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In the desolation of the aftermath there was silence, a pervasive kind of stillness that crept over the broken landscape to snuff out every sound but the staccato of a dwindling fire. It circled the defiant flames like a beast stalking prey, reaching with tendrils of fog down into the pit of a smoking crater, lingering about the light, waiting to claim its victory.
The crater was recent. It had once been a hillside. Amidst the scattered debris at its center lay a prone figure, shivering but otherwise unmoving. Enough time had passed since it had fallen there that ash had already begun to settle over it, yet the flames that danced across the figure's skin revealed the scars of a long-fought battle, and the strain in its shoulders—as it failed and tried and failed again to push itself upright—revealed its defeat.
The figure was The Dark Lord, and The Dark Lord was burning.
For a moment the silence withdrew as a piercing cry rent the air. Then, swiftly, it closed in again.
This was, of course, impossible. The Dark Lord could not burn.
The Dark Lord refused to burn.
Through a torturous crawl of hours he could measure only in heartbeats, Dark clung to his simple refusal as though it were an anodyne to pain and confusion, an anchor against the seemingly endless green-grey haze that clouded his thoughts. Burning was something that happened to lesser beings, to weaklings, to losers who thought themselves heroes and strove in vain to defy him.
(Inferiors, he'd called them once, before he noticed the way Chosen scowled at the term. But inferiors nonetheless, contemptible in the way they all but tripped over themselves for the sake of their pointless websites. For the sake of their animators.)
Dark knotted fists into the ground beneath him. Victims burned. The Dark Lord set aflame. The Dark Lord destroyed. Fire was his to shape to his will, his to command; it obeyed him regardless of target, it blazed perpetually within him and defined him.
It could not kill him.
It could not hurt him—!
A shaking breath that might have been a scream rose in his throat. With a snarl he choked it back. It was his fire, after all, that surged through his veins and filled his lungs until it flooded out of him in great waves, one after the next. His spilling up over the rim of the crater to assail any foe or unlucky wanderer who might have found themselves in this accursed wasteland.
Invulnerable, unaffected, The Dark Lord lay cloaked in self-immolation as if it were the vestments of a god. And yet he was burning—from the inside, from fire not his own.
His mind felt frayed at the edges. When night came and oblivion threatened to overtake him at last, promising respite, he sunk into it without resistance.
In the desolation of the aftermath, The Dark Lord dreamt of falling.
The morning brought frigid shrieks of wind that tore him from sleep with renewed excruciation. Dark raised his head, wavering between consciousness and unconsciousness as he tried to remember where he was. Jagged rocks pressed against his forearms. His lips stung with the bitter tang of dirt.
Drawing on his discomfort as though it were a catalyst, Dark pushed himself onto his side with one outstretched hand, twisted, landed on his back, and immediately wished he hadn't. A long gash across his now-exposed torso sent jolts of protest coursing through him.
He brought his hands to his chest, tracing the scar with numb fingers. What in hell had…?
Fragmented visions answered him: a command interrupted, a flash of green sparks, a bolt of lightning driving the air from his lungs. And then only fire, sharp, searing, unrelenting, cutting through him, cutting him open; cutting stone.
Never mind what, Dark decided. Whatever it was hadn't been enough to kill him. He was the Dark Lord, he had survived, and at present was determined to continue surviving.
At last he forced his eyes open, blinking through his disorientation at the matrix sky above. A sliver of moon—hadn't it been full the day before?—leered down at him.
Dark lacked the spirit to scan himself for further injuries. He had just about swallowed enough pride to consider flipping himself back over and clawing his way up the slope of the crater when a different memory caught him—of Chosen where he'd last seen him, cornered and struggling against a swarm of virabots.
He'd never once cried out. His silence, like the dispassionate rage with which he'd confronted him, cut deeper than defeat.
Chosen, Dark tried to call. His throat was dry with dust. Surely he would have come looking for him by now, if only to be certain he was dead. "Chosen!"
He was answered by a voice like the scraping of steel against steel.
"You failed."
A laugh followed, a high, shrill, callous sound that accosted him from every direction at once. Dark recoiled involuntarily, struck by recognition he could not place.
"Pathetic," it continued. "Loser. Coward."
With each word it seemed to grow closer, or louder. "He was defenseless, and you did nothing."
A sensation like something crawling beneath Dark's skin moved down along his arm to his wristband. Seized by terrible understanding, he grabbed at it and pulled, hard, to no effect.
"You are NOTHING!"
Then the mission tapped into its power, and the air shattered. For an instant the full expanse of the sky turned red as ragged surges of energy seethed around him. Dark was helpless but to watch, his life force draining through the wristbands, as the bursts coalesced into a vaguely humanoid shape that stabilized and sharpened by degrees until he found himself gazing up at a bright red stick figure, a near-perfect imitation of himself—only stronger, haler. Younger.
The figure shook off its lingering spasms with a roll of its shoulders before fixing Dark with a humorless grin. When it spoke again, its tone had taken on an edge of severity.
"Get up. You and I still have a mission to fulfill."
Dark stared wildly, his breaths coming in irregular gasps. "You're not real." You're code. A single damned line of code I locked away years ago.
The imitation—the impostor—his mission incarnate—landed a sharp kick to his chest in answer. "Get. Up."
