Tutor and George looked ragged as Nurse made her way through the swarm defensive layers of the shuttle and crept invisibly along the ceiling. The swarm had, as far as she was capable, perfected using Manifest and was ready for the next salvo from the General. For some reason, probably due to Kevin’s earlier combative display and the subsequent tragedy, the General’s cannons had been silent.
Tutor was finishing up arranging the delivery of the rescued Blidda to their fleeing ships, her actions uncharacteristically mechanical and distant.
Well, those Blidda that could be moved.
There were some, namely those rescued that were hooked up to the U'lennea's system, that would not survive any further movement. Even Nurse with her swarm couldn't disarm some of U'lennea's cellular self-destruct sequences that occurred when the subjects were disconnected from their feeds. The children, at least, were safe and were being cared for with great tenderness.
Nurse didn't bother to manifest, she simply moved along the ceiling to place herself in a corner. She didn't want to be seen or forced into a conversation about how she had failed.
She didn’t want anything now.
Kevin's swarm was nothing like the Hive Mother's. She dominated her swarm with massive oversight and strict control, while Kevin shared himself freely with his swarm, giving each of them near autonomy with all of his memories and power. But probably because of how Kevin's mind was built, his swarm, for the most part, acted like one body, working together toward his common vision.
They all lacked the ability to act as a Monarch. His swarm was not given the directive to ever become more than what he had given them. They would never supersede him or morph into anything else but his vision of himself, his character, and his dreams. He had, in his way, designed his perfect vision of his swarm.
As every Monarch should.
Kevin hadn’t done the same with Nurse. Sure, he had shared himself with her completely, yet when it came to commands, objectives, and independence, Kevin had been completely hands off with her, letting her choose what she wanted to be.
As a swarm Nurse, her initial desires had been to be the best healing drone possible. Yet as time went on, more of his emotions, physical needs, and their shared experiences had been absorbed by her need to serve him.
Now she had no Monarch to serve.
No best friend to be with.
No…
She was alone.
She could become something greater… yet…
Nurse watched as Tutor’s hands shook as she adjusted the settings of each of the children’s pods, optimizing them for transport. George kept looking off into the distance with a thousand mile stare. “Here goes the last of them.” She said as the pods were moved quickly into their delivery craft home. Her gaze watched them go before she took note that George still seemed lost, looking in another direction.
“What?”
“Invicta is coming, and she’s very angry,” he muttered to Tutor as a resounding click echoed through the bay—the final piece of the Skii’s intricate device snapping into place. Much of their work had involved constructing machines to build other machines, an endless cycle of assembly that led to even stranger creations. Only after reaching this advanced stage had they finally printed and assembled the enigmatic device now before them, each piece fitting perfectly like a puzzle.
To George's practiced eye, the device didn’t appear to have any clear function. It featured a massive seat, cryptic displays, antennas, and a few buttons that looked as though they had grown into one another. The displays produced only gibberish, and the antennas seemed to lack any specific frequency they monitored. But when a Skii— the only one of their kind who could sense future events—settled like a toothpick into the seat and linked the device to the ship’s hull, the machine powered up fully, finally coming to life.
A rugged pulse surged through the vessel, rhythmic and ancient, like the heartbeat of something very old. The Skii sitting in the middle of its device slumped, almost appearing to fall asleep as the pulses of the device vibrated up through its arms and legs and caused the tip of its head to flutter.
Those present watched the Skii, waiting for something more to happen.
“Is that it?” George asked as he studied the readings, finding that the monitors were using all spectrums of light and seemed to ripple with each pulse. It was quite mesmerizing yet without a frame of reference or key for each color the data was rather useless.
As the moments continued and with nothing further happening, Nurse’s attention was drawn to the distant expanse of swarm that was rapidly approaching. It wouldn’t be too long until they would arrive and finish this battle once and for all.
Nurse tried to summon some feeling—satisfaction, even a hint of rage—at the thought of obliterating the U’lennea and erasing the General’s Citadel from existence. But nothing surfaced. Not a flicker.
Yes, they had killed the only person that meant anything to her, but they didn’t get to become something to her. Not even a memory.
The U’lennea were too insignificant to register against the vastness of the swarm’s intent. The swarm would ensure that every last trace of the race that had killed their Monarch would vanish. If harvesting every star in the sky were needed to replicate an endless swarm, it would be done. Their skism weapons didn’t matter.
The U’lennea would be erased—forever.
