Resurrection of Titan

The stupendous boom of surface fire overhead served to jar Ebon out of his morbid torpor. "Damn these vile creatures!" Ebon spat out at the rooms' crumbling walls. "They shall all drown in rivers of blood, and I will decorate this barren room with the skins of their screaming faces!" Always he had known that this day must come. The great Alien war that had been raging for ten years had finally arrived at his doorstep. Here, in the catacombs beneath this moldering Tibetan monastery, Ebon the Dark, last surviving Necromancer of this Terran sphere, was finally prepared to act.

Humanity had proved no match for the interstellar invaders who had accidentally stumbled upon this backwater planet. Their hideous weapons and merciless demeanor were just too powerful. The once defiant, indomitable will of man had faltered and vanished like tears in the rain. Worst of all, the extraterrestrial fusion bombs completely obliterated their human targets, leaving nothing for a practitioner of the Necrotic Arts to raise up. For thousands of years, hidden away from man and his ever evolving technology, Ebon had perfected his Sorcerous skills, crushed all rivals, and plumbed from these dead wizards minds terrible and foul incantations dating back to before immemorial Atlantis fell beneath the waves. He had not survived and triumphed over all obstacles to let this alien filth destroy all his plans!

Grimly lifting his nearly seven foot frame from the battered oaken stool, Ebon's ice blue, almost luminous eyes settled upon an object resting on a metal tripod in a far corner of the room. Shaking the dust and debris that had fallen from the weakened ceiling from his long raven black hair he glided wraith-like across the floor, flickering lights overhead painting his surroundings in a portrait of surreal nightmare. Resting his spidery fingers around the vermillion mottled clasp of the eons old Grimoire resting on the tripod, Ebon opened the hoary, worm-eaten volume to the vile spell that would raise up not only a dead being but an entire world!

It was not Earth that Ebon prepared to raise up. Though battered, bloody and nearly beaten, Earth was far from dead. No, the world he planned to raise up had been dead for at least two and a half billion years. A satellite of mammoth, distant Saturn, the frozen moon Titan had revealed to Ebon's ever probing mind scores of teeming dead. Millions of them, flash frozen machines and all in some ancient unthinkable disaster. A mighty civilization entombed beneath hundreds of miles of ice and rock.

Finishing the low guttural incantation from the dreaded book, Ebon invoked the final summoning. " Titans, I raise ye up from your icy graves. Power ye ships and weapons and bring forth black doom to Earths vile transgressors!" Sinking to one knee, fighting to stay conscious, Ebon watched the swirling vortex of dark violet energy coalesce in the center of the room and shoot through the ceiling into the aether and beyond towards its final destination.

Sometime later, he was not certain how long, Ebon was jolted back to consciousness by huge pulsing vibrations that rocked the entire catacombs. "They are here," he whispered and quickly stretching out his mental fingers, he hooked on to the most powerful dead mind he could find. The mind Ebon touched was coldly alien, more so then the ones that were currently at war with this planet, and immensely strong, witnessed by the mental wall the dead Titan reared up at his touch. Ebon had never seen its like before. All the dead men he raised up erected barriers of some kind, but these were always weak and easily smashed. This Titan had threw up a wall as solid as steel around his mind. Sneering, Ebon pented his fingers and refocused his dark energies, forehead veins pounding, and slowly bent back the barrier and pushed through. In the brief moment before he engulfed the Titans mind, he thought he sensed another more powerful presence, but this faded quickly as he set about reaving the mind he had broken into.

In a few short seconds Ebon learned all there was to know of this dead Titan race. They had come from outside this universe. Their technological magnificence was such that they had managed to pass through the event horizon of a black hole in their own universe across to this one. That had been eons ago, and their collective memory had faded to such an extent they remembered nothing of that other universe they came from. No matter, it was unimportant for now, perhaps later he could help them remember, in the terrible way that only a Necromancer can. For now, through the dead eyes of the Titan hovering in the massive spaceship overhead, Ebon watched the disintegrating effects of the sonic net the Titans had enveloped the planet with. Each ship acted like a conduit, spreading the deadly pulses out to every corner of the planet. Specifically modulated not to harm humans at Ebon's command, the tidal wave of sound tore the alien invaders atoms apart, washing away in an absurdly short time the greatest threat humanity ever faced. Still, during the short battle the same ominous force he had sensed in the Titan flickered around his consciousness, but so brief and fading that Ebon started to wonder if he had ever felt it at all once it left.

Striding up the catacombs petrified wooden stairs into the ruined temple above, Ebon gazed skyward at the thousands of glowing Titan ships that lit up the night in a strange pulsing scarlet gloam. "Come down and face me!" he commanded in the Titans mind. " I shall see your ancient, decayed form kneel before me lest I grant your race its eternal rest." In answer, a shiny black sphere glided silently down from the huge Titan battleship coming to rest a few feet away from the tall gaunt Necromancer. As the rotting form covered in inky black armor that was once a Titan shambled towards him, Ebon threw back his head and howled like a madman, drunk on his own putrid power. "Kneel before me dog!" he roared at the figure decomposing before his very eyes. "Kneel before your dark lord and I may release your wretched bones from their bondage if it suits me." The creature stood their for a moment, then slowly, painfully slowly it bent its knee or at least what Ebon thought was a knee to the ground. It raised its filmy ermine eyes to Ebon and his heart stopped as it opened its mouth and spoke!

"Long have we waited for thisss moment. You have released usss and now we are ready." Ebons mind was suddenly blinded with terror. The strange power was back and it was no longer flickering, but pulsing and writhing with unspeakable strength.

"I put you down!" Ebon screamed. "Back to your coffin of ice and the emptiness of death eternal!" At this the thing emitted a mocking bubbling laughter and stood up, pointing a long finger heavenward. Ebon looked up and collapsed to the ground paralyzed with dread. At that same moment he also felt the prying of millions of mental fingers at his mind, brushing away his own defenses like a feather in a light summer breeze. With soul numbing clarity Ebon knew the frightful truth and realized too late his fatal mistake.

Still pointing towards the heavens, now engulfed by a black vortex that was quickly blotting out the moon and stars, the undead Titan knelt down beside Ebon and hissed, "The first time eons ago that we attempted to pass through the black hole we discovered that animate matter could not breach the gateway, so by our dark artsss we first killed then raised ourselves up as a race to ensure our passage. Shortly after we set up our outpost, a comet slammed into usss and threw Titan on a wild orbit into deep space freezing us instantly. Trapped in the ice, we slumbered until you woke usss. Now, at last, we are going back, and you are all going to passs through." "Go to HELL!" Ebon shrieked, but the Titan just smiled. "Hell is just a fantasy, invented by your race to explain what you cannot understand. Where you're going is much, much worse!

Engulfed by the Black holes impenetrable darkness, life force draining away, the last thought in Ebon's dying brain was the terrible knowledge that he, Earths greatest Sorcerer, had broken the first rule of Necromancy. NEVER RAISE UP WHAT YE CAN'T PUT DOWN.