As we waded through piles of ash, rust, and acid rain, deep, deep within the bowels of the World Titan, beset on all sides by grotesque mutants, on the course for some monstrous, ancient, machine-dragon’s lair…
I couldn’t help but feel that this was the happiest I’d been in months. Maybe, even, the happiest I’d been in years. The happiest I’d been ever since Mom died.
It felt shameful to think, in a way. As if I was cursing all those I’d left behind in Burrick, all those I’d lost, all those I’d failed to save.
Were we not good enough for you, oh mighty lord?
I imagined their critique.
Were we not strong enough? Not noble enough? Not destined for greatness?
Raynie’s face, and fiery hair, flashed through my mind’s eye.
Was that why you left me to die?
And, indeed, I did feel shame, yet…
Yet their desperate, otherworldly pleas were not so drowning, nor so suffocating, as they had been before. Were they right to curse me? Perhaps. Burrick had indeed been my home, all my life, and I did miss it, but…
But I was going to see the world, now.
All the world. What once had frightened me, terrified me, now I’d greet prepared. Now I’d meet all future dangers with Shards at my back and allies by my side. All the things I’d see I could not even imagine, but they filled with equal parts apprehension and wonder.
Was this what I wanted? I did not know. But it was what I had. Were they right to curse me? I did not know. I could not say.
In the end, life moved on, and so, slowly, did I.
Whilst it wasn’t a buzzing, bubbling euphoria that filled me, I did feel quite a measure of…contentment. Satiation. Peace. Come what may, I knew my place, now. I knew what I had to do, and I knew I’d no longer be forced to do it alone.
After near one month of rather inoffensive travel, all told, our surroundings finally began to change.
Barren wasteland and polluted forest made gradual way for the very most humble beginnings of shelter and civilization. Little houses, dilapidated and ramshackle huts that peppered the horizon by the hundreds.
They were cracked and shattered, one and all, abandoned for centuries and crumbling to pieces before our very eyes. They were gathered about in little clusters, tiny hamlets, connected by more of those same, sprawling asphalt roads. They had doors, windows, roofs, I even recognized a scant few rusted, beaten chairs and shattered mugs with which to drink.
They were so familiar, and yet, simultaneously, there was something distinctly different about them, too. Something not quite right. Something other than their general state of disrepair.
Though their architecture might have resembled ours, everything was just a bit too straight, too square, too well-constructed. Every now and again I noticed objects and artifacts that were shaped strangely, whose myriad purposes I could never quite divine. Put together, it all produced a rather uncanny effect.
Modern man had not made this.
These were the ruins of an ancient, Pre-Collapse civilization.
No one had lived here for a very, very long time.
Far off in the distance, I could just make out grand and gaudy, ephemerally-flashing neon lights and towering steel spires, easily as large as those that Talos boasted, and so, so many more…
At last, we’d arrived at our destination. The Dragon’s lair. The heart of the third floor.
Old Ottawa.
“It’s…incredible,” Caleb breathed, eyes glowing as he peered out over the horizon.
“Ruins of the Ancients,” Alyss agreed, shaking her head in wonder as she looked about the houses, instead. “Never thought I’d actually get to see some for myself.”
She reached down, and picked up a particular bit of detritus, examining it quizzically. It was a collection of two rather thick, oblong cylinders, beige and foamy-looking. They were together packaged in some manner of clear, translucent material which had, writ upon it, more of that wavy, confusing script.
“What’s that?” I asked, off-handedly. “The packaging, I mean.”
“Plastic,” Alyss muttered, still laser-focused on the words, as if willpower alone might allow her to overcome the barrier of time. “Polymer. Pretty rare. Agni manufactures some. Stuff’s more common overseas, though.”
Finally, she sighed, frustrated, and held it out to me in askance.
“Hostess,” I informed her, my brow furrowing slightly as I deciphered it. “Twinkies. Strange name, I…”
I read the rest, and snorted involuntarily. “Golden sponge cake, with creamy filling,” I recited, grinning at her.
