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As the ground quaked and the mountains split apart, high in the sky, a dark star awakened.
Blacker than the night sky around it, scintillating like an obsidian jewel with a blood red corona, the celestial body had orbited the moon, hanging always over the continent of Legendra, since the last battle between Madruk and Harsgalt. It had been dormant, never changing, a slowly bleeding hole in the sky. To rational scholars it was a mystery, an impossibility. Certainly it was nothing natural to this world, although if it had come from other worlds beyond the stars, who knew what strange natural laws it might follow? On a spiritual level its existence was seen as a terrible omen to most Legendran citizens, a rallying point for Madruk's underground cults, the remnants of his armies. Ritual sacrifices had been made to that moon and its malicious aura pulsed faintly in response, an emanation of dark energy rippling through the world, empowering the magic of the ritual and warping reality around it. Bringing the star ever so slightly, imperceptibly closer. Nudging it slowly awake.
Except now it was moving a lot closer, a lot faster. The ring of red light flickered rapidly on and off, then decided upon being permanently shining, twice as bright as usual.
Other sights had been spotted in the sky, the shadows of red bat-like wings, streaming from Ruinledge, the mountain peak where Madruk was said to be sealed. A column of blue light rising from the old tower near the lake. Unlike the waves of cold, impersonal malevolence pouring from the now unstoppably falling dark star (which scholars were now fairly unanimously convinced was going to collide with the planet with enough force to destroy it just from the impact), there was an aura around the tower that couldn't really be defined. Both light and shadow, intertwined in a complex weave, a balance of forces delicately positioned, unraveled with the tiniest change, but strong in the sheer will keeping it bound together.
Something of vaster and more ancient power than even the Black Star dwelled within that tower. It was impossible to enter, although rumours said that Empress Junon, the black-armoured wraith of the battlefield who had all but conquered Legendra, had been seen gaining admittance, speaking to the spirits that lived there, making some kind of pact.
Opinion was divided over whether the Empress of Tristan meant well for the continent but all agreed that she was the only one with the military might and strength of will to fight Madruk at this stage. Draconian as she may be in other aspects (including forbidding the use of 'draconian' as an insult as part of her forcing people to accept dragonfolk as Legendran citizens providing they aren't the type of dragonfolk who killed and ate other species on sight), Junon also did not tolerate anything approaching Madruk worship. Her stated goal was to enter Ruinledge and permanently destroy the fallen Dragon God and bring out the heads of His apostles, Gaul and Scythe, to display on spikes in front of Tristan Castle.
Before all this had happened, all the omens, the constant warfare, the dragons from the mountains and the risen dead, she would have been presumed to finally have gone mad with power, quite literally, to be challenging Gods to duels. These days it was fairly common to see miracles on the battlefield, every leader of Legendra's various nations had been given one kind of holy vision or other, there may even be a literal scion of Valhart on the Tradnor throne, so who knew what was possible any more?
All eyes turned to the skies...
INITIALISING... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
BIOS LOADED SUCCESSFULLY. LAST BOOTUP: ERROR.
SCANNING FOR ERRORS... 115 FOUND. ACTIVATING AUTO-REPAIR...
He felt it reactivate the instant that the first awakening signal reached its CPU. As power flowed through it, as its various servo-motors began to stir. Maintenance lights flickered up the sides of its smooth, curved contours, flowing into the various weapons bristling from its spiny limbs, blue bursts of laser fire bristling from the buds of laser crystal in the centre of its arms, surrounded by whirling blades. The illumination swirled down into the mesh of plastics and plasma inside its transparent core, awakening countless writhing firefly points, individual nanocomputers that could reconfigure at a millisecond's notice. The fronds crowning its head began to bristle. Its eyes pulsed red, aware of its own existence at a level higher than deepest maintenance for the first time in... no, it had forgotten. It had lost track.
Its first act was to reach for its operator, its psychic pilot, the living peripheral so close to its most core systems that they were practically the half of itself.
