Year Null. Brass Tower - Heaven
JIRA ne’JIRAL
Jira rubbed the strain out of her eyes and sat up. A stinging pain surged through the right side of her scalp, and a deft touch of her fingers felt the hints of a split in her flesh. Pulling her hand away from the spot revealed to her tiny brushes of blood on her fingertips.
“You hit your head off the wall when you fell,” Prokos explained as he helped her up off the ground. “It wasn’t hard enough to cause too much damage, thankfully. Just a scratch. Nothing that says major damage to the head.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Orlantha jibed.
“Orlantha, not now,” Gíla muttered, approaching Jira with a slight curve of a smile on her black, ursine lips. “Are you good enough to move, Jira?”
Jira lifted her leg and flexed it out. She repeated the motion with the other and twisted her back to loosen the stiffness. “I am. Though, I am not entirely sure I want to continue moving on in this place.”
“Well, we’re going to have to,” Orlantha said. “We got a man to revive and a God to kill.” She pointed at the hunk of flesh that Jira recognized as Sodon. For some reason, she felt nothing to the words ‘God to kill.’ It was as if she had expected to hear them.
“How did Sodon die?” she asked with the barest hint of emotion.
“The wasteland outside. It killed everyone he was with and turned them against each other. I came upon the scene of the latter, and it was…I did what I could,” Gíla explained.
Jira nodded. “I thank you for trying, Gíla.” She shifted her gaze to the man who was as feral as he was human. He sat sideways in a pew, arms folded over the back as he rested his head on his bicep. “And who are you?”
“Silof,” the man answered. Jira’s eyes narrowed, to which Silof snickered. “I see you met my associate. Did he talk ill of me?”
Jira noted the gazes from Orlantha and Gíla. They were surprised that this Silof had an associate.
“He did not,” Jira said. “He told us things that made little to no sense. Hall of Contemplation. Fate. God. Things about myself.”
“Then he vanished before our eyes, talking about technology and a city,” Prokos continued. “Said a lot of words and explained none of them. The bastard.”
“Sounds like him, alright,” Silof grinned.
“Who is he?” Orlantha asked, her voice taut with newly found distrust. “And why haven’t you spoken of him before?”
Silof defied the logic of his position in the pew and somehow flipped over the back, landing on his feet. He pulled his coat down with a tug to unruffle it. “Emmerich is his name. You didn’t need to know about him because it wasn’t you who would encounter him. They were.”
Orlantha shook her head. “I’d still feel it would have been appreciate had you informed us of ‘Emmerich.’ What if we had encountered him, and things went awry, and we had to fight him.”
Silof stepped closer to Orlantha and raised one finger. “First, you wouldn’t have. Trust me on that; you wouldn’t have. Second,” he held up another finger, “you would have lost had you fought him. The man does not play fair.”
Orlantha crossed her arms. “Neither do we. Fairness in a fight only gets-”
“Have you ever heard of a Spellgun, big lady?” Silof asked Gíla. His eyes told a story to Jira that was built on the foundations of some unknowable emotion. The closest approximation she could give it was sorrow.
“N-no,” Gíla answered. “I know of the Spellblades, but not that.”
Silof turned his attention to Jira and repeated his question, replacing ‘big lady’ with ‘guiling one.’ Jira felt her heart seize as it had with the Yvon imposter - a dream, a vision?
Her face remained placid from will. “I have not.”
Silof turned around and began trotting towards the great chairs at the room's northern end. “It’s a few hundred years before your time, so I’m unsurprised. Figured I’d ask, though.”
Jira, Prokos, and Orlantha followed after the man in a rush. Gíla stayed behind only a moment to scoop up Sodon in her arms.
“A few hundred years?” Prokos repeated. “Emmerich is from the future? Is that what you are saying?”
Silof stood at the base of the raised dais on which the lectern and the chairs rested. He stared hard at the stonework and cocked his head to the side. “Of a sort. Simply put, he is from a time that has come to pass, may come to pass, and will never come to pass. Emmerich is Emmerich, and it is best to leave it at that if you want it to be simpler.”
Jira shared a look with Prokos and knew that the events of this tower had ruined him. Regardless of what happened at the end, escape or not, the Prokos she knew was gone.
