Oh, faith!
Oh, destiny!
Oh, love!
It's been a long day...
I will sin today...

- Dongwoo's confession

Myungsoo staunched a mocking laugh out of respect for the ancient contemporary. Those feral beasts? The Bugmen? What kind of sorcery would one have to conjure to tame such wicked host? It was at this point that he recalled the silver band on each and every one of them.

 "It was by means of machinery that you accomplished it? By science?!" he questioned with a shocked voice, plummeting to the divan. His hand then pulled on Dongwoo's wrist and forced him to seat besides him.

 "Ah, yes, you know! Not by magic, but by our own arts. But tell me," the king said as he scrutinized their plated skin, "did you come to take my daughter? Because if so-" he lifted his staff and tapped the floor again. In less than a second the room became filled with Bugmen.

Dongwoo quickly grasped the sword holstered on his back, but Myungsoo gently rested his hand on his shoulder and swayed his head. His demeanor was calm and showed no wavering whatsoever. He was unafraid. His eyes transmitted a secret message, Don't worry.

 "Sire, while at first, that may have been our mission- it is no longer so. Rest assure. Neither I nor he," Myungsoo locked eyes with Dongwoo and hinted for him to comply as he forced a smile, "will abduct your fine daughter."

Initially, Dongwoo was outraged by the sudden news of their plans changing, but he kept looking at his friend's eyes that were lit by a steady, unwavering flame. He sensed Myungsoo had a grandiose idea behind his words, and after discovering how the old man controlled the Bugmen, he consented. He didn't know how many of those cretins beyond those summoned lied in wait and was unsure if both he and Myungsoo could kill them all, although he'd be damned if he didn't give his life slaughtering them when so many men had already been slain by the demons. Mentally reciting a prayer, he consigned himself to his god and the hands of his friend.

 "Fine. I trusted your father, no need to distrust you. I've enough of those cynical days." Another strike of his staff on the ground and the Bugmen faded into the secret doors from which they came. "How long has it been? A millennia? When did our banner stop billowing in the wind?"

 His hands forming tight balled fists, he answered, "Around 110 years or so."

 Both Dongwoo and the king gazed at Myungsoo with an astonished, stupefied expression. Perhaps it came from the shock, but the king had sprung from his chair with a sudden jolt of energy that belied his haggard, shambling body.

"That long?" he said as he melted down his throne, looking more like a puddle of wrinkly skin and bone than actual person. He frantically rubbed his face with a clear anguish and moaned with longing for a bygone era, an undisputed era in which the only dilemma his people faced was an energy crisis. But even that was remedied by enlisting the aid of an alien realm. "How are you alive then? Did Avlot place you into one of these Preservation Chambers as well?" he inquired with his head cocking at the cylinder Kei was in. Unknown to all but him, at the behest of a loved one, he had entered that very chamber once before to prolong his life, unaware of all that would follow. "What kind of damned war ravished our civilization? I stepped outside after someone activated the reawakening startup and saw everything different!"

 "No," Myungsoo said as he stole a glance at the capsule adjoining the silver throne, "I never even knew about such a device, the closest contraption that I remember that resembles it was the one my sister was in." He arranged a lie in his mind with a quick haste. "In regards to my survival, I was injected with-"

Slamming his withering hand on the armrest, the old monarch interrupted, "With the nanomachines! That's it! I supposed those things were far behind in development, but I can only surmise that a prototype batch was enough for you. Your father loved you much, it's a pity there was only enough for you. Wait! Your sister you mentioned," he remembered the fragile sight of a baby Myungeun floating in a contraption similar to that of Kei's.

 "My father did love me," Myungsoo said with a groan, shifting his vision to his plated fingers that intertwined. "And as for my sister, she too, is dead... I alone remain of our generation. You and I, that's it. Our glory is one with the chaff in the air... But this castle..." Myungsoo added with a tone of intrigue as he scanned the hall, filled with whirring mechanisms and unlit monitors that spread from floor to ceiling.