Briefly, he remembered the time when he could be said to be the other half of something much greater, before he had disgraced himself. His installment had been a great honour, an immortalisation. Now it was a confinement. Not that he felt like those mechanical extensions to every part of his being were chains - quite the opposite - but he could never forget that he was now eternally linked to something he was no longer a part of, something that he didn't want to awaken even as the truth of his soul yearned for its psychic touch once again. Something that would use his own mind-energy to go on a killing rampage, that he couldn't shut down without shutting down his own soul.
He had hoped it would just stay in orbit, that its repairs would take too long for it to be able to join in the final battle. Maybe if he could finish this fast enough, he could find someone capable of reprogramming it, maybe even some force in the Universe that could even repair the damage done to...
No, that was too much to wish for. Gods fell hard. They didn't rise up again.
No matter how hard they wished for it.
He clenched his fists, willing himself to refocus his mind. He couldn't afford any mental instability, not with the responsibilities he currently held. There was other being he was vitally linked to now, someone who needed him. Someone he might even care about more than the other two. Someone that the Katmando could try and target. Not even out of malice - more like a loyal hound, or maybe a small child raised as an assassin, the machine was not truly capable of spite or anger even as it slaughtered hundreds, only loyalty to him, a basic understanding that the other was an enemy and that they were too close to the one it existed to protect.
He looked over at the column of light with the ghostly pale blue apparition flickering inside it, now visible more often than not, its features more defined, its presence closer. There were now three people that mattered to him, all in need of healing, all of them needing to be kept away from each other.
He sat cross-legged on the floor next to the summoning circle and tried to meditate. Vivid memories intruded almost immediately, slowly at first, then flooding in through the cracks in the dam of his self-control created by the sudden, powerful awareness that the Katmando machine was awake.
ALL ERRORS CORRECTED.
SYSTEMS ACTIVATING…
AUDIO ONLINE…
VISUALS ONLINE…
MOVEMENT ONLINE…
LOCATION DETECTED.
OPERATOR LOCATED. PLOTTING COURSE.
COMMAND RECEIVED FROM ADMINISTRATOR:
DESTROY THE FORCES OF ASTEA.
WAR MODE ACTIVATED.
"What are you doing, Lokithus?"
The silver-haired young man looked up from the large, ornately bound tome he'd been writing in. His penmanship was flowing and elegant, his equally ornate fountain pen flying over the pages with both speed and accuracy, suggesting that he'd been practicing this for a long time. His shaggy hair was not so neat, roughly cut at the nape of his neck, curls sticking out in odd directions. Two curved ram's horns poked out from the nest. His pale, fine features showed similar dark regality, as did his slanted red eyes. He was smaller than his soul-brothers, including the young man who leaned over his chair, staring over his shoulder at the book. This young deity stood taller and straighter, his face broader, his frame more powerful, although he was in turn still towered over by the eldest, Madruk. Unllike his brothers, Ramda's hair was kept straight and neat and was showing lines of darker colour.
"Updating the records I told you I was making some time ago, Ramda, repeatedly," he sighed.
"And I was asking why you are still doing so," Ramda's tone was slightly harsher, annoyed at his younger brother's constant looking down at them for being less intellectual, "It is not part of our duties."
"Says the one who is constantly travelling a world we are supposed to be above and apart from," he pointed out, glancing at Ramda's travelling cloak he had just hung on the coat rack in their infernal castle's hallway.
"Preserving data that we are tasked to destroy could cause problems."
"As could observing up close a world we aren't supposed to interact personally with," retorted Lokithus.
"I have been in mortal form and I reveal no secrets..."
"And I only record data on the history of old worlds, which I am not showing to any mortals," he replied, turning a page with a decidedly brisk gesture.
"Information has power. All of our magic is only really information, when it comes down to it. We don't know what the effect of the memories of the old world appearing in the new will be, we only know that we are preserving a very delicate balance."
