MOOD MUSIC
Light streamed from the opening of the automated dual-doors, the figure of a decorated Hulk walking pensively into the command core of the Die Star. The Star, following the serendipitous defeat of the Forum Forest's army, had landed upon the heart of the largest city the planet bore host to, becoming the palace from which the cruel Imperial ruler would command the downfall of man and mythkind.
The hulk, slimmer, gaunter yet taller than most, looked into a large octagonal room lit only by the dim display at the far end, showing the night-enshrouded vista of the conquered fells, and by the light from the corridor beyond the bulwark...and by faint bio-luminescence from the high throne in the room's center.
"...My Lord, it is as you predicted. Our sensors detected it from the Die Star, without need of our forward base. They have returned from the past."
The Imperial Xenobeast remains still, silent. A heavy, tense atmosphere abounds, like a heavy static, until the silence is cut by the deep, sonorous growl of the emperor, a sound mixed with odd chirps and itsses through its immense beak.
"... ...Yes. They've made quite the mess already, I take it."
"Indeed, your excellence. We've lost several squads and a large number of the augmented reptilians with them - their celerity in slicing down our numbers exceeds in an hour what the Resistance has managed in several weeks' span."
The faint glow of the obscured ruler grows only slightly more pronounced, not enough to reveal its features in the oppressive shadow. The hulk pauses, knowing the irritability its lord has acquired in recent weeks.
"Bring our might to bear. I demand them wiped from the face of tits Universe. All the lives they've cost us will be repaid in blood."
"...Lord, as one of the few of the Die Star's hive allowed full free thought, please allow me to speak freely."
The Imperial shifts, a red glow becoming evident as an eye is angled towards the hulk.
"You need not ask that of me, Roi'kas. I trust you as my sole advisor - you've distinguished yourself enough to be my highest general."
Roi'kas seems to exhale, an oddly human affectation.
"Emperor Valiua, why do you hold them in such contempt? Did we not defeat them already? What chance could they stand against us now?"
Incensed by the notion, Emperor Valiua rises in a flash and makes its horrific height apparent, looming over its general with a wrathfulness in its gaze that could wither a forest in a night. its glow intensified all over to a burning crimson, revealing a deep, long scar across its entire head.
"Because they won. The mere existence of their time-gate proves our timeline is not the prime - they killed us! Even after losing our world, our race, we were still doomed! I had once considered allowing them their lives as servants of our glorious new world, but they cut us down to the last - this primitive, backwater waste bested US!"
Roi'kas shrinks back, not out of fear but shame at its own question. The general looks past its lord to the display, taking in the view of the blasted-out cityscape.
"...Why did you never put me to the field? I would have seen them cut down ere long you would have put your life on the line."
Valiua, after quivering with its continued rage, managed at last to rein its emotions in as it returned to the cool, faint blue and violet it regularly emits, returning to its throne silently.
"I did not wish to sacrifice more of my own. I am the strongest of our kind; it seemed far more prudent to crush them with my might then, and spare my people further loss."
"Why...did you flee, then, those three terran years ago?"
The emperor does not respond for a time, seeming to gather its thoughts.
"I saw an opportunity. When I realized what they had done, I knew their gate could be our doom...or our vengeance."
A tentacle snakes through the air, a light shining from its tip. The central display changes to show an image of the time gate. Valiua, again, takes some moments to collect itself, as if its fury still haunted it.
"We could push them back. Drive them away. Buy ourselves time to change our fate."
"...And so you waited to have them where you wanted them. Has the time come to un-"
"-veil our final card? Yes. I would have my new armaments made ready...immediately."
The Imperial Xenobeast rises with purpose, slithering its way towards the door, and its second-in-command.
"I am Emperor Valiua CXIV, and I will not be the last. I will not be the Emperor who bears witness to our end. Vengeance shall birth our new future."
Light streamed from the opening of the automated dual-doors, the figure of a decorated Hulk walking pensively into the command core of the Die Star. The Star, following the serendipitous defeat of the Forum Forest's army, had landed upon the heart of the largest city the planet bore host to, becoming the palace from which the cruel Imperial ruler would command the downfall of man and mythkind.
