As Anya acclimated to being inside Colossus the intricate machinery of cables had revealed itself to her more fully. Below them there was a great expanse of grass covered in a writhing sea of hairless skinless necrites and the pooling blood of their continual consumption expanding to all sides. For every necrite consumed they seemed to grow some inch in size all around, and by the time Anya could finally “see” more than just the red haze of morsels to devour the tip of Colossus had almost already breached the clouds. Still, to all sides there were more necrites, and though her vision was not capable of seeing in full detail all the way to the horizon, she knew there were more to that distance.

  To the south there was a mountain, and to the north a forest. To the east was the city, and to the west a brown lake contaminated by the flesh mills nearby whose refuse was often dumped there. She could see the necrites extend all the way to the edges of all these landmarks, even if the mid and long distance became indistinct.

  Alex: “Woah. Can you see that?”

  Alissa: “Those are all necrites?”

  Alex: “We don’t stand a chance.”

  Alex: “Oops… I didn’t mean to—”

  Alissa: “It’s ok Alex, we’re all thinking the same thing.”

  Will: “No. You two are, I think we still win.”

  Alex: “Even against infinity?”

  Will: “Infinity? They span to the horizon. That’s not infinity.”

  Anya: “Necrites aren’t the source of the problem, they’re a symptom.” The others knew exactly what she meant— it was nice to be able to understand each other like that.

  A picture of a black star rose in the sky above their head. It hadn’t come to pass yet, but it was coming. That moment in which all color inverted: the black sun was coming soon. It would damn them all again if they let it.

  Will: “How do we stop it?”

  Alissa: “We can’t, can we?”

  Alex: “Probably not.”

  Will: “Stop with the defeatist attitude! We’re inside a giant flesh mech right now.” The necrites were squished and absorbed at an incredible pace— thousands to a second.

  Will: “Isn’t this what you’ve always dreamed of as a boy?”

  Alex: “...”

  Alex: “Yes.”

  Anya heard full-bellied female laughter, Alissa’s of course. She didn’t often laugh like that, so Anya had to make the connection.

  Will: “Then buck up and be a man!”

  Alissa: “No! He’s my brother and I say—”

  Alex: “Will’s right dear sister.”

  Anya could see the close visual of pouting lips.

  Alex: “I don’t think we can win, but we should plan like there’s a chance. We have, what, two hours?”

  Anya: “More like one. Maybe less, forty-five minutes? Something like that.”

  Will: “How can you tell?”

  Anya: “The air has a certain static to it, like it’s about to catch on fire, like the moment before lighting strikes, like the smell after rain or just before a tornado.”

  Alissa: “I can kind of feel it too.”

  Will: “I can’t at all.”

  Alex: “Probably because you’re not attuned to magic.”

  Will: “...”

  Alex: “That wasn’t an insult. We all have different skills and I’m not much better than you.” Alex chuckled, only discernible from Will because of context.

  Will: “So what do we do next?”

  Anya: “I don’t know.”

  Alissa: “Can we cast a spell or use this body somehow?”

  Will: “We can ravage the landscape for a thousand miles around. Form a new Imperial Waste.”

  Alex: “That doesn’t help us though.”

  Will: “No it does not.”

  Alissa: “Maybe we could use all the power in Colossus to fire some kind of magic weapon.”

  Anya’s mind raced to the God-Slaying Sword, but instantly recoiled at the thought. Colossus was on the level of a god. Touching it was probably a very, very bad idea. But what else could they do? It wasn’t like any of them knew magic really, and they were locked inside the body of Colossus. Just because it let them control it to some extent didn’t mean they knew of or could do anything with that control. It was a giant blob of flesh that probably looked like an eldritch god from outside the way its many infinite writhing tentacles of flesh scoured the landscape of all life and left it barren. But what was there to be done? They could burrow underground, but that wouldn’t solve the problem. Like Alissa had suggested they could leverage all the magic power building up inside the colossal weapon, but for what purpose? They needed a spell or some kind of conduit to actually channel the power into, otherwise it would be releasing energy for no purpose.

  Anya: “That’s it!” Anya shouted.

  Alissa: “Owwww.” Her ears flashed with pain.

  Anya: “Sorry.” There was volume in this thing? Interesting.

  Will: “What is it?”

  Alex: “Please tell me it’s not that we can create TWO Imperial Wastes?”

  Anya: “We can use Colossus to power the transmission lines inside the base.”

  Will: “And do what?”

  Anya: “Contact the Most High. They have to listen to us.”

  Alissa: “No they don’t.”

  Alex: “They don’t listen to anything but the sound of their own voice.”

  Will: “We should try anyway. If we can get the Emperor to take note it could be big.”