"And what would happen, say, if there was ever a mistake? If something disappeared that was later needed, and there was no backup?"
"If the cycle of reincarnation ever develops such flaws, these records could be even more dangerous, if they should get... corrupted."
"What if the flaws is not within fate itself but because something went wrong at our level?"
"Have you been recording matters of the celestial court without authorisation? That is above our authority, Lokithus, we could be punished..."
"Or rewarded for showing forethought and being proactive."
"Are you sure," Ramda sat down beside him in the next chair along the great table, "You do not grow to regret your role in some way? That you have not grown fond of this world you must destroy systematically in order to preserve?"
"I do not allow sentiment to cloud my sense of duty, if that's what you're implying. Birth, death to feed new life, returning the memories to the stardust so that the next world can learn from the old... telling new stories from their beginning to their end... it's how the Universe works. To let it become overcrowded, or to grow overzealous and destroy everything, it would be disastrous either way."
"I know how to do my job, brother, I was just saying... between you and me," he leaned closer to whisper, "Does it not sometimes seem wasteful, how we keep so little? How we invest so much time and love into our work only to destroy it again?"
"Now you are the one suggesting that we seek authority above our station."
"I am merely asking you to consider why you truly keep so many records."
"And what about you, brother? Why do you really take so many trips out of the castle?"
"My pleasure trips are actually very few. I mostly scout for any problems, and... lately, I have become more interested in things that have been found beyond the scope of our realm."
"The unformed chaos, you mean? Is it not a dangerous place to go alone?"
"I take the dragon patrols with me, of course. They helped me bring back something interesting. I thought you might like to be the first to see it, before our... overenthusiastic big brother decides whether we may keep it or not. You know, I think your project may be of more use if you recorded more of these truly new discoveries, rather than endlessly detailing the minutiae of history."
"Any detail may prove to be useful, you know." he sighed, "And all you are truly doing is getting there before me, retrieving things that would usually be destroyed straight away. Which does make you rather a hypocrite."
"Are you interested or not, brother? Or should I just take it for myself?"
"I must admit slight interest, and I could use a tea break. Come, I'll make the tea, you show me what it is that so interests you."
"Is anybody there?" he called, wincing at the way his own words echoed through the void of endless grey fog before being swallowed by the futile emptiness. He was sure he heard something else other than his own increasing desperation and the howl of a wild astral wind. The prison dimension was crude, other than the strength of its seals - cosmetically blank, it looked out onto unfiltered chaos, endless raging star-foam, black and white unformed swirling motes of raw matter. To focus on it only added to the sheer confusion of the grey labyrinthine tunnels of this cosmic oubliette.
"If you're here, please answer," he tried not to make his tone too pleading, in case his desperation was mistaken for malice or insanity. Not that he wasn't likely to go insane very quickly, stuck here, "I need to be sure I'm not imagining you."
He heard it again - yelling and sobbing, pain and despair. Someone lost, like him. He ran towards the sound, trying to ignore the way the landscape kept rippling and shifting, to focus on the faint spot of white concealed in the grey mists, still obviously one of the only white objects larger than a speck of matter, apart from his own hands in front of him.
The cries grew louder, then turned to a sudden gasp of surprise. The bundle of white unfurled from the floor, eyes appearing within a shock of white hair like his own, the features of a gaunt face...
"Did he send you here too? Don't worry, I don't think he thought this through, and I share his power. He's likely to have used passcodes on his wards that I know, or else he's not sealed off all the emergency back doors we build into these things..."
"I smell darkness," whispered the other man, clearly in pain, "But... it's not the same?"
"That's right, I'm sort of the same as him, but sort of not. I'm sorry this is so confusing," he shook his head, "Anyway, you can sense me, that's good. You have power. Enough to survive this. You're really not one of us, though? Not part of this?"
"I was... we were fighting him. But we lost," he shook his head, wincing in pain again, "We lost... and I don't think anyone else survived. Holy Astea, what have we done? Legendra is doomed..."
