"Just so we're clear, you're asking us to help you destroy a demon god that's arguably worse than you ever were, and I'm saying this to the most recent mortal incarnation of the Biblical Satan? That about sum it up?" Khaara asked.
"More or less," replied Lucien.
"I assume you have some kind of plan for how to avoid getting demolished instantly?" she asked.
"Actually, yes. I'm going to re-invent Angels using Azure Demons as a base."
Khaara just stared blankly at her father for a few minutes before asking "Okay, I know you're not actually this stupid. I need to know what you've been smoking so we can schedule an intervention and rehab."
Lucien gave Khaara an unamused look before saying "I know what I'm doing. The ritual itself to initiate the shift is already almost complete. There's just the matter of killing Thorgraman."
"Again, you state that we need to do the impossible as if it's a trivial matter," argued Aillen, standing up from one of Lucien's living room chairs.
Lucien stood up and pulled down a whiteboard, drawing a donut on it. “The plan was originally to utilize the ringworlds, like the one we are currently on, to create an energy pulse intended to hyper-agitate large pools of essence, something that would prove deadly to even Thorgraman - or at least weaken him. Eventually, I got schooled in K.I.S.S. Theory - Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Lucien marked out the donut and drew an imp getting hit in the head with a rock, continuing “I changed the plan to something much more efficient and much faster. We are going to throw a giant black hole at Thorgraman.” Lucien paused, erasing and redrawing the imp’s eyes into Xs. “Any questions?”
Michiru raised her hand, “Wouldn’t he just, like, move?”
“Why yes, he probably would. That’s why we’re going to get him to show up at the very moment it would collide with him. Doing so will require very well-timed baiting, but should be completely doable,” answered Lucien.
Khaara rebutted with “Would that even hurt him? Normal matter?”
Lucien pointed to the rock and stated “Normal matter? Probably, but I'm not confident in its lethality. That's why we're making the black hole using a wormhole generator fueled with essence-infused negative matter, and obviously with a ton of safety features disabled.”
“Uh-huh.” Khaara scratched her chin, “So about this Nod-Tehom - what the hell is it?”
Lucien erased the sketches of Thorgraman and the ring world, drawing a weird, almost dripping sigil and writing NOD-TEHOM under it. Continuing, drawing what looked like a squiggly line with three branches on top and the galaxy - another donut, but with a star at the middle - before stopping. “Nod-Tehom is an enormous, incomprehensibly powerful entity imprisoned by some worm-like Precursor race,” Lucien points at the squiggly line, “The Lakim. The enormous citadels throughout the galaxy where we get so much of our Precursor artifacts from - all that is what the Lakim left laying around. These oversized worms managed to get Nod-Tehom in some kind of psychic cage, and apparently either forgot, or had been deliberately ignoring, said entity since then.
“Nod-Tehom is more akin to a force than an actual physical entity, and has reality-warping grade capabilities that I still don't fully understand. Remember Demodax, the mummified dragon that basically is the planet next door? As far as I can tell, that was Nod-Tehom's equivalent to a pet rat I had a couple incarnations ago.” Lucien drew a galaxy on fire under the sigil, for emphasis. “Or so Gabriel tells me. I don't actually recall my past lives and have no firm evidence I ever owned a rat.”
Michiru proceeded to raise her hand and ask “Okay, you've made the plan for Thorgraham or whatever sound at least theoretically possible. Buuut… you now also want help killing a set of mutable, self-aware laws of physics? That’s gonna take a little explaining.”
Lucien sighed, and sat down in his desk’s swivel chair. He then turned away from the group, saying “There’s a reason I haven’t dropped the Ringworld Array Project. Nothing I do will kill Nod, but if I can weaken him enough to allow someone else to finish the job, then this will all have been worth it. First things first, I’m going to begin generating a wormhole at the edge of this system. I want you three to fly the repaired Calnus through it to a galaxy in an alternate dimension. I’m not going to tell you where you’ll be coming out; it’s a surprise. Trust me, you’ll recognize the system when you see it.”
Khaara, Aillen, and Michiru looked at each other in confusion. Finally, Khaara asked “How soon will the Calnus be repaired?”
“In terms of Girbot’s personal time or the absolute time progression of the universe we’re currently in?” Lucien asked.
“Forget it, there’s no way for me to answer a question like that and get an intelligible response for my first question. When do you want us to leave?” Khaara asked.
“Whenever, really. Just don’t wait longer than, say, a month. I feel like if you delay much longer than three weeks or so, then you’d get too accustomed to sedentary living again,” Lucien responded.
Michiru raised her hand.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. You still raise your hand as if this is a classroom? What is it, Ms. Saionji?” Lucien asked.
“I didn’t get around to taking Theoretical Physics before dropping out of college. Why exactly is this such a non-urgent matter when we’re literally talking about killing demon gods, plural?” Michiru asked.
“A wormhole generator can functionally double as a time machine and a dimension machine in addition to its capabilities regarding ‘traditional’ teleportation. This is why we Lunarians don’t bother with natural wormholes anymore. The last time we trusted a stable, naturally-occurring wormhole, we came out in a different dimension entirely than the one we came from.”
“Oh.”
Over the next few days, the group prepared for the unpreparable unknown of their journey to the Milky Way Galaxy. Which, given they had next to no idea what was going to be on the other side, turned out to be something of a challenge. Each of them addressed this issue differently.
Michiru essentially over-packed with various gadgets and weapons she had, many of which were reminiscent of the anime and video games her people had become famous for putting out within the Star Empire. Aillen, on the other hand, gave up on packing much of anything at all, instead bringing only the most basic essentials. Finally, Khaara tried to bring only the most versatile objects at her disposal, but neglected anything particularly specialized, no matter how poorly her generalized equipment performed at that specialty.
Finally, the Calnus was ready to fly through the wormhole waiting for them at the edge of the local star system…