“Of course you did not.” Proxis cut in. “But now we can use this, I believe, to intercept that black world just as the recall signal redirected this ship.”
“Brilliant!” Gin shouted. “And seemingly un-demonic, Proxis.”
“You are wrong.” Proxis cast a side-glance at Gin. “But I need your help, now. The signal’s code is quite complex.”
“As is mine.” Gin looked off as Proxis sent him the data. “I recognize the style. It is a later Builder variant. And compatible with my own. Proxis, you have created the means for an apocalyptic off switch!”
“Transmit, now.”
“As you command, Ship Master.”
Within the next second, the black world appeared to stop and move backwards on the main screen as the hellship stayed at its current speed, but the black world slowed to obey its new orders to reverse and orbit the Red Giant.
“We have averted apocalypse on Hell, Proxis.” Gin smiled.
“We have done as we must. Now, we continue to Hell and bring our power to join the attack.”
Anguhr pressed on. He had little choice. To stop crushing and cutting through the dark ocean of red eyes and fangs would lead to being instantly overrun by Octuhr’s endless arachnids, even as he unleashed ripples of his inner fire to burn the ones ascending the frighteningly fast giant.
Bahl had watched for mere seconds when his army began to round the sealed volcano to join Anguhr’s attack. He felt dread watching Anguhr, but this time for his safety and not as a potential enemy.
The masses of the vast, arachnid enemy looked as an undulating mouth and fragmented tentacles as they surged forward. Yet Solok’s forces and Anguhr’s sheer strength repulsed the attacks. But the spiders pulsing kept on as their bodies gathered. More arachnids flew in and ran forward to attack.
“They will be overwhelmed!” Bahl yelled.
“Perhaps, but don’t undermine their sacrifice.” Zaria said. “We must also attack! But your battle is not here!”
Bahl turned to shout orders to his forces. He knew that this could be Anguhr’s last battle. His hellship was not—!
Bahl saw a shock of red enter the already crimson hued sky. A smaller, meteoric flare cut the atmosphere, heading near Anguhr. Another force had entered the war.
Anguhr kept fighting as his demons fired so many rounds their black guns began to glow orange at the muzzles. The color spread along the barrels. Anguhr made great use of his mother Azuhr’s sword. But, even large, it was a weapon of personal combat. He missed his axe, a weapon for epic clashes with the likes of Ursuhr, and for cleaving whole armies apart. If only—
Anguhr heard the shriek of Hell’s thin air being compressed and heated as something big entered and cut through the atmosphere. There was a sonic boom. Anguhr watched the plasma sheathed object streak down and strike the surface. Spiders, hawks, and demons rolled through the air in the shockwave. Anguhr stood in the blast and the following reversed surge of sand and spiders ripped backward in the sudden vacuum. Beneath his black helmet, he had never smiled more widely.
It glowed from its friction with the sky and impact. Anguhr ran to grab its searing handle. He tore free his axe and bellowed with joy.
The barks and battle cries of the second horde came down as they entered the atmosphere from space. One war cry was very familiar to Anguhr. He looked at the descending horde eclipsing the hellship now in orbit. He strained to find Uruk.
“Uruk! URUK!” Anguhr roared louder than thunder.
“I am here, Lord.” Uruk said as he flew beside his General. “I have completed my mission. The Ravager’s ship, his horde, and some new warriors are now yours to command. As I am, Destroyer!”
Anguhr could feel his heart pump. It was a sensation he had never noted. He stared at his first Field Master who, in his own way, deep within his burning mind, he had mourned. So long had they been at each other’s side. Now Uruk was here. Alive. And he had turned the battle. Anguhr searched for words to greet his longest serving lieutenant whom he thought lost, and the closest being to a friend he had.
Uruk continued to speak. “We found your axe in orbit of the Iron Work. It was tethered by a field, as if the machine was curious about it or held it at bay. Yet it did not resist our recovery.
