It had been over a thousand years since the creation of Metra. Kingdoms and empires had risen and fallen in the fertile land of Mesopotamia time and time again. Some she saw rise with her own eyes, bloody realms that needed her to quash rebellions or eliminate less worthy candidates.

The laws of Gaia had become stricter with each passing year. Individually it was barely noticeable, but over a millennium it now felt like too great a risk to step outside of the Abyss. None of her brothers or sisters ever dared to step outside the abyssal side, but that was often enough.

In the lands that once were Akkad, every fifth person was part of the Abyss, including all of the nobility. No matter how many empires fell, every king would seek a contract with the Metracanas for one reason or another. Some would only seek some of them out, those they needed, others would attempt to contract them all. Every time, the Metracanas acted upon the oath that they had made to Sargon on his deathbed.

Even without running the risk of being deployed in the world of normal man, it wasn’t like they had nothing to do.

Most of the time they resided in the city of Babylon. Once destroyed by Sargon himself, it had been rebuilt twice since then around a central tower that no one dared to touch. For why they were there, it was due to a drawback in how they functioned. Being the imperfect prototypes of a magical technique meant that they had aspects to them that made them outstanding, but that was only because people hadn’t yet figured out what was needed to take off the edges to make the entirety work.

Between the contracts they slept. It was a necessity. While the unique properties of Astrotium, the metal from the fallen stars that made up most of their bodies, allowed them to regenerate their own mana while under contract, it would leak out steadily whilst they were free. Mana just didn’t stick to them with their uncompleted souls; they needed a second person to stabilize theirs. Roaming around on their own was not an option for all but one of them.

An early design flaw for most, a deliberate decision for others of the Metracanas. The Artificial Spirits that existed nowadays, streamlined and clearer versions of the spell that had been used to create them, didn’t have that problem, they could eventually be independent, although they were inferior in other ways. Most of all being that they were weaker, weaker even than most golems. A new trend to implant crystalized versions of aspects of consciousness into their bodies as a replacement for the materials of gods that were inlaid in the Metracanas was slowly shaping up. The results varied. Metra listened to those stories with medium interest; she was the first, so she did care about what followed after her, but she was also not the science kind of thinker. She was a weapon of the battlefield and searched for a place to take the wrath inside her heart and live it out over answers to some questions.

There was one place, however, where the Metracanas could reside without having to be afraid of running out of energy, at the side of their goddess.

“I need to kill her, I will kill her, SHE SHALL BE KILLED!” Tiamat roared in the temple that was also her prison and the wonder at the heart of the empire giving the monolithic structure its name, the Tower of Babel.

The goddess of chaos was a hideous beast. A dragon whose body had much of its flesh carved off, revealing a bare rib cage, a beating heart within that pumped saltwater through a body that was working with rotting organs. Two of her five wings were naught but bone, the others looked pristine, water continuously dripping off them like morning dew. It landed on the floor where it quickly dried up, leaving a thin crust of salt in the middle of the circular hall.

On her long neck, covered in blackened, dull scales, sat a head that was half recognizable as a normal dragon, whilst the other was a chaotic mess of scars, displaced eyes and a mouth that had a vertical slit to pull open in addition to the horizontal, normal one. Her maw was just an elongated mess of displaced teeth in soft flesh, only fit to hurt not to consume. She moved her head around as if in a panic, overlooking the seven open chambers at the lower and the fourteen at the upper level of the two story temple that had been erected around her crippled form.

Her voice swung between displeased mess and sultry sweet words depending on her mood. Today, she was clearly annoyed. “So close, thousands of years, so much research, so many resets by foolish kings, we can do it today. So close! I understand the next world, we must tear this one down, the cycle has been stopped, the wheel reinvented before Enuma Elis.”

Metra listened closely to Tiamat. The goddess of chaos was incoherent, had so many endgoals that she seldom reached any single one of them, but her words ultimately revealed potential for someone else. The worthiest kings had been born out of her divinity.

It was indeed today that was important. Only a few more acts of masonry and this circle would be complete. A tower to touch the sky and rip Gaia from her throne in the heavens. Tiamat had wanted to get there for so long, but her mind saw nothing on its own and had taken the most winding path possible. It didn’t help that a number of rulers had denied helping with the building of such a project. Now, however, it was about to be completed and no complaints mattered anymore.

Not from Tilgun, that northerner that had taken to worship the chaos of opportunity with them and had left the land in anticipation of this event, not from Marduk, whose magic words had failed him after all and who was going along with this begrudgingly, not from Enki, who was patrolling the outskirts of the empire and made sure the magic lines were all set correctly. Over a millennium of scheming and finally Tiamat got what she wanted by poisoning her children with the influence of her chaos.

Metra didn’t know or care if that was a good idea, she just sharpened her weapons, from sword to spear, and waited. The ever-present anger inside her would be guided at something today.

“Just a little while longer,” a second voice tried to calm Tiamat, who then looked down.

“Ah, Seminaris,” the goddess of chaos spoke in a gentle way, rearing her head over, “my dear patience, how much longer is that?”

