Gods and Robots: part 2

Background reading

This is my ongoing scifi / fantasy / crime fiction serial. New chapter every week.

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: A rogue AI megaship known as ‘Probably Better’ has transited through the portal to Palinor. The insurgents currently trying to take the city of Bruglia wait to see what happens next…

Bruglia.
3208. Brightsun.

The fighting had shifted into the city proper, which in turn meant pulling the supply lines forward. That was where Jiraa found himself hauling crates, shifting them from the big metal lift coming up from the canyon floor to the stores atop the mesa. A makeshift camp had been established on the outskirts of the city, from where they could run tools, armour, projectile ammunition, lanterns and field medicine to wherever it was needed.

The particular mesa they were on was smaller, home to especially elaborate estates of Bruglia’s wealthiest families. It was where they retreated to in the the hottest months, away from the crowding of the central mesa.

“Where do you need this?” he asked of the quartermaster, an enormous dragon-man with tusks and skeletal wings that didn’t look like they could fly. Jiraa corrected himself: he couldn’t help but think of these enormous, muscled, scaled creatures as being male, with their deep voices and imposing presence. Zlati kept telling him off.

“I’ll take it,” the koth said, grabbing the heavy crate with one hand as if it weighed nothing. “Go back for more.”

The lift was in constant use, up and down the side of the mesa. Below were most of the support forces, busy in their pop-up workshops and forges. Once items were ready, up they came and Jiraa had volunteered to help move things from A to B. He could barely keep the various factions straight in his head, but he could put boxes on top of other, similar boxes. A repetitive job helped keep from thinking too much about what he’d got himself into. When he was idle for more than five minutes he could feel a low level panic bubbling away, questioning why he was in another dimension in the middle of a war he knew nothing about. He should have been well into his new job back in Addis, a month-or-two in, getting to know his colleagues, finding his feet, doing his best.

“Hey, come up here!” Zlati’s voice snapped him back to the present, and there it was — the reason he was still here. He didn’t know entirely why he’d come to Palinor in the first place, as it had all happened so quickly and he’d been on the airship before taking a breath. But she was the reason he’d stayed.

Diverted away from his appointed task, he ran up a flight of stairs two at a time, finding her at the top. They were in an antechamber of some sort, multiple doors leading off. The estate was a maze, every room lavishly decorated with what he had been reliably told was extremely expensive objects.

“Through there,” Zlati said, pointing, “is a very comfy looking four-poster bed. It’s bouncy.” She grabbed him and kissed him, then pushed him away. “But we don’t have time for that right now! Up there-” and she pointed to a spiral staircase visible through a different door “-is a tower with an amazing view over the city. And something’s happening. Come on!”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him with her, up the stairs, round and round, until he felt dizzy from the motion. An aen’fa like Zlati had no problem scampering about, and it always left him feeling slow. Finally they emerged into the bright daylight atop a tall tower, overlooking the mesa and across the bridges to the rest of the city. Something odd hovered in the distance, something which shouldn’t be possible.

“Is that a megaship?” Jiraa had never seen one up close, of course, but he’d been obsessed with them as a child. Actual megaship sightings were incredibly rare.

“A megaship? Is that the Max-Earth thing?”

Wishing he had binoculars, Jiraa squinted against the afternoon glare. “There’s no way that should be functioning here. No way.”

The black shape suddenly flared orange and red, engulfed in what looked like fire. Then the flame dispersed, replaced with arcing electricity across its surface, visible against the black hull. The electrical frenzy ceased and spikes burst from the ship, extending out in all directions until it was pin-cushioned.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

Zlati took his hand, held it tight. “It looks like it’s trying out elemental magic. That’s what I’d guess. Reminds me of watching Maxim during his training.”

It was subtle, easy to miss, but the day had taken on an overcast light, despite there being no clouds in the sky. “Remind me how magic works?”

She shrugged. “I can’t do it. No aen’fa can. It’s to do with light, I think. It’s easier to do during the day, and wielders always need a light source.”

“Like the sun?”

There was another flash of light from the ship, which again glowed red and orange, this time a trail of fire raining down from it to the city below. The fire was clumped together, looking more like a liquid, like magma from a volcano. Smoke rose from the city where it fell. “It’s attacking,” Jiraa said.

Another arc of molten liquid sprayed from the ship, dropping towards the streets as if flicked from a paintbrush. Jiraa and Zlati watched from afar, the supply outpost well outside of the combat arena. A shimmer extended over parts of the city and the fire impacted above the streets, spreading over an invisible barrier and sliding off the edges of the mesa.

“They put up a shield!” Zlati jumped, took her hand back and clapped excitedly.

“Who did?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “it looked like a pretty big shield. Maybe everyone? But why is that thing attacking?” She turned to him, eyes wide, the realisation dawning. “Wait, is it the same one that attacked you and the others on Max-Earth?”

