I'm… tired. I'm tired of it all. Tired of vacating my sheltered wormhole, traveling like a nomad to places far and wide, seeking just one that will accept me.
Is that all I've been looking for? Acceptance? Is that enough?
I can't even see the boy as he strikes me now, again and again, in complete rapture of my senses. He's too fast, too unfamiliar… like a crimson blur of blood from a fountain.
No, that's my blood. That's my blood.
Heji stood by the meditation chamber's small window. He leaned out into the chilled sunrise air, sipped a mug of tea as he waited in stern deliberation.
Kogar knew. Kogar knew, inside of his mind. He could see the picture pristinely — himself with his legs crossed and eyes closed, his black and white armor reduced to an amulet around his neck. His fists were placed together like a closed circuit. That was how Heji described magic — like a circuit. That was how he understood ley theory.
“Kogar. Kogar, close your eyes.”
“They are closed.”
“But they're not. You still see your surroundings, no? Have you no thoughts more worth exposing your mind to?” Heji stood from the window, crossed the small, carpet-floored room to stand before him. "Have you no greater will within yourself?"
Kogar said, “I leave myself vulnerable to be anywhere but right here. Strong as I am, I am not wont to be taken by surprise by those polluted, heretical minds who would deign to snuff me out."”
“Cedric Castelbre, and his lot? You won't stand a chance if you do not resist what you call reality. Open your mind past the surface layers. See all halves of the whole, then the quarters, the eighths, sixteenths… Start with half. Just see your other half.”
Zanthiel. Azatos.
Both sides of his amulet began to glow in opposite colors.
This is it — the truth is that they're not… they're not fixed to be themselves.
The colors swapped. Black became white, white became black.
All is malleable in Etheria. One cannot exist without the other. I cannot exist without Cedric, he cannot exist without—
Heji clapped his hands together hard, disrupting Kogar's concentration. “You're thinking too small. Remove your mind from the boy, remove your mind from Azatos and Zanthiel. They are not the truth which I intend for you to see.”
“Then what? What?”
“The reason you are so weak, Kogar, is because you refuse to see the true nature of your ability, or of your identity. You've merely inherited Etherians, but beneath it all you're all flesh. So what separates you? What makes you different than, say, Rykaedi? What makes you better?”
“She is… pure.” he muttered hesitantly.
“Do I detect envy in your tone? But all it takes to match her is to do as Cedric does: understand your power at its root, understand the core nature. And do not surrender the root of yourself; do not surrender Talek.”
His eyes shot open.
There was crimson Cedric again, wailing on him, striking him, breaking his body, ripping him apart. There was Rykaedi, digging her pincers so deep into the meat of his calf that they clicked together on the inside, pulled his sinews and fat and skin all at once in an orgy of pain and agony.
He shut his eyes again.
“Do not surrender Talek. Admit that he exists. Admit that he is you."
“Talek is dead.”
“When did he die? When you declared him dead?”
His voice whimpered and cracked through grit teeth, “When I killed her!”
His eyes opened again. There were tears on his cheeks. He was surrounded by the cosmos, by violet nebulae, by blue clusters of golden stars, by red supernovae…
This is it…! This is what he wanted me to see!
He turned to see Caloria, a big blue and green bulb behind him. Around it, he could even see the ley barrier — an iridescent series of intricately woven lines engulfing the planet, the whole of their realm. And his tears kept coming.
He saw the sun. He saw the moon. He muttered in awe, “...Kosos!”
“God of Moon and Star,” answered the voice in his mind. But it was no longer Heji's.
He turned to see Cedric stood in bare space some paces away, as bare as himself. As exposed, as vulnerable.
Kogar kicked through space as though in water. His body floated away at a dreary pace. “Cedric!”
“...You summoned me here, Kogar. The same way I've summoned Akvum so many times before…” he mused, and he looked upon the beautiful world. “...It all feels so small out here.”
“Why would I summon you!?”
“Because you're realizing we're not so different.”
“Bullshit.”
Cedric shrugged. “We're both Etherian Knights, if that's the popular term. We both have no idea what we're doing…”
Kogar didn't answer. He turned his eyes upon glowing Calamon.
