Eric’s psyche was soon lost in dreams that were the farthest thing from his own.
“No, impossible!”
Greed’s horrified gaze was transfixed upon a sight from his own nightmares. The wild-eyed Sylvan brat who by rights should be writhing in agony with a Bronze-tier pain collar around his neck was somehow hale and whole with eyes crackling with vile insights no native-born on any ascending world should have been permitted access to.
Glaring at the screen as if the fool actually thought he could jump through!
Greed had been so prepared to chortle his ass off when that obnoxious little shit fell right back on his ass. Taunt him with all the glorious Bronze potential that fool had unwittingly sacrificed for his mother’s tainted glory.
Yet the words died on his lips, cigar falling to sputter and his upon one of the many puddles of effluvia pockmarking the restoration vats, when that insane little shit ACTUALLY JUMPED THROUGH!
“No, no... impossible!” Greed jabbed a hysterical finger Aurelia’s way. “You set this up! You goddamned Silver-tier cunt, you set this whole thing up!”
Aurelia paused right before jumping through the gate herself, turning to lock gazes with Greed who suddenly found himself lost in those hideously vast pupils, wider than any black hole, falling endlessly to his own doom. Greed shivered, his too thin robe doing nothing to mitigate the hideous chill not just of his body, but his very soul.
Helpless, transfixed, Greed began to tremble uncontrollably when Aurelia’s lips stretched wide... hideously wide, unnaturally wide, showing rows and rows of wicked sharp teeth… without her absurdly flawless features warping or marring at all. As if geometric proportions meant nothing at all to the winter bitch whose low throaty chuckles caused the regeneration vats behind him to explode, Greed yelping in dismay when his fine silk robe was frozen to ice by the bitter cold spray freezing the skin right off his back.
“You’re in violation of every treaty in the System!” Greed screamed.
To which Aurelia only winked. “Not on this night. For you fools were the one to play a Silver Phoenix and the sins of this night alone will be utterly hidden with Dawn’s first light as success washes away memory of all sin. Isn’t that right, Greed Azmodeus Bane?”
Greed froze with those words, mouth open, yet no words came out as the gloomy corridor was suddenly filled with the panicked shrieks of sirens and the flashing red lights of emergency messages suddenly flooding the command post Greed was now desperate to reach. Yet he stood there, helpless as his seconds and lieutenants belted out panicked reports filling the air.
“Sir! Garrot Fleet reports heavy casualties! They’re unable to port out!”
“Lord Greed! Viper Fleet has been destroyed! No survivors! Repeat, No survivors!”
Those words broke Greed out of his awful daze, realizing that he was just standing there gazing at an empty chamber a world away, with no trace of the winter queen or her monstrous bastard child at all.
He glared at the wild-eyed young lieutenant that had spoken. “Viper Fleet has been what?”
“Destroyed, sir.”
“Impossible!” Greed seethed. “Each and every one of those ships was reinforced with blackened Soul Steel! Stronger than imperial battleship armaments, and we’ve already managed to compromise the entire feet at Halcyon Seven, which set us back over two billion credits! There’s no way they could have...”
His words died off in horror when the trembling young lieutenant pointed the way of the electromana powered monitors that had cost a pretty penny to hook up with countless arcane connections to their home world’s central command nexus, and Greed had always thought the investment worth its weight in soul gems.
Until now.
When every single screen that should have shown the delicious obliteration of his enemy’s most prized jewels instead became a front row seat to absolute devastation as the capital ship of Viper Fleet began to erupt in gouts of plasma.
Greed’s eyes bulged in alarm.
That ship was priceless!
Even if the plasma bursts were contained, he was now down at least five billion credits. Much to his relief, the erupts abruptly stopped. Then his heart stuttered when the entire ship seemed to freeze in a crystal blue matrix before the entire massive dreadnought that was worth an incalculable fortune abruptly exploded.
Greed’s withered hands clenched into impotent, furious fists, recognizing all too well that awful mixture of fire and ice.
