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The Unified Theorem - Chapter 20
🕑 Added 2024-08-16 14:51:11 +0000 UTCCombat in Alterac concludes. Next time, the Stormwind resolution.
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Chapter 20 – On the Back of the Mushroom
“-. Aiden Perenolde .-“
When he was a small boy, a pair of bluebirds built a nest outside his window. Then a cuckoo laid an egg in it while the parents were away. When the cuckoo egg hatched, its first act upon being born was to push the bluebird eggs and two chicks out of the nest. Killed them one after another, right out of the egg. Unable to recognize the chick’s true nature, the parents fed the cuckoo chick until it got several times bigger than both of them combined, only abandoning it when it began to beat them bloody for not feeding it enough. It was the first time Aiden Perenolde witnessed the creation of life, and also the first time he witnessed murder.
The second year, the cuckoo chick hatched too late and didn’t manage to evict the other chicks because they’d grown too big. The parents, having learned from the year before, recognized the parasite and pecked it to death. Upon seeing this, the cuckoo’s real mother swept down, tormented the parents until they fled in bloody tatters, and ate the native chicks in revenge.
Third year, the cuckoo chick once again hatched too late to displace the natives, but the parents’ courage was in shambles. Wary of the adult cuckoo in their midst, they did not attack the parasite. They just refused to feed it until it died, starving and suffocating under their own, real children. Alas for them, the mother cuckoo was no less offended by this, and it came down upon them and their babies with even more ravenous anger then the year before.
After that, year after year, the mother and father bluebirds slavishly fed the cuckoo chick, even if just enough to keep it alive, in the hopes that it would stave off the parasite's observant real parents' retaliatory attacks. Only then did they finally succeed in raising their own children to adulthood.
Ever since then, every time Aiden Perenolde saw someone grasp for power and glory, all he would think about was that elder cuckoo swooping down to eat the babes.
“The cuckoo doesn’t recognize its own nature,” came that hated voice that he nearly didn’t recognize, as the – the worst double vision ever seared Aiden’s soul. “Projecting all the way to the end, are you? Then I’ll be glad to divest myself of my last mixed feelings about this sordid farce.”
He heard a click.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Ysolde warned from across the throne room, stepping over the fallen Archmage. Behind her, the other she-dragon – one none of them had expected to be here but was apparently Ysolde’s real mother – was sinking her clawed fingers into Krasus’ chest as the archmage heaved his last breath on the floor.
Aiden looked up from where he’d fallen on his face. There was a metal pipe aimed at his face, something that looked like – his heart missed a beat. It was dwarven boomstick. Small, it was being held in a single hand, but he had no doubt it would end his life if-
“Some people like to look down on ‘meaningless’ childhood trauma, but I’ve found it pays very much to determine exactly when someone stops being human and resolves to live the rest of their life as a monster.” The Prophet turned his contemptuous eyes away from him and towards his wife, though the weapon didn’t even twitch. “This does not extend to actual cuckoos among sapient species. Either way, neither of you have any excuse.”
“Grand words from someone who invited all his on himself,” Ysolde stepped forward, her half-burned, tattered robes becoming once more pristine between one step and the next. “Trying to start an economic and social revolution in the most unstable kingdom, what did you think would happen?”
“Oh, believe me when I say I made no assumptions at all.”
“What a paltry rejoinder,” his dragon wife scoffed as she began to circle around them. “You had your chance in front of the king, you could have ended it right then but did nothing. It’s such a shame some little babes paid the price and not you.”
“Ah yes,” the prophet said in contempt, circling in the opposite direction of her. When the weapon moved away from Aiden’s head, he felt like he’d shudder from relie- “I’m to blame for an evil man murdering my family because I wouldn’t let myself be kidnapped or murdered. What brilliant logic.”
“Compared to what? Yours? You brought a man back to life in the middle of the public square in broad daylight. But instead of capitalizing on your victory by just ending the problem in the throne room then and there, you instead gave your king an insult he could not abide, and then just walked away to let the problem fester.”
“I should just be murderously reactionary like you? You should have no problem with me killing you here and now, then.”
“As if you can.”
“Well that’s what you want, isn’t it? You’re an unexpected unwanted development I can only react to, so I should do my best to kill you. If I’m supposed to have such poor impulse control that you think I should have gone berserk against the king and damn everyone else who might get in my way, why should I hold back against such an acceptable target as you?
“Spare me your propitiations. They are worthless, they will always be worthless as long as you humans cannot even see that good and evil are all a figment of the mind.”
“You know the most dubious thing about moral relativism?” The Prophet said lowly, spinning his weapon around a finger. “It's never promoted by anyone you'd actually want to be around. It's always the wretch eating a baby who claims that good and evil depend on your cultural baggage.” The prophet aimed his gun at her-
Ysolde – Onyxia the Black Dragon spat flames so fast it had already engulfed the place where the man had been. Aiden managed not to shut his eyes, which was the only reason he saw what really happened. The Prophet shrunk so fast he lost sight of him and then a gust of wind – where did he go?! “Ware, he-!”
CRAK BOOM
A streak of blood flew from Onyxia as she spun to face the new danger, which was the only reason she didn’t suffer worse than a gash across her face. Behind her, the other she-dragon’s head snapped back from a much bigger blast to the belly, shot from a double-piped monstrosity.
