"picking the pieces of a life poorly lived"
The world had forgotten itself. The ruin once wreaked by her own hand, her own willed word, utterly paled in comparison. Everything she remembered, everything she knew of physical and arcane might - even her worst nightmares never matched the scope of destruction that presently assailed her preconception of war's reality. Tusked giants armed with dragon-maws; feverish ghouls seeking screams and torment, an ending to their pain; steel men marching without fear, rivers of swarming violence caged beneath their sculpted shells.
Goodness, the noise, the sheer cacophony of it all.
The library to their back (she remembered visiting it thrice during her tenure as an apprentice and many times more in the following centuries) erupted, flinging splinters in all directions - clattering against suits of heavy armour and strange glowing shields. Those same flames followed them as they hurried through the city, boxed them into their reckless charge on either side. The howls of Scorn and warped speech of metal killers faded beneath the roar of explosions - so many explosions. It was senseless, a gross exaggeration of destruction made manifest.
And the giants chuckled. They went to no great lengths to hide it, bellowing laughter as they rode against the fanning flames and flying debris with delirious abandon - all while firing their weapons at smoking shadows and writhing shapes glimpsed in the raging pyres, chattering chink-chink-chink. Though she knew she should have been relieved for the effort they went to, Formora instead found herself disturbed.
And, most alarmingly, exuberant.
She appreciated fire. Appreciated what it represented, how its heat felt on her skin. A memory of another time bubbled to the surface, muddled by curse but cherished all the same. She... remembered the sensation. Remembered the love she felt for it. For that whence the flames came from - that poor nameless thing. The thumping of her racing heart and rush of adrenaline dragged her to simpler, darker, kinder times - though the horror of the present did not abate as the seconds passed. Not even by a margin.
"Don't get close," the human-but-wasn't shouted just to be heard above the racket. "Phosphorus sticks like glue."
A pair of shadows streaked close overhead at startling speed, showers of spluttering white cinders scattering behind them. A trio of fat wingless dragonflies gleaming with dirtied bronze sped after them, scarring the air with splashes of dazzling blue.
"Keep going," Ikharos called to her. "Keep close."
Formora hardly had a choice in the matter. She felt caged, like an animal cornered by a wildfire, and it felt... frighteningly reinvigorating. To play any small part in this relived scene, a hart trapped by a drake. So often she'd been on that other side, a core element of the hunt - but now here she ran, the hunted.
A breathtaking terror. Formora took to it with grim-faced gusto because, oh yes, she wanted to live. She needed to survive it, to parse through the sensations, the feelings and savour them like a fine wine - to come to some deep and personal conclusion when the deafening storm gave way to dangerous calm. Thus was her people's infamously embittered vice, their greatest undertaking set to follow her into lifelong eternity: the path of self-understanding, to know her truest of names again and again, to meet it like an old friend changed by a journey abroad. A friend she hadn't seen eye-to-eye with for some time, marked and changed as they both were by the most unsavoury of experiences.
The city began to grow sparse the farther ahead they fled - until they were out in the open gardens overgrown with vine and bush. No great cover but for the racing inferno behind them. Dark round shapes continuously dropped from the heavens, shaking the earth with their landings, and betwixt them darted those airborne constructs, lashing at one another with needles built of light. The chaos was a dissonant racket, all-consuming, set to devour the entirety of Doru Araeba and beyond. Ahead of them stood the Spire of Moraeta - that blasted thing that haunted her waking hours, whose voices filled her head. Formora blanched at the mere sight of it, some strange sick feeling rising in the back of her mind, but found herself tugged along.
Devastation followed them all the way to the monument. In the air between them and the Spire lurked approximations of Skuldu's macabre pet, shrieking and flinging wordless incantations. A pair of the things made to intercept them, but one of them was ripped from the air by a lance of sizzling energy fired from the ruined city. The other ignored its compatriot's death and swooped for them, its claws glowing blue, a cry for blood building in its throat. For one moment it looked as if to reach them - but then Ikharos removed himself from the ranks of the giants, leaving her to their care while he took to the air on wings of radiant fire. He rose up, caught the beast Agnisia and the pair of them tumbled through the air, bringing to bear the darkest of unspoken magics.
"Alaugh'ra," one of the giants cried. Formora's arm was enveloped by a colossal hand. It tugged on her, nearly tearing her limb from its socket. "Keep up!"
Another set of Skuldu's spawn soared in, burning ghouls trailing after them. They ignored the giants and moved straight for Ikharos, their eyes shining with lightning. They stabbed at him with talons alight, tore at space around him with bolts of energy; they were frantic in their bloodlust, delirious. More than was ever warranted of a stranger. They remembered - remembered something. Did they know from whose ship they'd crawled out of? Whose custody Formora had incidentally released them from?
Because it entirely seemed they had. They lashed at him, snarled, mauled him - or rather the ethereal sheen cast around him. For his part Ikharos danced between their slashing talons with an unerring grace, a bird of prey at play, as if he weighed nothing at all and the tug of gravity was but a memory. The first of them he closed in on and cut to ribbons with strikes of formless magic, reducing it to wailing ash. The second he ran through with a golden blade. The third he beheaded with a single strike of a twisting glaive, a humming concentration of otherworldly power. More came. More and more, as if each of them could feel the deaths of their compatriots - their own duplicated selves. They arrived with spite and they died furious, curses seething past clenched fangs.
