Diablo 3 Armory - Unofficial Diablo 3 Fansite

Author Note: This story does not take place in the Starcraft Universe. The following trilogy is in no way meant to be a part of Starcraft cannon. It is meant to be a standalone story only. As such, some artistic license had been assumed where the Zerg specie is concerned.

Chapter 1: Awakening

He felt only pain.

It was as though the inside of his skull was on fire. A storm of fragmented memories swirled around in his head.

He heard voices.

“Momma, big brother is moving,” the voice of a young girl said.

He recognized the voice. Dawn, his sister. No, he was an only child, he didn’t have a sister. No, he had a sister; she was four years old.

His eyes opened. He was lying on a tatter patch of hide. His clothes seemed to be made of the same material. Above him was the rock ceiling of a cavern. All of it was both familiar and strange. He felt a warm hand on his forehead.

“Night,” a woman voice said. “How do you feel?”

He looked over to see woman with long black hair. She looked to be in her forties but he knew she was only in her mid thirties. Her beauty was marred by crowfeet on the corners of her eyes and a weariness that was beyond her age.

He knew her, at least part of him did.

Her name was Gemma and she was his mother. She had been raising him and Dawn for three years, after their father had abandoned them. At the same time, there was a fragmented memory of another robust woman called Sarah. She was also his mother. There were also memories of a tall, lanky man called Ethan. The man was his father.

Confusion caused his temple to throb in pain. How could he have two sets of parents?

“What happened?” he muttered, it was a question directed at the ether.

“Lightning!” Dawn’s voice answered him.

He looked over to the raven haired little girl, trying to clearly see her feature through the pain.

“You were hit by a bolt of lightning,” Gemma explained.

Yes, he remembered that. A flash of light from the sky, and then darkness.

In a moment, the storm of images in his head consolidated into cohesive memories. Instead of clearing his head, he was even more confused.

There were two distinctive sets of memories in his head.

One was of a person called Nathan Peter, the only son of a middle-class family from Cleveland, Ohio. Nathan lived on a peaceful planet called Earth. Earth was a planet of technologies. The humans there had successfully taken to the sky and were on the verge of exploring the stars.

One set of memories belong to a person called Night. Night lived on a world called Luminous. Luminous was a world whose technological progress was equal to that of Earth in the Middle Age.

The only memory that both Nathan and Night shared was the bolt of lightning. Both of them had been hit by lightning and lost consciousness. The next memories was Night/Nathan’s awakening.

He didn’t know which set of memories was real. He knew that he was on Luminous. This little cave was the home Night shared with his mother and sister. And yet, Nathan’s memories seemed just as real. Sarah was as much his mother as Gemma was.

“How do you feel?” Gemma asked.

“My head hurts,” Night answered, “and I’m a little hungry.”

Gemma’s expression softened. “I’ll go find you some food.” She stood up and turned to Dawn. “Stay with your brother.”

“Ok, momma,” the little girl said.

With that, Gemma left the cave.

A wave of worry gripped him. His mother was going hunting. According to Night’s memories, humans did not rule this world. This world was populated by countless species of mystical and violent beasts called Hellites. Hellites were far stronger and faster than normal humans, and they greatly outnumbered the human race—no one knows by how much. To make matters worse, level three Hellites and up all possessed supernatural abilities.

Because of the threats of Hellites, large scale farmlands were near impossible to maintain and, consequently, large-scale raising of domesticated animals for food was impractical. Humans’ main source of food was hunting Hellites, an extremely dangerous endeavor under the best circumstances.

The humans of this world only hope of survival was two types of energy. One was Magic, a force similar that written in the fantasy novels of earth, the other was Force, a type of energy that could enhance humans’ physicals body to match Hellites. However, only one out of every four human could utilize Force and only one out of twenty could use Magic.

Force Users and Magic Users along with Hellites were divided into ten levels. Gemma was a level one Force User. If she encountered a level two Hellite, then her only recourse was to flee. If she encountered a level three Hellite, then it would take a miracle for her to survive. For her, a hunting trip was a dance with death.

Guilt consumed him. He shouldn’t have said anything. He would never be able to live with himself if a little hunger caused Gemma her life.

It was too late, however. Gemma was already gone and he could wield neither Magic nor Force. His hands clenched into fists.

“Do you want power?” A voice echoed in his head.

Night bolted upright, starling Dawn.

“Big brother?” the little girl said.

“Did you hear that?” he asked him.

Dawn shook her head, worry and fear filled her eyes.

Night felt an ache in his heart. Dawn was only four. She shouldn’t have that look in her eyes.

“Do you want power?” the voice asked again.

The voice seemed to resonate deep in his very soul. It sounded like an echo from the deepest depth of the stars. Night felt a touch of fear. He could feel the power in the voice. He knew that the owner of the voice could crush him from the face of this world with a thought.

At the same time, Night knew that the voice could give him power. He gritted his teeth.

“Yes!” he said.

“For what reason do you want power?”

“To protect my mother and my sister. To give them the life they deserve.”

The tone changed and the voice laughed. “Good answer, kid.”

Something inside him broke and a wave of heat surged to every corner of his body. He felt as though he was being burn alive. He heard screaming and it took a moment for him to realize that he was the one who was screaming.

The pain came and went within ten seconds but for him, it was a lifetime of agony. When he came to, he found that he had rolled off the piece of hide. His head was in the dirt floor of the cave. Dawn was crying, clinging onto the sleeve of his shirt.

“It’s ok,” he said, pulling her into his chest, soothing her. She felt so thin. He wondered when was the last time she had a good meal. For that matter, he couldn’t remember the last decent meal they had had from Night’s memories.

Holding his little sister, Night searched his mind. Beside the two set of memories, there was a few lines of new information in his head.

Collective Evolutionary Stage: 0
Overmind’s Bio Energy: 100/100
Collective Stored Bio Energy: 0
Requirement to Evolve Collective: Hatchery

He felt hot. His blood was boiling. He felt a compulsion. He was alone. He should not be alone. There need to be more.

Strange thoughts swirled around in his head. Unable to resist the thoughts, he got up and headed for the entrance of the cave. As soon as he took a step, he felt someone tugging at his sleeve. He looked down to see Dawn pulling at him.

“Don’t,” she said. “We’re not supposed to go outside when momma is not here.”

He smiled and patted her head. “It’s ok,” he said. “It’s all going to be ok.”

It was getting harder to concentrate but that didn’t matter. He needed to evolve. He needed the Collective. He needed to birth the swarm.

Chapter 2: Birth of the Swarm

Night made his way through the shrubbery that concealed their cave and made his way into the forest. Their cave was located in a mountain on the outer edge of a large forest.

Half of this planet was occupied by a single super-continent. On that continent, three quarters of it was covered by forest. Because of the Hellites, the deep forest was the forbidden zone; no one entered the deep forest and survived to tell about it.

Still, night made his way through the trees. Behind him, he was aware that Dawn was following him, begging him to come back.

He continued on until he came to a large clearing. Acting completely on instinct, he walked to the middle of the clearing and placed his hands onto the grass. He felt a wave of heat leaving his body and flowing into the ground, leaving him cold and exhausted. Inside his head, the Overmind’s Bio Energy dropped from a hundred to zero.

As soon as he staggered away from the center of the clearing, a bluish fleshy cocoon sprouted from the ground. Within five minutes, the cocoon swelled up to fifty feet, growing to occupy the entire clearing. He could see through the outer membrane to the churning red liquid inside.

With the appearance of the cocoon, his head cleared considerably and he began to wonder what the hell just happened. He felt Dawn tugging at his shirt.

“What’s that, big brother?” she asked, staring wide-eyed at the cocoon.

“I…I’m not sure,” he said.

The cocoon looked suspiciously like the incubation state of a Zerg’s hatchery, a race in one of Nathan’s favorite game series—Starcraft. But that was ludicrous, wasn’t it?

Whatever the cocoon was, it was going to take twenty hours for the hatchery to complete. He wasn’t sure how he knew that; he simply did.

Not knowing what else to do, Night took Dawn back to the cave. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Their mother did not return. Without food, both of them went hungry for the day. The hunger did not bother them; they were used to it.

Civilization on this planet was comprised of a handful of cities and a number of outpost towns occupied by a little less than twenty percents of the human population. The other eighty percents took their chances out in the wild and the chances were never good. Compare to Earth, it was a cruel system but it was born of necessity due to the lack of living space within the protective walls of the limited number of cities and outpost towns.

On this world, power decided a family’s status. A family could only live in an outpost town only if it possessed a level three Force User or a level one Magic User. To live in a city, a family group needed a level five Force User or a level three Magic User. The difference between the two combat types was due to their destructive power. A Magic User was more frail than a Force User but with adequate protection from Force Users or placed on the wall of an outpost town or city, their destructive power far exceeded that of their Force Users brethren.

Night and Dawn’s father was a level three Force User. Instead of taking their family to an outpost town, he had instead abandoned his wife and children to seduce a female member of a large clan from a distance city, living their mother to raise their two children in the wild. Dawn was three months old at the time. Afterward, Night had erased most of his memories of his father by sheer force of will.

The next morning, Night awakened to the sound of his sister crying softly.

“Dawn?” he whispered. “What is it?”

The little girl sniffled. “I’m hungry.”

Her words cut through him. As used to hunger as they were, a full day without any food was still too much for a four years old girl. He searched his mind for a way and found that there was some new information in his head.

Hatchery:
• Energy converter
• Spawn Larvae (500 per twenty-four hours)
• Spawn Creep (radius of three miles)

The hatchery must have finished when he was sleeping.
Beside the information about the hatchery, there was also an update to the information in his mind.

Collective Evolutionary Stage: 1
Overmind’s Bio Energy: 10/500
Collective Stored Bio Energy: 5
Requirement to Evolve Collective: 5000 units of bio energy

Much of the information seemed to confirm his suspicion that the hatchery was a Zerg hatchery, though there were a few lines of information that didn’t exist within the game. The Overmind’s Bio Energy has increased from a maximum of one hundred to five hundreds. He also felt stronger. The hunger remained but he felt as though he could rip a tree out of the ground if he wanted to.

Pushing away his confusion for a later time, Night left the tunnel with his sister, only taking with him a small pouch of hide containing clean water. As soon as they stepped outside, they saw that the ground outside was already covered with a light purple carpet. Night identified it immediately as creep. He knelt down and touched the carpet. It wasn’t slimy. It was smooth and spongy, reminding him of the gummy candy of earth.

A thought occurred to him and he tore a handful creep from the ground. The creep around rushed in to filled the hole as though it was water though the texture remained a gummy solid. With a little hesitation, he tasted the creep. There was a gentle sweetness to the gummy mass, and as soon as he swallowed, he felt his hunger abated somewhat. Elated, he tore out another chunk.

“Here, Dawn, eat this,” he said, holding it out to his sister.

The four-year-old took the creep and swallowed it without hesitation. Night wondered if it was because she trusted him implicitly or if she was simply too hungry to consider to possible outcome.

After the first mouthful, Dawn’s eyes widened. She immediately knelt down and tore chunk after chunk of the creep from the ground and stuffing it into her mouth. She looked at him with a look of joy and satisfaction.

Night hid his grimace. He knew that the creep was not supposed to replace regular food. It was akin to coffee on earth. It gave humans a boost of energy but barely provide any nourishment. He could survive on creep alone but Dawn couldn’t; her human digestive system couldn’t extract the necessary sustenance from the creep.

He started when the thought appeared. Human digestive system? Then what was he?

He shook the thought away. He would contemplate such thing later. His most immediate concern was that he needed to find some food for Dawn.

“Don’t eat too much, Dawn,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The four-year-old stood up and wiped her mouth though she still looked longingly at the creep beneath her feet.

Sighing, Night led his sister to the clearing the day before. Occupying nearly the entire area was his first hatchery. The appearance of the structure was near identical to that in the game: five tunnels leading into a deep red fleshy volcano, with five fang-like protrusion between the entrances of the tunnels. Crawling around the immediate area around the hatchery were dozens of bugs that resembled roly polies.

Larvae.

The minute he saw them, information popped into his head.

Genetics Information Available: Queen, Overlord, Zergling, Drone.

With the new information came the solution to their lack of food problem. Neither of them could hunt for Hellites but the Zerglings could.

He concentrated on Zergling and information popped into his head.

Zergling: Basic ground combat unit. Cost: 1 unit of bio energy.

By now, Night had guessed that he was the Overmind of this specie. According to Starcraft’s canon, the Zerg’s Overmind was the ultimate authority of the Zerg swarm, the singular consciousness that govern this entire race.

He didn’t spend any time contemplating how he became the Overmind of what was supposed to be one of the most destructive races in science-fiction universe. Consuming his thoughts was the desire to survive and take care of his family.

From the information in his head, he had fifteen units of bio energy available to him. Learning from the event of yesterday, he walked forward and placed his hand onto the hatchery. He thought to order the larvae to mutate into Zerglings but before the words left his mouth, he felt a wave of heat leaving his body. Fifteen larvae simultaneously rolled up and morphed into fifteen fleshy cocoons.

Telepathic connection.

He startled and realized that the Zerg Collective did not need vocal order. There was a psychic connection between him and the swarm, and they would response to his every whim.

Starcraft’s canon did mention that the Zerg’s Overmind possessed tremendous psychic power, powerful enough to span the distance between planetary bodies. Did he develop these powers when he became Overmind?

Seemed there was much he needed to discover about himself.

Half an hour later, the cocoons burst apart and the Luminous’ Zerg swarm witnessed the birth of their first group of Zerlings, fifteen deep red dog-like insects the size of golden retrievers with teeth, claws, and a pair of scythe-like limps protruding from their back. As soon as they were born, they converged around Night and his sister. They surrounded the two and prostrated upon the grown, an instinctive act of homage to their Overmind.

“Wha…what are those?” Dawn said, trembling and hiding behind him.

“Zerglings,” Night said. “It’s alright. They’re here to protect us.” He could feel their minds. The Zerglings were empty of all thoughts. There was no fear, no confusion, no desire. They were simply waiting for an order from their Overmind.

Night kept five of the Zerglings at the hatchery for protection and ordered the other ten to scout the surrounding area. The ten Zerglings disappeared into the forest with barely a rustle from the bushes.

Though he felt them getting farther and farther away, his telepathic connection with his Zerglings did not weaken. Closing his eyes, Night found that he could see through the eyes of any Zergling he chose.

On a whim, he projected his mind to a Zergling to the north. He wasn’t sure how he knew how to do that but it felt as easy as breathing. The primal consciousness of the Zergling retreated without resistance, surrendering control of its body to his mind, and he suddenly was the Zergling, seeing what it saw, hearing and feeling what it heard and felt.

Captivated by his new ability, he wandered aimlessly around the forest in the body of the Zergling. It was strong, fast, and seemingly tireless. After ten minutes, he felt a tug on his mind. A Zergling to the southeast had found a living creature.

