"This is a bad idea." Sunny said. Standing in the derelict shuttle bay, the two of them convened privately while the rest of the delegation slowly assembled itself. She restated her spear against the floor with a hard thud, visor retracted back from her inhuman face. Light glittered in waves over the electric blue carapace crowning her regal head, "She has the advantage here. This is their territory."
That was true enough, Adam could sense it.
This ship, this palace was..... Well it was evil. Despite having been here on multiple occasions in the past, he hardly recognized the silent, dark hallways, branching off from the main shuttle bay and into inky black darkness. There was no life here, only silence, and a muffled sense of complete wrongness.
Were was the crew?
All around them remnants of station life lay in a tableau of captured time. Equipment sat scattered on the floor, crates overturned. Something dark stained the far wall, though Adam had no desire to figure out what.
He could guess.
Apollyon perfecting his manipulation.... He could only imagine that what lay behind these walls was far worse than the hand of god incident. Closing his eyes he couldn't help but imagine the scene: a desiccated corpse sitting over an empty plate.
"She is at an advantage, but if Adham listened to me.... We have a secret weapon."
Sunny tilted her head in a question, but it was cut off as Adham approached from the shuttle. The glowing white and gold of his armor cast off a small radius of light, a bubble which chased off any fleeing shadows. The delegation was small, Adham as the leader of the Makers, Adam as the leader of the constructs, Sunny as Kazna's daughter and Conn as their resident mind reading manipulator plus or minus a few guards: That being Ramirez and another maker that Adam did not recognize.
The last member of their party might take some time, and the more dramatic their entrance, the better.
"I advise that we go no further into the station. I imagine Apollyon will be trying to throw us off and has set the stage to do so. Even if that isn't the case, we don't want to be trapped in tight corridors on an unfamiliar space station with architect knows what is wandering the halls."
Adam agreed. The rest of the group gathered around in a tight formation, maker and construct leaders at the head.
Adham closed his eyes, "If you think we will be venturing further into this ship, you are sadly mistaken. We have come to meet you on your ground, and we'll go no further, if you wish to meet with us, you will come and meet with us here."
For a long moment, there was only silence, a well of emptiness that seemed to spread outward from the welling darkness of the corridors and fill the room around them. The shifting of their bodies and the soft exhale of their breath was the only noise to chase away the abiding stillness.
And then she appeared, coalescing from the darkness like a wraith, shadows billowing at her heels, gold eyes flashing in the light given off by Adham the makers. She had never looked so sinister, her massive, horned black armor towering over them, shadow black cloak whipping around her heels. Her face was unusually gaunt, eyes sunken back into her head. Her once purple carapace seemed stained black.
"If you insist." She said, and with every step the ground beneath them seemed to shake a little under the weight of her massive, armored body. Adam had always thought of Sunny as tall, relative to himself, but every time Kazna or Kanan showed their full height, he was reminded of just how short she was, a mere seven feet in comparison to her mother's almost ten, with the added bonus of massive spikes on her helmet.
The rest of the delegation trailed in behind her, Everett, pale, twisted, and wearing robes of course red fabric. He had a look in his eye that was somewhere near manic, an unnerving grin plastered across his pale face, behind him came the thing that wore the chairwoman's body, parading around inside it like a cheap suit, body rolling and twisting in ways it should not have been able. Adam was also not surprised to find Noctus joining them.
No matter how many times they stamped out the little bastard, he was always going to return.
And then.
The last member of their party.
A woman, with scruffy blond hair grown past the line of her jaw, her face made unfamiliar by the twisted look of contempt that marred her expression.
Adam could feel Ramirez stiffen beside him, and reached out a calming hand.
"So this is what the architect sends." Kazna said, looking them up and down with a raised eye ridge.
Noctus chuckled darkly.
"Get on with it Kazna, we didn't come here to exchange pleasantries. You want us to surrender, and we refuse to do so, what other arguments might you have for us."
She lifted her hands to either side, "Your hostility is unfounded, you understand that this place, this....reality.... Is an intrusion. Apollyon claimed this long before the Architect came and stole it from him. He is only trying to regain what is rightfully his. Is that so bad?"
"Its hard to claim land that never existed." Adham shot back, "Apollyon ruled over a realm that hed neither time, nor matter nor space. For this reason he holds claim to nothing but an impossible idea."
She shook her head, "Your shallow mind refuses to understand. Apollyon was robbed of his true being, oneness with nothingness. How does that seem fair?'
