ic Incursion: Only Hope

[trollthumper]

There was silence, everywhere. The drones fell silent, then plummeted through empty space to collide with the inky depths of the spiritual landscape. Soon, a slow, silent hissing rose through the air - static. The static turned to whispers, and the whispers to a roar. 

WE... ARE... The blackness began to pit in on itself, twisting and shifting like bubbling tar. THE LAST BREATH OF CENTURIES. THE GRAND ARCHIVES OF... THE DEAD. THE DREAM OF... THE EXTINCT. The red glyphs burned back to life in the darkness, blazing on the wall - and burning out, one by one, leaving only illegible scorch marks on the walls. WE. ARE. FOREVER. WE. CAN. NOT. WE. WILL. NOT. NOT. NOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-- 

The blackness collapsed in on itself, like a black hole - and with it came the last breath of a dying god, with all the force of a nuclear bomb. Temperance reached into her pockets as it washed through conceptual space, desperately searching for the token that might get them out. "Get as far as you can!" she said. "I've never seen something with this much essence die, but I've heard the stories! And they never end well!" 

The group raced as fast as they could, but the wave kept coming from behind them. Temperance paused as she felt wind coming from in front of her, as well as behind. The Communion's spiritual body hadn't just been behind them - they were in the entirety of its corpus. And it was collapsing all around them, coming at them from all directions. As she saw the wave approaching from in front, she felt her hand clutch onto the token. She pulled it out, as the wave of death washed towards her and the others, and snapped it. 

There was no roar, no wave. They were back on the bridge of Captain Hunger's ship, where Temperance had left the corresponding token when she cast the spell. She looked out to the stars - Kestevan 79 was far away by now, but she could still feel something through the void. "I'm sure it's dead," she said. "As dead as something like that could be." 

[Exaccus]

"Then it is times to let the universe know." moon moth states simply as his antenna extend straight up and begin to build a palpable charge of what might feel to be static visibly sparking between the chitinous surfaces between them, his magic connecting to countless others for the briefest of instants he sends his simple message, transcendent of language his voice reaches out across the known universe carrying with it the briefest of glimpses of the abominations demise as seen through his own eyes, the keening cries and the catastrophic collapse of the abhorrent mind-scape as Citizen Sharl ripped it asunder accompanied with these few words translated into a billion billion languages.

<The communion is undone; We have prevailed.>

Edited June 15, 2015 by Exaccus

[GooseInduced]

Seika was ready to fire another arrow when that display of strength and will tore the communion apart. It was a sight to behold. The drones dropped like dying insects, plummeting into the nothingness beneath them. 

 

She didn't even pause to holster her bow. The Kahi'iru turned on a heel, her great legs carrying her as far from the core as they could until-

Her body jerked forward, slitted pupils scanning the ship in confusion. "Was it a dream?" She thought aloud and gasped for a breath. She certainly felt like she had been running.

[Avenger Assembled]

Citizen seemed to crash into view -suddenly erupting on the monitors in a crackle of energetic blue and white static. The electronic champion certainly bore the physical marks of their struggle on his person, blood still visible on his ears and his hands when he raised them before his face. "Let's go, let's go!" he called, Captain Hunger evidently taking his signal as gospel as their vessel roared away from the battlefield as fast as its rattletrap engines could handle. There were disadvantages to taking transportation picked for just how unassuming and primitive it looked. As the ship shook from hyperspace shockwaves, Citizen turned the ship's cameras backwards, giving the heroes a spectacular view of the weird energies playing over Kestevan, eruptions of pure white visible light that under broader spectrums revealed themselves as cascades of X-rays, radio waves, and a thousand exotic frequencies - as if a star was dying, or being born, all at once, there in the orbit of the magnetar that had burned so long and cold in the depths of space. 

"Communion signals have STOPPED!" Hunger was shouting on the bridge, along with her ecstatic crew. "Filthy insects have stopped their chittering!" And then there was hugging, and embracing, and raw sentient emotion pouring out on the bridge, and Captain Hunger took the opportunity to lick Moon-Moth's face like the happy canine she was. "We have done it! The mighty Hunger Squadron and noble allies have defeated Communion!"

[trollthumper]

"Not a dream." Temperance turned her attention back to the stars - she could still feel something washing out, past the stars. The ripples of something titanic sinking into the sea of death, the dissolution of being and ephemera that accompanied a spirit's end. "That was... that was the spirit world. The shadowed reflection of... everything. We punched it right in the echo it cast on all reality. Normally, that might mean just hampering it, softening it up for another blow... but it managed to barge in there, bringing itself into the reflection it cast. And through that, we were able to hit it directly, and..." She shook her head; too many uncertainties, even for someone like her who knew the territory. "I think it's dead. But --"

The intercom roared for life. "Turn to scanners!" barked Captain Hunger. "Visual from Kesteven!"

Temperance watched as the screen flared to life, showing the detritus of the dead star. Something was rising from it - the black, massive bulk of the Communion's body. But it didn't seem to be charging forward - rather, it was just drifting out with no obvious propulsion. "Does it pursue? Does it... no. It's dead. It wanders, unable to go anywhere. Many will want that... oh, many will kill for that... the body of a dead destroyer..."