Chapter Text
I am burning. I burned and will burn, glorious purple roiling and rising and shining forevermore. Away above the ebbing tides of clouds, I am a second sun. Not yet surpassing the other one, for I have no need to. Being here is enough.
I close my eyes from a moment (eyes? Fire doesn’t have eyes), letting the seconds or decades pass on in their inexorable churn. Tomorrow will be just as searing-bright as today. How lucky I am to be here, proud beacon, glowing herald! Who wouldn’t want to be so utterly resplendent with redeeming radiance? At the thought, an airy smile passes over my lips (fire doesn’t have those either. How odd. I’ll close my eyes again, maybe that will help).
A fierce gust of wind rushes past in defiance of my sovereignty over the sky. Indignation, startlingly cold, rises in response. How dare it attempt such treachery? My hands tighten around the hilt of my sword, and I push back against the air itself, flames spewing ever higher. Yes, better. I settle back into place with a metallic scrape. The sound—so foreign and so familiar—burrows its way into me, dragging forth a memory. No, not a memory. A shadow of a shadow of one, perhaps. The stench of sulphur in the air, mingling with oppressive heat. Darkness, and a too-soft-too-wrong voice that cuts through it like a blade. Words, hanging precariously at the edge of perception and-
The thought burns to ash. Fire doesn’t remember such things. Fire just burns. Fire just burns and burns and that’s all I’ll ever do and I’ve ever done-
I close my eyes again, longer this time. I still burn when they open again, and I allow the thought to reassure me. I have nothing to worry about. For a long, long time, I simply enjoy being. I let forever come and go with nothing more than a curt nod, embraced by the warmth that lies between sleep and wakefulness. True, perfect peace. And it’s mine, forever and forever.
Until-
The ground beneath me quakes and rumbles, like the waking of some ancient beast. For the first time in centuries, I stumble. Limbs stiff from disuse fail to support me as I hit the ground in a crash of metal. Higher cognition rushes back, an unfamiliar and unwieldy weight against the empty freedom that existed seconds ago.
I blink through the discomfort and— the flame is gone. Gone without the slightest shimmer of ash or a single puff of smoke. Gone like it had never existed, like I had never existed, like all the good in the world was nothing more than a childish fantasy. Panic. A vice around my chest that locks already atrophied muscles, air rejecting entrance to unyielding lungs, nails digging into palms because maybe, maybe if I squeeze harder, I can ignite again, be at peace again. I'm not meant to think, just burn. Moments tick by. True moments, where time has a meaning. Perhaps a few heartbeats, shallow and fluttering. That heartbeat, is it mine? Fire isn’t meant to have a heart.
And yet… The fire is gone, and I am not. I am here, a mind with a body, gasping, awake. Alive.
What am I?
Another lurch beneath me. Fine-honed instinct shapes impotent adrenaline into something useful. I drop to my knees, grasping fingers finding no purchase in the solid rock. Fingers. I had those, didn’t I? Legs too, and a torso they would attach to. A glance down reveals fine-wrought steel which encases my limbs, cascading in segmented pieces over pale green skin and veins that burn with the fire that I thought was my entirety.
Something shifts in the furthest reaches of my mind. A tiny motion, a foreign object lodged where it doesn’t belong, made manifest not from change, but rather the absence of something which I thought immutable as the sun and stars. As if some fundamental aspect of me was ripped from the rest in gleeful violence, dangling sinew and spewing arteries the remnants of the bloodlust. A doorway opens. Sensations, emotions, thin ideas without face or name. Memories.
A hundred, a thousand lifetimes, each one cut short with the snapping of bones and rending of flesh. A low, warbling growl of an exiled behemoth, simmering rage that spurred me forth again and again. A pulsating mass smelling of death and rot, putrid ichor spewing from an aorta cleaved by my blade. The writhing of almost sentient infection as it crumbled under infernal heat. Each fragment collides with the next in an unending swarm, and each slips away under the scrutiny of my attention. I try to hold on to something—anything—in vain.
Who am I? There are answers buried somewhere in this whirlpool of a mind, if I can just slow the current. Another rumble sends my heart ricochetting against my ribs, reminding me of more pressing concerns. The torrent is parted by the desire to survive. As if the universe heard my plea, a shapeless shadow wraps around my arms and heaves upwards. For a brief second, I follow it into the air. Then, a tear, the splitting of fabric by too-sharp claws, and I slip from its grasp.
