Hidden 7 yrs ago 4 yrs ago Post by Gattsu
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Gattsu Cold meat. Fresh cut.

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Ganaxavori’s acid rain pattered against the escutcheon spell like the angry marching of an alakastian infantry. His vision swam as he tried to focus down at his broken appendages--tentacles scorched and mangled down to the ligula. The quiescence of his end was heavily corrupted by a maelstrom of fear and anger that pulsed in his chest. Struggling, his field of vision drifted back up towards his murderers. A host of mirror-masked figures faced him reflecting only the distorted reflection of his disfigured form. The centerpiece of this gathering stood unmasked for all to see in his divine glory: a large mantoid individual that anyone in the system would recognize.

Ec-Shavar.

With labored breath he addressed the governor not only with his defense, but also his scorn. “You… you are a lunatic.”

He could feel the tyrant’s invisible gaze settling upon him. The governor’s victim choked, “You cannot do this. I… am a cizran! I am not to be exterminated like your worthless kukulls. The empire entitles me privileged!”

One of the mirror-men interjected like a knife in the back. The voice spoke in an electrical monotone voice that reverberated as if it were spoken through a fan. “You have and are nothing. Your claim to Act 35, Section Ö, Subsection S has been repudiated. Ec-shavar, Ascender of Mortality, Claimer of Galaxies, Razer of Armies, and Subjugator of Societies. Of Shal-anar, and the Emerger from the Qol’Vitrol, Banisher of Ghot, the Last Xo’Xan, and Slayer of Na-L Aktor, first of the New Breed, and Bringer of the Galactic Dawn, is the only god, and does not recognize any other authority.”

Looking up, the cizran beheld the ever decaying escutcheon border above him with muted chagrin.

***


The kukull’s vision ignited a renaissance within its developing mental faculties. The soft pattering of acid rain, the swimming of its sight, the sense of self. The feelings of sadness, of shock, of humiliation, of anger returned to it. Its expanding consciousness processed the demise of… him? Someone else? Though the golem hadn’t yet advanced enough to understand the concept of past lives, the anual’budai did claim these feelings for itself.

The stoneswallower’s furious stampede slowed to an absent traipse through the forest as the memory flooded its consciousness, expanding the boundaries of its psyche.

Ec-Shavar. Danger. Ec-Shavar. Murder.

With no understanding of the concept of death, the golem had attributed qualities to the governor. It didn’t like Ec-Shavar because “murder” and “danger”. Internalizing its feelings and fears, the kukull took a second to assess its surroundings. Quilled stems columned the canopy in a sundry of different sizes, some smaller and some larger than the stoneswallower. Glimpsing backwards, the golem observed its demolition with naked indifference. A path of uprooted trees, aerated soil, upturned stone, and shredded underbrush. Some of the larger trees were still unfurled into spiney pillars, though little difference had that made. Glancing forward, the anual’budai sensed motion. Through its knuckles it could feel the cascading rush of eddies, the choppiness of rapids, and the churning of a fall. Though the foliage obscured its vision forward, it could sense the distance through feel. The stoneswallower ventured forward cautiously, parting bristling trees with as little effort as if they were curtains.

Some time passed until the stoneswallower reached the stream. The unimpressive frothing brook snaked through the dense foliage of the Veldt. The kukull could feel it rush around stones, tumble over falls, empty into larger bodies, like it were rushing over his own body. This sensation reached much farther than his sight allowed. Approaching the water, the kukull peered into the shallow depths. Regarding its own reflection the golem took in the details: a furrowed brow which beetled tiny, glowing, turquoise beads, and a rocky underbite that added to the overall countenance of a grimace.

Me.

Its face didn’t appear like the distorted hyakume that reflected in the masks of the murderers.The golem raised its three-fingered hands and clenched them into powerful fists. They didn’t look like the tentacles in the vision. Befuddled the golem dropped its hands and looked to the skies, as if searching for answers. A brief moment of contemplation passed and it carried onwards on knuckles and stumps through the woods.

***


metadrive actuation: ╤ → ƒ → ╞ → ╖
Initializing auto analyses actuators...
15Ti → OK
§drive → OK

Scan BiSiId for override of cognizance program

Booting Cognizance Initiative.
Acclimitizaton: Location→Gereza

The deep sockets of Model §3 flared to life with faint turquoise light. Somewhere, within its tarnished cylindrical chassis, cooling fans whirred with vexingly tenacious stridence. With a forward pace every bit as automated as one might expect, Model §3 took its first step. At least its first since it had finished its previous investigation, and its owners had forgotten about it in Gereza. A large amount of information transmitted to Model §3’s antenna from Cizra Su-Lahn, information that would establish the android’s prioritization protocols.

Model §3 marched its feet and arms ambulating in perfect 90 degree motions. As per usual, the motto of the auditing section of the Hall of Records was “the budget we shall abide”. Model §3 was substantive proof of directive number one. Its joints creaked, its gears grinded, and the awful whining of its fans were not relegated solely to initialization.

The investigator got about forty feet from the scene of Eal’s escape before it received seven hundred and thirty six backlogged optional optimization updates that would total a net time of three days of constant improvement. Model §3 ignored them all as it was programmed to do. Another mantra would come to mind, one practiced by the middle management of the auditing department, “run it until it dies”.

Opening the cell, the investigator went to work, immediately scanning the residual tachyon emissions, eldritch patterns, and biosignatures left behind. Its findings were compared to the Hall of Records Cizran Erudition Syllabi (HORCES) for matches on recognized heretics and criminals. The robot immediately verified one biosignature as Prisoner 3091, formerly known as Eal Sermonde. However, the investigator discovered a second genecode that it could not verify. Standing statuesque still, Model §3 engaged routine validation protocols while emitting a screeching modem sound that everyone could hear because the door was open and that’s his ability. Then, it turned in search of the warden.

WARNING! MANDATORY EXTREMITY UPDATE!

→ Cancel

WARNING! EXTREMITY SUCCESS CONTINGENT ON UPDATE!

→ Ignore

When Model §3 finally arrived at the warden’s office, it no longer had the luxury of walking. Instead, the investigator now wheeled around on its auxiliary treads. The warden, Sinclair, was suspiciously absent from his duties, instead he left the dull-witted Mado-Keno as his replacement. Taking a moment to survey the room, the robot addressed the slim, sleepy replacement with a deafening monotone.

“INTERROGATIVE: WHERE IS WARDEN SINCLAIR?”


“He was leaving for some shrine. I don’t know, he didn’t file a time off request!”

The ensuing moment of stunned silence was interrupted only by one of Model §3’s loose bolts clinking to the floor. The substitute’s nervous twiddling renewed with doubled urgency. A moment passed by as Model §3 searched for a law to implicate the two of them in.

“INTERROGATIVE: HAS THIS ABERRATION BEEN DOCUMENTED AND REPORTED?”


“He mentioned it was on order of a super-”

“EXCLAMATORY: UNACCEPTABLE! YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE CANONICATE OF REDEMPTION’S SUBSTATUTE 32 OF THE µÖ’LOK INITIATIVE AS PASSED AND STANDARDIZED IN 3214-65-32. THE PROPER AUTHORITIES WILL BE NOTIFIED UNLESS YOU COMPLY WITH REGULATION 7: THE IMPLICATED MAY SUSPEND INCARCERATION IF COACTIVE IN AN EXTANT INVESTIGATION!”


“I, uh, I dunno. I can’t explain it. I mean--no.” Mado-Keno driveled.

“INTERROGATIVE: NO?”


“I don’t want to go to jail.”

“IMPERATIVE: YOU WILL REMAIN HERE, THEN. DECLARATIVE: THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL AUDITS WILL CONDUCT A FOLLOW-UP INVESTIGATION. IMPERATIVE: YOU WILL ACQUIESCE.”


Mado-Keno’s multitude of eyes nictitated irritably--the only external sign of retaliation against Model §3. Then, the warden gave a rigid nod of compliance. With that, the robot investigator whirred about with the turning radius of a Ha-Ren’il freighter. With inhuman patience, the automaton crashed, reversed, and collided again no less than three times before it departed.

However, Model §3 was better off than Sinclair when it came to traversing the desert moon. With a blast of plasma, the robot’s low-altitude short range boosters activated. It would push itself to the limit reaching the shrine of Tsathoskr this way, but if it broke down on the way, everyone at the department of internal audits was sure to breathe a sigh of relief.

Hidden 7 yrs ago 7 yrs ago Post by Liaison
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Liaison Passive Aggressor

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Kismet was closer than ever to elder scorpion morph. A matter of time was all it was. Considering the steps in preparation it took, it was odd to see him so…impatient. This chase neared millennia but never once in that span was he within the distance to salivate as he currently was. It was he thought about. Only hours removed of Sinclair and Eals visit, he could sit idle no more.

“Vhadgeid, you’ve arrived I assume.”

“I have.”

“Excellent, I will say this once. Administer order. Do as you see fit under Ak’Neshian code…”

Despite how Silexies flaunted his control over Sinclair he knew it was wise to surveillance everything he took part in. This meant ensuring he knew everything that was going on. It was perhaps the perfect opportunity to test the current Vhadgeid’s intention as her apprenticeship was approaching its end.

Cigány Cnidaria was now at Gereza.

Intersecting glyphs crossed Cigány’s pupil lacking eyes and lined her entire frame symmetrically. Long sea anemone like extensions protruded from her back, sides and head, forming a multicolored weave of a braided mane and majestic wings. Her legs were unproportionally long and bird like. Many considered her to be the pinnacle of Cizran beauty. Her flamboyant appearance was an invite to many to marvel but it came with its risks. Any sexual partner of hers eloped with death afterwards. Many types of spiritual energies and genes were sapped from her mates and stored within her in hope to ideally birth the next evolution of Cizrans.

Should she ever be democratically elected to do so she’d trigger her pregnancy and develop an advanced fetus. For now her pudenda remained a graveyard of former Cizrans. It was a great honor to have mated with a Cizran Hyacinth but her succubus-like tendencies were not to be displayed in the immediate future.

As a Vhadgeid, Cigány had been assigned to knowingly cover her superior’s tracks as her last act of duty. Though much of her thoughts questioned the Elder’s actions the Ak’Neshian code prohibited speaking out as it was clear Silexies wanted to utilize the tool for the presumed good of all Cizrans. Until he provided her reason to believe the opposite she had no reason to strike him down.

She arrived accompanied by a Cizran Escadrille and took no time to throw the entire faculty in disarray. By custom they were to prepare for a Vhadgeid or anyone higher beforehand should they visit.

“Unacceptable…” she scoffed

At first sight of her from a distance a swarm of Gerzas guards flew out the gates to serenade her as a part of their formal introductory customs. Despite this she was mildly angered. To show her unsatisfactory Cigány closed her eyes which signaled she was about to enter. Guard after guard laid down in her path, forming an entrance mat only to have their backs lacerated by her obsidian talons. Even as she finally reached the end of the path made mat they were still not permitted to rise until she officially left the room.

“Where is Sinclair, and why were preparations not met for my arrival. ”

“Vhadgeid, I assure you no notice was sent out and Sinclair has left on investigational matters directed under Silexies” Front desk secretary Yamel Tao’Zoag spoke. Of course she knew this already.He spoke the truth. There was no notice sent out but Cigány simply lied and at that moment someone would be deemed liable for the miscommunication.

“I do not accept that answer. Find who is responsible, Yamel” Cigány barked with conviction. Someone would have to take the fall, even if there was no one virtually at fault. Perhaps it would be one of the several hundred and easily disposable servitors drowned in meaningless paperwork. Only time would tell.

Though Silexies’ apprentice made a huge scene it would be foolish to think she did not have personal agenda to follow. She would find out how much this prison knew in regards to Eal’s escape and she would find a cover. The high and mighty act was not all a façade, however. She did generally find pleasure in the way she conducted herself. The workers were in for a rough time.

“Where is Mado-Keno?”

---

“Suddenly I have what I desire.” This voice resonated in Kirri’s mind but it was unclear who it was or what the message meant. Utilizing the fire stone, many of the Killimaran’s questions were answered, but it came with its price. Unaware, he opened his soul to Kaan but the timing was what saved him in the end from falling to the same fate as the swordsman before him.

He could sense him but…he couldn’t quite locate him. Reason so? Kaan had regained his strength to a point where could be felt wherever hatred was on Killimara. His essence was virtually everywhere but a stronger presence noticeably closed in on the alien warrior. Kirri’s mind was overwritten with all the knowledge he wanted to know, including how and why the situation reached such a point. It did not come easy on the heart, however. He could feel the very pulse of every Killimaran individually and he could sense that half now ticked at a different tune. Inside roughly a third existed a dark aura not natural to his species. Many of his species became meek puppets parading in plain sight ready to be flipped like a switch. Before Kirri could properly weigh his options his attention would be averted to the swordsman who had only just recently joined the fight unexpectedly beside him.

The trio of Hellseeds and their army were not defeated by any means but a change in their aggressive behavior was apparent. For a moment the raging army of Hellseeds paused. They watched almost as if they were anticipating something and they were.

And then, it happened…

Lysander, the rowdy intruder arrived on Killimara for an insane task, to consume a Hellseed. He’d accomplish that today. His sword stood tall, simultaneously holding the enlarged flaming heart down while he began to absorb its power. His muscles became increasingly tense as he attempted to harness the influx of power. On the surface, it appeared the mission was a success!

“I DID IT! HAHAHA. I ATE A HELLSEED. I AM THE BEST.” he continually boasted, completely unaware of what misfortune he willfully subjugated himself to. Maybe he’d realize when he couldn’t move his limbs but he was so high off the raw spectacle of his dream being fulfilled that he laughed hysterically. His world became dark. The scenery around him faded into a deep blackness.

“Fall…”

Instantaneously, the swordsman was brought to his knees. His high pitched laugh suddenly cracked, resembling an air horn before his body adopted a crippling state. One in which he could not longer properly speak. His words no longer had form, just obfuscated noises lashing out. His eyes no longer had splits in their lids and could not open.

“Awth si paephning to me? Ihts hsoludn’t… be hpnapneig…”

“This is what you wanted. A fiendish voice echoed.”

A tall figure sauntered from what could be gauged as a dozen meters away. He could only sense the malicious intent. He didn’t even have the privilege of seeing his abuser.

“You foolishly expose your soul and wage tug of war with a Demilich? Simply unwise. I am thankful for what you have given me, however. I have received collectively more than the majority of beings who inhabit this planet but you are at most a fool who is unworthy of damnation.”

“Utb I ma hte best!!!”

“Silence…”

After hearing such he could barely sustain consciousness. At this point the swordsman was leaning on his own sword for support. Menacingly standing over his body, Kaan placed his grotesque hand on Lysander’s head to relay a message. Aside from absorbing his and the swords energy he had one final task for him.

Kirri could only watch the man be slain by an invisible apparition. The strongest sense of Kaans energy was right before him and thus he’d be drawn to it. When an entirely different voice vibrated out of the throat of the swordsman it was clear who addressed him.

“Kirri… What will you decide? Will you continue to resist my influence? I have regained much of my power in such a short time. You cannot realistically hope to oppose me at the cost of your clan. The iscariotic feelings you sense in them are indeed permanent but you can extinguish the threat albeit you give a sacrifice of those already tainted. Malicious I am, but greed is something that escapes me. A small patronage is all I desire for the salvation of your species. Take this gift and do as I asked. What you do afterwards with it is entirely up to you.”

Before Kirri could answer, Lysander began to move again, coughing up liters of blood. His eyes, rolled well beyond backwards and it was apparent something was lodged in his throat. His hands forcefully entered his mouth and removed a folded page of archaic glyphs and inscriptions. It was bloodstained but power instilled within it was also codependent on the wielders will of mind. It could be the catalyst for scaling manipulation depending on the user. It left the hands of the man and made its way to Kirri, unfolding in the process.

The sword wielder finally fainted, planking on the desert floor. He wasn’t dead but he has served his purpose. Here in Kirri’s hand was an entire page of Aldaraia. The entire fate of Killimara. What will he do?

---

Outside of the chapel’s walls, two silhouettes conversed in a curtain of dusk. They were unseen, unsettled and unsure which course of action to move forward with. Opposing ideals and personalities’ were on full display, but the reality of how difficult the task they were assigned dejected their spirits. Neither soul had conviction in their opposites’ aptitude. Cooperation was key but bound to fail. Polluting the air were spiteful ambitions and intentions. Should they combine their efforts it was possible but should was an often a mere word of futility. It is a word often associated with what ended up not happening. It belonged in a parallel universe. It belonged ironically within another dimension of space, as did Eal Sermonde. At least this was how Ichor viewed the obstacle proposed.

He desired the coordinates and to banish Sermonde back to his Cell. The prospect of that idea was shot down by the feeling that a real bout would erupt between them here and now. One he could not win without disposing of his faux Cizran form. A fallout of that magnitude would no doubt bring unwanted attention to his superior. As much as he longed for Silexies’ demise an action like that exposed him also and to risk that for this individual would be uncharacteristically undisciplined of him. He thought hard to calculate a solution. The only option was the use his political clout for an unauthorized departure to the desired location.

So many options…

Perhaps a Wraith.
Hidden 7 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Alucroas
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Alucroas The Raging Singularity

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Cizra Su-Lahn

The cacophonous boom of thunder and lightning illuminated the lofty tower, the exterior of which was covered in a thick weave of arachnid silk, translucently lit by each strike from the clouds, giving it a constant electric glow. Inside the tower, Zeptir sat before a marble desk, inscribing notes onto a crimson letter of parchment using a dark-green ink. His entire body was concealed within a thick white robe, save for two holes where a pair of black antennae protruded three feet out, and narrow holes that allowed his mantid eyes to intermittently peer out through a square aperture, allowing him to view that storm which served as inspiration for his research and the ideas he inserted within them.

Among some of his ideas existed the theory that all Cizrans existed as part of a single collective conscience that had been shattered most likely hundreds of thousand of years ago by an unknown event. He formulated this theory after privately receiving the brains of several deceased priests who appeared to have conducted a group spell. The sender knew that the brain had long ago been proven to be an associated source of psychic and magical activity among all living organisms, and given Zeptir's knowledge of the magic and the effects it had on Cizran physiology, he had been the one chosen to perform the task of dissecting them for answers.

The documents read that came with the delivery read: Tu-Kras, Si-Kanchin, Mar-Kruft, Tala-Ceerin, and Ganti-Yuta ALL DIED SUDDENLY AFTER FAILING TO FULFILL CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS WRITTEN WITH *REDACTED* CLASS DEITY.

"Contractual Obligation..."

Internal brain scans revealed that the priests prolonged signs of heightened neural activity in addition to a massive hemorrhaging. The empathic organ - a region of the brain known for producing for deep emotions - emotions that needed extreme training and temperance before one could even begin magic, and thus contact a higher spirit for the purpose of making a pact had swollen to three times the normal size. There were only two possible conclusions: the spirit was too strong, or they were simply too weak to handle the spell. Zeptir concluded the former, given that this had been a group activity consisting of five Cizran priests. Just one should be enough to handle a simple pact, unless the pact held massive political ramifications, in which case the presence of something so absurdly powerful may have been justifiably necessary.

In any case, the mission was clearly a foolish one, though mainly in execution. Personal pacts were one thing, but a pact designed for multiple people, and possibly multiple parties? If they were plotting a usurp, or aiming to use the overwhelming power of a senior deity, then at least one hundred or more would be needed just to maintain a summoning circle, making it all the more difficult to hide their conspiracy.

Still, Zeptir had to file a report on his findings and send it back along with the brains, and so he decided to search his library for clues as to just what specific deity those priests were trying to summon. He figured if he could pinpoint which one, then it would provide some evidence of their intentions, and possibly lead to the arrests of other known religious associates.

It was during this time of arduous research that Zeptir felt something tugging on his antennae. The unusual twitch of his mantid fingers every time he came back upstairs with a piece of literature, where the organs had been refrigerated. He had this irresistible urge to run his hands up and down the jars, and on many nights found himself constantly opening the doors and finding excuses to perform further inspections. He hadn't noticed it at first, but each time he finished up, he set the jars just a few centimeters closer together. In the following weeks those centimeters turned to inches. A month went by and he felt the inexplicably and unignorable desire to move his desk closer to the refrigerator.

Feelings like these weren't normal, and Zeptir knew better than to allow himself to be compromised, so he quickly pulled the name of the strongest deity he could find and slapped it on the return file before preparing to repackage and resend. Upon opening the refrigerator, he found that all five jars had fused together, and the brains had begun the to merge along with them. Not wanting to be in possession of something so horrifyingly influential, Zeptir shipped the brains and files as quickly as he could, noting his suspicions of a possible, but as-of-yet unconfirmed conspiracy within the priesthood, and the strange physical anomaly of the brains. He intentionally withheld that he had been affected himself, finding it best that he remain detached by keeping his name out of the loop.

Then, Zeptir's antennae flickered again, but this time for an entirely different reason.

Deep Space, Location Unknown

A satellite composed of thinly woven strings glistened as it was hit by the light of countless stars floating through the cosmos. It was designed for the specific task of intercepting ethereal frequencies, then pinging the signal across countless relay satellites where it reached an unimaginably colossal vessel that was so massive so as to create a visible black spot in space, blotting out the light of other stars.

Aboard the vessel, a General with a face resembling a shark approached a soldier whom he had made a deal with many years ago. This soldier had fought many wars in the name of the General's organization in exchange for power. There was also the agreement that personal affairs were to take priority over any current engagements with enemies of the organization, provided they could afford to do so.

Now was one of those times.

"One of our agents has accidentally intercepted a negative psionic signal coming from your homeworld. As per our agreement, you may take a leave of absence in order to resolve your world's problem."

The soldier rose to his feet with a nod of gratitude and began to approach one of the warp pods located in his quarters.

"If you should have need of our assistance, soldier, know that we prepared to give it."

"I take my leave, General."

Kilamara

Kirri ceased his mad dash on hearing the voice of Kaan speaking to him inside his head. He witnessed the devastation he had wrought upon the swordsman's mind, thoroughly taking him over in what appeared to be mere seconds. Is this what had happened to the rest of his people, he wondered. Was this going to be his fate as well? He hadn't a chance to view what effects this man had on Kilamarans themselves, but was it something to be left to chance.

Before he could answer, the swordsman collapsed right in front of him, leaving only the strange piece of text floating toward him.

"Do not trust the words of a being who claims dominance over you, while at the same time, lacking the courage to face you directly."

