Villain

by Ivan Kal

  In an instant, she grabbed her armor. It enveloped her in barely a second, and a moment later she bent space and appeared next to Doranis. Before she even had the chance to take in her surroundings, he threw a piece of a ship he had just destroyed at her. Anessa slammed into the hull, the Sha state filling her body with power. She managed to kick off the debris and float away from it. A red beam cut toward her, and she raised a shield, blocking it. She felt the mental kickback from the attack, as if someone had just stomped on her brain, but she pushed through it. She gathered her thoughts and threw a mental attack she learned from the Lurker of the Depths. Several dozen mental tendrils stabbed Doranis in the head, and she felt them strike against his defenses.

  As he was distracted by the attack, she pulled out two canisters filled with gas from her back and prepared her antimatter annihilation beams—in the corner of her mind, she noted that they needed to find a proper name for the attack. Doranis recovered just as she was finished, and saw what she was doing. He surged forward, but a ship aided by her suit’s sensors fired at him, preventing him from reaching her, and she unleashed her attack.

  Doranis didn’t raise a shield this time. Instead, he did something that she had never seen before. It looked as if a sphere of black nothingness appeared in his palms and ate up her attacks. A moment later he pointed them at her, and she barely managed to get out of the way. The two beams she had just sent at him exploded out of the two spheres, and cut through the area where she used to be. Without her to take the hits, the beams continued on and smashed into a Sovereign that had been behind her.

  She prepared to attack again, but Doranis disappeared. She blinked, the Sha state thrumming inside of her as she searched for him. She tracked him to a location a couple hundred thousand kilometers away and she bent space. The moment she arrived she saw him standing on top of a ship, his palms pressed against the hull. A moment later, the small piece of hull around where he was touching started changing color and cracking.

  Her imp informed her that it was the flagship of the Erasi, and she realized that Doranis was targeting flagships. She reached for him with telekinesis, but he shrugged it off and bent space again. She sent her senses to the ship, searching for a way to prevent what he had done, but there was no time. The piece of hull he had changed into anti-matter reacted violently and a blinding explosion spread outward, forcing her to raise a shield. The force of it sent her flying back, disorienting her, and by the time she had recovered, Doranis had already destroyed two more ships. He was moving so fast that there wasn’t time for the ships to react and fire on him. She didn’t know how he knew where to strike, but she needed to stop him.

  She tracked him and bent space to his location. As soon as she appeared she saw him standing on another Sovereign in the shadow of a large red moon, a Shara Daim one, and her eyes widened as she realized that it was the Kar Ona. She pushed herself faster and further than she ever had before and slammed into Doranis before he could do whatever he intended—she didn’t think, she just reacted. They punched through the hull of the ship and through several decks before they came to a stop. The decks they passed through vented through the hole they made, and she even saw people flying out of the ship but she couldn’t focus on that. The bulkheads dropped and closed off the damaged sections, leaving them in the void once again. She was holding him by the shoulders, his upper hands wrapped around her wrists while his lower held her shoulders. Power crackled around them as she pushed with all her will on him. Her telekinesis kept him in place, not letting him move at all.

  With her implants she was sending messages to Kane and Vaana, telling them to leave the ship. She knew that they didn’t have a lot of time, and she could feel her hold on the Enlightened slipping.

  “You really don’t want me to destroy this ship,” Doranis sent telepathically. “I wonder why.”

  She didn’t even dare respond to him—with them so close, he might get something from her mind. She pulled her head back and smashed it into Doranis’s. With the Sha state she strengthened her body, increased her strength, and his head slammed into the hull behind him, leaving a dent. It didn’t seem to do anything to harm him. The turrets from her back rose over her shoulders and fired point blank, her telekinesis still keeping him in place. Plasma washed over his body, burning him, and she saw that he was hurting. His eyes narrowed and he screamed in her face, the space around them buckled. They pushed off from the floor, now floating in the void, the walls around them trembling as they both battled for control.

  “You are strong, but not strong enough,” Doranis sent. Then the HUD on her helmet went red, alarms screaming at her. She saw the levels of radiation rise sharply and Doranis smiled at her. Everything around them twisted; the hull seemed to be eating itself and ripping apart at the same moment. She felt burning in her arms and her armor melting. Then Doranis pulled his lower arms back and punched her. Her arms slipped and she let him go, but her telekinesis still kept him there. She pulled the canister filled with gas—firing it inside a ship was idiotic, but she had no choice.

  She didn’t get the chance, however, as everything around Doranis shimmered and the hull started to glow.

  Then there was only light.

  She remembered raising a shield around herself at the last moment, but the next thing she remembered was floating in space. Her mind was sluggish and her head was pounding. She blinked and realized that she no longer wearing a helmet, and in fact the entire front of her armor was filled with holes, the skin inside was charred and twisted. The pain was nearly unimaginable, her face hurt, but the Sha state filled her with power still. She felt her power start to heal the wounds, the nanites in her blood helping, but she was surviving on the Sha state alone.

