Halcyon Days: The Colossus

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The world was being reborn in judgment and rain, and Lucan was once again dealing with heretics.

A dramatic thought, he knew, but a prince was permitted his indulgences. Besides, when the scholars wrote of this day, and by the Rose Crystal's light they would, they'd need something memorable. The day the Colossus rose, the day White Hill fell, the day Prince Lucan stood upon the Inquisitor's skydeck and watched as millions were tithed. Yes, judgment and rain, that would do nicely.

Below, the Azure Colossus stood fifteen hundred feet under the tumultuous sky. Its crystalline armor was slick with water, its blue flesh lit by something steadier than lightning. The Iverian skyships swarmed it like wasps, their shardshot cannons blazing against that impossible hide. Deck plates thrummed beneath the prince's feet with each distant impact. Rivets sang under stress.

The city of White Hill was effectively gone. The ruptured shell lay shattered across the verdant plain. What remained would drown in dust and deluge by nightfall.

As planned, as decreed.

"We need to move above the storm, Prince."

Rook's voice cut through the downpour. The man stood at the railing, water streaming off that ridiculous chrome mask he insisted on wearing. He was staring into the tempest as if he could read a message in the clouds. His right hand tapped twice against the rail, an old, restless habit. Rook had always been like that, seeing things others missed, impatient to set them right.

"Retreat from victory?" Lucan let the words hang between them. He didn't turn. "This moment is centuries in the making, Rook. Our conviction made manifest, and you want to flee?"

"There's another ship above us." Rook pointed at the gray mass overhead, his mask tilting to catch the glow of ricocheting shardshot. "Frigate-class. I caught a glimpse when the clouds shifted. Five hundred feet higher."

Five hundred feet in the clouds. Close enough to pounce. Far enough to think no one would look up.

Of course there was. The Iverian League never could leave well enough alone. Always interfering, always protecting their wayward flock, always standing between the faithful and being reclaimed by the Emperor's rightful will.

"Scramble fighters." His hands clasped behind his back as he addressed one of his Praetori. "Engage and destroy."

"Belay that."

The words were quiet, but they cut through the squall like a blade. Rook turned to face the prince squarely, and in that moment, something changed in the air between them. An intensity that Lucan couldn't quite parse. Urgency? Almost pleading, but why?

His fingers found the hilt of his suda, the liquid-metal sidearm that obeyed the wielder's intent. "The day's success has made you reckless." Jests were one thing, and Rook had earned that privilege through years of service and camaraderie. But whatever this was, this edge in his tone and directness, it felt like overstepping. There was only one man who gave Lucan orders, and he was sitting on a throne in Aurelia.

"Trust me, Prince." There was something in Rook's voice he had never heard before. A sadness, or maybe resignation. "Keep it sheathed. You'll want it for someone else."

Before he could respond, the transformation took Rook. The Rosari change swept over him like a wave. A shroud knitted over his clothing. Red crystalline fur bloomed across his body. His frame swelled, shoulders broadening as crystal sinew overlapped over his existing form. His boots rose at new ankles to fit the shroud's digitigrade joints, lifting him higher. That chrome mask, oversized on his human face, now fit perfectly against the Rosari skull beneath.

"They're here," Rook growled, and his voice was different now. Deeper, with a reverberating timbre.

Thunder cracked the sky in half. A transport vented its Azure engines above them and dropped through the clouds, touching down hard on the rain-slicked skydeck near the port railing. Four figures dismounted, railing at their back, and three were armed. Lucan recognized the leader before he made his first step.

"First Altier Toren Luinondo." He let the name roll off his tongue. "To what do I owe the honor?"

Toren walked forward through the storm as if weather observed rank. Altiers were always like that. So certain. So sure of their moral superiority. Lucan had heard rumors of this one, but based on what he saw, Toren was just another nonbeliever come to find faith at the edge of Lucan's blade.

"You crossed the line, van Ferro." Toren's voice was level, controlled, but the rage beneath it was unmistakable. "And you don't even see it, do you? Three million lived in White Hill. Three million. That thing... this... Colossus... it won't stop with Iveria. It will consume the whole world."

"You traveled all this way to warn me?" He spread his hands in mock surprise. "I expected threats, Toren. Posturing. Perhaps some violence. Not sermons. Not from your ilk."

