Ulysses ran a large, bony hand through his silver locks, pushing his body up into a seated position upon the bed he had been sleeping in.
Three hours, he had only been asleep for three hours, but ah, why should he bother to care, when he already feels as though he had a full rest?
The Supreme Commander of the Armada cursed, when his steps stumbled as he forced his own slightly disobedient frame up into a slightly unstable stance; nearly collapsing into the leather chair behind the massive desk that had once belonged to the Supreme Commander Kane, no more than just a few hours ago.
Kane.
His Commander was dead, terminated.
NO, this could not be real.
He was a god, and a perfect god. A god cannot die, could they...?
This has to be a hallucination.
A hallucination!
Forcing himself back up once more, Ulysses was rather surprised that he actually made his way into the chamber where he had transferred the half completed form of Albinus without falling.
Perhaps if he lost himself in this work again, this hallucination would be banished, right...?
Septimus cursed, when his hand slipped again, nearly dropping another tool onto the ground before he caught it again. Thankfully however, the rest of the construction process went by relatively well, with no more incidents to impede his progress until the human man found himself gazing upon the for now inanimate form of the final member of the Ulyssean Triumvirate.
"Arise, Albinus Crassus Militus, arise and serve your creator!"
Golden light pulsated from the artifact he had taken with him into the chamber, pulsated with a light which reminded Septimus of how a human's heart would beat within their chest: enveloping the clockwork's form in a shround of ethereal light.
Ulysses' lips turned up into a grin almost far too wide to be human, at how within only mere seconds of the light's touch, the musketeer's fingers twitched, and he slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position, the light from the moon outside shimmering off of the blue gem set into the area between the voids of his eyes and his sculpted eyebrows.
"For the glory and might of the Armada, creator."
Unlike Servius' voice, which carried a sense of harshness with it, and a sense of powerful emotions churning underneath the surface of the well tailored words, Albinus sounded much more analytical, more like Septimus himself when he planned out battle tactics with his soldiers: one of calculation and cold intellectualism.
"Welcome... Albinus, the final member of the Triumvirate."
Septimus extended his right hand, helping the musketeer hop off the table.
There was just so much more he wished to speak of, so much more, until a singular voice chased all of those thoughts from his mind.
"Supreme Commander...?"
Servius stood at the entrance of the chamber, his gaze turning from the newly activated Albinus to Ulysses himself.
It almost felt as though someone had punched Septimus directly in the stomach, yanking him from the blissful oblivion of certainty he had created for himself, that this was all just a hallucination that would end if he tried hard enough.
"What is it?"
Ulysses did not bother, he could not, hide the pain, the anger that still remained in his voice even though it was a week ago since his master had perished at the hands of the worms that were his enemies.
"Someone wishes to see you."
Ignoring the obvious flinch from his oldest creation, Ulysses pushed his way past the elite sniper and back into his bed chamber; donning his waistcoat and uniform, the same one he had worn as an Admiral and an elite when Kane still ruled as the Commander of the Armada, before stepping into the study.
"Mentor?"
It felt so long, so long since he had last seen the older Assassin, even though it was only a week since they had met.
Cristobal took off his engineer's hat, holding it to his chest as he offered Ulysses a half bow.
"My apologies to be here at this ungodly hour of morning, Supreme Commander, but..."
He paused, as though trying to forumlate the best way to say this.
"How can we allow this grievous offense against us slip by? I do imagine you would want revenge as much as the rest of Valencia does, Commander."
"There is nothing I want more than that, now that the pirates have torn the last person who I had ever valued away from me."
Ulysses' cybernetic left hand tightened into a fist, and the Supreme Commander averted his eyes, not wanting anyone else to see the tears that threatened to spill out from the corners of his eyes.
I will give anything, everything to get this revenge of mine.
