Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Armageddon

Ramirez's execution of their escape had been possible, but not particularly pretty. He could fly a shuttle sure, but when they were all used to Adam taking the joystick, to have anyone else do it was a bit of an ordeal.

"Should have seen that coming." Sunny snarled, "Should have known she was going to backstab us like that."

Lanus, busy scrolling through baby pictures, looked up at his daughter from where he sat next to his son in law. The expression on his face was one of deep sadness. Sunny had had plenty of time to get over whatever lingering feelings she might have had for her mother, and move straight on into hatred, but Lanus had died before really experiencing what she had become.

The wounds were still fresh.

Out the front windscreen, things were not looking much better.

Shots were yet to be fired, but the two standing armadas bristled with waiting action, slowly forming into more cohesive attack formations. On their left was the Maker army, with the Empyrean at the center of a wide formation done in ever decreasing concentric circles.

On the right, was the void armada, and they were doing something...

Odd.

Adam stood rom his seat, walking forward to rest his hands on the back of the copilot's chair, "What are they doing?"

Behind him, the others crowded inward. Adham rested an absent had on his shoulder squinting out towards the flurry of motion baced by the blackness of space. The ship were difficult to see, but the orange light emanating from their engines gave them away enough to watch as the armada retreated, forming a vast sphere around the Necritorium.

As they watched, a russet grid of orange polygons began to erupt around the planet, forming some sort of defensive shield. Ship engines glowed orange as their energy stores were expended.

The russet shield pulsed.

And the planet began to turn, rotating vertically even as it continued to spin on its axis.

"I don't like the look of this ." Adham muttered

The rest of the crew couldn't help but agree, but all they could do was watch in helpless confusion as the entire planet was rotated into place. Behind it the black hole pulsed with many waving tendrils of blackness stretching out from its center and out into the black reaches of space, Apollyon defying the very laws of nature.

"Where's the architect?" Ramirez said

The question was very sudden, almost out of the blue, but when he asked Adam realized that he had been thinking the same thing this whole time. He wasn't sure what he had expected from the architect, probably not a matching tentacle mass but in white instead of black, that would have been a bit too obvious, but the man stepping up to take hold of the empyrean and lead their armies might have made more sense.

Adham was silent for a long time, and Adam was surprised when it was Lanus who spoke next, "We don't know."

Adam frowned, "What do you mean you don't know."

Lanus shrugged, "The architect is.... Surprisingly unobtrusive. The few times he shows himself he takes a new form every time. He likes to disguise himself as common soldiers until he is needed and tends to communicate telepathically when something needs to be done.... his ... presence is all around us. It is just simply not as tangible as some might prefer."

Adam sighed, "Well that is incredibly helpful."

Lanus shrugged

Adham sighed, "Either way, what matters now is figuring out what they are trying to do wi-"