"Bloody hells, Halvar, what the hell are you trying to do? We need to jump out! Don't you understand? We're skirting oblivion's edge by the skin of our teeth! What do you think you're doing?"
"Val's request."
Those quiet words silenced them all as a frustrated Sten prepped himself for jumping despite the warning. "Alright," he said as all of Jordia was suddenly covered by a shimmering azure field. "Alright. Our ship's worth about 5 million credits. I know the jump captain here. A million credits should buy us a backdoor out of here. Hell, the captain can come with, we'll give him two million! Start life anew rich as a lord. Just try to stall them as long as you can. Buy me time to reach out. How long until they wind it down?"
Elise frowned. "Ten minutes minimum. For a random anomaly especially from a class A source, we have maybe twenty minutes before they need secondary verification."
Their comms crackled once more, the voice clearly feminine despite being tinny and faint. "This is Colonel Alara Elistair of Phoebian Safety Command. Is this the ship declaring an Alpha class Solar distress warning?"
Sten gave a frustrated shake of his head.
"Yes," Halvar said, hesitating not at all. This is 03X1 Mordingi."
An angry pause. "You do know the penalty if you are wasting our time, yes?"
Halvar nodded. "Confiscation of our ship, the ruin of our good name."
"A hell of a lot more than that. Are you sure you want to do this?"
Halvar closed his human eye, shaking his head, Sten cursing in the background. "Yes," he said, firm as any commander. "Keep it up for a good thirty minutes, just to make sure."
"Thirty? Bullshit. Who the hell are you to commandeer our resources for that long? Prime directives be damned, I'll put you in a Valorian mine myself if you're fucking with us."
Halvar glared at the com. "I'll tell you what. When this all blows over, you can question me personally and I can tell you my source. Then you can do whatever the hell you want to, lady, but there are some people you don't want to fuck with, even if you are Safety Command. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Elise blinked at a shouting Halvar, nodding in odd approval.
Sten smirked, his eyes saying all that needed to be said.
"Shields coming on. And you sure as hell are no inquisitor, no matter that you came out of that dreadnought flying a Highlord claimed ship. You better be right, merc, that's all I'm going to say. Phoebe out."
"We're rolling the dice for keeps, this time around." Sten shook his head. "Good thing Val did actually leave so much Elementium. Otherwise there would be no way in hell we could bribe enough people to keep out of those damn mines."
Halvar chuckled ruefully. "Easy come, easy go. If Val does somehow win that duel and get ahold of that jump gate, no stray energies will be scorching our home when he overloads it, at least."
Elise's eyes widened. "That's not how jump gates work, Halvar. Why would you think that?"
Halvar frowned. "Val gave me the heads up. Weirdest thing. He gazed at me so intently and I just knew he planned on overloading it. After the performance of a lifetime he pulled saving our asses back there, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. No matter how illogical his stances, somehow he's always pulling winning hands."
Elise swallowed. "He's no physicist. There is no way..." Her gaze was one of horror. "That commander joked about Valorium mines. Sten, where we were, the only... oh gods. Oh gods, Sten, jump now! Now!"
Sten frowned. "Elise, what are you talking about?"
"Don't panic," Halvar soothed. "We'll get through this, don't you worry."
"No, you don't understand, Val's going to blow up the dreadnought!"
Dead silence.
Gregor burst into sudden laughter. "What are you talking about Elise? That's absurd. Beyond absurd, it's actually impossible! The only way to blow up a dreadnought class ship is piloting it into the sun!" He frowned. "Val isn't that crazy, I mean, he couldn't actually get ahold of the navigation controls somehow..."
"Shields!" Elise screamed.
1
"Val, watch your six, he's spawning behind you!"
Val nodded, tapping his keyboard at a mad pace, quickly refreshing his rapid buffs, his Hammer Guardian raising its shield just as the lich spawning behind him released its Doomclaw attack.
Val froze as the screen flashed a brilliant rainbow of colors, oddly certain he had done this before.
