[IC] End of a Dreamer

[Skallagrim]

In the deeps of space, in a box made of liquid metal, lay a skeletal being. The box lay in the center of the ravaged husk of a space station. Surrounding the space station a veritable armada of warships, their array of weapons directed at the space station. Far below it, a dark planet twisted and burned spun silently.

Skallagrim stirred, slowly sitting up as the energy dampeners shut down and fell off. Before him, the armored form of an Angar-Ryllan Inquisitor stood silently. Molded armor designed to impress and frighten failed to do so as the skeletal from stood.

“I am Inquisitor Absalom. I am here to judge you, Dreamer. Be aware, your magiks will not work in this place.”

Skallagrim lowered his head a moment as he stared at the man, slightly taller than the Dreamer, and with considerable bulk. Most likely it was the BROOD armored suit that members of the clergy wore.

“Are you sure of that Inquisitor?” The tone ominous as a spark of energy emanated from the fingers of the skeletal being. Slowly the chamber illuminated in the amethyst light.

Startled but persistent, Absalom flipped back the cossack, revealing an ornate mace of considerable heft. “I have my mace Dreamer while I do not possess the raw power you do, I am sure I can lay waste to your mistaken belief of supremacy.”

“Indeed? If that is the case, why do I sense several dozen warships within 10,000 kilometers of our present position?”

Absalom stepped back slightly as he realized that the passive powers of the Dreamer allowed him to determined the number and distances of the warships that safeguarded the Inquisitor.

“Be that as it may. I am here to pass judgment upon you, Dreamer. Today you shall be held accountable for your transgressions against the Imperium of the Angar-Rylla. “

“Yet you leave me with my armor and weapons? Do you think that is wise?”

Clearing his throat Absalom stood debating a moment. This was not going the way it was supposed to. The Dreamer should be trembling in fear, should be begging for his life. He was wearing BROOD armor, his visage should have been terrifying to the Dreamer, yet Absalom felt he was slowly losing control. That he and the fleet outside were nothing more than a nuisance to the creature before him.

Anger cracked in his voice as he launched a wicked backhand, augmented by cybernetic muscles, that knocked Skallagrim to the floor. “You will learn Dreamer, I have power here, not you!”

Skallagrim chuckled as he stood, “Of course you do.”

[MelonHead]

Sometime in the recent past

How is that possible? What an achievement.
Truly the greatest of our Empire, our greatest foe vanquished and imprisoned, at our mercy, the Angar-Rylla will rule the Multiverse.
Why hasn’t this information been dispersed through the ranks? It would lighten heavy hearts considering some of our recent setbacks.
I’m unsure, only sixth level officers and higher have been informed thus far, with strict rules on secrecy, I shouldn’t even be speaking with you about this outside of secured quarters, though I can’t see why.
Well, whatever the reason, it’s satisfying to know the mighty Skallagrim has been defeated, I’d better get back to my duties.
Same, stand strong brother.
You too.

From one dark corner of the sparsely populated bridge, two bright blue lights burned with a hungry ferocity.

They’d refused him, demanded to know how he’d heard, misled him, lied to him. Every answer was different, and ultimately came to nothing. Three days later the weapons research division was attacked, the World Machine V2 had been stolen, when the engineers awoke they reported one of their own had gone berserk and forced them to graft it to his armour. The alert was raised, what many in Angar-Ryllan had feared from day one had transpired, Fury had gone rogue.

Present day

He’d gone unnoticed, though he was no master of stealth with the power at his disposal his shielding techniques allowed him to completely conceal himself from the technology of his past faction. Lying silently within one of the many ventilation shafts within an Angar-Ryllan capitol ship, it had taken him more time and effort than he’d expected, but he’d hitched a ride with one of the few ships designated for guarding Skallagrim. He concentrated, his scarred brow furrowed and light leaking out in the complete darkness. He could sense it, smell it almost, the presence of an entity he hated beyond human comprehension. The being within him, the Void, hungered for its revenge, and its vessel was forced to accept the complexity of a rage so great it had almost broken his mind. He felt the charge up of Angar-Ryllan transportation technology, rudimentary teleportation of a kind, and knew the Inquisitor was making his way to the prison.

He’d be following him soon.

The shaft exploded outwards and Fury fell down into the transportation room, populated heavily with incredibly surprised personnel of numerous species. The Fireen’s energy blast shot shards of burning hot shrapnel in every direction, and loud yelps of pain were already emanating from the stricken. He fell with purpose, clearing the twenty meter drop in a backflip that dropped him securely on his feet, aided of course by some degree of skill with energy manipulation. The engineers were shouting in alarm, some were armed and fired at him, their projectiles bouncing off his shield as he raised a hand, his face contorted with barely suppressed rage. Few stood before him for long, but ran before he found it necessary to end their miserable lives, reaching the console he had sensed the message sent from. He wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, his abilities were indescribable, but somehow he knew that the force which had moved the Inquisitor nearly 10km away to the prison had come from started its life within the console, so he sought it out.

