Rules of Nature - Chapter 6 - StashBurnside (2024)

Chapter Text

Then…

“Shouldn’t you be at your godsdammned award ceremony or some sh*te?” Fordola at last barked between pull-ups. Even the bead of sweat that decided to hang annoyingly on her nose had become less aggravating than the quiet stare she could feel like a static-laced blanket upon her skin coming from the Warrior of Light as he sat silently in the ancient wooden chair beyond her bars. He’d been there long enough now that even her purposeful ignoring of his presence began to feel childish. She tensed her muscles as she pulled herself up toward the low hanging parts of her interior cell’s top bars, trying her best to not appear flustered as she brought her body upward in a fluid motion.

“Too loud.” he answered softly behind her with only the accompaniment of a crackling turning of the page of the tome he had chosen to read.

Fordola lowered herself again with a heavy gathering of her breath as she prepared to hoist herself upwards once more. The drop of sweat had relented at last, but the Warrior of Light continued to pluck at her nerves with his insistence.

“Seems proper daft for the guest of honor to be-” she began, stopping only long enough to complete what must have been her hundredth pull up since she stopped counting. “-absent from his own ceremony.”

“They’ll get along fine. Lyse and the others will manage.”

Fordola huffed a haughty breath of exhaustion as she gave up on continuing the rather strenuous farce, releasing her grip from the now-hot bars and dropping with a slap of her bare feet to the stone floor. She had thoroughly soaked through her linen prison garb to the point of discomfort, but forcibly paid it no mind as she whipped herself around to face the Warrior of Light at last, annoyance and exhaustion both plain upon her face.

Stash looked somewhat surprised, eyebrows raised behind his spectacles as he felt the full weight of her ireful gaze upon him.

“Oh, you mean to be rid of me?” he asked innocently.

Fordola hesitated, unsure of whether she was annoyed more by the question or her own flustered thoughts on the matter. She crossed her arms, and after a moment was able to compose herself.

“They’ll come looking for you.”

As if he knew something she was loath to admit, he smiled all the same, waving the book in his hand at her casually before leaning back once more.

“Perhaps; perhaps not.” he said, crossing his legs and returning his attention to his reading. “I’ve seen enough congratulatory celebrations for a lifetime. I much prefer present company, besides.”

Fordola sighed and rolled her eyes before grumbling audibly in frustration, but Stash appeared unaffected by her objections. She looked upon the black robed, blonde-haired man incredulously, unsure of what to say exactly. The annoying feeling of butterflies in her stomach hadn’t ebbed even under the countless pull-ups she had forced upon herself once he arrived in her cell. She had known that the celebration of Stash’s defeat of Lakshmi within the palace would most certainly bring the Warrior of Light back to the city, but she’d never expected him to be so bold as to…abandon his place of honor to loiter in her cell. Hells, the celebration was the only thing the guards had talked about since the damned thing happened, most of the lot eager to enjoy a proper feasting rather than guard duty. Would that some of their gratitude could be passed along to her, seeing as she was equally as much the hero of the hour as the vaunted Warrior of Light, but alas, it seemed her fate was far more aggravating than simple neglect. The raucous sound of celebration had rung throughout the grounds well over a bell ago, and yet here still was Stash Burnside, content to impede on Fordola’s time away from the ever watchful eye of the guards.

Were it anyone else but him…

That familiar sense of knowing flashed in the torchlight reflected within his deep blue eyes as he glanced at her over the rim of his spectacles, as if he had read her mind. She shuddered ever so slightly as she matched his gaze, but even then she managed to furrow her brow.

Ever the showwoman…

“Is something wrong?” he asked, despite the fact that she was confident he somehow already knew the consternation she buried deep behind crossed arms and a scowl. He placed the book down gently beside him upon the scarred and dusty table before leaning forward in his equally ancient chair, the groans and creaks of eons of neglect in the dungeons awkwardly loud. “Is this about last ti-”

Fordola quickly cut him off, knowing full well where he was going.

“No, it’s not about that.” she said firmly, despite the truth of the matter that it was, indeed, entirely about that. “We f*cked. We shouldn’t ‘ave, but we did. That’s all there is to that.”

Stash looked concerned, scratching at the back of his head, rustling his long blonde hair beneath the tied cloth bandana that she was quite sure she had never once seen him fail to wear.

“You sure?”

Fordola hesitated a moment, but ultimately nodded with as much confidence as she could muster.

“Aye...”

“Uh huh…” Stash said, his voice trailing off as an awkward pall set in, neither of the two hyurs quite sure how to proceed until both began to speak at the same time; a fleeting moment of truth laid bare.

“I wanted to, but-” she said.

“I’m glad we did, and-” he said.

“What?” they both interrupted in unison.

Fordola could feel her face flush intensely, to the point she craned her neck to the side so that she might salvage some dignity in the shadows cast by torchlight. So too did Stash squirm about in his chair, lowering his gaze and peering desperately upon anything other than Fordola. The silence between them became deafening.

“Well, uh…if it’s not about that, what’s wrong?” Stash at last managed to ask, mercifully changing the subject. Fordola composed herself with a quick breath and placed a hand upon her hip.

“They’ll come looking for you, and we’ll both catch hell if they find you here of all places.” she reasoned truthfully. Though a lingering desire to insist upon the opposite hung tantalizingly on the tip of her tongue, Fordola knew better than to bring it to reality. They’d gotten lucky once before; perhaps in a star-crossed act of divine intervention, but it was foolhardy to chance fate again, even if it were under less…passionate circ*mstances. After all, surely a guard would return soon enough, and to find them fooling around?

Fooling around? She thought to herself, astonished that her mind had even gone to such a thought so readily. Fordola could feel her scowl deepen, frustrated as one might be when losing an argument, but further annoyed that it was with herself.

“The hero of the alliance shouldn’t be consorting with war criminals.” she reasoned, determined not to fight on a losing front.

Stash snorted a soft chuckle as a smile crossed his lips.

“Consorting now are we?”

Fordola rolled her eyes.

“Aye, consorting. And that’s it.” she insisted. “Hells, if their Warrior of Light goes missing from his own bloody celebration, they’ll likely storm down here with half a battalion, an’ that’s the last thing I need to ruin my day.”

Stash rose to his feet and approached the bars, levity giving way to genuine concern.

“Are you still struggling with crowds?” he asked.

Fordola found herself unprepared for his sudden shift.

“Er… Yes.” she admitted, further surprising herself before snapping back to her defenses. “But it won’t matter if you just go.”

Stash remained silent for a moment. He looked into Fordola’s eyes, sending a peculiar shock down her spine as she felt herself getting lost in the azure glances upon her.

“Give me your hand.” he said softly.

“Huh?” Fordola stammered.

“Trust me. I’ll show you something.”

She shook her head.

“Sod off.”

“I’m serious - it’ll help. Look.” he said, reaching into the cell for her hand with his own outstretched, an earnest smile upon his features. He beckoned her on with his fingers as Fordola looked upon him equally confused and curious. Though a nagging feeling bore into the back of her head, in this moment she chose to ignore it, and gingerly reached out to him. It was not unlike that night not long ago in Zanr’ak, where all reason ceased to command her and a peaceful silence let her be free for a while…

“The hells are you…” she began, unable to finish her thought as she felt the warmth of his touch. He held her hand gently within his own and gently clasped the other on top of hers.

“Whenever it becomes too much,” he said with a smile to her, “I find the best thing to do is focus on your hands.”

Fordola eyed him incredulously.

“The Echo.” he insisted with a nod. “When it starts getting…loud, it’s easy to try and focus on making sense of what you’re hearing. You can’t tune it out and it only makes it worse when you try, right?”

Fordola felt him tighten his grip ever so gently on her hand, and she couldn’t help but watch him, transfixed by the softness of his touch, mesmerized with a strange delight when she saw his lips form a slight, enthusiastic smile while he spoke.

“So instead, just make a fist,” he continued, rolling her coarse fingers into a fist within his hands, “and really get a feel for your own skin. Try and feel every bump, every little detail you can feel on your fingertips like…the heat of your own body. But don’t squeeze too tight. Just try and feel the palm of your hand on your fingers - your sweat, creases, scars, anything. Like you’re trying to map out every ilm of your palm to the smallest detail. Really feel what it feels to be made of flesh; concentrate on being human.”

Fordola couldn’t help but chuckle, even in her momentary enthrallment.

“Concentrate on being human?” she asked mockingly.

Stash nodded, nonplussed.

“Yes; and when you’ve got a good sense that you’re still you…” he said, releasing her singular hand to one of his own so that he might reach for her remaining hand, holding both with an exhilarating softness and looking deep into her eyes. “You take a deep breath.”

“A deep breath?” she repeated, that nagging feeling in her mind failing to snap her out of her apparent stupor.

“And I mean a deep breath. Several in fact. Like this.”

He held fast to her hands and took a long pull of air into his lungs, closing his eyes as if fully committing to his performance, exhaling quietly.

“Deep breaths.” he said back to her expectantly.

Fordola surrendered any pretense of annoyance, and instead relented, straightening her posture to join Stash in his exercise, albeit it with a twinge of doubt in her voice.

“Deep breaths…” she said back to him. She joined him in his meditation, unable to focus on the feel of her own skin but rather the tantalizing static that danced upon her war-weary hands from the Warrior of Light’s.

“Just like that.” Stash continued. “Center yourself in the here and now, on your own thoughts; remind yourself to take deep breaths, over and over if you have to. Let the Echo wash over you like water on a chocobo’s back. Don’t fight it; just let it…do it’s thing, and it’ll let you do yours.”

Fordola scowled. Bitter pangs shot through her thoughts, bringing her from the lofty heights of joy back to the harsh pit of reality, withdrawing her hand from his.

“Maybe the Echo will.” she said scornfully, ensuring to place her hand upon her hip, content to let the nagging sensation win her over from her vulnerability. “The Resonance is none so kind.”

Stash withdrew his hands, though his face let on that he was unconvinced.

“Tell me about it.” he insisted.

“What, why?” she asked, further flustered by his pressing her. “Ye’ve seen in my head - I don’t have to explain it to you.”

The Warrior of Light crossed his arms before him and shook his head.

“I’d rather you do the talking than the Echo.” he said, offering a warm smile. “It’s not often I get to enjoy the silence of a normal conversation without the Echo burying the lead. Indulge me.”

“You can’t be serious?”

He smiled expectantly without a word.

Fordola found herself hesitating again. Normally she’d just swear and storm off, eager to tell the Warrior of Light to shove it up his craw and take his gobsh*te to someone who gave a damn. But that was just it…she gave a damn. She couldn’t explain it, not out loud anyway, but much as she knew she should just tell him off, something stirred within her enough that she wanted nothing more than to just be around him. The selfsame quiet that came from his mind reminded her of her life before the Resonance, from the simple joy of hearing a person’s words and not the lingering traces or ghastly screams of their thoughts piercing her mind. It was blissful; that quiet. Even in the depths of the prison the wayward whispers of scant thoughts from any and all lingering beyond her cell let her know no peace most hours of the day.

After all, she had reasoned, that was why she had allowed herself the pleasure of his company last time, despite her better judgment now. Unlike every soul she had come across since she’d chosen to subject herself to this accursed power, it was only the Warrior of Light whose thoughts remained silent to her - a blissful reprieve from the constant deluge she felt from even a small gathering. Even on her best day, she could scarcely enjoy genuine silence from the piercing thoughts of a passing guard, to speak nothing of her struggles in the yard under the gaze of several watchmen, or the all-too-frequent screams of her fellow inmate down the block at all hours.

That was it, surely. Some peace and quiet, or perhaps a means to cope with the grief of a comrade lost…and perhaps some more carnal stress relief, but surely nothing more. Fordola was smart to spurn his sudden arrival this time with a cold shoulder, lest she start to believe herself…distracted.

Or so she reasoned. With an exasperated sigh and wipe of her brow, Fordola rolled her eyes and sat herself upon the edge of her cot, its metallic fittings groaning under the sudden weight. She looked up toward the craggy, dry sandstone ceiling, cracks spidering from the holes where the now-broken metallic powered lamp’s fasteners clung to it, likely doomed to fall from the rusted fasteners any day now. Perhaps it would mercifully - or moreso ironically, grim as it was - take her out with it. Until then, it would likely remain some ‘mystery’ she couldn’t explain to the occasionally over-observant guard.

“You say treat it like water on a chocobo’s back.” she began, eager to redirect her train of thought from the embarrassing truth behind the disrepair of the old hanging lamp. “But the Resonance isn’t just…rain. Or a storm even.”

She directed her gaze back to Stash, who stood listening intently just on the other side of the bars. Fordola leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, holding her hands together apprehensively as she explained.

“It’s a sea. A whole damned ocean. And it doesn’t wash over you, it pulls ye’ under. Drags ye’ down, further and further until you’re just…crushed. But it keeps going. It keeps pulling ye’ down, where its nothin’ but dark and cold. And all the while yer’ heads being smashed from all sides, an’ all ye’ want to do is fill yer’ lungs with just a scrap of air. But ye’ can’t, ‘cause there ain’t none to be had. It’s just…nothingness. I’m surrounded by water, but it’s not water. I’m alive, but I’m drowning. All I want to do is breathe, but the only thing that fills my lungs is fire. I want to scream, but when I do, someone else’s words are all that come out, if any at all. And those words just get louder and louder until I can’t even hear myself thinking anymore.”

She scowled, dropping her head low and staring at the smooth, stone floor, a stray drop of sweat falling with a quiet plop upon the surface.

“How’s someone supposed to fight against the ocean when yer’ already being crushed by it? It’s not even an ocean, really. It’s just…emptiness. Nothing, forever, and all ye’ can do is sit and watch as the world becomes dust, and you feel the pain of dying, over and over, but it doesn’t stick. Nothing does. It’s all temporary…but even then it doesn’t feel like it. You feel every death. You know you’re dead, you remember every cut, every shot so plainly. But even that becomes nothing, and I’m just alone with nothing but screams and my own thoughts. If there’s a worse hell, I couldn’t imagine it - immortality be damned.”

Stash approached the wall where Fordola’s cot sat and leaned against it from the other side of the bars, casting a thoughtful glance skyward.

“You got me there.” he admitted.

Fordola chuckled.

“See? Not so easy.”

He tilted his head in that strange way he always did when he was thinking.

“Maybe we’re looking at it wrong.” he insisted.

Fordola raised her eyebrow curiously at the simple notion.

“We?”

“Either way, that doesn’t let you off the hook,” he continued. “Ocean or no, you can’t give up. I have a hard enough time fighting against a river, but here you are fighting against an ocean. That’s something to aspire to.”

“Come again?”

“Can’t tell you how many times I wish I could just…let go. It’d be so easy to hang it all up. But you and I? We don’t have a choice, do we? We’ve gotta’ be stronger than that,” the Warrior of Light said, his gaze still canted up toward the ceiling. “Too many folks counting on us to let us get bogged down by…rivers and oceans.”

Fordola eyed him incredulously.

“Us?” she laughed. “You maybe, but nobody gives a rats arse about me.”

“I do.”

There it was again - that peculiar weightlessness.

“Sod off.”

“I’m serious.”

“Why?”

The Warrior of Light held his gaze aloft.

“Because when I’m over here,” he began, playfully indicating toward himself with a mock swimming motion, “contemplating how hard I have it in my little Echo river, Fordola Lupis is over there, fighting a damned ocean all alone, and I’ll be damned if I let her do that by herself.”

Fordola shook her head, either unaware or purposefully ignoring the tender smile creeping its way to her lips.

“Always tryin’ to be a hero, aren’t ya’? Can ye’ even help yer’self?” she said.

“It’s in my nature.” Stash responded triumphantly. “And yours too, dammit. The folks up there might not want to admit it, but had it not been for you, Lakshmi might have been the end of not just Ala Mhigo, but me too. Same as Zanr'ak. So forget your hands; next time the Resonance becomes too much, just think about how much stronger than me you’ll be when you win control over it.”

“That has to be the dumbest bloody thing I’ve heard you say.”

“It’s worth a try, isn’t it? And when next we meet, you can gloat all you want about it. I’ll even let you call me that thing you like to call me…er, what was it again?”

“A mewling milksop at Hydaelyn’s tit?”

Stash chuckled.

“It stings just as much - every time!” he said with a wince. “But you keep on fighting, and I’ll let you berate me until the end of days. No giving up; knowing you, some day soon the Resonance will be just another tool on your belt.”

The pair sat in quiet contemplation for a moment. Fordola, for one, was glad to be at the end of Stash’s thought exercise, though she did admit to finding his attempts to comfort her heartwarming, in its own peculiar way. There was something charming to how he stumbled whereas most often the Warrior of Light was something of a faultless man. In silly moments like these, he was less of a god-slaying force of nature and just Stash Burnside, the befuddled conjurer doing his best to mask his flirtations behind ‘sage’ advice.

Flirtations?

Reason seeped into her thoughts like an unwelcome chill; she shook her head of her starry-eyed notions and scowled.

“Satisfied then?” she asked. “It’s nigh on last bell, and you’re still here.”

Stash nodded agreeably with a labored sigh.

“Aye. Duty calls, I suppose.” he said, canting his head disappointedly as he reached for the book left behind on the craggy, dry table. But as he started to make for the heavy iron-barred door to her prison chamber, the black robed Warrior of Light halted himself and turned on his heel to face Fordola, mouth ajar as he searched for the right words to say.

“What you were going to say before…?” he asked.

Fordola raised an eyebrow.

“About…?”

“About…the other night.”

“What of it?”

“You said you wanted to, but…”

Weightlessness and flushed cheeks.

“Of course I did. But…it won’t happen again.”

Stash slowly nodded, pursing his lips to one side briefly.

“Right.” he said, taking a step backwards toward the door, still nodding. “Well…I’m glad you…wanted to.”

The sound of the heavy metal locks clattering from within the mechanisms of the iron door echoed shrilly in the hallway beyond, mercifully not accompanied by any errant sound of footsteps beyond the Warrior of Light shuffling into the hall.

“Me…too.” Fordola said quietly.

Stash smiled.

“Keep fighting, Fordola. No giving up, now.”

“Aye.” she said as the door closed, leaving her with the silence and solitude she had convinced herself she craved. “Deep breaths, now.”

He nodded, a clear hesitation in his step as he started to leave and stopped again, only to find the courage he needed to at least close the iron door behind him.

Now…

Fordola shuddered, streaks of black still clutching at her sight as Ala Mhigo’s sky burned beyond the walls behind Garrickson. Her lungs ached, still laced with the errant icy chill of the Resonance’s touch, but a gentle calm washed over her mind, a warm memory that eased the rage in her heart. She closed her eyes and filled her chest with a slow, deep breath. She felt the gritty surface of the plaza bricks beneath her fingertips, mapping every worn ilm of the aged stone. She was home; she was herself - and there were far more dreadful things to contend with than the Resonance. Another deep breath, and she felt the unmistakable murk of still-warm blood reach her skin.

She opened her eyes to look at her flank, where the pile of corpses lay at Eiserne’s feet. A full score of men, mangled and torn, limbs and bodies severed cleanly by the devilish work of her scythe. Eiserne stood motionless, back turned to Fordola, shoulders slumped as the wretched blade’s steel was yet slaked in the lifesblood of the men under Marteen’s employ. Among them sat Gradey on her knees, eyes wide as she stared blankly ahead, her dark skin stained with blood, her neck barely able to hold her head up. The miqote’s head slowly tilted toward Fordola, her breast rising sharply as she took nervous gasps for air.

“She hesitated…” Gradey whispered, still in shock. “She looked me dead in the eye. She…she spared me. She’s... still in there…”

A wave of relief washed over Fordola, even though she was unsure if she should count Gradey among her newfound foes. For now, the Caduceus agent seemed too stunned to speak coherently, let alone take up arms against her. Gradey’s nervous words hung in her thoughts as Fordola glanced again at the unmoving Eiserne; our girl’s still in there.

Fordola took a deep breath.

The real fight had only just begun.

“How many more?” Fordola bellowed, head down toward the brick, making a fist as she withdrew her fingers from the pooling blood. Through clenched teeth she glared furiously at Garrickson from her knees as her mind cleared, ridding herself of the ghastly shades and lingering cold of the Resonance. Green eyes stared death from behind fire-kissed hair as she reached for Penance, her grip a vice against the still-warm handle, the leather of her gloves straining against her as she reaffirmed her hold on her weapon. Rising to her feet, vision unclouded, Fordola raised her steel to the men before her. “How many more traitors hide behind Ala Mhigo’s walls, claiming to be her goddsdamned savior?”

Falangrym - or rather the vile shade of Aulus mal Asina that donned his flesh as a mask - cracked; the stoic elezen’s face breaking into a wild smile, eyes wide with apparent glee. He practically stumbled forward in a sudden fit of devious laughter, hands shaking as they struggled to keep his spectacles in place. The outburst did not seem to shake Garrickson, who simply stood barrel-chested, fists at his side between the mad doctor and Fordola.

“How exhilarating!” Asina shrieked, eyes trembling as he all but doubled over. “To feel the cold embrace of the Resonance first hand! To be touched by the endless void - the endless knowledge of Styx! For all the years trying to force it - to pry it from that wretch…””

He took a step forward, his breath haggard between vicious laughter. His movements became sloppy and loose, as though the puppetmaster had forgotten how to properly pluck at the strings of his marionette, but only for a brief moment before the crazed look on his face snapped into a stern gaze of deep loathing. He stood upright and composed himself, pressing two fingers to his spectacles to rightly fix them upon his nose. A brisk wind kicked up the gangly mess of hair upon his head, and for a moment, he was as Falangrym had always appeared, but Fordola could see the cracks in the facade now; a twitch of an eyebrow, the crease of a piercing grin, the slight slump in his posture, an almost nervous tensing of muscles in his neck.

“It’s quite rapturous.” he mused, practically starry-eyed. “Tell me, failure; to what depths of my mind did you bear witness, hm? I would so love a very thorough account. You see, I have but only a singular-”

“Enough, Doctor.” Garrickson bellowed, eyes locked on Fordola.

She glared back at him, the bloodied color of the night sky warped by the pulsating black miasma that yet lingered around the delegate. A tepid breeze ran through her hair, but it was of no comfort to her, knowing what she knew now. Though the visions brought her only more questions, she now knew who her enemy was.

“You know, don’t you?” Fordola growled. “You know who he is? How he traded the lives of countless innocent people, right and proper Ala Mhigans you swore to protect. He’s doomed countless to short, miserable lives of pain and toil…robbed even more of any possible future! All so this maniac can play with forces he can’t - shouldn’t have unleashed upon the world. He’d trade the whole of Ala Mhigo…all of f*ckin’ Etheirys to undo one wrong at the cost of thousands! Where is the justice in that? For all your f*ckin’ talk about justice; you make your bed with this…this godsdamned monster? For all your talk of Ala Mhigo’s bright future? Just that, eh? More f*ckin’ talk!”

She swung Penance through the air defiantly to her side, eager for an answer, but the delegate remained silent, merely staring back upon her with cold, dark eyes behind reflective spectacles. Rage swelled within Fordola’s breast.

“What the hells is it for? All this death?” she swung her gunblade wide toward the myriad corpses of the men that not only Eiserne, but she herself had littered the plaza with. Callous eyes fell upon Asina. “None of this…none of it will bring Robin back.”

The thunderous sound of aethercannon fire cried through the ominous night sky, a heavy boom from beyond the retaining wall, quaking the ground beneath their feet and casting an ominous glow upon the plaza grounds as the salvo tore through the sky. The shadows upon their faces vanished, and in the flare of distant green and blue light, Fordola could see a vile smile upon Asina’s face.

“But it will. I have seen it.” he said with a wild-eyed sneer. “E.D.01 is finally ready. The confluence of Dynamis is upon us. Number 3 has returned. Soon, the gates of Styx shall be thrown wide, and from her depths shall I pluck my sweet, sweet Robin.”

Fordola pulled her sword back to her side, raising it slowly and preparing to strike.

“Whatever spell you put Eiserne under, you’re going to put an end to it now.”

Asina laughed.

“Pitiful savages - always so quick to claim that which you don’t understand to be the consequence of ‘magic.’” he said, his playful smile vanishing. “It’s science - science I have labored to master for longer than you’ve had the misfortune of existing upon this star. This is cosmic phenomena a toad-brained savage would never understand. Every life lost is one I would pay thousandfold if for only a fraction of a fraction’s chance to harness the power of Styx - to solve the very riddle of death itself. I would smash her, this city, this continent, the very star upon the stones for even a second glimpse into the void; to hear even a whisper of the infinite knowledge of past, present, and future. I would raise humanity to the very heights of the gods…no, yet further than that! To the endless shore upon which time itself has no hold! I would see the end of finality…I would bear witness to…infinity!”

Fordola looked to Garrickson, who had yet to break his steely gaze upon her and remained unflinching even as the clamor of shrieks and monstrous wails from the swarm of Blasphemies on high intensified.

“Do you hear this madness? Or do you turn your back to it like you have the science team? Or the Council? Or Eiserne and I? Of our godsdamned countrymen! And for what, Garrickson? What was your price?”

Garrickson closed his eyes.

“You misunderstand.” he insisted quietly. “The doctor and I have an arrangement; one with a heavy price, aye. That much was known to me at the fore. But it was for a single life - E.D.01’s. All measure of casualties surrounding her have been…unforeseen consequences. And the Doctor will answer for those lives. On that you have my word-”

“Monsters.” Fordola gasped solemnly, turning her gaze away from him. She held tight to Penance to her side, opening her eyes to the miserable world before her. “This place has made monsters of us all…”

Her sword glowed faintly under the last of the artillery salvo’s light as it drifted below Ala Mhigo’s walls and crashed with a calamitous blast against the Lochs. She held the heavy steel at the ready.

“Stand down, Fordola.” Garrickson at last ordered calmly. “We are as of yet still on the same side…”

“Sod off.” she spat back. “Not while you stand between me and him.”

“Let her try, Garrickson.” cooed Asina wickedly. “I would love to see the failure try and best E.D.01. With but a simple command, I could put this rabid dog down and be done with it… It wouldn’t be a great tragedy, besides. The people of Ala Mhigo wouldn’t mourn the loss of the Butcher, especially after she ruthlessly betrayed these patriots in their darkest hour…”

From the corner of her eye, Fordola could see Eiserne standing motionless amidst the bodies of the men she had slaughtered, the only movement about her from the weak gusts of wind blowing at her wild hair and feathered rags. Her scythe’s blade lay canted upon the bloodsoaked brickwork, its blackened and scratched steel slick with viscera, but motionless as its wielder stood with shoulders slumped and a vacant, blank expression.

“That’s enough, doctor.” Garrickson interjected quickly.

“Step aside, Garrickson!” Fordola barked. “I’m putting an end to this nightmare and taking Eiserne with me!”

Garrickson shook his head, but relented.

“I cannot allow that,” he asked. “Falangrym will answer for the lives lost; on that you have my word.”

“And you think your word means sh*te all?” Fordola hissed through clenched teeth.

“We are not enemies, Fordola.” Garrickson swore earnestly, his stern expression softening ever so slightly even as he made sure to uphold his defensive posture. “There is far, far more going on here than-”

“I know damn well what’s going on here.” Fordola interrupted scornfully. “I saw as much in the Resonance. Falangrym is dead, and Aulus mal Asina wears his flesh, and you turn a blind eye to his crimes.”

“Crimes?” Asina laughed, losing his composure again briefly. “Styx’s gift is wasted on the likes of you. Would that you even understood a modicum of the greatness that is lost on you, failure. ‘Tis a dreadful shame that the procedure didn’t kill you outright; I might have saved myself the shame of thinking it was you who might possess command of Styx. A foolish experiment. A waste. Just an outlier. Though I suppose I should thank you for giving us righteous enough cause to seize the ceruleum deposit in Ala Gannha; without that, I might have never completed the Vestiges in time. Heehee! The painful irony of it all!”

“So that’s it then; that was your scheming?” Fordola asked of Garrickson. “I was to be your assassin? Was Brunylda just another obstacle in your way? A man of your position can’t just needlessly have his political enemies snuffed out, so you sent me in to do the dirty work.”

“Sent E.D.01 in, to be more precise.” Garrickson said coldly. “You might as yet not care to hear it, but I’ve always had your best interests at heart, Fordola. I knew full well of what needed to be done, and I wasn’t about to have you take the fall for it. I wouldn’t sacrifice Ala Mhigo’s best hope when a nameless killer like her was the better option.”

“She’s innocent, godsdammit.” Fordola growled, her hands shaking angrily at her side. “That bastard Asina has turned her into something she isn’t - robbed her of her humanity. She never had a choice!”

Silence fell between them, save for the rustling of a sudden gust against the tails of Fordola’s jacket. Locks of fire-red hair darted over Fordola’s brow as she quivered, perhaps overcome by the lingering emotions of the Resonance, of seeing the tortured existence of Eiserne beyond the black veil, seeing a young girl’s life stolen from her before she even had the chance to see it begin. There was no joy, only sadness, pain…rage. Death.

“You won’t have her.” Fordola said at last.

Garrickson frowned.

“You don’t have a choice.” he said. “At least not when it comes to E.D.01.”

“Her name is Eiserne.” Fordola stared daggers at Garrickson, a glint of rage in the burning light reflecting in her eyes.

“And her sacrifice will be Ala Mhigo’s salvation. One life for countless. With Asina’s cooperation-”

“Enough prattling, Garrickson.” Asina hissed. “Kill this failure and let us be done with this charade.”

Fordola tightened her grip on her sword, eyes darting between Garrickson and Eiserne, wary of who might strike first. But the delegate remained in place, fists still held tightly at his side, making sure to keep his gaze singularly locked upon Fordola, even as he spoke calmly in reply.

“As highly as I hold your augmentations’, I’ve seen what Number 4 can do. Not just the Resonance, but Fordola is a ferocious warrior in her own right - one even now I would struggle against.” he said plainly. “And I’d rather not squander a chance to work together toward our mutual goals. Let down your guard, Fordola - you will see that our ideals yet align.”

As the delegate spoke, the strain in his muscles rippled with an unsettling black wave coursing over his flesh. Wreaths of hardened, crystalline armor coursed over his pale skin, only to fade away as he released his tightly held fist and relaxed his posture momentarily. When it appeared, the blackened flesh wasn’t entirely unlike that of the Vestiges, but in the light of the bruised night sky, it bore an uncanny resemblance to Fordola’s own flesh when she found herself in the grips of the Resonance. A polished onyx and blackened stone.

“So you’re hypertuned?” Fordola asked disappointedly, before reaffirming her stance. ”Another sacrifice to this bastard’s schemes then?”

Asina all but spat at the notion.

“Hypertuned? Inferior. Obsolete.” he hissed. “The delegate’s augmentations are the results of decades of research. Far before you. Far before any of us. He is aether infusion perfected; all the benefits of hypertuning are perfectly balanced in absolute harmony with the Resonance and no tangible detriment to the subject. The first Gen 5 of his kind. To say hypertuned is a vast oversimplification…”

Fordola scowled at Asina as he licked his thin lips excitedly.

“And how many had to die for one man to become it, eh? I’ve seen the degradation in the gen 3s. Gods help the first and second gens… Men made monsters…true monsters. How many lives were thrown away for…for…”

She looked scornfully to Garrickson, the highlander still bristling with muscles awash in black, rocky skin where he coiled his hands into tight fists, like he had dipped his own flesh into tar. She had hoped to see even the slightest sign of regret, but his cold, dark eyes stared back at her fiercely from behind his spectacles, unmoved and Falangrym slithered from behind him, adjusting his own spectacles.

“Two thousand, three hundred and twenty six.” Asina said with a sneer. “At least, that’s the ‘official’ number…”

“And Robin?” Fordola demanded, Asina going wide eyed as she said the name. “Is she among the dead you count? After all - it was the Resonance that drove her mad, was it not? The Resonance you cursed her with. And it was the Resonance that consumed her. Just as it has consumed you; a godsdamned plague that should have been buried with you.”

“You…you insolent savage…” the doctor stammered, his voice shaking as violently as his hands as he pointed at Fordola. “Keep my daughter’s name from your filthy mouth!”

His pale flesh appeared drained of all color as rage and fury overtook him, taking a singular step forward with as much force as his gangly body could muster. Gone was the collected calmness of Doctor Falangrym, and only the ghoulish, shrieking rage of a broken man remained to curse at her.

“And Eiserne?” Fordola continued. “Is she to be another Robin? Where does it end?”

“Do not SPEAK that name!” Falangrym howled.

Fordola shook her head and lowered her weapon, looking to Garrickson with cold disappointment.

“Your countrymen - our countrymen - are out there right now sacrificing their lives because they believe in this place. They put their faith in the Council; in you, Garrickson! We all have! Does that mean nothing to ya’?” she pleaded forcefully. “Falangrym - Asina - isn’t the answer. Nothing he has peddled to the world has made it a better place. He’s made monsters of all of us…but no more. It ends now.”

She turned her back to him, sheathing her blade in its holster and taking confident, measured steps toward Eiserne.

“Someone has to keep fighting. Someone has to break this godsdamned wheel and let the dead stay dead.”

