Icarus Awakens

It was a good day. Strike that, this was the best fucking day in the history of the Octyrrum. Flying was not an unfamiliar sensation to Tlara. She’d done it within an hour of getting Grow Wings, back in Aughal. Her father had even organized for her to be invisible so she could jump off the Eye of the Spires without revealing to everyone what she’d done. Come to think of it, that was about the last nice thing he’d ever done for her.

Flying herself was hollow now, especially because she still lacked the strength to do more than glide. That was life. The high of doing something for the first time, defying everything that would keep her constrained, was what she lived for and what almost constantly eluded her. Not today though.

She wasn’t riding an overgrown lizard with wings, she was riding lightning as it streaked across the sky. She was falling on the second like a doomsday star. When that one fell to her will, that was life. That was meaning. That…

Her jubilation lasted for about a minute before she got bored. Commanding the wyverns to shoot the wall with lightning a few times brought her spirits up before boredom inevitably settled in again. Tlara sighed. Part of her was aware of how destructive this pattern could be if she fed into it but to Crest with that. No one told her what to do, not even herself. Now with two level three monsters literally under her belt, Tlara deigned to consider those below her. Kob still hadn’t shown up but there was no way they were dead. Even if the mountain fell on it the gestalt would just wriggle out. Khare was another matter, though that one didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

The Hero and that Bard were arguing. Classic, she thought. It was amusing and frustrating to watch at the same time. They were just so predictable. Put a Bard and a Hero in a room together with nothing else to do and they’d find something to disagree on regardless of who they were. The same could be said for either class on its own to a lesser degree. They were all drama queens, Tlara had decided, pointedly ignoring how she had her wyverns swoop through the air as they fell to the ground.

“Hey,” she said in greeting, preening on top of the landed wyvern. She allowed the other to start feeding on the monster remains and implicitly dared anyone to tell the woman riding the young skyshock wyvern to stop it. Her tool didn’t need to feed, it wouldn’t Grow, but it could lose its strength through starvation. Stasis Pouch delayed this and was part of why the feature was invaluable. In fact, now that she’d committed it to level three, it would completely halt the metabolism of her monsters while contained. The permanent mana cost was annoying and overzealous use of Flay Monster had drained her but, hey. She had two level three wyverns, and those were pretty close to dragons. Fuck anyone who would tell her these tools weren’t impressive.

Depressingly, the others weren’t awestruck. Well, fuck them then. I have wyverns, what do I care? Daniel wasn’t with them, and that was odd. The Artificer should be making a fool of himself by fawning over the Bard or something. She was pretty sure he still had a thing for Evalyn and would be sure to let his paramour know if he crossed a line. That was just common courtesy or whatever.

Even so, she did owe the Artificer the slightest favor. Tlara had no power that detected the attributes of monsters and had initially assumed the wyverns were the level four variant. Size became less reliable an indicator of power around the level three to four mark. If things scaled in size the same way they scaled in power, the astonishingly rare level nine monsters would be larger than individual regions. Either way, she wouldn’t have tried taking them over if he hadn’t mentioned that was an option. So maybe she’d cut him a break. Wherever he was. Someone was asking her a question. “What?”

“Do you think those wyverns could fly us out of here?” Evalyn repeated.

Tlara’s first instinct was to say no. Then she remembered the only other way out was likely a pile of rubble Kob was crawling through. “Eh, probably. Two trips at most. Kob’s on their own though.” Roost’s Peak shouldn’t be too far, especially as the wyvern flew. She could save everyone here. She was even willing! And people said she was a bitch.

Remembering the ballista of that city and how they’d likely react to approaching wyverns made her reconsider. “We’ll need Daniel to tell that thing of his to let us through. Unless you like dying to fucking friendly fire.” She didn’t know how he’d do this other than whatever power linked him with the broken tool. It didn’t work like any she’d heard of. If he couldn’t do that, well, she’d just think of something else.

“A sound point,” Gadriel commented, looking to the ledge where she finally saw the Artificer, and then away from the gorging wyvern between them.

