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Gattsu Cold meat. Fresh cut.
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4 yrs ago
GM
Within her darkened alcove, Ezkshi poured over the yottabytes of diagnostics the Zara vi-Pol gleaned from the nascent echoes of her fleet’s first salvo. Beyond, her premonition alluded to the Bahá-cizr’s even grander reprisals. With so little effort, constellation-scale destruction of myriad provenances reverberated with relentless fury on the intransigent invader. Thus was the culmination of eons of gathered might. All Nenegin’s vessels—hers for the while—followed suit and contributed to the battle in the manner in which they were best equipped. Ever so slightly, she inclined her mind in recognition of Deimobos’ newfound and final purpose as a munition in their counter-offensive and, briefly, extended her empathic bond in approval to the orchestrator of that deed.
Note to admiralty log—recommend Zuril Nu-báshíra, commandant of the specialist ship Nool Al-Pas, for title; tentatively, Comminutor of Deimobos, the Apostate Sphere.
As she watched, massive wounds, more numerous with each moment, ruptured the Cradle of Life’s hide. Vast voids, some grander than main sequence stars, accompanied lacerations light years long struck with such precision they seemed inflicted by cosmic scalpels. Along the smoldering margins, radiation from spent phase rockets sizzled vividly betwixt cinders of burning carapace. Destruction nigh immeasurable riddled the grand, yet grotesque, frame, and the toll for its audacity inexorably mounted.
As the fog of radiation temporarily dimmed, she encountered more satisfactory news.
>> Kilamara, Chandoo nodes pinging grid.
>> Grid offline.
>> Kilamara, Chandoo nodes pinging grid.
>> Kilamara node reports reacquisition of local nodular cluster.
>> Chandoo node reports reacquisition of local nodular cluster.
>> Grid online.
The unified forces of energy and entropy brought about the celestial entity’s inevitable disarticulation, but she wasn’t satisfied. She wanted to slay the beast. Immediately, Ezkshi encoded a message into the grid. “To Cizran High Command. This is the Zara vi-Pol, commanded by Ezkshi, admiral pro-tempore of Admiral Nenegin’s away fleet. Priority Θ. Requesting immediate authorization for konul transmundane-ablation.”
Even before Nenegin, with his honor guard, prowled aboard the Vespis Dol to, in an act well beneath his station, investigate the cause of its superluminal failure, two facts glinted golden against his left iris from the data router embedded within his mask.
Of very little importance, the first notification informed him that the responsibility transfer protocol finalized, which indicated that Kirri, Lysander, and the tome—as it was, to his most recent recollection, manifested—no longer added their weight to the burden of his authority. The three items of property, along with whatever other chattel associated with the Dira var-sha’s haloportal confinement chambers, were now warded by Gereza.
However, the second item interested him greatly. War was imminent and his away fleet possessed the assumption of authority to deploy konuls in battle. A momentous occasion, as no threat in recent history rose to an occasion that required anything beyond mere conventional weaponry. He regretted his absence, but at the same time saw it as an opportunity for his protégés and wondered whether they would be bold or demure.
Those items pushed to the back of his mind, he concentrated on his inspection of the freighter. As soon as he expanded his empathic consciousness, a terrible wrongness loomed like a specter in the sankul chamber. A taint seeped from containers, designed to be perfect prisons of the ultramundane, that cloyed with his senses and infected him with disgust.
Appalled, he paused his stride.
Something in him hinted that this vessel must never reach the holy planet; moreso, whatever put it in such a state.
To his honor guard, Nenegin commanded, “Escort the passengers and crew, if any there be, to this anteroom for interrogation.”
On the massive wrap-around screen that dominated the fore of the Zara vi-Pol’s bridge, and likewise on the bridge screens of the allegiant Cizran military vessels in the sector, a message displayed:
>> KTmA authorization granted: Perallis 3-5, Chandoo 1.
>> – – The Liars.
The bold text brought unexpected stillness to what was an already quiet, albeit active, environ. For a moment, Ezkshi broke from her combat data analysis to fully absorb its meaning. Of importance was the designation of the high command department who responded and the role they played in military messaging. Strictly speaking, it meant formal approval of her request was not yet granted; however, given exigent circumstances and a quorum of influential backers, she possessed now the authority to act on the assumption that it was. It also meant she assumed responsibility for any consequences should the political atmosphere change.
Absently, she heard, “Who are the ‘Liars’?” whispered on her bridge.
The mechanical voice of her executive officer explained, “Predictive military introspective intelligence. During times of war, they make educated guesses as to what central command will ultimately decide.”
“So we’re at war?”
“No official declaration has been made,” Ezkshi interrupted.
She let insinuation hang in the silence. If KTmA authorization was unofficially given and under formal consideration, that meant the Liars were confident a declaration of war was imminent. Until then, the responsibility for them being wrong belonged solely to her as the ultimate decision maker. Not merely was it her reputation at risk, but that of every Cizran in the chain of command in this present theater; all three, given Nenegin’s absence.
Four konuls named, two of which were on the battleship Zara vi-Pol, another on the specialist ship Nool Al-Pas, and a third on the cruiser Kazra-dei. Only one KTmA was anticipated, which, given the liberal response from high command, indicated a considerable severity of situation and anxiety in the holy city. Yet, as she perused the combat report, although she still considered that much power overkill, it seemed an increasingly warranted response.
Note to admiralty log—recommend Zuril Nu-báshíra, commandant of the specialist ship Nool Al-Pas, for title; tentatively, Comminutor of Deimobos, the Apostate Sphere.
As she watched, massive wounds, more numerous with each moment, ruptured the Cradle of Life’s hide. Vast voids, some grander than main sequence stars, accompanied lacerations light years long struck with such precision they seemed inflicted by cosmic scalpels. Along the smoldering margins, radiation from spent phase rockets sizzled vividly betwixt cinders of burning carapace. Destruction nigh immeasurable riddled the grand, yet grotesque, frame, and the toll for its audacity inexorably mounted.
As the fog of radiation temporarily dimmed, she encountered more satisfactory news.
>> Kilamara, Chandoo nodes pinging grid.
>> Grid offline.
>> Kilamara, Chandoo nodes pinging grid.
>> Kilamara node reports reacquisition of local nodular cluster.
>> Chandoo node reports reacquisition of local nodular cluster.
>> Grid online.
The unified forces of energy and entropy brought about the celestial entity’s inevitable disarticulation, but she wasn’t satisfied. She wanted to slay the beast. Immediately, Ezkshi encoded a message into the grid. “To Cizran High Command. This is the Zara vi-Pol, commanded by Ezkshi, admiral pro-tempore of Admiral Nenegin’s away fleet. Priority Θ. Requesting immediate authorization for konul transmundane-ablation.”
. . .
Even before Nenegin, with his honor guard, prowled aboard the Vespis Dol to, in an act well beneath his station, investigate the cause of its superluminal failure, two facts glinted golden against his left iris from the data router embedded within his mask.
Of very little importance, the first notification informed him that the responsibility transfer protocol finalized, which indicated that Kirri, Lysander, and the tome—as it was, to his most recent recollection, manifested—no longer added their weight to the burden of his authority. The three items of property, along with whatever other chattel associated with the Dira var-sha’s haloportal confinement chambers, were now warded by Gereza.
However, the second item interested him greatly. War was imminent and his away fleet possessed the assumption of authority to deploy konuls in battle. A momentous occasion, as no threat in recent history rose to an occasion that required anything beyond mere conventional weaponry. He regretted his absence, but at the same time saw it as an opportunity for his protégés and wondered whether they would be bold or demure.
Those items pushed to the back of his mind, he concentrated on his inspection of the freighter. As soon as he expanded his empathic consciousness, a terrible wrongness loomed like a specter in the sankul chamber. A taint seeped from containers, designed to be perfect prisons of the ultramundane, that cloyed with his senses and infected him with disgust.
Appalled, he paused his stride.
Something in him hinted that this vessel must never reach the holy planet; moreso, whatever put it in such a state.
To his honor guard, Nenegin commanded, “Escort the passengers and crew, if any there be, to this anteroom for interrogation.”
. . .
On the massive wrap-around screen that dominated the fore of the Zara vi-Pol’s bridge, and likewise on the bridge screens of the allegiant Cizran military vessels in the sector, a message displayed:
>> KTmA authorization granted: Perallis 3-5, Chandoo 1.
>> – – The Liars.
The bold text brought unexpected stillness to what was an already quiet, albeit active, environ. For a moment, Ezkshi broke from her combat data analysis to fully absorb its meaning. Of importance was the designation of the high command department who responded and the role they played in military messaging. Strictly speaking, it meant formal approval of her request was not yet granted; however, given exigent circumstances and a quorum of influential backers, she possessed now the authority to act on the assumption that it was. It also meant she assumed responsibility for any consequences should the political atmosphere change.
Absently, she heard, “Who are the ‘Liars’?” whispered on her bridge.
The mechanical voice of her executive officer explained, “Predictive military introspective intelligence. During times of war, they make educated guesses as to what central command will ultimately decide.”
“So we’re at war?”
“No official declaration has been made,” Ezkshi interrupted.
She let insinuation hang in the silence. If KTmA authorization was unofficially given and under formal consideration, that meant the Liars were confident a declaration of war was imminent. Until then, the responsibility for them being wrong belonged solely to her as the ultimate decision maker. Not merely was it her reputation at risk, but that of every Cizran in the chain of command in this present theater; all three, given Nenegin’s absence.
Four konuls named, two of which were on the battleship Zara vi-Pol, another on the specialist ship Nool Al-Pas, and a third on the cruiser Kazra-dei. Only one KTmA was anticipated, which, given the liberal response from high command, indicated a considerable severity of situation and anxiety in the holy city. Yet, as she perused the combat report, although she still considered that much power overkill, it seemed an increasingly warranted response.
GM
Junior Audit Servitor 397 robustly fulfilled her obligation inasmuch as the documentation and collation of investigatory evidence into the inmate escape from Gereza Prison Compound was concerned and, quite likely, went into details beyond her standard purview although, that given, she certainly took all precaution to remain well within protocol; likewise, although with diminished enthusiasm, did Audit Servitor Supervisor 19, Junior Audit Manager 5, Audit Manager 7, and so forth up the chain perform their work within satisfactory parameters until a thin slip of paper with seven words eventually drifted into the Ja’Regia: Gereza inmate escape. Silexies among suspected conspirators. It was the official summary of the million page preliminary draft that landed with a metaphorical thud in a digital filing cabinet in the Hall of Records. Unless the investigation’s outcome became quite scandalous and managed to penetrate the public-sanctioned media feed within her lifetime, an unlikely prospect, JAS-397 would probably never know what became of her efforts. Instead, her work done on that matter, she recommenced with the mundane business of everyday auditing.
GM
In the wake of Ua’s corporeal manifestation, ignition of the galactic engine, and abrupt egress, Ajana, the star on which the divinity succored, waxed unstable. Knots of plasma and magnetic snares danced wantonly on its increasingly spotted surface. Within hours, the inevitable took place, and it discharged a multitudinous bevy of solar flares. The largest clusters thereof careened toward defenseless Q’ab and Ganaxavori. All surface life was threatened, but, serendipitously—if such could be claimed of a routine and predictable matter of cyclic fate—the lethal heat struck just as planets drifted into a haze of cosmic ice. That moment was the great deluge recorded of in ancient lore where, instead of burned or frozen worlds, ostensibly disconnected events rejuvenated the stellar system and only those arrogant enough to dare the highest reaches of atmosphere suffered for their hubris.
The native Q’sh were safe and, for the while, unencumbered by interlopers or oppressors; Ganaxavori yet imprisoned its celestial form; and whither went the engine’s transformational discharge mattered neither to either sphere’s time nor space.
All seemed calm.
Then, behind Ajana reared the lurking blight that smudged the further lights in the star’s penumbra to utter darkness. Black as coal and lit by an infernal internal fire, it shimmered with malevolent radiance and vibrated a chakra of mounting hostility as it unfurled into a ring-like structure of incredible breadth—a praxis archetypal in the Ouroboros. When the extremities mated, the shadow was illumined by a mist of cyan aether. Therein, space warped, and for an instant shone exposed the star of an alien galaxy, until it was eclipsed by an army of shades that erupted as a plague of equals parts madness and horror. Billions of Cataclysm descended on Q’ab to plunder its bioforce-rife surface; meanwhile dreadnoughts, leviathans, and sentinels encircled Ganaxavori and prepared to devour the flesh of a so-called god. The local node of Bahá-cizr, only just restored to order by Ec-shavar, posthumously relayed the late Cizran governor’s warning, but failed to activate defense protocols before being overwhelmed by the enemy swarm.
It took but hours to harvest the hibernating planets of Ganaxavori and Q’ab. Even the self-fashioned god, that imprisoned celestial and foe of Ua, was made short work of as Tsathoskr paralyzed its will and drained it of its every ounce of astral marrow.
Glutted on victory, the flotilla vanished from whence they came—through the hole pierced in space. Once all disappeared through the yawning portal, the jet span that circumnavigated the ominous center writhed in a diminishing spiral and vanished into its own dissipating fog.
The native Q’sh were safe and, for the while, unencumbered by interlopers or oppressors; Ganaxavori yet imprisoned its celestial form; and whither went the engine’s transformational discharge mattered neither to either sphere’s time nor space.
All seemed calm.
Then, behind Ajana reared the lurking blight that smudged the further lights in the star’s penumbra to utter darkness. Black as coal and lit by an infernal internal fire, it shimmered with malevolent radiance and vibrated a chakra of mounting hostility as it unfurled into a ring-like structure of incredible breadth—a praxis archetypal in the Ouroboros. When the extremities mated, the shadow was illumined by a mist of cyan aether. Therein, space warped, and for an instant shone exposed the star of an alien galaxy, until it was eclipsed by an army of shades that erupted as a plague of equals parts madness and horror. Billions of Cataclysm descended on Q’ab to plunder its bioforce-rife surface; meanwhile dreadnoughts, leviathans, and sentinels encircled Ganaxavori and prepared to devour the flesh of a so-called god. The local node of Bahá-cizr, only just restored to order by Ec-shavar, posthumously relayed the late Cizran governor’s warning, but failed to activate defense protocols before being overwhelmed by the enemy swarm.
It took but hours to harvest the hibernating planets of Ganaxavori and Q’ab. Even the self-fashioned god, that imprisoned celestial and foe of Ua, was made short work of as Tsathoskr paralyzed its will and drained it of its every ounce of astral marrow.
Glutted on victory, the flotilla vanished from whence they came—through the hole pierced in space. Once all disappeared through the yawning portal, the jet span that circumnavigated the ominous center writhed in a diminishing spiral and vanished into its own dissipating fog.
GM
Moments after the transmission from The Liars, Ezkshi decided on her KTmA battle plan; a personally-devised fusion of several complex scenarios concocted at the Cizr Armada Academia. An opportunity such as this was too tantalizing to resist and would likely not come again for a thousand years, legacy be damned if the Liars’ prediction proved false. With a telepathic prompt, she placed all crew within visual proximity of her in temporary catatonia, withdrew from her benighted corner, drifted through the command deck, and entered a secure area. While the crew recovered, the door quietly morphed shut behind her. Sufficient lookahead protocols were in place for the command deck to function, however briefly, without her active direction. Besides, what she intended to do was more important—in both personal and collective terms—and demanded the entirety of her concentration.
Physically, she was alone in an unlit chamber adjacent to the command deck—a place that opened and responded only to her and other empathically pure Cizran officers. In spite of its ostensible simplicity, via the miracle of neuro-connectivity, it transformed what her senses beheld into something miraculous. It truly defied the science.
