Fate Calls

by Sci-Fifan95

In life, the only certain thing that applies to us is death. We cannot escape it. We cannot outrun it. It is a fate that finds us all. However, He plays chess. And you don't find out until too late that He's been playing with two queens all along.

56. Vis

Hey. It's been almost 2 years to the day. Crazy, right? Gonna chaulk that up to me being busy with life and the passage of time growing faster and faster. Anyway, like last chapter, this one gets quite dark. Read at your own risk.

Oh, hey, by the way: Fate Calls now has a TVTropes page! I'm not sure who made it or exactly when, but I'm pretty sure it was around two months following my last update. To whoever made that, thanks! It was a really cool thing to find out.

Since it's been so long since the last update, I recommend a quick read-through of the last chapter or at least skimming some of the bigger sections. We got a lot of ground to cover here.

As is tradition, thanks to all who've favorited, commented, or messaging since the last chapter. You are, perhaps, the most patient crowd of people I've ever seen, and that makes you pretty great in my book.

Zen - Yeah. Kinda went scorched earth with the last one.

Quest-Questioner - That is correct; Fate Calls has been on-going for almost 13 years now. Started as an experiment in creative writing, now it's one of the oldest on-going stories in the Transformers fandom, as far as I am aware. There are a few others that are older, but in fandom terms, I am indeed ancient.

Guest 1 (Chapter 55) - My bad! Hope you slept well anyway.

Guest 2 (Chapter 2) - Um. Hate to tell you this, but I'm relatively certain this story was the first one to use Solus like that. I could be wrong, of course. But can confirm: it was not common when I first started writing this, way back when. Still not common today, far as I recall. But, you're entitled to your preferences. Hope you found a story more to your tastes.

Guest 3 (Chapter 55) - Thanks! Yeah, Shadow's been through it. His mental state is... probably on the latter side of sane at this point. Can't blame the guy, either.

Guest 4 (Chapter 19, 20, & 21; pretty sure you're the same person) - Alas, I could not update that day, but wished I could have! Hope you enjoy this chapter, if you're still around.

Thanks go to Crystal Prime and xDaughterOfKingsx for beta reading.

Disclaimer: Transformers belongs to Hasbro. I only take credit for this story and my OCs.

---

Shepherd's hands shook as he watched the end of the world.

He hid it from his people by crossing his arms, forcing his hands to still. He avoided looking at anyone in the Cage, his gaze settled fully on the main screen—and the hell that occupied it.

The monster rising from the Earth was an impossibility. A monster of unparalleled horror and size. Already, satellite passes had confirmed the giant was taller, wider, than any mountain in North America. If it kept growing, as it had since their first sighting of it, then it was only a matter of time before the entire continent became a grave.

Nevada already was.

"Update," he called out, focusing his thoughts, his fears, into something routine. Something that wasn't damned apocalypse.

"All forces are bunkering down as per your suggestion to the Joint Chiefs, sir," said a tech.

"What else?"

"We're picking up chatter from Russia and China," another tech said. "Topic is… Well…"

He could guess. "Who else?"

"Shadow Company has arrived at the Incirlik Air Base," a third tech said.

"Their status?"

"Bunkered down but hating it, sir."

At least they weren't close to this mess. "Anyone else?"

On and on the techs went, updating him on whatever operation, situation, or disaster they were managing, leading, or otherwise monitoring. It wasn't comforting, as Shepherd hoped it would be. Couldn't be, with what was on screen. What its existence meant for the entire planet.

He shivered. AC was down too low.

A second later, he felt someone step up to his shoulder. "Line to POTUS is still silent, sir," Willems said, his voice hollow, robotic.

"If he takes any longer, call again," Shepherd said.

"Sir, with all due respect—"

"Don't say it."

"—we may need to prepare for the worst."

Shepherd grunted. "How do you suppose we do that, Henry? Wave a hand and hope for the best? We need nuclear strike options."

"They aren't the only option, sir."

It registered in his mind what Willems was talking about. "No."

"We designed them to be used in lieu of nuclear strikes."

"And they won't touch that thing. I'll be sending those pilots to die."

"With respect, sir… They might prefer to die trying than die waiting."

Willems was right. Damnit, but he was. Shepherd didn't want him to be. Pilots in the hangars were his responsibility. His people. Like ground ops, he didn't approve their deployment unless absolutely necessary. Deploying them now, when he was trying to get nukes to level the whole state, would doom them.

As he stared at the ever-expanding nightmare rising into the sky, eating away at the sunlight, he knew they would be doomed anyway.

With a heavy sigh, he nodded. "They might… They might. Call the hangars. Tell 'em to load all craft for war."

"Yes, sir." Willems walked away, heading to the office.

Shepherd faced the Cage as Willems stepped away. "I want all available S.T.F combat assets ready for deployment. I want all drones and craft in the air, every missile armed and ready, and every surface vessel we have moving into position to engage. And I want them ready now."

The Cage became a flurry of activity as what few techs were at their stations contacted officers across the S.T.F, while others who'd stepped away rushed back to their computers to do the same. They were more alive, more eager, than they had been in days.

"Colonel Todd."

From somewhere to his left, he heard Todd's voice over the clamor of the Cage: "Yes, sir?"

"Contact Colonel Travis from the Experimental Wing. Tell him he's now—"

The main screen displaying the satellite feed became static.

Shepherd looked at it as a murmur went through the room, nervous among an already nervous crowd. "What just happened?"

He heard, none of which made sense besides one: "Sir, we lost contact with the NRO asset."

"That thing in Nevada?" He asked.

"No, sir. Just… Lost contact."

"Get me eyes in that direction."

"Uh, General…?"

He glanced at the tech at the back who spoke. She was from Security, one of the few allowed into the Cage. She had access to cameras across Fort Creed. She looked like she'd lost all the blood in her body. "You need to see this…"

She typed a command, and a new image appeared on the main screen.

"My God…"

The world shifted.

Shepherd felt it as soon as he looked at the image. He felt it in his bones. In the earth. In the too-cold air.

The titan has risen high enough into the sky that its dark, dark form and many arms could be seen from Fort Creed's exterior cameras, thrashing high into the atmosphere. But it, in its world-ending horror, wasn't what grabbed Shepherd's attention.

The glowing, planetoid-sized ship in the sky right over the monster, was. It, along with swarms of lesser lights—and, puzzlingly, light-consuming dots—as voluminous as the stars themselves. The increasingly-bright glare from its bow.

"All personnel," Shepherd said, quietly, his voice thunder in the deafening silence that fell on all others. "Brace for impact."

The ship grew brighter still. Brighter than the sun itself. Illuminating the monstrosity below it, slowly but surely wrapping the ship in innumerable dark tendrils and shapes and black that choked out the ship and its smaller lights.

Then it fired.

---

I gazed into the face of Hell, and Hell stared back.

Doom, doom, doom, doom, went the Drum in my mind, its sound deep and base and older than the stars.

The titan, It, rose higher still, each of its arms larger than a city. Its eyes blackholes, devouring matter and life alike. Slowly, the remnants of the blood-red sun gave way to its beyond-pitch-black, slaughtering color for the crime of existing in It's presence.

The Strength-Without-Me fled, leaving me alone against the eldritch horror that devoured Earth and sky, as It had done to innumerable other worlds and societies. I should have been afraid. Or surprised. Or angry. I was numb, instead. Numb to the coming End-of-All-Times. Numb to the pain of staring at the twisted, demented approximation of Arcee, still kneeling ahead of me, offering quiet, whispering prayers in a language I did not know. Numb, even, to It.

It was too much for what ribbon of sanity I still held onto.

I felt my mind shatter. My will fragment and fall away, like dust in the wind. My fear, horror, and sorrow became lost in the chaotic nothing coming to annihilate me and all Creation. I laid there, on the frozen ground, staring up at the sky that ate itself. The titanic It, warping and tearing apart reality by being there. And I thought of nothing. Desired nothing. Felt nothing. Nothing but apathy.

I was going to die. And I didn't care.

Arcee's helm snapped to me. She moved back to my side, her face hidden by the vortexes of her eyes.

"You Understand…" she said, in a voice of honeyed death, the eleven echoes within taking the same, sickeningly soft and faux kind tone. "You've given up…"

I didn't care.

Her laugh echoed, reflecting off angles that didn't exist. The tentacles on her back swirled and wrapped around me. One, Darkness-forged scythe came up to brush against my cheek. It numbed my entire head, even as the others numbed my body. "Oh, sweet, sweet, Zechariah. You never should have cared. You never were anything. Not a man, not a mech. Just an inferior copy of someone greater."

From her, the words should have hurt. Enraged. Inspired something in my chest. In my heart.

Instead, I felt like I was already dead.

Her hands ran over the sides of my head, even colder, number, than her tentacles. I felt her smile, the gesture invisible, but having its own, terrifying weight. "Don't worry. Your time is over. He has no more use for you. Neither, it seems, does She. Be nothing with the Void."

The Darkness of her hands, her tentacles—even the sky above—reverse-flashed with Darkness. Even as I felt nothing, I felt that Darkness enter me. Seep into my body, my spark. My very being. It consumed me. Ate away at my broken mind and hopeless soul.

It reached my memories and began to eat them, too. Feeding off my life. My treasures. My past.

And I didn't care.

I felt it so, even buried deep beneath a sea of black hatred, eating me alive from the inside out. It consumed the conversations I'd had. The jokes and laughter I'd shared. Fears, failures, and triumphs. They played out before me, without color or life. Sound or texture or taste. Each faded away, into nothing. Just as I was. My legs faded, as if erased. My arms became transparent ash. My armor and lower torso were pulled apart, joining everything else in nothing.

And I didn't care.

My hopes and desires were the last threads to be unraveled. The final echos of me. The idea—the hope—of finding a home. Of finding something boring to call a hobby. Of having a normal life. Of family, friends, to live life with. That house, on that planet, with her.

That thing inside me began to grow hot.

Those… Those were…

"Shh… It's time. Let them go. Let her go."

… Mine.

Inside me, deep into my very being, the Voice echoed again, "One chance. Seize it."

I reached out in mind, in body, in spirit… And grabbed my memories.

Inside me, a voice resounded within my skull, "YES."

I snapped back into being, my limbs and body regaining substance. Feeling. Existence. My mind whirled back to life, my chest burning with rage. A deep fury, going down to the very depths of my soul.

Arcee leaped back, tentacles and claws fleeing from me. "No. You could not have—"

"I don't belong to you."

My own words were set alight, countering the oppressing, infinite cold all around me. Suddenly I was standing up, looking straight into the Darkness of Arcee's eyes and heart. Seeing beyond it, to the thing that had taken her.

"Take the world," I said, my voice echoing back at me, bigger, greater—more—than before. "Take all that's in it. I don't care."

"You should not be able to—"

"Take my failures and regrets. Take my pain. Take my tears. I don't need them. All I need is my hope. Not because this will miraculously end well, but because it will haunt you. Nag at you. Cut deeper than any blade, or bullet, or word. Kill me. Destroy everything. But do it knowing you couldn't have what's mine. Not again."

Fire appeared around me, dark and foreboding, yet blinding all the same. It curled and twisted around me, its touch altering. I felt parts of my body shift, growing larger. Sharper. Stronger. Soon, I stood taller than she, looking down instead of up. The metal shards orbiting my frame grew with me and changed shape, becoming a thousand, flaming, tetrahedrons with sharp edges, spinning in the air. Cracks appeared across my frame, glowing with iridescent Light, even as Darkness swirled around their edges. Some were shaped like runes, letters, or words in Primic, bright as the Darkness was dark.

And still the fire grew. A whirling, unstable mass of anti-flame that was ignored by that which devoured all things. It did not bend to its gravity. Did not yield to its oppression. It wasn't Light, and it wasn't the Darkness. A hybrid of both, instead.

And it came from me.

Something—the Strength-Without-Me, but with me, at the same time—was pleased about that.

"You…" Arcee's voice rumbled, echoing far more than my own, if only due to the others that hid within her. Every echo held the same tone at once. "You landed on the Edge…"

"I don't know what that means. I don't care to."

"Xel'Tors don't land on the Edge. You are one or the other. Never both! You cannot be the Outsider!"

"I. Don't. CARE!"

I sprung forward with more speed, more ferocity, than I had any right producing. Her tentacles swung at me, each one faster than sound, but not obeying its Laws.

My tetrahedrons batted them away, and I kept coming, pushing her away from my catatonic friends, who remained motionless. I swung fists consumed by fire of both Darkness and Light, each strike sending out a wild line of flame through the air she'd just occupied, crashing into the ground and cutting deep into the Earth, setting it ablaze.

She avoided my hands without effort, spinning, dancing out of my reach. Countering with her own, too-fast attacks, which my tetrahedrons kept brushing off. Kept catching before they could connect with me, their fire melting her scythes and allowing me to press my own attack.

Until she sacrificed five tentacles to hide one. One that made it through the tetrahedrons and connected with my chest.

I felt breath leave me. Felt it rip my body apart on the inside. Felt it eat away at me, even as the fire—in contrast—made me whole. Constantly rebuilding me. Making me anew. Neither the fire nor the tentacle hurt, like they were supposed to.

For the first time, I felt her pause.

I used that moment to land a blow to the side of her head.

The Darkness around her face shielded her from the strike, nullifying the Light and the Darkness fueling the attack. Keeping the fire from spreading from my fist to her face.

It didn't stop that fire from condensing down into a tiny, tiny ball, floating in front of my fist, humming with a quick, sudden violence. She looked at it.

A great THUUUMM sounded out as the Light and Darkness detonated together, exploding in a myriad of colors and reverse color. Arcee was sent flying down the street, through the horror that had been Jasper, Nevada, and went crashing into a line of buildings. The line collapsed at her passing, throwing ash and dust and bodies into the air, coloring the sky something other than the total, all-consuming black of the Darkness.

I was standing there, alone, bleeding from wounds that rapidly shut. Holding out a fist covered in glowing runes. That fist audibly crackled, drowning out the ever-present Drum, and opalescent smoke rose from it and vanished into the air. The ground was scorched and burning in a line on her trajectory, clearing it of debris. Blood. Bodies. But not their souls.

I could… Feel those. The lingering cries of mothers, trying to shield their children. The terror of fathers, helpless to save those they loved. The fruitless brave, who faced their ends with defiant shouts. The betrayed, who only wished to understand. The dread of innocent passersby, trying to get away. Trying to run. Flee the scourge that descended upon them.

Sight.

There was no pain this time. Surrounding me, the Darkness grew more pronounced. More total. But what Light—what Life—remained, became blinding.

I saw them then. The souls of the dead. Human, Cybertronian, and others—far too many to count. They stood as they had in Life, glowing in the Darkness, a collection of blue-white figures that shimmered with supernatural fire. Their faces were without pain. Without worry. Without fear.

And they all looked at me.

They ignored the Darkness. The sky. The Titan. Faced me instead, their glowing eyes expectant. Challenging. Weighing me.

"So Stands our Xel'Tor."

Their voices were legion. Endless and without restriction. United in a single purpose. I'd heard them before.