The hulk, slimmer, gaunter yet taller than most, looked into a large octagonal room lit only by the dim display at the far end, showing the night-enshrouded vista of the conquered fells, and by the light from the corridor beyond the bulwark...and by faint bio-luminescence from the high throne in the room's center.
"...My Lord, it is as you predicted. Our sensors detected it from the Die Star, without need of our forward base. They have returned from the past."
The Imperial Xenobeast remains still, silent. A heavy, tense atmosphere abounds, like a heavy static, until the silence is cut by the deep, sonorous growl of the emperor, a sound mixed with odd chirps and itsses through its immense beak.
"... ...Yes. They've made quite the mess already, I take it."
"Indeed, your excellence. We've lost several squads and a large number of the augmented reptilians with them - their celerity in slicing down our numbers exceeds in an hour what the Resistance has managed in several weeks' span."
The faint glow of the obscured ruler grows only slightly more pronounced, not enough to reveal its features in the oppressive shadow. The hulk pauses, knowing the irritability its lord has acquired in recent weeks.
"Bring our might to bear. I demand them wiped from the face of tits Universe. All the lives they've cost us will be repaid in blood."
"...Lord, as one of the few of the Die Star's hive allowed full free thought, please allow me to speak freely."
The Imperial shifts, a red glow becoming evident as an eye is angled towards the hulk.
"You need not ask that of me, Roi'kas. I trust you as my sole advisor - you've distinguished yourself enough to be my highest general."
Roi'kas seems to exhale, an oddly human affectation.
"Emperor Valiua, why do you hold them in such contempt? Did we not defeat them already? What chance could they stand against us now?"
Incensed by the notion, Emperor Valiua rises in a flash and makes its horrific height apparent, looming over its general with a wrathfulness in its gaze that could wither a forest in a night. its glow intensified all over to a burning crimson, revealing a deep, long scar across its entire head.
"Because they won. The mere existence of their time-gate proves our timeline is not the prime - they killed us! Even after losing our world, our race, we were still doomed! I had once considered allowing them their lives as servants of our glorious new world, but they cut us down to the last - this primitive, backwater waste bested US!"
Roi'kas shrinks back, not out of fear but shame at its own question. The general looks past its lord to the display, taking in the view of the blasted-out cityscape.
"...Why did you never put me to the field? I would have seen them cut down ere long you would have put your life on the line."
Valiua, after quivering with its continued rage, managed at last to rein its emotions in as it returned to the cool, faint blue and violet it regularly emits, returning to its throne silently.
"I did not wish to sacrifice more of my own. I am the strongest of our kind; it seemed far more prudent to crush them with my might then, and spare my people further loss."
"Why...did you flee, then, those three terran years ago?"
The emperor does not respond for a time, seeming to gather its thoughts.
"I saw an opportunity. When I realized what they had done, I knew their gate could be our doom...or our vengeance."
A tentacle snakes through the air, a light shining from its tip. The central display changes to show an image of the time gate. Valiua, again, takes some moments to collect itself, as if its fury still haunted it.
"We could push them back. Drive them away. Buy ourselves time to change our fate."
"...And so you waited to have them where you wanted them. Has the time come to un-"
"-veil our final card? Yes. I would have my new armaments made ready...immediately."
The Imperial Xenobeast rises with purpose, slithering its way towards the door, and its second-in-command.
"I am Emperor Valiua CXIV, and I will not be the last. I will not be the Emperor who bears witness to our end. Vengeance shall birth our new future."
Headcanons
- The Xenobeast hivemind structure is only particularly rigid in military contexts. When they had a homeworld, civilian life would have been much more lax and individuals were allowed their, well, individuality, but the species had a universal mind-link.
- Why do I alternate between Emperor and Imperial? I like to think 'Imperial' refers to the 'master'/'overseer' breed that rules and produces Xenobeasts, with there having been several smaller hive-hubs throughout their former empire that lesser Imperials oversaw. The largest, strongest and smartest Imperial takes over the mantle of what closely translates in English as a specific Emperor, the ruler of the entire empire, though this is mainly just because I think it sounds cool. Imperials are a one-in-a-hundred-million type of Xenobeast that grows up as most of their kind do, but are particularly long-lived and show unusual growth near the Hulk stage, eventually evolving entirely into the cephalopod-like morphology we know, and are the only ones that can (reliably, perhaps) produce eggs and nests to sustain the hives. If they observed any concept of gender we know of, Valiua would be closer to female if not nonbinary entirely (technically they're all already NB so what's it matter).