“On General Xuxuhr’s ship, I struck an alliance with alien warriors the Ravager held as prisoners and weapon smiths. They now aid the horde and pledge loyalty to you, Destroyer. Proxis sends his compliments and regrets he has not brought the ship into battle, faster. I understand his plight. I, also, would have attacked sooner. Yet the Ravager’s ship also needed repair. We fought to regain control from the same recall signal. Circumstance forced our course around the far side of the Red Giant as we repelled along the Iron Work’s fields to counter the recall and steer as we regained full control.”
“And you did take the ship. My compliments, first Field Master.” Anguhr eased into speech with a breath choked by the stench of burnt spiders and hot dust. “It has been an interesting time while you were away.”
“So, you are not dead!” Solok said as we joined Uruk in hovering near Anguhr’s shoulders.
“You have risen in my place and done well, Solok. Obvious, else our Lord Destroyer would have eaten you.” Uruk said to his former subordinate.
“We have both escaped death. Again. Yet it still seeks us.” Solok pointed his sword at the airborne melee of both hordes fighting the vast cloud of arachnid hawks. “Together we can defy it with greater strength. Today is historic for demonkind.”
“Historic for Hell, too. And me.” Anguhr said feeling pride and the comfortable weight of his axe in his hands. “I am General of two hordes. Thus, I will have two Field Masters. Uruk, command Xuxuhr’s horde and these others you speak of. Command the ship. Nothing changes, expect a faster victory.”
“As you command, Destroyer!” Solok and Uruk said in near-perfect unison, and with sharp smiles and nods to each other. The demon leaders flew toward the battle in Hell’s skies.
A surviving slasher emerged from beneath the bodies of all the arachnids that flew at or charged Anguhr in futility. In defiance or utter ignorance, it charged at Anguhr. His boot flattened it.
“Your greatest battle,” Zaria said as she appeared next to Anguhr.
“I fear not.” Anguhr said looking across the field of arachnid corpses. “So far, this is more a contest of strength and endurance against a writhing mass, not one of tactics.”
“I speak of what is to come.” Zaria replied.
“I doubt your fears of this Octuhr.” Anguhr said. “This is hardly a war between strategic minds. My enemy is not even on the battlefield. And these creatures, they are many but hardly demons. They look to be the misbegotten scion of Shia-Phring.”
“They are that, but her genetics were stolen. Octuhr is their creator. And he is more a mercurial mind than corporeal presence. His undeveloped body still holds his physical mind, his brain. It is his weakness, yet his power to project thoughts and control matter is vast. I fear what may occur if he becomes fully transcendent.”
“Yet, for now, he is like most life and mired in the temporal plane.” Anguhr said. “Then show him to me, though I loathe the role of assassin.”
“You will not be, nor would I.” Zaria made a slight swipe of her sword. “Octuhr will have made defenses. And he will lash out. He is still a frightened child with godly powers.”
“Godly?” Anguhr scoffed. “Then where is this power, other than to vomit spiders over Hell?”
“Can you do that, Anguhr? Make a new horde? Open a breach in Hell’s surface? He has learned to fight by using different powers, but he makes the battlefields. We fight his war.”
“If he has a form I can touch, I can kill him.” Anguhr growled.
“Yes. And end this war. But we must find him. So tell me, if you were a General with only a fragile body, where would you hide?”
“I would not hide, I would retreat. There.” Anguhr pointed up at the sky beyond the clash of demons and hawks where th
e hellship brought by Uruk hovered beyond the atmosphere. “To my ship. My home.”
“And if you had no ship?” Zaria asked.
“I would take one.” Anguhr said. He turned to the battle.
Zaria raised a free hand to entreat Anguhr to stay, but he did not charge to his newly doubled horde. He noticed a mass of slashers reforming on the ground near the edge of the combat cloud where membranous wings, limbs, and exoskeleton parts fell, along with the occasional demon entombed in a ball of arachnid hawks.
“Uruk!” Anguhr called over a distance it seemed impossible to shout across, but for the thunderous voice of the General. “End this travesty! Bring fire from the ship!”
The demons broke from the huge but dwindling cloud of hawks and formed two swirling helixes that penned their enemy in coordinated sheets of rifle fire. Flashes spilt the sky. Several white beams struck down from the ship. They cut through and incinerated the flying venom hawks. The beams angle continued through to Hell’s surface and vaporized the massed slashers with the same salvo.
