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  “You were made merely to die? Pathetic! I will not die. I will become one with the Dark Urge. All hail the Dark Urge!”

  “Demon, you were never truly alive. Just a thing. A weapon. Nothing more than the gun you clutch. I think my first emotion would be pity.”

  “Pity is not a weapon.”

  “No. Neither is mercy. And neither you nor I posses that trait. Therefore, demon: good bye.”

  Seconds before the failsafe said its good bye, Ursuhr had struck the mortal blow against the Dark Titan’s chest. It had taken a full second to fall and create a spreading wave of crushed ground from where it impacted. Although Ursuhr didn’t need an atmosphere to sustain him, he still took deep and frequent breaths. They hurt his bloodied snout. He released a low growl and raised his hammer high overhead for one last, vengeful strike. The blow never came. The failsafe then said good bye.

  The flash was pure white. The ground where Ursuhr stood shifted beneath him. A section of city was blasted into the front of the shockwave. It hit with enough force to twist the maul free from Ursuhr’s hands. He knew this was not another nuclear weapon attack. It made the native fission bombs look feeble. He turned to look in the direction of the blast, and blinked. If he were closer, brightness would be the least effect to concern him. The blast was from a weapon that could kill him. More than the saurians, alien Titans, and his horde made war here. Perhaps it was time to leave.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  If hope now lived above the galaxy, long ago it burned to ash on a world deep within it. Wastelands spread vaster than oceans with dunes of sand more like grains of acid. Vast storms gathered the caustic grit into clouds cutting the surface as swift, airborne saws. Mountains endured the onslaught as peaks of static belligerence. Daylight was the fitting red glow of a giant star trapped by bands of a solar-scale machine. With no sand storm aloft, nightside looked up at the naked black of space. Forgotten constellations appeared to shun the face of the dread world. One name marked it across the stars that harbored complex thought and simple fear. Hell.

  There were canyons on Hell, stygian and deadly. If any life survived in their depths, it would be in gardens of unearthly horror. Some pits of the equator descended deeper and revealed the chambers of the machine below. It wore the surviving geology as the skin of a monster whose spawn laid siege to a galaxy. Once, Hell was a planet remade a machine as an act of preservation. Now its eternal Forge shaped creatures and machines that burned other worlds.

  One thing, one life, huge or minuscule, survived from the age before Hell, and even before the construction of the Forge. It now crept from the depths of heat and darkness to gaze out at the Red Giant. The star’s glow obscured its bands, but the stargazer knew they were there. She had seen their sections soar up from the Forge and towards the swelling star that had consumed the hydrogen of its core and then later an inner planet. Its growth threatened the surviving solar system seen with nostalgic eyes by beings now capable of restraining expanding suns.

  Before the reign of Hell, the lone observer was described many times over eons by those who glimpsed and dared face her. At times she ate them. At times, not. Most of the tongues that spoke of her were now dead. Her many names included Shia-Phring and Kodai kumo. The name with the most meaning for her own mind was Great Widow. She had been part of a living world that became a giant machine devoid of true life, save her own. She was an orphan and a mother of lost generations and alone with no mates. Small or gigantic, she was the Great Widow.

  She witnessed machines grow and multiply. She watched material enter portals, be cast and then leave the former planet’s heart. The cosmic machine they built became known as the Iron Work. Some mind, indeed nostalgic, thought its black rings looked fashioned from iron. The rings stayed black even right above the star’s red glare. The Great Widow felt it was fitting she had witnessed the construction. Some minds would see a structure of rings greater than some solar systems built for purposes grand and mysterious. The Great Widow saw a titanic web ensnaring a star while it still lived, and then preserving it to serve as food, as energy. She understood the Iron Work this way, because she was a spider.

