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Wanted to draw a technicolor war criminal. I have quite a bit of free time at my new job, so I’ve found myself occasionally going back to the series.

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Filling the Gaps

Author's Note: the story ended around a year ago, but oddly enough there are certain parts of the internet where it hasn't died. Wattpad keeps things alive, and every time someone comments I get a notification. Often this results in me reading my old writing, and I have recently noticed this very annoying gap hat I completely glossed over.

The first time Adam admits his feelings for Sunny we never see the aftermath, and it ticked me off. He admits his feelings and then later they are dating, and a lot of stuff just goes missing in between. I know it was because I wasn't ready or comfortable enough with the subject to write it at the time, but tonight when I got all annoyed, I realized that it's still mine, and I can write whatever and whenever I want.

A lot of you have moved on, but if some of you found this annoying then I hope this helps fix it.

“Are we going to talk about it?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“If we waited for you to be ready, we might never talk. I don’t want to grow old waiting for you to figure it out, Adam.” 

Adam turned towards Sunny, away from the viewscreen, but paused halfway between. His head was down, and from the corner of his eye he could see a part of her body, blue carapace glittering like starlight in the late evening. 

He couldn’t see her face.

“Okay, but not here, not where people could walk in.”

He was stalling. His heart hammered in his head. His stomach twisted into knots like his guts had become snakes. 

He turned away from her and headed towards the door. He could hear her walking behind him glad that she couldn’t see his face. Had he ever felt worse? 

Yes.

That was an unfair question. He had felt worse, but he had never felt like this. There was some special kind of torture in social vulnerability — in confrontation. Adam knew what was coming, ever since their duel in the cargo hold, this inevitability had hung over his head like a sword suspended on a wire.

He had admitted to his feelings for her, admitted them to himself.

And then he ran away.

But even the universe, and a space dragon, could not patch up the cracks in this leaking dam, could not shove the words back in his mouth.

The walk to his rooms were too short despite the size of the ship, and before he knew it he was stepping into a familiar, safe darkness. As the door slid open, soft blue light bloomed from the strip lighting on the floor bathing his personal effects in cool ambience. As the door hissed shut behind him; he immediately regretted coming here.

He had brought her back to his space, to where he slept.

It felt intimate, too intimate.

Unsafe.

As if he was opening the walls of his mind and letting her peer inside.

They were alone now.

He heard her move behind him, and chose to walk over to the window, hands clasped behind his back as he stared out into the nebulae. Nothing could be heard here but for the distant thrumming of the engines.

He didn’t want her to see how nervous he was, how sick he felt, but he knew she could.

His hands trembled.

It felt like embarrassment but somehow much worse. There was anticipation there too, the kind he didn’t want to admit to. 

A part of him was excited for this, hoped that something would happen, hoped that this would go the exact place the rest of him hoped it wouldn’t. Even as he stared into the star field, he could feel his own walls dissolving. Thoughts and feelings he had carefully packed away were now impossible to ignore. Hiding behind the appearance of the space dragon was only a temporary fix and now there would be a reckoning.

“Adam.”

Her voice was low and smooth. He had picked that voice for her, a long time ago when she had first been granted the translation equipment, but he could still feel her real voice underneath: a gentle hum that sent vibrations through his ears, morphing to a shiver that traveled down the sides of his neck. He closed his eyes feeling as his body broke out into a nervous sweat despite the ideal temperature of the room.

“Are you feeling okay?”

He laughed, and even to him it sounded nervous, lurching upwards from his throat in awkward sputters, “No.”

He heard her take a seat on the edge of the bed, listened to the blankets shifting as they brushed over each other.

In his mind he could see her poised at its edge. He could imagine the light as it fell over her body. The entire image was penned into his head in such exquisite detail he didn’t need to look at her.

“So, are we going to talk about this?” She said, She sounded so calm, and  he wondered how she was doing it. He felt so small all of a sudden, a child compared to her and he didn’t know how to take the sensation back.

“Then talk.” His voice felt tight.

“I’m not the one who needs convincing.”

He closed his eyes. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want us to talk about what is going to happen moving forward. I need to know where this goes.”

His hands continued to shake. “I don’t know. . .I’ve never. . . I don’t know if I can.” 

“Why don’t you start with telling the truth. I think we both need to hear it.”

He paced two steps to the right and then two steps to the left, “Why, you already know.”

“You’re not exactly convincing.”

He laughed again, another nervous laugh and turned away from the window, still refusing to look at her. His feet carried him back and forth over the floor in short, quick steps. The walls spun past him. Every time he turned he caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye and his heart picked up in pace.

“Maybe I don’t want to be convincing.” It felt like a hand around his throat.

“Why not?”

He threw up his hands. “Because!” His voice cracked. No, not now, not like this.

His eyes stung and his face grew hot and he turned his head to the ceiling.

“Adam. . .” 

He squeezed his eyes shut. Every time she said his name it was like being branded, each time a new wave of heat washing through his body.

“Why can’t you say it?” 

“Because I’m not supposed to feel like this!” He couldn't stop it, the words tumbled from his lips, and even he could hear his voice shaking. He kept his face pointed up and away.. He wished he could sink through the floor. He wished the window would open up and suck him into space.

He looked at the door.

Could he run again?

He heard her shift behind him, knew she could tell what he was thinking. She always knew.

His cheeks flamed with heat.

“I don’t understand, why can’t you feel like this?”

His hands dropped from behind his back and he turned down to look at them, anything to avoid looking at her. Suddenly he felt distant, detached from his body as he stared at his hands. He never expected this would happen, but now here it was, and somehow he was having trouble comprehending that fact.

“You’ve always supported LFIL, so I don’t understand. Do you find them disgusting? Is that why?”

He took another deep, shaky breath and turned his eyes back to the ceiling, “No! I didn’t say that. Of course I support them , but that. . . for other  people, not for me.”

“I don’t get it.” her voice was calm, but he knew her enough to know the undertone of frustration there. Not at him but at his words for not making sense.

He breathed in, but it wasn’t smooth, it stuttered and stammered like his voice, “I know it doesn’t make sense, I know it’s stupid, I know, but it's okay for other people to do it, I support them in what they are doing, but when it comes to me. “I” can’t do it. They are allowed to do it but I am not because if I do it, it would be wrong.”

His voice choked.

His heart clenched.

How must this make her feel? It's okay for other people, but my feelings about you make me feel disgusted. Is that what she would hear? 

Would he drive her away, insult her?

Is that what he wanted?

To his surprise, she laughed and he could feel goosebumps erupt over his body at the noise.

“It’s not stupid. Nothing you think is stupid, not to me.”

He felt the emotion then, prickling behind his eyes and nose. He valiantly struggled to keep himself in check, and kept his face turned away from her.

He took a deep breath. “Admitting to this feels like. . . feels like admitting they’re right.”

“Who?”

He flung out a hand in an angry arching gesture trying to make up for the emotion with aggression, “Everyone, everyone since I was young. All of the people on the news who accuse me of it, all the people I grew up with calling me a freak, certain members of my family. If I admit to this they win and I prove them right and I. . .” He dashed a hand across his teeth, teeth gritted in frustration and embarrassment.

“So, let me get this straight. You don’t get to be happy because people you don’t care about would be right?” 

He was pacing in circles now, so fast he was making himself dizzy, like he could replace one feeling with another.

“Adam.” 

He walked past her.

“Adam.”

He went to go past her again, but that’s when her hand struck out, catching him by the wrist.

“Look at me.”

He didn’t want to. He kept his head turned to the side, but then she reached up a hand touching his cheek and turning him to face her. His skin felt hot, and her hand cool. His heart hammered in his chest. He met her eyes for the first time in days.

“How are you so calm. . .” 

Her hand slid down his wrist, catching his hand. “Adam, All of my life I have been a disappointment and a freak and an embarrassment. I have been rejected time and time again, the object of hatred and mockery. I am an expert in handling how you feel right now.”

His chest ached, his tongue caught on itself. “I feel like I’ve missed my window for that. Everyone figured it out early and I. . . I thought I was supposed to be alone.”

“Oh no, it seems I get you all to myself. What a tragedy.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he whispered.

She tilted her head. ‘Well, neither do I, but it can’t be that hard. Idiots figure it out all the time.” her fingers slid between his, four fingers slotting perfectly into place. His hand felt numb. With another hand she pulled him closer.

He couldn’t ignore it now: the feeling rising in his stomach, the way his eyes were drawn to the curve of her cheek, the turn of her neck into her shoulder, the curve of her leg.

Her eyes.

“You know what we Drev do, instead of kissing?” 

He shook his head afraid to speak. She pulled him even closer the outside of his leg brushing against the inside of hers. She leaned up and he bent his head down. Then their foreheads brushed against each other. Static erupted through his face and down his cheek. She pulled him to sit next to her, mattress sinking so his leg was pressed into hers. She turned her head, the corner of her mouth and face brushing against his cheek, and then his ear. 

The static sensation rushed down the back of his neck and into his shoulder before stopping at his lower back.

His hands fluttered uselessly unsure of where to go and what to do. 

His stomach writhed.

Her head dipped and she briefly brushed up against his jaw sending the static into his face and chin.

And then she let him go, pulling away.

He was left, unsteady body buzzing.

Sunny chuckled, “Hmm, interesting.”

“What?” He managed.

“You aren’t dead, didn’t dissolve into a puddle, the ship didn’t explode.”  They weren’t touching anymore but he now wished they were. It was getting easier to admit that. “So, is this something you would like to move forward?” 

He couldn’t find the words. His tongue still felt thick, whatever part of him which had been holding back still clinging to the tatters. 

But where his tongue was tied his body was not.

He nodded.

It was only then did he see the tension leave her shoulders. She took a deep breath.

Had she been nervous too?

How had he missed it?

“Good. I had hoped you would say that."

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I was thinking about you guys today. My art had improved since the series ended, so have a pic of Sunny and Adam.

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Is your A03 user name the same ?

Yes

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

New Project

Hello Everyone! Its been a hot minute since I posted anything, and I know this account has mostly gone dormant. However, I wanted to tell you guys about the small project that I have finally been working to put out.

The Fear You Know is a dark fantasy horror novel I wrote some time ago, and have finally decided it needs to see the light of day in one way or another. So, I am going to be throwing it onto the internet as soon as I give the chapters their last look over. Unfortunately, right now I have no money for self publishing or anything fancy like that, so I will be putting the book up on Wattpad and maybe A03 and other platforms, maybe on Tumblr idk,  if it gains any interest. Also I had no money for an editor, so be aware that I am doing all of the grammar and stuff myself (and we all know how that will turn out). 

From the Book Jacket XD

The world is a landscape of fear. Humanity suffers under the oppression of a pantheon of dark gods, called Dreads, who grow in power as humanity languishes without hope. On a trip to Veerus city, information broker, Eli Collins, and his companion Wink  search for information that will shed light on: combatting the Dreads, finding his missing father, and saving his own life before it is too late.  However, it is not information hat he finds, but a man named Peter, and a strange book with an unusual symbol.

If I were to describe the book in one sentence.  The Magnus Archives Meets High Fantasy? 

Here is the Link

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Hello! Is there anywhere we can support/follow your new stories? Or is the best thing to just follow your wattpad/ao3?

Right now that is the best thing to do. I plan on self publishing with in the next year or so and giving everyone content they can actually interact with, but as it turns out you need money to hire an editor/ voice actor/ cover artist. And right now I am a poor jobless student so until I have a real person job, I can’t afford to do anything else :(

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Thank You and Goodbye

Hello everyone, I suppose you have all noted that the Empyrean iris stories have finally ended. I sincerely hope that all of you enjoyed what I had to offer and that I helped to bring some enjoyment to your life. In return I thank you all for everything you have done for me, and thank you most for the people who interacted with the story with questions comments and likes. Some of you have private messaged me, and said the nicest things that have helped me to keep going through the years. I cannot say how much I appreciate you.

A few things before I leave, I am leaving the Empyrean Iris universe on this blog for anyone who wishes to read, start reading or keep reading. You are free to play with the Empyrean Iris universe all you wish, as well as with its characters and locations. As long as credit is left where credit is due.

I will not be writing for this series again, though I may post some art if the thought takes me. I will still have access to this blog to answer questions and interact, so PM me here if you want, I will most likely be available.

The past few years have made me a much better writer.The change in my skill from beginning to end is incredible, but one of my greatest regrets is I never got to show you all what I could really do. These short form stories, written early in the morning before school sometimes lacked the quality I know that I can produce, maybe not grammatically, but at the very least you all never got to see my true writing abilities at their full potential: writing abilities I gained thanks to this series and thanks to you.

So with that in mind I have made a decision. I want you all to see the fruits of my labor, and what this  series has done to its author (if you care to look, I wont force anyone :). But down below I will post chapter 1 of two independent side projects I have worked on during the time of this series. The first is a book I worked on sometime during the middle of the series, and that I finished more than a year ago which I plan on posting online to wattpad and A03 in the coming months, the second is the first chapter from my most recent project and which I hope to traditionally publish some day. I hope that at least one or two of you might read them and see the change in me that has resulted from this series

Chapter 1

Children of the Affliction

The Outbreak moved up the street in a wave of fetid flesh, their feet shuffling in an uncoordinated, stilted shamble as they dragged their diseased bodies  through the ankle-deep filth of Veerus city. 

