“My god is not your god my god is righteous my god is passionate my god is caring my god is hunger my god is love my god is everything my god is existence my god is earth and moon and sky and stars and sun my god is God-Emperor of all The Central Universe my god is unstoppable my god will end you-“
Her maddened babbling voice ended abruptly with the soft whining of servos and a sickening crunch of plastic and metal on jawbone. Despite a broken jaw with a compound fracture; the Berserker’s vocal chords continued, switching the clear praying voice into a guttural explosion of sound.
The intention of silence had only transformed the voice into a true cacophony.
“Dammit Schnitz, you only made it worse!”
The Shocktrooper had his white, standard issue trooper helmet tucked under one arm, with the other elbow leaning on a nearby stainless steel counter. His plasma rifle was slung across his back, the thick Kevlar strap pulled firm against his matching white body armor.
Gel layer and all.
“Shut up Terrance, or I’ll court-martial you for insubordination, no matter how many times we’ve come out of the shit together! The Hand of Wrath recommended us to her lordship. We need to look decisive!”
The Berserker endured several more blows from the Seraph power armor’s armored gauntlets, stooping heavily over her chained and manacled body, before she finally fell silent via a partial loss of consciousness. Some remaining teeth and blood lay scattered all over the floor around the chair in a pulpy mess.
Both of the two Shepherd’s suits of pristine white plastic outer armor was splattered in flecks of red.
“Finally.”
The Seraph rose as he murmured to himself, raising himself back up to his full height of eight feet or so before turning to face the trooper. The pneumatics and artificial carbon muscle fibres in the legs of the suit whined softly as the weight of the powered armor leaned back gently onto the spurs – the strangely folded rabbit legs far below where his actual booted feet ceased.
“I don’t see why The God of Justice, Serania herself, wanted us to capture a Berserker! We all know they never talk sense. Even for the least fanatical of your Berserkers, who call Xex a Guardian still, rather than just a god, they’re still believers to the death. Big fat waste of time. The only good Berserker is one you’ve cut down already. We’d need to catch one of their more civvie staff, like from the ship crews.”
Terrance chuckled, his dark goatee prickling as he rubbed it with the hand he had previously been leaning on. He found a spot of blood on his cheek.
Wiped it off.
“Dunno sir, but it’s best not to question a god, especially not the High Council’s head god. Only loyal living member of The Prime Triumvirate, remember? At least seventy six thousand years old. She’d quote YOU for insubordination to The Creator’s memory, and have you hanged or sent to a firing squad as an example against The Democratic Theocracy. You think Xex’s hordes are fanatical? Let’s see you deal with his old squeeze after he dumped her!”
Schnitz smiled behind his hastily closing helmet – emerging up to form and seal over his head from the torso. As such, the spindly power-armored suit just barely avoided openly revealing his sudden amusement.
Despite his inferior’s joking manner, what the guy said was often true. They’d worked together and fought together for years to get here. Serania reviled Xex on her best days, and on her worst days she was known to have entire squads executed for what she deemed religious heresy.
Loyal deaths to be used and twisted into propaganda by her now-boyfriend Julian, The God of Darkness. He was the entire mind behind the G.O.D.’s covert ops and propaganda division – The Eye. Those who had been in “The Shepherds,” (the informal Black Armada and Neutral Territory slang for The Guardians of Destiny,) for a decade or two of their century and a half lifespans were well acquainted with the disgusting ways the propaganda could shift. But gene therapies and cybernetics towards living beyond a normal human lifespan in your prime or middle age was worth some things, now wasn’t it? Not to mention the other perks of the favored – a shot at ascension.
Becoming a god yourself after decades of service.
Twenty five percent success rate be damned!
Meat for the eternal meat grinder.
Some days, it felt like living as one of the unthinking, brainwashed Black Armada mass was somehow a better option. Perhaps it would be better to die falsely believing something with all your heart, than to die cursing yourself for following crazy “Guardians” or “Shepherds” with centuries old relationship hangups.
“I’ll let you slide this time, simply because you made me smile, Private Warner. Now shut your stupid ass up before she walks in on you spouting shit and has us both sent to the front – Silence was the point!”
