Chapter 23: The Crucible
Iskander
Gawain's grip remained an unyielding vice around my throat. Though the bone-crushing pressure had eased to merely immobilizing, it was still absolute. Every tendon in my neck strained against the cold, silver gauntlet.
My severed forearms had regrown, pale gold aether still shimmering across the new skin like liquid sunlight, but they hung useless at my sides, pinned by the sheer, terrifying aura of the Asura puppet.
Sylvia's wisp was a trapped star within my core, radiating waves of protective fury and profound dread. I couldn't move, couldn't speak without effort, reduced to a specimen pinned for examination.
Then the owner of the voice manifested.
Not stepping through the hole Gawain had torn, but coalescing from the disturbed aether swirling around it.
One moment, shadows and dust motes danced in the tunnel's sconce light; the next, a figure solidified before us.
'A—a Djinn?' Sylvia's mental whisper was a breath of pure, ancient shock, laced with a fear deeper than anything Gawain had inspired.
He stood tall, clad in a form-fitting coat of deep indigo that seemed woven from twilight itself. His skin was a shade of violet reminiscent of bruised twilight, smooth and seemingly lit from within.
His head was completely bald, and etched across its surface, glowing with soft, intricate light, were countless green runes—a living tapestry of impossible complexity.
His hands were folded serenely behind his back. But the most unsettling thing was his substance.
He wasn't physical. Not like Gawain's dead flesh and metal.
He was pure, condensed aether, more concrete than Sylvia when I first awakened in the Relictombs, he a projection so stable and real it defied belief, yet radiating an ethereal, alien energy. A remnant. An echo given terrifyingly potent form.
Sylvia, what is a Djinn? I demanded internally, my gaze locked on the glowing runes on his skull. The name meant nothing, only Sylvia's visceral reaction gave it weight.
'An Ancient Mage, Child,' she replied, her mental voice thick with sorrow and a chilling undercurrent of recognition. 'The builders… the masters of the Relictombs… before…' The sentence trailed off into a silence heavy with unspoken tragedy.
An Ancient Mage? The architects of this impossible tomb-world? And this one commanded an Asura like a hunting hound?
The Djinn's eyes, deep and unnervingly calm, fixed on me. They held no pupil, no iris, just pools of shifting, intelligent light. A faint, almost benevolent smile touched his lips, utterly incongruous with the scene.
"Being of Aether and Flesh," he spoke, his voice resonating not just in the air, but in the ambient aether itself, a vibration against my skin. "You have succeeded. I am very pleased."
The words were praise, yet they felt like a brand. A trophy acknowledging its own capture.
"W—who are you?" I choked out, the words scraping against Gawain's unrelenting grip. My eyes darted between the Djinn and the vacant face of my captor.
"I am a Djinn," he stated simply, as if that explained everything. "Al-Hazred, to be precise. And you, Being of Aether and Flesh, should thank me."
He took a spectral step closer, his aetheric form leaving no imprint on the dusty floor.
"It was I who intervened. Who plucked you from that foolish Vritra's crude laboratory before his insidious magics could fully claim your nascent mind. Before Agrona could shackle you completely." His gaze swept over me, analytical, possessive. "A fortunate miscalculation on his part, gifting you such a potent vessel. But the liberation? That was mine."
Sylvia! Do you know him? The pieces slammed together with brutal clarity. He's a Djinn! He knows Agrona! He was the one who made me wake up in the Office Zone! It wasn't an accident, not Agrona's error… it was sabotage! An interference!
'I… I don't know, child… I truly don't…' Sylvia's voice was small, confused, frightened. A rare moment where her ancient knowledge failed her.
Sorry, Dragon Mama, I thought, guilt twisting alongside the terror. I shouldn't have pressed. She was reeling, confronted by a ghost from a past she clearly feared.
"Agricultural?" I forced a rasping chuckle, a desperate, defiant stab in the dark. "Huh, friend of yours?" The sheer absurdity of the nickname felt like my only weapon.