  The Great Widow heard a noise. It was a moan. A scream. It was a summons. She turned from the lip of the pit she hid within and bid farewell to the crimson sky. She had gazed at it for mere moments, or the rise and fall of mountains. No matter the length of her reverie, it was now time to face death. The Great Widow thought doing so would be her journey downward across treacherous surfaces. However, where there should be a shaft of steel there was now interstellar space. Before her was a cloud of gasses that harbored young stars. It swirled as a vast helix that slowly spun and tilted until the Great Widow looked down the center of the helical nebula. At this angle, the nebula appeared as an enormous eye to most creatures possessing sight. The staring nebula split into two mirrored images and continued its burning, unblinking gaze. The true nebula was an object of light and wonder. The doubled projections reflected the aspect of their maker. No matter their color or brightness, these eyes of the Dark Urge were inimical, accusing, and distant. It was a fitting depiction of the sovereign of intense heat and hatred. The Dark Urge knew the astronomical stare emphasized her omnipotence. The truth or falsehood of such power mattered little when you were equal to a fleeing spider suddenly exposed under the gaze of an angry, frightened child. This spider had no place to flee. The Great Widow was already in Hell. And so, as always, she would endure the madness of speaking to fire.

  The stellar fire vanished. The shaft into Hell was again before the Great Widow. She still had to make the treacherous descent. It was an act of devotion into a heated temple or forced march through her prison. She could not afford a slip of just one of her eight legs against the hot, metallic surface. The smooth shaft gave way to a twisting succession of arcane machinery surrounding her in a cylinder of tremendous length. The wide shaft would seem to dwindle to a black dot if not for the intense light and heat from Hell’s core. Many of her silken, safety strands burned away as soon as she wove them. It was cautious navigation that would spare her incineration by fire. Though heat alone might take her, still.

  The gusts of searing hot air surged back and forth along the shaft as if the world machine breathed. She paused as the air rushed out, and carefully climbed down as it was drawn back in. Luckily the Great Widow didn’t need to breathe anymore through the rows of trachea along her abdomen as in ages before. The heat might sear her lungs. Now, her adaptation to the arcane energies flowing from the Forge sustained her. She began to feel comfortable in the heat again. However, the most dangerous part of her task was yet to come. That would be in facing the thing that summoned her. There was a ritual to their communications. There were chambers of with specific designs. Just as a heart had chambers or a brain had regions. This brain that called the Great Widow was missing pieces. This was all too apparent when the Great Widow crept into the speaking chamber. The Dark Urge sat at its center and mumbled to herself.

  What the Great Widow saw might look pathetic. However, it was the most fearsome thing in creation. It was a little girl in a dress made from material with blue flower pattern. She sat swaying as she mumbled. The Great Widow carefully approached the Dark Urge and saw half the child’s skull was missing. The Dark Urge might truly be a great black machine, but this was a more accurate avatar. This was how she saw herself. The Great Widow pondered what other surviving or alien minds would recognize the image of the little girl. The last species of humanity was long lost. What the spider saw was an even earlier form. It was difficult to believe such frail life could be the ancestral foundation of great engineers that built the Forge and the Iron Work. Not even the Dark Urge had ever seen a true human being. Yet somehow her mind stored the images and her twisted psyche made use of them to illustrate her deepest self image, her madness.

  Many ancient stories spoke of little girls and spiders. One described the love of a fair prince and an arachnid. The Great Widow hoped the Dark Urge had love for
her. She would use anything as a weapon to survive. If the spider ever needed to defend herself, venom and webbing would be useless against a thing so powerful. Only the Great Widow’s mind, adapted over eons, was of use against such overwhelming power.

  Adaptation gave the Great Widow a power useful to this dark god. Her webs were never great symmetries of circles and straight lines. They appeared chaotic, but were carefully woven. Should a prey item stumble into her silk, some lines would merely slow but others would adhere and snap. The break released the stored tension. The adhered lines pulled on the victim as snares of great strength. Few could break free. The spider lived on all manner of desperate or confident creatures until no prey remained. By then, the energies of the Forge had strengthened and changed her and her web. Strands of her silk, strands of herself, were tangled with her and whatever she imparted them into. A machine or thing a galaxy away would always be within her web of awareness if it had a strand of her silk hidden within it. This served the Dark Urge. She wanted to know where her dread offspring, her Generals, were and what they did. Any other mother would desire this as a means to watch over her children. But the Dark Urge was missing pieces. Though she loved them, she didn’t trust them. And so the Great Widow was her means of communication, and her spy.

