Chapter Text
It is done.
The boy, so foolishly dubbed Invincible, lay broken at the Grand Regent’s feet.
To the left of the halfbreed knelt a disemboweled Battle Beast. The Dornian smiles through bloodied teeth as he cradles the mass of torn entrails pooling from the gaping wound in his stomach.
“An end… most glorious,” rasps the warrior, his words wet with blood. Battle Beast gazes up at Thragg, amber eyes gleaming with adoration. The most he has shown to any living being in the galaxy. “You have… my thanks.”
Battle Beast draws a final, rattling breath, and falls still for the last time.
Thragg paid the creature no mind. For the whole of Battle Beast’s dying moments, the Grand Regent gave the entirety of his focus to the traitor’s still form.
Nolan spent his final moments drawing Thragg’s fury away from his son. He had fought well, before Thragg condemned him to the same fate as the Betrayer.
The void within Thragg’s being grows as he gazes upon Nolan’s lifeless eyes, but it quickly burns away in the face of his unyielding rage.
On the ground behind him are what remains of Anissa, and Conquest. The former had been cleaved in two by the boy, and the latter’s skull was caved in by Battle Beast’s mace.
They were two of his finest, but a mere fraction of those lost because of Invincible’s childish rebellion.
A pained, pitiful moan pierces the fog of Thragg’s mind. The boy lives still. The Grand Regent would have appreciated his tenacity, were it in favor of a sensible goal.
Thragg feels a buzzing at his hip, and he retrieves his data-sphere. He feels no pleasure at the information it imparts, for he expects nothing less.
“Half your world’s governments have sworn fealty to me.” Thragg returns the sphere to his side, and stares sternly at Invincible’s desperate attempts to crawl towards him. “Tomorrow they shall deliver their weapons to us, so that we might destroy them.” What could be called mirth fills Thragg’s heart as he watches the boy writhe on the blood-stained ground.
“It is over.”
Invincible makes a noise. Thragg assumes it to be a snarl. “It’s not over!” The boy uses his unbroken fingers to dig into the mountain’s stone, causing cracks to form around the digits. “It’ll never be over!”
The boy rips his hand from the earth, and brings it back down an arm’s length ahead of him.
He does it again.
“Allen’s still out there!”
Again.
”The Coalition… is still out there!”
Again.
“You’ll never win! So long… as there’s at least one person fighting out there… you’ll never win!”
Agai-
Thragg catches his wrist mid fall, and rockets into the sky. They stop on a dime, and Invincible’s broken body snaps back from the recoil. A strangled cry breaks free from the his throat.
The Grand Regent clamps a hand on the back of Invincible’s neck, and forces him to witness the fruits of the Empire’s labor.
Chicago burns.
Buildings cut in half, streets more dust than asphalt, and the screams…
There are none.
“You are right, in a way,” muses Thragg, “my mission will never end. So long as there is dissonance and strife in the universe, I will continue to fight.”
Thragg turns Invincible to face him. The lesser Viltrumite swings his arm, attempting to cut the Grand Regent with the jagged bone protruding from his elbow.
The arm is swiftly removed.
Thragg continues as Invincible screams in anguish. “Your effort is but one of many…” The Regent pauses, finding it difficult to say his next words. “Though none have come as close as you to toppling our great Empire.”
The strongest Viltrimite cast his gaze upwards, spotting the brightest stars shining through the smoke filled dusk. “You have reminded us of the danger the universe still presents. You have tested us.”
Thragg looks back into Invincible’s bloodshot eyes, before speaking with absolute sincerity.
“And for that, I thank you.”
Horror washes over Mark’s face, before it is crushed between Thragg’s hands.
The costume clad corpse falls soundlessly to the mountain below.
Thragg’s hands fall to his sides, and he beholds the sun setting on the smoldering city. He inhales the ascending ash and smoke, feeling a peace not present for thousands of years.
PLAYER 1 WINS!
Thragg’s eyes snap open, and he whirls around fast enough to create a miniature tornado. “Who’s there?” he demands. “Show yourself!”
As though in response to his inquiry, the world turns red.
A hundred miles below, mountainous cracks form in the earth, breaking the mountain apart and swallowing most of Chicago’s remains. Molten rock oozes from the open wounds, and great pillars of fire launch hundreds of miles into the air; some going so far as to escape the atmosphere.
Images of home race through Thragg’s mind, and his eyes fill with hate. He retrieves his data-sphere and begins weaving around and over the evergrowing fires. “Report!” The sphere is set to an open channel, allowing any of his forces to respond.
