That was when the chaos truly started, for Rika had used her own personal radio only moments earlier to alert the two Skull Teams that were waiting just out of sight of the camp. Moreover, she had exploited the low-alert state of the camp to individually enter each of the rovers that made up the “wall” and destroy their weapon controls, rendering their siege accelerators useless. She went on to begin methodically causing mayhem all across the camp, killing without prejudice where the opportunity arose as she went.
The Deserter Chaplain and his two equally armored warrior-brethren took up a tactical firing position just behind Fulgent, their slug-throwers the only things keeping Iorzan’s High Chaplains from opening fire. A quite substantial number of Chaplains had already been alerted, however, and were advancing towards the tent - they were nearly already there, in fact, their slug-throwers pointed at the entrance.
They might have broken the standoff, were it not for the two Distorted that stepped out to stand in their way. The Chaplains didn’t even say anything, merely opening fire on sight. It was unfortunate then that the two Distorted had already channeled their inner void energy, and were prepared to deflect the concentrated fire.
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“Distort and shred all…” the Armored One muttered as she focused herself, feeling the heat building within. She gathered it in her chest and built up pressure just as Karzon had shown her, and when she stepped out of the tent, she let it all out. “...thousand-fold firefly aegis!”
A stomp. A roar.
The ground in front of her ripped apart, and a nearly flat, disc-shaped distortion field blossomed from her outstretched hands. Her companion, nearly equal in strength and skill, served to amplify the distortion field three times over, both in size and intensity, resulting in it growing to something approaching a half-sphere that partly covered the tent.
Thousands of slugs ripped through the air, only to be shredded and tossed aside by the violent dervish. A few of the higher-caliber shells nearly managed to overpower the distortion field, partially passing through before they could be sheared apart, but still failing to fully penetrate. It was appropriate, then, that a similar situation was at hand near the camp’s gate, where the recon mission was just about to take off, despite Karzon’s attempts at delaying it.
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Seeing that the chaos had started, Karzon couldn’t help but smile as he stepped into the path of a nearby chaplain who was leading a group of warriors toward the commander’s tent.
“Your men will not pass, chaplain.”
“Surely you are aware that to oppose one of high birth is a grave heresy. I will warn you once only, step aside or you’re a dead man.”
The scar-faced man raised his head, a grin spreading across his face.
“I’ve been dead since I was blessed by the so-called Ecclesiarch. Today is the first day I live,” the three-eyed man said. An unearthly wind there blew as he spoke once more, and the universe listened.
“Distort and shred all, ten thousand flashing fireflies!” he proclaimed, not with his tongue and not in any audible sound, but in a command that rippled across reality itself and stoked the voidborn flames within his scar-covered chest. From the gashes that covered his face and arms there issued forth a lilac light, and the fabric around them shredded apart under the force of a thousand spiraling blades. Spiraling dervishes of void energy sprang forth from the scars upon his arms and legs, spreading inward and enveloping his body.
The spreading distortion field destroyed the rest of his sandstorm cloak and the soil beneath his feet in equal measure, enveloping his mangled form like an armor of lilac wind. The brave warriors in the firing line unleashed the full fury of their weapons against him, the bright orange of their machine-blessings glowing from within their gauntlets and their weapons as the sacred machinery was pushed to its limit and beyond it through the will of Clan Iktha’s soldiers.
Hundreds of slugs ripped through the air, spent casings flew upward, only to be rewound through time back into their weapon’s mechanisms by their wielder’s blessings well after they would’ve hit. Even so, he remained unharmed, for the wild dervish of unworldly fire that whipped about him ripped apart and tossed aside the projectiles.
Karzon stepped forward, and the brave warriors of Clan Iktha felt the poisonous burn of that accursed light, for the manifestation of their blessings was burned away from their weapons and soon they ran out of ammunition. Unfazed thanks to his insulated armor, the chaplain raised his personal graviton accelerator and fired. A clang resounded. The barb of livingmetal sprang forth and detonated into a cone of spikes some half a meter across just before impact. This as well failed to penetrate the three-eyed monstrosity’s unearthly armor, but it got close. Dangerously close. “The Chaplain’s not wrong, there’s no way you can get out of this alive without help,” one of the voices in his head piped up.
“We’re already dead, use us,” another joined in.
“Just guide us out of this cave you call a head!” a third one exclaimed.
“So that we may,” the first began, and all seven joined in to finish with “fight by your side again!”
A deep laughter arose from his throat as Karzon felt the spirits of his fallen comrades asking to fight by his side once more, and somehow, he knew he could do just that.
“Fallen comrades, come forth! You shall walk again, let my voice guide you!” he proclaimed as he took another step forward. The third eye embedded in his forehead became a shining star as the distortion field expanded from his body to cover unseen figures by his side.
The expanding field split into seven humanoid shapes, and from Karzon’s forehead, there emerged seven more crystalline eyes, arranged not unlike a spider’s. From each eye there leapt an immaterial umbilicus of void energy, connecting it to one of the seven humanoid distortion fields.
The shapes began to move as if they were alive, each of them shifting into a distinct combat stance, arraying themselves into a phalanx in front of Karzon. A crystalline eye flashed, as did its accompanying cord, and from the spectre that stood directly in front of Karzon there bellowed a familiar voice, one Karzon had heard inside his head many times before. The same one that warned him of the dangerous height when he was climbing the Spire of Glass.
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“Consider this my posthumous desertion, Igron filth,” the spectre rumbled.
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Armless didn't know how he got here. Frankly, he didn't care. When he came to, he found himself in the dead bowels of a small, crashed voidship, his body barely functional and crusted over with iridescent, insect-like carapace. His right arm was little more than an incredibly heavy bludgeon, whilst his left was the only part of his body spared the bizarre crust. It had segmented, bronze-coloured armor, a dragon-skull shaped pauldron, and clawed fingers.