Vertigo. Weightless freefall. Screaming air. Rushing pulse. I’m falling down, down, down. Sheer terror slows time until it becomes as viscous as honey. My screams are snatched away by the ceaseless rushing around me. Revenge for my arrogance in pushing it aside. Sudden clarity of thought does nothing for me, reaching frantically as if I could will the air to slow my descent. No, no, it can’t end like this.
With a sickening crack, pain stabs into my arms, arms almost torn from their sockets as I am caught again by those dagger-like claws.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Scrapmetal.” A hiss, tightening the grip around my arms. The contact sends a dull tingle through my heart, like a light strum on the string of a lute. I look up to find nothing but a winged, slightly person-shaped shadow, though far larger than I. The shadow-thing flaps its leathery wings once, twice, and twists in the air, hurtling towards—the spire walls. My arms raise too late.
Pinpricks of pain ignite all over my body, a thousand stinging needles. A fraction of a fraction of a second passes before I slam onto the ground, momentum carrying me tumbling straight to the other wall with a dull crunch. My vision flashes in red– gods, it hurts– and I fight to keep the encroaching darkness at bay, stunned and dizzy and aching, too afraid to move lest the glass tear me apart from within. Something—probably several somethings—broke on impact, a combination of crushed metal and shattered bone.
Then, the smell of smoke. The shadow-with-a-voice, a blurry mess through teary eyes, is… smouldering? It stands in the centre of the well-furnished room, hunched over and unnaturally still. No, not blurry through tears, but heat. Emanating from the creature, causing the air to warp and distort. Without warning, it lets out a horrible scream and seems to attack the room itself, tearing and burning and desecrating with reckless abandon. I am not particularly moved by this, barely capable of processing it through pain-addled lethargy. Somehow, the feeling is familiar. Knowledge bubbles up from some unknown spring, whispering that yes, I’ve been through worse, suffered more, that this is my place.
My place? I squint through the haze, looking, truly looking, at the beast that saved me from the fall. Horns, wings, claws. Pressing heat, scathing voice (‘Scrapmetal’ isn’t my name. I think. I hope). This is no beast, no man, no spirit.
Demon.
Vakuu, that same wellspring provides, he made you. He ruined you. You ruined yourself.
I shake that cryptic thought aside. What inane rambling. Demons are nothing but harbingers of ruin who will laugh when the sky falls and the earth spills its guts. The villain in each fairy-tale there before me. Something adjacent to honour pushes me to my feet, stance steady, blade poised, as easy as breathing. As if hearing my thoughts, the demon (Vakuu, some part of me insists) turns around and-
What is wrong with it?
Its face has been, for lack of a better word, cleaved. Split down the middle, wound slowly dripping dark blood. Though severed, the other half floats roughly in place, still just as capable of scowling. Sudden uncertainty burns in my gut. This thing is huge, easily four times my height, though strangely gaunt. Its sinews are traced over deep blue skin, limbs too long to be proportionate only give a greater edge in range. And if this thing can survive that, then-
“Look what he has done to my face!” That same shrill voice addresses me. As an ally. “Go forth, little puppet, kill the Architect!”
There’s a lot to unpack here. I am not his puppet, nor will I kill for him. Perhaps its injury is causing this confusion. An opening. Feint towards the right—its reaction is slow—then a thrust into the sternum. Another across the shoulder. One more across its Achilles tendon. I settle into the movements with practiced grace; my body has been sculpted for violence, though the true purpose illudes me. I only hesitate when I notice my sword skids harmlessly across the blue-grey skin. Like hitting a wall.
A smile creeps over the demon's mangled face, the frayed edges along its mouth curling up with the visible shifting of muscle. “How inconsiderate of me, it’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? Then allow me to remind you of a very important fact.” He raises one claw and points at my chest. The motion sends ripples of dread through my entire being. My bones know of a consequence I don’t, unable to convey more than a simple command. Run.
“I own you.”
Gently, gently, he mimes wrapping a string around his finger before pulling the air in an elegant motion. I raise my guard in anticipation, the-
A twinge in my own heart responds. The faintest tendril reaching beyond my ribs and straight towards the demon. More than a twinge now, a pressure, building in time with my heartbeat, tempo building like the drums of warfare. A pitiful trick, yet the sensation still throws off my strike, a reckless swing that barely makes contact. Cute. But I don’t have all day.
