Note: If you would like to read this story from the beginning, please check out my blog history and you should find 3 more posts of the same title (barring the chapter number of course ;) ). Not much else to say except, thanks for reading, and if you do, please review :p I am a review junkie.

Chapter 4:


The floor of the chamber was now blackened in colour, much like bo'tous in it?s deathly shade, devoid of any shimmer it might have once held. It crunched under foot, and in places deep cracks had begun to form from floor to ceiling, indicating spaces that would soon open into an unending maw.
What was most disturbing, Nom Anor noted as he tried to run, was the silence, more cold and penetrating than the bite of the icy depths of the seas, found on many infidel worlds.

The ship?s arterial networks seemed to stretch out for miles, as if unending, a final, potentially lethal punishment from the gods.

In all blatant honesty, the former prefect knew not what he truly believed anymore. Shimrra had all but openly suggested both the gods and he as their conduit, were nothing more than an elaborate and traditional ruse, to keep the Yuuzhan Vong in order. But in the Overlord?s audacious anger-driven madness, he had called the gods out, attempted to best them with this ill fated plan of his. It had all lead to his ruin - or had that been Onimi's plan all along?

Nom Anor repressed a shiver, realizing then, that his joints felt stiffened by the encroaching cold-
Almost there!

Arriving in the grotto, he headed immediately for the porthole that he had almost tricked Jaina Solo into going through a short while before - a porthole, that lead directly to the waste disposal creature, known as a maw luur.

Cradling the signal-villip beneath one arm, Nom Anor pressed his one, remaining hand against the sensory bundle concealed in the wall, the membrane - slick with degrading and putrid fluids, slid away to reveal the gaping jaws of the large waste disposal biot.

Essentially, maw luur were much like the Yuuzhan Vong storage biot, a ganadote. Though maw luur possessed several different, internal qualities.

Coloured rust-red to blend in with their coral mountings, the maw luur contained a highly complex digestive system, with stomach acids potent enough to dissolve all organic waste within a matter of kets. The acrid soup would then be filtered through several more digestive tracts, before finally filtering into the creature?s many glands, and the raw minerals converted from the waste, were then passed back into it?s surroundings - in this case, the vessel it?s self - as nourishment through the creatures excretions.
These biot's utilized it all.

But this ship was dying, and the former Prefect knew that the next time this creature closed it's immensely powerful jaws, it would be for the last time.
Steeling himself, the Yuuzhan Vong stepped forward, tentatively looking down into the unrelenting darkness of the creatures? gullet as if he were merely contemplating a misstep. If he misjudged his descent marginally, he could land in the highly corrosive acids within - and that was not his plan, not yet.

Taking a firm hold of the signal-villip, he placed it under the arm with no hand remaining at it?s end, where he made certain it would be secure. With his now-free hand, he began to stroke the creature to life carefully, mindful of the fact the plummeting temperature would make the small biot more fragile. The villip began to pulse gently, indicating it?s active state.
Wonderful

It was with that thought in mind, he then took hold of it once more, and tucked it, awkwardly, into the folds of his robeskin, then looked down into the belly of the beast.

He wasn?t going to like this, he decided, but when had Nom Anor done something he truly relished lately?

Stepping onto the fleshy palette that lay inside the maw luur's quiescent mouth, he waited, shaking with anticipation.

Then the creature swallowed, and all faded to black.

Outside, the chamber began to crack and quake more so, small breaks becoming deep running fissures that oozed black decay. Large chunks of the asymmetrical ceiling began to fall in, before they were simultaneously pulled outward by the harsh, whipping suction. This in turn caused larger fragments of the walls, door-irises and ceiling, to break away, smashing gaping holes in the withstanding structure as they passed into space - all of this, accompanied by the shrill, whistling gale that slowly, but surely, ebbed down to pure, unyielding silence.

Braced against either wall of the dying biot's throat, Nom Anor could only stare into the darkness and imagine what putrid remains awaited him down below, should he fall. Through the protective flesh of the gnullith, he could not smell the acrid stench of the creature's digestive fluids, but he could feel his eyes begin to sting through the cloaker, a testament to the fact that while the creature died, many parts of it would remain fully functional, if but only for a while.

Good - Nom Anor thought, he was counting on that most of all.

*****


Yuuzhan Vong Miid Ro?ik Cruiser - Yammka?s Punishment : Yuuzhan?tar/Coruscant orbit.


Commander S'khim Vorrik stared in horror at the scene unfolding not far from the main body of Warmaster Nas Choka's fleet.
Where had they erred? He had been wondering, had the Warmaster been right to suspect Shimrra had taken this whole cursed endeavour too far? That their one, true conduit to the gods, had become eternally lost in a sea of his own personal madness.

Of course the Warmaster would never have voiced such misgivings openly, not in front of most. But during his rallying of the troops, S'khim Vorrik had caught the general drift of those words best reserved for the gods alone. And it was only the gods that could decide weather or not these were in fact, blasphemy.

The bridge of Yammka?s Punishment had long since descended into complete eerie silence, Villip mistresses torn away from their work, tacticians no longer concerned with their strategies, all eyes turned towards mica canopies and blister-transparencies, to observe the unbelievable sight first hand - the sight of Supreme Overlord Shimrra's vessel, breaking apart like some gargantuan creature being torn limb from limb.

How could this be? Was Shimrra, beloved of the gods, truly dead? Had he, as Nas Choka had said, pushed the gods too far? And if that was so, what in all the terrible abominable punishments blasphemers and heretics could face, would lay in wait for the children of Yun-Yuuzhan?

S'khim Vorrik did not wish to imagine, yet his mind worked on, regardless of the extreme dread he felt curling up his spine along with the insatiable anger. They would fight on, they would make a stand here, and when they galaxy trembled beneath the threat of their onslaught once more, they would finally cleanse the galaxy of the infidels forever.

The priests would be tasked with selecting a new, more proficiently obedient Supreme Overlord, the gods may choose to be more lenient upon their children if this were so.

"Commander-"

The villip mistress' voice brought the warrior firmly out of his thoughts by the scruff of the neck, and he turned his narrow-eyed gaze on her incredulously, this was no time to be voicing one?s concerns!

"- I am receiving an attempted communication pulse from one of the primary signal villips, the pulse is weak, but the source is within range."

The commander grumbled something undistinguishable under his breath, cracking the joints of his knuckles as if to distract himself some,

"There are thousands of signal villips out there, mistress, do not waste my time with your inane obviousness." He growled out in response.

The villip mistress, a rather haggard looking female, took up a position of genuflection, pressing her forehead to the deck before uttering, "Belek tiu Commander, but the signal is that of Dread Lord Shimrra himself."

S'khim Vorrik's manner changed instantly,

"Send a squadron of Yorik-et to locate and investigate the source of that signal, if they find anything that is of significance, they will retrieve it."
A small, trickling concern wound it?s way down the Commander's spine,
"If Lord Shimrra survives, we may yet have the advantage over our enemies."

TBC