Adam jabbed a finger at her "You're arguing the point of a creature you cannot even comprehend. You make it sound like the architect just showed up out of the blue one day and stole Apollyon's home. We have no idea if that is the case. It could be that the architect existed within the same space as another entity, and thus resulted in creation besides, I am sure there are other locations just chalk full of infinite nothingness."
"Thats not how it works." Everett spat.
"I don't care how it works. People live here now, and I don't care what your issue is, you cannot promote the genocide of an entire universe and be in the right." he waved a hand, "And the fact that you all are okay with this is baffling o me. You understand that when this is all over Apollyon will have no use for you? Your very existence is abhorrent to him because you are a three dimensional creature that takes up time and space. The very nature of you being here is the one thing that he is fighting against. There is no new world order that will find the group of you on top. Once this is all done, you will vanish, like you never existed. All of us will permanently cease to be forever.'
"Not quite true." Noctus said making his stately way to the front of the group, "Apollyon will absorb what we are into himself."
Adam sighed in frustration, "He isn't going to do that. He doesn't want you. He is using you. The fact that you can't see that is.... Well it is simply baffling to me." he turned his head to look at Renegade who hovered at the back of the group. She didn't seem nearly so pleased to be there as the rest of them. In fact, she kept her head turned away at all times intently examining the wall.
Did she? Seem unenthusiastic about all this.
He turned his mind to Ramirez, knowing that the marine would know her better than anyone else.
And indeed, he couldn't take his mind or thoughts off of her, examining every line of her body, every shift in movement. Looking at her he seemed convinced that she did not want to be here, that all of this was making her just as uncomfortable as the rest of them.
She didn't want to cease existing, and all of this had simply gotten out of hand.
She was just too stubborn to back out. These thoughts spurred on his hope, and he couldn't help himself from leaning forward, eagerness holding him on the balls of his feet, "Come on Mav.... Renegade, you know this is bullshit," She jumped a bit, surprised someone had talked to her directly, but refused to look at them.
Kazna glowered at the marine, and then at Adam, "Keep your dog silent."
Adam narrowed his eyes, "Your negotiation skills are shit, you know that,: He raised his hands to the air in frustration. Why are you doing this Kazna, I just don't understand. Why make yourself the bitch of an Eldritch abomination. You used to be a general, leader of nations, and now here you are doing a space squid's dirty work, receiving nothing from it, losing everything and heading face first into never existing ever again. I don't see how this benefits you."
She growled, "I have lost,nothing. This fight is the greatest battle I could have fought, the greatest glory."
Sunny shook her head, "So what, it's not like your deeds will live on. Once Apollyon takes over, it won't matter how good a general you were or what you did."
"I did not ask you to speak,." Kazna said keeping her eyes intentionally trained on Adam in refusal to speak to her daughter.
"Yeah, no surprise there. You know I find it funny which battles you chose to fight and which ones you run away from. Destroy the universe sure, but you were too pathetic to fight for your own damn family."
Golden eyes flared, "I have no family." Sunny stepped forward and so did Kazna, and the tension in the air only grew until they were on the edge of a snapping point. Weapons were raised and all around the room bodies were gearing up for this to end bloody.
"Did I really mean so little to you?"
And then the tension snapped, like a rubber band, but instead of breaking it was as if a hand had slipped, and the band had sprung back into position, tension vanishing in an instant.
Kazna and Sunny turned at once, their movements similar enough to mark them as mother and daughter, eyes widening at the same instant as the rest of the room turned towards the owner of the voice, deep, smooth baritone warm and gold like the flow of honey.
And standing just inside the shuttle bay, shedding golden light like a cloak.
Was
Lanus, tall, strong and shimmering like the purest of gold. For a drev he would be considered incredibly handsome, as a Maker brought back to his youthful prime. But despite the regal bearing of his head, his expression was sad, a heartbreak etched in flesh.
Kazna stammered, faltered into silence, and for the first time since Adam had known her, she was speechless, the paul of darkness sliding from her for just a moment as her eyes fell on the one whose death had started this all.
Lanus stepped forward, his movements sure and lithe like the warrior he was. He showed no fear as he looked upon her, slowly pacing the distance that stepped between them before stopping before her.
Toe to toe they were able to lock eyes.
His expression grew with ever increasing sadness as he looked her over.
The room was still.
With a gentle, slow hand Lanus reached up brushing his thumb tenderly over the gaunt skin of her cheek, "What have you done to yourself, Zhak Dzhalzheen."