Altopereh rose out of the explosion like a resurrected demon, ripping free of the shattered crust in a pillar of black fire. Its wings snapped open and blasted the debris away in a shockwave that shook the upper atmosphere. In a single motion it shot upward, through the clouds and the stratosphere, and came to a thunderous stop in orbit that made the satellites around it tremble. There, high above Antia, the monster hung.
The cracked armor across its body no longer bled sparks and coolant. Instead, a thick black substance was oozing out of every fracture like liquid shadow, gathering, spreading, flowing over its metal limbs and reforming them, so that what had been broken a moment earlier now looked forged anew — but twisted and unnatural, almost alive. Its eyes burned like twin suns, the same pair of embers that glowed in its true, monstrous face deep inside Youri's mind.
Slowly, Altopereh raised one hand and pointed a single finger down at the planet.
The copper sky over Antia fractured and shattered like a dome of brittle glass. Black sludge spilled through the cracks in waterfalls of void-liquid that poured down out of orbit, flooding the atmosphere and raining into the basins, choking the land in crawling darkness. Every soldier, pilot and ship watching from the surface or from orbit froze where they were. No one had ever seen a God Orbiton reshape an entire sky.
Perciosa and Sirius were the first to come to their senses. They attacked with desperate fury — Perciosa with a storm of serrated plasma slashes and Sirius with a barrage of missiles that streaked across the dark like burning comets. Every projectile hit Altopereh dead on. Every wave of plasma struck it with perfect precision. None of them left a mark. Anemone was trembling. For the first time in her life she had nothing to say; her mind was struggling to understand the colossal silhouette in front of her.
"Ane, stay sharp!" Maximilian roared. "You know how fast he—"
It was too late. Altopereh vanished in a blur of shadow and reappeared behind Perciosa. A voice bled through the space around them like a whisper. "To think that mighty beings like you are caged inside armor like animals." A slow, chilling laugh followed. "Perhaps I'll set you free."
Its arm drove straight through Perciosa's torso — through her core plating and through her internal frame.
"Ane!" Maximilian screamed as Perciosa convulsed and then fell, plummeting out of orbit like a broken star until she crashed into the rising sea of black sludge far below.
Maximilian did not stop to breathe. He hurled Sirius at Altopereh with everything he had, every weapon blazing. Behind him, drawn by Sirius's inertia field, chunks of orbital debris, meteors, broken satellites and even Terrian ships tore free of their orbits, and he flung all of it at the Vanisher at once. The whole barrage struck — and dissolved like dust against the black shell.
Altopereh vanished again, and this time it appeared directly in front of Sirius, so close that Maximilian's heart dropped into his stomach. Its voice rumbled with cosmic certainty. "You still don't understand. It isn't about the objects around you." It drew back its arm. "It's about every piece of matter in existence."
The hand drove forward straight into Sirius's cockpit. The blow flung Sirius down toward Antia, falling and falling.
Altopereh did not chase him. It simply hung there in space while the black substance swallowed its entire body, its armor bulging and dissolving, lines of liquid shadow crawling out from its joints like veins, until it had taken its ancient, original shape. Then it spread its arms wide and let out a roar that was not a sound but a vibration — so powerful that it rattled the bones of every living thing nearby and echoed across orbit, through every ship, over the whole planet. Alarms burned out. Sensors overloaded. Pilots slumped in their seats under the pressure of it.
On the Morphius, Mikhail sank to his knees. The sight of Altopereh's transformation had overloaded his mind. "This is a dream," he said, and his voice cracked. "A nightmare. It has to be." And then he broke into laughter — shaking, unstable, terrified.
Emilia stormed across the bridge, grabbed him by the collar and slapped him hard across the face. "Get yourself together! This is not the time to break. There is a monster out there, and we are going to kill it."
