“You’re a godsdamned fool… Should’ve left me. I wasn’t…”
“Oh, be quiet, Harlon. This is your fault, you know? I wouldn’t need to risk my life if you'd just won that fight and stopped yourself from getting taken prisoner.”
“...”
“Hey! No! No! I just insulted you! I’m calling you weak and pathetic. You can’t take that.”
“I am…”
“Gods—fuck! Rose! Rose! I need you here, now! Please! Harlon. I didn’t mean—”
“I know. But you’re right. I was… dead weight in the end, wasn’t I?”
“No. You weren’t. You’re my brother. I’m—just keep talking. Stay focused on me. Don’t close your eyes! Don’t close your felling eyes! Harlon!”
“Brother…”
“Yeah. Yeah. I always wanted a brother when I was growing up. And I found one. I found a good one. You’re not dead weight, Harlon.”
“I’m not enough. Vera knows. You know…”
“No. You’re worth more to me than any power. You’re worth more than all the stars in the sky. Just don’t go to sleep! Harlon!”
-Harlon Lowe and Roland Arrow
179 (I)
Councilwoman
“Veronica. Veronica. Dearest. Please let him go. There’s no need for this.”
Veronica Chandler ignored her grandmother’s pleas as she tightened her grip around Stormhalt’s throat. The City Lord was choking violently. He kicked and struggled against the Legend-Councilwoman’s grasp, but his might was feeble compared to hers. Veronica was but a Master in terms of Physicality—and a Low Master at that. Such was why she strangled Stormhalt with borrowed hands
.She had summoned two Orichalcum-forged gauntlets from the Dimensional veil she wore and had them throttle the City Lord in ways she couldn’t. This allowed her to command Stormhalt to “Gag Harder,”or “Forget how to breathe,” and even “Enjoy getting choked.” The City Lord’s brutalized expression turned from indignation, to terror, to ecstasy, and then desperation as he kept looking upward. Halsur’s massive form glimmered faintly over existence. Veronica disregarded her grandmother’s favorite walking dildo and continued running the edge between releasing Stormhalt, or just breaking his neck and putting him out of his misery.
“City Lord Stormhalt. You. Simple. Stupid. Creature. Why the hell do you exist? Are you here to give me an aneurysm? Do you want me to finish you off, is that it?”
“Councilwoman, this is unbecoming,” Councilman Anthony De Diego said from the other side of the meeting chamber. She ignored the only member of the Auroral Council older than her and continued her strangulation exercise.
Veronica Chandler stood atop the grand ulenold table, having strode across its entire length with the activation of her Zen Berserker Skill to inflict bodily harm upon Stormhalt after he'd reported his latest blunder. “I’ll tell you what is unbecoming, Anthony. Helping an Abyssal Lord. Arranging for them to receive an Animancy Core. Allowing them to siege one of our towns and nearly restart the Abyss War. That’s unbecoming. What I am, right now, is simply upset. I am somewhat emotionally compromised. And the fact that the rest of you aren’t as well makes me just a little bit more angry.”
There were nine other Avatars in the meeting chamber besides her and Stormhalt. Nine other Avatars to nine other Ascendants. Right now, Cripple’s newest Avatar had yet to arrive, and one of Daughter’s sobbing Waifs was being held by a towering clockwork golem that served as Maiden’s Avatar and conduit to comfort her daughter. Why the Waif and Daughter were sobbing? Veronica didn’t know, and she didn’t have the energy to ask. She suspected it had something to do with the Deathless, considering how the Waif kept whimpering about him.
The Deathless, who really shouldn’t have escaped since he was under Cripple’s watch. But I guess I just expect too much from my fellow Avatars and my exalted Ascendants. Truly, the standards of stopping a True Hero with a single Legendary Skill from escaping the Capital Well are too much to ask for. I’m definitely the unreasonable one here. Yes, indeed.
Veronica took a deep breath.
