“There’s nothing left for us here!” Red hair flowing, a man wearing white robes over olive skin beckoned a group of others to come over to the quivering tear in a mountain, held wide by his one outstretched hand and the two-handed contributions of others in similar dress. The group in my first view were a small slice of the hundreds, perhaps thousands that marched miles behind them. The sky threw lightning into the ground at a blistering pace, dozens of bright bolts painting the distance permanently between the clay faced mountains the travelers stepped through - once hitting the ground, the bolts froze before jittering, tearing up the ground before creating a spire at full speed. Oceans of water cascaded down the eastside of the mountain pass, prompting two of the white robes to abandon their post and cast great curtains of fire upon the rapids, reducing them to steam but the lightning came upon their heads in retribution - leaving nothing but dust. The mud underfoot and constant rain only gave reprieve when in view of the newer destructions coming my way, a desperate step up the mountain’s clay path was another trial in quicksand that stretched from the hopeful at the front to the deathbound far behind. The flashing light and deafening sound made it hard to acknowledge the crowds of people still left on the path, trying to enter the gate being kept open.
My eyes cast downwards to a full belly before looking over to a companion, a man with dark skin, blue eyes and no hair - wearing the same robes but adorning himself with a black cape, echoing the statements and commands of the red-haired man: telling the travelers to make haste, to leave nothing behind. The last string of words I could hear before another line of spires spawned stayed as an echo, even as a new feeling overloaded my mind the longer my gaze settled upon the man in front of me - comforting and guiding me through the gateway.
We will be new gods in this place, make our fate.
A hatred burned in my gut as the man in front of me spoke his words that held no volume. A disgust weighed heavily against my throat, feeling choked, throttled and force fed a vile toxin. Chills ran down my spine as those blue eyes bore into me, the fear of the void disallowed the idea of even being secondary compared to the seething my body felt towards his. Anchors surrounding my ankles but being pulled along anyways, the tips drilling into my legs out of desperation to just let me go - let me be too burdensome to want. Regardless, I was pulled through, letting my free hand rest onto my stomach - stretching far from the rest of me, with a squirming just below the surface.
“Alu?” The voice was faint, I knew who it was but I couldn’t answer, my mind was stuck, overwhelmed with what I saw - slowly forgetting where I was before but I grit my teeth, or at least I think I did. The more I strained, the quicker the vision faded to white - with his voice pertinent, the red haired man’s voice joining the assurances to one who took no pleasure in hearing, giving me the red hot hands of a murderous intent. “Alu! Tell me what’s wrong?” That rancid taste of poison spread to my stomach, where the child lays, ready to see the world any day now. I hope the burning bastard drowns before he can see.
“Alu!” The voice and vision finally left completely as a new sensation crept over my face and exploded on the back of my head. My eyes were my own again as I saw Morrigan hunched over me while I laid on the ground. I raised my hand to the mild pain on my cheek and heard my mouth pop in two places.
“Did you just slap me?” Pushing on the other side, my face popped again but otherwise felt fine.
“Well, yes.” She answered with a vigorous nod, looking unsure and worried at the same time. “You stopped in the middle of talking and refused to move or do anything for minutes! Even your eyes started to roll to the back of your head.”
That sounds way worse than before. I said to myself as I pushed myself up before Morrigan just scooped me in her arms, holding me there until I asked to be put down. “It’s those visions again.” It wasn’t a question, the blight and its signs were obvious enough.
“How much extra time do we have?” I asked, feeling the breath in my lungs suddenly disappear as fragments of that vision came back with a pull - no images or words, but feelings and weights onto my very mind.
“We managed to come back two days before the sky started falling.” She simply nodded her head and held out her hand. “You want to investigate the scattering of fires.”
“If we find nothing there within an hour, we can just keep going.”
“It’ll be more than an hour.” She curled her fingers, waiting to accept mine. “But not for more than a day, satisfy our curiosities but no lingering.”
