“Chaos… take… you…”

The man spat at the Knight of the Abyss even as he bled out on the pavement. This one had struggled harder than the others and the Knight had to liberate his limbs in order to subdue him. The rest of his comrades were scattered in pieces inside their makeshift camp.

Dying in agony was the best way to ensure the formation of a restless Anima, the Knight found. One of the few he knew how, and the only one that could be done quickly and somewhat reliably. With his vision, the Knight could see that about two-thirds of the dead had been successful in forming, and each would be a fine addition to Lord Qatir’s army.

The Knight breathed in and pulled the disembodied Anima into his ribcage, right next to his core. There, they will be flayed in the fires of his anger and the dross would be turned to ashes, leaving just the bits needed to animate the Revenants. Every death, human and beast alike, fueled the growing Primordial army, and soon, they would have enough forces to overtake the plane’s defences.

As for this wriggling torso and head, the Knight pegged him to be the leader of this bunch. He also had strange magicks about him, less human and more…Chaos Lord.

The taste and scent of the Chaos felt nostalgic as if he was familiar with its use. Perhaps he had been, back before his existence now.

The Chaos mist drifting out of the poor fool’s Anima sizzled against the Knight’s gauntlets, corroding the metal of his fingertips. Ultimately, the Chaos wasn't strong enough, or pure enough, to be a danger. Instead, this captive would yield his knowledge to the Knight, and perhaps he would actually find what he sought.

“You are dead,” The Knight said in his graveyard voice. “You will cease to exist as you are, in its entirety. There is little left for you to hope.” If he had lips he would be grinning, but he didn’t, so he settled for the amused tone. The captive didn’t say anything else, but the fires in his eyes would have burned the Knight to ashes if it actually held power. “Now, you can either yield your knowledge willingly, and spare yourself a lengthy and painful demise, or I will drag that knowledge directly out of your Anima. Your choice.”

“Chaos…take…you!” the man spat out as he tried to rally his paltry defences. “The Duke… will unmake you.”

“Duke?” The Knight snorted. “Limited Chaos inside the plane. Your Duke won’t be able to do anything. And I guess you want the painful death after all…”

The man’s only response was to spit. So the Knight stabbed his hands into the man’s sternum and ripped out his still-beating heart. Chaos and Order swirled as patterns emerged from the ambient Chaos, laying a formation across the bloody organ. Then, tendrils of shadow burrowed into it, as well as the man’s head. The screaming Anima was ripped out of the remnant shell, and the Knight swallowed it whole.

But the Anima did not go into the Knight’s core. Instead, he sent it towards his mind, then proceeded to cut strips off to examine and read.

That would take a lot of work, and a lot of time. The Knight settles into a meditative trance. His Revenants continue to seek their quarry and whatever targets of opportunity they find. The underground ruins revealed a place he’d never even expected, although it seemed that the master knew some things anyway. Lord Qatir definitely knew about it or was suspicious of it, anyway. The Knight didn’t know all of the master’s mind, but some bits of it seeped through with their link.

Hmmm. A little slice here, and then there. Weave them together, and swallow.

Visions popped up in the Knight’s mind. Discordant and disjointed images that made little sense, except for one clear bit that burned through the Knight’s mental eyes. A silver-haired man… Chaos Lord, with scars on his left cheek. A Crescent Moon and an empty circle.

The figure radiated power, and the Knight felt tendrils of Will seep towards his Anima from the dreamscape.

Open. Surrender. Obey.

The Knight tensed up even as his mind slowly opened up. But the feeling of mental invasion was familiar, and the most important thing was, one cannot be mentally dominated by another if something else was already inside.

Lord Qatir’s disembodied tentacles swatted away the mental tendrils, and the silver-haired man hissed in supreme displeasure.

“You have no power here.” The Knight said, but…that was a mistake. By talking and acknowledging its existence, the link strengthened and he found himself staring directly at the Chaos Lord’s eyes.

“What have we here?” the man mused, an amused twinkle in his eye. “Ah, Primordial Interference. Who is it?” The man frowned while the Knight quivered in his armour. “Ah, Curiosity. I see your touch. Which spawn? I suppose it doesn’t matter. You. You’ve slain my champion. Then, I suppose you want to know my orders. Well, look no further and I’ll tell you.” The man’s grin widened until his ears. “The Avos Guardian is wounded. Tell your master that it is ripe for conquest. Slay it and both of us prosper.”

Then, he was gone, and the Knight shuddered back into wakefulness. He only had a moment to centre himself when his master pulled at his consciousness.

“My Knight,” Qatir said, his voice gurgling as though he were speaking through water, “I heard. I saw.”

“What is your Will, my master?”

“Go and slay the wounded guardian, and claim the planar core in my name.”

The Knight frowned to himself, but since he didn’t actually have facial muscles or a face for that matter, it went unnoticed. The Chaos Lord’s words were clearly bait. Those creatures always had traps within traps, plans within plans. The fact that the champion had been killed and the knowledge taken by the Primordial army may have been part of that thing’s calculations.

What was that Chaos Lord’s sobriquet?

The One Who Watches and Waits.

If he still had muscles, they would have clenched in instinctive fear. The Watcher. The one above all others.

