There was a very large ship hovering above Savepoint, as large as the floating island itself. That would have been more concerning if the ship didn’t have the words “The Pentathax Three” blasted on every side.
“Do you know these guys?” Arkay asked as a smaller ship disconnected from beneath the larger ship and slowly drifted down, landing in the parking lot. Three colossal beings exited the ship as soon as its engines switched off, but Retvik seemed to know them, and approached them without concern.
“Hello again, Flamebearer!” Pentaflame beamed as he and his fellow Doom Drums swiftly walked over.
“Hello again, little…” Permafrost seemed a little more concerned upon seeing Arkay, but shook off that worry as he realized that they were greeting the Missing, a fellow Trio. “Hello! We have something we want you to see. Is it alright if we set up some equipment briefly?”
Pentaflame patted Permafrost on the shoulder. “My dear friend we need to actually greet these folks before we get straight to the point!” The colossal, rocky fire monster then turned to the Missing and bowed slightly. “We are the Doom Drums, the leaders of the Pentathax. Who are you, young ones?”
Arkay opened his mouth to speak, but paused. “Um… I was about to say, I’m Arkay, god of death and decay, but I’m not any more! I’m Arkay, codename Deathbringer, full identity pending because I’m still a hot mess right now.”
Litvir snickered, then introduced himself as well. “I am Litvir Kaldynik, codename Souldrainer.”
Galeforce glanced at his companions. “Flamebearer described you as an armoured Psion, and I somewhat expected you to be one of those Beh’evok we see around this eniapent constantly. Pleasure to meet you both, and it is an honour to meet an Amalgam Mimic in person, Arkay.”
“Oh, we call ourselves Synaisthyns now. Since the Thantir kinda have a monopoly on them…” Arkay muttered. “Oh, hang on, you’re the big, uh, warframe thingy that was around when I last saved Retvik’s butt!”
Permafrost nodded. “I am. I am Ordas Kryanan, Permafrost, these are my companions, Praeliator Prime, Pentaflame and Lohmahro, Galeforce. We are actually here because we wanted to invite you to watch something spectacular, since you provided us with some utterly amazing information. We invited our other Trio friends to watch a stream that we are setting up right now, but we wanted to have you all sit with us in person.”
“But also we wished to ask the Life Goddess who set all of this up to join us, but we can’t find her!” Pentaflame added. “This sort of thing, we invite local Life Goddesses to watch, but the Life Goddess who did all this… We don’t know who she is.”
Retvik shrugged somewhat. “Life Goddess Sini went off to do her own thing after we fixed her up and gave her a ship, we do not know where she is either and Sini made it clear she wanted to be left alone.”
“Ah, a shame…” Pentaflame frowned, then snapped his colossal fingers. “Either way, let us entertain you for a bit. Will you briefly join us on the Joyful Beat, our pleasure cruiser?”
“Are we going anywhere?” Litvir asked.
“No, no. The Joyful Beat just happens to have a very nice private mini theatre which we use to watch various… fun things!” Pentaflame explained. “And since we are moments away from destroying a known SCS, based on information you provided, we want you to join us.”
“Hang on!” Arkay suddenly exclaimed. “You’re about to blow up the universe my sister trapped Epanophovon inside?”
“Technically, we are going to implode it, but yes. Do you want to watch, friend?”
“Bloody fucking void yes I do!” Arkay bounced up and down excitedly. “I want to see that bastard dead!”
The Doom Drums all smiled. Well, it was clear that Galeforce smiled, but it was difficult to tell for Pentaflame, and Permafrost didn’t seem to have a face. The elder Decay Lords span around and led Retvik, Litvir and Arkay to their ship, which was clearly more luxurious than the old Deathven base that Retvik had visited. As they walked, Litvir noticed that Galeforce was spending a lot of time juggling communications but doing so with pride.
Eventually, the six Trio members ended up in a quiet theatre with two rows of very large, plush seats, more like sofas than actual chairs. On the screen was a universe a lot smaller than Arkay remembered, but it was still that familiar dim, warm red, with the molten diamond outer walls. All around the universe, various large, metallic pillars had been erected, forming a dodecahedron shape, all of them connected by sparking arcs of energy. On the right hand side of the screen was a chat box, filled with eager viewers sending messages to each other, as well as a countdown timer that hadn’t started yet.
