Chapter 729 - Damnation

Zeke watched as a thousand ships broke free of the staging ground, then sailed off into space.  Most of his friends were on those ships.  People he cared about, along with millions of kobolds, beastkin, and humans, were meant to descend upon the moons and do his monstrous bidding.

Many would die, and not just on the other side.  Those moons were well-protected, but if his armies could punch through those defenses, they could strike a blow that Aja would feel more fully than any since the war in the Eternal Realm had begun.  Already, she’d lost millions of worshippers.  And by destroying the academies on the moons surrounding Okanar, they would rob Aja of the ability to raise more.

It was a good plan.

And yet, Zeke’s soft heart rebelled at the notion of killing so many innocents.  And they were innocent.  There was no doubt about that.  Some were children.  Others had barely begun their paths.  Certainly, there were more mature soldiers stationed on those moons.  Millions of them, in fact.  But their numbers were dwarfed by the students’. 

That was the point, after all.

Explicitly, his armies were meant to target the young.  The ones with the potential to change the course of the war.  With them out of the way, the flow of faith would be stymied, and Aja would be weakened.  Possibly enough to provoke a confrontation. 

Zeke felt guilty about his intentions.  He would grieve the innocents.  But he knew that, ultimately, it was necessary.  Aja had signed their death warrants the moment she’d refused to address the problem facing the entirety of their unraveling reality.  With every passing day, Zeke saw it more clearly.  If something wasn’t done, and soon, everything and everyone would cease to exist.

Maybe they would be consumed by the enemy outside the Framework.  Or perhaps they’d simply disappear alongside the threads that comprised them.  But even if Zeke didn’t know the nature of their demise, he recognized its inevitability.

Next to that, a few million deaths didn’t matter.  That was a small price to pay if it meant he could save everyone else.

So, as guilty as he felt, he didn’t let it influence his actions.  He simply couldn’t afford to go down that road.  He didn’t have the luxury of caring about them.  Too much responsibility rested on his shoulders.

With that in mind, he watched with grim determination as the ships passed out of his line of sight.  The first phase required them to attack the moons, and only once their assault was underway would he fall upon Okanar itself, where he would destroy the cities that acted as the pillars upon which their entire infrastructure rested.

Zeke wasn’t looking forward to it.

He took no pleasure in killing people who effectively could not fight back.  And yet, he was committed.  No matter what else happened, his goal was to destroy their goddess, which would likely result in more deaths than he could count. 

“Monster is right,” he said to himself, though there was no one there to hear it.

Aside from a few thousand kobolds who represented the army’s medical corps and administrative force, there was no one else around.  And they weren’t close enough to hear his words.

For a while, Zeke stood sentry, staring off into space, and he briefly felt a pang of wonder.  The twinkling stars, the barely visible celestial bodies – it was all beautiful, and in his past life, he’d have been awestruck.  However, now, that emotion was sullied by his awareness of everything’s underlying structure.

It was difficult to appreciate an outward expression of beauty when he could see the strings beneath it.  The same was true of his friends.  Of his relationship with Talia.  Of his connection to the reality he wanted so desperately to save.

In the end, what was he meant to save?  A collection of strings?  When did a person become a person?  When did they cease to be the threads that comprised them?  Where was the secret ingredient that made the difference?

Zeke was simultaneously eager to find it and terrified to look deeper, in case there was nothing to discover.  What if the soul was nothing more than another collection of strings?

He mentally shivered at that thought.

If that was the case, then whatever connection he felt with other people would be gone.  If it was all just threads, then what did it matter if he killed a few people?  He couldn’t destroy the threads.  He’d tried, and even if he severed them, the remnants just joined other strings. 

Looking at it from that perspective, did death even matter?  Without a soul, no.  So, he had to believe that they existed, even if he was too afraid to investigate it further.  It was better if he didn’t know.

For now.

One day, that might change, though.  Perhaps that day would come when he truly beheld the scope of the carnage he’d left in his wake.  Maybe it would come as an effort to assuage the guilt he didn’t want to acknowledge.

Whatever the case, it couldn’t change his intended purpose.  The wheels were already in motion.  If he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain, his armies would be hung out to dry.  Without his presence, they would have no defense against Aja’s inevitable response.  She would come.  Zeke felt it in his core.  And he needed to be there when she did.

So, when the time came, he reached out and grabbed one of the distant strings.  The ones that comprised space were much further apart than those represented by solid matter, but he could still reach them.  Once he’d taken ahold of his target, he pulled himself forward.

He sailed into space, latching onto another distant string.  Like that, he flew, though it was more appropriate to characterize it as him pulling himself through space.  Either way, the result was the same.  With each pull, he gained speed, and before long, he was flying along much faster than even the Mercury. 

As such, it wasn’t long before Okanar came into view. 

The planet and its moons looked strikingly similar to the hologram he’d seen back in the tower, though seeing the scale at play still took him aback.  Okanar was of a size with his home planet, and though its moons were slightly smaller than Earth’s, they were still large enough that, taken together, they represented an even larger body. 

Already, the battle was underway, with the force split into three groups that had attacked simultaneously.  None of them had landed yet, largely because the defenses were still active.  At present, space was filled with the issue from various siege weapons.  Those, in turn, were the result of skills and artifice working together. 

