I joined Alyss in watching our shared companion as he scorched the earth and scoured the sky with mighty, wrothful pillars of pure light.
Dragon had long been dead, of course. The area for miles around, reduced to a mere flattened rubble by the magnitude of my blow. To survey it, even now, felt surreal. My joining with my Major Shard had been nothing short of glorious, a euphoria that mere words could never have expressed. We were closer now, than ever before. Stronger. More united.
Yet, its aftermath was…troubling.
It’d cost me everything. All my Entropy. Almost my life. This was a Trump’s trump card, a move I could surely use but once in an engagement.
But I’d reduced near enough an entire city to ash and dust.
And I was barely past the Marble stage.
Was this the power that I’d sought so desperately? Was it finally within my grasp? Could I rest easy now, assured in my might?
Regardless, our combined efforts had, by now, rendered the Machine titan quite defunct. Its Overseers dropped like lifeless puppets from the sky, its mutant forces were scattered to the winds.
Still, the Immolator’s rage burned bright.
He charred and melted, slagged and incinerated, torched and immolated, until there was nothing left of our erstwhile adversary, nothing at all. Nothing but a bubbling, boiling pool of slowly-cooling metal.
And then, Old Ottawa was silent.
Caleb floated in midair, panting, eyes fixed on the ferric lake of his creation, that could no longer even be called a corpse. His chest heaved heavily, despite the fact he no longer needed to breathe.
He said nothing.
We joined him, but made no conversation. We knew well enough his mind. Well enough to read between the lines. The Inquisitor had never seen fit to share what happened in his game, save for the obvious fact that both his fellow delvers died, and that he’d chosen Dragon to blame.
So we said nothing, too.
We just sat there. Or, hovered.
Staring down at the pool of simmering steel and silver. Mutely watching the pitter-patter of falling, glowing, raindrops turn to vapor as they met its scalding surface.
Yes, Old Ottawa was silent.
And so, for a while, were we.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Caleb close his own, and take one last deep breath.
“It is done,” he whispered.
But that was it. He spoke not another word.
After our victory over the first Floor’s Champion, the Titanoboa, I remembered him giving quite the speech. Quite a rousing one. Quite an inspiring one. Allowing the two of us, and Rover, of course, to share a brief moment of camaraderie.
But he didn’t do that, now.
He didn’t say anything at all. Perhaps, he didn’t want to. Perhaps, he didn’t need to. Perhaps there was nothing to say.
The foe was slain.
The overwhelming foe was slain. We’d slew it together, each of us working hard to ply our respective roles. We’d done well. Worked well, together. How many other groups of three, across the world entire, could’ve stolen triumph from the jaws of a titan such as this?
And yet, strangely, there felt little reason to celebrate.
This delve, miserable and insufferable though it had most certainly been, was just that. A delve. An isolated, sealed-off experience, so far away from the much realer and more pressing problems of the outside world. Here, all was simple.
Brutal. Violent. Evil, even. But, simple. You saw an enemy, and you did battle with it.
Real life was rarely so straightforward.
Each of us had made grand and weighty promises of what we’d do upon returning. To kill a father. To purge an order. To slay a God. But these had been mere words, and naught more. Words professed in the daunting shadow of overwhelming odds, to boot.
Now, we would actually have to carry them out.
Now, we really would have to kill fathers, purge orders…
And slay God.
I saw nary a trace of hesitation, nor recalcitrance, borne upon the faces of my companions, and neither did I doubt them their convictions, yet I could not help but join them in the measure of grim apprehension the task set before us elicited.
We floated in silence, for a while more.
“Well.”
Appropriately, it was Alyss who eventually spoke up.
“Shall we?” She asked, glancing at the both of us.
She needn’t have. She was our leader, now. No matter what misgivings we might, collectively, have shared in the Coterie, our path was clear. We needed answers. Old Europe was where they lay. We made for Great Bern, for the institute, for intrigue and courtcraft. For the land of Godkin.
None among us knew its ways better than her.
Nevertheless, I nodded.
“…Caleb?” She asked, softly, laying a gentle palm upon the Immolator’s shoulder. My friend closed his eyes once more, took another deep breath, and nodded, too.