The voice grates against my eardrums, but from within. A twitching, dreadful parasite writhing and burrowing further through an already hole-riddled mind. Pain. Spreading down, through my veins, straining against the walls of my ribcage, gnashing mandibles tearing through organs, gleefully consuming, forcing me to my knees.
“Poor little puppet. It only took a millennium for you to forget your station. And you’ve forgotten more than that, it seems.” Vakuu says, sadism dripping from each syllable like half-clotted blood. “Allow me to remind you, then. Do you remember our deal?”
A wave of his hand and summons a yellowed scrap of parchment from the aether. Beside it floats a red quill, jet black ink slowly dripping from its tip. A contract, written in archaic and overly formal language, hard enough to parse as is, worsened by the apparent age of the paper. I only understand the broadest strokes, but the message is clear. This is a promise of power. Of unrivalled strength. Of complete and utter dominion. A slight glow draws my eyes towards the bottom of the page. There upon the dotted line: a name.
“I gave you what you desired.”
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It was almost startling, how everything came apart so easily. Metal and flesh and paper burned to nothing without a struggle, without glory. Just kindling in the end, lives ended by uncaring flames. Borrowed fire in my veins, violet inferno sweeping through yet subjugated lands, unopposed, unstoppable. It was overwhelming, the acrid smell of charred fat and skin, the sounds of desperate pleas and dying screams, the terrifying power I held over the world, unable to stop. Judge, jury, executioner—and prisoner all the same. How long before those pleas lost their edge? Before I accepted it? Before I started to enjoy it. Was I unable to stop, or just unwilling?
Surely, they would understand.
The renegade boy returned. My limbs clad in stolen bronze, dedicated to ceremonies of coming-of-age, never meant to witness bloodshed. I had never experienced either. Not true combat, where death breathed cold down my spine, each drop of blood a reminder that I was nothing but living meat, that another second could reduce me to the nothingness from which I came. Not manhood, either, though I had witnessed the spectacle before, where those vambraces and greaves, heated until they resembled the colour of rising dawn, were placed upon the bodies of soon-to-be men and women. The resulting brands symbolised mastery over pain, over death, over fear. My own body was unmarred in this way, but those pauldrons hung heavy regardless, red with viscera instead of flame before leathery wings. A demonic form, reeking of death, of triumph.
I had saved them, saved them all! Won the war that had stolen our greatest, claimed revenge for each fallen Brother and Sister, mother and father. Surely, surely, that would be enough. Let the sight of broken bodies be scorched behind my eyelids, let those vengeful ghosts steal away hope of quiet rest. War isn’t won without sacrifice; what’s another body thrown to the pyre?
A darker, slithering thought: I had finally accomplished something she hadn’t. I had seen the light beyond the shadow she cast, and it was glorious. For so long, I had strived and struggled for a fraction of what was simply handed to her as talent. Was she to blame? She chose me as Brother out of pity, her love genuine, but all too similar to the soft words and gentle touch given to the runt of the litter before you slit its throat. She loved so openly because I was never a threat. If it takes hellfire to make her reconsider, then so be it.
The first sight of those mud-brick houses over the heat-warped horizon sent my heart into a panic, unsure of whether to rise in excitement or sink in dread. The paths worn through the low grasses welcomed me back. It was all worth it to hear the mirthful shrieks of children playing beneath the spotty shade of acacia trees, the drumming of the forgeworkers’ battered anvils, the crackling of roasting meat rising above the rooftops. I was home.
For an ephemeral moment, I was home.
Then the invisible strings snapped taut.
For all their prowess, the Ironclads fell just as easily as the others. Calian—smith’s apron half undone—first rushed forwards unarmed towards the demon wearing a familiar skin. He tried to turn my blade against me, his work-hardened flesh melting as easily as butter in my grasp. His last breath shuddered through the steel of my blade. A silent scream, stifled by a mouth that no longer obeyed. Tears, too, illuded me, for my eyes were no longer mine. And yet I was lucid. Perfectly so. So graciously allowed to witness the end of the world. More bodies fell before my fire, though this time their voices meant something. Faces I only remember in bright shades of smile and scorn now overwritten with monochromatic fear. Fear that was meant to be purged, now exhumed from forgotten graves before a living wildfire.