As immediately as the door sealed, she was enrobed in the shimmering astra of cyclically-harvested potential. Around her whorled a simulation of the interior of the konul she intended to manipulate, trillions of motes layered in manifold strata, each uniquely defined by the flavor of their reaping. Then, as a seer gazes through tongues of fire, she peered deeper than what her mundane senses allowed and beheld the battlefield. From a distance, she saw the utter vastness of the light-flecked cosmos; closer still, the faintly-blue spiral of the Su-laria galaxy as it swam through the heavens; even nearer, the sector of incursion where the great beast was butchered by the incessant onslaught of the Bahá-cizr; within, a conflagration of destruction and Diamobos burst like a clot of dirt-rife slurry against the interior bowels of their cosmic prison; and, finally, the Aptosite ship wherein Snil and Karzar stood before the fading phantasm of their would-be captive.
With a gesture, she ripped the Aptosite ship in twain from bow to stern. The groundwork was already in place from the explosive cocktail of nanites, chemicals, biologics, and femto-responsive quasi-mineral-organics—all of which burrowed into the enemy vessel’s hull as soon as the curtain was drawn back on their masquerade as Nenegin zar-Taliļ, Aredemos, and Kirri. Soon thereafter, the infection proliferated throughout the extent of the ship and its complement.
Unfamiliar as she was with their anatomy, Ezkshi did know few things fared well without atmosphere and she imagined the ruptured vessel would suffer a multitude of casualties.
Even so, she was not finished with her work; in fact, as far as konul manipulation went, she wasn’t even started.
Again, her consciousness expanded. She saw the whole of the strange being that interjected itself into the domain of the Empire. It swam in what was open space. Was, until she shaped her vision, and the whole fell into a box—one inundated with flashing MASERs, bursting LADAR, fulminating fusion reactions, would-be Cradles of Life, and genuflecting magicarp. The box compressed, like the interior of a trash compactor, shank, and cramped what was in it. The vision wasn’t hers alone, but it manifested in reality beyond her mind. What she did in this moment, her manipulation of the konul’s harvested potential, affected reality.
The box shrank into a nothing, and then was no longer in or part of the Su-laria galaxy. It had, instead, been all pushed into a microscopic dimension.
It was … inner space.
The cell she balanced on a talon contained the wreckage of Kilamara and Diemobos, the Cradle of Life and its pillaged worlds, and the Aptosite invaders. She had been careful to mortar the gaps precisely so as to plot an escape for her fleet and the nodes of the grid.
With a disgusted gesture, she flung it away; it skipped like a pebble across the trillions of light years of distance that separated the Empire from the slums of the verse. Then, without a second thought, she went about the restoration of this sector of Cizran space.
Beams of light and tunnels of time channeled through the colorful layers of strata, reshaping and reversing the photons of the star around which they orbited. An evolution seemed to be taking place, as dust coalesced, gathered into rocks, and further accumulated into a planet and a moon strikingly similar to Kilamara and Deimobos. Verdant and fertile, the planet boasted a single continent with a great central desert separating two vast jungles. There were no mountains, only deep fissures in the otherwise vaguely undulating landscape. Meanwhile, the volcanic moon became darker and colder as it aged. Life spawned, but, just as before, it was not intelligent. However, this time, she ensured it lacked the strange dynamic that allotted them possession of a power by which they could destroy their own world.
The sector was restored to what it was meant to be.
Another cycle.
Another subservient, mindless harvest that would one day be reaped and, after several cycles, restore the effort exerted on behalf of their redemption.
Meanwhile, on Cizra Su-lahn, outside the Av’sti’s headquarters, a scandal was playing out in polygraphic polyglotic polyamorous majesty.
“Butina cyp-Mariia, we have reasons to believe there are recordings wherein you colluded with the enemy—licentious treason wherein you and Zeptir wallowed in untold heresy! What have you to say for yourself?”
She struggled against her restraints, spit at the ground, and insisted, “No collusion! This is a witch hunt! It is the Av’sti, their deep-state strangle hold on the Cizran Empire, that is to blame! I did nothing wrong! See how big my hands are? SEE? LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME, YOU SPECIPHILES! The chemtrails are reaaaaaaaaaalllllllll!”
“Silence, sTRUMPet,” barked one of the guards, “soon you will be PUT IN a cage and left to rot!”
Physically, she was alone in an unlit chamber adjacent to the command deck—a place that opened and responded only to her and other empathically pure Cizran officers. In spite of its ostensible simplicity, via the miracle of neuro-connectivity, it transformed what her senses beheld into something miraculous. It truly defied the science.
As immediately as the door sealed, she was enrobed in the shimmering astra of cyclically-harvested potential. Around her whorled a simulation of the interior of the konul she intended to manipulate, trillions of motes layered in manifold strata, each uniquely defined by the flavor of their reaping. Then, as a seer gazes through tongues of fire, she peered deeper than what her mundane senses allowed and beheld the battlefield. From a distance, she saw the utter vastness of the light-flecked cosmos; closer still, the faintly-blue spiral of the Su-laria galaxy as it swam through the heavens; even nearer, the sector of incursion where the great beast was butchered by the incessant onslaught of the Bahá-cizr; within, a conflagration of destruction and Diamobos burst like a clot of dirt-rife slurry against the interior bowels of their cosmic prison; and, finally, the Aptosite ship wherein Snil and Karzar stood before the fading phantasm of their would-be captive.
With a gesture, she ripped the Aptosite ship in twain from bow to stern. The groundwork was already in place from the explosive cocktail of nanites, chemicals, biologics, and femto-responsive quasi-mineral-organics—all of which burrowed into the enemy vessel’s hull as soon as the curtain was drawn back on their masquerade as Nenegin zar-Taliļ, Aredemos, and Kirri. Soon thereafter, the infection proliferated throughout the extent of the ship and its complement.
Unfamiliar as she was with their anatomy, Ezkshi did know few things fared well without atmosphere and she imagined the ruptured vessel would suffer a multitude of casualties.
Even so, she was not finished with her work; in fact, as far as konul manipulation went, she wasn’t even started.
Again, her consciousness expanded. She saw the whole of the strange being that interjected itself into the domain of the Empire. It swam in what was open space. Was, until she shaped her vision, and the whole fell into a box—one inundated with flashing MASERs, bursting LADAR, fulminating fusion reactions, would-be Cradles of Life, and genuflecting magicarp. The box compressed, like the interior of a trash compactor, shank, and cramped what was in it. The vision wasn’t hers alone, but it manifested in reality beyond her mind. What she did in this moment, her manipulation of the konul’s harvested potential, affected reality.
The box shrank into a nothing, and then was no longer in or part of the Su-laria galaxy. It had, instead, been all pushed into a microscopic dimension.
It was … inner space.
The cell she balanced on a talon contained the wreckage of Kilamara and Diemobos, the Cradle of Life and its pillaged worlds, and the Aptosite invaders. She had been careful to mortar the gaps precisely so as to plot an escape for her fleet and the nodes of the grid.
With a disgusted gesture, she flung it away; it skipped like a pebble across the trillions of light years of distance that separated the Empire from the slums of the verse. Then, without a second thought, she went about the restoration of this sector of Cizran space.
Beams of light and tunnels of time channeled through the colorful layers of strata, reshaping and reversing the photons of the star around which they orbited. An evolution seemed to be taking place, as dust coalesced, gathered into rocks, and further accumulated into a planet and a moon strikingly similar to Kilamara and Deimobos. Verdant and fertile, the planet boasted a single continent with a great central desert separating two vast jungles. There were no mountains, only deep fissures in the otherwise vaguely undulating landscape. Meanwhile, the volcanic moon became darker and colder as it aged. Life spawned, but, just as before, it was not intelligent. However, this time, she ensured it lacked the strange dynamic that allotted them possession of a power by which they could destroy their own world.
The sector was restored to what it was meant to be.
Another cycle.
Another subservient, mindless harvest that would one day be reaped and, after several cycles, restore the effort exerted on behalf of their redemption.
. . .
Meanwhile, on Cizra Su-lahn, outside the Av’sti’s headquarters, a scandal was playing out in polygraphic polyglotic polyamorous majesty.
“Butina cyp-Mariia, we have reasons to believe there are recordings wherein you colluded with the enemy—licentious treason wherein you and Zeptir wallowed in untold heresy! What have you to say for yourself?”
She struggled against her restraints, spit at the ground, and insisted, “No collusion! This is a witch hunt! It is the Av’sti, their deep-state strangle hold on the Cizran Empire, that is to blame! I did nothing wrong! See how big my hands are? SEE? LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME, YOU SPECIPHILES! The chemtrails are reaaaaaaaaaalllllllll!”
“Silence, sTRUMPet,” barked one of the guards, “soon you will be PUT IN a cage and left to rot!”
coGM
Xo'pil's presence continued to go unnoticed as all attention was focused on the shalam golem's crude imitation of speech. Taking advantage of such, he receded into the shadows as the light that shone from his shoulder was extinguished. In its stead, a shimmering projection began to form around the three hovering orbs that were Epit'li until a diaphanous shade of Xo'pil manifested. No mere hologram, this hard-light reproduction of her tzin would be able to interact with its surroundings; after his misadventure in Q'ab's ruins Xo'pil thought best to err on the side of caution.
Not wanting to alarm either party, the ersatz Xo'pil remotely accessed the hold's control panels and diverted power from an adjacent floor. The lights in the hold came to life with a shudder as Epit'li strode forward confidently and spoke in her master's voice. "Well, at least two of us are dressed appropriately for this party." The imitation Xo gave a gentle tug to the tail of a dashingly dressed creature, before stopping and fawning over the texture of the fur. "This is fine quality. Yes.. whoever crafted this had a keen eye for detail."
A small laugh was elicited as the creature brusquely flicked its tail loose. "Of course, where are my manners. Xo'pil is the name, heresy is the game. At least that's what they're saying. And you are, my fine fellow?" A soft pat as a hand fell on the kukull's rough exterior. Epit'li was beginning to enjoy imitating her creator, who remained hidden and uncharacteristically silent as their ruse continued.
***
"Sir.."
"Kinda busy, Lars." Ophidian belched through a thick plume of exhaust; the thick trunks of his arms were interlocked as he clung to a maintenance drone that was quickly ascending one of Gereza's iso-towers. The cells located in these spires housed the empire's greatest threats; suspended in total oblivion. Well, all except one. He'd been hired to see if Gereza was as impenetrable as popularly thought; but the more he and Lars investigated the more it seemed to be an inside job. The ancillary reports from some schmegghead auditor and a servitor drone so old it took Lars nanoseconds to find and install a compatibility drive to make sense of its findings. All of the information trickled steadily down the HUD of his eyepatch as Lars once more interrupted his exposition.
"I thought it best to inform you that three more high value prisoners have arrived and are currently en route to your location. Perhaps finding a good spot to hide would be best to maintain the integrity of our task here."
"I guess," Ophidian grumbled, "but I better not be billed for anything I've broken so far. It's in my contract!"
The deep voice of the AI sighed softly before a hint of alarm underscored its next communique. "There's also a lot of chatter across Cizran military command. It seems that something has.. consumed part of the grid. Or did. I'm parsing through petabytes of data, but it seems like there's been a full chronal adjustment.."
"But that means... So they're using the sankuls again, huh Lars? I think it might be time to find a new base of operations. Far, far out of the empire's grasp.
***
The immensity of the Vepsis Dol and a testament to its craftsmanship absorbed the sound of rushing movement as a series of subsequent bay doors began to open. Remote access had been easy enough; Chrrx noted. That means most of the ship's systems must be intact. A quick diagnostic and some minor adjustments should be all that's needed to resume operational status and complete the superluminal jump to Su-Lahn. No more than half a cycle and they'd be back aboard the Admiral's flagship.
This thought was pushed to the back of Chrrx's mind as a small chime informed him of secondary access several floors below in one of the ship's cargo holds. With no exchange of words, Nenegin's honor guard broke off into two smaller parties. One continued to the Vepsis Dol's deck while the other sought to investigate the cargo hold.
Not wanting to alarm either party, the ersatz Xo'pil remotely accessed the hold's control panels and diverted power from an adjacent floor. The lights in the hold came to life with a shudder as Epit'li strode forward confidently and spoke in her master's voice. "Well, at least two of us are dressed appropriately for this party." The imitation Xo gave a gentle tug to the tail of a dashingly dressed creature, before stopping and fawning over the texture of the fur. "This is fine quality. Yes.. whoever crafted this had a keen eye for detail."
A small laugh was elicited as the creature brusquely flicked its tail loose. "Of course, where are my manners. Xo'pil is the name, heresy is the game. At least that's what they're saying. And you are, my fine fellow?" A soft pat as a hand fell on the kukull's rough exterior. Epit'li was beginning to enjoy imitating her creator, who remained hidden and uncharacteristically silent as their ruse continued.
***
"Sir.."
"Kinda busy, Lars." Ophidian belched through a thick plume of exhaust; the thick trunks of his arms were interlocked as he clung to a maintenance drone that was quickly ascending one of Gereza's iso-towers. The cells located in these spires housed the empire's greatest threats; suspended in total oblivion. Well, all except one. He'd been hired to see if Gereza was as impenetrable as popularly thought; but the more he and Lars investigated the more it seemed to be an inside job. The ancillary reports from some schmegghead auditor and a servitor drone so old it took Lars nanoseconds to find and install a compatibility drive to make sense of its findings. All of the information trickled steadily down the HUD of his eyepatch as Lars once more interrupted his exposition.
"I thought it best to inform you that three more high value prisoners have arrived and are currently en route to your location. Perhaps finding a good spot to hide would be best to maintain the integrity of our task here."
"I guess," Ophidian grumbled, "but I better not be billed for anything I've broken so far. It's in my contract!"
The deep voice of the AI sighed softly before a hint of alarm underscored its next communique. "There's also a lot of chatter across Cizran military command. It seems that something has.. consumed part of the grid. Or did. I'm parsing through petabytes of data, but it seems like there's been a full chronal adjustment.."
"But that means... So they're using the sankuls again, huh Lars? I think it might be time to find a new base of operations. Far, far out of the empire's grasp.
***
The immensity of the Vepsis Dol and a testament to its craftsmanship absorbed the sound of rushing movement as a series of subsequent bay doors began to open. Remote access had been easy enough; Chrrx noted. That means most of the ship's systems must be intact. A quick diagnostic and some minor adjustments should be all that's needed to resume operational status and complete the superluminal jump to Su-Lahn. No more than half a cycle and they'd be back aboard the Admiral's flagship.
This thought was pushed to the back of Chrrx's mind as a small chime informed him of secondary access several floors below in one of the ship's cargo holds. With no exchange of words, Nenegin's honor guard broke off into two smaller parties. One continued to the Vepsis Dol's deck while the other sought to investigate the cargo hold.
coGM
Aboard the Zara vi-Pol there echoed the soft hum of cleaning equipment. It came from the 544th level; moreover from a hunched and swaying insectoid pushing along a device that scoured each surface clean at a microbial scale.
The top of its three eyes slowly rose from the instrument's controls and watched a holofeed display of the ship's surroundings. It'd been many a cycle since he'd been so close to home. Garri, a Kilimaran entering the winter of his life, set the machine to standby and gave a conspicuous look in separate directions.
He removed a polished gourd from between the chitinous plates of his chest and emptied its contents in a large draught. Garri's mandibles preened themselves in deep satisfaction as a fissure cracked Kilimara in half before it exploded from the raw might of idiocy. Gurgles rose in his throat before Garri emptied the contents of his digestive sac all over the corridor's walls before falling unconscious.
He awoke in a fugue, unsure how much time had passed since... His home... Gone... His connection...
Garri clutched at the stone that was meant to burn til his transition to his next state of being. An all too familiar warmth flowed through him.
The top of its three eyes slowly rose from the instrument's controls and watched a holofeed display of the ship's surroundings. It'd been many a cycle since he'd been so close to home. Garri, a Kilimaran entering the winter of his life, set the machine to standby and gave a conspicuous look in separate directions.
