The Core: The Dark Enemy

19: Earth without peace

I was almost out of time. In just two days the three months would be over and I still hadn't figured out everything needed in order to return to my body. Hunger had quickly returned with the other concepts needed for me to familiarize myself with the remaining creations but rather than help me, the abilities only burned up time as I fought to understand them and to summon their linked members. My little blip inside the relic, the representation of me, was getting increasingly closer to another sphere location and I hoped it would help me in some way.

In two days, the Tela were projected to reach the object that Time had left for me upon his death. If they reached it and managed to retrieve it for study, I had no way of knowing what would happen.

Little did I know the troubles that were taking place, how the armadas had grown exponentially, and how everyone was experiencing horrors and phantasmal ghostlike creatures who made progress through the scattered remnants of the star and system hazardous for everyone's sanity and health. Every burrowing creature that had lived underground around the hole between dimensions had been sucked through during the star going supernova along with a surplus of mud and dirt cr. Now they were all snapping at empty space, trying to blindly find their next meal and clawing or wiggling ineffectively as they tried to find their way home.

They were all slowly starving as they failed to realize that they were no longer within their original galaxy's soil.

Where I was stuck trying to work my head around concepts that were above my understanding, fleets were attempting to make their way toward an object that was messing with reality itself, causing prolonged disturbances in time.

It was almost as though, the closer a ship would get to the gigantic hand, the farther away it seemed. Further, not just in how long it would take, but visually as well, almost defying the readouts of the sensors telling the operators that they were within tethering range for boarding the massive hand.

Other alien races, not just the Tela armadas and U'lennea mercenaries, were gathering around the outskirts of the object's influence. Some even dared to send in smaller ships to see if they could make off with whatever the prize was under the Tela's nose though everyone was restricted to common space propulsion, limiting the speed they could achieve.

One thing that quickly became clear as communication channels were opened was that everyone felt that the secrets that could be gained here would empower whoever managed to seize control and no one was willing to back down.

Some, the more oppressed alien races, were considering a scorched earth strategy in the event that the Tela managed to secure the prize. They would use whatever weapons, their very ships and lives, if necessary, to do all that they could to stop the Tela from succeeding.

---

"Kevin still isn't back," George reported as Invicta fought her way through another heavily inhabited long section of spiraling tunnels that Nurse assured her was to lead to the domain of the Leva King. Of all the six that remained, Nurse suggested attempting to communicate with the Leva King first simply because his abilities were more stable and wouldn't end in a catastrophe.

Hopefully.

Based on Kevin's knowledge, the Hive Mother would have been the worst creation to communicate with, simply because she might simply try to eat Invicta and gain understanding through absorption. It would have been a fight, one that might have led to either Invicta's currently borrowed swarm body getting devoured, the Hive Mother perishing, or mutual destruction as they both unleashed their might on each other.

As for the other creatures... none of them, save the Leva King, seemed safe to approach. Sure, Hunger could have been a potential candidate, but Nurse knew of no way to communicate with the massive swath of gelatinous fanged feeding mouths. Corruption's abilities were understood to be nightmarish in their effectiveness and no one wanted to see what it could do to Kevin's swarm even though it already embodied the concept.