At last they stumbled against the Spire - Moraeta's blasted piece, that thing humming with power and potency and feeling. Formora averted her gaze; the warnings rang true in her mind. Something buried deep beneath her waking thoughts stirred for the proximity and she had to bite back the taste of bile. Someone had scrambled her memories. Someone had dug their fingers into her mind and rummaged without a care, leaving their marks on her psyche. It made her sick to her stomach, twisting it into knots of sheer fear. With loathing. Oh what a vile thing. What a gross trespass against her being.
If she'd still possessed the power of before, shared and great, oh she would have torn it all down...
But as it was, mortal-bound, Formora was forced to stumble as the giants slowed and swung about, weapons bristling and shields slotting together; she was forced to listen as the bombardment crept just shy of their position, immolating everything in their wake; she was forced to watch as Ikharos flipped out of the air and dove amidst the press of bodies, driving down a straggler illusion. The thing in the shape of Agnisia lashed at him until he broke her arms and then she tried to bite him, only to receive a nearby giant's backhanded strike for her efforts. Ikharos moved, slamming down a knife through the creature's shoulder and he grasped its collar, propping it up. The thing's visor was smashed open, revealing her dark macabre features once and for all: three glowing eyes, one set in her forehead, and the complete lack of a nose. Agnisia bore only the barest of sockets for nostrils. Her mouth was wide and lined with jagged teeth, imperfect and mismatched, the enamel pocked and scarred.
"Where are you?" Formora heard him say - snarl, he snarled at the thing, every word dripping with molten hate. "WHERE?!"
The False-Agnisia croaked, coughed sparks of light in place of blood. A heavy sharp sound rattled out of its dry throat - a sound Formora realized was laughter.
"Vorlog," it hacked. "I find you."
"Alright, let's do it," Ikharos shot back. "Just me and you, one more time."
"Always." Agnisia's head shot forward, mouth agape, but Ikharos was faster. His hands wreathed with violet and tore through the creature, reducing her to smoke and winking essence quicker than Formora could track. The residue flowed around the man, sinking into him and lending him their sheen, lathering across his robes like an extra layer of armour. It smelled like... there was nothing for Formora to compare it to. Smoke but - no, not clean, sterilized. Daubed in some merciless cleansing agent.
What is this?
He straightened up with a ragged sigh and looked upon the Spire, staring at it for long enough that Formora began to fear something had caught him. But he shifted before long, stepping back and motioning to one of his warriors. "Blocks are working. Val?"
"Active and operable!" the tusked giant bellowed back. It fired out past the wall of towering shields a couple of times before lowering its weapon and turning to them, speaking again but in a different language. It grunted and growled in its guttural other-speech, hardly sparing Formora a glance while it stepped past, eager to enter back into the fray.
"I don't know," Ikharos replied. He looked around with a frantic air. "The hell are they?! Where-" Then his gaze landed on Formora. "The Spire. There's something inside."
Her mouth was dry. She closed her eyes, but he caught hold of her shoulder.
"There's more to this, isn't there?"
"I don't-"
"You said something about-" Another shadow passed overhead. Ikharos ducked and raised a glowing hand to the air, then seemingly decided against it. "To say my name in the shadow of this fucking thing, right?"
"I don't know!" Formora snapped back. Her nerves were afire. She should have gone the moment the sky fell apart. She should have taken it as a sign and braved the waves.
He shifted back to face the spire and swung his arms out. "Ikharos!" he called out. "Ikharos Torstil! That's my name!"
Nothing happened.
"What the fuck now?!" Ikharos shouted. "Ikharos Torstil! Ikharos! What else do you want me to say?!"
Perhaps it, whatever occupied the spire, had stopped listening.
Or perhaps-
Formora balked. No, no one could be that bold; no one could possible demand that. Surely not.
-perhaps that wasn't the name they desired.
Ikharos spewed another expletive and brought his hand to his forehead, then swept it out. Something... changed. The air shimmered, like ripples on a pond, and the very colours in the air shifted. New shapes manifested; figures stepped out of nothingness and occupied the space around them, within the ranks of the giants. A stirring of surprise swept the warriors, shouts and curses filling her ears. Formora saw elves, some together and some alone. Most were faded, barely perceptible against the flare of hellish battle, but others were more... solid. A pair stood before the spire, in front of the greyed silhouette of a dragon. One of them opened their mouth and said-
It was a name. Too long and complex to translate in any other language, to consolidate into a simpler shape. The ancient language sang and Formora's ears were filled with the melody of home - but it carried none of the joy, none of the innocence.
"A true name," she whispered. The ghostly elf - a memory of some other time, some other disaster - soon faded. "It wants a true name!"
If Ikharos heard he gave no indication of it, transfixed instead by that which took the elves' places: the form of Agnisia and Elisabeth herself.
