"So there it is. Our fate will have nothing to do with our own self-determination, but what you and Pantaloon write up."
The Red Colonel set in her broken armor set righted herself, but once she spat out her hateful words, she wavered. Her breathing was growing more ragged, slower.
"...what have you and the rest of them brought to the Earth ever since you landed here? You've made it a battleground for your wars and moved your men in to annex this world. Coalition...that's ransom."
The blood that fell from her shattered hand resonated with the ancient grounds. The crystalline leylines recognized it just below the surface as the line of the Kings of Avalon.
The force below shone, recognizing their descendant, but set in the stone of this place it could not speak, an illumination that brought no more than a facade of truth which could never be revealed from echoing memory.
The First Sergeant kept her gun trained on Willa as the hammer slid back into place and began to glow.
"First, you leave this piece of **** to me," Kenshiko started. "She knows what we do to mutineers."
Willa's eyes darkened as pallor took her, yet none of the ferocity left her.
"The Raiders...are mine...!"
"We're not Raiders. That was always their name for us you bitch. Not anymore. That's the second condition, Xeno." she continued, "My soldiers have been fighting to avenge their right to live free. This island is the last place the Dragon hasn't cursed, and you'll keep the WG's eyes off of it. The Government made sure their borders have been long forgotten, guarantee me their lives will not be."
"I can tell you now I won't fall in line behind Jinzi Pantaloon. But if what you say is true...and he's our best shot...then I want in."
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There in pit outside of the sequestered chamber, Blizzar would eventually find Excalibur. His telekinesis had brushed upon it, however it was not any failing of his strength that he was unable to recover the sword.
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"The third condition..." She looked over to Ochazuke then. "You have something that I need. If we're going to take the fight to That Man...."
"Kaibyo spent a lot of time on that pipedream. The First Scroll of the Chimera school proves you and her weren't wasting time. However, the last lessons of the Phoenix and Lion Schools belong to my unit now."
Ochazuke drew his wounded right arm up as he faced the pinnacle. The bleeding slowed, but it did not stop. Gun trained on Willa, Kenshiko summoned a white hot flame into her palm and extinguished the exsanguination. Pain rendered itself beneath the crawling of a quickened, black scab, and just as shortly pink flesh regrew under the scent of Phoenix ashes.
"I know you learned the rest somewhere. We'll have an exchange of techniques and complete the system."
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From this height, the blade that had hewn unhealing wounds among enemy and comrade alike had fallen with such directness that the hilt stood above the stone. Blizzar might see the top of its exposed blade caught in a fissure cresting atop a hilly depression. The telekinetic impression would not be enough to withdraw it, it was as if something was restraining it, pulling it backward.
Which was exactly what it was doing, for it was seized by a hand of its fallen guardian in the darkness.
Damask had indeed fallen in the battle with his brother Golems. Arthur's magic shed from the shell and now merged with the substance of his own creation. The enormity of the figure in the darkness shifted with the cavern, light crept into the ruin. He had become one with the earth, and the spark of Arthur's will in this place empowered him one the sword returned to the stone. With a clarity never before heard, the golem spoke a command.
Rise, Vermillion.
It started with a rumble from the base of the hollow chamber, then the tremble began to echo, carrying from the The bedrock of Charlie Base began to shift. Tremblind, the island began to rise over the tumult of the ocean waves, facets of the broken kingdom carved in stone filtered salt through the marble and limestone as the breadth of Charlie Base was now surrounded by terraced miles.
There, the columnal structures that had been fused into the bedrock began to rise from shale and dust, the broken kingdom no longer obscured.
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Everyone who took the Red knew that it was in spite of the Red Colonel that a part of That Man's magic had been undone here, and yet in this place sequestered past the Gate of Ten, Willa herself stood outside of it. She turned listlessly to face the place she had been promised rise beyond her and all the venom died within her.
The fresco murals of the Dragon descending upon the kingdoms, once a beast, then a man that spawned miracles, the deceptions sown until the First Guardian rose up against him. How many stories had passed through the ages, generation to generation, carrying a warning wrapped in the promise of greater things?
How many had passed the Colonel's ears, that she would be the one to bring this unjust world to them? Though the shift outside of the chamber door could be seen as the change Damask brought carried across the realm, in here, the air carried only the scent of dust and salt.
Where they stood here in the foundation of the ancients, all was still, as if something had been set in this place by somebody outside of Arthur's kingdom, one who was not entirely part of the emergent story outside.
Carrying the rising foundations cloistered in the abyss upwards, Damask carried Blizzar up until the remains of Vermillion within Charlie Base once again saw light. Willa's features glazed over as she looked upon the Golem's visage, falling still as he rose upwards and left her behind.
Then Kenshiko raised the pistol, finger on the trigger, and rest its burning barrel to the back of Willa's head...