“Volstaka will have her borders, even if they are on the last map humanity ever draws.”

-Unknown.

Litanies rouse me from tumultuous slumber, harsh chants that shatter my waking dreams. Eyes that have beheld far too much of the world’s horrors crack open, and I am once again freed. Robed things that vaguely resemble humans surround my form, bent in supplication before me. Prayers of faith and fervor fill the sunken chamber, intermingled with the whir and clatter of many thousand small machines. The engines of blasphemy that keep my mortal form tethered to this broken plane pull away, and I rise once more.

For a heartbeat I am tempted by the sweet whispers of oblivion, weakened as her seductive voice urges me to lash out and destroy the unholy contraptions that keep me chained to the living plane. I crave the void, in that instant. The moment passes, and weakness fades, replaced by the cold emptiness that has become my existence.

Sweet smoke I can barely taste rises from a dozen altars around where my form knelt for so long. What little remains of my mortal body beneath the blessed machine is wet, salved in sacred oils as the rite of awakening transpires around me. The god within the machine stirs once more, and through its will I rise unbroken.

Their faces turn upwards, and a new generation of the Machine God’s faithful greet me, the ancient of days.

“Honored Remnant.” Come the murmurs. They address my presence, give greetings to me. Yet they do not bow to me, but to what sleeps within my mortal shell.

“I am stirred,” Come the weak, mutilated words from the cracked and broken flesh of my throat. “Why?”

The Architechtor who answers can barely bring herself to look upon what I have become. A mass of metal and flesh, bound into a fractured whole and kept barely functional by the god within.

“The wolves are upon the gates, honored Remnant.” She speaks slowly among the hymns and chants, painfully pronouncing each word for my understanding. “The Throne Volstaka calls upon us to fulfill our pact.”

I am almost relieved, then. To have been woken for something so simple as mankind’s wars. I will rise, I will cleanse, I will return to my slumber.

Fluid drips and machines scream as I fully stand now, the physical embodiment of a god’s will amidst the mortal throng. I see the fear, the awe, and even the primal disgust in their eyes as they fully behold me. Gazes trace the bulky metal that is my form, the vaguely human thing I resemble. What were once my human eyes are now multi-faceted prisms that drip with glowing orange miasma. The weak fleshen hands that proved unworthy are now sheer iron claws. In my mortal days, I was a tall, broad-chested being, wide of shoulder and thick of arm. Now I am long, tall and lanky. Sinuous and steel. A second set of arms shudder beneath the first and come to life, longer and thinner than the primary pair.

What was once the weak uncertainty of human flesh is now the blessed surety of the machine, forged to carry out the Machine God’s will. Molded for battle, shaped in strife. Once more, there was need of me. Reverence and awe mewled forth from fleshed confines as my form stomped along, pistons and power among the jagged, flowing metal. Meaningless words of tactics, reports and dire situations flowed off of me, blather I cared little for. I was here to commence the sanguine slaughter, and I cared little for what direction it lay.

A bloated, sunless sky greets me, the life-giver above rotted, its rays pallid and weak. Only then do I focus on what is mewled around me. There is something wrong. Far more than any mortal danger or the petty rivalries of kingdoms and empires that will turn to dust before I pass.

“They are come unto this world, most glorious one.” The Architector speaks solemnly. “The Taken and their rot have poisoned the skies themselves. We can no longer see the Godhome, nor feel its life-giving light. We know naught from whence they came, nor where they go. Only that they have come to collect what is not theirs.”

The walls quake around us as she speaks. Rock crumbles and screams rise in the distance, the sounds drifting unto my senses. The city, if it can even be called that, has changed since I last went into the blissful sleep of stasis. Gone are the brown-brick homes and steppes of grass that stretched to the horizon. What remains is sand, steel and chaos. Oily bronze flame burned upon the walls now, its thick smoke followed skyward by screams of pain, rage and desperation.

The siege was already lost.

“Woken to the most desperate hours.” I bluntly state. “What was it? Politics? Not enough worshippers? Negotiating a handsome reward for my service?” The scorn in my voice is unconstrained.

“I will ask your forgiveness later, Revered Ancient. The rites were….forgotten.”

I laugh in derision even as I walk towards the carnage. Another time, I would have expressed how the flesh was so fallible. I had other tasks to focus myself on. A trail of adepts followed us, robed forms that bore the crest of the God-thing Within The Machine. Wide-eyed humans part before us, ants that scatter before the storm that sweeps through their ranks. I appear as a titan in their eyes, and they fear me. For I have come to save them from their inadequacies, to show them that only in the blessed machine does salvation lie.

