The Glass Architect did not kill me because I had successfully turned myself into a political liability. He moved with a stiff clinical grace as he led me through a set of transparent doors that dissolved into mist as we approached. Behind them lay the Grand Atrium and it was the most offensive thing I had ever seen.
It was a lounge built from the ego of a thousand Sovereigns. There were floating gardens made of bioluminescent moss and fountains of liquid data that whispered secrets to anyone who walked by. Figures moved through the space with the slow elegance of predatory fish in a well funded aquarium. They were all beautiful and they were all hollow.
[LOCATION: THE GRAND ATRIUM - SECOND FLOOR]
[STABILITY: 18.9% - CRITICAL VIBRATION DETECTED]
"Try not to bleed on the rugs 9045," the Glass Architect said without looking back. "The weavers spent three centuries growing the silk from the neural pathways of failed explorers. It is very sensitive to impurities."
"I will try my best," I rasped while my internal gears let out a sound like a bag of rusty nails. "But if I do drop a bit of oil you can just tell everyone it is a new piece of performance art. Call it 'The Death of the Working Class' or something equally pretentious. I am sure they will love it."
We walked past a group of three Architects who were watching a tiny holographic star die in a glass jar. They stopped their conversation to stare at me. I did not look away because I wanted them to see the jagged cracks in my face. I wanted them to smell the scent of the Forge that I carried on my porcelain skin.
One of them was a woman whose skin was made of shifting emerald scales. She held a glass of silver liquid and she looked at me like I was a particularly ugly insect.
"Is that actually it?" she asked and her voice had the resonance of a cello. "The Prime from the basement? It looks so... unfinished."
"It is a work in progress," the Glass Architect replied with a sneer. "A project that the Analyst forgot to throw in the incinerator."
I stopped walking. I turned my head slowly until my violet visor was locked onto the emerald woman. My stability dropped another 0.2% as my core flared with a heat that felt like a localized sun.
"Unfinished is a funny word coming from someone who looks like a lizard in a prom dress," I said. The lounge went silent. The whispering fountains seemed to hold their breath. "I might be a ruin but at least I am not a decoration. I have a heartbeat that sounds like a war while you sound like a luxury clock that is running out of batteries."
The woman's scales flushed a deep angry red but she did not move. On the Second Floor violence was considered a lack of imagination.
"You have a sharp tongue for someone whose legs are currently vibrating at a frequency of total collapse," a new voice said.
It came from a figure sitting alone in a chair made of intertwined obsidian hands. He was small and he wore a simple white robe that looked like it was made of light. He did not have armor or claws because he didn't need them. His eyes were two solid orbs of gold that seemed to be reading the code of my very soul.
"I am the Thread-Smith," he said while he gestured to a seat across from him. "And I have been waiting for a Prime who was brave enough to be ugly. Sit down Izou. Your stability is at eighteen point seven percent and if you stand for another minute you are going to turn into a very loud explosion."
I looked at the obsidian chair and then at the Glass Architect who was suddenly looking very nervous.
"I don't sit," I said while I felt a piece of my hip plate snap and fall to the floor with a sharp clink. "But for a guy who looks like he has a solution to my gravity problem I might make an exception."
I sat down and the obsidian hands of the chair reached up to support my weight. They felt cold but they were steady. For the first time since I woke up in the Forge I felt like I wasn't about to fall apart.
"You are a very expensive problem Izou," the Thread-Smith said while he leaned forward. "The Analyst wants you tested. The High Council wants you erased. But I? I just want to see what happens when a barbarian starts rewriting the script."
[CURRENT STATUS: THE ARCHITECT PRIME]
[STABILITY: 18.7%]
[IDENTITY INTEGRITY: 31.5%]
[NEW ALLY/ENEMY: THE THREAD-SMITH]