“It’s difficult to say how far away, or how long ago all this happened, but the seeds of the crisis start there. And may come off sounding a little too familiar.”

The planet wasn’t too dissimilar to Earth. Moderate gravity, breathable air, relatively stable tectonics and orbital placement. Maybe a bit colder in climate, but the true standout feature was an unstable magnetic field that drifted with regularity and impunity. It subjected much of its inhabitants to geologically expedient up swells of heavy conductive metals that were caught in the overly strong wandering poles, causing life on the planet to turn out very differently to Earth’s. Mostly a lot of iron in their skeletal structures and conductive metals in their nervous system. But also a strong propensity for bioelectric adaptations. Ones that grew to a more substantial height in the dominant species that rose to inhabit this planet.

“They called themselves the Garkah, warm-blooded reptilian-esque humanoids that… well with just a cursory glance would look just like smaller laceroids. But their similarity falls closer to passed down sin than happenstance, but that comes later. They had power, pretty much the powers I’ve shown off and told you about, but they came about because of a particular metal that their planet has. One that I’ve come to call Ark metal. It changed them as beings, gave them control over electricity, electrons if they were powerful and focused enough. But it also marked those with it as greater than those without it. Marked them as a sort of nobility. And thus marked those unpowered as peasants to be ruled over.”

Thus their society was divided, this powered aristocracy using their abilities to build a technologically advanced society out of the path of the unstable magnetic poles. They built great walled cities out of metal and stone, kept a peace all their own. But left the unpowered to live in squalor, either under the shadow of those high walls or in the uncertain wilderness. But all of this wasn’t without a modicum of upward mobility.

The metal that gave them their powers was rare, but a natural occurrence in their geology and in their biology. Once it was a part of them, it got passed down through the various lineages that marked noble status. But the number of powered was obscenely outstretched by the number of unpowered. So, since the process for acquiring these powers was a natural occurrence and down to a random chance of the genetic slot machine and environmental factors, it was possible for new lineages to be created. If a peasant suddenly exhibited some amount of power, they and their immediate family were uplifted to nobility. Maybe not quite the same nobility, but better than what they had.

Status in this aristocracy was determined by the amount of control you could manage and the amount of electricity you could hold, usually through various displays of vanity or outward works. The metals that occurred naturally in their bodies were rendered malleable by their powers in just normal everyday life. So, those with the considerable focus and power necessary commonly used the metal in themselves to coat and color their scales. The truly ostentatious practically transmuted themselves to prove their superiority, at the risk of bodily harm.

“But all of this was the highest of the highs. The basics to all this focus and control were taught to all young powered Garkah as soon as they could manage, whether they had the ability to reach that height or not. So they had a little more equality to offer up. But… that is where the story truly begins.”

“A whelp… err. A kid born to unpowered parents and exhibiting some amount of power was risen to nobility. A better stature than the mud and timber villages he’d been born in, but still just lowest rung. When he came of age he was sent to learn how to control his powers, kind of like a boarding school with none of the same trappings and all of the same issues. Or better yet like our training course. I said it was familiar didn’t I. And at only somewhat similarly, he was bullied mercilessly by both his fellow learners and quite a few of the teachers. Most being of a level just above him on the aristocratic ladder, but still low enough to be looked down on. So instead of rocking the boat they just looked down on those lesser than them. An inescapable result of a society like theirs.”

And thus the ultimate cause of their downfall. This child was subjected to all the injustices that could arise from a hierarchical society. When he wasn’t being electrocuted and beaten by his peers, he was being lectured at and punished by the same people that were sworn to teach him. He dutifully took it, held his ground and kept coming back to learn what he could do, but a cycle was repeating itself in him that only some of the Garkah even knew to fear. Where all others found their potential through learning and training at their power, there was a subset, a percent of a percent, that were blessed and cursed with more of that metal within them than the rest. A critical point that once passed changed them further than the rest. Their powers becoming irreparably tied to their emotions, with their major driver becoming not focus… but aggression.

