Gorr had never imagined that the Necrosword, a Weapon capable of defying and even overcoming countless divine Weapons, could be destroyed so easily.

Unwhite fires, the very antithesis of the utterblack flames that had adorned the Necrosword, blossomed about it like a furnace of purity. The shards of the Necrosword seemed to writhe in protest, but they were on fire now, and the fire was hungry for them this time!

Sama planted her Blade in the middle of the shards of the Necrosword, a low yet lively Hum rising from it as the unwhite fires swirled around it, drinking in the power burning off the wriggling remnants of the Necrosword calmly.

“Let’s go.” Gorr felt himself get tossed onto a floating Disk, trailing after Sama as she continued with her rounds. “Looks like you’ve got quite a Karmic credit due you, and these wankers invested a lot of divine power into their monuments to themselves. You can drink it all in while I loot the scrap, and then we’ll see about getting you a new Weapon.

“Gorr the God-Judge sounds much better than Gorr the God-Butcher, doesn’t it? Holding the gods accountable for their actions. Just leave the majority of your power locked up unless you are dealing with non-mortals, and you’ll have an edge against gods they won’t like, while not looming over mortals so awfully as to disassociate yourselves from them.”

Gorr said nothing as he sprawled on that Disk, feeling the divine power from this fallen pantheon flowing into him... power he realized would have already been his, save for the Sword. As much as he hated it, he needed it... and, he realized, by the will of the universe, he had earned this power...

“Will not... be worshipped...” he managed to gasp out, despite himself.

“Laudable, but idiotic. You want to judge the gods, you need to be able to hear the prayers of those who have been betrayed by their gods, in order to bring doom upon them. Their faith is your faith, a faith betrayed. They won’t be expecting miracles from your hand to save them, but their faith powering your arm against their faithless gods will be your greatest weapon, just as yours is.

“On the other hand, making things right, as opposed to punishing those who have done wrong, is a completely separate matter. From bringing in a responsible pantheon to helping them help themselves with knowledge and wisdom at mortal levels, there are also things you can do to correct what the god-wretches have sent astray, not merely eliminating those who have done wrong.

“If you think back upon your own origins, I believe you will agree that righting what was done wrong would have been far more important to you than punishing the malefactors... but you took what you could get.

“Be more. Be a better god, god-slayer.”

Gorr fell into thoughtful silence. He did not know if it was the divine power flowing into him or the absence of the Necrosword, but his thoughts seemed clearer now, less filled with pure rage than they had been.

The gods still needed to be held to account, to be punished for their wrongdoings. But perhaps, perhaps there was a better way beyond that point, one he had not thought beyond...

And this woman who could slaughter gods... was not a god herself, either...

“Why... did you not just attack me, and destroy the Sword?” he managed to mumble.

“You didn’t attack me, and there is no blood of innocents directly on your soul. Someone who could use that Sword and restrain themselves from killing everything deserves at least a chance... and you not only took it, you grabbed on with both hands out of pure instinct.

“That Sword would have made you as heartless as the gods you condemn, and as indiscriminate. You have a higher purpose, not a lower one. It is good to see you finally start on it.”

Gorr sat back as the hateful power of the gods, the reward of the universe itself for his deeds, flowed into him, and wondered where this new path would lead...

-----------

“Well, that is not something you see every day,” I admitted to Barb, both of us standing out in the void and staring at the tableau there.

A hundred million Acanti were gathered around Taa II, lazily and gracefully arcing around the great home of Galactus, sampling the incredible power fields the thing generated with interest and care. They’d been pegged as harmless by the point defenses, but still, the sheer numbers of them were astounding.

“They all want to be outfitted with the biotech and the Warding Gems. Even brought the materials to make it all with,” Barb said, shaking her head and smiling. “Galactus doesn’t have a problem with it, as the Acanti were among the first lifeforms in the universe, and He’s known of them for a loooooooong time. I’m configuring a production line for them right now, it should be good to go in an hour.”

I shook my head. “That’s a lot of Acanti to fix on up.” I quirked a smile. “Venus has been busy pretty much straight along. What prompted this?”

“Someone reported a Brood hivemind a trillion strong was coming here to get eaten. The Acanti decided they didn’t want to miss this once-in-a-universe’s-life feast.”

Despite myself, I laughed, and /sent out to the Acanti, -You know, the Brood aren’t the only bioorganic race among the invaders, right?-

The local Song of the Acanti spiked noticeably, and I could feel a lot of expectant eyes fixing upon me.

“Oh, Mithar and his Mighty Mustang,” Barb murmured, reading the change in the Song. “How many more Acanti are there out there?”

“Billions,” I replied calmly. “Spread out across over a million galaxies.”

“And the invading Negative Zoners are going to be able to feed them all grandly, aren’t they?”

“Or feed on them. The Brood already proved that the ‘defenseless Acanti’ are preferred targets. The Brood aren’t the only species that will happily hunt them down to use as slave ships and technorganic vessels.”

The energy patterns around Galactus’ ship were starting to thrum with the Sublime Chord as the Acanti Sang their defiance of such a fate to the stars. They were a peaceable species, but they were not going to go quietly into the night, now that they knew they could fight!

The Brood were merely the tip of the spear, a vanguard of ancient races that did not want to die, and were more than happy to come here to fight for the chance to avoid that fate, using all the tactics that had allowed them to survive for ages and more at home.

