A dullscale child crept through the back alley behind a bakery, looking for an opportunity to steal a loaf of bread cooling in the racks just inside the door.

In the garden across the alley, a dozen dullscale workers were shaking large golden olives from the trees, and harvesting them in huge sack-cloth bags.

In the manor that overlooked the garden, a dullscale servant was whispering a joke to his master’s daughter, a glitterskin noble only a little younger than he. She was laughing quietly, and fluttered her eyes at him in a way that made him brave enough to tell another one. And maybe another, after that.

The ground shook.

The glitterskin girl let out a scream, and threw her arms around her dullscale servant.

In the orchard, all the olives fell off the trees, making a sound like heavy rain.

And a shelf fell over in the bakery, scattering warm, crusty loaves across the floor. The thief scooped three loaves in his arms, and scrambled down the street, with the baker shouting after him. Both of them were shaken to their knees by the quaking of the earth.

Columns trembled. Roofs collapsed, taking out entire stories with them. Trees were uprooted and flocks of small, speckled birds took to the air, squawking as the ground rumbled and heaved. Great cracks ran up the streets of Cyre, devouring people who were too slow to move.

Crowds rushed outside to find the source. Someone pointed up at the Emperor’s hills, and the crowds gasped in horror. Someone started screaming.

Great cracks carved the hills open, and chunks of stone rolled down the hillsides, kicking up tails of dust that towered over the city. The Old Quarter, full of Cyre’s most ancient noble houses, was swallowed by a landslide, until nothing could be seen of the Quarter save the highest columns of a temple sticking out of a fresh mound of dirt. The sound of so much soil and stone grinded and echoed against the marble buildings, though the deepest vibrations came from within the ground itself.

A single split crawled up the side of the Emperor’s hill, and when it came to His Everthrone, it split right down the middle. Half of the Emperor’s stone-and-metal effigy collapsed into the widening gap between the hills. The other half shuddered precariously as the hill it rested upon slid to the side. Then, it too collapsed.

The hills stopped. The grinding vibrations went silent, and the only thing anyone could hear was the last rattling sounds of landslides, slowing to a stop, and the coughing and moaning of xenos as dust filled the air.

When it cleared, the hills that had lorded over Cyre since the first Cyran walked out of the sea, were gone. In their place, a great pyramid, made of pure white metal, loomed. Its vast peak, aimed at the Scar above, threatened to pierce the atmosphere itself.

At the peak of that pyramid, sat a strange object like nothing the people had ever seen. Its exterior was all angular glass arranged in some meaningless, complicated pattern and reflected a cruel, sharp light from some other plane of existence.

People whispered and pointed, their voices filled with a new kind of fear as they watched the shapes inside that structure glow, and move in such unnatural ways. What it might be, they could only imagine…

Even Khadam didn’t know, not for certain.

She had impulsed a connection to the Library, and through its external sensors (most of which were degraded beyond use), she had seen the Emperor disappear into his Everthrone, and summon the pyramid. He was probably down there, right now, charging it into life.

Because of Poire. The Everlord of Cyre must have waited a long time for a glance at Sen’s Mirror, so that he could copy its pattern—and the little fool had given it to him.

Khadam refused to lose her temper.

“Poire. What is wrong with you?” Khadam said, stifling the rising emotion in her voice. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“I saved your life.”

“Explain.”

“The Emperor wanted to see Sen’s mirror, to configure his own. The two of them worked together a long time ago, before Sen betrayed him.”

“Did it ever occur to you that she betrayed him for a reason? The Emperor is not with us, Poire. We have no idea what that Mirror will do-”

“I do.” He said it with such certainty, that Khadam could only listen. “He was going to open it, either way. If he made the slightest error, it could have ripped open the Scar, too. It would have destroyed most of the system you’re in. And any other within a handful of light years.”

Khadam put a hand to her chest, trying to still her anger even as it twisted into doubt and confusion. If that’s true, then Poire had no choice.

“The Emperor doesn’t understand what he has,” Poire continued. “But I do. They had these, deep underground in my own conclave. Eight of them, and more in the other conclaves. There were so many dangers, so many tests. So much understanding, and it was all forgotten before the Emperor ever woke up.”

“Should I try to stop him?”

“No,” Poire said simply. There was a tinge of sadness in his voice, as if he actually felt bad for the Emperor, the very machine that had used him just to get this far. “When he enters the Mirror, he will enter another existence. You will see a great light, like a thousand gates opening all at once. And then he will die.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“No machine ever made can exist over there. They would have given us tools, otherwise, when they made us go over.”

