Many years ago…
“Hello?” called out Lucien Rorone. “Is anyone still alive?”
He'd crawled out of the wreckage of his troop carrier, his helmet nearly smashed, blood pouring down from his forehead onto and into his eyes. He still clutched his rifle in his hands, but he doubted it still worked after that impact. If worst came to worst, he could use it as a bludgeon. Better than nothing.
The landscape had been decimated by the three-minute battle. The carcass of a War Groom lay draped over the city ruins, the sheer weight of the mechanoid crushing everything beneath it without exception. When they'd brought it down -- someone sniping the War Bride out of the cockpit -- it had seemed a victory for a moment.
A moment before it had fallen.
Lucien dragged himself across the battlefield, one of his legs refusing to obey him. What did they do now? Who was in charge? He'd seen the commander's head melt away from one of the War Groom's attacks. Was he in charge now? The chain of command was just links scattered across the floor.
“Hello?” he called out again. “Did anyone else make it?”
His voice was quieter this time, more hoarse. He'd breathed something in, back during the battle, and he knew it was playing havoc with his insides. He needed to get back to base soon, he needed medical attention. Panic crawled down the base of his skull. If he came back alone, his Merit Score would definitely be too low to qualify for medical aid. He needed to return with at least something to show for their efforts.
“Hello? Please?!”
Taridel V was an unfortunate planet. There had been a bureaucratic error when this region of space had been liberated from the UAP, and so it had ended up being placed in the custody of two separate Ministers -- Ministers who hated each other. So, while those two argued and insulted each other in the halls of the Body, their conscripted armies slaughtered each other on the fields of Taridel, seeking total control of the planet. If you believed the rumours, they used this war to test new weaponry as well.
Lucien coughed. Right now, he believed the rumours.
“Please!” he screamed into the night-smog. “Anyone?!”
“Heya.”
Lucien whirled around at the sudden reply from behind him, raising his rifle defensively, his eyes wide with alarm. As a reflex, his finger pulled the trigger -- but the barrel of the gun spat only sparks. As he’d thought, it had been damaged beyond repair. Panting for breath, he flipped it over in his hands, ready to use it as a club.
“Jeez, what's your problem?” said a voice from within the fog. “You're the one who was shouting for people.”
“Who are you?!” Lucien demanded, animal adrenaline pushing him into action once more.
The newcomer pushed his way out of the smoke, striding through the corpses and the mud. It was a young man, probably only a year or so older than Lucien -- so sixteen or thereabouts -- with short purple hair and a tattered yellow scarf. He smiled cheerfully at the soldier as their eyes met.
He wasn't wearing a uniform -- not from either side. A civilian? No, a deserter? Lucien took a cautious step back, still ready to swing his gun.
“I'm a little lost,” the young man chuckled sheepishly, scratching the back of his head. “This is a war or something, yeah? It's pretty crazy around here, huh?”
“Who are you?” Lucien repeated.
“Hey, mind if I ask you something?” the young man said, ignoring Lucien's question once again. “You got any cigarettes? I've never smoked before, so I'm kinda curious to see what it's like.”
“You tell me who you are,” Lucien said steadily. “Or I won't be responsible for my actions.”
The young man said nothing to that. He just glanced over, twitched a finger -- and a nearly-invisible string whipped through the air and snatched Lucien's rifle from his grip. He stumbled backwards, falling to the ground, suddenly disarmed.
This was it. He was out of his league. Lucien raised his arms and squeezed his eyes shut, preparing for one of the miserable ends he'd seen so many of.
But it didn't come. Slowly, Lucien dared to open his eyes. The young man was standing over him, frowning.
“You're a twitchy little guy, aren't ya?” he sighed, extending a hand. “Come on, get up.”
Sparks of rainbow-coloured light drifted down his fingers, and Lucien's heart dropped even further as he saw them. Aether. He was certainly, definitely, absolutely out of his league.
“Who are you?” he asked one last time, throat as dry as the desert.
“Me?” the young man said, considering it. “I'm… hm, how about Wu Ming? Yeah, that sounds good. I'm Wu Ming.”
He grinned.
“How about you?”
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Present Day…
“Ah…” Black Dog grinned, its head and arm reforming from a black mist, its flickering eyes fixed on Morgan Nacht. “Yes, I like this. I'm into this. Superb, wonderful, fantastic. You've got great timing, Morgan Nacht. I was just about to wrap things up here.”
Morgan said nothing at first. He just drew his smoke-sword back, eyes fixed on the Aether abomination, his breath trailing out of his mouth as cold mist.
“Really?” Black Dog cocked its head. “Nothing to say to the Black Dog? No banter? Come on. It's no fun without some dirty talk. Or maybe you're unsettled from having a perfect copy of your teacher before you?”
