Sudden Final Boss
[Great job,] Rudy commented. [You’re way ahead of schedule! Seduce him, follow him to his base and kill everyone there. You know the drill, why do you sound so panicked?]
[I didn’t even sense him coming, Rudes,] Comet mentally flailed. [It’s like he’s not even here! I can’t sniff his soul! It’s like… he’s an empty armor suit! There’s nothing there except for the damned fox eyes in the Abyss!]
[So he’s good at hiding his Astral imprint?]
[I… guess? He knows everything Rudy! He knows who we are!]
[Relax, you got it. I believe in you! The Saint’s power protects us! Even if he’s a talented Seer, the foreknowledge of the future won’t save him! The stronger he is, the faster he will fall!]
Comet tried to relax, feeling far too tense as if a thousand spiders were crawling on her neck. It was the eyes. Far too many Astral eyes were intently leering at her. She suddenly noticed colorful string and cube bracelets sitting on the Emperor’s wrists and feet between dark armor plates. Hundreds of them. Each featuring random, colorful text and drawings of fox eyes.
“So,” the Emperor said looking at the Wendigo, “Commander. You have a problem. I have a solution.”
“My biggest problem is you, human,” Wattica growled around a mouthful of chips.
“Your problem is that you are stranded on a planet you failed to conquer, your boss is fired, and pretty soon, Admiral Colette and the Green Fleet are going to land,” the Emperor leaned forward. “They’ll probably turn this lovely, meat-serving bar into a vegan smoothie shop, make you spout toxic-positive bullshit while wearing Dryad-monitor eyes and lecture you about your carbon footprint and UwU eating habits, right?”
“Yes.” Wattica shuddered visibly. “The Greens are insufferable knobfolds. We don’t commonly interact. We were supposed to take control of the local government and then leave!”
“Exactly,” the Emperor nodded. “You desire fear and blood, don’t fit in their garden of friendship.”
“What in Slayer’s name do you want, Emperor? Why are you here of all places?” Wattica asked.
“I want you to defect,” the Emperor said simply.
The bar went silent, the prads and Wendigo staring.
“Defect?” Wattica laughed. “To what? You? A human?! Whyever would I…”
“The human who broke the Slayer’s Sword,” the Emperor said. “The human who is currently married to your Princess.”
Wattica choked on a jalapeño. “Married?!”
“Happily,” the Emperor said, patting his chest. “We had blood-raw steaks for dinner. She’s doing great. A bit tired from all the excitement, but very much happily ruling this lovely planet as my Lady dragon.”
“That is… Yes. Urmmm…” Wattica let out. “The Admiral… Said the Princess was a traitor. A thief.”
“The Admiral was mistaken,” the Emperor said smoothly. “Why would the Primaborn Princess rob her own house, sabotage her own glorious future, steal from the Empress? And now Evely’s paid for her mistake. Aunt Evely is currently a demoted, old lady with no power or hoard to her name. Princess Aquillianne extends her hand, and is offering you a deal, Commander Wattica. Security. Purpose. A territory of your own. For you and your girls. No Greens telling you what to do. Think about this, truly—would you prefer to serve a Green Admiral or a pureblood Frontenachii Wendigo Princess?”
“Hrmm,” Wattica looked thoughtful. “What’s the catch?”
“You do occasional work for the Princess,” the Emperor said. “Help protect our wonderful planet-wide domain from… minor, external threats.”
“Minor external treats… liiiike?” Wattica tilted her skull-head. “I ain’t going up against the Sixth Fleet, just so you know.”
The Emperor pointed an ironclad finger at Comet.
Comet felt the weight of everyone’s attention shift to her.
“External threats,” Comet repeated, producing a somewhat fake giggle. “Like… meteors?”
“Like invasive weeds,” the Emperor said. “And bothersome pests. Dungeon Seeders.”
Wattica thoughtfully looked at the nachos, then her eyes slid to her empty shot glass.
“The Greens will make us eat tofu,” Carrla muttered.
