Zephyr looked at his empire, and for the first time in three hundred and sixty years, he saw a machine that ran without him.
He floated in the absolute center of his divine grid. The interface was sprawling, dense, and terrifyingly complex. He now managed over one hundred and twenty territorial grids. His believer count hovered comfortably around twenty-five million. The Faith Points generated every hour were a staggering sum, a river of raw power that flowed continuously into his reserves.
But he wasn't looking at the FP generation. He was looking at the automation.
The war in the north was frozen behind the Ashen Peaks, held in place by the Mark VIII siege engines and a treaty Vaelthyr was too weak to break. The theological crisis was resolved, the Crucible and the Mechanists bound together by the Natural Law Doctrine. The southern ocean was stable, locked in a tense but functional equilibrium by the staring contest between his Sea Serpent and the Arbiter's Leviathan.
