I – The Cause of the Problem.
Just over a thousand years after the conflict with the great entity of time, some planets of Odyssey had finally developed again. Yet any alliances between them were rare, and that made Odyssey bigger than ever. A galaxy divided by different cultures, races, sides and reasons. Now Odyssey seemed to have no end, it was unexplorable land and water and void. The word is diversity, that’s what there was. Wars started, always in the name of the nation – in fact, for unsustainable reasons. There were beautiful, rich planets, in which there was plenty of resources, while there were poor planets, without colors and riches; the natural habitat of miserable peoples, faithful portraits of scarcity. Odyssey was a contrast. But on a fine line between the rich and the miserable was Krez Cese.
Krez Cese was one of Odyssey’s biggest and darkest mysteries. Marked by the huge labyrinth that hovered on its surface, whose walls glowing with a strong blue light, intertwined and intertwined, formed a design too confused and complex to be understood. And the blue lines seemed to be all there was, as they orbited a dark surface. In fact dark, as it made everyone lack clarity about what was happening on the black soil.
Krez Cese was for a long time restricted to imaginations – not that imagining Krez Cese was something common in the routine of humans outside, because, remember: wars, incessant to everyone, did not give time or space for the human imagination. War has become a great obstacle to men’s thinking. The only thing left for people was reality, which could be cruel at times.
This was the case for the citizens of Mitshniog: a rich but undeveloped planet. But of course this paradox has an explanation: internal wars! Men killed each other for territory, for food, or just for impulse.
And while the blood hydrated the fields, the king took no action, and this annoyed everyone, from poverty to the nobility, because, in addition to being unwilling to improve the situation of the people, he had not inserted the planet in any way into the galactic dispute by power. Thus, no inhabitant had a great perspective on the future of the planet.
But, one night the king dawned dead, and what prevented the trigger of popular revolt was the emergence of his son Linuor to power, and this was the one who improved the scenario there. He repaired society, ended wars between his nation, and set out to conquer galactic power. The new king pleased everyone. He went to war, but in an unusual way! His plan was to conquer and dominate the poor planets, and then with a large army and extensive territory under his rule, only then to truly enter the unbeatable war against the powerful. As Mitshniog wasted resources, he could. And so it was done.
II – Power.
Before long, dozens of nations came to serve a single planetary command, and then the power of Linuor began to consolidate, who would later become one of the greatest political figures of the third age of Odyssey.
As a leader, he was impeccable; someone who mastered the art of power. Loved and feared in the right measure by its people, respected and trusted by its elite.
However, if all was well for the people of Mitshniog, a new collective fear was met. The legends about Krez Cese, home of divine forces, were more and more easily dissipated in Mitshniogian culture. This was due to the fact that that tremendous unknown came to the end of every day in Mitshniog’s sky. The two planets were neighbors.
It was said that there lived a little known divine species. Legend has it that, long ago, the planet Selector was divided between the ancient gods and the Corzer. The last ones were huge furry creatures, with a rounded shape and huge and soft blue fur that protected them from the cold that was at that time. Creatures that didn’t stop smiling, and that was the mark of sympathy that made the coexistence between Corzer so peacefully functional… the gentle smiles they exchanged with each other at all times!
The sensitive antennas allowed them to communicate with each other and feel the vibration of each tiny insect wing that beat the air. The large eyes gave the Corzers a great view – “they saw through everything”, the legends said. But the coming of men to the plane of life was shocking to the Corzers, as they adapted better to the warm and bright world they had become, and furthermore managed to make the world a place without wars, in peace – if the battles between the gods ancients and the Corzers remained, life would come to an end. Since the extinction, the blues were never seen again, they became rare beings. And the rumors that circulated in Mitshniog were about the behavior of the species: They were said to be excellent war strategists, of almost immeasurable mental and physical capacities, but the most notorious was their temperament; rabies, but a kind of rabies that was unusual to all species. In combat, the gentle smiles turned perverse; the imprint of sympathy they exchanged became the image of insanity in the face of enemies on the battlefield. And it is on the battlefield that the sharp fangs once hidden by his lips come to the fore; that’s how they fill the field with enemy blood, and they don’t stop smiling. Anger doesn’t let you get tired. And that is why this species was the main reason for the extinction of the mighty ancient gods and their most terrible leader.
III – Conqueror.
