Bellageist: Chains of a Demigod Part 6
Annihilation
Chains of a Demigod
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8
Part 9 (coming soon)
Parts 1-5 Synopsis (3 minute read):
Nyl awakens in a primal, incomprehensible world as a hominid driven by aggression and an instinctive hatred of weakness. Guided by a metallic voice between battles, she evolves through escalating "scenarios," each marked by the sun’s flight and a new era of weaponry – from stone clubs to iron spears and beyond. The “voice” praises her victories, naming her "the Impetuous" then "the Ardent," urging her to claim "Basilissa" as her true title, while citing her shifting odds of survival. Her mind, a sponge for knowledge from an unseen font, propels her from savage killer to superhuman warrior.
In Part 1, atop a fortified wall, Nyl bonds with Garuna the Quick and Arcade the Steady – fully conscious allies amid half-aware "others." Her superhuman feats dodging arrows and scaling towers earn adoration and elevate her companions to "Garuna the Swift" and "Arcade the Unwavering." The trio face a dragon next, its roar heralding Part 2.
Part 2 sees Nyl, battered but triumphant, slay the dragon alongside Arcade and Garuna, her shoulder scorched and armor ruined. Unlike prior scenarios, the sun lingers, defying the normal cycle. Garuna, mortally wounded, is tended by a boy claiming to be her son. A king arrives, offering vassalage for their feat, but refuses Garuna. Torn, Nyl swears fealty, followed by a reluctant Arcade, both abandoning their dying friend. In the king’s coach, Nyl glimpses her hands as metal, hinting at an artificial essence. At the castle, she catches Arcade with maids, sparking jealousy and existential doubt as she collapses in tears, the sun still fixed overhead.
In Part 3, Nyl wrestles with identity during the king’s feast honoring their victory. Arcade’s tale of the dragon fight, lauding Garuna and Nyl, ends with the princess’s favor, further igniting Nyl’s rage. She hurls wine at him and flees to a tower, where Arcade pursues, revealing the voice’s decree: only one may survive this trial. His confession of love and willingness to sacrifice his life shatters her resolve; they kiss, and the sun sets. Alone, the voice names her "Knight" and a "candidate," cryptically stating she and Arcade united "ahead of the curve" toward "Basilissa." Heartbroken, Nyl attempts to reject the game, but the sun rises anew.
Part 4 thrusts Nyl into a prison overlooking a city ruled by a dead Garuna, now a crowned corpse-queen. Her son Garun, grown into a golden-armored man, executes red-haired prisoners, each an echo of Nyl and Arcade’s flaws. Nyl’s defiance draws his ire; he condemns her for Garuna’s death. Arcade appears, shackled, refusing to renounce Nyl despite the threat of torture. Garun’s anger changes him into a golden giant, but Nyl’s fury is greater. She transforms into a silver dragon. She kills Garun, only for Garuna’s witchery to birth twin granddaughters, Luna and Runa, from his corpse. The twins thwart Nyl’s attempted rescue of Arcade, and, wounded, she flees, crashing near another city and becoming human again, bloodied and grieving.
Part 5 finds Nyl nursed to health in this new city, her injuries healing without scars. She reunites with a changed Arcade. He’s become red-eyed and flamboyant, now "the Unstoppable," leading a nation called "Arcadia." He claims he fought a hundred battles to find her and proposes marriage in a manipulative public spectacle. Doubting his authenticity, Nyl resists. Garuna’s army attacks, interrupting the event. Garuna and Garun are present as corpses, followed by the twins and a blue-eyed Arcade chained to Garuna’s palanquin. Amid battle, Nyl charges to free him, her sword shattering against his chains as the twins close in to stop her. The dual Arcades - one brash, one stoic - deepen the mystery of her reality, where time bends, the dead return to life, and willpower reshapes flesh.
Across five parts, Nyl evolves from a primal killer to a being wrestling with love, identity, and a constructed world of alien rules. The voice’s riddles, her metallic visions, and Arcade’s split existence suggest a game beyond survival, with "Basilissa" as its elusive prize. Nyl stands deep in the enemy’s ranks, weaponless and clinging to hope: can she free the true Arcade and unravel this nightmare? Or will death finally claim her in a challenge so unfair even Nyl cannot best it?
Bellageist: Chains of a Demigod Part 6
Nyl’s swung her sword at the blue-eyed Arcade’s chains, but it hit an invisible barrier - and shattered.
Its fragments plinked over the smooth stone of Garuna’s rolling palanquin. If steel were to break it should have snapped or bent - some unnatural force destroyed the weapon.
“Arcade!” Nyl begged, wishing him to wake from his trance and notice her. She reached out and grabbed his shoulder. A mere centimeter away her hand met the same magical barrier. A flash of light stung her fingers and Nyl yanked her hand away.
A commanding woman’s voice accosted her: “Temptress!”
“Thief!” came its echo.
Nyl turned and saw Luna and Runa mounting the broad palanquin in mighty leaps; tall, statuesque, almost divine. The women circled Nyl, Luna on the left, Runa on the right, threatening her with halberd heads the breadth of a man’s chest. Their winged helmets covered their eyes, yet they moved as if guided by supernatural sight. Gilded sentinels, born from death to uphold Garuna’s inflexible will.
“Surrender, beast,” Luna said.
“Or be subdued,” Runa finished.
Nyl rolled her shoulders and assumed a fighting stance. She glanced at the battle raging behind her, smiled, and said: “You waste your threats. My ally demolishes your army.”
“Hubris,” Luna said it like a definition.
“Traitor,” Runa underlined.
The twins swung their weapons, one at Nyl’s knees, the other at her shoulder.
Nyl cartwheeled, narrowly dodging the axe blade at her feet. She bent under the blade coming high and grabbed its haft. She rode the sweeping strike, planting her feet and circling at a run to center Runa between herself and Luna.
Runa rotated her halberd with an expert twist, tangling Nyl’s head and neck in the axe’s bearded grip. Arms flexing, she pulled Nyl in close.