"You misunderstand." The suda in Toren's hand refined itself into a katana, thin and exact. Static crawled along the blade's blue edge. "This is the part where I stop you from burning the world for the sake of your damned ego."

Ah. There it was.

The grin came naturally. It was the one he saved for moments like this, the one that showed too many teeth. "Not for my ego, First Altier. For my faith." He glanced at his Praetori, the imperial elites, already beginning their transformations. "And your mistake is thinking the world will burn. No, no, only the unworthy will blister."

Toren's two Altiers responded in kind, their stances shifting. Lucan could see the blue lines glowing under their skin, crystal flakes flickering on their flesh. They were prepared for what was to come. Lucan took stock of the battle as his eyes moved past them to the fourth figure standing in the back. Unarmed. Unremarkable. Just a pilot, presumably.

Something about him was deeply upsetting. The man stood there as if he had all the time in the world. The gall to land on his skydeck and act so indifferent.

Rook wasn't as good as his Praetori, but he was still a competent fighter. Lucan would let him play and finish off whatever remained of that man's smugness once Toren's breath had left his body.

"Rook. Think you can handle the scrawny one?"

There was a pause, one that took too long. When Rook finally spoke, his voice was strange.

"I'll manage."

Something about the way he said it made the prince's expression falter. As if Rook understood something. As if he'd been expecting this. As if this was all part of the plan.

No time to wonder. Violence was calling him, and the transformation was the final rite. It sang in his blood, and he surrendered to it.

The change came through his veins. Crimson fur erupted across his body, shrouding his limbs, torso, and head. It added mass and pushed his boots to meet the form's digitigrade stance. Clawed feet formed beneath that. He gripped his suda off his belt, and the liquid metal rose from the hilt to set as a single-edged blade.

Six Rosari against three Altiers and a pilot. History said Lucan was far outmatched. He liked those odds. More for the scholars to write about.

Not that he was truly worried. Even among Rosari, the prince was different. The gale around him thickened, responding to his will, and that was his personal gift. An accretion field he could project with a thought. The weight built the longer you stayed near him. Five feet from his heart was his limit, but inside that radius, every second added drag to any limbs, blades, or breath. Step out and stay out, and the world returned to normal, like a diver coming up for air. Most Rosari could only harden their own bodies, and even that took effort. His power bent the world itself. Rain struck the deck harder around him. Welds began to buckle under invisible pressure.

He swung high, arcing the blade with his full weight. Toren sidestepped, and then he wasn't there. His katana printed a wet line across Lucan's collarbone. The blade arrived first. Toren lagged into the space a heartbeat after. Static crackled along his arms where the movement left its debt.

Lucan launched another swing. Another miss. Each one was deliberate. He didn't need to hit. He just needed to stay close.

Toren circled right, blade extended, hunting a real opening. His katana sliced upward, elegant and precise. The prince caught it with his forearm and his chin, letting the edge bite into the crimson pelt. The pain was sharp and bright and utterly meaningless.

"You're as predictable as all the rest." Lucan laughed.

His boots skidded, he shoved forward, and Toren stumbled backward two steps. The prince stepped closer, and the air continued to thicken around Toren, weight gathering with each beat. A rivet head popped and pinged into the wash.

"You think protecting people is predictable?" Toren's voice was strained now, fighting against the phantom pressure.

"Your compassion is cruelty." Lucan advanced, step by heavy step, closing to within arm's length. "You let the weak suffer because you're too frightened to do what must be done. I'm told your father understood that, in the end. Isn't it strange how true clarity comes only when you're bleeding out for what you believe in?” Toren’s eyes hardened, but he did not respond. “No? You'll find out soon enough."

Toren twisted free, somehow, impossibly, and kept his distance. Lucan could see crystal scales bloom and dissolve around his legs. A calculated burst. Clever, but an overexertion. The accretion drag would fall away like wet canvas. Toren was a step past him, deck wash erupting where his feet had been a heartbeat before. His blade sliced across the prince's side. The cut was deeper this time, and a darker wetness spread against his pelt. Hot metal and ozone cut through the damp air.

Lucan roared, not in pain. Never in pain. In joy. In the pure fundamental thrill of life and death.

He pressed forward, and Toren retreated toward the starboard rail where his two Altiers were engaged with the Praetori. As Lucan crowded in, the air thickened again, slowing Toren's movements. A wide, deliberate swing. A horizontal arc forced Toren to his left. The movement was calculated, precise, herding him back against the nearest Altier. Toren seemed to be aware of the field and was doing his best to avoid it. They were near the railing now, away from where Rook fought the pilot by Toren's transport. Toren and his guard fought back-to-back, protecting each other.