“Food?!” Alyss goggled at me, then at the package, bewildered. “This is food? How could it survive since Ancient times?” I just shook my head.
Sure enough, it looked just as pristine as it had, I could only imagine, over three-quarters of a millennium ago. She narrowed her eyes at the package, as if prodding it to speak.
Needless to say, it remained silent.
“Wonders of the Ancients,” I suggested, shrugging.
“Do you imagine it’s safe to eat?” She asked.
“Uh…I wouldn’t risk it,” I replied, then turning to Caleb. “You don’t recognize the fare, do you, Inquisitor?”
“No,” Caleb answered, frowning at the Twinkies for a moment. “We should–,”
“What more treasures lie here, I wonder?” Alyss muttered, cutting him off as she looked around with considerable awe. She flicked her wrist to the side, and the golden, spongy cakes disappeared with a light, popping sound, placed safe and soundly into her ring. “What secrets lost to time…how much could we learn from this place?”
She looked at the both of us.
“Well, doesn’t it fascinate you? Doesn’t it amaze you?” She pointed at Caleb. “Why, you could very well be an Ancient, yourself!” She waved her hands about the air, frenetically. “This, this could all be your culture, left to rot for ages untold!”
Caleb frowned, looking around. “It could,” he accepted.
“And that doesn’t intrigue you at all?” She pressed.
The Immolator’s frown deepened.
“Intrigue me? No, my past does not intrigue me,” he informed her. “It plagues me. It troubles me. It haunts me.
I would just as much be rid of it,” he declared, firmly. “I seek knowledge only as a means to do so.” He paused slightly, then nodded. “I am satisfied with my life, and my nature, as it is,” he concluded.
I joined him in nodding, as he spoke. It was an unsurprising perspective. Glare was many things, but not a complex man.
Alyss shook her head, huffed angrily, and crossed her arms. Scowling, she turned my way.
“Uh, me?” I asked, eloquently. She nodded, gesturing once more at the buildings encircling us.
“I mean…” I hesitated, “it’s…alright, I guess.” To be honest, Ancient civilization didn’t interest me all that much, either.
After all, this was the World Titan.
This was the World Titan, and this was an exotic floor. Here, there could be simply anything. Here, there were no limits to what manner of strange or awesome sight we might behold. Alien vistas, magnificent monsters, societies and cultures so wholly different from our own that they might beggar comprehension, that they might drive the mind to madness, or to exultation.
These were the things that enticed me. These were the things that drove my wonder.
Which was not to say that the Ancients weren’t at all impressive. No, quite the opposite. Their civilization was vast in breadth and knowledge alike, there could be no doubt of that, and indeed, I’d so loved the tales Mom told of them in my youth.
Yet, ultimately, they were…well, human. Only human. Lost to time and brutal circumstance, but only that, and little more.
In that sense, even the Kobold village had been more interesting.
Alyss scowled at me again, thoroughly frustrated with my apathy.
“I–I mean,” I stammered, quickly, “in the end, they did lose to the Warrior, didn’t they?” I mimicked her prior motions, gesturing all around us. “Surely, if the Ancients had possessed such magnificent weaponry as all that, they’d have put up a greater fight.”
Alyss snorted, turned her nose up at me, at both of our collective disinterest, let out another exasperated exclamation, and turned to stomp off in the direction of the city proper.
So we followed her.
We journeyed through Old Ottawa’s outskirts carefully, cautiously, with what I considered an appropriate apprehension. As we traversed the ransacked homes and houses, still set upon intermittently by bands of roving Canadians, and the sparse, vacant suburbs gradually mutated into a more and more steely, more and more metropolitan persuasion, we began to notice something odd.
Everything was still running.
That is to say, everything was still lit.
All the shops and storefronts were illuminated by glowing, neon, pink-and-purple lights and signs, the streets’ pavement still glistened green-grey from recent rainfall, and their narrow, sprawling confines were littered with some manner of vehicle unknown to me, but that slightly resembled the sleek, metallic floating carriage I’d seen outside of Talos.
Everything was still powered, but no one was here.
All of a sudden, Thaum stopped, jerked, clutched her head, and burst into clouds of darkness.
