“Thank you,” he said, walking towards that very door and opening it, cautiously crossing the precipice. He knew not what the future held, he knew not the heights this single choice would lead him toward.
He only knew that he was free.
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Left. Right. Left. Right.
G-Kaiser stomped through the sand, following tracks pressed into the sand by the previous convoy, and in turn the remainder of the rescue convoy followed it. The convoy was composed partly of the damaged siege rovers that had been taken from the Igron Camp’s “wall”, and partly of troop carrier rovers that had been reclaimed from the aftermath of the Battle for Canyontown and repaired.
After having heard of what transpired during the operation, Acala had expected to find nothing but ruins and corpses, with perhaps half a dozen warriors who had been saved by their full casement suits. Yet, as they crested a dune and the camp’s remnants came into view he saw… Not much.
The place had seen destruction, to be sure - it was clear a battle had transpired here, with at least a third of the tents collapsed, but… There were people alive here. He knew it was so, for a small fraction of his mind’s eye was always gazing upon the prophetic sword’s ever-shifting glyphs as it sat upon G-Kaiser’s shoulder.
The glyphs shifted, flashing in his head with a fiery glow.
Ten hundred charred martyrs,
Stripped of blessings,
Searching for purpose.
They await the Serpent’s herald,
To grant them adversity,
To fuel their blazing wills to live.
He made G-Kaiser slow its stride, commanding the rest of the convoy to follow suit with a transmission of “Keep pace with me.”
From amidst the broken wall of rovers, there stumbled a figure in the shape of a… Either a bulky Builder, or an emaciated Warrior. He couldn’t tell, and neither could G-Kaiser, so thoroughly covered by a cloak of tent fabric the figure was. It waved towards him, pointing with a bandaged arm towards one of the nearby tents within which G-Kaiser had detected heat signatures congruent with life.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
G-Kaiser was too large to enter the camp without destroying what was left. Far, far too large. Acala took the gamble, willing the steel titan to take a knee just outside the wall and open the cockpit hatch, then riding the embarkation wire down into the lifeless sand.
As his feet touched the scorching sand, the convoy had already encircled the camp and the drivers had already started to disembark their vehicles, guns and blades in hand regardless of caste. Two of the rovers were even driven by Distorted, distortion fields blazing around their forearms as they staked out the remnants of the camp from afar.
The cloaked figure turned its obscured head from left to right, sunken purple embers in its eye-sockets as the only part of its face visible. It lowered its left arm with visible effort, accompanied by the brief creaking of metal and whining of servomotors, before turning and walking into what had once been the camp’s makeshift gate.
Acala followed, as did a few brave souls who dared do so, the two Distorted among them. He followed the shrouded figure, past the outer wall and through a corridor made of repurposed tents, towards what was once the centerpiece of that segment of the camp.
Around the cooking pit there sat arrayed perhaps two, three dozen more individuals. The cooking heater spat and sputtered with lilac fire as a pot of god knew what bubbled atop it, sparks leaping from the heating coil as the figures nearest to the fire passed the end of its exposed power cord from hand to hand.
Most of them were obscured, wrapped in a mixture of bandages both printed and cut from the very fabric of their tents. At last, the shrouded figure reached up with a scorched hand and pulled his hood back, exposing a face both charred and scarred by the flames of the void, yet still recognizable to one such as Acala. One of the High Chaplains of Clan Herath, once a truly honorable and just man. After all, their nature of true good had been why they fell into disfavor with the Igrons and were forced into accepting the Ruler’s Blessing as a “gift”.
He took a breath and spoke, visibly and audibly struggling to do so, the noise that came from his throat not unlike the wild sputtering of a fire being put out with rancid stimmix.
“From one curse disguised as a blessing to the next,” he said. “Are you here to tell us this fire too is a blessing in disguise? That this is the price of freedom from the Igrons?!” he questioned, not with accusation, but pleading, his voice wracked with the pain of his body’s failure to recover from voidburn. He grimaced in pain and tears ran down his face, painted black by the soot of his flesh as he raised his left arm and ripped the bandages from it with his still-armored right, exposing burned flesh underneath, with gaping crystal-filled scars in the shape of teeth.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Acala saw the aftermath of Ouroboros’ actions, and for the first time in a while, he drew on the very skills that had once been vital to his continued survival under the Ecclesiarch.
“You can ask the Serpent himself,” he said. “Once your bodies have been mended.”
“How could you know the burn of this cursed flame?” the Burned Chaplain questioned, unable to see any voidburn scarring on Acala’s head.
Acala reached for the zipper of his pilot’s jumpsuit - the clothes he had taken to wearing as the symbol of his new station - and opened it, pulling his arms free of the sleeves and allowing the upper half to fall as he turned around to show his back, covered in a single, giant voidburn scar, so deep that over an inch of flesh was missing at its deepest point and the ridges of his spine were exposed.
“The cleansing fire burns, I know that better than anyone,” he said. “The works of man can wash away the pain and mend even the most broken of flesh. All I ask is that you allow us to help you, even if you do not decide to fight against the Igrons by our side.”
