CHAPTER FIVE

The Approach of Satan

Acreb was back on the bridge, a massive room three hundred feet wide and filled with computers, soldiers, officers, and advanced technology. It was extremely high tech, but also very foreboding. It was very dark in the bridge, and concealed thousands of automated guns and cameras, making a highly formidable security system.

"Admiral on the bridge!" someone called out. Before anyone could stand, Acreb said, "At ease. Status of the evacuation from the Enterprise?"

"Going smoothly," a crew member, who looked like an orca/human hybrid, said as his fin-like hands glided over the consoles. "Forty percent of all crew members evacuated." On the other side of the bridge, a young human was at his station, but he was very nervous at that moment. He was secretly doing his own calculations, and he had found out that the ship had only twenty seconds to survive, and that he had to instigate his subprogram right now or many would die. He took a peak over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, and then he hit a button.

The consoles on Acreb's chair blinked and an alarm sounded. Acreb rushed over to his seat and saw that the evacuation process had suddenly accelerated. The percentage of crew members evacuated reached sixty percent within a few seconds.

"Admiral!" someone yelled. "I have reports of forty other transport units activating and evacuating members of the Enterprise off of the ship!"

"Who's doing this?" Acreb demanded, standing up. His glare swept across the room as he snapped, "Someone's defying direct orders! Which one of you is it?!" His glare stopped as he saw the young crewman who activated the subprogram hunched over, and was trembling.

"Ensign!" Acreb snapped, walking over to the scared ensign. Just then someone in the bridge called out, "One hundred percent evacuation sir." Acreb was not paying total attention to the report as he glared at the ensign who had defied his orders.

"I gave specific orders not to interfere with the evacuation process, ensign!" Acreb yelled as the young ensign turned around, his skin going pale.

"And we had totally enough time to…" Acreb started. There was a huge flash of light from the Enterprise. Acreb and the rest of the bridge crew turned around and saw that there was no more Enterprise. The ship had exploded, and debris was flying everywhere, including a section of the saucer that was heeded right for the Archangel. Before anyone had time to react, the saucer crashed into the window of the bridge. The huge, one hundred foot long, fifty foot high pane of specially designed glass gave way, and the loss of pressure sent the glass flying out into space. Crewmen were launched from their seats and had to grab on to consoles to prevent them from being sucked out into space. Acreb was almost sucked out of the bridge and into the cold reaches of space when a huge, gorilla/human hybrid grabbed Acreb by the leg and pulled hard. The ensign that activated the subprogram was pulled from his station, but he held onto the helm to prevent a cold, dark death. He saw the emergency panel button, and he slammed his fist onto it. The massive emergency doors ejected themselves from the ship's haul and slid closed. As they did so, the ensign saw a young girl, whom he had a crush on for the last year or so, hanging onto a console. She looked at the ensign, her eyes full of fear…just as the console broke loose. The console – and the girl – flew into the air, and just before the emergency doors closed, the poor girl was sucked right out of the ship and into the vacuum of space.

"Noooooo!" the ensign yelled, his grip slipping. He suddenly lost his grip and was launched towards the vacuum of space…and slammed into the doors that had just sealed. He slid down the smooth metal of the doors and hit the ground with a bone cracking thud. The ensign had landed on his weaker leg, and he yelled out in pain as his femur snapped. Everyone who was in the air fell to the floor as the breach was sealed. Gravity and emergency air were both restored as the alarms went silent. Acreb hit his head on the stairs leading up to his seat, but soon got his bearings and got back to his feet.

Acreb looked around to see the damage to the bridge. Several consoles were ripped out of their places, either partially or completely. Fires burned here and there, heavy amounts of wire and cables and tubes hung loosely from the ceiling, crew members everywhere were injured, and the emergency lights had come back on, accompanied by a very loud hissing noise as air was pumped back into the chamber. Fire crews were already present, dousing fires with specialized chemicals and evacuating injured officers and soldiers. Down by the front of the bridge, where the cold metal doors had shut out the vacuum of space and sealed the ship, the ensign with the broken leg was still crying out for help.

