The Shattered Plains lay out before them, an infinite horizon of glass-like ground that seemed to glow unnaturally in the bruised purple light. Arthur's feet grated against the peculiar crystalline growths that carpeted the ground like a seeping infection, every step transmitting tiny shudders into the earth. The wind brought the acrid bite of ancient lightning and something darker, more ancient - a smell that woke up the parasite curled in Arthur's skeleton with unwelcome familiarity. Nyra knelt next to a growth of glistening mineral, her hand an inch from the stone's thudding surface. "This is not natural weathering," she whispered, her eyes aglow like embers showing the colors that played across the rock. "The earth's been. changed."
Arthur dropped to the ground beside her, flattening his palm on the heated crystal. His scars buzzed with the power vibrating just beneath. "The Fracture didn't only shatter the earth," he understood. "It rewrote it."
Before them, the steppes gave way to mist-covered ruins - the bones of old war machines half-digested by living soil, their metal bodies warped into twisted, almost organic forms. Some seemed caught halfway through change, suspended between their former selves and something else, something aberrant.
The parasite's voice was unusually reserved. "We are not alone here."
Nyra's fire sparks kindled between her fingers. "What's it watching?"
The reply came from below.
The earth shook fiercely.
Ten steps in front, the crystalline surface churned like troubled water. Then, in a crash like a thousand panes of glass breaking at once, something burst up out of the earth.
It towered almost eight feet high, its form made of flowing liquid stone - obsidian black and milky quartz churning beneath a translucent surface that reflected the dying light. Its face was featureless and smooth except for two holes of pure blackness where eyes would have been. As it shifted, the ground itself appeared to move around it.
"Warden-kin," the parasite breathed, its voice strained with something like wonder. "The land's memory made flesh."
The beast did not utter a word. It didn't have to.
Visions detonated behind Arthur's mind with brutal clarity:
- A battlefield where the sky was ablaze with unnatural hues, the air heavy with screaming magic
- Mages empowered by raw elemental powers that charred the ground black with each blow
- A magnificent shadow unspooling from the world's depths, hungrier than void between stars
Nyra gasped by his side, swaying as visions hit her consciousness too. "Gods below," she strangled out, "what in the world was that?"
The Warden-kin cocked its head in a disquietingly human manner. It turned and set off toward the mist-covered center of the plains, its movements unwholesomely fluid. At a dozen paces, it stopped and looked over its shoulder.
The meaning was unmistakable: Follow.
Arthur let out a hard breath, its mist making a visible cloud in the abruptly cold air. Nyra held his eyes, her jaw clenched in determined anger. No explanation was necessary. They trailed behind.
The fog thickened around them as they moved, hanging from their clothing like wet spiderwebs and depositing an oily film on their garments. Unusual forms materialized in the mist - statuesque structures that perhaps were once warriors, caught in silent cries, their faces smeared as if observed through distorted glass. The atmosphere thickened with every pace, descending upon them like some tangible burden that strained respiration.
Then, out of nowhere, the fog dissipated.
They were at the lip of a huge crater almost a quarter-mile in diameter, its depression filled not with stone or water, but with liquid light - a churning, swirling body of glow that mirrored stars Arthur had never known existed. The light beat in time, like the gentle pulse of some sleeping leviathan.
At the very center of the crater stood an individual alone.
Wrapped in frayed shreds of what had probably been robes, it stood with its back to them. Its shape shifted unnaturally - now solid and real, the next moment thin and trembling, as if it was standing in two places at once. The air around it rippled like heat haze, so that Arthur's eyes ran if he looked too long.
The Warden-kin halted on the rim of the crater and would not go further.
Arthur's scars flared hotter with every step he took towards the figure, the pain both agonising and thrilling. The otherworldly light under his feet beat in time with his own heart, producing a dizzying syncopation that spun his head.
Then the figure spoke, its voice a layer of a hundred whispers speaking as one, some of them young and some of them old, but most of them not human.
"You are late, child of Zenith."
It turned.
Arthur's breath caught in his throat.
The figure lacked a face. Where face features ought to be was an eddying void, a little whirlpool of light and darkness that was painful to gaze upon directly. But its hands -
Its hands were unmistakable.
The same cyan scars that wrapped Arthur's arms adorned the figure's body, throbbing with the same rhythmic glow. The patterns were practically the same, as if created by the same maker.
"You bear my brother inside you," the figure stated, its void-face somehow actually expressing emotion because it didn't have any features. "As I did once."
Nyra's flames hesitated uncertainly. "Your brother?"
The figure - the Primordial - pointed to the pool of light with a scarred hand. "Look. See what we were. What we have become."
The surface of the pool churned wildly. Visions coalesced with crystalline precision:
- A young, wild world where magic was like water flowing through all living things
- Twelve mighty spirits, each one a basic force of nature imbued with consciousness
- A holy bond broken, the initial betrayal which kindled an everlasting war
- The spirits fragmenting under the burden of their own strife, their shards turning into parasites that hunted hosts to exist
Arthur's gut writhed in agony. "The parasites. they're fragments of you?"
The Primordial slowly nodded. "We were the Harmony. We are now the Shattered. My brother had a warrior's heart. I had a scholar's mind. Both discovered Zeniths."
Arthur's mind flew, piecing together pieces of history and legend. "The War of Shattered Peaks. It wasn't merely mages versus mages. It was you. Utilizing us as weapons."
The Primordial's void-face grew dark with malevolence. "All wars are waged with borrowed hands, child of man."
Nyra moved forward, her flames expanding guardedly. "What do you want with Arthur?"
"To give a choice," said the Primordial, holding out its scarred hand toward the pool. "Join the pieces together. Re-establish the Harmony. Or allow the Shattering to rage on until no world is left."
The light of the pool grew fierce, casting double images:
One of a world made whole, magic coursing pure and untamed through green lands, cities drifting on cloud-mountains in effortless harmony.
The second depicted a world devastated, eaten away by the parasites' constant hunger, the earth itself twisting in unending pain.
Arthur's hands trembled wildly. "You're asking me to become a vessel. To lose myself entirely."
"All true power requires sacrifice," said the Primordial. "The question is: what are you willing to give up?"
Nyra caught Arthur's arm with the strength of surprise. "Don't listen to it," she spat. "This creature manipulated your ancestors like tools. It will do the same to you."
The parasite inside Arthur said nothing at all, though he could sense its darkness coiled tight, biding its time.
The Primordial cocked its head to one side in that unnervingly bird-like fashion. "Will you be the cage or the key, Arthur Zenith? The end or the beginning?"
Outside the crater, the mist coalesced into violent churns. Storm Guild enforcers in their lightning-pursued armor emerged from the fog - scores of them, armor crackling with barely leashed power. Leading them was Maelis Dawnwrath, eyes afire with stormlight, face set grim as purpose.
Nyra's hold on Arthur's arm hurt as she tallied their foes. "Time's up," she grunted.
Arthur looked from the approaching enforcers to the Primordial, then down at his own scarred hands. The parasite stirred within him, not pushing, not pulling - simply waiting.
He made his choice.