Perhaps a minute later he was forced to step outside and find someone with the expertise to work the machine. Shots fired at him from every direction as security staff ambushed him from each side of the corridor he had stepped out into, but he ignored them with a negligent twist of his hand. The blast split the clustered group, revealing what he had suspected, huddled and confused engineers. He grabbed them in one swift move which saw him cover the distance in less than a second, two of them, holding them suspended by the collar in each of his hands.

“Come with me.”

The hostage situation was reaching fever pitch as he had the engineers work, sealing the door as an afterthought. They finished their work and stared up at him in alarm, and with a moment of foresight he thrust one into the chamber.

“You go first.” He nodded at the second to send him through and the man began to shiver in fear, the first shouted something before he disappeared.

“He’s dead then?” Fury grinned. “Not a bad effort, you’ll be following him unless you send me to that prison, if we end up anywhere different I’ll tear out your spine.”

Needless to say, Fury appeared in the prison only a few moments later, following an engineer suffering from a nervous breakdown. He looked upon the two figures before him with little interest of what had transpired, but rather what was to follow. He cut a fearsome figure in his Antireen Mail, the malformed machine wrapped around him glowing alongside the scars on his face. He bellowed out a challenge on entry.

“Skallagrim, I’ve come for our reckoning!”

[Skallagrim]

“You have been found guilty of crimes against the Empire. You shall be executed by the Prime Executioner in a manner most foul.” Absalom said as he stepped back towards a doorway. The walls around the two hummed slightly with negatively ionized particles.

“May the Empress have mercy on you soul.” The inquisitor said as he stepped out of the room. Skallagrim felt the surge of power, adjusting his vision he began scanning through the EM spectrum until he found what he was looking for. Weaving the galdhr with deft precision, the heavy anti-matter locks holding the cell in place clicked with a resonating sound.

Behind the heavy door, Absalom swore as he punched the toggle to open the door, as expected it did not.

“Lord Inquisitor, it seems that he is trying to disengage the locks.”

“Flood the room with anti-matter, now!”

It was too late, the heavy sealed room detached from the space station. These cages, designed to hold some of the most violent and brutal species in the known universe, was now free of the matter/anti-matter couplings that held it in place. Floating free it bounced gently against the hull of the space station.

“Lord Inquisitor, we are detecting an energy spike. The cage is moving under power towards the planet.”

Smashing his fist into the hull, Absalom cursed softly as he watched the cell begin a powered descent to the planet below.

“All ships fire. Burn the cage and the animal within.”

At that moment, hundreds of particle and energy weapons fired upon the cage. Within the cage, Skallagrim chuckled as he began drawing the high energy bursts into the swirling sphere around himself and the cage, boosting the speed of the cage and allow a greater degree of control to the man inside.

A thunderous boom echoed across the skies as the heavy boxy cage raced along at Mach speeds, lowering every thousand feet a mile until it skimmed the treetops of the world. With a tremendous impact, the cage splashed into a fresh water lake. As the hissing metal cube floated, the various animals that had been around the lake fled, all except the small hominids who stayed in the trees watching. With a sudden loud explosive pop, the roof flew off. Skallagrim clambered out of the cage, standing on the edges, amethyst glowing eyes looking skyward.

[MelonHead]

“He’s not here, fool.” The Inquisitor snarled at Fury’s sudden entrance, the engineer quickly running over to cower by his side. The Fireen’s eyes glowed briefly, the area around him become little more than light of varying hues, before he was satisfied the Inquisitor spoke the truth. He regarded him then, briefly considering how best to approach the warrior, who would almost certainly have heard he had gone rogue.

“Where is he?”

“At this very moment, he is flying his prison cell to the planet surface.” The Inquisitor answered in a distracted manner, hefting his mace and sizing up Fury. “It would take some time to gather a crew together, direct transportation to the surface is unviable in its current condition.” His eyes narrowed as he thought about what he knew of the Fireen. The strange man was known to hold hatred greater than any he had ever known for Skallagrim, but he was unlikely a match for him. By the time a crew could be mustered the Dreamer may have already escaped, or put some other plan in motion. He could have even mustered enough of his power to pose a threat to the fleet, and orbital bombardment would be unrealistic for eliminating a single target. Fury could not be trusted, in fact he should be executed, but perhaps there was a way to eliminate two birds with one stone.

Fury had been pacing the ship in frustration, knowing he was cut off from the technology required to bring himself to the planet, even he would struggle to cross that distance through space, it was a treacherous area after all. Still, he was planning to do just that when the inquisitor raised a hand towards him.

“Fury, I have a proposition for you. We both know you want to destroy Skallagrim, as you may be aware we plan to execute him. You can be teleported to the higher stratosphere and reliably survive the drop, no?” Fury nodded. “Then we will do just that, and in reward for our gracious gesture you will not only eliminate Skallagrim for us, but return the machine and accept exile.”

