Deathstalker 03 - Deathstalker War

Souls.
    Mary's face was exalted, her eyes shining like the sun. Razor reacted immediately to the new threat, his sword instantly in his hand, but some unseen force picked him up and threw him aside as casually as a bothersome insect.
    Legion surged back and forth in its tank, awed by the sheer power it could feel building in the auditorium. The Mater Mundi reached out, and all the espers of Mistworld were suddenly drawn into its single purpose. In that moment, the thousands of minds came together and were one, guided by the Mater Mundi, focused through Typhoid Mary. She turned her unyielding gaze on Legion, and it was afraid.
    Psionic energy crackled on the air, surging through all the bays and corridors of the Defiant. Machinery overloaded and exploded, workstations malfunctioned and shut down, and all through the ship the members of the crew fell to their knees, clutching at their heads as unfamiliar thoughts crashed through their minds. It was chaos and it was bedlam, and in the auditorium Captain Bartok saw it all and screamed.

    On the planet below, in the streets of Mistport, everything came to a halt.
    Psionic energy hammered on the air like the wrath of God, and the invading forces fell senseless to the ground, their minds shutting down rather than face the power of the Mater Mundi. The espers of Mistport stood still and unseeing, caught up in the gestalt. They stood together on the mental plane, focused through one mind and one will, striving against the power of the thing called Legion. But all the thousands of rebel espers together weren't enough. Legion and the Mater Mundi faced each other, each concentrating on the destruction of the other, and neither could take the upper hand. They were too evenly balanced.
    Stalemate.
    Standing close together, forgotten in the crash of energies, Owen and Hazel found themselves suddenly revitalized. Something within them was feeding off the psionic energies running loose in the ship. They felt strong and well again, and their chains cracked and fell apart, broken links clattering and rolling away across the floor. Owen turned on Razor, but he had already left. Hazel looked at Captain Bartok, but he was standing still and helpless, frozen in place like a statue. Someone didn't want him interfering.
    Owen's and Hazel's minds reached out, drawn by some instinct to another level of reality, and there they saw the struggle between Legion and the Mater Mundi. Two great armies of massed will faced each other, locked in a combat from which only one could emerge whole and sane. Legion was clearly the smaller of the two, but it had no limits and no restraints, while the Mater Mundi was focused through Typhoid Mary, who had sworn a solemn oath never to kill again. Owen and Hazel concentrated. In the background, unnoticed by either side, there were voices screaming for release. The thousands of dead espers whose brains made up the
    body of Legion, controlled by Wormboy's worms. Owen moved closer.
    You have to break free, he said in a voice that was not a voice. The Empire is using you to kill your own kind.
    We know, said a crowd of whispering voices. But there's nothing we can do. The worms are in our brains. The technology of Legion gives them power over us. Free us!
    We can't, said Hazel. You're already dead. They cut out your brains and threw away your bodies. You're the ghosts in the machine.
    There were screams and howls of despair, and the crying of thousands of souls who no longer had eyes to cry with. What can we do? What can we do?
    There's only one thing left to you, said Owen Deathstalker. You have to finish dying. Legion will never let you go, never let you know peace. You heard what it said. It wants to kill all that lives, or make it part of itself. Think of the millions of minds, trapped and suffering in Legion's grasp, like you.
    We don't want to die!
    No one does, said Hazel. But sometimes you have no choice, if everything you ever lived for is to have any meaning.
    Nothing can stop you, said Owen. But do you really want an eternity as Legion's slaves? Stop fighting to live. Let yourselves die. And let Legion die with you.
    Perhaps in that moment the thousands of esper brains remembered who they used to be, the things they believed in, and fought for. Things they would have died for, given the chance. Perhaps they were tired of their mental slavery and just wanted to rest at last. And perhaps in that moment they were brave men and women again, determined to do