Was this not what he had spent the entire week preparing the Armada for? Wasn't this why he spent so many restless nights up, overwatching his Assassins and clcoworks as they rebuilt the headquarters? Wasn't this exactly why he was willing to lose hours of sleep devising the steps and details of the 'Final Cleansing' with his elites?
"I had thought so as well, so allow me to present you with this, Commander."
The Assassin Engineer gestured to the chest sitting by his feet, perhaps a three feet by two in length; throwing off the lid with a slight flourish, the way a magician might unveil their ultimate act.
Ulysses' lower jaw trembled, for now that he could see exactly what the chest held, both his memories and the monster he had ignored for so long returned to him in full power -
Laying over a neatly folded uniform coat that was a blend of his own style with the former Supreme Commander Kane's, was a mask, shaped to almost perfectly resemble the late clockwork king's face, from the thin, half smile Kane always seemed to have, to the golden corona pattern that covered the entire upper half of his face, nose, and part of his cheek.
The eye sockets of the mask shimmered when Septimus lifted it from the chest, enough for him to realize that the sockets were covered with some sort of visor, which prevented anyone who gazed into the eyes of the mask to realize if the wearer was a true clockwork, or if they are a human masquerading as one.
"What better revenge is there, than to have the two beings they had so feared combine into one, claiming both objectives with a singular stroke?"
Indeed, what is more fitting than this?
He could become Kane, even though he could never hope to match the king's godly perfection, but he could be a shadow, a perfect dopplegänger.
"Grazie, mentor."
Ulysses lifted his own coat from his shoulders, slipping into the boots included within the chest; the new uniform coat thrown over his white shirt and waistcoat, wrapping the sash and sword belt around his waist.
Delicately his fingers lifted the mask up from the desk. It too fitted him well, even without a ribbon to hold it on it remained, as though it had became his face: quite believable, in Ulysses' opinion, when he gazed into the only mirror in the chamber, with how the mask's colors were so well done, it was nearly impossible to tell where it ended and his flesh begun.
This wasn't him in the mirror gazing back at him, he wanted to believe, it was his master... his lord who had only perished because of him being a failure!
But there is no way to undo the events of the past, are there? No... But-
The demon inside of him cackled:
What better time is there, than the present time, to launch this cleansing, now that you have taken on the appearance of His Majesty? They will know just how foolish this mistake of theirs is.
"Send an order to General Rooke, Servius, and the Captain Optimus: I want a fleet ready and prepared by morning. And mentor, contact the Governors, tell them that it is time for them to pay their duty to me."
With his mask obscuring his face from view, the smile that spread through his lips was only known to Ulysses himself. It felt as though someone had pulled the ground from underneath him, yet it also felt as though he had the power to shake the very Spiral down to its core.
"The time has come to execute the Cleansing."
(The Following Evening)
Ulysses tapped his boots upon the deck of the Malevolence, impatiently, subtlely. They were due to arrive in that wretched pirate haven in only one more hour.
One more hour before the sands become stained with their dirty blood, the blood that was owed since the very moment they had killed his king mercilessly. But oh, don't get him wrong, he had offered them mercy before, and time after time he did to those who would give up the ways of piracy to see the true light of his king. Was it truly his fault they spat upon his mercy, like the damned criminals they are?
So don't blame me for all the deaths happening here, oh no no no... You all brought it down upon yourselves, by denying HIM, denying his rule and branding him as a monster, whose untimely end you are all no doubt still celebrating with that wretched worm!
He would not leave any survivors, not any who dare to throw themselves in his way, not any who may be found by his brothers and his sisters. He had given them far too much mercy, which is exactly how they are trampling over him, walking all over Ulysses as though he was nothing but a doormat for them to step on as they wished.
White gloved fingers tightened around the armrests of his throne, his whole form tensing up from the steadily building rage inside.
It did not help how his memories decided on this being the optimal time to return and haunt him, painting the most vivid image of the previous Supreme Commander's terminated frame right before his eyes down to every detail possible.