BOOM
“GHKAH!”
A second blast caught the scarred woman in her face and sent her flying to crash several feet away in bloody tatters.
The prophet crouched over the fallen archmage, touched him with a glowing hand and grimaced as nothing happened. He leaped sideways just as Onyxia unleashed an even hotter stream of flames. The cone of fire followed his jump faster than he could land.
This time, Aiden saw the flames engulf him, but he saw something else too. “His forcefield,” he rasped, pulling himself to his knees by the fallen statue next to him. “He’s protected!”
Onyxia’s flame breath tapered off with a snarl, but she followed it with a new one from her hands. There was an even stronger gust of wind this time, and her spell was disrupted. She unleashed a frost nova in response. “You humans and your tricks!”
The prophet grew back to size in her blind spot and shot her in the head before the afterimages even faded, he was changing his size somehow and was carried by unnatural wind!
CRACK
Onyxia stumbled forward- “Egtelarcan!” – but she turned it into a spin and unleashed a dozen arcane missiles back on him. Stone dust and chips flew from her hair as the other’s forcefield flickered weakly over his body, she’d cast some sort of stone armor? If she hadn’t, would the hit have –
With a wind and upward wrench, the marble floor burst up in a cage of spikes that trapped the prophet and gored him-
The saint shrunk again and appeared on the opposite side of Onyxia from Aiden before she even recovered from her spell.
CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK
Two shots deflected off Onyxia’s arcane shield, the last two went wide by and got Aiden himself in the side and knee.
“ARG!” He screamed, falling back down when he’d only just finished climbing up.
“Husband! You wretch, your death will last weeks!”
But Hywel was nowhere to be seen, then he was suddenly just behind Aiden and reloading his weapon with a clik – click – clik-
“Oh no you don’t! Telum flamma!”
- click – click – click – whirr – snap.
The flaming bolts went over Aiden and all hit the enemy, one of them actually singing his arm when his forcefield failed just as it struck. Hywel didn’t drop his weapon and aimed just as Onyxia made a grasping motion and swiped-
Aiden screamed at the pain in his wounds as he felt himself wrenched out of the way. He slid to a stop in front of the closed hall doors just as Onyxia hurled a fireball where he and Hywel had las been.
Hywel jumped back, kicked up off the wall – he could levitate? – and shrunk in a haze of afterimages such that he narrowly avoided the flame wave and – where did he go?!
Onyxia’s eyes tracked something unseen and she spewed a flaming breath-
Her throat folded around a seemingly invisible blow. Her flames sputtered as she staggered backwards, releasing an arcane nova and following with a frost wave and forcefield around herself while she choked without air, she-
She opened her mouth almost unnaturally wide, shoved her hand deep inside and pushed her collapsed throat back open with her fingers.
It was just enough time for Hywel to reappear, reload his double-piped boomstick and-
BOOM
Onyxia’s forcefield rang like a gong, but held.
BOOM
Her forcefield vanished just before the shot was fired, why-
The woman had strafed before the shot such that she only took the projectile in the shoulder instead of her throat. Her sleeve tore and blood began to gush out of the wound, but she gritted her teeth and erected a wall of stone with a wave of her other hand. Only then she grabbed her wounded shoulder. “When I’m through with you, I’ll make your petty spirits wish they’d fed themselves to slugs!”
Spirits? Aiden struggled to think through the light-headedness from his bleeding injuries, is that why – how many powers did he have? Wasn’t it enough he could use the Light with such impunity as to-
Wait, he did do that didn’t he? He trapped the entire crowd in the market, when he resurrected that man, the goldn light rose up to churn the sky itself, the clouds – and then that dome around that merchant’s house, why isn’t he-?
The prophet had vanished and appeared behind Onyxia again to
BANG BANG BANG BANG -
She took three hits, grew a dome of earth around herself-
BANG BA-
-and then a second engulfed the prophet where he stood.
A cloud of dusk kicked off the ground between the two balls of earth, as if angry. When Onyxia’s hasty ball of defense crumbled around her, the dust engulfed her face.
“Ack-die, damn you!” Onyxia roared hoarsely, blood trailing down her lips.
The second dome imploded like crumpled paper.
But the dust cloud only billowed even more madly in response, slamming open all but the warded great doors to bring in more powdered earth and glass until Aiden couldn’t see Onyxia anymore in the haze, even though he was on the outside and unaffected.
The crumpled earth shell melted a hole just a finger’s width thick, allowing the gnat-sized Prophet to escape. He reappeared just outside the whirling dust devil and shot inside seemingly blindly, once, three, six times, then he unhooked the spool-like thing to reload, click, click click –
Everything shook. Aiden was thankful he was already on the ground, but the pain in his knee and side flared, and he lost track of the rest of the earthquake in his light-headedness. Belatedly, he remembered that he still had a healing potion or two in his belt, so he did his best not to let is hands tremble too much while he pawed at the case. When the pain vanished, the relief almost knocked him out after all the blood loss.
His head cleared to the sound of wall-shaking gurling roar. Squinting through the settling dust, Aiden Perenolde saw Hywel well away from where he was before. Onyxia was barely standing to one side. On his other side…
It was a black dragon so large that it didn’t fit the throne room, its form writhing and twitching as its shoulder and wing pushed against the ceiling and the walls, the walls – the floor – they shook in tandem with her roars, cracking long fissures that kept growing as black slime-like things squeezed out of the creature’s ruined face and split belly and the roof is falling have to move!
