Now it was loud. So loud. Louder than war, must've been – no... He'd known war since time immemorial and it had never been as loud and sharp as this. His chest was heaving and his ears were busy being beaten into submission by the clamor of all the noise. So much noise. Why was there so much noise? People hovered over him, barely discernible through his blurring vision.
Dying again, and this time in what appeared to be a steel coffin full of other people. All screaming, never letting him get any peace and quiet. Death was supposed to be quiet.
“He's going into renal failure! Jesus Christ!” Someone cried. A staccato of beeping noises assaulted his ears, two figures bending over him and shouting to add to it all.
“Clear! No response.”
“Go again.”
“Clear! No response.”
“500mg of adrenaline?”
“No way, look at his heart rate! If we increase the voltage anymore we might as well just kill him ourselves!”
“Registered at two hundred and ninety BPM! Shit, I've never seen anything like this!”
“Panels indicate no use of drugs, no history either personal or family of any issues related to cardiac arrest.” The walls were talking again, a tinny buzzing voice that made him want to itch the inside of his ears. Advised direct dose of dropofol as soon as possible.”
“Dammit! Bro, if we let the Senator die we might as well sign on our unemployment checks! I'm going to try another sedative!”
“Hurry!”
Light. A lot of it. Too much of it. Everywhere hurt. Tyr clutched at his chest, dragging the needles piercing his skin out and thrashing. Everywhere was steel. He was trapped in this coffin with a man and a woman, neither of which he recognized. He struck the first on the chin, knocking the woman out cold just before another needle slammed into his neck. It hurt, and then it didn't. Again he was airy and light, but not unconscious. And he had arms to do and legs to push away from the man and hurtle towards the wall.
He burst from the coffin, swinging wide doors open to scrape himself on the smooth, uniform rock on the ground. Like liquid stone had been poured and allowed to set... Concrete but black. Rolling painfully on his side and skipping about until finally stopped, half the skin of his arm torn free and ragged. Bones broken, quite a few of them this time, he felt so weak. Different... So light and frail he feared it might fall up into the sky at any moment. It was hot... And the smell. Acrid and foul, sour. People were everywhere, a sea of them all staring down at the rectangular devices they held in their hands. A handful looked at him in shock, but he was blind to their gazes, trapped in hyperventilating madness as some unfamiliar force began to dull his mind.
Everywhere were towers that scraped the sky. A sea of steel and stone and glass, so bright as to scratch at his eyes. So many people, moving contraptions of steel flying by. It wasn't just the colors, lights, and depressingly gray environment that nauseated him, but also the nauseous vertigo welling up in his gut. We felt like a feather about to fly off of the ground at any moment, it made it hard to walk, like he'd been living his whole life with a bag full of lead plates on his back and had shed them for the first time.
“Where am I!?” He screamed to nobody in particular. His chest was on fire and the agony shaking every bone in his body was unbearable. There was no mana here, he couldn't feel it. No spira either, it was all... Empty. He hated that feeling, like someone had removed his lungs and told him to breathe without them. Everything felt so light, like all of it wasn't real but he knew inherently that it was.
“You've seen it here first, folks. It's another sweltering day here in the city, and as you can see – some people just can't handle the heat! What appears to be Senator Ryan Wolf is as naked at the day his mother brought him into this world and streaking through Times Square. God Bless America, and God bless our legislature. He appears to be screaming in tongues now, is that... Swedish? Honestly, I have no idea! Chet, I'm not sure about you – but I'd like some of what he's having. Oh, now he's being chased by the EMT's from the ambulance he's hoped out of... Boy oh boy but this mans got some wheels on him, somebody sign him! Or however they identify, correction. We here at WCSN 14 want to wish you all a happy pride month and ensure you that inclusivity is always our top priority. Trust us!”
Where the hell is the--
He was gone as soon as one of the rolling metal contraptions failed to stop in time, flattening him like the barley cakes so common in Haran. Haran...? What was that?
–
Weightless. Drifting. More noise, worse than before, turns out war was indeed quite loud. He hated this place, wanted to leave it but he was stuck here. Trapped in a shell of steel and ceramic sealing him from the outside world. And the mana... It was so thick that he could barely breathe...
“Fireteam Crimson requesting immediate support! What!?” Micah fell into cursing at the garbled response, tearing the ear piece from his head and pocketing it, only after decide crushing it underfoot might be a bad play. Everyone wanted digital but an ancient analog set like this one was what had finally gotten them in touch with command. “We gotta go!”
