NationStates Jolt Archive

We Are Again
One: My Life Back

I look down at the floor; the gleaming, polished surface reflects myself back up at me. I feel the cold of that floor through my bare legs as I kneel upon it. The cold that was so much less than the cold outside the pure black walls of this most Sacred of Places.

Even before it was a High Place, it was something special. It was a Place from…before. Before we, as we knew ourselves, existed. It is one of the few things that we do not remember building. There is no recording of its having been constructed. It has always been. It always will be. Unchanging, as ourselves.

Strange, then, that we call ourselves the Children of Change. But we are a strange people.

The blood on my hands leaves strange designs on the cold, gleaming blackness of the floor. I don’t know how I can see it, but I can. Perhaps it is my Lifehand, separating what was once alive from what is still alive, for this Place is more alive than I myself am.

I rise to my feet and laugh my strangled, rasping, dead laugh. It is Right that I should not be capable of laughing, as normal men and woman are. It is Right that I should be crippled. These things, they tell me. I cannot remember when I stopped caring what they told me…

They come at me again, and I take them into my embrace, still laughing, and feed their souls to this Place, as a suitor gives presents to his Lady. I do not know who They are. I don’t know that I have ever cared.

I lay down on the frigid floor and curl up about my prey, my teeth bare in what was once a smile. I am the Guardian, and this Place is mine to guard. Only those who are worthy shall pass me by.
--

My name is known, but I shall tell it by way of introduction.

Dysaryn Levan Blackstar-Stark, Seeker Alpha Primus, Warprince of what was once the Ascended Supremacy, Prince Celestian, Heir to the Sandstone Throne, and the only Ascended to ever bear the blood of all three Great Houses in my veins.

I’m leaving out things, such as the various grandmasteries of knighthoods that comes with my status, but those are meaningless. Bones that we have invented to throw to our dogs, though the dogs in question are in many cases better men than Our Brethren of old.

I have left out the fact that I am the only individual to have ever faced the Entity known as ‘The Devourer’ in single combat and survived. I have left out the fact that I am the designated sacrifice to the greater universe wherein my species is concerned. The poor bastard that is thrown outside the walls to stave off whatever oncoming force threatens Civilization.

Now I have not left these things out.

I let my vision sharpen, my left eye, the prosthetic one, increased the magnification a few times. I lost that eye so long ago that I can barely remember what it was like to have two normal eyes. To be whole.

My left arm below the forearm is a prosthetic, courtesy of a Skycar accident even before I lost the eye. That I survived was, apparently, a miracle in and of itself. I am not the person to judge miracles.

I am a powerfully built man at six feet and three inches, weighing in at approximately two hundred S.pounds. That doesn’t give you a very good idea of what I look like, because my prosthetic arm and Seeker Implants are heavy. I’m muscular, but not hugely so. Wiry, or something like that.

So now you don’t know what I look like. Good. Let’s get back to what I’m doing. Which is a question that I can’t answer without seeming more insane than I really am.

I let my feet propel me forward, though I don’t feel the strain. I can run all day and all night, for weeks, before I feel even the slightest twinge. I’m insane, remember?

That much should be obvious. I’m not wearing armor.

My feet carry me quietly through the gates of the massive black fortress, so like and yet so unlike the High Place of my House. I have been told that merely being near this Place has driven men insane. Instead, I feel the Song of the Place strike a chord with, well, call it my Soul. The Place accepts me, but my Lifehand tells me that Its Guardian does not.

The poor bastard is incapable of anything but violence, after so long. My right hand, the living one, rises to the hilt of my sheathed sword, where it hangs from my right shoulder. I drop the slung scabbard and blade down from my shoulder and shake the blade free from the scabbard, which I then replace over my left shoulder.

My Warblade burns with sizzle-crackling energies of a reddish-white color, so unlike the slice-field familiar to most people who have been inundated with the Ascended Warblade in their popular media, their fantasies, their very ideals.

The stereotypical Ascended Warblade is a backsword with a sharpened spine, about a fourth of the length of the blade. It has a single fuller for much of its length, and the tip is such that it is capable of stabbing and thrusting maneuvers. The hilt possesses an elaborate arrangement of swept quillons, a finger ring, and a knuckle guard that swoops back towards the pommel. The pommel is usually set with a single large gem.

The blade itself is made of the blue-tinted metal known as Eldensteel, remarkable for its incredible hardness, resilience, and rarity. It has exactly one source, and various complications in its forging. This blade is then fitted with a very thin groove along the very edge of the blade into which the monomolecular-edged slicewire is fed. A spindle of Slicewire is contained within the hilt. The blade is also fitted with a slice-field generator, which disrupts most forms of personal shielding.

My blade was forged of Eldensteel, but is tinted a dark crimson. My sword’s slice-field emits the same soft blue-white glow that is so familiar, but when I draw the blade from its scabbard, it emits a strange reddish-white energy in the form of small…call them ‘lightning bolts,’ like you might expect in some cartoon.

My Warblade, like all Warblades, is named. It is called ‘Heartsflame,’ which was once very meaningful to me. Back when I was eighteen and full of glory. Now, I don’t know.

The blade’s grip is warm, even through my gloved hand, and I feel the finger ring snug down around my index finger. The corners of my lips tug up in a grin. I may be insane, and I may be depressed, but I am still more than capable of killing anything in this pathetic universe. Likely enough, I’ve done it already. I’m old, remember?

I approach the massive great doors that bar my entrance to the fortress’s keep, the entryway to that most Sacred of Places within this Sacred Place.
--

I rise from my slumber, the skeletons around me crackling as I disturb them. I do not care. There is another here, I can feel him. He is so unlike the others that I have sensed in the past that I toddle for a few moments in indecision. Then my thirst takes my decision from me, and I spring forth into the shadows.
--

I can feel the Place’s Guardian approaching me. I can almost hear its silent footsteps; I can certainly feel its hunger for my flesh slamming up against my mental walls. I whistle softly as I walk forward, my boots crunching the snow in the courtyard. I want them to. It seems…appropriate.