  The Great Widow often wished her entangled power existed before the Iron Work’s engineers departed. She would like to know where they were, and perhaps bid them return. The Forge world burn long after the Builders left for perhaps another reality. Their machines remained. To living eyes, they were immortal. The Forge’s operating system became an object to covet, and a thing to tempt plunder. An alien race thought they were the equal of the Forge’s builders. They were not. The machine fought back. The plunderers fled. Yet, their tampering left a lasting schism. In time it grew into two separate beings. In the following dual age, the spider crept forth and befriended them both.

  Perhaps it was the influence of the Great Widow that shaped the two minds to appear female. It was her appearance that made them aware of life beyond their minds. One intelligence became inspired to look for more life, more minds, beyond the limits of the Forge. Eventually she departed. The one that remained felt abandoned. She never felt healed and always missed a piece. She took to the shadows that soon cloaked her mind. Creation knew her now as the Dark Urge. She recast the Forge as Hell. The Great Widow remained, for she was creation's greatest survivor. And because there was no place for escape. The Great Widow kept to herself that she inspired the Dark Urge’s adventurous sister to leave. It was the spider’s personal secret, but also a potential reason the Dark Urge would crush her in anger should it ever be revealed. The Dark Urge was never missing her anger.

  The Great Widow stopped next to the avatar of the little girl. The spider towered over this form of the Dark Urge who repeated a phrase over and over in a meek voice as she swayed.

  “If I can imagine it, I know she can. If I can imagine it, I know she can. If I can imagine it, I know she can.”

  The half face of the Dark Urge looked up at the looming spider. A second eye formed at the side of the missing skull. Both eyes became massive and then looked down at the Great Widow as a faceless scowl from the walls of machinery that now pulsed.

  “I greet you, dark mistress.” The Great Widow pressed her body to the chamber floor as a form of prostration. “You summoned me.”

  For a moment there was only the sound of the rush of air through the shaft outside. The eyes circled the Great Widow. Cables, ducting, and arcane devices flowed around them as they moved through the walls.

  “Can you die?” The voice of the Dark Urge was now a thunderous vibration through Hell.

  “My mistress knows she can crush me at will. Yet my mistress knows then her Generals would miss her counsel, and she the contact with them I provide.”

  “You think I need you? To do a thing? Anything?” The eyes became even larger and more narrowed. They stopped.

  “My mistress is powerful.” The Great Widow replied. She hoped her translated thoughts preserved her acquiescent tone. “You are the greatest power of all. Yet my mistress keeps me as part of her power. I who have served her the longest of all.”

  They eyes merged into a vortex on the wall. It swirled into a massive finger made of black steel, machinery, and taunting. Instinctively, the Great Widow raised her front legs and calipers. She stopped before opening her jaws. She drew her limbs close and allowed the finger to prod her.

  “I am obedient, mistress. Just bid me to do your will.”

  The finger stopped. It unspooled into its individual elements that remerged with the walls.

  The little girl reappeared. She ran to the Great Widow with outstretched arms and threw herself against the arachnid’s abdomen.

  “I have a thought.” The Dark Urge said pressed into her hugging of the giant spider. “I have a plan. You will help me.”

  “I do as you wish, mistress. I always do. I must. You are the will of Hell.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  D’nai Liung was a planet of vast, emerald planes and indigo lakes. In its one, sparse forest, the trees were few but enormous. Each was a living, gravity defying world unto itself. Some of the towering, helical evergreens carried a metropolis in many of their expansive boughs. Most worlds, stellar empires, and system consortiums employed mundane physics to power ships, weapons, and a few surprises. Some even gave Anguhr reason to pause. He enjoyed those challenges. He hoped to find more on the colorful world. Here the arcane combined with natural arts. The sentient and crafty inhabitants were a species of arboreal gastropod. Anguhr began to wonder if they took his invasion seriously. When he leapt to the surface as a challenge, he heard something akin to a bird singing. He sighed. Then the Hydragon burst from the ground and attacked him.

