Mazelton felt gibbering panic banging away in the back of his head. Ancient instincts told him to run, and were shouted down by much newer, Old Radler bred instincts. If it’s weird and isn’t chasing you, act like it hasn’t seen you and try to figure out what it’s doing. Worked with people, worked with strange machines, creatures, energy constructs and your aunts who might be all the above.

He breathed slow and deep for a four count, held for four, breathed out for four, held for four, breathed in for four, repeating this breath as he tried to catalog what he was seeing. Giant stone looking thing, shoots concentrated beams of heat and… something, some kind of higher energy, out of its mouth and eyes. Mouth for bulk carving-

It had just carved a sinuous trench some two feet deep and another foot wide.

Eye beams for more precision work, like the hatch marks on those rocks. Why they needed two projectors he didn't know, but they all seem to be running off of one fuck-off giant, hot as all hell core that seems to be self sustaining. Or at the very least, won’t have any trouble recharging with enough time and ambient heat.

The statue swept across the lake, hovering high in the air. Mazelton looked closely at the water beneath it- not a ripple. Or at least, no more ripples than the rest of the lake. That was not a good sign.

No visible damage on the exterior, but he wasn’t entirely sure what exterior damage would look like anyway. No obvious chips, cracks or the like, or at least nothing he could see at this distance. He let his eyes go hooded and tried to sense the flow of heat through the statute. Normally, this would be much, much too far away to pick up any kind of detail. And today was no exception to that general rule, the statue was like a mess of flaming lines. All just a big… oh. Oh that’s not good at all.

Mazelton took another hard look at the carvings it was making in the countryside, visualizing the patterns and trying to memorize the form. Then he started slowly crawling backward. Ffion looked at him, saw that Mazelton looked calm, and fell back with him. When they broke line of sight, Mazelton rolled onto his back and lay flat on the ground for a couple of minutes, breathing in the grassy, warm air and trying to figure out if he really saw what he thought he saw.

“So… Friend Mazelton… any ideas?”

Mazelton stared up into the vast blue empty. The clouds were tinged with gold, as the sun was just about to start setting.

“It’s not something I, or anybody this epoch, has any contact with. I’m not sure anyone in the last epoch did either. The best I can do is a kind of process of elimination.” Mazelton feebly waved his hand. “Try to find a hole in history that it can fit into. Unfortunately, history has a lot of holes in it, so I can’t really nail down an epoch or a maker. I can only vaguely guess at its purpose.”

“It’s purpose is a good start. Knowing how to kill it or drive it away would be better.”

“Gonna need a minute on that one.”

Ffion nodded seriously.

“Of course.”

Mazelton felt like he should laugh at that, but he couldn’t work up the energy.

“Alright. Not this epoch. Not even going to go into the why’s beyond “No one has the technology base to even start on that.” Which they don’t. The Swabian polishing heritage, at its very best, couldn’t have built a hundredth part of that statue.”

“What about the Ma clan?” Fion asked.

Mazelton shook his head. Another one of those “classic” questions.

“Making big, sophisticated pieces of technology requires a massive number of smaller bits of technology, each of which need their own supporting technologies and so on. Think of,” Mazelton looked her over, trying to think of an analogy. “Think of making a rifle compared to making a bow, compared to throwing a rock. Rock is easy. I see a rock, I throw a rock. I may hunt around for a good size and shape rock to throw, but that’s about it. Follow me?”

Ffion nodded.

“Ok, but now someone notices that tree branches are kind of whippy, and if you pull them back, they snap forward. And maybe you can do something with that stored energy. So they make bows. But to do that, you need the right wood, and it has to be aged in the right conditions, treated with the right oils, carved into the right shape, then bent into the right shape over time, then strung with the right kind of string, and so far we haven’t even gotten to the arrows. And that’s me really over simplifying. You know better than I do how hard it is to make a good bow.”

Ffion nodded again.

