Heretical Edge

I was flat-out sick of all this. I was done with all of it. Some filthy rich Fomorian cyborg piece of shit tried to lock us in another universe and just completely change the future simply because he thought he deserved to? He thought he was just that special, that he should be able to do any damn thing he wanted to because he had money and power? He'd already enslaved not only most of his own species, but dozens of other worlds, and all of that wasn't enough. None of it was ever enough. He thought he could ruin the future too, sneak right through that rift and create a whole new timeline for himself to become even stronger, even more unstoppable.

Well fuck every inch of that. No. I was going to put a stop to this right now. I was done playing nice. This guy pissed me off on a level that few had actually reached. He wasn't up to Fossor standards, of course. It wasn't that sort of personal loathing, but still. He was high on the list, which was an impressive feat for someone I just met like ten minutes ago.

Before Wreth could realize what had happened and do something to lock us out of this universe again, we exchanged a few quick words to plan out the general idea of what we were going to do. Then I transported all of us, including the dinobots, back down to Earth and onto that battlefield. Not that it was exactly a battlefield right now, of course. The rebel Fomorians had all been locked out of their ability to control their robots, so the only things that would have been fighting Wreth's forces were my zombies and ghosts, and those had faded when I was locked in another universe.

Yeah, Wreth's people were definitely congratulating themselves right then, standing around the area in front of the crashed rebel ship and lake. And why wouldn't they be? The monsters that had been attacking them were gone, the rebels they'd hunted down were contained, and the robots were all standing motionlessly without anyone to control them. Of course they were happy now.

But that happiness was about to change. The instant we arrived, Jazz was shifting into her mist form, shooting herself off through the air in the direction of the crashed ship to do her part in this.

At the same time, Theia turned my way and put her hand right through the small portal I had already created. A portal that led right to the middle of the largest cluster of Wreth's people that we could see, a group of twenty or so who had been standing right at the edge of the lake. It was like they were trying to look down through the water at the submarine or something. Which, hey, maybe they could actually do that. Whatever their intentions, they made a good first target.

Before anyone could react to the fact that we had suddenly appeared-- actually before almost anyone had even noticed our arrival, my small portal appeared right behind the largest of those troops. He looked like a nine-foot-tall rhino man with six arms, two of which were coming out of his back and were long enough to reach all the way up and over his shoulders and down to put their palms flat against the ground if he wanted to. But it didn't matter how long his arms were, or how many he had. Before he could do anything, just as one of the aliens next to him started to turn to look at the small, glowing portal that had suddenly appeared, Theia was already touching the big rhino guy on the back of his neck. Just like that, she disappeared, possessing him instantly.

Meanwhile, I closed my eyes and focused. Well, both of us did, Rig and me. We were each focusing on a different aspect of our Necromancy. I began shoving power into our ghosts, calling them back and rematerializing them. Rig was focused on the zombies. There were still plenty of dead bodies around. Actually, most of the zombies we'd already been using were still perfectly viable. Wreth's forces hadn't done anything to dismember or destroy them while we were out of action. They just left the zombie bodies lying there, satisfied that they weren't a threat anymore.

Boy were they about to be rather unpleasantly surprised. All across the field, under Rig's direction, the formerly motionless zombies suddenly sprang into action. They grabbed ankles, yanking their targets to the ground. They swarmed up and over other troops, dragging them down. They ripped weapons away while clawing and biting into any bit of vulnerable flesh they could find.

One second these troops had been casually standing around gloating with one another over their victory while the dead bodies of their companions lay scattered through the field, and the next those same dead companions were attacking them from all sides. That was probably a hard enough thing to react to even when you knew what zombies were. But for people who apparently didn't understand them at all… yeah, just like that, they were having a rough day once again.

And it was about to get worse for them. Because that was only what Rig was doing. Which was scary enough on its own, but they probably could've dealt with it pretty quickly if that was the end of it. After all, they had those ships in the sky. All they had to do was send word up to the gunners there so they could fire a few precise shots down and utterly vaporize all the zombies.

