The phosphor letters hovered inches from Joravar's nose, casting cold green bars across his knuckles. Suren held his breath against the wall; Cynere stood rigid, her titanium spine whirring at standby pitch beside the massive armored bulk of the former war god. Refusal meant planetary glassing, immediate and absolute.
[CONFIRM DELETION TO VERIFY TYRANT IDENTITY AND UNLOCK CORE. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN IMMINENT GLASSING AND ERADICATION OF ALL PRESENT.]
He pulled his hand back from the core. “No.” His voice was low, resolute. “I’m not deleting anything.”
Suren’s face fell. “Joravar, what are you –”
“The Integration Matrix is bureaucratic, not omniscient,” Joravar cut him off. “It operates strictly on parameters. It catalogues threats based on deviations from its prescribed optimum.”
His eyes narrowed, fixing on the core, then sweeping over his allies. “It anticipates an overlord, it defines an overlord. It anticipates a martyr, it defines a martyr. But what if it cannot categorize our unit at all?”
[WARNING: USER VERIFICATION PENDING. OBLIGATORY CORE INTERFACE REQUIRED WITHIN 5.0 SECONDS.]
[GRAVITY ACCELERATION INITIATED. FIELD STRENGTH AT 0.03% AND RISING.]
“Cynere, secure our flank; dreadnought, shield the console,” Joravar commanded, voice sharp. “Suren, your torn knee. How deep is the skin tear?”
Suren blinked, bewildered. “It’s… a scrape? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything,” Joravar snarled, ripping a length of torn fabric from his jacket. He dropped onto the iron grating, pinning Suren’s calf with a heavy thumb. He wound the strip tight around the oozing scrape, cinching it hard enough to turn the surrounding skin chalk-white. “The Matrix logs survival, lethal force, resource salvage,” Joravar said, tugging the cloth into a locking knot. “It possesses no ledger for emergency triage performed on an ally during an active terminal event.”
[ERROR: UNRECOGNIZED INPUT SEQUENCE. ‘AGGRESSIVE PREVENTATIVE CLINICAL INTERVENTION’ DOES NOT ALIGN WITH CORE OBJECTIVES.]
“Exactly!” Joravar jerked the final knot into place. “I am logging this squad under an Emergency Field Dressing Protocol for non-combatant casualty salvage.”
[ERROR: ‘FIELD DRESSING PROTOCOL’ IS AN UNDEFINED VARIABLE. ‘CASUALTY SALVAGE’ IS AN INSUFFICIENT PRIORITY OVERRIDE FOR ORBITAL WEAPON DISARMAMENT.]
Joravar bared his teeth. “The logic engine cannot reconcile it. A conqueror would purge his past. A coward would flee. A martyr would die on the platform. It never modeled an ambulance officer commanding a siege engine and a reconstructed seraph while generating procedural maintenance tickets during a target lock.”
[SYSTEM OVERLOAD. TEMPORARY DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED. REBOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED.]
[BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH PROTOCOL ACTIVATED. PLEASE WAIT.]
The colossal housing shuddered. The viridian luminescence stuttered into static, spitting lines of corrupted hex code across the casing until the displays locked into a flat cobalt field: [UNEXPECTED ERROR: NULL POINTER EXCEPTION IN PARAMETER DEFINITION SUB-ROUTINE. PLEASE RE-EVALUATE YOUR LIFE CHOICES. SYSTEM SHUTTING DOWN.]
The overhead guidance beams died. The atmospheric pressure dropped back to ambient subterranean chill. Joravar wiped grease from his chin, exhaling heavily toward Suren. “The loop collapsed.”
A low, guttural growl echoed from the chasm entrance. A figure drifted down through the smoke on violet repulsor trails, clad in volcanic plate beneath an avian bone helm. Dark plasma crackled along its knuckles. The herald surveyed the chamber, looking for slaughter or an awakened slaughterer. Instead, the newcomer saw the resurrected war deity standing sentry, Cynere perched with dead eyes on an intake duct, and Joravar kneeling to yank the trailing cotton knot on Suren’s knee.
The bone helm tilted, vocal emitters producing a dry friction hum. “The Anomaly of Scrap. You are… dressing a minor contusion on a foot soldier? In the battery room of a planet-killer?”
Joravar did not look up from the knot. “Infection impairs march speed, bird-head. My squad requires full mobility.” He rose, brushing rust flakes from his knees, pointing a stained digit at the intruder. “You are intruding on field triage. State your mission or get broken for parts.”
Xyrak’s violet aura flared. “Overwhelming force? You stand before Xyrak, the High Executioner. I was sent to… ensure your obedience to the Pantheon. To remind you of the consequences of defiance.” He raised a hand, dark energy swirling, coalescing into a sphere of pure annihilation. “This is the Cinder Orb. It will instantly reduce you and your blasphemous constructs to ash.”
Before the orb reached the size of an apple, the dreadnought accelerated. Eight tons of hydraulic plating and consecrated steel surged across the gantry. The emissary had no time to brace before an iron piston struck the avian helm full-force. The sound was a sickening *CRUNCH* that echoed through the cavern.
Xyrak reeled back, a crack spiderwebbing across his helmet, the Cinder Orb dissipating into harmless motes of energy. “You… struck a High Executioner?!” he shrieked, his voice losing its modulated calm, replaced by raw, outraged fury.
“Insolent carrion dares interrupt Master Joravar!” the dreadnought bellowed through internal horn arrays, brass gears whining in his chest. “My commander dismantled the Integration Matrix through procedural devastation! He will not suffer crude pyrotechnics from a messenger!” He hammered his breastplate with an open steel gauntlet. “Kneel before the Scrap-Metal Sovereign, preening kite!”
While Kaldur-Khan continued his zealous verbal assault, battering the bewildered Xyrak with a torrent of technical and theological insults, Joravar wasted no time. He jammed his palm onto the dormant terminal, scanning the error cascades. A maintenance gateway hung open in the shell of the crashed sub-routine. His fingers flew, a blur of motion as he began to rewrite the core’s parameters, redirecting its targeting functions, aiming the colossal orbital weapon at the Pantheon’s primary observation platform in geosynchronous orbit.
[SYSTEM REBOOT COMPLETE. IDENTITY VERIFICATION SUCCESSFUL.]
A deafening chime, sharper than any before, reverberated through the cavern, shaking the very foundations of the Chasm. The light from the core pulsed, then flared, broadcasting a singular, crystalline voice across the entire ruined city, echoing up to the shattered sky, visible to every observing deity.
[IDENTITY CONFIRMED: JORAVAR. CLASSIFICATION: ‘TYRANT’.]
[FORMER DESIGNATION: THE ANOMALY, LORD OF SCRAP, SOVEREIGN OF THE FORGOTTEN, THE GOD-EATER.]
[CURRENT COORDINATES: CHASM OF OSHKADAR, CENTRAL NEXUS, QUADRANT 7G.]