But these were just rumours, and even if they were real, at least to King Linuor, they were worth the risk. Mastering Krez Cese could be the guarantee of the long-awaited unlimited power in the galaxy – and, ultimately, in the universe. Linuor dreamed big, because that’s how he got used to it! – The king had never lost a battle. It would be completely unbeatable with an elite army made up of these big, aggressive blues – if they even existed, or if they did, if they really were. The king had doubts about this, however, he could not risk everything for an intuition – so he had a card up his sleeve.
Linuor then began planning the attack on Krez Cese. For this, he studied a lot day after day about the Corzers, until, after a few months, he felt ready to attack. In front of him was that black planet scrawled by blue: his deepest desire, and at the same time, only what he had left. So they had nothing to lose, so the numerous and trained fleets headed for the neighboring planet.
The scene was imposing. In the vacuum of dark space, thousands of blue ships orbiting a huge golden and blue ship, as if they were thousands of limbs for a single brain, and all the ships were glowing. Near the plant, of planetary proportions, the others that surrounded it were bright spots. It was impossible, from that macro angle, to see people in the cabins of the ships, so all you had to do was bring the view closer to the center of the frame, in an extensive zoom, until you reach the figure of Linuor, thirsty for what he had to find, almost transcending the fear of that unknown person, which was the only thing keeping him down to earth. His eyes fixed on the planet, glistening in the light reflected by Krez Cese’s blue scribbles. Then, the invasion began when the great ship the king was in stopped, right there, in the distance, and the small members made their way towards the surface.
IV – Out of step.
King Linuor’s troops then landed on the ground, aboard now large, gleaming blue ships.
They maintained direct contact with central command on the mothership. They went down attentively, then realized that it was an infinite labyrinth, and the brilliant blue were the huge walls that formed it. The dark soil, something like earth; the walls were big leds that burned on any contact, the smell wasn’t bad, in fact, unknown to them. And most peculiar: the ground often gave slight shakes, as if it responded to constant impacts from something below it. It was a little nerve-racking, but so far everything was calm, nothing scary had emerged. Faced with the strong tension, the soldiers followed together towards some place in the labyrinth, in troops of complete fleets, very numerous, even a little confident because of it. After an hour of walking by the troops, nothing found was a sign that perhaps there was nothing to be found there. Linuor was surprised, ordered them to return to the ships. It was then that, from the macro view of the mothership, the king saw something strange on the surface of the planet, which actually appeared to be a Corz, running at bizarre steps and at an awkward, animated pace. The animal was big. It was approaching the ships, and I could see it: it was the size of a ship, with each ship holding 50 men. Linuor’s pulse pulsed harder. He ordered the troops to stop immediately where they were, not to return to the ships, when the almost simultaneous and almost desperate response from all his captains was that they were lost. “The walls are messed up!”
And Linuor’s heart beat faster when he found one of his troops in sight, saw a Corz approaching her. He walked fast, out of step, staggering, smiling, and he seemed to know every path in that labyrinth. He seemed to know how to reach Krez Cese’s visitors. But each troop must have had more than a thousand men, they could handle a single Corz. The problem for Linuor was when he noticed two more creatures, coming from opposite directions in the labyrinth, on their way to that same troop. Then the king realized that the cursed ones were surrounding his troop, and when he looked at the other swarms of men, likewise being surrounded by the clumsy blue creatures. They were much bigger than men.
Linuor realized what was happening, and again, simultaneously the captains claimed “an increasingly intense tremor in the ground!” The king answered them in a calm and serious tone: “you are surrounded! Be ready and prepared for imminent attacks”. It was appalling, but Linuor, from inside the mothership, away from it all, seemed to keep everything under control, and that scared the crew who shared this cabin on the mothership with him. The man was cold, and perhaps he was ready to bluff the death of thousands of soldiers!
Then, through the channels of the cabin, shots were heard. The attacks had started. And so did the screams. Listening to the sound effects, Linuor watched the show from there; I could see almost only the sudden movements of the great blue creatures attacking their human swarms. You could see it from a distance, they couldn’t even wipe the smile off their faces, and Linuor’s expression also remained calm and thoughtful.
Soon the auditory terror ended, and the Corzers didn’t even celebrate their victory, just kept smiling and ran out of step towards another place: the ships. So Linuor ordered the ‘hangman fleet’ to dock at the same place as the others. The astonishment was that the king had an elite fleet awaiting… Those men were all given to the Corzer wrath as an experiment. But no one had the courage to challenge the king, especially at that moment.
