Corvis Eralith
The acrid tang of scorched metal and something far worse—cooked meat and charred bone—seeped through the Barbarossa's filtered vents, a vile perfume clinging to the crimson armor. My fingers, encased in the articulated gauntlets, moved with mechanical precision, slotting a fresh fuel tank into the Krakatoa's receiver.
This fuel, a volatile alchemy of mundane gases siphoned from deep beneath the Darvish desert using Rhabdomancy and refined into a hellish brew, sloshed ominously. Found by pointing a stick at the sand, a detached part of my mind whispered, the absurdity a thin veil over the horror it enabled.
Before me stretched the claustrophobic throat of the dungeon, a gash in the earth repurposed by the Alacryans into a festering wound on Dicathen's flank. We were perilously close to the Wall, this labyrinthine network a dagger aimed at its foundations. Holding this line wasn't strategy; it was desperation.
The battalion I was currently accompanying, a mix of hardened soldiers and wide-eyed recruits whose faces I refused to see through the Dark Visor, huddled behind the Barbarossa's bulk, a shield of crimson chitin and spell-forged steel against the darkness.
I raised the Barbarossa's massive right arm, a silent command etched in metal. Hold. Behind me, the rustle of armor and the soft, fearful breaths stilled. Then, my thumb found the Krakatoa's trigger. A deep, mechanical clunk resonated through the cockpit, followed by the hungry and demonic roar of ignition.
What erupted wasn't merely fire. It was annihilation incarnate. A torrential river of pure, white-hot mana, drawn directly from Sylvia's pulsing core and amplified by the runes etched into the Krakatoa's three-meter frame, fused with the spewing, highly pressurized napalm-like fuel.
The mundane fire, hungry and orange, intertwined with the searing, magical incandescence, creating a tsunami of devouring light and heat. It didn't just burn; it devoured.
The Alacryan squad caught in the open corridor vanished. Not retreated, not dispersed. Vanished. Consumed in an instant by the hungry confluence of energies. The wave roared forward, filling the tunnel, washing over barricades, engulfing figures who had only a heartbeat to scream—a sound instantly swallowed by the furnace roar.
For three seconds, maybe four, the Krakatoa vomited forth this fused hell. Then, the internal warnings screamed—overheating critical. I released the trigger.
The sudden silence was almost louder than the inferno. The Krakatoa's massive muzzle glowed cherry red, dripping molten slag onto the stone floor with sickening hisses. Smoke, thick and greasy, choked the air, swirling in the vacuum left by the flames.
And the smell… gods, the smell. Beyond the scorched metal and fuel, it was the reek of charred flesh, cooked organs, and vaporized bone. It clung, invasive, inescapable, permeating the cockpit's filters, coating the back of my throat.
Through the clearing smoke, the Dark Visor revealed a landscape sculpted by pure malice. The stone walls were blackened and blistered, weeping rivulets of molten rock. Where Alacryans had stood, only grotesque, blackened statues remained, frozen in postures of futile flight or agonized contortion. Some still moved.
Twisted, shrunken figures, more charcoal than flesh, writhed silently or emitted thin, keening wails that scraped against the soul. They clawed at smoldering rags, at limbs reduced to stumps, at faces melted into featureless horror. The mundane flames clung, stubbornly eating whatever organic matter remained, while the lingering mana-fire burrowed deeper, a cold, magical cancer consuming them from the inside out.
Suffocate the mundane flames? The magical ones feasted on your mana, your life force. Resist the magical incineration? The mundane fire roasted your flesh. My design. My perfect, horrific synthesis of Earth's industrial butchery and this world's arcane devastation.
A year. Three hundred and sixty-five days of this. Repeated variations of this slaughter. Fortifying the Wall, scouring corrupted dungeons, meeting endless waves of Alacryan soldiers with increasingly terrible inventions. The Krakatoa—the flamethrower I built for the Barbarossa.
Sonic destabilizers that liquefied internal organs. Each new weapon, each desperate stratagem, met by more troops, more powerful mages, more horrifying Vritra-spawned beasts. We bled them, yes. Slowed them. But we were always reacting. Always defending. The initiative, the overwhelming force… it belonged to Alacrya.
No matter the ingenuity, no matter the sacrifices piled high as the Wall itself, the tide felt inexorable. We were holding back an ocean with a crumbling dam.
"Don't you dare downplay yourself, Corvis!" Romulos's voice cut through the miasma of smoke and despair, sharp, almost gleeful. His spectral form materialized beside the Barbarossa's head, surveying the charnel house with an appraiser's eye, not a hint of revulsion.