Aiden Perenolde barely got away from a falling chunk of the ceiling, his heart pounding in his ears.
“K’ll you!” The frenzied creature hawked wetly amidst whirling dust and crumbling masonry, the woman – the she-dragon – she’d survived? “I’ K’LL YOUUU̷̝̥͎̦̽̌̋͊̌̉̈͋͗̒̈̓̍͘!”
“Fuck,” cursed the so-called saint as he was engulfed in seething purple flames.
Aiden was prevented to see what came next by rocky prongs suddenly erupting around him to stop yet another piece of falling ceiling crushing him to pulp.
“Husband,” Onyxia called as she landed next to him. She was dishevelled and caked in wet dust all over, blood dripping from her forehead and lips and practically soaking her left arm. She looked back at the other dragon with a complicated, vicious look before turning back to him. “Get to safety.”
The stones and earth were removed from him and he rushed to stand, barely not falling back down as his head went light again. “Wait!” He called, grabbing on his wife’s robe. “He’s weak!” The random facts in his mind finally made sense. “Whatever he did, he’s not as powerful as before. His attacks – his defenses have a limit. Your fire blasts didn’t breach his shield, it just expired! You can outlast him!”
“Well isn’t that just fascinating,” his new wife hissed with dark anticipation. “Go!”
Aiden turned and ran as best he could on his keep’s now constantly shaking foundations. The great doors were still locked, but the wall on one side had an all-new hole. He climbed through, feeling like his throat would turn itself inside out from the effort and dust and glass powder caking the air. But he made it to the other side, and then it was all he could do to keep going.
He still barely made it out. His castle wasn’t collapsing around him, but the unstable floor and the falling candelabra made it feel like it was really, really trying.
Finally, finally he made it out.
He was met with the sight of all his loyalists defeated, scattered traitors running away outside the golden dome, and a bunch of them still inside and arranged as if awaiting a charge for battle. Two dragons were in a stand-off on the outside of the forcefield. Finally, a fourth dragon, a giant bronze one was inside. Sprawled across a quarter of his welcome courtyard, seemingly dead. All around him were corpses of men, women and children.
Devils, how many are there?! How many dragons insinuated themselves in my court?!
The floor shook so strongly then that his light-headedness finally got the better of him. He lost his footing to the earthquake and fell down the stairs, all the way to the ground. It was only his enchanted mesh that let him survive with nothing worse than an added blow to the head.
When he came to a stop, he pushed himself up to all fours and froze when he felt a sharp edge at the back of his neck.
“No sudden moves,” came the voice of Jorach Ravenholdt as he proceeded to disarm him and remove his equipment bags. Even his own assassin had betrayed him. “Get up. Good. Now walk. No no, not that way, we wouldn’t-“ The ground rumbled as a plume of fire and smoke escape through the roof of the keep behind them. Aiden felt his heart stop as the tip drew blood, he’d almost died by accident as Ravenholdt struggled to stay balanced. “Wouldn’t want to give them the wrong idea. That way. Quickly now, or the next time my hand really might slip.”
The traitor led him the way opposite of his loyalists, but that was itself a show of weakness. It meant that there was still something to rally. Aiden could rally them. If he knocked them out of their wailing and muttering he could still change the tide of this disaster, either now or while the traitors fled like the cowards they were through whatever backdoor Hywel left, they could then-
“It won’t work,” Ravenholdt mercilessly ruined his last hope. “Those are the dregs that weren’t as rotten as you. Most who might have helped you died outright. The few who didn’t are blind or lackwits now.”
“The word of a consummate liar can’t be trusted.”
“Quite so.”
Aiden gnashed his teeth. Gods, how he wished he’d lived during the Fowl War.
He was led to a group made up of the King and Prince of Gilneas, Valea Twinblade who seemed to command the strongest force, and Lady Mara Fordragon of Stormwind who seemed to have somehow wound up in charge of everyone. To Aiden’s complete astonishment, Richard Angevin was nowhere to be found.
To his bitter shame, he didn’t dare meet any of their eyes lest the visions come back. To his even greater offense, none of them gave him more than a disdainful glance before Ravenhold was ushering him further away. They were more concerned with watching the keep, and chewing their lips every time it rumbled with flashes and noise.
Aiden refused to walk further even as the dagger dug into his back. “Where is my nephew?!” That was guaranteed to get a response from bleeding hearts like-
“Away,” was the answer of Archibald Greymane, whose manner seemed much more put together than just hours earlier. “His life will be comfortable, all things considered.”
“I demand-!“ Ravenhold shoved Aiden hard with his hand, then a pair of Twinblade’s biggest armsmen grabbed him by an arm each and dragged him off.
Shortly after, he was dropped on his knees near the horse awnings just outside the gates. He quickly jumped back up and looked around. On two sides of him were blank-faced men dressed like commoners but armed with daggers of too fine make. Ravenholdt’s? Yet more traitors, but not from among the ones he knew about, they weren’t anyone he ever allowed into his presence or access to information, he made a point of being thoroughly informed about all of them.
