[quote=@Gattsu]With a brief keystroke, the Nool Al-Pas released a chain of experimental projects which rocketed from their salvos and, once clearing shields, engaged in their short-range superluminal jump.  These missiles rephased about half an AU from the far-flung celestial body, where they would collide with the planetoid once corporeal again. The algorithms that determined each missile function relayed between a complex network.  Some of the missiles burrowed deep into the planetoids molten core, while others propelled the celestial body even faster, reengaging the planetoid into FTL travel.  

Many light years away, Deimobos phased back into existence with a brilliant flash and a flicker as gravitrons shifted about its large frame. A halo of light backlit the planetoid like an ominous eclipse, as the phase rockets engaged their secondary boosters.  The celestial body careened as it conserved its immense momentum, before crashing into the stomach-wall of the Cradle of Life.  The initial impact nearly shattered the moon’s thick crust, but what followed the impressive collision would be observable to any entity within the solar-system swallowing creature’s gut.

Every warhead simultaneously detonated.  The light of its doom would create one of the firstborn stars within the Cradle’s monster-made universe.[/quote]

A sonorous roar reverberated through the Nool al-Pas as it began its onslaught against the innards of the beast that had swallowed part of the Dira var-Sha's accompanying fleet. Left to operate without their flagship's command, each Cizran warship added their own distinct style to the destruction. The experimental salvo was but one harmony in a symphony. 

In conjunction with the cannonade, a viscous ferrofluid began to seep through apertures in the Nool al-Pas' hull. Its source was an enormous silo with channels passing through the ship leading to its exterior. As the effervescing effluvia drained into tributaries, a thrashing silhouette was revealed. Vaguely insectoid in nature, it thrashed atramentous appendages with great anticipation. It had been centuries since its last awakening; too few engagements called for use of the Voshd'gatr. A prime example of Cizran hubris, what had once been a niche species was now a blunt object with which to castigate any affront to Cizran authority. 

The Voshd began to emit a low buzz from its labellum as spindly setae took form; each ending in thousands of bristles that ran through to join its viscid offal on the warship's hull. As its hum grew into a shrill whine, innumerable shards of beryllium sprouted from each aperture before being engulfed in thick globules that began to slough off the Nool al-Pas. Their descent was cut short as a wave shuddered through the ferrofluid, its hue shifting from pitch black to lustrous argent. The Gatr, a swarm of whorling beads, now surrounded the Nool al-Pas as the lunar projectile pierced the Cradle of Life's serous membrane; nuclear splendor reflected in the trillion ommatidia of the Voshd's compound eyes. 

***

[quote=@Circ]“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.[/quote]

Flitting through the detritus of the destroyed Apostite ship, the Voshd'gatr began a campaign of annihilation against all signs of life. The highly unstable nature of the Gatr's beryllium cores had  immediately begun to react with the Voshd's ferrofluidic excrement and by the time terminal velocity had been achieved, each pearl had become a thermonuclear missile that erupted indiscriminately. 

[quote=@Circ]With a gesture, she ripped the Aptosite ship in twain from bow to stern. The groundwork was already in place from the explosive cocktail of nanites, chemicals, biologics, and femto-responsive quasi-mineral-organics—all of which burrowed into the enemy vessel’s hull as soon as the curtain was drawn back on their masquerade as Nenegin zar-Taliļ, Aredemos, and Kirri. Soon thereafter, the infection proliferated throughout the extent of the ship and its complement.

Unfamiliar as she was with their anatomy, Ezkshi did know few things fared well without atmosphere and she imagined the ruptured vessel would suffer a multitude of casualties.

Even so, she was not finished with her work; in fact, as far as konul manipulation went, she wasn’t even started.

Again, her consciousness expanded. She saw the whole of the strange being that interjected itself into the domain of the Empire. It swam in what was open space. Was, until she shaped her vision, and the whole fell into a box—one inundated with flashing MASERs, bursting LADAR, fulminating fusion reactions, would-be Cradles of Life, and genuflecting magicarp. The box compressed, like the interior of a trash compactor, shank, and cramped what was in it. The vision wasn’t hers alone, but it manifested in reality beyond her mind. What she did in this moment, her manipulation of the konul’s harvested potential, affected reality. 

The box shrank into a nothing, and then was no longer in or part of the Su-laria galaxy. It had, instead, been all pushed into a microscopic dimension. 

It was … inner space.

The cell she balanced on a talon contained the wreckage of Kilamara and Diemobos, the Cradle of Life and its pillaged worlds, and the Aptosite invaders. She had been careful to mortar the gaps precisely so as to plot an escape for her fleet and the nodes of the grid.

With a disgusted gesture, she flung it away; it skipped like a pebble across the trillions of light years of distance that separated the Empire from the slums of the verse.[/quote]

The Aptosite flagship had been atomized in nuclear fury. Millions of Gatr began to pour out of the massive puncture in the Cradle of Life before erupting in a resplendent column of decimation. One that would continue to burn long after all traces of the petulant usurpers had been lost to the annals of Cizran antiquity.