An azure light overtook the desert sky, its the single ray branching out into a thousand piercing beams with the exception of one struck the infected Kilamarans directly in their fire stone crystals. The light rapidly spread throughout the crystals, producing a cold not unlike the north and south poles, flash-freezing the stone wherein it cracked and shattered, leaving a gaping hole where the crystal had once been embedded mere seconds ago.

Rather than attempt to purge the curse from his people's souls, Aredemos, the original Warrior of Redemption targeted the source of corruption, knowing full well that without the fire stones, the Kilamarans were powerless to do anything significant beyond their petty, hate-fueled murders.

The final beam rocketed toward Kirri's position, its azure light bending into a familiar shape, that of a Redeemed Warrior, hitting the desert with a tremendous impact that created a freezing shock-wave. The shock-wave passed over the still-standing Hellseeds, chilling them to their very core, only for Aredemos to slam into them with his black insectoid body that was easily twice as large as Kirri's, shattering those miserable skeletons into a hundred shards of bone, stopping just before the page which sought to infect yet another Kilamaran with its vile influence.

"I will resist you."

Aredemos spoke to Kaan, whose voice he could hear through his own fire stone as well as Kirri's and all the other Kilamarans living on this world. Without allowing Kirri to contemplate Kaan's offer any further, he reached out with his right hand and curling his fingers into a fist, the blood and saliva staining its surface crystallizing as frozen spread over its entire surface, piercing, skewering, and shredding the page into a useless piece of paper.
Hidden 7 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Circ
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Circ

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One—rough basalt chilled his snout as he adorned his mask, hewn to resemble a ferocious ursine grin, its teeth variegated with the pigments of alien blood. Equally cold, a cloak of silver-drenched linen, embellished with the emblem of the Cizran empire, cascaded down his spine and concealed six of his eight legs. These unnecessary accouterments were symbols of his rank and reminders of his purpose.

Ten kilometers of sculpted and kilned phenakos pierced the expanse betwixt bridge and admiralty lounge; a shaft, translucent, with an insatiable appetite for cosmic rays to transmute to mellow radiance. In mirrored elegance, a pair of stairs cascaded from the hall’s caudal wall to the floor. Only he, the admiral, dared darken those stairs.

Two—for him, the trek across the hall to the bridge was another ritual of equal importance to donning his mask. As he strode in unhurried majesty, he recited the names of those whose souls brought the Dira Var-sha thus far while his tails absently whisked up metal shavings and fomented a scintillating coma. Traversing the grand parade hall was to swim a sea of light. Even so, it shown imperfectly, tainted by ebon motes. Suspended in the hall at irregular intervals, these were the basalt sarcophagi that held, in perpetual slumber, the dreadnought's most valuable cargo. Dubbed sankuls by the priesthood, these coffins severed the his kin’s heretics and criminals from the spiritual well, siphoned their vitality, and secreted away their potency to propel gigatons of mass throughout the vastness of space in defiance of all scientific knowledge. Unlike konuls, sankuls existed for that exclusive purpose and, once exhausted, were abandoned, with untold ancient others, to the Cloud of Ghot.

This was not lost on Nenegin for, in brutal symmetry with his mask, the sankuls both reaffirmed the cost of galactic imperialism and embodied a wicked omen of his potential future.

He ascended into the bridge.

Three “Behold Nenegin zar-Taliļ! razer of armies; subjugator of societies; conqueror of the outer worlds and House of Ar Laac, seat of the naked star; vanquisher of the Zanifeen, our adversaries from the dawn of Ghot; and keeper of Kilamara, Chandoo, Perallis, and beyond,” boasted his herald in the third and final ritual affirming his role and duty.

“Report,” Nenegin demanded.

“Exogenous conditions recently manifested that threaten indigenous population cultivation for konul extraction. Aredemos attempting to intervene, but the outcome remains uncertain.”

Nenegin mulled over the situation.

“Pin-point extract primary disruptive elements to holoportal confinement and transport Aredemos to our temple at Mount Initãra,” Nenegin ordered, “Then proceed with partial konul engagement and displacement to restore planet-wide spiritual homogeneity. Lastly, strike the locus of corruption with a kinetic bombardment—one rod only.”

Nenegin turned and left.

He knew, without needing to see it evidenced, that his orders were instantly and precisely obeyed; that, even as he approached the scientific isolation chamber to assess the prisoners, it revealed Kirri, Lysander, and Kaan; that Aredemos awaited his projection at Mount Initãra; that the whole of Kilamara slept, sapped by the konul of the strength to incite conflict or foment rebellion—at least those who did not perish, for Kilamarans already infirm and those weakened by Kaan’s corruption and Aredemos’ subsequent destruction of their fire stones were drained of vitality by the konul to the point of death. Eventually, the stolen life force, purged of taint, would be returned to the world, and they would awake. With absolute certainty, he knew that no more did aberrations such as liches or hellseeds exist on a single world in his domain; of such things, only a ball of plasma—an incoherent chaos of disconnected atoms bereft of physical and metaphysical properties—a kilometer in diameter remained, centered on the strike-point of a kinetic bombardment that struck the planet while traveling at a significant percentage of c.

The imbroglio was unquestionably and absolutely over.

As he entered isolation, the guards, already at attention, kowtowed in deference to his position. The lieutenant amongst them reported, “Admiral Nenegin, translocation is complete, although it appears to have malfunctioned. We collected only two prisoners; the third inexplicably recomposed as, uh, tome. All are secured in separate haloportals.”

Nenegin gave a slight nod in acknowledgment. The haloportals were similar to the confinement chambers in Gareza, with the notable addition of carried perception. This allowed them to collect specimens none-the-wiser, study them, and then return them from whence they came. The specimen never knew they were in another world, much less that that their world was under the dominion of an alien race. It lent the process a queer degree of scientific purity. As far as Kirri and Lysander knew, they remained, suddenly alone, on Kilamara. As for the book, well, that was another matter. Such dark arcana was beyond his ken, but he knew of another Cizran who specialized in such lore. After a moment, he opined, “Translocation does not fail, Lieutenant, ” then, ship wide, “once the konul deployment is complete, we return to Cizra Su-lahn.”

. . .


The temple at Mount Initãra was no shelter, but a monument devised to inspire reverence and awe. Spires, with viscera that churned as a dense fog, criss-crossed haphazardly overhead, allowing starlight to pass through uninhibited. Here, nature was embraced, rather than withheld, and the patter of rain on stone, and the taste of frost, and the scent of unmarred air all presided. Older than Aredemos himself, it nevertheless was, to the Kilamarans, his sanctuary, evidenced by sundry offerings littered around the threshold of the hewn stairs ten-thousand meters below.

“Aredemos, for your might the denizens of this world revere you as a god—such is my might to yours. Moreover, not merely am I, as likewise are you, accountable for the spiritual and cultural maturation of this world, but manifold others. Thus, if you fail—if your people fail—so, too, do I, in part, fail, and that will not be tolerated,” Nenegin said.

Translucent and nigh immaterial, he circled Aredemos, his frame twice as large, nematocists searching on strands that protruded from beneath his ivory, feather-like scales and hungrily arcing sapphire sparks.

He continued, “In this recent conflict, your indecision and inadequacy forced my hand. I, who create and preserve, was compelled to destroy. Attain vigilance that it may not so be again and do well in the remembrance that even mightier beings preside above us in judgment of our actions. Know also that your people slumber, for it is my will that their souls are cleansed of the taint of foreign planes, and my will that they awaken pure.”
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Within the grand scheme of the great web, Ulu'gol knew that this night would be amongst the worst in the series of terrible experiences and decisions that would eventually lead him to a life of self-imposed solitude. It had been meant to be the turning point in his career, a triumphant return to the limelight after having been cast out by talentless usurpers and their simpering idolizers. He, along with a few of his "peers", had been commissioned by the estate of Ec-Shavar to commemorate his recent conquest of Ganaxavori and the cementing of diplomatic ties with Q'ab, the extravagance of the night being one of many concessions made to prevent the devastation that had marked much of Cizran history. All of his aspirations were dashed on the rocks, figuratively and in a sense, literally, as that monstrous stone-eater destroyed his masterpiece and nearly his life.

Lidless eyes watched in budding horror as the stilted form of the "Prince of Flowers" lurched towards him. The fine hairs on Ulu'gol's cephalothorax bristled as he observed Xo'pil stagger towards the crowd of fawning socialites and sycophants, a drink having appeared in one hand with its contents dangerously close to being splashed across those gathered. The fool always made a spectacle of himself at each of his showings, and his behavior only seemed to enamore the Cizrans more with their prodigal pet. Especially that Plangó; who catered to his every eccentricity and afforded him deep pockets and even deeper protection amongst the more scrutinizing aspects of the empire.

With nauseatingly impeccable timing, the diminutive furball quipped as Ec-Shavar's boisterous introduction came to an end about the odds of the night ending with the jingoistic Cizran ramming his flagship into the gallery, in a gross misunderstanding of artistic interpretation. A polite round of nervous laughter was elicited from the group as the artists met gazes. Xo'pil's face split into a wide grin as he wrapped his arms around one of Ulu'gol's injured legs, embracing it tightly. "Oh, take a look at you! You poor bastard, what have these mutants done to you?" The Azot gave the polished metal of a hovercast a curious series of knocks. "Couldn't get a new piece out of you, so they've strung you up on display have they?"

The alakast's pedipalps rubbed against one another anxiously as he spoke, his voice modulated slightly due to the encumberance of the breathing apparatus he'd been outfitted with to prolong his existence. His words came between shuddering breaths, the rasp of the air intake lost within the sea of casual conversation and soft music. "I... am honored... and gracious... for the hospitality... and understanding... the Q'ush have... shown me..." Internally, he seethed at the mock familiarity and undoubtedly dishonest interest for his well-being. He grimaced, or he would've if he'd had the proper anatomy, as Xo'pil ignobly downed the rest of his drink with a sharp toss of his head and immediately beckoned for two more.

Ulu'gol shifted his weight in an attempt to escape Xo's attention when the gravitational repulsor engines of several of his hovercasts failed and he found himself now backed into a corner of the gallery, watching the ethereal forms of Ec-Shavar and Plangó moving amongst the rabble, seemingly deep in conversation with one another as the exuberant voice of Xo'pil ranted and raved about some moment of divine inspiration, or intervention, he couldn't quite follow as the Azot's behavior deteriorated within minutes until he was little more than a wildly gesticulating spectacle that slowly wandered off into the crowd, mumbling something about a womb of ignorance.

"That... could have been... worse...", he said aloud, and as if in response, the remaining engines faltered and he crashed to the ground with a thunderous squelch, a raspy rattle of air escaping his mandibles.

***

"I sense a weakening of your spirit." The words hung in the air despite the commotion in the room. The empathic bond shared between the two Cizrans had fluctuated subtly as Plangó Felho'Te-vesztø made a circuit around the gallery. What was normally a rushing spring of sensory and emotional information had waned to a trickle. It was an unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation, something akin to having his psyche scoured, micron by micron. He approached his host, a resplendent column of kaleidoscopic majesty, and began to keep pace with him, the other guests giving them a wide berth as they conversed.

"To the contrary, never have I been so mighty." The response was a worrisome one. Much could be made from the statement, and in their history Ec-Shavar had always been one to measure his words and actions to the utmost degree. It was his shrewd, tactical mind that had seen him survive several wars since the Kr'Nalus, the great rendering. The skein of Plangó's memories stretched out before him, plucking from them the rich fruits of their past. It was an epoch whose tenets had been emblazoned into the cultural psyche of the Cizrans, an event of such magnitude whose worship had always seemed profane to the Governor. It was a fall from grace he, and the Xo'Xan sought to rectify.

Ec-Shavar stood tall as a pillar of might during turbulent times for the empire. Many of their host had been lost during the Kr`Nalus and its repercussions would be felt throughout the empire for centuries. One of which was the need to reconquer many of the worlds they had dominated during their time as a collective; and it was during one of the last campaigns that he found himself serving under Ec-Shavar in an official capacity as liaison for the Av'sti, an Inquisitorial branch of the Church whose upper echelons were hidden amongst a veil of bureaucratic and mystic nature.

"That is surprising, considering the term mighty has not been used in conjunction with a Xo'Xan in eons." There had never been a need for much political navigation before the time of Kr'Nalus, but the sudden development of differing opinions and viewpoints saw much in-fighting occur between the former Cizran host as lines began to be drawn and sides taken. One of the many factions to arise at this time had been the Xo'Xan, a hubristic group of zealots who saw in themselves aspects of divinity manifest, and sought to constantly change themselves until such a time that divinity had been attained. They subjugated and quantified every species across the empire, taking from them whatever advantageous anomalies their genetic code contained, while exterminating others as wasteful aberrations.

The words held a tinge of contempt and more than a slight lack of courteousness. He doubted that Plangó had come just to exchange barbs; there must have been another reason for his coming. The recent attempt on Ec-Shavar's life, combined with all the other difficulties as of late compelled him to consolidate his power, something he always did when he felt threatened. And what was power in Cizran society if not information; its applications and withholdings tantamount to the finest of maneuvers in any battlefield. He decided it would be best to draw in his opponent, playing off of his well-deserved notoreity for treachery and subterfuge. He bristled theatrically, with all the subtlety of a slorax in heat, as they paused to observe the controlled orbits of a troupe of dancers, their choreographed movements interpolated within the design of the Cizran homeworlds, projected over them as an ever-shifting hologram. It replayed the sequence of galactic events that had led up to the Kr'Nalus, or an approximation of them as much of their records of the time suffered from its backlash.

"To talk of might is to not truly comprehend it, and delusions of grandeur are hardly becoming of a being whose most recent accolades have been won by the works of a Wa'ali." He unfurled a gleaming talon and pointed it towards Xo'pil just as he sent a wave of shudders through the group surrounding him, undoubtedly speaking of great grotesqueries.

"I have no qualms in admitting that all of the accolades bestowed upon me are completely unnecessary, and symptomatic of an antiquated social system that continues to fail us." If Plangó had had eyes, it was at this moment that he would have sharpened them in a predatory fashion. Instead of any overt visual cues, the hues at the fringes of his being pulsed in hypnotic patterns. "We both know how long it takes for the Noema to affect change in policy, and even longer for it to be implemented." Too much and his words would be fragrantly blasphemous. A gentle hand would be needed to gleam anything relevant. "Just look at how long it took to move away from the slaughterous history of the Xo'Xan. To think of all the culture that was lost, of what hidden knowledge we could have discovered had there been a patient Si'ab amongst the Av'Ilys to stay such careless hands. Yet rationality prevailed and we find ourselves at new heights, bolstered by the wit and craft of those you defame as Wa'ali. This is why it's been...Ah, the years escape me. Just how long has it been since you've beheld the grandeur of Su-Lahn's Ja'regia. Since you've strolled through the gardens of Rumai, who spent the better part of his countless years perfecting his art, finding the most beautiful specimens across our lands. How long, Xo'Xan?"

By this time their conversation had taken them in a full lap around the gallery and they found themselves upon a balcony overlooking one of the estate's molten pools and just as Ec-Shavar turned coldly to respond, another round of trumpets and a dimming of the lights brought all attention in the room to the kneeling form of Xo'pil, a gnarled staff within his hands. Behind him was the towering form of a shrouded structure, the masterpiece of the night so many had gossiped about. It was time for the unveiling.

***

The room was hushed as the hooded figure that was their focal point began to speak, his gaze steadied on the end of gnarled staff clutched within his grasp. Five ominous raps against the artificial surface of the gallery floor. Thoughts rose to empyreal heights only to crash against the rocks of his consciousness as Xo'pil, an apt description of the cognitive dissonance he was experiencing. His words tonight would most likely be his last before a Cizran audience.The extent of its circumstances an uncertain knot of probabilities he would have Epit'li working on if he'd had time for repairs. Huilo was drained from his work on the unveiling...Recognition came crashing upon him as he remembered where he was and resolved himself to the tides of fate.

"Civilization is in collapse. This collapse is well documented: by philosophers and scientists, novelists and artists. Through this collapse, at the precipice of insanity, are those who organize to quantify all civic life into a continuum of warfare. Of conquest. Galaticists work alongside military specialists to better prevent or control the slightest disturbances. They seek to continue if not further present cycles of exploitation. To quantify all experience to more readily assess and ajudicate. They do not see the inherent absurdity in such actions."

As he paused and gave his words a moment to sink, a minute parade of ideograms began to spiral out from the center of the pristine white robes he wore. The script seemed to be in a constant state of agitation, undergoing rapid changes yet somehow maintaining a fluid artistry in their fluctuations. The further they spread from the epicenter, the duller their colors became; beginning with bright and bombastic hues of orange and yellow that cooled to a golden hue.

"Our conception of reality is flawed. We begin with the world, made up of external beings. The world outside ourselves. But we ourselves are also a thing, which exist in analogy with the other things that surround us, coming to a consensus on the nature of reality. But there is a presence to us which is not a thing; self-awareness. The thoughts with which we think. Consciousness. We are an abstraction of an even greater abstraction we call nature."

He rose from his kneeled position and began to circle the veiled object with methodical footsteps. By this time the vast majority of his robes had become enveloped in the glyphs, an intricate weaving of visual elements that dazzled the senses. There seemed to be a light glowing within each symbol's depths and it eerily mirrored the rhythm of his movements.

"We make claims at an apprehended identity. On what does this apprehension depend? An observer? Does there exist an eye so mighty to behold all? If so, what would we look like to such a being? What would we say to the Divine, when we are Nothing within its scope? When the insignificance of your existence must be accented with a futile search for meaning, an act of hubris in which we are all complicit."

He stopped after having completed five circuits around the installation, whose veil turned tumultuously as if caught in a storm. Xo'pil turned and raised his staff to the cloth, the length of its gnarled wood having succumbed to the runes and laid it against the diaphonous material. The denoument had arrived and the rate at which events were culminating was accelerating. He could feel it deep within himself that the trajectory of his life would deviate wildly after tonight's initiation. The symbols virulently transferred surfaces and was the catalyst for his speech's crescendo. Xo turned to face those gathered, lush patches of his indigo coat becoming more pronounced as his robe began to fall away in a manner reminiscent of dying leaves.

"I see this, but I do not see my sensations of it. What I see will always remain, no matter how much its image may be turned or altered. I'll always have the same content of consciousness. Although very different contents may be experienced, the object which is perceived remains the same. In whatever way we may be conscious of the world as universal horizon, as coherent universe of existing objects that are constantly active on the basis of our passive having of the world. This is true not only for me, the individual ego; but rather we."

There was the distinct sound of shattering coming from the veil as the morpheme completed etching itself upon the entirety of the structure's surface and layers of the statue began to fall away in large shards until beneath it all there remained a floating and pulsating eye carved out of a crystalline substance that seemed to act as a plasma but retained the appearance of substance, albeit one whose inner dimensions contained dizzying depths.

"When stripped of ideological veils, the imperatives of autonomous subsystems make their way into the lifeworld from the outside- like colonial masters coming into a tribal society- and force a process of assimilation upon it. The diffused perspectives of the local culture cannot be sufficiently coordinated to permit the play of the metropolis and the world to be grasped from the periphery. Consciousness is fragmented into the twin demons of alienation and false consciousness. Let me show you what lays beyond such primitive understanding."

The word came to life within the folds of the eye, its luster caught in endless reflections. And from the darkness erupted a chorus of bellows.
Hidden 7 yrs ago 7 yrs ago Post by Circ
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Audit Servitor Supervisor #19 crouched beneath his desk, his portable media display projecting against the backdrop of the shadowy floor a hologram of his favorite soap opera. The scene was deep space; an unnamed vessel, an unnamed crew, an unnamed purpose. In it, the hero, a war-hardened soldier, was mysteriously being granted permission to depart from his military responsibilities to pursue other, unnamed, affairs. Was it personal or business; love, lust, espionage, or something more sinister; was his sickly mother finally at death’s door; or had his evil twin resurfaced? Such important matters would, ASS-19 hoped, be divulged in the next installment of Black Skies At Night.

A tap to the door interrupted his musings; rather, it startled him such that he struck his head against the bottom of his desk.

“Ouch! What is it?” he emerged, rubbing his pate.

Sir, there is ineluctable evidence of misprision at the highest echelons of our penal system, JAS-397 had rehearsed before her reflection an hour prior. In her hand she held round two, a folio, presently more innuendo than indictment, that nevertheless injected vim into her cyclic drudgery. Apprehension built, but she recalled what she nostalgically referred to as round one—an acme of fortitude wherein, after six hours outside her supervisor’s office, she boldly knocked, gained admittance, and thereafter convinced her supervisor of the merits of a site-side investigation at Gereza Prison Compound.

Her fellow servitors marveled at her unfathomable aplomb!

She tightened her grip on the crimson-bound folio. O, the manifold infractions unearthed by Model §3 and Ophidian! Blurry pictures of what looked like Silexies and his toady Sinclair. Audio files brimming with vague, noise-riddled exchanges between the two. A konul guard’s incoherent confessions, begging, and protestations were transcribed! Yet now, standing in ASS-19’s presence, she barely murmured, “New information, Sir,” and set the folio on his desk.

. . .


Each moment of his history he carried with pride; every title and creed, including those now out of vogue and particularly the honor of Xo’Xan. As such, Plango’s bald contempt wore on Ec-shavar’s patience. Surely his former protégé came for a higher purpose than flinging insults; probably he was embroiled in the attempt on his life, however tenuous his role in the matter.

Ec-shavar turned to face Plango and made ready his riposte, but was interrupted.

Events below were coming to a head. He glanced down and beheld the many demonstrations already prepared. Those works presented seemed crude tokens when contrasted with what he knew existed on the holy planet, but he recognized the widow’s mite. This was the best Q’ab was able to offer. Overlooking the many works celebrating his rule, ego elevated the importance of these honors and his need to observe such above political sparring. That in mind, he adjourned the exchange with a slight gesture.

First of the presenters to catch his notice, Xo’pil danced cyclically around his sculpture as the pieces of its shroud shattered to the floor. The wa’ali’s insolent prattling and tautological rhetoric surely tore the jester’s veil and cast the tatters of his future at the feet of his momentarily bemused patron, but unease for the rest of the gala mounted. When the eye manifested, through the spiritual entwining of their empathic organs, Ec-shavar felt Plango’s bemusement suddenly decay.

This, quite shockingly, was not a product of Plango’s instruction.

