Unfortunate... Hastur had been confident as well. Arrogant, but he'd always been that way and was more than old enough to recognize it for what it was. He had wandered the lands for a time before coming to a kingdom ripe for domination. Ripe to see a necessary thing done. He didn't feel that pressure anymore, and was glad for it. Now, he could focus on what needed to do with more clarity, no scratching in his brain, no shard buzzing in his skull screaming at him to obey the purpose it had foisted on him. The only problem were the resources available to him. In this case, mana.

This force from beyond the astral was capable of magic, but this was all a puppet show. These things were meat shields and nothing more, their creators not deigning to protect them with more advanced wards. Perhaps their world was not so familiar with the various elemental planes. On his own world, all humans were capable of magic, and all except in a situation involving a gifted bloodline were born equal. The problem, he thought, was ambition. Some started at different levels, but they were all capable of it given time, education and resources. An archmage was a terror on any battlefield, and Hastur was the best of them, but he'd killed thousands, and they hadn't stopped coming. Octavian himself looked flagged, with Hastur – or Cortus as the case was, looking even worse for wear.

Pouring darkness magic through the portal. To use magic was to approach its penultimate form, the origin of all elemental energy. Man could not stand to use light or dark for long, as living things all existed in states of constant duality. To use them was to imbalance themselves, and while the magic of their race was far more versatile than the others, it was incredibly flawed. Hastur had struggled to summon as many bolts of darkness as he could, as fast as he could. A peak level five spell, counting on his incredible power to see him through, and that was a mistake. He was no primus anymore, not after his original body had been destroyed by the child. Freeing him from his madness, yet resigning him to start again as a lesser being.

A fist from a dying automata struck him in the midriff, taking him by the neck and slamming him repeatedly into the ground until his body broke. Unable to shift or project his spirit without experiencing a great deal of agony, he did the only thing he could. His secret weapon. Not his, precisely, but better the enemy he knew in a contained environment than getting killed here with a permanency. To face the black now was to damn himself. Only once his grand designs were complete would he be willing to step off into the great unknown.

He let slip a vial of swirling spores, using the last of his strength to tear free the stopper with a flick of his thumb and pull himself free from the conflict. The others were irrelevant, whether they all died or not mattered very little to him. As long as Tyr lived, and himself, that was all that mattered, releasing that nightmare again and watching as the thing was devoured from the inside out by the contents of that vial.

–

“Where is Tyr!?” Jura cried. Everything was a mess, the numbers of their foe were seemingly endless. The others had done their jobs, but ultimately with the way free they were not trapped here. They could leave through the other side and many had begun to do so. Men might stand once before the face of death, but few would repeat the experience, especially after seeing the inhuman durability and vast quantity of the enemy. “We have to find him!”

“Hush, child!” Girshan snarled. He had her held in a crushing embrace far beyond her strength to break, dragging her toward the astral gate. Their astral gate. They could not stand here, not like this. The mess of bodies was so thick that all to be seen were the primus' doing what they did. Kill and break and destroy, their true purpose. Of the others, only the intermittent signs of mana ignitions could be made out in din. Only by a streak of luck and Abe's skill with earth magic were they able to corral the unintelligent enemy in the right direction.

“I love him!” She raged, pulling against him and weeping. He'd never seen her cry. Never, since she'd been a child, always snarling and protesting every which way, but never crying. “I won't leave him behind. Please, Girshan!”

“Sweet girl...” Girshan's voice was softer now. “You will, and you'll thank me for it. Love is not so easy a thing to come by. You will find someone who is truly capable of caring for you.”

“Unhand me! I hate you!” These words stung at his heart. Girshan saw both she, Yana, and Xavier as his own children. Young ones taken so soon without the opportunity to explore life and all its wonders. But he wouldn't release her. Only pausing in his march when it happened. It.

There was that mage, Hastur, the one Tyr spoke of often. He was wounded, but still alive. With blood slick teeth, chuckling as if in great amusement, meters away from dragging his injured body through the gate. It was a disconcerting, maddened laugh. Enough to cause Girshan pause, looking back at the field. A great black tree sat above the conflict, tall, composed of a multitude of fibrous roots. No tree, in truth, but a host of tendrils writhing together to take the approximate form of one. No leaves to be seen. A thing that seemed cast from the stuff of nightmares, weeping black blood from its boughs and rumbling with violent glee.

