Millennius understood how the strands were fighting back, producing a resonant frequency vibration pulverising the crystalline skin of the Zater Jen. Their temporal essences leaked out into the vacuum. Yet still more Zater Jen dashed in to battle without hesitation to crush the energy strand.
There was a thundering-like snap as the strand finally broke, the whiplash of the broken energy tie flaying anything in its path, including a Shadow Star, splayed in half. The two black burning pieces of the Godstar drifted apart, the shadow of a God disappearing into infinity. There was no cheer of victory. There was still much to do.
Before the other Shadow Stars could respond, Millennius tracked the other end of the errant strand through time and space back to the Hypermind.
>Where are you, Spheron?< Azure psyed as she led another group in Spheron’s absence.
She and Millennius knew something had happened to him, but they would have to wait to grieve later, after the war, if they survived.
The strand they sought lay curled up in a dimension of black holes, the ancient cosmos dying of entropy. Navigating through the chaotic mire to attack the node was the worst nightmare Azure could have endured. She choked as black holes clawed menacingly at her energy. Several Lore slipped down forever into a cluster of black holes, their ghostly shrieks disappearing forever, haunting Azure. After what seemed like an eternity fighting against singularity tides, they discovered the strand's base, as thick as a small moon, shining in the distance like a fuzzy sunbeam. They readied for their attack.
Sensing their presence the strand tried to snake off, but the Antiqchronal forces latched onto its spiky end. It violently shook and vibrated trying to flit through temporal fields, much like the Lore did to rid themselves of lore viruses. But Azure’s group dug in and valiantly hung on until the end.
Cosmogod and Starmondaus found themselves battling the combined Shadow Stars, avoiding the sucking singularity at its centre, sealing the dreaded maw with immense temporal pockets which looped in on themselves. The super massive black hole was trapped within its own bubble. The forces of Cosmogod began to rip it apart from the outside in, while Starmondaus sought one of the almost invisible strands which led from it.
>Here, my lord< he psyed, pointing out the filmy sinuous strand angling off into another universe.
Without a word, Cosmogod shot toward it not caring about the Shadow Stars behind him. Flying the length of the strand he spied the misty portal at its end. Plunging in, he was pursued by Starmondaus and their army tracing the strand back to the Hypermind.
Spearhead and his Surge-majority group could not resist the pulsar which hosted another Hypermind strand, a further million years in the red-lit future of a dying solar system. The bright beacon of the wrecked star rotated at an impossible speed, protecting the strand, but the Zater Jen and Lore wrestled the stellar beast to a standstill. Exposed, the strand disappeared into a dark light portal of its own making, the Chryrians tracking its psionic traces through a myriad of torrid temporal and jangled dimensional fluxes.
More than twice they almost lost the signal, but psionic nerves held in distant reaches stretching the limits of even disembodied minds. But they sent out beacons like breadcrumbs signalling the Surge, Lore, and Zater Jen who homed in to bolster their Antiqchronal companions.
Spearhead sunk a giant red spiked fist into the strand. >Lead us to Justice< he ordered.
His forces followed him down a portal of unknown destination.
The Time Empress commanded a Zater Jen-loaded force. Her obscene youth, compared to the elders around her, was respected by all of the Antiqchronals. With information on a strand supplied to them by Arcanaut, the Astral time-ported with her group into a temporal cul de sac. Space buckled around them limiting their actions.
>We need room. Find the strand< commanded the Time Empress. She could feel the strand warping space, sending out temporal fluctuations, disguising its location.
But with the combined power of the Antiqchronals, the Zater Jen and Chryrians were able to smooth out the buckled space, psionically and temporally pushing back the folded dimensions before them. Temporal energy spilled out into the universe, cascading over the plain of the alien universe like an undammed flood. Poised outward in all directions, the Lore and Surge were quickly attracted to the energy pulse of the strand which suckled on a nebula of chaotic particles.
They streaked through space, the strand now alerted to their presence. Recoiling, too late, the Time Empress and Antiqchronal units penetrated its portal back to the Hypermind.
