by Jacob Holo
“There are over a hundred of them,” Quennin said.
“I’ll send the archangels in,” Veketon said. “We’ll follow them in. Focus on the spawns first. We’ll deal with them, then the Disciples.”
“Vek, some of those things look—”
“Do not fear them! ATTACK!!!”
The archangels powered ahead, their reflective plate armor and glowing chaos shunts a stark contrast to the twisted black horde of chaos spawns. The two forces smashed into each other in a brutal melee. Spawns grappled with the archangels and tore them apart with arms and teeth. Archangels hacked through their foes with swords or blasted them into gooey bits with rifles and cannons.
Veketon dipped beneath a tumbling section of the Ziggurat ring and came upon a cluster of four spawns. They faced him and charged, black limbs quivering. Two of them held brass swords.
Veketon rushed the lead spawn and slashed upward. The lance cleaved it in two and so traumatized its flesh that veins burst across its cloven body, each rupture spilling streamers of red fluid into space.
A chaos spawn crashed into him and wrapped its appendages around his arms. A limb tipped with a human hand clutched his head and squeezed. Parts of its oily body opened, revealing a human eye behind rows of gnashing black teeth.
Veketon yanked his arm free and thrust the lance into the spawn’s eye. Its “mouth” went wide in a silent scream, and its body bloated outward and exploded in a flash of dark gore.
Quennin eviscerated another chaos spawn, then dashed forward and slashed across the last one nearby. Seven limbs floated away, one of them holding the spawn’s Ziggurat sword. The spawn tried to back away, but Quennin shoved her glaive into its slathering mouth so deep it punched out the other side. Golden fluid gurgled out of the impaled beast.
Quennin brought it close and kicked it off her glaive.
“Nicely done,” Veketon said.
“As grotesque as they are, they die like anything else.”
Veketon quickly surveyed the battle. He was fast running out of archangels, but the Fellerossi fleets were adding their own fire to the mix, killing spawns at a distance with precise beam attacks. Loss rates between the archangels and spawns were comparable, though the Fellerossi continued to do well against the battered Disciple fleet. Negators on both sides ensured no one would run from this fight.
He checked the positions of the three Disciples.
“Riviel has become separated from the others. Now’s our chance!”
Veketon diverted twelve archangels to form a protective screen around him and Quennin. The archangels wouldn’t do much against the Disciple, but they could keep the area clear of chaos spawns.
Veketon descended beneath the Ziggurat ring and darted through an area even more heavily choked with debris than above. The plasma vortex throbbed wildly below, and the Gate undulated violently above. Streamers of liquid silver splashed across debris fragments and, a few times, cut through the warships in active combat.
Riviel sped through a cluttered field of brass fragments. A group of six archangels had maneuvered below the spawn swarm in order to snipe from a safe distance. Riviel rushed into their ranks and cut them down effortlessly.
She turned from the freshly hewn archangel bodies, faced the two thrones, and accelerated towards them.
“This is it,” Veketon said.
“I’m ready,” Quennin said.
“Take her down!”
Quennin reached Riviel first and thrust in, but the Disciple blocked the attack with her shield. The tip of the Quennin’s glaive skidded across, sending out a shower of black sparks. Riviel brought her broadsword around and hacked into the throne’s exposed side.
“Ah!” Quennin gasped.
Veketon crashed into Riviel like a kinetic torpedo. She brought her broadsword around just in time to block Veketon’s own attack, and the two tumbled, locked precariously together with sword and lance grinding against one another.
Veketon grabbed Riviel’s forearm and sank his talons deep into the seraph’s flesh. Black energized blood dribbled from the wound as they continued to spin. He clenched his grip, found the bones within the seraph’s forearm, and twisted them brutally.
He snapped Riviel’s bones, ripped off her forearm, and flung it aside. Her sword floated out of a dead grip. Riviel pulled up her shield, and Veketon raised the lance high over his head.
Her shield had already been brutally mauled in the previous battle, and Veketon smashed the lance against it with all his might. Ziggurat alloys softened and melted. The lance punched past it, stabbed into Riviel’s side, and broke through her back.
