V Subversion of a Savage Cohort (Unmaking Quest - Only Room for One Horde on this Planet)

[King Ghidorah]

On the few occasions when I have not elected to form a cosmic cocoon while traveling through the interstellar void, I have always been struck by the timelessness of it. In the astral desert between the stars, adrift in the glare of suns light-years distant, pinpricks against the fabric of the night and yet so tightly clustered that the dark is nearly overwhelmed, the arc of the universe is unmarred by accretions of matter, a nigh-flawless medium harkening back to the earliest days of existence.

This is not a good thing. It is devastatingly boring – and without reference or respite the sense of time can bend and stretch in unforeseen ways, centuries like seconds, minutes like millennia.

I am having a similar experience right now.

I do not know how long I have been wandering through these caves.

I have left the site of my victory against Darkseid’s minions far behind, a vast bejeweled cavern, once a site of productive and purposeful industry before the arrival of the parademons, now a waste-heap of blasted corpses and twisted metal, riven by golden lightning and wrent by my unyielding strength.

Through tunnels and warrens I have descended ever further into the depths of Inverxe; I have passed through vast hollows filled with steam, water thundering down from far above only to evaporate in the face of the furnace- glow of a sea of magma, the radiance lighting the dense fog in sinister ruby tones. I have navigated, by dint of my cosmic perceptions alone, mazes of perfectly smooth crystal facets, my own golden countenance leering back at me from ten million mirrored surfaces, my path lit only by the sparking amber light of the power dancing across my fingertips and the still far-distant sense of something great and terrible and lacking in merit or meaning; I have waded an ocean of molten rock, navigated the ancient and crumbling avenues of a ruined and deserted subterranean metropolis, and broken a strange little robed figure who attempted to challenge me with trivia across my knee before hurling the wailing creature into a chasm beneath the rickety rope bridge upon which I found it.

And through all of this, at every turn, there has been battle. Giant insects (though far from the largest I have ever had to fight). More of the vicious obsidian hunters and purple-skinned psychics. Golems of living lava, misshapen mutants shambling from the shadows, misplaced vegetation – grasping vines and jagged trunks, and, most notably, within the aforementioned labyrinth of polished crystal, a small army composed entirely of my own silent reflection, given life and paper-thin presence by the sheer force of the arbiter’s rage.

It has been nothing short of monotonous. With the exception of the little man on the bridge, not one of these creatures has been free of Darkseid’s taint, not one of these victories has provided the least sense of satisfaction, illumination, or even sport. Everything since the parademons has been a chore, and it goes on, and on and on. A novel experience has dawned upon me, and it is one I despise - I am beginning to feel... weary.

Even worse, an appalling notion has begun to nibble mockingly at my attention: I may have undertaken a task for which I am not yet wholly prepared. Until my cosmic senses recover further, until I am able to apprehend more clearly what is around me and where I am going, I may not actually have the tools to navigate effectively within the depths of this planet without help. Further, if I do manage to reach the locus of this vile corruption, I may not be powerful enough to fight it within the very core of its strength.

I recoil from the idea as though from particularly foul odor, but in spite of the revulsion such an offensive set of notions inspires it is a conclusion I cannot entirely escape.

Effulgent, embattled and increasingly angry, I wend deeper and deeper into the dark.

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[King Ghidorah]

Relief, when it comes, arrives as a distant cacophony, the hew and cry of savage melee; sibilant hisses and piercing screams, bestial roars and ululating chants punctuated by the staccato bark and clatter of primitive firearms and the full-throated rumbling buzz of motors under strain. It echoes up from the caverns and tunnels, a sensation felt as much as heard, vibrating up through the soles of my talons from within the very stones.

I open my serrated jaws and scream golden glory and electric death into the face of the shambling horror with which I am currently engaged: a tarry behemoth of mummified arms and fleshless skulls held together by layers of inky black emulsion. With a bubbling sigh and a hydrocarbon reek the beast ceases to claw at my unyielding form as its body flares, burns, comes apart in my hands. Its bones clatter, smoking to the floor, and I spare a moment to check my surroundings before turning my ravenous attention to the far-off sounds of battle. The long-empty lava-duct in which I stand is empty and silent save for broken stalagmites, the scattered remains of my most recent unmade foes, and the freeze-dried corpse of some hapless decades-dead hominid, slumped against a wall.

I crouch, and I place my shining hand upon the clammy damp of the ancient floor, feeling the vibration. The din rises, now joined by the bass hum of a high-energy discharge.

Now that I am looking, I can sense it: a far-off reflection in the subspace glare of my astral furnace: lives, bright and savage, some greater in scope, but all eerily in-synch. They taste of caste and hegemony, but it is a flavor with depth. There are notes of mammal and insect, pack and tribe, loyalty and hive burning bright - and surrounded by a heaving sea of unmade mediocrity.

They are also directly below me.

I stand, and pace in a tight circle, my tongue tracing the inside edges of my mighty saurian teeth.

This presents me with a dilemma – these creatures, whatever they might be, are fascinating – and I have not even laid eyes upon them yet. I have no doubt that destroying them utterly would serve well to cleanse my pallet of the dregs of the unmaking which have so thoroughly offended my need for nihilistic illumination. However… as much as it enrages me, as cosmically offensive as it might be, I am direly in need of directions, still a mere flicker of a shadow of my true self, and determined to best a foe who commands the resources of a planet.

I have long considered anything more than the most simple of strategy to be a last resort, satisfying after a fashion, but beneath my dignity – a tool for those without the power to prosecute their will upon the cosmos. Humiliatingly, that currently includes me – so I am not certain I can afford to pass up the opportunity to ingratiate myself with potential allies. I can, of course, always betray them later – and betrayal is a luxury in which I have rarely had the opportunity to indulge.

Somehow, they always see it coming. I’m sure I can’t imagine why.

I grit my teeth and call upon the blazing depths of my astral furnace, drawing forth the dregs of a strength which belongs to a far grander form than this tiny prison in which I am forced to walk. As arcs of astral charge race across my shining scales and I bring my foot down with the force of a titan, practically liquifying the stone beneath my feet and sending me abruptly into free-fall as the floor turns to gravel in a blaze of golden energy, I consider that I truly do not know how I am going to proceed in the moment. I do not know whether the short-term needs of my aesthetic yen or the grander service of rebuking this cosmic corruption will win out.

I tumble through the crumbling roof of an underground valley, see the flicker and flash of weapons-fire below, through layers of mist and clouds of burning green gas, and I know that I am about to discover the answer.

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Ghidorah used a point of focus to make an entrance

 

[King Ghidorah]

A comet of bronze, shining beneath the earth, I make landfall; the impact drives me into a deep crouch as stone fractures, cracks in the bedrock radiating out from my talons. The sound is lost amidst the rumble of falling rubble, boulders and gravel and everything in between cascading down from whence I have come, very nearly a match for the ongoing roar of combat.

The air in this chamber, a long v-shaped cavern fit for my lost titanic glory to lie down in, reeks of sulphur. It is thick and hot, choked with steam and gunsmoke and unknown gasses which rise in plumes of emerald flame from volcanic vents in the floor. The majority of the valley is overrun with the dregs of the unmaking. Hominids of every size and shape, short and tall, frail and robust, leaking black tarry fluid from their eyes and grinning thickets of razors and matchwood crawl over every surface; they leap like insects, advance with tactical precision - or, in some cases, shamble vacantly amidst the greater horrors. Segmented chitinous beasts, armoured bugs a good ten meters long, possessing dozens of scuttling legs and such mass that I might once have considered them worthy meals wend between boulders and stalagmites, commanding the valley walls, their underbellies aglow with inner fires and their bladed mandibles dripping with venom. Verdant flora crawls inexorably forward, a sunless forest growing moment-to-moment as trees mature explosively and root systems spread, choking off the emerald fires – and grappling anything truly living that approaches within their reach.

The remainder of the valley is commanded by a legion of… creatures. They are robust and they are grey, possessing rugged, scaly hide and powerful frames, very nearly equal to my own diminished form. Their teeth are sharp and their eyes are black as the void. Their weapons are primitive, but bold – overbuilt rifles equipped with motorized blades, multi-barrelled chain-guns, grenade launchers, flame-throwers, black powder and explosions, flames and impact. Some, the officers I think, are heavily armoured in ornate powered suits of crimson plate, whereas others, the more brutish, wear more rudimentary protection, leaving their arms bare. The most lightly armed are protected by only chestplates and bracers augmented with tactical rigging, though I imagine their scales, while obviously not the equal of my own, also offer some defensive benefit. They have established a defensive fortification against the unmade tide using rubble and some manner of modular barricades. Several fixed gun emplacements lie in smoking ruins. To my astral perceptions there is something of the insect about them as well as something of the simian, a mishmash of familiar and unfamiliar, infused with a nebulous quality that is ruggedly chemical.

It is their leader, however, that catches my eye.

She is clad in ornate, form-hugging armour, emphasizing secondary sexual characteristics: spikes and curves in crimson and black with a heavy mantle protecting her collarbone and throat, overbuilt gauntlets which put me in mind of my own grasping claws, and a helmet that is almost reminiscent of the heads of the deadly obsidian hunters I have encountered elsewhere upon this benighted moon, sweeping back to a flared crest.

At a glance, I do not believe she is the same species as the others – but she is definitely in command. She hovers above, astride a gilded saddle, mounted upon the back of a giant armoured insect, smaller than the scuttling unmade juggernauts, but equally vicious - a rugged beast covered in chitinous protrusions and outfitted with golden armor, its forelimbs ending in mighty pincers decorated by shining metal gauntlets and its multifaceted eyes, protected by bronze cages, practically shining with fractal malice. Its wings carry her wherever she needs to be, buzzing like a runaway electrical arc as she bellows orders from on high. Its bladed jaws part, and a thundering stream of orange-white plasma sweeps across the battlefield setting everything it strikes aflame.

These monstrous soldiers are impressive, as such creatures go – disciplined, committed, facing insurmountable odds in one of the tightest defensive tactical formations I think I have seen, and I have seen thousands. They are also losing, retreating further and further up the valley. The rubble of several previous defensive positions and the bodies of many dozens of their fallen are even now being overgrown, fodder for the Arbiter’s latest hollow garden.

I have dropped directly into the middle of the chaos. Everything is lit in shades of ghastly green, the flash of gunfire and belch of flames.

My arrival does not slow the pace of the conflict at hand, and I have no time to be offended by the lack of respect, the lack of fear this implies. It is the only time I have ever dropped from high upon a battlefield and not immediately been the focus of all participants. Even as I absorb my surroundings, I am immediately sucked into the fight.

It does not take long for all present to realize their error.

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[King Ghidorah]

Plasma-fire splashes like rain upon the aurelian expanse of my peerless chest, hot enough to burn, to leave a blackened residue upon my shining scales, but not so much that I am concerned. I recognize this energy, this weapon, and my lip curls back in a savage snarl: there are parademons using the rapidly-enroaching forest for cover. Power crackles in the palm of my hand, and I unleash a blast of vivid saffron lightning, raking a sustained arc across the valley. Boulders crack and shatter and plumes of subterranean gas ignite; unmade hominids are blasted to flinders, tree-trunks scorch and splinter, blazing as they burst… but it amounts to barely a ripple amidst the storm-wracked sea of rising violence.

A series of explosions, not of my doing, rips across the advancing treeline; A lance of energy from on high sweeps across the battlefield, carving a burning trench in the stone, slowing the progress of the encroaching unmade flora, bisecting one of the great chitinous behemoths and turning a troupe of empty vessels in mining gear to dust.

I am struck once more, little red-orange comets of superheated matter bursting against me, forcing a backstep. I dig my talons into the stone, granite ground to gravel beneath my feet as bullets shriek all around me, clatter off my impenetrable back, itchy little staccato hammer-blows.

If I am to affect the outcome of this conflict, it will require a more forceful application of my power.

First, however, there are distractions to be dealt with.

A figure wearing some manner of respirator, heavy boots and a baggy survival-suit, leads a charge across the field from the unmade lines, sleek black rifle in hand, the semi-circular sign of Darkseid painted upon his face. He is followed by similarly dressed figures armed with random debris; heedless of their own safety, they are cut down in droves, but they serve their purpose, drawing fire away from the more dangerous combatants – including my own.

Twin blasts of astral charge erupt from my hands, sweep across the onrushing horde, a chaotic leaping synapse of cosmic carnage, scorching the flesh from their sundered bones.

At which point I am snatched up by a pair of mandibles half the length of my legs and lifted bodily into the air.

The giant armoured bugs have taken the opportunity to advance, flowing across the field with shocking speed. Their manifold spines bristle, and they spit great gouts of black bile and orange flame.

One of them has me in its grasp. I can feel the great chitin scythes digging into my waist, scoring and buckling my golden scales in an attempt to scissor my body in twain. I flex my midsection as electrum ichor begins to flow; the beast stares at me, oddly silent, through compound eyes like crystalline boulders, and within their many facets I see the manifold reflection of my own rage.

I scream, a thunderous cackle of anger and yearning denied: I can not enjoy this battle. These empty shells are an affront to all I hold dear, and they must be destroyed, but the task is mere labour. I have the answer to my question now, and though I find some pride in my self-control, it is overshadowed by my disgust that allying myself with the dogged defenders of this underground pit is at all necessary.

When all is said and done, I will revel in the destruction of the pawns which foul providence has demanded.

I plunge my arm to the elbow, claws first, into my segmented tormentors eye, eliciting a burst of tarry black fluid and burning orange ichor, smoking and sizzling where it touches my scales. In a blaze of cosmic energy I express my displeasure.

The creature is lit from within, a burst of yellow-white light shining from between the plates of its armour. Electric arcs discharge from its spines and a gout of flame bursts from its ruptured underbelly, spilling sizzling viscera across the ravaged stone.

Its grip upon my waist slackens. The creature shudders, jerks, and finally slumps to the ground, held partially erect by its own rigid exoskeleton as foul-smelling smoke escapes from within its carapace.

The creeping advance of the unmade garden is almost upon me. The crux of the fight has, in the brief moments I was restrained, shifted several meters beyond my position. I have a moment, perhaps two, before the parademons lurking in the trees and the arbiter’s grasping vines make me the focus of their attention.

I bring my fist down upon one of my fallen attacker’s slackened mouthparts, and the chitinous blade cracks apart, dropping me to the ground. I do not slip or slide as my talons contact the gore-slick bedrock once more; I sink into a crouch. With my hands held level, facing one another before my eyes, I focus my power.

My astral well rises easier, now, the depths of my lost strength not so distant as they once were. A spark crackles, equidistant between my palms, races a circuit across my clawed fingertips, catches and flares: a storm, lightning arcing back and forth between my hands with rapidly rising intensity, a crackle, a rumble, a roar, and finally a warbling scream as I spread my arms wide. The energy, solar bright, barely tamed, possessing a golden gravity all its own, whip-cracks all around me, carving patterns in the stone as its nexus settles in the coiled fist of my good right hand.

I leap, body bending, back arching, a glorious musical cackle rising in the back of my throat at the apex of my arc. Plasma and bullets shatter and splash off my hide as I soar – and for just a moment I am lost in the sheer exultant joy of my strength.

I make a three-point landing: The sound is so loud, it is practically a silence.

My fist descends upon the earth at a forward angle, blasting a fan-shaped crater into the ground, impact and energy rippling out and onward, racing down the valley in a golden tsunami of raw force and solar disdain. Stone buckles and root-systems tear as the golden shockwave advances; Astral charge arcs and crawls, the stark blaze of a newborn star flowing in an electric web, born forward like a net pulled along in the wake of a great and terrible tide. Trees are knocked askew, cracked and smoking, leaning drunkenly as the electric hunger of my power washes over them, charred to the root; Parademons, humanoids and other unmade beasts jerk and scream, scorched, crippled, thrown from their feet. Some turned to ash, others merely stunned.

The creak, rumble and hiss of advancing vegetation ceases as the hungry garden begins to burn.

I rise, turning to face the barricades. The fight has, momentarily, paused: all eyes, living and unmade, are on me – the proper order of the universe asserting itself at last.

The commander of the brutish defenders hovers above upon her insectoid steed, glaring at me with equal parts calculation and deep concern. There is a very strange moment where I am put in mind of a lepidopteran titan, a second of suspended time laden with a sense of mutual menace. Then gunfire roars and explosions burst as the defenders surge forward, seizing the initiative, and the spell is broken. From somewhere among the grey-skinned brutes an arhythmic chanting arises as the momentum of the battle shifts – perhaps decisively.

A wounded parademon bursts from the scorched and shattered treeline, wings buzzing as it vaults over the jagged and riven stone teeth which have sprung up in the wake of my attack and shatters a spear against my back; two more of them follow in rapid succession, pulling me to the ground..

I snarl my disgust and sink my teeth into one of their necks, feel black armour and pallid flesh buckle beneath my jaws; its blood tastes like sewage and ash.

It seems this farce is not yet finished.

3493 words /10000
Ghidorah used 1 point of focus to punch a bunch of trees, all at once

 

[King Ghidorah]

Golden lightning blazes within my throat, and I can feel my latest victim’s neck crumble to charcoal between my teeth. I place one of my hands flat against the chest of another struggling to restrain me, and in an eruption of cosmic energy I boil the parademon’s insides, a searing arc piercing its body and felling a drunkenly teetering tree with a burst of ash and splinters. The third does not posses the strength to hold me prone on its lonesome, and as I rise to my feet I heave it aside with a savage snarl – only to be immediately driven back, grappling with a scorched and half-crippled brute which crashes from the burning woods and through the jagged rocks unimpeded– one of the defenders of whom I hope to make pawns, but taller, broader, more feral, and with the black blight of the unmaking leaking from its hollow eyes, dripping from the forest of bony needles between its jaws.

It is incredibly strong – stronger even than I. After a moment of jockeying for a grip it takes hold of my wrists, and I instantly feel the pressure. I kick it squarely in the midsection with all the power I can muster, failing to break its hold, but earning a moment to catch my balance. The brute attempts to drive me to the ground for a finishing blow - so I open my jaws and unleash a continuous arc of brilliantly sparking cosmic discharge. Its chest glows beneath the astral onslaught, first gold, then red – then gives way to the inevitable, its back blowing outward in a storm of arcing electric tendrils and a shower of blackened, steaming gore.

A droning buzz fills the choked and sulphurous air, an awful dissonance at odds with the deeper thrumming of the armoured beetle which serves the Queen (and a queen I think she must be, as empty a title as it is for so limited a creature - there is an element undeniably regal in her bearing, a confidence and presence that I know only too well) as steed and aerial artillery. Haltingly, with difficulty, wounded parademons are taking to the air, fleeing the rising flames.

Behind me, the thunder of gunfire and explosions draws closer, growing more measured, less frantic. My astral perceptions paint me a picture: lives wild and bright, working in elegant concert as they push forward; if their deployment was not so obviously martial, there could almost be something tribal about it.

There is the suggestion of a richness of culture here, in these strange subterranean warriors, that I would dearly love to know more about before their usefulness expires and they, finally, inevitably, must burn. Sadly, lacking both time and the full measure of my telepathic faculties, those depths shall have to remain unplumbed for the present moment.

Twilight comet-trails blaze around me as the parademons level their plasma-rifles and open fire from on high, their scorched and battered forms increasingly obscured by the denser smoke which is beginning to billow upward, rising towards the chimney created by my dynamic arrival to the fray.

I cackle, a warbling cry of challenge and derision, and I return fire with both hands, filling the air with branching fractals of amber lightning.

I do not stop. My barrage clips the tops from the blazing trees, traces blackened, blasted canals upon the walls of the cavern, lights the sulphurous mists and the sheets of smoke from within in shades of orange and gold. I do not know how many of them I kill – it does not matter, in truth, for they can hardly be said to be living to begin with – but though the exigencies of the situation deny me my greatest insights and fondest pleasures, I may still revel in spectacle of my power unleashed.

Eventually, sustaining such output begins to feel taxing, and nothing seems to be shooting back any longer, so I stop. Save for the occasional gunshot, the loudest sounds now are the crackle of flames, and the howl of rising air escaping into the cavern-system above. The fighting, for the most part, seems to have come to an end.

I can sense the Queen. She is standing directly behind me – not four meters distant, flanked by her steed and ranks of her surviving troops. I imagine that I am likely the focus of a great many weapons, gripped fast in nervous hands.

Were I but ten-thousand times larger, it would almost be nostalgic.

I take a moment to watch the flames, to feel the heat reflecting off my scales, and to consider.

I do so dearly want to kill them all. They are so vivid, and I have been so dreadfully deprived of any comparable fodder for my muse. In truth, in spite of the… strategic… considerations, I would probably try – but they are prepared, and the Queen’s mount concerns me, as does some of the heavier ordinance which has been deployed in this place. I cannot help but note that although I only slew one of the great scuttling bugs, with their chitinous armour and fiery innards, the rest now lie dead as well.

I could draw upon my astral well to bolster this feeble form, as I did when I first encountered the parademons – but such an action requires focus, and a spare moment, neither of which I am sure I would be allowed.

Lightly, I touch my side, already healed, where the beast’s mandible cut my usually-impenetrable flesh.

Hrm.


A voice rings out, dripping with pride, confident and dismissive.

“Speak, creature! Where did you come from? What business have you here? And why should we not kill you where you stand?”

I have never been addressed in a such a way before, with such disdain– even the crystal chaos addressed me with some respect, on the one occasion it deigned to communicate. Not even Gigan was so foolish, and that creature was truly mad.

The sheer novelty is the only thing that prevents me from exacting immediate reprisal. I am, in a word, shocked.

