Bring me your soul, bring me your hate.
Aldric dashed out of sight the moment after he freed everyone.
Despite the fact that he hadn't hindered her or anyone else's breathing, Pyrrha still felt the need to catch her breath when she rediscovered her ability to move. With one hand she clutched at her chest, with the other she leaned against the bench in front of her - she clenched her eyes shut, trying to fight off a wave of emotion at the sight and understanding of everything that had just happened.
She barely heard Ironwood's livid "After him! Lock down the city!" Because all that rattled around her head was Aldric's words - and the sight of him with that miniature sun hovering above his hand. How he'd somehow hijacked Weiss' semblance - and how she swore it looked like he'd used hers too! Pyrrha had thought she'd forgotten what he looked like, with the fire of determination in his eye, the spark of purpose, and the understanding that nothing would stop him from doing what he -
"Pyrrha." She was pulled from her thoughts by a hand on her shoulder, she looked to her right and saw Ruby, a smile masking the similar emotions the younger Rose was feeling. The room was draining of people - all of the soldiers or Huntsmen had ran out with Ironwood, and everyone else was trying to get out and get away from the path of destruction Aldric would leave. The only people that hadn't moved were Pyrrha, Ruby, Yang, and Qrow. Even Torchwick had vanished - though that didn't surprise her, she honestly wouldn't have been surprised if it turned out he'd had something to do with this.
"This is just great - great!"
"I gotta go, kids." Said Qrow - who now, at the sight of both Aldric's return and the mayhem he'd wreaked in just two minutes, looked every bit as old as he was. Just this morning one wouldn't have thought he was pushing fifty, but all of whatever kept his back upright and his shoulders straight had drained out of him. "I gotta warn him." He made it two steps before he was stopped by older niece.
"Warn him?" Yang parroted back, turning on Qrow. "What for? Let 'em kill each other. Aldric's convinced the man's moving on him."
"He's a paranoid sociopath Yang, we knew that before they proved it in court." Qrow rasped, "and he got cornered. He was confronted with everything he did in his life and blamed someone else - do you really think Oz would set this up? He loved the kid. Bent over backwards for him."
"And Aldric wouldn't have even come back if Ozma had done what he'd said he would - if he'd actually done anything to improve the world instead of just resting on his laurels!" Yang pointed out. "And for once he wasn't even lying! Until Adam started really acting up and Ruby asked him for help, he stayed in his little corner and never so much as made a sound! And when he beat Adam and stopped the war, what happened? He went right back there. He never would have left if Ozma hadn't picked a fight, Uncle Qrow."
"Are you okay?" Ruby asked Pyrrha.
Pyrrha nodded slowly, patting Ruby's hand and straightening up slowly, a morose smile on her face, the only thanks she had the strength to offer her friend.
"Yang -"
"You're not going to argue that Ozma actually did do something to help the world, Qrow - you and I both know he's just been sitting in Beacon Tower, administrating his school. I can't believe I'm saying this but Aldric did more in a night than Ozma did in ten years! Frankly I'm amazed Aldric didn't come back sooner with all the good Ozma didn't do. Aldric said there were only three people alive who would get him to come back - he dealt with one of them, and the other - whoever Solidus Cinder really is, he said they're not a concern anymore! So if Ozma had done anything, Aldric never would have come back! But instead he did nothing, and got scared that Aldric wouldn't like that - so he sicced Ironwood on him."
"Yang, it was Ironwood who set up the attack."
"And who told you that, Ozma?" Yang asked, "the only person who lies more than him is Aldric! Do you know he didn't do something to plant the idea in Ironwood's head? What self-respecting General would go out and actively start a war?" Yang waved her hand at the courtroom, "he did this and he only had a few minutes to set it all up!"
"Guys!" Ruby turned to her sister and her uncle, putting her hands on her hips and frowning deeply. "We're stopping him."
All eyes turned to Ruby - Qrow's with surprise, Yang's with annoyance, and Pyrrha's initially with confusion - until something else tugged at her senses, causing her to break away and turn back to the devastated entrance to the courtroom, a frown furrowing her brow.