Distantly, Veketon heard a woman scream in terrible pain. He twisted the lance and drove it deeper.
Riviel let go of her shield and pulled at the lance piercing her stomach. She spread her wings, trying desperately to break away, but Quennin swooped in behind her and slashed through three of her wings. They floated away, fluid pulsing from open wounds.
Riviel raised her legs and kicked Veketon hard enough to break free. Her remaining wings flashed with energy, and she retreated towards the plasma vortex.
“The other Disciples!” Quennin said urgently. “They’re coming!”
“Press the attack! We kill her now!”
Veketon flooded his halo-wings with power and dove after Riviel. With her wounds, he closed the distance quickly and caught hold of one of her wings. She tried to break away, but Veketon dug into the seraph’s flesh with his talons.
Bones snapped and muscles tore. With a sharp jerk, Veketon pulled her wing off. Riviel fell away, missing four of six wings and one of her arms, fluid pouring uncontrollably from her wounds. She righted herself and flew around one of the huge brass panels orbiting the plasma vortex.
Behind it, the plasma vortex glowed hot and wild, the mechanisms holding it in check damaged in the battle. Streamers of plasma leaked out, splashing against nearby debris from the Ziggurat ring.
Veketon followed Riviel in, and Quennin looped around from the other side. They converged on Riviel, the white furnace of the plasma vortex a wall of heat to one side.
Riviel stopped when she saw Quennin approaching from the front, turned around, but froze when she spotted Veketon coming at her from the rear. That short moment of indecision gave Veketon enough time to close in. He shot past, his lance cleaving off the last of her wings. She spun away into the vortex.
Veketon did nothing to halt her fatal plunge. Quennin came alongside him, and they watched Riviel descend into the plasma vortex. Her black seraph was a dimming shadow against the searing furnace.
As wounded as she was, her barrier held out for an impressive number of seconds. Scorching currents carried her deeper into the vortex’s superheated core, and her barrier contracted.
Black armor vaporized. Flesh underneath crisped and burned. The seraph writhed within the roaring heat, and on the edge of thinking, Veketon heard Riviel’s death screams, carried over to him by the subtle connections of chaos energy that bound all pilots.
He turned away from the vortex. Riviel’s death brought him no pleasure, but that didn’t make it any less necessary. The only way he could prevent this Vayl’s forces from spewing into this universe was to kill every last one of his Disciples.
Riviel screams grew shrill and deafening, then suddenly stopped. The seraph’s barrier had failed completely. Its limbs withered to ash, and the charred husk disappeared from sight.
Veketon curved around the orbiting brass panel and flew away from the vortex.
“One down,” he said simply.
The other Disciple seraphs approached at high speed.
“Two to go.”
***
Quennin joined Veketon’s throne above the plasma vortex. She recalled the burning pain of Riviel’s sword impaling her back in Cathedral and watched the seraph disintegrate with a small degree of satisfaction.
High above her, Gate forces twisted and deformed the Ziggurat ring even further, and chunks of brass the
size of cities broke off.
Zophiel and Othaniel halted their advance, separated from the two thrones by a dozen wildly spinning brass fragments.
“You will pay with your lives for that!” Zophiel pointed his sword at Veketon. “I will kill you! I will tear you apart!”
“Then come over here and do it,” Veketon said calmly.
Twenty chaos spawns gathered behind Zophiel. With a quick hand gesture, he sent them speeding towards the thrones. Veketon released twelve archangels to meet them, and the two forces converged in a vicious melee.
Quennin tensed for the inevitable combat, but then Zophiel did something she had not expected. He spread his wings wide, turned, and shot off towards the broken Ziggurat ring.
“What’s he doing?” she asked.
“He’s going for a portal lance,” Veketon said. “Quick, after him!”
Quennin and Veketon accelerated after Zophiel, but soon chaos spawns swarmed over them. Quennin readied her chaos glaive and selected the first one swooping down at her. She swung upward, cleaved through three groping limbs, spun tightly, and hewed its writhing body in two. Thick fluid sprayed from its broken form.
