Death: Genesis

Zeke threw himself forward, tackling the Knight to the ground and locking his arms around the man’s neck. He squeezed, feeling bones break beneath his grip. Still, the Knight struggled on, his entire body glowing blinding light – a fact which epitomized the issue Zeke faced.

The battle had gone as well as could be expected. Even as his army of kobolds fought against the comparatively stronger contingent of Knights from the Radiant Host, he’d engaged their leader in a furious back and forth. And Zeke was winning. He’d destroyed the man’s body so thoroughly that he should have died a hundred times over. And yet, the Knight fought on, healing himself after every exchange.

It was infuriating.

“Now you know how your enemies must have felt,” Eveline supplied.

“Not now,” he grunted aloud.

“You could just use your Titan form and crush him to paste. I’m sure he couldn’t heal from that,” Eveline continued.

That was probably true, but Zeke refrained for one simple reason – he’d begun to rely too heavily on that form. It was part of him, and in a way that he only vaguely understood. However, in the back of his mind, Zeke had to acknowledge the feeling that he shouldn’t neglect his more natural form, either. [Titan] was powerful, but in that strength lay its weakness.

“Are you really doing this to handicap yourself?” she asked.

He was. In a way, it reminded him of how he’d played games with his little brother, which probably should have told him something about the quality of his opponent. Still, Zeke persisted with his plan, knowing that if it failed, he could always end it via the use of one of his devastating skills.

In the three months since the completion of his recovery, Zeke had yet to use [Wrath of Annihilation] or [Unleash Momentum]. Nor had he utilized the Worldbreaker or Runebreaker techniques. Instead, he’d fought like he didn’t have access to the tools needed to end any battle in moments.

“You need to learn to control them,” Eveline said. “Avoiding them only makes everything worse. You know that. And trying to fix them with runecrafting isn’t what I’m talking about. They don’t need fixing. The problem is you, not the skills.”

In the deepest places of Zeke’s mind, he knew Eveline was right. The issue wasn’t the skills themselves. Indeed, they did precisely what they were intended to do. However, learning to regulate their power required consistent use, and that was a line Zeke wasn’t sure he wanted to cross. So, instead of practicing with them, he’d begun to delve deeply into the skills’ runic structure, hoping to find some insight into how to regulate their power.

So far, he’d been unsuccessful in that endeavor, but that wasn’t terribly surprising. He’d only mapped a fraction of the skills’ runes, and even that basic familiarity barely scratched the surface of their complexity. The reality was that it would take years to understand those skills.

“Which has distracted you from other, more beneficial projects,” Eveline said. He didn’t need the reminder. Indeed, he had two skill evolutions he’d been working on for months, one skill’s construction he needed to finalize, and another choice he needed to make.

It was a lot of progression, and despite knowing exactly what direction he wanted to take everything, he’d pushed it all to the background in favor of adjusting his most powerful skill. That was not a smart plan, and Zeke knew that down to his very core. Yet, he’d clung to it because the memory of a million deaths continued to haunt him.

That number was not hyperbolic. In fact, it was probably a vast underestimate of the damage he’d truly wrought. Some of those deaths could be directly attributed to the initial skill use. [Wrath of Annihilation] had destroyed an entire city, and in doing so, had killed an estimated hundred thousand sapient undead who’d managed to evade the necromancer’s control. That was bad enough without considering that he’d also destroyed the dungeon known as the Pillar of Life, which had absorbed all the vital mana in the region, creating a vacuum, into which death-attuned mana had rushed. The result was the Kingdom of El’kireth.

And Zeke had killed every single sapient undead who called it home.

Not directly. Instead, the destruction of the Pillar of Life had upset the precarious balance that was responsible for the region’s aura of death. So, not only had his actions indirectly resulted in the deaths of all those people, but they’d also destroyed the entire ecosystem. Countless species who’d evolved to live in the midst of so much death were now gone, never to be seen again.

That was his fault.

