There was something ominous about marching toward a battle you knew was coming, and it was a new experience for Kade. The panicked retreat from the labyrinth, and the labyrinth itself, both had a sense of imminent danger, and Kade had gone through both ordeals with a constant, terror-fueled anxiety. This on other hand, was choosing to walk toward an entity that could be capable of killing him with a thought. This wasn’t hyperbole, it was what Nicky had been delightedly telling him for nearly an hour, as a sharply contrasting scene of green trees and rolling hills marked their journey.
“--and then it had another mouth on its stomach, which wasn’t that weird in the grand scheme of things, but inside that mouth was another, smaller mouth, that spit acid. And that’s how I had my arm dissolved the second time.” She paused, tapping her chin in thought, “The Elder we’re fighting though is fourth generation, so it’s not likely to be quite so exotic. Sixth generation, like the one with four mouths–” Kade interjected.
“You only told me about three mouths.”
“You don’t want to know where or how we found the fourth mouth; trust me and stop being gross,” Kade just smiled and shook his head, used to this behavior from Nicky. “Where was I? Right, sixth generation. They were around when Iros was attacked by some kind of tech-crazy race from the stars, and they fought them long enough that their whole generation ended up shaping their forms just for them.”
“Wait, what?” Kade jumped in. “This planet was invaded by aliens? And that hasn’t come up before now? How long ago was this? If this planet is as old as you all keep telling me, shouldn't the sixth generation be a billion years ago or something?”
Nicky waved a hand dismissively. “You’re exhausting, all your questions seem short and then I have to teach you forty obvious things before I can basically just answer no.” Kade waited patiently, having learned that the first thing Nicky said was almost always some throw-away jibe. “Short answer is that we count the other way, starting with the Calm. Since you never let me give you the short answer, the long answer is that our only reliable history starts with the Calm, so we don’t know about most of the generations before. They say that whatever brought the Calm, killed pretty much every living thing on the planet—except for the most powerful Elders, and even then, only the ones who’d embraced the Trance.”
“What’s the Trance?” Kade asked, trying to remember if he’d hear it before.
“Boring, so ask Edwin. Elder tales are at least interesting. Anyways, stop interrupting. So there was the Calm, and the ones who died–I dunno, Calming?--we call those ones the first generation. Supposedly they were Children of Korthos like us, but they died so who knows? Anyway, because they all died and any trace of them was scoured from the world–our only source of knowledge from before that time is the Elders, starting with the second generation.”
“You take history lessons from Elders, how does that even work? Are there nice ones or something? People keep mentioning Karthas as both a place and an Elder, was he, I dunno, good?” Nicky laughed, and as always Kade was surprised by how pleasant the sound was. Almost enough to justify how often she was laughing at her own jokes.
“No, Karthas was–even by his own account–a truly remarkable piece of filth. The best thing he ever did was sit his fat ass down on a mountain and fall asleep. Elders had no concept of good or bad from what we can tell, and that’s part of why we can’t ever let them wake up–which happens if you can’t get a Ritual of Calm done in time.”
“And that’s what happened now, I take it? So what, do we try to ask this thing a few questions before we start stabbing?”
“Do you even stab, chain-guy? And no, that would be as stupid as this conversation. The only way to learn anything from Elders is to tap into their Soul Cores. Most often that happens during Trials. Occasionally people report seeing writing while they’re inside; it can happen in a lot of ways–a friend of mine found a library once, and every book was basically a terrible, first-person account of something from the life of the Elder. Everything we know from before the Calm is pieced together from there, but it’s not all reliable.”
Kade was still thinking about the writing he saw in the labyrinth when the last thing she said registered. “Wait, what do you mean it’s not reliable? The writing can lie?”
She shook her head, “They don’t think so. It’s not really a conscious mind writing it, so more accurate to just call it skewed or wrong. It turns out that the memories have all sorts of biases, and twisted facts; they say it’s the nature of perspective. People remember things differently; they figured it out a couple of thousand years ago, when they found two Elder accounts of the same war, and both remembered winning it. It was a pretty big deal at the time, since everything they knew was suddenly up in the air, but now anything considered official history has to be verified by multiple Elder accounts.”