His mind jumped from one Zergling to the other. Even though the two creatures were miles apart, the transfer was instantaneous. The scenery before his eyes changed. Through the shrubberies, he could see what looked like a furless, gigantic brown bear with a lion head but without a mane. From its maw, two large fangs extended beyond its chin.

Night recognized the beast. The first thing that children in the wild learned was not reading or writing but how to identify various species of Hellites and the signs that marked their territory.

The beast before his Zergling was a Fanged Behemoth, a level three Hellites. It was a creature strong enough to shatter stones, with a hide so thick that it could turn away a level one Force User’s sword. Beside its immense strength and durability, the Fanged Behemoth was famous for its ability to cause earthquake in a small area, knocking any creature in the area off balance, creating an opening for the creature to deliver its killing blow.

Keeping the Zergling hidden, he sent out a telepathic call to the rest of the swarm. Though taking on a level three Hellite was quite dangerous, Night wanted to try. It may be reckless but he felt a measure of confidence. Within the Starcraft Universe, the Zerg swarm was the scourge of the stars, feared even by the super advanced Protoss.

Inside of five minutes, the Zerglings arrived. The Hellite looked up at the rustling sounds of the bushes around it. Night knew that the window of a surprise attack was closing. With no time to reconsider, he sent out an attack order.

The result stunned him.

Nine Zerglings swarmed onto the Hellite within half a heartbeat. The Fanged Behemoth barely had time to react before its head and three of its limps were torn off. The battle was over before Night knew what happened. It was barely five seconds for a level three Hellite to be torn to pieces.

From Nathan’s memories of playing Starcraft, he knew that the Zerg was a brutal and vicious race but it was an entirely different thing to see the Zerglings ferocity firsthand. More than that, the entire thing felt surreal. Up until this moment, any Hellite higher than level one was a symbol of fear and a herald of death to his family, but now, he had caused the death of a level three Hellite with a single thought; the different was jarring.

With a last thought to the Zerglings guard their kill, Night mind returned to his body. The first thing he heard was his sister’s tearful voice.

“Big brother! Big brother!” She was crying and calling him.

“What?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“You…you just froze...you weren’t saying anything…” Dawn stuttered before bursting into tears.

Night startled. Of course if his mind was occupying the body of a Zergling, his body would be left without a governing consciousness.

He knelt down and pulled his little sister into his chest. “It’s ok, little sister. I’m sorry.”

“I was so scared.” Dawn wept. “You just stop moving. Momma hadn’t come back yet. I don’t want to be alone. Please don’t leave me alone.”

Listening to the crying four-year-old, he wanted to smack himself. He was so consumed with playing with his new power that he’d completely forgotten his sister.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, clutching her closer. When Dawn’s crying faded to sniffled, he let her go and held in front of him. “You want to hear a secret?”

It took a moment for the little girl to nod.

Smiling, Night sent a command to one of the Zerglings guarding them. The creature got up on its hind legs and tried to dance. Within two seconds it toppled over and fell onto its back. It got the desire effect however. A giggle burst out of Dawn.

“I can control all of these creatures,” Night said. “I can also see and hear everything they do. As long as one of them is with you, I am always by your side.”

Dawn sniffled once more before hugging him, slightly clinging to his neck.

When she finally let him go, he stood up and offered her a reassuring smile. “Come on, let’s go have breakfast.”

With a five-Zerglings guard, they made their way into the forest. They had little trouble making their way toward the site of the Fanged Behemoth’s demise. Dawn stared in wonder at the enormous body of the Hellite. Up until now, their mother had only brought them smaller Hellites for food. It was the first time the four-year-old had ever seen such a big Hellite.
Night ordered one of the Zerglings to tear out a chunk of meat from the Hellite. He started a fire and began to roast the meat. Their meal was relatively uneventful saved for the separated arrival of a level two Hellite and three level one Hellites who were drawn to the scent of blood. Their uninvited visitors were quickly torn to pieces by the Zergling swarm.

As they ate, Night sent out ten Zerglings to search the forest for his mother. She had been gone for a day now. It wasn’t unprecedented but it was very rare. He was worried. In the past, whenever she was absent for this length of time, she always came back injured. 

Chapter 3: The All Seeing Eye

After their meal, there was still a lot of meat left. It was the first time either of them had ever had an excess of food and Night wasn’t sure what to do. They didn’t have any way to preserve the meat and it would be waste just to throw it away.

After a bit of consideration, Night decided to bring the Hellite corpses back to the hatchery and decide there. Once that decision was made, another problem presented itself: how were they supposed to bring the Hellite bodies back to the hatchery? Zerglings were ferocious warriors but they were ill-designed to move resource.

Resource. The word brought the Zerg Drones to mind. Though in the game Drones could only collect crystals, Night felt that a few Drones could solve his problem. It was an instinctive awareness. Night was beginning to think that his subconscious had a far better understanding of the Zerg Collective than he did.

The thought of Drones brought the information to his conscious mind.

Drone: Basic worker unit. Cost: 1 unit of bio energy.

Currently, the Collective Stored Bio Energy was two, enough to morph two Drones. After a moment of hesitation, he sent out the order to morph two Drones. He felt a flicker in his mind, a confirmation that the Collective was carrying out his will.

As they waited, Dawn seemed to begin to get used to the Zerglings. Curious, she wandered toward one of the Zerglings and began to examine it. Night sent a command for the Zergling to remain still, letting his sister inspect the creature to her heart’s contend.

They were there for an hour, during which one more level two Hellites and six level one Hellites were drawn to the area by the scent of blood. The five Zerglings easily tore the Hellites apart, soaking the area in blood.

After an hour, the two Drones arrived at the area. The Drones looked like tail-less scorpions with a pair of membrane wings on either side, connecting their pincers to their body. Not counting the membrane wings, a Drone was twice the size of a Zergling.

Night sent them an order to bring the Hellites carcasses back to the hatchery, not having a clue on how the Drones would go about obeying him. He watched in fascination as the Drones went to the lifeless body of the Fang Behemoth. Their pincers easily pierced the creature body, cutting through hide, flesh, and snapping apart bones. Each Drone cut out a chunk of meat three times its size and placed the package on its back. With that complete, the Drones turned and headed back in the direction of the hatchery.

Curious, Night took his sister’s hand and followed the Drones. Unlike the games where the Drone’s membrane wings were naught but decoration, in real life, the membrane wings acted to turn the Drone into a dish. More than that, Night saw some moisture on the membrane wings. Considering the fact that the package did not jostle in the least even though the Drones were moving through some very uneven terrain, he guessed that the moisture was some kind of adhesive fluid. Of course, fluidity of the Drones’ movements did not hurt; their numerous legs gave the illusion that the Drones were gliding along the ground.

They arrived at the hatchery without incident. There were already dozen of larvae scurrying aimlessly around the immediate area of the hatchery, making it seemed like a bustling hive. Dawn didn’t seem to be bothered by the skittering bugs and Night thanked god for small favor. The Zerg would be their tool for a better life and it would be a lot easier if his family wasn’t creep out by them.

Night watched the Drones entered the hatchery and came out a minute later, their backs free of the Hellite flesh. In his mind, the Collective Stored Bio Energy went up one unit. Without pausing, the Drones entered the forest in the direction of the Hellite bodies.

When the Drones were gone, Night turned his eyes onto the Hatchery. In the tumult of the morning, he hadn’t had a chance to see what was inside the hatchery yet.

With nothing better to do, Night led his sister into one of the entrances of the Hatchery. The tunnel led upward and was circular, about ten feet in diameter. They followed the tunnel until it ended into a large chamber. The fleshy ceiling of the hatchery was about fifteen feet above their head. In the middle of the chamber was a large pool of bluish liquid nearly thirty feet deep. The liquid was clear enough that he could see to the bottom of the pool.

Looking into the pool, he saw his reflection for the first time since awakening. His face surprised him, because it was his face. Night’s face was virtually identical to Nathan. Two people, both in their late teens, living on two planets god only know how far apart shared the same face who suddenly found themselves sharing the same body. For the first time, he felt the vague shadow of some bigger plan by some powerful force in the depth of the universe. It was the Voice. Was his entire life a part of some scheme conceived by the owner of the Voice?

Night looked around. This place would make a great home. It was certainly quite a lot better than their cave. Instinctively, he knew that the Hatchery was a living being in and of itself and was able to regulate its internal temperature according to his will. What made him curious was that the entire chamber was empty and there was nothing in the pool. Where did the Hellite meat the Drones had collected go?

His question was answered by the return of his Drones with another package of Hellite flesh. They went to the edge of the pool and dropped the flesh into the water. Night watched as the flesh sank into the water and dissolved within seconds, bones and all. In his mind the Collective Stored Bio Energy increased by another unit. He guessed that the pool’s purpose was to dissolve organic matter and convert it into bio energy.

The next time the Drones returned, he ordered one of them to cut off a chunk of meat about half of his size. He then ordered to Drone to bring that chunk to the wall and sent out a command for the Hatcher to preserve the flesh. A transparent fleshy membrane grew out of the wall and encased the Hellite flesh. Within a few seconds, he could see the flesh turned blue as it froze. He instinctively knew that, at his command, the Hatchery could raise the temperature inside the pouch high enough to burn the flesh to ash. He wished he knew that sooner. It would safe him the trouble of having to start a fire and roasting their meal.

These subconscious bits of information were beginning to bother him. He couldn’t riffle through them as will. When they appeared, they wouldn’t be clear, just an impression, like a whisper from his subconscious. For the first time, he wished that there was some way he could talk to the voice that gave him this power. If he could ask the voice some questions, it would greatly increase his understanding of the Zerg and his subsequent control of the Collective.

Sighing, he put such thing out of his mind. There was no point in dwelling on thing he could do nothing about. His most immediate concern was finding his mother. The Zerglings he had sent out couldn’t find a trace of his mother. Even though the people said that ‘no news is good news’, he didn’t feel comforted.

A thought appear in his mind; he needed an Overlord. Immediately, the information appeared in his mind.

Overlord: Higher intelligent commander and carrier. Cost: 15 units of bio energy.

The cost of the Overlord shocked him. In the game, an Overlord cost one hundred minerals, which was only four times the cost of a single Zergling. Why did his Overlord cost so much more?

This was a problem. The Collective Stored Bio Energy was only two, and his own reserve of bio energy was only one.

Before he could consider his problem, there was a tug on his mind. One of his Drones was being attack. He felt a flicker of irritation. He had too few units. A single loss was a sizable decrease of power for the Collective.

With a thought, he sent the five available Zerglings to help the Drone. His sister and he didn’t need the guard; they should be safe within the Hatchery since he could close the Hatchery’s entrances with a thought. How he would love to morph a few more Zerglings and Drones but he needed to save his resource for an Overlord. A sense of frustration filled him along with a tremendous desire to increase the size of the swarm.

Within a minute, the Zerglings sent back confirmation that they had entered battle. Night’s mind jump into one of the Zerglings for a few moments to see a large cat-like Hellite being tore apart by four Zerglings. He recognized the creature as a level one Hellite called a Gray Fur. He also saw the injured Drone. One of the creature’s pincers was broken and the membrane wings were ripped, but its good pincer was holding onto a severed leg of the Hellite. A pincer for a leg. It was a good display of the Drone’s combat ability. In the few seconds that he stayed in the mind of the Zergling, he saw the Drone’s wounds healing at a noticeable rate. In the game, one of the Zerg’s advantages was self regeneration. It would seem that that advantage was even stronger in real life.

His survey of the battlefield only took a few seconds, not enough time for Dawn to notice.

“Dawn,” he called. “Don’t touch the water.”

His sister had wandered to the edge of the pool and peering into the water. It was a preemptive warning. He knew for a fact that the water wouldn’t hurt him, but he didn’t know how it would affect a normal human like Dawn. Once again, he wondered what he was. Why did he keep thinking of his sister as a normal human?

With nothing else to do, Night sat down and waited. The Drones came and went. Under the protection of the Zerglings, they were no longer harmed by the Hellites that were attractive to the blood of their packages.

On one of the trip back, one of the Drones glided over to him and held out a small brown crystal in its pincer. Night could feel the Drone telepathically asking him what to do with the crystal. He took the crystal and ordered the Drone back to its duty.

Holding the crystal in his palm, he examined it. He had heard about such thing but he had never seen it before. A Hellite Core, a crystallization of a Hellite’s energy, only found in a level three Hellites and up.

It was said that Hellites and Magic Users were divided into seven elements: fire, water, earth, wind, lightning, light, and shadow. It was said that Magic Users who possessed a Hellite Core of the same element as them could absorb the energy of the core, replenishing their own energy, even increasing their power.

“I wonder…” Night muttered.

He closed his fingers around the crystal. There was a flare of light and Night felt a stream of heat running up his arm and into his body. He opened his hand and the crystal was gone. In his head, the Overmind’s Bio Energy jumped to thirty-two.

Elated, he immediately placed his hand on the fleshy ground of the Hatchery and sent out a command to morph an Overlord. A stream of heat left his body and his bio energy reserve dropped by ten points. The Drones’ collecting of Hellite flesh had result in the other five points of bio energy.

It took two hours for the Overlord to complete the morph. In that time, the Drones had completed their transporting of the Hellite corpses at the Fang Behemoth sight. However, on their various trips from the Hatchery to the sight, they encounter numerous Hellites who were drawn to the scent of blood. These low level Hellites had no chance against the Zerglings accompanying the Drones so by the time they finished at the original sight, their path between the Hatchery and the site were strewed with corpses of a dozen Hellites.

Night ordered the Drones to continue their collecting work. An hour later, the Luminous Zerg Collective birthed their first Overlord.

Night felt the creature immediately and more acutely than any other creature of the swarm. If the Zerglings and Drones were candles in his mind, the Overlord was a bonfire.

“Awaiting your command, Overmind,” a deep, throaty voice echoed in his mind.

Night froze. He had no trouble guessing where the voice had come from. “You can talk?” he sent back.

“Yes, Overmind,” the Overlord answered.

Night wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Still, there was an immediate concern on hand.

He turned to his sister. “Listen, Dawn. I’m going to search for mom so I’m going to freeze for a little bit. Don’t leave the hatchery and don’t go near the pool, ok?”

Dawn bit her lips and nodded.

Night gave his sister a hug before sitting down and closing his eyes. It was just for show for his sister’s sake.

“Give me command of your body,” he sent a message to the Overlord.

“As you command, Overmind,” the Overlord answered.

Night felt the Overlord’s mind retreating and his mind taking its place. It was disorientating for a few moment before his mind take full control of the Overlord’s body. The creature was shaped like a hot air balloon with a translucent membrane wall on either side of its body. It was fifteen feet in height—not counting the limbs hanging from the bottom of its body—twenty feet long and thirty feet wide. The creature’s brain and organ only occupied an area of two feet cube. The rest of its body was hollowed. Unlike the game, Ventral Sacs didn’t need to be researched for the Overlord to transport units.

