“I gave a name to the path you just took: the Mettle Stride. It is the final challenge of prospective Ironborn, before they arrive here, in the Chamber of Eternity, to be bestowed eternal life. I wished to test your forces, yet I see you prefer your preparations over the thrill of overcoming hardships through sheer will. John Newman, you and all your bodies, nothing more, no one else, meet me atop the ziggurat.”


    The Gamer took a deep breath and turned to his haremettes. “Guess this is it then,” he said and looked at each of them in turn. “I’ll see you all again when victory is assured.”


    “Give him hell, tiger.” As a stand-in for the entire harem, his girlfriend stepped forwards and planted one last kiss on his lips. It was deep and quick, as appropriate as it could be in this setting. “Don’t you dare die on me.”


    “I’ve got too much to live for to even consider,” John responded confidently. He knew she saw past that veneer and distanced himself before they could get bogged down in a circle of assurances. After a nod towards his friends in the crowd, the Gamer turned around.


    As he took the long walk towards the centre of the dome, Arkeidos kept monologuing, “I cannot fault your urge to prepare too much. I begun construction of this fortress before my reign was consolidated. Steadily expanding, parts replaced or renewed, my domicile has existed for over a thousand years. Never have I stopped improving it. Every revelation upon the power drawn from the sapient soul is etched into every eternal stone of this place. Its mortar is the power that flows through it.


    “You have my gratitude, for you allow me to use this place in all of its potential. The effectiveness of my governance always succeeded in suppressing every rebellion before it could come anywhere near the seat of my power. For hundreds of years already, I wondered whether there was any point to such preparations. Now I know, not only that people strong enough truly do exist, but that I may be able to reach outwards and challenge them myself. Confirmation that the ebb and flow of conquests may bring new equals to the feet of my fortifications after I have dispatched you.”


    John had reached the bottom of the ziggurat. A tall staircase led up directly to the top, cutting through the four stacked levels of the pyramid-esque structure. Each step went up to John’s knee, clearly designed for the much larger body of Arkeidos. As dignified as he could, John, the Creator Puppet and the Mandala Sphere ascended.


    “I admire your confidence – to step up to me despite knowing your own inferiority. Your reliance on familiars, subjects, and... allies, as you call them, has left you weak. Crushing you will be an easy task.”


    “Then why bother with all of this?” John shouted, finally able to see Arkeidos. Seven of him, to be exact. As predicted, there were six suits of armour, each representing one of the six elements, with the seventh being the one that had greeted the Gamer earlier. “If it is so easy to crush me, do it and let this be over with.”


    “You ask questions to which the answer you already know, deeply in love with your own intellect as you are,” Arkeidos returned. Although the voice reverberated from all around, John knew the true source to be the body of necromancy sitting on a throne amidst the Emperor’s doubles. Beside them, the top of the ziggurat was flat, featureless stone. The pillars he had seen from a distance were one level down, their spires reaching above. John glanced upwards, the mummified leviathan above them. “The conqueror always finds a way. If I attempt to discard you ahead of time, you will retaliate. As much as you want to save this one,” Arkeidos presented Claire’s crystalized soul, “you would not sacrifice your life in the attempt. It is understood that you can only save her if you are alive to see it through. That is what differentiates you and I from the peons you brought with you. Their lives are resources, their deaths, setbacks. Our lives are the beginning and the end of the glorious vision we have for the world.”


    There was a true core in what he was saying and John chose not to acknowledge it out loud at that time. To give a simple affirmation would have belated the complicated mess of factors that went into this calculation. “The time for debate has never been, Arkeidos.”


    “All that exists now is the base brutality necessary for conquest and consolidation,” the Emperor agreed and rose from his throne. The Fusionals in his armour vibrated with corrupted tones as he stepped forwards. With his left hand, he conjured his mace. The six blades of the terrible weapon fit perfectly into six slits in the floor. Like a key, he turned it, causing the entire ziggurat to rumble.


    Noxious green spread through the featureless stone in a flash, slowly followed by gold, brown, red, green, blue, and purple energies that travelled towards the lock, their colours tinting sickly on their way. Arkeidos let go of his weapon. It trembled at the base, until turning a sixth of the way around. One seal was lifted; elemental and necromantic energies dispersed in a booming shockwave that travelled outwards through this brilliant garden of stagnancy. Five times, this repeated. Each time, John felt a more powerful physical tremor. Something was advancing upwards from deep within the earth. It hammered against the bottom of the ziggurat, practically causing an earthquake.


