Numbly Khyl’zarbec stared out the window of his cabin, at the shimmering blue and green energies dancing along the wall of the Warp Conduit that his ship traveled through. The robed figure of Zarbec towered almost eight feet in height though nothing was immediately discernible through the voluminous robes. Turning to focus his gaze behind his ship, the cowl slipped back revealing an amorphous face composed of liquid silver that maintained an almost constant state of motion. Dancing along the silvery surface, glowing orbs of light would suddenly burst out of the body, as others dived under the silvery skin from view. The only nonmoving object on the “face” was a point of darkness. The darkness seemed to contain depths far more unfathomable than all of Zarbec’s body could hold. Smoothly the dark point rotated on Zarbec’s face, and then expanded in size, allowing Zarbec to focus his gaze. Following Zarbec’s ship the four surviving vessels traveled the Warp Conduit as well, all battered heavily, and most limping along under partial drive. Bitterly Zarbec observed them, and thought of the failure they represented.
He compared the feelings of bitterness and shame to the pride that he had felt the day he had been designated the leader of the Legacy project. How eager he had been at that time to go forth, find a race worthy of the Xel’Naga’s gifts. Accompanied by the greatest Psion Masters, the brightest geneticist, and the most skilled evolutionary theorist, he had gone forth on ten great Science vessels.
Despite such a crew, despite such an honorable goal, in spite of all the effort and power that the Xel’Naga had put into this mission, the great Legacy project had failed. The Xel’Naga had erred in their task, and not just once, but twice, first the Protoss, who turned from the teachings of their creators and rejected the Xel’Naga. Then came the Zerg, who had in the end been an even bigger mistake than the Protoss, and with far deadlier results.
The bitter irony was that the technology to access this Warp Conduit was what had saved them from their children’s fury, was just one of the inheritance gifts that the Xel’Naga had planned to grant their perfect child. Now that gift was the only thing that had saved them from those self-same children.
Silently, as his ships sped home, the only destination Zarbec could order considering the state of the Legacy Team, he pondered the cruel whims of fate. While despair was within his heart, Zarbec did not rage at the Zerg, or the Protoss. Of course the other Xel’Naga did not feel the same way as Zarbec, most of them were furious with their children. Still as a Psion Master, Zarbec had to be above such volatile emotions. He knew that it was his meddling and that of the other Xel’Naga that had caused his children to rebel. Zarbec sighed, and reiterated his wish to be able to reason with the two child races. ‘Perhaps one day when we ourselves are truly wise, and not filled with our own self-importance, we can go back, and apologize to them for what we have done.’ Khyl’zarbec thought to himself. Left to these bitter thoughts, he stood by his window letting the swiftly passing by walls of green and blue light, shed their soft glow across his battered soul.
Zarbec remained in that state of numb observation until the soft buzzing that preceded the end of their Warp Conduit travel shook through his form. Up ahead, a small slit appeared in the patterned web of the p Conduit walls, and his ship and the others gently slid back into normal space. Khyl’zarbec prepared himself for the powerful force of the concentrated Psion Masters on the Xel’Naga Capitol World. Yet when his ship came out of the Conduit, the region was strangely silent. There were energies present, but not the familiar residuals of the massed minds of countless powerful beings. Then his ship turned, and Zarbec’s window revealed the Capitol world.
The sight that greeted Zarbec was as shocking as the horror he had left behind. Where the gas giant world had once been there was nothing, but a vast field of wreckage. Gone were the elegant towers, and buildings that had been so great that they dwarfed the very planet they had been built from, towers reaching out into the vastness of outer space. What stood in their place was field of metal all twisted and burned beyond recognition. And in the center of that field an enormous floating pyramid. Then Khyl’zarbec got a closer look and realized it was in fact a tetragon, like two four sided pyramids placed one facing up one down, and attached together by their bases. Recognition came to Khyl’zarbec in an icy chill as he realized that he saw one of the ancient Xel’Naga Dreadnoughts, the fabled star crushers that had been destroyed to the last by decree of the Central Council.
Suddenly, from one side of the enormous ship, a swarm of needles poured forth. Zarbec’s silvery skin reflected the disturbance in his mind, ripples passing up and down his liquid form, as the dancing energetic orbs picked up the tempo of their random movements, at the sight of those needles. “Blade ships,” Zarbec whispered unbelievingly. Following the Blade Ships was an even more fearsome sight, a Claw. It first appeared as nothing more than another Blade ship although far bigger; however, as it neared Khyl’zarbec’s fleet fissures raced up its side, and it split open, fracturing into five outstretched “fingers” around a burning red core. It was then that a forceful hail greeted him.
