Gah beeped to himself as he restarted his body, trying to recall what happened to force him to restart in the first place. As vision sensors reactivated, Gah quickly remembered why. There was a portal. A gold portal. With things coming out of it. He and Nuh had managed to close the portal before anything too dangerous managed to climb through, but in doing so, they’d caused an electromagnetic pulse that had knocked everyone out.
Luckily, Gah had some resistance to that sort of thing. But normally, he needed half a second to prepare himself. He didn’t have that half a second, and his body had shut down because of it. However, Gah had managed to shake off most of the more immediate problems and, five minutes later, he was now back on his feet.
At least, it had to have been five minutes. That was what his internal clock was saying. However Gah noticed that his internal clock read 0005, so maybe that wasn’t accurate. Gah didn’t have time to ponder this further as he was immediately but rather weakly attacked. It seemed that Mediblade hadn’t passed out the same time Gah and his team had, and, rather than checking in on them, Mediblade had just stood there, watching blankly. It quickly occurred to Gah that Mediblade was under some sort of mind control as they very slowly attacked again. The telltale sign was that swirl of gold and silver energy floating around Mediblade’s head.
For the second time in about five minutes, Gah was glad that his element was magnetism. He was doubly glad that Mediblade’s sword was made of metal, so Gah could just strip it away. Gah did consider stabbing the Decay Lord with his own weapon, but that would have been mean, so he knocked the sword away then grabbed hold of the metal armour Mediblade was wearing and used it to slam Mediblade into the nearest wall until he was unconscious.
With that out of the way, Gah checked on his siblings. Weirdly, Tah wasn’t back yet. He was supposed to have dumped that Voidblade guy somewhere outside and teleported back already. Luckily, everyone else was beginning to stir.
“Did we close the portal?” Nuh asked as his eyes flicked on.
“Yeah but I think something sneaked in. Mind control. On telepathic channels.”
“Thought as much…” Koh tutted as he climbed to his feet. “Is Tah not back?”
“He might have gotten zapped by the electromagnetic blast just as he left, so he might be a while.”
Koh sighed and took charge. “Fine. Nuh, Gah, need you two to lock everything down as much as you can. Leh, you and I will work out who is being mind-controlled and try and work out how to reverse it. Pah, lock yourself on our ship.”
“Why?” Pah looked blank. However, Pah always looked blank. None of them had facial expressions.
“We’re probably going to get torn apart, so we need you in one piece to weld us together when all this is over…” Koh trailed off. “So, uh, what sneaked in, Gah?”
Gah shrugged. “No idea. I just know they’re mind-controlled because that guy there attacked me. Pretty sure it’s some organic telepathy thing though because we’re all fine.”
The other Cleansers all clicked, then made their way out of the room. Pah did as he was told, splitting off from the others and making his way back to the safety of their ship. Thankfully, most of the corridors seemed pretty clear and empty, and there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Up until…
“Excuse my language, but what the fuck?” Leh couldn’t help but shout as he skidded to a halt, then received a slap to the back of the head from Koh.
Standing in front of the four Cleansers were… two more Cleansers, except their colours were all wrong. One was blue all over with lighter blue parts and red crystalline eyes, the other was white and gold instead of white and silver. However, upon seeing the real Cleansers, both these fake Cleaners reverted to their normal forms.
“Hey guys!” Tenuk beamed. “I found another shapeshifter!”
Tenuk was a short being. Not as short as Kal, but definitely small, with four crimson eyes on his face and rather plain, featureless but rubbery blue skin. Across his body were small, glowing spots, while a stupidly long tail floated in the air behind him. The only clothing Tenuk seemed to be wearing was a pair of shorts. The creature standing next to Tenuk looked somewhat similar but lacked the glowing spots and seemed to have four long tails instead of one. She was also wearing a shimmering golden dress.
“What’s going on?” Koh asked.
“This Voidborn prick broke in, mind-controlled all the Beh’evok here through their version of the Secret and they’re all trying to kill Phovos because she’s a Life Goddess!” Tenuk cheerfully explained. “Retvik sent me to try and find the source of all of this and maybe find some reinforcements, since we kinda can’t just wake up the telepaths in case everything gets worse. I ran into Ahra here on the way to finding you lot. Good to see that you’re all in one piece! Where are Tah and Pah?”