“That kid’s sword. His goddamned thrice cursed sword was radiating the same foul magics!” Greed shrieked, before his shriek turned to a horrified groan, heart pounding with growing panic when he saw a stream of brilliant golden light surrounded by a retinal eyeburn of cobalt-blue now tearing completely through the hulls of dozens of his ships, resulting in a chain reaction of white-hot eruptions, frigid implosions, and eye-seering explosions leaving absolutely nothing but the memory of those doomed starships behind. It was destruction so catastrophic and utter, that Greed was frozen with dismay.
“No. That unforgivable bitch... she’s ascending.” Greed gave a despairing howl of laughter. “That madwoman is ascending on the silver phoenix we put in play!”
His lips curled in a snarl, glaring his hate at the screen before him. “Fine, Aurelia! Save your precious jewel of a planetary capital! But that’s only a single fleet, and even if you do have the strength to ascend, the emperor himself won’t let you back in, you stupid bitch!”
He clenched his fist in fury. “So play your twisted games, Aurelia! Fly for the heavens, for all I care! But you’re not getting back any of the other wor—”
His words cut off with a look of horrified dismay when fresh monitors came alive with countless explosions that might have been pretty fireworks…
Or the destruction of hundreds of dreadnoughts that could have taken over an entire sector of the galaxy… well over a dozen fleets.
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Golden fires surrounded by all the bitter cold of the Winter Queen herself told an awful story punctuated with flashes of destruction that brought a suddenly panicked Greed to tears as he raced for the command seat that would give him direct access to all of his surviving admirals.
No matter how much pain forcing such a gestalt would cause him.
“Your Grace, please be...” The goblin’s words cut off when Greed glared at the officers who ran the command center in his absence.
“You Grace, please!”
“Link me to all the fleet commanders. Do it now!”
“It will be done, your grace!”
And Greed couldn’t help but sigh in relief when his interface abruptly linked to Commander Glexus, presently before a particularly lush and fertile Gaia-tier world. The commander, a human mercenary, though thankfully not Terran-born, immediately saluted.
“Your orders, my prince?”
Greed clenched his jaw, forcing the vile words out of his throat. “Change in plans, Glexus. Bring the fleet home to Malice Prime. Do it at once, without delay!”
To the captain’s credit, he showed only the briefest look of surprise before immediately snapping a salute. “It will be done, Your Grace.”
And Greed, as much as he felt like he was swallowing bile, uttering words of such pathetic weakness, couldn’t deny that he felt an unexpected weight off his shoulders with the commander’s instant compliance. “Good. Now I expect you to pass the message along to all those captains still party-linked with you, Glexus. All fleets are to return to...”
Greed’s words died off as his mouth opened wide in horror. “Oh no. YOU!”
Because there he was, smirking like the smarmy blond-haired bastard that he was, eyes blazing with ice and fire as his blade cleaved his poor captain in half.
Greed screamed in wordless fury as he beheld none other than Eric Orcbane, disciple of the ascending Gold chortling so darkly behind him. An abomination that should never have been given System access, let alone be permitted to play in games of ascension as a Contender when he had just stepped through a gate upon a triple-tier warded space-ship and cleaved Greed’s Late Bronze-tier Captain in half like he was nothing!
And truly the fallen merc was nothing at all before the wild-eyed princeling who paid Greed’s furious screams no heed as he calmly turned around and swung his hideous reality-defying sword once more.
A swing that managed to cleave an entire dreadnought in half with a single swing!
The power of a Silver.
That monster had the power of a Silver!
Yet Greed’s howls of outrage turned to a squeak of horror when Eric swung his plasma beam a third time.
A swing that didn’t just cleave a single dreadnought or its captain in half.
No.
That hideous beam of reality-warping plasma covered in ice somehow managed to cleave through an entire armada of 117 hyperion dreadnoughts that would have given the emperor’s own fleet pause. Pause enough for the emperor himself to intervene.
