Arthur staggered after Lancelot through the woods outside the castle of Lancelot’s family, it had been two days but he was still recovering after the backlash of the fight against Mordred.
“We have to take the fight to him!” Arthur pleaded. “Lancelot please!”
“No!” Lancelot snapped whirling on him. “You unleashed a Bloodline Curse, you tried to kill your own niece in your lust for revenge. I fear what Mordred is about to do and I hate it as much as anyone but it was YOU who drove him to this!”
Arthur took a step back but Lancelot wasn’t done.
“Mordred was always a bastard in a fight but he had rules, he never slaughtered people who backed down from him, he didn’t sacrifice his vassals for rank points and Dominate more like the Warlords of the past,” Lancelot ranted.
“He is the Warlord,” Arthur shot back.
“No, he isn’t, not anymore, again because of you; and what he became instead was even worse. If Mordred really is the monster, you claim he, is it is because you made him so,” the weight of Lancelot’s accusation hung between the former friends.
“I will not help you any further, I’m taking Mira, and we will find somewhere to protect the ones we care about and under our leadership from these plagues. See to your own house Arthur, for I fear Mordred will not let it stand.”
Arthur watched Lancelot turn his back and leave him once again. He slid to the ground against a tree. He had killed Mordred; he knew that for certain. The System had confirmed it after all. Arthur pulled up the ability he had gotten from the System awhile after returning from the Void.
Machine Heart (Rank 20); Just as you were cheated of truly killing your nemesis so you now can cheat him if he ever slays you. When your body is killed you will automatically bind with your armor returning to life but forever bound and confined to your armor. (This effect can occur only once)
Your bonded armor is like flesh and can be repaired with healing potions, spells and abilities.
Your bonded armor acts as an extension of your body gaining benefits from all your Titles, Abilities and other effects that would effect your flesh and blood body.
Your bonded armor gives you a 25% bonus to your physical Attributes effectiveness.
Your bonded armor boosts your regen rate for all resources by 50%.
Final Rank Bonus: Your bonded armor reduces all damage taken by two stages.
Cost:
N/A
Casting Time:
Instantaneous
Upgrade this ability to increase the power of your living armor/flesh hybrid. Each rank increases your Toughness, Endurance, Might and Speed by 1.
Arthur was uneasy about the ability; the idea of being permanently bonded to and confined to his armor troubled him. But the description of the ability and the rank points he’d gained were the confirmation that the Bloodline Curse had worked as intended yet somehow Mordred still lived. He couldn’t be an undead the Curse would have ripped away even the energy needed to make a specter and left no flesh or bone behind. No Mordred had some ability, perhaps like Machine Heart to come back. The only question that remained was could it be used again?
There was no way to tell which left Arthur with one path, he couldn’t just destroy Mordred’s body, he had to destroy his very soul.
---
On the morning of the third day my eyes snapped open. I rose from my throne; I had not been idle before the temple my knights were armed and armored in new armor and weapons either enhanced from their old gear or newly crafted.
“Today I unleash you upon Talba,” I said my voice echoing across the Void. “You are my swift and terrible sword, the first of my plagues I shall visit upon the world in Retribution.”
The ringing of metal on stone sounded through Avalon as my knights knelt before me.
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“Thus say the Lord!” the multitude of warriors of every race said.
“I have not come to bring peace but a sword, turning brother against brother, father against son,” I said. “For three days you shall not spare the sword but will unleash it upon anyone who does not bend the knee and swear the Oath.”
“Thus says the Lord!” they shouted again.
“Go now and let nothing stay your hand,” I said opening hundreds of portals before my army.
They marched through the portals leaving the Void and entering Talba. I let the portals close after them then I sat on the throne and closed my eyes. I hadn’t lied when I said I would remind the gods just why they feared the Void. I would not destroy reality but I would stretch it, my abilities were powerful but they weren’t strong enough to spread across the entire globe.
At least they weren’t while in Talba, hear in the Void the only limit I was under was what my will could dream up and my mind enforce. Portals opened up again as I let my power float out of me, I reached out to the infinite potential of the Void and let it flow through and out of me. A dark storm flashing with lightning flowed through the portals. On and on the storm flowed but I wasn’t done, my teeth rattled as a great buzz filled the air as millions of flies and locusts were created and unleashed upon the earth.
My angels flew forth with my plagues to give testimony to my will as I spoke through them.
“I send a hail of burning ice upon your lands, I send the locusts to strip your world until there’s nothing left of green. I send the flies to bring boils on your skin and feet.” I said. “All these plagues will last for three days until you break or until you kneel.”