Jira stood next to Silof and stared where he stared. “What are these Spellguns, Silof? Does Emmerich use one?”
“The man created them,” Silof said with a toothy grin. There was an insanity in it that made Jira flinch. “He loves them. You won’t. They will be your savior in the wars to come - if we manage to get this plan to succeed - and your killer in equal measure. Some days, they will be more of either than the other.”
Silof suddenly turned away from the dais and leaned close to Jira’s ear. “But you already knew that. In time, you’ll know it again, Jira.”
“You named yourself Jira ne’Jiral, a lie of lies.”
Jira choked on her spit, quickly backing away from the feral man who laughed mockingly. Orlantha took her place, a glare shot Jira’s way, and shared quiet mutterings with the beast in human skin. Prokos ushered Gíla to stand next to Jira.
“You okay, tumathios?” Prokos asked.
“Not really,” Jira answered honestly. It felt good, to be honest, even with such a minute thing. “I don’t like him. Silof, I mean. He troubles me.”
“It’s his eyes, right? That smile?”
Jira sniffed and nodded. “Yes. Insanity lurks behind his expressions, and I dare not peer too far behind the mask. Not yet, at least.”
“The man is a bastard more than anything else,” Gíla chimed in. Jira quickly took note of how Sodon had no decay to his body. He looked freshly deceased. “Had Orlantha and myself combat a monstrous guardian and laughed. He speaks in riddles and clearly knows far more than what he is saying. Though he did, I suppose, explain the truth of what’s happening in the world. If he can even be trusted with that, now that I have had some moments to think about it.”
“What did he say?” Jira and Prokos inquired in unison.
For the next short while, Gíla relayed to Jira and Prokos what Silof had all told Orlantha and herself, from the ‘game’ and the players involved in it, the role God is playing, the purpose of the war, and the plan to rid themselves from their grim fate. Reviving Sodon in the Heartforge would be a task in of itself. According to Silof, with the assistance of a skilled mancer - himself, it appeared - one could also remake themselves in the Heartforge. Completely rewrite who they were as a person, or keep themself the same with only minute differences. Enough, Silof said, to break them out of the chains binding them. Yet, such an attempt would surely be lethal if any part of the process went wrong.
Jira heard very little of that last part and nearly came to blows with the Nujant Chhank upon the revelation that Dioúksis Audax himself was involved in this dire plot towards ultimate power, the lie of her integration into Khirnian society taking over the sensibilities of her true self for but a moment. Prokos had to separate the silver knight from the Bear Maiden, dragging her to a secluded area of the Hall. Silof cackled loudly. Orlantha was silent.
“Jira, calm down-” he pleaded.
“No. No! She’s wrong, he’s wrong!” she roared, pointing at Gíla and Silof. “I refuse to accept that the Dioúksis is involved in this…this…this sin.”
A strong word for a woman without belief in such things. Jira slapped her face three times and burst away from Prokos, pacing down the aisle of the Hall, her face red and contorted in rage. She could believe the Vasiles was involved. The Druyans. The Runemaster. But Dioúksis Audax? The man who treated her with kindness and respect and care and patience? Yes, she had altered his memories to think of her as having once been an orphan he took in. She had done this with everyone that needed to be so changed, but that did not change the fact that he had cared for her still. The man was still his own, and he could have tossed her aside as any other Belanorian. Yet, he believed in the memories, and he believed in her. He would not be involved in a plot so diabolical as to ruin all of reality like this. No, he could not be.
“The man is a traitor to everyone, Jira,” Silof called out. “You’d know what the pain of that’s like better than anyone.”
“You can lie to everyone else but not yourself, Guile Eclipse. You are a traitor to traitors, and your facade will fail in time. And when it does, they will hate you. They will execute you.”
Prokos could not stop her from charging Silof, who had just figured out what he was looking for. He spun to face her just as she dug her shoulder into his stomach in a takedown. He allowed it to happen. She knew he allowed it to happen. The instant they connected, Jira was made aware that had this man wanted to, she would have been dead before she took the first step to attack him.
That did not deter her.
