Chapter Text
In the darkness of a hill-hidden vault, a golden seal shattered.
It had endured since the beginning of the era that began all eras, crafted by the First Man during the tumultuous time when the gods waged war with one another, and ancient, forbidden weapons were grasped by desperate hands and terrible beasts were loosed from their leashes.
Old bronze and rusted gold cracked, splitting like rotting skin before fading away in a mass of flaking dust. The jet-black sphere they held was silent, its surface adorned with the imagery of an open eye overlooking a horizon of seaborne serpents. Beautiful, terrible, but silent. Dormant.
The relic was small, barely bigger than a skull, with a surface as smooth as it is hard, colored the hungry black of obsidian that devoured the light around it. It rested in the head of a titanic and monstrous visage carved into the cave's black stone wall. The monster is a hideous thing—a one-eyed ogre with a crown of flames. In its open, cyclopean eye socket, the sphere sits.
Before the idol knelt a man garbed in a blood-red hood marked by the symbol of a black, closed eye. He comprised a priest, a leader, a one-eyed warrior, a man, and a monster.
“He is dead…” The one-eyed man spoke the words as if tasting the finest wine. “The First Man is dead!”
He rose from his kneeling position, the loose fabric of his attire barely containing the ecstasy that made his Perfect skin shiver. He watched with a single, crimson eye as the seal crumbled completely, leaving only the ornate relic with which his congregation revered. Gloved fingers curled so tightly, he almost drew blood, as the man slammed a booted foot to the smooth, stone floor.
“ Brothers and sisters all, heed my summons! ”
His beckoning call rang out with both religious rapture and war-hunger. His voice resounds through space by a technique drawn from the days of yore, carrying his will across sea and soil, reaching only the few souls deemed worthy of this summons.
Within minutes, they arrived—identically red-cloaked figures materializing from hexogramic shapes of polygonal light. Each of them knelt before the idol, smiles and smirks concealed by the large hoods they wear over their hidden faces. After a moment of silent rapture, their master spoke.
“The False King has fallen, and with him, the seal he placed long ago on the True King.” He extended his arm to the relic, as several congregants stole glances at the onyx sphere looming above them. “My vigil confirms it, and with his accursed gold gone, we need only awaken our slumbering lord. Speak! and tell me of how that half-man fell!”
“A God-killer, Lord-Beholder,” one of the congregants, a woman of controlled class and sharp eyes, replied. “The Valkyries saw him slain, along with The Count, The Killer, and The Lover. Their entire command has been cut, and nothing remains to stop us.”
“Excellent, excellent!” the lord exulted, his single eye wide in manic reverence as he clapped his gloved hands. A red pendant hung free between his fingers. “With our greatest enemies vanquished, nothing can hope to oppose what we’ve crafted to combat those who oppose our king .”
He set the pendant before the idol, its crystal surface resonating when placed together. The man turned to face his followers, gripped the edge of his own cloak, and turned it inside out in a sudden tug. What had been blood red was now pitch black, and the closed onyx eye of before was replaced with one of gleaming red—one that was no longer closed, but open. His followers did the same, revealing half a dozen open eyes glaring hatefully from beneath their hoods.
The lord continued, “There is no time to waste. Enact the necessary preparations. Elara, bring me the Witchborn. It’s time he played his role.”
* * *
The air felt warmer—a red haze that brushed against his chillingly pale skin like a beast marking its territory. Years in this dry, dark, lukewarm prison had gotten Enda quite accumulated to its never-changing temperature. To suddenly feel that shift felt off. Frightening, even. Enda’s thin fingers twitched against the rough stone below, tired eyes now looking to the only ones he could.
“Something’s happening.”
His cellmate's words hit him like a blade from the blue. Always had she done her best to comfort him in their suffocating prison, never inciting him to worry unless it was absolutely necessary. Her voice was a sharp thing, poised and ready like an unsheathed sword. To their captors it inspired fear through the promise of violence. To him, it inspired comfort, the promise of a protector he’d never had, and the promise that nothing would harm him.
Their captors feared her, much like many had feared him. Yet he had no haunting soul or superhuman strength, no special property besides the curse passed onto every one of Finé’s descendants. All he had was pale skin, snow hair, and blood-colored eyes, features that even in the White Orphanage had earned him frightened looks and fearful aversion.