Luna and Runa moved in perfect concert. With Nyl briefly trapped, Runa shifted her hip aside. The spiked tip of Luna’s halberd thrust through the empty space, rammed hard into Nyl’s side.
The spike pierced the hinged flank of Nyl’s cuirass, sinking deep. Pain blossomed, every tendon in Nyl’s body suddenly taught and string-thin. She looked down in shock. She felt blood drain from her face even as it flooded the inside of her breastplate. She knew a fatal wound and recognized the irony; she would die of a puncture in her side, just like Garuna.
“Pathetic,” Luna said, twisting her polearm, wrenching another painful shout from Nyl, before yanking her weapon free. The spike withdrew to a sucking sound and trailed a shimmering ribbon of blood. The rippling crimson streamer splattered upon the stone.
Runa leaned in close, the eyeless brow of her mask meeting Nyl’s helmet, their lips almost touching. “You are naught but a beast.”
With foul intimacy, Runa pried Nyl’s grip from the halberd. She rested the haft of her weapon on Nyl’s shoulder, holding Nyl aloft by the armpit as the latter’s legs weakened.
Nyl had been unarmed and outnumbered - but it should not have mattered! Nyl could not believe how quickly she had been bested.
“You disappeared into idleness while we rehearsed this moment of justice.” Luna said, as if reading Nyl’s thoughts. She, too, leaned in awkwardly close.
“We fought a hundred battles in preparation for our day of vengeance,” Runa finished.
Nyl should have felt the air of their breathing on her cheek, but did not. She lacked the focus to wonder at this, her hands and feet numbing as her blood drained.
“You will not die yet,” Luna said.
“First you will witness your folly,” Runa followed.
The twins set their weapons down and hauled Nyl along by her shoulders.
I will not surrender, Nyl thought, remembering an old vow: “I will never know this death you speak of.”
She sought her inner fire, the dragon spark. She tensed, putting all her strength into squeezing her fingers and curling her toes. Her icy digits moved – only barely – but the power remained just out of reach.
Nyl’s fury bled from her nostrils like smoke, smoldering and doused with pathetic tears.
One of the animated statues carrying the dead queen’s palanquin reached up with Garun’s body in its hand. It set the queen’s dead son on the surface, and his ridiculous, table-sized, castle-garden hat fell off his head again.
The twins stretched forth one leg each and hauled the city-hat level with their heels.
Luna: “Our father is here.”
Runa: “He will hold you prisoner.”
“Do you ever speak first,” Nyl wheezed, doing her best to appear uncowed, “or does Luna do all the thinking for you, Runa?”
“Which chases the other over the moon?” Luna asked.
“The light, or the dark?” Runa echoed.
Nyl rolled her eyes. “I have never seen the moon,” she said, deciding she might instead bleed quietly from hereon out.
The twins depositing Nyl against the side of Garun’s giant, model-city of a hat. The potted plants set within it had been ruined by multiple falls, the bastions and roofs it depicted dirty with grime.
The raging battle now sounded tinny in Nyl’s ears. She wondered if she would survive a minute longer.
The gold-armored women withdrew manacles hidden within the helmet-city. They secured only one to Nyl’s wrist. They dragged their father’s dead body over and locked his wrist within the other manacle. Luna produced a rope, and Runa took it to tie Nyl and Garun together a their wrists.
“What… is this…” Nyl whimpered.
“Our father is guilty of weakness and failure,” Luna said.
“However, we honor all our ancestors, and strive to be worthy of them,” Runa explained.
“You think in rotten circles,” Nyl said.
The twins’ lips curled.
“And you think not at all,” Luna returned.
“You snarl like a beast,” Runa emphasized.
The twins turned without another word and collected their halberds. Lithe and powerful, the golden-armored ladies leapt from the palanquin. Nyl next saw them galloping off on their strange, cybernetic horses towards battle, hollering war cries.
Nyl glanced at Garun. The boy-turned-man, man-turned-corpse stared slack-jawed at the sky. His dead eyes cast an empty plea at the heavens.
The pitiful sight rekindled Nyl’s contempt.
Weakness.
She tensed again, tried to shift her hips to scrunch her wound tight and closed, then said to him: “You were never a genuine person. You are but a fragment of Garuna’s wicked conscience and a shameful byproduct of this tyrannical unreality. You were hardly worth killing.”
Nyl recognized the truth of her words only after speaking them. The insight did not move her from indifference. She reached for her shoulder buckle. She worked the strap loose, doing her best to ignore Garun’s mummified hand bumping upon her cuirass. She finally managed to slip her fingers under her dented armor.
She searched, grunting with pain and effort. She found the sticky hole in her gambeson and tore it wider. She put pressure on the wound beneath - vitae seeped in alarming amounts. She should have felt the heat of blood on her hand but her fingers remained worryingly numb.
This being all she could do, her eyes drifted to the battlefield.
The air thrummed with war’s cacophony. Firearms barked, steel clashed. Men shouted and horses shrieked. But above it all rose a deeper rhythm, a new sound; a puppetmaster’s pulse. Nyl, half dead herself, thought she saw and heard the pull and creak of strings on the blue-eyed Arcade at the head of Garuna’s palanquin – not with her eyes, but with her mind.
The dead queen’s puppet stood rigid at the platform’s fore, his chains glinting faintly, his arms jerking as threads tugged them this way and that. His blue gaze burned unseeing, yet the battle bent to his will, a grotesque symphony of his silent command.
Formations of golden-skinned soldiers, unyielding, their faces carved into indifference by an otherworldly power, marched in lockstep – only to be snatched skyward midstride. The air rippled, an invisible player’s hand sweeping across a board game. Entire phalanxes rose, armor clanking, banners snapping, hauled heavenward. They twisted in the air, suspended, then crashed down someplace new, units swapping positions – pikemen traded for cavalry, arquebusiers for swordsmen. Each block of men landed like a hammer strike and kicked up plumes of dust. The blue-eyed Arcade’s head twitched at each swap, a marionette’s spasm, reshaping Garuna’s line of battle like a capricious god.