The path was littered with corpses, blood strewn across the pale brickwork of the plaza in wide swaths, pooling into foul reservoirs alongside intricate mosaic tiles of the Ala Mhigan standard. It was difficult to not look upon the tortured faces of the dead, their bodies sliced clean into vaguely human remains. At the center of the slaughter stood Eiserne, alone and unmoving with the gnarled wood of her scythe in hand, the ragged and bloodied hands of the irregulars she had slain still gripping to their blackened blades as cold eyes looked endlessly into the night. In the reflection in the fulm-long trails of blood, Fordola could see the swirling mass of Blasphemies overhead stirring, hear their inhuman cries intensifying in the horrid night sky above her.

“Fordola,.” Garrickson answered sternly. “I’m trying to save my country…this star. And this power is our means to do it.”

“Yer’ just another daft fool with a god complex.” Fordola called back to him calmly. “Spare me your gobsh*te. Ala Mhigo doesn’t need more godsdamned silvertongued saviors. Her real saviors are on those walls, at those cannons, in these homes protecting their kin! Her saviors are already here. People like you jes’ need to get out of the way.”

Her boots splashed in the puddles of blood that surrounded the silent Eiserne as she stared blankly off into the distance toward the plaza gates. She took measured, slow steps into the gore, kneeling before Gradey as she sat stunned amidst the trail of blood. Her amber eyes shook nervously, still in shock, but steadied somewhat as they met with Fordola’s.

“She…she…” Gradey mumbled. Fordola shook her head and nodded softly.

“Gradey; can you get yourself somewhere safe?” Fordola asked.

The miqo'te gave a nervous nod of her head.

“For-Fordola…” she stammered.

Fordola stood, but Gradey’s blood soaked hand swiftly reached out to her own, gripping tightly. Fordola peered down into the bloodied face of her companion as she shakily held fast to Fordola’s hand.

“She spared me. Eiserne spared me. She…she could have done me in, but she stopped. I saw her. I saw her in there. She’s…she’s-”

Fordola rested her free hand upon Gradey’s with an uncharacteristic gentleness that silenced Gradey altogether.

“Leave it to me.” she said quietly. “I’ll find her.”

Gradey pressed her brow against Fordola’s gloved hand for a moment and sobbed. Her mess of blonde hair shook as she allowed herself a moment of weakness before collecting her weary self enough to stand beside Fordola. The bloodied miqo'te shuffled away slowly toward the House of Commons offices. Fordola watched to make sure she arrived well enough to shut the open door behind her. Given the unkind glances from Asina and Garrickson both, Fordola felt well enough to assume that Gradey indeed meant her no harm - at least for now.

With a deep breath, Fordola rallied herself to continue toward Eiserne. She took slow, but purposeful steps through the carnage to stand in front of her wayward companion, placing her hands gently upon the frail shoulders of the girl. Even through her gloves, Fordola could feel an unsettling coldness from Eiserne’s flesh. Fordola looked into her eyes warmly and smiled softly.

“Oi, Eiserne…” she whispered. “Can ye’ hear me?”

“Get your hands off of E.D.01!” shrieked Asina as he started to dart toward Fordola until a brawny, muscled arm stopped him, Garrickson halting his advance.

“Release her. I don’t care what manner of science or magic has hold of her, just end it.” Fordola demanded, scowling over Eiserne’s shoulder toward Garrickson. “You’re not taking another girl’s life for any of this madness. I swear it.”

“She knows too much!” Asina screeched with a violent twitch of his head, turning his attention frantically to the delegate that held him at bay. “She mustn’t interfere with the subject - any destabilizing-”

Garrickson shoved the man behind him, cutting his words short. Before Fordola could blink, she felt a rush of wind wash over her, charged with an electrifying static as shadow became man in an instant, Garrickson’s imposing stature just before her. His body coursed with pulsating stone flesh from beneath his rolled up dress-shirt, his slick hair loosened in the sudden burst of speed.

“Step away from Number 2, Fordola.”

Fordola relinquished her gentle grip on Eiserne’s shoulders and offered her silent companion a nod. Eiserne’s violet eyes stared blankly ahead, unresponsive. The sight was chilling - all too familiar. But even in their dull vacantness, Fordola could feel like Eiserne was watching. Just as Gradey said, she was sure Eiserne was somewhere behind that empty stare. She was sure of it.

“Let me handle this one, okay?” she insisted quietly. “I’m getting us out of here.”

She stepped around Eiserne, who remained silent, the blacks and blues of her wild twintails billowing ever so slightly in the wind. Fordola stood before the mighty Garrickson, unafraid as she canted her head upwards to meet his stern gaze.

“She’s innocent, Garrickson.” Fordola said calmly.

“Are you so sure?” he responded coldly.

“She didn’t choose this.” she indicated toward Falangrym with a swift tilt of her head. “I fell for Asina’s lies; and so have you, would seem. Eiserne wasn’t given the choice. I’ll see that she gets back what remains of her life, one way or another.”

“You’re not her savior. E.D.01 goes with the Doctor.”

“Not if I have anything to say on it.”

“You don’t. She must play her part, and so must you.”

Garrickson’s words were marked with dread seriousness. Fordola scowled at him, but he did not falter before her. He kept his voice calm, but the threat in his tone was unmistakable. His dark eyes broke their icy stare to glance upward toward the sky where the Blasphemies churned and howled.

“My city is under siege; we have survived only the first assault,” he said stoically, eyes wandering amidst the vile mass of fleshy, winged beasts writhing and screeching through the blood-red skies above Ala Mhigo. “Why do you think they gather like that? Intimidation tactics aren’t in a Blasphemy’s nature. A second wave is coming; one we will be lucky to survive without power. Hundreds more will die, if not every man and woman within these walls.”

“And my city will hold them back.” Fordola responded confidently, unwaveringly. “Again and again, as long as it takes, until the Warrior of Light delivers us from their wrath. Ala Mhigo keeps fighting. That’s in her nature.”

Garrickson frowned, his eyes on her once again.

“And what then of the next foe? The next great calamity on the horizon? How long must our people struggle helplessly under the foolish hope that the Warrior of Light can save us forever?”

An immense pressure rushed toward Fordola, so fast that it felt as though the very air in her lungs had erupted into fire. Darkness washed over her eyes in an instant as the sudden, powerful pressure fell around her head. Before she could realize what had happened she was weightless, lifted from the ground and flying through the air. But it wasn’t the familiar cold of the Resonance… Garrickson’s massive hand gripped her skull tightly, flinging her toward the center of the plaza with terrifying ease. Fordola landed on the bricks with a loud thud, her body wracked with pain as she tumbled to a dusty stop, heaving for breath. She sucked in the dry Ala Mhigan air, disorientedly rising to one knee, raising a hand to Penance, still secured on her back.

Fordola could taste blood on her tongue. She looked up toward Garrickson through the wild locks of hair on her brow, still trying to regain her lost breath. The delegate rippled with blackened flesh along his arms and hands as he withdrew his outstretched hand to his side, a dark aura of black energy radiating hot around him, distorting the very air as his hypercharged aether burned. He craned his neck back and forth as the black patches of rocky flesh faded beneath his own, his face half darkened for a moment as he looked to Fordola with a grimace.

“The price is steep, yes…but it is one that must be paid if this star is to ever free itself of the yoke of f*ckless hope.” he barked, raising a hand before him, fingers outstretched as his flesh became laced with streaks of black. Garrickson clenched his powerful hand to a fist, a wave of pulsating black energy erupting from the sudden clench with a static-filled snap. Garrickson looked back to Fordola, fist trembling with power as his flesh churned and hardened in a grotesque display. “One final life is a small price to pay for mankind’s freedom - for his evolution. Hydaelyn has abandoned us, and mankind must rise to become its own savior, to carve its own path toward a future free of inescapable fealty to gods and demi-gods alike.”

Fordola rose shakily to her feet, drawing her blade from its holster and wiping her wrist across the corner of her mouth. She examined the trail of blood left upon her leather gloves and shook her head, returning her attention to Garrickson. She chuckled, centering herself and regaining her composure.

“Funny… I’ve heard something like that from the mouth of another not unlike you; another self-righteous bastard who only wrought death and more death until Stash came along.” Fordola mused, spitting blood to the stone below her. “Sod off. Ain’t gotta swim in the Warrior of Light’s head to know yer’ just another in a long line of bastards thinking ‘e’s got it all figured out, prattlin’ on about grandeur when it’s all the same damn thing; greed. The power ye’ve got is never enough. Ye’ always want more.”

“This isn’t about greed. I want for nothing save for the liberation of mankind from this endless suffering at the hands of others, only to fall weakly to our knees when we are incapable of truly helping ourselves.”

“And ye’ think that hypertuning is the answer? Turning men into monsters so they can fight other monsters?”

“I would ascend mankind. I would rid us of death itself.” Garrickson held his hand aloft and tightened his fingers into a fist, his muscles coursing with stone-like sheen as the twisted energies of Styx coalesced in his palm by his command. “The power of the Resonance perfected - an artificial echo granted to all, and not just Her chosen. The strength of gods to rival any foe from beyond the stars.”

Fordola shook her head.

“You’ve got it all wrong…” she said with a sigh. “The Resonance isn’t just some weapon you can wield, some…power. There’s something…else. Something I don’t fully understand…but we have to leave it be! We shouldn’t be contending with it, Garrickson! It’s not ours to master.”

Garrickson appeared incredulous, turning to Asina.

“Take the girl and go.” he ordered. “Play your part. This has gone on long enough.”

Asina eyed the delegate cautiously, casting wary glances in Fordola’s direction with an unhinged smile.

“Yes…yes…” the doctor hissed quietly to himself over and over before shaking his own head and collecting himself with a pat of his lab coat and adjustment of his spectacles. “One query though, if I may, Number 4.”

Fordola scowled at the madman.

“Tell me; your venture into the Styx…did you delve within the confines of my own mind, or did it perhaps reveal aught of E.D.01’s latent consciousness?”

Fordola did not answer, but her silence seemed to please the doctor nonetheless.

“Perhaps that is for the best.” he mused gleefully. “‘Twould be a shame to come so close to fate’s horizon only to be turned away by silence. As you said; best leave the dead as they are.”

“What do you mean?” Fordola demanded.

“To me, girl.” Asina shouted, Eiserne snapping to attention suddenly, dragging her blade behind her and over the bodies of those she had slain.

Fordola watched as her friend sauntered toward Asina’s side, the doctor smiling wickedly at her, giving her a once over with all measure of pitiable contempt. Garrickson stepped between them and assumed a defensive posture.

“Stand down, Fordola.”

Fordola scowled, Penance high at her side as she shook her head.

“Stand aside, Garrickson.”

The two stared at one another for a moment, steady eyes locked waiting for the slightest move from the other. Another salvo from the aethercannon fired off from the city, erupting the night sky in a blooming flash of blue and green, the blackened clouds and blood red sky laced with tears of distant starfall illuminated for the briefest moment as the mighty salvo from the artillery tore through the air. The ruinous boom that quaked over the Lochs was accompanied by a howl most shrill from above, a singular cry soon accompanied by the hideous wails of myriad airborne Blasphemies. The endless churn of their fleshy wings and whipping tendrils had served to mask the swirling maelstrom of coalescing dynamis in their huddled masses, a massive black sphere of undulating energies, pulsating like a heart removed from its body. In the light of the aethercannon’s blast, the miasma of darkness was given form as energies and shadow became as flesh, veins pulsating over the beating sphere with thundering rhythm. The hundreds of flying Blasphemies ceased their endless circling and gathered upon the heart, setting upon its viscous membrane with fang and claw, ripping it asunder, pulling the bloody mess apart so that the fiend within might be birthed in the sky itself above Ala Mhigo. Blood spilled down from their foul work, the vile black fluid falling as rain upon the city as the creatures tore into the pulsating sphere with monstrous howls.

Asina cast his gaze aloft, in utter awe of what his eyes beheld.

“The confluence of dynamis…” he muttered as Eiserne stood silently beside him, both of them undeterred by the raining blood that fell from the grisly mass. “It was as I saw…this is it. This is where she returns to me…and I to Styx…”

From the walls, the distant shouting of orders mired in fear and uncertainty rose as the heavens themselves seemed to offer grim premonition to the wayward Ala Mhigan defenders. Under the hellish rain of blood, as cannon and ballistae turned to meet the new foe, another salvo fired from the aethercannons into the air toward the Lochs, and in the resplendent brilliance the mass of flesh gave way to the fiend birthed within. It burst forth from the shredded remains of the amniotic membrane that the smaller Blasphemies had rendered with a foul tearing of flesh and blood that drowned out the artillery below. The beast writhed and spasmed until it was free of its womb, drenched in fluid and gleaming in the light of the fading cannonfire. The Blasphemy was massive, easily as large as even the tallest building on High street; a long, snake-like fiend with a dark, scaled exterior, pockmarked by large lesions that pulsated and popped as one end of the beast separated into two, spine-laden halves, still as yet partially sealed together by bloody musculature. More spines and lesions burst forth from the separation, the open wounds sprouting not only more spines, but gnarled tusk-like teeth and wild, darting eyes as large as any man. The beast cried out from its mouth a howl that shuddered the very ground below it as eyes opened from the hundreds of bursting lesions upon its body with as many gnashing, fanged mouths using tentacle-like tongues to pull in hapless winged Blasphemies from the air. The giant Blasphemy happily gorged itself upon the flesh of those that had set it free, but only for a brief moment before the once uniform mass of creatures scattered and set themselves upon the wary city below, leaving the foul behemoth behind without any concern whatsoever, hungry eyes and bared fangs turned toward Ala Mhigo once more.

“By the Destroyer…” Garrickson muttered, the giant Blasphemy shuddering under the violent strain of its own muscles as scales and spines burst from its flesh. The eyes that darted wildly about its head, veiny, bloody, and innumerable, looked frantically in all directions as it let out a final, hideous cry before whatever cursed anima that held it aloft at last was not strong enough to hold it.

With a loud and violent crash it made landfall upon the interior battlements, sundering ancient stone beneath the massive weight of its body, thrashing as a newborn without full control of its own body. The ground beneath Fordola quaked, cracking the very foundations of the city’s walls and splintering the weathered stones beneath her feet as a massive cloud of debris exploded from where the monster crashed, tearing through the plaza with a choking wind. Fordola struggled to keep her footing, raising her offhand to her eyes to shield herself from the blinding cloud.

The Blasphemy fell and writhed upon the city, its massive body flailing as the ancient walls held as best they could against the thing, sending it tumbling into a bloody, pulsating mass over the interior walls, its spiny tail slamming through the center of the plaza with a deafening crash.

“Eiserne!” Fordola cried, still stumbling from the initial impact and blinded as clouds of debris pushed through the air. “sh*te!”

As she found her footing, a wave of pressure washed over her, bursting forth from just before her, clearing the dust cloud in an instant as a wave of black energy exploded from beneath the spiny tail of the creature. Garrickson stood beneath the massive appendage, flesh black as obsidian, muscles hardened as the mightiest stone, holding with inhuman strength the full weight of the Blasphemy’s tail just above a cowering Asina and still motionless Eiserne.

“M-m-magnificent…” Asina stammered, as the delegate, despite his immense strength, struggled to hold the creature’s tail aloft. His knees trembled as his feet cratered the ground beneath him, arms wide to contain the tail as the Blasphemy’s giant body at last ended its calamitous descent. He clenched his jaw tightly and through his teeth he grunted with a painful strain.

“Go!” he ordered. “And be done with it!”

Asina was still awestruck as the visible force emanating from Garrickson’s body rippled the very air around him. Only after the fiend’s tail lurched in a mighty spasm, causing Garrickson to falter ever more under the intense weight did the doctor at last snap out of it.

“E.D.01 with me!” he yipped weakly, Eiserne unflinchingly following behind the stumbling scientist as he clamored to escape. Her scythe blade scraped against the ground behind her as she dragged it along carelessly, leaving a gruesome smear of blood behind her. Fordola darted forward to intercept them, but Garrickson released his grip on the Blasphemy’s tail to his opposite side, leaving himself and her on one side of the living wall. His body coursed with darkness and shadow, darkened flesh retreating to his extremities, as even the daunting task of stopping the giant appendage from crushing them seemed to do little to weaken him.

Fordola stopped mid stride and readied her weapon.

Garrickson glared at her, his spectacles broken and once impeccable attire torn and dirty, his hypertuned fleshed quickly returning to normal. With calm hands, he plucked his beleaguered frames from his face, taking special care to fold them and slide them into the breast pocket of his buttoned shirt before craning his thick neck to the sides with a quick stretch. Before he could speak, Fordola shot forth, moving blindingly fast to Garrickson’s flank in a burst of flame as her gunblade roared under the explosion of aether, her burning steel arcing toward him - or so he thought. The sudden snap and booming crunch of bones and flesh being blown apart behind him sent the delegate into a spiral, raising his fists to his face toward the unseen foe; a winged Blasphemy, one of several that descended upon the crash site of their foul summoning. The fleshy creatures, with their horned heads and outstretched, spiny wings, screeched from horrid, gaping mouths as they dug massive talons into the stilled tail of the large beast, moving to surround their quarry.

Garrickson watched from the corner of his eye as Fordola sent her blade clean through the fiend that had assailed him, the creature’s muscles spasming violently as death claimed it swiftly, leaving a massive cauterized gash where she had cleaved the greater part of its body in two. There was a distinct metal pop as she cycled the chamber of her gunblade, a single smoking aether cartridge flying into the air with a whistle that landed with a clatter upon the ground.

A pair of Blasphemies landed on either side of them, maintaining cautious distance from their prey. They scuttled to and fro in small steps, heads twitching as insect-like masses of eyes stared blankly toward them unblinkingly, their oversized talons scraping across the crumbling and bloodsoaked bricks. As they circled, the giant tail that had grown still roused with a violent shake as its visible muscles tightened beneath its scales and spines, the massive beast righting itself from the rubble upon which it had crashed. Furious jaws snapped and clamped down upon the body of an unprepared Blashpemy that perched upon its tail, sending the others to take flight. Fordola watched as the snake-like body whipped back toward the interior walls with terrible strength, shattering a wide section of the plaza grounds beneath it as the monstrosity set its sights upon Fordola and Garrickson. With a singular snap of its jaws it cleaved the body of the Blapshemy in its gnarled teeth into bloody halves, the pustules and spines of its head rippling as it reared its head back to bellow a foul cry into the sky that joined in the horrified shouts and wavering commands of Ala Mhigo’s defenders on the wall now beset by hundreds of airborne Blasphemies tearing into their flanks along the walls and into the streets themselves. A raucous symphony of gunfire and clash of steel erupted into the night sky; a chorus of battle that would sing Ala Mhigo into her final night.

“I have to stop this.” Garrickson said as his dark eyes beheld the horror before him. “My city…my people…”

The fiend howled, coiling its massive body slowly around the plaza, rearing its body back to tower over its quarry as it surrounded them with its armored girth. Spines and scales stretched around them, sliding across the grounds with an unsettling speed, slowly constricting towards them, yalm by yalm.

“A Blasphemy this large could single handedly break the siege…” Garrickson said hopelessly. “The cannons can’t fire into the city… And the van-”

The delegate took a step forward; even his massive size was dwarfed by the sheer scale of the vile Blasphemy that slowly surrounded them. He found himself shaken, but undeterred, summoning back to his fists the black miasma of power within him, his skin hardening to that of effaced stone. He steeled himself, prepared to face the mighty beast alone.

“On me.” Fordola said sternly, slowly coming to Garrickson’s side as a wave of pressure washed over him like a sudden gust of wind. As she turned to face the monstrosity, he could see Fordola’s right eye burning bright red, wisps of black energy erupting from it like nightmarish fire. “I’ve seen Stash take on this type before; I know how they fight.”

Garrickson glanced toward the massive creature before them, a swarm of flying Blasphemies descending to join it in the hunt.

“Why would you-”

“You’re right. A bastard that big will destroy the whole damned city,” she interrupted, another gust of air erupting forth from her, sending her hair up into a frenzy, “We kill this thing, here and now.”

Garrickson took a breath.

“Aye.” he agreed. “Pragmatic; I knew I’d placed my faith in the right person.”

Penance cut through the air to Fordola’s side as her gaze remained locked on the massive fiend, its coiling body writhing ever closer around them.

“We aren’t done, yet.”

Garrickson nodded, raising his fists and rousing a quick flex of his muscles.

“I imagine we aren’t.”

The Blasphemy coiled a final time, snapping its body inward in what it had surely hoped would be the final squeezing blow needed to slay its two victims, but both of its quarry leapt from its clutches before it could crush either one, Fordola erupting into the air with a trail of fire behind her as she propelled herself skyward with a powerful blast from Penance, and Garrickson in a flash of black miasma as he stepped through Styx to arrive unharmed on the other side of the fiend. As flame erupted from her blade, Fordola spun herself mid-flight to drive the point of her sword into the writhing flesh of the foul creature, using it as a handhold as the snake-like body of the creature whipped itself from a coil and reared back, slithering the whole of its body along the damaged exterior wall of the plaza. From myriad mouths it shrieked, the eyes embedded upon its fleshy hide darting wildly until they could narrow upon Fordola holding fast upon its back.

The creature turned its attention to her, opening wide its toothy maw, revealing dozens of pustules within its mouth that erupted into geysers of blood and flesh as spines formed yet more teeth inside it. It convulsed its body, whipping its tail and Fordola along with it towards its mouth. She held fast to her blade, waiting for her moment.

She could feel an intense cold wash over her as blackened wisps laced across her sight as she rushed toward death, the Resonance ready to seize her for her folly; a tight, icy grip crushing her skull. But she held fast, even as her Resonating eye burned of black inferno; she could see in a singular moment every path, every twist of her own muscles, the exact arc Penance would take, the very second she would pull the trigger. In darkness she could see clear what need be done - the Resonance would not take her; it was hers to wield, its passing glance into all possibilities hers to witness. Through the inhuman wails and nightmarish screaming of the lost and dead echoing through her thoughts, she found silence and stillness on the shores of Styx. Drifting between light and shadow, life and death, everything and nothing, Fordola could set a single step upon the murky emptiness of Styx and find her way.

As she sailed toward doom, she lifted her gunblade from deep within the monsters flesh, using her momentum to further send herself into the gnarled jaws of death as she pulled the trigger and launched herself into a spin. Fire erupted from her blade with an enormous explosion, the sword an inferno unto itself as it ripped through bone and flesh, burning away muscle and sinew. Fordola roared, her eye ignited with the bright red flame of the Resonance, guiding her movements precisely as she tore through the Blasphemy’s head, deadly teeth and bile ever at a hair’s breadth from ending her. But even as she soared through the burning beast, she herself could feel every death pass her by like a chill breeze, every specter of failure reaching out to her with frozen hands to try and pull her to the silent embrace of the pit. But Fordola rebuked them; denied them as she drove her sword through the gauntlet of death on wings of fire.

A final spin, and she wrenched Penance through the stretched sinews of the foul Blapshemy’s jaw, a cascade of flames dancing around her as she burst forth and landed with a slam of her boots on the bricks below, halting her spin by holding her legs wide and steadying herself with her off-hand to the ground. Blood and smoldering flesh followed shortly behind her in a violent splatter as the torn ligament and broken fangs of the fiend were sent in a blaze to the ground, leaving the mangled jaw of the beast to flop helplessly to one side as the muscles that held it fast were severed in an instant. Were Blasphemies capable of experiencing pain, it might have staggered the creature, but despite its grievous wound, it simply roared a horrid roar from its mangled mouth and reared back to strike again. Even as muscle and bone were severed, foul flesh whipped itself into a frenzy of sinewy tentacles trying to reconstruct what once held it together, a writhing mass of bloody meat reaching with sticky tangles to form its jaw anew.

Spines and spikes ruptured the lesions and pustules along its head as the myriad beastly eyes locked feverishly upon Fordola, the fiend intent to finish its bloody work at any cost. Fordola readied herself quick as she could, righting herself and her blade for the assault as the beast rammed toward her spewing yet more teeth with which to devour her. It was only when it was mere malms away did its course become violently interrupted by a massive strike at its head, not unlike a cannon blast. It rocked the creature completely off course with a jerk, sending the fiend rolling to the side until it smashed into the high retaining wall. Flung like a hapless worm a fraction of its size, the beast cratered the massive slabs of stone that made up the retaining wall, spidering huge cracks upwards with a menacing rumble as the foundations barely withstood the fiend. Smoke and clouds of debris erupted from the far side of the wall, a distant structure crumbling at its foundations high upon the exterior battlements sending a deluge of loosened stone and timber to cascade over the ramparts and fall upon the mighty beast. Fordola’s eyes glanced from the wavering fiend to where Garrickson stood, his arm outstretched where his fist had struck. The air around him rippled as though he were a blazing star, the blackened hypertuned flesh at his fists hardened like stone. The delegate let out a singular breath to escape his clenched teeth.

The recoiling Blasphemy writhed in a convulsion of seizing musculature about its body, the scattered eyes protruding from its skin all chasing at something different, unable to focus. With a haggard roar, the fiend brought its head upright and faced its prey, a noticeable limpness in what might be considered its neck as it strained to keep its head pointed at them. While Garrickson had managed a sizable blow against the creature, it inevitably only slowed it down, the Blasphemy bringing its spiny tail to the fore with no regard to its own wounds. The tearing of wet meat and snapping of bone created a disgusting churn from within its skull as it readied itself for a strike.

“We’ve got to pull it away from the wall - another hit like that might bring the whole thing down on the homes on the other side!” Fordola shouted, shifting her stance toward where the enemy now prepared to lash out.

“I’ll give you an opening!” Garrickson called back to her, dashing ahead to well within striking distance of the foe. The fiend’s eyes locked onto the delegate as he rushed forward, sending forth its spiked tail to strike him. The massive appendage might as well have struck a solid wall as Garrickson braced himself and with stoney arms aloft withstood the full impact of the attack, shattering the ground beneath him. The brawny highlander bellowed as he endured another blow, his arms crossed as spines and muscle broke against his unwavering posture, the air around him erupting with blackened energies as his body surged with strength. Fordola wasted no time, darting to the creature’s flank as Garrickson held its attention, the monstrosity realizing the futility of its strikes and instead sending the entirety of its slowly-healing head to bear toward him.

Fordola slammed the point of Penance into the beast’s head, summoning every ounce of her otherworldly strength to drive the fiend downward and away from Garrickson. Though the mass of its body dwarfed her considerably, she used its own momentum against it and slammed its skull into the brick with a calamitous crash. Amidst a deluge of agonized roars and smashing stone, the fiend collapsed toward the center of the plaza, Fordola’s sword still lodged within it. It recoiled and with a thrash righted itself once more, whipping its neck up and sending Fordola flying with Penance in her hand. She flew through the air with a spin, landing on her feet with a quick slap, ready to endure a counterattack.

The fiend twitched its foul visage violently as bones and flesh snapped together in a hellish display about the creature’s head. Even visibly maimed, the lacerations and burns Fordola carved upon its flesh began to mend itself, muscles pulling scale and skin together with bloody, wet secretions. With its flesh renewed the beast was no less deterred than before. Where its jaw had been cleanly severed several rows of tusks ruptured from beneath boils, the hanging remnants of its jaw practically melting, like hot, oily meat slipping from bone. It slopped to the ground in a steaming pile of discharge, raising its head to the sky and bellowing from the open wound at its mouth where more teeth continued to erupt, forming the beginnings of a new mouth entirely.

Godsdammit… Fordola thought, quickly loading fresh rounds into her gunblade’s revolver chamber with a deft swiftness, plucking a series of two charges at once from the bandolier at her hip and loading them into her weapon in a singular fluid motion.

The one Stash fought wasn’t capable of this. she thought. Bastard’s regenerating like a Vestige…

She swung her sword to her side, the revolver chamber of her blade snapping with a resounding click of metal. As she readied to strike again with the beast now centralized to the plaza, a blackened flash of light erupted just over the fiend’s head - a shooting star with the mighty Garrickson within, crashing down with incredible force a solid punch that brought the Blasphemy to a stop entirely. The massive blow cratered the ground beneath the beast, sending it a full fulm well into the now shattered grounds, sending up a cloud of debris as the thing’s long snake-like body flailed.

Fordola shielded her eyes from the sudden rush of mighty winds that drove the cloud of dust her way, and once it had cleared she could see Garrickson still atop the beast, unleashing a series of powerful blows faster than her eyes could keep up. He roared as he punched, again and again, each slam of his stone fists an explosion of pressure and overwhelming energy - a splendid display of the techniques mastered by a Fist of Rhalgr, undoubtedly strengthened by magnitudes by the foul machinations of Asina’s work. But even under the onslaught, the fiend brought its spiked tail cutting through the cloud of dust like a ballista shot, slamming into the delegate with such intensity that even with his augmented power, his body caved, his bulky frame flung through the air and slamming into central monument of the plaza. The ancient stones and carved marble crumbled under the impact, but Garrickson weathered the blow, rising to his feet with a stagger, craning his neck to the side.

“Gods blood, you’re alive.” Fordola found herself saying in genuine surprise - any other man would have been ground to paste from such a blow, and yet here stood Garrickson with little more than a crick in his neck.

“And so is our foe.” he grumbled. “I thought you’d seen your loverboy fight one of these.”

“Aye, were that we were afforded the firepower of not just the Warrior of Godsdamned Light but the Scions besides, we might make short work of it.”

“The two of us will have to make do then.” Garrickson said calmly, stepping away from the rubble and ruin left in his wake.

“Make it three.”

Fordola and Garrickson both turned to see Gradey step between them, the blood-soaked woman hoisting what appeared to be some sort of shoulder-mounted artillery cannon slung over her back, her rifle resting against her shoulder. The clatter of her heels upon the stones beneath them stopped long enough for her to cant her gaze toward Fordola.

“I told you to go somewhere safe.” Fordola insisted.

“An’ is anywhere safe with that thing traipsin’ about?” Gradey responded. She smiled mischievously. “‘Sides, I know one way to kill us somethin’ like that.”

The miqote tilted her head toward the massive cannon on her back, her feline ears giving a playful twitch.

“‘Tain’t no Warrior o’ Light, but it’ll pack a punch as good as any o’ his magic.”

“As good a plan as any. Glad to have you afield again, agent.” Garrickson said.

Gradey’s ears folded back as she turned to meet his gaze with a scowl.

“Consider this my resignation, Chief.” she said curtly. “You got a lot ta’ answer ‘fer, an’ I want no part of it any longer.”

Garrickson chuckled quietly to himself.

“Gradey, I’ll try and get ya’ a shot. That thing gonna’ get its attention at least?” Fordola asked quickly, wary of the Blasphemy before them, the fiend shuddering violently and spasming as its bloodied and broken body mended itself in horrifying fashion.

“Somethin’ Falangrym…or Asina I suppose, cooked up. ‘Anti-WEAPON Personal Artillery,’ according to the quartermaster’s records. Designed to combat a Garlean warmachina twice that thing’s size. I reckon it’ll do some damage.”

Gradey cast a quick glance back over to Garrickson, offering him a shrug.

“Requisitioned from the armorer’s office, sir. Suspect he’s not like ta’ need it.”

The highlander shrugged back at her.

“Not my department.”

Satisfied Gradey looked back to Fordola.

“I owe you an’ Eiserne a drink after all this.”

Fordola nodded.

The ground beneath began to tremble as the mighty Blapshemy steadied itself, fresh spines bursting from its skin with a hideous sheen as blood and bile seeped from open, spiny mouths and bloodhsot, forlorn eyes stared in all directions from the lesions and pustules that pockmarked its scaled flesh. It wasted no more time, charging the trio with such force that its body tore street and stone to pieces under its massive weight, visible musculature contracting and expanding as it slithered toward them. Fordola returned its charge in kind, racing toward it with Penance held strong before her. Her Resonating eye burned bright as she ran headlong into the jaws of oblivion, unafraid and determined, ready to navigate the shadows and ceaseless grip of death to find her way to her target.

She fell upon a knee and slid across the pavement, narrowly avoiding the deadly tusks of the Blasphemy, gliding safely beneath its jaws and rising to her feet. She drove her blade into the flank of the creature’s neck, its forward momentum causing the gleaming steel to sever its flesh with a singular bloody stroke. The sudden drag against it drove it once again into the ground, stopping short of where Gradey and Garrickson had once stood, the two having already darted off in different directions.

The Blapshemy roared defiantly, a cacophony of hideous screams from its many mouths as Fordola withdrew her sword and repositioned beside it, the fiend lashing out at her with quilled spines from its slithering torso. As the Resonance burned in her eye, she could see through darkness and flickering shadows each strike approach her as though it were in slow motion, the vibrations of each strained muscle a signpost as to where each spine would land. Fordola leapt back, deftly dodging each attack with as much ease as a practiced dancer. Her footwork was impeccable, and when she found herself out of harm's way, she steeled herself with another deep breath, ensuring it was the stale air of Ala Mhigo that filled her lungs, not the bitter nothingness of Styx.