He didn’t know who he was, or for that matter, where he was. An overwhelming urge drove him to stand up, the auxiliary servos in his joints whining loudly as he did so. Struggling to support his own weight, he used his right arm as a third leg to limp out of the wreck and into the arid desert.
Left. Right. Arm.
Left. Right. Arm.
Left. Right. Arm.
His legs gave out.
He crumpled to the ground, rolling down the sand dune.
He waited until coming to a stop before trying to get back up again.
Something in the back of his head told him he needed to get somewhere. He couldn’t remember the place, or the reason, but he knew the direction.
His head was hazy, he could barely focus - but what little focus he gathered, he channeled towards trying to stand up. A slight heat rose up in his chest, spreading to his legs like the feeling of blood returning to a constrained limb.
Arm.
Left.
Right.
Slowly, he walked the sands, for hours, days, and weeks. Sometimes, it felt like a single step covered a week’s worth of travel. Sometimes, he saw the sun rise and set a myriad times before covering a few meters.
As he walked like this, he saw what he thought to be his goal. A great spire of glass, stretching into the night sky, and atop its peak, a black obelisk. It seemed to be transmitting, and somehow, he could hear the transmission in his head. It was a song. From what he could tell, the lyrics spoke of a lonely way, a blue comet in the sky, of an ancient hero named Melos.
Left. Right. Arm.
Left. Right. Arm.
The Spire of Glass soon rose up above the horizon, and at its base, there was devastation. The remains of a town, shattered and burned. Gazing upon them evoked a great sadness and fury within his chest. The song changed, new voices were introduced, new sounds. They didn’t fit. There was… Gunfire and yelling. There was the scraping of metal, there was a loud clanging noise and hissy laughter.
“You think yourself a god?!” said a voice. “Then as Elder, I challenge you to prove it! Strike me down! Invoke the Right of Inheritance! Lead clan Iktha to greatness, over my dead body!”
It was an old voice. A desperate one. Its words issued a challenge, but its tone was pleading.
The song returned to normal. He walked, for more days, for more weeks, until weeks turned to months and months to years. The Spire of Glass always seemed so distant. He didn’t understand. He just walked.
Another voice broke the music. A female one, this time. It was distorted and familiar, and filled with resentment. It was quiet and calm, dripping with a cold hatred that no amount of yelling could convey.
“After all you’ve done, you expect me to take your place. I will invoke the Right of Inheritance - but it will be for their sake, not yours. They will know you as a betrayer, as a sycophant to the Igrons, and they will chant the name Ouroboros amidst the burning ruins of the Igron palace.”
“Then so be it!” the old voice hissed. It yelled “Pulverize!” which prompted a loud, noise like stones being crushed, accompanied by a grunt of struggle from the female voice. The music returned again, but the song was different. It was violent, its instruments distorted, its lyrics speaking of… Familiar things, familiar despite the fact he couldn’t remember anything at all.
It spoke of a great destroyer that would devour the world, of an ancient creature from an age of myth long-past.
It spoke of a masked hero, and was broken up once again, this time a stuttering, anxious voice. “A-a stranger from out of town come to drive off the bandits and save the townspeople,” the voice said before it faded into the music.
Left. Right. Arm.
Left. Right. Arm.
The whining of servo motors slowly went away, and soon he didn’t need to use his arm as a crutch. The Spire of Glass was approaching now, towering over him. Through the ruins of the town, he saw that within the spire’s base, there was flame in the shape of a man. Something told him it would never go out for as long as the spire stood, that the empyrean blaze would serve to guide those without direction.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
The voices broke the song again. There was more noise this time. The repeated exclamations of “Pulverize!” and the crushing sounds of stone. Whines followed by clangs. The cracks of the sound-speed barrier being broken by fists. Flesh striking metal. The old voice laughing through wheezes and liquid. Blood in the mouth?
The female voice growling. “You truly thought you could go up against an Elder? I’d pity you, were I not looking forward to the autopsy.” a third voice cackled. The voices faded. The music didn’t come back this time.
As he approached the spire, he noticed the fiery figure looking at him with orbs of blue flame. The figure spoke, and the spire reverberated like a gigantic tuning fork, shaking the earth itself. Its words reverberated through his very being. Even though his ears couldn’t understand them, he knew what they said.
“You are no archdrake, no chosen hero, no inheritor of a noble bloodline. You’re just a broken, old man in an outdated body, even that dragon-head on your left arm is a fake. Yet you still fight for some nebulous ideal, born from your own twisted grasp of what few memories remain. How dare you claim this world is yours to change? This is the natural order of things, it is not yours to destroy.”
A weak chuckle escaped his throat, and his eye-lights changed shape to mimic a smiling face. The wrathful voice of that fiery entity had served to stoke the sputtering embers in his chest, and he felt the heat spreading all throughout the shell that was his body.
“If an archdrake is what they need, then an archdrake I will become,” he said. “For as long as this body of mine moves and the fire in me burns, there is no tyranny that will stand. I am man, and I spit upon nature’s cruel law.”
The spire shook again. “What a close reflection of the archdrakes you are,” the fiery shape laughed. “So be it. Go forth and devour their empire of dirt, Ouroboros."
The desert began to fade into nothing.
The ruins of Exile-town and the Spire of Glass soon followed.
When he awoke, he found himself at the edge of a crater that had once been a commander’s tent. He felt the nanolith crust over most of his body cracking as a strange device pushed its way out of his body near his waist.
Metamorphosis Protocol successful.
Dragonrider System ready.
Please select an activation phrase.