Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Chapter 75: The Identity of Theseus

Alex burst through the treeline, aether still sparking at his heels, before forcing himself to slow. His squad, as well as Ghrukk’s team, waited in a rough cluster together. Their shoulders were hunched, and their eyes were hollow. Grief sat heavy on the group, pressing them into the dirt like a multi-ton weight.

His chest ached as he saw them all like that. He walked the last stretch, and the silence broke the instant they saw him.

“Where are they?” Selka said first. Cole echoed her demand, fists clenched at his sides. When Alex didn’t answer immediately both surged forward at him, rage trembling in their movements. Someone caught Selka’s arm—Henry, maybe Ghrukk—but it barely restrained her.

“They were left behind,” Alex forced the words out, tasting bile as he said it.

The reaction was instant. Selka’s fury flashed, Cole’s face twisted like Alex had struck him. For a heartbeat Alex thought they’d tear away and run back toward the field.

“Enough!” His shout cracked across the area, harsher than he intended. He grimaced, guilt burrowing into him as every eye landed his way. Eric, Kate, Ghrukk, all asked what the plan was, each of their tones with its own angry edge.

Alex raised a hand, forcing them to quiet. He needed silence, needed some iota of control, or the following conversation would break them all.

“Listen up...”

He held Selka’s stare first, then Cole’s, waiting until their chests stopped heaving and their trembling settled into a simmer. He could still feel the heat of their fury burning beneath the surface. It wasn’t gone, only temporarily contained.

Alex swallowed. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep them from losing it entirely, but he also didn't know what to say. He looked back at Selka, and then, almost against his will, at Holly.

If it had been her… if he’d watched her head torn from her shoulders right in front of him… nothing, no one, could’ve stopped him from getting revenge. He’d have been uncontrollable, uncontainable. He would’ve been death itself.

So how could he begrudge Selka and Cole their rage? How could he deny them their grief, their fury, their need for blood? He couldn’t. He understood it too well. But fighting the Hive? The Hive was suicide. He knew it as surely as he knew the taste of his own breath. They would all die, every one of them, if they tried. There was no question about it.

And yet, again, if it was Holly... would he care about that? He already knew the answer. No. I wouldn’t. I'd still march out there and give it my all.

The thought hit him deeper than he wanted to admit. He stood caught between two selves: leader and friend. Which one could he be right now? Which one did they need him to be? And which one would they need in the days ahead?

He felt like his very self had been torn apart and stitched back together a dozen times over the past few months. He had so many identities. Son, brother, soldier… survivalist, mage, prisoner, war-slave, leader, lover. How many of those had he chosen and how many had been forced on him by the System, by circumstance, by the hungry political games of others? Piece by piece, he’d been torn down and rebuilt, he'd been remade and changed.

He looked back at Cole, a man he’d once thought of as nothing but an enemy when they first met. Now he couldn’t even stand to see the anguish carved into his features.

Would it be a mercy? He wondered, To take that pain away? To use the basilisk eye, or a draught of some alchemist’s potion, to strip the memory of Rynel out of him? To ease the wound?

Would that be a gift? Or a theft?

Alex’s thoughts drifted, unbidden, to the old losses that still lingered inside him. His grandfather, gone before their time. The quiet ache of heartbreak from relationships that had fractured and fallen apart throughout life. Each memory had weighed him down in its own way, a chain wrapped around his feet.

How many times had he wished he could’ve just… forgotten? Cut out the hurt and erase the sadness, leave nothing but clean, unscarred memories behind? Wouldn’t that be better?

No. Not really.

Would he truly want to forget his grandparents completely? Would he want someone to forget him when he died?

No, he wouldn't. If he stripped those pieces away, if he kept chipping and cutting, what would be left of him in the end? A ship remade plank by plank until no part of the original vessel remained. Still seaworthy, maybe. But would it still be him?

Change could be good. Necessary, even. But it had to be chosen, and carefully considered. Rooted in something deeper than fear, or survival.

