"B̛y̷ t͜he ̸S͜even̕,̴"Fulgent began, staring into her father’s golden eyes with a heart full of contempt."I ́in̨vo̶k̢e ̢t̀h̨e͠ ͝Ri͞ght o̶f̛ Inh͠erita͘n̷c͠e͟." ̴
Her words shook the earth beneath her feet, and the old magic listened.
"Lest̛ yè b̶e ̕dishoǹǫr̛ed ̴fo͘r ̴al͢l̨ ́time.́"
She spat her words with venom that could make even the most sincere proclamation of love sound wretched, and the grimace with which she gazed only affirmed the sincerity in her tone. Even so, in his desperation to abscond himself of any responsibility, Iorzan only smiled as he felt the old magic grip his being and begin driving him to kill his daughter, lest he be killed. Fulgent felt the skeletal claws of the old ways trying to dig into her being as well, yet they couldn’t grasp her. Perhaps it was the embers of void energy smoldering within her, or perhaps she already possessed a murderous intent greater than what the Right of Inheritance could impose.
Father and Daughter lashed out at one another, each driven by strength far beyond any chaplain. A clang resounded, and from Fulgent’s accelerator a cone of jagged livingmetal shards exploded forward, and in its wake, she herself followed. Iorzan exclaimed “Pulverize!” as the tendril-like markings upon his head flashed purple. At his word, the sand beneath his feet was crushed downward in a circle extending out an arm’s length, and before the shotgun-blast of livingmetal could hit, it was crushed down into the sand by the elder’s selective gravity amplification.
When she entered that very same radius and he proclaimed that same word, the old man’s expectations collided with violent arcs of lilac leaping across metal feathers to strike at him for the arrogance of bending reality. Despite the fact his armor was perfectly insulated, the surges of void energy produced by anchoring reactions such as these were utterly impossible to completely shut out. Even if his flesh remained unburned, even if his blessing was too great to be burned away by a single surge, the searing pain shook his core nevertheless. Moreover, the crushing gravity didn’t seem to affect Fulgent herself, for her fist had collided with his chestplate. When he felt the herculean force behind it, Iorzan knew that even his full strength as an Elder would not guarantee his victory.
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When the first strikes resounded, the camp around the supply depot was split, as the ritual’s effects extended to all those considered part of Clan Iktha. It was fortunate, then, that the camp itself was sectioned off by clan, with an innermost circle around the supply depot itself containing no fewer than two thousand warriors of Clan Iktha. The entire remainder of the camp was made up of smaller sub-sections, each belonging to one of the several smaller clans that were directly blessed by and under the employ of Clan Igron. Soon enough, in the span of no more than a few minutes, the lesser clans turned on the Ikthas. Some out of personal vendettas, others with the intent of garnering political favor with the Igrons, and others still simply wanting to take their notoriously high-grade Full Casement suits for their own ends.
It was then that, driven by the old magic, the Iktha warriors took a stand side by side with those they called heretics only moments earlier. Those present near the commander’s tent began to form into a defensive perimeter - most notably, those with armor insulated against the burn of void energy and those with particularly weak blessings gathered around the two Distorted. Meanwhile, the remaining Ikthas made their way to the commander’s tent, forming into loose groups as they moved through the central section of the camp and even entering into open combat with warriors from other clans.
They advanced and fought not in formation, not with any sense of decorum or honor, but driven by an unquenchable, instinctual battle-lust. Their cleavers and slug-throwers were merely stronger claws.Their blessings served not to fuel elaborate techniques, but as short-lived explosions of raw power to push them beyond their opponents. The warriors of Clan Iktha ripped and tore their way through the very camp they had built, killing and dying in an honorless, savage determination.
“We’ve no fondness for these heretics,” an unadorned warrior said in response to another clan’s chaplain accusing him of heresy. “But the Right of Inheritance has been invoked. The old ways demand single combat between the Elder and the to-be inheritor, to the death of either party.”
The unadorned warrior reached for the shotgun on his back, a weapon he wasn’t meant to have. It was loaded with shells full of razor-sharp nanolith fragments, ammunition he also wasn’t meant to have.
Briefly channeling all his blessing’s strength, he accelerated himself beyond even a chaplain’s reaction speed.