Night directed the Overlord body to rise into the air. The Overlord’s speed was very slow compared to the Zergling’s, moving at only about fifteen miles per hour. As Night rose into the sky inside the body of the Overlord, he finally understood why his subconscious wanted him to morph an Overlord.

The Overlord’s optical organs allowed it clearly seeing in all direction, observing a sphere area a fifty miles in diameter. It was as though a map had appeared in his mind, showing everything within twenty-five miles of the Overlord's body. He found when he focus on a spot, the Overlord’s gaze would zoom into that area and he could see it as though he was standing right next to it.

After a short period of time adjusting, he began to scan the forest. It didn’t go well. There were too many trees in the area. The plantations obscured most of his sight. It was even worse since he was not use to the Overlord’s sensory ability.

“Do you require assistance, Overmind?” the Overlord’s throaty voice said.

“Yes,” he answered. “I need to find my mother.”

“Mother?”

“Uh…a human woman,” he clarified.

“As you wish.”

The Overlord’s sight suddenly blurred for half a heartbeat. When it cleared, Night saw that the entire forest was glowing a soft green. Amidst the green aura of the forest, there were thousands of red shapes walking around.

“What is this?” Night asked.

“This is bio-sight, Overmind. It allowed us to identify all living creature within range,” the Overlord answered. “There are two human females to the north; one of them is injured. Is that your target, Overmind?”

Night started and turned his attention toward that direction. He saw it, the red outlines of two humans about four miles from the hatchery. The red outlines were inside a concealed cave but the Overlord’s bio-sight allowed him to see the glow straight through the rock.

The glow of one was much fainter than the other. The Overlord had said that one of them was injured. Since these were the only human within ten miles, one of the shapes must be his mother; it had to be. He just hoped that it wasn’t the injured one.

Outside, he could see a large Hellite prowling the area. It seemed to be searching for something.

Chapter 4: Glory to the Queen

Night jumped back into his body. He immediately ordered the ten searching Zerglings to converge on the area and kill the prowling Hellite. He didn’t know what kind of Hellite it was or how strong it was but at this point, he didn’t care.

He got up. “Come on,” he said to his sister. “I think I found mother.”

Dawn’s face lit up immediately.

Night took his sister’s hand and left the Hatchery. On his order, the Drones and their five-Zerglings guard were outside, waiting for them.

“Get on, Dawn,” he said, waving one of the Drones over.

Dawn scrambled onto the creature without protest and Night climbed onto the one. He felt a bit of moisture gluing him to the creature’s back, securing him there. It didn’t feel wet or sticky. It was more like sitting on a layer of cool gel.

He sent a silent command and they all headed out. The Drones’ maximum speed may not be as fast as the Zerglings’ but they still moved much faster than either Night or Dawn. By his estimation, the Drones’ could reach up to thirty miles an hour; the Zerglings could double that.

Within a few minutes, they arrived at the site. Night saw ten Zerglings milling about the body of a large Hellite. The creature was so ravaged by the Zergling group that Night couldn’t identify what kind of Hellite it was.

Not giving the creature much thought, Night searched the area. He found the entrance to a cave behind a large bush of Haven Breath. Haven breath was a type of shrubbery with razor-edged leaves. They weren’t edible but the pungent scent they gave off messed with the Hellites’ sense of smell. For the humans living in the wild, Haven Breath was an extremely vital plant. All children were taught to identify the plant as soon as possible.

With a silent command to the Drones, he felt the adhesive dissolved, leaving no traces behind. Night and Dawn leapt off the Drones and entered the cave. Night order ten Zerglings to guard the entrance and the other five along with the Drones to accompany him and his sister.

They had little trouble finding the women within. One of them was a stranger, a little shorter than Night with long brown hair Her clothes were made of dried and cured Hellite’s hide, same as anyone who lived in the wide but her face was covered. She was hovering over an unconscious woman lying on a patch of hide.

Night was elated and horrified. The woman on the ground was his mother. She was unconscious and her left arm was missing. Her wound was covered by a hasty bandage job of hide. The hide was soaked with dried blood but it was no longer bleeding.

When they entered, the brown-haired woman looked up and her eyes widened in fear at the sight of the Zerglings and the Drones.

“Momma!” Dawn cried as soon as she saw her and rushed to their mother’s side. “Momma! Momma!” She was crying hysterically, shaking their mother.

“Dawn, don’t!” Night said, running to his sister and pulling her back. He knew enough not to shake an unconscious injured person.

“Momma’s dead! Momma’s dead!” Dawn was crying and struggling in his grasp.

“No!” he snapped. “She’s not dead. I won’t allow it.”

Dawn stopped struggling but she was still crying.

Night pulled his sister into his chest. “It’s ok, Dawn. Mom will be ok. I promise.”

He tried to protect a calmness and confidence he did not feel.

“You are Gemma’s children, then?” the brown-haired woman said.

“Yes,” Night said. “Can you tell me what had happened?”

“I found her yesterday, injured and fleeing from a Hellite. I took her into this cave and tended to her wound as best I could. Thankfully, the Haven Breath masked the scent of blood.”

The woman’s explanation was simple enough but Night could guess how dangerous the situation had been. He felt a wave of intense gratitude toward the woman. Life in the wild was so difficult that the vast majority of people never extended a helping hand to other. If not for the woman, he had no doubt that his mother would have died.

He released his sister and walked over to his mother. As carefully as he could, he scooped her up and placed her on the back of one of the Drones. He ushered his sister on to the back of the other Drone before turning to the brown-haired woman.

“You have my eternal gratitude,” he said. “If you ever have a need for anything, head south until you come upon mass of purple gel covering the ground. I will know as soon as you step onto the Gel.”

He joined his sister on the Drone, and their group left the cave, heading back toward the Hatchery.

On the way back, Night was consume with guilt. All of this had happened because of a single comment from him. If he had just kept his mouth shut. If only he knew that he could spawn the Zerg race. None of this should have happened.

He will save his mother even if it killed him.

The vow brought a measure of clarity. He needed to find a way, but how? He knew nothing of first aid. On Earth, he had barely finished high school. He hadn’t even chosen his major for college yet. The memories of his life on Luminous gave some insights on how to treat wound but Gemma’s injuries were beyond his ability.

He needed a Queen.

The thought popped into his head latched itself there. In Starcraft II, the Zerg Queen unit possessed an ability called Transfusion that could restore the life of any biological unit. On theory, it should work on human. In any case, a Queen was his mother’s only chance. He examined the information about the Queen unit that had appeared in his head.

Queen: High intelligent genetic manipulator and psionic unit. Cost: 20 units of bio energy.

‘High intelligent’. The Overlord had the same description, suggesting that the Queen would have its own personality. It was not something Drake could consider at the moment. He wasn’t even fazed by the high cost a Queen. He was simply grateful that he had enough.

As soon as they got back to the Hatchery, he ordered the morph of a queen. He cursed when the information in his head told him that a Queen needed six hours to morph. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he ordered the Drone to take his mother into the hatchery. Due to the fact that it was a living being, the inside of the Hatchery was all but free of microbes, it would be far better for Gemma to be in there. There was nothing he could do but pray that his mother could last that long.

The next six hours was hell for him. Dawn cried for nearly an hour before falling into an exhausted sleep. Gemma seemed to grow weaker with each passing minute. After six hours, she barely had a pulse. Night nearly cried in relief when he received the telepathic signal that a Queen had been born.

He summoned the creature immediately and the Queen emerged from the one of the entrance tunnels a few second later. The queen did not look anything like what Night expected. It did not have the bloated insect body of the Queens in Starcraft II nor did it look like the flying umbrella like the Queen unit of Starcraft I. The creature looked like a beautiful, curvy woman wearing a suit of carapace scales. Two skeletal wings extended from her back.

Upon first seeing her, Night felt a chill. The creature looked unmistakably like one of the most famous and arguably the most feared person in the Starcraft Universe: Sarah Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades.

“Greeting, Overmind,” the Queen said. She actually spoke instead of using telepathy like the Overlord. Her voice was smooth and melodious. If Night wasn’t looking straight at her, he could have sworn that he was speaking to a normal human.

“Later,” Night said and indicated his Gemma. “Can you help my mother?”

The Queen smiled a deceptively gentle smile. “Of course, Overmind.”

She held up her hand and there was a soft red flare. The next moment, a reddish glow encased Gemma like a cocoon, fading a second later. Night held his breath. He exhaled when Gemma began to stirred and rushed to his mother’s side.

“Mom?” he whispered.

Gemma’s eyes fluttered open and she turned to him. “Night? What happened?” She looked around the interior of the Hatchery. “Where are we?”

He couldn’t help a laugh. “It’s a long story. How do you feel?”

“I’m ok, maybe a bit weak.”

“Let’s get some food into you.”

“Wait, where’s your sister?”

Night gestured to the base of the wall. “She’s sleeping. She kind got a little hysterical when we found you. Kinda cried herself to sleep.”

Gemma frowned at him and Night was contrite. He did feel responsible for everything that had happened.

Night walked to the fleshy pouch that contained the Hellite meat from earlier in the day and sent the Hatchery a command. The frozen meat defrosted within a second and was thoroughly cooked in the next. Whatever else about the Zerg, Night had to admit that their Hatchery work a lot better than a microwave.

He brought the chunk of cooked flesh to his mother, barely noticing the scalding heat. Sitting down next to his mother, he tore the flesh into small strips and handed them to his mother. The Hatchery’s cooking ability was extremely good. The meat was extremely tender, fairly falling apart in his hand.

They still had half a pouch of water. It was adequate for the moment. Night knew that there was a river to the east of their current position. He should probably secure a path to the river, ensuring a source of drinking water.

On Luminous, all bodies of water were danger zones. Rivers and lakes saw a lot of Hellite traffic. To get water, a large force was necessary. In lieu of that, stealth and extreme caution were required. In many ways, drinking water was even more difficult to come by than food.

“How long had I been gone?” Gemma voiced interrupted his thought.

“You left yesterday morning,” Night answered.

Gemma took a moment to absorb this. “What is this place?”

Night exhaled. This was going to take some explaining, and he had no intention of hiding thing from his mother. “After you left yesterday, I heard a voice in my head asking me if I wanted power. I said yes and the result is that I am now the Overmind of the Zerg.” He didn’t mention that, on some level, he felt as though he had just made a deal with the devil.

“Overmind?” Gemma looked at him, her forehead crinkling slightly.

“The Overmind is the governing consciousness of the Zerg.”

Gemma blinked twice, a look of confusion on her face. “And the Zerg is….?”

“The Zerg is a race of very evolved biological creatures whose strength lies in their overwhelming number. It is said that the Zerg is a specie that possessed all the fury of Nature and none of her mercy.” He laughed grimly. “Not that Nature is all that merciful.” The Hellites was a very good example of how vicious and cruel Nature could be.

“Wh…uh…what?” his mother said.

Night sighed. “Ok, I’ll simplify it. For some reason that I don’t really know or understand, I am in control of an extremely deadly race of creatures.”

“And…and this place?”

“This place is called a Hatchery. It is the main headquarter of the Zerg specie. The entire building is a living creature that birth larva which can then be morph into Zerg creatures.”

Gemma eyes widened. She looked from the blue pool back to the ceiling high above them. She looked stunned and he could sympathize.

“Momma?” a young voice pulled drew their attention. They looked over to Dawn who cried out and leapt into Gemma’s chest. “Momma! Momma!”

Gemma smiled and patted the little girl’s hair. “Hi, sweetie.”

“You’re ok.”

Gemma kissed her daughter’s cheek and hugged the four-year-old close.

“Momma, where’s your arm?”

Both Night and Gemma flinched at the question.

There was a few seconds of indecision before Gemma sighed and said, “I lost it, sweetie.”

“Where? Big brother can go get it back. He has a lot of strong pets.”

Gemma said nothing. She simply held her little girl close.

Night got up and walked to the Queen side. “Can you restore her arm?” he whispered.

“Not yet, Overmind,” the Queen answered. “I need access to the Roaches’ genetic information. Only then can I use the Roaches’ regenerative ability to regrow her limb.”

Night was elated. There was hope after all. “Don’t the Zerglings and the Drones also possess the ability to regenerate? Can’t you use their genetic information?”

“No, Overmind. Your mother is human. The Zerg’s genetic abilities will be greatly diminished on her person. Only the Roaches’ genetic information is potent enough to make her whole. The alternative would be to graph Zerg genetic information onto her genetic structure, turning her into a hybrid. This would permanently grant her the Roaches’ regenerative ability. Unfortunately, I do not possess this ability at the current time.”

Night sighed in acceptance. It made sense. Roaches had the most extreme regenerative ability among the Zerg Collective.

“How do we unlock the Roaches’ genetic information?” Night asked.

“The Collective needs to evolve to stage two. Stage two will unlock the Roaches, Hydralisks, and Banelings genetic information,” the Queen answered.

Night digested the information. He was very glad for the existence of the Queen. She seemed to possess extensive understanding of the Zerg Collective. He was finally able to get all the information he needed. All he had to do was ask the right question.

“Do you have a name?” Night asked the Queen.

“No, Overmind.”

“Does the name Sarah Kerrigan means anything to you?”

The queen considered it for a moment. “No, Overmind.”

Night was relieved. In Starcraft canon, Sarah Kerrigan murdered the Overmind in power and took over the Zerg Collective. He really didn’t want to go down that particular road.

“Eve,” Night said. “That shall be your name.” For a moment, he was tempted to let the Queen assumed the name Sarah Kerrigan, but he wished to distance himself from the human/Zerg hybrid as much as possible.

“As you wish, Overmind,” the Queen said.

She may be a creature of higher intelligence but she seemed to have as much freewill as one of the Drone. Night preferred it this way. The Zerg was his family’s hope for a long and better life; he didn’t want anything to jeopardize that.

He saw his sister walking toward him.

“Momma said that there’s no way to get her arm back,” Dawn said, her bright eyes stared at him expectantly. He could see in her gaze a blind faith that wasn’t there yesterday, and it was growing.

He knelt down and smiled. “It’s ok. I’ll get her a new one.”

“Night!” Gemma remonstrated, scowling at him.

Night looked up at his mother. She must be thinking that he was lying to his sister, giving the little girl false hope. “I will, mother. I swear it.”

Gemma seemed surprised by the conviction in his voice.

And he was resolute. Whether to make his mother whole or increase his family’s of survival in this hostile world, the Zerg Collective must evolve.

pretty cool story East
how high up do the hellites levels go cause the zerglings have only faced level 4 as the highest right so could they take on like level 10?

