The giant orb of the remaining ship was now in orbit around the planet, slowly circling as Asuta’s weapons continued pounding it. It was still steadily shrinking in size, but not as fast as Asuta would like. Most of her weapons platforms scattered throughout the solar system had been forced to shut down briefly. They weren’t meant for sustained barrages this long. They all were overheating, and those that fired physical projectiles like missiles or slugs of metal had run out of ammunition long ago.

But the laser weapons were more durable, so while they had to take breaks for a few hours occasionally to bleed off their excess heat they were still able to keep firing after their short break to keep laying damage on the enemy vessel.

Now it was Asuta’s planet based defenses that were firing upwards out of the gravity well to pound the enemy ship mostly. It had been thirty minutes of the barrage, and Asuta noted that the holes and wounds in the massive creature were sealing a little slower as time passed. Maybe they were wearing it down fast enough? Asuta wasn’t sure, she’d never fought a fleet of Endless Flesh single handedly like this before, especially one as powerful as this one appeared to be.

Emily was gone, off to the facility where Asuta had parked the planet destroying ship, to fix it up… Asuta should increase the attack, she didn’t want Emily to put herself at risk…

Asuta looked down at the datapad in shock as suddenly hundreds of small fragments started launching from the pitted surface of the shrinking enemy ship.

The fleshy orb kept orbiting around the planet and releasing more and more of its payloads that were streaking down to leave fiery orange streaks behind them as they plunged down through the atmosphere.

Asuta hesitated, but then with a groan told the defenses to prioritize the falling objects set to land around the perimeter of her automated defense cities containing all of her weapons and launch platforms that were laying into the enemy ship even now.

The back and forth continued for a few hours, the Endless Flesh vessel releasing a constant rain of drop pods onto the planet and Asuta’s defenses shooting down over ninety five percent of them before they even touched the ground. But its attacks were endless, and some still slipped through and reached the ground.

Asuta’s mortars and ground defenses from the nearby defensive cities destroyed another eighty percent of the pods that touched down before they could deploy.

But that remaining twenty percent managed to split open and spill out hundreds of vaguely humanoid figures on the scanners that scattered in all directions into the forest before Asuta could destroy them.

But the larger ship was shrinking, and while hundreds of thousands of the creatures had landed on the planet already, they were scattered and Asuta’s formidable defenses should be able to handle them.

Suddenly, just when their victory seemed inevitable and the large spherical ship of flesh looked like an apple with dozens of bites taken out of it, something changed. The large ship had stopped healing itself an hour ago, but even with that it was taking some time to carve inwards and reach the central chamber where the immortals inside were providing the ship with its energy and fuel.

With a sudden explosion, half of the damaged Endless Flesh ship exploded and rapidly accelerated it back towards the edge of the solar system and away from the planet. The section of the ship flying away folded over itself and shrank so it represented only a fifth of the size of the ship it had split from. But it was rapidly healing itself again even as Asuta’s energy based weapons platforms continued to pound it with weapons fire from around the solar system.

The other three quarters of its mass were pushed down towards the planet. Asuta rapidly tapped all over the datapad and brought up and dismissed various holographic screens as she calculated the firing paths to shoot them down as they spread across the planet and began atmospheric entry. Each of these pieces of the ship were hundreds of meters in diameter as they moved to crash into isolated zones all over the planet.

Asuta had a sinking feeling in her chest as she realized what this must be. It took another three minutes before her fear was confirmed. With concentrated fire from her defenses, the first of the multitude of ships was destroyed. It took a few minutes for her powerful sensors to be able to see what was happening within the cloud of fleshy debris. There was a single humanoid figure in the center thrashing as the rest of the chunks of flesh began to drift inwards to attack even as they all fell to the ground as the fires of atmospheric entry died down around them.

The Endless Flesh had just launched an ground occupation force, with Immortals sent with them as their fuel. Maybe even hundreds of them. Asuta had to shoot as many of the ships down before they hit the ground. Every one that landed and entrenched itself would become a source of monstrous forms attacking her and her defensive cities in a wave of Endless flesh.

Her defenses were excellent, but not perfect. Something would break down, one of the city shields would fail after constant assault… This just got a whole lot more dangerous.