“Grand Regent!” Lucan is the first to respond. “They-”
Silence.
“Lucan?” demands Thragg. “Lucan!”
“G-Grand Regent…” Kregg sounds afraid. Unacceptable.
“Control yourself!” Thragg’s voice rises above the wind as he streaks towards the edge of the flickering atmosphere, stopping just low enough for him to be able to breathe. “What is happening?”
“I-I don’t know,” stammers Kregg, “but the fires… Grand Regent, it’s killing the others.”
For the first time in millennia, Thragg feels the cold of space. “...What?”
“They’re gone.”
Then the Earth shatters.
Thragg had seen nothing like it. The planet’s surface is swallowed up by what appears to be a great ball of plasma, with glowing white cracks perforating its circumference. The Regent takes a deep breath before escaping into space.
The cracks splinter and spread, before exploding in a great white light.
Where once was Earth, the greatest hope for the Viltrum Empire, is now a but a ball of fire. Strange black squares drift away from the smoldering mass, and slowly dissipate into the void.
For the first time since the Scourge Virus, Thragg feels… shocked? Horrified? Such emotions are unbecoming of a Grand Regent, but the others…
His gaze hardens. Nonsense. He escaped, so they would too. They have to.
Thragg begins speeding around the celestial body, his sphere tuned to the open channel. “Viltrumites, to me.” Thragg orders the sphere to read his mind, so as to not waste any precious oxygen. “Viltrumites!”
Nothing.
He stops at what used to be the North Pole, staring furiously at the empty display on his data-sphere. White hot lead began creeping through his veins, starting at his feet and quickly working its way up his stomach and into his heart.
Was this panic? Was he, Grand Regent of Viltrum, panicking?
Thragg clenches his fists till the knuckles turn white.
They are alive. He is faster than any of them. They must still be on the planet, and flying to the surface, skin burnt and data-spheres destroyed, but alive.
It is only then that Thragg sought to test something. He lowers himself to the Earth’s new surface. Over the course of many millennia, the Grand Regent had grown well accustomed to feeling little discomfort. Despite this, even he can tell that the raging fire before him radiates no heat at all.
He places his palm against the burning light. Pain, the worst he’s ever felt, shoots up his arm and into his brain. Thragg pulls his arm back, and—in a moment of weakness—screams, losing a mouthful of air.
Thragg clamps his mouth shut, and raises the still searing hand to his face. The skin had been burnt clean off, revealing the tendons and bones beneath.
The Grand Regent cradles the damaged appendage, and gazes upon Earth for the last time.
It is then that he accepts it: he is afraid.
Every last living Viltrumite had been called to that planet, so that they might repopulate, and spread amongst the stars once more.
Now only he remains.
A Grand Regent of nothing.
…
…
…
No.
The Empire lives still. He is enough.
The first order of business is to find a people compatible with him, and begin repopulation immediately.
The second is to find whoever was responsible for this. Thragg had no doubt in his mind that the Betrayer had developed more weapons against the Viltrumites before his death.
But this still puzzles Thragg. Why use it now? Why not on Viltrum?
He receives an answer in the form of an explosion.
Another ball of plasma explodes into space, smaller than the first. Had it been Earth’s moon? Then another manifests, and another, each millions of miles away. In a matter of moments, every planet in the solar system suffers the same fate as Earth, and the sun seems not far behind.
The stars themselves and the void between begin to flicker, just like Earth’s sky had mere minutes ago. The crackling pulses and swells, spreading as far as Thragg can see, and submerges his body in hazy red distortions.
Pain envelopes Thragg, and though it is a lesser form of what befell his hand, it rises in intensity with every passing second. The Viltrumite grits his teeth and flies. To where, he knows not.
Just as skin begins to melt from flesh, Thragg sees them; clusters of black, circular space unaffected by the raging inferno around them. He points his body towards one of the spots, and streaks though the fire.
Were anything in his path, even a planet, Thragg’s velocity would have turned it to ash.
He reaches the empty space, and it’s over.
The pain, the light, the haze…
Everything is clear again.
Thragg turns around and sees… a great ball of plasma. Spots, like the one he just entered, cover its surface. The portals show images of the burning space he left behind. Planets of different colors and sizes breaking apart and exploding into energy.
The Viltrumite pulls his eyes away from the sight to survey his surroundings. There are no other balls of plasma, no planets… nothing. Not even a sun. The only source of light nearby the ball of plasma he just escaped.
Had he escaped it?
And if so, where had he escaped to?