"Dad had centuries to build his war machine! You've had months! Look at this!" He gestured expansively at the smoldering ruin. "Efficiency! Ruthlessness! Adaptability! You're doing leagues better than Dicathen managed with my direct intervention in my timeline! This is genius, Corvis! Pure, distilled tactical brilliance!" His praise was fervent, genuine admiration for the scale of the destruction, for the cold calculus of survival I'd embraced.
The words were acid on my soul. Genius? Genius was Gideon's Beast Corps, the clean lines of the Wall's design. This… this was butchery elevated to an art form. I was acclaimed. Feted. Just a month ago, Aldir himself, his third eye inscrutable, had named me Vice Commander under Grampa. 'Vice Commander Corvis Eralith.'
A symbol of hope. A beacon of defiance. Children around Dicathen probably sang songs about the Prince in the Crimson Giant who turned back the darkness. The medals felt like brands. The cheers echoed hollowly in the caverns of my guilt.
These Alacryans… the ones still whimpering in the molten stone, the ones reduced to ash… they weren't Agrona. They weren't Scythes corrupted on power. Many were conscripts. Farmers, laborers, petty mages pulled from their homes by the relentless machinery of the Vritra's ambition. Sent here to die screaming in a dark hole, burned alive by a monstrosity piloted by a sixteen-year-old hailed as a hero.
They had families. Hopes. Lives stolen by a war they likely didn't understand. I… I…
Stop. The command was internal, brutal. A mental flensing. Don't think about it. Don't feel it. Thinking led to hesitation. Hesitation got Dicathians killed. Got Tessia killed. Got Grampa killed. The weight of command was a glacier crushing empathy. Survival demanded ice.
I focused on the mechanics. My hands, trembling slightly inside the gauntlets, detached the still-radiant Krakatoa from the Barbarossa's arm mount. The mechanism hissed as it locked onto the heavy-duty hardpoint on the exoform's broad back. Think about the invention. The Krakatoa.
Three meters of matte-black, rune-etched devastation. A fire-breathing maw inspired by the Indrath Clan's own fury, its fused-fire principle refined with Romulos's chillingly practical insights. A masterpiece of destruction.
"The situation here is resolved, Corvis," Romulos announced, his voice cutting through the lingering crackle of cooling stone and the fading, agonized moans. "Efficiently. Let's head back. The Castle needs its Vice Commander."
I scanned the Dark Visor's enhanced displays, overlaying mana signatures and thermal imaging. The tunnel ahead was a wasteland. No movement. No heat signatures above ambient rock. No mana flickers except the fading embers of my own horrific handiwork and the oppressive, corrupted taint leaching from the dungeon walls. Not a single Alacryan life sign remained within a hundred meters.
Resolved. The word echoed in the hollow silence of the cockpit, a grim epitaph for the nameless dead and a chilling marker on my own soul's descent. The only sound now was the low hum of Sylvia's core and the heavy, metallic tread of the Barbarossa turning away from the hellscape I had created, carrying its pilot back.
———
The heavy stone door of my chamber in the Castle groaned shut behind me, sealing out the distant echoes of the war room, the clatter of armor in the halls, the pervasive scent of ozone and stone dust that clung to the very stones of the flying fortress.
Silence, thick and fragile, descended. I crossed the opulent room—a Prince's quarters that felt like a cage—in three strides, shoving open the door to the adjoining bathroom. Cool marble met my knees as I collapsed before the porcelain basin.
Then it came. Not a heave, but a violent, soul-deep convulsion. I retched, the sparse contents of my stomach burning up my throat, followed by nothing but acidic bile that tasted of metal and ash. Again. And again.
My body shuddered, muscles seizing, tears blurring my vision as I gripped the cold edges of the basin like a lifeline. It wasn't just the physical revulsion, though the phantom stench of charred flesh and molten stone seemed etched into my sinuses. It was the weight.
The crushing, inescapable burden of the year-long slaughterhouse I commanded. Each convulsion felt like a piece of my soul tearing loose, expelled onto the pristine white porcelain. I did that. I made that horror. The images—the writhing figures, the keening silenced by the Krakatoa's roar—played on a loop behind my clenched eyelids.
I finally slumped back, forehead pressed against the blessedly cool marble, gasping. Sweat plastered my gunmetal hair to my temples, my steel grey uniform clinging damply. Through the haze of nausea and self-loathing, the strategist, the Thwart, forced its way back. No Retainers. No Scythes.
Just… fodder. Waves upon waves of Alacryan soldiers, well-trained, disciplined, but ultimately expendable pawns in Agrona's opening gambit. Just like the novel. Testing our defenses, probing our resolve, bleeding us slowly while his true power gathered across the ocean.
