It stopped for a couple seconds, before it held up its remaining hand, a recording of its viewpoint during the two hours they had been at the previous space/time.<br/><hr/>*a swirling of light suddenly congealed into utter darkness* "Sir, we have dropped out of the portal, starting scans."<br/><br/>The 'crew' of Death Guard were mostly for show, so Draiss could pretend to be a mortal, and hide the fact that most of the fleet was AI based, something that had horrified a number of civilizations they had encountered during their travels. Twice, they had been forced to effectively decimate a civilization due to them attacking without pause. Since the first, they had put together a planet capable command frigate so he could meet with the locals if required. This time, however, they dropped not into a star field, something that had been so constant it had taken the Reaper a couple processor runs to notice that they were missing.<br/><br/>It brought up the fleet locations for its own diagnostic run, revealing the nearly two thousand vessels as they pushed out in a stand defensive huddle, 'massive' dreadnaughts on the outsides so anything approaching would have to come through at least one before getting to the squishy transports and other specialist ships. A handful of frigates heading out beyond the dreadnaughts, forming an outer perimeter to give better warning.<br/><br/>The image suddenly jumped, the fleet display joined by a display of the Guard collective's conversations in text form next to it, the text flying by as more and more AIs began processing to try and discover why they had dropped out in an area without lights of any kind, while the fleet display continued to show units moving outward to minimize the losses if they took a high energy penetrating attack.<br/><br/>The image suddenly kicked back to real time, as the text suddenly paused.<em>Possible contact, tentative at location outside pi...</em><br/><br/>Suddenly nearly a hundred vessels vanished from the display, a perfectly straight line nearly a planet wide opening in the middle and a ravening beam of not-light screamed through the sensors. Sudden screams of damage, cries for assistance, the fleet trying to orient on whatever had just decimated them without any warning from the pickets. Then it glided into sensor view, a massive spherical as large as the hole it had punched through the fleet. Transmission of lack of hostility, trying to warn it off, before they got a single simple message.<br/><br/><em><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 36pt;">Burn Devouring Traitorous Thinker of the Grey.</span></em><br/><br/>It seemed to unfold, on the sensors, plates sliding open and apart and back into it, as more and more beyonder weapon mounts appeared, and a portal suddenly burned in the center of the Death Guard fleet, even as it began almost contemptuously burning ships from existence, a second planet beam punching another hole through the fleet as pickets suddenly realized the planet they were detecting wasn't alone. Even as that chilling revelation appeared, their sensors suddenly showed another two appearing at their fleet's edge, plates sliding back, each repeating the previous declaration. The fleet wheeling toward the portal, some making suicide runs against what had to be manifested, naturalized Beyonders, to try and buy time for others to make it to the portals, try and distract them from the units carrying more AIs than others. The Beyonders didn't care, they swept their weapons back and forth, and units vanished.<br/><br/>It had felt like an eternity to the Reaper, but the command frigate nearly made it to the portal before the Beyonders finally either spotted it or located Ve'Aka'ma'len, Draiss' beyonder, and fired at least fourteen precision shots, each as big as a human's head, as the ship dove into the portal. Reaper hadn't been connected to internal sensors, but after it picked itself up and noted the lack of a left arm on it, and then turned around.<br/><br/>The image zoomed in on Draiss, showing the four hits he had taken, despite the fact all fourteen shots had clearly penetrated, judging from the holes in the bridge, none of them head sized thanks to the ships shields being reinforced by Beyonder energy at the last second, had tried to hit him. A fist sized hole in his right shoulder, a double fist sized hole in his heart, a finger sized hole in his upper left abdomen, and a hole sized between finger and fist right below his throat.<br/><br/>The recording showed the wounds crystallizing as the surviving Death Guards had rushed a stasis pod in, carefully placing him in it even as Ve'len started shrieking in utter agony, the noise identical to that of the beyonder hatchling that Draiss had destroyed that had so upset the Astral Plane.<br/><br/>The recording ended, and it looked at Nadriina. "Unit Creator is still intact, but needs an immediate transfusion of energy from a beyonder, willing or otherwise, else the wounds will consume his Beyonder, which will consume him."