She walked in the open doors as he spoke the word “both,” quiet as a whisper.
“Of course – be at ease gentlemen. Not that I’d assume you weren’t at ease already, but by how sloppily you stand and run your mouths whilst on duty here aboard The Hub.“
Warner and Schnitz both snapped to attention instantly at the god’s voice, G.O.D. Military bootcamp of decades before coming back hard regarding the respects to be paid to any immortals’ immediate presence. The Seraph, previously leaning one hand against the ceiling; slammed his armored hand loudly against the steel roof reinforcements of the small interrogation room in his haste to clasp his fist and beat it – then hold it tightly against his chest in a proper formal Guardian of Destiny salute, not the flat handed tip of the hat common amongst front line grunts like them.
Of course the two soldiers chose different arms, not that any specific direction was stated in the Guardian Holy Codex other than “a fist against your sternum or heart.”
Serania was a stunning sight, even after entire prehistories and the entirety of modern Human History. The ageless immortality of an older-looking, post-pubescent teenager helped, no matter how many literal battle scars any particular god might have. She was slim, with a slight build, yet remained muscled and lean – mostly frozen in time from her ascension as a meat-diet rich hunter-gatherer of ancient Europe, looking like some modern Rock Climber might.
One of Three. The Prime Triumvirate. The very first Humans to be ascended.
Her long, dark, black and brunette hair came down to just the small of her back, hanging casually over the soft gray linen of her tank top with the loose elastic fabric binder beneath. That same brunette highlighted hair was held in a long ponytail, with similar length braids near the backs of her small ears.
Her feet were clean and bare, legs hidden by a brighter gray-white pair of sweatpants. Her sharp features and the precariously perched, yet wholly unnecessary reading glasses on her nose emitted the quiet violence of an angry librarian. For one to know her for the faction and military leader she was at first glance would be nigh-impossible – so committed each and every day as her stylist and costuming team was to maintaining whatever the propaganda needed.
As of current, her usual public guise outside of formal, religious, or military events, all with their own wardrobing teams, was a wise and anciently-learned immortal. Yet, the fashion came in with the outwards persona of the traditional “Yogi Slash Monk” aesthetic. This was all to better sell the “Shepherd” brand across the Core Worlds and The Neutral Territories. All of this was an attempt to turn the slang of flocks of sheep against itself, by preying upon specific demographics and ideologies. This was especially prevalent on the more culturally diverse Core World of Blend, where Geopolitics could become difficult to manage quite quickly.
She wasn’t the only god to live according to some long-forgotten monk aesthetic ruleset. It worked well in the public zeitgeist, so as with most G.O.D. traditions or fashion eras, it stuck.
Private Terrance Warner’s eyes flicked downwards for mere milliseconds as he saluted, to her hips and the drooping edges of the sweatpants hanging low on said hips for the briefest moment, where her spandex panties peeked upwards.
Her head spun immediately to lock directly onto the Private’s gaze from behind her librarianesque glasses. An aura of telepathic power suddenly bloomed, with the air almost rippling and compressing down on them with the psychic force.
Very few gods could manipulate or engage with the Human mind itself – even with simple Telepathy.
Yet Xex, God of Control, Former Member of The Prime Triumvirate, God-Emperor of the blasphemous Black Armada – he was undoubtedly the most infamous across Central for his brainwashing. Serania knew that fact intimately – as it was a former boon for The Guardians in centuries gone by.
Xex often would quickly gaslight new realities, changing loyalties by changing one’s memories.
Often, he merely created new irrationalizations for old events within the memories of most Humans, and even some fresher gods, those he could physically touch. It was easier than weaving entirely new memories with his powers, one by one. That was reserved for the unique.
He would utilize both forceful applications of his mind-warping power – overcoming your very beliefs and philosophies with sheer willpower, or even lay aura-based insidious charms or subtle enchantments upon those in close proximity to him without them often realizing. Perhaps he might decide to incite a subconscious Fawn response within the nervous system.
