47 seconds earlier…

  Every major city in the Hadiran Accord was getting ready to pop-off with fireworks and nanotech-based aerial shows. At the Compound of the Fifth, Etienne had personally put on a display, dazzling the population of the medical campus with the imagery of legendary flying beasts – dragons of every kind, Rocs, winged serpents, and a blazing phoenix that seemed to emerge straight out of the last embers of the setting sun itself. For those with access to an overlay, the image of the Earth seemed to crest over the horizon. A recreation of the fleet traveling through the waxing night passed above, with an optional narration explaining the event, with the voices of the Eidolon themselves telling the tale from their own recollection.

  But in Trazad, on the western terrace of the palace, overlooking the massive sea-like lake, Emperor Iresha felt less than celebratory. He watched the Kitezan skiff approach – everything seemed on the up-and-up. The pilots of the vessel were communicating with the ground crews, there wasn’t any suspicious haste with the approach, and it landed exactly where it was told to touch-down. When the ship was given permission to open its loading-ramp door, Iresha had sent some of his guards in. He watched them bring the weakened former-Duke out, and pat him down in full sight of everyone, clearing him to approach. Iresha swallowed a nervous breath, and he saw every step that distant cousin took to get closer.

  Mardu himself, while stressed from travel and a week’s worth of self-imposed starvation, seemed exactly as Iresha remembered.

  If either of the two men were aware of anything after that moment, it might’ve been the loud click-like sound that preceded the explosion. After that, the cut to black would have been instantaneous. The gardens were completely destroyed, sending trees, bushes, and stone-architecture flying in every direction. Glass and walls shattered like dry leaves. Bodies that weren’t evaporated by the blast were torn apart and ejected with force. The terrace itself was little more than a smoldering crater, with the hollowed-out remains of that ship sitting in the midst of it…and within that, sat the singed shell of a well-protected, casket-like container.

  The lid was damaged, but it hissed anyway as it cracked open, and one side split apart, making space for a spindly, deformed hand to rise up and grasp at the lip.

  Ren had gotten an eyeful of the explosion from where she’d been flying circles around the capitol. It was a no-brainer to go down and find out what was going on; she found carnage, but she also found her Eidolon, “Sir!”

  “Dame Ren?” Rylen answered in confusion, the lone entity staring at the conflagration from what was once the doorway into the ballroom, “I…I was just here with…Xanarken…”

  “…Orders, sir?”

  The First didn’t seem to understand what was said to him, but when Ren repeated herself, he shook his head, “I don’t…even know. It all just blew up. Where’s Xanarken?”

  “…It…burns…” Ren heard, and she turned towards the wreckage; she flew upward to get a better view, and spotted the sarcophagus in a divot that looked like the epicenter of the blast, “…Everything…thing…every… Burns… It’s…all burning…”

  “What in the actual Hell…?”

  Within the palace, Gabriel had retreated back to his room some hours before. The explosion hadn’t quite sent fire that far in, but the shockwave had caused extensive structural damage, and smoke was pouring in through a crack in the broken door. Gabriel himself had been thrown hard, and was face-down on the floor with the dresser pinning him down. The red in his hair was no longer just from his Limitless-tell; a wide gash just above his left ear was bleeding into it as well.

  He abruptly roused, and retched from the smoke. The dresser wasn’t terribly heavy, but it still took some effort to push it away and get free. When he turned back, the first thing he saw was the boot he’d been unable to remove from the floor, and he groaned as he got up to his hands and knees. A gentle touch to his head revealed the sting of that injury – blood on his hand as he pulled it back to check – and Gabriel looked around in confusion.

  His first thought was for the Emperor and the transfer, but his second thought…was to the sound of someone banging on the busted door, yelling for him to respond. He was surprised how dull his hearing had become, and the deafening ringing settled in. What felt like normality a moment before was now replaced by the swimming imagery of the room warping around him, and he collapsed all over again.

  At the hotel Seth had been confiscated to, he had a clear sight of the palatial cliff, and his eyes – along with those of everyone else in the city – were fixed in horror on the sight of that smoldering, black pillar. Fire and smoke looked like a writhing monster, as that dark exhaust billowed into the waning light of the evening. Not knowing what else to do – and not knowing who was close by - Seth reached out to the only person he could think of, “Pick up the call, pick up the call… …Furion! Where are you right now!? You’ve gotta get to Trazad! The palace just exploded!” He listened a moment as his brother responded, “…Miss Ren is here? No, I had no idea. I saw Mr. Gabriel yesterday when Iresha and I got here, but… No, I actually got kicked out almost as soon as I’d been shown to a room. I stayed somewhere else. But Iresha and his dad were up there…! And Mr. Gabriel probably, too!”

