A New North God
From the sky, the Grand Duke's final strike — every last drop of his power poured into it — was descending along the path Simon had guided it toward.
In that instant, fire flickered to life in the eyes of both Simon and Gyros at the same time.
'Move!'
'Move!'
Simon manipulated Pier's Bone Armor down to its finest details, lashing his own body and Gyros's together ever more tightly and firmly.
Gyros immediately tried to wrench himself free of the boy, but with the Bone Armor binding them, his movements refused to cooperate.
'Shoving bone inside my exoskeleton itself?!'
KWAAAAARURURUNG!
Then an entire section of the Abyss's wall came crashing down, and the Grand Duke's black arrow revealed its ferocious shape.
The target was the back of Simon's hand — resting against Gyros's core.
If the arrow flew true as it was, it would skewer his core along with the boy's hand in a single stroke.
Left with no choice, Gyros hastily raised both arms.
KWAAAK—!
He barely managed to catch the black arrow.
[Krrrgh!]
The output was so monstrous that the flesh was peeling off Gyros's hands where he gripped the shaft. His two planted legs were being driven backward, inch by inch.
Click. Click.
Seizing the opening, Simon moved the Bone Armor, trying to lift the Greatsword of Ruin that had fallen to the ground — but Gyros's icy-blue eyes caught it at once.
'Stop it!'
GRRRRRRRUMBLE!
From the floor, the North God's tendrils erupted and clamped down hard around the Greatsword of Ruin, refusing to let it be taken. At the same moment, other tendrils snaked up to make contact with Gyros's own back.
Crunch. Crunch.
Gyros's back, shoulders, and arms swelled and bulged, reinforced by the North God's power. Still more tendrils wound around his retreating body, bracing and holding it in place.
[Krrrrgh! Just you wait!]
Clutching the Grand Duke's arrow even as it sought to pierce his core, Gyros shrieked like a dying animal.
[The moment this arrow's power runs dry, I will finish every last one of you!]
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWA!
The arrow shuddered violently as it strained forward, and the two arms gripping it broke apart and regenerated, over and over again.
[Gyros. I have something to tell you.]
Then Pier's skull rose up above Gyros's shoulder. Gyros's eyes rolled toward it.
[Pier...!]
[Yona never abandoned you. The Legion was dissolved due to some calamity, and the contracts were severed — not only yours, but with every Ancient Undead. You knew that full well.]
He had tried not to engage, but the moment Yona's name fell, Gyros's eyes began to flicker wildly.
[Contracts mean nothing! Lord Yona gave me a command, and I obeyed that command to the very end! But what did Lord Yona do? To me...!]
[Gyros.]
Pier said, flat and even.
[Yona came to the North.]
Gyros's expression froze solid.
[Wh... what did you say?]
Two weeks before the present.
The night Simon decided to go to the Carlos Northern Territory, persuaded by Nephthys.
-So. Dragging me out here alone, of all things.
Nephthys had quietly called Pier outside the ruins.
-Is there more to say, beyond what was discussed yesterday?
-Yes. And you know it. You remember going to the North with Richard back in the day, don't you?
-I do.
Pier thought Nephthys was moving with remarkable haste. She was a woman whose depths could not be fathomed, and he wanted to pin down her true intent in sending Simon north before anything else.
And there was one suspicion he could not shake.
-I'll ask you straight, woman.
Pier did not circle the point.
-Is Gyros alive?
At that, Nephthys tilted her head.
-Hm?
-I assumed you were sending the Boy to the Carlos Northern Territory as a pretext to have Gyros recovered.
She blinked her enormous eyes.
-Gyros? You mean that Ancient Undead of the 7th Legion? Didn't he die fighting the North God? I genuinely have no idea.
-Neither can we rule out the possibility that he remains in the North still.
Pier crossed his arms and pressed on.
-That thick-headed fool, clinging to his duty — he may well have kept guarding the North all this time.
-Ooooh.
Nephthys opened her mouth wide, as if thoroughly entertained.
-Richard used to say the exact same thing!
-...!
-A few years after the Legion was dissolved, Richard went to the North.
That was right.
Richard had gone to the North.
And at the most dangerous possible moment — when every necromancer on the Continent had their eyes blazing red, hunting for any trace of Richard alive or dead.
-Richard said Gyros might still be waiting for him in the North. Of course I tried to stop him! What Ancient Undead, freed from its contract, would go on obeying its Legion Commander's orders? That's what I told him, but Richard went anyway, risking everything.
Nephthys swept back her silver hair, her face clouded with regret.
-And it was only years later that word finally came back.
Richard had traveled north under the guise of a wandering traveler, but the North had been at war. The North God was alive and well, and raining blows down on Bilkenos more ferociously than ever before.
Richard had pushed past Bilkenos all the way into the Frost Field, but even there he could find no trace of Gyros. The home base of the Snow Ghost unit Gyros had once commanded stood empty as well.
In the end, Richard had no choice but to conclude that Gyros was dead, and turn back.
[Hear me, Gyros!]
Pier's eyes flared.
[Richard — no. Yona never forgot you, even after the Legion fell!]
Gyros's eyes shook like a man gone mad.
KWADUK!
The arm holding the Grand Duke's arrow lost its strength for an instant. The arrow ground to a halt, a hair's breadth from the back of Simon's hand.
[Krrgh! You expect me to believe such an obvious lie?!]
[Khekhekhe! The one telling the lie is that North God whispering inside your skull! He'd have kept Yona's visit hidden from you as snugly as a secret in a grave!]
As if he had been waiting for exactly that moment, a dark voice rang out from within Gyros's thoughts.
-Do not lend your ear to the enemy's words, Gyros. Yona abandoned you.
Gyros's eyes were growing murky, dimming.