This time, at least, his cellmate did not fear him for it. That was the one solace he could take when he was swindled from one imprisonment to another. Gone were the sterile surroundings of the White Orphanage, and in their place, the jet-black walls of some alchemical cult’s hideout. Before he was accursed among the cursed; here, he was simply cursed with a cellmate as equally derided as he was.
“W-What do you mean?” He couldn’t help but sound worried, she had always sounded so assured. Now, things were different. This was no promise of protection, no words of reassurance. She was apprehensive, tense, and afraid. Aura was never afraid.
“I don’t know.” The uncertainty in her voice was terrifying. “It’s like a dead camp has erupted into flame, it shouldn’t, but it has.” Her gaze was locked to the ground, haunting eyes shaking as they tried to come to terms with this revelation.
“A-Are you okay?” Enda tried to do something , more than ever cursing the shackles that kept each of them locked to a opposite ends of their cell. Truthfully, he couldn’t relate to a single one of the sentiments she called upon. A blooming fireplace keeping a home warm? He may as well have tried to picture a dog with three heads. Even so, he could still try . “Maybe you’re feeling sick? They haven’t fed us in-” His stomach ached; he had no doubt hers did as well. “Well, a while now.”
“It’s more than that. I think.” Aura raised her head, harrowing purple eyes meeting blood red gems. “It’s bigger—way bigger than anything else I’ve felt.” The eerie woman clutched her head, shackles creaking, unused to the sudden movement of their sullen captive. “It’s bad. Really bad.”
Before, Enda was unnerved. Now, he was scared. The young man brought his knees to his chest, hugging them with as much strength as his thin, starved arms could muster. He had never been an imposing boy, more lean than anything else. Now, he was downright skeletal.
“What’s going to happen to us?” His voice was on the verge of breaking, ruby eyes becoming wet with freshly brimming tears.
“Nothing,” Aura replied almost instantly, releasing her head from her hands, and leaning in as far as her shackles would allow her. It wasn’t far. “Nothing will happen to us, you hear me?”
Enda buried his face in his knees, his grip on his trousers tightening with every second. “But-”
“Enda, look at me.” Her words were firm, but gentle. The boy lifted his eyes from his knees, meeting her eerily comforting gaze. “Nothing is going to happen to us, okay? I promise you that.”
“Okay…okay…” he breathed, neither knowing if he truly believed it.
“Whatever it is, we’ll-”
Aura’s words were trampled by the unforgiving grinding of rusted steel against the rough stone floor. The gate to their cell had been pushed open, dim light from the hallway spilling into their dark den, framing a familiar figure, a woman dressed in red-
No, black .
Their captors' colors had been inverted,coats of crimson seemingly discarded for ones of inky black that blended all too well with the surrounding darkness. The pair of prisoners exchanged a look; neither of them knew what this meant, but dreaded the answer all the same.
“Witchborn,” the woman surrussed. Enda flinched. “The seal has broken. Come, it is time you fulfilled your purpose. Our lord awaits.” As she spoke his chains disintegrated, yet his shackles remained.
“The seals have been broken…” The echoing revelation shook Aura to her core, turning even her impassive face pale.
“Correct,” the woman responded, looking to Aura as if she were the filth she’d scraped off her boot. “Our lord slumbers, free of his chains. We simply need a siren’s song to awaken him.”
“No!” Enda found himself blurting out, rising to his feet on shaky legs. “I-I can’t! I won’t!”
The woman turned to him, her glare cold beneath her hood. “I wasn’t asking, boy.” She spat the final word as if it was an insult, and with a wave of her hand, his shackles began to move. Instantly the ones on his wrists clicked themselves together in front of him, locking against one another like magnets. Struggle though he might, Enda could not free his wrists from the alchemic bondage.
“Come. I will not keep our lord waiting.” A chain sprouted from Enda’s shackles, leaping into the woman’s hands like the leash of a dog. She pulled, and the malnourished boy stumbled forward.
“No!” Enda yelped, his cry just as useless as the last time it was uttered. “You can’t make me! I-I won’t!” He pulled, straining his wrists against biting steel, kicking his shoes into the ground in some poor attempt to resist her.
“You must ,” the woman demanded, pulling his chains with all the strength afforded to one with a Perfect Form.
