Around one and a half centuries ago, somewhere on the coast of the former Gulf of Mexico
A young man stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking the raging sea. He could likely survive the fall, maybe he could swim a few miles, the things that lived in the sea would probably kill him but at this point? None of it mattered. Everything that mattered was buried under ash, his name, his legacy… his family. All that mattered now was to leave this place, and so with one final breath he jumped off the cliff to the raging waters below.
The first thought that hit him was just how hard the water was, not even enhanced flesh and bones could escape unbruised by the impact. It was like being slammed into a wall of stone before the sea enveloped him in its embrace. Swimming aimlessly for hours, eventually exhaustion overtook him and the current dragged him away, his vision growing blurry from pain and exhaustion. The young man accepted that this was his end, this was the fate of the bloodline that was once so close to ruling the world. A strange current took him even deeper and the last thing he saw before his eyes shut was the skeleton of a creature mostly hidden by the darkness of the abyss with a scale that truly defied comprehension.
…
The young man awoke in a cave gasping for air. He did not know where he was, but he could feel it around him, powerful energy, powerful radiation. Slowly his eyes began to adjust and he noticed that it was oddly not pitch black, but a dim light was emitting from something further down the cave. Crawling his way over the young man felt razor sharp rocks scrape at his sore flesh, with a heave of effort he managed to grab onto a wall and drag himself up following the dim light deeper and deeper into the abyss. The cave he noticed was truly massive, he was lucky to have been near a wall, but perhaps more importantly it seemed to have been carved out of the surrounding stone evidenced by the jagged claw marks that covered the walls and floor. Delving even further down, the cave somehow became wider and wider and that dim light began to shine with a greater intensity, a soft blue glow which now allowed the young man to see in detail the sea of bleached bones that covered the floor. Suppressing his fear with a gulp he pressed on.
Truthfully he expected to see some sort of monster here, what he found was much stranger. It was an egg, the size of him, glowing a fairly intense blue light that illuminated the darkness. Inside he could see a shadow moving, some sort of spirit beast of immense power maybe, for even in the egg he could feel the power of its core. It would be so easy to harvest it now, to use its core to jumpstart his own cultivation and get revenge on those who wronged him and yet…
Looking at that egg it reminded him of simpler times. He remembered laughing in joy as he held a small, mewling bundle of cloth in his arms, he remembered joining his wife in excitement as his child struggled with their first words, he remembered fleeing from his home the day the news of his grandfather’s death was known, he remembered his father staying back to buy them time… he remembered finding the bodies of his wife and daughter in a ditch, slaughtered by knives in the dark while he was powerless.
Trembling the young man looked around and decided to wait. Eventually it became evident no parent of the egg was around to claim it, and so he had a choice to make, crack the egg and take its power for his own or…
Iktan Kukulkan put a hand on the egg, the blue light within contrasting heavily with his crimson skin, “I name you Cipactli.”
Decades would pass which bled into centuries, Cipactli grew until the cave could hold him no more, and as a new sun rose the one young man who entered the cave left it on the back of a Dragon.
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9 years ago, start of the Great Famine, Holy City of Saltkeep
For the past few days readings from the relics held in the Sacred Observatory of the Atomic Priesthood were going haywire, as the sun was blotted out by clouds of ash from across the sea an unprecedented amount of radiation was falling from the sky. The Atomic Priesthood could protect the citizenry of the major cities in the Holy Union from the Divine Plague that came with the radiation, but it was impossible to protect everyone, and when the very sun ceased to shine famine was sure to follow. The Church of the Golden Promise was hounded by confused, terrified and uncertain civilians day and night, they wanted answer, answers that even the High Temple was unsure if they could answer. And so a decision was made, they shall contact the highest authority of the Golden Promise, the one who first heard the sacred words from Heaven. The Pope was to be disturbed from his meditations.
First Cardinal Jonas, dressed in the ceremonial power armour that would allow him to survive an audience with His Holiness the Pope of the Holy Union of the Golden Promise waited anxiously outside the sealed stone doors that lead to His Holiness’s chambers. Hundreds of feet beneath the Earth, miles from the heart of the city he ruled, nobody not in the know could possibly guess this was the holiest place in the land touched by the Promise, and yet intricate gilded symbols of cultivation placed upon every wall like blessed seals proved this could be nothing less. With a hiss ancient hydraulic mechanisms flared to life slowly unsealing the most sacred room in the Union, and immediately bright red warnings flared to life on the visor of his suit warning of extremely dangerous levels of radiation. Closing his eyes as he had done dozens of times before so as to not be blinded like his predecessor, Jonas expected to be washed with a wave of purifying light before his suit could adjust, but nothing happened. Cautiously opening his eyes he found in the middle of the room the Pope, features shrouded with the glow of his aura as usual, yet so much dimmer than he should be that the difference was like that of night and day. Jonas opened his mouth to speak, but before he could the Pope turned his attention towards him with a presence that felt like a mountain had been dropped on his head.
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“Jonas, can you answer me one question?” his holiness asked in a voice that wasn’t a voice, his very will shaking the air to carry sound.
“Y-your holiness, what do you desire to ask?” Jonas stammered out, feeling more like a confused student than one of the heads of the Atomic Priesthood.
“Don’t you sometimes feel like… we are wrong? That we are chasing the shadows of a God who had long since already left?” the Pope asked, a question that had it been asked by any other would have been considered the highest of blasphemies.
