Chapter 233: Starbreaker
At last, the allied forces fought their way back to Cybertron itself.
They reclaimed the AllSpark and the Matrix of Leadership, artifacts fundamental to the survival of Transformer civilization.
During this campaign, the Human Imperium had been expanding with relentless purpose. Colonies bloomed across virgin worlds, each one transformed into a nexus of Imperial power. Resources flowed into vast staging grounds that grew into fortified bastions spanning entire star systems.
These actions gradually earned humanity recognition from the Cosmic Will of this universe. What had once been rejection slowly shifted to grudging acknowledgment.
After all, humanity already existed within the Transformers' reality; the Imperium's actions merely amplified their voice and presence.
The process went smoothly, though not without cost.
Primus understood what the Emperor and Corvus Corax intended. He could only acquiesce. Cybertronian civilization desperately needed Imperial support to stand against Unicron's forces.
Without that alliance, the Chaos Bringer would launch a devastating counteroffensive, and this time, his methods would be far more brutal.
Unicron would not grant Primus a second chance. He would scour the Thirteen Primes from existence and reduce Cybertronian civilization to cosmic ash.
Only two outcomes remained: defeat Unicron, or watch everything Primus had created burn.
There was no third option.
As the allied advance continued, Unicron's sphere of influence contracted.
He and Primus were opposing cosmic forces, a zero-sum equation where one's gain was the other's loss. As the Chaos Bringer weakened, Primus's strength surged, suppressing his ancient enemy further.
When Quintessa, another of Unicron's paramount servants, fell in battle, the Chaos Bringer himself manifested before the combined Imperial and Cybertronian fleets.
"Foolish mortals. Ignorant outsiders."
The voice resonated across space itself, making starship hulls ring like bells.
"You have succeeded in drawing my ire. Now face your annihilation."
Unicron's true form was vast beyond comprehension, radiating malevolent energies that twisted reality around him. Horned protrusions crowned his planetary skull, strange orbital rings surrounded his mass, and his maw gaped wide, a world-devouring aperture ringed with crushing mechanisms.
Nothing about this being suggested benevolence. He was a mechanical god of entropy and destruction made manifest.
His mere presence caused spacetime to shudder and warp. The concentrated dark energy radiating from him instantly corrupted Transformers at the periphery, twisting them back into his thralls.
Primus acted swiftly, restoring the corrupted before their corruption could spread. Simultaneously, spatial rifts tore open across the battlefield, disgorging countless Terrorcons and Scorponok warriors into realspace. Dark energy pulsed from these constructs, servants spawned from Unicron's essence, numberless as stars and just as cold.
The two progenitor beings locked gazes across the void.
They were Ancient enemies, needing no words between them.
The battle erupted instantaneously.
For entities of their magnitude, mere thought could erase star clusters. Unicron cared nothing for collateral damage; the universe itself could burn for all he cared. But Primus bore the weight of responsibility for the civilizations sheltering within reality's fragile shell.
With an effort of will, Primus forced the conflict beyond the universe's boundaries, driving Unicron into the howling void between realities.
There, they clashed.
The shockwaves of their combat generated cosmic tides that rippled across dimensions, threatening to tear the fabric of space itself.
Meanwhile, within realspace, the Primarchs and the original Thirteen coordinated their assault against Unicron's spawn.
The battle was apocalyptic in scale.
Magnificent warships exchanged fire across a battlefield spanning light-years.
They tore through space, emerging from translocation rifts to unleash star-killing ordnance upon their enemies. Suns were extinguished or detonated outright. Spacetime fractured like stressed glass before reality's self-repair mechanisms forced it back together.
On worlds below, filled with ignorant populations, they trembled in existential terror. They knew nothing of the void-war raging overhead, and could do nothing even if they had.
When their sun winked out of existence, the annihilation wave followed within minutes, erasing every trace of their civilizations.
No one could spare a thought for those doomed peoples. Survival itself demanded every iota of focus and cunning.