We didn’t have to wonder where we were supposed to go. We didn’t have to guess. It was obvious. A sordid leitmotif to this cursed Labyrinth’s first floor.
The great, dark, gaping hole beneath the split-open carcass of the blue-white pyramid was our way out.
As we flew towards it in unison, I couldn’t help but wonder what we might find inside. What rewards waited for us at this Dungeon’s end? Would there even be any? Certainly, there should have been, but then, this place was anything but normal.
We dove down, into the dark.
Down, and down, and down, until we reached its very bottom, whereupon we came across a surprisingly normal door, cut into the edges of the brown-black earth. Sleek, and smooth, and mechanical. When we approached it, it opened freely for us.
And, as one, we beheld what lay inside. Whatever I’d expected to find, it most certainly wasn’t this.
Inside the door at the very bottom of the pit was some…some sort of advanced, cutting-edge hospital.
All about the place were sequestered articles of clean, white, sterile medical machinery. Chilled sacs of ruby-red blood, sleek monitors displaying all manner of unknown data, lithe and powerful-looking mechanical arms sporting innumerable miniature digits. All of them beeped in concert, in distinct, atonal patterns, in a disconcerting disharmony with one another.
“I–is that…a man?” Alyss murmured, her eyes widening as she did so.
And sure enough, she was right. A man, it was.
There, right there, lain prostrate upon the room’s sole table, encapsulated in a thick, glass barrier that fully separated him from the outside world, and absolutely perforated by dozens upon dozens of tubes, wires, and needles that connected him to the myriad machinery around was, indeed, a man.
He was nearly naked, clothed only in a loose, light-blue pair of underwear, and looked downright bizarre. His hair and beard were long, unbelievably long, so long they fell in great clumps and tassels off the very edges of the bed to form pools of stringy keratin upon the ground. His nails, too, grew long and crooked, curling around and into themselves. Why, he looked as if he’d been here centuries.
And yet, he showed no signs of age.
His body was thin, yes, but…clean. Pristine. Bereft of wrinkles. His hair was thick and brown, and recently-washed, and his teeth, such that I could make them out, were bright white and unblemished.
He looked barely thirty.
And, to my absolute shock, I could hear him.
~~~
Armsmaster
Attunement: Fabrication–Miniaturization(Mi) 0
~~~
His Attunement was zero.
“His Attunement is zero,” I commented aloud, frowning. “I’ve never seen an Attunement of zero before.”
Though actually, come to think of it, that wasn’t strictly speaking true. In fact, I’d seen an Attunement of zero precisely once before; the time I’d pulled Discretionary Mutation from one of my save slots to form Acceleration.
Back then, the rating had made sense, in a way. After all, I’d never once used the Blessing, before. But, I’d never seen such a thing expressed in a human Host.
“How’d you eve–of course, your full status observation,” Caleb began, quickly correcting himself to shake his head wearily. “Would that I only accustomed myself to it.”
“Should…,” I paused, licking my lips, glancing at both my companions hesitantly. “Do you think we should wake him?”
“Is that wise?” Alyss questioned, dubiously. “For all we know, he could be hostile. Or mad. After all, this…,” she gestured towards the casket, “Armsmaster is like to be centuries old. Who’s to say how he’ll react to being awoken?”
“He’s the mage,” I realized, belatedly, causing both my companions to turn towards me curiously.
“The wizard sleeps in gilded cage,” I recited, recalled from the very beginning of our delve. “A maddened DRAGON guards the mage.”
I pointed at him.
“He’s the mage.”
Alyss nodded, slowly. “It does fit, I suppose. Strange. I wonder if he–”
“That’s all well and good,” Caleb interrupted, “but who is this mage? I mean, really? We don’t know. Such a stanza tells us precious little.”
“That’s true,” Alyss admitted, now nodding his way. “Perhaps he was the Dragon’s enemy, but they might just as well have been allies. After all, why else take such pains to keep him alive?”
“As a means of torture,” I suggested, gesturing once more to the apparatus, the mechanical sarcophagus solely responsible for keeping the sleeping man alive. “This is Ancient technology. We know not its capabilities.”