"In here," Elisabeth said. "If she's still alive they'll be keeping her here. Say your name."
Agnisia said something - a litany of torment on Formora's senses. It was in no language she knew, not even that of the giants' brutish tongue. It was not the ancient language, but it carried the same weight.
This was a mistake.
"A true name!" Formora stepped close and grabbed Ikharos's arm. He looked at her with surprise. "It wants your true name."
"My what?" he demanded.
He didn't know. Oh the irony, the rich irony.
"Your identity, your... your everything!" Formora said frantically. "We have to leave!"
"A true- Fuck this." Ikharos reached past her. A thrumming sound filled the air - followed by the sizzling crack of stone giving way to immense heat. She felt it on her skin, felt the sheer power of it with her own muffled magic. It was like staring into the sun it was so pure, so vivid, so intense.
And then it was over as quickly as it had begun.
"There we are," Ikharos breathed. He glanced at her and then to her hand. "You can let go now."
Formora snatched her hand back, shaking off the stray feeling of static running up her arm, and said nothing. Ikharos drew another golden blade out of nothing and held it aloft, banishing the leering shadows within the monument; Formora didn't dare look.
"Val," Ikharos said. "Close ranks. I'm going in."
The Val grunted something.
"I'll be quick," he replied. "Just watch her and make sure those Scorn stay away." Ikharos stepped past Formora, then paused. "Call me if the Locus makes a show." He continued on. Formora heard the scrabble of boots on stone... and then nothing. The giants closed in, retreating inwards around her until her back was pressed against the spire. The stonework was warm, baked by the midday sun. The air was almost too hot to breathe, scalding her lungs with smoke and heat.
One of the giants - not the Val, a smaller one - took up position beside her. Their hand fell atop her shoulder, enclosing around her entire upper arm. Their grip was strong; it was telling enough. Stay where you are, they were saying. You're our prisoner yet.
Of course she was. Always the prisoner. Always the lackey, the hound, the collared thing kept on the tightest leash. Always - even unto the thing rousing in her own mind, the whispers sifting through her thoughts with insidious sweetness until they were everywhere, all she could think about. The words finally sorted together.
Come along now, it said. Just a look. A quick one. You know you want to.
No, she was not so foolish-
Formora did it anyway. And not of her own volition. She turned her head. Caught sight of the spire's edge.
She was lost from there on. Lost in memory. Quick ones, flashes of words and sensations lacking their context, the feeling of something shifting in her packs, something precious, cradling it as she moved through the city currently aflame, swearing to guard it with her-
Her life.
But her life was all she had. Her greatest currency was survival. Why would she waste something-
The thing in her mind flexed; Formora raised walls against it the moment she came to, trapping it with mental barricades all around. She turned it into a box locked and sealed and she tried tossing it into the deepest depths - but the box grew legs and crawled right back in the shape of a warped centipede. It was all she could to hold it at bay, to scrunch her eyes shut, to claw away at the malice-laced memories.
Something worth her life. There was nothing worth her life. Not anymore. Not since-
And then she caught on.
And then she realized the danger.
"Keep them close," Elisabeth said.
Formora's heart stalled in her chest - because the worst had come to worst. Oh the irony. Oh the absurdity. Where were they? she'd wondered, but now she understood. How she'd failed, how she'd lost, how she'd given in to the life thought left behind. Keep them close - or draw to them their end.
No. No, she was more than that. More than a killer. More than a vagabond butchering old dragons, more than a fiend smashing eggs as she went. She had to be, because if she wasn't then what was left for her?
Craven, kinslayer, traitor, thief. Forsworn.
A piece of Formora died then. Gone was the battle, gone was the rattle of the giants' weapons, gone was their claustrophobic shuffling and their low grunts of effort. Gone was it all-
And all that remained... was that which she'd arrived with. Her life. Her piecemeal honour. And the drive to see it all through - crimes remedied and vengeance orchestrated. Other questions, pressing questions remained but she couldn't wait a moment longer. It simply wasn't possible. Fate was ironbound and she was but an insubordinate slave struck down time and again by its merciless whip.
Formora kept her eyes shut. She had to be quiet, lest the giant holding her hear. The first spell she muttered subtly changed the flow of air around her face until the smell of smoke was nearly overpowering - at which point she could parse through the fumes and pick the odd one out. She was no visual beast, reliant alone on sight, but it was much too loud yet to rely on her hearing and so her options were limited. The next spell reduced the friction between the giant's hand and the material of her tunic. With a simple tug Formora slipped out - and just as the giant opened their mouth to shout a warning she'd already darted inside, all but stumbling into the hole bore in the spire's surface. A third spell, "Letta du sund ábak edtha," caught against the entrance and boiled away all the din of the giants and their war, thrusting her into near silence.
Better. Much better. Her hearing eased in the lapse of constant pressure. Formora ceased her staggering; she heard the sounds of her boots on the floor and traced a hand against one of the walls. Soon enough her mind created a picture based on the mixed stimuli and she carried on at a much faster pace. The spire's interior was massive, a corridor large enough to fit an entire nïdhwal and then some. The floor was carved with steps; it was manmade. Elven craft or dwarven, she wasn't sure, but age had left nary a mark upon it. There was dust enough but little loose stone; each step she took was firm-footed.