Rubbing the bridge of his long nose with his frantic and quivering fingers, he moaned, "I am as though one bereft of all but one child, Myungsoo. This castle, formidable for war and beyond will fail to reclaim the lives lost. It too, is but chaff as you mentioned. You and my daughter are left to me." His drifting vision snatched the sight of the youth besides Myungsoo. "Who is this?" the king wagged his slender and twitching finger at Dongwoo.

 "My retainer, he is only my servant whom I gave the privilege of donning armor."

 Dongwoo furled his brows, "I'm your friend, not your servant," he whispered.

 Myungsoo scanned his face with widened eyes. He was startled to discover the fact that Dongwoo was privy of the spoken Adamah language. In this age in which they lived, there only existed one supreme written and spoken code and it was that of the Sanritem. Every other language was forced into oblivion, relegated to the annals of forgotten history with every person alive forced to adopt the language of their captors.

Snapping back to the present after a pause, Myungsoo continued, "As I said, he is my retainer. Do not mind him. What will you have us do, King Amahr?"

 "Oh, please, child- I should be calling you king, considering you survived your father."

 "I am not king," he said. With his head bowed and hanging between his broad and plated shoulders, he resembled a grim gargoyle. He might as well have been as the rage he spoke with twisted his face with ugly and horrific spasms. "A dog is king! And this king is the one who so greatly changed our world!" The veins on his front swelled and pulsed with maddening ire, and his whole face grew hot, his heart sounding like thunderous drums. It took everything in him to restrain the urge to lash out with curses and violence as he pronounced, "Oscuridaon! That is the devil's name!"

 Dongwoo kept his vision glued to his companion. This marked the second time he heard him mention the name of the draconic ruler and both times he radiated with an intense choler. 

 "I see," Amahr succinctly replied. Eyeing the pure child he once knew transfigure into the agitated mass of furor before him allowed the old king to ingest the evil which he was fortunate enough to avoid. What would be of me, had I not entered the Preservation Chamber?

Slowly rising to his feet with the aid of his staff, he gestured for the pair on the divan to remain seated. Stepping in front of Kei, he placed his palm on the glass and loosed a sigh. He was no idiot and knew far too well that the girl floating inside the capsule was not his daughter. He had not gone senile, although he wished that were the case. If it was dementia wrapping around his brain, he would be clear of all sin, he would be free of the guilt that resounded within his soul. As it was, he faced a deep anxiousness whenever the truth confronted him- that her likeness, the uncanny resemblance to his daughter was only by happenstance, mere coincidence. He struggled to maintain the lie, but it was all worthwhile.

Her face, calm and unmolested by the oppression suffered by those awake in the world was reminiscent of a blooming white rose. Her skin, milky in hue, glowed sublimely through the glass, as if untouched by the blaze of summer suns. She slept as though one lulled to sleep by the sound of the heavenly choir. She was innocent of faults and was only the victim of a man's sorrowful heart. This is my daughter, he told himself, This is my daughter, Jiyeon. Enraptured by her stunning beauty, he failed to sense the hand that rested itself on his shoulder.

 "What a great daughter you have king," Myungsoo said.

 "Maybe you might have held her hand... I'm sure you're a virtuous man with no faults," he said with a slight groaning. Inside, he reflected on his transgression, but gave up the thought with a haste after glimpsing at the slumbering queen. His eyes met with Myungsoo's and he saw what appeared to be welled up tears. Surely he knew the pain of loss, surely he was intimate with the groaning of heart that comes from being alone.

 "I only met her a couple of times- I don't remember, it's been too long, but I'm sure she was lovely then as she is now. I'm glad you have her back." 

Like a precursor, an augury of an impending cataclysm, Amahr felt Myungsoo's grip tighten, if by a small increment. It was no more detectable than a mosquito landing on open flesh, but even so- he felt it. From the corner of his eye he glanced at the armored giant looming over him. He felt a sinister air about the grin on his face, it was the grin of a starving hyena. His withering bones rattled with a type of fear he had not felt before. This in his heart he questioned as he swore seeing his eyes become a pitch black. 

Could he? No... he told himself. He's the son of Avlot! May Nesher forgive me for slandering this great man, the only one like me... Upon invoking his god's name, his stomach churned. The pangs of guilt assailed him, accusing him of his own sin of abducting Kei, holding her against her will all the while deceiving himself about who she is not, and slaughtering countless lives to keep her for himself.

