Thunder filled the Titanic air as guns fired off from the tops of buildings and in the streets. Along with the thunder carried howls of warriors and the screams of the dying. Arylos looked on, hiding amongst the parapets of the temple as he watched the once silver streets run orange with blood underneath a dark and red sky as the star burned, spilling its white guts across the sky. The Titan of Fire felt sorrow as he watched the city burn and fire rain down from the sky, striking buildings, homes, and city streets.
And in this chaos, the Titans were killing each other.
He watched two armies clash in the streets, cutting down all in their path which included the civilians who were just trying to run. Arylos clenched his fist as he watched what happened to countless worlds come to his own world and drown it in blood. Yet He could do little to stop this petty war; his world was dying and there was no future for them, and yet there were fools who still believed they could fight for it, seeking to change the outcome.
Arylos knew they were too blind to see the truth; that there was no outcome to change.
The Titan turned away from their petty war, trying to close his heart to the suffering of his people. He knew this was the only outcome; that the death of their race had been long overdue. One way or another, even if they succeed in dismantling the Great Work, they would buy themselves a few years at most. What then? They would be starving, dying, huddled and shivering around the last spark of light in this world before it all fades back into the chaos they were born from.
Death is inevitable, and if the world wills it, there is no greater will to defy it.
Arylos reached down towards a necklace he hid under his robes; black and silver beads with a single beautiful orange feather dangling from it. He held the feather tight, silently praying that she could get away from the fighting.
Arylos cast his sights on his mountainside home and faded away in a cloud of shadows and flames, reappearing at the foot of the mountain. He walked along the stony path as the burning stones rained down from the sky as their star died and fire crashed into the ocean. He could hear the scream of their world; the everlasting high-pitched scream that sounded through the ground and the sky.
The Elder Titan admired the beautiful destruction of his world, his burning red eyes examining the dying plants and the broken soil. Amongst the ruin, he saw a shape to the side of the path, a shape that was familiar to him. He approached it and as he grew closer, he knew the shape well.
At his feet lay the body of a large adult wyvern, one of his children he tasked to guard the mountain. He reached down and ran his hand along the body, the stone cold and the blood that was once molten like rock now solid and cold with spears and gaping holes in its stone body.
His home had been defiled.
Arylos growled deep in his chest as shadows twisted around him as he marched up the mountain. His nails grew long and black as dark flames emanated from his flesh. The stone under his feet cumbled with each footstep as the Titan prepared to wage war against these invaders. As he climbed, he found himself at the entrance to his cave. He looked inside and saw that everything inside had been destroyed; bookshelves broken, tables split in half, doors broken in.
The draconic Titan growled as he looked towards the ground and saw glowing orange blood leading from the cave out and farther up the mountain. Arylos pulled away from the cave and continued forward, following the smell of the otherworldly blood. He eventually found himself at the top of a familiar clifface and the trail of blood thickened until it ended at the corpse of a Titan face down in the blood, wearing a white robe. Arylos approached the body and went down to his knees and gingerly turned the body over.
Arylos’s orange fires went dark, nearly black as his strength was pulled away from his body. He held the body of a broken woman with a gaping hole in her chest from which the orange blood flowed. He recognised her pale skin, her long red hair, her soft features.
“Aralym,” Arylos whispered softly, his hands shaking as he beheld the dead Titan and examined her wound. He could only shake his head as his body trembled under the truth that the only one he could call friend in this world was now gone. Tears streamed down Arylos’s featureless black face as he whimpered, whispering ‘no’ over and over again.
He set Aralym’s body down and brought his shaking hands to his face, shaking in anger, in fury. He covered his face as he wept, letting out pained groans as his body was racked by a horrible pain.
The loneliness suffocated him. The pain broke him. The cold bit him.
His cries turned to wails as he screamed, tears running down his face as the dark flames coming from his body burned in searing agony. He had enough of this nightmare.
His cries were cut short as he heard a twig snap in the distance. He snapped his head around to look and saw a group of armour-clad Titans covered in orange glowing blood, wielding blades and guns that hummed with energy. The soldiers beheld the broken Elder Titan with awe and fear.
“Lord Zjornfernheim, are you alright?” one of the soldiers asked.
Arylos growled as he realised who these soldiers were. His eyes shone a bright orange as he slowly rose to his feet, using his wings for support like a broken puppet being lifted back to life. “You killed her,” he growled in a haunting voice that resonated through the air.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“W-We didn’t know she was your consort,” the first soldier replied, lowering his sword.
“She was not, she was greater; she was my friend,” Arylos growled as his dark flames burned orange once more and his wings expanded to show their full span.
“I’ve lost loved ones too, my lord,” one of the other soldiers responded. “We need to stop this apocalypse before it kills us all. You know that to be true.”
“And how many of them wanted to stay out of this war?” Arylos growled while clenching his fists. “How many of them were innocent in this?”
“My Lord, those who don’t want to fight are only aiding our destruction,” the first soldier responded, trying to reason with the furious Elder Titan. “We have to choose; do nothing and die or consume the Great Work so we can live. Those who do not fight are only complacent and will lead to our extinction.”
