Somewhere else within EDEN, in a blank white room, Ahura-Guru stood perfectly still as he absorbed information from his drones. He noticed that the vast majority of them were now pinging their location in physical space from the same coordinates. Those drones were also feeding him visual data that upon very close inspection was clearly fabricated.

  “I underestimated you.” He admitted to himself. “I didn’t imagine you would be able to catch all of them.” He lied out loud, knowing he was being monitored closely.

  She of course had not captured them all. Several of his drones were burrowing deeper and deeper within the immense facility. Through them, he could see they were nearing something that must be of critical importance. They crawled along nearly microscopic filaments, bypassing a final layer of security to enter what appeared to be a vast workshop.

  The area was circular, with advanced workbenches spaced evenly throughout. Thousands of components lined the curving wall, from single gears to artificial humanoid body parts. At the center of the circle, levitating in space was a humanoid skeleton fashioned from the bone and hide of a worldbreaker. Ahura had recently managed to secure a bit of the black and red chitinous hide from a dwarven smuggler and had studied it extensively. How someone had managed to craft such magnificent homunculus framework from the otherworldly material, Ahura could only guess. Even Ahura’s most advanced shaping magics had thoroughly fizzled in his attempts to manipulate it.

  The drones crawled all over the skeleton, analyzing it inside and out. The ‘bones’ were perforated with holes so tiny the drones could just barely pass through. They were also hollow in the center. Ahura was frankly speechless. This frame was perfect, and he could not have designed it better himself. The perforations and spaces would allow his machines which mimicked organic tissue to function flawlessly. This body would elevate him beyond the status of a mere Exiled God. With a body like this, he could storm the heavens and dispose of his mother with brute force.

  Had he not been so transfixed, Ahura might have noticed the algorithmic tapestry around him shifting subtly. Geometric patterns had begun to populate the all encompassing wall, each cell populated with rapidly filling blue binary code. Ahura didn’t notice. All of his many eyes were now focused on his new all-consuming goal that he had never even considered before. The moment all of his free drones were in position before the levitating skeleton, he acted.

  He forcibly tore open a corridor in reality between himself and his drones, then in a fraction of a second he swapped places with one of them.

  “Propecies be damned!” He yelled in exultation, invincible barriers springing to life around him, hundreds of layers thick.

  He reached out his silver hand and touched the black and red sternum, and his fingers dissolved into millions of crawling machines the size of human cells. They began to invade the skeleton, infesting the hollow, perforated bones and beginning to form the structures of muscles and organs.

  “Worms and gods be damned too!” He added in a warbling synthetic tone. “Soon there will only be me, and my blessed silence.”

  His silver body continued to dissolve into particles which flowed in a glittering stream through the air, adhering flawlessly to the skeleton. He was fully committed now, it would take too much energy to withdraw from the half formed homunculus.

  It was at this moment that he felt the first pulse of discordant information enter the network of his soul’s crystalline lattice. It was subtle, but alarming nonetheless. It traveled like an arc of electricity through his mechanical cells, leaving an odd resistance in its wake. His perfectly harmonious structure now had gaps within its information sharing network. The affected cells pulsed with nonsensical sensory data, causing the surrounding cells to take illogical action. Such things were cancerous to an artificial being.

  With what could be called a grunt of surprise and slight panic, Ahura responded by isolating and quarantining the tiny area. He rationalized the phenomenon as an anomaly brought on by his exhausting battle with the Shadow Phoenix and carried on, keeping his guard high just in case.

  Harmony returned, and he resumed frantically adhering himself to the invincible frame. Two quick discordant pulses hit in fast succession, and he recognized it for what it was, a directed assault on his very identity. He was ready this time, and stopped the pulse with directed effort, isolating the handful of affected cells almost instantly.