Her quarry reared back, spines erupting from its neck as it writhed skyward in an effort to slam down upon Fordola entirely, the monstrosity’s hulking mass eclipsing the sky above her. Fordola would have to move - and quickly. Before she could so much as consider her options, Garrickson erupted just overhead in a flash of black energy, the full force of a flying knee press brought to bear against the creature. The strike sundered the very air around them, a gust of wind tearing through the air and slamming the Blasphemy back with a violent jolt. Stunned, the Blasphemy recoiled, opening wide its hideous maw in an attempt to pluck Garrickson clean from the air where he rebounded. An eruption of fire beneath it stopped the fiend as Fordola went spiraling through the air like a starbound comet, she and her blade a pinwheel of steel and smolder ripping through the Blasphemy’s flank. Her red-hot blade cleaved through scale and flesh, leaving a massive, burning wound in her wake as she stopped her spin mid-air. She threw her arms wide, the tails of her coat fluttering behind her wildly as she began her descent back upon her foe, driving the point of her sword clear into the skull of the beast.

Fordola strained every muscle in her body to pull back on the sword lodged deep in the Blasphemy’s head, forcing it to rear back. Garrickson landed deftly on his feet with a tremendous thud, leaping immediately between spine and claw to reach the exposed underbelly of the beast, throwing wide his massive arms and holding back the vile monster with terrifying strength. It writhed and struggled as the two constrained it, its central mouth agape and howling as the others that dotted its body continued to gnash and bite feverishly. From atop the thing, Fordola cried out, holding fast to her blade and straining against the full might of the creature trying to fight back against her.

“Gradey! Take the shot!” she shouted.

From behind a cloud of dust and debris that wafted across the plaza as the Blapshemy flailed, Gradey had already taken up a position straight ahead, the giant cannon angled upon her shoulder, a reflective glint shining like a star in the night from the weapon’s scope as she took aim. She took only a moment to adjust - swift calculations running through her head as she spied down the looking glass, gingerly biting a singular fang against her outstretched tongue. She pulled the trigger and the world was silent, as if the massive cannon had somehow sucked in all manner of sound for a brief moment until a deafening burst of energy erupted from the rear of the cannon, blasting away the yet lingering clouds of smoke behind Gradey and illuminating the plaza in a dizzying flash of bright blue light. The concentrated aether salvo tore through the air with a howl. The burning beam of light whipped across the plaza faster than the eye could see until it found purchase against the Blasphemy, boring through every ilm of organic material with little resistance, vaporizing flesh and bone into scant embers. Fordola narrowly avoided the shot, and even from her perch, the heat that radiated from the magicked bolt was overwhelming, liquifying the scale and muscles beneath her feet to where she was forced to pull her sword from the beast and leap to sturdier ground. Garrickson fared far better, still holding fast to the shuddering torso of the Blasphemy, releasing his grip as the spasms became too much to contain even in his mighty grasp. The snake-like creature slithered back, muscles going limp, the gaping wound from Gradey’s cannon creating a foul, smoldering hole in the creature’s head, the salvo ripping into the bruised sky and dissipating into a haze of sparks just beyond the palace.

“Did we gett’em?” Gradey asked, wide eyed at the carnage wrought by her weapon.

The Blasphmey began thrashing about, bashing against the south retaining wall, the wooden battlements crumbling as it collided with it, the gatehouse stones buckling and cracking, threatening to crumble as the beast shuddered. The charred remains within the wound remained still, seemingly unable to generate yet more appendages from within, and for a moment Fordola and the others thought it would be over. Lesions formed and bubbled upon the opposite side of its head, boils popping as bones erupted from beneath the viscous membrane, severing muscles in a bloody incision of its own design.

The monster deigned to form an entirely new head, more hideous and malformed than the last, from what remained of it. Pustules popped and hardened into new scales as spines tore through the surface of its skin and newly birthed tusks broke through the haggard scales and sinew. A bloody tear ripped apart at what was once its neck all while needle-like teeth grew along the wound. It erupted into a howl most hideous - deafening and beastly from half-formed and half-mangled organs. It choked on bile of its own making, the various mouths that formed along its torso spitting the vile secretions into pools of viscera. Unlike before, the fiend did not heedlessly advance; instead, it recoiled inward bringing the stubby scaled tail beneath it such that it might hoist its newformed head higher. With maniacal eyes aplenty, it turned skyward, its body undulating and convulsing in a disgusting display of painful retching. A roar bellowed from its mangled throat, the fiend’s new mouth open against the bruised night sky beyond. Its body shuddered again, and with a final seizure, there was an eruption of blood behind it. From the massive wound sprouted two veiny, blood-slick wings, spread wide over the plaza with a fleshy membrane dripping from the foul constructs of newly formed flesh and bone.

Fordola watched in horror, realizing full well what would come next; she had seen what this same type of fiend had done at Vanaspati through the memories of the Warrior of Light…

“It means to take to the skies!” Fordola roared over the disgusting thrashing of the fiend as it spread its newly birthed wings, the giant span of meaty flaps sending all manner of dust and debris toward the trio as powerful gusts erupted beneath it. “It intends to destroy us with starfall!”

“Holy hells…” Gradey groaned.

Fordola had already taken off toward the beast, but the fiend had already begun to slither away, coiling upwards and pulling itself onto the top of the retaining wall out of reach.

“Gradey, hit it again!” Garrickson bellowed.

The miqo'te shook her head and dropped the smoking launcher to the ground with a hollow metal clash.

“One’s all she’s got!”

“We have to stop it; if it can channel the spell…” Fordola barked, eyes darting wildly about for options.

“Oi, what ‘bout that ballista?” Gradey chirped back, frantically pointing to the retaining wall. Fordola’s eyes met with where Gradey indicated; a portion of the exterior wall where the retaining wall of the diplomatic plaza joined it had collapsed inward, and with it an abandoned artillery emplacement. The interior wall had managed to hold fast to what remained of the platform itself, though the foundation had crumbled, leaving the ballista poorly positioned to fire outward into the field, but well enough to fire upward at a fleeing enemy taking flight…

“Let’s go! We need to slow it down - Gradey, with me!” Fordola commanded, Gradey nodding adamantly and rising to her feet, rifle gathered and at the ready.

“I’ll follow!” Garrickson insisted, but as Fordola and Gradey took off, Fordola turned to him to deny him.

“I need you down here!”

The delegate stopped his pursuit, confused.

“To do what?”

Fordola turned and took to full sprint alongside Gradey as the two headed for the interior tower that would bring them to the base of the crumbling artillery emplacement.

“To catch me!” she called back over her shoulder.

Garrickson shook his head.

“What?”

But it was no use, the pair had already disappeared behind the billowing clouds of smoke and ruin.

“Godsdamnit, Fordola.” he muttered impatiently behind them.

Through smoke and clouds of choking dust Fordola and Gradey took to full sprint to reach the far side of the plaza - another ascent to the ramparts through a connecting tower.

The inside of the ascending tower was eerily quiet, muffled from the cacophony of battle that surrounded it on all sides, the ancient sandstone and timber stairs holding strong against the ravages of the Blasphemies…for now. Save for the hurried breaths from the two women, there was hardly a sound. The occasional boom of cannonfire from the main battery was resounding enough to jostle the loosened eons worth of dirt and grime from when the massive Blasphemy had struck against the wall, the chains of the suspended lanterns draped down the center of the spiraling staircase rattling suddenly as Fordola and Gradey raced to the top.

With rifle in hand, Gradey slowed her pace only a moment to steady herself as the tower shook under the blast of the cannons. Fordola too took a second to pause and hold fast to the railing before the two looked at each other a moment to ensure the other was okay, and without delay they were off again.

“I’m sorry for all the secrets.” Gradey blurted out suddenly. “Sorry fer’ keeping ye’ at arms length.”

“Gradey…”

“I mean it; I swear on my own life I didn’t know what Garrickson was playing at… Still don’t, really… All I knew was that he needed to stay one step ahead of Falangrym and ta’ keep Eiserne as far away from ‘im as possible. I thought he meant well, an’ Eiserne was jes’... Well… I didn’t know her. Or you, really.”

The pair continued their trek upwards undeterred, though Fordola could feel the occasional worried glance from her companion upon her as they raced onward.

“I swear to ye’ both, I’d have never signed on had I known. Caduceus ain’t exactly got a clean record, but I promise ye’ they’re good people. None of us knew what Falangrym…er Asina was planning. It was all just…business as usual.”

“Until it wasn’t.” Fordola said coldly.

“He left us to die, down there, Fordola. It was his experiments ‘e unleashed on the science team... I’ll ne’er forgive ‘im ‘fer that. An’ Garrickson too. Son of a bitch with ‘is honeyed words - had me believin’ tossin’ poor Eiserne to tha’ winds was worth it. A necessary sacrifice. Easy ta’ say ‘til yer’ tha’ one bein’ sacrificed fer’ someone else’s grand ideas.”

“Garrickson isn’t off the hook, jes’ yet.” Fordola added. “If he intends to keep the Resonance program going, he’s no better than Asina. When this is done, he’ll get the justice that’s coming to ‘im.”

“An’ how do you intend ta’ do that?”

Fordola shook her head, grabbing fast and holding tight to the smooth timber railing to pivot herself sharply past the next sharp turn up the stairwell. It was difficult to think that far ahead, truth be told. But for as much as her mind raced, trying to formulate some lofty plan to apprehend the delegate, her mind settled on one thing.

“First we stop this godsdamned Blasphemy from razing the city. After that, I’m getting Eiserne back.” she said resolutely. “She’s the key to all of this madness.”

The two at last arrived at the tower’s zenith, no less out of breath than when they started, adrenaline still afire in both women’s veins. Smoke billowed out from the wreckage of the crumbling wall before them, muddying the blood-red sky above in a thick, gray fog. A chalky taste filled Fordola’s mouth and lungs as she and Gradey oriented themselves, quickly spying the path along the broken battlements to where the battery had toppled downward to the lower level. The structural foundations had begun a slow collapse, their slabs of sandstone shattered and cracking along the edges. Broken stones and splintered wooden beams of the artillery platform toppled over the walkway, the rotating base now splintered and bent upwards.

Their destination lay only a hundred or so yalms away, but was littered with several twists and turns as the various interconnecting stairways and rising paths intersected along the ramparts against the exterior wall. Worse still, several of the flying Blapshemies hovered with fluttering, bat-like wings just above the defenses, screeching aimlessly into the sky as they searched for victims. Thankfully, this section of the wall appeared abandoned by soldiers, perhaps when the giant Blasphemy had crashed into the wall. Isolated as it was and more centrally located within Ala Mhigo’s residence quarter, it offered little to the defense of the gates. Or at least, that’s what Fordola had hoped, and that the handful of flying Blasphemies that swarmed the area were not the former guardsmen transformed.

The walls rumbled beneath Fordola’s feet as errant winds blew aside the thick clouds of smoke and dust from below, revealing the massive Blasphemy far to the other side of the retaining wall, the foul thing writhing and howling as it stretched out its frail, still forming wings, slithering upwards along the walls toward the palace on high. Erelong it would be out of reach, and with little more than a swift nod between them, Fordola and Gradey made for the ballista emplacement.

As they emerged from the cover of smoke, the wayward flying Blasphemies spied them, and as if by the same thought, the full dozen or so turned to meet them with fangs and claws bared as their wings tossed them skyward toward them, fluttering masses of marred flesh and whipping tentacles.

Fordola readied Penance to meet them in kind as Gradey shouldered her rifle and took aim, slowing only slightly behind Fordola’s full sprint to squint down the sight and squeeze off a shot with a sharp crack. The round found purchase cleanly upon the head of one Blasphemy, sending the now decapitated corpse to the earth with a bloody crash.

Uncaring and unflinching the rest darted toward them where Fordola let fly from her offhand a burst of crystalline blue shielding magic only for her to in one swift motion cleave Penance through the shield, shattering it into a makeshift salvo of crystalline shrapnel that tore into the fiends. Razor sharp thorns of crystalline magic sailed into them, kocking one off course sufficient enough to catch its descent upon her blade as she brought it back on a return swing, severing the fiend’s flank and sending it spiraling into two dissolving husks of wispy black energy.

Gradey fired two more shots, each accompanied by well-practiced pulls of the charging handle, and sundering the skulls of yet two more foes before they had a chance to make landfall. One of the fiends managed to avoid the falling corpses of its fellows and launched itself at Fordola, thrashing barbed tentacles toward her with lightning speed. Fordola canted her body just so, the Blasphemy’s strike sailing past her by but a few ilms, enough for her to quickly respond with another agile step to slip between a second tentacle. The Blasphemy screeched with a deafening howl from its ghastly maw, rows of pointed teeth dripping with viscous bile, the creature launching its eyeball-laden head at the gunbreaker. A flash of steel met with the beast’s head as Fordola whipped Penance upward in an arc through the Blasphemy’s jaw, launching the thing by its own momentum over her shoulder and slamming it against the ramparts behind her. With the creature dazed and pinned beneath her, Fordola withdrew her sword from its mangled jaw and swung hard against its neck, landing a killing blow that erupted the creature into a foul black miasma as the dynamis that formed the fiend dissolved.

She whipped herself around in time to raise her sword to intercept the heavy, spiked tentacles of another that had set itself upon her, Penance’s blood-stained blade rippling with a vibrant blue light as the mechanisms within absorbed the latent aetheric energy from the blow. With both hands upon the grip of her blade, Fordola pushed against the beast with all her might, her boots dug in deep against the bricks below her as the Blasphemy towered over her, its mouth wide in an attempt to free her own head from her shoulders.

A loud crack of gunfire ripped from just behind Fordola and by nearly the same stroke tore flesh from bone at the beast’s head, the immense strength behind its pressing attack lost as the body went limp. Fordola slashed outward to push the dying creature to the side so she might intercept the next.

“That one’s fer’ Ala Gannha!” Gradey called out, the tinny plink of a spent casing from her rifle dropping the ground as she and Fordola pressed onward toward the next cluster of foes.

“Ala Gannha?” Fordola asked, her blade thrumming with stored aetheric energy.

Gradey nodded her head, as if to reassure herself more than anything.

“It was my fault. I was careless - never shoulda’ let Eiserne out of my sight.” she insisted as she let fly another keen shot toward an airborne Blasphemy, severing its wing at the joint and sending it toppling into a spin toward Fordola.

“What’s done is done; all we can do is do better, here and now!” Fordola shouted, driving the point of her gunblade into the flailing creature to finish it off.

Gradey seemed almost ready to burst into tears, even as she loaded another set of rounds into her firearm.

“Ye’ forgive me?”

Fordola nodded, making sure to step lightly as she and her companion moved swiftly toward the ballista emplacement.

“Aye, Gradey, I do.” Fordola said earnestly, a joyous smile obvious on Gradey’s lips as she spoke. “Just promise me you’ll watch my back, not point a gun at it when the time comes.”

“I’ll ne’er let ye’ down, captain! Oh, third bell!” she shouted, raising her rifle. Fordola turned with all haste to meet the Blasphemy on high as it dove through a thick spire of smoke toward her. Gradey fired a quick shot into the creature’s chest, sending it off-balance with a jerk as the bullet ripped through its smooth, muscular flesh, the Blasphemy careening with a monstrous howl as Fordola arced Penance through its torso. The great fiend crashed into the ramparts below with a wet slap as blood and bile flooded from its wounds, a pitiful final howl escaping its dreadful visage before Gradey fired the finishing shot square into its head. Fordola stepped over the now-dissolving mass of swirling black energy, scanning the skyline for any remaining Blasphemies. With a mighty bellow of its foul series of mouths, the massive Blasphemy screamed into the bruised Ala Mhigo sky, stretching wide its fleshy wings. Sprouting from the wet, boney ligaments scales and spines, veiny skin stretched between the pulsating musculature as it climbed higher along the ramparts. From where they stood it was difficult to see, but the giant Blasphemy must have caught the attention of some defenders along the wall. A rattling of small arms fire in its direction meant at least one contingent was alive and well, but even as bullets raked across its back, rippling with bloody pops, the fiend was no-less deterred, driving its body along the wall, coiling its body.

“Fordola, lend me a hand!” Gradey yelled to Fordola, the miqo’te having already shouldered her rifle and set to work ensuring the ballista were capable of firing. Fordola nodded and sheathed her sword, standing to the fore of the large mechanical weapon. Gradey pointed frantically to where the hardy coils of rope were gathered along an iron-reinforced winch, the ropes taught as steel. “Lock the winch all the way back!”

The ballista sat at an awkward angle, the mighty bow fixture barely above the ground on one side where it leaned heavily, threatening to loosen itself from the solid steel bolts that held it to its now-tilted platform. The angle made for awkward work as Fordola set herself to pulling the winch, the aching wood and metal groaning loudly as it pulled back the launching mechanism. Slowly, the coiling ropes fought gravity and the waning strength of the winch, but with a final rotation, the ballista locked into place with a loud crack. Fordola instinctively gave the top of the brass-reinforced woods a reassuring slap, looking to Gradey.

“You sure this thing’ll fire?”

“Ye’d best hope it does! Where in the seven hells am I aiming?”

Fordola drew Penance from her back and began running toward the massive Blasphemy through the mire of smoke and dust, shouting back to Gradey as she broke through the veil, the massive Blasphemy now but a handful of yalms away.

“Doesn’t matter! Just don’t miss!” she barked as she fell out of sight, leaping from the high rampart’s edge and dropping down to the lower interior wall once again.

Gradey pulled at the pair of brass handles of the ballista and squinted, biting at her outstretched tongue as she gauged her distance.

“I don’t miss.” she said quietly to herself, paying no mind to the nervous beads of sweat that rolled down her brow.

Fordola landed upon the weathered stone of the lower ramparts with a thud, her quarry a short sprint ahead, rearing itself back with a deafening screech, its wings having hardened with scales and thick, meaty flesh. In the darkened sky and clouds of smoke, the fiend was a terrifying sight to behold amidst the din of slaughter that raged all around. Muzzle flashes erupted along the ramparts, a cascade of fire granting gruesome illumination to the horrifying monstrosity. With wings outstretched, the creature reared fully back upon its haunches, a frightening display of malformed dynamis made flesh and bone. It gave a single, powerful flap of its wings and sent astray the clouds of smoke and dust, revealing itself to the whole of Ala Mhigo and her staunch defenders with a singular screech that quaked the very foundations upon which Fordola found herself steadily rising to her feet.

With her Resonant eye alight with burning crimson, she took a deep breath.

There was no time to plan or consider; she had only the fire in her veins and the sword in her hand. She ran full sprint along the ramparts - a straight shot. Fierce winds fought against her as the Blasphemy flapped its grotesque wings again and again, slowly lifting its hulking frame ever higher. There wasn’t time to consider the choking dust in her lungs, or how her body ached from strain, or her head throbbed painfully as the voices of the soldiers she sprinted past looked upon her in confusion.

“Fordola?” she heard Sascha say as she pressed herself against a collapsed portion of the rampart, reloading her coach gun.

“Fordola!” barked Vardarisch as he and Captain Finnard looked on in confusion, swords still wet with the blood of the slain Blasphemy before them.

She darted past the fallen corpses of the Blasphemies that yet remained whole, vaulted over the fortifications erected by the Ala Mhigan defenders. She was a blur, focused on the singular task at hand, driving herself ever forward through murk and mire, smoke and smolder. The Blasphemy beat its massive wings through the air, lifting it from its earthly domain and taking off over the side of the wall. There was no time. She could only act. Her thoughts faded into pure instinct - her prey was not about to escape.

A single step slammed against the rampart’s edge and into the night sky she went, Fordola launching herself with all her strength into the hot Ala Mhigan air, high above even the tallest of Low Street’s buildings, the selfsame rooftops she so cherished now far below her as she pulled Penance back, her arm outstretched, a roar escaping her lips as the Resonance became an inferno in her eye, a veritable wall of scales and spines rushing past her as the Blasphemy took flight. With all her might, Fordola drove her sword into the beast’s flesh. In a singular moment she went from weightless freedom to being dragged into the air as she held fast to her sword, her muscles burning to fight the forces now assailed against her. She grit her teeth, unafraid as the streets of Ala Mhigo disappeared beneath her as she ascended through the pillars of smoke, the wind tearing at her face, her coat tails billowing wildly behind her.

High above Ala Mhigo, the Blapshemy slammed its powerful wings against the air, whipping its long body around to face the beleaguered city with another dreadful roar from its litany of mouths. Fordola, hanging on tightly, pinned to its midsection could feel a terrible heat rising from within the beast. As she planted her boots against its hardened scales, the very air itself rippled with a stinging static, dynamis and aether both erupting into a scattered display of discharging energy.

sh*te! Fordola thought. Time was running out. The ripples of summoning energy radiated all around her as she fought to keep herself steady against the beast, the static becoming as bolts of lightning, crackling and tearing through the air.

The Blasphemy roared; an ear-shattering symphony of guttural, monstrous wails. The fiend reared back against the sky, the coalescing energies about its body rising above it into the clouds. There a roiling black miasma laced with coiling electricity became a burning sphere of hellfire and voidscarred sky.

The crack of lightning and otherworldly wails were silenced as the high-pitched scream of a massive ballista bolt tore through the sky. The barbed missile ripped through the Blasphemy’s torso with such force that all manner of flesh and bone were as paper, the bolt penetrating with deadly purchase clear to the other side of the beast. The impact knocked it forcefully off-kilter, the beast suddenly unable to keep itself aloft, frantically trying to adjust itself with haggard flaps of its wings.

In its bloody recoil, it coiled itself anew in the air, the magical energies that once thrummed beneath Fordola’s boots subsiding. This was it; this was her chance - Gradey had done her part.

Go! She thought as she felt the pit of her stomach become weightless, the Blasphemy falling out the air just enough to bring the portion of its body where she found herself flat enough that she could quickly withdraw her blade and stand firm.

There wasn’t time to think; she had to act.

There wouldn’t be a second shot from the ballista; no second chances - no Resonance to save the countless lives below her. Ala Mhigo needed her. She need only find the path.

She took off, step by thunderous step against the flailing beast, fighting each undulation of its body with impeccable balance. Each rise and fall of its snake-like body threatened to send her falling, each twist into the night sky another chance that she might fail her city; fail herself. But with her teeth clenched she moved, deep breaths no longer an option. She whipped Penance to her side, weaving betwixt spine and fang, the creature finding its own balance and taking to the skies once again, erecting itself once more. Fordola could feel every muscle burn as she fought gravity itself to keep going, burying deep the fear that failure was but a step away.

There was no time to be afraid.

She took another step, her back all but facing the ground, driving her sword’s blade into the beast as she pulled the trigger. Penance glided through the fiend’s flesh, a gleaming brand of crimson and erupting aetheric azure energy. Another step, and then another.

No looking back.

She pulled the trigger again, an inferno in her hands, tearing a bloody fissure through scale and bone. She ran up, her legs as fire themselves as she dragged the gunblade through the wailing beast, driving it clear through its neck.

No regrets.

Another pull of the trigger, and inferno became as the hells themselves as she took her last step astride the Blasphemy, Penance a torrent of fire in both her hands at her side. Together, Fordola and her sword roared with unimaginable fury as she propelled herself up through the skull of the creature.

She was as fire in the dark, gleaming brightly through the ash, her last steps against the Blasphemy light as rain upon the surface of Styx’s black waters, the world around her still clinging to color as she breathed deep of Ala Mhigo’s night sky, neither truly dead or alive. She weaved through the gripping shadows with a beacon of fire in her hands, denying the icy grip of the Resonance as she tore through the open sky. Penance erupted with a cascade of burning aether so bright, Fordola was starfall made flesh as she reached the zenith of her ascent. Below her Ala Mhigo appeared so small - the streets of her home, everyone she had ever known, every corner, every cursed stare, every tragedy, every fleeting joy, every moment spent wondering if she would ever truly be so free as to soar beyond the walls that towered forever overhead…she could hold them in the palm of her hand.

Fordola Lupis, adrift and aflame against the bloodshot skies that foretold of doom and ruin, beheld the quiet majesty of the city, its myriad defenders struggling with every breath to hold the walls, that this wave would be the last, her people huddled tightly in their homes, sure against all reason that the dawn would come. Somewhere down there, the shade of Aulus mal Asina conspired to use Eiserne to render all that struggle, all that hope meaningless. With fire and fury at her beck and call, Fordola closed her eyes; she would deliver the dawn unto her city.

She became weightless, Penance ignited with the brightest of blue flame as she threw wide her arms to steady herself in the sky, wind racing through her hair, whipping the black fire of the Resonance from her eye. Viridian eyes opened to behold in full color, full grandeur, the city where she would keep every promise, remember every name - honor every last soul far beneath her.

She held her burning blade in both hands as gravity pulled her downward toward the massive Blasphemy as it reeled from the still-rippling explosions rupturing from the massive fissure Fordola had carved upon its flank.

She felt the rush of air against her skin, the dancing static of the misbegotten creature trying to summon the magicks that would spell doom for Ala Mhigo, the scorching aetherfire of Penance in her hands. Its starmetal veins blazed bright azure against the roaring maelstrom of fire that erupted from the gleaming steel.

Deep breaths. She could hear Stash say. A familiar fluttering overcame her heart, and in that moment, despite everything, she felt no fear; neither remorse, nor regret.

Fordola held Penance beside her as she fell through the sky, tearing through the darkness with a blaze, a comet all her own. Electricity crackled around her, aether spiraling in a dazzling display as the Blasphemy screamed death into the night, ready to devour the would-be-savior of the city below.

Back to hell with you! She thought as she roared through the sky toward death. Ala Mhigo has suffered enough!

And then there was silence.

Stillness.

Darkness.

Fire became as stone, the once clouded sky an endless expanse of nightmarish monoliths beyond comprehension into the limitless infinity.

The dry, smoke filled air became as water, filling Fordola’s lungs.

The fierce wind against her skin vanished.

Ala Mhigo was but a shade of itself, a poor imitation rendered by ash and blackened sand amidst a maelstrom of churning emptiness far below.

The massive Blasphemy, mid-howl too was as still as stone, its skin now glossy and black as it sat motionless in the air.

The fire in Fordola’s heart escaped her as her soft skin became as crystal, the once burning Penance now a cold, featureless facsimile held to a standstill in her hands as the blade was stopped entirely against the singular finger of Vykke held aloft, his menacing golden eyes staring back at Fordola behind long black hair.

“The time has come, dear sister.” he said coldly. “Delay no more.”

Fordola withdrew her sword, she and Vykke suspended in the air as though they were flying on unseen wings as the embattled Ala Mhigo now lay still in a cold fabrication of reality. Her body had become as crystal within Styx, as it had before, the glow of fire within her breast the only light that yet pierced the endless darkness of the ceaseless churn of ragged shadows and shifting sands.

“Vykke!” she growled. “Stand aside!”

The muscular and lithe entity shook his head disappointingly.

“Does such a creature yet trouble you?” he asked menacingly as Fordola righted herself before him.

Fordola sensed a cloying softness to his tone that unsettled her, but it wouldn’t last as he lowered his raised finger and turned toward the massive effigy of the Blasphemy.

“These abominations, the Lifeweaver’s folly…” he said, back turned to Fordola. “They mustn’t stand in your way any longer. The rivers of fate are at last to meet, and you must be there. You…and our dearest little sister both.”

“f*ck fate! f*ck destiny!” Fordola barked. “And f*ck your cryptic gobsh*te!”

Vykke turned his head ever so slightly, the golden glow of his eyes plain as he peered over his shoulder toward her.

“Defiant…to the end,” he began with an uncomfortable softness. “Styx is infallible. You can stall destiny no more than a grain of sand can withstand the tide.”

He vanished.

Fordola could feel a brief panic in her throat.

And then he was before her, hand wrapped around her sword-arm’s wrist.

His touch was ice, a cold so biting that it burned beyond words.

He pulled her in close.

“Go to her. I’ll be waiting.”

In the blink of an eye, he thrust her downward, Fordola’s body but a ragdoll as Vykke unleashed her through the glassy stone of the Blasphemy, splintering it into countless shards in an instant. Fordola lost all control of herself, hurdling through the dark at such speed that she could not make sense of things. There was only pain and shadow as her crystalline body ripped the Blasphemy asunder, Ala Mhigo’s grim recreation speeding toward her.

The bitter emptiness of Styx abandoned her, and she was fire once more, the cacophonous roar of reality flooding her ears as she hurdled toward the ground. Above her, the Blasphemy had only the briefest moments of existence before it was torn forcefully in two along its center, Fordola herself the severing steel of its oblivion. A sonic boom erupted from whence it was, then light, and then silence as the massive Blasphemy was unmade in an instant.

Fordola was as dread starfall herself, cloaked in the roaring flames of her gunblade as she sailed toward the city at dizzying speed. The fires petered out, and Fordola felt fear once again.

Ala Mhigo rushed to meet her, but she would not be there to greet her in kind.

She had only time enough to see the blackened frame of Garrickson streaking toward her, his arms outstretched as he bolted through the air to intercept her.

Darkness engulfed her, and all was silent again.

When she came to, it wasn’t in the nightmarish embrace of the Resonance; the choking black of Styx’s waters did not fill her lungs. Instead, it was blood - her blood. She heaved, desperate for breath beneath the bruised sky above, a burning pain deep in her breast. As she seized up, she could feel the pull of Gradey’s hands against her shoulders, her companion having held her in her lap. Garrickson too stood not far, his back turned to them.

“Fordola! Fordola, ye’ daft c*nt!” Gradey yelled, tears practically in her eyes. “Gods blood, Fordola, I thought ye’d gone an’...”

Fordola shook her head, as yet still dizzy from her rapid descent. Her hands trembled as she held them before her, but with a squeeze of her fists she steadied herself. It was all she could muster to take a single shallow breath before a coughing fit claimed her, sending blood to her hands and the bricks beneath her.

Gradey did her best to steady her, caring arms holding her as Fordola gasped, desperate to find the air needed to speak.

“The…Blasphemy…?” she managed to say between labored heaving.

“Dead.” Garrickson said, still facing the horizon. “All thanks to you.”

Fordola placed a thankful hand atop Gradey’s as she leaned forward and found her footing, rising with a slight wobble, making sure to take up Penance from beside her to her hand once again.

“Nice catch.” Fordola said warily, still shaking the ghostly wisps of the Resonance from her sight.

“Indeed.” Garrickson said coldly.

Gradey rose to her feet beside Fordola, herself unsure of what to make of the scowl upon Fordola’s countenance as she stared upon the back of Garrickson. The tension between them was palpable, but the delegate kept his gaze toward the walls where battle against the swarm yet raged.

“What now?” Fordola asked cautiously.

Garrickson canted his head slightly in thought.

“The war rages on. With the major threat sufficiently dealt with, I am needed at the secure bunker.” Garrickson answered. “Marteen’s scheme wasn’t likely without leaks; the arrogant little prick’s sedition was practically an open secret. Someone talked; of that I have no doubt. If any number of my colleagues were to have survived, I must see it for myself.”

The delegate gave a measured sigh, clenching a fist before him.

“Ala Mhigo owes you yet another debt, Fordola.” Garrickson continued. “One that I aim to repay here and now.”

Gradey recoiled slightly, unsure if the sternness in Garrickson’s voice was meant to inspire fear or put them at ease. Fordola remained unflinching, despite her condition.

The delegate at last turned to meet her gaze, his sharp attire dirtied and worn from battle, his stare no less imposing than ever. Fordola tightened her grip upon her sword.

“Run, Fordola.” he said. “Run from here, and never return.”

“What?” Fordola asked incredulously.

“I offer you your freedom.” he continued, his mighty arm outstretched with an open handed gesture. “Leave this place. Be gone from Ala Mhigo and her woes. You have earned your freedom; and so I grant it to you. I don’t care where you go, just so long as you never show your face here again.”

Fordola scowled further.

“You know I won’t do that.” she growled.

“You can, and you will.” Garrickson insisted, lowering his hand, his expression laced with dread seriousness. “This will become your moment, Fordola. Your stained legacy can end with triumph, here and now - with how you sacrificed yourself to save the city from calamity in its darkest hour. How you threw yourself against the foe, and went out in a blaze of heroic glory. That can be your story, the legacy Ala Mhigo’s people carry with them into the bright new future. It’s time for Ala Mhigo to rise with new life, new purpose, from these bloodstained sands, free of the shackles of the past.”

“Another lie fed to the masses to placate them.” Fordola replied curtly. “ Whatever Asina told you about the Resonance…it’s all a lie. It won’t lead our people to greatness…only ruin and death.”

“Easily said from one granted the gift of immortality.” Garrickson said with a frown. “Tell me, Fordola; what would you have us do should the Warrior of Light fail in his mission?”

Fordola’s eyes narrowed.

“Stash won’t fail us; ‘e never has.”

“You know the truth. We are fools one and all to continue pretending that one man can hold fast against the tide of darkness that washes against our star. Eventually it will break him, and then what of Eorzea, of Ala Mhigo? The star itself? And even should he weather this calamity, what of the next? The next hundred calamities? In five years? In ten? A hundred summers from now, when you and your precious Warrior of Light are dead and buried together, dust and memories - what then should befall our star? Who then will stand as our staunch defenders in a world Hydaelyn has abandoned? Not even just the unfathomable catastrophes that await us beyond the stars, what simply shall Ala Mhigo do in the face of another oppressor? Another Garlemald? We trade one tyrant only to fall under the thumb of another, only this time our enemy reaches out with honeyed words and colorful banners of nations many. All the while, we are denied our rightful place in the world order, forced to endure the quiet humiliation of being lesser than. Forced to be chained by weakness and watch as our esteemed allies grow fat from our endless toil beneath them. We are not equals to them; we will always be savages to someone until we prove otherwise.”