And so, it was in vain he tried to hold back the tears that stung at the corners of his eyes once more, those bloodshot orbs with the capillaries branching out from their scarlet irises. Tears spilled freely down Ulysses' face behind the mask, and he could feel every drop of it.
Each drop drove a dagger into Ulysses' heart, each threatened to bring back those dreadful halluncinations of his master and king, and with each of those hallucinations, his grip on reality faltered.
This isn't real.
Said that little voice that often came along with his hallucinations.
Your king, your Commander is still alive, this is just a dream.
He had believed it, he had believed it for a second too long. This one second was perfectly enough to absolutely shatter him, upon the realization it was but nothing more than a mirage, a figment of his mind.
Yet he swore he could still hear his master's voice, hear Kane calling for him, summoning him.
Ulysses could not be more thankful for the mask in that moment. Without it, all of his vulnerabilities all of his weaknesses would be exposed for the whole Spiral to see.
Not in a moment like this, not when my soldiers need my guidance.
It pained him to say this, as it forced him to remember the fact he was the Supreme Commander of the Armada now; reinforcing the reality that Kane, his perfect god and savior, was gone for good.
"Supreme Commander."
Ulysses turned his gaze onto the eyes of the cyborg marine Sentus Optimus, locking in on his single human eye and the cybernetic eye that long replaced his other.
"We are arriving."
Indeed, he could feel the jolt that had ran through the deck of the Malevolence as the Armada flagship, trailed by the seventy ships of the Valencian navy, and the thirty that belonged to the Assassin Order, pulled up in the docks of the sleeping island, the doomed island. Tonight would mean a night of slaughter, he thought with a kind of cruel satisfaction, a night to bring justice upon those bastards.
"What are your orders?"
Without another word, Ulysses rose from his throne first, his golden brimmed tricorn's feather nodding menacingly as it cast a shadow over his masked face, walking across the deck of the Malevolence and surveying the clockworks that had accompanied him on this journey.
Twenty battle angels, a matching number of clockwork dragoons, at least seventy marines and a similar number of musketeers and snipers.
One hundred and eighty clockworks in total.
One hundred and eighty of his family assembled for blood on this ship alone.
Ulysses stepped off the ship, his coat billowing slightly in the night breeze that was blowing over the island. He watched as his soldiers disembarked after him, reassembling their formation upon the sands.
"I want all of them terminated, tear this island down to the ground and leave no trace of it. Skull Island will not stand to see the next sunset."
The synchronized click of weapons being readied was enough of a reply for Ulysses, and so the newly named Supreme Commander of the Armada turned, and begun to march, his sword drawn out and ready, toward the most populated segment of the island.
An ideal target for an objective like this.
Inwardly, Ulysses counted down until the alarm would sound.
Five, four, three, two, one.
Just as within his predictions, the alarms sounded, and pirates rushed out of the surrounding buildings, armed with either swords, polearms, muskets, and staves, ready to fight for the death to defend their home.
And death shall be exactly what they receive.
Before his clockworks even took action, Ulysses raised up his right hand, clasping it into a fist.
About fifteen figures, all of them dressed in white beaked robes with red accents rushed out of seemingly nowhere, each of them wielding either a Hidden Blade with a sword, or some sort of heavy polearm weapon. Swiftly, soundlessly, they fell upon the pirates, permenantly silencing some of them with precisely aimed strikes to their throats or their hearts, leaving at least twenty of them dead, before falling back into the shadows of their clockwork allies.
It was then did the survivors give a collective cry of rage, rushing forward with their weapons like the impudent fools they are.
Ulysses didn't care.
Everything outside was drowned out by the overbearing buzz within his brain, the demon sniffing through the air for the two men he had came upon this cursed island to search for.