“5-5 Crimson... Ra... Fireteam Navajo are... the AO... closing in on... position. Command... to keep moving towards... extract--”
The sky was on fire. Metal birds were circling one another in a bid for skyward dominance, but it was clear which side was losing. Tyr's side, whatever side that was. If the colors of his heavy armor were proof enough to match the machines falling from the sky in torrents of smoke and fire.
“...Micah? Micah, you can walk!” Tyr had no idea where he was again. No idea why he was entombed in this heavy suit with its unrealistic proportions. His pauldrons were so overly large that he couldn't freely articulate his arms... It was almost idiotic, almost, if not for the incredible power the armor was capable of producing. Just picking himself up off the ground gouged the asphalt and powdered it. He felt like with a grip he could easily crush stone with these articulating gauntlets. Nor did he know why he was carrying such an ungainly cannon. A blocky piece of steel set over a metallic cylinder with a snub barrel the size of an orange jutting out of it. “You know how to use Orik weapons?”
“Why the hell would an Orik be on Sigmus IV!? They'd be crushed on a high gravity world like this!” Micah cried, turning his helmetless face back to Tyr. Unlike the others in their heavy helms and glass eye slits, he was bare of any. “Oi, the commanders lost his shit! Fireteam Crimson on the way to extraction on a course to rendezvous with Wolf and Ra! Let's go, lads!”
They ran as fast as they could. 'Fast', they were running at a steady pace but moving slower than Tyr was used to. He stormed after them, punching a hole in the stone of the roadway with every step. The first city had been massive, but this was something else. Truly titanic, through the flickering holograms flashing into his left eye uncomfortably he could see that it dominated an entire continent by itself. A single tower sat at the center of it all, wreathed in a flurry of sparks and bright lances of what must've been some kind of tremendous magic. A million fireflies racing around to form artificial clouds, something akin to the schools of fish he'd seed in the harbor. Behaving organically, as squadrons of significantly less agile aircraft tried to beat them back them. Aircraft? They were too small to be airships...
“What the hell is happening!?” Tyr cried allowed, unable to process all the wild sights. There was mana and spira here but it was twisted and felt unnatural. The influence of this vast concrete jungle warping it until it tasted sour and burnt to him.
“We're eating shit straight from the ass of life is what we're doing! A spoon in each hand, commander!” Someone laughed at his side. Tythas, it was Tythas! He was here too! “What about the trade depot?”
“Overrun!” Sigi screamed over the din of combat. Each time they tugged at the trigger of their handheld cannons, a ripping tongue of fire would lash out. Throwing bolts of brittle metal with malleable tips toward the ridged torso of the enemy. The others. Long of neck, grayish skin, six legs and a score of eyes patterning their flat faces. No lips or a line demarcating where a mouth should be was present, but their faces would split even down the middle, vertically, to reveal a nest of opaque needles ringing a moist pink orifice. Through it came a chattering ticking noise, almost like a clock. A rapid tick tock, tick tock. A wholly unnatural sound, nothing that should be coming from of a creature of flesh and blood.
When Tyr looked at those things he felt such familiarity with them. A bit of trepidation but he did not feel hate even though they were actively trying to kill both himself and the others. That wouldn't stop him from attempting to fire back at them. What with his terrible sense for the odd artifact he was using, he didn't manage to do much.
“Airport?”
“Overrun. Fuck, Tythas. Everywhere is overrun! The orbital elevator, the trade depot, the fucking airport! We've one chance to make it to the citadel and head through the trans anchor before we're lost here. We have to get the commander back!” She growled. Tyr could hear both her voice coming from her position at his side and again in his head. An echo, heavy with interference and static.
“I don't want to die, man--” Whoever that had been, they received the gift they hadn't asked for, their head blown clean off by a bolt of emerald energy. A significantly smaller and less armored man, who never to the others looked like a child before giants. It jarred them, a pleasant reminder of what point lances were capable of. Sending the others into hunkering lower into their makeshift trench among the rubble of this once great city.
Tyr connected then, snapping into place like his brain had been loose and only now did he realize what was happening. He knew what he had to do. Standing, dauntless before the storm of return fire, he looked at the proud men and women serving under his command. Each and every one of them was a brother or sister, a comrade in arms and their relationships had stretched on for time immemorial. But despite their best efforts, the cordon was too thick. It was over before it had even begun. “It's been an honor serving with you all.”
They understood his intent. They had been serving together for decades, some of them for centuries. There was no way out of this mess, only ensuring that the plague they called the 'others' didn't spread to the core worlds. It was a last ditch effort and not a permanent solution by any means, but maybe it'd give them the time they needed to finish the aegis. That was the point of all of this, ultimately. Push back the frontier in a final crusade of sorts to and keep them away just long enough for mankind to close all jump lanes capable of reaching the center of their empire.