“No mere wa’ali, but a saprifit of an order unseen since the demise of the Hez-Karaz,” articulated Ec-shavar in measured tones, knowing full-well the heretical sect was still active on Cizra Su-lahn; “in that respect, the pet has surpassed its master.”

To that, Plango did not reply. It was, perhaps, unnecessary, for they both witnessed the same act of hubris; moreover, as Ec-shavar for that small moment exposed to Plango his bond, they shared an acrid understanding.

Even so, the matter demanded public annotation.

“No place is free of spies. It falls to you to destroy your creature, unless you prefer a sankull’s embrace once news of this reaches the Av’sti.”

The words straddled that emotion-bereft line where they became both threat and advice, for history and circumstance conspired to intermingle his role in the moment as an adversary and former mentor. As for the rest of the gala, there followed a stillness chilled by the occasional howl of disbelief, for the sculpture’s impact on lesser races imposed on them a trance while those of greater fortitude were nevertheless stunned into silence or despair.

After a while, Plango replied, “I shall drag him before the Av’sti myself whence leaves the next transport homeward.”

It was a bold declaration; one Ec-shavar respected even as it attacked his legitimacy as governor.

. . .


Fashionably late, Eti strode into the gala behind his Q’ush guide.

The scene rather failed his expectations. Oh, the settings were quite elegant, the architecture divine, and the decorations extravagant. The problem was the people. Some attendees seemed ill, others cried openly, many more stood still as statues with masks of horror etched on their faces. An arachnid alien locked in an array of mechanical contraptions sparked and twitched into a corner while raving simian was hauled out by a massive glass kukul.

Eti’s blinked away his shock and instead followed the path of his Q’ush guide, who presently was ascending the balcony where Ec-shavar and his Cizran guest held court. It was always difficult to read a Cizran, but the governor struck him as rather calm despite of the emotional chaos churning below. He didn’t know the other well enough to speculate.

“I have been instructed to present to you this token,” he heard the Q’ush utter while its elegant frame curved downward in a deep bow.

After the obligatory delay, it stood, although its head remained lowered in respect. Then it withdrew the japa mala from the lantern and presented it to Ec-shavar.

“It is from Potan Mul.”

Eti heard the Kantencan artisans, still in the lantern, catch their breath. The work was finished, but they were no doubt uncertain whether it would suffice. Worse, to have it presented so unabashedly to the governor of their world, who unbelievably stood within arm’s length of them, was a situation for which they were not prepared.

There was a shriek as the Q’ush was backhanded over the balcony, artisans and all, where he landed in a heap of ruptured scale and spilled vitae. The words of the Ci’zaria su-to Tóth clattered downward, untouched by Ec-shavar, who abruptly turned and left.

. . .


Waiting to board the shuttle, Eti couldn’t be happier that Q’ab and Ganoaxavori were almost behind him. In minutes, the enslaver implanted in his skull would be removed. He could see the same golem that implanted the device just outside the bay doors. At his side was Ulu’gol, whom he had met in the aftermath of the gala and who, armed with a new set of gravi-stabilizers, was likewise pleased to escape what he called an accursed planet.

Soon, Eti would be back on Cizra Su-lahn.
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The verbal arena of Ja’regia represented the pinnacle of cizran architecture, though some of its majesty was marred by a cloud-canopy of documents fluttering through the air of the Tabulis Dis’quosum like a roiling thunderhead of angry paperwork. The vaulted ceilings and open space amplified the angry shouting, cacophonous calls, and infuriated invectives that vied for volume over one another. Here within the halls of the Ja’regia, the formalities of cizran pride laid low to ambition, and there was only room for the banter and impossible discourse that were the fundamental building blocks of Su-lahn’s legislation.

Here, the fruits of the noema’s meticulous, plodding directives were debated and dissected, stretched and extrapolated, and utterly warped to fit the narrative of those most skilled in the art of discourse. Domnik favored this region with a different form. His gossamer wings elicited a constant whine he hovered among other flying cizrans. The screaming of a thousand voices ebbed like a tide of noise as bodies--some that angrily fisted documents in the air, screaming an interpretation of a half-century old legislation and others that whirled around in hysterical circles as they furiously recanted a previous decision of their party--crashed upon one another in a locker of strife. Within the last few recent centuries, the Tabulis Dis’quosum had gained the moniker, the Impossible Court, because its course had suffered so much since kr’nalus.

There was still order to the chaos, and Domnik had mastered this insanity through centuries of practice. In Cizran society there was no such thing as a uniform currency, instead the monitors that one might think would track transactional trends were instead monitoring something more important. Some of the graphs marked reputation and approval ratings of certain individuals, others were registering the strength of a civilization--crops to a growing empire. The staggering amount of information would be overwhelming to one not accustomed to it. Instead, Domnik knew what was important and what was superfluous. He understood how to read these trends. The cizran also knew the Au’lan, who arbitrated the chaos within. There was a beautiful discordian order to the chaos within the Tabulism Dis’quosum, one that instilled Domnik with an archaic sense of nostalgia. He could still see her inner beauty, the Tabulis, and the sensation filled him with wistfulness.

Domnik glided over the sea of chaos his two sets of wings flapping incessantly and the honeycomb of blowholes that dominated his abdominal half-dome expelling a constant stream of air that kept him aloft. He descended like a deformed angel from distant celestial gates, upon the Au’lan, one Buoliq Ac-Lanar,. His wings folded and became bat-like appendages that propped him up. Domnik had brokered a special relationship with this Au’lan. Buoliq was of Shal-anar--an influential “family” whose parasitic tendrils burrowed deep into the flesh of Cizran politics.

“Buoliq,” Domnik regarded the Au’lan, “how goes Chapter 353’s Ac-Nuovo Legislation?”

The cizran turned to face him, its face a blank slate, and its voice a melodic humming of resonance in the back of Domnik’s mind. “It is filed; it has cleared appellate court, and seems to be progressing to court district 14 §32, however--”

“That--” the Avi’lys testily interjected, “is not what I requested
.”
“I understand, and I apologize, but the affidavit was insufficient cause to move your legislation through district 56’s higher court and the motion was blocked by Ω Gorlund.”

Gorlund, a cizran high judiciary from district 15, was proving to be more than a nuisance, Domnik thought. The avi’lys paused for a moment in contemplation. “Very well,” he conceded, “I’d like to file Article 45.”

“Of course,” the Au’lan consented, “I shall complete the necessary forms.”

***


The soil churned as merciless treads sundered their surface, and the din of the heavy machinery in the camp ahead gave the kukull pause. From the spiny tree cover the stoneswallower hunched low and watched with animalistic caution. A large construction machine, of treads and shovels, patrolled between a large cylindrical pylon of metal. It watched uncomprehending as the large machine paced from a larger pile of glowing stonework to the cylinder in a constant cycle of gathering and dumping.

The small launch site was little more than a gathering of ships. One low skiff meant for overland travel had unfurled its form into a pyramid structure, portable in nature, but semi-permanent. The second ship--the furthest from the kukull--was a large boxy construction that sat dead and empty, but seemed large enough to fit the loader and pylon onto it, as well as the heap of aforementioned stone that sat closest to the forest line. The skiff, ship, and pile all ringed caravan-style around the erect metal obelisk to which they were loading the delicious shalam in. The kukull stared at the pile longingly, but was taken aback by the Q’ush that stepped from the skiff.

The Q’ush blinked blankly at the datapad, switching his stare between the consignment, and the mountain of animate stone that stood behind a copse of trees that couldn’t possibly conceal its hulking form He didn’t recall a kukull being required, nor did he even have access to one. Scratching his head with confusion he approached the kukull as one would approach a misplaced wrench.

“You’re not supposed to be here…” he gurgled, musing to himself, as one would to an inanimate object.

A spark of surprise jolted through his cold-blooded body as the lumbering golem regarded him with its glowing blue eyes. What the worker saw troubled him. The creature was entirely stone and magic true, but beneath that thin veneer of stone, underneath that furrowed brow, there was a spark of intelligence that should not have been there. He stumbled backwards, an action that startled the golem into backstepping deeper into the forest, before the q’ush rushed to his office. If the Cizrans knew he was harboring such a creature without reporting it, he could only imagine what they would do to him!

The stoneswallower watched the q’ush franticly retreat back to the strange pyramid. Taking this as an invitation to gorge itself, the kukull knuckle-walked over to the pile, as a strange feeling of jubilance and excitement bubbling within. The sensation of danger, at this point, had almost entirely faded from its mind--whatever threat that was bore in its mind that it fled from was severed then withered and died.

The golem watched greedily as the scoop-bearing machine came over and gathered more from the pile, and the golem followed it, picking pieces of stone off its harvest. By the time it had reached the pillar, which now the kukull could see was nearly four times the size of itself, he had eaten all the stones in its chassis. Curiosity got the better of the stone creature as it peered into the drop-off, and the soft, emerald glow of a stockpile of shalam lit its face. Diving in, the kukull disincorporated, and lounged in what it considered to be paradise.

A few moments later, the Q’ush burst from his office with frustration. Had they never heard of a sentient kukull before?! He knew what he saw! There was a giant golem hiding right over… The amphibian blinked, noticing the stone golem was gone. It was just him and his automated loader. He sighed with frustration, and went about his work. If this shalam was to return to Cizra Su-Lahn in time he would have to pull double time.

A few hours later, the obelisk and many more like it abound on Q’aab would converge upon a large ship in orbit, and there they would send off to the epicenter of the Cizran Empire.

***


The rocket engine sputtered, choked, and died as thick black smoke billowed from §3’s exterior. The investigator made no mental comment as he arced through the air like a shredded kite and crashed ten meters from the Shrine of Tsathoskr’s threshold. The event made all the noise of two freight ships made of porcelain clashing into each other in the middle of an orphanage for obstreperous azotl. The momentum carried §3 underneath a wave of dirt and sand for a moment before he came to a pathetic stop just inches from the actual threshold.

A few solid moments passed as a handful of curious clergy emerged from the debaucherous temple. They were greeted with a mound of refuse, dirt, sand, and, eventually, a small periscope that peered up from the wreckage. The periscope scanned the few clergy members before a shrill mechanical voice addressed them with the equivalent of a verbal run-on sentence.

“IMPERATIVE: DO NOT BE ALARMED. DECLARATIVE: I AM MODEL §3 OF THE HALL OF RECORD’S DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL AUDITS AND INVESTIGATIONS. I AM HERE UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF ARTICLE 2,367 REGULATION 32 SUBSECTION C.”


The clergy paused, shared confused looks, and then looked back at the submerged mound as a new racket caused a wince to splay across their faces. Whatever was buried underneath that cairn had unearthed itself as an augur pierced through the side of the mound, and out emerged what could only be explained as a mobile, electronic trash heap. §3’s treads were damaged beyond repair in the crash, and now it was pulling itself along the ground like a bisected soldier who, just moments ago, had stepped on a landmine.

It took §3 a few minutes to heave itself through the doorway and into the structure where its investigation would begin.

→Engage Thermal Scan

ERROR CODE: 4A THERMAL SCAN IS NON-FUNCTIONING.

→Engage Micro Scan

ERROR CODE: 4A MICRO SCAN IS NON-FUNCTIONING

→Engage Tachyon Scan

As §3 began to scan the interior of the temple a light of the same offensiveness as a welding arc filled the room. Surely enough, the same tachyon emission it had found within Prisoner 3091’s cell was present here. As §3 cycled through its gamut of scans, much to the dismay of anyone who had any sort of light-based sensory organs, it found many matches between its previous investigation, including the same genecodes as before, one of which belonged to Sinclair, and the other that matched to one Silexis of cizran high-caste.

“INTERROGATIVE: DID YOU WITNESS ONE
‘Sinclair’
"Sinclair
WITHIN THE GROUNDS OF THE
‘Shrine of Tsathoskr’
?”


As the robot identified the suspect with a pre recording of the accused’s name, it shot a hologram that flickered like a lazy neon light of the warden’s appearance. The clergy recognized him and with brisk nods they offered what information they had seen. As §3 patiently listened and recorded their testimony. At the end of the investigation he transmitted the information back to the Hall of Records with a modem screech that would surely cause any who heard it to bleed from their ears.
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by Zyamasiel
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Lysander lay in the grass, his back to the ground and his arms outstretched to either side. To the outside observer, it would inherently appear as if he just came down from a crucifixion cross at Golgatha. However, the truth was far less mundane. An energy-force somehow managed to traverse a thousand years of security, picked out the exact right road out of a multitude of dead-ends and false-leads, then followed that road through defenses that would have brought even an omniscient God to the brink of death just to be in proximity with, all to touch his soul. Which, in and of itself, carried a death sentence in the most gruesome of ways – the breaking down to nothingness on a molecular level. Rapid, forced expansion until there was no longer anything left of the original source. How this…thing managed it was far beyond his comprehension.

In that single moment, however, once that touch finally penetrated defenses nothing could penetrate, and caused him to act in a way that he never would have before – his body went into full-defense mode. Most systems storing secret information, when under intentional assault, have a backup plan. Lysander being an organic creature normally wouldn’t, but for some reason did. As soon as another being managed to break through all of his defenses and lay a finger on his soul, his body shut completely down. Respiratory and nervous systems ceased all activity, and even his soul actually evacuated its tether-line to his body.

Nothing remained of himself, and his body was only an empty husk as his consciousness floated freely. Of course, that was all part of the plan. All a method of preserving himself from sudden death and the end of his time altogether. He was over a million billion years old, and you don’t live that long by inhabiting the same old body the entire time. Flesh grows weak even with considerable power sources and augmentations in place to keep it strong. And though he was a warrior of considerable strength now, he wasn’t always such an indomitable force of might. Bodies were disposable, and he was sure he’d have to dispose of this one after its impenetrable defenses were somehow penetrated.

Regardless, the searching process began. A vast expansion of his consciousness across the planet seeking life. The sight before him, the old body laying on the ground apparently dead dulled – and his vision cast itself across the surface, scanning for a suitable replace. The process, even with an accelerated timeline, would take days, maybe weeks. It was all so frustrating. Suddenly, though, something changed. A subtle shift, like a ripple across the fabric of reality. If he’d been in his own body, it would have never been noticed. But now, as a ghost-like form floating and invisible, barely tethered to the living world, it was as evident as a dolphin diving back into the sea.

‘Lifeforms registered on the planet…zero?’ he asked himself, confused. A moment ago there’d been so many specks of light denoting a living creature in his field of view that it blinded him. Now…now there seemed to be nothing. Quickly rotating his consciousness back to his body, he sought out signs of the others. No one. Nothing.

“I don’t understand.” his disembodied voice was still prevalent, and could still be heard. If anything was around without showing up, they’d have reacted to a sound coming from nowhere in the dead silence that filled the world. Continuing his search for life, he kept focus on the body below him and began to realize that the flesh-form there was, indeed, the only one left on the whole of Killimara.

Understanding that was everything, he wouldn’t need a new body after all! Immediately his energy began pouring back through the flesh, and its systems began to live a second time. With an audible, jerking gasp and lurch of his body upward, head tipped back and mouth wide open, life returned. The scream of pain emitted from his lips, blood-curdling and cold, echoed across the silent forest. After a short span of time, the body lay back limp and he opened his eyes upon a dark, empty world.
“Holy shit. That was a hell of a ride, eh?”

“Yeah, it really was…whoever took us on it is going to have to pay, you know.”

“Oh, believe me…he will,” finishing the conversation with his sword, Lysander turned it tip down and used it to lift his body to a standing position. As soon as he put the weight on both of his feet, he almost fell again. It wasn’t the product of atrophy, though. The sensations passing through the process of bringing oneself back, at least in this manner, produced similar affects as being intoxicated. The whole world spun around him, and he steadied himself against the sword a second time. Already the pains in his stomach were coming, and he could feel the end result bubbling in the pit of his gut. He still didn’t know why the planet was empty, but he intended to find out soon enough…just as soon as the rebirthing sickness passed.

With a sudden, violent jerk of his head, his body tipped forward at the waist and a retching sound became evident. While some small liquid came through, so – too – did a grey substance which, upon exiting his body immediately floated high into the air, condensed upon itself – and then simply vanished.

The only thing Lysander thought was that it didn’t seem normal, and he surely couldn’t remember ever having that happen before during body changes. He reached through into himself, and decided he felt well enough to begin the search. Opting for the quick route, he reached his right hand outward as it throwing something to the side.

Nothing happened.

Immediately realization dawned upon him, and he spewed a string of curses that would make the most hardened sailor blush.

“He fucking escaped…all that work, all that planning…and he fucking escaped. I didn’t think that could happen, you know. Know this, Hellion of Val’gara, when I’m done here, and when I have paid retribution to the thing that did what none other could…I’m coming for you, boy.”

With that, Lysander decided he’d have to do this searching bit the old fashioned way, and immediately set off to scour the planet for any living creature he could lay his hands on.
Hidden 7 yrs ago 7 yrs ago Post by Circ
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Too vast to set down on any planet’s paltry spaceports, the Vepsis Dol hovered over Q’ab. Abstract and distant, never once in its long life was the transport vessel marred by any appreciable tug of gravity or crush of atmosphere. Instead, forged in the vastness of space in the shipyards of Zo, it claimed the higher calling of portal amongst the stars. Six massive reactors fused arcana harvested from sankuls with unstable antimatter, propelled the effluence through its engines, and made mockery of the limitations of physics. They—it—overturned archaic notions of the impossible and instilled life into the dream of galactic imperialism.

From the moment of its recent arrival, hundreds of shuttles had come and gone. Steadily, these deposited cargo into its labyrinthine bowels, which, while abuzz with activity, lacked much in the way of people. Its sentient inhabitants were limited to those eternally trapped in the sankuls, who of course sensed nothing, and an aberration in the form of a kukull who, without adequate paperwork, managed to infiltrate one of its bays by secreting itself within a veritable mountain of shalam. Otherwise, there was naught; neither crew nor captain, for the ship was completely automated by a host of machinations that oversaw maintenance, operations, and service and, for the duration of its stay, loaded, sorted, secured, and documented all its cargo.

One finicky bit of cargo, the aforementioned kukull, resisted these efforts.

In to a bin it was placed. A moment later, it was in another pile of rocks; doubtlessly up to no good. The machines returned it to where it belonged. As such, the process repeated, et still the unruly heap manifested in unexpected areas. Ever patient, the machines returned it to where it belonged. Ever persistent, it continued its exploration.

. . .


Within the bedlam of the Ja’regia, Nirak mul-Siyé presented herself in a reflective posture; not of inward awe, but for the evocation of any beholders.

Nothing of her physique conferred on those who viewed it a sensation of vitality or the organic, for there was no face, no limb, no flesh to admire. Instead, her form presented a purity both abstract and sharp-edged from which three Ganeshan trunks of pale white stone flowed faultlessly from a central prominence, arced in a sensuous trifold embrace, and rooted her whole to the sixth tier of steps that encircled the platform whereon bureaucratic proxies shouted and heaved simulacrum of code and law alike into the torrent above as though such sundry reams were merely chaff cast up into the wind. Given that mode of legislation, any progress constituted a miracle. In opposition to the raucous, the stillness of her body, the suppression of her nonessential senses, and the millennia of practice allowed her to pluck content from the fog of confusion.

Known as the witness, she seldom abandoned her post in the hundreds of cycles of her existence. In those rare instances, it was for matters of great importance.

The cryptic conversation between the Av’llys and Au’lan, Domnik and and Buoliq, did not escape her attention. However, it intrigued her less than two other motes of mystery that flitted through her data stream. Not born from within the Ja’regia, but communicated by the Noema, of which she was an agent, came a ship’s manifest and an inheritance of title. Normally lost in the milieu of a trillion filings, these were conspicuous by virtue of their origin.

Through an intonation of their shared organ, she drew Domnik’s attention.

<< Heresy yet defies us in Ganax’ab. >>

<< Potan Mul is dead. >>

Her actual information was far less clear, but anyone who survived a moment with their sanity intact in the vociferous storm of the Tabulus Dis’quosum would have recognized its merit. The manifest of the Vepsis Dol listed the highly anticipated sankul, but lacked a vital name amongst its list of passengers—Potan Mul. The implication of such would be poorly-received by the Si’ab. Granted, alone, that could easily have been a mechanization of his trade. What solidified her conclusion was the transfer of title from the former Av’llys assassin to something beneath even the station of a pathetic Wa’ali—an automation.

A pet—a mere toy!

Had she a mouth or the desire to fashion one, she would have spat. Yet the title’s veracity was unimpeachable and its copies undeniably present in the Hall of Records.

Worst of all, Ec-shavar was listed as the inheritor’s executor.
Hidden 7 yrs ago 7 yrs ago Post by Liaison
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The last time Cigány visited Gereza a substantial amount of its massive staff had to be replaced for a bevy of reasons that were borderline asinine. Ranging from general dismissal, resignation, injuries and even death, just the thought of her alone was enough to induce chills down every worker's spine. It was hard for Yamel to process just how fast things had occurred. Just minutes before it resembled any other day and now it had to potential to be his last on the job. Depending on how he answered could affect his entire life going forward and neither Mado-Keno nor Sinclair was in sight to save him. Somewhere deep in one of his several hearts, he knew he like eighty percent of the staff here were expendable. Despite this, he still had the strength to look into her menacing set of pupilless eyes.

Awfully nervous, Yamel responded to his towering superior knowing anything he said could be taken out of context and have him possibly prosecuted.

“Mado-Keno is in his office, Vhadgeid…. Let me show you the way.”

Yamel Tao’Zoag emitted such strong feelings of fear she could even analyze his train of thought in detail through their empathetic bond. Feeling somewhat in a giving mood, she figured the embarrassment of knowing she could see through him alone was enough. Prior to dismissing him, Cigány continued her leering gaze before spontaneously turning to the entrance of the grand elevator.

“No, several of my accompanying escadrille unit will suffice.”

To Yamel’s delight, he was not scolded. Graciously he counted his blessings, especially since Cigány failed to notice his abundance of pooling sweat behind his desk. (At least he thought) So far everything went well considering her abrasive tendencies. He could finally exhale once the shaft closed. He looked across the lobby to see the trail of Gereza guards she had used a doormat and whispered to them.

“Don’t. Get. Up.”

Considering several of them were on the verge of passing out, a great idea sprung into Yamel’s head. Earlier Cigány demanded he find a perpetrator for the miscommunication involving Sinclair’s absence. There might be a few candidates right in front of him.

