It was a graveyard of ice and darkness.

Distant blue stars cast a cold, faded light through the field of shattered ice. A thousand crystal facets hung suspended in the cool blackness of space, winking with the light of that distant blue star, like a trillion eyes , open and watching, and between all of it, ribbons of black dust marring the ice with blotches of discoloration, darker than the space behind it.

"Keep an eye on the radio if anything so much as moves let us know. I am relatively sure that if Behemoth was here we would know about it, but it pays to be cautious."
"Glad to see that's one lesson you've managed to learn."

"Jokes at a time like this, Antony?"

"Now that's the pot calling the kettle black."

Adam gave a grim smile inside the helmet of his suit. Underneath his legs, the Gravity Cycle hummed sending vibrations up and into his bones. It was near absolute silence inside his helmet, his breathing being the only sound heard over the pulsing of his heart. The star winked into existence on and off as he passed his way through the field of shattered ice, some sf it still spinning lazily in one direction or another.

"Ho did you find this place." Admiral Lavelle asked from over the comms. The man liked t talk when he was nervous.

Adam understood the feeling.

"We used star mapping information from my suit to match the constellations. It took an algorithm almost two years to do it, but eventually we found it."

He passed through another glittering curtain of ice, and as he did, the scene finally unfolded before him, a massive structure of ice, too symmetrical not to be intentional carved by the claws of a massive beast into what would be a temple.... A temple for a cosmic demigod.

Carved crudely from a massive chunk of blue, green, and silver ice, the Leviathan had made his lair. The entrance itself was vast, and grand, wide enough it was like walking into the upturned face of a football stadium. Distant jutting teeth of ice hung above them and below them glittering a cold cool green in the sweeping beam of their lights, though all remained dark and quiet. There was no sign of the Leviathan and there was no sign of Behemoth.

Adam swept his light over the vast cavern heart pounding inside his ear.

"Captain."

Turning Adam looked over to where maverick was floating on her G-cycle in the heavy SE armor.

He was about to ask what she had called him for when his eyes fell on the wall behind her. He paused, then went silent, as together the group clustered forward to examine the wall, and the massive relief carved into it.

Or less of a single relief and more a collection of them strung into a cohesive storyline.

It was a difficult story to follow, a lot of it didn't make sense, and, there were times where the images being depicted made his brain buzz strangely with discomfort. It started at the top left with, what must have been the creation of the universe. Adam recognized that bit as leviathan had shown him not so long ago.

The images were still seared inside his mind despite his difficulty in remembering them .

And so the story went, down until the last few reliefs.

He inched closer eyes widening slightly as he recognized the scene before him.

There was the leviathan, rendered in beautifully intricate detail, more detail than he would have thought possible for the clawed hand of the dragon, and just below his majestic floating frame, there was depicted a small figure, the figure of an f-90 darkfire suspended in space, dwarfed by the massive dragon's presence.

Adam had to pull back in shock taking in the entire wall all at once and marveling.

After all that was depicted here, all the important victories and universe changing battles, the leviathan had depicted their meeting upon his wall.

Was there some significance to that?

There had to be.

They couldn't remain at the relief for long, and moved to explore the rest of the leviathan's icy cave. At this point, he didn't believe that they were going to find anyone, but he felt that it was important to try. It became completely clear within the next few moments, that they had been too late. They found the Leviathan's nest at what was either the peak or the base of the strange ice formation. It was a large room in a rough bowl shape, and inside was a collection of strange and unknowable objects Adam could not have identified, but within the clutter, Adam picked out the most important piece.

He cut off the G-cycle's engine, floating quietly down to where the object lay.

The Egg had been attached to the wall by way of layered purple ice.

Compared to the Leviathan, it was a small thing, but still large enough that Kanan could have fit inside standing up.

The egg was cracked open, and the corpse of the developing embryo had spilled out, freezing into stiff rigor in the cold of space.

It hardly resembled a dragon at this point, and Adam could only wonder at the incubation period of such a creature, which had only recently developed a head, and tiny little feet. Its body was marred by black ash, and its just developing eye was wide as if it had been in panic when it died. It was hard to say if that was the case, r if it was simply his mind playing tricks on him.

