NIKKE: The Artifact Wars (A Runescape/Goddess of Victory NIKKE crossover)

[Stimpak Medic]

Prologue: The Mirror Opens



It was the end of a universe, and the brief breath taken and held before a new one was birthed from the nothingness that remained.

For those who lived in this universe, it was an end they could not combat, only escape.

It was the rebirth of the Elder Gods.

Wen, Bik, and Ful burst forth from their eggs, completely shredding and unmaking the very space, logic, and time of the universe they had created long ago. Jas was not amongst the Elder Gods to rebirth, having sacrificed her egg as the stone. Mah had died some time ago, and her corpse could be found on Freneskae, tended to by her Nightmares and Muspah. Very few managed to escape the nigh instant destruction of space, time, causality, and laws of existence.

Zaros, Azzanadra, and Seren being the only survivors to flee to the dimensions beyond the universe in the moment of rebirth. The rest of the Universe was not so lucky.

In the end, what was left was shredded nothingness, all that remained was an empty void that extended to infinity.

However, from the nothingness, the Elder Artefacts, creations of unfathomable power created by the Elder Gods to focus their immense powers of creation disappeared from the void, sent to a new universe. One where the Elder Gods did not reign.

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It was a warm spring night, and the stars shone brightly over the destroyed world's surface. The Raptures continued to spread their destruction and death, and Humanity, along with their Saviors, the NIKKEs found their refuge and retreated beneath the earth, in The Ark. Humanity's final bastion. Over a dozen Arks before this one had been overrun and destroyed, but this one, this one held on.

In the sky high above the planet, thirteen white lights coalesced and blazed like stars before shooting across the sky and landing deep within the planet's surface, burrowing down into the crust, and eventually finding home in the caves and caverns of Earth, sealing their holes in the earth behind them.

And so, for sixty five years they sat until one day, a Commander and his transport ship were shot out of the sky, right above the resting places of one such an artefact.

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A blinding flash, accompanied by shockwave, the burning and searing flames of an explosion slammed a young man against the wall of his transport ship, before he fell unconscious.

When he woke up it was to the desperate calls and attempts at resuscitation by a very well endowed woman in a white outfit, with a blue jacket. She had light skin and a very pleasant face. On her head was a small blue officer's hat.

"Commander! Can you hear me? Commander!" She shouted desperately, her voice echoing across the huge underground cavern around her.

"Unnnghh" The commander groaned out, and looked up at her, his eyes adjusting to the dim light of the cavern around them.

"Commander! You're alive? Great. I was so worried." The woman said, her light voice soaked with her desperation and fear.

The Commander slowly rose from his lying position, and the lady got off of him. Only then did he realize that she was almost straddling him moments earlier.

"Alright, I'm up...Where is this?" He asked, brushing his smooth black hair away from his bright blue eyes. He looked around, and aside from the lady, there were no other survivors he could see. But there were a lot of Rapture corpses littering the cave around them.

All of them shredded and peppered with holes and laser burns.

Slowly getting to his feet, he was helped up by the woman next to him. Her sufficiently enhanced strength made it look quite easy, despite him being on the taller and firmer end of men his age, with not a small amount of musculature on his body.

"Commander, I'm Marian, a NIKKE. Can you take command?" She asked him.

"Yeah, I think I can." He responded, his energy and vitality returning to his shaky legs.

Only then did he realize something very weird about this cavern. It wasn't hard to see, not just the rapture corpses, but the large rocks, their positions, and the floor. They were all identical, lined up at exactly the same distance, as if the cave which was a perfect square almost half a mile tall and wide was replicated over and over while expanding down to the last detail. even the dead Raptures lay in the perfect position on the perfectly same rock as the one behind and in front of it.

The crashed ship nearby them was the only thing that disturbed the perfect replicated stones and corpses.

Only then did the woman notice something right in the middle of everything so oddly and disturbingly arranged. This was not natural.

"Commander, look at this." She said, stepping around a large stone, and waving him over.

The ship had fallen and crashed through the weakened ground, landing quite close to the middle of the cave.

The Commander, having caught his senses followed the woman, and just past the large stone was something gold. He took a slight step back upon seeing it.

"A mirror?" The woman asked curiously, walking up to it and stepping around it. She was observing it curiously.