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High upon the split-peak mountain, the two dragons Nesgon and Ouroboros still drank and spoke, long into the night, both beyond the reach of mundane exhaustion.
“A Ruler I may be, but the people of Canyontown look to you as an idol,” the old dragon said. “They don’t worship at your feet, or build statues, or pray in your name, but it’s your face they carry in their souls. And I can’t blame them,” he continued, taking a long swig of his fourth or perhaps fifth bottle.
“Why not? You are the rightful leader of this place,” Ouroboros rebutted. “I have nothing but nostalgic memories and a desire for vengeance to drive me. I am no leader. That’s why the choice to wake Viriditas is yours, not mine.”
The old man raised the ornament to his face, a wry smile parting his fanged maw as he examined it.
“I have lived for a long, long time,” he said. “I have seen my people rise to heights few have reached, and fall to lows few have sunken to. Every time, they looked not to a competent leader for hope, but to an utterly impossible, shining symbol. A larger-than-life figure. A knight in shining armour, a dragon given mortal form, a-”
“-a stranger from out of town, come to save the townsfolk from the bandits,” Ouroboros interrupted. Nesgon gave only a nod and a grunt of agreement, lowering the ornament as he did.
“I was the symbol of hope, once. Then, I became the hand of tyranny. Even now, I am in no state to be believed in as you are. Though this old body is perhaps stronger than even yours, I do not yet have the strength to scream my meaning into the heavens and force them to listen. Not like you, or like Red-eye. Not yet. Perhaps in another century, eh?”
“It still weighs on you. The guilt.”
“So it does. Every brother and sister in arms I’ve struck down for the sake of morale - I remember them, each and every one. I will not find peace until I’ve saved a hundred times as many lives as I’ve condemned, and not one less.”
Nesgon took another swig and crushed the bottle, tossing it past his shoulder and reaching for another. “Even then, my sins will not be erased, but perhaps…” he mused, cracking the seal and taking a sip. “Perhaps it will permit me some peace of mind. To know I’ve done more good than bad.”
“You no longer wish for death, then?”
A rumbling, deeply sad chuckle rose from the old dragon’s maw. “No. I see death for the coward’s way out that it is. To live with the guilt of fratricide and work to atone for it is a fate far worse than death for one such as I. A fate I deserve.”
“They will remember you as a hero.”
“And I will live knowing it to be a half-truth. These chains of guilt will never allow me to be truly free.”
“To face one’s past is to be liberated,” the Serpent mused as he turned his gaze skyward.
“Then I may become a hero yet,” the man who had once been the Gilded Butcher replied.
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Through the desert, three-dozen eternal soldiers ran, with skin of black-stone and the faces of long-forgotten humans. In perfect synchronicity they ran, faster than any rover, the sand exploding beneath the pounding of their feet.
Their collective intelligence far surpassed that of any single sapient creature, yet they had no will of their own - truly, hollow soldiers they were. Puppets. Golems. Haniwa. Given purpose by nothing other than Asura’s command.
For hours they ran through the desert, a journey worth days of travel for any mortal thing. When at last they reached the ritual arrival circle, they did just as they had been ordered, arraying themselves in an outward-facing circle around the Twins’ Beacon, kneeling and entering a dormant state.
For days more they would wait, stone-still and statuesque, until the moment of slaughter would come.
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The people of Canyontown were busy moving all that they treasured into the safety of Viriditas’ great hall, in preparation for the god-mountain’s awakening. Nevertheless, the cargo shaft was the limiting factor, and those who could not help in the moving, helped with anything else, or simply chose to train with the newly-inexhaustible treasure trove of armaments, seeking the perfect weapons to facilitate their defiance of the Igrons.
As wracked with unrest as it was, the Oasis was at peace as well. Orsha’s fake “purge” of the Machinist’s former district was still in the planning phase, with his most loyal agents securing safety-zones and escape-tunnels, whether it be creating new ones or unsealing ones previously made by the Machinist.
Acala’s rescue convoy quickly became engrossed in salvaging whatever they could from the remnants of the camp whilst helping provide at least some medical care to the survivors.Those whose blessings had been weak suffered serious voidburn, but it was much like that which had been suffered by the survivors who were picked up by Ouroboros’ task force. Those who possessed stronger blessings - mostly the Chaplains and High Chaplains - were not just voidburned, they were Charred black by the anchoring reaction.
“I’m a walking corpse,” the Ember-eyed Man said to Acala as they sat by the fire pit. “Yet the voidfire blazes in this shell as if I were at the peak of my life. The pain consumed me, yet I felt no urge to scream. Even now, with your drugs to wash it away, I remember the searing ache. Tell me this, Acala. Does the memory of the pain fade?”
“No,” Acala answered. “It becomes a reminder of your freedom. I treasure it dearly.”
And so, for but a few days, there was some semblance of peace.
A great silence before the coming storm.