“Aurelius...?” Hastur stared down at Iscari, it felt good to be whole again – risen in stature until he'd have surely been equal to the others in height. Where the Heroes had been, there was nothing, some illusion magic splitting the wind some distance away to shroud the mass melee beyond. Splitting it like a plane of liquid, some arms and limbs visible and moving, the rest of them cut off and indiscernible.

Didn't matter, this war had been a sham to begin with, to destroy the credibility of the church and bring men towards their true destiny. Freedom from religion, and from all things besides. And so, at least in his own mind, Hastur Casterling who was no long Cortus but his own being was the only hero to speak of in the story that would be written of his ascension.

“Dead,” Iscari hissed back, but for all her anger she couldn't help but fear what Hastur had become, a true awakening and with absolutely none of the signs. Away from an Ark, independent from a sentient shard. That... That was the true evil here today, and Iscari had always known, all along, but she knew ever harder that Tyr had always been right. That his side was the right one, since day one. “As quick and as ignoble a death as deserved such a man, as dead as you will be very soon.”

“You killed him?” Hastur arched a brow in question, caught between being impressed or shocked. Aurelius was more than a match for the boy Primus', perhaps he would've given Vidarr himself a nice run before finally falling. Sure, he'd never win, of course not, but he'd challenge.

“Aye, and I'll get you too, you rat.” The woman postured shakily, of course Hastur had always knew she was a woman forced to play man through magic, all the Primus's did. An evil thing, that. She looked handsome there, in her tattered armor, twirling her spear in defiance, but Hastur did not love her like he loved Tyr, his killer. One was mighty, promised, and the other was like any other, unremarkable. A withered husk of little prospects, only alive because Jartor had taken Octavian's side in protecting her, and all others feared him.

Even Ragnar feared Jartor Faeron, that was well known, as all must fear the Primus of Strength.

“No... You didn't, and of course you won't. But if you stand against me, you will die – I have already spoken to your father. And so I'll give you the opportunity to make your choice.” Hastur squatted, the bizarre barrier finally falling. All proceeding apace, Amistad's army was on the ground – none left standing on either side by the looks of it. No survivors. Hastur frowned then, magic was nuanced and strange – even he didn't understand all of its secrets. Not even close.

But this... These plants...? He could not feel them, could barely see them, that which had suddenly arrived to slay all that yet stood. What was this? Even still, he had over 200,000 men in reserve who had not run like any other, a last minute trap could not stop him. If he needed to continue relying on them, he would, better to steady his foundations before facing his peers, at least those who wouldn't listen to reason.

“My father?” Iscari gawped, she'd had some reservations but long ago Octavian had accepted the fact that he'd only ever had a daughter that was gifted. She did love her father, and she knew exactly how far he'd gone to protect her, breaking so many compacts in the process and suffering for it, and so this affection was obviously mutual. Even still... she feared the truth. “My father gave you permission to kill me?”

“No, little one. They are not like me, Iscari. I know who I am, but I am no liar. I say only what I mean and feel, as I always have, and I'll say this. The men of this era are duplicitous scum, you are the holder of a virtue. I, as Tyr was, am a holder of sin – and thus I see it in them. Your father was quite clear he was coming here to do it himself, if you did not accept the new order. He will be the one to kill you,” Hastur shook his head sadly, or at least it seemed so, “So I beg you, please, kneel. We need all of us to save this world. You father, my peers,” He spat, “They are responsible for all the evil. Not me.”

“You'd make for a fine jester if you think I'd ever agree to fight alongside you,” Iscari laughed in his face, bold and loud, even injured and aware he could blow her away, grabbing at her cracked ribs and hissing. “But I'll humor you. That new order is, what, exactly...?”

“They are not your friends, young Iscari,” Hastur said, reaching out a hand, “They are traitors to us all.” And he was so very passionate, honest, even, but...

Iscari was loyal to one man, and one man only. It was not her father. It was the only one who had never lied to her. Not ever.