Out of the stone on the bottom stood a tall golden pole covered in strange symbols and glowing runes, at the top, about five feet above the ground was a two foot tall and wide circular silver mirror that did not reflect anything around it, simply being a flat silver color.

"Don't touch that!" The Commander exclaimed loudly as the woman reached out to it, only for as soon as her finger brushed the gold surface, she let out a violent scream of agony as an incomprehensible amount of power that she could not control rushed into her body.

If she was human, she would have died immediately.

With a flash, her artificial body was sent flying a dozen meters away into a rock, where her body was smoking and burned at several places. Her right arm was spasming violently.

However, something unfathomable happened.

Right where she originally stood, stood another version of her, unhurt and completely replicated in body, mind, and soul.

"Commander!" The replicated woman rushed over to him, seeing his confused and shocked face.

"Commander, Are you alright?" She asked, genuine worry in her voice. Then she looked to where her original was, and her face turned grim.

"Is that me?" She asked, an existential horror in her voice, as if both of them had the exact same existence.

The burned and damaged woman desperately tried to get up, but the immense amount of power that flashed through her for just a moment had almost completely scrambled the nanobots in her head and her body itself. It was a miracle she survived that flash for even a moment, given the immense world altering power held by the mirror.

The replicated woman ran over to her original, kneeling down next to her.

"You're gonna be okay , stay with us" She tried to say, but the original just gritted out a rejection in pain.

"Get away from me!" She growled, fear in her voice.

The clone seemed heartbroken and faltered for a moment before trying again.

"But..." She let out dejectedly before stepping backwards. Her eyes turning red in the process.

"She's corrupted, Commander, you're not safe, Run!" The original Marian shouted as she managed to get to her feet, her arm no longer spasming.

She raised her weapon at the clone, stumbling slightly.

"What are you doing?" The clone asked in horror.

"Commander! Run!" The original Marian shouted again. However, the Commander had other ideas.

The sound of a powerful gun firing was heard, and the pained scream of the clone was heard as she was peppered with holes from the Original Marian's gun.

"Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Wh..." The damaged almost dead clone fell to the ground, as her voice silenced. Tears falling from her eyes.

"Marian, why was she..." The commander trailed off, the conclusion obvious.

Marian was already corrupted, and the clone fell to corruption before she did, or was going to.

Looking even more grim, Marian addressed the Commander.

"Commander...I'm...Corrupted." Marian grit out, the tears falling from her eyes. She pulled out a handgun from a holster on her belt and handed it to him.

"Please, just make it quick." She said, accepting her fate. She would much rather die than corrupt and kill her commander.

He took the handgun.

"Marian...I...I can't." He said, lowering his hand.

"You have...to." She said, her voice beginning to strain and turn slightly staticy.

"No.. I can save you." He said, but he raised his pistol to her forehead nonetheless.

"You...Can't..." She choked out, her eyes flashing red, and her grip tightening on his.

"Please." She pleaded, and he began to feel his bones creaking in his hand as the woman's iron grip began harming him.

Bang.

The trigger was assisted by her finger, and she dropped to the ground against the rock behind her, lifeless.

The Commander dropped to his knees, and he knelt in front of her.

"I'm sorry Marian, you deserved better." He spoke with a quiver in his voice.

Then after some silence, he stood up and turned to the mirror. A crazy thought flashed through his mind. Could he save her with this strange mirror that could copy things?

No, what came out of it would not be her. It would be a fake. An imitation. Marian was dead, and he would not dishonor her memory. Taking a small satellite communicator from his bag, he called in to his superiors at the Ark. Strangely enough, despite the concentration of Alva particles in the air above them, inside this cavern, the connection was perfect.

This was something beyond him, and The Ark needed to collect this mirror before the Raptures did. Still, something about Marian's corruption bothered him.

Could it be? No way...

She hadn't been corrupted in The Ark had she?

 

[Stimpak Medic]

Chapter Zero: Reforged in Fire



"I hate the cold. Why can't we just melt this glacier down. I could easily get this over with faster than these workers." Nihilister grumbled from her position next to Liberalio who was overlooking the excavation efforts of something, something they weren't even sure of what it was.

"Be quiet and stay here. This item is of utmost importance and must not be damaged." Liberalio responded, her patient but slightly annoyed voice was heard from not far away as she stood on the edge of the huge hole the Raptures were digging.