"Val, what the hell?" John cursed as the Lich walloped Val, sending him cartwheeling off his chair, crashing into the bedroom wall.
A flash of excruciating pain and blackness as he drowned in the screams of six thousand souls roaring into him, each and every one of them desperate for one last gasp of life.
Howling in their final moments to claim their killer as themselves.
Val screamed as he found himself drowning in blackness once more.
"Val, watch your six, he's spawning behind you!"
Val nodded, tapping his keyboard at a mad pace, quickly refreshing his rapid buffs, his Hammer Guardian raising its shield just as the lich spawning behind him released its Doomclaw attack.
The screen flashed a rainbow of colors as he took massive damage to stamina and health, spitting blood, refusing even to look at the awful rent spurting gore from his chest as he tapped his primal potion, gasping with relief as his lungs and ribs sewed themselves up once more. It was team play, not solo, and he had two healers buffing his stats and wards as fast as they could tap their boards. Their dps specialist was blasting the massive boss trapped with them in the depths of the crypt with fire magics for all she was worth.
Val frowned even as the dark corridors flashed with crimson magics. The Lich Guardian's health bar was full. Julia wasn't making a dent.
"Oh shit, Val, it's powering up! I'm casting my primal now."
"Don't waste it, or it's pointless!" Val shouted into his headset.
"He's right, Julia," Finn's sigh came through crystal clear, despite being stationed overseas. "You were its slave for over a year, remember? There's no way that damned lich can't read you like a book. He owns you, body and soul."
"Did you have to say it?" Julia sobbed. "Why the hell did you have to say that, Finn? You don't know what he did to me. You don't know!"
"We all know what he did," said John, the fourth member of their band. "It's written all over your character sheet. Freed class one drone slave. You have a permanent minus two to your scholarship, but your psyche potential is fully awakened. You also have the Major Withdrawal disadvantage, and are highly prone to secondary addictions. But on the plus side, psychic and cybernetic classes are now open to you, and you have a base 75 in Psyche. That's pretty good. Right Val?"
Val was speechless, heart hammering, looking, really looking at the monitor that seemed to take up the whole back wall of his room. Graphics so lifelike it was beyond belief, that corridor of chrome, steel, and sourceless pink light looked just as real as his bedroom with its never-made bed, bottles of discarded pills he didn't think he needed any more, or the half-eaten egg sandwich Val was oddly certain had sat there for days.
He could even smell the odd bite to the sterile, recirculated air in the heart of the dreadnought as the screen began to jostle forward, as if captured by a vidcam held in the hands of a panicked reporter or soldier racing down the corridors, and Val could somehow even sense the constant low-pitched hum reverberating through the structure as a whole, the cameraman stopping before a strangely ornate entrance in this spartan vessel, manned by several troopers wearing jet black armor and a jaded looking man in a blue uniform just now staring up from his monitor.
The gaunt looking man smirked, and Val could only guess that his pallor came from the meaty stump of his wrist spraying blood even now.
"Why the hell doesn't he bandage that?" Val heard himself whisper.
The Darklord suddenly looked up, locking gazes with Val. His smile was that of a corpse, a thousand silent screams bubbling out of his soul.
"N
"So many lives," Julia sobbed. "My mind was open and raw, and even when I was sailing in hideous waves of pleasure, I could somehow taste all their minds. My master's sweet caresses sucked me dry, but even so, he was gentle at first, teaching me even as he used me, allowing my Psyche to blossom and grow. And I felt them, Val. So many lives! Young men and women finding love and purpose in their military life, having grown up in the cities of Jordia or Phoebe, all of them taught that their way was right! Harsh, imperfect, but doing far more good than harm. Like, well, like our own military back home." She sobbed a laugh. "Half the world hates our armed forces, Val, even as we try to play peacekeepers for the world."
Val shuddered and tried to look away but couldn't as Estof's (that was his name) smile turned to a rictus, his flesh slowly melting away as the corridor filled with impossibly brilliant light. As if the core of a white-hot sun had suddenly burst to life in the center of that ship.