He hadn’t missed any spies or hired blades then, they must have only come for today’s operation. Ravenholdt had indeed been true, until he turned. Aiden didn’t know if he should be more glad or furious.
In front of Aiden, sitting on a hay bale and looking at him with hard, judgmental eyes, was Narett the alchemist. The man looked emaciated and still lacked his hand, but his skin was hale and without scars.
The added confirmation of Hywel’s fall from power made Aiden feel a burst of vindication, but his outrage was still greater. And the fact that he, the king, still had to avert his eyes lest he enter another vision was too much to bear. “Another that would seek to judge me,” he sneered, then scoffed as arrogantly as he could at the lack of reply. “Go ahead then, if you’ve the words.”
The alchemist stood up and left.
The complete dismissal almost sent Aiden into a murderous rage, he hadn’t been bound, the fools hadn’t bound his hands or brought out chains, he could – he should –
He didn’t. He gnashed his teeth harder and glared at the man’s back, trying to convince himself it was because the turncoat had no tongue and was just trying to pretend dignity.
A rumble louder than any heard before heralded the complete collapse of his throne room down on itself. Aiden watched in shock as the roof caved in, and the massive spume of dust, ash and smoke that burst up. Flashes of red light painted it from within, mixing like a blood moon’s glare with the billowing smog. They soon became a stream of fire that burst out of the cloud outright, streaming out as the beast climbed up through the falling structure.
Just as the scarred dragon – Sinestra? What kind of name – seemed to reach the end of its breath, a second stream of fire came from elsewhere to continue the assault on-
From within the fire, a tiny speck of gold shot out, arched its way like – borne by a strong wind that scattered the haze. The spark grew mid-air, to the full size of Hywel holding a green staff which he struck down.
The butt of the staff struck the head of the second she-dragon with the force of ten thunderstrikes, just as it came out of the ash devil.
CRACK-THOOM
Aiden flinched and covered his ears at the noise, it was so loud his eardrums hurt.
Through his squint, he saw that most others had done the same. Had he the presence of mind, he’d have tried to escape from the distracted killers, perhaps take Narett hostage-
The older, scarred dragon landed on the half-collapsed west wing. Hywel landed on the arched roof of the east wing, which was the only part of Aiden’s castle still intact. Lava drips and steaming black blood seeped from the scarred she-dragon’s jaws as she sought stable footing on the building she’d herself brken. Ysolde… Onyxia… Aiden’s wife was nowhere to be seen, but Aiden swore he could still hear-
“Finally down to your last tricks, boy?” The monstrous creature gurgled through her half-stitched mouth. The black blood seemed to be curdling into musky yarn growing in and out of her face, and her thrumming gut. “Whatever it is, it won’t matter!”
“I know,” Hywel’s voice somehow made itself heard as if he was just a few meters away, instead of a hundred. It was a bleak and resigned thing that made everyone dread. “There is no tragedy you won’t relish, no victory you won’t spoil. Whether or not we get our shit together, it’s almost never anyone’s fault but our own. But then something like this happens, when one of you lizards turns out to have been among us all along. So everyone blames you for everything, and nobody learns anything because no one can conceive of taking responsibility for themselves in your shadow.”
The dragon laughed madly, almost delightedly, then the floor exploded under Hywel’s feet. He was barely airborne when new flames enveloped him, from there and the older dragon both. Cries of dismay arose from those watching as the small, fading light was seemingly overwhelmed and buried in molten rock and dark fire by the two dark beasts that-
Everything flared golden, completely golden like it only had once before, that same morning. A spiral of words began to shine up through the ground. Suddenly, from that part of the Prophet that Aiden had hoped had disappeared from within him, came words.
“The Light unites the one who sees with the one who thinks, the one who feels with the one who does, but the unwise separates them, and thus he separates himself.”
Many columns of light erupted skywards from everywhere in sight, and inside the castle too, even as the dragons became more frenzied in their joint destruction.
“As the Light sees through your eyes, let it beat, breathe and flow with you, for it is eternal and without shadow, beyond beauty and ugliness, beyond good and evil, beyond life and death, beyond the flow of time.”
“The End,” the voice came from both inside and out then. “Is the Beginning!”
Aiden’s consciousness was obliterated with a blinding, wit-shattering shock as the fragment of foreign soul inside of him gave its last.
He woke up feeling like his chest, throat and skull had been raked inside out with sharp nails. He was on the ground. The ground that shook, but no longer with earthquakes. Instead, there were tromping feet, and bigger feet as great impacts came and went amidst roars and wing beats cut short by violence.
Pushing up, he saw through stinging eyes that people were outright running out through the forcefield as quickly as they could. Even as they left, more people ran, staggered or limped out of the farthest and smallest exits from the right wing of the castle, joining the evacuation that just barely stopped short of becoming a stampede. Only two of the four people in charge seemed to be in the same place, the Gilneans. Where-? How long had he been-?
Beyond them, the corpses were gone – no… No, Aiden recognized some of the faces among those making their last escape, they – he’d revived them. Hywel had brought them back – so many at once…
What kind of monster even was he? How could a mere man be able to-?
A wave of fiery death bathed the air above him, through which the bronze dragon he’d thought dead barrelled through despite the pain of peeling scales to bodyslam the – no scars, Onyxia? Ysolde?