“Fuck yourself, old man, answer the initial question.” She leveled her spear at him, even if she died... no. He wouldn't let her die, she had faith, and was that not his aspect?

“There is so much you do not know, but you should not trust them. Take my hand and join me, I have more than enough to raise you – and...” Hastur frowned, lost in some deep thought. With a waving of his hands, he was confident as he could be. The Waiting One could not hear them, he hoped. “I might be able to raise Tyr as well,” He reached out again when she snarled, “Just listen! Bringing him back, we three can remove the cancer at the heart of society. Blow back the fog, save everyone and stand as a triumvirate above all. I have seen things you cannot possibly imagine, powers even the gods are afraid of. First, we'll remove the churches, the Primus' that do not agree to play ball will come next, and we will reforge men into their ideal form. But he must not come of the book, never. Not ever.”

“Towards what purpose?” Iscari asked, tilting her head, but she relaxed. She felt much the same, she wouldn't stab her sire in the back but what Hastur said tracked completely with how she felt, and how she'd convinced Tyr to feel. No hatred through disagreement, but from realization, not revenge but retribution. It had taken so long to get him to see her side of things.

Hastur smirked, crouching lower and reaching out a hand with a confident finality. “To kill the gods and free ourselves of their shackles. They were not meant to rule us, we are of far greater purpose than those parasites ever were.”

“In the oddest way...” Iscari sighed, though she refrained from accepting that hand. Hastur was right about many things and always had been, Octavian agreed on this point quite clearly. But what he was suggesting now was unabashed heresy. Iscari knew the gods for what they were, they were tools meant to be created and used as engines of war and progress, not 'gods'. Celestial entities were artificial constructs of faith given form, they'd long ago lost the plot and began to rule over men. As they were made of nim, the gods, they were equally flawed in lockstep with the consciousnesses that birthed them. “You sound just like him.”

“Like who?” He arched a brow, the battlefield seemed so silent then.

“Like Tyr,” She deadpanned, “You dumb cunt.”

Hastur chucked, dropping the hand and looking up towards the sky with a blissful expression. “He said the same thing to me once, that we were so alike only he was broken and I was not. Said that was the greatest piece of evidence that we lived in an irredeemable reality, and I do not disagree. He is dead, only for now, and only through me can you bring him back.”

“I think you're lying,” Iscari frowned, “And--”

“You love him.”

She paused.

“Not as a brother, or friend, or family, you love him in every single way, in a way nobody ever has. You want him, no? At any cost, you want him, even in the degeneracy and disgust of incest considering you share the same mother.” Hastur watched her expression carefully, but he already knew. Pining after the man with many wives, it was a little... cliché.

Iscari furrowed her brow. So much of Tyr's life she'd been kept away from him. No answer was needed, it was painted plain as day on her face. She did. The others saw him as a trophy, as the demigod he was, they wanted to collect him. Iscari just wanted him back. She wanted time, to know him, and whatever else he was okay with. Incest, Hastur had said, as if anyone could judge they who were gods in their own right, or even beyond those foul things.

“So?” Hastur asked, “Please give me an answer.”

“I say no,” Iscari shook her head, ebony hair tousled about her face by the harsh winds around them. “Tyr swore to kill you, and he keeps his oaths. He'll be back, he never fails at any task he puts his mind to. You will be the next, Hastur Casterling, or Cortus. You've died once, and I think we'll see it happen again.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Hastur sighed, chuckling lowly.

There'd always been something uncanny about how the 'Prince' had looked, Hastur had always felt that way and hadn't the slightest inkling that she'd looked too androgynous even before he'd found out. And how was that? By Jartor leaping through the seas to threaten his very life if he ever came for her, a man who believed wholeheartedly in 'brotherhood'.