I turned back, toward my friends. None had moved during the fight, yet they looked—felt—damaged. I moved to them, and saw the Darkness closing in. Covering them in a thin coat of beyond-vantablack essence that moved over them, digging into their armor. Their circuits. Their eyes.

It was eating them. Or, it was trying to; looking closer, while it dug, there was a point it did not exceed. Where it struggled. Leaving the outershell devoured, but their cores intact.

Why?

"Fight this," I said, my voice still bigger, greater, than me. "Fight this. Remember. Embrace who you are, flaws and all."

They remained standing there, vacant. Unmoved. Covered in Darkness.

"FIGHT!" I bellowed, my voice echoing in the dark, yet so very small in comparison, as I stalked up and down their lines, screaming in their faces. "You don't need to be perfect to be good! Be enough! Be YOU!"

None of them moved.

Behind them, the souls watched us with indiscernible, etheric gazes. "Redemption arrives at the most unexpected Times."

I watched them, meeting their old, old eyes. Feeling oddly comforted by their words. Certain about… Something.

Above me, the Titan shifted.

It was a tangible thing, the sheer weight of It's gaze. When It moved, I felt lighter. More focused. I looked up at It, and found It gazing into the black sky. Into the Darkness that was quickly enveloping the world itself. Despite the Strength-With-Me, looking directly at It was agonizing. A violation no mortal or immortal should commit. And in spite of It's focus being something in the Darkness above, not even Sight could pierce the clouds, so thick and total had they become.

That made the arrival of a tiny speck of Light all the more surprising.

Until that speck was vastly outclassed by the white star that appeared in the sky.

It came suddenly, so bright, so powerful, that the Darkness waned against it. Pulled back, to reveal the star's shape. A long, beautiful cylinder of glowing, fiery metal, with wide wings at its sides and a mouth of flame and Light.

The Infinite Reverence, in all its glory. And it wasn't alone. Within a second of its appearance, thousands and thousands—perhaps millions—of smaller, lesser clones deployed from its surface, racing out in all directions—shifting, expanding, and multiplying as they went. In mere seconds, they had become the sky. The stars. A mini Dyson swarm of warships, each one powerful enough to end worlds in their own right. Many other cloned ships shot forward and met tendrils of Darkness that, until then, I hadn't seen, amongst the rest of the dark. Dark shapes followed the Reverence clones, tiny and cloaked in Darkness. Had the Titan…?

The Reverence's presence made It growl. A soundless sound that shook the world, cracking it. Breaking it. Bringing forth even more Darkness. More lightless clouds and mist.

Still, the Reverence and its swarm shone in the black, even as the Darkness rose to smother it and its cohort. Wrap around and crush them, before the ship and the fleet could hope to engage It.

It was then that the first speck of Light—the small one—grew more prominent. Larger. Coming right for Jasper. Closer and closer it came, then became a coherent shape. A stealth aircraft.

The aircraft transformed and landed, heavily, on the ground nearby, just outside my vortex of flames, their landing throwing debris in the air.

The mech that appeared from that cloud was tall, though shorter than I now stood, with long limbs and a slighter build. He was dark blue in appearance, every angle, every part of him, reflecting his alt-mode. I'd seen him in person once before. A lesser, weaker version of the mech that now stood before me, gazing at me from behind a visor that betrayed no emotions, optics, or face.

The fact he was glowing with blue Light wasn't lost on me.

Redemption arrives at the most unexpected Times.

"Soundwave," I said, my voice echoing in the Dark.

"...Autobot?" He returned, his own voice bigger, more, than I'd heard before. He sounded uncertain.

"You are of the Council."

He said nothing in return.

Behind him, things began to move. Shapes without shape. Figures without color. Fragments of the Darkness itself, seeping up from the ground. Forming atop, aside, or inside one another, in layers thousands deep.

The Dead between us and them turned their heads as one, away from me.

I looked with them, and from the debris and ash and dust from the collapsing buildings, she came again.

"Protect them," I said to Soundwave, nodding to my motionless friends. "They're like us, but they must Awaken."

I felt him glare. "Soundwave superior. Autobots inferior."

"There's no more Decepticons and Autobots. Just those who aren't dead yet. Go. This fight is mine."

He stared, but moved away, leaving me to advance toward not-Arcee.

On the way, the Dead spoke again, "So Comes our Ruin."

"They speak something new. How remarkable." A flick of her claw, and the souls vanished from me. But Sight remained, cutting through the veil of Darkness that surrounded Not-Arcee and the twisted beauty she possessed, leaving behind only the ugly. Only the terror. "They are wrong, Zechariah. You are no Xel'Tor. Not when you stand on the Edge."

"Maybe not," I said, the words only partially my own. Driven by something I couldn't grasp. Couldn't feel, beyond an embrace in my chest, warm and comforting. "But I'm done cowering. Fleeing. Being crippled simply because I stand before something greater than I am."

"You aren't enough."

I held out my hand, and the Omni Saber folded out from one of the floating tetrahedrons and landed in my fingers. It was darker than dark, its surface feeding off a tiny tendril of my Light and Darkness. "Assuredly not. Yet, here I am. At the end, where I'm still me."

Around us, the Fragments stood, creating wild, unruly ranks that multiplied by the second, standing on the shoulders of those before them. They seemed to stretch into Infinity itself. There were so many…

"Primus has already won," she said, her voices cutting through the masses. "Your resistance is pointless. You have but one Shard."

The something took hold, reminding me of a truth. I grabbed the Omni Saber with my other hand, then pulled.

Repeat.

The Shard flashed, then broke in two. Each half was misshapen. Imperfect. Like their wielder. My Darkness and Light swirled around them, joining with the fire that still encircled me, pushing against It's presence without faltering.

For the second time, she paused.

Above, It rumbled, and a light from the Reverence began to break through the Darkness. Around us, the Fragments began their charge, their movements frenzied and wild. Hateful. Most went into the sky, toward the Reverence, their numbers darkening the already-black air. Legions remained below. More numerous than all the ants in the world.

"I ammy Shard," I said, more certain of anything than I'd ever been. At peace with some part of me that, until then, I'd been fighting. Unbothered, even as the Fragments closed in with claw and teeth. "Until I Fall forever, I will remain. I will fight. And as for your offer to let them go, to let her go—"

Her scythes shot forward, extending far beyond their previous lengths and speed, all aimed straight for my chest and head.

The air broke and unfolded. Turned in and out on itself. Fractured and rotated, fragments reflecting back on themselves. A microcosm of Infinity itself. Her scythes traveled through it, the mirrored nature of the dark air multiplying their numbers and size. Appearing, for all intents and purposes, to be an extension of the Titan behind her, reaching out to rend me into a trillion parts.

Then as quickly as it unfolded, the air folded back. And the space bridge collapsed.

I was behind her when it did.

She spun, fast as thought, and I blocked her claw with one of the Omni Sabers, its edge cutting into her hand.

My eyes met her vortexes. Then I spoke what I was prepared to be my final words: "I say go FUCK yourself."

I couldn't see her face, her eyes, but the Darkness—the Fragments—shifted into a smile.

Then the light from above pulsed, a beam firing into the Earth.

It lit our way, as our dance began in earnest.

---

They found his soldiers a third of a light-year out from the system, banged up, frightened, but otherwise well.

Lockdown knew better than to wonder what happened to the few he found missing.

"I'm sorry, sir," Malix said, when Lockdown told Unicron to space bridge the mech to him. "I… I failed. Nothing I did made a difference. He… He…"

"I'm aware," Lockdown said, adjusting a control on one of the bridge panels. "Unicron tends to be a bit beyond everyone."

He felt the mech's shock. Fear. Anger. "U-Unicron, sir?"

"I don't recall misspeaking."

"This ship is Unicron, sir?"

"Hmm. Yes and no. But there's no time for that. I need you and your best down in the fabrication centers. I'm expecting to be boarded and I need an army based on those who are dependable."

"I… We're inside Unicron?"

"And we're trying to kill Primus. Again. Keep up, boy." Lockdown snapped a digit, and Malix vanished in a faint flash. "Tell me He isn't free yet."

"HE REMAINS CONTAINED," Unicron said, his voice booming. "BUT HIS RETURN IS IMMINENT. OUR PRESENCE WILL NOT STOP HIM."

He was still working on that. "How many star drones can you create in the next fifteen klicks?"

"I AM THE MASTER OF IMAGES. THERE IS NO END TO MY LEGIONS."

"Yeah, well, your big brother has something to say about that these days. How many?"

He felt the old god's offense. He didn't care. "AS WE WASTE WORDS, SWARMS OF MILLIONS ARE BEING FORGED AND DEPLOYED."

That was something. Child's play for the End-Of-All-Things, but something. "And that army based on my best?"

"ONCE YOUR WARRIORS STEP ON THE RING, BILLIONS WILL FOLLOW."

That would have to do. "Get them ready and give them some big guns. We need to contain the planet even as He tries to break out. If we don't…"

"DO NOT EXPLAIN WHAT LIES AT STAKE, BEARER! I FOUGHT THIS WAR BEFORE THE COUNCIL EXISTED."

"Then let's hope it doesn't end the same way. Tell me when those drones are ready. I need to prepare myself."

"THERE IS SOMETHING ELSE," Unicron boomed, before Lockdown could step away.

"Hmm?"

"THE XEL'TOR IS AWAKE."

Lockdown shook his helm. "I was aware of that already. He's active, but he hasn't moved—"

"HIS PATH HAS PROGRESSED."

Lockdown groaned. "Oh for the love of… Figures he chooses the worst possible time to finally show up. He couldn't have figured it out just two—"

"HE IS ALSO… ON THE EDGE."

That… He… Oh shit. That was bad. That was really, really bad. Last cycle was bad enough. For this one to not only fail to contain Primus, fail to see Strength's Lie, but the Xel'Tor to—

Lockdown stopped.

The Xel'Tor had a Conjunx Endura.

Not in reality; they weren't bonded, according to Intelligence. Nor did it matter. Xel'Tors weren't supposed to have Conjunxes. The fact he did, and that it was her…

A plan began to form. A wild, impossible plan so far beyond insane, it may just have had a chance. It would require stupidity, precision, flat-out ridiculous timing, and a hefty dose of good fortune from Fate itself, but it… Could work.

Yeah… Yeah, he could work with that.

"Change of plans," he said. "Ready all drones for offensive operations. We're going planetside."

Unicron's avatar appeared before him, wide as the bridge. "WHAT MADNESS HAS POSSESSED YOU, BEARER?!"

"Desperation," he said. "There's only one way this ends without Him getting out and destroying all Creation."

"DIRECT ENGAGEMENT IS HOPELESS," Unicron boomed. "IF YOU STEP FOOT ON THAT DOOMED WORLD, YOUR FATE IS SEALED."

"And if we don't, that world's Fate becomes ours anyway."

"HE WILL TEAR US APART."

"Well, it's good that you're about to give Him a few billion targets, then."

Unicron's avatar scowled, the action prompting millions of holographic parts to shift to display his expression. "BILLIONS WILL NOT BE ENOUGH."

"Then get creative. Your Bearer demands it."

The old god rumbled, the bridge lights flickering in response. "AS YOU COMMAND, BEARER."

"Let's get that army ready to—"

Lockdown stopped to reorient himself. He wasn't on the bridge anymore, but a platform in an immense room, wider than the Infinite Reference was long from the outside, and just as tall and long. Thousands of bright, floating machines sat idle, their presence ominous as they hovered in place, waiting. Just before him, there was a ring on the floor, roughly twice his height in diameter. It hummed with power. Behind him, Malix and two of his other soldiers stood, looking confused. A moment ago, they would have been standing where Lockdown now was.

Lockdown put it together soon enough. "You want Images of me."

"YOUR CHOSEN REPRESENTATIVES ARE… LACKING. IF YOU WISH TO BRING THE FIGHT TO HIM, YOU WILL NEED MORE THAN THEY CAN OFFER."

He was afraid Unicron would say that. "His Lies won't fool my optics anymore, if I do this."

"NO."

"That's going to accelerate things."

"FAR LESS THAN THE XEL'TOR ALREADY HAS."

That was true. Still… There was no going back from this. No other plans. No tactical retreat. Just him and the exposure of one of the many secrets he carried, meant to never to be seen.

Such was the life of the Bearer.

"Do it," he said.

"REVEAL YOURSELF, BEARER."

Lockdown hesitated, the old habit dying hard. "Is this necessary?"

"IF I AM TO BREAK HIS LINES, IT IS THE ONLY WAY."

Lockdown sighed heavily. "Fine. If I must."

He Summoned, and the lights went out. Darkness crept in. Cold. Slithering. Total. Warping and devouring light. Making flee reality and life itself.

It was his.

In it, Lockdown saw everything. All his soldiers in the room, confused and frightened. Small. All the Light that fled his presence, seeking shelter from its destruction and horror. All his sins played before him again and again. All the deeds he'd done to gain power. All deals he'd made to achieve his goals. All the Voices, rightfully accusing him. All the mud he wallowed in so that others would stay clean.

All the lives he'd taken, before their Time. Such was the burden of Immorality.

"CEASE, BEARER," Unicron rumbled. "YOUR TASK IS DONE."

As always, he felt the temptation to let it continue. To swallow him. Alter him. Turn him into more. Someone great. Beyond the comprehension of mere mortal minds and imaginations.

He ignored it, as always.

Life and light returned to the room, their presence harsh and blazing in comparison to his Darkness. His visions lingered for a moment more, playing before his eyes. A tower. A mansion. A flash of lightning. And a scream. Primus, but it had been a scream…

"... Sir…?"

Visions still appearing in his head, he turned to Malix and the other soldiers with him. They looked horrified.

"What?" Lockdown asked. "Did you think someone like me was good enough for Light? Get back to the others. This will be beyond you all."

"What will, sir?" Malix asked, his tone delicate. As if afraid that if he moved, Lockdown would strike him down. It was a justified fear; the Darkness within Lockdown told him to.

Instead, Lockdown looked out across the room, to the machines that began to move at speeds blinding and dizzying even to his optics. To the dark, familiar forms rapidly appearing everywhere he looked.

Images of himself, cloaked in his Darkness.

At last, he answered Malix's inquiry: "The end, Malix. And the beginning."

---

The world was fire and ash and chaos.

Above, the Reverence's cleansing beam fired into Earth, into the Titan. Into It. Airborn Fragments of the Titan clashed with the Reverence's clones by the millions. Billions. Choking the sky with ruins of ships miles in length, or the beyond-black remains of too many Fragments to count.

The air crackled with heat and glowed with falling, too-bright ashes. The ground shook, swayed, rolled, and rose as if a sea in a tempest, its surface scracking and glowing with fire and liquified stone, as the air burned. Even so, every free inch of ground was occupied by a formless Fragment, as dark and terrifying as any nightmare, yet nothing compared to the Titan above, fighting the Reverence.

And still, the Drum played in my mind. And before me, she remained unphased.

With every swing of my blades, waves of Light and Darkness shot forth, cleaving ground and sky alike. With every step, the earth cracked and the air shook. Fragments burned and fell. But for every bridge I used to flank, she dashed aside, faster than anything should be. For every wave of Light and Darkness, set met it with ice and steel from the Void itself. For every fire, there was a smothering wind, snuffing it out again and again. For every Light, she found Darkness to hide. For every thought, she was three ahead.