"Aldric was right - he wasn't the one to lie to the world, we were. He shouldn't have been here in the first place, whether or not it was Ozma who set it up, he ended up here because of me -"
"Ruby -" Yang sighed, halfway between rolling her eyes and deflating in exasperation.
"- and we're going to stop him because if he kills Ozma, I don't think he'll ever come back from it." Ruby continued, not letting her sister interrupt her.
Pyrrha's frown deepened, and with a small tug of her semblance, she realized what it was she was sensing, shut her mouth, and turned back to everyone present.
"If Ozma set this up or not, he could have prevented it if he really wanted to - and that's what Aldric is latching onto. I know he doesn't want to do this - he didn't just wake up and decide he wanted to kill Ozma, but he thinks he has to! Ozma let it happen, and that's an attack - and that attack is proof that Ozma can't be trusted to be let run free, so Aldric is going to kill him to make sure Ozma never becomes the threat Salem was. How doesn't matter - but if he does it, then he'll fall into the same place he was in at Salem's castle - worse, even! And he won't ever be able to pull himself out of there - and whether or not you like him, we can't just let him do that! If you don't like him, then we're preventing a murder - if you do like him, then we're stopping him from doing something he can't undo, but either way, it's the right thing - we have to stop him! We have to deal with Ozma the right way - we have to show Aldric that there's a better way! That we don't need him like he was ten years ago, and he doesn't need to be like he was ten years ago!
"So we're going, we're going to stop him and then we're going to figure out what role -" She pointedly looked at her uncle, "- if any! Ozma had in all this! Okay?!" She looked between the two of them.
"You act more like your mother every day, kiddo." Qrow whispered, a look of nostalgia and an expression halfway between sorrow and bemused resignation washing over his features.
"I..." Yang tried to save face. "Always wanted another shot at him anyways. Said I'd kill him if I saw him again." When Ruby turned her ire on her, she added, "metaphorically?"
Ruby huffed, and then her expression softened as she turned to Pyrrha. "Pyrrha?"
"I just need a minute." Pyrrha murmured, "I'll catch up. I didn't have much packed anyways."
"You'll help us?"
Pyrrha bit her lip, and said, "I need a minute."
Ruby looked crestfallen, but nodded nonetheless. "Okay." She nodded to her uncle and sister, "come on, you two."
Pyrrha, leaning against the bench behind her, watched as Ruby and her family left the room. Pyrrha knew the Rose was already thinking of a million different ways she could actually make good on her words - that she was probably thinking of a hundred different ways to bring her old team into the fold to help, and how those conversations would go. No doubt she was also trying to find the right words to ask Pyrrha if she would phone her own team. Pyrrha envied her, that - how she instinctively knew exactly what the best, right course of action was. Pyrrha had spent her life trying to do the right thing, to live up to the image of her that everyone had - that she'd even helped cultivate, with Aldric's shield - but Ruby made it look effortless.
"And that... Ladies and gentlemen... Is why I gave her the phone." Said the voice of an old friend.
Pyrrha looked to her side and saw, leaning against the wall, right underneath a great window through which sunlight spilled, Aldric fade into existence. The stone he'd used was still levitating over his clenched fist, glowing a dull orange.
"You bent the light around you?" Pyrrha asked.
Aldric gave her a curious look, before he briefly cast his mechanical eyes downward, and nodded to the side. "You know... It occurs to me that you would be that smart. This world isn't backwards on its science - it's actually as advanced as mine in some areas, and more in others. But Beacon never really gave us chances to show off that particular side of things, did it?"
Pyrrha blinked, and couldn't help a smirk tugging at one side of her mouth. "Of... Course it did, Aldric, it was a school. You had some of the highest grades in our class - don't you remember?" An alarmingly large part of her was actually frightened at how easy it was to slide back into a routine she hadn't visited since she was a teenager.
"No - I cheated on all my tests, lady." Aldric didn't even fight his grin, "used my radar and just read everyone else's answers - usually yours, or Weiss'. Sometimes Jaune's just for fun. I had more stuff on my mind than that." He chuckled, then looked over to the door, "how'd you know?" Back to her, an eyebrow arced.
