Chapter Text
Kuria was unsure.
That was a new feeling. Feeling at all was still relatively new. Ever since Aysel had reached maturity, Kuria kept falling into Kráka—into the imitation of their true form. But as Kuria, he was supposed to be empty.
He kept glancing at Pahji for some reason.
She was the same as Kuria, but somehow she felt even more empty. Kuria considered the possibility that it meant he was not empty. But he was. He just was a different kind of empty. He had met all of his soulmates, he had unlocked Kráka. But Pahji had not unlocked the theoretical Rúku form. Kráka within Kuria found that…not ideal. Kuria should attempt to change that.
Lady Svanhild, Lord Orlov, Lady Fenris, Lord Rufus, Lady Guðrún, Lord Gideon, Lady Brynhildr, Lord Fáfnir, Lord Andraeus, Lady Valaeyasha, Lord Terran, Lady Leviathan.
Have met: Lady Fenris, Lord Fáfnir, Lord Andraeus, Lady Valaeyasha.
Can/will meet: Lady Guðrún, Lady Brynhildr.
Can but dangerous to meet: Lord Terran, Lady Leviathan.
Cannot currently meet: Lady Svanhild, Lord Orlov, Lord Rufus, Lord Gideon
Ideal situation: introduce Pahji to remaining soulmates within descending order. They are going to meet Guðrún now. Lady Brynhildr can be contacted at any time.
Warning: opportunity to meet Lord Terran and Lady/Lord Leviathan is quickly passing. Recommended action: rescue Lady Guðrún as quickly as possible and proceed to assist the other parties in securing and bargaining with the two remaining soulmates.
For currently unavailable soulmates: any amount of time may pass before it is necessary to seek out their souls, but they are not unreachable at present; they are simply not contained within mortal vessels.
Kuria jumped up with Pahji to the ideal entrance to the cathedral housing. The city of Meadhan was the newly-built but highly frequented central city of the Covenant. Thanks to the city’s growing popularity, with a high demand for jobs and high security and safety for those under the Covenant, it was a quickly growing central hub for the AEGIS Covenant. Unfortunately, it had also become a central hub for its enemies.
Kuria didn’t need to adjust to having Pahji by his side. He never had to adjust to others because he automatically knew how best to work with those he was ordered to work with. It was as simple as that. Pahji was the first to follow orders with the same certainty that Kuria had. She had been dressed in a similar entirely white outfit like Kuria—heavy boots, combat pants, a thick shirt, a trench coat, and gloves. Her hair was pulled into its perfect ponytail, but it was short enough that it didn’t affect her performance. To an outsider, they looked as though they were the same person, making the same motions, with even their clothes creating identical movements in response to them.
The Religion Cathedral had expanded into a large network of rooms and event halls where all different religions were allowed to be practiced. Some of them were above ground, others down in basements to help save space when they were expanding the Cathedral to inhabit more rooms and more religions. Pahji and Kuria entered through the second tier and headed down the stairs to the main floor and then to the basement.
Following orders, they stayed out of sight of others and made their way to Guðrún and Gunnar. The section dedicated to the Axiom witches had expanded into the underground section of the Cathedral because it wasn’t as popular as the aboveground sections. There was enough room for Guðrún and Gunnar to have their own personal room, so it would be a simple matter to slip into one of their rooms to speak to them when they were alone.
And so they did so.
Guðrún was sitting on a bed in a blank room. There were dressers, bookshelves, and tables dedicated to alchemy and witchcraft, but they were untouched. Her sheets were white, the walls and floors were white marble. There was a white light source from the ceiling lighting up the room with an ambient ease thanks to the reflective white room.
Kuria might’ve found it an ironic room for him and Pahji if he were more inclined.
“Lady Guðrún,” Kuria announced. “We have arrived to return you to your primary location of residence and your personal relationships.”
Kuria knew something was wrong in this place. Kráka was acting suspicious of something. What was it?
Guðrún was wrapped in a new shawl that she didn’t own, meaning she had received it here. She was curled up as if she were cold, leaning against the wall with a blank stare. She would not react, she could not be compelled.
But the two of them had been ordered to follow her orders in order to help her escape. Aslaug had ensured that if Guðrún and/or Gunnar were in no condition to speak or to give orders, they were to default to extracting her and her brother silently without any of the witches knowing.
“She won’t speak to you.” Gunnar appeared at the foot of her bed, flipping like a card into existence without a sound. “Her mind is trapped in misery, Where is Aslaug?”
“Master has gone to meet with others.”