“Hypocrit.Is that not what you are doing with all your procedures? All your enchantments, flesh boy?” Obby broke into his thoughts.

I… no, I… Alex faltered. The weak denial caught in his throat.

Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he exactly that? A pseudo-chimera, hiding behind human skin. He looked whole on the outside, sure, but inside? Inside, he carried a dragon’s heart thundering in his soul and enchanted metal grafted into his neck and spine. He had a soulgate turned inside-out in his body and rewoven by his own hands. He was patchwork, stitched together by desperation and borrowed power.

I’m doing what’s necessary, he thought at last. Necessary to keep myself and my friends, alive.

“And the Queen isn’t?”

The question slammed into him, a gut-punch he couldn’t dodge. Because he knew the answer. The truth was bitter ash on his tongue.

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No, he wasn’t so different from the Queen after all. She reshaped her children with flesh and blood, and he was doing the same with steel, and aether. He’d already laid his mark on everyone here, binding them with [Lattice Spiral] to make them more powerful. An attempt to keep them alive a little longer. He was piecing them apart, reforging them in his own way, just as he had himself.

And he wasn’t going to stop. That was the part that scared him most. He knew he wouldn’t stop.

He was the captain of this ship, and he would replace every plank, every nail, every mast if he had to. He would tear out pieces of himself and bolt in new ones until nothing of the original man remained, until not even Adam would recognize him anymore. And still… still, it might not be enough.

The thought clawed at him, cold and sobering. How many times would he have to rebuild? How many identities would he strip down to the bone, cast aside like ruined ship boards? How many times would things need to be pieced apart until Theseus got his fucking answer, and was finally satisfied?

There never would be enough.

“Hey, Alex!” Holly’s shout pulled him back to reality, the weight of his thoughts dropping away off his shoulders.

He blinked and realized every eye was still on him. They were all waiting for his word, his orders. The burden came back and pressed on his chest instead, heavy with guilt… but he knew what they needed.

“The Queen called off her daughters, those other four,” he said at last. “She told me… she was going to give us a ‘gift.’”

Cole’s spoke up before Alex could explain. “What the fuck does that mean? A gift? We should kill that bitch!”

Alex lifted his hands, begging for time. “Wait, listen. She said—”

“What she said doesn’t matter, Alex.”

The words came from behind him. Alex spun and dropped into a battle stance of the Asura Path without thought. Weapons hissed from sheaths all around him, every fighter ready to cut down the source.

Malric Vaunt.

The man stood a few yards away, limping, blood slick on his robes and armor. But his stride was still strong and his face calm in a way that made Alex’s anger spike even more.

“Stay sharp,” Alex warned, eyes trained the man.

Vaunt stopped, his hands visible, making no move for a weapon. “Karsali and the Empire soldiers were given the same ‘gift,’” he said. “The chance to flee.” Vaunt’s eyes swept over them all before settling back on Alex. “But we can’t take it. None of us can. If not for revenge, then for our survival. For the entire continent itself.”

He let the meaning of his words sink in before he went on.

“Primal Chimeras are extinct outside of dungeons, across the whole of the planet, for a reason. They’re terrifyingly lethal. Even unstoppable once they reach critical mass. And now…” He gestured weakly toward the mountain, toward the battlefield they’d fled. “…now the Queen is birthing new queens. That point has been reached.”

A hollow silence followed, broken only by Selka’s furious breathing.

Vaunt’s tone hardened further, “If even one of them survives, if even one hive takes root… within years they’ll have a foothold again. They once ruled a swathe of this continent larger than any sentient race empires. And it took every single nation, every army and mage, every sect banding together to hunt them down and burn them out. And that was only because their High Queen grew greedy and overreached.

“She was an Aegis-tier monster trying to claim more than she could hold. It took the entire continent to erase them. All of us, together.”

Alex thought back, the image of the Original Queen’s smirk seared his mind, her words like a mocking joke now. This wasn’t a “gift.”, the Queen was hoping they’d foolishly choose survival in the short term, so they could be all slaughtered later.