Garrickson’s mighty fist thrummed with intense, rippling aether and dynamis both before him as he glowered toward Fordola.

“No more.” he growled. “With this power - with this strength, Ala Mhigo will become the shield of this star. Heroes will no longer be made at the whims of some flippant god, but by man’s own command. Legends will no longer befall us at the mercy of fate, we will write our own storied future for generations yet to come. Mankind will break free of the yoke, and Ala Mhigo will be at the vanguard, leading the charge into that future. We as a people all will become more; no longer will we want for Warriors of Light when we’ve the means to become more than a dead god's playthings. Mankind will become as gods.”

Blackened energy whipped from the delegate’s coiled fist violently, a surging fire of black mist and raging aetheric tears.

“So be gone from here, Fordola. Do not fret over the loss of Number 2. Whatever Asina aspires to will be well in check under my supervision. You can be free to give your beloved Warrior of Light a most glorious homecoming and live out your days in peace in Ala Mhigo’s new future.”

Gradey took a step back as Fordola took a single step forward, Penance held tight at her side, green eyes locked upon Garrickson without fear.

“I made a promise to Eiserne.” she said calmly. “She and I are no longer pawns in your game.”

Garrickson relented his clutch, the air about him returning to normal, a curious smile about him as he chuckled quietly.

“As bull-headed as ever.” he mused. “Would that you even knew who that girl was; I’d venture to say you wouldn’t be so sure of yourself. Still…I admire your conviction. Maybe Asina was right - maybe that’s why you and I are different than the rest.”

“Save your breath, Garrickson. It doesn’t matter who Eiserne was. She’ll get to choose who she’ll be now, just as I have.”

“I gave you my terms.” Garrickson said. “For your sake, this had best be the last time I see you in my city. Go - live your life, Fordola. You want to break fate’s chains - well here is your chance. You won’t get another, on that I promise you.”

And with that, the delegate turned away from Fordola and Gradey both, walking resolutely into the clouds of smoke that covered the plaza gates, leaving behind the destruction and death without so much as another word, the clap of his dress shoes upon the stones fading just as his imposing frame was swallowed by smoke, leaving only the menacing din of continued battle beyond the retaining wall.

Gradey swallowed nervously beside Fordola, the poor miqo’te all but at a loss for words. It was only when Fordola at last spoke did she break herself free of her stupor.

“So he caught me after all?” she asked.

Gradey took a moment to clear her head and consider the question before answering.

“Aye, saw ‘im practically take off like a cannon shot ta’ catch ye’.” Gradey stepped closer to Fordola, concern plain on her face. “The hells happened up there?”

Fordola shook her head, unsure of what exactly to say. She relented her tight grip on Penance and released a short breath that she had held in her lungs, slipping her blade into its holster upon her back. She looked warily upon her companion, face dirtied by sweat and soot as a faint breeze rustled her hair.

Gradey appeared flustered for a moment, Fordola’s gaze still managing to catch her off-guard, apparently. Flustered or no, she collected herself with a press of her fingers to her temple as she found the courage to speak.

“It’s fine…ye’ needn’t tell me.” she insisted softly. She shook her head, her own dark skin sullied by the same grime as her erstwhile comrade. “What Garrickson said…yer’ not gonna’ run, are ya’?”

Fordola said nothing, but Gradey’s eyes went wide as she tried her best to explain herself.

“I mean, I know you won’t… Silly of me to even ask. But…” she trailed off.

“Gradey.” Fordola interjected, knowing full-well where Gradey’s heart lay on the matter. “I need you to take care of Ala Mhigo.”

Gradey appeared rightfully stunned by the charge.

“Ye’ don’t mean yer’…?”

Fordola took a step forward toward what yet remained of the plaza, its once beautiful mosaics and intricate brickwork left crumbled and broken, battered and bloodstained. Pillars of ghostly smoke reached out into the bruised night sky, Ala Mhigo still reeling from combat just beyond the quiet afforded by the still-standing retaining wall that surrounded the grounds. Men and women still warred with steel and courage both against the vile tide of death and despair that threatened to claim their homeland. For all the city and Fordola’s own struggles, beneath that tarnished sky they yet stood, defiant in the face of their own destruction, refusing to give in to the ceaseless onslaught of despair from beyond the stars. Ala Mhigo need only see the morrow; to hold out long enough for Stash and the Scions racing to the edge of all creation to deliver them. As for Fordola herself…

“I’m not running.” she answered. “I’m going to save Eiserne and bury Aulus mal Asina with his monsters for good.”

Fordola turned to Gradey and looked upon her softly.

“I just don’t know if that includes me.”

Gradey shook her head.

“I can help! We can both-”

Fordola took a step toward her, holding Gradey’s nervous hand in her own as she spoke.

“This is something only I can do. Asina, the Resonance, Styx, Vestiges…it’s my legacy to bury - my burden. You can help me by making sure the walls hold, that people are safe; that Ala Mhigo survives until the Warrior of Light and his comrades end this madness.”

Nervously, Gradey frantically shook her head in protest amidst a flail of messy blonde hair.

“But what about Garrickson?”

“I’ll deal with him. If he’s as smart as he thinks he is, he won’t get in my way. After that, he can be Rauhbahn and what’s left of the Council’s problem ta’ deal with.” she clasped her other hand around Gradey’s warmly. “Go find Captain Finnard on the southern wall; help them keep the skies clear. Destroyer knows they could use a crack shot like you.”

Gradey strained to protest, but relented when her eyes fell upon the somber jade of Fordola’s own.

“Gods damn you, Fordola Lupis.” she muttered.

Fordola chuckled, releasing her grasp upon Gradey’s hands.

“Fordola Redacted.” she quipped, Gradey taking a ginger step away before taking reassuring breaths into her lungs, rifle hoisted to her shoulder. “Go on now. And remember I’m holdin’ ya’ to that drink ye’ promised me an’ Eiserne, cupcake.”

Gradey nodded with a smirk.

“For you, I’d buy the whole damn bar. Jes’ be sure ta’ bring our girl home.” she said, offering Fordola a playful wink before she turned on her heels and headed for the connecting tower once more, disappearing amid the shadows cast by the clouds on high, blocking out the blood-red moonlight.

In somber silence, amid smoke and ash, in the broken, bleeding heart of Ala Mhigo stood Fordola Lupis, alone. Surrounded by the rubble of ruin of ancient stone, under the yet watchful eyes of the silent palace on high, Fordola took into her lungs a deep breath of her city, so marred by the flames of perdition as it were.

Having seen the massive walls of Ala Mhigo, the leviathans of stone that had kept her locked inside, from the skies…to see them so small was a sight she would not soon forget. Would that she could reach out and hold the city tight in her hand, protect it from all the hardship that now befell it, not just from the enemies without but those within as well. Would that it could be so simple.

Traitor!

Kinslayer!

Her eyes darted wildly, her vision clouded with the otherworldly specters of the dead - the vagrant souls of those that haunted her. In her somber reflection, she but for a moment let down her guard, and like a breaching dam came the myriad nightmarish voices from the Resonance. She squinted, trying to erect those crucial walls within her heart and soul, focusing on herself in this moment, closing her eyes to the foul shades that danced forlorn and hateful around her, their faces forever burned into her mind’s eye.

She did it! She defeated it!

It’s her; the gunbreaker!

Hold fast to your steel - stand with Fordola!

Her eyes went wide, the wailing and cries of anguish fading, leaving the warm and hopeful prayers of but a scant few souls.

The Butcher flies on wings of fire! Can we not do the same, men? Stand and fight as she does!

To the skies! It’s her! It’s Fordola!

Hero!

Savior!

Fordola looked around the empty plaza, as yet still alone among the faded clouds of smoke. She could see clear as ever, untouched by the black tendrils of the Resonance, and yet deep within the dying pillars of smoke she swore she could see the huddled shapes of people, of soldiers rising to their feet, of children excitedly pointing to the skies. They were as ghosts, intangible and fleeting, their voices distant and small, but their words still reached her, try as she might to steel herself from intrusions.

Fordola held out her hand before her, unsure exactly why she could feel a tremble in her fingers or why tears welled in her eyes. She shut them forcefully with a smirk - for all she thought she understood of the Resonance, yet again it altered its own rules. Or had she?

She filled her mind with all those thoughts and hopes that she kept at arm’s length, letting down her walls so that their thoughts became her own. They were loud at first, as they always were; sharpened daggers raked across her mind, riddled with fear and dread. But she welcomed their fear, let those howls of the long dead, those that were robbed of their freedom by her own hand, sink into her mind. She endured; their hatred, their fear, their hopes and squandered dreams…they were hers to carry.

The screams quieted, the gnashing fangs of hatred silenced. In their place she found the warm prayers, the defiant hopes, the wishful dreams left unsaid. In Ala Mhigo’s heart, Fordola exhaled and opened her eyes to a sky stained by agony itself, unafraid and unfettered. Her heart, her very soul, felt warm. She would never be rid of the agony of those souls that yet clung to her, pulling down upon her righteous fury - of this she knew. They, as Ala Mhigo itself, were in the palm of her hand, just as those whose voices now held fast to defend her, those that might have found it in themselves to forgive her.

She would not fail them; the living nor the dead.

She could not.

Her future - the one she dreamed of - was one of second chances; redemption.

By her vow were the voices silenced, her mind clear and focused. It was as Vykke had said - the end was here. She would see to it.

Even as the familiar unsettling cold danced upon the back of her neck, an unpleasant emptiness in the air as she felt the golden gaze of Vykke behind her, Fordola was prepared to do whatever it took to see this nightmare to its end.

“I’m going to Eiserne.” she repeated sternly, turning to face the otherworldly man.

He smirked and spoke with an unsettling sultriness.

“You know how. You need but only take the first step.”

Fordola took a deep breath, searching deep within herself through the broken memories of the past, of those not from her own.

The clouds stilled and the sky darkened. Her skin danced with static, only to then be overwhelmed by the unseen waters of Styx as she descended into the depths of the unknowable infinite, the familiar sandstone walls and crumbling grounds erected anew in grotesque ashen facsimiles. With her heart afire in the neverending dark, Fordola, in crystalline beauty stood at the center of the eternal maelstrom; the nightmare of undeath.

Vykke stood beside her, muscled chest bare, dauntless as always in the face of such unfathomable horror, if not unsettlingly eager for this willful homecoming at Fordola’s command.

“Very good.” he said with all gentleness. “You stand upon the shores of Styx on a whim. Your namesake would be proud. But what is it that you seek?”

In radiant glow through her crystalline flesh, Fordola set foot upon the shallow waters, the infinite churn of sand and smoke of blackest shadow ever just below the surface, dancing between the silent ripples. Incomprehensible monoliths of onyx stood watch as giants in the distance, their flat, smooth faces as large as the star itself, massive diamonds floating silently just above and yet forever out of reach. Farther still, the same maelstrom of circling miasma tore silently into the infinite, a tornado of the torn fabric of reality ceaselessly careening into the void. It was not here, among the broken and featureless recreation of her home, abandoned by light, save for the glow of her own soul within her breast, that Fordola would find her way.

It was at the water’s edge, upon Styx itself.

“You need but command it, sister.” Vykke said softly. “It is, as it always has been, your birthright. It is our nature, as Trueborn, and you as her namesake.”

Fordola shook her head.

“I’m not who you think I am, Vykke.” Fordola growled. “I’m not a shard of some Ancient. I’m not…blessed by some god or destiny’s chosen. I’m nobody.”

“And yet you know that is not entirely true.” he toyed. “Do you not feel it? Welcome that understanding into your soul. Do not fear it; embrace it.”

It was then that Fordola knelt down, her hand guided by a peculiar familiarity to gently reach out to the silent waters below her. As her fingers broke the surface, she could hear the incomprehensible mutterings of thousands, millions of voices, all at once. But it was not painful; quite the opposite - a gentle, steady thrum of whispers from countless unseen mouths, in innumerable languages. Over the tips of her fingers she could feel the soft kiss of a current flowing against her. She danced her fingers along the water, still perplexed by the strange sense of knowing within her, as if she had been here before, in this same way, doing this very thing long, long ago.

Garden. A voice whispered, though from where she could not say. It was faint, but clear amidst the din of myriad voices that droned around her as her finger stilled in the flow. Soft and fading as it was, Fordola recognized this voice - the unmistakable, stoic and serious tone of Aulus mal Asina. Asina’s memories sparked within her thoughts, a dizzying frenzy of broken images. They were scattered remnants, cracking shards coalescing into the image of a man whose mind was fraying. Fordola’s mind was torn between warring ideals. Dedication to crown and country, a hunger for knowledge, drifting sadness of falling out of touch with his daughter, unbearable shame as his life’s work is deemed a failure, the tiresome weight of duty upon his shoulders. Held together by the barest of threads were memories of a second chance - the joy of revelation only to be smothered by…zeal. No…not zeal - a desperation. A longing most dire. A pitiable emptiness of having known, but not understood. It drowned everything out, a gnawing, cloying need for more. It was as a scream in his mind, the carefully calculated process of his mind reduced to the ceaseless pursuit of a singular, intangible thing; a scream most foul, aching…yearning. Until it was no more; dread silence overwhelmed his mind. In its wake was only the void of emptiness. Regret. The regret of seeing his beloved Robin devoured by the Resonance. And then there was rage; roaring, deafening rage - a seething hatred for…her…T.G.01. Rage became devotion; devotion depravity; depravity into but an idea, a single, desperate notion that would drown out all the rest, and with it, Asina himself. Asina was no more a man than simply a cause; a purpose. And there, buried deep beneath this loathsome city of savages, astride a river of corpses, he was rapturous.

And then it was gone.

Fordola dug deeper, pulling at threads to try and find where this tapestry of misery ended, plucking at the disintegrating knot of Asina’s thoughts.

Robin. Vestiges. T.G.01.

Garden. Trueborn. Trueborn.

Styx. Trueborn.. Robin. Styx. Styx.

E.D.01. E.D.01. T.G.01. T.G.01

Styx. Styx.

Styx.

Robin.

Styx.

T.G.01

A name hung on his lips; a name wreathed in fire that fluttered on injured wings within its cage, yearning to be free. Yearning to escape so that it might set the star ablaze.

But it was lost to her; a dying gasp from a broken soul; shattered into dust, now but the faintest spark amid millions at Fordola’s fingertips. She felt dizzy, her thoughts beset by a thick, impenetrable fog, the droning of voices no longer disjointed and chaotic, but intensifying into a singular, sorrowful hum. Somewhere, deep among the cacophony, beyond the veil of shadows and the infinite void, Fordola could swear she heard singing…

Fordola withdrew her hand, the invisible beads of water upon her gleaming flesh rolling off her to join once again with the ocean at her feet. A single drop; a single ripple.

Garden. it said - that familiar voice.

Fordola stood, Vykke beside her. She traced her fingertips over the smooth crystal that was her palm, the lingering voices now gone. Her eyes beheld in its horrifying grandeur the false Ala Mhigo, its faceless walls of black stone staring back at her, the familiar streets empty and devoid of the warm energy of life, crumbling to ash ilm by ilm as it joined with the whorl. It was there she espied a spark of color - a fleeting ember of red light but a whisper from being extinguished, far beyond the silent avenues and half-formed effigies of the city.

“Eiserne.” Fordola whispered quietly to herself.

“Go.” Vykke said. “Destiny awaits us.”

She did not hesitate; without thought she set forth, her body taking flight, parting the waters of Styx beneath her feet just so as she glided toward the spark. Ala Mhigo’s blackened streets and empty buildings wrought from glass and sand flew past her as she weaved through alleyways and avenues, past the disintegrating ruins and lifeless stone recreations of smoke and fire, the faceless mannequins of soldiers and Blapshemies alike, immortalized in motionless struggle within the Resonance. Fordola darted over the water as a speeding gull, over rubble and ruin until she arrived at the sleek, glassy walls of Caduceus. Even in its cold recreation, the massive bunker was torn to shreds, dozens of silent husks of soldiers still battling to contain the fire from the massive explosion beneath the facility. Fordola could see the vast network of tunnels through the waters surface, a nexus of interlocking hallways, featureless cells, collapsed interiors; even the colossal remnants of the ceruleum reactor. Eiserne, the flickering ember in the endless night, was below even that, far, far beneath the water's surface.

Fordola steeled herself, and on unseen wings descended. Through the skeleton of intertwining hallways of Caduceus she sailed, flying ever closer to Eiserne’s spark. The light that radiated from within her shattered the darkness, and with a breath, from beyond the veil of the Resonance, through a cloud of ash and thrashing dynamis she stepped out into the world once more, a grave chill surrounding her as she took the sterile air of Caduceus’ most buried secret into her lungs. The grip of shadows upon her sight released her, and her world flooded with the harsh, bright lights that reflected off of the clean, glossy white walls.

Gravity seized her once again, and Fordola’s footfalls echoed through the long, empty chamber as she stepped back into reality. She was flanked by mirrored surfaces, her reflection the only thing to greet her in the vast, but claustrophobic chamber, little more than a few fulms overhead afforded to her. The floor was but a length of grated steel, bolted above an artery of cables, wires and connectors; a thick knot of twisting tubes of various sizes, coiled along the walkway. Fordola could feel the sensation of static all around - the empty hall felt truly alive, the wires and cables the veins bound for the heart of the facility.

Fordola took stock of her surroundings; the entryway behind her was sealed, the automatic mechanisms unmoved and unresponsive to her presence. The slick doors were dented inward, the tell-tale yellow and black markings of their trim indicating danger as the control panel beside it lay lifeless and cracked, perhaps destroyed on purpose to keep out intruders…

She peered down the empty hallway to where an ornate iron door sat ominously. Unlike the rest of the facility, with its clinical white tiling and sleek sheen, the door was oddly out of place, with rows of large boltheads flanking a heavily reinforced seam at the center. Fordola approached the door on the far end, her reflection on either side sharing her fierce concentration on what lay ahead. Boots clanked against the steel grate flooring, echoing sharply in all directions as she walked. It was painfully quiet, the jostling of her leather coat and gentle rattle of Penance within its holster on her back the only other sound to accompany her footsteps. When she arrived before the door, she could hear a distinct hum from the other side; a powerful white noise that radiated just behind the heavy door. Just above the columns of boltheads was a steel placard welded unto the metal, bearing but a single word; Garden.

Fordola reached up and placed a hand upon Penance’s grip, taking a deep breath before drawing the blade from its holster.

“I’m here, Eiserne…won’t be long now.” she whispered, taking a step forward, the machines unseen behind the silent white walls whirring to life with a sudden hiss as pressurized steam shot out from the corners of the door. Steel parted with a lurch as heavy gears and pistons worked to pry the massive pair of metal slabs, unleashing from its maw a gust of warm air from its darkened hallways beyond. A series of lights clicked on in succession down a short, wide hallway of little aplomb, replete with the stock-standard Garlean steel walls and singular unlit glass viewing window. Fordola stepped cautiously into the center as the automatic systems clicked to life around her, a series of rising hums vibrating deep beyond the heavy steel as machinery became charged with power.

Unlike the other sections of Caduceus, even all the way up to the Resonatorium, there was something…antiquated about this place. The metals were caked in dust, the four doors on opposite points of the open chamber were a pair of heavy darkwood doors with faded nameplates and weathered, worn brass handles. The remaining two were steel, more similar to the type in the older sections of the palace. One held weakly to its frame, the interior of the office on the other side having collapsed…and perhaps none too recently, given the splintered beams and torn metals that jutted from the tightly packed earth within were heavily rusted. Fordola attempted to open the next door over, but it was firmly locked, its ornate brass handle holding fast. At risk of causing another collapse, Fordola decided to leave that particular door alone for now, walking across the solid steel floor to the other set of twin doors. She set her hand upon the handle of one, which resisted only slightly as she pressed down slowly, releasing it from the frame with a click, and swinging open the old door.

As she stepped through the threshold, a series of lights illuminated along the walls of what appeared to have been an office, though it had long been abandoned, as clear from the overturned and disheveled furniture within. The lights flickered on weakly, a large square panel at the office’s far end illuminating behind wooden slats, giving the impression of a window bathed in sunlight. Hundreds of books were scattered about the marble floor within, the remains of a ragged carpet reduced to shreds, myriad yellowed pages torn and scattered without rhyme or reason amongst a graveyard of uncountable knick knacks and broken scientific instruments. One rich mahogany shelves sat broken and bereft of their contents against walls of elegant wooden slats, frames intended for paintings or perhaps records of achievement hung smashed and illegible, weathered with time to little more than sundered wood and cracked glass.

Fordola examined the office carefully, plucking a volume from the floor and thumbing through what pages remained bound to its faltering leather spine. By her estimation, it was some scientific account on aetherology; not surprising given the environs. She looked up from the ragged pages, looking instead to the heavy mahogany desk at the far edge of the office, itself the only mostly undamaged thing left within. A high-backed chair and an accompanying pair of other, much smaller and less ornate ones had been tossed to various ends of the round office, leaving the mighty desk practically the only thing upright, its surface covered in yet more piles of wilting papers, the ink upon their surface long dry and long faded.

Fordola tossed the book in her hand to the ground.

She sighed, her feet carrying her over the piles of papers and discarded books to the desk, its drawers on the opposite side either lost to some corner of the room, or left ajar with all manner of loose materials inside. Fordola danced her fingers over the smooth surface of the desk, her mind flooded with memories not her own. She knew this place; she had been here before, beheld the misery that would unfold for decisions made in this office.

She shook her head in silence; she needn’t linger here in Asina’s office - best it remain little more than a bitter memory.

Fordola stepped over the piles of books, jostling loose the remains of a shelf beneath her boot, the contents rolling to the floor from beneath the dusty papers that had been left to blanket them. An ornate box, with brass filigree fell before her, clicking quietly as it gently landed against her boot. Fordola looked upon the device with a sense of melancholy, the forgotten orchestrion plinking weak, distant notes of a familiar, somber song in Garlean fathertongue. The young girl who sang it truly did have a knack for it.

Fordola picked up the ailing device, capable of one final song as its power cells gave their last after undoubted decades of silence, and placed it gently on the desk where it clicked and whirred as a young Robin sang her song. There was an enchanting majesty to the melody, and though Fordola was ill-versed in ancient Garlean, she felt as though the words could not be better sung by anyone.

The last notes of the song rolled out weakly from behind the tiny speakers of the orchestrion, the machinery within at last giving in. The meticulously crafted box glinted under the light of the false window, its brass filigree having lost most of its luster from years of neglect.

“He should have been proud of you.” Fordola found herself saying quietly. Her thoughts hung heavy in her heart for a moment, but she was needed elsewhere. She left the orchestion atop the desk and exited through the weathered door, gently shutting it behind her.

Fordola made for the final door to her right, one that started to open automatically but fell short as the machinery housed within its frame pulled it back only half way before it stopped and jerked back again. It repeated this process twice more until at last with enough give, the door slid fully open under a labor of mechanisms clearly struggling.

It revealed to her a long, winding series of metal stairs that lead further down, the passage’s walls lined with darkened windows and powered sconces that cast eerie shadows of the latticework of pipes and wires that spilled out from the ceiling downward into the depths.

“Number 4? How disappointing.” a familiar voice crackled to life, tinny and static laced.

Fordola scowled - it was only a matter of time before Asina realized she was here.

“Aye, be disappointed all ye’ want. It won’t change things for you, Asina.”

“I had thought it was perhaps Number 3 milling about...” the Doctor mused menacingly. “I find your repeated attempts at survival most inconvenient, but surely it must be part of Styx’s design… That’s it…yes, you are here for a reason.””

Fordola made her way down the stairs through the artery of heavy wires and cables descending further down into the dark.

“I’m here for Eiserne and your head,” she barked.

There was only static in reply for a moment.

“...no…no, there must be something else.” Asina pondered to himself. “Something I missed! Some…some unknown! Oh!”

Asina’s voice, metallic as it was, became crazed, practically howling to himself.

“What do you want me to see!? What? Why? Why can’t I simply know what you want?” from the speakers arose a clatter and crash as Asina seemingly tore into his surroundings like a madman. “What else is there? Oh, but she can’t answer me; she won’t! Not yet! Not until everything is aligned, as it was written, as it was destined…yes…”

Fordola shook her head.

“You’ve lost yourself, Asina.” she grumbled, the bottom of the shaft coming into view as she quickened her pace. “Robin won’t answer you because she’s dead. You drove her mad with your incessant tampering with forces we weren’t meant ta’ wield. It’s ‘cause of you-”

“Never speak her name. Never, never, never. Do. NOT. Speak her name!” he squealed through tortured groaning. “She’s there - right there! I see her, just below the flesh. She’s waiting for me in this…this husk’s skin. On the shores of Styx. So close now, so so close now.”

When Fordola reached the bottom of the stairs, service lights flicked on under the audible groan of metallic shudders opening along a singular hallway. It bore the same white tile walls and glass windows of the newer parts of the facility, but nearly every ilm was cracked or shattered. Nearly all the windows had been reduced to empty frames barbed by broken glass, the ceiling tiles ripped off their seamless housing to spill all manner of wires and cable loose like entrails, hanging lifelessly.

She stepped into the hallway - far at its end was a glass door.

Above the darkened glass was a placard of iron etched upon ancient rusty steel:

T.G.01

Where all this misery began…and where it would end.

“Eiserne!” Fordola shouted, stepping into the light.

Pain. Staggering and sharp, like electricity coursing through every vein in her body, Fordola reeled, clutching desperately at her head as wave after wave of pressure smashed against her. It was all she could do to keep her eyes open, her Resonant eye bright red and burning. Her knees buckled, as an invisible maelstrom tore through the hallway, her head and heart pounding loudly as she strained to keep her balance. She raised her hand to shield herself from the biting, black winds that tore into her, gritting her teeth, summoning every ounce of strength she had to take another step forward.

She could barely see, eyes so hot she thought they might melt. The hallway was a blur, practically spinning as torrents of black, ghostly forms tore through her, the walls collapsing into black ash, the very ground beneath her threatening to crumble. Silence became as a scream, a symphony of tortured howsl coming from one entity…the shape of a young woman in a dress and knee high boots. She was unaffected by the calamitous winds, her pigtails and torn yellow dress unmoving as she stood, shoulders slumped just before the glass door that now felt as malms away. Lashing tentacles of shadow and shade flailed violently against the light of the hallway that yet fought to exist in this nightmare between realities.

Fordola could feel the woman’s ireful gaze, see plain upon her freckled face the hateful, empty stare as Fordola took another defiant step forward. The ghostly form of Robin stared death down at Fordola, her own eye burning bright crimson. As if by the specter’s command, the overwhelming force of the Resonance gathered in intensity and erupted down the hall. Fordola clenched her jaw tight, air robbed of her lungs as she drifted between the Resonance and the material, fighting for every ilm.

The ravenous winds ripped against her skin as daggers, crystalline shards of the purest black crashing against her. Every step was as hellfire in her veins, every second taking all of her strength. She gasped for air, catching sight of the chamber at her flank, through its shattered windows. The ghostly shapes of faceless mannequins in labcoats surrounded the pair of beds, a young Robin strapped helplessly to it by heavy fasteners, struggling violently as the faceless doctors surrounded her. Beside her lay Eiserne, motionless, her eyes wide and face blank as though she were dead.

Fordola heard their voices, clear as day and cutting into her thoughts like a blade through the tangle of nightmarish screaming.

“Any readings?” one of the labcoats asked of his fellows.

Another shook its head after scanning some measure of featureless, black panel before it.

“No!” Robin cried desperately. “No, please, gods, I don’t want to go back! Please, stop, have mercy - I don’t want to go back there! Stop!”

The doctor at the foot of the bed simply nodded.

“Begin again. 5% increase.” he ordered coldly, the doctor at Robin’s flank lowering a device suspended above her on several piped hinges to her head. The machine activated, letting out a dreadful whir and subsequent scream as whatever cruel device it was bore into Robin’s skull. Her body jerked and twitched until her screams stopped. Her blackened form shattered, the doctors soon thereafter. But Robin reformed, still strapped, still screaming. The doctors reappeared, the murderous device raised once more. Robin screamed and screamed, a horrifying, shrill scream as the doctors assembled around her once more.

“Any readings?” one of the labcoats asked.

Robin kept screaming, thrashing helplessly as the doctor beside her checked the panel before him and shook his head.

“No! No! No! Please! Please no!” she screamed.

“Begin again. 5% increase.”

The machine whirred to life again.

Fordola reeled under the intense pressure brought to bear against her, her vision cracking like glass as she lost sight of the Echo and the chamber was emptied, save for a pair of stained hospital beds and destroyed equipment.

Pain laced through Fordola’s veins as she endeavored to press forward, earning every step forward through unrelenting agony. Callous hands of black reached up from Styx’s depths tearing through reality in an attempt to drag her under. She could feel the ravenous, cold bite of crystal hardening on her extremities. The air around her burned, life stepping through fire as it consumed her.

Another step.

She felt the pangs of memories not her own tear through her head like a bullet. She heard against the malevolent storm a clash of steel, a frantic scramble, and a shrill scream. Fordola opened her eyes and saw beyond into the chamber on her left, through the destroyed walls and missing windows an ashen recreation of Robin huddled at Eiserne’s feet, Eiserne with knife in hand, dripping with the oil-like blood upon an onyx blade. Eiserne heaved in silence, Robin dead at her feet. Fordola winced, and there again stood the two, Robin swinging a greatsword wildly at Eiserne before she sidestepped and quickly thrust her dagger into the girls throat, leaving her reeling, clutching at her wound helplessly as she fell again before Eisernet. Fordola blinked. Eiserne was strangling Robin. Shades of black miasma raced past her sight, Eiserne pulling with shaking hands and wild, lifeless eyes from Robin’s breast her still-beating heart.

Again and again, Robin would die.

Again and again, Eiserne would be the only one standing, coated in blood.

The chamber filled with corpses, and each time Eiserne stood alone, silent.

“Please, no! I beg of you! Please!” Robin would cry, abandoning her sword and cowering, pounding against class that was not there. But her words did not those outside the chamber. Eiserne simply pulled the girl up forcefully by her arm and threw her against the wall so hard that even the steel itself was wounded, denting inward as blood splattered across its cold, uncaring surface. Robin’s limp, lifeless body would join all the rest.

Fordola forced herself forward. Another step.

The ashen recreation of Eiserne twitched, as if it heard her, the bloodsoaked young girl turning her head slowly to watch as Fordola pressed on, passing the bespectacled effigies of doctors nodding approvingly at what they witnessed, scribbling furiously against clipboards…even when a depraved smile fell upon Eiserne’s lips. Fordola did not look at her. It was all just a memory. It wasn’t Eiserne. It couldn’t be.

The fell shade of Robin’s eyes were ablaze with crimson before Fordola, never once releasing their gaze from her as she claimed every step. Styx itself tore through the real and the ruptured, an ocean rising to crash against her - she but a grain of sand.

Fordola found herself ever closer to Robin’s shade, the overwhelming pressure of her presence practically tearing away at the very fabric of reality itself, light and steel bending and warping as the Resonance reached out to her with the vice grip of countless damned souls at her feet. She looked away, struggling to even stay conscious, her sight laced with a spidering latticework of black crystal, revealing echoes of a broken past in all directions. She could hear yet more desperate cries from Robin - the shrill wails of a girl tortured without end, brought to the brink of death and beyond, only to be repeatedly brought back through the merciless puppetry of the Resonance. Death - endless death.

Robin raged and wailed her banshee cry, fighting to keep Fordola at bay with a torrential onslaught from Styx. But she pressed on, step by labored step past the final chamber, and with clouded, broken vision she beheld the shattered Echo.

Eiserne lay behind bars and harnessed to a chirurgeon's table, little more than a child.

Robin stood beside her, herself a child, excitedly holding against the bars.

“What’s your name?” she asked sweetly.

Eiserne did not answer. Her pale eyes simply stared vacantly at Robin.

“Well, if we’re going to be friends, I have to call you something.” the little girl chirped. “Papa says we aren’t supposed to call you-”

Fordola’s head raced with a painful static as the shade of Robin screamed, breaking apart the echo for a moment as Fordola roused her muscles to find the strength to find another step forward.

“...well my name is Robin.” the little girl continued as her body formed once again in an instant of ash and stone. “So…I know! You can be-”

Robin screamed with such force that Fordola lost her balance, the Echo shattering into dust and swallowed by the intense winds as they pounded against her. Knocked to her knees, Fordola was crushed by an ocean of invisible waters, straining with her very soul to remain in the world of the living. She was surrounded by death, and death would not relent. It screamed from the lungs of the long dead, tore at her every ilm of flesh, gnawing without end. Death had come upon the burning, nightmarish form of a monstrous entity - the slow, shuffling shape of Eiserne, her eyes solid black, the Resonance a raging inferno of fulminating darkness so fierce that it erupted uncontrollably around her. She was hellfire made manifest, walking the hallway with a dynamo of surging dynamis forming wings of arcing spirals of energy upon her back, scarring the very world in her wake. Eiserne was the angel of death from which none could escape. She came sauntering down the hallway, past the cowering shades of Falangrym and Asina, still in his wild hysterics. Recreations of security forces rushed her, but she cast them aside, clutching at her head and screaming, eyes wide and burning black as her howls tore men apart, rendering the ashen mannequins to piles of soot.

