Seventeen Seconds to Eternity

2 - Brothers

21st Year, 6th Month, Autumn

Xekkur, god of death and ascension, advanced through the masses, claiming all those who felt his touch as he made his way towards the podium. Rising above the cursed, bone-laden dias, he looked down upon his mortal servants and declared to them his edicts.

The divine spark exists to be found in all of creation.

All shall begin at the first of the seven stages and ascend the steps to godhood.

And it shall be by way of death with which all names are carved.

Let us undo mortals and eternals in kind, and achieve true equality in our sacred rest.

And so the world became as he commanded. Yearning for their seats among the immortal council, the people took death into their hands. Blood, ash, gore. Murder proliferated through the seven realms like spores in the wind. And yet, few divine sprouts took root.

Those unable to seize godhood between their fingers were labeled as the divinely inert. But neither the first, the second, nor even the thrice ascended could begin to grasp at the feet of the truly divine. Only upon acquiring a fourth ascension—reaching the fifth of the seven stages—would a mortal begin to transcend his shell.

To achieve the fifth was to become a sapling, to sprout from the downtrodden soil and seek a place among the heavens.

To achieve the fifth was to become one of the chosen who lorded over the world and its concepts.

To achieve the fifth was to become an aspect. With only celestial, divine, and death upon the path ahead.

Scriptures of the Savage Gods, Verse 3-24

___

I silenced my trembling fists as I put my first foot forward. One clacking hoof at a time, I walked the path, stepping across the marble-tiled floor. My eyes darted from corner to corner. I watched every shadow, every soul as I ventured through the hall. The fallen warriors were poised to strike; they had raised their wands and blades as soon as the trial began and positioned themselves as if they were preparing to charge. I was half expecting them to do just that once I crossed some arbitrary point or other. I could see it in their twisted lips, their clenched jaws, and their burning bright eyes. Their souls were filled with envy—the exact opposite emotion that one would expect from warriors of such eternal status and renown.

I nearly twisted my lips into a grin as I continued to observe their ranks. But despite all temptation, I kept my face in its usual, frozen position.

Only after three dozen steps did I find myself opposed. A giant of a man emerged from between two pillars and blocked my path with his body. Even through his thick scalemail, I could see his muscles bulging. He was twice, nearly three times my height, measuring over ten metres in all. His biceps were as thick as the lower half of my body and his fingers were wider than my arms. His weapon, a massive hammer even larger than the man himself, appeared heavy enough to collapse a mountain. And yet, his feet were light, so quiet that I could barely detect them.

“He is Fyrn, once the greatest of all among the warriors of Fornestead.” The goddess was leaning on her throne, with one arm propping up her face and the other swirling a glass of wine. “In life, he nearly reached the sixth step of godhood after felling the last of the mortal dragons, only to be slain in his sleep by his dearest brother. He was a heroic prince whose might was unequalled throughout his time. And even in death, he remains an avatar of brute strength. He will bear down upon you, his might unrestricted. And through his blows, he will judge you for the betrayal of your kin.”

I nearly laughed. But somehow, I fought back the urge and looked him in the eye.

To have nearly reached the sixth step, to have almost become a celestial—a veritable demigod—the man must have been incredibly powerful. As far as the system’s descriptors went, he was likely four to five times my level. But despite that, and despite having entered the temple unarmed, I remained without a stance and allowed the so-called hero to make the first move.

His giant frame suggested that he would rely on brute force, but the warrior spirit did nothing of the sort. Everything from his rush to his delivery was performed with technical perfection. He twisted his hips at just the right angle to maximize the force of his diagonal swing. His grip remained just loose enough that he could still adjust the momentum in case I tried to dodge, but not so loose that I could knock his weapon from his hands. His mastery of the martial arts was staggering. And yet, it played second fiddle to the control he had over his magic.

He activated three different spells at once. The first increased his speed tenfold in the midst of his swing. The second formed an earthen prison around me and denied every thought of escape. And the last transformed his hammer into lightning incarnate.