  To say that Ren’s view of the creature was up-close and personal would be an understatement. Almost as soon as she spotted it, it had spotted her in turn, and so forcefully shot itself in her direction that it pushed her 30ft further into the air. The grotesque fingers – knobbed and blistered, lobulated to the point of disfigurement – were punctuated by half a body that seemed not to know what shape it was trying to take. It cried out as if with multiple voices, and clamped-down on Ren’s helmet with a mouth that shouldn’t have been able to open as wide as it did; teeth and tongues lashed at the visor, biting with a fury as it screamed out in pain.

  Ren felt the ground behind her back much sooner than she expected, but for a mercy, the same inertia-modulators that made it possible to fly at hypersonic made it so she didn’t get the wind knocked out of her from the impact. Whatever the thing was that had leapt at her was trying to smother her, too, and it was freakishly strong, making it nearly impossible to grab the plasma-blade hilts on her hips.

  Nearly, but not completely.

  Right hand latched to the grip, and with a flick, the blade extended, shooting straight through the core of the entity. It shrieked and writhed, but finally let her go, and Ren kicked it off with all her strength, rolling her legs up and over to get out of the way with the same movement. Crouched on a knee then, and both hands with a white-hot edge at the ready, Ren got her first careful look at what had just attacked her.

  “…Prince Aamin…?” She said with disbelief; yet, there he was. Repulsive could be used to describe him; Eldritch another. Every part of him that had once been burnt by his nephew had ‘blossomed’ with mutilation. What remained – the right side of him, mostly – maintained some passing resemblance to the man he once was. He was the living embodiment of a fungating cancer otherwise, with multiple parts of him reshaping themselves into the limbs of something else entirely, moving independently from him. The worst part of it, to Ren’s sights, was the expansive mouth that had overtaken the left side of Aamin’s face and head, ripping through the flesh to protrude with meaningless teeth and hooked tongues. The jaw itself had broken away and elongated into an insectoid-like mandible, sharp and quivering.

  Rylen took no chances with proximity, and had retreated to the other side of the palace as he watched the live-stream of Ren’s feed on his overlay. He spotted Gabriel amongst the others being extracted from the palace-ruins, but it was concerning that every time he tried to reach out to Xanarken, there was no answer. With no recourse, he closed the attempted communication, and reached out to Etienne instead.

  She answered quickly enough, “Need someth-”

  “No time to explain! Check on Xanarken, now!” He barked, and steeled himself for the next message. The sound of Aamin’s tortured cries sounded in his ears as if he was standing in front of the man himself, and the fact of the Prince’s presence solidified one horrifying, sober truth, “…Attention fleets of the First and Sixth; prepare to invade Kitez. The Emperor of Sargon has been killed. All hands on deck; this is not a drill. Repeat; prepare to invade Kitez. We need to get Prince Iresha back immediately.”

  Gabriel had been too far away to hear, but even if he’d been right next to the Eidolon, it probably would’ve been a challenge anyway. His ears were still ringing, and everything sounded hollow and distant. Someone was trying to bind the wound on his head, but with the sight of red wings in the sky – darting through the smoke as something chased after - he fought to get a clearer view, “…Ren…!”

  Etienne manifested in the pod-room and cautiously approached the Fourth, remembering all-too-well how he reacted to her ministrations last time she attempted to offer any. She got close enough to see that his vitals were pulsing rapidly, but hadn’t reached a threshold of emergency, so she wasn’t sure what the problem was. She dared to set her hands to the glass and peered within, and was surprised to find the man staring straight up with his eyes wide open. Even though the soupy, iridescent liquid, his horrified expression was easy to read, and he quickly manifested a mantle there opposite her.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “…I’m fine.” He said, rather too simply, “I just watched the Emperor of Sargon get blown into a thousand pieces, is all.”

  “You saw what.”

  Gabriel’s dizziness was starting to clear, and he forced his way past the medics who were trying to help him. Sound from all around him started rushing in like a freight-train, and it seemed far louder than it should’ve been. When he rushed for the First, he couldn’t help but yell at the Eidolon, barely able to hear himself, let alone anything else.

  Rylen just stared at him in frustration, and sent a text-based message instead, waiting for Gabriel to read it, [You have to get clear. The Kitezans blew up the ship they sent the Duke here on. The Emperor and him are both dead.]

  Those confused eyes read the message in disbelief, and Gabriel yelled again, “What do you mean they blew it up!? How did they get a bomb here!?”

