“Clear the bridge.” Nyon ordered as his two fleets exited warp space beside Slayn. This was an odd order, but the supplicants obeyed without question. Before long, Nyon was the only living being in the bridge.

After routinely scanning through the bridge inch by inch, Nyon took out his communication device and made contact with Delta.

“You’re on your lucky day, protoss.” The Sixth Ascendant smirked when the image of Delta appeared. “It just so happens that we both need each other. I suggest...”

“Listen to me, Nyon. This is important.” Delta quickly cut Nyon off. She didn’t have time for this. “The Death Fleet has fallen into the Queen of Blades’ trap.” Jean told Delta everything she needed to know.

“What…” Nyon silently cursed. He tried to cover his shock. “How?” Deep down he knew something was off, but he just couldn’t tell how or what. He had no doubt this Delta could clear his confusion.

“Our scouts have located a sizeable zerg fleet waiting in a location in the center of zerg airspace. It seems like they’re planning for some sort of ambush. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you who the target of the ambush is.”

“Ma’lash...that fool!” Nyon suddenly remembered before he left, Ma’lash ordered the Death Fleet to locate the coordinates where the Swarm fleet warped into and chase Kerrigan down, but if what Delta said was true, the Death Fleet would be walking into a trap.

For a moment Nyon considered letting Ma’lash and the other ascendants perish, but he quickly shut that idea down. He didn’t give a damn about Ma’lash, but if the entirety of the Death Fleet fell, so what if he could become the Highlord. He couldn’t do anything with twenty four ships and a couple thousand supplicants.

“We need to save them out...” Nyon realized something. Perhaps the situation wasn’t so bad after all. “All of the capital ships in the Death Fleet are equipped with warp drives. As long as Ma’lash can stand his ground for enough time to activate the warp drives…”

“Across this long of a distance, the warp drives need a lot of preparation before they can be used.” Delta was telling from her own experience with Purifier vessels.

“But we have fleet beacons as intermediaries. As long as they are standing, the Death Fleet can warp to where the fleet beacons are and then retreat back to Slayn from there…” Nyon wasn’t a phase smith, but he did know the basics.

“Fleet beacon. Singular.” Delta cut him off again. “Your leader never considered the possibility of having to make a quick retreat. The only fleet beacon that can bring the Death Fleet back from zerg territory is the one on the Sigma Quadrant. Do you really think the Queen of Blades went through all the trouble to lure Ma’lash in just so she can forget about this critical detail? Put away your foolish hopes, Ascendant. If I can get this information, then so can Kerrigan.”

“Nuroka can’t hold the Sigma Quadrant with just his supplicants.” Nyon realized. “What do we do?”

Delta tilted her head.

“Not we, you.” She said slowly. “This is the day Ma’lash falls, but this is also the day you rise.”

Nyon’s eyes glared.

Zerg territory.

The entirety of the Tal’darim fleet that survived the battle at Sigma Quadrant emerged from warp space. Before the battle, the Death Fleet had around 1100 capital ships. Now it had less than a thousand. Nearly one tenth of the millennials of work was thrown away in just hours.

Still, it was a menacing force. Even after taking the losses, the Death Fleet could still overwhelm the Dominion Fleet. Ma’lash was confident that with the Swarm fleet maimed and the Queen of Blades sent fleeing with her tails between her legs, he had enough to make such a reckless decision.

He was wrong.

Inside her flagship, the Queen of Blades smiled. She showed no sign of someone who was recently defeated and chased home. Instead, she looked like a hunter whose prey has just fallen into her trap.

“These Tal’darim are brilliant warriors, but they are also terrible tacticians.” Kerrigan said to herself slowly before turning to all her queens and broodmothers in the zerg psionic network.

“The time is now. Attack, and kill every single one of them.”

“Highlord, it’s a trap!” As soon as he saw the sea of zerg signals on the scanners, Alarak knew exactly what this was. He no longer had time to worry about being polite or thinking for himself. “We need to warp away now!”

Ma’lash looked around. The Death Fleet exited warp space in the middle of an ambush. Everything about this was designed. When Kerrigan ordered the retreat, she ordered the leviathans to warp to a designated location that was surrounded by infested orbital stations from all fronts. These infested platforms were covered by tens of thousands of orbital defenses. Apart from providing fire support, they offered a shelter to hold fleets and fleets zerg flyers. The amount of help these platforms could provide for the Swarm was impressive.