Slowly, I turn, regarding the Queen through a crimson eye that is literally twitching with barely restrained rage.

“I am King Ghidorah. My origins are beyond your comprehension. As to my business…”

I study her. She truly appears to be a different sort of creature from her soldiers, a greater proportion of mammal in her makeup. Her armour, with its heavy mantle and chitinous protrusions, suggests a commonality of origin that may not, in fact, exist. Still, she stands regally upon the upturned face of a shattered boulder, her bestial soldiers and hulking mount at her side, looking down upon me with all the arrogance of a ruler who doesn’t know any better.

“Against my nature, my preference, and my remaining dignity, I would …. “

It truly is a revolting idea, and I am hard-pressed to articulate it. My lip curls back, unbidden, exposing a single fang.

“…. Enlist… your aid. Such as it is.”

4668/10000 words

 

[King Ghidorah]

The invitation hangs in the air. The moment stretches, a silence filled by the heaving breath, guttural whispers and casual motion of bestial warriors, the hiss of volcanic vents and the staccato roar of crackling flames.

I see the haughty flare of her nostrils, the twitch of surprise upon her brow – and I cannot stand it anymore. It is plain that this little queen does not appreciate my magnanimity, does not understand the unprecedented nature of this gesture. The force of my will, of my reason, set against the anger roaring within me, the affront, the sheer humiliation, reaches a fever pitch.

I cannot resolve this conflict within a single mind. Something must give – and with an audible snap, the metallic echo of a breaking chain , something does.

Deep inside myself, within the liminal spaces of my astral wellspring, something ignites, surges, smashing through barriers and shattering locks. My perspective shifts, and I abruptly understand that the gradual return of my powers has not been a matter of feeding an nigh-extinguished flame, but of widening a collapsed and warded aperture.

I have not been stuck in this miniature body because I am weakened: I am restrained - but against the unrelenting pressure of the astral furnace from within, my irresistible will from without, and the towering strength of my sheer outrage, the bonds are failing, the walls falling one by one. Whatever powers have been woven against me by enemies unknown (and I will find them, once the arbiter has fallen) are undergoing a rapid collapse.

A hurricane wind carrying cracking gold static whips and howls through the cavern, very nearly snuffing the flames before fanning them higher. My body turns to golden light, an expanding column of endless thunder, the roar of a collapsing star, a rising furnace unseen since the beginning of time. A wave of telepathic force crashes as my mind – our mind - divides, my senses expanding as my other selves surge awake – and, abruptly, a connection is made.

The Queen is a telepath.

As our tricephalic network reasserts itself, the Wrath, Control and the Whimsy, separate-but-singular, our psychic boundaries cross her own. She sees us – sees our nature, our destructive muse and highest honour, our glorious history, a path of shattered planets lit by the wailing torchlight of burning civilizations stretching back unto the very dawn of the universe... and we perceive her as she does so.

She is not just a Queen – she is a nexus. We see her as though for the first time, a leader, a defender, a zealot, a victim driven by a rage that very nearly eclipses our own - and three things become immediately clear.

First, she is not terribly powerful in and of herself. Though robust for a thing of her size, her true strength lies in her connection to her soldiers, her mighty steed, in the loyalty and obedience she commands and the power of her subjects.

Second, she is the seat of a vast telepathic network, to which all of these brutish soldiers are connected.

Third, there are far, far more of them than are present here. The sheer intensity, the ebb and flow of a living zeitgeist moving through her… there must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of them. Her mind is cast so far afield, it is no wonder we became entwined.

All of this passes in an instant – the connection, the contact, the understanding – but it is cut off as abruptly as it came by a sudden jolt as our ascension is arrested, held back by some unseen and unspeakable seal which yet stands unbroken – a second layer of restraints, stronger than the first. We are still bound and barred from the full depths of our starborn might, our truest shape.

Within the shadow-spaces of our astral well our cascading power flares against the obstruction, raging, a strand of energy tearing free of its subspacial avenues and erupting into real space as… a marble. A tiny deep-black orb, weeping limpid gold, blinks into existence as though it had always been there and falls gingerly to earth, unnoticed by all save ourselves amidst the grand spectacle of our transformation.

The column of light collapses – and we stand revealed. From out of the thunder, we are born anew.

Scales gleam and talons flex. Wings flare. Laughter echoes from three golden throats and a three-headed shadow falls across the Queen and her subjects, backlit by raging flames.

Though no longer miniature, this body is but a stunted and adolescent version of our glory: our wings are rigid, inarticulate and undeveloped. Our tail is forked at the end but not wholly split into two, our golden hide a dark and tarnished bronze. Our necks, though long and sinuously serpentine, lack the imperial grace to which we are accustomed. Our faces, as we gaze upon one-another, though equipped with savage carnivorous muzzles and crowned by knots of horns, possess an almost impish, malignantly playful countenance.

This is the body of a prince, not a King. Our centermost head is no higher than the knee of our most potent incarnation past – but we are still large enough to grind houses beneath our feet, a body sufficient to ravage a city, should one present itself. Or to swallow one of the mighty armored bugs which so recently posed a challenge.

We are Ghidorah once gain.

Our original dilemma returns, but played out across our triple-consciousness it is easily resolved: The Wrath does not consider the why’s and wherefores, is wholly consumed by the need to see the lives before us destroyed utterly. Golden light rises within our rightmost throat, shining beneath the skin, and purple flames lick at the corners of his toothy maw, but Control nips at the Wrath’s neck, hissing a warning. Our most vicious self is cowed for the moment, the inchoate blast of cosmic energy dissipating. The glow in his throat fades. The Whimsy demurs, his attention still occupied by the humanoid matriarch and her heavily-armed escort, watching them react to the dynamics of our trinity.

We can feel them all, the flavour and flame of their lives so much clearer to us now, the breadth and nature of their strength – it seems that the limited depth of our astral perceptions is among the restrictions we have shed.

With its true potency now plain to us the armoured insect steed is actually somewhat alarming, even moreso than we had at first believed. Although we do not believe it could destroy us, not as we are now, we are not certain we could destroy it either. We will have to bear that in mind going forward.

For the moment, we writhe, necks twisting, clicking and growling deeply within our expansive bronze chest as the light from the burning forest sets our scales aglow. These people are so small… but the knowledge of their queen’s connection to distant legions unseen changes the calculus. They are not a mere tribe – they are an army, a vast and innumerable horde, potentially far more useful than we had dared dream.

The hulking warriors clamour, armour and rocky flesh in regimented motion, so small to us now as they disperse back into cover, scrambling, panicking as they fumble their weapons. Some of them seem confused, regarding us with entirely appropriate awe. Towering above them, we feel the moment turn – they are going to open fire, and we will have to annihilate them. As many reasons as there are not to, as much effort as we have just expended in not murdering these people, an attack upon our person is an affront we cannot reason our way around, an insult that demands an answer. Thunder and flame rumble within us, the burning edge of a cosmic stormfront rising in the liminal spaces beneath the world, surging towards the light…

And then the Queen saves all of their lives.

“HOLD!” she cries, raising an armoured hand high, restraining her soldiers. “Hold.”

Control rumbles. The Wrath cries out, and the Whimsy chitters softly. We know this is for the best – in this form, we are too large to leave this cavern. We will, eventually, need to return to our small and singular self, and we will still require the knowledge of the planets interior which these people doubtless possess. We could make such use of their numbers – but their eradication, in particular the death of the Queen, would be sublime. If only they had attacked, it would have made things, briefly, ecstatically simple. But she is their liege, and the clarity of her command ripples through their ranks like a soothing balm.

The Queen turns to face us, defiant. The Whimsy sees her reassessing, and our rage, pulled taught to the very edge of breaking, subsides somewhat. Everything which should have been there from the beginning is now written plain upon her face, in how she moves.

Caution. Respect. And when she speaks, a hint of reluctant wonder spiced with horror.

“I recognize you... You’re that gargantuan well of nightmares entombed in the planet’s crust. The fallen destroyer.”

She masters herself quickly – but her discomfort ripples out across her psychic web. Her savage cohort stir once more, undertaking a more organized re-deployment, positioning themselves to protect their queen and stage a fighting retreat should the situation turn… satisfying.

“The powers of this world, myself included, had believed you were dead.“

We are not entirely forgotten, then. With our mood bolstered by that knowledge, we address the Queen once more.

Fallen no longer. We rise, little monarch, and although we would happily see you and all of your hive reduced to ash and fable, we are vastly preferable to Darkseid’s vile hegemony. Its emptiness offends us. The corrupted soul of this place offends us, and we would burn it from the heart of this hideous moon if we but knew the path to the Arbiter’s lair.

Her eyes narrow.

“You’re proposing an alliance – an assault on Rose Quartz’s stronghold. A bold suggestion; Few would dare. But why should we trust a genocidal monster? Your nature is plain to me, destroyer, as I suspect mine is to you. There is nothing in your heart but sheer poison, and I will not see my children harmed.”

Control looks the woman in the eye, our central neck arcing gracefully downward. He looms above her, gazing imperiously over the top of his muzzle, which contains serrated teeth not much smaller than her entire body.

She does not bend before our presence, does not quail at our immensity. We do not know whether to be impressed or amused.

Do not trust us. You would be an idiot to do so. Instead, trust our disdain. Surely you have felt our disgust, our utter humiliation, our apoplectic Rage at the fact that we must make common cause with something as limited as you. We would not debase ourselves so for anything… save for this: The unmaking strikes at the heart of us, little Queen. Darkseid’s insipid pantomime would take from us our purpose and we will.

Not.

Have it!

She seethes, crossing her arms and snarling in disgust, but her concern for what we might do appears to win out over her trampled pride...and more than that, as a creature of great pride herself, I believe she understands.

We shift our prodigious weight, trampling one of the slain chitinous hulks absentmindedly into mush underfoot and shaking the cavern. Boulders and dust tumble from the roof, clattering harmlessly off our armoured golden back.

Lack of suitable exits for a creature of our stature aside, If we do not wish to be buried by a cave-in we may have to retreat once more to our miniscule, limited form sooner rather than later.

It is not an appealing prospect.

Control lives up to his position, however, making the hard decision: though it is yet another in a long line of offenses against our person, the reasoning and the promise of it even the Wrath cannot dispute. We will, for the moment, subside – and save our Becoming for when we face the Arbiter.

It is a mere act of will to change, the lesser shape still fresh in our somatic memory.

An astral wind swirls again through the cavern, gentler this time, stirring pillars of smoke and fanning the flames. Motes of saffron radiance rise from our glorious trinity, billowing from our back, streaming from our horns and eyes and teeth like steam from a boiling ocean. The Wrath and the Whimsy chitter and keen, lamenting that they must sleep again so soon – and in a thunderclap of gold, ‘we’ are reduced once more to an ‘I’, a miniature and singular presence.

Taking a step forward amidst the fading sparks of amber werelight, I nearly stumble. I have not entirely, it seems, returned to the pathetic state in which I have persisted since awakening to life upon the plane of the scuttling masses.

Even reduced, I now possess a tail, flowing and sinuous in shining gold, half again the length of my body. I adjust with grace to the unexpected but familiar counter-weight, disguising my brief loss of balance amidst an admiring backward glance at my new acquisition – and stride toward the queen upon her rocky perch. As I go, I crouch to retrieve the gilded black void-marble, the burst aneurysm of my own surging astral veins. It floats near to the ground, nearly lost amidst the shattered stones – and reacts to my intent, taking up a station above my horned brow, a glittering crown-jewel of the cosmic abyss.

It offers an inroad to my true self, its energies still connected to the depths of my astral well – but though the power is there, there is something fragile about the window it presents, impermanent and unrefined. Were I to subsume it, to draw upon the diaphanous arteries of force within, I do not feel as though I could maintain the resulting shape for long: A minute, perhaps several – but in such constrained windows of time, in the fullness of my might I have broken armies and gods.

To fight a planet, it is power I will need, however fleeting.

Two of the queen’s retainers, lithe, hulking brutes clad in mechanized crimson armour move to interdict me, but she waves them back, not for a moment breaking her rigid and defiant eye-contact. It is impudence for which she will pay - eventually. With a final, casual hop, I alight before her, leaving not a meter of separation between us.

“You clearly have something more to say to me,” she says, her gaze boring into mine, so close that I can see my snarling saurian face reflected in the chrome of her headdress. “Say it, then. Politely, if you even can.”

Just to spite her, I speak as plainly as I am able.

With every passing hour my potency grows, yet I remain lost within these caves. Purely in the interest of locating my prey, and of seeing the Arbiter dead and Darkseid’s design undone, I am presenting you an opportunity for which stellar empires have fought each other to extinction: to turn the wrath of King Ghidorah against your enemies. Does your benighted pride offer such profound comfort in the face of unliving oblivion that you would, while standing upon the field of a battle turned by but a fraction of the might to which I have re-awakened before your very eyes, squander this gift?

I study her as she considers, a petty monarch face-to-face with an ultimate truth. Her troops grumble and chatter, uncertain, as they spread out to encircle us. Her armoured steed gnashes its pincers, looming protectively; Its wings hum in agitation.

I will credit the queen with this: even understanding to what and whom she speaks, she maintains her bearing, does not sacrifice her composure nor yield the laughable ‘dignity’ of her position.

“An impressive speech,” she says, “for an uncultured beast. It’s been decades since someone belittled me as you have done and escaped retribution… but… I am not a fool.”

Finally, she averts her gaze, clenching her gauntleted fists in impotent anger, and I know that I have won.

“The unmaking hounds us. The Horde bleeds, and every day more of my people are lost. Today was supposed to have been a great victory, but if you hadn’t arrived when you did, it could very well have been a route. You are a monster – and I know very well that it takes monsters to win wars.”

She turns to look me in the eye once again, and I can see how the concession pains her. Satisfaction rumbles deep in my chest at the irony, and it is all I can do not to laugh.

“I am Queen Myrrah, of the Locust. This world is rightfully ours – and if we must ally with a murderous relic from the depths of space in order to keep it, then so be it.”

7524/10000 words

 

[King Ghidorah]

The exit to the underground valley in which I have both regained a measure of my greater self and stooped to the necessity of an utter, excruciating humiliation lies nestled between two massive boulders, concealed by shadow and toxic steam.

The Locust are preparing to move out, many of them mounting various tamed grotesqueries, masses of tentacles, chitin and leathery hide beset by uneven proportions, technological augmentations and misshapen limbs. As Myrrha saddles her living siege-weapon, amidst a clatter of chitin and a cyclonic buzz of wings I interrogate her as to our immediate purpose.

Where exactly does this passage lead, little Queen? Not yet to the Arbiter’s doorstep I would hope. To battle the incarnate spirit of this hollow, vicious world we will require greater numbers than this. Or do we return to a city, perhaps, to plot the course of this… collaboration… in greater detail?

She responds with a harsh, humorless bark of laughter, settling atop her mount and regarding me with a dour expression of extreme tolerance. She is sorely mistaken about who is tolerating whom, but I will allow her that delusions for now.

“You must think me truly insane if you believe that having touched your mind I would bring you to one of our cities. No - we are going to a forward base of operations, abutting the planet’s deepest interior. If this distasteful alliance is going to bear fruit, then you are right: we must have a plan. We will consult with my generals, and proceed from there.”

The Queen rides out at the head of her army, leading the Locust rank-upon-rank into the dark: I keep pace at her side. I may require her knowledge in matters of local geography, and the use of her armies, but it is below my cosmic station to follow.

Progress is swift. If there were any doubt as to the Locust’s mastery of these tunnels, it is dispelled as we pass from concealed passages and crude volcanic tunnels, all of which show signs of having been recently widened, to broader galleries of timeworn stone.

Myyrha and I say little, each of us wary of the other. Not falling behind is a matter of pride and the natural order. - but not pulling ahead is a matter of tactics. She knows it would be foolish to show me her back - and knowing she knows that, although she lacks the power to capitalize fully upon the opportunity, I would be foolish to show her mine.

Eventually, as we descend a broad and ancient staircase carved into the bottom of a deep tectonic fissure by some ancient and bygone people, its walls illuminated by veins of dully glowing crimson ore, she sees fit to break our uneasy silence.

“That bauble upon your brow," she remarks, in a tone of feigned disinterest, “the strange black jewel. You didn’t have it before you… changed… but after reverting you immediately retrieved it. What is it?”

Nothing less than the ravenous eye of a capricious cosmos - a key to unlimited destruction. When Rose Quartz stands before me, you will see.

She refuses to indulge my obvious bait, and I grudgingly concede the exchange. It does not matter: after all, I have told no lie. She will see.

For several moments the only sound is the rhythmic tramp, clank and scuttle of her armies upon the steps behind us, the buzz and clatter of her insectoid steed. The air stinks of chitin, and the soil of unwashed bodies. Reaching the bottom of the stairs we emerge into an enormous chamber, many times larger than the underground valley from whence we came: perhaps as large as the vast geological sepulcher in which my original body lies rotting, half-entombed in stone.

I had thought, upon awakening in that macabre and twilit cavern, that it was large enough to swallow a city.

This place proves, assuming the strange geometries of that titanic grave did not deceive my sense of scale, that my supposition was correct. Before us lie ruins: a fallen metropolis buried beneath the earth.

To my expert eye, it looks to have been abandoned rather than deliberately destroyed - a situation I would remedy had I the time. Great decorated stone columns, carved, I would guess, from natural formations, rise hundreds of stories into the air, vanish into misty white cloud-banks which swirl and pool upon a ceiling perhaps a kilometer distant. Rank upon rank of collapsed commercial edifices, massive converted stalagmites and derelict limestone tenements line concentric rings of streets, converging on an inner district of caved-in, buttressed palaces and ornate towers. The ambient light is wan and beige, diffusing down from some unseen source within the distant, turbid mists.

Myrrah seems unsurprised, taking to the sky upon the droning wings of her armored mount, leading her people forward without ceremony. This place must be a landmark with which the Locust are familiar.

As we proceed down a central avenue, the drip of falling water echoing in the far distance even above the sound of the Queen’s troops, they are forced to divert around a massive hole in the street. It is circular, with rough-hewn sides, reminiscent of claws rather than tools - but it must be at least forty meters across. As I pause at its lip to inspect it, my tail tracing arcs of consternation, Myrrah descends, hovering close by.

“This was not here yesterday,” she mutters, offended surprise warring with concern for mastery of her inflection.

Abruptly, the atmosphere shifts. All around us, throughout the city and from the depths of the pit, a wave of featureless grey intrudes upon my astral senses - and I feel the eye of the Arbiter us.

From out of the gloom, the voice of Rose Quartz mocks me.

“It’s so nice to see such naughty children getting along. But it’s getting late - so I’m afraid you all need to come home now.”


They come upon us like a tide, flooding up the walls of the pit and emerging from amidst the ruins - arachnids with hairless hominid torsos protruding from the top of a bloated thorax, grey skinned and pointy-eared, half again as tall as I. The skitter of their arthropod legs upon the stones echoes like an avalanche of pebbles. The sable ichor of the unmaking drips from their grinning faces, blackening their teeth and tracing teardrops down their cheeks. Their mouths move as the Arbiter speaks.

“Come home to mother.”

The Locust instantly move to defend, singing, shouting, spreading out through the ruins in tactical formation. I can sense the edges of their network, feel them react to Myrrah’s will even before their Queen bellows the verbal command, her voice carrying even above the roar of their weapons.

“Ambush! Retreat to the central districts and cut them down!”

The Queen urges her steed higher as a beam of solar plasma thunders from its jaws, burning the unmade chimeras from the walls of the pit by the dozen.

I am left to my own devices. I punch my hand through the thorax of the first creature to approach me and flash-boil it from the inside.

Three more rise to take its place and I scream an arc of crackling amber lightning, sweeping a cosmic maelstrom across their chests, blasting the meat from their bones! Their arachnid components skitter mindlessly through the chaos for several moments before falling, twitching upon the ancient cobbles.

And then there are more of them. And more. They attempt to bind me with silken webs: their snares burn beneath the cosmic glare of my astral fires. They come at me with pincers, with spears and with daggers: what blows I cannot simply evade my lambent, unyielding golden body turns aside. They shatter beneath my strength, cracking chitin, rending flesh amidst the flash and crackle of a galactic tempest.

I kill and I kill and I kill - but they are unrelenting, forcing me back until I stand atop a growing pile of arachnoid half-men, awash in the sour stink of their gore. I am in danger of being over-run - and from the sounds which echo from afar, from the flame-of-life of the Locust horde tickling my cosmic perceptions as they wink out, one by one, given dearly but steadily going nonetheless, my newfound ‘allies’ are not faring much better. The Queen’s war-mount thunders its solar fury again and again, but the unmade are scarcely slowed.

There is only one conclusion to draw: to put forth this much effort in comparison to previous attempts, the Arbiter must be worried.

I rip off an unmade spider-leg, stab it into a thorax and boil the entire mess in the heat of my astral furnace. I punch through a chest and crush a heart in my hand. Then I bare my many, serrated teeth, and with a lilting cackle, I ascend.

It happens quicker than the first time: There is a flash, a roar, a tripling of perception as our surroundings shrink to little more than toys - and we stand revealed in our glory, nascent though it may yet be.

Towering above the tenements we take two quick steps, repositioning by approximately half a city block, and whip our forked tail ‘round in a vicious arc, sweeping several dozen of the Arbiter's creatures back into their pit and crushing half that many beneath our mighty tread. The Wrath bellows a taunting laugh. We beat our golden wings, raising cyclones of dust and gore from the ancient stones, and rise into the air, hovering above the huddled, clamouring masses. Our serpentine necks writhe with barely-contained glee as a saffron glow rises within our gleaming chest.