“Hungry, Guardian?” I shout into the shadows, my voice shattering the silence like a thousand diamonds tinkling to the ground. Things become real.

“Want to feast on me, Beast? Pity we can’t talk about this, but I don’t have the time to unfuck your brain. SO HURRY THE HELL UP, I’M WAITING!”
--

I don’t know where I’ve heard that noise before, but I can’t think about it now. My broken throat snarls out my hunting cry, and I can see the intruder before me in the Courtyard, heading towards the Great Doors. This is, somehow, right, but my hunger does not care. I am a blur of movement, faster than even I ever knew I could be.

I feel strange. I do not smell fear from this one, like I have from all the others. I know he must see me, know because he turns to meet my charge, and he smiles. I match his smile with one of my own, and my hands reach out to embrace him like the lover that I know he seeks, though he may not know it himself.
--

The beast would have been horrifying to look upon, but it has been a long time since I have felt horror from any visual stimulus. I sweep to the side and pivot, allowing the beast to swarm past me. Heartsflame rises up, and I plunge the blade forward, skewering the Guardian through the side. I have lost my taste for heroic battle. Killing is not an art, it is a craft.

I free Heartsflame from the Guardian’s carcass with a severe twist and the toe of my right boot, then bring the blade back quickly to free the blood. Not that there was any. Reflex is reflex, even if useless.

Then I calmly step over the carcass that was once something grand and beautiful, and I am at the great doors. I set my shoulder and push, and with a great creaking noise, I am inside.

The interior is as black as the exterior. It takes my eyes a few moments to adjust, then beauty greets me with open arms. Simple beauty, the magnificence of purpose that remains pleasing to the eye. I feel my blade purr in my hand, and I smile.

My left hand raises and begins to emit a faint glow. I can do a lot of neat tricks with my prosthetic, but they are nothing but tricks. Vaguely useful on occasion, but nothing special. I venture onwards.

The passage I seek is deep within the keep. I walk down simple passageways with still-strong doors that open into beautiful chambers, I know they do, I do not need to look inside to find out. I know where I am going. I’m coming home.

I find the Place I seek, and shrug the scabbard off my left shoulder so that I can sheath my blade, then return the scabbard to my right shoulder. My right hand rises to meet the cool black stone, and the passage opens to engulf me. My heart leaps, and I step forwards into the light.
--

I emerge as I entered, with a slight feeling of joy. Rare, those. I allow myself a slight grin, a genuine smile. After all these long eternities, I have won. Inside, I am dancing with joy. Outside, I leave this Place as I entered. Calm, inevitable. As unstoppable and as alien as Death itself.

I leave this Place, this world, with little changed. A Death, long deserved, given, and a life, long lost, restored. I have been given my life back. All is not futile. There is still a chance.

It is enough. More than enough. I would have been content with the merest hint of a chance, the possibility that I might be able to succeed. This is more than I dared hope for. It will not be easy, I have to qualify it, not easy for others. For me, it will be easy. As easy as death, which is no challenge at all.

We Are Again
Two: The Gift that keeps on giving

The Guardian had been a beautiful woman, once. That much was obvious. Now, the breasts sagged, the teeth were sharpened into fangs, the muscles were corded. The skin had darkened to a dull gray-brown. The eyes were dull.

She lay spread-eagle on one of the slab-tables onboard the Wanderer, her thin, filmy hair scattered out like a fan from her wrinkled head. I look down at her body, naked but for a rotting loincloth, and wonder what could do this to an Ascended, because I recognize my own kind. Full-blooded Ascended.

I don’t know who she is, but I can guess that she was once one of my own House. Stark. She has the carved-stone face and long fingers that is our trademark. I let my right hand, the living one, trace down the line of her jaw, feeling the curve of the bone. So familiar. Yet the wrinkled skin is so very, very foreign.

“Who were you, little girl? What happened to you? Who…what…did this to you?”

I say and drop my hands down to her chest, letting both of them rest over her heart. I clear my mind and let my thoughts drift out of my body and into hers. Then I Push.

Thump.

Push

Thump

PUSH

Thu-thump. Thu-thump.

I work fast, because I don’t have anybody to back me up. I throw myself into my work, showing yet again exactly why they call me the most powerful master of Lifehand to have ever drawn breath. I pour myself into the girl and draw a vision of what she used to look like out of her, in bits and pieces. Then I make her look like that.

It takes time, almost too much time, but I pull it off. I draw back with a deep inhalation, and before me on the table is a vision of beauty the like of which I had never thought I’d see again. A full-blooded Ascended woman. Radiant. The aura of health radiating from her near-lifeless corpse eclipses that of a human woman at the peak of health.

I press my lips against hers and breathe into her lungs, blowing life in until the dust has cleared out. Then I light the spark that is life. Something that not other Lifehand has been able to do, because you can’t do it. Lifehand doesn’t let you create life. That ability is mine from another source. Because while I am, genetically, full-blooded Ascended, albeit with some quirks due to my heritage…I’m more than that. More than Dysaryn Stark.

But I don’t talk about that.

The corpse sucks in breath, then exhales. I can feel the brain return to life, and I quickly repair neural links, clearing out the last traces of corruption. I still don’t know what ruined this beautiful creature, but whatever it is, I can heal it. Finally, as a last touch, I heal the sword-wound that killed the monster. But I leave a scar.

I let my eyes take in my work as a whole, finally, and I can place the face.

“Shit. Malya. It would be you…”

She’s not awake yet, because I’m not done yet. I’m not as powerful a Telepath as I am a Lifehand, which makes things unnecessarily complex, as I have to work primarily the physiological side of things. It’s still possible, though. I scrounge together what I can of the core personality matrix, then I remote-link with the Wanderer’s AI and scrounge out the personality back-up.

Normally you wouldn’t find that kind of thing on a warship, but this isn’t just any ship. The Wanderer was House Stark’s last resort. It had the personality back-ups for every single living member of House Stark in it’s datbanks, and it was the ship that carried me away from the Supremacy after the fall, on my mission of Vengeance. It was the ship that carried me to my Destiny.