He removed a polished gourd from between the chitinous plates of his chest and emptied its contents in a large draught. Garri's mandibles preened themselves in deep satisfaction as a fissure cracked Kilimara in half before it exploded from the raw might of idiocy. Gurgles rose in his throat before Garri emptied the contents of his digestive sac all over the corridor's walls before falling unconscious.
He awoke in a fugue, unsure how much time had passed since... His home... Gone... His connection...
Garri clutched at the stone that was meant to burn til his transition to his next state of being. An all too familiar warmth flowed through him.
Alucroas The Raging Singularity
Member
Seen
3 hrs ago
The Cradle of Life - Interior
Karzar remained utterly statuesque, light from the data screen reflecting off his cold, aquatic eyes. Beside him, Snil shivered with chilling intensity and nervousness, tendrils twitching spasmodically. The monitor the two had been viewing flashed red with a warning symbol, indicating that their message to CIPHER wasn't only failing to get through, but that the webs being used to transmit its signals were being attacked with heavy bursts of electromagnetism. Furthermore something had surrounded the Cradle of Life, and Karzar could only assume that their presence had finally been detected.
Snil nearly leaped out of his seat, only for Karzar to immediately step forward, and place a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.
"Calm yourself, Doctor." Karzar said with a tight grip, the corners of his mouth stretching and revealing his rear incisors, nostrils quietly taking in air, resulting in a subtle but gradual rise of his chest. "Let them handle this."
Karzar had longed for a Cizran of high rank and intelligence to bare witness to the glorious reunification of his long-fractured race, but it was simply not to be. Yet here and now, they faced an obvious deception. Why was it obvious? How did the General and the good Doctor know that what stood before them was fake? Simple. Snil knew Kilamaran biology inside and out, having genetically modified Aredemos’ body to make full use of his elemental affinity of fire, rock, and ice. The very same affinity which was exactly what enabled him to freeze and shatter the firestones of his fellow Kilamarans upon returning to his homeworld. A capacity for modifying his form to mimic the qualities of a caustic substance was utterly beyond him, and thus, so too did Karzar, who held his shoulder firmly in his grip, realize this as well...
Karzar reacted swiftly, stepping into the substance in only half a second, given that it had appeared mere meters from his face, grabbed his tooth-laden cape and threw it around himself and the Doctor. As the acidic explosion impacted his cape, the whole of his physical form underwent a transmutation. Every bone, every muscle and organ, every scale, every eye, every cell of gray matter in his skull became integrated into the substance pulling all of it and all that it spread into him, and integrated unto his very own self. Karzar became one with the matter before him, becoming the very substance exploding at he and Snil, compressing and suppressing the wave within himself, as such that it merely caused his body to vibrate.
Karzar was not without his own set of Aptositic powers. He had the unique ability to become one with all physical things that made contact with his body, to the extent of mimicking their properties as the fully resonant, genuine article. It was why in his former life that he had made for such an efficient ocean predator, becoming one--not with the tide--but to become as the tide itself. Such a gift did not merely lend itself to offensive or defensive measures, however; this gift had allowed him to know the full thoughts, feelings, longings, hopes, desires, fears, and dreams of all the Aptosites who he had led under his command, acquiring all through a simple empathy-inducing touch, and was the very reason that he need not so much as make a conscious effort.
“They wish to resist becoming one with each other,” Karzar said with true sadness in his tone and posture, turning to face Snil as he let his cape, spawning a few more teeth, fall back to the floor.
“Perhaps it is why they have conquered so much of the local inner and outer-galactic regions of this cosmic sector,” the Doctor replied without rhetoric in his voice, “gathering and acquiring many things in the hopes of filling a hollow void, just as they fill their appearances with many differing aesthetics, all on a banal quest for self-realization.”
“Oh, they will most certainly...” Karzar’s form shifted back, the dark glint of his eyes returning, “realize.”
The Cradle of Life - Exterior
The dark world of Obathera, whose residents had earlier attacked the lambent suns for nourishment began to unify their minds. For in feeding off that which the Cradle of Life gave them, so too did their awareness of of the internal and external expand astronomically. The hollow openings of the tall, cyclopean skyscrapers dotting Obathera became filled with uncountable yellow eyes, marked with multiple pupils resembling ink splashes, each one staring out into space with an unnerving, unerring, and uncanny sense of perception. This had not been the first time that the denizens of Obathera had cause to defend themselves, nor would it be the last, however rare the need rose into vision, a vision that grew to both figuratively and literally dot itself all over the Cradle of of Life. The eyes were the size of whole moons unto themselves, projecting as an encapsulating image of psionic energy over the Cradle of Life, swiftly and with a synchronicity that defied Cizran expectations of what was thought to be the limitations of the Aptosites. All they had known was that there was a spy in their midsts, that an organization had been watching them for a very long time, and that the Aptosites had begun to enact the full extent of their plans; plans acted for, not against the Cizrans, despite the apparent force they were willing to use to achieve them.
They had not seen what the Obatherans were capable of doing for a time that literally predated the emergence of this particular universe, nor had the Cizrans ever--through their numerous acts of counter-intelligence--witnessed the Obatherans watching them as they watched them now.
Inside the Cradle of Life, through the skein of space, through the twine holding every threaded cloth of fabric together, specifically the fabric on which an impression was formed by Ezkshi, her battleship, and her entire crew…this fabric became soaked, drenched, and submerged in pure white water, pouring forth and drowning the gaps between foam bubbles, and preventing any sort of stealth-based assault. The Obatherans did not try to intercept communication signals, nor did they attempt to hack or break into them. Using their eyes they observed every shift, fold, and imprint that was made, and this was how the creatures of the Dark World saw them. The water that flooded the crew was not unlike the primordial pool that the Cradle of Life surfaced from at the dawn of its existence. It was a place of beginning, of birth, a place existing so far back in time that the only records of its existence lay dormant within the creature’s ancient neurons.
In this primordial ocean, there was no ‘space’, or ‘time’. This place had no rules, no laws, no defining features or attributes to shape it save for the endless mass of unformed reality, and it was that very unformed, lawless substance that the decomposing beams fired into with no effect or interaction of any kind. No ghosts, no spirits, no astral phantoms, no obscure reflections of the selves occupying Ezkshi’s vessel, nor even the vessel itself. Neither a heaven, nor a hell, and definitely far from limbo; concepts like those didn’t exist yet, nor were there beings to create them, let alone imagine. The crew who thought that they could remain hidden found themselves glimpsing into the unravelling irises, dispersing scleras, and expanding capillaries into the unmolded after, the nondescript before, and inarticulable now.
In this existence, in this spaceless, timeless expanse, one could do naught but wait.
The lambent suns surrounding the pink astral sphere, known to the Aptosites as Astraelis, retracted the bands of energy holding the anomaly in place, the walls of the crater that contained it closing in and gripping it with its very own flesh. A brief glimmer of magenta sparked over Astraelis, and as fast its mind could think, an enormous amount of energy was transferred to the nearest web in space. Travel across the astral plane was limited only by imagination and comprehension, and thus, in accordance with the Creature’s capacity for fathoming the act, the transference of psionic essence happened instantaneously. A wave of light illuminated the Cradle’s veins, a moment which circumvented the constraints of temporality had passed, resulting in every, single web that was being attacked surging with the power of Astraelis. Crystallization took place along the silk composing the webbing, bolts of electro-psionic ether radiated off the expanding webs as a psionically charged shield, repulsing the gamma pulses and radio-waves back. Its defenses complete, the Cradle of Life remained in its supportive state, holding the astral gates open, wherein the signal was promptly given to CIPHER. The Aptosite spy would feel much more invigorated, given that the signal now carried Astraelis’ psionic fuel with it.
Meanwhile, the eyes dotting the Cradle of Life expanded to such great volumes that the darkness of their pupils spilled into each other, covering the creature in complete blackness. Starlight became bent and distorted, rendering the cold emptiness of space as the only sight. In the moments leading up to the Grid launching its beams, it no longer witnessed the colossus carrying the five worlds. Deep within the blackness of those pupils, the Grid did not see an enemy, it did not witness the eldritch being that had attempted to kidnap Nenegin zar-Talil, nor did it see the ethereal luminosity of Astraelis, the lava flows of Deimobos, or the sleeping desert of Kilamara. It did not gaze upon the looming obsidian towers of Obathera from which the eyes truly peered out of, and lastly it did not see the unending hurricane which swept across Gaiyana, that was rapidly becoming enveloped by a rising emerald plume.
Within the Absence the sight of the Grid became known, but not through sight. The eyes, whose parasitic host was space and time itself, felt the location being impressed upon its fabric. It reconfigured the sensation into a concrete image, and then saw many tiny machines aiming at it. In that instance of perception, sight reached out into a parallel existence, overlapped them together at opposing angles, and the World Beyond Time equipped itself with a mocking sword and shield.
What better sword and shield than the very same that took aim to destroy it?
The Grid saw itself. It was aiming at itself. Not a reflection of itself, not a phantom, not a flaw, nor an error in its programming. Obathera did not redirect the dicing beams, it did not use mundane magic to reflect the beams back. From the absence that existed outside of space and time, the Obatherans accessed a timeline of another universe in which the Grid was firing at the Cradle of Life, superimposed the event to the location that it had once occupied, and let the Grid’s beams take care of the remainder of the work.
Now the only sight was a graveyard of mirrorous suicide.
The Haloportal
The thing that watched Kirri was very much real, very much alive, and veryvery hungry. Undetected as it were, the dimensional parasite that observed Kirri with plain objectivity did so through his firestone, a thing that held a connection to a realm bound to, but ultimately outside the physical plane. It watched him panic, scream, and spaz in response to its horrifying visage and the effect it had on what was an entirely spiritual interaction. It did not need to breach the haloportal directly to gain access to Kirri’s mind, though it could have easily crawled right through the black hole had it so desired.
It did none of this, for the interaction transcended the physical plane in its entirety.
The “prophecy” Kirri experienced was entirely astral in nature, the connection formed via his firestone which, on the astral plane, emitted a constant energetic signature. One that did not need a code, password, key, or a hacking tool to breach, no matter how secure it may have seemed to the Cizrans. On the astral plane, the only requirement to do anything was will and imagination, and the will that belonged to this abomination was something so utterly outside of dimensional laws that these beings resided on, that it transcended the physical plane, neither circumventing, nor bypassing, but simply eluding the obstacle altogether. If it needed to, if it wanted to, the being could have punctured the singularity and pried open the black hole like the ribcage of a rotting cadaver through use of the strong electromagnetic force, slip, slide, and glide along the folds of space that the Cizrans believed Kirri’s mind was projecting itself against, and slip right in. None of these were necessary, especially at a location where the very laws of physics broke down.
For now it merely continued to watch and observe. Watch as the crimson spiritual tendrils of Aredemos lashed onto and wrapped themselves around Kirri, gaining as strong a hold upon his loyal follower as his hold was upon the physical world, preventing himself from being trapped within a haloportal as well. He had not been prepared for the sudden transportation from Kilamara to the foreign world, a world which he most assuredly, most certainly, and most absolutely knew was NOT Kilamara, for he would have at least felt the slightest tingle of the konul futily trying to drain his spirit as it had done to the rest of the Kilamarans. The poorly put together farce of a sanctuary would have been utterly smashed by the tribal elders upon its discovery, for in their eyes Aredemos was the ultimate heretic and blasphemer to their ways, and the dwellers in the desert would have likewise done the same, for they knew who Aredemos was, and more than that, they knew that what he wanted and desired most was not worship, but complete and absolute freedom for his race and all other races that lay beyond their world.
It was clear now, just as it had been clear when he took flight from the farcical planet, that the Cizrans had done either a remarkably incompetent job at studying Kilamaran culture, or managed to misconstrue the coordinates of his transportation to another world entirely, in-turn sending him to the wrong place, and getting one of their own territories blown to smithereens.
Or perhaps they had gotten their information from a drunkard named Garri, a Redeemed One who had lost his way, and in his stupor, jumbled the words Initara and Kilamara, whilst presenting the information to Nenegin.
Suffice to say that Kilamara remained safely, securely, and in-tactly aboard the Cradle of Life, swallowed as it was alongside its moon Deimobos. This fact negating any need for gravitonic restabilization by Commandant Zuril Nu-bashira, and resulting in the taloned Cizran never receiving the distressing feedback from his sensor arrays.
In a matter of moments, Kirri’s soul was yanked out through his firestone where it was dragged across the astral plane at light speed by Aredemos who, in his spiritually empowered state, kept his body firmly rooted in the physical plane. Though he was fully resisting and overcoming the monumental drag of a force that he did not know the full rules and governance of, Aredemos, however, knew enough after being transported to that mockery of a homeworld, that he would have to steel his spirit. A thing which he achieved through the escalation of power, before taking off from the false planet. It was with this hardened resolve that he evaded the trap, blinking across time and space at a rate of speed that rapidly brought Cradle of Life (which was currently undergoing a process of reformation as the eyes of Obathera retracted in size, draining away into the dark skyscrapers littering the planet) into his zone of awareness, triggered by the dormant spiritual signatures of those asleep on Kilamara.
Slowing his velocity so as to avoid annihilating a world that actually did belong to him, Aredemos tucked his limbs together, and braced himself for impact as he breached the atmosphere of Deimobos. For Kirri, this whole sequence of events was akin to being towed across a realm of fractal light that reflected everything that dwelt upon the physical plane. He saw a stream of swirling energetic solarity, brought to blackness by gravity, witnessed even more starlight streak passed his face, the scintillating crystal webs belonging to the Aptosite CIPHER, and the closing twilight orbs of the Obatherans. In an instant of extreme transmutation, the starlight shifted to burning, rocky red due to the emanant energy of a new firestone -- one of many found scattered on as well as below Deimobos’ surface. Through this stone, his soul found a new mass through which to rebuild itself, utilizing the many different varieties of superhot rocks and metals contained within the moon.
A core of magma molded itself like molten clay into the shape of a thorax, and from that thorax six exoskeletal legs made of hardened lava solidified into sharp, piercing points to hold the body upright. Upon that hot foundation, a secondary torso blossomed and bubbled up, forming the lines and contours of red muscle, abdomen, biceps, triceps, deltoids, trapezius and all. Finally, a tall, crown-shaped head stretched up from the neck, pulling and stretching itself into the desired shape with spectral hands, recurving spikes protruding along the sides. Next to form were his eyes- darkly reflective orbs of mahogany. Six in all ran down his face, ceasing above the mouth that retracted open, revealing his searing teeth.
Reformed and Redeemed again, Kirri peered out as his surroundings with confusion in his eyes. He knew he was on Deimobos, yet felt as though the very ground he stood on was being cradled by something far more massive. With that sudden reckoning, he became aware that what he saw beyond the horizon of the moon was not space. It was black flesh of the Cradle of Life holding Deimobos, the faint green glow of the lambent suns drifting in the creature’s membrane slowly orbiting it, and the sleeping Kilamara.
Though he was surely scared, he was also filled with wondrous awe, and a sobering sense of respite from the otherworldly thing he had bore witness to in his dreams. For now, his eyes shifted, and he saw Aredemos standing in a crater crater, frozen solid via his muta-cryogenic control over temperature. For the time being, Aredemos would stand guard here. He knew not if the Cizrans would come for them again, or if Nenegin were to seek revenge for his “insubordination” as he would have surely, and audaciously deemed the Redeemed One’s actions to be, but for now they were safe, and that is what mattered most to him.
Kirri approached Aredemos and asked him what the next step on their path was, still unable to fully process the events that had unfolded around them, but trusted that the original Redeemed One would have the answers he sought.
“We face a new beginning.”