         As they walked, they moaned softly, their rotting vocal cords shivering  with every breath they took.

         The outbreak was not a quiet thing, and Eli was thankful for that as he pressed his back against the desiccated crumbling wall of the rotting city, as desiccated as its occupants.

 He crouched low, but didn’t allow his hands to touch the ground and the filth that rested there. He closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath before peering out from the crack in the wall. 

And so they continued on their shuffling, staggering way, their red decomposing flesh  peeling back from rotting bone. A tidal wave   of rancid air fogged up the lenses of his glasses with a stench  so vile he had to swallow to keep from gagging. It was the kind of smell that burrowed its way into your nose like hungry maggots,leaving a sour  penetrating taste behind on your tongue.

         Eli wiped his glasses silently with a hand, and immediately regretted his ability to see as he watched a pale worm wriggle its way from the rotting  folds of what had one been  a nose, only to twist wetly before turning back to slither between ragged, purulent lips..

         Eli turned away from the hole pressing his back against the wall and covering his nose and mouth with a hand. He forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply, an action which he immediately regretted as the filth rose up to seep into his nose and mouth.

         Their groaning grew distant, and a small voice hummed in his ear.

         “I thought you said you weren’t afraid of the Outbreak.”

         His mouth was watering, a sure sign he was about to throw up. He let the saliva drip from his mouth and onto the ground, where it couldn’t cause him to vomit. 

“Just because I’m not afraid of them doesn’t mean I want to give one a hug.”

         “And all of this isn’t fear?.”

         “This isn’t fear, this is nausea. Those things are disgusting. Why anyone would willingly serve Affliction is beyond me.” He looked down to where a large baleful eye peered out from under the flap of his satchel.

The Eye blinked wetly once and then twice before “The same could be said about people who willingly visit affliction.”

Eli sighed, “You of all people should know that our visit here is hardly willing.”

The eye rolled at him, “Still going on about your father are you.”

Eli’s shoulder’s stiffened slightly jaw tightening even as his fingers went white around the strap of his bag, “This isn’t just about that and you know it.” 

         “Your Hope,” the eye said, his voice a high pitched reedy quaver through the fog “Your  little obsession always seems to bring us to the most loathsome cesspits: hiding under rocks or  in the bowls of trees.”

         Eli adjusted his glasses, “This entire world is a Cesspit, Wink. and it isn’t hope it’s research. Hope is blind without action, research might just be able to help me before ....”  Eli trailed off then not entirely willing to voice the concerns that had become so pressing in the proceeding months.  Instead, adjusted the shoulder strap of his satchel and stepped down from the crumbling building and onto the street below. He tried not to think about how his feet squished through the filth or how his weight seemed to depress against the soil, as if he was walking across great slabs of meat.

         A pallid mist rose up around them, and he was thankful for the protective shroud he wore over his face. It didn’t keep out the smell, but he was at least relatively sure it would keep the Affliction at bay,

He stepped over a small creek of cloudy water, and tried not to think about the strange spongy chunks that bobbed just under the surface.

         Wetness squished under his feet as he walked, and he stopped, reaching into his bag for a pen and notebook.

         Wink moved to the side as he passed his hand in and then out, coming back with a faded leather-bound journal -- once his father’s journal now his, bound with something that might possibly have been human skin, though he did his absolute best not to think about that, and flipped open to an inner page, past pages and pages of spidery writing and jagged sketches until he found a fresh page. He allowed his hand to rest momentarily on the familiar course paper, taking comfort from the journal: an item that represented the only piece of his family he had left: his father’s research. 

         Wink stretched up from inside the bag, his long, gelatinous body elongating and stretching like a string of black slime , “What are you writing?”

         “Just a reminder to throw away these clothes when we get back.”

         “Afraid of getting sick are we?”

         Eli tapped his chin and passed the notebook back into his bag, “out of all the Dreads, Affliction is, admittedly, one of my least favorite.”

         “That implies you have a favorite?”

         “I think that is generally the whole point, don’t you think? Why else would anyone choose to Serve the Dreads? You have to pick a favorite .”

         Wink settled back into the bag, filling it’s contours like some sort of inky black puddle, “I feel like there is a distinct difference between having a favorite and having a, I dislike this thing the least.”

         “I thought semantics was my thing.

         Wink wiggled a little bit inside the bag, “Just getting back at you for all those times I had to listen to one of your pretentious lectures on the nature of fear.”

         Eli adjusted his bag one more time, “That is assuming you even listen to me, which we both know you don’t.”

         “No, no I don’t.”

         The two of them lapsed into morose silence as the outskirts of the city passed away, and the twisted trees of the nearby swampland faded into the backdrop of fog. Up ahead, looming in the half illuminated mist, he could see the outline of Veerus city, less like a city and more like a cancerous growth on the face of the world seeping corruption and disease into the brackish feted bog that surrounded it.

         He could see it now, canals of pollution leaking out from inside the city by way of giant corrugated pipes, which dumped cloudy water into the bog. The smell was indescribable, like a thousand rotting corpses. It came in gusts and waves steady one moment and then a sudden wall the next.

         His mouth began to water again, and he stopped in the street to bend over and gag.

         He wouldn’t allow himself to throw up, simply wanting the comfort and relief of expressing his disgust with this place. His hands tightened around the straps of his bag, the leather of the black gloves he wore creaking slightly as he moved up towards the looming shadow.

         Overhead a black bird croaked, and Eli traced its stilted path through the sky, watching as a feather drifted down from above.

         He was surprised the creature had enough feathers to fly.

         Approaching the gates of Veerus his eyes fell on a pack of mangy dogs --with rotting skin and eyes so encrusted with yellow discharge he wondered how they could even see. They were huddled by the roadside, surrounding something that lay unmoving on the ground before them, tearing at it with their rotten teeth.

         It looked like it had once been a cat.

         Or maybe a rat.

         He heard the rats in Veerus were almost as big as cats, but either way it didn’t matter. The thing was so diseased it had probably expired right there in the street so unrecognizable it didn’t matter what it HAD been once upon a time.

         He made sure to keep to the other side of the street, eying the mangy mongrels as they chewed on their meal, not relishing the idea of what a bite from one of those infected things might do to him.

         As he came upon the gate, he found himself held up at the back of a long line of people all crowding around the entrance, in a long line of hunched shoulders and ragged clothing. Looking at the mass of flesh before him, he found himself purposely distancing himself from the filth of bodies.

         By the looks of them, he could see that most were peasants from the outlying marshland. They had that look about them, with scaly red skin, and bare feet with yellowed nails overgrown such that they were twisting back upon themselves. He grimaced as he imagined how it must feel to walk these streets, the rot squishing up between their toes. Their hair was lank like swampy weed and hung about their shoulders like wet moss while their skin hung loose and baggy around their faces.

         Even despite all that, none of them were repulsive enough to be mistaken for one of the outbreak, or even one of the city dwellers, who were characteristically marred by leperous pockmarks and spongy patches of skin.        

Granted, the swamp peasants lived on the land the affliction held dominion over, and many of them served the being in some way or another, but none of them were directly subject to it, so they had a little more safety than did their city dwelling brethren 

         Unfortunately for them, that meant they were still subject to disease as a natural course of things, as evidenced by their jaundiced  skin. Just ahead of him, he saw an elderly  woman hunched over a bundle of rags. peering out from those rags was a face, a feverish red face swollen and puffy with dark blue bags encircling the eyes. 

         He doubted the child had long to live.

         Anyone who managed to grow up in a place like this and survive until adulthood was a miracle on their own.

         The gate approached now, and  just as the gate guards came within sight, the man before him collapsed suddenly convulsing in the filth of the street before going still. Barely anyone stopped to look. Eli barely flinched, watching as a group of leprous individuals hurried from an opening in the gate hauling a hand cart behind them.

         The body was lifted by liver spotted hands and tossed into the back of the cart before being dragged away,  to be tossed into one of the plague pits, the contents of which drained from those massive pipes and out of the city.

         As he waited for his turn at the gate, Eli reached into the bag and pulled out his notebook and pen scratching a quick sketch of the scene before him 

         The men standing at the main gate were less diseased than the others: the only suggestion of their sickness being the pallid nature of their skin, and the glossy sheen of clammy sweat that acted as a constant veneer over their bodies.

         He couldn’t tell if they were bald on purpose, or if the sickness  had taken their hair.

         “State your business.” One of them said, and Eli followed the man’s eyes as they ran up and down his body. Eli shrugged off the crawling sensation that ran a course over his spine as the man’s eyes paused to linger on the unblemished skin of his face….. Almost hungrily.

   “State your business,” The second man repeated, voice raising with impatience.

         Eli clenched one hand around the strap of his satchel, “I am here in the capacity of my work, as an information broker.” 

         One of the men snorted and hawked a thick filmy wad of phlegm onto the ground, “And what information do you have to broker?”

         Eli looked the man in the face, the corners of his mouth turned  slightly down, “What kind of information are you looking for. I have information on the safest trade routes, weather predictions, medicinal recipes-“

         He was cut off.

“Let us see your identification.”

Eli nodded, dropping a hand into his bag to retrieve the little booklet of papers which he then passed over to the first man who looked it over with the same suspicious gaze..

In the end, it was his eyes that gave him away, running across the page too quickly and in such a strange pattern that he couldn’t have been reading. So either, he was lazy, or he couldn't read.

The man waved a dismissive hand, “Let him through.” 

Eli was quickly sent on his way as the first man moved quickly onto his next subject. 

         As soon as they were out of hearing range a grumble rose up from the depths of his bag “He lies.”       

   Eli resisted the urge to brush a hand through his hair, “ It wasn’t totally a lie, besides What would you rather I had done? Tell them why we are really here?”

         Wink stared at him from the shadow of the pouch contemplating his words before, “You are hardly likely to find your father here, and we both know it.”

Eli set his jaw forcing himself not to take Wink’s comments personally, “I know, but this isn’t about that, this is about…. Me.”

Wink hummed, “About that, what makes you think you are worth saving anyway. I thought you were erudite enough to know a lost cause when you see one” 

         Eli snorted “Big words from a wad of goo I might have just scraped from the bottom of my boot….. do you even know what it means?”

         “I know plenty of large words, because unfortunately the only reading material I have in here during our long journeys just so happens to be your creepy journal and Cripman’s Thesaurus fifth edition. The least you could do is drop in some decent reading material every now and again.”

         Eli huffed, “Yeah, perhaps, perhaps something with lots of pictures and very small words.”

         “You cheeky bastard.”

         “That’s me.” He looked up at the pale sky above and sighed. Besides, the wink was only half right. This wasn’t about stopping fear anymore; This was about saving his life. Eli only had so many days left, and those days were numbered. 

         He turned up another side street, following the map he had memorized earlier towards the center of the city. As he kept going, evidence of rot and sickness became more evident. More and more of those hand pulled carts trundled down the streets hardly even bothering to cover their gruesome cargo, all a mass of limbs and flesh melted together until it seemed to create one massive creature rather than just a pile of human bodies.

         A metaphor, Simile or perhaps a close facsimile to the physical avatar of Affliction itself.

         His mind was brought back to a page in his father’s Journal, where in was written an excerpt from one of the many books he had read, before leaving the journal to Eli. , “The Dreads and their incarnations” He could almost see the page upon which its description had been written, penned neatly in his father’s steady hand. 

 The creature lies within a pit in the ground-- a strange place for a god, though it is somehow fitting. The pit is filled a tenth of the way with brackish feted water, and flies churn in great wheeling circles overhead. When the creature moves it shifts with a great squelching sound that rips and rends like diseased flesh being peeled from bone.  The pit itself is wide, almost unfathomably so, stretching out for what must be miles, and inside rests Affliction, a god of sickness, disease, and plague.

To look upon it is to understand unfathomable corruption and disgust as its great amorphous blob of skin seems to churn and undulate below. Its outside are bruised in the many colors of a rainbow, sour and perverted into this strange and unholy facsimile.  It cannot be fathomed from where it starts and where it ends, and the limbs that wave above its head could be hands or feet or tentacles.

Not many but the Outbreak have seen the creature’s true form, for the power it holds, means that, to look on its body is to embrace the sickness, be permitted by it to become one with it.

To rot right down to the marrow of one’s bones.

                  Eli had some pity for the writer, for if he had seen what he had described, it was likely he was either one…. Dead, or two, a shambling corpse labeled as one of the Outbreak 

         He couldn’t say he felt entirely sorry for the man, as his first hand account saved Eli the curiosity of having to look at himself….. and the horrible boils that likely would have resulted. Overhead the sky had turned orange as the sun disseminated through the fog of corruption which shrouded the city. 

         It was a horrible place, and if it wasn’t for the Outbreak, the people would likely have fled long ago. but the Affliction had claimed them, and it wasn’t likely to let them leave any time soon. 

         Eli was close now, maybe a few blocks away from the library, and overhead, a rolling bank of clouds was passing its first shadow over the city.

         Looking at the library, he could only hope that it would be cleaner on the inside than it was on the outside. 

         It would be best for him to keep his head low lest he attract the attention of one of the Outbreak. He didn’t want to become like these poor trapped souls, subject to their dark god. 

         It was never a good idea to catch the eye of one of the dreads.

         Things tended to go generally very poor once that happened.

         For everyone involved.