It might have been. That would make sense, but megaships all looked rather alike. Jiraa couldn’t think of any other megaship that would be causing trouble, and if that was indeed Probably Better it meant they were all in a lot of trouble. At least they were positioned away from the focus of the fighting.

Zlati was biting her nails. “I’m worried about the others. They’re right underneath it. And if it came through the portal, then that would be right where Pylpo and the others were headed.”

He put his arms around her. “They can look after themselves,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as her. “We should get back downstairs and help out. Whatever’s going on, we need to make sure the supplies are getting up and across the bridges.”

Returning to the stairs, he took her hand and gently tugged at it. Everything else was above his pay grade. Krystyan and Lykasra and Daryla would know what to do. They always did. At least if the rogue megaship was here it meant it wasn’t terrorising people back home. Small wins.

“Something’s happening,” Zlati said, remaining atop the tower, leaning on the wall. “Look.”

He climbed back up to be beside her. The megaship was enveloped by a dark, expanding cloud. No, not a cloud: it was formed of thousands of much smaller objects, too far away to make out. They were spewing from the ship, spreading out like spray from a shower, then dropping down to the city. The swarm kept being ejected, dispersing more and more widely, and it became apparent that some of the objects were coming their way.

“What are they?” Zlati’s eyes were better than his, more capable of picking out details at greater distances. “They look almost like people.”

Most of the rest were still falling closer to the city, thousands of them, clearly pushing past the protective energy shield. Something, one of them, smashed into a nearby building, collapsing the wall and sending out an explosion of debris. A shockwave rippled up, flicking plumes of dust from the tower wall.

They looked down from their position as two Owkehu soldiers approached, swords in hand. There was movement in the shifting cloud of debris and a dark shape emerged: bipedal, slender, tall, and seemingly made from the same obsidian-black material as the megaship.

“Halt!” ordered one of the soldiers. The response was swift and violent, the creature darting forwards and tearing at the man’s throat with metallic fingers. It moved in short, sharp bursts, like an insect.

The other soldier rushed in, shouting, and received a fist to the chest that went all the way through and out the other side. Jiraa felt bile rising in his throat and he retched: this was war, but seeing actual death was still a new experience. It wasn’t something that could be unseen.

Standing on the spot, flanked by the two dead bodies, the creature didn’t move. Its lack of motion was unnatural: even a fear-stricken rodent continued to breathe; even a spider would involuntarily reposition a leg.

Then it jumped: up, towards the tower they were in, and landed on the wall. There it perched, clawed feet digging into the stonework. A voice, disembodied, oddly distant, the sound coming from its chest rather than the oblong that seemed to represent a ‘head’: “Where is the journal?”

Despite the lack of facial features, Jiraa had the distinct impression that it was looking at him. “What journal?”

“Facial recognition places you in Addis Ababa with the rest. Where are they, and where is the journal?”

He pulled at Zlati, moving her back, towards the stairs. The creature, thin as it was, was larger than a human and might not fit in the spiralling stairwell. Waving a hand, he tried to gesture to her to descend.

“Do not attempt to flee,” the creature said, stepping from the parapet to the floor. Having seen it close-up, Jiraa realised it somewhat resembled a host robot from back home, albeit without any of the friendly human aesthetic concessions. Its head tilted to one side. “Reveal the location of the journal or I will dismember your companion.”

He’d seen how fast it could move, how easily it had dispatched the armed guards. There was no way they could both get down the stairs fast enough, and even if they did it would likely be waiting for them at the bottom.

It wanted a journal. Was that the book that Yana and Lola had been talking about? Jiraa hadn’t entirely followed the specifics or kept up with the plan; he just did what he was told. He’d be damned if he was going to let this thing get hold of Zlati, though — perhaps if he positioned himself just right, it’d give her enough time to get away.

“Stop trying,” the creature said, “it’s a waste of everyone’s time.” Again moving with unnatural speed and precision, it pushed him aside and grabbed at Zlati, pulling her back to the top of the tower, where it held her off the ground by one arm. She flailed hopelessly, scrabbling at the creature but unable to free herself. Blood was already sluicing down her arm from its grip. “You can divulge the information at any time,” it said. “I will remove her arm in five seconds.”

He could rush it, but would be cut down immediately. He could run for help, but it would not be in time. Attempting to bargain seemed pointless. He didn’t have the information it wanted — the irony was that Zlati probably did, as she was often included in the inner circle planning, but he wasn’t going to let on to that. He could lie, pretend to reveal the journal’s location, but would it know?

There were no good choices. He was helpless. He had to try something, even if it was doomed. To do nothing was not an option. So much for being away from the front lines. He tensed his legs, ready to leap at the creature, to wrap himself around it and try to break Zlati free—

—then it released its grip, and she dropped to the floor, clutching at her crushed wrist. The creature’s arm remained outstretched, vibrating, juddering as if malfunctioning. “How are you doing this?” it asked.