Apart from that, Kerrigan put her newly defeated fleet around the platform as well. These wounded flyers were joined by forty more leviathans which Kerrigan has kept hidden the entire time.

She had eighty leviathans when she made the decision to attack the Tal’darim on Char. She appeared in the Sigma Quadrant with fourty? Where did the other forty go? Here.

It was Kerrigan’s plan from the very beginning. The cunning zerg leader did her homework and carefully studied not just the technology of the Tal’darim but also their social structure. Their arrogance and blind loyalty to their god could be proven useful, and they were.

Kerrigan knew Ma’lash would take some risk to retrieve the artifact fragment his god entrusted to him, and what better opportunity was there to attack than the moment after defeating the enemy fleet? It wasn’t that hard for the Death Fleet to identify the coordinates Kerrigan’s flyers jumped to and go to those exact coordinates and chase her down.

Everything, even the valiant attempt of the counterattack, was just to make Kerrigan’s own defeat seem more believable.

And it worked.

Everything the Tal’darim were proud of was trapped between a hell lot of zerg.

Ma’lash groaned, but even his terrazine filled brain could recognize that this wasn’t an even fight. All around the Death Fleet, dozens of platforms have already started splitting spores. Leviathans were approaching. Zerg flyers have already came out of both the platforms and the leviathans and were forming a literal cloud of purple in the gaps between the floating zerg fortresses.

The Swarm surrounded the Tal’darim from all directions, whether it was left, right, top, or bottom. There was no way out. Spores hit the Tal’darim vessels from every direction.

“We need to fall back and regroup. The Death Fleet is not at its peak power!” Guraj couldn’t sit back either. The quiet ascendant had no choice but to speak up. This might contradict Ma’lash’s will, but at this point Guraj didn’t care. She wasn’t his supplicant. She shouldn’t pay for his foolishness.

After the battle at the Sigma Quadrant, the Death Fleet depleted most of its assets. Warriors were wounded. Ships were damaged. Shields were depleted. Interceptors needed to be rebuilt. Ma’lash ignored these issues and pushed the attack because he thought it would be a clean, quick victory where the Death Fleet swept the floor in a few hours of moderate leveled fighting. Fighting against an entire Swarm fleet in such an awkward position was a completely different thing.

“Prepare the warp drives. We will warp back to Sigma Quadrant at once.” The Highlord ordered. If the Death Fleet stood, he could continue to serve Amon. If it fell, the true god would be quite disappointed.

“As you wish, Highlord.” A supplicant zealot started working. On the outside, the Swarm flyers have already made contact with the outer shell of Tal’darim forces. Losses were taken on both sides, but it was the Tal’darim that took more damage.

Ma’lash didn’t say anything as countless of his people fell. He didn’t care about those on the outside. Those were expendable ships, piloted by low leveled Tal’darim ascendants who could be replaced with ease. The ships that were loyal to him and the other top ascendants were in the center of the fleet. As long as the Death Fleet could evacuate anytime soon, Ma’lash’s ships could survive, and to the Highlord it was all that mattered.

However, the supplicant zealot soon delivered the bad news.

“Highlord, we can’t connect to the fleat beacon on the Sigma Quadrant.”

“How?” Ma’lash frowned.

“The fleet beacon must be destroyed…” The loyal zealot explained slowly, but that obviously struck Ma’lash’s nerve. The Highlord’s eyes glared, and he lifted the zealot into the air with his psionic power and slammed him into a wall.

“I know it must be destroyed! Do you think me stupid? I’m asking how the First Ascendant, with thousands of the best warriors of the Forged, can be wiped out without sending any warning!”

“We can’t receive transmissions in warp space, First Ascendant might’ve sent a transmission...” The stubborn zealot continued. Bad idea.

Ma’lash screamed in rage and snapped the zealot’s neck. As the kill was delivered, he took a deep breath. He knew the zealot was telling the truth, but he didn’t care. He was in a bad mood and he needed someone to lash out on.

He couldn’t execute his ascendants for such a puny reason, so the unfortunate zealot became the victim.

Alarak glanced at the zealot, was impressed by how stupid he was, before turning to Ma’lash. “We await your command, Highlord.” He suddenly realized something. “Highlord, if the Sigma Quadrant has fallen, then the artifact kept there is in the hand of the Swarm as well!”

A strange look appeared on Ma’lash’s face. “The artifact has not fallen.” He replied.

