A murder of ravens circled the Krieg in lazy loops.
Waiting for the crowds to disperse so they could pick at what was left of the corpses hanging from the walls. Each of them bore a placard. Bodies burnt beyond recognition, all labeled. Astrid Faeron, Sigi Faeron, Alexis Faeron, Tythas Slakt, Magnus Casterling, Micah of No House, and finally Brennwulf of Vestia's faith. Despite the disrespect, some couldn't help but to mourn. These had once been imperial princesses, and the inquisition had found them guilty of witchcraft, sentencing them to death along with their conspirators. Wives of a primus, and many knew they were worse off for it.
A primus that still managed to walk amongst the living, at least for now. But judgment would come, it always did regardless of position.
People gathered in crowds to watch the chained man led by spear point walk those stairs up and into the courthouse. To finality.
It wasn't as gloomy as one might expect of the grim atmosphere. The skies were clear, the bright sun of early spring kissing the green earth in a record heatwave. Eventually erupting into an almost festival-esque celebration as the people chanted and bayed for blood.
Most of them had no qualm against Tyr Faeron, the primus prince on trial this day, but they liked their blood. Always had. In the past, there'd been a time where they'd done the same to their own royal family, men and women who had given everything to the people. Ultimate freedom to the point where they had no wants or needs, independent from the draconian empires to north and south, and they'd still killed them. That was what Aurelius loved most about humanity. The lust. The betrayal. He could taste it on his lips, and what a pleasant taste it was.
“Order!” The judge, another haemonculi along with a sizable portion of those orating the crowd into passionate cries, Hastur slammed his gavel onto his high bench. Like talking to himself, all part of his grand show. Slowly, the hubbub died down. Every seat in the high court was full for the first time in decades, and the plaza beyond that was chock full of people packed tighter than a can of sardines. “We are here today to bear witness to the official trial of one defendant Tyr Faeron of Haran. Second prince and supposed primus. His crimes are great, and he has been accused of...”
Lernin barely listened as the his father's flesh puppet droned on, he could see who he was yet again, but he was forced to stay for diplomatic purposes. First, they'd have this farce of a trial, and then Baccia would invade Amistad. With Abaddon, the truest ruler of their nation asleep, they'd lose. Who knew what other tricks and traps Hastur had in store? Or should he say Cortus?
It was abundantly clear what they were on about. Lernin had been wrong. Tyr was complicit, and had mercilessly slaughtered his companions through no input from anyone else. Eventually leading the charge on Amistad at the head of an army. Tyr the mastermind, the monster, Wolf of the Inquisition now.
Perhaps that had been the plan all along, but in any case it was grim beyond anything Lernin had believed possible. He'd killed his own wives, for gods sakes, and now they were about to pronounce him innocent! He'd never seen that coming in their meetings, but everyone had agreed it was for the best. Suddenly... His father had made sure to show him all of that, trying to win him over to their side once again. But Lernin would fight, and he'd ensure that Abaddon hunted the demon known as Tyr to the end of the earth and burn him beyond recognition as soon as he roused himself.
Just like Magnus.
Hot tears poured down Lernin's face, wanting nothing more than to stand among this assembly and smite the beast himself, if it'd work. What a twist of fate that his initial estimation of Tyr, the one borne purely of empirical evidence and things he didn't want to believe real, had been so correct. If only he had known, his son would be alive. Clenching his hands so tight Lernin's fingernails are staring to bleed his palms.
Hastur was a scum bastard, but he was very clear – and Lernin believed him – when he said that he'd never told Tyr to do such a thing.
Asked him not to, in fact, but Tyr had done so anyways. Lernin was not the son of a primus, he'd been born of Hastur. A complexity he'd never been educated on. And Magnus was the man's grandson. A turning of tables, in the worst possible direction imaginable, the face of a monster being revealed to a world that was prepared to defend him. Worse, to rally behind and exalt him, so as to make him their new worldly god.
And that's exactly what happened. The human mind was malleable. Mob mentality was a very real thing and it was so effective that near every successfully dynasty on the planet has used iterators to see their work done. Men who cheered when prompted, spread the message they wanted them to. Propagandists and worse.
“It is the conclusion of the court that one Tyr Faeron, second prince and second primus of Haran, is hereby exonerated of all charges and pronounced innocent!” The judge cried out, and a cracking of glass followed deep within Lernin's mind. He couldn't do it anymore. Things were a bit quiet at first, the people were confused, but the loud haemonculi dispersed throughout the forum brought them into a wild cheer of sincere goodwill at the sentencing, or rather the lack thereof. How easily manipulated they all were...
