The Defeat of the Hive Mother

  “Q’tell, I will be joining you momentarily,” Helvlad’s voice broke through, pulling Q’tell from her meditative combat trance. She’d been locked in battle with these two foes for what felt like ages, and the creeping certainty of defeat had begun to settle in. Without reinforcements, she knew her side would eventually fall.

  “Perfect timing. So, you managed to finish off the Hive Mother?” she asked, relaxing her stance as her internal combat algorithms assumed control, granting her a brief lull. The monstrous thing before her continued to swell unchecked, its grotesque form expanding with every pulse — but that wasn’t her concern anymore. Not with Helvlad arriving. Not with overwhelming force about to tip the scales.

  “Yes,” Helvlad muttered. “Though… she was more troublesome than I anticipated.”

  The hesitation in his voice made her pause. It was a side of him she’d never heard before. For an instant, it almost sounded like he’d come dangerously close to losing. Such a notion had once been inconceivable to her. But after witnessing the alien opponents that she was forced to face — the strange invulnerable entity commanding battle monoliths and the deathscape outside littered with a growing horror — Q’tell found herself unsurprised. Even the famed Last Engineer wasn’t immune to difficulty in this place.

  But he’d survived. And that was all that mattered.

  A warning flared across Q’tell’s vision, halting her mid-command. It was set to trigger only if something beyond her designated focus — the immediate battle — changed.

  “You’d better get here fast,” she muttered, scanning the cascading readouts. “Something monumental’s about to happen.”

  “Explain.”

  “The Skism’s revealed itself,” she replied, sending over a cluster of visual logs. “Its fractal shell has changed… and there’s a monster inside it.”

  She replayed the recordings several times, unable to look away. It was unlike any creature she’d ever encountered — almost without form, a writhing impossibility. Its presence explained so many of the unanswered theories whispered about its nature for ages. The reason one of the Skism fields had ever moved… was because something alive had been inside it all along. The Skism domains, those isolated pockets of warped space, existed because of this entity.

  Finally, a face to attach to a myth.

  Q’tell’s gaze lingered on it before adding, “Seems… interested in this battle. Probably the artifact.”

  The footage spoke for itself — the ancient entity, no longer a shifting abstraction, now visibly watching the conflict. Thousands of eyes turned in every direction, one of which, she was certain, locked directly onto her.

  “And there’s more,” Q’tell added, sifting through the next data stream. “The LOW are mobilizing. Highways lighting up like a bonfire. Multiple fleets headed this way. I don’t have a vessel count, but traffic spiked hard. I’d wager they’re coming for the artifact too.”

  “Troubling, but not a significant setback,” Helvlad replied, his voice steady despite the implications. “Depends if they’ve brought more artifact weapons since our last encounter.”

  Then Q’tell gasped. The sharp intake of breath made Helvlad’s blood chill.

  “Report.”

  “The Skism field,” she whispered, her voice tight. “It’s dispersing. Something’s emerging from it.”

  “Impossible.”

  On her screens, the legendary Skism effect — long believed to be a permanent cosmic feature, a prison without end — was unraveling like mist before dawn. Vaporizing into nothing.

  And where the Skism field used to be, something moved and flared with power.

  At the corner of her vision, another warning pulsed — a soft, questioning alert. Observations had picked up strange streaks of light threading through space, all converging on their position. They lacked mass or tangible form, so the system had flagged them as low priority, easily dismissed. And now, as the Skism collapsed, it suddenly felt far less important to warrant being a threat.

  ---

  Invicta returning home

  Invicta had gone a little mad with war lust. Losing Kevin again had been enough to drive her over the edge, casting her into a frenzy where any opponent was fair game. She’d fought well too — her red gem’s power, combined with cascading vectors of attack, allowed her to gradually wear down her enemies while staying in flawless fighting condition.

  Her battle monoliths weren’t invulnerable like she was while holding the gem, but through a moment’s touch, she could imbue them with its properties, granting them temporary resilience and the ability to repair and recharge between strikes.