The level of Hellites, Magic Users, and Force Users is a simplistic classification system that the people on Luminous came up with. Level ten is the highest. A level ten Hellite had never been seen and there is a record of a level nine Hellite appearing about two hundred years back. Level eight Hellites exist in the deep forest but their number is unconfirmed. A level eight Hellite had the power to level cities; that's why the deep forest is forbidden. As for the human population, there is rumor of four level ten Force Users and one level nine Magic User in the most powerful city on Luminous, Heaven Road.

cool can't wait for the next part of your story to come out
ultras vs level 10 hellite that would be cool

Chapter 5: Contact with Civilization

Under Night’s directive, the Luminous Zerg Collective entered a stage of rapid expansion. From Eve, Night learned of the existence of the Creep Colony, a structure of Starcraft I. Each Creep Colony cost twenty five units of bio energy and spread the creep carpet for an additional mile.

The Creep Colonies were unlike that of the game. They were shaped like a giant fleshy lotus flowers. They possessed defensive capability, emitting globs of acid spores at their target much like the Spore Colonies of Starcraft I. Unlike the Spore Colonies, which could only attack air targets, the Creep Colonies’ corrosive spores could attacked both air and ground targets within a mile and a half of it.

Instead of being a standalone living entity like in Starcraft canon, the creep carpet was an extension of the hatchery. According to Eve, the creep was what absorbed solar energy which was then channel to the hatchery to be converted to bio energy. The bigger the creep carpet, the more solar energy was collected and, as a result, the more bio energy was acquired each day. Night had no trouble understanding the principle. It was no difference than solar panels.

Night learned that it was the creep that sustained the Zerg swarm. Zerg units were omnivore, but their preferred food was the creep. A single Zerg unit only needed a chunk of creep the size of a fist per month. Eve told him that a single unit of Bio energy could be converted into enough creep to sustain several thousand Zerg creatures for a year.

Night also learned of the creep’s effects on plant life. In the game, the Zerg’s creep was poison to plant life. What Night observed, however, was completely different. He observed the plants on the creep grew vibrant within days. According to Eve, the creep had incorporated the trees into the energy collecting network. The creep nourished the plants while increasing their absorption of solar energy, siphoning the excess. The creep was actually more effective when combine with lush plant life.

The plentiful plants provided them with quite a bit of wild vegetables and fruits, enhancing their diet. Night was grateful. Dawn needed a healthy diet.

He was beginning to feel like a parent, worrying about whether or not his sister was getting enough vegetable.

In the days after they found their mother, though they had no shortage of food, Dawn developed a liking to the creep. Even Gemma liked to use the creep as a snack. Night didn’t really mind. The creep tasted much like jell-o and Eve told him that the creep was completely nontoxic to humans. It wasn’t just them; even the Hellite developed a taste for the creep. Of course, most of them didn’t survive such a meal, falling victim to patrolling Zerglings. This provided Night with a steady stream of Hellite corpse.

Within ten days, the number of Zerglings grew from fifteen to five hundreds, and the number of Drones increased to fifty. The creep carpet area was under constant surveillance of the Overlords who directed the Zerlings to any Hellite they spotted on the creep.

After a few battle, Night estimated that the Zergling’s combat ability was roughly equal to a level two Hellite. Of course, considering the viciousness of a Zergling along with the fact that they seemed to be incapable of feeling any fear or hesitation, a lone Zergling could severely injured a level three Hellite. Even a level four Hellite was hard-pressed to enter combat with a Zergling and remained unscathed. In pact, their combat ability increased exponentially.

Within ten days, seven level four Hellites fell with bare minimum losses on the side of the Zerg; level three Hellites casualty numbered in the dozens and Night didn’t even bother counting level one and two Hellites.

According the Eve, even the few losses when the Zerg entered combat with level four Hellites would have been averted if the Overlords had been allowed to direct the Zerglings. The Overlords’ brains were designed to calculate and consolidate combat information extremely quickly and because of their powerful telepathic power, they could directly command the Zerglings, greatly increasing the creatures efficiently. Night promptly handed the control of the Zerglings to his Overlords, relaying all his order through the floating creatures

The Zerg’s expansion was largely fueled by the Hellites’ bodies and cores. Night learned that the hatchery’s pool could dissolved Hellite cores and absorbed the energy within. He also learned the conversion rate of Hellite cores. A level three Hellite core provide about thirty to forty units of bio energy. A level four core provide about one fifty to one seventy.

Night kept a lot of the Zerglings’ kills as food. The inside wall of the hatchery was soon covered with seal pouches preserving Hellite flesh.

In ten days, the creep carpet expanded to a circular area twenty miles in diameter, encompassing the cave of the woman who had saved his mother and extending beyond the River to the east. Night morphed four more Overlords, positioning one near the cave of the brown-haired woman and the other near the river.

The remaining two Overlords joined the original Overlord, hovering near the hatchery. An Overlord’s body contained a hollow section fifteen feet high, twenty feet long, and thirty feet wide. The open space was designed for transport but it also made a wonderful bedroom. Night’s initial plan of using the hatchery as sleeping quarters was quickly abandoned when he found out that the pool inside the hatchery could dissolve the flesh of a living human. He feared his little sister rolling over in her sleep and accidently falling into the water.

The Overlord also possessed the ability to regulate their internal temperature, making them wonderful living quarters. They also had an ability that both his mother and sister adored. The Overlords could project the immediate environment onto the wall, ceiling, and floor of their internal cavity. When this ability was activated, the Overlords’ occupants could see everything around them. The wall, ceiling, and floor would look as though they had simply disappeared.

Once Dawn got use to the illusion that she was simply floating in midair and after the Overlord carried her into the clouds, it was next to impossible to drag her out of an Overlord. She spent most of her time up in the clouds. Though that was still within the firing range of the Creep Colonies and flying Hellites were very rare, it still made Night a bit nervous to have his sister up so high.

He tried to directly order the Overlords not to carry her that high, but Dawn ran crying to their mother who proceeded in telling Night that he was paranoid. He knew that her decision was due, in no small part, to the fact that she too was addicted to ‘cloud swimming’ as they called it. He could sympathize with their infatuation. They’d had lived most of their lives being bound to a small cave due to necessity; compared to that, the sense of freedom they found in flying was intoxicating. He loathed to admit it but he himself love to occupied an Overlord’s mind and float among the cloud.

Between the two of them, he was outvoted and had to acquiesce. Though he was the Overmind and his words were law to the swarm, his family was a bit trickier. He couldn’t rule his own mother and sister with an iron fist. With no other choice, he ordered the Overlords never to carry his mother or sister out of the range of the Creep Colonies and to descend to the ground immediately upon spotting any airborne object that was not Zerg..

His initial plan was to assign an Overlord to his mother and another to his sister but the four-year-old refused to sleep alone. The result of which was his mother sharing an Overlord with his sister and an Overlord went unused.

His Zerglings along with the Creep Colonies kept the creep carpet free of Hellites, providing his family with a large open area where they can travel without fear, an unheard of luxury, one that they didn’t really indulged in, preferring to spend their time flying than strolling.

His Zerglings also claimed a sizable section of the river, providing all of them with a secure source of water. Soon, both his mother and sister developed the habit of bathing regularly in the river. Even the brown-haired woman, whose name Night learned was Emily, frequently joined his mother and sister.

After their experience, Gemma and Emily became very closed friends. With Night’s Zerglings providing them with an abundance of food, Gemma and Emily had nothing to do with their days. After a few days, Emily began to teach Night and his family the writing system of Luminous. Night was a little surprise; the humans living in the wild were, for the most part, illiterate. Such tool of civilization had no use out here among the Hellites.

Night also learned that Emily was a Magic User; her element was lightning. Seeing a Magic User living the wild was exceptionally rare. A Magic User, even a level one, was very sought after by human settlements and their position would be relatively exalted. A Magic User would not live out in the wild without one hell of a reason. Night often wondered what Emily’s reason was.

More and more, he felt that there was more to Emily, some unspoken secret to the woman whose face he still hadn’t seen.

It was two weeks later when his Overlord spotted ten men heading toward them. Through the Overlord’s sight, Night could see that all the men were armed with steel swords.

Metal weapons were mostly exclusive to cities and outpost towns; people in wild, for the most part, used part of Hellites that they had slain. Night knew that there was a town about thirty miles east of the river, but neither he nor his mother had ever been there. Thirty miles for his mother was a gamble that heavily favored the house. As for him, before his Zerg, just coming to the river was suicide.

What were the men doing here? They had never come this far before.

Upon seeing the men, Night immediately sent Eve along with a swarm of two hundred Zerglings to intercept. In the wild, humans were preyed upon by other humans almost of much Hellites. Gemma had had her kills stolen more than once in the past.

Worse than that, slavery was acceptable in many towns and cities. Night and his sister had narrowly escaped being abducted many times in the past. Even their mother had a few close calls.

As far Night knew, the outpost town to the east didn’t practice slavery, though he couldn’t be sure. He felt a flicker of fury. If this was a slave hunting party, Night swore to whatever god was watching, they would not leave his territory.

Through his Overlord, Night saw the men hesitated for a moment before stepping onto the creep carpet. He felt an urge to order the death. They may be human but a part of Night could only think of them as invaders.

He watched as Eve met the men at the eastern bank of the river. Night’s mind jumped from the Overlord to Eve. In the last few days, he had learned how to jump into his Zerg creatures but taking an observer role, seeing and hearing what the Zerg creature did but still leaving the original consciousness to govern the body.

Through Eve’s eyes, Night watched as the men froze when they saw Eve waiting for them by the river. He saw a short but muscular man with a goatee eyeing Eve with interest, even desire. Night didn’t blame the man. Eve could fold her wings onto her back, which she did at all time outside of battle. Without her wings, she simply looked like a very beautiful woman and the carapace scales that covered her body did nothing to hide her figure.

Night felt a touch of pity for the man. He knew the truth behind that beautiful face. If that man ever succeeded in getting Eve into bed, the result would be a night he would never forget, assuming he could even survive. Coitus with a Zerg Queen couldn’t possibly be pleasant, no matter how good she looked.

“Why have you come onto our land?” Eve asked the men.

The short man, who night assumed was the leader, stepped forward. “We come from Haven Field. We are here to find a female.”

Feeling Night’s anger, Eve’s wings began to unfurl. She stood on the bank of the river like an angle of hell. Night knew that all it would take was a thought from him. All Eve needed was a single order from her Overmind and she would rip the man to pieces, and he was tempted to give her that order. Still, he thought prudent was better. He didn’t want an unnecessary war.

At the appearance of Eve’s wings, the men’s eyes widened. They took a step back and drew their weapons. Night didn’t try to stop them. Steel weapons would not do them any good. The scythes of a Zergling could tear through the Terran composite Neosteel and Protoss’s psionic shield, given time. Even if the men were wearing full suits of armor, Night had no doubt that the two hundred Zerglings in the immediate area could tear them to pieces.

“Are you slavers?” Eve conveyed Night’s question to the men. There was no attempt to hide the threat in her voice.

The leader bristled at Eve’s tone and part of Night hoped he would make a move. He was somewhat disappointed when the leader seemed to gain control of himself.

“We are looking for a female named Emily,” the leader said.

Night felt a little irked. There was an arrogant edge to the man’s voice that he did not like. He knew it was normal; people who lived in cities and outpost towns tended to look down upon people living in the wild.

Still, they knew Emily.

“Come with me,” Eve told them.

Eve led them across the river, toward the hatchery. The men followed her with little hesitation. Considered that they were from an outpost town, all of the men must be at least a level three Force Users. Night guessed that there was no Magic User in their rank because Magic User did not carry swords. Their confidence wasn’t exactly unfounded, and if they weren’t facing the Zerg, their group would be a considerable combat force.

As Eve led them toward the hatchery, Night’s mind jumped to the Overlord stationed just outside of Emily’s cave.

“Emily,” he used the Overlord telepathic power to send a call to the woman.

It was an ability of the Overlord that Night had learned of recently. It seemed that the Overlords’ telepathic power allowed them to project their thoughts to anyone. At the moment, the range of their thought projection ability to anyone beside Night was about two hundred and fifty yards, but their ability could bypass virtually any physical matter. Eve told him that, as the Collective evolved so will the Overlords’ psychic power.

From the cave, a veiled figure emerged. Night loved to watch Emily walked. It was the way she moved; there was a grace and fluidity to Emily that Night found enchanting.

“Night?” Emily said.

“Why do you always ask that? Do you know anyone else who could take over the mind of an Overlord?” Night projected.

Emily rolled her eyes. “Do you want something or are you just bored?”

Night and Emily had become close these recent days. Night would have never thought it but being a Zerg Overmind was quite boring. All he did was wait for the bio-energy reserve to increase. Battles and clearing of the battlefields were directed by the Overlords and Eve kept an eye on the Collective, ready to inform Night of any problem that arises. There was really nothing for needed Night attention. As such, he had to find some way to fill his free time and Emily was a wonderful distraction. They spent a lot of time these last two weeks just talking.

Being a Magic User, Emily was very well travel, at least compared to Gemma or Night. Nathan’s memories, however, offered a wide range of topic. Living on Earth with cable television and easy access to the Internet, he never realized how much he picked up. He could more than hold his own against Emily in a conversation. Unfortunately, most of their talks tended to degenerate into a philosophical debate which often turned into an argument. Ironically, though Emily grew up on this hostile world, she was very kind, opposing the survival-of-the-fittest mentality that ruled this world. Nathan, on the other hand, was somewhat desensitized by cable TV and video games so he was not all that bother with this particular aspect of Luminous. Theirs was a close relationship based mostly on disputes.

“A group of men has come looking for you,” Night projected.

Emily seemed startled by the news. “Did they say why?”

“No, and I didn’t ask. They jackasses so I try to speak to them as little as possible. Is everything ok? I could drive them away if you want.”

“No, it’s alright,” Emily whispered. “Can’t run forever, I suppose.”

“What?”

“It’s nothing. I’ll go meet them.”

There was a strange shadow in Emily’s eyes. She seemed…resigned and a little afraid. Night didn’t miss it. Back at the hatchery, he frowned.

“Eve is leading them to the hatchery,” Night projected.

Emily froze. “What? No! You can’t let them come that far into your territory. What about Gemma and Dawn?”

“That’s a rather extreme reaction. Is there anything I should know about?”

“It…it doesn’t concern you.”

“I disagree.” Night projected and returned to his body.

He stepped out of the hatchery to wait. The practical part of his mind wanted to order the death of the men immediately, but he ignored it. He felt confidence that he could handle whatever should arise.

Emily arrived first. Even with her face veiled, Night could tell that she was frowning at them. “Where’s Gemma and Dawn?” she said.

“Cloud swimming,” Night said in exasperation. His mother and sister would not be back for probably another hour and he was a little glad. Confident as he was, he would not risk his mother and sister. If they had been here, the men would have been dead already. As it was, the main reason he allowed them to come to the hatchery was curiosity. The men knew Emily and, lately, Night felt a compulsion to find out more about the woman though he wasn’t sure why; perhaps boredom.