“I have raw steaks,” the Emperor countered. “As many as you desire. I have humans. More fear than the entertainment deck provided you, at no cost whatsoever. Free range, rich, organic terror, fertile hunting grounds… Like nothing you’ve ever had… not the wall-preserved, half-alive fast food fear Auntie Evely’s warship offered you.”
Wattica swayed in her seat slightly and then grinned wide with white Wendigo chompers.
“To start off, I want you to cut this fake charity worker off from her warship, Wattica,” the Emperor said.
The guns of the Frontenachii suddenly swivelled towards the Maned Wolf. Comet guessed that the Frontenachii Commander must have given a mental order to her prad kobolds.
The Maned Wolf prad suddenly felt like a piñata. And the Emperor had just handed everyone a stick. Several gray rays struck her from Frontenachii guns, making her heart-core tingle oddly.
Damnation! This wasn’t supposed to happen! Planets didn’t, couldn’t fight back. Not like this, never like this! She was a hunter not… prey!
She desperately tried to gather See-Mass around herself and felt… nothing.
Nothing at all. There was no response from the Seed buried below Seattle.
Her cheeks flashed, the heat transitioning from her skin to the tips of her fur, igniting separate hair strands bright red.
Performance issues?! Why here?! Why now?Damn it all!
Her connection to the Sleigh and nearest Seed felt like a tiny, barely visible thread. Ordinarily, she could take out a small city, all she had to do was wish See-Mass upon them.
No matter how hard she wished for ‘Let It Snow’, the power simply wasn’t gathering, wasn’t coalescing properly in her chest.She felt empty, alone.
[Rudy!] She tried. [Rudy?! Are you there?! I need extraction! A gate out! Dasher?! RUDY!!]
Nothing. All she heard in her head was static. The Frontenachii cut off her signal with nullifiers and barrier shields.
“I’m not a pest,” Comet let out. “I’m a harmless charity worker from Omnithornia. I came to your planet to spread…”
“All-converting See-Mass cheer?” The Emperor finished for her, the human’s deep voice drowning out hers. “It won’t work. Your Seeds will not bloom on my world.”
Comet realized how truly fucked she was.
The Wendigo Commander looked ready to break Comet’s spine for a mere promise of raw steak and endless human terror. The tiger prad flexed her claws, ready to pounce and tear out her throat.
Worst of all was the Emperor. He sat there, a mountain of black armor and red fabric, casually crunching a tortilla chip while thousands of liminal fox eyes peered at her over his shoulders.
He read like nothing at all in the Astral. Like emptiness. Like a hollow tree branch that wasn’t even here!
“Do tell me, Comet, who is the Slayer?” the Emperor of Humanity asked.
“The… Slayer?” Comet repeated.
“Yes,” the Emperor said, casually dipping a chip into a cup of salsa. “Didn’t you come to my planet to teach the ‘savage locals’ about the Slayer? Enlighten me. Who is the Slayer? Why does he want you to wear ugly See-Mass sweaters? Why does he want everyone here to die by your hand?”
The pradavarians and the Wendigo tensed up even more, eyes digging into Comet. The Maned Wolf didn’t dare move from where she sat on a human’s lap.
“Don’t shoot our lovely Comet,” the Emperor said. “I want to talk to her, understand why she does what she does.”
The Wendigo commander nodded.
The prad servant of the Saint straightened her spine. If she was going to be executed here, pinned between a golden skull and many Frontenachii guns, she would go out preaching the Good Word.
“The Slayer is… the Inevitable,” she began. “The Cosmic Reset. When a world grows old, when the laws of the Numbers decay and entropy begins to chew on the edges of reality, the Leviathan wakes up. She is the… Great Serpent, the Avatar of the Wormwood Star comet that ignites across the heavens with her emerald tail. She coils around the dying world and slowly… squeezes it clean.”
“Clean how?” Sergey asked.
Comet ignored him. She looked straight into the dark eye-sockets of the Emperor’s gold mask.
