He could feel the sizzling heat from it as it came nearer him from the deepness of a shadowed arch. He couldn't make out whether it was male or female, human or mutant. Draped in crackling, agonizing emissions of fiery electrical energy, as if bonded to hungry bolts of lightning, something living swiftly ran past him, howling as the wild energy slowly disintegrated its body...

It wasn't an attack. The wretched thing was obviously blind, its eyes burned out. Mune'stahr's mind immediately catalogued the event as likely the result of target-bonded ionic disruption. No Manifold Predator had done that. The poor unfortunate had probably been standing too near a feedline from an energy nacelle when the container had ruptured.

It wasn't going to live for very long, but every moment until them would be filled with unimaginable agony. No one deserved to die like that.

He raised his left arm and targeted the running figure, then let loose a single mercy round from his forearm gauntlet's particle-bolt projector. The tortured creature abruptly staggered as it vanished in a burst of blue-white brilliance.

Mune'stahr had locked onto Pylott's signal and had moved relentlessly through the mayhem that had seized the lower section of the metropolis at which Fellmanghul's command craft was docked. He saw that her path was a meandering one, no doubt due to the armed resistance she encountered, that led up through a system of tubular,multi-chambered lift conveyances. The people-movers were built into the massive stalk supporting the vast urban acreage for this sector of the city, and, due to the combat and rioting rampant throughout the metropolis, many of the lift conveyances' tube-housings were damaged. Their progress was far slower than he had patience for and made even more so by having to allow for Klauvane Tregg's mobility-impairments following his matter-transporter exertions. To his credit, though, Tregg pressed doggedly, almost single-mindedly, onward, angrily determined and heedful not to further burden Mune'stahr.

"How're you holding up, wizard?" Mune'stahr asked.

Tregg bristled. Those who considered themselves scholars and practitioners of despised the casual use of the derogatory terms "warlock", "magician", "enchanter" or "wizard" towards them --- the words were demeaning and defamatory with implications the person towards whom they were directed was a charlatan and a trickster. The words revealed a social bias that devalued the societal status and academic accomplishments of the person towards whom they were directed. The terms ignored the fact that whosoever mastered the various arcane disciplines of Magyckal Arts had to make painful and frightening sacrifices in their personal lives, often resulting in them becoming outcasts and social lepers. Tregg knew Mune'stahr meant no direct insult to him, but he could not let use of the slur pass. Tregg, a Temporal Chronadigitator, a rarity among even Reality Mages, and he was a Maven Adeptine, a high-ranked master at his chosen discipline.

"Careful with your loose tongue, you foul-tempered walking gunsight, this 'wizard' is the one who saved your nanite-infused, weaponized ass from getting charbroiled only a few moments ago...!"

"Touchy, aren't we? Relax, it should be obvious I meant no insult..."

"I know, but beneath your churlish ungraciousness, you're an intelligent man and you should choose to address your comrades more respectfully."

Mune'stahr half-turned to regard Tregg. Even past the helmet and carapace of his armor, he appeared surprised and more than a little amused at Tregg's indignation over what the former Star Legion fleet mercenary considered to be an inconsequential discourtesy. He shrugged and dipped his head in a brief, self-deprecatory nod.

"So I'm 'ungracious'? Duly noted. Apologies. Now how about providing a bit more value to our partnership and maybe use your abilities to divine some kind of useful intel about that huge ... thing ... hovering over top the skyline?"

"It is surrounded by an envelope of unstable nucleonics with a very particular signature. Each planar terrace throughout the Metaflow has its own subset resonance, identifying it as a different locale within the greater Ventriculum. I can sense and read those signatures the way you can identify and isolate the different textures and densities in a fistful of loose soil, separating pebbles from sand from soot. The thing above us is from Kadaverign-Space. More specifically, it's from Hellmarrow."

"Damn! It's the warlord, isn't it? It probably belongs to this loathsome 'Qaan'Rai' character we've been hearing about..."

"Well, from what little I know of industrialized technological history, it looks to be of ancient design, and by 'ancient' I mean I'm fairly certain this is Arkyngale technology. That's not a good thing. If that craft is indeed some kind of shiftship or flowcraft under the Qaan'Rai's direction, then we've got major problems..."

