“Step forward. Be richly rewarded... Hahaha...”
The voice of Trishek Hash was issued throughout the cathedral space. It bounced around the vaulting ceiling of the nave, silicon walls echoing the voice down onto the newly arrived laity. They advanced together as one, looking in every direction as the beast hidden high above them laughed. His voice wracked their will.
Together, the Axiamati entered the nave. The Eidolon saw a faraway window above them, beaming with radiant and heavenly light. It seemed impossibly high and so, so bright — as if the diamond tower itself could carry down light from the real sky, bring it here to this deep dark place, from a remote distance, so high as to pierce the city itself.
The window crowned the top of the spire, stained with the image of a woman — a progenitor, surely — holding a white flower and a dove aloft. Her form was pure. Her physique was beautiful. Dark skin bare, her shining silver hair was worn in long, curled tresses that cascaded around her, and the softness of her skin was implied by the blooming of the star shine. Her face smiled softly whilst the cleft of her vulva and the bare swell of her chest revealed the natural state of a woman rendered as pure. No augmentation. No mutation. A memory of an age before this slovenly inequity of genetic provenance. It represented hope for a future if only it was made real again.
Unexpectedly, a tear stung the Eidolon’s eye, but he blinked it away. The light from the window stung his pale flesh and dazzled his sensitive eyes, forcing the nameless warrior to look down once more.
Stepping between long-abandoned pews and the remnants of worship from another age, Sir Enhash snarled as Taneberr shook his head to dispel the glare. Menmarch groaned, shuddering in the giant’s grip, and Llewtoll silently bowed his head. At the focal point of the nave, a smaller structure stood, erected of worn stone and bearing intricate decoration worn down by the acidic conditions of the city over untold ages; still, it remained at the centre of a column of light, reaching these depths from the window high above.
Struggling, exposed to the inferno of the day star, they staggered across the bright floor until Sir Enhash spoke.
“Stop. This has gone far enough.”
Each of the warriors drew to a halt, squirming below the glare of the day star above them. Though the light was dimmed by its passage through untold depths, through glass and mists, it still bore down on each of them like a curse.
“My kin,” the Eidolon faced him. “This is not the time to shirk our duty.”
“What is our duty?” Sir Enhash waved his gauntlet-clad arm around, indicating the injured Menmarch and the rest of their party. “What do we fight for if not the wellbeing of the faithful, and their future?”
“We fight to restore the world, my kin,” the Eidolon said quietly, tensely. Taneberr and Llewtoll shared a glance. Llewtoll shook his head, warning the giant against becoming involved.
“Do we?” Sir Enhash leaned towards the ordained champion. “Your predecessor was certain that this was not the way.”
“And what would he have known, truly?” The Eidolon raised his voice and threw up his arms, indicating the cathedral space around them. “That he knelt to the Lord of Bones made him little more than a pretender!”
“He once told me that he had attempted this pilgrimage and that it was nothing more than death and damnation.”
“So you have said,” the Eidolon paced away, then gestured to a stone mausoleum — monumentally large, albeit dwarfed by the sheer scale of the tower they stood within — ahead of them. “But we are here now. Look! We can restore His greatness. We can find a way to break a new crusade, to overthrow those cruel elders who have dominated the world. We can free everyone.”
Sir Enhash considered the acid-weathered mausoleum ahead of them before he spoke, “What could we possibly do to change the world on that scale? The noble lines are ancient and powerful, entrenched by societal intertia and personal strength.”
The Eidolon placed his hands on Sir Enhash’s armoured shoulders, bowing his head as he spoke quietly.
“If only I knew, my kin. We can only turn to the wisdom of he who came before, he who once saved the world.”
“And fell...”
“... Betrayed, so the scriptures say. We can fix this.”
Sir Enhash and the Eidolon met each other’s gaze. They held the look, yellow eyes locked until the knight superior relinquished a nod.
“May Paradise await us all if you are wrong, Ohmax.”
“Have faith, my kin,” the Eidolon said softly.
So they each shared a look. Llewtoll nodded again, and Taneberr rumbled his approval. The Eidolon pat Sir Enhash’s shoulder, and they advanced together. Finally, they returned to their familiar darkness inside the mausoleum.
