Tyr asked the administrator for some sort of explanation or assistance, but she was silent. Too focused on maintaining the inner mechanism of the tower to respond. “It's just like Sinea.” Girshan suddenly said with a lost look on his face. Just like back then, he was ready to perish in bloody battle when everything had gone sideways. His reality turned upside down as the blood sworn warriors of his nation started to turn on one another just before the imperial legion had smashed into their lines. Indiscriminately, no matter how many of them pleaded their fealty to Jartor over Cortus.
Back then, among the northern beastkin, many of them had seen themselves as 'human'. Or they'd considered humans close kin, at the very least. They had lived in harmony with the empire for centuries and there was never any problem, until there was, not many left alive to mourn the past though. Even those humans who'd claimed Sinean nationality were killed, same as anyone else.
“You had fogmen and darkbeasts in Sinea?” Tyr turned to him, they were closer now that the lines were more muddled, but it was still loud to the point where they needed to shout in order to be heard.
“No, I just mean the confusion.” Girshan looked out at the mess in front of them, an ocean of bodies locked in mortal combat. Two forces he would've sworn were part of some dark pact with some black god or another – something foul and on the same side. “You know a thing. People who have sworn loyalty to the council for two decades, four generations of heritage and service. And just like that, these people you counted on and trusted are killing your kin and coming to get you next. Over which human to bend the knee to. Our leadership sided with Cortus, and the commoners and humans that lived among us sided with Jartor.”
“And you?” Tyr asked. He didn't much care, as far as he was concerned this could only be a good thing. The enemy of his enemy would never be his friend, an enemy was an enemy, but watching them slaughter one another. Accepting that was just common sense, he didn't experience the worry or anxiety over it that Girshan seemed to, hearkening back to talk about a done thing. When there was no possibility of revenge – best to let it go. One day, he would kill Hastur, he'd sworn it. Girshan, in comparison, would never equal a primus, even after a thousand lifetimes, reality was too cruel for that.
“Loyal to my brothers and sisters, unlike Ajax. My direct command felt the same, we had no interest in the politicking. Your legion was exclusively human so it made it easy to avoid them, but in the confusion things got messy.” Girshan shivered. “Our command could figure no way to save the capital without wholesale slaughter. Told us to butcher anyone or anything that prevented our flight from the field and back toward the city, sort out the loyal ones later. By the time we got there, it was flattened to the ground, the mountain it stood on was a pile of rubble and sand. In any case... I suppose now is not the time to be nostalgic, eh?”
“Probably not.” Tyr said. And that was all he could say. Girshan had always seemed so stable and stoic, but everyone had trauma, things they didn't want to remember or be reminded of. Hearing that Ajax had ordered the wholesale slaughter of humans, friend and enemy alike, did not shock him. Tyr would have done the same, and he would have lived with it. To give him power was to invite that kind of violent decision making into a thing, best if he stayed small, independent. “Still, I am glad to receive the faith of being told. I'm assuming you could guess at my thoughts on such a thing?”
“I didn't ask for them.” Girshan's thoughtful frown split into a grim smile. “But yes, I'm sure I could guess. Things must seem so simple to your kind, whatever you are.”
“Not so.” Tyr said. The melee had began to branch out and he was cautious of the fogmen, but none of them bothered to look at him. A darkbeast came too close so he kicked it away, allowing the thoughtless humanoids to butcher it before moving on. A little thing, like a scorpion melted down and poured into the mold of a house-cat. “Things are actually so complicated that I try my best to do rather than think. I've never been a fan of troublesome things, we toil and we labor and all for an end that's coming to us whether we'd like it or not. To spend your days in solemn regret over choices past is to live cursed, I think.”
“Do you have any regrets?” Girshan asked. Tyr was young, young enough to be his son, but he'd been places and killed many men. Done things that made him cautious in trusting the lad. Perhaps he hadn't done those things with malicious intent, but he did them. Girshan couldn't understand how his hands could be so bloody and he could show no remorse with one hand, and treat Jura and the others with such thoughtfulness with the other. He wanted to understand. “All of the men you've killed and deeds done, do you think about them?”