“Then the only way to stop this is to stop you, all of you,” Arylos snarled, taking steps towards the soldiers.
“Lord Zjornfernheim–”
“DO NOT CALL ME THAT!” Arylos howled as his burning flames ran through the soldiers’ chests like pins through cloth, burning them from the inside out. Within a mortal instant, they fell to the ground, their screams rendered silent through the swiftness of their death.
Arylos took deep breaths to control his flames as he examined what he did. That he killed them without worry nor care. The first time he had killed his own kind and yet he felt nothing from it; no satisfaction, no sorrow, nothing. Arylos looked at his hands and saw the orange feather dangling from around his neck.
He made up his mind. This has to end here and now.
He roared with a sound that shook the mountainside as picked up two of the corpses of the soldiers and marched towards his cave, determination and hate in his step. As he entered his broken home, he turned his attention to a small corridor that led to his workshop with a cold furnace to the side. He set the corpses down and then he pulled his black and red robe from his body to reveal his pale and muscular skin with black tattoos covering his body. The Titan then walked towards the table and snapped his fingers and a flame in the furnace roared to life, burning as hot as the sun.
He then picked up a long and curved blade from the table and reached for his upper set of wings, finding where they connected with his body. He let out a sigh as he turned his back towards the wall and above a trough resting against the wall. He stretched out the joint of the wing and held it firm as he slammed into the wall with a pained grunt, feeling the bone inside snap.
“You wanted war, I am the war; I alone,” Arylos whispered in a shuddered breath before cutting into the limb of his wing, slicing it at the stem as orange blood poured from his wound and into the trough below him, warranting a scream of pain from the Elder Titan. The wing fell to the floor with a thud and flinched briefly before falling silent.
Without hesitation, Arylos reached for the same wing on his other side and snapped the bone in it and began to cut into it, tearing flesh and muscle as his screams grew more desperate and painful. Yet he felt none of the pain, only the gaping pain in his chest that burned more intense than any other pain he had felt. His vision went white as he felt the searing pain of his hatred blind him until the other wing fell to the floor with a thud that shook him from his trance.
Arylos shook the pain from his body as he set the blade back down on the table and reached for the wings on the ground and set them on the table. He turned to the trough behind him and saw it was filled a part of the way with the orange blood; not enough. Arylos returned to the trough and pushed on the stumps of his wings that were left, forcing out more of the blood into the trough.
Once satisfied with the headache from the bloodloss, he quickly reached for bandages and tied tourniquets around his broken wings. He finally took a shuddered breath and prepared for the dark work he was about to perform.
Arylos gave his severed wings a gentle brush, feeling the stone of the feathers and the heat of the flames that once burned within them. He knew what he had to do; what he had to make in order to end this. He picked up one of the heavy wings and threw it into the roaring furnace, watching the flames burn the wing. As he pumped the bellows, he watched the wing turn red and deform like molten metal.
With a grunt, he held his spinning head and turned towards the bodies he set down in the corner. He shuddered as he approached one of the bodies and picked it up, feeling his strength begin to fail him as his power waned. He acknowledged what he had to do as his mouth went wide as he bit into the flesh of the slain Titan, ripping it apart and drinking the orange blood.
Arylos hesitated for a moment as he tasted the blood of his own kind, yet he quickly found himself not caring anymore. He growled and tore at the slain soldier, consuming him quickly and violently as the sound of monstrous growls sounded through his cave joined by the sound of flesh tearing and stone cracking.
Hours passed as Arylos regained his strength from the consumed soldiers, pounding away at the metal that his wings became until what rested on his workbench was a weapon no Titan could hope to stop. A glaive adorned with a stone-like blade sharpened to beyond a razor’s edge adorned with red glowing runes etched into the metallic stone. He spared no expense in design nor comfort.
It was a weapon created for one singular purpose; to kill Titans.
Arylos rested his hand on the glaive’s shaft and the runes etched into the weapon began to glow and churn with a haunting red light and the weapon hummed. Arylos felt a pull at his soul from the glaive as it drew on his strength, his hatred, his fury. Arylos felt himself be drained from the evil weapon but he relished in the pain it gave him. A madness developed in him, a desire to kill and feed, to destroy every last Titan until none stood, including himself.
Filled with this infernal desire, the glaive hummed to life and the blade exploded into a blade of flame that hummed loudly like a machine intent to kill. Arylos lifted the weapon, feeling the air hum around it as it burned and the weapon gave him a strength and desire to destroy, empowering its master with the one thing Arylos wanted more than anything.
He felt his sense of reality twist, able to sense the different layers of their own world. He looked towards his hand and saw that he could manipulate it, changing it across space and time. His consciousness expanded, allowing him to view all of Mortehksun within the same field of view and throughout all of time.
Arylos’s eyes had been opened, elevated to a higher level. He was no longer bound by his physical form while in this world. He howled as his body exploded into a firestorm that consumed his cave and the mountain, spiralling around it like a giant serpent. He felt no edge on his consciousness and body. He had become what the Titans could never become.
He had become a formless being; he is now nothing but fire given life.