LIX.
Vagari writhed a moment in pain, letting the world sink in. He had escaped, the device worked. Some part of him had doubted it when Tehom had given it to them, but it appeared she was a creature of her word after all. “Where… am I?” Vagari asked more to himself than to anyone present. He groaned and groped around. Rocks, debris, cement. He appeared to be surrounded by rubble, maybe even buried in it. As his vision began to clear, Vagari let out a doggish yelp. A burning red glare bore down upon him. He scrambled backwards in the darkness, ready to die fighting, ready to use what energy he had left to blow the angel and himself back to the hell that spawned them. Vagari raised his hands, the world still a blur of red and shadow, and began uttering a word of power.
Realization came sooner than actualization. It wasn’t an angel, but instead Tehom’s mute A.I. Nabu – because of course it was. Nabu’s red eye scanned him lazily and then changed direction. It was in its large crab-like form, supporting the cavern with its back. They were buried, Vagari realized, surprised the recall device had even worked beneath all the rubble. Vagari crawled to his feet and looked around. They were alone – no Xu, no Tehom, and no BP. “Alright,” He said, trying to be hopeful, “let’s get out of here.” Vagari crept up to the edge of their tomb and pressed his hands to the collapsing cement. “Ready?” he asked Nabu. Nabu said nothing, as per usual. “Skel-Tehk!”
Their cover of rubble began to groan and shift above them as the word of power took effect. With an explosive burst, the captivating roof was thoroughly lifted. Vagari coughed, choking on the dust that quickly flooded in in its place. Nabu lurched forward, pushing debris out of the way with massive claws. Vagari, standing on shaky legs, followed close behind as the arachnoid machine cleared their way onto a tarmac outside. The runway was a mess of craters and spider cracks that gave it the appearance of a mosaic. Judging by the surrounding buildings blocking three sides of it, Vagari was willing to bet it hadn’t seen much use before the apocalypse either.
Vagari followed close to the ancient machine as it made its way to the heart of the strip. The one open side gave them a limited view of the battlefield, just enough to pay witness to the devastation and the end of all things fast approaching. Miles of the algae fields were just gone, and with them most of the angels too. From there he could see small bands of Synbio soldiers still fighting. Though mostly on foot, they and a few of their retrofitted war machines were making vane attempts upon the Tevat as it cast them all in darkness. What little sunlight shone through the thick clouds of war was soon blocked out entirely by the immense ark’s bulk as it lined up above them, drowning the world in its shadow. Vagari stared up, his eyes dispassionate as he waited for the shimmering light of the ship’s doomsday cannon to spark up once more and burn its shadow away.
Vagari clenched his fists as the world tinted red, as the guillotine blade locked into place above his neck. He had escaped the second blast, but now there was nowhere else to go. There would be no escape this time. All he could do was face the falling blade. The world stood still and silent as the catastrophic beam ignited, cutting an arc into the sky. But, despite that that hateful glare had been burning a hole directly into his soul mere moments before, again it missed. Instead, the devastating beam cut a crescent in the sky far above.
When color returned to their bleached reality, all Vagari could do was stare and let loose the breath he felt like he had been holding since they had left the Megacity. The great ark had always sailed where it pleased, unchallenged by all those trapped beneath the shadow of its sails. But now, it had sailed too far off the map – carelessly past the line ‘here there be dragons’. Now, it paid the price. It had stirred something in the deep, something that fell under no shadow. BP had succeeded. “Upon earth there is not her like, who is without fear,” Vagari uttered. “She beholds all high things. She is queen over all the children of pride.”
True to the verse, BP now stood above them all. They, once high things in their own rights, were now only children of pride staring up at true greatness – a greatness that had the very might of GOD trapped between its jaws. The Leviathan’s teeth pierced into the hull as easy as if it were but the tough crust of day-old bread. Vagari watched the sky fill with explosions in quiet amazement as the impossibly large creature bit deep into the Tevat’s midsection, nearly swallowing a third of the three-mile-long ship. Half the eruptions were from the destructive bite, while the other half were in retaliation – the muzzle flares of a hundred semi-truck sized defense turrets firing bursts of superheated flechettes.