“Perhaps I used to.” Tyr nodded, finding his cleaver ill suited to the task of cutting apart the bizarre bodies of wounded beasts coming into his vicinity and switching to a flat faced hammer. Better to crush at their exoskeletons with that, most of them were either scaled or chitinous. Crunching the rest underfoot with a stomp, most died easy enough, after a few tries. Fire did the rest, crisping them up and making them smell like burnt hair and worse things. “I used to see their faces in my dreams. I had a friend, I guess. A wife of mine who hated me for it and made sure to remind me of that at every opportunity. And so, for a time, I hated myself. But now... I am what I am. I am not an evil man. There are no evil men, only men with choices. Those who make them and those who do not and suffer the consequences. I don't think there's a rightness to morality. A code is a code, and everyone's is different. I guess--”
“Behind you!” Tyr ducked without hesitation before the worlds had even left Girshan's mouth. They might not see eye to eye on terms of their moral compass – but there was trust there. A trust earned from training together for so long, watching each others backs in that jungle before all that. Girshan blurred forward, with Tyr pounding toward him, taking his back as they took position to engage darkbeasts on their respective flanks. “Triple strike!” Girshan shouted, wind magic suffusing his burly arms as he drove his hatchets into the beasts face. “Burning arc!” And it was done, he thing wilting under the force. Tyr used blur as well, refraining from crying aloud though. Just swinging his hammer until the beast was dead, nothing of the artistry and form Girshan had displayed.
“I don't think I'll ever get used to how you all just scream out your skills like that.” Tyr offered his unsolicited opinion in an all too flat voice. That was the way it was with him versus the others. How they used their respective abilities, but apparently this wasn't something so easily explained by 'he's a beastkin', everyone could use techniques, it was just rare these days. Tyr picked his detached fingers off the ground, only two of them this time, blowing the dirt away and slotting them into place with a soft clicking sound.
“It astounds me how cold you can be.” Girshan said, keeping on the subject at hand. “But I don't think you're wrong. What a strange world we live in where it can be on the brink of ending before our very eyes and we can prattle on like wrinkled philosophers.”
Tyr laughed at that. An honest laugh, and those were more common these days. “To a strange world.” He toasted, just before buying his hammer in the head of another darkbeast that came just a bit too close for comfort.
Things grew heavier from there. Swarms of the things, the fogmen were not friends – and Tyr had known that from the start. When the press became to thick, they'd swing at anything in their general vicinity, a veritable free for all. Whatever intelligence commanding them, if there was one at all, had merely considered the creatures from beyond a bigger threat. A butcher's paradise. A macabre show of blood and gore and viscera all around, decorating the landscape. None rushed for the astral gate, not even the 'monsters'. Still open as it was, that was surprising. The tower was the only goal, and it was silent except for that clicking and ticking and humming of the runes that now patterned its sheer edges.
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That wasn't to say it was easy. Tyr stared on impassively during a brief calm in his sector. Rafael's adventurers were butchered without mercy, almost to a man, while he himself stood amidst the breach wreathed in frost. The ground cracking and freezing before thawing again. A wave of ice from every swing of his magic poleaxe. Kirk and Benny were magnificent as well. The maxxid adapting quickly to the armor Tyr had given him, standing over the wounded form of Rakkis who'd gone down beneath the press. Letting fly with a fearsome hail of lightning and fire. Benny watched his flanks, two handed axe twirling around, wielded effortlessly in one arm while the other let spray a jet of red-black fire at anything attempting to box him in.
The others seemed to be doing better, only a little. Multiple Tyr's had fallen, a handful to never rise again. They weren't even targets, just unfortunate casualties of the scrum. Men with no mana or spira to protect themselves with, relying on technology instead. Suffering for it, and nobody batted an eye.
Everywhere was chaos. It wasn't war, just a three way slaughter. No organization or structure to it. In some places, including where Tyr stood, all he needed to do was avoid approaching the fogmen too closely and send a spell or two, or just a swing of his hammer at the twisted darkbeasts. Enough to shatter a leg and render them unable to defend themselves. Butchered by the fogmen who oddly enough didn't seem so violent minded towards Tyr as they did toward the beasts. He'd touched one on accident, nearly bowling it over and it had acted like he wasn't there. Contrary to Girshan who'd been stabbed by one, fortunately just a flesh wound.
In the meantime, they ensured Benny and his team that remained stayed among the living. Though in all honesty, Kirk seemed to have it under control, a literal crustaceous god of war, he was unstoppable. The armor held up under the violence, a clawed juggernaut spraying jets of flame and lightning from each hand, his bladed limbs pinning beasts to the ground as he spun and cut a swath of destruction through the mess.
Blood and gore and violence. It felt like days, but only hours had passed, and the ticking ceased. The mad storm grew silent, and everything was gone. The storm, the monsters, the fogmen. Everything was normal again, except for the recent addition of the wintry landscape. It receded, that wall of fog, until they could see it no longer, anti-climactic...