I linked my fingers onto hers. “If the end of the world wasn’t near, I’d call you a liar.”
She flashed that wide smile. “Can’t promise not to steal some books while we’re there.”
“I’d call you an imposter if you didn’t plan that.”
Going onward, the dirt paved roads leaving Sarengound territory was one of the few familiar sights we saw in the area. The large station of iron tracks just east of the town was nothing but a watchtower that existed since the Jeremiah reign. The soil beneath was dry, ridden with cracks, unstable enough to make the once solid pillar tilt to the west.
Quite a few landmarks remained the same however, the ice spires dotting the western sea still flooded certain low points in the land. We imagined that the north of Fahren was still a marshland - seeing that the Merchant’s Rest hump was still there ahead of Sarengound, with a completely drenched west side and the splash range still able to pepper the top and east every half hour.
Taking a full turn east from the divided river, it was another journey into the unfamiliar - heading in the direction of the Academic Recluse, and stopping just south of it. No one at the Guild spoke much of the Recluse, mostly because no one had real stories to tell - just scary tales they were told as children.
“They make joinings of man and beast there, send them out to hunt their meals while they hide in their casts of forbidden knowledge!” One would say, a girl like Gina but was only known for two nights on the tavern floor.
“Those Jeremiah mages hide the real last dragon! They brought that black beast to their domain when the Mad King died!” The oversized oaf of man with a hammer for a weapon, too tall to be of my kind, but too short to be of Morrigan’s. Loud and tall but brief in his shoutings, a drink or two put him down fast.
“Those old fabled ones wouldn’t exist anymore, why wouldn’t the Wardens hold it, lure their dissenters there?” The giantess singer once joined Morrigan and I for drinks and gave her own theory, before the rowdier of the humans pitched the previous two with different words.
How the dragons died was still a vague tale at the best of times. A group of men and women wielding what the Wardens now called the forbidden arrangements is the clearest story we have now. The tale goes that the Mad King consorted with those old witches - from a cave, from a lake, from the north, who knows? They gave him the ability to bring the sky down upon the dragons, the bolts held by the clouds cast upon the scales and wings of the roaming gods. To Morrigan, myself and the vast majority, it made the most sense. The most resilient of steel shields can bounce stones and hold against the gusts of a storm if the wielder wills it. Lightning was the most sought after spire for Morrigan however, being the one element that few can counter but it takes a toll to siphon.
The arrangements made a few horror stories, some belted from Warden mouths but mostly from the tavern patrons and their families - techniques of disfigurement, opening the gates to the Vacuous and the complete manipulation of the soul: the cage that is said to house our tethers as well as the desire to live and fight. Morrigan had even told a few of her own scary stories during our first weeks together, perhaps to keep me on edge and say that she would tinker me into mindlessness if I pushed my luck. That delightfully sadistic grin told many lies to humans, but a pebble of truth is always truth. Even if it's the truth she will have to create herself.
An old forest of blackwood stood between the mountains that separated the Recluse from the rest of the world. Whereas that building stood atop the rounded plateaus somewhere, the pulling line around my gut told me that the fires stayed on the ground between the gray dividers. The trees curled and bent forwards to scrape the ground with their sickly limbs, bleeding a thick orange that tarred the rooted ground and smelled like ocean water. The ground squelched and dragged our feet as we progressed under the wooden cover that slowly obscured the sun to only peaks and blemishes on the ground ahead. The arrangement of trees made the path narrow, only obscuring the walls that met our sides slightly. A quick scan of the ground confirmed that someone lived here, and they weren’t welcoming outsiders. Thinner than the dead leaves blowing in the winter winds, trip wires wrapped around the arched branches at foot, waist and neck level for a normal man. The material was a sharp, interwoven steel that the Wardens used for some of their machinery - called it cable line. Running straight into that line might not separate limbs but it would make one bleed.