Inside this sepulchral space, damp and claustrophobic, the warriors crept in through a narrow passage, an entryway fortified to be impregnable once upon a time before the entire structure was transplanted here. They had expected to find a tomb, but quickly — far too quickly — they brought themselves before a throne instead.
A man was seated on that throne. He was a titan that shared their shape — the very form of the progenitors they had religiously carved themselves to resemble. However, unlike their piecemeal armour, this figure was mighty in its armoured exoskeleton. Even seated, he was a five-metre monument of gilded titanium, etched with grandiose iconography, wearing a tale sweeping back to antiquity. His head was concealed behind a mighty visor, a sharp wedge without concealment in its use in war.
“My Lord!”
The Eidolon threw himself down to his knees, hands planted against the cold stone floor, head lowered in supplication. In his zealotry, he recognised this holy figure — the Pilgrim of the Axiamat, he who killed the insolent city that dared to reach for the stars.
Slowly, one at a time, the Eidolon was carefully joined by those who followed him.
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“My Lord,” the Eidolon gasped, suddenly lost for breath, lost for words. “We have come. We have... We have crossed the city. We have brought you tribute, slain the corrupt, brought justice in your name. We come to beg you help us to save the world once more.”
When there was no reaction from the seated figure, the Eidolon swallowed down a lump in his throat before managing in the ghost of a whisper.
“We have come because you have called.”
The Eidolon stared at the ground, head bowed until his neck ached. The fatigue of his long journey burned in his wearied muscles. When he dared raise his gaze, it was to look back to his companions. Their mutant eyes were filled with doubt.
And when they had almost lost faith, the exoskeleton of the Pilgrim groaned to life. Pneumatic muscles trembled and thumped against their metal bindings. A howl of static noise issued from its visor before booming with a strange, bone-shaking voice.
“I welcome you laity, faithful, at long last,” the Pilgrim said, his voice rattling the chamber, drawing dust from the walls and the ceiling.
Behind them, the entryway groaned to life. Machinery churned in unseen recesses, and the passage behind them closed — sealing them in the dark. The only light which remained was stark and electric, cast off from the elder God seated before them.
Stricken with panic, the Eidolon threw himself back down onto his hands, head bowed. He trembled before an ancient master.
“I welcome you to our most hallowed stronghold,” the Pilgrim continued.
“You do us-... A tremendous honour,” the Eidolon tried to speak, but his voice was drowned out. “We seek to join-... Join your crusade, at long last.”
“Whence mighty Acetyn, the Genekeeper, and I once walked side by side, I so welcome you upon our millennia-long crusade.”
The Pilgrim’s electronic voice, bassy and sonorous, thudded against stone and bone. He rose from his throne with the grinding of his old exoskeleton and sealed armour. Flecks of basalt, dislodged from the crumbling structure, fell around him.
As the Pilgrim spoke, he advanced, a titan in motion upon them.
“... Long ago, we fell from the branches of the city of Axiamat, who dared to reach towards the stars. Before the death of our host city, together, we came upon our birthright, a crucible where we could meet our ancestors…”
Ponderous, the ancient master extended a gauntlet out towards the injured Menmarch, with his mangled leg and cracked ribs. The dazed warrior placed his hands upon the gauntlet, enraptured, slit eyes dilating as an emerald laser sparked from the helmet of the Pilgrim and scanned across his face.
“... And so an alliance was born, out of a dream. A dream to restore our bodies to a beautiful state. Together, mighty Acetyn, the Genekeeper, and I led an army to scour this world...”
With slow grace, the Pilgrim closed his unbreakable grip around the hands of Menmarch and brought his other gauntlet over the vat-born’s head. Then, effortlessly, he pulled him apart, bone and sinew cracking and dislodging, a tide of wet gore spilling over the ground as his spine was torn from the rest of his body.
The Eidolon and his men cried out in fright and recoiled. Jumping to their feet, they retreated back. Llewtoll turned to find the entranceway braced closed and heavily reinforced. There was no escape.
“... We raised the greatest army that had ever walked under this star. The cities fell before us, one by one. The planet was ours to rule. From that position, we recovered the lost genes of humanity, lost in the discord of our corrupted world, one body at a time...”