“One day, the kid had had enough. His bully had pushed him too far and acted with too much impunity. He struck back, struck his bully across the snout, broke his jaw like it wasn’t reinforced by the same metals and powers they both possessed. A moment of subjective weakness, a flash of true strength that had been buried under self-doubt and peer pressure. The kid saw what he could really do, felt pride, felt a stature he’d never imagined, felt like he was more than what they beat in to him. But all of it came crashing down before he even had time to be the better man with all that power. One of his teachers had seen the retaliation, saw it for what it was but charged it as an affront perpetuated by one lesser than the other. He struck the kid, struck him again and again. Used power far outstripping what either of these children could conjure. Tore at his very being for daring to think he was anything but lesser. And so all that pride and rising hope fell in on itself… over and over again. And that kid’s true power was unleashed. All under a hail of stomps and burning plasma.”

The sparks faded to nothing, the teacher’s boasts and demeaning accusations trailed off. His stomping talons lost their edge and strength. And that kid rose up from the nearly shattered ground with an aura of blood red surrounding him, like his blood had lit on fire. Death not quite in his eyes, but control lost in a flash of awakened fury. The teacher’s offending leg whipped sideways at the knee, a claw appearing over him as he lurched back off balance. And an opening gong to his people’s death knell was rung as all that collapsed hope slammed him to the ground. As that ground was shattered and stained with the bloody pulp of what was left of his depowered body.

“I remember all of it, like I was that kid. The heavy copper taste of his blood being coughed up, the smell of ozone and burning flesh, the warmth of that teacher’s blood on my hand… The feeling of his heart slipping away like I was the one dying. I could feel his death from both angles, the one who dies and the one who kills. It’s a feeling I never made sense of… till I felt it for myself. Too many times over.”

The kid… the Threat as he would be called forever more, wasn’t lost to himself quite yet. That doubled flash of weakened restraint had beaten his resolve just as much as his body had been beaten, but that was all they were. Flashes. Moments that would haunt and guilt him. But also glimpses into what he truly was. The Garkah barely have a word for beings like him, those in power knew them all too well and chose to obfuscate their existence. The fear of revolt, of a congregated revenge from below. Better an ignorant fearful peasantry than one clawing at your walls surrounding a single outlier. One that could rip them apart in spite of all they threw at him. But every so often one of them is reveled, and the aristocracy does everything in its power to eliminating them before they grow.

“Threat hardly made it outside the grounds of his school before he was set upon. Guards called up by the shell shocked bully were quick to retaliate, firing on him nearly as soon as they saw him. The used a kind of metallic plasma weaponry, little more than burning metal shot. The Garkah have… er had a similar healing factor to the laceroids, just with more focus needed to use it properly. But Threat had surpassed that, arguably becoming a laceroid in all but name and stature. The shot burned, sliced through his scales and cauterized his wounds before they could close. But those wounds closed regardless, that power he’d taken… The power he’d cannibalized from his teacher was too much to keep back. He healed, but felt all of the pain that came. And the cycle was accelerated.”

The guards were beaten down, bones shattered before they could fill him with more overheated metal, but they weren’t dead. Threat found a modicum of control in his guilt, felt the reins on his power and pulled with everything he held dear. This didn’t stop him from siphoning those guards nearly dry, but it was a start. One that would unfortunately not last forever, but he would hold onto his resolve as long as he was able.

What followed though would be expected of most keepers of the peace, they sent more guards and Threat cut through them. They sent more, and he fought them back. They sent more and more and more. They fought and fought, till he couldn’t stand fighting anymore. So he ran. He fled the city he’d been risen to, jumped from the high plateau it had been built on and tried to disappear into the wooded steppe that it looked over. More than likely leaving his parents to be persecuted in his stead, but he would have had no moment of peace to even find them. Nor ever again.

By this point though, the leaders of the nobility had taken notice of the events transpiring. This aristocracy was led by a council, various matriarchs and patriarchs, heads of what could be called trade guilds, leaders of the military and scientific fields. All of them conglomerated and delegated from one massive city to rule over the others. And in turn gather in to discuss and work through the problems of their time. This council in turn was led by a single individual voted into power. A Speaker to represent all equally. At least among those in power.