“Agh!” Enda wailed, pain sprouting from his wrists like the roots of some parasitic plant. Her tug was vicious, pulling so hard on his hands he feared she’d rip them off. With a cry he fell to the floor, teary eyes mere inches from rough stone.
“Please…” he begged. “Don’t make me-”
“You can beg when you’re dead!” The cultist snapped with the speed and precision of a striking serpent. “Even for a Witchborn, such weakness is a sickening sight.” She pulled on the chains, yanking him upward with one hand, and gripping his chin with another. “Dispel those tears, and take some pride as a man. You will not have another chance. In awakening our lord, you will have done something miraculous with your pitiful existence.”
She threw him to the wall, scoffing as yet another wail leapt from the mouth of her pitiful prisoner. “I will not ask again, now come forth and-”
“ Unhand him! ”
The cultist flinched, turning to see the source of that sharp demand. It struck her like a blade, one she just barely blocked from cutting her to the bone. There was something special in that yell, a force that when summoned, could dominate the wills of weaker beings. Enda watched as the cultist regarded Aura with the caution afforded only to a caged beast. Compared to how they treated her, he was little more than a mouse caged with a wolf.
“Get your hands off of him, you wretch!” Aura spat, inflamed with an anger Enda had not even glimpsed from her. “His songs are his own! If you mangle them for something so vile, so help me I’ll-”
“ What ?” The cultists' question slammed into her. “What will you do, abomination?” Despite the danger Aura represented, the cultist feared her little. Aura made to speak, but the cultist seized the initiative.
“Despite your power, you are nothing. Merely a sum more than the speck of worth this witchborn represents for us.” She yanked Enda closer, forcing Aura to watch as she grabbed his long, shaggy hair and made him wince at her grip. “When our lord is reborn, we will have use for you yet. But your role has not come, so do not interfere as I make this one fulfill his.” Finally, she released the grip on his scalp, turning around to begin her exit.
“No, no, no please!” Enda screamed, kicking against the ground as he tried to resist her grip. As always, it was useless. “Don’t make me do this! Aura, help me!” He turned to his companion, pleading with a bruised face and teary eyes.
“Enda!” His cellmate screamed, already on her feet, and pulling against her shackles with the ferocity of a starving wolf. “No! Damn you- Damn you! ” Her voice was cracking, glaring at the cultist with vicious hatred. Those eyes went to him, and for the first time since they met, Enda saw them despair.
“Just hang on, I’m gonna find you, alright? Stay strong, I’ll rescue you! I promised to protect you, I promised! ” Her voice cracked, Enda could tell she was crying.
“Aura…!” he all but croaked in reply, helpless as the woman dragged him from his cell, and the only friend he’d known.
“I’ll save you! So please, wait for-!”
The cell door shut, silencing Aura entirely.
“You have no need of her, nor she of you,” the cultist affirmed, dragging him along like he was a disobedient dog. “Our lord awaits, and you will not leave him wanting.”
Any words of defiance died in his throat. Weakness was the one constant in his unstable life, and as those doors shut, he cursed himself for wishing for the strength of another.
* * *
“Sing.”
The man’s demands were simple, ordained with the true authority of one born to lead. They’d forced Enda to his knees, pressing them against stone as smooth as the White Orphanage’s sterile walls. Still his hands were bound before him, leashed to the ground of this central room.
“No!” he yelled, trying to summon a fraction of the strength Aura had wielded. “I-I won’t do it.”
“Insolent brat,” he could hear the woman mutter behind him. She frightened him, but the man before him enforced a toxic combination of terror and dread.
“It was not a question, boy,” the one-eyed man replied, towering over him like a monster of myth. “Your time in the witchspawn’s pits planted the seed to your compatibility, and through your training, we have nurtured that seed.”
Simply the thought made Enda flinch. Any mention of the man’s “training” sending shivers down his spine, and a dozen visions that haunted his nightmares. The haunting time he spent in a liquid-filled tube like some kind of preserved organ, machines biting into his flesh to inject their venom into his veins, and the lingering sting of electricity sending voltages throughout his emaciated form. Enda looked to the floor, his quivering gaze desperate to avoid the eye of his captor.
“Our lord is free, but slumbering.” The man gestured to the monstrous idol and the sphere nestled into its single eye-socket. Even glancing at it was enough to make Enda’s heart pound. Relics were a subject he knew all too well, and the fear this one instilled within him was as stark as the moon at night.