  Anya focused below them on the base long-since covered by the miles-long blob of flesh that had long-since breached the clouds. She could feel detail beneath as Colossus’ many tendrils infiltrated the base. There was a sudden jerk as the monster was pulled down.

  Alissa: “What was that?!”

  Alex: “Anya, did you do something?”

  Will: “She’s focusing. Don’t ask.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Alex: “Ok Will, you tell us. What’s she doing?”

  Will: “Using Colossus to enter the base and power its transmission lines.”

  A feeling of surprise washed over Anya as the others finally understood her intent.

  Alissa: “The base is that big?!”

  Will: “It must be.”

  Alex: “How big are we? For us to fall below the clouds means…”

  Will: “The base is huge. Big enough to house a whole country’s army. We’ve only explored the surface of it, and only seen the most basic scraps of what it has to offer. It was constructed long before the empire took note of it, and had expanded continuously for decades or perhaps centuries.”

  Alex: “So it’s a labyrinth that spans the whole world?”

  Alissa: “Wooooah.”

  Will: “No, no one else has an entrance and no offshoots have ever been discovered. We don’t know where the deepest chambers lead, and the few expeditions that have attempted to conquer it and returned alive have noted how it only ever leads downward.”

  Alissa: “What’s at the bottom?”

  Alex: “Hell!”

  Will: “Probably.”

  They didn’t know.

  Anya had finished powering the transmission lines, though it was mostly her will directing Colossus to do the actual work. It did not take more than a second for words to appear in their collective skulls with the sound of a thousand voices speaking in unison.

  “Speak, lest your actions betray you.”

  “Oh great and glorious Most Hi—”

  “Speak,” they demanded.

  “There’s about forty-five minutes until the sun goes out.”

  There was silence.

  “Salvation draws close. Speak.”

  Speak of what? What magic words did they possibly want to hear? Platitudes about how they would defeat some unknown ancient evil unsealed from a thousand-year slumber? They didn’t even know the full extent of what was happening, much less who was involved or why.

  “Speak or our ears will grow silent.”

  What?

  “We have resurrected Colossus to do battle with the sea of open flesh that surrounds our base in hopes of creating options to defeat the enemy in the sky.”

  “The black sun is not your enemy, though it will harm those you presently hold dear.”

  “What?”

  “The hour of salvation draws near.”

  “Please, tell us what to do! Tell us how we can use Colossus to defeat—” Anya knew that was the wrong question, but it was too late— from the thousand voices there was only silence.

  Alex: “Well that was a failure…”

  Alissa: “See? They don’t listen to anyone and raise more questions than you ask.”

  Will: “That was productive.”

  Alissa: “What?”

  Alex: “They ran us in circles.”

  Will: “No, they’ve told us the black sun is on our side. That means we don’t have to fight it.”

  Anya: “You’re all going to turn to ash. That means we can’t let it happen.”

  Will: “Did you see that? Or are you speculating?”

  Anya: “...”

  Will: “If we’re in a time loop there’s no reason to speculate. We should live it out and see what happens. If we turn to ash like you say that’s one thing, but if we don’t it’s something else. Then the next thing and the next thing follows. There’s too much chaos in this system to speculate on incomplete information.”

  Anya: “But you want to trust the Most High.”

  Will: “They’re the highest source of truth we have.”

  Alissa: “They also said the black sun will harm those Anya holds dear.”

  Will: “That could mean civilians or it could mean us. We don’t know. And “you” is sometimes plural— they could mean something we all care about, not each other. The only thing we do know is that the black sun is on our side.”

  Alex: “....how?”

  Will: “What?”

  Alex: “If it really is on our side I’m saying how? It’s a giant catastrophe that kills everyone on this side of the fucking planet—”

  Will: “You don’t know that.”

  Alex: “Yeah yeah and I don’t know if the moon is made of cheese.”

  Will: “Look, I’m not saying we should trust every word they said as if it’s perfect clear truth, but what else are we supposed to do?”

  Alex: “...I don’t know.”

  Anya: “We’re supposed to figure out how to stop the black sun. Nothing else matters if we can’t do that.”

  Will: “But *how* exactly do we do that? We have no clues and no information. We’re piloting a giant hunk of flesh the size of a fucking city but even if it were the size of a star that wouldn’t help. We’d just burn away.”

  Alissa: “You don’t know that.”

  Will: “Fine, I don’t, but I also don’t see how this is supposed to help us.”

  Anya: “It was the only choice we had! I needed to buy us time and Synarchy wasn’t enough— Judgement wasn’t enough. Or are you saying there are other, better weapons stocked away somewhere.”