Another part of Hastur's manipulation, how easy it was for them to change sides. Tyr the perceived misanthrope had likely fallen for that in a heartbeat, or perhaps time and experience had warped him into the man he now was. Someone Lernin had been absolutely confident had gotten at least a bit better, more human.
Lernin stood, bringing the...
...What?
His mana refused to obey him, sputtering out moments before a spell was activated. One last flash of glory and he'd be gone to see his beloved boy, and even that was denied of him. The gods were truly cruel.
“Order!” The judge slammed his gavel into the podium angrily, but anyone with eyes could see the smug look in Hastur's own. A man who had finally won, coming to the terminus of his complex schemes to see the horizon beyond it all. “It is the court policy of Kriegstad to allow the defendant, one Tyr Ebonfist, to give a closing remark upon exoneration. Do you wish to do so?”
“I do.” Tyr nodded, and though the judge had offered so – even he looked confused, frowning and scrunched at the brows. The rest of the law council turned about toward one another in an equal amount of confusion. This wasn't the plan... Tyr was supposed to decline the offer and later apologize for the people in a grand parade.
Realization dawned in Lernin's mind. That thrumming he'd felt since he'd entered the city. Fooled again, perhaps. Morse's code through the spira. A force he'd known of and been studying his whole life, yet still barely understood after all that effort. Lernin was well aware that Tyr was not speaking to him directly, there must have been someone else in the crowd. Someone like Abaddon, the being who'd taught Lernin how to see his own spira, though not how to wield or nurture it.
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-. --- / ... - .-. .. -. --. ...
...No strings?
That was code, one that even Hastur who was aware of the feeling wouldn't understand, though he wasn't here to actually feel it. Haemonculi couldn't feel, see, or utilize spira. It was rather creative, in all honesty. But that wouldn't bring his son back.
Tyr was being shackled and controlled through magic, that had to be what it was. Lernin knew Tyr as a spellbreaker and that had convinced him that he'd been immune to mental attacks, but nothing and nobody was monolith in this world. It was being played on a loop like some kind of song and everyone must've been feeling it, not knowing what that feeling was. But with all the turbulent emotions around, that wasn't shocking either. Lernin was intent to attack, he no longer cared. Nothing left to live for, and this was but a minor disturbance for a mage of his power – he'd break through, right now.
That was his goal, until a strong hand grabbed his arm from behind, and he came face to face with a masked figure leaning in close to whisper to him. A sheathed knife poking him in the ribs in a pointed message that should he move, there'd be trouble.
“Stay very, very still.”
–
Tyr was going mad. One moment, where was he? A courtroom, it looked like, but it was in a Gothic style like something out of a history museum. People were dressed in doublets and lace, with knee high leather boots and puffy sleeves. Staring at him with powdered wigs, eyebrows raised expectantly. A renaissance festival? No... Wait... What was happening? Why were there chains wrapped tightly around his wrists, they hurt and stung at him like steel frosted in the winter...
Suddenly and all at once it flooded back to him. Two into one, and he thought he'd gotten rid of the others. No, they were still there, he could feel them. But it was different now, there was distance and only one was truly close enough to touch him...
Welcome back. Jurak's voice. So she was alive after all, as alive as she'd ever been, just inside of him now. Not much of a surprise, it couldn't have been that easy to truly kill a god. He'd done as she'd always wished him to in any case, in an overly cruel and roundabout way. She'd had the reins up until now, but he couldn't care less about that. Where were the others?
Calm down, boy. I have it all under control, I've made use of your power and ensured that everything is going to plan, just let me--
Where are they?
Just let me--
Where are they?
Listen to--
WHERE ARE THEY!?
Jurak had always been a chief divine among the Orik 'pantheon'. One of the trio that stood at the peak of all her people had once created. Zell, Jurak, and Jakuul. The gods of fear, battle, and death – cursed to live far beyond their faithful who were no longer around to sustain them.
A curse, but she'd been strong. One of the few that had survived the siphoning, an attempt to grant the Orik true immutability. Not immortality, but immutability. To freely exist forever, under no compulsion of the cruel gods they'd warred against for millennia. And it had worked, just not in the way they'd hoped, those statues back in the Orik installation had all been very much alive in the worst way possible.
