“I’m happy that we could meet today. I’m sure that you understand the reasoning behind my visit, correct?”

The President of the Republic of Theien was now sitting across of Gareth, and Gareth had to hand it to him; the man had balls of steel. As suspected, he had shown up unannounced and had insisted on meeting him. What Gareth had not expected was that the leader of those damn Exterminators would be tagging along, although in disguise. Despite never having met in person, Gareth knew the man’s stink from the messages Mother had sent him. He knew that this meant trouble, and had sent several telepathic messages to Mother, though he had yet to receive a response.

“I can only guess that this is not a standard diplomatic mission.” Gareth said as he shifted his eyes between Johan and Allen. He was making it perfectly clear that he knew that they had come to engage in less than pleasant conversation at least. “I had heard that the Exterminators no longer had any connection to the government. Perhaps, given that Mr. Yirple is here, with you, this information was merely a rumor at best?”

“Allen Yirple is not-.”

“Ah, enough of this bullshit.”

Before Johan could try and deny things, Allen removed the hood he had been using to hide himself. Before Gareth could stand up and meet the hostility of his ‘guest’, a sudden and unknown force locked him in his seat. His gaze shot from Johan to Alen and back again as he strained against his invisible bonds, but before he could struggle much more he felt something along the lines of a dagger mixed with a length of barbed wire seemingly enter his head through a random point and worm its way through his brain.

The pain and anguish he felt were beyond anything he had ever endured before, and he could feel the various gifts that Mother had bestowed upon his scream in revulsion as this intangible force twisted and turned and wound itself through his mind. He wanted to scream but found that his body would not respond to his demands. In fact, all he could do was feel the pain and also something… else….

He felt…. Hate. A primeval and irrational hate was bubbling up from inside of him, directed at none other than the man who refused to do as his Goddess willed. The man who used some unknown force to compel Mother to do as he willed needed to die. Vaile. Vaile! VAILE! The blasphemer had to die, and by his hand! Whatever force had entered his mind would be what he needed to deal with that monster and reset the cult back to the way it should have been! He would kill him, and with him dead, Mother would come to Her senses!

Gareth stood up and bolted from the room, smashing through the window and landing on the ground outside as he prepared for a showdown with his true enemy. The Republic could wait; Vaile had to die now!

…

Allen found himself a while later. He had completely blacked out a few days after being kicked out of the government, only to awaken in the place he found himself right now an unknown amount of time later. He felt as though he had been running a full-body workout routine for several days in a row without end, sparing no time to sleep or even so much as catch a single breath. His body was a wreck, and he noticed that this blackout had almost certainly been the longest one he had ever experienced. It also was the most painful of them by far.

He tried to climb out of the bed that he found himself in, only to notice that he had completely lost command of his limbs. Worst still, he had extreme difficulty breathing automatically, forcing him to do so manually, which itself was a labor and a half. His heavy eyes glanced over to where his old buddy, Johan Corateiss, the President of the Republic of Theien, was seated. The man was in another one of his trances. He had a habit of going into those when no one was around, and he had claimed all those years ago that the trances caused by that relic he had found in his youth gave him knowledge and power, but at a cost.

What that cost was, he wouldn’t say. Ever since that first trance, Johan had never looked at him the same way again. It was as if the man somehow understood something that shook his world to its core and changed everything about him. Johan never stopped being his friend, though, at least for the most part. He focused more of his existence into his work, into making the collapsing Republic rise again, eventually becoming the Head of State and making sure that everything began to change.

Hell, even the push-back against him was just a show. Whatever he had done or said to convince his opposition to play by his rules was obviously potent, as no one in the nation with any kind of power or authority (save for the cult) did anything he didn’t directly make them do.

“Allen, I’m sorry it had to be like this.”

He was sorry? Why? What had Johan done that required him to feel remorse or to ask for an apology?

“I knew what I had to do in order to create a group that would destroy the enemies of The Warden, but I could not bring myself to do to you what I had done to all of the others. Ironic that, in my desire to save you from the truth, I caused such failures to occur... Due to this, your body could not take the full brunt of it all.”

What was he talking about? What did any of that mean?

“It won’t be long now, old friend. Getting that creature to fight the Variable won’t be enough, and all that it will do is cause the fall of the Republic to be that much faster.”

Johan stood from where he was seated, holding the relic in his hand. The relic looked like a sort of badge, not even as big as a man’s thumb was long, but it felt just as strange as it had all those years ago. Johan placed it on his chest and stood back, his face showing sadness and resignation.

“I hope you understand that this is necessary for the preservation of those that exist beyond the walls of the Prison. It matters not if our world burns, only that theirs does not. We are nothing to them but bags of sand to be used to keep the rising waters at bay, and maybe, just maybe, with your help this one last time, The Warden can at least push back the flood for a bit longer.”

What did that mean? What was-?!

…

In the capital of the Republic of Theien, a brilliant light erupted from the home where the President lived. The light came with a sound unlike any that any ear nearby could hope to hear, a voice more thunderous than anyone could comprehend. For miles around, all eyes were rendered blind, all ears stricken deaf, all things that crawled and flew and swam were wiped away, and from the light that consumed all it touched, a beast of massive proportions rose.

It had no face, no eyes, no mouth nor nose. It had no features one would normally associate with life of any kind, with no flesh nor anything metallic or anything synthetic or organic. And yet, once the light faded away, without a mouth to bellow the noise from….

It SCREAMED.

And all members of the Races within the Republic of Theien either fell dead or were cut from that which they once were. For they either were those who served the will of The Warden, their lifeforce, their code, absorbed into the existence of the Entity, or they had turned on it and thus belonged to the creature that the Entity was here to slay.

And with that act, the Entity began to move toward the nameless spider, to reach it, to kill it, to erase it, and to render the failed Republic into a land where none and nothing would ever exist again.