We weren't fighting the army yet. We were swatting at the scouts. And the sheer, relentless strength of even these forces… it was terrifying. How much worse would it get?
"For Dicathen's standards?" Romulos's voice cut through the ringing in my ears, materializing as a spectral observer leaning against the marble countertop. His tone was analytical, devoid of judgment for the carnage, only assessing the strategic balance.
"They are formidable. But you have done… admirably, Corvis. Truly. You've shored up weaknesses, maximized resources, turned this continent into a far thornier hedge than Dad could have anticipated." He paused, his gaze sharp. "The real question isn't their strength. It's how much of his vast resources Dad is willing to spend on this particular conflict. How much he values this game."
He drifted closer, his spectral form seeming to solidify with conviction. "It all ends with how much he wants to play. With you, Corvis." A chilling smile touched his lips. "My loved Dad is not a blind fool like my esteemed Grandfather. He sees potential. He sees a puzzle. The simple fact he wanted you captured, alive, proves that beyond doubt. This…" He gestured vaguely, "...isn't just conquest. It's a test. Your test."
His smile widened, a predator's grin devoid of warmth. "Consider it… a father acquainting himself with a long-lost son through a rather vigorous game. Well," he amended, his voice dropping to a viper's whisper, "a game involving the orchestrated deaths of thousands, the breaking of a continent… but a game nonetheless."
I thought you were done trying to sway me to his side, I projected wearily, the mental voice thick with exhaustion and disgust. The familiar argument felt hollow now, drowned in the aftermath of the Krakatoa's fire.
Romulos merely shrugged, an elegant, dismissive motion. "I am merely stating observable facts, Corvis. Interpreting the board." His gaze flickered towards the bathroom door. "Someone's here."
A soft, hesitant knock echoed through the small chamber. "Corvis? Sweetheart?" The voice, laced with maternal concern, pierced the fog of despair like a shaft of sunlight through storm clouds. Mom.
Panic warred with an overwhelming surge of desperate need. I scrambled to my feet, wiping my mouth hastily with the back of my hand, splashing cold water on my face. The reflection in the mirror was ghastly—pale, hollow-eyed, hair a tangled mess where I'd ripped the lace binding it after returning. I didn't care. I flung open the door.
Merial Eralith stood there, her elegant features etched with worry that deepened as she took me in. The Queen, the diplomat, vanished. Only the mother remained.
"Mom," I choked out, the single syllable cracking. Then I was in her arms, burying my face in the soft fabric of her gown, breathing in the familiar, comforting scent of lavender and parchment that was uniquely her. The dam broke. Silent sobs wracked my frame, the tension, the horror, the unbearable weight of command spilling out in the safety of her embrace.
"Shhh, my boy," she murmured, her voice a soothing balm, her arms tightening around me. One hand gently stroked my messy hair, fingers combing through the gunmetal strands with infinite tenderness.
"It's alright. You're safe here. You're home." She held me, rocking slightly, a silent fortress against the world's cruelty. For long moments, there was only her warmth, her scent, the steady beat of her heart against my ear—an anchor in the raging sea of war. My mind, mercifully, emptied of tactics and death tolls, filled only with the fragile sanctuary of family.
Dad, Grampa, Tessia… they were all fighting, burdened, but my presence, my role as Vice Commander, had lifted some of the crushing weight from their shoulders. It was a small comfort, fiercely guarded.
And Tessia… my heart clenched anew. Grampa's decision to let her fight, assigning her to mutant-clearing squads away from direct Alacryan conflict… it felt like the worst gamble of his long life. Yet, she had become formidable. A silver core mage, her bond with her Beast Will seamless, her power a terrifying, beautiful thing. Protecting her was another constant, gnawing fear beneath the mantle of command.
"Corvis," Mom said softly, pulling back slightly but keeping her hands on my shoulders, her eyes searching mine. The worry was still there, but overlaid now with a spark of warmth. "I have good news, sweetheart. Something to lift your spirits." She smiled, a genuine, hopeful curve of her lips. "Your friend. Grey. He's back. He returned from Epheotus today."
The words hit me like a jolt of pure lightning. Grey. Back. The despair, the exhaustion, the lingering horror of the dungeon—it all momentarily shattered. A surge of pure, unadulterated relief and fierce joy flooded through me, so intense it stole my breath. He was here.
My friend, my brother in arms against the impossible, the one person who truly understood the depths of Agrona's game. Without another word, without even a glance back at Romulos's spectral, intrigued expression, I tore myself from my mother's embrace.
Hope, sharp and bright, propelled me past her, out of the bathroom, and towards the door of my chamber. Grey was back. In the suffocating darkness of the war, a vital flame had just reignited.