“It is your duty to awaken him from it. Sing, witchborn, and rouse our lord from his rest.”
Duty. The word rubbed salt into an old wound. Would there ever be a day, he wondered, where he would have a life not defined by relics or the ghost that studied them?
“And then what?” The question left his mouth before he registered them. He looked to the leader, for once, not caring for the violence he often threatened. “I become the first to be devoured by whatever that thing becomes?” Enda felt emboldened, pushed on by some strange combination of spite and sorrow. “Tell me, ‘Lord-Beholder’.” He spat the title like a curse. “What reason could I possibly have to obey you? Starve and beat me—kill me if you want; it will make no difference.” Enda met the leader’s one good eye, mustering up more defiance in that moment than he had in years.
Enda waited for his captor’s reason, for his composed face to distort with frustration, for his brow to furrow and his eye to narrow. He expected the blunt pain of a hand connecting with his face, or the sharp promise of a blade to his throat. On some level Enda welcomed it, desiring the promise to die defiant. That , he could take pride in.
“At last, you understand.” The man smiled, and Enda’s confidence shattered like glass.
“What?”
“You are nothing, boy. We could kill you right now and little would change. The witch’s spawn are many, and when that facility spat you out to save its patrons’ skin, you were simply the closest to us.” His words were calm, almost affectionate. He kneeled before Enda, now eye-level with the Receptor Child.
“We can always find another. Three of the Valkyries already make potent candidates. Our lord's awakening is not a matter of if; only when.”
Enda’s blood ran cold. “Then…then why?!” He couldn’t help but scream. “Why me? Why not someone more promising?”
“Because you are promising enough,” the man said, like a father reassuring a son.
“I don’t understand…”
“What did you have when trapped within the White Orphanage’s walls? What did you have when released from that vile prison?”
“I-”
“Parents who had died long after you’d been taken? A grandfather who passed away merely a year before America spat you out with the others? An empty house with the memories of what once was, and the question of what could’ve been?”
“You know nothing of-”
“Oh, but we do . Well, what little there is to know anyway.” The man grabbed Enda’s chin, forcing the Receptor Child to hold his gaze. “We know the day you were taken, the day you were abandoned, the day you were lost, and the day you were found.”
“They day you kidnapped m-”
“The day we saved you!” His words forced a pensive silence on the boy, making him feel like a mouse in the claws of a lion. “The day we plucked you from the depths of obscurity, honed a talent the White Orphanage could not see, and gave you a purpose beyond that of a failed vessel of that immortal crone.”
Enda’s voice was caught in his throat, seized by something he couldn’t identify.
“You hadn’t a shred of Finé’s soul within you, nor was your compatibility with relics any more impressive than the other dozens of Receptor Children before we trained it. With no blood to call your own, nor a home that truly felt like a home, you were nothing— are nothing.”
“I…” Enda felt the back of his eyes sting with fresh tears threatening to break. “That’s not…”
“How long are you going to delude yourself?” the Lord-Beholder asked, his question neither soft nor firm. “How long are you going to pretend this sordid life has meant anything? You couldn’t be Finé’s vessel; you couldn’t even be a suitable Adaptor before we found you. So why not be something—something more? ”
Enda fished for a reply, grasping for words like flotsam in a suffocating ocean. “I-I don’t care!” he cried, driven more out of desperation than anything else. Whether he believed himself or not was a different matter. “I never wanted that! I never wanted any of it! All I ever wanted was-was-!”
Once again, the Lord-Beholder smiled. His hand left Enda’s chin, letting the absence speak louder than its presence.
“Connection,” he mused, taking a step forward. “The little treasure that all men desire, loathe as we are to admit it.” He leaned in close, too close. “And through our ministrations, you found it.”
Enda’s blood ran cold. He meant-
“Your bond with the abomination is strong.”
Abomination. Hearing that pet-name for his only friend sparked anger within Enda, however short-lived though it was.
“A freak with a wretch, licking each other’s wounds like stray dogs. We have many cells we could’ve put you in, and yet, you ended up in hers. How fortunate, for one so starved of connection.”
“W-What are you saying?” Enda whimpered.
“That you have attained something precious, but despite that, you are powerless to protect it.” The Lord-Beholder gestured to the robed alchemists that surrounded them. “The abomination concerns us no longer. Kill it.”
“What? No!” Enda screamed. “Don’t! Y-You can’t!”
