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Pain rent his torso, blood spilling forth from his chest and lips. Beneath him, the useless whore bitch who’d finally gained the strength to bite him back smiled the first and only true smile he’d ever seen from her. Moonlit feathers scattered across the platform, twilight staining her kimono and hair and casting all around them in a strange, nostalgia-bright glow.
Cold. So cold. No strength left to support his limbs. Impossible for his punctured lungs to summon the breath to carry his words to the oh-so-vaunted “savior of the savages”. She who claimed to have laid Lord Zenos low, an utter falsehood. “My- My master… Lord Zenos… He will come for you.”
Choking on his final words of spite, he collapsed against the floor of Castrum Fluminis, and knew no more.
Memories whirled before his eyes, a disorienting kaleidoscope. A starveling child forced upon his doting parents. Concern that they’d love her more than he manifested in the request that they keep her to work around the house. A chance for freedom from the yoke of overbearing parents that expected the world of him.
He stood back. Watched as she suffered their wrath, freeing him to keep his focus on his studies and show his true potential. Obtain the attention of the Garleans, gain a proper education, and repay his dedication with favors to his parents in turn. It was only right that he repay them for their sacrifices, as they oft reminded him.
A clash with Doman rebels. Nearly out of breath. Dead within a stroke. And yet, Lord Zenos saw fit to spare his unworthy life from destruction. Lord Zenos saw potential enough in his life not to extinguish it.
And yet. And yet, the gaze of what passed for his contentment or interest fell upon the sister he’d seen sold off to pay the debts her husband owed. The literal whore found herself at the head of a nation as viceroy, whilst he struggled and suffered in Garlemald to prove himself to superiors looking for the first mistake, the first chance to cast him out with the rest of the savages.
Something pulled at the edges of his awareness. Like the warning klaxons of an Imperial base indicating an impending attack. The crow of a cock at sunrise. The incessant beeping of a mechanical alarm dragging one into wakefulness. He opened his eyes and found himself back in Castrum Fluminis. He looked down at himself, patting his chest for a moment to determine if he was real.
Then, shock paralyzed him as his gaze fell upon his own pale, stiff, bloodstained corpse. No one, not even his enemies, had bothered to bury him. Lord Zenos never came to follow up on their party, their report.
Something in the air around him felt bizarre. Twisted. Then, as if stepping through a hole in reality itself, a black-hooded entity bearing a red leonine mask emerged with an annoyed tut, adjusting its robes.
“Well, now. That was an unfortunate end to meet. I labored to believe magicless shards of people could put up such fierce resistance, and yet, here we are.”
In the midst of his rambling (for Asahi could clearly hear the figure using a male voice), the hooded man stopped, staring right past Asahi himself and to his corpse. He raised his hands in mimed surprise. “But what is this?”
He strode right through Asahi, filling his entire being with a soul-deep chill. He leaned over the Hyur’s corpse as if inspecting it from every angle. “Oh my, my! ‘Twould appear that this is one of the pawns that boring old Elidibus sacrificed while wearing the flesh of Lord Zenos.” He poked a booted foot at the corpse, nudging it to see if rigor mortis had set in. “A shame, really. But such bonds, such desperation, are ever wont to lead people astray. I doubt the real Lord Zenos ever knew this man existed. A pity.”
If Asahi had a heart left, it would squeeze in his chest. Breath came in shuddered gasps. Lord Zenos had to know he existed. He had entrusted this mission to him, specifically. A mission of vital importance! A mission that, as doubt and realization settled in equal measure, was designed to fail.
To have him die for the glory of Garlemald. As was his pledge when he became a soldier and thence a Tribunus.
“Well, it’s not as if the man whose corpse this was will use it any time soon. And I am in desperate need of a new vessel, all things considered.”
Asahi’s voice rang in wordless cries of anger and violation as the darkness comprising the robed figure settled into shape around him, the masked man almost seeming to meld into him. It felt like a sickness, a festering worm crawling beneath skin and muscle to watch this stranger, this demon slip into his body like one would break in a new pair of trousers or shoes.