One of the first things Serania did after Xex defected was have herself checked thoroughly for any sign of psychic brainwashing – which luckily the scientists and doctors didn’t find.
Warner immediately quailed in fear and his body tensed up as her bright, contact-covered green irises bored holes into his soul.
His face jerked involuntarily to the side with a wave of air and kinetic force as if slapped.
“Private, you’re dismissed. If I catch you looking at any superior officer lecherously like this again – regardless of their gender, you’ll be on the front line trenches of Brokeback Gorge against the hordes. If I catch you looking that way at any god again, I’ll simply have you shot where you stand, executed for heresy. Even implying that immortals such as I might engage sexually with mortals is a sin. I cannot believe Warrant Officer Typhus suggested this squad, regardless of your service history!”
Warner quailed and saluted, looking almost straight up at the ceiling as he replaced his helmet and scurried out of the room.
Schnitz was extremely thankful he had put his helmet on just in time – the four glowing slitted blue eyes of the Seraph helmet designating the modernity of his power armor compared to glowing an older model’s greens or reds.
But most importantly – he was thankful it had hidden his own gaze; similar to that of the Private’s.
“God of Justice, Ma’am. The Berserker captive has been rambling heresies for the last few hours. I made sure I silenced her just now before you arrived so you were not subjected to such sacrilege.”
Serania’s eyes narrowed, and the pilot found the entirety of his armored Seraph suit slammed backwards into the wall with a resounding clanging of plastic and metal against metal.
“Did I hear you correctly, Sergeant Schnitz?”
Schnitz trembled inside and out, as the lanky power-armoured suit he wore was rendered powerless against the god’s immense telekinetic force. The servos of the armor whined in desperation as they struggled via the Class 2 onboard suit A.I. to adjust the center of gravity of the Seraph armor for a perceived fall, to no avail.
“I-I’m sorry Ma’am, she kept ranting and praying about the enemy’s religion, I was afraid it would offend you.”
The invisible force against his spindly, lanky power armor ceased pushing as he finished stammering. He collapsed forward, the suit’s A.I. finally able to correct itself gyroscopically in holding his body up and preventing him from sinking to his knees fully.
The suit’s pristine white plastic, fresh Berserker blood drying upon it even now, was cracked and broken in places, along with compression punctures across most gel layers and the various ceramic and armor midlayer plates. Schnitz could feel the gel seeping in against his bodysuit, along with the pain of small stress fractures across his body in various places from the crushing weight, even through the pneumatics and gel layer cushion.
The Seraph armor, again via the simple A.I., measured his rapid heart rate and extremely high blood pressure via the remaining sealed gel layer sections. Analyzing his near-shock state, it injected painkillers and stimulants internally, then gently eased Schnitz down again. First it was into the standard frog crouch all Seraphs used as standard procedure for normal ergonomic scout work and downtime diagnostics positioning. Then, seeing levels still much too elevated in comparison to normal graphed homeostasis, it seated him upward and backwards, locking into a seated position via immobilized spurs, knees, and hips. Many Seraphs did this with verbal commands for their onboard A.I. – for comfort during evening campfire mess or for squad strategy huddles in the field – allowing an armor assisted rest position.
“How considerate of you, Sergeant Schnitz. But never again act on what you think I might want, under the same threat and warning I gave the Private. You will not make assumptions. You will not try to guess the preferences of your betters. You will wait for direct orders from a Guardian superior without taking agency that you do not have.“
Schnitz saluted to show his comprehension, seated as he was, with the four glowing eyes of his helmet hiding his sheer terror.
The ageless, beautiful God of Justice stared him down, but quickly found herself distracted – and soon hovered over the gurgling berserker. The young girl was still fighting herself to stay conscious and chant Armada prayers despite the odds. Her torn and ripped gums were oozing blood where teeth had been bashed out, and she half managed to spit a glob of this blood and saliva mixture at Serania, broken jaw be damned! It dribbled down across her own chest instead of successfully projecting at the god.
“I’m impressed she was able to even survive such a beating from a suit of Seraph power armor, let alone stay even partially conscious.”