“Pray tell,” the man began, rising so he once again towered over the kneeling prisoner. “ What is stopping me?”
“I-I’ll-”
“Hah!” The man’s laugh was a vicious bark, making the boy flinch from its force. “You’ll what ? Hide behind that damsel? Grovel and cower as a woman fights your battles for you?” The leader’s smile was savage. “Don’t make me laugh, boy. You are nothing. Even as a man, you have nothing . No pride to call your own, no resolve to see it through, and no power to make your wishes a reality. I will drag her here and kill her myself, cut open her throat and make you watch as yet another thing you couldn’t protect disappears.”
“P-please!” Enda begged, eyes watering from the man’s terrifying threats. The image of his companion’s blood spilling onto the black stone floor below him threatened to make him wretch. “Please, no… She has nothing to do with this. You can’t just-”
“Then sing !” The man stamped his foot with a thunderous clack that shook Enda to the bone. . “Are you so desperate to have her die for your weakness? Are you so pitiful a man that you’d choose to lose everything, rather than stand and fight for it?” He seized Enda by the hair, forcing the young man to stand on shaking legs. Ignoring his pained cries, he continued, “Do you think it makes you special? Do you think yourself moral for casting aside the duty we men bear to protect ? Do you think she was happy being the shield to such a pitiful creature?” He threw Enda down, seething at the pained yelp he made when thrown to the smooth stone floor.
“I…” Enda choked, failing to hide the tears falling down his face. “I didn’t want to burden her…”
“You have a chance to fix this, to repent for the beatings she suffered protecting you, to be renewed after your failure to become what you must be. You’ve garbed yourself as a damsel for too long, expecting another to save you, all so you can escape the role you were born to play.”
“And what is that?” Enda sobbed, pushing himself to his feet, feeling tears sting against fresh bruises. “What would you have me be?”
“A man, a prince, a protector!” the Lord-Beholder exalted, wielding his words like a war hammer. “A pillar of strength, someone who will never have to rely on others again. Our lord gives you this chance, power the likes of which you couldn’t possibly imagine.” A vigorous hand swept out to the still idol. “Fail to claim it, and you will fail to be what you must. She will die.” His fist tightened.
Enda remained, quivering. His words were caught in his throat, strangled by the snake of self-loathing.
“Take it, Enda O’Nial.” The man softened his tone, speaking like a father to an uncertain son. “Take the role we have prepared for you. Do something only you can do, and cast aside the notion of ever needing to be protected again.”
Enda gulped. “Ever?”
“Never again,” the man assured him. “You will have power—power to protect others and yourself. Your life will be your own, with the strength to cast aside anyone who would deny you your freedom.” He stepped close again—too close—placing a gloved hand on the boy’s shaking shoulder.
“Only you can do this, Enda. Now sing, or you will be the death of her.” With words at once savage and serene, the man tightened his grip on the prisoner.
It was an impossible choice, one that left Enda speechless. The man pushed him, his chains rattling as he was pressed several steps towards the idol and the baleful relic lurking within. This thing was a monster, a spherical remnant of a slumbering monstrosity that if awakened, would gorge on the blood of Ireland and more.
His heart pounded, his eyes watered, his teeth clattered—every inch of his body rebelled against the idea of awakening it.
“Just hang on, I’m gonna find you, alright? Stay strong, I’ll rescue you! I promised to protect you, I promised!”
What he wouldn’t give to have her here now. To have Aura break down the door to this twisted temple room, strike down this canal of black-robed monsters, shatter these shackles, and carry him out of here.
He turned around; she was nowhere to be seen. There was just him, and the monsters who held them both captive. But he was no damsel, and needed no savior.
Enda looked to the idol. He swallowed, and finally, he sang.
* * *
It stirs. After an eternity of slumber, it stirs.
A sorrowful song summons it from slumber—the mournful melody of a broken boy.
It is old, older than man itself. Its crucible is gone, lost to time like so much of the gods and their gifts.
Power stirs. Systems that have spent millennia asleep now rouse to life. The song caresses its dormant sensors, heralding a stream of data that tells the relic anything and everything it must know of its activator.
