“There, dissection complete.” the Designer stated once the pain stopped, and I could think again.
I blinked, or at least tried to anyway. The Designer still had me muted for some reason and didn’t seem to think that having a conversation was needed.
“Look, I am already gone. If you are wondering why I am not interested in giving you conversation rights, I have already seen what is in your mind and made this decaying copy of myself to answer and correct what I deem necessary.” The eye in front of me said as it took its tendril away from me, finishing whatever it had just done inside me. In truth, the eye did seem to be rapidly shrinking and it looked like whatever it was going to say wasn’t going to take very long.
“One of the biggest questions you had that I see as pertinent to the viability of your succeeding is: “What is the Skism and what is its purpose?”. The answer to that is rather simple, it is a high-concept cleaning robot. Its whole purpose when it was dropped off in your dimension was to seal away any outbreaks of what you nonsensically call Void entities.” I said as a Skism Sentinel materialized behind the eye.
“The problem is, even with all of our containment and sterilization concepts, subject ^44-Degeneration_Lifeform-1004-3… you know what, never mind, to you it is a Void creature,” it said before pausing, seemingly showing a personality for the first time.
“Whatever, anyways, all of our concepts only manage to cause the Void to be frozen in place without the ability to curtail sustenance and stimuli by observing and draining hosts with susceptible ocular organs. On your level, they infect and spread through sight, both from themselves and to their host who looks at them. Somehow, the Void can still sense lifeforms through the skism field and can stimulate mental stimulation that resembles attempts at communication.” the remnant of the Designer said as massive Void eyeballs were created off to the side, seemingly squeezing through the core of a sun and spreading out in search of prey. After a few minutes, the Skism Sentinel would show up and contain the entire galaxy with a skism field.
“So yes, your Void Seedling, once you fed it enough, used its seedlings and they all went off in search of fertile husk material,” it said as a replay of the burst of light was replayed as well. “Husk material that exists in your dimension in several locations due to the Void having successfully breached those suns in the past.” It said, showing massive skism fields dotting the cosmos before zooming quickly in on one and pointing a massive arrow at the black tentacle substance making up most of its body.
“The Void Seedling knows that husk material exists in your dimension, from previous Void invasions, but it was unable to determine the exact location in which it needed to spread, hence the circular explosion of seedlings.”
The eye had shrunk considerably, and I became alarmed that it would completely vanish before it actually got to any of the other questions that I had burning in my brain. It seemed to think the same as well because it started to talk faster and severely cut down on the explanation length.
“Anyways, continually active skism fields draw a lot of power, hence we left some batteries in your dimension. Originally, they were considered invulnerable, due to your dimension being made up of weaker material and energy density, but with your updated knowledge, we now know that this is not true. Protect these batteries at all costs!” It said as it showed the six red egg-like objects that the Last Engineer had made a note of breaking open.
A wave of fear rushed through me. I had intended to open them myself to see what was inside them. I hoped that the Last Engineer didn’t have them and that my friends had not decided to open them as well.
“Finally, yes, we had abandoned these three dimensions. It was known that it was all a matter of time before our creations powering the shield fell and the Void escaped and killed off everything. With you, however… there might be a chance at saving and empowering the shield again, seeing that your species possesses a compatible mind. I dissected your absorbed abilities and fixed them so that you can go back to working on fixing the problem without worrying that you might accidentally kill your friends. I cut away each ability’s need to bond completely to a dominant part of you and simply made them usable as needed. I changed corruption to something else that will help you fix your problem. Clarification, this is your problem, not ours even though we made it. No, we won’t save you, we have our own problems to deal with.” it said as I felt a ball of rage flame up inside me.
“You didn’t know this, due to you being trapped inside our ability generator, but you are no longer a prisoner to the influence of the Void Seedling. Our cleaner… or Skism Sentinel, as you like to call it, intercepted each and every seedling and they have all perished, courtesy of having no husk material to bond with before they met the skism field.” the eye said as it shrunk down to a ball no larger than a human eye. I could tell that it only had moments left before it would completely be gone.
“We have never been able to inspect an empty shell up close. If you can get the shell that surrounds your body to our city and use the machines there to study it, who knows, you might just find a way to clear out the Void infection.”