  [Quit yelling at me, idiot! I can hear you just fine!] Rylen sent back, [And I don’t know! Xanarken and I went to watch the landing, and it just blew up!]

  “Then what’s chasing after Ren!?”

  [Prince Aamin, or whatever he’s become since we lost him.]

  Gabriel’s eyes widened, but Rylen could only shrug, and they both looked up over the ruins of the palace as yet another explosion rattled-off into the night, shaking the ground and volleying another glut of fire into the sky.

  What they couldn’t see was the volley of firepower that had been launched at the creature from over the lake. Ren rose up from where she’s braced and blocked with her wings, and spotted the oncoming form of the Fafnir Captain, “You’re only going to be a burden with one working wing.”

  “I made it here, didn’t I?” He answered, and finally – after nearly 16-straight-hours of flying – set a foot down onto solid ground. He already had his sword drawn, but with a click, the massive blade extended, and he leveled it at the former Prince, “I don’t need to fly to kill whatever that is.”

  For the moment, personal problems were set aside, and Ren refocused as well, “I think it’s a gift from Scyrexian.”

  Furion knew they were being recorded at that point, and didn’t ask the obvious, “…Right then. Let’s do what we do.”

  Aamin’s wretched form uncovered itself; the writhing pieces of his left side had covered the vulnerable right, but what momentary seething anger it felt towards Furion’s unexpected assault evaporated as it turned back towards Ren, “…Rejo…rejoin… Let me…”

  “…Ew, no.” She nearly wretched just to think of it, and dug-in with a foot before launching forward. A furious blade-storm descended onto the creature, with each strike – from both Fafnir – seeming to leave a fatal gash through that tormented flesh. However, each attack served only to cause pain, and its wounds closed almost as quickly as they were carved. Not understanding why nothing was dealing a finishing blow, Ren impaled both blades through Aamin’s chest – just as she’d tried to do to Regulus some weeks before. Sinew and skin sizzled with contact on those plasma-blades, and Aamin screamed out in agony.

  Something about that shrill cry triggered a wrenching pain in Ren’s eyes, and as she clenched them shut, she twisted her arms slightly inward. The barrels on her vambraces glowed, blasting energy out at point-blank, and launched the accursed Prince’s body away in a bloody spray.

  Furion quickly switched from his intended course to impale from the side, and turned to vault after the figure instead. He already had his back to his challenger when she dropped to a knee, clutching at her head, “What was that for!? We can’t lose him in the water!” He barked, and kicked-off the burnt edge off the cliff to launch past the man. With one grand swing from the flat-side of his sword, he smacked Aamin had enough to send him flying right back then way he’d come.

  Time seemed to move in slow motion for a moment, and Ren watched that body come right back for her. She could see something around it – a sickly aura, or a cloud of some kind; not unlike the translucent miasma that had served the Warp Magi before – and for a split second, she was sure she saw a golden flash just over Aamin’s heart. Without thinking, she threw the sword down from her right hand…and sunk her fingers into that flesh, catching the creature without so much as an inch of ground given from the impact.

  Aamin flailed and screeched, that exact miasma pouring out of him chaotically, slapping and wriggling in every direction. They latched onto Ren’s arm frantically, and crawled up past her shoulder with desperate abandon, pawing at the underside of her helmet like it knew how to unlatch it somehow. Something about the sight of those clinging tendrils kept Ren frozen in place; she could feel them wriggling through every vein in her body, licking at the back of her eyes like fire.

  She wasn’t sure how it happened, but it was suddenly gone, ripped away like roots from loose soil, and she was lucid again. She blinked hard and looked around; Furion had the creature impaled through the chest on his greatsword and had lifted it up and away. It squirmed like a hooked fish, and Furion swung the blade around to pin it to the ground instead.

  Blood boiled from the wound, spilling out onto the charred ground as Aamin coughed and cried, reaching for Ren all over again.

  “Ren, focus!”

  Etienne formed her mantle first, then Xanarken close behind her, as they both tried to reorganize themselves around what had just happened. Rylen was surprised to see them, but was equal parts relieved, and took a few steps closer, “What the Hell was that!? You can’t give me the silent-treatment and then refuse to reforge yourself after a blast!” The First barked, pointing at the Fourth, “I’m about to start a damn war; I need you here!”

  “Sorry, I-” He started, only to spot his ‘kid’ trying to get back into the palace, “Gabriel!”

  “Xanarken!?” The blonde answered in surprise, “Ren’s fighting against Aamin! He’s…turned into something! I have to get over there!”

  “And do what, Lugios!?” Rylen yelled from that short distance away, “There’s two Fafnir over there; let them handle things! There’s nothing for you to do!”

