“Behold! The Crimson Herald!”

“Help us!”

“Save us!”

“You don’t deserve these laurels!”

“Arazni!!!”

[-]

“Sweet mother… F-F-A-A…” Doctor-Commander Cold Iron’s eyes awoke to the bright lights of the Medical Bay of Fort Bragg. He tried to arise from the soft cotton bed he laid before. However all motions to even twitch a single muscle from his body was met with biting anguish that twinged to the edge of torn flesh.

“Take it easy boy…” laid the small yet caring paws of purple leshen flesh caressing Izo’s left arm. His nose easily recognizing the Leshy’s aroma.

“Muh- Mama Sopas? How did you get in… the B-Bunker?!” Cold Iron weakly slid his gaze towards her. His body still broken for what horrors and sights he had born witness and endured from that desultory trip to Vellumis. He attempted to shout, to reprimand the Druidess from venturing this deep into

“Oh don’t be counting on Owlbear Feathers now boy.” The Druidess petted him tenderly. The light beaming out of the reflection of her black eyes urgently cared for his muscle sores. “But your friends have been telling me you have been experiencing… ‘hysterics’. Please, Please my boy – describ’it to me.”

“A Big battle. It’as loud. I was fighting monsters, people dying around me. I was so full of pride, so much… Zeal. I tried to fight it all, everything… but they drowned me. There was just… too many of them.”

“Swallow this boy.” Mama Sopas handed him a globule from a wooden box wrapped in parchment paper. “It will help with the pain.”

Following suit, the Doctor-Commander swallowed medicine. His throat gagged as his tongue and nose registered its harsh taste. Yet just as the Druidess allayed him, the ball-shaped medicine relaxened some of the muscle aches he is suffering from now.

“I am not a religious type of person but, I was this… this Angel --- holding a sword while cutting down as so many monsters as I could. At first, I was… wa--- what’s the word? ‘Passionate’? Em-passionate with myself fighting them all. But as more came, That passion turned into anger, then to --- Fear, then into Desperation. But no matter how hard I fought, I was trapped as those monsters slowly piled up over me. I tried to scream for help --- ANYONE’s help. But none came. Then I came upon this great and tall man with two giant horns above his helmet. He grabbed my neck and then… then…”Izo imitated his neck being asphyxiation, his own voice cracking with every word he forced his tongue to push out.

“It was all… just a very surreal dream.” Izo inhaled, not wanting to burden himself any longer. He collapsed to the bed’s pillow. Sighing in relief as he told his story. A momentary respite, but a respite nonetheless however fleeting.

When Izo concluded his mangled recollection, Mama Sopas sighed, exhaling Oxygen from her leaf-breathed mouth as she sullenly collapsed to the worn leather chair that boosted her height to the Doctor-Commander’s level.

“A mouthful of quills… it is just as I had feared…” Mama Sopas warily clasped her hands in prayers.

“What happened to me?! Please tell me.” Cold Iron begged of her.

“That ‘dream’ of yours? Why you could almost feel everything happening inside your ‘dream’ is that it wasn’t a dream at all. It was a memory, a very strong fragment of a memory. You were seeing someone else’s memories.”

“A memory? Of who? How is t—tha---- That’s impossible!” Izo’s eyes flipped wide.

“Nay but it is. At least of an Angel.” Mama Sopas shook her head. “What you had experienced his what we call ‘Herald’s Fall’. It is this great--- painful --- agonizing echo that resonated even after it had happened to poor Arazni a thousand years ago… that eats away your body limb from limb.”

“Arazni… I remember that name. It was the name I heard the loudest the most.” Izo added.

“She was once the Angel of the Blazing Winds. The Crimson Crusader who flies across the battlefield slaying every monstrosity and evildoer wherever she comes across. Until she had met the Whispering Tyrant Tar-Baphon in battle and lost to him. They said that the Lich had his way with her --- stripped away her power, her sword, and worse of all… her Pride. Before he tossed her body back to her followers like a broken toy.” Mama Sopas hovered her hands upwards in a finespun waltz as she told the Story. “Now she has fallen from heaven. Her vengeful spirit now roamed Golarion seeking to terrorize all of those who wronged her. Her former Knights, her former lover, and even her murderer, Tar-Baphon.”