She was a tremendous beauty, a black haired angel of features so perfect it astonished him – and would've made for a legendary Empress in the rule of three he'd hoped for. That was, until she'd pushed too deep into taboo, darkening herself in an attempt to find the light, driven mad by the lunatic compulsion to save her brother from the brink. Because she was in love with him. Fate was tricky, and destiny was often cruel.

She wanted him, but Tyr Faeron would never want for her. He was not the sort of man to love anything, and that made him a tremendously competent ally.

“He won't,” Hastur shook his head, explaining everything he was aware of. “Not the Tyr that you know, and he will never be as you want him to.”

Actions had consequences and it went far beyond the courtrooms and juries of men. Every step one took, especially humans, defined them – in a way that other races did not experience. They started weak, even the elder nim who'd come first, they merely possessed the ability to grow far faster than anything else. Creatures of raw adaptability. Everything they did, consumed and killed, viscerally shaped them. Every significant moment would, as they were originally designed, bring them to an awakening point by which they could grasp new capabilities to bring them closer to achieving perfection in their field.

They were beasts of adapting to their vocation through exceptionalism, those who survived would be the greatest among them because of their unique connection to spira and mana alike. No race shared this component of man.

But there were limits to this.

Primus' were nephilim, and they were broken things. Taking away that versatility of spirit and replacing it with one major shard. A shard so dense that it would be born anew on the world, because the Dao it was composed of needed to live just as its host did. In a manner of speaking. And Tyr had awakened, he'd been awakened since his birth but as far as they knew he'd never managed to manifest a conscious shard. All Primus' aware, save Cortus of course, had been astonished by this – a half-blood Primus with none of the chains that bound them into servitude.

No limits. Not a single one. No bonds. No strings. Nothing to keep him down but himself. He'd even sacrificed his aspect in righteous pursuit of justice and had managed to bounce right back.

All of his 'awakening' talk had been folly, Tyr was weak because the faith of men had flagged and rotted away from a lack of conflict and struggle. He'd shaped himself, first from loyalty, and later to become a thing of love so profane and obsessive that it translated almost directly to 'faith'. Nothing unconditional about it, the kind of fondness one might have for a favored tool, something with value. So raw was it that he'd become weak, for many years, until all had thought his aspect to have been lost.

And then that Tyr had become a man and thrown away his rabid desire for validation, and found the truth.

That had been an idiotic idea from the beginning, an aspect could not be lost. Humans changed, even Primus', that's ultimately why the shards were needed. To anchor them and prevent them from running rampant. As higher nim, there were no limits whatsoever that prevented them from attaining true godhood. Altrimar had done it, albeit in an unfortunate way, that author of a Black Book had indeed been a Primus. Tyr had merely fallen, but as all man derivative species he was afforded the opportunity to rise again.

And he had.

On the backs of billions of dead, a world conquered, dragging himself up the blade in the worst way imaginable to rip the throat out of what he'd perceived as something holding him down. Eating the flesh of his fellow man, creating life, tearing a soul from the Black and resurrecting a friend. To break law until none existed but his own, in flaunting it there came a dark path but also one to power.

The list went on, and they'd punished him for it a great deal. His ability to see color in the proper way had been ripped away from him. Sensations and feelings others might experience were denied him, living a half life until he'd quite literally ceased to exist as anything more than an extremely stubborn ghost. A man in constant agony, grown accustomed to it, too full of wrought bitterness and rage to pass on to the next world.

Because the nephilim adapted, and he, again, had. It had become his reality, and he had learned to live with it.

Actions had consequences, and Tyr had become such a mass of sin that his spirit had run out of control. In essence, he'd done it all unto himself, taking and doing what he shouldn't in equal measure, propped up by his changed aspect as the first Primus ever born without need of a shard. Or rather than without a shard, perhaps his shard had always been here, or perhaps he was master of it, Hastur did not know for sure.

Unliving, a truly cursed existence and every time he dreamed he'd go somewhere else. As Abaddon and his kind did, though for very different reasons. In his time on this world Tyr had been the death of a world every time he'd slumbered, a spark of himself born elsewhere to do as he'd always done. Kill.