As for the remaining fleets, their ships would be cast aside, cleared from the area. The relic would belong to the swarm alone.
A prickling sensation crept over Nurse’s senses, like a rising static charge, growing stronger with each passing moment.
"Not forward, nor back, but through the space where endings meet. Survival lies in brushing death's hand without grasping it," murmured the strange Skii as his kin approached, each one touching the machine briefly before moving away.
Nurse divided her awareness across every swarm, scanning for anything out of place. Something felt wrong.
Outside, ships from various fleets were still retreating from the battlefield, having witnessed the U’lennea’s brutal display of forbidden weaponry. None dared test them in their insanity. Even the Tela were retreating hastily. Decisively, the U’lennea ships turned toward the relic, advancing as though assured of their victory.
Meanwhile, the Solar Citadel had shifted its focus entirely, its massive guns now targeting the U’lennea vessels, as though it sought to wrest the prize from their grasp. Every barrel tracked the receding enemy ships, ready to fire.
Nurse’s gaze caught something odd—a thread extending from the Time’s flesh, lazily drifting in their direction before snapping back as though reabsorbed. She blinked, trying to focus on that fleeting image, but it slipped from her awareness as though she hadn’t really seen it, surfacing again only with the rhythmic beat of the device’s heart-like pulse.
Then she saw it again: a faint, barely perceptible strand, extending from the flesh of Time’s arm and speeding toward them. The Skii in the machine had raised its left hand, as if summoning the thread to him. The last of the other Skii touched the device and stepped away, moving to the corner.
They lay down one by one, forming a silent mound. By their stillness, she could tell—they were dead.
“Tutor, something is wrong!” Nurse announced as she manifested, absorbing swarm from the ceiling to drop down to the floor in her human form.
Energy crackled across the machine and the oddly glistening Skii who sat at its center. Tutor’s head began to turn towards Nurse when she heard her land on the deck, moving painfully slowly as the energy rippled and began to warp the air in strange ways.
A needle of something pierced the wall and, for a moment, touched the outstretched hand of the Skii before withdrawing as though it had never been there.
Nurse found herself back in the corner of the ceiling, as if rewound to that moment, watching as the last of the Skii reached out to touch the device, giving their life force to the Skii with the outstretched arm.
“What is happening?!” Nurse yelled, dropping to the floor and pulling swarm from the deck to manifest her human form. She watched as the final Skii turned and walked to the corner, laying themselves down to complete the funeral pile.
“What are yoooooooooooo…” Tutor started to ask as both her and George’s heads snapped in Nurse’s direction. Her voice dropped in pitch with each moment that passed until she no longer spoke, simply stood frozen with her mouth open.
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The needle reached the Skii’s outstretched hand once more, and this time, it remained attached to his palm before changing unexpectedly. Nurse only just managed to catch the image of a bubble inflating from the hand before it grew too fast and simply didn’t exist.
The viewports and displays were dark, but Nurse could see outside the vessel still through the eyes of the swarm, revealing that the vessel’s surroundings had shifted dramatically in an instant.
Outside, a vast warping field encircled the shuttles, rippling like the surface of a soap bubble. A thin tendril stretched from this bubble, impossibly far, and connected to Time’s desiccated flesh.
George and Tutor stood frozen, their eyes fixed on Nurse, still questioning. Out of curiosity, Nurse jumped into VR, only to find the three AI staring at her intently.
“What is going on?” Meditati blurted out.
“We were cut from our manifested bodies. It was as though they abruptly lost viability as hosts,” George stated, pinging connections to the cr-bots he’d been using. “Hmm… the connection is gradually reestablishing. There was interference of some kind.”
“I believe it has something to do with this,” Nurse said, sharing the brief moments they’d missed.
“He’s aging!” Meditati exclaimed, as Tutor and George reconnected to their bodies, squinting as they adjusted to the reconnection. Tutor immediately approached the pile of Skii, while George moved cautiously toward the machine, careful not to touch it.
Sure enough, the strange Skii was visibly changing.
“Time, thin as a whisper—yet it endures,” he murmured, his form decaying before their eyes, skin mottling and flaking away with each passing second.
“My connection to the outside world feels distorted,” Meditati remarked, prompting George to check on Invicta, noticing her heightened, almost frantic state. “It’s as if this machine is warping time around us.” She manifested in the room, arms crossed and one hand under her chin as she studied the rapidly aging Skii. “It isn’t dying, though,” she observed, watching flakes of its skin fall softly to the floor.
