The entirety of the alien vessel broke and fell apart around him, like a mountain collapsing under its own weight. It hadn't been, Thragg mused, durable enough to withstand his flight from the inside. Surging faster than light itself had a tendency to warp and bend time and space, and accelerate every single particle around him into blazing projectiles that could pierce entire planets; materials that were hard and durable were obliterated and utterly annihilated, reduced to clouds and storms of swirling atoms. If done properly, a particularly powerful Viltrumite could even crack open a planet by flying into it at more than the speed of light, blasting it apart into the void, though – usually – the Viltrumite would also die; though, in general, their method of ravaging entire worlds did not involve suicide, and modern Viltrumites, especially those who'd been under his leadership, preferred to simply fly over and around a planet at the speed of light, generating intense storms of dust and heat and energy, enough to cook the planet's surface, alongside its inhabitants.
Doing so within a gargantuan ship was something that, as far as Thragg could remember, hadn't been attempted before. And so, he was the first to witness its effects. The behemoth of a vessel cracked around him, a great many portions of its once might bulk now gone, scattered into the void between the stars. What remained was a part of the front, where he'd hoped the bridge was, and the main thrusters, which were no longer actually attached to the ship itself, but were relatively undamaged. The numerous layers of shields that'd prevented his entry into the bridge had simply disappeared, torn apart alongside the gate that held them.
And, Thragg mused, damn near everything else about the ship was torn apart as well, seeing as most of its central half was just... gone.
Whatever the case, it certainly was a first and, hopefully, the last. If he could, he'd never want to do this ever again, engaging in violence. Hopefully, Argall proved effective enough of a statesman and a commander that his aid became obsolete and unnecessary. But, that was only after he paid the Rangdan back tenfold for what they did to his beautiful wife, his heart.
Thragg flew forward, batting aside a piece of debris that'd lain before him, sending it hurling and spinning out into the depths of space. Before him was an open path, the walls and the floor cracked and broken, but otherwise still stable and steady enough to form an actual corridor. That, more than anything, Thragg figured, spoke of the nigh-absolute durability of this vessel as most alien ships would've ceased to exist if he flew through its center at the speed of light. Hovering forward, Thragg noted the flickering of the lights and the general silence that pervaded the very air; the power core was probably destroyed and, somehow, the remains of the ship was running only on some form of reserve energy.
His ears perked up. Sounds came from up ahead, a horde of rushing footsteps and angry snarls, the sound of utter desperation and acceptance, the death throes of a wounded animal, knowing its death was near. An army of Rangdan Warriors charged him from the darkness. They must've already ran out of slaves, Thragg figured, for them to be desperate enough to send in their true fighters. He'd never actually fought one of them before; the only one he'd ever encountered was so horrible injured by the crash of its ship that, even with its regenerative abilities, it couldn't have been at optimal fighting capacity. The ones before him were combat ready, wielding a variety of weapons and wearing various armor forms; they even looked different from each other in subtle and, at times, crude ways – some, for instance, were lithe and vulpine and graceful, while others were hulking monstrosities of flesh and bone and tendrils.
Thragg ceased his flight and stood on the uneven floor, settling into a fighting stance that was known to all Viltrumites, instilled into them from a young age, the melee form that made full use of their strength and speed, but also had enough room for if and when they encountered something or someone stronger and faster – the perfect martial arts, Thragg mused, for his people. Essentially, striking for everything that was weaker than themselves and grappling and force-redirection for everything else.
Thragg weathered a powerful blow by a Rangdan Warrior, who wielded cackling blades, coated in some sort of black miasma. It did nothing, but it did feel weird. Thragg retaliated by punching the warrior right on the chest with his full strength. The alien exploded into bits of meat and blood and gore and fragments of bone. This did not deter the others, which was good; it seemed, Thragg noted, that these ones, at least, felt no fear or hesitation. The next one attacked with as much fervor as the first and died just as quickly after Thragg sent an open palm attack to its head and splattered its skull and brain all over its compatriots. The one after that suffered more or less the same fate.
And, amusingly enough, they just kept coming. There were probably thousands of them, armed with weapons that would've allowed them to overwhelm the Scrappers on the planet below. Thragg smashed them apart, like they were little more than children. They came at him from every conceivable angle, attacking with all the ferocity they could muster, even using suicide tactics with warriors who'd strapped explosives to themselves and flung themselves at him.
Others even tried to use brute force against him, which – all things considered – was actually kind of new. The hulking monstrosities of muscle and bone and sinuous tendrils attempted this and, Thragg admitted, their strength was considerable – enough, perhaps, to overwhelm some of the weakest Viltrumites if only for a brief moment. As the Rangdan Warriors attacked with all that they had and all that they were, Thragg had to consider that, without his presence, these aliens would've very easily crushed the paltry defenses of the planet, unless the Iron Men were truly so advanced and so powerful that they were capable of turning the tide against such an enemy.