“City?!?! What city?” I shouted, finding that I could finally talk again as the eye was only as large as a tiny dot.
“The city beyond the blasted region of course. Where the Void are contained.” It said, showing a cosmic-sized hole amid a mass of never-ending noodles. It took me a second to realize that what I was looking at was where the Void were contained. It was a space, a truly immense space that the Designer’s people had nuked when they attempted to kill the Void. The explosions had hollowed out the area, creating a cauterized zone to keep the Void contained within. The city was somewhere inside that, seemingly still existing.
As the eye vanished, I felt a mighty shove and quickly had to blink at the sudden brightness I found blasting in my eyes. I was staring at a sun that I was quickly approaching. No, not approaching, I was blasting past at incredible speeds.
“I am back!!!” I shouted as I felt all of my senses and swarm return to me. “Yes!!!” I screamed as I used the swarm around my tiny ant-like body to create my human form, stretching my arms wide and laughed. I no longer had to rely on the Six to feed the Void Seedlings, if what the Designer had said was true. Also, he seemed to have said that he had fixed me, and I shouldn’t need to worry about killing everyone accidentally.
“At least that is what I am pretty sure he said,” I muttered as I kept replaying his exact words over and over just so that I didn’t get them wrong.
“Kevin?” I heard several voices say in my head before a loud scream from Invicta filled my ears as she tried to wrestle swarm away from me to manifest arms to hug me with. I chuckled and rolled my eyes as I entered VR to meet them all.
Just as expected, once I arrived on the travel disk, I spied Invicta racing towards me from the Command room. Tutor, George, Nurse, and Meditati were no slower, each teleporting or simply manifesting as Nurse did with her arms already forming around me from behind.
---
General Magus was forced to pause his plans when he felt the foreboding presence sweep over him. He had never encountered such a phenomenon and it should have been impossible, seeing that he existed in VR. Nonetheless, he had felt it and whatever it was, it had breached his system like it wasn’t even there. He had been on the brink of opening his communication channels and claiming military dominance over the entire sector of space but after that feeling had swept through him, he quickly decided to halt everything and to observe his surroundings, preparing his more diabolical weapons just in case.
As he slowed his Solar Citadel even further, he intently monitored the space surrounding the battlefront. Nothing stood out to him, nothing anyway that was beyond the norm.
“Wait… what was that?” He muttered as he focused on a burst of sparkling light that caught his attention. It only lasted for a moment and didn’t seem to do anything or have a purpose. It wasn’t even near to any of the battles taking place.
“How odd.”
It wasn’t until he zoomed out that his eyes widened on all of his eye stalks. “They are everywhere!” He shouted as he spied the same sparkles of light practically in every zone of space in front of him. They even seemed to be approaching his Solar Citadel! He quickly diverted power to swing his fortress in a different direction while continuing to study the surroundings for more of the bursts of light.
“There you are.” He said as he spied a larger cluster of sparkles all being emitted from several large battleships sitting a large distance away from the front lines.
“You thought you could sit back and sneak your invisible soldiers or bombs onto everyone’s ships, did you?” He said as he targeted the new unknown threat and moved his gargantuan battle fortress to a more advantageous location. “Although, I am pretty sure that you didn’t mean to play your hand so clumsily. I can only imagine that you were tripped up by whatever interference just swept through space.” He said, rubbing his Tela armor plates together in a humorous chuckle.
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The Gurn, Blidda, Xeath, and Jaz’era had already played their hands, showing off their capabilities and thus allowing him time to modify his Solar Citadel to better resist such attacks. He had already ordered it to modify its hull and to separate his vital cr to work further within the structure. His launch tubes were now set to open mechanically, no longer needing to be exposed to the beam weapons being used against the Tela.
As for the Jaz’era using cr propulsion to draw the aggression of the creatures that used to live inside of the star that had gone supernova? His plan was just to not let anyone get into position behind him. Anyone who tried would be ripped to shreds with his denser cr shavings. He had felt great pride upon witnessing how effective his new weapon had been against the Gurn vessels. He would prove his capabilities in this theater of war once again. It was well past time for him to assume command of the cosmos, those blowhard politicians had done nothing of note in all of their time in power.
