This is not how I intended to bring the Obsidians into my fold. I wanted to use words, to come humbly, in seal skin, not armor, putting myself at the mercy of the Obsidians to show Alia that I valued her people’s worth. Valued their judgment, and was willing to put myself in peril for them. I
wanted to do as I preached. But even Ragnar knew that was a fool’s errand. And now I don’t have time for intransigence or superstition. If Alia will not follow me to war, I’ll drag her to it, kicking, screaming, like Lorn before her. For Obsidian to hear, I must speak in the only language they understand.
Might.
Sefi fires her pulseFist past my head at the doors leading to her mother ’s sanctuary. The ancient iron buckles. Bent and twisted hinges screaming. We flow past an army of prostrate giants who clutter the cavernous halls to either side. So much strength made frail by superstition. Once, when they were stronger, they tried to cross the seas. Built mighty knarrs to carry explorers across the oceans to seek out new lands. The Carved monsters the Golds sowed in the oceans destroyed each boat, or the Golds themselves melted them from the sea. The last boat sailed more than two hundred years ago.
We come upon Alia as she sits in council with her famed seven and seventy warchiefs. They turn to
us now amidst large, smoking braziers. Huge warriors, with white hair to the waists, arms bare, iron buckles on waists, huge axes on backs. Black eyes and rings studded with precious metals glitter in the low light. But they’re too stunned by the sight of the three-hundred-year-old iron doors suddenly glowing orange and melting away to speak or kneel. I draw up before them, still dragging the corpses of the Golds behind me. Mustang and Sefi hurl their captured Golds forward, kicking out their legs.
They sprawl on the ground and stumble to their feet, attempting beyond all reason to maintain some dignity here surrounded by giant savages in the smoky room.
“Are these gods?” I roar through my helmet.
No one answers. Alia moves slowly through the parting warlords.
“Am I a god?” I snarl, this time removing my helmet. Mustang and Sefi remove theirs. Alia sees
her daughter in the armor of her gods and she flinches back. Fear whispers over her lips. She stops near the five bound and gagged Golds as they finally find their feet. They stand over two meters tall.
But, even bent and old as Alia is, she’s a head taller than I. She stares down at the men and women who were once her gods before looking up at her last daughter. “Child, what have you done?”
Sefi says nothing. But the razor on her arm slithers, drawing the eyes of every Obsidian. One of their greatest daughters carries the weapon of the gods.
“Queen of the Valkyrie,” I say as if we had never met. “My name is Darrow of Lykos. Blood brother of Ragnar Volarus. I am the warlord of the Rising, which rages against the false Golden gods.
You have all seen the fires that rage around the moon. Those are caused by my army. Beyond this land in the abyss, a war rages between slaves and masters. I came here with the greatest son of the Spires to bring the truth to your people.” I wave to the Golds, who stare at me with the hatred of an entire race.
“They struck him down before he could tell you that you are slaves. The prophets he sent told it true.
Your gods are false.”
“Liar!” someone screams. A shaman with crooked knees and a bent spine. He babbles something else but Sefi cuts him off.
“Liar?” Mustang hisses. “I have stood upon Asgard. I have seen where your immortals sleep.
Where your immortals rut and eat and shit.” She twists the pulseFist in her hand. “This is not magic.”
She activates her gravBoots, floating in the air. The Obsidians stare at her in wonder. “This is not magic. This is a tool.”
Alia sees what I have done. What I have shown her daughter and what I have now brought her people whether she wants it or not. We’re the same cruel kind. I told myself I would be better than this.
I failed that promise. But noble vanity can shine another day. This is war. And victory is the only nobility. I think that is what Mustang was looking for here with Obsidians. She was more afraid that I would allow my own idealism to let something loose that I could not control. But now she sees the
compromise I’m willing to make. The strength I’m willing to exert. That’s what she wants in an ally as much as she wants a builder. Someone wise enough to adapt.
And Alia? She sees how her people look at me. How they look at my blade, still stained with the
blood of the gods, as though it were some holy relic. And she also knows I could have made her complicit in the Golds’ crime. Could have accused her before her people. But instead I offer her a chance to pretend she is just learning this for the first time.