The Doom from the Empire's Hand

Morphan, the eldest of the Chemibrion Oligarchs, was the most devastated among them about the loss of Explosmuto during this wretched war the Holometa Hive had caused. It wasn't enough the hive-minded fools used their Lepturoban assassins to take Gastrictus from them when he was sent to oversee the progress of the Pleurodan Research and Development facility on the island of Heraclon. They had to take their other brother during the war. Further adding insult to injury was the fact that Lepturobans dealt the final blow to Explosmuto within the Great Battle of Ecdysaedia.

The Chemibrion never dreamed that the winged denizens would deal such blows to them, not when the queens were ignorant to what the Oligarchs had gone through. How could they understand them when they were thinking of their intelligence as a threat? They were there to help enlighten the creatures of the oceans that were as brilliant as their hive mind, much like how they've helped other worlds before they arrived on Sokondro many cycles ago.

The Chemibrion were a family of 23 members of a race known as the Daothemians. They had left their home planet, Aqualia, when their own war against the demon-like Hagamen resulted in a chemical weapon backfiring and ravaged anyone unfortunate enough to be left behind on the war-torn world.

If only there were enough ships to evacuate everyone who wasn't already dead on arrival.

This thought had plagued the Chemibrion family when they left the planet and watched as the planet was swallowed by the chemical weapons that were loosed upon Aqualia by the brutish Hagamen. The patriarch of the Chemibrion, Alrubedus, had to ensure the family could find a new home even when the weapon that seriously affected the Hagamen's numbers. They had to go to the next planet in their solar system, Oberon.

The planet was mostly ocean which suited the Daothemians that came with the Chemibrion family. They came across the natives, the Oberonians, and gifted them with technology and their knowledge within their time on their neighboring planet. However, their stay was brief to put it mildly. The Hagamen were far from over even when a majority of the race got wiped from the planet they tried to conquer for their empire. They had pursued them to Oberon for revenge on their fallen comrades and their failed conquest on Aqualia. The Chemibrion had to flee and let their fellow Daothemians and the Oberonians to their wretched fate, lest they get caught up in another version of the fallout of their previous home.

Morphan Chemibrion couldn't help but be plagued by the losses he and his siblings had seen during their travels since they left Oberon. They had to run when their predators had come for them for revenge, each side having fewer members than the last and enlightening some species that they wouldn't know or care if they survived the might of the stranded Hagamen or not. From Polytrixia and their various bird-like beings to Colubra with the snake-like Colubrids that revered them dearly to the jungle-like Rivemia with the plant-like beings that put a serious dent in the numbers of the Hagamen.

The planet prior to Sokondro being Yunamikar, a desert-like world where 5 Chemibrion gave their lives, including Alrubedus, to ensure Morphan and his 7 remaining siblings would make the voyage to Sokondro without fear of the Hagamen reaching them. Morphan had to be the guiding hand to his siblings: Gastrictus, Explosmuto, Pheroto, Hemutus, Toxictor, Dynamot, and little Melanys.

Sokondro had a suitable ocean, and they were grateful for the aid of the Pleurodans and the Narkelegens. The Pleurodans helped the exhausted Chemibrion and treated Melanys of the Rivemian sickness that came from the harsh environment of Rivemia, and the Narkelegens offered them shelter with how they needed to be acclimated to the environment before they could breathe the environment of the surface. To repay the kindness of the Narkelegens and Pleurodans, they had given them their technology and knowledge. They were grateful despite the elders being uneasy by the beings that came from the stars above.

Now Morphan had failed his father with the lives of his two younger siblings. He feared that they would target Melanys, who had the hardest time acclimating to other worlds and couldn't afford to be outside of the walls of the Empire's palace, knowing the Holometa Hive would surely send their Lepturoban mercenaries to make sure she had a painful death. He couldn't help but remember the chemical weapon the Hagamen had used on their home planet. It was effective against them, but it backfired on them as well, as they didn't truly understand the power they had or they would've subjugated them cycles ago.

Morphan called a meeting with his remaining siblings, and they all wondered what to do about the Holometa Hive that had taken their brothers away forever and how they would exact their revenge. Morphan silenced them all with a wave of his tentacle.

He spoke, "We will make a powerful weapon that will strike at those arrogant queens. We will need to make a weapon... Similar to the ones the Hagamen used."

The siblings had eyes wide with shock, anger, and fear.

Toxictor spoke up, "You mean to make a weapon like what killed our mother and our people?! Have you gone mad, brother?!"

Hemutus interjected, "I second that! That weapon could be worse than the Hagamen's if we get the head Pleurodan scientists involved!"

Pheroto interjected, "We should talk with Dr. Amphine about this matter."

The Chemibrion Oligarchs talked with Dr. Bullcius Amphine about the weapon, with him and some other Pleurodans as shocked and fearful as they were about Morphan's request.

