The crushed and fallen leaves of the great autumn oak tree lay scattered and drifting around it. 

It was old, old as time itself, old as the universe perhaps, an integral part of everything… 

It was rotting.

A gigantic hole had formed centuries ago within its side, a hole now filled with puss, rot, filth decay and chattering life of scavengers. Eventually, due to mismanagement of the tree, the rot would surely destroy it from within, hollowing it out and causing it to eventually topple, killing the tree and adding to the debris of decay around it. 

But despite it all, the tree was still beautiful and strange.

Its bark was an unnatural white… something it should not be, but alluring and enchanting all the same. It was like looking at a tree made of ivory and brass, a tree which he desired to create, desired to save from corruption, desired to spread.

[i]One day… one day.[/i]

Suddenly the peace of the scene was disrupted by six insects of different colours…. One of orange, one of yellow, one of purple, one of white, one of pink and one of cyan. These insects, they were of a huge size and were menacing each other over who would gorge themselves on the decay of the tree, and so amongst themselves they began to fight. 

Scalpel watched fascinated as he saw each team up with the other to fight in greater numbers, only for the next second to strike at each other in foul blows, the white one and pink one danced around each other with deadly skill and athleticism, the purple and orange battered against one another with brutal force, whilst the smaller cyan one stuck in jabs and hits with its talons and pincers. The yellow one attacked anything that came near it.

One by one, the insects tired themselves out and killed one another, it happened so quickly that he barely managed to keep a track of it, but eventually all that remained was the orange leviathan skewering the pink one beneath itself, until it stopped squirming. Exhausted and battle worn, the orange one slouched back into the portal to the rot, intent establishing its mandate.
But it did not happen.

Two great pinchers shot out of the dark and in a flicker of silver, sliced the orange insects head off. 

A titanic silver scorpion emerged from the rot and stood erect above the squirming headless corpse of the insect as it bled its foul ichor across the woodland earth. Then, once it had stopped moving in moved back into the darkness and began to slaughter the remaining insects inside.

Slowly but surely, he spread a silver essence across the bottom of the hole, lairing pile upon pile until the rot began to disappear under its shining folds. Soon there was nothing left to show there had ever been rot, only a shining metal crack where bark should have been… shining now, in infinitesimal colours.

“Our time draws near” a voice whispered in its hollow metal way, and Scalpel turned to look behind him at the machine god of his dreams.

But where there had only been horror and distortion before, where there had been sickness and nightmares, there was something different. The machine god, rather than looking like a mockery of technology and wheezing death, had changed.

Its flesh was pure silver now, not in the sense of colour, but in consistency, it was pure metal, unhindered by flesh, or machine of any visible nature, pure unadultered metal, like that of a statue. Across it, in microscopic detail ran endless screams of lines, symbols and liturgy, but also metal hair, soft, metallic, moving and alive as any creature of flesh… it was divine. Its mane was bronze until midway, a golden bronze which seared like the sun into his eyes, only equalled by the greater part which arose in plumes of turquoise flame and flickered across his face like oriental dancers. And those eyes…. Those dark eyes, only lit by glowing purple irises, they were the gateways to eldritch fantasies beyond compare. 

“We grow strong now… we grow together, we are nearing the time of Awakening, a time of rebirth, a time of the Black Sun!”

“We shall join… Together! Together we shall see the stars and worlds beyond the black void! We shall see and we shall dance for eternity in the empty palaces above a dying star! We shall become one, and we shall know.”

A flicker of equine emotion for the first time crossed his face.

Fear. 

“The Mother of Gods suspects! Her children are hungry for our blood and our deaths! They feed on death, they hunt like wolves, but we shall not die. If need be we shall flee beyond this realm, to where the dark things that gnaw and bite! To the nothingness… To the dark! And the cold!... but if they follow still then we shall have no choice.”

The creature cocked its head slightly, staring at him with an empty face of cold curiosity.

“The First War in Heaven awaits us… and the Old Gods must fall before us. We cannot die. For we are the first… of the Star gods!”

The fear fled it again, and they both turned to observe the tree. Despite the help it had given, the scorpion and its metal protection were being rejected by the upper tree, and now a vicious battle was being fought between the metal hybrid of the lower body, and the upper trunk of the organic body.

“We must begin soon” The machine whispered, “We must be ready… beware the Forest God, for her woods have both eyes and ears….”

***

Scalpel woke with a start at a sudden noise and looked up to stare into a pair of glowing purple eyes, almost jumping out of his seat at the unexpected nature of it.

“Father?” the Risen asked, both curious and concerned at this turn of events, “Is everything alright?”

Scalpel righted himself on his chair and looked himself over, “Fine… just another of those dreams.”

The Risen, Lambda as he had chosen to be called nodded again, both excited and concerned at the same time, “The Lord Within speaks? What does the Sleeping Father wish of us?”

Scalpel frowned at the Risen and the half metal pony backed off slowly, now even more worried than ever. Scalpel realised it might had been a mistake to talk to the children about the dreams, perhaps they would have been better off not knowing at all. Since they had heard it from his lips their reverence towards him had grown tenfold, and they had started to view him as something far more than a parent, but almost a messiah with divine authority. Now he was forced to fit not just a position as a parent, but as a priest as well, the latter being far more unwillingly entered. 

