The Third Prince of Iros finally let the limp hand fall from his grasp. It didn’t matter that he and the other Princes had mourned each other before the battle had even begun, the pain of loss would not be diminished. But neither would the bonds of duty, and the Third Prince would fulfill his, regardless of cost, of pain, of sacrifice. He rose slowly into the air, not wishing to step around and amongst the dead. Too many were those he recognized...too many were family.
He allowed his gaze to take in the whole of the battlefield, his powerful senses more than enough to paint a vivid picture of the horrors that had taken place here. It had been such a good cause, hadn’t it? A worthy cause, one worth dying for. One worth killing for certainly, but that was too easily true in this pitiless world. He hoped that would finally change, now that they’d won.
A bitter laugh escaped his throat, echoing loudly amongst the endless fields of the dead. Calling this a victory felt like madness. The Third Prince took in the sight once more, his laughter as forgotten as he soon would be. Fires burned in every direction, a common side-effect of the wanton power that had been thrown around with reckless abandon. Hills rose and fell, shaping the landscape as far as even his eyes could reach. Some were natural, others a byproduct of some power or other, but most were simply the dead. Piled high into the thousands, and then stomped down by ally and enemy alike in a battle that seemed to have no end.
The Third Prince felt his body spasm, a bitter reminder that the end had surely come. He’d be the last to fall, as they had all expected. He would never be a match for the near force of nature his eldest brother had been, nor did he possess a fraction of the Second Prince’s versatility, not even the unshakable faith of his younger brother, but he had always been one thing above all else: relentless. He would rise when others would fall, he would persevere when others would break…he would complete their duty when all his brothers lay dead and broken at his feet. And so he continued his slow journey, willing himself toward the artifact left behind for this moment.
He wasn’t sure if he had the strength to move faster than the gentle pace he set for himself, practically meandering toward his fate, but even his so-called relentless tendency to charge ever-forward didn’t include rushing to his own certain death. He chose instead to be grateful for these final moments, as he drifted as if on a light breeze ever upward toward the site of the final battle. Not his final battle, he had no more wars to wage. This was the resting place of the First Prince, now a shared grave with the fool of a God that he had died slaying.
The battlefield covered at least the majority of the continent, and it would be left to the philosophers and historians to decide if calling the entirety of the world a single battlefield was more accurate. Without question no corner of Iros, however distant, had managed to avoid the conflict entirely. As such, even flying high above the Plains of Karavash, he had some time before he’d reach his destination.
His lofty perspective gave him a near-endless view of how the battle had played-out, and the ages he’d lived gave him the experience to piece it together as he flew. The elementalists had, as always, made their presence known in the most obvious of ways. He saw rivers of fire colliding with towering glaciers, artificial mountains conjured by the earth-touched, then perverted into volcanoes by their flame-touched counterparts.
There was evidence of the less common combatants as well. Massive lightning storms still raged, no doubt conjured by a weather sorcerer of some power. Carnivorous plants had risen from below, alongside countless summoned creatures and the odd, clock-work bodies of lifeless automatons. The technology-obsessed House of Dalton somehow always managed to impress, no matter what the more traditionally-inclined houses might say behind their backs–or even to their faces.
At one point he passed a near-endless series of metal spikes, impaling countless numbers of the enemy, and rising into the sky like some ancient, steel forest. The Third Prince smiled sadly, knowing the metallurgist responsible for the destruction, and sorry that the gentle man had been forced to do something so counter to his nature. His capacity for destruction had always been nothing compared to his capacity for love and forgiveness.
The Third Prince took on a grim countenance as he considered the fallen forces of Karavash, and concluded–not for the first time–that they were beyond forgiveness. They weren’t true Children after all. They weren’t born of this world, tied to it, part of it. They were creations of a single mad tyrant, one willing and capable of breaking every rule of law or nature that Iros once had. They were far more numerous than his forces, but still were difficult to discern amongst the dead. Though so many had been twisted or warped to serve some new purpose, many were simply smaller copies of Karavash himself, and the similarities amongst their coloring and appearance made it difficult to guess at what their numbers had been.
