Chapter 67

***This article contains spoilers.***

## Highlights

* The team watches recordings of Mael'nerak creating Ashanath, Trankarans, and Terrans. His Matriarch was Valada, Irillith's ancestor.
* Faye gets new hardware and can now run over a dozen avatars simultaneously.
* Despite making a hexagonal ward around the bed with Athena, John and the girls are pulled into the Astral Plane and get blocked from leaving.

## Summary

Amatsu Mikaboshi landed his stolen freighter on a landing pad by his hidden fortress, Yomi-no-Kuni, built into a remote mountain range, obscured from detection by the cunning use of technology. Servant Kagawa, his major-domo, greeted him, and him there has been no word from Shinatobe since the destruction of the Amaterasu. Mikaboshi ordered the immediate recall of all his agents, despite the fact that would mean abandoning dozens of contracts. He wanted revenge on John Blake for his injuries, the Amaterasu, and his beloved Shinatobe.

Sakura spaces out while helping prepare dinner, reliving a memory of Shinatobe. Except it wasn't how she usually remembers; it was as if it were Sakura hunting her target.

Dana finishes a project for Faye. Rachel treats everyone suffering from sulphur dioxide poisoning with my stem cell inhalant. John cautions the girls on target fixation.

Dana tells the team she built the projector that can play the Nexus Unity files, so they go to watch.

The 62,000-year-old recording started in a dimly-lit control room with bizarre equipment spaced evenly around. It was a kind of lab, with snaking cables linked to a blocky, hexagonal-shaped object about four feet high in the center.

A man strolled past to the right, appearing through a door that opened before him. (Jade recognizes him, and he reminds John of Nexus.) The ancient Progenitor had pointed ears like John, but his stern features were dominated by an aquiline nose, and a cropped goatee.

He walked over to a console, pressed a few buttons, and turned a dial, powering the machinery surrounding the hexagonal object.

*Turning to face the hexagonal object, the Progenitor strolled over to it, then looked down with a haughty expression on his cruel face. “You are to be called Nexus, and I created you to assist me with my experiments. My name is Mael'nerak, but you are to address me as 'Master.' Is that understood?”*

The Maliri had mixed up his name with a title.

Irillith had incorporated a translator, because they were originally speaking the Progenitor language, which sounds like an archaic form of Maliri.

Irillith skips weeks of footage of testing and calibration where Mael'nerak programs and configures Nexus, moving to the next section. She admits the progenitor was a genius; she couldn't follow his work because the extent of his knowledge on Artificial Intelligence was far beyond her own understanding.

Mael'nerak was experimenting on creating life.

Ten years later, he was in a tower overlooking a lush paradise world. The large room had Nexus' server located in one corner, and all about the room were numerous eight-foot-tall cylinders, filled with blocky-shaped humanoids. Mael'nerak strode into the laboratory accompanied by an entourage of several blue-skinned women.

This is the first glimpse of ancient Maliri, and the video was very similar the last Ashanath monoliths that Councillor Talari had shown them [30].

When Nexus told him the maturation process was complete, Mael'nerak tapped commands into a console which powered a device. Afterwards, a panel slid back to reveal Trankarans. Mael'nerak was going to call the species "slave" but Nexus suggested a more specific name to differentiate slave species. He decided "miner," because that's what he made them for. 'Trankaran" it is, then.

Two hundred years later, it was the same room, but the planet looked considerably more developed from the tower, and the design of the incubation cylinders was now more intricate and complex.

The Progenitor's appearance had changed now, and his goatee had been grown out into a Van Dyke. His hair was longer too, and while he still wore white robes, they were a different style, which seemed more relaxed and flowing.

This experiment revealed the creation of the Ashanath. This means the ancient Ashanath were likely the ones who created the Ashanath monoliths, since they witnessed the creation of their own species, and know what his lab looks like.

Forty-thousand years ago, the lab was showing significant signs of wear and tear. The equipment had been replaced at some point, and the view behind them showed a sprawling metropolis, with neat tree-lined boulevards all that remained of the jungle.

The Progenitor now sported a full beard, and had grown his glossy-black hair long. He still wore robes, but they looked a little dishevelled now, giving the impression that he no longer cared so much about his appearance.

This showed how Terrans were created. Mael'nerak had Nexus send servants to the seed world, Terra, to obtain specimens, Neanderthals. Their evolution was accelerated to fit the standard template, upon which the Trankarans and Ashanath were based. Then he types on his console, powers the device, and out pops Adam and Eve.

Rachel notes that it's no wonder humans share trace elements of Neanderthal DNA.

Mael'nerak planned to explore mutation of the generic template, and have his experiment overseen by his Matriarch, Valada, who was Irillith's ancestor.

After the recording, Dana led them to the Engineering Bay where she showed off the hexagonal-shaped Progenitor server she made to host Faye. Transferring Faye is risky because she had to be shut down, and some of her core functionality is stored in temporary memory. If it goes wrong, she'll be lost forever.

