Mercy spat defiance back at Tu'teggacha, just as he'd known she would, and he only smiled as she furiously denied all that he had said. He was finished with trying to control her, finished trying to shape her into something he could use. To him, she
was still weak; he had just gotten the
reasons for her weakness wrong. She had always been at the edge of sanity, her mind steadily crumbling into a maelstrom of competing personalities. She had made her love for The Mongrel her lifeline, and then his death had left her even more adrift than before.
His tentacled grin spread even wider, almost impossibly wide, as he saw despair flash across her face. The unstable gateway he had opened into this nightmare realm closed behind her as The Manifold collapsed, torn apart by the internal failsafe the Taskmaster had triggered. Now there was no way back; Mercy would never leave this place alive.
"I dominate the useful," he corrected,
"not the weak. And you? Your usefulness is at an end. I unleashed you upon the galaxy, used you to destroy the Maw's enemies. Now I will destroy you."
Reaching out to the eldritch void that surrounded them, Tu'teggacha drew in the cold energy of the Anti-Force. While the Force was life and motion, even its dark side based upon emotion and vivacity, the Anti-Force was stillness, entropy. It was like the Dark served by the Sorcerers of Rhand, the energy of decay, the power of the inevitable heat death of the universe when the last stars would consume all their fuel and wink out. The energy was not meant for him. It burned inside, a cold fire that agonized, but he held onto it all the same. He would only need it once.
He knew how to use the Force to
alter minds. With the Anti-Force, he would snuff Mercy's out.
"Don't think you will escape even in death," he burbled, a horrible Ebruchi laugh wrenching itself from his rubbery throat.
"I have seen the unknowable gods of this dimension. They will consume your soul. You will never reach your place in the Netherworld. You will never see your Asher again." But as the energy built in him, fraying at the edges of his soul, he dimly sensed a presence building around Mercy. No, not just one presence -
many entities, many spirits. They whirled around her. Where had they come from? He did not understand.
Panic set in as he felt those spirits strengthening Mercy, sensed her stepping closer. He tried to release the energy he had gathered in a dark wave, tried to melt Mercy's mind and flay the skin from her bones... but in trying to tap the Anti-Force, he had sought to control something beyond his power to dominate.
Just like Mercy herself. The energy lingered within him, lapping at his life essence, refusing to come out of his body and destroy his foe.
YOU WILL OBEY, he screamed inside, and by sheer force of will he brought it out, into his fingertips...
... just as the cold barrel of a gun pressed itself against the rubbery flesh of his forehead.
His glassy black eyes shot open, now wide with panic, with terror of the unknown.
"Wait-" BLAM. The point-blank blast painted the rocks behind him green.
-------------------------------------------------
~ It's over, ~ Kallan said. A breath he hadn't realized he was holding rushed out of him.
Through Mercy's eyes, he looked down on the corpse of the Taskmaster - that creature that had been so instrumental to the Brotherhood's reign of terror. Tu'teggacha had not killed a single one of the Maw's victims personally, but his gnarled hands had been dripping with the blood of countless worlds all the same. He had been the brains behind the Mawite war machine, the coordinator of logistics, the master of slaves. Every blaster bolt, scattergun round, slave-soldier, scavenged vehicle, and gene-twisted monster of the marauder tribes bore his mark.
Now the Ebruchi was dead. With him slain, the Dark Voice gone, and Exegol falling before the coalition of light, the Brotherhood was truly finished. Individual warlords would go on, and no doubt menace the galaxy for years - or even decades - to come... but the united Brotherhood of the Maw, the dark coalition of chaotic evil that had destroyed entire planets and forced the galaxy into an age of brutal war, would fracture without the unity that Dark Voice and Taskmaster had provided. The Second Great Hyperspace War was ending, and the shadow war was over.
Don't let the hate consume you. Stay yourself in this last minute, please.
Kallan smiled - and for the first time in a long, long time, it was a truly
joyful smile, without the weariness he had carried for so many years.
~ It's over, Keilara. We did it. We're free. ~ He held her tight, face pressed into her shoulder, tears trickling from the corners of his eyes. He had been holding on for so long with nothing but burning hate and the faintest sliver of hope to sustain him, and now he could let go of both. Somehow, as impossible as it seemed, they had won. They were still standing, still together, and finally free of this grinding conflict.
The spirits that had once been The Manifold swirled around them, then streamed upward.
In the pale void of Otherspace, they drew together, forming a glowing door.
A way out. A way for them to go home, to where they belonged.
~ Are you ready? ~ Kallan asked. He smiled.
-------------------------------------------------
Tu'teggacha opened his eyes, but that didn't change anything. The darkness was absolute.
The last moments of his life came back to him in a rush; the coldness of the gun barrel against his skin, then an instant of sudden heat and pain, then nothing. The shotgun blast, traveling faster than the speed of sound, had obliterated his skull before he'd even heard the gun go off. In a panic he raised his hands to his face, wondering if he had somehow been blinded instead of killed... but no. His skin was intact, everything exactly as he remembered it. So why couldn't he see? Where
was he? He didn't feel the chill of Otherspace. He felt... nothing.
Reaching out in front of him, the Taskmaster soon felt something solid - a flat, straight wall. He ran his knobby fingers along the wall, trying to see how far it went. Not far. Within only a meter or so it intersected with another wall, and that one with another. Fear built inside him as he realized the truth of his situation. He was in some kind of box, stranded in no more than a cubic meter of space. He could not even stand to his full height. There were no seams, no doors, no way in or out. There was just a blank, stony surface and the absolute darkness.
When he had been a child, the other Ebruchi on his clan's starship had shunned him. They feared his witch-like powers, his ability to twist their thoughts even without meaning to. That was why they called him Tu'teggacha -
accursed one. They had beaten him, thrown things at him, starved him and driven him away. He had taken shelter in dark, narrow places like this, places where the others - larger and more imposing - could not easily fit. His childhood had been full of these same feelings - the feeling of being
trapped and afraid.
He'd gotten his revenge on them. He'd gotten his revenge on the
whole damned galaxy. But...
... in the end, he'd ended up right back here: alone in the dark, helpless and broken.
Inside Freedom's crystal, the soul of Taskmaster Tu'teggacha screamed.
No one heard him cry out. No one ever would.
There he would remain.
Forever.
Thomas Barran
|
Aoki-Barran Mira
| Open
