Knights Apocalyptica

Chapter 50: Satellite

She is our life, our loving Goddess so high above,

We may witness the world born anew,

It is our blessing to have such love.

And under her light we grew.

Stronger;

Praise be to the heavens and our Goddess!

Praise Her name!

Lavinia, Lavinia, Lavinia.

So blessed a name, may in my dying days I walk along with her!

- Cardinal Julianus, (245, 3rd Era)

By the time Erec hit his bedroll that night, he felt like the Master Knights had slammed a hammer into the side of his skull.

They’d been relentless, he’d been an awful liar, but there were things he couldn’t say. Like physically, if he’d tried, it’d get him exiled or burned alive, or in the best case scenario, VAL would mute him.

By some sick twist of the Goddess’ humor, they somehow bought he’d known a silent one was up there.

And that had been enough to smooth over the rest of the lies. Their concern over the Stalker and its behavior outweighed everything else he might’ve said, and then, of course, there was the metal man.

After the reports, they hoisted the poor thing on the war table and tore it apart; old man Fulton was an experienced engineer. But even his years of expertise didn’t allow him to understand some high-tech processes and parts of the android. Not that it’d helped that all the circuits were fried and the hard drives wiped.

Little did they know the one responsible for that was in the same room as them, listening.

When he returned to his room, he lay in his bed quietly for a long time; he waited for Olivia and Garin’s to slip into a deep slumber. He knew it was time when his friend started to snore.

He spent some time pouring over his Blessing Sheet, letting the numbers numb his mind as he tried to keep himself calm. Soon, he’d have to confront VAL.

Name: Erec of House Audentia

Health: 94%| Mana: 100% | Stamina: 32%

———————————————————————

Holy Virtues:

Strength: [Rank E] | [Tier 7]

Vigor: [Rank F] | [Tier 9]

Agility: [Rank E] | [Tier 2]

Perception: [Rank E] | [Tier 2]

Cognition: [Rank E] | [Tier 3]

Psyche: [Rank E] | [Tier 1]

Mysticism: [Rank F] | [Tier 1]

Faith: [Rank F] | [Tier 1]

———————————————————————

Divine Talents:

Fury

He’d come so far in such a short time. Was that typical of new initiates? He was still in the E-tier, but in every fight, he seemed to break his boundaries by abusing Fury. Was it a crutch? Was it making him grow too fast, too uncontrollable?

If his Strength grew, got faster, got tougher—without keeping his Psyche up, would he lose that small measure of control he fought so hard to obtain in the first place? It was impossible to say, but the worry haunted him anyway.

He needed to be strong, both in body and mind. He wanted it badly, even with such a high cost.

He heard his friends drift away into their dreams.

Hopefully pleasant ones.

They deserved that much after what he’d dragged them through. All that only to end with VAL slaughtering the android in cold blood.

He steeled his nerves.

“Why did you do it?” Erec asked, his voice barely a whisper. Olivia and Garin were shoved into the same room as him. Colin had wandered elsewhere; the boy had been distant-eyed after the meeting.

Maybe the fact he’d faced one of his biggest fears again was starting to sink in.

[Simple. We were there to collect data. We collected our data.] VAL answered with an almost impatient tone.

It was funny. The longer he got used to having the machine inside of his head, the more he could pick out a shadow of emotion in what it said. He supposed it wasn’t real, a mere fabrication that VAL put on to conform to expectations. But the fact it’d been hard to pick out in the first place left him questioning.

“Did we need to kill it? It was looking to you for help.”

[It was aware of my identity and associations. If it had lived, it was an uncontrollable variable. Therefore, the route we opted to take was the most efficient method of retrieving the required data and keeping Trade Secrets, secret. Does that satisfy your questions?]

“You said that the data it had wasn’t confidential.”

[This is correct.]

“Then what did we get?”

[Are you sure you want to know?]

Erec almost sat up, a flash of anger in him. For all the trouble he suffered to keep a secret he hadn’t wanted to keep. To have himself associated with an action he wouldn’t have taken, of fucking course he wanted to know what they’d risked so much for.

“Yes.” It was a word filled with resentment, laced with as much anger as he could force into three letters, yet as quiet as such a word could be not to wake those sleeping nearby.

