Chapter 1.136 [The Tyrant Riot]

Chapter 1.136 [The Tyrant Riot]

The Tyrant Riot

Their feud was ancient.

With their finest days so many years behind them, it was easy for an outsider to forget that the elders of the Raging Heaven Cult had once been the hands that shaped the free world. The fact that they could be called elders at all, each one marked by the same indigo brush, was itself a damning sign of their decline. They had been unique existences once. They had been triumphant, and terrible.

Even before the high bastard of the Raging Heaven Cult had stolen them from their thrones, they had despised one another. It was often said that a monarch inherited their nation’s riches alongside its scars, and that every son bore the burden of his father’s sins. For existences like theirs, inheriting nations from fathers and mothers that had ruled for countless mortal generations, the weight of ancestral enmity was overwhelming.

Tearing each of them down from the seat of their power, breaking their crowns and discarding their fragments - that has been insult enough. The kyrios could have killed them then and there and they would have spent an eternity cursing his existence in the underworld. But, of course, that hadn’t been enough for the Free Mediterranean's least satiable hedonist. No. He’d wanted more from them.

The elder Tyrants of the cult hated the mad kyrios for usurping them. But they reviled him for forcing them to band together.

Time together had done nothing to mend the wounds inflicted by their predecessors. There were not enough centuries, could never be enough thread on the loom, for their enmity to be put to rest. Shared company only made it worse. Naturally, though he waxed poetic whenever challenged on the subject, the kyrios had known this would be the result.N0v3lTr0ve served as the original host for this chapter's release on N0v3l--B1n.

He’d thought it was funny at the time

Now, their joining brought ruin to his city. They destroyed it all - the monuments built in his name, the monuments that he had built himself, and all the bright-eyed examples of the young generation’s budding virtue. All of it crumbled in the face of eight Tyrants’ ancient malediction.

Cosmic laws were overwritten, repealed, and overwritten again at a rate that mortal man could hardly even conceptualize, let alone perceive. Their clashing destroyed the world around them in a thousand different ways, sparing nothing but the enduring amethyst that wound through and bolstered Kaukoso Mons. Free at last to vent their anger, they unmade everything the Tyrant Riot had built.

They found no catharsis in the act. In fact, it only stoked their fury. No matter how much of his life’s work they unmade, they couldn’t destroy the portion of him that still lingered in the marrow of their bones.

No matter what they took from the kyrios’ accursed legacy, they couldn’t shake the feeling he was laughing at them still.

They fought alone against seven, each of the kyrios’ would-be usurpers, but the word brawl could not have done it justice. Even the concept of a battle was not enough. Regardless of their current circumstances and no matter how disgraced - when a Tyrant fought, they went to war.

The war for the indigo throne had begun the day the Tyrant Riot died. They had waged it cold, searching through shadows and cats’ paws for the moment where the stars aligned to strike. Each of them had desired a different version of this day, but the fact that it would come had never once been a doubt in their minds. The kyrios had throttled eight lions, chained them each to one other, and left them all to starve while vultures circled overhead. How else could it have ended?

In circumstances like these, they had no choice but to eat each other. Four of them had been deceived into a vagabond’s alliance, but their careful vows hardly mattered here - the Tyrants of Howling Wind, Scattered Foam, Broken Tide, and Waning Wax had sworn to stand against the First Son to Burn, that much was firm. But they hadn’t sworn to stand together. Nor had they sworn to spare the rest of their rivals in the joining. The raven had changed things, but only just.

Without his ethos, the Tyrant Polyzalus was not an insurmountable threat. By all accounts, the fracturing of his foundations should have rendered him a complete non-entity when the war began in earnest. Yet somehow, his wrath was more than enough to match their dominions. That wrath, and the Gadfly’s incessant fucking buzzing. They dealt horrific blows to one another, violence on a scale that made Polyzalus’ earlier clash with his Butcher look like a child’s squabble, but soon found themselves trapped in a terrible equilibrium.

If the raven’s alliance had been made of horn rather than ivory, the war might have been won in an instant. If any of them had been capable of tolerating even one more rival to the indigo throne, even just until the day was done, they might have been able to turn that tide as two. But it had been centuries since any of them were capable of such compromise - these days, they would only act together if they had no other choice. So instead they waged eight wars alone, and not a single one was winnable.

When the voice of an era returned from the East, heaven and earth and all those in between stood still to hear him speak.

“NO.”

Their horror would have stopped their hearts if they still had one between them.

“NEVER NOTHING. NEVER NO ONE.”

It echoed through the city and far, far beyond it. Further than even their perceptions stretched. It carried over the mountain ranges. It carried across the seas.

Leonidas fell wheezing to the ground. Thalestris crumpled in a bloody, blinded heap.

Ptolemy the Great looked towards the stark pillar of the north with shock and silent hope.

“THIS MAN TOO IS ALEXANDER.”

The Conqueror named his heir with pride, daring all that heard it to deny him, and the chorus of heaven raged impotently in response.

“Alex,” Ptolemy breathed. His outrage vanished, gone like it had never been. They heard a skipping beat inside his chest. They heard - his heart. He had a heart. “My brother!”

Ptolemy the Great discarded all his rivals like forgotten trash, the star crown on his brow blazing with salvation’s light. He left the seven of them there on the brink of bitter oblivion, like the bounty of their souls wasn’t worth the harvest. Like they meant nothing to him at all.

“My king!”

He shouted out, and rushed away with soaring hope.

“I’m with you! I’m here! I swear to you upon the Styx, I’ll never stray again!”

Their feud was ancient, their egos unsurpassed. Even when opportunity had come and hammered down their doors, offering up the crippled king of Burning Dusk, their hatred of each other hadn’t allowed for a single moment of true cooperation. It was simply what they were. Even the death of Polyzalus wasn’t worth the insult to their ethos. Since the day the Tyrant Riot died, they’d each resolved to never share their strength again.

The moment Ptolemy the Great turned his back on his rivals to join the king of kings, they ran him through with seven swords of all their strongest powers. They struck him down together.

The Savior died with kingdoms in his eyes.

His final breath scattered Olympia to the wind.