Driven by the old magic, he took aim and did something he wasn’t ever meant to do.
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Both Rika and Karzon quickly noticed the change in situation. It was the slew of radio transmissions. The seemingly sudden shift in allegiance among the Ikthas. The fact they both heard Fulgent’s voice invoking the old magic in their radio receivers.
And so it was that they both chose to go along with the temporary alliance, trusting in Fulgent’s ability to go against a full-fledged Elder. “And if she falls, it will be up to Ouroboros to go against the old magic itself,” Karzon thought as he walked through the outskirts of the camp.
“You really believe he can do that? Even if he’s human, that’s just patently ridiculous,” one of the distortion spectres said, its voice echoing in his head as the corresponding crystal eye flashed. Karzon found it amusing, how calm and serene the spectre’s voices were even as their temporary bodies surged forward through gunfire. Even if certain high-power weapons penetrated, the spectres had no bones to break, no internal organs - they were just walking distortion fields, and they would take shape again even if destroyed.
They lashed out with little to no input on his part, throwing themselves into enemy formations with reckless abandon, using their own bodies as weapons. The ephemeral cords connecting them to Karzon had a limited range, that much was true - the seven spectres quickly learned that they would begin to fade away if they ever got further away than two dozen meters or so. This limit, however, wasn’t a substantial disadvantage.
And so it was that the high chaplains of Clan Herath saw their life’s work shredded to bits in the grasp of ghosts made of swirling blades and void-fire. Amongst the carnage, there walked a deformed beast, with skin of void-fire and eyes of glimmering gemstone, and with a wrathful grin it proclaimed so: “This strength that I wield belongs to the warriors who have been sent to their deaths under hold of the Ruler’s Blessing! It is through this fire in my chest that I give form to the wrath of those unjustly slain!”
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“Y’think the theatrics might be a little much?” one of the spectre’s voices echoed in his head.
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In the split-second after he awoke, he saw and felt many things. He clearly felt that his body still felt weaker than usual, there was still damage to be repaired. He saw that he was at the edge of a great hole in the earth, one that stretched no fewer than twenty meters across, and was no less than half that deep. At its bottom there was a flat, rectangular surface of crushed polymer and nanolith, upon which there stood two figures. One was the familiar curves and metal feathers of Fulgent, and the other was a lithe, tall Builder-caste in elaborately ornamented armor. His serpent-like head was covered in so many dark purple markings that his actual scale colour was impossible to discern, and from these markings there rose great tendrils of purple exotic particles that formed into a mane of immaterial snakes.
Fulgent’s and Iorzan’s fists had just collided, and from her right forearm, the jagged edge of a broken, matte-black bone erupted, accompanied by a burst of equally black blood - nevertheless she stopped her father’s punch. She raised a leg to kick his wide-open right side. With a turn, he turned his outstretched arm to a dropping elbow that came rushing down to block the kick, and he returned an upward knee to her leg, and another sickening crunch there resounded as a shattered femur erupted from the bottom of her thigh.
Iorzan was far stronger, far more experienced in combat - each of his strikes carried enough force behind it to pulverize bones and rupture organs, each of his strikes was accompanied by a flash of his markings and a nearly inaudible hiss of words like “Crush.” or “Pulverize.”. He channeled the power of his blessing to alter his own mass at a whim.
And yet, even as the shattered bones of her arm and leg protruded outward, Fulgent didn’t relent. The accelerator upon her third arm whined and from its muzzle there erupted a short stake, forcing Iorzan to busy his left arm with deflecting it from his head before it could detonate. In this moment, Armless saw the flame of void energy within Fulgent surging, flowing towards her damaged limbs, and in the next split-second, tendrils of black erupting from the wounds. They whipped about wildly for a moment, pulling the broken bones inward and sealing the wounds shut with not a scar or a seam to be seen.
Fulgent wrapped her right leg around Iorzan’s, her left arm around his, and with her right, she delivered a right hook to his head that resounded with such force it broke Armless out of his post-awakening focus and forced him to perceive the duel as everyone else did. With every passing second, they carved away more of the earth around them.
A blur of black and purple, the strikes of flesh against metal and the supersonic cracks to serve as the percussion. Growling and hissing, the vocals. The gigantic crowd that surrounded the crater, the rest of the orchestra. Yet… Only the innermost row was actually watching, or at least trying to. All those in the outer rows were turned outward, and from the sound of it, they were… Fighting?
