The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The human settlement on the Pacific coast had been totally destroyed, its army defeated, and its people twisted and transformed into demonic beasts.
The clone warriors were now under the control of Necrem as he weaved his dark dream within their empty minds. Hundreds of human Titan-followers now pledged their allegiance to him; they were at his bidding. All remaining humans at his disposal.
“Now I have an army again. By force of sheer will, I easily defeated that Titan. The next battle I have with a Titan will not be that easy. They’ll be prepared and waiting,” Necrem, back in his throne room, arrogantly boasted to the War God Marsan.
Marsan disliked Necrem and showed it openly.
“You had my help. Your will alone could not defeat a Titan,” the war god countered with anger.
“It did. Your strategic skills did help a great deal.”
“Thank you,” Marsan seethed. He stood at a height of seventy feet, relatively small compared to Necrem. He wore blood-red body armor that seeped blood—it almost resembled human blood armor, but was dark iron rust with black highlights. He wore no helmet, revealing his green eagle eyes and a lust for conflict, born by the hatred and greed of mortals. A long black mane of hair cascaded to meet his black cloak. He had two huge sabers that swayed on each side of his legs. Marsan exuded arrogance, confidence, and superiority.
“So what do we have in our new mortal army?”
“The Titan left us with ten shock Titans, five hundred followers, and eight-thousand surviving clones, and about five-thousand mortals from the town ,” the war god responded.
“Also, we have three thousand beasts at our disposal.”
“Good. Have you figured out how to use the shock Titans?”
“Not yet, but my tech-seers say that they’re working on a solution,” Marsan answered back coldly.
“Fucking technology!” The god-demon chuckled.
“Unfortunately, Necrem, your will is incapable of controlling technology, and there’s not too much of it to be had,” Marsan replied, calculating his next move.
Part XII: The Singular I
In the vast radioactive wastes of Siberia, a cyclopean frame lay sprawled on the side of a mountain. Hundreds of mangled clones and flayed demons and angels littered the ground around Vermix, their bodies incinerated by the intense radiation that was within the warp field.
Snow turned to heavy rain as it traveled near the injured Titan, the intense heat transforming the landscape. An insurmountable number of tiny robots and microscopic nanites began to patch together mangled armor, cleaved sensors, and seared internal components. The Titan’s once-beautiful silver frame had been tarnished by the carbon battle scars of a thousand lances and millions of explosive shells, culminated to ruin by five hundred years of intense warfare before Necrem’s total rout of Vermix.
“What is happening?” Vermix asked himself once his omni-mind came back online. *Nearly traveling beyond our capacity to reach this planet… Have we come this far to finally be destroyed by entities of other realms? Is this our fate for conquering most of the known universe? For millennia, even the strongest empires that stood against us crumbled relatively easily,* Vermix pondered. *To be under our control is an honor,* he thought. *These humanoids barely had control over their system when we came. They hadn’t even achieved inter-system travel. Yet we cannot conquer them. The more we exterminate, the stronger they seem to become. The inter-dimensional entities, do they now threaten war with us?* it contemplated solemnly as its massive frame’s micro-robots connected conduits, melded fibers, reconstructed servos, and fused armor.
“They have upped the ante. The battle against me was a test. They intend to take their planet back, for they need these humanoid creatures for their survival, and in order to guarantee these humanoids’ survival, they must annihilate us.”
*To come to this planet was madness. Why did we ever listen to those transmissions? Could we not just have left such an insignificant galaxy alone? A system filled with brainless, savage creatures that would have destroyed themselves anyway. Pride and arrogance have blinded us. Our lust for absolute dominion may be our downfall, and our obsession for absolute perfection of the universe our destruction. We war for territory on this planet, for the one who conquers all shall rule the vast universal empire that we have created. We are a dying conglomeration who may have reached their pinnacle of evolution and are now receding back into the abyss of feral drives. The trillions of individual consciousnesses who make up my essence integrated into perfect union eons ago have quested for far nobler things singularly than I, but yet all have stooped down to their instinctual behavior—behavior which my race not only follows, but exemplifies on a universal scale. I—we—have been blinded for billions of years, but now I see that our extinction will be imminent if we remain here, and all our accomplishments, our ultimate universal perfection, shall be lost forever. I must not let this happen.*
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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