“He isn’t,” came a voice from the stairwell. It was an older man, perhaps in his late-fifties, wrapped in a long, blue cloak. “My name is Erik Vineroot. Remember it well. And who or what are you, pray tell?”

The man approached, hand outstretched, fingers taut as if holding an invisible ball. As he moved his hand, so the creature’s arm also moved in tandem. Jiraa thought he might recognise him from the camp.

“A physologist, then,” the creature said. “Your tricks do not concern me. I can counter them faster than you can cast. You are a slow organic; I am a hybrid superintelligence.”

There was an enormous gust of wind and from below the edge of the tower came a gigantic koth, bigger even than usual.

“Funny, you just look like another monster to me,” they growled, grinning wickedly as they landed, claws cracking the stone floor. “And I like hunting monsters.”

Elise Racine / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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References

• Wondering who showed up at the end there? Meet the Six Blades, first introduced here before properly showing up the story during ‘The Creature’ (March 2022). They got a cameo recently during preparations for the war in ‘Alliances’ (June 2025).

• Jiraa we met fairly recently, in ‘Last flight of the Beagle’ (April 2025)

• If you want to brush up on magic in the triverse, here’s a primer (December 2021)

Meanwhile.

That image above is from the Better Images of AI initiative. Do check ’em out if you’re looking for less cliched images to use when writing about tech.

Some things I’ve been enjoying:

• Just started reading (rather late to the party) Absolute Wonder Woman by

  Kelly Thompson
  . It starts strong. The action is extremely easy to parse, too, while doing some pretty wacky stuff with the panel layout. So refreshing! And this made me wibble a bit:

• I’ve been playing Hollow Knight. Again, late to the party. I bounced off it a year ago, and then nearly abandoned it again this time round. It’s deliberately obtuse and difficult, but get through the early frustrations and it becomes increasingly rewarding.

• Bake Off is back on TV. This is big news in our house.

• My Babylon 5 rewatch continues:

• Brian K. Vaughan
  ’s intense Spectators is coming out as a collected print edition. If you didn’t catch its original serialisation via the newsletter, do check it out. It’s a difficult and upsetting read in many ways, but is quite genius in many ways.

• I’m still not sure how Jeremy Renner survived his snow plow accident, but I’m very glad he did. This looks brilliant:

• Cinema Therapy is often a good watch and they recently covered Thunderbolts. Having rewatched it a couple of weeks ago, I thought it held up rather well on second viewing. I’ve seen a fair bit of sniffy jeering from self-described grown-ups who don’t like the ending, so it was interesting to see this take:

• Finally, this discussion from

  Taylor Lorenz
  is really on-point and worth your time, if you write/create/do anything online:

Author notes

Things just keep getting worse.¹ When it rains, it pours, and it’s apparently raining deadly robots. Hate it when that happens.

PB’s ability to create swarm drones was established back during the Enceladus encounter with CK. We’ve seen how dangerous host bodies can be, back in the ‘Twenty-Four Hours’ (June 2023) story, when CK had a massive fight with Justin on the streets of London. The AIs of Tales from the Triverse are fine when they’re benign, but there’s always been that risk potential. They’re only ever a couple of steps away from The Terminator.

Here we have an entire swarm of these things descending upon Bruglia. It’s going to be bad. And to hammer this home using the oldest trick in the book, for this week’s chapter I switch the point of view to perhaps the two ‘weakest’ characters in the story. Jiraa and Zlati are, of course, extremely strong and determined mentally, and have both been through a lot (Zlati in particular), but in terms of combat ability they’re at a major disadvantage. No magic wielding abilities. Jiraa is a total noob when it comes to fighting a war, or even understanding how Palinor works. Zlati is fast and agile, but that’s about it.

So, yes: take the most vulnerable characters and put them up against an unstoppable enemy. Part of that structure is to also show how difficult it is to deal with a single enemy, while also acknowledging that there are thousands of these things being deployed across the city.

At which point the Six Blades show up. I put them in back in ‘Alliances’, before everything kicked off. At the time they were debating whether they should even be involved in the fighting: Erik in particular being unhappy about being caught up in political affairs. Well, now they’ve got their monsters, so at least they’ll be happy.

Having Jiraa to play with is interesting. He’s new to the story, and new to Palinor, but he’s also a Max-Earth citizen. He knows about megaships and Max-Earth tech, even if he doesn’t know the technical details. Nobody else really has that point of view in the story — I’m aware that I’ve had few Max-Earth characters that aren’t AIs. That’s been a mostly deliberate choice, and plays into the theme/question of whether the AI influence and control over Max-Earth is a good thing or not. It’s pretty clear who has the real agency on Max-Earth — which is, of course, what our nefarious conspirators have been complaining about this whole time.

The best villains are always the ones that make you pause and think “hmm…they’ve got a point!”

1. In Triverse, I mean.