As the day faded and candles lit the windows of houses, a large bell positioned just outside of the northwest gate rang.

  It rang 10 times before falling silent. I suspected this was to notify anyone outside the gates that they were intending to close them, and to give them time to either make their way back inside the wall, or find a place to camp if they would not make it.

  Based on where the sun was when the bell began its tolling, I estimated the time to be 21:00 hours Earth time, which fit with the seasonal time period. The days would come into their longest stretch soon, marking the peak of summer.

  Guardsmen occupied small platforms erected at equal intervals along the inside perimeter of the wall.

  They carried crossbows and had two spears positioned against the wall in case someone—or something—breached the top. The guardsmen had dressed loosely in padded leather and wore matching leather skullcaps. Each guard seemed keenly alert, which indicated there were frequent attacks on the walls.

  My mind went back to the image of the maybe-mercenaries that had passed through a few hours before.

  I looked down the road in the direction they had gone, shifting my vision into infrared, calculating for their average walk speed and time elapsed since crossing the threshold of the village. Sure enough, they had erected a camp 30 kilometres down the road, roughly 50 metres off the path in some dense forest undergrowth.

  I didn't blame the village for being so cautious with their guard duty; my first thought was to verify the mercenaries weren't somewhere nearby plotting a raid.

  This piqued my interest, and I swept the surrounding forest, curious to see if any other undetected threats might have loomed in the night.

  The mercenaries hadn't turned out to be a threat to the village, but if the guards were on the balls of their feet like this, there had to be some consistent threat to their safety motivating it., which is when I caught sight of something I wasn't expecting.

  Huddled 125 metres from the wall, among a particularly dense patch of underbrush, was a small group of creatures.

  At first I had thought perhaps a group of children had been trapped outside the walls, however there had been no alarm raised by the village, and no commotion had been stirred by distraught parents, so I magnified my vision again and came to realise that they were, in fact, goblins.

  True, honest-to-Machine-God goblins.

  This opened several new possibilities for other forms of life on the planet. If goblins were here, then things like orcs, elves, trolls, dragons, and other such mythological races were possible as well.

  My interest grew as I observed the small semi-intelligent creatures. It seemed to me that they were preparing to raid the village. Small ropes were slung over their shoulders with crude iron hooks on the ends; stone daggers were affixed to their hips with simple leather belts.

  Their long and pointed ears flopped and shook as they excitedly swung their heads around in conversation. I couldn't hear the sounds of their speech, so I could not extrapolate the syntax and translate it, though, based on the wild gesticulation of their hands, it became obvious they planned to try their luck with a space directly between two wall platforms.

  At the signal of what I could only guess was the leader of the group, the small band of creatures began to expertly navigate the underbrush towards the village wall.

  Clearly they had a night-vision in order to move that quickly and deftly through the dense foliage; however, the line of trees terminated 15 metres from the wall in a small clear-cut breach that ringed the entire compound.

  As the goblins came up to the breach in the trees, they slowed and finally stopped. The leader once again gave a signal, and two goblins split off and raced toward the wall, their short bony legs pumping furiously as they covered ground as quickly as they possibly could.

  At first, I thought one guard had noticed the approach as his head swung perilously in their direction. However, after scanning the ground briefly, he turned his attention back to the space more directly in line with his platform and more effectively lit by the torches on either side of him.

  The silence of the goblins on their trip impressed me. Apparently they had either practised this manoeuvre many times before, or their race had developed a preternatural ability to move silently.

  Just as the Guard had refocused on the patch of ground in front of his platform, the leader of the Goblins motioned once again and another two split off from the group, this time heading in opposite directions around the perimeter of the forest edge.

  Thoroughly interested in how this situation might play out, I proceeded to close the distance to where the goblins had been working their raid.

  Falling silently through the air until I was 15 metres above their heads. From here I could hear even the faintest of sounds and observe the tiniest details.

  I watched on as the two goblins enacted their parts simultaneously. They positioned themselves in the gaps between the first two platforms housing goblins. After several moments, both goblins rustled the bushes and snuffled loudly; it didn't sound unlike the snuffling of a boar searching for grubs in the dirt.