“I get most of this side of the past second hand, but I have better sources than just Threat’s experiences. The Speaker at the time was staunch, prideful, saw himself at the top of the hierarchy and saw the emergence of Threat as a… a threat. They tasked the military leaders with his elimination, but saw little of his potential for calamity. Preferring to turn his hunt into something bordering on sport and giving his generals free reign to cut him down outside the cities. And so Threat’s pursuers went from simple guards meant to keep the peace to hardened warriors sworn to kill whoever they are thrown at. Yet despite that, what followed was more of the same.”

“Every time they caught up he was confronted and shot at, every time he tried to hide out they laid siege and drove him into the open, every time he fought back he was challenged by lieutenants trying to show their prowess. And each time he still refused to kill them… or managed not to in most cases. He still couldn’t help siphoning off whatever power they couldn’t keep a hold of, and this fact kept the pressure on him even as the body count stayed at one. His elimination was becoming a point of pride, an achievement to raise your status and your lineage. A demand none could pass up. But the constant failures were wearing thin any preconceived honor. So… the grip on those reins wasn’t long for this world.”

It is difficult to say how long he ran for, possibly months, maybe a year. But at some point he came upon a village not too dissimilar to his original home. Huts made of mud foundations, cheap and weak timber holding up rawhide yurts in slapdash rows. Beaten and muddy paths splaying between them, and beaten and emaciated faces looking up at him. The squalor of the unpowered, and value taken from them through the labor forced upon them. This village had run out of trees to cut, its surrounding lands were rendered barren and drying in the cold. And its people were barely able to feed themselves, not allowed to make farms for when the nearby cities wanted their wood. But life wasn’t rung out of these unfortunate yet, and that life lit up in them when they caught sight of Threat.

Word had spread among the peasants, one who could fight back against those in power had come about, one that could defeat them with that very same power. A self-fulfilling of that prophecy. Many tired muddy faces clamored to meet his, scales sagging over contouring bones and limbs weakly raising to acknowledge him. It was like their messiah had come, but Threat felt little of their admiration. He was nearly as beaten as they were, just without the physical toll. He couldn’t help bear his teeth at the crowds and growl them back. Both for his own sake, and theirs. His form had changed with every fight he’d won. With every fellow Garkah he’d defeated. Energy building up, bulking out his once youthful stature into a mass of muscle and spring tension. And his eyes glowed a steady red backing. He feared he would kill them just by touching them, siphon away what little they had. But his fear found no backing, no truth, only found itself drained away as he was approached by a single villager brave enough to break his plight.

“It was a whelp much younger than him, practically a hatchling. He almost didn’t have any scales, skin little more than intricately segmented leather draped over a skeleton. His tail dragged behind him, too big and too weak to keep off the ground. His claws were dirty and pitiful, talons thin and cracked to nubs. But his eyes… they were wide bright blue green slits. They still shined despite his frightening gauntness, and in his trembling claws he held something. A figure, twigs and bark lashed together with mud filling it out. And at its drooping head, two pebbles stained with dots of blood. It was him, an effigy at least. Made from the stories the hatchling had overheard, and filled with all of the hope it gave him.”

A hope that burned before it could blossom. With that spread word had come spread reward. The cunning in the military using the desperation of the unpowered to hunt Threat down without endangering more of their warriors. Some in this village were offered status and money for telling their handlers when Threat came through, told to rile up sentiment, to sow seeds of admiration. To slow him down should he find his way there. To make him a sitting duck for their heavy guns brought to bear.

The call went out without notice, the spy not even knowing what they’d done till the steppes thundered to life. Till the guns fired from every direction. They were little more than low velocity lobbers, but their ordinance was beyond lethal. That overheated metal, that plasma shot, all of it brought to its maximum and turned to jellied fire. Massive whistling barrels spiraled down from the sky, with all of the hell they wrought without mercy.

