Ex Machinus

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Siege
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Ex Machinus

Post by Siege »

Hey, look what I found whilst trawling the depths of my personal digital archives? Ye olde quicksnap! To be frankly honest I'm not sure if it still corresponds with Comix' canon, but what the hell...

Ex Machinus

The Steam Citadel is gigantic, far larger than the Montmartre on which it stands, but the superlative construct is folded between dimensional seams and unnoticeable even from the streets that surround it. Inside, thick columns of white stone constricted by fat snaking cables of blackest bitumen rocket away from the ground, up toward a vaulted gothic ceiling hidden in darkness. Stained glass windows show imagery of cobalt cogwheels and ruby multi-armed wrenches. The floor is paved with massive tiles of a strange obsidian material etched with silver formulae, interrupted here and there by huge many-colored mosaics that are actually the blueprints of unfathomably complex mechanisms. Further in the distance stand innumerable bookshelves and rows of strange machinery alive with piezoelectric buzz and strange intelligence; golden chandeliers carrying thousands of electric candles hang from an invisible ceiling. Alcoves hold solemn holographic statues of great minds: Newton and Kelvin, Einstein and Hawking and Quartermass.

The Citadel is a temple dedicated to technology, but at this time the one who in its object of worship does not pay it any heed. Because Montesquieu is slowly bleeding out. Not from any physical wound; if it had been that, her tender, who held knowledge of all medical technology in the entire world and then some, would long have healed her. No: it was a grievous mental injury that plagued her, inflicted by the darkest of arts. Black magic ruined her body, inexorably sapping her strength and life from her. The sorcerous enemy had wrapped her in a metareal corona of imminent death from which there was no escape.

Magic was not the expertise of Saint Anthony the Machinist, Patron-Saint of Steam and Gears. The immeasurable vastness of his Paris Cathedral seems to ascend away from the old, grizzled man that was the Saint’s preferred avatar. Montesquieu’s brass armor was stripped away; her broken body sprawled across the velvet draped across the workbench-altar, surrounded by strange medical machineries fighting to keep her alive. But the Saint was losing. For all his incredible cunning, the human body remained frail and by the time Sylvia had managed to drag herself here she’d been too far gone already.

IV’s drip. Heart-rate meters beep erratically. Resonance imagers flicker futile warnings. Over a hundred tubes, some filled with glowing fluids, some pulsing with electromagnetism and others alive with even stranger forces, pass into and out of her body. They are not working. The Saint stands helplessly as she slips further and further away from him. His knuckles rest on the altar beside her, old and helpless and white as the plain metal rings on his fingers. His eyes are moist.

Her heart stops.

Alarms blare, echo through the vast emptiness of the cathedral’s expansive ceilings, drowning out the single spoken word that escapes the lips of the Saint.

‘No,’ he says.

Then louder: ‘No. This is not how it happens. Not this time.’

At unspoken command, esoteric machineries buried deep beneath Montmartre awaken. A nearly inaudible rumble reverberates through the air, deep and vast and unstoppable. It is the sound of continents grinding together, the sound of thousands of years of slowly coalescing matter that finally ignites as a newborn star, the sound of universes forming and dying and forming again. The Steam Citadel comes alive. Ancient stonework suddenly throbs with heat like the scales of a creature coming out of hibernation. The air is livid with unseen energy. Atomic gears and metaphysical pistons grind through the empty spaces between molecules, alight with eerie radiance. The formulae on the floor writhe and twist, rearrange themselves into a brilliant new pattern that dissolves cosmic infinities in a heartbeat, pierces through the dimensions of space and time itself.

All across France, the electromagnetic force flickers briefly.

The cathedral moves at right angles through the barriers of reality.

The windows are dark. Suddenly there is no more light outside. In fact, there is nothing outside: the mighty cathedral hangs suspended in the abyss between dimensions, less than a spec of dust against the great nothing, This is the great void, the eternity of darkness through which echoes the sound of passing centuries.

Darkness etches crystals on the windows. The overwhelming sensation of absence would drive lesser beings insane. Outside there is no matter, no energy. The things of this place are composed of passing time, and like the fluttering of a black cape, they beat their massless wings against the intruding bulk of the cathedral. It is a non-place, a place between places, an abyssal chasm composed of dimensions without top or bottom, left or right. In the absence of being, such physical directions become meaningless.