“Though it is quite odd… everyone who even lay there ears upon Herald’s Fall always perishes from it.” The Druidess mention.

“Are you saying what I just went through is --- SHOULD be lethal to me? But how could I survive that?!” Izo meekly raised his arm.

“Be at ease boy, for I shall reveal to you what I had discovered when your faithful companions of yours beseeched for my aid.” Mama Sopas hovered her hand over Izo’s. If the Leshy could give a comforting smile she would beneath her bulbous body. Her hand traced along the Doctor-Commander’s Body as he came upon his chest. With even just slight pressure from the Leshy’s paws still ached immensely.

“Easy, that’s where Lysithea stabbed me. She must have missed my heart I guess…” Cold Iron

“Nay, you are wrong. Sorrowscythe did sink her blade onto your heart. Lysithea, one of Tar-Baphon’s more — ‘illustrious’ of lieutenants. The Pallid Angel did killed you.”

“But… how am I alive?!” Izo gasped. His mind raced to cog through what he had just heard. Was this some fleeting dream too of the afterlife? He was no man to believe mostly in such spiritual aesthetics but it was a waking side-thought of what really happens to one as one expires. A part of him wanted to take comfort that his consciousness simply dies, and decays into the sands of the Wastes. Yet another still held to the archaic philosophies of forbearing thinkers.

“Somehow you stumbled into one of Arazni’s Bloodstones. Ancient Artifacts were the preserved parts of the Angel Arazni after her death. Her Heart is what is keeping you amongst the realm of the living here with me. That Bloodstone in particular contained her Love, her Empathy for others. As her old saying goes ‘To Aid those in…’

“In Mortal Peril…” he recited. Somehow even in Death and if her body had been broken apart. The Angel still seeks through her duties nonetheless. To grant Salvation for even the likes of a stranger, a non-believer, Another-Worlder such as the Doctor-Commander.

“The Heart must have been nearby the moment Lysithea slew you. The happenstance of seeing you in danger caused it to fuse itself into your body to revive you. Truly, truly a miracle in every word. If it were not that the Heart and your Body could learn to be good neighbors.”

“What do you mean ‘learn to be good neighbors’?” Izo pressed further.

“I scry’ed your body. A-And…” Mama Sopas averted her gaze. “Heaven and Forests forgive me if I could… The Heart is… it’s like cancer, a tumor, a disease that your body is fighting to reject with every fiber of your constitution. But the Heart, the heart is slowly trying to take over your body. Inch by inch, creeping every day. Arazni’s Heart is trying to --- what is the word? Pilfer? Burglarize? Abduct your body for itself. It is tapping itself into your life force, your vitality. The Heart is bleeding itself into you at the cost if it slowly taking over you. If your body doesn’t tame that beast inside, you will slowly just become… a Puppet at the most hopeful outcomes. No different than the Undead that Tar-Baphon commands. Or at worse… if your body fully rebukes the Heart. Gone, Dead, ‘six feet under’ as they say. You and the Heart.” The Druidess lamentably gave out her diagnosis.

“So, you are telling me… that there’s a Fallen Angel inside me right now? And is slowly trying to kill me from the inside?” Izo reconciled all the facts he had heard from the Druidess. “G-G-Get it out of me please!” he desperately pleaded.

Mama Sopas reluctantly nodded.

“This is beyond my ability son. I want to offer you a cure! I really do! But at best I can give you a momentary reprieve” She climbed out of the chair. “I do not have a permanent solution to your plight but at best I can give you reprieve.”

Mama Sopas reached into her Satchel and handed him a wooden box filled with the same bitter-smelling globules he had swallowed earlier.

“These are Captop Pearls. Made from its namesake Shroom. It relaxen the body for those whose ‘rhythm’ outpaces the beat of the world. For now, you will need to swallow one of these every midday to keep your body and your Guest calm so it doesn’t try to scrap each other to death.” She handed them over the wooden box to him. It was small enough that it can fit into his pocket. “I know of other such Chiurgeons, Doctors, Herbalists, and even Clerics who may help you. Friends I had made in a long time. I will need to return to my hut to write some letters to them. Plights such as yours, are simply not something to be ignored like some common injury or malady.”