Nyl’s impromptu allies reeled from these magical tactics. Reiters found themselves mired in compressing walls of spears, pikemen found themselves subject to withering gunfire, lancers stumbled from attack to defense when raining swordsmen blocked their path to vulnerable arquebusiers.
But Arcadia’s people had grit, experience, heart, and courage on their side. The red-eyed Arcade had told Nyl of the hundreds of battles they had fought; now this veterancy showed. Combat-hardened units maneuvered where possible, weapons briefly raised and men stepping into orderly files funnelling galloping cavalry through their ranks, facilitating one unit’s escape from entrapment and bringing other more suitable answers to Blue Arcade’s god-like arbitrations.
Garuna’s gold-skinned soldiers proved inferior to their enemy’s furor and skill at arms. Red-decorated soldiers chewed through the foe with zeal, laying waste to her stoic puppets and giving proof to the boast in their commander’s title: The Unstoppable.
Though Nyl could not see him in the fracas nor hear his words, she singled out Red Arcade’s brash voice booming within the din - the man seeking her hand in marriage laughed as he killed.
Soldiers of blue fell in droves, yet the men and women in red seemed unable to press the advantage. Nyl caught a detail she had first missed.
When death came for a golden-skinned soldier it did not prove final. She watched one fall, skewered by a galloping horseman’s lance. The slain puppet lay still a while, then its stoic mask split open spilling goopy crimson ichor. Moments later, a fresh, silver-skinned duplicate burst from the corpse, immediately standing to fight with its face frozen in a snarl of rage.
Every golden warrior that fell went through the same metamorphosis, silver revenants that fought with greater quickness and a feral abandon. These reincarnations ignored caution and sense, forgoing orderly ranks to swarm and hack down their killers.
These silver-skinned copies inflicted harm on the enemy, but not enough. They, too, crumpled to their more skilled opponents - only to stand again, bursting at the seams just like before, but emerging bronze-skinned in their third resurrection, their expressions twisting away from rage towards macabre grimaces of shame and horror.
These bronze husks staggered with deceptive rapidity, brittle but lethal, still one moment, thrusting weapons with inhuman speed the next, stabbing unerringly at throats and armpits with whatever sharp implements they could grab. But these bronze ones, at least, died real deaths when struck, shattering like clay pots and crumbling to dust in the bloodsoaked ground.
Arcade the Unstoppable’s men found their ranks disrupted as enemies returned to life in their midst. Both armies’ orderly lines of battle soon disintegrated into the chaos of a general melee. All the while, Arcade the Unwavering plucked his remaining gold-skinned regiments from the ground to toss them this way and that, negating the reds’ advantage here, encircling doomed men there.
Blue and Red Arcades ground each other’s forces to nothing. Bodies piled. Banners of both colors fell, trampled into dirt wettened by blood into muck. Battlefield dust dissipated as men died in great numbers, the roars and cheers of martial teamwork giving way to lone grunts of individuals battling for survival.
Nyl’s head grew heavier by the minute. Time ebbed and flowed, one hour passing in an eyeblink while the next dragged for an eternity. After a moment that felt simultaneously like days and minutes, the battlefield transformed from a contest of clashing armies to a dried-up graveyard of splintered metal and torn flesh.
Still the fighting continued, relentless, a mockery of war spun from Garuna’s witchery and Red Arcade’s indomitability. Nyl spied the man himself now - red-eyed Arcade, the lucky and the diehards he commanded gathering about him in a whittled and still-shrinking pack. Arcade, towering over other men, blazed through Garuna’s toy soldiers like a speedy flow of lava. A few crimson banners still streamed at his back, his warriors pressing through the metallic tide in a wedge at his back. Surrounded by death, his warriors nonetheless fought with savage glee, their weapons hacking at hands, heads, and feet. All their horses had fled or died, riders now fighting on foot, thrusting broken spears and swiping dull swords, the reiters’ smoking pistols inverted and employed as clubs. Blunt axes rang upon helms with concussive force, knives sheared away ears and fingers, and hoarse throats shouted a defiant, tuneless hymn of aggressive effort.
Red Arcade, at their head, his hand-and-a-half sword a blur of crimson and steel, its blade notched yet unyielding. Nyl watched as his laughter died. He now snarled as he killed, a mirthless predator drunk on fear and murder. His red gaze flickered constantly, sometimes toward Nyl atop Garuna’s palanquin, sometimes in count of his diminishing numbers. Still, he made his way closer, and she saw the crazed whites of his eyes burning bright with determination and desire.
Luna and Runa likewise reaped a steady crop of red-accented opponents, the visible parts of their faces haughty with mild disgust. Their attacks streaked and restreaked their golden armor with mortal gore, a soldier’s armor seemingly little protection from the strength of their arms. Their mechanical mounts lay dead and dismantled behind them, chopped to pieces by suicidal men and women in red. Undeterred, the twins pressed their way on foot, entering and further shrinking the mob with deadly swipes, eager to confront their grandmother’s sworn enemy.
The slaughter consumed formerly mighty armies until only ragged pockets remained. So many lied dead that survivors had to step over three dozen dead bodies to find a new foe or take up the shoulder of a comrade. Even the musicians and bannermen joined the fray, dropping their instruments and signals in favor of more violent tools.
Widespread death returned order to this chaotic intermission. By the time the three champions met, hardly a hundred soldiers from both sides still lived, each army coalescing into two small opposing gangs.
Red Arcade, at the head of his group, pointed his bloody sword at the twins.
“For Nyl!” he roared in challenge.
Luna and Runa raised their gore-caked weapons in silent answer.
Despite her weakness, despite her confusion over which Arcade was real and which was a copy, despite this Arcade’s theatrical, clingy drama – Nyl’s heart lurched for this hard-pressed man.
The survivors of both armies, pitifully few, parted, clearing a space in the field, dragging many corpses and wounded away - a scene that almost looked rehearsed.
Red Arcade charged across it, alone.
Survive, Nyl pled silently.