“You didn’t have a choice,” Eveline said as Zeke wrenched one of the Knight’s arms out of socket. The limb nearly tore free of the man’s body entirely, but white light flared, healing the damage almost as soon as it was incurred.

“There’s always a choice,” Zeke said, again not bothering to keep his thoughts in his mind. He spoke aloud, which clearly unnerved the Knight.

“You are insane!” the man growled in obvious pain.

“Maybe,” was Zeke’s simple reply, and there was some truth to that admission. He didn’t feel like he’d gone mad, but he supposed that no one who had ever thought they were crazy. The toll of all the death and destruction had affected him, though. How could it not?

As Zeke continued to struggle against the Knight’s healing powers, he considered the past few months. In a lot of ways, it felt like a penance for his actions. Sure, he wanted to develop his fighting technique without the use of his [Titan] skill. For that same reason, he’d left Voromir in his spatial storage. But it was an unavoidable fact that doing so had resulted in quite a lot of pain on his part.

He didn’t precisely revel in it, but in the back of his mind, Zeke had to admit that it was fitting, considering how much of horror he’d spread over the past couple of years. With giants and bigoted Knights of Adontis, it was easy to excuse. Yet, when his victims were innocent, his guilt became much more difficult to endure.

Yet, Zeke had no choice but to keep going. His goals remained the same as ever. Indeed, with what Oberon had revealed concerning the endgame of the entire Framework, his progression seemed even more urgent than ever.

“And still you procrastinate doing what you know you need to do.”

Zeke ignored her. He’d had the same thoughts often enough, but knowing what one needed to do and actually doing it were two very different things. Regardless, he’d chosen to focus on the three tasks Oberon had given him, rather than dwelling on what was to come in the distant future.

The most urgent – at least as far as he was concerned – was finding and dealing with the necromancer Micayne. The man – or lich, now – had put the Radiant Isles onto a path of complete destruction, and for that, he needed to pay. Zeke might’ve inadvertently killed millions, but Micayne’s kill count was significantly higher. Making it even worse was that his actions had been intentional.

That search had proven frustrating, though. So far, Zeke’s scouts had found no sign of the necromancer. For all they knew, he was hard at work building another army of undead. He wouldn’t have the raw materials he’d found in El’kireth to work with, but the Eternal Realm was littered with corpses. He would have no shortage of fuel for his army.

The worst was that he had clearly demonstrated a willingness and ability to nurture other necromancers, compounding the problem to a significant degree. But no matter the dangers Micayne represented, Zeke couldn’t simply conjure a trail. And if they couldn’t find the man, they couldn’t deal with him.

So, he’d been forced to focus on the second task – dealing with the Radiant Host. That had gone slightly better so far, with most of the resultant clashes between the two armies ending in favor of Zeke’s forces. But like the Knight with which Zeke now fought, the Radiant Host was incredibly difficult to put down for good.

And this was just a fraction of their entire organization. The Imperium – which was what the Radiant Host called their native land – was vast, both in terms of land and population. It had taken Zeke and his army more than a year to defeat one of their vassal states, so he knew that dealing with the host itself would prove a difficult and time-consuming task.

Especially when they had demons on their side.

Given their paladin-esque aesthetic, Zeke would have thought the Knights to be the natural enemies of demons, but that assumption had proven erroneous by the alliance they’d fostered between themselves and a horde of slavering demons. Fortunately, the former Knights of Adontis were quite committed to fighting demons, and their skills were very well suited to the endeavor. Adara in particular had shown herself to be an invaluable asset in that arena, combating the situation with a fury that bordered on obsession.

It was odd, then, that she – nor the other former Knights of Adontis – had transferred that hatred for demonkind to him. Apparently, being a cambion kept him from triggering whatever abilities they had concerning demons. So, Zeke was free to admire their commitment.

“That’s all you admire, huh?” asked Eveline.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zeke grunted, wrapping his arms and legs around his foe. He squeezed with all of his considerable might, and was rewarded with the sound of cracking bones.

