“Finally!” Hastur crowed, fists clenched and feeling the roiling might bursting in his veins. After so long, with the help of Signe, he'd managed to find a way to condense spira into a transmittable form of energy so as to sate himself. Pieces of shards that had been grown within the mindless clones he'd made of Tyr, cut from their Dao and left empty vessels of power by which to feed the Soulforge. With every crusader equipped with these 'special holy relics', and with every death, he'd be fed and brought closer to the point of ascension. And he'd come to be, a Primus, born anew on a field of battle with no shard to wrestle with. “I've done it!”
Tyr was the key, the boy had done everything as was predestined, the key to it all. The fact that he'd had to die to achieve it was... unexpected, but a valuable sacrifice. He would have understood, Hastur felt.
“Yes, very anti-climactic, I expected lights, perhaps a storm,” Signe Ebonfist pursed her lips, brow cocked to indicate that she felt no such way about it. Nothing had visibly taken place at all. “And...?”
“Glory...?” Hastur frowned, squinting in deep consideration of what he felt. “Pride, more appropriately, it's an emotional aspect, though it feels a bit frail in the moment considering we've dominated their minds.”
“Congratulations,” Signe replied in stark disinterest. “Thus I've kept my end of the bargain, and with an aspect very suitable to your personality. Tens of thousands of men dead, their souls flayed and burnt as fuel for your ascension. Pride indeed, I'm sure you're very proud.” She neither sounded nor appeared impressed whatsoever. Bored, more like.
“Indeed, my lady.” Hastur offered her a crooked and juvenile smile, feeling a wholeness of spirit settle within himself. Shards weren't meant to exist beyond the host, his mastery of astral projection had little to do with necessitating fleshy vehicles for himself, and more to ensure he didn't wilt and vanish from the world entirely. Not one of his independent bodies would last longer than 3-5 year.
Even his main would have experienced a normal human lifespan, and he couldn't live with the risks.
Now would have begun the climax of 'their' plan, Signe's scheme, to eliminate Tyr Faeron once and for all. With might like this, he might not need to obey such a thing, the hundreds of thousands of men filled with their own pride filled him in turn, perhaps the most powerful of all emotional aspects. Signe simply saw her son as a failed project, though Hastur certainly didn't quite understand the complexities of that woman's labyrinthine mind.
Ready or not... He yet still wondered if it was enough to slay the others, and to free this world from their endless tyranny and prattling dogma. The Primus of Pride...
“I suppose it's about that time.” Hastur frowned suddenly, turning to the woman – but she was already long gone. Oath given, oath achieved, she was about higher business, or so she must feel to act in the way that she did. Spirakin as she was, those who, some of which at least, considered themselves 'gods' in their own right.
–
Alex and the others watched on, helpless to stop whatever foul corruption was taking the Dawnguard. All of them, and yet the militia army so nearby was left untouched. Marching through a field of ebony lotuses, that took anyone not friendly to Amistad and latched onto them. Petals blooming to introduce tiny segmented proboscises that pierced clean through armor and laid them low, draining them dry.
“What is this...?” She asked.
“Salvation.” Samson rumbled from her side, his eyes burning with righteous and blatantly psychotic fervor. He did not seem party to her terror at seeing all of these sworn men be changed, and perhaps even killed, by what was clearly the return of the mycelian swarm.
She lowered herself to grab onto the breastplate of Mikhail, attempting to wrestle him free from the clutches of so fel a thing – but he resisted her. Grabbing her hands and holding her in place, smiling at her with a gentle familiarity he'd never shown before. She knew him, had known him for so long, but there'd never been such... well, she didn't know...? Friends? What was that look?
And the others did the same with those nearest them, dragging them all down into the black meadow and sighing in contentment. All pain, all worries, everything profane within them whisked away – leaving only the best parts. It did not take of their blood, only their pains and improprieties, along with the barest sliver of mana.
Alex attempted to resist, but Mikhail seemed made of stone – and he dragged down along with him. Emitting her mana in spells that would not actualize, the fel flowers sucked the energy dry. In the distance she saw Astrid strip bare and lower herself with a contented groan into that warm bath of ecstasy. Loving, something that cherish her.
Sigi was the inverse, screaming a command to retreat, echoed by the suddenly lucid crusaders who'd been so ready to war with them. Spraying all manner of spells, slashing at the stems and firing bows, but with each flower cut two more would grow in its place. It seemed their minds were returned to them in an instant, blinking dumbly as though unaware that they'd come here, fighting against the blooming growths.
Until there were thousands, and far too many.
And they dragged them down, even as they screamed, because they had given an oath. Undying loyalty. An oath of undying loyalty, a man should be careful with what words they chose to use when swearing to another.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
And from within that meadow came a song, a chiming lullaby of great familiarity to all who heard it – different for each one. A choir of such tremendous beauty that men wept and women fell to their knees in memory of things long forgotten. They could no longer resist upon hearing it, it was as the siren's song.