The twins met him halfway, halberds whirling. Axe heads arced and a sword parried in a tempest of sparks and blurring movement. Luna struck first blood, her blade gouging a streak along Arcade’s thigh, strips of his chausses torn away amidst a sprinkle of blood.
Red-eyed Arcade pivoted viciously on the spot, holding his weapon two-handed, one gauntlet gripping its blade past the hilt. He whirled on Luna, and metal clanged above a deep and meaty puncture.
Luna’s backswing faltered as she discovered half a meter of sword planted firmly in her breastplate. Gasping in disbelief at her skewered heart, she sank to her knees, dragging her killer’s sword down with her.
With a blood-speckled grin, Red Arcade drove his weapon in deeper, its point scraping bones and her armor’s backplate.
Luna’s halberd clattered to the dust.
Runa recoiled and screamed – a cry of agony as if she had been the one slain. She recovered her wits and swung her halberd at Red Arcade’s neck.
Distracted watching the life flee Luna’s body, Red Arcade leaned away from the blow late, barely saving his head. He caught Runa’s axe on his shoulder and forearm. Runa’s strike split his armor in both places and he yowled his pain.
Runa attempted to wrench her weapon free from the shallow cut. Red Arcade released his sword, the weapon still buried in the crumpling Luna. Staggering, he seized the haft of Runa’s weapon the moment she worked it free from his flesh.
Arcade reached with his other arm and dragged her into a bear hug. Runa abandoned her weapon, dropping it behind him, her hands clasping his neck. Red Arcade’s face reddened from pressure. His left hand’s fingers scrambled for something on his injured right forearm at her back.
Runa squeezed harder, the metal tips of her gauntlets drawing blood. Red Arcade’s eyes bulged and his face purpled. He stumbled on oxygen-starved knees. A grimace of pain and anger split Runa’s normally indifferent face.
Nyl bit back on an urge to shout a plea; an unseemly request to beg mercy for Red Arcade.
Silence dominated the scene. The Unstoppable’s eyes rolled up into his head. He sunk slowly, moments from a permanently crushed throat.
Runa barked a humorless laugh, towering over him, squeezing harder.
Red Arcade’s arms slid down around her legs, still joined. His scrambling left hand finally found purchase, weakened fingers pulling out a dagger – its blade snapped in half when Runa split his vambrace.
Red Arcade summoned the last of his strength and thrust his broken blade into an unarmored gap at Runa’s groin. Blood gushed down the hilt and over his hand.
Runa howled, releasing him to clutch her spurting artery.
Red Arcade yanked his dagger away from her. He stood, unsteady, stroking his damaged throat and gasping for air. But he retained his keen aim and strong arm, stalking Runa with hard-earned steps, then stabbing her in her throat.
Runa released her thigh to reach for the broken blade in her neck, gripping his blood-slicked arm in her hands. She stumbled some more, grasping and pushing at his offending arm. Finally, she slid off its jagged sharp edge and fell. She rolled and twitched on the ground a moment, then stilled beside her twin.
Garuna’s army, the few with gold skin that still remained, lost their supernatural glow and stoic expressions. They shrank to normal size, becoming regular men. The soldiers who had reincarnated as silver or bronze likewise reverted – but unlike their still-golden brethren, these unlucky ones sprouted mortal wounds at the change. Pikes, arquebuses, swords and bucklers clattered to the dirt as the magic wore off and they died from wounds no longer stymied by magic.
Red Arcade coughed as color gradually returned to his face. He bared his teeth, his smile bright amidst the field of carnage, and raised his arms in victory.
“For the future queen! For Nyl’s love!” he shouted.
No cheers came from Red Arcade’s soldiers, nor lamentations from Garuna’s. The pitiful remnants of both armies regarded this latest event with faces tired and dour, like actors backstage at the completion of a poorly received performance.
The morbidly fascinating duel completed, Red Arcade’s soldiers now contemplated the wanton destruction surrounding them. Nyl remembered, then, the whole city of Arcadia had seemed to be fighters – with the death of this many, was their civilization no more? Their faces pale, their eyes hollow, these people regarded their leader one last time. Then they turned their back on him – first one, then two, then a dozen . Soon all but two lone souls had quit the field, and these may have remained out of sheer curiosity rather than loyalty to their king.
Garuna’s soldiers looked as if freshly woken from a coma – perhaps they had. Any power Blue Arcade or the dead queen had over them came to an end. The men’s heads turned this way and that, their eyes wide and stupefied, their jaws slack and open. Perhaps they, too, would have quit, if only they had a clue which direction they should go.
Nyl wondered at her reality’s arbitrary rules. In previous scenarios, searing flames would punish such cowardice with pain and death. On this day, however, the “gods” seemed fit to let them go.
Red Arcade’s smile wilted as his army disintegrated. Blood trickled from his wounds as he turned in search of accolades unforthcoming.
“Curse you all!” he said to the departing troops. “The glory shall be mine alone!”
He dropped his broken dagger and stomped over to Luna’s corpse. With a kick, he loosed his longsword from her body and shouldered its bloody edge. He pointed Nyl’s way, singling out Garuna on her palanquin.
“You lost, bitch! But I am not without mercy. Surrender and be banished! Stand aside, and I might satisfy myself with Nyl and the spoils of your city, and not your life!”
Nyl twisted to watch Garuna. The attempt stretched the hole in her side, rewetting the dry blood upon her knuckles.
I refuse to die, Nyl tried to say, but a groan passed her lips instead. Her helmet felt like a leaden weight. She dropped her head and pushed the dangling headgear from her scalp, and with great strain, watched her captor through the side of one eye.
The dead queen rose to a stand, not under her own power, but rather pulled up by some other force. Like when Nyl had killed her son, a golden staff appeared in Garuna’s hand. She slammed it down and initiated another act of witchery.
At the commanding crack of the staff, Luna and Runa’s bodies disintegrated in a flash of golden light. Taking to the air as glowing dust and shooting sparks, their remains flowed in Garuna’s direction, jets blown along currents of magic over the charnel fields. The twin golden ribbons of ephemeral light sparkled at Garuna’s feet. One coalesced into a golden helmet, the other a golden sword.
