A brutalisk leaped forward and landed on a vanguard, crushing the strider with the maimed driver inside.

“We are the blade of death!” A squad of zealots performed another round of suicide charge at the brutalisk, but the beast literally ignored them. The zealots’ puny bane blades had next to no effect on the zerg unit dozens of times their height. Even if a zealot’s blade was completely submerged into the armor of the brutalisk, it wouldn’t make it through the layers and layers of armor.

The zealots screamed in ultimate rage, but their screams came to an end when a dozen banelings crashed into them.

“Weaklings! Move aside and observe the true strength of the servants of Amon!” An ascendant stepped forward. The brutalisk was powerful, as shown by the sea of broken armors it left behind, but the ascendant subconsciously believed it was nothing but a beast. It had some strength, but when someone reached a certain level of psionic power, they could kill those who relied on raw physical strength with ease, or so the ascendant thought.

As the two hundred zealots and slayers in front of the brutalisk moved to the side, the ascendant smirked and threw a mind blast onto the brutalisk.

Nothing happened. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. The brutalisk tilted his head, but that was it. The beast continued moving forward, hitting a slayer on the way and reducing it to a pile of glowing remain.

The ascendant groaned as he felt the mocking look from the other ascendants and, most importantly, Nuroka. His heart fell. As a lower ascendant, he could do nothing against Nuroka. If the First Ascendant felt like he was too weak to serve, Nuroka might send him and his supplicants on a suicide mission just to get rid of them.

His eyes burned. He turned to one of his supplicants.

“Prove your worth to me.”

“For victory!”

The supplicant zealot screamed before exploding into a ball of pure psionic energy, which merged into the supplicant’s body. The ascendant stretched his body, feeling the additional strength. He turned to the brutalisk again, with renewed confidence.

Crimson void energy formed within his grip. The ascendant slashed down on the brutalisk, which was already too close for comfort. None of the Tal’darim foot soldiers could stop it. A wrathwalker fired a shot of energy bolt at the brutalisk, but the beast deflected it with its frontal armor. The wrathwalker never had the chance to fire again as it was engulfed by a cloud of scourges. At that situation, the wrathwalker’s height became its biggest weakness.

Void energy landed at where the brutalisk was and exploded, crushing everything within its proximity, protoss or zerg. Countless swarm units that used the brutalisk as cover had the worst day of their short lives as they were fried completely. Some Tal’darim fell as well, but none of the Tal’darim ascendants batted an eye. If these Tal’darim couldn’t even survive the shockwave, they didn’t deserve to be alive.

As the prime target of the attack, the brutalisk took the brunt of the damage. Every single cell in the beast’s body was mutilated. Dozens of meters of armor were penetrated. The beast that took down line after line of elite Tal’darim warriors collapsed.

The ascendant smirked, slightly relieved, and took a step back. As the hero for the moment, he could gain a lot of this encounter, and the reward was certainly worth a single supplicant zealot.

Suddenly, the ground started shaking.

The Tal’darim ascendants turned and found two dozen brutalisks charging out of the grounded leviathan, crushing everything in its way, whether they were zealots, slayers, vanguards, or wrathwalkers. Nuroka saw a low leveled ascendant consume the essence of three supplicants zealots and fry nearly a thousand zerg, but a brutalisk jumped on the exhausted ascendant and sliced him into two with a single strike.

The Queen of Blades has given everything she had into this attack.

At this point, Nuroka was considering other options. The Death Fleet has successfully held its ground against the Swarm, but it took heavy losses, and victory would take time. Nuroka had no doubt Ma’lash would do everything he could to not send reinforcement onto the platform until he, Nuroka, was dead. Unfortunately, if Nuroka held his ground like a good Tal’darim, that time wouldn’t be far away.

The Tal’darim outnumbered the zerg with over two to one, but the zerg had much higher quality. Infestors trapped zealots in place with fungal growth. Without their agility, the experienced Tal’darim warriors were sitting duck. Infested terran modified to explode on impact with the enemy added to the power of the banelings.

The Tal’darim were doing their best to hold their ground, but their lines were continuously punched through. Orbital defenses started falling to the ground. The Swarm was getting closer and closer to the artifact fragment.