Alex saw it, the moment she'd truly reconnected with Tyr, it was the same song that he'd been playing at that tavern while he'd waited for her. Reaching out... A cry for help? She struggled, but her thrashing grew more and more subdued over time, he was so talented with that foreign lute of his, and yet... She sighed, and all resistance fled. This was him, let him kill her if he needed to.
Men were now diving into the ever expanding field, Alex felt a tear race down her cheek. All of the pain, the blame, and the regret of forcing him to leave flooding her mind until she was bathed in forgiveness.
Tyr spoke to her, he was... speaking to her. His voice and mind lay in the flowers. And he spoke every single word she had ever wanted to hear, and so she relaxed, and did not resist. She sank into the raven meadow and relished that experience, she was so tired, even tired enough to die, she figured.
It knew nothing of betrayal, a thing like that couldn't be betrayed. It was everywhere, in the walls, the one on the right side of the glass. The hand that shapes and makes better, the source of life as they knew it.
They saw a man then, all of them, a titan of silver with snow white hair, behind him a legion of howling wolves so vast no single world could hold them. At his side, two positions, one dominated by a woman of tremendous beauty, the other empty, waiting. The Choir, the expression of a god settling on the lands as those titans loomed over them with steely glances.
And when she looked around that sky around, she saw others. Themselves looming over the Crusade, giants that paled in the comparison to the Shapers, many fleeing in that moment, their followers along with them. The gods... They fled that black meadow. Feared it. Few chose to remain in witness, but those that did certainly didn't look friendly to the auspicion.
This petty Crusade was in a rout, and all it'd do is serve to drag them deeper into it, for it had been waiting. A ploy, a strategy as they were drained of sorrows and come addicted to the sensation they offered, a gift of pollen. A gift of spores. The world's most powerful drug, and most absolute lie, that of faith. Not of the worshiping of gods, but of a god offering one the faith that everything would be alright.
That every hope and wish for one's life would come true if only they knelt and said his name. Bubbling up in the air around them it came, the name of the lost one. The damned one. The slain eternal. And they did, they babbled, Alex saw it all, heard it all. And all she saw, truly, was a great crimson sun hung overhead to bathe each and every one of them.
“Tyr.” They said.
“Tyr. Tyr.” They stammered.
“Tyr. Tyr. Tyr. Tyr. Tyr. Tyr. Tyr. TYR!!! TYR!!!!!” They screamed.
All mouths would proclaim, all ears would rejoice in the hearing of it until a bare whisper had been brought to a howling cacophony of screams that split the throat and bled the eyes. All but the chosen few would suffer, and even those suffering would exalt him for the sensations he'd offered.
Do you love me?
Alex and all the others of import felt that voice roll through their heads. His.
“Always...” She breathed, she could not help it, no matter what, love was not in romance but in belief. Faith. In trust. She always had, always and forever, but they had been born in such foul positions opposite one another. And now, forevermore, she knew him for the slave to duty that he was, a fel thing, every single question she'd ever had for him was answered in the blinking of an eye.
She saw his entire life play through her head in the same span, and knew... everything.
Tyr was the most tragic of them all, and yes, she loved him. That man who knew he was dying one way another either bodily or by mind, he'd known.
And it knew she did, Alex could feel it. Even in observance of the worst travesties committed by his own hand her grief had been born of her raw dedication to him, how much she needed him, wanted him, just to be normal and to be happy together. They were bound, Tyr was here with them and always had been – the meadow erupting into geysers of slick oil that coalesced into one single. titanic black tree.
Branches looming in dominion of all things, a hundred meters at the canopy, and above it was a condensed mass of raw magic and spira bound together, akin to the reactor that powered the Academy only many times greater in the cataclysmic power held within. Beating like a heart, a gravelly whispering that would bring men and women to climax alike, a relaxing lust that left them squirming upon the ground in a profane orgy of dreams made reality.
The birth of a god. In a place that did not allow their kind to walk among mortals, Alex simply knew it, she was staring at its larval state. Tyr had willfully ended his own life to strip free the flaws of the biological to become something else. Something celestial. Something of great horror, even.
Each and every one of them was given the opportunity to live a life where they'd gotten everything they'd ever wanted. Been what they'd wanted to be. And it continued. Again, and again, and again – until all those subjected to that component of the peace were shrieking lunatics begging for it to finally stop. Begging to be allowed to die, but it would allow no such thing. To take away their pains and the struggles of man would invite pains and struggles beyond ken, and the meadow fed off the madness, shuddering under their distended mouths and bloodshot eyes, an ignition of raw emotion that was sucked away in a cycle by the great maw.
Alex saw it all, she watched, but did not experience that which punished what must've been the sinner in the minds of this grand, midnight artifice.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It beat, like a heart. A black heart.
Do you love me?
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Say my name.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Do not be afraid.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Do not do do do not do not not be be afraid be afraid do be do be not be afraid.
I am your friend.
I love you.
I need you.
I am coming.
All lies, and yet...
“...Please do.” Alex sagged, bleeding from the flank and wilting visibly from a deuritium wracked wound that would not heal, but the flowers... They reached out to her, they beckoned, and so she gave herself over to them.