Shipwright

The Shipwright ran through the calculations again, his flexible metal arms spun in a blur as he buzzed and clicked. The numbers came out the same, regardless of how he entered them. It seemed, that Drumstick, had made a mistake when he advised the Shipwright on this course of action. The World Lord would have never considered letting so many of the manifested corruption into his station world otherwise.

He flicked his screen around his station world, watching as the hordes of chaos swarmed through his defenses. It had only been a simple biological cleaner unit, and a few forgotten meatbags he’d planned on regifting when Erlking forgot about giving them to him anyway…but no, the chicken had insisted that he get his property back. Going so far as to suggest that he open his oldest station world, the one filled with a lifetime of his history, up to the enemy.

With an angry warble, he sent out a comm call on one of his tentacle comms. Listening to the tone as he waited for the golden chicken to pick up.

“…Yes…World Lord?...this is Drumstick…how may I help you?” The chicken was rightfully terrified, he had given his leader bad advice after all.

“Drumstick, your mistake has cost me. And I need you to fix it as soon as possible.” The synthetic sounding voice of the Shipwright whined and whistled over the poor connection to the equally mechanical chicken.

“My…mistake…my Lord?” the chicken actually had the gall to sound confused.

“Yes, Drumstick your mistake,” Shipwright snapped. “When you suggested that I open my station to the corruption, and the armies of chaos…who are even now destroying my station world!”

The chicken had the sense not to answer back, only remaining quietly on the line for the next words from his master and the arbiter of his fate.

“I need you to gather a contingent of elites, and assist the Erlking’s champions in getting to the rift. We have to close it as quickly as possible, at this rate the station will be overrun in a matter of days if we don’t stem the tide.” The speech was overlayed with several shrill noises as the Shipwright flailed about angrily.

“Lord shipwright, records indicate that there is only one elite in the facility…” he was cut off before he could finish his complaints.

“Just do it Drumstick, we don’t have time for your whining.” With those parting words, the World lord cut the connection.

Running a few more numbers, and searching every screen, he found a few possible avenues of help. Firstly, he increased the flow of time around Frank and the Morrigan’s champions. They would take another two weeks at the rate they were moving, but that was too long. Next, he found another human traveling towards him on one of Specter’s big space fish.

He didn’t know why it was coming here, but he increased the flow of time around it too. Changing the flow rate of time, even in a localized area was enormously expensive in essence consumption. He just didn’t see any other options at the moment. Between his champion, the Morrigan’s and Specter’s perhaps he stood a chance of not losing his station. All he could do now was wait and see what happened.

* * *

Erlking

The battle had raged for months, but was finally winding down. His avatar stood with a handful of human souls, the ones who hadn’t made the cut to be his champions. He held an essence dome over them protectively, as they watched the Morrigan clear the way towards the rift. he had brought several million of his new hive to the battle, but they were all dead now. A few of their corpses still fought on however.

It was the Morrigan’s power, and what made her such a terror in the last great war. Her avatar moved in front of his protective dome; strands of essence moved from her in a mass. Making her resemble the proverbial spider in her web, if one was to look at her with essence enhanced vision. Something that the Erlking was doing now, somewhat to his regret.

Hundreds of strands branched from her fingers, entering the corpses of the fallen hive and the bodies of the corrupt. From those bodies the strands split again, entering more bodies, where it once more split. This trend continued, until millions of bodies had been penetrated by her essence strands. At which point, they all rose up and continued the fight under her direct control.

“Zombies…” he could hear the humans behind him whispering.

“Necromancer…” he didn’t know the words they used exactly.

“Witchcraft…” but they were similar to many he had heard before the races of the worlds had been wiped out.

Most beings found the Morrigan’s specific talents to be abhorrent. Truth be told, so had he once upon a time. Things had changed however, when he found her, the first great war was just ramping up. she wouldn’t have survived that conflict, or likely many of those that followed. He had seen something in her however, and he couldn’t bring himself to kill such a promising talent.

Now, eons later, she was one of the few World Lords who still lived. As powerful as any of them, and completely loyal to him. It was a heavy responsibility, her loyalty. Having someone with her potential for destruction around had made his long life anything but boring. With a smile he thought again about Vryce and Benz. Those two really did remind him of himself and the Morrigan in ages past.

While he had been musing, the bodies of the fallen had rained down on the red skinned invaders. Each one killed, was another soldier to fight under the Morrigan’s control. The front lines had moved away from their position, and with no bodies to litter the field, he was able to move forward quite easily. He did just that, ushering his charges to follow.

They might not have what it took to do this on their own, like Benjamin and Jade, but if he protected them himself and kept them close together…well, even these cowards could manage to close a rift if he was holding their hands. That was the goal here today, well that and something else. Just as they reached the gates, the huge black forms of the stone guardians flew out, right on time. He smiled to himself, as the red skinned leader model followed behind the trio.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen. Just like we talked about please, concentrate your essence and close that rift before any more of these vile invaders can come into our universe. don’t worry, we will keep you safe.” He would too, there weren’t many human souls left and he needed them if he was going to save the universe.