Al-Hazred's reaction was unexpected. He laughed. A dry, echoing sound like stones tumbling in a deep cave.
"Agricultural? Yes, that is… fittingly dismissive for such a contemptible Asura. A scavenger playing with his false godhood." His amusement vanished as swiftly as it came.
"Gawain," he commanded, his tone shifting to cold precision. "Remove that puny trinket from the Being of Aether and Flesh."
Before I could react, Gawain's free hand—the one not pinning me—moved with blinding speed. Not a punch, but a precise, contemptuous flick of his gauntleted fingers against the side of my head.
There was a sharp crack as the glamour bead Seris had given me shattered into harmless shards of inert mana. My horns, the undeniable mark of my basilisk lineage, were fully exposed.
Al-Hazred drifted closer, his glowing runes casting shifting patterns on my grey skin. His spectral form radiated a chilling cold.
"It is truly a shame, you know?" he murmured, his violet eyes tracing the lines of my horns, then dropping to meet my furious gaze. "That I am confined. Trapped within a crystal heart, deep within the bowels of our own greatest creation." He gestured vaguely around the tunnel. "I can interact with you only through intermediaries. Through my Drones."
His gaze flicked to Gawain's impassive face.
"Limited. Crude. But necessary tools."
The implication was horrifying. Gawain wasn't just a puppet; he was a Drone. One of potentially many. Harvested Asura, repurposed by this ancient horror.
"What have you done to him?" The question burst from me, raw with outrage for Sylvia's kin, for the desecration. "To a dragon?"
"Mercy," Al-Hazred stated flatly, the word dripping with bitter irony. "Should I have left him? Left them? To rot? To expire slowly, consumed by agonizing mana depletion in the desolate corners of what the... "Alacryans..." call Relictombs? To suffer the lingering death they inflicted upon my people? Maybe, probably."
His aetheric form seemed to pulse with sudden, cold fury.
"The dragons of the Indrath Clan, the Vritra, all the Asura… they hunted us. Slaughtered us like vermin. We fled here, into the sanctuary we built, but they pursued. They broke the gates. They extinguished the light of the ones you call Ancient Mages. Only fragments remain. Echoes. Remnants like myself. And justice… justice demands repayment."
He thinks Sylvia's family committed genocide? The accusation slammed into me, monstrous and unthinkable. I tried to reach for Sylvia, to feel her reaction, but her presence within my core had shrunk, withdrawn into a tight, defensive ball of grief and shame.
Sylvia? What's happening?
"You seem confused, Being of Aether and Flesh," Al-Hazred observed, his head tilting slightly. The runes glowed brighter. "Even though you have enslaved the dragon's consciousness used to forge your body, you remain ignorant of the truth it carries. The guilt it bears."
His gaze felt like an ice pick probing my mind.
"But fear not. Ignorance is easily curable. I, Al-Hazred, will illuminate you. I will explain everything."
Rage, white-hot and blinding, surged through me. How dare he? How dare he call Sylvia an enslaved consciousness? A guilty remnant? The fury ignited my core, pale gold light flaring beneath my skin, straining against Gawain's grip. A low growl escaped my constricted throat.
"Calm yourself, Being of Aether and Flesh," Al-Hazred commanded, his voice a wave of chilling aetheric pressure that momentarily dampened my flare of power. It felt like icy water poured over a flame.
"Emotional outbursts are counterproductive to understanding." He looked like some cosmic librarian crossed with a torturer—the bald head, the glowing runes, the unnerving calm.
A discount Brainiac, radiating ancient malice.
Sylvia! I screamed into the bond, trying to pierce her withdrawal. Why does this glowing egghead say your Clan destroyed his people? Is he lying? TELL ME!
The silence stretched, agonizing. Then, a whisper, thick with centuries of shame and pain:
'It's… true, Child.' The admission was a shard of glass twisting in my soul. 'I am… so sorry. I should have told you sooner. I was… afraid. Afraid you would see me… as the monster my kin became.'
