A kind of serenity dominated the chamber’s boiling air. All that could be heard was the low roiling of the magma, the tear of metal against flesh, and the furious battle cries of a single man and his brother fighting to preserve a future that had already been swiped away.
Alberich swung, kicked, screamed - whatever it took to destroy the enemy in front of him. But when one pale-faced Gravewalker fell, another would step forward to replace it. Flecks of skin, muscle, and bone littered the onyx landing just beyond the bridge, where the silhouette of the fortress standing tall amidst the smoke and haze watched over the battle like a bothersome father.
Lieze was content to watch. Atop the Manticore, there was nothing the brothers could do to reach her. Its level was so intimidating and its HP so engorged that neither of the hopeful Scions beneath her dared to land a blow on it, for fear of a counterattack they wouldn’t be able to endure. Indeed, she was more like a spectator than an active participant, which seemed to bring the furious king no shortness of frustration.
“You damnable, corpse-fucking cowards!” Crushing the head of yet another Gravewalker, he spun around on the spot and rapped one gauntlet against his chest, “Do you think I won’t kill every last one of your thralls!? And when I do, I’ll gladly enjoy drinking your blood from the shattered remains of your skulls!”
“It’s a poor habit to take your eyes off an enemy.” Lieze pointed towards him, “Turn around.”
He did so, and just in time to meet the coagulant fist of a Flesh Elemental head-on. The thrall’s undulant body broke off into mundane splatters of blood as it heaved its weight against Alberich’s armour, leaving him none the worse for wear as crimson droplets painted the onyx platform, or fell and were consumed by the magma below.
“Is that it?” He wondered, raising his warhammer, “How many times do I have to tell you!? Alberich, king of the Dwarves, is invincible!”
As soon as he tore through the Elemental’s midsection, its body collapsed like suspended water, revealing another group of Gravewalkers behind its dissolving outline. Lieze had been keeping count - 129 of her thralls were dead by his hand. 70 more than Mime, who was forced to fight more conservatively for lack of true invulnerability. But those numbers didn’t put a dent in the army, and more than half an hour had passed already.
The two of them were fine warriors. Better than fine, actually. Lieze couldn’t think of any other men besides Helmach who could have possibly survived for a comparable amount of time. Their tenacity intrigued her. Even with their nation thoroughly dismantled, Alberich and Mime continued to struggle against the Order’s might. The perseverance of the sentient soul, she was coming to realise, was often the most troublesome factor of all.
But the soul was not the body. Though its will was capable of stoking a grand fire within the heart, it was forced to contest with the limitations of the flesh. No matter how brightly one’s providence shone through the darkness, every mortal had a breaking point.
The minutes carried on, indifferent to the brothers’ herculean task. With every swing, they were free of thralls for a second longer, but their bodies came to resist every movement with rustic intolerance. Beneath Alberich’s impenetrable armour, his body was burning up beneath the weight of fatigue, and Mime’s restorative spells acquired a rarity to their usage that was only exacerbated as the battle roared on.
“Hah… hah…” In a moment of respite, Alberich took a flask from his waist and uncorked the neck with his yellowed teeth, “Watch me… I’ll butcher these mindless corpses until there’s nothing left of the Order but a tide of twice-dead flesh… I’ll fight until the day turns to night… I’ll-”
The flask shattered, and its contents were lost. A well-aimed dagger had pierced straight through the glass. Baccharum stood with one arm extended near the back of the horde, taking the chorus of broken glass clinking against the ground to mean that he struck true.
“Now that’s just not fair, is it?” The Elf asked, “If you’re going to wipe out all of these thralls, then at least try to do it with some honour.”
“Nice shot, Baccharum…” Drayya offered a rare compliment, genuinely gobsmacked by the feat, “How exactly did you manage to do that with a blindfold on?”
“The ears reveal what the eyes do not.” He replied, “-That, and I just so happened to be at the top of my game. Please don’t expect me to land shots like those 100% of the time. I get performance anxiety when people expect too much from me.”
Alberich held the intact neck of the flask as if he expected it to regenerate at any moment. The fire went out in his eyes for a moment short enough to remain imperceptible, but long enough to introduce sorrow into his heart. The blaze reignited in the next instant, flurried with the hatred that spurred him towards ceaseless conflict.
“...Fine.” He dropped the bulbous welt of glass, which clinked against the grainy, uneven ground, “Fine! No - excellent! Do you want to witness the light dwindling from my soul as my muscles scream and my spine aches for release!? You’ll be watching for hours! Days! Weeks! Even in the absence of a soul, my body will continue to enact the final will of my people! Come, Mime! Join me in driving these forsaken exiles back to the arid plains of the Deadlands!”
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Mime’s tiresome breaths were so pronounced and laboured that he could barely utter a word in response, “...That’s right. That’s very true, my brother…”
He spun on his heels, catching the chin of a Gravewalker lunging from behind and sending it head-first into the magma. Lieze peered over the edge of the platform and watched its flesh catching fire, both arms extended skyward in a mindless attempt to prolong its attack even in the seconds before true death.