Pure energy coursed through the divine metal. It pulsed with raw power, its glow almost seeming to breathe as it cut through the air. Even the goddess’ divine realm was distorted by the display of force; the molten plasma that enshrouded his hammer warped the space inside of the temple and lit the air aflame.

Anything it touched would surely be fried, destroyed, rendered completely inert by a trillion volts at once.

It was an attack worthy of being proclaimed as a veteran’s trump card, a true ultimate technique capable of obliterating even a man prepared to receive it.

And yet, it was easily defeated. Lightly swinging my bare hand, I met his weapon head-on.

The runic inscriptions clearly revealed that its crafter was divine, perhaps the god of the inner flame himself. The sheer extent of the skill that went into its making told a thousand stories on its own. And yet, just like the lightning that had shrouded it, the hammer was split in two, with a straight line extending from the spot I touched.

The giant reeled back, but it was already too late. I had already swung my arm again.

An unexpected warmth pulsed through the back of my head as my hand tore through his phantom flesh. Suddenly, without any clear rhyme or reason, my mind was flooded by a wave of pure white.

The temple vanished. My opponent vanished. Everything went blank.

Everything except for the scream that echoed in the darkness.

It was my own voice. I could hear myself panting, shouting, roaring at the top of my lungs as I stomped through a familiar forest. It was a forest I would have preferred to have long forgotten, a forest pulled straight from the depths of my memories.

“Constantius!” My words lacked their usual quality. There was nothing steady about my voice, nothing calm about the delivery. The scream came out as a feral howl, a low, guttural string of incomprehensible sounds. “Constantius! Get the fuck back here!”

My shieldlance tore through a giant bird as I continued to give chase. It was only one of the many animals that inserted itself in my path. They crowded my vision with blood and gore. Over and over, they got in my way. They tried their best to stall me, but their effort was fruitless. I pumped my feet against the ground, kicked up the autumn leaves, and tore through the elven woods.

I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t smell him. I couldn’t even hear him.

None of my abilities allowed me to track him. But somehow, I knew he was there.

Not even in hindsight did I know what I was thinking. Everything was just as red as the day I chased him down. It was my own fault. The whole forest was stained in the blood of his servants. The leaves, the trees, the trampled undergrowth. It was all painted in the colour of the evening sky.

I opened my mouth and shouted again.

I couldn’t tell if I had shouted his name or simply roared like a feral beast. Either way, I was only met with more frustration. I hadn’t the faintest clue if it was what I had truly felt in the moment, or if it was compounded by my knowledge of what was to follow, but soon, I was lost. I could feel my brain turning to mush. I could feel that everything had come together to flood my mind with a single emotion.

Half the chase was a blur. The only thing I could say for certain was that, at some point, I stopped going around the trees and started ploughing right through them. It was simply faster. The branches couldn’t pierce my fur and I barely felt it as my two-thousand-pound body went barreling through the trunks. The repeated impacts did nothing to stop me. I gained far more speed than I would have lost from dancing around the forest.

That was how I finally caught up. Having turned half the beautiful woodland into a trampled warpath, I caught sight of the manipulative bastard right as I rushed into a clearing.

Compared to the last time I saw him, Constantius was far worse for wear. The aristocratic robes that once adorned his body had been replaced by a set of leathers. His armour was not dysfunctional—the individual hides were thick enough to protect him from my blade—but it didn’t make for much of a pretty sight. All the skins were fresh. They had barely been shaped into garbs. His feathered wings were uncovered and three of his four legs were readily exposed. Though perhaps, in retrospect, it was all by design.

He was an intimidating beast of a man. His calves were so thick that they put tree trunks to shame. Next to him, grown centaurs looked like children, and even most other cervitaurian moose would have shaken in his presence.

And I was no different.

While he was a few years older, Constantius and I were nearly identical. We shared everything aside from the details of our faces. The consequence of inheriting our father’s dominant, phantom blood.