“Yes.”

“Indeed?” The Inquisitor smiled beneath his helmet. “So be it.” He spoke quickly through comms, and Fury felt the familiar feeling of gathering transportation residue. He could shake himself violently to escape it should he wish, but this was his opportunity to destroy Skallagrim, so long as his aims and the Empires had truly aligned, there was nothing to be feared.

He disappeared; re-appearing high above the surface of a half burned half over-grown T1 civilisation planet. It did not factor into his mind whether his own faction had destroyed those who once called the place home or not, as he plummeted towards the ground. The friction of his descent produced excess heat and provided him with all the energy he needed to create the dense shield necessary for his favoured method of entry to any conflict. One glance below him was all he required to know the engineers had done their job well; he was less than a mile off target.

He hit the ground with a classic rupturing of earth and shattering of nearby ear-drums. His excess energy bored a nasty crater below his feet, while his body was unperturbed by the immense forces which had come together around and within him. He’d landed in a forest, evident by the split trunk and burning leaves either side of his landing point, and the scattering of small creatures before him. Slowly he hovered above the crater, concentrating on the signature of his greatest enemy, feeling the tug of insanity with every breath. It would be difficult to describe the rage that was poured through every fibre of his being by the Void then, as it knew an end was soon to come.

The forest cut off to a lakes edge perhaps half a mile south of his position, which was incidentally where his foe lay. It was time to issue a customary challenge, and this time hopefully his enemy would actually hear it, and know Fury had come.

He roared, and half a mile of forest splintered and burned in response, clearing a path directly to the lakes edge, the beam of iridescent and intense energy cutting out over the waters.

“SKALLAGRIM, WE’LL HAVE AN END TO THINGS YOU AND I!”

[Skallagrim]

By altering the gravitational pull, Skallagrim hovered above the cage. He would use it to form kinetic drives to use as weapons against the ships above him. Using his own energies would have been quicker, but the effects of the dampeners still hindered his power output. Drawing from the electromagnetic lines of the planet he currently stood he would be able to strike back at the Angar-Ryllans above.

Above a shimmering light appeared, a streak racing down at incredible speeds. Tendrils of energy swirled around Skallagrim as he reached out seeking to understand. Was it a weapon? Perhaps a single thermos-nuclear device, perhaps a neutron device a weapon, in theory, that would kill all life and leave a majority of the structures standing. However both weapons were energy, and Dreamers can manipulate and control energy so that made no sense.

The impact wobbled the floating cage beneath him, a tidal ripple that denoted an incredible kinetic exchange not far off. Still tracing the energies Skallagrim paused, there was something familiar, something both ancient and young intertwined. Scanning with rapidity the Dreamer accessed the dark records until he settled on the familiar signatures. One was the Fireen and the other . . . was that of an Ascended.

Suddenly a surge of power as energy cascaded towards him, an impressive outlay that cleared a path between the two. A voice, resolute and echoing filled the air.

“SKALLAGRIM, WE’LL HAVE AN END TO THINGS YOU AND I!”

“So it would seem.” Remarked the Dreamer as he floated a little higher and towards the shoreline. Behind him, the cage malformed, twisting into tightly rolled lances a uniform 3-meters in length. Had the Angar-Ryllan’s devised a plot where this man, what was the name? Fury? Yes, Fury, that was it. That they would use this Fury as a weapon to either kill or distract the Dreamer from striking back at them?

10-meters from shore, the Dreamer stared down the long, wide expanse that separated the two. The energy used to create the pathway was immense, nearly on par with the Dreamers own. This would prove to be a tough fight, not to mention the very opportunistic Angar-Ryllans whose tendencies to strike when they felt it safe must not be discounted.

[MelonHead]

“There you are.”

Fury glimpsed the skeletal figure of his most hated foe hovering conspicuously over the water, and his mind set alight with thoughts of vengeance. Pulsating waves of force sent ripples of debris flying from his position, shards of wood lodging themselves in the surviving trees around him. This mute display of Fury’s power was enough perhaps to hint at his next move, characteristic of the vengeful Fireen, an insane frontal charge.

He burst forward and dropped to the ground, gliding over the devastated forest floor with great bounds and leaps accentuated by his energy manipulation. It was a mix between sprinting and flying that saw him clear the distance in seconds, his arms outstretched and reaching, forming great ropes of energy on either side of him and wrapping around the shards of wood and rock he passed. It was like his passage created some great vacuum that sucked the wreckage up and launched it forward, resulting in a unique phenomenon as he reached the water’s edge.

Before he himself leapt skyward, he threw both arms forward with a loud grunt as if he hefted some heavy object. In a certain sense he had, as he used telekinesis to thrust a great clustered mass of wood and rock in weaponized form directly at his foe across the water. Little of it would pose any danger of actually hitting Skallagrim, though evading it completely would be difficult as it covered a vast area, however to Fury it was little more than a distraction as he followed it, bursting into the air and over the water, his energy sight allowing him to perceive his foe even through the concealing cloud of debris.