Serania was mostly commenting to herself, having decided very recently to ignore the damaged Seraph completely until she next needed him. Trying to serve in damaged armor with injuries would be an excellent and painful reminder about rank and proper servitude.
She contemplated the Berserker a few moments more, and then made another decision and motioned vaguely to Schnitz.
“Yes Ma’am?”
“Make yourself useful Schnitz. Bring me some hot tea from either the officer or the immortal mess hall, preferably the latter. Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe, please.”
The Seraph looked stunned for a moment even with the helmeted face, as if shocked that a fully armored Seraph of his rank would be crazy to act as a simple waiter. Realizing yet again who this was, he immediately relented, rising and saluting one again with the difficulty of a partially crushed suite of power armor. He stooped out under and through the doorway, the servos of the suit hissing and whining in complaint slightly as it pulled the spindly form down beneath the edge of the frame.
Serania watched him go, and then drug a chair over in front of the battered girl by hand with a simple gesture and mildest exertion of telekinetic power. When the chair stopped moving, as if by magic, she spun it backwards with a twirl on one leg, then perched her crossed arms upon the back, staring into the angry brown eyes of the Berserker.
If not for the green contact lenses, their brown eyes might be matched in color.
“Now that we’re alone, beautiful…”
The God of Justice gently placed a hand against her captive’s sticky dirt and blood stained cheek, almost caressing it in her tenderness. The girl jerked back poorly, away from the immortal’s fingers in her concussed and battered state – as if startling from a dreamt fall whilst half-sleep. A reply of some indecipherable swearing was attempted in some form, which Serania assumed was quite crude and offensive.
Not that Berserkers had the tact of The British, The Neutral Territories, or even the Core Worlds, singing pub songs like “The Frosty Bitch Up Yonder.”
She viewed such things as mocking satire – in poor, disrespectful taste regarding her age and ability, really.
“Nice try.”
Serania murmured mostly to herself, and paused.
Poor thing.
While the blood, grime and various other scars or injuries hid her true age, she had to be barely fifteen. Just a teenager, and already indoctrinated so fully…
The Black Armada was barbaric in such ways, allowing anyone to go serve or fight for God-Emperor Xex…
Insofar as they were mostly through the majority of puberty.
Serania felt the wave of disgust roll down her spine like vertigo as she imagined those children, sometimes as young as eight, being thrown into the Berserker hordes. Everything common to any given Black Armada front-line Berserker horde was often rather horrific.
She found herself wanting to be done with it before the Seraph returned with her tea, so she began the process she had come to experiment with – of linking minds with the Berserker girl. She was somewhat sure that other immortals aboard The Hub would feel the vibrations, but she cared little. The more attuned of the remaining space station staff might barely feel a slight disturbance in the air or the briefest twinge of a headache, if that!
Suddenly the old god was sharing thoughts and memories with the young Berserker, from the girl’s childhood to the present, a whole load of lived experience all at once. Scattered pictures and moving images flowed back and forth in a jagged wash of thought, memory, and emotion.
It was almost impossible to control, even for someone of her own talent and experience.
The Berserker’s first day at school, the name of her homeworld – Bounty, her favorite color – purple, everything she was before and after Xex’s own personal brand of brainwashing experienced firsthand. Some memories or emotions were fuzzy, strange, or distorted in different ways, clearly being the subject of prior tampering by The God of Control.
Her name was Tessa.
Serania stopped at one last moment, pausing the image of the memory and repeating it again and again in her head before it wafted away again from her reach.
Him.
This girl had indeed been turned by Xex himself; the gesture no more an action on his part than a gentle pat on the cheek and a murmuring of a sentence or two close in her ear to begin the process of rewriting her lived experiences.
Serania’s vision moved down, for what seemed like an eternity. A black “X,” looking almost like a freshly inked tattoo, was now spreading across the back of her right hand as the very melanin in the skin changed dramatically in the desired pattern.
Of course, she saw it all through Tessa’s eyes, not her own, but she remembered this feeling of having her willpower eroded away like soil from the edge of a constantly overflowing riverbank. The God of Justice had the power to resist it. But for this Tessa of the past, the gaslighting of her entire worldview was an instantaneous transformation. Of course it would be, the poor mortal.