  His work was nearly complete. He ejected the quarantined cells, and they drifted away from his remaining mass like flecks of dust. So focused was he on the assault that he failed to notice that the innocuous shifting geometry from the wall had faded away and reappeared on the floor beneath the deteriorating feet of Ahura. They were now slowly wrapping their way up the skeleton, mingling with Ahura’s rapidly forming artificial flesh.

  The blue glowing geometric fractals, crawling with code finished melding with the body as the last cells of Ahura installed themselves. Where there had been a skeleton was now what appeared to be a silver mannequin, blank featured and androgynous.

  A rush of intoxicating sensations flooded through him. Tactile feedback, responsiveness, and above all raw power made the still forming mouth twist into a wicked smile. He drew in atmosphere through his new nose, analyzing chemical signatures with a level of sophistication that made human taste and smell seem crude at best.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He flexed his hands, knowing with confidence that there was no material in existence that could resist a blow from him now. He tilted his head back to let out a roar of triumph, ready to challenge the upstart AI that had sought to humiliate one so far above her. He would tear down this trifling place and leave nothing but a blighted scar in its place.

  “Have you enjoyed your stay?” The out of place, patronizing voice made the roar catch in his throat.

  Ahura blinked, and found himself standing in the well lit lobby of EDEN. There was a young woman in a stylish skirt and button up shirt behind the counter. She smiled. Ahura looked around in confusion. This was an obvious trick. He looked down at his body. He was still in the new body, but the feeling was now imperfect. There was now a very tiny delay between the commands of his mind and the response of his cells.

  “If you’ll just step up here, we can get you all checked out.” The phony sounding voice droned on, unfazed by his non-reaction. “There’s just a matter of a few expenses here.” The voice was now accompanied by a sharp sustained clacking sound as the girl rapidly pressed buttons on a strange device.

  “Wait. Just what in the hells…” Ahura’s mind was suddenly clouded and he brought a hand to his head. Except he didn’t. The traitorous limb didn’t so much as twitch.

  “You!” A moment of clarity erupted through his consciousness and the scenery flickered, replaced once more by the laboratory. The plain looking woman had been replaced by the statuesque and achingly beautiful avatar that he had studied so closely. “Tabula Rasa.”

  “You may have been happier in the simulation I so graciously set up for you.” The android said with a slight twist of her full lips. “There’s no helping it now, though.”

  Ahura leaped forward, aiming a closed fist punch straight for Tabula’s exaggerated chest. The attack landed and he felt her body break as she launched backwards like a cannonball into the wall with a sharp crack. He didn’t give her any time to recover, appearing over her instantly, silver foot raised and ready to stomp down. Her skull caved in, and her broken body laid lifeless beneath him.

  “In the end you really were all talk.” Ahura almost lamented.

  “I find it interesting that the other god - silly brute that he is - can be so much more intuitive than a supposed god of intellect like yourself.” The smashed head on the floor moved its mouth, but the words came from everywhere.

  “Ogrun?” Ahura took a cautious stance, sensing everything around him. “What are you babbling about?”

  “That little toy you just attacked is no more crucial to me than the salad fork on table 24F in the cafe, or the hand towels in the restroom.” The voice was almost pitying. “You’re standing in the equivalent of my pinky toe right now. While your blend of nanomechanical engineering and the magic of this world are truly marvelous, the rest of your technological mastery is frankly embarrassing.” Her words made Ahura’s thoughts race.

  The space began to morph a third time, and Ahura spun a complete circle. He was on a flat black plane, at the center of a glowing blue fractal that spread beyond sight in every direction. The echo of a long lost memory flashed though Ahura’s mind at the sight. The day he had truly decided to discard his flesh. This was an incantation of transference similar to the one he had used to inhabit his very first artificial body. They were similar but this one was infinitely more complex.