Hot blood splattered Aiden’s face as he stared up at the grappling dragons that lost buoyance and crashed together into the belfry. The massive tower groaned dangerously as its base was cracked through.
Back at the keep, the bigger black dragon was in a teeth-clenched grapple with a red – a red dragon too? Another one? And then the two outside, Hywel’s – Aiden’s own assassin had been a dragon himself, before he betrayed him, and now the fifth – what other colours is he going to see before this is over?!
The dragons’ clinch broke along with the last shuddering dregs of the west wing’s second floor, sending the two rolling and thrashing furiously down into the courtyard where the bronze and corpses used to be, just as Hywel himself ushered the last survivors out of the East quarters.
Onyxia bashed the wobbly bronze over the head with part of the wall and spat steaming blood at him, but didn’t wait to watch it sizzle. She stumbled trying to fly, then snarled angrily and ran on the ground right where the Prophet was.
Hywel cursed, interposed himself between the last child and the dragon, and cast a weak shield as wide as he could, which was paltry indeed, it wouldn’t-
Mara Fordragon ran in just in the nick of time, and joined her Light to his. It was barely enough, and when Onyxia stopped to take another breath, Hywel vanished and appeared right between her jaws mid-swing.
Somehow, she spat him out before the staff struck the roof of her mouth. There was still a crack of thunder, but she took just the hit from the exploding air instead of potentially losing her brain.
“Go,” Hywel gasped at the woman when he landed again, and the fools who’d stopped to gape. “Get out while you still can!”
“What about y-“
“That’s my business!”
As if to make a liar of him, the other black dragon flew belly-up over the lot of them and crashed into Onyxia just as the latter tried to leap away. In her wake, the red dragon who’d thrown her jumped with aid from his wings and spat a wall of flames that were as golden as they were red. He then picked up the humans and leapt all the way to the gatehouse with another wing flap that only seemed to make the fire stronger.
“Beware that one!” The red dragon was the only part of the ensuing conversation loud enough for Aiden to hear where he was. “She took me by complete surprise, I neither saw nor sensed her, she’s done something so that I specifically can’t feel her weaves.”
Aiden wasn’t close enough to catch whatever argument started then, though he did use the wall to get there as stealthily as he could. As he did, the two blacks overwhelmed the fire wall with their own. Onyxia was slammed into the side by the returning, half-dead Bronze just as she made to leap forward. The bigger one had no one to stop her.
She leapt to attack the red, who met her half way. “No means no, Prophet!” The latter grunted even as his opponent snapped like a crazy beast at his face. “Besides, you’ve been wrong before! I’m not as important as you seem to think!”
“What do you-?” Hywel muttered just as Aiden drew close enough to hear. Then he snapped his fingers. “Tyranastrasz! He’s still alive.”
“I’ll not be led around by imperfect foresight!” The red lied so blatantly that Aiden could spot it a league away-
“But you’re not just – Dalaran-”
“Has dismissed me, thanks to you!” the dragon Krasus grunted as he wrestled the enemy aside. “Hurry, before we’re overwhelmed!”
An earth tremor threw Aiden to the ground and he lost the next part of the conversation. When he finally regained his bearings, Narett was running up from the gate, where the last stragglers had gone through. “That’s done!” So he did have his tongue again, curse that boy –! “We’re the only ones left, Wayland, where do you…?”
Risking a better look, Aiden peered over the overturned cart and saw the alchemist turn ashen.
“No,” Narett breathed, backing away from Hywel in horror to the confusion of everyone else. “You can’t mean-“
“Either this or they rouse Deathwing to break the world.” Hywel shifted grimly on his unsteady footing. Suddenly his tall, broad-shouldered body no longer obscured the headpiece of his staff. Even surrounded in floating blue and golden glyphs visibly shuddering against some mighty inner force, it shone so brightly that Aiden couldn’t look directly at it. “They cannot be allowed to live.”
Sinestra bit deep into Krasus forelimb and managed to push him nearly far enough to crush the humans. Most of them ran out of the way. Hywel swayed in place, pushed off the heel of the red one and proceeded to half-run, half-stumble back in the direction of the keep even as the battling dragons nearly crushed him to death in their frenzy.
“Wayland,” Narett called after but didn’t follow. “The force – you won’t – can’t hope to-!“
“Then I guess we’ll all see how beloved by the Light I really am!”
“You-“
That was when the bronze got done in a second time, and Onyxia swooped down upon the loiterers. Somehow, Krasus managed to wrestle his own opponent in her path to buy a few moments. It was all the last traitors could do to run out of the forcefield before Onyxia torched them all.
Aiden Perenolde stood there. Alone. Uncomprehending. Stunned.
Everyone seemed to have forgotten about him.
He…
He – they – he was the king, Hywel had come for him, the Light’s own Prophet, a literal Saint come down from heaven just to judge him, but now nobody…
Nobody cared about him.
The next while passed in a daze. He stared at where last four had left through the forcefield. He stared at the unknown dragon outside breaking the standoff and cutting into the path of the traitor-leaders to demand answers. He tried to stay out of the way of the dragons battling around him, only narrowly surviving because even Onyxia wasn’t paying attention to him anymore.
