Perhata Vritra
Mount Nishan roared like a primordial beast awakened from a sleep that had lasted longer than the memory of any living thing.
The highest peak of the Basilisk Fang Mountains and also the most active volcano in all of Alacrya, vomited molten lapilli, gases, and smoke into the atmosphere.
The sound was deafening—a deep, guttural bellow that seemed to come from the throat of the world itself. The ground trembled beneath my feet, and the air was thick with the smell of sulfur and burnt stone. Ash fell like grey snow, coating everything in a fine, choking dust.
I stood in front of my opponent. Another Vritra Blood, here on the slopes of the Howling Nishan, where the training facility owned directly by our glorious High Sovereign stood.
This was the place where his most elite warriors—his private army—were raised from infancy. Trained, drilled, perfected through every means necessary.
Eventually, they were made into Wraiths, the official title of His Highest Sovereignty's private troops. I had been born here. I had bled here. I had killed here.
This mountain was my cradle and my grave, and I loved it with a love that was indistinguishable from hatred which made it all the more... beautiful.
I was already a Wraith. And yet, continuous improvement was always demanded by the High Sovereign. There was no ending to this beautiful dance of death.
No final step, no final bow, no moment when the music stopped and you could rest. You fought, and you killed, and you healed, and you fought again.
Over and over, until the only thing left was the fight itself.
My uniform's cape—the standard of every Wraith—caught the powerful winds coming from the Nishan, fluttering behind me like a banner of darkness.
A molten lapillus fell on it, sizzling for a moment before sliding off without doing the slightest damage. The Basilisk scales woven into the fabric made it impervious to heat, to flame, to the mundane volcanic waste that rained down around us.
The blackened Phoenix plumes and feathers that made the fur on top of the cape suffered nothing as well. They were the feathers of a dead god, harvested from the corpses of the Asclepius who had dared to defy the High Sovereign.
My uniform, just like the cape covering it, was a masterpiece of the Vritra's war genius. The cape and the overcoat beneath it were both as black as nothingness—darker than the blackest sky in Cargidan's darkest and least starlit night.
The only color on it was the serpentine patterns on the overcoat that shone bloody red, like veins, like rivers of blood, like the map of some terrible continent that existed only in nightmares. Everything else was black.
Black on black on black. The color of void. The color of death. The color of the High Sovereign's will.
Richmal Vritra stood before me. His corkscrew obsidian horns pointed upward to the sky, as if he was trying to impale the clouds themselves. He was already a Wraith, just like me.
But today, we were meant to do weapon testing against each other. The High Sovereign wanted to see how his newest creations performed. He wanted data. He wanted results.
He wanted blood.
What made us Wraiths the best weapons of the High Sovereign was that we were walking, or flying depending on the situation, armories.
We carried the most advanced weapons Agrona Vritra had ever designed. While his Scythes and Retainers were meant to be the ultimate expressions of the magic system he had devised—the runes—we Wraiths were the ultimate expressions of his inventions of war.
We lacked runes. Our magic was purely the product of our Vritra Blood.
But where we lacked in magic, we made up for in technology. Relics from the Relictombs, adapted into weapons.
Richmal was wearing a hard chainmail above his standard Wraith uniform. The links were dark, almost invisible against the black of his clothes, and I knew they were enchanted—reinforced with the same Basilisk scales as my cape, woven with the same unbreakable threads.
I had a longsword in my hands. Its blade was dark, almost invisible, and the runes etched into its surface glowed with a faint, sickly light.
"Begin the test," one of the Instillers said.
He was one of the many who kept records of the testings we did here at the base of Mount Nishan.
I rushed at Richmal.
Rotbolt—the decay deviant of lightning magic—thrummed through the longsword as I fed it with my mana. The black lightning crackled along the length of the blade, dancing, hungry, eager to tear and rend and destroy.
The runes etched into the sword glowed brighter—copies of a Regalia. Nullbash, they called it. A rune that belonged to a Retainer. Cylrit Vritra.
I grimaced. That Retainer had been granted the honor of serving the High Sovereign and yet he defied his will.
The position of retainership, while fundamentally lesser than that of a Wraith, was much more glorious. To serve Vritra in Taegrin Caelum. To serve him in the Dominions of Alacrya. What honor. What pointless, empty, meaningless honor.
We Wraiths were the ones who bled. We Wraiths were the ones who died. We Wraiths were the ones who were sent to fight the battles that no one else could survive.
The black lightning crackled along the length of the sword, and I slashed at Richmal. The hit was aimed at his armor—not at his flesh, not at his bones, but at the enchanted chainmail that covered his chest.
The impact reverberated through my bones, making my blood vibrate, and I felt the ecstasy of it. The thrill of the strike. The joy of the impact. The pure, perfect pleasure of violence.
No. Nothing could compare to being a Wraith. The thrill of these kinds of battles was too good. Better than all the glory Vritra could give. Because the battles he sent us to fight were too much fun. They were the only time I felt alive. The only time I felt real. The only time I felt like something more than a weapon waiting to be used.
I attacked again and again, savoring the sound of steel clashing against steel. The ring of it, the screech of it, the way it echoed off the slopes of the Nishan and mingled with the roar of the volcano.
If only this was a duel to the death. If only I could feel his blood on my hands, his life draining out through the wounds I had carved into his flesh. But this was just a test. Just another training exercise. Just another moment of controlled violence that would end with both of us walking away.
As I attacked with the sword, Richmal's chainmail was fed with his own mana, repairing every damage almost as soon as I made it.
The links knitted themselves back together, the scratches vanished, the dents smoothed out. It was like fighting a ghost, an echo, something that could not be permanently harmed.
I grinned. The Rotbolt crackled in response, and the Nishan roared in sympathy. I clenched the handle of the sword so hard that my palms bled. The pain was sweet, grounding, a reminder that I was still here, still fighting, still alive. Then I hit with all my strength.
I pierced Richmal's chestplate. The chainmail, unable to repair itself in time, parted beneath my blade. I sank deeper, deeper, until the sword pierced Richmal's chest, the tip emerging from the other side. Blood welled up around the blade, dark and thick, and I felt the warmth of it on my hands.
Richmal spat blood out of his mouth. The crimson droplets caught the light of the volcano, glittering like rubies, and I watched them fall with a distant, detached curiosity. I withdrew the sword, and Richmal crumbled to the ground.
But before he could bleed out, the blackened Phoenix plumes of his uniform reacted. They coated him in Soulfire—the black flames that were the birthright of our blood—and healed him.
I smiled, observing the twisted process of healing. The healing abilities Soulfire had on Basilisk bodies. The tainted, corrupted healing properties of Phoenix bodies, harvested from the corpses of the Asclepius and woven into our very uniforms.
The spectacle was... fascinating. Beautiful, even. In the way that a corpse could be beautiful. In the way that a wound could be beautiful. In the way that anything touched by the High Sovereign's will was beautiful.
"Test finished," the Instiller declared. He turned and walked away, taking the recording artifacts used during this practice with him. He did not look back. He never looked back.
I turned to Richmal, who was still on his knees, still gasping for breath, still clutching the wound that was no longer there. "Stand up, you weakling!" I grimaced at him. "I even missed your heart!"
Richmal moved back to his knees, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking. I could not tell if he was laughing or crying. I did not care.
I turned my back on him and walked away, leaving him behind on the ash-choked slopes of Mount Nishan. The volcano roared behind me, and the wind whipped my cape around my body, and I felt nothing. Nothing but the fading echo of the impact. Nothing but the memory of the blood on my hands.
Nothing at all.