Ravens of Eternity

393 Thanatos Rises, Pt Godeater’s dark presence filled the cracks and hollows and shadows within the ship itself, and at the same time slipped into the depths of Freya’s body. To her, it felt all at once ubiquitous and subliminal, as though it was next to her, but also all around her.

It hung in the back of her mind like an ominous shadow, and caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand out straight.

For someone who was absolutely sure of every particle in her body, having something unknowable that close to her was deeply unsettling and unnerving. And that was putting it lightly. It was akin to peering down an endless hole where some ancient eldritch horror slept.

And then falling into it.

As it crept all throughout her, thin black lines like a circuit board appeared on Freya’s skin, much like it did with Lucifer. But unlike her other half, she resisted its full takeover, and pushed Godeater just to the very edges of her being.

To her utter surprise, Godeater didn’t attempt to force its way further into her consciousness. A part of her greatly feared that it was going to swallow her up, the same way it did to the entirety of Dendrus.

But instead, it simply waited.

Though it felt less like a considerate act, and more like a patient predator. And certainly, she got the sense that it had the ability to be infinitely patient. Like her, it seemed to be a being that had no respect for the finality of time.

It had as much of it as it wanted.

.....

“You have Lucifer, don’t you?” Freya asked.

Godeater responded to her the only way it knew how – with a bombardment of images and feelings and thoughts. Each one seemed to be an incomplete translation of what it was truly attempting to communicate.

Her mind was filled with the faces of countless people – wage slaves and soldiers and pilots and entertainers. There were faces from children to adults to the truly aged, each of them from every gender and walk of life.

Before she could get overwhelmed by the sheer number of faces, they all turned dark and faded into the shadows.

By the end, she was left with only the presence of Godeater, which exuded an aura of complete disinterest and indifference. That level of dispassion caused Freya’s chest to tighten painfully, as though it didn’t care to understand or know all of the people it had absorbed and consumed.

Or, perhaps, that they were all the same to it.

“Give Lucifer back to me,” she demanded.

But Godeater didn’t change its stance or response. It made its dispassion for humanity clearly evident to her. It didn’t care to know Lucifer, and certainly didn’t acknowledge any means of ‘return’.

After a moment of shadowy silence, it instead bombarded Freya with images of fire and destruction, of humans and drogar burning amidst it all. It was accompanied by a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment.

Though it tread very close to happiness, it didn’t quite feel like any kind of joy or euphoria from the act. It felt more like a profound sense of accomplishment, of a job well done.

It then filled her with a sense of serenity – one that told her that their mutual bloodlust could only be satiated through the genocide of every humanoid species in the galaxy.

Her heart thumped heavily in her chest, not so much on what it meant and what it wanted. But how much it reflected what it wanted her to feel. And, perhaps, that she was already slowly turning towards it with or without Godeater to prod her further.

Her mind and body quaked at the thought, then with a long breath, solidified herself and rejected oblivion. It was one thing to burn the Empire into submission, and was a whole different thing to murder every being in the galaxy.

“No,” she told Godeater. “I’ll not become your monster... But I will get back to work.”

She then pushed Godeater’s presence as far as she could away from her. And although it retreated back from her, it still lingered in her mind. It stayed there in the darkest corners much like an eternal ringing in her ears.

Freya exhaled as she refocused on the devastator around her. The massive ship hummed in expectation of her commands, eager to help her burn the Empire.

And with a thought, Freya activated the devastator’s maneuvering vents. They were similar to the Oni core’s drag vents, but could also behave similar to standard human thrusters. While she pushed up with the bottom vents, the top vents pulled up.

It felt to her that the ship traveled along streams of energy, rather than being pushed or pulled through matter.

The sensation felt wild to her, and it seemed she had much finer control over the ship’s maneuverability.

And as she flew the ship upwards, she collided directly with the upper portion of the hexagonal fabrication bay. The more she pushed the ship up and out, the more the crystal-like structure bulged outward. Seams along the fabrication bay’s length broke open as the devastator tore straight down the middle.

The facility itself was wrenched wide open as the devastator forced its way through. It was akin to breaking through wet cardboard. Massive sheets of compound crystal armoring broke apart as the facility was ripped open.

Most of the broken shards fell back down into the fabrication bay itself, even as the devastator lifted itself further and further up. In fact, so much damage had been done to its internal structure that the fabrication bay’s walls began to collapse in on themselves.

The force of gravity caused numerous gigantic sheets to tear themselves off the walls, and crushed whatever was beneath. Huge clouds of dust were thrown up into the air as the fabrication bay continued to fall apart.

By the time everything had settled down, more than half of its ceilings and walls had collapsed. And many drogar had been crushed.

