This should be his solution, he thought. Raise up people from the Iterations, not sworn to the Way, who could interfere without compromising their oaths.
But from the records, he could see that it had failed. Again and again. Those who fought corruption inevitably became corrupted themselves.
So Ozriel decided to do some investigation of his own.
He traveled to Haven, the prison-world of the Abidan, where he used his authority as a Judge to gain access to the Mad King, Daruman. Once the greatest of the Abidan Executors.
He asked the Mad King what he thought. Why was the Executor program flawed?
It wasn’t the program, Daruman insisted. It was the Abidan.
Being sworn to order made the Abidan too inflexible, too bound to their own thoughts. Creativity and flexibility were beyond them, and the second that anyone started pushing at the boundaries of their rules, the offending party would be condemned.
Ozriel promised change. He wanted to revive the Executor program, but this time, they would be an official division of the Abidan beneath him. They would be unbound to the Eledari Pact, able to intervene in worlds, and personally selected and supervised by him. They would save worlds by eliminating apocalypses at the root.
He would call them Reapers.
And if he could get enough support from the Court of Seven to create his own official Division, he would even recruit Daruman. Ozriel was uniquely able to handle Class One Fiends.
Daruman and Oth’kimeth laughed together.
Mighty as Ozriel may be, as keen as his eyes were, he would never succeed. The Court of Seven could not be convinced, and they would be against him for this.
If Ozriel was really dedicated to his ideals, as he claimed to be, he should join the Vroshir. They, at least, saved human lives.
Ozriel brought his proposal before the Court, and as expected, there was heavy resistance. Only the new, young Suriel would have allowed it—a woman he had known for centuries by this point, as she worked her way up the ranks. And even she had misgivings.
Ozriel pled his case but was dismissed.
He accepted that. He had looked into the future and seen that this would not be an easy task. He would try again, and again.
As long as it took.
Record complete.
13
Yerin cycled her last elixir and focused on the layer of red aura around her. The Hydra blood that had caked her robes and splattered on her skin flowed off, leaving her spotless.
The same couldn’t be said for Ziel and Mercy. Ziel didn’t look particularly bothered by the dark spots that covered him and his gray cloak, but Mercy looked like a rat that had been partially drowned in mud.
Orthos had simply burned the blood away, but he was clearly unhappy. He snorted as he looked up at the entrance overhead. “How many is that now?”
Yerin had been keeping track. “Six. Bleed me like a pig if something’s not spitting them out.”
Every time they killed one, hunger spirits devoured it. They were repurposing the energy, she was sure.
She had tried to stop them as much as possible, but the hunger spirits were endless, and her power wasn’t.
The others were all tired, and she was still carrying the bulk of each battle. But her perception was warning her about what was lurking up above. It felt like the Tomb Hydras, but much deeper. Bigger. It felt like a mother, giving birth to each of the dreadbeasts that fell down.
She hoped that wasn’t it.
“I’m going up,” she said reluctantly.
Mercy threw out a hand like she thought Yerin was going to dash away immediately. “No, wait! We agreed we’d stay here!”
“They’re going to grind us like grain in a mill. We stay here, and Lindon will know exactly where to find our bodies.”
It was hard to sense anything here, since her perception couldn’t penetrate the walls and everything was soaked in hunger madra, but she had still expected to sense Eithan or Lindon by now. Something had delayed them.
Ziel sighed. “You think it’s going to slowly kill us. So you want to dive in all at once. You want it to quickly kill us?”
“Not us. I’m going myself.” Yerin didn’t want to say it out loud, but she felt like she could keep fighting even once her madra was gone. She would be ground down eventually too, but even if she was left with nothing more than her sword and the strength of her body, she could probably keep fighting for days.
If they kept fighting, Eithan and Lindon would find three bodies and Yerin. And that wasn’t acceptable. If Orthos and Mercy died, it would be after Yerin.
Ziel…he was mostly a mystery to her. Maybe he could survive without her help.