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Promises Kept

If Fenrir was honest—and he tried to be, in every aspect of his life, even if he’d gotten really good over the years at giving others the benefit of the doubt over trusting his own intuition—he hadn’t actually believed Bastion when he said this arm would put his old one to shame.

He punched through the Prometheus’ venous gray skin, fist colliding with the bone underneath and pulverizing it into a shatter of fragments. Black ichor dripped from its wound like blood. Fenrir shook it off, soaring up into the air and out of the way of the Prometheus’ oncoming hand.

The hand was missing two fingers, the spindly bones of its thumb and forefinger reaching like pincers instead of the great gnarled paw Fenrir expected. It was evidence of all it’d been through. Too many fights to name and a starvation that wouldn’t relent had reduced the creature to a shadow of what must have been its former glory. Now it scraped at life like it scraped at him: desperate and frantic, chasing a thing that was increasingly out of its reach. Fenrir thought it was almost a mercy that they’d arrived when they did, at least now he could put the poor thing out of its misery.

One glancing leap off the tip of a knuckle and Fenrir charged up the length of its arm, sword balanced over his shoulder, aligned with the Prometheus’ single remaining eye.

All hells, how he wished he’d never given Farris his old sword. Just imagine what he could do with it now. I’ll get it back soon. And then not even Ohm could stop him.

Steel sunk into the spongy mass of the Prometheus’ eye, too shallow to reach the optic nerve let alone its brain, but the Prometheus shrieked anyway. Fenrir braced his feet against its cheek and yanked, his sword tearing it free, sticky goo arcing overhead with the sweep of his blade.

He catapulted away before the mangled three-fingered hand could swipe at him again, the Prometheus’ other arm dangling limp at its side where Fenrir had severed its elbow ligaments just minutes ago.

“How are you still standing, buddy?” Fenrir shouted over another roar. He landed on the Prometheus’ shoulder and dropped to a knee, waiting for the wave of sound to pass before leaping yet again.

Fenrir landed atop its opposite shoulder where Vera crouched, the flat of her shield dripping a rotten black goo that matched that leaking down the Prometheus’ cheek. Her normally tightly bound bun was a mess of wild pieces, but her chin dipped in confirmation when he met Rim-pale eyes nearly the same shade as his.

“I don’t think we can kill it,” confirmed Fenrir’s own suspicions, but it didn’t matter. Maybe the Prometheus wouldn’t die, but it was faster than the Empire’s vehicles, so Fenrir wasn’t about to complain.

In the near distance, Sanctuary’s walls loomed, no longer a mountain on the horizon but the enormous city Daedra had described, its spires piercing the low clouds like needles, its inner wall a beautiful obsidian black that caught the violet flare of an inferno. A cold fire that sparked and danced with a life that meant only one thing; the only thing that mattered.

Orpheus was alive.

I’m not too late.

With a shout, Fenrir leapt, sword coming down to cleave straight into the Prometheus’ head, more rotten black goo splattering across his cuirass. The creature screamed, then stumbled, somehow still lurching towards Sanctuary, the little vehicles at its feet struggling to keep up.

He could see Daedra far below, tucked into the roll cage, hand to her brow as she watched him slay a creature she’d only ever known from myth. Fenrir waved enthusiastically down at her, smiling when her hand raised and a singular finger pierced the sky.

Who taught her that?

Fenrir would have to give one of his officers a promotion.

“Mum! Do you see?” He pointed at the violet lights when Vera landed beside him with a huff. They clung to the Prometheus’ shoulder together, riding it towards Sanctuary like Lore had Ohm, one giant Hell steed balanced on the brink of death rather than reanimated by it.

“Did he do it?” Vera asked before leaping to avoid the Prometheus’ swinging hand. Fenrir followed. Like a pair of flies it couldn’t catch, they soared through the air, leaping from shoulder to ear to head and shoulder again while the Prometheus stumbled towards what it truly wanted: Netherflame.

“He fucking did it! He restored Sanctuary!” Fenrir’s grin was as vicious as his new arm. “Mum, he’s alive!”

Brilliant and wonderful, Netherflame returned to their world, now as a power wielded for good rather than the devastation of the Incident. And all the healing Orpheus thought he couldn’t achieve but Fenrir had witnessed when he’d closed that chasm, again returned in the face of a misidentified enemy’s need.

Orpheus had done this, and Fenrir was so fucking proud of him he could cry.

Instead, he shouted, leaping into the air when the Prometheus’ hand came down again, clinging to its decaying skin when it crossed that first broken barrier and lumbered into the dead orchards that surrounded Sanctuary.

Fenrir carved a line of flesh from the creature’s outstretched arm while the Netherflame it reached for began to flicker over the edge of the approaching wall. He could feel the cold from here, breath fogging in the sudden chill, and it occurred to him distantly that that was a little strange. A little wrong. Only raw Netherflame brought that kind of chill and to feel the flames from here meant there was far too much of it.

Fenrir’s breath went thin when the Prometheus came to a sudden, jolting stop. Through the wail of its roar, he could barely hear it: screams, coming from the city below.

“Fenrir,” Vera breathed, voice shaking. “Look.”

There, at the center of the city, spewing from a gaping wound of violet fire, stood Orpheus.

“What’s he doing?” Fenrir whispered as Orpheus raised his hands and tore open the world.

A ringing filled his head, vertigo returning, the whole world narrowing in on one man.