The first shot caved a pitiful roof, shook the ground for the barest moment, before washing all of it away in fire. Flash fired chunks of mud bricks and splattered timber spread an inescapable new heat to all. A sickly, caustic, green hued fire ignited anything that had the misfortune of being caught in its light. Rawhide, timber, stumps, mud, flesh, and bone. It burned too hot for the atmosphere to even react in time, bodies simply aflame for being in its presence. And that was just the first shell to land.

Threat heard the whistling, tried to react, tried to run or fight or do anything. But all he could do as that first ball of baleful manifest hell burned toward him… was to lurch over and shelter the hatchling before him. Even as his scales melted on his back, as his bones boiled under his skin, as the sound of that first strike roared the world away, as the ground heaved from each successive strike. As the screams flared and fell silent, as the world lost its composure, and as even this tyrannical agony lording over his being melted away. He held that child for whatever his life was worth at that point, whatever all that power was worth, all this control and struggle and cancerous fate was worth in the end. He held him… even as their already meager weight disappeared from between his cradling arms.

“I don’t know how long he stayed like this. The memory burned with the village, but all I know is that he came to still huddled over that child. Still cradling him like he was his. Still trying to shelter him from the worst their world could do. But when the world returned to him and his eyes could open again, he saw the worth of it all made poignant… and inescapable. They were nothing but a charred husk flacking away in his grip. A barely recognizable claw grasping at his arm, turning to dust as his bulk reformed back from this burning brink. The smell was worse than the white phosphorous that fell on us during the crisis, like the air was turned to acid that ate away at you from every angle. But that feeling fell away, as did everything else. The weight of the ash piled up on his arms, the burn of the fires still defiantly scorching the air, even the feeling of his heart beating in his chest. All of it fell away… as something far worse rose from that blackened hellscape.”

“It was… it is… like who you are, your wants and needs, your life, your memories, your being wrapped up in all this meat. It’s like all of it is siphoned away, like your own powers are turned against you. Like something else was feeding off of you from the inside, or at least pulling you away from yourself. A darkness, an empty void surrounding you. Pulling what it wants off, pulling what it can. And corrupting it into more of itself. The purest embodiment of where my power comes from… and the part that still haunts me. Because it refuses to let me forget what I’ve done… Nor what Threat did when his control was finally lost.”

The world through his eyes ceased to see victims, ceased to see pity or fear. His body couldn’t feel the pain that drowned it, could not feel the weight that it had been yoked to since he first lashed out. The yoke that he placed upon himself burning and falling away. There was nothing, no one. No blackened earth or caustic glare. No burned away husks in vague familiar shapes and horrifying shadows. There was only the ones who cause his pain. And the singularity that pain fueled.

The village turned to grassy steppe, a distance crossed before any could realize what had awakened. But in turn that grassy steppe was turned to shocked forms, metal, stacks of barrels, and fire. As Threat tore his way to the artillery batteries that had fired on him. The crews flashed by, caught mid standby as their spotters tried to confirm the results. The faces frozen as a clawed bulk, cloaked in burning red plasma tore through their pre-loaded cannon, and set off their stores for all to see. And fear.

The horizon ignited into green, a caustic sun being born and dying in the same instant. A traumatic birth that tore the air apart and threatened to light the world on fire. The other batteries watched, felt, as their world groaned and heaved, burned and screamed before them. Like divine justice for the fire they had brought down on it, and for the wrath it had wrought.

One by one each battery was detonated, each corner of the horizon turn to that acidic melting green sunrise. The lands ignited to seas of fire, dried grass and felled timber washing away into orange and red under that sudden green flash. The last battery could only watch on in horror, get buffeted off their feet by every kick of the air they had scorched, get thrown to the ground with every turbulent heave. Their ordinance nearly following them down, threatening to set off the last and brightest star they would ever see. But from on the ground, from the eyes of the leader who had been empowered by his Speaker to quell this Threat, the leader who had orchestrated this plot and wholesale condemnation, who had doomed those he saw as useless to maintain his people’s pride and stature. From those eyes a far worse star was shining down upon them. Instead of that caustic green that wanted nothing but to engulf all it saw, it burned a malicious red that knew nothing but how to take. And so all that they were was taken from them.