The nostalgia is delicious. If only these strange, misshapen chimera we are obliterating were truly alive, then we could imagine this is what coming home feels like, to creatures who require such feeble anchors for their brief existence.

The Whimsy watches, distracted by the Queen. Control cackles. And the Wrath lives up to his designation.

A roiling bolt of purple star-flame, a cosmic fireball congealed around a core of pulsing golden gravity and trailing streamers of crimson static, thunders from the open jaws of our cruelest self, almost as wide as his gaping maw - a seldom-seen manifestation of our power, but no less deadly than the lash of our amber lightning. The assault travels wide of its mark, striking an ancient tenement and blowing the entire building to pieces: a crimson flash, a cataclysmic bang, and an eruption of molten stone. But we do not intend to stand on ceremony. Control and the Whimsy quickly join the festivities, power leaping from our savage muzzles - and soon the entire street resembles a burning river of boiling tar, riven by star-flame and bordered by the burning, molten foundations of blasted ruins.

The flow of unmade is momentarily stemmed, though than continue to emerge from hiding-places amidst the ruins. The Locust still have a fight to deal with, but we have given them an opportunity to reposition - and the Whimsy, who has been paying more attention to the Queen's people than to our own efforts, a fact that annoys the rest of us tremendously, believes that Myrrah’s forces will be able to exploit it.

In the ruddy light of our rage the fallen city casts strange shadows at stranger angles, its fallow districts and moldering palaces reminding us of something which we cannot, for the moment, place. We do not have time to think on it in any depth, however. More of the unmade arachnid creatures flood from the hole in the ruined road. We beat our wings once, beginning a leisurely, low-altitude circle, preparing to fire bolt after starborn bolt into the pit until it either collapses or whatever hive from which Rose Quartz is drawing these abominations finally runs dry.

It happens with barely any warning - a shift amidst extrasensory smears of tasteless unmade grey: An ancient neighbourhood falls into a sinkhole, and from out of this new hollow, bursting from amidst the falling rubble, we are tackled to the ground by a creature whose stature nearly matches our own!

CRACK

We tumble, screeching, momentarily stunned, ancient edifices crumbling beneath our weight until we are slammed against one of the graven pillars supporting the roof of this titanic chamber in which we struggle - it cracks, but does not give, held in place by the weight of megatons of stone. The Wrath, reacting rather than thinking, twists ‘round the side of our assailant’s body and spits a ball of violent violet fire directly into its flank.

BOOM

It screams, recoiling as the resulting explosion tears into its side, releasing its jaws from Control’s neck, shifting its weight from atop us - and we take the opportunity to kick it in the chest, making a solid impact with one of our mighty three-toed talons.

BOOM

The challenger is sent tumbling through the ruins, annihilating several hollow tenements and a small, gothic keep beneath its bulk - and we finally get a decent view of what we are fighting.

Our attacker is a quadruped, hairless, reddish in color with a shortened muzzle and a single horn in the middle of its forehead. It has a tiny crest of ridges along its spine, and overlarge eyes brimming with inky unmade sludge. Its tail is embarrassingly short, and its floppy, diamond-shaped ears are each nearly the size of its entire face.

The species is vaguely familiar. The Wrath remembers better than the rest of us: Millennia ago, during one of our unsuccessful attempts at despoiling the Earth, we killed one of these creatures in a single sustained blast of gravitic lightning. It is a good memory - but with things being as they are, this burrowing maroon inconvenience may require somewhat more effort than its predecessor.

9811/10000 words

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Cont. from Revelations: Frost and Decay

Well, now, this was somethin’ Arthur knew a thing or two about.

He was a little lost on the particulars of the catty squabbles of his Andromedan companions and all their bickering, and he still weren’t too sure about all these murky, dilapidated ruins crumbling to dust all around them, but he certainly knew why Kopaka’d turned up, and how he’d known where to find them, besides.

With a tilt of his chin, Arthur let loose a raspy cough and spat onto the harsh volcanic terrain beneath his feet. He scuffed his leather boot against the gritty mixture of basalt and old stone tiles from a civilization long past, feeling the crunch of shattered, rosy-colored quartz under his heel.

“I wrote him a letter, ‘course,” huffed the cowpoke, the short, weathered brim of his leathery hat casting a shadow over his sundown-blue eyes. He had a bit of a hangdog look about him all of a sudden, the corners of his mouth turning down and his eyelids drooping, but he mostly just seemed mighty pleased to see the Toa. “Thought I’d invite him to join the party. Weren’t sure if you’d be able to read it, pardner, after our last lesson was interrupted.”

“The illustration you provided was… useful,” Kopaka replied, glancing up from his inspection of the gigantic fallen automaton of brass—his pale, chiseled mask of a face regarding Arthur with all the severity of a glacier.

Ezrihel's eyebrows furrowed as he fixed Arthur with a narrow look. "And are there any other guests lurking about that you've neglected to mention? Any other surprise drop-ins I should expect?"

A slow grin meandered across Arthur's worn face like a ripple over a still pond, crafty and not even a bit subtle ‘bout it, as he squinted at the General from beneath his hat. His eyes crinkled up at the corners, merry laugh lines spreading in fissures around his sun-cracked lips.

“Naw, General. As I recall it, there ain’t nobody else,” he drawled, then paused, his eyes turning up, as if remembering something that he’d let slip from his memory since it was none too important. “Well, there was one other feller. A king, though not in these parts. I reckon you might’ve heard of him. Name’s Mr. Mesh. That ring any bells?”

The noblethem stared at him, one sleek, aristocratic brow winging upward.

“You intend to tell me,” he enunciated in a rather deliberate manner, with a tone of voice that suggested Arthur was a simpleton in dire need of patronizing. “That you have written a letter to Gilgamesh, the monarch of Uruk and your would-be killer in Syntech’s little… island farce."

“Ayup,” said Arthur, popping the ‘p’ in the word with a smack of his lips. “He was a decent enough feller, ‘fore that ugliness came to pass. I figured he weren’t himself then, told him we ought to have a sit-down over a fine drink or several, and find if he’s got any better at shootin’ since I seen him last.”

Ezrihel pursed his lips, appeared to consider picking at Arthur for his fumbling attempts at politicking, and then elected to simply move on.

"...the depths of your amiability never ceases to amaze me, Morgan," he said with a hint of dryness, before shifting his attention to Kopaka, his sharp countenance taking on a genial, polite veneer. "And I must express my gratitude for your timely intervention on the part of my comrade and friend."

“Your gratitude is unnecessary, but acknowledged,” Kopaka conceded with his customary ‘warmth,’ his frigid blue optics turning to Arthur. “You wrote in your letter of aimlessness and wandering. I trust you have not been so aimless in your navigation of these caverns.”

There was a smidge of sarcasm to be found in the Toa’s words, but if it was an intentional denouncement, he most assuredly did not make it evident in his expression or tone.

Arthur gave a shrug of his shoulders, the weight of his shotgun thumping against his back, dislodging a thin layer of black ash from his scaly raptorskin duster in an abrupt, smoky puff. “We heard a lead from a Dr. Foster and her bounty hunter escort, Shand. They told us there was somethin’ mighty suspicious about the camp I wrote to you about, and we—”

He fell silent suddenly, his gaze drawn to a distant point beyond the Toa's shoulder. He strained his eyes, neck bending forward like a spaniel alerting its master to a pheasant tucked away amidst a dense field of wheat. The roughened, blunt stoicism of a consummate frontiersman and shootist was etched into his face, honed to a fine edge, made manifest in the clear-eyed, cold as iron glint that flickered across his features.

“…Morgan?” prompted Ezrihel, following his stare.

There was little else there but the remnants of a half-crumbled wall, the smooth bricks toppling over in misery. Much like the rest of the ruined edifices spread throughout the cavernous chamber, the pale bodies of slain goblinoids and the dulled ruggedness of cracked, colorless gems imparting the occasional visual interruption.

After a beat of intensely eyeballing said wall, the cowpoke straightened his spine and shook his head, clicking his tongue under his breath. “Imagined I saw a little orange feller walking through that wall, there. Probably nothin’.”

Ruedlen glanced up sharply, her glassy white eyes fixing on him. Ezrihel, too, appraised their dusty associate with a new sort of regard.

"It seems that you might have hit your head harder than we thought, my friend,” teased Sari with a wry chuckle, clapping Arthur on the shoulder. “Though judging by the faces of my companions, you’ve likely glimpsed a ghost.”

“Huh,” muttered Arthur. “I’d’ve figured I’d be sayin’ as much to you, considerin’ the kick that tonic I slipped you has.”

“Which wall?” asked Ruedlen, ignoring their banter.

Feeling mighty foolish, Arthur ambled over to where he’d seen the amber, ill-defined figure of the ‘ghost’ last, the rest following behind.

They rounded the bend of where the bricks lay in a heap, and there behind said heap… stood an arch.

“Well, now,” said Ezrihel. “This is… something.”

It was an arch composed of interlocking metal and stone voussoirs that formed a flawless curve, any wall or brick abutment that might have connected to it long weathered away by time. At its center was a metallic keystone, sloping gently upward like the shallow peak of a foothill at the base of a mountain. Garbled, twisting symbols were engraved upon its hard surface, curving like silvery rivers across its face, snaking all the way down to its foundations.

Next to it, sunk into the floor like a boulder might pitch inside a hole in the ground, sat a squat, square-shaped box. This was no ordinary box, however, for it had no discernible lid or latch; instead, its surface was one solid hunk of metal, beribboned with intricate designs that mirrored those of the arch, encircling a pulsating blue gem—the geometric complexity suggesting purposeful placement rather than simple decoration.

On the other side of the arch, resting opposite the box, stood a cylindrical shape that was also made of sturdy metal. It was taller than the box, with a strange, shifting interface circling several inches above its flat, slightly sloped surface, flecked with flashing sigils in a language Arthur could not, for the life of him, recognize.

A second gem lay nestled inside its core—a perfect twin to the other—casting a subtle light that colored everything around it in slowly fluctuating shades of cold, spectral blue.

Ruedlen stepped forward, drawn in by the azure glow. She reached towards the gem within the box, her fingers hovering, but hesitant to touch.

Abruptly, the air around the gem seemed to shimmer, a visible, gossamer ripple threading the gap between it and her fingers, as if responding to her presence. Ezrihel watched with rapt attention while Sari slunk carefully forward, tilting his head.

“It’s a gate,” murmured Ruedlen. She lifted her chin, milky-white eyes studying the arch that led to nowhere, or perhaps something only she could see.

“A gate?” asked Arthur as he came up to stand beside her, glancing between the empty space beneath the arch and her face. “Sure, maybe once upon a time.”

He reached forward to plant a hand against one of the arch’s supports, testing if it would shift under the pressure. It didn’t budge an inch, steadfast despite not being moored to anything, the metal feeling oddly… warm beneath the meat of his palm, the thin layer of gritty dust that coated it catching beneath his fingernails.

“Not any gate you might be familiar with, Morgan,” Ezrihel replied, likewise strolling over to assess the situation, his green eyes focusing upon the wavering glow of the gems. “It appears to be… a portal. Deactivated, but functional.”

“…alright,” said Arthur, musing to himself that this all sounded a bit dubious, though he reckoned he wasn’t the proper authority to speak on such matters. “We need to open it, then?”

Kopaka spoke, the cold warrior’s footsteps heavy and clinking as he, too, joined the cluster around the dormant gate. “We don’t know where it leads.”

“Ain’t much different than what we’re doin’ now, wandering ‘round these caves,” muttered the former outlaw, smoothing his fingers over his stubbled chin—thinking, not for the first time, that he needed a shave. “Feels like tryin’ to navigate a maze down here.”

“I’m inclined to agree with our icy friend,” Sari chimed in. “It could deliver us straight into the welcoming arms of danger, might it not? Not that I would mind it.”

“A spirit guided us here,” reminded Ruedlen. “Though their whims may be fickle and their lingering consciousness disordered…”

There was a contemplative silence. Then, Arthur sloooowly turned to face General von Althaus—the rest following his example in short order, four pairs of eyes (and optics) looking to the strong-willed blonde for a resolution.

Ezrihel sighed. “Oh, alright. Rue, if you would…”

Nodding her head in a bob of dark curls, the priestess tentatively reached for the gem nestled inside the cold brass atop the cylindrical, console-like structure. Once more, her hand paused a hair’s breadth above it, her fingertips rendered near-colorless in such close proximity to the glimmering, blue-white shard.

Delicately, her fingers grazed the smooth surface of the gem.

At her touch, the gemstone flickered in a cadence akin to the slow, shuddering beat of a heart, its rhythm growing stronger and stronger, faster and faster with each pulse.

All around them, the very walls of the cavern seemed to shiver, tiny stones skipping over the ground and a low, ominous rumble creaking in the air—as if the small, seemingly insignificant act of touching the gem had sent a tremor through the fabric of the icy moon.

With a ponderously slow flourish, the strange glyphs floating above the console expanded into a long, undulating ribbon before their very eyes, split apart into a six individual rings, and then wrapped around Ruedlen’s arm like a sleeve of finely-segmented bands, flickering rapidly all the while.

Crack!

A sound like a clap of thunder rang out, the gate erupting in a display of coruscating lights, a collection of six tabs flicking towards the interior of the metal arch like the prongs of an amulet meant to lock a stone into place. And gradually, the arms of a spiral unfurled from the heart of the gate, materializing from the void between.

It grew in size, nearly spanning the full width of the arch, before it seemed to bloom outward—adopting the shape of a white, wildly-spinning ring, made from a single, exquisitely-woven current of energy.

Arthur whistled low under his breath. “Well, I’ll be damned. I thought you was pullin’ my leg, but that thing is going somewhere!”

Somewhere, indeed. Through the eddying ring could be seen the interior of what looked to be, in Arthur’s opinion, a room of some fashion.

Within the room was a window. And through that window, clear as day, was a storm of lightning.

Ruedlen withdrew her arm from the console, the glyph-bands detaching like the light-as-air sleeve of a chiffon dress, fluttering daintily back into place—albeit not in their original formation. Instead, they remained split into six, floating one on top of the other, a measly inch apart.

As they watched, one of the glowing rings dripped downward in a languid, liquid trickle of light, its glyphs melding seamlessly with another. And with it, the portal seemed to… shrink a little, constricting by just an hair.

“Ah,” remarked Ezrihel, stepping forward to peer through the portal’s opening, his pine-green eyes skimming the room beyond. “A time limit? Well, that settles it… everyone in.”

In single file, they stepped through the portal. The accompanying sensation was not unlike breaking through the surface of a pond, thought Arthur. Like cresting through a lip of water and breaking out to the open air beyond, though without sucking any duckweed up his nose in the process.

He gave a shudder as he stepped into the room, glancing around. It was rounded in shape, utterly exposed to the elements in that it had no ceiling to speak of—broken bricks jutting out in uneven edges, some spilling in piles into the room’s interior. And beyond that, a ravaged expanse of smoke and wreckage stretched as far as the eye could see, many ugly things flying through the air and even uglier things scuttling along the ground.

With a decisive, practiced movement, Arthur unslung his shotgun from his shoulder and strode to the window. Gripping the cold steel, he squinted through the haze of smoke and white ash simmering hotly in the air, shielding his eyes with a calloused hand against a brilliant, eyeball-searing detonation of purple light.

His eyes widened, streaks of amber, red and gold reflecting in their depths.

“Is that some kinda elephant crossed with a rhinoceros?” he demanded, yelling to be heard over the din crashing throughout the chamber.

2,331/10,000 words

 

[Kopaka]

You cannot destroy me, for I am Nothing…


As Kopaka passed through the shimmering veil of planar distortion, these words fluttered across his neuron interface in a cascading sensation of…not memory, but neither wholly unlike a distant dream. As he felt his feet clank onto solid ground again, he shook his head and banished the words from his mind. He didn't have time, now, to entertain the existential phantoms he had left behind.


As their cohort spread out into the sequestered chamber, he called upon his great mask to peer through the walls and survey the exterior surroundings. It seemed as though his concern for their destination had been well founded. If the shuddering, crumbling walls of the granite tomb weren’t enough evidence, there was a certifiable pandemonium whirling through the cavernous ruins outside.


The others began to discuss and strategize. The Toa continued to watch the fracas and analyze candidates for removal.


“General, with all due respect, I think we need to get you out of here.” Ruedlan half-shouted. She had taken up a position next to Arthur and was watching the crawling masses tear eachother apart in the streets. Rippling, coughing gunfire spattered the exterior wall, causing the outlaw and priestess both to flinch back.


“I agree…” chimed Sari, “...we should bypass whatever contest this is and proceed with our survey…elsewhere. This simply isn't our business.”


General Althaus, to their credit, seemed to be considering this prerogative. On the one hand, it was technically their business; they had come to Inverxe to put an end to Rose Quartz and her Wretched cohort, after all. On the other hand…this was a bit much. Maybe with a small platoon, some heavy weaponry and a more defensible position, the situation would be tenable. Hells, they couldn't even be sure how far they were from the ship at this point.


Ezrihel puffed out an irritated sigh.


“P'thaeyl, see if you can get patched through to the Phantom Blossom and triangulate our relative position. We’re going to need to figure out a new road home.” Althaus muttered. They glanced around the shattered room slowly, assessing their options. One large window, through which acrid smoke and flashing crimson light was issuing…a large, square archway with steps leading downwards, presumably to the street level, and large bronze fastenings holding the structure together. A structure which, they had to note, was rapidly disintegrating.


“...in the meantime, we need to relocate. Sari, what’s your status?”


The assassin rubbed the side of his ribs, wincing, and sucked in an experimental breath.


“Well, there’s a difference between having pain, and feeling it. But, perhaps I should stick to my marksmanship for now.” Sari said. A sleek, polished plasma pistol appeared in his right hand with the flick of his wrist, which was enough to draw Arthur’s attention away from the actual kaiju battle outside. The cowpoke offered a sultry whistle and took a few steps towards the assassin to admire the weapon.


“Well that’s a purty little number right there, I didn’t know you could shoot. What’s it loaded with?” he drawled.


“Cyclotronically magnetized iridium charges. I usually prefer thorium, but... these maintain better battery life on long hauls.” Sari said with a wan smile.


Arthur nodded slowly.


“Ohkay...welp. We’d better get movin’ like the Gen’ral said. Kopaka, do you- ”


Everyone wheeled around as a flash of blue thrusters and a sharp breeze billowed through the portal room. The biomech unceremoniously rocketed out through the open window, sword and shield drawn for the next fray.


“For Chris’sake! Not again…” the outlaw lamented.


Kopaka had come to his conclusions, however. The unmade horrors sloughing in from untold crevices, the hulking white-faced brutes and their explosive rifles, the mottled red rhino beast, and the thrashing lightning dragon with three heads…all of it had to go. The Toa propelled himself from rooftop to shattered crenulation in great, striding leaps. A clear, clean trail of valiant blue streaked through the rolling clouds of oily fire.


The warrior of ice came to perch atop a precariously shaking column, and overlooked a small battle below him. The heavily armored brutes had set up a small fortification, complete with a brutally heavy turret, which was belching a stream of heavy ordnance down the street at an advancing tide of, what appeared to be, a mulch of recombinant arms and legs spreading out in all directions.


Had the Unmaking become so utterly languid that it didn’t even bother taking a proper form anymore?


A stray barrage of purple balefire inscribed a patchwork of smoldering craters through the entire block, cauterizing a bulk of the clinging morasse. Kopaka capitalized on the opportunity, and conjured a whirling gale of icy power into his sword, blasting the center mass of the thing even as it began to reconstitute itself.


In tandem, the two forces seemed to finally encourage the carpet of twitching appendages to finally cease its movement…or at least until it thawed. Kopaka would have to check in on that later, because the trigger-happy brutes below him were all pointing in his direction and bringing their heavy-bore weapons to bear on him. Kopaka instinctively spun up his shield, just as the first withering volley of bullets began to ricochet off of his protodermis chassis.


He fell, ice sword drawn, directly into the center of the thronging squadron in a flash of cleansing blue light.


Meanwhile, General Althaus, Arthur, Sari and Ruedlen were advancing down the exterior staircase of the crumbling building at a steady, but nonetheless anxious, pace.


There was a sort of keening, screeching howl as a slithering, talon-clawed behemoth rounded the corner a block away in the direction they were headed. Without so much as a nod, Sari and Arthur leveled their weapons at the oozing, unmade predator and delivered a fusillade of alternating green and blue fire into its un-armored mouth. It fell with a heavy crunch – the blasted remnants of its face nothing but a smoldering wreck.


Ezrihel stared down at the fallen wretch, and quirked an eyebrow.


“Saerhaus, when will your love for the old-fashion traditions of war allow me to upgrade your armaments to something with a bit more range?”


Ruedlan gave Ezrihel a droll look, as much as she could spare in this cacophony, and snorted dismissively.


“Whenever you’re ready to ditch Rose for the same ‘upgrade’, Althaus.”


The general was about to say something when the entire group of exfiltrators were lit up by a crackling red glow. A sphere of red protective energy honeycombed itself over the group just as a large…armored stag beetle of some kind strafed the entire street with a blast of stunningly bright light. It buzzed away, up through the ever present layer of smoke, without further ceremony.


“Thank you, P’thaeyl. Who exactly are we dealing with here, anyway? I’d like to have a word with whoever’s responsible.”


The hovering drone processed this for a moment, before buzzing a soft reply.


“Cursory data indicates that we have become entangled in a skirmish between the Locust Horde and the Unmade. I cannot, however, locate salient information on the tri-capitate dragon, nor the horned sauropod. I must insist that we find a safe location as quickly as possible.”


