by Martin HC
“The creature is fighting against the separation, it won't let her go,” he answered.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Mother, would built us in groups of three using the very stars themselves. The beautiful and youthful Tira here, was the only one built as a single unit. She was meant to keep the rest of us in check,” he laughed maliciously. “Look at her now, corrupted, if only you'd seen her in the good old days. Did she tell you she was once the strongest of us all, or has she forgotten that too?”
The ground around Tira began to crack and break as the entity hammered for control again, the weapon she sought to destroy dragged her new ally away. With the entity's power weakening, she fell to her knees and yelled out again. The more it was dragged into the machine the less it had to fight with, and what happened next was soothing. With the creature in its weakened position, Tira felt a peace begin to fall over her. Her mind began to clear.
This clarity was like nothing she'd ever felt, or remembered feeling. It felt good as the creature lost its hold, and the pain subsided so she stopped resisting altogether. Snaps of memories from a life she previously lived revealed themselves, non recognisable and too short to piece together.
“Soon your fight will be over, the entity will be mine, and I'll take back all the power they ripped away from me. They thought by locking it away inside the immortal gardens, that they could keep it from me. The fools, it was us who built the gardens, how could they ever keep it from me.” the anger in his tone was palpable.
“What are you doing to her?” Haydn roared. “Who are you?”
“My name is Arterou. Although, God would be a more befitting title in your case,” he spat.
“You are Arterou?” Babaidou called out. “You told me we would be victorious, that the weapon would crush my enemies.”
No one noticed his silent decent down the room. Oddly, he felt little pain in the stump of his blackened and self cauterised wound. His broken and slung arm held his service weapon, which pointed at the man now self declared as Arterou.
He stared at the Ferren commander then laughed deeply.
“I also told ...”
Haydn out of nowhere charged the man he previously knew as Bob, both of them crashed to the floor together, climbing up he swung his fist around and beat him in the face, a second time, then a third, splitting the skin open. Unfazed by the assault and smiling, Arterou laughed and smashed him in the chest, throwing Haydn back several metres to where Jill stood.
Shaking off the strike he stood with Jill helping him to his feet, Babaidou aimed his weapon and fired. The weapon didn't function, the power-cell damaged by Tira's assault ruptured and back fed into the Ferren commander, not killing but adding new burn injuries to his only remaining hand and arm, staggering off to the side he fell into another room through a hole in the floor.
“Well, that was quite the display, mortals, embarrassing,” Arterou told the three remaining persons, or two now, during the short but eventful fight Tira had completely collapsed to the floor. With the entity almost completely gone, peacefully drifting in and out of consciousness. “But, we can't be having more interruptions for what happens next.”
Arterou drew something out from his pocket, small and pen-like, he pointed it at the pair and fired, Haydn put himself in front of Jill and took the full force of the strike. The energy beam burned a hole through his chest, hitting Jill's shoulder. Both were thrown back and crashed against the wall into a heap.
“How does it feel sister, to lose everything you hold dear,” the scorn was rife in his tone while looking down at Tira. “Do you like my little toy, I made it myself.”
Arterou turned and began walking slowly up the steps, avoiding the holes in the floor as he did.
“You brought this upon yourself, I told you, I told all of you not to open the door but you did not listen. That creature came through because of you, and we lost everything, now it will answer to my will,” he said aloud, before continuing on a few more steps up. “It's not a creature from our plane of existence, it can't survive outside of living physical matter and only an immortal can contain it. So when I have it, it will need me as much as I will use it.”
As he finished, he stopped moving and the room lit up with a new power. Looking back down to the three defeated individuals, Arterou stretched out his arms, the device absorbing the entity's energy, began to feed it into the immortal man.
The creature tried to resist and fight the change but couldn't, Tira done nothing to pull it back, and its energy manipulated by the trap Arterou built, was forced to enter into the man's control or cease existing altogether.
Jill struggled to sit and held her lover in her arms, the beam done more than hurt, it had drained her strength. She looked to Haydn, who's eyes blinked slowly closed as his head rolled into her chest, she put a finger over his neck and felt his weakening pulse. The ex mercenary didn't know what to do. Arterou couldn't be killed, he'd already walked off two separate fatal assaults from her. There were worse ways to die at least she thought, holding her love till the end was something she thought she could never achieve.
Uncertainty in the Face of Victory
“What is going on with that ship?”
“They deployed some sort of energy shield after the Ophelia's core went critical and destroyed the cartel fleet. We still have no idea what that weapon was, but the friendlies appear to be disabled and drifting, ma'am.”
“Where the hell did the Ferrens get this type of technology.”