“He killed them… all of them. Tore them apart like a rabid animal with a nuclear reactor for a heart. His skin was still burning, reforming with all of the power it had taken in. But that didn’t stop him from taking more. The only reason I know all of this is because he took all they were and swallowed it whole. Their nerve impulses, their memories, their feelings, their wants, their fears. He tore them apart and siphoned them to nothing but more dust to stain the earth with. Even to him after the fact, after this long immutable fact, all the memories he’d accumulated turned to indecipherable jumble. Only the most clear and concise even being seen for what they were. And unfortunately there would be an overwhelming deluge for him to sift through. Because this sun would burn down his world.”

When the extermination force was nothing but dust stains and obliterated shadows burned into the scoured land, Threat continued his listless path. Even when he was still in control he had no clear goal, only a road forward to keep moving down, but now he was nothing but a wanton storm loosed across the land. Subject to nothing but its own whims, and impossible to sway.

The operation had been a failure of grand proportions, the ruling council could see no silver lining amid the black clouds that swallowed the horizon from their attempt at total elimination. Now all they saw was a black stain on their pride as wielders of the power they clung to. A stain they refused to see for the star casting it upon them in the distance. Even as both would become bigger while they worked to rectify the former.

Armies, munitions, technological feats. All were brought to readiness and brought to bear on Threat, now named as such for his conceptualizing meant more than whatever name he used to have. A single lesson was learned from their first engagement, that fire meant nothing no matter how hot it burned. So at the very least they avoided turning vast swaths of their world to chemical scars. But still the steppes would be stained with the blood and dust the armies they sent. There were no honorable duels, no groaning fields of beaten bodies, no mercy shown by the misunderstood. There was only grass stained with blackened dust of those leading the charge, trees splattered with the blood of the unenviably lucky who were slaughtered rather than siphoned, and burning dry steppes in the wake. The twisted hulks of metal that used to be armored vehicles and heavy weapons littered the blackened landscape. But always that red star burned further and further into the horizon. And always there were more waiting, wanting to end this Threat.

This onslaught, this cycle of slaughter and escalation. It continued for years. Continued in spite as tactical acumen fell at the wayside. As manpower swindled and yet was poured onto the bonfire scorching their world. Some on the council saw better of wasting armies by throwing them at a meat grinder, but still others could not accept that their pride as the powered elite was tarnishing with every failure. Soon most of the military seats in their chamber sat empty, and soon more would follow. This pride driving vast swaths to little more than suicide in the path of that star.

Yet Threat only followed his path in little more than hollow direction. If he hit water he circumvented it, if he hit an army he just kept walking in whatever direction he stopped killing them in. Sometimes he walked through unpowered villages, most understanding and fearing the power he had and the doom it spelled for any who got in the way. Sometimes he came upon cities far more fearful and much less elastic than the villages. Their garrisons attempted to defend with their lives, but all that came from it was drawing him toward them and sealing their doom. So city after city burned in his wake.

But not all by his doing. Passing village after village, he drew both fear and hope in equal measure. The unpowered saw him both as a force of destruction, and a force of change. A means to free themselves from underneath the powered nobles’ rule. An army of its own followed him, at a distance of course but his trail was hard to avoid. They picked up weapons from the decimated armies, cloaked themselves in the same blood red that their guiding star wore, and cemented their new paradigm in the cities that were passed. Those smart enough not to draw Threat’s ire, or smart enough to draw it away from themselves, found an army of peasants at their walls instead. No reinforcement would come to break up the siege, and no power gap would spare them from the fall. But Threat cared little for what happened behind him, or in front of him… Or really at all.

“His existence was like the center of a singularity, crushed and smothered on all sides by all the power and being he’d taken in. By all the… all the carrion just globed over him. The bits and pieces of consciousness and being he’d siphoned off and eaten. All of it on full blast and all of it drowned out. He knew nothing of what was happening, what he was doing to his world, what his world was doing to itself.”