[Skallagrim]

The Fireen was moving with amazing rapidity towards the Dreamer. Bounding and gliding as if on some unseen track trailing a mass of debris. Drawing the pulsating dagger, the surge of galdhr flared with an exotic dark beauty as the blade left the sheath. Twisting streams of energy radiating out in whorls.

In a sudden moment of utter beauty, the Fireen was in the air, suspended as a rain drop at the moment of inception before the debris behind raced forward like a rushing freight train. It was an exquisite attack, designed to obfuscate the actual attack, the Fireen behind the debris. Skallagrim allowed the gladhr energies to wrap around himself as he cut his control over the electromagnetic energies that suspended him. The outer edges of the storm reached him as he submerged in the water, sinking down into the darkness of the lake scatter fish away from him as the dagger pulsated, creating a tremendous burst of sonoluminescence.

Tendrils of black energy lanced through the water, latticing the molecules, infusing them with gladhr. Weaving throughout the atomic structure of the water, H2O. Two hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to a single oxygen atom now affected by the dark energies of the aesr, altering the water within the sphere of the dagger, some fifty feet in circumference around it into pure water containing no exogenous ions.

Something large swam ominously past Skallagrim. A veritable monster of teeth and scales, large fins to propel it forward in a slow cursory inspection of the sinking Dreamer. Above the debris field sailed with the fury of a hurricane forward across the lake. Further above them the Angar-Ryllians watched with mild amusement, all the while charging their kinetic impactor, maneuvering in orbit until they were over the lake.

[MelonHead]

“You’ll never escape me.” Fury swore, his ability to see energy making Skallagrim’s every move glaringly obvious even amongst the debris. One could argue the Fireen had been made for this very purpose, so he was at a unique advantage fighting the energy rich Dreamer. He immediately tracked his skeletal enemy’s downwards motion and summarized he was opting to dive down into the water to avoid him. No matter, he had avoided the debris but sacrificed positioning to the Fireen, who could take the high ground.

The wood and rock splattered into the lake below him as he hurtled upwards, drawing power into both hands as he gained altitude, reaching a height of no less than one hundred feet above the lake. His clenched fists glowed brightly as power reached them and was forcibly moulded by his Antireen Control, causing him to clench his muscles to restrain it. Finally as his hands began to pulse he opened them and looked down, two spinning energy crescents emanating from his palms which faced downwards.

He could trace his enemy’s movements unless he took calculated steps to conceal his energy signature, which was significantly above that of his surroundings, though a patch of water had altered in configuration and gained Fury’s notice. He could still perceive Skallagrim through it however, and saw no reason to make a move until he had finished crafting the energy crescents he would use to cut Skallagrim asunder when he surfaced.

[Skallagrim]

Skallagrim turned his attention up. There he was, the Fireen. A gravitational anomaly over the lake. Pulsations of energy from the shield radiated outward, racing away through the pure water, buffering and separating the hydrogen and oxygen molecules into a thin sheen monomolecular lattice work subtling altering its molecular structure, separating the pure water from the lake water. Whilst the extending tendrils of galdhr rippled through the water like spokes of a wheel. Bubbling and foaming with dark energies.

Drawing Keefe from its sheath, the war sword moaned slightly as seidhr flared around the blade, singing the thrumming song of electromagnetic energies. Finally touching down, the sphere of pure water flattened out creating an egg-shaped dome about the Dreamer. His feet kicking up a misting detritus from the lake bottom, Skallagrim set himself in a high guard, with his sword held up and back, the blade shimmering with energies running along the entire length, the tip of the blade dipping slightly.

The pulsating shield held before him, his gaze through the water towards the surface. Extending his senses outward, he began to formulate a plan against not only the Fireen but the Angar-Ryllan who surely would destroy the planet to ensure the Fireen was successful. Galdhr fueled tendrils and a thrumming Seidhr weapon, signature weapons of the Dreamers. Whilst the Fireen had a personal matter to settle with Skallagrim, the Walker between Worlds would make sure that the men in their warships orbiting the planet would perish before he did.

[MelonHead]

Fury glared down at the slowly spreading miasma emanating from the iridescent form of Skallagrim below. It was like a sickness or disease had taken hold of the natural place to his energy sight, such was typical of the destructive nature of his hated enemy. The rage Fury felt deep within bubbled up suddenly, tapping into the malformed machine running through his armour, the World Machine. Briefly, he was in sync with Kanitah’s old weapon, and the discs he was manipulating suddenly pulsed and expanded with new power. His muscles tightened further to prevent the highly condensed force within them from escaping too soon, it was similar to over-pumping a tire except he was the rubber keeping the pent up pressure locked tight.