Garuna’s staff disappeared to nothing, and the corpse-queen spread her arms, her will propelling the hovering objects forward.
“You are too useless to be magicked into something, it seems,” Nyl said to Garun.
Garuna’s dead son had no reply.
The corpse queen lurched forward, legs stiff and knees unbending, initiating a parody of a walk. Her wilted hands pushed the sword and helmet in Blue Arcade’s direction.
Red Arcade advanced, shouldering through the milling crowd of disoriented men who had once fought in Garuna’s army.
“Another bewitched puppet,” Red Arcade scoffed. “Will you ever fight your own battles, Garuna?”
Garuna’s head lolled back on a neck limp with decay. Her bony hand grabbed the top of the golden helmet, raised it up, and with perfunctory ceremony, slapped it down upon Blue Arcade’s head.
Blue Arcade’s chains burst the moment the helmet crowned him, each individual link splitting and collapsing into a twisted heap. It seemed he traded one prison for another, reaching over his back to take up Garuna’s golden sword. He stepped forward with a puppet’s ill grace, descending imaginary steps from the top of Garuna’s palanquin down to the ground.
Red Arcade hopped and rolled his muscles, then steadied and presented his sword in a combat stance. His voice rang hollow from within his helm: “Come, then, pawn. I have no fear, for I adore Nyl, and you do not.”
“I choose duty over whimsy. I adore Nyl too, but I am no slave to lust. I have no fear, for I respect Nyl, and you do not,” said Blue Arcade, his first words of the day.
They are both Arcade. Nyl saw it now: somehow the “gods” of this farcical reality had split her friend in two. Or perhaps Garuna’s strange powers had performed this deed – with the gods’ allowance and borrowed power.
Or perhaps blood loss clouded Nyl’s judgment.
The duel began without further ado. Steel met steel, a rhythm of clangs and whooshing power which split the air and echoed over the corpse-strewn plain.
The red-eyed Arcade fought like a storm, vicious and swift, his strikes an unpredictable flurry. He lunged and feinted and danced, his blade never still, seeking gaps in the blue-eyed Arcade’s guard.
The blue-eyed Arcade countered with eerie economy, his movements minimal, his body swaying as if propelled by an external force. His sword stood straight like a pillar, dipping occasionally at perfect right angles before snapping back to stillness. His weapon seemed sapient, quick and alive where his wobbly mannequin-limbs lagged. His gold-helmed head remained motionless while he parried each blow with mechanical composure.
Despite his bleeding wounds, Red Arcade worked twice as hard as his eerily calm opponent. And despite his feral imprecision, his furor won him the first blow - a chop to the head, a dent scoring the gold helm deep, ringing wickedly like a chime.
Blue Arcade reeled, his uncanny movements interrupted by a starkly human backward step.
“You leave her in chains!” Red Arcade shouted. “And call it ‘respect?’”
“Such is the burden of honor,” Blue Arcade retorted, resuming a defensive posture. “Loyalty - a word you spit upon, traitor.”
“You act without heart!”
“You act without principle.”
Red Arcade bellowed his frustration and charged. The men clashed again, equals in skill, opposites in spirit. Fire against ice, chaos against order, sea against cliff.
Stop, Nyl tried to say, words failing her. She had never felt so weak. She would die before this contest concluded.
Heedless of her plight, their men’s swords clanged against each other or turned futilely against twisting armor plates.
Nyl wondered idly: perhaps her imminent death was for the best. Better to not live and witness the result of this farce. Why should she continue to care for this evil game? She was so tired. The world’s light dimmed, and her neck slumped. Her chin became the softest of pillows…
She was going to die now?
Ah, well…
Tunnels of black squeezed over her dimming grey sight. Her narrowing vision drifted to Garun, her limp and dying hand still bound to his already dead one.
Garun, the weak. Garun, the ineffectual shouter of mommy’s condemnations. Garun, who threatened Nyl’s lover with torture, but turned squealing pig in Nyl’s draconic talons before she popped him like a pustule.
She would die next to him? Bound to him? Pass in his company?
Never… the outrageous thought brought a foul laugh. The darkness slowed, then reversed, her contempt for weakness resurfacing.
The power… all it took was my yearning and my wrath, she thought. She focused her remaining fragile thoughts on the humiliating idea of being a corpse like Garun. Ff dying in the same manner as his mother, Garuna, a fool who charged ahead of a better warrior and died for it.
Yes, Nyl could admit it – Arcade had become stronger than she. He had grown since Nyl had last seen him. A hundred battles? She believed it – he had dispatched her killers, Luna and Runa, single-handed. And he had been split in two – what could he achieve if his two halves recombined?
Arcade. A comrade worthy of her respect. A man worthy of…
She tasted sulfur in her saliva, smelled smoke in her nostrils, felt her toes and fingers curling into talons.
Yes! Focus!
She concentrated on him… Red-eyed… No, blue… his frosty eyes, his handsome, smiling face, his readiness for a kiss.
His theatrical, dramatic face… smiling at maids… smiling at a blonde princess… a bedroom smile, a fling with two warrior women. His performative grin as he holds up a gaudy ring…
“No!” she whimpered, shaking her head, attempting to banish the intrusive thoughts from her mind.
It does not matter who wins. One is a theatrical playboy and jokester. The other is a dour slave to a dead queen.
“They are not the real Arcade!” Nyl cried, trying to ignore the voice shouting in her brain, trying to focus on the Arcade she remembered, not this cursed pair of men.
One will tease you with hollow praise and false promises. He is a performer who juggles hearts. The other will never forgive himself. He fell to temptation and forever wears shame like a ball and chain.
“No…” Nyl said, the taste of smoke turning to ashes in her mouth. The surge of might died in her bosom, its heat dispersing, flowing from her airways as impotent vapors.
Her doubts victorious, the power fled her fully. Nyl saw it drift away, smoke from her body swirling into an ember-speckled orb, a tiny galaxy of glinting, fiery stars.