“...One of us is just slightly more heavy-handed.”
Kogar's brow stiffened, though his voice was uncertain. “They refused to bow down to me. They forced my hand. I wasn't going to unleash Calamity until they cornered me.”
“You killed thousands to protect yourself.”
He shook his head. “You'll understand as your position in the world grows. You'll see that it was inevitable.”
“Widespread punishment, Caine disease and famine and genocide are not inevitable. Evra wouldn't have allowed it.”
He chuckled. “Evra and Azafel are not so different as you'd like to believe. One cannot exist without the other. Or, they can, but our world would not be as it is. Evra may have created humanity, but Azafel gave them life. Free thought, independent action… That's chaos.”
“...Maybe.”
“You reject balance, Cedric. And one day you'll find it, but it'll be too late.”
“I don't believe in too late. Is that why you gave up on Talek?”
Kogar twisted an enraged glare to Cedric. His teeth were liable to shatter beneath his strength. “Who the fuck is Talek?”
“You. You, before you became this aberrant horror, before you decided to fuck the world. Did you forget? Did you shut it all out?”
His face softened. He turned away with his mouth agape, rubbed his temples.
“You're a man, not some pureblood Etherian. You're better than Rykaedi, but you follow her footsteps in spreading devastation and carnage. Is that right? Is that what the boy inside of you wants?”
No answer.
Cedric floated toward him, his voice growing. “You've spent your life shutting him out. I've spent my life trying to make amends with him, to reconcile. Talek, I slaughtered the people I grew up with in Cylenia. I selfishly chose myself before them. If I had died with them… imagine, how many more would have survived in lieu of me? But when the Sylvet came, I chose to band with them, not to fight against them with my family, who I knew would be slaughtered. I chose to commit sins against Evra. To destroy, and murder, and kill, and rape the world of joy wherever we passed. And now I do everything in my power to make it up to that boy in me, to make it up to the Lorik who was abandoned that day. I want to bring him joy.” Cedric felt his Hunters’ armor form around him. No more was he laid bare, covered now by the guise of salvation, of hope. Of order.
“Enough.”
“You should want to protect Talek. You should coddle him, not—”
“Enough!” His voice shook when he turned to face Cedric again. “You think you know me so fucking well? You think you understand me? Talek is dead; I killed him myself.”
“It's not too late…”
“So glad am I that you've found your answers, your tidy little way to wrap it all up, wipe your fucking hands clean. You've found forgiveness, you've found Evra!” And his voice cracked and whimpered, “But I've found nothing in these thoughts and words! There's no more for Talek here, and soon there won't be a fucking Caloria!”
Wooden floor appeared beneath their bare feet. "...Why?"
Kogar rolled his head back and forth like a drunk reconciling his emotions. “Do you know what it's like? To be mocked by lesser men? To be thought of as... insignificant?”
“I do.”
“Do you know how it feels to be a… a laughing stock? To never have anything you say taken seriously?”
“I do.” Sandy walls formed around them. “When did Talek die?”
His two-tone armor formed around his body. He growled through his teeth, “When I strangled her.”
And he watched. He watched his thick, bulging hands wrap tight around a slender woman's neck in that desert town of Harth. Tears streamed his cheeks while he did it, but that was no amend. That was no sympathy. His face was contorted in complete horror, complete misery. Agony.
“...She asked you to do it.”
“That answer is for cowards who can't admit to themselves what sins they've committed.” he gasped, his hands growing tighter around her throat. His grip grew tighter still, even after her body went limp. Even after her arms gave their last feeble throes of life, dropped limp at her sides. Even after her eyes flickered shut.
He could only gasp out sob after sob after sob.
“...And then Talek was dead.”
Kogar fell to his knees, let his palms catch the falling tears. Her body fell beside him. “She couldn't bear what I had become, what this Etherian power had done to me…”
“She was the only one to take you seriously. She was... kind.”
“And I snuffed her out. I killed her!”
He was being struck still, outside of their mental chamber. The walls were beginning to crack.
Don't yet tear me from these stars.
“Kogar—” Cedric stepped beside him, placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Talek… your story doesn't have to end in this moment.”
Don't you get it?