“Come on then Skallagrim, let’s see if you can still match my power!” He challenged the Dreamer, his body spinning and his right arm dropping downwards forcefully in a chop which launched one of his energy crescents towards the lake. It hurtled through the air with an electrical sound, pulses of blue force sparking from it as it plummeted straight towards Skallagrim in his watery hiding place. The disc impacted the water with a great crash and hiss, vast volumes of liquid becoming immediately displaced and even evaporating as it simply burned a path for itself towards his skeletal enemy. As he had utilized before in an earlier fight with Skallagrim, the disc did not have to impact him directly, Fury would detonate it at its optimum point, provided it had the force to cut through his protective barrier.

If not, Fury would learn, adapt, and take his vengeance.

[Skallagrim]

“Thrum”. And so it begins once again, the dance of life and death. A concentric wave of raw electromagnetic energy raced away from the Dreamer, merging and fusing with the monomolecular structure. The influx of energy strengthened the lattice work. Pulsations of Seidhr echoed through the lake, twisting, entwining and lancing through the dark tendrils of Galdhr that had spread like a spider web across the lake.

The water changed its physical state, becoming a gas as the immense energy slammed home. However where the energy touched the black tendrils, the monomolecular bond, already infused with Galdhr and Seidhr absorbed the energy, channeling it through the vast spider-web that floated a few below the surface of the lake.

The energy circulating through the network released the energy a picosecond after it had absorbed it, a picosecond after the energy traversed it towards the Dreamer further down. The entire lake surface became a huge burst of plasma, releasing upwards in a wide field as nearly two cubic tons of water transformed into plasma in a tremendous release engulfing and setting afire anything directly above it.

While a majority of the plasma would miss the Fireen, the import of the tactic was more subtle. It created a burst of intense energies into the air. The pure water surrounded by the lattice of galdhr felt the impact of Fury’s attack, buckling and rippling as the lattice work sparked and shimmered as it absorbed the brunt of the energy. Some but not all, of the energy, was diffused. That which pierced the dark shell ran into the pure water, which is an excellent insulator, slowing the heat and electrical energies.

The electrical charge that the Fireen seemingly fired at the Dreamer now diffused in the pure water. However, it would not last long. The immense energy that was released would quickly ionize the water creating a conductor for that energy. The heavy ionization would begin to trace a path towards the war sword which acted as a lightning rod, drawing the masses of ions into a swirling mass around it. The Fireen would produce the jumpstart that Skallagrim needed and in short order.

[MelonHead]

Fury had only a moment to be irritated that Skallagrim had caught him off guard with the almost the exact same ability twice, before he decided to survive would be the greatest indicator of his new strength. He launched the disc he still held into the incoming plasma and detonated it while diving backwards through the air with a sudden burst of energy propulsion. The resulting waves emanating from the detonation gave him the burst of speed required to escape the radius of the somewhat stunted plasma blast, coupled with his already credible height above the surface of the water. He sailed clear as his shield began to burn and tear in front of him under the intense heat, a mute reminder of what may have been should have failed to react in time.

There was something good to come from the tower of plasma however, as it increased the background energy the World Machine was able to garner. It was almost like a small star had appeared within its draining radius, which boosted the gathered energy for Fury almost ten-fold. With this in mind he skirted downwards, dropping in height towards the surface where Skallagrim likely lay, probably in an empty lake full of dead aquatic creatures.

As he dropped down his right hand trailed only a few meters from the edge of the receding tower of plasma, as if he were a climber creating friction to slow his descent. However, the proximity was simply a means by which he could snatch the energy for himself in its raw plasma form. He packaged it carefully with telekinetic power, creating a dense parcel of high intensity plasma only a foot wide in the shape of a ball. He dragged it through the tower, almost like a child rolling a snowball across the surface of the snow to increase its size. His teeth gritted all the way, he descended towards Skallagrim, his anger rising.

[Skallagrim]

Far above them, in the ships that fought the eternal struggle against gravity, alarms blared and bleated on the Angar-Ryllan ships. The energy signatures of both Fury’s attack and the response worried those aboard the ships. These were beings who commanded energies on a scale that their ships struggled to generate. And the two below were doing so with disturbing ease.

“Thrum”

The dark energies of the Galdhr glowed slightly with the influx of energies provided by Fury. The lattice mesh surrounding Skallagrim shimmered briefly as it folded in on itself again as a sudden, localized gravitational compression occurred along the mesh. With this fold, the dark energy mesh seemed to vanish as the fold creating a mesh of micron thickness, comprised of a singular chain of an incredibly dense matter.

While the being that descended towards him used mechanical devices to approach the energy control of the Dreamer, Skallagrim merely drew energy unto himself, the energy that would be used to defeat the being known as Fury, and ultimately the fleet of ships above them. Already the induction field encompassed the remnants of the lake, expanding outward in a pulsating circle that warped the natural magnetic and gravitational field of the planet.

