Near and far, daydreaming and sleeping, the artists of mankind stirred before a shared vision.

Serpent, smoldering.

Storm, howling.

Their dreams shuddered with the blows, and a new name rose unbidden to lips across a dozen diaspora worlds.

Tempest

Uncaring, the titans warred their way home.

They burst together into the skies of Eden, and Alisandra discovered a world long dead. Brackish, turgid grey clouds shuddered with her approach; too dry air tugged at her lips, hungry for her breath; and the land rolled beneath her in endless, gentle dunes of fine sand.

“Ah, here at last!” the Wyrm sang, lighting his bulk atop the crumbled remains of a prison. He grinned lightly, but his sides heaved like a panting horse.

Alisandra panted too, sweat running down her back. The Hand of God sang high and sweet of its Purpose, backed by her thunderous drums, and she rode the teetering crest of furious clarity.

To either side lay the abyss: the unreasoning rage of pure Tempest and the slumber of a weak Archangel.

“A prison would make a fitting tomb,” she murmured.

“Wise is the Tempest!” agreed the Wyrm, working his jaw. Droplets of flame like lava dribbled from where she had cleaved away a fang.

She had felt him flinch from that one, and she took satisfaction in that fact.

I am of a mind to bleed you, Wyrm.

“Yet a dead world serves living purpose.” Flapping his one wing, the Wyrm drove back the sand to reveal a ruin. Her height gave her the vantage to recognize its design: the entire settlement etched into a great rune upon Chesed. Beneath the sand, the living metal structures remained preserved as a mausoleum. “The Tyrant kept his prisoners here. The special ones.”

Like your father once upon a time, actually…

“Ah, but you probably do not recognize the anchor. You gaze upon the least fragment of Eleos! Ah, such a Work it–”

The Archangel struck from above, bearing her Blade down like a spear, and drove the Wyrm into the ruin. The ground rattled, the air filled with dead sand, and she redoubled her blow.

Digging for the bastard beneath the scales.

For that gleaming speck of Light.

This time, let my Blade seek true!

The Wyrm twisted, slippery as ever, and the Hand of God slipped past her target to ring against the old flagstone at the very center of the dead settlement.

All Eden rang with a high, sweet note.

Mercy

The Chorus sang it Mercy-as-binding, but she heard another voice.

Her father’s voice, singing Mercy-as-release.

Hissing in alarm, Alisandra pulled back on her strike.

Instead of cleaving it in half, she glanced across the flagstone.

Somewhere distant – somewhere close – overlaid both here and high among the tree – Eleos flickered.

For a moment, its wards failed.

Long enough for a single spark to fly away free.

“Sentimental as ever,” tsked the Wyrm, bleeding fire into the stone.

“What profit to release that prison?” she demanded.

“Profit?” He laughed. “I simply figured you were bored of meager prey.”

So dull to kill fish in a bucket

And such arts to learn from the thrill of the hunt

She snarled, watching his angelic blood dribble. Where are you keeping your heart, you bastard?

“You will never find it by asking. Next!”

The Wyrm flickered away, and she chased. Across a continent of sand, a sea of black water without a single wave, and to another dead desert.

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The Serpent alighted around a tower that breached the heavens and rang his burning tail against its dull silver.

Responding to his command and his blood, the tower began to glow: etched grooves drinking his Light and beginning to stir.

Like the tower wanted to defy dead Eden and live once more.

“Behold now…the Tyrant’s tomb!” the Wyrm sang.

Here, dear Alisandra, your father condemned Eden to death

A world rendered for services paid

The only fitting tomb for a King

“The last of the Mighty,” Alisandra growled. “Do you think I would let my Blade crack his prison? Do you think me a fool?”

The Wyrm grinned. “No, Ali. No such tricks. In fact, now that we have arrived, I shall ask nicely.”

Shall we war for eternity?

We three the free

“You alone have the key, dear sister.”

Jörmungandr tapped the grand tower.

The clouds ceased their turgid swirling from their wake.

And white-hot lances of agony burst through Alisandra’s skull – courtesy of her crown.

This shall be my tower of Babil, loyal Hound

Its heights my Throne

And this crown my burden

She screamed, but her halo of war sang of its previous owner.

We will eradicate this suffering

We will tame these discordant seas

Let them call me Tyrant, loyal Hound

So that Eden might be free

The Hand of God in her grip burned bright, scalding her palms.

For one impossible moment, she thought it betrayed her.

But, no, it merely shared its glorious purpose with the one hand that understood.

