From the core of his transformed being, from the deepest well of the Ahna'sara, Bolt unleashed his song.
It was not a sound that pierced the vacuum, but a tidal wave of pure, concentrated empathy, a desperate, silent scream of defiance against the cold calculus of war.
It radiated outwards from the Nyxwing, a shimmering, invisible chorus of sorrow for the Heart's pain, a fierce denunciation of Krell's destructive intent, and a fragile, almost impossible plea for harmony.
He aimed it like an arrow, not just at the suffering Heart, but at the cold, metallic soul of Krell's flagship, at the very weapon coalescing at its prow.
On the bridge of the Executioner's Blade, Warlord Krell's colossal command vessel, a sudden, inexplicable wave of disorientation swept through the assembled Felid officers.
Sensitive crew members clutched their heads, a profound weariness, an echo of an ancient grief they couldn't name, washing over them.
Targeting arrays for the Progenitor-derived Despoiler Cannon flickered erratically.
"Report!" Krell snarled, his own crimson eyes narrowing as a faint, unsettling resonance vibrated through the deck plates.
"What is that interference?"
"Unknown, Warlord!" a panicked technician cried.
"Sensors are… fluctuating! Some kind of empathic wave… highly focused!"
Krell's lip curled in a snarl. "Empathic wave?
Pathetic!
Override safeties!
Fire the Despoiler!
Fire it NOW!"
As Krell's command cut through the confusion, Bolt felt the Heart of Orion respond to his song.
Amidst its agony and fear, a faint, almost imperceptible flicker of resonance, a single pure note of recognition, answered his call.
Its chaotic, bleeding energies seemed to coalesce, just for an instant, a fractional shift towards a forgotten, primal harmony.
It was infinitesimally small, yet Bolt felt it, a spark of connection in the overwhelming darkness.
Then, the Despoiler Cannon fired.
A beam of pure, unadulterated anti-creation, sickly green and violet, laced with crackling black energies, shrieked from Krell's flagship.
It was not the clean, precise lance of a standard turbolaser, but a volatile, barely contained torrent of raw, unstable power, visibly warping space around it as it tore towards the Heart of Orion.
This was it. The moment of absolute crisis.
Bolt poured every ounce of his being, every fiber of the Ahna'sara, into his desperate counter-song.
He remembered Lyren's words: Progenitor-derived weaponry… unforeseen sensitivities… pure frequencies of the Ahna'sara.
He couldn't stop the beam. But perhaps, just perhaps, he could change its song.
He didn't project simple harmony now.
He projected a complex, resonant chord of dissonant stability directly into the Despoiler's energy stream – an empathic frequency designed to agitate the inherent instability of the Progenitor tech Krell had so crudely weaponized.
It was like trying to calm a supernova by singing it a counter-intuitive lullaby.
The universe held its breath.
The Despoiler's beam, already unstable, visibly wavered an instant before impact.
Its focused fury seemed to… fray at the edges, its sickly colours churning with an even greater internal chaos.
It struck the Heart of Orion not with the surgical precision Krell had intended, but as a more dispersed, though still devastating, blow.
A silent explosion of light and energy erupted from the Heart, magnitudes brighter than any star.
The Heart itself visibly shuddered, a vast, cosmic tremor. Its light, already dim and fractured, flickered dangerously, large sections of its luminous surface darkening entirely.
It was wounded, terribly so, but it hadn't shattered.
The catastrophic chain reaction Krell had gambled on, the one that would have given him ultimate control or utter destruction, hadn't fully occurred.
The effort, however, was too much for Bolt.
The psychic backlash from the Despoiler's impact, combined with the strain of his own projection, felt like being torn apart atom by atom.
A choked cry escaped him, and he collapsed in his co-pilot's chair, his transformed body spasming, the vibrant light of the Ahna'sara within him dimming to a faint, painful ember.
Darkness swarmed at the edges of his vision.
"Bolt!" Eva screamed, her hands fighting the Nyxwing's controls as the shockwave from the Heart's impact slammed into them.
The small Aethelgardian ship, tough as it was, was tossed about like a leaf in a hurricane.
Alarms blared, a true, panicked cacophony this time.
On the bridge of the Executioner's Blade, chaos reigned momentarily before Krell's iron will restored order.
Damage reports flooded in – the Despoiler Cannon had suffered a catastrophic energy feedback loop, its firing chamber cracked, unusable for now.
The Heart of Orion was damaged, yes, but not "tamed" or broken in the way he'd envisioned.
His prized weapon had underperformed, its effect blunted by an unknown factor.
"Analysis!" Krell roared, his face a mask of fury. "What blunted the Despoiler's impact? Find the source of that empathic interference!"
Technicians, fear overriding their earlier disorientation, worked frantically.
Then, one pointed a trembling claw at a newly resolved sensor reading.
"Warlord… there. A small, unidentified vessel. Highly advanced stealth characteristics, but its empathic signature during the Despoiler's firing sequence was… off the scale. It's directly between us and the Heart's primary wound."
Krell's crimson eyes narrowed, focusing on the blip that represented the Nyxwing.
Aethelgardian design? Impossible. But the interference… the unexpected resistance… It had to be them.
The source of his frustration, the reason his grand plan had been marred.
"That ship!" Krell's voice was a low, lethal snarl that cut through the lingering chaos on his bridge. "I don't care what it is, who pilots it, or what primitive magic they think they wield. Obliterate it! All forward batteries, concentrate fire!"
On the battered bridge of the Nyxwing, Eva finally wrestled the ship back under control, just as a new series of alarms shrieked.
Red targeting indicators blossomed across her display, dozens of them, all converging on their tiny, vulnerable vessel.
Bolt was slumped, barely conscious, the light in his fur almost extinguished.
The Heart of Orion was wounded and weeping. And the full, incandescent fury of a Felid Warlord was now aimed directly at them.