Megatron could still hear the crystal whisper.
He did not know if the others could hear the voice, as he had first heard it years ago, hissing seductions and whispering his name.
Did they hear the voice as he had, telling them it was the blood of a god - or a demon - and bidding them take it for themselves and become gods in their turn?
Did it speak to everyone? Did it promise them godhood, as it had promised Megatron? Did it promise different things to different searchers, worming its way into their processors and offering them whatever they most desired?
Or did it remain silent for others less worthy? Had it sensed Megatron's own might and chosen him, promising him greater might because it sought to use his?
Its siren call was muffled now, its words distorted as though heard from a great distance, warped into near-incomprehensibility. Megatron smiled.
"Unicron is gone," he growled, his optics bright with an eldritch red light. "He slumbers, locked frozen at the core of this world. He will not reawaken for millennia at least. You have nothing to offer me now. Nothing but what I will take from you by force."
He raised his arm slowly, a great hammer clutched in his hand, beams of blue light radiating from it. The hydraulics of his arm protested, aching.
Those who saw him might have thought he struggled with the weight. The Forge of Solus Prime was so immense that few mechs could lift it. Only Megatron and his greatest enemy could carry it without great difficulty. Even Megatron himself, it stood to reason, might have trouble wielding it.
But it was not the weight of the Forge that made Megatron's arm move stiffly, or that made a thin glowing line of energon appear, leaking from the joint at his shoulder.
You are just like the dark energon, Megatron thought as he forced the frozen arm to straighten. You do not wish to be mine either.
But the rightful owner of the arm had no need of it any longer. He'd sawed the limb from the still, sparkless frame of a long-dead Prime, a mech who had ruled Cybertron generations ago.
It resisted him as best it could, heavy with pain, still half-inert and dead. But it could not resist the will of its new owner. Nor could it stop the Forge from responding, recognizing that the hand of a true Prime held it. Lightning burst from the Forge, curling around it, crackling and electrifying the air.
That should have galled him. The Forge should have been his by right. He should have been Prime, the last and greatest of a dynasty his Great Revolution had restored. Instead, Cybertron's ruling Council had bestowed that honor on his favorite disciple.
Was it worth it, Optimus Prime? Megatron wondered, his fangs bared in a hiss as the energy crackled around his stolen arm. Ruler in exile, of the last ragtag remnants of your kind. Wielder of the Star Saber, the mightiest weapon of a dead civilization.
Are you pleased with what has become of you, now that you have taken what should have been mine?
With a bellow, he brought the hammer crashing down onto the crystal of dark energon. Light flared from the point of impact, a nova of blue lightning from the Forge and purple energy from the dark energon. It flared brightly but gave no heat, instead freezing the room in a chilling wave.
He had envied his former disciple once. But what did it matter that he wasn't a Prime, now that the Forge obeyed him? What did he care that Optimus wielded the Star Saber, an ancient relic, when he could simply forge its equal for himself?
He smiled, a twisted grimace halfway between a snarl and a grin. This was only fitting, after all. He had hoped, once, that his charisma or his message or his might would force the Council to appoint him Prime. But he had never meant to prove himself to them, or see them bedeck him with honors. He had meant to sweep them away in purifying flames.
Everything he had, he had built for himself. He had honed his skills as a warrior in the deathmatch arena of Kaon - a place where failure meant death and weakness meant certain destruction. He had learned to speak, to persuade, to command, not from the ancient schools of rhetoric in Iacon, but from the pleas and rage of the forgotten. He had studied stolen histories, forgotten texts, banned treatises - and become the one who inspired a world to revolution.
Why should he feel bitter now? His enemy had earned the right to wield the Star Saber - through tradition and thrall to ancient duty. Through upholding the values of the dynasty of Primes.
What did Megatron care for such trinkets and such traditions when he could create his own, forged by his will and his might alone?
And as powerful as the Star Saber was, it had been forged of mere metal. His blade would be forged of the very blood of the Chaos Bringer himself.
He brought his new arm down again and again, feeling the dark energon crack and reform in conformance with his will, its chill spreading through the air around him, its bright light searing his optics.
But despite the light flaring from the points of impact, the dark energon itself only grew darker. Its edges glowed purple, the same color as the crystal, but its center deepened to indigo and finally to black, absorbing the light as though devouring it, a void given shape by Megatron's blows.
The ringing sound of the Forge striking the dark energon filled his audios, drowning out the dark energon's whispers. Still, as he raised his arm after each blow, he could hear distorted moans, wails of pain, and high, piercing cries of indignation.
You sought to force me to serve you once, demon. But this time, you will serve me.
Staring into the dizzying blackness, he forced himself to focus on the vision in his mind: a blade as powerful as the Star Saber his enemy wielded, as hungry for war as Megatron himself, and as powerful as the demon whose blood Megatron shaped to make the blade.
Gritting his dental plates against the pain, he watched his vision take shape, the blackened energon curling into jagged points, glowing with an eerie light. He stared at the lightning curling around the Forge and his grimace shifted into a fierce grin.
His arm ached. The trickle of energon from the joint had become a stream; a warm, living counterpoint to the deathly chill of the crystal under his hammer. With each blow of the Forge, the stolen arm only grew heavier, a dead weight that he could barely lift - or a living will resisting his.
"No matter," he growled, forcing his arm to rise. The Forge recognized only that the hand of a Prime held it. The arm, however it might resist him, remained his. His fuel lines fed it. His neural net controlled it. His spark powered it. Whatever its owner might have felt about his purpose, it could do nothing against him.
So this is what has become of the Primes, he thought, a whirlwind of light coursing from the Forge as he brought it down again. A handful of trinkets, strewn across a forsaken little planet beneath which a demon sleeps.
He chuckled, listening to the sounds of dark whispers and surging energy, as he raised his arm for the final blow.
"You stole the destiny I wanted, Optimus Prime," he hissed, his rasping voice soft and lethal. "But I have always made my own."
With a resounding roar, he brought the hammer down.