“I can still fight… even if the power of the Scions fails me, I can always fight!” Mime continued, “I’ve lived through worse… I’ve faced down a Dragon with nothing but a mace in hand… compared to that, these peeling, bloodstained corpses are nothing!”
His words filled the void where his body could not. Each step of his was one taken with every risk of keeling over. Every swing of his mace was capitalised by aching, sprains, fractures in his weapon arm which only seemed to grow heavier by the second. Lieze found it pitiful, and yet, the beating humanity in her chest forced her - willing or otherwise - to harbour a spark of respect for his resilience. It was not a beauty she would have glimpsed in the past, when the vague miracles of life brought her nothing but disgust.
Given enough time, it was obvious who was going to break first. In the minutes that ensued, Briarknights stepped forward to trade gleaming blows with the Dwarves, their weapons catching the light of the magma and glowing as if infused by the spirit of the mountain itself. Lieze observed the oversized greatsword that once belonged to Helmach shouldered over a corpse that may have once resembled the towering zealot, but which had grown unrecognisable as it passed through the phases of rotting and bloating and withering.
Under the weight of that hulking weapon that couldn’t quite be called a sword at all, Mime felt like he was attempting to carry the world on his shoulders. A crushing blow to his shield sent shockwaves of pain through the nerves of his arm, forcing him, finally, to fall over from a combination of fatigue, encumbrance, and despair. The Briarknight which was once Helmach raised its greatsword with both hands to deliver the fatal blow.
“Mime!” Alberich, occupied with tugging his hammer from a Horror’s grasp, relinquished his grip, skidded across the field, and clenched a fist tightly enough to draw blood under the black metal of his gauntlets, “Damnable beast of the twilight! Take this!”
The fleurs of his ceremonial armour cut deep into the Briarknight’s flesh. Its cheek, like the bloated corpse of some gargantuan sea creature, exploded into a shower of effluvial lifeblood as Alberich’s fist connected. Lieze watched the Briarknight stumbling over the edge of the platform and slapped the skin beneath the Manticore’s balding fur.
Understanding her intent, the beast pounced over to the edge, braced its forelimbs against the sheer drop, and lunged towards the magma. Lieze was forced to close her eyes as, for a second or two, it seemed as if she was about to be cooked alive. Once the Manticore caught the falling Briarknight in its grasp, a boiling updraft from the bed of melted rock below caught the membranes of its wings and filled Lieze’s ears with a deafening airburst as it curved into the air.
When the Manticore landed right back where it had started, it craned its elongated neck over one shoulder as if expecting some kind of praise from its master - who was more concerned with resisting the urge to vomit than giving out any compliments.
“Hah…” She swallowed down the impulse and shook her head, “...Sorry, but that thrall in particular is one I would rather keep alive.”
“Insanity…” Alberich kneeled down to help his brother, “Mime! Stand up!”
He froze at the surprising coolness that ran through his body when they came into contact. Alberich’s fatigue vanished like a shadow, replaced with an energetic zeal. It was only a second later, as he pulled Mime to his feet, when he noticed the arm wrapped around his shoulder glowing with a warm, grass-green light.
“What are you doing!?” Alberich separated them with a shove, but the deed was already done, “Save that spell for yourself! Have you lost your mind!?”
“No… you need this more than I do, Alberich…” Mime spoke through laboured breaths, “My light is fated to dwindle… but yours… if I can prolong your flame for a second longer, then I’ll gladly lend this boon… this Heavenly Favour, to another…”
“Fucking idiot!” With an impressive display of reinvigorated strength, Alberich lifted his stocky brother up by the scruff of chainmail poking out from his neck, “You’re the one who needs to live, Mime! That’s how this was always going to end - how it was always meant to be! You know this!”
“No, brother…” Mime allowed his limbs to go limp in the air, “On that day, no matter the circumstance, it was you who-”
“It was a lucky shot! A fluke!” Alberich screamed, “I never landed one blow on that infernal wyrm! Every chance I took was a decision made out of fear for my own life! But you… Mime, you stood before the Amber Dragon with mace in hand, matching the beast blow for blow, while I watched - terrified - from the sidelines!”
A crushing claw. A wounded brother. A single bolt loosed from a mundane crossbow ready to fall apart at the drop of a hat. Alberich only recalled the scene in feverish fragments. His vision darkened as the Dragon’s heinous death throes inflicted him with a fear beyond mortal understanding. Then, he lingered in the silence, sweat beading on his brow, and opened his eyes to see the beast felled - a single, inconsequential bolt lodged into the soft tissue encasing its burning heart.
A vow fulfilled, and a crown claimed. That was his beginning, and also his curse. The nightmare - the guilt - of that day had never left him. There was only one who could vanquish the guilt from his heart: a stalwart, worthy brother prepared to take the throne in his wake. Now, that dream seemed more distant than ever before.
“...No.” Mime disregarded his brother’s confession, “It was you, Alberich. There can be no other king but you.”