Chapter 18 #2
He had always hated the Zenithar Schola. He had always viewed the High Arbiter as a brutal, unforgiving tyrant who burned heretics to maintain control. But he had respected the Arbiter's math. He believed the Spire actually wanted to protect humanity from the dark.
It was a lie.
The Abyssal Tide was not a failure of the Spire's defenses.
It was a controlled demolition.
The High Arbiter knew the Trench-Sovereign was waking. He intentionally used his own demigods as bait. He fed the greatest heroes of the continent directly into a meat-grinder just to wipe the geopolitical board clean of Cartel warlords and unruly outer rims.
It was a sacrifice of premium biological assets on a scale that disgusted Caelan to his very core.
Inside his mind, the encoded consciousness of Isolde The Unbroken was weeping.
The fanaticism that had driven her to initiate the martyr protocol was completely broken. She had died believing she was saving the world. She had died as a distraction.
Her grief instantly metastasized into pure, unadulterated, radioactive fury.
Treason! Isolde’s voice screamed inside his skull, the mental shockwave rattling his optic nerves.
He betrayed the Light! He betrayed the Vanguard!
The golden veins beneath Caelan’s skin flared blindingly bright. The core in his heavy rucksack pulsed with sudden, violent acceleration.
March on Pyraxis! the Valkyrie demanded. Her phantom hands clawed at the inside of his mind. Give me the chassis! Give me the iron! We will breach the inner walls! We will drag the High Arbiter into the mud and execute him for heresy!
The ghost wanted a vessel for her vengeance.
Caelan felt the overwhelming, crushing weight of her holy anger. It sought to override his motor functions. It sought to hijack his right arm and turn him into a puppet of the Light.
Caelan closed his silver eyes.
He felt a new emotion rising in his chest. It was not the cold, clinical detachment of the architect. It was not the desperate, gnawing survival instinct of the rat in the cellar.
It was genuine, terrifying, world-ending rage.
He was angry.
He was angry for the absolute, unforgivable mathematical waste. He was angry at the arrogance of a man in a tower who thought he could discard god-tier engines like broken toys.
But he was the Warlord.
He did not take orders from dead meat.
Caelan violently asserted his dominance over the internal interface.
He flooded his own neural pathways with the raw, highly concentrated apex neurotoxin from his left arm. He weaponized the caustic venom, pushing the deep-crust rot directly against the golden Light trying to control his brain.
You do not command the architecture! Caelan roared in his mind.
The mental strike hit the Valkyrie like a physical blow.
Her consciousness staggered backward in the heavy iron vault of his psyche.
You are an engine! Caelan dictated. The absolute, unyielding gravity of the Warlord crushed her rebellion into the floorboards of his mind. You are a battery. You belong to me.
Isolde glared at him through the static, her golden eyes burning with hatred.
I will kill the Arbiter, Caelan stated coldly.
The absolute certainty in his mental projection silenced the ghost.
I will slaughter the Trench-Sovereign. I will break the deep crust. But I will not do it to restore your broken laws. I will not do it to rebuild a Spire that feeds its own soldiers to the rot.
Caelan opened his silver eyes.
The golden Light beneath his skin slowly dimmed, receding into a stable, obedient pulse beneath his ribs.
He forced the Valkyrie’s consciousness into a dormant, subservient sub-routine within the core. She was locked in the dark.
Caelan Cross pushed his broken, bleeding body up from the concrete.
He stood in the hissing black rain.
He looked at the towering white walls of Pyraxis, invisible in the distant, toxic gloom.
He had the prize. He had the truth.
He turned to his broken retinue.
Jax looked up from Zylia’s unconscious body. The Cartel scout was trembling, terrified of the terrifying, golden-eyed monster standing before him.
"Get her up," Caelan commanded.
His voice was a heavy, dead iron rasp.
"We cannot stay on this island. The leviathan is still hunting the core. If it locates our thermal signature, it will simply drop the ocean on this bunker."
"She can't walk, Cross," Jax pleaded, his voice cracking. "She's bleeding out."
Caelan walked over to the scout.
He did not offer sympathy. He reached down with his right arm.
He used his silver-etched foundry iron claws to grab the heavy fabric of Zylia’s robes. He lifted the unconscious shadow-weaver entirely off the concrete, slinging her effortlessly over his left, venom-dripping shoulder.
Jax stared in awe at the sheer, impossible physical strength the integration had granted the Warlord.
"Pick up your crutch," Caelan ordered the scout.
Caelan turned to his ruined siege engine.
"Vanguard. Take the flank," he commanded Xyrielle.
He did not look back at the boiling, acidic mud of the Deep Corrupted Zones .
He adjusted the heavy iron-wood rucksack on his back. The insulated mythic core hummed quietly, a captured god bound to a monster’s spine.
The extraction was over.
The march to secure a permanent chassis for the Immortal Sovereign had begun.
And Pyraxis would burn.