         He was only delayed once on his way to the library, cutting behind a low stone archway as a contingent of the outbreak moved up the street, shambling and moaning like the deadmen that they were. He couldn’t tell what they were doing, but had suspicions that they were out hunting…. Looking for someone like him perhaps to bring into their fold, or to infect , their dark offering of fear to their hungry waiting god.

         They passed up the street, and he slipped out from his hiding spot, hurrying forward to the one building in this place that seemed somewhat clean.

         He said somewhat but there was still something about the building that didn’t sit right with him.

         At one point, it had probably been constructed out of large blocks of white marble, though the city had stained the pure stone with yellow over the years, like 

         He paused just outside the door and took a long deep breath, looking up at the words that hung before him.

         The Parvus School of Learning.

         And then he reached out with two gloved hands and pushed the doors inwards.

Chapter 1

Oculus

He scurries through the streets like a rat, his feet trailing whispers behind him as he goes, and even from here I can see the drops of salty, sweat condensation clinging to his skin like a dancer’s paste on jewels.

I know this man, though he doesn’t know me.

But even if he did, he certainly wouldn’t want to. 

A curtain of fog rises in a slow undulating wave from the Swampdark [may change this name] below, like the ghosts of the damned leading a procession towards the stars. When the fog touches me, I can almost feel the lifeless caress of those ghosts, the souls of all those the Swampdark has claimed.

The man turns a corner and I follow him, were it not for the midnight mirth echoing down from the upper city’s pleasure tier, he might have been able to hear the warning hiss of my mechanical joints. Luckily for me, the city humms, and my body hums with it, and in that hum I disappear. 

Music drifts languidly down from above pulsing with a slow, mindless beat. 

The man walks past a line of rickety storefronts, their windows and doors barred, and the message is clear: this city quarter bears no welcome for strangers. As he walks, his profile is painted by swatches of glowing blue neon, and now I can see the bottle in his hand more clearly. Neon light scatters through the container’s glass, and the light it refracts follows him down the street as a pale spector, his only companion in the night.

I slip closer, stealing strides of distance between us, a luxury he doesn’t even know he has.

I know this man.

I know him the way I know the thousands of men just like him, He’s got an iron lung, and it clings to the side of his bare torso like a bulging Nightleach, it's skeletal appendages burrowing into his body where it keeps anchored, The iron lung’s bellows spasm and pulse, struggling against the slow buildup of corrosion and rust, fighting to filter stagnant air into something the blood can use. 

It looks painful, the eternal weight of the iron lung acting as his ball and chain  that adds a perpetual twist to the man’s spine. Dying early might have been preferable to dragging around a botched suborgan.

I know this man.

He drinks hoping to abandon his pain in a bottle, he chews the bitter fungi to hang up his soul for the night, but when the ecstasy leaves him, abandoned like a one night lover he seeks to give his anger away: A gift no one asks for.

And who to give it to, but his starving, skeletal wife, and their seven, ghostly children.

Why would it matter to him? They'll all be corpses soon anyway, who will care if he speeds up the process, gives himself some relief.

I know this man.

And I am here to return his gifts.

The man pulls to a stop, lifting a desiccated hand to his pale, cracked lips. He coughs, and an unnatural sound is birthed from between his rotting teeth: wet and filmy, with saliva blackened by decay and rust. 

He turns another corner, passing silently into the lurking darkness. A path waits there, beckoning us downward until the city is lost above us behind miles of desperate metal and concrete. 

We step off the path, enfolded at once within an oppressive forest of towering iron 

stilts collectively called the hands of salvation: baseless rhetoric streaming like piss from the mouths of upper tier clergy. I doubted a single one of those godless men had ever even laid eyes on a support pillar, less like a saintly hand lifting its inhabitants towards the sky, but more like a diseased arm, holding a plate cruelly above  child’s grasping fingers 

I am behind him now, no more than a few precious feet of feted atmosphere occupies the space between us

If he turned now, he could reach up and pluck away my eyes.

Overhead, the support beams creak and chitter, as if conversing among themselves.

The swamp dark is never silent. 

The man’s steps are slow, plodding out the beat of his own funeral dirge against the hard-packed pathway.

Those unfortunate creatures that dwell here in the Swampdark are never without sound or even light, rocked to sleep by the tittering lullabies of rusted metal, and bathed in the malicious green glow of the trinity fields. 

Wobbly, stilt legged hovels huddle together in lopsided clusters over the uneven ground of the Swampdark,desperate to avoid coming within close proximity of one of the pillars.

Despite living in truth’s overwhelming shadow, the people of the swamp dark still refuse to look her in the eye.

We are halfway to the first rickety settlement, and I don’t know what it is he senses first. The man doesn’t have many natural senses at his disposal as, One by one, a lifetime of hardships has robbed his bodily coffers clean of taste, smell, and touch. But still, I watch the chill as it licks down his spine, alerting him to my presence and causing him to turn.

Robbed of his taste and smell, life left one parting insult on its way out the door, and the man is shorter than me by almost a foot, but despite all that he is lacking, he still has the good sense to be terrified.

He backs away jaundiced eyes as wide and pale as the cryptcap mushrooms beneath his feet.

I know this man.

And now, he knows me too.

Knows me by my mechanical augments, my wire implants, my external regulator, and the large silver eye that blinks at him from the upper right side of my chest.

A word condolences from thought and forms as a word on his lips

Oculus 

But he never gets the chance to speak it  as my hand cuts off whatever piffling speech he was about to make, but 

I know this man.

And I have heard his speech before muttered, screamed and pleased from a hundred quivering lips. They all offer the same excuses, passed between each other like an unwashed pair of socks.

And when the excuses fail to soften me, please and promises, empty and echoing like the bottles in their hands.

I lift the little man into the air kicking and struggling. He is heavier than he looks, iron lung dragged ever downward by the crushing weight of gravity, but my augmented limbs whirring to life with a hungry hiss. 

Yun Johnov 

I am here to equalize your sins.

I start with a headbut to the face, the cruel ridge of my mask biting into the delicate cartilage of his nose, which snaps without much protest. He howls, blood escaping eagerly from his nose to trace a getaway down his lips and chin. 

With his feet back on the ground, I reel back and punch him hard in the gut, brutalizing his already corroded liver. 

He doubles over retching.

I knee him, this time in his chin, and he reels backward, tripping over a huddle of mushrooms and staggering to one knee.  His iron lung screeches in protest, but I’m not quite done just yet.

I step forward, casting the dim impression of my shadow over his quivering body. He casts his hands high, shielding me from his sight.

But I want him to look at me.

I kick his hands out of the way, feeling as one of his brittle bones crumbles beneath my kick. 

His face is open and uncovered now, chin and mouth glazed in blood, thinning hair slick with sweat. 

I pull back one more time.

He falls to the ground a moment later, bearing my signature, signed with the judicious application of my open palm. My mark will last for days, the broken nose for a few weeks, but the memory of my intervention will remain until the bellows of his miserable lung stops choking in air.

“An eye for an eye.” I say, making my pronouncement to no one in particular as I stand over his battered body. 

We are close enough to the nearest cowering settlement for the occupants to have heard us, but they are unlikely to come to the man’s aid. Either he will negotiate his way back upright, or he will decay there in the mud, fertilizing the trinity fields with his juices, leaving only an iron lung as his headstone.

I bar thoughts of the man from my mind as I turn and trace my way up the pathway and into the lower city.

The lower city isn’t really part of the city proper, but a minefield of ghostly shanty towns, stacked in dangerously unbalanced heaps in the shadow of the upper city. The people here aren’t well off, but at least they are blessed to sit cupped in the palms of salvation, or at least that’s how some try to justify their miserable existence. 

In reality, people in the lower city aren’t much better off than people in the Swampdark, in fact the only real difference between the two groups is a matter of a few IQ points and a false sense of superiority. 

Despite the abundance of ramshackle dwellings, I don’t see many people here, and I don’t expect to. Generally, I am the first person most people see, and the last person most  people want to see, and as a result, my very existence tends to thin a crowd. 

I pass through the ghost shanties, as much as a ghost myself.

From there, I find my way up to the pleasure tier, its streets glazed with candy-bright colors spilling down from vibrant neon signs, and refracting through grimy panes of glass. 

The music crawls its sinuous way down into the street and vibrates up through the souls of my feet, stopping to pulse, and dance to the beat of the blood in my ears. 

Men and women writhe and dance before me, bathed together in the neon light. I can sense a few wary eyes turned my way, but the vast majority of people hardly notice me. The tang of trinity hangs heavy on the air, its presence announced by the thick, sweet smoke, and the bitter taste that makes itself manifest on the back of my tongue. A young woman staggers past me, the white underbelly of her eyes on full display, and her arms are flung out to either side as trinity guides her through fields of ecstasy for the night.

Curvaceous shadows dance low, and slow beyond a red-shrouded window.

“Over here, Oculus.”

Tangled between strands of real human hair, delicate fibrous cables lift themselves from my scalp tugging me towards the origin of the sound. 

The owner of that voice, does not attempt to hide, quite the opposite in fact

She stands in a nearby doorway, allowing glowing neon the privilege of kissing her skin as she stands. A ruby red gown blooms from her body stretching in languid curves down her legs and towards the floor. A wave of long dark hair spills down the side of her face and onto her shoulder, which is bare, and open to the night air.

I am surprised to see she is mostly organic, none of her curves borrowed, leased or welded on. 

She motions me over with a finger, “You look like someone who could use some company.” The same rote phrase trails from her lips, like it has from thousands of lips just like her since time immemorial. 

I raise an eyebrow, and the fiber optic cables in my hair rise with it, “Is that so?

She smiles, and I am almost impressed to see she has all her teeth, either that or an excellent set of dentures, “I believe it is.” When she breathes, a gentle fog of steam obscures the clear plastic of her external regulator, her only non-implanted augmentation. 

I tap my wrist, and her corresponding hand lights up. She looks down and then back to me, “That’ll get you an hour.” But even as she begins to speak, I have already waded my first few steps back into the flow of the crowd. 

“Hey! Where are you going! You know, I don’t do third party locations.” she says shouting to be heard over the music.

I turn my head internally, dialing down the background noise so I can hear her more clearly, “Keep it.” I say allowing the crowd to flow around me on either side. 

St stands, resting her hands on her full hips. Somehow, even her hands are beautiful: long and slender against the ruby hue of her dress, “I don’t accept charity, Oculus.”

“It’s not charity.” I say, calling back over my shoulder. 

She tosses her hair, which whips itself into a proud mane around her shoulders,“Then what is it!”

“A thank you.”

That response seems to catch her off guard. She stands, a pillar of stillness in a sea of flashing lights, and stares at me through the ebbing tide of the crowd, “For what?”

I turn away from her, and when I finally give her my voice, it is a quiet offering falling from my lips like shredded paper fluttering down from the upper city, “For being the first person to talk to me like a human tonight.” 

I make sure to be gone before she can answer, allowing myself to be swept away by a torrent of light and noise, bodies pressed around me filling my nose with the sulfurous odor of sweat, and the bitter tang of trinity.

Leaving the pleasure district, I shed neon and sweet smoke like water, the night air of the manufacturing district scrubbing my skin clean of revelry only to apply its own unique perfume.

Industry.

A distant line of massive, black smokestacks cuts a violent edge across the diffused, blue glow of the city skyline, huffing great clouds of rancid black smoke into the already hazy blue air. Lines of steel cables, electrical wires and bridges cut an impressionist pattern between the towering buildings.

The trinity factories are never quiet, run perpetually by ghostly night shift laborers fed with a steady stream of liquid stim. Some with company- subsidized ports directly into their bloodstreams for easier dosing. I’d seen it close up on several occasions, once as a boy when I was briefly employed on the refinery floor: employed until a steel hatch severed three of my fingers, and I was made redundant.

I flex my hand at the phantom memory of pain, before abandoning the memory on the streetside, though it would inevitably follow me home and find its way back into my head.

Until then, I would force peace upon myself.

The  industry  district occupies a long, single stretch of road that cuts like a scar through the central stacks of the city, always no more than a few miles from any possible origin point, offering no excuses for workers who found themselves running a few minutes late. Beyond this, only the trinity fields stretching for miles of back breaking labor beneath the city offer any consistent source of work.

I make my way past these buildings, hunching gloomily against the perpetually dark sky, and finally find my feet plodding along more familiar paths.

My place of work sits sandwiched somewhere off and to the side of both the industry district and the administration/government district ostracized from the bulk of the city by high concrete fences topped with a thin, blue electrical field. Additionally, the outer perimeter is surrounded on three sides by a murky perimeter of marble black water serving as a secondary deterrent to anyone already stupid eough to get to close to begin with.

I approach the front gate, a massive slab of silver metal with a barely visible hairline seam running a track down the middle.

At the center of the gate, the large, silver mockery of an eye blinks open, its external sensors connecting to the eye on my chest.

It blinks once issuing a series of robotic sounds followed by an inhuman mechanical voice.

Oculus Ailanthus 3 

The gate cracks open, splitting the eye in half to invite me inside. 

The courtyard and training fields lie silent and abandoned this time of day. My footsteps echo in protest to the silence as I lead my one man procession up to the grand double doors, which slide open for me without a sound. A thin beam of green/yellow light pours in a torrent from the open door, sweeping me up in a blinding spotlight as I step through the doors and into the grand atrium.

My eyes shed a small torrent of tears as they adjusted to the light, pouring down from our one greatest symbol of power and glory.

The tree.