  “I’m the one who let Aamin get away before!”

  “And if you go over there now, then you’ll just get in the way again! Just stay on this side and wait!”

  Xanarken looked between them, but spoke to Gabriel alone, “As an Eidolon, you can access her P.O.V. now. Are you watching?”

  “…I can watch…?”

  Rylen was too busy coordinating a response with the Fifth to notice the unexpected conspiring. Local emergency response crews were starting to arrive to put out the fire, making it even harder to focus as vehicles clamored for real-estate to park and set-up, putting themselves between the pair of Eidolon. By the time Rylen would’ve been able to see…the both of them were gone.

  Aamin recoiled against the agony of the plasma-blade, and to Furion’s shock, ripped himself free of it by using that very edge to cut his own body apart. Without a moment’s hesitation, it lunged at him with singular ferocity, and smothered him with the same disgusting mass of flesh that it had used on Ren. It knocked the Captain to the ground, and chewed hatefully at the visor of his helmet, taking hold and shaking like a dog with a large toy.

  Ren wasn’t sure what she was looking at; she could see it, but she couldn’t make herself do anything about it. The intersection of dream and circumstance wove through one another, and every time she blinked, she swayed and had to figure out what she was looking at all over again, as if suddenly waking up after nearly falling asleep. It didn’t make any sense at all when she thought she saw Xanarken manifest beside her, and even less when he reached to unhook the helmet from her armor.

  “Is it time?”

  “…Wha…?” She wondered blearily, and collapsed to her knees.

  Those purple eyes looked foreign, like they a mask hiding some other man’s visage. Sound rushed in as the protective dome came away, and Xanarken loomed, looking down on her impatiently. She could only look back…with eyes that were spilling that black, bloody miasma.

  “He’s coming right now. You have to take him.”

  “…What…are you saying…?”

  Xanarken had his lips parted, as if about to answer, but he heard a shriek nearing behind him, and three rather confusing things all happened at once. First, in a flash, Xanarken found himself standing on the other side of the wrought-iron fence of the palace’s southern garden somehow. Second, to Ren’s sight, in his place…was Gabriel. And third…the damned idiot grabbed at Aamin like a disarmed matador who had nothing left to lose, and took the bull ‘round the neck with both arms.

  Eyes burned brightly with that golden light, and Gabriel held on for dear life, but since the creature was trying to get at Ren anyway, it didn’t push him far. It lifted and thrashed, trying to throw him off, until finally succeeding…after a fashion. Gabriel had let go, and went skidding across the obliterated terrace, and in a purely chaotic swing of his arms – trying to keep his balance – Aamin’s whole frame smashed-down into the rubble as if hit by a falling bus. Gabriel managed to throw himself forward just enough to catch himself, and he caught sight of Furion’s armor struggling to lift itself up from the hole Aamin had put him into.

  “…L-Lugios?”

  Attention shifted back to the cursed Prince, but with a few seconds of stillness, Gabriel rushed back towards Ren. He skidded to his knees on that ruined ground, and took her by the shoulders, “Ren!? Ren, what’s happening!? Why are your eyes…!?”

  “Lugios, you have to get away!” Furion warned…only to find the Fourth Eidolon appear in front of him with an arm-outstretched, “…Lord Xanarken…?”

  “Stay out of it.”

  “…What?” The Captain could hardly believe the words, “Lord Xanarken, you don’t understand, he can’t be close to her! She’s-”

  The Eidolon was unmoved, “I know exactly what she is.”

  Ren seemed catatonic, but her half-sleepy eyes opened a little, and more of that pitch-dark reddish smoke oozed out, “…G-Gabe…you’re…so far away…”

  “No, Ren, I’m right here.” He answered, the golden mist fading to just his normal sights, “Focus on my voice.”

  Furion frantically looked between the three figures; confusion was the least of his worries when he saw Aamin starting to move again. He twisted to rise, but nothing could have prepared him for what the next few seconds had in store.

  Xanarken took a step closer, not noticing the trembling mass of hateful flesh lifting from the dust. He only had eyes forward, and just as he was about to call out…found one long, spindly, wretched hand strike fully-through his mantle. Gabriel heard the crunch like the Eidolon’s figure was made of glass, and twisted around on a knee so he could see past his shoulder. Ren lifted her head behind him, eyes wide; that dark red ichor crept forward, and black veins trailed out across her skin.

  “Y-you can’t…have her…before I do…” Aamin growled, and clenched his hand, ripping downward.

  The Fourth could only utter a distorted, crackling grunt before lines of light tore through the rest of him, and his mantle shattered entirely.

  [Xanarken Tellan is offline.]