-The easiest way to bring Yona back stands right before you. Kill his son!
Gyros slowly lowered his gaze, staring at the blue-haired boy who clung to him desperately, holding on through sheer will.
"I told you earlier, didn't I? That I can't replace my father."
The boy was smiling, entirely out of place for the moment.
"Let me prove it."
Smiling just like Yona would, Simon closed his eyes and drew up his Jet-Black.
He hadn't forced himself into this punishing position, hand pressed against the core, merely to guide the arrow.
KEEEEEEEEEING!
Simon's Jet-Black began to surge into Gyros's core like a rushing tide.
[You! Attempting Legionification in the middle of this?!]
Gyros, who had nearly lost his grip for a split second, clamped down on the Grand Duke's arrow with everything he had. The moment his concentration wavered, even briefly, that cursed arrow would punch through the back of Simon's hand and slam into his core.
GURURURURURU!
Within Gyros's core, Simon's Jet-Black and the North God's Jet-Black tangled together and warred with one another.
And in that moment, Gyros thought this dark blue-black force flooding into his body felt profoundly, achingly familiar. Not a flicker of resistance rose within him.
'That should be enough.'
Simon paused the Legionification for a breath and roared.
[Submit to me! Ancient Undead of my father!]
[!]
Simon's Absolute Order.
Gyros's knees nearly buckled. It felt as though an overwhelming majesty was pressing down upon his shoulders.
'So this is —'
Yona's son.
A new command, laid atop the old one — the order to protect the North that had long since become a curse, binding him in place.
The murky light in Gyros's eyes began, slowly, to return.
The dark voice faded, shrinking into a distant echo, and vitality seeped back into his reddened field of view.
Griiip.
Strength returned to Gyros's arms.
He could feel it now — time had passed, and the Grand Duke's arrow's output was dwindling little by little. Gyros released one hand from the arrow and reached back to grasp Simon by the nape of the neck.
'Ah!'
Simon's pupils wavered.
'He could have held it with one hand all along...!'
And then Gyros flung Simon sideways. The instant Simon was torn away from him, the tip of the Grand Duke's arrow trembled and tried to swivel after the boy.
But.
KWAAAK!
Gyros threw his own body into the arrow instead.
FWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
A blinding flash, and a colossal explosion tore through the chamber. Simon's body went tumbling head over heels.
He lifted his head, feeling the ache radiate through every inch of him.
'...!'
Through the smoke of the blast, he could see it — a gaping hole punched clean through Gyros's body.
The arrow was vanishing in the distance, having obliterated the wall behind him.
[I could not bring myself to wound the son of Lord Yona.]
Gyros smiled, black blood streaming down him. Simon scrambled upright in alarm.
"Gyros!"
[And Lord Yona's final order.]
He closed his eyes.
[The North must be protected. And what menaces the North most is the North God. Which means, by his command, I must —]
His body sagged.
[— destroy myself.]
THUD!
Gyros, his body hollowed by that enormous hole, collapsed to the floor.
"Gyros!"
Simon rushed over. He could feel it — the Jet-Black within Gyros was fading, dimming by the second.
Gyros lifted his head with painful effort.
[Forgive me, son of Lord Yona. And...]
His arm moved, reaching toward the sky.
[Lord Yona. I could not see your command through to its end, and I am...]
Tuk—
The words never finished. His arm fell and struck the ground.
Color was draining from Gyros's body, bleaching it bone-white.
"Stay with me! Gyros!"
[Boy!]
Then Pier came running.
[Steady yourself! It is not too late!]
Pier laid Gyros flat, then swung the Greatsword of Ruin and cleaved his body open. Into the gap, he thrust his hand with all haste.
Pop-crack!
From within, he drew something out.
Gyros's core.
The core bore slight damage from the Grand Duke's arrow, but dark energy still flowed within it.
"What are you going to do with that?"
[With things as they are, there is but one final recourse!]
Pier marched forward, step by deliberate step, and pointed ahead.
At the far end of the North God's chamber.
There it was — smaller than what they had glimpsed in the old Abyss, but unmistakably alive and writhing: the true North God.
The North God's eyes ground slowly around and fixed on Simon and Pier.
[Gyros believed he had destroyed the North God and become the new North God himself.]
Pier's lips curled upward.
[In truth, he was nothing more than that thing's plaything, from beginning to end.]
Somehow, it was a smile laced with fury.
SHAAAAAAA!
In what looked like a last desperate gambit, the North God raised tendrils from the floor on every side. But Pier swept the Greatsword of Ruin in a single arc and erased them all.
[Now comes the moment when the true North God is born, Boy!]
Pier turned back to Simon, his eyes smoldering with ferocious light, and held out Gyros's core.
[Seat a 'new North God' that submits to you upon that throne — and become the King of the North!]
"..."
Simon gazed at Gyros's core for a long moment, then, as if arriving at a decision, took it and stepped forward to stand before the North God.
"Gladly."
[Human! Human! A mere human!]
Then, from the North God's mass of flesh, a grotesquely distorted Continental tongue burst forth.
[We are the dead! Only through death did we become complete beings! Unstable, trembling living creatures will never understand us — never accept us!]
The North God convulsed its flesh in desperation.
[You there, Ancient Undead! Pier, was it?! Why does a perfect being such as yourself kneel to a living child?! Take my power! With your strength and mine combined, we will drag this world into death itself... KHOOHAAK!]
GWADUDUDUDUK!
The bone-white Greatsword of Ruin cleaved straight through the North God's body.
"Shut up."
Simon murmured, his eyes cold as frost.
And in his free hand — the one not gripping the sword — Gyros's core was flashing brightly.
"It won't pay off everything you owe, but it's going to hurt. A lot."
Simon put his strength into the hilt.
Black blood sprayed in every direction.