“We have given everyone enough time to learn to bow before the Tela. Those that choose to resist need not exist anymore.” He said as he watched his next targets lining up.
---
“You’re up rookies! Get out there and bag us some new tech!” His group leader yelled at Magus the Last and the rest of their squadron as the battle had begun and ships were already flying apart in the distance. Magus obeyed with just enough speed to seem respectful, his large lumbering Herv body rushing to his command seat inside his scavenging vessel. Herv spacesuits were bulky and cumbersome, having “thin” sheets of cr that were supposed to keep him alive in case of an attack. The space suit was still a death sentence out here and all of the Herv knew it. Each suit was equipped with tiny cr propulsion drives, something that no one would consider using here, meaning that they were being sent to their deaths if they took damage.
“Don’t think about the suits, command is rigging up a traditional retrieval rocket. Just be on the lookout for it if your craft is destroyed. Grab the line and make it back!” His leader yelled over the comms. He was probably trying to calm down his squadron and to get them to just focus on grabbing what they could.
Magus couldn’t care less. His sole focus was on all of the anomalies that kept popping up across the front. Ships were exploding without cause, Tela vessels were going dark, and the Gurn seemed to have caused everyone to hate them all at once. All that mattered was what Magus was counting on to happen at any moment, for the General to show up and take over the war efforts of the Tela.
It was all just a matter of…
Magus froze as a wave of pressure swept over his mind. Exclamations and open mic'd curses of worry were broadcast over each other in the comms, making Magus freeze in place as he was just about to press the button to lock in his flight movement suppression field. He had felt the pressure through his cr body! Something was not right. Whatever had just occurred had been felt by everyone, biological and digital alike!
“Command, are we still launching?” He asked over the unintelligible nonsense of the other Herv crew members. They were all relatively young and lacked real battle stripes.
“Standby everyone, Command is deliberating.” A strong voice cut through everyone’s open mic and shut down the chatter.
Magus clutched at his controls, wondering what had just happened and who had access to such a technology.
Was it the General’s new weapon? Did he just scan everyone?
Stress crept through Magus’s mind as he surveyed his surroundings around his small ship. He had to succeed! There would only be one shot like this!
---
-Aboard the Tela Command Ship-
“We are practically in a rout. Several of our ships have simply been sterilized of operable cr. For the first time in forever, we have lost Tela lives in battle. Additionally, a new kind of weapon has been deployed on the battlefield, one with which we know next to nothing about. The Xeath are screaming that someone used illegal mental intrusion technology and claim that it is a war crime. The odd thing about this new weapon is that every Tela troop also felt the effects. This whole situation is a catastrophe for the Tela.” The Commander reported to his superiors.
“Understood, all weapons are allowed. Kill as needed.” The Commander repeated before connecting to the U’lennea Mercenary Commander. “You are free to do as you will. Use whatever weapons you desire.”
“May we also claim spoils?”
“Yes, the Tela High Command doesn’t care what happens here as long as it is remembered as a day of terror for those who fought against us. Try to secure the artifact if you can but destroy all opposition and observers.”
“With pleasure.”
---
“Ok! First issue: We need to get ahold of all of the Lost Ancient Pods and to protect them from any damage!” I said after a few moments of everyone hanging on to me for dear life. Meditati tilted her head to the side quizzically before answering against my shoulder, not lessening her grip around mine and George’s necks in the slightest. “They are currently on their way here and should arrive in a little while. The Skism Sentinel kinda tipped off everyone to how important they are after it intercepted your Void Seedlings, and we grabbed them as quickly as we could. The LOW tried to obtain them, but they were not fast enough.”
“Good! Good…” I said as I closed my eyes and simply hugged them all back. It felt good, no… it felt amazing to have so many friends who cared so much about me.
“So, you managed to get the Six back to working on interrupting the Void Seedling again? What exactly happened this time?” Tutor asked, her breath tickling my neck.
“Not exactly,” I said before I opened all of my memories to them, letting them have access to everything that I had been through. I could feel each of them as they absorbed and filtered through my recollections.
All of them except Invicta.