“You lie!” Her voice cracked with grief and rage at the audacity of this creature in the flesh of a human. Orlantha wrapped her arms around Jira’s waist and lifted her off the still-cackling Silof with the ease of the wind blowing a dead leaf from the branch. Jira countered, using the giantess’ strength against her to slip out of her grasp and swing around, landing a hard punch to the woman’s nose. Something cracked wetly, and Orlantha almost buckled.
Silof moved to comment but was silenced with a flurry of kicks followed by dropping elbows to his face.
Nothing damaged him.
“You lie, you lie!” Jira screamed. “The Dioúksis is a good man! A great man! He would not-”
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Year Null. Brass Tower - Heaven
ORLANTHA XATHIA
Orlantha struck Jira on the back of her head with a hard boot, knocking her unconscious - or at least loopy enough to get Prokos to bind her arms behind her back as she came to.
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“We’re not doing this,” Orlantha sternly commanded. Her voice was nasally, with one hand holding her busted nose. Silof began to stand, only to fall back down following another hard kick from Orlantha to his face. “Shut the hell up. Don’t say another word unless it pertains to getting us out of here and making our plan work.”
Silof flopped his arms out to his side and groaned. “Fine.”
Orlantha twisted her fingers on her nose. A spurt of blood shot out from under her hand, along with a squelching crack. She removed her hand. Her face was stained red, her nose swollen and bruised but no longer entirely out of place. “Prokos, lead Jira where this bastard takes us until we’re certain she won’t attempt to kill him again.”
Prokos hesitated. “Lady Xathia, are you sure we should not let her at least be able to defend herself?”
Orlantha rubbed a trail of bloody mucus off her lip. “She will be fine. I’m not going to let her die for reacting poorly to the information. It’s not exactly something you can be calm about.”
“I agree,” Gíla said with Sodon hoisted over her shoulder like a sack of flour. “That being said, we should finally move on from this place. We need to revive Sodon and get out of the destiny the heathens who started this all have made for us.”
“That’s going to be difficult, as I said,” Silof added as he kipped up to his feet. Orlantha felt the urge to punch him in the throat. “Reviving a chump in the Heartforge is one thing, and that can go wrong entirely. Remaking yourself in it is…well, I’ll do what I can to ensure nothing bad happens. Besides, killing the big man is the only way to stop everything entirely.”
“But to do that, we need to make sure we have the means,” Orlantha clarified.
Silof clapped his hands lightly. “Which we can find via a few interesting ways, none of them easy. It’ll work best if we all work on it separately.”
“What are the ways?” Jira slurred as she regained full control of her faculties.
“You’re not going to like it,” Orlantha murmured.
“So glad you asked, Jira,” Silof grinned. His fangs seemed more pronounced. With a flourish, the beastly man spun around and waved his hands at the dais, which split open upon forming a series of symbols in a dialect so alien to Orlantha’s eyes that her mind hurt to see them. Beyond the new opening was a staircase that went down. He descended, and the group followed. “So far, I have identified four places we can get to that can make the first step of this plan to kill God work. The first place is Tahrir. I recall hearing that the two armies were sent there years ago to find something of interest. I’m telling you that they either will, which is bad, or they won’t, and they die.”
“I have an old friend who was sent there to follow up on disturbing reports,” Jira revealed. “What lies there, Silof?”
The darkness of the tunnel they entered was encompassing. Yet it was not the darkness that sent shivers down Orlantha’s spine or made Gíla audibly growl. It was the fact that Silof’s eyes were glowing and reflective, his face pulled tight into a fanged grin. “It’s the Athenaeum. A place of learning, of lore, of history. One of the Gods that Aedol killed placed it there in a time lock of sorts after Khirn and Aqella came into existence. They didn’t bother to remove it ever, so it’s remained there since. That’s one place. Has a lot of information, bound to have something on how you can kill a God as mortals. The second place is in Veoris. The far north of Veoris, to be exact. There’s an old temple there built by Khirn’s first inhabitants, long before your Golden Lords. Visiting it is outlawed by the Veorisian tribes, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. I have seen strong currents of mystharin emanate from it during my search for answers. The strongest in Khirn, by far. Bound to have something for us.”
“Who was it built to worship?” Gíla inquired softly. Orlantha expected the answer.
“Old gods. The ones given charge to watch over Khirn. A long time ago.”
