Eradicator

by Chris Fox

  “Only if someone finds out,” I countered. Yes, I was really trying to get gods to break the law. “Listen, if you think you can handle the situation then tell me so and I’ll take the three days to fly back. But if my first officer is right, you guys are getting your asses handed to you, and Necrotis is going to come out on top, and the Yantharan people will pay the price. If the Word shows up we can maybe scare her off, assuming we can’t just take her down once and for all.”

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  Voria finally spoke, but her distaste was clear. “He’s not wrong, Nara. You could guide the ship, and then translocate away the instant you arrive. You’d only be in the system for the narrowest of intervals, and I have to imagine that if it ever came to light they would forgive the transgression in exchange for saving the planet.”

  “Let’s say I agree.” She folded her arms and fluffed her wings behind her. I noted some definite similarities between the Wyrm’s shifted form and Nara’s new demonic form. Both had wings and a tail, but were otherwise close to human. “The first problem I see is getting me to the Word. If I translocate I can be there now, but then I can’t translocate back home after moving the Word. I’d be in the Yanthara system a lot longer than a few moments. I’d be there for the whole combat.”

  “What about Aran?” Voria got out in a rush. “Perhaps he can take you to Jerek. Then you are free to translocate home.”

  Nara shook her head slowly as she rejected the suggestion. “That might work, but that would leave Aran stranded in Krox space. They hate him, and if they learned he was there might attack on sight. That could get very messy.”

  “Is there another god strong enough to translocate somewhere on that demonic corpse you dwell upon?” Visala asked. She hadn’t said much, though her hawkish gaze had followed the entire conversation. “Someone that the Krox might find a more acceptable short term guest?”

  “I can’t recommend their hospitality.” I scraped at my still healing armor. “They tried to kill me at least three times under the guise of ‘training’. I’m not sure I’d trust them not to murder anyone you send.”

  Nara shook her head sadly, clearly out of solutions. “Kazon could, but we can’t risk him. Malila could, but she’d bring an army and burn Nebiat to ash.”

  “Whatever you intend to do, figure it out swiftly.” Voria glanced behind her one more time, and when she turned back to us her face had paled. “Frit and Necrotis are beginning their duel.”

  * * *

  Interlude VIII - Rules of the Game

  Necrotis floated in space across from her mighty opponent, and realized that had they been left to a proper battle that Frit was very nearly her equal in terms of raw divine strength.

  If not for the additional worship that her good works throughout the sector had wrought for her, then the fire goddess would have eclipsed her.

  Frit wore no weapon, nor eldimagus. Her body blazed with power, and Necrotis sensed the strength growing within the fire goddess, presaging the attack before her opponent officially began the duel.

  A beam of flame thicker than a starship blazed from the god’s hand and streaked toward Necrotis. She made no move to defend herself, instead letting the divine spell slam into her own divinely empowered wards.

  The spell discolored the outer rings, but they held, and returned to full strength a moment before fading from view.

  “You’ve tried your strongest divine attack.” Necrotis extended a hand and opened a void pocket. She withdrew her spellblade, the slender rapier still a potent artifact and eldimagus, despite having been forged from magitech and coming from her old life. “A time honored tradition. You have taken my measure. Had I dodged you’d have learned something about me. Had I countered it, you’d have learned something else entirely. You have faced opponents who could have done both. Xal’Aran, the demon you will one day face in combat should you best me here, would have dodged. Nebiat, if she lived and still possessed Krox’s power, would have countered the spell. But for me to do either of those things I’d have to fear your spell in the first place.”

  Necrotis blurred forward, countless souls dissolving into fuel as her stored spell granted her the Divine Alacrity spell, one of the most commonly used during duels between lesser gods.

  Her blade flashed through the space between them, growing to be a full kilometer long as the weapon began to more resemble a whip. Frit dodged, but too slowly, and the blade hummed past her head and separated a river of hair on the right side of her head.

