Chapter Text
Few things can kill a fully armoured man.
Heatstroke, concussive force, exhaustion, a stab to an opening, or drowning. The latter was a hypothetical—the arrogant clouds would never relinquish their bounty so generously. A watering hole, rarely, though drowning there would only prove one’s stupidity and complete ineptitude. The hooded nomads from beyond the plains spoke of places where all the waters of the world gathered, an unfathomable pool that embraced the horizon, reflecting its hue from sunrise to sunset, holding all of manner finned and shelled and scaled things that would suffocate in air. They were fanciful tales told to rowdy things with the indiscriminate curiosity of foals.
So my very first thought upon finding myself floating in water, shimmering and perfectly clear, is a confluence of fear and awe. What little armour I’m wearing should be enough to weigh me down, drag me into its covetous depths and smother me there forever. Seconds tick by. No abyss comes to claim me. Surprisingly gentle, this water is, showing me that I’ve outstayed my welcome by forming currents that nudge me towards the stone that borders it.
On aching arms, I heave myself from the pool, sudden chill negated by a thrumming furnace beneath my skin. With it, bright-burning purpose: I am not my own. A wretched thing here to kill and nothing more, put to its final task before penance, before salvation. Kill the Architect, whatever that means. The last vapours are dissipating when a low rumble, melodic and mournful, echoes through the chamber. What appeared to be an earthen wall opens its six yellow eyes—each trained on me.
“Listen, warrior…. Stay…”
Water spews in a curtain from the alcove she rests in, her words sending dust drifting down from the ceilings, shaking the ground beneath my feet. Then, a familiar tug. Lacking the lacerating edges and irregular knots of the First Demon’s invisible bindings, but with the same immutable strength. The same unspoken vow of servitude. The same gnawing need to bow before my betters.
But I do not submit. I run.
Heart racing. Thump. Deja vu. Thump. This is not the first time I have fled from her voice. Thump. Doesn’t matter. Thump. Get out. Thump. Before it’s too late. Thump. Chest heaving. Thump. Slipping on wet rock. Thump. She calls out. Thump. She calls me Ironclad. Thump. That’s not my name. Thump. The timbre of my footsteps shift. Thump. To gravel. Thump. To damp soil. Thump. Viscous air presses in. Thump. Sounds, chirps and squeaks and constant shifting of a place undeniably alive. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Far enough, surely. No signs for pursuit from a creature so large. Nothing pulls at my heart either.
Fading adrenaline brings into focus a dull throbbing where my neck meets my ear. Fingers brush against the area, immediately flinching back when they reveal a mass of dented bone and half-dried blood, burning with a heat beyond what could be described as feverish. Then again, what part of me doesn’t? Standing still, I become acutely aware of each vein that laces through my flesh, like winding rivulets of molten gold, trying to mend shattered pottery. Heat from inside and out meet at the skin, sweat already beading at my nape and under my helmet-mask.
I scatter the thought with a shake of my head. So what if it’s uncomfortable? So what if it hurts? Focus on ascending this godsforsaken spire (this is a spire, and the Architect is at the top and I know this somehow and I refuse to linger on it). This is too light a punishment anyways. Climb, kill, then rest in that eternal peace. Without pain, without guilt, without the scalding urge to run my blade over my palms, wrists, neck to feel the grounding clarity.
The lingering memories of being ablaze are the only thing stopping me from collapsing here now, sinking into the soft earth, waiting for the other sort of blissful nothing to come for me, one far easier to reach. Even if I were so weak-willed, mundane death would not break the contract I signed. The only path left is up. Until then---
I rest a finger upon the wound, and press.
Savouring the jolt, the way my eyes water and lungs seize up mid-breath, a pained, wide-eyed smile creeping across my face. The closest thing to justice that I will ever get. Relief when I release, only to push again because it’s not penance if it doesn’t hurt, if I can forget for a single second that I killed them, killed them all and every scrap of pain is nothing to what I did to them.
…
Enough. Time to move on.
The raw rod-marks on my legs have faded, but I’m grateful for the guidance they gave, because now my gait is refined to perfect efficiency. Left foot, then the right. Left, right. Until the destination is reached. Back then, those footsteps were one in a chorus, a droning beat underscoring the cling of armour against armour. Now my own earth-muffled strains are lost among the discordant symphony of the overgrowth.
(We were sent away, driven into the grasslands with nothing more than the clothes on our backs and the food in our bellies. Barely weaned whelps still unused to the prickly straw bedrolls of the boarding houses, still feeling affection for the parents that had raised us thus far. No preparation, no fanfare, just a Trial. Survival deemed us worthy of the resources required to live to adulthood.