Bullcius explained, "Such a weapon is possible to make, but there's no telling what a weapon could do without the proper testing to ensure we won't be a part of the weapon's body count. This war has taken so much as it is, but this, my liege..."

A Glaphyr scientist named Val Zadra interrupted, "We could do it with the project that we were going to use to make a gel that would help with the pollution caused by the Hive. It would require brainwaves to guide the gel."

Morphan stepped in, "I'll be the one to use it."

The Chemibrion were in shock with Melanys in tears over losing her eldest brother after losing so many elder brothers from this terrible war, but they had to do something, or the war would come to destroy them all.

The weapon was created and overseen at the Chemibrion Research and Development facility within the land of Araven. Bullcius Amphine, Val Zadra who defected from the Glaphyr, and other Pleurodan scientists had worked on a white gel and made it into a being that was based on the beings that the Chemibrion had seen in their travels. A beak similar to the Polytrixians, the slender antenna of the Colubrids, the markings of the Oberonians, the teeth and claws of the Rivemians, the mudskipper draconian traits like the ones from the revered Aqualian sea dragons of his former home, and small purple pustules on its shoulders like the ones on the brutish spider-like Mikarians that helped his father fight the brutish Hagamen on Yunamikar. They had thought of including the traits of the scientists and the Narkelegens, but Morphan thought there were enough traits to go into this being that was Project Morphan.

The time came to implant Morphan's brain waves into the fetus of the creature that had finished forming after such a short amount of time that felt like a long undertaking. He hooked himself up to a headset that was connected to the fetus that was being contained within the tube before him in the lab. However, this was the day it all went wrong when the Holometa Hive sent a force to attack the facility. This caused an explosion that caused a reaction in Morphan during this delicate process, shocking him to death.

The last words he whispered, "Kill, devour, swallow the will of all things..."

This horrified the Pleurodans and Val Zadra, forcing the Pleurodans to bite into some poison pill to avoid giving information to the enemy, with Bullcius the last one to do this when the leader of the force, Gasoma Ceton, arrived alongside a Glaphyr soldier named Hirsu Polvero.

With the Pleurodans and an Oligarch already dead, Gasoma cornered Bullcius Amphine. Hirsu spat a honey-like substance to make into handcuffs for the traitorous Val Zadra. Gasoma then went up to Bullcius, and yelled, "Start talking, water lizard. What is this weapon?" Bullcius coughed some blood before he croaked out, "The Empire's perfect revenge against your Hive." He died moments later the same way his comrades had died.

Hirsu was taking Val Zadra out of the room when Gasoma called out, "What are you doing, Lieutenant Polvero? Leave the traitor to the Lepturobans. Help me load this weapon if that croaker believes this could threaten the queens." Polvero froze, but Val Zadra had seen firsthand how driven Morphan was to get back at the Hive for what they had done to the Oligarchs. He may have been seen as an enemy when meeting them, but he thought what the Hive had done was wrong as to why he was siding with the Empire.

He had told Morphan one time during the making of Project Morphan, "It's better to be on the side of oligarchs who care about the environment than the arrogant queens who think they should lord over all of Sokondro."

Val Zadra then yelled out, "Orkudra, forgive me!" Val Zadra then threw his body at the tube, which released the fetus within and the fluids that contained it, knocking down Gasoma and forcing Hirsu to fly up to avoid the liquids. The creature swallowed Zadra up in its slimy embrace and grew quickly into a ghost-white mudskipper-like creature with purple bulbous pustules on the shoulders that swallowed up the dead bodies all around it by becoming liquid-like, before proceeding to target Gasoma. Hirsu ran away from the monster that was let loose at the facility to swallow up everything around it that was organic.

The Morphian creatures were unleashed upon Sokondro just like the chemical weapon that ravaged Aqualia all that time ago, which horrified the Chemibrion, especially Melanys, who had clung onto Hemutus, crying over the loss of now 3 elder brothers in the Chemibrion family. They had nowhere to go now with how they had used up all their tech on their settlements in worlds they've been to prior to Sokondro. They could only escape to the distant islands of Kazera Scitat, where the Pleurodans had set up for the Chemibrion in times like this like a bunker.

The Pleurodans and Narkelegens had to protect the Oligarchs from the Morphian threat at all costs. One Morphian having gotten past the guards to try to get at the fleeing Oligarchs, but froze at the sight of Melanys crying and in the arms of Hemutus. The beast didn't have it in them to attack this Chemibrion that seemed familiar before being killed by the Narkelegen guards left standing as Hemutus fled with Melanys in tow.

Melanys watched with her siblings from within the underwater transport guarded by Azirian Narkelegens as the world was overrun by the monstrous Morphians that attacked both sides of this war and yet left the Chemibrion alone. These leaders had fled their home in the palace, but they had no means to leave the planet like they did so many times before. They wouldn't leave this planet even if they had the power to do so. They had become no better than the Hagamen with their chemical weapon and so they have paid the price in their quest for revenge against the Holometa Hive with the life of their elder sibling, Morphan Chemibrion.