  Rage overtook those eyes and the war goddess screamed. Power flowed from her, void and fire mixed into pure voidflame. The goddess breathed it as a Wyrm might, and the fire discolored her wards, and then broke them entirely.

  Necrotis slid into the spirit realm, darted upward, then opened another tear and emerged back into normal space. She had a split second before Frit located her, and in that moment she readied a divine counterspell.

  Frit turned in her direction, and flung a disintegrate from one open palm. The spell swam through the black, adjusting course in a way no normal disintegrate could, and Necrotis ripped a bit from her own soul and hurled it at the spell.

  To her delight the disintegrate mistook the soul construct for her, and vaporized a minuscule spectral remnant.

  Frit finally began to realize that pure offense could not win, that brute force would avail her little. And, as Necrotis had known she must, the goddess finally tended to her own defenses. She began sketching spirit sigils as she readied a powerful ward, but Necrotis flung the counterspell she’d readied and the ward shattered.

  Necrotis leaned from the tear and flung a Greater Spirit bolt that slammed into the fire goddess’s leg as she attempted to dodge. The magic crackled through her, and she loosed a pained scream through the cosmos.

  Frit’s gaze locked on Necrotis, and she stretched out a palm. A phoenix shrieked in the black, larger than a cruiser, and flapped purple-black wings comprised of pure voidflame as its intelligent eyes settled on Necrotis.

  The creature winged toward her, and when she attempted to slip back through the tear, into the spirit realm’s protective embrace, the creature’s beak snapped down on her right wrist and ripped off Necrotis’s hand. The infernal creature wolfed it down as she escaped into the spirit realm, and moved to launch another unexpected attack.

  Necrotis stifled her fury. She still bore her original body, marvelously preserved, and that had belonged to her in life. Not her sword hand, thankfully, but one needed an offhand to balance themselves during combat. She could replace it, but she’d never get the shade of skin just right. It would always be someone else’s hand. Only with life could she truly restore it, and that was anathema to her now.

  Frit would pay for that. And pay dearly.

  Necrotis replaced her blade in the void pocket, and then wove an illusion of herself, a normal one rather than spending divinity to enhance it. She opened a tear and the illusion lunged through.

  As expected, the phoenix swooped down and attacked. Necrotis flung a binding, and soulshackled the creature. It shrieked in rage as she took its will, and turned it back at its master.

  Frit almost casually lobbed a disintegrate, which removed the creature she herself had summoned from the battlefield. Once more they faced each other on equal footing, though only Frit had scored a true blow.

  Were viewers scoring their match, Frit would clearly have been winning, and as one would expect from a young combatant, when they began to win, relief entered them. Confidence entered them. They believed they understood the parameters of a fight, and that they could win it if they only did the right sequence of actions.

  But Frit had never known the rules of the game she played. She’d made many incorrect assumptions. That Necrotis cared a shred for honor. That Necrotis fought alone. And that this was a duel, rather than a public execution.

  Another tear opened between the spirit realm and this one, but nowhere near Necrotis. Tuat ste
pped through in his shifted form, no taller than Frit, and directly in front of her when he could have run her through from behind before she became aware. He could have come as a dragon, and devoured her whole. Instead he chose the least impressive entrance, to her frustration.

  In that instant Frit could have translocated, and saved herself, but she turned to study Tuat with confusion. At least some would have come from anyone who intervened in such a duel, but having that person wear the face of someone you were familiar with? Tuat and Inura had been nearly identical, and Necrotis saw the confusion in Frit’s eyes.

  Then Tuat struck. He’d been the galaxy’s master swordsman for a large swathe of history and Frit, with all her destructive power, had not. Tuat’s scimitar sliced off one arm at the elbow, then the other. Both limbs spun away leaking flaming droplets of blood as the goddess screamed, but Tuat spun around and brought his blade across her throat, ending the cry.

  Frit launched backwards and avoided full decapitation, but the wound was deep and more blood sprayed into the void.

