Zekeke and the Derse Core

Zekeke teeters on the edge of the window sill. Her eyes are closed. She takes deep breaths and takes an introspective look at herself. Is she still afraid of dying? Deep breath. Yes, she is. Even with everything she's learnt and all that's happened, she's still afraid. And she's tired of feeling afraid. By now she feels like she has a pretty good idea about what will happen. She's been through it once, after a fashion. But there's always doubt. Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith.

Zekeke takes a deep breath and a step forward out into open space.

She then opens her eyes and floats upwards, leaving the purple landscape of Derse's moon and her dream tower behind her. She looks upwards to the chain linking the moon to planet and to Derse itself. She flies along the great chain towards her target. Zekeke was at the top of her echeladder and at this late stage of the game Derse was expecting an attack from the players at any moment. The space ahead of her fills with ranged fire.

Zekeke weaves between the links of the chain to avoid arrows and thrown javelins. Laser beams narrowly miss her and huge rocks smash into the chain around her. She pays them little mind: she had enough vitality gel to shrug off these hits.

She spots a more dangerous threat. Four homing rockets coming at her from several angles, each as long as she was tall. Zekeke narrowed her eyes, judging the distance, counting down the time till they hit. Three. Two. One. Zekeke closes up her mind and puts out a strong force shield around her. The rockets smash into her shield with enough force to halt her forward charge. For a moment the rocket engines against her and threaten to send her backwards. Then they explode in a large fireball easily seen by the cheering pawns on Derse.

The fireball disperses and Zekeke lowers her shield unharmed. Now she sees she's in counter attack range. She takes out a sun mine and throws it hard at towards the chain's base. Three. Two. One. Zekeke closes her eyes as a huge a blinding explosion makes a large crater in the dream planet. The chain breaks free and snaps past her. She does a graceful flip to orientate herself with the planet and floats down to her new crater and looks up at the retreating chain. Whatever happens next, she's accomplished one thing. Derse forces will no doubt be mobilizing against her now; what she just faced was merely a patrol group. But she wasn't planning on facing them. She had another path planned.

Zekeke holds up another sun mine and throws it at her feet at the base of the crater. Three. Two. One. Zekeke raises her force shield and a bright explosion washes over everything but her.

Zekeke floats down the shaft she created humming a hymn. A calmness overcomes her. She's crossed the threshold. There's no turning back now. The chain is long gone and the Dersite forces on the surface will soon trap her. This certainty washes away the last remains of her fear. She is cursed, her death set in the stone of paradox space and she's ready to face it now and be reborn as something more. With the vanishing of the fear comes a wave of elation that sweeps through her whole body.

Zekeke's in no hurry. She recharges and gathers up her psychic energy in preparation for when she needs it. Derse's interior is honeycombed and lets her descend past the hole her initial explosion made. When she does find her path down blocked she takes out another sun mine and blasts her own path. She heads towards her destiny and feels fate guiding her every step.

She spots a flash of red from above her and raises her shield just in time to block an arc of red lightning. She looks up. Another bolt of red crashes from wall to wall of the shaft before hitting her force shield. Zekeke grins, the black queen is coming after her just as planned. Zekeke's not fated to die by red miles and has nothing to fear from the queen. She drops another sun mine below her and looks up in anticipation for the next arc of red or perhaps the queen herself.

She blocks two more strands of the miles. More red bolts tear into the walls around her indiscriminately. The queen must be getting closer. Zekeke cranes her neck and thinks she almost got a glimpse of the Queen when a very powerful bolt hits her. It knocks zekeke down and she tumbles down the shaft. The bolt follows her and tries to drill into her shield. Zekeke pulls into herself and surrounds herself in a closed bubble of force. The bolt smashes into her again with enough force to smash Zekeke through several structural layers.

Space opens up around Zekeke. She falls into the cavernous central cavern of Derse in a kind of weightlessness. The red miles are behind her. She loses the energy to maintain her shield and floats exhausted. She falls past the chains that criss-cross the large space. And she sees a small speck of dark green: her round quest slab. Her fetch modus chooses now to release The Bomb. The big black and white one, the thing fated to kill her and on which her plan hinges. It falls away from her. She scrambles to catch it, she can't lose it now!

The cavern lights up with red light and an entire section of the cavern wall collapses as it gets torn apart by red miles. The monstrous form of the black queen appears in the centre of the hole and stretches out her flaming wings. She shoots out an arc of red miles which homes in on The Bomb. It gets vaporised in an instant. Zekeke winces but it doesn't detonate.

It's just gone. Zekeke screams out in shock and confusion. Something's wrong. This isn't meant to happen. Her death is already written. It can't change like this! She lands on her quest slab. All her certainty fades away again in an instant. If she was wrong about her fate then everything else falls apart too.

The queen throws another bolt of red lightning at Zekeke. The trolls stares it down as it tunnels towards her. She shifts her feet on the slab to get into a defensive posture. The situation could still be saved. All she has to do is let the red miles bite into her and she'll be reborn as a god. She grits her teeth.

The red miles strikes at her and hits a force shield. Zekeke gets knocked away flying and shouts out in pained frustration. She just couldn't do it. In that moment she realised she wasn't ready and reacted by refelx. The black queen lands on the slab and crushes it between bear traps. Zekeke cries out again.

She blocks more red miles. She must be in a doomed time line! What happens to souls in doomed timelines! A bolt of red miles arcs around her and she strains against it to keep it away from her. Zekeke's going to die here for real! The black queen is too powerful to survive alone against. She doesn't know what happens to dead doomed selves. She doesn't want to die, not like this.

Zekeke's sheild drops and the miles punch through her shoulder and slams her against a wall, or is it a floor now? The black queens rears up on her. Zekeke weakly puts her shield back up. Her psychic energy is depleted, she's pouring her very soul into holding it up and it hurts. Her death is certain but her fate afterwards is completely unknown and she holds onto what scraps of life she still has. The black queen viciously tears into her shield with claws and fins and teeth. Zekeke curls into a ball. She doesn't want to die. She pleads with any supernatural power to look the other way and spare her. She still has regrets. She says she's sorry over and over again. She's a good person please don't let her suffer in the afterlife. The queen tears open her shield and zekeke screams like her soul was torn apart. The queen locks a firm hand around Zekeke's chest. Then another around her waist. Then the queen pulls her apart.