“The Leviathan feasts on potential, on understanding, on knowledge and accumulated power of a doomed narrative about to end. She radiates entropy, causing the final decay of reality. And when there is nothing left… He arrives. The Slayer. He emerges from the abyss with a blade that can cut anything. He fights the Leviathan. A… battle begins. And in the end… He cleaves her in twain.”
She ranted out, thinking of how to escape this trap.
“Sounds messy,” the Emperor commented.
“It is glorious,” Comet corrected with a pitch of reverence she didn’t have to fake. “And from the blood of the Leviathan… Life begins anew. The rot is purged and entropy inverts itself into life-creating Syntropy which unfolds into Linearity. The cycle restarts. Destruction fuels creation. It is the fundamental truth of existence. Through their battle… doomed worlds become reborn.”
“Right,” he said. “Standard cosmic horror cycle. Big snake, big sword, big world reboot. Very heavy metal. I already heard as much from my Frontenachii Princess. You skipped a pivotal detail.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah,” the Emperor pointed a cheese-covered, armored finger at her. “Where does the jolly Saint Nikky, the reindeer-you and the festive-tree-dungeon fit into this? Did the Slayer kill the Leviathan with a candy cane? Did he gift-wrap her corpse?”
Commander Wattica snort-choked.
Comet felt her cheeks flush again with red sparks. “Do not mock the aesthetic! Saint Nikky teaches us that the end does not have to be grim! Why must the apocalypse be gray? Why must entropy be cold and sad?”
“So you bring about the Coniferous Conversion?” the Emperor asked. “How does that help?”
He knew. He knew everything and was just fucking with her, playing with her like a cat plays with a tasty mouse. There were too many guns pointed at her. Her power wasn’t working correctly.Something inside Comet snapped.
“We bring lights! We bring songs! We bring salvation!” she declared. “We bring liberation from the all-binding narrative!”
“You turn people into festive trees,” the Emperor stated flatly. “I saw it.”
How could he see that? WHAT?!
“I… that is…” she stammered out. “We…”
She felt Wendigo hooks clawing at the edges of her mind. The See-Mass antlers repelled the mental attack.
“Curious. I… Can’t seem to read your mind at all,” Wattica commented. “What kind of a charity worker hides her thoughts with See-Mass music?”
“It’s an… Artifact effect,” the Scrutimancer leopard said, sniffing Comet. “I think that she’s covered in high level, dungeon artifacts. The antlers. The bells. The festive outfit. An entwined chain of artifacts!”
“Simple defensive measures!” Comet swallowed. “We go to doomed words to spread the Word of the Slayer. We…”
“You are… party planners for the apocalypse,” the Emperor summarized.
“We are Heralds of the Holy Jolly!” Comet snapped. “We… we help… the unfortunate souls!”
The Emperor stared at her.
“Let me get this straight,” the Emperor said. “The Slayer arrives when a world is threatened by a massive, life-consuming entity. A Leviathan. He kills the Leviathan. He saves the potential of life by ending the threat. And from the spilled blood, a new story begins.”
“Yes,” Comet nodded. “Exactly.”
“And you work for the Slayer?”
“Saint Nikky aids the spirit of the Slayer… thus I work for the Slayer, yes.”
The Emperor picked up another nacho. He held it like a weapon, pointed at the Maned Wolf.
“Comet,” his deep voice rumbled. “I just dropped a ten-kilometer capital ship out of the sky. A ship named the Slayer’s Sword. A ship that was packed to the brim with harvested human souls.”
Comet blinked.
A cold feeling wriggled in her stomach, a sense like she was falling.
“I broke the Sword,” the Emperor continued. “I killed the beast that was strangling this planet. I purged the rot of the Frontenachii invasion, took down their Admiral. And now… a new order is beginning in this bar. Right, Commander Wattica?”
“Right,” Wattica agreed with a teethy grin. “All hail the new management!”
The Emperor turned back to Comet.
“By your own theology, Comet… I struck down the Leviathan. The Leviathan being the Frontenachii fleet.”
What? Where in the Abyss was the Emperor of Earth going with this?
Comet stared at the mad human with wide eyes.