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Chapter Text

It was a fine day for an execution. The king wore his usual regalia, a navy blue and gold suit with oversized sleeves, a matching cloak, and a circlet fitted to his forehead. His head was freshly groomed that morning, his raven black hair cut short, his beard trimmed evenly and close to the skin. He held his arms behind his back, awaiting his cue to step out onto the balcony where Bombastine spoke behind a podium.

“Your majesty,” Dominus Thrax made his presence known, and the king turned to the eternal child, who stood at about two thirds Silas’ height and with a timid posture. Despite his physical appearance being that of a boy no older than twelve, Thrax held the highest position within Silas’ court. “Are you certain this is the correct punishment?” 

“Thrax,” Silas’ mouth twitched in an insidious smile. “You understand the laws well. You brought evidence of conspiracy against me, Sythel was tried in a fair court, and it was determined death was an equal punishment to her crimes.” 

Thrax bowed. “Of course, but the citizens may not view it that way. There are already reports from the far reaches of Duviri of civil unrest.”

“The subjects know their place. As long as no crime is committed, they will not be punished.” 

Thrax bowed again, receiving the underlying threat and placing himself back in line among the court. 

“And now, citizens of Duviri, your gracious king,” Bombastine backed away from the podium. Silas stepped onto the balcony, seeing the crowd of a few hundred, a tangible anticipation in the air. The executioner stood at the front on the gallows, facing the crowd and holding their axe.

“Today is a day of justice,” Silas said, his voice amplified across the palace grounds. “A day that will be remembered and celebrated by all the free people of Duviri, as today, we bring an end to the disease of conspiracy against the throne.” 

Four guards in a diamond formation brought a bound Sythel forward. She physically struggled, yelling useless profanities at anyone and everyone. She was forced to her knees on the gallows, next to the executioner. 

“May the void embrace you,” Silas watched a ripple of excitement go through the crowd. Then, their mood swiftly changed to awe, as Silas felt something cold against his jugular. 

“Justice, indeed,” a sinister voice said against his ear. There were screams, the brief taste of blood, then silence. 

Try again. 

The words were whispered, in a voice vaguely resembling Dominus Thrax. Silas’ hands went to his neck, somehow his head was still attached to his shoulders. Time had shifted a few steps back, Bombastine was still addressing the crowd. “And now, citizens of Duviri, your gracious king.” 

No, he couldn't give his address, not while an assassin was loose in the palace. He glanced over his shoulder, Thrax was gone, the other advisors looking at him with confusion. He was urged forwards. The crowd was dead silent. 

“Today is a day of justice…” he began again.

A pain seared through Silas’s midsection. He looked down to see the bloodied tip of the blade protruding through the left side of his chest, only to be ripped free. The tearing on his flesh and the crack of  bone echoed throughout the palace grounds. He collapsed, writhing on the balcony as blood pooled around him. His attacker stood over him, wearing a theatrical red mask, its face forever twisted in a scowl. As Silas faded again, the crowd began to cheer. 

Once more. 

Silas could no longer command those around him with a simple flick of the wrist. He turned to flee, but was grabbed by guards. They were not his guards, however, their armor bulkier. They carried polearms, and their grip on Silas was tight. If he struggled, he would dislocate his shoulders. 

Dominus Thrax stood in the center of the court, the advisors now looking to him with keen interest. He stepped forward, now eye level with Silas. 

“Why do this…?” Silas demanded. “How did you do this?” 

“Isnt this what you wanted? A grand execution? A show of power?” Thrax smiled maliciously. “Let's play a game, like we used to. You hide, and my Dax will seek.” 

One. 

Silas nearly fell down the spiral staircase, reaching the bottom only to look up again. The two Dax remained at the top, staring at him with apathy.

Two. 

He sprinted across the throne room, throwing open the double doors. The gallows had disappeared, but the crowd remained. 

Three.

The crowd parted, Silas ran straight through them. About halfway through, hands grabbed at his cloak, his crown. He gave them up easily if it meant he could live, to not feel that pain again. 

Four. 

The streets were filled with Dax, their weapons pointed skyward as they stood in rigid formation on either side of the main road. Their heads turned curiously as the once king fled. 

Five. 

Silas reached the bridge, he looked skyward, the clouds forming in purple and pink plumes in the distance. They formed the shape of a mask, staring directly at Silas. 

Ready or not, here they come!

Silas dove into a deep ravine, his body rolling and bruising until it crashed to the bottom. With shaky arms, he pushed himself off the ground and looked to the sky again. He was out of sight, but he was not safe. He pressed his back to the wall of the ravine, catching his breath. 

