Apocalypse Reborn: Interlude: Justinia

Apocalypse Reborn:

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Interlude: Justinia

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Fools.

Beasts.

Denigrates.

All these and more had power unimaginable fall into their hands, and now they were hounding at our doors for doing what we had to do. The beacons that they cherished, the ancient powers that they loved and worshiped, were going to kill us all. Our only hope was to destroy each one and hide ourselves away from the rest of the world, yet they insisted on otherwise.

They raised the grand structures, they took technology from the past and exploited them, and drew more and more attention from beyond.

I had hoped that all would see reason, that the destruction of the Academy would have all stop and listen to us, but such was not the case.

The blasted king of ‘wisdom’ turned our actions of sacrifice, of our showcase and commitment to our own ideals, and turned it on its head.

Suddenly, overnight, we became villains hated by all others, to be hunted, and to own nothing.

All because we did what we had to in order to stop what was to come.

And, now, armies are at our walls, despite all that we have done, and we could do anything but to try and destroy our Citadel and these armies in hopes of stopping the flames of war that would act as a beacon to the rest of the world.

We have been ignored for so long as all the remaining nations did not care to surmount the defenses of the Ancients. Their curses and afflictions were within their control, even if so many of them wished to become more. They fought with one another, kept each other in check, and only the foolhardiest dashed themselves against the weapons the Ancients prepared for us. Now, though, they would cast their gazes upon us and see the Citadels as a means to recapture glory long lost, bodies that they gave up upon, and a prize that they must all compete with one another again.

We must try to quell this flame of industry and technology and war.

We cannot have the world entire look upon us and see both a prize and a common foe.

We must do all that we can, no matter the cost, to hide away and find another path forward for our people and reach a place where our foes could not reach us.

The place where all Ancients went, after this planet was lost and only those who chose to fight stayed, was in the stars.

We cannot do that if we were all destroyed by the remains of the Ancient’s foes.

So, as the armies came, I gave the command to scatter, to leave, and to do what needed to be done to my best and brightest.

All the while, I prepared for the siege and hoped to destroy the Citadel in hopes of stopping the coming end.

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Impossible.

The word should’ve meant nothing to me.

All the knowledge I held, all that I have experienced, informed me that I should never believe in impossibility. The power and might of the Ancients were beyond reckoning. They held power over the physical realm. Still, they fell as the paradigm changed, and they brought forth their own destruction through hubris and folly. Despite all their glory, power, and ability, their final gift to those that survived their immense mistake was a single continent protected by failing defenses.

Thus, I planned for the impossible.

Thus, even as we prepared every contingency plan and sought to destroy the Citadel, we aimed to be victorious in a siege.

Thus, I was sure that the ‘King of Wisdom’ would lose his armies, lose his reputation, and a Citadel would fall, while my people hid in the shadows to try and make a haven to surmount the storm that was on the horizon.

The Scholars of the Skies would hide away, spend thousands of years hidden away, as destiny itself fell upon the continent and killed all others.

Such was the plan, so that even if we lost here our people would persist, yet in the end it was for naught.

An impossibility, some may even call it a miracle, befell the city and we fell right into the scavenger’s demented trap.

Our fiercest constructs were out there, fighting the rioters that would destroy our defenses and make a siege impossible, while Champions hunted me in my own city.

As we had planned to destroy him, the Crow-King forced upon us a dilemma… and as the explosions around us stopped and the Citadel ceased to shake, I knew that he defeated us utterly.

“Run forward! Leave us! Tell the arks to launch now!” Only one portion of our plan remained. The city was lost, the Citadel will remain, and the madman who would drown us all in blood and flame would rise ever higher. All that was left was our future and what they could carry with them. “I shall distract the Champions. They will be after me. Go forth and fear nothing!”

My children’s eyes were wide, tears flecked them, but soon enough my children did as they were bid.

They went off to their arks, to the fragments of fragments that we had left, and went off without me.

The command sigil of the Supply Tower felt heavy in my hand, like a boulder threatening to drag me through the stone roads and into the fiery core of the planet, but I persevered and ran with my guards towards the gleaming white tower of doom that stretched into the sky.

Then, suddenly, one of my enhanced guards detached and ran at our back, while another picked me up.

“They are here. We must go faster.” That was all that was said by my guard. Foidal carried me in his mechanized arm and grunted as the machines used to replace his legs activated. My guards bounded with me towards the Citadel, and for a moment I saw the visage of my guard left behind, as his body came alive with lightning form within as his final, desperate gambit.

For a moment, a brilliant hue of power bathed the land from his presence, casting aside shadow, and then the next moment it was extinguished.

I looked upon them.

Four Champions all pursuing me.

I knew that I was already dead, but I had to hold them here, so that my children may escape.

And, perhaps, we could kill one of them.

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The gates of the Citadel were rocked by explosive force, the perfected material that could create a tower that stretched into the realm of stars cracked and shuddered, as my normal guards tried to shore up the defenses with anything that they can find. We’d weakened the Citadel by extracting so many Guardians from it, using up much of the mass it had stored, so we could not reinforce it with more of the empowered matter.

No. My soldiers and guardians tried to hold the gate with their own bodies and what little furnishings were within the Citadel, while I worked furiously with what was left behind.

Explosives were a secret we had long tried to keep, until the Academy had betrayed us and firearms began to spread across the Continent. We tried to show all their dangers, with our sacrifice of our home, and the destruction of the Academy. However, now, we could no longer hold back.

My people have long stored secret after secret, but now we had to use all that we could muster.

My fingers bled.

