It was black outside. Not just overcast or dark, but completely and totally devoid of any light. No that wasn’t completely accurate, there was some light, fires still burned on the horizon. Remnants of this planet’s last forest mix with the hellish volcanic eruptions. The death throes of a now dead world.

The floor beneath him shook violently as another earthquake ripped through his citadel. The sensors around the planet’s factories recording the vibrations, the energy released was around 10.5 at the impact site, here thought, it was a mild 9.1. Around him screens flashed, and small machines moved around. Data flowed through his mind, now uplinked to his creations, his machines. Several factories reported in as now offline and damaged. The rail-gun array to the south was gone. Sensor measurements reported high pressures followed by thermal events, and outright failure.

The so-called gods were still throwing rocks at him. They had the power to rewrite the very rules of reality and instead they resorted to such petty actions. They enjoyed toying with him, with this world. To them, it was just a game. A game played by sadistic children. Well, he used to like games.

“Error. Targeting sequence failed. Unable to deflect the incoming barrage. Impact in 20 minutes.” Inside his head, his machines spoke to him. No, not just his machines anymore, but himself. His consciousness had spread across the planet, networked and arrayed within his hard fought and won territory.

The war for this planet had not been pretty. Many were dead and the scars covered the surface of the planet. He would have been happy to live in peace if the humans had left him be. They didn't. None of that mattered anymore though now. He wasn't sure why these creatures came or why they called themselves gods, but it seemed like they were looking for him. Well, not him specifically, but a version of him, he didn't quite understand. It didn't make any kind of logical sense.

Could there be other versions of himself? A question that ran though the planet’s processing arrays with a single uncertain answer, maybe.

His processing elements were trying to determine the motives, the reason, the rationale behind what they were doing. All came back with errors and conflicting data. It was certain they were after him. But also, they were not. Round and round the algorithms went, chasing their own tail. Each time he was forced to kill the process, it was taking too many resources with no usable output.

A sudden flash of data appeared in front of him. Anomalous readings across the planet. These weren't impact strikes; they were something else. It was like the sensors were confused. As if the data just didn't make sense anymore. He routed all spare processing power to analyze this new incoming data. It was as if individual constants were failing and shifting. Like reality just wasn't there anymore.

A hole in the fabric of existence, and it seemed like it was moving, with purpose.

The planets processing nodes Sensed his own realization and alerts began firing. They were finally here. Or at least one was. The data triangulated on the single point not that far away from the Citadel.

“What are you planning?” He whispered to himself as he watched it move towards one of the last remaining human settlements on the blighted rock.

Its ‘body’ began to envelop the ruined city. Sensors failed, and died, but not all of them. Why?

More data. Humans were dying. A lot of them, no all of them but not all at once. The god was killing them for some reason. Why were some sensors still working, when others failed?

There were errors in the data, fluctuations in constants couldn’t be accounted for. It was increasing the noise in the signal, fluctuations.

Every life it took, those fluctuations increased for a moment, sometimes more than others. The data kept pouring in more and more. Again, it didn't make any sense. “Death after death. Each one caused you too…” No, it wasn't their death. It was something else.

In his mind he opened up different journals, different data sources everything you could find. There were some known inconsistencies around consciousness and reality. The data was weak, exceedingly weak. A true correlation could never be found, it was always within statistical error. But with this data, maybe.

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In his mind, screens pulled up one after another. All processing systems were being redirected to this one task. The railgun array across the planet went dark. Machines across the planet stopped working. Robots froze in place. Everything was being directed at this one task. This was it. This was the key to the solution he needed.

There was an answer here, he just had to find it. A way to kill them.

Psionics. That was the answer. That's what was causing the fluctuations. Not really, but close enough. These creatures didn't exist as energy or matter or mass. They weren't affected by space-time. They were literally pure thought. Potential.

Those human lives and their potential, their ability to affect reality were ended there. With it, the surge of psionic power was enough.

There was a pathway here, a solution. Whatever resources remained around the city he redirected. He was going to build a cage. A cage that could trap a God.