Stone crumbled beneath my sheer weight and the force of every step as I traverse upwards. Atop the besieged walls I pause for a heartbeat and take measure of my foes. There is no ravenous horde at the gates this day. I see disciplined legions. Organization. The invisible shimmer of constant message spells hidden behind the constant molten missiles launched skywards from a plethora of tubular bolt-carriers. I can almost admire the merciless precision with which they slam along the walls. Explosions sing as they impact upon the defensive barrier or break through weakened sections entirely.

Corpses lie at the bases of this wall, rotted so that even the most desperate carrion eater refuses to touch them. Shattered husks of mighty war-machines lie ahead, interspersed by the skeletons of once-ferocious steeds. The broken bodies of humanity and a witness to their shattered, impotent rage.

The weapons of the God-thing within heeds my call once more. No flashes of light signal divine intervention as they appear, for I am the weapon. The holy machine writhes around what little flesh remains of me. Blades rise from my primary forearms, long, cruel and curved. Liquid metal peels back upon my secondary arm to reveal embedded mage-storm orbs beneath the slender finger-claws.

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I turn this shattered face skywards, and utter a silent prayer that this slaughter might please the thrones above.

A heartbeat later, I step off the wall and plunge towards the jagged earth below. Corpses crunch beneath my feet as I land and metal crushes bones and armor underfoot. A distance is between my war-form and the army before the gates. A killing field of spiked wires, trenches gashed into the earth and filled with spikes to slow any counter-charge. Beacons that irradiate mind-skewer frequencies to drive any nearby mage to agony merely tickle against what remains of my mortal mind.

It is gone an instant later, and the slaughter-storm is upon them. Their obstacles are traversed in a single moment, and confusion turns to some primal fear as I appear in their midst. Faces I will soon discard from memory recoil from me, their lives ended an instant later. The scythe-claws tear through armor and enchantments with disdainful ease, flesh and bone rent beneath them. Streams of orange plasma-bolts scar the barren earth and leave smoking craters in whatever direction I turn them. I am a machine designed for slaughter, a being forged for war. These human things that have trained for short seasons are chafe before me. They have sown the wind, and now, they reap the maelstrom.

I pluck lives from their ranks like hairs from a scalp, blades come to reap lives as I traverse fortified positions. Bolt-throwers clatter and clank around me, for naught as they ineffectively clatter off my body. Mage-weapons are brought to bear, only to find there is no presence for them to liquefy, char or maim. Their holders are relieved of life and limb shortly after.

An armored, mutated giant steps from the chaos around me, a challenge roared at my form amidst the carnage. Blocky gray armor covers their body, and power physically leaks from the gaps in their shell. An elemental, I recognize.. Nature’s wrath solidified, confined to hulking form. This one burns with magma and stone, the sheer heat of its trail a hammerblow to the surrounding humans around it. Curiosity forms within me for a while, as I have never witnessed this binding of the great wild forces. Inevitably, it is stripped away, replaced by the fluid song of combat.

Molten slag is caught within my grasp, its blow stopped with contemptuous ease. A wonder of magic and nature, to be sure. Yet I am a god-form, and it is so pitifully little before me. Liquid metal blades rend it from stem to stern, its shell split in twain. Fire and heat scorch all around me, humans and their constructs burnt into blackened shells as the elemental explodes.

I have brought the war to them, and they cannot stand before me. Broken they flee, the memories of their slain etched into memory, consumed by fear. I am reminded that no matter how disciplined, the flesh remains weak and ever prone to failure. They mold themselves in the blessed machine’s image, make crude mockery of efficiency and stoicism. Yet they are too weak, too frightened to walk our path. Until inevitably, the crude flesh they deem a temple begins to fail, and they look to my kind to save them.

But we are already saved, for the machine is unfailing.

Titanic presence is what finally gives me pause. A figure descends from the sickly sky, and with it comes power that crushes all that surrounds it. Gravity drags downwards in the extreme, a physical force that shatters bodies, crumples iron emplacements and flattens war-constructs.

Empyrean.

Its very presence compels me to kneel in supplication, calls to what is left of my mortal being to worship it. Human frailty rears its head for a second, yet the iron within forces it back down.