Along the walls, though, she followed a trail of destruction - tracing her fingers over gouged lines seared to a cold glaze. The scent she followed ran thick there, running down into the sightless tunnel. She heard a clamour from behind her: the Cabal racing to catch her. Formora hurried on, headlong into the earth as quickly as she was able.
Heat ahead. It enveloped her wholesale, trapping her in a bubble of fire. Sweat beaded on her skin - but Formora did not open her eyes. She couldn't. Not for what it would bring. Not again. Her magic passed over wards innumerous, each of them broken, bleeding senseless meanings. The air was rife with crackling energy, the taste of ozone and ash and more. Devastation had come this way. It had come to stay.
The tunnel opened up. Shouts echoed from ahead - and behind. Someone was speaking, bellowing, demanding-
"Where," Ikharos bit out, "Is. She?"
The answer came not in words but a mental roar projected like a tidal wave, crashing over everything in its way. Formora held firm, tightening down her mind's defences. It was luck that spared her. She wasn't the intended recipient, but oh, it noticed. The chorus of snarling voices and furious thoughts noticed her near immediately. They were not pleased.
But she was. Because as they withdrew their projected might she recognized them for what they were.
Dragons.
Oh wonder.
Dozens of them. More. A pooled consciousness, arrayed in barricade against a common foe. Her? Yes - yes, but at the same time no. Formora was not so mighty. Not to so many. But their cause for alarm was a different creature entirely.
The dragons… were alive.
Alive.
And the world was better for it.
"Don't," Ikharos warned. She heard a heaving, crunching sensation as something shouldered past mounds of rubble. Something large. Beyond it she caught the sharp whisper of steel scratching over solid stone. A blade. The beast. The beast was here. It was in the same chamber as her. She could hear it approaching. The sound of its footsteps sped up, grew louder and she knew - knew! - it was charging for her. Formora backtracked quickly, her heart seized by terror, and she heard the thing swing its blade.
She fell to the ground.
The giant stampeding in behind her was not so fortunate. The blade impacted with a wet crunch and the giant gave a heaving gasp, coming to a grisly stop. A moment passed and the warrior's body hit the ground with a weighty thump. Formora scrabbled away, waiting for the mortal blow.
It never came.
"Oh, psesiskar!" Ikharos thundered. There was a buzz, a woosh, and she felt more than heard as an almighty force snatched the beast back. Steel crashed against steel; blades were crossed and battle was met once more.
She refused to look. The venom of sight hung around her, blatant now that she had crossed the threshold. Minds - so many dragons, awake and watching as their champion waged war - lashed at the air with whimsical will and thrumming hate. Their gaze was on her. The fangs of their loathing drew across the borders of her thoughts. Formora blanched, bunkered down in the recesses of her own consciousness; she couldn't advance with her sixth sense. For all intents and purposes she was cut off.
Where was it? Where was the egg?
A rattling cough struck her ears. Formora froze; she listened as the listless giant shifted, convulsing weakly. The stench of its blood filled her sinuses - iron doused in oil. "K-k-krighr'au," it hacked with all the spite of a starveling denied a meal
Formora stood there. She heard its breathing begin to slow, to grow quiet. She would've let it pass. She would've carried on. But the silence, the dragon's refrain-
-there was meaning in it. And she hadn't the heart to come to terms with it yet.
Formora fell back, feeling, straining her ears to catch that hissing rattle of air leaving torn lungs, until her fingers brushed against the cool steel of armour. A sabaton, a leg - thick enough to pass for the trunk of an ancient oak. Formora followed it along, her fingers tracing over hip, over stomach, until they dipped into the wet gulch where the beast's blade had bitten deep.
The dragons were watching. Watching. Sneering if they could, had they the flesh to manage it. But watching. Dare she disappoint them one last time?
Formora knew not the giant's biology. She couldn't possibly manage to rework the dying thing's flesh with elaborate spellcraft. It simply wasn't feasible. If she were more confident then perhaps Formora could've ripped the knowledge from the giant's fading consciousness, but the sensation of death was irksome. Too many other minds around, waiting for her to slip, to falter. Waiting for an opening. Waiting until their champion was through with the other interloper and settle the century-long grudge once and for all.
She had to be firm. She had to be strong.
So instead she uttered but a single word. "Heill." Heal. An absolute. Her will spread its wings and clad itself in the shell of arcane, taking flight - until it was beyond her control and all she could do was hang tight, flushing all her strength into the spell and hoping it wouldn't kill her in the process. A gamble. That she could find a way around the curse of infectious stimuli
That the giant wasn't yet dead.
The first tug stalled the breath in her chest. Formora grimaced as her energy was siphoned out, but the change was almost immediate. Flesh rewrought. Skin wove over split muscle. Bones reset. The giant inhaled - a gasp, deep enough to shake the very floor beneath them. It shifted, all but throwing her off, and tore its helm from its head. A sick, wet sound followed as it hacked up, spitting blood, emptying its lungs of loose viscera.