There on the torrid ground, alliances emerged; delicate ephemeral-blooms that surged in vitality after rainfall. Help me climb this tree and I will help you start a fire. Help me sharpen this stick and I will help you gather tubers. Help me hold Dreis down and we can split what I take. Much like desert blooms, they turned to rot with startling haste. Cracks formed—at first out of childish competition, then eventually out of necessity. No one truly knew just how much they needed, and so always tried to take more. Water became the greatest commodity, filtered from sap, drained from cactus, evaporated from blood. It was the one thing worth properly bargaining over. Those who tried to take it by force found out why the hard way when earth reclaimed whatever was spilt in conflict. And conflict it was, combat techniques turned against those with the same training until talent or cunning would prove a victor. Which was why I had to escape.)
The memory ebbs. Frivolous nothings, unhelpful distractions, products of an undisciplined mind (that make me tense for a blow that never comes). Childish to linger on what can’t be changed. Head down, back straight. Left, right, left, right.
In no time at all, the endless variety of life circles back to monotony, colours and sounds smelted into dull slag. The air is different, its unceasing ardour pressing against my exposed skin in a clingy caress, matting the scruffy hair that pokes out from my helmet-mask, winding into my lungs with merciless heat. I look up only to find that no sunbeams pierce the canopy, all light diffusing in from the sky evenly. Unusual. Uninteresting. Lukewarm comfort in that there is no sun to sear at my skin.
(The sun shone with the same decree as a century ago: all that cannot survive shall be claimed by those that can. I knew which group I belonged to, disappointing as it may be, absconding before what remained of civility was seized, shell prised apart and shucked for the promise of sustenance within. It was fear, of injury, of death, of powerlessness, that bade me flee. Shameful. But what was shame to the very real possibility of dying there, surrounded by people no better than beasts? Let me be left for the hyenas. At least their violence was instinctual, at least they wouldn’t draw it out, at least my flesh would serve some purpose in feeding their young.
I had only two days before the dry prickling in my throat would become lethal. I was no beast-of-the-plains, born with no natural instinct or appendage that could dowse for water. But I was confident (so sweetly, naively, tragically confident) that with the same intelligence that set me apart from the sad, yoke-bearing creatures in the fields, the mind that so long ago turned stones to weapons and so became lord of the wild, I could make do. It would be easy, even. That folly should have killed me.)
An airy whim from years ago. Regret flickers at not collecting the water from the stony cavern. It had seemed potable enough, perhaps even cleaner than what could be boiled from cloudy groundwater.
A minute, then. No more. I grab a particularly dew-laden leaf, drooping under its own weight, the curved reflection of the gathered water revealing impassive iron instead of a face. A nascent unfairness bubbles up, bitterness rising at the thought that this place has water in such profligate excess that it can misplace it upon leaves and bark and the air itself when somewhere out there—
Well, I suppose they aren’t rationing water anymore.
I remove my helmet-mask to drink, smothering the guilt before it forms beyond a hazy blob of discomfort. Focusing on the way it flows down my oesophagus, the coolness doing nothing to dampen the heat but distracting enough to prevent the unspoken words from forming.
To prevent further delays, yet more seconds are wasted filling the canteen strapped at my waist (that I did not place there, again, no point questioning it). The weight and thud, thud, thud, as I walk is familiar. Reassuring.
(Comfort and unease in equal proportion, perfect loneliness. The clamour of the other children had died down within minutes of me turning tail, though it took far longer for the sensation of being followed to fade likewise. I didn’t need them and their… petty rivalries. I wasn’t alone out of weakness, they would have only slowed me down. Maybe the lie would become corporeal if I whispered it enough on the directionless journey.
Sunset painted the horizon a lurid red. The air ceased its fiery rancour and turned its attention to biting cold, snatching heat from my sweat-soaked tunic far too late. No sudden inspiration struck, no revelation came. Misplaced pride yielded before bitter acceptance. I was an animal like any other, beholden to the same natural laws, made of the same fragile flesh. I would feed the same carrion birds.)
My mind knows it has been a few hours at most since I awoke, though my stomach disagrees vehemently. Heat from my temple migrates, sinking into my abdomen, sharp-edged emptiness that hurls itself against my organs, trying to feed upon them too. Hovering just above tolerable. Deep breaths to still the restless heart, to pretend I don’t want to rip out my own entrails to vent the pressure. If I can walk, that’s good enough. Left, right, left, right.
