A Lullaby For Gods Chapter 141

CHAPTER NINETEEN: BREAKDOWN! BREAKDOWN!

JANUARY 27, 2014

NEW YORK CITY

Eridan should have shot him right in the hallway.

For the sake for the children, though, and Jaeger who had been right behind him, he refrained from turning the room into a slasher’s movie set, and instead let the asshole in to explain himself. The human he was with turned out to be his tour guide through the city, unwittingly roped into the prick’s journey of looking for Eridan, so Eridan mostly gave him a wide berth and let him pass out on one of the couches to rest. It wasn’t his fault Cronus was a conniving dick.

Right now, it was a few minutes past midnight. They’d spent the last few hours introducing Cronus to everyone else as someone somewhat related to Eridan who had come looking for him, waited for the others to fall asleep, before Eridan dragged his dancestor to the kitchen to have a proper talk.

He kept his rifle with him, of course. It was comforting to have a weapon to fire if Cronus pissed him off, otherwise he might collapse the room if his magic escaped him from rage.

“Are you going to keep that thing?” Cronus asked, sitting across him and eyeing the gun worriedly.

“It’s the only thing keeping me from flattening this building on you,” Eridan said. “Talk. What the fuck are you doing here?”

Cronus kept his eyes on the firearm for a minute more before turning to Eridan. “I was sent here to help stop the end of the world,” he said. “Instructions from the, uh, Heir of Doom.”

Eridan raised an eyebrow.

“Hey, I came all the way from Sicilia and everything,” Cronus said, defensive. “I have friends, there, you know, I would have wanted to sit out the end times with them, but I came here looking for you instead.”

“What are you supposed to do here?” Eridan asked.

“Well, the end of the world didn’t just pick up steam for no reason,” Cronus said, leaning forward and placing his hands on the table, lacing them together. “The Heir of Blood managed to gain some incredible magic to worsen it. I’m here to eliminate the source of that magic and put a stop to the apocalypse.”

“Isn’t that grand?” Eridan scoffed, kicking his feet on the ground and making his chair tip back, balancing it on its back legs. “And that source is in New York?”

“Yes,” Cronus said.

“Okay,” Eridan said. “I’ll bite, even though you’re usually full of shit. What is it?”

Cronus smiled – it looked more awkward than self-assured, and more nervous than reassuring, if he was even trying to be positive in any way. He looked like he just smiled in the same way some people instinctively laughed when faced with something difficult.

“It’s not a thing,” Cronus said. “It’s a who. It’s a person. Someone’s helping the Heir of Blood speed up the end of the world.”

“And they’re staying in New York city?” Eridan asked. The city was going to hell in a handbasket, who would decide to stay on this sinking ship of a city, especially if they were the cause of its hastening destruction? Was it a range problem, in terms of their magic? Did they just want to make sure the job got done?

“Yes,” Cronus said, his smile tightening. “Unfortunately so.”

“Did you come here to recruit me to help you get rid of them or to help you find them?”

“The first part,” Cronus said, “And to make sure you were doing alright. You’re also kind of a, uh, loose cannon. What with your – ” He gestured in Eridan’s direction. “Everything.”

The boy’s frown turned into a glower.

“It’s…kind of difficult to maneuver around your magic since it’s so volatile,” Cronus said. “No offense meant, I just mean it’s very good at what it does – quit flaring your magic, jegus– and evidently way too tied to your emotional state for it to be stable.”

“Yeah, well, you’re testing my mental stability right now, so watch your step.”

“…perhaps we should talk about this outside the building, then,” Cronus said, glancing towards a window. “In case you actually accidentally flatten this place. There’re humans here.”

Eridan scoffed – but given his stellar track record of causing earthquakes and destroying property with the slightest shift in his mood, it was probably for the best. Jaeger could protect the others while they were away; she deserved some acknowledgement and trust for her capabilities. Plus, even without her, the kids had already been defending themselves from ghosts and angels before Eridan’d run into them.

He grunted, rising from his seat and slinging the rifle on, resting it on his back. Across him, Cronus looked at him in surprise.

“You’re actually going?” he asked.

“Just being around you pisses me off and I might actually rip this building off its foundations, so.” Eridan lifted a shoulder. He nodded towards the doorway. “Let’s go.”