It was a wonder he'd remained even relatively sane, a testament to his indomitable spirit and unwillingness to accept things for what they were.

The Arcanum Rex gave one the right and ability to actively create nephilim, and through these bonds with their lessers the Kings would manifest their shards unto other people. This is where, even to Hastur, things ceased to make sense. Summarily seeding the known universe and all of its myriad realities with what amounted to copies of himself, developing independently from one another. Not 'magic', it was too complex for that, it was an unconscious ritual beyond any spell that had ever been cast, to make him truly infinite. Again and again, like a virus.

They weren't 'Tyr', he was the only one, they were akin to his children, as no Primus had biological heirs.

But now... Tyr was simultaneously dead, and yet finally alive again. He'd surrendered his consciousness to a gestalt chamber of the god he'd been before and become something else. Making himself his shard – and allowing said mind to devour it. Saying he was 'dead' would be a clear mistruth, he was more alive than ever. But the 'he' he'd so recently been was gone, and it would never be coming back. His consciousness, by any other word, was destroyed in a bid to forcibly awaken himself though he'd never needed to do it in the first place. Suicide of the psyche, perhaps, memories gone and whatever was bound to be born of the corpse of a fallen angel would be fel beyond measure.

The mythical demon, he had torn himself apart to become what he thought he needed to be, a seed of salvation. Magic on a level that transcended the earthly, the perfect loophole, obtaining a spark of divinity the natural way, through sheer refusal to bend to law. A cheat, really, because he couldn't die and of the gods of this world were too weak to force unto him anthing.

Something with absolutely no humanity left, gnawing hunger and gnashing teeth. Driven mad by seeing everything he cared about fade away into the infinite, Hastur had merely lied about his ability to raise Tyr again. Hastur had used him as an engine, tearing him apart in Baccia and creating things of him in a bid to bring him back to the boy he was in the past. It'd be the same, after all, and this Tyr would be whole and good again. Hastur owed him that, without the boy he'd have never achieved the quantity of receptacles needed for ascension.

Even still, Hastur had failed, but he'd achieved everything he'd wanted out of the bargain through sacrifice of the lamb. As Primus' grew, so did their kin and peers, and Tyr had given him everything whether unwittingly or not.

“He is gone, for good this time,” Hastur frowned, “Unless you take my hand.”

“You're wrong,” Despite all of that, and ample statute to suggest it was impossible for him to have survived becoming a conscious artifact, Iscari refused it with a wave of her hand. “He is here, I can smell him, he is all around us and he speaks to me.”

Hastur arched a brow, but she seemed so confident in this claim. An impossible one.

She rose, shaking off the last remnants of Aurelius' magic and leveling her spear at Hastur.

Iscari was beyond reason, beyond sanity.

“I'm sure you think what you're doing is right,” Hastur grimaced, the youth and their romances – if only she knew how profane a romance it would be. Primus' did not have biological heirs, but the two were still genetically related, and this disgusted him beyond all belief. “But it is not. You'll only add to the stagnation, you'd seek to doom this world in your folly and die for it. You are not the heroes of this story, Iscari, I am the only one who sees what things truly are. Do not be blind to it like the others, those who would so easily betray you. I tried to teach Tyr this, I truly did, time and time again they stabbed his back and yet he refused to address it for what it was. See reason, I beg of you!” His voice grew more in fervor, more passion, shouting in finality and beseeching what he saw as a sibling to leave this edge she'd placed herself on.

“I'll do that and more,” Iscari's silver eyes flashed in the sudden storm bursting into being above. “We'll do it together, and we'll succeed.”

“Oh?” Hastur raised a haughty eyebrow. The young were always so full and self assured. “And how could you possibly know that?”

“Because I have faith,” Iscari said, black veins bursting from her skin as they connected with the thunderclap and flash only the Primus' were capable of.