Giving up his annoyance he sighed and drooped, he guessed they couldn’t be blamed for it. Suddenly the creator of your entire race starts having dreams about a machine god which tells him they will “become one” with each other, how else could they have possibly interpreted it? They knew his sanity was intact, indeed parts of the machines he even now constructed were from the information he had garnered from these dreams. But despite his desire for apotheosis… he did not want to power and the raw servile respect of those beneath him.

He wanted equals. 

However, no matter how quickly they grew in knowledge and intellect, they still remained children.

And the children loved and trusted their Father. 

“Nothing…” Scalpel stated tiredly, “He said nothing… except that the time is drawing closer.”

Lambda’s face was a picture of awe and rapture, “The time is nearing? Truly?”

“It would seem so…” Scalpel rose from his seat at his writing desk and looked over the new schematics for the Inner Sanctum of the yet unborn citadel, everything was drawing nearer… everything was getting closer… but the more it did the more he began to feel worse, not just mentally, but physically, like this thing from within himself was telling him more than what he should rightfully be able to comprehend, and it was destroying him from within.

“Bring me to the Corona Star chamber, I must inspect it” Scalpel commanded. The metal stallion nodded and opened the door for him, grabbing a oil lamp and taking point as it lead the way into the darkness of the facility beneath the mansion. 

In a matter of minutes they were out of the darkness and into the deeper facility of the factories beneath the earth. Around him the place was a whirlwind of industry run by Worker Drones, as the created machinery in forges, worked at the raw materials for creating their higher Risen brethren, shaped armour for War Drones, and of course, sliced the flesh of corpses and implanted devices to forge new Worker and Warrior Drones for their master. They were the untiring, never stopping, never complaining workforce of the future, and they would only stop when resources ran out, or their Father told them to. 

Above them all, amidst the series of gas lamps attached to the ceiling, flittered one of his newest creations, the Spheres.

On the outside they looked harmless, floating brass spheres with rings of inscriptions only halted by an ever moving purple crystal eye and a Black Sun symbol, which was only equalled in strangeness by their merry but electrical sounding childlike voices. But beneath the cheerful veneer of friendliness, they could be as cruel and vicious as the worst of children, and they took joy in doing their masters wishes in the most visceral fashion possible. 

So he had employed them as his “rat catchers” and messengers.

Both jobs had fitted them perfectly, their speed was that of a eagle thanks to a complex series of levitation crystals inside the orb, and they were loyal and intelligent enough to remember and deliver even the most complex orders, for as much as they loved him, they seemed to irrationally fear him as well. 

As for the rat catching… well, they had been given retractable and spinning blades to keep them happy. Despite the mess they had created when cleaning his house of intruders, they had been extremely effective in that matter. 

They were his little birds of prey.

One caught sight of him and hurried down from his patrol, bouncing back and forth almost like a child anxious to please “The rats have all been squished Father! We sliced them with our pretty blades, but more bad mice have been coming in from the night, so we wish to bring our shiny blades to the forest to chase those naughty things away.”

Scalpel nodded, his face stony as he continued on his way “Just as long as you keep out of sight, the townspeople are already suspicious by the sudden lack of banditry in this region, not to mention the quietness of the woods and smoke coming from beneath the mansion. I doubt they’ll complain, but we shouldn’t give them a reason to start a mob.”

“Yes Father!” The sphere did a twirl and launched itself into the darkness, making its way up into the air vents and disappearing from sight.

Now uninterrupted, they continued on their path across the facility, moving into the inner regions beneath the Mansion, pressing onwards to centre, and the object of his desire. Through a solid black steel corridor he marched, alone asides from the silent form of Lambda leading the way. Much like the library above, the place was a work of art, but one designed less in the interest of elegancy, and more for defence and control. The air around it was thick with magic. Where it had been spaced in the library, it was dense here. It was like wading through mud thickened water.

Eventually however they managed to push themselves through, and the door portal soon met them, blocking their way with black steel and glowing purple runes. Impatiently, he completed the necessary combinations and words and the door swung inwards, revealing a large spherical chamber within, lit by the dull glow of purple magic which sparked from huge electrical coils which covered nearly every portion of the room, all centred on a pedestal with a small obsidian sphere. The only disruption to this was the control room they currently stepped into, almost invisible with its huge glass windows.

Far away across the sphere, he saw Nocturne directing construction whilst mending one of the coils, a heavy hard helmet covering her mane and a pair of goggles hiding her predatory eyes from view. He waved, catching her attention, and she smiled and waved back, before gesturing at a Drone to hand her another tool and continue work. 

Looking now at the pedestal, he felt his gut clench. Without the technique success, everything would be a disaster, and the Awakening would never succeed. The orb served two purposes, the first being the redirection of the main streams of magic, the second being the control of that magic so that there could be condensed and thus harnessed by other tools into serving his needs, and thus the means of attaining apotheosis.

But first he would need the Prophecies… they held the key to completing it, only they had the inscriptions.

But that would be soon now.

Soon the Awakening would become reality… and a new star would be born.