  This had the effect of both pulling the attention of the guards on the platforms and also hiding the noise of the iron hooks planting themselves firmly in the wall's top. With the hooks in place, and the guards looking elsewhere, the first two goblins rapidly scaled the wall. The speed at which they managed to carry themselves up the rope impressed me.

  Simultaneously, the remaining 4 goblins, including the leader, made a mad dash for the wall where the first two goblins had been. The coordination on display by these creatures was unexpected, and admittedly, more impressive than I would have ever given them credit for.

  By this time, the first two goblins had touched down inside the wall, having slung an additional two ropes for their descent. The ropes had been looped over the top of the pointed palisade logs and trailed down the gaps between them, effectively hiding them from the guard platforms on either side.

  They then hurriedly found a place in the shadows to await the rest of the group. 15 minutes passed, and the two goblins left in the forest started up the distraction again, and again, it worked. 4 more goblins came over the wall and silently slid down the dangling ropes, with the guards being none the wiser.

  I observed as the 6 goblins met up and gave each other congratulatory slaps and shoves. The leader corralled the group, and they set out, creeping past lit windows and ignoring the ones that were shuttered. They seemed to seek windows that were both open and dark. Each time they came across a window meeting their specifications, one member would stay behind and wait.

  They tried to keep their group within line-of-sight, presumably to make signalling to each other more feasible, but for the last two it simply wasn't possible and with a bit of silent squabbling they resigned themselves to circling back to other members already next to windows. I guessed the two they joined likely had multiple targets inside the houses.

  I wasn't sure yet if they intended to steal food, items, or people. However, I couldn't imagine them scaling the ropes with captives in their arms, so I discarded the idea.

  The leader gave the signal, and all six clambered up and into the windows. Several minutes passed until one of them came slinking back over the sill of the window. It now had a cloth satchel tied tightly around its torso.

  Strapped to its back was a small child whose arms and legs were bound and looped around the front of the Goblin's body. The child's mouth had been gagged and their eyes were closed; however, their eyebrows were cinched together, either with pain or confusion, perhaps both, I couldn't tell.

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  The devious nature of this strategy dawned on me as the other goblins crept back out of the other houses with similar hauls. On their way out of the village, the guardsmen could not fire upon the goblins unless they wanted to risk hitting the children.

  They would act as meat shields to protect their kidnappers, and by the time the guards had rallied and opened the gates, the goblins would be across the clearing and into the forest, making their retreat through the trees. Precisely where they held a significant advantage.

  The goblins outside the village made their ruckus again, obviously having pre-planned the timing to allow the group inside to prepare for their exit.

  The plan went off without a hitch. The guards didn't notice a single goblin going up and over the wall, nor did they see the hooks left embedded in the gaps between the pointed ends of the logs. As far as the guards were concerned, a host of exceedingly noisy boars had chosen that spot to hunt down grubs in the forest beyond the wall.

  I didn't know whether I was more impressed with the goblins or disappointed in the guards.

  As the goblins made their way back through the forest, an excited chatter picked up between them. Eventually they were far enough away from the village that they felt safe hooting, laughing, dancing and generally celebrating the massively successful heist.

  Some children started to thrash and squirm in their bindings, which was unpleasant to witness, as the terror of the moment must have been tremendous.

  ***

  I silently drifted over to where the small encampment of goblins were kicking and prodding at the protesting children. Muffled screams and cries of pain and horror trilled through the cloth gags in their mouths, and the laughter of the goblins echoed through the thick trees.

  It hadn't escaped my notice that a few of the goblins had started removing their equipment, going as far as stripping off their rough, leather loincloths. As far as I was aware, there could only be one probable reason for that, and the look of disgusting hunger that had filled their goat-like eyes as they sized up the children threatened to short-circuit my mind with rage.

  I decided that this was where I drew the line between observation and action.

  I evaporated my black holes and plummeted to the ground, directing my fall to land on top of what had appeared to be the leader.

  As I impacted, I ramped my processing up several percentiles and noted with interest that as the goblin's slight frame crumpled under me; I felt no resistance whatsoever. It was like passing through a moderately denser patch of air, its body folding, compressing, and breaking apart as my mass overwhelmed the physical bonds of its flesh.