For his part, Zeke had barely even looked at those weapons.  He only needed to know that they worked, and given that one of the tower’s defining characteristics was its industrial capacity, he trusted his generals when they’d told them that they would.  They’d yet to breach the defenses, but it was only a matter of time.

As Zeke drew closer, the three moons launched a counterattack comprised of their own ships.  Instead of resembling Earth’s seagoing vessels, the enemy’s fleet was comprised of sleek-looking spaceships that reminded Zeke of watching a battle in a science fiction movie.

He ignored them all as he pulled himself toward Okanar’s surface.

When he drew close, he realized that there was a significant barrier in place.  However, to Zeke, it was just another collection of strings.  He severed them, opening a hole in the shield through which he descended.  It closed behind him, the threads snaking together of their own accord.

But by that point, he was through.

He plummeted toward the surface like a meteor, fire erupting all around him.  He’d used [Primordial Titan] during his trip through space, so he was more than protected against mundane friction.  Still, he felt the heat, which came with significant pain that he easily ignored.

After all, with what he’d been through in Hell, being burned alive barely even moved his needle.  He’d aimed for the largest city, which was home to at least a few million elves.  When he hit the center of that city, the effect was akin to that of a nuclear explosion.  A shockwave of force erupted from the point of impact, ripping through buildings and vaporizing anyone within a few miles. 

And that was most of the city.

The sky darkened as a cloud of debris erupted into the air, covering everything in a dense blanket of ash and dust.  The effect didn’t end there, though.  It went much deeper.  Hitting the planet with so much force set off a chain reaction that eventually sent ripples through its core.  Zeke saw it all through as vibrating strings, and the result was multiple earthquakes and volcanic eruptions across the planet.

Zeke knew it wasn’t an extinction level event.  Especially for the most powerful among the elves.  But he also knew that, with that single impact, he’d killed millions. 

He ignored the swell of guilt that came with that realization.

Instead, using the atmospheric threads as a ladder, he rose above the crater he’d inflicted upon the city, and paid witness to the carnage he had authored.  Everywhere he looked was a hellish cityscape of ruins.  Close to the crater, nothing had survived.  Only piles of ash. 

But further away, he saw charred corpses that had been mangled beyond all recognition.  The skeletons of the buildings had survived, their doubtless impressive architecture so thoroughly sundered that even their architects couldn’t have identified their own work.

Miles away were the first row of survivors, though they probably wished they hadn’t made it.  The least of their injuries were shattered bones, but many were missing limbs.  And those survivors were the most powerful among the population.  Lesser gods with no dearth of levels among them.

The weaker residents had died.  Some, instantly.  With others, it had taken a few moments.  But they were all gone.

It wasn’t until Zeke’s attention fell on a location five miles distant – at the edge of the city – did he see a relatively untouched structure.  Predictably, its architecture was impressive.  A blend of flowing wood, stained glass, and details glistening with mana – it was beautiful.

Or it would have been had it not been splattered with the blood of those thrown free of ground zero to splatter against its elegant curves.

Further on were more intact buildings.  More importantly, the survivors became more frequent, and to the point where Zeke knew they could muster a significant force.  He had no intention of allowing that.

So, as he rose above the city, he employed [Eye of Reckoning] to wreak havoc upon the population.  Dense beams of roiling divine fire erupted from the center of his forehead, sweeping across the city and destroying anything in its way.  In seconds, he’d carved a haphazard design into the city.  Buildings that had survived the impact now toppled as he cut them in two. 

 He destroyed the rest of the city in mere minutes.

Thankfully, most didn’t have time to scream, [Eye of Reckoning] killed them so quickly.  Yet, those unvoiced screams still echoed in his mind, evidence of the horror he had inflicted upon presumed innocents. 

He didn’t hesitate, though.  He couldn’t.  The task he’d taken upon himself demanded persistence in the face of horror.  In spite of the guilt, he forged ahead, though he could do nothing about the tears flowing down his cheeks. 

He had killed so many in his life, and he’d ordered even more deaths than he could count.  But the sheer slaughter he inflicted upon that city – it was enough to break a less resolved man. 

Zeke held firm, though.  Even as guilt gripped his heart and regret ravaged his mind, he killed everyone before him.  Then, he moved on to the next city.  And the next after that.  As he swept across the planet, his forces destroyed the academies on the moon.  They’d long since breached the defenses, and had landed upon the surface.

Doubtless, they enjoyed their task no more than Zeke did his. 

But even if they had their doubts – and they surely did – they had put their trust in Zeke’s leadership.  He wasn’t just their ruler.  He was their god.  And regardless of whether or not he truly lived up to that implied standard, they put the entirety of their faith in his direction. 

He only hoped that that would shield them from the damnation that would surely find him. 

So it went for what felt like an eternity as he swept across the planet.  It was only after he’d destroyed dozens of cities that he felt a surge of divine energy that heralded the arrival of Aja.

“What have you done?” she demanded, slapping aside the latest beam of [Eye of Reckoning].  She’d appeared before him in the shape of an elf, though one with bark for skin and hair of glistening moonlight.  She was both ethereal and otherworldly.

And she would have to die.

Zeke didn’t bother answering.  Instead, he aimed another [Eye of Reckoning] in her direction as he prepared to charge.