How did control slip through his fingers? It had to be the Void, manifesting in its strange ways and making Dominus Thrax more… real. He was no longer the Thrax Silas knew, that was for certain. 

Silas glanced around, this was still his creation. His kingdom. He would recoup his strength, and take Thrax head on. 

Chapter Text

Silas kept the windows shuttered, the main lights off. The glowing screens were his comfort, the cold silence, save for the occasional whirring of of his foundry, a welcome solace. It was not quite home, not yet, but it was his. This little pocket in 1999 needed a king, and he was all too eager to take the crown.

He rewound the tape. 

“Our only means of escape…” 

Escape? Why would Silas want to leave now? Perhaps selfishly he made it clear to the Hex he would remain as long as he was needed--as long as he wanted. No executions, no orowyrms, no bloody tams--1999 was a venerable paradise compared to Duviri.

“Our only hope to contain this horror I have created…”

Why did this admission of guilt piss Silas off more than anything? Albrecht was hardly a humble man--far from it, even. He had known this for a long time, ever since he set foot in the scholar’s tower, where Albrecht did who knows what. Silas did not know it at the time, but he would have drove a blade through Albrecht’s neck had he known the Man in the Wall trailed him. Now… now things were complicated. Silas looked to Albrecht with less hate and more pity, but the man’s cowardice still made the drifter’s trigger finger twitch.

“... will require a spark of energy rare in this timeline. You know what this means.”

This gave Silas pause. No, he outright refused Albrecht’s notion that the Hex needed to die and Holvania with them. Unpredictable Albrecht may be, Silas knew that if he had method of escape--regardless of the burden on others--he would seize it. 

Silas rewound the recording again, listening to Albrecht’s slow and methodical voice, and paused it at the end. He had visions of Minerva, Velimir, Loid, half buried in the sand around the scholar’s tower in Duviri. He tried to ground himself, but it did little to calm the rage building in his chest. He thought of how he watched the Hex and Roundtable slip into apathy. Nothing he said would bring them to understand. Even now, doom set in. He began to see his own shortcomings, he could do better. 

Silas leaned on the desk, his hair spilling over his shoulders and half shielding his face. He clenched his fist, and pounded the wood.

~*~

Lettie handed off the file to Arthur, who brought it over to his desk. Normally, he would not hazard a glance at something so intimate as a medical report, he would simply lock it away within his cabinet. Silas, however, was a special case, and by the look on Lettie’s face she did seem outwardly bothered by his reading. She expected it, even. 

The basic physical was normal, save for Silas’s abnormal menstrual cycle and heterochromia--perhaps yellow and violet are normal eye colors in the future, Arthur didn’t know. Lettie noted some things that could be chopped up to evolutionary differences--Silas’ height and his pointed canines. His age and date of birth was blank as well, causing Arthur to raise a brow. He flipped to the next page, the mental health assessment portion. Lettie did not claim to be a psychologist, far from it. She simply implemented a universal assessment from ICR’s recruitment regimen, nothing intensive, but Silas’s was lengthy. 

“If it would have been simpler to do a recording--”

Lettie rolled her eyes. “Don’t be absurd.” He began to read, muttering a dismissal as he got comfortable in his chair. 

One thing was common all throughout Silas’s answers, of which Lettie had kindly summarized, Duviri. When Silas first brought the place up, Arthur thought it was some city or nation on a future colony, or maybe a space station (no, Silas specified, that would be the Zariman); it was clearer now that Duviri wasn’t even really a place or even a when, but a what. A storybook written by Albrecht’s daughter, Euleria, one section explained, manifested into reality by… well, the details don’t matter. You get my point. 

It sounded too fantastical to be real, but too crazy to make up, and yet perfectly in line with the last two years of Arthur’s life. The more he read, the less he understood about Duviri. In Lettie’s summary, she noted hallucinations and nightmares related to Duviri, the former of which Silas assured were infrequent and nonconsequential. He claimed to have helped ended a war in the Origin System, the war here--from his observations--is small scale. He believes he can handle it. 

That has yet to be seen, Arthur thought. Silas kept his head when it came down to the reactor, without him they would certainly be dead and buried under rubble. But Arthur wondered about the business with him, Albrecht, and Rusalka. He had yet to explain this Indifference, in fact, there was very little he had explained at all. 

“My professional opinion?” Lettie had not left. “We have a full twelve months again. He explained time will loop again, why don't we just let this play out?”

A strange bit of deja vu crawled under Arthur’s skin, he tried to recall when they had this conversation. Maybe in a dream? He already knew his response. “Not like we have much choice in the matter. It's in his hands now. That doesn't mean we throw caution to the wind.” 