The toll for the Garkah’s pride was coming due, and its price was felt on all facets of their lives. Millions of their greatest warriors were dead, cities across their world were either lost to their rule or razed to the ground. The peasant hoards were growing and sought near equal retribution as the Threat that denied them their stable reign. The council was in upheaval, a sizable minority refused to accept their defeat, rallying as much force as they could behind them and their Speaker. But the rest refused to continue this suicidal endeavor, electing a new Speaker, one more in tune with the gravity of his people’s plight. And…

“And one that I know just as well as Threat. He still held to the same pride his people suffered under, that was a hard thing to escape, but he understood that their position was untenable. And their doom was of their own making. So he decided that their survival would be too. “

A massive undertaking was enacted, the best minds and greatest craftsmen their people had were set to one goal. Build an ark for their people to flee their now inhospitable world, one that could spare them from this doom. The issue presented to them though was one of significant cause, but one only rectified with sacrifice. Their technology was advanced, but they had little in the way of spacefaring craft. Their world clung to them too tightly, its magnetic instability rendered manned flights a harsh endeavor. Thus they couldn’t create a large ship to flee to the stars in, but they could make something far smaller, and far more sustainable.

“You’ve already seen it, held it, and tested yourself against its… subjective destructibility. The laceroid sphere was that ark. The Ark they all would flee to when the time came. It was made of the very same metal that gave them their powers, that’s why I call it Ark metal. It was segmented up and wired together into a massive supercomputer. But also incorporated another blessing or curse shown onto their people. Electron threading. I lied a little when I said I came up with it, I apparently always had it in me since I’d got my powers. Their like infinitesimal connections, strings binding our beings and almost acting like a… like a soul. They control, but are also easily controlled.”

“But outside the axis of their abilities, they are far more unstable. Or rather, they’re corruptive in a way. They have a resonance that causes them to stick together, to elicit that control and in turn focus it on whatever it is that the Garkah wanted to do. But it also spreads out, resonates atoms around it, draws other electrons to them if that resonance is too strong. So you need something stable enough to hold them, thus the Ark metal. I don’t know how they acquired so much of it, and admittedly I was afraid to ask when I learned it was a part of their bodies as well, but they pulled out all of the stops to make the Ark. And they understood just what they had to do to use it.”

It was a simulation engine, a crafter of a false reality and a solidifier of abstracted consciousness. Layer after layer of computational matrices combined with the steady pull and familiar substrate of the electron threads allowed the Garkah to transfer their minds to new, arguably smaller bodies. Ones made of pure energy and not bound by the same laws as their physical ones. In the deep core of this sphere sat a single space, yet through the matrix of all of the rest of the Ark’s systems that space became a near infinite reality all its own. One that these new beings could mold to their liking, and one that could be shot into the void of space without fear of the restraints of orbital mechanics. It still needed propulsion and sensors to avoid any gravitational behemoths that could melt or spaghettifi or doom its cargo to the slow death of an empty dead world. Because it ultimately needed a destination as well, one hopefully with life amenable or at least comparable to the ones they formally owned.

They hoped to find a world they could uplift with their advanced technology. Someplace they could endear themselves to and use as a surrogate home. A place they could ultimately use to regrow bodies they could return to. If it was possible. Their Ark was outfitted with vast suites of sensors and ionic thrusters, means to see worlds in their path, gauge their usefulness, and reach without material demands. And to top it off, a final suite to scan the denizens for compatibility. A safeguard in case they were unwelcome. Once on an acceptable world, the Ark would split its core into insignificant fragments and shoot them into the minds of their new hosts. There they would work to teach, steer, and work to make them as advanced as they were and push them toward their ultimate goal of reconstitution. But plans don’t always survive contact with a threat.