And started choking Stormhalt even harder to deal with her stress. His eyes began to roll, and her grandmother began singing a soothing tune. Veronica was resistant to the Sonbringer’s ways, but resistant didn’t mean immune. Immediately, she felt some of her anger fade, but the intellectual annoyance still stayed.
“I’m not strangling you for the Blackedge debacle right now,” Veronica seethed elegantly. She pronounced every syllable with casual calmness while the Orichalcum arms she wielded trembled with unstable fury. “I’m strangling you right now because, after all your screw ups, with both the Endbreaker and Songbringer trying to protect you, you still couldn’t understand basic instructions. What did I say about Adam Arrow?”
She loosened her hold on Stormhalt's throat slightly. He rasped for air, and his eyelids fluttered. The man had been close to unconsciousness, and everything inside Veronica told her to just finish the job. “I have no excuse… But all this… was for…”
“Don’t say it!” Kathereine cried out. “Don’t say for the Republic, Havel! Look at her face. Is this the face of a woman who wants to hear that?”
Stormhalt blinked and gulped painfully. Something threatened to break inside Veronica. “City Lord. It’s not wise to come up with an excuse right after saying you have no excuse. It makes it seem like your words don’t mean anything. And if your words don’t mean anything, then I can’t take you seriously. Do you know what I do to people whom I can’t take seriously? Do you think I will spend time on them?’
“No, Legend-Avatar,” Stormhalt managed with a rasp.
“Legend-Councilwoman,” Veronica corrected. “Because you’re clearly my grandmother’s Avatar as well. That’s why I couldn’t call on her when this World Quest triggered, right? Because she was with you.” Veronica’s head whipped backward, and she glared at Kathereine from the corner of her eye. The ethereal figure of her grandmother looked so innocent. She had the gall to be blowing on a piece of jewelry to feign nonchalance, even after everything she did. “But let’s not talk about that yet. That’s for later. Right now, let’s stay on track with what I asked earlier. What were my orders related to Adam Arrow?”
“To see him mended and left in isolation,” Stormhalt coughed.
“Oh, so you did hear me. Remarkable. So then, why didn’t you do as I ordered?” Veronica pressed her lips together as she waited for Stormhalt to give her an answer. When none came, she pulled him even closer. “Well. Say something. If you have a problem with me, I want to know about it. It’s important to know how other people feel about me so that I can self-improve.”
“I had to speak with him,” Stormhalt whispered. “I had to face him.”
Veronica closed her eyes. She nearly closed her summoned hands around Stormhalt’s neck too. No one would ever know the sheer depths of her Heroic willpower—how much it took for her to spare Stormhalt’s life. Three times she was tempted, and three times she held back from just killing him. “Stormhalt. I distinctly recall ordering you to seek a Psychomancer to resolve whatever fixation you have with Roland Arrow.”
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The City Lord had the gall to sneer. “It’s not a fixation. He was a threat to the Republic. He intended to bring down the Ascendants! To elevate himself to the position of god!”
“Right. So you say. Just a shame that my belief is very lacking right now.”
Kathereine almost said something, but Veronica whipped her head around a glared. “I’ll get to you later, grandmother.”
And for the first time, Kathereine’s self-control slipped as well. “Do not take that tone with me, child.”
Something clashed between them. The table Veronica had been standing on turned into a spray of ash, and she gracefully dropped to the floor as the malice in their Rhetoric turned tangible. Their words greeted each other like colliding blades, and the room was filled by the ringing of steel in the aftermath. Neither Ascendant nor Avatar said anything thereafter, and neither was satisfied. Veronica knew she wasn’t as powerful as her grandmother in most regards, but when it came to words, orders, and commands, she was a Legend.
And Legends existed to defy the reign of gods.
“We will be talking later,” Veronica said coolly. “Officially. And then privately.” She regarded Stormhalt once more, ignoring the narrowing of her grandmother’s eyes. “Stormhalt. You disobeyed my direct declaration—one that all the other members of the council agreed upon.”