"Can't you see we have injured?!" Acreb roared, startling those on the bridge. Acreb left over the chair and the consoles and rushed up to the injured ensign.

"Hang on, ensign! Stop moving!" Acreb ordered. The ensign nodded, but still yelled out in pain. Acreb swept his hand slowly over the ensign's injured leg, and there was a crackling, a snapping noise, and the sound of flesh intertwining, accompanied by the ensign's ear pitching screams. Once the broken bones and torn flesh was mostly repaired, Acreb pulled the ensign to his feet, giving a shoulder for the ensign to lean on.

"What's your name, ensign?" Acreb asked. It may have seen a redundant move at the time, but establishing a familiarity with the crew members eased tensions and made everyone's work and lives easier.

"Twain," the ensign groaned, wincing in pain. "Ensign Mark S. Twain, sir."

"Mark Twain?" Acreb asked incredulously. "Your name is seriously Mark Twain? You have got to be kidding me!"

"When I was born, it was my great-grandmother's idea," Mark replied, almost slipping on some broken glass. Acreb pulled the ensign back on his uninjured leg and said, "Well, Ensign Twain, I need you to stay as calm as you can. You still have severed nerves that we need to repair. Understood?"

"Yes, Admiral," Mark replied, barely containing the pain in his leg. Acreb helped the ensign out of the bridge and was about to take the ensign to the medical bay when two heavily armed soldiers came up to him.

"Admiral!" one soldier said. "We have the Narada in the containment hangar, sir! Requesting your presence there, sir!"

"Fine," Acreb said. He ordered the second soldier to take Ensign Twain to Medical, and then followed the first soldier to the bay where the Narada was captured.

transition

Down below decks, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts were just getting acquainted with Doctor Ten and Captain Picard, who were seated, when alarms blared, and then there was a massive shaking of the ship.

"What the hell's going on?!" Picard shouted, falling to the floor. Tony pulled the captain to his feet and said, "Well, we're not going to find out anything staying here, are we?" With this, Tony ran out of the room, Pepper and the others following. As Tony ran down the bluish tunnels, Riker, Worf, and Ahsoka Tano came out from a corner. All three joined the other four running down the hallway.

"Captain! What in the name of heaven's going on?!" Riker demanded.

"No idea, number one!" Picard replied as the seven continued to run, heading around a bend. "That's what we're about to find out!"

"Hey! You there!" Doctor Ten yelled, approaching a young crew member in service of the Archangel.

"What's going on? Do you know?" Doctor Ten asked as he and the others came to a stop.

"A warship just got tractor beamed into our containment hangar!" the crew member replied, brushing sweat off of his face. "All decks are on code red alert."

"Can you take us to there?" Riker asked.

"Yes, follow me!" the crew member said, running down the hallway. Doctor Ten, Picard, Riker, Tony, Worf, Ahsoka, and Pepper were right behind him.

After a rather scary running across a steel walkway, they came across the containment hangar. They were on another walkway, and the crewman and the seven others came to a stop. All of them were panting from the run, but they momentarily stopped breathing when they saw what had been captured.

First of all, this thing was demonic. It looked like the kind of weapon that the Devil would launch against humanity. Second, it was HUGE. Just one of the smaller spikes made a ship like the Enterprise seem tiny in comparison. The hangar itself was well over a mile and a half long, so large that the Narada seemed like a toy. The entire Archangel was over twenty miles long, which made the Narada seem like a mouse next to an elephant.

"What's going on there?" Ahsoka asked. She saw an Archangel soldier standing guard on the balcony, and had just turned his gaze to her.

"Hey! Soldier!" Ahsoka asked, walking up to the soldier. "What the heck is that thing down there?"

"I am not permitted at this time to disclose that information," the soldier replied. "All that I can tell you is to be on your guard – sensors have detected a device onboard that vessel that can create black holes – out of thin air. If one were to form, even the Archangel would be gone in just minutes. Are you all armed?" To this, the crewman, Ahsoka, Riker, Worf, Picard, Tony, Pepper, and Doctor Ten touched their phasers, lightsabers, Magnums, and screwdrivers.