“And the plan that the Vasiles and the others have will revive those Gods,” Prokos asked. His voice was rife with barely restrained conflict and fear. “And that is a bad thing?”
“An awful thing, young boy,” Silof said. “You don’t bring back a dead god. Reality will fix the damage on its own. It’s natural for Gods to die. The manner in which it happened this time was not natural, however. Without reality’s approval, bringing them back will make things…not good.”
“You act as though reality is its own thing, separate from the Gods,” Prokos whispered in the darkness.
“It is. It is far more powerful than any God that it makes. And once you become aware of it, it can drive you to do things that even our precious deities would balk at.”
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Year 8540. Woodlands of Change - Veirn
GÍLA SENGHU
“Your students aren’t in danger, Lady Senghu,” the man in the pale white armor chequered black assured the Bear Maiden. “I mean them or you no harm.”
“You’ll find that I have a hard time believing that,” the Bear Maiden replied curtly as she fastened the last strap of her pack tightly. “This is simply another place you are looking to conquer.”
“Far from it,” he said, removing his helm to reveal the neatly maintained visage of a warlord.
His hair had been tied into a topknot, the sides shaved down to the scalp, and his beard had been trimmed to a sharp point with his mustache braided with diamonds. “I sought this place for a moment of peace before I take my army west.”
Her students had long vanished before the conqueror appeared from the mountains, his legions of millions held back in their camps. He was alone, and they could settle their feud now if the Fatebreaker was so gracious.
It was what she wanted most next to simply leaving him behind.
Gíla stood up to her full height, towering over him like an ogre. She slung the pack over her shoulder and scoffed. “How often have you said that before? How many times did you encroach upon a place of peace and tranquility only to snap shut your trap?”
“Only twice, Lady Senghu,” the conqueror admitted. “And both times were necessary.”
Gíla’s eyes radiated golden fire. Her lips pulled back in a snarl. “They were not. Both slaughters are on your head.”
“The blame for the Vin’tel should be placed on Yvon, not me.”
“It is because of you that Yvon did what she did. You and Blackstone.”
The conqueror groaned and clenched his eyes. “Lady Senghu, I do not wish to have this brief encounter turn into something worse. Please, I only ask that I be allowed to have a rare moment of peace before I-”
“Engage in the slaughter. I get it.” She turned to leave and vanish into the darkness of the forest, stopping at the edge of a thick cluster of trees. “Thousands of years, and you are still the same.”
“How is that, Lady Senghu?”
“A monster.”
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Year Null. Brass Tower - Heaven
ORLANTHA XATHIA
They had been walking for hours, or so it seemed. Exhaustion had become their friend, but they pushed on, unwilling to stop for worry that Silof would forget to keep speaking. After a while, Jira had been freed from her bindings and had taken up the group's rear with Prokos. “So Tahrir, Veoris, the Star Bastion. All the ins and buts and outs discussed of them. What’s the last one?” she asked in a low, indignant tone.
“Aqella!” he chirped with joy.
“What?” Gíla bellowed, nearly deafening Orlantha.
Jira was shaken. “Aqella?”
Silof walked backward to keep his gaze on the group. His face was disturbed. His eyes were too glowing and too reflective. “Yes, ma’ams. Good ol’ Aqella. Lots of lands to cover there, but only one place to get to.”
“Where? What?”
“Asne Unarith, Capital of the Nujant Chhank.”
Gíla nearly dropped Sodon on the ground. “Wh-wh-Asne Unarith?”
Silof nodded dramatically. “That’s what I said. If I am correct, there should be an artifact deep, deep, deep below the Vaults that can help us accomplish our goals as a whole.”
“Stop,” Orlantha stopped the group before they could move forward anymore and heaved out a great sigh of frustration. “Before you say anything else, I will make a guess. And that is that the artifact underneath Asne Unarith is a weapon of immense power that was locked away ages ago because it could not be destroyed or because the Nujant Chhank are suckers for history.”
Silof scoffed, scoffed again, and then deflated. “Yes. It is. I think, at least. I’m not entirely sure what it is, only that it will help us.”
Prokos stuttered. “If you don’t know what it is, how are you sure you will help-”
“Prokos, do not,” Gíla waved her hand at him. “Just do not.”