“That’s fascinating. So, space aliens?” Kade prompted eagerly, and Nicky made an irritated sound.
“See? One stupid question and suddenly I’m talking all day,” she caught Kade with a halting gesture. “That joke is too easy, even for you. I’ll answer your stupid question, okay? Yes, space aliens. They were here for thousands of years, apparently trying to figure out how to use magic the way we do. Supposedly they all lived in what became Dalton, which is how they got so good at making things. But that’s all we really know. The Elders won eventually. Iros always wins.”
“What do you mean by that?” Kade sensed there was some greater significance to that statement by how she said it.
“I mean Iros has been invaded dozens of times that we know of, and that’s only pulling from the memories of Elders that aren’t too old for the world to have grown over top of them. Everyone wants the energy that makes Iros special, and they never accept that it just won’t work for them. You have to be a Child of Iros to wield her power.” Kade didn’t speak, surprised by the near-religious zeal that Nicky had finished with. Then she laughed.
“If it makes you feel better, we apparently invaded other worlds way more times. Those are the Elder memories I want to see; I’m going to ask for that as a boon someday.”
“Somehow after all this, just hearing that aliens are real is still difficult to process,” Kade replied, thoughtful.
“You’ll want to see the museums then. Every once in a while the Bringers will find some old vault or something, and bring back what they find. It’s turned into a bit of a shrine to thousands of fallen worlds. Apparently Elders enjoyed wiping out entire civilizations almost as much as wiping out each other. I’m not sure there’s really anyone left out there…”Nicky finished by gazing into the sky, and Kade realized he couldn’t tell her she was wrong. After everything he’d earned, he couldn’t be certain either. He changed the subject.
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“So the one we’re fighting is fourth generation. What should we expect? Is it much weaker than the older generations?” Nicky was already shaking her head.
“Again, backwards. Each new generation was always capable of being stronger than the last. That was one thing that was easy to confirm: half of every Elder’s memories seem to be gathering as much power as possible, and the other half was hunting down the next generation before it was too powerful–and ultimately failing. But that doesn’t tell us much about any specific Elder, to be clear. Some were millions of years old when the next generation was born, and it took a long time before the kids were even close to strong enough to take down mommy and daddy. We won’t know how strong this one is until we get there. Was it just lost in the Trance from a young age, or was it the pinnacle of its generation when it finally came to rest.”
“I think I really need to understand this Trance stuff.” Nicky rolled her eyes.
“Fine! But it’s so boring. Elders are amazing, incredibly old beings who conquered the stars, and the Trance is just boring biology. Literally. If a Child of Iros survives long enough to basically lose their purpose, then they just go to sleep, and they don’t wake up until they have a new purpose. I guess if you’re a million and you’ve only ever done one thing, it can start to get boring. Just ask Edwin.”
“I’m not a million years old!” Edwin shouted back from where he was leading the group.
“But he admits he’s only ever done one thing. Anyways, it happens to everyone eventually–if they don’t find a way to die first. They lose themselves, they stop moving, and they either wake up some day with a revelation or they fade into the landscape like shrubbery. Almost all of them do the latter.”
“You left something out,” Edwin called again, sounding far more serious this time.
“I left as much out as I could! I’m going to fall into the Trance myself if I have to explain anything else,” Nicky complained. Edwin picked up where she left off, untroubled by her outburst.
“That was mostly right, though lacking details. It’s very important to understand that to almost every Elder, the only purpose was killing and gaining power, and that purpose can only really be compromised by running out of things to kill, and power to gain. That means almost every Elder we fight will have been a survivor of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of battles. We have the powers of the first generation, so our potential is always greater, but never forget exactly what we're facing–the most accomplished murderers of their age.”
“Wait, so they’re all the last of their kind, the last survivors of their generation?” Edwin shook his head in the negative.
“Not exactly. Most Elders of the same generation will have similar power levels. We figure this is because they eventually plateaued when running out of weaker beings to kill, and when faced with nothing but even matches, most fell to the Trance. But there are examples like you’re saying, sole survivors of their generation. You probably finally understand enough to make sense of the term Ancient, as there’s only two ways to earn that title. EIther by being one of the oldest Elders of your generation, or by finding an eternal purpose. They are ancient not just to us, but to their own generation as well.”
