Mazelton had crawled to a little ripple in the land, too short to be honored with the term “ridge,” and peaked over it. The giant stone statue was still sweeping the land and carving, carving, carving away at the sandy soil. It didn’t bother much with the lake, though Mazelton noticed that the statute had rounded out a portion of it. The lake had been longer than it was wide, with a bit of a bend in the middle. Now, the south portion was widened a bit, made more neatly circular. Mazelton had no idea why.

The carvings were immensely frustrating to look at. They all looked familiar, without actually being familiar. Carvings varied from legacy to legacy, but you could sort of see the similarities. Nobody’s light cores were that unique, for example, but a device that could concentrate light finely and intensely enough to cut metal? Well, that would be very unique superficially. But if you took it apart, you would see the individual bits were, more or less, recognizable. At least recognizable to the point where you could confidently say “that’s the light core, those carvings bounce the light into a single line…” and so on. Even if you didn’t know exactly what the machine was, you could take a decent guess based on the carvings. Harder to do, though, even when the parts were smaller than the width of a human hair.

Here, the carvings were comically huge. No longer content with microscopic etchings, the “god” had created a macroscopic machine around itself. The hooks and loops were so vast that they were disorienting. It was hard to find where a piece of the machine began or ended, so identifying the parts was immensely difficult. Adding insult to likely injury, Mazelton would find himself certain of a bit of carving- an amplifier, a resistor, a frequency modulator- only to follow the lines a bit further and find out that it couldn’t possibly be what he thought it was.

Mazelton dropped back down behind his little ripple of dirt. He took a moment to indulge in self pity. He never pretended to be some amazing polisher. But he had paid attention in his classes. He tried. One of his teachers gave him an apple for acing the monthly test and he had been so proud! He carried the apple around for days before he could bring himself to eat it. Now he felt like he owed the teacher an apple refund.

He sighed. That teacher was likely dead. As was anyone who really knew what the hell this thing was doing. Mazelton closed his eyes and tried to visualize the carvings from above. It was a patchy picture, and he was missing at least half of it. Useless. Then he tried to visualize the statue, with better luck. He could see more clearly the way heat flowed in and out of the dark sun core. Too soon to conclude what, exactly, it all meant, but he did his best to memorize the flows.

Mazelton opened his eyes and looked around. The Two Souled had hidden themselves, as had the spirit beasts. As best he could tell, the only things really moving around here was the wind through the grass and the seven meter tall murder rock. And the omnipresent AAAAAAhhhhaaaaAAAAhhHAHHHAHAAAAAAAAA noise was really, really wearing a hole through his ears.

Well. At least it had gotten a bit quieter. That was something.

“Pssst.” A spot of prairie that had definitely been empty a second ago suddenly was filled by Ffion. She pointed back towards where the cheve were hobbled. He nodded at her. He hoped that she had some sort of ghostly movement ability. It would be really handy right now.

He asked.

“What, no, I just know how to hide. How else could I hunt?”

“Shame. Well just thought I would ask."

Ffion shook her head, then forcibly returned to what she originally wanted to talk about.

“So have you figured anything out?”

“Anything useful? No. It’s clearly carving some parts to a vast, core powered machine, but it’s style is so ancient, so remote from anything I have been trained on, I can’t even guess as to what it’s for. I mean… It's carving all this into dirt. Not special dirt or anything, just dirt. Usually you have to use a metal, and a particular type of metal depending on what you are trying to do.”

Mazelton threw his hands up in frustration.

“Dirt, especially compressed dirt, is not a useful medium for core machines! Nothing runs on dirt! And nothing has carvings that big!”

“I hate to disagree, but at least one thing does.”

Mazelton barked a laugh at that.

“Yes. Quite right. Do send word through the Sky Runners if you ever figure out what it does. The trail the caravan is on is that way, right?” Mazelton pointed in what he thought was a southerly direction. Ffion pushed his fingers forty five degrees to the right.

“Best place to intercept them is that way, actually. Nothing more you can do?”

“Ffion, on my very best day, after consulting a handy library of books and having extensive discussions with some clan elders, I wouldn’t be qualified to polish that things toes. It is so far beyond me I can’t even explain it. The only thing I can suggest is telling everyone that it’s out here. Tell the Clans the Collective, the Confeds, every tribe, polis and free republic. Hopefully someone, somewhere dug up a doomsday weapon and is willing to sell it. Otherwise, the best you can do is hope it doesn’t care about you until you can figure out how to talk to it.”

“Not what I was hoping to hear, but… thank you for coming all this way to take a look at it.”

“Oh, it’s been a real education for me too. Absolutely worthwhile trip, though my ability to sleep at night is now so-so. And hey, at least the music stopped.”

The two of them looked at each other, then dove back to the ripple. The “god” had moved to the middle of the lake. Standing rings of waves formed around it. Mazelton could see carefully pulsed heat shining out of the statue. Layered over the base waves of heat were narrower, stronger pulses of heat, activating different portions of the carvings. He still had no damn idea what it was doing. The statue turned to the east. Made minute adjustments to its orientation. Then it started blasting heat into the sky from its eyes.

Mazelton had no idea why, until he started seeing tiny explosions. First one or two, then dozens. A hundred. Small objects were raining down from the sky, getting bigger as they fell. More heat beams, smashing away at something, ignoring the bigger things that were dropping. About two hundred feet above the surface, the falling objects deployed parachutes.

Mazelton and Ffion were on their stubby little cheve in record time, headed roughly south. More importantly, headed away. This wasn't their fight. About ten meters above ground, the parachutes were jettisoned and airbags burst out around the materiel. They slammed into the ground, bounced once or twice, then the airbags retracted. Machines, armed machines, rolled out.