Time stood still as, abruptly, something encased in sectional armor and fully the size of an Earth-Terran grizzly bear erupted up from a section of splintered flooring and pavement, furiously punching and clawing its way past steel and masonry, to confront Mune'stahr, roaring in a voice alien to the human throat. A Manifold Predator, no doubt experiencing painful sensory overload as Fellmanghul's last command directive relentlessly ping-ponged around through its consciousness, forcibly overriding the creature's individual personality and thought-processes, driving it to repeatedly commit savage homicide until it dropped dead from sheer exhaustion.

Under his helmet's faceplate, Mune'stahr sneered and extended his arm to blast out the fiery jet of a coherent plasma beam. The force of the blast bent the Predator backwards, snapping its spine even as its brutal energies charred a watermelon-sized hole through the Predator's torso, the beast's body armor slagging and flowing like melted wax.

"Sorry. Got distracted. What were you saying?" the former mercenary contractor said.

"We need to go on the offensive and somehow get into that giant riftship...," Tregg said, quickly yanking his gaze away from the smoking ruins of the dead Predator.

"Really? Without any data regarding the vessel's physical layout, or whether the atmosphere contained inside it is supportive of human life, or a headcount of enemy troops inside it? We don't know what the vessel actually is, it might be a drone and there's no accommodation in it for organic life forms. It could be a mobile shell housing an alien artificial intelligence, again with no need for accommodation of living sentient biological forms," Mune'stahr growled irritably. "Or then again maybe its just a big holding cell, like a vermin cage, for trapping bio-humanoids dumb enough to intentionally break into it."

Tregg looked at the former Star Legion trooper and blinked, shaking his leonine head. "By the Gods, man, don't you find your persistent suspicions and paranoia exhausting?"

"I really wouldn't think this current situation would represent a good time to be insulting and disrespectful, Old Man..."

"Mune'stahr, I know you need to find Pylott and the rest of the team, I get it, I do! But we need to change from this unsuccessful reactive stance we've adopted to a more aggressive and proactive approach. This place is Chaos Itself and sooner or later, despite your ferocity and firepower, it will kill us! We need to get our people and go! And I'd rather be on that giant riftship facing whatever than on the run with that ship -- and its weaponry -- chasing us..."

PING! The unsettlingly loud electronic bleat startled both men. Proximity scan alert.

Glancing down at the holoscreen monitor projected onto the inner faceplate of his helmet, a graphical interface displayed reassuring information to Mune'stahr. "It's Pylott and the Away Team. I've got a lock. They're very close nearby. Follow me!"

The former mercenary took off at a run, moving far more quickly and gracefully than one would envisage from his larger armored size, with Tregg sprinting along after him, doing his best to keep up.

                                                                                                ***

The swirling, tumbling cloudbank of frost enveloping the giant metal scarab-saucer had begun to thicken as it continued to sit atop Lobarth Ceryndum's skyline. The image of the immense infradimensional supercarrier filled the pilot-bridge's optical display while NeeSharim's comprehensive and exhaustive computer intellect analyzed its visible engineering for defects. The slidestream-propelled environmetal container was unfixed in actual navigatible space, an extrusion from a different dimensional realm temporarily overwriting a specific, limited area of physical space in this different realm. Here. Not Here. Overlapping and intertwining, hosting both locational concepts simultaneously. There had to be a way for her to architect a stealthy and effective means to breach its multiple layers of defenses and gain access to its interior.

Speaking analogously, NeeSharim needed to puncture the balloon floating in the next room, slipping inside its interior, without punching a hole in the wall separating her from it and without popping the balloon's outer skin as it moved... an exercise in 4-dimensional Vector Space Uncertainty that was considerate of alter-linear topology. She had to work quickly. The attack had to be unexpected and relentless, happening too quickly for even an advanced technology to make defensive adjustments and create its counter-measures.

And it had to be absolutely lethal.

This was not at all normal for her. Over the course of her three-dozen generations of interactions with sentient biological Hosts, measured in organic human terms, NeeSharim had endured countless battles and been confronted with a variety of weaponized technologies, but this was the first time she had wantonly and explicitly planned for the conflict to end in a fatality. And she knew her opponent would only allow for one chance at it.

If she failed, she died. If the enemy survived, they ALL would die. That outcome was not an option.