“I have incoming!” She shouted, her voice made deep and reverberating by her Shadow Form. “Incoming, fast!” She cried out in alarm, shooting backwards to take her place behind us in a fluid, practiced motion, whilst both Caleb and I readied our Blessings accordingly. Her voice rose swiftly in pitch and trepidation.
“Aerial!” She screamed above the ever-growing whine of artificial engines. “Machine! Brace yourse–!”
“SKREEEEAAAWWKK!”
Something massive impacted the cracked asphalt in front of us, pulverizing the already damaged material and thereby spewing forth little rocky missiles in every direction. Thaum lashed out towards it with tendrils of pure shadow, and Caleb burst into stellar flame.
I, by contrast, did nothing at all.
Curiously, I watched my companions’ motions slow to a crawl around me. I watched the myriad comets of shattered asphalt creep through syrupy air at a snail’s pace. I cracked my neck and shook out my shoulders, readying myself for combat at a leisurely pace, hopping back and forth lithely, untroubled by the suddenly-slowed time.
Acceleration was a strange thing.
Perhaps it was simply the difference in scope and scale that separated a Major from a Minor Shard. Perhaps it was the unique nature of Acceleration itself, the way it played with space and time. Honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure.
But when I used it, I felt unstoppable.
Truly. It was incomparable. Shards were, one and all, incomprehensible, reality-warping creations of the alien divine, but this was different. When I used Acceleration, it really did feel like I was cheating nature, defying reality, breaking the rules that governed existence itself.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Everything else was just so slow.
When the world around you slowed to a crawl, it felt as if you were the only living thing in all creation.
I could walk up to Alyss, to Caleb, I could wave my hands in front of their eyes, and I’d receive no reaction. I could speak to them, and I’d hear no reply. I was invisible. Intangible. Immaterial. I might as well have been.
When at last I released my Blessing, they’d never know what it was I’d done, and that…that felt strange.
I couldn’t keep this up for long, of course, this accelerated state, this heightened existence, particularly when I pushed it, but…what did that matter? Nothing could touch me. Even, even when I fought the Canadians, or the Kingsguard, it never felt like a battle. They could never truly manage to respond to my actions, not properly, or if they did, it was in a creeping, stumbling, drunken manner.
When I Flash Stepped among their midst, entombed in the slow, crawling world, slitting the throats and spearing the chests of those who could not even react to, let alone defend against, me…it didn’t feel like a battle.
Because it wasn’t.
It was a culling. A euthanasia.
In the crawling world, all were inanimate.
In the crawling world, only I was really alive.
I shook my head, dispelled my thoughts, and looked up to face my novel adversary.
~~~
ALPHA NODE #0002, UNIT DESIGNATION:
OVERSEER
~~~
My first thought, that this creature was none other than our titular Dragon, herself, was swiftly dispelled by its name. And yet, it appeared nothing if not draconic.
Though its head was perhaps more aquiline than draconian, this monstrous machine was nevertheless quadrupedal, sporting an additional pair of large, glowing wings, and a sharp, whipping, prehensile tail. Up and down the many ridges of its sinuous neck blossomed a series of jagged, spire-like spines and its carapace was forged of a dark-blue, almost black, and glimmering metallic alloy.
All about and across its frame were speckled little flickering lights and glowing circuits of that same neon, pink-and-purple motif that pervaded the futuristic, yet ancient buildings surrounding it. Its front and hind legs were tipped with great and viciously-curving talons, and four racks of what I could only assume to be miniaturized missile silos had been embedded ancillary to its spine.
The creature’s glowing, neon eyes had fixed upon the three of us, its machine-limbs digging deep into the artificial ground as it raced sluggishly our way. I could see the very beginnings of deadly protrusions peek up from the silos that lined its back; the Overseer, evidently, having already opened fire.
A pity it would not live long enough to see its cargo delivered.
A single Flash Step took me over to the creature’s midsection, and I brought my boneblade swiftly and consummately down. Shockingly, the creature’s composite armor was far more resilient than I’d imagined, so tough that Fang could scarcely penetrate it.
