Vol 2, "Aetherman Year One."
Arc 3: "The Birth of Iskander Briand."
Chapter 38: Becoming the Highlord
Iskander
"Where do I put my armour?" The question felt absurdly mundane, a tiny pebble of practicality thrown into the churning ocean of my new reality. I was surrounded, not by enemies or monsters for once, but by a small army of servants.
Maids in crisp, dark uniforms, butlers with impassive, professional faces, stylists clutching fabric swatches and measuring tapes—all of them moved with a quiet, efficient purpose, their focus entirely on me.
They were a living, breathing testament to Seris's will, mobilized to transform the ragged yet divine survivor into a "presentable Highlord."
The sheer scale of it was overwhelming. How rich, how influential, were the Scythes? This wasn't just wealth; it was a silent, terrifying display of power.
To summon this many skilled professionals to her private villa on what seemed like a moment's notice spoke of a network and an authority that dwarfed anything I'd known on Earth.
Nobility there had been about influence in the King's Tournament and the purity of a family's Ki lineage. House Hyperion's strength came from its control of state agencies, a cold, corporate power. This was different.
This was feudal, personal, and absolute.
"You can store it inside of here, Highlord." A servant, his face a polite mask, offered me a ring. He was one of a dozen indistinguishable figures, all moving in a harmonious, silent ballet around me.
"His Lordship surely knows," he continued, his tone deferential yet informative, "but this is a storage ring of the ultimate generation. If His Lordship desires to bring his war garments with him, then he can store them within."
I took the ring. It was cool and heavy in my palm, a band of dark, polished metal etched with faint, intricate runes. It felt… alive, in a way that Earth's technology never had. A low hum of a strange power source I couldn't see or completely feel whispered against my skin.
Sylvia, it works with mana, right? I asked inwardly, already knowing the answer but seeking confirmation. I was able to slightly feel the mana in here thanks to Sylvia's own insight—now almost completely absorbed through our aether bond.
'Yes, Child,' her voice was a soft echo in my mind, a familiar presence in the unfamiliar opulence.
Of course. Which meant I couldn't use it. Not without revealing the one secret that could get us all killed. The stares of the servants, though professionally blank, felt like pinpricks.
How much had Seris told them? Surely not the truth. I was a project to them, an eccentric noble to be polished and presented, not an aether-wielding anomaly.
A wave of claustrophobia washed over me. The attention, the expectations, the sheer performance of it all was stifling. I needed space to think, to breathe, to be myself for just a moment.
In both my lives I have never been surrounded by so much attention. Doctors were the ones that visited me like this, but they were a different story; their scrutiny touched strings I stopped caring about very soon in my former life.
In the Heart Relic President Hyperion was looked at with awe and wonder, but it was more detached.
This was completely different.
"Could you please give me some privacy?" I asked, forcing a smile that I hoped looked more like aristocratic whimsy than panicked desperation.
They bowed in perfect unison, a single organism of service. "Scythe Seris has had various garments delivered for you, Highlord. We will be outside should you require anything." And with that, they filed out, leaving me alone in the spacious, lavishly appointed room.
The silence they left behind was profound. I let out a long, slow breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. My eyes scanned the room. Several racks of clothing had been wheeled in, displaying an array of outfits that ranged from formal wear that looked like it belonged in a museum to more practical, though still impeccably tailored, tunics and trousers.
The fabrics were rich—silks, fine wools, velvets in deep, subdued colors: charcoal grey, sapphire blue, forest green, the occasional accent of crimson.
I am starting to think Seris has a hobby in fashion, I mused, a faint smile touching my lips. The thought was humanizing.
Behind the mask of the icy Scythe, the untouchable demigoddess, was someone with an eye for fabric and cut. It made her more real, more complex.
In my few interactions with people outside my small circle of friends, I'd been treated with a deference that bordered on reverence. My appearance, my unknown status, it all marked me as someone above them.
I couldn't even begin to imagine what Seris endured every single day. The constant performance, the thousands of eyes watching her every move, the weight of expectations from both her subordinates and her god-like master.
And all while hiding a rebellion in her heart. She must be exhausted down to her very soul. The isolation must be crushing.
'You already worry about her too?' Sylvia's voice held a note of gentle amusement—only now I noticed she has always had a rather... fondness.. for Seris. 'That's very cute of you.'
Everyone deserves a chance at happiness, Sylvia, I thought back, my gaze drifting back to the ring in my hand. Well, almost everyone.
My mind flickered to the exceptions—the Agronas, the Kezesses, the King Greys. The architects of suffering on a continental scale. But even they… even they deserved to be stopped humanely.
What Al-Hazred had done to Gawain, reducing a genocidal knight to a enslaved puppet, was a perversion of justice. I had given Gawain a clean end, a warrior's death, and in his final moments, I had seen the flicker of remorse.
