30 Cornered

Ozkan hurriedly communicated with Carion in the Monolith to assess the damage after the explosion and was quickly informed about the destruction of the Tesseract Vault. 

"God, Stardeath. Old One forces have taken out the Tesseract Vault. They should arrive with psyker reinforcements within 20 minutes." Ozkan reported.

Stardeath merely glanced at Ozkan.

"Look! I told ya he was a strong git. This Git is as tough as tha weird skelly." Mork casually explained to his brother.

"Hmm," Gork muttered while looking at the useless weapons in his hands.

"Time to go," Gork finished his thought, turned, and started running away.

"Ah! YOU CAN'T GET A HEAD START!" Mork yelled at his brother's back and ran after him.

Ozkan watched blankly as Stardeath focused his gaze on the distance of the direction they were running. 

"There is an Honored One who will reach here within 10 seconds," Stardeath states while calculating based on the life force he could see in the distance.

"We are leaving." Stardeath commands and tells Carion to teleport the both of them along with the bodies of the legion back into the Monolith.

Stardeath only came to this moon to feed the C'tan in general were not a unified force. Each C'tan and his legion set off to do their things and accomplish their agendas. Stardeath never had any grand plan in the first place, he only wanted to continue to feed. So a hasty retreat is an easy choice for a C'tan like himself.

As Stardeath and Okzan appeared in the portal chamber, they joined Necron Overlord Carion in the command room of the Monolith. 

*WRRRR* *WRRRR* *WRRRR*

A buzzing alarm *wrred* from the Monolith, indicating a massive incoming psionic disturbance.

"The Old One ships have targeted the Monolith," Carion reported out loud.

"Space anchor points are solidifying. They are making it difficult to break through surrounding space." Carion continued.

Stardeath didn't bother to respond. Instead, he placed his scepter on the ground and began to flare his energy. Space cried out and the Materium's laws twisted once again. A sound like that of nails on a chalkboard grated against the space around the Monolith, as two powerful energy forces fought for dominance. One was the powerful psykers of the Old Ones, trying to trap them, and the other was Stardeath's spacial manipulation.

In the end, Stardeath's energy lost the battle. Not because he was weak but because the Old Ones had committed around 5 Honored One psykers of Alpha rank specifically to deal with him on the command ships above. Sometimes, battling a race of beings that could match themselves in plans based on prophecy was troublesome.

Stardeath recalled his energy and ran thousands of calculations within the span of a second. In the end, he went with a secondary plan.

"Begin repairing the Tesseract Vault," Stardeath commanded, before accessing the Monolith's teleport on his own and teleporting himself to Slagars position directly.

...

Slagar's ethereal titan form had long reached Gork and Mork's position. The two giant naked Korks were fighting with each other again when he arrived. He contacted the Old One command class ship to take them back to the ship for questioning, before continuing to move towards the Necron Monolith. 

He was about 500 meters away from his target when green energy buzzed near him. Stardeath appeared a moment later, leaving both Slagar and Stardeath to look silently at each other for a moment.

Stardeath didn't sit idle for more than a second before his scepter lit up as he swung it at Slagar, within his ethereal titan's chest.

*CRACK* *CRACK* *CRACK*

Purple and black energy crackled as the mace-like scepter seemed to crack the very air around its impact. The cracks began to spread across the air, the ground, and toward Slagar's physical body.

Red Warp Lightning pulsed out from Slagar's titan directly, as he manipulated the Warp energy to collide with the cracks. Red thunderclouds formed around him as the very Materium began to twist from the slim barrier between the Warp and the universe. The Choran gland caused the reaction it was intended to cause, without the limiting interference of the Necron Tesseract Vault to hold it back.

Annoyance flashed in Stardeath's eyes for only a moment. The energy of the Warp was something that the C'tan were incapable of understanding. And Old Ones at the level of Honored One would be able to be content with their basic influences on the Materium without issue.

*HUMMM*

Stardeath pushed his scepter-mace to full power, fully utilizing the stored anti-matter inside it. His energy flared and space began to cry louder than ever before. He began to fold space over and over itself directly in front of his scepter. A black and purple sphere appeared, growing denser and denser with each fold. Finally, a tiny black hole of folded space was simulated. As soon as he released his suppression of this space, matter of the Material universe would rush to fill it. The kinetic force caused by the resulting burst in gravity would overfill it and cause a rebound of the matter to explode outward.

Space surrounding the ball cracked like shattered glass, as Stardeath held back the natural effects of this folded space with the anti-matter as fuel. 

"Zero Space," Stardeath stated, before releasing his control on the ball of zero space.

Slagar's eyes widened as he watched a short view of the next 10 seconds into the future. He anchored one of the titan's arms as far into the ground as he could, while the other he used to attempt to cover his real body.

*WOOSH*

A powerful suction pulled in a large chunk of the atmosphere, like how an empty water bottle would collapse on itself when the air was sucked out of it. Chunks of the ground were being pulled off the ground and flew past him, faster than the speeds of sound. And yet, even this did not save him from the pull, only delayed it. Slagar flew towards the ball, leaving him open for Stardeath's counterattack. 

*CRACK*

Stardeath's scepter-mace collided near Slagar's real body and the cracks spread to his right shoulder.

"ARGH" Slagar grunted in pain.

*BOOM*

An explosion of zero space occurred only a second later, jerking him back to the ground in the opposite direction of the pull. The chunks of ground and atmosphere had been compressed into dense metallic alloys just from the pressure and became shotgun bullets from the explosion. His titan form crackled with warp lightning and his arm blocked most of the shrapnel, but some still went straight through his skin like bullets, leaving several wounds along his body and holes in his Honored One ceremonial armor he wore.

His titan form staggered to its feet and even though he might look like the fight was already over, his eyes burned with an inner focus that said the fight had only begun.

============

(AI-Generated Slagar titan form images from the pat reon. [They are a bit too big.])

More chapters on my pat reon:

pat reon/ MatheuDeWitt