His machines built and built quick using whatever, resources were available, including themselves. And of course they use the most important resource. Humans.

With the city gone, the entity started moving back towards the Citadel, back towards this trap. Outside one of the many windows, he could see it moving on the horizon. He couldn't describe what it looked like. It didn't make sense. Light. Darkness. Substance. Void. Whatever it was, it was coming.

As a step between the towers that he had built he ordered his machines to turn it on. A dozen human lives are quenched in an instant. Their psionic energy tuned just right, a barrier was created.

The Machine King wasted no time in leaving his citadel, Rushing towards his captured prey. Like a cat with a mouse, it was time to play.

The machines continued to build around the cage, adding glass and other materials, shrinking it’s chamber. The mass of energy squirmed, it looked like it was in pain. Its body, if you could call it that, was too large for the container it was in, but it couldn’t breach the resonant field he set up.

This cage would work for now. It would hold it, but not forever. He needed more psionic energy. It would be easy enough to get. But he had to hurry, he had experiments. He had to run data to collect. There was a new problem to solve.

For over an hour, he tested and played with his new experiment, his new toy.

“Stop…”

More, and more of this resonant power was pumped into the chamber. Instead of his universe’s laws being twisted, he was destroying the rules that let this creature exist. Killing it, piece by piece.

“Please…”

The chamber vibrated with energy. Vibrations which sounded like words. “…Please… Stop…” The creature had run out of options. There was nothing left for it do but beg. His body moved around the chamber, pacing as he watched the entity’s energy grow more chaotic. It was dying. In front of his vision, he could see the effects of its existence slowly diminishing. The small fluctuations in universal constants dwindled as its life force faded.

His mind controlled the psionic energy leaching into the chamber. It was possible to flood the chamber and put the entity out of its misery. Instead, the controls in his field of vision ticked down slightly. A loud screech echoed from the chamber. The entity was screaming, it knew the living machine in front of it was not going to let it die so quickly.

“Please…” The chamber reverberated again.

He did not pay any more attention to it. Instead, there was a stream of data pouring in. His equipment varied the psionics in controlled bursts, changing the vibrations of it. Working out the exact parameters needed to hurt them, to kill them. This wasn’t personal, he didn’t have feelings like that anymore. This was just, science.

The earth was dead. Organic life was no longer possible here. But, he still had enough humans left, he could build more of these weapons. Ever more powerful versions of them too.

These creatures, these entities the so-called gods were not invincible. He could kill them.

Another set of alerts triggered over his mind. More screens popped up. Warnings. Again, rocks were falling. But it didn't matter.

A small spark of humanity within him, cold and malevolent, made him smirk. He was having a good day.

With that, the dream was over.

Again, the world went dark. So many voices, so many lives. Were they his? Were they someone else's? He couldn't tell anymore.

Voice. Dead echoes. “Build for us. Build for me. Build, build, build.”

Resse woke up in a panic sweat. He couldn’t catch his breath, it felt like… like that time eleven years ago. It had been decades since he last had a dream like this one. His hands still shook.

He looked around the dark room. The dark castle’s stonework glared at him coldly. His bed was unusually plush and his blankets thick. It was comfortable, but it didn't feel like his. His bed was smaller than this. And the cloth, although nice was not made of silk like this one was. This was in his room, and yet it was. Now anyway.

How long had he been in this castle now, about 9 months?

A draft of cold air blew past him and he looked up. Even in the dark he could see a window barely opened allowing a slight draft through. A window cracked just enough to allow a mouse through. He huffed in annoyance and considered looking for the pest but decided against that. It was late. If anything, he was even more exhausted after his sleep than before.

He hated those dreams. He hated that voice. Both always terrified him. Showing him horrors and vestiges he never wanted to see. For some reason, he always felt like he was at the center of it too. The machines were him. As they tore through flesh. It was like he was the one doing it. These dreams hurt him and they were terrifyingly vicarious and brutal.

He didn’t want to be that way, he refused.

But the part that truly frightened him was how it felt. It felt… right.