Pyrrha shook her head, "just because I never had the time to actually practice with my semblance the things you thought I'd be capable of... Didn't mean I'd just ignored everything you'd said. It's not nearly on the level of your radar, but I can faintly sense magnetic fields, now." She nodded at him, "I knew when you'd walked back into the room."
Aldric nodded, an impressed grin on his face.
"You're smiling more than I remember." Pyrrha commented, trying to extend this moment as long as she could.
Aldric scoffed, and nodded his head to the side. "Someone... Helped me mellow the fuck out. Though they didn't know then, and they certainly don't know now."
That surprised Pyrrha, "you found someone?" She remembered how adamant he'd been on being alone, and the only two people who had really been any kind of determined to find him had been her and Yang - and Yang obviously wouldn't have stayed with him.
All Aldric seemed willing to offer up was, "Not quite." And just like that, the magic was gone.
Pyrrha was ready to swear the room grew darker with those two words and the entire lungful of air they seemed to take out of Aldric. She broke eye contact with him, and he found interest in the door he'd destroyed earlier.
Silence grew between them, until finally, "do you really think this was him?"
Aldric let out a sigh in which Pyrrha could hear what brief shadow of Ash's joviality was crushed under Aldric's duty. "Yeah."
"Why?" Pyrrha asked, half because she genuinely wanted to know, and half because she knew this was the only chance anyone would get to even try to end the war that had just begun before it got as awful as it could be.
"I said why already." Aldric responded, his eyes glazed over, his mind only partially here. "He's spent ten years doing nothing, when he promised he would do the exact opposite. He can improve the world, he can unite Humanity, all he needs is Salem defeated - well now she's gone, and what progress has he made? Ten years is a lot longer than it seems, Pyrrha, especially in a world as ripe for change as the post-Salem Remnant. But he did nothing, and my return reminded him that I'm watching. He got scared about what I'd judge him and his actions wanting, and would remove him from the board...
"But that sounds familiar, doesn't it?" Aldric asked, "Ozma... Fearing judgement."
Pyrrha frowned, her head tilted to the side as those words tugged at something, but she wasn't sure what.
Aldric continued, "something you need to understand about him is that he's been at this game longer than anyone else. You may understand that conceptually, but not realistically. What that realistically means is he's the single greatest liar in Human history - and since the only sources of information I have on him are himself, or Salem, I have to pull from them both to even try to come up with something accurate." He turned back to look at her, and now she had his undivided attention. "When he told me he was from ancient Rome, he told me he brought civilization to Remnant. The lies aren't hard to find - of course he wasn't from Rome, when Salem refuted that and never, once, even mentioned the 'ancient Dust' he attributed his arrival here to... But she did confirm that they introduced civilization to Remnant... Just that Ozma omitted the word 'back.' As in, they brought it back.
"Salem's story matches up with his, in that they both created the first kingdom after the Brothers left Remnant. It refutes that he did it alone, it matches that his kingdom expanded tremendously thanks to his power, but added that she was also present to assist said growth - which makes sense, given that Ozma partially confirmed her statement that two hugely powerful magic-users were required to locate and open a portal to Earth. It refutes that she introduced the Relics to him and that caused their war - instead saying that an ideological difference between the two of them was the cause of their rift.
"In case you're not following along... The important part is that he lies to suit his story, that he has been lying for so god damn long that he's better at it than me, who lied his way to killing Gods, and Torchwick, whose entire life has been spent in the underworld where lying is a form of communication. And of the two of them, Ozma and Salem, only one ever took active roles throughout Human history. The other remained such a background actor that no one knew she existed until he told them, or she revealed herself. The sole exception to that is Cinder, who found some evidence of her existence and kept pulling on that string until she ran across her... And finally, everything he's ever done has been to improve Humanity in anticipation of the day the Brother Gods return, for fear of their judgement.
"The same gods I killed."
It took a moment, but then things began to fall into place for Pyrrha, whose eyes grew wide.