She scanned the Ether Seas, mapping the supercarrier's position in the Flow, calculating speed and mass. Even though it appeared that the vessel was not moving, merely hovering in position, that was not the truth. The colossal craft drifted on an X, Y and Z-axis by only a few degrees from moment to moment to then, abruptly, flicker in and out from subspatial actuality as it maintained its lock on its anchor location elsewhere. Additionally, Lobarth Ceryndum itself was also physically moving as it shifted in and out from Phase, continually mapping and re-establishing its position within the confines of this gravitic region of the Ventriculum itself. At the end of it all, she was left with the subset of final calculations allowing for the drift of The Glide's mass as it rode the sky and the velocity she'd need to achieve to breach the supercarrier's outer hull. The situation was Probability Theory where the problem had developed its own Algebra of random variables.

She identified, fixed upon and isolated the relative frequencies of occurrence where each of those events would coincide with the probabilities along the multiple attack vectors she plotted...

Moments passed quickly, the female mobile A.I.'s phenomenal, multiple quantum-processored data access layers considering and disposing of hundreds of interdependent options and ideas in nanoseconds.

"I have you now," she suddenly said aloud, momentarily embarassing herself with the passionate outburst.

The Glide achieved Merge Point.

She calibrated the frequency of the enveloping force-field extending past The Glide's outer surface and projected a pair of points to which she applied energy to extend that force filed outwards, like the twin horns of a bull's head. Then she partially phased the Glide, destabilizing its overall solidity, creating a temporal porousness, and she eased the craft forward, towards the supercarrier, gaining momentum and increasing speed as she drew nearer the mammoth vessel.

As speed was measured on Terran-Earth, The Glide was traveling at Hyper-Mach as it closed distance and entered the very same physical sector of material Space that the carrier occupied. The Glide blended with the other vessel's vibrational residency, ripping into and through the temporal wall separating the Qaan'Rai's craft from The Glide's own dimensional pocket. For a moment only, they occupied the same place at the same time, their quantum matter matrices intermingling. The polar icy fogbank surrounding the craft barely moved, ignorant of the mass of The Glide as the shiftship matched the vibrational frequency of the supercarrier and attained congruency with the physical vessel itself.

The supercarrier's proximity alarms and computer defensive systems weren't prepared for the incursion.

NeeSharim activated the full complement of her intelligent weaponry, seeking targets...

                                                                                       ***

The cosmic Ronin's plan to steal control over the Alphas of the Manifold Predators from under Fellmanghul's psychic dominance did not succeed on the level Ryujonin Worr had hoped.

Her subversive neuro-suggestive thought-worm did indeed transmit across the telepathic link connecting the Predators' proselytized minds, but she had drasticly underestimated the depth and durability of the psychic hook Fellmanghul had implanted. Telepathic extrasensory blocks and falsified reactive-behavioral conditioning presented a complex minefield she had not expected to encounter. Fellmanghul had done his job well. Any sentient being held under sway of his dominant will fell prone to a powerful psychosis in which they felt an almost hysterical need to lash out at anything or anyone they saw as opposing that which they saw as the natural order. It was a potent and compelling fear response.

The Predators lost all sense of organized cohesiveness in their actions and lost control, becoming a murderous mob, a slavering horde of bestial butchers. That wasn't exactly a help to her and Opthas Kandyruu's precarious situation.

The thunderous pounding of his fists against the central corridor's omnium-plate interior walls nearly deafened Ryujonin Worr. The mammoth Black Sun Seraph had explained to her that the possibility of either or both of them being accidentally injured by reflective rebounds from any particle beam weapon he could use dictated he resort to brute physical force to breach the wall. Opthas Kandyruu had become more and more amped-up, impatient, galvanized by his sense of nearness to his Queen. He had attacked the wall as if his very life had depended on it, possessed by the urgency of his programming, driven by the demonic need to serve Infernyya Rebekkon. When the wall finally cracked, split and collapsed under the force of repeated blows from his percussive vibro-gauntlets, neither of them had known what it was they'd expected to see, but as it turned out, it certainly wasn't at all what they saw transpiring before them...

What they beheld was a reminder of the awful Truth about the nature of Where-It-Was they lived. This was the Ventriculum, a vast meandering expanse between quantum dimensional tectonic plates. It was a turbulent ocean of amalgamated Time cruelly and relentlessly smashing against the eroding shores of icy, polar Space. Realities were both birthed in this place and died there. Nothing was supposed to live there. It was not at all kind to biology, despite possessing an atmosphere, relative gravity, and having chemically ecologic components enough to sustain both fauna and flora. It was not nurturing of the evolution and development of living species nor nourishing to any of those species' accompanying bonds of tribalism or community. It was a vast, multi-sectional province given to ruthless transmutation. The chaos of transformation was the Status Quo. It was not an environment fit for living sentient creatures... and yet, despite such truths, it had become infested with the troubling and stubborn nuisance of organic life.