The moment she was looking for.
In a split-second Formora lunged upon the giant's frazzled psyche, enveloping its being with her own. The jaws of her mental barricades snapped shut around it, erecting palisades within to cordon it off from her own deepest secrets. It bucked with clueless fright, understanding that something was happening and, in some ways, recognizing what, but it struggled clumsily in senseless darkness. Formora closed around it softly but firmly, reducing the space between them to null and then injecting her own will into its being - a sharp intrusion, one that made it fight all the harder. This was the position with which magicians and sorcerers of some merit corralled lesser mortals into vessels of unwitting slaves. It was how tyrants made servants prisoners of their own bodies, shackling them with senselessness.
It was how she was, in her turn, used time and again by those damned by dragonloss - and dragons haunted by the void of their Riders.
But she was not so cruel. It would only take a moment. I just want to see. And indeed she couldn't bring herself to partition through the giant's hurtling thoughts. The avalanche of alien sensation was too much to bear; she could hardly parse through it all so quickly. The memories were worst of all - shadowed over by inhuman approach. She tried to keep her distance, to shield herself from it, but there was just so much.
Glittering stars falling in formation - a world braced against the cracks in reality - a splendid city in hysterical celebration - ruin, ruin, SHE stands over us all, SHE is GOD and SHE is WAR, Acrius preserve us, Acrius have mercy - an alien forest, swept by malice - "Kill them!" the little godslayer bellowed, already standing atop a butchered Knight. "KILL THEM ALL!" - a thing swathed in bleeding shadow - the emperor's cries-
Too much. TOO MUCH!
Formora dug deeper, bracing against the flood of the giant's consciousness. It didn't know how to stop her, how to keep her back; it clung tight to both their misfortune. With steely nerve Formora wrenched its grip free and shoved it back, consolidating her intent along the cluster of nerves that crowned its spine. Soon enough her mind was diverged between two beings, feeling with two skins, breathing with two pairs of lungs- no. No, the giant had three lungs. She could... she could feel them. Three. And hearts: two. A pair, beating slower than her own but louder and in turn. She had eight fingers. Not ten. And her toes - vestigial. Her cleft lips pulled back over hardened gum. Her tongue sat fat and heavy in her mouth, nowhere near so malleable as that of her original body. She had no nose, only nostrils. No outer ears.
Formora stood with her real body. She found the closest wall and leaned back against it. She had to focus.
The fight, if it could be called that, did not take long. The beast gave one last furious warcry before an eruption of senseless might silenced it forever. Metal screamed as it was torn apart, cast aside like offal, and the cohesion of draconic thoughts trembled. They sat there, aghast. Awestruck. Stupefied.
She would've felt the same if not for what she'd seen on the surface.
"Enough," Ikharos barked. She heard him heave something, tearing it free of the beast's sculpted form. "I'm sick and tired of all this bullshit. Where's Elisabeth? Where's Incaru?"
With the giant's body she reached for the helm, scrunching her eyes shut. She almost knocked it aside, surprised by her own strength but Formora pinched its edge between her powerful fingers and slid it over her head. A hiss filled her eardums as it closed around her skull, clasps clicking shut of their own volition.
She opened her eyes and looked up.
Her sight was tinged with a soft orange hue. Her nostrils drunk in the acrid smell of blood and oil, and her eardrums pounded yet with the disparate beating of her hearts, but her eyes saw cleanly the scope of the chamber and those in it, safe behind the internal light of the suffocating helmet. Glyphs flashed on the edge of her vision, incessant and nonsensical to her untrained eye, but the memories of their meanings came to her unbidden - WARNING, WARNING, PSIONIC IRRUPTION DETECTED, WARNING, BATTLENET (!ERROR!) OUT OF RANGE, WARNING.
... The armour. It could sense her. The giant's armour could sense her.
What manner of creatures were these?
"Well?" Ikharos demanded.
Formora looked at him. He stood above the remains of the beast - of Cuaroc - and held aloft a purple Eldunarí from which hung a dozen sparking, broken wires. Ikharos's fingers dug into the crystalline orb, cracks forming around his fingertips. She could hear it. Hear Cuaroc screaming, though the other dragons tried to hide it. A veneer of power. Pride to the end.
"Don't!" Formora called from her own lips. She shifted, pushing away from the wall with her eyes closed - tracing her own progress with the giant's senses. "Don't. Please."
(Coward, the giant muttered sullenly.)
Ikharos scarcely glanced in her direction. "What the hell is this place?"
"I... I don't know," she admitted. "But there need not be violence. Surely you've had your fill."
"Don't pretend you know me," he snapped. His helm shifted, taking in the sight - all those Eldunarí. All those dragons. Still watching. "And don't be so quick to defend... these things."
Things. Elisabeth's warning echoed still. "You don't know what-"
"They're dragons."
Formora slowed to a stop. "You know?"
"I've killed enough of them to know what their hearts look like," Ikharos clarified. He regarded Cuaroc's Eldunarí with something like spite. "You shouldn't be here."
