Eight hooded figures stood on the points of a glowing green octogram painted on a marble floor. The walls around them were a tall cylinder enclosing them, pointed skyward to aim their prayers at Heaven’s ears. Even now, beyond the roofless silo they called their temple, the circular image of the sky outside was painted red with apocalypse and streaked black with the soot of a burning city, sacrificed to buy time for them, the humans’ parting shot—their final revenge.
The eight hooded figures raised their holy staffs, and a ninth, a priestess adorned by gold and copper, entered the octogram, putting herself in the middle.
“O Goddess of Fire,” she proclaimed, “we, your servants, have lost. Nothing of the pride of humanity still stands. If that is so, then so be it—yet we implore that the future know nothing of this scourge that only knows destruction.”
Before her eyes flashed the last time she saw her gallant husband, setting off with the alliance’s army. In her ears rang the echoes of screams of children and their mothers.
She looked up to the sky with madness scrawled on her face. “Demonkind desires that nothing of humanity be left to stand—then so be it! We, your servants, implore—let nothing stand, after all!”
Light coalesced above her, making a circle formed of ancient glyphs. Above that formed another, and above that, another—more and more, stacked on top of each other, climbing up so high they left the top of the silo.
For the survivors watching outside, they saw a small glowing disk on the tippy-top of the silo—and then another, slightly larger one forming on top of that, and yet another, even larger one forming on top of that!
It was like the gods were peering into the silo with a sky-sized magnifying glass. Was this how it felt to be the one under the microscope, to be bacterium to an incomprehensible thing too large to be perceived?
A single alarm klaxon rang, blaring, pausing, blaring in a beat too regular to be a monster’s, too strange to be a dragon’s roar. Never mind the crying infants and the moans of dying militia—a god, somewhere, had heard someone’s prayer, and the survivors and demonkind’s hunters were all listening to the reply.
The priestess in the silo laughed with abandon as a wind lashed out around her. The lights of the circles were getting brighter, and as the person standing in the middle of it all, she knew that the time had come. They would all be obliterated, turned back to dust—reset back to the very beginning of everything.
A blast shook the silo and her feet. This is it, she thought as she fell backwards. The people around her fell, as well, and that was the last thing she saw before everything became too bright.
— And the brightness vanished.
The shaking had stopped, and the wind had died. She opened her eyes, though her sight was still dim. From the floor, she turned her head left and right, finding the other priests and priestesses clutching their hairs, trying and failing to get up with any semblance of balance.
Was the afterlife just a checkpoint duplicate of reality, after all?
When she faced up towards the sky, however, she couldn’t see the sky. Hovering above her was the figure of a man in a trench coat, wearing a strange metal mask with cylindrical protrusions. His strange clothing was too strange, of no known fashions from this continent and even beyond. It made her think that he might be a messenger of the gods—or a judge meant to serve the gods’ judgment.
His feet touched the ground, and only then did he open his eyes.
***
The man known only as the Courier knew only two things about himself: that he was a man, and that he knew nothing for certain about himself. It felt as if he’d been in a situation like this before, surrounded by people dressed in vestments that he’d sworn he’d seen dozens of times by now. The memories of his past were distantly familiar at best—only sketches with no details.
Closest to him, rising before his feet, was the most decorated of the people around him. She quickly got down on her knees again—maybe dazed—but whatever the reason, she didn’t get up again.
“Oh judge!” she said in a voice he’d only heard in a doomsday cult’s sermon. “Deliver unto us the mercy stroke!”
[QUEST UPDATED: Atomize King Valnar's ambitions.]
The mission details scrolled past his visor. The woman before him was the High Priestess of the Kingdom of Man, the last such kingdom of humanity, pushed to the brink of extinction by King Valnar and his army.
It puzzled him how he took this situation in stride, like he’d done this just last Monday.
[STRATAGEMS GRANTED] - HOLY MINUTEMAN-IV (10/10) Payload: 5x 100-kt MIRV's Range: 10,000 km [Defense Barrier II] employed.
Last Monday, indeed.
[SUGGESTED TARGETS] - Edr-zen-kyr (Kingdom of Valnar) + Range: 2,108 km + Reason: Industrial center + Projected casualties: 200k - Polous-claims-Ice (Kingdom of Valnar) + Range: 6,931 km + Reason: Magical development center + Projected casualties: 50k - Valnar'gath (Kingdom of Valnar) + Range: 7,666 km + Reason: Capital and military HQ + Projected casualties: 2M . . .
There were more—79 suggestions in total, counting all major populated cities in the Kingdom of Valnar. It was a truly gigantic nation, dwarfing humanity’s population a hundredfold.
For now, wiping out half of Valnar would suffice. If they still offered resistance, the other half can go, too.