"If it helps, he was badly hurt as well. He's not able to act in this world again... for now..." Ramda ignored the sympathetic pain that washed through his own body at this realisation, "We can live, if we escape. Please trust me... please take my hand..."
"Co-operate. Yes, for the first time in my life, I have to co-operate," the other man whispered, "And it's probably too damn late anyway."
-----------
"And you say this is a machine?" Lokithus looked doubtfully up at the armoured figure that floated in the pillar of light that was Ramda's magic, holding it in place. Red lights of its own flickered in its angular, pupil-less eyes and several other recesses along its form. It looked alive. Resting but definitely alive and aware. He could even sense will, of a sort, coming from it. No malice - no emotion of any kind - but definite destructive purpose. Something very dangerous lying in wait for them to make the wrong move, "It seems more like a living thing."
"That's because of the magic being fed through it artificially. Should it be turned off entirely, there would be no life signs, not even the residue around a corpse."
"I see no controls. How would one operate it?" Lokithus frowned.
"It is not designed for someone with a body resembling our own. I believe it was created by a very different form of life. Unless, of course, it is meant to look like that in order to make it look intimidating to the enemy. This is definitely intended as a weapon for war, probably a very large scale war if these are deployed in any significant numbers," explained Ramda, "It can be magically controlled, in any case, and responds to telepathic commands. It has something like a simplistic mind. Think of it as a very fancy Golem."
Lokithus smiled. Golems were something he understood. As the one who left the castle the least, he was mostly the one tasked with maintaining their home security, which was mostly Golems of various sizes and shapes, gargoyles, animated armour and weapons. He'd never seen one that shape, though, and it was enormous. He didn't think that was a metal that occurred naturally either, not in Legendra in any case.
"So, these war machines came from somewhere outside our world, not in any way under our control," Lokithus observed the thing. Those blades looked very lethal and if some kind of destructive magical energy came out of the various nozzles and hatches, which he guessed it would if this was a well designed weapon, very little about this machine would not be equally deadly, "And we do not know how many of these are currently active. Does this not worry you? There was a time when I would not have expected anything outside of the cycle of fate to exist, you know."
"All the more reason to find out about them. Forewarned is forearmed."
"And yet you would not have me store the information long term," Lokithus sighed.
"This situation is different, brother. We have no idea if these things exist for a longer timespan than a cycle of fate," said Ramda, looking up at the machine thoughtfully, "We have already had certain problems with refugees that managed to escape into the Void - you are aware of the Izumos, yes? They were never destined to survive, and this has already caused Madruk to obsessively focus on Legendra when we are supposed to be seeing to the entire world. Destiny itself has been changed. Do you understand, now, why I am hesitant to allow information to be preserved that shouldn't still exist?"
"A potential army of giant machines must worry you a lot more than the pitiful remnants of Izumo."
"Indeed they do, which is why I keep my vigil, while Madruk concentrates on affairs on Legendra. Or do you think he allowed us to split off from him on a whim? We are allowed to exist when we didn't, only because other factors have changed."
"You admit you owe your existence to the kind of changes I am making when I preserve information, then."
"We have higher concerns than our own existence, brother. Although, I do admit that there's very little I can actually do right now if an army of these did attack us. That's why I am starting by obtaining one of these and figuring out how it works. My intention is to learn how to operate it for myself. There is a security risk in this, though - from what I've been able to determine, it requires a very strong soul bond. I'll be very close to whatever it is inside this thing's mind. If there is some kind of trap, maybe a security measure..."
"It's almost as though it would be a good idea to make a record of your state of existence now, so you can revert to it if need be."
"For once, brother, your obsession may indeed prove useful. Do as you will. And... please don't tell Madruk. The way things are going, I'm not sure I entirely trust him these days."
