Interstellar Age

Daelia sat in her homeworld of Svartalfheim, gazing into a mirror as she fixed her hair. Her Empire was in ruins, with few of the worlds outside the core of her domain having survived the Naraku. The bugs were crashing against her defenses set up around these several systems and failing to break thorugh.

Was she concerned about the insurmountable life, and the damage which her people could never recover from? Not in the slightest. She was, after all not herself, and had not been for a very, very long time.

However, the reflection in her mirror said otherwise. The Elven beauty stared back at herself from beyond the glass and screamed at her figure. There was just one problem: while her physical form saw her own reflection, her reflection did not. Instead, it witnessed a monster born of darkness and whose figure was so gaunt and malevolent that it might as well be called a skeleton.

“You taint my body by accepting that warlord into my bed, only to allow him to deny his obligations to protect my people. And after doing so, you watch as countless suffer and burn in the background…. You are a monster of the highest caliber. I swear, when I am freed from this mess, there will be nothing to stop me from destroying what remains of your kind once and for all!”

The skeletal figure which Daelia gazed upon was the monster of the Maw which had possessed her. It simply laughed at her words, which only it could hear, while assuring Daelia that she would never be free from her control.

“I have possessed your body for the last million years, and you think now, when my plans are so close to coming to fruition, that you will suddenly be free of me? Please, we both know better than that. In fact I –”

The comment which the devil from beyond the void was about to make was instantly cut off by an alarm which shocked both her and the woman who she possessed.

“Hostile ships have entered the system. They have begun to open fire on our fleet!”

This was impossible! The Naraku could never break through into the system which Svartalfheim lied within. Nor would they want to, as they would instinctively know about the darkness which the world lied within, and how it would corrupt them in ways which were irreversible.

Then who? Just who had managed to break through her defenses and enter straight into the heart of her territory? Daelia was the one who began laughing as she realized what had happened.

“Oh, you stupid bitch… That girl has turned against you. She’s not dead, rather she returned to him, and alerted him of what you were planning. I wouldn’t doubt if they had spent the last few decades silently preparing to deal with you while the rest of their armada focused on the Naraku! You are done!”

It was only now that the monster from the maw understood what had happened. Sinaria was alive, and had returned to the Germanic Star-Empire, no doubt injected with their advanced resurrection technology, where she warned the Empire of what she really was, and what she intended to do.

The critical moment for the resurrection of the maw within the galaxy and the establishment of her people was so close. And yet she had been stabbed in the back before the final pieces could come into play.

This drove the monster mad as she began to throw a fit, screeching in a monstrous voice as she did sol, all while her reflection stared back at her with a smug smirk on her face.

“No! No! No! This isn’t possible! It can’t be! We are so close!”

Daelia, the real Daelia or what remained of the fragment of her consciousness which had through pure willpower alone avoided being snuffed out for a million years of possession simply laughed in the face of her most hated enemy, making a vow which she never thought she would make in her life.

“If that warlord ends up being the means of my liberation and your destruction that I will wholly submit to him and his dominion over what remains of my people after he has succeeded in doing so. And if I must die to ensure you go to hell with me, then so be it! But one thing is certain, you and your spectral race of monsters are done! You hear me! Done! Any grand ambitions you may have had of returning to the galaxy are over! You’re all going to die today!”

—

Tia had alerted Erich to the reality of what was happening on Svartalfheim only after developing successful measures to detect and eradicate the maw. Give an advanced artificial intelligence that had 1/5th of the galaxy worth of processing power to come up with a solution to a problem it knew almost nothing about and it would have one for you in a matter of weeks let alone years.

The strategy was planned perfectly on how to counter the Voidweirds that once lived in the maw, and were capable of possessing the bodies and minds of corporeal beings within the galaxy. And because of this, Erich was well informed and prepared for how to deal with Daelia when he landed on the planet.

And he, of course, was the one leading the charge against his wife, which turned out to be a spectral monster from another dimension. Needless to say Sinaria was by his side, wanting to reclaim her world the best she could.

The troops which deployed to the world of Svartalfheim were wearing special power armor which blocked out the darkness from corrupting them. And as for Erich, his natural ability to repel the darkness was all he needed.

Which had been how Tia developed the means to replicate and mass produce the effect. The battle to end an ancient threat to the Galaxy which had been hiding in the darkness planning their resurrection for a million years had begun.