Orange void light filled the room, emanating in a sickly haze from the dark altar, which pulsed and burned with shadow. Staring into the room, Adam was assaulted with a sudden and uncomfortable sense of familiarity. He had seen this before, or something very like it.
The room was draped in red, red curtains, and red fabrics tacked to the walls and draping downwards in a crimson forest of folds, hanging straight or pinned at diagonals over corners. A central aisle led up to the altar surrounded on all sides by open containers of liquid glittering in the orange void light. Most of the containers were full of water, clear liquid taking in and then refracing the burning orange glow, like a thousand little jars of molten fire.
The altar itself was... difficult to look at, a thing of nightmares. The source of the orange light emanated from somewhere behind the effigy lording over the dark sabbath from where it stood upon the altar. The effigy was difficult to make out, not because he couldn't see it, but because his eyes were having difficulty comprehending a shape from the mass of twisting blackness. It was almost a full five or six seconds before the image slowly began to solidify.
The effigy was roughly man shaped, at least in part. Its legs grew from the altar like the trunk of a tree, roots spreading down over the altar like the roots of a tree. Its torso was vaguely human, but unusually thin and twisted. One shoulder was higher than the other giving the thing a twisted, sideways sort of appearance. It had its hands held out to either side, but its arms were twisted like the limbs of a tree, and it had far too many fingers branching outward at odd and horrid angles. Its head was not at all humanoid, simply a writhing mass of jutting and twisting pieces.
All except for the eyes, which burned orange with malice.
Adam couldn't have said where it came from, but as he looked upon the horrid figure of the dark creature, a name came, falling unbidden to his tongue. He shouldn't have known who this was, but in that moment, he felt as sure of the creature's identity as he was sure of his own, a familiar dead rising its way from the very darkest reaches of his mind to fill his waking consciousness.
It was an old dread, as old and abiding as time itself.
"Apollyon." he whispered, not surprised to find the words passing simultaneously from his companions. Even Sunny, who should have been incapable of pronouncing the name, managed. The word was alien and strange coming from her mouth, and caused an eruption of gooseflesh to erupt along his body. The name tasted.... Wrong in his mouth like ozone, the copper tang of blood, and the metallic aftertaste that comes with sucking on an ice cube.
All of that and more.
Tastes he shouldn't have been able to taste, but still somehow managed.
And before that, bodies twisted in various stages of dark supplication, knelt Everett and his disciples, more creatures than man or Maker. Adam's stomach churned hard inside his boy cavity as he looked upon Everette, who had taken on an old, familiar appearance.
The cannibal from the derelict raised his icy blue eyes to the sky , hands held over his head. Naked from the waist up, his bruised and mottled skin glowed, backlit with the orange light., "Lord and master, the greatest one, the darkest one , we supplicate thee, we pray for thy deliverance. We pray for thy hand of Vengeance!"
At his feet, his followers groaned in agreement,
The ones that were still alive.
Moving bodies writhed over each other, writhed over the dead as the dark prayer took hold upon them.
Everett closed his eyes. As if in ecstasy,
And then stopped, holding out a hand slowly towards them. The backs of his knuckles were bruised, the skin peeled away and glistening gently with a light patina of slime where the skin had been rubbed away.
"Now is your chance Impetus, You and your friend can join us." his blue eys opened wide, fixing upon Adam as if he had known they were there the entire time. The writhing mass of bodies beneath him did not stop in their prayers to the dark deity. Adam did his best not to look at the effigy, which he swore seemed to grow and expand within the confines of his vision when he looked too closely.
There was no sense in hiding now, and he stepped forward firmly into the waiting aisle.
Water trembled in the open containers next to him.
Sunny flanked him on the Right, Celex on the left, and Ramirez took up the rear. Krill stood shocked and horrified at their center.
"Back to your old tricks again,I see. How many of them have you eaten this time/"
Everett didn't seem bothered by the question, simply smiling to reveal a mottled mouth full of decayed looking gums of yellowed teeth.
"The sabbath of Apollyon requires consumption, the consumption of that which is most precious."
"How could you have known..... Before all of this.. How could you have even known this ritual existed?"
Everett tapped his fingers together, long jagged nails lit orange in the voidlight.
"Just like your architect, Apollyon can reach out to his servants. It was his dark powers that caused my ship to go out of warp, shut off our engines and our communication and trapped us in that dark place." He laughed, "Trapped us within sight of the hand of god nebulae, don't you think that is rather ironic, I do."