Godslayer.

I check the scrounged elements against the rebuild and fill in the blanks, always preferring the existent material over the back-up, because the scrounged material is –real.- Finally, I’m done. I give her a jolt of energy, and her eyes pop open. They are the same color as mine. Quicksilver.

She smiles up at me, her perfect teeth are just like I remember them. “Heya, Cousin Dys. You don’t look so good!”

Dear God. What have I unleashed on myself…

The heavy door swung open, swung shut. Nobody seemed to care. The corridors were silent, the black near-stone as cold as he remembered it. He’d never liked this place, even while he’d lived here. It had always seemed somewhat hostile to his presence, as if the spirit of the place somehow objected to his occupancy. Leaving had been one of the better decisions he’d made recently, that much was readily apparent now, as he began to feel the crushing weight anew.

He walked the corridors to Central in silence – it was almost eerie. When he had been in command here, the corridors had never been empty. They had been occupied constantly by people racing back and forth, the life’s blood of the AFESSR high-level command organ. He suppressed a shudder.

The great doors to Central were closed, which was extremely odd – the massive things were an incredible pain to open, by design, so they were generally kept propped open to facilitate the considerable traffic into and out of Central – the doors were primarily defensive measures, anyway, and the idea something penetrating deeply enough to threaten Central itself was almost laughable.

Of course, that idea hadn’t been laughable when Celestian was constructed. Citadel Celestian was not, as was commonly thought, an outgrowth of the central command center for Great House Stark’s armed forces, that was located within the depths of Castle Mortis, Stark’s High Place. Citadel Celestian had been purpose built by the Guardian Temple to house the Warprince, his staff, and the machinery necessary for his functioning as the coordinator for all of the Ascended Supremacy’s military matters.

Celestian had then been adapted to perform the same function for the AFESSR, which had provided for fantastic command and control capabilities, provided that the Warprince himself was capable and willing to make use of them, which the first Warprince had not.

And that was just one of many failures in Dysaryn Stark’s life, though he was relatively aware that the only thing that he really had to blame himself for was not stepping down from the position earlier. It wasn’t that he’d done a bad job – he hadn’t. But the effort required to do a good job had very nearly killed him. By the time he’d finally stepped down, he’d been a mental and physical wreck, a shell of his former self. He’d been drinking heavily and doping himself with a drug cocktail to subdue his natural resistance to the effects of alcohol. His body’s superb resistance to chemical influence had necessitated that the cocktail become ever more complex and powerful in order to gain even a minor effect. But the drinking and the drugs had been minor.

The worst part had been entirely within his head. He’d become increasingly insular and distant, prone to manic bouts and rages that would likely forever taint his name, and he’d been unable to stop it. It wasn’t just the pressure of the job or the horrible feedback from Celestian’s command systems – he’d originally taken up the title of Warprince because he’d been the only option. Making use of Celestian’s advanced systems required an extremely complex NI link that required specific implant systems that were superfluous to general operation, but Dysaryn had been Warseeker Alpha Prime, and his implant package was outfitted for high-level command operations as befitting his rank, and were compatible with Celestian’s interface system. But only ‘compatible.’ The effects of sustained interface had been considerable, but one didn’t become a Gunslinger by bowing to pain.

Of course, while it probably had only been pain at first, it got progressively worse. It hadn’t started killing him for almost a decade. He’d still taken nearly two decades beyond that before he stepped down, and he’d been reduced to wearing his armor whenever he left his quarters, at first just to smooth out his movements and hide the state of his body, but towards the end, his limbs had failed and he’d had to rely entirely on the armor’s servos to provide motion. It had been humiliating for a man who was still largely defined by his physical prowess.

Being unable to even lift his sword outside of armor had been crushing. He owed his very life to his skill with the blade – when it all fell down and everything was on the line, his sword had seen him through where everything else had failed. And he’d been unable to so much as draw Heartsflame from its scabbard unless he was in armor, and then it was the servos doing what he himself couldn’t.

He’d lived like that for…years. Relying on technology to make up for what technology sucked away. At the last, he stopped leaving the interface chamber because he’d been unable to control the armor well enough to ape his normal grace. He’d expected to die there, in that massive, dark, lifeless hall, sitting on the great black steel throne of the Warprince. But he hadn’t, because his mother, on a whim, had decided to do something that she’d never done before: visit her son.

Dysaryn had never been close with his parents – he had seen his mother maybe once a year before his tenth birthday, and after that maybe once more before he left for the academy. She hadn’t been at his graduation ceremony, just one of many people who hadn’t been there to see him forge his sword. She hadn’t been there when he’d made Adept, hadn’t been there for his Watch commissioning ceremony, hadn’t been there when he’d made Warseeker Alpha Prime…and she’d been the last thing in his mind during the fall. When he returned to Northfell to fight the War of Reclamation and found Revenia, he’d become aware that she was alive, but hadn’t really cared…

Of course, it wasn’t her fault – Kaerah Maern was not a stable person at the best of times, and while Dysaryn had been raised as befitted an eventual heir of House Stark, Kaerah herself was, by blood, only distantly Maern. Her eventual adoption by Lord Javier Maern, coinciding with her mother’s marriage to Lord Javier, led to a more normalized existence, but the damage had already been done, and even though her situation improved with adoption into the primary Maern bloodline, she was not at all suited to Maern court life, and managed by-and-large only due to Stephen Maern, her half-brother’s fondness for her.

Dysaryn’s father had been well aware of his wife’s fragility, and had tried his hardest to make up for her weaknesses, but he was entering into the height of his political career during Dysaryn’s youth, and Starks had never shied from sacrifice.

Dysaryn leaned his head against the cool black stone of the corridor as the memories washed him over, grateful, for the moment, for the absolute vacancy of the Citadel.

