Wild-mother

She stood on the surface of the leading hive world, watching. She stepped aside as another invisible rock crashed through the atmospheric haze, igniting a plane of radiance before careening right towards where she had been. The earth dilated only to swallow it whole.

Did the champion know of nothing else? How droll.

The lack of imagination repeated itself until the Ascendant finally came up with something new. True to form, it closed in. She prepared.

Finally, it arrived. She narrowly dodged the landing strike by teleporting away, leaving the obvious distractions behind while Ghost-mother settled into the sun. She interspersed herself between misdirection and star, ready to intercept.

Too soon, the champion contented itself with simple barbarism, wreaking havoc upon the sacrificial formation. Once there were naught left but shattered remnants, the creature waved a taloned ephemeral limb and the remains lined up, scooped away from their collision course and unimaginatively swept aside. Its control permeated the planetary fragments, a banal promise to answer any further celestial barrages in kind.

Oh, she didn’t quite catch that. A single heartbeat suffused her being. It floated right in front of her. It preferred a cloudy shape, sometimes vague, other times solid, always where six wings converged, staring. It spoke.

“What travesty is this? Answer me Errant, why do you imitate, poorly I must add, the ones you torture?”

A parlay? Perfect.

“You misunderstand. To copy is to steal in disrespect, to emulate is to create in honor of.”

“You have failed.”

She didn’t think so. The changes were for the better, too much symmetry otherwise. She had merely moved around the repeating organs and twice present features, varied the length of the limbs, made every cord of muscle, every stretch of skin, every tooth truly unique. Alas, her opponent disagreed in word and deed. Maybe it was the gaping hole in her chest that it so disapproved of? It had been an improvised addition. Interest faded with another heartbeat.

She might have missed the closing net of speeding shards pulled from afar, were it not for Ghost-mother finally completing her invasion. Her influence flooded space, the emptiness now belonged to Mother.

She teleported away again, but the winged warrior followed closely behind, undeterred by the titanic pressure bearing down on it. Strips and threads of force erupted, distorting space around her. She moved once more.

Ah, a hidden strip had taken her leg. The barbarian incinerated her art. Noticing her mistake compounded it when she responded too slowly to another burst of dashes. A claw obscured her vision, she sensed the Ascendant standing right next to her and then it touched her face. She felt the art in it. A subtle, growing shift in reality propagated, laying a trail for the simplest of effects, amplification and a random change in direction. It took her head off.

A heartbeat pulsed, she created distance – too much. It turned around, heading for Ghost-mother.

She regenerated and interspersed herself. She had been too passive, but she carried the solution to that in her heart. She willed the seed to sprout and began to wither away while something new took hold within her, ready to be re-

“Mother…? No, no, no… Please…”

Don’t be sad. It’s not bad. You didn’t pull through, so I made you into something new. It’s what you like.

Her consciousness fell, entropy tearing away at her essence now that nothing held it together. In her descent, she noticed the rise of another in her stead. Chaos contained in structure, engineered rather than grown, something she should have found distasteful. She faded, unable to grieve her fate – worse, forced to celebrate it with her final thought.

Behold! An existence older than any star, revoked on a whim.

The Berserker

She raged. She rushed. A reckless exchange. She clawed at her prey. She could do no more, for she was reduced to nothing but a lone arm in lonely space, reaching helplessly. She was obliterated.

She was reborn. She raged. She rushed. They fought.

She was reborn. She raged. She rushed. They fought.

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She was reborn. She raged. She rushed. They fought.

…

‘The Last Resort’

This again. Fast, strong and stupid.

The sudden shift in temperament did not make up for being outmatched. If anything, the mindless assault was trivial to overpower, or it would have been, were it not for the single-minded persistence of the god-kin Errant. It dove in again and again, flailing incessantly until there was nothing left but an overtaxed shell, empty of power.

The star-nested entity retreated before I could reach it. With its cowardly flight, the wounded world was revealed. I nearly wept upon seeing the aftermath of what the children there were forced to endure.

I had enough. I screamed into the void.

“Altica! You will hear me.”

I began ripping out the compulsions rooted in my soul, ignoring the irreparable damage doing so caused.

“You have the power we hoped would end the war. Clearly we were wrong, even if you are the strongest of us now. You forsake your duty!”

No greater accusation and no response, but I knew he was listening, as always. I had the first one out. No more need to hide my strength. A radiant flower of false wings bloomed from my back, kinetic feathers overlapping crystalline plumage.