Arthur spat in the dirt with sudden vehemence.


“We ain’t goin’ nowhere without Kopaka. I ain’t leavin’ him here in all this mess.”


Ruedlan offered another precision scoff, even as she kept her eyes fixed on their rear flank.


“He seemed content to leave us! Let him catch up.” the priestess growled. Before Arthur could snap something back at the gloomy spearwoman, however, a scramble of movement from overhead drew their collective attention. An entire pack of milky-skinned, eyeless, shrieking somethings began crawling over the roofline of the building behind them. They weren’t unmade…they did not possess the sort of excessive, ambient wrongness about them. No, they were simply hideous and wretched in a more classic sense of the word.


“Look alive, Sari!” Arthur coughed. He and the assassin raised their weapons once again to start picking off the swarming goblin-things as the group collectively back pedaled down the rough, cracked cobblestone path leading…anywhere but here.


Oddly enough, the swarming grubmen did not seem interested in a fight. No…they weren’t here to try and overrun this wayward squad of explorers. Their true motive became clear as, in a sequence of thundering stomps, the golden dragon and the rhino-beast came crashing through the entire portal shrine like it was made of styrofoam.


A wave of dust blasted over the delvers, and everything was thrashing, cacophonous thunder for a few moments. Heaving, towering silhouettes tangled, ripped and roared in the shadows. It was really only for a moment, but it felt like minutes until the red-skinned saurian, easily the length of an entire city block, went charging through another, smaller row of ancient Dwemer houses towards the far end of the swarming cavern.


One might wonder why Baragon had been spurred to disengage from the ruinous body of Ghidorah while it had held the advantage. The answer was revealed as it careened past the crouching, reeling delvers – Kopaka was standing atop the bullish lizard with his frozen sword driven deeply between its shoulder blades.


Arthur couldn’t help but give a ‘heeyaw!’ as he watched the Toa keep his stance on the bucking beast as it thrashed and screamed off into the further reaches of the rapidly crumbling ruins.


“Ride ‘em Kopecker! Ride!”


Even Ezrihel couldn’t help but stifle a chuckle as he watched the cowpoke’s exuberance, but the levity was cut short. A crackling blast of star-fire rippled up through the fallen shrine, and the immense golden dragon picked itself up with seething, hateful deliberation. A sound issued from within its chest…not a bestial roar, but a harmonized ululation that cut through the warzone percussion like a song.


Two of its heads were focused on the other fleeing titan.


One head swiveled slightly to regard a new set of outliers in its domain.

 

[Ezrihel]

What was it with the unmade and gigantic monstrosities? Ezrihel scowled as he gracefully sidestepped a chunk of stone rubble raining down from above. It was large enough to flatten him, had he been a tad less acrobatically inclined. His momentary awe over Kopaka’s brash daring had instantly switched to that familiar fine tension of annoyance. The battlefield was hardly the place for theatrics and showboating, nor was it the time for such reckless endeavors as plunging into the midst of titanic tussles. What in the name of the gods was that Toa thinking? He was going to get the lot of them killed charging in like that- not to mention that if he’d had any plan besides ‘diversion via chaos’, the Toa failed to consider the rest of the group worthy of that knowledge.

“P’thaeyl, follow Kopaka, provide support where you can.” Ezrihel ordered. The AI darted off, ion jets flaring as it kept just below the roofline.

The lithe general unsheathed his rapier and darted forward, Rose’s needle-sharp point surgically threading through a rancid parademon’s vitals. He swiftly dispatched several more in similar fashion as he carved a visceral path across the smoldering street and dipped into an alleyway for a moment’s cover. Sari was quick to join him, and tightly pressed himself up against the wall. As if it would really do much to save them from the comets of galactic wrath pouring from the winged Kaiju’s three mouths.

“Morgan!” Ezrihel barked. “Does your frosty friend make a habit of running mask first into threats at every single opportunity?”

“What? You suddenly ain’t concerned about fightin’ the unmade, Gen’ral?” Arthur barked back incredulously from the other side of the street, the gruff scratch in his voice more apparent than ever as his hellfire shotgun blasted righteous holes of retribution into the hides of parademon after parademon. Ruedlen supplemented Arthur’s range, stepping forward to spear anything that slipped past the hail of bullets and hellfire or dared try to sneak up on them from behind.

“I am plenty concerned, Morgan.” Ezrihel corrected. With a nod he swept more shambling unmade off their feet before throwing them down the street, little more than newspapers before the gale. “But I tend to approach such testy situations with a touch more planning and communication!”

“We ain’t got time to sit around the war table, Gen’ral!” Another discharge of azure hellfire lit up the pockmarked road, countless twisted forms of the unmade screeched and keened their divinely inspired agonies in response.

“Yes, but did Kopaka even consider that this gargantuan golden behemoth could be even less of an ally than that massive megalosaurus who dropped buildings on us back in Nausicaa?!”

A bloodchilling cry of fury rang out from the glittering golden beast as it thundered back onto its feet, its forked club tail easily decimating a dozen derelict buildings as it reared back to dive after its fleeing floppy-eared prey. For a brief moment the air hummed, leaving the taste of electricity on Ezrihel’s tongue. There was only time for dread to register in the pit of his stomach before the pavement between them and the others was lit up with brilliant purple and crimson star-fire. Arcs of furious scarlet lightning discharged in every direction as the ground erupted, pulverized with ease.

The force of the blast sent Ezrihel and Sari tumbling back through the alleyway along with countless bits of fine grade stone shrapnel. Ezrihel grabbed the assassin and just barely managed to propel the two of them onto a side street before the roiling inferno could engulf them. They landed against a dusty stone brick wall, back first and hard enough to force the air from the Inquisitor’s lungs. Sari grunted, quicker to drag himself back onto his feet than the General who had taken the brunt of the impact, and offered Ez a hand up.

He was going to dismantle that frigid robot and scatter each and every nut and bolt to the far reaches of these Crossroads. What a vast well of selfish incompetence the Toa drew his inspiration from. He spat out a clot of purple ichor and wiped at his face, cleaning it with a snap of prestidigitation.

“P’thaeyl, report.” The General ordered. It did not answer. His optical overlay was dead silent. “P’thaeyl.” Still nothing. That damned firebolt, crackling with lightning and who knew what other cosmic powers, had shut it down. Damn it all! Now he was stuck operating with less support than he’d care to admit. And right now, what with the hail of fireballs and a pair of tremendously titanic destroyers treating the ruined city as their brawling pit, it was hardly the place or time to fuss over it. It would have to wait.

He reached a tendril of his psyche out and brushed gently against the consciousnesses of Arthur and Ruedlen, just enough to make sure that they were alright. ’Saerhaus, follow Morgan’s lead.’

’Are you kidding me?’ Ruedlen’s mind reeled with frustrated confusion. She was tending to a twisted scrap of hot brass that had embedded itself in the flesh of her forearm, and let every bit of that live pain flood across their mental link as she pulled the shrapnel out. ’Shouldn’t we group back up?’

Ezrihel grimaced and shut out the extraneous sensations. ’If you can get back across the block without drawing too much attention, by all means. Tend your wounds first, if it doesn’t get you killed.’

Thousands of prophetic visions flashed across his mind from the priestess. Vuelia, the golden scaled mother of all dragons, goddess of fortunes, good and bad, and her violent fiery birth. Showers of molten lava rained firestorms across the landscapes of their homelands, swallowing the countryside in a hellish cacophony of destruction, leaving naught but ash in its wake. Ruedlen wondered if this towering titan was some expression of the draconic deity’s innate fury against the encroaching darkness, but she could taste the death that clung to the dragon. He begged her to not be so dramatic as to presume godhood itself had shown up before them just yet.

Sari let out a rattling and frustratingly wet cough, then slumped against a scraggly half-ruined wall. His face and hands were covered in pale grey smudges of dust. “What now?” He croaked over the crackling pops of rapidly cooling stone. Steam hissed from the ragged craters dappling the block, staining the air with the acrid stench of melted asphalt and metallic slag.

“What now?” Ezrihel repeated in a huff of exhaustion as he pulled away from Rue’s mind. He dared not breathe through his nose lest he suffocate under the stench of the battlefield. Why did every single encounter with the unmade lead directly to utter apocalypse? And somehow everyone always expected a flawlessly executed plan from him in such dire circumstances. He gave a careless shrug and gestured broadly at the state of their surroundings. “I was not prepared to stumble directly into an active battlefield when we came down here, Sari. My communications are cut. We do not have the ability to communicate with the topside of this sordid little ice ball.”

The aristocrat shook his head, going through what must have been a thousand lines of thought at once as he hooked an arm around Sari’s back and hoisted him up onto his feet. They picked their way through the ruined block, thankful for the aristocrat’s telekenetics as he cleared away whatever rubble blocked their path. “The best we can do is find the one in charge of the locust horde. Meng mentioned a Queen, but who knows how desperate this battle is, how daringly up-front that leader will be. One tends to keep such important people in a defensive position along the back line, but where in the name of the gods would that even be in this chaotic chasm?”

“There is probably no telling, my friend. It is nothing short of disarray here.”

“Yes. Tell me about it.” Ezrihel scoffed tiredly. It was disarray, and they were stuck down here in it. The sibling gods of fate were a remarkable duo. “And the locusts are known to be relatively hostile.”

Sari leaned against the rough masonry of the alley wall, his free hand pressed to his aching rib. He clutched his pithy little plasma pistol in his other hand as he aimed down sights and blasted a shambling unmade cretin right in the eye. A spray of tarry green viscera painted the wall and street behind the twisted creature as it slumped over.

The assassin pushed himself away from the building and cast a look back at his master. “But they are in no position to turn us down.” His tone was dour with the reality of their situation.

“For now.” Ezrihel snapped. “For now. Who is to say they won’t turn on us as soon as the threat is pushed back? I did not come down here to get involved with planetside war politics. I brought a small team as a precision strike against a growing unmade threat. Four people. We are four people, terribly underprepared to deal with whatever in the nine hells has issued forth from this gods forsaken planet’s bowels!”

The assassin chuckled, a blithely bright sound in spite of the flaming wreckage surrounding them. “Do we have a choice?”

Ez growled. “Hardly.” It pained him to admit. Instead the blonde swept his bitterness aside as swiftly as he brushed his bangs from his eyes. Working with the locusts to turn the tide of this battle was their best bet. He just hoped, perhaps naively, that it wouldn’t come down to a situation where they were attacked and injured grievously before they even got the opportunity.

Quite suddenly the air around him felt remarkably wrong. Something slithered against the edges of his mind’s defenses, heavy and oppressive like the poisonous fog rolling across a mirror-still lake. Apprehension flooded his body. RUN! His very instincts screamed at him, forcing him to fight his own reaction in order to bring his gaze up in the direction of the malevolent energy.

What he saw sent spines of icy dread straight through his core.

One of the dragon’s three heads had swung around, slinking over the pitiful smoldering rubble and right in their direction. It tilted to the side as it investigated, its large golden eyes scanning the landscape with a sharp, pointed intelligence. Deep infrasound clicks and calls reverberated from the inquisitive goliath’s throat, rattling loose splinters of debris and sending vibrations through the andromedans’ dense bones.

The instinctual urge to hide echoed clearly between the noble and assassin, expressed as a squirming discomfort with few words. They pressed themselves against the wall in vain. Ezrihel’s prior dread deepened within his bosom as Rue’s own rising panic bridged the city block between them. That awful weight, that of ten thousand worlds extinguished and still countless more, smothered them under its profound and crushing gravity and left her rattled to her core. What in the hells could they alone do against that?

Suddenly the massive head stopped and stared directly at him, regarding him with a cold and strange sort of alien curiosity. An unwelcome curiosity, akin to the way one would study an unfortunate and interesting little bug trapped between a pair of forceps. He was the divine arbiter of his gods’ wills! He was made of living fire, and he would not cower needlessly before this great golden goliath.

Again it attempted to touch his mind, traces of contemptuous frustration by the oddly impervious barricade it came up against at every angle obvious in passing flickers. Now was her chance! He bade Rue to reposition, then reached his own guarded mental probe out to meet the dragon.

Incomprehensibly vast. Even interacting with such a small sliver of a single head’s mind left him feeling as though he was balanced precariously above the waters of an infinitely deep, abyssal ocean. A great maw of darkness opened under him and threatened to swallow him whole. It snatched his breath away with its terrible expanse of seething nihilistic hunger for the world. Every fiber of its physical form thrumbed with a barely restrained desire to annihilate everything before it, and yet... it was different from the mindless conformity that composed Darkseid’s armies. It had an frightening appreciation for the downright delectable sensation of snuffing out anything with inherent meaning, and a not-insignificant part desired the pleasure of his own express desecration. It was cruel and beautiful, living lightning given form and thought.

But it was not some fallen fragment of his god. He cast his nerves aside. By the might of his sworn oath and the light of his divine inspiration, he would plunge into the darkness and emerge not just a survivor, but as a righteous savior. He would not be denied his purpose via the whimsical priestly superstitions and fear of the vast unknown. They had beaten back a disgraced god at Nausicaa. He could not fail to a tri-headed hydra now, draconic or not.​

’You are no Unmade slave. Be you ally, or foe in this battle, great Golden One?’​

2,198/10,000​

 

[King Ghidorah]

The Whimsy has found something interesting.

We had elected to ignore the whorls of power now scuttling about this crumbling city, worryingly potent and reeking of the Pit though one of them might be, until the towering unmade quadruped was dealt with. But one now stands before us - and off all things it appears to be an Exif.

We remember the Exif. A race of mad zealots, they sacrificed their own planet in our name, and used the power of that terrible Working to chain us: to make of us a slave-idol, a puppet-messiah of the void with which to ritually re-enact their mundicide upon world after evangelically converted world in appalling mockery of our true passion and purpose.

When a catastrophic confrontation with the Balefire Knight finally broke us free of their grasp, we were… thorough, in their eradication. Even more-so than usual: No trace of them, neither tale nor relic, now remains.

So how then does one stand before us now? And how dare it address us so casually?

We would like to investigate this question immediately - but flames billow around us, and an ever-increasing menagerie of unmade horrors fill the burning, war-torn streets of this buried metropolis. More importantly, our immediate opponent lies, finally, pinned beneath one of our mighty feet, leaking ashen blood where our talons have dug into the flesh of its chest.

It opens its jaws, releasing a blast of black flames from between its cracked and broken canines. The attack *burns*, scorching our chest, our scales beginning to melt and crack beneath the unnatural heat of the beast’s tainted fires.

That is quite enough. This fight is no longer interesting, and we have entertained this empty flop-eared buffoon for far too long already.

The fury of our astral wellspring rises within us, shining rays of light from our effulgent golden hide, flaring behind our eyes, the depths of our world-breaking strength bursting to the surface.

Our rightmost head strikes like a serpent, the Wrath clamping his jaws upon our hapless opponent’s throat with a clap of thunder. Control cackles, golden lightning tracing arcs across his serrated teeth, bruised violet starfire spilling from his eyes, streaming from the corners of his jaws. So great is our surging power that it escapes into the world unbidden and separate, a blinding golden flash of energy booming through the clouds which grace the roof of this cavern, a lightning-strike within the depths of a frozen moon.

The Whimsy, as ever, is distracted. He turns his attention to the task at hand only long enough to chitter mockingly at our opponent while the Wrath twists and jerks, and a spray of boiling black ichor strikes the far-off ceiling as our opponent’s throat comes away in his teeth.

While the subterranean behemoth jerks spasmodically, choking and weezing its life out upon a bed of ruined masonry and melted bronze, we re-orient, our chest smoking, shining, the burnt scales flaking away as our glorious golden body repairs itself. Our tail smashes a building as it comes around - and as one, we lower our heads to regard the miniscule pointy-eared biped which has addressed us, which has dared to broach our thoughts, to resist the Whimsy’s probing curiosity.

It takes an involuntary step back beneath the full weight of our attention, reaching instinctually for a weapon, but a crumbling stone edifice blocks its retreat. A parademon descends from amidst the smoke, screaming, spear in hand, and the Whimsy strikes like lightning, crushes Darkseid’s minion between his teeth.

Parademons still taste terrible, but it is important to make an impression.

Upon closer inspection, this is not an Exif after all. It is similar, certainly, but the Exif did not indulge in such finery, did not wear crimson cloaks or fine black coats. The flavour of its life’s flame is wrong as well, the wrong convictions and the wrong stars. Plus, its psychic abilities outstrip those benighted zealots greatest seers by an order of magnitude, shining within the aether. Killing it might even require that we expend real power.

And there is something it carries, something divine, not a living thing, but an echo…

The Wrath opens his jaws, intent upon ending the creature immediately, but Control bites our least inquisitive self upon the horns, wrenches his head aside and hisses, chastising. There are other considerations than the glory of this morsel’s ending, however much that need might ache, and if the knot of hellborn force we have sensed roaming these ruins is this creature’s ally then attacking it here and now may be doubly unwise.

And so, finally, we respond.

We are King Ghidorah. We are many things, but chief among them, Destroyer. Understand, creature, on any other day, you would die here. On any other day, the only answer your impertinence would have received would be cosmic oblivion.

The Wrath growls and hisses. The Whimsy edges closer, his muzzle very nearly touching the not-an-Exif. Control rears up, unleashing a star-bolt upon a gathering cluster of gibbering unmade puppets several blocks distant, sending fire, lightning and burning limbs fountaining into the air.

…but the unmade task us. Can a thing with no value, no existence of its own, truly be destroyed? Ruin is a sacrament. One that Darkseid would deny us. No living thing is truly our ally, but in this, and only this, we may find common cause: the Unmaking must fall.

The creature summons its courage and sketches a formal bow.

'Then it is certainly a fortunate day for me, Great one. Although I must admit that until this meeting I was of another opinion entirely. I am the Grand High Inquisitor of Vaidehi, Called Ezrihel, of the house of Ancients, and I am grateful for your forbearance. '

We raise our heads, our cosmic fires rumbling within our chest as we consider. There is something… odd, about this creature, about the way its words make us feel, which we cannot quite fathom. The Whimsy is especially baffled, descending once again to peer at it from a closer vantage. Somewhere nearby, a tower falls, and Myrrha swoops past, her steed thundering columns of solar force amidst the chaos of smoke, cinders and booming weapons. She yells something, but she is so small to us in our current form, we cannot make it out over the clamour of war.

And in any case, this ‘Grand Inquisitor’ may present an opportunity.

It is a gift given not a dozen times in the history of the universe, and you do well to recognize its value. Tell us, Inquisitor: the mighty fiend and the ice elemental, the chillblaine mechanism and the knot of hungry hellfire - are they your creatures? We can taste their power - and yours as well: not just your meager psychic talents but a faded thread of divinity.

To challenge the soul of a planet, it could prove… useful.

The Inquisitor is clever, in the way that diplomats only sometimes are - not that cleverness has ever saved any of its predecessors. So much of this circumstance is infuriatingly, demeaningly unprecedented. Although we cannot penetrate its mental defenses, we can see it thinking - the extra moment it holds the bow, the seconds bought adjusting its cloak. We see so clearly in our minds eye, how its finery would burn, its flesh boiling off its bones…

… Hm.

That is what has been bothering us. We want to kill it - of course we do. Such is our nature, and our unmatched privilege. But, deprived as we are of proper satisfaction, we want to kill it far less than we ought to.

We know well the touch of psychic manipulation, of enchantment, of every form of mental compulsion. This is not that. But what, then?

The Inquisitor responds, interrupting our fascinated, furious curiosity.

'Yes. My faithful service to the gods has been well rewarded, mighty Destroyer. '

A cleric, then. Or some manner of paladin. Not an Exif, but a creature of religion nonetheless. The touch of divinity could, perhaps, account for our blunted bloodlust… but it has never saved a god from us before, let alone one of their servants.

It is a conundrum - but one we do not have time to ponder. Something is happening : a change in the pattern of violence, in the rhythms of destruction swirling within this yawning cavern. We turn, our mighty jaws gaping wide, and unleash a barrage of cosmic starbolts. Crimson lightning, violet fire and golden gravity annihilate an entire district - but kill fewer unmade than they should.

We turn once more to the Inquisitor, Control and the Wrath pinning them with their gazes while the Whimsy scans the ruined cityscape, abruptly on-edge. We will decipher them later - but for now, our burgeoning power is still not so overwhelming that we can afford to discard a potentially useful pawn, especially one we do not fully understand.

If you would spit in Darkseid’s eye, it is a service we will allow you to continue a while longer. Martial your forces. Gather your lurking demon, and your fragile retainers and your cold little puppet - for something is coming. Perhaps, should you survive, the Queen of the Locust will prove as magnanimous as ourselves.

11356 words total count for Ghidorah
Ghidorah has used 1 point of Focus to brutally dispatch Baragon. 2/5 reamining.

 

[Arbiter]

“Advance, advance! Secure the forward positions and hold them! Darkseid's chafe is routed!”


Queen Myrrah barked the savage orders over the incessant drone of her war beetle, now hoarse and blood spattered from the fray. She was no wilting regent who sent brave soldiers to do her bidding, no. She was someone who knew the value of leading from the front, of sharing the misery of her subjects, and of keeping a close damn eye on that perfidious golden snake over there.


For now, Ghidorah seemed quiescent; perhaps even contemplative as he stood amidst the now-thoroughly desecrated entrails of the protean Dwemer ruin. What few air drafts pushed through this massive hollow could no longer compete with the rising, acrid smoke that issued from every corner of the cave. Perhaps the beast had satiated himself.


Myrrah snerked. If only.