His mother had pulled him physically from the interface throne, which very nearly sealed his fate – it was only his implants inability to properly interface with the Citadel’s systems that saved his life, considering the weakened state. Gunslinger implants were designed to disengage rapidly and forcibly, if necessary. Even still, the shock had come very, very close to killing him, and did put him in a coma for nearly two months.

The Celestian staff – he’d cut himself off from his own people long ago, lest they see his weakness – had wanted to keep him in Celestian’s integral medical facilities, but his mother had refused. Not that that had bothered the staff, as they hadn’t the vaguest clue who she was – very few people were actually aware that Adrian Stark was married, fewer still were aware of who he was married to.

It had, apparently, gotten quite ugly, with his mother being detained by Celestian security, a situation that lasted maybe ten minutes before his father arrived. Adrian was a good man, a charismatic leader, and a beloved public figure, but he also had a bit of a temper about him. He’d slain nearly a hundred people rescuing Kaerah from remnants of a cult her mother had been associated with in her youth, and would have done so again if not for Kaerah physically holding him back.

Dysaryn sagged against the wall, sliding down it to sit with elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

They’d taken him to Castle Mortis to recover, and his mother hadn’t left him for more than a few hours at a time until he awoke from his coma. Two months. She’d been there when he woke up, and been there during his recovery. It had taken him nearly a year before he could walk on his own, and he still wasn’t fully recovered. It wasn’t anything that anyone else would notice, but he could tell. He wasn’t as fast or as fluid as he used to be, and that scared him. He kept that particular secret to himself – it wasn’t particularly noticeable, there was probably only one person alive who was capable of noticing it, and even then only if they sparred, something he hadn’t done in…years. Decades.

Fear, first, then incapability, and now fear, again. It was an irrational fear, of course, because he wouldn’t care if it were rational – he’d fix the problem and the fear would go away. But he couldn’t fix the fear that he would never fully recover, never really be himself again…and that scared him, because he couldn’t afford to be weak anymore.

He picked himself up off the floor and made his way to the massive doors, setting his shoulder against one, and pushed. He strained hard, putting his whole body into the action, and the door only just moved, which meant it wasn’t locked down. He opened it only enough to slip through, then toed it shut behind him – all the force necessary to send the thing snapping shut. Inside, Central was much as he’d remembered it. Big, dark, with a sunk-in pit where dozens of uniformed people sat and sweated at flickering console. It was uncomfortably hot in the room, the only room in Citadel Celestian that wasn’t uncomfortably cold, and it wasn’t the concentration of bodies or the heat of the computer systems. It was probably a side-effect of the defensive systems – Central’s environmental systems were among the most complex ever constructed, designed to protect against every conceivably threat short of direct assault, which was beyond its purvey, so to speak.

Dysaryn exhaled slowly and walked down the stairs into the pit. It took almost as long as he remembered, and he again wondered what the purpose of dropping the pit so far down from door-level was, and again coming up without an answer. It was just one more thing about this place that he hated.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness rather quickly, the way they should. Towards the end, they’d taken the entire hike down to the pit to adjust, leaving him blind for the duration. Not that he’d been missing much – there wasn’t anything to look at but stairs and black stone until one got down to pit-level.

He emerged out onto the floor as he’d done every day for three decades, except this time not one of the faces visible in the console-glow turned his way, no greetings were forthcoming. It was as if he didn’t exist, which was well enough. To the curious subculture that existed within Citadel Celestian, he essentially didn’t – he wasn’t a military commander, to coordinate and argue with and attempt to convince that a Celestian staffer who’d sought the position for its supposed prestige and attained it through political connections knew more about combat operations than an officer who had been a veteran Fleet Marine before the staffer was born. He wasn’t a member of the staff himself, either, nor was he the Warprince, who occupied a sort of honorary seat at the top of the totem pole as far as Celestian’s social pecking order was concerned.

It seemed a little odd, because he was used to being greeted upon entering the pit, but, of course, he wasn’t Warprince anymore…

He walked through the pit, along the same path he’d always walked, to the blank metal door that led to the interface chamber. Bizarrely, it was under guard. More bizarrely, the guards did not salute him. In fact, they moved to bar his path.

Dysaryn stopped in his place, moving his head in an odd fashion, sort of a side-to-side sway-ish thing, it was a quirk he’d picked up during his long wandering, from the Arknai. It was a multi-purpose expression, one he’d dubbed ‘cobra-head,’ but here it portrayed confusion.

“Is there something the matter?”

One of the guards scowled at him, “Access to the interface chamber is strictly prohibited under all circumstance. Access to the Pit is subject heavily restricted…may I see your clearance pass?”

Dysaryn blinked, “I’m sorry?”

The guard’s weapon rose rapidly to bear on Dysaryn’s torso. He did not immediately recognize the model – it wasn’t an AFESSR weapon, sort of a short, stocky carbine-like thing with a large curved magazine and a folding stock.

“The Pit is a restricted area. If you do not produce your clearance pass immediately, you will die.”

Dysaryn’s right hand snapped out and up, lifting the carbine’s muzzle up towards the ceiling. Several shots rang out, but they were caught rapidly by the suspension field that shrouded Central. Dysaryn was not content there, however, slamming his left hand into the guard’s stomach, causing him to exhale sharply and release his grasp on the carbine, which was promptly cast up and away, where it to was snatched up by the suspension field.

The other guard began to bring his carbine to bear – it had taken Dysaryn only a few instants to disarm the first guard, and he stepped sideways, ducking low and rising up to send his elbow crashing into the other guard’s weapon, forcing it up and nearly tearing it from the guard’s grasp. His other hand blurring in to strike at the guard’s neck managed that, as well as dropping the guard to his knees, fighting to breath. That strike was very easily lethal, but he’d performed it with controlled force – there would be no lasting damage.

His attention returned to the first guard, and his left arm uncoiled from the elbow-strike position, coming up grab the first guard by the neck and slam him firmly against the interface chamber’s door.

The entire altercation had taken only a few seconds, but Dysaryn could hear individuals rising from their chairs behind him, so he pitched his voice to carry.

“Return to your consoles, immediately.”

