Another double-chapter update, so go read the previous chapter first.
This chapter is another book-quoting one, but after this there's only one more book-compliant chapter before we go completely off the rails from canon.
Chapter 17: Omnis Vir Lupus:
Invictus Officers' Suites
Martian Orbit
March 16th, 2841
Sevro flailed past Darrow, exploding upward out of the coma induced by the haemanthus oil in the flask he'd been drinking from before they had freed Cassius. Sevro quickly gained his feet, looking around with manic, wild eyes, hands vibrating, holding his heart and gasping in pain. The last thing he'd seen was Darrow's in the brig, and now he'd awoken here to be thrust into the battle, blood and bodies littering the floor. Sevro stared at the Reaper with crazed, bloodshot eyes, pointing at his friend's belly.
"You're bleeding!" the Howler exclaimed. "Darrow! You're bleeding!"
"I know," he replied.
"Where is your hand?" Sevro asked frantically. "You're missing a fucking hand!"
"I know!" Darrow shouted.
"Bloodydamn," Sevro cursed as his eyes darted around and took in the sight of Lilath pinned and Octavia on the ground while Aja beat back Cassius and Mutang. "It worked!" he said. "It fucking worked! We've got to help the Goldbrows, shithead. Get up! Get up!" Sevro hauled Darrow to his feet and shoved the razor back into his hand before rushing onto the holopdeck, howling the hideous battlecry they'd made as children among the frozen pines of the Institute.
"I'm going to kill you, Aja!" Sevro screamed. "I'm going to kill you in your face!"
"It's Barca!" The Jackal screamed from the ground. "Barca's alive!" As he ran, Sevro scooped up a pulseFist from a dead Praetorian and trampled over Adrius's body, stomping on his face as he grabbed the razor that pinned the Jackal to the ground without stopping. Next Sevro flew into Aja, firing with the pulseFist, insane with the drugs and the victory he could smell. The pulse blasts rippled over Aja's shield, spreading crimson around her silhouette and impairing her vision enough to finally let Cassius slip his razor through her guard. Still, she twisted as it came so it only took her in the shoulder. But then Sevro was on her, stabbing her twice in the small of her back. The Protean Knight grunted in pain as she backed away.
Daarrow joined the fray as Aja stumbled back from her attackers. But on the ground behind her, she left something few humans had seen: a thin ribbon of blood, coating Sevro's razor. The Howler wiped it from the tip of the blade and smeared it between his fingers.
"Hahaha," Sevro laughed. "Well look at that. You do bleed. Let's see how much more ya got in there." He hunched like an animal, stalking ftoward her as Mustang, Cassius, and Darrow pinned her between them, making a square around the greatest living Olympic Knight like a wolfpack coming upon a great panther of the forest, shrinking before it as it charged, striking at its hindquarters, slashing at its flanks, bleeding it out. They were a prison of four, and Sevro swished his razor through the air, howling rabidly.
"Shut up!" Aja snapped as she lashed out at the Howler. But Sevro danced back while Cassius and Darrow darted forward and stabbed at her. She parried Cassius's thrust at her neck and his next two moves, but not in time to counter the Reaper. Darrow feigned a thrust at her abdomen and slashed her shin instead, raking through the metal. Sparks and bloody coated Darrow's blade as Mustang stabbed the woman's calf. Darrow darted back as Aja wheeled on him, making her overextend so Sevro could strike again. Cassius furiously slashed the Achilles tendon on Aja's right leg. The Protean Knight grunted and stumbled before lashing at her attacker, but the Howler danced back.
"You're gonna die," Sevro said with an evil little hiss. "You're gonna die."
"Shut up!" Aja screamed.
"That one's for Lorn," Sevro retorted as Cassius cut through the tendons of her left knee. "This one's for Mars," he added as Darrow imped her right thigh with an underhanded thrust. Mustang took the older woman's arm off at the elbow. Aja looked down at the appendage on the ground, as if wondering if it belonged to her. But she was given no respite. Sevro tossed aside his pulseFist, picked up the Truth Knight's razor from the ground and jumped into the air to bring both his swords down into her chest, hanging there, a foot off the ground. Their faces were inces from one another, noses nearly touching as Aja sank to her knees, setting Sevro back on his feet.
"Omnis vir lupus," Sevro whispered as he kissed Aja's nose and jerked his razors out of her chest, letting the blades slither back into whips around his forearms. With his arms outstretched, Sevro backed away from the dying Protean Knight, greatest of her generation as she pulsed her last blood onto the cold floor. Still on her knees, Aja's eyes drifted hopelessly towards the Sovreign, the woman who had become mother to her sisters, had raisedr, loved her as truly as any who ruled the Solar System could love, and now would die along with her. Darrow felt a small stab of pity for the two women. Despite the evil they perpetuated, they both cared for each other.
"I'm sorry… my liege," Aja wheezed between wet breaths.