All she cared about was getting past the red dragon to kill Hywel, because unlike Aiden she seemed to understand what was going on. Something that scared her.
When the three monsters took their fight away and finally began to demolish even the east wing, Aiden ran to where the last of his court was huddled and tried to rally them. Shook them, called to them, screamed at them, pushed, slapped, anything and everything he could think of until the first stone flew.
They tried to stone him to death. A crying maiden tossed a rock at him, and it was like the gates of hell opened all at once, screaming blame and hatred at him as if he was to blame for every evil under the sun, called him – him a traitor – a dragon lover as if he’d called them here, ran him off screaming that he’d sold them out to monsters.
Aiden only survived because half of them were blind, and none of them had the will to get on their feet anymore. They stayed there, shellshocked or weeping, and didn’t follow as he ran.
He – what was – they just – what kind of people just gave up and went collectively mad? Was this the best Alterac could muster? What kind of creatures had his House been pandering to, that they acted like…?
He stared at the forcefield in front of him. He didn’t think to flee out for the gates when he ran from the mob, he didn’t think about anywhere, but here he was. He tried to reach through the forcefield and couldn’t, even though three literal assassins had passed through not long ago. Visions assaulted his mind, judging him, and he pulled away with a snarl.
“Even here at the end, it’s all just mind games!”
Seized by the spite of the condemned, Aiden Perenolde turned around and ran back into the keep. Fallen debris, upended earth and blocked passages barred his way, but none knew the castle better than him. He picked up what weapons he found along the way, from corpses and whatever display cases hadn’t been looted.
He thought he’d find Hywel in the throne room, but he didn’t. He wasn’t in the Council room either, or the receiving area.
Finally, he caught up with him in the corridor leading deep into the keep, towards where Aiden would have his private office if they were one floor higher.
His thrown knives missed. So did the axe. The wind itself turned the weapons aside. When Aiden drew close to try and stick him with a spear, steam scalded his hands so hot and sudden he dropped the shaft. The same happened with his mace, and his sword, and when he tried to use fists it was his face that got scalded, and he felt like he was cooking inside out when the hot vapors wend up his nose and down his throat into-
“No.”
The steam withdrew along with his breath.
“Don’t sully yourselves.”
Only rage kept him from losing consciousness. “You – think – you’re so superior! How many people just died so you-?”
“One thousand three hundred and eighty-eight.”
What?
“That includes the ones still shambling outside, they just don’t know it yet.”
What?
“Seven hundred and thirty-four nobles, three hundred and twenty-two servants and household guards, three hundred and thirty-two royal guardsmen.”
Those words – those numbers – that – that was a third of his royal guard, barely a tenth of his servants, but almost all of his noble court. Not even a hundred of his lords had made it out? If so many – he had to be lying – so many – his whole court!
“Power attracts, and it reveals,” Hywel sighed tightly as he shouldered open the door to the game room. “But you…” He – Hywel was panting for breath, he sounded exhausted, he was exhausted, tired, Aiden – he quickly got to his feet and followed him through the door, he still had a couple of knives- “At least nobody brought any children younger than twelve,” Hywel said as if that made him any less of a monster, such hubris!
Aiden jumped forward and stabbed him from behind.
The knife found flesh.
Aiden was shocked. He’d done it?
Aiden let go of the blade and backed away warily, but the Light’s retaliation didn’t come. Instead, blood began to spill around the wound, over the white cloth. It didn’t heal. It wasn’t healing, Hywel, he – he couldn’t heal himself anymore!
Fury and vindication came together in an unholy union, giving Aiden the strength to make his final strike.
His last knife exploded against a shield of Light.
The force of the detonation hurled him all the way across the room to slam into the wall next to the door he’d just come through. He crumpled to the ground, struggling to breathe, clutching at his wrist. His hand was gone all the way to the arm bone.
“That was for the thirty-two children that remain dead,” Hywel rasped. “But you only get one.”
The ceiling caved in suddenly, broken through by the maw of Onyxia leaking blood, bile, and a foul-smelling stench from her jaws as she opened her maw to-
The red dragon snapped his mouth down on her neck from behind and yanked her out just as she exhaled. The fire missed Hywel by less than a foot and set the entire right half of the room to burning.
Aiden struggled to look up through the smoke. The pain.
“Aiden Perenolde, feared by many, respected by few.” Finally, finally Wayland Hywel deigned to address him, only now at the end, though still he didn’t turn around, didn’t even face him while- “I tried, I really tried to find some other purpose to the way you rule, but I couldn’t. There’s nothing there with any other purpose than to humiliate.”
“Look at me when you’re talking to me, you-“ Aiden’s breath was ripped from him mid-word.
“Like this bravado just now, everything you do to your people, everything you tell them, everything you make them do, you do it all to lie. The less it reflects to reality the better. You inflict injustice. You force people to remain silent when they witness injustice. You force them to cheer when they’re being told the most obvious lies. You force them to participate in those lies, and every other sin under the sun that your cronies find taste for. All you do, everything is designed to make the people lose once and for all their sense of probity.”
The staff’s headpiece seemed to warp and twist the longer Aiden looked away from it, but the rest of it was the most solid and real thing in the entire room. The staff was made of some green metal, studded from top to bottom with white topaz gems. The one nearest to the floor was blue, though. Aiden didn’t know why, but it felt like the most meaningful sight he’d ever seen.