Phasia’s assembled forces searched for the strand in a thousand-light-year long nebulous cloud. The star factory hid many hazards not least a cosmic strand which brazenly whipped around in the heavenly mists desperately trying to fight back. Despite losing hundreds in destruction to the savage lashes from the strand, Phasia coordinated her Antiqchronal army into subduing the strand creating a counter-temporal vortex. The Chryrians then psionically attached themselves to the slow-motion strand as it spiralled away at a crawling pace through the cosmos. Phasia followed their psi-signal into the unknown.
Celesophia and Arcanaut directed another group into a thirteen-planet system where the strand carefully threaded the sun and its wandering attendants. The Crystal Queen surveyed the dead worlds without compassion. The strand was sucking the essence out of them all. No life would ever grow here.
>Destroy the system< came her fateful order. There was no time or emotion to waste on these worlds.
Even as they began razing the worlds with precision strikes, the strand broke free, retreating into the vacuum, the Zater Jen commanders following it wherever it went.
Areigna and Geomega’s brigade found their strand strung through a vast field of millions of plant-like beings floating through alternate space sieving for interstellar particles.
>What are those?< the Power of Cosmogod asked.
>Space lilies<
>Hoh, ugly creatures< Areigna commented.
The asteroid-sized sentient beings sheltered for warmth against the cold of the vacuum, flat gray bodies huddled around a dark matter cloud, feeding. But they didn’t just feed for themselves.
>I think they're feeding the strand< Areigna surmised.
>Agree< Geomega psyed back. >I think they worship it as a deity<
>Then they are our enemy!<
Geomega looked toward his sister Zater Jen. >Agreed!<
When a large alien force interrupted their sacred feeding duty to worship their God, the space lilies tried to fight back.
Areigna and Geomega could see the all-but invisible strand, psionically attached to all the space lilies. To un-tether the strand would kill the entire space lily civilisation. But what was genocide in the ultimate fate of the universe?
>Attack!< Areigna gleefully cried.
The force descended upon the space lilies burning the foliage of the stars to death. There were great anguished screams from the defenseless beasts as the strand, their God, abandoned its people in self-preservation. The Zater Jen and their cohorts trailed it, leaving behind a dead space field and a universe devoid of its only life.
Only the Light Guard plied their way unaccompanied. The Glorious Ego Byss led Ax Omen, Adam Finitum, and Geona Zen into attack against as many of the Prime Stars as they could, distracting them from aiding the other forces. They hurled themselves into battle.
God blinked first.
One Prime Star hefted itself away from its siblings sliding into a blazing portal. It disappeared. Another blinked out at the last second, the portal snapping shut before them.
Ego Byss roared in frustration. >Ax Omen, attack Prime Star athwart. Adam Finitum and your temporal brothers, Prime Star zenith. Geona Zen, Prime Star point< he oriented them to their positions.
The Light Guard fanned out trying to herd the remaining three Prime Stars together to give them less maneuverability, Ego Byss holding the centre.
To his left, Ax Omen was an instrument of destruction pounding a Pri
me Star into retreat, crystal fists and psi-energy scything across the Prime Star's surface. Flares glanced off his silver form, more scars forming, crusting over in healing, but Ax Omen continued to push the God into submission.
Above Ego Byss, the blue crystalline Adam Finitum had been joined by three other Adam Finitums—future iterations of himself.
>Adam, news from the future. Veer left. Solar cavity. Exploit< Adam psyed to his younger self.
>Adam, quantum shield and quell the flares. Head for the core< psyed the eldest.
Two Adams complied diving and drilling down into the Prime Star. The God screamed, pierced by cold crystal. Exotic energy waves roiled around the Zater Jen brothers, heat squeezed them, crystal started to melt. But the Adams had a mission to accomplish. Now it was up to the others.