A counter. The flurry of blows was reversed. Cedric was suddenly pressed beneath the weight of Kogar's hammer fists — his right arm had regenerated as a glowing mass of black and white cosmic energy.
That's exactly what The Moment is…!
Space became thick and thin, cold and hot, long and short.
There's no escaping the finality of that moment! The ecstasy and dread and hatred for myself and everything! It's pervasive — The Moment makes everything exist all at once!
His crimson armor shattered. The Heretic stumbled back down the marble steps, clutched his broken arm tight.
I understand! I am enlightened!
He kicked Cedric's jaw to a sickeningly loud POP!
I'm stronger — because I reject what makes you human!
Rykaedi grew behind him, loomed over his back like an assassin in the shadows.
I am… whole! My two halves are become one!
Down she went, her pincers lunging for the exposed back of his neck.
Kogar spun beneath her, suddenly grabbed her platinum lock with his cosmic right hand. The iridescent lines that pulled out from it were like Evra’s engulfing spiderweb of ley.
And then those lines snapped.
And Rykaedi screamed.
The agony I can permit! And I am the god whose job it is to permit!
His eyes lit up platinum. Like the moon, like Evra.
I am Kosos, Moon and Star!
53.
Age of Etherian
Marisol charged up the white steps to the Vehkeidon, steps that rounded the building graced with the heavenly light of the midday sun. Twenty, thirty men of purple and red skins charged up behind her in unison, beneath silver and white plates of Hunter armor that shone that fiery sunlight back in glints and glistens of honor and valor.
A dark and shadowy figure stepped out at the zenith platform of the rounded stairway to block her, to block her ensemble of soldiers.
Marisol held up a paper scroll stamped with yellow wax — “We have direct orders from King Heji Aeon to enter the palace! It's dire!”
Then the black-donned shade smirked a malicious, broken-tooth grin. That's no human—!
A sel soldier leapt before her as a shockwave rippled through the air. He pulsed his Antithesis — and then tensed up as his body was wracked with horrendous pain.
“The barrier! Erect the barrier…!” Her voice trailed off as her gaze spun to the crowd behind her. They'd all begun a dance of agony. And then one's skin split in half. His skeleton grew too massive for his skin and ripped through. The whole of his flesh began to morph and abberate, tugged and tore itself open into a hellspawn unkind, unlike anything she'd ever dreamt of. Even in Kogar's nightmare realm, she'd never seen anything so horrible.
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And that dark shade up high tapped his sheathed weapon against the marble floor.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap...
…When her mind began to become her own once again, all she could hear was screaming. She could hardly remember where she was — for however long she'd been standing there with her sword limp in her hand, she'd completely spaced out. Her mind had completely shut the horrors out. Her body shuddered through a sick and twisted sense of deja vu. And then… she began to cry.
…Why? Why am I crying?
She wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand. The soldiers were still screaming around her while their bodies ripped themselves apart, while their twisted daemon-brothers bit into the necks of those adjacent, began to maul their comrades under their new rule. Blood sprayed all over the white steps, poured like buckets down the side of the tower.
And then she began to laugh.
Hopeless. It's hopeless to think we could have stopped them, stopped any of this.
That dark shade at the top of the steps still lingered there. Unmoving.
Ridiculous. We're all fools, and I'm the worst of the lot. I haven't even been on the frontline, and yet I think to plan and plot and…
She begged to fall to her knees. Blood from a nearby soldier splattered onto her dark skin. She winced through that laugh, becoming more a forced choke than a laugh. The others laughed, too. And gagged, and choked, and cried, and screamed. That was it — absolute horror had polluted their minds like a virus. She could already feel her longing for her sword to dig inward, her desperation to end it all. There was no reaching Cedric. No reaching Faunia. Human willpower is a joke, easily triumphed. Living is suffering. There is no good in Caloria, no hope in Calamon. There is only death. There is only…
“...No.” Her voice shuddered. Her grip grew tight around her hilt. “No.”
The squirming centipede-daemons and skeletal monsters, their oozing flesh and ripped skins… all faded into a less morbid reality.
“No!” she commanded, “Do not let them possess you! Do not let them take you! It's illusory, it's not real!”