“You’re paranoid, you know that?” Emily said.

He could hear the amusement in his voice. She seemed to like how protective he was of his family.

“My mom told me the same thing. What is paranoid about not wanting my family to fall to their death?”

“They are not going to fall to their death. Your Overlord aren’t exactly helpless, are they?”

Night huffed. “With their speed, they might as well be.” Night’s Overlords did have a rudimentary ability to defend themselves; unlike in the game, the Overlord’s giant limbs weren’t just for show. But they could only fight in point blank melee and Night had yet to have an opportunity to test their combat ability.

“What about your…what do you call them? Creep Colonies?”

“What about them?”

“Can’t they protect the sky?”

Night floundered for a moment and decided to go on the offensive. “I don’t understand why you keep taking their side. I admit, I’m not exactly helpless against flying enemies. Still, I would like to err on the side of caution. Isn’t this world dangerous enough? Why take unnecessary risks?”

“Said the man allowing an armed party into the heart of his territory.”

Night scoffed. “Please, they are hardly a threat.”

Emily turned serious. “Of course they are, and you must promise that whatever happened, you must not interfere.”

Night eyed her. “I can’t make that promise. If this is a meeting of peace then I will stay out of it but if they try to hurt you, I will not stand idly by.”

“You don’t understand,” Emily said. “These men are not like the lone Hellites your hounds hunt. Even if you could kill them, stronger men will come and in greater number. You must think of your own family.”

Hounds. That was what Emily called Night’s Zerglings. In some respect, he supposed that they do resembled dogs; mutated dogs from hell, but dogs nonetheless.

“I am,” Night said. “If I let anything happened to you, my mom will never let me hear the end of it, and then there my sister to contend with. She’s very taken with you, you know?”

“And for this you would start a war against an outpost town, even a city?”

“I can handle an outpost town, maybe even a city. My family? All the power in the universe won’t help me with them.”

Emily sighed and Night can hear a note of wistfulness.

“I can’t ask this of you,” she said.

“You don’t have to. You saved my mom. As far as I am concern, you are a part of this family, and I am going to protect you, whether you want me to or not.”

Emily didn’t say anything, seemingly stricken speechless.

“Our guesses have arrived,” Night said, turning.

From the trees, Eve emerged, leading a group of men.

“Welcome,” Night said.

“Is this the female called Emily?” the short leader said.

Night’s eyes narrowed. “Use the word ‘female’ one more time and we are going to have a problem.”

The leader bristled and glared at him. Night was unfazed. Somehow, it felt like an ant was glaring at him. It was difficult for care when he could have them all killed

“She is coming with us,” the leader said.

“Only if she wants to.”

The leader stiffened and placed a hand on the hilt of his sword. “I am Herod of Haven Field—”

“And this is not your little town,” Night cut him off. Under his silent order, Eve moved to Emily’s side.

“We are under order of the Blood Fang clan of the city of White Stone to bring to take the females into custody,” the leader said again.

Night glanced at Emily. Her hands were balled into fists at her side, and her eyes were fairly burning with anger.

“Good for you, but you are not taking her,” Night said.

There was a moment of silent laced with tension followed by a ringing sound as the leader’s sword left his sheath. In the next moment, all the men drew their weapons and lunged toward Emily.

Eve grabbed her and leapt backward as Night intercept the fastest man. He caught one of the man’s arms and crushed his wrist. At the same time, Night’s free hand closed into a fist and slammed into the man’s side, hurling him away; Night could feel the man’s bones shattering beneath his strike.

Night felt a sharp pain as a sword burst through his chest, impaling him from behind. He pivoted and slammed his elbow into the chest of the man behind him, shattering his rib cage.

The series of events happened within two seconds, just enough time for the Zerglings to shoot out of the forest and swarmed onto the man. There were shouts and screams. Severed limbs flew into the air, trailing blood in the atmosphere.

Individually, the men were stronger than the Zerglings but they were overwhelmed by sheer number and the ferocity of the swarm. It was a wholesale, one-sided slaughter that lasted all of thirty seconds. Afterward, the Zerglings settled into stillness.

When the battle started, he had noticed the leader retreated into the trees. Night’s mind jumped to a nearby Overlord and used the creature’s bio-sight to scan the forest. He quickly spotted the fleeing man and noticed something troubling; the trees enhanced the creep carpet’s ability to gather energy but they were obstacles that blocked the creep colonies’ lines of attack, inhibiting the creep colonies’ ability to attack ground target. Exasperated, Night ordered half of his Zerglings to pursue the man.

He jumped back into his body just as over two hundred Zerglings moved out. Emily’s concerned voice was the first thing he heard

“Are you alright?”

Night turned and saw the concern in her eyes. He followed her gaze to the steel blade protruding from his chest. He’d almost forgotten.

“Yes, actually,” he said, “and that, in and of itself, is quite disconcerting.” He turned his back to her and said over shoulder, “Could you just…”

There was a moment of hesitation before Emily pulled the sword from his body. “Are you sure you are ok?”

“Yes,” Night said, staring at his wound through the hole in his shirt. “Though I’m not sure how.” He could see his wound closing at a visible rate. He turned to Eve. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

“Nothing. You are our Overmind. You possess all the genetic information of the Collective along with all our genetic abilities. Your regenerative ability is superior even to the Roaches. As long as your bio-energy reserve is not depleted, you cannot die.”

Night was stunned by Eve’s revelation. He had never given any thought as to why he had a bio-energy reserve separate from that of the Collective. Never in his wildest dream would he imagine something like this.

A thought occurred to him. “And my strength?”

The men had been at least level three but Night had killed two of them in under two seconds.

“It is an attribute unique to the Overmind of the Collective called Bio-Resonance. As the collective grow in size, your strength will increase.”

Night was silent for a full five seconds before letting out a weak laugh. “I guess there are some perks to being a Zerg Overmind.”

He was worried. He was just run through with a sword and it didn’t even phase. Worse than that, he had just killed two people and he felt no remorse. Admittedly, growing up with cable television and video games had made Nathan jaded and Night grew up on a world where human lives were incredibly cheap. Still, he couldn’t possibility be this calloused. It must be the Overmind in him.

Even as he had this thought, a part of him whispered that he was still making excuses. In any case, he felt as though he was losing his humanity.

Inside him was the collective genetic information of the entire Zerg swarm. Could he even consider himself human anymore? If not, what is he?

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to Emily.

“You are still Night. You have a mother and a little sister. No matter what ability you possess. You are still you,” she said.

Night wondered if Magic Users could read mind. Still, her words comforted him, though they did not completely erased his worried. “I am still me, but for how long?” he asked. The question was not aimed at anyone. A part of him hoped that the being who gave him this power would answer him. He sighed when no answer came.

Chapter 6: The Might of the Swarm

A large shape appeared over their head, its shadow encompassing them. Night looked up without worry. His telepathic connection with the Collective had informed him the arrival of the creature before it was within sight. His mother and sister had returned.

Now, more than ever, he understood the value of family. His mother and sister was the anchor of his humanity. Until now, he had kept the reign on the Zerg swarm. He couldn’t deny that a part of him found the power intoxicating, especially now that he had discover the usefulness of his bio-energy reserve and his Bio-Resonant ability. A part of him wanted to let loose and order the Collective to expand and multiply as fast as possible. He had little doubt that, if he wanted, the Zerg swarm would overrun this planet within a year.

His family stayed his hand. His family deserved to be among to be among their own kind. He couldn’t let his sister grow up on a world without human. He was going to have to find a way to coexist with the humans. He may have to find a way to better the humans’ lot in life on this planet.

The Overlord landed and an opening appeared on its bulbous side. Night was quite glad that the Zerg Overlords didn’t unload by spewing out its content like in the game. He had no doubt that Dawn would be traumatized for life if she had to go through something like that.

“Big brother!” Dawn shot out of the Overlord and leapt into his arms.

Night smiled at his sister. “Did you have fun?”

Dawn nodded and clung to his neck, a big smile on her face.

Gemma stepped out of the Overlord. She frowned at the residue of the battle on the creep carpet. “Did something happen?”

“Just a few riffraff,” Night said.

Gemma arched a brow at him. “Riffraff with steel weapons?”

Night shrugged. Against the Zerg swarm, steels swords were no difference from wood spears. “I actually want to talk to you.” He put his sister down and patted her head. “Go play with Emily, ok?”

Dawn pouted but nodded.

Night watched as Emily led his little sister away and ordered Eve to go with them before entering the hatchery with his mother. They sat down by the pool and Night told her of the men and the battle, leaving out the part where he was ran through. When Night finished his tale, Gemma was silent for a few moments.

“What will you do now?” Gemma asked.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about. Emily believed that more will come and I am afraid that the current number of Zerglings will not be enough. To be safe, I would like to increase the size of the swarm. Unfortunately, this will delay the evolution of the Collective and consequently the restoration of your arm.”

Currently the Collective has a little over 2700 units of bio-energy in reserve. He wanted to increase the Zerglings’ number to three thousands. If he goes through with it, it would delay the evolution to stage two by at least half a month. This referred to an Earth’s month. A year on Luminous had ten months, each with forty-two days. People in the wild rarely kept such accurate time, measuring the years by the passing season instead. For some reason, Night was much more use to using the Earth’s base system of time measurement.

The alternative was to keep his original plan and hoped that their enemies won’t attack until the Collective evolve or, if they did, that the current number of Zerglings would be enough. At the current rate of growth and barring a surplus in Hellite cores, they would have five thousands in about twenty days. Unfortunately, that plan was at best a gamble, and even if the Collective could evolve to stage two, there won’t be any energy left to morph a bigger army.

Gemma smiled at him. “Son, she saved my life.”

Night returned her smile. He knew she would say that.

After their talk, Night order the morphing of a second hatchery and five hundred Zerglings, draining the number of larvae at his disposal. The rest of the day was uneventful. Night’s mind jumped into an Overlord once to check on his Zerglings’s pursuit of the escaped leader. The short man was still evading the Zerglings hunting him. At maximum speed, the fleeing leader was even faster than the Zerglings but Night knew that he couldn’t keep up that kind of pace forever and one of the Zerg’s claims to fame was their extraordinary stamina.

That night, he was about to go to sleep when one of his Overlord’s sent him a message. Emily had just left her cave carrying a traveling pack. Through the Overlord’s sight, he could see the woman, gazing wistfully in the direction of the hatchery, before turning and making her way into the tree. Sighing, Night directed the Overlord toward her.

“I knew you would pull something like this,” he projected.

Emily froze and turned just as the Overlord came to a hover fifteen feet from her.

“I have to go, Night. I can’t let you and your family get involved.”

“We are already involved. Even if you leave, the people who are looking for you will come here first. That is unless you turn yourself over to them, and if that is the case, I will have to come rescue you, which would be a pain. It would be a lot less trouble if you just stay.”

“You can’t fight against the might of an entire outpost town, let alone a city,” Emily protested.

“Don’t be so sure. Give me three days and I will give you a taste of the true power of the Zerg."

Emily didn’t move.

“You can go back by yourself or I can have this Overlord drags you back, kicking and screaming."

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me.” The Overlord began to inch forward. Its massive arms reaching for her.

“Alright,” Emily said through her teeth.

Bristling, she stomped back toward her cave, followed closely by the Overlord. When she reached the cave, there was dozens of Zerglings milling around.

“I’ve ordered them to stay in this area,” Night projected, “and I’ll leave the Overlord here, just in case you decide to try again.”

“Are you protecting me or keeping me prisoner?”

“A little of both,” Night said, steeping out of the trees. He had been heading toward this direction the moment he found out that Emily was trying to slip away. He had been experimenting with occupying his own body along with that of an Overlord. It took some getting used to but he was getting increasingly proficient at it. “Sorry, but I am not going to face my mother and sister after losing you. You want to leave, you need their permission.”

“I need their permission?”

Night smiled. “They have me and I can make you stay.”

Emily stared at him.

“Our lives are no longer our own. Like it or not, you are one of us now.”

Emily startled at his words. She met his smiling face for a moment before looking away but not before he saw the joy in her eyes.

With his mother’s help, Night had been able to piece together a little of Emily story. She was an orphan living in the wild before her master took her in. Unlike the western culture of earth, the word master was not a synonym for owner. The word ‘master’ was use to refer to one’s teacher. Such master-and-apprentice relationships were very rare in the wild. Most people, like Gemma, learned to wield Force or Magic by themselves.

Emily’s master had died. She didn’t talk much about the woman and they didn’t press; the subject always depressed her. Emily offered no detail about why she ended up living in the wild; they only knew that she had been living out here for a year and a half before running into Gemma.

For days, Night had seen how she gazed upon his family. It was the gaze of a child lost in the wood who suddenly saw a house in the night. He had seen how happy she was when his mother and sister included her into their family. Even when she was arguing with him, beneath the frustration, she was happy. Night knew that Emily longed for a family.

Even so, there had been a wall preventing her from fully becoming a part of their family. Perhaps losing her master had left a scar and she was afraid to go through the same pain again. Either way, this was the perfect opportunity for him to tell her that she wasn’t alone anymore.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, turning.

“Don’t you want to know why they were looking for me?” Emily said.

Night turned back to her. “Did you commit mass murder?”

“No,” she said, frowning.

“Will you hurt my mother or sister?”

“Of course not!”

“Then I know all I need to know.”

Emily stared at him. “You’re not even curious?”

Night rolled his eyes. “Of course I am curious. I’m dying to ask you.”

“But you won’t,” Emily breathed in understanding.

“If you want to tell me, you will. Beside,” he tapped the creep carpet beneath his feet, “I too have a few mysteries.”

A space of silent passed between them.

“You know,” Night said, “it would be a lot easier for me to keep an eye on you if you stay in one of the Overlords.”

“I’ll stay in my cave.”

Night sighed. He had offered her one of his Overlords a few times before and she had always turned him down. It was getting a little annoying.

“Why? The Overlord is cleaner; the inside is softer. Please, I want to understand. What make your cave so special?”

“Privacy.”

“The Overlords have plenty of privacy.”

“Not from you,” Emily said before turning and walking into her cave.

“Wait, what does that suppose to mean?” Night said but Emily was already gone.

That night, it took him an hour to fall asleep, trying to figure out what she meant. As such, he was a little cranky the next morning. To get back at Emily, he told his mother and sister what happened the night before. The effects were better than he expected. Gemma scolded her for an hour. As for Dawn, she didn’t leave Emily’s side for the next two days.

Over the next two days, Emily kept trying to explain her side to Gemma, telling Night and his mother how dangerous it would be for them if she stayed. Night was unfazed and Gemma all but ignored her.