“Mmm.” Sigi nodded. Her face was obscured by her helmet, but the familiar hand resting on Tyr's pauldron said enough. They were close here, in this place, and had been family for longer than his memory stretched. “One last ride, brother.”
“The honor was all ours, commander. For the empire.” They removed their helmets all, saluting him with reverent eyes and grim acceptance. There was so much different in this world compared to... His? His own? What world?
“For the empire.” Tyr repeated with a grim smile, pulling an innocuous looking device from his belt, vaporized in the world shattering glare of a newly born artificial sun.
–
Cigarettes were foul things, but he couldn't stop tugging on them. Anything to take the edge off, these days. Tyr's implants were old, but not many bonesaws left to maintain them. Hurt like a son of a bitch, regretted getting them in the first place, but they did the job. Need them all the same, would've died out here in the bush without them recycling his bodily fluids as they did.
He prodded his raptid forward with a gentle foot, eyeing the rolling hills of his property and whistling shrilly to his farmhands. His wide brimmed hat caught most of the white sun before it could ruin his vision, but not all of it. This scorching wasteland of oranges and yellow, ugly to look at and enough to ensure most went half blind before their time. Fat reptilian creatures grazed or sifted through the mud of a river near run dry Looking for water, not much moisture left out here these days. Not beyond the confines of the last city. They sucked it all up to give themselves showers while the rest of the Confederacy fell apart. As long as they had their nice long baths and clean linens, who cares if everyone starved to death, right?
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While the kids out here have to drink their own recycled piss. Tyr spat, not advisable given the climate and a bit of taboo to waste water like that – but he didn't care. It made him sick how they lived, every time he visited the expo and his buyers kept telling him that it was time to move into that filthy heap of trash and degeneracy they called a city. Things were shit out here, no doubt, but it was better than there by a long shot.
“G'day, boss man.” Steven was a good lad. Young, but he had a powerful body to him and a youthful energy that served him well. Handsome, too, or so the village girls said. Tyr's only 'son', though he was an adopted one. Love hadn't been in the cards for him. Course he'd had a fair few rolls with folk much to the chagrin of their fathers, but sterility these days was quite common. Too much radiation they said, poor diets and all that. Same scientists who couldn't manage to keep the maize growing so he'd stopped listening a long time ago.
“Reckon there'll be a hunt tonight.” Tyr grunted, taking another drag of that toxic smoke. It was a good life, but a hard one at times, and it'd only get harder from here. They'd grown bolder in recent years, the darkbeasts, until their ranch was half the size it had been in his youth. He could imagine his father seeing what had become of it, voicing his disappointment. Funny old man he was. He'd been twenty levels under Tyr's peak and not even close to him in stats and yet he'd managed to do so much more. Didn't really matter if times were harder now or not, results were results.
“Ethinids?”
“The very same.” Tyr replied. He was sure of that. They'd come, and it was their job to protect the herd. His lever action repeater left the therid leather holster in a flash. There they were, not tonight after all. “Looks like they're gonna make it nice and easy for us. Go on back to the village with you – we'll need some help with this one. Call a posse, and make sure its a useful one this time.”
“Are you sure you'll be okay?” Steven asked. “That's a lot, boss.” Tyr didn't allow him to call him 'father', by law or not. That was one of the few rules at the ranch.
“I'll be fine, son.” Tyr smiled, breaking one of those 'four rules'. He'd done his best to maintain the lands his father had left him with, and he'd failed. That much was obvious. “One last ride, eh Freki?” He patted the feathered sauropod below him with a gentle hand, his oldest friend shooting forward on all fours, a roar of challenge toward the interlopers. It was his land too, after all.
–
War, conflict and struggle and more of that each time. Everything was a peak no amount of steps could bring him closer to. Swords and handheld cannons, metal birds and hulking monstrosities of steel ten times the height of a man. Steel cages that swayed back and forth, walking on two legs. All weapons of such impressive might that it left him stunned every time he put hands on them. Mountain busting explosives and technology beyond his understanding.
But he always lost. Always failed. There was no stopping them, no matter what form they took. He didn't know why, but in almost every case they were the same entities. Tyr thought so... They just felt so similar, carried an identical scent. Come from the same place, perhaps, in forms as diverse as his were not.