The world tilted. The rage didn't vanish, but it fractured, overlaid with a profound sense of betrayal—not by Sylvia, but by the universe itself. The gentle, sorrowful goddess who was my anchor… her bloodline was steeped in genocide? It was impossible to reconcile.
You are NOT a monster, I thought back fiercely, the conviction absolute even as my understanding crumbled. Never.
But, Sylvia… King Grey… this… The comparisons were horrifying, unavoidable. Yet, therapy for cosmic guilt would have to wait. Survival was paramount.
"What do you want from me?" I rasped, my voice raw. I tested Gawain's hold subtly, finding not a millimeter of give. Escape was impossible through strength alone.
"I want you to be the instrument of justice, Being of Aether and Flesh," Al-Hazred declared, his violet eyes burning with fervent light. "You will be the sword that avenges the Djinn. Your aether core is unique. Unbound. Your body, crafted from the flesh of the oppressors, is resilient beyond measure. It seems even that fool Agrona, blundering in his arrogance, can inadvertently serve a higher purpose."
A cold smile touched his lips.
"Not only did he deliver his own clan members into the Relictombs, ripe for harvesting into my Drones… he has now gifted me you. His greatest creation, falling unwittingly into my grasp. Though," he added with a hint of dark pride, "every achievement of his hinges upon my beloved daughter's… Ji-Ae's contributions."
'Daughter?' Sylvia's mental voice, laced with shock, cut through her own grief. 'Ji-Ae?'
Sylvia! Relief flooded me, sharp and sudden. You're there! I thought… I feared he was silencing you! Are you alright?
'I… am, Child,' she replied, but the words were heavy, wrapped in layers of newly awakened pain and confusion. 'For now.' Her presence retreated again, a wounded animal seeking shelter.
"Who killed your people?" I demanded, locking eyes with Al-Hazred, needing to hear it directly, to understand the sin Sylvia bore the weight of. "Who truly destroyed the Ancient Mages? Sylvia… she only said they were gone, long before her time with Agreement. She never said how."
"The answer is etched in the ruins of our cities, in the silenced songs of our lorekeepers, our scientist, our artisans," Al-Hazred intoned, his voice gaining a resonant, terrible power.
"The dragons of the Indrath Clan led the purge. Kezess Indrath, the Lord of Epheotus you may know him as the enemy of Agrona, he commanded the slaughter. The Vritra, the Titans, the Leviathans, the Sylphs, the Phoenixes… all Asuras permitted it. They feared our mastery of aether. Feared our vision of a world not ruled by their brutal hierarchies. They called us aberrations. Threats to the 'natural order'."
His spectral form seemed to vibrate with ancient fury.
"We fled here, into the Relictombs, hoping the labyrinth we built would shield us. It did not. They arrived first to our cities before we could escape, before we could prepare. They hunted us to extinction within our own sanctuaries. Only fragments remain. Echoes in the stones. Ghosts in the machinery. And justice… has been patient."
"Impossible," I hissed, the word a reflex, a denial of the image forming—gentle, grieving Sylvia hailing from a lineage of genocidal dragons. He called her people the monsters? The parallels to King Grey's purges were sickeningly vivid.
"You cling to naivety, Being of Aether and Flesh," Al-Hazred sighed, a sound like wind through forgotten tombs.
"It is a luxury you can no longer afford. I will guide you. I will teach you the truth, strip away the illusions Agrona or the dragon's echo may have woven. It is unfortunate," he added, his gaze sharpening critically, almost disapprovingly, "that you manifested the Creation Godrune. Useful, certainly, for shaping, for building… but limited. Something more… direct… like Destruction, would have been far more potent for the reckoning to come. But," he conceded, "we will work with what Fate and Agrona's meddling have provided. We will make it suffice."