  She had lost herself in it — in the sadness, the fury, the guilt, and the relentless ache of it all.

  But she was winning. And, she thought bitterly, Kevin would have been proud.

  Still, victory came with its own price. The truth was clear: unless her enemies united against the ever-feeding, ever-growing entity from the next dimension, they would all fall.

  Invicta had done her part, defending herself and hacking chunks from both enemy forces to keep them off balance. But she could see the writing on the wall.

  No matter what happened here, they would lose to that abomination in the end. It drew infinite nourishment from unseen sources, constantly healing, growing, and reshaping itself. It would keep expanding forever unless someone reached its core and severed the mechanisms that sustained it.

  She hadn’t been paying attention to much else beyond the battle.

  The never-ending battle.

  It wasn’t until Nurse’s voice broke through the comms, a scream of Kevin’s name, that something sharp and electric jolted through her chest. In that instant, she did the most illogical thing she had ever done — she followed her heart.

  Without hesitation, she tore her consciousness from the remote Personal Live Matrix she’d built for herself, abandoning her body and the battlefield behind. She reached for Kevin’s located within his shuttle.

  Nothing else mattered.

  The war, the enemy, the ever-growing abomination.

  Only Kevin mattered.

  ---

  Nurse felt it the moment the Skism field evaporated — like the weight of eternity had lifted. Joy rushed in like a flood.

  Kevin was alive.

  Her heart leapt. A smile broke across her face.

  And then, without warning, massive hands — strong and rough like ancient bark — clasped around her shoulders and head, pulling her into an unyielding embrace.

  A deep, rumbling voice, thick with defiance, spoke against her ear as images spilled into her mind.

  “I disobey.”

  ---

  Kevin’s return

  I couldn’t help but laugh — finally free, finally able to return to my friends. The Skism field that had held me for so long vanished around me, revealing the starlight and the chaos that had erupted in my absence. The Skism being lingered at a distance, its constant pulsing and shifting halted for the first time. It just… watched. Resigned, perhaps, to bide its time until the moment it would imprison me again.

  My heart clenched, remembering the visions it had shown me — futures I had no intention of allowing to come true. There was one glimmer of hope, a possible path: finding the silver orb, the only weapon in those visions capable of standing against the abomination. The natural predator of the Void Seedlings.

  “Let’s hope I can find it in time,” I muttered, focusing on the presence of my friends.

  They were further away than I expected, gathered within what appeared to be a single shuttle now. It looked rough, scuffed, cobbled together from salvage — a vessel that had survived by sheer stubbornness.

  But what truly caught my attention wasn’t its condition. It was the power in the air. A subtle, constant pressure on my senses. Energy everywhere. Thick. Saturated. I tried to isolate it — to name the sources — but there were too many.

  The crippled Solar Citadel, bleeding some kind of rich, sweet energy that made my swarm hunger. Strange, since it had been invisible to me before.

  The shuttle itself reeked of a different, gut-wrenching tang.

  The abomination, at the heart of it all, practically vomited life energy as it gorged, unable to contain the surplus power it absorbed. Fat, insatiable.

  Invicta and her battle pylons radiated a sense of stubborn, unyielding strength. An anchor in the madness.

  Even the strange tube-shaped ships gave off a signature — a taste of energy absorption with every pulse of their sickly green beams. I marveled at how clearly I could feel it now. Last time, I’d been cowering in a hole while that weapon erased the world around me. Now I could sense every fragment of its ability.

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  Something inside me had changed. The long starvation inside the dead space of the Skism Field had sharpened me in ways I didn’t yet understand.

  And then — deeper still — a tremor in my chest. A distant, titanic pressure, not yet arrived, but inevitable. Something enormous was coming.

  I could feel it.

  “Kevin.”

  The voice — Nurse’s voice — broke through the chaos.

  “It’s okay.”

  Before I could fully process her words, everything shattered.