My final warning was spoken as I brought my judgement down upon the world.
---
Jeriah swung his sword cutting through the guards attempting to block his way. Alongside him the black armored forms of the Void Knights marched forwards cutting through the city’s defenses. Blocks of burning hail rained down but never where any of them stood. Some fields and orchards were spared as the farmers who owned them had bent the knee to Mordred and swore the oath. A dome of energy rose over the city deflecting the hail off of it but it didn’t stop the buzzing swarm of locusts and flies that flew through the storm darkened sky. Cries of pain rose up around them, but Jeriah hardened his heart.
Mordred hadn’t been the only one to suffer, one of the civilians Arthur had cut down had been one of his older daughters; he was not the only father bringing his wrath down on the world in judgement. His heavy two-handed sword cut through another three men as he moved through the street to the castle at its center to bring down the dome over the city.
The city was already in an uproar as a civil war broke out between those who took the power Mordred offered them and those loyal to the old gods. Mordred’s words turned true as he tore family clans apart as brother turned against brother, mother against daughter. Jeriah smashed through the line of castle guards, blades, heavy bludgeoning weapons and scorching elements slammed into him but his armor and the skin of Void armor against his skin made him nearly impervious to the attacks. He wasn’t like Mordred who could weather the attacks of an entire army but against these common Gifted he was like a dragon loosed in a cattle pen.
Jeriah broke through the castle gates and fought his way down the corridor. Magical and mechanical traps activated but he activated his ability Life Surge and repaired the damage he took it had a thirty second cooldown but the armor he gained as a Void Knight plus his actual armor were more than enough to handle the rest. Despite no longer being a vassal of the Warlord, he had maintained the ability Foresight that Mordred had gifted him as one of his lieutenants. Apparently, the System considered that more a part of Jeriah than just being a lieutenant of the Warlord.
His sword cleaved open a set of heavy steel doors and he stormed into circle of mages. Their screams were short as he cut them down ending their channeling of the shield dome above the city. He climbed up a tower of the castle and looked out over the city as buildings burst into flames as the burning hail rained down on them.
“Are we on the right side brother?” Tobias asked coming up beside Jeriah.
“How can you ask that after what that beast did to Heresha?” Jeriah snapped.
Tobias laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I feel your anger Jeriah, but don’t become like the monster that murdered my niece. He was willing to kill innocents to get at Mordred and take his revenge, how are we not doing the same thing now?”
“Because THEY did nothing,” Jeriah said gesturing out over the city. “When we were being hunted down for extermination through the woods and Underlands they stayed safe in their houses obeying the monsters who hounded us like animals. Remember the lesson our father taught us Tobias, the Law of Strength.”
“So might makes right?” Tobias asked, but he wasn’t really asking it of Jeriah.
“It always has,” Jeriah said. “Unfortunately for everyone else they are no longer on the side of the mightiest.”
“They have the gods on their side,” Tobias reminded him.
Jeriah let a grim smile come over his face. “Not for much longer.”
---
Lancelot looked past the dome of his castle, they were far from any major city but they had evacuated all the nearby villages to inside their walls. The land was on fire, the locusts and flies ravaged the land; they burned to a crisp if they tried to pass the walls but that didn’t matter. Lancelot trembled in his armor. He hadn’t just refused to join Arthur out of disgust at his actions and who he was making himself. He was afraid.
No man -even a demigod- could do devastation on such as scale at this. Even the gods who might have had the power had that power bound and checked by rules they were forced to abide by. Not so Mordred, he had been rejected by his patron at the insistence of the other gods and banished back to his world to die of mana starvation.
However, instead of dying like he should have he had returned ten times stronger and answering to no one but his own conscience.
“If he even has one,” Lancelot muttered.
He tried to keep that spark of rage on fire but he didn’t have the heart anymore. He was tired, he looked down at his fingers, not his fingers anymore but the magical prosthetics of living wood. He wiggled his digits but it wasn’t the same, Mordred had showed him what he would have to endure if he wanted to win this game and he knew now he wasn’t willing to pay that price. He also couldn’t truly fault Mordred for his fury, the thought of someone trying to hurt Mira and his unborn child filled him with a rage that would also burn down the world if it could.
He and Mira couldn’t win the game of the gods anymore than they could stand against Mordred and win.
“Let Arthur fight this battle,” Lancelot muttered. “I don’t know if it even matters which one of them wins at this point, we’ll still have a monster as the next god of this world.”