Tall enough and wide enough, to take up the entire far wall of the large atrium, the plant stands proud within its environmentally controlled glass enclosure. A shroud of golden light filters gently through the emerald leaves and onto the ground where a curtain of lazy grass sways slowly in an artificial breeze. As far as I know, the tree is the largest of its kind, at least thirty feet tall, with a trunk as thick as a man’s thigh, and a tangle of branches forking out like the delicate veins and capillaries of a man’s heart. The leaves that sprout from its branches are smaller than my palm, and shaped like gently tapering spades.

As usually, the tree robs me of both my breath and attention, but I’m not one to complain.

“Oculus…”

Everything inside that class container is so clean, and gentle, even the lacy patterns of golden light cast onto the ground seem so much brighter than the grungy blue neon that paints the walls of the city.

“Ailanthus!”

Reality makes its unwanted appearance, barging in on the back of our front desk administrator’s nasally voice. I turn my eyes on the little man, no larger than five foot four, fighting with an aggressively retreating hairline, in a losing battle for his scalp. The son of some mid level administrator, he had been granted little enough power, and an even smaller amount of respect.

He glares at me expectantly, his small black uniform hanging in bags around his armpits and chest.

Usually, I might have had a little sport with the tiny man, but not today.

I walk up to the counter, and stand still, while the little man, can’t remember his name, unlocks the Observer from my chest, unplugging the bionic eye with a pop. He turns in his chair, plugging the camera into a waiting port, “Report?”

I rest the palms of my hands flat on his countertop, smudging its polished surface with the imprint of my fingers, “I have completed three sanctioned beatings, two retaliatory robberies, and returned three truancies. It must be noted that one retaliatory robbery resulted in compulsory amputation when no item of equal or greater value could be provided.” 

Behind him, the observer unit blinked and chimed a long, low note.

The small man gave an aggressive stamp to a sheet of paper and handed it over.

“Bring this to-.”

“The records office, I know.” I held up the paper, eyes scanning lazily down the page as I made my leisurely way from the room, red ink glistening like a smear of blood on the white paper circular red letters reading. 

Government of the Coladium: Department of the Seer Collective 

Oculus 336 Ailanthus. 

Certification of case completion.

I dropped my hand to the side, letting the piece of paper fall with it, turning only once to look back at the tree glowing like a beacon in the atrium behind me. 

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Here is the updated master post updated all the way to the end!

A03 if you want it. It only has the book and not the stories.

Master Post

/OK, so you guys asked, and I delivered, this is the master page with all of my stories in chronological order starting at the bottom and going up. Some of them include flashbacks, and so are not “technically” in order, but it was the best I could do. I will not write in order because the ideas do not come in order, but I will put them in their general place on this page when they are done,  so I hope this helps :)

Another development is that I have a Patreon now, if you would like to support what I do. It isn’t mandatory or anything, just a virtual tip jar of sorts :)

https://www.patreon.com/empyreaniris?fan_landing=true

Also recent development is that I have adapted the series into a book that I will be writing on the side. The link to that is right below if you are interested in reading. The title is Empyrean Iris.

Update: It is Finished! So I hope you read and enjoy

https://www.wattpad.com/user/starrfallknightrise

This will be updated as new stories are written

https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/186631255850/could-you-do-a-post-on-what-each-alien-species

https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/623401468069822464/alien-species-reference

Here is a document containing a few reference pictures for the diferent species of alien

https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/189708814740/drev-conlang-current

Here is the current conlang for the Drev language. 

https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/621283927531929600/adams-playlist

The sort of music that Adam listens to when he flies. 

https://discord.gg/pS97NBaVVR

here is the discord server link 

And here is the rest of the Master Post since this one is too long

https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/659588552862105600/master-post-continued

Keep reading

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

The End

https://www.patreon.com/empyreaniris?fan_landing=true

https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/182501791735/master-post

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jzEIdDAB4omdO2JcQVMObfrhLJ5kX4ONmSsLypM1ks0/edit?usp=sharing

Warm sunlight streamed into the room spilling onto the floor in a golden cascade. As the sun moved, the golden pool crept its way across the floor and up the side of the untidy bed. Sometime during the night sheets and pillows had been thrown to the floor by the rows of a restless sleeper, and now the occupant lay face down atop a small mound of pillows face partially obscured. The light continued its creeping trail upwards, sliding onto the bed and across the occupant’s face.

It was only a  little at first, but it wasn’t long before light was spilling down with full force, and the occupant of the bed groaned and turned his head inward. At the far end of the room the door opened a crack allowing two furry forms access to the room. The first dog was large, with glowing blue eyes and a coat as black as tar. The second was no more than a puppy, still trying to wrangle in its huge paws and oversized ears. Its fur was as silver as gunmetal, almost blue in the light and unusually uniform. Together they trotted across the room, tongues lolling and leaped onto the bed.

Their mission was clear.

The first dog proceeded to step onto the bed’s occupant with some amount of gusto, while the other just went straight for the face, pink tongue lolling and flapping with excitement, tail sweeping back and forth with enthusiasm as it licked the occupant from hairline to chin.

With a muffled shout of protest, the figure flailed, grabbing a dog with each set of arms to try and force them away, but the enthusiasm was simply too much to contain. The younger of the two dogs lunged forward, the thick skin at the scruff of its neck affording it just enough wiggle room to lick the bed’s occupant across the eye socket.

“HEY Pancake! Doughnut!!” The shout was not one of anger, but laughter, the dog’s tails wagged even harder, “Alright I’m up I’m up.”

Ka’Leen sat up, shaking himself and shooed the dogs off the bed eyeing them both reproachfully, “Did dad let you in here? I bet he did” The dogs didn’t answer, but danced around his feet looking for ear scratches, which Kay happily gave to them. There was no better reason to have two sets of arms, than being fully able to pet two dogs with equal gusto at the same time. Eventually they grew tired of him, and he let them out into the hall, going back into his room to get dressed.

Kay was Sixteen almost seventeen and didn’t remember Armageddon though it was the one greatest defining moment of their generation. 

He hopped into the shower, music on in the background singing loudly without fear of anyone being bothered, he was usually the last to get up anyway.

As far as most things went, he was mostly average for his age…. Well maybe that wasn’t quite right.

He was anything but average, but he mostly blamed his parents for that. 

Kay was nearly six two at sixteen, his father was a human and his mother was a Drev. What resulted was a tall, lanky teenage boy with four arms instead of two, or at least he had been lanky. Arcadia offered an endless supply of weapons training in its public schools, and what Resulted was hours of physical training and discipline taught by the most brutal of Neospartains and Drev warriors.

Over the past year or so he had finally started packing on the pounds, and fancied himself a little in the mirror as he looked.

Not bad.

Not bad at all.

He stepped out of the shower and flexed at his reflection glad that the door was locked so no one could catch and make fun of him. Again, Kay was tall, a trait he got more from his father than his mother, and short cropped golden hair that he kept in a way that he personally thought was artfully messy. His skin glowed gold, and his mother said he looked a bit like his grandfather. His eyes were green just like his father. He didn’t look much like his mother, but he had a couple octaves of human vocal range others would kill for. He could sing anything from bass to soprano without batting an eye: both the men and women’s parts.

Puberty had been a real bitch.

After messing with his hair to give it that intentionally unintentionally messy look, he hurried into the other room and pulled on some pants, grabbing his weapon before heading out the door and into the hallway. He ran into Nyx on his way out walking down the hallway. She had her head bent low over her handheld arms tucked tight into her sides.

Nyx, like mom, had never gotten that tall. At only around five five she was the shortest one in the family and the shyest. She looked more like their grandmother, a fact that Nyx hated, its not exactly easy to be told your whole life that you kind of resemble space Hitler, because that’s what Kazna was.

She had even tried to kill Kay on one or two occasions at least though he didn’t remember that.

Nyx didn’t actually look much like Kazna, just her coloring, a carapace that was a sort of cosmic looking purple shot through with tones of deep blue and red. She also had only two arms, one of which had been missing the hand since she was a baby, though she had a whole wall full of cool attachments courtesy of their mother.

Walking past his younger sister Kay plucked the handheld from her hands and then held it high over her head as she protested.

“Give it back”

“Sure, go on, take it.” He stopped trying to keep it away from her but instead stood still holding it high over her head where she couldn’t reach leaning back when she tried to jump for it.

“Kayyyy, give it back!” She jumped for it again, but she was simply too short.

He tossed it from one hand to the other, slipping it behind his back when she tried to reach for it, “Go on take it.”

Nyx was just starting to get mad, to kay’s amusement, when something hard and fast drove itself into his stomach, doubling him over and causing him to drop the handheld. A hand darted from nowhere plucking the game from the air, mid fall with contemptuous ease. Kay grunted and looked up to find his other sister Astra standing in front of him with a smirk on her face.

She was tall, pearly white where he was gold. She had short spiky hair, less hair and more like chitin in some places. She wore black tactical pants and a men’s black T shirt, an ensemble that lended her a rather androgynous appearance,  one that she intentionally cultivated. At nearly five eight and still growing, she was on her way to being very tall.

“Here Nyx, I think kay dropped this.”

“Hey, you three, what did I say about non consensual violence.”

The three of them turned abruptly to find their father looming at the end of the hall, hand resting on one hip, the other currently occupied holding their six year old baby brother, still sleepy in the early morning. Despite the fact that he was holding a baby, Adam Vir could cut a rather intimidating figure. Kay and he were about the same height, but  their father had years of physical training behind him. a fact well documented through the simple cotton t-shirt. Not only that but he had the look of a grizzled space pirate with his messy snow white hair, eyepatch, scars, and visible prosthetic leg.

He claimed that he HAD been a space pirate for a time, though none of his kids believed him.

He had plenty of stories that were just too good not to be made up.

“Astra started it.” Kay protested

“I did not start it, but I definitely finished it.” She pronounced 

Their father raised an eyebrow, “Uh huh, ill be living in an igloo in hell before I believe that. Anyway, breakfast is almost ready.” he walked into the other room, gently depositing Tana on the couch with a cup of juice before heading into the kitchen.

His three other children followed, sitting down at the table just as their mother swept into the room. She was wearing her Saint’s armor and carried a massive spear in the palm of one hand. It looked like she had just come back from training, golden light rolling off the electric surface of her chitin. Their father turned to look at her, a small smirk crossing his face.

Kay sighed, “Oh here we go.”

Their dad frowned at him, “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You guys are about to get all weird, aren’t you.” Nyx mumbled.

“My apologies for appreciating the aesthetic appeal of my wife.” he said, brandishing the spatula like it was a weapon. 

Their mother walked across the room, sliding both sets of arms around him, and resting her chin atop his head humming softly as she did.

Kay rolled his eyes.

“Be glad your parents like each other.” Their mother commented, “Not everyone is that lucky.”

The three of them mumbled incoherently, but perked up as soon as dinner was served.

The three of them ate with gusto, finished, put their dishes away and were halfway to the door when Sunny called over, “Hey, where are you three going.”

Kay turned to look at her, “We were going to hang out with the triplets.”

“Okay just don’t forget to bring a weapon, and call me if you need help with a body-” She said, like she always did though kay was never sure  if she was being facetious or not.

Just as they were about to leave, the front door was thrown wide, and a small crowd of people burst into the room, headed by Uncle Ramirez who threw his hands wide, “¡Buenos días, mis sobrinas y sobrinos favoritos!”

“Buenos días tío Ramírez” They chorused 

He grinned at them stepping aside to allow Aunt Maverick in through the door. Despite how small she was, Kay had always thought she looked a bit like a viking. She raised an eyebrow at him and he raised an eyebrow back by way of greeting, breaking into a grin just as Uncle Conn sailed through the door, “Oh Honey, I’m home!”

Their father sighed, “Honey is a term reserved only for people who are allowed to kiss me on the lips.”

Conn tilted his head, pitch dark eyes glimmering, “Well in that case-” He lifted his pale arms and began to chase their father around the room making kissy noises as he did. Adam brandished the spatula and swatted t him.

“Back foul demon.”

Following them was uncle Celex in all his technicolor glory. Kay was surprised he didn’t have a new lady friend on his arm as he seemed to have a new one every other week. He ruffled Kay’s hair despite being shorter than him, which he only ever did to Astra and kay but never Nyx, “You three don’t cause any more trouble than I would.” he said with a wink.

Astra smirked.

“And don’t forget the first rule.” Ramirez said.

Kay frowned, “Don’t try to use your heelies on the stairs.”

Their father winced visibly

Ramirez shook his head, “Not that one.”

“Don’t add to the population and don’t subtract from the population?” Nyx offered.

“No, not that one either. By the way, your dad was actually terrible with that roll back in the day.���

Adam frowned again, “half of that is not my fault.” 

Ramirez just shook his head, “no no,, the BIG rule.”

They had to pause for a minute before, “Oh, don’t chuck Marshmallows at neutron stars/” Nyx finished.

Ramirez grinned, “Alright, out of here you crazy kids-”

They would have if Riss and krill hadn’t showed up just then, scuttling through the door mid argument. It didn’t seem to be about anything important, specifically the correct way to put toilet paper on the toilet paper roller which was an odd argument to have for two people who didn’t need toilet paper.