I had to believe there was a scale for these things, a way to balance justice with mercy, even for the monsters.
My focus returned to the ring. It was a beautiful piece of magic, a tiny pocket dimension held in a loop of metal. It reminded me of the principles behind the Djinn Slate—spatial manipulation taken to an art form. An idea sparked, cutting through my melancholy.
'What are you doing, Child?' Sylvia asked, sensing the shift in my focus.
I want to make a storage ring made out of aether, I declared, the engineer in me waking up. The Djinn Slate has storage functions, but it's a bit… conspicuous. A ring would be perfect. Discreet. And it would fit the cover of 'Highlord Briand' perfectly.
I didn't even need to ask. I felt Sylvia's presence shift, her consciousness flowing from me into the mana-powered ring in my palm. It was a violation of its magic, a foreign element inserted into its precise workings, but for Sylvia, with her ancient understanding of energy and form, it was a simple thing.
A moment later, she returned, and a perfect, three-dimensional blueprint of the ring's internal structure appeared in my mind's eye. I understood its every rune, every flow of mana, every stress point.
Oh, neat, I thought, genuinely impressed. You can act as an analyzer too.
I reached for the Djinn Slate, which I'd leaned against a chair. Pale gold aether flared around me, not as a weapon, but as an extension of my will. With a thought, the intricate plates and scales of Gawain's armour dissolved from my body, flowing into the Slate in a stream of golden light. It was a seamless, effortless motion, the power of Creation obeying my slightest whim.
Then, I turned my attention to the storage ring. Holding it in my palm, I poured aether into it, not to activate its mana-based core, but to rewrite it.
I followed the blueprint Sylvia had provided, but I replaced the flows of mana with circuits of pure, golden aether.
The dark metal shimmered, the existing runes fading as new, more intricate, and far more powerful patterns etched themselves onto its surface, glowing with a soft, internal light. I was not just using the ring; I was perfecting it, making it truly mine.
Finally, I willed the Djinn Slate to enter inside the storage within the ring. I slipped the ring onto my finger. It was cool and comfortable, a negligible weight that held the power to outfit an army.
"Way better," I said aloud, a genuine smile spreading across my face. "Now I can switch between casual and combat attires with ease."
The convenience was a tiny victory, but it felt good. It was control in a world that seemed determined to spin wildly around me.
I turned to where Sylvia's will-o'-wisp hovered, a tiny sun in the opulent room. "That's the door," I said, pointing firmly towards the exit.
'W-what do you mean, Child?!' Her mental sputter was immediate, laced with genuine worry and a hint of indignation. I winced; my phrasing had been terrible.
"Don't be a creep," I clarified, my voice firm but playful. "I am going to change and try on some of these clothes. So, privacy. Please."
I gestured again to the door. Even though her wisp form had no eyes, I felt the full force of a metaphysical eye-roll.
'Child,' she said, her tone dripping with long-suffering patience. 'Your body is quite literally, for at least twenty-five percent, made from mine. We share a soul. This modesty is… incongruous.'
"I don't care," I repeated, crossing my arms stubbornly. "That's the door. Out. Shoo."
There was a moment of tense, silent communication through our bond. I felt her amusement warring with her frustration.
Finally, with a sigh that resonated in my mind rather than the air, her golden light zipped toward the door, passing through the solid wood with a faint shimmer.
Alone at last, I let out another breath, this one of relief. The room was silent save for the distant crash of waves. I looked at the racks of clothes, then down at the simple underclothes I now wore.
It was time to try on a new skin. Not just the clothes of a Highlord, but the mantle of the role itself. And for a few minutes, at least, I could do it without an audience.
Sylvia Indrath
When Iskander's voice, firm and final, told me to leave him alone, a cold dread, sharp and immediate, lanced through the golden essence of my being.
It was an irrational, childlike fear, the kind that whispers of abandonment in the darkest corners of the mind.
He is sending me away. The thought was a shard of ice. He is still angry.
My consciousness, a wisp of light and will, recoiled. The plan he had declared so boldly—to go to Dicathen, to find him—loomed like a storm cloud.
He would ask me about Arthur. It was inevitable. And I was adrift, utterly paralyzed by the impossibility of my choice.
If I told him the truth, if I spoke the name 'King Grey,' I would be unleashing my Child, my hero, on a path of vengeance against the other boy who held a piece of my soul.
Iskander, with all his newfound, terrifying power, his unshakeable moral certainty, would see not a complicated, reincarnated soul, but the monster of his past.
He would go to Dicathen, and he would do something irreversible. And I would be powerless to stop him. My pleas would be nothing against the tide of his righteous fury.
And if I stayed silent? If I clung to my lie through omission, and he discovered the truth from another source? That would be the ultimate betrayal. It would shatter the fragile trust we were trying to rebuild, proving me to be the deceitful creature I feared I was. I was trapped between the doom of my son and the destruction of our bond.