“Impressive.” Zaria noted as more odors of arachnid grue and ash wafted over them along with blasted sand.
“Effective.” Anguhr said. “Such is the benefit of ship support. But Octuhr has no hellship. Proxis and Uruk have control of those under my command. There are no others.”
“There are no others, in space.” Zaria said.
Inside the Great Widows web, she noted events to her ally and greatest threat.
“Unfortunate. This other ship. This other horde.” The Great Widow mused. Her words lilted across her silk but constricted as tightening strands. “Now Anguhr’s forces look doubled. And then there is still Bahl’s army.”
Octuhr was silent. No vibrations came through the web.
“An interesting turn,” The spider goaded.
“Do not speak to me.” Octuhr’s thoughts rippled with such rage that it compressed into frigid calm. “I am angry. Very angry.”
“Doubtless. The one you considered a thrall, Buran, his legacy is like a sword. One with a double edge. Yet your rage is one way. Always forward. Always wanting to strike. You forget your greatest tactic has been to hide. But now that you have power, all you desire is to indulge your wrath. You need to understand why any leader, even one of Hell’s Generals, might retreat.”
“My power is greater than any General. Hell itself is my weapon.”
“Oh? How so?” The Great Widow asked with genuine curiosity, for Octuhr had surprised her with adapting Buran’s code to manipulate Builder technology. And he reanimated Hell’s genetic foundries. His power grew.
“You will see soon enough, if you do not already know.” Octuhr answered after a pause. “Do recall, I am the Omniurge. In me, all things are possible.”
“Indeed. You are not a trivial actor in history. That, this ancient soul will attest, freely.” A tinge of bitter acceptance colored the spider’s thoughts.
“Soon, I will be the final age of creation. I will control it all. Nothing that comes after me will exist without my consent. Your own fate nears judgment, oldest of all life. A new age will rise. Old things will be fed to my burning heart and vanish.”
“So as you leave, it will be our final goodbye.” The Great Widow felt relief, no matter the threat implied.
“It will. I will say nothing when you are destroyed. I have all I need now. Your web, and even some of our alliance and conversation, has been useful. Now, enjoy darkness. For mother and you, there is no—”
The Great Widow cut the upper strands to the web devoted to channeling Octuhr. They collapsed into a dangling, gauzy and silent mass. She spoke to its empty space.
“I know much of what you know, little monster. Do you think I could build a web linked to minds and not know how to control what flows from mine, or how to plumb those touching its silk? I have taken what I can from you, the self-resurrected General. I need you no more, as well.”
She pressed her body against her web. Octuhr’s mind had tainted its networks when it expanded. Some of his resonance would linger. Most if it had been drawn into the collapsed mass that she could now cut and discard. She set to weave new strands, connected to opposite sides.
The sound of marching and many types of feet crushing exoskeletons echoed behind Zaria and Anguhr. They turned to meet Bahl and a cadre from his forces. A tired looking, spattered Inaht had reunited with Bahl, along with an equally grue-encrusted Aekos. He seemed to be angling to bite Anguhr, or was smiling with his wide, sloping jaws. No one but him knew for certain.
“It seems we can join forces sooner than anticipated.” Bahl said.
“It is the way of battle,” Anguhr replied. “Conditions change. Our objective is the same.”
“Kill Octuhr.” Bahl said.
“Agreed.”
Solok and Uruk descended with a unit of demon lieutenants from each horde.
“There was a time I wished to eat demons.” Aekos said as he looked down at the dual Field Masters that landed beside Anguhr.
Aekos was equal in height to Zaria and the towering Khans and General. Demons were large enough to interact with their Generals without the altitude of ancient skyscrapers. However, their serpentine stares humbled giants. Aekos was silently impressed by all the demonic eyes that looked up at him with confidence of strength and skill.
“We have no idea how well you taste,” Uruk replied. “But if you fight well alongside us, we will forgo the experience. For now.”
“Demon humor!” Aekos exclaimed. “Such a thing exists!”
All eyes looked skyward at a second, burning mass of red flame visible in the day sky as it drew closer to Uruk’s conscripted ship. Proxis had arrived with Anguhr’s first hellship.