Uncle Krill frowned at them suppling his best grouchy expression from a creature that was always grumpy, “Rule number one-”

“Don’t chuck marshmallows at-”

“No! Don’t stick anything in any body cavity that doesn’t have a flared base.” Nyx blushed while Astra and Kay howled with laughter, stepping out the door and into the hallway. Nyx was just like their father like that, she got embarrassed at almost everything which was hilarious for everyone else.

They made their way down, and out into the cool morning air, scrubbed clean by the scents of the forest, which had been integrated seamlessly into the Noxumber metropolitan landscape. All around them water features, flower beds, and small huddles of trees clustered in the main square below the spiral tower. 

Dr Katie, waved at them, holding hands with her partner on the way up Accompanied by Narobi and her husband and wife. 

Massive billboards played 24 hour GA news reels showing plenty of footage of their quarter sister Eris, who had been chairwoman of the GA for over a decade now.

Grandpa and Grandma Vir waved at them from across the square on their morning walk.

They stopped in the central square, in the shade of the Armageddon memorial.

Kay craned his neck back staring solemnly up at their family legacy.

The memorial was large, a tall landscape of rock and moss, around which were placed several strategic statues all with their own plaques. He had read them all, had read them multiple times since his childhood. At the base, old and wise, but wise in her weathered stone, Hijan, motherly and thoughtful.

To the other side Dzara, raising the weak from the ashes.

Above her Kanan, the stalwart poet soldier.

On the other side, a black statue sat in cross legged repose, deep in mediation, Naktan keeper of the mountain, and at the very pinnacle, a massive statue reaching towards the sky in triumph, his spear brandished, his cape billowing behind him,  Lanus, the saint of light, the saint of gold.

The savior of the universe.

A figure that in the past decade had been nearly deified.

Their grandfather.

A man none of them had ever met but one Kay personally, deeply respected, and whose loss he mourned.

He stared at it for a long while feeling a lump come into his throat, and was glad to look away when someone called his name, and he turned to see the triplets, and the rest of their little bad hurrying up the square, an eclectic group of alien and hybrids, they were they were the perfect mix to make trouble.

And so they made their way from the square, out from under the watchful eye of Lanus’s statue, standing vigil high above.

The End

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Epilogue pt. 2 “Adventure Never Ends.”

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The leaves of the alien planet where a deep mauve in color shot through from stem to point with veins of electric blue. The bark, or what served for bark, on the trunks and stems of the tree-like plants were ashy gray and lined with little bubbles of light yellow syrup  which leaked from gashes in the tree’s sides. The syrup was edible, sort of sweet and citrusy and was actually pretty good when spread on toast, a fact that had become apparent only by way of happy accident and more than mild idiocy.

Still it was a little less stupid considering no one had been poisoned, and the camp that morning had been one of eager, bright-eyed optimism much to the chagrin of the night owls in the camp, forced to get up and go to work with the dawn. 

The man knelt in the mud, rich and black with minerals, working gently with his hands to clip samples and take scrapings from the leaves and flowers of any strange plant that caught his fancy. He had laid out a few insect traps for good measure, and planned on waiting for a half hour or so before moving on to his next location.

While he waited, he broke out a field microscope, more compact and better suited for field work than the large and rather cumbersome laboratory style microscopes. He glanced through the lens jotting a few notes in a field notebook as he worked. He could have used the built-in note taking tool on his field HUD, but he had always preferred taking notes by hand, the work seemed more tangible that way.

It had been a little over ten years of work, and he had probably filled a couple hundred notebooks by now, each one dedicated to the flora and fauna of every new planet he came across. Ever since Armageddon, the universe around them was growing rapidly, every day more and more colonists set out to make a living for themselves on far flung planets. The population boom had been incredible for almost all the species.

There were now more colonies than there were central planets almost ten times over, some of them were corporate owned, used for mining or agriculture, but many of them were bought privately. Anyone could buy a planet if they had enough money, and were willing to sign documents promising they would protect the planet’s natural beauty and resources. They didn’t always follow through with their promises, but still, the GA did its best to keep things in line.

This reality was good for business, after all, every time a corporation found a new planet, they needed someone to go down and take a look. Partially it was to catalog the natural resources, determine habitability, but mostly, they were here to make sure no one else had already claimed the planet.

There was always the chance that there was some kind of sapient species inhabiting the planet, and that had happened to them a few times , however patients tend to leave behind a record of themselves, usually through the lines of infrastructure or sometimes even a satellite grid. That had happened to them at least three times in the past ten years, two of those species already having joined the GA while the third was still in talks.

Despite the mostly friendly nature of those encounters, it paid to be vigilant.

A twig snapped somewhere in the bushes behind him.

The man did not stop working, continuing along with the steady movement of his hands as he made methodical work of the plantlife before him. Making as if to place a sample in his bag, he slipped a hand through the open flap of the canvas, dropping the sampling container gently at the bottom while simultaneously moving his hand to brush cold metal.

From the back he looked like any other field scientist.

Having ditched the environmental suits some days ago, he now wore long pants laced beneath calf high boots to keep out alien bugs. His arms were bare from the biceps down past the simple black T-shirt and his head was bare of protection. He must have looked like an easy target from behind.

He almost felt sorry for the predator sneaking up behind him, for if they had known anything about the thin line of metal that ran its way up the back of each of his arms, and onto his hands, it would have known he was no ordinary scientist.

His HUD blinked.

A small cartoon dog popped up superimposed over his vision, and it growled.

His early warning system was going off now, just a few seconds shy of his human instincts.

The forest around him had gone silent, never a good sign.

His hand closed more firmly around the cold of the weapon

And then the bushes behind him erupted with a roar.

He spun in place, whipping the collapsable spear from his bag and diving to the side, fast as lightning.

The shape came charging into the clearing, nothing more than a streak of blue chitin, impossibly fast, the blade of the spear it held even faster.

He slapped the blow aside with contemptuous ease, falling into an easy pattern of blows, spinning the spear this way and that to defend from a flurry of attacks so quick it shouldn’t have been possible. Metal sparked and clashed filling the silent forest with the sound of sudden battle. Small animals fled from the brush in all directions sending up a cacophony of scurrying.

Caught up in the ease of his defense, he moved forward with confidence, ready to-

And then his arrogance caught up with him.

The attack switched up suddenly just as his foot came down on a loose pebble, and before he knew it he was on the ground, something hard and heavy pinning him in place. A large hand was clamped around his throat, and something hard and painful jammed itself into the junction of his thigh and pelvis. Both of his wrists had been pinned. The hand holding his wrist squeezed forcing him to drop the spear which rolled away across the dirt. 

He looked up, finding himself face to face with two large golden eyes.

Sunny hummed in amusement, “You know, you’re cute when you’re helpless.” She said pressing her knee down just that much harder into the junction of his leg. 

Adam tensed slightly causing her to laugh again.

“Well, are you just going to sit there and gloat, or are you going to teach me a lesson?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

Sunny looked him over with her cool golden eyes, one of them suspiciously more metallic than the other. She hadn’t changed much in the past decade and a half or so. Violet light spilled down from the canopy brightening her electric blue chitin in burning pools of blue. The smooth gray skin of her exposed throat rose and fell in time with her breathing.

She leaned in a little the edge of her mouth brushing ever so lightly against the line of his jaw. He shivered once but then she pulled back, cutting the moment off abruptly, “No, I don’t think I need to.”

He frowned, “Now you’re just being mean.”

She hummed, “Unfortunately for you, the interns are looking for Dr. Vir to ask him a question.”

Adam smirked, “I like it when you call me doctor.”

Sunny huffed and stood, pulling him to his feet with one of her free hands, “I know you do.” Adam reached over, and snatched his pack from the ground, accompanying Sunny through the tropical foliage and back towards camp. Overhead, little patches of blue sky could be seen through the violet canopy. Adam took in a deep breath of fresh air and closed his eyes. 

Who could ask for more than this?

Adam had once worried that  one day, his adventures would be over, that he would be forced to settle down to a stuffy nine to five and stare up at the stars with longing. The possibility of that future had plagued him for as long as he could remember, but now, when the future had finally come, he found himself still armed with a fleet of ships, and a new job that gave him every excuse to go out and touch all the weird alien things.

It had taken him a few years after Armageddon for him to acquire his doctoral degree, but he had needed something to do while recovering from the injuries sustained at the hand of Kazna. The nerve damage to his spine alone had been horrific, and were it not for Krill, Adam might not have regained feeling in his lower extremities.

Even so, his human leg below the knee sometimes felt oddly numb, and his left fingers tingled sometimes when it got cold.  Following the battle, he had stepped down from politics and moved on instead founding a private xenoexploration company for hire, specializing primarily in planetary first contact.  Generally, he advertised their non-sapient collection capabilities, but there was a reason they had both an active diplomat and xenolinguist on the payroll, not to mention private security that doubled as a small army.

They came out of the trees just then and into the camp  a little to the south west of the security shuttle. The ship was large for a shuttle and had Big bold letters running along one side reading: Seraphim Security.

Seraphim’s co-director was standing next to the ship, as annoyingly handsome as ever, barely having aged a year despite the past decade and a half. He had tousled dark hair, honey amber eyes, and had no compunction about telling anyone and everyone about the two silver medals he had won in the winter olympics. 

Angel Ramirz had been Arcadia’s first medalist in Arcadia’s history and did not want to shut up about it.

“Ah we were beginning to think you might have been kidnapped.” Ramirez said with a smirk.

Adam frowned, “It has been over fifteen years since I was last kidnapped thanks.

The smirk did not go away, “Wrong, there was that time on Scorpius b.”

“That was a misunderstanding and they apologized.”

“A polite kidnapping is still a kidnapping.” Ramirez said, stepping aside to allow Adam into camp, where the interns were waiting nervously around the campfire. Meezin, as per usual, was waiting nervously at the edge of the group, clutching his field bag. 

“Alright, where’s the fire?” Adam asked as he walked up.

Meezin looked behind him towards the flames and then back at Adam with a puzzled expression. It wasn’t that the Thoruks didn’t understand sarcasm, it was just Meezin. The big intern had four left feet, and a left trunk, if Adam was honest. At seven feet tall, and well over three hundred pounds, Meezin was a health and safety hazard and had a horrible habit of nearly tripping into the fire every other day. The Thoruck was tall, and built like a tree, with two sets of thick legs, the front set longer than the back set, with bright orange skin, and two trunks he used for articulation. In a way he reminded Adam of an elephant.

“What's the problem?”

It wasn’t Meezin that answered, instead Adam’s head was turned as a light thud alerted him upwards to where the second Co-owner of Seraphim Security had just dropped from a nearby tree, and onto the shuttle roof. 

Maverick’s short blind hair caught up in the wind as the four, bone white, spidery, articulated legs retracted back through her suit. Her gray/gold eyes were eager as she crouched, low to the shuttle rooftop.

“Remnants, the intern found his first remnants.”

Adam’s eyes widened a bit, “Sapient?”

“Unless you know of any sloths that can build a thatch hut, then It might just be.” 

Adm smiled, an eager gleam entering his uncovered eye, “Ah, first contact it is then.” He cracked his knuckles, “This is always my favorite part.” 

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Epilogue pt. 1 “Preface” Why Humans Are Space Orcs

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Becoming Human: Fathoms of the Unfathomable

Krill M.D

Preface 

With more than two decades of experience treating, diagnosing, observing and interacting with humans, and as the only nonhuman in the galaxy who has experienced humanity first hand, I am confident that I am the Galaxy’s most experienced nonhuman human expert in the matter of human physiology, biology, virology, psychology, and sociology etc. During my past two decades of research I have lived with the humans, acclimatized myself to their customs, and more than allowed them to become a part of me in both mindset and behavior.

My other qualifications include over three decades of specialty in advanced surgical procedure and diagnostics. I have been named the Intergalactic Association for Practicing Physicians’  Intergalactic Physician of the Cycle  award four times in the last twenty or so years, and also I saved the universe once. Granted,  it may be argued that I had some help in performing the last task, but at the end of the day it was I who pressed that button, and I am hardly about to be modest about such an accomplishment.

Despite all of these achievements, and even after all of this time and after experiencing life as a human first hand with their same sensory biology and cognitive configuration, I can confidently say that…

 I don't know SHIT!

And yes, this is my book, published through the Arcadian agency, so no stuffy board member can sit here and complain that my language isn’t “Academic” enough for them.

I don’t know shit, The more I thought I knew the less I actually knew, and experiencing life as a human myself did nothing to inform my understanding. In fact, my experiences as a human so many years ago only served to prove that I knew nothing. After the institution of the Maker Accords in Geneva and the banning of Anumectomy surgery, No other non-maker inhuman has been able to experience life from another perspective.

The Makers haven’t been seen for more than a decade now, so I think it is finally time for me to admit something I was unable to admit when they were still here.

Reversal of an Anumectomy is entirely impossible. The strands grown in the brain that attach the soul to the body are present at birth and can only be severed by death, they cannot be reinstated. After the makers left, I admit I have, on more than one occasion, Indulged in the pleasures of being human.

I am no closer to understanding.

Dr. Loquens of the Tesraki university of behavioral xenopsychology’s book on human behavior suggests that the special nature of humans comes as a result of their unique construct physiology in combination with the Anima allowed to hold it. He says that the human construct is specifically designed to hold the more powerful Deus Anima or a last cohort Deus, which entirely explains the special nature of humanity. He believes that the special nature of humanity and their accomplishments as compared to other species are related to their heightened survival instincts which drive them forward. 

And I can see why he would think this.