It was when the executioner fleet landed that a remarkable burst of light went out of the fleet’s ship towards the Corz that had been there from the beginning. He only gave a cry before falling, and as his body hit the ground, a crooked smile invaded the king’s face. Everything was working out.
After the scream, broods of other blues emerged from the opposite hemisphere of the small planet Krez Cese. They were running with the same bizarre smile, and just as clumsy, but you could see that there was anger there. Thus, every Corzer on the planet fervently after the elite fleet. It wasn’t even good for the smell, there were hundreds of fast Corzers. However, the king’s smile only grew… He had a card up his sleeve!
V – Card up your sleeve!
Linuor could not have relied solely on his intuition, so he built what would become the most notorious achievement of his era: the RUV Satellite, popularly known as “the Corzicide”. A spacecraft with planetary proportions, which, miraculously mimicking the effects of the ancient and mighty Sun, would emit ultra violet rays at a potentially amplified intensity, so that a blast could contain the same massive intensity as an entire Sun. And this homicidal invention had as its first exclusive target the Corzean race of Krez Cese; thus, Corzer’s murderer – “the Corzicide”, his card up his sleeve.
This was the mother ship, in which King Linuor was at that time of the invasion. The plan was to bring the entire race to one point on the planet, and then properly employ Corzicide, exterminating the entire species in a single burst – since Corzicide took months to reload.
Linuor was always aware of the great possibility that the Corzers were violently indomitable, and that is why they were expendable in his plan. Instead, there was something… Someone bigger!
VI – Nuclei.
Long ago, even in the first age, when not even the Sun had yet bloomed to its splendour, the Selector was almost entirely frozen, and the ancient gods were the only inhabitants, but they were immature with power. They created and eliminated species just for fun, but in an inhospitable place, inside a cave, Mother Odyssey was the one who created a species naturally, and let it flourish; these were the Corzers. The species evolved and reproduced in the darkness of the cave, where they were unnoticed by the gods’ divine sensors. One day, a Corz found a way out of that immense cave, but he came across the sunlight, which seemed to blind him. So the Corzers discovered the world, which they could only explore at night, and so they did.
They explored Selector until they found the first god they came into contact with. There, the curious god approached the creatures to see and analyze them, as if they were attractions in a show. Then, the rift between the gods and Corzer began, when, after finishing his analysis, the king launched a fatal attack against the 2 Corzer who were there. It was sudden death, and the Selector’s all blue antennae vibrated, warning them that they had a new enemy.
So, during Corzer outings at night, they hunted gods and, in a rite in the name of the first dead Corzers, ate the god they hunted and killed each night. They went in groups, strategically and subtly, and when they encountered a single god, it was certain that the hunt was complete.
Until the gods realized the lack of theirs, and decided that it was necessary to organize themselves to wait for the attacks and react against the “creatures of the night”. It was then decided that they needed a leader to command the gods, and without contesting, the chosen one was Dratapilar, the most powerful god. He was an unusual god, odd in appearance and shape, and coming from another plane… A place called Venus. No one knew much about him, but he was the most powerful, and that was enough.
He was accompanied by 2 creatures, which he called Drats, and would help him defend himself from imminent Corzean attacks.
The fact is, Dratapilar was a serious strategist. He wanted to create a numerous species and reign supreme. Therefore, being such an excellent strategist, he was the one who managed to resist the species. On one of the hunts, he watched the Corzers, where they came from, where they went at dawn, and then discovered the cave where they sheltered during the day. He planned a daylight attack on the cave, rounded up the gods left over from the attacks. They were outnumbered, but they were gods, and they were fervent to attack, and that battle marked Odyssey’s first great war, especially over carnage. There, the gods almost all died, as the Corzers waited for the attack, and they hid, causing the attackers to separate through the great cave to look for them. Again, one by one, they were being killed, many lost in the darkness of the cave, and on a plane similar to that of King Linuor, when all the baits were gone, the blue swarms went in search of the Dratapilar leader, who awaited them fully at the beginning of the cave. When they reached the prey, the god ordered them inside. He had created a large army of Drats, and these creatures fought like the Corzers, with the same ferocity, the difference being that the Drats didn’t die.