He was facing me already, awaiting my arrival with his spear held over his shoulder and a grin spread across his face. It was practically a teasing smile. Even though his birds and beasts lay dead at my feet.

“Constantius.” I spat his name as I brought my lance down upon him. I went straight for his throat. There was no need to hold back. There had never been a need to hold back. My only regret was not killing him earlier—not seeing him for the demonic abomination he was.

“That’s not the nicest way to greet your brother now, is it, Virillius?” He feigned a pout as he parried my blade. It wasn’t a perfect defence. His hands shook, nearly giving out beneath the weight of the blow. Our levels were practically the same, but he was a tamer, and I was a warrior. He couldn’t have possibly matched my strength.

The impact alone should have ground his bones to dust. And yet, he stood his ground. He remained unflinching, stalwart, unharmed in the face of my fury.

“You are not my brother.” I practically spat the words at him, but he only laughed them off.

“Your hatred changes nothing. Come on kiddo, remember what Father told you? You’ve got to think about everything in terms of cost and benefit.”

“Shut up.” I lashed out again, swinging my blade in a powerful, horizontal sweep. I even tried to imbue it with my magic so I could split him in two. But it was to no avail. Back then, I had no such power. Back then, I could do nothing to stop the traitor from escaping my reach unscathed.

“Don’t be so impatient,” he said, with a laugh. “We still have a solid twenty minutes before anyone else arrives. Let’s slow down, have fun, maybe even go through some of those long-term investment plans Father was always talking about. You know, before the fire.”

“You have no right to speak of my father!”

Another wild swing. Another inopportune parry.

“You do realize that he was my father too?” Constantius sighed. “What was it that he always said again? ‘I’m proud of you, both of you,’ was it?” His perfect imitation only grated my nerves, bearing down on my ears like a knife against a bottle.

“I told you to shut the fuck up!” My next attack was the heaviest so far. By imbuing my body with divinity, I was able to empower every muscle in my body and deliver a strike capable of shattering the earth.

And yet, even that was unsuccessful. Constantius held his ground, watching me with an entertained smirk as he stepped right out of the way. He raised his hooves as I passed him and drilled them into my chest. The attack itself wasn’t all that heavy, but it forced my legs into the ground and provided him with a window to back away.

“Besides, it’s really not about father anymore, at this point, is it? Who was the one you failed to save last week? I forget her name. The Pollux girl.”

I was itching to charge him. My hands were trembling, wanting nothing more than to break his jaw and snap his antlers, but I refrained. According to martial theory, it was an amateur’s mistake. I should have pressed forward while I had the advantage, but I knew Constantius too well. He would surely have accounted for such a scenario; there was nothing he wouldn’t have done for a chance to gloat.

“Oh, or maybe that one merchant from Kryddar?” He tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “Honestly, little brother, that one was my bad. I know I totally fucked him over for siding with you, but I really didn’t think he would kill himself. I know you think I plan just about everything, but I really didn’t expect it to pay out that well.”

The taste of iron seeped through my mouth as I clenched my teeth. There was nothing about him that didn’t annoy me. The way his voice cracked only promoted the urge to kill. His hyena-like laughter birthed a wish for his strangulation, and his smirk only convinced me that he deserved to be ripped in two. Just as it always had, since the day that he became himself.

“So who’s next, I wonder. Oh, how about that Violet girl?”

He knew he inspired my darkest urges. That was why he insisted on speaking, why he insisted on facing me directly instead of running away, despite his lacklustre skill in combat.

“Honestly, this is what you get for taking after Father. You should have learned to be more like me and Mother, not that she ended up much better.”

It wasn’t like I gave up on closing the distance. I tucked in my ears and muffled his voice as I scanned my surroundings. There were seven suspicious mounds in the leafy piles by his feet, and I counted three different lines of crossbows mounted in the surrounding trees. It didn’t look like they had any operators at a glance, but I knew better than to assume that they wouldn’t fire. His servants came in all shapes and sizes, and the trees had yet to fully shed their coats. They could easily have been hidden in the foliage.