“All the more reason not to rouse him,” Caleb argued back. “All the more to Lady Nycta’s point; centuries of torture would be sure to drive even the most stalwart minds to madness. For that matter…”
He paused a moment, quirked his head at the casket, then at me.
“You can see Blessings, too, can you not?” he murmured, though he didn’t wait for a reply, instead jerking a thumb towards the slumbering man.
“What’s his, then?” He asked.
I narrowed my eyes, and glanced back at the Ancient mage, listening closely to his song. It was the whirring of minute circuits and servos, the clicking of many microscopic gears into place.
“Blessing Fabrication,” I dictated. Glare shook his head immediately, snarling down at the man with a look of pure hatred in his eyes.
“Tinker,” he growled, his palms flaring with light. “You see? Dragon’s sole human ally. Helped build her, no doubt. He deserves nothing less than death, we should–”
“Specialization in Miniaturization,” I finished, frowning, stopping the Immolator’s tirade short. I raised my eyebrows at him, incredulously.
“Miniaturization,” I repeated. “You think he helped build the walking mountain we faced?”
Caleb’s scowl dimmed, as did the light seeping from betwixt his fingers, but it didn’t disappear entirely. “Well,” he mumbled, “perhaps components any–”
“He might have answers,” Alyss interjected, suddenly. We both glanced at her.
“Consider it,” she maintained. “The Ancients were the only ones in all history to actually do battle with the Warrior. To succeed, even…,” she hesitated, “even if, perhaps, temporarily. If this man is, indeed, one of their race, would it not behoove us to question him?”
She paused again.
“Given our particular quest?”
Caleb’s frown deepened. He opened his mouth to speak, but Alyss continued before he could do so.
“And besides,” she argued, “if he is innocent, and has been imprisoned here for centuries, are we truly comfortable leaving him to rot?” She turned to Caleb, who faced her with a good deal of defensive tension in his guarded expression.
“Is this what the Faith teaches?” She condemned. “To mistrust our fellow man? To assume the worst, in all? Is that the manner of Triumvirate we are to be?” She stared the seasoned Inquisitor dead in the eye, and he looked away, unable to meet her gaze.
Idly, I shook my head in wonder. It boggled the mind to see just how far the initially diminutive, anxious, sorceress had come. Just how much she’d changed.
“I understand that you are angry, Caleb,” she went on, more softly now. “I understand that you have suffered. But i–”
The Immolator rankled a moment, at this.
“You do not understand,” he snapped suddenly, interrupting her, his eyes flashing with righteous radiance, an outrage at once irreproachable and out of place.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“You are a babe, unused to war,” he decried. “You have not seen your comrades die before you, as I have. In your arms. Again, and again, and again. You do not know.”
Yet, as their twin gazes locked tight, and I almost thought I could feel their songs clash with one another, just as mine had with Sovereign’s long ago, Alyss, remarkably, once more gave not an inch of ground.
Nor did she, herself, become at all irate.
“Oh?” she asked instead, mildly. “I do not know suffering? Is that really what you think?”
Caleb said nothing at first, but I could see it in his eyes. He’d spoken in anger, and anger alone. He might not have seen the visions I had, the ones I’d left out of my story, the memories I’d felt as my soul and Alyss’s joined, but it didn’t matter.
We’d both heard plenty of Nycta. We’d both heard the stories Alyss told.
And, more importantly, what she couldn’t bring herself to say.
The edges of the Immolator’s fierce, tightened grimace quivered, and his offensive fell apart. His perfectly-chiseled facial features crumbled into a dense network of thick lines and heavy fatigue, and grief, fresh and long-buried alike.
“No,” he said finally, in a voice quieter even than Alyss’s. “It is not. It is not what I think. It is not what the Faith teaches. It is not the manner of Triumvirate I wish to be, no, I…I just…”
Caleb’s mouth worked silently, forming words that refused to make their way up and out. Both Alyss and I watched in absolute silence, absent any manner of reaction, or surprise, eager to hear whatsoever it was he might say.