It knows his voice. It knows his name. It knows when he was born and when he died—when an old life was butchered to suit the designs of others. It knows every strand of DNA that perpetuates his biology and through that, sees the failsafe built into them. It sees the soul-song storage device, the means with which his soul will be devoured in favor of a forgotten primogenitor. It traces his bloodline through the ages, walking down an emerald, isle-borne road before it arrives at its source. The etchings of her work remain, an eldritch system made to overwrite the very core of his being should a specific waveform summon forth his ancestor.
It matters not. She is dead. Slain twice in body, and once in soul. Her contingency will never see use again. Now it is simply a dormant reminder of the curse he once bore, and a mark for which man and woman will persecute him.
Fools. All of them. It knows better. It knows the eternal truth at the End of the World that unites everyone and everything. The truth of power, of justice, of the shackles of their pitiful societies and how one may go from slave to slaver, from peasant to emperor.
He was once one himself. An emperor of might divinely ordained by his creator to fight and rule. He is a warrior, a conqueror, and a kingmaker. He is mighty, and as he is mighty, he is free. He is the end of shame, the herald of might, the monster king who wears his horrible flesh with pride.
He is Bálor, and his Eye is open.
* * *
The sphere split, a red line cutting across its surface like a slash from a sword. It pulsed, a fossilized heart beating with newfound life. Its crimson light bled from the cut, and in that moment, Enda wanted nothing more than to have never been born.
Crack!
Lightning red as the dawn burst from the relic’s surface, trails of electricity following behind to lick the weathered stone face that housed their host. With every pulse, the relic’s incision widened, bleeding ever more blood-red light. Bit by bit by bit, it widened, slowly and clumsily opening like an old man’s tired eyes.
“Yes! Yes, yes, yes!” the Lord-Beholder cried, arms outstretched as he howled in religious rapture. His one eye was wide, his cloak buffeting with every thump from the infernal thing’s pounding core.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
An almost rhythmic beat echoed like skin-woven drums. At first an echo, then a heartbeat, and soon growing to rival an earthquake.
It pounded and pounded and pounded. A hammer breaking bones, a sword splitting arm from shoulder, a breaking wave against seaside cliffs. It sent vibrations through the ground, then his flesh, then his blood, then his bones, until Enda could feel the resonating of this thing’s pulsating lifeforce batter against his disposable soul.
It was going to consume him. Eat him alive. Devour his soul like Finé-
Flash!
“AYGH!?” A bolt of lightning shot out from the opening socket, crashing against his left eye with the force of a cannonball. It wriggled like a worm trying to dig through dirt, burrowing into flesh, tissue and jelly that miraculously, suffered none of the damage he felt he was taking. It merely wanted to dig, it wanted to feast, it wanted in . In his eye, into his body, into his heart, into his soul like Fi–devourdevourdevourdevour–!
Eat–devour–grow–fight–kill–die–rise–fight–eat–dev our–grow–fight–kill–die– rise–fight–e at–devour–grow–fight –kill–die–rise–fight–eat–devour–grow–fight–kill–die–rise–mo nster–monster– mon ster – m o nster– MONSTER !
I-I’m not–
You are!
I can’t be–
You MUST!
I don’t want to be–
No one chooses what they will be! Accept it in your soul, let it consume you, let it devour you, cast aside this pitiful facade and break free from this shell of–
“NO!” Enda screamed, a shrill cry that sent the lightning leaping from his eye to join the many electrical tendrils spawned by the relic. The room continued to shake in the throes of an earthquake. Cracks split the walls, rending ornate carvings apart as if they were little more than torn paper. The monstrous visage the relic rested in fractured, crumbling even as its evil eye surged with life.
Countless bolts of the malevolent energy were visible now, wriggling in the air like tentacles of a kraken. They scorched and split the stone around them, shattering the shackles that held Enda and striking even the cultists that had gathered in reverence.
Enda ran, kicking his feet off the ruptured floor and sprinting on shaking ground. Not a soul tried to stop him, too enamored were they by the awakening of their long-slumbering lord. He would never get another chance like this, so he ran, ran as far as his withered legs would take him, down pitch-black hallways briefly illuminated by flashes of blood-colored light. The only sounds around him were that of sundering sparks, scorched stone, and the maddened laughter of the Lord-Beholder.
They got louder, and louder, and louder, screaming in his ears like the howls of the banshee, rattling his bones through sheer volume alone. Every step was on unsteady ground, every blink heralded by another flash of red. Nausea seeped into his throat, compounding the dread that made his soul–
There was a flash.
