Knights Apocalyptica

The wasteland flew by in a blur of dust and sand. Though the blurring landscape remained largely the same, the car Erec rode in changed.

When he’d tried to get into Yniol’s car, Corey took him aside and told him they were swapping up who was with who. Nominally, it was to better distribute the captured thugs between the cars. Which made sense in theory. He was now in a truck, filled up with two thugs tied up in the trailer and two strapped into the seat on either side of him. It was a bigger vehicle, to be sure.

That argument fell to shreds when Yniol’s car came close. Colin lounged in Erec’s normal seat next to Enide, with a thug tied next to him.

Upon their first stop, and a little discrete asking, he found out that Yniol was sour over him and Enide.

The Pendragons laughed about it, saying that he had a habit of getting overprotective whenever she got close to guys in the past. One of which ended with Yniol stranding a kid in the desert for three days to ‘test’ him to see if he was worthy. Upon that explanation, Erec didn’t know how to deal with that. This sort of fatherly oversight was outside of his wheelhouse. His own father didn’t care what he or Bedwyr got up to. His mother was long gone. And the courts ranged in their reactions, with more of a focus on beneficial marriages to the family.

Erec sunk into the seat and let the road pass by, trying to clear her from his head.

Boldwick wanted them to go along, finish this mission, then what? Secure themselves, someone, to stitch into the Kingdom in Vega, then go home? VAL wanted him to go with Enide, but it wasn’t for the reason Erec wanted to go with Enide. His people back home needed him to fix the mess he’d left with the merchants… Enide wanted him to be himself and be free.

There were so many wills pulling him along, asking him to follow their goals.

Except for her.

What did he want? What did being free mean to him? His entire life, he’d felt constrained. Under the thumb of his brother, their family suffered the prejudice of the upper class.

Erec clenched his fist.

He wanted it all. Wanted to be a hero to the Kingdom, savior of his cavern, and wanted to go with Enide and the Pendragons. He still wanted to find his mother somewhere out there. Even if she’d betrayed the Kingdom.

One of the tied-up thugs coughed, bumping into Erec.

“Corey, level with me,” Erec began, reflecting on his journey. His goals. Trying to find any way to make all the different desires in him find a solution. Or, perhaps, he hoped one might consume the others. But the one that still haunted him kept coming to his mind. His mother. He felt guilty since he’d set it aside for so long. His vow to himself and to his brother. If he focused on one thing at a time, it might lead him to the future he wanted.

“How big is Vega?”

“Hmmm?” Corey answered. It was hard to get his voice heard above the wind, but with a bit of force, he was sure the boy could hear him. “Massive; lots of different parts of the city. All of it’s covered with a nice barrier that keeps the nasties out. Soccer matches every other week, which you’ll be able to catch. Wanna see one? You’ll love it.”

“And the people there?”

“From all across the wastes; there are a couple of smaller cities, but I don’t know any with as much reach and renown as Vega. Not even your tin-can Kingdom.”

If there was someone who knew about his mother, it would have to be there. He was sure of it.

— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —

Dame Morgana hummed to herself, busy by the fire. Erec gave a soft cough, unable to withstand the nervous edge in the air. They’d hardly had a second to breathe after coming to a stop. The entire day, Erec worked on his nerve to confront Yniol and get this nonsense to end. Instead of that unpleasant conversation, Dame Morgana came and swooped him and Colin up like a whirlwind.

All in the name of her ritual.

She danced in a long black dress; ignoring Boldwick’s orders to stay in their Armor. Her song carried softly and stopped at planned points.

Every time she stopped, she drove a crystal into the ground. They were black spikes, close to obsidian. How she’d hung onto them with no one noticing, Erec couldn’t guess. Maybe Boldwick knew but ignored it. From what he’d observed, she got away with more than anyone else.

Next to the fire in the middle of their circle was a pot of water, boiling away as she worked.

Her song made his eyelids feel heavy. Which meant he was under the effects of one of her rituals, he was sure. He tapped his gauntlet against the helm to his right and took a lazy look at Colin and Garin. Both of his friends were dealing with the ritual in different ways. Garin swayed and mumbled like he did when they stayed up way too late. Colin, on the other hand, was alert. Not looking away from Dame Morgana for an instant.