“These are all dead,” Tutor murmured, gently touching each of the Skii in the pile and checking their vitals. “Drained of all life, yet their bodies remain intact.”
“What do you mean, it isn’t dying?” George cast a skeptical look before heading for the door. “With that much decay, it’ll fall apart soon. I’ll be right back—I need to check on something.” He slipped into the adjoining shuttle, keeping the comm link open as he moved purposefully, heading toward the Personal Live Matrix where their virtual forms and systems operated. Concern twisted at him: if Invicta had been outside the zone, whatever was warping time might have affected her.
“It is growing,” Meditati announced through the link, her voice a quiet hum in his ear. Her tone unsettled him as he reached the storage shelves, which were in an unexpected state of chaos.
“What have you been up to, Invicta?” George muttered, pushing aside clutter on the shelf that he was sure had been neatly arranged. Amid the disarray were prototypes—clearly, weapon designs she had been building—and, finally, he spotted the top of the Personal Live Matrix half-buried under more equipment.
“There you are,” he grumbled, pulling the shell-like structure toward him. Oddly, it felt heavier than he remembered, and as he drew it forward, something else shifted further back on the shelf.
He hissed in frustration, spinning the Matrix around, only to find tethers trailing from it, connecting several heavily modified Alpha Cubes to its core.
“What have you done now?” he whispered, fingers brushing over the tangled connections with a mix of exasperation and awe.
“George, get back here now!” Meditati’s urgent shout crackled over the comms. George dropped the cubes and sprinted back to the main shuttle. The sight awaiting him was just as Meditati had warned: the Skii was growing, casting off layers of skin as it slowly expanded. It now loomed over the machine’s displays, its thickening arm still extended and connected to the tendril reaching toward Time.
Though the Skii’s transformation was staggering, it was the tendril itself that riveted their attention. The connection between the machine and Time’s arm had thickened and was now vibrating with a strange energy, almost pulsating in sync with the device.
“Look at the monitors!” Meditati pointed, her voice laced with concern. “The arm—it's vanishing.”
“Everything’s speeding up,” George muttered, eyes darting to the flickering displays.
“My link to the outside world is slipping…” Meditati added as the connection crackled with interference.
“The strand is pulsing—”
Suddenly, the view outside rippled, and reality itself seemed to warp.
“What just happened?” Tutor’s voice was a soft, shocked murmur. The screens and viewports flickered, revealing a world beyond the vessel that had transformed dramatically in an instant.
Outside, the scene had devolved into a living hellscape.
--- Invicta’s laughter echoed across the comms, mingling with screams of rage as she tore through space, her erratic path a blur against the towering monolith of the recombined Solar Citadel. The massive structure loomed ahead, its form a grotesque monument to war—hull plating buckled and torn, revealing a network of scorched metal and sparking conduits beneath. Jagged rents exposed entire decks that had been sheared away, each wound telling of the relentless assault it had endured for hours, perhaps even days. Yet despite the devastation, the Citadel’s arsenal remained potent; it was ringed by colossal, multi-barreled turrets that spat violent streams of cr in every direction, daring anything alive to come within striking range.
Invicta weaved between the blasts with manic agility, maneuvering with a combination of reckless speed and flawless precision, her figure darting unpredictably through the deadly lattice of beams. Her taunting shrieks overlaid with laughter seemed to goad the Citadel itself, as though she’d turned the battle into some dark, chaotic dance where the line between predator and prey was all but gone.
Around them lay the remains of a battlefield long since abandoned by the factions that had dared to challenge the U’lennea’s supremacy. Ships that once thrummed with life and purpose now floated as derelict carcasses, cast adrift in the vastness, evidence of the vicious reprisal inflicted upon any who had sought a piece of the now exposed relic. Most of these vessels had tried to flee, retreating in desperation from the onslaught. But the marks along their broken hulls told a different story—deep slashes, torn panels, and shredded metals, as though some terrible, serrated weapon had cut through them in their final moments.
The true scope of the massacre was apparent: any who had resisted had been obliterated. Yet, strangely, amidst the destruction, there were signs of clemency. Dotted far off in the distance, like faint stars against a dark sky, were trails of glowing escape pods, still visible as they dwindled into the void. Against all odds, they had been permitted to flee, their eerie, blinking lights serving as distant reminders of a mercy that had been rare and brief.
They had been permitted to flee, but only after relinquishing everything they had brought into this space. A steep toll for their audacious quest to claim a piece of the relic, and a haunting reminder of the price of hubris.