She had moved and was hovering an inch in front of my face.
I pried an eye open to find her puckering her lips with her eyes closed and her hands clasped behind her back.
Silly girl.
I leaned my head closer to give her a tender peck on the lips, causing her to turn beet red and to start to light up like a party sparkler. She languidly flew and plopped down on my head, causing my scalp to tickle as she sighed.
"After you were gone Meditati intercepted a communication broadcast from the LOW concerning what they had observed and what happened when a Seedling ran into the Skism Sentinel. It went after the other Seedlings, even arriving in Earth's orbital path to do so, and now seems to be tracking you via your Seedlings shell." Tutor said as she filled me in on everything that they had been up to since I was gone. She even confirmed my suspicion that it had been Ess via a swarm body that the Leva King had encountered. She caught me up to date with where my current body was in relation to the battle. They had sent it in the other direction, thinking to keep it safe and away from the main body of the Sentinel while moving in random patterns to hopefully confuse the Sentinel’s extension.
I could feel that Nurse had a truly massive amount of swarm following in my body’s wake like a royal escort and while acting on instinct I chose to divert their collective path and to guide them all directly towards the event and war location. There was no harm in being excessively prepared given that General Magus seemed to already be using gold cr.
“So that is what happened,” Meditati said when they all got to the part where the Designer had dissected me.
“Indeed.”
“I thought we were all going to die. It felt like we, you, and everything that bound us together was getting ripped apart.” George said as he stepped back, leaving his hand on my shoulder.
“You encountered a Designer.” Nurse whispered in awe.
“Yes, no, I don’t know. It was more like I got an answering machine with how the situation went.” I said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Meditati said as she finally released me and stepped back. “I would guess that each syllable was tailor-spoken to guide, manipulate, or lead you where it wanted you to go. It all depends on how you see its machinations. Believe me, I would know. Not allowing someone the right to ask questions takes out many equations that it might have to account for. This way, you are only running on a script that it let you have."
“Well, it is pretty messy out there. I am not sure how anything could account for the mess that is taking place.” I said as I noted that the outside world was practically frozen, giving us as much time as we needed for our reunion.
“So! You are free and all better now?” Tutor asked as everyone started to unwrap me in their embrace.
“I guess? I don’t think I would be able to come back like this if it wasn’t the case. The Six can’t reach me anymore.” I said as I brought up a visual of my tiny ant-like body. It still seemed to be the same size and appearance. It was also still trapped inside the invisible shell of the Void Seedling.
“Oh yeah! That Leva King is a jerk!” Invicta suddenly exclaimed from atop my head. “He totally wouldn’t listen to reason! Sublimis wants to bite his tail!”
“Invicta. Look through his memories. It will fill you in on several things.” George said softly.
“Fine… oh.”
I could feel her roll about on the top of my head for several seconds as she mulled over what she had learned from my memories. It was slightly distracting and became even more distracting when she grabbed my hairline above my forehead and pulled herself across so that her little Barbie-sized face could get in front of my eyes.
“So that means you have new weapons now?!?” She asked with glowing excited eyes.
I laughed. Out of all of my memories, that was the sole thing that she focused on. I reached up and retrieved her gently, sitting her on my shoulder and leaving my arm bent so that I could hold her legs in place.
“So it would seem. They will probably come in hand in the next few moments, what with General Magus already having gold cr.” Meditati said.
“Can you please harden the shell of the Skii ship?” Nurse asked.
“You mean you can’t?”
“No, it is locked. I can’t access it, wait, now I can. What did you do?”
“Huh, I guess the Designer wanted to be sure that these powers were only used with my consent. I had to will you the ability.” I said as I felt out the abilities inside me. They were oddly different than before, as though he had made them more a part of me than before. As I thought of them, little descriptions popped into my mind and described what each one was and what it could do.
All except the last one. Corruption, the ability that the Designer had said that he had removed and swapped for another one, was just an odd mishmash of symbols in the language of the Designer. Seeing that made me realize that Meditati was correct, the Designer was playing a game with me and had decided to keep me in the dark. There was no way that a being with his intellect couldn’t have at least tried to describe what the ability did and what triggered it.
He had left a Trojan horse inside me.