“Y-Yes… please do.” Izo concurred, passing sway his hand.

“Henry! I have done what I can with your Master.” Mama Sopas called forth to the Medbay’s Door.

On cue, H.E.N.R.I., carrying a Wheelchair, along with one M.U.S.C.L.E. Unit escorting him from behind came into the Doctor-Commander’s presence.

“I told everything I said to you to him before I awoke you from your bed. Your Golem should be able to get you smelling like roses in no time.” Mama Sopas nods. “Do summon for me soon if you need more of my Captop Pearls. I will be at my Hut.”

H.E.N.R.I. nodded. “Myrmidon shall escort you out. If symptoms persist with my Master, we shall immediately contact you for your expertise.”

“Good good, you Golems are very polite.” Mama Sopas briskly walked away with Myrmidon as H.E.N.R.I. carried over the weakened but thankfully recovering Doctor-Commander to the Wheel Chair. “There is some paperwork and some schematics that Myrmidon had wanted you to examine and authenticate.”

“I shall work up what I can… then I can take some… rest,” Izo grunted. Writing and Paperwork weren’t that much of a risk of pumping his heart rate dangerously for his body yet is still an integral part of his original goal. To rebuild himself from the ashes.

“Take your time Master.” H.E.N.R.I. pushed the wheelchair away as they journeyed to his Executive Quarters. “I must attend to matters of the maintenance of our new living quarters. Myrmidon informed me that you can notify him of any concerns via your quarter’s built-in Call Button located beside your bed.”

The Mechanical Manservant pushed open the Executive Living Quarter’s mahogany doors and placed Izo on his Desk where a stack of paperwork awaited him.

“I shall now take my leave.” H.E.N.R.I bowed as he closed the door to give Izo privacy.

The Doctor-Commander sighed as he turned his gaze to the stack of papers and wasted no time grabbing the first few sheets onto his eyes.

The first papers were Reports detailing the progress of the excavation effort Myrmidon had dedicated half of the M.U.S.C.L.E Units to overseeing. They detailed how they had excavated a damaged Auxiliary Power Station that is deemed repairable with the correct amount of new replacement parts and a Barracks good for twelve people with dusty old beds and lockers. Myrmidon request permission that needed his authentication as ‘Gideon Baird, the Secretary of Defence’ to go out on a scavenging mission within the foreseeable future of a week to scavenge for replacement parts. Prudently, the A.I. also took care to detail the benefits of restarting the Auxiliary Power in restoring a fraction of Fort Bragg’s potential capabilities in many details that the Doctor-Commander swayed his eyes not to read.

He hurriedly reached for a pen. Unfortunately, years of non-use had dried it to a useless black paste within its plastic chamber. The next best thing for a writing implement was a bundle of unsharpened pencils. Carving out a pointed tip of the first pencil he grabbed he swats away the first signs of the day.

The next group of papers he read through was a series of statistically drawn charts from bar graphs, pies, neural nodes, and lightning-line rises and descents. Heading these papers read:

‘Myrmidon Deep Learning Summary Report: Feedback Sheet’ Myrmidon is conniving, young and full of charge but they are above all else, transparent. He opened his book of themself to his master.

The Doctor-Commander was struck with an emotional chord.

‘Recorded encounter of hostile humanoid. Seek continued layers of study to fully classify efficient countermeasures to send to Behavioral Patterning.’

The paper showed a photo of one of the emaciated Ghoul-like creatures that waylaid them during their hasty escape away from Vellumis.

‘Agile, Capable of Tactics to outmaneuver Myrmidon, Has heightened senses of smell and sight.’

He observed Myrmidon’s observation diligently. The A.I. was very capable of the reason given such a short period of time.

‘Possible Termination Methodology: Exploit subject’s heightened senses via visual overstimulation; Deploy ‘Animal Traps’ upon the next encounter?’