On the morning of the third day, Emily stepped out of her cave to find Night waiting for her. Behind him, blanketing the entire area, all but spilling out from between the trees, were three thousands Zerglings. The moment Emily appeared, the Zerglings surged forward, a dark red tide of talons and teeth.

“Three days ago, you told me I can’t challenge an outpost town,” Night said. “How about now?”

Emily stared without blinking at the Zergling swarm for a full minute before she could find her voice. “Where did they all come from?” she breathed.

“I hatched them.”

“All of them? That’s not possible. There were only a few hundreds three days ago. There are thousands of them here.”

Night stepped closer to her. “This is the true might of the Zerg. If I want to, the creep carpet beneath my feet could cover this entire world and the swarm would number in the billions, killing and devouring every living creature on this planet.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I can and will protect you, even if it means going to war with a city.”

Tears of happiness glimmer in her eyes and she hastily wiped them away. “Why? We hadn’t even known each other for a month. Why would you do all this for me?”

“You saved my mother. I owe you a blood-debt.”

“You protected me three days ago. You were skewered. That kind of makes us even.”

Night laughed. “What happened that day was more my fault than anything. I let the men near the hatchery because I was curious; I wanted to know more about you. Beside, even if you count that as me saving your life, my mother’s life is worth more than yours. According to my math, I still have to save you a few hundred more times to even thing out between us.”

“Your mother’s life is worth more than mine?”

“She’s my mom. Compare to hers, your life is near worthless. I know it sounds harsh, but it is what it is.”

Emily sighed. “I suppose.”

Night turned to the east and frowned slightly before turning back to Emily. “Excuse me, there’s something I must attend to.”

Not waiting for her response, Night called an Overlord down and stepped inside. As the Overlord rose into the air, his mind jumped into a Zergling dozens of miles away.

For the past couple of days, over two hundred of his Zerglings had been tirelessly pursuing the escaped leader. Much to Night’s surprise, the short man had managed to elude the horde. The Zerglings had followed the man straight to Haven Field. Night had been keeping tab on them. When the Zerglings had sent back the first images of the distant town, he had ordered them to stop and they had been holding position about five hundred yards from the outpost town.

It was the first time Night had ever seen an outpost town. Five hundred yards away was a wall made of trees with their tips sharpened, pointing to the sky. At the base of the wall, the earth seemed to have reached up to reinforce the wooden barrier. Night had always wondered why the town on luminous had an ‘outpost’ in front. He understood now. The settlement was extremely small. Night estimated the place be only a few hundred yards in diameter. Most of the movie stars on Earth had houses bigger than this.

Night hesitated for a few moments before ordering the Zerglings to attack. Emily had been right. Up until now, all his Zerglings ever faced were lone Hellites. He wanted to assess the Zerglings’ effectiveness against an organized force.

His mind retreated to an observer role inside of the Zergling he was occupying and the creature joined the pact. Like a pack of hounds, the Zerglings close the distance to the outpost town with shocking speed.

From atop the battlement, a large bolt of shadow energy and two bolts of fire flew down and consume three Zerglings. Before a second volley, the Zerglings collided with the wall. Their scythes tore through the wall of wood and earth like it was made out of paper. A hole quickly appeared in the barrier and the Zerglings swarmed in.

Behind the wooden wall, a dozen Force Users wielded steel weapons stood against the swarm and was quickly consumed by the Zerglings. The Force Users managed to take half a dozen Zerglings with them.

From above them, three bolt of energy rained down along with two blades of what appeared to be compressed air. Seven Zerglings fell beneath the barrage.

Night ordered fifty Zerglings to attack the wooden wall while the rest pressed the attack. He thought it was prudent to have a plan B.

They had been able to catch the Haven Field’s defensive force off guard but more Magic and Force Users were converging on the Zerglings. Night could feel the Zerglings’ telepathic connection disappearing one at a time.

Still, the Zerglings were able to push deep into the outpost town. Though blade of steels impeded their path and bolts of magic rained down on them, the Zerglings never falter. Buildings of wood and stones were cut apart; Magic and Force Users were overwhelmed and torn to pieces. The entire settlement was in chaos; screams of the dying mingled with the screeching of Zerglings. Night only show of mercy was an order for the Zerglings not to attack the noncombatants.

The Zerglings force was almost to the very center of the outpost town when a wall of lightning appeared. Night felt the connections to over thirty Zerglings vanished. He called the attacking swarm to a stop immediately and converged to the same area, facing the force of Haven Field.

From the Magic and Force Users, a man stepped forward. He was six feet tall, with short blond hair and facial stubbles. Electricity was crackling in his hands and through the Zergling’s senses, Night knew that this man was responsible for the wall of electricity. The man was the most powerful being Night had ever come across.

Night ordered the Zerglings to scatter and hide among the ruins buildings around, leaving a single Zergling to face the man. It was something he learned from playing Stracraft; don’t clump your units together when facing area-of-effect attacks.

As he had hoped, the man seemed shocked and troubled by the behaviors of the Zerglings and held his attack. Controlling the lone Zergling, Night used the creature’s claw to write a message into the dirt. He had only been taught the Luminous’ writing system by Emily for a few days but it was enough for him to scrawl three words into the ground. ‘We will return.’

East this is a really well thought out story
But i'm starting to think that there never will be a need for guardian's or ultralisk's to help fight

The being who created the Zerg Collective chose Luminous because it is a primitive planet; this give the Zerg swarm some breathing room to develop and grow. Luminous is like a starting area so units such as Ultralisks, Brood Lords, Guardians, Devourers, and so on are unnecessary. The creator of the Zerg Collective that Night is currently in possession of planned the swarm to be an intergalactic civilization. He divided the Zerg into four stages of evolution. Stage four is the Zerg's space age, and such uber units will become necessary. On that subject, the Zerg creator also hidden the possibility of a fifth stage of evolution in the genetic information of the Overmind.

Before all is said and done, there will be a quite a few space battles. A bit of a spoiler, unlike in the game, the Ultralisks are not earthbound; they are capable of breaking orbit and traveling between stars. There are few sights was glorious as an Ultralisk ramming an interstellar warship and cutting it to pieces.

nevertheless can't wait for next segment of the story
I wonder how infestors would work in this world?
I mean will they still spawn infested terrans with the guns and armor?

Chapter 7: Evolution

The Zergling pact retreated from Haven Field. All in all, Night lost eighty-four Zerglings in this battle. It was the biggest lost he had sustained since the birth of the swarm. Even so, Night was reasonably satisfied.

He had laid siege to an outpost town with just over two hundred Zerglings. If he had allowed the swarm to kill the noncombatants and fought to the last Zerglings, Haven Field would have been irrecoverably crippled.

As it was, nearly a quarter of the outpost town lied in ruins; the protective wall of Haven Field was all but cut apart by the Zerglings. All of this had been achieved without the present of an Overlord. Due to the Overlord’s low speed, Night had not included one into the original pursuit. If an Overlord had been present to direct the Zerglings, Night could only imagine the damage his force could have dealt to the outpost town.

Though Haven Field still stood, Night doubted that they would be able to attack his territory anytime soon. With the wooden wall severely damaged, more Force and Magic Users would be needed to be delegated to the defense of the town. Even if they made an attempt for his territory, the number of attackers would be limited. Ideally, the force of Haven Field would be focused on the restoration of the Outpost Town, until the Zerg Collective evolved to stage two.

Still, for safety, Night ordered thirty Zerglings to split into three groups and patrolled a perimeter five miles from Haven Field. They would give him an advance warning should Haven Field decided to attack.

His safety measure proved superfluous. A month and a half passed without incident.

Sustained by the creep carpet, all the trees in Night’s territory were eternally green. Beyond the creep carpet, some of the leaves were beginning to change color, heralding the passing of summer and the coming of fall.

Night didn’t notice. All of his focus was on the rising number of bio energy. Seventeen days after his battle at Haven Field, Night’s personal bio energy reserve and that of the Collective finally totaled five thousands.

Elated and a bit nervous, he called a gathering of his family. Gemma, Dawn, and Emily came quickly, gathering in front of the Hatchery. A pouting Dawn was clinging to Gemma’s pant Night’s summon had interrupted one of her cloud swimming session and she was stubbornly refused to look at him. Emily

“What is it, son?” Gemma asked.

Night took a deep breath. “It’s time. As of this morning, there is enough bio energy for the collective to evolve.”

Gemma’s and Emily’s eyes widened.

“According to Eve,” Night continued, “once I order the collective to evolve, both hatcheries, all the spore colonies, along with all the current Zerg units will enter a dormant stage for the next three days. I have transport enough food and water to both Emily’s cave and ours to last us ten days, just in case.”

“Guess we’re going back to our cave,” Gemma said.

“Only for a while, mom,” Night said.

Once the Zerg Collective evolved to stage two, short of level nine and ten beings, Night doubted that there was anything on this planet that could challenge him. Even if he ran into level nine and ten, Night was reasonably certain that he could win. Roaches, Hydralisks, and Banelings; in his other life, he had called them the Zerg’s triumvirate. In the game, even the Terran’s Battlecruisers and Thors along with the Protoss’ Archons and Colossi, the so called end-games units, were hard-pressed to challenge the tide of Roaches and Hydralisks. As for the Banelings, the living bombs were stuffs of nightmare.

Most importantly, with the evolution of the Collective, Night would be able to regrow his mother’s arm. He would finally be able to fix the single greatest mistake he had made on this planet.

“Ready?” Night said.

“Do we need to do anything?” Gemma said.

“Not really.” Night smiled. “I just didn’t want you to be caught off guard.”

He turned to the Hatchery and sent the collective the command to evolve. Within a few minutes, thousand of Zerglings swarmed toward the area and milled around the Hatchery. The Drones were among their ranks but they were hard to spot among the dark tide. Overlords descended from the sky and landed. In a moment, all movements stilled and silent fell upon the entire area. There was a sound like bubbling liquid before the Hatchery swelled, becoming an enormous fleshy cocoon. All around, the Zerg units mirrored the action of the building, swelling and becoming cocoons of their own.

Night didn’t notice, he was kneeling on the ground, sweat pouring from every pore on his body. He was gritting his teeth so hard, his gum was bleeding. He felt as though someone had shoved a grenade into his stomach. All of his organs and muscles felt as though they had been torn apart, his bones felt like they had all been shattered, even his skins felt as though it was on fire.

The agony grew until it was beyond his ability to tolerate. The air left his lungs in a scream that seemed to shred his voice box. The last thing he saw before darkness claimed him was his family rushing toward him.

Night jerked awake trembling all over. The memory of the agony filled his mind and it took him a few seconds to realize that he was lying on a piece of hide upon a dirt floor. The rock ceiling above him told him that he was in a cave.

“Big brother?” a young voice said. In the next instance, a small body leapt into his arms. “Big brother! You’re ok!”

“Dawn?” Night said. “What happened? Where are we?”

“This is Emily’s cave,” his mother’s voice answered. “You’ve been unconscious for three days.”

Night turned to meet his Mother’s and Emily’s concerned gaze. They were sitting on a different patch of hide next to where he was lying. Her words surprised him. Eve said that all the Zerg units would become dormant during the evolutionary process; he just didn’t realize she meant him too.

“How do you feel?” Emily said.

Night mulled it over for a second. “Wonderful,” he said.

He did feel wonderful. The agony seemed to have burned away all the weakness of his human body. His muscles were fairly humming with power. His senses were sharper. Even though the cave was relatively dark, he had no trouble seeing every detail of the wall and ceiling. Of course, sometimes sharp senses could be a curse.

“Wow, your cave stinks,” Night continued. There was an odd pungent odor hanging in the air. He could almost taste it and it tasted like oily trash.

A flicker of annoyance flashed across her eyes. “It’s not my cave. The smell is coming from you.”

“What?” Night said.

He looked down at himself and startled. His skin was covered with black patches of gunk like dried slimes. He had felt a little sticky when he’d woke up but he didn’t give it much thought after his sister had leapt into his arms. Seeing the state of his person, he was surprised that Dawn had so readily buried herself into his chest. Even now, his sister was clinging to him.

“She’d been worried sick about you,” Gemma said. “She hadn’t left your side in three days.”

Night felt a swell of love for his sister and his determination to give her a better life strengthened more than ever before. He would use all the power at his disposal to elevate her to that of a princess. He wanted this world to adore and worship her; he wanted the rulers of the most powerful cities on the planet to fall all over themselves to please her.

“I’ll go wash up and then we’ll regrow your arm,” Night said.

“The evolution is complete then?” Gemma said.

“Yes.” Night nodded. He could see the excitement in her eyes. He knew that the indifferent she had shown about missing an arm was a façade. He turned to Emily. “So, you want to take a dip with me?”

He saw a tint of red that betrayed her veiled blush.

“Don’t make me throw you out,” she said, scowling at him.

Night chuckled. Recently, he had discovered how much fun it was to tease her.

Night left the cave with Dawn and Gemma trailing behind him. On their way, a contingent of Zerglings met them. After the Collective evolved to stage two, the Zerglings had double in size. A pair of insect wings had sprouted upon their back, beating rapidly as the creatures moved. Though the wings couldn’t provide enough lift for sustain flight, they did provide considerable thrust, enhancing the speed of the Zerglings. Night recognized the evolution. In the game, this form was so lovingly dubbed ‘Speedlings’ by the Zerg players of Starcraft.

The progression arrived at the river unmolested. Night stripped down to his breeches and waded into the water. Dawn was half a step behind, taking off all of her clothes and canon-balling into the river.

Smiling, Night wiped the gunk from his skin while watching his sister splashing around. In his mind, he went over the new information of the Collective in his mind.

Collective Evolutionary Stage: 2
Overmind’s Bio Energy: 4/5000
Collective Stored Bio Energy: 2
Requirement to Evolve Collective: 500,000 units of bio energy

There was little difference from the information of stage one. The numbers were bigger though. His own bio-energy reserve was ten times as big as stage one and the energy needed to evolve to stage three was daunting.

When he was reasonably clean, Night waded over to the boulder where his mother was sitting and soaking her feet I the moving water.

“We can’t stay here,” he said.

“What?” Gemma said.

“We can’t stay in this forest forever, mom. I want Dawn to grow up among other humans, kids like her. I want her to have friends.”

“You want to move to an outpost town?”

“No, a city. I’m going build up my force for a month or so and then we’ll move out. Go see the world, find a nice city and settle there.”

Gemma seemed to be speechless, captivated by the future Night was painting. For the countless humans living in the wild, moving into an outpost town was a dream and living in a city was as unreachable as the stars above their head. Some wanted it so badly that they willingly allowed themselves to be captured by slavers.

Night left his mother to her thoughts. The requirement for living in a settlement was power; with the Zerg behind him, it shouldn’t be a problem. Night sighed. He wished he could take his family to Earth. For all its problems, Earth was a paradise compared to this planet.