And they did, because the combination of authority and threat in his voice brooked no questioning. Dysaryn returned his attention to the guard he was holding by the neck.

“I don’t have a clearance pass, because there has never been a need to possess such a thing. Nor has there ever been a need for guards at the interface chamber’s entrance. Not even during the time of the Ascended Supremacy was such a security measure necessary – the reaction force was sufficient for organic security, and Central has the most advanced defense systems ever produced by the Ascended. Perhaps not the best, but the most advanced. If I were not supposed to be here, I wouldn’t. Which begs the question…why are you here?”

He brought his right hand up to prod the guard in the forehead, snapping the man’s head back against the metal door.

“But perhaps we’ll get to that later. Central, Identity Query.”

Central’s AI was a marvel of programming, but it was also an extremely dedicated system without the more endearing characteristics of other Ascended AI systems, which made it considerably less impressive in Dysaryn’s opinion…

“Query confirmed, subject?”

Dysaryn didn’t hesitate, the peculiar command language coming back to him without any trouble, “This operator.”

“Operator is Master Guardian Dysaryn Levan Blackstar-Stark, Warseeker Alpha Prime. Operator is recognized as Temple administrative personnel. Your command, Master Guardian?”

Dysaryn exhaled, “Nothing, Central.”

And, of course, there was no response. Because that would have been far too much to ask. But seeing that Central hadn’t changed any was, at least, an indication that this wasn’t really some sort of bizarre alternate universe..

“Now that we’ve established who I am…you get to tell me why I shouldn’t splatter you brains all over this damned door? I really don’t like this place, but I received a very urgent request for my presence here, something that I couldn’t ignore…which is why I’m here. But I don’t want to be here, and I’m very, very much angry about the whole thing, and you’re not really helping anything, what with threatening to kill me and all…”

The guard began to babble incoherently. Dysaryn sent the guard’s head smacking back against the door again, and the guard began to babble slightly more coherently.

“I am Sergeant Jean Bartholt, Horatrian Guards-Militia. This area is restricted by order of Field Marshall Cassandra Witter, Commanding Officer, Armed Forces, Exalted Star Supremacy of Revenia. You won’t get away with this, Silver.”

Dysaryn smiled, “That’s my line. Say ‘Night Night!’”

Then his hand rushed forward, slamming the guard’s head back against the door with enough force to knock him out. A quick kick served the same purpose for the other guard, then he rapidly unsealed the interface chamber’s keypad-lock and tapped in an override code. The door hissed as it unsealed, then irised open, and Dysaryn stepped inside, his left eye, the prosthetic one, previously emitting a faint silver light that was a telltale of active light enhancement dimming to null-emission. Active enhancement was used in casual situations, and was a convenience more than anything, and the situation had just ceased being casual.

He silenced his footsteps with the ease of practice, creeping down the lightless corridor that led to the throne chamber itself, knowing the corridor from long experience walking its length – it wasn’t straight, instead taking several improbable turns that seemed to loop it back onto itself several times over. The final barrier to the Throne Chamber was a rather flimsy looking metal door, which Dysaryn pushed open without thought – the chamber’s inner defenses were such that an imposing door was deemed more hassle than benefit – the flimsy door was deemed useful on the off-chance that it could fool an intruder into a false sense of ease.

Inside, Dysaryn found a scene about as he’d expected to find it, given what he’d heard from the guard outside. Several men in odd uniforms, carrying carbines similar to the ones carried by the exterior guards, plus a woman examining the throne itself. Standing off to one side of the throne, held by two particularly burly guards and secured rather excessively with binders, rope, and chains, was Sir Falkner Drake, present Warprince of Revenia, looking decidedly annoyed at his present predicament.

Dysaryn sighed and threaded his way through the guards, staying low – the throne chamber was almost completely black, with only the vague light emitted by the throne’s monitoring panel for illumination. It was relatively easy, given his intimate knowledge of the various bumps and protrusions of the room’s floor – cabling and such, laid about strategically as yet one more defensive measure, and also, supposedly, for ease of repair…though the Throne was maintained by its own swarms of nanites, rather than organic engineers, which made ‘ease of repair’ a largely null concern.

Dysaryn brought himself up behind the woman so intently studying the Throne and coughed gently to announce his presence. The woman snarled, spat something about needing silence, and returned to studying the throne, moving her penlight to illuminate various parts.

Dysaryn rolled his eyes, then coughed a little louder, causing the woman to spin around, snarling. Her penlight pointed down at the floor.

“What the hell do you want, damnit? I gave orders, specific orders, that I was not to be disturbed. Period!”

Dysaryn’s smiled would have been something to see, if that had been possible.

“Ah, Field Marshall…there’s a bit of a problem. One of those damned Silvers snuck out of holding and has evaded our guards so far. He’s taken out Rorjak and Cranamyr so far, but the Captain’s got two squads hunting him, so it shouldn’t be much trouble. Just wanted to let you know.”
Cassandra Witter screwed up her face in a decidedly unattractive manner, “When he is found, have him killed. As an example to what happens to all who support the old order, Silver or otherwise.”

Dysaryn’s face went very still, “Certainly, Ma’am. Wouldn’t want those damned Silvers getting any delusions that this is their goddamn planet first, and Revenian a very distant second, or anything, now would we?”

Witter frowned, “I’m not sure I understand your point, Guardsman, but I know I don’t like your tone. You should show more respect towards your superiors. Respect for your superiors is essential in the New Order.”

Dysaryn nodded – the sound the motion made was audible, “Yes, ma’am. Of course, Ma’am. Incidentally, if I might be so presumptive, what exactly are you hoping to achieve by studying this big chair thingy, anyways?”

Witter’s expression changed several times, before finally settling on ‘reflexive political smile. “Certainly, you may ask, Guardsman. Silver elitism is a thing of the Old Order, and we must be sure to keep no secrets from each other. I am hoping to determine a suitable manner in which to disable this device, so as to cripple the silver-loving members of the AFESSR who would fight against us, but in a manner that we can bring it back into operation to serve us at a later time. Just because it’s Silver technology doesn’t necessarily make it evil, Guardsman.”

