Chapter 343 Cannon Fodder.
There had been total silence inside of Sector G.Gamma ever since Ikaris arrived, specifically, on the Resistance's main planet; Dredd, the cities were whispering, the farmlands were left unmanned and the markets had all come to a standstill; all daily activity came to a halt when a chain-link from an Unknown was sent to every operational device on all four unnamed worlds.
For some, the revelation was quite the shock, there were a few who had suspected as much, others had already set out to seek answers, but the vast majority of people simply stood confused as the lists of treachery carried out by the Resistance was revealed, there was coded proof, orders from their leaders and their closest allies.
Friends that had gone missing without any explanation, family members who suddenly left and never returned, acquaintances who seemed to vanish into thin air, hundreds of thousands of missions gone wrong with entire teams getting captured or killed, so many names, so many crimes, the list was hours long if read out, but the summary presented by none other than Alpha, provided clarity.
Along with the plans, schemes and schedules according to the agreement between the Emporium and the Resistance, there came a harrowing Message from the lost Vatui Princess, Ikaris addressing her most recent discovery and the people at large, whomever they were, wherever they were, it was a broadcast that later that same day reached out to every border of Khalla-Nova every household, every ship.
[The Resistance would not exist without the funds from the Emporium, the life that you have been provided inside of this bubble was tailored, so that you would later be sold as resource whenever the Emporium demanded it of your leaders, as was the case in the Khalla-Boris Collective where the resistance has been entirely wiped out leaving the former leader, Ikaris-Curt, and his most trusted advisors who migrated here to the Khalla-Nova Collective and started recruiting and building again...
this man is a traitor to his kind that has been selling his people as livestock]
[Across the Grand Collective there is a total estimate of Three Million Vatui and Godslayers captured and harvested by the Emporium on a yearly basis, the Resistance alone is providing nearly Twenty-Four Million lives to the Emporium over that same time period, this is why despite the efforts of the people to raise their numbers they have failed overtime and are being killed off.
Spread across the Grand, there is an unconfirmed estimate of Fifty Billion of our kind remaining]
[It might seem like a lot of time when spoken aloud, but our kind are blessed with nigh immortality. it takes thousands of years for us to reach maturity; almost ten thousand just to reach adolescence, if things continue this way our species will be extinct within the next two thousand years!]
"Just two thousand?"
"Isn't that the same as saying we have no time left?"
"Why is she coming back mow, she should never have shown her face at all!"
"Can we trust the words of someone who abandoned us for over Four Billion years, who does she think she is?"
The reactions as expected were mixed, ,ostly negative...
Ikaris; the Princess seen by some as a traitor and by others as a myth showed her face for the first time in Aeons, and it was with news of their extinction, it was not going smoothly but this was all within Alpha's calculations, through Ikaris's eyes, shared by the System onto those same devices, the people witnessed her arrival and confrontation with Curt.
***
"Today, will finally mark the true death of the house of Ikaris; the Emperor had personally requested that if I meet you I should try to capture and deliver you to him alive, but as things stand now you are far too dangerous, Ikaris, it is better to kill you and be done with it!" He chuckled when Arla's hands began shaking from the pressure that was being forced on her by the woman she had blocked from attacking Ikaris.
"Everything else can come afterwards!"
He leaned forward preparing to attack when his party began pushing those on Ikaris's side backwards, but through the floor like a phantom, S'mael emerged slicing at him and cacckling wildly.
The silence was broken; it shattered with an explosion that stole the entire upper half of the building they were in, causing severe damage to the buildings that surrounded it as well and then from the explosion like beams of light, one golden and the other one white Ikaris flew off, being chased by the leader of the resistance while she sent a message to the others.
"Whatever you do, keep away from the civilians, isolate them and take them down, I will handle Curt alone!"