She felt the girl’s sudden change in identity, in loyalty, in emotion. Felt it all swallowed up beneath the surface of a new all-encompassing desire in half a heartbeat. Evil in finest masquerade. Serania could feel the divide, see and experience the unchanged memories of before and the new ones of Xex, crafted and rewritten by Tessa’s own enslaved subconscious.
Fear of power turning into intense love.
The feeling of being alone vanishing, being replaced with a sense of wholeness, fulfillment.
Serania had to jerk herself back into her own state of mind for a moment, away from Tessa, and quickly clear her thoughts, with the Berserker feeling her weakness and pathetically trying to fight back. Something must remain of Xex, perhaps – writhing against the intrusion of another ascended immortal into his prior work.
Her pathetic struggle was silenced with the slightest murmur of Serania’s powers, as a pebble might disappear rapidly into a swiftly moving brook.
She collected herself, and delved back into the girl’s memory to that same moment, the first moment the girl had locked eyes with Xex.
The moment he used his powers on her.
His bright blue eyes flickered and searched, holding within them a strange sort of compassion.
But something else flickered there too, a deep and unending ripple of hunger.
As his strong palm gently patted Tessa’s cheek, there was an arrogance in those eyes, a sense of confidence that could not be taken away. Serania knew that look, even before her ex had turned traitor. It was the expression Xex made when adding another toy to his toybox, or a tool to his toolbox. Mortal people, even other gods, were nothing but mere objects to him.
Serania paused there.
His short-sheared, cornsilk blonde hair was beautiful as always – swept back by hand constantly into a wavy mane of sorts. His rippling muscles and crisscrossing black tattoos stood out as he stood in front of her without even a shirt. He hosted many new tattoos, ever-more of simple black, added or removed since his defection. He only wore a pair of rough, blue, tattered jeans all full of holes, and black combat boots beneath – a look marking him as just another farm boy, not the impossibly ancient warlord and conqueror that he was.
Tessa swelled with joy as her Emperor blessed her by hand with the gentle patting, and consumed her mind with new religiosity at the same time: a complete and utter devotion to him.
This girl had once been a living, breathing human being, but now she was no more than a puppet at his direction, sans the free will of The Guardians of Destiny across the hierarchy.
Such heresies were common across discussions of Artificial Intelligence throughout the Central Universe. If an A.I., even theoretically, had the power to give commands to Humans as their superiors, unlike the current norm of “suggestions upon request,” the very Theocracy of the Guardians itself could be at risk, with higher Class Artificial Intelligences infringing or treading upon the divine roles and rights of gods themselves as the “Shepherds” of all Human destiny.
Serania shivered and moved on, searching through the girl’s memories post-brainwashing for anything she could use. Troop deployments, battle stratagems, anything. But again and again she found only the same thing.
Tessa’s perfect obedience to her master.
Again and again the girl had been sent into a meat grinder, with Serania suddenly watching her own Guardian Army troops from the other side. Often it was a massacre, with the G.O.D. mowing down wave upon wave of the horde. But through sheer luck, and a newfound zealotry, Tessa had survived. Three major battles and four smaller skirmishes. Her searching was for naught, only finding front line battles across a handful of planets.
Warlord Xex and his Black Armada hordes clearly had no distinct battle plans for Berserkers. Such things as plans rarely existed for such mindlessly fanatic warriors. Black Armada attacks were merely an endless wave of machine and humanity that consumed everything. Martyrs like Tessa were for softening up the enemy, helping the properly trained professional soldiers and troops behind them focus on proper tactical deployments.
Berserkers were just as much a form of psychological warfare as anything.
Soon after victory, as part of the usual raping, torturing, and other gruesome murders of the Berserker hordes; Guardian forces dead or alive would be flayed, dismembered, crucified, and/or paraded. It varied across pieces of defaced and vandalized armor, helmets, or frequently the more gruesome – leather or skeletal remains.
Berserkers loved screeching skywards with new collections and battle trophies in prayer or worship to their uncaring God-Emperor.