  I imagined the wet squelching of its bodily fluids being forcefully ejected in every conceivable direction was likely the first indication that something was not going right for the gang of goblins.

  After utterly crushing the leader beneath me, I collided with the ground with such force that the other goblins were pelted with debris and thrown off their feet. Noticing this might inadvertently cause harm to the children, I directed several of my whip-like limbs to snatch the speeding debris out of the air without so much as a second thought.

  As I stood, I sent a quick ultrasonic pulse across the surface of my skin to dislodge whatever remained of the leader's viscera. Upon doing so, I realised I was still utterly and completely naked.

  Deciding that remaining like that may not elicit the most favourable outcome when confronting the children, I quickly sped up my mind even further and then lashed out at the bodies of the goblins with billions upon billions of strands of my body.

  Using the dust cloud I'd produced after hitting the ground as a shroud for my activities; I began gathering organic material from each and then, manipulating the molecules, proteins, fibres, and minerals, I remade their organic flesh into cotton and linen, slapping apart chains of fatty hydrocarbon and reshaping them into chains of fibrous cellulose.

  Within milliseconds, I had a generic pair of cotton trunks and a simple linen vest covering my body.

  While the goblins writhed on the ground, reeling from what had just equated to a small bomb going off, I turned to the terrified children. They all stared up at me in abject terror, pale as a perfect moon and as still as the dead.

  I slowly raised a finger to my lips and patted at the air in front of me, attempting to placate them with soothing gestures, which I hoped they interpreted as: shhhhhh, you're alright now. The odds weren't great that they would understand anything I could say to them, as I had heard none of their verbal communications in order to translate, but I hoped the motions were universal enough to be understood.

  I turned back to the remaining 7 goblins and observed their recovery. Everything was still a few percent slower than 'regular time', so their movements were comically sluggish. None of them seemed to realise they'd been lashed and robbed of bits of skin and muscle, the impact of the rocks massively disorienting them.

  I grabbed the closest one to me by the skull and hoisted it up into the air until it was eye-level with me. It struggled to free itself, but its efforts were as effective as beating against the side of a mountain.

  I issued it a simple command,

  "Speak."

  It began to babble incoherently, so I tightened my grip and commanded it once again,

  "Speak."

  I hoped that the repetition would give it enough of a context clue to realise it was being instructed and a response was warranted.

  Sure enough, the creature began to verbalise guttural oinks and yips, mainly utilising the throat and tongue to essentially choke out their version of 'words'.

  After a few grunts and snuffles, I had understood enough of the syntax to extrapolate the patterns of speech and communicate with it in its own tongue. As I'd suspected, larger and more specific words had been excluded from their lexicon, instead making do with conveying just enough information to get the point across and not much more.

  It occurred to me that the leader potentially had a more verbose understanding of the language, or at the very least, might have been a bit faster on the uptake. For a brief moment I lamented terminating it, but I took the calculated risk of destabilising their miniature hierarchy and removing any potential rallying point for the group's morale, forcing their submission to me through violence.

  "Goblin camp where?"

  I asked, anticipating some form of resistance or token struggle to withhold information, but the goblin broke immediately.

  "Base up. Big hill."

  It squawked and pointed feverishly off to the west, somewhere over the horizon to a place I hadn't surveyed yet. With how high I'd been above the ground, I could easily see 30 kilometres in every direction, so it must have been even further beyond that, well past the curve of the planet's horizon. Which meant that these creatures had come a long way exclusively for the children.

  It also didn't escape my notice that every child gathered behind me looked to have been assigned female at birth with none appearing older than 10 or 12. Between that and the behaviour of the Goblins prior to my interruption, I understood enough to take up the responsibility of ending the prolonged threat of the goblins on this village.

  This was something I could not allow to continue. It also made sense why the guard was as heavy as it was for such a small settlement. They had been fending off these raiding parties for some time; it seemed, which made their failure tonight even more tragic.

  I crushed the goblin's skull like it was a ball of fluffy wool, the tissue and bone giving way with barely perceptible resistance.

