metal face, pulsing with dim light. Enchantments. Perhaps part of the magic that was blocking his senses from penetrating through the basement ahead. Maybe protections or defenses or even alarms.

There was no way to know.

There was also no way to open the door that he could see. No handle. No lock. Just a seam in a frame attached to the wall behind it.

Alexander studied it for a moment. Whatever was behind the enchantments, behind the shielding, behind the door that didn’t want to be opened, he wasn’t going to learn it by standing here.

Which meant forcing his way in. That meant noise and broken enchantments, which would probably alert the wizards above within seconds.

“Oh well.”

He held out his hand. Metallokinesis seized the door and twisted. Metal screamed as it folded inward, the frame buckling, the enchantments flaring once in protest before the runes cracked and went dark. Alexander wrenched the ruined door aside and stepped through.

The room beyond was wrong.

It stretched far longer than the footprint of the mansion above could account for. Fifty meters. Maybe more. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all the same metal alloy, and every surface was covered in runic script that crawled across them in continuous motion. The symbols shifted and rearranged themselves, drifting along the walls, sliding across the floor, spiraling up to the ceiling and back down again.

Watching them move made his eyes want to slide off the surfaces entirely.

Spatial manipulation. An entire chamber expanded beyond its physical dimensions and held there permanently by magic.

Pods lined both walls. Dozens of them. Glass and metal, each one large enough to hold a person, because each one did. Men and women floated inside, suspended in a pale liquid that glowed faintly where the crawling runes passed beneath them. Their eyes were closed. Tubes ran from the pods into the walls, connecting them to the runic network that covered every surface.

They were probably Harborhill’s missing people.

Alexander’s jaw tightened.

Three quarters of the way down the room, the pods ended. The crawling runes converged on the floor ahead of them, flowing toward a shimmering barrier that stretched from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. It rippled with color, prismatic light shifting across its surface in slow waves, blocking his view.

He kept moving forward, Droney floating above his shoulder.

The barrier cleared as he got closer. Behind it was a gateway.

It was open.

Alexander’s breath caught.

Something stared back at him through the gateway. A single eye, as tall as he was, filling most of the opening. Its iris was as black as the void.

And beneath it, pressed against the lower edge of the gateway, was a mouth. Wide. Curved upward at the corners, and full of teeth that didn’t fit together properly, overlapping and jutting at angles that no living thing should have.

It was smiling at him.

“So, how are you finding our world, superhero?” A voice whispered from his right.

Alexander spun.

An old man stood three paces behind him. He had a long white beard that reached his chest, and wore golden robes decorated with black stars. A golden cap, tall and pointed, sat on his head. No staff. No wand. No spellbook. Just his arms tucked behind his back and a calm expression on a weathered face.

He looked every bit the wizard from a holo.

Alexander’s hand had come up instinctively, Electrokinesis crackling across his fingers. He held it there for a second. Then he let it drop.

“You’re not real.”

He turned back to the eye behind the gateway.

Artensah cocked his head. “How can you tell?”

“You first. How did you find me again?”

Artensah considered that for a moment. “A fair trade.” He glanced upward, toward the ceiling and whatever lay above it. “You entered within the awareness of one of my worshippers.” His gaze lingered on the ceiling. “Though she is not one who loves me. She lives in fear of me.”

He turned back to Alexander.

“You know of what I speak, yes? You are Exalted yourself, are you not?”

Alexander nodded, almost distractedly. His attention remained on the eye. “We call them Divine.” He paused. “That still doesn’t explain how you found me. She’s up there and I’m down here.”

“You are standing within my Domain. It extends wherever my followers and their magic are.” He gestured at the crawling runes, the pods, the barrier. “This room is saturated with her work. And her work is an extension of her Will. And her Will is bound to mine.”

Alexander frowned. “That sounds pretty strong.”

The old wizard inclined his head. “Your turn.”

Alexander shrugged. “I can sense the bioelectrical signatures of living things. Your illusion doesn’t have one.”

“Ah.” The illusion studied him with eyes that carried more warmth than Alexander expected from a man whose red threads numbered in the thousands. “I’m surprised you told me, to be honest. I thought your kind more deceptive and manipulative.”

Alexander laughed. “That describes me plenty. But I’m a man of my word.”

Above, the Tier 2s were reacting to his presence. Activity rippled through the Tier 1s as they responded to something as well, some of them already racing toward the building.

Alexander turned back to the door. He lifted it from the ground with Metallokinesis, and began uncrumpling the metal, restoring its original shape.

Artensah watched curiously.

Alexander flicked a finger and the door snapped back into place. He reached out a hand and squeezed. The metal walls groaned as they deformed under the pressure, stretching and filling in the gaps.

Then he filled the metal with his Will and locked it into place. It would buy him some time to figure out exactly what the fuck he’d just walked into.

He turned to Artensah’s illusion.

“Alright. You have my undivided attention. Let’s talk.”