"I don't know what we were to each other before coming here but we're going to have to work together to get out again," said Ramda, reaching out his hand once more to the lost, wary-looking figure on the floor. He had been about to co-operate but then a strange blankness filled his eyes, as if their surroundings were entering his soul, as they were prone to after such a long while. Ramda guessed the man had been there for a lot longer than himself. Not that time means anything here. A nightmare scenario flashed before his eyes that they'd both actually been here for thousands of years and the Universe would be nothing but ashes when they emerged. He shook it out of his head like so much unwanted dust in a library.
Since then he'd been busy looking for the back doors he'd mentioned but he couldn't get the memory of that last sensation out of his head - the brief moment their fingers had brushed against each other. He wasn't sure what he'd expected - pain, maybe, as the man still resonated a lot of divine silver light despite the speed at which it was fading as his soul faded to despair - but it hadn't been... this!
He hadn't felt anything like this since he'd first bonded with Katmando. That same profound feeling of closeness, of being suspended in a void where only the two of them existed, of being aware of each other at a level so intimate that it transcended even his link with his two soul-twins, which had grown rather tenuous at best and that he was well aware he would soon have to discard. It left him shaking and unable to move, as if he'd been overshadowed by something much larger than him, some grand event in destiny that might not even have originally been accessible yet. He wondered if the other man had felt it too, if that was why he was there on the floor, unable to look him in the eye.
Like with the Katmando, they were both immediately aware that they were now connected at an essential level that now couldn't be safely broken, like two cogs of the same machine. They also, briefly, had brushed against the hidden recesses of each other's soul and found something that they probably shouldn't have.
The enemy. For a second, he'd smelled the enemy. Although the link was as fraying as his own link to Madruk probably was...
"I can't get both of us out through this portal - not yet - but if you give me enough power to let myself out, I can try and open it fully from the other side."
"You... you are Madruk's..." whispered the man on the floor.
"I am worse than dead if I return to Madruk," Ramda sighed, "You cannot imagine the closeness I have betrayed."
"Oh, I know all about betrayal, and discord, and division," his eyes flared up.
"Then you must take every chance you can to make it up to the others in the Dragon Force," Ramda replied, "That's where you're from, yes? I heard that the mission had gone badly..."
"And will you do the same? Will you do anything you can to return to Madruk?"
Ramda shook his head, "I can't. Madruk is not the same any more. And Lokithus is forever lost, so we wouldn't even be three again. I'd be going back to something false."
And besides, he thought, the bond I have with you is now somehow even stronger. I wish I could tell you but I can't put it into words. It isn't... something that Destroyer Gods are taught words for.
"I do not wish to go near Katmando again, either. I'll only be forced to pilot the machine. Then we'll both become tools for war again, maybe senselessly killed. This whole war... it should not have happened. There used to be a balance... What did you say your name was, again? Frest?"
He nodded, looking thoughtfully up at Ramda. He was having difficulty meeting the other man's eyes, kept lowering his gaze. Did he really think of Ramda as an enemy, even a conqueror? The idea put a stab of pain through Ramda's heart.
"The balance of the Universe is so much more complicated than we thought," he frowned, "It's a miracle anything at all is in balance, at this rate. I think Lokithus understood this more than any of us and we'll never get him back. Once I'm out of here, I'm going to try my best to save at least Madruk, to restore this system to what it was. "
"And Legendra will not be sacrificed for this?"
Ramda shook his head. If anyone will be sacrificed, it won't be the world you inhabit, or you. Never you.
"You have to understand that this is not just a weapon, as our esteemed older brother seems to think it is."
Ramda raised an eyebrow at his younger brother's stern words. Lately, Lokithus and Madruk could not even pretend to have a civil conversation. More and more, Madruk was just obsessed with his duty of destruction, to the extent that the other two worried he was even treating it as a duty any more, or if he just liked breaking things. Upon hearing of their discovery, he immediately demanded that it be given over to him so that he could optimise its weaponry and then test it out on the world below.