"Good. Keep them close," the soldier said. All looked over the side and saw over a hundred thousand soldiers down on the hangar floor, filling the hangar to capacity. A thin corridor was formed through the soldiers, where hundreds of beings from the ship were being escorted out, their hands on their heads.

"Riker, what do you get on the tricorder?" Picard asked. Riker pulled out a tricorder, his data collecting device, and scanned the ship in the hangar. Although Riker was hundreds of feet away, the ship was so large that it could be easily scanned.

"Holy crap…" Riker breathed.

"What? What is it?" Doctor Ten asked as he scanned the ship with his screwdriver. He looked at the screwdriver and said, "Oh, now I know what you mean?"

"What is it?" the crewman that had led the seven visitors to the hangar asked.

"It's a Romulan mining vessel," Riker said. "But there are no records of anything this large ever being built in Starfleet records."

"Also, if I may say," Doctor Ten said, double checking the readings on the sonic screwdriver. "Looks like it's armed – with an entire empire's worth of weapons onboard."

"An entire empire's arsenal on a single vessel?" the Archangel soldier asked. "That's impossible, even for the Admiral! How can this…"

"AHHHH!" Ahsoka suddenly screamed, and she fell to the deck of the balcony, grabbing her montrals in pain.

"What's going on?" Worf demanded. Doctor Ten scanned Ahsoka and said, "Can't get anything off the screwdriver! The signals are all far too…far too great to be measured!" Suddenly, Ahsoka stopped screaming. Her eyes opened, but her eyes were no longer there. Glowing orbs of light blue energy were in the eye's places.

"He comes now," Ahsoka groaned in a voice that was definitely not her own. "The Master approaches."

"What?!" Doctor Ten exclaimed. "The Master? That can't be right! I saw the Master fall into the time rift into Gallifrey! He can't be…"

There was an absolutely tremendous roar, and the whole hangar was consumed in blue light. Outside the hangar, visible through the energy barrier, were giant blue creatures. They looked like elongated amoeba with thousands of legs. They had to be at least five miles long apiece. They had heads like frogs, and tongues to match. There were at least five of them, if not more, surrounding just the Archangel. Outside, among the fifty enormous battleships that was stationed around the binary star, hundreds of these creatures surrounded the task force, ready to kill.

One of the creatures opened its mouth, and a giant lightning bolt shot out of its mouth and crashed into the Archangel. The shields flashed red, and the entire hangar fell into chaos. People everywhere fell on top of one another and was swept off of their feet. Up in the balcony, Riker and Worf were trying to revive Ahsoka when alarms blared.

"ATTENTION ALL CREW MEMBERS! SHIELDS AT CRITICAL! EVACUATION ORDERED TO ALL LEVELS!"

Suddenly the blue light turned red. All of the creatures outside turned to the binary star. Something else had appeared. It was much, much, much bigger than the Archangel, which was the largest ship in the fleet. It had the chest of a human, but its fingers were tapped with humungous, deadly, black claws that seemed to blend into the space around it. Its head was like a wolf's, with huge pointed ears, and a ring of horns around its head. Its jaw was long and distorted, and so were its teeth. Its skin was dark red, and had a dark grey, prickly mane running along its head and down its neck. Its waist down was nonexistent, consumed in the binary stars. Huge, red wings spread across the cold vacuum of space. Its eyes were glowing fiercely, were like dragons, and in them seemed to be the universe – just far more in each eye than can ever be described in words. Battles, deaths, colors, fires, people, places, things – everything that was everything was in those eyes.

"The Master approaches," Ahsoka whispered.

"Oh," Doctor Ten gasped. "That master."

Even though space cannot transmit sound, having no air, the roar that the devilish creature let out shook the ship and the sound of it – the screaming, pained, monstrous, agonizing, crying, ferocious, luscious, hellish scream of power practically immobilized all in the Archangel.

