"You have failed me, for the last time!" Vanessa shouted to Guun Ji. "Unacceptable! Henceforth, you will be nothing more than just another one of my drones!"
The poor hunter was shrouded in fear. "No, no, please no! Give me another chance, my Lord! Give me another chance!" He pleaded as his eyes grew larger.
"Take him to the conversion chamber!" The warlock ordered, talking to her ghost servants. The ghosts, Loki and Walter, grabbed Guun Ji's arms.
"Even you, Walter? My own ghost?!" Guun Ji asked, now feeling betrayed. Without guilt, the ghosts began dragging him to the chamber in the back of the throne room. "No! No, don't do this!! Please!! Don't do this!!" The hunter screamed as he was pulled through the warmind doors.
Lady Sif watched the Technomancer approach the conversion chamber with horror, sorrow... and anger. She looked around the room, fighting the thoughts in her head. This was the final straw that broke the camel's back. This was her breaking point. "Vanessa?! What are you doing?!"
The warlock froze, then half turned back. "I am your Lord... And you will address me as such..."
"Guun Ji was our teammate! We ran strikes together! We fought the Darkness, [b]together[/b]! And you're just going to kill him?!" Sif shouted.
"He is an incompetent fool! Incapable of completing the simplest of tasks! I have declared, numerous times, that if I must convert you into my drones to prevent failures, then I will! [b]And I will[/b]! I will convert every living [b]soul[/b] into my drones, if it I must, to build the second Golden Age!"
Sif's jaw hung low in disbelief. "No you won't... No! You! Won't!"
"What did you say?" Vanessa asked, rhetorically, as she turned to the titaness.
"There was a time when I once believed you, Vanessa... I believed that SIVA was our salvation. But I see now, SIVA is our damnation!!"
"If you are no longer with me, traitor... then you are against me. And I will let nothing get in the way of completing my objective..." Vanessa said, eerily calm.
Lady Sif forged a hammer in her right hand, but it wasn't the SIVA nanite hammer she used to wield. It was made of Light. It was the Hammer of Sol. "Then you will just have to kill me..."
"That can be arranged!!" Vanessa yelled as she cast SIVA spikes at the titaness. Sif swung her mighty hammer and shattered the shards of nanites before they could harm her.
The titaness jumped into the air, and tossed a hammer at Vanessa. The warlock raised a wall of SIVA to shield her, then force pushed the Guardian away. SIVA drones swarmed Sif as she stood back up. One drone after another, she destroyed with her Hammer wreathed in flames.
Sif threw a salvo of hammers towards the warlock in the black coat. Vanessa quickly threw up a wall of SIVA to block the hammer, but it shattered, so she raised up three more for the remaining hammers. Each wall of SIVA shattered from the weapons of Light.
The Technomancer directed SIVA to grab Sif and toss her around the room. The titaness tried to break the tendril that was wrapped around legs, but the constant thrashing around was disorienting her. Finally, Sif was dropped down at Vanessa's feet. Sif slowly pushed herself up, then whipped her feet around, tripping the warlock.
Before Sif could do anything, Vanessa force pushed the titaness across the throne room. Vanessa commanded more nanites to surround the Guardian. Sif watched as the SIVA covered the ground like technological water, coming to drown her. Before they reached the titaness, Sif threw down a hammer at her feet, raising a ring of fire that disintegrated any nanite that tried to reach her.
Both, the titaness and warlock were growing weary. This battle was bound to end soon. Vanessa commanded more SIVA to do her bidding. She cast large nanite spikes towards Sif, but the titaness jumped over them, then charged at the warlock. Vanessa tried to raise barricades of SIVA between her and the enraged titaness, but Sif broke through each wall like the unstoppable force she was. Sif gripped her hammer tightly, then whacked the Technomancer across the room. Vanessa lay in a darkened corner, motionless.
Sif was exhausted. She turned away, then began breaking the SIVA pillars that supported the Citadel ceiling. With each pillar destroyed, the more the weight of the ground above forced downward into the throne room. Everything Vanessa had built, was now crumbling.
There was one pillar left, right in the center of the room. Sif walked up to it, but looked up in fear, one more pillar stood between life and death for her. She looked down at her hand... at the nano-parasites on her hand. They had to die. Sif breathed deeply, raised up her flaming hammer and prepared to swing, then closed her eyes.
"AHHH!!" The titaness screamed. Three SIVA shards pierced her back and jutted out of her stomach and chest. She fell to her knees, and dropped the hammer.
Vanessa was huffing angrily. "You will be converted into a drone... just like that d***ed hunter!" She declared as she controlled the SIVA to drag the titaness back.
Sif reached out for the hammer, but her fingers only slipped on the handle. She continued to reach, but the nanite harpoons in her were pulling her away. Finally, she snagged the weapon of Light just before she was dragged out of reach. Vanessa watched in fear as the titaness, still pierced by SIVA, took the hammer in hand.
"You! Will! [b]NOT[/b], make me... one of your drones!!" Sif, despite laying on the ground awkwardly, tossed the Hammer of Sol as hard as she could. The weapon smashed through the pillar, and everything above the underground bunker finally caved in.
"Nooo!!" Vanessa cried as she commanded SIVA to form a shell around her before she was crushed. Despite her efforts, the warlock was knocked unconscious by pieces of debris, and was partially trapped under some scaffolding.
The Citadel was no more.
[b]You are obligated to leave your thoughts if you open this.[/b][spoiler]A few hours later, the drone that was once Michael, pried open the warmind doors. The conversion chamber was largely unaffected by the cave in; so he, Guun Ji, Loki, and Walter survived. Lasers on Michael's extra arms began cutting the scaffolding that trapped Vanessa and Sif.
Michael picked up the two, severely injured, people, then carried them to the replication chamber. He sat Vanessa on the operating table, but left Sif against the wall. There was only one operating table.
The warlock, still dazed, looked around. "No!... No, I, I, I, I... can't be converted... into a drone... I am... the... the... the... Techno... mancer!... I must... live!... I must... li... livvvveee... " she muttered before drifting unconscious a second time.
Michael, the SIVA drone, began the operation himself. The SIVA that infected his mind knew, the only way to save Vanessa was to convert her into a SIVA cyborg. The final form of the Technomancer.[/spoiler]
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Nice. [spoiler]But...why were we obligated to leave our thoughts for a cliffhanger?[/spoiler] Bump!