The doors opened on one of the lower levels and instantly her voluptuous scent allured many of the traditionally jailed prisoners behind bars. Also enticed by the scent was Mado-Keno, but his reaction differed enormously from the prisoners who were salivating. He was instantly put on high alert.

“This is bad… Must hide”

Cigány stormed into the office but noticed no one was there. She could definitely sense him but the main desk remained vacant. She walked up to the desk and spread apart a few papers until something caught her eye. It appeared to be a personal journal Mado-keno had just written in. On the left was a doodle of a vaguely familiar robot, but on the right read “This is a drag. That §3 unit is only going to make me have to do actual work until Sinclair returns. I need a break...”

Intrigued in more ways than one, Cigány realized it would be best if she took over the entire complex in the meantime. It would be effective the minute she informed Mado-Keno, should he actually make an appearance. Though she wasn’t aware of it, Mado-Keno was indeed in the room. He was an expert in camouflage and even masking his aura. The amazing spot he chose was none other than in-between the wall and the door female Cizran had just moments ago opened. He silently gasped when he realized she was going through the journal but neither she nor the Escadrille noticed. He was relieved but there was no way for him to escape considering the door was guarded.

“I hate my job” he sighed to himself, rolling all of his eyes while staring at the ceiling.

Worst of all Cigány perched herself at his desk and began to go through his personal logs. What she’d find wasn’t incriminating but certainly embarrassing to say the least. Simultaneously she also became aware of the incoming transfer of prisoners expected from Admiral Nenegin. As events unfolded, she was bound to find out why he would ultimately arrive uncharacteristically late.

Killimara was in the face of extinction level event after event, and as it appeared, many lives were not in the position to be spared. Aredemos attempted to save face but the reality was he should have reacted much sooner. In fact, for a being who apparently watched over all of the Killimaran’s it was almost unfathomable how irresponsible he had acted.

Kaan meticulously crafted the page of Aldaraia he sent forward to be interacted with by only one individual. That individual was definitively not Aredemos. The second he pierced the page Kaan’s mercy had been affronted. This was something the lich did not take lightly. Ironically, the only souls prepared to be salvaged were the ones whose minds had already been linked with Kaan’s. Something was coming and it had nothing to do with Kaan aside from perhaps his tendency to draw horrible misfortune like a magnet.

The Killimaran’s God wanted to free them by destroying their stones but his efforts were undoubtedly in vain. A sound like howling winds erupted west. Overhead a flurry of what appeared to be rapidly flowing strands of green tinted circus clouds swiftly traveled overhead. This wasn’t an odd weather pattern by any chance. Basic analysis confirmed this was, in fact, visual representations of howling Killimaran souls traveling through the air towards, Kaans location. The amalgamation of moving clouds created a profile in its crevices, sneering down upon Kirri and Aredemos.

“This….is…the… end” the collective howls worded, but the end Kaan had in mind would not be inflicted; at least not entirely. Before he could collect any more souls Kaan felt his presence being homed in on by an unknown force and as Aldaraia was collected so was he. The deployed konul seized any opportunity he had to acquire the majority of the souls but at this point Kaan gained a sufficient amount of strength and everything at this point was just extra. Anything in the vicinity of Killimaran space would only watch on and marvel at the event of a Konul strike.

When the book arrived it was abundant with spiritual presence. Silexies desired item had coincidentally been acquired and was coming right to him on Cizra-Suh Lahn. Had he known this, Eal Sermonde would have never been released to retrieve it. Word of the discovery was bound to get to him but as of now Silexies remained uninformed. Even if he tried to inform Sinclair to call it off he wouldn’t have gotten an answer anyhow. Their communication link was suspiciously blocked. Sinclair and Eal’s whereabouts were very much unknown. Sinclair did not have the mental means of deflecting Silexies psychic waves so it was possible that they were, in reality, plotting something.
Hidden 7 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Circ
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Finally, that horrible enslaver implant was out of his titanium skull. Although he was still perplexed by what Ec-shavar personally grafted into him after the gala. Ganax’ab’s governor claimed it served to formalize Eti’s continued presence on Cizra Su-lahn in spite of the shortcomings of his given caste. The process stung quite a bit, which was odd as he turned off his pain receptors; indeed, it made him feel vulnerable, less pragmatic, and he sensed he wasn’t quite free and never would be. Still, in terms of actual autonomy in the given environment, it was as good as it would get, and excitement nevertheless surged into his extremities. Another few steps and he would be on the shuttle. As he hastened along, Eti Naris grew more elated. A few minutes and he would be on his ship, his beloved Tabris Ruzgar. The thought was euphoric. Visions of his feet propped on a cushion in the lounge and a large glass of MILK clenched in both paws occupied his fantasies. Then, he knew, he would be free as a synthe could, in the Cizran Empire, ever be.

Perhaps he would allow Ulu’gol to be his guest and regale him with the gossip and innuendo of why he so loathed Xo’pil.

A palm pressed against his chest. It wasn’t the kukull—no, that was behind him, doubtlessly on its way back to Ec-shavar’s lair. Even so, he was shorter than the someone or something, hardly an unusual predicament given his diminutive stature. Irritated at the delay to his freedom, he glanced up to fully observe the impedimenta.

“You are Eti Naris. I am Tob Ydrian,” said what was quite clearly a synthe, a model slightly older than himself, although larger and fashioned in the likeness of an otter, “but just call me Boomslang. As his truthspeaker and meat shield, it is my duty to ensure the commands of my master, Ec-shavar, are properly executed upon our arrival on Cizra Su-lahn.”

Eti swatted the paw off his chest, barked, “get in the fraking shuttle,” and shoved his way on board. Ulu’gol whirled and clicked after him, but Eti was no longer in the mood for chit chat.. A proverbial ball and chain was the last thing he wanted, although he admitted to having accounted for the fact that such a being would afflict him on his journey.

As he took his place on the shuttle, Tob sat across from him and appeared less than offended. Instead, he sat there, a cocky smirk tucked beneath his whiskers, and started sharpening a kukri. On the handle was a small toggle. Eti, as a trained assassin, was familiar with the device. One could stab a synthe, or really any electronic device, and trigger an electromagnetic pulse that would surge through the blade and into the incapacitated victim. Quite effective.

As the shuttle lifted, a thought occurred to Eti: once they were on Cizra Su-lahn, and the writ of inheritance acknowledged, Tob would be a prisoner on his estate and, effectively, belong to him. He wondered if Tob realized that.

There was at least one more thing to be thankful for: he escaped Q’ab alive; more than could be said of his master, Potan Mul.
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by Liaison
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Despite being dark, the tunnels were hot and humid. Aside from the constant plops of water from the city of overarching stalactites, it was quiet. Traveling in secrecy, it was wise for these two to travel well below the surface. For a while, the two did not talk but Sinclair’s curiosity got the best of him.

“Explain further. What is the origin of this book in which Silexies lusts for?”

“Well, to be honest, I don’t know significantly more than you do. I only grabbed it at the request of a partner of mine. In my time with the book, I figured out little about it. When I tried to read it, all I could decipher was that many of its pages contained spells and perhaps scholarly entries. The weird thing is, every time I opened the book there seemed to be a new page I didn’t see before or one missing. Half of the pages were also blank. At that point, I knew it the book was actively monitoring what I was trying to read. I wanted to ditch it. Trust me. But I was getting paid to do otherwise. The worst part is I felt like the book was trying to get rid of me.”

“So you think it’s haunted?”

“Haunted is a weak word in light of its terrors. More like possessed. Any and everything happened to me and the residents of where I resided. You name it. Famine, mysterious murders, spontaneous fires that burned down cities, natural disasters, meteor strikes. I really cannot make this up. Finally, I said fuck it and tossed it on a planet not too out of reach from here actually. From there I decided to lay low considering Merse would probably send someone(rather something) to find out what was taking me so long.”

“Merse?”

“The partner of mine I mentioned earlier.”

“I see. The question is why would Silexies want such an item that could potentially hurt the Cizran empire.”

“I really prefer not to play mystery with you but it’s pretty obvious he thinks he can control it. Honestly, If the book ends up anywhere near his hands I’m just going to make a break for it. On top of that, your prisons absolutely blow. Temporal space cells? Geez, you guys take all of the fun out of being incarcerated.”

“Whatever. Just hop in the crate when we reach our destination. I’ll free you from the cargo haul when we get far enough from the port.”

“Where are we anyway?”

“The underground evacuation tunnels of K’enatenya. If needed, they could actually serve as a highway with shortcuts to all major locations on the planet. A section of it is actually ruins. Those parts are cut off for obvious reasons. If anything it may be within our interest to travel through them. Without the proper guidance, you could potentially get lost in there, however. They're large enough that if so, you wouldn't be found for years perhaps. Still stay on guard. It is unlikely we will run into anyone due to the sheer size but who knows who could actually be down here…”

“Knowing my luck…”
Hidden 7 yrs ago 7 yrs ago Post by Circ
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Within a purposefully and otherwise empty chamber of the Vepsis Dol, its ornamentation contrary to the ship’s otherwise utilitarian purpose, Ec-Shavar stood and ruefully observed a sankul, one of thirteen. The quantity was necessary to splice from the well adequate energy such that a vessel of such magnitude could be propelled through the cosmos by means not possible with standard engineering. Even so far in orbit, its shadow darkened much of Zöld'Nach as it passed overhead. Were it to alight on the planet, its inestimable bulk would prevent it from leaving.

As was tradition with those deemed criminals, no name or feature marked the gloomy obsidian sarcophagus. Those thus damned were intended to be forgotten, as such was the ultimate punishment: a lesson taught in civilizations ancient and manifold, from barbarians setting fire to the huts of their foes to the more calculated destruction of libraries and monuments.

He intended to do more.

Of all the unmarked coffins, it was the one upon which his thoughts lingered whose occupant he knew and foresaw that, in time, as it drifted in the Cloud of Ghot, its service as fuel fulfilled, none but he would recall who it bore. That name was etched into the edifice of his hatred alongside all others who sought his overthrow. He would relish his revenge. Methodically, he would excise every memory of its occupant from the historical record—banish all they ever were to a mere mote of black dust in a continuous gyre of obeisance around Bulkan, star of the holy planet Cizra Su-lahn. Of that he was certain, just as he was certain that he again would walk the streets of Samarra as co-ruler of the Cizran Empire.

Nobody was present. He was certain of that. Even so, he dared not utter the name as he scowled a final moment longer. Spies and traitors could listen anywhere. See anywhere. Even into this sacred and secure place. Instead, his mind and empathic bond already sealed, he merely thought what he would not risk and he kept that thought to himself.

A moment later, having completed his inspection of the transport, he descended back down to Q’ab and gave his last respects to Plango who awaited the last shuttle up and off the planet.
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by apathy
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A superheated mantle, composed of the most lustrous shades of rose, amethyst and lapis churned in gaseous fury as the array of sensory receptors that lined the length of its oblong carapace passively observed its actions. Electromagnetic bursts cascaded forth from the roiling cloud as the form of Ua continued its orbit around Q'ab's star. The moment of Convergence had arrived once more, and its role in the Eternal Rite must be fulfilled once again. Ua's advent into this plane of existence had begun with a series of fermion pairs finding their polemic counterparts; fluctuating with such quantum friction that the superfluid vacuum of space tore at its very seams, causing a distortion around Ajana, the star.

Through this tear Ua was suspended in a quasi-corporeal form. It had oft considered the frequency at which this universe operated on to be discordant, and sought to expedite its duties as to return to the comfort of a more harmonious plane of existence. From the squamous husk that composed the entirety of its mass, spectral strands of undulating tendrils slithered from innumerable openings. The distance between its appendages and Ajana became suffused with its spread, an ever growing blot against its luminosity. Quantum strata fractured as Ua vibrated violently, a phantasmagoric patina pouring out from each aperture, encasing the star in an intricate network of bioelectric tissue; fresh capillaries running through the length of the quivering mass, harvesting Ajana's energies in order to power its processes.

Its appetite voracious and growth exponential. Ua coldly noted that it had already encompassed a large portion of Ajana and prepared itself for the rest of the Rite. From within its depths there began a terrible tremble. Its resonance increased in intensity, the pulses emanating from its epicenter running through the length of its tendrils and spreading across the surface of sloughed skin. A nightmarish beat was brought about, and with each new wave of force a metamorphic process was underway. The Rite could not be stopped.

===

The crisp crack of a vacuum seal being broken. There were few sounds more enjoyable, once given proper context. This was the.. ele-twelfth such sound in the past hour. It'd been quite some time since a job had fallen into his lap and Ophidian didn't mind spending that time drinking himself into oblivion. Or as much as the prosthetics in his hunched form would allow. A calloused and gnarled hand lifted the container to his gaping maw and drained its contents in one swig. A stream of neon ran down the corner of his razor-thin lips; a putrid combination of Nvarian muskglands and liquid brillium.

A chime cut across the courtyard that gave way to the soft rumble of an ozone generator. It signaled a proximity breach; something having entered the orbit of the small moon he had settled comfortably outside of Cizran space. He turned at the hips, the muscles of his neck being so thick that turning it was saved for the most dramatic of moments.

"Lars." His voice; an asteroid adrift in solar wind. Something comforting yet distinctly authoritative. In response, a contemplative and morose modulation of a male voice. "Sir, it seems a courier drone has entered our airspace and is bearing towards our position. Shortburst broadcast says it's Cizran. More specifically, from Su-Lahn.:

A shrill whistle escaped his pursed mouth and he brushed away the neon trail with a hairy forearm. He hopped out a hammock he'd strung between the broken fuselage of a wrecked cargo cruiser. Much of his surroundings seemed to be refurbished wreckage from vessels of various make, juxtaposing a collage of clashing colors against the barren landscape of the satellite. A soft creaking followed his movements as he stopped in the center of the open yard, turning his blind eye towards the ever nearing beacon of light that was the drone.

It came to a hovering halt, before descending until level with Ophidian. Even though it was a simple courier drone, Ophidian could feel the cold contempt of Cizra Su-Lahn emanating from its reflective hull. A sliver appeared on its surface, from which the full terms of his contract was holographically projected. Ophidian gave the document a once over, or to be more accurate his obfuscated gaze paused over the scrolling text before giving an affirmative grunt. The drone chimed in response before ascending; waiting to be picked up by a passing ship to deliver its contract to Su-Lahn.

Several more chimes, matching the proximity alert from earlier, followed its departure. The first of several thousand forms were being delivered, the ambiguous nature of Cizran bureaucracy reflected in the byzantine by-laws and statutes that were in constant flux. Lars would have to dedicate a whole section of his servers to processing all this Nvarshit for the next several cycles, feeding the pertinent information to the display in Ophidian's eyepatch.

Within moments he was strapped into the cockpit of his launchship, cracking open another container as he awaited for the transgalactic loadout he kept in orbit to be properly aligned with his launch. A splash of foam fell across his lap and on to heavily stained pants, made from a repulsive magenta striped hide. How he squeezed into them is unknown, but they're the source of the soft creaking sound that followed him.

"Lars, where we headed?"
"Gereza, sir."

Ophidian spat neon across the console. Its hydrophobic surface and Lars were nonplussed, as this was a frequent occurrence.

"Why didn't you tell me I was agreeing to a job there?"
"Security logs show you looking at the contract and agreeing."
"You know I'm fucking blind!"

Panels of atmospheric shields slid in place over the cockpit's viewports, a live feed of the space surrounding the ship projected against the interior of the shields. The time to back out had long passed and both of them knew it. Ophidian activated all primary and secondary functions of his eyepatch, synching up with the flight computer as an orb of pure energy appeared above the apex of the ship. Its surface crackled with electric fury before lurching upwards; Ophidian and his ship immediately in orbit surrounding his moonbase. With a thought, both modules of the ship interlocked and he was on his way towards Gereza.

===

Xo'pil paced back and forth in the small quarters he had been provided with, knowing full well that his apparent freedom was nothing more than a show. If he were to attempt to leave this place.. Well, he wouldn't attempt to. The furnishings might have meant to be comforting, but he knew the feeling of a cage. He had no clue as to how long he had been held before being transported here. Frankly, he didn't know where "here" was. He assumed from the stagnant quality to the air he was aboard a ship, but bound to where?

He'd been left alone with his thoughts for some time and was far too embroiled in them to notice that Plangó had appeared within a corner of his quarters. His light seemed suffused, as if projecting himself through a fog.The form he took now was one he had reserved for the most intimate of moments between the two, vaguely bipedal in form while the swarm of his collective seemed to be in a deep trance. He gave the softest of sighs before speaking.

"Oh, Little Prince, what have you done? What has gotten into that mind of yours that would let you think such heresy would go unpunished? And why at that clod's gala, at that? He couldn't appreciate the work of a master like yourself, darling Prince. You know, he wanted you put to death right then and there. We're both lucky he's dense enough to let me get you off-world. But everyone knows of your hubris, and your presence on Su-Lahn is already envisioned."

"So we're on our way to Su-Lahn?" The panic was evident in his voice and he barred his teeth, an Azot tendency when threatened.

"You will be. I am not, at least not aboard the Vepsis Dol. No, we're still in orbit around Q'ab. I've delayed its departure for this brief meeting. I'll be quick, so listen carefully. Say nothing to anyone and await my arrival on Su-Lahn. I'll see you through this as far as I can. I still hold much sway with the Siab." The shimmering silhouette turned away and began to fade. Before he had completely vanished, he quipped, "Oh, and Little Prince, you're quite welcome."

The light in the room fluctuated midly with his disappearance, and in his place were three orbs that danced about one another in an elliptical orbit. Xo broke out into laughter as he rose then cried excitedly, "Epit'li!"

===

Through the meticulous manipulation of its viscera, Ua began to layer a rhythm over the percussive wave that it had produced. Its form was both conductor and instrument, and its cadence was one of creation. The strands that it had extended were severed as the first wave of mutation swept over the malignancy that had come to Ajana. The amalgamate of organic and mechanical engineering swelled and throbbed in unison to the Rite, and with each beat the flesh assumed a new form. One that expanded outward exponentially until an area twice the size of the star was encased in a pulsating womb.

Ua's performance had reached a fervor unseen within the confines of this dimension in countless millenia. As its crescendo neared, a new opening in the carapace appeared. It was an approximation of an eye, ancient and terrible in its wisdom. Beneath its surface teemed an intelligence motivated by the unfathomable as it rotated its mass, turning its monstrous gaze to distant Q'ab. Existence stilled as Ua's exaltations had reached a violent apex, and an eerie calm befell the engulfed star.. only for a moment before it shook apart at a subatomic level, sloughing off to reveal an engine of empyrean design. Fully operational, the engine began its daunting task of rearranging the order of the cosmos.

Collapsing in on itself, Ua shed its corporeal shackles briefly as it traveled across the expanse between Ajana and Q'ab, as pure information broadcast through the first solar windburst expelled by the reified star. It took shape once more; repugnant mass against a gleaming emerald orb.

===

Within the glimmering grip of a taloned hand, Ec-Shavar examined the extracted slaver implant. A detached amusement took hold; he was ensured to benefit from the abdication of Potan Mul's station, inheriting the vast swathe of resources the former Avi'lys had been notorious for. Such strategic positioning would allow for a glorious return to Su-Lahn. Complacency has taken hold amongst the Si'ab. He would root it out. But now was not the time to delve into such thoughts. Now was the time to gloat, for he also had the added pleasure of seeing disgrace befall the name of Plangó Felho'Te-vesztø. His pet's subversive outburst would see it suffer, most assuredly for an indefinite amount of time. As complacent as Su-Lahn has become, special measures were always reserved for those who sought to sow heretical thought. If only he could be there to relish in the saprifit's suffering.

A familiar tug on his consciousness informed Ec-Shavar of his former protege's proximity. They found themselves within an open courtyard, part of the estate Plangó had taken over in his short sojourn on Q'ab. He turned a cold eye towards the skies, following the stream of trace energy emitted by the Vespis Dol's sankuls. The soft warmth of Plangó's form was an unusual sensation. The two stood in silence; column of luminous lepidoptera and majestic mantidae. The bent forms of Q'ush servitors rushed to and fro in the adjacent launching pad, moving the last of Plangó's possessions on board his personal shuttle.

"I see you've returned from visiting the saprifit, having circumvented my commands to have it imprisoned in a Gerezan cell. Your adroitness knows no end."
"With just a gentle word in the right ear, much can be accomplished. And when kind words fail, there is always the burden of the Ja'regia."

Ec-Shavar's mandibles gave an audible click of contempt. "True deference can only be gained through the application of strength and fear."
"How unimaginative." Plangó retorted, a stream of aquamarine passing across a fluttering field of rose.

Ec-Shavar weighed his response, one that would not come as the two Cizrans attentions were turned skywards. A dark satellite had appeared, dwarfing Q'ab's moons several times over. In that instant, through the subtle exercise of their empathic organ, the Cizrans established an emotional clarity, their disparate psyches intermingling; a vestige of what they had been before the Kr'Nalus. A flash of emotion was exchanged; fear and avarice.

An ill wind began to blow across Q'ab...

===

The serrated edge of a matte black blade slid across the exposed servos of a custodial droid; a fine mist of hydraulic fluid spraying into the air, beading down Ophidian's broad forearms as he gently set the crumpling form down. It convulsed violently then laid still, the soft whirr of its engines coming to a halt.

"Sir... We're tasked with infiltrating the prison complex with minimal expenditure."
"Yeah- and?"
"That's the tenth droid you've destroyed."
"No witnesses."
"But you're going out of your way for most of them. You actually spent the past ten minutes circling back to 'get the drop on him'."
"You're no fun anymore, Lars."

They had entered Gereza's orbit some hours before, having decided on entering the facility through its waste disposal sector. From there he'd navigate the sewage system, working his way towards the cell block he'd been briefed on. Ophidian had spent the better part of the journey here ignoring Lars drone on and on about the type of defenses he'd come up against and what to expect.

Ophidian wiped the blade dry before sheathing it as he pulled up a mini-map of his current position within the complex. The loadout was displayed against the opaque canvas of his eyepatch, and he gave it a studious glance. He took a knee as he observed two new droids gather below, the omni-directional microphone built in to his eyepatch registering their conversation audible.

"I tell you, Xi-229, if I have to work another triple shift, it won't matter how much M.I.L.K they ply me with. I'm gonna fry my own servos and risk being scrapped. It'll beat having to deal with Cig-agonizing."

