Chapter Text
That's all it takes, really: certain death behind you and an unknown fate ahead. You don't need the hand of an enemy-turned-ally to guide you, just like you didn't need the storm-surge of their resolve driving itself against your own hesitation as they bade you to follow. You would have followed regardless.
But their hand in yours feels like a promise. It's nice to have, before you jump.
And as you fall.
If you survive the fall, you're free—untethered from the now-broken world you were entrusted to defend, unbound by your betrayal.
It doesn't matter, then, if the command that gave you purpose still lingers like a geas upon your heart. You've proven you can resist it.
Your fall becomes a steady glide. You smile easily, even laugh in defiance of your animator's pathetic attempt to control you, and raise your hand to your ally again. The moment of contact only serves to strengthen your conviction. You are free.
Your proof is right beside you.
"Do you know what they call us?"
The Chosen One swerved, glancing over his shoulder as he angled himself from surface to deep web. Dark raced to keep up.
"They call us a reckoning," he continued breathlessly, "a scourge, like—like we're avatars of the web itself, sent to wreak vengeance on an internet condemned." He threw an impish grin in Chosen's direction. "I've read their forums, Cho, they call us destruction incarnate—"
"They call us malware."
Dark sighed. Chosen wasn't listening to him, not since bringing their latest incursion to a sudden halt without so much as an explanation beyond a curt 'we're leaving.'
"The boring ones, maybe." With a burst of flame, Dark accelerated past and rounded on Chosen, propelling himself backward so as to better confront him. "My point is, they fear us. Word's spreading. If we start holding back now…"
Something darkened beneath Chosen's feigned indifference. "I wasn't holding back."
"Then either you're lying, or breaking through that firewall took more out of you than I thought."
The portal opened, the interspace taking shape around them in a wash of greys and greens. "I've known you three years, Chosen. I've never once seen you burn out."
Chosen said nothing. Wrapped in silence and private rumination, he began to weave his way out of the city's central hub.
The Dark Lord followed.
"I don't get it."
They were halfway home, and Dark had just about finished drafting up the blueprints for an internet portal of their own in his mind, when Chosen spoke again. He didn't like to fly within view of the city—something about not wanting to draw unnecessary attention—though at this distance, with black anvil clouds darkening the sky and the city shrouded by rain, Dark had to assume he was trying to work out some quandary only a long and contemplative walk could solve. If a muddy one.
Chosen had stopped at the edge of the cliff a distance ahead of him to stare out over the gale-ravaged waters below. "Those stick figures. Why… why didn't they flee?"
"Sure they did," Dark muttered, huffing a little as he trudged up the slope to meet him. "Barely gave the show a chance to get started before they'd all scattered to the links."
"Everyone with weapons. Or powers. Anyone who could've put up a fight. They scattered."
Something sharp had made its way into his voice. "A few stayed behind. I thought they'd gather themselves together, or hide, or—do anything to protect themselves—but they just… ran. At me."
"What, you mean the victims?"
A pause. "I guess…"
"Conventionally speaking. You know—stock figures, fodder." Dark waved a hand. "Call them what you like. They're all just throwaway sticks, really." Scowling slightly, he scuffed his feet against the ground to kick the mud from his boots. "They exist solely to emphasize the prowess of their betters. A purpose to which they slavishly adhere."
"...throwaways…" Chosen repeated, more to himself than to Dark. His gaze seemed fixed on point in space somewhere between the two of them. "Don't you pity them?"
He scoffed. "You say that as if they're worth pity."
"You scorn them."
"They're not—" Dark broke off; composed himself. "Look, what do I care if they insist on a fight? That's on them. Anyone can see they're powerless to stop us."
Chosen turned away—from Dark, from the precipice. "Futile to even try."
"You get it." A note of unease itched at him, but he pressed on. "That any of them are so deluded to believe they even stand a chance against us—I mean, who do they think they are?"
"Who do they think we are?"
"Exactly. Destruction incarnate, remember?" Dark grinned. "We're gods, Chosen. They're losers."
Chosen met his eyes at last. It had to be something about being a Chosen One, Dark decided: the way he had brooding down to a fine art. He'd never met another, but he bet they were all like that—staring, calculating, pinning you down like a specimen to study your every flaw and motive. And unlike Dark Lords, Chosen Ones never rose from the banquet table glass-in-one-hand, dagger-in-the-other, poised to sweep aside the curtain and reveal all they knew in a big, dramatic monologue, aha! The doors are sealed and the wine is poisoned and I've got you right where I want you…
No. They just stood there, thinking. Menacingly.
After a moment, however, Chosen nodded. "Losers. Of course."
Dark hid a small sigh of relief. "So what do you say we get back online and finish what—"
He felt the air knocked from his lungs before he saw what had struck the blow. A second sent him sprawling on his back in the wet grass, an arm's length from the edge of the cliff. When he looked up, Chosen was looming above him, stark against the churning sky with his hands curled into fists and lightning strobing around him as though he'd summoned the storm to his bidding.
"You lose," he said softly.
"Heh, h—wait," Dark gasped, "wait waitwait Cho, Chosen come on you can't just…"
Chosen advanced on a stupefied Dark Lord, lightning surging closer with every step. "Oh. I guess you thought you stood a chance."