  Then, I directed concentrated beams of microwave radiation into the heads of the remaining 6 goblins. I could hear their brains boiling inside their skulls as I turned back to face the children once more. Some of whom had fainted, and others of whom looked on in both wild confusion and bone-rattling fright.

  I raised my hands and attempted my best smile, but I knew this was going to be an uphill battle. A towering man had just plummeted into the earth, picked up a goblin like he was picking a flower, and then spoke to the goblin in its own language, only to turn around and slaughter the rest in under a second. To say I was an intimidating figure would be a colossal understatement.

  "I want to talk."

  I made slow, deliberate motions with my hands, pointing to the children, and then mimicking their lips moving with my fingers. Reaching down gently, as slowly as possible, I pulled the gag loose from one of their mouths. The child flinched away and, as soon as the gag was off, began howling and wailing incomprehensibly.

  I crouched there and silently waited for the child to realise nothing was happening to it or the others.

  The racking sobs and sniffles slowly abated, and I once again gestured that I wished to speak.

  With a stuttering start, the child asked something. The vocabulary reminded me loosely of the Scandinavian languages back on Earth. Vowels and consonants fell into place, and by the time the child spoke again, I had a firm grasp on the dialect. It was a surprising mix of Proto-Germanic and Old Norse; while not an exact match to Swedish, it was startlingly similar.

  "Who are you? What did you do? Where are we? What happened to the goblins? I want to go home!"

  Words spilled from the child before it slowly devolved into more crying and sobbing.

  I chose to crank up my processing until the child froze in place. It occurred to me that there was an opportunity here, a good chance to fill two cups with one spout.

  Anyone I could bring into the fold of our God's service would be additional shepherds to wade into the cosmic war. We needed an army to fend off the inevitable encroachment of enemies, and while mindless automatons could work, what would really balance the tides of war were rational, thinking, feeling souls.

  The power of religious zeal was something humanity constantly had to contend with, so spawning a universe-wide congregation of believers might be one more weapon against our rivals out there in the multiverse.

  I still didn't have a great idea of the kinds of forces that would eventually be arrayed against us, nor the kinds of powers they could bring to bear upon us. A machine army was fine, but ultimately vulnerable to tampering on some level.

  For as powerful as my God had been, it still wasn't capable of altering my soul, and while beings with free will could easily be led into betrayals and subterfuge, the introduction of religious ideology could harden their resolve beyond even the greatest treachery.

  Obviously, corruption was still rampant throughout the institutions of Earth, but the reason for that had been the prevalence of greed. Desire for wealth, opulence, and power over others had twisted the leadership of many a congregation into the heights of hedonism.

  This would not exist in my church. There would not be wealth to attain, there would be no power to wield over others, and there would be no opulence that was not also available to their fellow believers. They would all equally exist within the body of God, and in so doing, be provided for equally.

  Those who desired for more than they would be given, had no place among my flock. Those who took my Lord's power and used it to suppress their peers, or for their own satisfaction, would be stricken down.

  I would have no prisoners of war, there would be no cast-outs, until another God bent its knee and forged an iron-clad pact with my God, every entity, in every universe, would be an enemy to conquer regardless of what they believed or what they preached.

  To that end, I would need to convert this planet into believers.

  Worshipers and devotees who would prostrate themselves at the thought of our venerable Machine Lord. And in order to influence them, my God would require a mythos, a tale for which the people could latch onto and believe in.

  Tangible answers to prayers offered in its name, it needed to be certain beyond a rational doubt that a God was listening to them, and taking pity on their lives, and giving them the salvation they craved.

  I would need to have its name spread across the planet slowly, incrementally, over years and years. Murmurs and whispers turning into cries and shouts, small backroom prayers turning into mass-broadcast sermons.

  All the while, making sure that observable change was being made for every generation of people that joined the cause. I would need to ensure they felt needed, valued, and recognized by the power they supplicated to. Idle worship bred dissent, and I needed my religion to be fanatical.

  That would need to begin here, with these children. Whether they believed in me or my purpose here was irrelevant in the long run. I needed them to carry the gift of my God to the people of the village.

  They would be ground zero in the spread of my God's name, and share with their people the works of my Lord. They didn't yet know it, but they would be the harbingers of the Iron God Mechanriel.