Avery just sat frozen with his eyes glued to viewscreen for a few moments as the sealed entity finally fully freed itself.

His breathing had stopped and just seeing the creature’s image displayed filled him with a fear that bordered on crushing hopelessness.

This was something he had not felt in a very long time.

The closest he could remember to ever having experienced an emotion at all similar was when he first heard about his father’s accident and the state it had left him in.

Yet even that had not been quite as intense. Avery now truly understood why most people’s response was to go into a catatonic state when they felt its unnatural presence washing over them.

He slowly wrapped his arms around himself and leaned forward in his seat. Almost allowing himself to curl up into a sort of fetal position and lie down on the floor and wait for the investable doom this creature would bring.

His instincts were now telling him that fighting it was foolish, and running away would only delay the inevitable at best.

It would simply be better to give up and wait for the end. That would be the fastest way for the terror gripping him to pass. Oblivion would serve as a final release.

Except, just as Avery was about to give in, he felt his two hearts, both his original and the smaller one Doctor Raiti had engineered for him beat in unison.

It was a loud and roaring sound of difference from within him.

The heritage within him that he still knew little to nothing about fighting back in defiance against the oppressive power of the creature that had now fully revealed itself.

What Avery felt was a wave of clarity washing over him. The unbearable fear that had taken hold of him fading as he realized how illogical it was.

After everything he had gone through. All the battle he had persevered through and at times completed dominated. Why for even a second had he considered giving up?

It was not in his nature, and certainly never had been.

Even in the darkest moments of his life, he had never rolled over and given up.

There was always a path forward that he had walked even when things seemed bleak.

And now, when the danger was honestly still far away and not focused on him or his allies, was hardly the time to let despair beat him.

That was what this creature wanted. To break the wills of everything else and consume them. At least, that was the sense that Avery got from the overwhelming presence the thing emitted.

’It really is fu*king ugly though.’ Avery thought as he shook off the last lingering effects of the entities mind warping powers.

While Avery had seen the creature in its entirety for several seconds now, it was only after shaking off the latest effects of its abilities that he was really able to analyze it.

His first thought was that this thing was vastly different from any other lifeform he had ever seen or even heard about.

Its main form was like a giant mound of wiggling muscles and flesh that was ever shifting, not taking on a singular form for very long.

What did remain mostly constant about it though were several giant maws that were filled with giant teeth that were shaped like spikes.

These mouths were always moving their positions along with the shifting form of the creature, but they always remained generally the same shape and size from what Avery had observed.

He had plenty of time to study these mouths as the horrific creature was always dragging the space monsters it caught towards its main body and devouring them.

The other semi-permanent part of its form was a near endless number of tendrils shooting out from its main body.

They were constantly in flux with how large they were or what shape that they would take, but the entity always had at least several thousands of appendages shooting out at one time.

Honestly, there was too much for Avery to possibly study in the couple of minutes that he watched the thing.

He noticed that the tendrils were now more confusing than they been before.

When the creature had still been partially sealed inside the asteroid, it had mostly been using appendages like spears to catch and reel in whatever it caught.

Now though, they were taking on completely different shapes and never had any uniform design.

At one moment one of the tendrils could be filled with giant spikes, before rapidly shifting an shooting out what looked like innumerous human hands.

This was something that Avery had seen and only added to the unsettling nature of the aberration.

It was as if its entire existence was meant to induce terror and chaos. Truthfully, despite his resistance to the entity’s powers, Avery felt like his sanity was being chipped away at the longer he stared at it.

Fortunately, he realized quickly that no matter how long he studied the thing, there was no way he had any real chance at understanding it.

All he really wanted to learn, however, was its general abilities and to figure out a rough estimate about how long they had.

The creature was still fighting off the remnants of the space monsters and more seemed to be arriving to join the battle as time went on.

Still, it was obviously a losing fight for the native creature of the system that had been originally created to stop the horror that had invaded long ago.

’It will buy us a little time at least. For now, we need to focus on getting everyone we can out of here.’

While Avery had been figuring out the situation and what sort of enemy they were up against, Zefield and Nali had been busy as well.

The leader of the entire mercenary fleet was seeing if it was possible to use some of his ship’s equipment to protect others from the constant psychic attack the incomprehensible entity was emitting.

At the same time, Nali was helping to prep the Intrepid. Mostly by dragging people out of hallways where they had fallen and into different rooms.

If things were going to play out how Avery thought they were, his carrier ship was about to become a lot more cramped.