The Voice Speaks

The medics that greeted Adri and Peter were surprised to say the least. Two people being dressed in armor of old, charging out of a shuttle with weapons held high would surprise anyone. Any sympathy for the medical personnel had been bombed out of them when this ship had killed friends and family. There were three of them waiting at the shuttle entrance. Adri killed one with a thrust, while Peter crushed the other with his hammer, the third man fled and Peter reached out with his hand and burned the man alive. It was an amazing thing for a non magical user to have magic like that, it was also terrifying. Peter simply extended a hand and killed a man. The champions didn't have much time to adjust to their new state of being, boots were tromping in their direction.

The soldiers emerged not really covered in body armor, but they did have rifles. Adri lowered her shield and marched forward, extending out from the shield was a barrier of fire, the soldiers bullets slammed into and were flatted like they'd hit hard steel. Panic'd they fired faster hoping to drop the shield before she got to them, but it didn't work. Adri reached the group and with super human strength carved them up, her blows sending men and body parts flying. Blast doors slammed down to lock the champions in, but between Peter's hammer and Adri's sword, they were easily sliced open. The Fire God's voice would not be denied.

****

"I don't know sir, whatever they are, they are carving their way through the ship!" Griggs heard the paniced ensign and felt sad. What had gone from being an easy operation had become a mess, and now some kind of armored warriors of old were burning and murdering their way to him. It all went wrong somewhere and Griggs was reluctant to say where.

"Decompress the lower decks."

"Sir!"

"JUST DO IT!" The ensign worked with trembling hand, Griggs knew this would kill hundreds of people, but the two people were already doing that, so it wasn't like he was really killing them, which is what he told himself.

****

"Do you hear something?" Adri was busy pulling her sword out of a wall where she had thrown it to impale someone.

"A hissing noise."

"Decompressing the ship? Wow that's ballsy, stupid, but ballsy."

"So what do we do?" Peter was worried, though Adri despite not knowing how to fly a shuttle had actually done some work on ships.

"Come with me Peter."

Future Uncertain

"Still unable to contact the strike team sir, though it appears two of them survived by thermal scans." The bridge crew was waiting in silence since the lady in red had wiped out what appeared to be their whole team. They were unable to get a visual on what had happened, so they were down to thermal sweeps and those had indicated two people had survived, which implied they had killed the woman who had gotten their team.

"Comms?"

"Down still, whatever that bitch hit us with has messed up everything. I swear she didn't even show up on thermal." The interloper had caused a panic on board. Captain Griggs barely got anyone focussed on the mission after she had seemingly appeared from nowhere and hit their ship with some kind of sensor damaging burst. They figured it was a virus of some kind, but engineering had reported their sensors were apparently literally fried.

"Autopilot work?"

"Yes sir."

"Bring them up, I don't know why they haven't gotten it going, but they may be hurt, so get medical down there."

"Yes sir." Griggs sat back in his char, he wanted to know what in the gods name was going on.

****

"We're moving great job Peter!" They had been in the cockpit for a bit trying to figure out how to get the shuttle moving, so far they'd not been able to glean anything and all of a sudden the ship was moving.

"I didn't touch anything."

"Crap that must mean they are autopiloting us, which hopefully means they are going to bring us on board."

"Hopefully?"

"Well they might know we are followers of the Fire God and they are planning on piloting us into the sun."

"Adri in the future remind me what a cynic you are about things."

"If we have a future."

"Adri!"

Go Forth And Burn

"And so I come to you two, who asked nothing and were willing to die for me, which you should, but it was brought to my attention I've relied on sins and a particularly annoyingly self interested family for the majority of my conflict resolution, and that's probably not for the best for me." The Fire God wasn't great at explaining things, then again she'd never had to in the past. She just did things and the universe dealt with the consequences.

"What would you have of us?" Adri spoke for Peter, which seemed about right since Peter was still dumbstruck by the actual Fire God resurrecting them and then conversing with them.

"I want you to be my voice, and my voice is filled with rage right now. For too long my people have been hunted, ever since the red war I've been silent, working in the shadows, no longer. You will be my champions." She waved her hand and they were suited in armor of old, it was light almost like it wasn't there, but still sung with power. At the same time both Peter and Adri felt infused with power, neither one had any natural magical ability, but now they felt like they could do all kinds of things.

The fire god looked at Adri and handed her a sword and shield, "You shall be my sword and shield, both defense and offense, shield those who need protection, smite those who offend." She then turned toward Peter and gave him a hammer that was almost the size of him, "And you shall be my hammer, the world is full of nails and you shall smash them, but at the same time, hammers are constructive, so you'll have the power to heal as fire does, burning away the infection." They both nodded at her choices.

"Where shall your voice first go?" Adri felt alive more than ever, not just the power of her god, but the power of devine purpose.

"Your enemies came here in a small craft, you can take that to their larger craft and deal with them, this organization has opposed me and mine for too long, I have allowed their bullshit for long enough. Bring them low, but only use the weapons I have given you, my voice must be clear, my purpose direct."

"Yes my lord." They answered in unison and made their way to the shuttle waiting outside. Once inside Adri sat at the controls and turned to Peter.

"So can you fly a shuttle?"

"No."

"Crap." So it was a bit of a rough start for the Voice of The Fire God.

