Dalantai laughed triumphantly; his voice carried far along the wall. He ignored Brood Lord's summon. He was no lowly servant to run and cling to his leg like a calf. If the khan was unable to put down a single obstacle, that was his problem. He paid no attention to the soldiers firing at him from the ruined buildings or to a nearby duel, reveling in the twitching of the one destined to end him.
He had won! He faced his fate and overcame it! Terror had filled his veins when he had noticed the brightening image of the black-headed white bird on the artillery, for in his visions, following a blinding light, that creature had torn him to pieces. Night after night he had groaned, tormented by the same outcome, no matter how hard he tried to untangle the threads of fate. It all led to the same conclusion: this damned city would be his end.
But it was over! That explosion that had ravaged the battlement must have been the light, but he refused to cower and reverted the tide of time, proving his worth to the Sky. His doom was sealed, trapped in the inescapable time loop and subjected to experiencing the punishment everlasting. Victory!
No obstacle remained. Dalantai eagerly awaited the return of his future sight to chart the proper course for the Gilded Horde's utter supremacy. The figure inside the cocoon disintegrated and reassembled, growing younger and then older, never knowing rest as the wounds on her body kept reopening. As amusing as it was, he had never enjoyed senseless cruelty, but today was a bloody day, a memorable day demanding a touch of horror to prove the Sky's superiority.
"Heathens! Mislead! Unbelievers!" Dalantai roared proudly, using spatial control to send the sound of his voice into the ears of the defenders. Bullets and energy beams formed a rainbow wall before him, frozen forever in the solidified space. "Fall to your knees!"
He pointed a talon, and a dozen defenders shouted their last cry as the time loops closed around them. Unlike with the raven, he had shown mercy. They'll be stuck in this earthly hell until dusk, but not beyond. A single step carried him through a hundred meters, and he reappeared on the road behind the furred beasts and oblivious, unblessed.
"Abandon your superstitions and embrace the Sky's guidance!" They didn't heed his sermon and fired at him, but a panic grenade explosion merely hurt their own. "See how the one true god protects his faithful! Your champion has fallen!" He swiped his hand, compressing the distance between his talons and the rabble. Gurgles and screams followed as he tore at throats, lungs, arms, and everything else. The crowd surged away. "Do not run! There is no salvation in flight; there is no future in resistance! Get down on your knees and repent! The Sky is a strict father, but His methods are just! Join me as brothers and sisters, and I shall enlighten and guide you to a better future!"
He no longer harbored even the slightest irritation at noticing a shaman wearing a symbol of the Planet. A day ago, it would have sent him into a foaming rage, but after facing and changing his future, he understood the childishness and unworthiness of his old ways. Nothing would please the Sky more than to see a former heathen learn the truth and join the flock.
"Yessss…." Dalantai purred in revelation. Cruelty served to make a point, but to bring peace, he had to eradicate the delusions properly. How foolish he had been to torture and invert the shamanic false preachers when integrating them into the priesthood would have brought the desired change sooner and less painfully.
Laser rays fizzled out, failing to reach him; with a single wave of his arm, a charging tank appeared half a kilometer above the city and fell on the snipers perched on a rooftop. He stepped, tensing to overcome a resistance, and the head of a crawling doggie ten paces from him burst. A rocket exploded at his legs, but the blast scattered the defenders without harming him in the slightest.
"Misguided! Pitiful and lost souls!" Tears ran down his cheeks. "It pains me to end your existence! Like you, I wasn't perfect, but I swear, if you will only accept the breeze of truth, the loving touch of our Father, I will introduce you to his kinder side. Every person is assigned their role. Yours…" He pointed at the shaman, and the mist of the future dissipated, granting him a vision of the bloodied man dying. "…is to die here. But it need not be so. Embrace me as a brother, and I will change it! Together, we will bring peace!"
"Peace?" The shaman reloaded his gun. "You have brought devastation and slavery to these lands. By your deeds, we know you! I'd sooner die than betray…" His speech ended in a wheezing as Dalantai's fist closed around the empty space. He clenched his fingers, breaking the windpipe, and the shaman spat red.
"Then so be it." Dalantai nodded graciously, walking to the retreating soldiers.
They hurried into a tunnel leading underground, the silly fools. Was it truly so hard for them to understand that he wished no harm to them? If they would just obey, then nothing would happen to them. As any good gardener, he had to be stern to root out superstitions. It didn't bring him any joy besides the righteous indignation, and even that he had discarded. But war had many faces, and as the chosen savior, he had to be stern in his hand and strong in his convictions. Otherwise, what were the sacrifices for?
He will scour the opposition from beneath Houstad and bring them back to the surface to face the light.
Time touched the closed bunker door, and it rusted enough for him to kick it in. He stepped inside, and wires stretching the length of the corridor turned to tatters as safety pins reappeared in grenades. Planted explosives didn't go off; their expiration date had long passed. A single cut brought down four turrets. Dalantai passed through the long corridor, raising an eyebrow in surprise that the heathens had escaped so far already. No brave trooper tried to bar his path, and no champion tried to end him. Their footsteps echoed through the corridor, fading as he descended.