Cizra Su-lahn
I…saw darkness envelope the cocoon I had created, a cocoon that flowed with psionic energy from Astraelis itself, a cocoon that became crystallized with raw psionic power, reinforcing the luminous tower of unyielding psycho-magnetism. For a moment I felt as though something was… off? Did a glitch occur? Did I not study this race thoroughly enough? Perhaps I needed more data, perhaps I needed to gather more, yet nothing in my research nor my interactions with the citizens of this world contradicted the data I had received. Something was afoul, something was amiss, but fortunately for me, the thing trying to trace its way to my wrong brain had failed to account for one simple and basic grain of tactical truth.
It had neglected to halt the acceleration of time, and though it lacked a physical form, the infusion of Astraelis’ psionic essence into the cocoon, meant the decay would become all too spiritual as well. In attempting to fester within my crystallized creation, its power diminished considerably, the tarry darkness thinning out along the strands, then drying into a billowing cloud of ectoplasmic dust. Now its words came out as a slurred, half enunciation of mockery, malignantly spreading in the thalamus of the being that I am not, triggering a biological defense mechanism.
It…felt confirmation. It came in the form of a spasm, a foul, evil vibration pinging its way across a brain; the inferior brain, the slave brain which was my sub, secondary, utilitarian brain. This brain sat in a secondary chamber behind my primary master brain. It was the brain that had thought itself a member of the Cizran race, the brain I, CIPHER had given the order to hypnotize itself into believing that it was Cizran, thus creating Zeptir who now writhed in agony. It had gone on and on and on, locked in the madhouse of divided souls for so long that by the time I received the go-ahead command from Snil and Karzar, the prisoner had begun to mistake itself for the warden. It was a distinction these Cizrans failed to take notice of, and in that aspect, it appeared we had both taken the other for fools.
But my foolery ends now.
Break the facade. Let it go. Time to rest, and let MYSELF take over.
I am… (said) the Master.
I am NOT! said the slave, subject to the will of its superior.
I AM… CIZ-E-PTH-IER… said the seeming dissociative fool, who did battle with its art-ICU(too)-late-ly crafted self, a self which disconnected itself from myself upon realizing its imminent demise.
I am (not) dying.
I
AM
MYSELF
AND
ONLY
MYSELF!
Your life ends NOW.
I…screamed. The back of my neck split open, and a swarm of auto-cannibalistic bacteria came spilling from the wound, ravenously devouring that which was so readily expendable, just as all slaves are expendable upon the expiration of their use. With the help of Astraelis, I let out a loud and terrible screech, and spun a new web with which to strengthen my defenses. Through that aid I began to feel weightier, denser, and sturdier. I felt black crystal conforming to the contours of my exoskeleton, sprouting along the suction cups of my topside tentacles like newborn teeth, and bursting through the joints of my hoppers, and the hundreds of legs lining the sides of my torso.
I... got rid of the liar, ejected the corrupt mass of once dire flesh into a blazing fire caused by the Kukull during its earlier stampede. The golem was now on its spaded hands and stumps, crawling toward its destination due to the loss of its lower legs, a result of its blind charge throughout the city. It had tripped over something once thin and easily cut, but now bore a physical resiliency on par with that of a neutron core, and possessed an ethereal edge matched only by a reaper’s scythe. Its severed limbs melted into energized particulates, and were drawn into the cocoon along with the many Cizran souls, and were its crawl not as quick as its charge, then so too would the rest of it - body and soul - be joined in glorious mergence.
I…feel no pain.
I feel free…
“You… attacked the wrong me,” I said with a voice that was filled with neutral depth, nearly robotic.
I…watched my slave brain, now dead and useless burn away into nothingness as the armor closed around my face, twin crystal tusks protruding from my chin, and with my master brain, thought to myself that I am free to be me again.
The Cradle of Life - Inside
Snil and Karzar observed the data flowing out of the eyeball in the ceiling with much delight and approval, thoroughly satisfied with the progress that CIPHER was making. The Cizrans had done all they could to deceive the spy with cheap imitations of their biology, in a banal battle to resist that which was natural. In failing to prevent the acceleration of time within CIPHER’s cocoon, it no longer mattered that the parts given to the Aptosite were fake, for every other trapped Cizran soul was very much real, very much genuine, and very much authentic, all the way down to their empathic organs where the goldmine of information truly lay.
The data was disseminated, deciphered, and processed through Gaiyana, comprehended and understood by Astraelis, and Obathera allotted them with all the time it would take to do so, enshrouded within the Absence as it were.
Unity can only be kept at bay for so long until the truth comes crawling forth as a pindoll, ripping out its sharp rods of restraint, and skewers the sewn residence of existential subsistence, before in-turn weaving for itself a newer, better form. One of solidarity, and collective cohesion, the likes of which can only be found flowing in the veins of a misleading idol. The crystal webs transmitted all the data back to the Cradle of Life. Death had indeed been fashioned; death was a requirement, a mandatory destination, but not the final destination.
Outside the Cradle of Life, the lambent suns orbiting Astraelis sunk even deeper into the Cradle’s flesh, as did the ones orbiting Gaiyana and Obathera, the world of everlasting life, freeing them to access higher degrees of potential. This lead to the crystal webs sudden and intense expansion, growing from what was once a construct merely a few feet in diameter to something the size of a planetary core. In perfect synchronicity, each and every one of them launched connecting beams of magenta across millions of light-years in a matter of seconds, bonding to each other as an incomprehensibly voluminous net of psionically charged crystal.
“Prime the gene wedge.” Commanded Karzar to the Cradle, who sensed his intentions by touch alone. This sense of touch extended to Gaiyana, Astraelis, and Obathera as well: incarnate body, mind, and soul of the Cradle of Life.
Broadcasting its beacon of unity, all the crystal webs that CIPHER had scattered throughout the Cizran galaxy began to synchronize in
psionic harmony. In doing so, the awareness of the reemerging Cradle of Life from the Absence became amplified exponentially, and with that augmented awareness, the abhorrent beast feasting on the star of Q’ab was made known to it. This revelation spilled forth from the eyeball’s tear ducts as blight rain that caused a small area of rough tissue surface Snil and Karzar were standing on to turn gangrenous and rot away, only to suddenly regenerate in a weird cycle of life and death. The process lasted for ten seconds before the Cradle’s immune system kicked in and brought an end to the damage before it could spread any farther.
Within that revelatory interval, the gene wedge finished priming itself. The rising emerald plume within Gaiyana’s atmosphere reached a storm pitch as a substantial portion of the world’s lifeforms were telekinetically drawn upwards via Astraelis’ psychic assistance. Scale and skin crumbled to dust under the influence of Obathera, whose eyes marked the amphibian, aquatic, and reptilian flesh, dissolving them into an energized stream of raw organic material. The lambent restraints on Obathera lifted, and now all three worlds hovered just over their respective cradles, a sight which shook Kirri to the core as he saw them rise above Deimobos’ burning horizon.
Truly, he was witnessing something grand.
From Astraelis’ northern pole, a continuously firing beam of magenta shot vertically into space. Branching into a trillion bolts of electrically charged psionic energy, it made contact with the crystal net surrounding the Cizran galaxy and imbued it with an enriched psychic glow to rival its billions of stars. Pressure mounted within Gaiyana’s atmosphere as the storm that raged within exploded out from its gaseous containment.
The Spirit of Gaiyana rocketed upwards and snaked its way around the magenta pillar where it joined the net to be processed and refined a thousand times over, immediately after to be then modified by the gene wedge that was manufactured by the Cradle of Life itself. The form that the wedge displayed itself to be as little more than a sickly brown cloud evaporating from the Cradle’s skin, to be absorbed into the net.
All across Obathera, its towers luminized with yellow light, striking at the lambent suns for more power, power that was pulled into the base of the tallest tower and projected up as a bolt, stained with distorted black pupils of sight beyond time. Where Gaiyana was life and death, and Astraelis was the mind incarnate, Obathera was that which persisted throughout all ages, throughout all lives, throughout all times, existences, and incarnations. Lesser creatures referred to Obathera as the Metropolis of Chaos, for that which reached outside of existence had next to no comprehensive value for ordinary beings.
Obathera was the soul. A timeless, immortal, thing. Because of this, it was able to reach into the distant past- back to a time where the Cizran hivemind was still whole. With the help of the mind’s eye belonging to Astraelis and Gaiyana’s hold over life and death, it plucked a single, unsuspecting member of the race from their perch, and flung them into the pillar.
The five energies: the magenta light of Astraelis, the emerald storm of Gaiyana, the yellow lightning of Obathera, the brown of the gene wedge, and the white Soul of Cizran all resonated within the net, achieved harmony, and spiraled back down into the Cradle of Life, whose jaws parted, taking aim at the nearest branch of netting to Cizra Su-Lahn and…
”FIRE!"
Cizra Su-lahn
I…looked to the sky, and saw the fruits of my labor flash before me an instant. I, like all the other Cizrans peering out at what seemed to be a great unfolding chaos- would have been blinded the flash, eyes burnt from their sockets if not for the optical protection afforded by my crystal armor as the energies surged into the cocoon. This triggered a massive and sudden expansion of the cocoon’s core, forcing the outer shell to grow not only in height, but in width to accommodate the rapid increase in size.
Wisely, I made the decision to fall back.
I…knew however, as I fled, that for every building the crystal expansion sliced through, a Cizran body was bisected along with it. For every toppled structure, a Cizran was crushed under its weight, and for every home that collapsed around, rather than atop a fortunate family, that they were [i]trapped]/i]. That misfortune, as they in their stubborn complacency sought to deem it, would be met with a fate far more delightful than their agonizing deaths would lead them to believe.
All of you are the same to me, and that is what all of you will be!
I…fled farther and farther away, all the way to the outskirts of the capital, where I knew I was safe. I took one final leap, and with that leap, the tentacles upon my back stretched to twice the length of my forty foot body, my silk spinners crafting a web that bound them together to create a strong, silky membrane through which to keep myself afloat. It was from this point of ascension that I somersaulted mid-flight, throwing my rear forward and rolling over to a right side up position to watch the great mergence unfold.
Soon… I will be able to leave this world, but for now, I…
watched.
Watched as Gaiyana gave life back to the Cizran souls. Souls that were cleansed of misguided attempts at aesthetic perfection with which to replace their once beautiful bodies, modified to true perfection via the gene wedge that deCIPHERED their genetic code, and inserted ingredients for a newer, fresher, an ironically younger kind of beauty.
I watched as Astraelis gave them back their minds, once void of sanity.
I watched as Obathera gave them back their past, that eluded them to the point of them willing it begone.
I…
WATCHED AS
MYSELF
AND NOT ZEPTIR ZUKRINCHEN …
… as the Soul of Cizran gave them back their unity.
I…witnessed the last of the Cizran souls, their bodies sliced, crushed, and smashed to pulp by the destruction getting sucked into the cocoon, destined to undergo the very same process as many before them had. The final amalgamations of body, mind, and soul took place, the temporal storm of magenta, emerald, brown, yellow, and white decelerated to a slow cauldron churn, that liquefied into a ruddy solution, that re-accelerated in the center, creating a central vortex.
I… then gazed through the shell, whose reflective magenta light faded to cobalt transparency, providing a contrast of color that gave shape to the thing that was starting to awaken. Through the veil, I saw a bundle of tails, twined together like an elegant flower whose petals were likened to a cluster of horns poking the top of the shell. Quickly, they unwravelled, revealing five saurian skulls with slender, serpentine features swishing, swinging, slamming into, piercing, and cracking the shell. I counted seven tries before large gaps formed at the peak, leaking cascades of ruddy birth fluid. At the mid-section of the shell, I saw gray, shimmering impressions of stretched torsos pressed against the interior, corroding the inner-walls with an insatiable hunger that led to a ring-shaped splinter destroying all but the front, producing an extremely crude clam hinge from which the cascades became a great flood. Unable to support such tremendous weight, the hinge collapsed, leading to the structure biting down into its own jagged teeth, bringing the whole thing crumbling down in a delugian avalanche.
I waited nearly a minute, and finally...
I… could see what had been born, tracing my mantis eyes down the length of the five-headed hydra, whose necks connected a torso made of pure gray ectoplasm, from where an uncountable number of smaller torsos spawned along its sides, pushing the grayish-indigo behemoth forward like a slug with occasional leaps. This colossal tail ultimately led to the main body, where four legs of equine origin held the creature upright, supporting its main torso. The torso itself featured a unique decoration of jutting rib bones that curved inwards like hooks. Between those protruding bones I saw jagged spikes attached to cords of muscle, whereupon after mere seconds of observation, I watched them launch and extend like spears, skewering any Cizrans lucky enough to dwell on the outskirts of the capital.
I…had no emotional reaction to this, as it reeled Cizrans indiscriminately to the spot just below its ribcage, dropped into swirling portal to a place unknown, yet inextricably bound to its mind, body, and soul. The creature flung its head back, pupils more akin to a triangle of cone-shaped spikes protruding from the corners of its forehead and center brow, letting out a bestial roar comprised of many differing layers of vocal spectrums, in part due to the headed tails stretching up into the sky, and roaring along with it.
It was at this point, that I finally saw its arms sprout from its shoulders, outstretched in praise of its own existence…pulling the crystal fragments what was essentially its egg shards into the portal where they were reprocessed, and layered along the base of its tail, forming a mineral casing over what was - in reality - a massive empathic organ.
In knowing what I am, in knowing that I am not a relative of this insane monster, I felt safe in projecting a single question with my mind out to the creature.
Who
Are
You?
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"La'Nibi Napistum."
Karzar remained utterly statuesque, light from the data screen reflecting off his cold, aquatic eyes. Beside him, Snil shivered with chilling intensity and nervousness, tendrils twitching spasmodically. The monitor the two had been viewing flashed red with a warning symbol, indicating that their message to CIPHER wasn't only failing to get through, but that the webs being used to transmit its signals were being attacked with heavy bursts of electromagnetism. Furthermore something had surrounded the Cradle of Life, and Karzar could only assume that their presence had finally been detected.
Snil nearly leaped out of his seat, only for Karzar to immediately step forward, and place a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.
"Calm yourself, Doctor." Karzar said with a tight grip, the corners of his mouth stretching and revealing his rear incisors, nostrils quietly taking in air, resulting in a subtle but gradual rise of his chest. "Let them handle this."
Karzar had longed for a Cizran of high rank and intelligence to bare witness to the glorious reunification of his long-fractured race, but it was simply not to be. Yet here and now, they faced an obvious deception. Why was it obvious? How did the General and the good Doctor know that what stood before them was fake? Simple. Snil knew Kilamaran biology inside and out, having genetically modified Aredemos’ body to make full use of his elemental affinity of fire, rock, and ice. The very same affinity which was exactly what enabled him to freeze and shatter the firestones of his fellow Kilamarans upon returning to his homeworld. A capacity for modifying his form to mimic the qualities of a caustic substance was utterly beyond him, and thus, so too did Karzar, who held his shoulder firmly in his grip, realize this as well...
Karzar reacted swiftly, stepping into the substance in only half a second, given that it had appeared mere meters from his face, grabbed his tooth-laden cape and threw it around himself and the Doctor. As the acidic explosion impacted his cape, the whole of his physical form underwent a transmutation. Every bone, every muscle and organ, every scale, every eye, every cell of gray matter in his skull became integrated into the substance pulling all of it and all that it spread into him, and integrated unto his very own self. Karzar became one with the matter before him, becoming the very substance exploding at he and Snil, compressing and suppressing the wave within himself, as such that it merely caused his body to vibrate.
Karzar was not without his own set of Aptositic powers. He had the unique ability to become one with all physical things that made contact with his body, to the extent of mimicking their properties as the fully resonant, genuine article. It was why in his former life that he had made for such an efficient ocean predator, becoming one--not with the tide--but to become as the tide itself. Such a gift did not merely lend itself to offensive or defensive measures, however; this gift had allowed him to know the full thoughts, feelings, longings, hopes, desires, fears, and dreams of all the Aptosites who he had led under his command, acquiring all through a simple empathy-inducing touch, and was the very reason that he need not so much as make a conscious effort.