The Supreme Commander of the Armada marched into the ranks of pirates, bodies falling wherever he went, and blood was sprayed into the air like jets of ruby red, coloring the sand underneath their feet. Ulysses slashed the throat of anyone who dared to fling themselves at him, or tearing through their torso with his sword, spilling their innards out onto the sands in steaming piles, as the pirates themselves bellowed in agony and fear before they become silent as well by the hands of Thanatos.
Where are they?
While his greater purpose here was indeed to eliminate this wretched pirate haven, Ulysses could not forget his own true reason to be here in person.
Revenge.
He wanted revenge upon the pirati, revenge upon those who had snatched all that was dear from his hands.
Adrian Devereaux and Atticus Mercilus, both whom were hiding in Skull Island, based on Secundus' latest report.
"Halt, clockwork fiend!"
Ulysses' lips threatened to twist into a snarl behind his mask. He would have perhaps spared them, had they not been so foolish as to get into his way, especially with one of those oh so revered trainers of the Resistance.
"How about you make me so, insolente stolto?"
His voice spilled forth from his lips in a perfectly clipped montone, the Supreme Commander of the Armada lunging forward toward the privateer trainer with his sword, the very same weapon once carried by Supreme Commander Kane.
For the most part, the old Marleybonean was good at deflecting his sword strikes, for the most part, even managing to land a few strikes against the Supreme Commander himself. Though it wasn't too long, before the sword of Ulysses struck through his heart, just as he was mumbling a spell that was no doubt to shield himself from Septimus' relentless attacks.
Ulysses yanked back his sword, turning his eyes away from the trainer's corpse, continuing his advance into the inner parts of the island, where it was much, much more populated: the most likely location for the two slimy worms to hide in, while everyone else did their dirty work for them.
Then, without any warning, the Supreme Commander of the Armada found himself flung backward, as though a massive hand had caught him and threw him like a rag doll.
His back slammed painfully into the wall of one of the buildings, and would have knocked out Ulysses had it not been for his trainings as an Assassin; scrambling back up on both feet within the next moment.
There was no need for him to look around too long to see who it was that had done to him.
Vadima, the mistress of the arcane arts of the island, the very source of the pesky witchdoctors such as Cyrus Chamberlain.
"Why must you all insist on being a thorn in my side?"
The muscles of Ulysses' legs tensed, as he prepared to dodge to the side to avoid her next strike against him.
The need for such never came.
Two consecutive shots sounded, and Vadima fell to her knees with a groan, her crystal slipping from her hands, the blood from her now ruined knees staining the hems of her robes red.
Like her initial strike against him, her end came without warning as well, when her head splattered into a thousand pieces of bone and brain matter and a shower of bloody red, blown apart by a single shot from somewhere directly behind him. Her headless body gave a dying twitch, like a freshly slain pig, before she went still, a voice speaking up behind Ulysses.
"I trust that you are unharmed, Commander?"
Albinus' voice was cold and measured, the sniper stepping over some of the still warm corpses to his creator and commander, his twin brother only a few paces behind.
"I am indeed intact and functional."
Ulysses' gaze scanned Horace Avery's now blood bathed courtyard, corpses falling everywhere as the Armada clockworks made short work of their opponents: sometimes, a pirate would seemingly fall down dead out of no apparent reason, leaving any and all of his companions in shock until they realize the source, the hands of death from above that were manifested in the hallow clockwork beauties known as the Battle Angels.
Where are those two bastards hiding? Come out, come out and face me like a proper soldier, perhaps I will take mercy on you!
Would he? Would he really take mercy on those who are the hands that had taken everyone he had ever valued from him?
"Belay my command to the musketeers..."
Ulysses had spoken softly, his voice piercing through the battle din.
"Burn this place down to the ground, I want the next sunrise from Skull Mountain to fall upon smoldering ruins!"
Two birds with one stone: it would drive out both of those bastards like how animals would flee from a burning forest, and it would ensure this entire island serve as an example to those daring to entertain the thought of challenging Armada superiority.