Vitality can be harvested like any other mortal trait

Harvested and put to use

Like any other mortal trait. Like the glimmer of a muse in a dying man’s eyes, or the laughter of a newly married couple, or any of a million other hints of God to be snatched, squeezed, and distilled.

To be forged, inch by merciless inch, in a mold of shimmering notes stolen from the First Moment.

Heat, and Word, and Will, and a sea of blood. The recipe for a singular Blade.

The halo hammered nails into her mind: the brilliant simplicity of making use of one’s spare parts.

Over her own screaming, Alisandra heard the Wyrm sigh at his own thoughts. “Tch, Asher, you just had to commandeer the Edenwards too, didn’t you? Pointless.”

Cost the Tyrant an arm and a leg

Literally!

But he built them strong enough for even me

Asher always did believe in recycling

This may sting a little

The ward-bound trap sprung, and lightning erupted across the whole face of Eden. The bolts etched holy wards, bidding whatever fool angel would disturb this tomb to sink into its embrace.

There to linger with the Tyrant until the end of all things.

Wards originally built to incinerate the enemies of the Tyrant; built with centuries of sacrifice; and designed specifically to bring down others among the Mighty.

Spears of jealous Light hurtled from the sky and pierced Alisandra. They flashed in time with the Edenward and flooded her with agony. New worlds of pain, fit for an angel, peeling apart Light and flesh alike…

Jörmungandr roared in pain – or laughter. “Ah, n-nostalgic! Really takes me back to the good old days!”

Laughed at the agony; laughed at the blood of men spilled to seal Eden beyond his reach…

Groaning under the onslaught, Alisandra lost her footing in the air and dropped to the dunes before the tower. Her soul rang with hopes and dreams burned to ash in tiny cells; with bitter ends met alone by heroic men; with Light twisted by mechanical degree to regret; and that regret then forged to white-hot spears through her chest…

How many?!

How many did you bastards kill for your game?!

“O-only the ones we could afford to lose,” answered the Wyrm through his own gasps.

She heard Eden’s history in the spears. Nations liquidated for Tyrannical machines and cultures relegated to museum walls. All for righteousness; all for safety; for what greater threat could there be than the Serpent?

The Tyrant’s blades dug deeper, hungry to scatter her and sequester her in fractal dream…

Her skin cracked, Light welling through, as she breathed the exquisite agony of disassembly.

But deep within Alisandra, something dark and deep and terrible caught hold.

Her hand found its strength and gripped the spear through her chest.

Snapping its tip, Alisandra hissed, “No.”

No gears shall turn

No kings shall command

There shall be no gods and no masters here!

The harder she fought, the greater that Edenward swelled. A world released its dam of Light into her veins.

A deluge, and she drank the sweet, burning draught.

Pain and pleasure.

Rage and clarity.

Alisandra the Tempest burned with the agony of it, but the notes burned so good.

Jörmungandr hissed, tail lashing into the dunes of sand around the tower in pain.

My prey is pinned at last!

The Tyrant’s wards pinned her to the ground before his grand tower – so she seized the skein of space and dragged the tower to her! The fabric of the world groaned, and she raised her Blade for her quarry!

Drove it through the Wyrm’s chest as he writhed on the stake.

They thrashed closer, sharing their torment, and Jörmungandr sighed like a lover.

The notes repeat

Just like everything else

Admit it, Ali

You hate being the Archangel

“Shut your goddamn filthy mouth!” the Tempest roared, straining against the bounds.

Of the Edenward.

Of this place.

Of the notions of could and could not that barred her way.

She turned her Blade on the Edenward, cutting deep. Where her strike caught her own Light, she summoned more!

Her braid tore free, releasing her hair to swirl with all the unbound fury of the sea, and she hammered her naked fists into the Wyrm’s chest, prying at the scales with fingers of searing Light.

Seeking his true self with death in her eyes.

This, Ali

Peeling scales back, she scooped up her Blade and drove the tip into his fire.

This is what we truly are

“Still that God-damned tongue and die!”

Somewhere, distant and unheeded, Foundations groaned beneath her blows.

Her Blade hitched in his belly, so she yanked the space between them tighter and hammered her fists into the hilt. Inch by inch, she drove it deeper!

This time!

This time she would not be turned away!

She would taste his oblivion!

Jörmungandr arched into the blows, offering himself.

Let me be your lamb

Let God taste and tremble

Joined in the ecstasy of the oldest play, he whispered to the Tempest terror tearing him apart, “You are so beautiful when you’re killing me.”

Then Alisandra hammered once more; inviolate soul against unconquered Blade…

…and the Wyrm surrendered before that contradiction.

Leaving Alisandra to stumble, bleeding, to the sand and scream curses to the spent sky.