Myrmidon still had his flaws however, they still not yet truly in the rhythm of themselves in the now fulfilled practice of his purpose. Cold Iron laughed at the obvious answer. It would be impractical at least most of the time to have his M.U.S.C.L.E. Units lug around the Bear Traps. He rather reserves such lumbering tools for food. The A.I.’s intuition was however offset by his propensity to think of absurd reasonings.

“Where am I?” a dainty voice babbled from the Doctor-Commander’s left.

Before he was a woman with purple hair, her crown bunned together with ribbons. Adorning her body was a resplendent, wind-streamed red breastplate armor. Or it would have been resplendent if it were not the fact that part of her chest’s platings had been torn violently off revealing cloth revealing only bandaged cloth to hide her right breast. Her eyes loomed across Izo’s Quarters, skimming through every nook and cranny with a hurried agency. And then her amber eyes locked with the Doctor-Commander.

“What kind of Castle is this? Nay… a Prison!” the purple-haired woman frowned. “You! What kind of fool makes you believe you can keep the Crimson Crusader imprisoned in these walls?!” she hurled her finger at Cold Iron.

“H-how?” Izo stood up from his desk. “You can see me?”

The Crimson Armored woman scowled at him. It came to dawn at the Doctor-Commander that the purple-haired woman was none other than his invasive guest. The Crimson Herald or Crusader whichever his mind could interchange: Arazni.

“You cannot hold me captive in your fortress for long!” she incessantly shouted.

“Shut up Arazni!” Izo roared back at the purple-haired woman.

“I beg your pardon?!” she placed her hip by her waist. “Did you tell me to… ‘shut up’? To be silenced? To tell me to be silenced?”

He only seemed to further exacerbate her simmering contempt for Izo.

“What kind of Peon are you even supposed to be?” she tempered her disdain with the continued confusion of her alien surroundings.

“Shut up!” Izo grabbed the wooden box that Mama Sopas gave to him.

But before she could open it and claim a piece of the Druidess medicine. Arazni pushed him away. Causing Cold Iron to fall to the carpeted ground of his Executive Quarter.

“Who are you? Start talking!” Arazni stood above him. Even when unarmed she curled her fingers into a fist, made heavy with her blood-red gauntlets. Readying to smite down this uncouth jailer for the answers she seeks.

Izo raised his hand in a spontaneous plea of his own begrudging human instincts for mercy. Yet as he raised his hand to yield, Arazni’s curled fist opened flabbergasting the Crimson Herald. And then she had reached an Epiphany, she felt herself somehow some way connected to this boorish stranger she brought low before her.

“Tar-Baphon…” she realized to her utter horror that her soul had been tethered to this feeble mortal. “Damn you… I will break free of this.”

Izo’s body launched upwards from his decumbent post until his body crashed onto the wall as a doll tossed away by an angered child. Mama Sopas’ Medicine Box launched haplessly across the room.

“You cannot bind me for long you fiend!” Arazni forced herself into Izo’s body as she made him flung his head across the wall in an effort to crack his skull like an egg.

“Get off!” Izo roared. Wrestling control away from his intruder.

His vision weakened, he flew himself blind to the room. The Doctor-Commander having landed a mere foot away from the Captop Pearls. Struggling, with certain death of himself on the verge he crawled frightfully to Mama Sopas’ Box.

“Thrust a knife in your gut and pull me out!” Arazni squawked. She grabbed hold of Izo by the nape of his neck with a phantasmic grip. “I can feel our souls… touching. I am poison, a disease, mold on fruit! I am just a copy of… me! I should smite you down myself. I have to be out there! Somewhere! Anywhere!”

Izo grabbed hold of one of the Medicine Pills and swallowed as exhaustion engulfed him. The last sight was the imperious Crimson Crusader standing above him. “See you… never… bitch…”

[-]

“Outlander? Outlander?” a dainty voice questioned.

Izo’s fatigued body felt the pressure of several tinier bodies stand above him like crows perched atop of a fallen creature. The beat of his head raced and splitting concomittant of Druid’s medicine from earlier counteracting the intruder in his heart. But at least it kept Arazni at bay, at least for a little while.

“Is he… dead?” another such murmur added.