 "She is beautiful," Myungsoo commented. "But, perhaps, more than that- it is beautiful, the way in which you have tamed these monsters, the Bugmen."

 Amahr paused and slowly stepped aside, so Myungsoo's hand would leave his shoulder. "Yes, it is, all it takes is a strike of my staff and they are summoned... All it took to subdue one was a simple wave of my staff."

 "I see," the steel-clad man replied. His eyes were transfixed by the almost smiling mouth of Kei. "Our technology was unmet by the other nations as I remember..."

 The aged king observed the manner in which he stared at Kei and sensed no concupiscense, but his heart still warned him that something was amiss; he sensed some grim, vile intention in those eyes. "It still is, I reckon. The Bugmen, as you call them, serve as eyes for me and have stealthily searched out the land-"

 "I know that much," he cut in. "They're like unbroken steeds, wild and relentless, but the way with which they conducted themselves was with intelligence... Why else would they not decimate a kingdom? Except a being ordered them not to?"

 "What are you getting at?" Amahr shot back, sick of the pussyfooting. It was crystal clear now that Myungsoo identified the girl as the stolen queen of a lofty nation. Suspicion told him to brace himself for a dire battle.

 "Nothing, it's just that, glass is fragile." The barbarian placed a palm on the glass, and the metallic sound it created caused Amahr to shudder. "It easily shatters into fragments, but the breaking thereof is with mesmerizing beauty- the shards reflect a beauty that transcends the spectrum of our limited imagination," the barbarian said with both his palms now pressed on the Preservation Chamber's glass. 

Amahr's ears was filled by the irritating, mocking noise of metal fingers tapping rhythmically on the glass. His gaunt chest heaved up and down. With an agitated breath, he pointed his staff at the son of his old friend. "Myungsoo, what has happened to you? Things have changed, you are no longer that sweet angel, but-"

 "I suppose," he cut in with a subtle smirk, "you would christen me as demon now? Alas, what sin have I committed this day? Have I shed blood? Only that of the Bugmen. I am innocent of hidden faults, believe me. But you-"

 "Step away from her!" Amahr demanded as he confronted the barbarian in steel garb. "She is my daughter!"

 Myungsoo nonchalantly leaned his armored back against the capsule and listlessly replied, "Love has you singing, old man. All I ask is for you to hand over that staff and the fortress. No more, no less. You can finish off the rest of you life with her wheresoever you desire, if you comply with my demands, that is."

 The old king threw his free hand into the air as if making demands to the celestial ruler. "By Nesher! What hell, what evil have you passed through that you have become such a foul man! You should be ashamed! What would Avlot say?!" he added with a shake of his fist and his eyes now bloodshot.

 "Listen!" Myungsoo exclaimed as he slammed his palm on the glass, "What right have you to name my father?"

 "May Nesher have much mercy on you and I, son..." He swayed his hoary head with a distraught look and shed a tear of penitence. "Where is our god?"

 Dongwoo ran up to his companion and stood by him. That's all he could do, stand there. He didn't doubt those reassuring eyes he saw not long ago. All reason told him to doubt Myungsoo's character, but he didn't. He trusted his god that chose him in the first place. He didn't know what road the two were on, he simply had faith that it would lead to a better place than this. One thing, however, he failed to consider: the pain and hurt the road was laden with.

 "Stay there and follow my orders," Myungsoo told him, "in a minute, all hell wil break loose."

 "I- I," Amahr stammered with a whimper, "why? Why?"

 "Why what? I have my reasons, but of what use is it to share it? Explain to me now the secrets of the staff and this castle!"

 His head nodding, he asked, "Can it take back this world from the devil you mentioned? If technology failed once, won't it fail again?"

Myungsoo swayed his head side to side, "We were unprepared! But now the sword is whetted and ready to kill! Lo, I am that sword!"

 Amahr tilted his head back and sobbed without restraint. 

Gritting his teeth with impatience, Myungsoo shouted, "One wrong move and-"

 "And what, fool?!" he decried with passion, "You cannot break that glass! Only a nuclear explosion or something as powerful as that can shatter the barrier!" 