Such an energy aberration would be noticed by Fury and those hovering above the planet. Fear crept into the Angar-Ryllans, they knew that the Dreamer was consuming the energy of the planet. Altering it, manipulating it to so that it would serve him. Already the debris of trees and growth created by Fury was starting to heat up, small elements began to burn, began to smolder.

The folded and compressed metal that had once been the cage that imprisoned the Dreamer, had fallen into the mud of the lake bottom. Angry, pointed metal spears. Kinetic impactors that would be used to destroy those who had created it. A dozen, long, thin metal rods comprised of incredibly dense alloys, waited patiently to be utilized by the Dreamer.

The ions that had flooded the pure water sphere swarmed the war sword, racing into the energy that ran along the blade, becoming part of the racing streams. Altering, adding and subtracting from the highly excited particles that engulfed the sword. The thought of a Dreamer energized and continuing to draw energy into themselves like some incredible capacitor, ready to unleash that energy would frighten many. The very thought had subdued entire worlds, had shattered worlds. Had shattered Fury’s world.

[MelonHead]

He’s doing it again, the bastard.

In the short time it took Fury to descend the plasma tower and then subsequently reach the bottom of the lake he had time to observe the, at first, subtle changes overcoming his vicinity. The focus point of the aberrations stemmed from the Skeletal figure whose burning aura was highlighted even in the blinding vicinity of so much residual power. Fury recognised the affects, even if the Angar-Ryllans were still struggling with what it meant, the Dreamer was going to destroy this planet, like Antire. Fury’s home.

As always, the Void tapped into the burning rage contained within its vessel, heightening its control and subsequently its own capacity to manifest its powers by masquerading as Fury’s own anger and desire. It was always a risky business, if the vessel ever discovered the nature of his rage, examining it with a cool head, he may discover he was little more than a pawn. However, thus far he had been unable to resist the Void’s power, and so the entity of destruction within him drove him to its ultimate goal. Destroying Skallagrim, for the Ascended, for vengeance. In this, the Vessel and the Void had a common purpose.

The plasma drained away from the tower as it dissipated, but by that point Fury had acquired a great ball of plasma locked tight with his telekentic power. It was perhaps two feet in diameter, a perfect circle that threatened to burst free from its confines. The plasma was essentially superheated gas, but it would remain in that state for a significant period, long enough in fact to serve Fury’s purpose. His feet hovered only a few feet above the bottom of the dry lake, as energy poured and burst around him under the Dreamer’s control, the Fireen looked upon him with all his rage across a divide of perhaps fifty feet.

“You have given me a weapon to destroy you.” Fury stated simply, raising the contained plasma in front of him his right hand ran through the air and the ball moulded to his will. Slowly it flattened out and rolled, forming a long rectangle in the air that was not dissimilar to a huge blade. Indeed, Fury had fashioned the plasma into something resembling his old sword, a four foot monster of a weapon, save for the handle. His right hand clenched into a fist, he manipulated his plasma blade a few feet above his hand, swiping it through the air with an experimental swing.

“Come then.”

[Skallagrim]

“You have given me a weapon to destroy you.”

Thrum.

Skallagrim erupted with a hiss-filled laughter as his voice scaled along a thousand radio frequencies at once. As he did so, the galdhr monomolecular mesh flickered and condensed tighter and thinner, recoiling back from Fury.

“You have trained him well, this pet of yours. What other tricks does he know?” Skallagrim asked earnestly as he paced a few times, his amethyst gaze never leaving Fury. “Answer me, does he know, Azakanealina’Kaelin. Does he know? Is he aware of the truth?”

Skallagrim stopped pacing and squared up, facing the man known as Fury, the induction fields slowly altering the world around them. Minute. Subtle changes. Perhaps Fury would notice it, perhaps not. Those in the ships far above them did. The world had slowed a full second. The electromagnetic field that protected the world from the harsh cosmic rays, as well as the deadly radiation from the sun, faltered a moment.

“We watched in the shadows, watched as you reached every stage of civilization. Marveled at the sophistication and beauty that enveloped your species. When you ascended we came as friends, welcomed you.”

Raising his warsword, pointing the pulsating, glowing mass of gamma energy, Skallagrim spoke solemnly, “We tried to warn you. Told you that you were not gods. In return, you mocked and decried us as fossils. Ignorant of what we knew you dismissed us as easily as you dismissed your creations.” The ground around Skallagrim roiled with the elastic energy of an earthquake, contained as the energy focused upward into the being who stood in the epicenter.

A moment's pause, as the war sword tapped the ground beneath the Dreamer, a world appeared, followed by another and another until the solar system that contained Antire, the homeworld of the being known as Fury came into existance. “Does he know why we destroyed his world? That billions of people died, only to be housed our dreams, because of your hubris and arrogance?”

Skallagrim cracked his neck slightly, as he did so the monomolecular mesh flickered briefly as energy surged through it again. Tendrils of galdhr dove deep into the earth, boring for the center of the world, seeking the core.