Spreading, multiplying, free to assimilate.

“...What the hell is that?”

“Blight and decay.” Hastur crowed, raising his hands like some composer before an orchestra. “The death of all things. I'd advise you leave this place with all due haste unless you plan to become a part of it.”

–

What am I doing... Tyr was, realistically, throwing himself into a meat grinder. A whirlwind of pain, again and again. He could do that, given his ability, that which seemed to define him. When faced with a greater power than his own, it was his only notable talent, everything else about him seemed so small and insignificant. Tyr had grown, improved by leaps and bounds. If the youth of his past looked at his current self... He was sure that he'd have been amazed. Maybe even cracked an honest smile at knowing he'd be something special. But Tyr was not special in the slightest, the big ones crushed him. Tore him apart and threw him aside. Ignoring him in pursuit of more active prey, while the little skinny ones would run toward him mewling and whining. Exploding themselves when they came too close, or vomiting acidic liquid on him. Each one had a purpose, and once that sole purpose was expended they would fall limp and dead.

The lizards... That was what troubled him most. The pain was something fierce, but he'd felt it before, carved his own flesh in an attempt to test his limits. There wasn't one. Once it hit a certain point, it stopped, no more agony. As if, except in the context of his proto-awakening, that 'blessing' from Thanatos wanted him to stay awake and suffer. Just enough to cause extreme discomfort, but not enough for shock to set in. A curse. And for all his changes he was a frail thing, weak enough that they'd smash him to pieces and stalk away in disinterest.

It... Disgusted him. And so he labored, howling at them, not even resisting when they smashed him apart. There had to be answered here, something... They would show him, he'd cut the answers out of himself and truly know. To become his own god, this was the way, the others could not possibly help him. Tyr was alone, in the most visceral way.

He was weak. Felt weaker than he ever had even in the face of great powers. Tyr could always excuse his weakness in those situations. They were beings that had stood on this earth for a century or more, five times his age. More time. He needed more time, but that alone wouldn't help. Tyr was an incredibly selfish person, but all living things were. They wanted to survive, but conversely, he didn't care about survival in the literal sense. His wishes and wants, his lust was to... Be better. A fear of mortality was irrelevant to something that couldn't die. Even when he hadn't known that, his spirit must have, there were things to taste and experience here on this world and he wanted it all. He wanted to feel Jura's skin, breathe the air and taste all sorts of food. To feel alive. But he did not want to live, and he realized that now.

It was the experience. There was so much left to do, and he'd never be given the chance if he didn't adapt and evolve, tear and devour. Threats would come, they always would, and they'd threaten these little things that made life what it was. They'd take from him, and to his mortal mind this was an irredeemable sin, these things were his. Everything was his, nothing else mattered but ensuring these possessions remained in the palm of his hand. Sickening, perhaps, a vile way to look at things – but this was who he was. One step on the path of acceptance, he could change later, becoming better was all that mattered.

Perhaps he did want to live, but he didn't need it. A man who had never gone hungry, fattening himself each day might begin to take his ability to do so for granted. It becomes as natural as breathing. Tyr was immutable, eternal, and therefore his need for survival did not exist. His instinct was for a want to win, not simply survive. Uncountable failures weighed down on him, stretching the length of his entire life and those before or after, those happening in the present as he pulled his torn arm back into place.

He was weak, coping over every little thing with one excuse or another. The fel things that he'd done were okay because the world was shit and he wasn't more than the merest speck of filth that made it that way. Because the world was unfair, it had been acceptable. He was just a part of it and a product of his environment, and it wasn't his fault. But it was. The world wasn't unfair or inherently unjust. It could be cruel, surely, but the world was just the world. It existed, and so did they. Looking at the blood on his hands or the mistakes he'd made and excusing them were just a mechanism. A lack of taking responsibility, but being aware of a thing was not the same as knowing it in the truest sense.

No more excuses. No more pity for the self. These were human flaws that he would cut and burn away.