Fortunately, it doesn't go wrong. Faye's now a feminine five-foot-tall girl, whereas she used to be androgynous aside from her cute face and long, purple hair. She now feels she has limitless potential. She's now able to operate over a dozen avatars simultaneously.

Irillith went into the cyber realm to give Faye a *very* warm welcome back.

John called Eito Yamamoto, who was deeply ashamed by his loss of control last time [62]. John informed him he'd hunt down Mikaboshi, and Yamamoto agreed to continue training him.

They all get in bed, and John goes Spirit Walking to ask Athena if she came up with a plan for facing the nightmare. She hadn't, but she has an idea that will help: John needs to have an orgy. His psychic strength is fundamentally sexual by nature, so he loving his girls will encourage them to open up to him even further, enhancing the strength of the eldritch power he can draw from them. Once Jade assists in feeding them all to create an active connection, they can attempt to create a ward.

After having the orgy and feeding, Athena takes over Alyssa, her glowing with a soft white radiance. The idea is to build a psychic shield, through which Athena will attempt to anchor him to the Material Plane.

Athena kisses him, filling him with energy, and he formed a large dome over the bed, formed by blue-tinted semi-transparent hexagons.

Athena relinquished control of Alyssa's body to her, and John filled her in.

John was back in the dream world. Swirling, ethereal mists prevented him from seeing more than a few meters in any direction, just enough to see the edges of his dome. Usually the mists disappear quickly, but they stayed this time. Although he couldn't see past it, he know *something* was lurking out there. Just then a deep bellow thundered out of the fog, brimming over with pure frustration and rage.

Suddenly Alyssa appears at his side. John gathers his will and tries to jerk them out and back in their bodies like he did last time [55]. However, it doesn't work, as something immense had interposed itself between them and his target destination.
A black tentacle smashes into the dome, its razor-sharp teeth trying to chew their way in, but finding no break in the surface. The tentacle withdraw, and again hammered and chewed and clawed at the shield. A shrill chorus of screams makes John realize the other girls are now there too. They'd been there all along, merely obscured from his senses.

The limb battering in the same spot finally causes a splintered fracture in one of the tiles, and it prepared for a mightier blow.

Just then, flickering runes appeared on the dome, and John recognized the language of the Progenitors, its meaning becoming clear to him as though another form of fog was lifted from his mind. The wards described the structure of the shield, and he understood that the strange runes linked the protective dome to the girls that had provided him the power to construct it. As the newest member of their group, Sakura was their weakest link. John shrugged off his feeling of terror.

John placed his hands on the dome and focused his will, strengthening the weak point, and the edges of the fracture melted together. This enraged the monster, making John laugh. Alyssa notices his eyes are glowing just before it starts to tunnel under the dome.

John sorely wished he had his gear with him, but here he was naked and unarmed, with seven vulnerable girls to protect.

The thought of being helpless to defend his girls drew up a terrible anger. In the astral plane, such an intensity of emotion has power of its own, and his rage manifested a blackened blade over six feet long, dreadful red runes glowing in the surface as it floated in the air.

He seized the weapon with both hands and rushed forward through the dome, using the momentum to deliver a devastating scything cut to the tentacle’s flank, gouging a four-foot-deep furrow through the grotesque, crawling flesh. Black ichor spurted out, and the stygian monstrosity let loose a disbelieving howl. John dived, narrowly avoiding the ripping hooks which rebounded harmlessly from the wall of hexagons.

The new plan was to hurt it badly enough so John can read them from the Astral Plane. He just needs Alyssa's help, but unfortunately she's paralyzed with fear.

Just then, one of the hooked tendrils slashes Irillith's leg from under the small holes appearing around the base of the dome. John tried to hack away tendrils trying to come through.

*Calara grabbed the paralysed blonde, and hugged her fiercely. “I love you,” she whimpered, knowing that they had only seconds left before the unspeakable horror would be upon them. She pressed her lips against Alyssa’s giving her one final kiss goodbye.*

*A Progenitor derives their power from the women in their thrall, and as wondrously unique as Alyssa was, a female Progenitor was no different. Calara’s loving kiss roused Alyssa from her daze, and her pupils flared as she sucked in a breath. Her mind felt clear and sharp once more, the debilitating aura of fear no longer clogging her mind and leaving her helpless.*

*Alyssa began gathering her will, and a shrieking, howling wind tore around the dome, with her at the epicentre of the vortex. Eldritch energy surged towards her, swathing her body in glowing white light that cascaded down her arms to gather at her hands. Raising her fists towards the gigantic terror, she cried out to John, **Drop it now!!!***

Instead of letting the dome harmlessly dissipate, he poured vast streams of psychic energy across the bond back into Alyssa.

Alyssa blazed brighter than a supernova, and an incandescent beam blasted out of her to hit the limb square-on, incinerating tar-like flesh and obliterating its disgusting eyes. The hideous nightmare gurgled in agony and terror, its remaining half-dozen limbs flailing away into the fog as it toppled backwards.

John gathered the girls to him, and focused on their bedroom back on the Invictus. The Astral Plane ripped away as he unleashed the pent-up energy, and they were thrown back into the real world.

Dana is *never fucking sleeping again*.