In the pitch darkness, he walked, growing more curious and less worried about traps. Nothing could kill him anymore. He entered a spacious room and found the escaped group lying unconscious on the floor next to a man and a woman in blue and green medical robes. Dalantai walked cautiously around them, sniffing the air for poison, but then he noticed dark darts in the back of their necks. His curiosity piqued, he looked around.
This was a place allocated for healing; Dalantai was sure of it. Pungent smells of drugs, blood, used bandages, extracted bullets and shrapnel, instruments in sinks, mechanical devices hanging from the ceiling, and even removed limbs in rather crude bowls proved it beyond doubt. Yet there was a single patient here, a badly wounded woman whose breathing grew weaker by the second. The tracks leading to another corridor proved that the rest of the patients had been wheeled to safety.
He stepped beside the patient, examining her open belly. A bondsman, not carrying a single trace of divinity in her regular veins. Most likely injured in the first hour of battle, a shell or piece of one had impaled her, destroying her stomach, damaging her lungs, and shattering her spine. Even the tubes in her mouth did little to provide the woman with oxygen, and if it weren't for a variety of medical devices attached to her body, she would have been dead long ago.
What a waste. He considered, wondering why the locals would try so hard to save an ordinary person. He drew a hand over her injuries, reversing time, and the bloody lips trembled, stretching toward each other as the missing organs reformed. The soldier gasped and opened her eyes to his calm beak.
"You were saved by the Sky's grace." He took her by the throat and held her lightly on the bed. He gave her a moment to concentrate, feeling her pulse quicken under his grip. "Your city has fallen, your comrades have lost, and I have come to judge you. Tell me, do you wish to repent and denounce your false rulers after your salvation?"
"I'd rather die," the soldier spat at him.
"A pity." He let go of her, and the time loop popped into reality around her. She twisted and contorted, trying to escape the reality where the wound in her stomach opened and closed. "I was hoping you'd be more reasonable. Perhaps your friends will see the truth upon witnessing my miracle and the punishment you have brought upon yourself."
"Step away from the patient." Dalantai heard a deep, pleasant voice.
Orange light danced in the dark corridor, sending Dalantai's shadow hiding behind him. The priest obliged the request and returned to the entrance, not out of fear, but emboldened by amusement. A figure wreathed in flames was approaching the surgery chamber, and through the going-up-and-down crackling leaves, he had noticed a blue robe trimmed with gold and the emblem of a coiled golden serpent eating its own tail. Dalantai saw his face when the fire parted briefly as the man removed the robe, reducing it to ashes.
His hair and short mustache were black as coal, accentuating the tanned skin and perfect, chiseled patrician features. Rings covered his fingers; under the robe, the man wore a silken white shirt and a short red cape, flamboyantly thrown over one shoulder. The man's approach raised the temperature, drying Dalantai's skin, but had no effect on the sleeping humans. As he stepped inside, the fiery tongues spread across the room, closing protectively over the group and pointing their tips at the priest.
It didn't bother him. Another deluded imbecile who had caught a whiff of the divine and now dreamed about challenging the Sky's chosen conduit in this realm. A simple exertion of will surrounded Dalantai in the pleasant breeze of his home.
"And who are you, little candle?" Dalantai asked.
The newcomer didn't answer, stopping near the patient. He let him see what fate awaited those resisting the providence. As he was about to ask the blessed if he would submit, the man thrust his arm into the murky cocoon of the time loop, and Dalantai sighed. Too bad. He will be trapped as well…
But it didn't happen. The arm glowed the same bright orange as the disks of the man's eyes. Energy coursed through his body, dissipating the cocoon that tried to consume him and integrate him into the loop. The quivering, barely visible walls of time shook and burst, dissolving into nothing as the soldier screamed, arching her back from the intense pain. Unharmed. Brought back to the present.
The man produced a black dart from a pocket and jabbed it into the soldier's neck, while his flames harmlessly touched her, without so much as a reddish stain. She slumped, closing her eyes.
"Remove their memories of the last ten minutes," the flaming man said to no one. "No, no elimination. No patient dies on my table. I don't care; we don't do that. Not my methods. Would you really do that? Yes, there are mutants among them. Don't dodge the question. Would you do that? Then what is there to argue about? We are of the same mind! Thanks, honey, you're the best. I'll make it up to you. Only four? Come on. Don't leave me dry like… Yes, let's use the concussions for the legend."
"How did you do it?" Dalantai demanded, narrowing his eyes. Only the khatun had ever broken free of his time manipulation. Nothing, neither nukes nor plasma, had ever harmed the prisoners of his power, let alone freed them.
There was no fear. He had transcended death.
"Sweetie, let's postpone discussing the details. I have to incinerate an undesirable. Kiss you. Me too." The man, enveloped in flames, clicked his fingers and turned to Dalantai. "Has no one ever told you that all women are goddesses and must be treated with befitting respect?"
"I give respect for the deeds performed, not based on gender or lineage." Dalantai said.