One moment he'd been teaching his sons and daughters how to plane fresh lumber. The next, he was teaching them how to purify water in a scorching desert. How to fight and how to survive, how to face any of the challenges presented to them whatever the source. But they never did. They couldn't. These worlds weren't meant to be. The singular truth of a burning cosmos, a void that consumed suns and devoured worlds. Every time it was the same until he was left standing on a mountain of bleached bones.
They always came, no matter how much time he was given. And they always won eventually. Whether in five years or a thousand.
One moment he was a simple fisherman. The next, the leader of a vast army larger than he'd ever thought possible. The same person in different skin, a different life every time. An eternity of attempts to fix some important thing, but he could never remember what that thing was. Only that he had to win by any means necessary. Any means. Tyr's 'self' in these other places and alien worlds was not always a man of honor or justice. Worse things came. Cleansing flame, his hands copped and overflowing like a chalice of blood overrun. Raining death on entire planets with titanic engines of siege. Any means necessary. That was his price to be made whole once again. But whole into what...? He didn't remember, none of these men could either. Tyr would know, there were a hundred minds screaming within his thoughts. Pain, sorrow, loss and anger so profound that it could crush mountains and boil oceans.
A slide show of horrors interspersed by the briefest moments of quiet contentment. Tyr had wondered at his existence all this time. Who didn't? All the great philosophers spent entire lifetimes trying to explain the concepts of sentience, faith, the soul, what 'it' all meant... But for Tyr his question was simple. Why am I here? Or – if he pushed his brain into overdrive – what was he supposed to do? What was his purpose? He found it eventually, every time in a manner of speaking. But it didn't matter. None of it did. The visions made it apparent. Endless desolation, a hopelessness so uniform that a mortal might pass into the afterlife on their feet if they'd felt it. But he was already dead, had been for a long time. A ghost in his shell. A puppet on countless strings, forced to dance eternal.
Tyr was a slave and the bonds shackling him to this doom were not of those made by men.
–
Alex was cold. The sun beat down on her something fierce, but she felt a chill deep within herself despite the fair weather. A gentle breeze tousled the ebony hair framing her face. On the peak of the mountain, staring at Jartor's back and wondering what she would say. What she should say.
She was dressed well. Wearing a court skirt for the first time in at least a decade. It was uncomfortable, too drafty and the corset pulling at her ribs and waistline made even the simple act of breathing incredibly difficult. A wonder that anyone could remain dressed like this for any amount of time. A lilac colored gown with white piping, black lace, and the symbol of her house centered over her chest.
The golden lion. The sister sigil of the Goldmane's out of respect for house Faeron. The black above the gold.
It was Jartor who would speak first, not bothering to turn those massive shoulders of his. A living titan in the flesh. “You loved my son, Alexis Goldmane?” His voice was deep and the gravity of ages weighed on it. He sounded so very tired, no small amount of sadness in his voice either. That kind of exhaustion that only comes from being about ones duty for so impossible a stretch of time. Two and a half centuries of toil for a world that would never bother to remember his name. Because they couldn't be allowed to once he was gone.
“Maybe once.” She replied softly. “I'm not quite sure if it was something so profound as that. But I've not come to banter, I've come to ask for leniency. Grant him a barony or a foreign charter, but don't take him away from us. I beg of you, he is our friend and the empress's failings are not his own. He is getting better, father, I can see it in him.”
Jartor shook his head slowly. “You know nothing of my late wife. I did what I had to do, and it was not of wrath – but because it was necessary.”
“What was necessary...?” Alex paled, feeling bile rising up in her throat. That cold returning back tenfold and rolling down her spine, more constricting than any corset. “Primus... Where's Tyr?”
He didn't reply. Her hands began to shake at the dawning realization. Asking questions she did not want the answers to again as she so often did. “Where's Tyr?” She repeated.
Jartor turned, stony face broken only by the single tear that had fled the confines of his right eye. That Jartor, the lion of all lions. The immortal king and lord of lords. A literal titan, a child of gods sent to walk among men. Showing honest sorrow for the first time in centuries. “He's gone, Alexis. And you should leave. I've have no interest in continuing this conversation, I wish to be left in peace.”
“Gone...”
“Yes, child. Tyr is gone, and I killed him. In a way that even his strange and unnatural abilities cannot reverse.”
“Why!?” She screamed, feeling her own eyes growing moist. Sick to her stomach, pulled violently between extremes of emotion. Alex repeated herself until her voice grew hoarse and barely intelligible. “...How could you do such a thing?” She wilted, first under all of that emotional whiplash and next under his face. That look on him that communicated absolute truth.