Huh, Tlara thought. That’s interesting. Now why doesn’t he like that? Flaws were just another kind of opportunity and Tlara took care to remember any she picked up on. Daniel’s fear of the underground was just a recent example. “Hey! You listening?” she yelled at the Artificer, but he didn’t turn. The man was barely moving.

“Daniel?” Evalyn’s voice out of all of them should have reached the man, by his crotch if nothing else.

“Do you see him? Lograve?” Thomas asked. “Is he?”

The Artificer didn’t even look like he was breathing. “Alright, what the fuck?”

“Tlara!” Gadriel had taken offense at her tone. She eyed her feasting wyvern and a covert hand sign made it turn its face to the hero. Gadriel shifted uncomfortably and broke eye contact first. See? Flaws are just opportunities.

“I’ll get him.” Thomas stood unsteadily.

“You look like you’re about to fall over,” she responded dispassionately, shaking her head. “Fuck. Get on the wyvern, I’ll get you back first.”

“I’ll get him,” Evalyn cut in softly and walked a wide circle around the bloody-mouthed wyvern. When she got close to the Artificer, he jumped off the cliff.

…

Daniel dreamed he heard Evalyn scream. That normally would have woken him, but this was a deep dream. An odd one too. The kind where your teeth were falling out or you were suddenly naked in public, coupled with a sluggishness of thought. He was in bed and didn’t want to get up. That was the simplest explanation. Some famous guy had said something about simple explanations but he could hardly remember even that.

The oddest part of this dream was that he was someone else. Daniel still felt like Daniel, at least the person observing what was happening was Daniel. The person in the center of the dream was different. It was complex, the thoughts of this dream entity overlaid with the feeling of falling.

That made Daniel furrow his metaphysical eyebrows. Falling, again? If movies had taught him anything, it was that falling in dreams made you wake up. Not this one though. For a moment, Daniel struggled to make sense of this and rouse himself, only for waves of soporific force to push him back into the greater dreaming.

Rorshawd, a name for the dreaming entity Daniel plucked from the air, was intent and intense. Clever, too. He was skipping across the walls to reach the bottom, using the still active buff from Kob to make this fall survivable. He was thinking… what was he thinking?

The thoughts of the dream entity reached across to Daniel as if from the opposite shore of a grand sea. With focus, currently hard to come by, he could make out the individual words of these thoughts. Emotion carried through first, making Daniel feel reverent. It was a religious experience unlike anything he’d had since a young age. The Brants were Baptist as a family, with Daniel’s participation peaking at age 11 with his baptism. Life had worn down his faith since then.

Rorshawd was in rapture. If he could survive doing so, he would have just jumped to the bottom of this place instead of jumping around. Sight was foggy as well, so Daniel couldn’t tell exactly where he was supposed to be. On the other hand, when did you ever know exactly where you were in a dream?

Lord. My Lord. It was the first thought Daniel caught from the mist surrounding his mind. Rorshawd was repeating it as a mantra, so it wasn’t difficult. Were Daniel more aware of where he was, he could also guess that this thought was closer to Rorshawd’s subconscious than what the entity was actively thinking. With time, more thoughts came.

It was worth it! Then, Sacrifice not in vain! The thoughts were disjointed like Daniel was trying to read a book by pinning it to a wall and throwing darts to see which sentence he’d read next. Will unmake. An end of Tyranny. Rorshawd could see his Lord now, whatever that was, and paused on a wall in elation. To Daniel, it was just a fuzzy shape barely distinct from the darkness surrounding it. He wanted Rorshawd to get closer just as much as the other. This was an interesting dream and Daniel wanted to know how it would end.

Free of this cursed existence, the thoughts echoed around him again, growing clearer. Daniel was missing less as time went on, though he was also growing less aware of himself as it went on. They will rise. Rise! Unmake the Octyrrum! The dream focused on the hands of Rorshawd, which turned avian as he clenched his fists. To be here when it awakens is an honor I will never forget. My lost brothers, your deaths were not in vain.