“Ah Khyl’zarbec, you return sooner than we anticipated. The Emperor of the new Xel’Naga Empire has ordered that you surrender your forces to us, and immediately pass over all of your data records, about what you did with the Legacy project. It is the will of the Priests of Xellas, that your work to perfect other races, to bring them closer to the holy position that is to only be held by the Xel’Naga, is heresy. You are to tell us where they are, so that we may go back and rectify your blasphemy, by burning the abominations from this galaxy’s memory.”
Zarbec quailed inside at the raw violence and anger in the mind of the captain. Quickly scanning that mind, he saw to his horror, the fall of the Central council, as the main planet was ignited in the awesome powers of a Dreadnought blast. He heard the anguished screams of millions of minds, most of them Psion Masters, as their flesh, and the very air itself caught fire and converted into ionized gases. He then glimpsed the massive subjugation of lesser races and the factions of the Xel’Naga that had tried to resist the rise of this Emperor, in the days after this act. In the span of a few moments he stole from the captain’s head the horror of a four century long war that had ended with the downfall of the peaceful culture and works of the Xel’Naga, lead by the power hungry Emperor.
The furious captain detected the intrusion, “Get out of my mind dark one. Think I cannot detect your evil thoughts sifting through my mind? No longer will those of us that follow the Holy Writ submit to the presence of your dark powers. You Psion Masters have been dethroned, cast from power. The Holy Empire has no use for beings such as you. Too long have those overly gifted with psychic power ruled over the rest of us while in secret you advanced your own designs. When the Emperor led the people against the elite and cast down the Central council, he ended that. Now fallen one, I give you the order one more time, power down your ships and transfer all the information in your databases now.” Five simultaneous red points of light followed this order, as the ends of the “fingers” of the claw lit up, powering up the ship’s massive weapon.
Faced with certain destruction Zarbec was left with the same option he had been left with before, he ordered his ships back into the Warp conduit thinking that he had to escape long enough to obtain some time to figure out what to do. The retreat was sadly to slow for most of his ships. The Blade Ships saw the ripples marking the reopening of the Conduit and immediately surged forward. Advancing towards the vessels, the Blade ships, took on a faint orange glow, and surged forward so quickly that to the naked eye they appear to be laser beams. Without slowing, the Blade ships crashed into two of the five science vessels. Smoking holes were drilled through the both vessels. The Blades emerged from the other side completely unscathed. Rapidly the ships spun about to face the vessels, and again the hellish orange glow came over them as they surged forth. The two vessels disintegrated before the assault, falling apart in splintered pieces, massive holes bleeding the atmosphere from inside into the cold vastness of space. Then the red light at the tips of the Claw flared brighter, and red-twisting cords of raw lightning sprang into being between adjacent fingers. Then at once the red lightning changed direction and surged downward towards the glowing red center of the Claw. The lightning magnified into a bolt of charged psychic energy, and electricity, tightly bound into a twisting cord of ethereal plasma. The glorious bolt smashed into one of the science vessels, and the red cables surged over the ship’s surface before the entire ship exploded in a fiery burst of raw energy. At last Zarbec’s ship and the one remaining ship made it into the Warp Conduit and raced back towards their destination, which Khyl’zarbec fervently hoped, the Zerg had abandoned during the time in which he and his fellows had been traveling through the Warp Conduit back home.
Zarbec relaxed a moment considering what to do next, when the other ship exploded the victim of a second bolt of the Claw’s psychically charged electric plasma. Behind his ship, Zarbec saw the Claw racing through the debris, its fingers crackling as it prepared a third volley to target his own ship. Behind the Claw the swift glowing forms of the Blade Ships raced, like some swarm of fireflies from hell. The harsh voice hailed again, “You are too predictable, Master. When you reopened the Warp conduit we got the exact coordinates of your destination, they are already being transferred to the emperor, he will prepare a great fleet to go forth, and burn your Legacy. Pity by that time you will be dead.”
With that the red lightning surged again. Fortune was with Zarbec; however, for the lightning twisted to the side, its normal behavior altered by the strange laws of physics that ruled within the Warp Conduit. Instead of destroying the vessel the bolt merely smashed Zarbec’s vessel sideways into the wall of the Warp Conduit. The panic of the crew on his vessel finally began to break through his vast psychic blocks, and seep into his own mind. There it met with the raging despair of having lost his beloved, the loss of his friends on the Central Council, the death of the way of life for the Xel’Naga, and now the death that would soon descend upon the Legacies he had spent two millennia preparing.