“You definitely know,” Eveline said, obviously referring to his budding relationship with the half-orc woman. They hadn’t progressed much past the initial stages, but they had spent a few nights together. Fortunately, Eveline had remained silent throughout, avoiding what would have been an extremely awkward situation. Yet, she hadn’t given him that same courtesy in the aftermath, often wanting to discuss whatever future he might share with Adara. He’d outright refused, much to Eveline’s consternation.

And finally, there was the need to find somewhere he could access Hell. He couldn’t go back to the portal he’d used back in Min Ferilik. Like everywhere else he went, he’d left a wake of destruction in the fallen dwarven city. Besides, as far as he knew, the Blood Wraith was still there, and Zeke had no interest in battling it out with a peak wyrm who assuredly held him in quite a bit of contempt.

No - he’d need to find another way to Hell, so he could descend to the next circle of Hell that ran parallel to the Ethereal Realm, he would need to find a way to cross over. But that was a problem for another day, and one he wouldn’t need to solve for years yet.

Somewhere in the middle of those three tasks, he still had his quest to complete. He’d made no headway in finding any other natural treasures, but he’d sent a few scouts – beastkin and other races that had been enslaved in Adontis – to find any tales of such treasures. He’d not heard back from any of them yet, but that wasn’t surprising, given that they had only been gone for a couple of months.

Over the next half hour, Zeke continuously broke the powerfully regenerative Knight’s bones, ruptured his organs, and ripped bits and pieces off of his body. And yet, he continued to heal from every bit of damage Zeke managed to inflict. Finally, when the rest of the battle had begun to wane – with the kobolds being the victor – he let a little of his destructive Will enter into the conflict.

That was all it took.

Just a trickle, and the man’s healing faltered. The bones stayed broken, and his organs remained ruptured. After that, it wasn’t long before he finally succumbed to his injuries. It was a hollow victory, and yet, with the battle having been decided, he didn’t have any more time to waste on the fight.

Picking himself up, he grimaced at the blood soiling his clothing. He didn’t wear armor anymore, and he’d long become accustomed to the generally easy-to-clean nature of his titanic form. After all, metal was very difficult to stain. Clothing, not so much.

Sighing, he inspected the battlefield, and he saw a similar scene to a dozen others he’d observed over the past couple of months. Lots of dead Knights, a few slain kobolds, and a lot of blood and carnage. With his domains empowering them, the kobolds had proven themselves a very effective army. Though Zeke wasn’t solely responsible. Their collectivist nature lent itself very well to group tactics, which they used to their immense advantage.

In any case, the battle was won. Now, he needed to deal with the aftermath. To that end, he strode across the field – they’d fought on the Muk’ti Plains – to find his advisors. Soon enough, he stood across from Adara, who’d been conversing with Silik. The hulking kobold general stood head-and-shoulders taller than the half-orc woman, but if anything, she seemed to loom over him.

“Casualties?” Zeke asked upon approach. It was the same thing he asked after every single battle.

“Six-hundred and nine,” answered Silik. “An acceptable number of losses.”

Zeke shook his head. “Still too many,” he muttered. It was a conversation he’d had on multiple occasions, and he expected to do the same many times in the future. In the grand scheme of things, six-hundred dead kobolds shouldn’t have mattered.

But it did.

They did.

They mattered more than Zeke could have imagined before they had all become his responsibility. The only solace to be found was that the number wasn’t higher.

“And the raid?” he asked, referring to the group of Rangers and Assassins he’d sent to assault a camp the day before.

“Successful. No casualties on our side,” Adara said, her face bearing mixed emotions. She didn’t like fighting a war like that. Instead, she preferred meeting her enemy head-on. Of course, she also understood why such raids were necessary. Despite having numbers on their side, the Titan’s Legion – as his army had dubbed themselves – were outclassed. The only reason they were winning so far was Zeke’s participation and their willingness to use every means at their disposal.

Like raiding an enemy camp under the guise of stealth.

“Good,” Zeke said. “Join me in the manor?”

She shook her head. “We have much to do here. Perhaps later.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said before striding away.

“Smooth,” Eveline said. “Very smooth.”

“Shut up.”