“My Khan… what are we here for?” Gabriel asked. The man had largely recovered from whatever incident had robbed his memories, and his spymaster gave him the all clear along with several second opinions from psychics of admittedly lesser skill. Though still, some part of Iktan still didn’t entirely trust the old Spider’s intentions… and though Gabriel’s continued loyalty was unquestionable, it seemed that some memories remained more lost than he was told.
Little matter, he supposed, he enjoyed talking about the things that weighed on his mind. For a century and a half, it had been him and Cipactli in that cave, feeding on whatever fish and beasts he could catch with his own two hands. He greatly enjoyed the peace that gave him, his little dragón staring up at him with eyes glowing with equal parts curiosity and power. But it was good to have an audience with the anatomy to respond in human tongue too.
“Do you recall all I have told you about my family?”
The fiery man paused, raising a hand to his chin. “Some, not all.”
“Figures.” He huffed, getting down on a knee so that he was merely almost twice the height of the man. “When my grandfather died, I was on the final stages of Wretchhood and was never intended to reach even half of that. We were to carry on his bloodline, and I was the last member who had not chosen the path of Power. Still, I was a shortsighted young man, and I chased those distant dreams until…”
“Until?” Gabriel asked.
“Her.” He reminisced wistfully. “Skin like gold, eyes hazel pools that shone with understanding. It has been so long I don’t even remember her name… but her face lives seared in my memory like a scar never to heal. She was no noble scion, no daughter of a Wasteland chieftain or Khan. But she understood me better than any of them.”
His expression soured as he reached down to the ashen earth, taking a fistful of sand impregnated with streaks of slag-like glass. “I had my daughter with her, and she was like a little miracle. At that moment, I could not understand why my grandfather would give it all up, to cut himself off from his family, to become a distant God-King. To miss all of this for the world.”
Cipactli growled from above like rolling thunder, sensing his father’s pain. He called him off, that would not be necessary.
“When he died, the world caved in. And when I ran with my family, away from the ruins of the Capital, I had honestly believed I could escape it all. Live a small life, die a mere man. I would have loved to have just watched our child grow up with her… and then they were taken. And I, already dead, marched to the cliffs to join them.”
“But you lived.” Gabriel pointed out.
“I did.” He answered. “I understand my grandfather now. The world only respects power, and it will do all it can to crush any hope of the small and the fragile. The only recourse is to grow big and take all you can back from it.”
He walked to the centre of the great crater, a fitting grave for a great man. Even now, so long after the battle that not even the nomadic descendants of the western Mountain Kingdoms bothered picking through the scraps, this place thrummed with power. There was no marker, no grave or monument, but his grandfather’s corpse was a statement in of itself. A scar upon the land that stubbornly refused to heal.
And here, the whispers that had driven him forward were the loudest.
“I don’t know when it started, but I was visited by voices in that cave. I thought I was going insane, but no, unfortunately, I exist very much in reality.” He said softly. “But I know my birthright is scattered across the wastes, the key to true power, the secret that would take down that Bruja…”
He didn’t get to finish that thought, as abruptly a thrum of quiet fury travelled down his spine from his psychic link with Cipactli. Above him, thunder roared, lightning illuminating the outline of the colossal reptile who was pulsing with displeasure.
“Something’s coming.” He told Gabriel.
Understanding immediately, the trusty old man took on a fighting stance, magma-hot fluid flame dripping from the gaps between his chitin.
The air warped before them, and from a gap carved in a dimension he had not the capability to physically observe, a figure walked through. A man with crystal wings clad in resplendent yet practical armour. Not that even the best metals would be much more than decoration on someone operating at this level of power, he could feel the controlled current of Si in the air. A mastery of radiation honed only by powerful Aberrants given great investment.
Gabriel rushed to meet the threat, growing a massive blade of metallic scales. It churned like that ridiculous relic weapon old Asta used, the movement granting even deadlier potential to an already doubtless deadly limb.
In response, the stranger grew his own blade of transparent crystal, light dancing as he parried his initial strike, and sparks flew against the sky. Nuclear power was concentrated into his fist, the ambient levels of Si falling as muscles bulged and blackened.