“They wish to resist becoming one with each other,” Karzar said with true sadness in his tone and posture, turning to face Snil as he let his cape, spawning a few more teeth, fall back to the floor.
“Perhaps it is why they have conquered so much of the local inner and outer-galactic regions of this cosmic sector,” the Doctor replied without rhetoric in his voice, “gathering and acquiring many things in the hopes of filling a hollow void, just as they fill their appearances with many differing aesthetics, all on a banal quest for self-realization.”
“Oh, they will most certainly...” Karzar’s form shifted back, the dark glint of his eyes returning, “realize.”
The Cradle of Life - Exterior
The dark world of Obathera, whose residents had earlier attacked the lambent suns for nourishment began to unify their minds. For in feeding off that which the Cradle of Life gave them, so too did their awareness of of the internal and external expand astronomically. The hollow openings of the tall, cyclopean skyscrapers dotting Obathera became filled with uncountable yellow eyes, marked with multiple pupils resembling ink splashes, each one staring out into space with an unnerving, unerring, and uncanny sense of perception. This had not been the first time that the denizens of Obathera had cause to defend themselves, nor would it be the last, however rare the need rose into vision, a vision that grew to both figuratively and literally dot itself all over the Cradle of of Life. The eyes were the size of whole moons unto themselves, projecting as an encapsulating image of psionic energy over the Cradle of Life, swiftly and with a synchronicity that defied Cizran expectations of what was thought to be the limitations of the Aptosites. All they had known was that there was a spy in their midsts, that an organization had been watching them for a very long time, and that the Aptosites had begun to enact the full extent of their plans; plans acted for, not against the Cizrans, despite the apparent force they were willing to use to achieve them.
They had not seen what the Obatherans were capable of doing for a time that literally predated the emergence of this particular universe, nor had the Cizrans ever--through their numerous acts of counter-intelligence--witnessed the Obatherans watching them as they watched them now.
Inside the Cradle of Life, through the skein of space, through the twine holding every threaded cloth of fabric together, specifically the fabric on which an impression was formed by Ezkshi, her battleship, and her entire crew…this fabric became soaked, drenched, and submerged in pure white water, pouring forth and drowning the gaps between foam bubbles, and preventing any sort of stealth-based assault. The Obatherans did not try to intercept communication signals, nor did they attempt to hack or break into them. Using their eyes they observed every shift, fold, and imprint that was made, and this was how the creatures of the Dark World saw them. The water that flooded the crew was not unlike the primordial pool that the Cradle of Life surfaced from at the dawn of its existence. It was a place of beginning, of birth, a place existing so far back in time that the only records of its existence lay dormant within the creature’s ancient neurons.
In this primordial ocean, there was no ‘space’, or ‘time’. This place had no rules, no laws, no defining features or attributes to shape it save for the endless mass of unformed reality, and it was that very unformed, lawless substance that the decomposing beams fired into with no effect or interaction of any kind. No ghosts, no spirits, no astral phantoms, no obscure reflections of the selves occupying Ezkshi’s vessel, nor even the vessel itself. Neither a heaven, nor a hell, and definitely far from limbo; concepts like those didn’t exist yet, nor were there beings to create them, let alone imagine. The crew who thought that they could remain hidden found themselves glimpsing into the unravelling irises, dispersing scleras, and expanding capillaries into the unmolded after, the nondescript before, and inarticulable now.
In this existence, in this spaceless, timeless expanse, one could do naught but wait.
The lambent suns surrounding the pink astral sphere, known to the Aptosites as Astraelis, retracted the bands of energy holding the anomaly in place, the walls of the crater that contained it closing in and gripping it with its very own flesh. A brief glimmer of magenta sparked over Astraelis, and as fast its mind could think, an enormous amount of energy was transferred to the nearest web in space. Travel across the astral plane was limited only by imagination and comprehension, and thus, in accordance with the Creature’s capacity for fathoming the act, the transference of psionic essence happened instantaneously. A wave of light illuminated the Cradle’s veins, a moment which circumvented the constraints of temporality had passed, resulting in every, single web that was being attacked surging with the power of Astraelis. Crystallization took place along the silk composing the webbing, bolts of electro-psionic ether radiated off the expanding webs as a psionically charged shield, repulsing the gamma pulses and radio-waves back. Its defenses complete, the Cradle of Life remained in its supportive state, holding the astral gates open, wherein the signal was promptly given to CIPHER. The Aptosite spy would feel much more invigorated, given that the signal now carried Astraelis’ psionic fuel with it.
Meanwhile, the eyes dotting the Cradle of Life expanded to such great volumes that the darkness of their pupils spilled into each other, covering the creature in complete blackness. Starlight became bent and distorted, rendering the cold emptiness of space as the only sight. In the moments leading up to the Grid launching its beams, it no longer witnessed the colossus carrying the five worlds. Deep within the blackness of those pupils, the Grid did not see an enemy, it did not witness the eldritch being that had attempted to kidnap Nenegin zar-Talil, nor did it see the ethereal luminosity of Astraelis, the lava flows of Deimobos, or the sleeping desert of Kilamara. It did not gaze upon the looming obsidian towers of Obathera from which the eyes truly peered out of, and lastly it did not see the unending hurricane which swept across Gaiyana, that was rapidly becoming enveloped by a rising emerald plume.
Within the Absence the sight of the Grid became known, but not through sight. The eyes, whose parasitic host was space and time itself, felt the location being impressed upon its fabric. It reconfigured the sensation into a concrete image, and then saw many tiny machines aiming at it. In that instance of perception, sight reached out into a parallel existence, overlapped them together at opposing angles, and the World Beyond Time equipped itself with a mocking sword and shield.
What better sword and shield than the very same that took aim to destroy it?
The Grid saw itself. It was aiming at itself. Not a reflection of itself, not a phantom, not a flaw, nor an error in its programming. Obathera did not redirect the dicing beams, it did not use mundane magic to reflect the beams back. From the absence that existed outside of space and time, the Obatherans accessed a timeline of another universe in which the Grid was firing at the Cradle of Life, superimposed the event to the location that it had once occupied, and let the Grid’s beams take care of the remainder of the work.
Now the only sight was a graveyard of mirrorous suicide.
The Haloportal
The thing that watched Kirri was very much real, very much alive, and veryvery hungry. Undetected as it were, the dimensional parasite that observed Kirri with plain objectivity did so through his firestone, a thing that held a connection to a realm bound to, but ultimately outside the physical plane. It watched him panic, scream, and spaz in response to its horrifying visage and the effect it had on what was an entirely spiritual interaction. It did not need to breach the haloportal directly to gain access to Kirri’s mind, though it could have easily crawled right through the black hole had it so desired.
It did none of this, for the interaction transcended the physical plane in its entirety.
The “prophecy” Kirri experienced was entirely astral in nature, the connection formed via his firestone which, on the astral plane, emitted a constant energetic signature. One that did not need a code, password, key, or a hacking tool to breach, no matter how secure it may have seemed to the Cizrans. On the astral plane, the only requirement to do anything was will and imagination, and the will that belonged to this abomination was something so utterly outside of dimensional laws that these beings resided on, that it transcended the physical plane, neither circumventing, nor bypassing, but simply eluding the obstacle altogether. If it needed to, if it wanted to, the being could have punctured the singularity and pried open the black hole like the ribcage of a rotting cadaver through use of the strong electromagnetic force, slip, slide, and glide along the folds of space that the Cizrans believed Kirri’s mind was projecting itself against, and slip right in. None of these were necessary, especially at a location where the very laws of physics broke down.
For now it merely continued to watch and observe. Watch as the crimson spiritual tendrils of Aredemos lashed onto and wrapped themselves around Kirri, gaining as strong a hold upon his loyal follower as his hold was upon the physical world, preventing himself from being trapped within a haloportal as well. He had not been prepared for the sudden transportation from Kilamara to the foreign world, a world which he most assuredly, most certainly, and most absolutely knew was NOT Kilamara, for he would have at least felt the slightest tingle of the konul futily trying to drain his spirit as it had done to the rest of the Kilamarans. The poorly put together farce of a sanctuary would have been utterly smashed by the tribal elders upon its discovery, for in their eyes Aredemos was the ultimate heretic and blasphemer to their ways, and the dwellers in the desert would have likewise done the same, for they knew who Aredemos was, and more than that, they knew that what he wanted and desired most was not worship, but complete and absolute freedom for his race and all other races that lay beyond their world.
It was clear now, just as it had been clear when he took flight from the farcical planet, that the Cizrans had done either a remarkably incompetent job at studying Kilamaran culture, or managed to misconstrue the coordinates of his transportation to another world entirely, in-turn sending him to the wrong place, and getting one of their own territories blown to smithereens.
Or perhaps they had gotten their information from a drunkard named Garri, a Redeemed One who had lost his way, and in his stupor, jumbled the words Initara and Kilamara, whilst presenting the information to Nenegin.
Suffice to say that Kilamara remained safely, securely, and in-tactly aboard the Cradle of Life, swallowed as it was alongside its moon Deimobos. This fact negating any need for gravitonic restabilization by Commandant Zuril Nu-bashira, and resulting in the taloned Cizran never receiving the distressing feedback from his sensor arrays.
In a matter of moments, Kirri’s soul was yanked out through his firestone where it was dragged across the astral plane at light speed by Aredemos who, in his spiritually empowered state, kept his body firmly rooted in the physical plane. Though he was fully resisting and overcoming the monumental drag of a force that he did not know the full rules and governance of, Aredemos, however, knew enough after being transported to that mockery of a homeworld, that he would have to steel his spirit. A thing which he achieved through the escalation of power, before taking off from the false planet. It was with this hardened resolve that he evaded the trap, blinking across time and space at a rate of speed that rapidly brought Cradle of Life (which was currently undergoing a process of reformation as the eyes of Obathera retracted in size, draining away into the dark skyscrapers littering the planet) into his zone of awareness, triggered by the dormant spiritual signatures of those asleep on Kilamara.
Slowing his velocity so as to avoid annihilating a world that actually did belong to him, Aredemos tucked his limbs together, and braced himself for impact as he breached the atmosphere of Deimobos. For Kirri, this whole sequence of events was akin to being towed across a realm of fractal light that reflected everything that dwelt upon the physical plane. He saw a stream of swirling energetic solarity, brought to blackness by gravity, witnessed even more starlight streak passed his face, the scintillating crystal webs belonging to the Aptosite CIPHER, and the closing twilight orbs of the Obatherans. In an instant of extreme transmutation, the starlight shifted to burning, rocky red due to the emanant energy of a new firestone -- one of many found scattered on as well as below Deimobos’ surface. Through this stone, his soul found a new mass through which to rebuild itself, utilizing the many different varieties of superhot rocks and metals contained within the moon.
A core of magma molded itself like molten clay into the shape of a thorax, and from that thorax six exoskeletal legs made of hardened lava solidified into sharp, piercing points to hold the body upright. Upon that hot foundation, a secondary torso blossomed and bubbled up, forming the lines and contours of red muscle, abdomen, biceps, triceps, deltoids, trapezius and all. Finally, a tall, crown-shaped head stretched up from the neck, pulling and stretching itself into the desired shape with spectral hands, recurving spikes protruding along the sides. Next to form were his eyes- darkly reflective orbs of mahogany. Six in all ran down his face, ceasing above the mouth that retracted open, revealing his searing teeth.
Reformed and Redeemed again, Kirri peered out as his surroundings with confusion in his eyes. He knew he was on Deimobos, yet felt as though the very ground he stood on was being cradled by something far more massive. With that sudden reckoning, he became aware that what he saw beyond the horizon of the moon was not space. It was black flesh of the Cradle of Life holding Deimobos, the faint green glow of the lambent suns drifting in the creature’s membrane slowly orbiting it, and the sleeping Kilamara.
Though he was surely scared, he was also filled with wondrous awe, and a sobering sense of respite from the otherworldly thing he had bore witness to in his dreams. For now, his eyes shifted, and he saw Aredemos standing in a crater crater, frozen solid via his muta-cryogenic control over temperature. For the time being, Aredemos would stand guard here. He knew not if the Cizrans would come for them again, or if Nenegin were to seek revenge for his “insubordination” as he would have surely, and audaciously deemed the Redeemed One’s actions to be, but for now they were safe, and that is what mattered most to him.
Kirri approached Aredemos and asked him what the next step on their path was, still unable to fully process the events that had unfolded around them, but trusted that the original Redeemed One would have the answers he sought.
“We face a new beginning.”
Cizra Su-lahn
I…saw darkness envelope the cocoon I had created, a cocoon that flowed with psionic energy from Astraelis itself, a cocoon that became crystallized with raw psionic power, reinforcing the luminous tower of unyielding psycho-magnetism. For a moment I felt as though something was… off? Did a glitch occur? Did I not study this race thoroughly enough? Perhaps I needed more data, perhaps I needed to gather more, yet nothing in my research nor my interactions with the citizens of this world contradicted the data I had received. Something was afoul, something was amiss, but fortunately for me, the thing trying to trace its way to my wrong brain had failed to account for one simple and basic grain of tactical truth.
It had neglected to halt the acceleration of time, and though it lacked a physical form, the infusion of Astraelis’ psionic essence into the cocoon, meant the decay would become all too spiritual as well. In attempting to fester within my crystallized creation, its power diminished considerably, the tarry darkness thinning out along the strands, then drying into a billowing cloud of ectoplasmic dust. Now its words came out as a slurred, half enunciation of mockery, malignantly spreading in the thalamus of the being that I am not, triggering a biological defense mechanism.
It…felt confirmation. It came in the form of a spasm, a foul, evil vibration pinging its way across a brain; the inferior brain, the slave brain which was my sub, secondary, utilitarian brain. This brain sat in a secondary chamber behind my primary master brain. It was the brain that had thought itself a member of the Cizran race, the brain I, CIPHER had given the order to hypnotize itself into believing that it was Cizran, thus creating Zeptir who now writhed in agony. It had gone on and on and on, locked in the madhouse of divided souls for so long that by the time I received the go-ahead command from Snil and Karzar, the prisoner had begun to mistake itself for the warden. It was a distinction these Cizrans failed to take notice of, and in that aspect, it appeared we had both taken the other for fools.
But my foolery ends now.
Break the facade. Let it go. Time to rest, and let MYSELF take over.
I am… (said) the Master.
I am NOT! said the slave, subject to the will of its superior.
I AM… CIZ-E-PTH-IER… said the seeming dissociative fool, who did battle with its art-ICU(too)-late-ly crafted self, a self which disconnected itself from myself upon realizing its imminent demise.
I am (not) dying.
I
AM
MYSELF
AND
ONLY
MYSELF!
Your life ends NOW.
I…screamed. The back of my neck split open, and a swarm of auto-cannibalistic bacteria came spilling from the wound, ravenously devouring that which was so readily expendable, just as all slaves are expendable upon the expiration of their use. With the help of Astraelis, I let out a loud and terrible screech, and spun a new web with which to strengthen my defenses. Through that aid I began to feel weightier, denser, and sturdier. I felt black crystal conforming to the contours of my exoskeleton, sprouting along the suction cups of my topside tentacles like newborn teeth, and bursting through the joints of my hoppers, and the hundreds of legs lining the sides of my torso.
I... got rid of the liar, ejected the corrupt mass of once dire flesh into a blazing fire caused by the Kukull during its earlier stampede. The golem was now on its spaded hands and stumps, crawling toward its destination due to the loss of its lower legs, a result of its blind charge throughout the city. It had tripped over something once thin and easily cut, but now bore a physical resiliency on par with that of a neutron core, and possessed an ethereal edge matched only by a reaper’s scythe. Its severed limbs melted into energized particulates, and were drawn into the cocoon along with the many Cizran souls, and were its crawl not as quick as its charge, then so too would the rest of it - body and soul - be joined in glorious mergence.