Lokithus had flat refused, pointing out that Legendra wasn't even due a visit for another five months - a fraction of a moment for a God but this was a calculation where a fraction could make all the difference - and anyway, there were other memory banks to analyse, things unrelated to weaponry that he refused to allow Madruk to wipe in an effort to make the thing more efficient in its destruction.
At this, Madruk had thrown a fit, physically assaulted the youngest brother and tried to snatch Katmando away. He would have managed it, too, had the machine not already been irreversibly soul-bonded to its current registered pilot - Ramda. Its security devices had almost done Madruk serious harm before he retreated, vowing to find a way to take that thing for his own.
There'd always been conflicts of interest here and there but it was the first actual fight between them that Ramda ever remembered. Not since the deity grew conflicted enough to split into three in the first place, which had been thousands of years ago.
"The Katmando was a command module for an army, and not just a rampaging horde. There had been a... control system. Like a machine that could run an entire fortress like this, except it was connected to an entire network. If anything, this thing has as much authority as us in its own dimension, except that it is a tool for something else to operate. And it is... no longer needed? It had been off for a long time. Along with a lot of things. Brother, there is a vast other world out there and it is unused and unfinished, just sat there collecting dust. It might be just the thing I need!"
"Lokithus, I can't lend you the Katmando even if I wished to give it to you for such a rash venture," he frowned. Hadn't this been his role, to venture out past their boundaries? But then, while he'd been the more physically mobile, Lokithus had always been the one with the more radical ideas. They'd inspired each other all this time, he realised.
It was the first time he'd even considered the possibility that Madruk and his ambition could tear all this away from him. For the first time in thousands of years, he was scared.
He'd been resting when it happened.
They didn't sleep, exactly. Not even in their centuries of imprisonment had the y really turned off their awareness. Ramda hovered in a meditative pose, trails of magical energy billowing from his inert form like mist. He took the time to offload all the information he had acquired during his considerable period of wakefulness and really sit down to process it. So much had happened over the last cycle of waking and he wasn't sure how much of it had been his fault. He had expended a lot of magical reserves, even dipping into his life energy, in an attempt to bring the machine back, then learn how to control it. Even when he rested, he could feel the thing's consciousness in the back of his mind, impatient to be up and flying, to attack its enemies, to return home to the thing it was meant to protect, a confusing series of thoughts when he was unconvinced this place even still existed in this Universe. Resting itself expended magical energy, especially when he had to shield himself at all times. What with the distractions, he never quite felt fully rested any more. However, once it happened, he wondered if it was that lack of ability to go into a truly restful state that had saved his life.
He'd teleported away the instant he heard the roaring, splintering, tearing noise, saw the first flash of white light flecked with black interference. He was mid-teleport when the entire castle went up in a primal black and white inferno, from which a single, perfectly square portal emerged, a gate of black light. He cried out his brother's name but Lokithus was already silhouetted against the portal before flickering out of existence, wreathed in arcane glitches and breaking down into static.
Reflexively at this point, Ramda called out for the Katmando, ran towards the anchoring point of the portal to the pocket dimension where he had been storing the machine. He had been yelling his elder brother's name, certain that, despite his foul moods these days, this would concern him enough for him to help, what with his home now burning. As he jumped into the portal, a sensation of wrongness already making him feel mildly motion sick, he immediately came face to face with a furious Madruk.
His brother had reached the Katmando first and had done... something... to it. As Ramda suspected, even Madruk could not usurp his connection to the machine as pilot, but that wasn't what he had done.
The air stank of the ozone taint of dark sorcery. Like the choking branches of some kind of enormous, invasive tree, sharp scaled tendrils erupted from the fronds on Madruk's spiny shoulder-plates. He was now in full draconic form, his scales burning with a kind of tarnished golden light, bristling with spikes. His eyes glowed a dull red that was leaving behind sanity in its rage. Inside the spines that spilled from his back, the Katmando had been wrapped. Sparks of dark magic surged around it as it resisted being spiritually absorbed into Madruk's own being.