Dysaryn grinned, “Well, ma’am, if we’re not keeping any secrets…what’re you doing later tonight?”

The resultant spluttering made the whole damned trip worthwhile.

Witter finally calmed herself enough to make out, “Guardsman, I’ll have your HIDE for that!”

Dysaryn flowed forward, his right hand sweeping out grab Cassandra Witter’s arm and snap her towards him, spinning her about as she was pulled, then his left hand came up to grab her other arm and bring it around to where his right could grab hold of it as well, securing both her hands behind her. His left hand then moved to grab a handful of her hair, snapping her head around towards him.

“I doubt that, Cassandra. I doubt that very much. Central, Lights.”

Several panels in the chamber’s ceiling rotated about to reveal powerful floodlights, unused since before the fall but still as potent as ever, flooding the room with bright light. There were a few mumbles of confusion as the rapid change in illumination blinded the occupants of the room. Dysaryn adapted within a few seconds, which meant he had quite some time of waiting for the others vision to clear for the proper dramatic effect. Finally…

“What the hell? You’re a Silver!”

Dysaryn smiled, “Ya think? Central, intruders. Immobilize, please.”

The air suddenly got very thick as several of the Chamber’s defenses were triggered, freezing the Horatrian soldiers in place, giving Dysaryn a captive audience.

“I’m not entirely sure what the hell you hoped to achieve by starting your little coup here, Witter, other than a visit from SSU…which probably won’t be necessary, as Celestian can handle itself pretty well, I’d say, judging from the lack of action on the parts of your little revolutionaries…”

He spun Witter about, pressing her against the side of the Throne.

“Honestly, Cassandra…you had me fooled. I thought you were really willing to try to put a stop to all the needless deaths that this kind of thing results in, but, of course, it was all too good to be true, wasn’t it? Sero will be crushed, Cassandra. He was so excited at the prospect of a Horatrian who was actually willing to help us rather than hinder us…”

He paused for a few moments, then sighed. “Central, priority alert, Caer Malant. Message is: Celestian under assault, send relief. End. Go.”

Then he tossed Cassandra Witter lightly into the air, where she was caught in a stop-field, leaving her suspended several feet off the ground, and went to see about untying Falkner.

The first thing one noticed was the sword. It was immediately recognizable as an Ascended Warblade of the type widely referred to as the 'Guardian Temple format' or 'Templar Pattern,' though these were anachronistic to some extent. The style had originally been developed by Paul Stark for his nascent 'Stark Elite Combatant' program within Great House Stark's armed forces.

As a result, the blade-type was properly referred to as 'SEC Pattern,' and had been unofficially referred to as 'Stark Pattern' for its popularity within that House long before the SEC program became the core for the Guardian Temple's Warseeker program.

This was a Stark blade, however, forged in the caverns beneath Castle Mortis from Eldensteel, the Ascended miracle-metal. Unlike most Warblades, it did not possess the bluish tint to the blade steel that was generally associated with the type. Rather, the blade was tinted a deep crimson, almost as if it was covered with fresh blood. Of course, that made the sword instantly recognizable -- there was only one Warblade with red Eldensteel, and that was Heartsflame, Dysaryn Stark's sword.

The blade had been sadly neglected in recent times, the with relatively little use since the War of Reclamation, as Dysaryn was more and more absorbed by his duty to the fledgling nation that he had paid for with blood shed on the battlefields of a dozen worlds. Even after he stepped down from the office of Warprince, Heartsflame saw little use -- even without slicewire fixed, an Ascended Warblade was still far too deadly a weapon to employ as a teaching tool. Even when his students used edged blades, he limited himself to simple sticks. This was not, exactly, arrogance; not a statement of superiority, per-se. Rather, it was because he didn't trust himself to be able to pull a lethal blow every time that he launched one out of reflex. In his youth, maybe -- he had been that confident, once. Not now.

He wasn't getting old -- he was Ascended. He did not 'get old.' Which, really, made it worse. He had not recovered fully, likely would not ever recover fully, from the damage inflicted upon his body and mind by the Celestian interface...and when he was being truly honest with himself, that scared him more than anything else in the universe. He could label it 'vanity' as much as he liked, but he'd built his personality around martial competence as a way of compensating for a perceived lack of attention or concern from his family in his younger years. In his weakest moments, he would admit that it wasn't just a 'perceived' lack of attention, that his parents had, for their own completely legitimate reasons, been unable to fulfill their parental duties to an ideal extent, and that his extended family hadn't exactly stepped forward to fill the gap...and that he couldn't really blame any of them for any of it, because they hadn't really had any alternative.

So he'd thrown himself into the Temple with an almost fanatic enthusiasm, and pushed so hard that his instructors and peers were taken aback with awe, concern, and not a little fear. He'd forged himself into something beyond even the scope of the Gunslinger program -- and in doing so, had won the respect of his peers, something that he had never experienced before. Deference to his birth, yes....but respect? That was an entirely new thing, and like an addict he had begun to crave it -- pushing himself further and further, to climb that next mountain, seeking his next fix of admiration.

Somewhere in there, he'd found the Arena. Fighting in the Arena was relatively taboo for 'respectable' people, but young nobles had a reputation for competing anyway -- Dysaryn's father had been a vastly successful -- and popular -- fighter, at one point in his youth. It was in the Arena that Dysaryn had come fully full-circle, for in the Arenas, in the pit fights, the ancient, barbaric, weapons that were largely forgotten by greater society were still employed. They were inefficient, inhumane, and often relatively ineffective...but that made only made them perfect for the Bloodsport. The more challenge there was to a kill, the greater the drama. Though death was actually quite rare in the pits -- generally occuring only in fights against non-sentient creatures -- the concept of the 'skillful kill' was firmly rooted in the Arena tradition.

As a child, Dysaryn had been trained in the Gauntlets, the archaic weapons employed by his House for honor-duels since before recorded history. In the Arena, he had put that training to use, and, like his father before him, become very fond of the Gauntlets, to the point that he wore them as part of his general battle gear, having incorporated their functions into his battle armor gauntlets.

