Chapter Ninety-Eight (Leebaw) (1/2)
She was Queen Glad-Real-All, and she had been born whole.
A daughter of the Mad Angel Terrasol, he of the flaming warsteel sword and wings of flowing magic. She was born knowing the spells and incantations of life, of the sublime traceries of the blood code, of the how and the why all life together.
She knew of her people's ancient history, as inscribed by the ancient seer Toll-Klien, which translated to Child of the Toll, which she secretly knew was Child of the Price that Must Be Paid. She knew of triumph and loss, of how even her magic could be twisted to blasphemy and others would seek her power for their own.
She knew the songs of power to commune with the Arch-Angels of Warsteel that patrolled the far heavens to ensure that those who dwelt within her realm were inviolate from powers beyond.
Queen Glad-Real-All knew of the heroism of little people, at the difference a single being could make, knew that heroism and will and steel could carry the day even when all appeared to be lost.
She knew to never give up.
She was Queen Glad-Real-All, and she had been born whole.
Serving her were her Wood Elves, that she had touched and ensured that they knew the songs and incantations when they were born whole. She whispered to them in their sleep as they grew so that when they were born they knew their job in shepherding life across her domain.
She was Queen Glad-Real-All, all who knew of her loved her.
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His name was Ukk-uk-huk and he was content.
The Overseers had came to his world when he was but a tadpole. The older members of his pool had all been killed when the Leebawans had tried to resist. He had watched as his people's little spaceport had been wiped away to be replaced by a giant smoking place that generated electricity for the cities of the Overseers, even as the Overseers destroyed the small towns and places of his people.
He had watched the Overseers destroy muddy banks where tadpole eggs should have hatched. He had seen them tear apart his world, cut down the beautiful silent forests where his small people had always marveled that living things grew so big.
They had learned the ways of space, learned to create ships that could travel between the stars, and for that, the Overseers had come and his people were doomed.
Then had come the metal ones. They had killed everything, destroyed everything.
Then had come the Terrans. Savage primates that reminded Ukk-uk-huk of the lemurs of the Southern continent, extinct now, as the Overseers had disliked their funny games and playful pranks. They had smashed the machines, taught Ukk's people to smash the machines. To scream and rage and not huddle in their burrows waiting to die.
Like the lemurs of the southern continent.
Ukk-uk-huk's people had blockaded and forbidden the southern continent for hundreds of years, to give the lemurs time to grow like Ukk's people had grown.
Now they were gone.
The Overseers had returned and the Terrans had told the Leebawans that they had to decide what would happen.
Ukk himself chased the Overseer in charge of ”Incendiary Population Control Methods” down and shoved a spear made of a stick and a Terran Marine KaBar through the Overseers torso, pinning him there until the Leebawan females came with knives and hot coals.
Since then he had been content with his life. He guarded the Wood Elf Elanteer-1 when the strange being walked around. The Wood Elf, a servant of the Great Elven Queen Glad-Real-All, was curious about Ukk's world. Had wanted to see fish, taste plants (even the ones that weren't good), squish his feet in mud, and taste the waters. Elanteer-1 cared for Ukk's world, and Ukk had seen him weeping over dead fish and small crustaceans as if they were his own children.
When Ukk had told Elanteer that when he was tadpole there were many more of the small rainbow fish in the creeks Elanteer had sat with him and sang a song, one that the Wood Elf made up.
A month later Ukk had seen thousands of tiny rainbow fish in the creeks, darting around eating the algae that had bloomed in the old way.
It was then that Ukk began to believe in magic.
A year went by. Slowly. Around Ukk the world seemed to come to life. The Terrans rarely showed themselves, landing only at the small space port, and only going to talk to the Wood Elves or the Elven Queen unless invited by the Leebawans.
Ukk remembered when he had encountered the Terrans. Watched them save tadpoles and brood mothers and wounded Leebawans. How they had taught him the meaning of jawnconnor time. They had awaken a rage within the Leebawans, had watched, approvingly, as the Leebawens had driven the Overseers away with flame, spears, and a willingness to die on the Overseers guns if only they could drive their spear deep into the Overseer's body.
It felt good to rest in the algae rich mud and listen to Elanteer sing his songs of magic, holding tight to his magic spear where a Terran Marine KaBar gleamed in silent menace.
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The Obscene One came from beyond. The Arch Angels of Warsteel and Fire had warned Queen Glad-Real-All that it was coming. Had warned her that it would attempt to bring black heretical magic to her world to twist her work. That they would attempt to slip past the Arch Angels and bring doom upon her kingdom.
She had thought he had been born whole. She had thought that she, Glad-Real-All the Elven Queen, had known all the spells, incantations, and rituals there was to know.
But the Gan-Dolph had been reborn Gray, and had taken her to a secret grove while she lay dreaming, unclad, next to her dreaming pool, her fingers trailing in the gently swirling water whose currents streamed her hair out beyond her.
There the Gan-Dolph had taught her spells left behind from the War of the Genome. From the War of Blood Code. Had shown her the ancient and great magics that were hidden even from her sight.
He had bid her to protect this world and its small, injured people. As if she would do anything other.
She could feel the Obscene One. Could feel his rapacious hunger, feel his raw hatred, and knew that this is why she had been whole into such power, why she had been entrusted with the Sacred Fire and the Songs of the Seven Seals.