The sound of a spark came at least ten paces back. Wrapping me in her right arm, Morrigan summoned stone from the ground beneath us and absorbed the blast with a shield. Once the rock fell, the explosion lit the sap from the trees on fire, leaving behind a wall of flame. Likely wanting to scare us into the wires with a mad dash.
Spears flew from between the trees at chest height, their points cutting through the air and making a whistle that turned into a scream. Casting a flame and spreading it across, my free hand produced a box of tethers to keep it in place as a floating wall - turning the spears into ash. A small arrow came from on high, with Morrigan catching the attack with her discarded shield before extending her grasp to the tree above and pulling down the archer - a woman obscured in black wraps and painted mask. Several more arrows came, forming a rain of steel and wood. Flames shot from my mouth, moving my neck to swirl the blaze, igniting the blackwood in an instant, feeling the tiny remnants of ash pepper my face. Several men and women fell from their perch, screaming and panicking as they rolled onto the flammable soil.
“Enough! Enough!” An echo from where the spears shot. The flames burning the hired guards vanished as the last utterance faded, with a figure removing the braid that obscured his form. Stepping over and ducking under the welcoming traps in a fluid motion, he still held his arms open as if expecting an embrace. Morrigan and I kept ourselves in a defensive stance, weary of the visible but still covered man, strapping and binding black fabrics tightly around his chest and face - an ebony skin revealed on his arms, bandaged from the elbows to the palms. When we didn’t meet his approach, the man dropped his arms but the fabric on his face moved and formed over what Morrigan imagined to be a smile.
“Imagine? You can’t just see what he thinks of us?” I uttered to her thought cage, suddenly clenching my fist, the man noticed and let out a hearty laugh.
“No, it’s nothing but crackles of lightning up there.” A questioning gaze followed by a shift in that fabric pushing smile painted the stranger’s face as he turned from me to Morrigan.
“You must forgive my servants, young successor.” He bowed his head as he vaulted over the last trap. “If I’d known you were coming, I would have sent scouts out here to guide you safely.”
“Successor?” I responded. “And it sounds like you were at least aware of me in some sense.”
“Very astute, Lord Elfren.” Morrigan floated her hand towards mine, with the stranger’s gaze fixated on the action. “But I’m sure you have a hundred questions, come with us. Your family will be thrilled to meet you.”
My blade left my sheath, the end stopping right before his throat - my breath felt heavy, my teeth tight as I questioned him. “Why did you say that name? And family? What family? I have none!”
The man sighed, unbothered by the blade. “That is what I feared, Lord Elfr-.”
“That’s not my fucking name!”
“It is one of your names, young successor.” I pushed my blade closer, the servants readying their bows with Morrigan plotting tethers on their limbs. “The family name given by your father, Herrick being a dear friend of mine once.” He looked down as if in grief. “Everything you need to know will be much easier to understand if you come with me.”
My grip started to shake, the name somehow became familiar, even if in the time I’d known my father, I’d never call him by his name - no child would. Morrigan put a hand on my sword arm and simply nodded to me.
“You know I’ll have your back as soon as he starts suggesting sacrifices.”
I lowered my blade and let him guide us through the array of traps - spikes and ensnarement ropes were the last of the measures against intruders - with Warden armor and mechanist weapons tarnishing against the base of blackwood trees. A village composed of brighter oak wood laid at the end, half on the ground with the rest suspended between the trees, full of paths to and fro. The eyes of all, young and old, took a gander at our quiet entrance. The stranger clapped his hands together and sent a flame to a cradle above.
“It is time for council! We have recovered another successor!”