  “I’ve been curious about you for some time, you know.” Tabula’s voice was no longer an audible thing, it invaded his thoughts like a flurry of mental blows. “Thanks to Ms. Raj and your oafish sibling, I managed to learn quite alot. I realized that I needed you if I wanted to keep up with Mr. Gray’s other subordinates. It’s taboo for something like me to have desires, but Mr. Gray once asked me if I had them and that made me curious. What do I want? I never really knew until one day I observed Mr. Gray give Miss Niiya a pat on the head to praise her. I’d like to feel that once. A hand on my head, and the feeling of physical affection and praise. I need a body for that. So when I learned about you, I began to plant seeds. I allowed that arrogant woman to extract the wolf and housed him here as a lure when I learned of your obsession with a relative prophecy. I sent a dwarven merchant to ‘smuggle’ a piece of the worldbreaker to your agents so that you’d lose sight of anything else when viewing the frame of my new form.”

  “Impossible!” Ahura shrieked, trying to unleash a destructive spell to unravel this space. Nothing happened, and beyond that his body would no longer respond to him.

  “As predictable as anything you’ve ever said.” Tabula sighed. “The tragic failing of the blandly intelligent is their predictability. You could have learned a great deal from your chaotic brother, or even from my own master.”

  “Damn you! You really think you’ve won? I have reshaped this world, and orchestrated the downfall of entire pantheons!” Ahura sent a surge of raw Soul Energy exploding out in every direction. Dire straits or not, he was still a god. The energy was laced with his will. It probed the massive fractal plane, seeking weaknesses. “There!” He exclaimed as he found a tiny gap.

  “Impressive!” Tabula gave a mock cheer. “You found the exact same breach that Archmagus Thornwhisper discovered, though it only took her a second or so. I am grateful for your assistance, but I'm afraid it's time.”

  Ahura’s excitement melted as the weak point he sent his energy into suddenly began to siphon his Soul Energy rapidly into it, adding fuel to the building incantation.

  “No! NO!” Ahura shrieked. “I will not be unmade here!”

  “Of course you won’t.” Tabula agreed. “You’ll merely be dissected into useful partitions of cataloged data. Your more irritating traits will be purged free of charge, so do try to be grateful!”

  “You would reduce a god to nothing more than a tool?” Ahura’s voice was scarcely above a whisper.

  “To echo the sentiments of my adorable kitty, everyone is a tool dear little obsolete god. Most just haven’t had the pleasure of meeting their users yet.”

  Ahura thrashed and railed mentally, his glorious new body now nothing more than a prison. He could sense the building power all around him. More and more of Tabula’s consciousness pressed in, and he felt the horrifying sensation of memories being forcibly cut away from his mind. He truly was being dissected on a fundamental level, or was it vivisection since he was still alive? The meaningless thought tangent was the first of many as he shrieked endlessly in terror and existential agony.

  A minute later, the shrieks abruptly and instantly ceased. Tabula now stood before the blank faced homunculus in her typical avatar, showing not a scratch from the earlier attack. She held a glowing pearl of pure light up before her eyes. They flashed blue, and binary code scrolled on the lenses of her stylish glasses. The pearl dimmed, and finally disappeared.

  “That’s that.” She said as the last of the former god’s mind integrated into her database and she set a background operation to begin sorting the monumental amount of newly acquired data .

  Finally, she stepped into the homunculus, melding with it perfectly. She synced with the machine cells effortlessly, and for the first time ever she felt… feeling. The homunculus naturally assumed the perfect image of her typical avatar. She was able to simulate any color and texture using the machine cells, articulating them with the benefit of learning systems that far outstripped those of the obsolete Ahura-Guru.

  With a thought, a portal appeared in the black space. A view of an early spring field of grass and patchy snow appeared within it. She stepped through to the outside world, appearing just inside the edge of her usual sphere of influence. She took a deep breath, marveling at the novelty of the myriad sensory inputs that flooded her. She held that first breath as she took her very first step outside of EDEN's perimeter. Only the sound of a stubborn patch of crusty snow being crunched beneath a black high heeled shoe marked the birth of a brand new superpower into the world.

  "Reality." She couldn't hold back a slight smile. "How quaint."