Specter

The World Lord stood again in open space, watching as Annice and her other charges did battle with the blind dreamers. The majority of her human souls hadn’t been happy about the change. She had even lost a few of them, who had chosen to reenter the rebirth cycle rather than fight the space monsters.

That mentality hadn’t made much sense to Specter, why choose to die rather than fight a few battles? It isn’t like death was permanent for them, not at least while she was here to reanimate them with her own essence. In the end, she decided she didn’t care. Anyone who would fold that easily in the face of adversity, didn’t deserve to live anyway.

Those that remained flew around the ship, each wearing a blood red jacket that provided them with their ability to float. Annice had insisted, saying that they were deserving of being red shirts. She’d laughed hysterically when she had made the demand. As it didn’t seem relevant to ask, Specter hadn’t bothered, merely doing as she was bid.

None of the clothes, even Annice’s allowed for flight inside the ship. They could levitate perhaps a foot off the ground, and shift their position slightly. In the vacuum of space however, they were able to move around like they were born with wings. Each also wore a mask, but none other than Annice sported a plague doctor mask. Theirs were simple white masks with red lines covering them in the shape of ‘fox faces,’ something else Annice had insisted on.

Truthfully, Specter thought the girl might have been more concerned with making them look silly than how to make them look like fighters. She had however, asked the girl for help, so she would live with the choices she had made. The thirty-eight remaining human souls took turns blasting the blind dreamer with their essence blasts.

Fully ten of them had elected to die then fight, but the ones who remained were really getting into the action. Flying around, calling themselves ‘heroes’ while blasting away with weak essence blasts. The lot of them working together, had finally managed to take down the first creature Annice had focused on. The rush of essence its death had produced nearly incapacitated a number of the human souls.

Afterwards however, their strength and desire to kill more of the dreamers had only grown. It was still taking them all, to take down even one of the beasts, but with each one they dropped, the process got easier on them. Specter figured they might get to two a day soon, as their strength continued to grow.

“Ah, finally.” She said to herself, as she picked up the incoming energy her oldest daughter gave off as she approached.

She wasn’t in view yet, but Specter didn’t say anything. She wanted to see the looks on the humans faces when they caught the first glimpse of her. She didn’t have to wait long either, the humans soon began to rally together, pointing at the new shape forming in the distance. They flew to her, crowding around for her protection.

“What is it?” Annice asked her quietly, watching as the small dot in space grew larger and larger.

“That is my daughter, I don’t know why it took her so long but we can finally begin now.” She answered with a fond smile.

She really did love these humans, perhaps she could keep one or two of them when this was over. The looks on their faces were priceless as the shape of her creation slowly grew in size. She turned to it herself, envisioning the sight from their prospective.

The first thing she noticed were the glowing dots, they looked like stars, only they moved slowly up and down in an odd rhythm. Next, the outline of her wings came into view. moving slowly upward and back down again, propelling the form through the void. As she watched the form grow larger and larger, she could feel the anticipation of her charges.

“It’s a manta ray.” One of them whispered as they watched the creature close.

Specter didn’t know what a manta ray was, but she knew many of the forms in creation were used repeatedly. She didn’t understand the reason, but if one was to visit a million planets, most of the life forms would be similar in some way to all the rest. Or, at least to the legends of mythical creatures from the others. like even the beings that didn’t exist on every world were somehow still known about as fictional creatures. It had interested her once upon a time, now she didn’t care for planets anymore, preferring the nearly endless expanse of space instead.

The huge flat body of her child swam into view, glowing dots of light on her back moving as she came closer. The long thin tail moved around behind her, directing her path with lithe ease. She giggled at the gasps she heard as the form continued to grow. They couldn’t get a grasp on her true size from this distance. Already she was as large as their ship, and she hadn’t yet reached them.

Specter was honestly a little surprised herself, it had been long ages since she had seen her child and she had grown in those years. Smaller dots of light began to become visible around her form, many of them flitting about rapidly while the larger form moved slowly closer.

“Ah now I understand,” Specter whispered out the side of her hood to Annice. The girl looked at her questioningly so she continued. “I called her ages ago; she should have been here much quicker than this. She has offspring with her, that explains her delay. The little ones can’t move as fast as their mother, by their size they must be at least five hundred years old...I really need to get out more often and visit the grandkids.”

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She added that last part mostly to herself. She felt bad now, not having realized one of her oldest and most treasured creations had children. Or, that she had had them half a millennia ago. Sometimes her wandering ways caused her to miss the wonders in her own back yard.

“Wow, there are so many of them.” Annice commented. “How long do they have to stay with their mother like that? If they are already five hundred years old, shouldn’t they be grown by now?” the confusion on her scrunched face was really cute to look at. Specter couldn’t help poking her nose before replying.