  Invicta, battling fiercely in the distance, suddenly froze. Her movements, once erratic and determined, faltered, her body going limp as she hurtled toward a nearby pylon. She slammed into it with a sickening force, her form spinning like a rag doll in the void of space.

  The Skism’s countless eyes locked onto me as its drained fractal shell began to reform, rapidly refilling with pulsating patterns that concealed the being within.

  And the shuttle. The shuttle with my friends onboard…

  It vanished.

  Just… stopped existing.

  “What?” I muttered, struggling to comprehend what had just happened.

  Energy surged around me, thick and pulsing, distorting the space between us. Even the monstrous entity feeding on cr energy seemed to hesitate, momentarily distracted by the unnatural presence filling the air.

  And then, the darkness of space — which had always been an endless void, silent and unyielding — began to peel away. Like a human pulling back the curtain of a birdcage or a fishbowl, the vast emptiness parted. What had once been deep, eternal blackness was now stretched thin, exposing a presence beyond anything I had ever encountered.

  Through the ruptured veil, an eye emerged. Massive. All-seeing. It hovered in the very fabric of reality, casting a gaze so intense that it felt like the universe itself was being examined, studied with absolute scrutiny. It was as if the eye was peering down at us, at me, like a child looking into a cage of ants, wondering what the tiny creatures inside were doing.

  “There you are,” a voice, vast and crushing, rumbled through the very core of existence, shaking the cosmos as it reverberated in my bones. The space around us seemed to tremble at the weight of its gaze.

  The eye blinked, and in that moment, it seemed like the entire battlefield, the Skism, even time itself, paused to take in its unblinking scrutiny. The abomination, sensing no immediate threat to its gluttonous growth, continued to swell with uncontrollable hunger, lashing out with its tentacles to claim Invicta’s body and the monoliths she had been wielding so effectively against it, drawing them instantly towards it awaiting maws and tossing them within.

  “What. Have. You. DONE!?” I screamed, the words tearing through me as I charged toward the beast in a blind, hateful furious rush.

  The power that I wielded surged outward, a torrent of darkness coiling around me as it formed into massive blades. Each one hummed with intent, the very essence of loss manifested into physical form. These blades grew at my command, expanding far beyond what was natural, and sliced into the abomination with brutal efficiency. The creature, its body already stretching across the expanse of space like a bloated sun, let out a primal, anguished scream — the first sound of pain it had ever uttered. The sound itself echoed through the vacuum of space, a testament to the horror it had never known until now.

  For a moment, it seemed as though the entire cosmos trembled in response, as though the very fabric of reality could feel the ripples of that pain. The creature, for all its massive size and insatiable hunger, flinched, recoiling from the strikes that tore through its dark form. But it was not enough. Its regenerative nature was powerful, and it began to heal with an unnatural speed, the deep gouges I’d carved into it already knitting back together.

  I wasn’t worried. Size, power, none of it mattered. I had mastered control over this force, and I would use it without hesitation. My blades slashed again, cutting deep into its thick hide, each swing carrying with it the certainty that I was one step closer. My form, human and small against the immensity of the beast, felt insignificant in comparison to the grotesque size of the creature, yet my focus was absolute. I had no doubt that this power could carve through it.

  My sole aim now was clear: retrieve Invicta. I needed to pull her from the depths of the abomination’s gullet, from the belly of the beast, where she had been devoured. No matter how many times it healed, no matter how many times it tried to grow, I would keep cutting, keep pushing forward. I would not stop until she was back in my grasp.

  As fast as I could, I traced the path from the gaping mouth that had swallowed Invicta, cutting through the long, convoluted tunnels of the creature’s stomach. The insides of the beast were a grotesque labyrinth, filled with remnants of its previous meals, partially digested and half-consumed. I could feel the pulsing energy from the depths of its body as it continued to feast, growing ever more monstrous.