Behind Ego Byss, Geona Zen tackled the first Prime Star. The bright white Zater Jen could see her fellow Light Guards ahead and above her even as she ramped up her speed. She ran along the surface of the Prime Star dodging flailing flares and coronal eruptions. She felt her crystal skin melting. Her eyes gleamed and an energy suffused her. Geona Zen, the Quadrassentia, shifted, her body turning into metal—from Zater Jen to Surge. She sucked up energy for more speed. The Prime Star tried to roll into its portal, but Geona Zen's rotational speed spun the Prime Star away from its escape route. She steered the gyrating God across toward Ax Omen and Adam Finitum who were achieving the same goal.
Ego Byss readied himself. While two Prime Stars had escaped and with one Prime Star refraining from the war, still hanging above the Earth as if in existential contemplation, the other three were under siege. The Light Guard would bring them together and destroy them. Then they would hunt down their strands to the Hypermind.
In one final effort, the Light Guard cajoled and forced the Prime Stars together. Three burning stars were cast together like cosmic cannonballs. They sparked and flared, churning and gouging at each other, grimly held in place by the Light Guard.
Ego Byss thrust himself like a great red laser straight at the Prime Stars' centre. He snapped up his hand-eye. It pulsed and a radiant beam flashed from the eye. Prime Star shuddered under the beam. It reared against the Light Guard, twisting as one sharply, summoning an inner fury, throwing them off, free to move as one body. It charged Ego Byss, catching the Captain of the Light Guard by surprise. Neither wavered.
They collided.
As if the universe had split open, the exploding energy catapulted the Light Guard across the system. They were shattered. When the light died down, when the temporal ripples cleared, neither Ego Byss or the Prime Star could be seen.
Six autonomous groups of Lore, Zater Jen, Chryrians, and Surge chomped, clawed, burned and destroyed as many of the strands as they could. They were freelancers and fire-fighters, reserves, and cannon fodder, but they knew what was at stake and were ready serve the ultimate sacrifice.
Zane and Lord Aeon had arrived just in time, following one of the autonomous groups’ trails into the heart of a red giant where a temporal node was hidden. The core of the star had a seething strand of temporal filament attached to it like a steel fist around a heart. Invisible to anyone but beings like the Zater Jen and Lore, the latter started eating away at the trembling core while the Zater Jen physically un-tethered the chronal attachments. But as the temporal filament broke away, it flailed around through space trying to find another attachment.
Before it could, Aeon flew after it and savagely hacked at it with his sword. A thin filament from the strand wrapped around him trapping his arms to his body. The filament started to fade away taking Aeon down into realms unknown, but the energised Zane and several Zater Jen intervened, grabbing the filament and prising it apart enough so Aeon could slip out.
The two Astrals hung onto the filament, their only path back to the Hypermind. They looked back to the main force beckoning them to trace it back to the source. They faded from existence.
The embattled Lady Elisabeth flew undaunted in its mission. Chryrians and Silverwraiths acting as a crucial forcefield were severely hard-pressed to keep out all the cosmic flak and heat from the temporal and spatial journey they were undertaking. The fortress shook violently in duress. But there would be no let up.
>Force, we need more speed, more power, and weapons< Gordell urged, feeling his psionic teeth chattering.
>No pressure then< Force thought. But he knew exactly what they needed. Before he had been shipped off as an E-Corps leader, J.J. Lundy had been a nifty pilot and engineer. Force did the conversions in his mind adding extra armour and super-charged engines. He thought about bombs, lots of them strapped to the wings, to the underbelly of the fortress, in the bomb bays.
He laughed to himself: So glad aerodynamics aren't necessary, just my little, ordinary human brain!
>Red alert, shields up< he snapped in his best Star Trek voice.
To his surprise a red forcefield encapsulated the plane, the Chryrians and Silverwraiths actually changing colour.
>Outstanding!< he mused.
>Incoming Storm of Stars< Valtare yell out, sounding calmer than he should.
They all cast their minds arrear and sure enough two Prime Stars were bearing down upon the fortress.
>Ready weapons< ordered Force, who banked the fortress into evasive manoeuvres. He mentally flicked a red cover on his throttle, a modern fixture to his vintage craft, revealing a fire button.