It was in this moment of desperation that he looked out his window and saw the wall of the Warp Conduit. Then he saw beyond it. As his ship pressed against the patterned and structured wall the green and blue lines of energy began to stretch, and through the gaps he saw a chillingly familiar sight. Red and purple energies fought in a chaotic dance of nightmarish violence, smashing and clashing in riotous energetic explosions. In that moment, Zarbec understood the nature of what had happened to his fellow Psion Masters from the Legacy Project. Their ship, must have been pushed into that Nether region, and in there they would never find their way out, their ship would eventually fall, twisted by those energies, and destroyed for all time.
This moment of revelation was interrupted as a side affect of the Nether manifested in the form of a stray chaotic tendril of red power that lashed out at his probing mind further warping his fragile psyche. At last the final pin in Zarbec’s mind snapped, and his control over his emotions fled from him. The first emotion to surface dominant in the flood of feelings was rage. Rage at the Legacies for their betrayal and rage at this emperor for destroying everything he had held dear save Korellia.
At that moment the harsh hail of the Claw’s captain rang again, “You were lucky that time demon, but your luck has run out, now at last in the name of the Emperor and God we shall cast you into the pits of Chaos from which you were spawned.”
Those words sparked an idea in Zarbec’s mind, a way to extract a great vengeance on those petty fools following him, and wreck a blow against the emperor that would avenge his lost friends. It would give the Legacies a chance to develop and grow, before the Emperor got to them, and maybe just maybe it would save the last remaining Psion Masters, and though it would cost him his life, that act would at least unite him with Korellia in the Afterlife beyond.
Defiantly he hailed back to the captain, “You blind fool. I will repay your Emperor for what he has done, in the name of all the good your Empire has destroyed, it is I who will unleash Chaos upon you!”
Rapidly Zarbec gathered his psychic energies, pooling them into himself. Along his skin, the glowing orbs ceased their random dance, and with a single-minded purpose raced from wherever they were on his body, towards the dark spot on his face. In an instant the dark region flared alive with white blazing light. Power surged from within him, till he had reached the limits of the energy that his own body could muster forth. Not to be stopped, he quickly sent his mind out scanning for the largest source of controllable psychic energy he could draw from.
That was when his mind reached the point in space, where the Central Council had once been. There under the surface of space, was a massive pool of power. The deaths of countless Psion Masters, the destructive force of the Dreadnought’s blast, the shattering of the gas giant, had acted to depress space, and in that depression the energies had pooled, just under the surface, forming a vast lake of energy. Quickly, Zarbec attempted to draw on that raw power, and the unthinkable happened. The energy within the pool, ‘recognized’ Zarbec. Somewhere in that chaotic psychic depression, the faint sense of being, the final thoughts of the countless Psion Masters remained. The power felt Zarbec’s pull, and understood in a moment his intent, to strike a blow against the Emperor for the lost Xel’Naga way of life. With vengeful glee the power raced down the link towards Zarbec filled with a mind of its own. In an instant more power poured through Zarbec than any Xel’Naga had ever before attempted to contain. He felt his mind strain against containing it, his skin rippled like the ocean during a raging storm, as lances of light burst through his and his body took on an unearthly glow. Knowing he couldn’t hold back the energy that poured forth any longer he instinctively gave up trying to contain the power and instead released it only preserving enough control to continue acting as a channel bringing it in, clinging onto it with the tendrils of his mind. In a gigantic rush his mind was ripped from his physical self by the swelling tide of energy, and suddenly as if he was casting off a simple garment, his liquid skin, simply lost cohesion, falling with his robes to the floor. Only the brilliant light remained, surging in size and intensity.
The light soon consumed the entire ship, which was replaced by a glowing orb that equaled a small sun in its strength, size, and brightness. The entity that was once Khyl’zarbec and once Psion Master’s of the Xel’Naga Central Council sensed it’s opponents still following in pursuit far behind. With the speed of a thought, the star reversed its course of travel and clashed into its pursuers. Tiny sparks of incandescent fire flared into being, engulfing every last Blade Ship. Likewise the Claw was cast to oblivion. The star creature fed off the energies released, and on the fear and rage that had been in the minds of those that had pursued it. The tiny feast only served to whet its appetite the being sought another source of energy. The fading consciousness of Zarbec took that moment to seize control of the raging star entity, forcing it to serve the purpose he had created it for. Angrily the creature fought against the orders, but at last had to give in to them and undertook its task with a will. It lashed out at the walls of the Warp conduit, consuming the delicate threads of blue and green with an unreasoning fury. Under the onslaught the walls were shredded like cobwebs, and the twisting chaotic red and purple energies of the Nether, surged into the Warp Conduit through the holes. Like water surging down pipes, the energies raced down the Warp Conduit. Within moments, the entire Warp conduit, the path that connected the Xel’Naga to every point in the galaxy, was completely filled with the chaotic destructive power.