Night felt a flash of pain at the thought of us. For the last two months, he had avoided thinking of Earth. As powerful as the Zerg Collective was, they couldn’t help him get back to Earth. He had tried to think himself as Night and Night only, that Nathan was just a phantom, that all of his memories were a just a vivid dream.

As hard as he tried, he couldn’t convince himself. He knew that somewhere, out there, was Earth, and on that planet, were two more of his parents.

He missed his other parents greatly. He missed Sarah Peter. He missed her pies. His Earth mother made incredible pies. All the other foods she made sucked but the woman’s pies more than made up for it.

As for his father, and by that he meant his real father, Ethan, not the pathetic excuse of a man in Night’s past, in some way, Nathan missed the man more than he missed his Earth mother.

Nathan remembered when he was six, their family fell on hard time. His father took three jobs. The man was six two and he dropped to a hundred and five pounds in two months. Even so he didn’t voice a single complaint.

When Nathan turned sixteen, his father had insisted that they spent every Sunday afternoon together. They would talk about their week in the only atmosphere for such a thing, with plenty of snacks and the football game blaring. Neither of them even liked football.

He used to think of such afternoon as a chore. Now, he would kill to be able to watch a football game with his father.

Chapter 8: Restoration

He waited for half an hour until Dawn was done playing in the water. They got dress and headed to the Hatchery. Like the Zerglings, the building had grown bigger, the fangs was larger and looked more menacing. It was the first evolution of the Zerg Hatchery, the Zerg Lair.

The information that pop into his head was virtually identical to that of the Hatchery’s, though the number of larvae spawn every day had increased from five hundreds to five thousands, which meant, given enough bio energy, Night could order the creation of ten thousands units every day.

Eve was there, waiting for them. There was no physical change to the Zerg Queen but there was a palpable aura of power radiating from her. From the information in his head, Eve had gained two new abilities: Genetic Infusion and Psionic Focus.

“Eve,” Night greeted.

Eve bowed slightly. “Greeting, Overmind.”

Night took a second to shake off how human the Zerg Queen looked. “Restore my mother’s arm,” he said.

“As you wish,” Eve said. “Overmind, the process would be much more effective if we reforge her.”

“Reforge her?”

“It is a process in which we break her down at the cellular level, purging all pollution, and rebuilding her physical body into its ideal state.”

Night blinked and a thought occurred to him. “Was that what happened to me three days ago?”

“Yes, Overmind.”

So that was what’d happened to him. Night shivered at the memories.
“What effects does the reforging have?” he asked.

“The process will increase her strength and speed. Her cerebral functions will be optimized, sharpening all her senses and increasing her reflexes. The process will also increase her ability to heal wounds and fight off diseases, significantly increasing her life-span.”

Night fell silent. The augmentation of Gemma’s physical body meant little to him. He would not allow his mother to get involved in a battle. What appealed to him were the latter effects Eve’d listed. A strengthening of her ability to heal and immune system, and especially an increase in her life-span were irresistible temptations. Still, he couldn’t subject her to the agony he had endured.

“Is there any way to keep her sedated during the process?” he asked.

“Yes, Overmind.”

Night was elated. “Wonderful, let’s do that.”

“As you command,” Eve said and led them into the Lair.

Once inside, she guided a nervous Gemma to the fleshy wall of the building. Night offered his mother a reassuring smile when she glanced at him. Inhaling deeply, Gemma stepped to the wall and didn’t resist when a clear membrane grew out of the wall and encased her. It only took a few seconds before Gemma’s eyes slid close and she slumped in the pouch. From the wall, a bright red liquid seeped into the pouch. Gemma was soon submerged in the liquid and began to float. Night could see wisp of black ink seeping from her body and dissolving in the liquid. He felt someone tugging his pants.

“What is it, Dawn?” he said, looking down.

“Can I do it too? It looks fun,” Dawn said.

Night was taken aback. This looked fun? His sister was getting far too comfortable with all things Zerg and he wasn’t really sure if that was a good thing.

“S…sure,” he said and turned to Eve. “Can we reforge my sister too or do we have to wait for my mother to finish?”

“The Lair can reforge multiple creatures, Overmind.”

“Ok, reforge my sister.”

“As you wish,” Eve said.

Eve brought Dawn closer to the wall and the little girl was almost giddy when the membrane grew out of the wall to encase her. Within seconds, she yawned and slumped in the pouch and was soon floating in red liquid herself.

“How long will this take?” Night asked Eve.

“It’s different for each person, Overmind. Your sister will be done in half an hour, while your mother will take three hours.”

“Why the different?”

“Your sister is small, and younger. There is less pollution in her body.”

“How come it took me three days? Is my body that polluted?”

“No, Overmind. It took you so long because you did not have a Lair to aid you, and your bio energy reserve was depleted.”

Night fell silent. There was nothing to do except wait. Half an hour passed and the liquid in his sister’s pouch drained away. The clear membrane dissolved and Night rushed forward to catch his sister. Dawn stirred awake and Night gazed at her in wonder.

His sister was perfect. All the blemishes on her skins, all the signs of malnourishment and scars that she had received from growing up in the wild were gone. Her black hair, which had been as dry and rough as tree roots before, were like black silks. Her skin was soft and supple. She looked as though she was made of malleable gemstone. Even the excess fat she had put on these last month or so thanks to the excess food his swarm had provided was gone. She looked like a miniature goddess, glowing with vitality and youth.

“That wasn’t fun at all,” Dawn pouted, standing up and examining her clothes. “I’m all sticky.”

Night’s eyes flickered. If Dawn had been aware during the process, if she had endured even a fraction of what he had, he would never forgive himself. “What do you remember?” she asked

“Falling asleep,” Dawn said. “I want to take a bath.”

“So it didn’t hurt?”

Dawn shook her head.

Night sighed in relief and sent a command to Eve. “Go with Eve,” he told his sister. “I have to stay here with mom.”

“Ok,” Dawn said and gave him a hug before leaving the Lair with Eve.

After seeing his sister’s transformation, Night was a bit exited to see what his mother would look like. For that matter, what did he look like? He’d been so occupied by the prospect of restoring his mother’s arm that he had neglected to check his new appearance. Before he saw the change his sister had undergone, he didn’t know that he had changed. That his mother showed no reaction showed just how distracted she was about getting her arm back. As for Dawn, it would be asking far too much to expect a four-year-old to notice such thing.

He examined his body. His skin was as flawless as his sister’s. The reforging process had sculpted his muscle. It may sound conceited by this body reminded him of those Greek statues he saw in the museums on Earth. He went to the side of the pool and looked at his reflection. The face in the water was his own, except more polished. His face was like those pictures in the magazines, airbrushed to perfection. If only he had looked like this when he was in high school.

Half an hour later, Dawn returned with Eve. Seeing the two of them together, the eerily beautiful Zerg Queen and the physically perfect little girl, it felt a little surreal to Night, and for a moment, he was struck by how extraordinary his life had become.

Night sat down in front of his mother’s pouch and waited. Dawn nestled against him. Ten minutes passed before Dawn got restless.

“I’m bored,” she complained.

Night glanced at his sister and allowed himself a small smile. “It hadn’t even been that long. Were you this impatient when I was being reforged?”

Dawn pouted. “You turned out ok. Beside, momma is just sleeping.”

Night sighed. Without any fear for their mother, it would be difficult for Dawn to sit still for long, and he preferred it that way. Dawn was much smarter than most four-year-old on Earth and that wasn’t a good thing in his mind. The children on Earth could stay a child for much longer than the children in the wild of Luminous; most Earth children didn’t have to learn about the nature of life and death until they were in their teens.

Dawn did not have that luxury. Her four years of life were already riddled with worry, fear, and hunger. Here, a shadow in the night was a thing to be fear; the monsters outside wasn’t imaginary. On this planet, you either grow up fast or not at all.

It was heartbreaking. Night wanted his sister to be a child for many more years, to worry about nothing except what game to play.

“How about I tell you a story?” he said. He hoped that it wasn’t too late to instill a little wonder into his sister’s life. He wanted to fill her imagination with a little magic, not the life-or-death magic of this planet but the magic of fairy godmothers and the handsome prince on his white steed.

“Ok,” Dawn said.

She sounded indifferent and Night wasn’t surprised. Fairytales didn’t exist on Luminous and she didn’t know what to expect. He hoped she would be pleasantly surprised.

“Ok, once upon a time, in a land far far away…”

He told her the story of Cinderella, the Disney’s version, not the gorier ancient version where the stepsisters hacked off their toes in order to fit into the glass slipper or the even bloodier oriental version in which Cinderella killed her stepmother and fed her stepsisters the corpse.

Night was delighted when his sister’s eyes widened in wonder at the part where the fairy godmother conjured a beautiful gown and a pair of glass slippers for Cinderella. The four-year-old even held her breath when one of the stepsisters ‘accidently’ broke the glass slipper before Cinderella could try it on and then smiled brightly when Cinderella pulled out the second crystal slipper.

“…and they lived happily ever after,” he concluded.

There was a moment of silent before Dawn grabbed his sleeve and started to shake him, fairly bouncing where she was sitting. After being reforged, she was quite strong for a four-year-old and was nearly able to pull Night over. “Tell me another one! Tell me another one!”

“Ok, ok.” He laughed. “How about the story of Sleeping Beauty?”

Dawn nodded eagerly.

Smiling, he patted her head. “Once upon a time…”

After he finished with Sleeping Beauty he had to tell her the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Of course, he had to explain to her what a dragon and a dwarf was. The dragon was easy; he just told her that it was a very powerful Hellite. A dwarf was much harder to explain, and in doing so, he made the mistake of mentioning the elves. Dawn was absolutely enchanted by the legendary fair-folks.

Just as she was pestering him for a story about the elves, the red fluid in the sack containing their mother drained away.

“Later, ok? Mom is waking up,” Night said.

Grudgingly, Dawn agreed.

Learning from last time, Night stepped closer and caught his mother before she could begin to fall. The reforging effects was even more pronounced on his mother. The process seemed to have melted away ten years of age from her body; she looked like to be her late teens or very early twenties. Her hair was as beautiful as Dawn’s and the crowfeet along with the other wear-and-tears that came with living in the wild were gone.

Her eyes fluttered and she awakened.

“Night?” she said. Even her voice was smoother, more melodious.

“How do you feel, mom?” he asked.

“Wonderful. I hadn’t felt this good in years.”

“That’s good.” Night turned to Eve. “Can we restore her arm now, or do we have to wait for anything.”

“There is no need to wait, Overmind. Her arm can be restored now if you wish.”

“Do it.”

“As you command, Overmind.”

Eve knelt down and placed the tips of her fingers to Gemma’s forehead and the woman gasped softly. Night watched in fascination. This was one of Eve new abilities, Genetic Infusion. It allowed the Queen unit to temporary graph the genetic ability of one Zerg unit onto another biological creature. When Eve took her hand away, Gemma was trembling slightly and her breathing was erratic.

“Mother?” Night said.

“I can feel…everything,” Gemma whispered.

“What?”

“All the Zerg, the creep carpet, the Overlord, everything. Even this building.”

Night looked at Eve.

“She is a member of the Collective, Overmind, if only temporary.”

Night knew that, for a Zerg creature, their connection with the Collective was everything. They were utterly dependent upon their bond with their Overmind. It was like a drug. If that connection was severed, the withdraw would be so severe that their mind would shattered and they would be forced into a dormant/comatose state. It was a major reason for their absolute obedience to the Overmind and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the Collective without a second thought. Of course, this dependency was not very apparent in the Drones and the Zerglings since their intelligence was excessively low.

That his mother was subjected to such a thing was very troubling. It might feel good now but
Eve had said that the connection was temporary. What will happen once the connection fades?

“Mom,” he said.

Gemma turned to him, seemingly in a trance.

“Are you ok?”

“I…uh…yes…” She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “It just…so amazing. Is this what it is like for you all the time?”

“I suppose,” Night said. He’d never given it any thought. He had been connected to the Collective since the swarm was just a single Hatchery. He was used to his mind being connected to everything that it all just seemed normal to him.

“Momma!” Dawn’s gasp caught his attention. “Your arm.”

Startled, Night turned his attention to his mother missing arm. It had only been a couple of minute and Gemma’s arm had regrown halfway to her elbow.

“Wow, that’s creepy,” Night said.

“I didn’t even notice,” Gemma said, eying her restoring arm. In the next second, the stump started waving up and down.

“Oh, for heaven sake, would you stop that,” Night said, looking away.

“Eww,” Dawn said in agreement.

“Sorry,” Gemma said, smiling.

It didn’t even take twenty minutes for Gemma’s arm to regrow. Afterward she left for the river to wash up and Dawn went with her. Night sent Eve with them.

When they were gone, Night stepped outside. He gazed at the floating clouds above and sighed. For the last two months, he had been consumed with the evolution of the Collective. The restoration of his mother’s arm had been a mountain, constantly pressing down on him. Now that it was done, he felt a sense of relief and freedom. There was no pressing goal anymore. There was no need to save bio energy. He was to expand the swarm, and he was free to explore this world.

Chapter 9: Rise of the Triumvirate

The Zerg Triumvirate, that was the Nathan’s little pet name for the Roaches, Hydralisks, and Banelings. These three units countered virtually every other unit in the game. He believed that he who mastered these three units could rule the Starcraft universe. He believed that these three units embodied the true essence of the Zerg swarm: strong, ruthless, and overwhelming number. Of course, that was not to say that Nathan was averse to morphing a dozen Ultralisks and shoving them down his opponent’s throat.

He admitted that the end-game units such as Ultralisks and Broodlords were awe-inspiring but he believed that the nature of the Zerg did not lay in a few uber units. The Zerg crushed their enemies beneath a tide of teeth and acid. The Roaches and Hydralisks were relatively cheap and quick to make, at least compared to the tier two units of the other races, and there was no other unit who better embodied the brutality of the Zerg than the Banelings. The green, fluid-filled creatures were the epitome of ruthlessness, willing to cast their lives aside in order to kill their enemies.

The prospect of adding the Triumvirate into his swarm elated him. After evolving to stage two, his Lairs could morph Roaches and Hydralisks for the price of five units of bio energy each. As for the Banelings, like the game, they mutated from Zerglings.

It was one thing to play the game, but it was another thing entirely to see the creatures, to stand in front of them.

The Roaches were as big as sedans. They looked as like the result of a turtle and a spider after they had wild monkey sex at ground zero of a nuclear explosion. Six spider-like limp extended from a thorny shell. From the only opening of the shells of the creatures extended heads with faces not even a mother could love.

As for the Hydralisks, they looked like Medusa’ mutant cousins on super steroid. They had the upper body of a demon and the lower body of serpent, with scythes where there arms were suppose to be. Spike lined the creatures’ bodies. Their head was oblong, the bone extended into a slight triangular shape. Like the roaches, the lower jaw of the creatures can split open, revealing a row of needle-like teeth. Looking at their faces, Night guessed that this was what the Devil would look like when he smiled.