She reached out to it, but it fled her vain grasp, her manacled hand yanking uselessly on its chain.
Tears flowed over her cheeks. She keeled over, a new searing ache in her side. She clutched her wound tight, desperately guarding her last drop of blood, to hang onto life just one more minute. But instead of hot blood, her hand met something hard and bumpy.
She looked down, pulling at cloth and plate to unshroud her wound. She caught a glimpse of her injury – gone, now covered by a patch of silver scales. The power had departed, but left her this one blessing, at least, sealing her wound and returning warmth to her nerveless fingers.
She would not die. Not yet, it seemed.
She looked up, thought to see the strange energy still hovering there, but her eyes met empty air. With her injury she did not know how much she could believe – had she hallucinated it all or in part?
Regardless, she felt new strength. She pulled at her manacles. She had been healed, but she had not transformed to a mighty dragon, and her puny body remained constrained by simple iron.
Grunts and scrapes stole her attention. She looked back to the duel, saw the two Arcades now disarmed. Sweat and blood mingled and steel armor ground and squealed as the Arcades wrestled in a shallow pond of bloody mud. Gauntleted hands beat uselessly against plate and fingers scrabbled blindly for purchase on something to pinch or rend.
Red-eyed Arcade seemed to have gained some advantage, straddling his opponent and pinning his arm while he wrenched his golden head aside.
Blue-eyed Arcade struggled to free his pinned arm, his free hand braced against his tormentor’s chin. His fingers spidered in and out in urgent search of a gap. With effort, Blue slipped a finger into his opponent’s visor, then flicked him in the eye.
Red Arcade snarled, maintaining his grip, twisting Blue’s head further, eliciting a grunt of pain. But Blue’s hand remained lodged in Red’s helmet, and he flicked his finger once more, dirty metal scratching an eye.
“Feckless thrall!” Red Arcade swore, flinching, forced to back away from the unbearable irritation. He released Blue’s arm.
Blue took immediate advantage, controlling Red’s head by gripping his helmet. With his released hand he pulled a dagger from his vambrace – identical to the one Red had used to kill Runa.
“No! Stop!” Nyl shouted, then added: “I love you!”
She had meant to stop Blue Arcade. But instead, Red Arcade looked up at Nyl’s shout.
“Hah!” Blue shouted, driving half the blade’s length through the mail underlayer of Red’s armpit.
Red screamed, grabbing at the wound and jumping off. He came away with Blue’s dagger still in his body.
“Stop fighting!” Nyl pled, straining uselessly against her bindings, unable to even stand.
Blue stood, too, swiping ineffectually at Red in an attempt to reclaim his weapon. Red hopped away and tore the dagger from his flesh. His right arm hung limp and bloody while he swiped the dagger at Blue with his left. Blue retreated and scurried for the hilt of his golden sword some distance away.
Red jumped after him, the stained dagger flashing scarlet in his hand.
“Stop! I will marry you!”
This time Nyl had meant to interrupt Red Arcade. Instead, her words turned the head of Blue. Blue Arcade’s hand clutched the haft of his golden sword too late – Red slammed the stolen dagger down into a gap at Blue’s clavicle. The dagger snapped, breaking at the hilt, leaving the edge lodged halfway in Blue’s flesh.
Not one, but two voices screamed in pain at this strike.
Nyl turned in surprise and watched the corpse-queen grab her collarbone, a new red stain spreading through the silk of her pure white robes.
“Garuna!” Nyl shouted. “I am sorry!”
Red Arcade tossed the bladeless hilt away. His face strained with pain and worry, he searched for Nyl’s eyes. He stumbled forward drunkenly, the blood of his many wounds washing the dust and grit from his armor.
Nyl saw him, then cried out a long-suppressed truth: “Garuna, it is my fault, not Arcade’s. I was wrong to abandon you, and I regret it!”
Blue Arcade rolled onto his front. He pushed his golden helmet from his head with a trembling hand and beheld Nyl with his frosty gaze, lips thin and white. He stood as well, clutching his limp arm and scrambling up the slope behind Red.
Garuna’s dead corpse rotated unnaturally to face Nyl, her body still as a statue. Her sunken eyes curled open to stare at her sightlessly. Her rictus grin slackened into something sad.
“Arcade left you because of me. I gave him no choice, can you not see that?” Nyl begged in earnest. “And I am sorry!”
Garuna’s jaw moved wordlessly. After a delay, a wispy voice emerged without source, speaking as if in translation to the flap of her desiccated flesh:
“The beast… discovers humility.”
Both Arcades called her name: “Nyl!”
Nyl saw them, standing shoulder to shoulder. Red Arcade’s fire dampened, his expression losing its exaggeration, a subtle reduction of melodrama to something more sincere. Blue Arcade’s stony façade cracked, his stiff shoulders sunken and his brow creased with worry.
The two regarded each other, recognition at last, dualities glimpsing a broken whole.
“How did this come to be?” Red Arcade asked.
“How do we mend this,” Blue Arcade replied.
“Follow Nyl’s example,” came Garuna’s ghastly voice. “Surrender that which blinds you.”
Both men stiffened and looked to her. Both opened their mouths as if to protest, but neither did. They then looked at each other, mirroring mind and body, searching each other’s faces for answers.
Blue Arcade doffed his golden helmet one-handed, and with difficulty, turned its visor to his face to speak to it: “I beg Garuna’s forgiveness.”
“You are forgiven,” the corpse-queen said.
Blue Arcade set the helmet on the ground. “Then I abandon my guilt.”
A golden flash consumed not just the helmet but also the golden sword nearby. The corpses of Runa and Luna replaced the objects, both twins withered as if dead for a year and wrapped in ceremonial burial cloths which hid their eyes.
Red Arcade likewise doffed his helm. Where before there had only been fury or glee, he now regarded the dead twins with regret. Then he looked up at Nyl.
Nyl glimpsed the old Arcade in his face, the knight who had offered his life to save hers, the one who had kissed her in the tower.
“Our time together has been too short, Nyl,” Red Arcade began. “But since we first met, I have hardly spared a thought for anything besides the chance to see you again.”
