Starcraft

Something was amiss…

She can feel it…

Something was moving beyond the walls of her mind…outside her reach. She focuses more. Reaching out to it; trying to catch it. Questions flood her mind.

“What is it? Where did it come from? What does it mean?”

But as time wears on, the questions fade away, giving rise to only one thing.

Catching it.

She focuses more, reaching out with her mind. But try as she might, she can't go beyond the boundaries of her mind. She screams in anger. Her instincts take over; instincts which had kept her alive for so long. She claws frantically at the walls around her. She can feel the damage she is doing to her mind, feel the pain she is inflicting on herself.

But none of that mattered. The thing outside now drew closer...so close she only but had to reach out...outside her mind and catch it. She grows angrier, ripping apart the walls of her mind; memories tearing, knowledge being destroyed. Her control is gone.

With a final effort, she rips apart the very walls that had kept her sane, reaches out into the abyss and grabs hold of the thing. Glee flows through. She can feel the pain she has caused...but she doesn’t care. She has got it. She has won.

But something is different now. The thing. It is moving.

Changing.

It grows hotter and colder. Harder and softer.

She tries harder to hold it. But it is now thrashing wildly like a caged animal seeking freedom. She does the only thing she can.

She brings it into her...into her mind.

Her greatest mistake.

As she closes the walls behind her, she releases the thing. It flows gently around. Searching. She watches it with awe. It reawakens memories...memories of times now gone. She watches as its thrashing subsided. It slowly flows to her. She reaches out. She touches it.

Suddenly, she feels something she had not felt before. Fear. Terror. She realizes something.

She has a made a mistake.

She tries to draw away from the thing. Too late. It seizes her. She stiffens up.

And then she hears its voice.

“Why do you fear me, Child?”

She doesn't answer. She struggles to break free of its grip. It is her turn to escape. But she can't.

She stops. She gathers her courage and asks.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I am who I am. And I seek a means to achieve what I want.”

The thing tightens its grip on her. Its voice grows.

“I seek a way to redeem what I thought was lost. Too long I have wandered in this darkness. Too long I have watched as my children ripped apart each other in madness and fury. You have dissappointed me.”

Its anger grows more terrible, more painful. She struggles harder. She is growing weaker by the second.

Then it hits her. She knows who the voice is. She knows what it had come for. It was impossible, she thought. It pauses.

“Impossible? I am far greater than you believe me to be, Child. I was a creation of a far greater power, a power that I thought was destroyed and consumed by my own children.”

She struggles to get free. She desperately wants to escape. She doesn't want to hear its voice. Memories of it come flooding back into her mind. She stops them...for a while.

"But now that power seeks to destroy its own children. I have returned to stop it. But I am not the only one that knows of its return. Many others do."

She doesn't understand. Her only aim is to break free. She draws her powers again.

“You have grown. I can sense it. But no matter how far you have grown, you cannot be greater than the one who created you”

The creature roars in her mind, and with its sound come the memories. Some of hers, some of its.

She sees a bleak land; red and wasted. Ashes flow on the wind and land on the carapace of the monsters that stand before her, creatures of her nightmares, yet slaves to her in her waking life. They look at her with mindless eyes, yet she can see in them hunger, and madness.

The scene changes. A battle.

No.

A massacre.

Millions and millions of shapes fly past her in the inky blackness of space. The stars blink in the background. She watches as they strike the hulls of many gargantuan shapes in the distance.

A wave of awe flows over her...She has never seen such madness before. The creatures she had feared were ceaseless in their attacks, guided by the voice.

By their master.

Her master.

She feels a growing hunger in her...a hunger to join the creatures in their attack.

Then, the scene changes again. This time she is on another planet. She remembers this. The memory of this belongs to both of them. She is inside something. She doesn't know what. The fluids flow across her naked body, running through her. She remembers fighting it, remembers how futile it was. Her humanity is being stripped away right in front of her eyes. She can't bear to see it. She tries to look away, but the thing won’t allow it. She starts her struggle again. She grows more violent in her attempts to break free.

“You have come a long way Child.”

She thrashes wilder, her efforts grow more and more violent. She is ripping apart the creature’s hold on her. In front of her, she can see and feel herself change. The beauty slowly being corrupted, her skin changing. She screams in fury and claws desperately at the creature’s hold.

“The time is coming Child. The time for my rebirth. And you will see it through. Just as I saw you through your rebirth.”

Claws sprout from her body. Grisly mutations grow all over skin and her hair that was once sleek and beautiful starts to change, mutate. Horrible tentacles sprout from her head. She doesn’t want to see it. She breaks free...a little. She starts beating against the thing.

“Soon, you will know the true might of the Swarm. You will realize your true purpose. Your true destiny.”

She breaks free a bit more. Only a bit more left. She is weakening. She knows it. She draws together her last bit of strength.

“And you would find there are greater opponents, greater beings than the once you battle now. There, you will test your full powers. There, you will realize your full potential. ”

With a final effort, she rips apart the last tendrils of hold the creature has on her and breaks free. In front of her eyes, the girl she remembered herself to be has finally changed. It has finished its terrible mutation. She watches in horror as the new creature in front of her opens its eyes. It looks around. Then it looks straight at her. It stops...staring.

Then, like a dog that has heard its masters call, it turns away to its physical walls. Using the claws it has grown, it slashes apart the shell that had imprisoned it and rips free. It stands in the darkness of the night now, a creature reborn under a new master.

It is a slave. It is her. She had been a slave. But she believed herself to have broken free of her master's will. Until now.

“Together, my Child, we will oversee the destruction of my enemies. And we will sit on the throne of victory..."

"And rule as the One supreme race!”


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The Queen of Blades opens her eyes. She has a new purpose now.

She has heard her father’s call.