This is the domain of the vast insentient force that is the dark god Chernobog, the Giver and Taker, the Atlas who carries the weight of uncounted realities.

And he has taken notice of the intrusion into his realm.

The electric candles flicker briefly and rattle in their chandeliers when a shape of blackest darkness manifests on the floor of the cathedral, at the very edge of the circle of light that illuminates the cathedra. It is solid, but featureless like shadow: darkness coagulated into a shape only vaguely humanoid. The avatar of Chernobog, strangely lean and tall as two men, wraps his cloak of black around him and turns to the cathedra, and the Saint who stands behind it.

‘Machinus, it breathes, and its voice is heavy and aimless as if its owner has to concentrate hard on each word spoken. ‘Long is the time that passed since we last spoke.

‘That was another time, and another world,’ the Saint replies, walking past the workbench-altar and positing himself between it and the avatar of the dark god. ‘You have something that belongs to me.’

Chernobog falls silent for long seconds. The dark god is not sentient in a way recognizable to man. The motives and mindsets, the fears and petty thoughts of mortal creatures are alien to this impersonal force. Would a hurricane care for human suffering? Would death? This incomprehensible thing, which shoulders the corners of dimensions, can barely grasp the concept of ownership.

‘You wish your puppet back, the faceless black thing finally says. ‘You are far beyond you bounds, Machinus. The authority of the Circuitry does not extend this far.’

‘If there’s anything I’ve recently learned,’ smiles Saint Anthony, ‘it is that rules are meant to be broken. I am here to claim what is mine, and I am not leaving without it.’

The dark avatar extends its hand, and a scythe of darkest obsidian manifests itself in it. ‘Then come and claim her.’

Saint Anthony steps forward. Some of the formulae on the floor realign, leave their slabs and rise up in a swirl of silverdust that joins together to form a solid silver stave adorned with perpetually moving Jugendstil patterns. ‘I will, if I must.’

‘You must!’ the voice of Chernobog is barely more than a whisper, but his scythe arcs down in a wild swing aimed at the head of the Saint. Anthony lithely withdraws out of the reach of the raven blade, then moves inside the dark god’s guard, staff twirling in his hands. But Chernobog merely raises his hand and blocks his swing. The instant the silver stave connects with the starless black it disintegrates in a burst of writhing patterns of geometric silver. And then the scythe arcs down again and the Saint is forced to duck below it, moving out of harms way again.

‘Impressive,’ nods Anthony. His rings glow faintly; thin air reconstitutes itself back into a platinum copy of his weapon. ‘You’ve been practicing?’

‘I need no practice. I am eternal.’ Without further warning, the dark god hacks at him. In more esoteric and abstract realities, tremendous mystical energies blister and clash when the two avatars of those titanic forces collide in combat. Chernobog’s wild and passionate slashes are warded off by the Saint’s platinum baton, which now stays intact for one, two, three parries, until it breaks and dissolves and reconstitutes itself yet again in a golden incarnation.

Then the duel begins in earnest. Saint Anthony circles, parrying each wild, passionate slash with cool decisiveness. With the patience of rusting steel, of entropy itself, he waits time and again, parrying, dodging and deflecting, until the time has come for him to strike. The staff turns in his hands, over his head, and then comes down and strikes the sinister avatar on the shoulder, driving the dark figure backward for scant valuable seconds. Golden Jugendstil patterns detach themselves from his baton and twist through the air and wrap themselves around the arm that holds the black scythe.

But the dark god cannot be so easily captured. Almost instantly the glittering golden threads begin to smolder and melt, and then Chernobog’s scythe dissolves into tendrils of darkest shadows, enfolding the bullion patterns and slithering across toward the weapon of the Saint. Anthony grimaces and with a glittering flash, the patterns dissolve.

Brief moments, the two opponents, equally unarmed, gaze at each other.

‘I can adjust to any move you make,’ says Saint Anthony. ‘Given time, I can overcome you.’

‘Your Circuitry is potent,’ acknowledges the avatar of Chernobog impassively. ‘But you are in my realm now. Despite your prowess I could crush this place if I wished.’

Anthony shrugs. ‘And yet, you do not.’

‘Your avatar is meaningless,’ rumbles the dark god with a motion that is the closest it can come to shrugging its shoulders. ‘Eradicate it and you will fashion another.’

‘So why don’t you?’

‘Why don’t I, indeed?