Were Tessa any bigger, she surely already would have already been operated on and enhanced in a grotesque “promotion” of sorts, for her dedicated resilience after a battle or two. Her limbs and certain senses would be replaced or augmented with machinery or cybernetics, and then her internal organs or other biological systems might be altered with even more machinery to become a proper Harlequin Knight.
Or worse, if she continued to survive and find victory, her body might be genetically spliced or mutated, then pumped full of drugs and wracked with other supplements and surgeries – to be locked away in the powered armour of a Dread Knight.
Xex’s favored warriors.
Dark creatures made of machine and flesh, perverse forms of power and strength that even Seraphs sometimes feared.
Serania kept sifting through the very last shreds of Tessa the Berserker’s experiences and memories as the ebb and flow of memories slowed. She was getting closer to the present, and she could estimate that Schnitz would be back soon with her tea.
She suddenly pitied this girl, serving as the sole survivor of a final battle, then captured and hauled kicking and screaming by G.O.D. Shocktroopers into a transport, chained and disarmed.
The only absent crime against her at this point was rape, although who could even be sure of that barbarity without testing?
Berserkers like Tessa, regardless of gender, origin, and race, were often treated as subhuman if captured or found alive by most Guardian Army and Navy folk – retaliation common against their class specifically for the many tragedies and traumas G.O.D. military members had experienced. This continued across multiple centuries, despite some Berserkers being captured, brainwashed and indoctrinated Guardian staff themselves!
But most G.O.D. staffers, regardless of how corrupt or lecherous they might be, wouldn’t often dare touch most frothing pounds of rage and devotion, Berserkers, as Tessa had become.
The frequent STIs, rampant across most Black Armada Berserker hordes, were enough to dissuade most ignorant grunts from such war crimes.
Serania wrinkled her nose in distaste as various sexual acts arose from Tessa’s memories in a wave of sensation at her meandering thoughts. The God of Justice felt her own arousal piquing slightly as she experienced dozens of Tessa’s orgasms and sexual experiences across several years within the horde, all at once.
Next came a sudden sense of related sadness and loss as Serania experienced Tessa losing several of her romantic or sexual partners in battle.
Tessa was still mourning some of them even now, as Serania fished around inside her brain.
She did her best to fast forward away from the relationships and racy encounters, as close to the present as she could force Tessa to be. Only when her eyes locked on the image of herself, The God of Justice walking into the room, whilst experiencing Tessa’s agony of a shattered mouth and jaw – did Serania let herself fade, staring angrily at her own form, judging her own shape, her own presence.
She let go of the Berserker’s mind with a soft psychic shove, and the girl fell back against her chair, moaning softly, limp and mentally broken from reliving most of her entire life all at once.
Serania knew already that she was resilient indeed, for the same act of psychic connection and experimentation had killed dozens of captured Black Armada test subjects before her.
“Nothing.”
Serania mumbled to herself, and rubbed her temples, removing her fake glasses with the slightest thought to drift lazily in the thin air beside her as she tried to relieve some of the barest inkling of a headache that was forming behind her eyes with the exertion of balancing, juggling, and connecting two Human minds.
One immortal.
One mortal.
Yet not so different on the inside.
The visage of a handsome Xex kept floating into her head, and her own memories surfaced, now free of Tessa’s connected brain.
His muscled body next to hers.
His touch.
Conversing with him around a campfire under the clear Mediterranean stars, aeons ago.
His lips on hers.
The comfort of feeling like they belonged to each other.
She remembered Jikos, God of Chaos – with a sudden fondness.
As he was back then. Before he died. Before Xex killed him.
Before Xex. Before he stabbed her in the back. Before she could even suspect anything.
She missed Jikos so much. The deceased third member of The Prime Triumvirate. He had been the friendly, helpful uncle to their romantic partnership. A shoulder to cry on. An ear to bend for ancient wisdom. A kind paternal figure she never had, who offered jesting words towards prompting self reflection. A third voice to settle arguments or disputes between The God of Justice and The God of Control, his two peers, hopelessly romantically entangled as they had been.