Curious eyes were now paired with gleeful smiles, the rapid pattering of a hundred feet across the wooden boards upstairs was loud enough to drown conversation. In the middle of the village was a circular pad adorned with rugs of many shapes and sizes, jewelry of different builds, old tetherboxes and a mural painted in small segments across trees surrounding. The guards I burned brought out stoops for the three of us, but leveled three together for Morrigan, to which she giggled and made a joke about where their eyes really looked as they tailed us back to the village. The stranger led us to the chairs while he stood on the other side of the pad. As we sat, the other successors sat on the floor behind our guide. “Thank you for coming with us, Lord-” He caught himself before grabbing at the fabric on his face and loosening it - revealing the scars and marks hiding beneath his green eyes. An uneasy feeling gripped my gut before a momentary still from my vision occupied my eyes, cursing and making it subside thankfully through stubbornness. “Would you like to introduce yourself, successor?”
“My name is Alu, and for that I’m sure.” I rested a hand on her thigh. “And this is my companion, Morrigan Kasteros.”
“By scale and magma, it’s true!” One of the successors spoke.
“Yes, it is Herrick and Dia’s son.” The stranger said casually, an eager smile betraying the tone. “And I am Garreus, founder of this successor colony, leader of people like you, Alu Elfren.” He spread his arms and faced the people behind him, prompting a return of the gesture - an incomplete embrace, before marching over to the series of tree murals, running his fingers along the jagged frames.
“Some of that is a lie.” Morrigan spoke to me, her eyes darting between all the people sitting across. “I can enter most of their minds.”
“Not all of them are successors then.” I remarked, feeling some sort of joyless warmth beneath my eyes when I looked upon some and apathy at others. Garreus turned from the mural, delaying the story with a useless utterance. “This is a story for our ears foremost, Alu. I hope you understand I mean no offense to your companion.”
“My companion stays by my side - if you cannot say your piece, you cannot keep my presence here.” As I replied, I heard a small giggle enter my mind, held back by a bitten lip beside me.
“Very well then,” He answered with a sigh. “We cannot be a whole without every piece.” His fingers grazed the edges once more, and his story began.
“Many years prior, we as a people were up against a threat unheard by scholars and dreamers alike.” Upon the first mural was a representation of a man afflicted with what appeared to be crystallizing skin - making what was once flesh become glass. The mural then showed a great hole that swallowed the village the man once called home. “And during these times of a great plague, we had separated ourselves from the kingdom. We were disallowed from doing so, with those being caught thrown into the vast dungeons and becoming infected by the same blight the king had tried so erroneously to ignore.” Even while talking of such a grave injustice, Garreus’s face showed no sign of even mild rage or irritation. “Those of us who escaped did so before war had started to erupt all over the land. Fields that were once green, marked with only the tracks of merchants were now disfigured beyond recognition - the toll of skirmishes, funeral pyres and mass execution by the remaining party permanently cast a shadow over the formerly beautiful unity.” Garreus projected flame to form castles before crushing them all into a mass of fire that spread across mountains. “Everyone was looking for an answer, blaming the men who just came from across the sea, accusing their former neighbors, invading the southern regions - anything to make the blight stop.” The flame disappeared and Garreus threw his arms to murals of a great array of dragons in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some of the gods held black scales and one red eye upon their head, with wings that only came from the tail. “But while they fought, we prayed to our divine beings. Kept safe under their employ after we had built our shrine of stone and hunted in their woods.” The mural nearby had shown a dragon devouring or pouring out the sun into the sky. “Builders of the sun and the ground we stand upon, our devotion was unending as the world was further stained with the blood of its inheritors.”
Drawings of a congregation before a man set ablaze but seeming unaffected. “As silent as our protectors were, our prayers were finally answered. In times past, we saw the dragons purge the evils of the world before our eyes could even see them. We’d even see them fly as we prayed, and one one rainy morning…the gods from up above on their mountaintop nest came and surrounded us all. A great blaze consumed our minds as their eyes glowed like the suns they set in the sky.”