  She looked around, her eyes searching. There was no sign of the Kar Ona. Her senses spread over her surroundings, looking, but in her heart she knew that she wouldn’t find anything. She caught Doranis in the distance attacking another ship, and she knew her children were dead.

  Cold wrapped itself around her. She saw Doranis, knew that he had decided not to finish her off, that he was destroying the other ships to show her that there was nothing that she could do. But she couldn’t bring herself to care about them. Her children were dead. The Sha state trembled around her, and she felt herself sink deeper into it, felt the power there waiting, along with answers to questions she hadn’t even known to ask. But she didn’t care enough to listen, to see—she cared about one thing only. Her children were dead, and the monster that had killed them was in front of her.

  A moment later she bent space.

  * * *

  Urvu’ri had trouble following the battle between the two monsters on the holo. The sensors could only just keep up with them. But ships were dying, ships that were the flagships of the many fleets of her force. Her command center was filled with chatter, with chaos and confusion, and she was struggling to keep up, to provide guidance to millions of ships.

  Then she nearly fell from her perch as her ship shuddered.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  But the answer never came as the ship was torn to pieces by the power of the Enlightened.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Year 718 of the Empire — Josanti League Territory

  Doranis felt her before she arrived, the Sha trembling all around him. The Sha state put one more in tune with the Sha, the force of creation, the building block of everything. The state allowed a person to manipulate those building blocks, to move the atoms, to change them, to feel everything that they touched. If one had the knowledge of how an effect came into being, inside the Sha state they only needed will in order to make it reality. Creating a singularity was as easy as moving a piece of debris; by exciting atoms, one could create plasma; and by reaching for dark matter, one could shape it into a weapon.

  Doranis had lived for a long time. Inside of his head was the knowledge of a race that had ruled the galaxy alone for longer than all the races in this galaxy had existed. He himself
had done experiments that had uncovered new technologies, had discovered secrets of the laws of the universe.

  He was stronger than these new Sha state users because of that knowledge. He knew how to bend the laws of the universe, knew what was possible, and he had the intelligence and will to accomplish what he wished.

  When Anessa appeared before him, however, there was nothing intelligent in her eyes. She looked terrible, her armor melted off and broken, her front exposed in many places, the skin charred. Her face was exposed as well; half of her cheek was missing, her teeth visible inside the twisting mess. He could tell that she was healing, but something was off. The Sha was screaming at him, and he had never felt anything like it—it was as if the Sha was being drawn to her. The hull he was standing on was twisting, as if the atoms that made it up were trying to reach her. The look in her eyes chilled him, stared into him as if he was the only thing in the existence.

  And then she was in front of him, and he didn’t have the time to react before she punched into his body. His first thought was incredulity at such a stupid attack and the fact that he had allowed it to connect, but then her fist continued to push him back, and he felt the bones of his hardened body crack and turn to fragments that impaled his inner organs.

  Before he knew it, he was flying.

  The pain was blinding. He barely had the presence of mind to heal himself as he drew in his secondary set of arms, cannibalizing the matter to repair the damage. He smashed into the hull of a ship, cratering it around him. His senses screamed at him as space bent near him violently, and the ship was torn apart by a wave that twisted space all around the exit point. His arm shattered as he put it in front of himself reflexively to ward off the attack. He bent space and escaped before the force ripped him apart.

  From a distance away he saw the ship get torn to shreds by the force of space twisting in on itself. Anessa looked around, and then her eyes turned to him.

  Doranis realized the gravity of the situation. Something had happened to her—she had dropped deep into the Sha state, deeper than he had ever been. She didn’t know what she was doing, and she didn’t know how she was doing it. The Sha was simply responding to her will, doing everything for her, and he could tell that she had only one desire now: to kill him.

  He realized that he had to have done something to trigger this. The way she defended that ship… Someone important was on it. A family member, perhaps? It didn’t matter—he needed to end this quickly. He reached around himself for the dark matter that was just barely there, gathering enough to fill his palm. With an effort of will, he unleashed it, and a wave of dark energy flew toward her.

  Then, just as it was about to hit, space twisted around her and the attack was deflected. Doranis’s eyes widened. That was impossible—not even he could’ve deflected that attack. He saw it continue on and strike one of the fleet-killers, and everything that the wave touched crumbled, the effect spreading from the impact point until the entire ship was gone. Something was wrong with her, he knew; she was destroying her own ships.

  A proton beam hit him in the back as one of the ships opened fire, distracting him and giving Anessa a chance to close the distance. He raised a shield around himself just as a wave of amplified light struck him. The light burned his eyes out and he growled inwardly. He bent space getting as far as he could manage. He was at a disadvantage enough by the change in Anessa without having to worry about warships firing at him. He arrived in the orbit of one of the planets, the one that used to be inhabited, now just a spawning point for his Created.

  He healed his eyes just as Anessa arrived after him. He focused, preparing to unleash an attack, when she slammed into him, pushing him backward. He felt heat and realized that they were falling, burning up in the atmosphere. A field of telekinesis wrapped around him, around both of them as they accelerated. He tried to move, but was unable. As they reached the area where the air was denser, he reached for it with his mind. The atmosphere charged and lightning smashed into them, burning him, and her, too.