"I kept that knowledge from him to see what he would do, and he did nothing. The moment it became public, he became aware of my ruse, and knew how I'd judge him - that anything he did now would just seem as a platitude towards me... So." He indicated the courtroom. "He tried to get ahead of the curve. I'm willing to bet everything on red here: That he genuinely expected me to fight Atlas, and to either die in the Null Zone at my ranch, or die escaping it and being chased endlessly by the entire Atlesian military. When I didn't, he got scared - more than that he got terrified, because he knew I had a plan of some sort."
"Doesn't that mean you revealed your plan, then?"
"This is a weapon." Aldric let the stone bob up and down a bit, "this isn't a plan."
"How do you know, then?" Pyrrha asked, "that this was his work?"
"The best evidence of his involvement with something is the lack thereof." Aldric responded, "just look at me and Torchwick. The same goes for us, he and I are just more open about the games we play."
"No, I mean - what if you're wrong?" She asked, taking a step closer to him, though stopping when he slid a step away on the wall. "Is it even possible that this could be a coincidence?" She asked, "is there even the slightest chance that he was willing to leave you alone, and that it was Ironwood acting on his own? You said it yourself - Ozma's been around for thousands of years... How do we know he's not operating on that time scale?"
"Because when he wants to get something done, he can move fast. In the aborted timeline - in Solidus' timeline - she explained to me that everyone went from being on the backfoot to launching Atlas into the fucking sky in a few weeks. He went from genuinely worrying that the world was about to end and he was going to finally lose, once and for all, to convincing Ironwood they could cancel the apocalypse and trying to convince Solidus to literally give her soul to him for the power boost he'd get out of it. He can get shit done when he wants to, when he's scared - and I scared the ever-loving shit out of him. I know because I intentionally picked a planet that had a purple and a golden star to have our come-to-Jesus meeting. He was convinced that I wasn't speaking for myself - or that the Gods were actively watching us.
"And he still didn't do anything in ten. Years."
"Fine - but then how do you know this wasn't a coincidence? Are you saying it's not even possible?"
"No." Aldric said, "it's absolutely possible."
Pyrrha blinked.
"The problem is that I can turn that question around on you: What if you're wrong?" He asked, "because believe me Pyrrha, there is absolutely nothing more I want to do than just run back away. I don't want to kill him - because I know what will happen if I do. Ruby's reading the same book, but she isn't as far ahead as I am. She doesn't know the outcome of me falling into that abyss.
"But if I take that chance... And I'm wrong? Every single person that suffers because of his inaction, is suffering because I didn't do anything about it; and if we're in the worst-case scenario?" He scoffed, though he didn't smile. "If we're in the worst-case scenario and Ozma really does try now what he tried then, and absorb kingdoms into one giant conglomerate? Then everyone who dies in those wars, will die because of me. I can't take that risk, not when I can prevent it - not when I've decided he's on the list of three people I'd come back for.
"Finally... The fact that this is even possible in the first place reveals a gigantic flaw that no one can deny. People as powerful as me, Ozma, Salem - any of us. We shouldn't exist. If it were force of will, that would be one thing - but when one of us can take control of an army of demons, another can build a cave full of hyper-advanced technology and doomsday weapons, and the third literally cannot die, and there's a basic understanding that all three of them could theoretically scale to each other... You have a fucking problem. I genuinely think there's a case to be made that if me, Ozma, and Solidus are the last magic-users... There shouldn't be any more."
"Aldric -"
"Don't argue that with me, Pyrrha, not before you actually think about it. There's a story where I come from - about this galaxy full of space wizards. My sword comes from that story. That galaxy has been stuck in a state of constant, universal warfare between two different factions of space wizards. One faction rises up, wrecks shit, the other one picks up their swords, kicks their asses, falls into a victory-induced apathy, the one faction takes advantage of that, rises up... Rinse, lather, repeat ad infinitum. All in the idea that some cosmic thing wants to be balanced, and that's how it chooses to balance itself. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome - Pyrrha, that's literal insanity.
"Throughout that setting's entire history, one - one single woman recognized the pattern and found an actionable way to break it. To kick the gods out of the driver's seat and finally give everything to the regular people who'd been suffering under that cycle for more time than you can even fathom. The results of what she tried don't matter, but the point is she alone - for the thousands of years before and the thousands of years after - was the only person to realize and acknowledge the insanity, and was the only one to try to actually solve the problem instead of treating the symptoms. You think Ozma and Salem's war is bad? Imagine if there were thousands of them, across millions of planets, and billions of people died every single time they so much as skirmished. Wouldn't you want that to end?!"