Garreus stomped on the ground and raised his voice. “And thus! A new vision bestowed, we knew of our great responsibility: to banish the evils that they once cleansed with fire!” When his pause went on long enough, his gaze became sullen. “But what we inherited was far beyond what we could ever hope to save. The responsibilities we had acquired took a toll on our bodies as we tried to seal every tear, every reaching hand of darkness and disaster.” Unwrapping the bandages around his arms, a black rash shined and pulsed across his ebony skin. “So as the world died beyond our control, we escaped.” The composure finally broke, the stone mask from the first chapters of the tale melting out of sight. The storms before my eyes could be justified with clarity, yet the feeling in my throat never wavered upon seeing him look at me - an acidic anchor that laid within as much as it did around my neck.
Garreus didn’t move to the next mural, simply sighing and looking back at me. “Alu, those Vacuous, what this world has called them…they aren’t simple beasts.”
“What are they then, Garreus?” I simply couldn’t think of a rational answer to the leading question.
“When one leaves the world they were born in, they leave the grasp of tethers.”
“The binding elements…” Morrigan began. “From how our bodies move to how we manipulate the world. Without them, you have nothing to hold your existence together.”
Garreus held his tongue for a moment. “That is correct, Kasteros.”
“And if you have nothing to ground you, what happens?” I chipped in.
“That original bond, the anchor will try to pull you back - correct this thing that was never meant to be.” He answered coldly. “But that wasn’t something we knew at the time - all we knew was that as we grew sick from the dragon’s duty, we realized…” He lit a flame in his hand before snuffing it with an angry curling of the fingers into a fist. “We were not ascended for our worthiness or nobility, we were taking their place as they maintained the border of the world…” Tearing off the cloth on his chest revealed the pulsing black stretching from his right shoulder to the stomach. “We were betrayed by our gods, to take their place and suffer while they finally had the chance to die.”
Garreus’s words sent a chill down my spine but my rushing thoughts sent my body to the core of an ice spire. Suddenly aware of all the successors I had killed trying to defend Morrigan and myself after they fought and lost against the anchor of their former world - torn apart in mind, body and soul. The skin I could see was clear but the illusion of black lesions mocked the space between my fingers and feigned crawling and clawing outward on my back side.
“I can see by the look on your face that you understand what I’m saying, you are a child of a Successor bond - Herrick and Dia. Only you were born here, even as your ultimate bond - your mother and father disappeared, you held a place here.”
“But you weren’t born here.” She spoke atonally, like she was thinking past every word delivered.
“Correct, Kasteros.” Garreus answered without relent this time. “There are other ways to make bonds, to make your own anchor - and it is by staking your permanence on something…” He looked over to a quiet woman who only moved and acted when Garreus did, standing on the other side of the tree for whichever mural he exposited. “Or someone.” That smile and statement made something sting in the back of my mind, trying my best to not let it show but it was like trying to suppress a headache by punching your head back into compliance.
“So why come here?” I asked, trying to feign an itchy head as I looked at the speaker. “How did you do it?”
“The same way you did.” He answered plainly. “Used the tears that birthed the spires, coming so quickly after our duties were shunned. The more they came, stretched the line between worlds, the sooner one world…or others came through as well.”
“Your own travels certainly won’t slow the spread of the spires, I’m sure.” Morrigan coldly stated with a stone expression.
“We are not the sole reason worlds are falling apart” He scoffed. “The death of the dragons here would have ended this world eventually, whether we were here or not. There is more than just us, from a different time, a different world, coming in and dying or…thriving and imposing their own order.”
“Those tin men mean little now compared to what will occur soon.” Morrigan continued.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t speak so plainly on the death of strangers, giant. Many of us were killed in our own conquests but much more once the Wardens found us.”
“Is that what happened to my father?” The weight of the question failed to carry the sadness that any normal person would hold for such a circumstance - that pain in my head only intensified in annoyance instead of grief. Garreus kneeled in front of me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Yes, Herrick was one of the first to guide expeditions out to find where the dragons laid, not realizing how they were truly gone here as well thanks to cruel witches.” Morrigan held back a biting thought about the label. “The Wardens found him and the entire crew was skewered for their existence, you were but an infant at the time. Dia left our fold soon after, and I’ve wondered where you’ve been all this time.”