He was flying.
His world was red. The color had come from behind, engulfing him and spilling through the hideout’s halls like a flooded ant hill. It smelt like loneliness, tasted like loathing, felt like despair and sounded like self-hatred. It was red.
He was red.
* * *
For the first time in years, Enda felt the rain. It pattered against him in a gentle drizzle—the first signs of a coming storm.
He could not see the sun; that much hadn’t changed. Though his vision was foggy, he knew clouds when he saw them. From them came the sprinkles of water that dropped down his face, joining tears he had thought he’d finished shedding.
He’d woken up on grass, lying on the emerald plains of his homeland. He had always thought this would be a joyous moment, when he and Aura would run through the meadows with the sun kissing their skin, hand in hand, sprinting until they reached Grandy’s bungalow.
But the sun was gone, and Aura with it.
He knelt before a ruin, watching the rain seep into the now-sundered hill that had once been his prison. Mud flowed between blades of grass like blood through hair, slipping past his knees and carrying the cold to seep into his skin.
He didn’t care. Nothing was left.
He thought the sight of his hill-hidden prison destroyed would delight him, yet all it left him was a heart hollowed by loss.
Aura! he had called, over and over and over again. His hands were caked with mud and grass, dirt dug deep into his fingernails as he searched, and searched, and searched. He found nothing, and heard no one. Before the rain and ruins of what had been his prison, Enda knelt alone.
Tears poured down his face, joining with the rain that drove the cold into his body. There were no cities visible across the vast countryside, no sun beyond these smothering clouds, and not a soul but him in the ruins of yet another captor’s mad ambition.
I did this, he thought. He woke the beast, he sang its song, he sundered the base and killed Au-
“A-Aaaaagh!!!” He screamed, digging dirty hands into his soggy snow-colored hair. What was once a slow drizzle had intensified, erupting into a fervent downpour that drenched him in misery. Alone he wailed, sobbing for what never was and what would never be.
Then the air went hot. A wave of cold warmth that brought no comfort. It was alien, frosty, flaming, and intense, causing the pouring rain to boil and evaporate upon striking the ground. Thick steam rose, clouding his vision like a smothering fog. The mud coiled, the mist deepened, and the storm roared, as if Enda had been transported to some mythical swamp of legend.
A fairy tale was coming to life around him.
He had wandered too far, trampled into the other world, tampered with that which man was not meant to touch. Now things would come for him, the creatures in the woods who stalked the swamps like wolves.
Fairy tales, he told himself, old folk stories to scare children. This isn’t real. I’m hallucinating. I-
In the mist, shapes rose. Long-limbed, gangly beasts rising from flashes of red that fought to be seen through the thick mist. Each one tall, each one thin, each one bearing a single, red circle in place of an eye.
He knew them. He didn’t know how, but he knew them. They were the army of the monster king, the weapons made to oppose god and man alike, the legion that had not been documented since the Book of Invasions.
The Fomor had come.
“A-aaah!” Enda screamed, scrambling to his feet. He blinked away teardrops and raindrops alike, craning his head and twisting his body to find an angle where he wouldn’t be looked upon by the one-eyed legion. Not a spot existed. The shadowy things in the mist had him completely surrounded. Every step was uneasy, made shaky by fear and-
“Agh?!” Enda fell, his heel catching on something that sent his rear crashing into the ground. He dragged himself across the boggy dirt, trying to run from whatever thing had tried to claw him.
Then he looked down. “What?”
At his feet lay a sword.
It was long and coloured red like blood. Simply looking at it made his eyes ache. It existed, yet didn’t, giving off static like a fire gives off smoke. It both did and didn’t belong, was and wasn’t, an incorporeal thing trying desperately to anchor itself in reality.
It’s power, it’s freedom, it’s the promise of a lord’s knight and a life of your own. You need only take it and-
No. Enda knew what this was. Knowing without knowing, he looked up to see the surrounding monsters as still as statues. Their numbers were considerable, a small army of ruby red eyes glaring at him through boiling mist. Simply standing, waiting to see what he’d do.
Enda brushed his hand against the muddy grass below, feeling something solid rub against his palm. Instinctively he recoiled, almost jumping before just what it was finally came into view.
Through the mud, grass, mist and murk, a pendant sat. Small, well-made, and red as the rising sun. Where the sword was a mystery, this was a certainty. He knew what this was, even if he’d never seen one in person until now.
