“F-Father...?” Looking up, he saw the sun orb begin to shrink. “It’s not true. I don’t believe it.” At the hero Kranos’s feet lay Halberd, on the brink of death after losing his left arm.
The sky was crowded with vehicles. Panopticon’s helicopters had been hovering there for a while, but they had increased in number. There were also units without the snowflake emblem, seemingly affiliated with a different company. Inorganic camera eyes protruded from the helicopters, observing the dwindling sun.
“This...cannot be.” Kranos stood rooted to the spot. The gazes of the mercenaries of the brigade and the Reincarnators shifted. The other remaining members of the Seven Generals, Itimenos and Papus, stood ready to defend their master. Having lost the power of speech upon their resurrection, they had no words with which to admonish the listless Kranos. They were both covered in wounds, but the battle was not yet over.
“Well done, everyone. We’ll take it from here,” came a sudden voice. On the surface of Krios, there appeared a distortion in the air resembling electronic noise, out of which rose a cloud of fog. From out of that fog stepped a Reincarnator—Foghorn, a Whisper and a Manager-class member of the Project.
From out of the fog hanging above Krios there followed more Reincarnators, then more still—a vast number. There looked to be dozens of them, perhaps over a hundred. All of them belonged to the Project. These Reincarnators surrounded the heroes of Krios, the mercenaries of the Halberd Brigade, and finally their fellow Project members who had participated in the effort to suppress Prodotis and his allies.
“Now, what do we have here? You certainly took your time getting here, didn’t you? Did you meet with some kind of accident? I hope you’ve brought a written explanation of why you were late.” Toiler, also a Manager, joked in a voice dripping with sarcasm, but the color of his face was grim. He was now forced to acknowledge that there had been some undesirable political activity within the Project and, by extension, Panopticon, its parent company.
Foghorn ignored the scam artist’s jests and repeated himself. “We’ll dispose of those who remain. Every Project member below Manager-class is to evacuate. Your next appointment is scheduled to arrive from head office shortly... Be assured that we are very grateful for your service up to this point.” Though a very roundabout way of putting it, Foghorn was in fact delivering a death sentence.
The first to assert himself was Blusterer, who now occupied Rick’s body. He hefted his crossbow and aimed it right at Foghorn. Next, Repeater, with her broken right arm behind her, held out her still-functioning left hand, assuming a martial arts stance. Toiler forcefully bent back the finger that Prodotis had broken, setting it back in place, and prepared to use his psychokinetic hands.
Dill and Sid, along with the mail-cloak called Whitehead, also took up arms and assumed a circular formation with the Reincarnators at their backs. Nue, who beat her wings in the sky above, descended to meet them. The Siren did not touch back down on the ground, but instead floated above the circle as if protecting it, glaring at the enemies surrounding them.
Some distance from Dill and the others, the giant Halberd could no longer stand. Two of his subordinates, Hathaway and Mace, stood in his defense, but the weapons in their hands were not their usual armaments. The final battle was about to begin.
Sid suddenly turned in shock, looking at Dill beside him. He now knew Dill’s thoughts without them needing to exchange a word, as their minds resonated. Dill kept a stern expression and didn’t move a muscle. Eventually, Sid just nodded.
Behind them, in the center of the circular formation, they saw the signs of teleportation. Who should emerge but the Manager Starlight, who had remained unseen for some time.
“Manager, where have you been?” asked Repeater, with unconcealed scorn on his face.
Starlight answered bitterly. “The first blow I received also cut deeply. It was no use. I performed some first aid, but I was in no state to continue fighting. To make up for that, let’s say...I’ll at least let you get away, our noble hero. I’m reluctant to do that, but I’m even more reluctant to let those in the Project who just watched from the sidelines do whatever they want... If you’re quick, one more person, maybe two, might be able to escape through my gate. I must warn you, though, the range between my gates is short. I can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to lose your pursuers once you’ve teleported. Well, in any case...we have to make the best of this mess. Reincarnators gathered here, I call on you to support him. Surely you have no objection to that?”
“No. But I have.” It was not a Reincarnator’s voice that answered. “My name is Dill Steel-Link. Reincarnator Executioner.”
What were the names of those who slew and those who were slain at that moment? Dill caught Blusterer, Sid caught Repeater, and Whitehead caught Toiler, all by surprise, running them through with their respective weapons.
There was no way they could have reacted in time. They had already readied themselves for the final showdown, thinking themselves in the same boat as the mail-cloaks.
“Steel-Link, you bastard! You’ve got to be...kidding me!” As Repeater crumpled to the ground, she glared up at Dill with her gruesome visage. “Don’t tell me this is your way...of protecting us?!”
Sid took his sword in an overhand grip and delivered the finishing blow to Repeater. Starlight, standing in the center of the circle, saw all of this happen and said, his voice trembling, “You people...are insane. Even more insane than we thought...!”
“Did you forget, Reincarnator? Did you forget your enemy’s name? The mission of Terea’s hero, Aegisthus?” Without giving Starlight so much as a glance, he thrust his spear into the Manager behind him, then drew it straight back in front of himself.
“I knew...we shouldn’t have brought him with us...!” As soon as Starlight finished speaking, he expired. Dill tossed the corpse aside and glared at the Reincarnators surrounding him. “I’ll tell you my name as many times as I need to. My name is Dill Steel-Link. By another name, I am the hero Aegisthus. Killer of the dead, a calamity to Reincarnators everywhere. The blade bequeathed to the world by the Ex Machina. I can never forgive your barbaric act of destroying the city we once called home, Aspro Terea of the white walls. This is the day you bastards meet your ruin. I will kill every Reincarnator I see—no matter how many times you’re revived, I’ll kill you again. I swear I will, until I retrieve Iris’s remains! My name is Dill Steel-Link! This is the name of Redguard’s fury...!”
This announcement was being broadcast live—a news helicopter hovering above filmed the man in his rage. His voice and image rode on radio waves to be disseminated throughout the world.
Dill’s image was displayed on a screen installed in a street that Nefritis of the Seven Generals crossed as he fled along the ground of the Tower Capital. In the office of Electra, puppet leader of the New Terean Republic, his voice was heard on an old-fashioned radio by former soldiers of the Terean regular army, now engaged in guerrilla warfare as they circled a railway line laid by New Rail in the Aeros Region. He was heard in a truck commandeered by the Titan chieftain Lycaon, accompanied by a lump of flesh with a crimson eye. He was seen on television by the Tereans in the recreation room of their prison, interned there after Fireworks Inc. had suppressed their riot.
And finally, he was seen upon the Acropolis of Vulcan of the Eleven Cities, on a gigantic monitor that had just been created by the hands of the city’s god—right before the eyes of a woman with short, milky-white hair who stared fixedly at the screen.
The image of a man with rust-colored hair, daring to join a battle he had no hope of winning, displayed for all to see.