[After much deliberation, I changed the telepathic lines from this:‘*thing telepathically*’, to this: [*thing telepathically*]. Sorry for confusing anyone who may not read any of my author’s notes]

‘How did it come to this?’ Mary asked herself. She was lying there, strapped to a stone altar in front of a giant contraption made of metal and mana. It was the god that this cult created to cause the end of the world. She was about to be sacrificed to it, her soul made into food for its growth, when it lashed out. Arcs of electricity had burned all of the grey-robed cultists black. She was alone now, alone with the machine god. Her mind blanked for a few minutes, staring at the machine. The core of the machine was a shiny golden metal ball the size of an apple with red lines running across its surface. There were eight ports built in which were used for inputting information and connecting it to other devices. Currently, one of the ports was housing a wire connecting it to a database containing all of the information the formerly alive cult possessed, another was pumping mana gathered in the air to the core, and a final was connected to an advanced filming camera that watched the whole room with its unblinking eye. The core was laying on a small pillar that went up to her waist made of metal. The top of it was indented and was filled with the blood of the cultists from an earlier ritual. The thought of pouring one’s blood into such a disgusting ritual would have made her stomach turn were it not for the fear she felt for the core.

She had heard stories about the ritual to create the core, and the terrible creature that it was from her adoptive father. She had been abandoned by her family when she was little but somehow had been found and adopted by the demi-human Arthur Grant. The man was a demi-human with one eye instead of two and an extremely muscular build. Apart from that, there was nothing different about her adoptive father from any other human.

She had grown up in one of the more wealthy neighborhoods in the city-state of Olsvania. Her early life was filled with mana practice, swordsmanship practice, and general knowledge about the standard subjects. She had few friends growing up, but it hardly mattered to her; getting stronger and fulfilling her new family legacy was the only thing important to her. The Grant family, which she had been adopted into, was an old family with a long history of battling with the Sect of the Divine Mechanism, and Mary wanted to follow her family’s path. She went to school in the public system, but found it to be extremely dull due to the fact that she was completely ahead of her peers. She much preferred to daydream about the tales of various ancestors who fought the Sect and their triumphs. Unfortunately for her dreams, the Sect was on its last legs when she graduated high school and there was only one major hold out hiding underground.

She had resigned herself to an ordinary life after graduation, ready to join the workforce as a professional swordsmanship teacher, when the Day of Purity happened. It was the explosion of political tensions that caused an ethnic firestorm to rage across the city. While she learned of such things later, throughout her childhood, there had been a growing movement in the state religion that wanted to remove all demi-humans from the borders of the city-state. There were even successful movements to create a law that ordered the execution of all demi-humans after the events of the Day of Purity called the Elimination Act. She stayed by her father’s side until the end; during that time he told her stories about the Machine God that the Sect had always aimed to create and the near fatal blow that was dealt to the Grant family after they had succeeded at one point, driving the family to near extinction. It was only by the sacrifices of the family that it was destroyed and he was the last biological Grant member due to the struggle. In his final moments he lamented the blindness of the world around him. He wondered to her why no one knew about the Sect, or if it was really that way all along. The words struck a nerve in her, as such an apocalyptic cult should not have flown under the radar for the hundreds of years implied by the stories she had heard.

Despite her lingering questions, just a few hours after the enactment of the Elimination Act, the new government stormed into her family’s estate and held the two at gunpoint. They carried advanced magical firearms that would have been hard to replace, which showed how credible of a threat Arthur Grant was. Before a battle could occur, however, the building exploded in a fireball, leaving almost everyone dead or dying. Mary was lucky that she was near a window that overlooked a wide river, as she was thrown into the river instead of being crushed by the falling debris or burned. In her last moments before falling into the river, she saw the telling grey robes of the Sect flying across the rooftops near her now-burning home. They were carrying a book that she had heard about from her adoptive father, they carried the book with the instructions to create the Machine God. She fell into the river and blacked out. When she awoke, she was on a beach at the outskirts of the city. Looking around, she figured out that she had drifted nearly 50 miles down river, to the northern shore of the island from the center. She recalled everything when she woke up, and steeled her resolve to stop the cult.

She was unsuccessful. She had to evade the new Purity Union and the Sect members while trying to find their homebase. Mary was eventually caught a few weeks into the chase and brought to their headquarters as a prisoner. They were not extremely powerful individually, but their numbers overwhelmed her immediately. She counted herself lucky that they were not the type of thugs that would do anything too repulsive to her when she was a prisoner, but she found their utter devotion to their god creepy in its own way.