The Nacon had arrived.

The machines came in a few varieties, some with wheels, others with belts of tracks, more still with legs. Many imitated insects in their movements, while others dispensed with the simulacra of life entirely. That horrible CRACK that Mazelton could still hear in his dreams echoed off the prairie. Ricochets started scything through the grass. Something screamed nearby. Mazelton hoped it was a cheve but he didn’t really know. They were galloping flat out, almost lying down on the neck of the cheve as the horse ran for its life.

Between the hot insertion and the airbags, the slave machines had been scattered wide and deep. Not that it mattered a damn to them, apparently, as they swept through the scrub, slugs crack crack cracking away with the terrible accuracy of a mind that would never know fear. One of the six legged horrors planted its feet wide, a long barrel swinging up and around. A thump. Then another. Then an almighty CRASH as the ricochet slammed through some of the slave machines. Mazelton prayed that they would ignore him.

He knew better. But he looked back. And learned what the statue had been making.

The slugs weren’t ricocheting off the statue, they were being swatted away with precise blasts of heat. The patterns etched in the dirt were glowing in his sight. Almost delicate flicks and tickles of heat came from the “god” and bounced off the patterns, gathering power and striking at the best possible angle to destroy and deflect the projectiles. Waste, or things coming from too high an angle, were deflected into the lake. It was making a fortress. It was carving itself a war-nest usable by only a God.

The God rose up, and began its counterattack. The sky was scorched clean to it’s satisfaction. It began to tidy up the land. Short blasts of terrible heat lashed out, punching holes neatly through the cores of the slave machines. Hundreds of bursts a minute. The bursts were silent, or nearly so, just an angry crackle as the air combusted from their passage. It rose up out of its war-nest and began sweeping the ridges and dips the machines were using for cover. Mazelton could feel the searing heat sweeping past, but so narrowly focused he got hardly a taste of it. North, south, east and west, the God split the compass rose and fiery blossoms bloomed across the prairie.

A slave machine appeared directly in front of Mazelton, and the cheve screamed and dodged to the side. The nimble pony avoided the worst of it, but he and Mazelton both took a tumble. The machine was too busy shooting at the God, barely sparing a leg to reach out and crush the recovering cheve’s heart. Mazelton was paralyzed for half a moment, then when he saw the machine was ignoring him, he dove for his tools and canteen. Everything else he abandoned at a run. Another crackle, then an oomph of air, and Mazelton could smell burning hair and grass. He kept running south.

He saw the spirit beasts around him as he ran. They were way out in front of him, of course. Mazelton was envious of how they could run, coiling and exploding over and over again across the miles of prairie. Not like him, who’s leg was already giving out.

Dozens, hundreds of the the slave machines had been dropped from the sky, the dry mind clearly hoping that speed and numbers would make up for the absolute difference in quality. The scope of the slaughter had driven the machine mad, apparently, as some of the slave machines were throwing their defeated kin at the nest. What they thought they could achieve was beyond Mazelton. The God flew a hundred or more feet in the air. Untouchable. Unstainable by the dust of the world.

The remaining machines tried to dump their magazines all at once, no longer cracks or a staccato but a grumbling roar of noise. For a brief moment, the God stopped its slaughter and focused on defense.

The corpses in the God’s nest exploded. A plume of heat and dust and poison steam rose and swept out with terrible power, smashing Mazelton and the spirit beasts to the ground. The mists of Old Radler swept out and covered Mazelton once more.

Just for a second, but he was there again. Breathing in the heat and light and life of the oldest, greatest, most terrible city of the Eastern Edge. He was still that beaten, disliked child. He was laughing and dancing and flirting, and slowly poisoning the wills and minds of those he met, all for the Ma. The clan that he was proud of, feared, hated, respected. He was Ma, Zel Generation, and when it was all stripped away, only little Ton was left. A name picked out of the big jar of names by the Maternity Warden. Then the fog and smoke blew clear and the ground rang with the outrage of an awakened God.

The machines, the ones that didn’t die immediately under the invisible heat, went mad. The dry mind that sent them could no longer pull their strings. They stumbled about, trying to shoot the God, shooting each other, slamming into everything that moved, or failed to move. One smashed into a spirit beast, injuring its leg. Mazelton didn’t think, just ran towards the downed animal. The machine lurched around, turrets sweeping around but not shooting. Like it had forgotten how. Mazelton got himself between the beast and the metal hulk, its treads spinning madly. He found the nexus of the heat within it, and without a shred of thought, slammed his hand against it. What paltry little heat he had accumulated seeped through the armor. Something within the machine caught fire. It stopped moving.

Mazelton collapsed next to the wounded beast. It looked like the bone wasn’t broken, but there was an ugly gash. He poured water over it, dodging the snapping teeth to clean the wound. The burning smoke of the machine was starting to sting his eyes, but it was more important to bind the wound right now. Then the beast started barking urgently. Mazelton looked over his shoulder. The God had appeared.

“I'm sorry Danae.” It was all he could think to say.

Mazelton stood between the beast and the God, and gathered the dregs within him to his hands. He had implanted cores in those hands. Geegaws. Toys for illusions and amusements. To let him paint the mists. They were never intended to be weapons, but they were all he had. So he did the only thing he could think of. He traced the trifolium in the black, boiling smoke, and hung the emblem of the Ma Clan high. He prepared to die on his feet, as a Ma should. Surrounded by the enemy’s dead, in a sea of flame and heat.

“I’m sorry Danae. But it’s in the blood.” He didn’t know he was crying. He just didn’t want the beast to die with him. He would fall backward, covering the beast with his body. It was the least he could do.

The God looked at him. He could feel it’s attention on him. Weighing him. And then it flew past.