Marisol’s teeth grit hard against each other. Then, one by one, they began to shatter in her mouth. She pulled her jaws apart in a gasp, let the demon visions squirm in once again before she slammed her eyes shut. “NO!” she howled like a frightened child. “Don't let them TAKE YOU!”
BFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF…
A pulse of Antithesis. She ripped her eyes open. The steps were littered with allied corpses, bodies covered in blood or with their entrails dragged out. Some bodies were mutilated beyond comprehension, some were twisted halfway through transformation…
They're… real!? It's not a hallucination…!
She lurched over, puked a stream of green over the ledge of the tower. Her eyes twisted, struggled to focus on the dark shade at the top of the steps — he's not an Etherian… he's…
She could see, then, the figure up there in black-gold robes holding a black and purple amulet forward. The amulet began to glow again over his pale hands as Antithesis wore off.
“Antithesis… pulse. Pulse the silence…!” she gasped through burps and gags.
BFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF…
The glowing stopped. The lingering fear began to regress. And finally, not just for her.
The man at the top of the stairs panicked, gave a flustered turn on his heel.
You're not going anywhere, you bastard!
She threw her sword over her shoulder.
A woman with flaming amber hair beneath a winged steel helmet appeared there. She caught the hilt, reeled back.
Helag, STRIKE!
WOOOOOOOOOOSH!
The blade soared like a spear. It struck true into the man's spine, sent him barreling over the tower's edge.
“The amulet, get that amulet!” Marisol ordered her Etherian.
The woman's face turned a cocky grin. “As you wish, master.”
Helag grabbed Marisol by the armpits, leapt over the edge with her in tow. The girl only managed a short scream before the helm’s wings grew to full size and caught their descent. A blast of fire accelerated them toward the falling robe, slammed them all together long enough that Marisol could wrestle with him, pry the amulet away from his still-dying body.
Then Helag swept up the other side of the tower, placed Marisol at the top of the steps where he had been just a moment ago.
She looked down to the onyx amulet in her hand, panting heavy breaths. But she was calm. She trusted Helag. And Helag had yet to deceive her. Cedric will know more about this. We need to reach Cedric.
Then she looked to her knights, those remaining still recouping after the staggering attack. “Steel yourselves, men.” she commanded. "It will get no easier from here."
Nasrya chortled a sickening laughter, swung her scythe overhead with such velocity that her body compressed downward, her knees retracted like dense springs.
Like a guillotine, down came Ithlo’s greatsword. A fast spray of frost shot upward from his shoulder and deflected her blade just a foot to the side.
And his blade cleaved her skull in half, unzipped it down to the collarbone where it lodged firmly into her flesh.
CLANG!
The scythe blade shattered tiles. Ithlo pressed his boot into her chest, kicked her back and tugged the blade free. He wiped the flat with his sleeve until the blood had all vanished.
But she kept laughing. While her head reformed, pressed itself back together, she only kept laughing.
“So I should break your amulet? And that'll stop your regeneration?”
“You can try! But first, a hug!”
Thrum’s living corpse suddenly grappled him from behind, pulled his arms tight so he couldn't move.
Nasrya dropped her scythe forward. The blade rotated on the pole into a sharpened spearpoint. She rushed him.
Ithlo struggled left and right, his face finally contorting into a show of fear. There was no telling what would happen — would he be absorbed into the amulet’s scales? Would he be brought into her scales? Was such a thing even possible?
And just as the point neared his flesh—
“Tirolith!” barked a new voice. An explosion of frost suddenly coated Nasrya’s back, locked her legs in place beneath giant crystals of ice. She struggled left and right, pushed the spear tip as far as it would go. But it would no longer reach. Ithlo narrowed his gaze.
Faunia Vleren emerged from behind Nasrya, coated in a suit of icy armor. Her face was slick with pain.
“I am ever glad to see you, Faunia.”
Her face softened slightly. “That's wholly unexpected of you to say.”
Just then, Thrum’s embrace grew tenfold in power. Ithlo’s ribs began to buckle and crackle while his face was overcome by agony.
Faunia lifted her bow of ice, released an icicle arrow through the shattered, bloody helm overtop his fractured skull.