WIth four cortical hemispheres, the Vrul are on average more intelligent than an average cross sectional sample of other populations.

But I also find Dr. Loquens conjectures to be stupid, primarily based on at distance observation with minor undertones of Tesraki centralized bias. Here is what I CAN tell you.

There is something special about humans.

Something special about BEING human.

If you have ever been a human you have it. I don’t know what it is or how it happens, but once a human,, always a human.  

All other biological programming simply cannot compete with the experience of humanity. If you were to take a human and palace them in the body and cognition of another species, they would still be human. 

If you were to take an alien and allow them to experience humanity, than i dare say…. There is a chance they might be human as well. I don’t think this might happen to everyone, I think that there are those that are simply incapable of whatever it is that is required to be human. The exact nature of these requirements have been lost to me for over twenty years, and the fact that I have finally chosen to write this book is an indicator that I have finally accepted that I will never know.

I once coined a term common around the galaxy, “Humanization” or the phenomena experienced by nonhuman sapients in close proximity with humans, who experience a growing presence of human-like behaviors or other characteristics as a result of prolonged exposure to human socialization. I

For this reason, I believe that whatever it is that humans have can be transferred to a select group of others. 

This is what has me believing that there is something special about humans beyond their constructed bodies and beyond the Deus anima. There are plenty of nonhuman Deus who will never experience humanity or humanization, while there are those with other levels of anima who will.

I know the explanation is not satisfactory, because there is no explanation, but here are a few things that I am willing to say with some degree of certainty. 

Being truly human is not a matter of the body or genetics. I daresay that there is the occasional human  who is not HUMAN based on the classification that I will offer forward today. Instead I make the argument that humanity is something that exists as an ephemeral state of mind.

It is true doctor Loquens is correct in his assumption that humans have a heightened sense of survival, however, I say that this can be argued about every species in their own way. Vrul are more fragile than humans and more easily killable, so the option so saw your own arm off to escape from a dangerous situation is not viable without the immediate product of death, but instead vrul chose to subjugate themselves inside the walls of several cities along sites perpendicular to their planetary axis  and hide there for thousands of years until the memory of why they had gone was forgotten.

This survival instinct though different is of the same magnitude and cannot completely explain the differences.

I argue instead that humanity is a state described by the distance between two variables for example the desire to survive, and the impossibility of the situation to be survived, or the ability to feel empathy, and the ability of an object to be empathized with. Humanity is the ability to experience life in all of its extremes where those who are not classified as having humanity experience life somewhere in the middle. Not all humans experience all extremes in everything , but they experience more extremes than those who do not.

Take the “indomitable” spirit of a human. The ability to survive the unsurvivable, the ability to believe the unbelievable, and the audacity to do the impossible. One at a time they may not mean much, but in combination it can create some extraordinary things. Those without humanity might never have thought it would be possible to survive the war of Armageddon and make it through to the necritorium, even fewer would have been able to believe, in circumstances so terrible that there was even a possibility of winning. Many others would never even think to attempt something they  thought was impossible.

Humans are all of that.

They can hope in hopeless situations, in fact, hopeless situations bring about the MOST hope for humans.

Humans can love things that should be unlovable, they experience empathy and emotion for inanimate objects, those who have hurt them, or even beings they have never met before, only heard of.(See my chapter on human pack bonding to see how putting googly eyes on inanimate objects can elicit this reaction in humans.

The more extreme a situation gets, the more the human spirit can be seen.

In situations so hopeless, terrible and soul crushing, a human may still fight to live through.

In the most dire of times, they fight the hardest.

And in the most peaceful of times they can be at their most unsettled.

As a whole humanity possesses this, and as a whole humanity is able to spread it.

Since meeting humans I too have experienced a change in mindset towards the extremes.

I have believed the unbelievable, I have won the unwinnable and I have achieved the unachievable. 

The darkest times are when the light shines brightest.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

The Saint of Golden Light

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Sunny held Adam in her arms, cradling his war-ravaged body against her chest as she rocked silently back and forth. A part of her thought about briefly leaving him there, running over to the railing and looking for her father, as if there was any chance that he might have escaped kazna, let her fall and survived himself. 

But she didn’t move.

She knew better.

Drev loved only once. It didn’t matter what Kazna had done or what she had said, there was always a part of Lanus that loved her. So despite her misguided hope, she knew.

Lanus had chosen to fall with her.

He had chosen to stop existing, to save his children, to save the universe, and for that little bit of him to stay with her, to destroy himself as he destroyed her.

Blood slicked the metal beneath her. 

Her body ached, and as she knelt, a weakness spread into her limbs that made it hard to hold herself upright. She was so tired, so tired even weeping was becoming too much of a chore, and though Adam was growing heavy, she didn’t want to put him down. 

The skin of his face had gone ghostly white in the near darkness. His hair was slicked with sweat, plastered against his forehead in little tendrils. The UV stripes, visible on his face, were just a little off. She rested a hand against the skin of his cheek, cold to the touch. Little sparks of white energy hung in the air around the ring, flickering like fireflies against the night sky, falling like snow in meandering trails towards the gravity mats below.

Other shapes moved in the near darkness, but she didn’t look up.

She was so tired.

She stroked a thumb over Adam’s cold cheek.

“Let me see what I can do.” 

Sunny barely heard the words, and it took krill another two times of repeating it before she acknowledged his presence, shifting her arms so Krill could get a better look. She turned Adam gently to the side so krill could see the devastation that Kazna had brought. 

Krill sucked in a sharp breath.

Her heart sank just a little more.

“We have to move him now, I can help…. But we need to do it fast.”  Krill said, 

Problem was, the portal was gone. They had gotten here but, it seemed, now that Apollyon was gone, he had taken the portals with him. Still, the two of them looked, as if expecting the portal to have been moved to a more convenient location over the course of their fight.

But they found nothing.

They were stuck here 

Sunny clutched Adam a bit tighter.

Would the makers let her see her children again once she died.

Who would raise them if not?

She and Adam had failed to talk about that before they left. It was negligent of them not to have spoken, but neither of them had been prepared for a conversation as devastating as their children losing both parents. It was either one of them came back or Apollyon won and it didn’t matter anymore.

Sunny lowered her head, continued to rock back and forth humming gently to Adam whose eyes were still open.

She wished he would just pass out, at least then he wouldn’t be in pain.

“You can sleep now” She said softly, “It's…. Okay.”

Adam shook his head, and though his eyes were distan’t and his words slurred, he still spoke, “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

A similar scene was playing out not so distantly. Ramirez had extracted himself from his crushed armor and crawled over to where Maverick lay, face down, on the deck one hand dangling over the side. Golden light pulsed around her in jagged edges like the paint peeling off an old car. When he touched her, the light shifted some of it shedding and dissipating into the metal.

He tried to hold her gently for fear that she would turn to ash in his hands.

“Maverick….. Maverick.”

She didn’t respond.

Krill still knelt at Adam’s side helpless to do much with the field kit he had brought along with him. He couldn’t fix anima injury, so could do nothing for maverick, but even Adam’s injuries were bodily catastrophic. The nerve damage alone would take a year or more of rehabilitation even in the best scenario, with all of the most advanced technology.

If they didn’t get him into surgery soon, there was no doubt in Krill’s mind he’d be paralyzed from the chest down if not the neck.

 Sunny dropped her head onto his chest and hummed sadly, unable to put into words what she was feeling.

It was the soft, golden light that alerted them to his presence.

At first Sunny’s heart leapt, hoping beyond hope it was her father escaped from Kazna’s clutches, but it took no more than a glance to prove herself incorrect.

The architect floated softly down from the darkness. The burning white light had mostly gone away, spent in an effort to Destroy Apollyon’s forces, leaving behind only a visible echo of that power. The golden halo that surrounded his body was dim enough to leave his features apparent. The architect’s silhouette was human, but beyond that he chose no specific form. His face and skin morphed continually across the spectrum of humanity, dark to light, masculine to feminine, and aged and withered all the way down to a youthful prime.

It was disconcerting, but Sunny didn’t have the energy to stare.

Krill and Ramirez remained silent as the architect approached ribbons of golden light trailing behind him as he walked. WHerever he stepped, he left a glowing golden footprint.

“Thank you.” He said softly, “Creation is in your debt.”

The words meant something big, but none of them could think large enough to comprehend it.

Creation.

Everything.

“I am sorry I could not have done more, but my power had been waning for some time. You have restored balance to the cosmic scales.”

Krill frowned, “Wait, you didn’t destroy him?”

“It is not possible to destroy apollyon, like it is impossible to destroy me. But like the balance of the ecosystem, so too must the universe find its balance. When the scale tips, those held within suffer.” He raised a hand and gestured to the black hole, “Apollyon does not understand this. He and I have no beginning and we have no end, we cannot exist without one or the other to destroy one would destroy us both…. The result of such a thing is….. Incomprehensible, even to me. What you stopped was a fate worse than simply not existing.”

Sunny didn’t speak. 

Adam looked like he wanted to say something, but the bloodloss had taken his tongue.

“Please….” Was the only thing Sunny managed.

The architect raised his hands, and as he did, there appeared in the sky behind him a very familiar shape.

Glowing white like a beautiful cosmic ribbon, Smaug turned in a slow spiral Maleficent hanging at his neck. The architect stepped back, slowly growing in size as he stepped off the platform to hover within the vacuum. Gently, he reached out, and plucked the group of them from the deck, cradling them easily in the palms of his hands as he turned towards Smaug.

The group of them experienced no ill effects, needed no space suits.

Smaug Spiraled around, clasping his own tail firmly in his jaws to summon a warp portal through which the architect gently deposited them.

***

They had lost so much

Though they had won, the aftermath of the battle was devastation. Little did they know, but Apollyon’s supporters had not been simply relegated to the necritorium.  All across the galaxies and worlds, void soldiers were given the task of dealing death in an effort to funnel energy towards their dark god. 

The death toll was somewhere in the trillions and climbing ever higher with every passing day.

Some worlds had it worse than others.

Earth had lost an entire city to a single nuclear missile strike perpetrated by void soldiers.

Irus, the center of the void outbreak, had been rendered uninhabitable, its vast tracts of blue desert sand had been glassed into a single sheet of radioactive wasteland. Its great ruins and capital city had been obliterated, and its delicate ecosystem had been entirely annihilated. It was lucky that the Rundi’ had been recolonizing multiple planets for the past thousand years, and many had managed to escape even before the glassing, but still 

Tragedy was an understatement.

The Rundi no longer had a homeworld.

Noctopolis had broken out into all out war.

The Tesraki homeworld lost thousands in building collapses and bombings.

The Tvek and the Kree were no more

All across the galaxies, there was devastation.

Arcadia was the only planet that had seen casualties below triple digits, and even then most of the dead had been void infected soldiers. 

Some  were calling it the battle of Armigeddon, the day of reckoning, the end of times as foretold in so many religious texts across creeds and species.

Others weren’t so sure.

As for personal losses, there were many.

The Chairwoman of the GA

Naktan

Simon, and the crew of the Omen

Captain McCaster

Queen Xanthia

Hijan- Who died in brave combat for honor

Jane - taken by artillery fire. 

General Kimball 

Admiral Palmer

Admiral Koslov 

And to Sunny’s added agony

Kanan and Dzara, both Killed fighting to hold the Gate.

And now she was alone, the only surviving member of her family.

The rest had died, their Anima sucked into the Necrotorium funnel, and then used to augment the architect. The Makers promised that the broken souls could be collected and put back together. But a thousand years might as well be eternity when you are mortal, and basically eternity even as a Maker.

In the days following Armageddon, the world limped back to life, the universe went on, but there were still scars, reminders of what they had lost. 

In agreements between constructs and Makers, it was agreed that all Makers return to Revelation. Kelly agreed on the condition that she could serve to the end of her terms, what was a matter of four to eight years for eternity. Celex outright refused, telling the makers he would come when he was damn ready, but at least agreed to keep a low profile.

The makers would cut contact, revelation would be moved.

They would vanish into obscurity.

All those who had received Animectomy procedures agreed to have the effects reversed until the time of their natural deaths. Krill was mildly disappointed but eventually, and grudgingly agreed. 

Adam made a mostly full recovery.

The Steel Eye project and all of its iterations were shut down permanently and direct nerve-linked equipment for the purpose of military application was  banned galaxy-wide.

Statues were erected, the first on Arcadia, the second on Anin.

The savior of the universe.

Lanus the saint of Golden Light

A figure that would rise to almost deity-like qualities in the coming years

Adam abdicated his throne on Arcadia as did Eris, though she had better things to do. 

It was hard to run a planet when you have been appointed the newest and youngest ever chairwoman of the GA.

King James remained king of the spartans, but handed power over to the most surprising candidate, and one Adam was entirely unsure about for the first few months.

Conn made a surprisingly good president, aside from his habit of leering through Adam’s bedroom window for the fun of it. 

Numerous Starborn nations joined the GA.

Both Adam and Sunny, neither entirely made for the simple life, dedicated themselves to intergalactic exploration and diplomacy, everything they had missed from the old days.

There were still plenty of things in the universe to fight.

Adam finally went back to school for a doctoral degree in “cool science stuff” he always wanted to do but thought he couldn’t  specifically xenobiology.

Krill continued to write journals, argue with Riss and occasionally go on missions. 

Maverick recovered, and though the going was slow, her long time friendship with Ramirez healed and might have grown into something else.