Cronus blinked, before scrambling out of his seat and grabbing his jacket from where he’d draped it over the back of his chair. Eridan turned away and headed out, barely waiting for him to follow.

The hotel was as eerily quiet as it had been when he and the others had first found it. Staying holed up in their room had allowed Eridan to ignore the fact that he was essentially in a building full of dead people, but now that he was walking down the hallways and smelling the rot again – he drew his jacket tighter and scrunched up his nose.

At least there were some human survivors in the city, if Cronus’ guide was any indication.

“Actually, there was something I needed your help with,” Cronus said when they reached the ground floor. “There’s a horrorterror outside.”

“A horrorterror?” Eridan asked, looking out the glass walls of the building’s front; he could only see the street across them from where he was. Hastening his steps, he quickly ducked out the front doors and looked around.

Cronus pointed to the east, and there, having slipped through a particularly large crack in the sky, was some gigantic octopus creature. Or one of its limbs, at least.

“Holy fuck,” Eridan breathed.

“I think it fell through some space-warp crack from the furthest ring,” Cronus said behind him. “It’s been trying to get itself out since, but look at the size of that thing. I don’t think it can support its own weight when it’s on a planet with gravity. It’s probably used to just floating in space.”

“I don’t know how much help I could be with that thing,” Eridan said. “I get magically poisoned when I use too much Hope.”

“Oh, I’m not asking you to kill it,” Cronus said, stepping forward so they were side by side looking at the eldritch monster. “I mean – it’s a horrorterror, you probably can’t anyway. I was thinking we could just, shove it out, or something.”

Eridan turned to him, expression irritated as he looked Cronus from head to foot, as if to ask, Well, why the fuck didn’t you just do it yourself?

Cronus, as if to demonstrate, did some jazz hands. “I’m a destruction-type, but I’m an ambient destruction-type,” he said. “You’re the powerhouse. Didn’t you get like, lessons on your Hope powers?”

“I did, but I assumed you would have been able to do something since you’re a Hope player too,” Eridan said, turning his attention back to the horrorterror. “Our whole thing’s about doing the impossible and not making any goddamn sense…you want me to throw that thing back where it came from?”

“If you can. That thing’s just going to destroy whatever it can reach if it stays there.”

The older troll kept his gaze on Eridan, as if observing his reaction, so the boy just made a noise of begrudging ascent and started marching towards the direction of the horrorterror, before deciding, fuck it, that thing was probably halfway across the city, and instead started running down the street.

Cronus yelled, “Hey!” in surprise, running after him. Unfortunately for him, however, while he’d grown lax in the safe environment of Sicilia, Eridan had been spending the last few months working his ass off on an island, easily leaving Cronus in the dust.

Eridan clicked his tongue. “Beforans.”

“Hey! That’s not very nice, Beforus was also your planet before everything got Scratched!” Cronus yelled after him.

Eridan raised his voice loud enough to make sure that Cronus heard him as they ran. “I think you got benched because the Heir knew you would have melted into a puddle if they put you on the Heir of Blood’s radar.”

Feeling just a little bit petty, he put slightly more energy into his run as he wound down the road, leaping over debris and overturned cars as he went, making sure to check that he could still see the horrorterror in the distance as he navigated the streets, and that it was getting closer.

In a few minutes, he finally turned down a street that opened to a part of the city was in complete ruins – buildings reduced to rubble, the road nothing but a mess of ground asphalt – and at the center of the wreckage, the horrorterror’s unfortunate tentacle that was thrashing about weakly, desperately trying to push itself off the earth and out of the rift it’d fallen in.

It didn’t seem to be hurt, but it couldn’t be comfortable, being stuck like that. And with how Eridan only just noticed its presence now that Cronus pointed it out, who knew how long it had been stuck there. Plus, time warped around black holes, didn’t it? If rifts acted the same, since it was a warping of space, maybe an unhealthy amount of time had passed for the thing.

The problem was that Eridan had never used his Hope in a task that didn’t require him to outright destroy. Sure, he might not actually be able to hurt the horrorterror, but given that he was a Hope player…it was probably best not to risk pissing off one of the most terrifying and powerful creatures in the universe.