All kinds of Life.

At first observation, it resembled a crescent-shaped, seaside land formation, a tidal shore butted against a shallow incline that grew into a wide, flat plain. The thin veneer of watery liquid rushing back and forth from that shore frothed agitatedly as the watery substance ran forward towards land, but closer inspection by the viewer revealed that what they saw wasn't actually that at all. The watery substance was Space, a large pool of fluidic celestial matter that included sparks of hot, shining light, rocky, metallic particulates and elongated mucoid, web-like strands made from the gases of nuclear furnaces, star matter -- perhaps the remains of some variety of stellar nebula. The shore against which those tides surged and beat was a thing of an entirely different sort. It was not made from any manner of soil ever seen before.

It was rawest nightmare given solid form.

The multiplicity of floating, bobbing, acres-wide blobs of glistening, undulating Hyperflesh that formed the surface of a panoramic tundra beneath the feet of Infernyya Rebekkon and Mondrum Fellmanghul was infused with an unholy animation. A terrain of living viscera. It resembled a savanna made from giant, pulsing entrails.

It was an island drawn into this regional subsection of the Metaflow from Kadaverign-Space.

Floating imperiously above the island, on an oval of coherent solidified light, his fists clasped behind his broad back as the prehensile tubular straps bordering the edges of his uniform's dark cloak fluttered and billowed, they could see the Qaan'Rai.

Floating imperiously above the island, on an oval of coherent solidified light, his fists clasped behind his broad back as the prehensile tubular straps bordering the edges of his uniform's dark cloak fluttered and billowed, they could see the Qaan'Rai. Even at a distance, they could see both Queen Rebekkon and Fellmanghul appeared to be tremendously uncomfortable in the midst of such a monstrous pulpy, corporeal landscape. Conversely, even though his back was to them, neither Kandyruu or Ryujonin could discern anything adverse or troubled in the Arkyngale's demeanor.

He was in command. Here, among the corpuscular charnel gore, he ruled.

It was undeniably obvious that Taekonus Helmstrype was accustomed to an ecological habitat that defied easy or familiar definition. It was also just as obvious that Kadaverign-Space was every bit as noxious and evil as its legends and mythology commonly alleged it to be.

Opthas Kandyruu was appalled, his prosaic, intransigent intellect perplexed and offended by the alienness of the tableau before him.

"My Queen, my Queen!" Kandyruu bellowed, his powerful voice almost lost in the sussuration of the liquidic tide's movement in and out from shore. He held one massive, metal-encased fist high, clenched in a gesture of triumph, raised in a salute to her. "Do not despair. I am here!"

Infernyya turned towards the sound, looking up, taking a moment to search the higher reaches of the wall surrounding the strange landscape on which she stood. When her eyes found the hole in that wall framing Kandyruu, she extended her arm to raise an open hand towards him. The movement was slow and deliberate, conveying to Kandyruu, and to Ryujonin Worr next to him, that she was earnestly exerting a great deal of muscular effort against the pull of an intense and uncomfortable atmospheric pressure. The expression on her face was unreadable. The acknowledgement lasted only a moment before she again focused her attention on Taekonus Helmstrype.

Helmstrype, still facing away from them, turned to look towards them over one shoulder as he said, "Ah yes, the primates are here. More 'humans', a strange word that. No doubt seeking to enact some kind of rescue and retribution for daring abduct their monarch, the very same monarch who twisted and mutated their biology to make of them the freakish creations they are now. Dutifully upholding laws that have entirely no meaning here, in my realm. Is their ire spurred on by outrage? Are they driven by honor? No, they only exercise the simplistic tribalism of angry simians expressing their futility in the face of the Unknown and Unknowable."

"SHUT YOUR MOUTH! You think I don't know about you, about what you are? YOU are a heathen, a pagan, an idolator... You lie and steal and take that which was never meant for you, that which was meant for others, that which was meant for the betterment of ALL who were born with the stain of being 'different'. You should have fought with us, fought FOR us, because we are YOUR children more than any others in this realm. You and your kind turned your backs on us, denied us our true heritage! Queen Rebekkon embraced us all, all we 'failures', and bound us together as a nation. You have no longer have any RIGHT to judge who and what we are...!"