Xi-229 gave a short chirp of agreement as it reclined against a hover-lift that was overloaded with barrels of industrial waste. "It's probably not the wisest decision to cut corners on security in a facility like this, but what do I know? As soon as we had less guards on rotation so they could bluster around that Vhadgeid and relied more on remote surveillance we started losing more and more personnel. I'll deactivate my olfactory receptors but I can still feel the stink of what's leftover after an inkling gets past the sewage defense grid and gets a hold of a carby."

The Cizrans needed to run a tighter ship it seems, or maybe looser? Ophidian left the machinations of upper management to the boring types, he was meant for greater things. Greater things like throwing himself over the rail and crashing atop the two chatting synths below, crushing them with poise.

"What did I just say?" Lars intoned over the comms.

===

Ua had arrived, and with it came the devastation of the plasma created by Ajana. Within moments, Q'ab's atmosphere began to be stripped away by the high levels of radiation being emitted by the new satellite within its orbit. A reckoning of electromagnetic fury had come to the planet and with it the refinement of another resource indispensable for the Rite. Its eye reflected upon its actions with unfeeling precision as a beam of highly condensed light erupted forth from its pupil and bored its way through Zoldnach's mountain range, exposing rich deposits of shalam. The emerald mineral began to pulse with a violent light as it was enriched by the introduction of a second energy source. Deep cracks ran through the foundations of the city, spreading like spindly fingers to throttle the Veldt. The caves that served as homes for the Q'ush began to flood. The planet thrashed in pangs of metamorphic agony while darkness waxed.

Once more Ua resonated: if left unaided, Q'ab's instability would increase exponentially until the planet would erupt in Cherenkov brilliance. Such an outcome would hinder the continued operation of the Rite. A heavy lid fell over its monstrous eye as self-contained waves of bass created a mandelbrot interference pattern. From within the unfathomable depths of the fractal appeared the gross caricature of a mouth; twisted in its design. The mouths were legion and from them flowed a single note, and it was cataclysm.

===

"What has your wa'ali done?!" Ec-Shavar turned, hunger and shock in equal measure tainting his tone. A talon jabbed at the satellite's position, in its epicenter was an eye. One they had seen before, during Xo'pil's performance. If a simulacra of the eye held such power, what would one of such magnitude wield? Plangó was unable to respond as a scream tore through the darkening sky, followed closely by explosions from the concussive force of the eye's beam bombarding Zoldnach. The ground grew unstable while the Q'ush threw themselves upon it in prostration and uttered prayers in their hideous reptilian tongue.

Ec-Shavar unfurled his diaphanous wings and rose high above the courtyard. He watched in mute admiration as destruction swept through the city. Photons glittered in the dissipating atmosphere, the blast of energy diminishing into darkness. The far-off Veldt swayed in the might of perilous gales, mimicing the zealotry of the indigenous Q'ush. Wings wrestled against the tempest, holding him aloft so that he might witness more of what true power was capable of. This was what he had sought for so long. It would be his. It was his will and reality was an extension of said will.Yet even the mightiest wills yield when met with fear; and this was terror of the unknown incarnate. The eye had sealed and in its stead arose... mouths. Too many to count. Too many to be possible. Their proportions were crude and they seemed to spin on a broken axis. Its eldritch enunciation the source of a paroxysm of terror that permeated all of Q'ab.

The silence that befell the planet lasted for what felt like an eternity, only to be pierced by the roar of rushing water.

===

A churning began, deep beneath the surface of Q'ab's furious oceans. Tumultuous tremors wracked the ocean bed, a latticework of freshly formed fault-lines expelling super-heated shalam, its familiar emerald glow replaced with scintillating sapphire splendor. The lines widened into rivers, which begat valleys that crumbled and gave way to abyssal horror.

Ua's lips came together, ending its utterance. It beheld the product of its labor, the once-emerald orb that was Q'ab refined into a lustrous sapphire, suspended within a sphere of water vapor it had brought into being. The lid of its eye lifted, and with it the sapphire surged, a second beam piercing through the surrounding cloud and shooting off into space towards distant Ganaxavori. Once more Ua shed its corporeal form, accompanying the beam on its voyage.

===

Plangó's form flitted through the courtyard, every organism of his being bristling whilst producing a kaleidoscopic pyrotechnic display with the intended effect of temporarily stunning whoever was foolish enough to look upon him. A strobing phantasmagoria, Plangó entered his personal shuttle and continued towards the storeroom where his personal effects had been loaded. With ever-increasing fervor, he flung his collection of sculptures and other aesthetic necessities aside with nary a thought to their condition. This continued until he found the item of his search. A painting of Su-Lahn, its contents were ever-shifting. It floated aloft until the desired image came into focus; an obfuscated chamber. A bead of light grew from the center of Plangó's being out of which was extended a hand that quickly pressed against the canvas.

The frame dropped to the floor with a clatter, the supply room darkening as Plangó's form disappeared moments before the vessel fell into a crater as the city crumbled.
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Circ
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Boomslang loafed deep in a divan across from Eti Naris. In one hand, he held a filed straight blade. Wet with a green fluid, it slowly slid along the underside of his extended claws on his opposite paw. The threat was obvious, yet, in spite of that, he he saw the way Eti looked at him—with feigned apprehension and barely suppressed confidence. It wasn’t the artificiality inherent in all synthetic beings, but a charade rife with subtext and, perhaps, a complementary threat.

‘Just what is he planning?’ Boomslang ruminated angrily behind his menacing, toothy grin.

The companion synth’s records indicated it was merely a pleasure model supplemented with subroutines for enhanced spacecraft piloting. It would have no chance in a fight. Yet it sat there, almost smug, insistent on these sterile and claustrophobic environs. Rather than the lavish quarters available to someone of its dubitable stature as an inheritor of Cizran wealth, the elevated wa’ali opted for the cabin of the Tabris Ruzgar, craft of his former slaver. Usually companions hated their masters, yet this was evidence of sentimentality.

Then again, it could be scheming revenge.

<< Alert. Alert. The ship has prematurely exited superluminal travel model and is on an inertial propulsion. Maintenance underway. Support vessels in region notified. Please remain calm. >>

Boomslang and Eti Naris twitched in the direction of the notice and then back toward one another with expressions that conveyed quite explicitly I had nothing to do with this. Boomslang certainly didn’t feel anything different, not that there was any frame of reference where he sat.

“I guess we should go investigate,” Eti suggested, then stood up and strolled off to find the other living inhabitants of the hauler.

Boomslang jumped up to follow his ward.

. . .


An alarm sounded softly in the action center of the Dira Var-sha. Given Cizran military supremacy throughout the galaxy over the last several centuries, it was a familiar notification. It signaled neither threat nor foe, of which few remained, but rather a mundane request for assistance—a distress signal. Somewhere, a vessel was confronted by mechanical difficulties, perhaps lanced by cosmic rays or struck by debris. Whatever the matter, these seemed to become more regular occurrences as the fleet aged and maintenance languished due to the ostensibly deadlocked efforts to allocate funding by bureaucratic arm of the Cizran government.

<< Vepsis Dol – hauler class-q , call sign 3EPL6 – experiencing propulsion failure and requesting assistance. Repeat … >>

It droned on and on in an electric pulse that would continue so long as the plea for help went unanswered. The ensign manning the station would need authorization to suppress it.

“Sir, do we wish to respond to this distress signal? It is coming from the Vepsis Dol,”—she keyed the name into the database to retrieve its manifest and waypoint information before relaying the data to the first officer—“a hauler on its way to Cizra Su-lahn from the Ganax’ab system. It contains a haul of artifacts, shalam, and political detainees under the protection of Governor Ec-shavar and Minister Plangó Felho'Te-vesztø.”
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“Did you hear that?” Eti stopped abruptly in his tracks and pondered.

Around him stretched a cavernous cargo hold. One of many, although large, it was relatively small in comparison to the bays that housed interplanetary shuttles such as his precious Tabris Ruzgar. Towering above him on all sides were translucent containers, a strange few filled to the brim with precious ores and other raw materials; a state that, at first glance, suggested the vessel left in haste rather than procure a full shipment of trade goods from Ganax’ab.

Most of the interior of this part of the ship was designed the a similar fashion, with semi-opaque and vaguely luminous walls, ceilings, and floors offering a swift survey of one’s surroundings and the trade sundries in various sections. A glance over his shoulder confirmed the safe and secure artifacts and art galleries through which they recently passed. Beneath him, thin, rubbery lines on the floor mapped routes to other parts of the vessel in blue, orange, green, and black. At present, they were in pursuit of the green line—passenger quarters.

Close at hand, Boomslang frowned at his charge, paused, and perked an ear. Indeed, there was a rumble somewhere in the distance. It sounded like a far away avalanche or strip miner, but, in spite of the loss of the Vepsis Dol’s faster-than-light capabilities, artificial gravity remained undisturbed and intact. Still, on a vessel so complex any one of a thousand things could be the culprit, from a surge of fresh atmosphere from one of the massive air purifiers to thermal expansion in the hull as the warmth inside combated the frozen void without.

“Probably the machinery,” he suggested nonchalantly.

“It doesn’t sound mechanical,” Eti disagreed. Convinced of that, he abandoned his green line, and all lines altogether, and sauntered off in the direction of the noise.

“Maybe it will provide some clue as to what is wrong with the transport.”

Intermittently, the rumbling grew louder and nearer. Fear strove against curiosity, but inevitably lost. Then, three chambers hence, without explanation, just as they grating noise reached an obnoxious volume, a sudden cessation. Eerily, the silence flowed around him and his unwelcome guard, pregnant with deception. It was a familiar sensation for one trained in the ways of assassination. He recalled how prey would feel a presence, without reason, become quiet, assess their surroundings, but eventually dismiss that inexplicable six sense as mere paranoia. Yet nobody was here. He knew everyone on the ship and they were all accounted for. Unless—maybe a stowaway? Around him towered bins of shalam. Two and a half, actually, although the room’s dozens of containers should have been filled with megatons of the radioactive rock. Each seemed rather dusty and dull, although they did glow. But that half full one, so suspiciously low, shone a little more or perhaps a little less. Either way, he didn’t like the way it shifted and glared back at him.

“Hold on a se —”, Eti began to say when suddenly the rocks sprang to life.
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Alucroas
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Mt.Initara

The recent turn of events following Aredemos' return to Kilamara had been jarring. He watched a stream of souls go screaming into a green cloud of spiritual malevolence, the connection to his brothers and sisters fading with every second. Then, without warning, he felt his body suddenly start to dematerialize, his black, chitinous exoskeleton flaking and swirling around him in a lightning-charged cyclone. Before he could even take the time to fully comprehend what was happening to him, his view of the desert faded—an infinitesimal moment of darkness—hardly a blink, and his matter coalesced back together, cells and molecules realigning in an instant to reform his physical self. Despite his senses dialing down the event to feel like an elongated stretch of time had elapsed, he knew that what transpired took only a matter of mere seconds, for the feeling was similar to of what he first felt when he was taken to Deimobos for the first time.

This was not Deimobos though, it was a strange, alien world--with towers reaching to the heavens, granting an open view of the stars, and an immaculately sculpted temple built around nature itself. Neither Kilamara nor Deimobos could ever hope to reach this level of pristineness, nor would he ever hope for such ugliness…

In the wake of all the chaos, there was one thing he managed to hold onto, one person he was able to maintain a connection with, and that was Kirri, whose fire stone continued to burn as hot as Deimobos' molten core. Immediately he began to work toward strengthening that connection, a crimson tether slowly forming within his mind, while another part of himself worked toward establishing contact with a different group of beings he had allied with not long after his departure from the moon.

In the meantime, he would devote his attention to surveying as much as he could of Initara, and find out just who this world belonged to, and why he had been brought here by its inhabitants. Upon examining the temple in its entirety, he felt a large part of him pull away—the elegantness of this place repulsed him, its spotlessly shaven pillars and walls were revolting to his six compound eyes; too beautiful, he thought. Nothing like the simple warmth, and natural beauty of the desert. This wasn’t the first time Aredemos had seen such grand architecture though, nor would it be the last; he had engaged in countless campaigns dedicated to destroying places like these – campaigns waged in the name of freedom; freedom from tyranny, freedom from cultural oppression, freedom from the things and people which sought to halt social evolution. Finally, he remembered why he hated this place so. It resembled the old villages of the jungle, where his elders, and their elders before them lived, the very elders who murdered any who sought to expand their minds beyond tribal life, and break free of the archaic traditions which halted not just their progress as a society, but that of their spirits as well.

This was the message he had given to his people before departing Kilamara, and it was a message to be spread by others like him, others brave enough to venture to other worlds.

Freedom and liberation.

He gazed upon the staircase, littered with its thousands of offerings, and wondered if the god they had devoted themselves to was as grateful as he had been for being brought here to destroy it.

The surprise he felt when the mastermind behind his kidnapping dared to show itself couldn’t be measured with words, nor could the anger which flowed through his veins, thought of what he had been taken away from -- the rescue of his people from a demon who sought to steal their souls. All of it returned, and resurfaced, and resurged in his thoughts, the spikes protruding from the sides of his head bristling, and pressing against the back of his skull with the piercing intensity of a beast who had just been threatened.

“Aredemos, for your might the denizens of this world revere you as a god—such is my might to yours.”

What!?

“Moreover, not merely am I, as likewise are you, accountable for the spiritual and cultural maturation of this world, but manifold others.”

Aredemos heard Nenegin's speech and felt his crown bristle, the stench of divine horseshit.
Accountable for this world…?

Thus, if you fail—if your people fail—so, too, do I, in part, fail, and that will not be tolerated,” Nenegin said.

It crawled its way up into his brain where it sought to lay its wretched eggs of deceit, warning him of superior beings who would punish him if he carried on with his actions.

Was that a threat!?

Translucent and nigh immaterial, he circled Aredemos, his frame twice as large, nematocists searching on strands that protruded from beneath his ivory, feather-like scales and hungrily arcing sapphire sparks.

He continued,“In this recent conflict, your indecision and inadequacy forced my hand. I, who create and preserve, was compelled to destroy. Attain vigilance that it may not so be again and do well in the remembrance that even mightier beings preside above us in judgment of our actions. Know also that your people slumber, for it is my will that their souls are cleansed of the taint of foreign planes, and my will that they awaken pure.”

Destroy… Slumber… Awaken... Pure…?

It interferes with MY world, with MY people, and it dares to criticize ME!?


Mt. Initara resembled neither the glimmering radiance of peace, nor did it resonate the bland dreariness of a war-stricken land. It lacked the soothing serenity of the desert villages separating Kilamaros from Kilamari, and moreover it lacked the brutal savagery of the temple of Deimobos, a place built for perfecting one's warcraft. Such a pretty farce, such a pretty, beautifully disgusting farce. It sought to drown him in its grotesquery, clog his veins, toxify his soul, and boil him away in a bubbling vat of BULLSHIT!

He knew what had to be done now, and with his anger now rising to its peak, so too could he feel his connection to Kirri finally form, the spiritual bond between the two Kilamarans at last solidifying, his dark form becoming pale with chilling blue.

“HEAR MY VOICE NOW, BROTHER!”

The pores on his exoskeleton expanded, and through them came an emission of frosty vapor hovering over the whole of his form. Aredemos’ firestone vibrated and released a wave of heat, causing rapid condensation of the frost, and subsequent precipitation across his entire frame, sheathing the Redeemed One within a cryogenic membrane that conformed to every curve and contour of his exoskeleton with no shortage of perfection. His feet reddened with focused flame before slowly rearing up, strands of molten floor stretching away from the footprints he left in his wake; detaching, receding, and enwrapping, and flattening across his ankles. Then, swinging his limbs up overhead, drops of melted ice falling off his shins, producing a fine wet mist, due in-part to its close proximity with his burning toes.

Minerals were siphoned from the floor through the rear limbs which Aredemos held himself upon, every protruding tip on his crown spewing out lava, the streams building greater, stronger pressure with every passing second. He felt the urge to lean forward at the back of his skull, and hastily gripped the floor with crystal claws sprouting from his toes, their jagged tips hooking him him place. The Insect’s size was starting to swell, his exoskeleton cracked, expanded, smoothed out, and accumulated another layer of ice, the process repeating itself until the sheer weight of his form cracked the ground beneath him, his eyes meeting the tips of Mt. Initara’s spires.

“IF YOU STILL SHARE OUR DREAM, THEN RISE, AND FIGHT BACK!”

Crystal scythes burst from his back in a downward-facing arc, splattering the shrine in scorching crimson. The outer-layers of the growths were as hard as corundum, whereas the interior of the crystal was remarkably hollow and empty, though it lacked the distinct darkness permeating the entirety of Kaan and Nenegin’s souls.

“WAKE

The crown he wore proudly on his head - not as a symbol of authority - but of race, the scythes sticking out of his back - not as a symbol of death - but direct channels to his soul, the focused flame at his feet feeling the very same as his people who once frolicked happily through the desert.

“UP!”

His raised feet exploded in a cone of flame and his limbs swung forward with the fury of a titan, the scythes sprayed highly pressurized lava that ignited on a molecular level, burning the air behind and below him, and all the moisture trickling down Mt. Initara into a scalding steam that would choke a lesser being. The impact he made was cataclysmic, the entire floor and everything beneath it cracked and quaked, birthing a thousand microfractures which spread down to the foundation of the stairs behind him, utterly pulverizing the whole area with a single devastating act of power.

Just as quickly as he destabilized the whole mountain did he release an inferno of incinerating flames to engulf the whole mountain, superheating the resulting dust into a storm of molten shards. Exerting his power over the elements of rock and metal, Aredemos pulled the destruction toward his raging form, each rapidly darkening shard compacting against his body to form a secondary layer of tough obsidian armor.

Though viscerally satisfying, the destruction of Mt.Initara was not Aredemos’ main goal. Being the oldest of the Redeemed Ones, Aredemos could do more than simply establish a psychic connection with another Kilamaran. Similar to how Kirri tracked Kaan’s location by forming a physical link to the Hellseeds via his fire stone, Aredemos locked onto Kirri’s exact holding location via spiritual resonance of the stone itself.

His destination now set firmly in his mind, Aredemos’ limbs pressed flat against his frame, the crystal scythe protrusions swelled with excess mass and detonated in a final explosion of concentrated flames. Mere seconds passed and the clouds blurred and dispersed behind him, leaving naught but an explosion of heat and sound in his wake as he rocketed toward the vessel which held Nenegin, his crew, and Kirri aboard.

Edge of The Galaxy

In the farthest, darkest, starless region of outer-space, a thing that was too large to be called a ship, too massive to be called a planet, and too alive to be regarded as anything but an abomination of the cosmos, drifted away from its safe zone of observation. If one had a telescopic instrument, capable of peering out into the depths of the void, the observer would have noticed the beast, whose length stretched the full distance of an entire star system. The skin of the creature was blacker than obsidian, each subtle shift of its extremely long, slime-coated musculature caused starlight to bend, twist, and refract along its grooves, with the most distinct bend being that of three ginormous, leaping, spherical arcs, altogether spanning only three eighths of the being’s total length.

The light which leaped over the beast was not the result of a strange eldritch power it emanated, nor was it the product of photonic distortion. Rather, it was the result of a transparent membrane running the full length of its body, its viscous layers bending to the gravity of three half-visible celestial objects, leaving only their northern hemispheres visible. Embedded in the sub-dermal layers of the pit was a bioluminescent orb that rotated the full circumference of the pit. It acted as an artificial sun, providing the worlds with all the necessities of life, whilst its radiation was dissipated in a combinative effort of the planet’s magnetosphere and the membrane itself, leaving a brief aurora in its wake.

On one world, a metropolis of chaos rose through the clouds, its towering structures resembling something far closer to an obelisk, its surface pocked with hollow openings. Beyond those clouds, a network of spiraling obsidian architecture curved around the obelisk’s base, tunneling underneath the lesser monoliths that surrounded it, and bled a malefic blight. The obelisk’s flat, rectangular roof sheened with dark energy that was conducted via the ground itself, wrapping its way up along the obsidian before it reached an intense point of focus and breached the atmosphere. With an infernal might rivaling that of a malicious elder demon, the dark bolt burnt through the flesh of the beast that held its sun, searing the impact zone to a smoking crisp. Burning its way deeper beneath the skin, a violent series of explosions ensued as the sun ruptured, releasing a spew of liquid-organic matter back across the gap, evaporating as it made contact with the atmosphere, only to condense into a hazardous yellow mist, and precipitated as calamitous a downpour, corroding the obelisk and the city below in a luminous effect.

A global storm engulfed the next planet. The boiling sun was too hot for the ocean, and so when the cold upper-winds met the humid moisture rising off the water’s surface, an intense hurricane was triggered, stirring the tide into an eternal vortex of immense tidal forces. Forests pressed against the terrain as the waves washed over them, pulverizing the mountains and mixing the mud into a murky grain that made the water completely unnavigable. In order to withstand the devastating impacts, the forest trees evolved a flat, curved front, and extremely deep, flexible roots, literally bending to the wave as opposed to trying to face it head on. Hidden among the branches, a flock of avian lizards resembling iguanas used their protruding spines to detect changes in the current, long, narrow frogs remained hooked on bark using specialized claws, and snakes wrapped their long sinuous bodies around the stems and branches, hanging on with their enlarged jaws and microscopic spikes lining their scales. Once the wave passed, the iguanas leaped and spread their limbs, as did the frogs, spreading open a membrane that was as wide as their bodies were long, and the serpents simply straightened their forms and dove straight down into the mud. There they would feast on exposed kelp and algae, nutrient-rich minerals, and each other. Mating would ensue, the burial of their eggs would take place, a climb back up would begin and an awaital at the canopies would commence for the next wave to come, allowing the whole process to begin once more.

Last of the worlds, and easily the most unstable due to requiring not one, not two, not even three, but six lambent suns lashed to one another as a collective show of force. Highly conductive fluids were pulled from their cores by electromagnetic attraction, toward the fiery world, whose pink glow rapidly absorbed the substance into what was not an atmosphere, but a solid orb of astral matter… Pulled onto the physical plane, bound and chained to the realm of direct tangibility, barred from inflicting further astral mayhem, this was the price that had to be paid to contain the threat. Intermittent cracks spread across the orb, allowing the fluid to seep in, causing an intense surge of lightning, followed by cacophonous explosions, and ended with a torrent of ionizing fire, cauterizing the orb and severing the cords that connected it to the six suns.