(Walking wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. The rapid, driving pulse that kept me alive sent waves of agony through my head. Each breath burned like swallowing fire, accompanied by retching that bought up nothing but bile. It was the smallest mercy that I had no tears to cry. The familiar sweetness in my mouth begged for reprieve, for something, anything, to slake the boiling thirst because I was going to die here alone and worthless and pathetic because I was too weak to compete with the others and I was so stupid stupid stupid—
Gritted teeth met with resistance, hot liquid welling up at the site of the pain. Followed by an idea.
It tasted perfect.)
Impossible to tell if the iron in my mouth is real or a shadow cast by that day. Strangely satisfying either way, for the split second it appears. And then it’s gone.
I refuse to slow, though it gets harder and harder to force each left-right-left-right, legs protesting the strain, trembling under their given commands. Agony laced with yet sharper frustration; my body owes me at least 24 hours before catabolysis takes its due by force.
…When was the last time I ate?
Oh how useless this body is, forcing me to admit that intentionally starving myself would be entirely counterintuitive. The bare minimum, then—get something into my system before more tissues are rendered down for the furnace.
I snatch a bulb sprouting from distended vines, ignoring the risk of poison, biting through the prickles that tinge its flavour with yet more metal. The gnawing remains unsated by the bitterness even after I cram the entire thing down my gullet, stomach scoffing at such meagre sustenance. I need something with more fight in it.
How fortunate that now a strange, blue-scaled lizard-thing announces its presence with a snarl. Its stubby legs leave it low to the ground, billowing frills not indicative of venom or spikes. But that doesn’t detract from the sharpness of those teeth, clicking together in a warning call. I slip into combat stance—
—and immediately abandon it in favour of charging with all the self-preservation instincts of a pebble. And why wouldn’t I? The hunger has been calcined, recast into a different appetite entirely: I long to see its skull crushed to smithereens. Skin and scales melted into a charred mess. Organs squirming in my hands. Feeble lifeforce ebbing to nothing. More satisfying than food and water and air. Slice-cleave-sever—
(Dark shapes in the distance. Migratory beasts-of-the-plains lumbering leisurely in the knowledge that their numbers would dissuade any attack. Thus, they heeded not the tiny, frail, two-legged thing that walked among them on shaking limbs with cracked lips stained red. I followed them, tried to figure out how they managed to thrive without opposable thumbs. But the stubborn things marched on as I lagged, leaving me by the young and sickly. Perhaps if I was stronger, braver, smarter, I could have felled one of them, gorged myself on its still-warm flesh, proved my maturity, earned the right to survive. Such an easy, ample chance any other would seize for all it was worth. But I did nothing.)
Haste catches it off-guard. But it’s quick to retaliate. Needle teeth puncture just below the knee. Blood rushes forth. Searing hot. No matter. Down comes the blade. Inexorable like the pull of gravity.
Crunch.
An unclean decapitation. Time-dulled edge caught on the seam between spine and skull. The jolt clamps its jaws further. Teeth gouging into my tibia. Its nerves are severed but still flailing, twitching, twisting backwards to slam its tail against my arm. Admirable. Weak. One boot propped up against the blade. Stomp down. Kick after kick after kick. Each blow carves a path through bone. Its bite only loosens in death.
(A pained bellow arose, surrounding hoofbeats escalating, kicked-up dust swirling and blinding as the herd was confronted with its mortality. With a thud, a huge carcass collapsed before me, its calf’s keening punctuating its mother’s death throes. A second sound, wordless triumph. A new threat. Yet I didn’t turn, tense, brace myself to struggle with what little strength I had left.
Because there, drained and sullied with each passing moment, seeping wastefully, carelessly into trampled earth, was the creature’s blood.)
Warm, barely-dead meat in my hands. The remaining nerves fire their last in little shudders that send a bizarre tingle of excitement into my chest. The air smells of iron. Obvious, now, why water and bitter fruit weren’t enough. Like trying to ignite a furnace with dirt and grease. Oh, but this? This is kindling. Firewood that only needs to be chopped down to size. My helmet-mask is thrown aside.
Into the delicate skin under the throat. Tearing, stringy bits of sinew and tendons shredded to scraps, split fibres squelching between gnashing teeth, mouth flooding with heat and salt and relief. More. Veins pop, mildewy bitterness spilling forth. More. Half-chewed chunks that choke the air from my windpipe. More. Pumping the bellows. More. Stoking the flames. More. Until it glows incandescent. There it is, little wildfire.