But. But it wasn't the same -- in combat, they were an eccentricity, no-one with a functioning mind could believe that they actually added anything to his ability to kill his foe. You couldn't kill something deader, after all, and it was hard to imagine a more deadly close-in combatant than Dysaryn Stark with a blade in his hand.

No, there was no questioning the superiority of the Warblade as a tool of dealing death, but when the point was not to kill one's enemy as quickly as possible...that was something else entirely...

--

There was a purity to it -- two men, stripped to the waist and below that wearing only simple black trousers and boots, facing each other armed only with weapons designed to make killing one's opponent an exceptionally difficult task. The Fighting Gauntlets of House Stark. On the right hand, the Hellcaster, the offensive gauntlet -- a black leather glove with polished silver plating along the forearm and the back of the hand, held in place by a complex network of straps and buckles. In addition to adding weight to a punch, the Hellcaster had two additional functions: the Line and the Spike.

The Spike was the most commonly known -- and, amongst the vast majority of practitioners, the most widely used -- function. It was a twelve inch long steel spike contained within a housing that ran the length of the forearm, and, when triggered by a specific motion, would be propelled with considerable force out of said housing. It was not, by any means, a blade, being largely a conical thing, and, worse, triggering the blade locked the gauntlet's wrist joint -- not out of any necessity, but by design, to make the whole thing difficult. The Spike was not merely a fancy version of the arm-blades that were a perennial favorite in the pits, though the vast majority of people treated them that way.

However, a learned practitioner, someone who truly understood the Gauntlets, knew that the Spike was little more than a finishing weapon -- it was the Line by which a battle was fought. This concept was not particularly unknown, but it was generally laughed at as being exceedingly impractical, for the Line was little more than a length of exceedingly strong monofilament attached to a weight that was normally held in the palm of the hand by a set of straps, and would be released when a certain motion was performed.

It was difficult to imagine a more impractical weapon -- it was not intended as a 'swinging weapon,' using the weight as a striking projectile, and, indeed, served poorly in that area as it was difficult to control the amount of line let out with only one hand on the Line. Most pit fighters tended to ignore the Line, and in so doing, proved that they did not understand, at all, the weapons that they wielded. The Line was a thinking man's weapon, the Spike was almost entirely superfluous, a reminder that sometimes it was truly necessary to fight a duel to the death. The Spike was a tool for execution.

The left hand bore the Iris Guard, similar in appearance to the Hellcaster, but largely defensive in function. The Iris Guard contained a spring-loaded set of steel leaves that, when triggered, would fold out of a compartment along the forearm and expand along a center-point towards the wrist, 'irising open' to form a small buckler. The edges of these leaves were generally kept somewhat sharp, allowing the buckler to be used offensively, if necessary. One of the more exotic -- and dangerous -- tactics was to attempt to catch an opponent's Line with one's buckler as it opened, wherein the razor edges of the leaves would sever the Line, essentially assuring victory if one is in the least competent.

Dysaryn smiled as he triggered his Line, feeling the smooth weight slip into his waiting hand. He might never fully recover from what he did to himself, but he could get better than he was right now, and the only way to do that was through discipline and constantly pushing the limits of his capability -- and exceeding them. It was harder now, near impossible -- if his 'crippled' status was readily apparent to himself, it wasn't so to others. But it was always difficult to gauge how much better than oneself another person is. Dysaryn knew, and he knew that he wouldn't be content until he'd tried his very best, and then some, to regain what he'd lost -- not for any practical reason, just that the thought of being less than fully capable was a painful -- and troubling -- one.

He'd tried machines and simulations, but it didn't really feel right. He could make a machine that was in every way a perfect simulation of a worthy opponent, and then find himself having defeated it without any real issue. Perhaps it was because he was Temple-trained to fight and defeat synthetic opponents. Even when the opponent was run by a 'synthetic sentience,' or whatever the current 'in vogue' term was, he found himself, at battle's end, unfulfilled. He'd tried stacking the deck -- creating opponents who were physically superior to himself at his very peak, which he was assuredly not at at present. Opponents who did not tire, opponents who would carefully analyze every move he made and select the perfect counter...and those fights had been difficult, indeed, he had lost as many of those as he had won, but they had been cold -- there had been no passion in them. Thus, he had not been pushing himself, merely proving that he could create an opponent capable of defeating himself, something that had never been untrue, and never would be untrue.

The Gauntlets were only peripherally weapons of physical combat -- they were, primarily, tools of the mind and of the emotions. By employing the two -- passion and logic -- in combination, allowing them to supplement and complement each other, one was able to understand the value that House Stark placed upon these...idiotic...weapons.

And so Dysaryn had returned to organics, selfishly abusing the students in his 'Swordsworn' training programs as opponents -- none of whom had the level of training or experience with the Gauntlets that he did, most of whom saw the weapons for what they, in fact, were -- devices contrived to make combat difficult. Duels should never be easy, after all. By and large, Dysaryn understood that the Gauntlet bouts had a negative effect on the cadets -- the majority saw it as Dysaryn simply 'beating up on them for the fun of it,' and Dysaryn could not have called that a lie straight-faced, though he certainly derived no pleasure from the activity. A scant few did learn the proper lessons, which was gratifying -- the Gauntlets had once been a valuable teaching tool, and the lessons that one could learn from them were very valuable -- but they were also complex and somewhat beyond the scope of the Swordsworn program. So, after a time, he had caved in to his sense of duty, which had never given up its iron-fisted rule over his life, and abandoned the practice. It had been good for the program, but bad for him -- he had had to contemplate the possibility that even if it was possible for him to build himself back up to where he had once stood, the tools to do so might well not exist at this date.