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Any speculation was cut short as the clouds parted before him, and Karavash himself came into view. Though many things made the being unusual, his appearance was not one of them, being well in-line with many of the ancient Elders. The scale of him was admittedly impressive, even for one so old. He eclipsed any natural formation on Iros, appearing to the eyes of the Third as nothing so much as a living mountain range, spreading practically to the horizon. It was rumored Karavash had been forced to construct his own throne, as few minds were capable of conceiving of such scale. As the body grew close enough for the Third to make out details, he acknowledged with grim satisfaction that this was a “living” mountain range no longer.
The lower body came into view first, which was quadrupedal. The upper torso had similarly supported four arms–though most of Karavash’s limbs were either missing entirely or so ravaged as to be unrecognizable now. It was a common body type favored by those that valued power above all else, but it had gone out of fashion in the times of the Prince’s grandfather–despite the man being famously power-obsessed, himself.
All four princes had preferred the comparatively simpler form pioneered by their father, utilizing only two arms and two legs, positioned symmetrically at the top and bottom of the torso respectively. It was a form of swiftness and precision, as well as one especially capable of utilizing weapons; something most Elders still considered to be a show of weakness. The Third was an undeniable master of hand-wielded weapons, and he’d slain enough Elders with them that he considered the argument long decided.
Still, all his blades had meant nothing when he raised them against Karavash. His size hadn’t been the problem, as dramatic differences in scale was one of the oldest and most fundamental of combat inequities on Iros, and there were countless methods to account for it. It was everything else that made the Third, and so many others nearly impotent against the vast and terrible monster he now flew over.
Karavash had been an impossibility. Every generation had the potential to reach heights of power beyond the previous; that had been true for the entirety of the long history of this ancient world, and the Children of Korthos–the Prince’s people–should have been leagues beyond even that lofty standard. Yet the endless dead were testament to the unusual nature of Karavash, now looming before him. Even his lifeless corpse–blasted quite literally halfway to Oblivion–was still a sea of power beyond anything that should be possible in this world.
Karavash was generations old, ancient even by the standards of their race. Yet he had proven something that was practically blasphemy in a world where Children were born with the potential to destroy the very stars: that knowledge of all things, could be power. The Third Prince hated that they still didn’t understand the secrets that had allowed Karavash to Emerge with a strength beyond reason, with the ability to shatter the very laws of nature that had governed their world.
Elders had power; they could not become Elders without amassing power over thousands, if not millions of years. But the next generation would be shaped by that power, regardless of the Elder’s wishes. The new Children would be born, and hunted down by those not ready to relinquish their rule, or raised up by those who had embraced a new purpose. Either way a Child was never born more powerful than the Elder from which they spawned, but given sufficient time, surpassing that Elder was an inevitability.
And then came Karavash; then came a living God, with power and ability beyond scope or imagining. Only the Second Prince’s genius and the unusual nature of the First had provided the smallest glimmer of possibility beyond certain doom. Evidence of the First’s power was still everywhere, pockets of pure Oblivion littering the landscape. The First Prince, and the first soul ever to manifest the purely destructive nature of Oblivion: his loss would be felt for eons.
“You should have let us call you King, brother, even just once. Father would have understood.” A small half-smile touched his lips as he glanced toward the heavens, before pain ravaged through him, his soul feeling like it was being ripped apart–which it was. He knew there was little time left, he’d simply given up too much to make this work. He managed to quicken his pace, nearly at the remains of Karavash’s chest, where the broken remnants of his Soul Core was still accessible.
He landed with none of his usual grace. His golden armor felt heavy, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to prevent his own Soul Core from rupturing. He stumbled up to the artifact, still embedded in the center of Karavash’s own shattered Core from where the First had used it to strike the killing blow. Only the preposterous amount of energy it was siphoning was preventing the dead God from rising, even now.
Placing his hand on what looked like little more than a pure white rod, tears came suddenly to his eyes for the first time in what felt like–and may have been–eons. He could feel his brothers. A final gift from the Second; one last act of genius and compassion: the Third Prince would not have to die alone.
As everything that had been the Third Prince of Iros was being pulled into the artifact, he spoke one final time.“Well, Karavash, you miserable, arrogant wretch, this is the end. Now you and I will save this world together. Now…we bring the Calm.”