Fordola winced, her mind threatening to be reduced to smoldering ash in her skull as she opened her eyes again to Robin before her.

“Failure!” the specter screamed. “Failure!”

The corpses of Robin somn Asina rose from the inky blackness beneath Fordola, in all their grotesque, bloody forms.They surrounded Fordola, looking down on her with nothing but hatred in their bleeding, burning red eyes. Fordola felt the waters rising around her. Robin, in all her foul, mangled forms, reached out with callous hands to seize her, to drag her under. To drown her in their endless wrath. The waters of Styx became as blood, thick and foul, a whirlpool of crimson swallowing Fordola, ilm by ilm. She sank deeper as rotting, bloodsoaked limbs reached out from below the murk, malformed and mangled, clutching at her arms, her neck, her face, ceaselessly groping to pull her down. Fordola fought to stay afloat, sloshing desperately through the raking of hands against her and the oily, black blood. Under the ireful, burning eyes of Robin she felt her consciousness slipping, the clawed hands of malformed spirits rising from beneath the roil to drag her under, their grips as ice against her skin. Fordola pulled up her body with as much strength as she could muster, her Resonant eye igniting with crimson fire.

“Stand aside!” she roared, her voice an echo being drowned out beneath inky blackness.

The Resonance shuddered. Fordola ripped her arm from the grip of Robin’s rage, seizing what solid ground she could with ravenous hands. She became radiance, a pyre that shattered the infinite night that broke through the seams of the Resonance, pulling herself out of the mire, the ashen churn and sea of blood rippling under the weight of her command.

Fordola rose to her feet, her eye afire with twisting crimson.

She stood tall, unbowed and unbroken against the frenzied storm of dynamis, and took another step. She could feel Robin’s presence just out of reach. As the full force of Robin’s rage tore into her, Fordola took her final step. Robin screamed.

Deep breaths.

And then it was gone.

The world was as it should be, Fordola’ sight returned to her. So fleeting was Robin’s disappearance, and with her the maelstrom of Resonance, Fordola could only remind herself that it like so many an Echo was just but a passing nightmare. She peered over her shoulder, the hallway behind her empty, its blown out windows and cratered walls as they were when she arrived, with nary a speck of dust out of place. Her ears rang, despite the now eerie silence that befell her, her heart still pounding and muscles aching. Fordola fell to her knees, both hands against Penance’s grip, using the blade as an anchor to remain upright. She seized precious air through clenched teeth.

Deep breaths.

Then…

Try as she might, Fordola couldn’t shake the throbbing in her head. Nothing seemed to help. The pain was so sharp and deep she thought she might pass out, but that would be a fate far worse than death itself. She couldn’t show weakness, not in front of the soldiers, not before Arenvald…and certainly not before the Warrior of Light. But try as she might, she could feel her pace quickly falling behind; the friendly chatter between Arenvald and Stash became a muted, distanced mumble, despite them both being but a few fulms at her flank. She winced, staring at the dry, craggy earth of Zanr’ak beneath her dragging gait, the discomfort of the intense heat or the buzzing of insects at her ear a forgone problem.

The crunch of her boots against the rocks joined the muddied words of Arenvald. She tried to concentrate, but soon the whispers came, the errant thoughts of the contingent of Ul’dah’s warriors that accompanied them beginning to intrude her mind. They were as needles, poking against her brain.

Why’d they have to bring this bitch along?

She makes one move’n I’ll gut her.

It’s godsdamned hotter’n Thall’s taint out here. Why’d I get this detail, eh?

In an’ out. That’s it - Command wouldn’t throw us to the wolves, right?

Don’t trust that one. Jes’ don’t feel right.

These damned Amalj’aa, always a damn nuisance.

Is that really ‘im? The Warrior o’ Light? A bit unremarkable, ‘in’e?

Fordola could feel her mind breaking under the weight of thoughts not her own. She slowed; all she wanted to do was clutch her head and scream…but she wouldn’t. Not now. Not in front of him.

A playful slap of an armored gauntlet rapped against her back, knocking her slightly off balance.

“Oi’, Fordola, you alright there?” Arenvald asked, his voice clear. By some miracle, the oaf had silenced the voices in her head and brought her back to her senses.

“I’m fine.” Fordola hissed through her teeth, clearly irritated. “Mind your own bloody business.” She shook her head and swatted Arenvald’s arm away with a scowl, quickening her pace to take up a position at the fore of the caravan. Arenvald raised his hand in protest, but when Fordola did not seem apt to return his kindness, he simply looked to Stash and shrugged. Best not to poke the bear; when Fordola set her mind to being grumpy, there was little anyone could do.

That didn’t stop Stash though, the concerned look about his face plain. Thankfully, more for Arenvald’s sake than anything, the white mage kept his voice low.

“Is she alright?” he asked of Arenvald. It was all he could do to grin and nervously place a hand to the back of his head.

“Aye, don’t ye’ worry. Jes’ Fordola bein’...Fordola.” he assured their honored guest, though the Warrior of Light kept his gaze upon Fordola as she stormed off. “Anyroad, you were saying? What’s the good lad got cooked up this time?”

Stash took a last look toward Fordola before he allowed his cheerful smile to return as he brought his attention back to his brawny companion.

“Oh, some manner of political intrigue, I imagine. You know how it is - once he starts talk of Alliances and parleys and meetings, I’m well checked out. At that point it’s just ‘show me where to go, Alphinaud.’” the Warrior of Light mused. “It certainly required an immediate audience with the Sultana.”

“Well enough; I was glad to see Alphinaud in his element again. Old boy seems better suited to the halls of governance than the field of battle.” Arenvald joked, he and Stash keeping a steady but leisurely pace through the canyons of Zanr’ak, their Ul’dahn retainer alongside them with arms bared. “Sad he couldn’t join us; that one’d probably manage ta’ talk some sense into the Lord of Flames ‘imself.”

“I can only imagine!” Stash agreed. “‘Twould certainly make things easier.”

Arenvald rapped a fist against his chest, the plate armor clanging resolutely.

“Fear not! This ain’t our first run in with ol’ Ifrit.” Arenvald said confidently with a telltale grin. He pat the soldier at his flank playfully on the shoulder.

“Private Gilly here’s done two whole tours with us now, ain’t that right?”

The young elezen nodded, his pot helm shaking unsteadily as he did. He, like the others, was clad in the loose-fitting leathers of the Brass Blades, a gleaming scimitar at his hip. The soldier matched Arenvald’s haughty energy with a smirk.

“Just so.” he said, resting a hand upon the curved ivory hilt of his sword. “Maybe this time I’ll be the one to lay the fiend low, eh?”

Arenvald and Gilly looked to Stash for approval, the hyur offering a somewhat unconvincing smile in return.

“With any luck, we’ll be well done before any Primals decide to show.” the Warrior of Light said. When his compatriots looked somewhat disappointed, Stash found himself befuddled. “Er…not that it would pose any trouble. Certainly not with such…erm…stalwart company.”

Arenvald nodded, giving Gilly another more forceful pat on the back.

“Stalwart company.” he repeated to his fellow. “High praise, that!”

“If you’re quite done with yer’ small talk, we’ve a job to do. Unless you wish to announce to the enemy that we’ve arrived?”

The trio turned to see Fordola leering back toward them with a scowl.

Ahead of her the canyon walls receded, revealing in gleaming sunlight the arid valley of Zanr’ak proper, with its copper sands and sea of sun-scorched boulders baking under the cloudless sky as locusts hissed and chittered madly from the sparse, petrified trees that dotted the vast clearing. Beset on all sides by a honeycomb of eroded cave entrances, dried riverbeds carved into yet more canyons as smooth cliffs rose up from the craggy fissures, all emblazoned with the earthy browns and reds of ancient sediment. This would mark the end of safe passage into the valley, and from here, the band would doubtless fall under the inscrutable eyes of the Amalj’aa that claimed this territory as their own.

Stash took it upon himself to steer the now awkward conversation toward the task at hand, quickly approaching Fordola and joining her at the head of the van. He could feel her watching his every move, stealing a glance himself upon her eyes, a deep jade as the sun reflected upon them.

Focus now. he reminded himself silently, dropping to one knee and observing the open valley before him. Cautiously, Fordola joined him as he surveyed the path ahead, pointing a gloved finger to the far side where one of the many dry riverbeds ran along the cliffside.

“There.” he said sternly. “The Brotherhood of Ash will have done what they can to hold any wayward patrols’ attention. So long as we stick to that trail, we should be at the bowl of embers before nightfall.”

“An’ you trust those beastmen?” Fordola demanded.

Behind them one of the soldiers just behind Arenvald plainly announced his annoyance.

“Shut yer’ gob, Butcher. O’ course the Warrior of Light knows what ‘e’s-” said the armored hyur. Fordola looked back toward the perpetrator with an ireful glare.

“Is that fear I hear in your voice?” she asked scornfully. “Can’t look scared in front of your hero, now can we?”

“Oi, ye’ shut yer damned mouth!”

Fordola stood quickly in a fury.

“Come an’ make me!”

“Enough, ye’ two!” Arenvald interjected quickly, stepping between them with his arms outstretched to both. He swatted at the soldier who rolled his eyes annoyingly but remained silent, falling back in line. Fordola maintained her imposing stance, relenting only when the Warrior of Light stood up beside her.

“The Brotherhood of Ash haven’t let me down before; I don’t suspect they’ll start now.” he reassured Fordola. “I trust them.”

Fordola wilted ever so slightly as Stash looked upon her, a peculiar sting in her breast as her heart fluttered. She quickly scowled.

“Don’t need their help any more than we need yours.” she spat, shaking her head and taking off from the shallow canyon into the blazing sunlight of the open valley. Stash watched her go, mesmerized as the wind caught her hair and whipped it around. He barely noticed Arenvald step beside him.

“She’s just like that-”

“I know.” Stash interrupted, eyes locked on Fordola as she frustratedly stormed ahead. Arenvald looked to Stash curiously, the Warrior of Light seemingly transfixed. With a shrug, he gestured to the retinue.

“Alright you lot, ye’ heard ‘im. Let’s put in an honest march and be back at camp ‘fore dinner, eh?”

Gilly nodded confidently, rousing the other Brass Blades to join him in walking past Arenvald and Stash both into the valley.

“Eyes up, boys.” the Private offered reassuringly, Arenvald nodding approvingly.

Stash joined them, and together the troupe quickened their pace across the valley. All the better; being relieved of the cover of shade the canyon provided made the heat all the more oppressive, but out in the open the risk of ambush by Amalj’aa was far more pressing. Fordola made sure to scan each and every cave entrance, every dip of dead riverbed, every rogue blade of yellowed grass that wafted in the breeze. The feverish attention to her surroundings helped assuage the return of whispers in her mind, but even then she couldn’t ignore the obvious nagging in her head of her own thoughts. She’d almost hoped that some wayward enemy would spring from behind the sparse grasses. She knew she was being petty, but she wanted Stash to be wrong. The frustration came from not knowing truly why.

Godsdamned Resonance. She swore silently, making her steps deliberate and impactful as she marched onward. It’s messing with my head. Has to be.

The more she thought about it, the more she stewed. The more she thought about how annoying it was having Stash here, how annoying he was. How he walked, how he talked, how everyone seemed to adore him. How kind he always was, how caring and gentle he was; always trying to help. Always trying to smile; smile at her, even. Not dismissing her or looking at her like everyone else did. How he looked at her like she was…

Human. The thought raced across her mind like a gentle breeze, peaceful and ephemeral.

She clenched her fist, shattering the peace in her mind.

Godsdammit, what’s wrong with me? She swore, shaking her head angrily.

“You sure you’re alright, Fordola?”

Her heart might have burst.

She whipped her gaze from staring blankly ahead to find the others had fully passed her, Stash the only one that had slowed his pace to match hers. Fordola could feel her throat tighten.

“Aye, I’m fine.” she managed to say, composing herself. To her chagrin, she found herself momentarily lost in the faded blue of his eyes. They looked almost gray in the sunlight.

She’d done it again.

Pathetic.

“Sod off.” she barked. “I don’t need your concern.”

Stash sighed.

“You’re right.” he agreed with a shrug. “Forget I asked.”

“Happily.”

The two kept pace with one another in an almost comical fashion, neither one confident enough to be the first one to leave the other’s side. Fordola felt a rage bubbling in her heart, but not at Stash, strangely; more at the fact that she didn’t know why she wasn’t furious at him.

Or more precisely, why she wouldn’t admit to herself why she couldn’t tear herself away.

“Quiet back here, isn’t it?” Stash asked suddenly.

Fordola blinked, at a loss for words as the Warrior of Light mercifully broke the silence between them. Silence? Indeed…just that.

Before she could formulate her response, the Warrior of Light leaned forward slightly, crossing his hands behind his robes and taking an exaggerated step ahead to bring himself out of pace with Fordola. He looked upon her with a peculiar softness, an unsaid understanding, before straightening his posture and catching up with Arenvald.

Fordola found herself staring.

And not long after did the whispers catch up with her again.

The ambush had come swiftly, though not entirely unexpectedly. In Fordola’s experience, the Amalj'aa priests seldom traveled without several guards, so it came as little surprise to her that no fewer than a dozen accompanied their target - a recently tempered priest with some tongue-tying name that mattered little to her. Still, the guards were expected, but the full dozen or more Amalj'aa warriors and bowmen that sprung from the high ridges of the Bowl of Embers were something Fordola and the others were fully unprepared for.

Fordola herself had only just pulled her curved sword from the belly of a brawny Amalj'aa warrior when she espied the ambush on high, howling to her embattled fellows.

“Ambush! On high!” she bellowed, blood arcing from her foe as she swung her sword around to defend herself. She cursed, full of rage, through clenched teeth and burning muscles, her every movement felt as though she were dragging Alabathia’s Spine through an ocean, so exhaustingly slow to respond. Her mind raced as the beastmen nocked arrows the full size of a man grown, barbed javelins of death raised skyward as the marksmen prepared to loose.

sh*te! How were we found? She couldn’t help but wonder, as she whipped herself into position, quickly taking stock of her comrades at arms. Gods be damned; did the Brotherhood sell us out?

Arenvald had already turned to face the ambush as well, thankfully. He rallied with a swift bark of orders to the soldiers at his flank, grabbing one by the shoulder to forcefully turn him around, the stunned lancer having only just avoided death himself at the hand of his foe that Arenvald had intercepted.

“Shields! Shields!” Arenvald ordered, the Brass Blades diligently interlocking their hefty iron shields and holding them at an angle above them.

Fordola felt a strange ripple in the air, a peculiar pressure at her flank. She spun and brought high her own shield, sending astray with a crack of iron against steel the heavy axehead of an assailing Amalj'aa guardian. Her eye burned as she felt her muscles react on otherworldly instinct, the Resonance coursing through her veins like a tremor, rousing her limbs to answer the blow nary a moment before it had come to exist. Fordola slammed her shield against the beastman’s head in response, sending the towering creature to its knees. She struck again, roaring furiously, driving all her strength into her arm and smashing the creature fully to the ground. It reeled from the hit, sending up a plume of sandy dust as the scaled beast snarled at her, reaching out with its claws to try and retaliate. Fordola was faster, slamming the full weight of her sword with both hands against its neck, instantly killing the beast, the spark of fury in its eyes abandoning it as it went limp.

Fordola heaved, erecting her posture to better intercept the coming attack from the bowmen on the ridge.

The flailing of human form at the corner of her eye gave her pause, private Gilly stumbling and falling off balance as he clumsily pulled his sword from a fallen Amalj'aa.

Without so much as a second thought, Fordola sent fire to her feet, summoning a well of adrenaline to slam boots to rocky ground. She darted toward the exposed Brass Blade, her eyes locked upon the bowmen. Her heart thundered in her breast, her lungs aching for air. She leapt forth, slamming to her knees at an angle and sliding along the gravel with her shield arm raised high, stopping with a crunch beside Gilly. A high pitched thwack sent arrows toward them, Fordola’s shield barely managing to catch the barrage and shattering the massive missiles that made contact. She flinched as splintered barbs tore through her exposed leg, but she and Gilly both managed to survive the volley. Gilly, flustered as Fordola practically smothered him to shield him, quickly found himself and brought his own shield and arms to bear, he and Fordola rising to their feet in preparation for the next assault.

“Are you hurt!?” Fordola barked, ignoring the searing pain in her leg.

Gilly simply shook his head.

“Then kill that bastard and stay on me!” she demanded, pointing her sword at an approaching Amalj’aa that brought a vicious bronze-tipped spear of bone to bear. It was the last of the priest’s guards; Fordola would finish the job and cull these weeds by the root. Gilly found his courage and stepped forward to battle their assailant - Fordola set her gaze upon the hulking brute of a priest beyond. He knelt before the burning brazier, an altar fashioned of volcanic rock in a shallow pit surrounded by colorful beaded ropes and intricate ceramic jars of uniform size. The priest, a dark-scaled, muscled Amalj’aa in his own right, waved his arms loosely through the air, a headdress of long beaded feathers and polished bones waving manically through the air as the creature chanted in guttural tones of prayer.

Fordola charged in, blade high - the summoning had to be stopped, then they could deal with the rest.

Before she could deal swift death to the priest, she could feel the world still, her movements sluggish again. A pressure, an unseen push pressed against her, causing her to dig in her heel and slow her charge. The world seemed to go dark for a moment as her eyesight became clouded with racing shadows, holes of infinite abyss rupturing from the canyon walls.

A massive iron sword crashed downwards just in front of Fordola, almost cleaving her in twain where she stood had it not been for her sudden stop. She fell back, losing her footing with a stumble as the hulking Amalj’aa fanatic readied to strike again, bringing the massive sword to its side with ease. Fordola fought against her burning muscles and tried to stand again, but felt the tearing pain of her wounds at her leg, the sudden shock robbing her of the breath in her lungs and causing her to falter.

Her foe hoisted his sword over his shoulder, the draconic beastman roared triumphantly, his scales coated in streaks of white warpaint that made him all the more intimidating. The thing towered over Fordola, its arms alone the full length of any man here, muscles tensed as it readied the horse-cleaver of a sword that was somehow even larger than its wielder. Fordola grit her teeth, unsure if even she would be able to bear the full brunt of such a weapon against her shield.

She hadn’t the time to mount a proper defensive, as the sword was brought from on high to plunge toward her amid a roar from her foe that shook the very environs around them. Fordola readied for death, for the cold, dark grip of the Resonance to pluck her from her failure. She felt a deathly chill in her heart, an unwelcome sensation she found altogether worse than the pain of death - she felt fear. The Resonance was hell made manifest. She did not yearn for its embrace, for her body to become as stone and float helplessly through a nightmarish recreation of the world.

But there was no darkness; instead there was light, radiant and blinding. Where there was once the fell, chilling wind of fear, Fordola felt the rush of burning, tingling energy dancing upon her skin with an energizing static. Her eyes beheld a bolt of light so fierce, she might have thought a star had been plucked from the sky and sent hurtling at the mighty Amalj’aa. In luminous white fire did the beastman crumble to ash, the blinding light radiating into a haze as the lingering energies joined once again with the latent aether of the air, and in its wake stood the Warrior of Light, his hand outstretched toward Fordola. From his gloved fingertips, gentle tendrils of green and blue danced like water, wisps of light reaching out from the palm of his hand to Fordola’s leg wound. She could feel the gentle kiss of healing aether ease the pain, granting her the strength to rise to her feet again.

Stash looked upon her sternly, without a word.

Fordola did much the same, a silent understanding between them.

Fordola and Stash stood with their backs pressed to one another, sword and stave raised and ready for battle as the brutish priest turned to meet them, his own retinue of reinforcements joining him at his roaring command. The hulking Amalj’aa warriors bellowed into the Zanr’ak sky in unison, a warcry of zealous fervor, weapons drawn and thrust into the air as they marched forward to slaughter the heretics in their most sacred of places. These interlopers were not even worthy of tempering - the godslayers must be put to the sword, lest the Lord of Flames, Ifrit be slighted at the sight of them upon his glorious return to the mortal plane.

When the first of them step forth, Stash and Fordola became a storm, a typhoon of blades and magic, a deathly dance in perfect unison. Every swing, every step between them, a mirrored duet performed to perfection; Fordola was a swift blur of gleaming steel to Stash’s stalwart rain of roiling white magic. The rippling pressure upon Fordola’s mind was gone; the Resonance held no sway over her. She was pure instinct, her every movement flawless, matched only by her partner, the Warrior of Light unleashing from his staff bolts of radiant death upon their foes. One after the other the Amalj’aa fell, be it beneath an eruption of blood or light itself, until none were left standing besides the priest himself.

Fordola was the one to strike, launching herself at the beastman with crimson-stained blade tearing through the air.

The priest roared, its eyes darting wildly between the rapidly approaching Fordola and the equally menacing Warrior of Light as his metal staff yet coursed with burning aether. The beastman wavered, raising only at the last second its gnarled bone staff in time to save itself from the swing of Fordola’s sword. She brought her sword on high, ready to deal the killing blow.

In a moment of zealous frenzy, the beast looked upon her with an empty look that unsettled Fordola, the fire in his bloodshot eyes vanished, and left were only soulless husks. They rolled back, the beastman throwing his arms out and bellowing a deep, melodic chant as Fordola’s blade found purchase, sending the creature falling backward into the roaring brazier of fire. In the passing of seconds, Fordola felt as though the creature took ages to fall, so disturbed was she by the look of rapturous joy upon its lizard like face as it fell into the blaze.

Fordola looked nervously to Stash, unsure of what she had done. He too seemed to move in slow motion, his expression was of dread concern. It was only when he shouted to her did she feel as though the spell of aching speed fell.

“Fordola!” he yelled, arm outstretched as light erupted from his hand.

The blinding light of Stash’s magic arcing around her twisted and warped as a blast of the most intense fire swallowed her, a plume of inferno that erupted skyward. The pillar of flame swallowed them both until even the sky itself was ablaze.

Arenvald looked on in horror as he and the Brass Blades yet shielded themselves from the Amalj’aa. Their foes, for the moment anyway, appeared to be similarly transfixed by the sudden conflagration that devoured nearly the whole of the Bowl of Embers, waves of flame cascading from the altar and billowing into the sky with terrifying majesty.

“Gods blood!” the highlander cried, scrambling best he could under the momentary reprieve afforded to them. He and his fellows rushed from their defensive line toward the fire, unsure if it had claimed Fordola and the Warrior of Light in a single fell sweep.

“Stay back!” he heard a voice cry from within the inferno, the pyre spiraling into a helix of soaring fire. The blinding inferno was pierced and broken by a shattering of crystalline energy at its center, Gilly and Fordola both alive under a waning shield of protective magic held aloft by the Warrior of Light. Fordola looked back to Arenvald, gesturing wildly for him to stay away as a wall of flame erupted just at his feet. Arenvald was knocked to his back with a heavy thud as a mighty backdraft tore into him. He scrambled to his knees, desperate to help, but Fordola roared louder than any inferno.

“Stay back!” she barked over the wall of fire, the torrent at its center relenting only to reveal the beast within, the aspect of fire, the Primal of ruin, Lord of the Inferno - Ifrit. The beast let out a mighty roar, driving its blazing claws into the dirt and rupturing the very ground with volcanic magma in his wake.

Stash’s protective magic shattered under the blast of fire from when the Primal appeared, granting only the smallest reprieve from the inferno. They were surrounded on all sides by an ever-burning ring of white-hot fire at Ifrit’s command, Stash’s magic the only thing that had spared them from being swallowed entirely. Fordola scrambled to Gilly, the poor bastard having been scarred the worst by the eruption, his leathers charred, his face panic stricken as he looked upon the Primal with horror. Fordola dragged him by his shoulders away from where Ifrit stood, practically falling over the poor sod as he flailed in terror.

Stash managed to stay on his feet, but only long enough to summon forth another protective shield as Ifrit reared back upon beastly haunches to let forth another inferno from his maw.

“Fordola!” Stash yelled with strain, his arms shaking as he funneled aether through his staff into the gleaming shield of latticework crystalline energy.

She panicked, her mind racing with far too many choices; too many potential mistakes. She knew she had to act, but she was frozen. She didn’t know how. Gilly howled in pain behind her, trapped as they were within the ring of fire. Stash rebuked Ifrit’s flames, but the Primal reared back and slammed down upon its forelegs, quaking the ground below and sundering it as spires of flames tore through the fissures. His shield wouldn’t hold. Seconds became as torturous years, each passing breath a lifetime of agonizing, freezing indecision. Arenvald and the remainder of the retinue shouted incomprehensibly as they fell under attack by marksmen, Arenvald barking orders as chaos erupted in their ranks.

There was no time.

She stared into the eyes of the Lord of the Inferno as it pressed toward Stash, raising its claws at its side, the nightmarish fiend ready to swallow them all in the dread flame at its command.

There was no time.

They were going to die.

Stash was going to die.

She sprung forth. Something guided her, though she could scarcely think on what or who it might be. Her sword struck against the beast, her steps as a feather, carrying her unimpeded through fire and flame as it roared around her. Blood and steel flashed before her, Fordola acting beyond even instinct, driven purely by an emotion she couldn’t name. She saw the strain on Stash’s face; the fire that surrounded her was as but a tepid breeze. She saw the azure of his eyes focus on his magic. Every aching fiber of her muscles became little more than static. Her sword struck the crimson scales of the Primal and showered them in blood, rending tendon and sending the beast off kilter, Ifrit whipping its head skyward, releasing Stash of its endless fulmination.

Ifrit turned to face her and roared a savage howl that quaked the ground beneath her.

She stared back. Her mind was empty.

Not a creature upon this entire star would match her fury.

No fire would burn brighter than her.

Not even the Lord of the Inferno himself.

Fordola’s eye became as crimson and shadow.

You…you can’t have him.

The thought was a spark, and she was as hellfire itself.

Ifrit swiped at her with heated claws, but they were little more than daggers to her. She could see them as though they were sap slowly rolling down a tree, see their path before it had even reached her. She stepped beneath them. She outpaced the arc of fire from the fiend’s maw. Fang and claw missed time and time again. She danced between death, a graceful waltz of steel with her taking the lead.

With Ifrit’s attention fully upon Fordola, Stash recouped his energies and ran toward her to offer his support, but she stopped him with a roar.

“Take him and go!” she barked, narrowly avoiding blow after blow as Ifrit set his full fury upon her. “Protect the others! Go, damn you!”

Why is this happening? She wondered, her perception of Ifrit’s strikes slowed to a crawl, her body able to react at the slightest movement. What’s happening to me?

Her eyes burned, her sight scarred by a ring of black fire at its edges. She could feel Ifrit’s flames dance harmlessly over her skin, and even still, she felt...cold. Light and fire moved slowly around her, threads that wove through the air itself and formed the tapestry of the world around her revealed themselves to her and parted to grant her passage. Between the seams she could see endless darkness, through the ruptured fissures of the earth at her rose wisps of a weave of shadows that coalesced around her limbs.

The otherworldly threads pulled with a chilling touch at her limbs, guiding her as a gentle partner through the dance of death.

Is this…is this who I am now?

Her sword danced over the burning scales of Ifrit, her body weaving between the beast's attacks as a thread through the eye of a needle.

I… I don’t care! she screamed in silence. You can’t have him! He’s not yours to claim!

I… I…

She felt an immense pressure in her head.

A voice called from somewhere beyond the ring of burning black in her eyes.

It was gentle and warm; familiar and yet altogether unknown to her. Upon a single name, on radiant wings did it fly.

Azem!

The voice carried with it a dizzying, earsplitting ringing. In an instant, Fordola could see the ripples of the voice tearing through reality like rain upon the surface of water, shattering the world like glass in its wake. She shuddered, her heart feeling as though it stopped beating entirely, her lungs sapped of the air within them.

The voice…it scared her. It was not of the Resonance. It was not of this world.

Fear became hesitation, and in hesitation, the fire at the edges of Fordola’s sight waned.

Ifrit reared back, no longer enthralled by her fury, whipping its spiked tail down toward the still reeling Gilly, at the same time raking a massive claw across the jagged earth toward her.

The effortlessness of movement she felt but moments ago slipped away from her. The roaring pitch of the flames around her defeaned her as the scorching infernos burned against her skin. She felt no chilling touch upon her extremities, only the aching, calamitous stillness of doubt and indecision.

She was going to die.

She blinked…and felt her stomach drop as something collided with her.

Ifrit, in all its fury, stopped entirely, suspended motionless before her.

The insurmountable walls of flame that encircled her were as still as stone.

Arrows loosed from Amalj’aa warriors hung still in the air, bound for the huddled, motionless row of shields that Arenvald and the retinue held firm against the assault.

Fordola was herself frozen, though altogether able to perceive this suspended moment entirely, as though time had stopped for all but her. A singular moment, not gripped by the Resonance, no; the world was as it should be, colorful and hot, but simply frozen for her to witness.

Ifrit held before her its spiked claws, effortlessly cutting through the air toward her, having only stopped short of cleaving her because Stash had thrown himself between them.

No.

Crystalline magics shattered like paper under the powerful blow, erected too late to save him. Claws tore through his robes in a shower of light and blood.

N-no!

She fell for what felt like an eternity.

She watched as Stash’s body was tossed through the air, landing just ahead of her in a bloody spiral. Behind broken spectacles, his lifeless, blue eyes stared blankly through her. She reached out to him, hands shaking, unable to breathe.

“N-no…”

He did not move.

He was gone.

She didn’t hear Ifrit roar, nor the pathetic cries of Gilly as the Primal speared him with his tail, cutting short his desperate pleas for help. Arenvald and the others began to falter, Ifrit turning its attention to them and sending forth from its maw a torrent of fire. She could hear their screams.

Her ears rang. Her eyes stung. Her mouth was dry. She couldn’t breathe.

She stared into Stash’s eyes, the glint of fire dancing coldly over the pale, almost gray color.

Fordola twitched as she lay upon the ground.

“Come back…” she muttered.

Ifrit stepped over her, a thundering quake amid the tortured screams of men burning alive lost to her.

“Come back…”

This was all a dream. A nightmare. She’d wake up soon. The Resonance would take her, as it always did when one of destiny’s chosen fell. The Warrior of Light couldn’t die. It was impossible. She’d soon be free of this reality. It would all be over soon. It would all be over…

But the release of darkness did not come.

Fordola shook, her lips quivering and her eyes watering. She couldn’t look away. She wanted to, but she couldn’t.

“W-w-why?” she stammered, reaching out to him. Neither he nor anybody answered her. “Why did you do that?”

This wasn’t real. It simply couldn’t be.

This wasn’t real. It was hell.

“Why?” she asked dryly, tears rolling down her cheek. She dragged herself to her knees, crawling toward him. “Why, damn you?”

Ifrit roared into the sky behind her. Merciful death found her on smoldering wings of fire as the Primal’s claws fell upon her.

Fordola watched as light was taken from the world. She watched helplessly as Stash’s body turned black, the texture of skin becoming smooth onyx. The gentle softness of his hair became brittle, breaking into shards that crumbled into clouds of ash, sinking into an endless pit of nothingness and shadow.

A lifetime passed before Fordola, and every aching second was spent watching Stash’s lifeless face slowly fall to dust. Even as her own body fell apart under its own weight, the slow, freezing clutch of the Resonance digging through her veins until all was ice within her, she dare not take her eyes off of him. To see him this way…to see the joy robbed from him, to know he would never again laugh, or pout, and try to cheer her up. To know he would never stand beside her, even in passing, to know she’d never hear him say her name again. Perhaps, she feared, Stash wasn’t as immortal as she had hoped he was.

The Resonance had seen fit to let him die.

As the last of her fell to dust, and all that remained was her consciousness, Fordola felt only a deep, dark hatred for the Resonance.

Darkness surrounded her, and in the endless void, whatever remained of Fordola burned with such a hatred that she hoped that spark might some day set the Resonance aflame herself, that it may know even a singular shred of the hatred she felt for it…for allowing Stash to die. Even as she herself couldn’t unravel the knot of conflicting feelings in her own heart, she knew that there would be no reality where such a thing would happen…even if it cost her her own life.

Eons would pass, and Fordola would soon enough find herself in the world of the living once more, seconds before the great Ifrit reached out to slay her and Gilly both.

She would dance this horrible dance again. As many times as it took.

But as she would retrace her steps, time and time again, no matter how different, Stash would invariably choose her. A hundred deaths, a thousand - every time, no matter how impossible it truly was, he would try to save her. It would be so easy for him to simply stay with Gilly, he had more than enough time to conjure some protective field around them both. But in every reality, no matter how finely tuned Fordola made her dance, to see them both survive, the Warrior of Light would run to her, attempting with every resolute fiber of his being to save her.

And every time, he would fail, die before her.

She couldn’t take it.

Though the Resonance would inevitably tear her from her grief as death came calling, it never dulled the sting, the knife plunging into her heart to watch Stash fall. She couldn’t do it. What felt as a millennia of trying, an unending cycle of reliving this same, dreadful few seconds, drove her mad. She couldn’t save them both. The Resonance silently named its price.

Ifrit roared, his claws baring down upon her, as they had countless times before.

But Fordola did not run, did not try to position herself to fight further. She did not carefully plot some grand escape, nor some fantastical maneuver to place herself just so, or to try and get Stash to alter his course.