Freya and her devastator floated up and joined the rest of the Einherjar, who were stoically defending the airspace above the entire facility.

They had long since made short work of the Imperial battleships that had faced off against them, and turned their guns towards whatever was left. Though the devastator’s presence among the combatants suddenly caused every gun to stop firing.

Everyone on the field felt waves of awe and dread all at once at seeing the behemoth on their sensors and live feeds.

The swarmchiefs on the remaining Imperial cruisers were utterly horrified as they watched one of their own ships rise up and join their enemy. Waves of fear struck them as it rose up and showed them its starboard side.

They watched its starboard armor chitin slide open and hundreds of disintegration beam turrets floated out of them. Each of the stinger-like guns quickly turned and pointed straight towards them, which brought them a level of despair they never knew existed.

Whatever semblance of sanity they had left fled them as Freya appeared on all of their comms displays. Some of the drogar recognized her instantly, and whatever hopes they held about the fight completely bottomed out and vanished.

“This is Fleet Admiral Freya, leader of the undying Einherjar,” she began. “Some of you in the Empire know me as Ra’ventrii, subjugator of the Reborn. We’ve taken command of this devastator, now named Thanatos, the Ender of Worlds.

“Together, we’ll ravage the Empire and bring it to its knees! Only once your precious Imperium is reduced to ash will we stop. And should anyone foolish enough to try to hinder us, know that we’ll crush them. Painfully. Thoroughly.

“Like this.”

Freya poured the energies of Ascendant Form through her body, which also caused Thanatos to pour excess energies through itself. She channeled them all through her starboard side beams and opened them up to the Imperial fleet in front of her.

Thick beams shot out from each of the guns and seemingly joined together into one massive beam. They overwhelmed the Imperial fleet wholesale, and washed over a vast majority of them. Hundreds of fighters and mecha and frigates and destroyers were completely swallowed up by bright orange energies.

The beams were large enough that they even swept across large portions of whatever cruisers were there as well.

Everything that was caught in the beams were completely disintegrated. Their chitin and exoframe literally deteriorated within seconds and were wiped away. It didn’t take long after that for everything else inside to get annihilated as well.

Thousands of drogar pilots and crew and engineers and officers – all gone in the flash of bright orange energy.

And once Freya’s attack concluded, almost nothing was left of the Imperial fleet in front of them. Only a handful of destroyers and frigates were left afloat. What few cruisers were still in the air had been wholly eviscerated.

Entire sections of their hulls had been completely ravaged. All but one of them lost all power and crashed down to the plateau. Some smashed into the crystal facility below. Their carcasses tore through the relatively flimsy crystalline plating and into the fabrication bays.

Worse, they crashed into whatever ships and modules were being created and utterly wrecked them as well.

One of the cruisers smashed against the edge of the plateau and fell down the side. Its chitin fragmented and flaked as it rolled down the plateau’s steep face, then tumbled down into the lush vegetation below.

Everyone inside the cruiser was thrown around like dolls and slammed painfully into the walls or machinery or each other. As the ship rolled and their bodies were flung in every direction, their bones were utterly pulverized. Some snapped and tore through their scales painfully, though that was the last of their worries.

The mangled cruiser landed with a heavy WHUMP at the very bottom which shook the terrain for kilometers all around. Every chitin plate shattered into pieces on impact, and flew in numerous directions. At the same time, its exoframe bent and collapsed and warped severely.

The cruiser rolled slightly, then settled down on its topside. It never rose again.

Inside, the broken bodies of hundreds of drogar littered its rooms and passageways. Their blood intermingled with the cruiser’s shattered fluid circuits, then spilled out through the cracks and into the dirt beneath.

The last swarmchief on the remaining functional Imperial cruiser fell down on his rump at the devastation he saw. Red alerts and warnings filled his holoreports, all of which told him that all was literally lost. Energy readings on the cruiser were plummeting, and entire decks had been eradicated.

More critically, where there were once hundreds of Imperial ships on his wraparound screen, now there were only four or five. A single attack reduced them to nothing.

Freya, still on his comms, panted lightly from exertion.

“The rest of you...” she said between breaths. “You run back to your masters! You tell them I’m coming! And you tell them that hell’s coming with me!”

Her voice rose out of a deep-seated anger, to the point where she screamed the last few words.

The few ships that were left didn’t even hesitate. Freya had completely obliterated whatever courage or honor or pride the survivors had. All they had left was the overriding need to flee.

Without waiting for instructions from whoever was left in charge, the cruiser powered up its port module, linked up with whoever was still alive, and flashed out as fast as they possibly could.

With the planet’s main defenses gone, and its teleport beacon in disarray, the Einherjar found themselves with free reign over the planet below them.