"Son of the Architect." Maverick muttered, "Poor little guy."

Adam agreed with the sentiment.

"Behemoth was here." He said softly, stating the obvious to everyone in the room as he turned to look out one of the small windows, and towards heir curtain of ice where ribbons of black still cut through the field.

"So what do we do now."

Adam rested a gloved hand gently on the unborn hatchling's cheek, his mind made up.

"help me rest the body somewhere more appropriate, and after that, we move to my next target."

***

They stood on the bridge of the Omen some light years distant from the burning blue star. After giving the hatchling what burial they could, they had returned to the ship, and moved themselves some distance away just in case behemoth were to make a return visit.

Adam stood on the bridge with his captains arrayed around him, Admiral Lavelle nervously standing in their midst.

Standing in the middle of a group of traitors, or so it must have seemed to him.

Adam admired the man, for doing what he thought was right even despite who he had to work with. It was rather impressive, though Adam knew the man was practically throwing away his career for this. He would have to find a way to thank the old man.

"It's a horrible idea." That was Simon of course.

Being a ship captain had gotten to her head in all the best ways. She had really come into her own, though in his opinion she ran her ship like a drill Sargent. Even so, she was not afraid to say what she needed to say, and her tactical insights were always helpful.

He reached up to rub the back of his neck, "Horrible ideas are all we have left open to us."

Admiral Lavelle was shaking his head, "Hold on, you want to do what exactly."

Adam turned on his heel and marched out of the room, accompanied by the sound of shuffling as they walked down the steps and onto the catwalk, "There is only one person who knows for sure what is going on and how to fix it, yet for some reason they have lest us high and dry this entire time without explanation. Well, I plan on changing that."

"Wait, I am not following."

"The Makers need to explain themselves."

"And how exactly do you plan on getting a Maker to even pay attention to us?"

Adam stepped from the elevator and onto the engineering deck, walking the group of them back through the ship and towards the fusion core. There were warning arrows everywhere, but not because of radiation. The fusion core gave off almost no radioactive materials, but the heat of the room could be intense. All around them the engineering crew scurried about the rats through the bowels of the ship, their grimy grey uniforms slicked with oil and grease, singed here and there with small burnt patches.

"Ah there she is."

Narboi sat in her "office." Less of an office and more of a chair bolted to a catwalk from which she could watch her crew going about their work. Adam knew from her file that she was technically royalty, but never did she look more like a queen than when she was sitting on her makeshift throne surrounded on all sides by darkness, and the scuttling bodies of the mechanical crew. She lifted her chin with a sharp jolt as he came into the room, her hair bouncing slightly where it sat, tied up tight surrounded by the folds of her brightly colored head scarf, even here her full lips and symmetrical face could not have ben anything other than beautiful.

"No.:

Adam frowned, "You haven't even let me speak yet, how can you already be saying no"

"Because every time you come here you ask to do something stupid, and every time you convince me and every time something goes terribly wrong, and I regret it."

"Why don't we skip the part where you say no and move right onto the part where you do what I want but regret it."

She frowned at him; lips pursed into a sharp line.

"We need to use.... It."

The frown grew even deeper, "Why did I see this coming." She gave a deep sigh, and stood from her seat, smoothing out the front of her grey jumpsuit and motioning them to follow as she clambered down from the catwalk and towards the engine room.

"I have a theory about how they woke behemoth." Adam began as they followed after her, "Not so long ago, while on a routine mission, Maverick discovered a secret laboratory on a hub station, where a group of Tesraki scientists had discovered a new power source." He stopped in front of the door to he fusion chamber, "Basically, they had placed people and aliens inside a specially designed containment unit, and then tapped into the power of their anima. As it turns out the soul is capable of generating power that is.... Heretofore incomprehensible to what we understand. I believe that Kazna used an anima to awaken Behemoth."

FUSION CORE DEACTIVATED.

Adam opened the door leading to the fusion chamber.

Narobi didn't look at him as he stepped inside, "Every time we have attempted to activate the full power of the Anima, the person has been able to harness their power. Granted that's not something the makers like us doing, but I bet, if we can get their attention, we can get a maker down here to try and explain to us what is going on and why they haven't been doing jack shit to help us out."