That thought surprised the Courier. He felt remorse, but no shame—that this was just something he had the unfortunate honors and obligation to do.
He brought up his bracelet. On it was a digital screen with a flashing red button. He pressed it, bringing up a keypad. The code came to him as a memory known only by his fingers.
|===========| | 666 | |===========| | CL | <-- | |-----------| | 7 | 8 | 9 | |-----------| | 4 | 5 | 6 | |-----------| | 1 | 2 | 3 | |-----------| | 0 | ENTER | |===========|
He narrowed his eyes. Was this for real? A three-digit PIN, and it’s just that?
He swore to himself how to figure out how to change the PIN…and hit ‘enter.’ He really didn’t feel a thing.
***
Magic circles once again lit up the sky over the burning city, surrounding it in its outskirts along eight equally spaced points. Strange towers emerged from them like organ pipes, and accompanying them was a rumbling—were they being coughed out by the earth, the defenders and attackers wondered.
Once they were fully out of the magic circles, dragon’s breath spewed out from their foundations. They turned the siege trenches outside the city’s walls into pits of char and ash; any demon who hadn’t yet charged into the city were still in the trenches, and when the fire came, they were only allowed one second to scream.
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From far away, humanity’s Regiment Tertius, formed of young boys and old men, stopped their forced march to watch eight lights scatter upwards from the fallen city. Maybe they were angels—but why were they leaving?
***
From the balcony of his palace, the Dragon King Valnar watched his newest legion’s parade. His taloned hands grasped a dark scepter, and instead of a crown, he wore his father’s dragon skull. The old man had been no doubt strong, but he lacked one thing: ruthlessness.
Peace between the tribes could have never been achieved through peace alone, because among the tribes, there were those who naturally existed to upset balance. The worst offender of them all was humanity, the damned worshippers of Vulkaia.
Below him, the last Dark Legion to be raised marched forth to war. They were armored hunters created from template souls extracted from demonkind’s best warriors—and they knew nothing but to fight. They were aberrant copies cursed to only feel pleasure through battle, and he wished he hadn’t had to make them.
But to confront one scourge, it had been necessary to make a worse one.
What could be worse, he thought—as he watched a star fall from the sky. The barriers will scatter it, he thought, as he watched it smash right through.
The shape of the object that had broken through had been no mere rock. Its shell and the hostility of perfectly-machined geometry told him it was a gift from humanity. Where did I go wrong, he thought, as everything before him turned into light.
***
As the last warhead found its mark, the Courier received a message through his visor.
[Hits: 33/35]
Not all the warheads found their targets, it seemed, but it was good enough.
[Stratagem HOLY MINUTEMAN-IV resupplying in: 23h 31m 19s]
By the end of tomorrow, there’d be nothing left.
“W-we’re still here,” one of the priestesses muttered. The High Priestess turned towards him. “O Holy Judge, I mean no discourtesy, but what have you done?”
What had he done, truly. He looked at her, though he was sure that all she saw was a faceless, black visor turning her way. “It’s done,” he said.
In the coming days and weeks, winter would suddenly come, and in the years to follow, each winter would be a little chillier than they’d remember. This world was done for, anyway.
His hand went to his hip. He sensed something coming. Looking left and right, however, he found nothing to be wary of—but he knew that relying on only five senses wouldn’t ever be enough.
A sphere of dust accumulated to one side of the room. It did so quietly, but the Courier was sensitive to these strange things.
“Stay back,” he called out, putting up one arm—and pulling out a long iron with the other.
The sphere of dust grew and sparks of lightning crackled. A second later, it blew up into the size of a giant, obscuring whatever it was nursing in its electrified core.
The Courier took aim at the core and fired once. The gunshot was like a cannon in the silo, and the faithful behind him jumped at the sudden attack he’d produced from his wand.
The core dispersed, and from its center dropped down a man clutching his arm—or rather, where they used to be an arm.
But was he a man? As the dust cleared, wings became evident, and when all the dust had gone, his skull headdress was clear.
“Valnar!” the High Priestess shouted behind the Courier. A high-speed spell shot over the Courier’s shoulder, hitting the Demon King in a concentrated explosion.
Valnar coughed, covered in ash and soot. “A powerful spell, priestess,” he said, “but not as powerful as his.”
He was still on one knee, refusing to stand. The Courier kept his gun trained on Valnar. He could see the king’s pupils somewhere under the dragon skull, his eyes switching between the Courier’s face and the barrel of the gun.
“So you’ve come to finish us off yourself, then!” the High Priestess shouted. Her staff was primed for another shot. “Come on, you prideful king—stand up!”
“No.”
That got silence out of the High Priestess. The Courier could tell this wasn’t the exchange she expected.
