The Machine God

Chapter 300

One Ugly Chair

The palace hung above him, vast and intimidating, its underside still split open where the Empress had descended. The gap was shrinking, the panels of white stone and gold tracery folding inward.

He raced upward between them before they could close. His Domain flooded outward, and the magical defenses layered into the structure resisted for barely a heartbeat before yielding to his Will. Metallokinesis warped the framework, deforming the metal beneath the beautiful facade before the entrance could seal fully behind him.

An alarm rang out, echoing throughout the palace.

Alexander didn’t slow down. His senses mapped the structure, Metallokinesis tracing hallways and rooms and pods while Electrokinesis catalogued bioelectrical signatures all across the palace in real time. He tore through the air, barely even glancing at the small warships parked inside the hangar bay he’d entered through. Again the metal deformed ahead of him, the ceiling tearing open at his approach.

He was looking for something specific. And for once, he was actively avoiding people, because he only had 82 seconds. Assuming Maximilian was successful in buying some extra time.

A man teleported into his path, staff already raised. Tier 2. Space warped around Alexander, trying to lock him in place.

Alexander unleashed a lightning bolt straight into the wizard’s chest. As the wizard’s concentration broke, he closed the distance in a heartbeat and followed up by grabbing the man’s face and slamming his head into the wall.

The wizard hit the floor behind him as he continued upward. His senses had identified a massive concentration of Tier 2 signatures, farther into the palace. Nearly two dozen of them. Two of them felt intense, their signatures just as powerful as Artensah.

Exalted.

Alexander veered wide, giving the room a berth of several corridors. As he passed through the floor, though, the signatures inside began vanishing. One after another, blinking out of the room and reappearing elsewhere in the palace.

They were spreading out. Hunting.

He moved faster.

The palace was enormous. Corridors branched and split, some wide and ornate, with marble floors and golden inlay. Others were bare and functional, clearly meant for staff and soldiers rather than dignitaries.

Alexander ignored all of it, focused entirely on his goal. He was looking for gaps. Dead space. The voids that existed in any large construction where structural walls didn’t align perfectly with interior walls. Every ship and station had them. Wasted space between layers that nobody thought about because either nobody needed them or nobody knew.

There.

Three floors up and half the length of the palace away. A meter-wide void running between two walls. It was big enough. And hidden enough.

Alexander changed direction. He tore through two more floors, angled down a corridor, and put on a burst of speed.

Two black-robed wizards rounded the corner ahead of him, wands rising to take aim at him.

He was faster. Lightning erupted from both hands, both bolts striking simultaneously with enough force to punch through hastily raised shields. Both wizards fell.

Alexander came to a halt. His gaze swept the wall from top to bottom and left to right, tracing the edges. Metallokinesis peeled the metal back, carefully splitting it along the seam where the wall met the frame, and revealing the gap behind it.

A space like this on a station or ship from his world would be packed with cables carrying power and pipes carrying water or air. Here it was empty.

With a thought, he pulled up the System Interface and navigated to the notification from when he’d claimed the gateway in Harborhill.

Four weeks. That was how long it had been since he’d learned about the Nightmares. Since he’d snuck into the Marquess’s Estate, expecting to find something bad. Some kind of evil, even. But the normal kind. And instead he’d stumbled upon a part of the System’s game that had been kept secret from Earth 1.

When the Marquess had opened the pods, he’d still been confident he could deal with whatever came through the gateway. And he had dealt with the first one easily enough. But the prospect of fighting one after another continuously was daunting, even for him.

Claiming and sealing the gateway was meant to protect the city.

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Alexander closed his eyes.

Artensah had shown him just how naive he’d been.

It wasn’t a fight between superhumans. The Empire was at war. And they’d treated Harborhill, a city filled with their own kind, no matter how they split hairs about Earth and Stars, like it was held by the enemy.

Whether that was merely because he’d passed through, or because he’d caused some of the people to worship him, he still didn’t know.

Alexander opened his eyes. But he’d been thinking about how he might hurt them back. It might end up being nothing more than a petty attempt if they found it in time, but maybe they wouldn’t notice until it was already a problem.

He activated the transfer.

The gateway materialized in the space between the walls. The aperture was still sealed, much as it had been when he’d placed the Beastworld gateway in the Sanctum. It wouldn’t open until the timer ran down. And as far as he was aware, it couldn’t be moved again.