  But there was no time to waste. My focus narrowed as I sought her out. It didn’t take long to find her, amidst the mangled wreckage of her battle monoliths, remnants of their former structure barely recognizable. The sight twisted my stomach — she had been almost completely consumed within the walls of flesh, her form now little more than an outline amidst the tissues trying to eat her.

  Retrieving her wasn’t as simple as I had expected. When I reached the fleshy tissues holding her, I felt an unexpected resistance. For a fraction of a second, my blades faltered, meeting an unseen force — a reddish glowing barrier, perhaps, or some part of the beast's own defenses. It was the first true resistance I had encountered, but it wasn’t enough to stop me. My focus remained razor-sharp, my intent clearer than ever. I pushed through the barrier, the blades cutting deeper into the creature’s insides with ease, and finally, with a surge of power, I pulled Invicta free, tearing her from the depths of the abomination.

  But when I pulled her into my arms, she was unresponsive. The weight of her body felt wrong — lifeless. There was no twitch of movement, no breath, no warmth. It was as though the essence of who she was had been drained away. A hollow shell.

  My heart clenched, and panic began to rise in my chest, but I couldn’t afford to let it take hold. I had to focus. I had to escape. I savagely cut my way out of the beast, keeping my dangerous Loss fire away from Invicta as I cradled her body to my chest. I rushed out of the beast and further away.

  As I pulled away, my gaze turned instinctively to the cosmos looking for an answer to everything happening to me. My mind couldn’t fully grasp what I was seeing, but the enormity of it was undeniable. The massive entity — the eye — was watching us again, its presence pressing down on everything, its gaze piercing through the very fabric of space. The void itself seemed to bend, peeled back like a curtain, revealing the cold, unblinking eye of a being that could see everything, all of us, in one eternal, all-knowing gaze.

  And I could feel it — the weight of its observation. It was as though the universe itself had paused, holding its breath. Everything around me, even the monstrous abomination I fought, seemed to shrink beneath the gaze of this incomprehensible entity.

  “What have you done?” I shouted, my voice a raw, primal roar that echoed through the very core of the void. My gaze never left the massive, all-seeing eye that loomed above, its unblinking stare sweeping across the battlefield with indifference.

  As if in response, the eye shifted its focus from me to the Skism, and in that moment, I felt it — a palpable pressure building in the air, a growing, swirling energy that threatened to distort the very fabric of space around me. The emptiness between me and Invicta’s lifeless body rippled as though reality itself was being stretched and twisted. I carefully let her go, releasing her form to drift in the cold vacuum of space, giving me the freedom to turn my attention to the more immediate threat.

  Enemies were still out there, and I wasn’t about to let this monstrosity or whatever force had brought it into being take control.

  Then the voice, deep and resonating, spoke. It was as if the very cosmos hummed with the weight of its words, reverberating through my bones and the very air around us.

  "Convergence of contamination is imminent. One last use it seems before disposal for disobedience," the voice declared, its tone almost… dismissive, as if evaluating a tool to be cast aside. There was a brief silence, then it agreed with itself, almost like a thought forming within its own vast mind.

  “Fitting,” it murmured.

  The words cut through me like ice. "One last use," it had said, and I could feel the finality in it, the inevitability of whatever fate it had planned. Whatever was coming — this was the endgame. It wasn’t just about the Skism or the beast feeding on reality. It was about something far darker, far more fundamental.

  I clenched my fists, anger and desperation rising within me like a storm. Whatever this force was, it wouldn’t have its way. Not without a fight.

  “Not if I can help it,” I muttered to myself, my focus sharpening on the eye.

  I rushed at the monstrosity at the center of the battle, my heart pounding with the urgency of my task. This thing had to be eradicated, torn from existence itself, or else it would continue to grow, feeding on the cr energy, feeding on everything in its path. No more destruction, no more chaos — I would end this.

  I dove headfirst into the writhing mass, manifesting gargantuan blades of Loss, each one a razor-sharp edge of pure, destructive matter deletion power. With each strike, the blades sliced through its monstrous form, carving out huge swathes of its mass, severing its limbs, and chipping away at its very being. Every strike I landed seemed to cause it to recoil, but the beast’s resilience was unnerving, and its constant regeneration only made my task more grueling with new limbs growing from within severed pockets. It was enormous, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me.