The cycle of pride and slaughter came to a head as Threat neared the council’s grand city. The armies and forces sent by the minority Speaker had dwindled to little more than the garrison on the city’s walls. But still they sent out attempts, and still their only result was fueling the retribution bearing down on them. If not outright drawing him right to their last bastion. In desperation the villages under the city’s subjugation were conscripted. A bulwark of flesh to slow the Threat down long enough for everyone to evacuate. A tacit acknowledgment of the Ark as their only hope. As could be expected, only the best were set with a place inside. Much of the teams that built the Ark were spared spots, along with much of the council. To preserve their culture, places were reserved for masters and artisans of all crafts the Garkah had created. Chefs and architects, strategists and scientists, artists and composers, shapers of wood and metal and hide, and lastly anyone else who could make it aboard should the hour come too soon.

The process started as Threat crested the horizon, that red star nearly as bright as the dawn opposite. The armies assembled in haste and fear filled the steppe before the grand gate, every manner of weapon they had directed and gathered to that singular side. All directed at that single approaching point of glaring crimson light. Inside the city, throngs crowded the central rise where the Ark was installed. A large offshoot of the council’s chambers repurposed into a launch bunker, a rail extending deep underground stuck out at a precise angle. A magnetic gun to shoot the Ark into space and out of their world’s influence. A final garrison surrounded the bunker, guiding those that had been chosen to leave in and keeping the rest at bay. An unenviable duty in the face of their certain deaths. Either by the hands of their own people or the Threat’s.

Inside the chamber though the attitude was not spared of tension. The time scale had been too short for testing the completed systems, and few knew if the Ark would work as intended. But the tension wasn’t selfish in nature, all eyes were watching the sole volunteer step up to ensure his people were spared. The Speaker, the rightful one who’d accepted his people’s guilt and set this exodus in motion. His clawed hand hovering over the matte surface with the last vestiges of his hesitation trying to force him away, and the innate pull of the Ark countering it with unnatural compounding greed. A cautious balance, a last step to take before nothing mattered anymore.

“An odd feeling to have and accept, to know you’ll not have to worry about anything you used to. Food, temperature, thirst, sleep. They wouldn’t be necessary once he placed his hand down, once he left his body behind. And yet he held to it, hesitated giving it up. Even as a true death approached. One that was certain, and one that gave the same outcome. Just with less prolonging of his suffering. But that suffering was still a life, and he’d rather he and his people lived.”

His hand pushed passed his hesitation and accepted the uncertain better fate. And the world disappeared into an empty sea of black. One with an odd horizon to level to, but still a floor to land on. His senses were flaring like fresh regrowth, ears ring and scales shrinking away. Like they were calibrating back to what they should be, calibrating to this new normal. A normal of hardened dense simulation, with barely a feeling lost in the transfer. He breathed in and the air was cold, his lungs filled and released without a catch. His talons tapped on the blacked out floor, like he was stood on a glass pane. He looked down and saw himself as he was now as he would be for as long as it took. His scales were hued a dulled gold, and he could see right through his hands. Transparencies in the spaces between the stars that made him up, points of light mimicking his body down to the cell and making sure he could accept this normalcy. That he could accept it and not be burdened by any absence of what his life used to be. A perfect enough simulation, and one that proved the escape he’d hoped for.

Outside in the chamber the tension was crashing. The limp body of their beloved Speaker was crumpled on the floor like death had refused them this escape. The frightened scientists, the gathered councilmembers, the throngs waiting for their turn. All waited in silence, ferreted that it was permanent. That their hopes were dashed at the final hurdle. That their deaths were certain no matter what they chose. But their silence broke as the Ark thrummed to life, and a connection was made between outside and in. And the voice of their Speaker rang through that chamber. A message that their deaths were not so certain anymore.

One by one the elated and fearful alike stepped up to the behemoth that would ferry them away from their doom. And one by one their emptied bodies piled up at its side. Another consequence of this drastic change, the body count would pile up either way. Guards dragged them clear as more and more chosen survivors were allowed aboard, and before long the bodies proved too thick to clear. Yet they still came, did their duty, monitored the transition and ensured the order was kept. Even as the city rumbled to life with the final resorts of the prideful.