“So the Ancients are like old people who still drive and do their shopping, and the Elders are basically losers who give up after a midlife crisis?” Nicky and Edwin both glanced at their bracers, then each other, then simultaneously replied “No.”
Edwin continued indulgently, “Okay, sort of. Yes, Ancients maintained their purpose long after their rivals gave up, and thus continued to accrue power. But that’s the easy way of earning the title. The ones who earned it the hard way were those whose deeds were so incredible, so beyond belief even in this world that they were considered to be legends even by their contemporaries–essentially figures of myth that were still alive. If you hear someone speak of a Living Legend, they’re likely referring to some of the powerful and remarkable Children of Iros that ever existed.”
Kade seemed confused for a moment, “I don’t think I understand what would be considered legendary, you guys said that all these Elders did nothing but kill and conquer, what kind of myth could they have other than just killing and conquering a lot.”
Edwin and Nicky shared knowing smiles, and Edwin continued, “The two most famous examples are Kronos and Korthos.” Kade interrupted.
“Okay, is it my translation or do a number of these names sound irritatingly similar?”
“Both,” Nicky replied. “It was common for those with the most power, as well as those who intended to have the most power to name themselves something that resembled King, as that’s the title that they fought for. The greatest of them were always naming themselves King of something, and choosing a name for that purpose was a common way of establishing oneself. King Kronos, King Korthos, King Karthas, it’s common even to this day, Kade.”
“King Kadeus,” he responded without thinking, and Nicky and Edwin shared a look while Kade seemed to stare into space. Nicky laughed awkwardly, while Edwin just went back to speaking.
“I was telling you about legendary deeds, and Kronos are Korthos both certainly accomplished their fair share. I told you about Dalton, but the story would take too long to explain then. Kronos is what happened to the nation of Dalton. He was obsessed with using his power to affect time itself, which was considered wrong even then, but he succeeded. Time manipulation became key to his becoming the greatest of his generation, but when there was no one left worthy of battling him, he started to fade into the Trance.
“He’s still a Legend to this day because he embraced another purpose, one that completely transformed his body, which isn’t uncommon. His nature though, was truly unique. The wild power of time manipulation became his only form; no mind or consciousness to guide it. He became what we call the Kronostorm, a mass of time-magic that circles Iros, and causes areas of drastically abnormal time, speeding up or slowing down time in a localized location.” Kade’s eyes went wide as he tried to imagine what that would look like, or worse: what it would do to a person.
Edwin continued, “Thankfully the storm follows the same path with little deviation, but that’s not always true. There have been a few occasions where the storm was diverted, though no one is certain why. Once, it happened to Dalton…the entire nation was eventually covered, but the Kronostorm slowly moved on. This meant some parts of the nation were experiencing time rapidly, while others slowed down. From what was found in the aftermath, the Dalton citizens thrived in the storm for thousands of years, while days passed for the rest of Iros. Eventually the storm passed over them though, and they were slowly expelled from it, which almost nothing can survive.” Both Nicky and Kade remained silent, trying to imagine what it would be like watching the storm approaching, devouring their world, day by day.
“Eventually only King Dalton the man remained. He was incredibly powerful even before the storm, and was nearly a Legend himself by the end. They say he was trapped in an accelerated time for tens of thousands of years, watching as the storm approached, alone and impotent. When the storm cleared, all that survived were the bracers, his final invention.”
There was silence for many long minutes before Kade finally spoke again. “That explains Kronos then, and my nightmares for the foreseeable future. What about Korthos? I keep hearing that name mentioned. Do we have time to hear about him before we arrive?”
Edwin once more smiled indulgently, “We have time for the short version,” he said, then continued walking. Kade barely waited before prompting him.
“Well, what’s the short version?” Edwin stopped, turned to look at him, then smiled. Finally he raised a single finger and pointed up. Kade immediately looked, convinced the man was right above him, possibly as another storm or something worse, but he saw nothing. It was a beautiful day, there weren’t even any clouds, and if this world had moons, he still hadn’t seen them. It was just a sunny day…disbelief obviously became clear on his face, as both Nicky and Edwin smiled knowingly.
“Oh,” Kade said simply, as the truth literally shone down on him. “He’s the god damned sun, isn’t he?”