Then the final piece fell into place, and Pyrrha realized where Aldric was going with this - she realized what his endgame was and it terrified her! Aldric intended to end this cycle he'd identified by invoking everyone's checks and balances. Even if all of this was pure coincidence, if there was no malicious intent to be found anywhere, Aldric was saying that the mere fact it was possible for this misunderstanding to happen - and for the collateral damage such a misunderstanding would cause - meant that they needed to do something else, and proactively solve the problem instead of just waiting to react to it when it got bad.
She understood what he meant by saying Ruby was reading the same book as him, but was just behind where he was in it. By killing Ozma, anyone who knew him would thus understand that the abyss he would look into would then look back at him - Solidus Cinder would then be obligated to kill him, for fear of the threat he would pose to everything.
Aldric, in his belief that Ozma needed to go and that anyone who used magic like him should go with him, was actively planning for, and walking to, his own death!
"Aldric, no - there has to be a better way -"
"Give me one, Pyrrha." Aldric whispered, "please!" He begged through gritted teeth. "I want to go back to where I was a year ago. To what I had, to what I was doing - I want that more than you can believe, but I do not know how to do it! So if you have an idea GIVE IT TO ME!" He screamed, his voice echoing throughout the courtroom and into the hallways outside.
Pyrrha struggled for anything she could think of, "what's stopping you from waiting? From just... Walking away, letting Ruby - letting all of us - look into Ozma ourselves? Or even helping us?" She asked, "this all relies on him having set this up - if we can prove he didn't -"
"And how the hell will you do that, Pyrrha?" Aldric cut her off, "I thought of that - there's any number of mind reading bullshits I can pull out of the ether, but Ozma's a mind reader himself, and he's been doing it for thousands of years. He'll know how to shield himself in a way that's far less crude than wiping his memories or putting on a red helmet! What do you expect to happen, Pyrrha - you'll find a journal he wrote in which he confessed everything? I promise only one of us is that stupid! What next?" As much as he was arguing with her, Pyrrha could hear in the crack in his voice that he didn't like this - that even he, so skilled in thinking his way out of situations, in improvisation, in planning, couldn't find a way out of this.
"Couldn't you - just -" She couldn't think of the word, and just snapped her fingers.
"So you'd rather me kill five people instead of one, just to cheat my way to the answers. Or, assuming I can't substitute regular souls for magical ones, you'd rather me go out and kill Solidus, just to figure out if I should kill him... In effect giving him a reason to kill me, resulting in it happening anyway - and that is assuming you're willing to bring the stones back!" Aldric nodded to the one hovering in the air above his hand. "I cannot stress enough how bad of a decision it was to keep this, Pyrrha - the weakness I fully admit to having succumbed to in so doing! The absolute second I kill Ozma I'm going to destroy it. But to willingly bring them back is to just invite an apocalypse - and yes, Nikos, I've thought of using mine!" He interrupted himself, managing even to forestall her speaking by dispassionately using her last name. "But I guaran-goddamn-tee he's waiting for me to do that. He's hoping I will - so the absolute second he realizes I did, the second he senses another infinity stone show up, he'll teleport in and kill me! Then he'll have a stone that gives him control over life and death and a stone that will let him utterly dominate and turn Solidus' mind to help him! And I've even thought of pulling dead souls back to the living world and using them!" He said, practically shaking now. "But I don't know if that will work, I don't know what death does to people or their souls, and I don't know what happens to souls after I burn them up to do this!
"What next?" She saw the tear that gathered in his good eye just a second before he wiped it away. "You want to get a confession? How do we do that? He's immortal - he won't care about pain or any possible method of torture. If he says he didn't do it, we won't believe him. If he says he did it - even ignoring that we might not even believe that, we'd fight anyways and the point is moot!
"What next? Do we help Ruby and investigate? What do we even investigate?! What evidence would be left behind by a man that's played this game for longer than our bloodlines have existed?