“Uruk. Solok.” Anguhr said and the two demons snapped the focus on him. “Locate and destroy the wreckage of Sutuhr’s ship.”
“Lord,” Uruk paused to recall any data he may have glanced on the bridge as he came close to Hell. “If Sutuhr’s wreck existed on Hell, we would have detected it, even dead.”
“It did, Uruk.” Solok said. “The Destroyer drove it to the surface when last we fought at Hell.”
“I can verify that,” Bahl said and raised the mace. “We will tell you the location.”
“Then it had been hidden from ship sensors.” Uruk said. “I saw no image or data of a wrecked hellship. It would be hard to conceal in such open wastelands that cover Hell.”
“Thus, by hiding it, the enemy base is revealed.” Aekos nodded. “That confirms it as our next target.”
“Now we—” Anguhr halted.
He was now closer to the web dimension’s nexus with Hell than since his rebirth. Inside it, the Great Widow spun her body to vibrate her web. Spiders of many millennia ago used a similar act to appear to vanish from predators eyes. The Great Widow did so to generate energy and contact Anguhr, no matter his wishes.
“I hear a voice in my bones!” Anguhr barked. I do not like it!”
“Do Not Shut Me out, Azarak-reborn!” the spider screamed in Anguhr’s mind. “I summoned every ounce of strength to breakthrough your defenses. Listen!”
“Shia-Phring,” Zaria said as she guessed what vexed the General. “Speak through me, and this.”
Zaria worked her fingers together and parted her hands. A web of gold spread between them. A portal formed between the gathered warriors and the Great Widow. She hovered in her web and drew nearer the portal as if to gaze through a window crisscrossed by silk.
“How can you weave enchanted silk?” the spider asked.
“I was trapped in your web. It is energy, as am I.” Zaria answered. “I learned what kind of energy, and thus we see you, old one.”
The others looked at the eight, dark eyes behind strands in the portal. As they moved, each had the instinct to back away or position to attack. The allies remained physically calm. Inwardly, unease crept across their minds. This spider’s massive presence, even when only part of her was visible through Zaria’s portal, was differen
t from the scurrying beasts unleashed by Octuhr. There was purpose in all eight eyes, and a stare from beyond the time of Hell.
“Your prey, the one know as Octuhr, he was taken the shipwreck of the Devotion.”
“Sutuhr’s wreck. We know.” Anguhr snapped, but was glad the spider was no longer in his mind.
“The demon corpses. I wager he seeks to animate them.” Zaria offered. “One last army, the resurrected horde of the second General to destroy all for the last.”
“Dramatic, but not the case.” The Great Widow said. “I can feel what he seeks. It is from me, my webbing intertwined with the ship.”
“But the ship is dead.” Bahl said, and regripped the mace he had taken from Sutuhr’s dead claws.
“So, too, was Octuhr. Or so I thought.” The spider said. “But he survived. Now he needs the ship’s silken nerves to boost his mental resonance. It will act as a transmitter for his mind, perhaps powerful enough to hijack my web.”
“We care not of your fate, Shia-Phring.” Bahl growled.
“Nor, truly, I of yours, mere Khan. But I do care for my greatest creation, and you care to live as you wish, without an omnipotent monster as your god.”
“To make his web, and yours, will grant access across the galaxy, across dimensions.” Zaria said as her eyes widened.
“And with Octuhr’s power and skill, he can use such energies to merge with the systems of the Forge.” The Great Widow added. “He will become its new control and take more power.”
“He seeks not to rule Hell, but to become Hell!” Zaria exclaimed.
“Yes. Uniting with the Forge will make him one with Builder technology.” The Great Widow continued. “He can then reach out and link to Builder machines across the galaxy and beyond that have no sentient operating system, no mind. He will become their mind. Then he can make them weapons, or reshape much of what we know as reality.”
“But the Builders—” Zaria began.
“Where are they child?” The spider cut in. “Where are the makers of this reality? It is we who challenge Octuhr and protect their legacy. They are long vanished. We must act on our own to save creation, to save ourselves, from a power that will crush each of us standing alone.”
Alliance Page 28