“...Is that it?” Tyr frowned, he looked to his mother. She who seemed to be in charge of this mess and the most knowledgeable. The primus' were still smashing away at some creature in the distance, hunting the remnants, but calm had descended rapidly on the field before he'd even been given a real chance to fight. Almost entirely unscathed sans some fingers that had been bitten off when he'd unwisely chosen to punch a giant centipede in the face. Tyr hated bugs, they gave him the creeps. “I'd hoped for a better fight. It's probably selfish, I know, but--”
“No.” Signe replied. “It's not over.” She pointed. Opposite the tower and above the rise, a second astral gate in a place that should only have one. A swirling disc of liquid in appearance, and through it was a visible and unfamiliar landscape. Orange and browns, with desert buttes splitting a yellow sky. “Almost, but not quite.” She frowned, looking toward her son. Signe wasn't sure she liked the man that he'd become, violent and reckless, impulsive beyond belief. He was that way because of her, and she knew it, but to see him staring emotionless at the slaughter of the fallen adventurers and 'other Tyr's' was concerning. They'd started with sixty three, and now they were forty one, not once had he shown any discomfort over all of the violence. He hadn't been like this in his youth, always so full of affection for everything around him. Treating the servant staff so well that they doted on him more than anyone else...
Her heart ached thinking about the time she had missed. Time for him to develop such a cold and brutal personality. To fight and to kill was their way, and always had been, but to stare down in mute disinterest at a broken enemy was not. Battle was hot and emotional, but her Tyr was empty. Others may not see it for what it was, but she did. He was too cold. Warriors cried out and howled to their victory, they weren't dead eyed executioners.
Calling him a psychopath would not be an exaggeration, she'd watched on as he'd stood over one of the adventurers. A dwarf with his gut split, crying out for aid. A wound clearly infected, one he would not rise from, ending him had been a mercy, a release from suffering. But Tyr had shown no sign of compassion, slowly approaching him and burying the bloody hammer he held in the mans face to end his cries once and for all.
“And that is...?” Tyr asked, squinting to see better through the new gate. The primus' returned, all of them looking beaten and tired. They had lived perfect lives, the diamond spoon in their mouths. Privilege, comfort, and a body that had little need of rest or sustenance. Unable to cope with the unfamiliar exhaustion they felt now. It was alien to them, to feel so worn, to feel pain and discomfort. Their divine gift waning in this space and leaving them feeling like the old men that they were.
“It's an astral gate, but I'd bet my bottom dollar you knew that.” '42' answered the question, pulling his dislocated arm into place with an uncomfortable crunching noise. “Fortunately for us, a god of calamity or balance must have noticed this space after so much action and sought to eliminate the anomaly. Aiding in correcting it, at least, fogmen serve the astral gods. These spaces are, even if by a half measure, physical planes, those creatures were not supposed to be here and it is against the ordering. Unfortunately – it's opened a gateway into the next world. So now, I'd assume, whatever force that commanded those darkbeasts will attempt to do the same via more... Natural beings?” He seemed unsure, but refrained from proactively elaborating on it.
“And who are they?” Jartor demanded of the man. He, as with his peers, was heaving. His throat felt lashed by a nine tailed whip, never in his entire life had he felt this way, the way that mortals felt after exertion.
“We're not allowed to know. There are secrets in the universe, little games the celestials play at to see that it remains existing. Thinking, created beings like us – and that includes you – are not privy to that kind of information.” Forty-two shrugged. “It's just the way it is, as frustrating as it may be.”
“What the hell is happening here?” Another rift opened, but this was a temporary one. Six figures in bulky ceramic armor stepped through more mundane looking gate to join those standing there. Huge men, near as tall as the assembled primus' in their ridiculous looking armor. All of them carrying blades that were audibly vibrating the space around them.
“...Six?” Tyr's eyes lit up in recognition, staring at the man that had greeted him upon his last 'death' and ensured his... Well, not dying...? Or not allowing his soul to transit and reincarnate in a new world, whatever the case. He was still just as confused as anyone else might be, though the primus' didn't seem overly shocked by the revelation for whatever reason, and the assembled 'Tyr's' were acting like this was all totally normal.
“Shay!” Six laughed, slapping Tyr on the back so hard that he immediately face-planted into the bloody ground. “Damn, good to see you again, my brother! The rest of you... Not so much. It's always you guys, always! An alert comes through. Oh no! A world is in danger, unregistered anomalous activity! Assistance requested! And then I have to come through and fix your mess. Who did this?”
In unison, they all pointed to Tyr, as in Tyr Faeron, though he had no inkling as to what that could possibly mean or how he was responsible for everything that had happened. He didn't have it in him to care, or question the implication, not at the moment, rolling onto his back and groaning in discomfort.
“...Shay?” Tyr cocked an eyebrow, but the other 'Tyr's' around him just knowingly shook their heads, dodging the question.