After a week of being held captive, they wrapped her in cloth and brought her to the ritual room. It was shocking to see the hundreds of cultists all kneeling and praying to the Machine God once they unwrapped her. They were supposed to be on their last legs, but they had hundreds of members even in their weakened state. She realized that she had lost before the game even began.

‘It’s… pointless.’ She thought. Her enemies were numerous and powerful. Their defenses took minutes to get through as she was and they could kill her dozens of times within that time if she stood still. It was a miracle that she was able to evade for so long, as she should have been killed in the explosion that destroyed her home. She lost all will to fight at that point. She didn’t resist when they strapped her to the altar. She didn’t resist when they said their prayers to the Machine God. She didn’t resist when the head priest raised the dagger to take her life. All she did was stare up at the concrete ceiling. All she did was apologize to her father for failing to stop the Sect. All she did was lament the destruction that would ravage Olsvania. She saw the dagger plunge through the air, aiming for her heart when a bright blue light shot through the entire basement.

Once she gained vision again, she saw the members of the Sect all burned to a blackened crisp. She saw the walls burned black, the stone beneath her burned black, her restraints burned black. Everything in front of the Machine God was burnt black with electric mana. She was the only thing spared from its wrath. Her sweat stuck to her thin pink shirt and her legs shook with the power she saw. Even if the cultists were not expecting an attack, they had tools that protected them in the event of a sneak attack. She would have to give her all to successfully kill a cultist with a sneak attack, and the Machine God killed them all instantly while even sparing her. She was in awe of the power she saw. Even if it had been given a large amount of Mana, it would have taken a great amount of time to do something like that.

Mary pulled her arms up and the metal restraints instantly disintegrated. She pulled her legs and found the same situation. She stood up and gazed at the Machine in front of her, taking in every detail of the metal that made up the Machine God. It was little wonder to her mind that it was worshipped. Being able to kill so many so quickly with nothing but a purely mana-based attack was an impossible fantasy only thought possible by extraordinary coincidences.

She slowly walked up to it unimpeded. She was sure that her stupidity would have gotten her killed, but she made it to the core with no resistance. She may have feared it, but it saved her life, so she had to thank it. Before she could say anything though, it began to vibrate. She could almost feel what it wanted. It felt like it called out to her, ordering her to touch the core. She reached out, almost unconsciously, and grabbed the apple-sized core. It was not cold, like the blood it was drenched in, but it was warm. It beat like a heart in her hand as she pulled it upward, tugging on the wires around it.

She raised it up and followed its order: she put it to her chest, letting the bloody ball stain her clothes. Soon she felt her clothes peel away, charred from heat radiating off of the core. Despite the state of her clothes it felt pleasantly warm on her skin. Soon her skin caved and her flesh moved aside for the core. She felt it dig through her chest and end up in her heart, embedding itself there and reforging the hole made in her chest, letting the wires connected to the core be pushed out of her chest.

As soon as the process was finished, she panicked. It was the first time she had felt so compelled to do something like that and she realized that she shoved the core of the Machine God into her heart. She could feel it working in tandem with her body. Pumping her blood. Feeding her flesh. Growing her cells. It felt supremely odd. It was no longer a thing to fear; it became a part of her body. She instinctively knew that the thing willingly separated itself from entangling her mind. It simply sat in her chest, beating away like a second heart. She stood there, feeling her blood flow in her body. Feeling air flow through her lungs with every breath. Soon, she started to feel her body even more. She felt her mana flowing through her body, being taken in from the air and then flowing through her veins. She even noticed how the core began to store mana for her, letting her take it out at any time. She conjured 3 compacted fireballs, taking a bit of her concentration to do so, but not crippling her train of thought like it usually did. She noticed that it affected her capabilities when shaping and affecting mana, making her more capable in doing so. She dispelled the fireballs. Sighing in satisfaction. But soon confusion struck her. She finally internalized that she had essentially become the vessel for the Machine God’s core. The thing that had destroyed her adoptive family was now a part of her. She began to feel conflicted. She knew that the core of the Machine God had destroyed her adoptive family and nearly wreaked havoc on the world at large, but she felt something from this thing. It was not malicious. It was not spiteful. It was protective. For some reason, she could feel its emotions when she was about to thank it. It was not like anything she expected. It was confused, mournful, scared- terrified even- at what it did, but the thing that stood out most was a desire to protect her. She didn’t know why, but it wanted to protect her.

She suddenly heard a sad voice ring in her head, [I’m sorry… I lost control]