"We come in peace."

Starscream bowed to the old man standing behind a row of flagstaffs on the border of the new world. He knew from the compass readings that the Quintessence was either within this world, or beyond it, deeper in the heartwood of the tree. Either way, they would have to deal with this patroller and whatever society was behind him before they came to their goal.

Bowing seemed obvious. The old man was dressed in a manner that suggested eastern origins, or rather some kind of cultural convergent evolution that had resulted in a superficial resemblance to what was considered eastern dress on earth before the revelation. The language was definitely Sino, which threw up a lot of questions about how this place came to be, how people came to be here, if there had been a crossover from earth in a previous age, or whether considerations like that really mattered at all when you were dealing with a multiverse hypothesis.

"If you come in peace," the old man said, "then you may claim guest rights. My name is Makoto Kanashii," he returned the bow, "and I am the guardian of the border of Fringe village. I can provide you with lodging while you wait to be brought before the elders."

"We are honored by your graciousness," Starscream layered on the subservient politeness as thick as he could manage. It would be expected in a culture like this one. "We humble travelers could only dream of being offered such a boon by a noble such as yourself. Please accept our thanks."

Makoto brought them across the border, and walking behind him, Starscream was struck by the unreality of being around humans again after so long journeying across the Tree of Heaven from their landing zone, as well as what they had gone through to reach the tree in the first place.

For one thing, Starscream was the smallest member of his group, but he still towered above the average human. He and his brothers were androids, the latest and finest brand of mechanoborgs the universe had ever seen. They had humanoid frames, and indeed, an argument could be made that they were human, or at least that parts of them had once been human.

Mechanoborgs were what humans had become in the paradise that Orobos had created for them in honor of the Maker’s dreams.

Starscream wasn’t sure how much of the propaganda he believed, and it was propaganda, even a child could see that. Orobos was worshiped like a god, some kind of digital messiah, but he was an ADI, an autonomous digital intelligence, first and foremost. He’d been made by a human hand, a human mind. The power that he had was godlike, and so was the Spiral Dragon, but it wasn’t helpful to mythologize either of them. At the end of the day they were machines, like Starscream and his brothers, like the ones who would come after.

The men of iron were brought to a well appointed villa some distance from the town proper. In the distance, there was a region where the land seemed to die, but here it was as rich and green as any forest on earth.

The villa was oversized for a human, not quite large enough for some of his brothers, but there was a barn-like structure where they could come together to plan their next move. Its only other occupant was a large white fox, apparently domesticated, that Makoto had put there either to keep an eye on them or to keep them company.

Havoc was nervous. Their sergeant at arms had been on edge ever since they ran out of bullets the last time they’d had to frag a space worm. The tree had been lousy with them, and the entire party had gained a few levels in the last week of the trek. Monsters had seemed to become more common and more dangerous as they approached Hollow.

Early on in the journey, they had been able to manufacture whatever they needed, but for whatever reason, the equipment had begun to fail as soon as they touched down on the Tree of Heaven.

The mechanoborgs themselves weren’t affected in any way they could measure, but the universe itself seemed to be hostile in some way to non-living machinery. The more complex the system, the more completely it broke down.

There had been plenty of debate as to why this was the case. Starscream believed it had to do with the presence of the Quintessence in this reality, an increase in the base rates of chaos resulting in an uptick in entropy. Why entropy would have a special case that gave preferential treatment to mechanoborgs over pure AI and plain electronics was another question entirely.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"We should get out of here," Havoc said. "I get a bad feeling about these humans."

"Makoto was respectful," Dunsparce said. The largest member of the group, he was forced to crouch under the roof of the barn, his bulky frame overshadowing his brothers. "We need to learn as much as we can before we go on."

"I’m not afraid of them," Starscream said. "Everything we’ve seen so far has been pre-industrial. Even if they did decide to try something, what’s the old man going to do, fistfight us?"

He flexed his left hand, twice the size of his right, and ruby red. It was a weapon and a utility belt rolled into a single appendage, capable of doing some very small scale manufacturing of its own, an ability that hadn’t failed yet, presumably because it was attached to him.

Mechanoborgs were perfectly capable of exchanging parts, as long as the sizing was right, but he wouldn’t have given up that hand for almost anything. Some of the others had better weapon systems, but he felt it was the best all around tool in the group, a gift from Orobos himself.

Just because he didn’t believe their god was actually a god didn’t mean he couldn’t be proud of that.

Though the group often made decisions democratically, Dunsparce was the de facto leader, and the others deferred to his judgment and agreed to wait and see what the elders would decide. There were several meetings over the next few days, usually just Makoto, but also a few other men and women who seemed honestly curious about the men of iron and where they had come from, where they were going, and what they wanted.

None of those people showed the least sign of fear in their presence, which in hindsight seemed like a red flag.

Starscream was the designated liaison, and he shared a modified version of the truth of their mission with the humans. They were travelers from another world, which the locals understood to mean another world on the same Tree of Heaven, and they had come because that world was imperiled by a demon that could potentially devour everything, every grain of sand, and remake it all in its own image.

They came seeking a weapon, or secret knowledge, anything that might give them an advantage in the war. They made no mention of the Quintessence, because as little as they understood about it, the source of magic had to be important to the people of Hollow in some way and there was no reason to imply they were going to steal it, even if that was the plan.

But Starscream sometimes had the feeling that even though they never spoke of it directly, Makoto knew something of what they were after.

They had been confined to the villa and the barn for almost a week before Makoto and another old man took them all for a walk in the woods. Ostensibly, the day trip was just to give them a chance to see the world and stretch their legs, but Havoc was grumbling his suspicions about the locals on shortwave transmissions the entire morning.

(These guys are planning something. They look at us like we’re meat.)

(There’s nothing meaty about us.) Starscream had responded.

(Keep your eyes open, that’s all I’m saying.)

It was on the return journey that Dunsparce accidentally stepped on a bush, and the old men got strange looks on their faces. They started going on about how sacred the bush was, how its flowers only bloomed once in a century, and the priceless elixirs that could be brewed from the petals of those flowers.

Then the killing started. The two old men were magic, and when they started to glow, they became stronger and tougher than any mechanoborg. Dunsparce got shredded, and the whole team fought after that, but it wasn’t enough.

Starscream escaped via drastic measures. Once it became clear that the battle was unwinnable, he ducked behind a tree and did some quick off the cuff engineering. Moving so many of his processors into the hand meant losing a lot of himself, a lot of his capabilities, but it was the only way out he saw. The hand was equipped with enough sensors and the mobility to function as a seat of operation for his consciousness, not to mention all the other toys that were built in. Power was going to be an issue, but he managed to squeeze a battery in there as well before setting the body he left behind to die on autopilot and scuttling into the wilderness. It would last him as long as he needed to figure out a more permanent solution.

Havoc had been right. The ansible was lost with Dunsparce, so there would be no more transmissions for the second exploratory team. He couldn’t warn them. The cultivators had planned on this from the beginning. They had simply waited to learn a little about the men of iron before making their move.

Starscream understood them better after that, and using the data he had gathered during the massacre, he was able to piece together the fundamentals of channeling for himself. As it turned out, cannibalizing the cores of sacred beasts was a quick way to advance.

The Red Spider was born.