  They detached from each other, spinning in the air, among the clouds. He charged the particles around them and sent a constant stream of lightning at her. Anessa’s body was charred, smoking, but it didn’t seem like she could feel it. The Sha around her seemed to be almost a part of her. He couldn’t touch any Sha that was near her; it was as if she had claimed it for herself.

  Then, before he could react, the air around him smashed into him, sending him flying down and into the ocean.

  * * *

  Her children were dead, and nothing else mattered. The coldness was a deep freeze now that she felt deep inside her bones. Her body was barely holding, it was dying, she knew that. But understanding filled her—all the secrets of the universe—and she knew that she was not her body. It was not important; she wouldn’t die without it, and she could repair it with a thought. If she were just to reach for it, she knew that she would know how to do all of that, how to craft herself a body the same as what the Enlightened possessed: powerful, nearly impossible to damage and able to heal from nearly anything. But she had no need for it, had no need for that understanding. The only thing she wanted was to kill the Enlightened, and the Sha understood and did not press her. It only provided what her will desired.

  It was so…strange. She had never felt as connected with it as she was now. She could tell that if she wanted, she could get answers to many things that she had been wondering about for a long time, and yet she had no desire to do so. Somehow, she knew that the fact that she was so focused on one thing was the reason why she had achieved this. That, and because she had been injured and near death.

  Doranis stood in front of her, floating among the clouds. She wanted him gone, and the Sha obliged. Air twisted, and a fist of wind smashed into him, sending shockwaves as it broke the sound barrier. Doranis smashed into the surface of the ocean, sending a massive plume of water upward.

  She followed behind him, flying into the water. She didn’t feel the water much; it didn’t hinder her at all, so little that she might as well be in vacuum. Doranis recovered, and she felt him move the water near her, freezing parts of it and sending spikes at her, trying to impale her. But she ripped the Sha from him, and the spikes slid past her and curved back at him. His eyes widened as he moved to the side and evaded.

  She grabbed hold of the water around him and excited it, causing a sphere around him to boil and then turn into plasma. An explosion blew up in all directions, sending the water surging away from the impact point, leaving them in open space filled with evaporated water and gasses.

  Doranis was still whole, a shining shield surrounded him.

  He tried to bend space, to escape, but she didn’t want him to leave. The Sha obliged, and subspace twisted around him, preventing him from teleporting away. The water surged back, violently battering them. She could feel her body failing, and she knew she didn’t have a lot of time. She flew at him, he attacked, and she deflected, redirecting his attacks back at him. But soon, she was getting hit. He was skilled, and was smart. She couldn’t reach him.

  Everything around them was hers to use, yet she couldn’t catch him. He was twisting the Sha around him like the expert that he was, and for every one attack she shot at him he sent a dozen back. She had only one advantage on him: power. It filled her and made her able to do things that she had barely imagined before.

  Anessa hardened her mind. She needed to kill him, to stop the monster that had killed her children. She reached out, searching for power, and deep beneath the crust of the planet she found it. Enough power, enough Sha, to smother even a monster like him.

  She reached for the ground deep beneath them, then pushed on it, and the plate cracked. Doranis had noticed that she had done something, but he didn’t know, not yet. She went after him again.

  When he started sending attacks at her, she abandoned all pretense of defense. The attacks bit into her already failing body, but she managed to reach him. That surprised him, enough that he rea
cted a second too slow. She grabbed hold of him, hugging him tightly even as her telekinesis enveloped them both, and then she pushed them down, deep into the ocean. They gained speed, the water around them shimmering, evaporating from the heat, and the pressure increased as Doranis tried to free himself.

  Then they reached the cracked plate and slammed through it. Doranis shielded himself, and in doing so shielded her as well. He tried to escape, to push her off, but the Sha around him didn’t respond to him. It listened to her, now. They smashed through the mantle and into the outer core. Light and heat assaulted her, but Doranis kept them safe, his struggling turning panicked. She pushed them further. They reached the core, and she felt one of her legs melt as Doranis tried to reduce the radius of his shield. But the rest of her was too close.

  He wasn’t composed anymore—he was a being fighting for survival now, and still he wouldn’t die, not here, even with the pressure of an entire planet coming down on them. So she called to the Sha around them, and it answered. She felt the crust of the planet crack as all the Sha that made it was pulled toward the core. The planet was compressing in on itself, but there was too much of it. Pieces broke off, flew into space, and atmosphere escaped as the gravity shifted widely.

  Doranis was screaming at her, smashing his head at her. His body trembled as he tried to bend space and run away, but she didn’t let him. The core around them was compressing, and she could feel the forces even through the shield. Her body died, but she remained, holding the monster that killed her children trapped. A part of her that was physical was gone, and now only she remained, a single thought blazing through her entire being: to kill the Enlightened.

  And the Sha obeyed.

  The planet imploded, taking the Enlightened with it.