Prologue
In a vast hollow, the floor was drowned beneath a tangle of intricate, grotesque sigils. Upon them, one man watched another setting something upon an altar, and spoke.
"Hah... hah... Lior... Are we still far off?"
"No, Knox. It is nearly complete."
Footsteps crossed the stone. Step. Step. Step.
"Knox. The memory stick that holds the memories of the 74th Hero, and his corpse—I have placed them both upon the altar."
"And the blood..."
"I will be the last of it."
Around the altar, ringed in torchlight, dark blue blood and corpses heaved and rolled like some enormous, unnatural swamp. A complicated look crossed Lior's face as he spoke.
"To think that the one who was once humanity's hope should, now, become ours..."
A tremendous shock hammered the cavern ceiling—a booming crash, then thud after thud—and from somewhere impossibly far off, furious explosions and gunfire tore loose in a relentless chain.
Knox let out a short, bitter breath.
"Looks like Roana is holding up her end..."
"I hear humans call a thing like that a last supper... Everyone means to eat their fill before they go."
Knox swallowed, the sound thick in his throat.
"Heh heh... Right. Fear... That ought to taste delicious..."
"Even so, it sits poorly with me that the last of our kin left alive should be Kelly, that eccentric gourmand."
"Lior... I have regretted that the whole way here. But what choice do we have? If she is to survive without being found..."
A shrill tone burst from a small timer set aside in the hollow—beep, beep, beep—and the faces of Knox and Lior sank, heavy.
"So. It's time..."
A low roar rolled through the air. Mana surged in waves violent enough to shake even the caves far from this one.
"Those damned Battle Saintesses... Hah... Knox... I will go on ahead, to our god's side in the abyss of chaos."
"It will hardly be any difference at all... I'll be right behind you, so don't you worry."
Lior did not hesitate for even an instant. He drove the stake-like thing clutched in his hand straight through his own heart, and his body pitched forward, plunging into the pool of blood and corpses.
"O... our dank god, who howls in the darkness and crawls the floor of the abyss!!"
"Bearing the wish of every one of us... we offer You this sacrifice."
"Our wish! Hear it! Keep the promise You made to our people!!!"
As Knox roared the words, the intricate sigils drawn across the floor flared with blue light.
The density of the air around Knox began to change. The dark blue blood pooled across the floor was dragged upward as though into a black hole, gathering itself into a small sphere. In the same moment the memory stick upon the altar, and the slack body of the 74th Hero, rose weightlessly and were swallowed into the sphere that had only just formed.
Knox's flesh blanched to gray ash and scattered away into the empty air.
The little sphere lurched as if retching. Then, with a raw sucking heave and a wet, heavy slap, it vomited a black-haired boy out onto the altar. The sphere still hanging overhead sank into the boy's body and vanished.
Hard footsteps struck the stone in rapid succession.
"Hah—! Hah! Cough, cough! K-Knox!!"
A woman came into the hollow looking as though she had fought her way across a battlefield, and cried into the empty air in a trembling voice.
"K-Knox!! Lior!!"
The strength left her legs. She folded to the ground where she stood.
In the emptied hollow, only the faint, wheezing breath of a boy still drifted on the air.