An Unwavering Legacy
Gravely wounded from the fall, the young commodore set out to the task at hand. It would be here, on the Crook of Nevod Bay, that he’d rebuild his legacy.
The ruined Haakon Osnor faltered across the steep cliff face. He ascended the unforgiving coarse terrain of this foreign land. Behind him, plumes of black smoke intoxicated the bleak, overcast afternoon. The dismal crackling fire devoured the wreckage. His aircraft shuttle lay beaten and broken beyond repair, scattered across the shore.
There would be no time for mourning, he thought bitterly.
Haakon clambered to the top and finally crested the cliff, where exhaustion overthrew his determination. On all fours, he gasped for air as the wind whipped it from his reach.
Blood and dirt mingled across his face, marred through streaks of his wavy hair. The clad colours of his house flapped in the coastal wind, like a frayed flag hanging on for salvation. Broad strokes of navy and burgundy marched towards the middle of his naval military greatcoat, like two opposing sides clashing on the battlefield. The gilded buttons lined the coat fastening as gold coins, now existing as glinting specks amidst the heath landscape before him.
The unforgiving gale pressed him towards the edge.
Yet, he wouldn’t surrender here.
A heirloom dangled from his neck, beating on his heaving chest. He fixed his eyes on it. The pendant was an old sigil ring imprinted with the ouroboros; the emblematic serpent having its tail engulfed in its mouth.
It has to be somewhere here, he thought.
He pressed his advance through the ruthless gale, stepping across his ancestral land for the first time. Once there lay a prosperous city forged from iron and blood. Now it has fallen into an infertile plateau. No traces of his lineage remained, except for weathered rock buried under soil.
As Haakon wandered through heathers and heathland grass, futility burdened his mind. The spent campaign loomed over him unkindly, a malicious parasite leeching onto his will.
He muttered under his breath, ‘My gambit failed…’
However, the dogged determination still seeped through his body. His legs propelled him forward. One step at a time. He winced, his right hand clutching his side. He looked down and peered underneath his greatcoat, seeing a drying patch stained on his black uniform. The metallic scent of rust ripened the air.
He gazed far into the distance - where the coordinates of the fabled ancestral city were supposedly determined to be - and saw a knoll jutting out from the heathland plateau. A mile away from his position. His brows furrowed at the stale site .
A deranged chuckle escaped between his lips. Blood sputtered onto the ground. He fell to his knees.
‘Commodore Haakon Osnor, Lord regent of House Auberon, the last of his name… buried in an unmarked grave,’ he spoke clearly into the wind’s ear, each word hanging limply on his tongue. He knew that those would be the final lines in his obituary. The rest of his prestige and feats - all of his history erased by the stroke of the victor’s ink. A chill shuddered through him.
He resigned himself to his fate.
Suddenly, the grey mist rumbled overhead. Nearby, the imperial squadron soared through the skies. They would soon be scouring the coastline for the collision. They would soon find him.
Yet, even as death swiftly approached him, he felt a pang of defiance swell up inside him. Haakon Osnor shook his head, whispering under his breath – ‘I refuse to surrender, we will triumph’ - and hurried towards the knoll on the horizon.
He stood near the foot of the mound. Inhaling the uncertain peril that lay ahead of him.
With quaking reluctance running through his hands, he placed the ring carefully on the fourth finger of his left hand. It slipped on with ease. A snug fit. Then without warning, the ring ensnared him. It tightened its grip on the finger, before releasing tiny needles into him. Haakon snarled as the pain permeated through his flesh. The tiny needles sunk deep into bone marrow, releasing a swarm of nanobots containing a neurochemical substance that infused into his blood. Within minutes, the foreign substance diffused throughout his peripheral nervous system: it shuttled between dendritic branches and pulsed through axons of every neuron, reinvigorating his perception to acute levels.
Sensory overload devastated him.
The world immediately darkened around him.