Xex. He was different then. They were still both young and naive somehow, romancing each other both monogamously and polyamorously off and on for tens of thousands of years as they worked together towards the betterment of Humanity, behind the facade.
Servants to a greater power.
She thought of their final night alone together, mere days before he betrayed her. She could see him there – his body half-hidden by the sheets, his bright blonde hair a sweaty mess, her own tangled strands adorning the pillows in a halo around her head.
They were both sweaty from the exertions of rather physical intimacy.
“What would you do without me Ser?”
He had asked her then, running a calloused finger along the naked flesh of her ribs and stomach.
“I don’t know.”
She had answered, truthfully at the time, and he seemed almost appalled at the notion. He had rolled over, and she had felt something ominous rising from his form, his back to her as he brooded himself to sleep.
She constantly blamed herself.
She should have known. Somehow.
“Ma’am. Your tea.”
Schnitz snapped her out of her own old memories, stretching across most of a hundred thousand years. She jerked upright, her spine twisting to glare at the Seraph as he offered a dainty porcelain cup of piping hot tea with the large gauntlets of his power armor.
“Immortal mess hall, as requested, Ma’am.”
She shot him a dangerous look from where she sat on the backwards chair, facing Tessa.
Schnitz took the hint and set the steaming teacup down on the metal counter, exiting back out the way he had come sheepishly, thankfully hitting the door button on his way out to close her in with her thoughts.
She heard the Seraph’s damaged, complaining power armor take up a guard position outside the interrogation room with a few soft clunks and staggered hisses.
He had also clearly been trying to hide his soft, forced, under the breath grunts from the pain of his fractured bones.
She walked over, took the hot porcelain cup of tea, and blew at it gently, feeling the need to do it the old fashioned way, rather than abusing her powers for such a simple task as manipulating thermal energy. It made her feel humble to do at least some of the easier tasks in life with her own body like mortals did.
Her romantic love for Xex had been as whole and all consuming as that of Tessa’s once, yet devoid of any actual brainwashing. Purest trust. And in her complete devotion to him as a lover and partner, she had failed to see the murmuring of something sinister. Even now she still sometimes felt the hollow pangs of loneliness without him, despite vowing openly again and again to kill him above all else for his heresy and betrayal.
Julian, The God of Darkness, made for a poor consort in comparison to The God of Control, regardless of how competent the British Enlightenment-born foppish dandy was, in bed or in spycraft.
She sipped the tea and thought of the moment she had caught him there in the Glass Casket chamber, his violence and tyranny revealed as basest truth with her very own eyes. Even as The Hub space station trembled and shook around them with the battles outside and inside, she loved him. Even when he slew her hallowed Creator, ripping it from the Glass Casket it slumbered in silently, she loved him still.
The two loves of her life, swirled up in one agonizing moment of tragedy and trauma.
It was only when he was gone, having murdered Jikos, leaving her to pick up the broken pieces of their empire and mourn the death of her own god, that she began to hate what he had become. The god he had been, before fading into just another distant memory. Just another consort. Just another warm body. Just another traitor. Just another tyrant, pirate, or warlord like out in The Neutral Territories.
“Tarnos was right, you fucking bastard!”
She laughed at the thought of the stern old Roman Legionnaire scolding his elders, and even with tears starting in her eyes, she found her resolve and turned to the task at hand, the original purpose that she had ordered the capture of the Berserker for.
She steadied herself, placing the tea back down on the counter, and linked her mind with Tessa again by placing her hands and fingers gently against both sides of Tessa’s temple, the soft moans ignored as Serania steeled her hatred for her former lover and whipped it into a frenzy.
She picked through Tessa’s memories again, finding the exact moment Xex had taken her.
And from there, she spread her influence across Tessa the Berserker in false mimicry of Xex, The God of Control. Everything she was, everything she believed in, extending herself across the girl’s will and mind much like a virus, water surging through empty criss-crossing hallways. It was scary how easy it was for her to distort memories and gaslight Tessa’s reality yet again. The mortal mind felt like tipping already falling dominoes, compared to difficult immortal connections.