They were falling again, the dreamer and the zealot. The earth shifted with their flight. Rorshawd had waited long enough and had come far enough. He had no wings but still guided his fall towards a clear area in front of the Lord. The rock there stretched towards them, almost as if the land itself had shaped a stage where he could commune and behold its grandeur.

Of all his group, Rorshawd would not have expected himself to be at their Lord’s side. Amalia had been level five, the strongest of their number in Eido, but she hadn’t survived their attack on the Temple of Unification. None of them had. As soon as they’d fought their way to the center and Rorshawd had laid a hand on the Godseed, there’d been a tremendous explosion. The incomplete Spoke had been destroyed just before it would have damned the region, just as they’d hoped.

That must have been what the others called the Upswell in what glimpses he’d been able to get of the real world. Only he had survived what was advertised as assured martyrdom and in a way most unpleasant. Trapped in another’s form with no way of controlling the body, barely conscious at the best of times.

Then his Lord had freed his mind and banished the other, perhaps forever. Rorshawd was in a stranger’s body but that did not matter. He landed roughly, spraining or maybe breaking an ankle. It would heal and it did not matter. He wasn’t going to stand. Rorshawd knelt, ignoring the pain, the tribulations of the past weeks, and the voice that suddenly spoke to his mind. Was it the interloper, trying to wrest control? It wasn’t his Lord, he would know, and so it didn’t matter.

Communion had already begun before Rorshawd had descended into this most sacred of places. His Lord had found his soul, abused and hidden, and brought it out so it may see. So that it may know Rorshawd was of those pledged forever to service. Now, it could be finished. Amalia had spoken of it. A rite, performed when the baneful artifices of mortal kind had been sundered, to bring forth the full might of the Lord’s wrath.

That mental tick was trying its best to burrow into Rorshawd and interrupt his splendor. It only spoke, nothing changed around him. Instead of using his strength, the zealot pushed himself mentally towards the Lord Incarnate. Nothing could overcome the power of the one in front of him. It was nature itself, it was the world! Even the so called gods of mortal kind were nothing to it. This Rorshawd knew, for the truth was not kept from the faithful.

The vessel Rorshawd had been trapped in was faint to him now. Not from its failing, but from the Communion nearing its culmination. It wasn’t doubt that made Rorshawd think of what would happen when it was finished but wonder. Would he be changed? Made into a superior servant of the Lord, one more fitting? Would he shed mortal form entirely? The thought of power was almost as alluring as the presence of his Lord. Rorshawd had, of course, only been level one when his cabal’s grand work had finished. Hitting his wall early had given him the usual bitterness of divine rejection, although Rorshawd did not find acceptance. Instead, he had found the Spiritualists. He was a more recent addition to their rank but believed just as much as any. Just as much as Amalia, and who was now in front of the Lord? Not her.

He felt his arms spread wide in unconscious reverence. Closer now. So close. The core of his being was farther from that husk than the Lord. A new form, then. That would be better. More disorienting, perhaps, than a mere transformation but Rorshawd had already been through something similar. The creation of lesser life was within the grasp of the Lord when it slumbered. Now that it was awakening, surely it could grant Rorshawd a fitting form to reward his service.

The news of the dragon had reached him, deep in the mind of that hated man Daniel. That would be a very appropriate vessel for him to continue to serve in! If the Lord felt he was worthy to possess it of course. Another would suffice if not. The Lord would choose whatever would be most appropriate. He was so close now, practically touching the outer nature of the Lord. The barrier between itself and the world, what it had been forced to use to survive what had been done so long ago.

Rorshawd knew, in an occult rather than a scholarly way, that passing through this barrier was the threshold. Beyond the shell, there was only one of the true gods of this world. The communion would be done. For a moment, he questioned why the idea of pulling back had entered his mind. His instincts had always been sharp to danger, it was what had allowed him to break through the fog and save his own life when that cursed man hadn’t the strength to do it himself!

He continued, heedless of his trepidation. This was his Lord! This was the world. This was… nothing. The mind of Rorshawd found nothing beyond the threshold as it became nothing. His soul was consumed, and the Origin Beast’s long slumber ended.