He saw his own body stretch, shrugging off the sword wounds in his torso as if they were little more than a stitch in the side after a night of sleeping improperly. “Ahhh, there is nothing quite so satisfying as awakening in a new suit of borrowed flesh.” The demon wearing his skin tilted his head back and forth, cracking and working the kinks out of his rigor-mortis laden form.
Asahi’s fists clenched as he charged for his stretching body, desperate to try and dislodge this intruder from it. He passed right through his own skin as if it were little more than an illusion. He turned back to face the monster wearing his skin with an unhinged snarl on his face.
“Get out of my body. Whatever savage hellspawn you are, get out. It’s bad enough I have to suffer the indignity of dying in my moment of triumph, but-“
He paused in the middle of his grousing as his own eyes stared through him. No, not through- at him. Could this fiend somehow perceive his presence?
His own tongue clicked in mock annoyance, black bangs canting from side to side as the intruder shook his head. “I might have known this one would come with a very attached spirit, given the grisly nature of its end. No matter. Tag along behind me, if you must, but I can’t suffer you to get in my way, Asahi sas Brutus.”
A deathly chill ran down Asahi’s spine as the monster wearing his skin spoke his name in a cadence that bore a disturbing resemblance to his own. He dared not ask how his possessor knew either piece of information. However, he knew that he was dealing with something far beyond any mortal’s ability to comprehend, much less fight against.
This demon proved quite effective at allaying all rumors of Asahi’s death upon his return to Garlemald through a portal that almost severed the tenuous connection between the deceased body and his lingering soul. So effective that it put Asahi in mind of the rumors that his Lord, Zenos, had met his end in Ala Mhigo.
Had that, too, been a deception by these monsters? Fandaniel’s earlier words indicated it had been, yet Asahi struggled to believe it. His lord could not, would not fall before a pathetic band of savage adventurers, not after cutting through swaths of uncivilized hordes to establish Imperial footholds in Doma and Ala Mhigo both.
He was too strong, too skilled. Too perfect to fall to such human things as a death in battle. Or worse, as the rumor mill spun before Zenos made his next public appearances, to suicide.
His lord had more than a passing fancy in the arts of a Doman samurai. However, Asahi doubted very sincerely that he would, in a moment when he found himself hard-pressed, see fit to embrace a samurai’s end.
Asahi would be offended at the draining of his family’s coffers and fortune if not for the fact that “he”, or what was left of him, was already in the grave. And despite how grateful he was to Garlemald for its many, many opportunities for advancement over the rest of the Doman chattel, he could hardly say he felt a strong bond of patriotism that would be offended by the outbreak of civil war on his family’s dime.
Fandaniel soon tracked down his lord, resplendent and golden as ever. He simpered in a poor mummer’s mockery of Asahi’s own voice that he was little more than a dog at the heels of his master, a hunting dog if his lord so wished. And it took every onze of Asahi’s self-control not to want to vomit.
If spirits could even vomit, anyway.
Then, at last, the moment of truth came. Fandaniel celebrated how easy it was for their plans to plunge Garlemald, thence the world, into utter chaos to get moving with the aid of his “singularly useful body”. How simple it was to move men with the alluring glint of coin, to convince people that what they knew as truth was falsehood.
“Ah, but wait. Were we not acquainted, you and ‘I’?”
Asahi’s eyes widened at the query this demon mincing and prancing about in his flesh like a bad mummer’s motley posed to his lord. There was a chance. At last, he could receive confirmation that Zenos had not died, that it was truly his lord that finally noticed his singular talents and gave him the chance that always should have belonged to him.
Zenos slouched over on the throne, as was his wont. His bored gaze barely flicked to the white-robed beast as he removed his hood, showing Asahi’s face to him for the first time since their reunion. A foul smirk of the sort that Asahi would never wear in Lord Zenos’ presence crossed the demon’s face, as if he knew the answer to his question would provide only cruel sport.
Fandaniel bowed at the waist, a perfunctory thing that showed little of the respect Zenos was owed as the now-reigning Emperor of Garlemald. “Should our familiarity cause you distress, I beg your forgiveness.”