“She must really be busy if she can’t even be bothered to rescue Guðrún.” He frowned. “I’m assuming you were ordered not to let anyone but the two of us know you’re here.” His dark eyes moved to Pahji. “Who’s your new girlfriend?”
“She is called Pahji.”
“This is Pahji then? She really is like you. Who does she serve?”
“I serve Lord Phoenix,” Pahji answered. Unlike Kuria, she had not yet been programmed with the right commands to ensure she at least could pretend to be human. She didn’t blink, her face was flat and dull, her voice was monotone and straightforward.
“If Guðrún is taken from this room, they will know. He will know.”
“You have not attempted to extract her?”
“I have. But I am under the Scourge as well. He cannot control me directly; I am immune. But I can be accessed, listened to, and sometimes I’m forced to listen. They’re using her power against me; the power of misery.”
Kuria might’ve thought he looked tired. He had the weariness of a man who had cried his eyes out until there were no more tears left, of someone who had lost everything but could not lose his life. Though that wasn’t Kuria’s opinion.
“You are named Daihyo,” Kuria said. “We will follow your command.”
“I don’t know what to command. Though…I suppose you won’t be offering any solutions of your own volition…” He sighed. “Tell me how to extract Guðrún with as little commotion as possible.”
“You leave without announcing your departure,” Pahji said. She wasn’t yet optimized to understand subtext and add the correct amount of nuance to her answers.
“We will carry her out using the Kavern to hide her departure,” Kuria amended.
Gunnar dropped his head into a pensive frown. “Your Kavern…you think that will be strong enough to cloak her disappearance?”
“It appears to be the most ideal option.”
“Then we will do it.” He moved to sit beside his sister, his motions slow and non-aggressive. “Sister, will you follow me?”
Guðrún muttered something light under her breath. Her voice hitched, as though she were in the middle of sobbing. She appeared to be in a state of shock after a traumatic event, but also dazed as if she were hypnotized in her own personal mental prison.
Then, she moved. She sat up and shuffled to the end of the bed, still muttering to herself. “Go…we…must go…there.”
She got to her feet and swept past Pahji and Kuria, who made no move to stop her because Gunnar did not order it. Gunnar was curious as to where she was going. “She hasn’t moved this whole time, not of her own volition.”
Kuria and Pahji dashed ahead of Guðrún, ensuring that no one knew of the four’s movements. Anyone that came close to seeing or hearing them were instantly Kuria’s target—if they weren’t Pahji’s. At least Aslaug had been there to make sure Phoenix specified that they should avoid inflicting potential harm even in their disabling methods, or else Pahji might be completely killing people to make sure no one knew of their presence and their escape.
“If we are to make our escape, it is recommended that we do not linger,” Kuria announced.
“Guðrún should be entirely sedated at the moment,” Gunnar said. “If she’s strong enough to do this of her own will, I want to know what’s bothering her. Sigmund has had control of her for days now. This shouldn’t be possible. The thing that makes my sister strong is misery, and if she is being attracted to something, it will likely be something I want to prevent.”
Kuria wouldn’t say he understood the sentiment personally, but from a psycho-analytical mindset, he could accept that it was reasonable for Gunner to prioritize his sister’s current desires rather than what was actually best for her. But Gunnar was Daihyo, and Aslaug’s only overriding orders were to make sure that none of them died or were permanently disabled. They were not disabled or in immediate fatal danger by following Guðrún now, Kuria could sense that much.
Guðrún’s eyes finally focused. She began walking down the hall rather than simply shuffling. She had a purpose to her strides now. Then, she began running.
“Guðrún!” Gunnar called.
“Jon…Jon!” she whimpered.
Gunnar flinched. “Kuria, find Jónakr and protect him from harm!”
Kuria sprinted past Guðrún with light speed, running down halls and knocking out anyone who he passed with a weak touch of magic that was controlled from becoming Kráka’s levels of strength by his magic nullifying clothes.
Kuria had run down a set of stairs and busted through a heavy wooden door in an instant. His hand wrapped around a syringe and he tore it out of a woman’s hand. He reflexively hit her with a strong debilitation spell. A spell of that strength would normally put a human in a coma, but she merely staggered back and even managed to remain on her feet.
“Egregore!”
Kuria ripped through a wave of magical bindings meant to restrain him and moved to eliminate the source to prevent further interference. He grabbed a large tomb glowing with deep purple energies and slammed it to the floor, pressing it under his boot and shoving the woman who had been holding it away with just enough force not to hurt her.
“Jónakr!” Guðrún was leaning over her husband, who was unconscious and chained to a stone table.
Gunnar flicked his hand and the chains vanished. “Mother, what were you doing?!” he demanded.