And yet, it didn’t really matter.
After all, my acceleration wasn’t temporal; it was physical. I wasn’t speeding up my own personal flow of time to attack, my body was being Entropically articulated through space, hastened with energy, with the blistering, brute force of living lightning.
As I felt the harsh and guttering rebound of such a strike echo through my arm, I narrowed my eyes, and increased my speed to three-quarters capacity.
Thirtyfold Acceleration.
In this state, each of my blows connected with the full force of a Marble stage Brute’s body, accelerated to thirty-times the normal rate, and compressed into an area as thin as my own sword’s width.
It was, in the end, simply physics.
The machine drake bowed and bent before my blade.
I watched with fascination as its seemingly impenetrable shell warped and crumbled under my strike like supple tin, deforming, the recoil alone whipping my arm back and fracturing it in a dozen disparate places which Draconic Blood near-instantaneously healed.
With this, my work was finished. I allowed a tension within me to relax, and time promptly resumed.
The cyber-dragon was torn apart in mere moments by the aftermath of my blistering assault, scattered into countless pieces and fragments that ripped into the building placed unfortunately just behind it, shearing through the steel and concrete as if it was warm butter. The boom of a massive shockwave shoved me back, tousling my hair and making my comrades flinch.
Caleb blinked at me.
“What wa–”
“More incoming!” Alyss cried, taking higher to the skies, but not too much so. None of us were eager to separate, as we’d no good way to communicate from afar. The previous method Alyss had used so effectively–that of attaching to each of us one of her shadow servants–didn’t work anymore. I was far too fast, and the Immolator’s novel incandescence aura far too potent.
“Taiven! Report!” Her voice, whispering and distorted, reached me from afar as the Immolator and I followed her into the sky. Below us, the asphalt road had begun to swarm with mutant Canadians, drawn by the commotion of our burgeoning melee.
“Flight-capable!” I shouted quickly in reply, but not so quickly that my companions would be incapable of deciphering my words. I’d made that mistake multiple times on our passage, already.
It could be difficult, sometimes, to slow down.
“Resilience Brute fourteen, at least!” I continued, noticing six more of the draconic Overseers approach us on high, emerging from the shadow of a nearby skyscraper with foreboding haste. Their shrieking calls rang out through the stagnant air, driving the deformed humanoids below into an even greater frenzy. “Melee weaponry, fangs and talons! Ranged weaponry, spinal missiles!”
Sure enough, as if in order to confirm my words, the backs of the incoming drakes lit up with a roaring, orange-yellow heat, and a swarm of howling projectiles shot into the air, curving up and up and around, racing our way. I twirled Fang tensely, hearing him growl eagerly, but waiting to engage.
Such was our system. Thaum decided the battle’s course.
“Caleb, missiles!” Alyss called out, clear and firm. “Taiven, Overseers!” She twirled around, diving back down to earth. “I’ll handle the rank and file!”
The Immolator and I chorused our reply with easy practice, and set upon the foe.
Glare immediately blasted out ahead of me, as was appropriate, his flight far, far faster than my own. A comet that lit up the stormy, darkened sky, he blazed towards the hundred missiles without a hint of fear, lancing beams of lights expertly, individually, from each fingertip to remotely detonate them.
And it worked.
The air in front of us erupted into a massive, mammoth conflagration, hundreds of explosives dispensing their payloads all at once to form a vast, towering wall of screaming noise and fiery death.
I smiled grimly, and flew right towards it.
For Fire was a friend to me.
The erupting inferno wrapped around me, a raging, violent shawl that probed my contours up and down, seeking purchase and finding only knowledge of its true name and nature. The blaze let out a loathsome wail as its scalding grip slipped slickly over me, and I emerged unscathed. Caleb had reached the enemy’s ranks before me, plowing right into an Overseer, ripping it ruthlessly from the sky, the both of them hurtling to earth.
One of the drakes shrieked, spun, and spiraled down after him, but I ignored all three. The Inquisitor could take care of himself.
The remaining four were headed my way.