Zarbec’s spirit smiled maliciously, as he imagined the fate of any Xel’Naga ships that ever again attempted to use the Warp Conduit. Now the Emperor would have to use the same primitive methods of travel as the lesser races to carry out his genocidal agenda. That would slow down the Emperor; hopefully changing what would have been a trip of a few months to one that would take millennia, enough time for the Children to grow. Having fulfilled his obligation to his “children” he had one duty left.
Preparing himself for the contact with the chaotic mind of his creation, he trudged into the vague mind of the star entity. Control was much easier now that the creature was starting to disintegrate, its weak unstable nature leading it to deteriorate a process that was accelerated by the chaotic Nether. Under his command the entity plunged into the Nether, and raced down the outside of the Warp Conduit. He felt the fading energies of the star entity as the energies in the Nether tore at it. As the creature was reaching its last dregs of power he saw the goal he had sought, the ship his beloved had traveled on. Or what remained of it. The ship had been badly twisted and damaged by its time spent in the Nether, despite the faint traces of shields the Psion Masters must have thrown up to defend themselves. Already the ship had withstood the Nether for two months, far longer than the star entity was capable of due to its more energetic nature. Still the ship wouldn’t last much longer. Utilizing the last energy of the star entity Zarbec sacrificed his will and gave the ship a push, hard enough to shove it back through that rift it had taken into the Nether, and back into normal space. Exhausted the creature that was Khyl’zarbec finally faded, consumed and torn apart by the chaotic forces of the Nether. As his spirit fell, the last thought in Zarbec’s mind called out, “Beloved, I am returned to thee.”
* * *
Space took on an unusual hue as a harsh red and purple glow lit the vast emptiness, and from the glow, a ship catapulted out into the vast emptiness. The ship flew for a few moments, before finally fading to a slow halt. Inside the vessel, machines lay dead, the once pristine halls either bearing enormous gouges or dark burn scars. Occasionally a barely recognizable charred body part would float by in the deep stillness. Somewhere deep within that stillness; however, there was still life. The only survivors were in a room that held nineteen bodies, one dead the others locked in a trance their faces frozen in a horrid displays of pain and agony. The stillness of the ship was broken when every last one of the frozen beings jolted awake, screaming out in suffering of a pain that no living being had ever before borne. The scream lasted till the very last creature ran out of breath, his scream fading into a pained whistle, before falling silent.
* * *
Across the galaxy the enraged Emperor of the Xel’Naga sat in his throne hearing the news that his Warp Conduits were no longer accessible. Angrily he cursed the demon, Khyl’zarbec for his dark work. Furious at the futility of his rage he ordered his court closed for the day, commanding all of his men out of his presence and sat brooding with impotent rage.
In this moment a sibilant voice rang out, that of the head of the priesthood, the Voice of Xellas, the only one who would dare defy the Emperor’s order to be left in solitude. “Tell me emperor what shall you do now?”
“What can I do, we have lost the Warp Conduit, now it is as deadly as the very pits of Chaos themselves. No ship will last more than a few moments within it, and even those sent in for a second come out so badly damaged, they are unworthy of war. Without the Warp Conduits, we cannot follow where Zarbec has gone, he and his children have escaped our clutches.”
The Voice was mocking, “So you would let the demon escape his fate, a fate decreed by Xellas himself? You would allow his perversions to continue living a blight upon the fabric of our Holy Master’s creation?”
The Emperor stood up defensively saying, “But, your holiness, even if we sent a full host this day, it would not reach them for millennia!”
“What are millennia to us? I shall live for at least three more myself, and you shall as well. What’s more our god is eternal, and so is his displeasure. If we don’t bring his holy decrees forth, our torment will last through the ages.”
Seeing that his speech wasn’t sufficiently moving the more pragmatic Emperor, the Voice decided to take a different approach, “What’s more dangerous my Emperor is that if you do not send out that force, you risk losing your hold on the Xel’Nagan people. They will believe and rightly so that someone can move beyond the reach of righteous justice, that someone can challenge our god, and escape unharmed. It will not be long after that before they begin to rebel themselves, and we will lose all we have wrought.”
The Emperor moved by the logic of that last comment replied, “You speak the wise words of our God as always. Quickly relay orders to Host Commander Vir’taralon, tell him to mobilize his entire Host, every last Strike Force is to be ready for travel by dawn. I shall even grant him Dreadnoughts. He has a mission from Xellas himself. His ships shall fly on the morrow and they shall not stop until the unholy children of the demons are destroyed by the might and fury of the unbeatable Empire of the Xel’Naga, the Chosen of Xellas.”
