(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Taking the fight to Daggoth!

-x-X-x-

As soon as they reach the edge of Tarsonis’ singular mega-continent, they find themselves under attack again, swarmed by flying Zerg in the dozens and then the hundreds and soon the thousands. Needless to say, things don’t go very well… for the Zerg.

It might have been more difficult if he’d been by himself. Having to protect Sarah while fending off the unrelenting horde of monstrous creatures would have been a challenge… keeping her completely safe from them would only have worked out because they seemed to want her alive.

Fortunately, he’s not by himself. Mystique is there too, more than capable of providing them with plenty of offensive firepower while Myk-Zod focuses on the defense of their squishy human companion. The Zerg remain unable to mount a proper attack on them, left to throw themselves ineffectually against him and Mystique.

It doesn’t help that Tarsonis also has a bit of a ‘solar flare problem’. Its something Myk-Zod had noticed during their first retreat from the planet’s main continent… the star system’s sun had flared up and the effects had washed over him and Mystique like a refreshing, soothing warm bubble bath, providing them both with a boost of power that they frankly did not need.

It happening one time, Myk-Zod might have chalked up to pure luck, but on their way back it had happened again, further fueling both him and Mystique to the point that they were more powerful than ever before… certainly more powerful than they’d been back on Mystique’s home world.

That was good, because frankly… he still didn’t fully know what they were getting into. These cerebrates as Sarah had described them sounded like bad news… but if they could remove them all from the equation like she wanted to, perhaps the planet could still be saved.

Not that the sights beneath them as they fly further in fill Myk-Zod with much confidence of that. The entire continent had been built up and turned into a massive city of industry and civilization from what he could see… and all of it had been reduced to rubble and hollowed, burnt out husks by the Zerg.

There were buildings still standing here and there, the sturdier and bigger ones, but they didn’t look like they had withstood the might of the Zerg Swarm, they simply looked picked over and cleaned out… and then left to rot.

And to Myk-Zod’s senses… he didn’t detect a single human amidst all of the noise generated by the Zerg. Not a single soul still lived, at least on the path Sarah has them take deeper into the continent. Part of him is relieved by that fact.

If he had heard a human’s terrified heartbeat amidst the scrabbling and screeching of the Swarm, Myk-Zod isn’t sure what he would have done. Rescue seemed obvious… but then both he and Mystique would be preoccupied with defending squishy humans. And that would have made doing anything else much more difficult.

With light touches on his arm from time to time, Sarah guides them forward. Its her power that they’re relying on to guide them to their enemy, after all. He keeps expecting her to tell them to stop, to say that she’s found a cerebrate for them to take down… but instead they keep going. Deeper and deeper. Further and further in. Until they’re practically on top of where they entered this world in the first place. Close to where they rescued her from the Zerg, in fact.

Finally though, they seem to arrive. Sarah smacks his arm and points down, so Myk-Zod descends to the ground while Mystique follows. Said ground, at this point, looks completely changed from what it looked like the last time they were here. Its almost entirely unrecognizable, actually… because its covered in some form of purple living flesh.

Some of the nearby buildings that remain standing have also been overtaken by the flesh, with massive protrusions coming out of them that look like the usual brown, spiky makeup of the Zerg they’ve been fighting… albeit stationary instead. And yet, they still shiver and move and almost seem to be ‘breathing’.

More Zerg attack them once they’re standing on the flesh, and some even come from the purple material itself, rising right up out of it like they were spawned from it or something. Between him and Mystique, they’re able to kill everything, keeping a wide area around Sarah as her brow furrows and she concentrates for a long moment before finally nodding.

“Down. We need to go down. Can you clear us a path?”

Glancing down at their feet, Myk-Zod simply nods.

“Just point me in the right direction.”

Sarah literally points… and so Myk-Zod moves. He carves the ground open with his bare hands while Mystique continues to defend them up top, making a hole and then a tunnel. From there, he keeps going… until, just under a minute later, he breaks into a massive cavern filled with more of the purple flesh from above.

Immediately retreating, he moves to retrieve Sarah and together with Mystique, the three of them descend into the tunnel he’s made, with Mystique sealing it up behind them using more eye beams.

Finally, they reach the cavern… where Myk-Zod is honestly expecting more Zerg to rise to face them. Instead, it becomes eerily quiet… no more monsters attack them, nothing spawns from the purple flesh even as he sets Sarah down on it.