One of the strongest divines, and yet this nim child tore her from her seat in his head and took the reins. Leaving her alone in that desolate wasteland of what first appeared to be snow, soon revealing itself to be ash. A vast expanse of wasteland covered in the stuff, more falling from the sky with each passing moment. Wolves circled her, hulking things, twelve of them, finishing the job with spectral fangs and ripping maws.
No more gods.
Tyr had known a bit of her might have trickled in via the transition, but apparently it had more more than just a bit. It was all of her – here inside of him. It'd take a long while. Ten, twenty years. But what was time? How many decades had Tyr been with his family. Family? Were they even real? Yes, they were very real, and so was that machine. That Cradle of God. Another version of himself somewhere else in the cosmos, doing the exact same thing with the tools given to him. Fighting the end that came for them all. A good man, a strong man with a past of his own but he'd managed to tame it and move on. It wasn't him, that had been another person.
The Cradle hadn't killed that version of himself, because it had found a compatible host and replaced his mind. He wondered if that other man were alive somewhere, or if there'd been two of them in that mind the entire time? He didn't know. It all seemed like one big blur.
He'd been with Astrid, old and gray and yet mortal after a long talk with her about what they wanted from the future. Sacrificing their immortality to go together on the same day, but not before then. And then she'd shooed him away, and he'd found himself in a mud soaked trench. Chest high holes in the middle of battle scarred fields, barbed wire and desolate ground as far as the eye could see. A rifle of stout oak and forged iron in his hands.
Everyone had been screaming on both sides, smashing into one another with mechanized war machines roaring all around. And they'd made it... Somewhere. Tyr had been separated from his brothers on some mission of great important. He remembered running through a broken city to chase down a man with the oddest mustache he'd ever seen, bludgeoning that man to death with a shovel before a woman riddled him with lead projectiles. After that, he was gone, another place – a hundred more. Constant scenes of slaughter that never ended, never allowed to stop running.
Made acutely aware that in every war ever fought, on any plane, by any race – Tyr had been present to end it. This was his ultimate mission, he'd become war amongst other aspects of his personality, with the ultimate goal of ending these things once and for all.
His only succor was in knowing that Astrid and the children were still alive, time was linear – two worlds could not connect without the stream running in the same direction. That man, Connor, had died in that moment – and Astrid...
It wasn't time for that, and he couldn't ever know.
He was here now, again. Whatever else happened was either too inconsequential to remember, or too consequential. He forgot things he did not want to know, not given the chance to remember the happy years as they were brutally ripped away from him.
Left in the moment and full of grief he could not process, knowing that he was so powerful now that he was sure he couldn't be stopped, only growing stronger.
Eventually. They could trap him, seal him, throw him into the deepest parts of the sea and all he'd need to do was wait. One day, it would come, always chasing that thread of something that might allow him a few years of peace before he lost it all again. They took the memories, but they never filled that hole, and by now it was yawning. The bottomless pit paved with the corpses of everything and anything that had ever stood against him.
It was only uphill from here, their weapon against him had made him better than ever before, everything playing into his hands by no design of his own. Only the others, the voices in his head and skittering hands tapping at his windows.
But for what? What was he here to? Kill Hastur? It seemed like a small goal. Shouldn't there be something bigger? Lucian had said that Tyr's conviction was small and that was why he was small, and he agreed. He'd sprinted down all paths forbidden, spoken to gods, received gifts that no human might have ever before. Cultivated for years, raising the speed at which he progressed with yet more forbidden magic. But Lucian would still wipe the floor with him. Right now, Nala might be his achievable peak, and ultimately she wasn't all that strong on a global scale of things. She was too lazy and had never properly sought out power at any point, content to remain as she was.
Maybe this would help, devouring Jurak with as much finality as he could. He sat, waiting, watching the years go by as what was left of Jurak's essence wilted and faded until near nothing was left. God Eater. Expecting a battle, she'd surrendered to it and allowed them to eat their fill, these wolves.
There had been 13 with Jurak. He didn't like 13. 12 was much better. She didn't deserve to die, so he kept a little bit of her inside of him. Not enough to speak or turn his thoughts, but enough to let her survive just a while longer. A spiritual zygote with no more power than an infant child. He knew her plan, the designs she'd pursued for him. Strange ones, he didn't really understand it – but he'd never been as good as he'd once thought at the cloak and dagger. Leaving him in a better position than he'd ever had before, primed and prised.
I'll take it from here. And thanks, Jurak. I will keep your seed, and I'll plant it again when the time is right – enjoy your rest.