Stash ran to her, as he always would.

She couldn’t take it.

This is what she had become.

And she didn’t care.

He crashed into her open arms. Together they fell through the air, weightless. Time stopped - the pain was gone. The suffering ceased. The screams of death and despair became silent as she held him in her arms. She didn’t care if Ifrit would strike her down. Perhaps this was the only way out. Perhaps not. She just wanted to hold him, for the briefest of seconds, knowing he was alive. To feel the beat of his heart, the warmth of his skin, even if in this moment there should have only been fear. For but a moment, Fordola didn’t care if this was where she met her end. If the mummer had no more need of this puppet, then she was ready to sever her strings. If the Resonance came for her life in exchange for the Warrior of Light’s, she was happy to pay it. Even as she and Stash tumbled to the ground, his stunned, confused eyes upon hers, totally unawares of the millenia she had spent trying to save them both, Fordola felt something she hadn’t in a long time.

A silent peace washed over her, and she and Stash both were bathed in light.

She closed her eyes, and with Stash in her arms, she thought that she might at last be free of the endless void of the Resonance. For a second, as light drowned out everything around her, she thought she might have wrapped him in wings of light.

Arenvald appeared shaken, of that there was no doubt. Try as he might to hide it, even the sight of the campfire, meager as it was, crackling in front, stirred something of a fear within him. He worried he might not ever look at a hearth the same way ever again. Three tours of Zanr’ak prior, and not a man lost; a record he had been proud of. And now? Now he wasn’t sure how to feel. The frustration on his face must have been plain, as the Warrior of Light placed a gentle hand upon his shoulder, offering what comfort he could.

“You did as you could, Arenvald.” he offered.

“Aye, I know.” he replied, his voice dry. “Gilly knew what he signed up for. Knew the risks…”

Stash circled around to join him at the campfire, the gentle crackling of the logs joined by the chirp of insects in the night. He gazed pensively into the starry sky, twinkling starlight staring back down at him.

“Doesn’t make it easier.” Stash admitted.

Arenvald tried to find some measure of his typically chipper self to offer, but failed to do so. Instead, he too found himself staring into the night sky.

“You think…” he began, “You think he’s up there now?”

Stash shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

Arenvald chuckled.

“Sorry, jes’, y’know…” he said, gesturing to Stash’s staff, resting against his shoulder. He stumbled through his words, and they failed him at every turn. Strangely enough, the Warrior of Light seemed to understand, and smiled warmly at Arenvald.

“The lifestream’s a funny thing.” he said looking onto the horizon of Thanalan as it sat quietly under the milky glow of moonlight peering from behind the thick clouds above. “The padjals of the guild used to teach us that our time here is only borrowed. It doesn't belong to us. Eventually, we all must return to the planet…some sooner than others. But it’s not a sad affair. In life, we take from the planet, and from that, innumerable memories and experiences are born. When we die, our spirits return to the lifestream, that we may nourish the star with those memories. Every life, even a short one, has something to offer back to the star, and in doing so, they sow the seeds for others to live. We borrow our time here, that we might pass it along to the next more vibrant and blooming.”

Stash lowered his head.

“Ser Gilly may be gone,” he said with a somber sigh. “But the star will remember him. We will remember him. And when we die, maybe our memory of him will foster an even better life somewhere along the way.”

“Aye.” Arenvald agreed. “Gone, but not forgotten. I’ll see to that.”

Stash’s eyes fell upon the dancing lantern light in the tent just opposite of him. In the gentle breeze that swept over the camp, the fold of cloth that covered the entryway parted, and inside Stash could see Fordola, staring out toward Zanr’ak, arms crossed.

Arenvald noticed Stash staring.

“She’ll be alright.” he insisted, taking a drink from his canteen, offering it to Stash as he finished. “Tough as nails, that one.”

Stash nodded in agreement.

“I know.” he said quietly, taking the canteen into his hand and throwing back his head as he drank of the warm water within.

Arenvald eyed him suspiciously.

“You two…have history? Y’know…besides the whole…bein’ on opposite sides of the war…thing…” he asked. “Seems you know quite a bit about our fair condemned, eh?”

Stash took another drink and handed back the canteen, wiping his mouth against his wrist, offering a peculiar, almost apologetic smile. He often forgot that few, if any really, knew that once he and Fordola had delved into the depths of each other’s memories through the Echo. It was easy to have simply regarded them as former enemies, made allies by circ*mstance, without knowing how much he truly knew of Fordola Lupis and she of him. Stash often found that he kept that fact secret, as if to simply tell another soul might make the experience less…precious. But surely Fordola did not feel the same way, and given her closeness to Arenvald, surely she had…

“Ah, no, nothing. Just a hunch, is all.” he explained quickly. “Besides, surely you two are…?”

Arenvald laughed, snatching the canteen and throwing the cap back on.

“Y’know, you’d not be the first to imply what I think yer’ implyin’.” he chuckled, grinning. “Heavens forfend a bloke care about a lady without in the same breath folk assume he’s tryin’ ta’ bed ‘er, eh?”

He shoved Stash playfully.

“Never ye’ fear though,” the gaudy highlander offered in jest. “She’s like a sister ta’ me. A right mean older sister, aye, but I keep ‘er in line.”

Stash smiled awkwardly, a fact lost on Arenvald, mercifully.

The Warrior of Light stood up, Arenvald too rising beside him and placing an arm upon his shoulders.

“Thank you for what you did, Stash.” he said earnestly. “She might not say it, but I’m glad ye’ saved her.”

Stash stared curiously at Fordola through the billowing cover of her tent.

“I’m not so sure I’m the one who did the saving.” he muttered quietly.

Arenvald must not have heard him, slapping his comrade reassuringly on the back and spinning on his heel.

“Well! That’s one less Zanr’aki priest, and one less Lord of Inferno for fairest Thanalan.” he said, strutting with perhaps a bit too obvious of a false bravado, perhaps trying too hard to mask the sadness he surely felt for losing a comrade. “Don’t stay up too late now, Warrior of Light. Little Ala Mhigo’s a full day's march away, and I hear tell it’s set ta’ be another scorcher.”

“As ever.” Stash said with a chuckle. “Rest easy, friend.”

Arenvald nodded, heading to his own tent some distance away, eager to rest his weary head, leaving Stash alone among the stars and crackling embers of the campfire. Try as the Warrior of Light may to fix his eyes upon the meager flame, dancing across the withering logs as their dried husks charred into blackened scales, a far more alluring flame inexorably drew his attention.

His mind pulled him in two separate directions.

Consideration and caution might as well not exist; that much was clear to him. Like a moth enthralled by radiant fire was he drawn to her, to step with purpose and aplomb where he knew his heart wanted him. He marched to her, across the camp where her tent lay nestled against a petrified tree well away from the others at camp’s edge.

Hesitation held fast to his hand as he stood at the threshold, an electric static dancing in his veins as he dared to push aside the curtain and step into Fordola’s tent. In all his tribulations, all his struggles, every battle for life in the face of overwhelming odds; never once did he feel the peculiar fear he now felt in his breast. For all the foresight the Echo granted him, in Fordola’s presence, there was only the unknown, a frightening silence of infinite possibility. He stood in that silence, terrified as she kept her gaze out the slit window of her tent toward the horizon, the only movement the dance of her shadow as the flames within her lantern flickered. In this faintest of lights, she was as yet radiant. She was a monolith of contradictions, and yet…Fordola was the only thing that made sense to him.

He took another step into the vast unknown, the few fulms between them could have been as the sea of stars itself.

His boot nicked the edge of her sword, propped up against a travel pack, knocking loose to the ground a leather satchel embroidered with a fearsome beast’s visage. The silence was shattered as steel clattered against the dirt, and Stash could swear his heart had abandoned his chest to make for less awkward pastures…

“Why?” Fordola demanded coldly.

Stash went wide eyed, sure he must have been as pale as a sheet.

“Sorry, I…erm…” he shook his head and started to retreat. “I was clumsy. I-I’ll-”

Fordola shot straight up and marched over to him, practically throwing him behind her by yanking at his high-collared robe.

“Not the bloody sword, ye’ bastard.” she growled. “Why? Why did you try to save me?”

Stash was puzzled. Even though Fordola was only a few ilms taller than he, she might as well have been a giant, imposing as she was. Stash wilted under her viridian stare, meager before the expanse of the unknown equally as the radiant woman before him. Even in her rage, he found her…beautiful.

“Because I wanted to.” Stash admitted plainly.

Fordola didn’t much care for that answer, shoving Stash against his chest with both hands.

“Not good enough!” she hissed. “You could ‘ave easily saved Gilly. Ye’ could ‘ave easily saved yourself. Saved Arenvald an’ the others!”

“Fordola? I-”

“Ye’ don’t get it.” she continued, exasperated. “Ye don’t f*ckin’ get it! I saw ya! I saw all of you die! A thousand times! And every time - every bloody time, there ye’ were, without rhyme or reason rushing ta’ save me. Me! When Arenvald needed you; when Gilly needed you! Just me, a thousand times! Not once did ye’ even f*ckin’ try-”

Stash rallied his defenses.

“I can’t save everyone, Fordola-”

“I know ye’ can’t!” she threw her arms down to her side, trying her weather best not to scream as she unleashed her frustration upon him. “But you get to choose! You get to choose, and you chose me. Again an’ again, you chose me. Why? What gives ye’ the right?”

Stash furrowed his brow.

“I wanted to save you!” Stash said plainly. “There’s nothing more to it.”

“Gobsh*te!” she shouted. “You let a good, honest man die to save me. A monster!”

“You’re not a monster!”

She pressed closer, her whole body quivering with rage.

“You talk as if ye’ know me! You don’t know me! Nobody f*ckin’ does!”

“I do!” he shouted back. “And you know what? I’m done pretending. I’m done pretending that you are some kind of monster; the one you wish you could be so badly!”

Fordola fell silent and withdrew ever so slightly.

“It would be easier that way; no doubt.” Stash said. “It would make this all a lot easier! If every life were measured as worthy and unworth, good or evil, aye, that’d be great. But they aren’t. You think this is the first time? The first time lives were in my hands and I had to make a choice?”

Fordola grit her teeth.

“Ye’ chose wrong. Either you, or that bleedin’ Echo of yours did - cuz it didn’t bring you back! It never undid what you chose ta’ do. For bein’ a mewling milksop at Hydaelyn’s tit, She let you die!”

“I don’t care.” Stash said at last. “Is that what you want to hear? That I chose you over him because of some selfish reason? Then fine, Fordola. I did. I wanted to save the one person on this star that knows me better than anyone else. Better than anyone else possibly could. I chose you, Fordola Lupis, because I know you more than anyone else upon this star. I’ve seen everything you were, and I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s right or wrong. I’d choose you again. I’ll always choose you. Because I care about you. You’re right - I’m not some god that can just save everyone. And that hurts. It hurts knowing that despite this…gift, this power, I’m still just a man.”

He lowered his voice.

“That’s the truth. For once, I wasn’t the Warrior of Light; I was just me…the man. The man who couldn’t stand the thought of existing in this world without you. So no; I didn’t make the wrong choice. I made one to suit myself; to see the future I wanted…the one with you in it.”

Fordola was speechless before him, and in twinkling lantern light, Stash felt the world crumble into pieces in the dancing jade of her eyes, afraid that maybe, for all the infinite possibilities he imagined, there wasn’t one where she felt the same.

“You might as well have let me die and kept living, because the world where I don’t choose you might as well be the hells themselves.” he said quietly.

She faltered.

“Stash…”

“Say it.” he demanded. “Say what you want to say and I’ll sod off. Just know that when I look at you, I don’t see a monster. How could I? And maybe that makes me a monster, but I don’t care. All the better. I’d rather be a f*cked up monster together with you than… a perfect god without.”

He stared intensely at her, both locked in enthralled silence in each other’s eyes, Stash full ready to receive the tongue lashing he was justly due, to venture forth alone back into the cursed world outside where he could only be the immaculate Warrior of Light.

But she pulled at his collar, her body pressed against his.

She kissed him.

Momentary confusion gave way to unfiltered passion. He embraced her, damning the world to never be rid of Fordola Lupis, should he have any say in the matter.

Belts were removed, clothes stripped and quickly discarded, lustful hands groping at flesh as they fell to her bedroll amidst a flurry of passionate kissing. Nary a word was said between them; what need did they have for words when breathless passions spoke volumes? In rapturous silence, without a single errant whisper, a single doubt, Fordola and Stash entwined themselves in one another.

Fordola could feel a lifetime of Stash’s memories blanket her mind as he entered her, every thrust a reminder of the man he had become, of the choices he had made, her body eagerly awaiting the next. She surrendered herself to the whims of her body, pulling him closer with her legs wrapped around him. Her mind was quieted, marked only by the exhilaration, the joy of her own thoughts as she let down her guard and gave in to her desires. She didn’t have to pretend. She chose this. And in her heart of hearts, she knew she would always choose this. In that moment she, as he, did not care if destiny never meant for their paths to intertwine. So too as she writhed and climaxed beneath him did Stash’s thoughts find tranquility in Fordola, blissfully bathed in her radiance as her quieted cries of ecstasy escaped into his ears. In a single breath Stash could see in his mind’s eye the path Fordola had taken, how fate itself brought her here; how among the infinite realities where she and the Warrior of Light existed in parallel, in this moment did they at last intersect. In the midst of passion, the Warrior of Light and Butcher of Ala Mhigo felt, for the first time, that they truly weren’t alone.

Stash lost himself in the twilight of her eyes, Fordola pulling him close, her fingers running through his hair. He drank deep of the limitless jade abyss, no longer afraid of the unknown. Together, in climax, they chose a world for themselves. They chose to save one another, for better or for worse, and their bodies would choose each other, again and again, until the sun did rise over Thanalan and look down upon a curious world of new possibilities.

Now…

Fordola collapsed to her hands, Penance clattering before her.

She was breathless, choking.

Her head throbbed, but that was an all too familiar pain. It was almost welcome, adrift as she was in her own memories, desperate to find solid ground again in reality as ice and fire coiled in her veins, torn between past and present. She felt a tear roll gently down her nose, unsure if it was her own.

It was just as it was then. Awash in the flood of memories of her past, she remembered that voice - it called to her then, when she stood upon the precipice of death before the Lord of Inferno, where she defied destiny and took fate into her own hands. When she made a choice.

She wasn’t strong enough then. She buckled under the pressure, wholly unprepared to bear the consequences of her choice. She was afraid then; afraid that she had doomed herself to an eternity of knowing only loss, only solitude. And so she crumbled, the burden too much for her to bear. She shunned him, spurned her own feelings for far too long because she was scared. Scared of being alone.

And still loneliness came, upon blackened wings it would find her.

It came for her even now, but not just for her - for Eiserne too.

Fordola stood, panting heavily, taking up her sword in hand once more. She faced the chamber bearing the name T.G.01 in weathered iron, knowing that though she stood alone in the Garden, somewhere, beyond the inky black of the churning void, buried deep beneath a maelstrom of silent sands and ash…someone…or something stood with her. It offered her but the tiniest spark, a frail, fragile guiding light that would take her upon the knife’s edge and see her to the world she wanted. A world where she was not alone.

Now she needed to be that very same spark for another; for Eiserne.

She would be her flame, that together they might forge a paradise of their own design in this uncharted world.

Fordola breathed deep and stepped forward, the thick glass door slipping back and sliding in a singular, smooth hiss. She passed beneath the rusting placard and into the chamber, unafraid. The chamber itself was as she had seen of it in Asina’s memories - a massive silo that housed at its center a thrumming nexus of coiling, intertwined cables and pipes that spilled from above and below, connecting into a towering steel cylinder. Glowing rings of blue and white light evenly dotted the length of the cylinder, huge valves of heavy iron connecting pulsating hoses, undoubtedly pumping refined ceruleum into the heart of the machine.

At the base of the cylinder, suspended by chains at the wrists with its arms splayed out was the last Vestige, a singular, gruesome cable buried into its back connecting it to the machine. It appeared as the others, a naked woman with oily, solid black skin and a curtain of matted black hair covering its lifeless face.

Before the creature, atop a gurney at the center of the chamber, lay Eiserne, her eyes closed…her face almost peaceful. Asina, looming beside her, sneered, wearing the face of Falangrym, practically giggling as he crossed his arms before him and held a fist to his lips in an attempt to mask his excitement. The elezen appeared far too calm for Fordola’s taste, as though he fully expected her to be there…as if he were waiting.

No time to think about that; she’d dealt with worse traps before.

“Get away from her.” she ordered of Asina. “I swear, so help me if you harmed her…”

Asina, puppeting the flesh of his former colleague Falangrym just smiled.

“E.D.01 is unharmed.” he cooed. “And so are you, number 4, from my observations. Curious.”

His demeanor quickly changed from almost maniacal glee to grim seriousness - the familiar, cold look of Asina deep in his own mental calculations.

“I find myself more and more perplexed by your mirrored natures, you see.” he said, holding his hands behind his lab coat. “I was so confident you were nothing more than an anomaly. By all measures, there should be no reason you live. A completely unremarkable specimen, save for your willingness to accept the procedure. Even still, the Resonance should have claimed you long ago, as it did all the others. And yet, here you stand.”

Fordola continued to approach him, scowling at him with her blade ready.

Even then, Asina continued.

“What makes you, an ignoble savage of unremarkable stock…why should you of all people be worthy to wield Styx as you have?” he glowered as Fordola came ever closer, unflinching. “I had hoped to find the answer, dig up some reason as to why, some…unseen factor, a variable unaccounted for that made you different. What made you superior to my sweet Robin?”

He scoffed.

“Imagine my disappointment when all our testing and questioning yielded only the most obvious truth; you aren’t special. Everything I had taken into account: genealogy, aetherology, all manner of science, it all lead to the same inexorable conclusion. That was until you and E.D.01 intercepted number 3 at the Telophoroi tower. I was quite ready to be fully rid of you - I had hoped you would become another Styx-touched Blasphemy like the rest, but imagine my surprise when you yet returned from Ala Rhigar, hale and whole.”

“What the hells are you talking about?” Fordola demanded.

“Oh, you haven’t noticed?” Asina cooed. “Do you not find it strange that the Blasphemies here share the same regenerative properties of my Gen 3 hypertuned?”

Fordola hadn’t considered it. She could only assume the malformed beasts were capable of a multitude of unknowable, horrific mutations. Her mind raced; indeed the resemblance was uncanny, her thoughts returning to Haven Creek and the gruesome end to the greencloaks under Royster’s command - the remnants of the XVIth Special Operation Corps. She’d seen the same vile method of regeneration in the giant Blasphemy, though it shared a likeness to one Stash had defeated in Vanaspati that had no such ability.

“God’s blood…” Fordola muttered. “You’re making them stronger…”

Asina rolled his eyes.

“An unfortunate side effect of trying to force a Resonance reaction in E.D.01. The base code waveform for the Hypertuned began with T.G.01’s dynamis signature, and somehow that mixed with the latent dynamis of the Final Days, warping its creations with all of my hard work.” He swatted the air, signaling his distaste with a gag. “Styx is, by its very nature, something of a mirror to the lifestream, but for dynamis. To Resonate is to be in harmony with Styx, to become a conduit for your own infinite reflections and wield the power of death itself in the palm of your hand. But unlike the lifestream, you do not borrow - you take. You live, but in another reflection, a soul is eradicated. A soul for a soul. As is ever the order of creation.”

He shook his head.

“But that is not the case for E.D.01. When she devoured my sweet, sweet Robin, she didn’t eradicate her soul. I know, because I saw it happen, as Styx itself bore through the fabric of reality, I saw her and T.G.01 become as one. By every rule of nature, it was an impossible feat. No one vessel can be possessed of two souls.” He swatted into the air, signaling his distaste with a frown. “But what remained was neither Robin, nor T.G.01. She…this…scourge…was something entirely different. A broken husk. A homunculus, unworthy of existence, stealing for itself the souls of two others. Two broken halves of two souls, made as one. A living contradiction that confounds all science. And thus did it require reclassification. Further study.”

Fordola circled around to the far end of the gurney where Eiserne lay motionless, leaning down to her lips to make sure she yet lived. A gentle breath escaped her, and Fordola felt a wave of relief. She sheathed Penance and propped up Eiserne against her, the poor girl ice cold and limp in her arms. Strangely, Asina didn’t seem the least bit interested in stopping her. He merely…observed at a safe distance.

“You see, souls are quite fragile, I have found. It requires a delicate hand to successfully extract the soul from its cage.” he said with all measure of venom in his voice. “Extracting Robin’s soul from E.D.01 wouldn’t be sufficient. This body…this husk is scarred by Styx. Imperfect. My Robin’s body was lost, but her dynamis lingered here. And with it, I created the Vestiges - perfect vessels waiting to receive her precious soul, that she might be whole again.”

Fordola stared Asina down, Eiserne cradled against her breast, the doctor quivering as he spoke, his voice cracking with madness.

“But E.D.01’s soul was too fractured. Fragmented, barely held together at all. Extracting Robin’s soul in a such a state would only further the damage. No…for her soul to be strong enough for excision, both halves must be…nourished.”

Asina smiled menacingly.

“To strengthen a broken soul, one must foster natural dynamis; human emotions, memories, and experiences.” He adjusted his spectacles with a press of his fingers to the frame. “Broken though her mind is, E.D.01 responded positively to you, Number 4. In you she became rich in dynamis. In your friendship the empty husk became something of a real human. The soul of this Eiserne Drossel started to heal…enough that now the soul of my Robin can be returned to me.”

Fordola looked down at Eiserne, softly setting aside the strands of bright blue hair that had fallen upon her peaceful face with her fingers. She felt as a corpse, cold and clammy, but Fordola could see plain the rise and fall of her breast as she slumbered. It didn’t matter what Asina said…husk or no, Eiserne was Eiserne, and she was worthy of living.

“I saw what you did to her.” Fordola said, using her thumb to gently try and free some of the dried blood that pooled beneath Eiserne’s eyelids like a macabre mascara, laying her back down atop the gurney. “To Eiserne. To Robin.”

Asina tilted his head and grunted in confusion.

“You tortured them.” Fordola continued scornfully, her hands quivering with rage. “Her and Eiserne both. For years…their whole lives! They were little girls. She was your little girl-”

Fordola drew her sword and stormed up to Asina, taking the collar of his coat into her grip and pressing Penance’s blade against his neck.

“-and you turned her into a hateful monster.”

Asina didn’t so much as flinch. The puppetmaster behind Falangrym’s flesh roused a hideous, broken smile.

“And now she returns to me!” he squealed gleefully. “On Styx’s shores, yes. She will return to me…better than before! Radiant! Immaculate! Bathed in the knowledge of the infinite! A goddess of limitless understanding! To cross the great river and return, yes…yes… To see! To see everything that was and will be… I will see. I will see…!”

Fordola grit her teeth, rage boiling inside of her as she stared death and fury into Asina.

“You won’t live to see the morrow!” she spat.

Asina began to seize with laughter, paying no mind to the blood trickling down his neck as he wriggled against blade’s edge with not a care. His eyes went wide with frenzy, shaking wildly in Fordola’s grasp.

“Come, Number 4! Come, come! Styx awaits! The time is now! Infallible Styx! Haha!” he cried maniacally.

Fordola pressed against him, ready to finish the deed.

“We’re not going anywhere.” she hissed.

Asina simply laughed.

“You don’t have a choice! This is fate’s decree.”

A hand fell upon Fordola’s shoulder, a familiar warmth that unsettled her to her core.

“It’s time, dear sister.” Vykke whispered.

From his touch, color abandoned the world, a shattering ring that radiated outward from his fingers and tore through all that was. Light was swallowed by swirling shadow, a cascading ripple of inky blackness that consumed everything. The walls of white became as glass, the floor beneath their feet broken into myriad splinters of black crystal, revealing an endless abyss below. Fordola watched in horror as she stood helpless, her body refusing to move at her command, forced to watch as the creeping darkness swallowed her, drowning the world in pitch and smothering all light. The torrential maelstrom of ghostly forms swarmed ravenously around them, tearing reality to shreds with unseen claws. Unspeakably massive obelisks of solid stone loomed ominously across the endless expanse of starless night.

As reality itself was sundered, Asina laughed hysterically, the ring of shadow stretching out from Vykke’s touch painting the world in blood and darkness. Wide eyed and slack jawed, the ghoulish doctor stared in awe as the Resonance devoured existence around him, leaving him completely unscathed. Light tore through the waters below, giving shape to the nightmarish realm. Tears broke through the veil of shadow at Vykke’s command, streaks of radiance that would reveal the true horror of Styx. In light, the unseen waters were an infinite shallow sea of black ripples in all directions, and far, far below, what was once an endless churn of formless sand and ash took shape; uncountable faces, their expressions pained, wailing horrifying cries of pain, locked in a perpetual cyclone of torment, drowning for all eternity. The ragged shades that once swarmed overhead in silence revealed their true form in the paltry light; monstrous beings of shadow cloaked in torn shrouds, bodies of bone wrought from onyx and crystal. They were ephemeral, fading in and out of existence, lashing out with gnarled talons, tearing one another apart in a never-ending bloodbath, forever locked in an endless struggle.

Vykke stepped before Fordola, Fordola unable to move as her body was devoured in a seal of reflective crystal.

His eyes glowed with golden fire. He raised his head up high, towering over her, looking to the ceaseless void above.

“Welcome home.”

He lifted a hand toward the blackened heavens, and from the depth, beyond the unfathomable obelisks, beyond creation, beyond nothingness, a blood red crescent moon waned, bathing the whole of Styx in scarlet ambiance.

Fordola’s body became her own once more, and she fell to her knees upon the surface of Styx - the true Styx. She understood now, the truth before her at last. The Resonance was but a fraction of Styx’s horror, a silent river that circled upon the edges of the beating, bloody heart. The Resonance kept her at arm’s length, never to breach the seal into this hell, to exist solely in the realm of death. No life was ever meant to exist here, for nothing existed here at all. Fordola could feel the fabric of her very being rupture under the crimson glow of the deathly moon above. Her blood boiled - she thought it might burst from her skin entirely. Every thought that raced through her mind was a dagger dragged across her brain. She could feel maddening whispers in her ears, tortured thoughts stabbing into every inch of her consciousness, millions upon millions of voices, joined in a single cacophonous cry for help, begging for mercy. Her eyes beheld death; not just her own, but of those everyone she had ever known. All that lived died before her. Eiserne. Gradey. Arenvald. Lyse. Oswald. Garrickson. Sascha. Brunylda. Marteen. Gilly. Clarell. Raubahn. Thancred. They were gutted, burned, flayed, flensed, boiled, crushed, and cut. They died and died again, each time begging for Fordola to save them.

She watched as their flesh melt from their bones under Ifrit’s roaring flames.

Felt the hot splash of their blood against her face as she drove her sword triumphantly into their bellies, the steel banners of Garlemald behind her as she scarred the star in the name of the Emperor.

She saw her father as the stones struck his body, the crowd that encircled him endlessly pelting him with nightmarish smiles upon their hideous faces. He begged her to look away but she simply could not.

She felt the noose tighten around her neck as she balanced atop the cot in her cell, the rope she had constructed of her sheet tied to the lighting fixture embedded in the ceiling. She felt her neck snap, praying for a release from this endless suffering in darkness, but no such mercy came.

She watched as Stash stood before her at Castrum Abania, his eyes white, glaring at her with only hatred upon his features. He raised his staff, and without mercy, with a second thought, he erased from existence under the radiant scorch of his magicks. Another foe felled for the good of the realm among countless. There was no love in the white of his eyes. How could there be for such a villain as Fordola rem Lupis? Butcher. Kinslayer. Monster. Vermin.

Infinite visions; each a branch in the nightmarish flow of the bloody river.

Fordola clutched at her head and screamed.

Ice collided into her, tearing her from the visions of countless hells and worlds that had not yet to be. Freezing cold held tight with frail arms around her, a mess of blue and black hair, torn rags, and pale skin.

“Fordola!” Eiserne said, hugging her, her head against Fordola’s chest. “Don’t look at it! Come back! It’s not real! It’s just a dream! Come back!”

Her voice was raspy as she begged. Fordola could feel Eiserne squeeze tighter, but her mind was still scarred from what she beheld, burning tears rolling down her cheek as she lifeless dropped her head atop Eiserne’s shoulder, her muscles failing her. The waif held firm to Fordola’s head, brass claws yet tender upon the back of her head, offering what comfort she could with a gentle stroke through her hair.

Eiserne trembled, whispering in Fordola’s ear, her voice cracking weakly.

“You came for me…” she sobbed. “My only friend. You didn’t abandon me like everyone else. Don’t go. Don’t go to the dark place. Come back!”

Her sadness became rage, Eiserne pulling Fordola’s limp, huddled body to her breast, holding her close in both arms as the terrifying waters of Styx roiled below where they sat.

“I’ll kill you…” she growled, her gauntlets trembling against Fordola’s head. She heaved shallow breaths, looking to Asina. “I’ll kill you!”

Though her skin felt as cold as a corpse, Fordola could feel an intense, otherworldly warmth upon her cheeks, the pounding of Eiserne’s heart becoming deafening in her ears. The girl roared with a deep, incomprehensible fury, a harpy’s cry into the endless void.

Asina cackled.

“Yes, it is just as I saw! Oh, infallible Styx - that I stumbled so and yet still arrived upon your shores! I kept my faith! I knew! I knew!”

“Shut up!” Eiserne hissed, shuddering as tears of her own rolled down her blood-smeared cheeks.

Asina only writhed with smug glee, rubbing gnarled fingers over his hands as his voice trailed. He looked around nervously, as though something yet unseen were judging his every movement.

“Oh ho - the husk…yes, the husk… I must prepare E.D.01. Flooded with dynamis. Yes. For… For Robin, yes…”

“Eiserne…” Fordola said, the warmth spreading to her core, and slowly enveloping her, easing the pain of Styx’s visions. Eiserne’s rage was swiftly replaced with sudden joy as she looked tearfully upon her dearest friend. Fordola roused her strength, her limbs kissed with a warm static. Even in the hellish darkness of Styx, bathed in blood, Fordola swore she could see sparks of light dance around her. Tiny embers fluttered between her and Eiserne, ephemeral and weak, but radiant, even in Fordola’s broken sight. Against the infinite void under the bloodmoon of Styx, Fordola could see Eiserne glow, if only for a moment. The horror she had beheld in Styx’s reflection was a wound soothed, and though her body was tired, in the comfort of the lost light she was able to find her footing beside Eiserne, taking up Penance from the river of blood, offering a hand to Eiserne.

Eiserne placed her hand in Fordola’s, gripping tight to her wrist as she was gently assisted to her feet. She held fast for a moment, Eiserne seemingly not ready to let go just yet. Fordola looked into her eyes and nodded softly, reassuringly.

“I’m back.” she said.

Eiserne’s joy became annoyance; her face cross as she pelted a weak punch against Fordola’s shoulder.

“Don’t do that again.” she ordered, trying to hide the welling of tears in her eyes by looking away with a scowl. Fordola nodded, placing her hand upon Eiserne’s shoulder reassuringly.

“I won’t.”

Satisfied, Eiserne knelt down to pick up her scythe from the ghastly waters, taking special care to keep her eyes locked upon Asina. She and Fordola faced him as he paced back and forth, undisturbed by the horrifying realm of Styx. Vykke stepped quietly from just out of view upon the murky waters to stand between them, silently watching with an almost amused look on his face.

Relieved of the nightmarish grip of its visions, Fordola was able to take stock of their surroundings. The facsimile of this realm in the Resonance was none too far off from the true face of this hellish plane. Bereft of darkness eternal and shifting sands churning in a maelstrom just out sight, in the illumination made by the piercing pillars of light, Styx was far more detailed, and far more terrifying for it.

At their feet, they stood upon an endless sea of murky black that stretched out unto the dark horizon, flat and still, save for the smallest of ripples from their own movement. Indeed, it would seem they stood upon something of a shoreline, the waters ahead of them becoming ever deeper, though Fordola dare not look into the depths again. What had appeared in the Resonance as unfathomably large obelisks of flat and featureless, floating diamonds, were solid pillars of intricate design; columns of stone as wide as the whole of Ala Mhigo itself that stretched up into the sky until they simply could not be seen. Upon their surface were enormous tapestries of bone, uncountable millions of skeletal forms bent and broken into shapes and symbols that Fordola could not understand. Black skulls larger than the high walls of the prison yard stared out into the void in rows encircling the structures, lifeless and haunting, side by side with the myriad other bones embedded in the stone. These massive columns dotted the horizon along the water’s edge at unfathomable distances away, as if they simply could never be reached, forever on a horizon that one could not approach. Styx felt truly unreal - incomprehensible. Though they surely stood upon its waters, bathed in the crimson glow of the crescent moon and the radiating glow of lances of pure light piercing the shallows, none of it felt as though it were real.

“Is it not as you had hoped, dear sister?” Vykke asked with an unsettling allure. “After all this time, is Styx not beautiful?”

Fordola scowled, uneasy but undeterred.

“No more, Vykke.” she spat. “I’ll have no part of it.”

Vykke seemed almost saddened by the notion.

“Even now, when Styx welcomes you into its embrace…” his sadness became a quiet anger, leering at Fordola with golden eyes. “The truth of Styx lies before you, and still you deny it. You stand now upon its waters, after countless millennia of spurning its wisdom; and still - still you do not accept it!”