[This will be unpleasant.]

His body convulsed as he lost control of everything. He slammed into the bedroll as his fingers and toes curled and spasmed—his eyes rolled up into the back of his head as a gasp left his lips.

White.

He saw white.

And then he saw darkness.

— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —

//Recording Date: June 23rd, 2112, 13:03:43

//Video Initialized

//CONVERSION SUBROUTINE

//OUTPUT ERROR

//OUTPUT ERROR—

//OUTPUT ERROR WRONG MEDIUM—

//OVERRIDDEN

He was floating. A black void all around, littered with stars as far as the eye could see. He felt nothing; he didn’t even blink. His eyes…they couldn’t turn, couldn’t look. Slowly drifting in the black void, ever so slowly, that view shifted, rotating to center on the curve of an incomprehensibly massive orb.

Luminescent blue glowed from its surface, it was decorated with circling fluffy white. Beneath the clouds was a wide swath of deep cerulean seas and blobs of brown dirt and tan sand. But what caught him most was the vibrant green. So much life. Serene. Gorgeous, even from this distance, and a view that was instinctively familiar, even without a frame of reference quite like this.

That was the Earth.

Breath-taking, if he could breathe. If he had lungs for the air to go into. But there wasn't; he was hanging far above the planet's surface and couldn't breathe.

He supposed there wasn’t air up here anyway, so perhaps that was for the best.

A flash of white shot through the black void and paused near the curve of the Earth—it shimmered a deep silver color, its light bright and pulsing. It hovered there, hanging in the air like him. They were the same, just watching the Earth from high above. Though, what it was, he couldn't say.

Without any direction on his part, the view of the glowing object grew closer—enhanced as it came more into view.

He saw a blur—static filled his vision as his head split and ached, its shape deforming and reforming, unable to piece together what the hell it was, other then it gave off a too-bright glow.

Letters and numbers flooded his vision, along with error messages.

Suddenly a beam of that silver light shot forward from the glowing object and slammed into the side of the peaceful planet. It hit the surface; and then spread in a wave, a pulse of silver that left everything on fire in its wake.

With such scale—it took forever, five hours—six? it was hard to say how long Erec watched that ring of death coat the Earth.

As the silver coated the planet then faded, all of the life and enchanting greenery were gone. The sky rapidly filled with dark black smoke and clouded a deep swirling gray as the planet burned.

The world violently burned alive.

His view refocused on the figure hanging in the same spot. It watched its destruction. Serene as it watched billions die below.

He couldn’t hear their screams. But he knew. He knew what that silver flame meant.

A massive tear opened behind the Goddess—a shimmering distortion of light and shadow, with a twisting separation of the color gradient around its jagged edges. The Goddess stepped back into it and vanished.

Leaving a wake of destruction from Her holy flames.

— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —

Erec was screaming.

Garin ran over and grabbed him—holding his friend up with panic in his eyes. “Man, what’s wrong, what’s wrong?”

It was hard to breathe—he’d forgotten how after watching the world burn for hours.

He hadn’t needed to for so long. With deliberate and painful focus, he forced air into his lungs; the screaming stopped as he struggled to pull in oxygen.

Olivia was awake in an instant, too, hovering nearby but unsure how to help. Garin held his friend tight, panic in his eyes until Erec started to settle.

His heart raced a mile a minute.

He'd heard the holy scripture about the holy fires. Everyone had. The Goddess had burned the Earth to bestow her Blessing upon man and gave them a chance to fight against the horrors that were coming through the Rifts.

It was one thing to know that such an act of devastation had occurred and an entirely different thing to witness it. Cold sweat coated his brow as he took in deep gasps of air—and the process of watching was surreal. That should've been impossible. He'd been in the sky. He'd seen Her destroy the Earth.

And then she vanished into a Rift.

They spoke of her fondly, of the things she’d done to give mankind a chance, but the raw nature of watching over a billion people die was too much to comprehend.

Garin asked Olivia to make them some tea and leaned Erec against a wall.

He didn’t speak much; he couldn’t find the words. VAL didn’t offer anything in his head either; it seemed the machine was busy running its processes, or maybe it understood that it would take time to recover.

Could one ever recover from having a perfect view of the end of the world?