Jackal Among Snakes

At some point, Argrave stopped thinking about what was happening and what he was doing to stop it. It was as though he retreated within himself, going from an actor in a movie to someone watching it. He saw the spells being cast, saw his body rot away again and again to fight against this corruption encroaching upon the world, but he couldn’t say that he was the one doing it.

That was the only way he managed to stay sane.

It was impossible to distinguish between the wounds he caused himself and the wounds Gerechtigkeit imparted. They were one in the same, fundamentally—pain brought about because of an enemy. But as he all but showered in the embryotic tissue of the calamity of judgment, he began to see strange things—impossible things. It was as though time itself warped, bringing him back to eras of the past where the battle still raged.

Argrave saw great scores of enemies standing up against Gerechtigkeit. He saw Vasquer and Felipe I in their ranks, saw gods like Erlebnis and Law. He saw them rage, fight, and struggle against the calamity. He saw Gerechtigkeit’s hand, too, weaving things in the background. Manipulating. Corrupting. Exposing. Controlling.

The time-warped hallucinations came without an end in fragmented flashes of hardship and terror. He saw, for the first time, the perspective of the other side of this calamity of judgment. In coming so close to this embryotic tissue, he was exposed to the fundaments of Gerechtigkeit, who’d been born out of the child that’d once been Griffin. It wasn’t some curated propaganda piece, either—it was the true essence, showing the utter depths that Gerechtigkeit had been willing to sink to for the vaguest chance of victory.

Argrave saw that he’d attempted to create an infected lineage that permeated throughout the beast races, securing their loyalty in the next cycle—and in so doing, engineered their genocide. He’d played subtle roles in countless revolutions, ensuring that they never ended as ideally as those who’d began them intended. Argrave saw over a thousand revolutionary advances in magic and science utterly squashed in a deliberate effort to keep people ignorant. His watchful eye was a constant headwind against all progress in the world.

Argrave had always known that Gerechtigkeit’s influence wasn’t limited to the brief period that came once every one thousand years, yet he’d never pictured how extensive his oversight was.

He’d create great empires in one stroke, and have them cannibalize each other in the next. He used the lessons of one hundred thousand years to goad people into repeating cycles that he’d mastered. Jaray had been skillful, but Gerechtigkeit had mastered this. The gods were his only foil, the only countering force that brought forth their own power and experience sufficient to banish him every time. The gods were isolated, yes—but they were safe, and not at all inferior to him in terms of power. They balanced the cycle, ending it every time.

There had only been two exceptions to that rule: Argrave himself, and Lorena.

It was only when mortal power grew to something surpassing the gods that the cycle veered from its traditional route, enacting true change. Argrave knew the fate of Lorena’s struggle against the Heralds, yet now he saw flashes of it from Gerechtigkeit’s perspective. He saw unintelligible requests toward the Heralds, each about Sophia… and each rejected. In the end he’d avoided death only by conceding to the Heralds, accepting their aid in the face of Lorena’s onslaught. And, strangely… Argrave felt a great deal of regret in that decision.

Argrave continued to flow through battle after battle, and as he went backward Gerechtigkeit lost some of the experience, some of the ruthlessness, some of the low cunning that he’d possessed in later cycles. Some were brief, bitter defeats, while some were protracted campaigns spanning near a decade. Argrave found it all impossibly foreign. He hoped to find something at the center of all of this—something that could tell him what, precisely, had turned this man from the child called Griffin into the abomination that was Gerechtigkeit, if there was anything at all. He wanted to see how Sophia’s brother had become a monster.

He saw the first few cycles—dying at Sataistador’s hands more than once. Eagerness flooded him as Argrave thought he might be exposed to the beginning, might be exposed to the very day that the Heralds had taken Griffin from Good King Norman and subjected him to this.

Argrave had hope, until he realized he stared at an empty sky and a wound in the world.

It wasn’t an escalation of the pain that brought Argrave back to himself—rather, it was the sudden absence of it. The wound in the world had ceased to bleed. Like a raw injury exposed to salt and alcohol, the sudden lack of the sensation of pain was so overwhelming Argrave felt his body might fold inward, his head might collapse.

That would imply, of course, that he wasn’t broken already. And he couldn’t say for sure.

The golems still came, and Argrave’s body moved without any of his input to deliver devastatingly powerful blood magic. Anything that touched him, came near him, met a gruesome end. He could logically understand that he was acting like a rabid animal, but it felt beyond his control. Enemies kept coming, and he kept killing them. Whatever form they took—gargoyles, birds, reptilian creatures, or even human…

“Argrave. Argrave!” one of the enemies that’d touched him shouted—it’d lost an arm from a blast of red lightning, and now stood far away from him. “We need to go. We need to get out of here. Everyone is waiting for you!”

Argrave waited for it to come closer, hands twitching with anticipation. This one was large and powerful—he’d need to respond in kind.

“Anneliese is waiting for you,” it said, and something inside Argrave twitched.

He recognized the figure for who it truly was—Raven.

“Are you going to attack me again?” Raven questioned, coming closer with sufficient caution. Argrave couldn’t say anything in response—it was like he’d forgotten what words were. “You’ve done well, but it’s over. You can’t do any more. We need to get you out of here.”

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Eventually, Raven fully bridged the gap. He grabbed Argrave—and though he thrashed instinctually, there was enough reason within to refrain from hurting someone he knew was only trying to help.

“Your body morphed your mind to cope with what was happening without shattering your ego.” Raven picked up him, then looked off to the distance. There, enough golems to hide the sun were approaching them. “If you can, I’d like you to direct whatever’s in your head toward getting us out of here.”