Balance. Everything was balance, and everything was on his shoulders. He was responsible for everything that happened in his vicinity at all times. To fail was acceptable, but to have lived a life without responsibility or foresight was not. Balance. He could not use dark magic for the same reason he was so attuned with light metamagic. Selfishness. At the same time, his magic was so weak and incapable, not because he'd had poor teachers, but because he was lacking. Lacked the will and conviction necessary to wield it the way it was meant to be, to take hold of that viper within him and strangle it until he was the master. Morality did not exist, and he saw that now. Morality was a coping mechanism. Ethics were a coping mechanism. Constructs he didn't need, to live was to be, and he had a right to be what he was. He would do, and in doing things would be right, just like before – to do whatever he wanted, because he was his own god.

Why...? Why did he feel this way? This wasn't right, it wasn't human, and yet still he didn't care, it was electric. A feeling of casting off shackles, it wasn't that he believed he should become a machine, throwing off emotion. Something told him that he should embrace these parts of himself with all vigor, to live and breathe and thrive. To conquer all challenges presented to him, this was one of many, the list would be endless and there was no use living by any code other than his own.

Madness settled on him until he couldn't think of anything but following that thread the voices had been trying to show him.

There were images... Things he couldn't explain, laughing madly as they tore him apart again and again, reaching out and feeling it all come slamming into his mind. The whispers became screams, he could hear them now. An insane swarm of screaming maws, repeating the same thing, over and over again.

Seven and five. Seven and five. Seven and five. Seven and five. Seven and five.

'I do as I do because the following result is the best of two options. Black and white, there is no gray.'

It does. But it, the world, doesn't do. It offers people their freedom and a choice to do as they please and live with the consequences. That is the way it should be, at least. To consider a possibility and see a thing done without regret. It happened, things happen. And that is natural. There was no grand plan anymore, it was all just chaos. That's why they hated it so much, the gods, but they'd learn to embrace it given time. There way no gray. The grays that defined mortal existence was so petty and small that they might as well not exist at all. Everything of consequence was black and white, and he was weak because he'd been unable to see that.

A gate opened. And then another, until he was swarming with them. All of these little pieces that made a man, experiences. Hopes. Dreams. He saw their faces in those gates. Alex, Astrid, Sigi, Brenn, Tythas, Vidarr, Varinn, Micah... Micah most of all. Why? He could feel them now, as if they were standing beside him, their hands on his back. They were screaming, too, their reflections had been carved into his soul, and at the center of it all was Iscari.

Like giants, they loomed over him, calling out. Each one of them asking him what he was worth. This enemy... These things, the invaders, were nothing. They were weakling rats, frail and insignificant, the idea that they'd threaten his peace was a gal he couldn't stomach. There was need there, an insane desire to smash and reave and tear them down, and he didn't resist it.

Seven and five.

He'd failed. Feeling so high and mighty and right. He could not die, so he'd charged into them and released all his power, hungry to find something. But that wasn't how it worked. The world and the laws that bound nature did not care about his wants. It cared only for need. For example, he needed to want something to die so deep down in his core to make it happen through the spira.

Spira was the fabric of reality, it could do anything on this plane or any other physical place. Practically infinite power if only he could grasp it. He no longer cared for his impending, truest sense of death, that of his mana core. Let it happen, he would rise again better than before. It would happen, the voices said so, and dwelling on this fact was no longer a concern of his.

But he couldn't grasp it the way it wanted him to, because he was motivated only by mortal wants and needs, ensuring that the spira served as the leash keeping him weak. Of no significance in the slightest. Even these mind bound slaves with their rivets and nails were superior. Because they behaved with purpose, primal conviction. It was all numbers to them. Tyr was just a number, he did not matter. Spira wasn't some force, some energy standing alongside mana to balance the world.

It was, and wasn't. It was everything, and nothing. Visceral, illusory. Part of the balance.

Seven and five.

From his current perspective, mana was want. A dream. Dreams were powerful, emotions and ambitions, but spira was need. A reality. Spira defined everything as he knew it, shaping the wild threads of chaos into something tangible, making the illusion real. Spira was, for lack of a better term, a pure distillation of will. He had not possessed the will to win, so he'd lost. It wasn't as if others possessed more spira that him. It was, more often than not, the complete opposite, spira was not like mana, it wasn't a wellspring of power, it was the rating that measured ones existence – how deserving they were of being 'real'. He had so much of it, but it was useless to him. Even in the event that his own amounted to the incredible energy possessed by a primus, he'd lose in a confrontation. Because they had the will to use it, and he did not. It was a thing that could only be known, not explained, ensuring that he'd always be a puppet unless he could pull at his own threads.