Magnus the Red strode through the void in his radiant aspect, a god walking among the stars.
Blazing aetheric energy coiled around his golden armor and wild crimson hair. The scepter in his hand crackled with arcs of psychic lightning. His eyes contained abyssal depths of raw Immaterium, any foe foolish enough to meet that gaze fell immediately into madness and death.
The Thousand Sons Engine implanted within him by the Emperor had magnified his psychic might exponentially.
Even in this universe where physical law heavily suppressed the non-material realm, Magnus could channel devastating warp-craft with contemptuous ease.
His opponent was Scourge.
The Transformer hailed from a civilization lost to time and entropy. His combat prowess was legendary, his status surpassing even that of Sentinel Prime and Quintessa. One hand bore a vicious, energized blade; the other could unleash a disintegration beam that reduced all matter to its constituent atoms.
Spacetime fractured. Reality froze for an infinitesimal moment, then resumed its flow.
A lance of annihilation erupted from a dark warship the size of a small planet, spearing directly toward Magnus.
"Dust and memory."
Magnus swept his scepter in a dismissive arc. The beam ceased to exist. Then, with a deliberate clenching of his fist, the Primarch crushed the planetary warship like an empty beverage container.
Steel buckled and twisted. Energy cores detonated in cascading chain reactions. Those enemies who failed to evacuate were consumed in the vessel's death throes.
Such casual displays of impossible power would drive mortal witnesses to their knees, proclaiming Magnus a supreme deity.
A flash of light.
Scourge, who had been driven back moments before, materialized behind the Primarch with impossible speed, his energized blade carved through the void itself, passing cleanly through Magnus's torso.
The next instant, Magnus's form shattered like a heat-mirage and vanished.
When he reappeared, he stood tens of thousands of kilometers distant.
In the dark vastness of space, the Primarch was a sacred figure of exquisite, terrible beauty. His golden armor blazed with inner light. His crimson hair seemed alive, writhing with barely-contained power. His eyes burned with psychic fire, and his flesh itself glowed with transhuman might.
Magnus extended one hand and slowly closed his fist.
Light-centuries away, a blue supergiant began to distort.
It was a stellar colossus, tens of thousands of times the volume of Sol, spewing unimaginable flames and particle streams from its roiling surface.
When Magnus gradually opened his clenched fist, that distant supergiant appeared within his palm.
It rotated slowly, radiating lethal heat and blinding luminescence.
Scourge's metallic features shifted into an expression of wariness, his combat protocols calculating possible defensive responses—
Magnus detonated the star.
An impossible translocation portal manifested directly above Scourge.
A galaxy-sized ocean of stellar fire crashed down, vast, apocalyptic, radiating temperatures that could slag continents in microseconds.
The sight was magnificent beyond description.
Aboard an Imperial warship, mortal crew members watched with wide, disbelieving eyes. It transcended their comprehension; what they were witnessing was more extreme than any mythological cataclysm.
To detonate a blue supergiant simply to eliminate a single enemy defied reason itself.
It seemed impossible that such power could be wielded through technology alone.
Scourge's expression shifted fractionally. He activated his AT Field at maximum capacity while simultaneously attempting to warp away.
But Magnus had already sealed local spacetime. There was no escape, only endurance.
The void soon became the blazing noon.
Long minutes passed before the stellar conflagration subsided, the scorching temperatures gradually dissipating into the cosmic background.
Scourge carved through the spatial seal and emerged, battered but functional—
A planet struck him head-on.
The impact carried Scourge into a second planetary body. Both worlds disintegrated on contact, exploding into countless tumbling asteroids. Molten magma vented from the rupture points, flash-cooling in a vacuum and solidifying into blackened stone.
In the end, Scourge was executed by a concentrated psychic spike that Magnus manifested with surgical precision.
The warrior's massive form hung lifeless in the void, lubricant oil streaming from ruptured seals, electrical discharges arcing across his shattered frame.
[End of Chapter]