While I enjoy the dramatic imagery of a heroic final sacrifice as much as the next person, I am forced to ask the people of Nytos a simple question: has no-one in a dozen millennia of weapons research ever heard of a fuse?

But in all seriousness this was a very evocative piece with some powerful and effective imagery. I especially appreciated the description of the collapsing flesh-tower in the planet's last moments. I wasn't sure whether or not the dying minstrel was supposed to be literal or figurative, but either way the imagery was effective. The story was a little hard to follow due to how quickly and how often it jumped from past to present to future, and however evocative the image, the minstrel bits didn't help due to the ambiguity of their nature.

I'm deliberately trying to avoid major spoilers, so let me just say that the nature of the weapon and how and why it was deployed is something I've thought about extensively in my own worldbuilding, so it was fun to see another take on the same idea explored and developed. Nicely done and powerfully-written overall.

Talk about batman levels of prepared.

Very grimdark feel, nice job! 

Nice haunting feel to the writing, nice!

Wonderful!

Fascinating writing style.