Dispatches from the Obsidian Watch
1726 Words
KRAG-VOR’S POV
The void fractured behind me… a wound in space that bled violet light across the observation deck. I stood at its edge, dust from an Earth world still clinging to my boots, and waited for the crystal to wake.
It always took longer now. The connection stretched across distances that would have killed lesser beings, threaded through dimensions the humans couldn’t name. I had learned patience in the long centuries. I had learned to kneel and wait.
The crystal pulsed. Ember-light bloomed in its core, spreading outward like blood through water. And from the throne room I could not see… would never see fully, not anymore… his presence descended.
Cold. Vast. The weight of a collapsing star pressed into consciousness.
I lowered myself to one knee. The obsidian plates of my armor ground against each other, violet sigils flaring along the seams. My head bowed. My mandibles locked in the position of formal address.
“My Lord Drax’Khar. I bring word from the frontier.”
Silence. The kind that demanded filling.
“The last Artifact has awakened. Earth… the third world, the forgotten deposit. The Beacon stirred three rotations ago. We felt it across four systems.”
The ember in the crystal dimmed to a blood-red pulse, then thickened toward black. His voice rose out of it…slow, seismic, a low-frequency rumble that seemed too heavy for air. It dragged through the space like distant thunder rolling under stone, each syllable vibrating in the ribs first, then in the mind.
“Describe.”
“The planet is… loud, my Lord. Louder than the records suggested. The last survey showed no sign of evolved life… primitive organisms, nothing more. Now they swarm across every continent. Tiny creatures. Weak. Their strength is incomparable to ours.” I paused. Choose my next words with the precision of a blade finding the gap in armor. “But they resist differently than expected.”
“Differently.”
“They lack power. Lack of knowledge. Yet they throw themselves against threats they cannot comprehend. When my scouts descended, their primitive forces engaged without hesitation. They die easily… but they do not flee.”
The crystal pulsed. I felt his attention sharpen, a blade turning in the dark.
“The Zorathians?”
“Present. Weakened further since our last engagement. They wounded me…” I did not let shame color the admission; wounds in service carried no dishonor “…but the cost drained them visibly. Their projections flickered. They are dying, my Lord. Slowly, but certainly.”
“Good.”
The word carried no satisfaction. No pleasure. Only the cold acknowledgment of a calculation confirmed. Drax’Khar did not celebrate victory. He merely noted the elimination of variables.
“The Artifact. Its current state.”
“Active. Bonded. Five of the local creatures made contact during the awakening. The resonance threaded through them… I observed the energy signatures myself. They are… connected now. Inheritors, if the old protocols hold.”
A sound came through the crystal. Not quite laughter. Something older than amusement, darker than contempt.
“Inheritors. Children playing with fire they cannot name.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“And you allowed them to live.”
The temperature in the observation deck dropped. My breath would have misted if I still breathed in the way of flesh-bound beings.
“The Zorathians intervened before extraction was possible. I withdrew to reassess. The wound required…”
“Excuses are chaos, Krag-Vor. Chaos dressed in logic.”
I said nothing. There was nothing to say. He was correct… he was always correct, in the way that gravity was correct, in the way that entropy was correct. Arguing with Drax’Khar was arguing with the fundamental architecture of the universe.
And yet.
Order is a thin thing. I can feel it warp.
The thought came unbidden. I crushed it before it could take root.
“You will return. Secure the Artifact. If the inheritors resist…”
“They will resist, my Lord. They have already demonstrated…”
“Then destroy them. Destroy anyone who stands between you and recovery. If the world itself becomes an obstacle, burn it to bedrock and sift the ashes.”
I bowed my head lower. “As you command.”
The crystal’s ember began to fade. His presence withdrew… slowly, like a tide retreating from shore. But before the connection severed entirely, his voice returned once more:
“Do not fail again, General. The prison frays. I feel the Zorathians’ grip weakening with each rotation. When I am free… and I will be free… I will remember who served with excellence. And who did not.”
The crystal went dark.
I remained kneeling for seventeen heartbeats. Counting. Centering. Then I rose, and I was alone with the fractured void and the dust on my boots and the weight of orders I would carry until they were fulfilled or I was destroyed.
…
The observation deck stretched behind me… a cathedral of black stone and dim light, built into the flank of a vessel older than most civilizations. I walked its length slowly, my footfalls echoing in the emptiness.