“So… you stream these destructions?” Litvir asked as he, Retvik and Arkay all sat down, with Arkay sitting in the middle. Arkay seemed slightly nervous, and he wrapped his tail around Litvir’s.
“Mhm!” Pentaflame nodded. “The use of VGIDs, Vast Gravitational Inducer Devices, is heavily restricted, and all uses of them have to be documented. We also have to document HCUs, heavily corrupted universes that need to be destroyed, so we kill two Corruptions with one flamethrower blast and just stream the whole thing, since folks want to see what’s going on anyway.”
“You have clearly been doing this for a while!” Litvir mused. “What are we about to witness?”
“An implosion…” Permafrost muttered as he and the other Doom Drums sat down.
A couple of Pentathax soldiers handed everyone a special, magically filling drinking vessel (the sort used for special occasions). Arkay clearly didn’t know how the chalice worked, and Retvik quickly showed him. Permafrost noticed and decided to question it.
“So, Deathbringer, you were apparently missing. Welcome back, have you been gone a while?”
“Yep. But I’m free now!” Arkay chirped. “I want to see you all kill Epanophovon.”
“Who is that?”
“Uh, that’s the name of the Unending Ancient One!” Arkay remained perky. “Turns out, old, smart Corruptions like the one in that universe have names for themselves. The name for-” Arkay paused, mostly because Litvir telepathically suggested that he not mention he turned himself into a Corruption at one point. “Like, the name of the Nekro-Kinisian strain is kinda just Kinisis, but the Unending Ancient One, the smart bit, calls itself Epanophovon.”
“How do you know this?”
“Bastard nearly corrupted and killed me. But I escaped. Because of Synaisthyn nonsense.”
Permafrost shrugged, accepting that answer. Before he could ask more questions though, Galeforce nodded at him and Pentaflame, and the counter on the screen started ticking down, from 60 seconds. The chat on the side immediately filled with excitement, but the mood in the theatre was quite tense. Litvir and Retvik both recognized some Decay Lord codenames in the live chat, clearly a LOT of locals were also watching.
As the timer hit the 30 second mark, Retvik glanced down and noticed that Arkay had shifted as close as possible to him and grabbed onto his hand, holding it tightly. On the screen, the metal pillars began to charge up and shimmer. Around the perimeter, ships were somewhat close by, weapons all aimed at the universe.
The timer hit zero, and, for a brief moment, everything was silent. The pillars all shone brightly, then faded. All of a sudden, the universe swiftly began to collapse, while the ships all opened fire with napalm and nuclear weaponry. Within just a few seconds, the universe was nothing more than a fireball, but even then, the universe collapsed further, turning into a black hole. The black hole glowed for a moment, sucking in the nuclear inferno, but faded away. The pillars all lit up again and sucked the energy from the black hole, causing it to fizzle out and disappear.
“Wow… Is he really gone?” Arkay whispered.
Pentaflame got up and patted Arkay on the shoulder. “That particular Sentient Corrupted Source? Yes indeed! While we will most likely never permanently rid the universe of Corruption, with that SCS destroyed, the only remaining pure UAE generators are any SCSSSs, Sub-Child Strain Sentient Sources it may have created. But those are far weaker and far less spreadable than the main SCS!”
“You vok need better acronyms…” Litvir grunted. “Did you really come all this way just to show us this short livestream?”
“Admittedly, yes. We were hoping to find the Life Goddess, but you said she’s already long gone.”
“It was totally worth it though!” Arkay went back to grinning. “Screw that horrible, sadistic bastard. I know we just had a me-returning-home party already, but I want an Epanophovon-is-dead party too.”
Pentaflame glanced at Permafrost and Galeforce. “Do we have time for a short celebration?”
“I have some documentation and paperwork to do, but I guess?” Galeforce grunted. “How about you Thantir, do you have time?”
“We just started our work day, but we do not have a problem with you sticking around for a bit!” Retvik smiled. “We want to be more friendly with other sects anyway.”
“Ah, I see…” Permafrost hesitated briefly. “Alright, semi-related query, the lake you have here, can you… swim in it?”
“It’s fucking freezing, but yeah, you can swim in it.”
“Can I swim in it?”
The Missing all nodded. This pleased Permafrost more than it should have.
“Well, wonderful! I think we’ll stick around for a bit then…”