"We have them outnumbered eleven to four!" Shar-Khan now seeing that he was not going to be facing Curt seemed to regain much of his confidence, but Dina served a reminder why he should remain alert when she was suddenly blown clean through the city with one strike from her foe, crashing far away in a deserted tundra while her attacker glanced at the others and then went after her.
He was a Godslayer, and while he had no idea what it was, he could still sense the dense Divine mana inside of her.
Thus, he had deemed her the most dangerous of the group and taken it upon himself to dispose of her.
"I will handle that one and then return. Hurry and go help Master Curt," He spoke in a rough tone; his hair glowed brightly, and his eyes went feral while he flew within the large rend Dina's body had left through each building while she was blown away.
"That Ikaris, we underestimated her, I heard that she defeated the Tenth General on her own in a one-sided battle, but what she just accomplished is beyond the power of a mere Celestial, and she called herself a god...?" He clenched his fists and his jaws, making haste as he rushed Dina a second time.
"This one is the one Rem told me about, he assumed she was a former member of the Emporium that had been converted like the others had, but she has strange powers; it's not LAW, so what is it and why is it making the highlights of her hair glow?" He approached Dina who had been blitzed by the first attack and craned his entire body, putting his back into the second attack while she was still recovering from the first one.
"I won't give her a chance to use that power again!" He thought back to Dina matcing his strength with a casual smirk until he had to exert himself to get her to budge a little.
"Dina!" Arla snapped when she sensed the second attack and saw a massive shockwave across the horizon, unlike before, Arla had taken to the skies above the city, she already knew that the current enemies were out of her league, her purpose for emerging on the front was to test just how much so she could provide assistance when she needed to while preventing interference from anyone else, this also meant that the others who made up Ikaris's party were also on standby.
Find your next adventure on empire
"Don't worry, Arla, the further away I am the better I will be able to fight, remember?" Dina responded while she was in the middle of crashing, experiencing another change of scenery when she crashed on a beach that stretched from one side of her field of view to the next.
Unlike the first time she was hit, Dina didn't struggle to get up, it was instantaneous, so much so that the Godslayer that had chased her halted when he arrived rather than attack her carelessly again.
"Are you certain?" Arla asked once more and Dina hummed, rotating her shoulder and blowing a small clot of golden blood from her nose.
"Yeah, I can handle myself," Dina looked over her shoulder at the man, seeing his hesitance. "If this is the strongest that the resistance has to offer then it makes sense why they betrayed their primary races to save their asses," She stared at him with a small smirk. "They are strong, but compared to someone like Dr'ul or Cecelia, they; aside from their leader, everyone else is cannon fodder."
"You... what are you?" The Godslayer asked; aside from his white hair, he was a fairly good-looking fellow; he was tall and lean, with an angular nose and attractive lips; his hair was silky as well, even noticeable while it glowed that brightly. "You are not human, I was told that you were-"
"I am a Divine, you idiot." Dina answered watching his eyes widen in surprise at what she was saying. "The information Rem came back with was based on assumption and misdirection."
"A divine... as in... a god?" He asked, surprised. "That is impossible, gods do not interfere in the matters of the Collective, no matter how bad it gets-"
"Those are the old bastards who are afraid of the ones above them taking action," Dina looked to the skies, viewing the heavens above and staring casually at the few residing deities who all averted their gazes when she caught them peeking at her.
"I couldn't give a fuck about anything greater than a Divine, my Mistress is a Celestial divine, the peak of divinity and my master is so far above godhood that we could all stop breathing if he willed it!" Dina declared while the pink in her hair spread, even to her brows and lashes.
"There is no being above Divine-"
"Of course you'd think that, but remember, you are dogs under the heels of the Emporium who has beings you could never dream of defying... the Grand is much more vast than you have come to know it!" Dina raised her hand and aimed it at him, the skies opened up and the seas behind her began roaring all of a sudden.
Like the descent of a world-ending disaster, lightning from the heavens tore through the atmosphere and turned on him.
[Divine Cast: Lightning Retribution]