“He cannot be. His heart rate is normal.” Cold Iron could discern that voice was none other H.E.N.R.I. as he felt his frigid robotic fingers press upon his neck.

“Heart rate? Is that another way of saying life force?” the dainty voice asked the Mechanical Manservant.

“Son of a bi---” Doctor-Commander Cold Iron arose from the ground.

“Master.” H.E.N.R.I. greeted him. Holding him up until he stood upright.

Izo rubbed the sand off of his eyes to see that his faithful robot was accompanied by a garden band of Leshy’s. He recognized them as coming from the same village as Golgar.

“Calamity! Disaster! Monsters coming out of the bed! Wolves at our garden!” a Leshy panicking shivered.

“They are taking us! They wanna eat my leafy asses!” another leshy leaped.

“I don’t taste good! I don’t taste good! I don’t taste good!” one leshy even waved around a pendant to ward off evill as he superstitiously conceived.

“First, why are you here?! How did you get here? Tell me everything from the beginning.” Cold Iron, his brain still befuddled, wrangled the white mess of noise around him.

“The Village… they came… they rustled us like cows!” the leshy hyperventilated as he slowly uncurled the full story of his and his fellow’s chilling chronicle.

“‘They’ who?” the Doctor-Commander egged them.

“Lysithea Sorrowcythe! She brought her monsters from Ustalav and came to kidnap us! Me and my friends are the only ones we know of that managed to run away. She even caught Mama Sopas when she tried to defend the village. She says ‘she is saving something very special’ for her.”

“Lysithea?!” Izo’s inhaled the news. He remembered that deceitful wench who lured him into Velumis’ bosom before nearly snuffing his life away with her fanged maws.

But then he remembered earlier how she had ‘helped’ her earlier in studying Crossfen Village’s Wards. When he found out she commanded a legion of sycophantic undead at her side, Izo nearly cracked upon what he had done. He had quite handily given Mama Sopas and the Leshy’s on a silver platter to the decadent seraph.

“Sorrowscythe? I remember that name…” Arazni materialized by Cold Iron’s side. “I honestly cannot believe you could fall for such flowery lies of hers.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion!” Cold Iron scolded the Crimson Crusader.

“Pardon?” the Leshy tilted his head. His fellow Leshen companions stared at the Doctor-Commander in utter bafflement.

“I swore I locked that reprobate before I faced off Tar-Baphon. How is she free?” Arazni grasped her chin. “We have to confront her. I will snap her wings into two just like how the Tyrant did with mine.”

“Finally, you are saying something I can agree with…” Cold Iron gleamed.

“Master who are you talking too?” H.E.N.R.I. shared the Leshy’s confusion.

“You can’t… I mean see… uh… never mind. We need to go to Crossfen stat!” Izo shrugged it off. His mind was more concerned of the danger the Druid who held the means of creating more of the lifesaving Captop Pearls she made.

“That is out of the question! I will not allow you to venture out on your own not after what happened to you at Vellumis.” Myrmidon’s voice echoed out of the Bunker’s Public Announcement Systems.

His unerring voice scaring the lights off of several of the Leshy’s who cowered and cried.

“Then get me a team of your best M.U.S.C.L.E Bots to come with me then.” Cold Iron ordered the A.I. “Relax… relax… he is just a friend.” Izo knelt down to comfort the Plant-like folks. Gently lulling them to safe refuge.

“This is not a Whispering Way Fortress is it not?” Arazni asked Izo. “I knoweth the fate of such creatures if Lysithea intends to capture them alive.”

“It’s not pretty. I know.” Cold Iron shook his head. “.”

“The Leshies trust you.” Arazni calmly voiced. “Perhaps for now, I shall trust you.”

“Well follow my lead and don’t even think about doing anything to my body.” Cold Iron instructed the Crimson Crusader. “H.E.N.R.I. My weapon.”

“I have kept it safe as ordered.” The Mechanical Manservant handed over Hamm-Gap the Combi-Axe-Hammer weapon of his design.

“Then what am I to you?” Arazni questioned.

“Advisory Backup.” He conceitedly tells her.