A tear rolled down Nyl’s cheek.
“I do not know if you meant what you said - if you said it to stop this. But you know I love you, Nyl,” he continued. He dropped his helm to the ground and with his good arm he reached under his breastplate to pull a small pouch from under his chausses.
“Perhaps this is what blinds me. It would be a lie to claim I could abandon my feelings for you. But perhaps I can set you free.”
Red Arcade bit the drawstring on the pouch to pull it open, then turned it upside down. The onyx engagement ring he had tried to foist upon her fell to the dirt. Its large red gemstone sparkled one last time before Red Arcade’s ironclad toe ground it into the soil. With a twisting foot, he drove the ring deep into the ground.
Nyl admired him that moment, even if she was not sure she wished to be set free. She needed to speak, to assure, deny, or support his act, to confirm her love as true, but nothing suitably sincere would come. “Arcade…”
Red Arcade simply nodded to her, a measure of his blue-eyed twin’s impassivity present on his face. He broke eye contact with Nyl and said: “It is your turn, Garuna.”
Garuna’s corpse rose in the air, her arms spreading.
“Me?” the unsynchronized voice said in imitation of her black maw. “I am perfection! My vision is keen! My guidance alone reveals your flaws!”
“You are wrong,” Blue Arcade stated plainly. “This is not you. You are not a witch, a queen, nor a corpse.”
Her golden staff flashed into existence again, high in Garuna’s hand. “I have nothing to surrender. For a generation I navigated the strife of the heavens to bring you to this moment. I have given everything to achieve it! Sacrificed my life! My children!”
Nyl spoke: “You are wrong. There is still one more thing.”
Garuna gripped her staff in both hands. “You question me? The beast I have only barely enlightened?”
Nyl ignored her old comrade’s threatening tone. “You gave up your son and your shame. You gave up your granddaughters – vengeance and justice. You forgave Arcade for abandoning you,” Nyl nodded her head at Red and Blue. “And you have released him from his guilt.”
“Yes! I have given everything! You should be thankful!”
“Do you not see it, Garuna?” Nyl insisted. “You are not a victim, not anymore. You let it all go. Now, it is time to move on.”
The dead queen stilled, still hovering, gripping her golden staff menacingly.
Nyl and both Arcades watched and waited.
Finally, Garuna moved, floating down and setting foot on her palanquin.
A stone tumbled – a chunk falling from one of the animated statues carrying her throne. One boulder rolled down after another, and soon they all crumbled to dust. Garuna’s seat of power sank upon the disintegrating giants’ remains until it settled amidst the ruins with a thump.
Garuna raised her staff high, then brought it down upon a withered knee. The staff snapped, its broken ends spewing golden flames. She hurled the broken ends at her throne. The splinters exploded upon contact, the throne and the staff disappearing in a brilliant flash.
A stony haze billowed out from the destruction, swallowing all present.
“Arcade!” Nyl shouted, then coughed on the dust. “Garuna!”
None answered.
Grit stung her eyes and Nyl raised hands to rub them clear. Her arms felt unusually light, and she realized her bindings lay open at her side.
She stood, searching for Garun. He had gone, and so had his strange and burdensome hat. It resembled a boulder now, sitting out of place upon the fallen palanquin. Perhaps it had never truly been more than that.
“Arcade!” Nyl shouted, afraid and impatient, well-accustomed to this reality’s trickery. Its dreams often twisted into nightmares.
“Nyl?”
“Garuna!” Nyl saw the silhouette of her old friend now, alive and familiar again.
“Nyl!” Garuna said, rushing towards her, freckled, orange-haired, and green-eyed. She again wore the beautiful white-colored plate in which she had battled the swamp dragon.
“Garuna! You live!”
They rushed and embraced in a rattle of armor.
“Let me look at you!” Nyl said, pulling back.
Garuna smiled under Nyl’s scrutiny, bouncing shyly on her heels.
Nyl ran her fingers through her companion’s hair. “My friend. You are as beautiful as I remember.”
“Not as beautiful as you,” Garuna said.
Nyl grinned, doubting it.
“I am sorry about all… this,” Garuna apologized. “I know not what came over me. I slipped away in that marsh and then… now I feel as if I wake from a terrible dream.”
“It is over now,” Nyl said, hugging her tight once more. “Who knows what awaits us. But I am glad to have this moment with you.”
Garuna returned the hug, squeezing even harder.
A man’s voice: “Nyl? Garuna?”
“Arcade!” Garuna shouted. She all but shoved Nyl aside to race past and greet him with a hug.
Arcade caught her in another clank and rattle of armor. His injuries healed, he hefted Garuna into a spin, laughing. He set the woman’s feet down, held her at arm’s length, and said: “You look well, Garuna!”
“Good as new!” She pulled him back into a tight embrace.
Arcade smiled down at her, then looked over Garuna’s shoulder to meet Nyl’s eyes.
Nyl hesitated anxiety tainting her joy. The three of them stood alone in illuminated dust - even the ground looked like the interior of a cloud. The scene seemed so dreamlike, so unreal, and thus she feared would not last.
She took a good look at Arcade. Red hair, strong jaw, a muscular neck. But one thing had changed.
“Nyl?” Arcade said, his voice a cautious mixture of delight and concern. He gently pushed Garuna aside and reached for Nyl.
“Your eyes,” Nyl said. “They are purple.”
“Why do you back away?” Arcade asked.
Nyl recognized her unconscious backwards step and stopped. But his eyes should not be purple – just like they should never have turned red. She knew this without drawing upon the encyclopedic knowledge that always waited at the fringe of her conscious mind.
“It is me: Arcade. I am whole once more.”
“I know. It is not you that I fear,” Nyl explained.
“Then come to me!” Arcade said, his smile wide but wistful, his brow furrowing.
“I wish to. But I am afraid,” Nyl confessed. “Afraid when I touch you, that this will end, like it did last time.”
Arcade halted mid-step. Nyl’s words wiped the smile from his face.
