45
Surrounded by death and decay, haloed by constant explosions and tracers of glimmering light, goddess and mech-pilot fought. The contest was terribly close and ferocious, at first. Struck by a powerful beam weapon, the Mother’s icy white mask developed a web of fine cracks and then shattered. Behind it lay roiling Chaos and circuits, out of which sprang a forest of writhing black limbs.
She sent those tendrils forth like an oily net, fighting to snare her quarry. Time after time he dodged her, though; able to slip off through a dimension that she couldn’t sense. His movements were burning-swift. Every twist, punch and slash heated that inrushing air and seared her tentacles, wherever they touched the shields of his “mech”.
And all the while, three worlds drew closer together, nearly aligned at the heart of reality. The sands were trickling, and she had a task to perform, before she could claim this realm for her own. The Mother patched her slashed arm with a spell, drifting forward.
“I lay by your heart for eons, boy,” she hissed to her prey. “I know you better than anyone else but the flame-godling, and he is not even a myth in this place. You cannot evade me, or the one who ordered your birth and decanting: OVR-Lord.”
The young pilot might have replied, but his words came too fast to interpret. Her attention was divided, besides, as she was attacked from within. He had managed to reach through her chest, somehow, causing deep pain and invasion without breaking her smoky exterior. His arm just vanished in midair, showing wires, circuitry, bones and blood vessels, while his hand probed through the layers of Chaos and legend that made up her guts.
She could sense activity out in the passage beyond, where a female half-mech struggled to unlock a strangely vibrating sphere. Speed mattered. A quick end to the situation. The Mother hissed, working to pull herself free of his grip, but a wave of sheer, blinding agony stopped her short. She sent further pulses of seething dark force through his arm in response, most of which that armored mech suit absorbed. Flaring and sparking and riddled with holes, it was doing its best to protect him, still. The battle suit was slowing, though; losing power with every strike it absorbed and each weapon it launched.
A thunderous boom rocked the deck. Air returned to the chamber, adding concussive force and ear-shredding noise to the glare of eruptions and rays, whipping goddess and victim back and forth like twigs in a tempest. Meanwhile, this “OVR-Lord” grew alarmed at becoming a part of her substance. It fought back with a storm of hard radiation, trying to scorch her hollow. The Mother would have none of that. First, she crushed OVR-Lord’s fragile cartridge to splinters. Then, as the wounded elf tossed his human companion away through the air… as a score of robot security units arrived… the Mother created a grinning, fanged maw. Used it to sever that groping hand at the wrist. Crunched through metal and plastic, wires and flesh, then swallowed his severed hand at a gulp.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
The young elf jerked backward, withdrawing a ragged and sparking stump. More armor plating folded over snapped bones and torn muscles, stopping the flow of blood. A new metal hand formed, as that wretched lout brought his energy blade around blurry-quick, gashing through her right shoulder. More tendrils and cursing burst from her then, along with a spray of acidic gore that pitted his once-shining surface.
Partly crippled but far from done, the Mother struck back. Dark, slimy tentacles boiled out of her face and new, central maw. She lashed the boy’s armored limbs, struggling to control someone who could just slide off through an impossible region of space. They were both of them wounded, now. Equally angry, with much more at stake than their lives. Only…
She had his bitten-off hand, along with the deep understanding that came from having spent ages inside of his alternate self, waiting for glassy black stone to erode. It was a connection much more intense than hatred or love, and it gave her real power.
The Mother called forth an underworld hex of sleep and oblivion. Focused her spell through his torn, eaten hand to what it had once been a part of. Reached further than that, trying for Miche and Val, as well. Spoke aloud, crooning,
“Emptiness. Sorrow. Loss and despair. All is gone. All is ended. Why struggle further? Give in, little fighter. Give yourself to your Mother’s embrace. Back to sleep. Back to stasis and rest.”
Critically low on power and manna, the elf grew still inside of his robot armor. The mech-suit fought on, heating its surface to blister her smothering tendrils. The Mother produced hundreds more, keeping that battle-mech pinioned, dragging it and the boy to a jagged clump of pale crystals that rose from the deck by OVR-Lord’s podium. She got him tied down, stretched out ready for Sherazedan’s sword-thrust; pinioned at wrist, ankle and neck by crystalline spears and her own oozing tendrils.
Then a small metallic orb buzzed past her, using a powerful ray to slice through the Mother’s indistinct head. It would have been a deadly strike, had her intelligence been clustered inside of a skull, or anywhere else.
“Such a noble effort,” she purred, backhanding the alien into a startled security bot, then setting them both to explode. “Pity it didn’t work.”
She had to form another face on her back, squinting through a forest of lashing tentacles to hurl bolts of age and decay at swooping robots and one tiny mech. Another bold, stupid alien, this one launched missiles and clouds of needles at her. She defended herself by ducking behind the elf’s pinioned form, using his body as a shield. Next fired a sharpened tendril with lightning-like force, impaling the tiny battle-mech.
“Hurts, does it?” she mocked. “Poor little thing! Well, you haven’t long to suffer, dear heart, for the reign of darkness is nigh, bringing us all final peace.”
“Drop your weapons! Cease this unlawful affray!” commanded a hovering security bot, attempting to snare her with energy-sapping cords. She let its line hit, then sent thousands of years of decay through that silvery cable, laughing wildly as the robot crumbled to dust.
“Anyone else?” she teased, forming a ring of smoky-red eyes.
Then the human girl came rushing back into the chamber with a female cyborg and… but that couldn’t be. She had the comatose boy in her clutches, tied down to that crystal array like a sacrifice-victim.
“No,” snarled the Mother. “This is illusion. Some shadow or trick. I have you right here!”
“Surprise, witch,” snapped a second blond, armored elf, smiling without any humor at all. “He’s just a messenger. A simulacrum I sent from the Refuge. I’m the real thing, and you’ve just made your final mistake.”
With that, V47 Pilot, Foryu and Raine leapt to attack. No quarter, no mercy, no respite, as three worlds locked together at last.