So back and forth we went. Slashing, punching, stabbing, shooting, shouting. Her, a phantom cloaked in death; me, a flaming beacon in the dark, fighting to stay lit against not only her scythes, her claws, but the Fragments who swarmed me in her name. Neither she nor I able to gain the advantage. Neither willing to stop.

Neither, able to.

She caught my Shards with her hands, and I felt her smile at me through the Darkness. "Why do you still try?" Her voice was perverted music, twisted and foul. Amused. "You are on the Edge… You could join us."

Hundreds of thousands of Fragments swarmed us. A thought, and my tetrahedrons—born from my Shard, from me—shot forth, spinning and tearing through them, felling half in the blink of an eye and enforcing a perimeter around she and I. "There is one whom could convince me," I said. "You are not her."

"Oh, but I am."

She vanished, and in her stead, more Fragments of It came forth, too many to count.

A thought, and my burning tetrahedrons shifted in an instant, becoming cannons. Each more powerful than my Nucleon by an order of magnitude. They fired, every shot enough to turn stone to glass and banish both the Light and Darkness, if only for a moment. The Fragments burst into veiled ash, dark and oily, joining the piles that covered the battlefield, most taller than I was.

"Think of what we could do together" she mocked, voice echoing forward and back, right at my audio, as I felt her scythes rise.

I space bridged right, avoiding her strike, and fired more shots into the horde. More Fragments came, clawing through the dying ground to attack me. Relieve me of my pointless existence.

I set my cannons out in a dome around myself, firing in all directions, each shot rumbling and shaking the ground with rattling BOOMs. I kept their aim away from where my Autobots stood, helpless; Soundwave protected them. Used his own, Light-infused weaponry with deadly competence, launching waves of Light at the horde in the shape of his namesake. He was fast. Fast enough that something—somewhere—felt proud. I wasn't sure what.

Distant Fragments formed together into giant, oozing globs of Darkness. Those globs rose into thousands of miniature versions of the Titan, each one ten times Grimlock's height. They charged me, as I fought their smaller, unrelenting clones.

Heat built up in my chest, spreading to the rest of my body. It was alien, but natural. Something that belonged to me. A power that was equal parts frightening and intoxicating.

I glanced at them. Raised my hand, then a finger. Thought:

Disintegrate.

A bolt of my Darkness and Light shot forth from my outstretched digit, instantly hitting the first of the Giants.

A ball of fire and anti-fire burst from its chest, blinding in its luminosity and tossing near-liquid earth and Fragments alike. The shockwave knocked others over, and those closest to me stumbled, just before falling to my tetrahedron cannons.

When the fire died, the Giants were gone.

"Do you not grasp the significance of this?"

I spun, searching the horde, even as my tetrahedron cannons kept them at bay. There was no sign of her. Just the echo of her voice, resounding in eleven different ways through the masses.

"You have a Conjunx Endura," she said, when I didn't answer. "Another half, whom your soul could be bound to. Intertwined. Made stronger. More powerful. We could consume universes together… Like our Lord…"

Truth.

The Darkness gave way, as if torn asunder by hands larger than the Titan itself. Tossed to the side by the unrelenting gales of Life, refusing to die. It exposed her form, among the horde, hidden even from Sight.

For the third time, she paused.

"You aren't my type."

A great HHHRRRMMM sounded out as my cannons became beams of iridescent Light and Darkness, every one of them powerful enough to cut deep into the earth and melt rock and stone on contact.

All of them missed.

I made another dome as soon as I realized she'd vanished and kept firing, expending enough energy every second to power nations for years and decades. Cut through reality, if I so wished. Felling Fragments by the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. Creating hills, mountains from their ashes, before being torn down by Fragments beyond.

And still, I felt nothing hit her.

"So much power," her voice echoed directionlessly, the words almost musical in nature. Dripping with mockery. "So much strength. How do you have so much, yet still can't grasp WHO YOU FACE?!"

From the horde, and the Darkness, something new came forth. A swarm of shapeless things in the air, smaller than Fragments. They flew faster than any aircraft or weapon, yet were soundless. Instantly, they were positioned around me, in a massive dome that smothered my own.

They fired.

Beams of absolute darkness—deeper than any other, save the Titan's—shot forth, directly at me. My tetrahedrons redirected their own beams into theirs, stopping them just short of me. The clash between the two, vastly different beams created constant explosions, both bright and blinding, and absent of light.

It was then I realized, in the light of those explosions, that the swarm wasn't shapeless. They had shape. A mass of triangular pyramids, floating in the air.

They were clones of my tetrahedrons.

She was upon me as soon as I made that revelation, heedless of my fire, for there now was a vortex around her. A tempest of Darkness, hiding her from sight and sapping me of strength, for the mere offense of gazing upon it. From that tempest, she lashed out with swords. Cruel, wicked-looking things of light-absorbing black.

Twisted copies, I realized, of my Omni Sabers.

Somehow, she was even faster than before. Brutal and precise. The Strength-With-Me helped me see. Helped me move. React.

It wasn't enough.

She was everywhere at once, using my own fighting style. My own movements. My own strength. Only better. With greater ferocity and fluidity. She slashed me with blade and tentacle both, breaking through my defenses at will. Cutting me across the arms. The legs. The chest. Yet never enough to kill. Never enough to keep me from fighting. Only to cause me pain. To numb my fire with cold. To show me.

Remind me that, for all my own power, my new strength, our fight—our dance—was happening because she allowed it.

"Finally, you realize," she said, the tones of her voice twisted. "I am Strength and Power. I am all forms of might, capacity, control."

She stabbed me deeply in my biceps, forcing me to drop my arms and my Shards, which vanished. She leaned in close, clawed hands still on her swords. I felt her smile, though it was lost in her vortex. "Which means that all of your power, all of your strength, your will… Belongs to ME."

From one of her tentacles, her Darkness concentrated down into a tiny, finite ball, right in front of me. Like my Darkness and Light had.

I had time to look at it before it detonated.

The next thing I knew, I was gasping awake in a place of blinding light.

"Oh, Primus; it's awake! Run!"

The voice registered in the back of my head. The light ceased its blinding, and my surroundings became clear. I was back in the base, lying against a wall near the workstation in the main room, my tetrahedrons present, but in lesser numbers than they should have been. Twitch was shaking next to me, looking horrified, and above me, Grimlock loomed, dark and angry.

All that, though, took a backseat to the debris surrounding me. The massive hole in the wall, allowing black mist into the room. The long, glowing mark in the floor, where the metal was cooling from its melting point.

And the fact I was glowing, too. Not from Light or Darkness, but heat.

I… I'd made that wall in the hole. Hole in the wall. God, my head. And my chest. Legs; everything. Had… She launched me multiple miles? Through more than two football fields of—

Like waking from a dream, urgency rushed through me again.

"I wouldn't use that name," I said to Twitch, rising up from the floor, wincing as I did. There were parts inside me that were broken; I could feel that. "Mythology mixed up deities."

He flinched away from me, frightened. "Just… Don't hurt me! I'm too young to be offlined! Take the big one instead!"

How was he… Wait. Why was he more afraid of me instead of what was happening outside? And how were the lights still on? I looked at him, then the hole in the wall. It emitted mist, but nothing else. No feeling of dread, least no stronger than it had been, when I left. There was no other Darkness. No Drums. No Fragments. No Not-Arcee. No clones of the Reverence.

Why?

Beside me, I felt Grimlock's gaze, intense and furious, as always. In my new form, he wasn't as tall. Still near twice my height, but now a mere giant, instead of a titan in his own right.

Around him, barely visible even with Sight, he had an aura. A deep, angry red. A Hue of Rage. Of Violence. Restrained desire for war.

"Do you know what's out there?" I asked, without looking at the Dinobot. "The greatest foe the universe has ever known, or ever will. A figure of myth and legend, come to life. Darkness incarnate, coming for us all. It is on the verge of winning. There is one other out there, fighting. I hope. We need help."

I willed my Omni Saber to appear, then Split it once more. Then I stabbed it into the floor, in front of Grimlock, and instructed it to shift into a larger weapon. When it was done, it was taller than I now was. Bigger, even, than the sword Grimlock had wielded before it was broken.

His furious optics gazed down at me. Unmoved, yet seeking all the same. His huge fists shaking with anger and eagerness; I saw it, as I saw Twitch's fear, with Sight.

He wanted my sword.

He grasped its hilt, and I felt it react. Felt its desire to turn to dust, instead of allow an unworthy hand to wield it; a hand that wasn't my own. I willed it to remain. Worth was subjective to circumstance. And at this point, I could imagine few others more able to bring slaughter than Grimlock.

He swung the sword once, then twice, testing its weight. His eyes flicked to me. I could see the excitement in him. The hunger for a fight.

I was glad to oblige.

"Just make sure to bring it back in one piece."

He growled, black smoke pouring from around his mask, his horns flashing a deep crimson.

Then he roared. Then he pulsed with Light. Then he rushed the tunnel, moving far faster than anyone his size had any right to move.

In the corner, spectral forms appeared, glowing blue. "Heed Anger's Roar…" They said. "Our Ruin lives."

"Twitch," I said, ignoring the Dead. "Is everyone still alive?"

He scampered to the workstation—damaged from what, assuredly, had been my hypersonic entry, but still functional—and brought up a different screen. "Most, yeah," he said, voice shaking, along with his hands. He was still afraid of me. "Two are… Gone…"

She didn't kill them when she had the chance. Why? Was Soundwave that powerful? No. No. That wasn't it; she could copy and use power. She'd done that to me, she could do it to Soundwave, too. What did she gain by leaving them be? What stayed her hand—

The Darkness hadn't been able to consume them.

That meant something. Why? What?

Irrelevant. Something was special about this place. Special about my friends, out there and catatonic. Kept the Darkness away—or restrained it—when nothing else could. In the case of the base, it had to be powerful, for the Darkness was unstoppable. Unknowable. Without hesitation or mercy. That narrowed down what it could be.

In fact, it left just one option.

"A moment," I said, and bridged myself to a certain storage hangar on base. Containers were everywhere, large and small. Coated in a thin layer of dust from disuse.

One in particular held my attention.

I raised a hand toward its doors, and thought: Tear.

The doors were tossed aside, torn from their heavy mountings and revealing what they hid. A machine, holding in place an object that already floated, already contained itself.

The Delphic. The White Emitter. Whatever that meant.

Come.

The White Emitter burst from its duraglass prison, coming to rest in my outstretched hand. Its touch was warm and comforting. Nostalgic. As if the Emitter contained not… Whatever it contained, but the concept of love, shrunk down and stored for all eternity in a nigh-indestructible shell.

It was, without a doubt in my mind, what kept the base from falling fully under It's Darkness. What kept Not-Arcee from following me and finishing me off. From Twitch going insane, and Grimlock from being attacked. It reminded me of—

Ah. So that was why the Darkness wasn't eating them.

"Vok," I said, aloud. Certain The Being could hear me, somehow. "You told me at our parting that I adapt to Acceleration under the right circumstances. I hope that talent applies to what I have in mind.

And if it does not, well… I pray I make a really big boom."

---

"THE XEL'TOR IS ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARILY FOOLISH."

"That right?" Lockdown asked the old god, watching the battle from the Reverence's bridge. Even for him, it was difficult to tell who was winning and who was about to be winning; the tide shifted every micro-klick. But something in his gut said He was toying with them. "And what else is our illustrious Xel'Tor about to unleash?"

"AN EMITTER HAS ENTERED THE FIELD OF BATTLE."

Lockdown went still. "He's doing what?"

The bridge altered its view of the fight, going down into the heart of the conflict, not fifty kilometers from the epicenter of the Reverence's Erasure Beam. The surface was covered with Fragments, as the rest of the planet now was. A mass of Images so dense, they practically replaced the Earth's surface.

But in the middle of that ever-shifting mass of Darkness—in a zone where the Fragments had been held at bay, and the planet's true surface was still visible, though molten and destroyed—a tiny light appeared. Brighter than the Light than could typically be Summoned.

Oh shit.

Lockdown pulled his bow from his backplates. "Get me down there."

"THERE WILL BE BUT ONLY ONE OPPORTUNITY FOR A PLANET-SIDE INCURSION," Unicron said. "IF I DO WHAT YOU COMMAND, THERE WILL BE NO REINFORCEMENTS."

"And if we don't get down there, the Xel'Tor will hand Him the secrets to the one thing that can contain Him." He looked at an alert to the side of the bridge window. It displayed a ship, or part of a ship, completely consumed by Darkness. "What's that incoming vessel?"

"I HAVE TRACKED IT SINCE OUR BATTLE BEGAN. HE IS BRINGING DOMINION TO HIM. PREPARE YOURSELF, BEARER. YOUR TIME TO ACT IS SEVERELY LIMITED."

"Like I had a lot of time to spare."

Lockdown took his bow from his backplates and Summoned, letting his Darkness surround him. The lights went out, and his bow had changed. Grown larger, wicked. Dangerous. A vortex had replaced the arrow he'd nocked, swirling and ripping apart light at its miniature accretion disc. "Ready," he said.

"GOODBYE, BEARER."

Space and time were torn and ripped apart, then reformed. Lockdown was no longer on the bridge. No longer on the Reverence. Around him, below him, and above him, there were Fragments. Faceless, shapeless Images of Him. Just as angry, hateful, and desiring of all things to die.

They swarmed at him.

Then Lockdown's Images swarmed them.

They arrived in an endless wave, centered on Lockdown himself. Millions met millions, and Darkness flew. Tore. Smothered. Absorbed. The air filled with distorted screams of rage, violence, and agony. Thousands and thousands of his Images fell every moment, the Darkness abandoning them and leaving behind their twisted, mangled bodies.

None of them were left with a face.

Lockdown used his own Darkness as cover to muddy—not stop—the sight of the near-omnipotent master of the Fragments, whose presence Lockdown felt down in the dark, dark flickering remnant of his soul. That momentary obscuring allowed him to weave his way through the chaos, running, Summoning, and shooting through the masses with shockingly little resistance, as his own Images acted as decoys.

He opened a channel. "Orophona," he said, launching a vortex and felling a line of Fragments.

"Sir?" She answered. "What's going on down on Earth? All signals are—"

"No time. I'm about to transmit the emergency code for KHIONE to you. When I tell you, activate it on an open frequency. Maximum strength. I've attached the authorization you need."

"I don't understand, sir. What are you—"

Lockdown cut her off and continued fighting. Running. Summoning. He moved for the clearing he knew was there. He had to reach it. If he didn't get to the Xel'Tor before—

There was a blast. A flash of white so powerful, so bright, it blinded even him. After it, there was an intense calm. A burst of peace, so tranquil, so strong, Lockdown's mind drifted to simpler times. To the fields. To the herds.

Then the shockwave hit him.

And things got complicated.

---

I bridged myself back to the main room.

"GAH!" Twitch screamed, diving beneath the workstation. "Oh, pedes! Ow!"