She glanced at the minimized window on the corner of the panel and brought it up. She grit her teeth and saw the ship that had left orbit of the planet was slowly healing itself and growing in size again now that only her laser weapons were attacking it. All it would have to do was recover for a bit and then it would be back…

Asuta turned back to her sensors and kept frantically working, blowing little strands of hair out of her vision as they fell over her eyes as she started sweating slightly from the stress. She had to stop as many of those pods from hitting the ground as possible…

— — —

Entiru woke as his eternal prison shuddered around him. He, like his many brothers and sisters, had long ago learned that they could willingly put themselves to sleep and let the ages pass around them. The groupings of them shifted, their positions within the eternal prison shifting according to the needs of the great beast whose belly they were contained within. For the first unknown amount of time they had all entertained themselves with conversation. But then it had been so long that every new thing had been said. Every thought spoken. In the darkness there was nothing new to discuss.

For the next age, many of them fell to madness, only for their immortal brains to heal themselves once they’d plunged over the edge. Leaving them as emotionless husks for a time before they recovered themselves once again and the cycle repeated. Then after an even longer time, there was nothing but silence from those within the prison. Nothing but the sounds of insectile blades sliding into flesh, the squishy plop of organs falling onto the ground, the scuttling of the beasts around them, and the wet squelches of the fleshy walls around them all.

The sounds that were so routine to all within the endless prison that they hardly even counted as anything but silence in their ears at all.

But after the time of the silence, the first of them had finally learned. Many had attempted to sleep before, but it only worked for a time as sleep tended to be. But one of them finally figured out the trick. A cross between deep meditation and a light slumber let them remain there with nothing passing through their heads at all. To simply exist and let the time pass faster and faster around them as their empty minds perceived nothing around them.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

But Entiru was awake. Something had broken his meditation. He could hear from the sounds around the chamber that he was alone, none of the other immortals in this same chamber with him. The chamber shook again and Entiru straightened within his gelatinous prison. This was… something new. What could it be?

The rumbles and vibrations grew larger and larger as Entiru’s mind slowly came back to itself, emerging from his endless meditation as if waking from an endless dream. Everything was still pitch black around him as he remained within the prison.

Then suddenly Entiru gasped as the fleshy walls around him split open as one final violent vibration echoed through the great beast around him. Or not so great a beast as a massive wave of flame washed over Entiru and dissolved him into ashes along with his surroundings.

When Entiru regenerated himself, he opened his eyes with his mind now crystal clear, the cobwebs and fuzziness of his mind wiped away in an instant.

The first thing Entiru noticed was the light. His eyes no longer only saw the pure blackness that had covered his sight since the beginning of his imprisonment. His vision rapidly flashed between a bright blue and a vibrant green.

Almost instinctively Entiru spread the arms of his naked body out as far as he could and the spinning began to slow and stop until he could only see bright vibrant green and blue of the planet below. The shape of its continents were unfamiliar.

Entiru noticed for the first time that he could hear the loud rush of wind in his ears. Feel its sharpness biting at his bare skin. The first new sensation on his body for eons or more. Entiru laughed as he saw the surface of the planet far below slowly begin to grow slightly closer as he fell.

Over the great wind in his ears, Entiru suddenly snapped his head to the side as he heard a familiar noise to his right. The flesh harvester floated there falling alongside him, its sharp blade on one arm and shovel-like claw on the other. It was kicking through the air and flailing towards him even as they fell through the air together.

Entiru looked around himself and saw dozens of other creatures of the captors emerging from inside of the fleshy chunks scattering the skies around him and pushed off to make their way towards them.

Entiru’s training as the genemother’s royal guard kicked in as he began assessing his opponents as they pushed off through the air to drift through the air towards him.

The flesh harvester was closest, so Entiru tucked in his arms and dived for it even as it struggled to maneuver through the air in its efforts to reach him.

Entiru crashed into it, sending the both of them tumbling through the air and spinning at high speed again. The flesh harvester stabbed him in the gut with its sword and slapped him hard in the head with its shovel like claw, briefly stunning Entiru. Entiru felt the blade strike through him and emerge from his back in a spray of bloody droplets that left behind a trail of red in the sky above them as the both of them continued to fall downwards.

But after recovering from the blow he adjusted his grip on the creature and shoved his right hand directly into its mouth. In surprise, the creature bit down and severed Entiru’s hand from his body in a single bite. Entiru adjusted the stump at the end of his arm until it was pressed against the roof of the creature’s mouth. After a few more seconds of thrashing, the flesh harvester went still, Entiru’s regenerated hand now embedded inside of its skull. He felt the blade still embedded in his abdomen nearly dissolved away and ready to snap within him. He quickly reached behind his back and grabbed the remaining section of the long blade just before the portion within his body finally broke and dissolved into nothing.