Outside, a ferocious battle ensued. The creatures spat bolts of energy at the monster, but the bolts bounced off the monster's skin like they were bouncy balls. The monster's bottom section formed, and it appeared to be a massive tail, long and spiked and wickedly horrifying. The monster's eyes focused on the creature closest to it, and they flashed. A blast of fire shot out of the eyes and tore the space amoeba apart. The creature then shot blasts of fire out of its hands and eyes, destroying even more. The creatures abandoned their initial prey and attacked the monster, shooting everything that they had. The red, devilish monster shot blasts of fire left and right, but he was surrounded, the space amoeba closing in. There was suddenly a massive flash of light, bright as an exploding star, and the light washed over everything within a hundred light years, and all was still.

transition

After what seemed like an eternity, those in the ships resumed consciousness. Doctor Ten awoke to see the creature still outside, growling quietly. The binary star was still intact, but was a little dimmer than before, like power had been drained from the stars and was now in the monstrous beast outside.

Riker was holding Ahsoka close to him, attempting CPR, when the monster's head turned to the Archangel. The monster roared, fire bursting out of its mouth and then, all of a sudden, it leapt out from between the intact binary stars and leapt for the ship! Everyone let out a scream of horror, expecting to be crushed, but suddenly the monster exploded into red mist. All of the mist concentrated into a single, five foot wide stream of mist, which soared right through the shields and armor and went into the hangar. Soldiers and Romulans left and right ran for their lives, unintentionally creating a circular gap. The mist went straight for the gap and hit the very center of it. The mist all came together, concentrated even tighter and tighter, until all of the mist came together in one form.

It was a man of a semi-average build. He was dark, like an Earth-born of Spanish descent. He had short, spiky black hair. His head was round, his nose blocky, his lips thin and dark, and his ears pronounced. He had a very muscular build, but wasn't that tall. Even though he was slightly bent over, he was still not super tall, maybe only five-two at most. His limbs bulged with muscle, and in one clenched, scarred hand, was a long, wicked sword. It had a wide, thick blade, wicked hand guard, and a small sculpture of a demonic wolf's head at the hilt. The whole blade was dark, and so was this man in general. His clothes were subdued and dark, wearing a dark, long sleeved shirt, gauntlets, leather boots, black leather belt, and a long, flowing cape. His eyes were the same as the monster that had killed the space amoeba. He slowly stood up, and he flicked his hand. A massive rush of wind expanded quickly in a three hundred and sixty degree blast. Weapons of everyone flew into the air and crashed against the walls and onto the ground, or occasionally onto the soldiers. All was eerily silent. His gaze saw everyone, all backing off in terror.

"Everyone," Doctor Ten whispered. "Do nothing to provoke him. If I think…"

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! The soldier had moved down twenty feet down the balcony. A sniper barrel attachment had been stuck on the end of the barrel, and the gun had changed to bolt-action firing. The soldier had got three shots off before Riker could even stand. Down below, the new arrival took a shot right in the head. He staggered and almost lost his footing, even though the shot didn't leave a mark on his bare scale. The second shot hit him right in the neck, but the energy shot bounced off again, leaving not a mark. The third shot was the one that the man dodged, and by now his blade was starting to glow.

Riker flew to his feet and rushed up, but before he could get within arm's reach of the soldier, the man from down below had suddenly jumped up onto the balcony. The soldier turned the barrel and fired two more shots, each one deflected by the blade in the man's hand. Riker ran up to try to push the gun down, but an invisible force sent Riker flying back like Riker was a feather. In the next instant, the soldier's gun flashed into ash. The man's eyes glowed, and the man suddenly found himself face down on the balcony. The hairs on the back of his neck brushed against the blade that was mere millimeters from his neck. The man above him said, slowly and very clearly, "You are upon the brink of death. Would you still fight?" The solider was a little surprised. He had never been asked anything like this before, nothing so personal had ever come his way. However, he still mustered the courage to answer.

"Yes." The soldier closed his eyes and prepared for death; for he knew that the blade would come crashing down. It was then a huge surprise to the man when the blade was swept away from his neck. The man slowly looked up and was even more shocked when the sword-wielding man was offering his hand. The soldier took it and was helped to his feet. In a flash of light, the ashes of his gun came together to reform the soldier's rifle, which the man handed back to the soldier.

