by Vowron Prime
He crushed. He fused. He destroyed.
MC methodically murdered each and every Ultimator in the room, killing them with an efficiency that would make the devil’s blood run cold. By the time the enemy spotted him, they’d already died. Then he was gone, teleporting off to his next target.
When he finally finished, decapitated heads, mangled cybernetics, and an assortment of brain matter covered the asphalt. Red asphalt, soaked in pools of blood.
“Secure the facility! Eradicate the enemy!” MC roared over the X42’s loudspeakers. His battle cry echoed through the silent cavern. Silent on account of his audience’s shock and awe. Shock that any mortal could wreak such devastation in such a short amount of time. Awe that the spectacle they had just witnessed might very well have transcended the bounds of mortal might.
Teleporting through the broken hangar doors, MC reaved and rent as more Ultimators, Dyn drones, and enemy Zevan mages poured through the long tunnel separating Sanctuary from the crater’s floor.
MC met them head-on and, like a revenant of death, left only corpses in his wake. Mages attempted to pelt him with fire, ice, and lightning, but the poor fools only managed to self-destruct. Projected energy dampener deflector bubbles ensured that anyone unfortunate enough to be near them burned or froze instantly.
It didn’t end there. The Legatus’s forces had managed to somehow land hordes of werebeasts into the crater—likely dropped from the Tensa, the oblong gray mass that cast the entire crater in shadow.
Whether it was ten or a thousand, it hardly mattered to MC. He relocated hundreds of abominations en masse deep into the ground, fused to their deaths.
The enemy never stood a chance. The crater was silent once more.
It was a short-lived silence, though, with the Tensa and the chariots that hung above like harbingers of doom.
MC had something to say about that. He hadn’t killed nearly enough. He needed more. A lot more. Death, destruction, blood. His vision began to turn red, as if engorged with the blood of his enemies.
A quick teleport later, he stood atop one of the magically shielded chariot’s smooth hulls, his cybernetic arm re-formed into a vicious blade. They’d upgraded the X42’s arm shroud to accommodate his cyber-organic weapon; shielding around the arm retracted to allow the blade to peek through. He plunged the armblade into the ship’s armor, twisting, drilling, hammering it through.
MC forced the arm to liquify and push deeper. Its heteromorphic nature made it sharper and stronger than any blade he knew. With each strike of the X42’s hydraulically-assisted arm, he cracked the nut. With each strike, he penetrated through microscopic fissures in the chariot’s armor until his arm broke into the cabin below. Expanding the hole, he retracted the arm and dropped two frag grenades down the chute.
He didn’t have to wait long. A satisfying explosion rocked the hovercraft, blending every organic thing inside into a soupy pulp. The derelict plummeted into the lava fields that covered the bottom of Sanctuary’s crater, but MC didn’t linger around to gloat. He’d already teleported up onto the snowcapped crater rim, his suit sinking a foot into the white powder.
Blackness accompanied the red that encroached his vision. Ever since he overdrove the parasite in space, he’d been nursing a headache that felt like an ax to the head. Then he’d gone and used his abilities even more.
He’d soon pay the price, but it was far, far too early to succumb to that blissful land of nothingness. The pain would have to wait until these Dyn were deader than dead.
The parasite agreed.
Mutilated wreckage of the three artillery emplacements burned upon the crater rim, destroyed beyond recognition. The flak cannons by their side fared no better—victims of the hundred Hasta bombers that screamed through the air above, patrolling the area. Noticing MC, they banked hard and assumed a delta formation in preparation for a bombing run.
Their microwave emitters lit up, to which MC answered with his deflector shield, sending the lethal radiation straight back at the fighters. If he’d had more presence of mind, he’d have realized that the fighters were drones—that there was no organic matter aboard to destroy. But MC wasn’t in his best frame of mind at the moment. The only thought that drove him was primal.
Basic. Powerful.
The desire to kill.
When his deflected beam had no effect, he teleported directly onto the lead fighter’s nose.