"I am taking this with me," I told him, in what I tried to keep a smaller, quieter voice. It still boomed up and down the main room's silo. "When it leaves, the Darkness will take its place."

"I don't know what that means!" His hands gestured wildly, his visor flashing. "Everything's dark compared to that thing! What even is it?!"

"One last chance," I said, aware I was being vague, but having no time to explain. "The only one we all get right now."

"Okay?! So what?!"

"I don't know what will happen, when I leave. But leave I must. Just remember, if the Darkness comes for you… Remember that's okay you're not perfect."

I bridged again, before waiting for his response.

The battlefield was mayhem.

In all directions, there were Fragments, clashing with the mini Reverence's in the sky or rushing by me, on the way to where I believed—hoped—Soundwave still fought. The air had grown hotter and colder still, clouds appearing and birthing tempests that lived for mere moments, before being blown away by the rolling, molten ground. The vast array of weapons being fired into the planet. The ongoing shockwaves of the Reverence's beam, firing into the Titan and It's Darkness.

The second I entered the field, things shifted. Fragments turned their attention to me, rushing forward with non-verbal screeches. That weight of the Titan hit me in full force, willing me to be nothing.

And she appeared.

There was no flash. No sound. No warning. She simply appeared in front of me, warping and destroying light. Wrapped in Darkness that could not be pierced, even by Sight. Her own tetrahedrons keeping mine from destroying her.

"He lives still." She purred, the tones of her voice hollow and mocking. "How… Pleasing. What is this you bring me?"

I glanced to the side, into the infinite horde around us. There were two locations they were swarming. One involved bands—waves—of crimson Light. Grimlock, no doubt. The other had a mountain of Fragments already, climbing the ashes of their slain. Beyond them, I saw the tops of other waves. Transparent, purple-blue Light, vaporizing everything in their wake. Soundwave. Which meant the others were—

My head went numb, as a claw traced my cheek. "Is it a gift? For me? For our Lord? Or are you trying to be… Heroic?"

I couldn't see. I needed to make a path through that mountain. But I needed time for that. I turned my head back to her. Gazed deep into her vortexes. I held the Delphic up, and—just barely—I saw one of her tentacles flinch.

"This is an Emitter," I said, as if she were a stranger. As if the monster in front of me weren't Arcee underneath. Wasn't the one with me, from the start, and didn't know what I held. I needed more time. "It is… Vast."

"You are trying to be heroic." She chuckled, the sound deep and echoing. Chilling, despite my conviction, now that I had a taste of what she was capable of. "I thought it was clear already: you're outmatched."

"You're right about that," I said, forcing myself to remain resolute. To not think about what I was doing. "I am weak in comparison. I don't know what I'm doing. Why I'm doing it. What it means that I can. I know for fact, I cannot hope to defeat you—especially not all of you."

Her head turned to an unnerving angle, going beyond the point her neck should have snapped. "You Understand, yet you don't. What pointless resistance are you attempting?"

No. She couldn't know yet. "The Emitters are unknown to me," I said, keeping my focus locked on her. "They are old, and known, to the Higher Powers. They possess energy at levels that are hard to measure or otherwise quantify."

"The grandest quasars are but dim lights in comparison. They are each universes. Finite yet Infinite. They are your greatest tool, your mightiest sword, your final bastion of Hope." I felt her smile, the Darkness shimmering with her gesture. "And you thought to bring it against me? Did you not understand the lesson I taught you? You can't use any form of power against Power."

I risked a glance left, to the mountain of dead Fragments, and the lone tetrahedron I had tasked. It was close. Very close. But not there yet.

"What is it you're trying to do…?"

I'd taken too long. I bridged between her and my tetrahedron, hoping—praying—I blocked her sight. Just a few seconds… "I am considering your grandeur," I said. "And your limitations."

"I have no limitations."

"But you do. All things do, save those who clash above us. You are not the first to serve Him, yet you speak as if the Emitters have never been on a field of battle. Never faced you."

"Because none were foolish enough to bring them in the open. What are you hiding?"

Her vortex shifted, and I bridged again, this time right in front of my tetrahedron. Near me, Fragments burned and turned to ash, or shied away from the blinding brilliance of the Delphic in my hand. "Yes, I realized that, too," I said, to her words. "That made me realize something else: There are powers, objects, out there that even you can't counter."

She didn't refute that.

"You can't counter them, because they are initially too much for you. For even Power, taken for one, has Limits. Rules. And if even you have Limits, and this Cycle, this Council, has existed before… Then the Emitters have been enough to surpass you. Suppress you. And if merely using them was enough, then what, praytell, would you be able to do, if you gained the ability to interface with the Emitters, as we do?"

She said nothing.

"This Emitter," I said, holding it up, its Light shining wide, making more Fragments stop and retreat. "Is the Council's secret weapon. The one thing you cannot match. The only way we have beaten you, again and again."

"You've never beaten us."

"Contained, then. The only thing the Council has been able to use to contain you and Primus. The only obstacle between Him and the annihilation of All Things. They are the reason you haven't outright killed all of my friends: you wished to corrupt them, change them, so that through them, you gain the Emitters."

She chuckled, the sound echoing. "Yes. But now you've brought it before me, Power Incarnate. When I take it from you, He will win at last. All Things will be destroyed. And I will alone will be His Equal. Without you and your stubbornness." She ran her claw over my face again, this time slicing my armor without effort, drawing energon immediately and numbing my whole head. "But worry not, I will remember you as the one who helped me rise. Thank you for being foolish enough to use your Emitter against your own Conjunx."

I felt my tetrahedron stop firing on its own. It had gotten through.

"Through?"

Even though it hurt, even though part of my soul withered, I leaned toward her, into her vortex, so that her Darkness-covered face was inches from mine, my optics inside the Darkness that was her eyes. "Who said I would be the one using it?"

So close was I—so within her sphere of influence—that I felt her realization.

And her horror.

I spun, looked into the mountain of dead Fragments, and saw the tunnel my tetrahedron had created. Through it, I saw him. Optimus. Damaged. Covered in Darkness. Yet still standing. Still living, despite the Darkness which willed his unmaking.

Join.

The Delphic—the Emitter—flew from my hand, leaving behind the sound barrier in a boom. I felt Not-Arcee tense. The only warning I sometimes sensed, before she vanished. Now came the hard part.

I spun back to her, fast as I could, and threw myself into the short distance between us. The last few inches of Darkness separating us were vast expanses in their own right. Nigh-endless, empty spaces, void of anything. Sound. Smell. Heat. Cold. Touch. In that Darkness, there existed only her. I embraced her, heedless of the numbing, soul-consuming power she wielded by existing. All my focus, all my own strength, was put into a single task: keep her there.

And for a moment of a moment—if I pretended hard enough—it felt like things as they could have been, wherein the world boiled down to just she and I. As things should have been for us, from the start.

Then the Darkness shifted. Became a black hole, pulling me apart. Ripping my armor and tetrahedrons away.

I didn't feel the scythes pierce me. Didn't hear it. Didn't even see it, so lost was I in the void where her eyes should have been. But I knew when it happened. Knew it pierced deeper. Did more damage than any others.

The Strength-With-Me did not flee, as it had before. But it was smothered. Dampened. Overwhelmed, in that moment, by a power that could become infinitely more.

Then came the words that hurt more than any wound: "She never loved you. That's why I'm even here."

Then the world became white.

---

The shockwave banished all things.

In naught but a fraction of a second, it changed everything.

Darkness was tossed aside, forced away, as few things could force it to do anything. The air bent. The ground caved. Fragments and Images turned to stray bits of matter, hot and boiling. It sundered the sky, banishing blacker-than-black clouds and letting shine an eclipsed sun. It ripped and tore and exploded, as ships and tendrils were rendered to quantum foam, to drift and be reborn and destroyed over and over again, for all eternity.

As quickly as it lashed out, the shockwave calmed, and where there had been war, there was peace. Where there had been chaos, there was order. Where there had been It, there was nothing. Where there had been Darkness, there was Light.

Near the epicenter of the shockwave, the air, ground, and very soul of the Creation were in harmony. Gone were all signs, and traces, of Darkness. Gone were all signs of war and death. White ash drifted down to a blackened Earth, covering its scars. Dead air regained itself, occupied by debris, stone, and foreign crystals, floating in place. Alien plant life grew, returning color to the world in bright, vibrant colors of every shade.

Among the plant life, people regained themselves. Stumbled as if walking for the first time. Let fall tears shed for reasons they did not know. Marveled as the glowing, white ash gathered around them, embracing, and healed the deep, painful wounds across their bodies and souls.

Among the epicenter itself, there was Light. Pure. Undying. Unbending. Brighter than any flame. Than any sun. Brighter than the remaining ships, far above the world. Brighter, even, than the quasars themselves. It reminded all they were alive. Where they came from. What they could be. Who would light the way, in their Darkest Hour.

For three, its presence burned.

The Light—steadfast, untouchable, all-powerful—turned to them, and with its turn, sound returned as well. A song, sung in the hearts of all things that dared look upon its visage.

So cometh the God of Light.

---

It burned.

Gods, it burned.

That was all Lockdown could feel. All he could think. Fire. Heat. Burning. His body, his mind, his soul. His very existence was an offense. An unworthy mess, before that which destroyed impurity.

He scrambled, tried to find cover against the blinding, boiling, danger within the Light that now shined. But there was nothing. And there would be nothing.

For what could cover him from a storm like this?

He collapsed in a heap, his body frail, smoking. Armor glowing from the sheer heat radiated by the Light. His Darkness had fled, terrified, and abandoned him. Left only his own sins to protect him.

He felt the Light's attention shift to him. Felt its eyes. More alien, more powerful, than anything its size had any right to be. Heard the song in his chest.

The Light turned away.

Lockdown breathed, took solace in the fact he still could. But he knew. God, but he knew. The Emitter was in play. This wasn't supposed to happen. It shouldn't have. There was a REASON why they were kept away.

Absolute power…

In spite of his weakness, his own morality, burning away at his insides, he looked up. Looked where the Light had.

The Xel'Tor was there, altered, alien, powerful in his own right—but a pale shadow before the Light and its unwavering, cleansing presence. The Xel'Tor burned, as Lockdown did.

Yet neither of them were the worst off.

Black Smoke and steam boiled off Strength—off her—and were thrown aside by a vast wind he couldn't feel. Her body rose and fell again and again, melting into white-hot slag before reforming to her true state, then repeating in an instant.

The Light took a form. A tall, regal mech, radiating heat. Trailing behind him a white cloak of fire and stars and Light. Staring ahead with eyes that could destroy worlds and systems.

He advanced toward her, floating over the ground, leaving behind him a trail of white fire and rapidly growing plant life, organic and inorganic.

Behind the mech, Lockdown saw something even more worrying: Primus, rising out of the ruined ground once more, heedless of the Light. Defying its power. He'd adapted already?!

Okay, he thought. I can still work with this…

With every ounce of strength he had remaining, Lockdown reopened his last channel. "O-O-Orophona…" he said, mental voice breaking. Fracturing. Like his very spirit was, at that moment. "N-n-now…"

---

In the deepest depths of the Earth, there existed not a core, nor a spark, but a void.

A void so dark, so cold, so empty, no Light could touch it. No energy could enter it. No matter could end it. It had existed longer than the very Cosmos itself. A constant of trillions of Universal Cycles, always with the goal of its demise.

All had failed.

Around the sphere of the Void, there was a disk of empty space. A barrier, between normal matter and life—essential to sate the Void's hunger and hatred—and the Void itself. Within that empty space floated approximately 35,831,808 oblong objects, dark in appearance and roughly the size of an average Cybertronian.

To any modern civilization, they were an unknown. Built with technology so advanced, even the vast majority of space-faring races could not theorize their origin or purpose.

To the ones who built them, they were storage containers.

Extremely old, extremely advanced, storage containers. Under normal circumstance, they stored non-exotic matter at such extreme densities, the matter they held became radiation. Turned into a tiny black hole, held in place by technology and magic. Ready to store matter for their makers, who could contain entire moons, planets, and even stars worth of material within a single container—all without influencing the container's actual gravity.

But the containers did not hold non-exotic matter.

They were ancient, even by the standards of their makers, long since joined with the One. They dated from the earliest era of the Cosmos. In those days, when the Cosmos was young, and the Gods—even The One—roamed, crafting worlds, systems, galaxies, wonders, and incomprehensible miracles, matter, energy, and Light existed in forms and quantities unimaginable for the modern era. Such forms of all three were Supreme. Able to grace any and all who sought its Light—even those who created it. All that remained of such a wondrous matter had been lost to time, save for the contents of the containers.

They each held the purest, rawest form of energy in all the Cosmos. A substance so old, none remembered its name. A power so exotic and vast, a single kilogram contained the same, lifetime energy potential as an O3-type main sequence star. Rolled over its own energy from Absolute Hot, to Absolute Cold, and back again and again and again.

And each one contained multiple solar masses of such matter.

They had been sought out for that exact reason. Hunted, traded, and killed over for untold millennia, for the neigh-unlimited power they contained. Not because the hunters sought to power a universe-wide civilization. Or to create a weapon the likes of which even the old, quasar-taming Vok would shudder upon its creation. Or to power a machine they believed would turn them into gods. No, the containers were to be used for a very different purpose.

They were meant to be food.

And, hundreds of millions of cycles after they had been found, claimed, hidden, and placed so close to the Void, their time came.

A signal was sent to crude engines even more crudely strapped to their sides. The engines activated, disrupting their delicate orbit around the Void, and the mass of containers descended down into the spherical Void—where they would never return.

They breached the Void's disc hundreds of thousands at a time. Passed the threshold beyond which, there was no return from the immaterial nothingness that awaited All Things, when they touched the Void. Entered a state of nonexistence with neither substance nor description.

… then they detonated within the Void with the force of a billion Big Bangs.

---

Heat.

Heat.

Heat.

JUDGEMENT.

Heat.

Heat.

Heat.

UNWORTHY.

Heat.

Heat.

Heat.

IMPURE.

… Pain.

A thousand things returned to my mind in a tidal wave of emotion. Regret. Guilt. Sorrow. The heat—the heat—went away. A vast, dark, cold emptiness filled in its place, smothering everything. The Light. The Dark. The Drums. The ash and the fallen. The Strength-With-Me. I knew its embrace.

It was… Normalcy.

I rose from my hands and knees and found the world grey. The Titan was nowhere to be found. Nor were the Fragments, or the other, Darkness-covered creatures that had fought them. The clouds were gone, but the sun was dim. Blocked by the moon's continued presence. Only the Reverence remained from its mini-Dyson Swarm of clones, the ruined corpses of its copies aiding the moon in blocking light. Only the Reverence itself still produced Light—even then, it was dampened. Lessened by the blank, invasive grey.

Before me floated a mech I no longer recognized. He was tall—taller than me, with the Strength-With-Me—and broad in the shoulders and chest. He seemed made of Light. A rich, multicolored Light that gave way to a blindingly bright white within his chest. His eyes were fire, fierce and powerful and alien, and behind him was a cloak made of reality itself.