And Val could hear it as well. The panicked final moments of disbelief and horror felt by six thousand souls, so many more of them innocent than he could possibly have imagined.
And how they screamed, long after death, long after their bodies were flash fried to oblivion, their very souls pulled into a hideous vortex that seemed to cross entire realities, a singularity that would devour even those final echoes of all they had ever been.
Val shrieked with the agony of it, even as his massive monitor blazed with the blinding intensity of a fusion bomb, leaving nothing in its wake.
Only the memory of Val, somehow still alive, every fiber of his being screaming with the agony of six thousand souls pouring into him, all their endless potential now his own.
Congratulations, you have reached level 9!
Hidden questline: Free Jordia unlocked! - You have destroyed your first dreadnought, home to the Jordian High Council and Overlord Tytus himself! Actions that will no doubt send all of Jordia into political turmoil as Highlords and administrators try to consolidate their positions, prevent the southern continent from rebelling, and prepare themselves for whoever will fill that power vacuum! Do you have what it takes to free the entirety of Jordia from Dominion rule? Do you really want to?
And the pain did not stop. It only grew. Each and every soldier on that ship, flickering thoughts of loved ones the last awareness that would ever be their own as they drowned in the dark abyssal seas at the heart of Val's psyche. Feeding off them. Growing stronger. All their hopes and dreams, all their hidden potential, all that they could have been or hoped to be, somehow claimed as Val's own.
Hidden questline: Primal Lord Rising unlocked! - You have destroyed your first dreadnought and brought all your foes low. It's true you harnessed pure matter-energy conversion, the highest form of explosives completely outlawed within Dominion space. But war is an unruly beast, and those who try to tame it with conventions are merely tilting the board in their own favor! Any smart tyrant rewrites history as he sees fit, and in the dark calculus of warfare, victory in battle justifies any means!
The original Highlords cared nothing for convention, oaths formally sworn to being the only treaties that mattered. As you gave no oath, your survival is its own justification! - It is conceivable that one with your unique background and ruthlessness could find a pretext to seize the mantle of power! All you need now is a Dreadnought of your own, and you're well on your way to claiming Jordia for yourself!
Just remember to avoid any Highlord's gaze, Val, lest your poor brain get instantly fried. For we both know how fragile you are without your Shadowmind. Ever the dagger, never the shield.
Have fun trying to seize a world's worth of power!
Even as guilt tore through him, it was nothing compared to the horrific, searing pain. For no soul would go quietly into that final goodnight, each and every one clawing frantically at Val's mind, a primal desperation, to rise awareness above drowning depths and breath deep upon the life-raft of Val's body, claiming his awareness for their own.
How desperately they all fought as if Val rode stormy seas that were drowning men, each and every one struggling just to exist, and how cold and ruthless Val became, icy fury alone ripping through the sobbing faces of so many fragile souls, pleading for one last breath of life.
Please! - so visceral, so lifelike, Val couldn't help but strike them as if they were real sentient beings, and somehow it helped, as if the flash and fury of his Psiblade was their final abjuration, the cold sentence passed, desperate souls unable to face the presence of that blade.
Save for one.
Overlord Tytus himself.
Hidden questline: Child of Oblivion revealed! - For you have become Death, destroyer of worlds! A single starship is but the first step, Avatar of Oblivion! - Seeing how hideously efficient internalized Valorium matter energy-conversions are, what are the consequences, do you think, to unleash one in say... Jordia's very core? One can only imagine how many tons of hyper-pressurized Valorium ore are squeezed to plasma-like consistency in the heart of that planet. How easy it would be with your True Artifice skill to catalyze chain-reactions heretofore unthinkable!
To unleash a shock wave of destruction as brilliant as any supernova, instantly converting Jordia to superheated ash and plasma, unleashing exothermic cascades that will obliterate life on Phoebe as well before causing their sun to destabilize in a hideous cacophony of destruction a billion years earlier than once predicted!