"I-"
"KINSLAYER!" Cuaroc's head abruptly rose - the steel approximation of a dragon's skull, animated even sans its heart. But it wasn't he that spoke. It was the rest of his cohorts. A concert of the near-dead. Their voices melded together, tone of thought given audible form. The words were given to strange enunciations; they spoke with the marks of drakes once-living, banished to the facsimile of survival. "SHE KILLS THOSE DEAR!"
"I... I had no choice!" Formora exclaimed. Her heart - hearts, one and two - began to beat even faster. "No choice! He took that from me!"
"YOU WAVERED!"
"I never wanted any of this!"
"YOU STRAYED!"
"No, I..."
"They captured you here," Ikharos interrupted. He was looking straight at her. "Elisabeth said you were their prisoner." He swivelled back around. "She came here looking for you. But they cut you loose. Why?"
"A STRANGER WHOSE WORLD IS OURS TO OPEN! SHE IS A VEHICLE FOR PURPOSE! YOU ARE OUR DESIRE! PEACE, MORTAL-MAKER! PEACE! LAY DOWN ARMS AND LEAVE HARM AT THE DOOR; SHE IS A TORMENT, SHE IS NOT WORTH-"
"Be quiet!" Ikharos roared. The air cracked with thunder. A halo of lightning surged around his body, impossibility made manifest. With his free hand he created a broadheaded glaive forging of twisting stone and simmering heat, veined with branches of eerie gold. "You... you animals are worth every torment to come your way."
The air shifted. An intake of imaginary breath.
How. Dare. He?
And yet... how dare they?
(How dare you.)
"I should kill you all right this moment," he growled. "Keep you from corrupting another soul ever again."
"Don't," Formora pleaded. She burned with fury, trembled with anxiousness - other concerns. Other priorities. Already on her lips, readied to let fly. "Don't."
Ikharos didn't turn this time. "You're falling into their thrall again. How many more times will you let them suppress your memories?"
"Never." The giant in her mind shouted hypocrite. Formora ignored it as best she could, but the word caught hold. It dug in. A pain she could scarcely bear.
"Then mind your own business."
"This is my business!" Formora cried out. "It's not my memories alone they've kept from me. There's so, so much more at stake."
"Oh, you have no idea," Ikharos muttered. He tightened his grip and Cuaroc's psychic shrieks reached a new crescendo. "I won't ask again. Where is Elisabeth? Where. Is. The witch?"
For a moment there was nothing. No sound. No reply.
"Agaravel," Formora pleaded. "Are you there?"
Cuaroc's skull croaked and hissed. "HERE AND THERE AND HERE," it cackled madly. "WHOLE ONCE MORE, STITCHED TOGETHER!"
"Where's the egg?"
"BROKEN! BROKEN! OUTLANDER'S CRIME, OUTLANDER'S GIFT!"
"What egg?" Ikharos demanded.
For a moment - for a moment she feared, but-
"It hatched," she breathed. Oh the relief. The RELIEF! "It hatched-"
"HIM, HIS, DELIGHT AND DISHONOUR TWINNED TOGETHER!"
Her relief turned to poison in her hearts. "... You," she whispered, the realization dawning on her. She stared at him through the giant's eyes with sheer disbelief. "It… it hatched... for you?"
Ikharos looked back at her real body, uncomprehending. "What hatched?"
"... Stars above. You." Exhaustion caught back up with her. Only in the giant's body did she feel strong. A stolen thing. Only in tyranny could she keep standing. Hysterical.
"... Me," Ikharos agreed at length, no more aware of what she meant. "You do you." He stepped over and brought a boot down on Cuaroc's ruined throat. "The witch. Now."
"GONE!" Agaravel cheered. "Gone and all the hope with her."
"Oh no," Formora gasped. "No..."
"Where has she gone?" Ikharos pressed impatiently.
"OPEN YOUR MIND!" the dragons ordered. "TASTE THE MEMORY OF HER DEPARTURE!"
"Don't let them i-" Formora warned, but it was too late. Ikharos dropped Cuaroc, the Eldunarí hopping once off the stony floor before rolling a few feet away, and made a motion with his hand. Tearing away the fabric of reality. Just as he had above.
Through the giant's eyes Formora saw the shape of Agnisia take form, Elisabeth beside her. A different Cuaroc, wounded but functional, lay on a mangled knee before them - not prostrating but rather brought low. Stray arcs of power smoked from his body, great gouges carved into his metallic skin. His sword lay useless by his side. He didn't take it up.
The reason why hung between Agnisia's clawed hands. The dragonling gazed up at her glassy visor with childish wonder, transfixed by the shine of her glowing eyes. She sang to it, softly. A rough, coarse lullaby. A voice that physically pained Formora to hear. Distantly she took note of how the giant's helmet muffled the noise, made it… bearable.
A faded crash from elsewhere drew the pair's attention. Agnisia paused and Elisabeth twisted around, her weapon already in hand. She cocked her head sideways as if to listen. "They're coming," she said hurriedly. "If she isn't here-"
Agnisia said something.