I…feel no pain.
I feel free…
“You… attacked the wrong me,” I said with a voice that was filled with neutral depth, nearly robotic.
I…watched my slave brain, now dead and useless burn away into nothingness as the armor closed around my face, twin crystal tusks protruding from my chin, and with my master brain, thought to myself that I am free to be me again.
The Cradle of Life - Inside
Snil and Karzar observed the data flowing out of the eyeball in the ceiling with much delight and approval, thoroughly satisfied with the progress that CIPHER was making. The Cizrans had done all they could to deceive the spy with cheap imitations of their biology, in a banal battle to resist that which was natural. In failing to prevent the acceleration of time within CIPHER’s cocoon, it no longer mattered that the parts given to the Aptosite were fake, for every other trapped Cizran soul was very much real, very much genuine, and very much authentic, all the way down to their empathic organs where the goldmine of information truly lay.
The data was disseminated, deciphered, and processed through Gaiyana, comprehended and understood by Astraelis, and Obathera allotted them with all the time it would take to do so, enshrouded within the Absence as it were.
Unity can only be kept at bay for so long until the truth comes crawling forth as a pindoll, ripping out its sharp rods of restraint, and skewers the sewn residence of existential subsistence, before in-turn weaving for itself a newer, better form. One of solidarity, and collective cohesion, the likes of which can only be found flowing in the veins of a misleading idol. The crystal webs transmitted all the data back to the Cradle of Life. Death had indeed been fashioned; death was a requirement, a mandatory destination, but not the final destination.
Outside the Cradle of Life, the lambent suns orbiting Astraelis sunk even deeper into the Cradle’s flesh, as did the ones orbiting Gaiyana and Obathera, the world of everlasting life, freeing them to access higher degrees of potential. This lead to the crystal webs sudden and intense expansion, growing from what was once a construct merely a few feet in diameter to something the size of a planetary core. In perfect synchronicity, each and every one of them launched connecting beams of magenta across millions of light-years in a matter of seconds, bonding to each other as an incomprehensibly voluminous net of psionically charged crystal.
“Prime the gene wedge.” Commanded Karzar to the Cradle, who sensed his intentions by touch alone. This sense of touch extended to Gaiyana, Astraelis, and Obathera as well: incarnate body, mind, and soul of the Cradle of Life.
Broadcasting its beacon of unity, all the crystal webs that CIPHER had scattered throughout the Cizran galaxy began to synchronize in
psionic harmony. In doing so, the awareness of the reemerging Cradle of Life from the Absence became amplified exponentially, and with that augmented awareness, the abhorrent beast feasting on the star of Q’ab was made known to it. This revelation spilled forth from the eyeball’s tear ducts as blight rain that caused a small area of rough tissue surface Snil and Karzar were standing on to turn gangrenous and rot away, only to suddenly regenerate in a weird cycle of life and death. The process lasted for ten seconds before the Cradle’s immune system kicked in and brought an end to the damage before it could spread any farther.
Within that revelatory interval, the gene wedge finished priming itself. The rising emerald plume within Gaiyana’s atmosphere reached a storm pitch as a substantial portion of the world’s lifeforms were telekinetically drawn upwards via Astraelis’ psychic assistance. Scale and skin crumbled to dust under the influence of Obathera, whose eyes marked the amphibian, aquatic, and reptilian flesh, dissolving them into an energized stream of raw organic material. The lambent restraints on Obathera lifted, and now all three worlds hovered just over their respective cradles, a sight which shook Kirri to the core as he saw them rise above Deimobos’ burning horizon.
Truly, he was witnessing something grand.
From Astraelis’ northern pole, a continuously firing beam of magenta shot vertically into space. Branching into a trillion bolts of electrically charged psionic energy, it made contact with the crystal net surrounding the Cizran galaxy and imbued it with an enriched psychic glow to rival its billions of stars. Pressure mounted within Gaiyana’s atmosphere as the storm that raged within exploded out from its gaseous containment.
The Spirit of Gaiyana rocketed upwards and snaked its way around the magenta pillar where it joined the net to be processed and refined a thousand times over, immediately after to be then modified by the gene wedge that was manufactured by the Cradle of Life itself. The form that the wedge displayed itself to be as little more than a sickly brown cloud evaporating from the Cradle’s skin, to be absorbed into the net.
All across Obathera, its towers luminized with yellow light, striking at the lambent suns for more power, power that was pulled into the base of the tallest tower and projected up as a bolt, stained with distorted black pupils of sight beyond time. Where Gaiyana was life and death, and Astraelis was the mind incarnate, Obathera was that which persisted throughout all ages, throughout all lives, throughout all times, existences, and incarnations. Lesser creatures referred to Obathera as the Metropolis of Chaos, for that which reached outside of existence had next to no comprehensive value for ordinary beings.
Obathera was the soul. A timeless, immortal, thing. Because of this, it was able to reach into the distant past- back to a time where the Cizran hivemind was still whole. With the help of the mind’s eye belonging to Astraelis and Gaiyana’s hold over life and death, it plucked a single, unsuspecting member of the race from their perch, and flung them into the pillar.
The five energies: the magenta light of Astraelis, the emerald storm of Gaiyana, the yellow lightning of Obathera, the brown of the gene wedge, and the white Soul of Cizran all resonated within the net, achieved harmony, and spiraled back down into the Cradle of Life, whose jaws parted, taking aim at the nearest branch of netting to Cizra Su-Lahn and…
”FIRE!"
Cizra Su-lahn
I…looked to the sky, and saw the fruits of my labor flash before me an instant. I, like all the other Cizrans peering out at what seemed to be a great unfolding chaos- would have been blinded the flash, eyes burnt from their sockets if not for the optical protection afforded by my crystal armor as the energies surged into the cocoon. This triggered a massive and sudden expansion of the cocoon’s core, forcing the outer shell to grow not only in height, but in width to accommodate the rapid increase in size.
Wisely, I made the decision to fall back.
I…knew however, as I fled, that for every building the crystal expansion sliced through, a Cizran body was bisected along with it. For every toppled structure, a Cizran was crushed under its weight, and for every home that collapsed around, rather than atop a fortunate family, that they were [i]trapped]/i]. That misfortune, as they in their stubborn complacency sought to deem it, would be met with a fate far more delightful than their agonizing deaths would lead them to believe.
All of you are the same to me, and that is what all of you will be!
I…fled farther and farther away, all the way to the outskirts of the capital, where I knew I was safe. I took one final leap, and with that leap, the tentacles upon my back stretched to twice the length of my forty foot body, my silk spinners crafting a web that bound them together to create a strong, silky membrane through which to keep myself afloat. It was from this point of ascension that I somersaulted mid-flight, throwing my rear forward and rolling over to a right side up position to watch the great mergence unfold.
Soon… I will be able to leave this world, but for now, I…
watched.
Watched as Gaiyana gave life back to the Cizran souls. Souls that were cleansed of misguided attempts at aesthetic perfection with which to replace their once beautiful bodies, modified to true perfection via the gene wedge that deCIPHERED their genetic code, and inserted ingredients for a newer, fresher, an ironically younger kind of beauty.
I watched as Astraelis gave them back their minds, once void of sanity.
I watched as Obathera gave them back their past, that eluded them to the point of them willing it begone.
I…
WATCHED AS
MYSELF
AND NOT ZEPTIR ZUKRINCHEN …
… as the Soul of Cizran gave them back their unity.
I…witnessed the last of the Cizran souls, their bodies sliced, crushed, and smashed to pulp by the destruction getting sucked into the cocoon, destined to undergo the very same process as many before them had. The final amalgamations of body, mind, and soul took place, the temporal storm of magenta, emerald, brown, yellow, and white decelerated to a slow cauldron churn, that liquefied into a ruddy solution, that re-accelerated in the center, creating a central vortex.
I… then gazed through the shell, whose reflective magenta light faded to cobalt transparency, providing a contrast of color that gave shape to the thing that was starting to awaken. Through the veil, I saw a bundle of tails, twined together like an elegant flower whose petals were likened to a cluster of horns poking the top of the shell. Quickly, they unwravelled, revealing five saurian skulls with slender, serpentine features swishing, swinging, slamming into, piercing, and cracking the shell. I counted seven tries before large gaps formed at the peak, leaking cascades of ruddy birth fluid. At the mid-section of the shell, I saw gray, shimmering impressions of stretched torsos pressed against the interior, corroding the inner-walls with an insatiable hunger that led to a ring-shaped splinter destroying all but the front, producing an extremely crude clam hinge from which the cascades became a great flood. Unable to support such tremendous weight, the hinge collapsed, leading to the structure biting down into its own jagged teeth, bringing the whole thing crumbling down in a delugian avalanche.
I waited nearly a minute, and finally...
I… could see what had been born, tracing my mantis eyes down the length of the five-headed hydra, whose necks connected a torso made of pure gray ectoplasm, from where an uncountable number of smaller torsos spawned along its sides, pushing the grayish-indigo behemoth forward like a slug with occasional leaps. This colossal tail ultimately led to the main body, where four legs of equine origin held the creature upright, supporting its main torso. The torso itself featured a unique decoration of jutting rib bones that curved inwards like hooks. Between those protruding bones I saw jagged spikes attached to cords of muscle, whereupon after mere seconds of observation, I watched them launch and extend like spears, skewering any Cizrans lucky enough to dwell on the outskirts of the capital.
I…had no emotional reaction to this, as it reeled Cizrans indiscriminately to the spot just below its ribcage, dropped into swirling portal to a place unknown, yet inextricably bound to its mind, body, and soul. The creature flung its head back, pupils more akin to a triangle of cone-shaped spikes protruding from the corners of its forehead and center brow, letting out a bestial roar comprised of many differing layers of vocal spectrums, in part due to the headed tails stretching up into the sky, and roaring along with it.
It was at this point, that I finally saw its arms sprout from its shoulders, outstretched in praise of its own existence…pulling the crystal fragments what was essentially its egg shards into the portal where they were reprocessed, and layered along the base of its tail, forming a mineral casing over what was - in reality - a massive empathic organ.
In knowing what I am, in knowing that I am not a relative of this insane monster, I felt safe in projecting a single question with my mind out to the creature.
Who
Are
You?
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"La'Nibi Napistum."
Alucroas The Raging Singularity
Member
Seen
3 hrs ago
"Who... is speaking to me?"
I... was at a loss for words. I had not expected this newborn beast to trip, stumble, and struggle to articulate itself so easily. Perhaps it was due to the shock of finally being free again, that I failed to calculate that the collective intelligence of the Cizrans merging together being held together. I pushed the thought to the back of mind, and answered as quickly as I knew how.
"I am Cipher."
"Life. Death. Life. Death. Life. Death. Life. Death. Everywhere I see life, I see death, and where I see death, I see life."
I felt...paternity. My organization cared much for the well-being of all creation. We went out of our way to promote individual wholeness. For the Cizrans this was impossible. Others had paid the price for their vanity, and a slave - no matter how much "freedom", or privileges it is granted throughout its lifetime, it is still just a slave, never to be truly free. La'Nibi apparently shared this line of reasoning, and I instantly knew, that it shared some of the Cradle of Life's genes.
Slowly, it began to turn, its colossal tail sweeping a swath of destruction, leaving a thick trail of ectoplasmic slime coating the debris, its equine hooves puncturing the ground with every step, and its tails twined together into the shape of a multi-skulled saurian flower as it finished the turn. It stood still for about three seconds, meeting my gaze with its cony eyes, a unified breath of utter bliss exhaled from the swirling portal in its torso; and where I might have flinched at this, I felt all the muscles in my body instantly start to relax.
So La'Nibi saw me as kindred... Very well. Snil will analyze this... phenomena at a later date, I presume.
"What will you do?" I asked with blooming curiosity.
It stopped about a hundred feet from where I held myself aloft, and the twined skulls eased the tightness of their necks.
"I wish to watch, and decide what I will do with this life and death, life and death, life and death, life and death."
There were still three craters left within the Cradle of Life. One of them could easily hold La'Nibi. Yes, the Doctor and the General will be most pleased to have their newest... friend so close for acquainting.
I... dropped my claws, tilted my head, and began to click my mandibles. "We travel to the Cradle of Life, and it will be within the Cradle of Life, where we shall watch life and death, life and death, life and death." Upon the projection of this final message, the gateway within its torso swallowed its light, its dark-indigo skin becoming luminous as its veins were flooded, and the skulls shined like ornate lamps.
"We go to watch life and death, life and death, life and death."
I am safe. I... flew at the portal, nestled myself against the solidified walls of space and time, felt the prying eyes of a billion Obatherans from a billion different universes through interconnected consciences watching me. Inside I felt this chamber rotate to a vertical position, the walls compressing, stretching, as La'Nibi's body shrunk inwards on itself, expanded outwards on itself, and spat me out on the crater of the Cradle of Life.
Finally, without pause, the Cradle dove into the blackness of space like a whale going underwater.
And then I... heard through the intersection of existence,
a
twisted
metal
s
c
r
e
a
m
I... was at a loss for words. I had not expected this newborn beast to trip, stumble, and struggle to articulate itself so easily. Perhaps it was due to the shock of finally being free again, that I failed to calculate that the collective intelligence of the Cizrans merging together being held together. I pushed the thought to the back of mind, and answered as quickly as I knew how.
"I am Cipher."
"Life. Death. Life. Death. Life. Death. Life. Death. Everywhere I see life, I see death, and where I see death, I see life."
I felt...paternity. My organization cared much for the well-being of all creation. We went out of our way to promote individual wholeness. For the Cizrans this was impossible. Others had paid the price for their vanity, and a slave - no matter how much "freedom", or privileges it is granted throughout its lifetime, it is still just a slave, never to be truly free. La'Nibi apparently shared this line of reasoning, and I instantly knew, that it shared some of the Cradle of Life's genes.
Slowly, it began to turn, its colossal tail sweeping a swath of destruction, leaving a thick trail of ectoplasmic slime coating the debris, its equine hooves puncturing the ground with every step, and its tails twined together into the shape of a multi-skulled saurian flower as it finished the turn. It stood still for about three seconds, meeting my gaze with its cony eyes, a unified breath of utter bliss exhaled from the swirling portal in its torso; and where I might have flinched at this, I felt all the muscles in my body instantly start to relax.
So La'Nibi saw me as kindred... Very well. Snil will analyze this... phenomena at a later date, I presume.
"What will you do?" I asked with blooming curiosity.
It stopped about a hundred feet from where I held myself aloft, and the twined skulls eased the tightness of their necks.
"I wish to watch, and decide what I will do with this life and death, life and death, life and death, life and death."
There were still three craters left within the Cradle of Life. One of them could easily hold La'Nibi. Yes, the Doctor and the General will be most pleased to have their newest... friend so close for acquainting.
I... dropped my claws, tilted my head, and began to click my mandibles. "We travel to the Cradle of Life, and it will be within the Cradle of Life, where we shall watch life and death, life and death, life and death." Upon the projection of this final message, the gateway within its torso swallowed its light, its dark-indigo skin becoming luminous as its veins were flooded, and the skulls shined like ornate lamps.
"We go to watch life and death, life and death, life and death."
I am safe. I... flew at the portal, nestled myself against the solidified walls of space and time, felt the prying eyes of a billion Obatherans from a billion different universes through interconnected consciences watching me. Inside I felt this chamber rotate to a vertical position, the walls compressing, stretching, as La'Nibi's body shrunk inwards on itself, expanded outwards on itself, and spat me out on the crater of the Cradle of Life.
Finally, without pause, the Cradle dove into the blackness of space like a whale going underwater.