They were deep in the glaciers of antarctica, on a eighty mile wide glacier excavating something that their queen had sent them to retrieve. Something that was calling to her. Whatever that meant. As if that wasn't weird enough, the further their raptures excavated, the warmer it became, as if the planet's core was not so far away despite them being on the surface.

"Whatever." Nihilister grumbled, but didn't do anything further, except walk closer to the wide hole. Sure enough, the Raptures had found something.

Looking over to Liberalio, Nihilister wondered if the usually torpid Heretic would do anything, but she just stood and watched silently.

Not one for subtlety or waiting, Nihilister jumped down the hole, her heat turning the surrounding ice red from the residual heat that had left her in her descent.

Thoom.

She landed on a blackish obsidian shell of something, something hot and powerful. The obsidian withstood her passive heat well, only once she brought her fist back and slammed it into the obsidian, then did it crack, before shattering upon her third punch to a hole big enough for her.

Jumping through the hole with no regard for anything Liberalio could say, she was enveloped by a heat even she could barely stand. As she descended into a world of red and yellow, she felt power soaking her, her very body absorbing the heat, and the power. It filled her completely as if she were a mere cup before an ocean. It felt good...No, it felt great...Amazing even.

"I" she began speaking as her skin and body began melting.

"Can.." Her vocal cords melted, and what was left of her body was a mere red metallic puddle of Lava, yet her voice still continued.

"Contain." Her voice was much stronger, fuller, deeper, despite her physical body having completely melted.

"Alll..It's" She continued as her body began to reform, just as it had before, except her aura that was that of heat was much more intense, as if it could burn anything and everything in existence.

"POWER!" She shouted in glee and expanded her Aura of fiery heat far beyond it's normal limit. Her connection to the Rapture Queen and all the surrounding Raptures eliminated in her remaking. Her reforging. She was a brand new being in her entirety, and her impressive willpower allowed her to not be bound to whatever this strange heat was.

She shot up through the hole, and it expanded several dozen meters just by her entering it. Any Raptures that were still nearby were instantly incinerated by her presence. It was exhilarating, this power. It was all hers. This was far greater than anything the Rapture Queen had done for her. No, It was far beyond that. Right now, she felt like she could single handedly destroy every force on the planet in minutes.

She shot into the sky like a comet, completely ignoring Liberalio's shouts from below. Right, Liberalio. That little uptight lazy brat. Well, she wasn't her problem anymore, but she could give her a scare.

Shooting straight down towards her, she pulled back her fist and slammed it into Liberalio's face, which almost instantly melted halfway by the brief contact, causing her to let out a scream as she was drilled face first into the glacier, where she lay in the sizzling ice crater that remained having almost completely destroyed the glacier. What was left of it was smaller sheets of ice that broke off and fell into the icy sheets below it.

Nihilister's jaw dropped, from such a weak, timid, and playful blow she almost shattered a eighty mile glacier.

Looking down at the broken and damaged Liberalio beneath her, she laughed. How haughty that brat was. Now look at her. Barely moving beneath her, her body melting just by the sheer passive aura she gave off. If she increased her heat just a tiny bit, she would not survive.

"Because you once worked with me, and our partnership under our Queen. I won't kill you. But if I see you again, you're dead." She spat at Liberalio, kicking her half dead body, sending it flying a dozen miles away on to the icy land.

She didn't need anyone now, she was...She was...Godlike.

Yes that was the word. She felt like a God. That was the only way to describe this immense power.

So this was what true freedom felt like. The power to do anything, to kill anyone, to go anywhere. She didn't even stop to think about it.

That thing that remade her. What was it? Why hadn't they found it earlier. Why hadn't they found the Elder Kiln.

Wait. The Elder Kiln. Why did she call it that? It was as if the name of this thing was imprinted in her mind upon her reforging.

It didn't really matter what it was called. She now had her own plans, and nobody but her needed to understand them. She would save the Ark for last. Seeing the utterly powerless looks on the faces of the Nikkes and humans that had left her for dead all the way back then 90 years ago would be priceless.

First though, she had to deal with that Queen she used to serve. She couldn't let other's get this power.

She couldn't let someone else challenge her.