Her words cut through his hysteria like a blade. Mikhail blinked, steadied his breathing and wiped his face. Slowly he stood up. "Thank you, sister," he whispered. "I needed that." Then his voice became iron. "All ships, prepare for battle. Surround that monster. Fire every cannon you have!"
The eighty-eight ships that remained formed a vast net around Altopereh and converged on it from every angle, unleashing an endless barrage. For a moment the whole of space became a storm of light. Then Altopereh was gone.
"Where did it go?" Mikhail barked.
The answer came instantly. Altopereh was hanging above them with one hand outstretched, slowly closing its fist, and a sphere of pure blackness swallowed half the fleet in an instant. The ships inside it dissolved in silence, erased as though they had never existed, and the survivors, the Morphius among them, could only stare at the emptiness where they had been. Altopereh descended to face them and raised its hand again. Mikhail closed his eyes and accepted his death.
A spiral beam tore through space and slammed into Altopereh's torso, knocking it backward. A crimson flare followed, then a streak of burning light. What was left of Perciosa came shooting up out of the dark. Anemone stood inside her cockpit with blood pouring from her scalp and one eye swollen shut, the other glowing red from sync overload, her breathing ragged and her will unbroken. "You son of a bitch!" she screamed. "I'm taking you to hell with me!"
Altopereh chuckled darkly. "Hell? Child — hell is a place I built."
Tendrils erupted from its back and whipped toward her. Anemone dodged them by inches, moving at speeds no human body should ever have survived. In sync mode, Perciosa had become a streak of silver fire, weaving between the tendrils and breaking every barrier of sound and light at once. Altopereh lunged at her, and she lunged back. Perciosa locked her wings around its torso, opened her jaws and fired a sonic beam point-blank into its head. The black shell blew apart and exposed the metal beneath.
"Gamma feathers — fire!"
Hundreds of crimson darts erupted from every plate of her wings and struck the exposed head in one overwhelming cascade. The explosion lit up the entire planet. Anemone staggered back with her chest heaving and aimed at the smoking silhouette. "Please," she whispered. "Please let that have taken its head off."
The smoke cleared. The head was intact, barely scratched, and the black substance was already crawling back across it to reform the armor. "The Sacros made a damn good alloy," Altopereh said. "It will take far, far more than that to even dent it."
Perciosa lunged again, folding her wings inward until she had become a blazing sphere, her armor glowing white-hot as she entered her Celestial Body form and turned herself into a meteor of pure heat and energy. The moment she struck Altopereh at full velocity, she was swallowed whole by black tar. Held, crushed and smothered, she felt her Orbiton crumpling around her like a can. "Max!" Anemone screamed. "Do something! I know you're still alive!"
Far below, on the surface, Sirius lay among the rocks with its alarms shrieking. Inside it Maximilian was barely conscious, missing his left arm and his left leg and bleeding out into his seat. Anemone's voice broke through the static, begging him, and with an enormous effort he opened one eye. "Damn," he muttered. "I really am dying." He knew Sirius was nearly gone too. "Hey, Sirius," he coughed. "What would you take this time?"
Sirius's voice echoed coldly inside his head. Another five years of your life. But it seems you don't have that many left.
Maximilian laughed weakly. "Damn. You're expensive." Then he whispered, "I'll give you all my memories, and the rest of my organs. In exchange, you're free. You've probably got ten minutes before I'm gone. Kill that monster."
Sirius paused, and then it chuckled. You really do hate losing, don't you?
Max only smiled. "I do."
Deal.
Sirius's core unlocked. Tendrils of something like flesh burst out of it and swallowed the Orbiton whole while steam hissed up from the ground and the air shimmered with heat. The metal frame was consumed, reshaped, transformed into a towering humanoid with six enormous muscular arms spiraled with glowing turquoise veins, its skin turning dark and reptilian, a tail thrashing behind it, two massive square golden horns curving forward from its head like an ancient war crown. Its yellow eyes opened, burning with a primitive intelligence.
Sirius had taken its true form.