Kay Astra and Nyx grew up under the watchful eye of their grandfather’s statue proudly standing on the square outside the spiral tower. 

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

My Sunlight

THIS IS IT! The moment you have all been waiting for. The culmination of at least three years of stories, the climax!  This was so exciting to write, I hope you enjoy!. 

https://www.patreon.com/empyreaniris?fan_landing=true

https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/182501791735/master-post

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jzEIdDAB4omdO2JcQVMObfrhLJ5kX4ONmSsLypM1ks0/edit?usp=sharing

Krill felt the prongs of Kazna’s trident pierce his chest. The pain was exquisitely excruciating, beyond anything he had ever felt before. As a Vrul he had once experienced pain differently, but in human form, the difference was something he simply couldn’t describe.

But he knew, this was worse.

All his senses were heightened, all his nerves more acutely tuned to the instinct of survival.

And that instinct told him he was dying.

The prong of her spear had punched through the wall of his thoracic cavity and pierced straight through an atrium of his heart, blood gushed briefly over the facade of his chest as his heart spasmed for life, but it was no use. He felt his extremities go cold as everything around him faded to black.

-

His next moment of awareness came with a sudden sense of cold, like being plunged into a pool of Earth-Arctic water. Krill opened his mouth to gasp but found he could not pull in the air.  What followed was immediate panic as he realized he couldn’t breathe. All other senses were momentarily blocked from his consciousness as he fought for breath. His respiratory system flatlined, then struggled, but finally, with one great, choking gasp, he began to expel the embryonic mucus that had done its job to protect him during the fight. Air rushed into his body, whose senses seemed surprisingly dull and muted after experiencing death as a human.

Krill gasped limbs flailing as he tried to push himself upright, body thick with the protective slime that had preserved his construct. The armor he had been wearing was now an empty husk without a driver. Slowly, his vision resolved, brain attempted to adjust from the sharp clarity of human sight to the prismatic nature of Vrul vision.

It was the blood he noticed first, so much of it, covering the deck and pooling in great ruby pools.

And then there was Adam.

He lay chest down on the deck, half of his helmet cracked away to reveal his face which glowed ghostly pale with blood loss. Blood loss, because the blood was everywhere else,, coating his body and cracked suit…. And the SE hardware trailing behind him. The spine of the SE exoskeleton had been ripped completely off. The attachments for the arms and chest had either been ripped off or snapped away from the force, and now it was attached by only the bloody cables that still held the suit to his lower body.

The rest dragged on the ground like spilled viscera.

“Krill” He wheezed.

He didn’t know what to do…. Not here, not without an immediate surgical suite.

All around them, there was carnage.

Ramirez and, to his surprise, maverick lay in a heap at the far end of the disk, Sunny lay next to them, just beginning to stir, while kazna and lanus battled for dominion, though he was fighting a losing battle.

Every moment another flickering of the architect’s light would mark a rise in her power.

And just behind them, a streak of light and energy was headed in their direction.

He looked back at the suit.

Adam had crawled over, and let him out of the suit, it had likely taken the last of what remained in him.

Sunny groaned and began to crawl to her feet. 

And that’s when krill saw it.

The console.

Kazna had been standing in front of it before, but the fight with Lanus had pulled her away, leaving it open. He was no fighter, even in human form that was true, but he was smart, and that was not up for debate.

In that moment he knew what he needed to do.

As much as it killed him to do it.

He stood.

“Fealty, are you there?’

Adam’s suit let off a soft and mournful whine, almost painful, “Start the clotting agent and lower his body temperature. Help as long as you can.”

The Suit chirped.

“Krill>” Adam mumbled.

“Don’t worry, I have a plan,” Krill said, scuttling across the deck as fast as his legs would carry him, which was a pace somewhere between frustrating and mind-numbing after being a human. Behind him, Sunny had made it to her feet. 

Kazna screamed, Lanus stepped forward, scything through another set of tendrils eyes burning with golden anger.

Krill could see the console now, very simple, with a joystick and a keypad with a single screen. The screen blinked a green display, marking the center of the black hole as its target. If Krill could get to that console, he might be able to redirect the beam of energy and blast the anima off into space.

Sure that wasn’t ideal, but at least they wouldn’t be gone forever, and Apollyon wouldn’t gain more power.

Pity for him Kazna knew what he intended.

Krill heard a roar, turning just in time to see Kazna pelting across the deck towards him at full tilt, black tendrils fanning out behind her like great, black wings. Lanus ran behind her arm outstretched. Krill squealed and tried to dive out of the way, but his legs were slow and awkward.

Kazna ran past Adam, who had just enough strength left in him to reach up and stab at her exposed ankle. Kazna screamed and stumbled, just long enough to give Sunny an opening. She dove forward going nearly horizontal as she reached for Krill. In a moment his world was turned upside down as Sunny wrapped her arms around him, tucking him into her chest and rolling just as kazna blazed through the space where he had been.

Sunny landed in a crouch, skidding across the deck with one hand on the metal, and two hands around Krill. Her fourth hand held a short double-sided combat knife that krill hadn’t seen her recover. 

Her eyes blazed with golden fire.

She set Krill down, “GO!”

He didn’t waste time, racing the last few feet towards the console as Sunny Ran to intercept kazna both her and lanus reaching Kazna just as she was coming back around to take another pass at Krill.

Lanus came in hard, shoulder-checking Kazna off course and into Sunny’s line of attack. Sunny swung and stabbed in arching sweeps from left to right cutting through tendrils in rapid succession. Lanus flanked from the other side confusing kazna’s tendrils long enough for Sunny to scythe through them.

Kazna turned from Lanus to Sunny, trying to maneuver herself out of a flanked position, but, Lanus and Sunny refused to allow it, dancing deftly on either side of her, lanus a burning warrior of gold, and his daughter Sunny, small, limping, blood-stained, and broken, but vicious.

She said nothing.

But her actions spoke louder than any curse or diatribe ever could have.

She spoke instead with her blade, dicing her mother’s blackness to ribbons with unerring precision.

Krill, had flung himself at the console frantically scrambling at the controls. He tried moving the joystick, but it did nothing.

He cursed viciously with all the human curses he knew.

What did he need to do!

Krill frantically started pressing buttons as the distant column of light approached, growing larger with every seconds.

What was he doing!.

Kazna was backed against the railing, and out of their flank, managing to scoot along the edge and towards Krill, She was now doing her best to fight Lanus and Sunny off from the front.

And she was winning.

Krill’s eyes scanned over the console all four hemispheres of his brain working in desperate tandem to determine how the machine worked. 

In the sky before him the battle between Apollyon and the Architect raged on, tendrils of blackness, against a humanoid silhouette of shifting white light. The architect ripped and pulled at Apollyon, and in turn Apollyon’s tendrils ripped chunks from the Architect.

Krill’s eyes swept desperately over the console.

Kasna was in tatterers backed nearly against the rail just behind him.

Sunny stood between them.

AHA! He found it!

Overhead the architect began to flicker.

Kazna broke into manic laughter as all her tendrils sprouted back into place, the wounds in her body fusing shut. Apollyon pulsed with triumph as Kazna lunged forward towards Sunny, bloody, broken, and no match for her sudden surge of power.

Krill was seconds behind.

Sunny braced herself for impact, Krill did the same.

Kazna’s scream of triumph was cut off as four massive golden arms encircled her from behind. Lanus’s weapon lay on the deck, discarded, his back against the railing. From over Kazna’s shoulder, and behind a wall of waving tendrils he uttered a phrase that echoed through both physical and cognitive spaces, soothing, sad, and resigned but also glowing with pride and warmth.

 “I love you Chalan, and I always will.” 

Then General Lanus of Anin braced one foot hard against the railing, and pitched them both over the edge.

“NO!” Sunny screamed

The beam of golden light hit the ring and began to burn.

Krill slammed his fist against the joystick.

The ring fired.

A beam of golden energy streaked across the night sky and hit the architect directly in the center of his chest. 

Apollyon Screamed, with a psychic wave so powerful it brought Krill and Sunny to their knees. 

The architect’s back bowed, arms held out to either side fingers curling into talons, his head thrown back. Light and energy poured into him as a torrent, his skin began to brighten. Krill turned his head away, but still, the light was terrible, brighter than the first flash of a nuclear eruption and growing brighter.

Krill curled into a ball.

So bright, that briefly across both Andromeda and the milky way, a new star burst into existence, brighter than a supernova.

And then the architect flexed his hand.

A wave of energy burst out from him in all directions, searing away Apollyon’s tendrils, frying the necritorium, shutting down void power, searing away void infection, and forcing Apollyon back into the blackness of the hole from whence he came.

As the light faded, Sunny, Chalan, Lanusdaughter staggered to her feet, half blind and almost deff she threw herself against the railing looking down into the swirling darkness of the black hole, no longer rimmed by light, “No…. no no no.” She whispered, “Please no.” Her body shook with a sob,

 “Nane, Tak, gda tsa.” Please, father, where are you?

She repeated the words again through another sob.

But a cough broke through her pleading.

She turned, to find Adam lying on his back, the last bit of energy spent. He coughed against and blood bubbled from his lips.

“No.” 

She ran to him, gently pulling him up to rest in her arms, “Je nane jee jeeanish.” No, please don’t die

He would have reached up to touch her face, but he didn’t have the energy. “Zhak Chaleel (My sunlight), I’ve made it through worse.” 

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Fading Light

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https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/182501791735/master-post

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jzEIdDAB4omdO2JcQVMObfrhLJ5kX4ONmSsLypM1ks0/edit?usp=sharing

Ramirez fell, pulled inexorably downward into the gravity well, and towards the event horizon. His stomach plunged into his pelvis, leaving his chest cavity hollow as he screamed. Ramirez had never been afraid of dying…. But he WAS afraid of this. 

He didn’t want not to exist.

But Apollyon raised its many tendrils to embrace him, and oblivion is what it promised. Light flashed and churned below him, rolling in a great spiral toward its end. Could he escape?

Maybe if he ripped off his helmet, let his body die, and released his Anima before he crossed the point of no return. Maybe his Anima could escape. 

It was his only option.

No time to think further.

He reached up and grabbed onto his helmet, curling his fingers under the latch as Apollyon rose up to consume him.

But just before he could pull the latch, something grabbed him around the chest. His body jerked, his arms flailed, the wind was knocked out of him, and his sudden feeling of weightlessness was replaced by the sensation of being crushed as his fall was halted.

The gravity was incredible, and he felt as if his eyes were about to be squeezed from his skull.

He groaned.

And so did his armor.

A warning light began to blink behind his visor. 

Suit integrity failing 17%

 Golden light rose around him…. Golden light muddied orange. Ramirez couldn’t turn his head, the weight was too much, but slowly, he began to shift against the will of gravity, and his head lolled forward to find a pair of arms gripped tightly around his chest.

The architect? 

But no, that didn’t look like the architect, and on further inspection, he found a pair of spidery void appendages grappled around his upper legs. A part of him fell into shock while another part of him fell into confusion. Why would a void creature save his life?

If only he could see!

But couldn’t he?

Ignoring the warning from his suit, he pulled up the screen monitor for his helmet cam, which still worked, though the increased gravity was causing it to fail and flicker, giving him only a grainy image as it struggled to swivel. At first, its shutter was not adjusted to take in the light that was shed from the golden silhouette, but after a moment the image resolved.

And it wasn’t just the gravity that crushed the breath from his lungs.

Above him, arms gripping around his chest, face contorted into an expression of immense pain, was his savior.

Angel Ramirez had his own Angel.

Maverick 

****

She was made whole. 

Awoken on the battlefield, Maverick had found herself resolved. Renegade/Rebel was no more, Technically Maverick was no more, but instead, they were one and together like they should have been. She was maverick because that was the sum of her most important parts, the part of her that had grown from this jealous thing that she had harbored, but she wasn’t free.

She was still weighed down by incredible guilt, burdened by a pride she had lost on earth. She was everything now. She was a warrior of time immemorial, once a loyal soldier to the architect grown jaded and bitter. She was a turncoat, and a traitor to her people, the same Anima who had been banished to earth to learn her lesson.

But she was also the sum of what came after, what the past few years had turned her into.

Maverick, not Renegade. 

Oh, and a hanger-on.

The creature that had once tormented her, turned her, whispered in her ear, and now gripped onto Ramirez just as tightly as she did. 

They were here to save their friends, or she was here to try. 

She had seen him go over the edge; had arrived just in time to dive after him, and now with her arms wrapped around his chest, she wasn’t sure she could do it. The gravity was terrible. Though they had not crossed the event horizon, past the point of no return, the intensity of the pull was no small thing, and she could feel it trying to pull them both down, to end them permanently.

She couldn’t allow it.

They were suspended, her pull equal to the gravity that pulled them downward.

Her limbs shook.

She was starting to give.

They were going to fall.

Ramirez couldn’t speak to her…

But somehow he must have known she could hear him, one of the powers of being a Maker. 

So he spoke to her in silence, forced to have faith that she could hear.

“I love you.” 

The sentiment wasn’t a romantic one, at least not at that moment. Sure he harbored those feelings for her, she knew, but this was neither the time nor the place. 

This meant something different, something beyond. This was about everything, this was for the years they had fought together, for the slow friendship, for the hard things, and the frightening things. 

This was his forgiveness.