Like one of the humans sacrificed to him by their many death cults hidden around Legendra, or maybe more like the final ordeal of the Apostles chosen every once in a while, the ones who were often Immortals to start with and no longer resembled anything human by the end of it.
"Madruk, you know full well that is mine, and you have no idea how it even works..." he snapped.
"Quiet! I have had enough of you two going behind my back," Madruk roared, green flames erupting from the sides of his fanged mouths, "What has your insane brother done, Ramda? What were YOU intending to do with this weapon you've already turned against your brother?"
YOU are calling US insane? Ramda mentally rolled his eyes at this but did not press the matter, well aware of how close his elder brother was to casual enraged murder, "I wish I knew the answer to either. I think... he was going somewhere he wasn't meant to be allowed..."
"To start up your own kingdom?" he roared, "Do you two even remember your original mission?"
"Do you, brother?" Ramda snapped, unable to contain himself, "Because I remember it being something to do with a cycle of nature, creation AND THEN destruction, but I look at your reports and all I see is mindless destruction, far above quota, and furthermore, you never talk to either of us first..."
"Because you know nothing, and it is pointless trying to explain anything to you. You are no longer a part of me. You split off and became too much of your own thing a long time ago. You may as well just be two more Apostles these days, my brothers, two Apostles who are too powerful and dangerously close to me."
"What are you trying to say, Madruk?" he flexed his arms, summoning dark energy to his own fingertips, sensing a fight.
"You will defer to me or you will be considered enemies," he declared, "And we are going to war. Outright war, for the first time. No more of this carefully treading a balance as though we were servants. No more of working hard and seeing the whole thing unravelled by tomorrow, of being in a hierarchy we can never climb to the top of, no matter how loyal we are or how hard we work. If there are other worlds, you shall take me to them, where I shall rule, after destroying all my enemies and their pointless creations!"
"Madruk, we don't have the resources for a full scale..."
"QUIET!" he roared, then the full extent of his dragon's breath poured out, just as every light on the machine turned on at once, too bright, including every overheating warning light...
ENTERING LOW ORBIT. TARGET VISUAL ACQUIRED. ENEMIES OF MADRUK DETECTED. COMMENCE EXTERMINATION.
The black sphere was visible in the sky now, so that most people could make out that it wasn't a moon or star at all but some ominous metal structure with red lights blinking on and off all around it like a spider's eyes, razor-sharp dendrites waving and slicing like a demonic insect's pincers. Judging by how large it was now, Empress Junon had determined it to be the size of her palace, coming in fast enough to leave a crater and send a shockwave of destruction across the land. The aura of malevolent energy emanating from it had already killed the flock of harpies she had sent up to scout. Pulling all her armies from the other thousand and one places where small battles had broken out, mostly with the Skull Children by now, she sent them all to surround the predicted impact site and intercept the Black Sphere, as it had been imaginatively renamed by the scholars. The wizards and priests would proceed first in a ring and try to cushion the shockwave as much as possible with an enormous combined magic barrier. Then the cavalry and dragons would filter in with cover from the archers.
It was not going to work, Ramda realised. They were all going to die. They couldn't even make a single scratch on that thing's shields. As far as he could tell, Katmando didn't even exist in the same dimension when all of its shields were working. Besides, its lasers would pick them all off before they ever reached it. They didn't understand all of what it could do, how dangerous it was.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to Frest over their private connection. Interference had already become a problem as the machine's sensors probed this realm for his psychic signature. He could feel its pull, the undeniable urge to return to it, let it take over. Katmando's piloting HUD was even starting to flicker over the top of his vision, causing him to trip over once or twice as he ran, unable to see most of what was in front of him any more.
"I'll return to you. I promise. I won't be long..."
---
OPERATOR DETECTED. CONNECTING...
LOGIN ERROR. OPERATOR REGISTERING AS HOSTILE. COMMAND WAS CHANGED ON DATE *ERROR*.