Moments later, Haakon found himself sprawled out among the heathers and grass. Having eventually regained his senses, he rose wearily to his feet. Yet, as he moved between positions, he felt a renewed vitality coursing through him. The pulse of his heartbeat drummed louder than before, right beneath his feet. He stared at his ensnared hand to see the ring illuminated with a tinge of indigo, in the places where it was engraved. The eerie glow of the ouroboros’ eyes unsettled the fine hairs on his arms. Yet, the most remarkable feature was that the veins running through his hand embodied the same tincture of indigo luminescence.
It was then that Haakon acknowledged the substance’s effects: it had permeated into his brain and spinal cord. It altered him into a different state of perception - an abrupt reflection disrupted by the sudden upheaval commencing all around him.
The ground shook beneath his boots. Tremors rippled through the cliff. Sedimentary rock splintered under the knoll. Grass became uprooted and soil crumbled away as the mound emerged taller from the surrounding plateau. The scraping sound of metal clanged through the air. The earth toppled away, as it lent an opening for something colossal and dormant to rise again…
Suddenly, two indigo beams illuminated from the emerging structure. Their blinding luminescence pierced through the overcast sky. Haakon shielded his eyes with his arm, as the towering knoll continued to rise to mountainous heights. It gradually surpassed the sunless horizon and eventually blotted it out entirely from where it spawned. It loomed over the plateau as a steel behemoth. The glare of its hollow, indigo orbs penetrated all who gazed upon them, like two spotlights setting the darkness ablaze to uncover hidden truth.
Haakon stood in the shadow of the colossus, revering its ancient beauty. Dirt and gravel continued to hail down from its sockets, colliding onto the uprooted earth. The steel behemoth remained erect, awaiting his command.
His titan had awakened.
‘It’s real,’ he muttered, eyes wide in disbelief at the ungodly sight.
The young commodore stood there in awe, regarding its shape and structure: a giant mech-suit with humanoid proportions, clad in knight armour, rebirthed from the earth. He felt its vast emptiness, a husk awaiting the next phase of metamorphosis. When the connection between them eventually stabilised, he felt his consciousness uplink with the steel mech-suit. It loomed over all specks of existence. Haakon gazed through the eyes of the behemoth, illuminating the darkened sky and haunting heathland with its spotlight glare. Lines of code ran along the fringes of his peripheral vision, as the environment was simultaneously scanned and identified before his very eyes.
The calibration was complete.
They united as one.
It moved as he willed. It sensed as he judged. It acted as he commanded.
His augmented vision transcended the sky’s haze, sifting through the clouds to delineate the enemy. The squadron of airship fighters were fast-approaching his location.
He heard the low rumble of their airships as they cautiously approached the scene.
The squadron cloaked themselves under a blanket of low-lying clouds, a hundred metres away, anticipating his movements below.
Then, a voice boomed through a speaker directly above him. The sky declared its terms:
‘Commodore Haakon Osnor, you are surrounded. The emperor has ordered your immediate arrest, where you will later be trialled under the Scales of Justice. Surrender now, or else your life will be forfeit.’
‘It already is…’ , he muttered under his breath as he donned his battle armour. A holographic interface of the mech-suit sheathed across his body. The titan awaited his order.
‘This is your final warning, commodore. The revolt has been quelled. Your allies have been exterminated. You are the last of a dying house. There is nowhere you can run or hide. Surrender now or else your life will be forfeit.’
Commodore Haakon felt the whirring barrels of the airships’ canons preparing to fire. He sensed the locked-on targeting systems placing him in their crosshairs.
He cried out so his enemy could hear: ‘My life is forfeit either way… Now, you have a choice to make: Surrender your lives here, or swear allegiance to me.’
The oppressive sky lit up in flame and smoke as the airships let their cannons loose. The ground groaned under the weight of the titan’s strides as it warded off the missile strikes with a swipe of its gauntlet. Deafening explosions ignited all around him. It was his turn to act. Haakon raised his arms and clenched his fists tightly; the titan’s mech-suit unveiled its arsenal across its body. Mounted launchers and turrets projected from its pauldrons and vambraces.
The titan raised hellfire back at the airship assault, as rocket upon rocket and bullet after bullet tore the sky asunder.
Haakon’s eyes lit up from the inferno streaking overhead, as the Crook of Nevod Bay roared with strife.
My first attempt at a Sci-Fi short story.