“Break through, Quennin!” Veketon shouted. “Outrun them!”
Veketon slashed at two spawns. His lance barely touched them, and they burst like overripe fruit. The edges of his halo-wings flared with energy, and he sped through the closing spawn ranks. Quennin cut down another spawn and formed up behind him.
They approached one of the Ziggurat spikes no longer attached to the main ring. The section was now a brass cylinder, its ends twisted and crumpled. Zophiel was a black speck against its immense surface. He held a long shaft aloft in one hand, its length energized with dark lightning.
“No…” Veketon said.
“Know this, my ancestor!” Zophiel shouted. “Both of you will suffer before you die!”
“Here he comes,” Quennin said.
“We take him head on.”
Veketon charged in, and Zophiel met his challenge. Lance crashed against lance in a cataclysm of competing energies, but the two held their ground. Zophiel angled his wings, their edges burning with dark power, and Veketon spun his halo-wings at maximum, their circumferences brighter than the stars.
Quennin swung around to Zophiel’s side and thrust in with her glaive. He spread his wings wide and darted quickly upward. The tip of her glaive glanced off his calf’s Ziggurat armor. Veketon sped after him.
The two flew about in a frenzy of clashing lances and sparking energies, and Quennin struggled to find an opening where she could contribute. They sped through the debris field in an insane duel, oblivious to the world around them, twisting and swooping this way and that, clashing and breaking and clashing again.
Veketon and Zophiel fought in a dizzying blur of strike and counter-strike through jagged brass debris fields and around the twisted ruins of warships. Quennin looped around, trying to come at Zophiel from behind, but every time, he maneuvered to keep Veketon between them.
“I’ll handle him, Quennin!” Veketon shouted. “But watch out! Othaniel’s getting close!”
Quennin turned and spotted the black seraph rising through the debris field, its six-winged shadow silhouetted against the vortex below. Quennin fed power into her halo-wings and sped after the Disciple.
Othaniel flung her arm out, and a whip of energy snaked towards Quennin. She dodged hard to the right, but it swept around and came in from behind. Othaniel released a second whip, and the two converged on Quennin. She dove sharply, but the whips curved after her.
One of them struck her from behind in and entwined both halo-wings. In her mind’s eye, yellow damage indicators lit up within each ring. Othaniel had cracked both halo-wings. If they shattered, she’d be immobilized!
Quennin twisted in space, falling and slashing with her glaive. She cut through both whips, and they dissipated into black mist. Quennin righted herself and flew straight after Othaniel.
The seraph held its hands out, palms up, collecting black energy. Quennin rushed in, her glaive held behind her, and she swung it with terrible force. At the last moment, a black triangle of barrier energy appeared in front of Othaniel, and the glaive struck it in the center.
The triangle bowed inward, but Quennin drove her glaive deeper. Suddenly, the barrier shattered, and Quennin slashed across Othaniel’s chest, cutting a shallow groove that bled into space. But instead of retreating, Othaniel lunged and sank her talons into the throne’s shoulder.
“Gnh!” Quennin grunted, aware of her true flesh sizzling in the cockpit. She brought her glaive around, but Othaniel darted aside in a swift blur of motion.
Suddenly, Othaniel was behind her, slashing her talons across the halo-wings. More damage indicators appeared in her mind, red this time as a section of the secondary wing broke loose. She spun around and stabbed Othaniel in the stomach. With a twist of her glaive, she tore out an ugly chunk of flesh.
Othaniel dodged away, clutching her side. But despite her wounds, the Disciple still moved faster than any seraph Quennin had ever met.
Even faster than Seth.
Othaniel darted behind her again, and Quennin struggled to keep her defenses aligned. The Disciple lashed out with twin whips and entwined them around both halo-wings. Energy sizzled out of the contact points, and Othaniel harshly jerked them back. The whips strained against the halo-wings, but repeated focused attacks had taken their toll. Both wings shattered into a cloud of glinting metal bits.
“Veketon! Help!” Quennin cried out.