There had to be a way to move this thing without having to rely on a blast of Hope powerful enough to move it but also potentially harm it. Eridan wracked his brain for everything he’d been taught on the island, though unfortunately, he only came up with offensive spells instead of something that would help him move objects. He didn’t have Harley’s ability to command space, or Silvertongue’s telekinetic abilities. He was just good at shooting things.

“Have you actually tried to move this thing?” Eridan asked as he heard Cronus finally stumble into the wreckage site, wheezing for breath.

“N-no,” Cronus said, “Not that I can do much. I – ” He paused as he tried to catch his breath. “ – I’ve only been practicing self-enchants, and I mostly isolate those to my voice, sometimes my hands.”

Self-enchantment. Eridan could hear Nereus’ voice in his head reviewing the details of it as the word kicked off a memory in his head. A form of enchantment that imbues conceptual power to the caster’s physical body instead of a separate physical object.

…god, he missed the old man. He wondered how the others were – where they were, since they’d fallen into rifts in space. Were they stuck in some unpleasant part of the universe too, like this horrorterror?

Eridan had mostly used his Hope to form weapons and he’d been able to hold up reasonably well in fights before; he could try to self-enchant himself, but with what? His abilities were so rooted in destruction it would be like holding a knife to his skin.

He looked down at his hand. Magical pressure was just formless magic – what if he could enchant himself with that instead, a steady flow of formless magical energy?

“I can hear the gears turning in your head, what are you thinking?” Cronus asked beside him.

“Something stupid,” Eridan said. Fuck it. First time for everything. He pushed some of his Hope forward. “Self-enchant.”

The ground underneath him shook and cracked under the weight of his magical pressure, causing another earthquake and nearly forcing Cronus to the ground, but, after a few seconds, the scope of the wave of energy diminished, eventually localizing to Eridan. The boy clenched and unclenched his fist, and then, experimentally, flicked a finger down at the empty street.

A massive wind gust erupted from his hand, blowing back a few chunks of rubble. A little weaker than expected, but Eridan wasn’t about to risk increasing the power when his body wasn’t equipped to handle his magic.

“What was that?” Cronus asked.

“Channeled magical pressure,” he said. “Magical theory states that magical pressure is the formless weight of magic, meaning it can be called forth and pushed back and even aimed at a certain scope.”

The ground sloped downwards the closer it got to the horrorterror’s thrashing limb, so Eridan hopped down the small hill and slid down towards the eldritch creature, jogging lightly.

“And a self-enchantment is just putting something abstract to your physical body. Basically, I’m supergluing sheer weight and force into my body,” Eridan said, “I did pay attention when to my lessons.”

“Didn’t seem like it.”

“Eat shit, then.”

Eridan crouched beside the horrorterror’s tentacle as he reached it, taking hold of it from underneath with both hands as best as he could.

“Alright, here goes.”

With a grunt, he lifted it off the ground, hurriedly walking underneath it so he could find a better way to support the weight of the limb with his hands. Surprisingly, it was light to him right now, the only inconvenience being the dust and the rocks that were disturbed by the limb’s movement.

Great, so, he could lift the thing off the ground. What now? He needed enough force to throw this thing back up the rift, and all he was doing was lifting the very end of its limb.

He looked back up at the rift. It looked big enough that he couldn’t miss it.

With the end of the tentacle still being carried overhead, he walked to the side, stretching the horrorterror’s limb as far as it could go, before rearing both hands back in preparation to throw. Then, with as much strength as he could muster, he threw the octopus limb straight at the rift, the force of such a massive object soaring through the sky and folding up into its main body sending a burst of wind downwards.

The folded-up muscle hit the underside of the giant eldritch octopus’ body with a loud, resounding boom! knocking it backwards into its rightful place in the farthest reaches of the universe like it’d just been punched with its own arm.

Eridan let the self-enchantment dissipate, staring up at the now-empty rift.

“Well,” he said. “That’s that, I guess.”

“Thanks,” Cronus said behind him. As Eridan made to turn, he froze at the sudden spike in magical energy pouring from his dancestor.

When he met Cronus’ eyes, the young man’s irises were alight in gold. “Sleep.”

