“It is upon each of us to ask if there’s a reason why we go on. With the world so twisted and filled with terror, our ancestors faced many dark days—some lived their lives without seeing the sun above.
When this question inevitably runs through my mind, I keep coming back to the same answer.
I go on for those that could. I face evil for those that never saw it. I stare at the sun in memory of the people who never will, and never had.
This, I believe, is a duty to all Knights.
It is this that you never did understand, Alfon.”
- Luisa Luculentus, Correspondence to Alfon Nitidus (3rd Era, 304)
Getting closer to the White Stag only meant more enemies to swarm and get in their way. Erec got to put his battle axe to work on a new creature every few yards.
In short, it was glorious.
With the Knights at his side, they left a trail of corpses in their wake. Like a dream, a line of bodies marked their path to this point. As Dame Robin led them to their new target, these corpses would water the dry field of death with their lifeblood.
Erec laughed, dodging left from a beam of red light with enough force to slam a shoulder into a centipede-like puppet and cave into its exoskeleton. It tumbled away on a hundred legs as another Knight’s sword dug into its head. “Right—“ Jefferson pulled his sword free and jumped as the ground began to shake.
A massive worm tore from the ground, maw wide as it dived to swallow Erec.
Perfect.
Erec shoved with all of his might and flew past its razor-sharp teeth before they could tear into him, landing right into its insides with a swipe of his axe. Easy kill.
[Air-supply activated.]
Even easier than last time, his axe cleaved through the creature as Knights hit it from the side. Before on the battlefield, it’d been frustrating. An overabundance of targets had amplified the puppet’s lackluster combat—they didn’t necessarily fight better now, but the higher concentration on him was better. He wanted their attention. He wanted them to come at him with more.
His Fury sang; the Knights around him only amplified its flames. They weren’t thinking. Every Knight out there was another weapon. Extensions of death raging around him and showing off their skills.
They were Strong. And he wanted to be stronger.
The pulsating black insides of the worm flashed into light as Erec hacked a hole out of its side. Not even a moment in the sun again until a hound with massive fangs flew at him—Erec grabbed it by the throat and crushed the windpipe, lazily tossing the dying monster into the worm’s torn stomach.
Let it have a last meal.
So many to kill. Erec grinned as he dodged past a red beam—seeing the flash of light a second before it existed. His fire tore through him, making his skin numb yet making him feel far more alive than ever before. His axe sliced, ripped, and murdered. Blood caked his Armor's joints, and his weapon's sharpness dulled from smashing apart bones too many times to count.
How had this power tired him out before?
He could keep going forever.
As long as the flame inside burned, this pace could keep going; each kill stoked it further, letting that hell grow and sear him out. Nothing on this Earth had a chance of taking him down.
They dug deeper into the wasteland, suffering their first loss from a Worm biting a Knight in half. The man should’ve thought to launch himself into it, but he hesitated, so its powerful jaws crunched through his Armor like teeth into a cracker. Another suffered a direct hit from a light beam to his skull—from how he gurgled after and gasped for breath, he’d no doubt melted something important. Erec doubted the man would go on for much longer.
But, the Knight fought to his last breath, collapsing a mile later.
Glorious.
In his name, Erec ripped out a massive eyeball and let the puppet die a slow death. They’d taken casualties, sure. But how much had they killed?
The Silent Ones flung themselves about in heavy numbers, sure. But the striking forces sent out to deal with the Stag had a much larger number of stronger and more prepared Knights. Yet the fight kept going out. Were they too weak for the Stag? Was it possible they’d go all this way, killing so much, only to discover this to be their last march?
How beautiful. They’d run a gauntlet of death to face demise on the horns of a maddened Stag. There couldn’t be anything better, right?
Something shifted in Erec’s hell. A glimpse of a figure flashed in him, hiding away within the heat of the inferno a second later.
“More!” Erec yelled with glee, chopping apart another creature.
The limbs flew off like leaves from a tree—even the way their bodies seemed to flop apart, one severed. The different shades of scales ooze from wounds, spraying blood—it swirled together like paint. Each swipe of his axe was like a stroke on a canvas with a brush. If this were the last fight of his life, if by the end he ended up a corpse, then let it be a final moment of beauty. With this weapon, he’d fill his canvas with death and fire.
Fury could have him, fill him with Strength until he shattered like glass.
There wasn’t a more fitting end.
[Whoa, Buckeroo. You’re heart’s racing far over what it should be capable of. Wow, you’re off the charts! Applying sedatives—]
“No!” Erec screamed as he ripped a monster in half. Not with his axe. No, his limbs damn near burned with power. Enough to take apart its flimsy flesh. Until the Stag offered him better, he’d make a mockery of it.
Right until it faced him itself. The fucking coward.
[…Right, making the executive decision here. I’ll be taking us down a notch—]
Erec looked to Robin even as he felt his veins strain. The drugs were lancing through him and burning away as Fury reacted against them. His fire knew what it needed to do—but if it was sparing attention to divert and burn away the toxins that would bring him away from this power, he just needed to convince the machine that it was wrong. That meant finding a situation where the threat was high enough that it had no choice but to let him go free.