Optimus. Or who once was Optimus.

He stared at me, his alien, fiery eyes locked onto my very soul. Judging it. Weighing its value. Like the Vok had.

He looked to his left.

I did too, and gasped.

She was there. Still changed. Altered. Taller. Her every feature twisted and dangerous yet undeniably beautiful.

Only now, when I looked in her eyes, there were no vortexes. Nothing blocking her face. It was just her.

And grief.

"S-S-Shadow'," she said to me, in a shaking, panicked voice I'd never once heard her use.

"Arcee," I climbed to my feet and stumbled, fell down to a ground cracked and smoking. Colder than it had been moments ago. I touched my chest, and my hand came away covered in my own energon.

Right. She'd stabbed me.

I crawled toward her. "I'm coming."

"S-Shadow'..." She said again, and this time, I heard her voice break. Saw the tears form in her dulled eyes. "I killed them… I killed them…"

"I know," I said, automatically. Blankly. My brain still grasping what just happened. The Titan. The Light. The Darkness. Our fight. I reached out to her.

"NO!" She screamed, her voice distorting, her tears intensifying. "Stay away," she said, crawling backward, away from me. "You can't touch me."

Above us, the mech that was once Optimus watched in silence.

I took a breath. "Arcee, please. Let me help you."

"There's no helping," she said, tears running freely down her face. "I remember, Shadow'. I killed them. I killed Springer. I killed Flareup. I killed Jack. And Miko. And Raf. I killed all these people. And I enjoyed it."

"That wasn't you. It was It."

"But it was."

I felt my heart breaking—my determination wavering—at the certainty of her voice. The brokenness I saw in her eyes. "It's okay," I said, with another breath. "It's okay, It's gone."

She shook her head. "He is never gone, Shadow'."

The Earth shook.

Suddenly, violently, it shook. New cracks and fixures appeared in its surface, growing and spreading at an alarming rate. Leaking Darkness into the grey air. Not-Optimus turned to that Darkness and raised a hand, firing a crackling beam of pure Light that vaporized Darkness whenever they met.

But more came.

This was impossible.

"You don't know what I-I know," Arcee continued, her voice breaking. Distorting again, before returning. "He is unstoppable. You delayed but a fraction of what He is. Primus is coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it."

Not-Optimus fired another beam, its multi-colored Light angry and powerful, lighting the ground on fire as it banished Darkness, leaving behind… Plants?

"Shadow'... You have to kill me."

My entire being shuddered, my head snapping back to her. "What?"

"You need to kill me," she said again, voice fuller. More herself, despite the tears. "Primus has placed His power in Champions, like me. When we are, so is He. Kill us, stop Him."

"No. No, no. That's not. No."

"Shadow'... It's the only way." Her face contorted with pain, whisps of Darkness radiating off her like mist, before disappearing. "He's calling. I can't resist for long. Please…"

My brain boiled down to panic and horror. Anger and refusal. This couldn't be the answer. There had to be another way. I… I couldn't…

Tears rolled down my own face, hot and angry. After everything I'd done. All the suffering I'd endured. This was the reward? This was the path forward?

Rage spread through me like a sickness, overwhelming everything. My panic. My indecision. Everything around me. This wasn't right. This wasn't right. It wasn't fair. It was wrong. I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't. I'd given enough. I would give no more.

"Shadow'... Kill me…"

I wouldn't do this.

"Kill me."

I WOULDN'T DO THIS!

"KILL ME!"

Her scream brought me back. She was glaring at me. Angry, like I was, but for the opposite reason. Broken, like I was, but because of what she'd done, not what she was about to do.

"KILL ME!" She shouted again, with more authority than I'd ever heard from her. "YOU MADE ME PROMISE TO KILL YOU! YOU NEED TO DO THE SAME! STOP BEING SELFISH AND KILL ME!"

The words made me deploy a weapon from my hand. I didn't know what. I couldn't think. I aimed at her. Forced my HUD to line the crosshairs to her chest. She watched it happen, still angry, still broken, but eyes filled with acceptance.

My entire world was waiting for me to kill her.

My hand shook, my mind fighting itself. Shoot. Don't shoot. Kill. Don't kill. It's what she wanted. It was too much. Primus was coming.

And I… Didn't care.

"Do it. DO IT!"

I… Couldn't…

My arm lowered. Her expression shifted. Went from angry to betrayed. Then just sad.

Her face contorted, and she screamed, clawing at the sides of her head. Darkness rose from her frame, rapidly thickening. Her eyes snapped open.

They were darker than the Void itself.

"Too late," she said, voice echoing in twisted amusement. "You lo—"

There was a fast thwump, and she staggered forward, Darkness wavering. Eyes between normal mortality and the unknowable black. I looked behind her as she turned around.

A black mech stood there, holding a large, intricate bow with a glowing green string. He pulled it back and fired again.

An arrow of Darkness hit Arcee in the chest, piercing deep.

No.

He advanced, firing again. Then again. Then again.

Three more arrows hit her, each one as deep as the last. One piercing through her entire torso.

No!

I stood in time to watch a second arrow pierce through her whole chest, but instead of Darkness, its arrowhead appeared blue-white. Beautiful beyond words.

Spark essence.

Everything stopped as what little Darkness remained around her abandoned Arcee, flying into the wind. I lurched forward as she fell, catching her just before she hit the cracking ground.

"No," I said, looking at her wounds. The energon flowing from them and onto me, accompanied by the tell-tale brightness of Spark essence. "No, no, no, no…"

A hand lightly touched my face. Arcee's, warm and without an unnatural chill. She looked up at me with eyes fully her own. An expression that was mournful, regretful, relieved, and loving all at once. "Shh…" She said, in the smallest, most gentle voice I'd ever heard. "It's… Okay, Shadow'. It's okay… Only w-way… I-I... I lo—"

Her eyes—weak but her own—went out.

Her hand fell.

My world ended.

All things, great, small, evil, good, faded to nothing. Sound fled. Thought died. Existence became empty. All that was, was her, in my arms. All that mattered was she was gone. All I felt was rage. A deep, deep rage that turned into a tangible flame, lighting all things red.

My head moved on its own. Locked onto the black mech. I screamed a scream I did not hear, did not feel, but lived. Vengeance swam in my veins. Vengeance for all I had endured. All I had done. All I had failed to do.

Vengeance for her.

Time slowed as I rushed forward with speed no mortal should possess. No being could measure. No force could—

He vanished, and my hands found naught but air.

Then, there was a voice at my audio. "Down, boy."

Something stabbed me in the back, and Rage fled. Emptiness resumed. I collapsed in a heap, unable to move. My hands, body, and soul twitching. Spark stopping and starting. My head pounding as my Protocol—present, guiding, and all-consuming—kept turning off and on, snapping me in and out of sanity.

A foot turned me over, and I found myself on my back, staring up at the mech. My hands shakily clenched. Urging—hungering—for the opportunity to break his neck.

He crouched down next to me, bow laid across his knees-joints, his faceless visor turned toward her body. "It's a travesty," he said, his voice deep and low, piercing the haze clouding my head. Carrying an authority, a strength, foreign to me, yet familiar all the same. "All the potential in the universe, just to be little more than a Herald. A puppet. And she thought that a privilege."

He shook his head. "What a waste."

My hands twitched again, vision flickering between grey and red.

"You're still trying to kill me, aren't you?" He asked, without looking at me. "Fair enough. Don't think it would work out for you, in your state. I stabbed you with an Isolation Vessel. A very old, very powerful device. As I speak, it's trying to absorb your soul and imprison you in a realm of unending pain and agony. It will succeed. One just like it worked on Unicron himself. Partially, at least."

Rage—the fleeting, restrained remnants of it—flared, forced my hand into a fist, crackling with sparking, weak, Light. No Darkness.

"But I didn't stab you with the intent of letting it take you," he said. "I needed your attention. There are powers at play here we can't fight. Forces that will rend Reality itself, across all universes. And your presence is… Not helping."

"K-k-k-il… Y-ou," I managed to mutter, even as it felt like I was being torn apart from the inside out.

"Yes, yes, I know. But there isn't time for that. Not if you want her to live."

Those words cut through the fog of Vengeance. Made my twitching stop, just for a few seconds.

"Thought that would get through to you." The mech rose to his feet, gazing in the direction where It had been. I couldn't tell if It was gone or not. "Yes, there's a way she lives through this. There's a way most of us do. It won't be easy. It won't be pleasant. But it'll work. All you have to do is leave.

"Primus hasn't fully broken his Containment, but you being here—so close to a Containment Seal—all but guarantees that happening. She—" He nodded his head toward Arcee's body. "—is to be His greatest servant to speed things along. If you were both elsewhere, Primus' influence could be more readily countered. Slowed. Buy us time we desperately need. And, given how she's Strength and Power… Well, that gives the other side a chance to use their own influence."

Chance.

The Vok spoke of a Chance.

The Earth rumbled, and the grey sky dimmed. "Seems we're low on time. Gonna have to speed things along."

He flipped me back onto my tank. "When I remove this," he said, as the air began to crackle with the energy of a space bridge, and the ground shook once more. "Your mind is going to resume being torn apart by your own Protocol. You'll need to act on instinct, and you'll need to act fast. So, what will it be: Kill me, for killing her; or flee, for the chance she might return to you?"

Might?

He yanked out the thing he'd stabbed me with, and tortment and relief clouded my existence in equal measure. My Protocol healed that which was broken. Sealed the wounds that had been opened. Turned my emotional anguish into fuel for the Rage.

My vision went red, and my head snapped up. There he stood. The mech. The one who'd taken her away. He stood without a weapon. Without care or caution. He held his arms out as if to embrace me. As if to taunt me. I tensed, readying myself to leap at him and tear him apart.

But she was there.

Lying to his side. Dead. With a white space bridge behind her, swirling with Light, waiting for us. Waiting to give us a chance. A chance away from this. A chance to live.

A chance for us.

Thought drifted to ruin. Vengeance. Dead. Chance. Vengeance. Dead. Chance.

Vengeance.

Dead.

Chance.

I leapt forward, screaming, voicing once more the Rage—the Vengeance—that had taken over my body and spirit. Turned me into little more than a beast, fighting to avenge my world.

… And I picked her up.

I ran, closing the distance between me and the bridge in two, bounding steps.

As I made contact with its edge, the ground shook. The air contracted with a dangerous pulse of black. The bridge's beautiful Light turned dark.

"NO!" A voice screamed. The mech's. Desperate, terrified. Too late.

I passed through the bridge, bearing with me the shattered pieces of my world. My mind. My heart.

Leaving everything else behind.

---

Lockdown stared at the empty air the Xel'Tor had occupied only a second previously, trying not to panic.

"Unicron," he said, in his channel to the Reverence. "Where did they go?"

The old god didn't answer.

"WHERE DID THEY GO?!"

"I DO NOT KNOW, BEARER," Unicron finally rumbled, voice so much larger than Lockdown's own, even in his own head. "HE CORRUPTED THE BRIDGE. THEY ARE… LOST."

That was… Bad. Very, very bad. But Lockdown had another, pressing matter to attend to.

He turned, and there, once more floating in place, was the mech who had been Optimus Prime. Tall enough to be a giant. Armored heavily enough to be called a Knight. Wrapped in Light that felt hot, even without Primus being fully active.

And burning eyes that stared through him. Pierced every layer of secrecy Lockdown lived behind. Cloaked himself in, as the once-Prime was now cloaked in Light and flame.

It was highly unnerving.

"I don't know what you're thinking," Lockdown finally said, when the Prime only stared at him. "I can't even hazard a guess. All I know is that you aren't Optimus Prime. Not anymore. You're… Something new. Or something not seen in a long, long time. Before me. Before my people. Before a lot of things without name."

The eyes remained locked on him. Burning. Intense. Seeing all.

"If you're considering me a part of Him," Lockdown went on, swallowing. "Then… Ya ain't wrong. But you aren't right, either. I'm a sort of… Necessity. So people better than me can shine."

The mech stared. Then, abruptly, spoke in a voice of fire, ash, and ruin, that echoed back and forth. Up and down. Within and without: "YOUR CAUSE… IS JUST."

Then he vanished. Not in a flash. Not with a portal. Or a space bridge. But without sound, warning, or indication. His absence let the air chill once more.

Lockdown let out a long, relieved breath, hidden by his battlemask. One less thing to worry about. For the moment.

He doubted the Decepticons would share the same sentiment.

---

Just as the black haze that had taken his CPU faded, he arrived.

Shockwave knew as soon as he did. He felt it. Not in an atmospherical manner, but something extrasensory. Instinctive. A phenomenon he'd done much to research, yet had resulted in little firm data.

He went to a control panel, where he could access cameras facing the sky. There, Shockwave found him. In that moment, Shockwave knew.

He was an anomaly. A being of fire and light, standing in the air without support, engine, nor technology. An impossibility, as was the haze that swept over them all.

When the fire and light raised a hand, he became an inevitability.

Shockwave knew, then, that he had one chance to do something. Something he had not done since before Grimlock had taken his servo. Since before the War. Before Shockwave could recall being the mech he was.

He fled.

He fled as quickly as he could through his laboratories, now filled with the worthless drones and even more useless full Decepticons. He ignored their addresses as he opened the entrance to the restricted areas of his lab, where his one chance lay in wait.

The air grew warm, then hot, by the time he arrived at the Universal Bridge. He knew others had followed him. Some with a measure of intelligence, others without. All without any sense of logic. He cared not; he had no time to deny them.

As the Universal Bridge powered online with a hum, the base shook. The air boomed with a deafening roar. The lights grew unnaturally bright.

Behind him, in the base proper, the screams began.

He had no more time.

At random, Shockwave selected a Drop. The Bridge stabilized, and he ran for it, pushing his way through other Decepticons who'd followed him. He passed through the Bridge, exiting out into an alien landscape of bare stone and neither flora nor fauna. Some of those who'd been in the room with him came through as well.

Then the Bridge exploded in white.

Shockwave went blind. Felt himself being thrown. Felt himself hit something. Slide. Drag. Then hit something else.

Then he knew nothing.

---

He landed at the base of the crater where the island once sat.

Around him, water rushed in to fill the void, cascading down a hundred falls greater than any natural formation of his planet.

He knew, because he could see them all.

All parts of the world. All things in it. All people, shaken and fearful. All Evil, foiled and nervous. Waiting to see what would happen. Whether anyone knew of their deeds, done in the dark.

He did, and he would be coming for them. But not yet. First, he had a purpose here.

His gaze fell on that purpose as it sat, sticking out of the earth. Waiting for his hand. He raised one. "COME."

The Star Saber rushed to meet his outstretched hand, flipping once, then landing handle first in his fingers. His power surged as the Shard joined with him, its energy vast, yet finite. Overshadowed by his own heart, blazing in his chest.

Something—a small, quiet voice in his head—found that inspiring and alarming in equal measure.

He raised his the Star Saber high, willing Light to cover its surface, bright enough to light the crater in its entirety and reflect off the stars themselves. Then he announced to all Creation: "I AM SINGULARITY. I HAVE COME, IN YOUR DARKNESS, TO LIGHT YOUR WAY. EARTH… IS MINE."

