Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

A Second Star

The Empyrean spun counterclockwise on its axis, faster than any ship its size should have been able to move. Inside internal dampening systems of an unknown technology reduced the effects of the spin to almost nothing, leaving engineering and below deck crews non the wiser to the pitched battle going on above.

A massive tentacle passed through the space where the ship had been moment before, measuring hundreds if not thousands of meters across. The ship glowed for a moment with bright inner energy before pulsing once and shooting and arching beam of golden light out rom one of the many forward mounted Anima Mounted Cannons (AMP) guns for short.

The bolt of energy cut downward, sheering the massive limb in half, and the tentacle withdrew. A psychic screech battered against the hull of the ship as behemoth drew back, its battered limb spitting toxic black icor which sizzled in the vacuum of space.

ON the bridge of the ship, Adam flexed his hand pulling the ship to the right with just the power of his thoughts and motions as the vast typography of the monster opened up before them.

The first moment they had seen the creature was one of nerve-wracking intensity. None of them knew if the Empyrean would be able to protect them from the maddening effects of the strange alien creature, and they had gone slowly, opening up their comms channel to radio signals first, and then when the psychic blasts did not tear Adam's mind apart he had opened it up to the rest of the ship. With that done, they had slowly moved on to other elements, until the front view screens had been exposed and behemoth was revealed in all of its horror.

The creature, now fully visible to humanity for the first time since its awakening was a hideous thing that defied description. Later attempts to write or describe the creature would only result in frantic lines of gibberish from the perfectly sane members of the Empyrean crew, but no. This creature was of an unfathomable size beyond what had been known before, large enough to knock a planet of its orbit or its axis with gravity, a writhing mass of limbs and shapes and darkness and light that could not be drawn or properly captured in an image.

It had thousands of limbs, black tentacles stretching out into space man miles thick and hundreds of miles long, lashing frantically at the space around it like grass thrashes in a wind. Its skin was an oily black in color, darker than the dark space behind it. Thousands of eyes and teeth lined the tentacles, bone white protrusions that stuck out against the black, all of it wriggling and waving in a grotesque halo surrounding the most profound horror of all.

The creature's champing maw.

Many miles wide, perhaps hundreds, a gaping circular mouth with trillions of circling teeth leading back into the cavernous black opening of its throat.

And it was this creature that was making its slow, inexorable advance upon earth and her rocky inner moons.

They had crossed over Neptune's orbit as the battle raged, though luckily Neptune was not near enough for its orbit to be affected. Even so Behemoth had already gathered a small cluster of orbiting rocks and debris, which smashed occasionally against the shielding as the Empyrean made battle.

AMP CANNONS FIRING

The ship rumbled as another salvo of golden light shot from her forward decks, sheering one tentacle clean off as it whipped towards them.

Adam was forced to roll under the decapitated limb.

Inside his head he could hear the distant screeching of behemoth as it howled over another missing limbs.

"Status report?" he shouted, and the crew jumped to do his bidding, still getting used to their new control stations, though many of them had taken to the new ship like they had been meant for the position.