Raising his hand, he gestured forward. The ground rumbled as three giants trundled forward on tree trunk sized legs. He had brought a few from his training world when they came here, knowing what he hoped to accomplish. They were the biggest units he had close to hand and should be more than up to the task.

Each moved ponderously forward, making straight for the stone guardians. The twenty-foot-tall humanoids had blue skin and long white hair. In the case of the two men in the group, beards as well. Armored in alchemically treated bark from the forest’s tallest trees, the two men sported axes and shields, while the woman member of their group held a bow. An arrow made from an entire sapling tree trunk sat on the string.

He had made around twenty of these giants, after watching what they had done to Jade, he decided they were too powerful to use as a training tool for the human souls. That was largely irrelevant as the majority of the humans had proven themselves unwilling to be trained anyway. Shaking the melancholic thoughts of wasted effort aside, he focused back in on the unfolding fight.

The ten-foot-tall stone guardians were completely outmatched by his giants. It only took minutes for them to subdue their individual targets, and bring them down for his inspection. He spared a glance for the red skinned leader, Morrigan was engaging that one personally. Knowing she could handle the small fry, he dug into the stone guardian’s heads, one after the other and retrieved the patterns inside. The temptation to try to absorb them himself was palpable, but he refrained.

The Creator had messed with his ability to use creation essence, he didn’t know how well his world essence would react with the chaos essence. In any case, he was far to old and valuable to the war effort to risk the universe on a bid for more personal power. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t mind risking a few of these less then exemplary human souls, however.

The Morrigan joined him shortly after he had retrieved the last of the black patterns. She was holding one too, that belonged to the red skinned male who had led the invasion effort. Thanking her, he took the pattern from her hands and inspected it.

“Will you try after all?” She asked, reading the desire in his eyes.

“No,” he sighed. Dropping the hand holding the core back to his side. “I dearly want to, but the risk is too great. I just can’t fathom how we never noticed this before? The corruption has been invading us for years now.”

“The Creator ordered us to stay away from the rifts, and not to interact with the invaders in anyway.” She shrugged, “perhaps the chaos essence is dangerous to us…or perhaps, he feared what would happen if we acquired it.” She voiced his thoughts exactly.

“Still, all the reasons not too still stand. We will have a few of these fools absorb them instead, and see what happens. I think we can break them into smaller groups now, to handle more then one rift at a time. If a few of their number vanish, well they are just with another group.” His logic was sound, if a little cut throat.

He had been prepared to be ruthless from the start, now that he knew the score however, he would do anything to save his worlds. He knew the Creator and the beings like the Arbiter didn’t value the lives of his creations, seeing them as not real beings because they lacked souls. He didn’t agree with that sentiment, they were as real as he could make them, and letting them all be killed wasn’t an option he was willing to consider.

“Have you checked in on your champions lately?” The Morrigan asked him suddenly. She had pulled up a screen while he had been lost in his thoughts and plots.

“No, I haven’t. Why?” He asked, bringing up a window to his champions as he spoke.

It didn’t take him long to realize what she meant. Moving the screens view backwards in time, he watched the events unfold.

“Damn it, Shipwright.” He said with a sigh, “why couldn’t you play fair?” He knew how…illogical…the mechanized World Lord could be, but he hadn’t thought he would do something this stupid.

He had likely already blamed one of his subordinates for the entire incident, but it wasn’t going to save him this time. The Erlking had been on more or less friendly terms with the Shipwright for ages, but this was more than he was willing to overlook. Benz and Vryce were the best of the human souls, at least when it came to closing rifts. They had even integrated the chaos essence into themselves, a feat never before seen in this universe.

That didn’t matter to the Shipwright though, he would watch the whole universe be swallowed up by corruption for a damn janitor.

“Morrigan,” he said in his softest voice. “I need you to go to the Shipwright’s station world.” He looked at her as he spoke, his eyes saying as much as his words. “That rift needs to be closed, for the universes sake…but the station needn’t survive the experience.”

“I understand,” she said. “You will be working on the chaos patterns then?” she asked him in turn.

“Yes, that and closing more rifts. It won’t be as bloodless without you here, but more and more are popping into existence every week. We have to close them, and for that we need Miss Benz and Mr. Vryce.” One good thing had come from all the new rifts opening, Illyria and the court of seven had stopped pushing into his worlds. Too busy now, defending their own.

She nodded at his words and vanished from his view, already off to do as he bid. The Erlking turned to survey the bodies that, now free from her control, rained to the ground in their millions. A grim smile touched his lips, as he envisioned the same thing happening…wherever the Morrigan went, with murder in her heart.