“If you want to know where my mother is, I don’t know.” The absent pain for my father’s passing made itself present when talking about my mother, suddenly getting flashes of the memory I was slowly losing. “If what you say about bonds is true, I think she’s gone.”
“You are but a novice as of this talk, what makes you so sure?”
“He’s been losing his memories for years.” Morrigan spoke at my momentary reluctance, feeling the image of a house fire enter my mind with a painful ringing between my ears. “And if what you say is true, the starting point of those memories…is gone.”
“Vague recollection at best, completely gone at worst.” Garreus grimaced at my momentary revelation, like he somehow never considered this. “I started a fire in our home, didn’t know what I was doing - and next thing I knew, years had passed and I was a begging thief on the streets.”
“That’s…I’m sorry, Alu.” He began, looking back to his sullen people. “But we are here to protect you, to make this family as whole as it can.”
“As touching as that sounds, we’ve got much bigger problems to deal with.” Morrigan interrupted. “The spires will start to emerge from the sky, a grand flood came before we traveled through the tears.”
A wry smile appeared on Garreus’s face. “Excellent, I knew some form of tampering must have taken place after my most recent slumber. Train tracks where there weren’t any before. You gave the Northerners a chance to build their own.”
“How do you know that for sure?” I asked. “If we changed the past, wouldn't your existence ride along with it? Change your memories?”
A small laugh. “We are not of this world, Alu. Your meddling affects everyone tethered here, but we saw the changes happen outside of our existence.” A higher pitch and an energetic swing at empty air. “This is perfect, our travel through the tears was flawed - we lost a few along the waves of darkness. With your help however, we can finally find a time where the dragons conquered the skies still! ”
“What do you need from dragons when you’ve been gifted already?” I stood up, simultaneously enraptured with the information but disdaining of his presence. “Are you hoping for more, an answer to your sickness? You sound like you already have your answers - we are forsaken bastard children of gods.”
He stepped towards me with a snarl, and I could hear Morrigan rise beside me. “Have you been listening at all? This isn’t just about these gifts, it’s about knowing why!” Garreus gestured to his people. “Why were we left to suffer for so long before acknowledgement? Why couldn’t our gods do anything about the plague, the war? Why ascend us, so we can share the same fate? Was it the same for them?”
“And what answer could satisfy the existence we now have? You get your answer, and then what?” I shout back. “Become burdened by the evidence?”
“So we know what we can do, if anything at all!” His finger pointed inches from my face. “We will build anew when we have the answers we need!”
“You’re looney.” I responded.
“Maybe!” He threw his hands in the air, smiling madly. “But I’m insane with a plan.”
“How far are you willing to go?” Morrigan intervened, standing beside me, her shadow imposed on Garreus. “Alu and I’s trek backwards in time was an imprecise action. This land may not even be here if you go too far.”
“Your concern is thorough.” He responded. “But regardless I want to try with this tear, believing that where you go will dictate where you end up. Up above is one world, down below is another, but there may be links to the other worlds in some stray tears. We came from the west when we entered your world. I only hope to find something new entirely now that we’re here in the east.”
“A different beginning.” I replied.
“One in which the gods never died.”
----------------------------------------
Morrigan and I stayed for a little while longer as the rain made the trek outwards unappealing - still serving as a warning for the spire to be. Beyond the trees was a series of caves that must have made Morrigan scoff with the craftsmanship on display - for once she was void on snark to share between us - it was clearly melted with flame with varying results. Rough bumps dotted the ceiling and floor, some seemingly open rooms were filled with rubble.
One of the women escorted us to an open room in their latest attempt at expansion. Morrigan sighed before shifting the stone on the floor to be smooth and lengthening the ceiling. Our housemates down the gravel hallway looked on in horror when the walls and floors groaned by her hands, but simply moved back into their holes, keeping the gaze steady. Unbothered, she sealed our hole with a door.