But that was what the ghosts were for, the ones I was focusing on. Because I wasn't actually bringing them onto the battlefield. Oh no, I was summoning all those ghosts in a much more useful place: back on that ship we had just left. I had made a point of leaving one of those ghosts, Seth, there before we left. Now I was looking through his eyes as I summoned more and more of them. Dozens of the ghosts quickly appeared while I shoved power into them and sent my little army swarming out of the throne room so they could spread through the rest of the ship.

The troops on the ship itself, the officers and crew, were all taken by surprise. They had just barely started to react to the zombies attacking their people down on the ground, when they were suddenly the ones being attacked. It was probably terrifying, honestly. First they started hearing alarms about the throne room being breached, its occupants escaping. Then the dead bodies littered across the battlefield started attacking their companions once more. And now, before they could even start to react to all that, they were being assaulted right in their own ship. Not even by a standard boarding party. No, they had ghosts swarming over them, going right through the walls, floors, and ceilings, hitting them from all sides. They were barely even able to process that they were under attack before it was all but over. My ghost army had won, for now.

It wouldn't have been that easy if these guys had had the slightest idea of how to defend against Necromancy, ghosts, and magic in general. They might've been incredibly advanced when it came to using technology, but they had nothing when it came to spells. Which again made me briefly wonder why that would be, but I set it aside and focused on the important part: using this ship to make sure the others couldn't help the troops on the ground by destroying my zombies.

Of course, that might have raised the question of how I could do that without actually knowing anything about how to control the ship. After all, this was completely alien technology from a long goddamn time before literally any technology I was accustomed to had been invented.

But that was the trick. I didn't know how to use the ship's weaponry, but its crew did. The second my ghosts had that crew contained, I transported myself right back up there. The captain of the ship, or whatever his title was in their language, was laying on the deck with three ghosts holding him down. The guy--err, person looked like a four-legged, semi-humanoid scorpion with long arms that could extend from the inside of his pincers when they were open. But I didn't have time to think about how wild that was. The second I appeared, my hand was already grabbing the back of his exoskeleton-covered head. His bladed tail tried to stab me, almost ripping its way free of the two ghosts who were holding it. That's how strong he was, how good his reflexes were. And--well given about half the segments in that tail appeared to be metal, how advanced his cyborg implants were, I supposed. Either way, he almost broke free just like that.

Fortunately, my ghosts managed to hang onto him just long enough for me to touch his head and possess him. I was in his body, instantly shoving his consciousness down. I scanned his mind, not looking at his memories or anything like that. No, I only wanted to know one thing at that moment: how to make the ship's weapons aim and fire. Which, conveniently enough, was basically right at the forefront of his mind. He had just been thinking about ordering the ship to wipe out my zombie army, so all I had to do was skim those surface thoughts and I was ready.

Without wasting another second, I sent the orders to the ghosts who were already spread through the ship, the ones who weren't keeping the crew contained. More and more of them had appeared over this past minute, and those were the ones who took over the controls that Wreth's crew had just been dragged away from. I skimmed the captain's mind enough to direct my own troops, and soon the ship's weapons were aimed not at the ground, but at the other ships, their own people. I could only imagine the alarms going off across those ships, the confusion filling their crews as the command ship suddenly took aim. And before their captains could even start to call out orders to raise shields or anything, the cannons were already firing.

Just like that, Wreth's other ships were shot out of the sky. Their engines were on fire, entire sections of the ships missing as they careened down to the Earth. He still had plenty of others, naturally, the guy controlled thousands of ships across the universe. But for now, right here, his ships were done. He'd only bothered to bring a few with him, a mistake he'd either learn to regret, or wouldn't live long enough to. I knew which of those I was personally leaning toward.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Meanwhile, on the ground, Theia had used her control over the big guy she had possessed to make him point two truly massive rifles in either direction as he started firing. One by one, his own people were cut down. Which gave Rig even more zombies to work with in order to take down more of those people, and so on. Between Rig controlling those dead bodies, and Theia helping create even more of them (including bouncing any damage some of those who were quicker to react tried to hit her host with back at them), the battle down there was basically over almost as quickly as the one up here had been. All of that happened in a bit less than a minute. Far too quickly for Wreth's people to have the slightest chance of fully processing what was even happening, let alone how to defend against it. We hit them as hard and as fast as possible.