When it hit, his whole body exploded into a cocoon of frost. His figure stumbled back before it locked in place, statuesque.
And their fight was over.
Nasrya barked, “Release me! Let me out of this fucking cage!”
“Feeling claustrophobic?” mused Faunia. “I'm guessing these two won't die.”
He shook his head. “Their amulets are bound by fragments of Algirak. We have to destroy them.”
“What about Cedric?”
Ithlo’vatis turned his gaze to the top of the steps. Faunia looked on with him, her heart panging with anxiety and guilt both.
“...Tirolith.” muttered Faunia
The icy girl appeared beside her.
“Go to him.”
She cocked her head. “What happened to resisting change? You do know the consequence of me fusing with—”
“I know,” Faunia whined. “But, fuck, what other choice do I have? Preserve you, or keep Cedric alive. Protect Aeon? Or… or hold you back. It was selfish of me to even think…”
Tirolith stared at her for a long moment. “You're not selfish.”
Faunia only managed a dreary smile. “You don't need to lie for my sake. Go get in there.”
Tirolith hesitated again.
“Well? Go on, he needs our help.”
Then Tirolith placed their heads together. “I never knew how exactly to express this feeling, this thought I've had since we met, since we fused… I think humans would just say ‘I love you.’ So, Faunia Vleren. In case I don't come back... just know that I love you.”
And Tirolith was gone in a flurry of ice.
Kogar howled from his place above the battered Cedric. His eyes had turned iridescent, then
That's why men are so scary, Cedric thought. Because they can change. They adapt, they develop. Etherians can too, in a sense. But they are much more constricted in it than any of us.
The last time he had seen Rykaedi was when she was skittering away. The lock being ripped from her flesh had devastated her, perhaps beyond recognition. Only time would tell.
But Kogar did not enjoy being ignored.
His black boot struck Cedric, knocked his still-healing teeth from his mouth again.
Then came the white boot, knocked him in the temple hard enough to concuss, staggered him low onto the steps.
RELEASE.
RELEASE.
No, NO! Don't you see, he's vulnerable! Talek is vulnerable! We have to strike the heart—!
Another boot knocked Cedric's gaze astray. His vision became blurry.
Cedric! There's no more time, we have to slaughter him!
The ley constricted.
Tirolith, stop!
The ley relaxed.
Cedric panted. Cedric gasped.
Ithlo… Ithlo, what do I do!?
...Tirolith is right, Cedric. We have to put a stop to this.
But... But he's like me!
Itlho, Tirolith, Serkukan all appeared before him on the few steps leading up to the glowing Kogar.
...One move, Cedric.
AND HE'S DEAD.
Cedric winced, averted his gaze.
I... I can't! He's mislead, he can be saved!
Last chance, Cedric!
FUCK YOUR MERCY.
Serkukan vanished from the steps. And then Cedric's body moved on its own, threw itself forward into a sprint.
Cedric's teeth slammed into each other like blacksmith hammers, locked tight as he let loose the most devastating screech that they could all muster. All of space contorted around him as time relaxed, time pushed itself slower and slower. Cedric's clawed fist continued to approach, continued to near, continued to reach...
It wasn't long before Cedric's arm was miles long. And no matter how far it stretched, no matter how many steps he climbed... Kogar was just out of reach.
...Kogar sneered. His armor began to flicker, to writhe between black and white. "This is The Moment, boy."
My Moment.
It wasn't a flurry that time; it was the most singularly immense pain that Cedric had ever felt, like his whole body was being shredded and torn apart all at once. Time continued to slow, his entire body began to stretch and stretch in orbit around Kogar, twisting and distorting inhumanly. He couldn't tell where his crimson armor began or ended in the sea of blood and flesh.
Kogar was in the center of it all. Kogar had become entirely limitless in the sea of black, his gravity had outweighed Cedric's own.
"I should have killed Talek properly so long ago! Little did I know that expanding my mind so far would open me to completeness! It started with her... I had to kill her to unleash my true potential!"
Cedric's reality was fading, abstracting itself to destruction.
I am the eternal ending to all that exists. There is no escape, Cedric Castelbre. I would snuff out even Solus, even Lunus!