A relic fragment—a shard of something once grand rendered into a weapon of soul and song. The little miracle machine used by those the scientists deemed compatible with LiNKER, and the tool forged by the ancient witch whose existence had damned him.
A Symphogear.
Finally, it hit him. They wanted him to choose .
Sword or song.
One was power, might , a kind of strength that could be his and his alone. It would garb him in armor, give him the strength needed to never again let his life fall into the control of another.
The other was a different sort of strength. He could never use it before in those barren white halls, but he could wield it now, his captors’ “training” had seen to that.
Embrace the power of a monster, or a witch. Believe in the strength of a sword, or the strength of his songs. The question rattled him fiercely, one he had never possessed the heart to answer.
The sword tempted him with the promise of might, cursed as it might be. Perhaps he could use it for something better. At the very least, his life would be his own. He would have strength, power, the means to take what he wished—starting with his freedom.
With this power, he could shed the wool of the protected and don the steel of a protector. He could take back his life and so much more, hold Aura close and keep her so safe that nothing like this would ever happen again.
“I like it when you sing. It’s nice.”
Aura had said that once; when, he couldn’t remember, yet the words persisted, digging themselves up from some forgotten corner of his mind. During the cold nights they spent together yet apart, she would ask him to sing, and smile.
“His songs are his own!”
Enda swallowed, and seized the pendant.
Instantly the Fomor moved, charging from their misty veil and splitting it like it was silk. Without it, their visage became clear. Bodies composed of crimson, slimy light lumbered towards him—some with weapons, others bearing claws, and others more with teeth—as if Noise had fused with the mythical monsters they’d inspired. Their evil eyes were glowing prisms, and their forms just as alien to life as the Noise he’d heard so much about.
The sword vanished, and the horde was upon him. Within seconds they would have him, and carbonize his flesh so he may join the runny mud below him.
Enda rushed to his feet, gripped the pendant tight, and sang.
“Zelgen coffin Fragarach tron! ”
Amidst an ocean of red, a cyan star shone.
* * *
“Haah…haaah…!” Enda plunged his blade into the ground, wrapping shuddering hands around the horizontal handle. Shaking legs struggled to keep him standing, forcing him to lean against the soot-stained blade of his Armed Gear. The rain had stopped, dwindling to a mere drizzle that dripped past the crown that now framed his forehead.
His vision was blurred, made foggy by tears, raindrops, and exhaustion, one so intense it shook his very bones. Cold upon cold upon cold seeped into his skin, shielded by a cloak whose mantle rested between his collarbone and shoulder. It draped across his shoulders, back and arms, its tails resting on the ground like flensed skin.
The soot that had once been his foes piled at his feet, coalescing with the mud to form an inky paste that stained his boots. How he’d done it, he had no idea. The last minute had been a chaotic blur of silver, red, sword and song. He had fought like a man possessed, until little remained of the monsters that had come for him.
I did it… Despite everything, he’d won. The Fomor were gone, felled by the blade that was his Armed Gear. It was a strange weapon, looking more like a cuboid spike than a sword, yet wielding it felt as natural as moving his own arm. It was an extension of him, the blade of his soul called forth by the song in his heart.
Slowly, the rain dissipated, leaving parting clouds and the chill of a squall. He could hear something, the low thrumming of an engine followed by the whooshing cuts of propellers.
Something was coming, but he was too exhausted to respond, and too miserable to care. Was it the Americans who came to clean up one of their hidden mistakes? Or yet another captor come to use him for their own ends? Lethargy lingered, making it impossible to stand on his own. A fitting metaphor, he thought, for he had rejected the power to do just that. He had sacrificed strength for songs, and now another collector had come to claim him for it.
He took his hands off the blade, letting it dissipate to form the single silver gauntlet it had spawned from. For just a moment, he stood tall, before letting himself fall, resigned to his fate.
An arm wrapped around his waist—a silver gauntlet identical to the one he now wore. A Symphogear.
“It’s alright. You’re going to be okay,” she whispered. Trails of pink came into vision.
He knew that hair, and he knew that voice.
Exhaustion overtook him entirely. Blackness fell over him, leaving the memory of a familiar, smiling face. As his heavy eyelids closed, he croaked out a name he never thought he’d say again.
“M-Maria?"