“What are you doing, my son? Using this creature to defy me now?” Grímhildr picked herself up. “You would dare? ”
“I am loyal not to you but to sister Guðrún.” He held out his hand and a sword formed in his grip, pointed at his mother. “If you threaten her or those she loves, I will show no mercy. Kuria, Pahji, we’re leaving. Now.”
“Wake up…” Guðrún was shaking her husband. “Wake up, my love. Wake up!”
“He will not wake.” Grímhildr threw her hand forward and wrenched it back. The tomb under Kuria’s boot slipped free and flew to her hand. “He is joined to our network, he is ours. Unfortunately, he resisted the change, so it is taking longer than usual, but I can fix that. He will be ours forever, my child—”
“He would be yours! ” she bellowed. “He would be yours to control so that you can control me! ”
Guðrún rose and pulled a knife from her robes. She charged at her mother, but Grímhildr waved her hand and sent out a wave of magenta flames, the tomb in her hands glowing bright with the same color. The old woman’s eyes shimmered magenta. Guðrún was thrown back, but she was not set ablaze at least.
It was horrible magic that didn’t belong in this world. There were many dark ways for humans to gain the power of magic or imbue artifacts with such power so that it can be channeled by a wielder, but this was an artifact born of hundreds of dark magics from this world mixed together, agony and souls and sacrifices, along with power that wasn’t even of this world at all. It was power like Kráka’s, but wrong. It was an imperfect imitation, corrupted and twisted, incomplete and mixed with a sickening combination. It was a Scourge.
Gunnar threw up a wave of paper to block the flames—a tactic that would’ve seemed ridiculous if he were not a deity. He knelt by his sister, who was already rising with her blade still wrapped tightly in her grip.
“Kill her…kill Grímhildr! Make her suffer pain greater than I have suffered!”
“Yes Daihyo,” Pahji said abruptly. She dived through the wall of paper, releasing Grímhildr’s flames as she pushed through them with ease. Guðrún charged with a battle cry, her eyes wet with tears.
“You will know my pain, Mother! You will know all the pain you have caused, all you have made me suffer…!”
Gunnar quickly ran after his sister. “Kuira, protect Guðrún and Jónakr from all harm!”
“Yes Daihyo.”
He took off one of his gloves and put a strong protection spell on the both of them. Grímhildr’s tomb allowed her to fight off even Pahji and Gunnar working together. While Pahji hadn’t been given specifics on how she should be killing Grímhildr, she would be able to adapt to the situation to find the ideal and easiest means of killing her and work her way up through experimentation.
Running a hand through her heart would be the easiest, so that was what she would go for first. If not her heart, slamming her in the shoulderblades hard enough to cut off her nerves from allowing her very heart to beat and her lungs to breathe would be next. Then she would slam Grímhildr’s head hard enough to break her neck and/or give her a brain injury.
If physical contact wasn’t possible, she would try to telekinetically harm her physically. If telepathy didn’t work, she would telepathically try to shut down her mind. If that didn’t work, Pahji would teleport her to a hostile environment of her controlling where she would systematically break down all of Grímhildr’s defenses that were preventing Pahji from harming her. Kuria didn’t know how much further Pahji would go after that, since he had never had to go further than that himself.
In the end, though, perhaps the cruelest way to die would not come by Pahji’s hands.
Kuria’s only order was to protect, but he watched as both Pahji and Gunnar were pushed back by magical attacks from her unnatural tomb, and Kuria had to put extra magic into keeping Guðrún from being harmed. She was pushed back multiple times, but her rage kept her running back in, diving through the horrifically enchanted flames.
“Enough of this!” Guðrún screamed. “Enough of this pain and hatred and misery. ENOUGH! ”
Her voice pushed through the air, sending out a wave of emotion filled with misery. Gunnar stumbled, but Kuria and Pahji were stable. Kuria felt Kráka coming to the surface with deep sadness in their heart, but it wasn’t overwhelming. It was just feeling emotion.
Guðrún broke through her mother’s defenses, diving for the old woman with her knife. Grímhildr threw up the book itself as a defense, but after Guðrún stabbed it, she threw it aside. Grímhildr began chanting spells, but they bounced off of Guðrún, who didn’t seem to notice anything that was trying to impede her anymore. She jumped over objects her mother threw in her path, swatted away projectiles, and spells bounced off an invisible barrier made from a wave of pure agony rippling from her form.
Guðrún stabbed her mother through the chest. Her blade met resistance from encountering one of her ribs, but Guðrún had shoved her mother to the floor of the laboratory where so many horrible things had been done and stabbed her again. She twisted her blade for different angles, she aimed for the chest and the stomach and the neck. Grímhildr was still smiling.