If he was still the loyal ascendant, then he would’ve held his ground and gave his life if necessary, but he wasn’t. Just before Ma’lash recalled the entire Death Fleet and launched the crusade against the Swarm, Nuroka has peaked into Amon’s mind under the blessing of the terrazine, and what he saw shocked him.

Amon never intended on making the Tal’darim hybrids. When the war against life was won, all the Tal’darim would be terminated, along with the rest of the sector. The Forged would never have a chance of ascendant.

Amon betrayed every single Tal’darim. Why would Nuroka fight and die for him?

“Supplicants, follow…”

Suddenly, Nuroka sensed dozens of powerful entities appearing on the platform. He frowned. He didn’t know anything about this. He had no idea if these newcomers were friend or foe. If they were foes, the Tal’darim would be in a worse situation than they were already in. If they were friends, the tide of war would certainly be turned, but Nuroka had no idea who they might be.

The next seconds dozens of void rifts were opened up on the worldship wreckage.

Dozens of hybrids emerged. One from each rift.

The Tal’darim has seen hybrids before. In fact, they viewed hybrids as a more noble servant of Amon then the Tal’darim were due to their prowess in combat. When Ma’lash commanded as the Highlord, he promised the Tal’darim as long as they served Amon, all of them would eventually become hybrids. To the noble templar, the fate of becoming a hybrid was a disaster. To the Tal’darim, becoming a hybrid meant having more power. It was a blessing, and Amon denied them even that.

“Amon has sent his servants to aid us! Forward! For victory!” Nuroka immediately changed his tone. It was almost impossible to see a couple seconds ago he was planning on fleeing the battle.

Across the battlefield Tal’darim warriors cheered and slashed down on their enemies with twice the speed and strength. A few ascendants went into the field themselves and led their supplicants with them. These powerful warriors launched multiple counterattacks and pushed hole after hole among the Swarm lines.

Despite only having dozens of numbers, hybrids changed the battle as soon as they met the zerg. Reavers ripped open everything in their way. Only brutalisks and ultralisks could delay them. Smaller units, like zerglings and banelings, were stepped over. Banelings exploded, but the corrosive acid were deflected by the reaver’s heavy armor. Roaches and hydralisks were ripped apart. Just like baneling acids, roach corrosive saliva and hydralisk spines did little damage.

More importantly, whatever damage that was done was rendered useless. One of the reavers was a bit too aggressive, and it soon found itself in the middle of a sea of zerg. Spines and salivas did little damage individually, but when these attacks were in the thousands, they could stack up quite the hurt.

Faced with a near impossible situation, the hybrid screeched, and blue life force left all the zerg units around them. The hybrid’s wounds were healed as the zerg units collapsed. They weren’t killed at the moment, but the hybrid reaver was more than happy to change that. Having lost a large portion of their life, the zerg were paralyzed and practically defenseless.

Reavers did a ton of damage, but they didn’t have the numbers. Dozens of them were insignificant among the swarm and swarm of zerg. Even if every single one of them could slaughter three thousand zerg, there would still be ten times the zerg ready to fight. What really made the table turn were the hybrid destroyers. These psionically enabled hybrids had plasma shields and the ability to use void blast, but their strongest weapon was their void energy.

One of the hybrid destroyers lifted into the air and held its claws out. Void energy concentrated, and the next second a storm of rogue void energy towered over half the zerg army.

The Tal’darim cheered as void storms ravaged through the zerg army.

Inside her leviathan, Kerrigan, who was observing the battle from the eyes of common zerg units, severed the link and turned to the queen beside her.

“Prepare for evacuation.”

“My queen, there are around eight hundred thousand of your underlings down there. If we wait a few more minutes…”

“Those zerg are dead. Taking more risk and trying to save them is a foolish decision.” Kerrigan closed her eyes. Even from orbit she could sense the power of those mysterious creatures on the ground. She had no idea who they were, but she did know they were powerful. The Queen of Blades hated to admit this, but if she was to take on a reaver in a one on one duel she might lose.

At this phase Kerrigan has never met a single hybrid. It was only when she attacked the Skygeirr Station when she learned of these weapons of Amon.

“Plus, this fight is far from over.”

“As you wish, my queen.”