- The gene that controls Imperial growth does manifest more often than there are Imperials who successfully mature into their betentacled final forms, in truth. However, in many cases mutation happens as successful growth demands great strength, both in psionic and physical constitution. Most Xenobeasts born with the gene instead branch off into other 'aberrant' Xenos such as the Sarpedon (beginning its evolutionary split at the developmental midpoint between 'noisy cricket' and 'basilisk' stages) and the Triarii (a particularly old Hulk that fails to shed enough exoskeleton to accommodate tentacles, which are reabsorbed into the creature's muscle tissue, causing rapid bodily growth). Roi'kas himself, having reached the Hulk stage, already shows signs of mutation in its altered proportions and will eventually assume the form of a slightly thinner yet equally taller Triarii.
- 'Valiua' is named in reference of the Valuan Empire from the classic RPG Skies of Arcadia, and Roi'kas's name is just complete gibberish. Valiua's characterization takes some inspiration from Emet-Selch of Final Fantasy XIV.
- We'd best not tarry here. Though we are not in the current prime timeline, we ourselves ARE still prime natives. Due to the temporal travel path we took, three years in the prime in which we were supposed to be present now observe a conspicuous absence of us, creating a paradox that will eventually resolve in this timeline fusing with and superseding the prime. Thankfully, we won't have to lose these three years, as simply returning to our timeline where we first left it should cause a snapback that restores the original sequence of events (time's sometimes not quite as fragile as you think, you get enough of the pieces back in place and it can put itself back together). Should we die here, or take too long in reactivating the gate, the Xenobeast victory could become inescapable.
- I don't know why I did this.
MOOD MUSIC
In the flames of war beats the heart of madness. A quickening beat, pulsing faster and furiously faster to calamity, the abyssal countdown of fate.
Hordes and hordes of the Last Hive clash with fervor against this planet's beleaguered denizens, each cutting the other down like so much wheat. And at the calamitous heart of the conflict stood an assortment of titans; two grandiose, if identical, quadricephalic and augmented wyrms clashed along with the finest of the Resistance's armies. Against them was the once-Emperor Valiua itself, seated upon its final weapon, a vast brontosaur festooned with innumerable cybernetic enhancements, and hidden within its body one of the cannon emmitters of the Die Star's primary destructive emplacement. Smoke was thick, acrid clouds further blotting out a deathly purple sky, the sun seeming ever farther from the soil. The mighty Imperial and its 'steed' bore intense wounds and scars, the very life's-blood draining in rivers from their scored and nigh-filleted flesh, but fire burned from their eyes with a passionate fury like they were but babes.
Defiant, prideful and pushed beyond wrath-filled insanity, Valiua bellowed in damnation's tones, its voice like to shear space and time apart alone.
"OUR WILL IS NOT WONT TO BE DENIED, BY YOU WHO OVERREACH YOURSELVES!!!"
Even with its life ebbing to nothing, Valiua's madness is not to be taken lightly as the tyrant rears back upon its suffering mount, cackling in noises that, for lack of better words...are incomprehensible to Terran ears. Tentacles writhe and come to points above the brontobot's head, crackling energy shocking its inner cranial implants and sending the beginnings of commands to its core. The mighty cyborg rises on its hind legs as a burning, hellish radiance burns like the Sun from the core of its being, a horrific molecular explosive that could well wipe the Earth from physical existence. The energy flows from the brontobot into the Imperial itself, glowing lines burning themselves across its wounded form as well.
"IF WE CANNOT LIVE, THEN YOUR 'TOMORROW' SHALL COME FOR NONE OF US!!!!!"
The nameless Princess hefts two vibrant compressed energy blades in her hands, blue in the right and red in the left and looks down to an injured Hero just behind her, collapsed yet still with a grenade in one hand and a pha- RAY GUN in his other, trained as best he can at the brontobot's head. He coughs, a rather nasty hole having been dug in his side, hacking up red.