The Obscene One wished a ATCG War and the Elven Queen was willing.
This world, these small peoples she was shepherding and restoring even from extinction, were her charges and she would not let them go into the Dark Night.
Glad-Real-All sang the songs and summoned the birthing pools deep in the swamps of hydraulic fluid and battery acid around the slowly decaying machines of the Ancient Enemy's Great Iron Furnaces. There, she created new life, sang the songs to bring them into the world.
The trees she had grown, used great magics to accelerate the growth, she whispered to in order to produce spores that she would need. She touched the algae across the world and whispered a long song of ATCG to its strands. She touched the Leebawans themselves and changed a single piece of dormant code to make it into a marker.
A way to tell the People from the Enemy.
She prepared Leebaw for war.
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The Void Creature seeded the waves of attacks and slowed down. There was no hurry. There were few emissions from the world. It was not sure why it had been called. There were some ships around the world, not many, but not enough to face it.
It had wiped away this world before, a hundred times, and would do so again.
The ships around had launched missiles, but they had missed its great presence by kilometers, vainly attempting to get closer with gravitics pulses even as they peered at its bulk with LIDAR and RADAR.
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Rear Admiral Jonathon E reached out with his mind, through his datalink, and grabbed the bars of the ship's wheel in front of him, looking down at his gestalt vision of the crews of his twelve vessel flotilla. He had laid in the fire plans. Dig the C+ shells deep, sweep the enemy from the skies with his cannon.
Around him the ocean sparkled as sea birds floated on air currents, singing songs and telling tales of the enemy's movements.
He had been raised in Texas, on the coast, and his gestalt image reflected it.
”OPEN FIRE!” he roared.
”WEAPONS FREE!” the cannoneers roared, yanking their lanyards.
The three massive battleships fired their main guns, C+ Cannons, fired in carefully arranged sequence to keep from warping the keel. The Heavy Cruisers fired their Plasma Wave Phased Motions guns, the giant pistons hammering at one gun then the other so the dual gunned ships could fire without tearing itself apart.
”VOLLEY ONE AWAY, SUH!” his Treana'ad Gunnery Officer called out. Admiral E preferred to have him appear dressed as if he was an ancient Terra pirate, dressed in blue with little caps with red tassels from the feared Londown Pirate Navy.
The cannon crews busied themselves, in their blue pants and white shirts, looking snappy as they reloaded the cannons.
”Get me the results, Scan,” he ordered the two men working over a map with compasses and sextants.
”Direct hits. Target Alpha-One is heeling to starboard,” the Treana'ad in the Crow's Nest called out.
”WEAPONS FREE!” the cannoneers roared, yanking the lanyards again.
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The first salvo had wounded it badly. The shells impacting inside its armor, turning flesh and sinew, organs and tissue, into expanding bubbles of agony.
The creature screamed across the void in the voices it knew would be heard.
SUBMIT OR BE DESTROYED
The roar back staggered it, agony across its mind.
EAT ALL THE DICKS
The roar was feral, cruel, full of malice, hatred, and rage. It burned across the creature's mind, burning away synapses, snapping dendrites, seering axioms.
The second salvo hit, smashing deep. The creature reeled, an explosion of tissue from the great 'foot' it used to crawl through space itself.
This was impossible.
It was losing.
It reached out and gave the orders to the smallest of itself.
Reproduce one of its kind.
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When beings through of the TerraSol Fleets they thought only of massive ships, huge weapons, gigantic shells, cliffsides of armor. They thought of fleets in the hundreds, thousands of ships, spreading out to engage the fleets of the enemy. Of the areospace fighters, bombers, intro-atmospheric ships that could operate in space or atmosphere with equal ease. Of dropships pounding the dirt in plumes of radioactive retrorockets to disgorge the ground forces.
When they thought of the ground forces they thought of the great firebases of the Army, the pounding artillery, the smashing tanks, of infantry dug in so that the enemy would have to use its own bones to dig them out. They thought of the Marines, the Mechaneks advancing through atomic fire, through the hell of the enemy's guns, landing in drop-pods that slammed to the ground and shattered the enemy.
But there was another battle that was always fought. One that didn't make for good Tri-D Drama, that didn't have vast militaries moving across the landscape even though the troops were deployed in such great numbers that it required scientific annotation to list.
Nanophage Texarkana-8817 numbered in the 6.43134x1038 in the upper atmosphere, hanging up above the jetstreams and soaking up the energy that cascaded across the ionosphere.
The Elven Queen knew it as Angrist, Keeper of the Upper Air.
It was the first assaulted. Spores from space fell far enough their shells ablated away. They were designed to reflect UV rays back into space or absorb them, to dim the amount of sunlight that fell upon the world.
Angrist fell upon them, their blade-like protein shells piercing the spores, rupturing them so they fell as scattered genetic debris to burn up on the air currents.
Layer after layer of warriors, or weapons, most too small to see with the naked eye, fought against the incoming tide of weapons of the Obscene One.
Glad-Real-All the Elven Queen sang her songs, performed her incantations.
The Arch Angels of War Steel in the Sky Beyond Sky were winning the battle against the Demons and Unclean Ones of the Darkness Beyond.
The battle for sea, land, and air, fell on her. On her mastery of incantations, spells, and rituals.