"Good," the sword-wielding man said. "It matters not if you are on the brink of defeat, or death – or both. As long as you have what it takes to not give up, that's all that matters…" The man stopped when he saw the soldier staring past the man. The man turned and saw, standing about fifty feet away, was Admiral Acreb, standing stock still, like a deer in the headlights. The man at the other end of the walkway had the same look on his face. His eyes became dimmer and the man's skin seemed to go pale. It was several long, agonizingly intense moments before Acreb whispered, "Presul? Is that you?" The man at the end of the walkway, obviously Presul, nodded slowly.

"And I am not alone," Presul responded. He closed his cape, and then with a wide flourish. A flurry of black smoke erupted from the folds of the cloak, making the soldier jump back. From the clouds two humans stumbled out. One of them, a woman, had long red hair, sharp cheekbones, angled eyebrows that were over bright brown eyes, and missing her whole left arm and part of her right one. The other man had curly hair, a long but rectangular face, darkish skin, and reddish eyes. He had only the garments of a slave, and his face looked as if it had been through a thousand horrible nightmares. Acreb barely managed to hold back a strangled gasp. His face turned even paler, and from his lips were the words, barely whispered, "Angelica? Marayzk?" The two new humans were just as speechless. No one could even move. Picard, the Doctor, and the others were also seemingly trapped by this magical moment. It was several long moments that the woman, Angelica, decided to slowly take a few steps up, then began to trot, then ran full speed at Acreb. When she reached Acreb, she threw the stump of a right arm around Acreb. Acreb pulled her close and hugged her like he had no one else. He then saw Marayzk run up as well, and then Acreb pulled him as well. His two best friends were indeed alive – and back once more.

There was a tremendous rumbling, and loose bolts on the ground started to bounce around. Presul, Marazyk, Angelica, and Acreb all looked up. All of their eyes started to glow. All of them let out a growl, and then all of a sudden all of them were consumed in light. Angelica's missing limbs suddenly regenerated, and on all four of them were suddenly changed. A horned helmet and medieval archer's armor covered Angelica, and a yew bow was in her hands. Marazyk was covered in heavy bronze armor and a skull cap, with a massive Dwarven great-sword in his hands. Acreb was little changed, except his cloak glowed and a long staff adorned with a sculpted dragon's head on the attacking end was in Acreb's left hand. The head on the staff was surrounded by long spikes that could stab at close range – and almost instantly kill a close up threat. Heads turned to Presul, and what met their eyes was a true nightmare.

Presul's head was now a wolf's, its elongated jaws dripping blood. Its eyes were now all black except for the iris, which were ultra-white. Spiky black hair ran down the top of his skull and ran down his back. Long, pointed ears came out from the sides of his head, and a ring of horns adorned his skull. Black, swirling cloaks and dark armor clung to his body and swirled around his legs. The cloak was ragged and torn, and was so black that it appeared to have been sewn from the very strands of sin itself.

"What in God's name are you?!" Jean-Luc Picard gasped. To this, the monster before Picard turned and hissed in the voice that could only be true hell, "What has humanity always feared?"

"You're…" Picard choked. "You're…Satan!" Just then the rumbling got louder, and everyone had a hard time standing. The eyes of Presul, Acreb, Angelica, and Marazyk glowed even brighter.

"HE IS HERE," Acreb boomed. "HE HAS COME FOR US."

"Then let us prepare for him!" Presul growled, and then Presul, Acreb, Angelica and Marazyk all leapt off of the walkway and landed on the deck hundreds of feet below.