“Get out of there! Fold!” he shouted, his throne engaged in fierce combat with Zophiel.
Quennin mentally triggered her fold engine sequence. But as soon as she did, she realized it was futile. The Disciple fleet still functioned, if barely, and its negators maintained their fold nullifying coverage over the battle. She couldn’t flee!
Immediately, Fellerossi warships began focusing down the remaining Disciple negators. Quennin knew Veketon must have given those orders in a desperate bid to save her. She also knew he was too late. Othaniel would strike her down in seconds.
But instead of finishing her off, Othaniel turned and sped away. It took Quennin a moment to figure out why.
“Vek, watch out!” Quennin shouted. It was all she could do as she floated helplessly above the plasma vortex.
Veketon fought Zophiel in a frenzy of determination. She’d never seen him fight like this before. It was as if he’d tapped reserves of strength he’d never known and now used that power to whittle Zophiel down piece by brutal piece. She knew that if the fight continued as is, Veketon would emerge triumphant.
But Zophiel was not alone, and Othaniel swooped in behind him. She deployed her whips, and suddenly Veketon struggled just to stay alive.
Quennin interfaced with the surviving archangels and tried diverting some of them to help, but chaos spawns still occupied the remaining squadrons. Both groups had suffered horrendous casualties, and Quennin knew the few archangels left wouldn’t stand a chance against the two Disciples.
Veketon dodged and retreated from his opponents, the tide of battle now turned against him, but he refused to give in so easily. The Disciples rushed in, and he smashed their attacks aside and countered. The three of them fought in a whirlwind of blurred motion. Even outnumbered two to one, Veketon made them bleed for every mistake.
For a moment, Quennin thought that he would pull through, that Veketon on his own could fell both of them. But then, Othaniel managed to entangle his left arm in her whips at a critical moment. Zophiel dove in, cleaved through the throne’s forearm, and sent Veketon’s portal lance spinning away. Othaniel swooped past him, and suddenly she had a lance, too.
Even wounded and disarmed, Veketon fought on, falling back and igniting an energy sword. The Disciples still struggled to finish him off, but they had him outnumbered and outmatched. Piece by piece, their attacks tore him to pieces: first a leg, then the other arm, and finally they struck and shattered
his halo-wings.
Quennin could only watch in horror.
Zophiel clasped his talons around Veketon’s throat and shoved the portal lance brutally in until his hand touched the throne’s stomach.
Veketon cried out, then whimpered softly in pain.
“You were a fool to turn me down, Veketon!” Zophiel shouted, almost screaming in rage. “You’ve taken something from me that can never be replaced! I will—”
A private hypercast channel opened.
“Quennin…” Veketon wheezed, each syllable a monumental effort.
“Yeah, Vek?” she asked. In the cockpit, tears tricked down her true face.
“I’m… sorry. You deserved… better.”
“Vek…”
“Goodbye.”
Zophiel pulled the lance free and raised Veketon’s limp throne over his head. In one quick motion, he threw the throne into the plasma vortex. It splashed briefly before sinking into the howling plasma currents.
Quennin took a slow shuddering breath.
“Curse you,” she whispered.
Zophiel and Othaniel approached slowly. Above, even more chaos spawns exited the convulsing Gate, and the Fellerossi fleet fought hard just to hold them at bay. They would not be able to rescue her.
A beam from the Vengeful Ascendant burned through space in a thick column of light. It missed the two seraphs and slammed into the vortex, vaporizing another support panel. The vortex wobbled unevenly, ejecting thick streamers of matter into the cluttered debris field.
Quennin readied her chaos glaive. It would do no good, but she refused to submit quietly to her fate.
Othaniel launched twin whips at her. Quennin tried to block, but the whips looped around and stabbed her from behind. They bored through her back armor and wormed into her internals.
Unbearable pain eclipsed all rational thought, and Quennin could offer no further resistance. Zophiel came forward and snatched her chaos glaive away. He tossed it aside as the whips pushed their way deeper into her throne, chewing and rending muscles and bones. Quennin cried out through every second of it.