His biggest problem was the Banelings. He morphed one just to see what it looked like and his sister stumbled onto it. For reason that Night couldn’t even guess at, the four-year-old thought the creature was cute.

The night after Night morph the Baneling, Dawn tried to go to bed with it, holding the creature as she would a doll. Night nearly had a heart attack. He had no idea how volatile the Baneling was. If that thing went off, Night would probably hang himself out of grief.

Thankfully, stage two unlocked the Zerg ability to burrow so it was quite easy to hide the Baneling from his sister.

From that day on, Night began to supplement his swarm with Roaches and Hydralisks, and testing his units in battle. The Zerglings had increased in speed and power. One on one, a Zergling could now match a level three Hellite.

His roaches had a bit of trouble navigating the creep carpet because of the trees but their ability to move while burrowing neutralized this problem. Night was surprised that all of his ground units, saved for the Banelings, could move while burrowing. Though it significant decreased the movement of the Zerg units, this ability gave the Zerg swarm an edge of stealth that did not exist in the game.

After a few battles, Night was disinclined to use Roaches against Hellites. It was just wasteful; their acid melted everything, even the Hellite cores.

Of the Triumvirate, the Hydralisk shone the brightest. They weren’t the lumbering units like in the game. Their serpent-like movement allowed them to slither near silently through the trees with blinding speed, and the ability to shoot a chain of seven inches long, poisonous spines made their scythe-arms somewhat superfluous. In conjunction with the sight of an Overlord, a Hydralisk could thread a needle at fifteen hundred yards, a distance that shocked even Night.

Two days after the first Hydralisk was born, a level four Hellite called a Stone Hide wandered onto the creep carpet. In appearance, a Stone Hide looked like a twelve feet tall boulder moving on four stout limbs. Its claim to fame was its defense. It was considered the toughest of all level four Hellites. This defense was compounded by the creature ability to control the earth and use it to either attack or for a shield. It was said that even some level five Hellites had a problem breaching the creature’s defense.

Night sent five Hydralisks along with a dozen Zerglings to take care of the creature. It proved to be overkill. The leading Hydralisk fired a spine that pierced Stone Hide’s shield as though it was made out of tofu, hit the Hellite between the eyes, and punch a hole clean through its body, killing the creature instantly.

Night was speechless. It wasn’t even fair anymore. The stage two evolutions had caused the hunting of the Hellites in his territory to feel like beating up children. The different in power had grown so huge that Night actually felt bad about killing Hellites.

Night ordered the halting of all active hunting of Hellites, and commanded the swarm to simply protect a few vital areas such as the Lairs and the river. Stage two had increased the creep carpet’s ability to collect energy so much that level three Hellite cores weren’t that big of a supplement anymore.

With the increase in power, Night came to a realization. He didn’t hate the Hellites. Sure, they had made his family’s life very difficult throughout the years but when you come down to it, they were just animals. They weren’t evil; they just did whatever their nature dictated. Heaven knew, if the situation was reverse, humans would be just as cruel to them. On Earth, humans had reigned supreme for centuries and they had used that supremacy to hunt dozens of species to extinction. Maybe Karma worked on a galactic scale. In any case, he didn’t feel right to order the deaths of a bunch of beast that didn’t bother him in the least.

With the halting of all Hellite hunting, Night turned his attention to the spreading of his creep carpet for his energy needs. Dozens of Drones were morphed and sent out to mutate into Creep Colonies.

Even the Creep Colonies had changed. It was now bigger and was able to fire three shots of acid spore at a time. It had also developed three roots could freely move underground and able to extend up to five hundred yards in any direction. The roots gave the Creep Colonies an ability identical to that of the Sunken Colonies of Starcraft I. They could shoot up and impale anyone within range, assuming that Night gave such an order, and because they moved underground, the surrounding trees no longer impeded the Creep Colonies’ ability to attack ground target.

Within a few days, the creep carpet expanded to cover an area of fifty miles in diameter, stretching from the very outer edge of the deep forest to the west to a few miles outside of Haven Field to the East. The creep carpet now brought in over nine hundred units of bio energy each day. With such a stream of resource and no reason to conserve energy, the Zerg swarm increased at a chilling rate. Hundred of Zerglings, Roaches, and Hydralisks were born every day.

Night recalled the Zerglings that he left patrolling this area in the event of an attack from the outpost town. Such safety measures were no longer necessary. With the acquisition of the Triumvirate, Night could crush any outpost town at will.

Night even halted the patrolling of the creep carpet. He kept the entire swarm buried around the two Lair. Even burrowed, the swarm could faster than a normal human could run so everywhere Gemma and Dawn went, there was an army of Zerg beneath their feet, ever vigilant and ready to burst out of the ground in a moment notice to slaughter anything that threatened the two. Night had wanted to assign some Zerg to protect Emily but she had stubbornly refused. Night was finding it harder and harder to understand the woman.

The banning of all Hellites from his creep carpet had been removed, and the edible gel attracted quite a few creatures. Interestingly, according to Eve, the Hellites were distance cousins of the Zerg on a genetic level. Their similarity was similar to the similarity between humans and chimps. The similarity was close enough, however, for the Hellites to extract quite a bit of nutrient from the creep.

Night had no problem with the Hellites eating his creep carpet; his Creep Colonies could produce creep much faster than the Hellites could eat. Even if several thousand Hellites lived in a five miles area and ate the creep twenty-four/seven, the collection of bio energy would still not be affected, so as long as they didn’t attack his Creep Colonies or harassed his family, Night was more than happy to leave them alone.

This new policy had an unexpected benefit. Just like in the wild on Earth, the Hellites battled each other for food, territories, and mates. To the victors went the spoils and the Hellites ate the bodies of the vanquished. What they didn’t eat were the Hellite cores, simply leaving the crystals behind. Since the Drones could move while burrowing, collecting the cores had been extremely easy. The Drones simply had to pop out of the ground, grabbed the core, and burrowed again. Night suddenly found himself collecting half a dozen level three Hellite cores every day, even an occasional level four core, and for the first time, Night considered the large-scale raising of Hellites.

Twelve days after the evolution of the Collective, just as Night was having lunch with his family, a group of fifty humans from Haven Field stepped onto the creep carpet. Night showed no reaction saved for a slight flicker of the eyes. He continued the meal, not even bothering to send an order for his swarm to intercept.

The Creep Carpets had attracted a rather large population of Hellites. Night wanted to see how the force from Haven Field would measure against them. A part of him wanted them to attack one of his Creep Colonies so he could gauge the buildings’ combat ability. The Hellites seemed to know that the creep that they like so much came from these fleshy constructs so they left the Zerg buildings alone. A few level four Hellites even went as far as claiming a Creep Colony as their territory. For these reasons, the Creep Colonies were never harmed by the Hellites.

The Hellites exceeded Night’s expectation. It took the force of Haven Field a full week to traverse the distance of twenty-five miles from the very edge of the Creep Carpet to the river. Three of them died on the way. That number would have been doubled if not for the lightning element Magic User that led the group.

Night remembered the man. He was the one who vaporized a chunk of Night’s force when the swarm attacked Haven Field. Of course, the current Zerglings wouldn’t go down so easily. Still, by Night’s estimation, the man could go toe-to-toe with a Roach or a Hydralisk, quite admirable for a human. Night also saw the short man that started this whole thing in the group.

On the afternoon of an overcast day, the Haven Field force neared the river. Night finally sent out his force. A thousand Zerglings along with one hundred Roaches and a hundred Hydralisks moved silently beneath the ground on an intercept course. Night had little doubt that his battle would be a one-sided slaughter. Just like in the game, the creep enhanced the speed of Zerg units. Anyone who had faced the Zerg knew that engaging the swarm on the creep was suicide unless they had a far superior force. Outnumbered and outclassed, the creep was the red carpet of hell.

Night had his force lied in wait on the east bank of the river and sent a lone Baneling forward. The creature rolled toward the approaching group like a fluid field ball. It was easily spotted by the group. When it was thirty yards away, the leader of the group held up his hand. There was a flicker of electricity in the clouds above before a bolt of lightning streaked to the ground and struck the Banelings.

The resulting blast stunned even Night. The explosion showered everything within fifty yards with acid and punched a crater fifteen feet deep. The force of Haven Field leapt backward immediately. Night had to admire their instinct and reaction speed. Still, the acid rained down on a dozen of them.

Screams of agony filled the air. The acid ate through flesh and bone. A few steel weapons were splashed and dissolved in second. Five of the men who were hit by the acid died almost instantly. The rest were not so fortunate. The acids dissolved quickly, leaving behind screaming men with missing limbs and wholes through their bodies.

Through the eyes of his Overlord high above, Night could see all the men who were lucky enough to escape the destructive power of the Banelings. They were all as white as ghosts. As for leader, he was just as white-faced as the rest. His, however, was a mask of rage and regret.

From the way he was looking at the remained of his men, Night could tell that the leader blamed himself for the death of his men. Night found that he didn’t dislike the man. Under different circumstances, they could even be friends. Shrugging, Night ordered his force forward. The Zerg units remained beneath the earth and moved to surround the Haven Field force, their passing leaving no visible sign beneath the surface.

“There something beneath us,” one of the men from Haven Field said suddenly.

Hearing the man’s words through his Overlord, Night startled.

“What?” the leader said.

“There something moving beneath us,” the man said.

Night watched in surprise as the man held out his hands. Beneath the earth, one of the Zerglings suddenly began to struggle. The earth around the creature had hardened and was beginning to ripple, forcing the Zergling upward.

An earth element Magic User, Night realized. This was quite interesting. Earth element Magic Users were relatively rare. They excelled at defense was highly sought after by human settlements. One or two earth element Magic User could greatly enhance the protective wall of an outpost town. Night never thought they would be able to detect creature moving beneath the earth. It seemed that the humans on this world were not as helpless against burrowed Zerg as Night had thought.

Seeing no reason to hide anymore, Night ordered his force to surround the Haven Field force and unburrow. Within half a few seconds, the men from Haven Field suddenly found themselves surrounded. Just as Night was about to order an attack, one of his Overlords sent him a message. Emily was trying to get his attention, calling for him while rushing toward the main Lair. At the same time, the leader of force from Haven Field was gathering energy. Small strands of lightning appeared in his hands, dancing between his fingertips like living spider web. Through his Zerg units, Night could feel the east bank of the river became charge with electricity.

“Be careful, human,” Night used the Overlord closest to the field of battle to project. “You cannot hope to win this battle. Do not force my hand.”

Just as the rest of his Zerg units had evolved, so had his Overlords. The floating creatures had tripled in size. They were large enough that Night could classify them as flying houses. Along with their size, the Overlords telepathic power had developed. The creatures could now see an area one hundred miles in diameter and their telepathic projection had a staggering range of thirty miles.

The telepathic message seemed to startle the man. The light still danced in his hand but he did not attack. Night didn’t really give it much thought. He ordered the swarm to hold their ground and jumped into the body of the Overlord closest to Emily.

“What is it, Emily?” Night projected as the Overlord descended toward the woman. Stage two evolution had increased the Overlords’ speed to over fifty miles per hour. They were no longer the lumbering hulks of stage one and had little trouble overtaking Emily.

“Did you see the bolt of lightning just now?” Emily said. She sounded exited.

“What about it?”

“It was not a natural bolt of lightning. It was an attack from a Magic User.”

Night wasn’t all that surprise. He knew that Emily was a level two lightning element Magic User; it wasn’t all that strange that she could guess the source of the lightning bolt. “So?” he projected.

“You don’t understand. Most Lightning Users use magic to generate electricity inside their bodies and fire it out. My master is the only who’d figured out how to channel and direct the electricity of the natural world. Calling down lightning is a technique unique to my master’s student. One of her students is nearby.”

Night was speechless. The leader of Haven Field’s force was a student of Emily’s late master? This situation was much more complicated than he had thought.

Night ordered his Overlord to pick up Emily and returned to his body. He stepped out of the Lair and waited for a minute before he spotted the Overlord carrying Emily floating toward him. He joined Emily in the Overlord and they headed toward the battlefield.

“Where Gemma and Dawn?” Emily asked.

“Cloud swimming,” Night said.

“Again? Wow, they really are addicted to it, aren’t they?”

“It’s not as if there is anything else to do around here.”

“Them going cloud swimming doesn’t seem to bother you anymore.”

Night didn’t say anything.

“You’re just glad Dawn isn’t here to pester you for more stories, aren’t you?” Emily said, her voice rich with amusement.

Night grumbled in irritation but didn’t contradict her. Part of him believed that telling his sister those fairy tales had been a mistake. Dawn was obsessed, loving the stories more than she loved cloud swimming. It had gotten to the point that Dawn refused to go to bed each night without a bedtime story. Still, it was a minor problem compared to their current situation.

“Emily,” Night said, a little hesitant.

She turned to him. Looking into her brown eyes, filled with excitement, Night found the words lodging themselves into his throat.

He took a deep breath. “The Magic User who called down the bolt of lightning…he’s…he’s from Haven Field.”

It took a few seconds for his words to register with Emily. Horror and disbelief filled her gaze. “No…No! That’s not possible. One of my master’s students would not work for the Blood Fang!”

Night didn’t say anything. She would see soon enough.

The Overlord floated over the river and touched down onto the east bank. Night and Emily stepped out of the Overlord. The Zerg swarm moved aside to create a path for them. Upon seeing the leader of the Haven Field’s force, Emily began to tremble. Angry tears spilled from her eyes, staining the veil that constantly covered her face.

“Arthur, how could you?” Emily said and Night could tell that she was saying the words through gritted teeth.

The leader frown for a moment before his eyes lit up in recognition. “Emily?” he said, the electricity fading from his hands.

“How could you work for the Blood Fang?” Emily whispered. She sounded out of breath.

“What are you talking about?”

“The Blood Fang was the one who killed my master!” Emily screamed.

Arthur paled. “Lady Magdalena is dead?”

It was the first time Night heard the name of Emily’s master. A thought occurred to him. The man looked genuinely confused. Was it possible that the Lightning User was ignorant?

Night pointed to the short man standing behind the Lightning User. “About a month ago, that man came here with a group of people in order to capture Emily under the order of the Blood Fang clan of the city of White Stone.”

The Lightning User was shock by the piece of information. He froze for a second before whirling on the short Force User. “Herod, what have you done?” he hissed through his teeth.

The Force User backed away from the Lightning User. Just as he turned to run, a Hydralisk spine imbedded itself into his shoulder and the man fell to the ground. The air was suddenly filled with the man’s screaming as his body curled in upon itself. Night could see the man’s muscles seizing uncontrollably. He kept expecting the man’s bones to break beneath the force of the muscle spasms.