Chapter Text
Unknown Location
Joshua knew he was capable of great hate. The Undying didn’t care to temper it, and Jote didn’t have the spine to tell him to do anything other than to take his medicine. He knew he was being used by the group, just as much as he was using them.
Joshua was self-aware enough to recognize that his hate had been tempered once. By Mother, by Father, by his beloved Brother. He had friends in the castle, like Jill and Thomas.
All of his family and friends are dead or gone now. And worst of all, his Father and Brother had been executed by his Mother.
Oh, how he hated her.
He and Phoenix hated the second Eikon of Fire more.
873: Caer Norvent, Empire of Sanbreque
Joshua shuddered in his bonds when he felt a pulse of wind aether through the air. It was impossible to hide from that breeze that seeped through the walls like winter air through a cracked door. It was no use signaling back or searching the area himself, it would just give the game away sooner than he wanted.
He had only allowed himself and Jote to be caught by the Dominant of Wind because he wanted to know if Harman knew anything of Ultima. He never got a chance to ask the woman herself. Harman’s Intelligencers hadn't even bothered to put him in crystal fetters, though he would never dare to tell them that such tethers had never worked on him for reasons that were still unclear.
His annoyance turned to hatred and to fear when he sensed a wildfire drawing closer. Phoenix had never been loquacious, but after that night, the Eikon did not speak at all.
The Undying were wrong. The Demon that nearly killed him did survive that night and the following morning, when his Father and Brother did not.
A single, controlled burst of fire at his wrists incinerated the ropes that bound himself and Jote. Without speaking, he nodded at his attendant, and she moved to the door. She nodded back at him, signaling that the path was clear. Explosions and screaming could soon be heard from below, and Joshua scowled. That monster was slaughtering everyone on his way through the keep. Joshua would not allow the innocent bearers to be caught in the crossfire.
He did not bother hiding his power as he burst the door off its hinges, the iron no match for the Phoenix. Jote went ahead, pointing out which rooms contained prisoners. He followed behind, breaking through the doors, and gathering a frightened group of prisoners behind him. He hated how Garuda and the second Eikon were growing closer together.
The moment Jote signaled that everyone was together, and the families reunited, he turned to guide them out of the keep, away from the sources of wind and fire. Thankfully, the Intelligencers and Royalists were all focused on the larger threats to their life than the escaping prisoners.
In his head, Phoenix screeched and cowered in fear as bursts of wind, fire, and levin washed over them, one after the other. Joshua frowned even more heavily, but there was nothing he could do, and he had no desire to confront the other Eikons, not without a plan.
He felt the fluctuations in the aether in the air as levin, wind, and fire clashed. Finally spying the gate furthest from the fighting Dominants, he shuffled the grateful bearers out. Once the last woman was past, and Jote was once more by his side, he whispered in Eikonic, learned from the Undying. The words helped to channel his magic into a particularly destructive time-delayed spell.
If he was lucky, maybe the destruction of a few load bearing walls would crush the other three Dominants.
-
Joshua and Jote fled north as fast as they could, only running faster when he felt Garuda and the second Eikon of Fire priming sometime the next day. He knew it was unlikely, but he prayed to the founder that Garuda won.
They camped rough for the next several days, their things left behind near Lostwing. A calculated event that Joshua was regretting now as his health turned. His body had always been weak. It was only the tireless work of the Phoenix that kept him from succumbing to the cough and the fluid in his lungs. Jote and the Undying did their best to help him as well, but their medicines either failed to help, or in the case of the latest concoction, tasted so terrible he struggled to keep it down long enough to take effect.
His breathing became so poor, and Jote’s supplies grew low, and they were forced to adjust their course back toward more populated areas to an Undying supply cache near Fort Rois.
Their pace had been limited by his illness, and he knew they were being tracked. He was unaware whose tracker it actually was though, since they did not seem to get any closer than a sense of strange magic just on the edge of his senses. He wouldn’t put it past Ultima or the second Eikon of Fire to send a spy after him.