Sadness. Melancholy. Desperation. To know it was true and still call it a lie, but Jartor's words were reality distilled. If not for the sound they made, then for the cairn stones to identify an empty grave at the peak of the mountain overlooking the palace. Where a matching grave for Signe lay, and the primus' personal memorial to both of them. One eroded by wind, rain, and time. Another made new, the stones fresh and carefully placed stop one another with perfect precision. The only testament to a life lived, the shattered bits of a broken blade sunk into the ground and a ring strung on sinew hanging from the crossguard.
“There can only be one.” Jartor said softly, no offering no further elaboration.
Tyr would often speak of a 'hot nail'. That was his 'excuse'. A sharp pain just behind the eye that made it hard to think, making him impulsive. Something that told him blood needed to be spilled and his efforts to contain it were more often than not an exercise in futility. Some madness, perhaps, Alex had figured as much, finding it all too hard to believe. A thing a man or woman or otherwise of rational mind could not relate to.
She would've said that, until she felt it. Human magic was full of contradictions. The foundation of academia would say that a cool and calculative mind was necessary to manifest a proper spell. Finely tuned control arrays and magic circles. Bodily movements and mental imagery to aid the manifestation of a mana emission.
And yet in rare moments, human mages might experience a feeling. Something that went beyond the science. For Tyr, it had often been anger or pain. But for Alex it was sorrow, rejection, mourning... No absence of rage either, but it wasn't dominant in this equation. The earth shook violently below her feet. Storm clouds manifesting overhead despite the clear sky, and with no need of a spell – her body was wreathed in black lightning.
Nature itself seemed to roar at her coming, reacting to the powerful and conflicting emotions rising up from within her. Sorrow and rage tempered not by want, but a need for vengeance. She could feel it, losing control like she had never before. Letting it all out at once.
CRACK. A tongue of midnight lightning fell from overhead, striking Jartor head on and leaving him a smoking giant wreathed in vapor. His hands were spread and feet splayed wide so as to catch the wash of magic and prevent it from marring the cairns. He turned, raising an eyebrow at her. Magic was something he'd never had much interest in. It was a thing that was easily warded and defended against should someone have the knowledge or equipment necessary to do so. His spira was such that he rarely saw it as anything more than a trifling novelty. But every once in a while, it would surprise him.
“I've not been wounded in over a century.” He chuckled with mirth, his own look of pain melting away. Barely a scratch, his snugly fit robe top was smoking, a hole pierced through it to reveal a weal of red skin. A second passed and it had already faded – but it was enough to see her incredible potential. Able to do as few mages could, accessing that they called the 'old blood'. But it wasn't Alex that had done it, it was that thing inside of her. That which would run thin in a dozen generations to manifest inexplicably far down the road. True sorcery. Her hair was wild, eyes weeping iridescent blood like an oil slick on water. Skin as white as snow, and a deep madness burning in her eyes. Behind her was the towering form of a black serpent. Not something visible to the naked eye, rather a reflection of the soul. That small shred of power which gave her the ability to rise above lesser men. An almost infant arcanum, not yet realized but enough to surprise him.
There were lesser men, lines and heritages that had seen the blood of their ancestors still and dilute over the eras. Millions of them. Countless nim might rise up to stations above their peers, but they were still lesser and always would be. They were not primus, and they were not Jartor. He stood calm and stoic against the storm. Dozens of bolts patterned his body until he was near bare of any clothing on his upper half. Until she tired herself, that is, still too infantile in her half-awakened state to do much more than that. Frothing at the mouth and groaning under the vast exposure to and consumption of mana that didn't belong to her.
“That's enough.” Jartor sighed. “What's done is done. I will tolerate your disrespect out of empathy and respect to your family, but--”
“I'll kill you.” She snarled. “I'll kill you and grind your little empire to dust, your kind have no place on my world. A cleansing is needed, though my kin have become too soft to see it done.”
It was too late for her, he could see that now. He wasn't being spoken to by Alexis Goldmane anyone, but the serpent, fueled by her insane need for something. Feeding on her fragile pride and mind left adrift at the revelation that her friend was dead. It had called to her, and she'd accepted even subconsciously her loss of self as the cost of this ancient power. There was a price to pay for all magic, that which could not be seen nor measured in flesh or gold. A cost to the soul, and Alex's was... Gone. For all intent and purpose, she had killed herself in her need for some sort of closure. To make her mark and deny, frail egos of man that had sent so many mages to their doom reaching for things and powers they could not control.
Ultimately irrelevant. Their kind were not permitted to enter his domain – whether physically or through the spira they called home.
Two deaths today where there needed only be one. A shame, but as with so many things it was necessary.