“So someone has to figure out how to do all those things and put everything together. Now compare that to a rifle. You start with figuring out what rocks have metal in them, then how to get the metal out of the rocks, then what can you do with the metal and we are going to be here all day and night if I have to walk through a technology net that leads us to cartridge rifles. The term “industrial base” very much applies.”

“Nobody in this epoch has the “industrial base” to support making something like this, even if the Ma knew how to make something like this.”

“Exactly. And who knows if we do? Not like we have an exclusive hold on high end polishing.” Working on it though!

“Last epoch?”

“Last epoch was heavy on mechanical technology. They did have sophisticated carving technology, but this doesn't look like anything from this continent. Doesn't look like anything I recognize from the last epoch at all, actually. Certainly nothing local to around here.” He waved vaguely.

“I heard the term “Nacon Empire” a lot recently?”

“Yeah, great example. Their technology was very heavily based on electricity. Which… don’t worry about what it is. Just know that anything running on it, surrounded by that much heat, would break instantly. Also this really doesn’t fit their aesthetic. That is, they just didn’t built things that looked like this, though they did build things that could operate without humans. Just like this.”

Mazelton frowned in thought.

“Something the Nacon secretly made?” Ffion asked?

“No. Or at least, I really don’t think so. Again, it just doesn’t look like their stuff. Something like this would have been marked by its makers, or at the very least the iconographs of the city and caste that built it. They slapped labels on everything. And I do mean everything.”

Mazelton grinned. Lettie told him once that they even branded sperm and ova, humans very much included. Long since blurred into non existence, at this point, but for a dozen or so generations it was still heritable.

“Very likely not the Nacon. What’s interesting to me is that it might be something the Nacon heard of and was inspired by.”

“Like what?”

“Like the epoch before them, there was a civilization- nobody really knows what they called themselves- but they were absolutely top notch polishers. Freakishly good, but almost no physical artifacts from their era survived. Heat tech self-destructs over time.” He looked in the statue’s direction. “Apparently with some exceptions.”

“It self-destructs?”

“Ever notice how a light core just stops working after a while, or looks kind of worn even if you were really gentle with it?”

“Yes?”

“Same deal.”

Ffion looked mildly stumped at that, but refocused.

“Doesn’t help up with this thing, though.”

“Not really, no. My weapon won’t reach it, and even if I shot it from a centimeter away, it would just eat the heat like a tasty snack.”

Ffion thought about that.

“So we are back to trying to figure out what it wants.”

“Which will likely relate to who made it, yes.”

“And we don’t know who made it.”

“Right. Another point- did you see how it flew?”

“It was thirty meters in the air. Hard to miss.”

“No, I mean, physically. How it flew.”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Birds fly by pushing themselves up with their wings and pushing the air down below them. Bullets fly by exploding gas behind them. You fly, for a second, when you push against the ground and jump up. In all these cases, something is pushing against something.”

“And?”

“And it looks like that statue isn’t. Or if it is, it is doing it so gently I can’t see any impact on the world around it. Something that big should be heavy. Heavy means bigger push. It’s moving fast- bigger push. But there is no sign of it pushing the water in the lake. No big waves or even ripples.”

“That… is worrying. But I don't see the significance, compared to death eyes.”

Mazelton had to admit that was a good point.

“It matters because it means that it is operating off a technology base that I can’t even describe well. Something that lets it interfere with some of the basic laws of the world, as I had understood them until today. And it’s carving up the land.”

“I had sort of thought it had gone mad.” Ffion muttered.

“It might have done, but I don’t think so. I think it’s carving something.” Mazelton let his long fingers dance in the air.

“Complex heat devices don’t just have complex carving on the core, they are carved and polished in such a way that the heat that leaves the core interacts with the surrounding material in the way the polisher wants. A really basic example would be… you could get all the light in a light core going more or less forward by putting a shiny metal bowl behind it. You could do the same thing but with a much brighter, more amplified beam, if you carved a back plate for the core using some very specific patterns for the light to bounce off of.”