"What next?! Do we try and magic up a machine that can see the future and pray it will let us see more than one? What answers would that actually give us?!
"What next?! Do we wait and pray that one of the Brother Gods' relics will just show up in the next week or so because we really, really need it right now?! Ignoring that an omnipotent asshole saw this coming and literally said the words 'some tests shouldn't be cheated on'...?!
"WHAT NEXT?! Do we write a story where an easy button gives a person the answers to their deepest question if they press it and then I make that button?! Would that even work, Pyrrha?! TELL ME!"
She lunged forward and grabbed him, pulling the broken man into a hug, and feeling him deflate against her.
"Jesus Christ Pyrrha, there's no stopping this." She heard him whisper into her shoulder, his voice shaking. "Even if it was all Ironwood - all three of us are still getting ready to get flattened underneath a boulder someone else pushed down the hill!" He lost strength in his legs, and she followed him, slowly kneeling down until they were both on the ground, "I can't think of a single way out of this!" He cried limply. "I can't!"
Pyrrha was paralyzed, trying to force her way into and immediately playing at the level of titans and finding herself wanting. This wasn't an foe she could fight, an enemy she could subtly outmatch, or an army she could hold off - this was a game she'd never played before, at a skill level that Aldric almost killed himself to reach as fast as he did, that Torchwick and Taurus needed their entire lives to train in, and that Ozma and Salem had spent entire epochs of history mastering.
Only one idea came to mind - the mother of all Hail Mary's, but it was all she could think of. The idea scared her, its outcome scared her even more - but if there was even the smallest chance that it could avoid all of this, didn't that mean she had to try?
"Use mine." She whispered, and despite how quiet she had been, she felt Aldric grew still - he'd heard her. It physically hurt her to do it, but she grabbed both of his shoulders and pushed him to arm's length, to look at him directly. The less burned, though still scarred half of his face was red from his emotional outburst, though both the scarred and burned halves were slackening, his mechanical eyes growing wide, as he processed what Pyrrha had suggested. "Use mine, Aldric."
"Pyrrha -"
"If I give it to you, it's not murder, it's self-sacrifice. It's not you taking a life to determine if you should take another, it's you being given the resources you need to obtain your answer."
"Pyrrha you don't know what you're asking me -"
"I do, Aldric." She insisted, looking him right in the eye, green boring into gunmetal gray.
"I don't know if I can undo that, Pyrrha!" Aldric shot back, his breathing growing faster - but in his eyes, Pyrrha could see the spark that told her everything: The person that made this choice wasn't him, it was her.
If he couldn't convince her to back down, he'd go through with it. She'd given him the piece to the puzzle he needed - and as much as he desperately didn't want to go through with it, he was being presented with the simple, cruel calculus of war that he'd operated on for years. One life to spare another and the collateral their battle would cause, or one life to determine beyond doubt the guilt of another. To take it himself, to attack and kill a random person to solve that metaphorical equation, Aldric couldn't do it - that innocent life didn't have to die. But for one to offer their life to him, willingly? To give him the chance to get the answer that would save untold lives no matter what it turned out to be - and perhaps more than that, but to either spare him the need to perform the act, or give him the same strength of conviction he'd had when fighting Salem, he already knew he could do that.
He just desperately didn't want to.
He was trying to force her to go back on it, but if she didn't, if she held firm, he would get his answer - and she would either spare him, or give him the strength to save the world.
"I'm serious - I don't know what happens to souls after I spend them!" Aldric continued, "if I do this, I can't just use your soul to effect the Mind Stone, get my answer, and then move you back to your body - or revive you afterwards! This is one use, then it's burned out - this one only works because the souls making it up are immortal! They don't fade away to wherever they go after dying!" Aldric indicated the orange stone, "I don't know if I can bring you back from this, Pyrrha - it may be irreversible!"
"I know, Aldric - I'm okay with that."
"Pyrrha you'll die!"
"You were willing to kill Ruby."
"I didn't want to then and I don't want to now!"
