The bunker shook again, dust falling from the reinforced Magical concrete, the runes etched into the surface glowing slightly and the crystals arrayed around the room used to syphon ambient mana to power the defensive enchantments flicker with every impact. Spencer looked over the most complicated set of sigils, glowing stones and floating rune-work, that a single earth-born man has ever created.
His armour, Huge and rune-covered was just as complicated but less delicate and more rugged.
The steampunk looking device set behind the rune-work added to the feeling of a blend of magic and technology with thick crystal cables growing into the input runes of the large glowing molten gold spell construct. Five years have been spent building this device, in secret and burning through an entire world’s worth of resources.
But it was done, or as much as it could be. With the activation of the start-up sequence, the mages pinpointed the secret base instantly. It was now a matter of days before they were able to break through the defensive wards and stop them. But the device didn’t need days, it was ready now.
Spencer's face was covered in scars and glowing runes of power, both marks covered his entire body. Both are a testament to his struggle and the latter, a sacrifice for additional power with the small cost of his very life force. He looked to his left, his last remaining kin, his daughter. The only surviving member after the mage's fantastic genocidal extermination of magic capable earthborn natives.
“The time is right father,” she said in a seriousness that should not be on her young face, she should still be a child and not a soldier fighting in this war.
He sighed and nodded his head.
“We don’t know what will happen if you enter with me, you’re not even born then,” he said while making a few taps on a screen hovering in front of him.
“I am alive then father, in the womb, yes, but alive. Our hypothesis stands at probable that I will just sleep, that the waking mind will wait until the brain develops enough to can hold my conciseness if we make it, I will send a secret message into the aether ”
Another sigh escaped him, and she continued, emotion flashing across her face before vanishing again.
“This is the last hope we have, we wasted so much time squabbling in the dirt and mud, not looking towards the real threat.” It was true, she was always right, how could we be so blind, the enemy had oracles too, and we never tried to question who designed the Nexus needs. They knew who to strike and how hard to ensure their victory from the start.
“Ok, no turning back now,” he said as he shattered the activation crystal starting the process.
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Unbenonsed to his action, at the approximate Lagrange point above the earth, The command ship of the war fleet continued to bombard the small dome of power that could be seen and the bottom of a crater kilometres deep. Every new siege spell forms from the rune-array cannons, disintegrating earth deepening the scar on Gaia, exposing more of the emerald glow of the bunker’s defensive shields
The fleet admiral watched from his flag deck's holo display for any meaningful progress. A junior communications mage officer yell out an alarm as his feed was passed to the main display.
“MAGI, New energy signature reading from the corrupted base. Exponential growth, probably layline tap 90%. No signs of convergence point, no warp or teleportation energy detected, It's just raw mana.
The Admiral of the fleet that had all but decimated the indigenous life on earth looked at his display before murmuring to himself.
“What is it doing, primitives….”
That was all he was able to say before the sensors alarms when off on all the displays and cut feeds to protect the processors and amplifiers.
The voice of the same officers started before being cut off with a silence that froze all the hearts of the members aboard.
“MAGI, Black-Hole detec…….”
...
Observation drones left twice the distance out of the solar system than Pluto was from the sun, witnessed the event horizon of a singularity, the empty void centred on Earth growing faster than the light could travel. It recorded the seconds of struggle as the sun’s gravity fought against the new interloper and fail. Massive chunks of fiery hydrogen sucked into the empty void, helping feed the growth. It recorded the first 3 planets of the binary system being destroyed, then one after another joining the same fate. After the last planet was sucked in, the drone itself started to be pulled, it was able to send its data via deep magic link to the next Scry-Bouie and back to its system of terminus before itself was destroyed.
Luck or something else would have it that the final seconds of data were recorded but unable to send due to its destruction. If it was only a few more light hours out and safe from the singularity many things would have been different.
That data would have raised alarms across the entire Mage empire of Alpha Centauri, the image of a small glowing shear, that was assumed to be the last defensive fortification of the indigenous population of earth. Before an explosion of time particles erased even that. An explosion that signalled the destruction of this local timeline.
Over the next few years, the timeline would degrade in this part of local space and become another part of the void in warp space, being replaced with a more stable timeline.
Space is vast, so much so that not even a thousand years ripped from the timeline would go noticed unless you were looking.
Spencer woke from his meditation and pulled his mind back from memories of the last years, hours and seconds before the end, the events of his vision fading, not quite recalling the last part that was not his own, echo’s of a dead timeline, or a message often received by the oracles.
END OF CHAPTER 4-5 Addition