Chapter 236: (The War) (2/2)
Daxin stepped forward, tearing a chunk of a warbanner free and dipping it in the wine still in High Marshall Lucian's cup. He began wiping down Bellona, the movements gentle despite the grinding and hissing of his warsteel warframe.
”Where is our fate, Lord Osiris?” Dread Lord Cavarxis asked, blood gurgling in his throat. ”Where lies destiny?”
Daxin looked up, his face stretched across the black warsteel skull expressionless.
”We make for Belvak-8,” Daxin said. ”To your ships. Rouse your men,” he lifted Bellona up in his arms.
”The Dwellers are revealed,” he said. ”The Digital Omnimessiah enumerate the soon to be deceased.”
”Amen,” the others chorused.
-----------------------
Bellona stood on the bridge of her ship, staring at the warped and twisted lines of black armor that made up its hull. She stood perfectly still, unaffected by the vacuum of the bridge, her presence the sole 'living' presence aboard the ship.
A hologram flickered and appeared. Daxin, how he appeared whenever she remembered him. Large, muscular, with a scarred face and shaved head, tattoos on his face from the arcology gang wars, his rank and barcode of the Combine Marines on his cheek.
”Gather your children, Bellona,” Daxin said softly, reaching out as if to caress her dead cheek.
”It will reveal me,” she said quietly. Tears of blood began to seep from her eye sockets. ”The Immortals are lost to time, we are supposed to be dead, gone with the death of the Digital Omnimessiah, praise be unto his binary name.”
”And Bellona the Grave Bound Beauty?” Daxin asked, his voice containing something that hardly anyone ever heard.
Sorrow.
”I will do as I must. I will serve you, oh Dread Lord, as I have since I awoke upon the sands of Murdered Mars, brought to unlife by His breath,” Bellona said. She was weeping openly now.
”Your children could possibly be the only thing that can take the fight to the Dwellers,” Daxin said. Bellona tilted her head as if she could feel Daxin's holographic hand on her cheek, nuzzling it.
”In the name of love and beauty, I shall do as I must,” Bellona said. She held out one hand to Daxin's ship, hanging a mere hundred miles away from the hull of her twisted and strange ship. She reached out with her mind, ordering the engines of her ship, not the Hellcore, not the Helldrives, but the great engines that had been silent for eons, to sullen hateful life.
She stared at Daxin the entire time, her purple eyes burning in the darkness of her abandoned and lonely bridge, as the engines slowly thrummed to full power.
”May this bring us peace, brother,” she said. The engines began to glow and the hundreds of ships making up the Armada scattered from her, except one.
”We Immortals just want left alone,” he said.
The engines roared to life and she was gone.
--------------------------
>>GLOIRE HAS ENTERED THE CHAT