#####

Anneliese watched with bated breath as great flashes of red tore through the sky, sluggishly heading toward their position. The golems were beginning to converge back where Gerechtigkeit’s tissue had fell—that meant only one thing. The next stage of this long battle was to begin. She’d sent Raven out to help Argrave, because Elenore claimed that he’d become nonresponsive.

When Raven finally returned, alighting down and dispelling [Absolute Movement], Anneliese had been immensely glad she’d made that call.

Argrave looked more like a feral cat than a man—not in his appearance, but in his behavior. He fought against Raven’s grip with his teeth and his nails, having discarded all dignity in wake of something more primal. She could feel the stir of magic about him as he called upon spells, but she saw sparks of reason in his eyes that killed the spells before they could manifest.

“You,” Raven said commandingly. “Ground him. He needs to be reminded of who he is.”

Anneliese came to him immediately, fear and worry dominating her actions. She took him from Raven, utterly ignoring his wretched state. He ceased to thrash, but she could tell there was a madness in his eyes. As she began to imagine what he’d been through up there to reduce him to this, she began to cry. She did so silently, ever mindful of the vast army behind her that watched their every move. Raven used his imposing form to shield the two of them from view, and she repeated both of his names in a desperate whisper, pleading with him.

“Has Gerechtigkeit done something to him?” she eventually managed to ask of Raven when Argrave offered her no answers. He’d calmed, clutching her as if she was his only refuge in a storm.

“Gerechtigkeit’s embryotic tissue has left some mark on his flesh, but as for his mind… I’m all but certain he did this to himself. It was a self-preservation instinct. You can verify as much with [Truesight].” Raven looked into the distance, where the golems continued to return to the point of Gerechtigkeit’s landing. “I suggest that you allow me to take him away to join with Sophia. We need to analyze Gerechtigkeit’s tissue for us to use Sophia’s power to follow Gerechtigkeit back through that wound. I can study the lingering remnants left on Argrave’s body toward that end.”

Argrave mumbled something.

“What was that?” Anneliese pulled back. “Argrave? Can you hear me?”

“Not done… yet,” he said, his words slurred like his lips and tongue were too thick to use.

“No more from you,” she said—not demanding, but begging. “No more.”

“Morale fucked,” Argrave said, and when she looked into his gray eyes, she saw most of their acuity returned. She saw him. Relief flooded into her, damming the stream of tears running down her face. “They think… hurt. Everyone falling back. Need… bang. Need to start things with… bang.”

“I will,” Anneliese promised. “We’ll begin the counterattack shortly. Trust me, Argrave. I can do this.”

“Mmm.” Argrave drew away, rising to his feet. His tattered coat and clothes barely clung to his frame, but it made him seem all the more regal as he straightened his back. “Start… with punching a hole. House. Hause. Blackgard. Make it to Blackgard.”

“You’re unwell,” Raven disagreed. “We can’t heed your strategy.”

“I’m not… there’s…” he seemed to brighten as words came to him. “Stroke victim,” Argrave looked at Raven. “Mind sharp. No control. Anne. You see? Still me.” He pointed to his eyes.

Anneliese studied him intently, both with [Truesight] and her own empathy. Eventually, she nodded—his mind was present, but not fully attuned with his body. “Okay. You want us to punch through to Blackgard. How?”

“I’m obese.” Argrave frowned, perhaps realizing he’d misspoke. “Coalescing… good for me. For us. One target. Big target.” He turned around. “On my signal, okay?”

“Yes.” Anneliese wiped her face down quickly and rose to her feet, prepared to begin the battle anew. She wasn’t any surer of what Argrave had said than Raven was, but she trusted that he was acting rationally.

When Argrave began to cast a familiar yet subtly different spell, she pieced together what Argrave had meant to say when he said, ‘I’m obese.’ He was referring to the glut of vitality he’d accrued fighting against Gerechtigkeit so long—vitality that could manifest itself as blood magic.

Argrave walked a long distance away from the army, standing at the head of the field, and took an archer’s stance. A crimson mana ripple cut the air before a gargantuan bow of blood, easily twenty feet tall, appeared before Argrave. He had to hold the thing sideways, but he took a deep breath and pulled on its string.

At once, a tremendous torrent of blood burst out of Argrave’s body from every point. He was employing a modified version of [Bloodfeud Bow], one that she’d never seen him make, never discussed with him. Perhaps he never had—perhaps he was calling upon this magic by instinct. Whatever the case, the spell taxed him so greatly he fell to one knee. Even amidst that, he rested his arm atop that knee to keep it steadily trained on Gerechtigkeit.

In mere seconds, Anneliese could tangibly feel the power in the air. It was a pressure as constant as gravity, emanating outward. Argrave continued to add, add, add, until it began to distort the surroundings, warp the air, and send out ripples of power that cracked the earth and set fell winds stirring.

“Everyone, get back!” Anneliese shouted over it. “And get ready!”

She led the efforts in the rapid retreat, and everyone wasted no time in expeditiously giving Argrave more than sufficient distance. When, finally, the pressure wasn’t so overwhelming, she looked back. She was shocked to discover she couldn’t actually see Gerechtigkeit anymore. The maroon bolt, trained toward their enemy, had turned everything red. Argrave’s brush of pure power had hued the world according to its nature.

A roar split the air—a great rumbling, like some dark beast risen from the hells. It was Argrave’s roar, transformed into something unearthly by the sheer magnitude of the power he wielded. It sunk into the mind of the vast army assembled here, shaking their minds as powerfully as Gerechtigkeit himself had. And when that thought took root…

Argrave unleashed the full might of his blood feud.