Indeed, the crater was surrounded by a crowd, by warriors in armor of the same style as that of the man Fulgent was fighting - the Iktha Clan. To his right, he sensed a great deal of void energy, and his visual sensors clearly picked up the source - it was a substantial distortion field, nearly fifteen meters across if he were to estimate. He saw hundreds of slugs slamming into it and being shredded apart, but it was clear the field wouldn’t hold up for much longer. He could tell that whoever was generating it was getting tired. Its edges were unfocused, slowly fading. Every once in a while, a larger slug or glob of hot plasma would fly clean through the field and overhead, or worse, directly into one of the warriors on the outer perimeter.
A few seconds passed, and he saw the circle part as a warrior was dragged into it, onto the edge of the crater, and left to lay there while the one who dragged him in rejoined the perimeter. His chest-plate was heavily deformed and even had a couple holes, from which blue blood was running. The warrior laid there for a moment, until one of the others on the inside of the circle walked over and reached for his helmet, undoing the seals. Along the hiss of escaping air, there was the sloshing of escaping blood and a gut-wrenching coughing, and soon the warrior struggled into a sitting position with the help of his comrade.
The warrior had strained himself to such a point and coughed up so much blood, he had begun to drown. The orange markings upon his head glowed, but it was with the red of dying embers, and the scales were burned black. Armless saw that, even though his armor was heavily irradiated with void energy on the inside, the warrior’s flesh was mostly unharmed - it was the warrior’s own effort that burned his blessing into nothing.
As he watched the warrior sit there, captured by a strange fascination, Armless overheard the warrior saying something to the one who removed the helmet. “No way we can hold them off,” the warrior hissed with a weak voice. “I thought void-fire was meant to burn blessings away, yet even with these void-wielding nomads to bolster us we can’t stand against a dozen high chaplains and some battle-slaves. I knew the Igron bastards equipped them better than us.”
Armless had hoped to watch the duel unfold and possibly step in if it didn’t go in Fulgent’s favour, even if it meant pushing against whatever the “old magic” was. He had hoped he wouldn’t have to, considering the less than ideal state he was in. “No rest for Ouroboros,” he thought as he stood up. The servos in his knees whined, but soon fell quiet as he stepped forward and the ground cracked beneath his weight.
“Let me through, noble warriors,” he said, putting on a robotic voice to keep up the facade of a security automaton. “The void-fire fuels me.”
“The nomad’s automaton? Let it through, it’s blacktech. Who knows what it might do. Might kill us if we try stopping it,” one of the warriors on the inside of the perimeter said.
“Smart choice,” he thought as he gave the warrior a nod of acknowledgment and stepped toward him. The warrior stepped aside, and as he moved into the perimeter, he found himself unimpeded in his advance outward. The Ikthas had a healthy respect for human technology, it seemed.
The Armored One’s eye snapped to look at him when he reached the outside of the perimeter, and he saw that there was blood dripping out the corner of her mouth. “I thought you wouldn’t wake up. Wipe these nobles out with that arm cannon of yours,” she rumbled through gritted teeth, confident in Apeiron’s destructive ability.
“My right arm is unfortunately just a bludgeon now,” Armless said. “But a bludgeon is all I need.”
“Register activation phrase:”
“Go forth and devour, Ouroboros.”
Activation phrase registered.
Proceeding with casement formation…
Error: Casement already present.
Recycle current casement?
“Yes.”
Affirmative.
Please vocalize activation phrase.
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And from amongst the heretic line there emerged a skull-faced, stone-skinned creature, its right arm a bludgeon and its left a mockery of the legendary dragon-heads. Upon its waist there was an ornament of black-stone, and in its center there shined the baleful lilac of the void. It stepped through the heretic nomad’s wall of void-fire, and remained unharmed. Thousands of sacred weapons were brought to bear against it, yet none could penetrate its stone skin, slugs and plasma-bolts alike splashed and bounced off as if they were nothing. From the creature’s empty eye-sockets there gushed geysers of the accursed light, and from its maw there thundered a proclamation that would come to haunt the honored clans.
“Go forth and devour, Ouroboros!”