“I c–couldn’t save him,” he admitted, finally managing to force out speech, grief and shame tearing their brutal passage across the crinkled-up lines of his face. “Rover. He was just a boy. Barely, barely fifteen years of age. He shouldn’t even have been here, he…and he…I couldn’t save him.”
“But,” Caleb ground out through tight-grit teeth, “I can avenge him.” He stared Alyss and I down together, this time, as if daring us to argue with him.
“A child’s death must never go unpunished,” he swore, an unusual degree of weight and meaning to his words, such that it made me think he was no longer merely speaking of our deceased companion. “There must be an accounting for this.”
I vacillated for a moment, unsure of how to reply. I didn’t want to thoughtlessly kill the sleeping man, but couldn’t deny he posed some amount of threat. Even, a potentially ruinous one. Nor was I overeager to contest my friend in such a state.
Alyss, apparently, shared not an ounce of my hesitation.
“You speak truth,” she agreed, yet with a similar amount of firmness to her acceptance. She narrowed her eyes at Glare. “And there has been.”
She gestured back the way we’d came.
“Dragon is dead, Inquisitor,” she declared, quietly and with finality. “Her stronghold, shattered. Her forces, scattered. None will perish at her hands ever again. None more will share Rover’s fate.”
She closed her eyes, and spread her arms wide, beseechingly.
“It is done, now, Caleb, so let it be done,” she implored. “You have your vengeance. Do not allow it to deny us future aid.”
“We do not judge,” she comforted, quickly glancing my way. “We have all failed. We have all lost,” she paused, and raised her eyebrows at me, meaningfully.
Slowly, grimly, I nodded.
Raynie. Aldwyn. Ewan.
Mom.
“Loss is a part of life,” I agreed, sadly.
“But today,” Alyss continued, quickly, “We have not lost. Today, we have won.”
She turned to face him, once more.
“So let us win.”
Caleb was quiet for a while, staring at nowhere but the ground. His song, whilst just as silent and mirror-like as ever, pulsed slowly.
A beating heart, singing the tune of distant stars, breathtaking to behold, yet so very far away that one could but dream of reaching out to touch them.
“Very well.”
Caleb spoke at last, and though not smiling, I sensed a measure of the monumental weight he carried with him lessen, if ever-so-slightly. He looked up at us with sadness and gratitude in equal measure, but there was nothing false left in his expression, not at all.
“Very well,” he repeated, taking a deep breath, and squaring his shoulders. “Very well, then. Let us rouse him, and see for ourselves.” He strode toward the casket’s console purposefully, then ground to a jerking halt.
“Um,” Caleb muttered, examining the meaningless collection of eclectically-blinking symbols helplessly, then glancing our way.
“How exactly are we to wake him?” He asked.
Both of them looked at me.
“Wh–how should I know?” I asked, incredulously.
They glanced at one another.
“Well,” Caleb hesitated, “I merely thought–you understand the language well enough, after all. Somehow. You seem to–”
“Yes, quite right, and besides, you speak plenty highly of the Shardsong,” Alyss continued for him, quoting words I’d spoken to her during the many idle hours of our passage. “How it resides in all things, all people, all places.”
She shoved her hands awkwardly in the direction of the sleek, translucent sarcophagus. “So, song?”
I blinked at her, dumbfounded.
“That’s not how the song works!” I defended, a measure incredulously.
My argument, though quite airtight, seemed not to sway my companions much.
So, rolling my eyes, I walked over to the casket in question, raised my hand obligingly, and gently laid a single palm upon its smooth, glassy surface. It vibrated slightly with an internal hum.
It was, of course, otherwise entirely silent. It emitted nary a trace of Shardsong.
“See?” I declared, vindictively, never mind the fact that neither of them could, indeed, perceive the song.
“No song, see?” I repeated, quickly. “No Entropy, either. All this tech, it’s, it’s…”
I glanced back down at the casket, and frowned.
“Well, it’s mundane, I suppose,” I explained, murmuring. “Strange. Was all Ancient technology mundane, I wonder?”
Caleb let out a sudden, strained laugh, making us both regard him curiously.
