[o] ==>

If the lapse in her custodial bond was significant enough, it was not just political power she risked. At such a distance, she sacrificed concentration needed to curb its most dreadful psychic shriek of all, the galaxy-wide extinction event called the Vast Glub.

Of course this eventuality proved a fitting reward for such reckless expansion of her territory. She chose the worst time possible to explore further from the homeworld than she'd ever been. She was scouring the edge of the galaxy for systems to plunder when she received word of her planet's devastation by meteors. The young were being slaughtered. The mother grub was dead. The end times were upon her people.

She ordered all fleets to return to Alternia. But such was her empire's expansion and interplanetary occupation, few could make it in time to provide any meaningful defense. She instructed her Helmsman to pilot the ship faster than he ever had, and he did so through extreme physical duress. He was able to leap across thousands of light years in a matter of hours. The exertion likely would have killed him, if the Glub didn't get to him first. Her touch could extend life, but never restore it, to her lament.

In that instant, her empire was gone. Gl'bgolyb's swan song wiped out her entire race, save the Condesce and her lone heiress, leaving the empire nothing more than a galactic necropolis of floating tombs.

> [o] ==>