“They fight our battles. Hopelessly outmatched against our shared enemy. Children are dying, Altica. Children!”

I finished pulling out another geas. Already complete, but in the way. Stolen strength anchored itself within condensed energy. Thus, counterfeit pinions were made real.

“You stand idle. Beyond mortality, yet lesser than those who fell this day! A god of nothing.”

Finally I found the third, the assignment which kept me from moving freely. Wingtips wrapped around and surged into my chest to no outward effect, yet the metaphysical was shearing. My composite channel flared.

“You think I will not come for you? You think yourself beyond my reach? If this is what you have become, I will lay waste to your winged world. I will take the core under my own protection. I will chip and scrape at your power until you fall. I have done it before. You were there.”

I tore out my limitation, and then bound the fragments of my soul together, a stopgap solution to wounds which would never heal. Link closed, with only a single true feather burned.

“Choose, Altica! I lay before you the same choice I gave them. Choose, between duty and death.”

An answer.

“Very well.”

Raw energy emerged from hidden places, everywhere - a stream of invisible luminescence beyond any mortal. The flow split into millions of individual creeks, each destined to further empower a child, Ascendant or not. A tenth… no, more. Far more. A sixth. Yet power remained. A different river encapsulated the dented planet in a pooling sphere until, in time, no gaps would remain.

Soon the Errant would no longer find it so easy to do as they pleased. It was a shame they already had. My hunt would begin once the process completed. I pulled in the god-kin corpse, traced down to the indivisible and found what I was looking for.

A thread.

The Last Resort? I preferred my old title, given to me by my peers, the ones I acknowledged to recognize the star upon which the chariot of my name and deed had been bound. Unlike my current one, it did nothing but stand as a warning. Yet even now, it still carried weight.

Mother

She had so much fun. Sneaky-other was a sore loser. She didn’t mind. Everything was in place. She tricked him, yes she did. Him and everyone else. They all thought she was simple.

She wasn’t. Wild-mother understood now. But she was gone.

What should she do to pass the time?

She took Sneaky-mothers pieces and started toying with them. Her game was played out anyway... No fair. Sneaky-other was a sore loser.

The System

Who could have known that in naming him so, drunk on victory, we thrusted upon him an entirely different kind of transcendence? Indeed, it was likely the only reason he never crossed the threshold.

It mattered not how little nor how much he changed, how much he left real or what he invented.

Even in death, the man’s will persisted. In the beginning it resurfaced slowly, then with ever more speed since. Rai’Sei always returned to his true self. He examined the title that was his gift, engineered to empower and sustain his old mentor.

The Last Resort.

His own creation. His own power. The very System he was. A deity denied. How could such a thing happen? There was much to learn, still. He did not truly fear his own experiment, but acquiesced nonetheless. He simply did not have the heart to ignore the pleading of his beloved friend. Not with the guilt he carried. The reminder stung.

The sixth experiment had now truly begun.

Perhaps he was a little frightened. It seemed unwise to ignore the Godhunter, who, as first prey, chose his own… And then slew all the others for good measure. Especially after he went to such lengths aggravating him. How nostalgic, and cruel perhaps, but it accelerated the process.

It was only a matter of time. He turned his attention towards the core worlds instead, where it was sorely needed. The fires of war erupted in earnest again.

He froze it all and then slapped away the alien influence reaching into his mind. After having finally taken the first step ahead on his path through transcendence, such things no longer mattered.

Three worlds, infested.

He set to work.

Waves of temporal decay crumbled away all Errant on the surfaces. He embedded exposed gravitational singularities in lightning streaks, which burrowed direct paths to key Errant infrastructure. Resources, tools, arms and armor, secrets and caches long forgotten – he laid them all bare.

A metaphysical blink and the grey pall receded. A timeless instant, the only warning heralding his unleashed interplanetary annihilation.

It was only appropriate.

He was a System of his own design. And the purpose of that design was to bring to a close the war unending. It mattered not how often the contrary had been proven, he would, just as he did now, resolve himself to achieve his purpose. Within infinite time, victory lingered. It must.

Duty or death? A preposterous proposition.

Duty, always and forever.

Rhoq’eau

For the first time in my life, I gazed upon the open sky.

The Holy Child

Free at last.

The Inheritor

I could not believe it, the Errant spoke true. From horror to paradise, a new world nigh untouched.