All began to shrink around Kogar. All was becoming dark around his sinister, dark grin. And Cedric had already ceased to exist within the massive ring of light forming around his black hole form.
"Finally, I have become a GOD!"
BFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!
Faunia gasped up from the floor. Clatters of footfalls stormed the room around her, a familiar face most relievingly at the fore. "Faunia!"
Marisol quickly ran over to the silver sword, began helping her up.
Nasrya snarled and barked, "Fuckers! Get out of here! Get out of Kogar's—"
One of the sel ripped her amulet free, ran her throat through with his blade. Her head fell limp. Her lips went quiet.
Faunia panted, "He's up there! He has Tirolith and Ithlo, I don't know what's..."
"It's okay, Faunia." She looked to her ensemble. "Start the barrier!"
Faunia could no longer feel Antithesis when they pulsed it, except for a slight upset in her stomach. She looked to the floor where her tears had begun to splatter, wiped her face on Marisol's shoulder. Her tears shuddered there in place.
"...He'll be okay. As soon as the barrier is up, Kogar won't be able to... do whatever this is..."
It was like all space within that throne pyre had been erased into a black void, a ring of burning light now surrounding it in a perfect circle. The chandeliers not yet within it were being pulled tight toward it as though by giant magnets. And so were Faunia's floorbound tears.
"It's too late..." Faunia cried. "If he's in there, he's dead!"
"Cedric doesn't believe in too late, Faunia. He'll make it. The same way he's still doing his damndest for Calamon, the same way he did everything within his power against Rykaedi... When he went up against Algirak, he was all alone. But now he has us. Men, the BARRIER!"
And then the glowing, iridescent ley barrier growing within the circle of sel men and women burst outward like an explosion.
Cedric was laying on the 'floor' of empty space, laying prone on complete nothingness. He was sure he had died.
Space. Time. Algirak was space, a black Etherian... Llestren'vatis was time... White... Ithlo'vatis, Tirolith... Azatos... Zanthiel.
Kogar was some feet away. He turned himself to Cedric. "What the fuck is this?"
"...We're back..." he groaned, though he knew the words hadn't escaped his mouth. He wasn't even sure if he was in one piece. I'm dead.
"What this fuck is this!? In my moment of triumph, I'm returned to my fucking meditation session with you?"
The Moment... Time. The Moment captures moments in time... It maintains them, forever. That's why it's faster than stopped time... If he can hit me once, he can capture it...
"Don't you fucking ignore me."
...I'm back. He looked at the backs of his hands beneath himself. He began to push himself from the 'ground.'
And then he was upright just as Kogar rushed him, grabbed him by the throat.
"WHAT IS THIS!?" he howled.
"This is..." Cedric mustered, "the sel ley barrier."
And the facade of space collapsed around them.
X
Princess Arobella lazed in the chair sequestered within the dark corner of her sunlit room, a wine glass still dangling between her fingers. She stared off with her jaw slack, her eyes focused on nothing but the gaudy patterns of the busy wallpaper. She hardly blinked as she sat there, hardly moved even a single muscle.
Cedric Castelbre. The only one who hasn't submitted himself to me. The only one who hasn't deigned to hand me a gift, the only one who doesn't give a damn for how a civilized society functions. Him and that whore, Vleren.
She brought the wine glass up to her lips. It was empty. The fingers of her other hand went over her shoulder, scraped and scrounged for another bottle, for a refill of her most potent vice.
The eyedropper-topped bottle she found at her fingertips gave her a surprise. It was on the decanter table beside, packed within a cluster of similarly shaped and sized bottles.
And to think, if I would have just drank this... she thought, her eyes going wide with the possibility.
And then she tilted her head.
And a sickly sneer began to form over her lips.
...Yes. If I were to drink this. Or better yet, if the queen was to drink this...!
Oh?
She blinked. She looked left and right in alarm. The sunlight seemed to have faded from the room.
It appears to me we'll get along just fine!
And she looked up; there were the clicking white pincers, the moldy bone of a skeletal daemon far decrepit, long laid to rest. And so did its bony, centipedal legs writhe and wriggle.
Arobella screamed.
And Rykaedi had her.
END
VOLUME 4