(How I had cupped my hands to its fatal wound, crouched by its side in the same way its calf might have suckled, delighting in simple, animal pleasure at the warmth. Perfection again, not savoured, not rushed. Just consumed. I would have remained there, relishing the metal on my tongue until the stream slowed to a trickle—if a blade wasn’t then pointed at my chest.
“Step away from our kill.” A man’s voice, though perhaps barely past the threshold. A glance up proved my suspicions. The scars across his face and wrists were still an angry red, skin tender but no longer bleeding. I was all too happy to oblige, more pliant now with basic urges fulfilled. Even then, the man’s eyes narrowed. “Is this runt one of ours?” The insult didn’t jar me, only the implication that he didn't recognise me as part of his clan, that I couldn’t grow into someone like him if allowed the years. Still, his concerns were not unfounded. This bloodied, desperate, dying creature was a far cry from the efficient brutality an Ironclad was meant to show, meant to be. “Are you on your Trial?”
Of course I nodded, heat-addled mind having long abandoned reason to ease its burden. I should have thought for a single second about the weight and purpose behind the question, rejected and come up with an excuse—I had gotten separated from my group, I was being punished by the Instructors, I was simply bored and wandered off. Again, I did nothing.)
Horror. Revulsion. Spit it out spit it out spit it out right now—
Shoving fingers down my throat. Groping for the base of my tongue, discomfort building under the scalp as my diaphragm yields to reflex. But no amount of wretched gagging can force my stomach to relinquish its hard-won prize. And… is the aftertaste not sweet? The cravings are assuaged, the fever subdued, homeostasis restored. All in seconds.
(It took a single second. A single second for his elbow to catch me under the ribs, wield his momentum to shove me to the ground and press the air from my lungs with his knee. His face was expressionless before mine as cold steel met my throat. Either instinctual fear or pure exhaustion shook through my limbs while my mind lagged, unable to even process the attack.
Pitiful.)
Disgust mixed with half-forgotten disappointment allows me to finally heave up something. I spit out the last of the acid in my mouth, hands clutching at the ground, digging fingers into the dirt to cease the shaking.
(“Stop, Mercutio.”
Only two words, but enough condescension and hidden power to make him hesitate. Then release. Then stand, leaving me gasping on the ground. The command came from a woman of similar age and build, though her own brands had healed to true scars. Nothing about her was kind. Not the way she stood askance, one hand against her hip, not the way she idly plucked at the grit beneath her nails with utter confidence that the man would listen. If anything, the bloodstained sword that marked her as the one who felled the beast should have scared me into respect. “I think he’s been through enough.”)
It wasn’t enough. Within an hour, the gnawing resumes. Within two, it is soothed by the rubbery, spore-ridden flesh of some winged mushroom. Any significant motion in the overgrowth is met with raised hackles and bared canines, some other-mind moulting like an emerging cicada as the rest of me crumbles away before its commands. I wouldn’t even mind such an intrusion if I wouldn’t constantly awaken to increasingly bloodstained hands, panting like a hound after a hunt.
(Catching my breath, turning over her words for hidden knives while Mercutio argued that my state indicated a failure in the Trial, that I would have succumbed anyway and putting me out of my misery now would be kinder. Some delirious part of my brain agreed, urged me to support my own execution. The woman barely looked back, dismissing his repeated pleas with a wave of her hand. Again, he complied, frustration manifested in the slightly too forceful killing of the still-wailing calf.
Then, because the universe decided its rules didn’t really matter anymore, the woman handed me a waterskin. In my confusion and disbelief, I almost dropped it. Her hand slid back to her waist instead of snatching it back to test a reaction like a boredom-stricken cat. An expectant raise of her eyebrows. “It’s water. Personally, I find it more hydrating than blood.”)
Nausea builds with each sickening feast. No predatory creature is so wasteful, only able to endure a few mouthfuls before the taste grows rancid, as if rotting in seconds. Because it’s not even the sustenance I’m after. Only bloodshed. Leaving so much of the carcass to rot untouched. Unnatural. Infernal. The forest is almost comically indifferent to these scenes, continuing its chattering symphony, its incessant heat. Permission, of sorts. It holds no grudge nor prepares a consequence.
But each encounter with the local fauna leaves scrapes and bruises that compound faster than my blood can cauterize, though that doesn’t stop it from trying. Fascicles reaching out tentatively, spun, knitted together leaving no trace of any injury if left undisturbed long enough, which it rarely is. Left, right, left, right. Slightly uneven after caustic brine from a blobby, one-eyed creature singed the crook of one knee. But nothing even close to lethal. I can still climb.