"Leave him to me and go. You need to hide. He'll kill-"
"No," Agnisia growled. Her grasp of the common tongue was uncannily smooth.
Elisabeth slowly shifted around to face her. "You don't know what you're doing."
"Pain."
"This won't hurt him. Just everyone else."
Agnisia hummed to herself, cradling the hatchling dragon closer. "Then I will be your champion." A light flared across the living memory, then receded - and Agnisia was gone. The dragon with her.
Elisabeth sighed. A moment later she too disappeared, dissipating into... Formora couldn't describe it. It was as if Elisabeth's body had been flensed apart into nothing. Gone. The three of them.
"Well." Ikharos muttered. "Shit."
"... I should've been here," Formora said. "I should've been here."
"YOU ARE A VESSEL YOU ARE A TOOL AND YOU ARE WEAK-"
"No weaker than every one of you!" she shot back. "The egg was my responsibility. I knew the stakes. I would've fought. You let them go."
"WEAK WEAK WEAK-"
Ikharos raised a glowing hand. Formora leapt, catching his arm - wincing at the heat of it, the burn, the feeling of electricity racing down her spine - and shoved it in the direction of a wall without Eldunarí. "No," she hissed through clenched teeth. "Leave them be."
He regarded her balefully. "Legionary," he called. "Get her out of here."
A moment passed.
"Legionary," Ikharos said again. "Are you deaf?"
"SHE IS A CAPTOR!" the dragons crowed. "SHE IS A SHADOW OF THE USURPER!"
No. No, nothing like that, nothing like him. No.
"Legionary-" Ikharos glanced at the giant. Then, slowly, back to her. "What did you do?"
"Nothing that cannot be remedied," Formora said quickly. "And no harm that cannot be undone."
The glaive pressed it, hovering by her neck. "I've been gracious," Ikharos told her. "I've been merciful. Let him go."
"I can't see!" Formora stressed. "I need its eyes."
"His. He has a fucking name."
"I-" The word floated to the front of her strained consciousness. Ra'arche. Son of Ru'arke, who was daughter of Ro'oaurc, Beloved Venerater of Torobatl - Torobatl? A city? A nation? The meanings escaped her. "I know."
"Let. Him. Go."
"I... won't." Formora eased her grip. Let go. "I don't want to do this. Don't make me do this."
Ikharos looked at her in tense silence for a few moments too long. "Ah," he said at last. "I see I've been too nice."
"Leave. There need not be anymore death."
"I can't leave a dragon alive. Not even for a Legionary's sake."
(Death or victory, the giant chanted. Death or victory.)
"But I can't let you kill them," Formora evenly replied - at odds with herself as much as him. She ached to be avenged. It pained her to be better than that.
"You'll die in this," Ikharos pointed out.
"I hope not. I want to live."
"Then leave."
"Only with you. We've both lost something here. We have need of each other."
"Don't know about that."
"Whatever the dragons of your homeland inflicted upon you, these are not the same ones. You need not sully your hands. They're innocent."
"Not to you," he pointed out
"Not to me," Formora agreed, "but I have no more right to end their lives than they do mine." If the dragons disagreed on that count they were being conspicuously quiet about it. "They've suffered enough. So have I. So have you. Don't feed into another feud. You have enemies enough."
Perhaps it was the reminder of that which awaited them above that settled it. Or perhaps sense won out at last. Whatever the case, Ikharos lowered his glaive. The power along his arm faded. "Let him go."
"I want your oath."
"Fine. I promise."
"In the ancient language," Formora chided. "A binding oath."
"I'm not..." Ikharos trailed off. "Give me the words."
She nodded. "Say it after me. Eka otherúm néiat eom haina..."
Ikharos inhaled deeply. "Eka otherúm néiat eom haina-"
"...anneinn unin thornessa húsa."
"-anneinn unin thornessa húsa," he finished. And paused. And shivered. "Fuck," he breathed, trembling as he felt the oath constrain him. "Fuck."
Formora stepped back. "I need that dragon," she said. "The one she took. More than you can ever know."
"I won't make a second oath," Ikharos growled breathlessly
"I don't expect you to. Circumstance will prove just as binding."
"We won't need you."
"You're a newcomer to Alagaësia," Formora said. She didn't know what drove her to be so bold. Desperation? Relief? Or perhaps a sense of misplaced trust - in the civility of something that refused to die? "And you carry no experience with gramarye. If you despise dragons so much, then I'm the only person left in a position to teach you. That's what she wanted, wasn't it?"
"Don't think this was what Elisabeth imagined," Ikharos argued. "Besides, you're dragon enough." He retreated back to the stairway. To the giant's side. He gazed up into her borrowed eyes, glaring, and said, "I saw you. I saw the memory of you. I'm starting to think I should trust first impressions."
She could have replied. With Ra'arche's mouth, the Ra'arche's voice - but no. That was too far. Too... depraved. To borrow senses was one thing; to borrow an identity? That was a trespass against everything she held dear. To share sensations under duress was despicable enough. To dominate was to become the very monster she plotted against.