The war beetle alighted on a low overhang, opposite the rooftop where Ghidorah was mentally bellowing his decrees at a cluster of unknown figures. As she did so, another one joined them in a jumping flash of blue flame. Her eyes narrowed beneath the gleaming, polished brown of her red helm.


She had received reports of this icy automaton causing trouble over the past few minutes…and now the destroyer beast was treating with them. How rote. Clearly this destroyer of worlds was more of a talker than he let on. Myrrah raised her voice across the crumbled cavern street, smoke-raw and weary.


“Ghidorah! You already march with the might of the Locust Horde; I didn't think you needed even more help! Destroy or ignore these interlopers so that we can press the counter-offensive!”


A baritone chitter rolled across the blasted square as the dragon took in the full context of the situation. That feeling of something coming, like having his senses pulled…no…drained down an endless event horizon that demanded every flicker of his attention. It was here…now…


“Rose Quartz.” Kopaka droned. He pointed his finger in the direction of Baragon's smoldering carcass, no more than a block away. Perched upon the neck stump of the sauropod stood a lone, powerfully feminine figure. Full-bodied, with fuschia hair and bubblegum dress billowing in the blazing wind.


Big, fat, glittering tears rolled down her cheeks as she knelt at the Baragon's wound. The lacrimal essence washed over the blackened flesh, and greasy, half shaped scales and facial features writhed back into existence…such as they were. It was as if the saurian's features were only half-remembered, and sloshing, offal wretchedness filled in the gaps.


Ghidorah's entire body bristled as the assembled Fighters watch the kaiju rapidly undestroy itself, and rise back into a fighting position. All three of Ghidorah's heads, their full attention fixed on the pink figment, blasted a fusillade of crackling fireballs in Rose's direction.


All of them smashed ineffectively against a shimmering, pink wall of force that raised itself to defend the last two Unmade in the city.


“No, sweetie. You've done enough. Go home.” Rose whispered, somehow audible over the crumbling necropolis. The gelatinous half-creature that used to be Baragon gurgled pitifully, and began rapidly burrowing away as the Arbiter ascended slowly into the air. Another volley of firepower glanced off of pink fields of impermeable force, this time not just from the space dragon, but to no avail.


“That's enough!” Rose shouted. The entire cavern shook from the power of her voice, toppling the last few towers at the edge of the cavern that hadn't caved in.


“All of this fighting and death is your fault! We invited you to be with us, to embrace Darkseid! To let me give you my love! But you would prefer this!” she cried, gesturing at the smoldering devastation.


Ghidorah clucked a long, rolling rumble of sheer amusement before blasting another concentrated blast of storm fire at Rose. Oh he was certainly strategizing other solutions to the Arbiter's delightfully resilient defenses…but at the same time, a square peg will fit through a round hole if you hit it hard enough.


Rose, however, continued her soliloquy – heedless of all the fire, ice, and ordnance bouncing away from her. Any hurled insults, banter, or bargaining from these rowdy children was just stubborn noise.


“I know I'm not actually your mother…so I figured maybe some of your real family could show you the beauty of Darkseid.”


Ezrihel, Arthur, and Kopaka all paused for a moment and glanced at each other.


“You got a brother I ain't heard about?”


“Tell me that your other models of android aren't as reckless-”


“I was under the impression you had no family ties.”


If there was ever a group of people in the Crossroads who had absolutely no family ties, it was these souls. Ghidorah, however, had gone completely still. Another fetid spark of Unmaking was swirling in the wings of his awareness…a flavor of essence that was nauseatingly familiar as much as it was disgustingly false.


Also, it was immense.


The roof of the entire cavern fell in with a blast of crackling, deep purple electricity. Everyone dove, shielded and ducked for cover as rubble and stalactites pelted the entire city – now little more than an engraved rock pile. The smoke and dust was cleared by the thunderous clap of giant wings, as an absolutely titanic form descended into the ruined hollow.


The three heads and double tail, you are familiar with. Two great, shredded, nearly skeletal wings flapped softly. Emaciated, broken necks and sloughing scales crunched and crumbled away loathsomely as the ‘healed’ corpse hung there overhead.


Rather than a golden gleam, this cosmic wraith's body was wrapped in dull greys and bruised purples. Smoldering thunderheads of static-charged blood dripped from a thousand wounds like choking ozone rain. And then finally, there were the muzzles. Slack-jawed and ponderous, with only burning red points left in five and a half eye sockets. On each brow, broken horns were surmounted by a blazing Omega symbol, burning proudly through the fog.


And then, finally, came the voice…smashing into every quaking mind within the cavern like a rogue planet.


Hello, slug.


Hello, assorted dust.


Rejoice, as you are the first to witness the true depths of Darkseid's power. Rose's mercy has freed me from the internment of death itself…but more than that, He has granted me true purpose.


The cosmic progenitor cruised down to hover just above the toppled rooftops, causing arcs of violet lightning to languidly flicker from his corpse to the streets.


No more a destroyer, but a Harbinger. I bring you tidings of mercy and rebirth, if only you give yourselves to the Unmaking.


Snow, of all things, began to trickle down into the cavern. The stolen, perverted body of Ghidorah had taken the prerogative of blasting through nearly a mile of solid stone and ice from the surface, just for the privilege of presiding over them.


If not, well. I still have a taste for the old ways.


“The choice is yours. But I hope you'll choose peace.” Rose said sadly. She offered the assembled usurpers one final, loving smile before rocketing up through the ceiling breach in a streak of pink light.

Boss Battle
OMEGA SHIN GHIDORAH
- Cosmic Anathema -​

 

[King Ghidorah]

Snowflakes and ash mingle upon the breeze.

Desecration…

There are no words.

The very breath of the universe shudders to a stop within us, so still and cold, so crystalline and flawless is the feeling which consumes our soul. It stands an apotheosis: across fourteen billion years and one-hundred thousand forgotten tongues, it does not have a name.

If left to ferment in the minds of immortals for an age of creation, if tended like a garden and sculpted by the hands of masters, if cultivated over the course of a civilization’s lifetime by the best and most brilliant of the genius and the mad, it is what rage might one day become.

This is no longer about the Unmaking. Rose Quartz has done this, taken our own perfect, fallen body, and created this anathema. It is an offense far beyond the merely personal. For this, we would tear down the stars, cut open the sky to draw but a single tear upon her cheek; We would end the universe to see her bleed.

But first, this hideous pantomime must stop.

Our astral furnace roars, and so do we, an echoing shriek which eclipses the crack of our wingbeats as we launch ourselves towards this false and stolen revenant, this parody of our zenith, sickening mockery of its hallowed desolation.

Our own mighty voice, not three, but one, placid and empty like a great slab of featureless stone, condemns us.

‘Such misplaced anger. Fall then, little echo.’

So great is our need to purge the abomination, overriding all tactics and reason, that we nearly fail to avoid the monstrosity’s attack, twisting in the air as actinic bolts of diseased violet lightning fit to eclipse our current body’s torso boil the air around us, trace great blasted canyons of blooming black flame in the rubble-strewn floor of the hollow.

We shine, our scales beaming solar-bright, golden electricity crackling across our wings as we return fire, three, six, nine blasts of burgundy starfire blooming explosions across the thing’s wizened and rotting chest, blasting gouts of putrefied grey flesh and corrupted crimson blood into the air - to no avail.

It flaps its tattered wings once as we close in, jerking a full body-length upward, and curls its skeletal tails beneath itself, a deceptively fast two-pronged whip-crack sucker-punch: one of our own favourite tricks, and one we narrowly avoid - but in doing so, swoop directly into the path of another blast of blackfire lightning, product of the Wrath’s lolling undead counterpart.

Howling, we are driven to the ground, into the rock and debris, our glorious golden body blasted, burned and torn as the pulverized ruins erupt around us.

‘Ah, Futility.’

Seldom have we felt such agony. We know the touch of our own power, and this is something different - the same forms and pathways, chaneling similar forces, but twisted, empty and cold. The pain is psychic as much as physical: the hammering force of Darkseid’s grinding, hegemonizing will lancing like ice into our bones.

Even as we claw our way free of the collapsing rubble-filled crater, bleeding mercury-tinged gold from our cracked and blackened scales and screaming through three sets of broken fangs, our flesh is already beginning to mend itself - but not as fast it should, and the cold and the sting remain.

Above us, beams of plasma thunder, and bolts of unmade lightning flash: Myrrah and her steed have engaged our corrupt doppelganger, her aerial harassment forcing it lower. The entire cavern shakes as its feet finally touch the ground, directly beside us with an echoing boom and a shower of broken stone caked in crackling liquid gore.

At our highest point, twelve stories tall, we barely reach its knee.

Scattered weapons fire echoes from the half-buried ruins, tracing tiny, bright flashes and occasional blossoms of flame across the rotting colossus, but doing no noticeable damage. Additionally, bafflingly, the cold little robot with its sword and silly shield has somehow mounted one of the abomination’s massive talons and, through streams of toxic blood and a haze of crackling violet static, is doggedly climbing.

In any other situation, we would laugh. But for once, there is no room in us for laughter. We rise, and shake ourselves, our comparatively undersized feet squelching in puddles of our own golden ichor, and, we take once more to the sky, swooping around behind the towering corpse. Dodging between its tails as it ponderously advances, we cannot help but observe that its ravaged body lacks much of the mercurial speed it possessed when it was ours.

Abruptly, there is a five-pointed burst of sapphire combustion, a column of hellfire erupting from amidst the buried ruins, raising whisps of steam from the swirling snow - and the demon finally joins the fray. Clothed for travel in hat and bandanna, a humanoid skeleton wreathed in furious blue flame, its stature is a match for our own, though still dwarfed by the foe.

“I THINK,” it booms, “THAT’S ABOUT ENOUGH OUT OF YOU, HOSS.”

This is when the demon proves we were correct to be wary. It draws a weapon - primitive in appearance, a simple metal tube mounted upon a stock. Gripping it in one bony, burning hand, it opens fire, peppering our opponent with comets of sinister blue-white flame. The fiend advances, its overlarge boots cracking stone rubble with every step, working a lever upon the bottom of its gun in between each shot with a complicated flick of its wrist.

It does not appear to do any harm, does not burn or blast the behemoth’s flesh - but still, our antithesis rears back, howling in wordless confusion.

We take advantage of the distraction. Soaring higher, we channel that peerless peak of ultimate, all-devouring apoplexy glinting at the core of us, dredging the depths of our astral well. We open our mouths, golden blood dripping from our jaws - and there is lighting.

Not the pitiful golden arcs of our diminished form, not the incidental manifestations trailing the starbolts this adolescent body employs - the full-throated furious thunder of the newborn cosmos with which we once ravaged worlds. Searing amber blazing to white, it strikes our dark reflection full upon the back, blowing smoking slabs of corrupted crimson organ-meat and rotting grey scale out through the front of its titanic rib-cage upon a tide of golden gravity!

We are not expecting the speed of its retaliation, or anticipating how little our assault seems to stagger it. We are not expecting its leftmost head to twist fully round, massive vertebrae cracking like thunder, and return fire, blasting us once more from the sky with a blazing arc of inverted astral fury - but that is what happens. Thankfully, we do not take the full brunt of the assault, twisting aside with sufficient alacrity that only our wing is struck, its membranes burnt and torn - but it is enough to send us crashing to the earth.

Only the Whimsy sees what happens next. As we writhe, stricken and half-buried in rubble, floating outside of ourselves, the demon closes in, exchanging its gun for a rope of sapphire flame, looped expertly around Control’s putrid counterpart - only to be yanked in by its own weapon and slapped aside with one tattered skeletal wing, sent tumbling across the hollow as our oppressor begins sweeping the chamber with cold, violet lightning, scattering the remaining Locust and drowning rock and rubble in an ocean of black fire.

And spiralling down from far above, the pace of the snowfall rises.

Ghidorah used 1 point of focus to do a really-big-boy breath-weapon

 

[Arthur Morgan]

“He’s not getting up,” yelled Sari suddenly, the words cutting across Ezrihel’s focus.

“What?” the andromedan General snapped to be heard over the din, head whipping towards Sari, the blonde strands of his hair flung wildly around his aristocratic features, tangled with dust and smoke. His sword sliced through the air as he fended off an Unmade beast with far too many spear-like, grasping legs—scything off half of them in one fell swoop.

The pair ducked behind the toppled remains of a brick wall, wary of the twining heads of the three-headed golden behemoth and its shadowy counterpart high above them, creeping in sinuous coils amidst the debris, their sharp jaws gnashing and releasing bursts of lightning that tore everything in their path asunder.

“Arthur,” supplied the blue-haired assassin, his eyes flicking towards where the fiery cowpoke’s eight-story tall form had been cast into the war-torn wreckage of one of the city’s lower districts. “He’s not getting up. Do you think he might be dead, my General?"

"Hardly," Ezrihel scoffed at the suggestion, offended by the mere thought. “He’s tangled with an Arbiter before, for Nithos's sake. I highly doubt one little swat would be enough to topple him.”

Yet, the noblethem couldn't suppress the urge to steal a concerned glance back towards the silent, motionless heap of rubble and billowing black ash…

.

.

.

A dusting of snow shook down on him, sifting through the brittle air as a gentle powder descending upon his prone figure.

The biting cold tore at Arthur's cheeks, leaving his lips chapped and his grizzled beard raw and stinging, the skin beneath cracked into bleeding veins of scarlet and bruised blueish-black purple. Each flake that landed upon his weathered face felt like barbed wire being dragged across his flesh—the sharp crystals fleecy and spinning, as weightless as his thoughts were scattered, tangled up in a whirlwind where truth and shadows twined together in a confusing, hazy mess.

He couldn't remember how he got there. Couldn’t remember why he lay there, sprawled across an endless expanse of white. A shivering husk of a man, of nothing, the crust of frost beneath his crumpled frame bearing his imprint, his body’s thawing warmth, and little else.

But he could taste the sour, metallic tang of blood in his mouth, its coppery fingers clawing outward from his chest like a man might dig himself out of a grave. A brutal reminder that he was still among the living, even as his mind grew numb with delirium, his extremities deadened by the cold.

There was something… something he was meant to be doing. Something that needed doing.

With an effort that seemed to summon every ounce of strength he had left, Arthur forced himself to focus on his hands—those sun-kissed, scarred storytellers of a life lived hard and foolishly, though not particularly long—and watched, like seeing some inexpert puppeteer at work, as his fingers hooked, scraped, and dug with weakening fervor at the ground beneath him.

Fighting to stand. Fighting to get up.

The snow yielded begrudgingly to his desperate scratching, revealing streaks of bitter ice that glinted scornfully under an absent sun. His fingers, chafed and burning red with exertion, met with opposition at every turn. He barely registered the cuts on his knuckles where the frigid crystals had lashed out too fiercely, the uneven granules leaving glistening, crimson droplets of blood to mix with the pristine white of the snow.

Shallow breaths tried to fill his lungs—crackling, laborious puffs that hung in the air, gusty and misting with flecks of black, diseased blood, before dissolving into the polar vastness. All other sounds were muffled, almost as if he were submerged under water; a great hum rolling and sloshing in his ears like the ocean’s eddying waves, everything beyond rendered as distant and fluid as a dream.

A dream, but not a particularly pleasant one.

Every so often, Arthur thought he caught the cadence of a familiar voice or the distant, rumbling growl of thunder, but it slipped away from him just as quickly. An auditory mirage, he thought. Only the wind playing tricks on his mind.

With each futile effort to rise, the cold hard ground became his confessor, accepting the burden of his collapsing, crumbling body with stoic indifference. His muscles protested their leaden weariness, but it was as though his every fiber had been dredged through thick, gum-like mud—the snow painting him in its chilling, ivory-white livery until he was left there, sluggish and limp, staring up into a vault of endless white like a sick eagle looking at the sky.

As he lay there, slumped in the dirt like a beaten dog, Arthur became cognizant of… a secondary presence. The crackling of a campfire, the subtle sensation of heat against his skin. A mere suggestion of comfort against the bitter, blue-black cold that had consumed his eyelids, his ears, his nose, his mouth.

“Arthur Morgan,” came a voice, crisp and clear over the howling of the wind. “I do wonder… where you get the nerve.”

Arthur blinked. Slowly, straining against the relentless flurries that sought to blanket him whole, his eyelids heavy with their weight… and looked up.

His mind sketched the figure before he saw him proper. A man, dark and looming against the searing canvas of white. A strange man, at that—wearing a black suit and a black top hat, with a black, trim mustache and black, empty eyes.

The man’s figure was illuminated only dimly by the campfire’s hungry orange-gold flames, the murk of his clothing seeming to absorb its flickering light.

“Who… the hell… are you?” wheezed Arthur. He struggled to focus his bleary eyes, barely able to form words around the pain in his chest.

"I’m an old friend,” said the man, staring off at something across the frozen expanse. Arthur looked that direction, too, but all he could see was a plain of solid ice. That, and one monster of a storm brewing on the horizon, the dark clouds tinged with flashes of violet-black and gold. “Or perhaps simply an interested party. Either way, it doesn’t matter now. Does it?”

Arthur tried to respond, he did.

Instead, he coughed.

He coughed, long and wet and hacking, each choked, terminated breath like a strand of rusted saw blades raking across his lungs, his throat, his—hell, the whole damned trunk of his body, practically flaying him alive from root to tip.

Sweat trickled down his forehead in rivers by the time he was through, his face uncomfortably hot, head spinning as his eyes struggled to line up.

“I thought so,” said the strange man, his shadowed eyes glinting, beetle-black, as he peered down his nose at Arthur. “You stand among gods, Arthur. Among angels and devils. And yet here you are, the most godless of them all, groveling in the mire like a lowly worm.”

Despite everything, a grin cracked across Arthur's face.

"Ain't… worth nothin' more than that, I reckon,” he croaked out, voice hoarse, the frozen-stiff corners of his mouth seeping thin trickles of crimson. “Just worm food."

The mysterious stranger chuckled, a low and soft sound like the gentle fastening of a coffin’s lid. Arthur felt the chill of that laugh creep across his skin, a prickling of gooseflesh lifting in its wake, rising like the hackles of an animal.

“Worm food?” the strange man echoed, tilting his head ever so slightly—his top hat casting improbable, unsettling shadows that seemed to falter in their attempts to cross his plain features. “You’re far from your final rest, Arthur. I’m afraid the worms will have to wait.”

Arthur didn’t imagine so. He felt worn. Beaten. Couldn’t the man see that? His body ached, his muscles burning with a severity that rivaled the diabolic inferno he'd seen in the belly of the beast that’d struck him. Though it was more than the physical ache that weighed upon his spirit, now; it was the crushing yoke of fate. The knowledge that even here, after every improbable, impossible thing he’d seen and done, he’d always be kicked back down to this one, solitary point.

The dirt.

“Can’t keep doin’ this,” he groaned.

He didn’t know which part he was referring to. Damn near all of it, Arthur imagined.

But he didn’t have the luxury of languishing. There was something that needed doing—something half-done that needed seen to.

Unfinished business. That’s what they called it, wasn’t it? When a man who was by all natural rights supposed to be dead kept on living.

With great effort, the cowpoke shoved against the icy crust of hoarfrost beneath his hands as he fought to rise, his arms quivering under him like sapling branches in gale-force winds. And all the while, the stranger observed him with an air of detached curiosity, as if watching a tortoise struggling to right itself upon its back.

“That creature,” said the man. “Is but a child’s bedtime story compared to what’s waiting for you.”

Panting hard, Arthur steadied himself as he rose up onto one knee. Chest heaving. Body hunched forward, his neck and spine tortuously bent, head bowed as if in supplication.

He squinted up at the stranger through swollen, cornflower blue eyes, utterly incredulous.

“Really?” he managed to spit out through bloodied, cracked teeth. Phlegmy red speckled the snow, bright as rubies. “What's there left after this?”

All good things come in threes, growled the Wolf.

She stood to Arthur’s right, her hoary, mottled-grey coat bristling against the cold. Her yellow eyes fixed upon him, jaws agape in a canine pant, revealing rows of glistening fangs in a snarled muzzle.

And evils, snorted the Stag.

He stood to Arthur’s left, his broad chest and neck chiseled with sun-dappled brawn, his antlers sprawling outward like a crown of thorns. Long, graceful legs carried his form, his front hooves stamping against the icy ground with a blustery, ghosting huff of steam.

And ahead of him, the strange man loomed ever closer, his shadow threatening to swallow Arthur up completely.

“This world is but a crucible,” said the man, hands folded neatly behind his back, tipping forward and back on his heels. “And you—like all those who came before you—are being tempered within it.”

“You keep carryin’ on like this,” Arthur grumbled irritably, in between gasps for air, glaring from beneath the brim of his hat. “Talkin’ in circles, riddles, and what have you... and I’m gonna get mad.”

“Mad?” the man in the black top hat gave a mirthless chuckle, the sound mirrored by a chuff from the Wolf, a snort from the Stag’s dewy snout. “Let me tell you what you have to be mad about, Arthur Morgan.”

He turned, his footsteps crunching through the powdery snow as he paced slowly away from the stooped cowboy, one smooth, sleek accountant’s shoe after the other.

"You and I, we're cut from the same cloth. A lawless and moral breed, hailing from the untamed territories of the old world. The wild and free places that keep hell fat with sinners…”

The strange man drew to a halt, hands slipping inside his black suit jacket’s pockets.

“Arbiter,” he stated, the title laced with a hissing, keen sort of distaste as it slithered off his tongue. “The very word signifies control. Power. The right to rule. They've yanked you away from your own world, from the fate you chose, my friend. They won't even let you die. And now, they've allowed this governed realm to succumb to the dark. Worst of all… they expect you and your little friends to rectify it.”