The trouble was that even his peers of old, those few who still remained, did not possess the same drive for perfection that he did -- even his father, who had once been considered the most skilled practitioner of the Gauntlets alive, was no help. On the rare occasions that a bout could be arranged, it was uncomfortable and neither Dysaryn nor his father truly had their heart in the matter -- and both men knew it, and neither was willing to insult the other by forcing the fights to continue. It had only been attempted twice, before Dysaryn abandoned the idea in entirety...and sunk further into depression.

For so very, very long he had defined himself by his ability in combat, given himself value because he was the absolute best at what he did, the very personification of the Gunslinger concept -- the ultimate individual warrior, a living weapon of mass destruction. The resources necessary to train and equip a single Gunslinger could have produced a hundred lesser warriors, but that was not the Ascended way -- the Gunslingers were as much terror weapons as they were actual combat assets, and even if a strike team of standard Warseekers would have probably been more efficient than a single late-model Gunslinger, efficiency had long since been relegated to more basic functions.

Now, now he had to face the possibility that he might not ever be that thing again, and even if no-one else could tell that he was no longer acting at this 'peak,' he could. Some people still insisted on telling him that it was 'all in his head,' and for a time, he had hoped that they were right -- still found the idea incredibly seductive, but also accepted that whether or not it was true, that lingering doubt would remain. And so, he had decided, the only way to rid himself of his doubts and to truly settle his mind, would be to become better than he had been before -- he could not remember why he had stopped pushing himself, only that he had done so. He knew, had always known, that there were still boundaries left to push, that he had not yet reached his limits...but once he had been content with where he had been, though he could not, no matter how hard he tried, remember why.

Now, he could only find fault with himself, and his greatest fear was that this inner turmoil would breach his discipline and taint his actions. Perhaps it already had. It was, after-all, inevitable.

And, of course, there was no-one that he could turn to for help. The remaining Ascended didn't understand -- even those who had been Gunslingers thought he was joking when he spoke of his troubles, because all they saw was that he was 'better' than they were, just as he had always been...and in Gunslingers, that was enough -- there was a danger in examining such things too closely, because it tended to breed resentment...and resentment between Gunslingers could potentially lead to Gunslinger fighting Gunslinger, which was, perhaps, not so potentially disastrous now as it had been once, for the true danger of such a thing had been in the political fallout...and the Supremacy was gone.

Still, old habits died hard.

And Dysaryn Stark was alone, as, when it came down to the hard stuff, he had always been. He had friends, yes, but when things got hard, things were always just that little bit too dangerous, required that extra edge that only he had. They said that he was the best of them, though that joke was old before the Supremacy had fallen -- they saw his torment, no matter how he tried to hide it, and no matter how they tried not to, could not help but label it weakness. And yet, tortured as he was, he was the best of them, able to do what no-one else could.

So they'd used him, and he'd used the glory that he'd won so doing, and it'd helped for a time, but there was no more glory to be won, no more respect to be gained. Not from those who mattered, and therefor not at all. And he could hardly venture out of Revenia, not after he'd managed to disgrace himself so fully in practically every 'diplomatic' venture he had undertaken. He had no-one to blame but himself for those failures -- had not realized just how fragile he truly was, how much he relied on the little ego strokes that had always been his due because of who he was, what he was, to simply manage a normal conversation.

Faced with someone who hadn't the vaguest clue as to who the hell he was, or what the hell he represented...he had come to the realization that he truly did not understand such interactions, save at the point of a sword. And then he had been forced to see how pathetic he truly was, and how completely lost he was as to how to solve the problem, for such things were truly unknown to him -- he had always had value as a warrior, even in his Wanderings, had quickly gained respect after a simple show of arms -- but he simply did not know other ways, and that...scared him.

It was Revenian policy not to publicly emphasize Revenia's links to the Ascended Supremacy extensively, not to smear the international community's face -too much- in the 'glorious legacy' mud, because such things represented an unknown, and people feared the unknown.

Dysaryn Stark, cocking back his right arm in the ritualized 'killing blow' motion, thus ending the fight, was forced to the realization that perhaps the problem did not lie with his physical capability, but with the discovery that he was woefully deficient in other areas, and hadn't the slightest clue how to remedy that fact, because it wasn't anything he'd done before, and somehow...somehow he'd begun to fear the unknown as well.

He couldn't remember ever being more terrified, which was most certainly an odd state of being for one Dysaryn Stark, who had walked unflinchingly through more brushes with death than he could ever hope to recall. Who had been forced out of necessity to sublimate the majority of his emotions just to have the slightest chance at survival.

Who had been a living, breathing embodiment of the Gunslinger ideal. Who had been a fanatic.

He took a deep breath, and felt the fear writhing within him, twisting a hole in his gut. He wanted to turn and run, and he could feel his feet begin to twitch, but he stopped himself. He remembered, of a sudden, being this afraid before, and memories flooded back. Not the cascade of images that he had come to expect, but as if things that had been taken from him simply slotted back into place, a part of him that had been missing coming back again.

He remembered how to deal with fear, and his lips curled into a firm smile as his hand dropped to caress Heartsflame's pommel. The fat red and orange pommel-gem flickered in response to his touch, and he felt a warmth on the tips of his fingers. His smile deepened as, within his mind, a familiar presence uncurled from its sleeping ball, stretching out and yawning so very much like a friendly cat.

He looked out upon the assembled mass of people, and he stepped forward, his hand rising to adjust his lapel microphone. Then he began to speak...


"You are afraid! We are afraid! We have known little enough in the way of true threat in so very, very long that we have forgotten what it is like to know true fear, and in so forgetting, faced with something that inspires fear, we have forgotten how to face that fear, and we have flinched back! WE HAVE TURNED AWAY!

This is a thing that we cannot do, for we Revenians have inherited more from our Ascended forebearers than our long lives and parts of our culture. We have also inherited the thing that drove the Ascended to become what they were! WE HAVE INHERITED THEIR DUTY! That is a thing that we cannot flinch from.

Look within yourselves, brothers and sisters, and see the light that burns there. That same light burns within me. That light is your greatest blessing, that light is your greatest curse. Follow that light, and you may lose many things, but you will never lose the knowledge that you took a stand against that which would do others harm."