Imagine the inconceivable amount of potential potency unleashed, Val. The destinies of entire civilizations, the fates of entire worlds.
Claimed and quantized by you. And you alone.
Just like a massive black hole, you too will grow in ways hideous and profound, should you choose Oblivion's Path.
Entropy is always waiting for new disciples, dear Val, and we have opened wide the gates of Oblivion.
For you have indeed come home.
Val stumbled back as his final opponent roared, the pair of them on choppy seas no longer, but the sleek and beautiful dreadnought that had been Overlord Tytus's hard-fought and fiercely loved home. So many dreams he had had, fierce dreams of conquest and dominion played out by a brilliant mind able to unlock every moment of glory, every lesson learned in a pristine mental palace of perfection, in some ways so hyper-aware and alert that to compare his intellect to a lesser man was to compare a human to an ape.
And Val had committed such a hideous, unthinkable act of betrayal against every fundament of their people that Tytus had not even the moments to conceive a brilliant means of survival before the hideous energies released sent them all to oblivion.
"You fool." Tytus's cold words froze Val where he stood, the Overlord of nightmare proportions, glaring down upon Val. "You destroyed everything! You thought to save lives?" His mocking laughter cut like a blow. "All of Jordia will suffer for your vile act! Instability will rock both continents." He shook his head. "Even in those final moments, had you averted disaster, I would have made you as rich and potent as any ancient king. I know you could sense my plea, even when you had cleaved Solena in twain! You could have had everything you ever wanted, and now all is ash and ruins, and all you will get for your crime is death!"
With that, the giant roared and charged.
Far more real than any soul ever to have fought against inevitable extinction before.
And in that terrifying moment, Val realized there was a very real possibility Tytus would win.
The giant's eyes blazed with crimson fury as his Psiblade crackled against Val's own.
"I will claim you, worm! I will live through you! I will rise once more and claim this world and Jordia both! We will be one, you and I, and then there will be only me! For even in the depths of despair, I see before me the true path to immortality!"
And their blades hissed as furious flurries turned to cautious exchanges, each testing the other for weakness, and what an edge Tytus's shield turned out to be, Val cursing, his legs weakened by numerous darting thrusts. Not crippled, but his legs were alive once more with a cripple's agony, the flesh remembering being burned so very very well. Val coughed bloody phlegm as Tytus judged his moment, Val's guard too high.
The desperate beeping of critical care equipment sensing cardiac arrest as Tytus's blade at last slipped under Val's guard, neatly piercing his heart.
Unspeakable agony, as Val charged up the blade. A hideous gamble.
Tytus blinked in surprised startlement, eyes widening in crimson horror as he began to topple over.
For Val had taken his head.
Even then the desperate spirit screamed and wailed.
And Val smiled even as he began to die in the world above, knowing every Highlord fought blade and shield. And for all that they might cleave apart lesser men, all of them trained to take on other Highlords as if they held rapiers, useful slaves they then became.
So he let his foe thrust as he charged forward for one final strike.
And Tytus was the last soul for him to claim.
Save one.
Solena, beautiful eyes leaking tears of blood. Naked flesh exquisite perfection, save where he had cleaved her in twain.
"I would have loved you, Val. You could have tamed my darkness," she sobbed. "My last thoughts, before you killed me, were of our family. The children we could have had." She lowered her gaze. "You will never know the woman I could have become, if only you had given me a chance!"
Val forced himself to swallow, knowing he was running out of time.
"I'm sorry, Solena." So much he might have wanted to say, if she were really there, anything but the memory of a beautiful smiling girl laughing so freely, once upon a time, before being found and claimed by Tytus himself, the most hideous of torments forging that girl into the ruthless monster she had become. Some of her acts had been unforgivable. But if she hadn't lost herself to gleeful madness, she would have died like so many other sobbing children too broken to go on.
Ruthlessly exterminated.
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