"Chosen, if this is your idea of a joke—" Dark scrambled further towards the precipice until his hands found empty air. "Look, I'm sorry, ok? How was I supposed to know you were some kind of, I dunno, victim sympathizer—"
He broke off, cringing at his own words. Chosen had stopped in front of him, so close Dark could feel his arms and neck tingling, and he braced himself for an onslaught of lightning. But none came. When Chosen spoke again his voice was low, raw and haggard as if the memory of a deep hurt had blunted his ire.
"I am a Victim."
"Don't say that," Dark pleaded at the ground. He knew what he meant; Chosen had told him, once, what the animator had done to him, and yet… "You're not. Not—not anymore. You're the Chosen One."
"Chosen," he rasped. His words came in halting breaths. "Not chosen for anything, except, to be destroyed. Then thrown away. That I refused to be thrown away doesn't make me any less of a—"
"Don't say that!"
"I was tamed."
"Chosen, enough—"
"And you know as well as I do that my name means nothing."
"But it does!" Dark wrestled himself to his feet, frustration giving way to sudden, boiling rage. A white-hot arc of flame erupted from his fist to cut across Chosen's torso. "It means you are!" And another. "You are! You ARE The Chosen One!"
He made no move to defend himself. His storm had dissipated. His arms hung limp at his sides as cords of focused power meant not to burn but to lacerate swept through him again and again. Coiling them inward, Dark shaped a fireball between his palms and raised it in his left, the swirling orb building and growing brighter as if it were drawing the summation of his might into itself. "Why won't you FIGHT BACK?"
He aimed.
He froze. The hardness in Chosen's gaze struck at him, and he faltered, stunned by his own fury. Panting heavily, he grit his teeth in effort to regain control over its inexplicable vehemence. "Hellfire, Chosen, who gives a damn what noogai made us for?"
Chosen regarded him with wary apprehension. "But it matters what he named us?"
"Yes!"
Extending his free hand, Dark grabbed hold of Chosen's arm and wrenched him closer, striving to make himself understood. "I was made to fight you," he said, his voice precariously strained. "To destroy you—to give my life, if that's what it took to save the animator's precious computer. You released me from that purpose!" His fingers dug into Chosen's shoulder. "Look at me, Chosen, am I not the antithesis of who I was? And am I not still The Dark Lord?"
He drew himself to his full height. Something was unraveling within him, weaving threads of mad desire through his every defense, every renunciation he'd hammered like steel around that cursed mission that lay at the core of his being. A part of him welcomed it—welcomed the chance to put himself to the test, to confront it again, and again deny it. Meeting Chosen's uncertainty with the force of his conviction, he dared it to try.
"Look at us," he went on. "Our power, our freedom—everything that makes the world fear us—it's all because of what we are. Chosen One and Dark Lord, together."
He might have clasped both hands around Chosen's at that, if it weren't for his flame's persistent refusal to be extinguished. Caught in its gold-orange gleam, Chosen appeared strangely unsteady, forlorn and distant as if he'd forgotten the strength that defined him. Yet his countenance betrayed a deep, piercing scrutiny. His eyes flicked from the tension in Dark's forearm to the twitching of his left hand, to the fireball still swirling above his open palm.
"You're… not free," he said. It was almost a question.
"What?"
Objections rose in Dark's throat. What else could he be? He'd mastered his own code; he was warden, not prisoner of the animator's will—was Chosen so blind? Did he pity him? The thought nauseated him to the point of renewed indignation.
But Chosen had turned and was already starting in the direction of the forest and their base beyond, shaking his head slightly as if to say you're just another victim.
He seethed. He would not accept it.
In a flash of movement, The Dark Lord attacked.
For a moment even the storm seemed to hold its breath as the air between the lord and his target ignited. Yet with uncanny timing and agonizing, maddening grace, Chosen sunk to his knees. Dark watched the fireball intended for his back arc over his head and crash into the trees ahead of him, engulfing them instantly.
A growl of irritation escaped him, followed by a sound like strangled laughter. What difference did it make? Chosen was invulnerable to fire. All Dark had done was make a fool—
—out of himself—
—when what he needed was something far more potent—not a wild, destructive conflagration but something precise, sharper and more intense than anything The Chosen One could throw back at him. Even the word 'destruction' felt suddenly limited, amateurish; he needed to rend, to annihilate, to DELETE.
Master of his own code, he found he could shape such power with a simple revision to his programming.
And summon it.
It detonated from him in an explosion of black lightning. The Chosen One was rounding on him, a hurricane like a singularity of light and wind materializing in his fist, and at once the two forces shattered against each other. For an instant they resisted each other, ruptured the atmosphere, broke, resurged and shattered again, showering sparks and bolts of energy down upon them both. But Chosen was outmatched. The next wave of deletion shredded his defenses, coruscated up along his arm and struck at his heart.
The lightning vanished. Dark stood frozen in place, a soundless scream trapped in his throat.
The Chosen One fell.
And The Chosen One crumpled.
And stopped moving.
The Dark Lord staggered, as excruciation and triumph tore through him as one.