---

"HE REMAINS ON THE WORLD," Unicron said, after Lockdown asked him to check Lockdown's suspicions. Of course, that proved unnecessary, thanks to the proclamation a second ago. "I SEE HIM. HE IS FORMIDABLE. WE WILL NEED TO TRAIN HIM."

Lockdown said nothing to that. "What of Primus? Is He contained?"

"HE IS… SATISFIED. FOR NOW. HE IS NO LONGER IN MY SIGHT. WE HAVE GAINED TIME."

Ah. Thing #2. "About that…" He opened his subspace and recovered another Isolation Vessel. The one he hadn't used on the Xel'Tor, and had modifications only he knew about.

He really hoped they would work.

"YES, BEARER?"

"You're a complication."

He crushed the Vessel in his hand.

The scream Unicron released rattled Lockdown's helm. Deafened him. Shook his entire body, down to quarks.

And it hadn't been through the link.

The sky lit up with explosions, as the remnants of Reverence's star drones began to detonate. The Reverence itself flickered, the Light and fire of its hull seeming to thrash and rage. A light appeared between it and Lockdown. A thin string of white Light, invisible until that moment.

The ship began to turn toward him.

"The main cannon?" Lockdown asked aloud, knowing he would be heard. If not in voice, then in intent. "Don't you think that just a touch of an overreaction?"

"BETRAYER!" Unicron bellowed, and the entire world—perhaps the system and beyond—shook. Rumbled with the power that, without Primus present, was greater than anything in all Creation. "I SERVED YOU! I FOUGHT HIM!"

"And for that, I thank you. But you're Unicron. Big a target as can be. Plenty of motivation for Primus to cross the Void all on your own."

The world shook again, rattling ash and bone, and ripping the surface of the Earth around him. The bow of the Reverence began to light up. "YOU NEED ME!"

"Not right now," Lockdown said, as steady as he could. He needed just a little more time… "Right now, I need you to be quiet. And quiet you'll be, until I let you out again. You can kill me then."

"YO—"

The Light string cut from Infinite Reverence, falling away and traveling toward him. The Reverence itself flickered again, dimming, then stabilized. Glowing in a way that felt far more empty.

The Light string fell further. Down, down, and down from orbit, then to the air above the ruin that was once Jasper, Nevada. Then into the broken, rapidly-reforming Vessel in Lockdown's hand, where it glowed with a soothing warmth.

The mind of a god, in the palm of his hand.

Fate had given him a strange one.

In his head, he felt the channel come to life again. "Pardon me, sir," said the voice of the Lie. Refit. Merely a Tier-0 AI, instead of a deity, capable of destroying galaxies if he was pissed enough. "I lost our connection for a moment."

Seemed like the modifications were working just fine. Some of them, anyway. "No problem, Refit," he said, with faux familiarity. Kindness. "Fighting the Chaos Bringer takes a lot out of you."

"Then we won?!"

"For now," Lockdown confirmed, looking up at the ship, still in place. No longer turning toward him. "What, you thought we wouldn't?"

"It was the CHAOS BRINGER! Our chances of success were… Slim."

"We beat odds."

"Yes, yes we do. But there is…"

"What is it?"

"Something," Refit said, slowly. Lockdown could see the Reverence flicker, as if reacting to Refit altering his avatar. "My matrix indicates I used a space bridge on two very different but exceptionally powerful individuals. Yet I don't remember…"

"Yes, you did that in battle," Lockdown lied, trying to determine if the modifications had worked. "They were wounded and compromised. You tried to get them off the field, but the Chaos Bringer altered the bridge. Perhaps that's why you sound… Suboptimal."

"Yes, yes of course," Refit said. "That must be it."

"Can you work on finding where they went?"

Refit was silent for an abnormal moment. "Hmm? Oh, yes, yes I can. I'll get on that away, sir."

"That's good work, Refit. Let me know how it goes."

"Of course, sir. In the meantime, may I send aid down to the little planet you're on? It bears a significant amount of damage, including breaches to its crust that, if left unattended, will cause its surface to become uninhabitable. Additionally, one individual appears to be actively causing more damage. Shall I stop them?"

"No," Lockdown said, meaning the instruction genuinely. He did not want to see what happened when an Emitter stood against the Reverence. "Let him work as he pleases. Just start bringing aid down. And work on finding out where that space bridge went."

"Of course, Xel'Tor."

Lockdown smiled. So all the modifications had worked. Good. That would make things easier. For now, at least.

He'd need to create some new contingencies, for when it stopped being easy.

A figure approached. Soundwave. Lockdown turned to him. Looked him up and down, evaluating the alterations he'd received, when he Awoke. He'd been damaged pretty heavily. Torn. Ripped up. Series of cuts and stab wounds. Some armor that appeared frozen or peeled off. Other damage that looked so severe, most other bots would have already been dead.

"You are Lockdown," Soundwave said, his voice not betraying the state of his body.

"Yes," he said.

"You are not dead."

"What gave it away?"

The former Decepticon didn't react. Glanced to their right, where Grimlock was turning in a circle, enraged, fiery optics seeking. Hunting. Looking for more Fragments to slaughter. He threw the Omni-Saber to the side, and it vanished into dust. A copy, then? Interesting. He hadn't known the Xel'Tor would figure out he could do that.

"Can you assist?"

The question jarred Lockdown and made him look back to Soundwave. "Assist with what?"

Soundwave didn't answer, just looked to the side, where the Autobots had begun to move. Come back from their delirium. Their wounds were great enough that most were indistinguishable to his eyes.

He tried not to feel guilty, when he noticed the ones missing.

"What you do is no consequence to me," Lockdown said, retrieving his Bow from the ground. "I don't intend on being here long. Besides, thought you were firmly with the Decepticons. That was why I sent you those clues in the first place."

"Soundwave… Fooled. Used. Broken. Remade. Trusted. Conflicting intelligence highlights uncertainty of allegiance. Continued hostilities compromises chances of survival."

Lockdown sent a quick message to Orophona, asking for a space bridge. He glanced up as fresh star drones left the Reverence, heading for the surface. "I wouldn't worry too much about continued hostilities at scale."

The bridge appeared, and he walked toward it, just as Grimlock finally noticed he and Soundwave and charged their location. "Because, if those words that rattled in all our heads are any indication, then there's not going to be much of a war on Earth anymore."

Lockdown heard Soundwave transform and fly just as he entered the space bridge, appearing again within his own base. He felt another wave of relief when the bridge closed without Grimlock appearing behind him. He didn't have the energy—or the Darkness—to fight him off right now.

While that was comforting to Lockdown—meaning that, indeed, the Chaos Bringer was further away, far enough to limit Darkness, and thus The End avoided—it also raised a worrying question in his head.

Where did that other ship end up?

---

Somewhere, a ship watched.

It was far from where it had been, yet so close to where it wished to be. But it had been delayed, as its Lord had been. It had been told to retreat. Find a place to hide. To thrive. To let its great passenger, Dominion, find pleasure in ending untold volumes of lives.

The ship began to move again, clawing its way through the dark. Seeking a world in which to begin its slaughter.

It would be back.

---

Wildwing drew.

He drew unceasingly. Unendingly. Without pause, or hesitation, or thought. Image after image after image appeared in his helm, more real than life. And he drew them. Faster than he had ever drawn before. Better than he had ever dreamed. He filled page after page after page, letting them fall wherever he finished them. His floor was littered with new depictions of shadowed faces, monsters without shape, and Darkness that moved.

He hated it.

The Feeling did, too.

Carrier and Sire had brought other people to see him. Doctors and medics and people who asked questions in soft voices, which, to him, sounded like the raking of claws on the wall. They made him sit still. Made him look into their worried, unknowing optics. Made him answer questions that hurt his helm and his spark.

He wanted to stop. He was so tired. He wanted to recharge. He wanted to cuddle Carrier and Sire on the couch and watch his vids.

The Feeling said no.

"It is not any condition we've seen before," one of the people said to Carrier and Sire, behind the door. Wildwing flinched and whined, the sound painful. Every voice was. "We are… Uncertain of how to treat it."

"There must be something that can be done!" Adda was angry. Wildwing felt it in his chest. In his spark. Heard it in Adda's bellow. "You saw him! He won't stop drawing! We can't even get him to talk to us! He won't even recharge!"

The Feeling said he couldn't. Not anymore.

"We saw him, yes."

"So fix him!"

"Love… Don't yell."

Wildwing's spark hurt more at Edda's voice. At the quiet, shaking tone. He could feel her pain even without his aching spark.

"What can we do?" Edda asked, softly; Wildwing kept drawing.

Wildwing finished three pages of twisted images before the person replied, "Put him in stasis."

"Absolutely not!" Adda said, his anger turning darker. Feeling hotter. Wildwing altered his drawing to reflect it. "At his age, that will end him!"

"It's the only thing that would stop him at this point," the person said. "But I am inclined to agree it's ill-advised and I wouldn't recommend you take that step."

"What else can we do?" Carrier asked.

"Pray. This… This is something beyond our understanding. Perhaps it requires a solution also beyond our comprehension."

"Who might know more about this?"

"As far as I am aware, ma'am—you're already in contact with the only person who might know."

Adda and Edda didn't say anything; Wildwing kept drawing. His latest was an image he knew well: the Apex Sentinel's main hangar, running the length of the ship.

It was burning.

"I'll take my leave now," the person said. "If his condition worsens, or his vitals fall, summon me, and I will do what little I can for—"

The ship rumbled and shook.

Wildwing stopped. It was starting, like the Feeling said.

An alarm pierced his audios.

Sire said a bad word and ran out the door, and the other person followed.

His door opened, and someone picked him up. Carrier. He drew on her servos.

"Stop! Wildwing!" She grabbed his drawing tool and tossed it to the side, but the Feeling directed his servos anyway, finishing the image in his CPU even if she wouldn't let him use the tool. "We need to leave right now, okay? That's the alert for everyone who isn't brave to get to the shelter. We need to go and wait there for your Adda, alright?"

He wanted to. The alarm scared him. Made the drawings in his helm so much more alive. Scary. More demanding. He wanted to go with Edda and hide in the shelter, where he could see his friends again. Tell them about the good drawings he'd made. Maybe then they'd be his friends again. Maybe then he could be happy.

The Feeling said no. It showed him things. Things that scared him, like they had before. But they were also different. More important. He knew and saw that. He had to do something. And he had to do it now.

When Carrier turned her back to grab the important bag from the safe—the one he wasn't supposed to look in—Wildwing walked over to his drawing tool and walked out of the open door. He felt at his bond with her. The link he treasured. The feelings he loved.

He cried.

Wildwing felt her distress before he heard her cry out, "Wildwing?! Where are you?"

He shut her out. Sire, too.

Then Wildwing felt everything become so quiet. So lonely. For the first time since he got too far away in the escape pod, he couldn't feel anything. Not Carrier. Not Sire. Not the Feeling. Just him, and his drawings, and his ideas, spinning around his CPU.

Then the Feeling found him again, wrapped him up again, and the moment ended.

He ran down the street, under the panicked steps of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people. Screaming people. Crying sparklings and younglings and parents and so many scared people. People he knew, and people he didn't. They looked back and above them, calling to each other to run, or shouting names, telling those people to follow or run.

Loud sounds came from the other direction. Sounds like Sire practicing on the weapons range. Only way, way more. There was more screaming that way, too.

Their screams didn't last as long.

No one looked down at him, dodging their pedes. Most of them were a lot bigger than him. If he made a mistake, he would get really hurt, and Carrier would be even more sad. But he wasn't worried. The Feeling had shown him where to go before he left.

But he felt so alone.

With shaking servos and tears in his optics, he made his way through the running crowd to a lift that led up to the levels above him. He climbed up the side of it, to the buttons and switches, and hit the one at the top that the Feeling had shown him—the one that needed to be hit, or he would go to the wrong place. The door shut.

Someone slammed into the door just as it did, and Wildwing lost his grip and fell to the floor. He looked at the door.

"Wildwing!" Carrier screamed, and Wildwing knew she hurt inside; the Feeling said she did. "Wildwing, get out of there now!"

He stared into her optics, and he felt bad. Like he was the one attacking the ship. Like he was the one putting everyone in danger. Like he was the one hurting her.

The tears in his optics fell, because the Feeling said he was.

"I'm sorry," he said, quietly. "The Feeling says I need to."

Carrier tried to open the doors, but the lift started rising. "Wildwing! Dear spark, please!"

"I'm sorry…"

The elevator went up, and he lost sight of Carrier. Her voice called out to him. "WILDWING! STO—"

The elevator entered an overhanging part of the main hangar's wall, and Carrier's voice cut out. So did the sounds of the running people. The crying of sparklings and younglings. The panicked cries of bots, afraid and shouting for others to find shelter.

It was just Wildwing. And the Feeling. And the hum of the elevator. And the shaking, scary rumbles that made the lights flicker.

He sniffed. "I'm sorry…"

The elevator shook a lot. The lights went out, and then it stopped.

"NO!" He screamed, shutting his optics and putting his servos over them. He knew what was in the dark. Who was. He wasn't brave like Shadowstreaker; he couldn't look at It. It would hurt him. Hurt Carrier. And Sire. And his friends. But if he shut his optics, He wouldn't see him. He'd be okay. Carrier and Sire would be okay. Everyone would be okay…

He felt the Feeling embrace him tightly. Like Carrier and Sire did. Like Arcee—the real Arcee—had.

It said no.

He heard the elevator's lights flickered back on, and felt the elevator move again. Wildwing hesitantly opened his eyes, and saw no darkness. No It. Just him and the elevator. And the Feeling.

The elevator reached the floor he needed to be on. The door opened, and he ran out onto a street higher up and not as wide as the one he left Carrier on. People were in it, but they were lying down, surrounded by burning debris. The Feeling told him they weren't alive.

He ran down the street, around the people who weren't online, in the direction of the sounds. Of the explosions. Of the fighting. He had to get there. He had to.

The Feeling cried a warning, and he ducked into an alcove. A micro-klick later, people flew over the street in their alt-modes. They had dark paint and sharp armor. There was a green face painted on them, with two crossed swords. The Feeling knew what it was; Wildwing didn't. They passed by, and Wildwing kept going.

The explosions became louder. The shouting, the shooting. The air grew dark and smokey. He felt hot like a fire was close, but he didn't see one.

The smoke cleared.

And Wildwing saw the battle.

People wearing armor with the green face on it were fighting Sire's security forces. Lots of them were shooting. Or swinging swords and hammers. Or throwing things that blew up. Or shooting things that blew up. In the air, Seekers were fighting. Some of them were ones Wildwing knew. Most weren't.

Wildwing saw it all and wanted to run. Wanted to hide and wait until it was safe and Sire or Carrier found him. But he didn't. He was right where the Feeling said he should be. From here, he could see everything. The fighting. The people. The hole in the Apex Sentinel, where the mean people were coming from.

But something he didn't like had to happen first.

From the air, a Seeker turned toward him. A familiar one. One Wildwing loved. He transformed as he approached, rolling and sliding across the street until he was right beside Wildwing.

