Forevermore Unto the Void

Epilogue (part 1: Conquest)

                     "The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind"- H.P. Lovecraft

1

One Minute After Midnight (~0 ACA [After Collapse of Argus])

Archimedes had expected something other than what was around him now. He couldn't quite decide if he had expected agony or simply oblivion, but he definitely hadn't expected to simply remain on Mercury, standing next to his own impaled corpse. Looking around him, Archimedes couldn't tell if anything had changed about the abattoir that officially marked the death of the Argus Collective. The similarity to the battle before that unnerved him the most, however, was his own body. Where Archimedes had expected to see some sign of his death written across his form, there was nothing.

Hesitantly, Archimedes reached out one arm before his eyes, studying the clothing, his normal lab work coat, exact down to the placement of stains as closer inspection revealed, and tried to see any sign of anything having changed. On some subconscious level, Archimedes had almost expected to have become a translucent spectre of old myths, able to see through his own body, but he appeared as usual-only without the need for breath and, since there was neither dust nor prints on Mercury's surface, apparently without mass.

Unsure of what to do, Archimedes wandered the deathly calm of the mass grave, studying the bodies carefully to see if any of them still lived. Out of curiosity, Archimedes attempted to push one of the human corpses over only to have his arms disappear into the body, revealing his limbs to be purely aetherial constructs incapable of interacting with the world around him.

As he paced the world, wandering around the colossal wreck of his last battlefield, Archimedes eventually gave in and asked the audient crypt "Am I even dead?"

"I was wondering when you'd give me an opportunity to show up," James Wadeth announced, walking into the silent air from a Tear that opened and closed only long enough to admit the spectre.

"The fuck are you doing here?" Archimedes demanded, hostility naked in his voice.

"Isn't it obvious, Archimedes?" James asked, pausing a moment for emphasis. "You fucked up-failed. I know it's a new concept for you, but now you've got the rest of human existence to ponder all possible meanings of it."

"How could I have failed?" Archimedes retorted, far out of the patience required to keep the frustration from his voice.

"You missed Terra," James spat. "There are about twenty million people left alive in the ruins of Terra that you failed to kill."

"And I don't suppose we can expect them to just get along after the war that just left our species a ruin of its former self," Archimedes responded. It was not a question.

"I've been around a while, so I can safely say that it won't be more than a few hundred years before someone gets jealous of someone else and it's war. And you failed to produce an heir, so that means we just get to sit back and watch it all."

"We don't have to," Archimedes told James after a few moments' thought."

"What do you mean?" James narrowed his eyes.

"I mean we could make a bargain. We have the power of several quadrillion lives behind us-that has to count for some collateral, right?"

"Go on," James hesitated, already picking up on some of what Archimedes had in mind.

"We ask the gods, whichever you prefer, to allow us to create... four more of us, one for every Wadeth that's tried to lift our curse thus far. With the bargaining power we have, even accounting for the amount lost to my last deal, we'd be able to convince them-especially since, as we'd be desperate to be rid of this curse-that it would be a bloody affair."

"Then put those four on the board around the same time-"

"And play them off each other to maximise our odds of one of them triumphing and securing a reign over humanity or slaughtering everyone in the process of trying."

"That could work. We should run it by Nocturne and Corvus first, but I think that could work," James nodded. "Come on, then, Archimedes, it's time we went back home."

Archimedes nodded solemnly and followed James into a Tear that formed only long enough for the two to walk through it and into the Hidden Library, where an exhausted-looking Nocturne and Corvus were waiting for them.

"We heard your plan," Nocturne announced without a trace of emotion.

"It's not the best idea," Corvus added, "but we haven't got anything else, so we'll side with you on this one."

"Now we just need to pitch it to the gods-whichever of them will listen to us, anyway."

The instant James finished speaking, two voices speaking in unison, the layered effect created by the difference in their tones causing the group to pause a moment before realising that the deities that were speaking were Thanatos and Arkarthas "We have heard your proposition, and we will accept. You will have your four heirs, but that will be the last string that you have to pull. Once they have died, you will be left to witness the consequences, one way or another, without possibility of intrusion."

"Thank you, First of the Nightmare-born," James supplicated. "When will they come into existence?"

"When you decide the time is right," Arkarthas' harsh whisper ghosted through the halls of the Library before the weight of the gods' malefic presence subsided.

"Probably best to wait a few hundred years or so before we drop the first one in," Archimedes suggested. "Be better if there's less chance of him stumbling onto some Argus technology no one understands anymore and blowing himself up."

"We should groom each of them properly as they grow up," Nocturne added. "With proper training, we might be able to avoid mistakes like making bargains impractical to keep with the Dark Gods."

"I'll take this one," James volunteered. "I was the one who got us into this mess and I'll be the first to try to remedy it."