Burn it to bedrock.
The command sat in my mind like a stone in still water. I had burned worlds before. I had watched civilizations crumble to ash, had stood in the silence that followed extinction. It was efficient. It was final. It was the way Drax’Khar had always operated… chaos eliminated through overwhelming force, order imposed through the absence of alternatives.
But something in the pattern had shifted. I could not name it. Could not locate its source. Only feel it: a friction beneath the certainty, an unease that whispered when I considered the unnecessary scope of the destruction he demanded.
The humans were weak. The Artifact could be extracted with surgical precision. The inheritors could be isolated and eliminated without reducing their world to cinders.
So why does he want it burned?
I stopped at a viewport. Beyond the glass, their planet hung in the black… blue and white and green, swirled with clouds, impossibly fragile. The last record had shown nothing but primitive soup. Now cities glittered on the night side like scattered embers. They had grown so quickly. Built so much. And none of it would matter if I followed my orders to their fullest extent.
My hand moved to my belt. Found the token without conscious thought.
A metal shard, worn smooth by centuries of handling. Etched into its surface: a sigil of a crown. The mark of Kharnath… the old kingdom, the first kingdom, the world where I had been forged into what I am.
The old king had believed in precision. In honor. In the conservation of force… never more destruction than the mission required, never cruelty without purpose. I had served him for three hundred thousand years before Drax’Khar came. Before everything changed.
I turned the token over in my fingers. Felt its weight. Remembered a throne room that had smelled of incense and iron, a voice that commanded without crushing, a time when orders made sense.
That world is ash now. That king is dust. There is only the mission.
I returned the token to my belt. Sealed the memory away.
…
The command chamber hummed with activity. My scouts moved through holographic displays, tracking energy signatures, mapping the humans’ defensive positions, and cataloging the locations where resonance had spiked.
I strode to the central platform. Called up the tactical feed.
Five signatures, clustered in an underground facility. The inheritors. The Zorathians’ projections flickered nearby… weaker than before, barely holding coherence. They had expended too much protecting the humans from my initial assault.
“They guard them still,” I observed. “Even fading, they persist.”
One of my lieutenants approached. Knelt. “Commander. Shall we press the attack? The Zorathians cannot maintain projection for more than…”
“I am aware of their limitations.” I studied the display. The five signatures pulsed with the Artifact’s resonance… untrained, uncontrolled, but unmistakably bound. “They will be inconvenient. The old guardians know too much, and they will attempt to teach these… inheritors.”
“Then we should strike now. Before they learn.”
“We should.” I did not move. The human facility’s defenses were trivial… I could breach them in minutes, extract the Artifact, and eliminate the inheritors before they understood what they’d lost.
Burn it to bedrock.
The order echoed. I examined it from every angle. Found the small hesitation lodged beneath my certainty.
“No. Not yet.”
The lieutenant’s confusion radiated through his posture. “Commander?”
“The Beacon woke on its own. It chose these inheritors… selected them, just as it selected the guardians of the other worlds. That has not happened in millennia.” I called up a holographic image: a human face, young, unremarkable except for the terror in his eyes. The one who had touched the Artifact first. The one who had started the cascade. “I want to understand why.”
“My Lord Drax’Khar ordered…”
“I am aware of my orders.” My voice dropped to the register that silenced dissent. “I am also aware that the previous two recoveries cost us significant resources because we underestimated the bond between Artifact and inheritor. I will not repeat that inefficiency.”
The lieutenant bowed. Retreated.
I stood alone before the hologram. The human’s face rotated slowly… captured from our surveillance, frozen in the moment of first contact. Such a small creature. Such a brief lifespan. And yet the Artifact had reached for him across the void, had chosen him from billions, had poured its resonance into his fragile form.
Why?
The question would not leave me.
A subordinate approached. Knelt at the edge of the platform, head bowed in deference.
“Commander. Our forces are in position. The facility is surrounded. Shall we burn the world?”
I studied the hologram a moment longer. The human’s eyes. The terror in them… but beneath the terror, something else. Something I had seen in warriors facing impossible odds. Something that, in another context, I might have called resolve.
My mandibles unlocked. My answer came slow, deliberate, ground out like stone against stone:
“No. Not yet.”
The subordinate waited.
“First… bring me the one who touched it.”
- Writer