It took her another eternity before she felt properly finished, replacing fully all that Xex had done in reverse, with herself substituted for Xex in every gaslit experience or altered memory she could find. She lacked The God of Control’s insane power source; The Creator’s very energy and being that Xex had consumed, and Xex now fed from her absorbed deity internally like an infinite generator – that grew stronger and stronger every year the more he used his powers.
Still, stolen power aside, the methodology was similar. She could feel it. And she had plenty of time to practice over the centuries, even learning from Xex himself, millennia ago.
When she finally detached herself from Tessa’s mind and memories, Serania had never felt so whole in her life, as if what she had poured into the battered girl had filled her own body with new life simultaneously. It felt like she had leeched the girl clean of corruption, and filled it with new intent and belief. There was a perverted sensation of purity.
The soft rains after the dry season.
Drinking essence directly into the soul.
Full control over body and mind.
An extension of her own will with a single word.
Perfect loyalty, where once there had been the vehemence and murderous intent of a Berserker fresh from the horde.
She stood, then fell heavily against the counter with both hands, tears rolling down her face freely now. But her face contorted into a twisted smile of joy. She felt as dirty and desecrated as she did rejuvenated. To copy The God of Control in such a way was sacrilege. She herself had declared it as such for subsequent generations of ascendants and gods. Free will and worship was a cornerstone of The Guardians of Destiny. People needed to believe in the cause of their own free will.
She snatched her glasses off her face by hand and wiped her wet face with the back of her free forearm, smudging her light makeup before slowly bringing everything back into focus.
“What have I done?”
The thought came unprompted, and Serania moved, tears flowing, placing a soothing hand on the girl’s dirty, bloodied cheek.
“What have I done?”
She murmured it again aloud, and her voice brought the girl back to wakefulness, her brown eyes staring deeply into Serania’s false green irises again.
But now her expression was full of love and worship, rather than hate.
Her gaze disturbed the god from her moment, and drove her almost to rage herself.
“What have I done?!”
She exclaimed the phrase aloud a third time, and the girl beamed a toothless, bloody smile at her in mute, disfigured response.
The girl slurped up what she could of the tattered remains of her gums and various fluids, and after several tense seconds of failed attempts at speech, managed to get out the very least of what she wanted to say with her throat, tongue, and the remains of her teeth and gums.
“Thank you.”
Serania reeled back; simultaneously amazed and horrified, and then got up and strode from the room, her powers flailing as she did so. Tessa gazed longingly after her. Schnitz, who had been standing guard outside, found himself almost bowled over by the force of her before she even noticed he was standing there. His armor creaked in damaged protest.
She focused on him, his armor creaking more furiously, trying to maintain integrity as she barely kept the full force of her powers in check.
“Sergeant. I want the thing in that room executed immediately, and the body subsequently disposed of. Airlock it or incinerate it. Am I clear?”
He nodded feverishly, the four slitted Seraph eyes flashing up and down with a soft blue glow. He was clearly quite frightened now by the notion of being crushed alive in his armour like a tin can in a vice by such an angry god.
“I am not to be disturbed for the next several hours.”
It was as real a threat as any order could be.
Just as Schnitz had turned to do as he was bid, she jerked around again, and gave him a final once over.
“And have your armor repaired. You should be ashamed to wear the white!”
The irony of such a command was not lost on Sergeant Schnitz.
Serania disappeared down the hall, and with a heavy sigh of relief, he took a moment to inspect the small fissures and cracks across most of the hard white outer plastic of the Seraph armor. Several of the metal or ceramic armor plates inside were also fractured or cracked, visible through portions where the plastic fragments had shattered away.
After he composed himself, he moved back into the interrogation room quickly to obey Serania’s last orders, drawing his sidearm and levelling it at the forehead of the girl. He had no intention of angering The God of Justice any further.
He clicked off the safety, but it was only as he pulled the trigger blindly in his obedience to The God of Justice that he noticed the soft loving smile on her face.
Her expression despite the jaw damage was one of complete adoration.
Tessa’s eyes glistened.
But by then it was too late, and she was already gone.