The Cleansers all glanced at each other. Leh was admittedly just happy that someone around here actually seemed to know who was who.
“We sent Pah back to our ship. Tah teleported Voidblade out of here in a last-ditch effort to stop, well, this from happening but it didn’t work. Where is everyone else?”
Ahra crossed her arms and sighed, then grabbed Koh by the hand and started dragging him back in the direction she and Tenuk had come from. “The handful of non-Behe’vok Phantai and the non-telepath Thantir are held up in the main observatory in a bid to protect the Life Goddess! We must go, now!”
As she did so, Ahra changed her form again, shapeshifting into a tall, white and gold Beh’evok, lifting Koh into the air as she did so and not particularly caring that the white Cleanser was now being thrown around behind her. Tenuk laughed, then shifted into his own Beh’evok-like form and followed, suggesting that the other Cleansers do the same. Rather than running, Nuh and Gah used their gravitational and magnetic powers to float after them.
“I’m going to say fuck again…” Leh cursed as he plodded off. He may have been the fastest of the six Cleansers on foot, but he didn’t have any real way of propelling himself that didn’t involve explosions. As Leh struggled to keep up with the others though, he noticed that the few beings he did see were all frozen in place but aiming in the same direction, the direction in which everyone was going.
It didn’t take long to find where all the actual commotion was. A wall of heavily armoured Beh’evok were circling a swiftly shrinking wall of flames. Rather than approaching like normal beings, Ahra nonchalantly threw Koh over the flames and into whatever was there. Ahra and Tenuk then both changed into small, flying critters and flew over the walls themselves, while Nuh and Gah continued to just float over everything. Utterly sick of being constantly left behind, Leh decided to get destructive, and caused a myriad of explosions in front of him, scattering bodies everywhere and making a large wall in the flames for him to walk though.
“Oh, hello little ones!” Vikalos beamed as he closed the fiery hole, providing safety once more. Outside the flames, the mind-controlled Phantai were back on their feet, trying to cut through the fire and somehow actually doing a pretty good job of doing so. Both Vikalos and Retvik looked pretty tired, doubly so since they were concentrating on not actually killing anyone.
Also present was Akah. Akah was creating a wall of ice just behind the two fire gods, behind which the two purely female members of the Thantir were sheltering.
“How long have you been here?” Gah asked, giving the Decay Lords a hand by swatting a few errant Phantai away.
“Hm, four hours, I think?”
“Three hours, forty five minutes and six seconds!” a voice shouted from behind the wall of ice.
“What Elksia said…” Akah frowned. “I mean, we are literally fighting an army. And also it turns out Elksia was exactly right when she said that their Rethan-Secret-like telepathic link was prone to hijacking.”
Akah’s statement was met with a rather angry growl from Retvik, who increased the intensity of his flames. “When you are all formally Decay Lords, we are leaving this stupid place and I am going to go somewhere where I can murder a lot of people…”
“Now now, Retvik, I thought you would be at home among these beings? The Beh’evok are proto-Threavok after all, and is that not what your kind evolved from?” Vikalos tutted, making sure that no one was actually dying from the sudden increase in temperatures. He glanced behind him, making sure that his dear partner Galyn was still in one piece. While Galyn was both a Beh’evok and a former Phantai, he did have some resistances to this mental attack, but was currently just sitting in a corner, repeating the lyrics to some sort of lullaby over and over. Annoyingly, Vikalos had no idea where his other partner, Itaviir was.
“This is the second time I have experienced a Voidborn taking over a low level empathic network to turn everyone into mindless slaves. The question is, where IS the Voidborn controlling them all?”
As if they had been specifically waiting for someone to ask, a colossal Voidborn entity exploded into the room, throwing pretty much everyone back. Unlike most Voidborns, this one was not just huge, but also coated in platinum armour rather than the traditional gold. They lacked antlers though and instead had a single, round horn that connected to itself and formed a halo. Its armour plating was rather smooth and was decorated with delicate golden swirls.
“I am Krohniak, First Son of Ahkron, and I am here to end the beings that ended my father.”
No one answered at first. But eventually someone spoke.
“Huh, didn’t know Voidborns could fuck!” Elksia exclaimed from behind the wall of ice. “You guys gonna kill the bastard or what?”
Krohniak laughed, summoning a long, elegant staff. “I like you, Time Drake. Everyone else though, it is time for you all to die.”