The Acanti were going to meet them, and let them learn a harsh lesson about territories among the stars!

“I think I’m gonna need to increase production a bit,” Barb murmured, listening to the Song as it worked its way across the stars. She didn’t have my level of Cosmic Awareness, but Marks had proliferated across many, many pods of the space whales, with representatives from many pods from across the universe going to Venus to receive them.

Always a numbers thing. Magic still needed a living hand to guide it all, but Cosmic energy at least made shaping the Ward Gems a lot easier, and the Acanti could power them up easily themselves.

“I think we need to ask Sama and Briggs if they can allocate a super-soldier per fleet of Acanti. With their herd instincts they basically become one big communal weapon, and despite their willingness to fight, they aren’t really predators, and don’t have the instincts for all of this.”

“It’s like the ability to calculate tactical and strategic maneuvers at a superhuman level is valuable, or something,” Barb agreed. The Acanti truly had to be roused to fight. “Are the Brood gone?” she asked calmly.

I reached out, looking around the cosmos for specific somethings. “There’s less than a thousand of them left, and they are being rooted out as we speak. No mercy to them. No living queens, and their wild-spree of egg-laying is being put down, too.” Another point we made sure to spread: a medical procedure of precise irradiation that made the Brood egg reject its host and thus wriggle out from them, to be disposed of easily.

Of course, there were those powers, agents, and organizations that thought it was a great thing to preserve some Brood eggs or egg-layers, with the idea that they would be useful in the future. There was also a long list of forces willing to shoot them for it, and they did.

“You’re up to over two hundred different observers in the Negative Zone now, right?” Barb questioned, the part of her that wasn’t on overdrive directing the looming mass of Taa II’s internal machines to slam more production modules into place, as well as the furnaces accepting the exotic Elements the Acanti were bringing in to get the whole process going.

Millions of Xandarans were also coming to cloned life, helping direct the operations, and also ready to start colonies atop the willing senior Acanti, perhaps later to expand to planets in distant galaxies and spread the light of Xandar to farther stars than their people had ever imagined.

It was a Good Thing. The Xandarans were bright shining lights in the Cosmos. Seeing them rise stronger than ever had to piss off a lot of people, especially the Skrulls.

“Yes. It finally shut down their naysayers completely, replacing it with panic as they realized they’d delayed too much, and now it was going to be even worse. A lot of them were lynched in career or person.”

“Politics and disaster, always great things. I hope they were drafted to the front lines, that they might deny the enemy exists in person,” Barb said piously.

“Well, there’s pan-galactic information sharing they are talking about going up, and the Acanti and the Xandarans might be in the middle of it, now. Everyone wants information about significant events, but nobody wants to supply information to an enemy about disasters, so you need third parties to provide it all.”

“Ohhhh, nice. Information-sharing leads to a LOT of stuff. Entertainment, banking and finance, middleman trading of resources, and the like.”

“Nova caravans and super-gypsies of the cosmos. Once we get past this little bump in the road.”

“No way to interdict ‘em from coming?” Barb sighed.

“Nothing below the Living Tribunal, probably. The area they can cross over to is just too vast. Stopping them somewhere, if they put enough power in it, just shunts them off to another area not protected, which means nothing if they have hyperdrives or teleportation effects. With their ability to negate Cosmic power, you literally have to go to the very top of the scale to shut them down.”

“Wonderful. The Lanterns make firm plans yet?”

“Last I heard there’s over ten thousand of them coming to help out various galaxies that are going to be overrun. They will be able to stop the flood, if nothing else. They are also getting some of the more war-like empires to contribute ships and bodies for basically the grandest shoot-‘em-up of all. Those places tend to like blowing up everything they can indiscriminately when far from home.”

“Just more muscle to stop them from spreading. Think we’ll be able to get a judgement from the Tribunal to shut them down?” Barb asked curiously.

“I’ve a feeling it will cost a few pantheons and Cosmic Entities first. I expect at least half a dozen Celestials are going to bite it, for starters. They tend to be the easiest ones to locate and follow. I’ve a feeling trans-universal invasions of this scale weren’t a thing in the past, but the simple fact that they can do this one means that there’s going to be another one coming in a generation or two or four, when the nerve of more N-Zoners break and they want to flee again.”

“Especially since doing this is going to accelerate the collapse of their own universe,” Barb snorted.

“A useful tool to persuade a lot of the races to come here. Our biggest edge really is that our universe is so much bigger and more populated than theirs, but the number of habitable worlds is still not enough to take them all.”

“Death in a collapsing universe, or death in war. Might as well go out fighting,” Barb nodded, clear on the logic. “Survival is everything. Hate having to fight them, but have to fight regardless.”

“To all things an end.” I turned a hairy eyeball in a certain direction. “I think Thanos is gonna be an arse again, too, and there’s still a Magus running around. I doubt he’ll join either side, but he’s definitely going to take advantage of things.”

“Plans in place?” she asked rhetorically. She heard things, but she didn’t seek them out. Had tons dumped on her to keep her busy, as it were.

“Fuck yeah. Sama and Briggs got things going on. She’s actually been running around killing gods who want to sign on with the invaders, scaring some pantheons stiff. Dunno what Briggs is doing, can’t be any less impressive. He just likes to be showy when he moves...”