“Guðrún! Stop! Guðrún! ” Gunnar grabbed her wrist and pulled her away.
“Die! Die, die, die, die, die, die, DIE! ”
Gunnar was knocked back from the force of her new empowered aura exploding.
Guðrún stabbed the bloody corpse of her mother until she was coated with the blood. Kuria and Pahji stood back, their orders fulfilled with Grímhildr dead and no one in immediate danger.
“Jónakr!” Gunnar shouted. “We need to help Jón. Sister, come back, please.”
That made Guðrún hesitate. Her bloodied blade slowed down. Then it fell from her grasp, clanging against the stone floor. She fell to her hands and knees, then turned around.
“Jónakr…Jón!” She dashed to his fallen form, crawling to her feet to stand at the table he’d been chained to. “Release him. Free him! Let no harm come to him…”
“Yes Daihyo.” Pahji pressed her hand down on the chains and broke them in her fist. Kuria touched the ones on his side of the table and they dissolved under his dark-skinned magic-filled hand.
“Is he alive? What did she do to him? Can it be reversed?”
Gunnar carefully approached and placed his hand over Jónakr’s forehead. “He is…he is not alive, but nor is he dead.”
“What does that mean?! Speak clearly, brother!”
“His life force is similar to that of a…an incomplete Astral. He’s dead, but his life is being held hostage, his soul not yet leaving his body. Something is keeping him here.”
“Does that mean we can fix him? Do it! Do something! Save his life! Return him to me!”
“Yes Daihyo.” Pahji moved to pick up the abandoned tomb that Grímhildr had been using. She handed it to Guðrún. The hole Guðrún had stabbed through its pages had healed itself.
“What do I do with this? This can help fix him?”
“This is what his life is tied to. All you need do is command it, and he will wake.”
Guðrún snatched the book immediately. She threw open the cover, flipping through the pages as though she knew what she was looking for. She was muttering to herself, desperate pleas to whatever higher powers might help her.
“I-I don’t understand it all; Mother wrote so much of this in code and the others are in different magic languages—!”
“The book is magic,” Gunnar said. He placed his hand on his sister’s wrist. “Calm down. If she was able to command it, that must mean that you can too. Kuria, what did she call the book?”
“Egregore.”
“Egregore,” Guðrún repeated. The tomb pulsed in her hands with the same aura that it had been when Grímhildr had used it. It was weaker, and it faded a moment later, but Guðrún clung to it as her only hope. “Egregore, awaken! Please, under my command, revive this man!” The book pulsed to life again, and this time, it didn’t fade away. “I…I don’t know. What can I possibly give?” The tomb whispered to her. “Okay. I can do that.”
“What?” Gunnar tugged at her. “Sister, don’t do anything stupid.”
“It needs a master,” Guðrún said. “I killed its master, but I can replace her. All I have to do is—”
“Bind yourself to the tomb instead. Guðrún, we don’t even know what this thing is or how it works or what that means .”
“It will bring him back! If Mother could control it, so can I. Maybe…maybe if this thing connected her to the rest of her cult, I could take her place. I could get them to stand down and stop this war.”
“Or you could become indoctrinated like the rest.”
“If it meant keeping him safe, if it meant keeping the children safe…what if I can beat it?”
“After what Sigmund did to you—”
“I’m not strong enough to beat my son, I know! But maybe with this, I can stand a chance.”
“Look what you did when Mother was using this thing against you—you beat it! On your own. You’re more powerful than anything this tomb can give you. We can find a way to—”
“Pahji, is there any other way to revive Jónakr without this tomb?”
“He is bound to it,” she replied. “The only way to free him is to control the tomb.”
“You could both end up being put in a deathless state, Guðrún—”
“ Fine! ” she snapped. “He is the greatest man in this rotten world that I have left , Brother. You will deny me this? You will let him stay this way forever? He has done nothing but love the wrong person—love me! He doesn’t deserve this! LET ME SAVE HIM, PLEASE! ”
Gunnar stumbled back as though punched. Guðrún’s blood-and-tear-stained face fell pale with shock.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Gunnar? Gunnar, wake up. Gunnar!”
“I’m fine,” he muttered, though his voice was choked. He pulled himself to his feet, leaning against the table. He needed a few moments to breathe, wiping at his face and his eyes. “If you do this,” he gasped, “we do it together.”
“I can’t let you sacrifice this for me.”
