Earth's Defense part 3: Abigail Williams

The assault on Earth was going according to plan. Military bases and political centers were reduced to craters, and all forms of communication were destroyed. Whole cities burned, armies lay desiccated, and spikes lined the roads. Each day their own forces grew, while the humans had yet to rally a decent defense.

The Reaper forces made their way through the Eastern seaboard of North America, their armies swelling as they went.

Their advance stopped when they reached New England.

The sky darkened, a fine mist filling the air. As unnatural as it was, the Reapers were hardly one’s to worry over meteorological phenomena. Reports had started coming in through their network of strange or odd occurrences happening worldwide, but that was hardly their concern.

They had their orders. The Harvest would continue.

A female child stepped out of the city, ignoring the cries of the people behind as they urged her to return. The Reaper analyzed her curiously as she calmly approached the army of husks. Once she was at a certain distance, she clasped her hands in front of her and began speaking.

“Oh Father, my God, I am one that holds the silver key, materialized from the void and touched with these fingertips. Come forth from nothingness and open the lock.”

The Reaper dismissed her immediately after. Religious zealots were hardly new - praying to some non-corporeal concept was illogical and pointless.

Though they did serve a purpose. Statistics showed that killing them off was often the most efficient way to break the morale of the rest of the populace for when they truly began to Harvest.

With a thought, it sent the husks marching forward once more.

And still the female remained, hands clasped in prayer.

“Now God, the Father, pass beyond the sleep of roses and arrive at the Final Gate, Qliphoth Rhizome!”

The mist thickened, the land seemed to groan as a shadow darkened the land, and the girl vanished from view.

A moment later, the husks flew into mist.

A moment after that, the husks flew back out, in pieces, bloody limbs filling the field.

The Reaper immediately rescanned. Did it miscalculate somehow? Yet it found itself nearly drawing back in confusion at the results.

W-what was this?

The mist was… interfering with its scans somehow. What it could infer was that there was somehow a section of space that was bigger than the space around it, an aspect that it couldn’t understand, and in the middle of that space was an increasing mass of something that couldn’t be identified.

It didn’t understand, yet it cataloged it and prepared a counterattack. Blasting a counter-missile at the girl was probably overkill, but better to err on the side of caution and analyze the remains.

The mass moved in front of the girl, yet the Old Machine wasn’t worried. It might have been of unidentified material, but it was still organic based on its movements, and it was confident that nothing could survive.

When the dust settled the mist dispersed, and the Reaper was almost convinced that it was suffering an error somewhere, somehow. As impossible as that was, surely it was more likely than this.

The female survived, her apparel though…

Well, to be honest the concept of clothes wasn’t something it had thought about in a few millennia, but it was reasonably sure that they were for protection. What the female was now wearing was scraps and ribbons, hardly appropriate for protection of any sort.

It wasn’t able to focus on that however, as the mass of tentacles behind the female took precedence.

She took a step forward and gestured with her arms, and the tentacles surged forth and smashed into the husk army, breaking and twisting them until nothing was left.

The Reaper began charging its weapons once more, only for the girl to suddenly turn towards it and then she was right there, right in front of it, tentacles expanding as they wrapped around the Old Machine with unnatural speed.

It activated its mass effect fields to get away from the squirming mass of… Whatever it was, when it noticed the keyhole.

There was a… Space. A hole? On her head. A keyhole. So small, yet it seemed impossibly big at the same time. Small enough to fit in the middle of the girl’s head, yet it was large enough to envelope the entirety of the Old Machine. The next thing it scanned was -

Space.

A Void. Infinite and expansive, all around it. Nothing as far as it’s sensors could see.

Outside of the circumstances leading up to this, it should have been used to this. After all, it had drifted through deep space for hundreds of thousands of years in preparation for the Harvest, outside the bounds of the galaxy, but it had never been alone. Even asleep, there was the entirety of the Reaper forces to connect to if it so desired.

In this abyss, there was nothing but it.

Suddenly, something stirred, and it saw thirteen iridescent globes, eyes, open and stare at it. So big, each one was far, far larger than it was. Much too large for it to properly categorize or scan. Nothing in its databases could have prepared it for this level of magnitude as each eye focused on it and it alone. Cascades of errors filled it’s systems as it attempted and failed to comprehend any of what it was seeing.

Then there was a key, but… That key was a gate… The key was to the gate, but that gate was its key…

So engrossed with this, it didn’t even react as tentacles emerged from the ether and began to wrap around it, encompassing it fully as for the first time in its existence, the Reaper felt…

Insignificant.

To the spectators, when the mists finally receded they saw the Reaper frozen in place, only to slowly crumble to the ground with an earth-shattering collapse, all signs of life gone.

The assault against Earth was no longer going to plan, and the Reapers pulled back from the Eastern Seaboard as they desperately analyzed what had occurred. Reapers had been lost before, but only to weapons of mass destruction or in dramatic last stands against a species military.

For the first time in their own history, a Reaper had been driven insane, it’s mind completely lost.

This little town in New England became a beacon to humanity. It was not the last, but it was easily one of the first of places that managed to repel the Reaper forces.

Salem.

Outside human boundaries there existed entities and dimensions beyond human comprehension. However different the Reapers might be, they were still wholly of this dimension. While the Reapers claimed to be infinite and unending, the truth was that they did have a beginning, and therefore they must have an end. When confronted with beings that truly were infinite and unending… How could they even compare?