Dark writhed inwardly, indignation swelling up within him, yet the wind had been taken out of him. All he could manage was a breathless "why."
"He is vulnerable." The figure gestured over its shoulder, presumably in the direction of The Chosen One. "Don't you understand? Now's our chance."
"You're insane."
"He is broken."
"I'm broken!" Dark sputtered, "and in a worse state than him, if I had to wager a guess." He groaned like a man suddenly spent, letting his head drop back onto the ground. "Go away so I can die in peace."
"Fool."
Out of the corner of his eye Dark saw the figure make a small beckoning motion towards itself. A moment later Dark was lurching to his feet, the wristbands wrenching him forward and his legs moving of their own accord to steady him. Blinding agony shot through him with every step, but he could neither fight it nor go limp; he moved like one possessed.
"You are alive because of me. You draw breath," it spat, "for the sole reason that I require it of you. Refuse me and I will take what I need from you, while you remain here, acting as conduit until the Chosen One is destroyed. Only then will I release you, and you will perish."
It stepped closer, sending a prickle of static along Dark's spine as he struggled against the bands.
Dark's voice had fallen to a rasp. "Then why—why don't you leave me here?"
"Because I want to hear you beg." A shimmering lace of power coiled from the mission-figure's hand to Dark's throat, just enough to restore his voice. "Beg me to take control. Beg me to do what you never had the guts to complete. I am all you are, Dark Lord, I am your purpose, and you will beg my forgiveness for ever having denied me."
Dark glared at it with all the intensity he could muster. "Go to hell."
The lace snapped away. Dark grinned.
"So be it," came the hissing reply. Clawed, upturned hands became blades making cutting motions downwards, and as though something had broken within him Dark dropped where he stood, landing awkwardly on one knee. But the ground offered him no comfort: no sooner had he slipped onto his side that a strand of fire was summoned from him and immediately turned against him; tearing through to its source, tearing it out.
Dark's vision fractured into shards of light as pain consumed him instantly. He thrashed about in an empty space, floating or falling, his head tilted back and his mouth open in a soundless scream.
Distantly, he understood what was happening to him. He'd studied his own code.
He could feel it being undone.
When the scraps of sensation returned, Dark found himself in a crumpled, trembling heap, hugging himself like a child. He heard the mission turn to leave, wordlessly, as if he was not worth even a passing taunt. And he was cold—desperately cold. His fire would not answer him. He lay bereft.
Except, he realized with a start.
Except the mission had not taken everything. Dark stared in disbelief at the small, soothing flame of what had once been a torment.
And then he heaved himself up off his knees, rose to his full height; steadied his footing. From several paces away the mission-figure turned to face him, a sneer twisting its features.
"You're wrong," said Dark plainly, as though it had been obvious from the start. "You're not the reason I'm still alive."
The flare of the mission's eyes burned into him, but Dark ignored it, keeping his gaze fixed upon the ground. Instead he raised one hand and searched within himself for the flicker of fire that remained, the green fire that was not his own. Please.
He was not its lord. He was not any kind of lord, really. He could not command it.
He could only ask.
"I am alive because of mercy."
Between one heartbeat and the next he heard only the mission's icy laughter, and briefly Dark wondered if the fire would not answer him after all. It was karmic, he supposed—he pictured the radiant orange figure standing above him, not cold or sneering but wrathful, whispering through a torn expression, You ended my friends, why should I save yours—
Then the light exploded.
Wild lashes of fire sprang from Dark's palms, scattering light as though he held a tiny sun. The force of it might have flung him back, but he kept himself locked into position, letting its rays envelop them both. For half a second a spark of red flames rose against the green. In the next they were gone.
The mission screamed, or perhaps it was merely the sound of it dying: a harsh, unwavering thing that hung in the air even after the lightning-fire had pierced it through and rent it apart. Dark stared at the point where it had fallen, his chest heaving with exertion.
He'd destroyed it.
He'd actually—
A hollow, broken chuckle escaped him. He hadn't. He was nothing. Not a threat—not to Chosen, not to the animator, not to anyone.
Yet here at his end, where it no longer mattered, he was free.
He was free.
Dark's legs buckled under him, and he collapsed. A shuddering exhale that could well have been his last sent vapors rising through the air above his head. As it cleared, he almost marveled at the brightness of the sky, at the snow beginning to fall around him. He thought he saw the sun between the clouds, encircled by a strange, dark halo, but then a shadow fell over his eyes and it vanished.
"Hey, Dark," said The Chosen One softly.
The most surprising thing was how light he was.
Chosen had expected a broken mess of a Dark Lord, and that's what he'd found, half-buried in the snow with his limbs bent in odd directions. He'd expected the scars, branching like lightning across his weakened form.
What Chosen hadn't expected, when he'd taken him into his arms at last, was how little he weighed. As if he was hollow. And he was cold—so cold, like there was no warmth left inside him. Through the long trek back from the pit he burned a wide path through the snow in his efforts to keep Dark wrapped in blankets of flame.
"ch…"
"…cho—"
When he spoke, his voice was imperceptibly soft. But Chosen was used to listening for quiet things.
He met his eyes. "Dark?"
"where're we… where're we goin'?"
Chosen considered for a moment. "Home."