Destruction? The very name tasted like ash and blood in my mind. A power born of pure annihilation? It sounded like the ultimate weapon forged by the God of Misfortune himself. A tool for the very atrocity Al-Hazred accused the dragons of. Never.
Sylvia! I shouted down the bond, needing her anchor in this maelstrom of revelation and threat. Why? Why does this… Brainiac… confirm what you said? Why the shame?
'Because the guilt is ours, Child. Mine, by association. My father… Kezess… he commanded it. My clan executed it.' Her voice was a desolate whisper. 'We were the storm that erased a civilization. That truth… it is a poison I have carried since I learned of it, long after the deed was done. I feared… I feared it would poison you too. That you would see only the blood on the scales, not the being trying to atone.'
You are not your ancestors, Sylvia! The thought was a lance of pure conviction. You are Dragon Mama. My light. My protector. The one who chose kindness in a world of monsters. But the battlefield was shifting beneath us, the moral ground crumbling. Survival demanded focus. Al-Hazred's plans were unfolding.
"Naive, Being of Aether and Flesh," Al-Hazred repeated, his voice losing its faint trace of patience, turning colder, harder. "Profoundly naive. This misplaced compassion for your captor's echo… this rejection of necessary power…"
He shook his head, the glowing runes casting shifting, ominous patterns on the tunnel walls. "It seems you require more than guidance. You require… recalibration. A reforging of perspective."
A chill colder than Gawain's grip seized my spine. "Reforging?" The word sounded like a death sentence.
"Indeed," Al-Hazred stated, his violet eyes fixing on me with unnerving finality. "Gawain. Bring the Being of Aether and Flesh to the Crucible. Subdue the subject. Break the lower cervical vertebrae. Ensure neural disruption is minimal. The twilight of Epheotus and the death of all the asuran races approaches and we must prepare."
Break my neck? Crucible? Twilight of Epheotus? The terms were clinical, terrifying. Sylvia's mental presence exploded in a silent scream of denial and protective fury within my core
'NO! CHILD!'
Gawain's grip shifted. His thumb pressed with terrifying precision against the base of my skull. There was no wind-up, no dramatic flourish. Just a swift, brutal application of Asuran strength, focused and efficient.
SNAP.
The sound was obscenely loud. Not a crack, but a clean, decisive break. White light, then absolute darkness swallowed my vision. Agony was a distant second to the horrifying disconnect—the sudden, total severance of command from my body.
I felt Sylvia's aether surge in a desperate, futile wave towards the injury, but the disruption Al-Hazred had mentioned—Gawain's inherent power interfering with my core—turned her healing torrent into a feeble trickle.
I was paralyzed and for the first time since I woke up in the Relictombs in my new body I felt true despair. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Not again, I don't want to return to the state Iskander Hyperion was!
Consciousness didn't flee immediately, but it hung suspended in a terrifying void of sensation—the cold stone floor against my cheek where Gawain dropped me, the fading echo of Sylvia's scream in my mind, the detached awareness of my limbs utterly unresponsive, and the final, chilling sight burned onto my retinas:
Al-Hazred's glowing runes watching dispassionately as the Drone bent to retrieve its broken prize.
———
Consciousness returned with a slow, creeping awareness. I was… intact. I flexed my fingers, shifted my legs. Everything responded. The memory of that sickening, final snap was a phantom echo in my mind, but my neck felt whole, reinforced by a lingering hum of pale gold aether.
My core pulsed steadily, a familiar sun in my abdomen. Relief, sharp and immediate, washed over me. I was still me. I was still whole.
"Sylvia?" The name was a breath, a prayer flung into the silence of my own mind. My consciousness dove inward, seeking that golden, invisible thread—the aetheric tether that bound me to her.
For a heart-stopping moment, there was nothing but the hum of my own power. Then, I felt it—a faint, but resilient, thrum of connection. She was there. Frayed, perhaps, but there.