Compassion. Exactly as planned.

Another swing. Toren moved instinctively to shield his companion. To protect the weaker fighter.

A feint. The prince pivoted low, then high. His blade drove deep into the Altier guard's back, through cloth and flesh and bone. The man fell with a sound that was almost a sigh. The deck replied with a hollow thud.

Toren froze. Something in his face shifted. Pain, guilt, rage, and grief, all of it at once. The sight amused the prince, but he didn't care to understand it. Didn't care to name it.

"You see?" He hissed through his fangs. "Trying to save the weak only gets them killed."

The Colossus bellowed somewhere below them, a sound like continents smashing together, and the deck shuddered under their feet. Even here, far above the creature, its presence pressed against the world.

Before he could strike again, before he could drive his blade through Toren's heart and end this, another cry echoed across the deck.

This one was metallic. This one was human. Rook's voice.

Lucan turned.

Across the skydeck, near the port railing, the pilot stood utterly still. His hand rested flat against a leather pack on his back. Steam rose from the leather, visible even in the storm. Whatever this was, twenty feet away, Rook's shroud had already buckled. The transformation collapsed and crystalline fur sloughed like frost in sunlight. His human form was already sliding across the slick surface toward the edge.

Rook's chrome mask caught the crossfire's glow as he tumbled over the edge. That mirror sheen, that ridiculous mask. It hung for a moment, and then it was gone, swallowed by wind, cloudburst, and distance.

Rook was gone with it.

Lucan's blade stopped mid-swing, and he took a step to the edge Rook had just gone over. His thumb ground against the suda's hilt. He felt a screw pop and had to restrain himself before he damaged it further. The only person who'd ever called him "Prince" like it was both a title and a joke was gone. The only person who'd stood at his side for three years of planning. Who believed in the prince's vision. The only person Lucan could trust.

The thought passed.

He felt an echo of something. Guilt, perhaps, or sadness, or just the loss of a useful tool. It didn't matter. Whatever it was, it wouldn't help him kill Toren. He had to focus. Emotion was a luxury, and he had never been one to indulge in luxuries that did not serve him.

"After him!" Toren shouted before lifting the fallen Altier with surprising care. The pilot vaulted into the transport, hand still on that pack. Toren followed with the body. The surviving Altier broke from the Praetori and jumped over the edge after them.

Lucan charged forward, claws scraping against the wet deck, but they were already gone, swallowed by the storm below.

He slammed his fist into the railing. The metal collapsed beneath the blow. 

A beat passed as he stared into the storm, then at their works. The Colossus still fought, which meant the day was not lost. One of his guards approached cautiously. 

"Your orders, Prince?"

He turned slowly, meeting her eyes. She was young. Probably joined the Praetori thinking it was just an honor, not a sacrifice. She would learn. 

"Pursue them. Retrieve Rook's body from wherever it fell. Bring it back to me."

Her face went pale. She understood what that meant. Not the fall. She could survive that. Rosari could survive a terminal impact. No, she saw the storm below, the Colossus raging, and the chaos of war spreading across Iveria. Rook's corpse was already lost to wind and distance, and that's if the pilot hadn't reached it before it hit the ground. This was an impossible task in an active battlefield. Lucan did not care. His need for violence had not been quenched.

She saluted, because that was what the faithful did, and leapt into the growing darkness of the night sky.

"The rest of you," he said to the remaining guards. "Go with her. Follow them into the afterlife, if you must."

Without hesitation, they leapt over the railing one by one, dropping into the storm below.

Lucan stood alone on the deck. It should have tasted like victory. The Colossus had risen. White Hill was destroyed. The beginning of his new world, his new order, his devotion made manifest in crystal and blue flesh. Yet Toren had escaped, Rook was gone, and something that should have felt like triumph sat bitter in his mouth.

No. That wasn't how it would be written. He would tell the scholars a different story. He would tell them Rook sacrificed himself to the cause. Together, they had pushed back the Iverian heretics and secured a great victory for the faithful. That version was cleaner. Simpler. True in the ways that mattered.

After all, this was not a defeat. The divine could only ever be delayed, never denied. Any doubt in that had been washed away by the storm.