“Technically, we ended the last emergency session at an impasse.” Veronica’s glare was ripped away from Stormhalt’s pathetic face until it found the one that had spoken. Three seats to her right, Luminous Lantern, Enoch the Builder’s Avatar, decided to add its two bits of mithril. The automaton’s lantern-like head flickered with each word, while its Ascendant, Enoch the Builder, remained absent.
“Thank you, Luminous. But please be polite and wait for your turn to speak next time. Thanks.”
The automaton flinched as if someone slapped it over the head. “I was merely being truthful,” it said, slightly hurt. It fidgeted with its gold-tipped fingers, and still its absent-minded Ascendant failed to appear. “When we finished with the last session, we only agreed to refrain from doing anything with the Young Lord and treat the prison break in the Nadir as the priority.”
“Yes. Anything. And City Lord Stormhalt decidedly did something. Something that led one of our own wardens—a Biomancer—to steal him from his cell and attempt an escape. Now, I have to ask the ugly question of whether our Biomancer was actually an Aviary agent all along, if she was ideologically compromised, or if our City Lord here was so repugnant in terms of behavior that she thought freeing the Young Lord was the proper thing to do.”
Veronica paused for a moment and leaned in closer over Stormhalt. He tried to flinch away from her. “I also know that we have a dead Psychomancer. Which leads me to two more questions: What was a Psychomancer doing in his cell when we already had one do a surface survey for his mind, and what were you trying to do with him?”
“The surface survey was insufficient,” Stormhalt choked out. “I just wanted to see if there was any way we could learn about the Deathless’s behavior. And to use the Young Lord against him. I suspect there is a strong—”
Veronica slapped Stormhalt. The man’s head whipped off to the side. A cut opened along the edge of his scalp. “Heal,” the Councilwoman commanded. The wound tried to argue against her, but her Unique Feat and unbending ego decided otherwise. The injury she inflicted didn’t heal biologically. It was simply commanded to seal itself shut. The System tried to argue with her. Existence disagreed. She felt a brief pushback and rolled her eyes. “Heal, because you’re going to heal anyway. I’m not killing this sad waste of a Pathbearer yet. Just speed it up.”
Now things were more acceptable. Stormhalt’s wounds slammed shut and fused back together in an instant. Most of the time, when you got to be a Legend, the System wanted to help you do the impossible. Veronica just had to give it a few steps to follow.
“Councilwoman,” Stormhalt began. She smacked him again. His head snapped hard to the right, and he nearly passed out.
“Stay awake,” Veronica commanded. “Get over your concussion.” Stormhalt shuddered as he did just that. “Stormhalt. Being an Avatar lets you get away with things. Everyone in the room knows that. Some of us use our position to do great things.” She gestured toward herself. “Some of us use our position as an excuse to do nothing, like Anthony.” The older man didn’t even bother frowning. “Some of us are literal orphans bound to an unstable child monster because life and fate hate them. But do you know the difference between the ones that stay Avatars and the ones that get spent?”
Stormhalt swallowed hard and didn’t answer.
“I’m looking for a reply on that, Stormhalt. It wasn’t rhetorical.”
“Favor,” Stormhalt said. “Service of the divine.”
Veronica couldn’t help it. She laughed. “No, you poor, simple man. It’s saying no. It’s telling your Ascendant that they cannot do something. That they cannot use you in a certain way. Because there is a big gulf between Avatar, servant, and slave. I know you despise Roland Arrow. And that matched up with what my grandmother feels toward the Starhawk. But the reason why we managed to stay a Republic so far is because everyone knew to listen to me!”
And with that, she snapped Stormhalt’s neck. The man wheezed desperately. His limbs shot out along his sides—but black lightning burst free from his twitching form.
“Stop,” Veronica said. A few of the forking bolts sank into her—but touched nothing due to her veil of Dimensionality. “Live. I didn’t break your neck completely. Get over it. Get better. Snap back into place.”
