The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
Part X: A World to Die On
Three had been destroyed; this had now brought the number of their race’s down to nine.
When they first came to Earth, the primitive inhabitants were little more than playthings—an unexpected bonus. They morphed them into bloodthirsty war toys for their own armies. Although the natives intellectually and physically were dwarfed by their awesome might, they respected their feral warrior nature. But then something unexpected happened in the last five hundred years: the dwindling savages took captrured titan technologies and used it to their gain; adapting and creating mega-fortress cities to defend themselves. And now they had discovered a weakness in them—a weakness they themselves did not know that they had.
The other two omni-race genocides could be accepted. The first one trusted his greatest mortal creation, not realizing it would be betrayed. In the other omni-species eyes, it deserved its obliteration.
The second, Hyperion: that omni-species obliteration was an accident, a miscalculation of the sun’s solar energy, which proved to be a weakness because of a miscalculated solar flare from the star that overloaded Hyperion’s power generators, obliterating it to atoms.
Ramses, however was destroyed in a different way: it was defeated in battle by the humans—by their design, their tactics, on their battleground, and by the most basic of components: a soldier. Perhaps the greatest weakness of all was Ramses’s arrogance.
Vermix, keeping his omni-race name, thought deeply, retreating within it’s vast body. Hiding its consciousness into the core, it gave control to subroutines to finish the battle that its army was winning against a smaller human settlement. It always surprised him how the bulk of humanity fought against them when the odds greatly outweighed their favor. Maybe this was what made them so powerful, so adaptable.
Throughout human history, it had studied that these creatures had won even against insurmountable odds. Most of the time they had to sacrifice a great many of themselves, like the last battle against the Ramses, but they would do it. This was the kind of devotion the Titans could never have. Humans also possessed a great strategic and tactical knowledge, kept alive by their never-ending lust for war—a trait that could be studied throughout their bloody history. If given the time, he pondered, they could conquer the known universe. Except the only thing that has barred them was the interference of the inter-dimensional entities. For some reason, they must keep humans from evolving. Could it be that if they evolved, the entities would die? Or, on the other hand, if the humans were exterminated, would they cease to exist?
Vermix quickly glanced out to view the battle as it’s cyclopean feet crushed homes and his followers dispatched the last of the human warriors and civilians. Its army was small compared to some of the others omni-species; basically, it kept them for protection against enemies: human, rival omni-race’s, ethereal entities, and the rare giant creature. Vermix sought a different path to the means—one of logic, not merely cessation and deconstruction. Although the last two were much easier, Vermix did not lust after them like most of its rivals. Still, something had tempted them to conquer this small planet on the edge of a nearly deserted, desolate galaxy, far away from the main body of the universe and their multi-galactic empires—a galaxy they had no desire to even conquer, and one by all logic they should have controlled by now.
Perplexity; Vermix realized that the temptation to conquer was a lure. Logically, it should have taken a mere slight of thought to strip this planet and this galaxy of its knowledge and control all the sentient populations. Pieces of the puzzle were scattered about, intersecting into dead ends, being scattered in the eddies of chaos. Humans, the onmi-race and the others, and the entities were clashing. The humans were fighting for their survival. Vermix’s race, and the other omni-race’s, came on a dare that they couldn’t conquer this meager galaxy. And as for the inter-dimensional entities, he was still not sure what their motives were, but they were powerful in all realms, weaving meticulous plans. Vermix’s vast galactic intelligence could not fit any of the puzzle pieces together.
He peeked out at the battle again, astonished as he saw that the humans had transformed into horned, clawed beasts, driving back his clones. Behind him, hundreds of red-winged demons descended from the sky, slashing at its back merely to be vaporized by a hundred plasma blasts, but thousands more still fell. Angels of vengeance swooped at him, slashing his armor with golden divine lances. He was under a full-scale attack—a battle Vermix knew he could not survive for much longer.
From the sky directly in front of him, the largest entity the Titan had ever seen thundered down. A void-black demon, armed with an immense blazing sword, thrust toward the Titan. Vermix unleashed a torrent of annihilation upon the demon, but all his death was deflected by the entity’s power of sheer will. The Demon, half the Titan’s cyclopean size, severed its hand as it went to parry the slice.
Necrem then plunged the weapon deep into the Titan’s lower right abdomen, releasing a molten jet of energy that repulsed Necrem violently, throwing him hundreds of feet away. Necrem laughed, his voice booming throughout the countryside.
Vermix released control of his shock Titans and gathered his remaining energy into his tele-warp generator. The space around him bent, losing color, as he pierced a hole into space-time. Then, almost as soon as the hole had been torn, the Titan vanished, along with any unlucky clones and demons that happened to be within the warp area. The remainder of his clones stopped fighting and began to wander around aimlessly. Vermix’s mutant followers battled on with Necrem’s demons and the angels of vengeance, now lusting after ethereal blood.
“STOP!”
Necrem yelled as his cyclopean wings blocked out the sun’s rays. The battle suddenly halted to a dead stop.
“You fight for me now!” Saying with a sneer on his thin flat lips.
Written ~ 1997. © Jacob A. Pickard 2025. All rights reserved. This work is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced, republished, excerpted, or used for academic, commercial, or derivative purposes without written permission.
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