Huon ran for the cellars, precious bucketfuls of water reserved for droughts reduced to impotent steam by the blaze. Barristan held a cracked pot-lid in trembling hands, muttering profanities as his Brother begged him to run. Sayrir remained kind to the end, holding those terrified children in close, whispering that all would be right, that they just needed to stay quiet for a moment more. It was cruel to make her watch. So very cruel. There was no dignity, not in this body-that-wasn’t-mine in the burning corpse of civilisation.
And then there was only Sister. Alone among the carnage wrought through shattered bone and crimson mud, exhaustion did not weigh down her movements. She had been honed to the sharpest point through those gruelling years for a purpose. She raised her blade not to conquer, but because there was nothing left to protect. The arm-that-isn’t-mine raised, ready to reduce her to another mote of ash to be swept skywards by roaring updrafts. No. Not her. I’m sorry, please. She doesn’t deserve- I don’t deserve- let her live please please please please-
The steel around her body and in her hands—proper steel that had tasted the sweat of countless battles—stood in gleaming contrast against the dull black blood that trickled from my stomach. Another thunderclap of white-hot agony as she cleaved clean through my wrist, the desperate ferocity of cornered prey behind impassive iron. Faux-starlight danced in my vision even as the intangible strings binding me bade me endure, stay, suffer. Again, again, again, she struck, even as severed fascicles slowly knitted together, cauterised from boiling blood.
She stopped. Heaving breaths slowed. Why? There was something behind those dark eye-slits. It looked like-
Panic
Terror
Revulsion
Despair
Hatred
That was the last thing that flashed in her mind before her armour began to burn, before the steel that encased her became her tomb. Before I stood as the last witness to my crimes, alone among ashes. Alone but for the dark laughter. Laughter that echoed forever.
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“I fulfilled my end of the bargain, all the power you could want. Now-”
“Put me back! Please-”
I’m grovelling. On the ground, pleading like an animal. No, less than that. Heresy, perfidy, treason, each bore the price of torture, and I had surpassed each definition a thousandfold. There was no one left to declare a sentence.
“Let me burn again, I’ll do anything! I don’t want to remember-” Like eggshells in my throat. It was peaceful, perfect. Free of the burden of knowing. I don’t deserve to even be alive, not when I- gods no- I killed them. Sister was right-she-I-
Thoughts crash and spin into a swirling maelstrom, spiralling into an endless barrage, stealing the breath from my lungs like suffocating sand. Blinded, stumbling, false wind roaring. The sand smells of smoke, ash, fear. My stomach twists. Burning up from within, overflowing furnace leaking scoria into my abdomen.
A fragment, an island, bright-clear-shining among the dust. An escape. My blade—irrevocably, invisibly stained— lies askew, and is lifted by trembling hands. I’m sorry, Calian. I place my grip above the crossguard. I’m sorry, Huon. The point is levelled at my chest. I’m sorry, Barristan. I clench my fists around the blade, the sharp pain grounding and sickly-sweet and I somehow smile because yes, I deserve this. This blood is mine to spill, this body mine to desecrate. I’m so sorry, Sister. When we meet in the After, don’t forgive me. A moment of pain in exchange for eternal nothingness. The easiest decision in the world. But no, my blade is gone. Plucked from my hands with a tsk-tsk-tsk reserved for chiding misbehaving brats.
“So hasty, Scrapmetal. Of course you can return to your station once you vanquish the Architect. Just try and keep it together until then, okay?”
Vakuu sneers down with a grin too wide, too nonchalant for his disfigured face, seemingly already forgetting about the matter in favour of watching this pathetic thing struggle on the ground. Of course. He can put me back together again. He can make me burn again. One more kill, then I can rest. One more, just one more.
“I’ll do it.” This must be my penance. Then bend me, break me, grind me to dust. Use me until I come apart at the seams. Until only my bones hit the pavement. Until I’ve bled enough to outweigh the lives I stole. Less than a puppet. Blade, pet, beast-of-burden.
I’ve no dignity left to lose, no pride left to swallow, no grounds on which to object. “I’ll do it”
“Oh, you never had a choice in the matter. Say hello to Neow for me.”
It’s the last thing I hear before he thrusts a claw through my stomach.