“Sarah Kerrigan… despite your defiance, you do my bidding all the same by presenting yourself and the anomalies to me.”

A voice reverberates through the chamber, deep and dark and menacing. Myk-Zod frowns, glancing around… but truth be told, it’s hard to pinpoint the source. It shouldn’t be given his senses… however, in this case there’s just too much noise. His eyes, ears, and nose are telling him that everything around them is alive. Wherever the voice is, it manages to blend in with the rest.

Or rather, it does so physically… psionically on the other hand…

“We’ve come to destroy you, Daggoth. You and every cerebrate on this planet will die. The Zerg will lose their masters on this day.”

Sarah points at a nearby flesh wall.

“There.”

Myk-Zod doesn’t hesitate. Neither does Mystique. Both of their eyes blaze red, striking the purple flesh and burning it away as they sweep back and forth. Until eventually… something is revealed. Something not entirely like the Zerg they’ve fought so far. It was another mass of writhing, undulating, pulsating flesh… but it seemed apart from the rest of the flesh. And it had no weapons, no skin, no armor of any sort that he could see.

It pulses as Daggoth speaks though, giving proof to this being his true form.

“Destroy us? Ah… ahahaha… BAHAHAHA!”

The creature, despite being exposed and seemingly helpless in that moment, chooses to laugh. Myk-Zod’s eyes narrow and his jaw clenches. Its unsettling and he keeps his head on a swivel, trying to find the play, trying to preempt the ambush.

“Your ignorance has made a fool of you, Sarah Kerrigan. You think to kill me and my brothers? We cannot be killed. The Overmind will not let us die. Destroy the flesh and we will simply reconstitute. Destroy our minds and the Overmind will remember us back into existence. We are his eternal servants… unkillable. Immortal. Invincible.”

Myk-Zod hoped that wasn’t true, but even if it was, maybe they could kill the cerebrates fast enough to disrupt things here on Tarsonis at the very least? He’s certainly willing to try and so is Sarah, the red head stepping forward with her hands clenched into fists and that same blue energy from before filling her eyes and sparking across her knuckles.

“Well then, let’s test that invincibility of yours, shall we?”

“And why would I allow that?”

In an instant, before any of them can move… pressure like nothing else rains down on Myk-Zod’s mind. Mystique’s too, judging by how she cries out. Both of them collapse to their knees, causing Sarah to whip around in horror.

“You brought them right to me, Kerrigan. More than that, you bypassed my brethren, ignoring them and making a beeline to my location. You foolish girl… all you’ve done is allowed every cerebrate on this planet to unify in one purpose. Taking control of the anomalies… and taking control of YOU!”

Through his haze of pain and his losing battle to regain control of his limbs, Myk-Zod hears Sarah let out a cry and collapse as well. Shit… they were in trouble now, weren’t they?

-x-X-x-

Daggoth was right. She’d fucked up. She’d fucked up bad. The plan had seemed sound at the time. It was an ancient adage as old as civilization itself. When you found yourself in a new environment and you wanted to establish yourself as someone not to be fucked with, you found the biggest fucker around… and you put him in the dirt.

Or to put it another way… she’d wanted to cut the head off of the snake. Daggoth was one of the oldest cerebrates in existence. He was pretty much the Overmind’s right hand man. If the Overmind had been on Tarsonis, Kerrigan would have gone for him instead, but he wasn’t. Daggoth was the biggest fish in the pond.

Only… now she can feel it as every other cerebrate pools their power behind their ‘elder brother’. She can feel it as the psionic strength he’d leveled at her back on the island is instead increased a hundredfold. Enough that even Myk-Zod and Mystique cannot fight it, not this close. And that’s bad… that’s really bad.

It would be one thing if she herself were captured by the Zerg and infested. Not good by any stretch of the imagination, but not necessarily the end of the world. But the power she’d seen these two visitors from another universe exhibit so far… if the Zerg had that power, if they could assimilate what they called ‘the anomalies’ into their physiology… then it wouldn’t just be the Koprulu Sector that would suffer. It would be the entire galaxy.

Now you see the depths of your follow, Sarah Kerrigan. Now you see just how you have failed.

