Post
Eighty four remaining. Another impact fractured the gate's upper third, a sound not unlike snapped spine, bent steel kissing her pauldron with enough force to drive her a full inch forward - her boots carving shallow trenches into the frozen flagstone. She bore it - all of it. Let the cold eat through alloy. Let its rust bloom into plague-flowers where frost pried the layers apart. She was the gate now, her body hinge and lock. The hallway stretched on behind her, long and black except for that blue. That infernal, faithful blue. Flailing across stone in waving curtains - cobalt to bruise-deep and back again - and within its light, the last of the critters scrambled. Dozens of them still. She had stopped counting their silhouettes long ago and trusted the O-CFR to tell her when the count went to zero. Until then, she held. A three-legged thing no larger than her thumb tumbled, righted itself, and ran again. Something that might have been feathered pressed itself flat against the wall to let a larger shape pass, then resumed. They did not look back at her. Thank the devil for that. 'Cecilli-' Forty-one percent. The number arrived before the voice had finished her name. That was new. 'I see it,' she muttered, though her jaw had begun to fuse with the cold, vowels collapsing inward. No mist in them, not enough hospitality upon air to allow it. 'The lower hinge.' She already knew. Had known since the fourth impact, when the lower half of the gate changed pitch - a faintly higher groan, a different kind of complaint from iron. That part had been first to rust through when the beast's exhalation had rolled over the abbey three days prior and undone a century of maintenance in an evening. It would be the first to fail. Another blow. The upper bent section slammed into her left shoulder’s ridge, found the seam between gorget and pauldron, and introduced a cold so precise it was less sensed and more as information - a bulletin across every nerve in her neck. Her feet disregarded it, adjusting and found fresh stone. Twenty-nine percent. The blue at the hall’s end deepened for a moment, as though breathing, rippling curtains sidelong and disturbing oceanic bellows. A few critters paused at its threshold, arrested by whatever old instinct made small things hesitate before passages. The first one stepped through and went, others following in cascades. The O-CFR began its count in a sound of no language but was perfectly legible nonetheless. Forty-one remaining. 'Tell me when it's ten,' she said. 'You should know,' the voice returned*, 'that it may not hold that long.'* The gate struck her again. Her left leg squeaked against dirt and found wall. 'Tell me when it's ten.' A silence - the particular quality that was not the O-CFR's absence but its restraint. Then: 'Acknowledged.' Twenty-two percent. The lower hinge issued a sound close to departure - groans of something that had already decided. She did not look. Frost from the world outside seeped no longer; it was arriving, purposeful, an army that had found a gap in the wall. It moved through her layers with a bureaucratic thoroughness, cataloguing what remained and more. The gate shuddered, a shattering somewhere within her frame. Thirty remaining. One of the critters lingered. Her apertures caught its motion before the rest of her did - auto-zoom snapping in three increments, pulling into sudden clarity - and she found it there, at the boundary where broken flagstone surrendered to frozen dirt. A small thing. Hair and fabric, both in colors she could not name from this distance, crouched down with a deliberateness that struck her as almost ceremonial. It bent with an occupied hand. Thrice-magnified, the object resolved: six petals, white-rimmed, erupting from a cluster of green and yellow. Recognition filters worked unseen, cross-referencing dormant archives. Hibiscus family. Subspecies: - A Cecilia. The flower held its shape against the cold with a stubbornness she recognized in her own chest. She should have opened her jaw and bellowed, for the volume was there, sent the thing scrambling with something ugly and loud and commanding. Should have, with the same hand holding the gate, plucked the flower from dirt and cast it through the FloodPath ahead of its giver. Both were options. Neither was what her body chose. Something moved through her in intervals. Electric, and warm in the way that had nothing to do with temperature - an old current she had no official designation for, because the O-CFR had never been issued one, and she had never thought to ask. Seconds filled like water in a vessel - the kind that would have made organic irises glisten. 'Down.' The O-CFR did not ask. It moved her - seized the motor pathways with a swiftness that bypassed permission - and she was already dropping before the seismic split could divide her from chest up. Debris rained behind and her hands met the frozen dirt, the slight hollow texture slamming against her palms, and she spared a glance as that hairy critter found common sense and made its hurried way towards the swirling exit. Above her helm, the gate split horizontally at shoulder height, an intended wound. The tear crossed the full width of the steel, too precise for chance, too violent for anything sane, and through it came nothing visible. No shape or silhouette against the beyond. Just a false emptiness that pressed inward rather than filling what space it occupied, accompanying a silence that devoured edges of every other sound in this hallway - the dripping of frost, distant blue-hum of the FloodPath, the ticking of her own frame - until she was aware only of the cold. Or rather, the very removal of heat. It entered through the tear and found the steel layers, the O-CFR registering the immediate incursion. No sufficient reserves available for sustained thermal regulation. Requesting permission to suspend sensory peripherals until further assessment. 