Only Fools Don't Believe in The Power of Gods

Peter and Adri were still stunned by the loss of everyone they knew when they heard boots coming in their direction. They knew it wasn't anyone coming to help, it was whoever had killed their friends and family coming to finish the job. Adri looked for something to do some damage in return with. All she could come up with was part of the ceiling she took up like a shield, she hoped to block some of the incoming fire to get close enough to do more. Peter just resigned himself to his fate, his only worry was the volume of history he carried was the last of its kind for the worship of the fire god.

Their executioners arrived, and said little. Adri charged and the ceiling panel was able to deflect some of the bullets before it was punctured and she was gunned down. Peter upon seeing his last friend die screamed and charged forward, he too was met with bullets and died slightly behind Adri, a tribute to never being able to keep up with her. The men confirmed both deaths and were on the way out when a woman in a red suit appeared. They who had never seen the Fire God mistakenly believed she was someone who had been missed by their scans and they opened fire on her, which did nothing. The bullets drilled through her clothing, but did not seem to affect either.

"What are you?"

"The god of whom you have murdered my followers." The men laughed.

"Right whatever force field you have bitch it'll fail with enough..." Their leader didn't get to finish, he was burned from the inside out, The Fire God thought little of these insects, even less so when they didn't give her the proper respect. The rest of the men for all the good it did opened up on her. She killed them with all the effort of swatting a particularly annoying fly. The troops dealt with The Fire God approached the bodies of her last disciples. So many of her people had been killed, so many followers lost, and she cared little. But this, whatever this was, upset her. These followers had mainly just wanted to believe. The large one in front of her even carried a volume of her history, he had shielded it so that it might survive when he would not. She reached down with her power, tapped into something she normally did not and brought them back to life. They looked surprised about being alive, and then shocked when their God herself stood in front of them.

"I'm sure you two have some questions."

The Last Disciples

"Come on hurry up." Adri Raiyne was tired of waiting for her slower companion. They were late for prayer already and with his doddling they'd be even later. Her companion a large oaf of a man named Peter Haknawa was trundling along behind her, his nose in a thick volume detailing the history of the Fire God. Peter dwarfed Adri in size, but she had always known him to be more gentle than anything, in their martial sparring he lost more often than not.

"Sorry just feeling a bit winded."

"If you'd work on cardio more you'd have better wind." Adri doted on Peter, but she found him the most easy going to work with among the disciples. Everyone else was all war and bringing glory, Peter spent most of his time reading up on the history of the fire god and fishing, it was such a weird thing, but it ingratiated him to her. For Peter he was just glad Adri who was very good at all the physical things he lacked at was willing to work with his coordination. He had a lot of strength, but lacked the dexterity to properly implement it. Adri joked he should just carry a big club, that way if he hits someone it'll be the last hit they'll ever receive.

They were late for the service. Peter was looking for an obscure history of a previous Father in their church and Adri didn't want him to be last into the hall as always, so she waited around. She didn't know he'd have been this late or she would have let him be the last one. They were half way down the hall when the blast hit. They felt the impact before they saw the destruction. Some kind of orbital strike from the impact of it. One minute they were moving towards the prayer hall, the next laying flat on the ground. More shots landed in other subsequent areas. Whoever was killing the Disciples knew exactly where to fire. Adri looked on in horror as all the living spaces were vaporized before her. Peter sat clutching the book he'd taken from library, she could hear him crying above the screams and burning. It was over in minutes, but the impact would linger.

They were now, the last Disciples of the Fire God.

The Indifference of the Gods

Praying to the Gods is a fools errand. No matter how devout, no matter how much you have sacrificed, ultimately they do not care. Sure divine intervention has occurred, but only at their behest, not because someone asked. You are better off believing in yourself and ignoring the Gods than expecting their help. But every once in a great while, when boredom or a Divine plan is at play, they do interfere at the behest of a prayer. It's not something anyone can really point to. Usually just a legend of a legend. Someone heard from a guy that a guy once asked a god for help and it happened.

Most of the stories have to do with Trezlan Lorentino. Who does not really pray as he whines, and the gods interfere for him if only because he amuses them more often than not. But there are others who in their moment of need are granted clemency. Though never usually the Fire God. Her indifference to her subjects bordered on cruelty. She didn't even have open worshipers any longer and she cared very little for who remained with her. She viewed those who had given her power as means to an end and their current struggles not worth it.

The last true order of Fire God followers wasn't much. It was a group of no more than sixty who still carried on the martial tradition. But things were about to change for the last order, and in that change something that hadn't happened before was about to happen, and all the universe would feel the repercussions.

I Feel You Aren't Taking This Seriously

"Sir." SiC was following along behind me, we had left the planet behind, I wanted to fire a parting shot just to be sure everything was dead, but SiC convinced me it was a waste of resources. Damnable robots not understanding sometimes a waste of resources is a gift of anger. Still I was feeling pretty good, got my sword back, killed the death god gun again (stupid thing stop trying to kill me). It was somewhat successful of a mission.

"Yes?"

"You should really be checked out, you had exposure to things down there, both magical and physical." I waived him off.

"I'm fine, you guys worry too much, there are several things that can kill me, but nothing down there came all that close. Aside from boredom, the hand doesn't know how to argue at all." SiC stopped me, I was annoyed at its insistence even it was heartwarming the machine cared.

"Sir your calllous disregard for your personal safety is noble at times, but you really need to be more careful."

"I'll be careful when I'm dead SiC."

"That will be more likely to happen with your current attitude!" I walked off waving my hands. I swear to the gods I invented my own mother that I never had. Ok not so much invented as programmed and stole, but still the point remains! Damnable robots! Stop caring so much!