(No. I couldn’t accept this. Out here, far from the village cisterns, water was not something to be given out like shallow praise. Did she not care about her own life? Hunting was tiring work, who knew how long she had been following the herd? The weight in my hands suggested barely enough for another day. And to relinquish it so freely to a stranger, unproven leveret failing his Trial…
What a waste.
This woman was an idiot.
“Look, if you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”
Well, now she was just forcing my hand. The stopper hadn’t yet hit the ground when I tipped my head back, washing the lingering copper away, every muscle and nerve and bone rejoicing, refreshing cold seeping outwards. I forgot how to breathe, how to blink, how to form a coherent thought beyond wordless satisfaction. And I drank faster still, until a mistimed heave of struggling lungs sent some down my windpipe. Doubling over, suffocating, hacking up mucus-tainted muck, I was laughing through it all. Because wasn’t this all a strange, pleasant, useless dream conjured by a failing mind to make passing on the tiniest bit more bearable.
The woman smiled too, quickly taking it back before I could drown myself. “The Trial ends in two days. Turn back and you should meet with the others just as it finishes.” Then, as an afterthought: “Don’t die. That would be a waste for the both of us.” Without a further word, she knelt to help Mercutio carve out the fiest cuts to be taken home.)
An attempt is made to ration out the excess meat, wrapped in leaves and tucked into a satchel. I’m acutely aware of the risk of contamination in such a humid environment, but something tells me that mundane diseases would burn to nothing in my blood. At that estimate, maybe it would remain edible for a day before putrefying beyond even my tolerance. No saying whether stale remnants would even appease the fire, but ritualistic butchering makes the slaughter feel almost acceptable. A conscious choice to tear the legs of a yellow beetle from its thorax or crack apart the wing joints of a flightless bird.
(A pilfered stach of titan-tortoise eggs and a surprising amount of moisture gathered from morning dew were enough sustenance to last me the while. I made it just as the survivors were being tallied, congratulated, taken home. That year, eight didn’t make it. Their deaths looked natural, but nothing could be confirmed without autopsies no one bothered to perform. Though none of the others could recall a single glimpse of me, I had returned, alive and mostly whole-of-body, which was what mattered. The feasting table set up in the guildhall was both a reward for our efforts and a measure of staving off the lingering effects of starvation. Steamed buns filled with broth, braised meats on beds of leaves, sweetened cakes delicately shaped to resemble flowers. I couldn’t enjoy it. Not really. Everyone else looked different. The obvious changes to the surface, the skin, were to be expected, but the wounds underneath were what threw off my appetite. And they stuck, even after the bruises faded and the cuts healed to light scars. They were meant to, a subtler version of the brands we were yet too young for, but a lesson of necessary cruelty that I never learnt.
The woman bore that hidden pain, too. She couldn’t have survived her own Trial without it. But she carried herself with dignity and strength; a discipline I dreamed of in vain. At the breaking of each rosy dawn, I would trace the inked symbol on the back of my right hand, fingernails leaving light lines across its sweeping curves, a shape whose twin only she bore, just to ensure it was real. That among all her myriad options, I was her Br—)
—No.
Shaking the tendrils of the memory off, quelling its attempts to reinsert itself with the clenching of fists, fighting against every instinct to look down, to even imagine what might be there. Just another thing I don’t deserve. Is it faded under time and loss? Or is it just as vivid as the day it was first inked, holding onto promises it doesn’t know were ever broken? Is it enchanted somehow, to turn from blessing to brand in case of treachery? Perhaps I could flay the skin from there, cast the ragged scraps aside so that only the forest will know the truth. Tempting indeed, but falling flat after even a modicum of further consideration. I have nowhere near a deft enough hand or toolset to imagine such a procedure. I have to settle for pulling my gauntlet downwards so that even an accidental glance would reveal only bronze.
Something adjacent to dusk falls over the landscape, highlighting each glistening edge of the canopy in sparkling orange while leaving everything below the understorey frustratingly dim. Every few minutes, some half-hidden root snags against my sabatons, the repeated vertigo growing pointless. The silver lining is that evening brings a different ensemble of humming and chirping, quieter than the incessant noise of daytime. Even the air finally grows lax with its sadism.