“So all our argument was for nothing, then?” He shook his head, grimacing as he leaned back against the main console’s blinking, beeping surface, placing the butt of an elbow upon it for support. “That figures. That’s just perfect, I–”
His lament was interrupted by a sudden hiss, a mechanical gasp of releasing air that made him jump back, startled, from the coffin just beside him.
It was moving.
The medical sarcophagus’s glass cover was retracting, sliding open smoothly with a hermetic hiss, that it might expose what lay within. The many tubes and tendrils connecting the slumbering Ancient to the system of apparati surrounding him withdrew, unlatching themselves from flesh and slithering out of orifices to leave its prior host pristine as the very day he was born.
Armsmaster’s eyes shot open, and he jerked awake with a shuddering scream.
The three of us startled to attention at once, well-trained by months of constant combat, our Blessings primed and ready even against the defenseless, Attunement-zero Blessed.
After all, the Gods only knew what secret knowledge the bearded man held firm over this antediluvian stronghold of madness and war.
For his part, however, the Ancient seemed entirely uninterested in doing battle, instead releasing a rather unsightly series of choking, retching, spluttering gasps, bent double over the flat and uncomfortable-looking metal slab upon which he’d slept. His chest shivered, his limbs spasmed, and his eyes flickered frantically about the room, as if he might blink away all the ages of his internment.
Then they fixed on the three of us, and widened.
“Axa…uru…qst?” the man croaked out his incomprehensible words, in a sore, unused, rasping voice, barely above a whisper.
Nevertheless, his speech still caused Caleb to clutch his head, and moan with pain. From the blank expression on Alyss’s face, his dialect was incomprehensible to her, as well. But as I quirked my head, narrowed my eyes, and truly focused my hearing, it started to contort itself into some ephemeral form of meaning.
Some language that most certainly wasn’t my own, and that didn’t quite sync with the movements of his lips, either.
“[Who…are you?]” the man repeated, grimacing, massaging his throat in apparent anguish, his voice still soft and fragile. “[Oh…my head. My throat. How…how long…]” Some semblance of awareness returned abruptly to the man, and panic began to overwhelm his features.
“[W–where am I? What happened? Where’s–]”
“Well? Can you understand what he’s saying?” Alyss asked, in a mixture of excitement and anxiety, her words no doubt directed at me, yet bringing about an even greater state of shock in the visage of the Ancient man.
“[That language, it’s…]” He muttered, bewilderment sweeping across his face, “[not English. No…Mandarin? Some mixture of the two?]” Then, as he further examined the room, his surprise gave way to a great and growing dread.
“[Oh…oh, god. How long was I asleep?]” He whispered, clutching trembling arms about his thin, pearly-skinned chest, overcome by fear.
“[I can understand you,]” I reassured him, my speech halted and abrupt.
Speaking the Ancient’s tongue felt strange. Bizarre. Uncomfortable.
In a way, it was a similar sensation to the one I’d experienced during my conversation with Alyss’s Nightmare, back in her soul. The intention was formed in my mind, but my mouth and tongue moved somehow of their own volition, producing consonants and vowels with which I was entirely unfamiliar.
Nevertheless, they made all three of the room’s other denizens snap to face me. Alyss was exuberant, Caleb still clutched his, for some reason, aching head, and the Ancient man regarded me with a mixture of shock, and hope.
“[You can understand me?]” He exhaled in relief. “[Oh, oh thank christ. Fucking, thank fucking christ. You–you’re from the Guild, are you? Narwhal’s people? I don’t recognize you. Where–]” He paused for a moment, his gaze sweeping across the three of us, his face scrunching in confusion.
“[The fuck are you wearing?!]”
His words caused me to look down, shamefully, at my own attire. Indeed, I stood now entirely bare-chested, boasting only a single, if remarkably well-maintained, black pant. I was, nevertheless, far better off than Caleb, who’d taken to once more wrapping an extra pair of Alyss’s robes haphazardly about his waist.
“[What’s the last thing you remember?]” I asked him, in lieu of responding directly to his words, taking a calming, placating tone. The bearded man groaned, rubbed his forehead, and frowned.