"Aldric." She tightened her grip on his shoulders, "You just said you can't think of a different way to determine Ozma's guilt. I can - and if I have even the slightest chance of absolving you of this task, shouldn't I take it?" She asked, "if I can help you determine Ozma isn't guilty and absolve you of this, let you drop this weight you've taken again, I want to do it."
"And what if I'm right, then?" Aldric asked, voice growing hollower as he realized in his heart that Pyrrha wouldn't give in. "What if Ozma's guilty?"
Pyrrha's lip quivered, and she had to look away for a moment to gather her strength. When she looked back, she said, "then I don't want to see what happens next."
She could see the effect her words had on Aldric, but this was the only idea she had. If Aldric did this, sacrificed her to obtain the truth to Ozma's guilt, and learned Ozma was innocent, then she would save him from what he would do. Even if he couldn't find a way to bring her back, he would live - his peace, the peace he so richly deserved, would remain. He could go back to whomever it was he'd found and they could do what Pyrrha couldn't - and fix him, help him heal from what he had done, and what he was about to do. If he learned Ozma was guilty, then he could do whatever he had to without an ounce of guilt his own, and could use that knowledge to curtail or even avoid the conflict between him and Cinder. Pyrrha had the power to save Aldric and the world - and the cost was just her life. She'd long since found her peace with the idea that she may die for something one day - or even for nothing at all.
But this?
This was dying for everything.
She stared deeply into Aldric's eyes, forcing him to look at her, and forcing herself to witness the conflict in them as he desperately tried to resist the growing tidal wave that was pushing him in one direction, and one direction only: Killing her, and learning beyond the shadow of a doubt what he had to do. His expression was one of the deepest, most intense conflict - there were tears gathering in the corners of his eyes, and his entire body was shaking, his only hand clenched tightly, as though he were trying to physically keep himself from doing what she had denied him the ability to resist.
She saw when Aldric finally lost the battle - the subtlest shift of his expression from struggling, to a macabre mix of resignation and determination. His brow shifted down at the edges, his lips thinned, his jaw set. An instinctual part of her wanted to shut her eyes and embrace what came next, but she didn't - she instead stretched her face in a warm smile, trying in her last moments to let him know that this was okay, that this was her choice.
She didn't know what to expect, how it would feel, or if it even would feel. All she knew was that, in the space between heartbeats, the orange stone fell from its position just above Aldric's hand, to nestle right inside of it. There was a flash, and then -
Nothing.
There were innumerable times throughout Ozma's very long life when he was worried, and even more than a few when he was scared.
But here? Now?
Ozma couldn't keep the absolute terror gripping his ancient soul from showing on his face.
Standing in his office at the top of Beacon Tower, looking out the windows, the holograms above his desk showing nothing but the cut feed from Atlas, Ozma contemplated what was on its way.
Or rather, who was on their way.
The trial had been televised - against his advisements. Atlas wanted a win - they wanted a major win, and putting the alien on trial for the things he'd done would be that win. It would show the world both that they hadn't grown weak or complacent despite their many recent defeats, at the hands of the Terrans and even the Fang, and it would show the world that they were in control of the situation. Capturing Aldric was symbolic - and it was the dumbest decision they could have made. Sure, everything had gone according to plan - they'd caught him, set up this 'kangaroo court,' discredited him to an entire world, and were moments away from sentencing him either to death or to life in prison; but that should have been their first and most major clue that they were playing a role, and not in their own show: That everything was going according to plan, most assuredly meant that things wouldn't end that way.
The only chance they'd had to keep things from going apocalyptically bad was if they'd killed him at his home - that was their only shot, but he'd just surrendered and they never even thought twice about it, instead trusting their own might and machines to keep him docile and weak - never once considering that he either had allies that may take offense to that, or his own plans to ensure he could change the status quo at a moment of his choosing.
His repeatedly asking after Ozma himself had proven that to the ancient man, and he had to admit a perverse curiosity as to what shape those plans would take, but even he couldn't have even imagined the terror they would turn out to be. Aldric's power - the power of a modern man, and an alien at that, who understood the ages and eons of study into magic that Ozma had acquired - was frightening enough, but what he'd done with it was terrifying in a way that words simply failed to convey. Stealing and using souls as a fuel source was such a grotesque, alien concept that even Salem had never considered it - and what it allowed Aldric to do? To use other human souls as power sources to create things that he himself could not sustain, it was one of two times in Ozma's long, long life where he felt an existential dread.