Memories and thoughts surged from the depths of his mind, staining it with past emotion, but the details were as blurred as ever. It left him with mere impressions, but also, with instinct.

One way or another, as long as the guardian dies, the Watcher will win. The master, Lord Qatir, was strong, but…

The Knight paused as memories filtered back into his head. They weren’t his memories, but he viewed them from his eye.

The battle with the blonde woman, a vision of perfected beauty, tainted with the Radiant and Lust both. She wasn’t stronger than the Watcher, but she managed to hurt Lord Qatir. Even though the Watcher wasn’t at his full might here within the plane, he was more than enough to deal with the Primordial Spawn.

But if the master received the planar core…then, he will become an integral part of the Great Old One rather than a piece of hair.

The Knight could feel the desire filling the master. The guardian was powerful and there was little hope for Qatir or the Revenant army to defeat it, but wounded and in hiding? It was the chance of a lifetime. A lifetime that spanned millennia, and an occurrence that was unlikely to ever happen again.

He could feel Lord Qatir’s anger at the woman pushed to the bottom of the list—time enough to deal with her after they ascend.

The guardian should be close to the core and should be linked to it. With its death, the path to the core would be opened. Unlike Chaos dwellers, Primordial Spawn were perfectly at home within the planes. After all, their origins were the ones responsible for creating them in the first place. The Chaos dwellers were merely parasites left over after everything was put to Order and Law.

The same repulsion that weakened the stronger dwellers protected the Primordials and empowered them. They had the chance!

The thoughts, foreign as they were, resonated within the Knight’s skull. And even against his Will, he was forced to agree.

Things may turn out the way the Watcher wants, but if they succeed, if they claim the planar core, then nothing that Chaos dweller did would matter in the end.

Lord Qatir would subsume the plane of Rumiga, and he would exist as long as it does. Ascension into the realms of the Primordials was the least of its possibilities, and with its power, they could finally claim a piece of reality riding on the tides of Equilibrium.

So he got up. The intuited direction the champion had was no longer active, and there was no way for the Knight to subsume it anyway. But the threads of Anima the Knight did subsume gave him the direction.

“And guess what…” he grumbled to himself, “mind domination doesn’t work…if there’s no actual mind. Hie hie hie!”

Or so he said to himself, hoping that he was right. He had no bodily organs left and his mobility was provided by his Anima. It was Anima and Animus that coated his skeleton and filled what was underneath his armour. Not that anything else but his skull wasn’t created by the master.

“Revenants! Obey!” The Knight roared. “Head towards the centre. Bring me the heart of the giant stonetoise!”

And so the Revenants clattered and clacked as they marched towards the city centre. And…contrary to what he expected, the Revenants walked right past the main road that would have taken them directly to the central keep.

And, why was he walking towards the wall on the opposite side? He was pretty sure that Zarek was behind him, and he should turn around.

He did so, and turned a complete 360 degrees, facing the correct way towards his quarry. Only when he had crossed several blocks did he freeze and yelled, “Traitor Sun!”

The Revenants were still walking around him, completely ignoring the correct path. He and the others tried for several hours which eventually stretched to days. It just wouldn’t work!

Frustrated, both at his inability to do as commanded and at the fact that he didn’t even have a breath to control, he stomped over to a building and collapsed in a heap. He stared up at the ceiling, which reflected the surface’s skies. It was close to noon at this point, and the Radiant Sun burned down on him and the Revenants. If it weren’t a reflection, that light alone would have been enough to turn them to ashes.

Even though the plane protected them as any other denizen, the power of the Celestials that deemed their kind anathema could not be denied. A pity, since he was sure he had loved to feel the warmth of the Radiant Sun on his face back in his previous life.

The illusion of the ceiling wasn’t complete, and parts of the original poked through. The pointy cavern fangs from the ceiling were quite noticeable, as well as those that joined up with their ground mirrors. In fact, those pillars were huge. And heavy. And…

His fiery eyes stared at the ceiling. At the cracks and the pillars. There were more than enough of them around the centre, weren’t they? Now if neither he nor his warriors could enter that area…then what about things that had no mind to influence?

He didn’t waste any more time. He directed the Revenants around him to follow him towards a nearby pillar. They scaled up the side until they reached the ceiling. Part of his power allowed him to walk on it as though it were the ground, but the proximity to the Radiant Sun’s reflection proved more painful than being burned on a campfire.

Still, he found enough cracks and vulnerable points that his deadly plan should come to fruition. He had the Revenants stick themselves into the cracks and crevices, and he did the same to the biggest one he could find. He squeezed himself as far into it as he could such that his armour was well and truly stuck. Then…

“For the master…” he whispered then he commanded his Revenants to do the same as what he was about to do. He knew that Lord Qatir would catch his Anima again, and remake his vessel, but he didn’t know if the master would do the same for the riff-raff. Not that it mattered.

He drew in as much ambient Chaos as he could, mixed it into his core in a volatile mix. Imparted his Intent and squeezed as hard as he could. The crystalline core began to fragment as it overloaded with power, and, in a glorious burst of light, heat, and concussive force, his body shattered, and along with it, several thousand MiJin of rock broke loose, and fell.

As his consciousness faded away, he only hoped that he had taken the wounded Avos with him.