"WILDWING!" Sire shouted, looking at him with wide, angry optics. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!"

"The Feeling—"

"GO BACK TO YOUR EDDA! NOW!"

Wildwing flinched back, scared. Hurt. Afraid of his Adda for the first time. He didn't move. It hadn't happened yet.

"WILDWING, G—"

Something hit Sire and tossed him to the side, a great and loud boom sounding out at the same time.

Energon splattered Wildwing's faceplate. Sire's energon.

It happened.

Wildwing's helm spun to the right, and there—landing—was another Seeker. He transformed with less urgency than Sire had, and in a micro-klick or two, there stood a towering mech of dark blue and gold. One pede had been replaced with a simple rod, and his red optics made Wildwing nervous and afraid. On his chestplates, there was the same symbol as the other bad people. He took out a cannon that was still smoking.

"Finally, ya touch down," said the big mech, his voice loud and booming. "Ya been giving my fliers some trouble. No more o' that, see?"

"W-W-W—lid…"

Wildwing looked left, to Adda. His voice was broken, wet. Spitting. Energon came out of his mouth, and there was a hole in his side, flowing with more. He held a servo out to Wildwing, as if to grab him.

In that moment, what little of Wildwing's idyllic existence shattered. As the Feeling said it would.

"What da we have 'ere?" The big mech asked, taking big, slow steps toward Wildwing, his ugly, ugly faceplate smiling, his optics shining with a meanness Wildwing had seen before, in his drawings. In the bad mech that looked like Shadowstreaker. "A wee bitlit. So many on this accursed ship. 'Dis one yours, maybe?"

"Wild…" Sire's voice was growing weaker, his outstretched servo shaking. Still, he reached for Wildwing, his optics changing in shade—like Shadowstreaker's did—but not fast enough. Just as the Feeling showed. "Run…"

The big mech loomed over Wildwing, smiling that big smile. Wildwing looked away, unable to look into those scary optics. "Ya ready to serve the Star Seekers, bitlit? Me advisers feel change comin' in the universe. We gonna need more crew to grab our piece, see?"

"Wild… Wing…"

"I'm gonna go kill ya sire over there, understand, bitlit? Then I's gonna find ya carrier 'n do the same. Then ya gonna be part of me crew."

Wildwing suddenly felt very, very calm. The smoke. The shooting. The fire. Adda. They faded. Lessened. Made way for something else.

He felt something deep, deep within him stir for the first time. Something warm and comforting and old. It wrapped around him and held him close. Whispered in his audio words that he didn't understand, but leaned into as surely as Edda's hug.

As the Feeling said.

"Do ya understand?" The mech said again. "Ya gonna be all alone."

Behind the mech, something without color or shape moved.

This time, Wildwing looked up. Straight into the mech's eyes. And he said the words he was supposed to, "The Feeling says no."

With speed he had never used before, he drew in the air.

The thing behind the mech moved…

… Then tore him asunder.

There was no time for him to scream.

"Don't stop… Do what I showed you, Little Wing…"

The Feeling's voice was in his helm, soothing, warm. Safe. He felt their hand on his, even as they showed him more of what could happen. What would happen.

He spun, drawing as he looked at a squad of bad Seekers. Instantly, the thing that killed the big mech was there, with them.

It killed them just as quickly.

While their parts fell from the sky, Wildwing's gaze moved again. And again. And again. Attacker after after attacker fell into bits, or smoldered, or just ceased to be.

The Feeling sang in his mind,

"Ashes, ashes

We all must Fade."

Wildwing looked at the hole in the Sentinel and drew, and suddenly he was standing there, at its mouth, in front of squads of reinforcements.

With a single flick of his wrist, they died where they stood, cut into pieces that fell to the floor.

He drew again, and the very tunnel was severed. The air around him immediately became a tempest, violent and dangerous. People from the security forces held on to whatever they could grab to keep from being sucked away. Bodies and other debris became missiles to be dodged, pulled out of the ship with enough force to damage other objects they hit, on their journey into space.

He stood unaffected.

And he kept drawing.

The tunnel drifting away was cloven into multiple pieces, and bright lights flashed distantly.

Through the roaring air, Wildwing heard the screams that accompanied them.

An emergency atmospheric shield finally activated on their side of the tunnel, stilling the wind. Wildwing saw through it, into the truth beyond. As pieces moved away from each other and the Apex Sentinel, that truth was revealed to the security forces around him.

Another ship was floating away from the Apex Sentinel.

And it had been cut into seven, perfectly even pieces.

As the Feeling had said it would.

"Wait… Wildwing?" One of the security force people said. "What are you—"

Wildwing looked up to the street Adda was on and drew in the air. A blink of his optics, and he was in front of Adda, who was still hurt. He stared at Wildwing with wide optics. Optics, Wildwing saw, were afraid.

He drew, and Adda wasn't hurt anymore. He took a big, deep breath, checking himself over. A bit of the fear in Adda's optics vanished, but was replaced by a different one. As the Feeling had said it would.

"Wildwing…?" Adda's voice shook from emotion, but Wildwing couldn't feel it. He wasn't sure if he ever would again. "What… Did you just…?"

"The Feeling said I needed to."

"Look, Quill. Witness."

He turned his helm at the Feeling's word, looking at the thing without color or shape. Looking, he knew, at the Feeling itself. Where it had been all along.

It showed him something important, as it had for cycles. He left Adda's side and went to the nearest wall to draw. His movements were quicker, smoother, better than any of his drawings before. As if, now, he had become something more.

Beside him, with a hand only he could see, guiding his movements, the Feeling sang,

"Light and Dark

Bite and Stark

Vengeance finds its Mark…"

His drawing was of a familiar mech in white, surrounded by countless shapes darker than dark space. They hated everything. Everyone. They wanted the mech to die, as they wanted all things to die.

He knew what would happen, and he began to cry, weeping tears of fright and terror and mourning.

They were not for the mech.

---

"MERCY!"

They cried, and he ripped them apart.

"WE DID NOT SEE!"

They said, and he tore out their nonphysical eyes.

"WE CANNOT DISOBEY HIM!"

They screamed, and he crushed them where they stood.

"WE DIDN'T KNOW!"

They pleaded, and he ended their suffering.

All he saw was red. All he heard were the distorted shrieks of the dying. All he felt was the cold black blood sprayed and spilled around him—and the undying, eternal wrath in his spark. All he smelled was fear.

Its taste was intoxicating.

Yet, he burned with desire for more. More death. More slaughter. More vengeance. For her. For them.

He threw his Shard into the air with a single instruction: Butcher.

With a thuuum as it shattered the sound barrier, it zipped away, spinning. Cutting. Tearing. Annihilating. Blazing like an angry quasar. In a way, it was. Legions upon legions of beyond-black masses fell to its blade. Struck down from the air, on the ground he stood, or on the surface below, in the dark. It mattered not what they did. Whether they ran or hid among the corpses of their brethren. Or where they stood, wailing.

Weeping.

His hand snapped forward and grabbed one by its formless head, holding it in place even as it wiggled in his grasp. Burning it. Crushing it. He brought it close to his own face, his optics aflame.

"STARSIGHT!"

His bellow filled the air. Shook the heavens. Rumbled the earth. His breath admitted red mist. A real, physical manifestation of the unending, insatiable rage in his soul.

… Even as, inside, he shattered.

He crushed its head in his hand and grabbed another—one with more substance. Resistance. It tried to strike him. With a thought, its formless, wavering arms snapped.

"WINDBREAKER!"

His voice altered the world.

It became a hellscape of maddened, frenzied red flames that killed and consumed all they touched and left the earth covered in lightless, black ash. It colored the sky with blood and fury and grief. Revealed in that fury the true extent of the destruction and desecration of the hall and the realm around it. Thousands—millions—of orbital rings and habitats floated in crumbled pieces. Arcologies lay in ashes. Mountains in pebbles. The land itself was reduced to melted slag and stone.

Beyond the red sky, there was a sphere the size of a star, dark and lifeless. Black as the earth below.

"VIBES!"

The Fragment in his grip burned away under the red flames, turned to black smoke and ruin.

He roared, and it echoed all the way to Empyrean itself. More. More. MORE! HE NEEDED MORE!

A thought, and he was among another group of them, already burning. A wave of his hand, and they became memory.

Another, and he found others fleeing. Scampering up the walls. Jumping out to the ashen land below. Desperate to escape the fire. The flames. The vengeance.

A balled fist, and they broke and snapped.

"SOLARA!"

Another, and he was on the ground itself, standing on a surface that had been decimated. His blinding Light stood out against it even more than the air had. Around him—in an area the size of a multitude of planets tied together—were Fragments. Billions and billions of them. Trillions. More. All of varying sizes and innate levels of hate.

They were already fleeing before him.

"ME!"

His scream brought forth Fire once more. This time, instead of the red he'd Summoned, there were bright, blinding, brilliant white flames. So pure, so untarnished, his crimson wrath could not stain them. Could not dim them.

They relieved the Fragments of their existence. Spread across the ground, the continent, the world, in the blink of an eye. Spread further, to the lands beyond his immediate surroundings. Traveled up and around, following the surface all the way from his location, across the Endless City, to the opposite side of the Great Shell, more than a billion miles distant, straight above him and beyond the black sphere.

He felt octillions of Fragments burn in the process.

He bathed in that Fire. Let it wash him. Clean him. Fuel him. Harness his vehement violence into something… More…

"Remember…" he said, in the Fire. In the ash. To the slain. "Remember us…"

The Fire died.

The world became black once more, the Truths his Light, his fury, had revealed returning to their graves. He stood in the dark, and the Darkness. No longer blazing. No longer the heart of a star, too bright to ever go out. He breathed deep the dead air, and the whispering black.

"They failed…"

"They lied…"

"They betrayed…"

"They left Him in Darkness…"

"They didn't Know…"

"They didn't Know…"

"They did not fear the Knight…"

"Fear the Knight…"

"Fear the Knight…"

"Vengeance is a Cycle…"

"Vengeance is a Cycle…"

He took one more, deep breath, letting it shudder. Letting it echo into the empty, lifeless landscape, then with a thought, returned to the Palace above. He held up a servo. A moment later, his Shard shot to his outstretched digits, the air thundering and exploding behind it, casting to Extremis' side a wave of high-hypersonic air which produced a cloud of ash and dust the length of the Palace itself. Despite how many Fragments it had ended, the blade appeared as flawless as ever.

The hall did not.

Remnants of the horde were everywhere. Spilled. Splattered. Burned into the floor. Bits and pieces and globs of Darkness covered everything, all of them new. A glob dribbled to his shoulder, but instead of hitting him, it slowed in the air, then ran off nothing and hit the floor. He looked up.

The remains of One—whom, he knew, despite its experience, was not a Fragment, but was one of them instead—were there, separated out into tiny parts when he'd willed it to be torn to shreds bit by agonizing bit. His Light had not yet killed it. Curious.

A thought, and the Light keeping One in the air returned to him, letting One reform and fall to the floor. He caught it with an outstretched servo before it did.

"Ple-ase…" Its voice, once distorted, strong, and arrogant in its power, was quiet and broken. Splintered and ground to dust. "W-e… We di..n't know…"

He stared at it. Through it. Into its blackened heart. "You live still, when you should not. Why is that?"

"Y-y-y-ou… Kil-led… Suffer-ing…"

"Yes. They used her voice."

"L-le-t m-e…"

"What have you done to yourself, to stay alive this long?"

"L-et me… Live…"

He hummed, the sound echoing. "No."

A pulse of his Light, and it exploded, as Suffering had. Bits and pieces of One sprayed and splattered across the floor. As before, he remained untouched. Unblemished.

The thunk of something hitting the ground was not expected.

He turned. Saw nothing. He raised his Shard, its light illuminating. Only then did he see a glint of something amongst the remains of slaughtered Fragments. He advanced, and the glint brightened, gaining the same, blinding quality of his Shard.

Reflection, he thought, stopping above the object. It was small and shaped like a cube. And, indeed, it was reflecting what was around it. It did so perfectly, shining the Light of his Shard back at him. He Summoned, willing the object to his servo.

It didn't move.

Curious.

Extremis crouched, picking it up off the floor. At that angle, he cut his Shard's light off from the cube, and instead, he found himself staring at a flawless image of his own faceplate. He turned the cube over in his servo, analyzing it. It was metal, but not one he knew—and that was rare. He sensed neither Light nor Darkness emitting from it—and that was rare. Like him, it was also untouched, even though it had sat in Darkness—and that was rare.

He looked at his reflection, slightly tilting his helm. His reflection tilted its head the other way. He blinked, and his reflection blinked back, its optics turning from ruby red to a deep cobalt. His armor became cinders and detritus, and those optics became haunted. Torn apart. Broken.

He blinked again, and he stared at himself once more.

Not a mirror, he thought. Nor a true reflection; it didn't reverse what shined from its surface. It was something else. Something that reflected truth without blemish, just as it suffered neither Darkness nor Light.

A thought, and Extremis was next to the portal he'd crossed to get there. He stepped through it without pause.

The crowd of Ancient drones aimed their weapons at him, the air between him and them crackling violently. Ominously. Seeming to vibrate with power. Purpose. Perpetuity.

Then, together, the runes covered all the drones flashed white, and each and every one of them lowered their weapons. Then they lowered themselves, bowing down before him.

"Hail the Knight," they said as one, in the Ancient dialect.

"Hail the Knight," they praised, optics low to the floor.

"Hail the Knight," they called, and the air rumbled.

In his hand, the cube vibrated. He glanced down at it just as it began to float. It hovered in the air above his servo, slowly spinning, reflecting. First himself, then the opened sphere and the portal behind him. His other servo, still holding his Shard. But, oddly, never the bowing drones.

Curious, indeed.

He grabbed hold of the cube, keeping it from floating away. A thought, and he was back on the observation post of his Paraions, standing right where he'd been… Klicks ago? Or had it been longer? Time was difficult when he let himself lose control.

Extremis looked to Stormhammer. "The threat is contained."

Stormhammer looked at him like he was a deity made flesh. The rest of the room was doing the same. He hated it.

"Take this," he said, holding the cube toward Sunrider, the object itself following his movement, as if he held it in his digits. Or he was Summoning it in place. Strange.

The head tech approached cautiously. Quietly. All present personnel were visibly tense. Visibly frightened. As if Extremis would destroy them all if they so moved incorrectly. Eventually, Sunrider reached Extremis and took the offered cube.

He didn't create a reflection on its surface. Nor did anyone else, save Extremis.

"I-I—" Stormhammer swallowed audibly, gave a shuddering breath, as Sunrider backed away, gazing at the cube with a frown. "You… Were glowing, sir."

"Yes. My Light is bright."

"B-but… It wasn—"

"That cube," Extremis said to Sunrider, "was found within a Dark God."

Sunrider threw it to the side, but it slowed down faster than it should have and just floated in the air nearby and rose slowly, as if the atmosphere was a liquid heavier than it was. "It was what?!"

"It doesn't react to Light, and there is no trace of Darkness on it. Find out why."

"This is far outside—"

"Stormhammer." He looked back to the smaller mech, demanding his optics.