Formora followed after him with her real body. She reached the base of the steps... and let go. Her giant-sight blinked away, her strength faded, her being fled back into the safety of home. She heard Ra'arche buckle under the shock of control. Heard him raise back up, approach, draw a blade-
"Leave her," Ikharos said sternly.
Ra'arche paused. "Caur'ik," he snarled. Her limited reservoir of borrowed knowledge translated the word the moment it was spoken. Curseling.
Deserved. But no less biting.
"There'll be a reckoning if you come with us," Ikharos continued. "And that's a promise. One I don't need your fancy language for."
If the alternative was to stay, then she would pick any other fate. "I would expect no less," Formora drily replied.
Cauroc's broken body coughed. "YOU ARE DAMNED, YOU ARE HAUNTED, OUR MARK IS UPON YOU FORSWORN, YOU WILL NEVER-"
"Jierda," Formora said, and Cuaroc's skull shattered. It was more vindicating than she'd ever hoped to imagine. "Jierda," she said again, and the rock tunnel shivered. "Jierda," Formora repeated, and on and on until the stairwell collapsed behind them. She feared not for the dragons. Already she could feel their power at work, wild magic reinforcing the contours of their new prison lest the spire fall atop them.
It was the last mercy she would ever spare them.
The scene up top was apocalyptic. The dead gathered, ashen, before the field of flames and smog, prodding at every gap. Peddling a reckless offensive, heedless of the cost. Their numbers were depleted by lances of red energy from the shadows of the city, where men of iron stalked unseen. It was enough to render the giants speechless at last, humble after an age of bumbling arrogance.
They did not welcome her return.
"Bind her," Ikharos said, and they caught her arms, forcing cuffs of steel around her wrists and locking them tight. Formora did not fight it. Ra'arche led the effort and he was none too gentle about it. Treatment, perhaps, she deserved. But there were no apologies to be made. Not when they'd seized her first.
The giant called 'Val' spoke to Ikharos - too quickly to track, too thickly to make out. Ikharos replied in kind. "We break through," he said in the giant's language. "Now. Before the Locus summons a modicum of tact and finishes us off."
"The witch?" Val rumbled lowly. They shot Formora a suspicious look.
"Gone." Ikharos's shoulders set firmly. "We need to get back to camp immediately."
"... Understood, commander-interim." Val straightened up and raised a blade as long as Formora was tall into the air. "We break out. Close ranks, ready shields!"
The formation tightened around them, heavy steel shields hefted and locked side-by-side. Ikharos rose into the air as they prepared, the very air around him shimmering with heat, and he raised a hand. The inferno... parted. The nearest Scorn hurtled through, screeching, only to fall as the giants fired upon them with unerring accuracy.
"Forward!" Val bellowed.
They advanced. Formora couldn't see much of anything past the smoke and the ranks of giants, but she felt the moment as the Scorn slammed against the shieldwall. The impact ran through the press but they hardly stopped. Ikharos wove his fell magic and the giants moved fearlessly through the devastation he cast. Nerves of steel and weapons of nightmare. The pace increased until they resumed the run, until they were racing for the edge of the city all over again.
And lost themselves into it.
It wasn't long before they were cutting through ruined streets once more, bracing against the wave of ceaseless ghouls. The stench of it was worse than any battlefield she'd ever known - living rot and navy ichor staining the very air around them. The acrid smell of smoke was a blessing; a lesser contaminant, choking but nowhere near so vile - and overpowering where they were fortunate. Formora muttered spells under her breath, drawing in all the clean air she could to spare her lungs.
Their destination was closer than she'd been expecting - and more than she'd hoped. The racing vessels that had doused their path in fire returned to clear the mob of living cadavers with that same brutal flame. A momentary lapse; a temporary solution. Long enough for them to make some distance and run, run, run for the sister-ships swooping in. They were larger than the others, with fatter bellies opened up to receive them. Transports, curious and bedazzling and frightening. Formora would have stalled before the closest one but she was carried along with the tide, Ra'arche dragging her by her arms into the dim light of the vessel's interior. The rear ranks blocked the hatchways with their shields until the ships rose into the air on mysterious mechanisms. The shock of sudden velocity shoved Formora against the giant behind her, eliciting a muttered curse.
"Alaugh'r," it barked. Tuskless girl, tuskless girl, tuskless girl. What did it mean? What tusks? Like Val's? What about the other giants? Where were theirs?
"Stand up," Ra'arche snapped, pulling her back to her own feet. Formora swallowed the lump of anger before it could rise - no good here. She was a prisoner once more - only this time with a finer perspective.
So no, no complaint. As it was, she imagined they would visit worse upon her soon enough.
AN: Hugest thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!
This chapter was a little rough to write. Unlike Stargazer I'm limiting myself to just three POVs (not including further Interludes (my forever guilty pleasure)) with radically different styles, and Formora's elf-centric one feels like the most difficult. With Agnisia I feel I can go all out with how alien she is, because Hive stuff is just a delight to write, but an elf has be human-just-not-quite. Still, I'm eager to dig deeper into some of the weirder stuff soon enough.