Adam shivered as he thought back on that horrible memory, the dark derelict ship that had floated in place below the distant spectral hand.
Everett continued, "But it was not god's hand that drove our ship that day, but the hand of our master calling out from beyond, calling out to find me and where I had gone. " He grinned, and his teeth glittered with a malicious patina of saliva, "Even his most subtle work can be quite disturbing to the uninitiated."
"We thought it was mass hysteria-" Adam said voice trailing away
Everette laughed, "I mean in a way, but it was his power, his influence, and his spirit that was there with us, that drove the crew to eating their own when the food stores were still full. He was trying to speak to me in his own way, but I just wasn't ready to listen. I knew partially what to do, I knew that sacrifices had to be made, I knew that there needed to be an alter, but still my mind was too clouded to see his true form." he sighed, "You killed me before I could find the answers, but you did return me to the Makers, which was almost as good. From there I was able to direct the movements of the troops so to speak, to lead the void to us."
Adam clenched a fist, tried to reign in his anger.
"Than why kazna, why not you>"
Everett understood the question and chuckled.
"This war may have started with me, and my connection to the master is stronger than anyone, but I am not tactician. The war for the children of the Maker's needed a general. I am what you might call a priest. She receives military orders, and I am more concerned with the spiritual aspect. I receive revelation from our leader, and I call down his wrath."
"You;'re a prophet?" Adam asked, trying to keep his voice cool. The more information he could get the better it would be, all of this despite the churning in his stomach and mind as he tried to keep his eyes averted from the statue of the creature looming just over Everette's head.
"Maybe an anti-prophet." Everett said his voice colored with a sort of philosophical thoughtfulness that Adam should have expected from a mandman.
"But why Kazna?"
Everett laughed, "Why Kazna." He continued to laugh, "Sometimes it is funny just how much you and your little companions don't know."
"Then why don't you enlighten me/"
Still bodies writhed and twisted within the darkness, heedless of the conversation happening around them.
"You understand, at first we were planning on using the renegade."
At his back, Adam could feel it as Ramirez stiffened.
"Maverick?"
"Whatever you call her, but as it turns out she is too unpredictable." He laughed, "A broken record warring with herself. Her downfall is pride and arrogance, but the better part of her is loyalty. The two sides war with each other, each almost as strong as the other, and in the end we couldn't trust her to do the right thing, so we picked someone with more.... familiarity ."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Sunny said, cutting into the conversation, a note of threat seeping into her voice.
Everette cackled, "There is still so much you do not understand, but I don't see why someone shouldn't tell you.
"The last cohort was meant to be a great nation, they were supposed to help the makers end the war, and from them came the likes of you....."
Adam waited.
"Kazna was one of them, you might once have even called her an ally."
Adam felt his blood go cool , and turned to look at Sunny.
She remained impassive.
"It took us a very long time to prepare her for what was to come. She's stubborn, you know, difficult to work with, and also quite loyal. In that way she is a lot like the renegade. THe only difference is her corruption was more complete, and her own stubbornness worked in our favor."
Adam didn't know how to unpack all of that, and didn't feel like they had a whole lot of time, so instead he motioned to the room around them, "Since you seem so eager to give your little super villain monologue, do you want to go ahead and tell me your evil plan?"
Everette laughed, "it impresses me how your humor never seems to fail..... We will see how long it manages to last." He motioned around the room, "You may ask, because you see.... The ritual is already done. You are too late to stop it. Apollyon has been called, and he is coming, and as soon as he gets here, he will unmake you all, drive you to your knees and then to your graves. He will harness your energy to fuel himself, and plunge the galaxy into the blackness that it deserves."
It was then that the shaft of the spear sprouted out from Everette's chest.
He paused as he spoke, looking down in consternation at the long silver shaft protruding from between his ribs.
He looked up at them with an expression of reproach.
Together they turned to look at Sunny, who stood with one foot forward and one arm extended at the end of a throwing arc.
She huffed, "Sorry, I was tired of listening to him talk."
A long pause extended into the silence. Well, they were already too late anyway, so what did it really matter?'
Adam turned his palace and pulled out his spear.
Everett snarled, and for the first time in so many minutes, the bodies began to rise in a chorus of hissing.
Behind them, Apollyon's light pulsed orange.