The entrance to the hangar suddenly fell apart, melting into shards, as several figures floated in, hovering in the air. One of them had long whitish/bluish hair and dark sin. A long grey cloak lined with gold hung from his back. He had on a black armored jacket that swept down to his feet, black boots, and a white tunic, with his white shirt underneath opened up to reveal a heart-like emblem emblazed on his chest. His eyes were yellow, and were signs of a monstrous being. The second person that floated in was much older, was bald, but also had yellow eyes. He had a long black cloak, a white shirt, a pair of black belts, pearl white gloves, black pants and matching boots. His left hand was clenched, while his right hand was literally dripping in black magic. The third one also had tanned skin, but a long black cloak covered him front and back and swept down across the floor. He had slivery, wild hair, gems hanging down his chest, and amber eyes.

"I think you mean they have come for us!" Angelica told Presul as she loaded an arrow into her bow.

"ANSEM? XEMNAS? MASTER XENAHEART?" Presul exclaimed, his sword now covered by swirls of dark red fire. "HOW ARE YOU ALL HERE?! YOU THREE SHOULDN'T EVEN BE ALIVE!"

"Oh, but you know so little, Presul," the one voice that Presul did not want to hear said. The fires around the blade withered away as Presul's eyes focused on the final person to walk out of the mist.

A sin black cape hung off his shoulders. Two triangular pieces of armor covered his shoulders. Evil seemed to bend around him, and his dark armored gloves and his dark grey helmet – thin, pointed towards the chin, with a ring of horns on his head – were the only things that seemed to have definite substance. A v-shaped visor, dark as night, stared intently at those present. A dragon head-shaped symbol sat just below the visor, and black lines branched out and wrapped around his helmet. The garments, armor, and helmet were simple, but Delten recognized the monster instantly. Presul hissed so loud that the ordinary soldiers and captives from the Narada covered their ears and dropped to the ground in pain.

"DELTEN?" Presul growled. "How can you be here? You should…should be dead!"

"I have my ways, ignorant fool," Delten hissed. A long broadsword formed in his hand. He added, "Even you, the Devil himself, are pitiful and weak compared to me. After I eliminated five of your worthless geearnkachee, you and Mammon will be no more difficult to kill!" Presul seemed immobilized by that remark. Presul seemed weak at the knees as Presul continued to taunt, "You mean NOTHING to me, Ira! Now I finish off what I wanted to finish so many millennia ago in the Cataclysm!"

Angelica and Marazyk had enough by that point. Marazyk swung his weapon fast and hard, but the blade bounced off an invisible shield that Ansem had cast so easily it was like it was nothing. Angelica fired, but her bow burst into ashes when Delten's visor glowed. Then there was the gunshot. For the briefest of milliseconds, underneath his helmet, Delten smiled. He had been hit with billions of projectiles in his past – cannonballs, bullets, arrows, crossbow bolts, atomic weapons, fusion bombs, laser blasts, dark lightning, and many more – and nothing stopped him. So Delten smiled as the bullet he sensed flew toward him. The bullet would not hurt him – they never had. So it was much to Delten's horror when the copper-colored, rifled, heavily weighted, slick-as-a-seal bullet went right through Delten's magical wards and tore right through Delten's armor and burrowed it into Delten's flesh, just missing the lung.

There was an awful pain, an intense, burning sensation, throbbing, burning – it felt like acid fire burning away his flesh. Delten roared in pain as the force of the round knocked him off of his feet. Subsequent shots struck Ansem, and then Xemnas, who only took a graze but collapsed in pain. From the dark clouds behind the sorcerers, humanoid gargoyles with horrible horns and staffs in their hands burst out from the darkness and slew any soldier that came within fifty feet of their masters. Delten was on the ground, and could feel the life slipping away. Delten was horrified – he had never even gotten a scratch, and now his life was ebbing away. Delten heard more shots fired and gargoyles fall apart into dust, and then Master Xenaheart fall, mortally wounded. He felt several pair of gargoyle hands grab him and pull him back into the clouds. All that Delten could remember was bodies surrounding him, making a bubble around him. More of his gargoyle soldiers fell but Delten could feel himself being dragged out of the portal. Huge blasts of energy shot by him within inches of his forces, and everything went dark as Delten slipped through the portal…

transition

High up in the walkway, the soldier who Presul had spared was emptying clip after clip into the enemies. He was pretty sure that Delten and that old guy were both down for good, and he had wounded the other man – Ansem, was his name? The silver-haired man was not hit, but he pulled back, summoning dozens of those monstrous gargoyles to pull the wounded out. Meanwhile, Acreb, Presul, and the man and woman with them began attacking, sending blasts so powerful the ship rocked and the electrical systems were in jeopardy of short circuiting. The enemies pulled back and vanished, but not before the soldier attached a small rocket onto his gun and fired. The missile flew straight and true into the portal, but it shut just after the missile entered it, leaving only silence.