Floating outside the door, I dimmed my aetheric signature to complete invisibility, a ghost in the opulent hallway. Then, the door was slammed open with a force that spoke of impatience and new-found energy.
And there he stood.
My breath caught in a throat I did not physically possess. Iskander was transformed. He wore a suit of pristine white, the fabric so fine it seemed to drink the light, tailored to perfection. Matching white trousers fell in clean lines to shoes polished to a mirror shine.
The style was unmistakably, exquisitely Alacryan even if it was too white—a sharp, severe elegance I recognized from the fashions of the elite, an echo of the styles the Vritra Clan themselves had worn in Epheotus, long ago, before their exile.
For a frightening second he looked very similar to what a son between me and Agrona could look like... he didn't have any of Agrona's peculiar characteristics, but his basilisk appearance was enough to remind me of him.
But layered over that recognition was another, more distant memory, gleaned from the fragments of his past life: this was also the armor of a businessman from his old world. He had chosen white, a color of purity and defiance, a stark canvas for the complicated soul within.
On his right index finger, he wore the storage ring, now a band of silver and gold humming with his aether, not mana. And on his wrist… was that a watch?
The sight sent a jolt of ancient nostalgia through me. Timepieces like that were the signature craftsmanship of the Kain Clan of the Titans millions of years ago.
It was an era before my birth—even before the birth of my Father—when time in Epheotus still flowed in sync with the Old World.
Still Father used to wear them, too, despite them being useless in Epheotus. He even possessed original pieces that had outlasted every living being in the world, ancient as they were.
I always wondered how Father came to possess them.
To see a lesser version here, on his wrist… it was a strange, poignant collision of epochs and worlds.
Then, he did something that spoke volumes of his control. He passed a hand over his forehead, his fingers barely grazing the base of his two sharp horns.
As he did, they simply… vanished.
Not gone, but concealed beneath a masterfully woven veil of aether, a testament to the brutal precision he had been forced to learn. He had erased the most obvious marker of his otherness, donning the perfect disguise of a young, powerful, and fashionable Highlord.
"You finally look like someone who wouldn't draw the attention of every single individual in Alacrya merely by sight," Seris observed, her voice as calm as a shallow creek.
Iskander grinned, a flash of the charm that could still break through the demigod's exterior. "You say that? I chose these clothes to be the perfect Highlord Briand, not some nobody."
"That's the reason for all the white?" Seris asked, what seemed like curiosity in her voice as she studied Iskander's clothes again.
"Moon Knight." Iskander replied leaving both us confused, but Seris didn't question further.
As he spoke, I felt a gentle, irresistible pull. He was recalling me into his aether core. The action was so instinctual, so protective.
He trusted Seris, yes—their alliance was forming and I was deeply glad for that—but he would not leave me vulnerable, floating exposed even in my invisible state.
The gesture, small and likely unconscious on his part, undid the knot of fear in my core. He wasn't pushing me away; he was keeping me safe. This mighty warrior, who could trade blows with someone like Sir Gawain Indrath, still fretted over my wisp-like form.
The contrast was almost heartbreaking. I did not deserve such devotion.
"About being Highlord Briand," Seris continued, her eyes missing nothing. "I have already made sure people in Aedelgard know you have returned from your… extended excursion across Alacrya."
"Anything else?" Iskander asked, his tone light, playing the part of the obliging noble.
"You will attend the Victory Ball in Cargidan, in the Central Dominion, for Highblood Lords. In three days' time." Seris delivered the edict with flawless nonchalance.
I felt Iskander's good humor falter. A frown touched his brow. "And who decided that?"
"Me, of course." A sly, knowing smile touched Seris's lips. It was the look of a master strategist moving her pieces on the board. "A master of disguise like yourself should know that the best way to hide is to act exactly as the enemy would least expect."
I saw the calculation in Iskander's eyes, the quick assessment. Then, he whispered something beneath his breath, a name from his old world that meant nothing to Seris but everything to him:
"I am going to literally be Bruce Wayne..."
Then, his face broke into a huge, brilliant smile, all traces of reluctance gone. "You can count on me! Now, where is Aedelgard?"
"A coach will take you to the city," Seris said, already turning her back, a dismissal and a sign of trust in one. "I wish you a pleasant day, Highlord Briand."
"I wish you a pleasant day as well, Scythe Seris." Iskander's reply was accompanied by a respectful, perfectly executed curtsy. He was a natural, slipping into the role with an ease that was both impressive and terrifying.
As he turned to leave, the image of him in that white suit, playing the part of a frivolous noble while shouldering the fate of worlds, was seared into my consciousness.
He was a paradox.
A hero who loved the spotlight, a savior dressed in the clothes of the oppressor, my beloved Child acting a part to deceive the gods.
And I, hidden within him, was the keeper of a secret that could shatter it all.