    The box of stone that finally rose from the ground before Arkeidos almost seemed to mock the intensity of the ritual. three metres on each side, four metres tall, it looked like another stone at first. Then the walls of the upper half disintegrated, leaving only four pillars at the corners and a roof above the treasure within.


    Millions of souls must have been sacrificed to create this pillar of Eternal Iron. A monument to a thousand years of tyranny, the metal itself screamed in agony. Massive constructions of humanoid souls, taking the shape of struggling skeletons, pushed out of the surface of the metal. At times they succeeded, burst out into the empty inside of the tower, and scattered into swirling souls. Before long, they were absorbed back into the metal that was all that remained of what had once been individuals with thoughts and aspirations.


    The suffering at display was so horrifying, so absolute, that it ceased to be scary at all. One dead man was a tragedy, a million a statistic, and just like that John’s impressive and yet still human mind failed to comprehend the true scope of the misery. Perhaps it just refused to. The condensed realization of the atrocity might have broken his mind, had it weighed on him in its entirety.


    “You’re a monster,” John declared, more convinced than ever.


    “I am a conqueror,” Arkeidos rebuked. “And rulers do not submit to the opinions of creatures.” Almost carelessly, the Emperor tossed Claire’s core to his phylactery. Another turn of the mace, and the box snapped back underground, returning to wherever it had come from. Noxious green energy exploded from above and below, creating isolating curtains not even a god could pass unharmed.


    Through the various eyes he had scattered about, John followed as the chamber was entirely dissolved. The elemental platforms rushed out through the tunnels, flying at an immense speed, their path being sealed behind them. Just from the two he could follow, he knew that the platforms were not only heading in different directions but to largely varying levels of distance and elevation.


    What exactly happened to the three gods set to fight Jevaine or the various other reinforcements he had brought along, John could only guess. He had no eyes among them, no time to make a call or something like that. All he could do was trust that they could fend for themselves.


    A deep, disgusting gurgle caused John to look up. Chains rattled as the mummified creature above started to jitter like a man claimed by deep, sudden cold. Spasming gargles accompanied the on and off flicker of green light in its eyes, as the energy that separated the top of the ziggurat from the rest of the outside seeped deep into the monstrosity. Its tentacles and arms were animated properly and latched onto the sides of the ziggurat.


    Stone grinded, as dust that had gathered for hundreds of years was forced to be displaced. After a few seconds of struggle, they began to rise. To the base of the pillar above and higher still. Rapidly, they ascended, growing faster and faster. The crude shape of the pillar rushed by them. The inside of the tower was a blur. Barely, John realized the existence of many balconies and accesses that should have been impossible at their height. The true dimensions of the Eternal Fortress were warped beyond reason by the magic that had seeped into it.


    “Necromancy is such a crude tool and few bones were ever capable of surviving revival by my hands,” Arkeidos shouted over the howling of the air. With his raised hand he channelled much of the souls wailing in the air into the kraken horror, further strengthening its grip on unlife. “You are truly worthy of this honour. Even with this, I cannot be certain of victory. IS THAT NOT EXHILARATING, CONQUEROR?! THE THRILL OF KNOWING THAT THERE IS MORE LEFT TO DOMINATE?! THAT YOU HAVE NOT YET WON IT ALL?!”


    The platform suddenly stopped. Several kilometres had been crossed in less than a minute, yet John was not thrown into the air by the abrupt end of momentum. His three bodies stood across from Arkeidos and the thirty-metre-long eldritch leviathan. The ziggurat folded in on itself, layer by layer, until it was a smooth surface – the floor of the top of the tower.


    Inexplicably, the air was completely still up here. John had no problems breathing. He turned his back to the Emperor and looked down at the world. “Desolate,” he said, now able to look in every direction and to see the sand and dust where grass had been a few days prior. “Lifeless, uninspired, dull, unworthy. What you call conquest, I call a waste. What use is there in ruling over a world without beauty?” Smiling over his shoulder, he said, “You know, one day I’d like to say I’m done making my mark on the world and retire to a quiet private island were I can keep indulging in my base urges, play video games, have sex with my harem, maybe learn how to build a rocketship.”


    “How dull.”


    “To you, yes,” John said, hands in his pockets. “That’s my point, Arkeidos. For all the ways we are the same, we are very different, you and I.”


    And all across the Eternal Fortress, combat began.