Appropriately, the first time was also by Aldric's design, when the man had convinced him that the Gods - the Gods he'd killed - were active again, and watching.
Worst of all was that Aldric kept one of the instruments that had given him the power to kill those Gods, and Ozma could only imagine what he was doing with it. Ozma could only imagine the fields of bodies in Aldric's wake as he escaped Atlas and just cut the strings of every person in his way, he could only imagine the sheer number of people their duel would kill.
Ozma tried to prepare - he did everything he could, but in all honesty what could one truly do against another who held a weapon that could end lives without any struggle or any effort whatsoever? He didn't even know where to find the woman out of time - perhaps the only weapon he could possibly bring to bear against him that could shift the tide, and that was if the woman would listen to him in the first place. Sure, there was evidence to say Aldric was loose and was going to start a rampage, but if The Record hadn't lied and Solidus truly distrusted him as much as he thought, would she even help him at all?
There was only one answer - only one outcome: Nothing Ozma could put between him and Aldric would even slow him down.
Well... He thought, eyes sliding down from the distant horizon to the closer docking ports at the cliff that divided Beacon from Vale proper. Maybe there is something... But would they even do anything but slow him down? And, he could scarcely even bring himself to think, would Aldric - who now had a goal and who had shown how little obstacles meant when they came between him and a goal - even hesitate if Ozma put them in between the two of them?
But it was the only chance he had to stop this rampaging bull. The only thing in the world that may slow and calm him down just enough for words to reach him.
He just had to pray Ruby Rose would return to Vale before Aldric did.
But, as further evidence that there was no one left to listen to his prayers, they were thrown back in his face when a gale-force wind suddenly picked up in his office.
Eyes widening, Ozma whipped around, his cane coming to his hand as he witnessed, for the first time in countless millennia, an astral projection.
Ozma watched in horror as, through a deep orange fog, Aldric clawed his way from wherever he was to just in front of Ozma's desk. He ripped and tore at reality using the implement he'd kept from the final battle against Salem, and his projection, or his soul, or whatever he was casting from wherever he was, pulled itself from whatever was in between Aldric and Ozma, and fell to the ground in front of him. Ozma barely even blinked before Aldric was standing again - and he looked just as awful as he had on the television, wearing prison rags, his body covered in deep scars and burns, his arm missing, but even worse now was that he was pale and translucent, a great orange glow and a deep orange fog filled Ozma's office, leaking from the tear in reality that Aldric had pulled himself from. Clenched in between his teeth was the implement that was allowing him to do this: The Soul Stone.
Ozma hesitated, this having been so far from what he'd predicted, what he'd hoped for, that he couldn't even come up with anything to say. All he knew, all he could think, was that the only reason he wasn't already dead was because Aldric was using the stone without his gauntlet to filter and regulate its powers - it was all he could do to project himself here, the evidence of this being both that he could see the man's soul being rent asunder by the power he was forcing through it - looking like fissures in his body that bled liquid gold, boiling away to orange smoke on contact with the ground, and that if he could have killed Ozma, he would have. But why astrally project himself here? Why shove the stone in his mouth? These answers eluded him -
Until he looked in Aldric's hand, and saw that accompanying the orange stone allowing him such a minute control over his - and truly all souls, was another.
A yellow stone, that Ozma didn't even need to recognize, to know its name.
Words now came to Ozma, a desperate plea to save the man in front of him and indeed himself. He dropped his cane and held up his hand, "Aldric, stop - it will overwhelm -" But that was all Ozma could push out before, with an angry, ghastly roar, Aldric lifted his hand and shoved it in front of him.
A great yellow flash filled the office, and for the first time in centuries, Ozma felt someone else infiltrating his mind - and nothing, not his own strength, nor his skill, nor the countless defenses he'd learned or created over his lifetimes, could stop his foe from breaking through and acquiring the answers to his questions.
And what Aldric saw doomed them all.