No sooner had he spoken, orange flares near one corner of the island became visible, the flames of destruction spreading through the island with the ferocity of a raging bull, licking up the wood of the buildings with a hunger that could never be truly satisfied. Smoke curled up into the heavens, followed by pained shrieking of those unfortunate enough to be caught in the middle of the flames.
Just this very thought brought a smile onto Septimus' lips, a smile that remained even when a rather familiar figure charged toward him.
Morgan Lafitte, the swashbuckler trainer, and, if he recalled correctly, a traitor to Valencia. This was not Adrian nor Mercilus, but oh how he would take time in teaching this traitor what it means to betray His Majesty Kane.
Tightening his grip on his sword, Ulysses poised into his usual combat stance, feet braced at shoulder's width -
Lafitte was a good swordswoman, he would admit, a very good one not to mention swift and agile: able to parry nearly all of Ulysses' strikes, despite Septimus' training since he was a young child.
"It is truly a pity that you are a traitor, Lafitte."
The Supreme Commander registered a hint of fear within the former countess' eyes. It was only right, wasn't it? Kane was rumored to be stronger, faster, smarter than any living being there is, granted, Septimus was just a copy of him, a weak, imperfect copy, but who would know? No one would ever remember the Assassin they had beaten down into the ground.
"You could have survived this tribulation."
Lifting one booted feet, Ulysses kicked her, hard, in the gut, enough to knock the air out of the raccoon, sending her flying backward and crashing into a flaming section of a wall of the swashbuckler training hall.
Septimus' smile widened sadistically, at how her flesh and fur soon caught on the flames, which licked among her form like a hungry predator, encompassing her in a burning embrace.
Yet this did not satisfy the demon within.
Striding forward, Ulysses thrust his sword into her stomach, and ripped upward.
Instantly, her shrieks of pain became much, much louder, as her blood and insides tumbled out into the sands, leaving her to a painful demise that would be neither fast nor slow.
It was only then, did the Armada Commander allow himself to laugh.
"HEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
It was a throat tearing, grating sound that only a madman would be able to produce. It echoed throughout the bloodbathed battleground, as if there was eight of him laughing all at once, rattling his heavily uniform clad frame with its power. Oh the power felt good, it was exhilarating, combining it with the taste of revenge made him feel as though he had wings to soar into the now smoke choked sky, the demon within him cackling along with his mad bouts of laughter.
"Come out, come out and face me, Devereaux, Mercilus! Face me like you both have always wanted to, and perhaps I will make your deaths a little less unpleasant! COME OUT AND FACE THE HAND OF SUPREME COMMANDER KANE II!"
No answer, of course, and he expected so, but it won't be too long before they did, right? This entire damn island is burning down like dry parchment, the flames driven on by the overly abundant supplies of alcohol the pirates always seem to keep with them. It was only a matter of time before the Armada would win this battle, like how it should have been since the very beginning.
Even from here, Ulysses heard the distant screams of pirates being brought into a sudden end, perhaps by the sword of one of the many Assassins who had chosen to follow on this Cleansing quest, or shot down by a musketeer, or perhaps killed by a marine.
The power of the pirates won't prevail, Ulysses imagined a prophecy someone might have uttered since the beginning of this war, the Resistance will burn down in flames.
And in flames, they indeed burnt.
Septimus continued onward, wading through the bodies of slain pirates and through the pools of blood, their filthy blood that was long owed for how many of his brothers had perished because of one of them.
He could hardly wait to see how many bodies would pile up on this part of the island alone, by the time the sun raised over the western horizons, or to see both of his enemies dragged out from wherever they may be hiding to face the justice they so deserved for the deaths they had caused in his life.
Alright, let's all face it, this is gonna happen sooner or later, no? Especially with what the pirates had coming XD and yes, I miscounted, THIS, is the last chapter of VL, so only after I upload the epilogue in a few minutes, Valencian Legend shall be concluded.
Reviews are welcome :D
-Hades