And then I... heard through the intersection of existence,
a
twisted
metal
s
c
r
e
a
m
coGM
With a brief keystroke, the Nool Al-Pas released a chain of experimental projects which rocketed from their salvos and, once clearing shields, engaged in their short-range superluminal jump. These missiles rephased about half an AU from the far-flung celestial body, where they would collide with the planetoid once corporeal again. The algorithms that determined each missile function relayed between a complex network. Some of the missiles burrowed deep into the planetoids molten core, while others propelled the celestial body even faster, reengaging the planetoid into FTL travel.
Many light years away, Deimobos phased back into existence with a brilliant flash and a flicker as gravitrons shifted about its large frame. A halo of light backlit the planetoid like an ominous eclipse, as the phase rockets engaged their secondary boosters. The celestial body careened as it conserved its immense momentum, before crashing into the stomach-wall of the Cradle of Life. The initial impact nearly shattered the moon’s thick crust, but what followed the impressive collision would be observable to any entity within the solar-system swallowing creature’s gut.
Every warhead simultaneously detonated. The light of its doom would create one of the firstborn stars within the Cradle’s monster-made universe.
A sonorous roar reverberated through the Nool al-Pas as it began its onslaught against the innards of the beast that had swallowed part of the Dira var-Sha's accompanying fleet. Left to operate without their flagship's command, each Cizran warship added their own distinct style to the destruction. The experimental salvo was but one harmony in a symphony.
In conjunction with the cannonade, a viscous ferrofluid began to seep through apertures in the Nool al-Pas' hull. Its source was an enormous silo with channels passing through the ship leading to its exterior. As the effervescing effluvia drained into tributaries, a thrashing silhouette was revealed. Vaguely insectoid in nature, it thrashed atramentous appendages with great anticipation. It had been centuries since its last awakening; too few engagements called for use of the Voshd'gatr. A prime example of Cizran hubris, what had once been a niche species was now a blunt object with which to castigate any affront to Cizran authority.
The Voshd began to emit a low buzz from its labellum as spindly setae took form; each ending in thousands of bristles that ran through to join its viscid offal on the warship's hull. As its hum grew into a shrill whine, innumerable shards of beryllium sprouted from each aperture before being engulfed in thick globules that began to slough off the Nool al-Pas. Their descent was cut short as a wave shuddered through the ferrofluid, its hue shifting from pitch black to lustrous argent. The Gatr, a swarm of whorling beads, now surrounded the Nool al-Pas as the lunar projectile pierced the Cradle of Life's serous membrane; nuclear splendor reflected in the trillion ommatidia of the Voshd's compound eyes.
***
“That’s quite enough, thank you,” spoke a dim presence.
Compliant, the sumptuously vivid portrayal of Nenegin zar-Taliļ condensed to an acidic fog. Too heavy to remain aloft, its constituent droplets struck the deck mere meters from Karzar and Snil. Venomous hissing poisoned the aghast silence as the corrosive substance splashed, sizzled, and sated itself on all it pooled upon. Discrete, the miasma inevitably thinned and revealed a hovering black orb with a single point of white light in its midst. Once, twice it blinked. Then it exploded sharply—darkly.
Flitting through the detritus of the destroyed Apostite ship, the Voshd'gatr began a campaign of annihilation against all signs of life. The highly unstable nature of the Gatr's beryllium cores had immediately begun to react with the Voshd's ferrofluidic excrement and by the time terminal velocity had been achieved, each pearl had become a thermonuclear missile that erupted indiscriminately.
With a gesture, she ripped the Aptosite ship in twain from bow to stern. The groundwork was already in place from the explosive cocktail of nanites, chemicals, biologics, and femto-responsive quasi-mineral-organics—all of which burrowed into the enemy vessel’s hull as soon as the curtain was drawn back on their masquerade as Nenegin zar-Taliļ, Aredemos, and Kirri. Soon thereafter, the infection proliferated throughout the extent of the ship and its complement.
Unfamiliar as she was with their anatomy, Ezkshi did know few things fared well without atmosphere and she imagined the ruptured vessel would suffer a multitude of casualties.
Even so, she was not finished with her work; in fact, as far as konul manipulation went, she wasn’t even started.
Again, her consciousness expanded. She saw the whole of the strange being that interjected itself into the domain of the Empire. It swam in what was open space. Was, until she shaped her vision, and the whole fell into a box—one inundated with flashing MASERs, bursting LADAR, fulminating fusion reactions, would-be Cradles of Life, and genuflecting magicarp. The box compressed, like the interior of a trash compactor, shank, and cramped what was in it. The vision wasn’t hers alone, but it manifested in reality beyond her mind. What she did in this moment, her manipulation of the konul’s harvested potential, affected reality.
The box shrank into a nothing, and then was no longer in or part of the Su-laria galaxy. It had, instead, been all pushed into a microscopic dimension.
It was … inner space.
The cell she balanced on a talon contained the wreckage of Kilamara and Diemobos, the Cradle of Life and its pillaged worlds, and the Aptosite invaders. She had been careful to mortar the gaps precisely so as to plot an escape for her fleet and the nodes of the grid.
With a disgusted gesture, she flung it away; it skipped like a pebble across the trillions of light years of distance that separated the Empire from the slums of the verse.
The Aptosite flagship had been atomized in nuclear fury. Millions of Gatr began to pour out of the massive puncture in the Cradle of Life before erupting in a resplendent column of decimation. One that would continue to burn long after all traces of the petulant usurpers had been lost to the annals of Cizran antiquity.
Gattsu Cold meat. Fresh cut.
Member
Seen
4 yrs ago
The Hall of Records, Cizra Su-lah
A muted light barely illuminated the chamber where Zuril Nu-Báshira stared widely and unblinkingly at the six foot tall monolith that floated across from it. The only semblance of life the golem exhibited was when it spoke a blue line snaked across its surface, and rippled with the intonations and pitches of its metallic queries. The commandant’s credit was on the line, and the cizran took this for what it really was-not an interview like the government said, or debriefing as many military superiors said, but for the interrogation that it really was. An interrogation that would decide the fate of his reputation. All eyes were on him, but if he were cunning, he could deflect to his superior officers.
Zuril clicked his beak as he recalled the information of many years prior. Then answered the slate, “Yes, I remember,” of course he did. His status depended on it. He had performed his due documentation as any good cizran would.
With an avian twitch he continued, “I had engaged protocol Θ tsathoskr. Our sensors confirmed this due to the breakdown in parallax and astroluminary activity.”
“Please, Science Commandant, ‘plain language’ as requested.” The stone responded, the metronome only minorly agitated.
He paused for a moment before craning forward onto an appendage, “The stars were gone.”
The Commandant continued, “There was precedence for this before. Therefore I was within my authority to engage protocol Θ tsathoskr.”
“The Noema is not interested in precedence. Please continue.”
Though it couldn’t be told by looking at the strigiformes-like countenance of Zuril, he was flushed with concern. “Very well, our sensory array also confirmed that the military experimentation ground charge to Nenegin zar-Taliļ was destroyed by superluminal backforce.”
“By entity Θ?”
“No, the inhabitants of the planet refer to it as ‘Aredemos’ and it is classified as a B class entity. Clearly that classification was in error.”
The slate took a moment processing the information before it relayed what was likely a new question to it fed by what ever Av’sti or agent of the Noema was on the other side of it.
“Commandant Nu-Báshira, do you view Admiral zar-Taliļ’s ability to guide reconnaissance as ‘satisfactory’?”
There it was. He paused and considered his words carefully. “The Killamaran Catastrophe calls many aspects of his judgment into question.”
“The standing officer, Ezkshi, authorized a konul deployment. Can you confirm this?”
A small conflict waged within Zuril. Ezkshi had recommended an extension to his title, a prestige that if and when it cleared would certainly improve his ethos. But, unfortunately for Ezkshi, Cizran instinct reigned supreme. Zuril would look out for himself.
“I can. I believe the standing commander acted with authorization of the Liars, but I was not privy to command’s communications with the Noema. We used the artifact to escape a reaction between special magazine of the Nool Al-pas and entity Θ.”
“A science report has been established by information relayed from satellites near that section of space, Commandant. This is your opportunity to explain your perspective.”
“I can confirm a strange paradox. Our sensors detected elevated levels of psionic energy, but the state within entity Θ was ‘normal.’ The energy emission consequent from the creature and payload was...unexpected. Our independent luminosity tests rate this higher than 32 x 10^57 watts of energy. More than the quasar at the center of the Gamordena sector, more than any recorded energy reading that I could find within the Hall of Records.”
“There was an attempt of communication that was tracked across space from entity Θ to Cizra Su-Lahn.”
“My speculation would be that the communication was severed when entity Θ was destroyed.” Zuril responded matter-of-factly. Less of a speculation and more of a waste of a question. Nothing could survive that.
The kukull paused for a moment before its intonation changed, a different questioner, perhaps.
“One final request before the post-interview closed conference proceeds, Commandant. We attained some interesting information from a scrap heap near Gereza that will be presented in the sessions to follow. We are also investigating the connection between a former Gereza warden and the disappearance of prisoner #3091.
Tell us everything you know about this text Nenegin retrieved from Killamara.”
***
“Cipher… Zeptir… La’Nibity… La’Babity… La’boo…”
I… beheld a room of darkness that resembled the vast horrors that dwelled out in space; terrors the Cizran Empire could hardly comprehend. The Cizran Empire their hubris found their only worthy enemy was themselves. A thick darkness entangled all within its strands. All spawned from it and all would return to it. Oily blackness I learned to live with for what seem like eons. Only when its terrors relented did I get time to mull over the existential crisis that wracked my mind before the shade took over. In these periods of lucidity I remember thinking myself a cizran, or an aptosite, neither or both. It would come and go, the darkness felt as if were crawling in my…
“Cipher… Shark cape… Electropsionic amplitude...”
I… cringe and hiss like the creature of the night that I am when the idiot with questions flips the light on. He returns like a specter every eve to haunt me; this is my curse. The pawn on the cizran chessboard never knew my secrets until far too late. Were the cizrans not interfering with my abilities I would have used my edges to slash him to pieces. That I have paid the price for unification is a trifle in the face of the glories Karzar the Lord of Edge will reward me with when he finishes his invasion. The throw-away shuffles his paperwork and sits down across from me in the stark box room they call an inquiry chamber, and I call a prison. He looks at me with unsuppressed enthusiasm, calling himself “Executive Auditor 224.” I know him as well as every other cizran knows each other now that their hive mind is restored. He greets me, laying his papers out in front of him.
“Cipher… Cradle of Life… Cradle of Civilization… Cradle of Filth…”
I… hate him.
***
As Executive Auditor 224 entered the inquiry chamber he did his best to remain incorrigibly pleasant. Even if Zeptir Zuchrinchen didn’t want his assistance, it was his purpose in life to present it. Cizran process dictates a benefactor in the entire ordeal, and process was what made the world work. The auditor flipped the light on and the insectoid creature recoiled on the other side of the desk, hissing and rattling as he slashed at air. Unfazed, EA224 approached his side of the desk, ensuring his paperwork was in order.
“Greetings Zeptir, do you remember me? Executive Auditor 2224.”
“I am not Zeptir. Zeptir is dead. I…. AM… CIPHER!” The insect roared. Over the stretch that EA224 had continuously visited Zeptir he had begun to pity the creature. He was probably the closest thing that the insane creature had to a friend, and certainly the furious insect was one of the closest things to a friend he had. It was sad how the creature’s mental state had continuously decayed into madness. And how rapidly the onset occurred. The doctors were unable to provide any sort of assistance, as whatever he had contracted was beyond the scope of caste-available medicine as they knew it.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Astraelis empowers me this day, feeble pawn of paperwork!”
EA224 wrote that down, before continuing with a gesture, “Let’s talk about the day we captured you the…” he consulted his notes, but before he could speak Zeptir interrupted him, finishing his sentence, “--Great Mergence Event!”
“Yes, yes, that…” the auditor responded, in his notes he found the report filed by the apprehending cizran task force. ...Subject captured skittering through Ja’Regia, babbling and nude while smearing questionable substance upon other dwellers and attempting to build a cocoon in the busy district. When cited subject became combative and was apprehended.
Right… the exhibitionist.
“What can you tell me about this? What were you trying to accomplish?”
“The Great Mergeance event is complete! La’Nibi and I have solved a great problem for your race. How are you adapting to the adjoining of your people?”
EA224 glanced at the psychiatric notes and absently tapped the section on delusions. Were this insanity the insect spouted off true, then it would headline every news station in the Cizran Empire, but ever since Zeptir’s outburst, nothing had changed. Then he looked back to CIPHER and nodded patiently. “This cocoon you created was empty, was this where you were attempting to metamorphosize?”
Cipher hissed and flailed at the mention of the empty cocoon, but EA224 still couldn’t tell if it was because deep down the Cizran-impersonator knew he failed at whatever he was attempting to do, or because he truly believed he succeeded. This question continuously struck a nerve.
“You attacked the wrong me! You stupid shadow! You attacked the WRONG ME!”
EA224 grew a little nervous, he was unsure how much further he could push Cipher before the caretakers would intervene, but he still had more questions, and he still had his most important question.
“Cipher, what can you tell me about this Cradle?”
The creature recoiled as if it were struck with a heavy blow. His insanity bore in full effect. If he did have accomplices, it could be inferred he might have some heavy conditioning present. Especially if he were some sort of deep agent. EA224 wasn’t sure he really believed that, but someone very important wanted it looked into, so it was his duty to oblige.
“Snil… Kazar… Cradle of Life. Astraelis, Gaiyana, Obathera, Killamara and Deimobos are watching!”
The insect began twitching, and the door opened as two spherical golems entered the room to apply a sedative. A third sphere approached EA224, as he gathered his documentation. Turning to the open doorway, he could hear the faux-Cizran screeching behind him
“The Pantheon is assembled! The Pantheon is assembled! The Pantheon...!”
EA224 knew what the presence of the caretakers meant--that his time was up here, and that he would get no further useful information. That was alright, there was always tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. Until whenever whoever up high was convinced there was nothing left useful to glean from the vagrant.
GM
Samarra, Cizra Su-lah
Nostalgia threatened to manifest as tears as she plucked her coffee cup from her desk, a place ineffably imprinted on her heart and on the white slab in the form of a brown ring. Commonplace though it was, the act felt bittersweet, for it was, for her, its final performance. Resolute, she dismissed her memories, for she knew within minutes of her departure even the ring would be gone; expunged by process and bureaucracy. I’ll cry later, she affirmed, then steadied her nerves, exhaled, and inspected her keepsake. While her eyesight lacked the keenness of youth, her mind retained its edge; she did not need to see her mug to know, after countless washings, that it no longer boasted a vibrant red gloss and the embossed skull lingered on as only a vague blotch.
No other trinkets cluttered her workspace. Enclosed by the drab walls of her cubicle were only a white slab, which served as her desk; her console, for the last seventy-eight years her only aperture into the broader universe; a bin, a translucent plastic affair delivered by sanitation drones soon after she arrived for her shift, empty, for she possessed nothing to fill it; and a large binder prepared for the Av’sti.
“Is there anyone you would like to say farewell to?”—apologetically, from behind, the voice of her supervisor penetrated her reverie; a new hire, only twenty-three years employed.
Two prehensile tails elevated JAS-397 until she peered above her cubicle. Artificial lights desaturated the cruelly-ordered environment, glinted harshly off the metal frames, but went unnoticed. Unmoored by personal bonds, her gaze drifted in a perfunctory and futile survey until she lost track of time and place.
“Well?” urged the voice.
It occurred to her, wearily, that she didn’t know anyone. All of her friends were gone, most of them discovered lifeless at their work stations. Experience, fear, and cynicism dispelled her desire to form new friendships. It was too dangerous. Everyone informed for the inquisition. All too often, workers vanished; particularly the gregarious; especially the gossips. Whether they were actually auditors, she wasn’t sure; it might have all been theater—a sick manipulation.