Dreariness hit Eridan in a wave, his eyelid suddenly weighed with lead. What the fuck was going on? What the hell was Cronus doing? As he felt his knees buckle, he grabbed for whatever ounce of Hope he could muster and felt it sluggishly trickle under his skin, lifting some of the heaviness from his eyes, though his limbs still weighed with fatigue.

“Huh, you tanked that,” Cronus said. Eridan couldn’t see him anymore, not when everything around him was dark from the empty sky and all he could see from his drowsiness were blurry shapes. “I mean, you do destroy magic, so I guess I should have put more kick into that.”

“W..what…?”

“Go to sleep, Eridan.”

There was that wave of exhaustion again, and this time, Eridan gritted his teeth, forcing as much magic into his body as possible. He could feel the sting of his arms burning from the inside out, and he braced his hands on the ground, fists clenching from the warring sensations of weariness and pain.

“What…the fuck,” he managed. “Are you doing?”

“I need you to sleep,” Cronus said, frustration leaking into his tone and forcing a bit more strength into his vocal magic. “You’re way too dangerous to keep awake.”

Eridan heard the crunch of the other troll’s shoes on the ground and blindly reached forward, trying to swipe at his legs. The first few swings caught nothing, but as he extended his arm as far as it could go and grabbed, he caught one of Cronus’ legs.

“What are you doing?” he asked. His eyes were sliding shut, so he let the burn of his magic spread – and now the pain was spreading to his shoulders; the sensation of his skin frying from within forced his eyes open. “Cronus, what the fuck are you doing?”

“I have to stop the end of the world, Eridan,” he said, pulling his leg away from Eridan’s weak, tired hold. “Sorry.”

“The - the source of the Heir of Blood’s sudden boost in magic?” Eridan crawled forward – Cronus quickly turned on his heel and walked away, but the younger troll kept moving, as slow as he might have been going. The important part was that he was straining against the bard’s magic and keeping himself awake. “What the fuck does that have to do with putting me to sleep, I thought you wanted my help – ”

He paused.

Eridan was way too dangerous to keep awake. Why on earth would someone do away with someone who was supposedly on their side, even if they were dangerous?

And just like that, it clicked, through the haze of Eridan’s fatigue. It would be more beneficial to leave a dangerous ally behind if they would get in the way.

“…why do you think I would get in the way?” Eridan slurred, lifting his head to watch Cronus get to the stop of the small hill. “I’m the powerhouse here, you’re going to need me if you want to get rid of some magic asshole hiding in New York…”

He brought his gaze to Cronus’ face. At the way his expression turned uncomfortable, nervous.

Someone Eridan would be a liability when confronting. Someone with magic. Someone in New York.

Eridan’s eyes widened. “Does this have something to do with Anshu Jaeger?”

Cronus, instead of answering, flooded as much magic into his voice when he spoke. “Sleep.”

For a moment, Eridan actually blacked out, slow to call for more of his Hope to assist in keeping him awake through the burns. But he needed to wake up, he needed to stand. He had no idea what the fuck Cronus was thinking involving some other-universe version of his friend, but all he could focus on was Anshu was in danger, Anshu was going to be hurt, Anshu was here and you failed before but she’s here and this is your chance this is your chance this is your chance - !

Eridan braced his hands on the ground and slammed his head on the concrete.

Above him, he heard Cronus make a choked noise out of surprise, and as he blinked, he found that the fatigue that was weighing him down had blessedly disappeared, replaced by the stinging ache of his head, and the warmth streaming down his face.

Bleeding profusely, Eridan Ampora stood, glaring up at Cronus.

“Don’t get cocky, asshole,” he said, lifting a hand as he summoned magical pressure forward, this time letting it run loose around the perimeter, shaking the earth underneath its weight. “Don’t fucking forget – ”

The pressure abated, taking in the form of multiple spears suddenly springing to existence above them, turning and aiming themselves at Cronus’ direction. In the darkness of the empty city, they dotted the broken sky like stars, pouring into the world just as past as Eridan’s magic began to burn and peel away the skin of his hands from overexertion.

Still, even through the pain, he smiled, manic.

“ – I’m the Destroyer here.”