MC plunged his cybernetic arm-blade into its armor, deploying the X42’s magboots to anchor the suit to the ship’s hull. Their lack of a magic barrier allowed him to systematically relocate the innards of every vessel behind the leader.
At least, that was how it was supposed to go.
After three or four relocations, the ability began to break down. His peripheral vision had gone to hell, and all he saw were tiny cones of light—a shroud encroaching upon his vision, eating it piece by little piece.
His armblade deformed, liquifying into a formless blob.
Darkness overtook him just as the fighter went into a rolling dive. The magboots put up a valiant fight, but ultimately couldn’t hold and he was thrown free.
Dazed, MC vaguely registered that he was falling. He needed to teleport, but he couldn’t. In fact, none of his abilities responded to his foggy mind’s input. The suit could tank some of the impact from the fall, but from this height, plummeting headfirst? His neck would be as good as gone.
Thoughts came to him like oily sludge—slow and amorphous.
The remaining Hastas dove in formation, their weapons ready to end him. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the Tensa mother ship pointed its dozens of ginormous weapons downward, perhaps thinking to vaporize the entire crater and Sanctuary along with it.
“Operator health critical. Administering emergency stimulants,” Al called out.
MC’s vision instantly cleared as the suit injected him with a medley of horrific chemicals. As bad as that shit was, he’d take what he could get. Clarity returned to his thoughts.
What can I do? What can I possibly do?
As he prepared to cast an energy dampener to slow his fall, a primal shriek shook his skull, and just like that, an answer descended from the heavens.
A black-winged form swooped down from above, far outpacing the diving bombers, twisting gracefully as it descended. A beam of crimson magical plasma diced the flying machines like mincemeat.
Then, just barely fifty feet off of the ground, it twisted again as it passed under MC, catching him on its spiky back.
Eiga!
A dozen more shrieks pierced the air.
And he’s brought friends.
MC burst out laughing. “You glorious bastard! Just had to wait for the perfect entrance, didn’t you?”
Eiga responded by unleashing his magic beam once again, disintegrating the remaining fighters in pursuit. A few scrambled to break off, but the vairo-syken’s friends out-accelerated them, grasping them in their claws before hurling them at each other. The masses of metal collided in midair, combusting in a dazzling explosion of blue and yellow.
Man and syken burst through the falling debris, shooting up above the crater. The Hastas that remained stayed well clear of them, perhaps hoping to snipe them from afar.
It didn’t matter; the only target left was that capital ship, its shadow completely covering the area. The five-hundred-yard-long vessel was entirely covered in a formfitting magic barrier, the result of an ungodly number of Zevan mage-slaves working in tandem. Eiga didn’t even attempt to fire his magic beam, instead circling the craft from above.
“Sanctuary, this is Machine One. I’m calling in orbital bombardment on that motherfucker, pronto!”
“Machine One, this is CIC. That is a negative from our end. If that vessel falls on the crater, it will take out a good chunk of the base that we’ve built inside the crater walls.”
“What about Sanctuary itself? Will it hold?” MC asked.
“It should, Executor. Sanctuary is buried deep enough to avo
id damage, even if the Tensa’s weight damages the crater.”
“Then I want everyone evac’d from the crater. Take only the most critical tech that you deem irreplaceable. Do it now!”
“I, ye—”
The operator was cut off by a familiar, synthesized voice.
“Magnus, this is Krar. I had the same reservations as you, so I’ve already begun evacuating the tunnels. We will need another five minutes to get everyone out safely. But there is another problem. Despite your best efforts, Heimdall was damaged in the attack earlier. I believe we may only be able to get one more shot—any more, and we risk losing the satellite.”
“Do it. We can always repair our equipment. Lives are irreplaceable.”
“Understood, Magnus. Can you buy us some time?”
“Doesn’t matter whether I can or can’t, I have to. Machine One, out.”
