Brash and the Schrodinger Snare Ch. 09

Behind him, a secret door whirred open, revealing that Mr. Eye had built a freaking escape shuttle into his command spire! I glanced at the others. The others looked unsure. But slowly I let go of my psi-sword, letting it flicker away. With that, my friends nodded and we started forward, running towards the escape. Meanwhile, the elevator doors were sizzling and hissing. Spores were spilling through the crack and then started to spread along the ground, then along the ceiling. The spores came with disgusting fungal growths that looked more than a bit like flesh and musculature, which stretched over the walls. Tendrils reached outwards and the Beast's hideous voice gargled at me.

"Brassssshy, let Mommy give you a huuuuug!"

I sprang at the door.

The door slammed shut behind me and the escape ship exploded away from the Command Spire just in the nick of time. Through the circular window in the door, I could see that the entire Doomship was changing. The craggy stone hull was crackling with fingers of red-lightning, arcing from tip of protruding gun to tip of protruding gun. Red growths were forcing their way out of damage holes, creeping along stone in a hideous webwork of muscle tissue and cancerous masses.

"Ew," I said.

"This is bad," Kira whispered. "This is really really bad."

"How bad is bad?" I asked.

"Like, imagine if the entire Chromatic Dominion fleet came back to life," Kira said. I winced. "And then was doubled." I winced again. "Six times," she finished. I meeped. "Okay, that's about a quarter as bad as this situation currently."

"But the Beast was lame!" I exclaimed.

"When it was being fought by your shapeshifting powers, and was barely a fraction of its original strength!" Kira said, then pointed at the receding ship. It was growing smaller, but that only made its changes seem all the worst as they consumed more and more of the ship. Even at this distance, it was red. Far. Far too red. And not a healthy red like a rare stake. It was the sick red of dried blood. I shuddered as Kira continued. "It's neural nets will get bigger and more sturdy and it will start to develop more powers. If it manages to figure out it's primary weapon again..."

"What's its primary weapon?" P90 asked, her voice grim.

"A particle beam of suspended Beast spores capable of infecting a ship at a range of ten kilometers," Kira said, her voice flat. "It was how it started to really spread."

"Flippydicky, and you kept some in a VIAL!?" I shouted, turning to face Lord Darkeye. He had recessed himself into the control bridge of the small ship. It looked like it was basically a small wedge with engines.

"Quiet," he growled.

"Uh, no, we're facing potential galactic Armageddon. Again!" I flung my arms up in exasperation. "How many times can this happen to one dragon?"

Lord Darkeye was silent. Then he stood. He turned and, with shocking speed, stomped towards me. I opened my mouth to object, but then he swung around and caber tossed me into a niche at the front of the ship. I squalled in alarm, but I landed face first in the niche. Then a glass tube closed around me, locking me into the niche. The girls cried out in alarm – but Lord Darkeye swung his petrification eye in a sweeping arc. Each girl froze to stone. I slammed my fists against the tube, snarling in fury.

"Darkeye, you tranch!" I snarled.

Darkeye looked at me with his big old eyeball. "They can be unpetrified, you know?"

"It's the principle of the thing!" I snarled. "What are you going to do?"

"I am going to use the abyssal dimensional energy that surrounds your body to open the gateway," Darkeye said. "Then enter the Quantum Hoard...and leave this universe to rot." He chuckled.

"What!?" I yelped. "What about the whole...Beholder Empire!?"

He looked at me. And I could see that his eyes were full of utter and complete contempt. "Brash, how many universes are there? The Cosmic Dragon crafted an infinite wheel of universes. Each one has a galaxy or galaxies to conquer at my own pace. Maybe...maybe I'll go to a universe without magic and break them with ease. Maybe I'll carve my own niche out of, oh, I don't know...Purgatory or the Sunder." He chuckled. "My options are infinite. With the Quantum Hoard, I'll have enough magical resources to do anything."

I snarled at him. "But what about everyone here?"

"What about them?" Lord Darkeye asked, his eyeball stalks shivering in a shrug. "They will make up a gestalt intelligence that will span a galaxy. Or they'll defeat it. Either way, it won't be my problem."

And with that, he reached down with one of his cybernetic hands. Electrodes slammed into my forehead and the tube elevated upwards, as if it was aiming me towards the nose of the ship. I screamed as agony burst in my brain. My body shuddered and...once again...I felt the worst thing in the universe. When Lord Xosh and the Chromatic Dominion had tried to destroy the Earth, they had used a draconic warsphere to do it. Take the Death Star, but replace the planet destroying laser with a gun that transforms the surface of a planet into literally hell. The weak willed are turned into demons and the strong willed are torn apart in an orgy of cthulian violence.

I had jumped in-front of that beam.

It hadn't just hurt.

It had been the most grotesquely agonizing thing I had ever felt. I had put it into a teeny tiny brain box called 'do not open ever ever ever even if offered cookies.' And there, it had stayed. Until now. Now that box opened and the echoing memory of that moment roared through my every nerve. I screamed and screamed and screamed.

At the nose of Lord Darkeye's escape ship, a beam of ruby red light shot out. It struck the swirling portal and suffused it with color. With light. With real dimensionality. Meanwhile, the Rickenbacker and the Von Braun were withdrawing, flying away from the Beast infected Doomship. Desperate signals were being sent – not only to the United Nations Space Command, but also to the Metallic Kingdoms. Even, it seemed, to the various pretenders to the throne of the Chromatic Dominion. The messages were all basically the same.

GET YOUR ASSES OVER HERE HOLY SHIT WE ARE ALL GOING TO FUCKING DIE. OVER.

It seemed almost no one noticed a single small shuttle accelerating towards a geodesic dome of ruby red light, which unfurled in a fractal flower, opening into a tunnel of swirling light. Lord Darkeye laughed a booming, echoing laugh as he flew into the portal.

Despite all the dire warnings from Trilby...it was here. At last.

I was entering the Quantum Hoard.

Fudge.

TO BE CONTINUED