“We cannot predict the future in this place, nor can we avoid it,” Arcade said. “But let us commit this moment of harmony to memory. Perhaps that way we may never again be divided, no matter what the powers deign us do next.”
The man I adore, Nyl thought. Arcade really was back. She could not restrain her joy.
He smiled again, the expression pure, platonic, untainted by lust or worry. The smile of a kindred spirit.
“You are my pillar, Arcade,” Nyl said. “In this hurricane of trials and violence, you are my solid ground. I care for your companionship, and little else.”
Garuna coughed.
“And Garuna, if she will have me back,” Nyl amended, to Garuna’s delight. “And a good fight. I still like that, too.”
“Maybe, Nyl,” Arcade said. “But I was about to say: I think you are the strongest of us. Without you, I would be lost.”
Their hands touched and their fingers threaded together; his in gauntlets, hers unarmored. She had not noticed their nearness, their magnetism, her automatic reaching for him. She gripped him tight despite the pinching metal. Tears both sad and joyous warmed her cheeks and dripped from her chin.
“I agree with Arcade,” Garuna opined. “But Nyl does need a few friends to tame her wilder side.”
Arcade and Nyl gave her a withering look.
“Too soon?” Garuna asked.
Nyl and Arcade laughed.
Garuna joined in.
Nyl laid her head upon Arcade’s chest, uncaring of the hard metal plate he wore, desiring to be as close to him as possible.
The gods let them have another moment together.
Then the sun fled the sky.
Plunged in shadow again.
Nyl had anticipated the trial’s end. While she experienced no less sorrow for it, she now had some wisdom in her, and she restrained the potent urge to shout her anger and argue denials.
You slew many of the named and titled, came the cold metallic voice once more. You survived where others perished. You triumphed where others met defeat.
Nyl ignored its scripted statements, predicting a chance to ask a question. Her mind raced to form a good one.
You have earned a title: Knight-Lieutenant.
You have risen from candidate to chosen.
You have earned a question, to which an appropriate answer will be given.
Nyl’s thoughts circled, bouncing between one question and another. She feared the voice would dodge and deflect a question too direct. But she also feared asking for something proximate and trite, anxious she might waste this chance to elicit a satisfying explanation of these trials.
You have ten more seconds before-
“Why Garuna and Arcade?” Nyl blurted. She winced at her haste, resenting the voice’s prodding. Then, through a grimace, she clarified: “Let me rephrase. I meant to ask: What makes us three so unique that we must go through all this?”
As usual, the voice took its sweet time. It designs half-truths and riddles with which to smother me, Nyl thought.
Your two questions will be treated as one question, the voice said authoritatively, ignoring her attempt at correction. Prepare your mind for a greater truth.
“Prepare for wh-” she did not finish the sentence, assaulted by kaleidoscope of noise and light.
A cacophony of data assaulted her thoughts directly, taking the form of sound and sight that bypassed her sensory organs. Amidst this roaring static the hollow metallic voice spoke its answer – not with mere words, but with the heat of a branding iron applied to her brain:
Garuna is the beacon, the crystal atop the mountain. She is guilt, anxiety, and inferiority. She is the ideal, the tradition, the authority. She is the anvil and the hammer, the wind and the spark. She is memory and the light on the horizon, and through her, Basilissa could be forged to perfection.
Arcade serves two masters. He is the prisoner and the guard, the watcher and the watched. His hands, though bound by chains, grip the leash of control. The cold judges him harshly and to his resentment, but with it he tames the self-destructive fire of the beast. He is the link that binds two ends, and through him, Basilissa could witness reality.
Nyl. You are the living contradiction. You are the motive force and the howling void. You are the immortal river, the flood and the reservoir, the source and the destination. You are the ultimate, the instigator and terminator of all compulsions, and through you, Basilissa could draw purpose.
Its enigmatic message delivered, the torrent of sensory overload ceased, switched off like the flick of a lamplight. Nyl experienced vertigo, as if the brain-scrambling power of the voice had lifted her high in the air and now released her to fall.
But no wind swept her flailing limbs and no ground met her bracing feet. Nyl reeled her fear in and willed herself to calm, scrunching her eyes shut against the dark and forcing her body ramrod straight. With some effort, she slowed her heartbeat and regained her composure.
The poignant moment over, the voice began the rest of its regular, mundane diatribe:
Your statistical chance is more favorable than the average at: two-hundred-ninety-nine thousand to one.
Defy the odds. Face destiny. Seize your legacy. Become “Basilissa,” your true namesake, still unearned.
Be born again. Be victorious again. Be rewarded again.
Nyl hardly heard the voice speak, her mind still overloaded. She felt like every synapse in her brain had fired at once. Had she just been tortured? No, that did not seem right – but why the delivery of pain and light within the answer? Had the voice done something to her mind while speaking its nonsensical riddle?
There was no way for her to know.
The sun did not rise this time. Instead, a rod of fluorescent electrical light sputtered to life overhead.
Nyl shivered in a cold metal tube. She hugged herself tight, and, looking down, saw her body naked and encased in hoarfrost.
In front of – no, above her – an oval-shaped glass window gave view to the outside world. Through this narrow greasy pane Nyl spied a steel-reinforced concrete ceiling, hanging lamps, and a spider waiting patiently at the center of its silken web.
Gloved hands passed over her window outside her tube. She saw muscles flex under wiry forearms, the fingers in the gloves working at something. Nyl then heard muted, external beeps and the thump of unlocking mechanisms.
The hands gripped a rung and hauled the door of her tube open, a cylindrical cover rolling aside to unsheath her, baring her freezing body to warmer air. Melting ice crystals slithered down her skin in painful tickles.
A wizened old face leaned into view and looked her up and down. A scientist of some kind, she somehow knew - a man of research or medicine wearing high-tech goggles seated high on his brow.
Nyl attempted to ask hello, but she was cold, so cold, and her words hummed like nonsense through chattering teeth.
The stranger smiled at her and said: “Welcome back, Nyl!”
Continued in part 7
Captivating—I love the interplay between the twins!