"So wait, you are going to?"

"Intentionally awaken my Anima to make an intergalactic cell phone call to tell Adham to get his ass over here and explain what is going on."

The room was silent, and Adam took that as an opportunity to shut the door separating them, in no mood to argue about weather this was a good idea or not.

He knew it kind of wasn't.

But it was all he had left.

He walked forward, opening the chamber to the fusion room, waiting for a moment as light flashed and the door slowly cranked itself open.

The fusion room wasn't very large, maybe fifty feet square in all directions, and generally circular in shape. IN the center of the room there was a raised platform and an empty set of prongs where the fusion core usually sat, though it had not been deactivated and stored away. They would be running on auxiliary power for the time being.

Adam stepped forward and onto the raised dais. It would be awkward, but he gently scooted himself into place where the fusion core usually sat wedging himself in like an ill-fitting battery. They had looked at the technology that had activated Maverick's anima, and had secretly repurposed their warp core afterward, knowing that one day it might come in handy. Adam had been thinking it could be used for supercharging their weapons systems, but this was just as good.

The hard part was going to be focusing enough to even get Adham's attention. Generally when reverted to Deus form, they had all the memories and information they had before they became human, and usually their more human desires and interests were kind of thrown to the wind during those times.

Adam did not intend to allow that to happen, or at least not fully.

He needed to piss someone off enough that they would send someone.

"Are you ready, Admiral?"

"As ready as I will ever be."

He heard the machine whirr to life, and closed his eyes as he felt the prongs below him beginning to heat, and then.

An explosion inside his head.

***

Outside, Admiral Antony watched in shock and horror as the entire ship began to groan. Lights flickered and then buzzed brightening to almost blinding levels. He threw up a hand to cover his face. All around them the Omen hummed to life with devastating power, power so great that she began to shake and rattle unable to contain it. There was a ripple, almost visible traveling out from the warp core and through the ship.

ON the bridge, the communications officer watched in shock as a radio signal manifested itself and burst outward from the ship, accompanied by a sudden firing of the warp core, which took radio signal with it to.... Somewhere unknown .

Before her, her, the computer station began to glitch .

Back on the maintenance deck, there was a sudden pop, and burst as the power went out.

CORE MISSING.

Narobi turned back to her console just as the door to the fusion chamber opened, and a glowing figure stepped out of the chamber.

Admiral Antony reeled back as Adam turned to face him, his body shedding sparks and pulsing with waves of power as he walked past them and up through the ship. The other followed tentatively, holding back as Adam made his way up and onto the viewing deck, where he stopped before the open window peering out into space.

They all waited and watched from the doorway as he stood unmoving for some time.

And then they saw it.

A glowing shape appearing from nowhere, a majestic warrior of unfathomable power and grace just appearing in the middle of the blackness and floating up to the window. Adham's ageless, ethnically ambiguous and annoyingly handsome face was marred with an expression of annoyance as he stared at Adam through the glass.

The two of them stared at each other for a long moment before Adham stepped forward. His body seemed to melt and warp phasing itself through the solid layer of glass until he was standing inside the ship, alien weapon held at his side body glowing with golden light. Pearl white armor inlayed with strips of golden power covered his body in contrast to Adam's armor, which he still wore, humming and shaking with the power that Adam gave off.

"What do you think you are doing."Adham demanded

For a moment it seemed that Adam wouldn't answer but then he smiled green eyes burning, "Getting your attention."

Adham gritted his teeth and reached out, grabbing adam by the shoulder.

As he did, it was almost as if adam imploded. There was a sharp flash of light, and the brightness collapsed inward, slamming back into his physical body with such force that Adam was tossed back to slam into the wall behind him, his SE armor denting the solid steel of the bulkhead, slumping to the ground a moment later in a daze.

The room was silent, and no one dare move as the Maker stepped forward across the floor to kneel in front of Adam, now back in his construct where he belonged.

Adham's face, once in an expression of anger, had now turned to an expression of pained frustration and regret.

His touch was more gentle this time as he lifted Adam's face to look at him.

"Why do you keep doing this?"

"Because." Adam rasped, "I have people to protect. You should be able to understand that."