As the power raged in him, he’d begun to glimpse something in that hell. Within the flames that spewed chaos, there was something more profound.
Something truly magnificent.
Right now, he felt closer to that than ever before. But…he needed to push further. If he wanted to find whatever lurked in that hell, it meant reaching the next level. The beast roared in him, but he knew that wasn’t it. It was beneath his skin, killing to its heart’s content. What was hiding?
“Robin!” Erec yelled, his voice hoarse from the screaming.
“Yeah?” She called back, effortlessly sliding between two flying beings—her arms crossing as thin metallic whips of liquid metal from her Armor halved them cleanly.
“Faster!” Erec almost growled—for the first time, his red-soaked vision didn’t see the puppets in front of him. Those sacks of flesh that were so fun to pop and tear, no, he looked past them. They were a waste of time. Not an actual test of power. They wouldn’t draw out what hid in hell even if there were a million.
“What?” Robin yelled back.
“Faster!” Erec screamed at her. She knew how. He’d seen her do it before. The rest of them might struggle to keep up, but he felt it. The Fury raging through him would let him push forward; all it took was to ignore these useless bags of flesh. They were puppets dancing around on a string. Amusing, but a cheap distraction from the real thing. It came with the clarity of a punch to his face.
“That’s what we’re trying to do—“ she began to retort.
“Me! Follow me!” Erec yanked an eye puppet by the wings and forced it in front of him. All of his power went to his legs, and he began to leap forward. The puppet smeared across monsters as his living shield took the brunt of each hit and shoved aside whatever was stupid enough to get in his way.
Each jump took him further, tearing apart the sack of flesh in front of him. When it wore away into a bloody stump, Erec yanked another unwilling living shield from the vast array of the enemy in front to choose from and kept up the charge. He didn’t need to use the axe. Unlike before, he didn’t take delight in the dying monsters. They were inconsequential. Their death was meaningless. There was only one thing worth hunting now. Only one creature could let him see the bottom of hell.
Erec charged across the remainder of the desert, brutally forcing an open pathway, with who the fuck cared left following his destructive path through the enemy.
— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —
Ahead was a rather disparate scene. Backdropped by the three rifts lingering in the air was a solid line of humans fighting humans—all the while, a gallery of monsters exploded with electric charges at random intervals. Erec hardly paused as he threw the latest shield of dead monster flesh aside. The last quarter-mile was easy as the line of monsters thinned.
And he saw why.
More than half of the humans here were facing off against their side—all the while, the White Stag looked on past its fence with crimson eyes.
Their strike force turned on one another and struggled against themselves.
A Knight collapsed to the ground as another took off his head with their massive sword in a single stroke.
Further down the line Master Knight from the Crimson Lotus’ flung out binding glyph after binding glyph. They seemed to be doing well until a monster in the background exploded like a liquid firework. A moment later, his bindings fell apart, and the puppets ran free to harass the Master Knight again.
Erec paused, trying to pick the quickest route past the Knight line and to the Stag.
A Knight sprouted wings, shooting above the enemies.
They flew past the fence separating them from the White Stag and Rifts, only for three monsters to explode in a viscera of energy and gore. The Knight's wings gave out a second after the monster's sacrifice, and they slammed into the ground.
Not long after, the Knight got to their feet and turned back towards the rest of the Knights—moving with that same jerky trademark of a puppet being controlled.
[…Proximity? Each explosion generates radio waves, and that Stag is somehow condensing them and then targeting them directly at people.]
Pathetic. Even with fighting so close to it, that weak creature didn’t dare to take a step and bloody its pristine white hide.
I’ll turn it red.
Erec took a step towards the fence. From the corner of his eye, he saw a ghost of a blade flying his way; his body was already reacting, but the puppet was too quick. It’d score a hit.
“No!” Bedwyr’s voice called, his brother flashing into view, his massive blade deflecting the oncoming strike. “Erec?! How are you—“
The puppet swung at Bedwyr, only for his brother to catch the weapon again, a storm of ringing metal. He matched each swing yet didn’t have the speed to buy himself time to launch a counter-attack.
Dull.
Erec strode forward, taking a blade to his shoulder—it bit through the steel and made him taste genuine pain for a split second before his Fury burned it away. That annoying machine gave up its attempts to subdue him during the charge of using a monster shield.
It’d given up.
Which was for the best. They’d find what hid in hell, and to do that, Erec would gladly take this blow.
It bought him an opening.
His hand smashed into the Knight Protector’s helmet—caving it in and knocking the man onto the ground; his enemy twitched. Dying or living, Erec couldn’t tell or care. They wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.
“Erec—you might’ve just killed—“
“Stag,” Erec growled.
How had he ever thought of Bedwyr as Strong? Bedwyr was afraid. Of death, of life, of the truth.
Erec walked towards the fence. If the Stag kept trying to hide from his challenge behind more puppets, he’d take their blows and end them.
All that mattered was getting to that coward pulling the strings. For that, he’d pay any price.