Stormhalt let out a pained cry as his neck popped back to a stable state. Halsur was glaring down at Veronica now, but she ignored him as she always did. Of all the Ascendants, she cared about him the least. Mainly because Halsur was kind of like Stormhalt in a way. The bastard was obsessed with her grandmother and didn’t really have a will of his own when it came to her. It just made him like a hollow vessel. And there was something especially pathetic about a god acting as a slave.
Veronica sneered at Stormhalt before releasing him. The armored City Lord hit the marble floor with a resounding crash. Veronica’s summoned hands of Orichalcum receded into Dimensional rifts. She glared at Ascendants and their Avatars. Then she strolled away from Stormhalt, clasping her hands behind her back.
“Fellow council members, Great Ascendants, I see we have to talk about a few things again. I see that we need to be reminded of the rules we abide by. Mainly, how our politics are supposed to be inflicted on our enemies rather than each other.”
“Then we must speak of our wayward brother,” Kathereine began.
“We will not speak of the Starhawk until he and his Avatar are in our presence and properly accounted for. Not before that. Never before that.” She made eye contact with Kathereine again, and a pressure built between them. The chamber groaned. The gilded walls cracked apart, revealing Orichalcum behind. Paintings were ripped down the middle, and glass shattered. Even the marble floor came apart in an expanding web of fissures. “Never before.”
Veronica began circling the chamber. She eyed the Ascendants more than their Avatars, and she enjoyed their silence. Yeah. That’s right. You know I’m right, but you never listen. You never listen until one of you actively shits the bed. Despite the burning frustration nested within Veronica’s bones, she quite liked this—the feeling of being the pillar of the Auroral Council and the tiebreaker between the gods.
“She is right, you know,” Maiden’s voice sounded forth from the clockwork golem she used as her vessel. The massive entity was a collection of snapping gears and hissing steam. Yet, beneath the metal were patches of biomass that melded with the inorganic exterior. “You were always impatient, Kathereine. We know that Matthew has grown unstable as of late, but the goal is to convince him. Or bind him to us. Not to be rid of him. That is not the consensus we came to.”
The Ascendant herself appeared in the golem’s metallic reflection. She looked as she always did, a shadow sprouting far too many limbs hunched over a crafting table. Sparks flew out as she worked, and between the flashes of light, Maiden’s full glory was shown. She was as much of an art project as all of her creations. Only patches of flesh remained of her. The rest was a jigsaw of glass, metal, crystal, and more. Yet, despite the filigrees of contrasting matter comprising her form, there was still a gorgeous presence to her. Maiden’s face was like cracked clay lined with whorls of gold. Her hair was a nest of copper, and a faint smile lined her lips. Pits of shadow existed in place of irises, and there was a boundless intellectual hunger in her expression as she worked on.
Kathereine’s beauty made her fellow Ascendants look plain, but Kathereine was ultimately human. A bit too human for Veronica’s tastes—but gods came in all shapes and personalities.
“Oh, the consensus,” Kathereine retorted with mockery. “Maiden. I do so admire your willingness to abide by the rules when none exist.”
“But one does,” Maiden replied. Her clockwork golem lifted its face at Kathereine as the gears it had for eyes snapped and turned again and again. “There is a single law that determines all our fates: The Great One. Should our connection to them be damaged, should the skills we crystallized in their mind be affected, then there is no us.”
“And such is what I was trying to prevent,” Kathereine said, gliding across the room. Her white dress flowed and flapped behind her, turning into the faintness of wings. But then the wings broke apart into petals, and a fragrance filled the room. The Songbringer hummed as she circled the clockwork golem like a snake preparing to wind itself around its prey. Then, she struck. She wrapped an arm around the golem, and for the first time, Maiden looked up. It was a strange sight—though one infused with aesthetic.
Maiden stared up at an angle, looking past the shell of her golem like a portrait of someone looking beyond their frame. Meanwhile, Kathereine grabbed the golem by the arm and grinned amiably. “Why, if Matthew had his way, there would be no Republic. There would be no us. We all know what he intends to do.”