There was only one problem.
Gerravon’s three Hands disappeared from his awareness the moment he gave them the order. No explosions occurred on the planets.
Now there were only ten transports left.
Another Vroshir—a longtime partner to the Silverlords—had bound the force of ten billion spirits, an entire doomed world, inside herself. She had been drawing on them for power for centuries, but now she sacrificed her own life to release that power. Billions of ghosts erupted into space, seeking vengeance, seeking an enemy…
They were wiped out in an instant. Scrubbed clean. Erased, as though they had never been.
“Deploy all shrouds and veils,” Gerravon commanded. He was sweating like a mortal.
Every individual Silverlord had unique powers and their own ways of hiding themselves. Even some of the transports were fitted with irreplaceable artifacts or equipment that would help them hide from Abidan eyes.
As one, thousands of different mechanisms triggered stealth. They created decoys of divergent futures, manipulated probability to make themselves less prone to chance discovery, wiped themselves from minds and awareness, dispersed energy signatures…they employed every method to hide and disguise themselves.
And, against Gerravon’s expectations, their transport made it through the Void portal.
He let out a breath of relief, and someone clapped him on the shoulder. He assumed it was one of the bridge crew until, with a chill, he realized his Presence hadn’t detected anyone next to him.
Slowly, the old Silverlord turned his head to the right.
Ozriel stood next to him in black armor, white hair flowing behind him, a satisfied smile on his face. “So Daruman told you I was weak, did he?”
Gerravon closed his eyes and remembered his life.
“Weaker,” the Reaper said. “He should have said weaker.”
“Would you spare me if I asked?”
“Would you rather face trial for plundering worlds and leaving them to die?”
Gerravon considered that. Then he condensed all his Hundred Hands into a single strike that would obliterate this transport, his entire fleet, and most of Spawn to hopefully leave a crack in that pristine black armor.
Instead, he felt his power dissolving along with the very origin of his existence.
“That’s what I thought,” Ozriel said. “Good-bye, Gerravon. I have business with your friends.”
Iteration 075: Verge
Suriel engaged in a cosmic tug-of-war with a group of Vroshir.
The transports in Verge had already mostly made it away from the Iteration by the time she arrived, and she continued pulling them back through space while trying to shut their exit.
But they had powerful reinforcements.
The portal led only a short hop through the Void. On the other side, she could see—and feel—their destination.
Amorenthus, one of the Vroshir homeworlds. A concentration of their power. It looked like a myth, like a fairy legend common to many worlds, an idyllic paradise of rainbow skies, floating islands, and shining water.
The powers built into the world supplanted the efforts of her enemies, armoring them against her authority. She held some of the transports back, but several slipped through her grasp even as she concentrated.
Until Ozriel arrived.
For someone who loved to pop up unexpectedly where he wasn’t wanted, he could make as much of an entrance as anyone. All over the Iteration, supernatural senses screamed that the end had arrived.
He didn’t have his Scythe with him, but he reached his hand across the gulf of space and spoke a command.
Suriel sensed many hostile powers die in an instant. Several of the transports slowed, the energy propelling them having been wiped away. She seized them and pulled them back into Verge.
With fewer Silverlords to oppose Suriel, their portals began to slide closed. She pushed back the influence of Amorenthus and seized the portals, healing the tear in the world that led into the Void.
Until Ozriel zipped through the closing portal after the Vroshir.
She gawked at him while she hurriedly held the portal in place. Her Presence spun out possible motivations for his actions: he was defecting, he was committing suicide, he was offering a deal to the Vroshir in exchange for his freedom.
There were multiple points against each possibility, but Suriel suspected she knew what he was really doing.
He wasn’t leaving or giving up. He was doing his job.
Recklessly.
She followed him only as far as the Void portal, unwilling to move further into the Void. “What are you doing?” she shouted after him.
He waved a hand behind him. “I’ll be right back!”