Shinsou was barely conscious and the world around him seemed to be blurring into a sickly haze, like an oil painting ruined by a water spillage. His joints ached where Keats had struck him and where he had impacted the cold, hard floor. Blood flowed in crimson torrents from his lips, dripping down his chin and forking down the front of his neck. The salty taste upon his lips from the liquid was an unfamiliar one that stunned him momentarily – there weren’t many people who had caused the mighty Shinsou Vaan Osiris to bleed – but after a few moments, his mind snapped back to reality.
Flicking strands of brown matted hair out of his face, Shinsou looked up to survey the carnage before him. As he did so, he caught sight of Keats slumped against the northern wall of the Cartographer, lay prostrate amongst the debris one of the many mahogany bookshelves that lined the chamber walls. A pair of wincing, dark eyes looked back toward him, the glowing bruises above his cheeks visible even in the dim glow that fought through the thick rain clouds outside. His features were gaunt and frail, almost as if something had leeched the life from his body, and his chest rose and fell harshly as the man’s lungs tried to work through the pain of his injuries.
Shinsou managed, slowly, to push himself onto all fours. His breath was laboured to the point of almost choking and his strength felt sapped from Keats’s repeated assaults, but eventually the Telgradian staggered to his feet, swaying like a rubber man before eventually steadying himself on two feet. His first steps were slow and small. He looked down to his right hand to see his Dark Lance still somehow locked in his bloodstained grip, and began to amble past the Cartographer’s stone pedestal in the centre of the room. Ahead of him, his target was spread across a pile of books and broken wood, barely moving.
Then, suddenly, reality was sucked into pure, brilliant white.
Shinsou panicked. The floor, the walls, the whole Cartographer had exploded into a million tiny fragments of reality that spun away from him uncontrollably like shrapnel. Was this some sort of trick or illusion? Was Keats doing this to him?
It wasn’t long before he realised, alone in the void, that he could no longer feel the pain of his injuries or taste the bitterness of his wound upon the tip of his tongue. His clothes were clean, his hair swept back into its usual slick style. His arms and legs were no longer aching, and his magic had dissolved into nothing.
“Where am I?”
He wasn’t expecting there to be a response, so when it came and took form of a softly spoken female voice, it startled him.
“The question, Shinsou, isn’t where you are. Right now, it is who you are. I will help you…remember.”
The woman’s form seemed to manifest through a cloud of grey vapour before his very eyes, and took a moment to fully appear. Her hair was brown, straight, falling in soft waves to the middle of her back. Strands hung in layers about her glowing face. Her nose was petit and her cheeks were smooth. Her clothes seemed to consist of a flowing gown of light, one that Shinsou’s eyes could never really focus on, as if one were gazing into ultra-violet light. She gazed at him with green eyes that sparkled, beautiful things that regarded him with a warm interest, and yet all the while seemed to enquire.
When the realisation hit him after a few moments of reflection, Shinsou’s eyes widened with shock.
It couldn’t be.
“…Rhovani?”
In the blink of an eye, the atmosphere changed and for a moment it threw Shinsou off guard. The air became hot and dry, but laced with a familiar scent of Jal Shey bitterweed that caused him to squint unflatteringly. They now stood in the ruins of a vaguely familiar Telgradian valley, one he couldn't place off the top of his head, but a looming statue blinked into focus against the burning red sky as his eyes adjusted to the dying light.
Then, he knew. This was the Valley of the Jal Shey Lords.
“Five years ago, you, as General Atlas Revaan, came to the Telgradian Outlands to stop a separatist rebellion from tearing Telgradia apart. Under the guise of a war hero, you obtained permission to enter the Jal Shey territories, usually forbidden, to finish your campaign.”
That’s what I wanted people to believe. That’s what I needed people to believe.
“…Only that campaign was a lie. The separatists had long since been defeated, and were already crushed and scattered across Telgradia after the battle of Gaus years before. The war was already won, but so far away from the King’s territories you knew that no-one would be able to stop you entering the Outlands if you convinced your troops there was more to be done before the battle was over.”
I lied, but I had to. They tried to stop me coming for you. I couldn’t let that happen.
“The Jal Shey had taken me three years before you came, smuggling me through their outposts and into the deepest recesses of their territories. By the time you got to the Temple of Osiris, having ruthlessly cut through swathes of your enemies and having sacrificed the blood of your own men, there was nothing you could do.”
…It was too late.
The woman turned, staring towards the setting sun on the horizon.
“The beast you know as Temperance was created by the dark magic of the Jal Shey, and to finish their creation they needed a fuel source. However, for all of their experience in the black arts, they could never create anything that could keep it alive for long enough.”
You always had such a radiant smile and warmth I couldn’t understand in the cold light of day. Your beauty was unreal.
“I was dragged into the temple’s lowest level, stripped bare, and forced to watch as their disgusting creation of bone and shadow consumed all of their living prisoners, but it still wasn’t enough. Then, the Jal Shey realised that I was of the bloodline.”
Your power, though, was even more potent than your beauty. A princess of the royal bloodline? They must have thought they had struck gold. Your soul alone was enough.
“I realised that there was no escape. Temperance consumed me without mercy, moments before you arrived. But, I thought, if I could just keep my soul intact, perhaps I could influence it enough to prevent it from harming Telgradia…from harming you.”
Nothing turned out right, Rhovani. Our bond…
“However, such was the strength of our bond that the darkness inside Temperance overcame my will and was able to manipulate you. Sentient at last, it used its vile power to transform you into Shinsou Vaan Osiris and send you to do its bidding across Telgradia. I couldn’t stop it, but I knew that if I tried, I could maybe weaken the link between you.”