 With a wave of his staff, sirens began to blast, the whole room was enveloped by a vivid scarlet phosphorescence. From the lofty ceiling descended countless mechanical arms with a yellow nozzle at the end, and the whole floor was littered with such machinery. These robot arms aimed a beam of bright red light at the heads of the pair. 

Rather than sipping in the fear, Myungsoo smiled. This is what he wanted. He wanted a place full of weaponry. "You will call them off! Or my hand will pierce your daughter's with my dying effort!"

 Dongwoo gasped and spasmed suddenly. Glimpsing at the queen, his nerves spurred him to break her free. Calm down! He won't do it! We've already come this far! There's no way he'll kill her, it's just his anger talking! If I try to save her, I'll make things worst! Stay still and follow his command. 

His eyes were frantic orbs that peered to and fro, finally settling on the one who issued the threat, searching his face for any distinguishable sign of murderous intent. Though his eyes were burning coals, something, a sixth sense or perhaps divine inspiration told Dongwoo that he was merely bluffing. His qualms were subtly allayed. For now, he braced himself to face a deluge of chaos, praying small petitions of Help us, Nesher.

 "I'll let you, fool! Try to break the glass," Amahr said in his dimwitted hubris. His confidence in the glass was immeasurable. His eyes witnessed when it was tried by countless blasts of explosives, lasers, and strikes of blades. a simple fist cannot crash through it, even one aided by nanomachines, he reasoned.

A cocky smirk on his face, Myungsoo struck through the glass with his fist. The sound was like the violent crashing of thunder, and the speed of his fist was like lightning. Miraculously so, or by design, the glass had burst outward- as if it the blow that destroyed it came from within. The queen magically floated in the blue liquid that had congealed and was unharmed, her lilied flesh untouched by the broken barrier unlike Myungsoo who bled from his hand and face as resulting from the shards that burst and shot themselves at him.

Amahr's knees rattled with awe and he felt his spirit leave him. In the span of a moment, the abducted queen slept in the arms of a fiend. That grim, red lighting that illuminated the room made him appear as though he were a being of macabre lore. The shadows played about his face and etched his features with the scrawling of profane acolytes. It was an inhuman being masking itself in a man's face that held his "daughter".

He yelled, but no sound came out; only the dry and wheezing breaths of a dying, reckless, old and foolish man.

 "One wrong move and she dies! It takes no effort to snap a neck, and I've snapped my fair share!"

 Dongwoo convulsed as his distended eyes darted between the sight of his companion, the lissome dreamer, and the old man. He was immersed in sweat and the throes of ambiguity, the dread of impotency lashed at him. What do I do, Nesher? he questioned as he clenched his fists. 

He won't! It's only a bluff! He won't kill her! He's more than that! His lips gushed with blood as his teeth pierced them. Steadily, he felt his hand reaching for his sword. I'm sorry he said in a whisper to his god, Just in case...

 "Call all this off! Or else your daughter dies!" Myungsoo roared with what looked like a euphoric smile. "Alas! This fortress will be put to use, to kill a dog! You will be avenging our people!"

 Amahr, his head hung low, swayed his head and groaned. Beard covered in froth and already sagging cheeks from age sagged further down as if pulled by heavy weights, he glanced up with his miserable, wretched eyes. "My daughter died... I just wanted to dream even if for a bit longer, but the devil appeared to take her a second time? Are you not like the very one you presume to kill?"

His teeth grinding away like stone mortars, Myungsoo growled, "I ought to-"

The entire room was filled again by the Bugmen. Myungsoo questioned their summons, for no staff had struck the ground. What did this mean? 

Dongwoo ran his hand through his matted hair and gazed upwards for answers, hoping for his god to act. Myungsoo was right when he mentioned that all hell would break loose, he mused. The Bugmen's invocation and the fiery ambience of this room resembled that flaming pit.

His hair glistened from the coagulated green blood of Bugmen and freshly expulsed perspiration. This is not over yet. Nesher still has plans for us... His hand slowly started to unsheathe his sword until he was stopped by his friend that called out.

 "Take her- here," Myungsoo told him without making eye contact.