With a roar, Taneberr lunged forward. In a failed attempt to save his old ally, the brute delivered a thunderous strike to the body of the Pilgrim, the mail around his fist crashing against the Pilgrim’s armour with dense weight. The ancient master, untroubled, released his first victim, Menmarch, who fell to the ground in a puddle of his own fluids. Then the Pilgrim turned upon the arrogant warrior attacking him with a flick of that glowing, emerald eye. The insidious device burned Taneberr’s flesh with charged, strobing pulses of light, tasting the smoke.
And his electronic voice continued all the while.
“... But we were each of us betrayed. The only constant in this doomed world is that those who are craven covet what the noble possess. And so, the wicked Genekeeper revealed her true nature. Instead of uniting our genome whole, she used her position to enthral mighty Acetyn, and leash my army...”
Llewtoll snarled, raising his lance. A crack, and he fired the weapon at the head of the giant. The flash broke staccato in the dark, and in the next instant, Taneberr leapt up and jammed the blade of his sword into the crack of armour between the Pilgrim’s visor and throat, sending burning sparks in all directions as star metal collided.
A swing of his tremendous arm and the Pilgrim caught Taneberr by the throat. He continued his monologue as he peeled the brute’s arm from his body. Taneberr screamed for help, drowned out by a booming voice.
“... Such arrogance. My work for old Desht will never come to an end. Acetyn’s oaths bid him carry my fortress, evermore. Even as he took the Genekeeper as his betrothed, such a promise could not be forgotten...”
Llewtoll and Sir Enhash stepped apart. The hunter desperately looked around and whimpered, faced with his own doom. Whilst he dropped his lance, the knight superior drew his blade. All the while, the Pilgrim used his massive, armoured thumb to probe into Taneberr’s chest cavity, pulling bone and armour apart through the hole where the warrior’s shoulder once existed. Finally, after scanning the augs within, the Pilgrim dropped the dead brute onto the ground. Then, he continued to speak whilst regarding those who remained in deep appraisal.
“... The dismantling of my army, the injustice of her vile actions, was not the end. The Genekeeper dared to deploy a bioweapon against me. The infection led to the withering of my body and my augmentations. And so for a thousand years, I have waited...”
After falling to his knees, pleading, Llewtoll met a swift end as the Pilgrim crushed him under his colossal, titanium heel. Sir Enhash ducked under a swing of the ancient master’s arm. Then, he lunged at that electronic eye in the Pilgrim’s helmet. He never reached it, however. Instead, seizing the knight, his gauntlet a vice grip around his entire body, the Pilgrim used a finger and thumb to peel the star metal helmet from Sir Enhash, blood pouring as jagged metal bent and bit into his mutant skull.
The emerald beam pulsed and flicked over the scoured remains of Sir Enhash’s head, examining the twisted knot of bone, muscle, and chitin shell. Not satisfied, the Pilgrim squeezed until the knight superior burst and then dropped him aside, worthless.
“... It is true. You are far from the first leal souls to arrive over this dark millennium. So many brave and noble aspirants have risen, eager to embark on a second crusade to see this world made right. However, such a dream is impossible. So I have devoured them, fed upon their augmentations to slowly restore my own strength. I see now that only I can unite the genome of our progenitors and save us all...”
A sudden weight landed upon the Pilgrim’s shoulders. The Eidolon leapt upon him from behind, bare feet fast upon the machinery of the ancient master’s armoured exoskeleton. A sword blade slammed into the same spot that the brute Taneberr had damaged. Then the Eidolon gripped the visor under the crack with both his scarred hands, hissing. Muscles straining with bioaugmented strength, the titanium groaned and buckled before the helmet was shorn from its mount in a spray of broken metal.
A human skull was revealed within the vast mass of the suit. Filled with rage and betrayal, the Eidolon slammed Menmarch’s blade down into the Pilgrim’s right eye socket. However, the triumph was short-lived, as the massive grip of the Pilgrim took hold of the Eidolon, bringing them face to face at last. Ignoring the Eidolon’s desperate struggle, kicking and shouting, chrome teeth scattered electric light as the master continued to speak, despite the blade still plunged deep into his eye socket.
“... I hope you have been listening. For it is you, most faithful, you most mighty, who brought your kin, purified, here to this holy place to restore the might of your true lord. So to you, I grant the most incredible honour. Your neural matter shall join mine. You shall teach me of this world, even as your bodies act as that final leaden sacrifice, and my work begins anew.”