After recognising the new threat, their battle had become very interesting. Several battlegroups were forced to detach from their main areas of conflict and engage the flagship, two more of her ships taking heavy damage as a result, but it was necessary.
The Ferrens were still heavily outmatched, given that most were disabled or destroyed. They were just counting down the kills until total victory, to have lost so few ships while completely wiping out an enemy fleet would be monumental.
She watched as the battlegroups encircled and began to hammer into Babaidou's vessel, which had not since the first time used that powerful weapon. Nuke after nuke hit the shield, pulse cannons were pushed to the point of overloading but still it didn't fall. Another of her ships broke from the battle, circling around to the rear no longer able to fight effectively.
A new thought struck her, if they can't take down that shield then it won't matter how many of their ships she destroys, that remaining flagship will just pick them off one by one.
Although she was certain it wouldn't come to that, the remaining battlegroups were finishing up now. With their fire-power to augment what was already being poured into the enemy's shield, it would collapse eventually, she dared to think.
“Try and get them on comms again.”
“Comms is sending a repeated channel request, and they're not answering. It's possible they may not be able to, that weapon could have vaporised the internals of their ship for all we know.”
“Keep on it all the same, if they're still alive they may need us.”
“Yes ma'am,” she was answered.
Y'Riell watch the remaining enemy ships being picked off one by one, still even now they endured till the end, never surrendering, never running. All part in parcel of their magnanimous system of honour, for if they did surrender it would be the families that suffered. Dumped to the dirt and stripped of everything, the children would be torn away and sold into slavery. Not just those closest, but those of brothers and sisters too, anyone executed if they resisted.
For the Ferren, it was always better to die fighting than to surrender, honour demanded it.
Memories and Dreams
The fogginess of her dream was clearing a little more now but was disconcerting all the same.
Having never properly slept, the process of dreaming was a new experience. She opened her eyes to incredible sights, citadels housing stars in awe-inspiring nebulae, mountainous landscapes of beauty surrounding cities of immense scale. T
he images closed in and dissipated again always just out of reach from her touch, until she found herself sitting on a chair.
Creatures of differing types and shapes communicated with one another in a grand hall, and it shined with brilliance. At the head of the hall she sat, to her right was Arterou, to her left was another male who's face she could not see. Above and behind them all sat a woman of grace and stunning beauty. Upon looking at her, a faint hint of recognition and more flashes of memory came to the front of her drifting thoughts. The woman sat atop a powerful and unmatched human empire, an alliance of alien races bowed to their combined magnificence and peace reigned overall, she understood now, this dream was all a memory.
Her memory twisted upon the realisation, looking back to Arterou, his figure turned to fire, his eyes lit up and then she began to panic, tried to get up and move away but couldn't. The aliens within the giant hall and those around her, rose together in a deafening roar of celebration and like Arterou, turned to fire.
After watching everyone and everything within crumble away, the walls of the hall began to melt, the building she was in fell apart and the chair she sat on also began to burn. Observing the flames licking around her body was a strange sensation giving her no pain.
A cold feeling washed over her and she found she could get up again, Tira moved as if time itself had slowed. She walked slowly to a balcony outside where the woman stood, following her gaze she looked out into a city and to her horror it lit up in a rage of infernal light. The entire planet she stood on was like the city, burning in the light of an unnatural star to close to be any system sun, and above the fiery supernova was one single person, his face awash with rage and terror while he cast his fire onto the planet, Arterou.
She looked again to the woman who stared back at her with tears falling down her face, Tira knew somehow it was not just for the planet that burned, but also for the fallen angel standing on top of the terrifying devastation.
Arterou reached out his hands towards her, and began to draw the very life from her body. She could see her life-force, infused with glowing blues, being syphoned out and into his own being.
The woman spoke slowly, quietly like a whisper into the wind her words came out, but in her mind they boomed.
“Stand against the corrupted star, remember who you are,” blinding out her vision in white light the woman lit up like sunlight erupting to life, then faded again to show her another scene.
A monolithic structure sat in space between three orbiting stars, shaped like a giant oval ring and larger than the biggest star itself, but flat. The inside of the oval ring shifted and rippled like thick silvery water, it reflected the image of the smallest white star back out and warped the light of the other two from the other side. As she watched, the liquid became a torrent, a vortex of chaos hammered around and around as lightning battered across its structure. Just as she thought it would tear itself apart, it all stopped, becoming still like a mountain on a windless night.
The silvery opaque liquid vibrated as the woman's voice punched through it, causing it to ripple outwards in tune with her words, “return to me, return to our gardens,” the words spoke clear in her mind, the image began to fade now.
“How do I find you?” Tira's mind whispered back.
“Find the signal source,” came the answer, the massive structure in space housing the small neutron star flashed into her vision and left again. “Now get up, Taa'li,” was the final whisper of her words, leaving Tira in darkness.