Slowly, or at least what might have been perceived as slow, given the sheer volume of the visible universe compared to even this creature’s girth, it turned its head toward the light of a white dwarf, exposing its wide, flat mouth that was sheathed in dark, densely padded, slime-coated flesh. Its titanic teeth were mountains unto themselves, glistening and twinkling with fractured light that filtered through a glacial layer of saliva several thousand feet thick. A faint red tint reflected off the ice, mixed with the blinding plasmic glow of the star, and gave way to a pulsing outline moving toward the front of the beast’s mouth.

The white dwarf that the beast was turning toward was none other than the same ball of plasma holding Kilamara and its fiery moon, Deimobos within its orbit.

It would consume them whole… just as it had done to the others!

For its comrades, it would do this!

For its children who had emerged from the soft white pool of primordial reality…

Its jaws opened wide, the thick layers of ice coating its teeth cracked, broke apart and evaporated in Deimobos’ atmosphere, shrouding the world in a steamy haze. The outline in the back of its mouth became more distinct as its jaws parted even wider, revealing a bulbous sphere of white flesh connected to its throat. The bulb blossomed over the moon, fully engulfing and swallowing the satellite into its throat. Mere minutes passed, and Kilamara received the same fate, a great shadow of esophageal flesh taking the entirety of the planet into its body where it and Deimobos would soon become neighbors to the other three worlds.

It would do this and more for the Aptosites, not out of loyalty or submission, but because their ideals were in sync with each other, and because this Living Ark, as it had been called by observers, was given a chance to fulfill its cosmic duty as...

The Cradle of Life

Deep inside that colossal beast, in a part that was retrofitted for the Aptosites strategic planning endeavors, a twelve-foot tall General awaited the revelation of imperative information. His predatory eyes of pitch followed the screen that his good doctor, friend, and partner, Snil monitored.

General Karzar paced back and forth across the black, flesh-striped floor, his tail-fin half-hidden beneath a leathery cape, decorated with several rows of jagged, upward-facing teeth belonging to a variety of sharks. The rigid, wave-patterned fissures of his face, the gills on his neck, and fins protruding from his black, aqueous skin marked him out as a beast of the fathomless depths. Sharp spines ran beneath the skin of his skull, which split open into a nine-pointed, pentagonal crown. Like others before him, like in the oceanic food chain, he had swam all trenches, learned to navigate the currents of Aptosite society, and rose to the top as the apex beast of the organization. The muscles in his face tightened into a feral smile of anticipation, causing the crown to widen and expose his hungering serrated teeth as he awaited the report, a crimson stone held tightly in his webbed right hand.

The thing sitting in front of him, Doctor Snil was by all accounts, an eccentric, and extremely productive scientist of the Aptosites. He had been the leader of Project Forge King, Project Anti-Deity, Project C.I.P.H.E.R., Project T-Error-R, and Project Soulmate that led to the birth of Alucroas.

A fat, rotund thing he was. Snil’s body was covered in black, braided tendril growths emerging from every pore on his body, and were very likely designed by his own hand due to the notable attributes of high prehensility and handy nimbility. The majority of the growths had been tied into a thick ponytail behind his head, revealing his bright, horizontally slit yellow eyes, giving him the vague appearance of an amphibian, which showed more prominently when he pressed his webbed hands against the edge of the control panel, which bore striking resemblance to veterbrae.

Despite the long, arduous wait that Karzar and Snuff had endured, minimal stress had accumulated between the two. Their partnership was a long-lasting one, a bond between knowledge and power that persisted throughout countless millenia. This was but another test, another trial to be overcome. CIPHER would gather the information, and he would deliver on the data he had been ordered to attain, just as he he had done on other worlds. Once it was in their hands, nothing would stop them from ushering in the Great Mergence event, whether it was through imposition or negotiation, nothing would stand between the Aptosites and their promised goal of cosmic wholeness.

Eerily, as if the old gods of space and time were listening on their plightful determination, and patience, the universe answered to the justified call. Scattered across the void of space, the arachnid webs relayed the psychic information sent in by CIPHER, pinging it across the thousands of structures it had deployed on its journey to the Cizran homeworld, and among its countless other ventures of scholarly study.

The great Cradle of Life received the information through its membrane, allowed it to flow down through its nervous system, crossing the gap between a trillion axons, and fill the bowl that had remained empty for far too long. Embedded between the hemispheres of a brain that was situated within a triangle of beating hearts, whose ventricles pumped napier-green fluid into lungs, connected to an even larger network of myelin cords was a single monitor that, like the edge of Snil’s desk, had been framed with the vertebrae of an unknown organism.

Gradually, the data appeared on the screen in bold white letters.

Examination of Cizran Empathic Organ Tissue Complete
Observed Signs of Spiritual Synchronicity Within Samples.
Running Self-Diagnosis of The Samples Combinative Potential.
Self-Diagnosis Complete. The Combinative Potential of Empathic Samples Is Nominal; Possibility of Mergence Event Is 100%.
Sending Data Back To Cradle of Life And Will Await Further Orders.


The good Doctor’s eyes nearly leaped out of their sockets, his many protruding tentacles flailing wildly, whilst Karzar’s eyes sheened with delight, his hand clenching into a fist as he slammed it down atop the control panel, gripping Snil’s shoulder with the other hand. A strange frenzy overtook the pair as both of the Aptosites sizzled with animalistic excitement, their pupils dilating amid a surge of adrenaline flooding their veins. Karzar’s gills flared as he let out a maddening scream of jubilated exaltation from the depths of his throat, chest puffing out as he roared cachinnatiously, jaws parting ever wider with each laughing exhale. Snil’s hidden proboscis burst from his oral cavity, the flexible mouth-appendage ending in a weave of salivating feeler-lips that emitted horrendously intense shriek, followed by a gurglingly ecstatic shout that nearly came across as yowling due to how overtaken he was by the results.

“Ha...ha...ha…” panted Karzar in a darkly prophetic tone, “it is time.”

Rising back to full his height, Karzar turned to face the exit. The door, like the rest of the room, was a living thing. A row of sharp, vertically interlocked teeth, connected to a thick mass of muscular gum-tissue that upon contracting, emitted a series of wet clicks and smacks as the teeth unlocked and the two sections were pulled apart, retreating into twin flesh-slots, leaving only the tips of the incisors visible.

Before he could give Snil his orders and step through the door, an alert appeared on the screen in crimson text, and at the same time the stone in Karzar’s hand began to glow. It was a distress call from Aredemos, the signal transmitting itself through hazy, flickering static. Karzar approached the screen, and held out the stone which began to emit the same static, and after a few seconds of waiting, the screen ceased flickering, providing the Doctor and General with clear resolution of the events as experienced directly through Aredemos’ eyes and ears.

“...”

“We have what we need. Give the order to CIPHER. Tell him he is to trigger the Mergence Event himself. In the meantime set a course for Initara.” Karzar walked through the doorway, into the hall that was a stark contrast to Snil’s laboratory. The floor and ceiling was made of solid, polished gray stone, as were the walls, lined with countless doors resembling the one he had just exited out of, illuminated by lambent eyes embedded in the walls above each entrance.

He was going to help Aredemos with his problem, just as he promised he would, but with CIPHER’s timing, and the fact that the being in question was a Cizran… in this he saw opportunity.

Snil turned in his seat, facing the general with interest. “What do you intend to do, Karzar?”

Pausing for a moment, Karzar began to speak rather matter-of-factly. “The Cizran made claims of responsibility to Aredemos in regard to his people. I want to see if that same sense of purpose extends to his own.”

With that he began to make his way down the hall. Meanwhile, the Cradle of Life, finished with its current task, slipped through space where it would emerge elsewhere.

The Cizran Vessel - Holding Cell

In one instant, his leader had suddenly returned to free Kilamara from the threat of corruption, outright shattering the malignant curse on those who could still be saved. The strange swordsman, whose presence he used as a combat bolster against the Hellseeds suddenly collapsed, a maelstrom of souls flew overhead, into a cloud of tainted energy, and the whole world began to spiral out of control.

He felt his body being pulled apart, but unlike Aredemos who had been transported somewhere else, Kirri felt a glitch in his vision, a static blink in perception, and then everything went back to normal. The taint was gone, Aredemos was gone, Kaan was gone, and the Hellseeds skeletal corpses were gone as well. He was completely and utterly alone, the shock of the experience causing his limbs to turn weak, dropping him to his knees in the sand.

“That couldn’t have all been just a hallucination…” Kirri looked upon his surroundings, then stared down at his arms and hands, still lined with crystal from his fire stone weaponizing itself across his skin, “could it?”

Despite being an elemental warrior of flame, his fire stone was now the only thing keeping his spirit warm in the approaching night, just as it had kept him warm as a child, before he had been purged by Deimobos’ molten purification. The warmth it provided him would spur Kirri back to his feet, where he quickly decided that there could be no answers in this forgotten battlefield, and so he made up his mind to head to the Fire Stone Forest--the place where he had achieved redemption.

There, he would find the answers he sought to his mental dilemma.

Throughout his travel, he recalled the trails he had followed to reach the Fire Stone Tower: the spiders fed on the snakes, and the snakes were fed on by the birds who built their nests upon the towers outcroppings and the many lesser towers that surrounded it.

Again, without conscious thought, Kirri’s body acted, summoning a cloud of sand to drift through the night skies. He would use the element to feel the birds migration path, and by tracing a web in that path, he would be able to pick up on the resonant call of the Tower, beckoning its power to lead him to it.

The closer he got to the tower, the more powerful its resonant energy became. All around him, he could feel the desert start to decay, its sand blackening as night reverted back to dusk, and he could see the tower ahead of him, visible in the orange twilight. He observed the sunlight behave strangely as it touched the tower, an eerie vortex of spiraling rays disappearing into the center, consumed by a force that was not known to Kirri. Within that vortex, he could feel the churning tide of lost souls that had been imprisoned by Kaan, and lamented the thought of sharing that fate.

His instinct screamed at him not approach that corrupt tower, and wisely, he obeyed it, turning in a different direction, only to find it standing mere inches from his face. All of his muscles tensed from the surprise, his body leaping away, poise shifting mid-air before landing in an uneasy defensive stance. A faraway wail of tormented souls seemed to emit from deep within the crystal structure, the collective weight of those grains gathering to form a boulder inexplicably sought to hammer his will into the ground and suppress his spirit.

Sensing Kirri’s weakness, the crystal thorns which sprouted from the Tower’s base shot forth, cutting deep into his limbs, spilling his molten blood across the sand. Then it began to tug with a might that had only been felt by victims of the monstrous desert worms, whose tongues had been lined with hooked teeth to secure their prey in place before swallowing them whole. As Kirri was dragged closer, the trunk cracked and split open, forming a diamond prism-mouth whose interior walls were just as deadly and just as eager to feed as the worms, its crystalline teeth drooling with fresh ectoplasm from its most recent meal.

Despite his fear at being consumed, Kirri felt an unnerving sense of morbid curiosity swell up in the back of his mind, and this curiosity allowed him to see deeper into the mouth of the abyss using his own fire-stone. Fate must have been guiding this bizarre trip, for as he came closer and closer to that soul-stained mouth, time as it existed around him slowed to the pace of a slug. In the farthest depths of the Tower, passed the curtain of shadows obscuring its core, he saw a barely visible, gray stone-colored eye with a black vertical slit watching with profound objectivity. Around it, he could see the universe he existed within, the incomprehensible chaos it traversed—chaos which existed outside of his existence as if the entire cosmos were just a thin membrane that only shielded its inhabitants out of simple deterministic convenience.

The chaos blared like electric static on a broken monitor, and as Kirri strained his mind to focus, he bore witness to countless transparent limbs branching out from the eye’s center. Somewhere, in a far-off corner of the existence, several parallel universes imploded, but before they could reach a point of complete destruction, the thing that had been gripping the cosmos drained it of fuel, thermal energy, digested, and excreted the matter, laying fertile ground for a new cosmos to be born in its place. Afterward, the eye’s color shifted from stony gray to something pink, and its limbs vibrated all at once before returning again to gray. The evolution of his race by the Fire Stones could never prepare him for something like this, and as he continued to watch, he felt the first tear in his sanity start to form…

"KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! DO NOT BELIEVE THEIR LIES!"

A violent impact jolted Kirri from his nightmare, the firestone within his chest shoving his mind back to forefront of reality. The first sight his eyes took in was that of embers, embers caused by metal shards ricocheting off walls and creating sparks. Then, he saw more metal, only it was flat like a wall, dented inwards, and in the center of that dent he saw a hole resembling a flower whose petals had been shredded to ribbons flapping chaotically amidst the fluttering metal shards. Through that hole he heard the militaristic shouts of unknown beings, barking orders at each other in an aggressive, but controlled manner; it seemed they were preparing for combat. That was when he heard something come crashing down from above and land in front of him, on the other side. A flurry of sharp piercing assaulted his ears accompanied by a storm of light. Immediately, he felt something massive stampede across the floor, heard a person’s flesh get impaled, his body slam violently against a wall with a hollow crash, like something was demolished. Last came a scream and an enormous shock-wave as whatever was attacking the beings on the other side got blasted back against the wall in-turn.

Trying to move, Kirri noticed his arms and all of his legs were being restrained by large metal cuffs. A prison...? Thought the Kilamaran, his eyes widening with panic as he finally began to realize where he was. I must have been captured by that damned lich, and that nightmare must have been his way of breaking me…

Now he knew what was going on here. Those things on the other side were servants of Kaan, and the thing on the other side of the wall must have been trying to free itself. It was in this moment, that he felt a strong feeling from his fire stone, and legitimate fury welled up from within, causing a crystallic blade to burst through the flesh of his forearm, severing one of his restraints. His other limbs rose by a multitude of degrees, incinerating the remaining at which point his whole body lifted up off the ground, accumulated even more pressure, and rocketed toward the aperture.

An interval of nanoseconds occurred between the Kilamaran throwing his legs forward, raising his chest, inadvertently scorching several Cizrans in the process of breaking his flight, and being blindsided by the sight of Aredemos in the midst of combat. Without pause for thought, the Cizran soldiers turned their sights on Kirri, aiming their pulse rifles, the barrels of which bore same menacing ursine grin as the masks they wore, prompting a defensive posture from the Insect Warrior.

“Who are you people,” Kirri demanded furiously, “and more importantly, why are we here, Aredemos?”

Not wanting to let the chaos escalate any further than it already had, Nenegin spoke in an attempt at bringing reason to the forefront, “Your god failed to fulfill his obligations to his people, so I stepped in to rectify his mistakes.”

“God?” Aredemos remarked, “That was quite the farce you put on, Cizran.”

For a moment, Kirri’s arms lowered, head tilting in slight confusion as Aredemos carried on. “Gods demand worship, I demand freedom for myself, my people, and any others who seek liberation from people like you.”

“Be careful how you choose your next words, Kilamaran.” Nenegin warned, the rifles turning back in his direction.

Unease filled the room with those final words, the seconds seeming like minutes, and the minutes seeming like hours until the very fabric of time and space literally split open, and Kirri was the only person facing the correct window to see the bulbous orb that was slowly emerging from the rift.

Were Aredemos’ insectoid mouth capable of forming a grin, it just might have, for while he didn’t see the thing come out of the rift, he could feel its presence vibrating through his fire stone, at which point he began to speak again.

“You warned me that there were higher beings presiding over us, Cizran.” The scythes sticking out of Aredemos back extended back, piercing the hull, and causing a small vacuum to form behind him. “It’s time for you to meet them.”

Before Nenegin could reply, the extensions branched out in a spiraling disc-pattern, cleaving through the entirety of the hull in a matter of seconds, separating the control room from the bridge, exposing them to the vacuum and throwing the ship into a violent spin.

Follow me! Came Aredemos’ words to Kirri, communicating telepathically via the stones in their chests.

Kirri was frozen in place from what he had just seen. After the nightmare he had experienced, he wasn’t particularly fond of people talking in his head, but Aredemos had rescued him, and so he forced himself out of his shock and followed him out through the hole, careful not to collide with the soldiers who were sucked out into space. Looking behind him, he saw that Nenegin had used his tentacles to maintain a firm grip on the stair-case, and to Kirri’s surprise, Aredemos sealed the aperture via the same method he had used to form the cut: his crystals, flying over to the roof, Kirri saw that thing again, this time able to see its teeth which were like mountains unto themselves.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING!? Kirri cried out in panic.

It’s our ride. Aredemos replied.

Ride!? Kirri continued, flabbergasted. That thing is going to EAT us.

It will swallow us whole. Now hang on!

The canvas of the cosmos became a starlit blur for Kirri as the chunk of metal that he and Aredemos were clinging accelerated its spin, their senses of gravity shifting immensely as the white sphere blossomed overhead and brought them into its depths.
Inside The Cradle of Life

“Welcome back, Aredemos.” The crystal seal on chunk of ship Nenegin was trapped inside had broken apart, allowing him to view a room reminiscent of the inside of a colossal rib-cage, lungs, heart, liver and all.

Standing at the far end of the room, his back facing an enormous spinal column, the cords of which thrummed with nerve pulses was General Karzar in all his overzealous glory. Standing next to him was the good Doctor Snil, whose eyes were only half-open, quietly observing the Cizran as he stepped out of what may as well have amounted to a hermit shell. “As for you, Nenegin, I am glad you survived the trip here.
Stepping forward, Karzar commenced his speech. “Today marks the beginning of a return to that which is fulfilled. For too long, have the Cizrans wandered the galaxy without a true identity, oppressing and limiting the growth of others along the way.”

“More to the point, the oppression of other races, the domination and enslavement of those races can most certainly be chalked up to practical economics. One race works until no more work can be done, is buried then replaced by the next, or as you surely observed with Cizran criminals who go against the established order… stuffed into those wretched sarcophagi to be drained of what little lifeforce they
have left so that their ships will possess the fuel needed to make the hop to the next planet deemed ready for “resource” gathering.

“This is something even I can understand and appreciate, even if I personally disagree with the method.”

“However, this… incessant need for body-modification, it reeks of desperate necessity. It reeks of familiarity, and the hopeless futility, the hopelessly futile incisions made by scalpels and lasers, the breaking of bones to extend your height, the steroid injections to expand your might, genetic modifications performed upon your flesh to bring you that much further from death. It cries for declaration, cries for self-examination, and it sobs endlessly in projected degradation, because it cannot ever hope to be one whilst knowing that the ONE exists as soulfully shattered glass.

"How can something so incomplete ever hope to be whole?”

“And you intend to make my people whole?” Nenegin asked challengingly. The beast must have lost his mind to think he could take on the Cizran Empire.

“It is inevitable even without us headstarting the event, I merely wanted you see it for yourself, and decide whether or not you wished to partake in your kind’s… reunion.”

“In the end, Cizran, Kilamaran, and Aptosite culture will benefit from this reunion, for we do this not out of judgment, pity, or sympathy, but rather because we know their pain.”At that point, a single ocular descended from the ceiling and projected a holographic display of everything that their agent was experiencing, using the satellites it had deployed as a transmission medium.

Cizra Su-Lahn

Zzz…

Z-z-Z………

z-Z-z...

Z-z-Zeptir

Z-z-Zeptir

z-Z-zeptir

ZEPTIR ZUKRINCHEN!


I am…

I am...

I am…

Am I…

I am...

I am NOT!

I am…

I AM NOT!

I am...

I… sliced through this white garment and exposed my mantid face, my mantid claws, and hands. I stand tall and look down at my segmented exoskeletal body, and view the long legs which lie flat against my belly, hidden among a hundred other legs which start to carry me forward, like a train.

I am…

Z-z-Zeptir

I am…

I AM NOT!

I am… C-

I am…

I am NOT.

I… broke out of my research office through the window, crawling up the wall on these centipede legs of mine, which protruded from my sides. They are a part of me, but I… I...ME...I AM NOT. I see between my legs, and there lie my spinnerets, spinning my silken web around this tower, this tower that I am building into a tower of psychic power. Through my strands, through my webbing, through telepathic glue… I broadcast my message to the Cradle of Life.

I am…

I am… NOT!

I am… CI-

I am…

I am NOT.

I… turned my head to gaze upon my back and remembered that I had tentacles. Three rows of tentacles, just like an octopus’ tentacles. Three rows spaced evenly apart across my back in pairs of three… I remembered the briefing given to me by the fat Doctor Snil. His tentacles were tingling, flailing about with the same wild energy I had come to recognize as excitement. He was always excited about everything, even when he appeared not to be excited, the wild, chimpish aura he exuded lacked an exhaust valve, trapping the fumes inside him and allowing no escape. Because of this he always seemed to quiver madly, as if in pain, but I knew it was just the body’s method of coping with the mind’s insanity.

He reached out with his proboscian mouth and touched me gently between the eyes, an act of affection I could not even so much as think to reciprocate, let alone react to. “For this mission, you will once again be using self-induced psycho-hypnosis to infiltrate the Cizran Empire, and will assume the identity of Zeptir -- Zeptir Zukrinchen, a Cizran scientist, scholar, and biologist.” Removing his feeler lips, the Doctor continued to speak to me, his tone unusually sincere, given his tendency toward shrewd speaking when it came to mission briefings.

“As Zeptir, your mission will be to investigate the Cizran Empire. More specifically, Zeptir…(...I AM NOT!...) your job will be to look into the Cizran psychic link. Discover it’s source, and figure out a way to combine them into one. As always, we will most certainly be on the receiving end of hatred from those who fail to complete the Mergence and end up retaining their individuality, but we do this for the benefit of all, and therefore it must be done.”

I am…

I AM NOT!

I am… CIP-

I am…

I am NOT.

I became… invisible. I hid in plain sight, I hid by bending the light, but not the real light. I bent my inner-light, my skinner-light, I became as light as the path was under the sun, I became as dark as the evening was under no one. I became as filled with color, but only enough color to stay black, only enough color to crawl along the cracks which spread across my skin, leading to the hovering rickshaw containing the things that would bring the Cizrans back to…

I am…

I am NOT!

I am… CIPH-

I am… NOT.

I...sped toward it on all my legs as fast I could, as fast as I should, as fast as I wouldn’t dare had it not been for the orders given to me. I do not care about these people, I do not care about this mission, I am not sure if I care about my own life, but what I know is that

I will do as I am… I will do as I am NOT.

I will do…

I am…

I am NOT!

I am… CIPHE-

I am… NOT.