  Will: “No, I didn’t mean to question— Look, Commander, I just want us to figure out how to do something here. We need to do something. All we’re doing is talking. We need to act.”

  Alex: “Do we? With so much time we could try anything, go anywhere, repeat every action.”

  Anya: “My loop was an hour shorter this time.”

  Alex: “So? Ours was just as long. Yours may have special rules but you won’t be able to find out until you exercise them.”

  Anya: “And what if I do lose time every go around?”

  Alex: “Then you’re fucked.”

  Will: “We’re fucked, Alex. We’re fucked.”

  Alex didn’t respond.

  Alissa: “I don’t want to die.” She spoke in a small voice.

  Alex: “None of us do. Stay strong.”

  Will: “That’s all we can do it seems. But right now we ought to use that strength to accomplish something.”

  Anya: “We’re talking in circles here. What do you even suggest?”

  Will: “I don’t know. I already said that.”

  Alex: laughed.

  They knew exactly what was left on their plate. Colossus was the only avenue remaining. Several things could be learned from this loop, but for the moment the only thing they could do was wait. Run out the clock and watch the necrites die. Watch their own skin and observe if it charred to a mountain of ash. Perhaps they would form a new landscape, or perhaps Colossus would survive.

  For now the only thing left to do was kill. Anya focused on the tentacles nearest the city as the others understood her felt intent and did the same. Will focused on the south mountain. Alissa on the northern forest. Alex on the western contaminated lake. To the city Anya could see the necrites cut down like stalks of wheat before the modern agricultural machinery she piloted. She had heard of this technology and knew that agricultural production had more than quintupled in the last five years, but to experience a modern combine harvester for herself was a different experience entirely.

  At first the tentacles she wielded had killed and harvested the necrites in one action, slowing down to— “oh.” Anya muttered to herself. She finally noticed their teeth. It would seem there was no special means of devouring the necrites. The tentacles opened wide from the horizontal direction and chewed the necrites up. Had it always been that way? She didn’t know, but the sight now was revolting. The tentacle mouths didn’t really have lips and didn’t close between bites or during the motion of chewing. Being as Colossus was processing so many bodies so quickly it didn’t care about processing every piece, only that they were stuffed inside quickly.

  Before the open mouths had rammed themselves against the tide of the skinless, but now there were two or three support tentacles to either side that constantly filled the lipless mouth with more flesh to devour, and when pieces fell out of the processing machine one or two other tentacles in the shape of snow-shovels dedicated themselves to bringing the refuse back up to the mouth. In this way all parts of the necrites were swallowed save for the endless blood that stained every inch below and around Colossus with the same endless shade of red.

  Anya focused and the tentacles devoured tens of thousands of necrites. Colossus once again breached the clouds even as its tentacles had not moved from the base below that now housed some quarter or third of its mass. Colossus spanned a diameter of many miles at this point, and Anya could no longer focus on the entire city-side direction. It had always been a mostly autonomous machine, but now there was no room left for humanity. What did it even mean to aid Colossus when your “aid” spanned some 1/10th of 1% of its total processing capacity. Even if Colossus were piloted by some fifty or hundred or ten thousand archons as the legends said it once had been, their humanity would have been diluted out. There was no room for individuality in a machine like this. Grabbing the bodies and feeding them to slaughter. Picking up the refuse and broken bones discarded through laziness to break and chew again. There was no creativity now. There was no humanity. There was only blood and hunger as Colossus grew.

  And yet even with only four body’s efforts averaged out it was enough. The minutes had passed and Colossus rose to tower above the clouds as though it would pierce heaven itself. To every side they had met the natural boundaries. Mountains pricked Colossus’ southern edge. Its flesh spilled over their ridges like a muffin top. To the north the many trees had been flattened and felt like nothing more than carpet. The brown lake stung with the acidity of pollution, yet there was no way to avoid spilling into it. Even the city was on the verge of being flattened, its many inhabitants fleeing in panic. Anya had paid them no mind, seeing as they would all soon be dead anyway, but it was no less painful to watch their rolling mounds of flesh called cars crash into each other and explode with the pressurized blood not meant for human bodies. It was heated beyond boiling and kept in liquid state by pressure, so when finally released to the outside world it splattered out for many dozens of feet around, giving all present second or third degree burns. Some who were unlucky enough to be struck in the face or other vital areas would find themselves melting, disfigured and destined to die. Even if they survived their permanent disfigurement it was likely they would find themselves an outcast from society. And there was only one place outcasts ever ended up. With no one to miss them they would soon be abducted and made to work or… be recycled… in one of the many flesh mills.

  Anya wasn’t sure if it was kinder to die by boiling blood or trampling from a panicked stampede. She supposed it didn’t matter.