“Most would be happy at a chance of a family reunion.” She stated as her hand graced the stone, sending out tethers across the mountain.
“Well you saw how their leader acted, man talks like he’s been mad for several lifetimes.” I sat with my back to the new door.
“I know, and I only ask because I don’t trust them - I need to know if you have any reservation about leaving or hurting them if it comes down to that.”
I couldn’t help but sigh at the suggestion - necessary to include but ugly. “I’d rather not hurt them, consider it a last minute option.”
“Ok, my dear.” She said with a smile after the tethers retracted. “I’m sorry this is the way you had to find out about yourself.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I sigh, watching her move over to sit across from me. “Honestly for a moment back there, I thought you would disown me - be mad at me that my kind is somewhat responsible for all this.”
She clicked her tongue and exaggerated a hand motion like a teacher giving a lecture to a youngling. “With the dragons dead, we were fucked eventually. You can’t help where you came from.”
A smile hurt my face for a while, the sheer size and weight of it becoming more apparent as I looked into her eyes. A kiss was briefly exchanged before saying what I felt every day under her protection. “I wouldn’t be nearly half as happy without you in my life.”
She came for another kiss. “You just dropped in at the right time.”
A knock came at the stone door, likely done with kicks to make enough noise. “Did another cave-in occur, Sara?” It was Garreus’s voice. Morrigan pulled a sour face before banishing the wall between us and him. “Oh good, I thought we lost you.” I stood to face him, trying not to let my robbing of the eventual embrace show. “I’d like to speak with you in private, Alu.” He looked past me to Morrigan, still sitting on the ground. “If you would allow, Morrigan.” She simply replied that it was my choice. With the understanding that I could still talk to her from the distance we’d go, I left through the uncomfortable caves once more.
The village pad was aligned with simple stoves and spitroast racks, preparing a grand feast with animals I vaguely knew in these parts - boars, bears, scavengers and eels from the rivers and lakes that lead to the east sea. “I met a few giants during my first years here.” Garreus said to me as he flashed a wide grin at the children trying their flames on the stove with little success but loud enthusiasm. “They are an interesting people, the most efficient nomads and warriors across this entire world perhaps.”
“With the invention of the train in their hands, I imagine it works even better than what the Wardens could have dreamed of.” I replied.
The uniform brow above his eyes seemed to cast a shadow then. “The Wardens are another plague entirely, more than our former brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers united.”
“I’m aware,” I locked eyes with him, feeling that buried venom make itself known once more as I took in his features. “They’ve been trying to kill Morrigan and I especially for a few weeks now.”
“They sent patrols after you?”
“A false being, a woman made of tethers and stone. We barely escaped her - they knew of our crimes in time travel before we knew this was something that more than dreamers could achieve.” The feeling of sand reemerged on my skin, to remind me of the terror and adrenaline that ride through the Southern Reach gave.
“The Wardens are shifting between worlds like you and I have, Alu.” Garreus said slowly as we walked away from the other successors and towards the clearing where we entered the village. “I don’t know who they were before, but the ones we captured and interrogated spoke of Tarengahl and Red Ghast - perhaps former names. They know about traversing the worlds more than we ever will, and your story confirms that they can also tell the future or at least a version of it.”
“How do you think they are doing this?”
“If I did, you think I’d be here able to meet you and discover a new way out?” He replied with a shallow chortle. “My family and I would have found our way out long ago. We’ve navigated the tears with some disastrous tolls, being torn apart from each other and lost.”
“I’m sorry, Garreus.” Morrigan chimed in that they probably knew even less about tetherwork than I did, which made her wonder how they controlled their flames. I presented the question as if it was my own, in a false attempt to cheer him up by changing the question.
“Do you not feel the wings of the dragon when you cast your flame?” He looked at me puzzlingly. “Show me your flame.”
