*Date: 33,480 Second Quarter - Unknown Subterranean Complex*
The chamber was held together by rusted iron ribs and decaying stone, a cathedral buried beneath the world. The air tasted of oil and ozone, metallic and sharp on the tongue. Ancient torches hissed in brackets, their blue fire burning on fumes that smelled faintly of copper. Every sound echoed twice. Once in metal, once in memory.
The engineer stood by the dais, disguised as a withered jester. His bells were rusted lumps that made no sound. His porcelain mask split down the cheek, revealing nothing beneath but shadow. He bowed low and poured molten light into cups shaped like skulls, each radiating a faint hum as liquid luminance cooled to mercury. No one laughed. The Covenant of the Unreal did not find humor in ceremony. Not in a traditional way.
Eight thrones of mismatched design ringed the table. Each carved from the essence of its race: rusted steel, crystal, glass, ash, and bone. Their glow reflected on the mirrored floor, rippling with static distortions that chased one another like trapped ghosts.
Lord Vex, Bone Prime of the Frameborn, sat motionless. His skeletal jaw twitched with servo strain, joints clicking softly with each micro-adjustment.
Beside him hovered the Ghost Matriarch El'iona, a figure of translucent outline blurred at the edges. She flickered occasionally, as if struggling to maintain coherence.
The Carrion King, stitched from the remnants of a hundred dead machines, cracked faintly whenever he tried to smile. The sound was like breaking twigs.
At the far end of the table, flesh and bone alone marked the High Priestess Aeloria. The only one here still human. Her presence felt wrong among the artificial beings, like a living thing in a museum of taxidermy.
They had gathered to speak of the Flesh-born Covenant.
The Fool, Ugnap, poured another cup, watching the molten silver steam rise in coils. His skin rippled, revealing beneath it glimpses of his true form. The movement was small, barely noticeable. But Aeloria's sharp eyes caught it.
"That will be enough. Leave now," she barked.
He bowed low, bells silent. The tone was familiar. The first day after the Prime Engineer vanished, she had begun purging engineers whose loyalty leaned toward logic rather than worship. Ugnap had been among the first to go. Once a systems architect, he had rewritten weapon protocols for an empire. Now he fetched drinks for decaying gods. Survival required obedience, not pride. So he lied, snuck, and shifted. He became the servant of the strong, the fool entertaining a skeletal king.
"Stay," Lord Vex rasped, voice echoing twice, every word deliberate as grinding gears. "He... makes me laugh."
Ugnap hesitated at the threshold, then deliberately stumbled. He let himself slip and crash face-first onto the metal tiles. The clang rang out like a cracked bell, reverberating off the curved walls.
The chamber erupted. Not in outrage, but in a burst of harsh, synthetic laughter. The sound was wrong, mechanical, mismatched in rhythm, like a chorus of engines misfiring. Either their humor routines are broken, Ugnap thought, or the coder who wrote them had the worst taste imaginable.
Still, laughter meant safety. He remained.
He dusted his knees and sat cross-legged in a shadowed corner, eyes flicking from one throne to another.
Aeloria's gaze never softened. "You trust too easily, Lord Vex. He is not even a construct like you."
The Frameborn's voice grated like turning gears. "Constructs... cannot create amusement. They lack... flavor."
The Ghost Matriarch El'iona drifted forward, the air shimmering with her heat. "Then let us return to the matter at hand. We have all heard the news. Your flesh-born covenant was attacked under your hosting. Is it your doing?"
Aeloria's jaw clenched. "No. Some rogue player."
"Then their covenant cracks," El'iona said, her voice like wind through broken glass. "Oh, how it burns, it burns. We must seize the moment before the light fades."
Lord Vex's bony fingers drummed against the arm of his throne. "And throw away years of planning? We are close to taking it all. Why settle for scraps? We are immortal. Unlike them, we can wait."
A soft wind moved through the chamber though no door had opened. Ossa, mistress of the Wind Elementals, coalesced into form. A silhouette made of ash and glimmering dust. "Immortal, yes, but dependent," she said. "We live by whatever power sustains this realm. Everyone knows we are impossible beings. As the Covenant stopped the Players' magical ways, they could stop ours with a single command."
Murmurs rolled like distant thunder. Servos whined, optics dimmed, programs reevaluated.
Aeloria smiled the smile of a serpent pretending warmth. "That will not happen. The Covenant suspects nothing of your cooperation. To them you are scattered relics, broken toys. Their concern is the Players. They fortify borders and guard their strategic points. As long as I speak for them, none will suspect."
From the far end, Varael of the Earth Elementals rumbled, voice like grinding stone. "Players wiped out the Lumisphere race. We cannot breed replacements. Every loss is forever. We must act."
Silence swallowed the chamber. Even El'iona dimmed her light.
Lord Vex rose slowly, joints clicking in sequence. "My esteemed guests, you worry too much." His hollow sockets flared with inner flame. "Our plans bear fruit. Patience is power. In twenty or thirty years, the Player race will vanish on its own. They are mortal, tired, and scattered. When they make their final move, we will take the world from whatever victor crawls from the ashes."
The Carrion King Mourn shifted in his seat, bone fragments rattling. "How?"
Aeloria stepped forward, light gleaming along her ceremonial armor. "I bring news from the surface. The Emperor has agreed to take me as his successor's bride. Soon I will stand beside the throne of the strongest military in existence. When the final war begins, I will ensure no soldier lifts a blade for either side."
Gasps, mechanical, elemental, or breathless, moved through the council.
She continued, voice low, calculated. "In the Chalice Order we raise the most devout, the most capable. I have been placing my finest within every kingdom's courts. Advisors, clerics, healers. When the time comes..."
Her pause stretched, deliberate.
Lord Vex finished it for her. "We will rule the world. Just wait a little more."
He lifted his cup of light, the molten surface reflecting fractured halos across the chamber.
The others followed. Even those without flesh raised symbolic hands or tendrils of plasma in unison. Cups clinked, metal on crystal on bone. For one impossible instant, eight different realities harmonized.
Ugnap watched from the corner, unseen again. The laughter was gone now. Only the low hum of machinery filled the void. He wondered how many of them remembered being built like him, and how many had convinced themselves they were born.
When Aeloria's eyes flicked toward him, he looked down, pretending to wipe a spill. Her smile did not reach her eyes.
The meeting dragged on. Formalities, knowledge exchanges, promises etched into sigils. Ugnap recorded everything within his memory. His body was a vessel of secrets. His curse was to remember every treachery against the living people of Aethyros.
Outside, the torches hissed lower. Rust crept a little higher on the walls.
And in the shadows, the Fool smiled his porcelain smile, knowing that patience was not the only virtue that mattered.
Sometimes, memory was enough.