“[Last thing I remember,]” he muttered, unsure, “[I–I remember, the battle. The Dragonslayers. ASCALON, tearing into us, tearing us apart. I remember…I remember making…]”
His eyes darkened, then, and shone with an emotion I didn’t need the song to recognize. It was one I knew down to my very bones. It was the memory of pain.
Madness, and pain.
“[I remember sacrificing myself,]” he whispered. “[Sacrificing everything. Then, blackness. Just blackness.]” His voice quavered. “[I thought it was enough, but…]” He looked up at me, weary far beyond his apparent age.
“[It wasn’t, was it? We lost. She’s dead.]”
“[She?]” I asked.
“[Dragon,]” he replied.
My eyes widened.
“What?” Alyss questioned, immediately. “What’s he saying? We can’t understand it, either of you.” Caleb nodded miserably from beside her, though he looked a touch less worse for wear.
Strange, I thought, that he could read Ancient words, but understanding their speech was beyond him.
“[What is it?]” The Ancient questioned, simultaneously, a desperate hope clawing its way across his features. “[You know Dragon? Is she safe? Is she alright? Please, oh–oh, please tell me she’s alright.]”
I hesitated for a moment, unsure of to whom I should reply first.
“He says,” I licked my lips, speaking nervously in Common as I leaned conspiratorially over to my companions, “that he knows Dragon.”
“What?!” Caleb growled, incensed, flickering with a barely-contained brilliance. I had little doubt that, save for our conversation prior, he’d have torn the Ancient man apart then and there.
“Hold, for but a moment, Inquisitor,” Alyss snapped at him, sharply, though she was frowning, too. “What does he–”
“I don’t think it’s our Dragon, though,” I murmured, my brow furrowed, intensely, focusing on the emotions laden, faint but entirely unfiltered, within the Ancient’s song. “Or…I don’t know. Something’s not right, he…”
The Ancient man glanced about at each of us, anxiety and desperation rising.
My eyes widened once again.
“He loves her,” I realized.
“He’s mad,” Caleb decreed, immediately, though he looked less certain, now. “We should–”
“No, you don’t understand,” I continued, more and more and more certain as I gazed yet deeper into the emotions of the desperate, bearded man. “The Dragon he speaks of is not the one we met. In his mind, she’s gentle. Heroic. In his mind, she’s…she’s kind.”
My companions both looked genuinely flummoxed, now.
“Cirque said, mother Dragon has gone mad,” I recalled, muttering. “I wonder…”
“[This Dragon,]” I said, speaking to the Ancient man, who latched onto my words with all the urgency of a drowning man clutching for a rope. “[What does she look like?]”
“[What does she…look like?]” He echoed, frowning. For a moment, he seemed to engage in some manner of internal battle, as if deciding whether or not to share with us some morsel of information, some secret of absolute paramountcy.
“[She…like nothing, I suppose,]” he said, slowly. “[Dragon’s…]” He grimaced, gritting his teeth. “[Dragon’s not human.]”
I nodded, about to speak more, when he cut me off.
“[But she’s got more heart, and heroism than half the capes in the whole damn world,]” he protested, fervently. “[Maybe, maybe more than all of them. Who cares about the mechanics, the specifics? Dragon might not be human, but she’s a wonderful person. She always has been.]”
The Ancient shut his eyes tight, and sighed.
“[Dragon’s an AI.]”
I looked at him, blankly.
“[An artificial intelligence?]” He explained, slowly, defensiveness beginning to make way for the inklings of concern, of fear. “[Do you not know–]”
“[Like, a–]” I started.
“What’s he saying?” Caleb interrupted, aggressively.
“He says that Dragon’s an AI–er, an ‘artificial intelligence,’” I replied. The Immolator’s brow furrowed, nonplussed. I licked my lips, clearing my throat.
“[Do you mean, a–]”
“Wait, what’s an artificial intelligence?” Alyss cut in, quickly. “Does he mean, Tinkertech? An android? A robot? A golem?”
“I don’t know, Alyss,” I sighed, exasperated. “I’m asking him, right now. I’m just about to ask. Would you both give me a moment, please?”