“Are we going to split up the group then after the Heartforge? Assign everyone to different tasks?” Orlantha inquired.
“We should, truthfully, reconvene with the war and stop the Siege,” Jira answered. “It won’t do us any good if we are trying to fix this and have to face the Druyans hunting us down across all of Khirn and Aqella. And it will give us a chance to change fate further if we can kill Runemaster. Without him, the Runearch remains, and it is one less threat to deal with.”
“Tumathios ne’Jiral is not wrong,” Prokos advised. “Taking care of what is easily our largest physical threat next to Vasileú Hippon would ease things greatly.”
To his credit, Silof nodded in agreement, though his expression remained just as disturbed. It was Gíla who spoke. “That does seem wise. Eliminating him and then, perhaps, Vasileú Hippon would weaken the king’s army, granting us easier access to travel to Veoris to the north.”
Jira leaned against the wall of the tunnel. “Tahrir as well. Less of the Vasileús’s spies or Druyan scouts would be sent to the west. We’d have more chances to rebuild our forces. If we’re changing the hand the ‘players’ have set up, maybe we can naturally get others to join us.”
“Would that work, Silof?” Gíla asked the beastly man.
Silof rubbed his nose and flicked a glob of mucus to the ground. “To be completely honest, you are the first to reach this far and not die or go insane, so…” he sneezed loudly, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t try.”
Orlantha had many questions to ask the man from this response alone, but she kept them silent. “Are we settling on it then? We use the Heartforge, and we kill the Runemaster?”
“We can certainly try,” Prokos grunted.
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They had come upon the Heartforge after five weeks of walking, resting, and arguing. Five long, arduous weeks filled with nothing but each other. No beasts invaded the sanctity of the group. No monsters, no abominations, no horrors. They only had each other and the winding, grinding gears of the tower they explored.
The dark tunnel that Silof had led them into from the Hall of Contemplation had finally ended after the first night, and from there, it became an ascent of ladders, stairs, shifting rooms of slabs that carved pathways and interconnected for brief moments, and many more chambers filled with items of unknown origin and make.
Orlantha had picked up a recurve bow in an abandoned blacksmith-type chamber. Its size was perfectly suited for her, as was its overall design, having been efficiently crafted out of strong blue steel with a string of excellent hide. The curved limbs were decorated generously with sigils and words, clearly belonging to noble houses no longer existing, with the ends topped by reptilian claws.
“Never took you for a bow woman,” Jira remarked.
“Haven’t taken myself for one either,” Orlantha concurred.
She picked up the quiver, itself made from the same hide as the string, though clearly more robustly reinforced for travel and carrying the arrows. These weapons themselves were made of a hardy silver that felt cold to the touch. With a nod to herself, Orlantha shoulder the bow and strapped the quiver to her hip.
They walked on, moving endlessly until the heat of an ever-burning furnace blasted their flesh. Silof was unbothered, of course, but the rest fell to their knees with hacking wheezes. Before them loomed a grand archway lit fire-red. It had appeared without warning, much like the storm and lightning and savagery of the battles past. Orlantha patted at the ground to pick up the few arrows that had slipped out of the quiver.
“What is this?” Gíla blurted out in an almost disembodied voice.
“This is the Heartforge,” Silof exclaimed. “I guess we found it. Told you I wouldn’t know where it was. We just had to be lucky.”
Orlantha and the Bear Maiden were first to their feet, albeit strained and bleeding from their eyes. Orlantha was the first to step forward. Gíla was next, taking a much farther step toward the arch. Sodon was clutched in her arms.
“Inside, we’ll have the chance to change everything,” Silof announced. He had his hands on his hips and a tremendous toothy grin on his face. When Orlantha and Gíla fell to their knees again, and Jira and Prokos could barely crawl, Silof suddenly made a noise of surprise and waved his hands. The fires of the Heartforge died down enough to allow the four warriors to stand up.
“Sorry, I was lost in the moment,” he barely lamented.
“I would ask how you can do that, but I really don’t think I want to know the answer right now,” Orlantha grimaced.
The four traveled inside, heaving all the while with every breath. They beheld two sights, one magnificent and one so greatly terrible that Silof himself froze stiff, and Prokos fell to the ground in seizure.
“Well, that’s unexpected,” Silof uttered.