At that, at least, Morgan reacted.
“A perfect copy?” he scoffed. “Hardly. The eyes are way too big.”
“That's just so I can see you better, little man,” Black Dog smirked. “Really, though… that was quite the approach. I didn't even see you coming until your sword was already inside of me. Ah, if I had blood, I know it'd be pumping right now…”
Morgan looked past the Black Dog, to where Wu Ming was sprawled on the ground. Blood oozed from the stumps of his legs -- legs that terminated with torn thread. An absurd mixture of the material and the organic.
To tell the truth, Wu Ming was impressed with his apprentice as well. The last he'd noticed Morgan's presence, the kid had still been on top of the shopping centre, fighting the Hive of Malkuth. What had changed? Why was he here now?
Wu Ming looked, and he saw -- the pale hue of Morgan's skin, and the exhaustion in his unwilling breaths. The signs of a battle that was starting to grate. Wu Ming had never experienced that himself, but he knew what it looked like.
Ah. So he’d come here to get Wu Ming's help. That made sense.
“Sorry, Morgan,” Wu Ming grinned from the ground, embarrassed. “It looks like I bit off a little more than I can chew! You should probably get out of here.”
Black Dog glanced back down at Wu Ming, the levity fading from its face. “You think I'll just let him get away?” it asked, voice low.
Wu Ming glared right back at it, even through his smile. “You think I need legs to kick your ass?”
The Black Dog opened its simulacrum of a mouth to reply -- but Morgan chose that moment to move. Not away, as Wu Ming had hoped, but instead to attack. In an instant, he was upon the Black Dog, smoke-sword whipping through the air so fast that it was only visible as a dancing smear of purple.
Wounds opened up all across Black Dog’s body -- but no flesh, no blood.
“Kid!” Wu Ming shouted, using strings to pull himself out of the Dog’s range. “Normal attacks won’t work!”
His warning nearly came too late.
At the same time as Morgan leapt back, the Black Dog lunged, the wounds on its body snapping open like mouths -- and tendrils poured forth from them in pursuit. They were tipped with snarling canine heads, eyes white with malice, and they stretched to cover nearly the entire alley as Morgan continued to retreat backwards. They snapped and snarled, tearing apart the walls and floor as they went, their attacks indiscriminate.
“A! C! B!” Morgan shouted, his voice tinged with the echo of Aether.
Purple Aether coalesced near his foot -- and as it did, he spun and kicked at it, sending the Block he’d manifested hurtling towards the Black Dog. Wu Ming saw what he’d done: he’d applied an Amplified Cut effect to the Block, effectively turning it into a twelve-sided blade. Against anyone else, that would have been a good maneuver, but against this thing…
As the tendrils retracted back into its body, the Black Dog simply reached out and tapped the incoming Block with a finger.
It popped -- and blood sprayed over the walls and the Black Dog’s sly grin. Licking its lips, it spread its arms wide, as if to display to Morgan that its wounds had now fully vanished. A malicious chuckle danced throughout the dark space.
“I guess you haven’t been watching that long,” it said smugly. “But I’ve pretty much figured out Aether constructs of that level. You can blame this guy for that. I’ve already developed an ability to nullify any constructs an enemy throws at me.”
Yep, Wu Ming had really messed up this time. To tell the truth, he was probably the worst possible person to have fought this thing. After just a few minutes of contact with him, the threat the Black Dog presented had snowballed to such a level that Wu Ming was no longer sure he could even win.
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Did that mean he regretted it?
Wu Ming grinned. Oh hell no.
Puppetlord! Starlight Swing!
In an instant, he activated two abilities. Puppetlord created strings pulling on his own shoulders, holding him up in the air and letting him move around. As he rose into his floating position, he let loose a web of light-strings from his fingers, intending to cover the entire alleyway and catch the Black Dog in a deadly net.
His adversary had been ready for him, though.
Black Dog responded at the same time as Wu Ming attacked. In the blink of an eye, it had turned and kicked off the wall, launching itself towards Wu Ming with a wild look in its eyes. Its form was fluid -- and so it simply compressed itself to fit through a tiny gap in the net as it closed the distance. As the strings finally reached their destination, the Black Dog was already in Wu Ming’s face, its massive hands wrapped around his throat.
“Sorry,” it giggled, saliva running from its mouth. “Did you think I’d forgotten about you?!”
“Nah,” Wu Ming gasped back. “I was counting on it.”
Sinking Feeling!
The Black Dog’s eyes widened -- and it was no surprise, for its hands had started to sink into Wu Ming’s throat where they made contact. It tried to pull away, but Sinking Feeling couldn’t be escaped that easily. Black Dog realized that quickly enough, too -- with a gruesome crunch, it dislocated its jaw, lunging forward to try and bite Wu Ming’s head right off instead.