I… was close, but now I am far away once again. I can feel my frustration settling in, I must get rid of this disguise, I must get rid of the universe’s self-imposed demise. I must become myself again, I must fulfill the coldly passionate demands imposed upon me by my ego. I must act on the selfishly selfless needs that came with my inception, and infused my genes with unrelenting aggression I neither know nor understand, but simply allow that need to guide my actions. I am… and I am.... And I...am! I...I AM…

I am… A Counter
I am… An Intelligence
I am… A Procurer
I am… A Holistic
I am… Engineered

I am… A Reconnaissance Operative Dedicated To Carrying Out The Clandestine Goals Of The Cosmos, That Will Lead To The Universe Becoming Whole Again.

And I Do Not Care About Any Of It, Not Out Of Choice, Or By Design, But By Consequence Of Existence. My True Personality Is Unknown To Me, Hidden Beneath Layers of Psycho-Genetic Code.

I am...

C.
I.
P.
H.
E.
R.

I… felt the cosmos split open, and from that split, I knew my superiors had arrived to assess my progress. They wanted to watch the Great Mergence unfold before their eyes. I cannot disappoint myself.

I… spun my spinnerets, leaving silky strands of webbing everywhere my destination took me. It is all part of the plan, the plan that will entrap these Cizrans within their own personal web of truth. Deep within my mind, I detect an eagerness--an eagerness to become one with this race--the thought of it makes my antennae undergo a mild spasm, and in my head I can hear a ring of static as the two realities of what I am and what I am not clash against each other.

Anticipation.

Communion.

GATHER TOGETHER IN THE GREAT CLOUD OF NOT!

I… became compromised. A quarter of a second passes, and during that quarter of a second, my mind is frozen in time. My body fails to carry itself forward, I derail in the wrong direction, lose my footing, and find myself caught between an alley, a flight of stairs, and a lamp-lit corridor. It is only thanks to my adaptive camouflage that my head matches the steps, my torso blends with the stones of the pavement, and my twin scorpion tails glow lambently with the lamps. By the time I resume my chase, the whole area is covered in sticky strands, and as I progress further, I can feel more and more thoughts, more and more feelings traveling through those strands.

I… see it once again, moving through a large group, near Cizra Su-Lahn’s capital center. I can smell those organs, I can hear the faintest spark of a former existence emanating from within. It is a fragment, a splinter of wood from a tree which breaches the clouds and touches other worlds beyond this one. It will be one, and so I will I, but I will NOT be one with them, for I AM NOT one of them. Passion consumes my chase, and with reckless abandon, I charge through the crowd, not caring who I trample under my hundreds of legs, or pierce with my claws, or entangle in my path.

THEY ARE ALL THE SAME TO ME!

I… shriek my chimeric shriek, and with the legs pressed up against my belly, I decompress them and leap over the crowd, crushing those I land ontop of whilst striking out at those who would halt my advance, even if it be out of simple shock and awe. Another leap and some die, another leap, and others live, another leap, and they finally realize that there is no stopping me from reaching the finish line.

I…

I did not hesitate this time. I reared back my left stinger, stabbed it through the curtain concealing those jars, and without pause this time, without confusion as to what I AM (CIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPHEEEEEEEEEEEERR), I increased time’s flow.

I did not stick around for what was about to happen, I fled for highest point, crawling on buildings, scaling scrapers and statues and monuments. Through the webbing I watch structures rapidly start to rust and decay, in bodies I witness the breakdown of artificially made flesh and bone, stripped away until there is naught but a skeleton coughing up its soul and becoming caught in the trap. Thousands of fragments, thousands of shards, thousands of bees, thousands of false mes go shooting through the silk, shooting back to the womb, back to beginning, before they were brought to this diminutive state.

Wrapped in this cocoon so saturated with sibling spirits, I will watch for the first time as the Great Mergence unfolds before my eyes. Whatever will emerge, I do not know, and I do not care, for I am NOT a Cizran.

I am... an Aptosite.
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Silence was a welcome comfort, something she'd not known in quite some time. It had been weeks since the conquest of her people at the taloned-hand of Ec-Shavar. They posed no real threat, their budding civilzation being nowhere near as advanced as the Cizran empire that had brought monolithic reckoning to the Ganaxavorrian capital. Normalcy, or a semblance of it, had returned after the chieftains had sworn fealty to the governor and "trade agreements" had been solidified.

Loi-Ara Alak's skiv skittered across pools of bubbling selenium, the contents of its belches harmlessly sliding off its hull. She had a late start, spending most of the morning navigating the latest addendums to the scavenging manifestos, and was eager to fill her cargo bay. She scanned the feed from her skiv's radar when the quills on her back bristled abruptly. A peal of lightning tore across the sky and with it the ground before her crumbled into an ever-widening cavern; she cursed beneath her breath, yanking the controls in an attempt to save herself.

The gulch that had swallowed Loi-Ara had begun to flood with steaming selenium, its surface a violent roil. Deep tremors spread across the landscape, causing further fissures to erupt from the craggy ground. Plumes of poisonous gases were sent skyward, their cores pyroclasts of molten silica. What had started as a tenorous bubbling, within moments had built up enough pressure to breach Ganaxavorii's upper atmosphere.. Swept up in swirling currents of thickening air, the skies ashened as the planet choked, a portent of Ua's nearing.

***

Nothing. I am nothing. Or.. I was nothing.

For so long I knew nothing but absence. The absence of everything. It was... comfortable. Now I know no such comfort. I am aware. Of darkness. Of cold. I can feel.. something. It grows nearer. And with it my dread grows. I cannot recall why I feel this way, but I do. I notice a light, microscopic in dimension. But it begins to grow, and with it does my awareness. I feel... I feel pain. A burning pain. It is all-consuming. I am pain.

I am alive once more.

Sensation is a strange concept as my faculties return. Or a simulacra of them. As awareness fills me, memories too begin to trickle across the retina of my mind's eye. This heat is familiar. I had wielded it, or something akin to it long ago. I had worked a forge, and within it I had crafted... The details escape me as darkness abates. The light which had been so faint before has now engulfed my vision. Its intensity and the pain I feel are tantamount.

Have I been brought back only to suffer? The thought has barely formed when I hear a response, within the cavernous depths that is my being. The voice is cold, colder than the womb of non-existence that had enveloped me for so long. Where one had been indifferent, this voice was malice incarnate.

"Your suffering is essential, and quite satisfying. It's part of our last great work.. You never did quite have the vision necessary, but there was no other craftsman as skilled as you."

I attempt to formulate a response, when I can no longer bear the excruciating pain. Through tyranny of will, I am able to focus on the source of the pain; the light; and see that it is me. A wound, grievous in nature, pulsates and with each quiver is expelled a molten crystal. The core that imprisons me fills with the substance, and I lose myself once more.

***

Its tiresome voyage was at an end, and with it Ua would be free of this loathsome plane of existence. It conceded that a small pleasure was to be had in torturing an old mentor. Mun had sculpted many magnificent artifacts in his time, and even laid claim to having crafted many stars in his forge, but never could he have been masterful enough to craft the engine, nor ingenious enough to have a part in its design.

The prison Ua had created for its predecessor was encased within Ganaxavorii; Mun was buried within the planet's core. And the invocations it had envoked had accomplished their duty. The wound Ua had given him so long ago, that had taken his life, had been cursed to bleed at Ua's presence. Through the machinations of its art, Ua had manipulated his mentor's form to excrete an endless stream of an element it had carefully selected. It would act as a reagent in the overall effect of the engine.

Ua manifested itself outside of Ganaxavorii's orbit, having undergone another metamorphosis. It now resembled a gargantuan briollete, easily dwarfing the planet it orbited. It was made from a substance heretofore unknown in this universe; a translucent mineral from which vivid visions emanated. The sudden appearance of something so mighty wreaked further havoc on the planet that convulsed in evolutionary pangs. Ganaxavorii's surface was no longer visible, having been smothered in particulates.

The beam that Ua had broadcast from Q'ab had also completed its journey and it passed through the shimmering form Ua had taken. Energy filtered through every crystalline capillary; the last part of the Rite being completed. Passing through the spiritual medium that was the eldritch horror, the beam had been altered as it met with the reflective silica that had supplanted Ganaxavorii's atmosphere. And the universe shook upon its foundations at such a display of power as beams were transmitted across the cosmos.

***

"How much do you remember about what happened in the Veldt ruins?" The artist's voice was equal measures relieved and inquisitive. Apotheosis had nearly come to the two when their minds met within the psyche of that... being.. that oversaw so much of what had transpired on Q'ab through the ages.

"There are gaps in my logs, due to the extreme fluctuations of the psychic tether, but I do recall being aware, or at least a semblance of awareness. It was like passing through solar wind, a level of distortion in my environment I had never experienced before."

"Do you recall speaking with it, Epi?" Xo'pil paced the length of his accomodations, racking his brain for theories as to what they experienced. "I would think it had been nothing more than a drastic reaction between the toxins of that symbiotic fungus and my accelerated immune system. But that doesn't account for your experience. Could I truly have found evi-"

<< Alert. Alert. The ship has prematurely exited superluminal travel mode and is on inertial propulsion. Maintenance underway. Support vessels in region notified. Please remain calm. >>

His words hung in the air as the Vepsis Dol's emergency notification continued on a loop. The lighiting system within his quarters flickered as the sound of crashes deep within the interstellar freighter. Xo'pil gave pause before curiosity took hold. Retrieving a small object from his belongings, Xo'pil affixed a modular portable lighting system to the polymorph weave that covered his shoulder.

Crossing the room towards the security panel that kept him sequestered from the rest of the ship's passengers, he clucked the tip of his tongue against the back of teeth to a jovial tune. His dexterous fingers slipped betwixt the hull and the panel's edges. With a forceful tug he removed the panel and set it to one side. Xo'pil regarded the layout of the circuitry before him and could barely contain a scoff. "This tech is at least five centuries old."

From within a minuscule aperture in the lining of his lapel, Xo'pil removed two tapered metallic rods that gleamed coldly in the artificial light. He gave another soft cluck of his tongue as he made minor adjustments to the control panel's parameters. A brief sound of triumph was elicited as the door slid open with an ominous whoosh. The lights outside of his quarters were now flickering at a heavier rate. Turning the luminous halo towards the darkened hallway, he took notice of colored bands leading away from the passenger quarters and made the decision to move towards the Vepsis Dol's massive cargo bays.

***

The regular hiss of a respiratory filter underscored the incessant drips and creaks that echoed throughout Gereza's cooling and sewage systems. The garish neon of Ophidian's hide pants were muddled in a knee-high viscous fluid that flowed through a deep channel he was in the process of traversing. The scintilla of short-circuiting hoverdrones cast a sinister shadow down the vast chamber's length, its edges undulating in the coolant's current. The thick husk of his skin tingled against the caustic vapors that surrounded him.

"Sure is spacious. This seems like very poor prison design." Ophidian mumbled as the HUD projected against his eye-patch shifted to that of a map of the area he had salvaged from one of the hoverdrone's memory units. A highly detailed simulation of his immediate surroundings was beamed into the sensory nerve cluster deep within his cyclopean eye. A ping appeared on the map, highlighting a point of interest.

"I am discovering many irregularities in the management and construction of Gereza." Lars responded, and would have continued if not for several distress prompts that was relayed to both infiltrator and overwatch thanks to the surveillance measures Lars had taken upon entering Gereza's orbit. "Sir, alerts incoming from across the empire. One from an ultrafreighter in some backwater system. Many more from the GRID."

Ophidian let loose a short whistle. Something trying to breach the GRID was a fool's errand. "Keep me updated. Going silent on my end." The shadow that had been cast faded as the form of Ophidian sank beneath the surface, followed by a stream of bubbles.

***

His journey towards the cargo hold was a silent and cautious one. The Cizran were notorious for delegating most tasks to the ranks of beings they subjugated and it would do little to further his knowledge if he were to bumble across a kukul assigned to security or some poor soul burdened with one of the fetters devised during millenia of maurading the universe. The modular light responded to his thoughts and would frequently extinguish at the slightest sound.

In the silence that was becoming oppressive, he hesitated when he was able to distinguish a pattern: deep repetitious rumbling somewhere ahead. The distance was impossible to determine due to the cavernous surroundings. Moving towards is source, Xo'pil picked up a brief exchange of words, only able to make out "wrong with the transport".

As he approached, he saw a chamber softly lit in shalam's glow. It had taken him a moment to determine it was actually shalam, as its tell-tale emerald had been replaced with a sparkling sapphire.

"Hold on a se-" exclaimed a diminutive silhouette as the mass of minerals became animated. Xo'pil's beam of light cut through the dim chamber, three forms caught in its halo.

I need a break, Xo thought to himself.
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Undeniable


While Plango fled, Ec-shavar rose—not to glory, but, unbeknownst to himself, through the interstice of fate that led to ignominy.

Motes of rage confused the former clarity within the labyrinthine complexity of his empathic organ, in which Ec-shavar felt what his mind refused to countenance. Fueling it was a vicious truth that lingered and mocked his futile denials, tore at the ligaments of his psyche, and scorned the raison d’etre of not merely himself but his entire species. It was a fact intolerable to the extent it was unthinkable—that an unworthy wa’ali prognosticated such an auspicious occasion while he, the epitome of billions of cycles of evolution, stood impotent and irrelevant before that which he beheld. Worse, it became apparent that more unworthies than Xo’pil were availed prescience to the calamity, for even the Quish were safely sealed within the catacombs beneath Zold’nach and likewise the wildlife within their burrows.

It hardly matters now, he bitterly abnegated.

Invisible, the psychic tendrils of his mind wound round the planet’s electromagnetic shield, constricted in an upward wave of paroxysms, and brought him through and above the city’s forcefield and into the stratosphere. There, his senses unimpeded, he observed clearly. Greatly altered, Q’ab barely resembled his recollection from mere days prior. It hummed with a frequency that threatened the fragile molecular bonds of life. Beneath him, clouds and the seas assumed strangely repetitious patterns reflected inward until the mind became frustrated by its impulse for closure. The shalam glowed eerily, its radiation piercing soil, stone, and flora in an earthy aurora that cast the continents, for a moment, in a mantle of scintillating green. Inexplicably, the terrain muted in reaction to the exquisite dissonance and ultimately sharpened until it, like the oceans, blazed the purest blue; even the variegated hues of Q’ab’s vegetation were reordered and inevitably capitulated to the sapphire regime.

Futilely, his mind sought for a shred of historical precedence, yet, in spite of the long Cizran occupation of Q’ab, no similar event revealed itself.

I fear no unknown, Ec-shavar blustered. Fear and rage were distractions. Focus was required. It was his moment. He would be transformed. He would be reforged and reborn as a god.

Brazenly, he bore himself to the power that surged from Ajana to Q’ab and willed it to acknowledge him—recreate him. In reckless abandon, he burned in the halation of its majesty. Even that proved to be beyond his strength to reconcile, for it rent his armor and introduced disorder into his carefully devised genetic blueprint. Senses successively blunted and his will perverted, his hold on Ganaxavori’s kukull’s faltered and the world below whorled into an indecipherable muqarnas of lapis lazuli.

Then it—Ua—passed by Ec-shavar without notice.

Crestfallen and the tatters of his attention unable to follow the cosmic aberration, Ec-shavar returned his mind to Ajuna, the molested and unstable star. With effort, his mind pierced its volatile plasma eruptions, coronal mass ejections rife with heavy elements, and contorted magnetic bands. It was violent and dangerous. All of Q’ab was in imperiled by unbridled blaze. Then he sensed yet another presence. From behind the star emerged a peculiarly familiar malevolence nearly identical to what was carved in stone in his office by the ancients of Q’ab. Its likeness likewise appeared in temples and tapestries all over Cizra Su-lahn. A black blemish of absolute evil, revealed in the other being’s wake, bled darkness over the canopy of starlight and awoke in him nightmares of the calamitous era before he splintered from the whole.

At last Ec-shavar comprehended that the forces that confronted him were beyond his ken. The gods he longed to join were manifestations that succored on on the effluence of stars and supernovae. In comparison, what was he who subsisted on mere vanity? Less than nothing and, soon, mere dust lost in a maelstrom of power. All he beheld overwhelmed him, as it would any lone Cizran.

In earnest, he cast aside the barriers erected around his connection to his brethren—he flung wide the floodgates of his soul. For the first time in a millennia, he basked in the kinesthesia of long severed relationships. He felt the vitality that burned in Plango, Domnik, Silexies, and more; moreover, they felt him. A beacon that burned brightly throughout the empathic galaxy of his people, he conveyed in an instant a threat—not to himself, but to his people—via the instrumentation of their unique, unbroken, and inimitable bond.

Ajuna scorched Q’ab.

The bond evanesced.

A great deluge soothed.

Obliterated, first was he, last of his breed, Ec-shavar, never to eternal dwell in the Cloud of Ghot.

. . .


Inescapable


Kirri never was aboard the Dira var-sha.

Cizran were wise and cunning. They defended against the unknown, allowed for the unexpected, and permitted no exposure of unnecessary risk. Prisoners were secured in neither ship nor structure, but confined where they could do no harm—self-harm included. Rifts emergent from dimensional vortices at the bottom of a black hole designed by Silexies were where the unwanted were sent, access to which was facilitated by ad-hoc generation of wormholes that bridged encrypted spacial coordinates. If one escaped, decamp to a region of insignificance and solitude occurred. As Eel Sermonde and Eti Naris both could have attested, they never felt the crude embrace of manacles; instead, space, sensation, and impulse were constrained. Against such, brute force was utterly impotent.

On par with Cizran intellect was their perception, so keen as to avert deception. Schemes unfolded only as pretext warranted, as was true with Eti Naris’ charade. To Ec-shavar, the synthe’s prohibited mods and conspiracy with Potan Mul were known, the intended occupant of the Vepsis Dol’s sankul foreseen, and Plango’s role as his replacement comprehended. Venial deeds such were so long as relief from exile remained within reach; thus, rather than punish, he isolated, controlled, and exploited the affectation of innocence to his advantage.

Kirri lacked these especially Cizran qualities.

He and his ilk were mentally deficient, evidenced by the haste with which he, exemplar of his species, succumbed to phrenic distress after mere translocation into standard haloportal confinement. His visions were not prophetic, but pathetic byproducts of hopes and fears distilled in synaptic discord. For him, there was no door open, no bar to bend, no chain to break, no shackle to unbind—those were mere chimeras extrapolated from his cultural bias. Any analogs to such archaic contrivances were obsolesced by the Cizran Empire millennia prior.

There was no spiritual journey; no bold rescue by his hero, Aredemos; no repudiation of Nenegin, who never would have permitted an unknown quantity aboard his spacecraft; no menagerie of queer aliens with origins outside of known space—only Kirri’s mind projected against the interior of a fold in space.

Millions of light years physically separated Kirri and the Dira var-sha.

Aredemos was not on his way to both.

. . .


Destruction


Desert, jungle, and valley defined Kilamara, a once-planet in the Su-laria galaxy’s edge once protected by the Cizran Empire. An expanse of sand sharpened by translucent red spires divided its sole continent as well as the sexes of its most conspicuous inhabitants, the Kilamarans. A place of contrived norms, its opposites were ultimately mirrors where jungles abutted oceans, rivers careened down gorges, valleys accentuated mountain ranges, and a cyclic abundance of primal urgency and consumption were ever and conspicuously manifest.

Once

From atop Mount Initãra, Aredemos scorned the fractious symmetry of his homeworld. Still visible in the distance blazed a symbol of Cizran might, an orb of frenzied light and excited particles. It would have been his funeral pyre were it not for translocation to his present vista. The residue of the orbital bombardment involved a rod smaller and lighter than the tumescent form Aredemos assumed in his wrath and, accelerated to a percentage of light speed, contained enough kinetic energy to eradicate the Hellseed incursion, engulf a spherical kilometer of terrain in plasma, and unleash a wave of destruction across a vast, but uninhabited, expanse.

This, indirectly, was why Mount Initãra was on what was Kilamara.

Was.

If Aredemos’ unfamiliarity with an ancient Kilamaran shrine hinted at lack of kinship with his people and ignorance of his own history, the haste with which he obliterated his own planet bellowed volumes about his recklessness. A scientifically illiterate boob, repeatedly he displayed a prejudice towards brute force as the solution to his problems. It never occurred to him the kinetic energy present in the orbital bombardment was orders of magnitude less than the equal and opposite force necessary to reach Kirri or, as he imagined, chase down a superluminal spacecraft. The instant he kicked down and accelerated to multiples of light speed, he atomized Mount Initãra, splintered the planetary crust over its entire surface, agitated the mantle into an unstable brume thrice its natural volume, and pulverized the core. Momentarily unbound by gravitational pressure or an external shell, the superheated interior expanded to a gaseous nebula that incinerated and sterilized all life that clung to the debris field once known as Kilamara.

In future Cizran science classes, this would be an example of why kinetic energy was never to be used to achieve great speeds in short time frames while near anything of value, although such was within their power; it was inherently pointless and self-destructive. Instead, they elected a harder path that preserved and maximized the resources available in the worlds they controlled.

With Kilamara gone, the delicate gravitational balance of its star system was disrupted and an asteroid field stretched along the path the planet once circumnavigated. On Deimobos, mountain-size impactors of burnt rock and semi-solid magma weighing exatons rained in torrents and would do so for millennia. In the fallout, the moon’s surface was battered, subterranean lairs ruptured, history eradicated, and all but the hardiest macro-level life annihilated. As the debris field spread, it wrought havoc on all worlds, from the primordial to the domains of the Aptosites, adrift within the belly of the galactic beast known as The Cradle of Life.

. . .


En Route To


Aboard the Dira var-sha, calm prevailed. The bridge was, as usual, minimally staffed. Anything more was unnecessary while under faster-than-light conditions, where threats assumed a disposition different and diminished from the ordinary. Even in situations where a full complement was required, the presence of crew was ceremonial—a holdover from a bygone era kept in place by bureaucratic inertia. For modern vessels, like the Dira var-sha, all importance systems were fully automated, from defense, to propulsion, to life support.

Gazing through the viewport at the gray miasma that superluminal travel presented was the first officer, Lieutenant Commander Qigar, a Zanifeen slave with a velvety trunk for a nose. Despite his title, he had no real authority and served as a reminder to the crew of Nenegin’s conquests. Instead, like most denizens of the Cizran Empire, his role was relegated to relaying information between parties. After all, it would be absurd for the ensign manning the communication network, a low-caste synth, to address the admiral directly.

