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Deep into the womb of the earth, past the graves, and away from the eyes of the Fell Star, everything was possible. Like defeating death.
The bright turquoise light of the circuits that delimited the entrance to the Chamber of Rebirth cleaved through the silent, sweet embrace of the darkness. Bias grasped the round latch firmly and rotated it once clockwise. It clicked in place and whirred into the door.
Bias stepped backwards right as a cloud of ice poured into the hallway. It curled around her feet, almost lapping at the hem of her robe. She mused that, had any surface dweller stood in her place, their feet would have frozen to the floor. To her, instead, it was a pleasant coolness soothing her skin.
She entered the Chamber without waiting for the door to slide fully upward. Her breath shuddered in her chest at the sight that awaited her; rows of vertical, transparent, and cylindrical pods pulsated softly in the swirling mist, like lungs inhaling and exhaling. The liquid within them, the Amrita, glowed across the Chamber. The Sacred symbols inscribed along the pedestals and the canopies of the pods hummed in synchronisation with the Amrita.
Bodies long-healed of their mortal wounds floated within, sleeping the last dregs of the eternal rest until they could rouse to their second life.
The shadows cast by the pods swallowed everything else. Bias couldn't even see the conduits snaking across the walls unless she stared at them and focused.
Bias glided along the smooth path engraved on the floor, her feet not making the slightest sound. The mist enveloped her as if to embrace her like a good friend; holographic panels lit into existence in front of the pods at her passage.
She turned to the pod holding the body of a Bearer of Goneril, the one her team had retrieved after the Dragonslayer bent Derdriu to her will. Core thumping behind the sternum with excitement, Bias poured over each data displayed. The energy levels, the cellular activity, and the tissue regeneration rate were excellent. The Core implanted in the place of the Bearer of Goneril's weak, dead heart had bonded well with the body; the neural pathways were, at last, ready to be activated.
Bias's hand itched to authorise its initiation. Instead, she flittered from one control panel to another, ensuring that no anomaly had emerged during her absence. It took her some time since the bounty provided by the Dragonslayer had been plentiful; besides Goneril, the Chamber hosted the bodies of a Bearer of Lamine, a Bearer of Charon, one of Gautier, a Riegan, a Domeric, a Daphnel, one Blaiddyd, two of Fraldarius, and a Dual Bearer of Gloucester and Charon. Bias remembered her a former experimental subject returned to her family for proving the Twin Crest project feasible.
Her team had retrieved more Crest Bearers from the battlefields, but Bias had these imprinted in her memory because they had arrived in Shambhala with Relics and Nabatean weapons attuned to their Crests.
As Bias walked from pod to pod, checking the status of her future siblings, a blissful heat radiated through her limbs. The systems couldn't detect a blemish or a sign of their first death. Bias vividly remembered how delicately she had handled the Bearer of Dominic after all her bones had been shattered. How hard she had laboured to cleanse the jagged stump that Aymr had made of the neck of the Bearer of Blaiddyd. Looking at them now, Bias questioned herself if the younger Bearer of Fraldarius truly had had his arms torn from his body or if the Sword of the Creator had ripped through the chest of the Bearer of Riegan.
The only mark that prevented them from perfectly retaining their looks from before their first death was their now translucent skin. It was a side effect of the Amrita that nobody, not even the progenitors of Agartha, had ever resolved. The notion didn't sadden Bias; it brought them closer as a family.
Her Core buzzed in trepidation as she neared the last of her new brethren. Lips still trembling from the incredulity of it all, Bias stepped one breath away from the glass of a specific pod. There, just beyond multiple sheets of reinforced and enchanted glass, rested Seiros, the last direct daughter of the Abomination, her skin as wan as that of any other Agarthan. Her fellow blood, Cichol and Cethleann, flanked her, silent in their deep sleep.
Bias's fingertips grazed across the glacial surface as she observed the miracle. Seiros, unlike the other Bearers, had possessed a Crest Stone as heart; substituting it for a Core had been impossible, as it would have resulted in an empty vessel fit only for harvest. Rescuing her from her first death should have been unfeasible. Had been deemed unfeasible, just like everyone had once believed turning Crest Bearers was unattainable.
Bias had had to fight for Seiros, Cichol, and Cethleann's salvation. Lord Thales had wished for their corpses to be disassembled and converted into weapons. However, Bias had stepped between him and the former Children of the Goddess, chin held high despite the dread writhing in her chest.
Are they not like us?, she had cried in front of a bewildered Lord Thales. Have they not been abandoned by a cruel creator whom they loved without reserve, like us? Your Excellency, you witnessed with your own eyes the Fell Star ignoring their plight and purposefully sinking its blade into them to deprive them of their lives!
As expected, Lord Thales had regarded her with cool disdain. The people under their command had fretted around them with heads bowed down and shoulders hunched; they had scurred from one alcove to another as if chased by subterranean rivers, carrying the spoils of war gathered.
