Ravens of Eternity

400 Harbingers of the Apocalypse, Pt By this time, entire swaths of the city beneath were ablaze and had been reduced to little more than piles of colorful rubble.

But none of that stopped the vast tornado of destruction.

Amidst all of the combat within the swirling storm of metal, the two devastators faced off with vicious determination. And since they were both Imperial ships, their weapons were moderately effective against each others’ armor.

Dark orange disintegration beams crossed between them and struck each others’ thick chitin. Both of them tore each others’ armor apart with equal amounts of fury and power.

They etched deep scars into the chitin and carved off huge chunks. Most of which fell down the city below, which demolished anything still left standing and added to the growing mounds of debris.

Freya focused all of her topside mortars onto the enemy devastator’s port side, specifically at its floating turrets, then fired them in succession. Huge mortars wrapped with orange energies streaked across the sky and smashed into the devastator’s side.

Arcs of orange energies crackled across the turrets’ surfaces then seeped down into the fluid circuits below. There, they caused power fluctuations in the turrets themselves, and their inner mechanisms seized up for fractions of a second.

But it was nowhere near enough to completely neutralize them.

Despite their stingers and chitinous armor getting eaten away by the disintegration mortar nuclei, the enemy devastator still fired back. Though its beams wavered in power and intensity, they kept on firing.

.....

Freya had no option but to fire another volley.

But as the topside mortars charged up for another attack, the Imperial devastator’s topside guns turned towards Thanatos. These weren’t the same as her own topside weapons, and instead of curved horns these were massive barrels that tapered down at the tip.

Arcs of orange electricity swept from the bottom of the barrels all the way to the tip as they charged up. They gathered up faster and faster until they formed bright spheres at the very tips, then fired their projectiles through it.

The massive guns infused their spiked slugs with disintegration energies and shot them at Thanatos at the same time. The spikes all smashed into the chitin one right after the other, at nearly the exact same spot.

Each of them dug deep in, and caused massive cracks and fissures to break across the surface.

Thanatos lurched back from the blow, even as Freya was thrown off her knees deep inside.

She cursed as she pushed herself back into a kneeling position. Unlike her, the Imperial devastator didn’t aim for her weapon systems. Instead, they focused all their heavy weapons fire in an attempt to punch through.

And after calculating their trajectories, she determined that they were aiming straight for the bridge. They were clearly going after her, specifically.

After all, if they did a simple lifesign scan of Thanatos, they would have easily found that it was only her piloting it.

“You wanna play like that?” Freya growled to no-one in particular. “Fine then. Let’s go at it for real.”

She breathed in and out, then steeped herself in the energies of Ascendant Form. And since she was telepathically linked to Thanatos, it did so as well.

Excess energies poured through the liquid circuits and infused the devastator’s myriad systems and modules and weapons with an abundance of power. The ship’s signals and emissions flared out brightly and overwhelmed many other ships’ sensors.

And right at the peak of that wave of energy, Freya fired Thanatos’ topside mortars one after the other as rapidly as she could. Instead of taking a dozen seconds to maximize the mortar charges, she was able to fill them up a second at a time.

As a result, she peppered the devastator with a constant stream of calamitous mortars. The countless dark nuclei smashed into its port side constantly, and practically covered it with nanites. Boundless waves of orange energies swept through the chitin as well, and bombarded the liquid circuits inside.

And while they completely overwhelmed the devastator’s power system inside, the thick layer of nanites voraciously ate through the chitin outside.

It was clear that the Einherjar’s devastator was far from done, and kept on throwing mortars at it even after it started seeing the exoframe. Many who were paying attention on the battlefield watched with horror as Thanatos literally flooded its enemy with dozens and dozens of ravenous mortars.

The Imperial devastator shuddered and shivered as it was struck over and over again by Thanatos’ unrelenting barrage. It began to list and fall as its internal systems were chewed out and emptied at a frightening pace.

Only once the devastator’s numerous demimatter batteries erupted did Thanatos and Freya stop.

In fact, it seemed as though the entire battlefield stopped still and watched the Imperial ship collapse.

Numerous decks and sections were swallowed up by ferocious implosions deep inside. The exoframe warped inward in various places, which caused sections of the devastator to wrench free from the central body.

Although it did its absolute best to stay aloft, it eventually tore itself to pieces and lost all energy.

Its massive body fell down towards the city, which caused unrestrained panic from every drogar below. They ran in every direction even as fluids from the devastator’s liquid crystals fell from the sky. Hundreds of thousands of panicked civilians did their best to flee out of the way, but there was nowhere to run to.

The falling devastator was over a dozen kilometers long – there was no escaping from underneath it.

Some understood their fates and simply sat down and gave up.

The rest died running and in an absolute panic.

When the massive devastator struck the ground, it caused a huge shockwave to sweep across the surface. The actual ground rippled up and out in waves, as though it was a massive pond. And wherever that wave swept across, everything was ripped to shreds.

Anything that was still standing was uprooted and thrown aside violently. Everything struck everything else with so much force that they tore each other apart. It didn’t matter if it was parts of ships or buildings or hoppers or people. Everything broke apart violently.