“Never seen something like that.”

“Basically no call for it out here. But it exists.”

“So…”

“So I think the statue is the “core” and it’s building the machine it’s going to socket into. And right now, I don’t know what kind of machine it is.”

Ffion buried her face in her hands, then looked up.

“So what do I tell the tribe?”

“I don’t know. I will stick around for a while longer and try to understand the carving. No promises, but… there are patterns to carvings. You might not know exactly what a thing is for, but you can sometimes make a guess as to how it’s doing it.”

“Thank you.” Ffion nodded. Not what she was looking for, but dangerous work deserved at least a “thank you.”

Mazelton closed his eyes, enjoying the stabby, scratchy, not soft at all prairie grass. “One other thing which I deeply hope is not relevant. The Nacon had a myth about how their epoch would end. Turned out to be totally wrong, but it was so common that copies of it aren’t all that hard to find.” Mazelton opened his eyes and looked over at Ffion. “The Descent of the Gods and Devils.”

Mazelton was hauled off to another lake, to explain everything all over again to the tribal leaders. He was then “invited” to tell the story of The Descent of the Gods and Devils. In the light of a dung chip fire, Mazelton stood, posing his body as he told the story.

“Long ago, before lightning was tamed and the winds were made obedient, before both earth and sea learned of the Nacon’s Truth, lived the Devils. Bloodless, breathless, but not filled with holy lighting. Instead they ate and shat the poisonous invisible flames that polluted the world. They dug warrens and ate the good metals and even sickened lands beyond their ability to heal. This went on for so long that time had no meaning.”

Mazelton wore a grieving face, posing as one in prayer.

“Then from the hearts of the mountains and the depths of the seas came the Gods. They too were breathless and bloodless and filled with invisible flames, but where the Devils had to eat and excrete to live, the Gods were perfect and whole. They saw the havoc that the Devils wrought upon the world and were outraged!”

He struck a furious pose, a fist raised above his head to smite a sinning world.

“The Gods flew out, not allowing the red dust of the world to stain them. They swept through the world, healing the lands and cutting out sickness. Where they found Devils, they fell upon them and warred upon them and sought to destroy them utterly. But the Devils were not so easily defeated. For in truth, this was more their world than the Gods- they had been upon it longer.”

He crouched forwards, arms bent like a praying mantis, bright teeth shining in the dark.

“They built terrible traps, so destructive entire mountains would vanish into pillars of flame and heat and the poison fires. They saw the burning lights shown by the Gods, and repaid them with their own mocking black flames. The very air was shattered and the sky pierced with the fierceness of their retaliation.”

Mazelton swept his arms in great arcs, from high to low and back again.

“They warred for years, but soon the burden on the world became unbearable. The land was broken, and nothing would grow upon it. The seas dried up, and the rivers and the lakes with them. The system of the world... stopped.”

Mazelton stilled himself, showing the world dying.

“The Devils and the Gods conferred. There could be no peace between them, nor truce, but the destruction of the world benefited neither of them. So they agreed to a change of battlefield.”

Mazelton slowly drew his hands up, into the night sky.

“They chose to war amongst the stars. Before they left, they did the bare minimum to keep the world alive, not wanting to benefit the other side should they lose. The world turned. In time, some of the clay they had warred over woke up, and made more of itself. These were the Potuk. But the Potuk were only unfired clay, and knew they could not live long. So the Potuk gathered up the animals and distilled their most perfect essence. They made humans. And to the humans they gave their own spark- consciousness, and dominion over the world.

“They also left this warning, the same warning I give to you- One day the Gods or the Devils will return. If it is the Devils, they will simply eat what they will and destroy what they will. Humanity will be reduced to food, little hunted prey for the vast stone beasts. If it is the Gods, humanity will simply be wiped away. For the Gods did not intend humans to exist, and thus we stain their perfect world. It is only through transcendence that we may survive, away from the world that birthed us.”