Still, reality stung. In her mind reverberated the emptiness of her career, but landed hallow in her heart, poisoned by the toxicity of her former work environment.
It was simply too dangerous to care.
“No,” she replied, her voice wistful—husky. After a final glance, an effort to engrave the moment onto her core, she lowered herself to her paws and plucked the binder from her slab. Then, as she turned to leave, she caught sight of herself. On the bin’s vaguely reflective surface she saw her face—flat, like a mask with dull black ovals where eyes ought to be and mouthless ever since the zar-Taliļ Incident.
Reflexively, she repulsed the memory. After decades of service, her discretion was absolute. To them, that didn’t matter. They took her voice—her mouth. Life was a luxury she retained only due to the value of her future testimony.
“It is time to go,” her supervisor sympathized.
Androgynous, brief, and porcine, it pointed her down the hall, followed her to an elevator, but declined to accompany her aboard. When the doors opened, a massive kukull confronted her. Despite its stature and course appearance, its aura soothed and a firm, yet gentle, touch managed to calm her nervous spirit. Silently they watched as the numbers on the elevator register went up, far higher than ever before permitted to her or, she speculated, anyone of her caste. Inexplicably, she felt honored. More than that, she felt nervous with expectation and noticed not the surgical collar, suffused from the kukull’s excess substance, as it encircled her neck.
Many hours of corridors, stairways, and doorways paraded by; many creatures, a few she suspected might even be Cizran, caught her attention until, in her frenetic desire to observe and internalize everything, she focused her gaze on another. Finally, she arrived in a room with an exquisite Ganeshan statue, whiter and purer than any of the architecture that surrounded it.
The kukull paused, reduced, temporarily, to a mountain of debris. JAS-397 almost didn’t notice, given the silence of its collapse. Instead, she peered in astonishment at the statue as it undulated and directed itself toward her.
“I am Nirak mul-Siyé,” the statue intoned with words that flowed over JAS-397 as intimately as a loose gown. “You are the auditor who reviewed the Dira var-sha’s admiralty and personal communications at the time of the zar-Taliļ Incident. We have concluded that you will not live long enough to provide useful testimony at the trials related to that incident. As such, you are to be placed in suspended animation until you are needed as a witness. Place your documents on the floor and proceed to cryo-suspension. My kukull will guide you there.”
Stupefied, JAS-397 lifted a paw to her face, but was further amazed to feel beneath her fingertip the thin line of a mouth for the first time in decades.
“You will need that for your testimony,” the Cizran observed, as if the auditor’s mind was completely exposed. JAS-397 believed such well within Nirak’s capabilities, given how her own physiology was altered with little more than a thought.
Green tears coursed in twin rivulets down her flat white face, but she cared little about what any might think of her emotional display. For the first time in decades, the flame of happiness burned in her bosom. Without delay, she eagerly complied with Nirak’s request. The kukull resumed its role as guide. More corridors, streets, and structures blurred to a solid, but mostly unnoticed, phantasmagoria as she was escorted through the halls and boulevards of Samarra. Her first time seeing it, the city was beautiful, replete with architectural marvels and gardens as far as her limited vision allowed. Finally, her sojourn ended, and she entered a chamber full of translucent vessels almost as variegated in size as manifold in number. Within them she beheld the faint outlines of hundreds of different species. All too soon, she occupied her own. The container closed, cold air fogged the interior, something pierced the side of her neck. Then, instead of blissful rest, her worst memory awakened and paralysis abruptly censored her scream.
For her testimony to be fully utilized, they wanted her to remember every detail.
. . .
Beckoned by a callous will, darkness strangled her cry and aroused, through a nebula of unnatural and fitful slumber, memories she, for years, struggled to repel. Garishly visceral and, in a way that utterly unnerved her, more real than real, she relived them in a cruelly awakened existential clarity that her mind was barely equipped to parse. Nightmares that recurred over the decades, they, in this grand finale, were bolstered by knowledge gleaned in her career as an auditor, such that even the smallest detail loomed rife with nuance and pregnant with unsolved intrigue.
JAS-397 was justifiably excited, as work ushered in her second once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a mere decade after her first. When she resumed her audit routine in the aftermath of Silexies’ unauthorized prisoner release, she assumed she was done with excitement forever. Instead, she stood, pale face lit by a magnetically-levitated console. Behind her, her tails nervously twitched and belied her stoicism—even as they indicated to her colleagues the criticality of the work on which she embarked. Her coworkers never learned that this was not merely a routine review nor an ordinary validation of protocol, but, instead, a top secret investigation into potential Cizran malfeasance.
Methodically, she analyzed what she knew or, more accurately, suspected. Interrogation of the former warden’s cronies exposed his plot to obtain a heretical text. Desperate to secure lenience, he invented a co-conspirator in the person of Admiral Nenegin zar-Taliļ. Circumstantial evidence in zar-Taliļ’s unexplained possession and subsequent transfer of the tome to Gereza certainly merited an audit. That was her role—to seek out evidence of conspiracy. Future recall tinged the facts, and she peered down the whirlpool of time to where the Admiral’s actions were judged as negligence that culminated in several lost konul harvests, an overturned Liars assessment that devastated the career of his protégé, and ultimately crescendoed in his ignoble discharge from public service.
Quite the fiasco.
Officially, ‘exceedingly poor judgment’ was the verdict rendered by the Si’ab and Noama for the admiral’s forced retirement. Were it not for an exemplary military record and familial connections, the consequence of his decisions, which remained inexplicable, would have terminated in a quiet sankul banishment. As Cizran war hero, she suspected his preference for that over his public evisceration in the Ja’Regia.
With fastidious dedication, she collated information pertinent to her superiors. While she observed no evidence of criminality, those in power gleaned from it what was convenient. However, she believed bureaucracy always prevailed and fixated her mind on the data feeds. In fixed-width block letters, she observed the feed summaries culminated from extensive log filtration. As she parsed them, information flooded her synapses. More than saw, she felt the emphatically-transcribed contents synchronize with her soul.
Nenegin’s inner mind, exposed in the memory transcripts of his admiralty logs, crystallized within her consciousness. He regretted his desire for personal involvement in the fate of Kilamara’s surreptitious visitors and was concerned for both his legacy and the safety of his away fleet. Especially in the interval where contact between the Dira var-sha and the Zara vi-Pol ceased. Once it resumed, Nenegin and The Liars encouraged Ezkshi to unleash the totality of her vessel’s destructive capabilities on the Aptosites. Cizran High Command disagreed and, in their report, concluded that the fleet should have remained hidden as the Bahá-cizr was sufficient to annihilate the enemy, additional strength mere hubris, and the outcome ultimately disadvantaged the Empire in potential future embroilments.
Nenegin further recognized that while the partial harvest of Kilamara and his response to the Vepsis Dol’s distress signal were perhaps serendipitous, they were inadequate. Still, he reflected, what were the odds that, after decades of mundane idleness, an incursion would occur at the exact moment of his departure; that Aredemos would, through idiocy, inflict genocide on his own race and homeworld; and that he, admiral of the fleet in patrol of that sector, would be absent?
He knew it didn’t matter.
He was not at his post. That is what mattered.
Inevitable as a somnambulist coerced into lockstep with caliginous night terrors of their own design, her consciousness descended into the final data feed. Initially, it imposed mere visual theater—an ante room of the Vepsis Dol. Unadorned, the vault-like entrance to the huge vessel was silent, still, and gray; a dreary environ with few creature comforts, not unlike her sparse work habitat numerous levels beneath the Hall of Records.
Other senses awakened. Her focus on mere appearance became less important. Instead, in diametric opposition to her self-perception, she, for the first time, felt burgeon within herself raw power and undeniable poise. It emanated effortlessly from zar-Taliļ, through the feed, and into her core. Stoic and composed as he seemed externally and unreadable as the false eyes grafted in the apertures of his basalt mask appeared, internally his mind churned in a tangle of distraction and worry. Even the task at hand he pushed aside in favor of an internal dialog, as he was fully confident in the adroitness of his mechanics and aptitude of his honor guard to restore the transport vessel to proper function. As they worked, he pondered the queer events and chaos that stirred inexplicably in his wake. It felt, to him, as though an inexorable fate teased him and tempted him onward to disaster; one impossible to mitigate even were he able to observe its approach.
As if executed by his milieu, two presences suddenly vanished from his awareness. Merely a tinge at the corner of his mind, they nevertheless snapped him back to the present. His guards, gone. Reactively, he queried their biosignatures, but they did not manifest within his techo-empathic compass. Exasperated, he activated ship-wide comms.
“Where are units c-x9 and c-x12?”
“Ambushed, Sir,” quavered, in his mind, the voice of his lieutenant, “We’re trying to contai—aaaah!”
Fully alert, Nenegin shifted his mind-state to the video feed of his away team and synchronized his surveillance augmentation with the ship’s security system. Everywhere, it seemed, bodies and their siphoned screams reverberated off the walls, reduced to mounds of gore. In one chamber, he saw a sanguine mass of sinew, shrouded in a brume of black flecks, as it writhed through the vanes of an air duct and into the ventilation system to affect its egress. Those who yet expressed life were too far gone to merit aid and choked their last words out into a miasma of spores that permeated the passageways in the wake of the thing.
Nenegin detected it through one security camera after another as it slunk and churned its way around the vessel. Eventually, it dripped like raw sewage through an exhaust vent in the ceiling of the medical ward. Below, an arachnid patient in temporary bio-stasis convulsed in helpless tactile horror, its lidless eyes seized in dread preternatural. A quick cross-reference of the manifest confirmed the unfortunate as Ulu’gol, an artisan whose plight brought him to Q’ab and, finally, here. Atop its paralyzed prey, the mass coagulated along the dorsal joint of Ulu’gol’s carapace, leered down, and erupted with maniacal laughter. “Ulu-ulu-ulu-uluuuuuuu—” it cackled as its physique clarified. Intensity mounted, then its being vibrated erratic until suddenly it seized and flopped to the floor beside the stasis pedestal in a viscous puddle.
A moment later, it was back on the move.
“Units, search for survivors and avoid engagement with any threats,” Nenegin ordered.
It took a mere moment to skim the ship’s recent errata and confirm the layout, another to activate the automatic quarantine protocol—which hermetically sealed every zone and inhibited gas and liquid flow—then he was in pursuit. Semi-translucent halls and bulkheads blurred in a kaleidoscopic array of colorful zone indicators embedded in the floors, ignored in favor of the spectral signature he developed ad-hoc to associate with his prey. Ominously quiet, his trek went nearly unimpeded, his only obstructions the bodies of his soldiers and his only distractions their plaintive cries for relief. Moments swelled to minutes, but he eventually cornered the thing in a cargo hold. In retrospect, he felt lured there—its twisted intelligence enjoined, in some ultramundane fashion, to his own ironic fate. Across the chamber idled, unaware of danger, two synths and a kukull—Tob “Boomslang” Ydrian and Eti Naris, he confirmed.
Guards and soldiers were expendable, but at least one of the unaware trio he was required to safeguard for the inquisition. Unless—there was another passenger unaccounted for. A political servant of Plangó Felho'Te-vesztø charged, as indicated by the manifest, with heresy.
Xo’pil, an Azot.
So this is the product of Plango’s crimes against the Well, Nenegin inwardly sneered.
Too late, he understood. It lurched down from the ceiling where it clandestinely clung and latched itself on to his mask. A whirlwind of howls beat against his crystalline exoskull. The psionic pulse with which he countered did little, if anything at all, to dissuade its onslaught. Instead, the thing—Xo’pil, he was certain—scraped and gnawed at his armor while its shrieks filled the gaps in the milliseconds betwixt its physical assault. Nenegin improvised, his chemistry altered, and his exterior slickened with oil that gushed from newly-formed pores. His chitin glowed white-hot, and the oil ignited. This, for the while, was effective. Xo’pil recoiled, gathered itself on the floor away from him, a weave of exposed muscle and storm of spores, then dashed away.
“Get off the ship,” Nenegin instructed the two synths, who gazed on slack-jawed and shocked, “yellow line. Now!” then was back on the hunt.
The aura of its seared flesh he followed easily enough. It teased him deeper into the Vepsis Dol, through propulsion, engineering, and finally into the sankul chamber. With only one way in or out, Nenegin sealed it and himself within.
Eventually, he emerged, victorious but damaged. What transpired in the interval was beyond his ability to frame in words the Av’sti believed and beyond JAS-397’s capacity to observe. It broke her as assuredly as it wounded him. As a precaution, he remained on the Vepsis Dol and sanitized every micro-angstrom of the vessel. He sanitized every molecule of his being. After over a dozen rounds and a hundred sweeps, he remained unsatisfied that the thing was eradicated.
Eventually, his power to make that decision was revoked—an incredulous high command demanded his return to Cizra Su-lahn.
. . .
Station X-b, Gereza
Thoroughly and uneventfully processed by Gereza civility enforcement drones, Kirri was ushered to a transport vessel and shuttled from the penitentiary to Station X-b, a large and dated spaceport in orbit around the prison planet that served as something between a halfway house and a melting pot. There in the hangar, his bonds dissipated in a nanite fog. Most of them, anyway. The civility-enforcement programming to his neuro-pathways remained intact, but would decay over the course of a year. Such was standard rehabilitation protocol, but was further beneficial as with it Kirri could comprehend the languages of the local species.
Around him, the hangar was a churn of chaos, a veritable tent city rife with kiosks, haggling, and raised voices. Occupied by riffraff with nowhere else to go, refugees, ex-cons, and people who were finally free of enslavement and wanted to get as far from Cizra Su-lahn as feasible, it was the perfect place to disappear into or come into power, relatively speaking.
If he played his cards right and fell into the right company, Kirri would be fine.
. . .
La Cantina, Eqiko-4
Boomslang and Eti-Naris perched atop stools in a dive bar on planet in the outer rim of the Su-laria Galaxy while their kukull friend hulked outside. No doubt it was stargazing, as it was its wont. They, meanwhile, enjoyed pints of MILK and quietly discussed future plans.
Mostly scrap metal, the establishment was quite worn, filled with fumes, suspicious characters, and soft voices. The only thing in good shape appeared to be the large wall screen behind the bar that projected a century-old documentary on Cizran Imperialism. They mostly ignored it, although some bits filtered into their consciousness. Extremely nationalistic, the documentary extolled the greatness of the Cizran Empire and its manifold conquests. At the moment, it was on their most recent, the Aptosite’s doomed invasion and subsequent rout. Disclosed was public domain knowledge of the Bahá-cizr’s capabilities and how it, alone, eliminated the threat without the necessity of an active response; how it, so briefly, debilitated the Cradle of Life and reduced to ashes the enemy’s galactic web. Mentioned also were the ruined careers of those who misappropriated Empire resources and reduced an exquisitely perfunctory victory into a gaudy and supercilious overexposure of power.
“Hey, look, we know a celebrity,” Eti opined, a claw pointed at the screen. To a narrative of his poor judgment, it displayed the simultaneous demolition of statues of Admiral Nenegin zar-Talil located in the Cizran Fleet Academy and the shipyards of Zo.
Boomslang rolled his eyes and replied, “Yeah, a bright shining star. You really piled on the misfortune, too.”
Eti nodded wistfully, “Yes, but it got us our freedom and it got me my ship. Free and clear. The news of Ec-shavar’s death didn’t hurt either. I mean, yes, I lost the estate to a greedy comer-up, but would you change anything?”
“You mean go back to being property? Hell no,” Boomslang snorted and, in exclamation, slammed his pint down on the bar.
. . .
. .
.
Tsathoskr and Ua, Plango and Ec-shavar, Nenegin and Silexies, Zeptir and Snil, Aredemos and Kaan—all came and went, egos confident, for a sharp glint in the corridor of time, of their personal dominion over the cosmos, but in the end bureaucracy endured and demonstrated that in the Cizran Empire it was no god's sky.
THE END
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