“Why do you want me to destroy the last of your creations? What purpose does it serve?”

[MelonHead]

Fury bristled as his foe spoke to him, though to the man his words had one meaning, to the Dreamer they had another. Skallagrim was worthy of the Ascended’s ire, more specifically the hatred of Kaelin, all which had passed before had led to this. The Void had been destroyed in its infancy, but from the ashes The Fury was born, and it would achieve Kaelin’s ultimate goal, the death of the Dreamer. To Fury, Skallagrim seemed to be speaking with something beyond him, for a moment his thoughts flashed to the Void, a presence he knew only too well. There was something off though, and it unsettled him a moment, causing him to momentarily pause, the plasma writhing in his grip before him as the changes overcame the planet. The Fireen knew a moment of doubt, and the Void raged within him straining to throttle the life from the Dreamer, how it dared fight his vessel with mere words it could not guess.

“What are you talking about? This is between you and me Skallagrim, you took everything from me!” Fury roared out his defiance, his mind re-asserting what it knew above that which it was starting to guess. With this re-affirmation of his belief came with it a strength of purpose that flooded his system, with the only emotion the Void could fully understand. Fury.

There was some form of energy lattice-work between him and his enemy, but it would matter not. As the plasma writhed in its telekentic prison he fed it with stolen power stored within the World Machine, causing it to glow painfully before his eyes. While Skallagrim worked on the macro-scale, Fury’s concentration on the micro could grant him an edge. One he planned to use in that frontal fashion which was characteristic of the Fireen.

He burst forward, energy induced flight driving him towards the mesh as he thrust his right arm forward, the effect of which saw the blade come about in something akin to a long sword lunge. The blade would easily pierce the lattice-work, bringing him to a momentary halt as he observed the effect his attack had upon Skallagrim’s designs. If he broke through, it would only be a matter of moments before he was upon the Dreamer himself.

[Skallagrim]

Thrum. The induction field continued to expand outward, allowing the Dreamer to draw energy into himself, through the rapidly pulsating war sword. A shimmering array of gamma energy held in a narrowly focused array along the length of the sword, creating a shining nimbus glowing with the drastically subdued power from the heart of a star.

The Dreamer watched as the man known as Fury, Mander Rane, thrust his plasma sword into and through the mesh. The plasma sluiced through the material with relative ease since the highly energized gas, held in place pierced it. Threads of the plasma flared and splashed about where it contacted the monomolecular thread. Spirals of plasma raced away where it contacted the near invisible mesh.

Skallagrim stepped back a pace, feet set firmly as the warrior raised up onto the balls of his feet. The galdhr dark shield flailing as if it were a living thing. The sword back and down as the man known as Skallagrim, Walker between Worlds and Destroyer held the sword in low back guard. With the step the singular strand of highly dense monomolecular thread, compressed by immense gravitational forces into a nearly invisible mesh, a single molecule thick made of dark matter and charged with dark energy moved back another few feet from Fury.

“Manadar Rane, if you wish to continue this act of vengeance so be it. However be aware that you are the last of your species.” Skallagrim hissed, nodding towards the man with the plasma sword. “I do not wish to end your species, but I will not suffer the darkness that inhabits your body.”

Deep in the earth, the dark tendrils of galdhr pierced through rock, burrowing ever deeper towards the core, the purpose only knowable to the Dreamer. The electromagnetic inductive field above and the galdhr below. The world would surely suffer once the Dreamer decided to unleash the power cosmic upon the world.

[MelonHead]

The plasma pierced the Dreamer’s designs, energy sparked and flashed in a display of two cataclysmic forces meeting. Fury’s power intensified then, as he sensed the moment of his vengeance at hand great volumes of stolen energy poured into his body from the World Machine. Skallagirm had the gall to insult him then, perhaps at the worst possible moment, as the blade of plasma flashed and spat before him, he looked at the Dreamer.

“Hypocrite!” He roared, and with a pulse he thrust his right hand further forward, his body coming closer to the mesh he forced his impromptu blade forth with telekinetic power. It sheared directly through with ease and hurtled towards Skallagrim, who was backing up at the time. Clearing the gap near instantaneously, the burning blade would pose a threat by merit of the shear intensity of the super-heated gas. More importantly, it would not react like an ordinary blade, existing simply as gas it could not be blocked by mundane means but would simply slip past the majority of defences that most could muster.

His strike was made as such to thrust his burning blade directly through his enemy’s chest, spear-like, and to then release the barrier surrounding the gas to let it burst forth within Skallagrim. However, Fury was more than capable of manipulating the blade how he saw fit, and could threaten Skallagrim in any number of ways depending on how he deemed it wise to defend himself from the Fireen’s projectile.