I bet he sees what she’s actually doing.

“It’ll be fine,” Erec told Garin. His friend was ultimately nervous about this. While it was a bit of a lie since if this worked, they’d be undergoing a dramatic change that risked their Faith Virtue. Aside from spitting in the church's face, since neither of them focused on Faith, it’d likely be a better tool for them.

Garin gave him a half-hearted grin, and Colin remained quiet.

Dame Morgana finished her loop around them, now with her four crystals shoved into the ground… North, East, South, and West. There was an internal consistency to it, as were most of her rituals. With that completed, she unfolded a white cloth; four peyotes sitting peacefully within it. Their little white buttons stood out as the major cause of what they’d experience.

They were hallucinogenic. That much Erec knew from Dame Juliana’s lectures; they were not to eat peyote. But here they were. About to do what another instructor told them not to do on the orders of an even higher-ranking Knight.

“The veil between the physical world, and the world that underlines and connects them all, is thinner than most realize,” Dame Morgana said, taking a small pairing knife and delicately cutting the small buttons off the peyote. “We peer past the veil at times, some of us. Like Erec. When we do, whether it be by Divine Talent or insight, it’s possible to take hold of the part of ourselves that exists on the other side, and become cognizant of it within this one.”

“…The way your mana influences the surrounding magic. Abnormal. You coax it into following different pathways,” Colin muttered, ignoring her completely.

“—Abnormal? Glyph work is abnormal. But I digress. Today isn’t about mana and magic. It’s about the soul.” Morgana took a handful of the peyote buttons and dropped them into the boiling water. “Take one another's hands, align yourselves to sit in a direct line from the fire to the crystals.”

They were already committed, so no one argued with her. The three of them shifted around the fire. Coordinating themselves in the cardinal directions.

To still hold one another hands, they were awful close to the fire. Were it not for their Armor, Erec would be worried about the heat. But he felt it on his face. Sweat gathered on his brow, but the coolness of his body helped regulate it.

“Repeat after me,” Dame Morgana began, “Spiritus intus, mundum foris amplectitur. Intra ignem, ostende mihi quid sim, quid ero, et quid fuerim.”

The words were in Latin, some of them outside of Erec’s understanding, but pronouncing them was simple enough. With each word, the world slipped a little further away; he felt a heat burning in his chest. But it wasn’t the overwhelming rush of Fury. As he looked at where his hands met his friends, he saw the low, nearly non-present glow of a silver fire.

Across from him; plants were pushing stems up around where Dame Morgana sat. Flowers bloomed despite the lack of light and grew from where she touched the ground.

“Vagus, vagi, fui quod es, eris quod sum. Sequere, vide, vive.”

There it was, more of those words. Floating out of him. His head lulled as he spoke, enchanted and taken away with each syllable.

[I dislike this.]

Even that machine, so tied to who he was by now. It wasn’t real. The veneer of life slid by; he watched the woman in her black dress pour the boiling peyote tea into four mugs, placing each carefully in the hands of their recipient. Steam curled from the mug, the smell tangy and fake. This was all a thin shell, each moment a passing picture.

That fire inside of him burned bright, the silver calling to him. Guiding him.

Take the fire and escape.

Those words came from nowhere, yet everywhere. At the woman’s instructions, he raised the ceramic mug to his lips. Just like the two others beside him. But their eyes were already far away, looking past what was in front of them.

It tasted bitter, an awful sensation on his tongue as he gulped down the whole drink, per the instructions of the woman.

Then softly, she sang and danced. Before he knew it, he was up dancing with her; the two of them made circles around the other two. That black dress of hers was no longer black; rather, it radiated a bright white light. A perfect mirror of the moon far above, flashing with a glow that seemed so far away. Erec twisted, laughing and signing until his throat went hoarse, his own flames covering his body.

With each step, he treaded on a flower growing on the ground, a perfect circle of greenery around the fire; his flames caught the flowers, burning them up to ash. From those ashes, more flowers would grow once she tread the same ground.

A perfect circle of life and death.

His fire burned, not with anger, not with hate, not with rage. But with life.

The world burned away in a silver flame before his eyes. Burned away this reality, and swept him somewhere else. He felt as if he were soaring, coated with silver fire, flying through the void. A comet.

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