Soon. There was a promise in him that asserted how inevitable it was, he only needed to earn it. Somehow.

He stood, and tried. Tried and failed. Again and again, cast down like a child even as he watched the primus' and Tyr's reap a blood toll. Each lost in their own bubble of existence. They were weak, too. They were mountains. Weak things. Cosmic events could see them shattered to dust and nothing would ever care for them, the peak was beyond gods, planets, seas, and forests.

But if they were mountains, Tyr was a pebble atop them. And he hated that. Hated it so much. Feeling the first true mark of jealously scar at his essence. Vidarr of the storms, Jartor the great lion, and Octavian who possessed enough of the worlds will to make it corporeal. All immutable, despite their flagging powers, none could equal them. Bloodied, beaten, broken, but not fallen as Tyr was. All of that effort, and he'd been looking at it the wrong way. But nothing would change, not now, maybe not ever.

There was no such thing as instant gratification, this revelation was not enough.

Seven and five.

As their powers waned, so did his own. Each time he was struck down, he grew weaker. Not him, specifically, but his power to heal. He watched on as the slaughter grew in intensity, seeing his father fall to a knee under an earth shattering impact, Octavian rallying to save him. True brothers. Men who would die for one another with the full understanding of what death meant. Not motivated by petty concepts of honor and gallantry, it was a solemn promise beyond what Tyr was capable of. Real conviction. He saw it, and swore to make it his own, that dire need stripped of the care and love that motivated it. Balance again, that word, they kept screaming that word at him like he was supposed to shift his entire self in the moment and become better.

What was balance? What were the laws that defined things as they were? They were five, and they were seven. To make for twelve, this number kept repeating in his mind, again and again. Screamed from some mouth beyond the gate to that alien world, all those eyes on him.

Tyr didn't need these creatures to die. He didn't care enough, was incapable of thinking that way. But he needed help, an insistence of being alone was anathema to the raging star beside him. To see things beyond his current scope of imagination. He wanted to. Needed to. Needed to survive. And it clicked. Just a piece to the puzzle, nothing so vast as to define or change him. Just a tiny sliver of truth lancing into his brain. Back leaning against the piles of stinking dead. If he died, she'd die. They'd all die. All of these reflections inside of him would be shattered, these people who had made something out of him.

He owed them everything. Before them, he'd been an empty shell of a man, and they had lifted him up, becoming his wings. And in that moment, Tyr genuinely believed he'd found his aspect, at least a part of it. It was too complex to define with a word, they all were, aspects were a part of eternity, universal concepts.

It wasn't as if he wanted them to go living on to enjoy their individual lives, that was too selfless. To protect one you loved was inherently a selfish act, predicated on the fact that you loved them to begin with. It was not some sacred goal. Those of true purity would protect everyone and everything. Tyr didn't care about any of that, only them, because they were of benefit to his continued feast of all life had to offer.

In the old stories there was always something. A magic sword, most of the time, but he didn't have any of that in the strictest sense. Just a idea, a concept that he still did not understand. But it understood him, it had hands and they were in his head. Reaching, tapping its fingers on his gates and whispering the words.

“Tjut.” He croaked from a broken throat, reaching for one of the many gates inside of him that remained welcoming to his touch. The call, the choir, the connections that had become an immutable part of him. “Tjut gallarhorn.”

Weak. He was still so weak. His magic, weak. Will, weak. Existence, weak. A frail opponent to this legion of broken men who'd do far worse on the other side of the gate. He knew that contextually, he was quite adequate. Able to hold his own. But set loose, these things would tear his world asunder. Bereft of all the luxury and excess and 'free will' that led men astray and made them wretches.

He saw these things, these mindless men, and named them his superior. They lacked this weakness of sapient existence, only existing to serve a purpose. They were closer to something sacred than anyone he'd ever known, and that became his motivation for tearing them down.

I am a monument to all your sins.