"...I- can we even stop that?!"
"I don't know, but I also don't care to see what'll happen if we don't!"
She rushes forth with a screaming cry, slashing at the bot's hind legs with desperate fury as many and many more fire upon and crash axes and bat'leths upon the cybernetic abberation against nature. Despite the unhindered attacks, the brontobot and its rider seem transfixed, hardly even noticing the damage they take as the beat of war within the brontobot pulses faster and ever faster, light streaming across the bloodied and barraged warzone. The Hero tries in vain to shoot down the beast, scoring a few hits, and throws his grenade with all his might...yet nothing seems to stop the impending armageddon.
The panic sets in on the masses as they pour all their souls into their survival. The cybernetic Dragons bite and tear, freeze and melt wherever they can reach on the titan-duo. Many throw themselves into the jaws of death. One called Dragonfire, another known as Tusitala, stout souls like Zelphyr, GrandFinale (dunno if this guy's such a 'stout soul'), the Grape Juice, a Copper Dragon, SEVERAL cats and a Katia...the ARCHITECT, Angelus of the Sith, a wily KeKe, Owelle, and even the leader Kim herself. Whether they survive their charge is uncertain, but what is certain...
...is Valiua's sheer, obstinate refusal to fall.
The Xenobeast army converges upon the center field to defend their Master, and defeat for the Repository's greatest spirits becomes all to plain. A glowing arrow in the encroaching night streaks through the air, a rocket bearing every hope.
From a high rock streams smoke and ash, and Dekko, who had taken the knee in aiming a rocket launcher at the fiend, panted wordlessly. Heart racing. Fear overwhelming. Hope springing eternally, despite all. The explosive hits dead center in the brontobot's belly. The dinosaur grimaces and screams in pain, the light in its eyes flaring brilliantly before giving away to deathly dimness as the self-destruction's charge is at last interrupted.
Its back erupts as the built charge is forced through by the force of the attack upon its torso and belly, a fiery and massive beam of red, orange and white blasting across the warscape and into the sky beyond, piercing wide through the smoke and clouds to reveal the sunset streaming in from afar, through a heavenly window in the apocalyptic mire. Valiua is thrown off its mount, most of its tentacles burned away before the explosion-ray dissipates, landing half-dead quite a distance from its steed. The brontobot disappears in flame as its body is consumed, disintegrating explosively, with the Princess being closest bracing herself and shielding her face from the shockwave and light that washes non-fatally over her and both armies.
The Imperial Emperor cries out loudly. An eldritch scream of disbelief, rage and hate. The itself scarred and wounded form of Roi'kas comes bounding out of a thick bank of smoke beyond, kneeling down before its dying Lord.
In the flames of war beats the heart of madness. A quickening beat, pulsing faster and furiously faster to calamity, the abyssal countdown of fate.
Hordes and hordes of the Last Hive clash with fervor against this planet's beleaguered denizens, each cutting the other down like so much wheat. And at the calamitous heart of the conflict stood an assortment of titans; two grandiose, if identical, quadricephalic and augmented wyrms clashed along with the finest of the Resistance's armies. Against them was the once-Emperor Valiua itself, seated upon its final weapon, a vast brontosaur festooned with innumerable cybernetic enhancements, and hidden within its body one of the cannon emmitters of the Die Star's primary destructive emplacement. Smoke was thick, acrid clouds further blotting out a deathly purple sky, the sun seeming ever farther from the soil. The mighty Imperial and its 'steed' bore intense wounds and scars, the very life's-blood draining in rivers from their scored and nigh-filleted flesh, but fire burned from their eyes with a passionate fury like they were but babes.
Defiant, prideful and pushed beyond wrath-filled insanity, Valiua bellowed in damnation's tones, its voice like to shear space and time apart alone.
"OUR WILL IS NOT WONT TO BE DENIED, BY YOU WHO OVERREACH YOURSELVES!!!"