The uproar among the group was instant.

Selka, “Then we end them! Every last one, here and now!”

“We don’t run! We kill them before they spread!” Cole roared alongside her.

Others joined in, their shouts blending a mix of denial and rage and grief overlaying with desperation.

Kate shot a blast of fire into air, getting everyone to quiet back down. “How the fuck did the Empire let this Dungeon stick around? Why wasn’t it destroyed decades ago? Do you people ever—”

“Enough!” Eric shouted. He stepped forward with his hands raised in placation. “Rage won’t help us. Think. Think, godsdammit.”

But it didn’t stop the noise, everyone began yelling once again.

Tom-Tom was trembling behind Alex, twitching like a rabbit trapped in a wolf’s den. His small hands clutched at Alex’s arm, as if he alone kept the kobold from devolving into a urine puddle.

The chaos threatened to boil over until Alex and Peter raised their voices together.

“Quiet!”

It wasn’t instant, but eventually, silence returned. Selka’s sobs cracked through the stillness, but the crowd settled enough to listen.

Alex forced his tone to remain calm, which took immense effort. “You’re right, Malric. We can’t just leave. But tell me, how the hell do we win against them? Those four Princesses, those new Queens—every one of them is at the Liquid-stage. The Original Queen is Solid-stage Adept. She’s one step from Magus.” At Alex’s revelations faces paled, and everyone’s shoulders slumped.

Malric frowned, unease flashing across his expression. For a moment, Alex even saw shock. The man exhaled slowly, shaking his head. “Reinforcements have been called. But they’ll take time—days, maybe—to gather and march here.” He paused, scanning their wounded group, then went on. “We have to hold them until then. At the very least.”

Alex tsk’d, “Hold them? That’s the plan? Just pray we die slowly enough for help to arrive?”

“We have to. Karsali’s already ordered the wreckage of the Andreia searched. If even one cannon’s intact, or talismans, or stockpiled spell-crystals, we will use it all. Anything to buy us time.”

Alex looked at his friends, every one of them was wounded, crippled, the will to fight scraped down to the marrow. He saw it in their eyes, the exhaustion, despair, the hollow places where fury burned but resolve wavered.

Could they really be satisfied with just that? Just surviving?

Malric studied him for a heartbeat, the lines around his mouth deepening, then inclined his head. “You’re reckless.” He said it like an observation instead of an insult. “But you’re not wrong.”

Alex felt something click into place in his mind. Something cold and ruthless building in his being. Holding out until reinforcements arrived wasn’t a plan that would work, they had to do more than just that. The math didn’t resolve out in their favor. The Hive had numbers, higher stats, and the willingness to lose bodies to attrition. Everything he knew about war screamed that passivity would cost them every life within his sight.

He thought back to the dungeon, of the Queen’s open mandibles, the proboscis piercing his chest, sucking that golden warmth out of him. He didn’t say anything about that memory aloud, he couldn’t. The truth of it would sound like a confession and a justification all at once, and none of them needed more reasons to look hollow-eyed at him.

“No.” The word left him quietly. “We don’t hold. We finish this instead.”

His voice found a pitch that almost sounded like confidence. “We will kill them. All of them. The mother, the daughters, every one that can breed. Then we can walk back to the hive and slaughter the rest down to the larvae.” He looked each of his friends in the face as he spoke, Selka and Cole first, then the tanks, the mages, the healers. “I know what this might cost. But, I helped make this worse. If I put my hands in the dirt that fed her… then I will help dig her grave too.”

Malric nodded and gestured for him to follow.

They all pushed through the forest, moving downhill toward the wreckage of the Andreia and the makeshift command camp Karsali had ordered set up. Behind him, Alex heard Eric bark orders and heard the rustle of people setting to work, potions sloshed as they were passed around.

Obby pipped up at that point. “Finally. I was getting bored.”

Alex knew Obby was just trying to prickle at his emotions, keeping him going, but he ignored the rock anyway.

He had a plan to make, a queen to end, and only a day to make it count.