My companions raised their hands, defensively, but relented. The Ancient man regarded our antics with only more concern, the beginnings of a terrible realization starting to creep their way across his face. I cleared my throat a second time.
“[An artificial intelligence,]” I reiterated, “[You mean, like, a golem?]”
“[No,]” he replied, instantly, “[not like a golem.]” The concern upon his face had crystallized, and set into a grim, pained expression of pure dread.
“[What year is it?]”
His question gave me momentary pause.
But only momentary. Regardless of what impact my answer might have, I decided, the Ancient had a right to know.
“[747 AC,]” I replied.
“[AC?]” he whispered, as if he already knew what I was going to say.
“[After Collapse.]”
The Ancient man’s face whitened. He spoke quickly, rapidly, machine-gunning out nouns and phrases.
“[Do–do you recognize the words; Protectorate? PRT? Brockton Bay? Cape?]”
Each time he spoke, I answered in the negative. Each time, his face paled further, and his voice grew more and more tremulous.
“[Parahuman?]” He interrogated, with a yet greater desperation, a yet more pressing need. “[Manton? United States? China, Africa, English, Endbringer, Christ, Catholicism, Dark Ages, Renaissance, Internet, Earth Aleph–]”
He went on, and on. Listing a litany of words, the vast majority of which might as well have been alien to me.
Eventually, I stopped replying in the negative, and so the man simply continued to rant until he exhausted himself, whereupon he limply collapsed.
A pile of thin, pale, Ancient skin and bones.
“[Oh,]” he said, quietly.
He stared at the cold, metal ground.
“What…what did you–” Alyss began.
“I told him the year,” I responded, simply.
“Ah,” she replied.
For a while, we listened to the disconsolate beeping of disconnected life support systems, their purpose antiquated, their charge abandoned. At this point, even Caleb regarded the Ancient man with a considerable degree of pity.
Our fears no longer felt quite so necessary.
“[So…so we lost,]” the Ancient said, at last, with an empty finality. “[All…all lost. All of it. Our best efforts. Destroyed, every…everything destroyed. I have so many questions, but…]”
He looked up at me with a determined glare.
“[But first,]” he said, stabbing a finger towards me, “[You might not know half the words I said, but I know you recognized Dragon’s name. I know you did. I saw it in your eyes. Tell me where she is, or I…I’ll…]” he looked about the room, quite helplessly, and at himself, perhaps finally realizing his haggard state of disrepair.
“[Just, just tell me, would you? Please,]” he begged, looking so very lost and weary that it made my heart ache. I knew my reply would only crush him further, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie.
“[Dragon’s dead.]” I answered, emptily.
The Ancient man choked out a sob.
“[She–she went mad, I think,]” I explained, though I knew not if he was still listening. “[She was luring humans down here, trapping them, torturing them, and–]” I stopped, thinking the better of describing the maddened machine’s actions in too great detail.
“[And we…we put an end to it,]” I finished, quietly, gesturing at my two fellows.
The Ancient man looked up at them, through his tears. Alyss raised a tentative, unsure hand in greeting, alongside a shaky, wavering smile. Caleb nodded professionally, granting the tearful man what felt like an empathetic gaze.
“[I see,]” Armsmaster replied, miserably. “[So, in the end, I failed, too.]” Then, so quietly I could barely hear it. “[I really did lose everything.]”
His face wrenched tight, then, awkwardly, contorting itself in a rather robotic manner, as if to seal away the grief. Distantly, I got the feeling that this man, whomever he might have been in life, had a somewhat strained relationship with his own emotions.
“[I suppose,]” he began, “[I should thank you, then.]”
He met my gaze.
“[Dragon was a formidable hero,]” he said, seriously. “[I can’t imagine it was an easy fight.]”
Oh, you have no idea, I thought.
“[My name is Colin. Colin Wallis,]” he said, rising somewhat unsteadily to his feet. I repeated his name to my colleagues, as the man extended a hand to each of us.
Caleb shook it first, firmly. Alyss shook it second, with a slightly starstruck expression. I shook it last, simply pleased that he seemed to be taking all of this as well as could be expected.
“[So,]” Colin began. “[Where exactly am I, right now?]”