Mazelton bowed and sat. There was no applause.

The elders shared a look with each other. They could connect the dots just fine.

“You think this is one of the Devils the Nacon feared?”

“I fear it is one of the Gods. Though I don’t understand what it is doing there.” Mazelton tapped his lips. “I also think it’s quite the coincidence that a epochs old myth emerges at the same time slave machines bearing the totem of the Nacon appear.”

“You think one incited the other?”

“I do.”

The elders looked at each other.

“We will have to discuss this further. Do you have any other suggestions?”

“I’m afraid not. I will take a look at what it is carving tomorrow. I expect it will be pretty well along by that point. Might give us some clues. A couple of other thoughts- might be worth reaching out to the Sky Runners. See what they have seen. How widespread is this? Is it just the one statue or are there more?”

That caused a stir.

“Second- just because this looks a lot like a “god” from a Nacon myth doesn't make it one. It might be a mistake to just accept their version of the facts. Worth remembering that the story I read was a translation of a written fragment of a larger book from towards the end of the last epoch. And the Nacon only printed books for the lowest tiers of their society. Anything really important would have been kept by the dry mind and shared with those who needed to know it. All we can really say is that the Nacon thought it was important for the lowest tiers of their society to know this story, be able to recognize these things, and treat them as hostile.”

“Hard to imagine that it could be friendly. It killed a lot of people without saying a word.”

Mazelton spread his hands

“Just because it’s an inhuman, murderous thing beyond our human comprehension doesn’t mean you can’t work with it. You just have to learn how to talk to it.”

That night, Mazelton slept under a tarp held up by sticks. He had his three piece sleep system- ground sheet, pad and blanket, just as the maritally minded lady from… was it South Bay or South Port? He was pretty sure it was South Bay. Well, what she told him to do, anyhow. No comfy cot. No little folding desk, or hanging lamps.

He couldn’t say he liked the change.

What the hell was going on out here? It hardly felt fair. Most epochs started slow, for a few millennia, then there was an accelerating curve of both population and development before a catastrophe. The exact timelines varied, but that’s more or less how it tended to work. You aren’t supposed to get two end-of-epoch level events in the early days of an epoch! The Nacon dry mind was pretty much untouchable by any land based organization, as there really was no functional anti-machine weaponry developed yet.

As for the statue, it was an inspiration. Mazelton rolled over and dug out a little light core. It wasn’t very bright, but it was good enough for him to pull out a little notebook and start sketching. He tried to draw the statue from memory, its abstract lines and curves. A rather lovely face, good symmetry. He thought he captured it pretty well, but it looked flat. He turned the page.

This time he tried to draw the heat network inside of the statue. He had been damned far away, but that black sun pumped around so much heat that he could make out some things. No matter what the story said, it couldn’t be a perfectly closed system. Energy had to come from somewhere, and it was certainly burning vast quantities of heat flying around and cutting dirt. No, he would sooner believe that it was passively scavenging heat, and had been for who knows how many millenia under the earth. Now that it had stored up enough energy for… whatever it was doing, it popped back up again.

He traced the big flowing lines into a wireframe of the statue. It was a gorgeous, glowing coronae of energy, rising up out of the core, racing through the body and, having spent its vigor and sweeping up any detritus along the way, fell back into the dark sun to be warmed and sent out again. Like a second heart, circulating heat instead of blood. He closed his eyes and visualized it. It was the answer to an old “Then What?” What, exactly, was core polishing meant to look like if you did reach the fabled dark sun realm? The answer was to become an eternal sun, devouring and expelling simultaneously. Mazelton shivered. What sort of impact would that have on a human body? He had no idea.

It might be dumb. It might be lethal. It was definitely a problem he couldn’t solve. But he was still going to go and see the statue again tomorrow.