"Iskander?!" Her mental voice erupted, a torrent of alarm and desperate relief. The golden will-o'-wisp burst from my core, materializing before me, pulsing erratically with agitated light.
"You're awake! I was… I tried… for so long, I poured everything into mending the damage... I thought I'd lost you to the stillness!" Her light flickered, conveying the depth of her terror, the hours—or however long it had been—of frantic, futile healing against the cold, alien power Gawain exerted.
A genuine smile touched my lips, the first real emotion since the tunnel. "I'm relieved that Djinn Brainiac hasn't managed to harm you," I said, my voice raspy but steady. My gaze lifted from her comforting glow to scan our prison. "But we need to get out of here. Now."
The room was a perfect cube of blinding, featureless white. No seams, no doors, no vents. The light came from everywhere and nowhere, casting no shadows, offering no depth.
It was profoundly unnerving, a sensory deprivation chamber designed to erode sanity. I pushed myself to my feet, the movement smooth, my body obedient. I walked to the nearest wall, pressing my palm against its surface. It was cool, impossibly smooth, and utterly unyielding.
Then, Al-Hazred's voice filled the space, not from a speaker, but from the air itself, resonant and calm.
"Being of Aether and Flesh." The title rolled off his… whatever passed for a tongue… with a tone that was almost reverent, yet chillingly possessive. "Do not fear. My intentions are purely facilitative. I desire only to help you unlock your true potential. And in doing so, I help myself. You may think this a manipulation—such crude tricks are beneath intellects such as ours."
I couldn't help the dry, mocking laugh that escaped me. "Kidnapping someone and dumping them in a completely empty white room isn't 'help,' Brainiac. It's psychological torture 101. A classic from my old world. Meant to disorient and break down resistance. Pretty lowbrow for a supposed superior intellect."
Al-Hazred actually laughed—a dry, echoing sound that felt utterly out of place. "You do not lose your sense of humor. That is… robust. Strong, adaptable minds are the finest clay to work with, Being of Aether and Flesh. If only your sentimentality regarding that draconic remnant didn't cloud your judgment. Though," he conceded, a note of cold approval in his voice, "utilizing her consciousness as a power source is… pragmatically ruthless. I can admire that."
"You're not pragmatic, you're just a racist, egocentric fossil," I shot back, leaning against the annoyingly perfect wall. "First, I get a bargain-bin Doctor Doom in Agrona, now a discount Brainiac. My life's becoming a bad comic book convention."
"Call me what you wish, Being of Aether and Flesh," Al-Hazred replied, his voice dismissive, as if swatting away an irrelevant gnat. "I have no intention of keeping you caged indefinitely. But potential, no matter how raw, must be tempered. Refined."
'Child,' Sylvia's voice cut in, sharp with renewed dread. 'He's… Sir Gawain. He's—'
Her warning was cut off as the world itself unfolded. The stark white walls didn't shatter or slide open; they simply… fell away, like four enormous, rigid sheets of paper being yanked downward into the floor, which itself dissolved into nothingness.
The sensory assault was instantaneous and overwhelming. The sterile silence was obliterated by a deafening roar—not of a beast, but of a raging inferno.
Blistering, sulfur-tinged heat slammed into me, a physical push after the room's clinical coolness. The blinding white was replaced by a hellish, pulsating orange glow.
I stood on a wide, rocky plateau, surrounded by the steep, blackened slopes of a massive volcano. Molten rock glowed in rivers far below, and the very air shimmered with intense heat. And standing between me and the yawning caldera, its scales the color of cooled magma and obsidian, was a dragon.
It was colossal, easily dwarfing the Brass Bulls manifold, its body a monument of primal power and wrath. But it wasn't just any dragon.
Where Sylvia's form spoke of grace and ancient sorrow, this creature radiated pure, unadulterated hostility. Its eyes, slitted and burning with cold blue fire, were fixed on me. Vacant. Empty.
No, this was Gawain's dragon form.