These servants were not created by Dratapilar, but rescued by him from the realm of the dead. The Drats were Corzer who had died and were resurrected from the realm of Mrs. Death by Dratapilar to fight this war. Therefore, when a Drat died in combat, their soul was only for a few seconds in the realm of death, until they returned to the body again. And the 2 loyal servants of Dratapilar were the first 2 Corzer killed.
The Drats were the undoing of the Corzers. The battle was close. Everyone screaming to death, but Dratapilar was intact, his tail pulsing, and a Corz noticed it. This was Krez Cese, the one who ate Dratapilar alive through the syrup, leaving only his head, still alive but harmless. So, Krez Cese ended the battle, the Drats returned to rest in the realm of the dead, except for his 2 faithful, who came to an end like their leader.
It was then, according to legend, the first time Mother Odyssey acted directly: she used some of her power to create a prison for that menacing intruder in her Plan. In a lightless star, far away from the Selector, the humiliated god’s head and his 2 faithful servants were imprisoned in the core of this little star, but Dratapilar would recover, and for this prison to be truly secure, it would have to be sealed with magic. A huge magical rune that outlined the small star was made and sealed in itself, bright blue, designed like a labyrinth, where all the lines intertwined and made the prison stronger. That wall was pure magic, designed entirely by Odyssey, in the star that was named after Dratapilar’s greatest executioner, by legends, popularly known as the “eat-eat gods” or just “eat-eat”! This was Krez Cese.
VII – K.C. Munchkin.
And this was Krez Cese, under the gun and subjected to the intense solar blast of King Linuor’s mothership, which then destroyed that swarm of Corzer that was there, and with them a part of the blue wall, thus broke the cell of magic rune… The result was as expected by Linuor; the plan that had to dominate, rather than a creature, a creator: left the Dratapilar core; was released.
It was solid, like a smooth golden stone that wouldn’t break—except against a Corz’s teeth—it glowed golden. He was the light of Krez Cese, the heart that throbbed as if it were alive. The image of power could be seen by Linuor, it was there, within his reach.
And just like that, faster than the king’s eyes, evil returned. The core’s reaction to the impact of the shot was immediate. The earth vibrated, cracked. There arose Dratapilar, the first invader. The first fear in the Selector story. The reason for the first shiver of horror, the root of the first impulse of hopelessness. Dark pioneer.
And with him, emerged the 2 Drats, the faithful warriors of the god of apocalypse, to whom they owe their life and honor, and for whom they are determined to die in battle, go through hell and return to the field to die again. Alive from the only life worse than death, yet alive!
The reaction of the golden monster provoked the greatest feeling of fear in all the men who watched the spectacle, and it only reached Linuor when he noticed the god coming towards him.
The silent king, looked into the eyes of the god, who came closer and closer with his Drats at high speed. Death was certain, but the king’s concern now was not death but the future of the galaxy when that thing went beyond; what would be of the universe. For a few seconds the majestic person of King Linuor was reduced to a mere mortal, and there, in that moment, the immoral acts and sacrifices in the pursuit of power seemed not to have been worth it; such as poisoning one’s father to ascend to the top—it had been her greatest source of remorse until then. It wasn’t worth it, and maybe it wasn’t worth it to extinguish an entire species in the name of that same cause.
That’s when the serpent god stopped approaching, started to regress back to Krez Cese – against his will, it seemed. Something was pulling him, knocking him to the floor of Krez Cese, and there was a great battle for him.
Thanks to the wizards! Thanks to Odyssey! The conductor of the genocidal act could breathe: a Corz had survived the Corzicide; one, only one, but also ONE, was far from the radius of the shot. There, in front of you, the new eat-come, the last Corz, trapped in the great maze of blue walls with Dratapilar, the terrible, and the Drats, the first 2 dead, his servants. Or perhaps the latter were stuck with the come-come, fierce and eager to fulfill their last mission; to do what Odyssey conditioned his species to do: stop every last god.
From above, King Linuor was now someone else, and he was privileged to be above. He had the macro view of the maze and the same intention as the eat-eat. So the game would be this: he would lead the devourer of gods through the labyrinth. It would indicate where to go, and where not to go, and the blue’s sensitive antennae would pick up the king’s every command. Against the most powerful god, the hope was a partnership between a Corz and a human, they just had to play.