Because that damned boy who should long be dead hadn’t swung his blade with the force of a newly forged Silver.
No. Eric Orcbane had cleaved through reality itself, embracing higher order concepts that tore at Greed’s mind with the might and towering fury of a half-step Gold.
Greed's heart was pounding with a sensation both strange and alien to the dark revels and malicious glee he had embraced for so many delicious decades. What was that sensation again?
Ah yes.
Fear.
That was it.
Fear bordering on mind numbing terror as he caught the sight of countless scores of imperial-equivalent dreadnoughts being torn through as effortlessly as he had once set fire to his favorite slave’s origami collection just to see the look on her face. And how strange it was that his entire command now wore the same expressions of horrified dismay that ancient and long dead slave had once worn. Bitter fruit coming full circle with a tide that now threatened to wash every dark and grand scheme he had spent so many decades orchestrating as if it were no more relevant than strands of spider silk before a hurricane.
But what truly irked Greed, besides the constant bone-deep pain still throbbing endlessly through him, was the look of sheer cowardice he saw in the eyes of every single one of his stooges and underlings. Then he grit his teeth with a snarl, a single furious fist to the face of the nearest admiral covering the monitor behind him in bone, brain, and blood.
For to see his own terror reflected in the eyes of his officers sworn to his eternal service was absolutely unforgivable.
“Cowardice will not be tolerated!” He roared at their looks of horrified dismay, shaking his own blood-spattered fist.
“I... yes, Lord Greed!” Barked command as a whole.
“Good! You all know your orders!” One among them opened his mouth as if to say something before the man beside him, still as a statue, still managed to stomp his fellow’s foot to painful silence.
“Sir! Yes, sir!” they all declared as one.
Greed flashed a bitter smile, covering his own existential dread. “Good! And for those of you fools too DENSE to understand, all armadas are to return to the capital at once! The penalty for insubordination will be court-martial and death! Is that clear?”
“Sir, yes sir!” All cried as one, saluting Greed with half-bows as the screens behind them continued to flash in hideous fireworks as that awful, vile, UNFORGIVABLE blade of plasma and bitter winter tears continued to tear through entire fleets it had NO BUSINESS OR RIGHT to strike.
Greed grit his teeth. “When the emperor hears of this... this absolute... imperial insubordination, he’ll wipe the entire Silver clan off the map, mark my words!” He shrilly declared, and how pathetic it was to see so many goblinoid eyes light up with desperate hope, even as Greed prayed to all that was dark and twisted that it would indeed be so as he spun away from the command center and began racing down corridors he had fervently hoped he’d never have to enter again.
Not when he knew what awaited them at their heart, as busy corridors filled with either panicked or dazed-looking goblins who at least had the decency to wear snappy uniforms was replaced by increasingly ragged-looking collard servants and the dead-eyed lost, whose minds were empty of anything like cogent thought, stumbling around increasingly damp and poorly lit corridors echoing with piercing wails, shrieks, and the stench of death.
The miasma of corrupted power and twisted fate grew to such monstrous pressures so damned quickly that for a half-second Greed feared that even his own mind would be crushed to pulp... before shaking away the awful sensation with a growl and approaching the rust-pitted door from which screams, howls, and endless shrieks that bombarded one’s psyche so violently that it almost felt like a roaring din of actual sound could be both felt and heard .
Ethereal strands so sharp and cloying that Greed could almost feel the desperately clawing fingers reaching for his wrist or neck, spasming in their panic to wrest free of the pain that was theirs for eternity... souls locked in endless agony that served to push back the System and fuel the darkest arts available to the Goblinoid tribes.
That which had, for countless centuries, put them heads and shoulders above all their foes.
Yet even so... even with the distant panicked cries Greed heard not from these corridors but from the command center high above, it was everything Greed could do to slowly make his way through that rusted door that somehow glided effortlessly open without a single squeak of protest, revealing the horror within.