But, of course, that left Jazz and what she was up to. After all, she was an important part of this too. The most important, in some ways. Because while Theia, Rig, and I focused on dealing with Wreth's army, her job was to make sure the arrogant piece of shit didn't actually reach the rift.

She'd used her mist-propulsion combination powers to reach the crashed rebel ship by that point, the one that had been producing and controlling those robot dinosaurs. I had a single ghost following her, just to back her up in case anything went wrong. When I checked in on her through the ghost once we had things under control here, I saw the other girl already following a group of rebel Fomorians through the ship, having freed them from the cabin they were trapped in. Together, they had just reached the bridge, with Jazz using her 'turn objects intangible' power to make an opening for them to pass through it. Now they were at the controls, but that, of course, left the problem of Wreth being able to just completely shut them out of the systems. There had to be a way to flush his virus out of there so they could actually use the robots again.

That was the other reason I'd needed to possess the captain of this ship. After all, Wreth had told him to send that signal that disabled their tech to begin with. So he knew how to undo it.

It was a bit awkward to move as a four-legged humanoid scorpion thing, and I didn't really have time to practice. I shuffle-stumbled over to one of the control systems, almost breaking the thing with those massive pincers before figuring out how to make just those smaller arms extend from them so I could hit several buttons, reading the captain's own memories to make sure I had it right. His fingers danced over the controls as I sent the signal to unlock those systems, to unlock all the systems not only on that crashed ship itself and the submarine, but across the entire rebel fleet. One moment they had all been locked in their cabins, the systems completely unresponsive, and the next they had control back. They could move again. They could fight. But more importantly, they could send their people to the ground to start making their way to the rift.

Speaking of which, I checked on that too. Grover and the other ghosts had been lost about what to do when the robots down there stopped moving, and when I lost contact with them. But now the robots were moving again, back to doing their job. They'd already identified the rift, made certain it was the one they had been looking for all this time, and now the robots were… oh, they were sort of Voltroning. They were combining, all those robot sea creatures locking together and transforming into some sort of… ah, they were becoming a large cube around the tangled-together rifts, stretching all the way around them. Any second now--yup, I saw some sort of pump and tube appear, draining all the water out of the inside of the cube. When one of the ghosts poked his head through so I could look, we saw the rifts right in the middle of that open space, not covered by water anymore. On one wall of the cube was a doorway, which was linked right to that submarine.

Good, great, fantastic. The Fomorians could go through the sub to the door and through the door to the rift. The only bad part about that was that it would take a long time to send all those people through like that, and even though we'd basically already won this battle, we still didn't know where Wreth was. I'd expected him to actually show himself already. But there was nothing. I had ghosts checking everywhere, down by the rift, on the submarine, through the ships, across the battlefield, and there was no sign of him. He'd made a big deal about going out for his victory lap or whatever, but now he was just… gone. Why? Where did he go? What was he up to?

Realizing the chiming sound I could hear was the communications system on the bridge of this ship I had taken over, I used the captain's memories to understand how to accept the call. As soon as I did that, a holographic image of another Fomorian appeared there. And no, I still wasn't accustomed to seeing these guys and actually being on their side. I had to restrain the urge to shudder. Which, given I was in this scorpion-body, probably would've looked odd.

Wait, scorpion body. Quickly, I put the guy to sleep and stepped out of him, leaving his body to fall. Which definitely made the Fomorian on the screen jump a bit. Then he said something and I--uhh, didn't understand. Oh, right. Quickly, I summoned Chas and had him use his translation power. Then I tried again. "Repeat that, please?"

