Ash and soot sprouted towards the sky, like the limbs of a dying tree during winter. Though the impression was gone almost as soon as it had come. And while Celex had managed to repel the artillery fire, the kinetic energy absorbed by the shield had thrown their tank like a child toy which spun, hit the light, and then tumbled across the open ground scarring the dirt as the Tank's metal frame tore massive clods from the ground.

Adam was thrown off just as the tank began its first rotation, not that he would have chosen to stay on otherwise. In the mass of spinning sky and ground, he caught only flashes of the others, as they too, were pitched from the Tank's frame. As a robotic AI, fealty was fast enough to highlight Sunny's body in green even as she tore past his eyes, but even had Adam possessed the speed required to do anything about it, his brain was too muddled to try.

She passed out of his vision, and he hit the ground hard, rolling once, then twice, then three times before slamming into something very hard.

His already cracked suit armor sent a distress signal to his HUD which blinked dramatically in shades of red and yellow.

Suit operation capacity 37%.

His body throbbed, but still, his helmet had done its job of protecting the mushy insides of his skull.

Adam staggered to his feet leaning heavily against the hard surface that had so rudely stopped his forward momentum: It was a wall, specifically the wall of the Necritorium.

They had made it to their destination.

And Nechal had already found them a way inside.

Adam was almost positive she had been aiming for the Necritorium gate; to say that the Tank's path had been fortuitous enough to crash through the massive rot iron facade simply upon the capricious whims of luck, would have been too much.

She had clearly been planning to use the tank as a battering ram either way and while flipping through the air had not been her original intention, the result was still the same.

"Over here! Hurry!" The sound of artillery fire was enough to drown out any other words she might have shouted, but Nechal's pearlescent carapace and glowing golden aura were more than enough to catch his attention as she waved him over from the broken gate.

Out in the other direction, a line of silhouettes was gathering before the horizon. The void army had broken away from their individual conflicts and was now funneling toward them in a torrent. Ignoring the urge to limp on his human leg, Adam raced along the wall and towards the gate.

Others were doing the same.

To his relief, Adam watched Sunny reach the gate first, Vaulting over the wreckage, and past Nechal, followed closely by Ramirez, who was missing good chunks of armor on his thighs and upper shoulders. Miraculously, so came everyone else, limping or bounding their way forward as the void army grew in size behind them. The tank left only a small gap in the warped gate allowing them through one at a time.

Surprisingly, through all of the odds, Krill had managed to survive, awkwardly shoving himself through the gap before Adam and after Dzara. Adam was both impressed and shocked. Kanan stayed back and climbed through last, taking Nechal's hand and squeezing tightly as he passed through the gap.

King James waited for them on the other side, golden shield dented, plume torn, red cloak hanging in tatters even as flecks of blood spattered the golden facade of his helmet.

"No time to talk, those soldiers will be here in moments, and once they spill through that gate we won't be able to stop them."

Adam knew he was right.

James pointed, leveling the blade of his spear towards the small gap in the gate through which they had crawled, "That's as good a choke point as any. Some of us should stay behind, hold here while the others make their way inside, and finish this once and for all. We must make this decision quickly. I will stay here."

The pronouncement surprised no one.

Holding the line with few men and few prospects against the tide of a much greater army was the legacy of Spartans. But unlike Leonidas at Thermopylae, King James did not have 300 nor the thousands of other Greek soldiers that stood at his side.

"We will stay." Kanan said, him and Nechal already stepping up to cover the choke point.

"So will I," Dzara said, though her voice was small.

Celex nodded once, "Never will I have participated in a greater battle. I will stay behind."

"Make that one more." The voice was rather unexpected, and the group turned their heads in unison, craning their necks back to watch as the starborn descended from the sky in a whipping cloud of tattered ribbons.

It was Conn, followed by a ragtag band of other starborn seconds of their alabaster skin singed to blackness by soot and fire.