"Alright, settle down!" Acreb ordered, sheathing his sword. "We're professionals here! Keep the prisoners moving and…" At that very moment one of the prisoners from the Narada seized the opportunity to attack and did so in a very violent way. He grabbed Acreb's gun right out of its holster and raised it to Acreb's head. Acreb's head jerked as the blaster bolt flew right past his ear. Acreb spun around, but by then one of Acreb's soldiers had the Narada soldier tackled. Hundreds of the other prisoners suddenly attacked their guards, and all hell broke loose. Swords were unsheathed, hidden knives and guns were stuck in the faces of the enemies, fists flew, bones cracked, blood was spilled, and more were trampled underfoot from the violence.

Acreb pulled out his backup pistol and, switching it to stun, fired shot after shot, stunning every soldier he could hit – whether or not it was his own. Angelica and Marazyk rushed forward to help, but both of them saw Presul bending over, a light glowing from him.

"ACREB! DOWN!" Angelica warned as she and Marazyk hit the deck. Acreb knew that Angelica was never one to make a mistake in a tense situation like this, and did not disobey. He hit the deck just as Presul unleashed a massive ring of red lightning. As it traveled outward at over eighty feet a second, soldiers everywhere were consumed by the lightning, yelled out in pain, and fell to the ground unconscious. Angelica, Marazyk, and Acreb covered their heads as the energy rushed by, drowning out the screams as men fell unconscious and the howls of horror. And then there was nothing. It was only after several long, agonizing moments that the three on the floor dared to move.

Everyone around them was lying on the floor, unresponsive. Bodies were tangled up with one another, blood spurting here and there, but mostly piled up, like the aftermath of some bloody war.

"They all done, Acreb?" Presul snapped. After Acreb got to his feet, Acreb slowly said, "Yeah, now they are. You better not have killed a single one of my men!"

"No, no one is dead," Presul replied. "Pure energy-sap, not a killing curse. Now, I believe you have matters to look after besides this vessel behind us…"

"Yeah, all the guys you just hurt!" Marazyck growled. Both he and Angelica were keeping close to Acreb.

"You want to go a few rounds?" Presul growled, the whispers of thousands in his voice becoming more and more clear. "I would be more than willing to…"

You know nothing!

Presul almost jumped out of his skin when he heard the voice. It was a woman's, soft but rasping, gorgeous but atrociously horrifying. Acreb suppressed a gasp – he knew exactly who that was.

I know you recognize me, Acreb…the voice taunted, like a possessed prostitute. And who is this? Angelica? Marazyck? I thought I killed you already – no matter, I will kill you again…who is THIS? Presul felt a presence in his mind, a strong one. Presul focused hard, and the entire cosmos' power flew into his mind, blocking out the presence that was attacking his mind. He felt the presence pull away from the inner reaches of Presul's mind, but Presul still heard the voice.

I have never seen you before, powerful one. You shall make a fine addition to my trophies of war. I have killed thousands upon thousands upon THOUSANDS of people, and you shall be no different…Delten shall destroy you, and His armies will not be stopped. Nothing can stop us, not now, not ever…

The presence disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared, but Presul, Angelica, Acreb, and Marazyck were all clearly terrified.

"You know who it is…" Presul half-gasped half-chocked, looking Acreb right in the eye. "You know all too well who that was…" Acreb slowly nodded, as still as a statue.

"Ishtar," he whispered. "She has come once more to finish what she has started. She killed Beowulf and five of our brothers, and she will not stop to take us down as well."

"We're going to need to get help," Angelica said. "A lot of help."