If only it ends there. Evening sends most beasts scurrying off to their burrows or warrens, my path unfettered at the cost of leaving nothing to sate the infernal appetite. The formula of left-right-left-right dissolves under weakened limbs, under impossibly rapid famine. Disassembling me from the inside out, melting through like wax wicking into the fire. Any attempt to claw my way into sleep wither in minutes, body instinctually rejecting it like poison. But I will not break into the first of my hastily-made rations. Not until the choice is between that and death, although each painfully slow step is making me reconsi—
The temperature drops. The world falls silent.
I flinch at the sound of breathing, only to recognise the ragged, exhaustion-riddled sound as mine, finally audible in isolation. Brittle stalks that were once grass carpet this perfectly circular clearing.
An involuntary shudder. Death, even the profane violence that leaves streaks of gore across my blade, leaves something behind for the rats and beetles. This place has been scraped clean of life even more thoroughly than the desert, an emptiness only matched by actively raging wildfire. But whilst that will crackle and spit its vitriol, this barely five-metre-wide clearing is content to exist in quiet defiance of the nature surrounding it. Inexplicable, unsettling, a sudden realisation that I am utterly unprepared to face a magical threat, because what else could kill with such precision? Not that I’m prepared to face much of any threat, in this condition.
My eyes catch on a mottled patch of red and white barely peeks through the desiccated grasses. I approach it slowly out of both caution and fatigue. Pushing aside the shrubbery with my blade, as much tension as I can muster coiled up, ready to spring forth into a lunge at the slightest motion. An overreaction considering that I only find an unblemished, unguarded egg laying upon a nest of sticks and feathers. Only a cursory confirmation that indeed no parent is waiting in ambush before my pommel slams down, little bits of shell sent flying inwards.
The embryo inside is surprisingly well-developed, perhaps only a few days off from hatching. I even feel the faintest trace of a heartbeat just before bringing it to my lips. A little slimy, but thankfully still. Not as satisfying as I would have hoped, not being properly alive yet, but enough to tide me over for now.
Progress slows to a crawl as daylight’s remaining generosity wanes, leaving me in an inky night. A few pointless minutes are spent fumbling around blindly, making no progress and reopening barely healed wounds on brambles and bark. My limbs protest against the continued exertion, their cries of discomfort heard and promptly ignored. Which gives me an idea.
I feel my own hands, parsing through the redundant signals, single-mindedly searching. For what, even I’m not sure. It’s mostly just aching, a sharper pain where a thorn is lodged, mild tetany from exhaustion and hunger. There, beyond all of the typical sensations, I find it. An atrophied… thing (muscle? tendon? nerve?), one end in my palm, the other stretching into my heart, barely clinging to existence.
I will it to twitch.
A single spark pops, flickers, fades. Homing in on the tingle, shunning all sensation but for the omnipresent pangs. Gently at first, as the fragile thing is liable to tear itself apart. Then steadily increasing the force, emphasising the speed of each movement, no different than pyrite fire-strikers. Slowly but surely, a seam appears in space itself, glistening and glowing in a way that is not seen nor heard nor felt but undeniably real. A gossamer thread is pulled forth from that shimmering other-plane. Power.
Sparks give way to embers, cinders, acrid smoke. Until a burgeoning, honest-to-gods fire lies in my open palm, casting the surrounding nature in brilliant purple, a stark contrast to the diffuse orange of the false sky. An unconventional torch, but bright enough.
My eyes are not yet adjusted to the sudden light when something else slithers through.
“There you are.”
Sudden agony erases my end of the seam, prevented from snapping closed by someone on the other side.
“Begging again for my power, how cute.”
Freezing. All motion ceasing except for my treacherous heartbeat. Of course. This power was never mine, always borrowed, forever indebted. All leads back to him. An apology for my insolence is reduced to a wordless mutter. But can’t he see? I’m doing what he asked. Why—
“I can hear you, you know.”
…
“Much better. But my fire is not to be used so… frivolously. Though there’s something funny in seeing you call upon the latent powers of an Ancient to use as a torch. Feel free to try again when you’ve found something worthy of immolation.”
That same abrasive laugh, and then darkness plummets. I release the stale air in my lungs, the adrenaline in my blood, the instincts of cornered prey. Trying to steady by breathing again, but it’s as if I never learned how. The tiniest glint of scorn at my own pitifulness is at once overshadowed by the decision to never try that again. Not much of a choice, really, because sudden shock has snapped the not-quite-muscle and I have no bearing on how long it will take to heal. Still, it’s difficult to stand here, impotent and restless, nothing to distract from a dozen injuries, simply waiting for sunrise to save me from the monotony.