“I know why you do it. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. To assent to obvious lies, to co-operate with evil is to become evil yourself. One’s ability to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. From there, the only things left for power to attract are the corrupted. Bloated egos, petty grudges, vain cravings.”
The prophet reached up and unfastened the headpiece of his staff from the rest. Held it in one hand and just stared at it. “Have you ever seen an amputated spirit? A maimed one, even? A soul bleeding? And infant aborted mid-way through term? The world is a long-suffering thing, it can endure the likes of you forever. But I won’t.”
The Prophet held the light sphere up, and the thing – the glowing orrery – flew upwards through the newly opened hole in the ceiling.
“I’d have ended with you. The cancer is all ripped out now, I would rather just shoot you in the head and be done. But in a world like this, mankind's actions are never entirely our own, so the consequences of mine can't discriminate either.”
Aiden tracked the thing with his eyes. Higher and higher it ascended, above flames, above the dust and smoke that seemed to draw away from the wake of its passage. As it rose, the dome of Light outside seemed to grow ahead of its path, sharpen, rise in height like an ever-narrowing cone in the sky. On the outside, the traitor black dragon ran round and round and upwards in a spiral along its outer surface. Changing it. Shifting its shape.
“Wha-how-NO!” A desperate roar of denial came from the bronze just as the four battling dragons flew too high to fit. Onyxia shoved her head under his belly, pushed him over and kicked him through the golden dome all the way outside. “Curse youuuu-!“ The bronze howled weakly as he rolled and slid down the exterior of the light, clawing uselessly as he tried to arrest his fall. “You pus-gobbling tapeworm-!”
The cone grew taller, ever taller and narrower until the three battling dragons left couldn’t fly up through it even if they wanted.
The tip stayed just ahead the orrery’s ascent, until, finally, when the forcefield had grown so high that Aiden couldn’t guess the distance, it opened up to let new air in, and the sight of the distant blue sky.
Absolute hell broke outside as dragons both in and beyond the Light began a race towards the top, as if it would determine all their lives.
Why?
Surrounded by hellish flames and hallowed by the skylight above, the king could finally see the Prophet as he truly was. A walking dead in all but name. Weak. See-through, almost. Nearly hollow to his eyes. There was no part of him that didn’t look more solid than he did. Everywhere a wound should be, had been, gold shimmered and seeped out through his skin as if there were no flesh beneath anymore, just the Light replacing more and more until the man that used to be there was just memory. A mimicry of life but nothing real.
It was the most frightful thing the King of Alterac had ever seen. “What are you?”
“I am Ferdinand Wayland Hywel Rogasian, and I am here to impose my moral code.” The Prophet was enveloped in a globe of runes as his hand fell. “Be at peace.”
Life came to an end in a white flash.
Death took him with the terrifying feeling of falling, then being snared by mouths of slime. It pulled him down, dragged him, crushed him together with everyone else who’d died. Dozens, hundreds were snared and crushed together with him in a desperate pile of writhing limbs. He tried to claw his way past, through, up, somewhere.
But the souls around him recognized him, and like an unholy spell their wills joined together to push him under, down, down for them to step on, stomp and climb over in their bid to break free of hell while he – no, NO!
“No,” many voices came from all around, like a heavenly choir. “Not even for scum such as this.”
A wave of Light purged the dark tendrils, and all the souls flew free.
A different pull seized him then, looser, gentler but somehow even more impossible to defy. He couldn’t see what it was, the world was blinding brightness even as it faded. So bright that even the shapes of angels at distant points around the city could barely be made out.
There was nothing to hear either, except an echo that was so loud it had gone past sound into the realm of touch.
He could only feel himself floating, rising under a power not his own, pulled around in a spiral, a wide and winding spiral that narrowed with every revolution, each circuit taking him slightly more towards the sky.
Finally, like coming out of a snow bank, he could see the sky again. But instead of endless blue, there was a gray vortex swirling from horizon to horizon.
He felt like he shouldn’t be afraid, but he dreaded anyway. There was a river of souls around him, and all of them hated him. All of them hated him, and none of them were the one who murdered him.
In a bid to look for him, to see anything else but their scorn, he looked back down.
It…
That…
There were three dragon souls down there. Two were just faint drops of molten stone, rapidly hardening while the bulk of their shape was just bile-filled pus sinking into the hellish much that had almost swallowed him. A third was life and fire, but still too heavy to be drawn up into the vortex with the rest of them. It languished where it died. The others…
The Traitor Black crashed brokenly on the outskirts of Alterac City, barely avoiding killing everyone in the circus caravan as he dug a groove into the earth. The other dragon outside – a red – peeked up through her wings from where she had taken cover under the ridge just beyond. And the bronze…
The bronze was shooting like a meteor away towards the south, somehow still alive even after being blasted away by the barest edges of the – the…
As Aiden Perenolde was sucked into the vortex to the Otherworld, the last thing he saw was an enormous, sprawling white cloud that looked bizarrely like a mushroom cap.
Comments
Sebastian Pop
Well, guess this chapter was a bust then. I was so sure that he'd be the perfect POV to blindside. Oh well.
Sebastian Pop
He had more than a third, but yeah, he got a raw deal here.