In a single strike, the air split into plasma, sending Gabriel soaring into the distance.
Inconvenient. Well, at least the man was durable, he was more than certain to survive this. Though that meant he had to deal with this interloper himself.
“Hm… that sigil, you are of high rank of the Jackalope Sect itself, correct?” He deduced, looking down at the proudly displayed horned rabbit carved from precious gemstone inlaid with Spirit Metals. Not exactly an Elder, likely despite the level of power… possibly an heir?
“I am Jackson Kalu, Prince of the Empire, o Great Khan. You should not be here. Not yet anyway.” He growled.
“Hm, I believe I have heard of you, a Changeling blessed with the gift of Prophecy.” To waste power in the form of one of the few mutations one could choose in favour of fleshy aesthetics as trivial as ones gender was a choice he could never understand, but power spoke loudly enough. He supposed he could take this opportunity to learn the strength granted to the Empire’s most precious scions. “Though imperfect it seems, if you thought you would beat me to my fate.”
Black rain began to patter down as Cipactli whipped up a fury, tornadoes being birthed from bloody clouds above, drawing charred sand into the boiling sky.
Scowling, the Prince drew power into himself, dimming the very light around him. But oh, two can certainly play at that game indeed. Taking out the relic-saw he had liberated from his traitorous scourge of an uncle, now tipped with blades of his own blood harder than any obsidian, and holding it as a mortal man would a slightly long dagger, he activated the ancient artifice and threw it at his foe at speeds rivalling a bullet.
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Immediately, he responded by growing a massive organic shield. Impressive reaction speed, or perhaps some sort of combat-capable precognition? Mutations tended to improve upon each other, operating by rules scarcely understood by human minds, psychics especially tended to simply iterate upon the complexity of the tumour networks in their brains, primary or otherwise. Still, it was of little matter, the fact he was even here proved the future was flexible. That was all the leeway he needed.
Rushing towards him, the Prince lashed out with superheated crystal blades, rendered white hot with radioactive power. With his great size, even had he been faster than his foe, dodging would have been a difficult ask. So he simply blocked the blow with his massive forearm, the scent of searing flesh filling the air.
He had become quite acquainted with that scent indeed.
Dragging his nails against the dents in his skin and gouging out his own cauterised wounds, streams of blood coated his arm like a shell and hardened into crystalline armour, before he started circulating power from freshly opened meridians through the makeshift gauntlet. Slamming into his opponent with speed that evidently surprised him, he punched him straight into the air, a cloud of superheated steam and shrapnel following the impact.
Above him, Cipactli charged up his breath and let loose an earth-shattering beam of pure energy. Momentarily outshining the sun, had it been visible beyond the perpetual storm surrounding Cipactli. He was actually thrown back by the force of the explosion, for any lesser Aberrant it would have simply overpowered any defences they had and vaporised them entirely.
To his surprise, a crystal cocoon appeared relatively unscathed in the middle of a pit full of molten slag created by the blast. Interesting, he had managed to redirect the vast majority of the energy, it seemed, enough that the protective shell remained intact. The question arose then, where did the energy go?
Shattering into tiny fragments, inside the Prince was a bloody mess. Armour charred, skin at places appearing more like carbon than flesh, yet blazing with a new sort of power.
Before he could react, the Prince charged him, face morphing into a massive beak that closed around his face, only kept at bay by his crown of horns, keeping it from closing. Bright orbs of energy coalesced in the burned arms of the Prince as he returned Cipactli’s favour.
And here, where the walls between worlds were already thin, weakened further by the intruder, Iktan knew he had won.
The world flashed as they found themselves somewhere else entirely. A wasteland of decaying buildings, a once grand city left to rot. The very air felt wrong, and just for a moment his assailant was distracted enough for him to punch him square in the gut, tearing a good chunk of beak off as he flew into distant ruins. He puked blood, several of his internal organs were destroyed by the supercharged attack, but thankfully, he had redundancies for them. Even had he not, he was more than capable of enduring until his natural regeneration could do the rest. Not that it mattered, though, he had something more important than death.