“They sent you over? But you’re- wait,” Khadam said suddenly, “a thousand gates?”

“Or more.”

“The Swarm,” Khadam turned to Laykis. “They will sense it.”

“Perhaps that is why Sen hid her mirror inside a world,” Laykis said. “To hide it from the Swarm.”

“We must leave Cyre immediately.”

“What of the xenos?”

“What about the xenos?” Khadam threw her hands in the air. “They held us captive. They-”

“-were enslaved by Him. This isn’t their fault.”

Khadam only just stopped herself from saying They don’t matter. Because she wasn’t sure if she believed that anymore. She had come this far for a single purpose—was willing to do anything to see that purpose through—but now…

“There are more important things,” Khadam said. Even to her, it sounded awful.

“More important things than saving millions of lives?” Laykis said, her voice low and crackling.

Poire said, “If anyone can help them, it is you, Khadam.”

“How?”

“You are divine,” Laykis said, and kept talking before Khadam could argue, “You are the only one who can help them. The Swarm will come, and destroy them like they destroyed Sen’s world. There will be nothing left. But if you do something, some of them might stand a chance. You are so much greater than you know, Khadam. You are human.”

Laykis was staring at her with an intensity that spoke volumes of her belief.

Khadam shook her head. What was the point in arguing with a machine that truly believed in gods? Of anyone, she should know better.

The worst part was, Khadam did have one idea. There was no guarantee it would work. It was probably a waste of time, and a dangerous one at that. If the Swarm came while Khadam was unprepared…

Khadam clenched her jaw, and blew out a sigh. “I’m still coming for you, Poire,” she said. “But you will have to wait a little longer.”

She severed the connection, and impulsed a new one. Khadam wasn’t sure if anyone would even answer—if the avians even knew how to work the receiver.

An unfamiliar avian voice answered, droning out a long preamble, “By the Order of the Royal House of Oqylla of Gaiam, you now have the honor of speaking with the Official Messenger of the Queen. Speak the code.”

“Code? What code? I need to speak to the Queen.”

“Who is this?” the voice demanded.

“Uh,” Khadam said.

The voice sounded more agitated now, “This is an official line, reserved only for the highest purpose, and requiring the Queen’s official approval.”

Laykis leaned forward, and her voice clicked as she whispered, “The divine human Khadam requests the ear of the Queen. Say that.”

Khadam repeated after her, and the voice on the other end changed instantly, “Oh, gods. It’s her. Yes, Divine One! My apologies! Oh, by all the above, what have I done? Please wait a moment, I will find her right away.”

Below, the pyramid shuddered to a stop. The landslides settled, and the Mirror atop the pyramid gleamed of its own light.

Minutes later, the Queen’s breathless voice answered. “Khadam? What is wrong?”

“I need your help.”

“Anything for you, Divine One.”

“How would you feel about hosting cyran immigrants?”

A hesitant pause, pregnant with uncertainty.

Finally, the Queen asked, “How many?”

“As many as we can get through the gate. I think the Emperor is—”

An alarm caught Khadam’s attention. There was a sudden draining of power from the dam, and a surge down on the surface.

Khadam slipped into the Library’s sensors once more, in time to watch the world go white. The sensors automatically adjusted a fraction of a second later, dimming her view until she could see the circular wave of light, expanding outward from the mirror, spreading over the city, and the flat plains, and the ocean beyond.

“It’s begun.”

***

The Emperor’s body was ready. The new one.

Not flesh and blood, this time he would use the perfect machine, one that could sustain itself almost indefinitely. He would collect energy from the Light that flowed through the other side, feeding himself and keeping his body mobile forever. Anything that broke down could be replicated, reconfigured, or fixed on the spot.

The body was something between a spider and a praying mantis. Down its abdomen were numerous cargo holds filled with equipment and spare parts. He kept four molecular degenerators of varying size, including one that could handle factory-level conditions, twelve printers, four of which he expected to use every single moment of every single day for the next several thousand years, give or take a few maintenance days. And more nanodrones than any organic being would dare to count (by his count, it was 16,128,144).

There was a whole universe on the other side. Waiting to be conquered.

By him, and him alone.

He might even return to this one, once he was satisfied he could do so safely. Perhaps that Poire child would still be alive, too, and the Emperor could make good on his promise…

The Emperor doubted it. Very much so.