He breathed a sigh of relief, finally being able to breath as well, when the tracker fell out of range behind him and his companion. He contemplated his next steps. He wanted to know more about Ultima, and he wanted to kill the other Eikon of Fire, but he knew the time for the latter would require meticulous planning.
In the end he decided to continue on to Rosaria and the Apodetery, like originally planned. He recalled from the last update from Cyril that there was still more in the Apodetery that the Undying had not fully investigated, a feeling of being watched, and a mural that had never been copied down. From the note, it was certainly worth returning to the site. The odds of being followed out to Rosaria by the other Eikon and Ultima himself were slim.
873: Phoenix Gate, Province of Rosaria
Joshua should’ve known better.
What right did the Demon have to touch the remains of his people? What right did it have to leave the field of orange lilies that represented his hatred as much as they did renewal? Joshua was half tempted to torch the field right then and there, if Jote had not been standing in the way, one eye kept on him like she knew what he was thinking.
They had been too slow, and he knew it was his fault. He had not pushed himself, weak in spirit and in body. The other Eikon had come and left already. It was only when they went down below and saw the door broken into pieces that he knew why the other had come. The Apodetery was destroyed. No aether flowed through the walls, and the underground lake was dozens of feet lower than it had been, the bottom visible in places.
There was nothing for it. He called on the Phoenix. The bird Eikon’s mind retreated even as their power rushed forward to greet him, semi-priming. The weight of wings settled on his back, and fire flickered through his hair. He held his arms out for Jote, grabbing her under her arms, and lifting off with a powerful flap of his wings. They soared across the underground lake, to the only part of the structure that remained.
The entire structure was dead and empty. So much so that it was eerie and the only light came from his wings. Everywhere, there were signs of a fight. The Fallen material he once thought indestructible was marred and scorched black, where it was not cut clean through.
Jote finally spied the ritual chamber as they circled the structure from above. At her sign, he landed, placing her down first, then setting his feet down. He did not release the wings from his back, and the Phoenix stayed silent. Not surprising.
Just a quick glance around the final chamber told him that this room had not been untouched either, the fight may have started here, but the bulk of it took place on the larger platform below.
He examined everything on the platform, Jote taking the other half. He felt no eyes watching him, and his aether-sense returned nothing but the normal undercurrents of the environment and Jote as a bonfire connected to his power. If there had been an agent of Ultima or of the second Eikon of Fire, then they were gone now.
He leashed his power tightly to not destroy more of the place, at least while they were inside. Jote pulled his attention to the mural she was sketching. It was the one thing in the place that was untouched by the fight, but the only thing touched by time. He got the idea that it had been added much later by the different stone it seemed to be made of. He leapt up, flapping once to gain height to hover near the mural itself.
It was too damaged to see the whole image, but the winged and horned figure, could it be Ultima or the second Eikon? Joshua needed to see the whole thing, but it was not here.
-
Joshua led his companion back to Tabor. He needed to speak to Matriarch Elizabeth. They passed unremarked through Velkroy and Dalimil. It did make him curious at the fewer and fewer agents of the Undying that were along the path. He wondered if any agent had ever gotten an in with Cidolfus Telamon, but it was an absent thought. The likelihood of the ex-lord commander knowing anything of Ultima may have been high, but the man and his second were smarter than they seemed when it came to his people. He would see right through any spy the Undying tried to send.
The tension only rose in Tabor. The city built into the cliffs was bustling with noise, louder than usual, and no few amount of Undying, barely hiding their allegiance. They were there for a funeral, the Matriarch Elizabeth was dead and Cyril had been named their new leader but more had happened.
The Imperial Army of Sanbreque was on the march to the Crystalline Dominion, and mere days after their march, Drake’s Head in Oriflamme had collapsed. On top of that, an unknown Eikon had been seen climbing the crystal, fighting something that seemed like yet another unknown Eikon. Both had been on the peak the moment it fell, leading several to believe the Eikon had been the cause. The worst news was what Cyril, the new leader told him, quietly, after the funeral:
The Demon had stolen his dead brother’s face.
There was nothing for it now. Desecrating his brother’s memory was the last straw. Ultima and the second Eikon of Fire would die