“Enough.” It speaks from everywhere at once. “Stay thy claw. The war is lost. Your god-home has fallen. Your masters vanished to the cosmic winds. Go. Vanish into the world, and we will forget you.”

Useless information that rolls off my mind. An offer to tempt the weak, self-concerned fleshen concerns of mortals. An offer to continue a temporary existence for a small while longer. Information met to demoralize, to shock the frail human existence with some insurmountable truth. It elicits nothing within me. I was roused for war, for slaughter. Should I perish within the blood price I exact from these foes, I would gladly do so. For the canticles of the blessed machine guided my claws.

“Your words are wasted upon my being.” I return, knee-deep in slaughter. “Dust upon the wind. A task has been given. It shall be performed. Come unto me with all your might, or fly back to your cradle of stars.”

It recognizes the futility of further speech, and complies with my demand. Insurmountable pressure slams down upon me, the very earth itself come to drag the sky down atop me. Any mortal foolish enough to have stopped and gape in awe is simply wiped away, godly force brought to bear at my very existence. I bear its fury, let it wash over me. The metal that is my being is cracked and rent beneath the gale of power, shattered and torn by insurmountable force. I am a scarred shell, twisted and wrought once the Empyrean relents. Broken.

A singular pulse, a whisper comes from within my core, and I am remade. A god that sleeps within this imperfect temple crafted to its image stirs, and the machine is made whole once more.

Steel tentacles grow from my back, long and sinuous as they curl skywards. Mage-storm orbs in the dozen peer from beneath the fluid metal, orange eyes that gaze balefully heavenward. Enough caution remains in the arrogant god-child that floats high above for it to raise its distortion fields in time. The deafening sounds of starscreams consumed reality around me, rumbled roars and behemoth cracks that sing of destruction and the tearing of reality. The crimson lances of titans tear heavenward, harsh beams of roiling miasmic fury that sunder the clouds. The ground around my form shatters, rock and charred corpses heaved at the sky as if thrown by giants.

Impossibly long beams of sheer force cleave through heavens above even as earthquakes shake the land beneath. The nameless Empyrean screams, a sound that pierces my very being. There is no second chance, no grand dance of powers that clash with one another. I was born to slay for the Machine God, to bring ruin upon all who stand in its way. Mortal or godling, it matters little. All are granted the killing blow, made equal in Death’s embrace.

The taint has not yet cleared from the sky when I observe that the god-child did not scream in pain, yet pleaded for help from the void above.

And they came. They descended now in their legions of light, spears of wrathful sunlight brought to bear upon me. The children of the Thrones Above, come to end the last fragment of the Star-Gods. I knew then the purpose of this war, of the conquest that spanned the world beneath. To find the god-thing that slept within me. The god created by mortal hands. There were no empty words of promised exile now. They had only needed to confirm my existence, and now oblivion came.

I fought, of course. Exacted whatever unthinkable price I could. Every god-child that perished before my claws was a treasure forever lost, a price far too steep. But oh, they paid. Their fury tore the very land beneath me apart, shattered the lands and burnt the skies. Inevitably, I collapsed.

Broken land beneath my knees, the imperfect temple I called a home for my messiah cracked and rent. Precious miasma of life ran from torn joints that no longer healed themselves and ethereal smoke rose from my innermost core. Death came, and I refused to look away. It was finally, blessedly over. A life I had given in the Machine God’s service, in supplication and faith of its inscrutable will. The void called to me, yet a singular, monumental task remained in my possession.

Slumped forward upon my knees, I prayed for one, final moment of conviction. For a last sliver of strength so that I might accomplish what needed to be done.

This broken body screamed as I threw it backwards, my chest facing heavenwards. Still upon my knees, I brought what arms remained functional to bear. Claws flexed outwards, and tentacles morphed into barbed blades.

I gave one final exultation of a life well-spent, and plunged the blades into my chest. My own form I tore open, prised the liquid metal apart layer by layer. And with that final act I reached within myself and ripped out the core that kept me whole.

A single moment of irrational fear gripped me as the end approached. The all-too human want to keep existing, to accomplish more. A final reminder that I had not yet reached the perfection of the holy machine spirit.

I allowed a single, liquid claw to pierce the precious life-crystal that kept the Machine God asleep within me. As I collapsed and drifted into the void, my final recompense was that I did not have to watch the world I had just broken.

And darkness came for me. I-.