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Flakes of burning dead flesh fell away with each bombardment, but only that. The Leviathan’s hide was simply too thick for the massive guns to do any real damage and armored besides with layers of tumorous growth that had swallowed every car, roadway, and building that ever stood in its way. And now, it was trying to swallow the Tevat as well. Branches of probing tentacles reached out from the shackling jaws of the cetacean horror. They spread out like slime mold upon the dread ship’s hull before they began forcing their way in. It was by no means a gentle infiltration, one whose designs the Godhead seemed to be wise to. It became obvious once all the turrets went dark and the Tevat’s massive plasma thrusters ignited. The Godhead was abandoning the futile offense in favor of fleeing the field.
Vagari stood firm against echoing blast waves as jets of electric-blue carved glass snakes into the earth. The force of those engines was showing to be nearly as devastating against life as the Tevat’s main cannon. Not only did they immolate every bit of the bog below them, leaving streaks nearly as long as the ship itself, but they also proved to be far more adept than the cannons at cutting back the armored layers of the Leviathan’s hide.
The Tevat teetered violently in its try for freedom, and with each lash of its tail it gouged out caverns in the mountain of flesh that restrained it. Vagari’s heart skipped a beat watching the defiant ship gain some height, an inch closer to escape, as the titanic creature nearly let go in a gasp of pain. But BP resisted, willing herself past what had to be unimaginable pain to set firm the Leviathan’s jaws and pull the Tevat back down. Seams began bursting all across the Leviathan’s colossal body as the strain of that unrelenting test of strength pushed it beyond its limits. The lacerations were tortured canyons of raw flesh that coursed with rivers of silvered blood.
Vagari stared in horror and cursed through clenched teeth. The knowledge that all he could do now was stand and watch as BP gave everything to her task, maybe even her life, burned more than all those hateful glares set upon him. “No… No – I believe in you,” Vagari reaffirmed in thought, stamping away the fear with a memory. He didn’t rightly know what prompted it in that moment, a memory of Eastend, of them two sitting upon the docks staring out into the unknown. Vagari had told her his favorite poem, one that he took to mean ‘men are only as alive as their will to fight for life’. “’Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…’” Vagari recited, reaching out with his heart and soul so she might hear his words, hear his belief in her against all odds, to the very end, and ever after. “’Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect!’”
Whether she heard him or not, Vagari could only hope, but something did change at the sounding of those words, something ignited within her. That something he could see shining out of the very heart of that colossal thing. It burned as bright as the GOD of Man’s soul ever had, and brighter still than the Being of Light her radiance challenged. It looked to him like the Leviathan had reached up into the void above and swallowed the sun. The splendor of that core throbbed like a heart, growing with every new beat of it. From the sun grew shape and form, splitting like cells in the womb until it was embryotic in all senses. Each new beat advanced it further, growing arms, legs, the makings of a face. Embryotic became fetal, an infant, a baby that grew into a child of the sun.
The child reached up from the core of the Leviathan, reached and grew to attain the stellar heights it longed for. A child, a teen, a woman – all of whom touched Vagari with a painful sense of familiarity. This new being of light looked towards him fondly – that strange sense seemingly shared. She smiled broadly; a mane of solar flares set as tangles around her shoulders. He knew her, somehow… He knew her. The new being of light turned away, leaving that feeling of familiarity warm in his chest. She reached higher, up and out until she reached outside the womb of her mother, growing beyond the Leviathan, now seemingly lifeless, but still holding fast. The child of the sun took over her mother’s charge, wrapping her arms around the massive ship. She rooted herself and with all her strength, pulled it from the sky.
The Godhead wouldn’t relent, wouldn’t give way to defeat. The plasma engines burned hotter than before, hotter than they ever were meant to. Like the Leviathan, they were soon pushed too far. The Tevat’s engines detonated, briefly becoming two nebulitic glares before blooming in nuclear fashion. Vagari shouted her name, shouted, and cried as he leapt forward towards the oncoming devastation. The wave would surely kill him, but he didn’t care, he didn’t think about it even once as he charged across the ruins of that tarmac to save her. All he thought about was that he had to save her, that somehow, he would, that by some impossible means he could.
Nabu, however, didn’t share his confidence. With denying claw, the crab-like construct pulled him from his charge. Vagari kicked and screamed as its shell opened up and Nabu forced him inside. Vagari screamed violence, shouting threats and curses in rapid succession as he tried to escape, but the walls closed too quickly around him. Vagari shouted until his throat was raw, until he couldn’t even whisper, until all he could do was sit in the darkness and cry.