Various Chryrians and Silverwraiths manned the guns Force provided, protruding from their aft gun ports, waiting upon his order.
>Fire!<
Psi-bullets snaked and peppered space in a psionic glow slowing down the Prime Stars with psionic flak. But they were also providing a decoy. Sceptre, Urana, Decion, and L’Coyle who with his men and two hundred Chryrians were poised at a makeshift bomb bay door as psi-paratroopers. Valtare coordinated the troops from the crew cabin
One of the Prime Stars absorbed all the psychic hits to shield the other, which raced around its revolving brother’s flank, whipped around by the awesome gravitational forces. The sacrificial Prime Star dragged behind, sucking in surrounding energy to heal itself. But it could not. There was something interfering with its ability to regenerate. It had to carry on fighting regardless and flagged along behind the action. It watched with mute satisfaction as its brother Prime Star gained on the errant Peoples.
Sceptre and his team jumped. From beneath the fortress, a string of pulsating psionic-energy orbs descended quickly executing an upward arcing manoeuvre and sweeping up from below the advancing Prime Star. Decion projected his lancesword ahead of him ready to joust with a God.
The flagging Prime Star began to notice an irritation, an uncomfortable feeling all over. Only when it scanned in the psi-scape did it see the cause.
A group of five thousand Surge had been silently trailing the Lady Elisabeth, dormant, like drones in space. As the psi-flak had hit the shielding Prime Star, the Surge had latched onto it, stealthily leeching its energy before the Prime Star could notice.
Now it was too late.
The Surge fed, absorbing all the energy and then the next phase began. Draining a God of its energy was hard work, so the Surge had to dissipate the energy out into space or overload, but the Prime Star could easily reabsorb the rejected energy. A further outer ring of Surge awaited to re-absorb what the first couldn’t. Then there was a final ring of millions of Lore eating their emitted energy. There was no lull in their determination, no mercy; the Lore and Surge would feed off this Prime Star forever.
The other Prime Star bore down upon the Lady Elisabeth, relentlessly catching up; a race between the speed of thought and the speed of light.
But Force had another surprise.
>Hold onto your lunches, boys and girls!< he psyed eagerly as he pulled back hard on the throttle.
The Lady Elisabeth executed a loop the loop, hurtling in one fell psychic swoop over the pouncing Prime Star. They were now the pursuer.
The Prime Star turned on the spo
t to fight. Force flicked up the trigger guard and fired. A stream of Lore screamed out from his forward cannons punching into the Prime Star.
>Hellfire from the Helstar< grinned Force in the psi-scape. >Take that, God< he gleefully remarked, though mentally making the sign of the cross, just in case.
The Prime Star spun again and began to rupture as more and more Lore descended upon it, smelling the scent of a God’s blood. But the Prime Star’s momentum continued as it slammed into the fortress. The forward hull crumpled.
>Shit!< Force was thrown from his seat.
The Lady Elisabeth lost a wing, rolling out of control, Force desperately clawing his was back to the pilot's seat, simultaneously trying to get his craft to grow another wing.
His passengers tumbled in their various holds and positions, their bodiless forms trying to float among the open areas of the fortress.
The Prime Star smothered itself over the fortress like black cosmic tar; thousands of tendrils penetrating through the walls and ripping backwards leaving sections open to space.
Sceptre and his team had clung on to the Prime Star during the collision imagining their powers in use and striking the Prime Star. They were hurting it, but the Prime Star continued to slink into the fortress.
Gordell led the charge from within, his non-corporealness ignoring the escaping air rushing through the fortress. He lashed out with a hail of psionic energy.
>Aaaarghhh!<
A thick tendril struck him down burying itself deep within his massless self, coiling around the psi-beings inside him. Gordell’s physical body, hidden below in a fortress chamber, convulsed and blood started pouring from his nose. An attendant Chryrian tried to stabilise his body, but the Prime Star dug into Gordell’s mind squeezing the life from it, purging all Chryrians from his mind.
The Destinia Apocalypse (The Starguards - Of Humans, Heroes, and Demigods Book 4) Page 19