The obsidian scythe rematerializes and curves down, a blur too fast for the human eye to follow. But Saint Anthony is no human and his baton rematerializes, diamond this time, and blocks the weapon of darkness. Over the course of a second they exchange ten or more blows, their weapons sparking pure darkness or swiftly fading geometric patterns whenever they meet with hissing clangs.

‘You are Machinus. You can fashion another puppet,’ murmurs Chernobog, his coagulated darkness mere centimeters away from the Saint. ‘Why come here? Why provoke me over something so easily replaceable?’ The dark god sounds faintly intrigued.

‘You would not understand,’ shrugs the Saint. ‘I’ve… changed… my views on mortals since last we met. I no longer consider each as expendable as the next.’

‘Flickerings they are. Brief patterns of thought, there and gone again. Gone, vanished. Like this woman of yours.’ The dark avatar points at the cathedra and the lifeless body upon it.

‘Not if I win this.’

‘Win, lose. You attach much value to mortal concepts, Machinus. I do not remember you so.’

‘As I said, dark one, I’ve changed my mind since the last time we met. About a great many things.’

Another flurry of blows rings through the mighty cathedral. Another impasse follows. Their weapons grind together, but each appears no stronger than the other.

‘You came to this place for this one mortal soul?’ asks the dark god, as if Chernobog only just became aware of that.

‘I did.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘You are Chernobog, the titan at the gates. I don’t expect you to understand such things.’

‘What if I release her to you?’

The Saint pauses in the very start of a new attack. ‘You would do such a thing?’

‘You sound surprised, Machinus.’

‘I thought I would have to fight you for it. I was prepared to have to rip her from your bosom.’

‘Surely you did not expect to succeed. I am Chernobog. I am he who defines what is and what is not. I am the divider, the cornerstone, the gatekeeper. I am eternal. You cannot defeat me.’

Saint Anthony smiles wryly. ‘Don’t count me out so fast, dark one. You have seen, today, what I can do. I have a few tricks up my sleeve yet.’

The avatar of the dark god turns away with a motion of supreme indifference. ‘Think what you wish. I am the gatekeeper. Nothing can pass through me and return without my sanction. But there is no sense in ones such as us bickering over something so trivial, and I tire of your presence. I shall allow you what you desire, this time. Now begone from this place, Machinus. Take your prize. Be at peace with yourself... For now.’

The Saint shrugs. His weapon disappears in a blaze of radiant patterns. ‘I thank you, dark one. But know that one day you too shall pass away. Like the old gods did before you. But I am progress… And progress is eternal. Not you.’

‘We’ll see, Machinus. We’ll see. Now leave.

And with that, a shiver creeps across the stone pillars that hold up the proud cathedral. Once again, arcane mechanisms begin to throb and ache. With a silent shudder the veils between dimensions are lifted and then the Steam Citadel once again squats atop the hill that is Montmartre. None saw it leave. None saw it return. None had missed it.

But atop the cathedra, Montesquieu quivers with sudden life. Machineries leap beeping into action. Displays show reds, then yellows and, one after the other, greens, as the awesome prowess of Saint Anthony the Machinist is turned solely toward saving his beloved protégé. The Saint rests his hands on the side of the cathedra and gazes at her as she lies cradled by his unfathomable apparatuses that carefully keep her alive.

‘Maybe he’s right, you know,’ he murmurs to no-one in particular. ‘Maybe I have lost it. Wouldn’t that be a sight? The Patron-Saint of Technology gone insane? But I don’t think so. Not really. Instead…’ He briefly plays with a strand of Sylvia’s brown hair, and then he smiles faintly. ‘It is that I have tasted the forbidden fruit, and I have tasted nothing as sweet as this.’
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Shroom Man 777
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Re: Ex Machinus

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I rather like it, especially with the machine-god Saint Anthony being rather human about the whole thing which utterly perplexes Chernobog. Also, I think it'd be quite a treat of we got to see more of the good Saint and Montesquieu, mang.

I think this still fits with Comix canon, since it doesn't outright contradict anything, so it's good. I wish we could expound more on Comix 'theological matters'.
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Re: Ex Machinus

Post by Czernobog »

This is really good, and hints at the 'deeper' reality behind Comix, which is a quite good idea.
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Re: Ex Machinus

Post by Magister Militum »

Yeah, I agree with Shroomy that Ex Machinus doesn't really contradict current Comix! canon, which is good, as this was always one of my favorite shorts.
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