  Aside from the assault, Anguhr still harbored doubts in other matters. Part of his mind always searched for some missing, mysterious aspect, or the true nature of war. At least this monster was solid. The Hydragon captured his full attention. It snapped and stabbed at him with five heads with opened jaws armed with swords for teeth. At closer inspection against his skin, Anguhr saw that the teeth were actually several beaks jutting from each mouth. This creature was a form of cephalopod made into a dragon. The snapping appendages could be heads on tentacles. They had a squid’s eyes. Many more, shorter tentacles supported and moved its vast bulk made heavier with fine scales. The Hydragon was an excellent monster. Better yet, it wanted to fight. Anguhr smiled.

  In his past campaigns, Anguhr had seen a species of intelligent and quite giant squids. They beseeched him to allow them to serve the Dark Urge. They had developed high technology and a communication network that served several stars systems. They offered it to serve the Dark Urge. They would also cut him in on a share of the user fees. Anguhr saw they did not fully understand the concepts of total war or annihilation. Apparently, they also did not hear the condescending tone in their appeals. Odd, Anguhr thought, for a species that thrived as communication coordinators. He destroyed one of their hub planets as an illustration of his intent. They were giant squid creatures with advanced knowledge and ample resources. The annihilation should have roused them to action. He commanded them to fight or be annihilated as cowards. Sadly, he annihilated them as cowards.

  Anguhr stopped his reverie and sliced away the snapping and biting Hydragon’s heads with a swing of his massive axe. A second weapon, toxic blood, sprayed from the sudden whipping fountains. And then each neck split and became a two whole necks and heads. Ten viscous heads whipped their disproportionate beak-teeth at him. His axe swung again. The crimson shower returned. As the decapitated heads rolled to the side of the monster, twenty living ones hissed into life. This, Anguhr thought, could be fun.

  Forty heads quickly became four hundred. Blood dripped from inside Anguhr’s black helmet and left a red sheen on his body. He was not yet bored. Heads rolled and joined many more. Over time and landscape, there were more skulls than blades of grass in what ha
d been a green savannah.

  Anguhr tired. His fatigue was not physical. His enthusiasm to swing his axe as an inverted pendulum waned. He was eager to leave D’nai Liung. He used his time against the Hydragon to consider several strategic matters. One was his next target for conquest. The unfortunate system he chose next fought with technology and steel. Their capital planet was a dry world. Here he would drown in the Hydragon’s blood before its jaws found a chink in his armor. They never would in his Hell-tempered skin. And he likely couldn’t drown. He needed no air to sustain himself. Still, getting bathed in this creature’s acrid blood was enough saturation for a long time to come.

  Anguhr observed his surroundings, and took another swing. This planet held insect-like forms. Some buzzing, carrion eating fliers would be massed over the countless heads and dark red pools if its blood wasn’t a fetid toxin. The natives had made a weapon to fight him that now killed their ecology. It was time for the carnage to end.

  Anguhr focused back on the Hydragon. Its greatest power was not the ability to rapidly heal and double its sets of jaws. It was the energy required to do so and keep fighting. Making new heads and necks would be its downfall. It was a massive beast at the start of their combat with great strength. But Anguhr knew there were limits to strength, and energy. Its formation of necks and heads was not synchronous with the muscle increase of the rest of its body. It was already tottering, and less than half of its snapping necks could lunge at Anguhr. Its offense and adaptation were faulted. A few more axe swings later and the beast collapsed from the weight of its own, countless heads. Waves of their severed predecessors rolled out from the impact. Anguhr leapt over the mass of wilting necks and impaled the creature’s body with his axe handle. It convulsed once, and then became still. Anguhr mused that the mass of its beak-teeth alone might alter the planet’s orbit.