“Not long,” the second Metracana ensured her. She didn’t even try to use any unit of time; the goddess of chaos had no use for such things. “It will be soon now. Before the sun sets once more.”

“And then we will be all dead,” one of the Metracanas commented from above. Probably Serestra, the first of darkness. “For slighting Gaia.”

“Gaia is the false goddess, she forces order that isn’t of Abzu’s design. My children who murdered him, in a world playing by her rules. I hate them, I hate them all, this world has to sink into chaos. From the muck my husband shall rise again,” Tiamat screamed.

All of these things had happened long before even Metra existed. The bickering continued around her. Metra concentrated on the whetstone in her hand. “We shouldn’t…” Shiiiing, it glided over the singing blade. “It is…” Shiiiing. “My opinion here is…” Shiiing. “You all need to…” The singing stopped. “I think you...” The beating of drums in her ears. “If the king…” The whetstone threatened to burst. Semiramis added the straw that broke the camel’s back; Metra hated her closest sister and her endless patience, her voice alone ticked the first of wrath off, “You just need to…”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Metra screamed and hurled the whetstone at the first of patience. The hall was quiet except for Tiamat’s many laughter. Semiramis deflected the attack with a magical barrier. “It’s only a short time now, the chaos has spoken; if you dislike it, curse your existence and the fact that we are bound either here or with the king that agreed to this.” Metra looked at the two empty chambers on the first floor. “No one forced you to follow our traditions and stay here. You could always have done what the first and second of love did and bind yourself to merchants in pursuit of a foreign king.”

She reigned her temper back in and grabbed a new whetstone. She had more than a few lying around in her corner. The room thus went silent until a new person entered a long time thereafter. The circle was completed. The ritual was about to begin.

“About damn time,” Metra rose and strapped her weapons to her broad back, one after another. She was thankful that this current king had no use of her as a concubine. Many kings, unworthy in better times but the best they could find in the ones they found themselves in, had thought it a great irony to have the greatest weapon be a plaything in the bedroom.

Metra had taken those contracts in disgruntled passion. She didn’t dislike sex, it had been one of the first things she had experienced in her life. Filling her days with nothing but that was beyond dull, however. Thankfully most monarchs of that calibre invited plenty of rebellions, so they either died soon or gave her something to do in castle raids.

“Why are you so eager to get this done with?” Semiramis asked. The first of patience was the only other one of the Metracanas that had been made by Sargon himself. The dislike Metra felt for her was mutual.

She was a fine-looking lady, pale for this part of the world as she resembled someone that was hiding inside scheming all day. Long black hair with dark brown eyes and a face befitting for a lady of the court. All of her fine details, from those natural to her royal behaviour to her steel-grey dress with the silver rim of starlight, looked even more elegant next to the brutish appearance of the muscle-bound Metra in her armour.

Dress and armour were both made from the metal most of their bodies consisted off, Astrotium as it was known in the west. The Metracanas had eventually figured out how to manipulated the make-up of their bodies in the most effective ways: by pushing all of the hard material outwards they could create armours harder than anything anyone could hope to smith with their hands. The appearance of dull steel was intermixed with other elements, depending on the Metracana. For Metra, red decorations covered the dark dull grey, pieces of the scale of Tiamat, liquefied in the fire of anger that they themselves fuelled.

“Just like you to voice your complaints when nobody important is listening,” the wrathful growled back.

“You are putting words in my mouth as usual,” Semiramis sighed. “I know that Sargon, blessed be his beard in the world beyond, had not figured out how to grant intellect to you, his most failed success, but you still ought to listen every now and again.”

“I would be more inclined to listen to you if you weren’t in the middle of scheming something again,” Metra told her. “Like 230 years ago when you told me someone stole Uru-kartza.”

“Are you still not over that?” Semiramis wanted to know as they cleared the temple, leaving behind a manically laughing and sobbing Tiamat.

“You made me murder an entire priesthood in search of my sword and, in the end, it just magically appeared back in my storage,” Metra stopped for a moment to threateningly bump her finger against the much smaller lady’s chest. “I may not be the greatest planner, but I know when I have been played and how to recognize who benefitted the most from my mistakes.”

“Not that any of that matters now,” Semiramis mused.

“No, it doesn’t,” Metra agreed. They were all almost certain that they were running head first into certain death. Even if the theory of this tower was correct, even if there was a way to push Gaia from her throne, just this tower wouldn’t be enough, a whole kingdom wouldn’t be enough, the only thing that Metra could imagine would be enough would be the entire world and, even then, barely. “Which begs the question why you are bringing it up.”

“At the end, I just wanted to say: I hate you,” Semiramis stated. “But let us end as sisters, not as foes.” She reached out her hand. Metra took it immediately, much to the first of patience’s surprise. “I would have figured…”

“You thought too much about it,” Metra interrupted her. “If this is the end, I don’t want to enter whatever may come after this, if anything, to see Sargon again as bickering children. If you lie to me again, you are just the same bitch as usual.”

“…You are so refreshingly simple,” Semiramis stated.

Metra just blew air out of her nose, and they continued to climb to the highest floor.