Ryujonin kept quiet, kept her own counsel as she listened to Kandyruu's brief tirade. She was beginning to better understand the true nature of the heart and charter of Infernyya Rebekkon's Paranescience and the source of their loyalty to her. To an extent, she ruthlessly preyed upon her own kind, yes, but, ultimately, she dared to take responsibility for bringing them hope, order and purpose, even though her brand of such virtues was bleak and dark.

"You act as though we Arkyngales should consider you biological aberrations to be our children. You are not. Never were. You were, are, abandoned curiosities of experimentation. You are sheep stupid enough to believe you should love the wolf who feeds on you," Helmstrype sneered. "Those born of my blood would never be so desperate for salvation as to bend a knee to anyone or anything that forcibly enslaved, ruined and devoured them."

Opthas Kandyruu stared ardently down at Queen Rebekkon. "She is our light in the darkness..."

"Light? And why would you fear the darkness? The gloom of the void is your true home," the Warlord said, his voice cold.

"BLASPHEMY!"

Continuing to speak, he slowly turned his face away from the duo on the wall and fixed Queen Rebekkon and Fellmanghul with a blazing stare that was unbridled homicide. "When I kill you all, I expect the pleasure will be almost more than I can bear."

"I am going to kill that smug whore's-son and then my Queen will resurrect him so that I can kill him again – and again," Kandyruu rumbled, sounding more like some great prehistoric predator than a person capable of coherent thought.

For a long and silent moment, Ryujonin Worr closed her eyes tightly, then she sighed. She felt isolated and adrift, lost and abandoned by Fate and Mercy, trying desperately to navigate a universe where the only thing anyone understood was Greed, Power and Revenge... What was wrong with these creatures? Surely, with all their vast power, there was more they could do to interact with their worlds, with their Realities, than to waste time and energy deciding who and what they should kill?

"God-killer, I think we might want to consider extreme caution in dealing with a being who is capable of controlling and bending TimeSpace in a manner such as this," the cosmic Ronin advised. "What we are seeing here is far beyond our experience. You will be of far greater help to your Queen if you can ply precious information from your enemy about his over all plans before engaging him in what may be an ill-considered assault."

"Fah! What is there to know? He is an atrocity, his very existence an obscenity. He is an Arkyngale..."

Arkyngale? ARKYNGALE! Ryujonin's mind reeled. How was this possible? Like many in the populated zones of the Metaflow, she'd heard the word before and she'd long known of the myths, but she'd never once considered that such beings actually were real.

This was bad. Very bad.  Had the Authoritarchs known this?

The space-born bounty-hunter had no time to further consider the implications of her plight as Opthas Kandyruu impulsively launched himself off from the outer ledge of the wall they'd breached and initiated the flight-propulsion system in his armor, his long-range particle weapons blazing as he targeted the Qaan'Rai...

The psychotic fool! Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it...!

Activating her molecular transplacement generator, Ryujonin abandoned the use of her own more prosaic pistol-type weapons and drew her crescent-bladed, dual-headed Naginata sword-spear from its place in the dimensional partition in which she held her store of ion-powered weaponry. Her "space-sheathe", as she called it, was a portable, extra-dimensional armory in which she stored energy weapons and the technology with which the Authoritarchs had gifted her allowed her to travel with it anywhere for use anytime. The lengthy, two-handed Naginata sword-spear could slice effortlessly through a full meter of dense onmivanium steel-alloy or fire brilliant, scorching bolts of focused gamma energy at enemy targets.

Her warrior's code would not allow her to abandon him to his fate. Dreading what was to come, she launched herself after Kandyruu, committing to the battle despite her misgivings.

Startled, but his eyes sparkling with anticipation, a small smile splitting his skull-like features, the Warlord spun gracefully atop his gravity-defying light-disc to meet the onslaught.

And then the sky split, beams of violet light raining down in wide columns, accompanied by a sound like ten thousand hunter's horns blaring, torn asunder by some unrecognizable dark force. Half-draped in shadow, a huge spherical craft appeared. The Glide suddenly descended from above the oceanic island of undulating flesh.

NeeSharim, hunting both Fellmanghul and the Qaan'Rai, had found her prey.

                                                                                            ***