  Necrotis’s hand came up, and she flung a binding at the fire goddess. Frit’s will quickly overpowered the spell, but it left her vulnerable.

  Tuat flapped his wings as he swept down on her, and impaled her through the heart with his eye-wounding sword. The unholy metal drank of her essence, and as the sector watched in horror, as reporters and cameras captured the terrible event, Tuat ripped Frit’s soul from her body, and drank it into his evil blade.

  Then the Wyrm began to shift, and he grew, and grew, and grew as perhaps the sector’s largest surviving dragon snapped up Frit’s fire magic, and dove back into the spirit realm.

  Necrotis waited for the tear to close behind him, and then spun slowly in space to face the doomed world below her. She stared out at the ragged Confederate fleet, and resolved to end them all here, now.

  That would be the swiftest victory. Destroy the other Great Ships, and devour every soul in this system until the Wrath brimmed with reserves.

  Nothing remained that could stop her now, not without the aid of the demons, and they would not be welcomed here.

  The Flame of Knowledge warmed up its main cannon, and a spear of fire lanced into her wards. This time the wards easily shunted the spell, as the Flame wasn’t being wielded by a powerful goddess. Necrotis rolled her head back and laughed.

  She had won.

  21

  Translocate

  My idea to get us to the fight was based on a single line from a post-war documentary I’d watched not two weeks before my planet disintegrated. Nara had remained on the missive, as had Visala, so I floated the plan.

  “I remember hearing that Narlifex is a god in its own right.” I glanced up at Ardaki. “Can the sword translocate? Could you borrow the sword, have it bring you to me, and then you take the ship to Yanthara? That way you’re only there for a few seconds.”

  Nara’s eyes widened and she delivered a delighted smile that was ruined by the demonic tail raised over one shoulder like a scorpion. “That’s perfect. Aran won’t mind, and I can have the sword back to him in an hour. Get your ship prepared. I’ll be there shortly.”

  That left just Visala still on the missive, and I realized she would be critical for what was to come. “Can you get to the secondary bridge and organize the mages in the matrices? We’re going to need every bit of firepower, and soon. I’ll see that you have anything you need.”

  “I will see it done.” She snapped a dragonflight era salute, and killed the missive. Much more polite than I expected, but given the imminent combat I suppose even she could put aside grudges.

  I turned back to the bridge crew, but all were doing their jobs, and I realized there wasn’t much to do until combat began. I could stand here and issue the occasional order, but was superfluous until we needed someone in the main matrix firing the spellcannon.

  I wouldn’t even have to worry about defenses as many of our matrices throughout the ship were piloted by competent mages who planned to do nothing but create wards or launch counterspells.

  For the first time all of Bortel’s and Visala’s training was about to be tested. They’d done an amazing job preparing my ship, and now, hopefully, I was about to reap the benefits.

  A moment later I sensed a change in the air to my right, and glanced over to see Nara appear, the naked blade of a demonic falchion cradled in one hand. I could feel the power, and the malevolence, flow from the blade. This was a tool of war, not so different from Dez.

  …Who appeared completely enamored with the sword. Something like lust pulsed from the pistol as it beheld Narlifex. So much power. Want to be like that. How can Dez be like that?

  You will never be like that, Ardaki’s tone raked Dez as surely as any claws might have. That weapon has tasted the blood of multiple gods. Worthy of being belted upon a god of war.

  I tuned out the weapon drama, and offered Ardaki to Nara. “You grip the staff, and then translocate just like you would personally. That will fuel the vessel, and move us.”

  Nara nodded grimly and accepted the weapon, who said nothing as it passed to the goddess. I could still feel Ardaki linked to me somehow, though I didn’t fully grasp how that link functioned, or how it might be broken.

  Guardian had warned me not to trust anyone with the staff, but I couldn’t pass up using a weapon that might save us on the off chance that it would somehow be used against us. This was my chance to help end the war for good, before it really got started in earnest.