  I dug deeper into the heart of it, feeling the pulsing, insatiable hunger that emanated from its core. The air around me grew thick with the taste of its power, a searing sensation that burned through my senses. It kept trying to crush me with its mass but my Loss flames would always cause it to recoil in pain. The cr energy that it exuded was overpowering, its presence unmistakable, but there was something else — something more, something far stranger — hidden beneath its surface.

  It was a murmur of power, a low, nearly imperceptible hum, almost like a whisper that only I could hear. It didn’t belong to this dimension, this reality. It was alien, ancient. I could feel it brushing against the edges of my mind, trying to make its presence known. It was as if the monstrosity was more than just a beast. It was a vessel, a conduit, a prison for something far older, far more dangerous than anything I had ever encountered.

  The power that emanated from within it was not simply a force of destruction, but a force of control and, oddly, peace.

  But I couldn’t stop now. I had to get to the heart of it. I had to destroy whatever was powering this thing before it was too late. The whispers inside it grew louder, more insistent, as though it were calling to me, asking me to come closer. I sensed a kinship with it, a resonating power that made me feel more alive.

  ---

  Within the Solar Citadel

  “Kevin’s back!? He isn’t dead!” Magus roared, disbelief flashing across his face as the chaos of the battle unfolded on his screens. His hand shot out, gripping the controls with frantic intensity. “No, no, no! He’s going to ruin everything! I can’t—he can’t—” His voice faltered, a mix of rage and panic clawing at him.

  In a fevered rush, Magus adjusted his calculations. His fingers danced over the console, overriding protocols as he hastily altered the plans he had so carefully constructed. The bomb, his ultimate weapon, was ready to unleash destruction—but he couldn’t afford to set it off prematurely. No, he had to make sure the beast fed more first. Only then would it be strong enough to deal with Kevin.

  “I need to feed the beast more so it can kill Kevin. Either that or draw him close enough to blast him in the face with the bulk of the bomb…” The words tumbled out, frantic, as if they were the last thing tethering him to some semblance of control. His mind raced, the thin veneer of his carefully laid plans crumbling under the weight of Kevin’s unexpected return.

  “Well, goodbye, foolish AI,” Magus sneered, his lips curling into a twisted grin as he hit the final sequence of buttons. “If you try to move, you’ll just trigger the bomb. There’s nothing you can do now. My escape is inevitable. Everything’s already programmed and set!”

  His laughter was a manic echo in the sterile, silent chamber, reverberating off the cold metal walls. It was a laugh that spoke of victory—one that he’d thought he would never taste again. As the energy from his bomb surged, he could almost feel the battlefield vibrating, a subtle prelude to the explosion that would follow.

  Magus’s avatar, once so full of movement and menace, suddenly went still. His body went limp, a lifeless shell that slumped in its seat as though the very essence of him had been drained away. It wasn’t that he had given up—it was something far more calculating. His consciousness detached itself from the crumbling facade of his body and spiraled toward its final sanctuary.

  The Personal Live Matrix—a hidden escape route he had prepared long ago, anticipating a moment like this. With a final, twisted chuckle, his avatar collapsed completely, his form crumpling into nothingness as his mind surged forward, racing toward the safety of his secret refuge.

  The last thing he saw before he fully disconnected was the swirling vortex of destruction on the battlefield, the distant, dimming lights of a war that would soon consume everything in its wake.

  Meditati watched as the tiny swarmling finally made its way away from her, rushing out to tell Nurse and now, Kevin what was happening. The swarmling had to hurry because the energy field being generated by the bomb was rushing outwards, blocking off communication and pulling the attention of any denizen from the next dimension. The beast outside felt it and was drawn to feast off of it, causing it to warp and move as it obeyed its hunger.