Was staffing the new Crimson Towers of Khan difficult? Amazingly enough, not at all.

The tale of the Descent upon D’bari naturally made it back to the Colosseum, as many members of the Brutes fought and trained there, some even being direct disciples of the Champion of the Universe. The tales of heroism and mutual support, of slaughter and iron defense, and most of all that video showing the dead heaped high in mountains around the cold and lonely fallen tower, touched off a firestorm in the hearts of combatants born from martial cultures from all over the bloody universe.

Champion’s favorite cook was fighting there, serving meals for the brave heroes, Healing them in battle, watching over them, and making sure those who went home did so with their scars, but not as cripples.

Even Champion himself could not ignore a conflict of that scale.

He was an Elder of the Universe, and he had been everywhere and anywhere. His name and reputation were literally known across the universe, renowned in more stars and systems than there were people on Terra.

He made a simple proclamation, which he backed up with his actions: “This is a cause worth the mettle and honor of any warrior-born.”

He simply moved out and took over the Crimson Tower at Oivigial, the startled Kree and Spartaxans politely shunted to support. He made no claims to great strategic skill, and pointedly asked for a few of the geniuses who’d overseen the Defense at D’bari to come there and guide the warriors in their battles as they strove to emulate the deeds of the Descent.

We were happy to do so, even as the Elder’s words touched off a counter-current across half the universe.

Warriors and warlords converged from thousands of galaxies at Champion’s words. The Colosseum became a conduit for armies moving to fight for this cause, and the Crimson Towers and the worlds they stood upon became bastions suddenly staffed by some of the most martial and warlike cultures in all of Creation, waiting for the Negative Zoners to come and prove just how damn committed they were.

And then, of course, those many, many legions of warriors coming in got bored waiting for the fights to start, and they started setting out to find more fights.

If there were some who thought it wasn’t their fight, the Earworm that sidled through their numbers convinced many otherwise.

“They come from their own dying universe to take what they can from our own without care nor mercy, only death and annihilation for all who stand in their way. There will be more coming, whether or not they see these succeed, as they have shown how it can be done. When it is your turn, and your worlds and peoples are finally at risk, will the universe sit by and ignore this as your problem, or will this still be a fight worth the honor and mettle of the warrior-born?”

First by the millions, then the billions, soldiers and starships flowed across the universe at the word and call of the Champion of the Universe to fight in a worthy battle, absolutely stunning the twenty and more galaxies being overwhelmed by the Annihilation Wave from the Negative Zone. Races and species who were not even legends to one another came together in a theater of war to fight against an enemy to them all.

All on the word of the Champion of the Universe. None of the other Elders could possibly have motivated such a massive outpouring of violent force from so many places and peoples, and long had it been since Tryco Slatterus had bothered to utter such a Call to Arms. The hordes of his students, disciples, and just plain admirers came from across Creation to the siren call of battle, and threw themselves into the fight with both the skill and the ruthlessness to be expected of students of the Champion of the Universe.

As for Champion himself, hearing an Elder of the Universe was there, a Cosmic being, many eager powers converged on Oivigial. Not merely ships and soldiers, no, but powerful beings, eager to test their strength against the best of this universe, disdaining the mass combats for duels against the mighty and displays of their own personal strength and glory.

In short, the Onslaught of Oivigial soon became a place where gods and cosmic beings came to fight, and even clashing armies and navies gave such beings room to fight.

Pantheonic champions from multiple galaxies came together to do battle with godkillers, demon-eaters, and Slayers of the Boundless. Soon enough the system was roiling with the might of nigh-immortals in battle, and I, I was there, too.

I was a Courtier of Death. Where else was I supposed to be?

Sama was here, too, but Briggs was elsewhere, piloting the shell of a once-living world that could take down whole fleets by itself with impunity, racking up his kill counts. I had a Weapon that could kill those who thought themselves immortal, and I was using it here.

The Negative Zone had no gods nor demons, only those who had slain such and taken their power for their own. They thought they were coming upon young and vulnerable powers, untested by the ages, and instead they found themselves in death-battles with vigorous, warlike deities and cosmic forces at the height of their power and ambitions, not the aged forces and beings they’d overcome at home, things long past the zenith of their might and slowly decaying.

Champion didn’t want it any other way, taking all comers with glee and enthusiasm. It was plain to me that he was in his glory, pushed by combats and combatants he had not faced the like of for probably a billion years or more, and finally having to dive into the depths of his memories and pull forth tricks he’d not had occasion to use against his opponents for a very, VERY long time.

He was getting it all on video, too. His legend would rise anew in this new age.

Dealer, Mr. Hill, and the Brutes were all there, as well as endless ranks of Champion’s personal disciples current and past. It was like an intergalactic poster show of mighty heroes of this reality, daring all the brutes and warlords of the Zoners to come and get a piece of them.

Hercules showed up, running about in his Chariot and challenging those godkillers, with Uhura taking time off to be at his side and give him a hand with the hordes some of the twats liked to bring along to soften up their enemies. Cursespinners and mindfeasters ran into the likes of Morgan and Kwannon; Nimue and Circe were bolloxing up legions with casual effort; the Champions, Tribal heroes, and Dragon wielders were seeking out their enemies; and over it all loomed Sama Rantha, the Golden Hag.