Mockery. The snide bastard knew it too, offering a half-smirk to both Lord Zenos and Asahi’s own spirit where he stood silent beside the throne, waiting with bated breath for his lord’s answer.
Zenos heaved a sigh before asking, deadpan, “What did you say your name was?”
Asahi’s heart shattered as the world collapsed around him. After all his effort, all the time he spent trying to earn his favor, all the hours spent trying to perfect the plan he thought his lord entrusted him with, he didn’t so much as recall his face, much less his name.
Asahi sas Brutus was absolutely no one to Zenos zos Galvus. No one to anyone else, save for the fortunes in gil that once lined his family’s coffers. No one to his own parents, if he didn’t succeed where his adopted sister consistently failed again and again and again. No one, even, to his enemies or his fellow Garleans.
He was nothing. No one, but a shade who yet resisted the yawning pit of gravity that threatened to pull him into some other world he was not yet ready to traverse.
Fandaniel’s absolute mockery of his heartbreak did little to assuage the burning hatred that began to kindle in the depths of Asahi’s heart. A dagger to the heart to live unnoticed, to die unforgotten, indeed. Wordless screams and obscenities tore their way from Asahi’s throat as Fandaniel ended the melodramatic mockery of his emotions and settled into his role as the preening fool at Lord Zenos’ beck and call.
His corpse moving about like a puppet jerked on inconsistent strings, laughing in mad relief and dancing about the room as Fandaniel reveled in the death of one of his former compatriots was too much for him to bear. Darkness took him for a few blessed moments of relief, and he screamed his throat raw in the void, slamming his fists down again and again on what passed for the ground, wishing with every fiber of his being that it was Fandaniel’s worthless face he was pummeling with each blow.
As his reserves of energy exhausted themselves, he found the living world playing at his consciousness. He peered through the veil to see the savior of the savages, still annoyingly alive and well, glaring at “him” with the utmost disdain and hatred. He heard as if from underwater Fandaniel’s gloating about his intent to commit suicide on the grandest possible scale, taking the world with him.
No wonder this fiend was drawn to his lord, if they both held the same self-destructive impulses. He had to wonder, were he still alive and himself, would he have chosen to enact such a plan? To follow in his lord’s footsteps unto the end?
He had to think that he would, though he would not have been so theatrical about it as Fandaniel. And yet, a gnawing pit in the depths of his soul told him that this widespread destruction, this plan to end the world and all else on it, was not Lord Zenos’ plan. For once, rather than effortlessly taking command, Zenos appeared to be drifting, listless. Following the twitch of the puppeteer’s strings as he slavered for a rematch with the savage savior.
He watched as Fandaniel bungled scheme after scheme, nearly taking a blade to the face for his incompetence and shrugging off the possibility of death as a mere backup plan. Rancor unfurled its wings in the depths of his heart, for he himself would never fail Lord Zenos so. Nor less dare to brush off his punishment or speak to him so casually.
Asahi didn’t know quite when Fandaniel decided to stop imitating his speech patterns, using his own natural voice instead. The sickness he’d felt when the monster first stole his flesh had festered for so long that he barely felt it anymore. Clearly, the bastard was wearing himself a comfortable little niche in his corpse.
And as Fandaniel stood beside his lord in the bracing cold of Garlemald, there was a moment of quiet. Of calm before the storm. A moment where he felt he had something crucial to gain by listening in. Insight into his lord’s mind and heart.
“Honestly, talk of your nemesis is the only thing you ever seem to enjoy. Does nothing else spark your interest?”
A pause. Wind whistled through hollowed-out buildings as Zenos gave thought to his answer. After a long moment, he hummed in thought before replying, “No. All else is… equal. Equally tedious. Equally disappointing.”
His talk of mire and bog and choking faded for a moment as Asahi staggered. The moment that had formed much of his professional life, the moment that gave him something to strive for, had meant nothing, absolutely nothing to his savior. The bitter irony of it all made him want to laugh and weep.
“But then came the light. Blinding and pure and hot, so very hot. Enough to set my soul aflame. I basked in the afterglow until the void yawned once more. And then I knew the muck would never claim me again.”