“Either way, the point remains. You should really learn to use your head, Virillius. That’s supposed to be the part that makes our bloodline stand out.”

Having finally finished my inspection, I spread my wings and rushed him. It was a head-first attack. I lowered my antlers and raced them towards his gut. I knew I was faster, that for him, the distance would have felt like it had closed in the blink of an eye. Still, I found my attack interrupted.

A spear suddenly burst from the ground beneath me and threatened to rip through my skull. It didn’t come from any of the leafy piles I’d noted, nor even the exposed patches of dirt. It had simply appeared, suddenly entering the space directly in front of my face.

I dodged it with a twist of the neck, only for seven others to take its place. Again, they had all appeared out of thin air, and again, they were pointed at my head. Any other man would likely have stopped in his tracks and focused on defence, but I ignored them outright. Their angles were misaligned; four bounced right off my antlers without so much as piercing the velvet. One scraped the side of my cheeks, and the other two brushed off my shoulders. They slipped right off my armour, barely scratching the metal defences.

Just when I thought I was in the clear, his arrows were all unleashed at once. Every crossbow launched a shimmering bolt infused with elemental magic. With nearly sixty projectiles in all, each exceeding the speed of sound, it almost looked like I was trapped. But the trump card that I had hidden from him, the whip of blood summoned from within my wrist, knocked his weapons out of the sky in a single swift motion.

I tightened my grip on my weapon and drew it towards his neck with another forward step. He closed his eyes. It looked like he was accepting his fate, but then, there was a click. He pressed the device in his hands and set off the artifacts he had buried in the ground.

They exploded without delay, filling my eyes with blinding lights and flooding my ears with ringing screeches. The concussive force itself did nothing to stop me, but unable to see, I could only guess his position.

The first few times, I was right on. I forced him to parry my lance thrice in rapid succession before missing and striking the air. His blade sank into my stomach. It pierced my armour and tore through my innards. They screamed as they fought to escape my gut, but I bore with it as I swung at the place where he should have been. But even following the tip of the spear to its accompanying shaft, I found nothing. Still, I struck at the space in front of me another three times before I finally realized my mistake.

He had already escaped.

I clenched my teeth so hard they cracked. I still couldn't see, and I still couldn't hear. I had no choice but to wrench the spear from my gut and wait. I focused on regenerating my eyes, but even then, it took nearly a full five seconds for everything to come back into focus. My ears and my gut were likewise soon mended.

There was only one problem remaining. My brother had disappeared.

He had made a mess of our surroundings. There were hoofprints in every direction; it almost looked like a whole army had been through the area. But just as he knew my patterns, so too did I know his.

Briefly turning my eyes towards the sky, I immediately set off in the direction of the sun. It took a few minutes to catch up, but surely enough, I soon found him in earshot. His hooves pounded against the forest as he did his utmost to flee.

Again, his familiars tried inserting themselves between us, but they were too weak to serve as shields. I dispatched them with one clean swipe apiece and charged right through their corpses.

By the count of five, I was upon him again, my weapon in the midst of its descent.

He tried to block it, but I kicked him in the gut as soon as he threw up his defence. It was not the moose underbelly I struck, but his upper, human half. My hoof dug straight through his organs and sunk into his flesh, leaving a permanent mark.

My blade continued on its path even with my legs in action. I hammered it through his weapon—another spear he had pulled from a nearby bush—and into his shoulder, pushing down until he fell to his knees.

Leaving my blade where it was, I started pounding him with my bare fists. I struck his face over, and over, and over again. I smashed his shoulders and emptied his lungs every time he tried to move.

His ribs were long pulverized, but I continued to attack, beating the life out of him with everything that I could muster.

It wasn’t just to vent my anger, nor even to restore my honour. It was for Cleveland and Allegra, who had become targets purely on account of our friendship. It was for Timaios and his wife, whose families were unjustly butchered. It was for Cassius, Murmilo, and Horatius, who lay at the bottom of the Varnius.