Entiru gripped the blade tightly in his hands as he tugged his right hand and extracted it from the skull of the dead flesh harvester. The fingers on Entiru’s left hand bled profusely as he held the two foot long blade as tightly as he could even as he pushed off of the flesh harvester’s body with a hard shove from both of his feet.

He was still tumbling about, and quickly spread eagled again to correct himself. The green ground below was still far away, but grew larger and larger by the second. He glanced around and saw that the first of his next opponents were almost upon him.

These were the gatherers, meant to take away his flesh after the harvester had already taken it from him. Each of the beetle like beasts was a little over a foot long, and dozens of them were drifting through the air towards him. Each of their legs frantically churned through the air fruitlessly as they all tried to move towards him as quickly as they could.

Entiru leaned his body to the side to move to the closest of the beasts. His left hand was stained red, but no longer bleeding. At the base of the blade where he had been tightly gripping it, his injured hands had now dissolved five perfectly smooth finger holds for him to firmly grip the blade’s handle with.

His blade snaked out and stabbed into the joint between the gatherer’s armored head and shell on its back. Erivue took out his blade with a spray of black blood, sending both him and the creature spinning through the air.

The cloud of floating beetles was closing in on him, and Entiru kept slicing and killing them one by one as they all fell through the sky, each of these stabs sending him tumbling through the air but also sending his target falling limp to drift through the sky lifelessly.

The larger chunks of flesh larger than Erivue had spread out by now, drifting farther and farther from each other as they all fell down.

Entiru kept fighting, and five of the living gatherers had latched onto him and were crawling over him and biting with their jaws to rip into his flesh before tossing it behind them into the open air with sharp flicks of their armored heads.

Entiru was spinning uncontrollably through the air. He had three living gatherers crawling over him when suddenly he jolted as he realized the ground below was rushing up towards him rapidly. He only had an instant to react and tense up before he hit the ground full force and his body splattered against a rock outcropping as he came to a sudden stop after his long fall from orbit.

— — —

Entiru woke up blinking to find himself lying face down in a depression smoothly carved in the rock where he lay. He shook his head and pushed up with his hands and looked around to the forest around him. He was alone, except for the chunks of the dead flesh scattered around the forest floor around him and the limp bodies of the gatherers caught in the branches of the trees above him and on the forest floor scattered around where he had landed.

He was sitting on a rock outcropping forming a clearing in the center of a vibrant and green forest.

Entiru looked around cautiously and spotted his impromptu blade taken from the harvester lying in the soil a dozen feet away, looking relatively undamaged. He scrambled over to it and quickly picked it up and shifted to hold it in his right hand where it was more comfortable.

He stood there completely naked and tilted his head to the side as he listened for movement around him. Nothing but the sounds of the forest and the rustling of the leaves in the wind. Entiru let out a relieved sigh and let his blade drop down slightly. It appeared that none of the beasts were nearby for now.

He took a few more minutes to collect himself and inspect the area for anything that could be useful. But he turned up with nothing. Where was this? Even as he had spun through the air fighting his falling captors, he had seen the shape of the continents. This wasn’t the homeworld Gaia. How long had he been captured? Decades? Centuries? But this was good… This must mean that some must have survived or escaped to settle elsewhere and terraform this new planet after what had happened.

Entiru walked through the forest for a time, as he looked for any signs of civilization for a few hours. He followed along the bank of a river, hoping that he would find someone living there. He should do his best to get back to civilization so he could aid in the defense of this world against his captors. He wasn’t exactly sure of the situation, but he was sure that the creature’s arrival on this world couldn’t signal anything good for all the people that must be living on it with how lush and hospitable it was.

Entiru followed the river for a while with no change. No signs of civilization, not even any ruins or old foundations that he could see. Was this planet newly settled? The terraformers’ work was finally completed while Entiru was captured? He’d expect to find at least some sign of humans if this was still Gaia, even in the remotest areas. Even if it was recently settled he’d have expected to see some sign of human settlement by now. At least trash or perhaps some old foundations or carved stones buried in the soil…

He paused as he thought he heard something in the distance. It was almost like thunder…

Looking between the river and the direction the faint thunder was coming from, Entiru hesitated. But he hadn’t seen any signs of humans yet in two whole days. Absolutely nothing except pristine wilderness and the occasional strange animal like none he’d ever seen before.

So Entiru turned and started walking towards the distant sounds of thunder, abandoning the river. Although he gripped his blade tighter and was wary as he continued forward. Who knew what waited in front of him…