The light. The Light. That damnable savior of the savages was his lord’s reason for living once more. The one who had seen him to his grave had become the target of his obsession, the one upon whom his approving gaze rested. So long had Asahi toiled for but a moment’s consideration from his lord, only to realize that had never, would never receive it. Only those things that managed to stimulate him would ever claim his attention for more than a passing moment.
Asahi couldn’t tell whether the words spilling from his mouth as Fandaniel worked it were his own or the fiends as he commented on the way Zenos barely acknowledged his existence.
The void yawned once more for him. He wanted it to swallow him whole. But before it could, he felt an insistent tugging on his spirit. As if the fell beast occupying his body wanted to show him something.
What he saw was a mockery of a state dinner. Zenos seated at one end, a nameless Pilus seated at the other. His own body dressed in the attire of a servant, dithering about the throne room twisted by machina and organic matter. And resting upon the throne-
Asahi couldn’t help a double-take. The savior of the savages, unconscious and unmoving, propped upon the throne. The Pilus at the end of the table awakened, and Fandaniel addressed him as if he were the Warrior of Light himself.
He cared little of their current plans, nor less of the machinations of Aulus mal Asina. Yet he couldn’t help but feel a sadistic twinge of joy in his chest at the thought of his foe, the one responsible for his death- for even now, he couldn’t conceive that it was Yotsuyu that managed to end him- facing the same utter humiliation that had become his daily fare. Something else, wearing their flesh, mocking their behavior and actions.
That sadistic glee only raised as he watched the erstwhile Warrior of Light struggle and flail about in flesh not their own, cowering and scurrying about like a pathetic rodent. Like he and the rest of his Imperial compatriots had been forced to do time and time again, especially when faced with the eikon-slayer’s all-consuming might.
He crowed at how the one who laid his master low kneeled and crawled along the icy ground like a worm, struggling to hold on to consciousness and life itself in the aftermath of a ceruleum explosion. Ah, to see Lord Zenos’ murderer- for he still could not accept that his lord ended his own life- brought so low was utter bliss.
Yet even that momentary spike of vicious, vicarious entertainment could not allow Asahi to forgive Fandaniel for what came next. From what little he’d gathered of their plan, their intent was to summon this ancient eikon and have Lord Zenos gorge upon its strength, recreating the end of the world.
That was the intent, and yet Fandaniel fell backward into the embrace of the primordial soup at the moon’s core. He stole Lord Zenos’ moment of triumph for his own glorification, robbing him of the one satisfaction he could take from this world of emptiness. The fires of hatred and rage that had dimmed with the passage of time now flared into life once more. And when the yawning maw of Death surrounded the both of them once more, he let it take him.
Take him, but not dissolve him. Not claim him. No, he refused to allow that until Fandaniel, too, suffered his fate. He could see the bastard in his true form, some scientist of Allag, waiting, resisting consumption by the core of the star as the end of the world shrouded the living world.
By the time the savior of the savages and their pitiful crew arrived, Asahi had his course set. He but had to wait for battle to weaken what was left of Fandaniel’s spirit. And when the moment arrived, he struck.
He barely paid any mind to the words he spoke to the living. He only had eyes for the kneeling ancient before him, the man who almost seemed to grovel at his mercy as the depths opened beneath him.
The worst punishment he could offer the bastard for using him, for his treason against Lord Zenos, was this: To deny him the resolution of his magnum opus. To ensure that, even if he succeeded, he would never witness it, and would have to start his work from the beginning.
Yes, that was a fitting punishment. To rob him of satisfaction the same way he’d been robbed of it in life. That the savior of the savages seemed to pity the fiend before him when they’d spared him none only made the bile and disgust rise further in his throat. Thus, he insisted that none of the living try to follow him.
Being the target of the eikon-slayer’s misguided heroism was bad enough. The thought of receiving their sympathy, their pity turned his stomach to no end.
The bog of festering anger, the mire of his resentment and rancor slowly swallowed the both of them. The darkness of resentment and unfulfilled desire filled their eyes and stuffed their throats until they finally, finally choked upon it and knew no more.
He was nothing to anyone that mattered while he was alive. Now, at last, Asahi sas Brutus was nothing in death.