The Swarm retreated. Leviathans prepared for warping. Tal’darim forces were still engaging Swarm units all across the Swarm fleet, but Kerrigan wasn’t worried. Ma’lash wouldn’t abandon millions of his own people. Even if he did, the Swarm ships could escape nonetheless with all the Tal’darim above. After disengaging the Tal’darim fleet, the Swarm could take their time in terminating the stranded protoss boarding parties. Even someone as reckless and zealous wouldn’t make a decision like this.

Just like she imagined, every single Tal’darim still alive warped away, leaving behind millions of dead zerg and hundreds of thousands of armors and weapons.

In an almost simultaneous movement, the Swarm fleet warped out of Sigma Quadrant.

On the ground, zerg after zerg fell. Purple blood stained the ground. The survivors formed lines of defense around the grounded leviathan, but the Tal’darim and the hybrids pushed forward. Having won over the war against the Swarm, the Death Fleet descended upon the sky. Destroyers focused their firepower on the leviathan and made a barbeque out of it. Reinforcements who didn’t have a chance to feast on the blood of the zerg during the previous engagement were sent down here. As soon as they arrived, they launched themselves at the zerg.

Burtalisk after brutalisk fell beneath the feet of the Tal’darim.

A squad of zerg queens tried to turn the tide, but they were soon relieved of their command in the worst way possible as they found themselves surrounded by dozens of blood hunters.

Finally, ten minutes later, the leviathan was completely melted, and all the zerg were slaughtered.

Nuroka turned off his blades. When the situation was clear, he charged head on into combat to earn himself some fame. Suddenly, he heard Ma’lash talking to him inside the comm.

“First Ascendant, secure this platform with your supplicant forces. The rest of the Death Fleet have something much more important to attend to.”

“What?” Nuroka frowned. The Death Fleet just lost a large portion of its ships and warriors against the Swarm. The wisest thing to do at this point would be to pull back and regroup. ”Against whom?”

“The Swarm. The Queen of Blades has just been defeated. If we strike now, we can take her out and retrieve the artifact fragment in her possession. For the First Ascendant of the Forged, you seem unbelievable short sighted.”

Nuroka turned furious. “I can be of great use!” It was already bad enough that he was left out of the most intense combat. Now he was ordered to sit back while the Death Fleet ravage through the zerg territory and seize the prize?

“That is an order, First Ascendant. If you resist, my blades will teach you the folly of your way.” Ma’lash threatened before shutting down the comm from his side.

Nuroka finally backed down. His fists clenched tight as the millions of Tal’darim and dozens of hybrid on the worldship were warped away. When the light beams stopped dropping down, only the First Ascendant’s thousands of supplicants were surrounding the vault.

Meanwhile, inside the bridge of the Tal’darim mothership, Ma’lash met up with his top ascendants, except Nuroka, of course. The Highlord told his best warriors the plan of attack.

“Our phase smiths have traced the zerg warp signals. All ships are entering the coordinates now. We will enter warp space immediately. The Queen of Blades will never expect this. We will exit warp space right outside their base. This will give us the element of surprise.”

Protoss technology was unbelievable advanced. For instance, by checking out captured technology and adding in some of their own insight, the Tal’darim phase smiths were able to develop a type of warp space-tracking technology. It was still at its early stages. Tracking an entire fleet of dozens of capital vessels was easy. Tracking a smaller fleet or individual ships was impossible. Thankfully, it was helpful in this circumstance.

Suddenly, one of Ma’lash’s supplicant ascendants walked in.

“Highlord, we lost contact with our warriors posed on Sia II, but before we did, the warriors sent over this message.”

With a single nod from Ma’lash, the ascendant took out a projection device and turned it on.

Inside the projector, a small fleet of yellow ships descended from orbit. Those ships were protoss, but they weren’t exactly the same as the Daelaam ones. The types were the same, but both the color and the details were different.

One of the ships in the small fleet was a mothership. The giant capital ship’s energy was charged up, and seconds later the hologram went dark. The source of this video was already terminated.

Most of the ascendant frowned, but one of them was faking it. In fact, Nyon was satisfied. He recognized the ships to belong to the same protoss that was allegedly allied to him and Jean, and this Delta was keeping up her part of the deal.

Sia II was one of Ma’lash’s most important mining planets, and it has obviously fallen. If Delta kept this up, Ma’lash would get weaker and weaker.

Ma’lash realized that as well. He turned to the other ascendants.

“Before we strike down the Swarm, we need to deal with these pathetic thieves…”