The worst part was, now that Daggoth had found purchase in her mind again, he wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

Despair… and rejoice. You will become one with the Swarm. The Overmind has great plans for you.

He was also much too happy to brag too, even letting her ‘see’ what was going on around her while she lay all but catatonic on the ground at the foot of his physical body.

Bringing the anomalies to us… this will be rewarded. The Overmind looks forward to assimilating their biology into the Swarm.

Myk-Zod and Mystique… their mental domination was complete. The two of them rose up from the floor of Zerg Flesh like puppets on strings, their eyes filled with the blue light of control. And as they do so, Kerrigan sees other Zerg carefully approaching.

Your own transformation will be made all the stronger for it. He has given me glimpses of what you will become. His Queen of Blades.

Nothing the Zerg Swarm currently has can hurt or harm Myk-Zod and Mystique physically. Except that’s not entirely true anymore… because now they have the two mentally.

Witness our ascension. Witness what your pointless struggling has wrought.

Kerrigan watches in horror as the two impossibly powerful strangers bring their hands up and use their fingernails to carve into their palms. Droplets of blood well up in the cuts… before falling from their hands towards the Zerg Flesh below.

The first blood that either Myk-Zod or Mystique has shed as far as she knows. The first blood that the Zerg have managed to get them to shed.

Time seems to slow to an almost crawl as she ‘watches’ that blood fall. This is it. This is the end of everything unless she does something. Anything.

… She’s always been afraid of her powers. Even if she puts on a brave face, even if she wouldn’t admit it to most, it’s true. The Confederacy had to rewrite the scale for her. They rebuilt the entire Psi Index around HER abilities. And yet, Kerrigan knew that she’d never truly reached her full potential. She’d been too scared to.

Now she’s too scared of what might happen if she doesn’t not to. In that moment, as she watches those droplets of blood fall and knows the galaxy will end if they hit the ground… Sarah Kerrigan reaches out with everything she has and asks for salvation.

And to her surprise… something answers her. Something deep inside, something that had perhaps always been within her… she just needed to reach out and take hold of it.

What?

Daggoth’s shock brings a rictus of a grin to Kerrigan’s face as the blue glow in her eyes turns a deep, royal purple. Her hands, clenched into fists, unfurl... only to curl into claws.

What is this?!

Power unending races through her. The first thing she does with it is send out a wave that vaporizes the droplets of blood before they can ever hit the ground. It kills the Zerg approaching as well… and even cauterizes Myk-Zod and Mystique’s palms, though it otherwise simply buffets them both.

YOU! THIS POWER! IMPOSSIBLE!

Impossible? No… in fact, all Kerrigan had really needed… was the right push.

She swipes through the air and cuts the connection between the cerebrates and her allies next. The glow disappears from Myk-Zod and Mystique’s eyes and they both stumble for a moment as they regain control of themselves.

Finally, Kerrigan rises to her feet and bares her teeth as she glares at Daggoth’s physical form. She could destroy his body in an instant… but that wouldn’t be enough. He said it himself… a body could be reconstituted. A mind could be ‘remembered’ by the Overmind.

… Except the rules have changed, haven’t they?

No… you do not know what you play at. You do not understand the power you command…

A dark chuckle leaves Kerrigan’s throat.

“I know one thing, Daggoth. I know that it’s enough to destroy you.”

With that, she reaches out. Not physically, not even psionically. Mind, body… none of it mattered. What mattered was the connection. Daggoth was connected to his Swarm, to his fellow cerebrates… and to the Overmind. In that moment, Kerrigan takes her newfound power, this strange cosmic energy she could barely comprehend… and uses it to annihilate everything along that connection.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Power cascades through her as sweat beads on her brow, pouring into Daggoth and through every cerebrate on Tarsonis. She feels them die, she listens to them scream for mercy, for salvation… she kills them all, permanently.

And then she turns her mind further afield. Why not, right? Why not go for the source of all of this? Why not go for the leader of the Swarm himself? Sarah Kerrigan smiles ferally, her teeth grinding together as she reaches out and touches the Overmind.

Only for the smile to immediately drop as the backlash leaves her nearly blinded with pain. She definitely does something to the Overmind, some form of damage… but even as she falls back, returning to her body properly as the purple light fades from her eyes and she collapses backwards, she can tell she didn’t manage to end it.

Damn it all… and she’d been on such a roll too…

-x-X-x-

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