A rustle among the leaves, and I turn to the sound.
Something awoken by the sudden light shuffles around in the vegetation. Squinting reveals that it’s slightly aglow itself. A smooth, segmented, ivory-coloured thing surrounded by dark fire that—somehow—coexists with the flora around it. Its legs tap out a rhythm on the ground, waiting for a reaction. Strange little… bone spider?
Break the shell. There is meat inside.
Gratefully sinking into the half-lucidity of instinct. Easier this way, to forget about the aching and boredom as carefully honed movements yield to calls of kill-main-slaughter-destroy.
Simple prey. Backing up as I advance. A swipe of its leg. A shiver when it meets skin. It is the cold of death. Reduced in intensity. Always recognizable. Necromantic magic. A thrall. Of what?
On cue, something else rises in the dark, shaking me from my stupor. First, a bleached skull, ablaze in the same blue, stretching down, binding it to bare ribs in lieu of vertebrae. Then frayed purple robes that hover just above the ground and billow in the still air. Last, the scythe. Huge, unwieldy thing, gleaming despite the darkness, wickedly sharp. Back, now—a heartbeat before it cleaves my head from my neck. Dangerous thing. I begrudgingly bring reality back into focus, if only out of curiosity.
The dim light radiating from it makes my sightline practically nothing, forced to stay close lest I try and fight in complete darkness. There is little satisfaction in the death of the already dead. Better than nothing. Blade raised. Steel against steel. Greater strength pushing the thing backwards. Its fingers flick erratically, trying to write in the air. The strike that should have sundered its ribcage falls apart under arms that no longer obey, struggling under their own weight. Underhanded magic. Weak. Perhaps a kick, then—
—Turn around.
The spider, clattering a battle cry, gallops forwards on mismatched limbs. Stance shatters when it collides. Greater inertia sends me reeling, darkness spinning, almost tripping over uneven ground. The same biting cold again. Recover. It circles around. Catch it in the thorax. Plunging steel into the gap between its legs. Sliding through smoothly, satisfyingly. Too smoothly. Not a spider. A hand. Splitting the ectoplasm between each huge metacarpal. There are no organs to skewer, no tissues to puncture. Bisected nonetheless. Its navy flames vanish, a pile of lifeless bones. Worthless for the fire. Maybe there’s some meat left on the other one.
My lungs stall, seize, each subsequent gasp hopeless, pathetic. Turn. Its hands are aloft, fingers strumming the air as if at a loom. Lunge now. It’s taken by surprise, dodging in a rush of purple and dropping the hex. Down comes the scythe. Slamming into pauldrons. Jolting through the shoulder. Something breaks. Its movements seem hesitant, more invested in holding ground than drawing blood. Good. Almost there.
Strikes quicken. No downtime for either of us between each deadly arc of metal, each swipe of an iron claw. The onslaught is effective, each clash of weapons slower, sloppier, weaker. The flames atop its head falter now, bones creaking with the effort. How I will smother those flames, crush those bones, grind them to dust that stain tattered robes, ribs snapping to reveal the festering once-organs within, carved out, withering in the air, putrid on my tongue—
“Hey! What is wrong with you?”
Oh. Oh no.
The euphoria of a perfect deathblow collides at once with visceral repulsion. Flinching. Time frozen in an overcommitted strike, all momentum funnelled into a sweeping blow sent off-kelter by the pause. The lich sidesteps gracefully as my blade lodges into the ground. Another cling, metal-on-metal, and it’s wrenched from my grasp, skidding away into the darkness. Hesitation. Pathetic.
“What are you doing? I’m not your enemy!”
The scythe is raised. Defensive. Confident. Stance solid. I’m disarmed. Range at a disadvantage. Act now. Stop, what am I—One step. Another. All at once, barrelling forwards, wind rushing, shoulder turned to a battering ram.
Bones against flesh, fabric against metal. Tumbling onto muddy earth. I’m hurting her. A light, fragile thing writhes below me. Willing my arms to release, like shoving a wall. Sharp-tipped fingers scratch uselessly against my helmet. Push away, stand up, beg forgiveness. The same deathly cold as the desolate clearing. I will not kill her—infuriating noise. Finish this. One hand against its skull—no, no—the viscous ectoplasm of its neck prised apart by grasping fingers pulling, pulling, pulling—
Crack. Ribs yield to the sudden pressure.
But they are mine.
Hissing through gritted teeth. Impossible cold sears against exposed skin. The vice constricts again, forcing my shoulders together until a pop breaks through my trance.