Thus far, the distress signal from the Vepsis Dol went ignored; even the volume of the alert was reduced to the absolute levels permitted by protocol. While the proper reports acknowledging its receipt were filed, the standing order—or lack thereof by the requisite authority—was that it was a matter that could wait, preferably for someone else to address.

At any rate, they would be in orbit around Cizra Su-lahn within the hour.

Suddenly, a second alarm blared and shocked the occupants of the bridge out of their reverie. Its tone and color indicated it was of a much greater priority than the first. Qigar gazed with irritation at the synthe as he waited for the information to be relayed. A second later, the synthe practically jumped out of her station and the atmosphere on the bridge transformed from one of quiet professionalism to excited chatter. Not an excitement born of dread of fear, but of astonishment.

“Lieutenant Commander Qigar,” the synthe exclaimed, her words rushed as as she plucked herself up off the floor and took her seat, “Kilamara is .. it is gone!”

Agitated by the news, the hairs along his snout puffing out, as if electrified, in a ridiculous and off-putting fashion. This would not be received well by Nenegin, but it was best to pull the admiral in as quickly as possible. Before he would do that, Qigar wanted a bit more explanatory data to work pass along up the chain of command.

“Synthe xb-83-r, compose yourself! Now, what do you mean by gone?” demanded the first officer.

The synthe paused and pressed her fingers to her temples for a moment, took another glance of the data feed, and, her voice trembling with excitement, elaborated, “Sir, it appears a several xenna joule kinetic impactor, centered around Mount Initãra, blew off the crust, lanced through the core, and effectively surrounded the planet in a fiery gas cloud.”

“Aredemos, that imbecile,” muttered Qigar, “kicked the planet so hard it ruptured. Why?”

“Sir?” the synthe articulated, unsure of what to do next.

Qigar paused and concluded speculation on that matter was above his rank. Instead, he demanded, although he could have easily guessed at the answers, “Information delay? Casualty rate?”

“1.3 seconds before the alarm—the time it took for our communication network to process the data. As for casualties, everyone. Our satellite detects no life forms in the wreckage. A likely outcome, as the impact vaporized the planet’s molten core, which would have sterilized surrounding masses. Uh … on the subject of Aredemos ...”

The synthe paused.

“Well?” Qigar practically snarled through his flared proboscis.

The synthe pressed her palm against the side of her head as if trying to concentrate. In a way, the image was accurate—she was exchanging a great deal of information with the communication network in that moment and all her cognition circuits were active.

“Sir, we’ve isolated the aberrant being’s course. He is heading toward sector c-xv-209-r7, the gravity well at the bottom of an artificial black hole.”

Qigar rolled six of his nine eyes.

“He thinks he is going to rescue Kirri, as in that twisted space lie many of the sub-dimensional vortices where prisoners of war and other undesirables are isolated. Kirri’s imprisonment codex, when activated, opens to a rift to a dimension therein. A fool’s errand, as the tidal forces of that space, both physical and spiritual, will stringify Aredemos both body and soul. If he survives that, he will be trapped in a rift and, if he is anything like Kirri, subjected to fantasies of his mind’s own making. A better fate than the fratricidal brute deserves, if you ask me.”

“Enough speculation,” Nenegin appeared and silenced the chatter on the bridge. Normally, a Cizran of his rank and experience would have an apprentice instead of a wa’ali. His, however, was recently promoted to commander and reassigned to her own ship. Instead, he, the only Cizran aboard the Dira var-sha, suffered a fool for the sake of his vanity. Qigar’s musings were of a top secret nature and not something meant to be prattled about on the bridge where anyone could hear it. That matter would be dealt with appropriately. In the meantime, everyone stilled. The only noises were the two alarms and muffled breathing. The only changes in scenery were the intermittent flashes of alert lights. His gaze swept the chamber and settled on Qigar who awkwardly shrank back in fear beneath the admiral’s inspection. “I’m aware of the situation. We’re changing course. Acknowledge intent to render aid and set a course for the Vepsis Dol’s distress signal.”

“Yes, Admiral,” Qigar stammered.

“Also, relay all prisoner confinement codexes to Gereza, priority one off maximum. We may need the space for some new detainees and Silexes will be able to observe more actively than we. Once that is complete, resequence to free confinement zones. I’ll prepare a memo for the warden to accompany the request”

Horrified, the first officer blurted out, “Resequencing without physical hand-off and authorization at Gereza Proper will mean abundantly more paperwork! Plus there is the matter that our codexes lead to military and espionage zones, not standard penal zones!”

“A little paperwork never hurt anyone,” Nenegin threatened, turned, and left. He had his own paperwork to file.

Even so, in Nenegin’s mind, he knew he would rather do anything else. Likewise, he would rather attend more important matters than assisting a stranded vessel, but he was desperate to put off standing before the Si’ab reporting on how he let a submoronic insect on steroids destroy a planet under his protection that was cultivated and veritably ripe for konul harvest and mineral extraction. It was a waste of resources that put him at risk for demotion or worse.

Well, at least the konel deployment was partially implemented, thought Nenegin with an inaudible inward sigh.

Back in his quarters, he felt the ship briefly drop out of faster-than-light to undergo the course adjustment. The walk allowed him to gather his thoughts, although all decisions were already made. It was simply a matter of execution at this point. Satisfied, in the hyperbolic sense of the word, Nenegin articulated the indicated message and passed it along to the bridge.

“To the acting warden at Gereza Prison Compound,

Greetings from Admiral Nenegin zar-Taliļ.

Due to unusual and unprecedented circumstances, I have elected a remote codex transfer to relay access and responsibility of our detainees to the authorities at Gereza. I apologize in advance for the additional processes and protocols this will necessitate and have included an addendum on the various forms and procedures that must be adhered to. Additionally, please be aware that the codexes for the
Dira var-sha’s confinement zones are designed for military and espionage operations and therefore differ from those of which I am aware operate in Gereza and as such there is a high likelihood of the need to transfer the contents to a secondary zone following processing. I’ve attached as much information as we’ve gathered regarding the detainees, but ...”

Despite its great detail and length, the full text of the memo largely reiterated the summary.

A lot of words for something so simple.

Such was the Cizran way.

. . .


The Aptosites


“That’s quite enough, thank you,” spoke a dim presence.

Compliant, the sumptuously vivid portrayal of Nenegin zar-Taliļ condensed to an acidic fog. Too heavy to remain aloft, its constituent droplets struck the deck mere meters from Karzar and Snil. Venomous hissing poisoned the aghast silence as the corrosive substance splashed, sizzled, and sated itself on all it pooled upon. Discrete, the miasma inevitably thinned and revealed a hovering black orb with a single point of white light in its midst. Once, twice it blinked. Then it exploded sharply—darkly.

Queued for destruction, the mock manifestations of Aredemos and Kirri likewise persued the pattern of deliquescence, revelation, and eruption.

Distant, invisible, but likewise trapped in the so-called Cradle of Life lurked the Zara vi-Pol, a vessel, one of many, left to patrol the sector recently vacated by the Dira var-sha. Largest remaining, it, a battleship, readied itself for combat under the direction of Ezkshi, the fleet’s admiral pro tempore. Not one for honorifics or grandiosity, she prepared her retaliation in the soft, thoughtful, orchestral manner that typified her fame.

Deliberately, she shifted her thoughts away from her enemy’s repulsive display of arrogance. Eagerly divulged by the Aptosite leadership to a simulacrum, enough was now known of their intentions. Now she concentrated on the preservation of her fleet and the exquisite destruction she would mete out upon her adversaries.

“Bodhi languors on complacency’s shore,” she acknowledged, a terse refrain that highlighted the peril of security wrongly presupposed and an understatement of her present circumstances. None of their predictive models hinted at the possibility Aredemos would be so absurdly idiotic. Yet there it was, a matter of historical record, and here she was, adrift with a dozen other cloaked vessels secreted in the debris field of the demi-god’s former home planet.

The shock of that audacious act, she concluded, was what blinded her to the cosmic imprisonment that enveloped the chaos of which they were a part.

That given, opportunism made herself an ally to all who saw her value and the counterintelligence arm of the Cizran Empire was inordinately robust. Amongst a multitude of other Aptosite machinations, the scheme to kidnap Nenegin was known to Ezkshi, so she improvised. An unusual endeavor, to be sure. Even so, the enemy’s expectation of guests culminated in covert access to their facility by three of her drones and marked the dawning of her riposte. Armed with intercepts from the unnecessarily lengthily observation of Zeptir’s failed spy-craft, she was confident that …

“Engage phasic battery—target areas dense in population,” Ezkshi ordered, the time for speculation concluded. It wasn’t relayed to the other vessels in the fleet nor conveyed via her empathic organ. They were on an absolute silence protocol, all bands, and widely dispersed. Still, the commanders of the other vessels were wise enough to observe her havoc and follow suite. Cizran destruction was, after all, rather distinctive. “Have we isolated the metalogical choke-points of this thing that swallowed us? Excellent. Unleash a volley of slipstream decomposition pulses through the virtual arteries of the quantum foam. Don’t give the parasites anything they can analyze until we open up a communication channel to the grid and receive authorization to unload some real magic.”

. . .


Their Intrigues Foiled


Within her usual place on the steps of the Ja’Regia, the Watcher sat. Chaos adequately described the vast chamber on any given day, but the recent rumors of war transformed it into absolute bedlam. A cacophony of words and a whiteout of papers made it unlikely any but the most astute observer heard or saw anything of substance. The shouting, stomping, flinging of vellum, and further accentuations to the absolutely unnecessary din were hardly where the insanity ended nor the possibility of war its direct cause. Many, the more ambitious and younger parties of the assembly, relished the idea of open conflict after centuries of stagnation. Even more desired and conspired to seize the moment of confusion to advance their political agendas. At present, they argued about whether a hold should be placed on peace legislation; whether a battle council should form and, if so, who should be seated; and whether they were even at war or should be concerned by recent events. Most accepted the need for a council, but then bickered over the details of its theoretical size, roles, oversight, and limitations. It hardly mattered where Nirak focused her mind, for everywhere alliances were forged, broken, and reforged; massive guardian kukulls were deployed to prevent or dissolve the numerous fights fomented by the most vociferous parties; cold proxy battles ensued, rife with blackmail, intrigue, and armies deployed to the borders of their respective holdings.

If she tried hard enough, she could pierce through to the center of the Ja’Regia’s torrent of manuscripts. There, a cerulean projection of Su-laria, the galaxy in which their holy planet resided, slowly rotated in multidimensional splendor. Two anomalies were highlighted in neon orange. The first, on the edge of a galactic arm, was an incursion that, already, snuffed out the Kilamara and Chandoo systems. Its manifestation was incomplete, for it was only partly within the galaxy and only partly observed by their satellite network. Nevertheless, they reasonably estimated the length of its cross section on the order of several light years. The second was harder to describe. Initially manifesting in the Ganax’ab system, it was a being that defied classification, one moment organic, the next metaphysical, and the next mechanical.

For the most ancient amongst them, memories long forgotten stirred. Buried emotions and lore that went as far back as the Kr’Nalus.

Nightmares and rumors aside, there were fragments one could piece together. Take, for example, the spy Zeptir. Unlike any other Cizran alive, this being, who alleged to be of their species, lacked both his empathic bond and family name. Nobody knew him, which was not only unheard of for a Cizran—it was impossible. Every member of their species, no matter how unimportant or obscure, did not exist without the requisite paperwork! There was also the matter of how bad at spying he was—the threads he left behind were highly reflective and detected by surveillance as soon as they were put into place. Moreover, her connections in the Noema and Av’sti assured her of his fraudulence. She further became aware of their counter-intelligence operation, where they fed him lies, provided fake organs for his experiments, and otherwise manipulated him to their advantage. They learned, by intercepting his communications, that he belonged to a space-faring species from a galaxy beyond the Cizran Empire. Things known as the Aptosites. Given his communication frequency, they eventually managed to crack the encryption and even the alien language. Really, it didn’t take long for a civilization with quantum computers thousands of years old and 10^7,000,000,000 FLOPs of processing power.

. . .


A Rescue Impeded


The dreadnought fell out of superluminal velocity and slid into position next to the stranded Vepsis Dol. Constructed in the renown shipyards of Zo and amongst the largest craft of the Cizran armada, it appeared as little more than a mote of diminished silver light that hovered nigh-indiscernible and minuscule when set alongside the massive black hull of the transport. Yet, in spite of its relatively small size, it contained the power necessary to vanquish whole civilizations and hold steady against cosmic anathema.

A knock sounded on Nenegin’s chamber door. It was, as he anticipated, Qigar, his first officer. With a mere glance, the ornate metal door dematerialized in a shimmer of blue and permitted the lieutenant commander’s entry. Punishment for the Zanifeen’s gregariousness already dolled out, he entered meekly, prostrate himself before Nenegin, and waited until the cabin was secure before speaking.

“Sir,” he began in a pained, gravelly tone. It was clear that every utterance was agony. Still, he continued, “Aredemos is—”

“Not here, no longer a threat, and of little consequence,” Nenegin mused.

“Alive,” Qigar, tersely as manageable, completed his thought. “Imprisoned.”

“As expected,” acknowledged Nenegin. Prior Qigar’s summons, he requested and reviewed the situation report. Given the projection splayed out in the haloportal in which Aredemos ensnared himself in his ultimately futile attempt to free Kirri, the demigod imagined a great victory. The fool actually thought he could force his way onto the Dira var-sha. The idiot actually thought Cizran technology so antiquated as to use manacles and chains—to lock detainees up within close proximity of expensive infrastructure, as if that wasn’t a lesson learned and a problem solved well before even the Kr’Nalus. Arrogant, myopic, primitive, and uneducated competed in Nenegin’s mind as appropriate descriptors of the would-be god, but ultimately he settled on nuisance. He pitied his subordinates who would have to deal with all the paperwork involved in the fiasco. Still, there were now other, more present, matters to focus his efforts on.

“Now, concerning the transport,” Nenegin segued, “Prepare a boarding party in the event we have to take on guests. See if we can figure out why its propulsion systems were compromised. I’m sure you can—”

Suddenly, a third alert sounded—it was of the highest priority. The entire interior of the ship was bathed in an eerie red light. Relentless, it flickered in with an asynchronous oscillation pattern that focused the mind as much as it disquieted the soul. Horrific, unseen for a hundred years or more, it indicated the inconceivable. It meant war, although such would only be made official in the Ja’Regia.

Qigar, ordinarily a rich brown in color, even after his chastisement, struck Nenegin as rather ashen. No doubt there was some error or a surprise drill from high command. If not, what else could it be? Who or what might be capable of escalating a conflict to the level this alert indicated wasn’t at all clear to Nenegin. Unless … no, he didn’t want to imagine the old stories were true. Whatever the case, he intended to discover the facts of the matter as expediently as possible.

Without waiting for his first officer to recover from his terrified stupor, Nenegin opened a channel to the bridge and demanded, “Verify with central command whether this is or is not a training exercise,” then, to the entire ship, “As of this moment, we are at war. As of yet, we do not know the disposition of our enemy, but all personnel are to immediately head to their posts and ready their stations. Until we receive further orders or information, our priority is to get the freighter operational and escort it to safety.”

While in the process of that, he split his attention to the communication network to directly glean information. This was too urgent for formalities. His access credentials applied, he perused the highest levels of information available. Incrementally and inevitably, his mood soured.

>> Galactic system diagnostic reporting failures in Kilamara, Chandoo, and Ganax’ab.
>> Triangulating unresponsive nodes.
>> Kilamara, Chandoo nodes missing.
>> Perallis node reporting incursion of mega-spacial anomaly—existential risk imminent.
>> Perallis node reporting distress signal from sector fleet.
>> Perallis node reporting sector fleet missing.
>> Network-wide combat systems online.
>> Ganax’ab node unresponsive.
>> Initiating override reboot sequence on node: Ganax’ab.
>> Ganax’ab online.
>> ...


Even for Nenegin, the quantity and content of the information was alarming.

Assuming it was a mere system malfunction that he could briefly peruse, he decided to review the Ganax’ab report first.

Very quickly, he realized just how terribly wrong he was in his assumptions.

Tampered with by Ec-shavar, it was soon abundantly clear why it was, of late, so laconic. Both its combat and surveillance subsystems were locked down by the governor’s authorization codes and only now, overridden by the reboot sequence from high command, did the information collected by the node flow freely throughout the network. It came like a torrent. Much of it Nenegin cared nothing for, such as the assassination attempt and subsequent schemes amongst Ec-shavar, Potan Mul, and Plango.

What concerned him greatly, however, was the wave of metaphysical energy that erupted from the Ganax’ab star like a torrent. The halographic projection of the event showed a massive beast emerging from behind the star, orbiting it with a sinister grace that sent a chill down Nenegin’s spine. He watched the horror feed on Ajana, the local name for their system’s luminous body. It swelled, a bloated terror of a composition he could not even begin to comprehend. Machine, flesh, aether—it hardly mattered as the apparition perversely and ambivalently cascaded through a multitude of physiognomies and self-representations while its voracious consumption caused it to dwarf the burning body it so eagerly consumed.

Quickly, it became clear to him why the Vepsis Dol floated helplessly alongside his vessel.

. . .


So Begins the End


Formed by multiple galaxies, the Cizran Empire sprawled a million light years in diameter. Billions of worlds, habitable and inhabited, orbited in its expanse while trillions more spheres, once barren, were retrofitted as outposts or colonies. More numerous were their ships, manufactured in a cavalcade both ceaseless and efficient at the mineral-hungry shipyards of Zo. Vaster yet in number and reach were the nodes of the grid, each constituent member of its nodular clusters seldom more than an astronomical unit apart.

Whatever fate culminated thus was no accident.

Instead, it was deliberate, evidenced by the undeniable order, efficiency, and communication preserved across the mind-boggling expanse. In the tens of thousands of years of their expansion, they dauntlessly stared down a endless stream of existential threats from within and without, subjugated worlds stronger in magic than Kilamara and more technologically mature than the Aptosites.

Against grim odds and by a deliberate progression of evolutionary cycles, the Cizran Empire prevailed. While still yet broken, they resurged from the cusp of extinction in an alien harvest recollected in the annals of the Kr’Nalus, a tome named for the galactic empire’s collapse first and only. In spite of their splintered collective and the sudden limitations imposed on their magical acumen, they achieved even greater conquests than before. While flawed, decadent, and bogged in bureaucracy, they were equally wise, earnest, introspective, and pragmatic. Experience made them even more adroit. Battle-hardened, they reconquered every lost colony, every civilization and alliance that rose up against them in their moment of weakness; they broke down every barrier and expanded beyond the borders of their galaxy of origin to worlds beyond the void.

One factor in their success was the grid.

While not a formal name, the grid nevertheless elevated Cizran control over their empire to a degree once attributed to only gods. Within the empire’s subjugated galaxies, it was omnipresent, with each world invisibly accompanied by a nodule cluster; likewise, it was omniscient, for it observed all within its territory and proliferated critical information onward to Cizra Su-lahn; and, lastly, omnipotent, for it was augmented with an array of highly lethal instruments designed to counteract all manner of incursions and uprisings, no matter the size, disposition, or spectrum.

Lesser civilizations simply referred to it as Bahá-cizr—the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful Cizran god.

Within nanoseconds of the enemy encroachment, artificial intelligence activated the grid’s combat coordination contingencies. All around the Cradle of Life, the grid’s offensive capabilities were on full display. Even the two nodes within—Kilamara and Chandoo—sought to penetrate the apotheosis’ innards and restore contact with their counterparts. In constant communication, they instantaneously, via quantum interlinks, informed Cizra Su-lahn of every detail.

High energy gamma pulses interspersed with radio bursts destabilized and vaporized the arachnid web throughout the empire—as a result, the Cipher never received the order from Karzar. Simultaneously, along multiple frequencies, from the astral, to the psionic, to the energetic, to the ultramundane and beyond, they probed for and exploited weaknesses in the incoming anomaly’s armor. Within minutes, the nodes estimated an optimal disassembly pattern, self-arranged for geometric efficiency, activated their beams, and diced the Cradle of Life into enormous cubes. Statis fields were projected all along its surface, locking the mind-boggling amount of damage in place so that it couldn’t heal. It was like a dog thrown into a wood chipper, a cat stuffed into a meat grinder, a babe reduced to hunks of gore by the downward press of a razor wire fence—it was astronomically larger.
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Silexies sought to imbibe Aldaraia’s lore for the most hedonist of reasons. To be heralded as a prophet, a messenger of the one “true” way in a time in which Cizran society had become that of galactic idolaters was important to him. Intolerance combined with decades of frustration led him to believe only he could tackle chaos itself. Chaos was to be feared, yet it was seen as natural. It was the author and catalyst which created abominations akin to many of the deities they even worship. In his slumber, nightmares of an unforeseen revelation badgered his soul into taking on a cumbersome load. The result? He was terrified but valiant enough to do what aligned with his beliefs. Such he owed to Cizra. With the chance to control the madness, Silexies wavered not, but Cigány had reasonable doubt.

“Greetings from admiral Nenegin ar-Talil…”

Her pupiless eyes caught sight of the notification and an influx of thoughts around the application of the book brought her mind to a frenzy. Here it was.

She was not privy to the pain it caused, the worlds it ended or even the malignant forces it housed, but somehow she felt uneasy. Mado-Keno took note of her apparent shock and releasing a sigh, he boldly dropped his camouflage, jump-scaring the Hyacinth which caused her to accidentally project the message in the middle of the room. "hmmm, its here he spoke." Her diva nature was curbed, knowing had Mado-Keno never revealed himself, she may have been caught in potentially treasonous actions. Had he been sharp, he might have been able to do his race a great service, but in the end, he was just Mado-Keno, and he never really cared about things of that nature.

“Do not do that, again” she spoke rather calmly in comparisons to her standard tone.

“...”

“Keno, I assume you are briefed on the current transport. I’m merely curious, but in regards to the warrior and Kilimaro, I suspect their battle was so grand it endangered the territory, provoking the need for interference? It would quite the blunder had the admiral let it fall.”

“I dunno, could be. I don’t like to question things.”

“I don’t understand why they’d go through such the effort of extracting a book as well.”

“Silexies likes old books.”

“That he does but, maybe I should analyze it and conduct a report in the meantime, don’t you think?”

“I mean…we have the authority to. Why not? You would have to go to Gaiola D314 to access it legally, however.”
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