My wrists ached.

My ears rang.

The constant din of a beast slamming against the gate put fear in my heart, yet I did what I needed to do to all my guards. I removed their limiters, that which stopped them from ripping apart their own bodies, and integrated what components I could force the Citadel to forge in moments. As I did, I instructed my assistants to grind poultices of poison and medicines that would make pain meaningless and have wounds clot with greater speed.

I was turning my people into weapons.

My eyes stung, not just from the fumes of the poisons and medicines being hastily created with harsh chemicals, but from the injustice of it all.

I had saved my guards.

Each and every one of them wished to die after losing their limbs for our nation, but I had saved them. I had studied, gone against my father’s wishes, and created limbs for them. My greatest moment in my life was when my father looked upon my works, looked upon their intricacy and how I ensured they would not fall into the hands of fathers, and decided that I would best lead our people.

Now, I was using my greatest inventions to kill the people I had saved.

“Lady Justinia! The gate won’t hold for much longer!” One of the soldiers cried. It was a miracle that they held for a quarter of an hour. If only the sapping charges hadn’t been stopped, then we would’ve survived. “What are we to do!?”

“You are to leave.” I willed the entrance to the heart of the Citadel to open. “Go there and enter the doors. You will find tunnels to leave.”

“But, what of you—

“They will search for this ring to the ends of the Earth. They will extinguish all of our kin, if it is not found. I will stay here and ensure that our foes will know this is the end of the Scholars of the Skies” A mage came forward and healed my wounds. My flesh reknit and reformed around my bones. However, I hesitated as I approached the slumbering forms of my guards. Pale moonlight shone through the battered gates now. Conquest and the tyrant’s personal demon were cleaving through the gate. Behind them loomed two Undead of immense power and talent, waiting to surge through the gap, and kill us all. “Go! Go now!”

I turned the switches in the backs of my guards, reactivating them completely, and ensuring their deaths in the next five minutes.

Foidal’s ruby gaze settled on me for a second, then the gates broke apart and my whole world unfolded into violence and destruction.

My world came apart, faster than I could see, with my guards coming alive with lightning against four Champions.

I gave the order to fight, and I felt my hands coming up to summon what little I had left.

Yet, I knew nothing besides everything that I knew breaking apart all around me into nothing.

…

Conquest loomed over me. A prime specimen of her kind. Her name marked her as the apex of her kind, the absolute pinnacle that they could reach, and she was not found wanting.

Her blade was in my chest in a killing blow that I could barely feel.

Everything was fading and cold, but I remained.

My people can always remain.

“You fought well.” She rested low, with one arm dangling off a knee. She was beside me and still cast me entirely in her shadow. “And, so did your guards. Rest easy, Speaker of the Scholars, Justinia. I will remember you.”

Those words should’ve comforted me, yet even with my heart pierced, I felt a heat flow through my body.

Flashes of the battle sparked in the edges of my fading vision.

Fiodal taking on Ilych in combat, his flesh burning away, while the metal parts melted. A blazing star of flame and lightning fighting against a black-clad beast. He was cleaved in half, but at the last moment he ignited the replacement for his heart that powered his mechanical limbs and swathed her in an inferno… from which she walked out of like a true demon without being harmed.

Turin, Malin, and Eli surged after Conquest and she met them in a charge with her weapons at the ready. They each struck her, their fists burning with searing hot flame, their bodies coursing with lightning, and their blades coated in poison. Conquest took on their desperate, final charge head on and endured the trio’s blows.

I had watched her sides come apart, her ribs fly, and her organs burst… but a barrier of wind stopped them from breaking apart her heart and spine. With that singular mistake, they were defeated. Conquest gave out a shout of triumph, and with a burst of magic her wounds become undone, her body rebuilding piece by piece in an instant, while she brought her weapons down and smashed them apart with singular blows.

Balin, Thane, Herold, and Gerund with the soldiers in the room had tried to fight against the Undead Elf and the Vampire leader of the Guardians of the Moon. Their battles were in the corner of my vision, but their deaths were seared into my mind as well. The damned assassin of the tyrant sent off arrows that skewered my guards to walls, just before she sent arrows through their reinforced skulls. Celia waded into the battlefield more like an aspect of death itself, surrounded by phantoms that wielded weapons that fell to the ground, and they protected her and killed for her, while she casted magics that rotted flesh from bone in an instant.

My guards and my soldiers were all dead around me, while I lay dying, only kept alive due to my long, storied lineage… and even that was fading.

Still, I felt it.

Hatred for these people.

For all the work that they have unraveled, for all that they did here that would bring the world crashing down upon us all, and for the orders of a tyrant that they followed without thought.

They were going to kill us all in their pride and hubris.

And, because of them, my children and their children and their children’s children will be hunted down as the last remnants of the Ancients.

My last words, thus, were a curse.

“Damn you. Damn all of you! You condemn us for bringing the Academy low, but you all do the same! These Citadels will bring war across the land, then those from beyond will come to take them and they will!” I summoned all my strength, all that I had left, and forced myself to stand. One of my arms was gone, one of my legs was broken, and I struggled to keep my insides within my stomach, while a blade protruded from my heart. Still, I stood to speak and curse them all, even as death awaited you. “I curse you! I curse you all to die last! To suffer and see the horrors the Ancients failed to extinguish… who all now come for you! Suffer and die knowing that all you did today… was grant those who tried to save you the mercy of a quick death!”

As soon as those words left me, I knew that it was over.

That I was spent.

And, so, I fell forward into the abyss to join those who fought and died for me

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