Neither of them would be here long, he knew instinctively. Though he knew not where this place was, this wasn’t how one was meant to arrive. Still, any opportunity to grasp part of his birthright was enough.
And there, half buried in the sand, a scrap of mummified flesh still thrumming with power.
He knew instinctively, it was his birthright.
A hypersonic force slammed into him, sending him a good couple miles away from where he was. Like a living bullet wreathed in power, the Prince had hit him hard enough to leave a sizable hole in his abdomen. Impressive, it had been quite a while since anything physical hurt him beyond superficial.
Already, the wound was starting to stitch shut, though, heightened regeneration collaborating with his hardened blood to seal the damage. By the time the distant blue blur came back, he was ready.
He pooled his power to a single point, and before he could be hit again, threw a single punch.
The air before his fist lit ablaze, a tornado rising through the dead air from the sheer force of it. Impressively, his opponent managed to power through this, but with the amount of force they were hit with, their crystal armour was cracking, and the second hit was barely a love tap compared to the first colossal impact.
He shouldn’t stay here long, Cipactli would not like it.
Turning on his heel, he sprinted at his opponent at blinding speeds, easily catching up to them and slapping them into the ground hard enough that they bounced half a mile away. Really, he should finish him off, but he had to do something first.
Running back to the site where he had arrived, he grabbed the small scrap of dried flesh which glowed crimson in his hands. A shrivelled heart, boiling so thickly with Si, even the pads of his armoured fingers began to burn.
Before he could do much more with it, though, he noticed something. In the distance, a strange black cloud was gathering. With no small degree of amazement, he realised it was… insects? And as though noticing him too, the vast majority of the swarm turned their attention onto him.
They immediately descended, screaming through the air in a swarm so thick there was seemingly no space in the distant cloud unoccupied by chitin. Doubtless, he could handle them, but he should finish this quick. Now, should he simply consume this, or place it in some other-
A blast of lightning that could trigger an avalanche hit him squarely in the hand, knocking the heart out of his fingers. His fingers tensed uncontrollably, frying nerves yet to regenerate, not allowing him to even shut it.
He forced his Si into the limb and made it clench into a fist regardless.
“MURDERERS!” Screeched the insects as they descended. Giant beetles with human faces, he had never heard of such a thing, yet somehow they felt familiar. They lashed against his skin, dealing minimal damage, but with the rate they were piling on, it could be troublesome.
He reached towards the heart, managing to grab hold before a particularly large beetle took grasp of the other half. Before he knew what was happening, several smaller insects swarmed in and began to chew with speed he was not even aware could be possible. Faster even than his own superhuman reaction times.
In rage, the air around him turned to a fiery vortex, a burning heat immediately evaporating several nearby bugs. All he had left was a small scrap as the heart-eaters retreated, so deep into the swarm he could not sense nor distinguish their presence.
But he knew they could not destroy the heart. This was merely a setback.
Watching his foe approach, themselves wreathed in a shield of blue power, he took a glance at the little shrivelled scrap in his fist and shoved it into his half-healed wound.
The swarm screeched again as the skies burned red, power flowing into his soul so overwhelming he fell to a knee. The universe wavered, and they were shunted back into the real world.
Before the Prince could react, he blazed forward, striking with a sword of pure Si. A crystal-clad arm holding an intricate diamond blade fell to the ground, devoid of life, as he sent spears of boiling blood to impale the body.
“Any last words, princeling?” He asked, rage breaking through his voice as steam flooded the air.
He had the gall to laugh. “I have seen my fate, I do not die here. All has gone according to my plan.”
And just like that, they disappeared. A timed teleportation array? A risky play, one that would only work once, but perhaps once was all that he needed.
Ciapctli roared, mirroring his own anger, shaking heaven and Earth. The Prince would not get away a second time.
“My Khan! What happened?” Gabriel asked as he finally made his way back, a sizable hole carved into his armoured plating revealing coiling guts much the same shade as charred meat. Idly, he noted how he should have been in a much more sorry state, but it seemed all of his wounds had completely sealed by now. All that was left was the sting of failure, far from something he was unacquainted with.
“A delay.” He responded, staring down at the thin crimson glow around his skin.