A moment later, the High Priestess marched up beside the Courier. “The dragons are prideful. They refuse to kneel to even their parents,” she said. “Something’s wrong here.”
“There is nothing wrong here, priestess,” Valnar said. He slowly raised his hands…and took off his father’s skull. His silken yet fiery hair fell to the floor. He lowered his head as he spoke. “Peace through overwhelming power. That, I have believed, and that” —he looked up at the Courier— “had been achieved. I have already issued a general retreat order for my forces. It is clear to me that we have lost—that I am an infant who merely thinks he knows what ‘peace through power’ looks like. The power who must rule” —he bowed his head once more— “is not me, but you.”
The High Priestess slid closer to the Courier’s side. “I implore you not be deceived, Judge. These demons have done nothing but push humanity to the brink.”
“As if you wouldn’t do the same,” Valnar muttered.
The High Priestess fired off another spell, but even with the angrier blast than the last, it was only enough to get Valnar to sneer behind the veil of his hair.
[OPTIONAL: Kill Valnar.]
The Courier was no fool. He’d heard everything that had been said. Animosity between races was a fool’s errand to quell, and he had no delusions about his ability to lead worlds.
He could discern the purpose of his existence as well. It was fairly obvious he’d been doing this for a long time, but how long, he didn’t know.
The easiest thing to do was to kill Valnar and set the world on fire—reset everything. Even so, a feeling within him resisted the call of his old habits.
Against old habits, old wounds screamed—an intuition that if he went through with this, that he would meet a predictable end, just to be once again sealed away somewhere, then wake up again, annihilating millions and maybe entire worlds again, and for the sake of what?
He was no such machine to be dictated by goals that flashed across his eyes. Towards what end had Valnar waged war? Why did humanity occupy only such a tiny corner of the world? Why was he sent here only now, when his methods would be too late to truly save humanity—only useful enough to wipe the slate clean?
The best quality of a judge was to withhold judgment. He holstered his gun and took a step towards the pitiable king.
“Judge!” the High Priestess called. She reached out with a hand, but she dared not to get within flaying range of Valnar’s magic.
The Courier turned around to look at her for a second, but she said nothing, only looking at him with a lost expression. He turned right back around and approached the Demon King.
Valnar looked up at him as he approached, nearly just as shocked as the High Priestess.
“Take me to Valnar’gath,” the Courier said. For a moment, Valnar couldn’t reply.
Valnar shook his head. “There is no more Valnar’gath,” he said.
“Take me to the outskirts.”
Valnar looked down, considering his request. “Very well.”
Darkness wrapped around the Courier, and light returned a second later.
The color of the air had changed into something familiar. Ash rained from the sky, and below him was a city’s proud walls, but no city left behind them. It was all rubble surrounding a perfectly smooth crater.
“I never thought,” Valnar said, “I’d see a destruction so grand, so total, and yet so precisely aimed.”
A flower petal blew past the Courier’s head, and he turned around to see what that was doing amidst the raining ash.
The flower field behind him was vibrant in colors he couldn’t name. He hadn’t even seen a flower field before, he somehow knew.
A part of him rejoiced that it hadn’t been touched by the blast, perhaps sheltered by the shockwave propagation characteristics of the terrain combined with the many magical defense barriers that overlaid the city.
That joy was alien to him, but he was glad he still knew the name for it—and it pained him to know he was joyful, because by his hand, he had almost taken it away.
He turned back towards the city. This world shouldn’t have been slated for destruction. Even with the war of extermination, this place was a paradise—unknown, unexplored, filled with things that flourished with life.
Had he known, he wouldn’t have pushed the button.
His regret couldn’t possibly measure up to the actual weight of what he’d done, but the important thing was that he’d suspended judgment, and he bothered to step out to see the world with his own eyes.
“Even with this,” Valnar said as he watched the crater’s glow, “the world will know no peace. My generals will fight among themselves, and some will see fit to finish what I had started. The High Priestess will rally humanity’s armies once more, I reckon, and fuel their engines of war.”
The Courier had done a wrong that could never be righted, but he had no need to right a wrong. He only needed to take it to his grave, and bring about a peace that would outlast the animosity of the war.
This world didn’t need to be destroyed; he didn’t want to see it destroyed. He just needed to enforce a new order…and he had the power to do so.
Valnar’s words rang in the Courier’s skull. ‘Peace through power’—such a straightforward idea, wasn’t it?
“Valnar,” he said, “hand me the crown.”
[NEW QUESTLINE: == New World Order ==]
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Hi, there! I drafted this short story as practice. If anything good or bad stuck out to you (aside from word choice; bruh, I just wrote this in one pass and ran it through a spellchecker), it'd help me out to hear it!
Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed the Fallout crossover lol.