“I’m a god, for whatever it’s worth. Maybe I’m not that strong of one, but if you won’t back down, I’m going to help you bear the burden together, okay? Maybe my…enhanced life…thing—whatever now powers me that makes me an Astral, it might give you both a better chance at surviving without repercussions. And…maybe you’re right. Maybe we can use this to get the others to stand down, stop this war here and now. But I’m not letting you do it alone. I’m dead, or close enough. I have nothing left to live for if this goes south. But you? You have some little screaming youngins who who’ll kill me anyway if I have to come back telling them you’re not coming home.”
Guðrún blinked away a seemingly endless stream of tears. She stared down at her unconscious husband. A simple man, Jónakr. He was nothing special, not to anyone else. He was too soft-hearted at times, they said. People overlooked him as unimportant, unremarkable. But he had stayed with Guðrún even after all she’d been through.
He’d rescued her from the sea when she had tried to first kill herself. He had endured countless nights of her waking up screaming from night-terrors. He’d never stopped loving her even when she continued to have breakdowns, when her panic attacks kept him up all night, when he had to ignore his duties to make her tea and hold her, and lay trapped beneath her sleeping form even though he had so many other things to do.
He had accepted little Svanhild when she had gone through the same hell as her mother, but at such a young age that she barely knew what was going on. She hated him at first, but she eventually came to respect him for enduring her tantrums and outbursts and the days where she hid and let her family worry about where she’d gone.
The tragedies always seemed to follow Guðrún, and Jónakr, the unremarkable man, had never wavered in the face of them. And here he was again, just an unimportant pawn, a seemingly useless mcguffin that was brought here just to die and make Guðrún sad. That was all he was to the world, to her mother, compared to all these gods and monsters and beyond. Just a human man, nothing strong or smart or important. All he had to offer was kindness to an unkind world.
“If you’re sure,” Guðrún said.
Gunnar nodded. “Let’s get you both back home to your daughter, okay?” He placed his hand atop hers on the tomb.
She smiled at him, as confidently as she could when her face was torn by layers upon layers of sadness and fears and regrets. “Egregore. Arise and accept your new masters: the blood of the Gjúkungar accept the weight of your burdens in exchange for mastery of your power.”
Kuria did not act, which must have meant that this ritual would not impede his ability to rescue them both. Or perhaps it meant that this oath was beyond even his orders. It would not be impossible…
Guðrún and Gunnar were consumed by the violet flames of the tomb Egregore. Even Kuria could hear faint hints of its whispers, feel the odd and evil magic it was born from bending to their will. The siblings flinched, but held fast to one another and to the book.
Then, Guðrún placed her hands on her husband’s chest. It took a few tense moments, but then Jónakr sucked in a ragged breath. He immediately began coughing, his breathing painful, but he was alive. Guðrún left the tomb and her brother to focus on her husband, wrapping her hands around his face to hold him steady.
“You are alive,” she whimpered. “You’re okay.”
“Love…?” He glanced around frantically, then looked his bloodied wife up and down. “I believe I missed something.”
“It’s okay. I’ll explain later. But you’re alive. That’s all that matters. My mother is dead. The children are waiting for us. Let’s go home.”
Jónakr managed a weak smile. “You’ve confused me, but okay. Let’s go home to the children.”
Guðrún nodded, kissing him with blood-stained lips before pulling him to sit up. “Sorry.” She wiped his face as best she could, but there was little about her still clean. She finally seemed self-conscious about her current state. “It’s over now. Brother, let us go—”
She was cut off by something cutting off her breathing.
“ Well, I’d hoped to gain control of Fenris Wolf first, but you will do. Thank you for mastering your powers so beautifully, Mother. Your soul sings with misery. ”
In a wave of magic, a cloaking spell was removed to reveal Sigmund plunging his hand into her chest.
“You bastard!” Gunnar swung the tomb to strike him, but Sigmund backed out of his range, removing his hand from Guðrún as well. Instead of blood and organs, he was holding a glowing orb of light in his palm, which melted into his skin.
Jónakr caught his wife in his arms, checking over her back for the wound, but none of the blood on her was coming from any injury of hers. “What did you do?” he growled.
“I took what she offered,” Sigmund shrugged. “She infected herself at the highest level with the Scourge, right after unlocking the power of her soul. She was just asking for me to take it. I didn’t even have to do any work!”
“Kuria, Pahji, ensure we are able to escape Sigmund,” Gunnar said before he attacked.
He summoned a wave of cards imbued with the new fire from Egregore and shot them at Sigmund from all directions while he himself ran up with his sword in one hand and the book in his other.
Kuria and Pahji grabbed Jónakr and Guðrún respectively.