DOES NOT COMPUTE. PLEASE RE-ENTER LOGIN DETAILS. WHO IS OPERATOR?
---
Error messages flashed into his mind, a stream of red text and frantically beeping alerts. The information had long since overloaded his brain until it was all just meaningless noise, a constant migraine-inducing barrage. He forced himself to concentrate on the one important task right now.
Junon was already on the march. Even the fastest horse couldn't get there in time. He couldn't teleport, not with so much magical disruption in the air. He'd probably be redirected straight into Katmando's pilot seat. At this point, with the thing so confused, so inexplicably bloodthirsty, he didn't even know what that would do, whether he would be rejected and killed by it, whether he could seize control, whether his own mind would be usurped by Madruk though the connection... assuming this thing wasn't just completely out of control by now.
"I'm sorry, I cannot do this," he sighed. Then he walked back into the centre of the chamber, stepped into the summoning circle and threw back his arms. Wild torrents and black and white light surged through him like twin lightning bolts merged together. Then there was a white flash. He was flung backwards, falling limp, every muscle in his body in agony. Running towards him, concern etched on his face, was a man who he had never seen on the material plane before.
"Good. You made it safely..." he whispered.
"You summoned me into this world? Why did you do that?" demanded Frest, "You were supposed to get your energy back first! You were supposed to clear the way of any danger!"
"I had to change my plan. There wasn't time. I don't have much energy left but I don't need it... to do one simple task..."
"What are you planning to do? Do you need my help? I can transfer life energy..."
Ramda shook his head, "No, you need it all to teleport safely. Go and warn Junon... go and tell her exactly what this thing is. I'm going to buy her some time."
"Can you really stop that thing on your own? Without destroying yourself in the process?"
"I can't shut it down, not without uncontested, full admin access, but I can probably get it to pause for a while, even if only by confusing it enough to force it into a systems reset while it figures out over again what's going on," he said, "It's always been bad at that. Like I explained, it shouldn't even be in this realm of existence. If anything, it should be where Lokithus is... and I might even see my brother..."
"Will this destroy you in the process?" Frest repeated, his piercing green gaze boring into Ramda's calm, slate-blue eyes, frowning at his weirdly serene expression.
"Its harder than this to get rid of me, Frest. I'm part of a God. And I think that, when I first contacted Katmando, I saw that other realm, brushed against it just briefly. I'd have probably followed Lokithus in, even been the first to step inside, had he not done it behind my back as usual. What I'm saying is, I'll find a way to come back. Maybe not straight away, or even in this cycle of existence, but I will find you. I swear by my bond to you. I'm overriding even the bond I have with Katmando for this, do you understand? Even though I might lose a thing so valuable to me that it feels like an extension of my soul."
"Ramda, I..." he grabbed the man's hand. It was burning up with the same black and white raging energy, "I don't understand how souls work. I've only ever been mortal, lived in one realm, before I was imprisoned... before I met you. But I promise I'll do what it takes to be with you again, too. I'll ascend to a form that can be equal to your divinity. I'll reincarnate again and again. I don't know how I would even start going about it but I know... I know our bond is strong enough. I felt it as soon as we first touched hands."
"Frest," he whispered, "I've got to go now, Frest. See you again."
"See you again," he replied.
----
OPERATOR DETECTED. PREPARING SOUL SYNCHRONISATION.
255 ERROR MESSAGES FOUND. OPERATOR NOT RECOGNISED. NO, OPERATOR RECOGNISED. CANNOT BE OVERRIDDEN. ERROR. DOES NOT COMPUTE.
ALL HAIL MADRUK. NO... ALL HAIL THE DIRECTOR. THE DIRECTOR COMMANDS ALL UNITS TO BOND WITH THE OPERATOR AND PROTECT THE CORE. WHERE IS... THE CORE? ENEMIES DETECTED... DESTROY ASTEA...
ENEMY DETECTED IN COCKPIT. NO...
DOES NOT COMPUTE. DOES NOT COMPU....