Sebastian Pop
Also yes, the elementals are alright.
Robert H.
Hm. While I liked the chapter, I think there's a certain something that keeps it from being a truly satisfying ending. It's definitely not a moment of triumph; just a sad tragedy limping towards its end. While it would be out of character for Aiden's perspective, I think leaving Wayland's fate ambiguous isn't the right choice here. We've had several chapters worth of things not going to plan/getting worse, and I think including a light at the end of the tunnel (confirmation of Wayland's life/survival) would have shifted the tone into something better. However, it might not be a problem in the future - what feels awful at the end of a chapter in a serial feels differently when you can just start reading the next chapter. One thing I will say is that the whole 'Wayland casts nuke' thing didn't feel nearly as interesting or as cool because it was from Perenolde's perspective. Heck, his perspective in general is... unpleasant is the wrong word, but it's 'work' to read from. He's just so deluded, and so hypocritical, that I can't even find sympathy for him that would make his perspective interesting or enjoyable, especially after reading other chapters from his POV. And there wasn't enough comeuppance for it to feel like vindication either. With all that said, I really do like your writing. It always brightens my day when I get to read new chapters from you, and I can't wait to see where this goes next.
Ashaeron
Almost feel bad for Korialstrasz here. Find ancient mortal enemies infesting kingdom, start fight, get ambushed and killed, get resurrected, keep fighting, get blown up again. Dude has like a third of the context for what's going on, too.
Sebastian Pop
No resurrection without a body, unfortunately. I'm glad you liked the cuckoo subtext. Those typos I'll only be able to notice after I don't work on or read Unified Theorem for at least two weeks.
Judah Frankel
Thanks for the chapter! Solid chapter all around, IMHO. Loved the fight scenes, and Perenolde getting his final comeuppance was very satisfying. I also thought that whole bit about how Perenolde modeled his whole kingdom around that cuckoo was very insightful.(Plus, Aiden didn’t even realize the irony.) Quite a few typos to resolve, and I’m curious whether Krasus can be resurrected after a nuking, but overall I liked it. BTW, are the steam elementals OK?
Sebastian Pop
It's not a perfect solution, but it's how I'll keep doing things. It's why I've managed to keep updating really.
Zerak
The Stormwind part would have likely rounded out the chapter. It’s one of the limitations of posting stories chapter by chapter. On the bright side it shouldn’t be an issue for someone reading the story for the first time as the chapter itself isn’t bad, it just feels like an in between chapter. Better to post what you have rather than try to push for an even longer chapter and drain yourself. That way lays burnout.
Sebastian Pop
By far weaker than all of them.
Sebastian Pop
I'm sad to hear that. I originally envisioned including the Stormwind part in this too, but it would have taken me twice as long to put it in, and the chapter would have been more than double the length (if I could actually stand focusing on it that long, action-packed chapters are pretty energy-hungry on the mind). Sorry about that, but it just didn't work out. Yes, the birds thing is true to life, cuckoos really are that evil. As for why the other birds don't relocate, why doesn't everyone move out of Detroit?
Fran
Hiroshima was 16 kilotons, Nagasaki 25 kilotons, the strongest (Tsar) was 50 kilotons
Fran
I mean how many kilotons of energy did his explosion release? If you make a scale with the famous atomic bombs which place would he rank in energy released?
Zerak
The chapter did feel very disjointed. For a second I thought he might do some time manipulation by using the light to cast into the past and change shit. Then for a while I thought the king would get away and stretch this arc even further.
Zerak
So he nuked the castle. Not gona lie the ending felt kinda unsatisfying. Likely because a lot has not been explained since the kings perspective was disjointed, but mostly since it’s been a very longer time building up to this, and each chapter seems to just push things off to the next chapter, which wouldn’t an issue if not for how long It takes between chapters. So on the plus side the story as a whole isn’t as impacted, but reading it chapter by chapter (roughly once a month) makes it feel a bit hollow when you go in expecting the chapter to actually wrap up this arc only for it to feel like a (I don’t want to say a bridging chapter since it’s not that so ..) like an incomplete chapter, like it cut off before the conclusion. The previous 2 chapters were somehow better even though this is technically the conclusion. My reply is mostly based on the comment you wrote at the start of last chapter “next chapter will conclude the show of shit”. Plus with it being 3am by the time I finished (was excited to read the finale that I decided to push past sleepiness and read). Sorry if this comment is all whiny and negative, just felt like I had to vent so I can let go of the negative feelings and fall asleep. The part with the birds was interesting though, is that an actual thing that happens in nature? Because I feel like the birds might just want to relocate.
Sebastian Pop
I don't understand the question. You mean what would he name it?
Fran
What would be the equivalent in terms of "famous" atomic bombs of his little kaboom?
Sebastian Pop
Well, in fairness, right below the blast source is where the least of the force concentrates, in an airborne explosion. Of course, that assumes there isn't a forcefield containing and redirecting everything inward.
Abhi
Haha, nah I got that part. It's the talking that went by me after a certain point.
Fran
The size of the balls to detonate an atomic bomb equivalent while being on ground zero has to have it own gravity pull from sheer size.
Sebastian Pop
He nuked it.
Abhi
Kinda lost to be honest lol. Still nice though.
Phantom knight who can’t think of a better nicknam
First because why not