And most of all, it was for Mother and Father.

“Virillius.”

I didn’t stop, not even as the flesh peeled off my knuckles, not even as I snapped his spine in two.

“Virillius!”

I couldn’t stop. Not after everything that he had done.

“Virillius!”

But I did.

I gave my fists pause when I felt a hand on my shoulder. A familiar, comforting hand, almost as soothing as the accompanying voice.

“That’s enough.”

“It’s not,” I said, my chest heaving. “It’ll never be enough.”

I couldn’t look in my uncle’s direction. My eyes were too busy, fixed on my brother. He was bloody and broken. But somehow, despite my best efforts, he still drew breath.

It was a thought that only flooded my mind with rage.

I needed the bastard dead.

“You have done your part.” But with my uncle’s encouragement, I was able to steady my breathing. “I understand your frustration, but this is not the time for his judgement. He will be brought before the law and made to face the full extent of its might.”

I bit my lips. “I understand.”

It was a lie. I didn’t get it. I didn’t want to give up my prey. But by the king’s command, I slowly rose from his body with my chest still heaving.

“Thank you, Virillius. I promise you that he will be sentenced to death.”

I watched in silence as Constantius was bound and gagged by a group of knights. My heart continued to race as he was taken away. Even knowing the man’s punishment, I couldn’t bring myself to smile.

I may have hated him.

I might have wanted to bathe in his blood.

But he was still my brother.

It was as I wallowed in that feeling, as I experienced it again, that the world began to fade. The forest melted into a grand cathedral, and my body was drawn into a forward position. I could feel my strength returned from the ease with which I carved through the giant’s flesh. But though it had certainly been before, my hand was no longer bare. It was equipped with a deadly weapon I had never seen before.

Like the blade I had wielded in my recollection, it was a shieldlance—a standard Cadrian armament that was equal parts armblade and buckler—albeit one as decorated as a temple’s sword. The plate was adorned with a platinum symbol and there were glimmering blue gems embedded throughout. The shimmering silver blade practically glided through the giant’s body, splitting him in two with no effort at all.

There was a thud as he collapsed. The upper half of his body slid off its lower counterpart and shook the hall in its divine entirety.

When I looked up at the goddess, I found her fighting back a smile. Like a child whose prank had produced a resounding success, she watched in delight while the rest of the hall was kicked into a fluster. Whispering to their neighbours, they exchanged opinions, with some offering praise and others open disparagement. Whatever the case, they soon fell silent, muting their lips as the goddess parted her own.

“Had he lived through his brother’s deception, you likely would have found him to be a kindred spirit.” All of a sudden, the goddess’ amusement was gone. She focused her eyes on the fallen giant, watching almost solemnly as his body faded to dust. “He would have grown further and ruled over his homeland with a true iron fist. And then, one day, you would have met on the field of battle. Alas, in this reality, it was only here, in this place of tribulation that the clash could be brought to fruition.”

She closed her eyes once he vanished, opening them again only as the particles gathered in her hands.

“But if you were to ask him, he would tell you that his life was not one of dissatisfaction. Though his death was unjust, though his life was cut short, he was happy to have lived the life of a hero. Now, I ask the same of you, Virillius.”

She finally turned her eyes upon me, staring with their brilliant, coral glow.

“If you were to die today, could you proudly say the same?”

“No.” The answer came almost immediately, leaving my lips before I could even finish the thought. “I would have too many regrets, Goddess, and too many things to achieve.”

She nodded, so I continued.

“I have a nation to stabilize, a maiden to court, and a large set of shoes to fill. In honour of my fallen companions, some of whom line your halls to this day, I must press forward until my duty is done.”

“Then I suppose you have no choice but to emerge from this trial victorious.” A smile on her face, she raised a hand and beckoned me closer.

I had passed her first test.

There were only fifteen to go.