Except… he had already created an opening.
As the two of them flew through the air, Morgan leapt up behind Black Dog, another Block clutched in his hands. Was he seriously trying the same thing again, after seeing how it had ended up? No. He wasn’t that stupid.
With a roar of exertion, he hurled the Block right at the Black Dog’s face --
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L! A!
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-- and this time, the projectile exploded into light and noise before it could make contact.
Black Dog hissed in agony, retracting its head into its body like a tortoise to avoid the explosion.
Seeing that there was now a danger of actual injury, it moved instantly to free itself -- Sinking Feeling was indeed too difficult to escape, so Black Dog just tore its own hands off at the wrists and let Wu Ming keep them. Kicking off his chest -- with enough force to vaporize ribs -- it launched itself up into the air.
Morgan followed. With a flick of his wrist, he launched a rope of fog and wrapped it around the creature’s leg like a lasso. As it soared upwards, it pulled him right along with it.
Wu Ming took a second to finally release Sinking Feeling, letting Black Dog’s severed hands drop to the ground and dissipate into mist. He’d be best off getting into a good position now -- but looking up at the shrinking figures of his apprentice and his copycat, he couldn’t help but smirk to himself. It had been a while since he’d seen Morgan in person…
…but the kid really had gotten quick, huh?
String Theory: Wormhole.
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“Hm?”
Black Dog glanced down as its massive leap finally crested the building. It hadn’t noticed at first, but it seemed it had acquired a passenger -- Morgan Nacht was clinging to its leg via one of those smoke-ropes of his. How curious. Why hadn’t Black Dog’s ability automatically nullified that construct? It certainly fit the criteria.
Morgan Nacht.
Black Dog sifted through the information it had acquired from Wu Ming. This kid was his apprentice, one of the Seven Blades of the Turning of the Heir. He used abilities based on the alphabet. The data it had acquired was fairly clear on the first few letters, but it got murkier the further it went… that was annoying. Maybe it should have let Wu Ming beat it up a little more, to acquire more intelligence?
Nah. It might have been strategically advantageous, but the idea of willingly losing a fight still struck Black Dog as a real zero-out-of-ten scenario. It would just kill Nacht and figure all this out later.
The nullification worked just as well manually, after all.
As it landed on the roof, the Black Dog swung its leg with almighty force, whipping Nacht through the air horizontally. Then, at the right moment, just the right moment, it nullified the smoke-rope. The construct popped into blood, and Nacht went flying into the wall. Debris and smoke was spat out in every direction as he slammed into the concrete surface.
“Hm,” Black Dog smiled, regenerating its hands to cup its ears. “Was that the sound of breaking bones I heard? Ah, what a wonderful melody. I’ll give you a ten-out-of-ten for your entertainment value, if nothing else.”
The smile widened into a sickly grin.
“Encore!”
Black Dog opened its mouth wide, dislocating its jaw once again -- but this time, instead of biting, it breathed. With the force of a starship engine, it sucked in the air around it voraciously, taking in so much that its head inflated to nearly ten times its original size. At the point its facial features became cartoonish, it finally relented --
-- and so it huffed, and it puffed, and it spat that invisible payload right back towards the injured Morgan Nacht.
It was like Black Dog was belching forth a hurricane. A vicious beam of air poured from its mouth towards the small figure of Nacht, the breath so concentrated it was very nearly a solid object. The Black Dog’s eyes widened in vicious glee as Nacht -- caught injured and dazed -- was unable to dodge, the beam slamming into him with all its force.
How many seconds would he last? Two? Three? Ha, hahahaha, perhaps he was dead already! Ten out of ten! Two thumbs up! Five stars! Would recommend, would recommend, would recommend! Yes! Yes! Die!
DIE!
Finally, the attack crawled to a close, and the Black Dog’s head returned to its normal size. Ah, perhaps it had gone… a little overboard. The skyscraper behind where Nacht had been standing had been completely demolished, as had the five behind that. It would be a miracle if a corpse still even existed among all that rubble.
“Ah, still,” Black Dog scratched the back of its head sheepishly. “It’s probably best to make sure.”
It took a single step forward --
-- and the building exploded beneath it.
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It was just as Morgan Nacht had thought. Wu Ming hadn’t known about Inside yet.
When that thing -- Black Dog -- had used the air attack, Morgan hadn’t been able to dodge immediately. He’d needed to use an Amplified Grade to weaken and partially block the attack -- and even that had peeled away nearly all the skin from his hands. As soon as the winds had begun to weaken, he’d used Inside to move into the room below…
…and from there, he’d gotten to work.
Now that he’d gotten a little more used to it, he’d realized Light was a potent combination with a number of his other abilities. To put it simply, Light -- L -- was the ability to convert his own Aether constructs into an explosive flame. Combined with Fog, it essentially gave him the power to sculpt his own bombs freely.