He pivoted on his heel and gazed down at Arthur with dark, scrutinizing eyes.

"I wonder. What sentiment does that stir within you, Arthur Morgan?"

Arthur chewed on that thought, for a time.

“I reckon,” he began in a drawl, the words hoarse and weary, trailing along like the slow creaking of a wagon's wheels. "I reckon I'm feelin’ mighty used up. It’s one thing when hell’s got hold of your coat tails… real different when it’s some devil I don’t know, stringin’ me along.”

With a grunt, he heaved himself more or less upright and stumbled forward in the snow. His boots sank deep into the frozen ground with each unsteady, listing step—and the Wolf moved alongside him, the Stag and the Strange Man remaining behind, dissolving with the falling snow, failing, passing away.

“But I also reckon,” said Arthur, a glint in his eye. “I ain't done yet. Got a few more good licks left in me.”

.

.

.

From out of the dark a blue whip of fire shot forward with a crack and shriek, its links ablaze, snapping in fury.

The three-headed abomination came to a sudden halt in its rampage, its shadowy form unfurling two colossal, cadaverous wings. Its serpentine heads reared high, the cursed sigils blazing upon their crested foreheads with an unnatural, blood-red gleam. From its loathsome nostrils billowed forth great strokes of violet flame, dark and pungent with the sulfurous stench of death.

Amidst the shattered wreckage of the Dwemer ruin, Arthur stood, his shoulders bent forward in a wolfish lean, an immense length of chain coiled in his skeletal grasp.

His shotgun hung limply in his other hand, wreathed in roaring blue flame.

“C’mere,” he said, the words crackling out from between the bared teeth of his naked, grinning skull. “C’mere.”

He gripped the fiery blue chain and whirled it around his head, the singing whine of metal humming in the air with every turn.

Sch-ing. Sch-ing. Sch-ing.

The three-headed dragon rested in menacing stillness for a moment more, its tongues of fire and bilious thunderbolts wavering with uncertainty in its breast. Then, it approached slowly—the shadows around it seeming to deepen and expand, crushing homes and lofty towers beneath its bony, talon-tipped feet.

It uttered a baleful, snarling hiss, its dark words indecipherable to Arthur, mangled by the jaws of his mind. They were warped and corrupted, wrung from the very depths of whatever unholy nether it had crawled up from. Until finally, it reared upright, wings spanning wide, encompassing the cavern ceiling and casting an apocalyptic shadow over all that was ensconced within.

In the encroaching darkness, Arthur remained. He stood hunched, skull tipped at a crooked angle upon its stem of kerchief-covered vertebra, his skeletal form streaked with azure hellfire, his chain-whip swinging like a bolt of lightning striking against the black.

Sch-ing. Sch-ing. Sch-ing.

“C’MERE,” he said again, louder, this time accompanied by a high-pitched, whistling ember from between his gnashing teeth.

Out of the titanic creature's three maws came forth three beams of glaring violet light.

With a thunderous BOOM and a searing lash of blue, the three-headed devil pitched backwards, emitting a shrill, furious cry—the lancing glare of its deadly breath forming a dazzling spectrum in the air, arcing wide of its intended target. Arthur staggered, his colossal boot-heels skidding in the rubble, before regaining his footing.

The chain in his bony hand continued its hypnotic, unending circuit, swinging in a rhythmic frenzy.

Sch-ing. Sch-ing. Sch-ing.

“C’MERE, YOU,” Arthur rasped again, and lurched forward, the length of chain crackling, hissing, spitting in his grip.

Amidst the deafening thunderclap of its tattered, ripped-sail wings, the great three-headed abomination descended upon him, its spiny, club-like tails poised to strike and its cataclysmic jaws stretched wide.

A glimmer of gold flickered in Arthur’s periphery, coming from the creature’s flank, and that’s when he struck.

With a surge of rage, Arthur brandished the chain-whip with all his might, bottom jaw falling unhinged as he emitted a guttural, wicked cackle that ricocheted across the ravaged cityscape.

CRACK! The metallic links writhed and slithered in his bony grasp, singing in musical chorus as the chain spun. And at its tip, a blistering blue flame erupted, scorching the very air and leaving behind a deep black scar upon the rubble-strewn ground below.

But Arthur's chain continued its upward arc, soaring and seething with hate.

The chain-whip flashed and coiled around the long, serpentine neck of the three-headed dragon’s central head, yanking and pulling taut, wrenching it forward. The beast's massive body pitched and spilled towards the skeletal cowpoke in a meteoric blaze, two of its heads retching out berserk streaks of brackish purple electricity, striking at him with all the ferocity of a pair of mated cobras.

Fortunately, Arthur didn’t have to worry about their interference for long.

One head’s neck was soundly clamped by all three jaws and both mighty talons of the three-headed golden dragon, the wind currents kicked up by its wings buffeting Arthur and stirring a hailstorm of dust into tumbling all around them. It thrashed and writhed, jerking its heads in an attempt to wrench the abomination’s skull free from its trunk, tendrils of white energy searing into the imposter’s grey-tinged meat.

With a ham-fisted scramble, Arthur mounted the back of the three-headed abomination, the barbs lining its spine scraping through cloth to grind against the bone of his flame-wreathed limbs, its grey-scaled frame rippling and bucking in protest. But the cowpoke held on with a firm hand, his skeletal fingers pulling tight on the chain around the center head's jaws, choking it, strangling the fire that sought to bleed from its infernal core.

”YOU AND I,” gritted Arthur, the burning sockets of his eyes flaring all the brighter. “WE’RE GOIN’ FOR A RIDE.”

5,229/10,000 WORDS
Arthur is using 1 point of Focus to impose his will upon Shin Ghidorah using his Ghost Mount and Hellfire Lasso: Chains of Heaven abilities.

 

[Kopaka]

Fire, thunder, ice, stone, wind…all of these forces of the natural world bent and shifted around Kopaka like a perpetually tuning orchestra as he continued to scale the corruscated mass of the Unmade Ghidorah’s flank. Between careful timing and judicious use of the Kanohi Miru, Kopaka had been able to make quite remarkable progress, nearly reaching the thing’s middle back.

P’thaeyl continued to buzz along, just behind the Toa’s shoulder, covering both of them in a shimmering, honeycomb shield of protective energy. Based on the ongoing cataclysm, Kopaka had to assume that neither he nor the helpful drone would survive any kind of direct attack from Rose Quartz’s pet.

The shield did, however, protect against the ionic ripples of cosmic static that crackled across the towering creature’s body every time it blasted a fresh gout of purple lightning. Even as the immense, ghostly apparition of Arthur saddled the thrashing beast, Kopaka continued to cling and climb in short, icy bursts, freezing his own hands to Shin Ghidorah’s invincible scales as he went.

“WE’RE GOIN FER’ A RIDE!” the ghost rider seethed. It was barely recognizable as Arthur’s voice, at this point. The giant timbre and spectral hissing gave it a sinister, harsh quality that Kopaka found personally offensive. If the Toa did not know his friend so well, the cowpoke may have very well found himself on the short list of Kopaka’s elimination targets at this point.

Another rush of crackling, violet static washed over them, causing P’thaeyl’s shield to flicker red and waver.

“Master Kopaka, I must observe that we are in a tactically disadvantaged position. I do not know what you plan to accomplish here upon the creature’s back but…” the drone shouted, politely, as the cosmic anathema began to thrash and buck around the entire cavern.

“...but I suggest you accomplish it soon!”

Kopaka nodded sullenly, and unfroze himself from the body, keeping his gaze fixated upwards. His prize was just fifty feet away now, bleeding and writhing, just behind the flaming calves of the ghost rider. The smaller destroyer had blown a hole clean through the Unmade dragon about two minutes ago…a breach which had already begun to rapidly seal itself shut.

Shin Ghidorah staggered sideways and slammed its entire, crackling bulk into the side of the cavern as it fought the ghost rider’s control. Blue fire and purple lightning flirted amidst a fresh shower of basalt dust. Each thundering step was its own earthquake, further supplemented as Ghidorah the Younger slammed into the pair as well.

“EASY THERE PARDNER!” Arthur boomed as Ghidorah screeched and assaulted his larger counterpart. The golden destroyer’s movements and blasts of destruction, such as they were, had an altogether different flavor at this point. His wanton rampaging of the dwemer city now seemed relaxed and smug in comparison to the bared fangs and warbling hisses issued by each of his heads. Flecks of sizzling, mercury blood seeped from three jaws as the younger Ghidorah continually ripped and bit at any exposed soft spots on the Unmade Titan’s vulnerable underbelly.

This, to say the least, made climbing the oversized specimen fairly difficult.

Kopaka couldn’t help but emit a shocked yelp as he was thrown bodily from the side of Omega as the smaller Ghidorah continued his assault. The powers of the Miru allowed the Toa to float like an indecisive leaf, tossed through the air, as the entire dogpile of unhinged violence boiled below him.

He hung there on the updraft, blue eyes watching the wrestling, cacophonous heap carefully.

“Are you able to contact your mothership?” Kopaka said smoothly to the drone hovering next to him. P’thaeyl chirped momentarily before answering.

“Yes! The breach in the cavern ceiling has allowed me to reconnect to the Phantom-”

“Bring them here. Your assistance is no longer required. Thank you.” the Toa said softly. Without further ceremony, he deactivated the Miru’s booster jets and plummeted down towards the thrashing pile of fury.

Despite being fairly distracted by trying to wring the ugly gator’s neck with a hellish chain, the giant, flaming cowpoke was still able to spot the relatively miniscule, gleaming speck of Kopaka diving straight towards Omega’s center of mass.

“KOPECKER! WHAT-?”

But it was too late. Kopaka vanished seamlessly into the regenerating chest cavity like a catfish into a burrow.

There was a flash of light within the heaving, slopping recesses of moldering flesh as Kopaka switched masks from the Miru to the Kanohi Kau Kau. The Great Mask of Breathing would be needed for the next stage of his machinations, based on his prior observations of the Omega dragon’s interior anatomy. Granted, the Kanohi Akaku could not perfectly penetrate the undead beast’s scales, so thick was their protection, but Kopaka had scanned enough of the skeletal structure to understand what he had to do.

Considering that he was no longer benefitting from the Andromedan drone’s protective shield, he would have to work quickly, as well. Already, he could feel the latent, corruptive lightning within Omega’s very blood beginning to burn out his organic components. As the assassin had so insightfully observed earlier, however, there is a difference between having pain, and feeling it.

There is also a difference between observing something’s skeleton, and then trying to blindly traverse the cold, sloughing meat of its internal chest cavity. The Toa dare not switch back to the Kanohi Akaku, however, for risk of suffocating within the dead flesh; he would simply have to trust his memory and instincts.

Don’t think that I’ve forgotten about you, little orphan.

Kopaka shook his head as the Omega’s voice seized his processors with all the telepathic weight of a small moon. He mustn’t become disoriented here, and if his understanding was accurate, he had approximately twelve more feet of connective tissue to navigate before arriving at his first landmark; the third-left proximal rib.

One might say that Kopaka was surprised when, with another incision of his freezing blade, he tumbled into an unexpected pocket of heaving flesh – nearly into the jaws of a smaller, yet very much alive, interior head and neck structure of monstrosity.

As he slid towards the awaiting jaws, Kopaka’s hyperrational mind raced, and he breathed the purified air of the Kau Kau. This was nonsense. He allowed himself to become calm, breathing softly, and let his internal machinery inform him of the situation. All servo and armature motivators indicated that he was still (relatively speaking) stationary.

The Omega was projecting some sort of vision onto him – a tactic to which he was woefully defenseless towards, except insofar as he could rely on his mechanical components to be unbiased. The fact that Omega would even bother diverting that sort of mental energy on him while actively being assaulted by two other monsters indicated that he was, indeed, doing something harmful.

I’m sure you wish that was the case, little orphan. But no. I wish to offer you salvation.

“Tch.” Kopaka clucked. The illusion, knowing it was defeated, recoiled from view, and replaced itself with a simple, yawning gulf of starry blackness. Writhing, black, serpentine shapes occluded distant stars, as crackles of purple lightning ran between them. The Toa willed his body to continue cutting, thrashing, anything…but no. All digital readbacks confirmed that he was still immobilized within the sloshing meat of Omega Ghidorah, and rapidly suffering structural degradation.

I too, once occupied myself with a singular purpose. Disconnected. Unconcerned with the world, insofar as it gave me a canvas to express my deleterious ethos. For you, your art is your Duty.

“If you can read me so openly, then you will know that Darkseid holds no temptations for me.” Kopaka snapped in retaliation.

Give it time. Even if I am destroyed this night, I am happy to serve as his first ambassador to your heart. Darkseid is inevitable. Lend him your Duty, your dedication, and you will accede to the gradual arc of the universe…

“I do not…” Kopaka strained, trying to sever whatever mental connection was holding him pinned. Damn it all. He would have to discuss this weakness with General Althaus once this situation was over with.

“I do not…serve others in my pursuit of Duty, harbinger. I serve…myself.”

Ah, the altruist’s paradox. You think you can conquer the inherent self-serving vainglory of a righteous heart by admitting it? I have reigned long enough to know the folly of such so-called honesty, even before I was taken into His fold.

“That doesn’t seem…to inhibit Darkseid’s vanity project. You attempt to talk down to me, yet you are at the nadir of ethics.” Kopaka struggled back. His internal HUD was informing him that his right lower leg and left shoulder were beginning to suffer complete systems failure as latent destructive forces ripped his mechanisms asunder. The biological components would be next.

The cosmic serpents slithered and wove themselves tighter, closing a circle in around the Toa. No stars were visible now…just the smoldering eyes of the awaiting beast.

Darkseid is inevitable. You will be destroyed, or you will serve a purpose, then be destroyed. If we can admit that our pride is the only thing we can cling to, the choice becomes simple. Serve Darkseid-

“Darkseid is redundant, as are you, destroyer. The stars grind themselves to dust as the universe turns. You think you can outclass the profanities of the natural order? I am the turning of the wheel. I serve a greater destroyer than either you or Darkseid…”

As Kopaka said this, a cold light began to bloom from his body. Frost covered his digits, and jagged skeins of ice began to creep like branches outwards from his robotic form. The shadowy serpents recoiled from the reaching, freezing filaments. The Toa growled softly as he spread his body wide and focused his will.

“...I am no mere conduit. I am the embodiment of cruelty, of the fate of all things, of the cold death. You cannot unmake me any more than you can unmake the sky, or the light, or the dark.”

Like a frozen rose, now, a wall of icy power began to emanate from the Toa. It was a spiny, sharpened, bolus of angry hoarfrost that pressed and cracked into every internal bone and vein that surrounded him. He may not quite have reached Omega Ghidorah’s tripartite sternum as he had wished, but he was certainly close enough.

“I am Kopaka, Toa of Ice.”

Meanwhile, the situation outside of the undead, fleshy tomb had changed drastically.

The ghost rider had managed to rough-ride the howling titan long enough to fly him up through the yawning gap in the ceiling, with the smaller golden destroyer in very hot pursuit.

They spilled out onto the fractured, snow blasted glacier in a full flash of fire, smoke and blood as Omega Ghidorah’s eyes suddenly flashed with a malicious red glow. Even as Arthur tightened down on the reins, jagged red beams of piercing light zig-zagged out from the Unmade titan’s six eyes and slammed into the ghost rider’s chest, knocking him a good hundred feet back into the drifts.

The towering behemoth shook its three heads ponderously as the flaming chain slipped from its neck, slowly wheeling around to regard the bleeding, panting form of its smaller offspring. Here, in the parched, Inverxe air, with the pink light of Ioun glaring down on the ice, both Ghidorahs cackled out a harmonized refrain of sheer, supreme disdain for the other.

It was at that exact moment a jagged iceberg bloomed out of the middle-right section of Omega’s chest. Still, perhaps, fairly small compared to the rest of the titan’s overall bulk…but a weak point was still a weak point.

One of Omega’s heads stared at the fresh, frozen wound in profound curiosity, just as the golden destroyer’s jaws began to salivate with galvanic temptation…

Kopaka used 1 of 3 Focus to kick his Control Element: Ice into mega overdrive.

 

[Ezrihel]

“PHANTOM SIX-TWO-ONE ACTUAL, THIS IS EAGLE-ONE-EIGHT-THREE. HOW COPY? OVER.”

“PHANTOM SIX-TWO-ONE COPIES. LOUD AND CLEAR. REQUESTING SITREP. OVER.”

“COPY. COORDS TRANSMITTED. DANGER CLOSE, GUNS HOT, REVENANT UP. UNMADE CONTACTED. LOCUST HORDE AND GOLDEN DRAGON KNOWN AS ‘KING GHIDORAH’ APPEAR TO BE TEMPORARY ALLIES IN CURRENT ENGAGEMENT. BIG MAMA MADE -///- APPEARANCE AND SUMMO-/////- AID. UNIT CURRENTLY RANGING PRIO-///-TY TARGET - MASSIVE UNMADE TRI-HEADED DRAGON - SURFACE SIDE. TARGET REGENERATES AND WIELDS CATA-/////-MIC ELECTRO-GRAVITATIONAL PO-///-R. I REPEAT, TARGET REGENS AN-///- W-///-LDS CATACLYSMIC ELECTRO-GRAVITA-////-NAL POWER. CASUALTIES SU-////-AINED -//- EAGLE THREE-FIVE HIT BUT FUNCTIONAL. PLANETSI-//- REIN-////-MEN-//- -///-EST-//-D. SE-///- MATRON. O-///-R.”

“SAY AGAIN, EAGLE ONE-EIGHT-THREE. ARE YOU REQUESTING MATRON’S PLATOON? OVER.”

“AFFIRM-//-ATIVE. DEPLOY -////-T VANGUARD. OVER.”

“WILCO. DEPLOYING VANGUARD. ETA TO OBJECTIVE: SEVEN MINUTES. DO YOU COPY? OVER.”

“CO-PY. O-///-R -/////- OUT.”

