He descended in a smooth arc and landed beside me, folding his wings neatly against his back. Up close, his expression was sharper than usual, no trace of casual amusement remaining.
"This place reeks of something ugly," he said quietly.
"It did," I replied. "Most of it is gone."
His eyes flicked across the cityscape.
"And what do you need from me?"
I looked outward, sensing the subtle tremors still running through the planet as it adjusted to its new balance.
Then I raised my head and looked toward the sky.
Two moons circled the planet, pale against the blue, moving in quiet arcs above the wounded world. When I had connected with the core, I had not only felt the cities and breeding grounds. There had been something else. Not strong enough to command the planet, but deliberate enough to be hidden.
On both moons.
I lifted my hand and pointed toward the one on the right.
"You see that moon?" I said without looking away. "When I connected with the core, I felt a presence on both of them. You take the right one. I will take the left. If you find someone there, capture the leader."
"Consider it done," Silver replied.
Crimson mist surged around him instantly. His body expanded, bones and muscle reshaping as he assumed his giant form. Wings of dense mist unfurled from his back, and in the next moment he shot upward like a launched spear, cutting through the atmosphere.
I released a portion of the spatial lock around the city. Once he cleared the upper layers, the lock sealed again seamlessly.
My eyes shifted to the left moon.
Space rippled around me.
The ground beneath my feet fractured outward in thin cracks as pressure built for a single instant, and then I launched upward. The air split around my body as I tore through the atmosphere, the planet’s surface shrinking rapidly below. Oceans curved into view. Continents pulled inward toward the horizon. The wounded cities I had erased were no more than faint scars from this height.
Mid-flight, I extended my spatial comprehension and gripped the coordinates between the planet and its moon. Instead of crossing the distance, I tore a corridor straight through it. Space folded violently ahead of me, collapsing the gap into a compressed path.
The planet fell away behind me in seconds. The left moon grew larger in my vision, its surface gray and pitted with impact scars. Yet beneath that barren appearance, I felt something organized.
As I approached, I sensed the distortion more clearly.
There was a veil around the moon, subtle but present. A layered concealment designed to mask whatever lay beneath the surface. It was weaker than the planetary core’s protection had been, but present nonetheless.
I slowed just before the concealed layer and drove my fist forward. Essence compressed tightly around my arm, condensing into a dense construct that shot outward like a cannoned blow.
The impact struck the hidden veil and tore through it in a violent rupture. The masking field shattered completely, fragments of distorted space peeling away and dissolving into the vacuum around the moon.
What lay beneath was not an empty rock.
It was a base.
More accurately, it was a small city carved into the lunar surface and sealed beneath a transparent dome. Rows of housing lined circular streets, and at the center stood a single tall tower rising above everything else.
As my perception spread outward across the enclosed settlement, I felt the movement within the tower first. Multiple signatures from different races clustered together, their auras sharp with agitation.
Inside the tower, the activity was frantic.
Their attention had been directed downward, toward the planet below. Through layered spatial arrays embedded within the structure, they had been monitoring the headquarters and relaying updates to a higher command beyond even this moon.
I did not give them time to react.
With a single step, I folded space and appeared inside the central chamber of the tower. The room was filled with holographic projections and spatial monitoring arrays, all focused on the planet I had just altered.
Before anyone could raise an alarm, I released a controlled Essence ripple.
The surge exploded outward from me, striking every individual in the chamber simultaneously. Bodies collapsed across consoles and floors as they were knocked unconscious in a single wave.
Silence fell instantly.
I walked forward slowly, scanning the central operation console.
The communication channel remained open.
Projected lines of text and recorded transmissions scrolled across the display. The last sequence of reports was still visible, frozen mid-update.
"Order of Absolute leader is captured."
"He is attacking the leaders."
"He is gone, unable to track him."
"The planet changed, there is a violet shield surrounding it."
"All the breeding grounds were destroyed in a massive attack."
"He is flyi–"
The transmission cut off there.
I watched the unfinished line for a moment.
They had been tracking me in real time.
This tower had served as an orbital command node, monitoring planetary operations and relaying intelligence further outward. Somewhere beyond this moon, there was a higher relay.
I placed my palm against the central console and allowed my spatial comprehension to seep into its structure. Through it, I followed the faint imprint of the last active transmission, tracing its directional anchor.
The line stretched outward, away from this moon, threading through distant coordinates.
They had not expected the tower itself to be compromised. And they had not expected me to come here so quickly.
A faint smile crossed my face as I followed the outgoing transmission line to its destination. The coordinates pointed somewhere extremely far away. The distance itself was telling.
I could think of only two likely possibilities.
Either someone posing as loyal to the Prime Universe was receiving this information, or the Eternals themselves had an active intelligence node embedded within that sector. Both options were equally dangerous.
I exhaled slowly.
There was no reason to preserve this observation post any longer.
With a simple sweep of my hand, I gathered the unconscious personnel in the tower into a spatial hold and stepped outside, rising into the vacuum above the dome-covered city.
I looked down at the lunar settlement one last time and pressed my palm downward.
Violet Essence condensed immediately, drawn from my reserves. A massive palm of compressed violet light formed above the base. It hung there for only a heartbeat before shooting downward at tremendous speed.
The impact was absolute.
The dome shattered first, its shielding collapsing instantly under the force. The palm struck the central tower and drove straight through it, releasing a devastating burst of compressed energy upon contact.
BOOM.
Dust and shattered stone erupted into space in thick plumes.
When the light faded and debris settled into drifting fragments, nothing of the base remained. The city had been erased completely. In its place was a massive crater carved deep into the moon’s crust.
The observation post was gone. The relay line had been severed. Only the coordinates remained in my mind.
And somewhere far beyond this moon, someone was now wondering why their feed had suddenly gone silent.