All the force they'd brought against him was for naught, it seemed, for none of their weapons could even so much as pierce his skin, though a few did succeed in irritating him and causing a few itches here and there, and none of their armors, not even the thickest and most daunting, could stand before even the weakest of his punches, let alone his strongest. They weren't weak by any means. Thragg had long since learned to remove himself from the equation of strength; often times, a Viltrumite was simply too strong, too durable, and too fast to even be compared to other, lesser races. On the scale of averages, he mused, these Rangdan were already incredibly powerful, likely even powerful enough to wage war and win against Thokk's people, whose martial and physical prowess were close to the Old Viltrumite Empire; Battle Beast, Thragg would readily admit, would've won their duel if he hadn't sliced open his own stomach in an idiotic display of foolishness and pride.
Having tasted their strength, Thragg decided that the Rangdan Warriors were simply no threat to him, no matter how many of them there were and how many weapons they brought against him. And so, hovering off the floor for the first time in a dozen or so minutes of continuous combat, Thragg surged forth, unleashing his full might against the alien warriors and ripping all of them apart in a vicious brawl of blood and gore; he ripped them limb from limb, tore their muscles and bones, and crushed skulls and spines left and right and up and down – an orgy of death and desolation, one he'd not indulged in for a long time. But, surprisingly, Thragg found himself... not enjoying the carnage as he once did; he performed the motions, followed his instincts, unleashed his full might, but he found no enjoyment.
Satisfaction, perhaps, of a good and honorable kill in a fight against an opponent that gave him all they had to give, but no more than that.
Thragg held off a Rangdan Brute Warrior, a goliath that stood at a height of twenty feet, covered in heavy armor and wielding gruesome weapons. He then ripped its head right off and shoved it through the gigantic creature's chest, its torso exploding in a shower of blood. It then fell backwards, toward the corpses of its fallen brethren. Thragg waited... and... nothing. That titan, it seemed, had been the last of the wave of warriors that came to attack him. Were there more of them, perhaps? He didn't know. The corridor he'd once stood in was now riddled with the bodies and body parts of thousands and thousands, their strangely-colored blood rising to form a shallow pool.
And still, he found himself smiling, despite all the blood and death that surrounded him. He'd changed, he realized, for the better; Nareena changed him. His heart was softer, true, more open to the idea of mercy than it'd ever been, but to be loved was to be changed... and to love was to accept change... Nareena taught him that. Violence, he'd figured, would never be rid of him and, Thragg accepted, that he'd never be rid of it, but it didn't have to dictate his life or how he lived it; violence was just there, a part of him, but it didn't have to define who he was or what he wanted no more than his right hand could tell him what to do.
Thragg hovered forth and found no resistance waiting for him, no horde of warriors or slaves, no shielded gates or corridors. It was a straight path from the gruesome slaughter to the bridge – or, he supposed, its Rangdan approximate. The massive chamber that Thragg walked into was... clearly different and distinct in architecture from all the other rooms and corridors he'd already encountered on the way here. It was, for a lack of a better word, crude and primitive-looking, like a great expanse of stone that'd been hollowed out by a wild creature. Glowing, pulsating crimson crystalline growths hung from the ceiling and jutted out of the floor, their faint light occasionally revealing the shadowy outlines of the humanoid and alien things held within the growths.
Creatures in dark suits and dull robes walked about, ignoring his presence entirely, their faces and bodies seemingly made entirely of millions of worm-like organisms. Hivemind entities onto themselves, then, individuals comprised of numerous, smaller entities to form a much greater whole. Thragg had faced such creatures before and many of them were annoying to deal with, considering their bodies very often were capable of surviving extreme kinetic energy; the most basic strategy against such creatures were to toss them into a nearby star or into outer space, whichever one is more convenient at the time. These creatures, in particular, Thragg mused, were likely little more than drones – not even slaves. They did not attack or react to his presence at all; they simply continued doing what it was they were doing, walking about from one place to another and managing the numerous consoles that seemed to grow from what appeared to be organic computers – grotesque, but also intriguing; said computers were connected to the pulsating crystalline things.
Ah, it seemed like the living creatures inside the crimson crystals were being used as living batteries of some kind. The efficiency of such a thing was questionable, but the technology would likely not have existed at all if it was useless; so, there was something here that he was missing. Aside from the consoles and the drones that operated them, there was also a great black monolith at the very center of the bridge; made entirely of black stone,its four sides were covered in blazing alien symbols and characters. It stood at a height of thirty meters, its top tapering into a sharp point. Glancing around, Thragg found... nothing else, really – no king or queen, no commander or admiral, just thousands and thousands of odd glowing crystals, thousands of consoles, and thousands of these worm-faced drones operating them.
If this was all there was tothe bridge, then his suspicions were proven correct or, at the very least, leaning closer to his earlier conclusion; the Rangdan very likely seemed to be a hivemind species, but composed of several alien races, forced into some form of servitude.
Interesting.
But, he was here to find the location of the Rangdan home planet and that... now seemed like an impossible task.
"What are you?" A dark and deep voice reverberated across the entirety of the bridge. The floor shook and dozens of the crimson, crystalline growths shattered, pale and prone bodies held within sliding and falling off.