[Skallagrim]

As Fury pushed his blade through the mesh, the trap sprung to life. The near invisible monomolecular mesh split around the blade’s entry point as the fulcrum that whipped the entirety of the mesh around and down onto the man known as Fury. The monomolecular mesh was, in fact, a superdense net made to capture the man who had come seeking vengeance.

The plasma sword, superheated gas, employed by the Furian was not a threat, not to someone who commanded the full scope of the electromagnetic spectrum. While the plasma sword would be under the command of Fury, he would be fighting the strength of the electromagnetic spectrum which would present a vast bow shock effect to continually deflect the blows of the telekinetic power of the man wielding the sword. The induction field, which was now humming with great effect would provide the magnetic field the power to help sluice the blade away from the Dreamer.

That was the mistake the Fury had made, he knew, understood that the Dreamer controlled the electromagnetic spectrum easily. The very spectrum that would allow him to manipulate and control the plasma as easily as the Furian, perhaps more so. The magnetic field would now affect the plasma much the same as the magnetic field of the planet they stood upon shunted away deadly plasma from the sun that flared above them. The magnetic field resonated such power that the ships above began to shake as the planet’s very magnetic field began to center on the two combatants. The deep galdhr tentacles now latched themselves to the deep rock below the mantle of the planet. Holding fast to the pulsating dark shield the tentacles would provide a stable basis for the Dreamer once the full implementation of his plans took effect. For now, the highly ionized gas would become a miniature battlefield as the power of the Dreamer over the fundamental forces of the universe faced the amplified powers of the Furian. It was enough to cause the Dreamer to step backward as the immense heat of the gasses fused links of mail.

However, the matter of the mesh netting would become problematic for the man known as Fury. A nearly invisible single molecule of highly dense matter stretched out in a fine mesh would attempt to envelop the man much as a net envelopes fish or game. The net would whip around and over with incredible speed. Once the net began to settle the true nature of the trap would become evident as the dense, dark matter, would begin to collapse on the Furian. The weight, incredible, made of dark matter compressed made the mesh heavy. Incredibly heavy. What is worse is that the weight coupled with the thin, dense structure would provide a nasty, cutting surface as the weight of the molecule-thin net, affected by the magnetic field created by the Dreamer pressed downward.

The Furian was incredibly strong, but would his strength equate the weight that now pressed on him? The entire mesh net, crumpled together would roughly fill a large ladle. But the weight was enormous. Nearly a billion tons, the weight of a mountain range would weight the ends of the net, controlled by the Dreamer the full weight was limited to anchor points to hold the Furian in place. However once released the net would crush the Furian beneath it in a matter of seconds.

“I have no wish to kill you Mandar Rane. If I release my control of this net the full weight of mountains will descend upon you. I have no quarrel with you, you are simply a tool used to strike at the Dreamers. As such I implore you to stop this course of actions and seek the true source of your hatred.”

[MelonHead]

If Skallagrim had one weakness the Fireen could exploit, it was his overconfidence bordering on arrogance. Not for a moment had he doubted in his ability to stop Fury’s projectile dead, and had in fact taken not a single evasive manoeuvre, which Fury had counted on. Skallagrim was not a physical being in the same way Fury was, the Fireen still remembered the vulnerabilities of the flesh and with it the caution that would have significantly altered his response to the plasma blade. Skallagrim however had been separated from anything resembling mortality for so long he did not react as a Fireen or indeed a Human would. The moment Fury felt the resistance of his opponent’s abilities acting on the blade he revealed his trap, like the first strike launched in their battle the Fireen once more had concealed the real threat behind his attack.

The telekinetic aura surrounding the plasma blade sheared away, first from the end still pointed towards Fury, allowing the gas to escape with explosive force. The ensuing burst of momentum saw the remaining plasma, dissipating rapidly as the telekinetic field broke down, hurtling towards Skallagrim anew with many times the force Fury himself could have provided. However, as the last of the plasma dissipated a glowing spear remained, one of the Fireen’s signature attacks, hidden within the blade and propelled by the sudden departure of superheated gas. The energy spear was an ability distinctly Fury’s own, and Skallagrim had no power over it, his chosen defence would fail. It followed its original path, Skallagrim’s only evasive action being a single step backwards, which to the spears new and terrifying speed would offer only milliseconds extra respite before it pierced the skeletal figure of his hated enemy.

Meanwhile, Fury utilized the energy he had drawn into his body to combat the mesh, his energy laced sight offering him some insight into its capabilities before it had unleashed itself upon him he was at least somewhat prepared. Relying in truth upon Skallagrim soon being pierced by his spear, or failing that momentarily distracted, he used the stolen energy in his typical fashion, drawing it into his hands to bolster the shielding there. With a burst of sudden speed he pushed forward, reaching both hands into the hole in the mesh he himself had created with the blade and forcing his departure on the point where the mesh was weakest. All the while the threat of the net and instant death loomed over him, time slowed as the Fireen fought to reach his hated foe, the glowing spear hurtled towards its target, and the Dreamer’s designs made their presence known.