Alarak suddenly realized something. “Highlord…”

“I had the artifact brought to me the moment it was put into the vault. The vault was empty the entire time. The artifact was on this ship since the very start of the battle.”

Alarak realized what Ma’lash said and did, and he had to admit he was impressed. If both the Tal’darim and the Swarm thought the artifact was inside the safety of the vault, behind layers of orbital defense, then Ma’lash could get a lot out of this exchange. The Swarm would be focused on seizing the vault, distracting them from the real artifact, and Ma’lash was able to send Nuroka to that platform. With Nuroka gone, Ma’lash dispatched the First Ascendant’s fleet to the most dangerous positions. They took heavy losses. That didn’t matter, though, as the First Ascendant was likely dead by now.

Ma’lash didn’t rise to his rank by being stupid. He did so by using every opportunity possible to enhance his power.

Still, that issue didn’t matter anymore. If anything, Ma’lash’s decision helped the situation.

Outside, the first layer of defense has already crumbled. Eight carriers were overwhelmed and destroyed. Thousands of phoenixes and scouts fell. Ma’lash knew he needed to do something quickly before too many of his forces were chipped away.

“Enter battle formation. Launch all fighters. Ready our energy field projectors and prepare our warriors for boarding.”

“Highlord, we don’t have the forces.” Ji’nara couldn’t help but object. If the Death Fleet had enough to beat the Swarm, then they wouldn’t try to warp away in the first place.

“I’m not done yet, Fifth Ascendant.” Ma’lash groaned. “All of you, ready your supplicants. I will communicate with the hybrids. As soon as it’s possible,” He walked to the window and pointed at the largest leviathan, which was leading the Swarm assault. “we board the zerg flagship and terminate the Queen of Blades.”

It was not a bad idea. A straight up fight was impossible to win. Escape was impossible. The only thing left to do would be to take out the commander of the Swarm, hope the Swarm would be sent into a confused and leaderless state, and then either push forward or fall back.

All the ascendants nodded and departed.

Meanwhile, in the Sigma Quadrant, twenty two carriers and two motherships jumped in.

“Nuroka is dead.” The Sixth Ascendant smiled at the loss of his superior. After all, this made him the Fifth Ascendant.

What happened a few hours was a disaster for the protoss. When Nuroka’s supplicants were busy cleaning up the mess of the previous bloodshed, two leviathans came out of warp space and unloaded one hundred thousand zerg on the platform in just a few minutes.

The Tal’darim were hopelessly slaughtered. Thousands of supplicants were spread across a battlefield that could hold millions, and before Nuroka knew it he lost half his warriors. Supplicants were the best of the best, but when one thousand zerg, including ultralisks, surrounded a single supplicant, most oftenly a supplicant zealot, the result was already decided.

Nuroka put up a good fight. Thousands of zerg perished with his every psionic storm. Ultralisks and mutalisks were ripped apart a distance away by mind blasts. A single cut from his blade could cut any zerg unit apart.

But none of his effort could change the inevitable. Thousands of spines slammed into him every minute. Banelings and zerglings did their best to close the distance. After the seventh ultralisk, Nuroka’s shield fell apart.

Another spine hit him in the back. Nuroka screamed and melted the spine, as well as the hydralisk that sent the spine, as well as every zerg within a thirty meter radius of that hydralisk, but by the time that was done three more spines have pierced his body.

Nuroka considered running, but when he was sent to safeguard the vault he was stripped of all his ships. He still had his own carrier, but it was destroyed when an ultralisk bungee dropped on it.

At his last moment, Nuroka made one last try and attempted his emergency warping system. Unfortunately, the attempt was cut short when thirty banelings rammed into him, melting both his armor and his emergency warp drive.

The First Ascendant knew about Amon’s attempt to take out the Tal’darim when he got his victory, and in the original history he would challenge Ma’lash. He would lose, but he would open up an opportunity for Alarak’s eventual ascension.

Unfortunately, in this dimension, he never got as far.

The last Tal’darim fell before Nyon arrived. When the Sixth Ascendant got here, the fleet beacon was already no more than a few pieces of glowing wreckage.

“Wipe the zerg off this planet and prepare to warp in a fleat beacon on my command.”

Nyon flicked his fingers. Immediately, the two Tal’darim fleets started striking down the two leviathans. Interceptors ripped apart flyers. Destroyers burned through the leviathans’ carapace. Zerg tried their best to fight back, but just like the previous occasion, one side was hopelessly outnumbered, only this time it was the zerg that were bombarded and slaughtered.