It worked. The further away I travelled from the Temple of Osiris, the weaker the control over me was. But then, something happened. Even as Temperance’s influence started to break, my own feelings started to manifest. You were lost to me, Rhovani, because Telgradia deemed you lost to them and refused to help. The darkness Temperance had filled my soul with was replaced with real, almost tangible hatred. Out of that hatred I waged a relentless war against my people. I was responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.
Afterwards, inside, I felt a terrible remorse. Once the anger and the sadness subsided, I realised I was no longer the ruthless Emperor of Telgradia. I was in isolation with only my regrets and my war-mongering accomplice Keats left. Thirsty for power, his mind completely dominated by Temperance’s twisted grip, he wanted to purge everything Telgradian from the face of the planet. That’s when I realised I had to act, and by sacrificing my whole power I somehow temporarily sealed Temperance using the Cartographer on Althanas and faked my defeat.
I knew that once I was captured, the only sentence the council could pass would be imprisonment in Kokushi’s seventh level and a complete razing of my soul. They would store enough of my original essence in a Pillar vessel to ensure I could return to “myself” again. Keats would then come for me, and resurrect me under the impression we would be continuing our vendetta against the Telgradian Monarchy.
Rhovani turned towards Shinsou, raising a hand to his chin and softly stroking his cheek.
“…This, Shinsou, is you in the flesh. Free of that insatiable hunger for revenge. Free of your hatred.”
I’m not free of my hatred. I’m not free of anything.
Not yet.
Rhovani stood before him and clasped her hands demurely in front of her.
“Go, and do what you must to be free again. Shinsou, you are…”
The white void returned, wiping away the remnants of the Jal Shey valley, and collapsed in on itself to form a corridor of bright blue light. As Rhovani’s silhouette faded into non-existence, Shinsou followed the passage, which dipped sharply as it carried him back into reality. Strange sensations followed, from what seemed like him splashing through stagnant water to there suddenly being many openings along the walls, gaping mouths revealing endless chasms to the unknown.
The moment came at last when Shinsou finally arrived back at the chaotic scene of the Cartographer. A new surge of adrenaline welled up in him, empowered by his vision of Rhovani, his lost love, but this one he stamped down as he cast his eyes back towards the bleeding Keats. Shinsou, with renewed purpose, approached him, glancing back over his shoulder to see if Keats’s assailant was moving. He wasn’t.
As Shinsou reached Keats, the Telgradian’s former right hand man quivered and looked up. He no longer saw a man, or an Emperor. Instead, a demon loomed above him, his eyes ablaze with righteous fury, wielding his Dark Lance menacingly. Keats’s shoulders drooped and he cocked his head to one side, and his brain struggled to make sense of what he was seeing.
“How…how could I be so damaged?”
“That man…” Shinsou started, delighting in explaining Keats’s shortcoming to him before his imminent demise and gesturing back towards the motionless Gnarloc behind him “…was a prisoner in Kokushi, and part of the convict guard assigned to this mission. However, it would appear he was not Telgradian, obvious by having so easily been able to break your Jigoku Guard. Your arrogance in thinking you were untouchable and unreachable here in the Cartographer has proven to be your downfall.”
Keats winced. The sound of this mocking was deafening, soul crushing, coming from Shinsou, but the man couldn’t muster the energy for a response.
“Don't worry. I’ll give you a fitting end...for a monster. Goodbye, Jaeger, and rest easy knowing that Temperance will be joining you soon!”
With that, Shinsou recalled his dark lance, instead raising his left hand until it was level with Keats’s sprawled form. He tensed. There was a massive surge of adrenaline now, enough to chase off the aches and pains of his encounter, as the words of an incantation rolled from his tongue.
“Let the scales fall from their eyes, the blind, and let them know their own powerlessness. Let the wind carry their ashes to the sun, and scatter them."
From the gulley of Shinsou’s outstretched palm, the colossal grey wave of Shinohai’s deadly ash blasted towards Keats, finally answering the call of its master.
Keats’s heart, for the first time since he had challenged Shinsou, leapt into his throat as he watched Shinohai approach him. In those few seconds, as the deadly ash stripped the flesh from his face, rending asunder layers of skin and tissue, he finally felt true fear.
Strangely, he had felt that the moment he’d seen Atlas Revaan in his dormitory that it was going to come down to this. Gone were the safe walls in the Telgradian Royal Guard barracks where he had planned out Shinsou’s resurrection, replaced now only by the desolation of the Cartographer and the resting place of all of his plans. Keats knew he should be doing something, anything, to protect himself but now there was just acceptance of the inevitable. It felt like he was trapped in quicksand and no matter how much he struggled he couldn’t seem to move. The ash cut through his muscle and bones like a knife through butter, and before long the only remaining evidence that Keats had ever existed was the broken, scattered remains of his stripped, bloody carcass.
Shinsou lowered his hand, steadily, as Shinohai’s cloud dissipated in front of his eyes, leaving nothing but a bloodied mess where Keats used to be against the wall.
There was no disbelief, no remorse in his soul for what he had done. Keats’s eyes that had looked up towards him in those final moments were no different to those of any other murderer that had accepted their fate, that death had finally come to collect, and now that he had silenced this madman Shinsou finally felt somewhat vindicated.
And then, suddenly, he saw her. Rhovani’s image. He doubted his eyes, denied it, but her voice echoed around him. He felt strained by a sudden fear and exhaustion, and as her image momentarily superimposed itself on the side of the stone sarcophagus in the centre of the room, Shinsou’s legs gave in and everything went black, leaving a barely conscious Gnarloc alone in the Cartographer.
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Originally Posted by Philomel