The artillery sang its bass backed whistling tune, smaller rails buzzed and thrummed to crescendo, and armies chained to service stood at attention as the horizon was crowded with rival stars. The caustic light of that baleful green fire, the sudden cutting bash of accelerated metal from those rails, the onwaiting hoard staring down that defiant red menace. All of it was lost to Threat. Not even the pain of having to relive that wholesale burn, at having holes blown through and limbs obliterated by slugs going way too fast slowed down his far more baleful advance. Yet still it hammered away at him, scorched his scales to black and ash, blew chunks in his body that rippled and flailed. But each time those scales grew back to the grey spackle they always were, those holes closed without a hint of the cavity they created left to see. Limbs disintegrated and regrew, even his head refused to stay gone as a lucky slug turned it into discoloring mist. Nothing stopped him, because there was nothing to stop for. Not till all those that attacked him were dust and splatters across every surface.

The guns ceased their ineffectual barrage and the walls erupted in a more effective order to the hoard below, their chains released to loose them at their target, to hold him back but a moment if possible. For even the briefest of seconds so more could flee to safety. But those chains clanged to the ground alone, no taloned steps followed suite, no vast movement of those gathered below. The hoard of unpowered promised a better life or uplifting riches or noble status or whatever their subjugators promised them to see them throw themselves at their enemy. None of it mattered, because those promised below knew far more than those above did. And knew that true result of those same promises. So instead of a vast hoard of walling meat, the walls and their defenders received countless eyes turning about on them, and a single line spared down the middle. A line straight to that grand gate.

A line that malicious star walked right through, nothing stopping it and nothing seeking to feed it. And nothing left to stand in its way. The gate exploded to metal splinters, stalwart defenders giving their last gasp at keeping their pride were dashed and skewered. But their number was exponentially smaller than their final retorts. A rout was already scrambling away, running toward the rise at the city’s center. Toward the escape promised yet ignored till now. The stone streets were empty, trashed by both the fearful and the opportunistic. The hoard at Threat’s back following behind him, spreading out through the city they had been enslaved to enrichen. Began to burn it in his wake. The unlucky or too fearful caught and dragged away or burned in their hides. Yet still that red star advanced.

The slope to the rise was littered with the baggage of the ignorant and entitled, the bodies of the unfortunate who were caught in stampede to exodus or the wrathful overzealous rebuke of the guards. But none stood guard still, and no one trailed behind this rout. The rise was empty save for the path of once thronged thoroughfares leading straight to the council chambers. A path Threat still walked, still unconsciously stanch in his advance. But the barest crack in that overwhelming void was growing. One more of confusion than calm. A confusion that mounted to its precipice as he slammed through the council chamber doors, and saw the end result of desperate exodus.

Mountains rolled through the grandiose hall, crawled up the walls and valleyed through the central path. They spilled through the doors to outer chambers, through windows and out culverts. But they all spread apart around the central edifice of this grotesque landscape. The bodies of the transposed seemingly being pushed away from the Ark like the alter of a dark god. An alter only still manned by two initiates left to take the final plunge. A master of some wooden musical instrument and a final dutiful guard left behind by his brothers. Both though cowered away as their last bastion burst open, as the light of their certain screaming doom was allowed in to the sanctum of their shame. A light that disregarded them to take in the magnitude of what it now saw.

The confusion dredged through the void in Threat, not enough to escape, but enough to try and make sense of what it saw. Enough to rouse the unfortunate companion to confusion, curiosity. That central edifice, this gargantuan perfect sphere of black circuitry. It called to him without words, pulled at the power inside of him. A pull he could not ignore even from a distance. This pull and this curiosity compounded, drew him in close. Too close to escape, too close to avoid the inevitable. Those left behind unfortunates could do nothing but watch as their hoped for escape was caught in the light of the Threat they wanted to flee from. And their despair was made crushing as the reality dawned on them. A cry of warning, a brave last hope against fate. But it meant nothing as Threat’s claw rose and was pulled down onto that matte black surface. And all of the hell that had been carried to this point followed the guilty in their diaspora.