“Look, I don’t want to kill you. But you’re not making that decision any easier, you know that?”
The lich stands, brushing dirt from her sternum, running her own fingertips over the huge phalanxes of her hand-shaped familiar that must have reformed when I was distracted. She somehow projects nebulous displeasure without any facial expression to speak of. The sight burns an image into my retinas. One of her reduced to bonemeal, reclaimed by the earth. Pulverised, unrecognisable. I’m sickened by the almost-reality.
She should just kill me now. Spare us both.
Impatience manifests in the restless rising of her flames. “Can you not talk? Or is this a choice? Because it's not doing you much good. I guess Neow did say that you were… Forget it. I already know who you are, Ironclad.”
“That’s not… my name.” A fatigue-tinged rasp lined with as much steel as I can muster, an outward reflex as cracks in my heart I wasn’t aware ever existed shatter along new fault lines. Tracing those cracks until the unmarred truth spills forth.
The Ironclad. The last of his kin.
“Wait, you aren’t—” Genuinely alarmed, gaze flicking between me and her familiar as if either could clarify the situation. “You’re joking, right? Got a sense of humour rattling around upstairs next to random bursts of me-directed violence? Because I’m not particularly partial to either.”
I barely register her remarks, still turning over the unfamiliar epithet, hoping to wear down its serrated edges, make it somehow tolerable through turning it over enough times. What was once a birthright turned to a title, now to a condemnation. Does she see the way I flinch at my supposed name?
Growing ever more frustrated at my continued reticence, she leans down and says:
“Just so you know, I’m being awfully tolerant towards… this. We want the Architect dead, so how about we work together.” Emphasising the last word by poking my helmet. Like talking to an especially half-witted child. “I’m going to let you go now. Don’t make me regret it.”
The fall is less than a metre. Still, it’s enough to send shards of shattered bone tearing through my abdomen. I smother a scream. For the best. Injury has cowed the feral-thing in my head, slinking back to nothingness with its tail between its legs. It will not take over. She is safe.
That is the final straw. Unconditional surrender sweeps through each limb, free of their burden, sprawled out on the ground without any pretence of dignity because what really was the point anymore? Too tired, too shaken to reject her ultimatum or question who Neow is and why she also wants the Architect dead, allowing her to prop me up against rough bark, checking for a pulse, nodding along to words obscured by the blood rushing in my ears.
I will abandon her come morning.
Because this strange, sarcastic woman deserves better than to waste her energy on something incapable of repaying her. Because I deserve worse than someone who will give second chances so readily to a murderer. Because somehow, some way, I will betray her like all the others and I would sooner see my own guts spilled onto the dirt than have another die by my hand.
Because she doesn’t know that I am bestial violence, endured and delivered. All I’ve ever been and all I’ll ever be. The best I can do is spare her from the wildfire.
“Hey—are you even listening? Or awake?” The crunch of me wrenching my own shoulder back into place is enough to convince her of the latter. She looks away as I flex my fingers, stiff but functional. “Sorry about that.”
“Sorry…” It’s all I can muster before the hunger, temporarily shunted under the demands of battle, returns. Yet another reason for her to get away as fast as she can. I try to stand, shaking enough to make my armour rattle.
“It’s the middle of the night—where are you going.” Placing a skeletal hand on my pauldrons, barely applying any force but sending me to the ground anyways. It seems she is choosing to picture me as an ignorant child, not knowing the limits of his own body because she says:
“Just… get some sleep.” Clasped hands resting against a tilted head, miming the action in case I am unfamiliar with the concept. “Actually, do whatever you want. This is a tomorrow problem. And please, for both of our sakes, don’t try to kill me again.”
Completely and utterly confident that I lack the strength to even try, she steps back, lowering herself gently to the ground, her familiar curling protectively around her body, bristling in my direction before growing still.
No need to wait until morning, then. Standing up slowly, miscellaneous injuries protesting at the movement. Disappointingly, I only make it a step and a half before some hitherto unknown rupture in my heel decides to make its appearance. My foot lands, then twists. Centre of gravity unsupported, plunging downward, barely a metre out from where I started.
A second attempt is even less effective as my limbs finally give out. Stubbornly inert, forcing me to rest in the only way they can, battling with infernal hunger as I lie powerless to remedy either.
The minutes are hammered thin, spun to threads, stretching forwards to infinity. The only confirmation that they pass at all is the sensation of bones realigning to their intended anatomy.
It is the longest night of my life.