Alexander sealed the wall back up. Metallokinesis pressed the metal back into place, smoothing the seams, aligning the metal until the join was nearly invisible. He stepped back and examined it with both his eyes and his senses, checking for any irregularity that might draw attention.

It was as good as it could be given his time constraints. 53 seconds.

He took off. But instead of heading in a direct path back through the ship, he tore through walls at random. Ripped panels from ceilings. Punched holes in floors. Shattered bedrooms and a storage closet. Peeled sections of hallways free and created chaos across multiple levels. Every act of destruction was a false trail. Anything to increase the likelihood that they wouldn’t find the present he’d left them until it was too late.

Two golden-robed wizards appeared. The first materialized in the corridor ahead. The second appeared behind, cutting off his retreat.

They immediately began casting.

Alexander poured Electrokinesis through his Core and juked right, tore through a wall, crossed a room, and burst through the far side.

One of the golden robes was waiting, already sweeping his wand in a cutting motion, and sending a rippling wave of energy toward him.

Alexander crossed his arms across his chest and caught the blast. The impact drove him backward into the wall, forcing a grunt from his lips.

Chains materialized across his arms, attaching themselves to the wall behind him.

Instead of fighting them, Alexander just stepped backward, and the wall tore down the middle again, letting him through.

Then he dropped through the floor the same way, just in time to duck under a spell from the other Exalted.

Alexander gave up the game and put on a burst of speed. He raced down through the decks, zigzagging down hallways to avoid the two Exalted as they kept pace with him, anticipating his movement and erecting barriers ahead of him.

Each corridor he entered, one of them was already there or appeared a heartbeat later. They were either trying to pin him between them or herding him somewhere.

Alexander grabbed a Tier 1 wizard as he stepped out of a side room. He rounded the corner and used the wizard as a shield, catching spells that had again been waiting for him.

The man screamed in pain, and Alexander discarded him before changing direction again. This time he headed for the room he’d avoided earlier, as all of the signatures had dispersed already.

He tore through the floor and came to a stop.

The room that opened up around him was not a command center.

White marble pillars lined both sides, rising to a vaulted ceiling inlaid with gold. A plush carpet, deep crimson, ran the length of the floor. There was a table with a partial world map and figurines laid out on it.

The room was enormous, designed to make anyone who entered it feel small. And at the far end, marble stairs climbed upward to where a strange throne waited.

The thing was assembled from staves, all of them lashed together with silver wire. It was easily the ugliest chair he’d ever seen.

Alexander should have left. The clock was ticking. 25 seconds remained, give or take. The raid comms rang out with confirmations as people withdrew from the courtyard, across the gateway back home. Maximilian had done what he could. He was returning to the fortress where the others were still defending it against Artensah and the handful of Tier 2 wizards still fighting.

Augustus’s portal would be waiting for him once he exited the floating behemoth of a palace. From there, it would take less than two seconds to reach the gateway.

Caroline was silent, but Talia had given her the timing.

The two Exalted appeared on either side of the room, between the pillars. Several other black-robed wizards joined them.

Spells tore through the air from every direction except above and below.

And from the throne.

Metallokinesis pulsed. He tore through the air heading for the prize. A phantom strike hit his shoulder, sending him crashing through one of the pillars. Bolts of fire followed, scorching against his clothes and burning flesh beneath. He grunted and put on another burst of speed.

A tear in the air appeared, and he twisted around it just in time, only to come face-to-face with one of the Exalted as he materialized at the base of the stairs, staff raised.

Alexander struck the wizard’s shield with his cybernetic fist and unleashed a full-powered burst of lightning, shattering the barrier.

The Exalted vanished at the same time.

Alexander raced up the stairs and came to a stop beside the throne. Glancing around the room, he realized something had changed. The wizards were still aiming their wands and staves at him, but none of them were casting. And none of them had dared to set foot upon the marble steps.

He grinned and placed his hand on the ugly chair.

“I’m just going to borrow this for a bit,” Alexander said. “Tell the Empress I’ll take good care of it, though I might need to break off a piece or two for the fireplace.”

Then with a thought he sent the throne into his ring.

In the stunned silence that followed, he tore the floor open beneath him and dropped through. He could sense the bioelectrical signatures giving chase, but it was too late. Floor after floor peeled open ahead of him, and suddenly he was back in the hangar bay.

Alexander burst through the underside of the palace and into open air. Augustus’s portal hung below, inky black against the sky. He dove for it. Spells streaked through the air behind him.

He hit the portal at full speed and the darkness swallowed him.

It was time to go home.