It didn’t carry with it any special power, it did not solve their problems

It was a single phrase spoken by a very powerless human man at just the right moment.

Because it made her angry.

Angry at that bitch Kazna for taking away the kind of person who could say it: the right thing at the right moment. She roared, digging down deep to find the place buried inside her, where the energy flowed.

They began to move.

Inches.

She screamed.

Feet.

She was a comet, a ball of burning golden fire as Anima energy shed from her.

She howled like an animal, her voice lost in the silence of the vacuum, nothing to vibrate over her vocal cords, but still, it felt good to scream. Ramirez hung limp in her arms. 

Maverick was nothing more than light now, shedding energy, she could feel it sloughing off of her, shredding from her body in a way that should NOT happen. She was losing power, losing strength, but she could not stop.

Her very being was flaking away, but their speed was increasing, and the pull was lessening as they shot through the sky. 

She screamed.

And they shot up over the edge, hurtling into the catwalk and bouncing. For a horrible moment, she thought they would pitch over the other side, break through the railing and start falling again, but as they careened into the metal, it held, denting and warping but not breaking as they came to rest.

And she faded.

***

Adam lay in a pool of his own blood, slowly spreading beneath him and trickling towards the edge of the catwalk as if a part of him were eager to flow after Ramirez and die himself.

From the corner of his vision, going hazy, he watched as lanus threw himself over the edge of the railing, rolling once before coming to his feet, and charging back toward Kazna, sweeping up a discarded spear. He was a blur of motion, spinning through the air as she came at him from all directions.

Gold light flared over his body, and that moment became one of the most beautiful pieces of combat Adam had ever seen. For those few seconds, Lanus was a god of war.

Kazna had her attention turned away.

Adam reached out his one remaining hand, and clawed his way across the deck, toward Sunny’s prone body. His nerves screamed in protest, as the Steel eye Exoskeleton, spattered in gore, was dragged along the deck behind him.

He reached her, Resting a hand on her chest.

“Sunny, Sunny come on.” He said, hot tears filling his vision, “Please come on.”

A bright streak of orange light appeared in the distance.

It was coming.

He shook her, “Come on.”

And then she groaned and shifted, but she did not wake.

Still, a wave of relief washed through him. The armor was crushing her but maybe he could help. He reached out and pulled the emergency tab. The suit did its best to fall apart, but it was still jammed. Orange blood leaked out, but it wasn’t a lot, and she was breathing.

Feet away, krill lay prone, and though blood speckled the place around him.

Adam shifted using only his arm and dragged himself the foot or so across the deck to Krill’s suit. The body didn’t move.

Behind them kazna had grappled lanus, but a sharp burst of anima energy seared away the dark tendrils that gripped him around the chest. He threw her off.

Adam peered in through the open holes in Krill’s suit, and was surprised to find.

Nothing there.

There was no body.

What!

And then, he remembered.

He fumbled at the back of Krill’s suit fingers going numb and tingly as his blood continued to seep onto the deck.  

He was growing cold.

Please, just a little more.

 But Finally, his clumsy fingers found the latch and pulled.

Warm clear fluid spilled onto the deck, and with it came Krill’s real body, sloshing out of the artificial womb like a calf during birthing season. It wasn’t pretty, but it was much less bloody.

His body settled onto the metal just as a comet of bright golden light came searing out of the darkness, throwing itself over the railing, and rolling across the desk before coming to a warped stop against the far railing with the shriek of metal.

The light faded rapidly leaving Maverick Spent on the deck, one arm hanging over the edge, and Ramirez lying next to her 

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Admiral Kelly

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

I have waited far to long to draw Narobi, but I’m happy with how it turned out.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Turn of the Tide

Am I sorry? No, No I am not. 

https://www.patreon.com/empyreaniris?fan_landing=true

https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/182501791735/master-post

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jzEIdDAB4omdO2JcQVMObfrhLJ5kX4ONmSsLypM1ks0/edit?usp=sharing

Apollyon was silent.

The architect was silent.

The entire world around them was silent, despite the chaos. The black hole churned behind Kazna, backlighting her warped form with an outline of glittering orange rim light. Streaks of bright gold arced across the sky in bursts and chaotic eruptions as the architect did his best to hold back the tide of nothingness that was Apollyon.

A golden phoenix cut across the sky like a comet and burst into sparks as one of Apollyon's tentacles snuffed it, only to appear as its namesake a moment later, in a burst of golden light that seared Apollyon’s tendril. 

“There is still time,” Lanus said, taking a step forward towards his once battle partner. As he stepped, a pool of golden light spread from his feet dancing around his body like the hem of a cloak, “Please, Kazna, come back to us…. We can end this here and now, we can take it all back.” 

It was a lie, but it was a beautiful one at that.

In truth the things she had done could never be atoned for, all the lives she had ruined, all the people she would have condemned never to exist. The architect had never established a permanent hell, but for Kazna… he might have made an exception. But still, the lie was convincing: convincing because Lanus hoped it to be true, wanted to believe it just as much as he wanted her to believe it.

His attempt to convince her had not worked during their meeting on the derelict, but perhaps it could work now when they were only minutes away from annihilation. Off in the darkness, the golden phoenix was snuffed, but this time…. It was snuffed permanently, leaving behind nothing but an impression of light in the darkness.

The tide was turning.

Apollyon was stronger than the architect and despite his valiant efforts, the architect was losing.

On their other side, a pack of glowing golden wolves vanished in a single swipe of Apollyon's tendril, and they did not reappear. One by one, the sky around them grew darker.

Around her, Apollyon’s borrowed tendrils sheathed, and Kazna sneered, “You fight a lost battle Lanus. Kneel, and your death will be swift, your pain will be gone, and the fight will be over. I promise you a swift end.”

Lanus straightened, the fingers of his upper right hand tightening slowly around the shaft of his spear. For a moment he stood as a glowing golden beacon against the darkness, a bastion of the architect’s light even as the architect himself was beaten back.

Before them, a Jeffery snake burst into sparks, the light streaming back toward a central point. Black tendrils persued. More glowing creatures burst into clouds of light, spinning backward and merging together in an immense vortex of light and color that rapidly resolved itself into a shape.

The architect’s last shape.

It was telling that the last shape the architect chose in his final moments was…. human.

He towered at an incredible, and impossible size thousands of AUs across, and thousands more tall, growing in size to match the power of the black hole before them. The light he shed was immense, impossible to look past without high-yield light filters. Past the incredible and terrible light that he shed, the architect’s body morphed and undulated, never keeping the same shape, his face and the proportions of his body always changing, never settling on a specific human form.

The architect shook himself, like a prize fighter who had just taken a nasty hit to the face, and then he lunged forward, grabbing Apollyon's tendrils in grasping handfuls before ripping them open and burning them to ash.

Kazna laughed, “See your god now, fighting for his life. Apollyon is the future, set aside your fear and BOW!”

Silence pervaded the ring despite the carnage.

Lights flashed, in shades of orange and gold around them.

Their shadows cut across the metal in bright contrast, shifting and churning as the architect moved. Their armor was thrown into sharp contrast with the brightness of the light, all five of them standing in a loose row against Kazna. Light danced and sparked off their bodies, torn, and ragged.

Kazna’s blood glowed like a beacon against the metal.

Slowly, Sunny stepped forward, the riges of her char-blackened armor burning in sharp contrast.

She held out her hand.

Adam did not need to read her thoughts to to know what she wanted. Reaching down, he withdrew the backup spear from his armor. The first weapon Sunny had ever made him, and deposited it in her palm. Armor stil lit by golden light, Sunny flicked her wrist, allowing the collapsable weapon to errupt outward and snap into place, the head of the leaf blade glittering with a sinister sheen.

She stared across the open space at her mother.

“No!”

The word broke the stillness like a damn.

Without agreement or forethought, the five of them charged forward in unison all thoughts of fairness forgotten, discarded at the door to armageddon. 

And then their little bubble was filled with noise.

Sunny let out a war cry that reverberated off the metal and shook the very bolts that held the station together, her anger so great as to propel her across the catwalk and be the first to strike at the woman who had made her life a living hell for nearly three decades.

Sunny thrust forward, but the tendrils that surrounded Kazna spirited her back, swiping at Sunny from two directions. Sunny ducked right under one swing and came up to sever the other tendril. Adam cut around to the side, severing a secondary blow coming in from her right.

Lanus maneuvered himself to the rear, while Ramirez cut to the other side and emptied his remaining ammunition into the mass of tendrils. When that didn’t work, he dropped the weapon to the deck and pulled out the energy weapon, which he cycled with such rapidity, it was practically a continual beam of light.

Lanus stabbed down at Kazna aiming for the junction between her neck and shoulder.

He was battered away by a tendril.

Adam thrust his arm forward and summoned his shield, severing several tendrils in the process, and then drew his sidearm and fired the remainder of his ammunition directly into Kazna’s chest.

Behind them, the architect flickered.

And kazna laughed.

The light behind them noticeably dimmed, and Kazna….. Grew noticeably stronger.

Bullets rattled to the ground as her body pushed them out, none the worse for ware.

She batted Sunny to the side, throwing her across the deck and into Ramirez, knocking them both over.

Adam ducked a swarm of tendrils, and dove to the side, rolling across the deck to swipe at her legs as he had once done so many years ago. His blade severed through the tendons on her ankle, but almost immediately, they regenerated  almost as fast as the cut had been made, and then she kicked him, hard.

Were it not for the railing surrounding the circular catwalk, Adam would have been sent careening back into the black hole, but even so, he hit hard, twisting the metal with a screech of protest as his body slammed into the metal bars leaving them warped beyond repair.

Lanus was the last one standing, but even his skills were to match, his offence had turned into desperate defence as all her attention turned to him.

He cut in great arcs, severing tendrils left and right, but it was no use backing his way toward the railing. 

It was clear, she intended to throw him over the side, to destroy him permanently.

She had him backed against the railing, tendrils straining to wrap themselves around his body to gain more leverage.

He sliced one in half, but another grabbed him by the arm, while yet another wrapped itself around his leg.

Lanus slipped.

Kazna lifted him upward over the rail.

Sunny screamed in rage.

And then.

A body appeared from nowhere, leaping from the blackness to land on Kazna’s shoulders, latching itself onto her back and wrapping its arms around her neck. Kazna jerked violently to the side dropping Lanus, who spun and managed to grab the rail before pitching over the edge.

She spun like a bull at a rodeo clawing at the silhouette that had attached itself like a barnacle to her back.

Adam pulled himself to his feet staggering to the side.

Kazna spun past, and in that brief flash, Adam recognized her attacker.

Krill 

WIth no combat training, and no weapon krill had jumped in to save Lanus.

Adam took a step forward to help, having maintained a hold on his spear, but what happened next was too fast for him to comprehend. Kazna reached up with a tendril, grabbed Krill by the back of the armor, and slung him to the ground, breaking his grip.

He hit the deck hard, hard enough to dent the metal, then she drew back her arm.

“KRILL, NO!”

The shout tore his throat raw.

He dove forward, but he was too late, as the blades of Kazna’s trident erupted from the pass of tendrils and pierced through Krill’s chest.

“NOOOOOOOO!”

Adam slammed into Kazna from the side, knocking her over, but his momentum was too much, and her grip was too strong. The trident was torn from the krill’s body with a geyser of red.

Somewhere someone was screaming.

And it was only after a long moment did he realize… it was him.

Adam pulled back his spear and rammed it, once, twice, three times into kazna.

Sunny appeared on his other side, her spear moving in tandem with his.

Kazna screamed.

Somewhere, an energy weapon burst repeatedly to life with glowing golden light.

The architect flickered again.

Kazna’s screams turned to laughter, and then Adam was hauled bodily from his feet. He screamed as her tendrils buried themselves into the cracks in his armor, ripping them apart like an eggshell, and exposing him to the stale air of the bubble. Chunks of his armor were pitched to the ground.

Fealty screamed

And then one tendril struck, grabbing him by the back of the neck, piercing through his skin, beneath the SE exoskeleton, and hooking around the other side. 

He squirmed.

And then.

She pulled 

Adam screamed.

Screamed and Screamed as the SE exoskeleton was ripped from his body pulverizing the nerves to which they connected as he was ripped apart.  In a single terrible moment, he lost all the feeling to his human leg and the entire left side of his body. 

And then she discarded him throwing him like a broken doll to the catwalk unable to move as blood welled into the open creases of his armor.

His helmet flickered.

Fealty whimpered softly inside his head, but even as his suit flickered towards death, fealty made one last attempt to save him injecting his body with another dose of the narcotic cocktail and filling the suit with a coagulating agent.

And then, the suit died, and Fealty with it.

Beyond him, Sunny roared in rage, thrusting her spear forward in the perfect arc, right through kazna’s throat.

It would have been perfect.

The architect flickered again.

Kazna grabbed Sunny by the throat, hauled her into the air, and slammed her to the ground.

Adam’s vision flickered.

Again and again and again, kazna threw Sunny against the metal, over and over until her body was limp, and did not move again.

Seconds.

The seconds it took For Lanus to haul himself up over the edge of the railing.

But it was enough.

Just enough for kazna to destroy everything.

Still firing his weapon, Ramirez tried to leap out of the way as her tendrils shot toward him, but she was too fast. 

One tendril caught him around the ankle, and she was more than strong enough.

Strong enough to pitch him over the edge.

Ramirez screamed once and vanished over the edge.