But there was more.
Amid the chaos and the relentless tide of destruction, a new force had entered the fray. The vessels currently assaulting both Invicta and the Citadel were no longer familiar foes but rather bizarre, the cylindrical entities—the “tube ships” that had traveled through distant stars. Their movements were unnervingly virus-like and coordinated, each tube covering for others when any suffered critical damage. They pressed their assault with cold resilience, falling back and advancing with seamless teamwork, determined to outlast the defiance of Invicta and the Citadel.
But it was the heart of this star-scattered graveyard that drew the eye—and the nightmare waiting within. A grotesque horror had taken root at the epicenter of the battlefield, a living monstrosity that defied understanding. Kevin’s remaining swarm, having rushed in to provide aid, was locked in a savage struggle with this writhing, eldritch mass.
From within the pulsing, cosmic body of the creature, grotesque limbs, gaping orbs, and barbed tentacles erupted with rapid, chaotic violence. Each time a limb or eye burst forth, it met an immediate counter from Kevin's swarm, which attacked in unison, consuming each appendage before it could fully emerge. Yet the abomination was unrelenting—new growths erupted as fast as they were devoured, creating a cycle of creation and destruction that fed the creature's dark vitality, slowly pushing Kevin’s swarm back.
Amid the mass, twisted remnants of derelict ships were half-embedded in the thing’s pulsing form—proof that the strange tube ships, too, had fallen victim to this spreading monstrosity. Their metallic shells and fractured hulls were now part of the horror itself, subsumed into the shifting, writhing mass as though drawn into a sickly union. Some even still functioned, firing and pulsing with light in futility. The sight was both mesmerizing and terrifying: a battlefield transformed into a living nightmare, where even the unyielding tubes and Invicta's fierce defiance might soon be claimed by the cosmic abomination trying to grow at its core.
These newcomer tube vessels could morph, becoming fragmented forms—sleek and jagged, composed of shifting plates and ever-evolving weaponry. They moved with an uncanny speed and precision, darting between the arcs of Invicta’s defensive fire and the colossal blasts from the Citadel’s monolithic turrets. They fought like beings unbound by the limitations of flesh or metal, reshaping parts of themselves mid-battle, adapting as they sought weaknesses in both their opponents.
Their numbers were slowly growing as more came from the darkness of space, as though drawn to the battle from afar.
For Invicta, this new enemy was like facing a constantly shifting mirror. Every tactic she employed was met with an equal and opposite reaction, the enemy vessels reconfiguring to counter her every move. Each time she drove them back, they advanced with renewed aggression, their forms twisting in shapes that mocked and mirrored her maneuvers. And yet, she could feel their purpose—an unspoken intention that transcended mere survival.
No one else mattered to them.
Beams of green energy occasionally swept from the enemy's weapon ports, briefly slowing Invicta's movements before she blocked the drain with one of her pylons, shifting the energy flow to neutralizing the effect.
In the next instant, she pulsed with an intense red glow, as though reinvigorated by the confrontation itself. She surged forward, her reserves seemingly restored and even amplified, darting faster than before. The shift was abrupt, each new red pulse feeding her relentless charge with renewed strength. Invicta’s maneuvers were wild yet controlled, evading and countering the green beams as they fired in steady patterns, turning the battlefield into a vibrant, dangerous dance of clashing light.
The Solar Citadel, already battered and scarred, fared little better. General Magus had recalibrated the Citadel’s guns, which now targeted the newcomers as well with brutal accuracy. But even the Citadel’s awesome firepower could only hold them off momentarily. Each blast tore through their numbers, yet they reassembled like swarming insects, coalescing back into lethal shapes, filling the void as though their fallen were mere fragments to be absorbed and recycled.
Between the Citadel, Invicta, and this new wave of unyielding attackers, the battlefield had become a dance of chaos and desperation, an arena where alliances shifted in an instant and survival was measured in moments. The terrifying reality sank in: these new entities were not just another enemy. They were there to conquer and nothing, not a highly decorated Tela General, not an advanced war AI, nor an eldritch abomination phased them or would stand in their way.
Amidst it all, the abomination at the battlefield’s heart fought everyone and continued to try to expand, a monstrous convergence of madness that seemed to have limitless potential for growth.
The only remnants of the U’lennea’s armada could be seen pocked and embedded in the flesh of the abomination.
Whatever or whoever had created the monster had sealed their fates.