MC cut the call and shouted above the wind to his dragon. “Eiga, can you get me close to the top of that ship’s hull? I can teleport over, but the shorter the distance the better.”
The X42’s health readout showed more red than yellow on his body’s heatmap. Green was preciously rare. The suit itself had taken a beating in Heimdall’s defense, and he wasn’t much better. Its diagnostics concluded that he had a concussion, ruptured blood vessels, and massive internal bleeding throughout his body, as well as some within his brain. He had no idea how much longer he’d last, but this was the final battle. He could not fall until it was won. And that meant conserving his abilities whenever possible.
Eiga dive-bombed the Tensa, descending vertically. He flared his quad wings right before they collided. MC leaped off.
“Emergency landing protocols initiated,” Al informed. “Deploying landing rockets.”
The suit tanked the impact, flaring its boot-mounted explosives before collapsing to its knees.
“Landing successful. Operator control reestablished.”
MC retrieved the oversized laser from the suit’s back—the one that was still attached from his foray in space—and sprinted, firing the weapon at the bevy of exposed guns that lined the ship, melting everything he could.
He bounded across the gargantuan craft’s hull to the starboard side that housed its array of weapons. The entire ship had already canted fifteen degrees, pointing its energy weapons down towards the mountain. Before he could make it, they fired.
As if in slow-motion, the top of the crater became like jelly. Melting, then vaporizing into nothingness. The shock wave from its explosion hit him like a sucker punch to the gut, nearly knocking the suit over.
He wasn’t going to make it. At least, not at this rate.
The suit’s rockets fired, hurling him through the air right off of the ship. When he’d picked up enough speed, he teleported right above the weapons. Lacking the time to aim the rifle, he stowed the weapon and reshaped his arm into a six-foot-long blade, as thin as he could make it.
Leveraging his existing speed, he teleported again, accelerating himself well past terminal velocity.
“Warning! Warning! Uncontrolled fall detected. Warning! Warning!”
“Shut the fuck up!” he roared as he barreled past the energy weapon like a guillotine, slicing clean through the alien metal. The stress was too much for his arm. It shattered even as its shards liquified. For the second time, he fell to the crater, along with the remains of his arm.
With milliseconds to spare, he projected a half-dozen energy barriers in front of the weapons.
The Tensa fired, and backfired. A massive explosion rocked the side of the capital ship, taking out several guns beside it, but it wasn’t nearly enough to down the impressive hovercraft.
MC’s barriers lit up and instantly winked out, sending him reeling. Another chunk of Sanctuary’s crater exploded, though the damage was about half of the original attack’s.
Barely clinging to his consciousness, MC sighted Eiga and teleported onto the dragon’s back.
“We’re ready!” Krar yelled.
“Fire!” he rasped, coughing up a wad of blood.
The pair flew out from under the massive alien vessel’s shadow right as a superheated rod-from-God skewered the bridge of the floating whale, and penetrated deep into its hull. The gargantuan craft hung in the air for an eternal second.
Yet as surely as death, it faltered, pitching nose down to plummet toward the crater in slow motion.
The unstoppable force met an immovable mountain. The two tousled for a brief instant, though it soon became obvious which would be the victor.
Gouging a mountain-sized chunk out of the crater wall, the dying ship crashed through the rim unimpeded, eventually gouging the ground of an adjacent crater as it broke into three gargantuan sections. There was no explosion—the Resistance’s victory was accompanied only by silence. Shocked silence.
Then the shouts and cheers erupted as the realization hit and his cadre of companions celebrated their success over overwhelming odds. The remaining chariot was nowhere in sight.
By the time Eiga had flown down to the crater’s bottom, hundreds of Zevan and Dyn Resistance had flooded into the crater. They cleared a large space around the fearsome dragon, fists to the sky, hooting and cheering the arrival of their hero.
MC responded with a wave as he stumbled off of Eiga’s saddle. Unfortunately, that was about all he managed, as he finally succumbed to the darkness that could no longer be kept at bay. He fell from Eiga’s back onto the hard ground below.