My reserves had regenerated to over three-quarters capacity. More than enough for what I was about to do.
I narrowed my eyes, and licked my lips, and let the lightning become me.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Four strikes of lightning. Four reverberating shockwaves. The air flickered and tore, once, twice, thrice, four times, and I apparated on the other side of my adversaries.
In the space between seconds, in the flickering wake I’d left behind, the cyber-dragons were ripped apart.
I watched their shattered remnants fall to the distant ground, ventilating calmly and evenly whilst my Entropy recharged. As I did so, I started to come to a somewhat frightening, if greatly belated, realization.
I was far more powerful than I’d previously thought.
It was a rather obvious recognition, yet one I’d not felt truly comfortable making until now. The Kingsguard were formidable, yes, but not in any…physical capacity. At least, not primarily. No, their strength was born solely of their own nature, their ability to restore themselves upon their brethrens’ deaths. Likewise, the mutant Canadians, whilst no doubt rabid and relentless, and likely well-matched to most Marble-stage Blessed, relied more on numbers than strength outright.
But the same could not be said of an Overseer.
These creatures were strong, smart, fast, possessed of both ranged and melee weaponry, and of a durability that put even Marble Brutes like myself to shame.
And yet, I’d just dispatched four of them. In seconds. Without breaking a sweat.
And I still hadn’t reached my limit.
I hadn’t progressed in Attunement at all over the course of the third floor, because the creatures here simply hadn’t been sufficient to push me. Thirty-times acceleration was more than enough to devastate the cyborg drakes, and I’d driven Bullet Time all the way up to forty in the past.
For all I knew, Acceleration could go even higher.
Sure, the strain it put on my reserves was heady, but I’d gotten around that drawback easily enough. All I had to do was Flash Step close to an enemy, Accelerate for a split second, and attack them.
Rinse, and repeat.
How far could I push this? How much damage could I deal?
How fast could I go?
Now was not the time to experiment.
I shook my head once more, flexed my hands somewhat anxiously, and promptly dove towards where I’d seen Caleb land.
The Immolator was surrounded by a crater of his own making, a pool of bubbling, oozing asphalt and swiftly-melting steel. Lain about him was one partially-slagged, yet surprisingly-intact Overseer corpse. Caleb was wrestling with the second, a searing palm thrust deep into the spot just below its head. He wrenched it out as I descended, revealing a glowing, white-hot hole.
“Ho, my friend,” I greeted, landing behind him lightly. Caleb turned towards me, then snorted.
“Ho yourself,” he chuckled, grinning sardonically as he jabbed a finger my way. “Not a scratch upon you. That figures. Am I to assume, then, that the four you engaged posed you little difficulty?”
I was about to reply, but as my comrade shifted, I made out several glowing grooves carved deep and barbarous into the front of his Hard Light chestplate, and greaves. Caleb noticed my gaze, and smirked darkly.
“Ah, yes,” he commented, drolly. “The bastards are heat-resistant, I fear. That alloy’s damn impressive. I must have been near enough two thousand degrees, and yet it gave them not a moment’s pause.”
He chuckled once more, in that way that made me worried.
“Never had to worry about getting hurt, before,” he muttered. “What I wouldn’t give for a Brute Blessing, right about now.”
“But…you’re Immortal, no?” I asked, slowly. “What have you to fear?”
“I don’t know how my Immortality works yet,” Caleb sighed, then smiling sourly. “No detailed descriptions for me, remember?”
“Ah…er–yes,” I replied, uncomfortably, about to again raise the subject of a visit to his soul, but quickly thinking the better of it. I’d broached the topic several times already, and met with naught but a stalwart, if polite, denial.
Glare’s disposition, in general, for that matter, had been…somewhat troubling, of late.
And yet, it was equally difficult to fully explain. The Inquisitor, having no doubt been well-trained in resisting the efforts of Masters, boasted in all but the most trying circumstances, a pristine, featureless song. Thus, I was forced to rely upon intuition alone.