Even with its life ebbing to nothing, Valiua's madness is not to be taken lightly as the tyrant rears back upon its suffering mount, cackling in noises that, for lack of better words...are incomprehensible to Terran ears. Tentacles writhe and come to points above the brontobot's head, crackling energy shocking its inner cranial implants and sending the beginnings of commands to its core. The mighty cyborg rises on its hind legs as a burning, hellish radiance burns like the Sun from the core of its being, a horrific molecular explosive that could well wipe the Earth from physical existence. The energy flows from the brontobot into the Imperial itself, glowing lines burning themselves across its wounded form as well.
"IF WE CANNOT LIVE, THEN YOUR 'TOMORROW' SHALL COME FOR NONE OF US!!!!!"
The nameless Princess hefts two vibrant compressed energy blades in her hands, blue in the right and red in the left and looks down to an injured Hero just behind her, collapsed yet still with a grenade in one hand and a pha- RAY GUN in his other, trained as best he can at the brontobot's head. He coughs, a rather nasty hole having been dug in his side, hacking up red.
"...I- can we even stop that?!"
"I don't know, but I also don't care to see what'll happen if we don't!"
She rushes forth with a screaming cry, slashing at the bot's hind legs with desperate fury as many and many more fire upon and crash axes and bat'leths upon the cybernetic abberation against nature. Despite the unhindered attacks, the brontobot and its rider seem transfixed, hardly even noticing the damage they take as the beat of war within the brontobot pulses faster and ever faster, light streaming across the bloodied and barraged warzone. The Hero tries in vain to shoot down the beast, scoring a few hits, and throws his grenade with all his might...yet nothing seems to stop the impending armageddon.
The panic sets in on the masses as they pour all their souls into their survival. The cybernetic Dragons bite and tear, freeze and melt wherever they can reach on the titan-duo. Many throw themselves into the jaws of death. One called Dragonfire, another known as Tusitala, stout souls like Zelphyr, GrandFinale (dunno if this guy's such a 'stout soul'), the Grape Juice, a Copper Dragon, SEVERAL cats and a Katia...the ARCHITECT, Angelus of the Sith, a wily KeKe, Owelle, and even the leader Kim herself. Whether they survive their charge is uncertain, but what is certain...
...is Valiua's sheer, obstinate refusal to fall.
The Xenobeast army converges upon the center field to defend their Master, and defeat for the Repository's greatest spirits becomes all to plain. A glowing arrow in the encroaching night streaks through the air, a rocket bearing every hope.
From a high rock streams smoke and ash, and Dekko, who had taken the knee in aiming a rocket launcher at the fiend, panted wordlessly. Heart racing. Fear overwhelming. Hope springing eternally, despite all. The explosive hits dead center in the brontobot's belly. The dinosaur grimaces and screams in pain, the light in its eyes flaring brilliantly before giving away to deathly dimness as the self-destruction's charge is at last interrupted.
Its back erupts as the built charge is forced through by the force of the attack upon its torso and belly, a fiery and massive beam of red, orange and white blasting across the warscape and into the sky beyond, piercing wide through the smoke and clouds to reveal the sunset streaming in from afar, through a heavenly window in the apocalyptic mire. Valiua is thrown off its mount, most of its tentacles burned away before the explosion-ray dissipates, landing half-dead quite a distance from its steed. The brontobot disappears in flame as its body is consumed, disintegrating explosively, with the Princess being closest bracing herself and shielding her face from the shockwave and light that washes non-fatally over her and both armies.
The Imperial Emperor cries out loudly. An eldritch scream of disbelief, rage and hate. The itself scarred and wounded form of Roi'kas comes bounding out of a thick bank of smoke beyond, kneeling down before its dying Lord.
The general seems on the verge of whatever the Xenobeast equivalent of crying would be, despite its hardened, war-strengthened heart.
"...My liege."
"R-roi'-"
The Imperial hacks hard and long, gouts of luminescent ichor from its beak joining the pools of it staining the blackened dirt and gravel beneath them. It and Roi'kas experience the now unavoidable collapse of the hive-link as the Emperor begins to slip onto its ferry to the Undiscovered Country.
"How...?! How did these savages b-best us so...?!"
"...Valiua, you forgot the promise you'd made when you ascended the throne. We'd begun to see the detriments of our iron-fisted rule over our conquests. Did...did the end of our world embitter you so, old friend?"