A ping on his comm module. The Mirror was ready.

The Emperor allowed the chair’s crane to remove himself from this mortal body. He unlocked his connections, and his sensors noted the crane’s successful grip. The crane lifted, and his mask came out with a wet slurp as the electrical connections were pulled out of the organic ones. This time he didn’t bother to sedate that biological form, instead letting it writhe and shake and seize in its restraints.

It would probably die from the shock. But the Emperor would not waste anymore time.

His universe awaited.

The crane inserted him into the slot on the new machine body. The Emperor carefully checked and accepted thousands of new connections, before churning up the startup sequence. By the time he was 98.8% operational, the Mirror was brimming with stored Light, ready to open the way into the Scar.

“Into” wasn’t exactly the right word. The Scar obeyed different laws, and one did not merely travel through it, like one traveled through normal space.

It was complicated. His expertise came from the physical computations, not the theoretical explanations. That had always been Sen’s realm… Sen, and the First Prophet.

He impulsed his machine limbs, still clunky from their newness, to carry him up to the Mirror.

There were shapes there, behind the mechanochemical glass panels. The glass reacted as shapes passed somewhere inside. Logically, he knew those shapes were poor representations of what lay beyond. More like illusions, to help his sensors comprehend what they were seeing. The laws were different. That spinning, wobbling orb might be a planet, or a sun, or a rather bright galaxy. That cloud of warping angles might be the equivalent of wind or errant energy.

And that huge thing, sliding through all those planes, diving in and out of layers of matter might be… what might that be?

He did not know.

For any other human, gazing into the glass always resulted in a shudder of deep, primordial fear. An unknown so powerfully different from any other unknown, that simply looking at it made one’s headache from the infinite, terrifying possibilities.

But, along with various other useless emotions, the Emperor had long ago removed the part that could feel that fear.

Thus, he did not second guess himself, as he stood at the precipice, his jointed legs lifting him toward the Mirror.

He sent an impulse. The glass changed from a solid, refractive surface to one that was halfway between liquid and gas.

The Emperor stepped through.

The change was so instantaneous as to be almost unrecognizable. Indeed, most of his sensors reported no difference at all. His temperature gauges threw null errors, but his internal readings only registered ten degrees colder. The density of the green ground under his feet was similar to polished marble, covered in tiny, raised ridges.

The Emperor lowered a limb, covered in sensors, to look at the ridges. Hundreds of them, in a single square foot. All those straight, geometric lines, perfectly spaced. Almost like something intelligent had lined up the very ground itself into that shape. There was oxygen here, too. But that was quickly fading. Probably just the gas I brought in with me. It didn’t matter, this body had no need for air.

In the distance, a set of oddly-shaped hills winded to a horizon. The hills registered a great deal of activity, as if thousands of tons of matter were moving rapidly somewhere over there, but he could see no movement. He adjusted his sensors again, checking them on himself. And when he looked back, the hills were gone.

A great object overhead stretched a broken shadow over him.

When the Emperor pointed his sensors up, his system started throwing errors. There was nothing to see. No movement, no disturbance of the local atoms or air. His temperature gauge reported millions of degrees, but if that was true, then he should be dead. The logical inconsistency threw more errors in his code, forcing him to bring more processors online to deal with them.

He started an observation routine and started writing a script for detecting the anomaly of heat (or lack thereof). Before he could finish, full-priority alert began to scream in his head.

Internal sensors detected a sudden loss of moisture in his motorized components. In the motorized components? That shouldn’t be possible. They were sealed, he had checked the seals. They should have lasted tens of thousands of years.

It was a problem, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He could still create more from his printers, and he had plenty of regolith around to demolecularize-

Severe Degradation Warning. Please replace components in all major body systems immediately.

The very metal of the Emperor’s circuits was corroding. No, not corroding. He turned down his external sensors to view his body. There were white, glittering lines spidering through the metal of his inner workings. A glowing, prismatic mist floated like vaporized water, turning the copper and gold into black rust. Burning through the wires that connected his body to his mind.

Warning…

His limbs screeched as he tried to reach for his printers. Something would break if he kept moving like this. Then let it break! He reached a claw under his hull and grabbed one of the printers stored in his cargo. The printer’s metal frame was covered in a spiderwork of white lines. The more delicate pieces inside were already glittering and crumbled to prismatic ash.

Warning…

Wait, came the Emperor’s last thought. I need more time.