Much Worse

Fate caught up to the other three Embodiments, who had stopped on top of the hill Fate and Cait had fought Griffith on. He wiped the slight sheen of sweat off of his brow as he looked up at the approaching ship with everyone else. "That's a big ship," he said.

"It is," Ythmun said. "But in my experience, the bigger ones go down easier. The Tramolians typically don't shield their big ships, trusting in the size to deter damage. It just goes to show how stupid they are."

"Then why did it stop?" Cait asked

Fate squinted at the smudge in the sky. True to what Cait had said, the ship had stopped about forty miles above the ground, hovering like a miniature, cylindrical sun as the flames continued to lick its hull. It was comically shaped like a red can of chips that someone had shoved dozens of different-sized needles into as if they had seen a kids' program to turn a can into a satellite.

The front of the ship, currently angled to point directly at the ground, had a long, thick barrel protruding from it. The tip of this barrel was currently glowing with a green light bright enough to be seen in broad daylight from miles away.

"It's going to shoot us from up there." Fate cursed, glancing around for a way to stop the ship. "And with your ship gone, we have no way of getting up there."

"Not entirely true," Cait said. "We still have the Stratospheres."

Fate looked back at the ship, gauging the distance between them and it. "I don't think the Stratospheres can take us that high before that thing finishes warming up. Besides, we still need to breathe, and only I have a breathing mask."

"Then I suppose the only thing we can do is stop it from down here," Ythmun said.

"And how do you propose we do that?" Garrett asked with a snort.

"We have a lot of rocks from the palace," Fate said, turning his gaze to the palace ruins. "We could throw those at it. And if that doesn't work, we take the biggest one and use it to meet that laser in the sky."

"It's worth a shot," Cait commented.

"Then let's get on with it." Ythmun sprinted toward the palace ruins, the others joining soon after. When Fate caught up, Ythmun and Cait were already chucking rocks at the ship in the distance, trying to hit the barrel. Garrett stood on the sidelines, sidling up to Fate when he approached.

"I'm gonna need your help with this, boy. Most of these are too heavy for me to lift by myself."

Fate nodded, and the two joined Cait and Ythmun in throwing boulders at the distant ship. The first ten they sent either missed or glanced across the sides, the next ten struck around the barrel, and the twenty-third rock they launched snapped the barrel clean off, everyone except Ythmun cheering as the destroyed barrel exploded, taking off a small chunk of the ship.

"It's not over yet," Ythmun said exasperatedly. The ship moved once more, angling itself so it was parallel to the ground as it descended slowly. They grew serious once more, preparing another volley of rocks for when it got closer.

The ship stopped a mile off the ground, all of the needle-like protrusions across its body whirring as they pointed downwards. Each one glowed bright red, building up heat and light until one could've mistaken them for stars, even though it was daytime.

As the lights reached a crescendo, another light, infinitely brighter and searing white in color, descended from the skies and sheared through the Tramolian pirate ship like paper. The ground below was scorched black and a large crater formed as in the sky, the ship's two halves fell slowly out of the air.

They didn't fall for long before both halves exploded into shrapnel and heat, the embodiments on the ground throwing up reflexive Divine Reach barriers to shield themselves as fire and metal rained down from the sky.

From the depths of space came another ship, this one so big it made the Tramolian ship look like a pebble next to a mountain. It was as large as a moon, shaped like a square with no discernible windows. Every inch of the white metal square had strange grooves running through them which glowed bright white.

All of this light seemed to coalesce near the bottom of the ship, where a blinding bright light slowly lost its intensity.

"Is that your Flaming Crows?" Ythmun asked quietly.

"No…" Fate said. "No, it's something much worse than the Tramolians."

The square tilted, revealing its emblazoned symbol on one side to everyone on this side of the planet. Staring them in the face, mockingly, was a capital "A" with a circle around each point, engraved in black. The ship opened on its left side, revealing a hanger housing an entire armada of capital ships and fighters as a single ship flew out.

This ship was relatively small, only a hundred feet long and wide, its appearance that of three circles joined together at the sides to form a triangle. On the bottom was the same symbol as the one on the square ship.

It landed a hundred feet away from Fate and his friends, a section of one of the circles turning into liquid metal and flowing away and forming a ramp to the ground as a man stepped down.

He wore a buttoned-up white lab coat, brown pants, and crisp black boots. His black hair was slicked back with some type of grease, causing it to shine in the sunlight. He wore a friendly smile on his face, one that didn't quite reach the cruel stare of his brown eyes.

Ythmun immediately moved to greet the man, giving a crisp salute as he stopped five feet away. The man looked Ythmun up and down, frowning at something only he knew. "Where's your bear, Ythmun?" the man asked.

"Killed, Sir Norman."

The man's frown turned to a sneer before he quickly plastered his fake smile back on. "A shame. He was a promising subject."