He stopped to hover a few inches above the ground and surveyed them with a keen eye., "We will help hold the line." The bedraggled starborn sent a psychic pulse of agreement, though none of them looked particularly eager for what was to come.

Adam couldn't blame them.

"Hurry, we have little time," James ordered climbing the pile of rubble as the thundering of feet grew in intensity.

Conn turned to look at Adam, winked and then blew him a kiss, "A final smooch before you go dear."

Adam made a face, "Choke on a cock, Conn."

Conn leered at him, "Buy me dinner first." before Adam could say anything, or even really recognize that he should have seen that coming, Conn turned and floated off towards the gap, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt.

Adam shook his head.

No time for anything else "The rest of you on me!"

Sunny, Ramirez, Krill and Lanus fell into step beside them. He might have suggested Lanus stay back and hold the line with the others, but there was no doubt in his mind that, Kazna would be waiting for them at the end of this, and if they were gong to fight her they needed all the weapons they could get, even if that meant using her own feelings against her.

"STEADY." James roared from behind them.

Another throb of pain washed up through Adam's body.

He cursed, there was no time for this.

"STEADY." James called again

Adam engaged the medical system in his suit even as they raced into the first, long, dark passageway, and dosed himself with another round.

He told himself it didn't matter what happened now as long as they made it in time.

They had already lost fifty minutes to the fight and drive here, and now they had a little under an hour to make it to the Necrotorium core.

Together they ran at a near-dead sprint, not speaking, no one had the breath for that.

But it wasn't simply that that stopped the conversation, but the Necritorium itself.

The front gate lead straight and down into a dark stone hallway lined with pulsating orange light. It was dark there, shadows spilling in opaque inky pools upon the ground. The hallway was long and dark, eating up so many precious minutes as they ran, and so long it seemed to be neverending.

It was only after a good five minutes, that the passageway opened up before them, spitting them out onto a high catwalk overlooking a massive, stadium size pit with an open rooftop.

Golden light spilled in from above, flowing hard and fast like water.

Past the torrent of light, the sky pulsated with distant flashes of light and darkness.

The funnel of light plunged downward through the open ceiling and into the massive tapering pit, which extended for endless miles into the earth growing darker as it went. The singularity of the pit, far away at the distant end pulsated with throbbing orange light.

And the noise that came from it.

Was a noise that Adam would not soon forget: screaming.

The screaming of a million tortured souls as they were pulled apart piece by piece

A sound that would haunt him to his own dying day.

Dark stone enclosed the edges of the pit hemming them in on all sides. Fealty blanked in Adam's HUD impatient reminding them of the time 45 minutes remaining. They had to get moving.

"On me,"

Adam shouted.

The makers had given them some speculative schematics of the Necrotorium, supposedly somewhere around 85% accurate give or take a few points in their estimation. If that was the case, the power control room was past the pit, and down a story or two.

It was further than Adam would have liked,

And he wasn't sure if they could make it in time.

They had slowed to a jog as they entered the pit, which turned back into a sprint as he urged them onward, following the catwalk in a semicircle around the room, even as more and more souls came spilling down into the proverbial meat grinder. Gold and orange light lit his face as the slow transformation from person to power continued below their feet.

Adam was relieved he had taken another dose, muddling his mind and focusing his thoughts forward.

He didn't know what might have happened if he had been in greater possession of himself.

And he feared for the others.

But if they managed to continue at this pace then maybe-

The roar drowned out his thoughts, and Adam turned his head just in time to see a tide of void creatures spilling from over the edge of the pit.

His blood went cold.

He recognized these.

Some of them warped construct bodies, others creations by the void itself, twisted and cobbled together.

All of which he recognized from the invasion of Earth, and the Tricar homeworld.

A massive creature dropped onto the platform before them, spidery legs planted hard against the rough metal. Orange light glittered off the sheen of its smooth mushy body folding in curves and swirls like that of a human brain.

It roared again.

And Adam cursed.

They didn't have time for this!