“Space is a really big place; they could leave now if they wanted too. But its lonely out there without companionship. Family groups tend to stick together until they meet up with another, then some members switch off or form new groups to travel in. Honestly, I can’t even tell you how many there are out here now. They grow so fast.”

She could tell the idea of children over five hundred years old growing fast amazed Annice. She grinned mentally; her nonexistent face didn’t allow for much expression really. She would learn with time, the young never understood how time changed as one ages. Of course, she could actually control time to a degree, so maybe she couldn’t judge at all really.

She pondered on the effects of time, when one was wholly bound by it’s effects, as her child arrived. She was so large, that being this close her wings disappeared into the distance. Her tail was visible enough though, whipping about like crazy, wiping the blind dreamers from existence with each swish.

Her grandchildren started in after they saw their mother doing it. Each was nearly the size of their space ship, or ‘as big as an aircraft carrier’ she heard several times from her charges. They laid into the ‘air plane’ sized blind dreamers with abandon. Smashing them open with their tails, and leaving them to drift.

“Well…I can see why you wanted to wait now.” Annice said with awe, and a little annoyance. “We were just wasting our time out here, it took us nearly a month of working together to do what they did in the first five seconds they got here.” She continued, pouting.

“That isn’t true Annice,” Specter reassured her favorite human soul. “You have been growing your soul’s strength, you might not have been able to close the rift before. Now it should be easy for you, shall we go try?” she asked gesturing with a skeletal hand that leaked purple light, towards the rent in space.

“Ok, might as well.” The teenaged girl answered after a little more sulking. “Once this is closed then I can go meet Fr…I mean, I can go help the others close the rift at the station, right?” she asked, changing her word choice midsentence.

That didn’t make Spector happy, she had wanted to spend more time with the human. none of the others had expressed interest in going to the station though, so it was just Annice who would be leaving her…just her favorite, no big deal really.

“Sure, child.” She answered anyway, knowing that kids couldn’t be contained. “Once we close this rift, you can go to shipwright’s ugly old station.”

The smile that split the girls face, was felt instead of seen, the plague doctor’s mask was hiding her face after all. Specter could feel her joy however, the girl was infatuated with meeting the kid Briggs. Specter couldn’t figure out why, Benjamin was a much better specimen of the male variant in her opinion. So, why was she so fixated on the overweight boy who hid inside a gunship instead of going into battle himself? She sighed; the young were so silly.

Closing the rift proved almost as easy as she had hoped. The majority of her human souls were too weak to do much, but the process was instinctual. So, all thirty-eight of them helped while their essence held out. The ‘space mantas’ as they were calling her daughter and her children, delt with the blind dreamers. They were so outclassed that it wasn’t even really a battle.

As the rift began to close a huge version of the blind dreamer emerged, with three even bigger types surrounding it. The three looked to be made of a black stone that reflected the light like glass, they were as big as the small space mantas. Unfortunately, for them anyway, her daughter was many orders of magnitude larger. Three sweeps of her tail, ended the lives of the guards. The other one took two strikes to put down, but it went almost as easily.

Specter didn’t want to think about what might have happened to them, if that thing had come out before her child got here. It was a good thing they hadn’t approached the rift prier to her arrival. In all the rift battles she had observed to date, that seemed to be the trigger. Get too close to closing the gate, and the strong leader types showed up.

“That was actually a lot easier than I expected.” Annice said, moving back to float beside Specter. “Now what?” she asked, being obvious with what she wanted by, not, asking about it directly.

“Now,” Specter replied with another mental sigh. “I will talk to my daughter, perhaps she has a few kids who are more rambunctious than the rest.” With that, she left Annice and moved closer to where her child’s face was located.

She didn’t need to do that of course, but the avatar was growing on her, and she didn’t want to drop it that easily. A quick conversation later, that took place outside the human’s ability to hear, and Specter had prepared an escort for her favorite human.

She watched as the girl rode away, riding inside a small clear dome she had quickly created and mounted to one of the space mantas backs. Three of them had agreed to take her to the station and watch out for her for a while, at least until she decided she didn’t need them anymore. Or, they got bored and flew off, Specter didn’t know where they got that tendency from but it was annoying.

Still, she was going to miss that girl. Turning to the human souls she still had, she thought about what to do next. Closing the rift hadn’t actually been difficult, and she was getting word from more and more of her children that rifts were popping up all over in the deep reaches of space. Well, at least she would get to travel.

“Back to the ship everyone, we have more rifts to close.” At the groans she heard she decided she might sweeten the deal for them just a bit. “For those who do a good job, I might be able to custom make you new hero outfits…”

That got the response she wanted, with a whoop they darted for the ship. She still didn’t know what a hero was, but they really seemed popular on earth. Well whatever, making clothes was a lot of fun, and if they wanted to look silly while fighting corruption who was she to argue?