​

~~~***~~~​

“SARI!” Ezrihel shouted as he braced against the terrible tremors rattling every inch of the cavern. The roof had caved in to reveal the far reaches of the pale, otherworldly surface. At this rate they were going to get buried alive. Ezrihel darted a hand out, grasping the assassin with psionic ribbons, and yanked the man forward several meters into an area clear of tumbling rubble.

They needed to find a way out of here, but where the hell could offer stability from such a cataclysm? He scanned the towering walls of the cavern, eyes bouncing across the icy barrier. The titanic battle between the two Ghidorahs had left the stone pock-marked with countless craters, and Arthur’s blistering chain had done the landscape little favor in gouging and flaying massive chunks from the terrain. Damn. He shook his head. He and his team had not planned for a situation with this level of open and accessible verticality when drawing up plans and strategies in the war room.

Ruedlen stood next to the aristocrat, her face and robes smudged with streaks of damp grey ash and the decrepit blackened oil slicks of unmade ichor as she dutifully held her spear at the ready. “We need to get somewhere that won’t rain debris on us.”

“This place is swiftly becoming a death trap, General.” Sari noted. His stooped posture had straightened out from sheer adrenaline. He was breathing easier, at least, shrugging off the lingering pain.

“Yes, yes! You are preaching to the choir, darlings.” Ezrihel quipped. He knew! He knew that the world was coming down around them. He didn’t need both of them interrupting his thoughts to state the obvious. “No one wants a repeat of Nausicaa.”

Rue grimaced, unable to bite her tongue she snapped, “so what’s your solution then, smartass?”

“I'm working on it.” The aristocrat growled at her audacity, mind still racing as he worked to patch himself through to P'thaeyl. They were sitting ducks down here, and they needed to get through to the ship or they would swiftly become roasted ducks.

“Well work faster!” The priestess demanded. The wan light from dozens of discolored fires lent her features an avian sharpness only bolstered by the aggravation building in her bodice. “There is no way in any of the nine hells that you take me from one apocalypse to the next just to get me killed again, Althaus!”

“Get you killed again? Is that what you think this is?” Ezrihel rounded on his subordinate, incensed by her accusations. “That this is all some sort of big game I'm pulling the strings for? That I'm the one choosing for you to live or die?”

Her burning ire flickered, a lapse of certainty. Ezrihel continued, “I am the reason we're all down here, yes, but you will not pin the disaster that Nausicaa was on me. We made the best of an awful situation-”

“I got reset, Ezrihel! I- augh! I got beaten to death by a furious god all while you got to play angel with the cowboy!” She retorted bitterly. So she had been filled in by someone on the crew, it just wasn’t clear what all she knew.

Sari stood guard just inside of a ruined doorway, catching his breath through his scarf to filter out the stench of ozone permeating the air. He peeked out to take a few potshots at the lingering hostile unmade that had wandered too close.

“‘Play angel’?” The noblethem scoffed with disdain. He was nearly finished patching himself through to his AI assistant. “You mean my gods given duty, to purge the universe of that encroaching force of darkness? You mean the oath I swore to Liliel that I would uphold? I'm sorry that you don't find life on the battlefield appealing compared to your sheltered life spent in a silent morgue, priestess, but some of us would like to actively achieve something with their lives.”

Ruedlen gasped, then hissed through her teeth. Sari ducked back inside, narrowly avoiding a potshot aimed at his head. The energy-bolt blazed through the destroyed room, bouncing off a brass fixture and gouging a hole in the wall. Ezrihel spoke over the insubordinate priestess as they collectively flinched. “This, Saerhaus? This is bigger than either of us. Do you fail to smell the death carried on every particle of air on this blasted planet? We need to fix this. I don't particularly care for this ball of ice either, but I would be less than a sickly little worm to turn my back to this issue.”

Bigger than both of them? She thought with a sneer. “Don’t act like I’m the one being selfish here, Althaus. My family has sacrificed plenty as well-”

“Haven't we all!?” Althaus scoffed dryly. Sacrifice. As if he didn't understand that more than anyone else here. It was all wearing thin in its tedium. “Is that an excuse to fall out of line? No! Get used to the battlefield and count your blessings, priestess. You walked it off in the end, not everyone we knew could say that.”

“Just because you lost her doesn't give you any right to lecture me.” Saerhaus spat, her shoulders and hips squared. “What you did wasn't your choice to make!”

Ezrihel cut his eyes to her. Sari was between them suddenly, hands up placatingly as he watched both them and the doorway. Ruedlen adjusted her hasta in her white-knuckled grip.

“I'm the reason you're alive and not fish food at the bottom of the gods forsaken ocean! Yes, Rue, yes!” His voice rose, anger bristling just under the surface. How dare she throw that in his face. “I'm the bloody reason that you were ever even recoverable in the first place! What, what? Did you want me to just leave you to die because you couldn't reasonably express a choice? Your choices don’t matter if you are dead, Saerhaus, and if you want to keep enjoying the ability to make choices, I would suggest shutting that thorny mouth of yours.”

Ruedlen scowled with barely concealed disdain. “Who were you to intercede between me and my god when it comes to matters of life and death?” She pointed her hasta at the general accusingly. “You forget yourself.”

Sari was suddenly beside her. He gripped the haft of her spear, fingers coming to his lips as he uttered a soft prayer. “Do not make a rash choice, my friend.”

All of a sudden the aristocrat laughed, loud and shrill with a manic edge. Compared to the backing din of smoldering wreckage and cosmic blasts, it sounded downright whimsical. “No, no...” He cackled, entirely amused by her statement as he gestured for Sari to stand down. “I forget myself for saving you, sister-in-law?”

He never forgot himself. How wretched to insinuate that he could ever possibly forget what had brought him to this point. He didn't need to be reminded. He pushed his bangs back from his face and tossed his hair.

“You do realize how utterly ridiculous that sounds, Rue?” He dismissed her position swiftly: she was being absurd acting this way, standing there with a nasty snarl contorting her lips in the midst of an active combat zone. “I am no fool, and I will suffer none of it. You are here because you are needed, boots on the ground, to fight back against the void that seeks to unravel us all. You should show more reverence to the still-living that deserve to experience their full lives. And,” with a wave of his fingers Ruedlen's hasta leapt from her grip and into Ezrihel’s. His voice dropped dangerously low and hissed passed his teeth, “don't point this at me again.”

The priestess huffed, quite an ugly scowl worn on her face as she quickly closed the distance between them and took her hasta back with an indignant yank. He allowed her without a fight. Her silence signified his point taken, no matter how unreasonably moody she got.

“Now that we are done with that,” Ezrihel relaxed slightly and turned his focus away from his two underlings. “P'thaeyl, do you copy?”

‘Yes.’ It chirped in his ear. ‘I took the liberty of contacting the Phantom Blossom and informing them of our situation. They have deployed the vanguard unit in response. ETA two-hundred and forty seconds.’

‘The vanguards? Did you warn them about all the lightning?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Kopaka?’

‘Topside with the unmade dracolich.’

‘Of course they are. You were up-close with the unmade dragon. Report.’

‘Unmade and undead, but it seems to be actively regenerating. The last I saw of the Toa, he was plunging directly into the innards of the Omega Ghidorah. ’

Regenerating? Ezrihel worked his teeth over his lower lip. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. That meant that they probably had a strict time limit when it came to dealing with that monster. ‘We need to get up to the surface. Problem is, those two can’t fly.’

‘My flight capabilities are only strong enough to carry one of them.’

‘Yes. One part of the issue solved, but I won’t leave the other one trapped down here. Morgan, how was he fairing after his little rodeo?’

‘Morgan is topside as well, though he has been consumed by the flames of his fury.’

‘Hopefully he’ll refrain from quoting the good book until I get up there. Return to me ASAP. We have but a moment to prepare properly.’

‘Make your decisions quickly, more approach from the east.’ P’thaeyl flashed a live feed across his optics. Locusts harassed the remaining unmade, pushing the dark forces towards them in retreat.

As soon as the assistant mentioned that fact the unmistakable but distant steely buzz of paradaemon wings started to prickle at the edges of his awareness. He spun back around, making eye contact with both of his underlings. “Sari, Rue, look alive! We have unmade bearing down on us from the east. The locusts have routed the remaining paradaemons for now, but until we get that gargantuan monstrosity out of the sky: the unmade still has the upper hand. The Vanguard unit is locked in and ready to hot drop on the situation. We need to make it topside in a little less than three minutes to meet up with them.”

Saerhaus couldn’t believe his words. “Three minutes? Althaus are you insane?!” She demanded. “With enemies marching towards us and no jet packs?”

“P’thaeyl will take one of you, the other will have to stay here with me.” Ezrihel informed them matter-of-factly. He already knew how this was going to go down. “Whoever goes topside must meet with our Vanguards.”

“I will stay with you.” Sari stepped forward with little fanfare.

Ruedlen blinked, taken back a bit by just how fast the assassin volunteered. “What? Sari, you-”

“Rue, my friend,” Sari interrupted her confused jumble of words, “go topside. We both know that you do not wish to be trapped down here. You need to be out there, where the light of Koneus can reach you... Besides that, Matron will probably not bite your head off if she sees you!” He smiled broadly.

“Wha- You have drama with her?” Frankly the priestess could hardly fathom the habitually friend-shaped man having drama with anyone save those on the receiving end of his blades.

He held a hand up, dismissing the question as P’thaeyl darted into the shelled building through a shattered window. “Some people are simply impossible to please.”

“Good, good.” Althaus interjected, unsurprised and ever disinterested. He didn’t need for this to turn into some teary-eyed goodbye. “Saerhaus, you will go with P’thaeyl to meet the Vanguards topside. May the gods bless you with swift thoughts, a calm heart, and a lucky blade.” Proper decorum demanded that he send underlings off with hopeful reassurance, even when he wanted to lash one for such disrespectful behavior.

Send-offs done, P’thaeyl promptly grabbed the priestess up and took back off towards the snow encrusted landscape of the surface. The general wasn’t quite sure if that fact relieved him or not, but he brushed the thought off to the back of his mind.

Ezrihel turned to Sari, a wry grin stretched across his pretty mouth. They were two warriors, forged in the inferno of grief and loss, braced against the oncoming storm of apathetic cruelty. The aristocrat couldn’t help but admire the dogged loyalty of the assassin. How blessed he was to have such a steadfast friend. The dreadful buzzing loomed closer still, oppressive in its droning cadence. Ezrihel reached out an open hand, “Do you trust me, Sari?”

“With my life, always.” The assassin answered effortlessly, clasping hands with his mentor. He would follow his general to the edges of the universe and further still, a fact Ezrihel easily picked up on as he bridged the psychic gap between them.

The noblethem’s eyes began to glow with a soft golden light as ghostly winds whipped his blonde tresses into aurelian ribbons. Liliel had adored the man before him endlessly, it was painfully easy to see why. His grace was a limitless aspiration. “Are you ready, friend of my heart?”

Sari nodded and laced their fingers together. His voice was soft and low, “I would be most honored, my general.”

“Lord of Endless Fire,” Ezrihel spoke the prayer aloud, light pouring from his eyes, mouth, and crawling down from his fingertips to paint him in divine gilding, “conqueror of all realms, witness my time of need!”

Winds gusted around them, ruffling their clothes and hair in the rushing torrents of glittering, energy laced air. Ezrihel’s brilliant inner light seeped into Sari like a welcome forest fire. It climbed up the assassin’s arms to spread through the rest of his form until he too shone from head to toe.
​

“As faithful warriors we ask that you guide our blades,
so we may lift our burdens and slay our foes today.
Exalt us with your divine authority!”​

With a final psionic pulse they fell into each other. A blinding flash consummated the prayer and left the air shimmering. In the space they once occupied a new creature knelt, one made of pale fire and adorned with flaming wings. They held a hand out, stretching their fingers wide and admiring the perfection of their digits, the flawless lines of their musculature and the grace of even the simplest of motions. A sense of wholeness flooded the deva, a profound oneness they had not experienced in a terribly long time.
​

HOW BEAUTIFUL.
HOW DIVINE.
THIS GLORIOUS GRACE OF MINE.​

They straightened their legs and stood, stretching their dazzling wings out until the tips brushed the sides of the shelled ruin. Next they stretched their mind; out, out, out they yawned, shuddering off the compression of cyclical time that weighed their thoughts down. The familiar chitter of chitin and metal exoskeletons echoed in the gutted alleyways, yet this time it did not belong to fetid unmade cockroaches. No, now it belonged to the locust horde, a battered lot who had barely survived the day thus far, if the angel had to hazard the barest of guesses.

It didn’t take long for their assumption to be proven out. The one they assumed to be the locust queen was swiftly upon them, mounted on the back of her gigantic war beetle and backed by the remnants of her elite forces. The hercaclaeum’s chitin wings hummed with an obnoxious monotony as it clacked its slavering mandibles in threatening hostility, doubtlessly thirsty to tear into yet more intruders. The astral angel did not falter or flinch before the insect, instead their flaming eyes bored directly into the Queen.

‘Ah, the Queen herself. Your Majesty.’ The angel’s choir-like voice whispered in her head. They spared her a courtesy. The light of her life burned brightly, connected as it was to a network of others. To take her down would not be simple, nor easy to survive. Their inquisitive mind raced over the web of the partial hive-mind, careful to touch no locust’s spirit in particular lest they be disturbed. No. They were a people of pillaging and raiding, but they at least belonged to Inverxe. The unmade was the far larger threat considering all circumstances. ‘We are Algorab, the one who seeks to root out the unmade poison.’

A tension lingered over the Queen, as if a rigid muscle was being forced to stretch through an agonizing cramp. Suddenly she pulled her arm back and yielded her savaged battalion’s encroachment; she did not, however, lower her own weapon.

“First the fallen destroyer in the flesh, then its corpse resurrected, the towering revenant... and now you, like a lantern in the dark.” She remarked in exasperation as she glared down the bridge of her pale soot marred nose. “Tell me: what is it you hope to accomplish in this battle of titans? Why should I not strike you down and save myself the concern of one less invader?”

The angel merely pressed the memory of the unmade dragon’s resurrection into her mind. ‘You are allied with King Ghidorah, for now, yet even they are eclipsed before the might of Darkseid. To survive on this unforgiving planet is to prosper and flourish. Your people would not survive with an incompetent ruler who did not understand such practicalities.’

“And what makes you think you have earned such mercy?” Myrrah leered with crown-ordained dignity. The notion of having all these invaders running about so deep in her domain was not something she enjoyed tolerating.

‘We think it would be most unwise to disregard any potential ally in such trying times. We are only here to remove the Unmade threat. Your legion is battered. We can feel the aches of their wounds as easily as smoke stains the air. Allow us to cut out the cancerous tumor at the heart of this savage world, and be gone.’

“Ha!” She gave a contemptuous and bemused scoff, finally lowering her weapon. “Very well, outsider. If nothing else, the beast may find your light a distraction - or a tempting meal.”

​

~~~***~~~​

“LOOK ALIVE, SOLDIERS! Into your drop pods! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” An imposing knight barked over the wailing alarms that blared through the Phantom Blossom’s barracks and launch bay. She was armored from head to toe in a suit of silvery lightweight alloy plate and stood on the deck, waving her platoon down into the drop pod bay. A yellow warning light strobed across the plain grey walls, counting down each passing second. It took approximately one hundred and twenty some-odd of those seconds to make a planet-side descent on a good day, and they had to drop fifty pairs of boots on the ice before shit went unrecoverably sideways.

Soldier after soldier climbed dutifully into their pods, the hydraulic lids hissing as they each locked shut. Finally the commander clamored into her own, securing her weapon before strapping into the launch safety harness. She gave one final glance over her equipment and ran the systems check. Five more seconds were spent before the automated system kicked in, turning the pods around and shielding off the hangar. Massive bay doors opened up under the platoon, revealing the ominous and smooth off-white expanse of Inverxe’s frigid surface. Even from all the way up here something about that dirty little snowball felt wrong deep in her guts.

She jammed an armored finger on the comms console. “Reports say that there are TWO metallic dragons fighting near our LZ. Our priority target is the big boy. He’s half undead, appears to have regenerative powers, and prefers a liberal usage of electro-magnetism - that means no high flying once we touch ground! We might lose comms as we descend, so stay alert. Priority target has a gigantic omega symbol branded on his forehead. Whatever you do, don’t fuck things for us and mix the two dragons up, or we’ll have a real shitstorm on our hands. EDL to LZ in two minutes. Copy?”

Each of the squad leaders sounded off. Except Jungo, who was quick to complain. “You’re telling me that we just got these fine new ion packs, and we aren’t even allowed to use ‘em?”

“Not unless you feel like eating shit anytime a discharge happens, musclehead.” She smirked as she held the interior handles tightly. Leave it to the cocky bastard to break his neck fucking around on this mission. She would never let him live down the shame after he got out of infirm.

“Nah, you just gotta have some skill, Matron.” Jungo teased over the comms, his signal going on the fritz as the release mechanisms fired and dropped them all into low orbit free fall.

“I have plenty of skill, it’s you I’m worried about.” Matron quipped back. It wasn’t as noticeable at first, but after several seconds the vibrations of crashing through the atmosphere had her teeth rattling behind her helmet and her organs pressed to her ribs.

“Feet first -///- into -///- hell!” Jungo howled into the crackling comms.

“You think the -///- asshole is gonna be -///- humbled when we get there?” Khan asked blithely.

“Hah, you’re asking for a -///- goddamn miracle, Khan!” Jungo cut in with a burly laugh.

Matron smirked at the banter. “Okay, okay. Can it, you two. I don’t want to hear it if he decides to review comms after we drag him out of hell itself.”

A handful of seconds passed. Soon a dark smudge became apparent on the barren icy surface, several kilometers away from the original drop point the general had used and concerningly close to the Vanguard’s landing zone. A colossal stormhead roiled up through the atmosphere, obscuring the battlefield in swaths of foreboding indigo clouds.

“Shit.” Matron grunted as they plunged into the unnatural and gloomy cumulonimbus formation and lost all sight of the LZ. Titanic bolts of cosmic lighting rippled and tore their way through the anvil, causing even her reinforced displays to crackle with static.

She punched the comms button. “Lost visual on LZ, I repeat, lost visual on the LZ! We’re flying blind. Copy?”

Only silence greeted her in return.

She gritted her teeth, straining her eyes to make out anything within the dim interior of the cloud. Through the gaps in the ominous haze and the brilliant backlight of stupendous violet lightning bolts she made out the twisting shadows of enormous serpentine forms. Cold dread flooded her veins and pooled in the pit of her stomach, her heartbeat pounding in her ears as she truly began to grasp the edges of proper comprehension. The dragons.

Cataclysmic, the report had read. How little weight she had given that description until now. Another flickering web of purple lightning briefly revealed just how savagely the two kaiju maneuvered for dominance, a towering silhouette contending seemingly through sheer bloody rage with a truly colossal shadow, before fading back into obscurity. She eyed the barrel of her mattock and found it pitifully lacking. What in the name of the gods were they supposed to do against that?

Finally, after what felt like an eternity that would forever line the pockets of their on-board therapists, they shot out through the bottom of the dense cloud cover. Instantly Matron was back on the comms. “Come in, Vanguards, how do you read?”

The comms system wailed, cutting in and out for several seconds before all the various squad leaders sounded off. Thankfully they had made it through the storm without anyone getting violently immolated.

“Adjusting our course.” Matron declared and punched the alteration in, the change rippling across her platoon’s drop pods. “Whatever the hell that fight is doesn’t look good. Gonna give us more wiggle room on the LZ.”

The pod jerked violently as its descent boosters fired up, effectively slamming the breaks on their fall. Then the parachutes automatically released, again jolting some of the air from her lungs. Tension built in her legs and arms until her muscles quivered - landing jitters they called it back in training, adrenaline shivers. Because no matter how many times you were shot down from space, there was no getting used to seeing burning plasma form around the hull of the drop pod during entry, or the way the ground rushed up to meet your feet at damn near the speed of sound in those last thirty seconds. She forced her breathing into a steady rhythm and clenched down every shuddering muscle in her body, then relaxed all at once.

“What in the gods’ names is that in the snow??” Khan blurted out over comms, shocked by what she saw.

Matron turned her eyes to the swiftly approaching ground. Amidst the pale fractured ice and frosted snowdrifts a massive burning skeleton lay heaped in the snow, surrounded by an unthinkably large hellfire chain, its towering jumble of azure bones the center of a hellish bonfire. Smoke wafted up from the downed giant.

“Is that... Is that the cowboy we’ve had on ship for the last few months?” Jungo followed up in astonishment. It must have been, it was wearing a supersized version of Morgan’s duster and she knew of no other emblazoned revenants.

“He’s a goliath! When did he learn to do that?”

“Focus!” Matron barked, cutting off the back and forth. She, for one, wanted to keep her spotless orbital drop record, and most accidents happened at landing. It didn’t matter that the miniscule human man they had been traveling with was now, inexplicably, a towering behemoth. Did it look good? No. But they could sort that out when there wasn’t looming combat threatening their imminent future. “When we touch down, find the General. Copy?”

“Loud and clear, ma’am!”

A green light flooded the interior of the drop pod, all screens taking on the same viridian hue. An alarm sounded, quickly subsumed by the chaos.
​

!!!PREPARE FOR LANDING!!!

~~~***~~~​

Ruedlen von Saerhaus recoiled in P’thaeyl’s grasp as enormous booms rattled across Inverxe’s glacial geography. Bitterly cold wind seared her eyes and bit at the unprotected skin of her face. The vanguard unit had landed with enough force to tear small craters into the unforgiving ice sheet, raining down chunks of sun-hardened snow and ice in a crystalline shower that caught the wan starlight in faint rainbow streaks. Under the oppressive eye of Ioun it all would have been beautiful, Rue thought, had it not been the result of such rugged calamity. She shook her head in dismay. The destruction was difficult to process, but at least it was happening on the barren surface of a desolate moon, unlike her last encounter with the unmade. Back on the ship she had abused the clearance her name provided her and stole the opportunity to look over the Nausicaa files.

The casualty count had been scrubbed from the City of Hope’s official reports and reduced in a gross attempt to save face. The fact that the threads of countless lives - entire families - had been erased by both the unmade and their own government had disgusted her. At least today the only casualties were those of soldiers who had chosen this duty, in one way or another, and not helpless civilians.

Althaus’ earlier words still rattled around in her brain, stinging at her core even as they arrived at the landing zone. P’thaeyl deposited her in the snow directly in front of the pod labeled ‘01’, the treads of her black combat boots crunching through the crust of ice as she begrudgingly strode up to it.

“We are here, Madame Saerhaus.” The AI chirped half a second before the drop pod lid thudded and hissed open. The lead knight pulled herself free with a grunt, giving herself a quick once over before her head snapped up to stare at the unexpected nobility.

“Saerhaus??” Matron started. “Where is the General? He’s supposed to be-”

“He sent me instead.” The priestess remarked coolly. “That hole in the ground must go a kilometer down or more. P’thaeyl could only carry one of us up here before your landing.”

A great galvanic bolt of stray cosmic lightning gouged into the ice sheet not fifty yards from them, tearing through the terrain like an act of god. A great wind gusted out from the crater, carrying the stench of ozone with it.

“Hell’s bells!” The knight growled, pressing a hand to the side of her helm. She figured the lightning was something awful, but every second spent involved in this forsaken fight left her all the more cautious. “Vanguards, this is Matron. I want boots on the ground in scattered formation yesterday! Get hit by one of those bolts and you can kiss you and your squadmates’ asses goodbye, so play it smart and safe! And for the love of the gods, whatever you do, don’t hit the wrong fucking dragon. Over.”

The knight turned her attention back to Ruedlen and grabbed the woman by the arm. “We’re here on an existential battlefield, and he sends me you.” She shook her head, pulling them back behind an outcropping of ice. It wasn’t much cover compared to that but it was better than standing on the open ice. “Of all the days for you to get field training, he could not have picked a worse one.”

“What does that mean?” Rue tartly demanded.

“Saerhaus, when the hell was the last time you led a unit on the field, during battle, no less?”

The noblewoman fell silent. Matron scoffed, “yeah. I thought so. You’re staying here with me, and I’m maintaining command of my platoon. Got it?”

“I am not just some child to be shuffled about!” Ruedlen snapped as she bolted up from her spot crouched against the ice. If she was going to be treated like this, like some obnoxious kid meant to only be seen and not heard, like some burden to be pushed around the field, she wasn’t going to bother sticking around. She would find some other way to contribute.

Matron caught her by the wrist with a vice-like grip, hard enough to make the priestess yelp out in pain. She yanked the disobedient noble back into place behind cover.

“Are you fucking crazy?” The soldier spat as she pinned Rue back against the ice. “Your mama ain’t here, so stop trying to impress an empty audience. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were eager to go back to your goddess. You might be nobility, but you hardly have half the good sense that Althaus does!”

“You can’t- You can’t talk to me like this!” The priestess sputtered through the dagger of pain those words levied on her soul. “How dare you-”

“Look,” Matron swiftly cut her off with little patience, “either you can shut your trap and fall in line and stay here, or I can leave you hogtied in my drop pod so you don’t get in my way acting like a gods damned idiot.”

Ruedlen glared hard at the knight for several seconds, her chest visibly rising and falling with each agitated breath. The knight sat back on her heels considerately, “Nausicaa really changed you, didn’t it.”

“Just give me a fucking gun already.”

​

~~~***~~~​

Across the battlefield Algorab alighted upon his fallen companion, kneeling beside the smoldering revenant, their brilliant outline lost amongst the featureless snowfields. Oh what terrible pain boiled just beneath the towering outlaw’s blazing bones, lashing and thrashing as it demanded to be set free upon the world in a great reign of purifying fury. It growled and snapped the razor sharp teeth of its deathly maw, pitch black fur raised in jagged, defiant bristles against the world.