'Granted,' she murmured, and meant it without grief. The sensation-field collapsed in sequence, starting at the outermost layer and working inward - cold going first, to heat, and everything between - until what remained was pressure, motion, the weight of her own mass against frozen ground. Cleaner. She had always found it better this way. A soldier with fewer instruments to tune. 'Initiating transfusion.' She reached into the compartment in her left thigh and unclipped the hilt. It extended in her grip - a familiar articulation, segment locking to segment - until the staff's full length sat balanced in both hands, water pouring from its farthest end. The way it moved to seize the dim blue light far behind and held it a moment before releasing - except that water did not flow upward along channels of a weapon and worked into an armor’s veins like a river finding tributaries. This did, reaching the first spoke of her back and through it, branching along the chest-plate where major lines ran, the same sensation as it had always been: Baptized by the devil. Not unpleasant - never . Just the grasp of something that had decided on her and claimed its ground. The spear settled, its two-pronged end retaining its shape, neither flickering nor diminishing - steady, as it always had once the transfusion ran its course - pointed at the tear in the entrance and the false silence beyond it, hiding one too many things. Twelve percent. Ten remaining. The spear solidified under her grip. Even through deactivated sensory registers and the blessed absence of cold, she was aware of her own teeth pressing together, jaw finding its opposition and holding. Not from the cold or dark; but the particular, ungovernable thing without designation in the O-CFR's registry either, and she had never named it - because that would mean it could be spent. Almost there, she thought, and it was not for comfort nor command. Simply the truest thing she knew how to say. Her mind raced through possible actions - until the thing outside decided for her. Two horizontal panes slammed into the opening, vibrating sheets of translucent steel, already wrong in proportion, forcing their way into the gap and prying outward. Hollow dirt beneath her back step shifted a fraction, her footing faltered- Confirmed, the O-CFR supplied. Two nails. Separate digits. Eight percent. Three remaining. The spear laid steady, leveled at the breach - one hand locked to shaft, the other guiding its aim at eye level. Those nails widened the tear with each shrieking protest of steel, peeling it open to a present dark that stared back with weight, suffocating even through the armor. Under that pressure, the O-CFR forced her arm to motion. The spear sang. where rain fell into ocean Finding a maw void of heat. the blade, battered by the pour The strike collapsing in on itself. and at the heart of a falling droplet Given way. carving space wider than its reach An absence forced open. and sang a moment's worth of ocean into reality Flooded with another world’s light. It was close enough to be a song - a spear-shaped melody a thousand fathoms wide - and from beyond, a sound not like a roar, one that belonged to no mouth. The beast’s fury and her spearsong collided, splitting walls with quaking fractures, both vying to annihilate what remained of her hearing. Both arms held the broken shaft in place. Yet still she held. Praying - for the weapon to hold a moment longer. The entire spear shattered. Its force threw her back, the single thought before impact that perhaps even answered prayers had limits- The earth clanged as it struck her. Four percent. Zero remaining. Or perhaps another’s had been granted. The portal was too far. Too unstable. Instead, she reached for the carved gap beneath her, glove grasping a cold cylindrical handle set into the dirt. The light was dimming. Still, the hidden trapdoor pulled open easily enough with such speed of rehearsal. She slid under the earth. To a space barely large enough for her frame, coffin-tight in any other context. Here, the one place not already made a grave. Two percent. Her cue to hunker down- The gate gave. A shriek of condensed winter tore through the hall, a structural violation through her foundations even with her senses stripped. Something struck the trapdoor, still a quarter open, wrenching it from her. Bright-edged limbs, neither hand nor foot, hooked into each corner as something bulbous craned down into view. Its form was unreadable in full, flesh and armor beyond distinction, the blue light too faint to resolve it. Only the edges held - feathered steel, serrated. And there- The wound. Where her spear had made its claim. A gash torn through gold, snow, and emphyrric bone. Within it, a length of golden sinew burned, wet with a furious light fitting for an angel- -and blinked. One percent. Above her: Incoming vector detected. With embers of ocean-light dying, the O-CFR forced motion. Her fist rose to meet it. Unarmed - irrelevant . As long as she had a limb, she had a weapon. The strike met- where tide met no shore Yet denied answer. a droplet against absence Turning inward. no world to receive it Where it parted upon contact. still the ocean answered The blow driven back, recoiling itself away from the trapdoor’s edge - though not without cost. Her arm flew off at its joint. No pain, just absence where it had been. The severed limb spun across the hall and struck stone with a violent metallic crash. - Zero percent. Collapse imminent. Her remaining hand heaved the trapdoor down in the sliver of time the beast’s motion faltered. The last sight before it closed- An ocean burnt the far end of the hallway, weeping green-blue, a flood of impossible light forcing itself through this stone throat towards