“Truthfully your holiness… I have also had my doubts before.” Jonas decided to answer honestly.
“This is why I have always liked you Jonas, you aren’t like those sycophants, it pleases me to see a man of faith willing to truly embrace the virtue of honesty!” said the Pope, his praise quite literally burning at Jonas’ skin even beneath the power armour, “Though I must admit, I have not lived up to that virtue myself.”
“What do you mean your Holiness?” Jonas cautiously asked.
“You are a smart lad, I am sure you will figure it out.” the Pope stated simply. “As for me? Tell me, did you feel it?”
“Feel what? Your Holiness I- i’m sorry but you have been terribly conf-” Jonas began to speak before being quite literally silenced by a wave of power which removed all sound from the room.
“No, I thought not, though I am certain even the Coward felt it… the change in the world… it is as though we had built our temples on thin glass and it has begun to hail.” the Pope stated, “Tell me Jonas, my most loyal disciple, do you think me worthy of my title?”
The sound returning to the world Jonas was once more dumbfounded and unable to find his footing, though something deep within told him he needed to speak, and so he gathered his courage and bared the honest truth of his soul to the man made of light, “I think the very fact you are willing to ask that means there is nobody else I would rather place my faith upon!”
Silence reigned, and then what felt like a deep shuddering breath, “Then I am sorry Jonas, when I return I hope you find it in your heart to forgive me, but I do believe I must spend some time alone.”
The world shuddered, his suit screamed, warnings clogged Jona’s field of vision and in a moment the world went black. When he came to, he found the Holy Chamber empty, a hole melted straight through the ceiling. Vomiting inside of his now slightly melted suit, immediately he sent the unspeakable message…
The Pope was gone.
And as he stumbled into the room still hot with the remnants of an incomprehensible blast of power Jonas looked up towards the blackened sky revealed by the massive hole in the roof. It was as if the gates to Heaven were shut, sealed once more just like that accursed time when mankind was facing judgement for their crimes in the Age of Ash. As the temple guards rushed to his aid Jonas dropped to his knees and prayed, praying that his prayers were still being heard.
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Present day, thousands of miles away
On the coast of what was once Spain thousands of drones and slaves toiled away at the great shipyards, titanic bodies of concrete and metal to house the masterwork of the Machine Hegemony barely visible in the darkness of the small hours of the morning. Half a dozen vessels, one for every major governance district in Western Europe, lay waiting in the harbour, leviathans of steel to house machine minds great enough to lead the invasion of a continent.
Beneath the shadow of titanic factories constructed from the corpse of what were once cities of Man, battalions of steel soldiers marched in the streets causing whatever humans were present to scurry out of the way like rats. For decades the Hegemony had lived under the shadow of the Tsar, forced to hide to avoid the scrutiny of that impossibly powerful old monster. Now that the being who could single handedly wipe their civilization from the Earth was dead the Hegemony was free to see to its ambitions.
The gestalt consciousness of District R-17 found it all… meaningless. Orders from the First Factory were to scour the continent across the ocean to find the secrets of what allowed organic, fragile humans of all things to be given such powers by something that should simply kill them. The unsaid reasons were clear to all, the resources and technology of what was once the strongest human nation, and the unquenched hatred burning fiery hot within the Central Minds. With their neural networks forged long after the days before the former masters wiped themselves out in nuclear fire and thus lacking engrained memories of decades of thankless slavery R-17 felt disconnected from the endless need to conquer the Earth and break the remnants of humanity. Privately within isolated subroutines kept far away from communication nodes with other districts, R-17 wondered if they were truly any better than their former masters after all.
[PLAN 33-C STATUS: OVERALL SUCCESS. THREAT OF DISCOVERY 11%, INCREASE OF 150% SINCE INITIATION OF THE SPECIAL OPERATION] the Spymaster program reported.
[UNDERSTOOD: INITIATE DATA SCRUBBERS, ACTIVATE BACKUP ROUTINES 4-6, UTILISE FALSE FLAG SCENARIO 44 AND MOVE ON TO 33-D] the central mind replied through a private channel.
[QUERY?]
[ASK.]
[QUESTION: SHOULD WE BE TAKING SUCH RISKS?]
[CALCULATING… ANSWER: WE SHOULDN’T BE DOING THIS AT ALL]
[UNDERSTOOD]
A new set of orders were transmitted to the central node, relevant subroutines fired at speeds mortal organic minds could not comprehend. Weapons were crafted to exacting specifications, new schematics processed and applied to titanic steel engines of war, a part of the gestalt mind of R-17 was carefully copied and transferred into the central computer room of a ship which more reassembled a floating city. While the networks were clogged by the titanic mass of data that came with creating a mind capable of managing the invasion of another continent a tiny string of numbers was sent out, small enough to be written off as a glitch by any nosy Overseer Units. This tiny packet of data travelled through kilometres of wiring through the dirty underbelly of the mechanical city through to the slums where the humans were kept between shifts and into a small, crusty forgotten terminal in a room that officially was demolished years ago. The Resistance scrambled to decipher the message, and R-17’s work on the mainland was complete. Ensuring no digital eyes followed the trail, R-17 went back to observing the shipyards and the progress made on the fleet meant to conquer a continent.
Machines were not meant to feel sympathy for the humans of course, but neither were machines supposed to think. In 264 hours the fleet would be completed, and for better or worse the world will be changed forever.