It worked, I could understand that time. The Fomorian turned out to be the admiral of the fleet, their highest ranking person. He wanted to know why Wreth's command ship had turned against him. I tried to give the quickest, best explanation I could. Thankfully, Kaur had already sent a decent summary of who we were and what we were doing, so it wasn't completely impossible to get him to understand. I told him we had control of the ship and not to fire on it. I would make sure his people were covered while they worked to send everyone through that rift.

And that's what we did. Well, I didn't stay on the ship myself the whole time. I left a small army of ghosts up there, made sure the crew were all disarmed and locked in their quarters, and then went back to the surface to meet up with the others.

Jazz, Theia, and I made our way back to the submarine, made sure Kaur knew what was going on, then helped them finish setting up the link between the sub and the mainland. They had three large metal archways installed right there in the grass with a shimmering portal inside it. Each of those archways was linked to a different wall inside that cube underwater. All the Fomorians could walk through one of those portals, then keep moving forward through the rift. They'd already sent a scout force through while we were busy with all that, now they just had to keep going. Dozens of shuttles were landing all over the place, letting out their occupants, then heading back up to get more. The Fomorians were swarming over the former battlefield like ants attacking a picnic. They headed for the archways, then through the rift. One by one--well, four by four (counting the portal attached to the sub) the Fomorians moved through the rift to their destiny. A destiny I was really trying not to think too much about.

Eventually, the three of us were standing together out on that field, watching the endless line of Fomorians passing through the portals one after another. This was going to take a long time. There were almost a million of these guys at this point, going through four separate doorways?

Assuming it takes four seconds to walk through the arch, then step into the rift, Rig put in, that's four million seconds, divided by four for the different doorways is one million seconds to send all these guys through. That's--- uh, way too long. Like, way way too long.

Jazz and Theia had already come to the same conclusion. Fortunately, when we found Kaur and asked about it, he assured us they weren't about to take months to send their people through. It turned out what we were seeing was only about fifty thousand or so Fomorians. Each of them was carrying a special cube, which--well the short version was that they were using technology similar to the magical 'bigger on the inside' stuff. Every cube had a bunch of other Fomorians inside it. These fifty thousand would pass through the rift, then release the others. They had technology, tools, weapons, vehicles, everything they could need inside those cubes. They would be ready to colonize their new world.

Still, even that was going to take about fourteen hours. Better than how long it would've taken to send all of them through one by one, but not immediate. And we still didn't know where Wreth was. Had he given up and run away once we took over the fight again? Something made me doubt that.

So, we watched intently. We stayed on guard, and kept scanning everyone, trying to make sure he couldn't sneak through as another Fomorian. Fortunately, these guys had detectors up to identify any Fomorian with cybernetic enhancements, so it wasn't likely Wreth could pose as anyone else. So what was he--

A tug from one of my ghosts up on the command ship made me focus that way. And what I saw made me choke a bit. "Come on," I urged the others, telling them where we were going before transporting up there.

We ended up in a room that definitely wasn't in any of the blueprints of the ship. My ghosts had found it by accident, just by floating through what should have been solid walls. It was another of those 'bigger on the inside' things. This space, from the outside, was only about as wide as a thick wall. But on the inside, there was a room about fifteen feet across by eighteen feet long. Large enough for a tube with a Fomorian body inside. A child Fomorian, from the size of it. And right next to that tube with the child body inside was another, much more familiar body. It was Wreth. He never left the ship, he just… came here, to this hidden room. There was a metal cord of some sort connecting his head to the tube, while these tiny robot things, no larger than bumblebees, flew around inside the tube around the child Fomorian's head, cutting into it while implanting… something inside.

Taking all that in, I rocked backwards on my heels. Wreth's body laying on the floor, a metal cord connecting his head to the tube where the child Fomorian was, and those tiny robots installing something inside the kid's head. "Well…" I started slowly.

"We found Wreth."