Chapter 4 of my Endless Fan Fiction.

Ch 1 https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/38-creations/thread/16426-fan-fiction-the-duke

Ch 2 https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/38-creations/thread/16382-fan-fict-the-missionary

Ch 3 https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/38-creations/thread/16383-fan-fict-the-vain-god



The Chained Chancellor



Heres Adrift sprinted across the barren wastes, under a burnt yellow sky. His muscles ache sweetly, his will urging him forward, four tentacles protrude from his back, keeping balance as his limbs propel him across the waste. Grey dirt and stone crunches under his claws.



Adrift leaps across a chasm twelve feet wide, loose stones fall noisily into darkness. He stops and turns watching his younger brothers trying to keep up. The yearlings have little resemblance to full grown cravers. They scurry across the ground on eight legs. Weak and defenceless except for a hard shell on their backs and sharp mandibles protruding from their mouths. In several cycles their four middle legs will shed and tentacles will protrude from their backs. They will grow strong and begin to walk upright and become soldiers of the Hive.



The yearlings finally reach the chasm, the leader jumps without hesitation, and the others follow. Adrift will make soliders of them yet. It is a great honour to raise yearling to true cravers, and Adrift relishes the task.

He continues to run, spitting a cloud of pheromones into the air, urging the young ones along. Adrift vaults over a great boulder as large as him and over a ridge, he stretches out his tentacles to break his fall, and raises himself up into the air. It has begun to rain, and he clucks his mandibles happily and drinks the drops, savouring their acidic tinge.



The yearlings catch up to him and crash their mandibles together noisily as he drinks. He has never felt so alive. He has never felt so free. A shadow passes over him. A feeling of dark dread and foreboding. In the distance a massive ship tears through the sky, then another. And another. Soon the sky is filled with them. They reign fire down on the land. The yearlings shriek as they are consumed. His mother cries out from the hive, in horrible pain. Heres Adrift joins his voice to hers.



He wakes covered in slime. His mucus membrane had burst in his sleep. A common occurrence amongst cravers under stress. A defence mechanism from the last age, before they had climbed to the top of the food chain in their home world and spread out across the galaxy.



Adrift wants nothing more to be back in the dream, his only place of freedom away from the Watcher. Nearly every waking moment, Adrift can feel the Watcher deep inside him, controlling him, seeing through his eye. The Watcher was apart of him. The Watcher was him.



“11:08...” said the Watcher from within, “and it was that the Concretes fell from God’s favour. They were cast down and purged from the universe and so He raised up new servants. And ye who would serve faithfully, I shall give unto you endless riches and abundance for commerce and ask of you that you only obey. Obey!”



Adrift’s head began to split in a pounding headache. He clucks his mandibles and shrieked as his claws clasp around his head, trying to shut out the pain.



“Obey!”



As quick as the pain came, it leaves. Heres took stock of his surroundings. He was in the Watchers ship. The cargo hold was his den. Bones lay strewn across the floor. He begins to place his armour on, plate after plate, trying to remember the last time he was without Him.



It was on Sirius. He was inside the Terran hive. The meat lay broken in the corner, dying loudly. The Watcher did not have what he came for. The broken meat had displeased him, but the virus stored in his armour seemed to give Watcher some hope after it was uploaded into the machines.



“This facility must be purged, my pet,” said the Watcher, “Go, hunt and feed.” The Watcher left him. Broken meat was finally dead meat. More meat came, shrieked and fled but Heres would not give chase. He slumped down in the room and just sat. For days he sat there, starving and growing weak but at least he was free of him.



Finally the Watcher joined him again with a great fury. “11:08,” he boomed “Obey!” His mandibles crashed together as he shrieked, his membrane sprayed forth with mucus. He rose to his feet and left the chamber of broken dead meat.

For the next four turns, Heres stalked the terran hive. In the great chamber where their ships were docked he found many meats, trying to break open the doors to reach their ships. He crashed through the room, his claws thrashed them apart, his tentacles choked and threw, his mandables devoured the meat. Some had ran, and failed. Some had fought and died. In the last few days the few that were left huddled together and hid from him, but he could smell the meat, especially when afraid. He had his fill and he was strong again, and the Watcher had been pleased.



Now in the cargo hold of the Watcher’s ship, his den, Heres prepared for his new task. The admantium mask hissed as it closed over his face. The ship shook violently. Tentacles braced the floor and ceiling, keeping him steady. With a resounding thud the ship was still.



“Obey.”



The far wall to the den slides open and sunlight pours in. Heres Adrift with the Watcher steps out onto green grass and a clear blue sky overhead. Great trees were all around, reaching kilometres up into the clouds. Feathered meat were watching him from above. They cluck loudly and fly from branch to branch. Some glide down and hop along the ground to get a closer look. The poor feathered meats. They will be just like him, though they do not know it.