An entire story filled with Fog made quite the explosion of Light. Morgan watched, resolute, as heat and flame poured through the building -- and he readied his sword of smoke as the scraps of the Black Dog dropped to the ground in front of him. Its legs had been burnt away by the shine of Light, and it looked back at him with feral indignance.
“Oh look,” Morgan said, nodding to the beast’s twitching stumps. “I guess you were a perfect replica, after all.”
As the Black Dog howled at him, Morgan tightened his grip against the hilt of his sword.
This time, he promised the world. I’ll show you what I can do.
He went to dart in -- but fortunately, a white light flared from far above, and Morgan saw the trap he would have stepped into. Immediately, he jumped backwards, creating a platform of Amplified Fog beneath his feet to stop himself from touching the floor. After all… it was now the enemy’s domain.
In the darkness of the ravaged building, the Black Dog had thrust its hands against the floor -- and those hands had reformed into bundles of black strings, spreading all throughout the area like the roots of a diseased tree. The Black Dog’s grin stretched all the way up its neck as it looked up at Morgan.
“Like this, right?” it breathed.
The roots spread further, crawling towards the gaggles of rats that lurked in the shadows of this abandoned place. Animal instinct showed them the danger they were in instantly. They squeaked and squealed as they went to escape, but even with their haste, they’d never stood a chance. The instant the roots made contact with their furry bodies, they vanished in pops of red Aetheral sparks -- like bugs caught in a bug zapper.
For a few seconds, as the horde of vermin was recorded all at once, the room itself shone crimson. And then…
“Guardian Entity!” Black Dog cackled. “Kyūso!”
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Hark.
The providence of a cerebrospinal heaven. The triumph of divine will over mortal soul. A synchronized sequence of lights slaughtering the dark. The grace, the glory, the virtue, the memory, the wonder. An angel, an angel, an angel had come.
Praetorian One floated over the world of man, wings spread wide, feathers floating all around him like the satellites of a celestial sphere. Even the individual feathers bore crimson eyes now, watchful over all below him -- and all was now below him. He needed not even flap his wings to fly. It was in his nature to stand atop the sky.
And yet…
AH… MY BACK HURTS…
He bared his fingers like claws at the world. The wings that formed his head twisted around each other until they nearly formed a needlepoint. His feathers shuddered and twitched sympathetically in the air, like subordinates outraged on his behalf.
One could feel them, shifting under his skin, the abilities that the Queen had granted him to save his life. An ecosystem of power that now formed his core. If he were to dig his claws into his chest and pull it open, no doubt a wellspring of divine light would pour forth.
And yet, this divinity was a fragile thing. He was the newborn of an uneasy equilibrium, one that had only just barely achieved existence, one that the world was pushing back against. In time, in time, he would stabilize and achieve a true apotheosis, but right now…
AIEEE! SAMUEL SENTZMANN! BECAUSE OF YOU, MY BAAACK HUUURTS!
He threw his wings out wide, and vented his anger upon the world. Bolts of light fired forth from every inch of his body, bombarding the district below -- and whatever those bolts struck crumbled into salt. Buildings, vehicles, people… all of them were transmuted, turning the world into a pure and blinding white. Great clouds of steam floated up from the impact sites, like a great breath of relief from the souls of the righteously departed.
Returning to the serenity expected of Her Majesty’s proxy, Praetorian One looked upon his work, and he thought it good.
DID YOU DIE, SAMUEL SENTZMANN? NO… YOU MUSTN'T LET THAT KILL YOU. YOU HAVE A MORE HELLISH PUNISHMENT AWAITING YOU.
Right now, not even Praetorian One knew how Appointment would suffer before he died. All One knew was that he couldn’t let the heathen get away with it. To humiliate an agent of Her Majesty, to murder an agent of Her Majesty, to sin to sin TO SIN TO SIN!
…it could not be forgiven.
When Praetorian One finally had Appointment in his hands… only then would the shape of the agony reveal itself. Until then, all One needed do was follow the mandate of heaven. Until then, all One needed do… was stop the rat from escaping its trap.
The angel raised its arm, and pointed a single thin finger up towards the sky.
DELIVER UNTO ME A KINGDOM.
His feathers moved to obey his command, pouring forth from his wings without end and hurtling up towards the sky. One by one, they slotted together seamlessly, forming a radiant canopy over above. Within the space of thirty seconds, the entire district was completely sealed in a red-and-white dome, bathed in a perpetual and soothing daylight.
Now, there was no escape.
Not for the rat stripped of his metal skin.
Not for the rats seeking to flee this planet.
Not for any rats at all, none of them, none of them.
Before this night was done… all of them would have their filthy eyes burnt clean by Her Majesty’s kindness.