If the raven knew one thing about wolves, it was that they only got like this when cut from their birth pack and backed into a corner. All that terrible desire was instinct. The urge to survive and dole out justice for every misery suffered, every wrong left scarred upon the world... But there was far more to Arthur than just primal drives. Buried deep, deep under the savage protector lay a calm, accepting regality that retreated when it all became too much for a mortal to bear.

“Get up.” The external choir of Algorab’s voice commanded sternly, rousing the enraged outlaw from his daze. The inner wolf stirred in feral recognition of its ally, pacing and pacing before its mental snarls slowed. Trust. The raven smiled softly, the first expression it had worn in its short existence, as it laid a guiding palm on the wild revenant’s soul.

‘Remember who you were before you got knocked down. The day is not yet finished, my spirit of vengeance! Before us are the stars fallen from the cosmic abyss, a great awakening of the profane that has descended upon us to darken the sun and skies alike with its vast nihilism. We cannot rest until they are vanquished. Set your great fangs upon them, so that they might taste the misery they have earned.’

The skeletal rider suddenly clamored to his feet, “Shit, Gen’ral?” Arthur rumbled, swiveling that massive flaming skull to consider the burning fairy perched on his shoulder “Where’s that damned Toa?”

‘Algorab, my friend.’ The angel corrected, though they knew it hardly mattered to the cowpoke. ‘You would know better than us where the Toa is.’

Another swear slipped past the outlaw’s teeth in a hiss. A couple hundred feet away Ghidorah the Younger screeched in a tempest of fury, laying into the chest of his unmade nemesis with a cruel discharge of crimson fireballs. Shit, shit, shit! A thread of searing panic shot through the cowboy from skullcap to toes. Kopaka was in there, deep in the middle of all that mess. It seemed like no matter what that frigid machine was hellbent on throwing himself straight into the carnage, and Arthur was forced to dive in after.

Respectable, the raven thought of Kopaka as the Rider surged forward back into the fray, but terribly reckless to put oneself between a Dragon and its goals. Algorab had no clue as to what the inner makeup of an undead unmade cosmic dragon could even entail. To coat their ephemeral gods given form in such wretched flesh and viscera ... They banished that thought and took to the skies. Vanity mattered little when one stood at the edge of apocalypse, if they were beautiful it was because they were a flawless implementation of the gods’ wills, not some notion of a perfect appearance.

Algorab’s inner furnace scalded away the thin layer of atmospheric frost that attempted to settle over their form as they surveyed the battle. From way up here it was easy to think of the fighting as some small, distant thing, acted out by scores of dramatic miniatures on a blank white stage. Of course it was never so simple. They folded their wings and dove through the air in a streak of light from above, a divine comet with Andúril clutched tightly in hand. From Nausicaa until now they had not dared to use the Arbiter’s blade in battle, but today offered them precious little choice in the matter.

Their glowering eyes fixated on that ugly Omega mark worn proudly on the greater Ghidorah’s festering center brow. Oh how they would relish ripping that profane crown of madness from the dragon’s horns. Every fiber of their celestial being craved the aberration's destruction down to the atomic level. There, they decided, that dreaded symbol would demarcate their aim. Would it die? Unlikely. But sometimes one had to do things simply for the satisfaction of being the terrible thorn in the sides of their enemies.

“Aragorn, first of the lost Arbiters,” Algorab cried out as they brought Anduril into position directly ahead of them. The grand omega loomed large in their vision, demanding above all else to be dealt with. “Guide our blade with your divine hand, make it strike true!”

The monster, though distracted with the multitude of threats lapping against its sloughing scales, was not caught completely unaware of the divine comet blazing down to greet him. The Whimsy’s unmade shell, once the leftmost tributary to a triple-stream of consciousness- and now merely a window into a single polluted mire- fixed its milky, blazing eyes on the rapidly descending angel - but there were a lot of things happening.

Ghidorah the lesser ripped and blasted at its gargantuan counterpart’s rightmost head, darting and harrying round its back to full-on tackle the cranium on the left: flashing talons and booming wings, streaming golden blood from its wounds and blossoming electric burgundy flame.

The revenant cowboy’s obnoxious infernal lasso, blazing sapphire and rattling like the derelict gates of hell, fastened around the middle neck, yanking Control in the opposite direction.

The obscene titan’s consciousness, made monolithic by the anti-life annihilation of the idiosyncrasies which had defined its living components, could only track so much. The right head came ‘round, the husk of The Wrath blasting a lethal arc of corrupted cosmic energy - but too late.

With a brilliant flash of alabaster lightning, the angel of war drove Andúril’s gleaming blade down to the hilt in the middle of Control’s corrupted skull, with enough force to bow the cosmic devil’s horned head. The steady crimson glow of the Omega sigil guttered and flared, blazing and choking as though in vengeful anger.

The unmade beast’s three snarling mouths each cried out in conjoined agony, a great warbling scream as it reeled back, wings akimbo, necks thrashing like snakes in hot oil. It tumbled to the ground with a cataclysmic boom, cracking the ice and shaking the earth.

Above, the roiling sky darkened further, the storm spreading out over the heavens amidst flashes of black and violet thunder: an inverted landscape of shifting sable mesas and undulating bruise-colored hills enveloping the world like a cloak.

Sweeping like a bloodstain through the rising blizzard, black snow began to fall.​

2,198 + 6,466
8,664/10,000​

Ezrihel/Algorab used one application of focus to activate the relic Andúril. 2/3 Focus remaining.

✤ Andúril - 2500 E
Damage X (1000)
-- Removable X: Physical Weapon (-500)
Endurance X (1000)
-- Removable X: Physical Weapon (-500)
Agility X (2000)
-- Removable X: Physical Weapon (-500)

The shards of Aragorn’s sword, Narsil, have been reforged into the beautiful blade Andúril, a long broadsword with a black and silver handle. Its reach is wide, and its power great; often, the wielder can almost feel the spirit of the former Arbiter flowing through it, giving them superhuman strength, endurance, and agility for just a few moments. When its power is not being focused, it operates as a regular sword.​

 

[Arbiter]

Ice, dust and sediment washed over the fallen titan’s sundered mass in great clouds, each twitching and whirling with every errant thrash of wing and tail. Anduríl was an ancient blade, and though it had long been reborn as the Flame of The West, it still held the ontological weight of its former life; that sword which had sundered the flesh of Sauron himself. What was a mere dragon, by comparison?

And so, Algorab’s blow smote the device of the Unmaking where it burned on Shin Ghidora’s expansive brow, and through there into the flesh of the beast. Where the pure and the profane met, fire leapt from the wound like sunlight from a pond, and scattered a flash of brilliance through the blustering storm heads which cloaked the battle. The central head of Darkseid’s hierophant breathed its last, as its two brothers looked on in shock and horror. The seething angel turned to face them, as their words hummed through the firmament like thunder.

‘See what we have wrought on the best among you, hollow beast, and know that each of you shall be cleansed in turn.’

Having paid the occasion its due theatrics, the fused souls of Ezrihel and Sari spread their wings once more and streaked towards the leftmost dragonhead. Even as this happened, the raging outlaw giant and golden successor charged in to capitalize on Shin Ghidorah’s moment of weakness. Blue, flaming chains and scintillating streaks of lightning continued to flay the thrashing behemoth’s carcass with unrelenting fury.

But even as they did so, a bubbling, sickening laughter fell across the psychic landscape. First it was merely two of Shin Ghidorah’s winsome cackles…but then another chord joined the chorus, then another, and more still. The fallen anathema’s body heaved and twitched loathsomely, bloating as if it were a week-old cadaver. Then, with sudden violence, the dead and limp neck of the murdered head swelled with a rising gorge. Even the rage-weary cowpoke had to pause in sheer revulsion as three fresh heads burst free from the existing neck, discarding the destroyed flesh like a snake from its skin.

Like wise, every breach and wound that had been torn open or through the risen destroyer now seemed to writhe and fester with rippling, horrid life. Half-formed ideas and suggestions resembling its cosmic glory snaked their way forth from the myriad gore, whimpering blindly like so many crocodile hatchlings. Defiantly, impossibly, Shin Ghidorah rose tall once again as its gravitic wings flexed and tensed with crackles of levitating static. Where once there had been a mere three heads, now there were nine or more.

In one final act of gleeful defiance, the large, icy wound in Shin Ghidora’s chest exploded in a shower of bloody rime, as an eyeless, jawed head burst out of the wound, holding the glacial morsel delicately enough. Exhibiting it, even. Making sure that each and every one of Darkseid’s opponents within the battlefield could see the gleaming shard.

“Kopaka!!”

The fiery plea came too late as the emergent half-head crunched the mass of ice between its lightning-filled jaws. Shin Ghidorah screamed over and over itself twenty times. Keening rays of destruction spilled forth in every direction from the abomination, slashing bloody, sizzling burns across everything within a mile. Perhaps, then, Darkseid’s prophet attempted to mock the tiny, trivial insects arrayed before it – but for naught. Nothing but a cacophony of interlaced, discordant, deafening screed played through the minds of everyone present. The moon trembled.

Only Algorab and Ghidorah himself, perhaps, had enough mental fortitude to concentrate well enough to see the two remaining primary heads of the anathema rear up towards one another and intertwine, to the point that their slavering jaws almost touched. But no, instead, a new blast of dark fire spilled out of their faces; twin beams of malevolence which slammed and molded together, forming a whirling black sphere which pulsated with diseased intent.

Another psychic roar of indecipherable jeering. Too many. Too much at once. Wipe the slate clean and start over. It was the way of Darkseid.

“Pull back! Pull back! We’re getting excessive levels of Hawking radiation from the epicenter…that’s a goddam black hole!” the lieutenant shouted. Curtains of snow and fog whipped past Ruedlan and her brigade as endless carnage spiraled towards the growing sphere of annihilation. The priestess pressed down her comms button with white-knuckle fear and screamed at her liege.

“Althaus! Do something! We can’t-!”

Algorab was, of course, already doing something. If Anduríl could smite one head, it could easily cut off the channel of power that was fueling this berserk doomsday folly of the Unmade dragon. The angelic hybrid steeled their courage and shot through the air like a meteor towards the leftmost head. Giant, malicious eyes of lavender fire rolled to regard the pest with passing interest, and then flare red. A jagged, zig-zagging beam of Omega Force energy intercepted the incoming Algorab like a gnat, and physically pushed the gleaming beacon deep down into the nearest rock face.

The golden destroyer shrieked forth a fusillade of crackling hatred at its desecrated predecessor. The radiant beams curved and sank into the impenetrable darkness of the high prophet of rebirth.

Laughter. Endless. Unchallenged.

Kopaka is dead.

Characters who cannot resist Move Object 10 must flee the battlefield or suffer Ongoing Damage as they are drawn towards the event horizon, or until the Black Hole attack is disrupted.

 

[King Ghidorah]

Familiar forces tear at us, taxing our battered body's regenerative powers as we strain against their pull: the wail of a quantum gravity-well, the call of the void, a promise of annihilation used to bring down the mightiest of our foes, now summoned and executed with inexpert clumsiness by this gibbering and increasingly mutant imposter.

We have seen the phenomenon overtaking its body before. The flesh of our flesh is a *hungry* thing - and left to its own devices, without our thoughts, our spirit, our fundamental nature to give it shape, it breeds horrors in the seas and abominations upon the land. The sundering of the dark rune puppeteering Control’s hollow echo has broken the beast’s tricephalic network - and shattered the mask.

It is revealed for the cancer it truly is.

This Rose Quartz has wrought from our own slain and vacant body, the sanctified specter of a ruin that can never truly come to pass, made *septic* by her will, by the will of Darkseid.

This, they would tell the doomed and weeping stars, is King Ghidorah. A herald - A hideous *banner* for the unmaking to wave as it marches across the cosmos.

The Wrath cries out in furious anger. The Whimsy keens. Control, in the brittle stillness of his outrage, is silent.

A black blizzard howls, scouring the frozen, blasted storm-wracked plateau, falling into the eye of the singularity. The angel is brought low, and the elemental is dead. Of our ‘allies’, only the Demon stands - and like us, he spends every ounce of his hellborn strength to resist being drawn in by the black hole.

We can abide it no longer, not one more moment: this mockery. This abomination. This debased and irreverent profanity.

It is too much, we say.

Enough.

The word rings out across the battlefield, across the planet, a line drawn within the liminal spaces of the mind.

Miniscule upon Control’s brow, the floating gold-tinged void-marble implodes - and the corridors of power within us are scoured to the foundations by a white-hot flood of undiluted astral fury.

Mystic restraints buckle before it, straining at their moorings - doors of the spirit blown outward by a power that is raw and keening and too long restrained. A golden storm from the beginning of time rushes through tributaries, across floodplains of the ethereal, bursting in searing high-pressure jets through the cracks in the locks which yet obstruct the deepest font of our astral well.

Chain lightning crashes down upon the battlefield - and our body turns to light: a sculpture of golden flame, unmoved by the pull of the hungry darkness, untouched by the lash of our tormentor’s false lightning.

We grow and change with every peal of thunder - our necks broaden and stretch, turning grand and proud. Our horns grow and twist, turning to backswept crowns and bony fringes upon our jaws. Cast in fire, our faces mature, gaining the heavy brows and powerfully muscled jaws of an apex predator.
Our chest broadens, our tails split and lengthen; our legs grow long and powerful as our stature increases, swelling to match that of our dark reflection.

In a final crash of thunder, we spread our wings - not the stunted, paltry things with which we have made do, but the true length and breadth of our avian potency, each as long as we are tall: an unconquerable silhouette, the shape of a predator’s aurelian shadow cast upon the face of a cowering universe.

The fires of change subside - but still we shine, glowing from within with a white-hot aurora. It beams forth from our scales and ripples beneath our flesh, refracting across the tempest-tossed battlefield in sheets of saffron light.

Ice buckles beneath our talons. Golden gravity surges in our veins, our mastery of its forces rendering the pull of the black-hole a mere breeze at our back. Rearing and rampant, we take a single step, and the ground shakes.

Manic, we attack, breathing a triple barrage of actinic amber lightning fit to smash cities and boil oceans, tearing trenches from the glacier, only to be swept up by the gravity-well and swallowed as it draws near to our foe - but we do not stop firing.

Who is the pretender now, you gibbering excrescence?

The only answer we receive is unformed telepathic chaos - a mocking and twisted echo-chamber of our own bygone thoughts and feelings: all this creature ever was.

Far above, the storm begins to rotate - and golden flashes appear within the clouds.

We snap our wings downward, and forward we surge. Leading with our gaping jaws from which continuous torrents of golden lightning still pour, we flow across the broken landscape like a tide of scales and sinew. Our dark imitator's half-formed and cancerous faces, erupting from its ravaged body like boils, lash at us with crackling arcs of gangrenous power - which splash harmlessly against our effulgent form, broken by the cosmic forces beaming forth from every shining scale.

In scant moments we have crossed the distance, shattering ice sheets with every fluid step as we circle ‘round the side of the towering monstrosity - and now too close, and coming from too oblique an angle for the gravity-well to shelter it from our fury.

Black thunder splashes upon us like rain - but our own attacks are not so ineffective.

Empyrean lightning, bright as a star, rakes up its flank, tearing rents in its left wing and blowing twisted and inchoate reflections of our trinity to flinders.

Who, as you stand revealed, a nattering swarm of mnemonic shards, now falls SHORT OF THE GLORY OF KING GHIDORAH?

The beast staggers - and the singularity falters, pulsing, the gravity-well abating momentarily.

Riding high upon the crest of our power, our nature, the urge to destroy is undeniable, irresistible - matched only by our rage.

We cease our barrage - and surge upward, abandoning our serpentine posture. Spreading our wings once more we strike like a trio of snakes, peals of thunder as we fasten all three sets of jaws upon the abomination’s leftmost neck. Twisting and pulling with every ounce of apocalyptic strength, we wrest it aside, hauling the creature fully off-balance.

You are no King, no Terror, no Herald of the end. You are nothing but a godling’s incontinence. YOU ARE WEARING OUR BONES.

The circuit of gravity is broken, and with a world-shaking crack the singularity implodes, freeing the battlefield from its oppressive pull. As we drag the beast to the ground, its fall shaking the earth once again, our dark reflection’s two original heads give us their full attention, miniature arcs of sable pseudo-electric discharge leaking from their jaws as the crimson brands upon their foreheads flare. Beams of ruby radiance erupt from their eyes, tracing a complicated geometric path of vectors and angles through the air before they strike the Wrath and the Whimsy each full in the face.

No physical damage is done, the assault unable to overcome the burgeoning cosmic force which still roars like a supernova through every shining fiber of our glorious body - but the psychic pain is another matter. For just a moment, we experience the beast’s existence from the *inside*.

It is nothing less than a walking tomb - a hollow space named Darkseid, with the shards of an identity dancing within like dust in the light of dawn.

Revolted, disgusted, horrified we recoil - but though the Wrath and the Whimsy are stunned by the experience of an existence with the texture of cold wet clay, Control lives up to his appellation.

Our opportunity to capitalize on the abomination’s fall, however, is lost. In a crackle of violet energy, ashes and corrupted gore, it surges upright, falling back a kilometer's distance across the riven ice-fields with a crack of tattered wingbeats and a rush of tidal forces. The impostor sets its stance, bellows in challenge, spreading its own wings wide and high in mocking defiance amidst the howling gale. Its multitudinous mouths glorify the sin of its existence in an unholy chorus of choking wails and telepathic cacophany. Control alone responds, an icy bloodlust, a flawless gem of perfect malice.

… but we should not address *you*. There is no ‘you’ - merely our bygone recollections, worn like a mask by your masters.

Rose Quartz has shat upon our Grave.

Wild and raging, broadcasting our contempt for all to hear, we rise into the air, power arcing to ground from every claw, every horn, every pinion. Our necks writhe and our tails twist. Our jaws open, sparking, as golden aurora falls in sheets from our true, peerless form, cascading from the leathern crescents of our wings. All three of us speak once more, the razor-strop metrinome of Control's vengeful desire dragging our other selves from their stupor.

She will Understand what she has Done. The Weight of her transgression.

Thunder strikes twice in the heavens, once golden, once violet. The dark blizzard redoubles in intensity, howling wind and biting black ice. An earthquake ripples across the plateau as unnameable forces gather beneath the surface of the physical world, a tectonic rumble as the moon itself shifts in discomfort.

Our opponent unleashes the fury of his unmade lightning, the dark imitation of our own astral energies erupting from a dozen cancerous mouths. Heedless, we glow, the assault breaking upon us like wind upon a pillar of steel.

We answer back, screaming forth three fractal arcs of electro-gravitic power. Unending, unbroken - a continuous stream of astral scorn eroding chunks from the beast’s flesh, making of it a drowning island amidst a river of cosmic force in full white-water flood.

SHE WILL FALL TO HER KNEES.

Ghidorah activated his consumable, 'Eye of the Gilded Void'. For the remainder of the scene, he has the shape and dimensions of the Monsterverse version of King Ghidorah: Monster Zero. So, in addition to looking fly as hell, he is now 500 feet tall. It grants him the following abilities in addition to those he already possessed.

Unstoppable Titan
Shapeshifting (Monster Zero only)
Growth rank 11
-Limited (static)
-ongoing
-side effect: murderous rage
Protection rank 12
-ongoing
Endurance rank 10

Swift as the Storm
Speed rank 7 (superseded by a 'native' rank 8)
-Ongoing
Agility rank 5 (superseded by a 'native' rank 8)
Flight rank 10
-ongoing

Hammer of Cities
Damage rank 12
Move Object rank 12

Gravity’s Lathe

The user gains temporarily unlimited access to Ghidorah’s golden lightning, the crackling fury of the early universe given form. These king-size bolts of electro-gravitic astral chaos, wide enough to engulf a column of main battle-tanks or rip the guts out of a two-lane highway, are functionally unlimited in range and capable of shearing through steel beams like a chainsaw through a pile of cotton-candy. Contact with anything substantial results in a violent detonation, subjecting everything within one-hundred feet to intense heat, overwhelming shock, and massive tidal stress. These bolts may be fired from any of Monster Zero’s three mouths, whether in brief bursts, focused in a continuous arc upon a resistant target for maximum attrition, or raked across the landscape, carving great blasted swaths of devastation.

Damage Rank 12
-side-effect: nihilistic and irresistible urge to use it until everything you see is ruins, dust and ash
-ranged
-chaotic
-ongoing
-affects multiple 5
-indiscriminate

The resulting gravitationally-based 10-rank in flying allowed him to resist the black hole's effects, and break Shin Omega's concentration with a physical assault; the black hole is gone.

At roughly the same time as the consumable, Ghidorah also used his last point of focus to supercharge his already-astronomical ongoing Protection, making him functionally invulnerable to physical damage for the rest of the round. He will be using this advantage to attack recklessly and without relent.

Focus: 0/5