"Do not mock me! What I've done...I-I've done for our people's survival...!!!"
The general arches over Valiua's head further, placing a...'hand' on its face. It looks to the side towards the encroaching armies as the Princess closes in, blades at the ready...stopping cold when she sees Roi'kas raise his other hand in a universal plead to stop.
"Allow us this last conversation - we surrender, though our forces can no longer hear us. Our liege and I will fight you no more."
The Princess looks puzzled and VERY distrustful, looking to the Hero as he lumbers into view ahead of a moderate contingent of surviving RPR forces and raising her arm to stop them. They all stare at the two Xenobeasts before them, ready to strike without an instant's hesitation.
"Surrender, Roi'kas...?! N-neVER! I WOULD DIE FIR-"
"Valiua, you are not the Imperial I matured with! You were committed to bringing an age of peace and hope to those our Empire had mistreated for so long, and look upon us now! No better than what we claim to be so far above!"
"Silence-"
"I WILL NOT. It grieves me to see how the war changed you! You cannot hold yourself to blame for the Predations' sabotage of our intergalactic gate any longer! Stop following in the sins of your forebears! THIS IS NOT YOU!"
Silence falls, the Imperial's dimming eyes going wide in shock at the revelation. Now, before the end, it was finally becoming apparent how far against itself it had gone. Seconds pass, but feel like days.
"...W...what...?"
The general slowly rises back to his full height, looking down on its old friend with regret.
"You put our lives above theirs. I warned you time and time again against the conqueror's path, but that regret...it poisoned your judgement."
"Was it all for naught...!"
The great beast attempts to rise, only to fall again, cursing everything.
"No, it wasn't, though we did choose perhaps the most chitin-brained means of preserving ourselves...heh."
Roi'kas's voice gurgles slightly, Valiua's eyes focusing sharply on its advisor.
"...Don't tell m-"
"If we'd tried peace first, perhaps all these deaths could have been avoided...heh...heh."
The hulk's left bladearm moves to reveal a deep, wide, and fatal laceration all the way across its lower side, cleverly obscured until now. If it could, it would be smirking.
"...and why did you fight, i-if you...wanted to treat with these h-humans so...?"
"I only made a show of it. Truth being...I drew ours away from theirs more times than I led. String me up for treason later."
It chuckles...taken aback moments later by the Imperial joining it in strained bemusement. Moments more pass as the Imperial gazes upon the humans that conquered them.
"Was I wrong? Did our hivemates d-die in vain...?"
"Perhaps. It is up to how we end this to decide."
The crowd has thinned somewhat as members of the defending army go off to combat still-marauding Xenobeast forces, some remaining to witness the Imperial's end. Valiua breathes sharply, its bioluminescence fading faster by the moment. Roi'kas has begun to flicker itself; death approaches. The Emperor's last tentacle rises pathetically to point to the Die Star, falling limp in quick order. The Princess has deactivated her swords, catching on that these two are no longer threats.
"Take the last...clutch. Fo-forgive me...realize the ideals you and I h-held in our age..."
The dying monarch finally passes with a rattling breath, its light giving into dead silence. Roi'kas steps back as its lord's body flecks away into sparkling dust, its remains exploding in a harmless, if dramatic, starburst of light and dust as its leaking psionics rip its body apart molecule by molecule. The now former general looks to the sky and sets forth to the Die Star, but not before speaking one last time. One might notice it was holding a translation-audio module this whole time, explaining how the others could understand the Xenobeasts and their speech.
"The hivemind is broken, and I can no longer command my brethren. I will return anon - nothing can excuse the lives we've taken, but-"
"Can it. I don't trust you, but I'll at least have my men let you pass. Bring us whatever it is you were talking about, we won't wait for you if the gate opens again."
Roi'kas nods solemnly, and off into the smoke it goes. The Princess mutters something into a hidden comms device, the Hero walking up by her.
"Why did you let it go?"
"...I don't think this was as black and white as we thought. And if it's getting what I think it is, I don't want to let a whole species go extinct. We're supposed to be better than that."
Will end when the battle concludes
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