“There’s nothing to accept!” Fordola rebuked. “This is hell, truer than any conceived by men, aye. Is that what ye’ wish to hear from me? Is that what all this scheming, all this…talk has been for? All your secrets?”

She shook her head and slashed her blade through the air defiantly.

“You can keep your secrets - keep your hell.” she roared. “Asina dies, Eiserne comes with me, and you and your Trueborn can rot!”

Vykke appeared crestfallen, but he remained silent, canting his head to look at Eiserne for a moment, the girl reaffirming her grip on her scythe. He looked upon her with tired, loathsome eyes of gold, his posture loose…annoyed. He turned his gaze back upon Fordola again.

“Even when we find ourselves reunited at river’s end…you shun your duty, sister. Eons of silence have weakened your resolve - in darkness you have become blind. Your soul is frayed, sister. The flow stagnates, and your pitiless defiance staunches the bleed…”

He straightened his posture, his demeanor full changed to stoic seriousness again.

“Blind and broken as you are, it matters not. For all your protestation and defiance, the truth is that you inexorably were destined to be here. Your rage against inevitability was for naught, as it always would be.”

“Sod off.” Fordola growled. “I’m here because I want to be.”

“Ignorant failure.” Asina hissed, his back as yet turned to them, refusing to take his eyes off of the waters below. “Every step you take is at the mercy of Styx. None are above its command. None can resist its current. It has already seen your destiny for in its bleeding heart lies all destinies. Reflections upon infinite reflections…every reality, every choice, every variable. Here we are infinite, and yet…as one. And from that infinity…it commands order.”

His head twitched, the disheveled flesh of Falangrym under Asina’s puppetry slowly falling to his knees, drawing ever closer to the surface of the murky water.

“I see it now. I too was ignorant… I thought I could change things. But every mistake and misstep…they were never my choices to make. I would always come back. I was destined to be here. Styx welcomed me and guided me here. There is no ‘choice.’ There are no ‘mistakes.’ Our every second was already decided - but one of many reflections upon its surface. Even the husk…even my sweet Robin’s death. Even T.G.01…”

Eiserne twitched, wincing as though she’d been struck in the head.

“Robin?” she asked angrily. “What’s he talking about?”

Asina laughed, lifting in his hands the bloody, dark water of Styx, letting it flow from his palm in a crazed ecstasy.

“You see, Styx?” he clucked, his voice cracking and wild. “I did as you asked! I did as you commanded…I am here. By your glorious order.”

Eiserne turned warily to Fordola, still shaking with rage.

“What does he want with Robin?” she demanded.

Fordola shook her head at the poor girl.

“That’s not doctor Falangrym, Eiserne.” she answered. “He wears his flesh, aye, but that’s not ‘im. Aulus mal Asina’s soul rests in ‘im, and has for a long time.”

“So Falangrym is dead? Good. I hate him. I hate him for what he did to Ra-”

Eiserne froze, wincing in pain and clutching at her head. Her eyes went wide, pupils dilated and darting wildly. She staggered, stopped from falling as Fordola lent her an arm. She was as ice, so cold that Fordola could not stand beside her. She recoiled, a bone-chilling freeze descending upon her skin as Eiserne shuddered and heaved, clawed gauntlets digging into her head.

Vykke looked on, unfazed as the waters below Eiserne cracked and became solid, the rippling murk freezing into solid shards of ice as she grimaced in pain. From her body, spectral tendrils of white danced off of her flesh and coiled into the darkness before her. Styx itself joined in the spiral, the bloody water breaking from the still surface and freezing instantly into splintered shapes. Beads of blood were plucked by unseen hands, one by one into the drifting miasma radiating from Eiserne, each tiny ball erupting into blackened, blood drenched ice. Eiserne cried out, Fordola trying to approach her, but from her reemerged that same, overwhelming pressure she experienced in Ala Gannha. It fought against her, a violent nexus of force pushing against her, keeping her at bay. At its center Eiserne screamed, fearful at first. But her pitch became heavier, harsher; she screamed in endless, undeniable rage as lances of ice shot from the waters around her, blood frozen into grotesque shrapnel, suspended in the air around her in coiling barbs. It tore at her flesh, bloody cuts shearing across her ivory white skin, wrapping her in a cage of icy thorns.

Fordola tried desperately to approach, fighting against the ever growing web of barbed, icy vines as they spread around Eiserne and plunged into the waters of Styx, freezing its black surface as it went, a spreading overgrowth of blood-soaked crystal. Fordola stood fast, pushing against the pressure and forceful winds, fighting against the lashing ice, cutting through bleeding barbs with her sword and shielding herself best she could.

“Eiserne!” she cried, reaching through an ever growing wall of tangled ice, trying to place a hand upon her friend. Eiserne’s screaming intensified, Fordola’ fingers dancing just out of reach. Blood seeped from Eisernes lacerations, pulled into the very air before her where it weaved like veins against the ice. Fordola had only but to reach out…just a bit further…fight a little harder, resist just a little longer. She could reach her. She could get to her.

Blackened skin, oily and hot stepped between them with lithe step, burning Fordola’s fingertips. Ice melted where it stood, a thick mist enshrouding its vile form. The Vestige stood beside Eiserne, eyes burning gold. It stood tall, not like the others, stepping gracefully atop the melting ice beneath it, its feminine form warping the very air around it, unaffected by the nightmarish cold around Eiserne.

The web of bloody thorns erupting from Eiserne coiled around the fiend, tearing into its flesh with lances of crystal that penetrated clear through it, but only for mere seconds as the intense heat within reduced the ice to blood once more. The foul coagulation of Styx and Eiserne’s blood, still as veins in the air were drawn to the Vestige, its arms wide, receiving the gift of blood dauntlessly, even as countless spears of ice tore through it, again and again.

The Vestige took another slow step, its black flesh laced with the crimson web of blood flowing from Eiserne as she howled, ice and thorn fighting hopelessly against the fiend. Its naked flesh hardened into shapes, the slick oily texture of its legs becoming as knee-high leather boots, the suspended veins of blood congealed and spilled over its shoulders, becoming as cloth, threading itself slowly down the lithe figure into a yellow dress. It stepped lightly, the clap of heels echoing as it stepped upon the ice as tightening vines of solidified, crystalline blood withered and melted. The blood washed over the Vestige, and as crimson waned, in its wake it left pale skin. Gleaming golden eyes dulled, the roaring fire behind them dimming to a vibrant amber. It took another step, running soft hands through the mop of wet, black hair where it became warm auburn twintails.

It took another step, the fury of Eiserne’s icey storm falling uselessly upon the Vestige’s back, the mire of erupting vines and javelin-like thorns endlessly sprouting from the waters of Styx and penetrating the thing with ephemeral, crimson spears. The Vestige paid it no mind, taking another step, its lips parting as it walked slowly onward toward Asina.

It opened its mouth, and from its throat came the most haunting, beautiful melody.

“Sin, sin, little thrush in the midst of sin

Weakened and frail, bearing broken wings

Rise, and be strong; within is bestowed a Queen

You too shall fly again on wings of gold.

Fierce and free.”

But it did not sing alone.

Eiserne stopped her screaming to join her song, a somber duet harmonized to perfection. Eiserne released her frenzied grip upon her own skull and stood up, the myriad wounds upon her flesh now gone as blood rolled softly down her. In her eyes, Fordola could see sadness and joy all at once, the hollow, empty rage within the girl full gone.

“Monster, Sin, little thrush in the midst of sin

Temper now your wings of iron,

Persist, and be strong; within is bestowed a Queen

You too shall fly again on winds of gold.

Fierce and free.”

Eiserne’s roiling vines and gnashing of thorns against the waters of Styx ceased, the violent pressure that kept Fordola at bay stopping suddenly. Ice and crystal melted away in an instant, splashing onto the stilled waters below. As if compelled by the song itself, Eiserne and the Vestige sang a languished, otherworldly melody, and in their union of angelic voices did rise a deep, echoing chorus from the infinite void around them.

Fordola rushed to Eiserne’s side, but with every step she could feel Styx tremble, the damned souls wailing in pained tenors, harrowing baritones, and labored basses. Eiserne sang that most beautiful song, she and the Vestige’s voices angelic, weaving effortlessly between the rise and fall of each note, each word a perfect compliment to the others, their voices joining alongside the fell chorus into a full opera as the unseen myriad souls forever bound to the dark howled into the void.

The Vestige and Eiserne reached their crescendo, and as their voices fell, the languished chorus so to did bring their verses to a final close. But it was a Vestige no more, and behind the still transfixed Asina stood Robin, in flesh and blood, as real as the day she died, upon the shores of Styx.

Fordola approached Eiserne, her friend completely perplexed by what had happened, looking to Fordola desperately for answers, though she had none to give. It was all she could do to place her hand upon the girl’s shoulders, Eiserne at least managing to nod.

They looked to Robin, standing straight, looking down upon Asina, the flesh of Falangrym at his command still hopelessly in a trance before Styx.

A dreadful silence fell upon Styx as Robin just stared.

“Look at me.” she said, her voice accompanied by a haunting echo, dark and twisted as the words left her mouth.

Asina did not stop, still erratically dipping his hands in and out of Styx’s waters, muttering incoherently to himself, his body wracked with shakes as he gorged himself on the visions below.

Robin’s soft hand coiled into a fist at her side.

“Look at me!” she roared in a cacophony of thousands of hellish echoes, all of Styx trembling, the sea of blood erupting with spires of ice, tearing through the dark and becoming as gnarled mountains around them, the shallows where they stood quaking, as solid ground might have, as it all became as blackened ice in a second. As Robin’s fury manifested as an endless horizon of frozen, mangled blades of dark crimson, at last did Asina turn his attention slightly. He winced, ever so, letting the last of the waters cupped in his hand fall through his stained, wet fingers.

He said nothing, barely looking from the corner of his eye over his shoulder at her.

“Get up.” she demanded, menacing, demonic voices accompanying hers as the words left her lips.

He remained silent and turned back to Styx.

Robin seethed and screamed a deafening cacophony of untold shrieks and howls from the myriad souls of Styx. She flung her fists to her side, and from the depths of styx shot crystalline vines, twisting into barbs, piercing Asina’s flesh and coiling upward. The solidified blood became a spiral of thorny stalks, tangling and contorting, lifting from the waters below the body of Falangrym, his arms and legs bleeding as the blighted mass tore through him, forcing him to look upon her as he was crucified.

Silence once again befell Styx, and thankfully so - Robin’s screams had become almost too much to physically bear, Fordola’s head dizzy and reeling.

Robin stared upon the visage of Falangrym, the crazed elezen’s face laced with agony…but not from the bloody barbs than lanced through his limbs. He struggled, but not to be free. He did not look upon Robin, but not for fear of her gaze. He whimpered, but not from pain.

He yearned for Styx. His daughter yet stood ilms before him, by some horror made manifest in the darkness of Styx…as he himself had desired, and yet he was drawn to the waters and naught else.

“Let me go.” he pleaded weakly, Fordola not even sure if he realized who was begging. “Release me. The knowledge…the infinite. I must needs return… Let me go!” He pulled his arm through the yalm long lances that pierced him, a disgusting rending of his own flesh as blood seeped from the wounds, his fingers dancing pathetically as he reached out to the water’s edge, lips quivering and eyes wild.

Robin stepped back, her eyes trembling, wide in disbelief.

“Even now…” she whispered. “Even now, you don’t see me.”

“Let me go.” Asina babbled, bleeding violently as he tried to pull his own body through the cage of barbs, pushing with his gravely wounded arm his torso over a penetrating lance of black. “Styx… I’m coming. Styx. Wait for me.” The eyes of Falangrym never once fell upon Robin, forever locked upon the black, murky waters.

Robin quivered, the ice beneath her feet spidering with cracks, bloody pools leaking from below.

“Robin.” Eiserne said, breaking the silence.

Robin stopped shaking.

Her fists uncoiled.

She looked over her shoulder at the meager voice behind her, eyes burning with golden light.

“You.”

Ice and blood exploded, erupting into a twisting mire of black, thorny vines. A crater of ice formed around Eiserne with Robin at its center. Water became ice, blackened sharp blades slicing into existence and rising into the dark, crimson glow of the sky. Fountains of blood that poured forcefully through the cracks in the ice twisted into crystalline blooms, their petals scarlet blades gleaming macabre beneath the moon. Fordola found herself faced with an impenetrable tangle of vines that jettisoned from the waters before her, rising into the sky well beyond her sight. She fell back as murderous barbs shot forth from the depths, lances of solidified blood lashing out at her, driving her back.

She bobbed and weaved, rolled beneath thrusting barbs and leapt out of the way of crashing spines until at last she was far enough from the growth.

She beheld Robin’s creation in all its horror - a massive cage, malms high, of coiling, bloody vines, beset on all sides by fields of icey thorns blooming with crimson flowers. Fordola rallied herself, prepared to throw herself into the mire, to carve a path, but as she stepped upon the growth, yet more vines lashed out, erupting from the murk to try and pierce her flesh.

Clearly Robin had no intention of letting her interfere with her reunion with Eiserne…

Get up!

Eiserne couldn’t think straight - the fog was too thick, too choking. It had reached well beyond the cage of her thoughts and seeped into her body, stifling her muscles. In dire confusion she felt cold…alone. Even as she opened her eyes, what she beheld made little sense to her. She considered that she might be well and truly dead at long last, were it not that the hells for which she was surely destined were strangely cold. Cold and bright. Indeed, where she lay her hands, the claws of her gauntlets rapped against ice with a dull clink. How strange - she had always thought what awaited her at the end was a pit of fire and brimstone. That’s what they had always preached at the orphanage…

Orphanage?

Her head hurt, the fog giving her an unbearable vertigo. She tried to cling onto the thought as it swirled around in her mind, but she could no sooner grasp it than the wind itself, the faintest of memories lost to the fog. All the better; Eiserne was certain she was dead. Remembering wouldn’t help her now. But even still, something stirred, something…scary. As she sat upon her knees against the ice of hell itself, her thoughts encased in an impenetrable wall of mist, she could feel something…someone just out of reach.

Get up! it hissed in menacing, quiet rage.

Eiserne shook her head, her muscles unresponsive.

She thought it might have been Gloomy playing a trick on her, but that was quite unlike her. Even for her, that would be quite a cruel trick, knowing she was helpless like this, and given that Eiserne was probably dead, all the worse. She groaned, alone and spinning in her head, words too difficult to formulate.

The voice came again, thunderous and far closer…as if it were right on top of her.

“Gloomy…” Eiserne muttered.

“Get up!”

And then she was in the air - flying almost. She could feel the ice disappear beneath her, her body weightless for a moment as she seemingly was lifted from the ground in an instant. She must have become an angel, taking flight into the icy sky! She had grown wings and flown free of the miserable world! She wanted to see them, her beautiful wings, to see the world become small beneath her as she soared above Ala Mhigo, above Etheirys, to see everyone’s faces behold her in her majesty as she left them behind to toil. She was going to be free. How she longed to see their faces…to see Fordola smiling at her.

Eiserne smiled, opening her eyes.

There were no smiling faces - no beautiful wings.

Just ice and blood. Her blood.

She could feel it rolling down her skin from the giant needles of black that pierced through her wrists and arms, hoisting her just above the ice in a pillory of black, crystalline ice, stained red by her own lifesblood. Embedded in the crystal was the dull shine of her scythe’s blade, trapped behind a wall of thorns. She couldn’t move, her legs floating just above the surface as spikes tore into her body and suspended her before the source of the voice. Her vision was still blurry, the ghostly shape before her…familiar.

“Gloomy?” she asked weakly.

The girl leaned in, her face ilms from Eiserne’s - beautiful as she remembered, down to the last freckle upon her pale cheeks. Behind the girl’s amber eyes, Eiserne felt a cold, biting sting of pure malice.

“I found you -” she sang, Robin caressing her cheeks with a gentle, frightening touch.

From Robin’s lips, upon venom and spite, she spoke a name. A scream. A static so shrill it may have devoured Eiserne’s brain entirely in ice. She winced as Robin spoke, her head ringing, unable to lift her head to face her, nor understand her words. Flashes of white tore through Eiserne’s mind, a dizzying second of the faintest memories shining bright in her mind a final time before burning out, lost entirely now to the ever growing fog.

“ - just like I promised.” Robin said as the ringing in Eiserne’s ears petered out. She felt Robin’s touch become as fire, the girl driving her fingers against Eiserne’s face, forcing her to look upon her, smothering her all with an inhuman joy.

Eiserne tried to yell, but her words were muffled as she fought against her captor. Robin’s eyes danced over Eiserne as she held her at her mercy, blood flowing from her wounds as she struggled to breathe. Something in her eyes seemed…disappointed; defeated. She clenched her teeth and scowled, shaking violently.

The girl trembled with rage, and as she thrummed with nothing but contempt, the very cage of blackened, icy vines around them quaked. The space around Robin distorted and warped, a crimson miasma radiating from her flesh that tore through the air and became a spiral around her - a dance of macabre light that burned and left the very air scarred with wounds of distant void in their wake. Robin raked her fingers across Eiserne’s face, slicing under her eyes and leaving vicious cuts that leaked crimson.

Her dress twirled behind her as she spun on her heel, heels echoing loudly as she strode across the ice to the opposite side to approach the suspended body of Falangrym, so too held aloft by lances of frozen blood piercing into his body. He was as a part of Robin’s cage as the blooming flowers and twisted mire of thorns she had created from the sea of blood, his body skewered by countless spines, the blood that yet seeped from his wounds congealing into blooms of crimson roses. A singular vine had coiled around his neck and squeezed against his brow, forcing him to look upon Robin.

She stormed toward him, head held high, ice cracking beneath her, allowing the bloody waters of Styx to flow inside her cage where they froze into nightmarish petals, coiling into effigies of roses, a veritable garden of death blossoming in her wake. Eiserne could hear it now…the chorus of her song echoing through the frozen cage, sung by ghoulish, unseen mouths. It brought her no comfort; a foul mockery of the melody sung by uncaring specters.

Robin stopped before Falangrym, the puppet at Asina’s command, looking down at him with limitless scorn as he yet babbled, unconcerned with the lances of crystalized blood impaling him.

“Styx…” he mumbled, his voice faint to Eiserne’s ears as the demonic chorus bellowed a deep, low note of her song. “I’m here… I return…”

Robin stared at him, her eyes quivering, hands trembling. Though his own eyes stared back at her, he did not perceive of her; she was as a ghost, even in flesh.

“This?” Robin growled. “This is what became of you?”

She peered over her shoulder to glance at Eiserne, pinned to the opposite wall of the cage.

“...of both of you?”

She raised a trembling hand before her and slowly, painfully made a fist. The pale flesh of her fingers darkened, deep red to nigh black as pitch, coursing down her palm and to her wrist, staining her arm as she squeezed tightly. Veins of pulsating scarlet throbbed beneath her skin, the tips of her fingernails drawing blood in the palm of her hand she squeezed so tight. Robin forced her eyes shut, her nostrils flaring as she let out a single, desperate whimper.

“Styx! Styx, I beg of you… Styx!” Asina wailed forlornly, his mangled limbs still flailing, desperate to escape, even as the crystal vines plunged their barbs deeper into him, coiling tighter around him, his body blooming with bloody flowers.

“Monsters…” Robin gasped. “I…hate…you.”

The creeping blackness upon her flesh crawled further down her trembling arm, rising to her shoulders, spidering across her pale face with blackened veins until she screamed, echoed by thousands upon thousands of howling souls. Her howl sundered the ground below her, a crater of blood as fissures tore through her cage, racing towards Eiserne, shattering the weave of vines that held her aloft and forcing her to fall upon what ice remained beneath her.

She coughed and sputtered, wincing as Robin’s cry yet devoured her thoughts, the unknowable souls that erupted to join her cries of pitiless hatred rising to join the nightmarish chorus. From the flood erupted a spreading growth of crystallizing flowers, a rush of unspeakable cold making petals and thorny stalks of frozen blood, a field of ghastly blooms bursting around Robin. Eiserne fell upon the bed of roses, her heart aching with a terrible sadness she’d never felt before.

What happened to Robin?

This wasn’t the same girl that Raven knew. Gone were the smiles…the hope, the happy memories. Even when Raven had fallen to her worst, Robin was always there for her. She was her north star, her…joy. Why was this happening? She was safe - carried away by the white robes!

The white robes? Eiserne thought, the splitting pain of memories flashing before her and fading out of existence tearing as quick as they came. The white robes in Garden-

More pain.

Garden? The dome! The dome where Raven and Robin were-

Fire and lightning, coiling and burning upon the edges of her mind.

No dome.

There never was a dome.

She could see it - a small, metal chamber. A steel cage. No escape. No trees, no rocks, no dirt. Only steel. Steel and blood.

But the monsters! The monsters they fought together…they? We?

Daggers at the base of her skull, stabbing with every thought.

No…no monsters. Just…her…and-

She remembered.

Knife…stab her. Strangle her. Survive. You must survive.

Death…give her death

She remembered how lovely it was to tear limb from limb. To see those soft, amber eyes still as life left them.

Robin…she was like a sister-

More pain, a flaying of her own mind, tearing memories away like a skin.

Sister…

She had no name. She had no need for it.

Kill her…failure…

This is who she is. There were no monsters to slay. It was always Robin.

She had pulled her apart. She drove knives into her skull. She strangled the very life from her body. She reveled in slaughter, again and again, never once feeling pity or remorse. Never once showing mercy…

Rip her apart. Tear out her throat. Crush her heart. Kill her. Kill them. Kill everything.

Kill.

It was her. It was always her.

They don’t love you.

Kill her.

Kill them.

Kill. Every. Last. One.

The fog surrounded her, swallowed her, just as the last of those memories was peeled from the surface of her mind. She stared, overwhelmed and stilled. The fog swept her up in a numbing embrace, and just as the nightmare came to an end, the lingering image of a young woman with raven black hair, frail and hopeless, with eyes as bright as lilacs, vanished in the churn of mist that devoured her.

It was lost to her now. Like so many others, just out of reach.

Eiserne felt the deathly grip of Robin’s blackened hand against her throat, her nails digging like knives into her neck, choking her. Eiserne clasped tight to Robin’s arm, trying to wrest herself from her clutches, vying for air that felt like inhaling fire.

“Gloomy!” she gasped. “Gloomy, p-please-”

Robin’s eyes narrowed, holding Eiserne aloft with terrifying strength. She canted her slightly, looking deeply into Eiserne’s eyes.

Eiserne pounded against Robin’s arms.

“Gloomy, please!” she cried, tears rolling down her cheek. Color seeped from the world, and all the while she could only see…herself…Gloomy staring back at her. Uncaring.

Robin twitched.

She released Eiserne, the waif clutching at her bruised neck, coughing violently as she seized air into her lungs, crying.

“What did I do?” she begged, “I’m sorry, please…I won’t do it again!”

Eiserne reached out her hands toward Robin as she watched hatefully. Eiserne crawled toward her, huddling against Robin’s boots, her arms wrapped around her leg. Crying. Endlessly crying.

“Please! I don’t want to play anymore.” Eiserne pleaded. “I’ll be good. I’ll be quiet, Gloomy! I’m sorry!”

Robin looked down upon the cowering waif with pure disgust.

“You…” she growled, the crimson miasma that swarmed around her intensifying, burning holes in the very fabric of reality as the crimson wisps spiraled around her. “...you both took everything from me.”

Behind her, Asina yet continued his ravings, his flesh pale and sickly as blood from his wounds sprouted into macabre roses of frozen lifesblood.

“It is infallible…Styx… I want more. I need more. Please show me everything… So many questions. So many questions…”

Robin looked over her shoulder at him, eyes still wide and full of hatred.

“You took everything from me…and you don’t even see me…” she seethed. “A lifetime of misery…no. A thousand lifetimes weren’t enough. You needed more…and so you took them. All of them. Fed them to your perfect little monster… Gorged it on death. But it ever hungered…insatiable.”

She pulled away from Eiserne, leaving the girl in a fetal, sobbing mess on the ground. Her steps toward Asina were as thunder, roaring through her icey cage with the fury of the mightiest of storms. She sundered ice, stone, and water in her wake; a walking calamity.

“And yet you fed the beast… What did one life matter? What did a million? They weren’t real after all, right? Snuffed out of existence when the Resonance plucked me from peace of death to drag me back into the hell of living. A passing dream for those not cursed by Styx’s touch.” Her footfalls sundered the very realm, the whole of Styx shuddering. “But I assure you they were very real… I remember. I remember every one. I felt every blade. Every drill. Every hand upon my body. Every limb severed, every laceration, every plead for mercy that went unanswered. I remember! You might not have, father, but I did. Every miserable…awful death at her hands, every horrifying rebirth beneath your machines. And endless cycle, death and rebirth… You swore…you swore it was for the greater good. You swore my suffering would end when the work…the work was done.”

Blood from Styx swelled at her feet, roiling in an explosive frenzy, coiling around her legs and rising to her thigh, to her back. Crystals of crimson erupted behind her, blades unto themselves, cascading down her back as a pair of nightmarish, bloody wings.

“But now look at you… You had but a taste of Styx and now it consumes you. I was the lie; the convenient cover for what you truly desired..” she growled, bathed in the waters of Styx, reborn. “ Observe now, father. At long last…the culmination of your life’s work. Hide behind your puppet’s flesh. Watch now as your greatest failure rips apart your greatest success. Watch…as I had to… Watch as I take everything from you.”

Robin turned to Eiserne, an angel fallen, a nightmare made manifest.

“Gloomy… I’m sorry!” Eiserne cried, rising to her feet, reaching out to Robin, but still cowering, retreating slowly as she approached. She winced as waves of unrelenting, blinding pressure washed over her, an insurmountable tide of pure malice. She gazed upon Robin, but what she beheld was but a reflection of herself. In her eyes, there was no Robin somn Asina before her, the fog so intense in her mind that it warped her very perception. “I…I thought we were friends!”

“Friends?” Robin roared. “No…no no no… For you? For you I have only the deepest hatred. From the moment our paths crossed I hated you. As I drew every last breath I hated you! The stars themselves could every one erupt in hellfire across all of creation at my will - and they would but know a breath of my hatred for you. An eternity of tearing you limb from limb wouldn’t be long enough to sate my thirst for your blood. I hate you, even now, a broken, pathetic husk…not even worthy of the air in your lungs, of the corpse you parade as your own. You…”

She raised her hand before her, blood coiling against her fingers, hardening into black, bloody claws.

“You will not take from me the very last thing I want. Neither you, nor father. First, I shall lay you low. Then…I will take from you every last hope. Every joy. Every thought, every second, every memory! I will devour you, crush every shard, every reflection, purge you like the disease you are from everything that ever was. Everyone you have ever known, every person that yet walks the star that might have memory of you…I will devour them too. I won’t just kill you…I will kill the very idea of you. I will bleed out every last soul that yet flows in this place until you and I are all that is left. All of creation will bleed, all that was and will be…I will exsanguinate existence. And all of the silent eternities will watch as you become queen of nothing.”

Eiserne recoiled, a gnashing of barbs exploding from the waters at her side, hoisting from the depths her scythe, the hellish vines at Robin’s command, presenting her her weapon.

“So come, T.G.01.” Robin stood before Eiserne, a nightmarish angel of sorrow, rage incarnate. Empty, uncaring eyes stared down upon her, as she spread her bloody, bladed wings, eyes black as pitch, pale skin pulsing crimson as she drew the very waters of Styx into her flesh. “Your throne awaits.”

Eiserne clutched at her head and screamed.

“I don’t remember! I don’t remember!”

“I do.” Robin said as a thousand merciless voices echoed her own.

She couldn’t remember. There was only the endless fog. Even the leviathan below the surface was silent. She felt so terrifyingly alone.

From ice came fire, roaring and on gleaming steel. A helix of inferno, tearing into the nightmare cage, sundering ice and crystal. The vines recoiled and shattered, returned to their bloody murk as inferno claimed them, wilting the blooming blood roses in wildfire. Smoke and smolder followed in fire’s wake. Fordola swung Penance to her side, the blade red-hot and pulsating with overcharged aether along its starmetal veins. She landed upon a single knee, a torrent of fire behind her as two spent aether cartridges were flung into the air, hot and whistling, landing upon the waters of Styx with a steaming plink.

“Eiserne!” Fordola roared, vaulting herself to a sprint, shrapnel of ice yet flying through the air upon her violent entry. She saw Robin’s horrifying form, Eiserne cowering before her, and in a singular step, Fordola became as fire once more, tearing Penance through darkness, hellfire itself exploding from its vents, howling as it erupted with aether and inferno.

“Get the f*ck away from her!”

Her blade collided with Robin, a meteor of steel and fire, setting the whole of the cage ablaze with searing heat. But Penance continued its arc through the air with a spin of Fordola’s body, her boots skidding across crystalized blood as she brought herself to a stop, a shower of bloody petals left in Robin’s wake as she took flight to land gently before her father. Fordola flicked her sword to the side, the revolver chamber ejecting the last aether cartridge with a steaming whistle. She turned to Eiserne.

“Eisere!” she called to her.

But she just trembled.

“I don’t remember! I don’t remember!” she chanted, eyes wide and staring blankly, clearly in shock. Her pale features were ghastly and panic stricken.

Fordola placed her hand on Eiserne’s shoulder, lowering herself before her, speaking intently, making sure to keep eye contact.

“Listen to me! You’re Eiserne Drossel!” she said warmly. “You’re a Resonant, just like me. We live in the Ala Mhigo prison and have for quite a while. The guards are mean, the food is proper sh*te, an’ they only let us shower once a week. It’s hot, gods it’s always hot; you’re not very fond of the sun, but when we went to Ala Rhigar together, Gloomy was very brave and stood in it for the first time. She even helped me find Number 3 and save some of the villagers. And when we went to Ala Gannha, we made friends with Gradey - the white robe! She’s a bit strange, but she means well. We took a long carriage ride to get there, and ye’ seemed to fancy the chocobos, remember? More than the people, that’s fer’ sure. And that’s where Jolly saved me, up at the mansion; saved me from Brunylda when I couldn’t save myself.”

Fordola pressed a firm hand to Eiserne’s cheek, gently running her fingers through her hair to place it behind her ear.

“That’s where you stained your hair - but it’s okay, it suits you. And ye’ seem proud of it. You said so yourself when we talked through the monitors at the Resonatorium. You were so excited to see me, Eiserne…and I was excited to see you too. Ye’ve no idea how scared I was for ye’. But ye’ fought your way back to us - you survived.. Then you, Gradey, and I had to take care of some bad men. They wanted to hurt us, but you stopped them. You saved me again; you saved Gradey too.”

Eiserne’s eyes focused on the deep jade in Fordola’s eyes, a flicker of life twinkling in violet reflection.

“Fordola…” she said, a smile chancing upon the edges of her lips. “My friend…?”

“That’s right; I’m here. I’m here to take us home.”

“Home?”

“Aye…but not back to the prison. When we leave here, you and I are free to go wherever we want. No more guards, no more walls, no more Resonance or white robes. We’ll be free! You’ll be free as a bird, Eiserne.”

Eiserne blinked, memory washing over her mind like a gentle breeze, taking with it the miresome fog in her head.

“I’m…Eiserne Drossel.”

Fordola nodded.

“Yer’ godsdamned right ye’ are. An’ I’d have it no other way.” she stood up and held out her hand before Eiserne. She placed a clawed gauntlet against Fordola’s palm and held firm, Fordola hoisting her to her feet.

“But…Gloomy…” Eiserne began. Fordola smiled, shaking her head.

“That thing over there? I know Gloomy, and that ain’t her. Gloomy’s still here.” Fordola rapped a gentle fist against Eiserne’s chest. “She ain’t no monster like her, promise ye’ that. And right now I need Jolly to help me make sure that monster doesn’t hurt anyone else.”

Fordola pulled at Eiserne’s scythe, shattering the brittle thorns that encapsulated it in the walls of the cage with a mighty tug. She placed the gnarled wooden shaft in Eiserne’s grasp and nodded reassuringly.

“What ye’ say, Eiserne?” Fordola said, plucking from her bandolier the last of her aether cartridges and loading them into her still-hot weapon with a click and flick. “Weak or strong? Decide what you’ll be today and live or die with me.”

Eiserne wrapped her clawed fingers around the scythe handle.

“Another of father’s failures, come to take more from me?” Robin snarled, Fordola turning to the horrifying angel of misery before her, raising Penance at her side. Robin lashed out with her crimson claws, the force strong enough to send shockwaves throughout the cage. “Stand with T.G.01 if you must, you are all but lambs to the slaughter!”

Eiserne stepped to Fordola’s side.

“I…am Eiserne Drossel.” she rebuked, a peculiar sinister smile on her face as she spun the gruesome scythe, throwing her arms over the shaft as she rest it upon her shoulders. Fordola could see the spark returned to her companion’s eyes, the peculiar joy the waif took from standing before oblivion’s doorstep that bordered on mania.

“And I can’t wait to tear those wings off of you and watch you bleed out.” she sang with a smile before nodding to Fordola, who responded in kind.

She was back; of that Fordola was certain.

“Ready Eiserne?” she asked.