During the initialcy of our delve, Caleb had been…well, a veritable beacon of positivity, hope, and nobility. But there’d been something false to his positivity, as well, something sour hidden behind his affable demeanor. I remembered thinking such, even when first we’d met.
Of course, after the ruinous events of Vox’s betrayal, Cirque’s game, and Sovereign's rather public debut, this joviality had been more or less abandoned by the wayside, replaced by what felt, to me at least, far more appropriate to a soldier of his pedigree; a jaded mistrust, and defensive sullency. This, though perhaps less lighthearted, at least felt genuine.
Then I made my ill-fated excursion into the depths of Alyss’s soul.
That had been near enough a week ago, by now.
I never meant to question Caleb’s Faith. I didn’t put much stock in it myself, true, but what he believed, what he didn’t believe…it was all the same to me. I took no issue with it. And yet, though I hadn’t, myself, questioned it, I feared I’d done something all the more damaging.
I’d made him question it.
The Faith had done much for Caleb, that I knew. The Faith, and the father, Ian, he spoke of. I could only imagine that to cast doubt upon it, internally, in this manner, felt nothing short of a betrayal to those he considered most dear.
As a result, and though I knew he held no grudge against me, personally, mistrust and sullency had subsequently given way to what I now considered his most honest, fundamental psyche. A sour, sarcastic drawl, a defense mechanism built by years of war and trauma, strung-thin by the hysteria of our current circumstances, and the madness of our mission.
I wanted to raise it with him. I wanted to do so badly, very badly. I worried for Caleb. I felt confident enough in my assessment of character over the past months, confident enough to see the heart, the Core, of goodness within him. Much like Alyss, in that way. But I worried for him, still.
I worried that what unknown pain the Frontlines bore in him as a mere child had now blossomed, flourished, drunk deeply of his questioned faith, and set him on a troublesome path. It was hardly my place to judge his journey, and I knew not what support I might offer, or how to offer it, but felt compelled to, all the same.
Again, now was not the time.
First, Dragon. Everything else could come after.
So I just nodded at my wayward friend, lamely. The two of us looked around, then at each other, nodded again, and took off in the direction of our fellow sorceress.
We found her without much ado, due just north of our position, bent double atop a veritable mountain of fresh-made corpses, five hundred at least, taking deep, heaving breaths. She demonstrated no surprise at our breakneck arrival, having doubtless detected us from afar.
“Well…done,” the Nycta heir panted. “So…many…souls. So many servants. So many whispers. I’ve never–”
“Are you alright?” Glare interrupted her, frowning, demonstrating his considerate, compassionate qualia, no matter his inner turmoil. “If we need retreat, even momentarily–”
“No,” Alyss cut him off, shaking her head. She grimaced. “Can’t…leave.” She took several more deep, deep breaths, and gestured weakly off in the direction from whence we’d came. “City’s swarming with mutants. Drawn here, somehow.”
She grimaced. “They’ve already breached the outskirts. We don’t have much time left before they are upon us.”
“Is…that really a problem?” I asked, slowly, glancing at Glare. “I mean, Caleb and I–”
“There’s hundreds of thousands of them,” Alyss breathed, shutting her eyes tightly as she shuddered. “And that’s not all.”
“Even if the two of you could beat them–” Caleb tried to speak, but she held up a hand “–and maybe you could, that’s not all. I’ve dispatched a number of nightmares long-range. There’s more of the Overseers, too. Thousands more.”
The two of us drew breath, sharply.
“They were distributed evenly about the city at first, but ever since we arrived, they’ve started heading towards its center. It’s–” She scowled, frustrated. “It’s got more of that writing on it, that Ancient script I can’t read. It’s a…a blue-white, chrome pyramid.”
“The Dragon’s lair,” Caleb growled, pulsing with light.
“No doubt,” Alyss agreed. “We must make for it with all available haste, I fear, lest we leave this Dragon time sufficient to rally the full extent of her forces.”
And so we did.
We pushed on through groups of them, of mecha-drakes and mutant Canadians that grew thicker and thicker, larger and larger, slowly battling our way towards our destination.
Towards the heart of Old Ottawa.