And whatever the devastator hit directly was instantly flattened and crushed.

The sheer size and weight of the ship itself practically compressed everything it struck, and broke it all down to a fine powder. Worse, the impact caused a massive crater in the middle of it all, and kicked up huge plumes of dust dozens of kilometers into the air.

On top of it all, the countless mortars that Freya fired into it kept on going.

The sheer mass of destructive nanites chewed even further into the massive carcass, along with everything else around it. They broke apart the broken buildings and busted machines and dead people indiscriminately.

They joined the fires and spilt corrosives and toxins all around and helped further eradicate the industrial planet all around.

Up above, Freya panted heavily as exertion took hold of her body. Though she herself didn’t do much physically, the mental control she had over the devastator was incredibly taxing. Controlling that many systems and modules with Ascendant Form by herself was, to put it bluntly, extremely tiring.

It honestly felt as though she had just run through an entire marathon, and felt as though she was on the verge of exhaustion.

But it didn’t matter to Freya.

That amount of reckless destruction felt incredibly satisfying to her. In fact, seeing a large swath of the city below in absolute tatters filled her with a deep sense of accomplishment.

Despite that, the emptiness inside her hardly budged.

The space where Lucifer used to be was still a bleak and blank void. She could hardly handle the emptiness, which allowed a quiet fury to wrap around her. It urged her to destroy more. To blast all of it into dust and sand, and then further into glass.

Her breathing increased and escalated as she imagined bearing down her full fury on the devastated city. As her pace quickened and her heart thumped, she adjusted her disintegration beams and pointed them downwards.

But before she could fire, a comms alert brought her back to the present and out of her hole. Her presence was being requested back on the Einherjar’s tactical bridge.

She quickly withdrew Ascendant Form, as did Thanatos, and then joined the rest of the commanders on the tactical bridge. Freya composed herself as their holoprojections appeared on the desolate bridge in front of her.

“Apologies for calling you to the Tactical Bridge,” said Anali. “We just received a priority communications request from the Imperial Throne.”

Freya frowned on hearing that. She clearly felt that was no sense in continuing to talk to Retholis. He would simply beg for them to stop their attacks, and she would demand they stop theirs.

But neither ever did.

“There’s no point,” Freya replied. “Emperor Retholis won’t listen, or at least won’t act to end hostilities, so neither will we.”

“I don’t think this is the Emperor this time,” said Anali. “I think we ought to listen.”

“So do I,” added Halbrecht. “Although I want to caution that we’re still in a massive fight, and there’s still a half dozen enemy battleships in our airspace.”

Freya sighed audibly.

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s get it over with, and quickly.”

The Einherjar accepted the incoming secure communications request, and the holoprojection of a towering albino drogar appeared on the Tactical Bridge.

The sight of her caused every officer to gasp in surprise and awe. They had never seen a drogar that large and imposing. They felt the drogar’s presence close to stifling.

Everyone but Freya, of course.

“Colviss? Why’re you reaching out?” she asked.

“Hail, Ra’ventrii,” Colviss replied. “Apologies for interrupting. From my understanding, you are likely in the middle of a critical operation.”

“You could say that. Please don’t tell me that you’ve opened comms just to convince us to stop. Because as I’ve told your boss so many times before, we’re not.”

Colviss shook her head quickly, then added a slight grin after. Her tail flicked with slight amusement, something only Freya understood. The others thought it meant that Colviss was agitated.

“I do not share the Emperor’s hesitance,” said the drogar. “In fact, I wholeheartedly support your evisceration of clan Belynn as this also deeply wounds the Sanguine Fundamentalists. Which I’m very vocal about, even in the Emperor’s presence.”

“I’ll bet that doesn’t go very well in the Imperial court,” said Halbrecht.

“It does not,” Colviss replied. “To the point where he ordered me to assist you in your endeavors instead of haranguing him constantly.”

“Spy on us, you mean,” said Freya.

“I am not a fine operative like that, Ra’ventrii. You know this. I am a blunt instrument.

“Remember, I used to train a cell of the Sanguine Fundamentalists. And that means I have some knowledge of their inner workings. The Emperor believes that this knowledge can help you eviscerate our enemies even more optimally.”

Freya exhaled as she thought it through. Allowing the Emperor’s right hand to literally be in the Einherjar was both a blessing and a curse. Whether or not she admitted to being a spy didn’t matter – she was ordered to no doubt report on everything she saw.

Of course, it also gave them direct access to the most powerful person in the Empire itself. And that also meant more information regarding what Imperial targets to destroy.

Colviss spoke again, even as Freya mulled it over.

“One other thing,” she said. “I can also help you raise and train and lead a drogar opposition fleet. That would be highly beneficial, no?”

~~~

Author’s Note

Hey all! We’re up to 400 chapters! Woo hoo! Only about 100 more before the end =O

I also want to announce that I started a Twitch channel. Mostly so I can chill a bit and game after a long day of writing. And hopefully chat with some of you. If you’re up to hanging out for a bit, come by, subscribe, and say hi. You can find me by searching for my name CeritusOrbis.

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