Nobody really saw her fighting, only flashes of light and horrifying psychic screams that would occasionally echo across the system. Ghostly unwhiteness would flare across a section of space as hints of madness scrawled across the eye, and some Things that wanted to feast on the dying essence of gods and immortals were instead introduced to Mistress Death in abrupt fashion.

Primus earned himself a universal reputation during the Onslaught, too. He and the Champion never crossed paths once during the entire battle, for Champion stood at the Crimson Tower and dared all to come, and Primus hunted for the mighty and the sinister among the tumbling rocks and broken moons in the void. It could be said some assaults broke on the Tower and fled to space to instead dare the wrath of Primus, and others fled from the final judgement of the Third Eye of the mightiest hero of Terra to dash themselves on the walls of the Crimson Tower instead.

Nobody ventured out into the dark of the void to see who was killing what out there, but Sama indicated she was having a good time, so all was sweet on that end.

I largely left the immortal fights to one another, but if they wanted to get involved in the constant space battles, I was happy to intervene and show them that Divine Cosmic Primal lightning was a truly horrifying thing to experience when laden down with the energies of Heaven... and the screaming Baneskull on Function’s head was more than capable of reaping them and making a new Skull to set at the foot of Death’s throne.

I reflected that Thanos would have loved to be here and acquire some tokens for Mistress Death as well, but he’d already been the architect of the deaths of many trillions of them, so perhaps he was being rewarded now.

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The Tower at Oivigial fell as well. Infuriated immortal-hunters who couldn’t break the defenders spent their energies wildly to shatter and explode the crimson crystals with their death throes, chipping away at its foundation and reducing the storms and shields of its defenses as Cleo reaped ships and godkillers alike from atop it, even as they tried to reach her in turn and bring her down.

In terms of sheer volume of the slain, it was nothing like D’bari. But Oivigial was where the mightiest of the Wave died, pulled from multiple galaxies to face the like of Champion, Hercules, and Primus, and they left behind their skulls to adorn the foot of Lady Death’s Throne. The strength of Hercules, the power of Primus, and the unmatched skill of Champion were all on display, and their fights were shown across the universe.

If there were whispers among the mighty and the knowing about what had died out in the dark of the void and who had done it, that was not for the masses to know. Whispers of a Golden Hag hunting time-lost horrors made the rounds, and pointedly, not even Champion denied them.

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Every Crimson Tower that rose eventually fell. Every single one of them. Their appearances seemed to incite the Annihilation Wave like nothing else, and like bees to nectar, they swarmed in their billions to bring them down.

In every single case, the cost of doing so was apocalyptic, and the defenders punched far, far above their weight. Gods of the storm and lightning and vengeance sat atop those towers and filled the skies with Divine wrath, and super-soldiers waited to run the battles with a merciless skill and precision that only fed the high morale of the defenders even more.

At every single battle, the Great Bear made an appearance, and the name of the mobile Lantern World soon became the most dreaded words to be heard among the Annihilation Wave. If worlds settled by the Wave were left undefended, without the strongest fleets, the Great Bear would sweep into their flanks and annihilate their noncombatant populations, depriving whole species of their reason to live.

It was easy to take the worlds, as those fleeing the Wave weren’t destroying them. Holding onto them, however, was quite the different matter, and those who did were not being allowed to keep attacking those they’d stolen from.

The Kree and Skrulls, fully ready to crack suns and shatter planets, saw the effect of the tactic in the dropping numbers of Zoners pressing forward with the Wave, and finally had to admit to the wisdom of it. If the Zoners didn’t fortify their holdings, not just against the races coming from behind, but from a simple pass of the Great Bear, they would return to find only ashes left of their civilians and extinction finally looming before them.

And so the Wave began to ebb, and slow, and break. Sometimes internal conflicts, like those that began over the pristine worlds that shone after a Crimson Tower fell, erupted into wider internal conflicts.

The battles over the Ringtrap Worlds had never really faded, either. There was simply too much room there if all you wanted was a place to raise your people, and the greed of those who wanted so much of them wasn’t going to dissuade those coming behind. Martial cultures make for wanting to fight, and lighting the match of those conflicts had not been a difficult thing at all.

The Skrulls, being the best-equipped and the most populous of the Galactic Empires, had received the least amount of help from us overall, and especially from the various Corps. Or maybe the most, if you counted the deeds of their Comet Corps, which were far and away the most successful of their projects, so much so that the Annihilation Wave put lots of effort into killing them whenever possible, and the Skrulls just frenziedly made more.

More often than not, said ‘dead’ Comets popped up ready for a Uni-Merge/Duping out, and quietly joined the fight in Ultra Corps colors on our side. The Skrulls were so generous.

Actually, the main request from the Skrulls was military advisors and intelligence on the various races, including their anatomies and any physiological weaknesses. As shapechangers, the Skrulls were very adaptive in exploiting biological weaknesses of their foes, and their troopers fought well above their weight if they were made aware of such things ahead of time.

They were still losing their worlds and being driven back across the galaxy, but they were doing a good job of leaving as little of their technology behind as possible. They would need mining resources, certainly, but their people were surviving... and there were a lot of Skrulls, and a lot of defenses to get through, and a lot of Skrull infiltrators exploiting their enemies from the inside out...