"Never be," Octavia managed from her place on the ground. "You burned bright, my Fury. Time itself… will remember you."
"Nah, prolly not," Sevrro said pitilessly, causing Darrow to wince from his friend's lack of tact. "Nighty night, Grimmus." And with that, the original Howler lopped off Aja's head and kicked her in the chest. Her body teetered back and collapsed to the floor, where Sevro jumped atop it on all fours and howled. A deep moan escaped the Sovereign's mouth at the hideous sight, and everyone else put their heads in their hands in embarrassment for Sevro's behavior. Octavia shut her eyes, leaking tears as Darrow and his friends made their way to her.
Darrow and Cassius limped together, the Bellona's arm around the Reaper's shoulders to take preassure off the leg he dragged behind him. Mustang and Sevro followed behind after knocking her brother unconscious and making sure he was securely restrained.
Octavia's eyes were distant and dark, already halfway to that other world where even she does not reign. I thought there's be spite in the end from here, Darrow thought to himself as he watched the ruler of the solar system bleed out. Or begging like Antonia. But there was nothing week in Octavia even now. It was sadness and love that came in the end. She didn't create the oppressive hierarchy, but she had been its keeper in her time, and for that, she needed to be held accountable.
"Why?" Octavia asked Cassius, shaking from sorrow. "Why?"
"Because you lied," the Bellona heir answered. Wordlessly, he pulsed a small holocube, a thumb-sized triangular prism, from his ammunition belt and set in in her bloody hands. Images danced across its surfaces before floating into the air above the Sovereign's hands. The scene of Cassius' family dying played, bathing her in blue light. Darrow watched silently, having seen it before hours ago when Mustang first explained her plan to use Cassius to get them inside the Sovereign's perimeter.
"You ask me why?" Cassius asked rhetorically, his voice barely above a whisper. "It is because you are without honor. I swore an oat as an Olympic Knight to honor the Compact, to bring justice to the Society of Man. You swore the same, Octavia. But you forgot what that mean. Everyone has. That is why this world is broken. Maybe the next one can be better."
"This world is the best we can afford," Octavia whispered weakly.
"Do you really believe that?" Mustang asked.
"With all my heart," the Sovereign answered sadly.
"Then I pity you," the younger woman replied. Darrow could tell that Cassius did too.
"My heart was my brother," Cassius said as he looked over at Darrow. "And I no longer believe in a world that says he was too weak to deserve life. He would have believed in this. In the hope for something new. For Julian, I can believe that too." The young Bellona handed the other two holocubes in his pouch to Darrow. The first was the murder of the guests at the Triumph. The second was a reminder to the Rim of what the Sovereign had done. Politics ever rested. Darrow set the two holocubes in the Sovereign's hands to join the first. A moment later, Rhea glowed before her, a blue and white moon, gorgeous besides its brothers Iapetus and Titan as they orbited Saturn.
Then, over the moon's north pole, tiny slivers flicked several innocent times, and mushrooms of fire bloomed upon the surface of the blue and white planetoid. As the nuclear fire blazed in the Sovereign's eyes, Mustang moved aside so Darrow could crouch before the dying woman, speaking softly so she would know that justice, not vengeance, had found her in the end.
"My people have a legend," Darrow began. "Of a being who stands astride the road leading to the world after. He will judge the wicked from the good. His name is the Reaper. I am not him. I'm just a man. But soon, you will meet him. Soon, he will judge you for all the sins you hold."
"Sins?" Octavia replied, shaking her head, looking back to the three holos dancing in her hands, mere drops in the ocean of her crimes, her hands closing around them. "These are sacrifices. What it takes to rule. I own them as I own my triumphs. You will see. You will be the same, Conqueror."
"No," Darrow answered. "I will not."
"In the absence of a sun, there can only be darkness," she retorted. Octavia shuddered, clearly cold now. Darrow fought the urge to put something over her. This woman knew what was being left behind. When she died, the succession struggle would begin, and it would tear Gold apart.
"Someone… someone must rule," Octavia continued. "Or a thousand years from now, children will ask, 'Who broke the worlds? Who put the light out," and their parents will say it was you." But Darrow already knew this. He knew this when he asked Sevro if he knew how this would end. The former Helldiver refused to replace tyranny with chaos. There had to be order, even if it was a compromise. But he didn't tell Octavia that. She wallowed painfully a struggle to even breathe.
"You'll never…" She whispered before her voice faded away. Those were the last words of Octavia au Lune. And as they faded, the fire of Rhea cooled in her eyes and life left a cold pupil surrounded by gold, staring into infinite darkness. Darrow closed her eyes for her, chilled by her passing. The Sovereign of the Society, who had ruled for sixty years, was dead.
Yes, Octavia gets killed earlier here than she does in canon. I've got big plans for the Ash Lord and the Moon Lords and I need to get Octavia out of the way sooner in order to implement them.