The commander on the ground snapped to attention.

"The Cosmos has changed. Our time of solitude has ended. Contact Intelligence and Security. Tell them to cease Phantom Protocols."

Stormhammer gave a shaky salute. "S-sir! It will b—"

Extremis space bridged himself away, to his sanctuary. His public one. He looked at his chair and the holoscreens around it. They were no longer frozen, but they weren't correct either. Lagging severely. "Vigilance."

It took alarmingly long for the AI to respond. "S-s-s-si—sir," Vigilance's voice echoed around the chamber, fractured. Glitching. "I-I-I s-s-seem—"

"Compromised." Extremis blinked at the screens, and the cameras hidden within their coding.

"C-c-c-correct, sir," Vigilance said, voice regaining some level of normality. "I… I-I don't…"

"Have files regarding your infiltration."

The AI paused. An unheard-of event. "N-n-no, sir. I r-r-rec-c-commend—"

"Engage complete system reboot and software upgrade to Class 12 Sophistication. Authorization Onyx-118/Tango-1792. Secondary authorization: Shoulders of Giants."

The lights in his sanctuary darkened, then brightened. The holoscreens flickered to life again, displaying information without delay or lag. He had thousands of unaddressed, high-priority alerts. He ignored them; Vigilance would take care of them, once he was done rebuilding himself.

Extremis… Had something else he needed to do.

He walked to the door. Not the one leading into the rest of the complex. The one that led nowhere. The one just for him. He placed his servo to the hidden scanner, and the door to his true sanctuary opened with barely a sound, revealing to him the many trinkets—the many agonies—beyond. He gazed at them, the physical reminders of every joy, every sorrow, every failure he had endured.

He went for the pedestal just off the room's central point. The one holding a shard of metal, an audio recorder, and a stone carving. A familiar voice in his broken mind told him not to. Told him to avoid them at all costs. To not think. To not remember.

The voice was his own.

He didn't listen to it. He needed to do this; he needed to. Suffering had… Used this against him. Twisted it. Corrupted it. He needed to restore the purity of the objects.

With servos that had destroyed worlds and rendered civilizations to memory, he gingerly picked up all three objects—the metal shard and stone in one servo, the recording in the other—and sat down in the room's only chair. The outside world ceased to be when he did. The portal, the Palace, the cube—none of them mattered like the objects in his servos. None of them were as important. As meaningful.

… as painful.

He set the shard on one arm of the chair, the recorder on the second, and kept hold of the stone. He ran his digits over its surface, feeling every crack, every imperfection. Every marking of a wayward chisel, incorrectly struck when it was first carved. Some of those had been intentional, meant to prompt a reaction.

She'd laughed at his clumsiness. It was such a wonderful laugh… He'd just wanted to keep hearing it.

He shuddered, servo shaking. He felt his mind fighting against the base reaction. Against the threat to the layers of logic and order he'd embraced to preserve his sanity. It was not succeeding. Bit by bit, he could feel his mind cracking, its safeguards failing. He needed to be grounded already.

Extremis' optics flicked to the metal on the arm of the chair. He swapped the stone for it. The shard did not prompt happy memories. Its surface—smooth and flawless where the stone was imperfect—had not prevented it from shattering against a cold greater than Absolute Zero. Had not kept intact the weapon it was once part of. Had not stopped a force, an evil, from succeeding in its dark goals, when the blade had been pledged—given—to do just so.

Its touch flared the black anger within him. Stoked once more the recently-satiated fires of vengeance. Retribution. Justice. The dark haze of hatred, self-given and external. It centered his purpose. Reminded him of failure—theirs… And his…

He was ready. He took a breath. Steeled himself in mind and body.

Then he played the recording back.

It did not at first play, so disused and ancient as it was. He heard it whirl to life for the first time in eons, drawing power from a cell that—by all rights and reason—should have run out of charge more than a million centi-vorns ago. Yet live it did, despite the odds against it. Much like him.

A transparent, blue hologram flickered to life, but only partially; the lenses were cracked, and he would not fix them. The effect gave only a fleeting impression of someone in front of a camera.

"Come on, come on…"

Extremis' entire being went still.

It was a femme's voice, as strong and full as it was beautiful. A faint metallic scraping accompanied her words. A tool scratching the surface of a softer metal. It went on for a few micro-klicks, then the femme softly cursed. "Fine, I give up! I'll get a new one for next leave. Bitlits! Come on—we're recording the message!"

Two distracted acknowledgments came from the background; a third came after a pause.

"Sooner we record, sooner I can take us to Maccadam's!"

That got a more enthusiastic response from the other two, and another, more excited confirmation from the quieter third.

"This trip is exempt from our talk of spoiling them, Sweet. I just happen to think we need… A treat this cycle." A beat of silence, then, "Stop looking at me like that."

He heard pedes on the floor. Three pairs. Two close in size, the third slightly larger. Slower. More subdued. The first two had more than enough energy.

"No running in here. We just discussed this."

"Sorry, Edda," two more voices said. Two more wounds in his empty chest. "We forgot."

"Oh, you forgot, did you? Let me remind you of the consequences…"

A scuffle. Two playful screams. Laughter from all three and a slight chuckle from the fourth.

"Okay, okay." The femme again, taking control. "Enough games. Sit. Talk to your Adda."

"Hi, Adda!" A mechling's voice. Younger than he sounded; he was so smart for his age. "Can you talk to Edda about not abusing us? It's very unbecoming for a celebrity."

"Oh, is tickling abuse now?"

"Absolutely. Punishable by paying for energon candies."

"Hi Adda!" A femmeling took over, as the mechling and femme briefly continued their playful back-and-forth. Same age as the mechling, far more unhinged. "The Academy is really fun and I've made lots of friends and learned a lot and Teacher Helmhammer looks really scary but he's very nice and keeps energon treats in his desk for us and he doesn't know I know they're there and I took 'dis many one time and I'm gonna do it again next cycle!"

"We talked about this, Vibes," the femme said. "You need to apologize to Mister Helmhammer, remember?"

"But what if I don't get more energon treats because he starts locking the drawer and not giving them out like normal or keeping them all to hisself?"

"Then you apologized for doing something wrong. Also, something's wrong with the recorder, so Adda can only hear us."

"Why is it broken?"

"I'm not sure, Dear."

"But why?"

A bell rang in the recording. There was a pause. Extremis knew she would be checking the security camera. "Gotta pause this, bitlits; Councilor Canatess is here."

Two gasps sounded out. "Auntie Cana!"

"Yes. Auntie Canna."

"YAY!"

Two pairs of pedes ran away.

"Bitlits!" There was a groan from the femme. "And I suppose now it's going to be a longer pause. Shouldn't have mentioned who it was." He heard her stand, then add more quietly. "If you want, you can take it to your room…"

There was a flicker. A pause of audio, and a complete ceasing of any visual element. Followed by a faint, high sigh. "Hi, Adda."

His servo clenched.

It was her.

The voice was a femmling's. Older than the other two, but not yet close to adulthood. Her tone was… Sad. Hurt in a way that brought down one's entire soul and being.

"Edda's downstairs, talking to Aunt Cana and trying to wrangle Vibes and Wind'. But you know the Twins; they never make it easy." She chuckled, the sound soft. "I don't understand why we're so different; I don't remember ever being as active as they are. As… Well…"

Something in his dead spark moved. Gave the faintest pulse of life. Hummed with a different ache. A different pain.

His optic twitched.

"Anyway, things are fine. Flow's the best player on the Grav-Ball team, which isn't a surprise because she's really good. Breakhorn is doing really good in pre-sciences; he loves learning about atoms and sub-atomics. Hightop moved. Solarshot's going to a new Low Academy now. Flinch is, too. Sundrive's Edda got a new job, so she'll be leaving soon. Longwire doesn't talk to me anymore, and I don't know why. I still see her at Academy with her new friends, but she ignores me. I don't know what I did. But I'm… I think I'm still happy, even with her not being a friend anymore. Some cycles. I just… Wish I the others hadn't moved before Mid Academy next jour."

There was a long pause. Another hint of more than death living in his chest. His optic twitched again. His jaw followed suit.

"I've been having fun with my music though," she went on, her voice brighter. More alive. Passionate. "Edda says I've been getting better. She's been teaching me things when it's just us, which is nice. She helped me write a piece all on my own!"

There was a rustling. A movement of several objects at once. Another breath. Not a sigh, but a calming of nerves.

"Edda's the only one who's heard this," she said, her voice less certain. More embarrassed. "And I keep messing up the notes, but I like it anyway."

Music played.

His audios recognized the instrument. Pictured it perfectly in his mind. A dis'cada. The one they'd bought for her creation cycle. For a moment, he saw her, sitting at her desk, playing it. Creating smooth, haunting notes at a slow, measured pace to make up for her inexperience in where to place her digits. What keys to press. What strings to pull. When to use a deeper or lighter tone.

It was… Beautiful. More beautiful than anything Extremis had ever heard.

In his black soul, an inkling of something else tried to take shape. Tried to pass through the dark, dark cloud of rage always lurking under the surface. It drowned in the dark, but still it pressed on. Pushing against his spark.

His optic twitched again.

The song ended. The femmling let out a breath just barely caught by the recording. "I don't have a name for it yet," she said, sounding less timid. Happier instead. "I don't, well… I've never done something like this before. I don't know if it's good enough to get a name."

It was.

"But it's just my first one! I'll get better. Edda says I'm already a lot better since I started."

She… Was…

"I should stop the recording now. It's been a while, and I think I heard the door open again; Auntie Canna probably left. I didn't even say hi to her…"

The femmling fell silent, and Extremis knew why. Had seen it far too often, so long ago. The way her helm would dip. How her optics lost that spark in them, giving way to a sorrow that didn't belong to someone so pure.

"I don't like this," she said at last, her voice hollow and despondent. "I don't like being sad all the time. I don't like spending breems just looking out a window, trying to do something but can't. I don't like my friends leaving me or not being my friends anymore. And I don't like you and Edda being away all the time!"

Her voice broke at her last words. The weeping began after. Weeping he'd known well. Tears he'd dried as many times as he could, or let soak his armor, if that made her feel better.

Tears that now fell forever, and no one could dry.

The drowned thing pushed harder, and his rage let it. His breathing shifted, growing slightly unsteady. He savored how it felt.

"I miss you, Adda. I want you home again. I don't want you to keep going away…"

His next breath came as a shudder. He felt his servo shake. His jaw faintly quiver. More and more, the drowned thing gained affluence in his being. Came with scorn and hatred and its own, violent anger. All directed at him.

He deserved it.

There were a few more cries from the recording. More tears. Then sniffles. A few audible breaths.

"I'm sorry…" The femmling sounded ashamed. "I know I shouldn't cry…"

The thing grew stronger still. Urged him on, when he had no need of it. His servos clenched, wanting to gather the femmling up and hold her tight. Tell her it was okay to cry. Okay to feel. Okay to be sad. Just as he'd told her a thousand times before.

Why had Fate been so cruel to someone so innocent…?

"Okay," she said, evenly. More relaxed. "I'm okay now. Or, I will be. I can't wait until you're home; I want my family whole again." A pause, then, "I'm going to go talk to Edda and the Twins for a while. Bye! I love you, Adda."

The recording clicked its end.

His audios heard it. His mind made note of it. His soul dwelled on it. On her voice. Her words. Her sadness. Her anger. And, despite it all, her love.

In his chest, he felt something. Something not dead—not anymore. It whirled with fresh life. Fresh rage and agony. Quickly it spread through him, robbing him of breath. Focus. Thought.

It was sorrow.

It hurt. It hurt. Like it had, so long ago. Like it was supposed to. He welcomed it. Held onto its once-familiar embrace, not wanting it to leave him again. To depart and leave him empty. Drowning in the cold, endless void within his own heart. His lip quivered. His jaw shook. Inside, he was a mess. A terrible, terrible mess.

There, in his true sanctuary—for the first time in millions of centi-vorns—Extremis wept.

He wept long, and he wept hard. He wept for what was, what could never be, and what was to come. He wept in grief and misery. In wrath and loathing. In torture and loss. It served only to boil that thing in his chest. In his dead spark. Tears were not enough.

Extremis screamed. Bringing voice to the torment inside him for the first time in eons. Letting roam free the enmity he seldom released from its cage. The self-denigration for his failures. His scream made the air vibrate, the walls and floor shake. The lights to flicker and go out.

Eventually, he stilled once more. His tears, his screams, falling silent. Collapsing under the weight of the emptiness inside him. The lights flickered back to life.

He sat there for a long time, gazing at nothing, feeling naught but the air in his intakes once again. The faint malice that now spread throughout all the universe.

He hit replay on the recording. He had to hear it again. Those words, from Her voice.

I love you, Adda.

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Welp, that happened.

It's a very strange feeling, finally being at this stage of Fate Calls. I've been working toward this specific chapter for a very, very long time. I've gone through so many life events, other works, hurts, and frustrations, that I really can't even pinpoint the specific date that many of these scenes started to pop into my head. Only that they've been there long enough that there was a time when I doubted I would even be able to write them out.

But I have. And it feels good.

... yes, I am also aware of the irony of that statement, given this chapter's events.

I have many, many plans and scenes still running in my mind, and I hope to share them with you as soon as I can. If not in this story, then rest assured I'll be recyling some of them into my original works, which I also hope will reach their next stage soon.

This chapter has four credit songs, one for the end of Shadow's part, one for the end of Lockdown's, one for Wildwing's, and one for Extremis'.

The 1st credit song is "Mass Effect 3 OST - Leaving Earth" This song has a phenomenal balance between sad, tragic, and ominous, with beautiful notes from pianos and horns, as well as the signature Reaper percussion. I think this song perfectly suits the last moments between Shadow' and Arcee, right before her death. It captures both the mourning and the fury that engulfs Shadow'. Highly recommend.

The 2nd credit song is "The Hit House - Caia Caelcilia" This song has an intense, intriguing tempo to it, which builds into a darker and more "cinematic" feeling to the music. I picture it as accompanying Lockdown and Singularity's quick, back-and-forth scenes, concluding with the Ship as it watches. Love this one.

The 3rd credit song is "YUNGBLUD - Abyss" Unlike most songs I choose, this song is almost exclusively a theme for a scene rather than the ending note. It has a very interesting, very catchy, tempo, and it's easy to picture a number of epic images as this song plays in the background. I envision playing right when Wildwing experiences the shift within him. The moment he goes from being just Wildwing, to something more. It would then continue as he directs the Feeling in decimating the borders of the Apex Sentinel, ending as he draws at the conclusion of his scene.

The 4th credit song is "Efisio Cross - Lettre à Élise" This song has both somber and happy tones, leaning heavy into tragedy, sorrow, and loss. I think it perfectly suits Extremis at the end, listening to the recording over and over again, haunted by voices only he can now hear.

Thank you all for reading. Please consider leaving a comment behind as you leave, as they really are what keep me going creatively - both in fanfiction and my original work. Any and all are equally appreciated by me.

I sincerely hope and pray for your health, happiness, and safety for you and your family and friends. Be well.

See you soon.