A minute passed, tense. Then, Lord Thales shifted minutely away from Bias. Explain, he only said with grave voice.
Bias felt her knees quiver. Your Excellency, I, too, thought the creatures spawned by the Fell Star as beasts! How could I not- how could anyone not, after seeing their true form! After learning how they trampled our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons! How they destroyed our homes and our cities, and how they erased the glory of Agartha from history for the happiness of the Abomination!
She had licked her lips. Her dry, cracked lips. Her throat convulsed, a flower deprived of nourishment for days. Lord Thales hadn't twitched a muscle. Everyone else had stayed far away.
But now!, her voice had broken for a second. I see! They were only dolls to the Abomination. Things to be used until the Fell Star bored of them. They differ from us solely because Nemesis, the thief, destroyed the physical body of the Fell Star before it could turn against its Children, like our progenitors have done us.
Bias had fallen to her knees then, to surprised gasps of onlookers. She had crawled towards Lord Thales, deprived of the courage to look at him in the face, and wrapped her arms around his ankles. I beg of you, your Excellency… They are like us. Tools discarded and hunted by a wicked creator who had extracted vows of loyalty from them with lies. Please, your Excellency, allow me to draw them from the pit of death and join us.
Something had fallen and clanged loudly against the floor. Bias hadn't dared to raise her head to learn what.
Her Core had hummed behind her sternum. She tried to breathe through the hand squeezing her lungs. Lord Thales had moved his foot - no, he hadn't. He had remained as unmoving as ever. Bias had lowered her face further, forehead scraping against the metal of Lord Thales's sabatons.
-Next, Lord Thales's sabaton had collided with her nose. There won't be a third chance, he had stated imperiously while Bias was clutching her face.
The memory filled her with the sensation of blood in her nose but also elation, for she had triumphed against impossible odds. Thanks to her, Seiros, Cichol, and Cethleann had been rescued from the cruel fate the Fell Star had condemned them to. "I cannot wait for you to awaken," Bias whispered, gently caressing the glass. "There is… So much I want to teach you. I'll love and cherish you like you've never been before, I swear."
However, her delight diminished at the uncertainty of her next move. Bias paced back and forth the length of the Chamber, contemplating the figures of her new siblings. The time had come for them to rise to their second life, but she couldn't afford to be hasty. If they reacted badly to the confusion that emerging from death brought...
She immediately discarded the possibility of first awakening Seiros or the Bearer of Blaiddyd. The destruction they could unleash upon themselves and their siblings in momentary madness was unacceptable, and Bias refused to subject them to the boundless pain of having hurt their family. Cichol was, by all accounts, a level-headed individual, but he was pathologically attached to his daughter too. He was at risk of losing his composure like the others.
Bias discarded the other Bearers one by one. Too rash; too devoted; too vengeful; too cheeky… She wanted to limit the risk of their awakening going awry as much as possible. Bias paced and paced, her brow ever furrowing, until her feet stopped next to the older Bearer of Fraldarius.
This could work, she thought to herself. This man had ample experience as a father and ruler of a territory, possessed a strong influence on the Bearer of Blaiddyd, and demonstrated himself capable of placing the common good before his desires.
This is the one, she decided, her fingers deftly tapping the awakening sequence into the control pad. Mist steamed overhead as the Sacred symbols powered up. The Amrita began bubbling, like water in a pot on the verge of boiling but never tipping over the point.
The neural activity on the display spiked. Her new brother's eyes fluttered open.
The Bearer of Fraldarius blinked, and then he blinked again. His eyes widened; shudders ran through his body; his fingers twitched. It wouldn't take him long to regain control of himself.
Bias quickly inserted the command for the activation of the neural link. "Welcome, my brother," she greeted him with joy almost spilling from her eyes. "My name is Bias. I'm here to guide you into your new life."
"What is this?" the Bearer of Fraldarius fixed his stare on her. His shoulders jerked. "I died… I'm dead. How can I be speaking to you? My son, Arianrhod, his Majesty-!"
It wasn't a reassuring reaction, but she could understand it. She wished she could hold him in her arms to hearten him. "You've bravely fought against an undefeatable opponent. It's partially my fault, and I apologise for it." She shifted so he could see the rest of the Chamber and raised her hand toward the other pods. "As for your questions, I had your corpse and that of many other Crest Bearers, your son included, brought into the Chamber of Rebirth to free you from the hegemony of the Fell Star. The former Kingdom of Faerghus has fallen, it's true. It doesn't mean it's over. Once the time for the Dragonslayer to join us comes, we shall lead Fòdlan to a new age of glory."
The Bearer of Fraldarius choked, mouth falling open.
Bias smiled. "Worry not, brother. We are a family, from now unto eternity. There's nothing to be afraid of anymore."