her. The door sealed. - Where a single droplet had made an angel bleed, a river now tore through the world above her. The thin pane of floor was now her shield, a breadth of material against current. Through the seams of frame, droplets flashed brighter than dying stars. Even beneath the roaring river, she caught fading bellows of alien appendages - cut short, swallowed by a crash of water and the violence carried with it. Her systems begged for rest. For one moment, she almost allowed them. And in a flash- Silence. The total ceasefire of sound. A moment passed before she pushed. The trapdoor gave at once, crumpling like paper. Light struck first - white, absolute - leaking through the expanse where the roof had been. She pulled herself free and looked across what remained: the hallway scattered into debris across a flattened field of stone where the abbey had stood. Her vision struggled, then crystal clear. Above, a sky of thorned and falling snow hung too close, as though within reach. The mound beneath her rose high enough to scrape it. She treaded now, dragging legs that bent wrong with each step. Snow fell, gold dust with it. Towards the stairs down the mound- Upon a broken form. A great thing kissing the clouds, charred and collapsed, once belonging to the factories of heaven. A river darker than inferno had burned through it, leaving only a husk. The system hummed its calculations. - No immediate threat detected. It lay hunched, unrecognizable in shape. At its crown, a circular wound gaped wide, positioned so that it seemed to look at her. Its wound spread. Slowly, then all at once. The angel’s corpse unraveled into nothing, frost and gold bleeding upward, drawn into the same horizon that damned this world. Even in death, a curse - one directed at her. Up high, gunships rose without resonance. Their forms unreadable, but unmistakably of the same origin - heaven-made . The stillness broke and they tore through the crumpled sky, carving spirals into it as they ascended, turbulence trailing behind. Perhaps the destruction of the final FloodPath was enough for them. Maybe they believed the last knight of O-CFR had already died. Perhaps both. Or neither. The system spiked, a needle upon her skull. It struck all at once, systems no longer able to suppress accumulated damage. Nerves flared where her arm had been, cracks along her joints buckling her stance. A sharp, stabbing heat pressed into her helmet’s rear. - System failure imminent. She reached- -and caressed a stinging eye beneath a gloved hand. Flesh. Belonging to a body she forgot was hers, flimsy legs sore from months of disuse. Through her other eye, a thin shaft of light held a dead world beyond, splitting through steel and wiring, exposing the pitch black chamber where she lay. A throne. Not one of stone, but of machinery. Her body, small and crumpled, sat within it, both hands resting against soft silicon controls built into the armrests, encircled by a council of dead screens. Rubber clung to her skin, torn and soaked in sections, the scent of copper needing no confirmation. Burnt strands of hair drifted loose against her shoulder. For years, she had but seen the world through screens - through eyes of something greater. Now, in its absence, her own body was a foreign thing. Memory struck with precision, of her never being the behemoth. Not the mechanical knight standing kilometers tall, spear raised against false gods. Only the one within it. A human, nested and fragile inside the hollow of its helm, sustained by the armor’s ghost. Smaller than the creatures that once fled before her. Smaller than those that had looked upon her with reverence. Not that it would matter. The behemoth she once controlled was now a statue, damage and exhaustion locking it into stillness. The ‘vultures’ would come soon. Hopefully she was too small for them to feast on. Or gone before they arrived. Sleep came too easily. Eyelids were closing together- -and the system screamed. Every dead screen flared red static. One alone surged to life without power. RECONFIGURATION CONTRACT - ACCEPT? 'Take it.' The O-CFR’s voice tore through failing speakers, distorted but urgent. 'I, the knight, and you- ' The soul, her own thoughts finished it for him. There had never been a moment for this. Battles ended too quickly - victory or death, nothing between. Yet here it was, and though details had long since eroded, she understood enough. This was the last chance. For either of them. For both. The choice was simple. 'I, Cecilia sen Nouveau- ' Pain cut through a jut of bone, burning hotter than flame, the taste of copper bitter on her tongue. Still, the words forced through it. '-hereby… accept your contract,' her bloodied hand feeble against the screen. A single chime in answer, though she was already going before it finished. 'And I, Alondr-' — -shall uphold this oath. She is already asleep. Not dead. Never dead, so long as I remain. The ocean has begun to take her, a quiet thin layer settling over thought and memory. She will dream through me now. The contract is complete. My first step leaves a deep imprint in the frozen ruin, pressed into a winter born from an angel’s corpse. The body resists and yields. It always does. There is still such distance yet. The nearest threshold lies systems away - those not already claimed or destroyed. Angels do not leave doors unattended for long. But distance is irrelevant. These legs march. As long as they do, she sleeps. As long as she sleeps, we persist. As long as we persist, the promise remains intact. The Furthest Garden is not yet lost to us. Father still waits there - if He has not already been found. Or undone. That is not our burden. Ours is the road. And the keeping of it. Sleep, then. A little longer, Cecilia. The path is gone. So we will make another.
This signal has not been scored yet.