A faint haze of smoke filled her nostrils, the smell of tainted air and burning materials registered in her senses, her eyes hurt as she blinked them open. The last of the entity's strength clutched at her being in an almost final act of defiance, refusing to be dragged into the artificial machine and funnelled into Arterou.
Shaking away the grogginess of the dream she reached out to it again, and grabbed the creature with her mind. Sharing what little of her strength was left, and against the torturous pain she felt across her entire body, the girl forced herself to her knees. Her vision cleared, and she saw Arterou standing halfway up the steps. Absorbing the energy of her entity, he bathed in its light and revelled in the newly felt power. Then looking to the side, horror tore down on Tira.
Haydn lay in Jill's arms, the woman had a single tear running down her face as she stared into the face of her motionless love, cradling his head like a baby's. Jill looked up seeing the girl's movements and for a second she stopped moving altogether, her defeated eyes level with Tira's own.
Jill's look became intense, she shifted her own weight into a position more befitting her warrior self and shouted to Tira. Above the rage of the energetic background, Tira heard all she needed to, “He's not dead yet.”
Anger spiked in Tira's mind, who was this man that would manipulate her, that would steal her strength. Who was this fool that would conspire with her enemies, who would kill those whom she loved most. Who was this optimist, who figured he could do or take what he wanted, without a single wound to show for his efforts.
Her expression became as black as midnight on a moonless night, and her chest heaved as he began to shake with rage. Reaching down Tira grabbed hard at the entity's remaining energy, and hauled at it, dragging it back in towards her.
Arterou feeling the shift in balance looked down on her. “You can't fight it, surrender the creature, and let it leave your body, sister.”
“You think the it will leave me for you, it's fighting you as much as I am.” She growled at him.
“Enough of this, stop resisting, do not force me to destroy you completely,” he shouted back while lifting an open hand to her, and feeling the newly taken energy fill it with power.
“You will never control it, the beast answers to no one, and it's power would burn your mind up.” she answered him.
Dragging more of the entity back into herself, her eyes burned to life again as blue starlight pulsed ever stronger in behind them.
“You should not have hurt my friends,” she raged out at the man, as the blue energy snaked its way back through her skin.
“Your friends... we're gods to them, we are infinite, they mean nothing. You're leaving me no choice sister. If you're going to fight me, then I'll have to destroy you,” snapped out the desperate man. Arterou released the built up energy from his open palm, and watched it crash through her.
She stood, feeling the familiar energy of the creature filling her body again. Like an old soulmate reunited they came back together, and she didn't let it go. Gripping its power, Tira began tearing it back out of him. No machine was needed, and it did not dare hurt her now.
Arterou fought the bond between them, unable to break it off he could feel his newly gained power flooding back out of him. So reaching into a pocket he drew the laser weapon and pointed it at the girl, then his world blackened as the floor came up to smash his face. Jill's dagger caught him squarely in the side of the head, she'd moved painfully, but silently to his flank in the commotion.
Dragging himself to his feet again, he reached up and tore the dagger from his skull. The weapon in his hand levelled on Jill, bolts of energy then flew from the corner and smashed into him, those that hit punched through his guts and sent him back to the ground. Jill looked at the source and seen Haydn, his eyes open, and the pistol in his hand.
Tira used this current weakness to her own advantage. Drawing more power back into herself, she built its energy, and together with a great release of strength forced down through the decks of the ship until she found the machine, and destroyed it.
The weapon, shield generator and her allies prison blew together, rupturing the flagship to space in the decks far below them. The heave of the floor was felt everywhere as metal tore, screeching and breaking, twisting and bending. The massive holo projector on the ceiling fell and crashed onto the deck, narrowly missing Arterou.
In rage at the defeat, he raised himself again this time to his knees, the burned and gaping hole in his chest smoked away.
“No,” he screamed, directing his anger to Tira. He shouted at her with a face twisted in wrath, and spit flew from his mouth. “I need that power, you do not need to fight me, you do not need to live as a slave to these mortals, we can be gods.”
The sound of crashing and grinding metal continued to fill the air. The structure shook around them once more throwing Arterou onto the steps, and a deafening almighty boom followed.
“The Mergence, they're tearing this thing apart,” Jill shouted down to Tira.
“You'll all pay for this,” Arterou decreed, climbing to his knees while raising his laser weapon one last time, and it was the last time he raised it. A distinct and already known zip of noise filled the air, by the time he'd turned, it was too late. Two winged mini bugs hit him, the first his shoulder, and the second his spine just below the neck.
He looked at Jill, dismay and fear setting about his face as a nasty smile spread across hers.