The cheering hushed.
Magnus Cromwell did not get back up.
Epilogue
MC awoke, coughing and sputtering, his mouth dry. He spit out a handful of coarse sand, then spit again as he tried to rid his mouth of the remaining grains.
Where am I?
It was night, but it was one unlike any other. Beautiful nebulae painted the star-studded sky, interspersed among constellations he could not recognize—impossibly beautiful. Ethereal. Like something out of a painting. Desert dunes rolled to the horizon in every direction, lit by a moon that couldn’t be seen. This was a land of nothingness. Empty, apart from him and a small red puddle that bubbled at the foot of a nearby dune.
With some effort, he propped himself up with his left arm. An organic arm, dressed in a camo T-shirt. That was when he understood this place for what it was. He instantly rolled, springing to his feet, scanning the surroundings for any signs of danger.
There was only one place it could be. The puddle. He half-ran, half-fell down the dune, his sturdy boots sinking into the sand. Like a spring, it boiled, yet entirely unlike water, its contents were thick, crimson, and hot. Blood.
He didn’t have to wait long at all. A geyser erupted from the puddle, but instead of falling back down, it froze itself in place. A column of blood. The indistinct shape began to shift. A protrusion formed, then another.
The top of the column shrunk. Its base thinned and split. Two legs, two arms, and a head. It stood no taller than a child.
MC lacked weapons of any kind, or he’d already have dispatched the abomination. Hell, he wasn’t even wearing armor and his powers didn’t work, either. Of course. Here, he was nothing but a mere mortal. Why the parasite showed him these scenes, he had no idea.
A face finally formed upon the monster. Rivulets of blood dribbled from its open mouth down to its burgundy frame. The fucker was grinning.
The creature had solidified into something that resembled Qephyx flesh tech; constructed of blood, yet solid and firm. Of course, the parasite was a Qephyx invention, so it only made sense that it resembled Krar’s technology.
“You looked less disgusting last time, asshole. At least it didn’t try to hide what you are. And I know what you are, now. I know what you’re trying to do to me.”
The creature simply stared back, its hollow eye sockets unblinking.
“Look. I have no idea how intelligent you are, or if you can even understand me. But I know that you want to survive.”
The parasite’s grin widened
. It reached out a squishy appendage that MC swatted away.
“Listen to me, shitface. If you take over my mind, we both die! Don’t you understand that? That’s it. Game over!”
But the parasite wasn’t listening. Its neck elongated like a giraffe’s. It chomped down on MC’s head, decapitating him. He didn’t even bother to resist; he knew by now that dying here would only make him wake up. And it was likely the case that he’d die no matter how much he struggled, so why prolong the inevitable? The last thing he wanted was to spend a second longer in this bizarre place.
“Well, well, if it isn’t sleeping beauty?” a familiar voice said.
MC’s consciousness had transitioned directly from the dream back to reality. A jarring experience, to say the least.
“Nina? What the hell happened?”
“You overused your ability like a fuckin’ noob, that’s what happened.” His sister’s hazy form came into focus under the blinding fluorescent light.
MC bolted up in his medical bed. “Is Sanctuary all right? What about Nova?”
“Whoa there, tiger. You should take it easy,” Nina said, gently pushing him back down onto his bed.
The medbay?
The room looked a little worse for the wear, but the room had been restored more or less to its former glory, albeit lacking several medical beds.
“Nina… how long have I been out?”
“Two weeks.”
“Fuck! I need to get out there.” He tried to rise, but Nina pushed him back down again.
“Magnus, we’ve survived this long without you. We can make it another few hours just fine. Besides, things aren’t that bad. Well, apart from the hordes of mutated creatures the Legatus keeps throwing at us.”
“Have you made any progress finding Nova?”
“Some,” she replied, pursing her lips. “We did manage to piece together the bodies. Nine of them, to be accurate.”
“Just nine? There should’ve been ten, not accounting for Nova.”