 "What?" He received her and nestled her supple body in his steely arms. She was light, not heavy as he might've thought. Her winsome face, fairer than all women alive, he supposed, made his heart pulse more than it had ever before. Yet, his heart pulsed more furiously whence Myungsoo lifted Amahr by his spindly neck.

Dongwoo closed his eyes and cried out. He cried at the thought of Myungsoo killing, even if it entailed the death of one who had already shed so much blood. The sound, the disturbing thud of a body hitting the floor drove him to the edge of his sanity. He opened his eyes once he recognized the thud as something else, it had been a metallic clang. 

Some feet away from him laid Myungsoo with blood spilling out his side, Amahr looming over him with the device of his crime held aloft, his staff. 

 "You made me do this!" Amahr wailed.

Myungsoo, his voice more of a gurgle than intelligible speech, grunted, "I'll see you in hell, old friend."

 "You will, you will. I am afraid of that. But even so, may Nesher have mercy on us two lost souls." The shivering elder braced his hands to deal the death blow, aiming for Myungsoo's throat.

His vision, a hazy mess of dull colors and misty silhouettes, managed to witness his assailant fall back with a broadsword transfixed on his chest. He heard the faint sound of shouts and sobbing when at once he heard the familiar cantor of a beloved girl, his sister. Her usual sweet lilt that sounded like a song as she whispered goodbye became a knell to him, those loud and hollow bell sounds haunting him until it receded into the bedlam. Shadowy, quickly shifting figures of black appearance stood above him.

The angels of death? he questioned in his wavering consciousness.

....

He was fading, merging with the memory of those long dead, slipping like a shadow between the cracks of life until someone shook him out of that near-death state.

It was a girl with ruddy brown locks that shook his side with a plea, "Don't die please! You have to help your friend!"

 "Friend?"  Myungsoo asked with a slur as his eyelids moved with clear lethargy, "Dongwoo?"

 "Yes, please!"

 "Don't I need help?" he spoke with an indolent tone.

 "Hurry, please," the fragile voice insisted, "Amahr left something behind before he died, look," she said as she lifted his head to peer at a machine. "He had called me his daughter, so I can only guess he rigged for it to appear in case my life was endangered. I don't know, but I can only presume it can deliver us from danger!"

 "Doggy?" Myungsoo coughed up some blood while straining to sit up. It was a machine that resembled the one he owned as a child, that robotic dog he could never convert into a hovercycle. It was a robotic spectacle he had not fancied to even consider in his recent days, yet the name of the contraption his father gifted him so long ago sprang like a shooting star.

 "Hurry! He said this castle explodes when he dies!"

 Myungsoo grunted and his glassy eyes roamed about the chaos of dead Bugmen, limp mechanical arms, a dead man, and the sight of his friend heaped up into a pile, sobbing without end. The sight worked a small reserve of energy in his thews. The warm, gooey feeling of blood seeping out his side he didn't heed, but rather it was s that behaved somnolently. He called his legs stupid for refusing to advance in Dongwoo's direction. With a grunt of effort, he forced his sluggish feet to lift themselves and so began to walk with an ineloquent stupor, his body constantly tottering side to side.

 "What happened to him?" he asked as he paused to in some air, exhausted by the small distance.

 "He saved you! He killed Amahr before he killed you! I woke up too late to try anything!"

 ...

On board that shining metal oddity rode the queen and two dying men, her saviors. Kei frantically pushed at the random squares on the screen as Myungsoo ordered and gripped the handles as the entire thing lifted itself off the ground.

Small fires burst out of every wall, electricity crackled everywhere and dense smoke clouded the place. With a small prayer, she pressed on the last square and the machine blasted off down the stairs and into the tunnels. It sped along the maze at a fast pace, navigating through the warren with a smooth glide. It was the talent of the machine's makers to imbue the mechanism with a system that allowed even the most novice of riders appear skillful.

 "Follow the large gashes we made on the wall, or the corpses of those monsters we left on the ground," Myungsoo ordered as he clenched Dongwoo's waist.

His friend clung onto Kei's own waist limply. It killed him to shed blood, Amahr's blood. It killed him mentally. Alive, yet already dead, he was...