Eiserne flung her scythe to her side excitedly.

“This’ll be fun!” she sang with a devilish grin.

Robin screamed, and all of Styx cowered before her, taking to the blackened skies on crimson wings, an angel of scorn, hatred’s arbiter come to claim her eternal prize. The formless chorus of tortured souls rose to a bellowing crescendo in her wake, rising to the final verse of her song.

She brought down shards of crystal blood, sending forth coiling vines to capture her foes. Fordola and Eiserne both darted in opposite directions, Fordola tearing through thick vines, shattering like glass as Penance cut through them as quickly as they burst from the murky waters. As Robin landed, where they once stood, she struck out with bladed wings, the crimson crystals freezing the very air around them. Fordola vaulted into the air, arcing her gunblade beneath her in time to intercept the slashing wings. The impact knocked her flying towards the massive tangle of vines that formed the cage, but Fordola was able to tumble and slow her momentum.

She drove Penance point-first into the ice below and came to a full stop, quickly rising to her feet. Robin burst forth from her position in an explosion of crimson petals, tearing toward Fordola with blinding ferocity.

Eiserne roared, swooping in from behind Robin and driving her scythe blade under the pouncing harpy, the forceful yank of her momentum against Robin’s advance tearing the blade clean through her midsection. A geyser of blood erupted from the wound, sending Robin’s body tumbling through the air, her torso cleanly severed from its legs.

Crimson wings flapped, righting Robin’s body between Eiserne and Fordola. From the grievous wound of bloody entrails and severed bone Robin yet formed her legs once more from crystalized Styx, gently landing on the toes of her boots amid a flurry of petals as her wings slowed her descent.

Eiserne pouted for a moment before launching herself upon Robin once again. Robin used the bladed feathers of her wings to strike at Eiserne as she approached, but the lithe girl practically danced between the crashing lances of ice, nimble and elegant, she and her scythe partners in a ballet of death. Eiserne twisted and turned, avoiding blades of blood, smiling a crazed smile all the while until she was close enough to swing her scythe upward from the ground and into one of the wings themselves. The blade made bloody purchase, piercing through crystal as though it were flesh and tearing a massive wound along the arm of the wing. Eiserne spun herself over the handle of her weapon and straddled it with one hand. She was an acrobat at play, twisting herself perfectly erect, contorting her body to slam the heel of her boots against the back of the wing, sending the crescent blade of her scythe clean through the vile wing, severing it from Robin’s back.

Robin reeled, pulled off balance by Eiserne’s attack. Fire from on high bared down upon her as Fordola came crashing down, her gunblade roaring. Hot steel slammed into Robin’s shoulder, Fordola pulling the trigger as she came to a stop, blasting the brace forcefully though Robin’s collar bone, burning clear through her breast and erupting on the opposite side of her torso in a cacophony of fire and blood. Robin collapsed as her body was mangled, her remaining wing still cutting through the air toward Fordola as she screamed, her blood spilling into the waters of Styx.

Fordola swiped her offhand through the air, erecting a shining crystalline shield in time for the crimson blades of Robin’s wings to break and crumble against the hardened aether. Undeterred and full of rage, her body becoming whole once more as ice and blood healed wounds and became unsundered flesh once again, Robin slammed against Fordola’s shield, spines and bladed feathers in a cycle of smashing against it and regrowing in horrifying display. Each strike bore down upon Fordola with tremendous force until the shield shattered into crystal shrapnel, the tiny particles of light cast aside as bloody wings tore down upon Fordola’s sword, brought to bear in time to block the blow.

Robin pressed against Fordola with all her strength, Fordola’s knees buckling under the hellish power Robin possessed. Eiserne rushed to assault her, Styx splashing under the footfalls of her boots as she ran toward Robin, blood still slick upon her blade. Robin’s gaze turned to meet her, slashing a claw through the air, summoning in its wake a wave of thorns that coiled outward explosively. Eiserne barely avoided the sudden vines, having to drag herself to a stop before she collided with the thicket of barbs, backstepping upon tiptoes as vines grew out into the sky and turned to drive down upon her. They collided with the waters of Styx, each vine that pierce the shallows erupting into a briar of lancing ice barbs.

All the while, Robin continued to press her wing against Fordola. The gunbreaker grit her teeth and pushed hard against the flat of her blade, being driven further into the waters of Styx as a nail being hammered.

Robin slammed her wing against steel in a shower of sparks and blood, leering down at Fordola.

“Miserable failure!” she roared, myriad damned souls echoing her voice in kind as she spoke. “You who chose to take this curse unto your flesh! Cease this meaningless struggle - the Resonance will claim you eventually; accept true death and be rid of this nightmare!”

Fordola pressed her blade against Robin’s bladed wings with all the strength she had, muscles burning.

“It’s your struggle that’s meaningless!” she barked, fire in her eyes. “Eiserne is alive; what right do the dead have to take that from her?”

Robin struck harder, at last breaking Fordola’s guard, driving her swordpoint down into the waters. She launched herself at Fordola, grabbing her by the neck in her bloody claws. Robin lifted Fordola into the air effortlessly, Fordola pulling her body back and slamming her boots against Robin’s chest, knocking herself free, but not before Robin swept the arm of her wing at Fordola’s legs. Robin looked down upon her as she fell, venom on her tongue as she screeched.

“You know nothing, failure! You know nothing of loss - the magnitude of suffering I have endured in life and in death!” The ground quaked as she screamed in a rage. “All of it…all by her hand.”

Fordola brought herself to her feet, reaffirming her grip on her gunblade.

“You don’t think she suffered? That we haven’t suffered?” Fordola roared back. “The Resonance has made monsters of us all, aye. It’s the chains at our throats! But those chains will rust, and we can break free of them! We need not stay as monsters!”

Robin scowled, a foul spurt of blood erupting at her shoulder, growing her severed wing anew in sleek, black crystal.

“What do you know of freedom?” Robin seethe. “Every step you’ve taken, every breath, every thought you believed to be your own? They were, every one, decided by Styx. You can’t change. You were born to be a monster just as she was!”

Eiserne howled as she sailed through the air, whirling steel carving through ice.

Robin stretched her vile wing outward, the bloody crystals breaking against Eiserne’s blade enough to stall her momentum. With another lash of her broken wing, she caught Eiserne by the throat as crystal vines exploded beneath her and seized her. She kicked and flailed as the bloody crystal hardened and tightened around her neck.

Fordola erupted in flames, driving her gunblade through the rising tangle, steel hot as it freed Eiserne from the deadly grasp of vines, reduced to befouled waters once more. She helped Eiserne remain steady on her feet; Eiserne coughing, but nodding reassuring back at her, both women reaffirming their grips upon their weapons and standing firm against their loathsome foe.

Robin sneered, looking down on them as she flapped her wings.

“Struggle all you like, failure.” she hissed, a fell chorus of damned souls joining her words in terrifying unison. “The wheel comes for us all…”

“Be quiet!” Eiserne barked, stepping forward. Her posture was slouchy, her face positively laced with annoyance. She slung her scythe to the ground with a heavy smash, clutching the gnarled wood with fury. “How about I take your f*cking wheel and break it on your skull?”

“There’s the fury I remember.” Robin said with a glower. “There’s the beast within you, T.G.01. I can’t wait to drag it out of you…piece by piece!”

“Stop calling me that!” Eiserne roared. “My name is Eiserne Drossel! You don’t get to decide who I am! I do!”

Fordola cycled her gunblade’s revolver chamber with a grin, stepping to Eiserne’s side.

“On you, Gloomy.” she said.

Eiserne grunted in agreement.

“How cute…” Robin and her thousand voices sneered with saccharine sweetness. “Very well, Eiserne Drossel. Throw yourself at me and let me take that name from her as well.”

Eiserne raised her scythe, Fordola at her side, and together they launched themselves at Robin as she drove myriad spines of crystalized blood down upon them. A storm of knives rained down upon them on bloody wings as thorn and vine erupted from the waters below to swallow them in a tangle of barbs and vile thorns. Death surrounded them, bringing close its jaws to devour them. Fordola and Eiserne’s eyes ignited in crimson fire, a pyre beset in their Resonant eyes so bright it scorched the eternal darkness of Styx. Thorn and crystal became as feathers glancing off of steel as they burned through the mire, their bodies, their souls, resonating in perfect harmony with Styx itself, gliding effortlessly between death as it raged endlessly against them. Robin screamed, birthing more wings from her body to tear into them as the Resonant scarred the shores of death with fire and steel. Fordola and Eiserne’s blades crossed as they flew past one another. A deft pull of Penance’s trigger ignited not only the heavy steel of the gunblade but Eiserne’s scythe, swallowing the erupting aether and coating her grim blade in deep blue flame. They were a helix of crimson and azure, spiraling fury that swallowed Robin’s cage in hellfire, transforming ice and crystal into ash and embers. WIth wings of fire, Eiserne and Fordola took flight, becoming as a calamity unto themselves, devouring Styx in fire.

Blades and souls roared in terrifying unison, shattering the sky above Styx itself like glass as Fordola and Eiserne gleamed through the dark. Light pierced through the veil, hot and blinding, piercing lances tearing into the heart of Styx, the light of the world of the living revealed in the shattering of the veil. Infinite realities, the light of myriad versions of Etheirys shining like the sun through the fractured sky as the Resonant tore through Robin.

Darkness shuddered, the uncountable souls below the water howling in deafening unison as Fordola and Eiserne both swung their blades through the aspect of hatred herself, Styx’s waters billowing out from the arc of their swings in a massive wave of blackened blood that crystalized instantly as Robin’s massive cage crumbled. Thorns wilted, her field of macabre roses reduced to ash. Her wings of crimson burned to their roots upon her back until naught remained of them.

She fell to her knees, her fell chorus silenced. The wounds of reality seeping into Styx shuddered and warped, as if slowly healing, bringing only shadow and darkness back upon the nightmarish shores. The body of Falangrym too fell to the shallow waters as the lances of crystalized blood melted away, the doctor as of yet clinging to life, mumbling ever still to himself.

Fordola stood, slashing Penance through the air, the blade so hot it warped the very air around it in a dizzying haze and still-burning aether. She turned her head to see Eiserne standing before Robin as she sat slumped in the shallow waters of Styx.

“Why…?” Robin demanded, blood spilling from her mouth. “Why…am I cursed…to suffer so…”

Her head bobbed, struggling to look Eiserne in the eyes as she stood over her.

“Again… You-” she heaved, retching blood against EIserne’s rags. “...no. Not you.”

Robin held shaking hands before her, the waters of Styx gently slipping between her fingers.

“Just…a husk…” Robin muttered. She looked up from her trembling hand and grabbed at Eiserne’s gauntlet, pulling her close. “I know… I know you can hear me…”

Eiserne let Robin pull at her, falling to a knee so that she could look her in the eye. The crazed, blood soaked woman, with bloody wings torn and smoldering, looked deep into Eiserne’s eyes.

“Keep your lies… I hope you choke on them…” Robin hissed, a cursed smile on her face. “Even if I die… I’ve already won. You won’t…you won’t even realize it. I only wish… I could have been there…when you did.”

Robin’s grip loosened, and she toppled over.

“Tell me again, husk.” Robin said weakly. “Tell me your name.”

“Eiserne.” she responded coldly.

Robin coughed, the yellow of her dress stained red as she lay in Styx’s waters. Tiny waves washed against her as Fordola came to Eiserne’s side, gunblade in hand.

“Eiserne…” Robin said. “I hope you get to meet her some day.”

Eiserne frowned.

“Who?”

“The real you. The one waiting…in the fog.” she said. “Then…maybe you’ll hate her as much as I do…when she takes everything from you too…”

Robin clutched at her wounds, and in clawed hands beheld the crimson of her lifesblood turn foul and black. Soft, amber eyes became broken and bloodshot, the bloodsoaked auburn pigtails of her hair becoming heavy and wet as oil. Robin looked to Fordola as her pale skin spidered with inky black veins.

“Failure… Is my… Is my father still alive?”

“Aye.” Fordola answered.

Robin coughed as parts of her body became as stone.

“From one…failure to another…” she stammered, her voice weak. “Do me but one kindness… Kill him for me…here upon Styx.”

She writhed in agony as the spreading stone across her flesh began to crumble to ash.

“I want him to…feel the full weight of his failures…before we meet again…”

Robin began to sink deeper into Styx, the ghostly grip of the souls of the dead reaching up to drag her under the surface. She gasped for air, her amber eyes wide and dim, no more lustrous than stone now. As stone and ash claimed her body, she no longer looked pained. As her skin blackened and was drained of life, she looked peaceful.

“Sin…sin…little thrush…in the midst of sin…” she whispered, the souls claiming the last of her to the depths of Styx, an arm outstretched, clinging just above the surface. Upon her flesh danced tiny sparks, a meager flame that slowly crept down the lengths of her body, leaving charred embers to sail pitiful downward into the waters. “Within…is bestowed…a queen…”

In murky depths, she vanished, neither Fordola nor Eiserne gazing upon the waters to watch the tortured soul of Robin somn Aulus…or perhaps just a Vestige, fade into darkness. Fordola placed a careful, cautious hand on her friend’s shoulder, Eiserne staring listlessly into the distance.

“We…won, right?” Eiserne asked quietly, fear laced into her words. She stood in silent contemplation a moment before turning to face Fordola, fighting back tears. Fordola nodded, but Eiserne shook off her friend’s concerned hand, a bitter whimper escaping from her as she turned away. “Then why does it feel like…”

Fordola searched desperately for words of comfort, but found none.

It was all she could do to simply wrap her arms around Eiserne’s shoulders and hug the poor girl. Eiserne lay her head against Fordola’s breast and sobbed, clutching tightly against Fordola, abandoning her scythe to the shallows with a splash. Fordola placed a hand upon Eiserne’s head, the upturned tufts of her hair grazing against her own cheek.

“I’m…” Eiserne whimpered. “I am me, right? I’m not a husk…I’m a person! I’m not T.G.01! I’m not a monster!”

Fordola spoke softly as Eiserne’s cries became more panic-stricken. She could feel the intensity of her companion’s heartbeat race against her..

“You are what you choose to be.” Fordola said, embracing Eiserne warmly. She pulled back, keeping her arms upon Eiserne’s shoulders, leaning down to look her in the eye. Eiserne’s blood-stained eyes ran wet with tears. “I’ve seen ye’ choose, Eiserne, again an’ again. Ye’ don’t need me, nor anyone else ta’ tell ye’ who you can and can’t be. The Eiserne I know - the Eiserne that’s my friend? I know who she is.”

Fordola placed a hand against Eiserne’s cheek.

“She’s a bit strange; can’t ever seem to decide if she’s happy or plain sour all the time. She gets confused from time to time, but that’s normal. When she’s made up ‘er mind though, aye, now that’s a sight fer’ sore eyes. And she’s tough - tougher than any gal I’ve ever met twice ‘er size, me included. She talks to ‘erself a lot, but that was before she had so many friends. Now she’s got me and Gradey ta’ talk to…and one day, I hope, she’ll get to meet a very special friend of mine.”

Fordola sniffled, a tear in her own eye now.

“‘cause see, I know what I’m choosing.” she continued. “I’m choosing to be Eiserne’s friend. Not T.G.01’s…not Number 2, or some nameless husk’s; Eiserne f*ckin’ Drossel. And I’m choosing to make the world just a little bit better for her an’ me…’cause she an’ I got our whole lives ahead of us, without cages, without chains. An’ if she’ll let me, I’d choose to be not just her friend, but her sister.”

Eiserne smiled, a warm smile without any mischievousness or malice behind it. She pressed against Fordola, wrapping her arms over her shoulders and clutching tightly.

“That’s what I want.” she whispered. “I want us to be free…together.”

“Free, eh?”

Fordola and Eiserne looked toward the voice; a pompous, incredulous scoff. Light that tore through Styx’s outer membrane of starless void cast a heavy shadow against the massive shape of Garrickson as he stepped upon the shores, dress shoes sloshing through water, clapping his massive hands slowly.

“Gotta admit, that’s one hell of an act to follow.” he bellowed with a chuckle.

With light at his back, Garrickson stopped well enough away from Fordola and Eiserne, stopping to stand beside Vykke as he silently observed.

“Garrickson?” Fordola barked, sloshing through the knee-deep murk to face the delegate, somehow hale and whole within Styx. “God’s blood, how did you-?”

“Shouldn’t have left the door open, kid.” he sneered. The broad highlander placed a firm hand upon Vykke’s shoulders, giving the slender entity a slap upon his bare, muscular back. “Well, not that you had any choice really.”

Fordola and Eiserne glowered at the two men before them, neither of them seemingly perturbed by what had just happened.

“See, old Number 3 here; hate ta’ admit it, but he’s right. Always was. All the way back when he first showed up, ol’ boy’s been quite the prognosticator.” Garrickson gave a playful sneer that went unreturned to Vykke. He gave another rapp against him before taking a step forward, adjusting the rolled up cuffs of his buttoned shirt, still dirty from the confrontation with the Blasphemy. “Shame I didn't have ‘im around in my gambling days.”

Fordola didn’t take kindly to Garrickson’s levity.

“The hells are you doing, Garrickson?” she demanded, wary of the last words of warning he had left Fordola with.

Garrickson tilted his head, spectacles reflecting the vibrant light of reality behind him that yet pierced unto Styx. He looked to Vykke expectantly, the so-called Trueborn not hesitating to speak for him.

“The pretender is here to play his role, that this tragedy may finally come to a close.” he said menacingly to Fordola. Garrickson shrugged with a sarcastic grin.

“I’d’ve put it a little nicer, but aye, that’s the long and short of it.”

Fordola scowled.

“So what then; you some kind of thrall to Vykke?”

“Thrall?” Garrickson laughed incredulously. “Afraid it ain’t so simple.”

He pointed a finger at Fordola, stepping through the waters with his other hand behind his back.

“Freedom though? Now that - that’s a complex problem.” he stated. “Number 3 would have you believe there ain’t even such a thing. To him, you an’ I are just pawns on a board in a game that’s already been decided. I didn’t believe him at first, I mean, how many broken minds does Ala Mhigo got ranting and raving about prophecies and doomsdays on any given day? What was one more vagrant lost to the bottle on Low Street?”

Garrickson crossed his arms across his broad chest in consideration.

“Well this one, aye, he was somethin’ special. See, he had some pretty…we’ll call ‘em thoughtful ideas back during the war. Ones that answered quite a few of the conundrums the Empire was havin’ a right hard time answering. You might say it was something of divine intervention that he appeared in my district, right when the Vox Populi needed a man with ideas to inspire them, right when the Empire needed a kickstart to their long-languishing Resonant program. Needless to say, Number 3’s a real ace I needed close to the vest.”

“So what then? What now, Garrickson?” Fordola roared, cutting into Styx with her sword as swung it in a fury. “Ya’ mean ta’ settle our score here an’ now? ‘Cause my answer stays the same.”

Garrickson raised his hands slowly to his chest and shrugged.

“See, that’s the part that chaps my hide.” he said. “I go an’ offer you godsdamned everything you want, after putting my neck on the line for you, and you can’t give me one little thing in return.”

He flexed his fingers in his fist, cracking his knuckles loudly as black energy coursed across the length of his brawny arms.

“But I’m nothing if not a man of principles. So here’s the deal;” he said, resting his fists calmly at his side. “As our mutual friend here so eloquently put, I, like as not, have a job to do. I had hoped that Asina might’ve pulled through, or maybe you’d have actually listened to godsdamned reason, but I’ll be a tonberry’s uncle if this sonofabitch didn’t lay out exactly how this would all play out. Right down to how I’d find you and our wayward Number 2 down here in the dark. Asina too; said the old boy…er…what’s left of ‘im…”

Garrickson pointed to where Asina’s mangled body lay face-up in the shallows, bleeding and babbling. The delegate sauntered over to him casually.

“...said he’d be right here. Ain’t that right, Aulus?”

Asina’s words were incomprehensible, the doctor still somehow alive after being impaled upon Robin’s thorns. Garrickson kicked him just so, the doctor’s body limp.

“See, he even said the bunker where all the delegates would be safe - said it’d be every last one’s undoing. I hadn’t thought such…maniacal cruelty truly possible, but lo and behold, Marteen - that little sh*t. Actually did it. Saw it plain for myself. That’s when I knew…”

Garrickson gestured widely to the whole of Styx, impressed by its majestic horror.

“This Styx sh*te? Pretty f*ckin’ real.” Garrickson admitted.

He turned to face back toward Vykke, who waited silently and patiently, Garrickson lowering his arms and resting his large hands upon the belt loops of his trousers.

“So, man’s got the right of it.” he took a casual step toward Fordola, shoes plunging below the water as he approached where they stood amid the flow. “And the good news is that you, Fordola, are still gonna’ get that freedom you want. In fact, because of you, I’m going to do great things for Ala Mhigo.”

“I’m not doing sh*te all with you.” she hissed.

“No, see, that’s where you’re wrong.” Garrickson insisted, stepping slowly and steadily into the water, Styx rising to his heel. “See, you and I? We’re apex predators - cream of the crop! I thought we’d need Asina and his perfect little miscreant there. Wanted to believe it, as a matter of fact. Me? I’m a man who loves a come-back story. Thought, given the means, Asina’d do the right thing and come back from all this a better man. Back with his daughter, and ready to do his part for Ala Mhigo’s future. But I’ll be damned…sure enough, the old boy did exactly what Number 3 said he would. Down the letter. That was his fate.”

“But it’s not ours. Ours is glorious. We are Resonance perfected - the truth was there all along. We didn’t need Asina or Number 2. We have the perfect specimens…right here. Ours is the blueprint for a future where conviction…purpose…patriotism; these will be the factors that determine who among us are worthy of strength. We are going to be the first in a long, long line of new legends. The Resonance shall be our shield, and we the standard emblazoned upon it as we forge the steel of humanity’s resolve. No more Empires. No more Kings. No more Chosen. True, red-blooded Ala Mhigans will be the ones to take the van in leading all of Etheirys into a future free of weakness. Free of the masses, cowering in fear, waiting for someone else to bear the torch against the night. The whole of society will become as a single pack, where the strong are no longer held back by the chains of the weak.”

“You would become a tyrant!” Fordola roared back as he slowly approached. “You’re no less delusional than Asina! Look around you, you daft fool! Look at this place and what it is, what it truly is! This was never meant for mortal eyes! The Resonance, Styx…these aren’t weapons to wield…these are forces of nature!”

“And soon it too shall fall under man’s heel.” Garrickson continued with a smirk. “Just as we will take command of nature, of the star, of all of creation - so too will man at last take control of his destiny.”

“You’re all the same!” Eiserne raged, splashing Styx as she angrily stepped forward. Her teeth might as well have been fangs for how she gnashed them with fury at Garrickson. “You talk and you talk and you talk about humanity and how you’re the one who’s gonna fix everything wrong with us… But you- you’re the ones that are broken! You’re the ones that need to be fixed, but can’t, because as long as there’s a stupid throne for you to claim, you’ll break and break and break everything you touch!”

“We’re not born monsters,” she hissed, holding an ireful stare upon Garrickson, “bastards like you turn us into them! Power-hungry assholes like you…you’re the real deathless. You never go away. You never actually die. There’s always another maggot eating at the corpses you leave in your wake.”

Garrickson at last stopped, the waters well up to his knees.

“Tell me something, E.D.01,” Garrickson demanded coldly. “Do you remember what your name is? Your real one?”

Eiserne scowled, unable to answer.

“Shut your mouth, or I’ll shut it for you.” Fordola interjected.

Garrickson paid her no mind.

“A shame.” he said, dismissive of Fordola entirely. “And this…’Eiserne Drossel?’”

“I chose it! That’s my name!”

“Funny,” Garrickson continued, the levity in his voice full gone. “I seem to recall that was a codename lovingly given to you by Asina. You see, after you went and killed his precious daughter, he couldn’t stand the sight of you-”

“Leave her alone, Garrickson!”

“-and since T.G.01 was an incorrect designation, given the presence of two souls within you, a new one was required.”

“Shut up!” Eiserne shrieked.

“So he named you in the fathertongue of eld - appropriate.”

“Garrickson!” Fordola readied her sword.

“It means ‘iron thrush.’ A bird that even without a cage could never escape, betrayed by its own wings. Bound forever in its garden of steel, too heavy to fly free.”

“Shut up!” Eiserne screamed, charging him.

“Eiserne Drossel - “ he began.

Fordola went wide eyed and rushed him.

“ - In the garden sleeps a messenger;”

Eiserne stopped.

Garrickson furrowed his brow.

“Dream now of silent oblivion.”

Fordola felt her heart stop, Styx’s waters fighting against her as she screamed in protest, unsure whether to run to Eiserne or Garrickson. Time itself slowed, indecision and panic tearing at Fordola’s heart, the waters of Styx becoming as stone upon her feet, encasing her where she fumbled and tried to run to Eiserne.

Eiserne held the point of her scythe against her own chest. She stared blankly ahead. The fire of Jolly, the rage of Gloomy…they were gone from her. She was a corpse - lifeless.

Fordola screamed, but her cries echoed in futility.

Eiserne fell upon the blade with a kneel, the crescent steel piercing her heart and staining its blackened blade in crimson lifesblood as it rose from her fall. Fordola’s body had become as ice, her heart and lungs fully stopped within the confines of her chest. She watched as Eiserne’s eyes went blank and lifeless, her body limp, falling upon her knees as blood flowed into Styx.

No. was the only thought running through Fordola’s mind as she rushed to Eiserne’s side, panic stricken, her hands stunned to inaction. She felt the fire in her veins die, her mind going blank, her mouth dry.

No.

She reached out to Eiserne, the loathsome scythe buried in her chest, the blade penetrating her back like an accursed iron wing.

Eiserne did not move. She did not blink. She did not breathe, or smile, or frown, or ask silly questions, or get irritated, or swear, or pout, or cry. She didn’t laugh, she didn’t tilt her head in the curious way she always did, or slouch her shoulders on purpose to look annoyed.

She was gone.

“No…” Fordola muttered. “Not again…”

Resonate. she thought. Please. Please.

Fordola’s eyes burned, but not with the thrumming power of the Resonance.

“C’mon…” she mumbled, choking on every breath. “Resonate…”

Her head shook, disbelief and rage coiling her mind into an inferno.

“Do it!” she screamed, shaking Eiserne’s lifeless corpse. “Answer me! f*cking answer me, damn you!”

Her mind raced with mantras, again and again.

I am a hunter, the Resonance is a tool.

I am a hunter, the Resonance is a tool.

The Resonance is mine to command.

The Resonance is mine to command!

Deep breaths.

Deep breaths.

But she couldn’t breathe. The Resonance would not listen.

The fire in her eyes died, just as Eiserne’s limp, impaled body fell softly against her, Styx’s cold, bloody water washing against her.

“Why…?” she asked weakly.

No one answered her.

“Why!?” she demanded, clutching tight to Eiserne’s body.

“‘Fate’s decree.’” Garrickson answered with an unsatisfied sneer. “Sorry - nothing personal.”

Fordola shook with rage, Eiserne’s blood coating her quivering hands.

“You’ve made it very…very personal.” Fordola growled, no more a woman than a beast in her rage, looking at Garrickson from over her shoulder.

“Suit yourself. I’m doin’ you a favor anyway. An’ don’t go thinking that offin’ yourself like in Ala Gaanha’ll help you, neither. Death on the shores of Styx is as real as it gets - Resonance or no. Now…with that, the legacy of Garlemald’s hold on Ala Mhigo can be laid to rest.” Garrickson said coldly.

“Now c’mon; get up.”

“No.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

Fordola roared against Styx, the fangs of a beast bared against her prey, an incoherent, savage scream in defiance of the dark itself. But for all her frustration, all the rage that dwelled upon her fingertips, demanding she tear not only Garrickson, but the whole of Styx to shreds, Fordola could only cry. For every instinct that welcomed the coming of the beast, every drive that wanted to sunder creation upon her steel, it was all she could do to sheathe Penance into its holster. For all her defiance, for every step she once surely thought was her own, for every choice she claimed would bring her her azure freedom, Fordola could only rise, as she was bidden, with Eiserne in her arms.

Garrickson did not appear amused, annoyed even; however, it was Vykke, who remained almost nonplussed by the affair that angered her the most.

She stared venom into his golden eyes, for it was all that she had within her now.

“Was this what you wanted?” she demanded of the haunting man. “From the beginning, was this what all of it was for?”

Vykke slowly crossed his arms, his expression unchanged.

“Dear sister…” he began. “A burdensome legacy rests within you - a tragedy born of the Lifeweaver’s hubris far, far before you were born in this flesh. The natural order has been in chaos ever since, the great flow’s singular current torn into myriad divergences. It is because of that legacy that you must now suffer, but so too will your final act at last staunch the flow of limitless chaos. Order must be restored. All who yet exist are bound to Styx’s flow, for to exist at all is to be a slave to fate. There can be no exceptions.”

Fordola looked down at Eiserne, her face still, eyes still open to the nightmare of Styx. She could not find words in her heart. All she could find was hatred.

“There…she waits for me…” Fordola could hear Asina mutter pitifully. “I saw her… Styx…she’s there… She waits for me! Styx…oh Styx…my sweet Robin’s soul…”

Fordola could not wrest her eyes from Eiserne, and though her friend - her sister - did not glimmer with the radiance of life, did not hope, did not dream, Fordola would keep her promise.

She turned her back to them all - to Garrickson, to Vykke, and Asina - to the torn, burning images of the Etheirys she called home just beyond the broken veil. She pulled Eiserne close and stepped further into Styx.

“You can’t save her, Fordola.” Garrickson shouted. “The outcome’s already decided. The girl is fated to die here. Just let her go. The future, a real future awaits.”

Fordola did not stop, the water rising to her waist, cold, biting death burying barbed teeth against her flesh as the burning souls of the dead tore into her. Garrickson looked confused, turning to Vykke with a furrowed brow.

“The hells’s she doin’?” he demanded.

“Two errant souls…” Vykke said softly and somberly. “Long ago, they each stood upon a revelation that might save those they loved from calamity. But that revelation would take from them everything - a price one was willing to pay, while the other thought the price too steep.”

Fordola descended into the water, the ghastly, blackened hands of Styx rising from the depths to guide her and Eiserne’s body into its miresome depths with claw and fang.

“Their conflict would lead to a millennia of tragedy, one that would not only devour the star, but reflections uncounted. They would sunder everything in their dispute, staunching Styx’s eternal flow, sewing chaos across existence itself. They would defy the cycle of life and death. But Styx cannot be denied. One does not borrow from Styx - to deny death, to spare one’s soul its return to the flow is to take from another. But in time, the soul thins…frays. Deprived of the nourishing waters of true death, even errant souls such as theirs would become frail and wither. Now those two souls return to Styx, as they always would, that we might finally be rid of the scourge of freedom’s chaos, and bring order back to creation and beyond.”

Garrickson scowled.

“What about the Resonance?”

Vykke remained stoic.

“Echoes and Resonances…these are fabrications, imitations. Falsehoods, made in arrogance by fools and pretenders to mimic the cycle. Only in a sundered world, steeped in chaos, and bereft of Styx’s flow, could such abominations exist.” Vykke lowered his gaze, watching Fordola intently as she carried Eiserne deeper and deeper into Styx’s cold, silent waters. “On its shores, there is no escape. Only death, true and glorious, awaits life here.”

“All this planning, just so she takes a dip in Styx, eh?” he mused, though annoyed. “Seems an awful waste.”

“My sister…she is defiant.” Vykke answered. “But she cannot defy fate itself. She exists, and therefore is a slave to its whims. Her reckoning comes, regardless of her resentment of order.”

Fordola stepped into Styx, countless hands pulling her below the water. They tried to pry Eiserne from her, but she refused to let go. Claws raked against her, but she didn’t care. She beheld before her the roaring maelstrom hidden behind the Resonance’s recreation - untold souls, ghastly skeletal shapes cloaked in torn shrouds, swirling and swarming forever in a ceaseless death rattle. Darkness itself seemed to yield at the the storm’s eye, Fordola’s sight bending and warping, stretching thin and contorting as she and Eiserne were dragged to it. She could feel the thick, gruesome water fill her lungs, but she was undeterred, beyond the need for breath. The Resonance had steeled her to this pain, strengthened her against the deafening cacophony of tortured wails, screaming in her ears the horrors of realities unmade and unborn. Visions of the dead blinded her, but she did not weep for them, for in the Resonance death was her erstwhile companion - a soulmate that ever kept her company. Ice and fire tore into her flesh, burning beyond reckoning, but she was as stone, hardened by ages, eons, lifetimes within the merciless grip of the Resonance.

Vykke watched, the golden flame in his eyes flickered, and for the briefest of seconds, even in the endless shadow and crimson glow of Styx’s crescent, bloody moon, there was a hint of forlorn sadness in the glow.

“She would have wanted to believe she could change things. I have but granted her a mercy, to believe even now that she is free… To her, I owe at least that much.”

Darkness entangled Fordola, driving stakes into her flesh so that she might never know freedom, but in radiance she was in flight. She clutched Eiserne to her heart. She thought only of promises made. Promises that would be kept.

Or Styx itself would burn in her wroth.

Darkness parted, pain ceased, and in the nexus of Styx, within the heart of the eternal spiral of death, Fordola could see only light.