  Nara closed her eyes and the entire ship moved. I wouldn’t have known, except that the scry-screen abruptly shifted to show the Yantharan system. We’d appeared behind the Flame of Knowledge, not far from the combat with the Maker’s Wrath.

  Proximity alarms sounded as smaller craft adjusted their courses to vacate our landing zone, but they faded quickly and it left me staring at our very immediate problem.

  The Maker’s Wrath hovered in space before us, and both the Spellship and the Flame were delivering salvos from primary and secondary cannons. The Wrath weathered the assault, and I couldn’t see any direct damage, beyond a few gaps in the wards that were repaired too quickly to exploit. If you launched a spell, by the time it crossed the distance, that part of the shield had been repaired, even if a gap had opened elsewhere.

  “Captain,” a tech barked, maybe sixteen. “Incoming missive from the Spellship.”

  “Put it up!” I faced the scry-screen even while ducking under the matrix’s spinning rings. I needed to be ready to fight.

  Voria’s tired face filled the screen, and a moment later another panel appeared with Kek’s flaming visage, the arachnidrake rendered strangely upon the scry-screen.

  “Where’s Frit?” Nara and I chorused, her with alarm, and me simply with confusion. Then I remembered she’d been stalling Necrotis.

  Voria didn’t say anything, but she looked away and shook her head. Kek’s flaming visage quivered in what I thought might represent grief. “Friend Frit is…gone. During the reign of the dragonflights the Wyrm of Death was widely feared. His name was stricken from memory, and no mention of him occurs in the last hundred millennia. Yet I believe we have witnessed his presence today, and that he has claimed Frit, and taken her soul, and her power, into the realm of the dead. She is lost to us.”

  “No,” Nara murmured beside me. Tears flowed unheeded down her cheeks. “Show me.”

  Voria waved a hand with a sympathetic nod, and footage of the battle began to play in the corner of the scry-screen. I winced as a figure very much like Inura stepped from the spirit realm. He bore a weapon that burned my eyes to look at, and filled me with dread.

  He played with Frit as a mouse does its food, maliciously enjoying her suffering as he ended her. The way the weapon wrenched her soul from her body reminded me uncomfortably of the Devourer of Hope.

  I began to tremble when this Inura-clone transformed into a Wyrm. He wasn’t as large as Virkonna had been. He didn’t quite rival a Great Ship. But he was the l
argest Wyrm living, that I knew of, and large enough to score a continent with his claws should a world upset him.

  We. Kill! Narlifex’s deep voice thrummed through the room, violence given form.

  “Yes, but not today.” Nara stared up at the scry-screen. “I can’t be part of this. I hope Yanthara doesn’t pay the price for their arrogance that I fear they’re about to.”

  And then she was gone, along with Narlifex. Voria stared down at me, along with Kek, and the three of us now had the unenviable task of figuring out a way to salvage things.

  “Voria, where do you want us?” I grabbed the matrix’s stabilizing ring, and fought the tremors from the adrenaline. This was about to become real.

  “Join the assault on Necrotis. Fire your cannon…everything you have.”

  “Acknowledged.” I tapped all four void sigils on the matrix, and fully bonded with the Word for the first time in weeks. My senses became his senses, and vice versa. I could see the system around us, and feel the many mages powering the ship.

  There were gaps in me…problems, but I felt more complete than I had in an age. More powerful. I was a Great Ship. I closed my eyes and tapped into the intercoms. “Attention, all personnel, this is your captain speaking. Yes, I really exist, and yes, I’m on the ship. We’ve just appeared in the skies over Yanthara, and are about to engage Necrotis and the Maker’s Wrath, alongside the rest of our forces. Your prayers matter. Believe in our success. Pray for our success. Pray that our ship stomps a mud hole in that wench. Captain out.”

  Then I focused on the ship’s sensors, on the Maker’s Wrath. On my target. I willed the Word to fill with power, to summon a void bolt, one amplified not just by the ship, but by the worship of the crew within it. Seventeen thousand students had survived Kemet. This was our home, and we would fight for it.