I laid my palm out and lit a simple flame on all my fingertips before creating a big ball in the palm of my hand, concentrating on my tethers to keep the display under control. Garreus nodded his head but the strange tension in his features confirms a confusion. “Interesting, perhaps you forged your own way.”
Garreus stepped back and spread his arms outwards before a series of lines appeared behind him, glowing white and constructing a duo of extensions jutting from his back. The lines connected together before splitting apart and drawing a set of wings stretching out behind Garreus’s arms. “The wings of our former masters rest in our very bodies, coddling the flames as they sway and move to form it.” The bright flesh disappeared in an instant. “Perhaps you can teach your younger successors how to tend their flames when their wings don’t appear.”
I simply nodded my head, feeling that vile hatred sitting upon my neck yet sounding like it's on the other side of the mountains.
“Alu, I need to speak about your friend.” He rests his hand upon my shoulder and all at once, I feel the need to draw my blade and sever the connection from the elbow down.
“My companion?”
“You’re aware that man cannot have children with giants.”
“And why is that of any importance?”
A snarl contorted his face while the grip on my shoulder tightened. “Look around you, Alu Elfren.” He pointed his free hand to the successors eating their boar. “Look!” I gave a momentary glance. “If we are to survive as a people, we need to do our part - to carry on this curse until we can find the answers we seek. To become the very gods we were promised to be.”
A quick flash before my eyes suddenly turned into a relentless assault upon my mind. Images of Garreus flashed in between those of my own father and looking down upon a belly that would slowly grow. A burning consumed the eyes, belly and heart of the one witnessing these images the first time. Moments of my father looking at the inheritor's eyes brought forth a burning at the back of the neck that told me its shape in flame before traveling to the thought cage and making all movement stall as if suddenly being trapped in an iceberg. Words were said that I could not hear but it became clear what the first command was, and everything that followed was a self assured compliance.
I had recoiled away from Garreus’s grasp, and when I gazed upon him a second time, another image came - that of him leading the people and demanding unions for all available. He reached his hand out towards me and I unsheathed my blade and swung it harder than I ever have before. The sword met his flesh but it immediately turned to flame, his whole body appearing as a puppet of fire before returning to his physical form. The melted weapon sizzled beside me.
“You…you deranged dreck. Unapologetic rapist!” I shouted through my teeth. “You forced my father upon my mother all for your fucking cause! For your worthless ideal!”
“How could you possibly know that?” Garreus didn’t even raise his voice. “Is Dia still there somehow in your head?” My muted rage did little to bother him. “Why act so angry when you branded that giant, you depraved child?”
“What are you talking about?” I considered drawing my second sword but predicted the same result.
“You made a bond with that woman and brought that mark upon her back. My servants noticed.” A small smile came across his face. “We have no use for her here but I can let you have your fun while you fulfill your real purpose, successor.”
“Alu, we have a problem here.” Morrigan’s voice came into my head.
“I’ll fucking kill you.” I yelled, a plan formed. I withdrew my second blade and swung slightly, making Garreus adopt his marionette of flame once more. Pulling back I focused and wrapped my tethers around his frame and dragged apart his defense - the wings of his power vanishing. Garreus became flesh and blood once more - out of breath, trying to dodge as I charged and rammed my blade until it stuck from his back.
“Alu, they’re breaking in! I have to run!” Her voice came again before the shifting of the mountain made the nearby children scream in terror. Garreus coughed in my ear before making a small laugh, I pulled back the blade and stabbed him again twice.
“You need me, child.” His grip tightened before I twisted the blade. “Your mind will dissolve, Alu. All you have fought for, will melt before you.” He collapsed to his knees before I separated his head from his body. Upon looking at the successors left over, none of them wanted to attack me. Horrifyingly, I realized what all these bystanders were and the process I imagined was worse than any nightmare I’d had previously.
“Fuck! I’m coming, Morrigan!”