Lettie sighed, turning away and muttering something under her breath. Arthur ignored her string of insults, and filed Silas’ physical. 

~*~

A cold winter draft blew in from the decaying roof, causing the Hex to retreat to their private quarters and keep their doors closed. Silas offered to take on patrols, unaffected by what he considered to be the mild temperature of Ancient Earth under the metal suit. Plus, he enjoyed the snow, and the soundlessness it brought with it. He wasn't quite alone, however, as Quincy sat at a hidden high point above the mall, watching Silas’ back as he brought Kullervo and his panzer vulpafayla along the route. 

At some point in his route, Silas paused as his infested companion became occupied by a pulsating nest of techrot mites, taking the opportunity to hunt. In the meantime, Silas looked up and down the street, it was the same as it always was. Abandoned, silent, the shadows occasionally shifting. 

Kullervo idled, one of the small quirks of piloting another body--it occasionally moved of its own volition or gave in to certain urges. While the warframes within Silas’ arsenal were just copies of the originals, he could feel every bit of their essence wrapping around his mind. Their emotions, desires, pain… he felt all of it. Kullervo was different from the others, he too manifested in Duviri. 

A lot of his memories blurred together, but Silas would never forget his first encounter with the disgraced warframe. Dominus Thrax, bored of the usual executions, bartered with the Warden to allow a fight to the death between their prisoners. It was over quickly, but Silas gained a newfound fear of Kullervo after that. Forget orowyrms, nothing would come close to the pain of a hundred daggers shredding his body. Thrax was rather pleased with himself for many spirals afterwards. 

How far they came, Kullervo now would rather lay his sword down than bring harm to Silas, a gesture that did not go unnoticed. Even now, amongst the bones of a once city far in the past and the parasitic techrot, Silas’ senses were heightened by Kullervo’s alertness. 

Saggen, after successfully destroying the nest and getting her jaws around a few mites, trotted back to Silas’ side. She arched her back against Kullervo’s thigh, satisfied with her work. Something else captured her senses, her head tilted towards one of the many buildings lining the street. Kullervo’s body tensed around Silas’ consciousness. 

A lone Scaldra shambled out of the shadows, twitching and clearly infected. Saggen growled, but did not move from Silas’ side. Over comms, Quincy chimed. 

“Nasty bugger, don’t move.” 

“We should let it pass,” Silas said. “Killing it here will draw more to the area.” 

“How d’ya know that?” 

“A hunch, based on its cousins from my time,” it wasn’t a lie, but Silas recalled the first loop where Quincy made the mistake of shooting it. It only took hours for the techrot to fully compromise their north flank. Before that, Silas believed this strain to be too primitive compared to the ones he was more familiar with. 

“Ay, ‘spose you’re right,” Quincy conceded. The infested Scaldra scurried along, retreating back into the shadows. Silas moved along, Saggen putting distance between herself and the curb.

Chapter Text

Silas took to watching the Hex from afar, conscious of their wariness. All in all, it felt relatively the same. Having an idea of how they would react gave Silas an edge in conversations he was careful of, and already they became more tolerable of his presence. He began to hope maybe he could save them afterall, he just needed to play his cards right.

He found it hard to look Arthur in the eyes, opting instead for picking at the skin around his nails or making their interactions as brief as possible. Arthur was none the wiser, yet the lingering guilt for how things ended in previous loops gnawed at the Silas. It was a new type of loneliness Silas was unaccustomed to, how many sleepless nights did he lay awake, holding himself and wondering what could have been? He had awarded himself a second chance at setting things right, not just for the Hex, yet he felt sick to his stomach. He opted to ignore the shame crawling under his skin, despite its effects making him skittish. 

Silas roused himself after a night of fighting his own thoughts, dragging his feet until he kicked a fold in the rug. Looking down, he could see the frayed hole. Arthur stood there, spinning his skana, talking nonsense about breweries and horses. Silas laid on the bed, propped up by his elbows, he listened. 

“I could maybe carve out something like that in Duviri,” Silas said. 

“I’m just dreaming,” Arthur smiled. “You have to find us a way outta here first.” 

Silas sat up fully, just to hunch as he picked at the frays in the holes of his jeans. “I can't.” 

Arthur stopped, letting his prized sword lay up against the wall. He made his way over to Silas, sitting near him. “Can't or won’t?” 

The drifter loathed this conversation. “Can’t. This loop is keeping you and everyone else alive. As far as your infections… well, you'd know if you would have just looked at the notes I brought from Albrecht’s lab. You're living just as much as a fantasy as I was in Duviri if you think--” 

Arthur stood. “I get it,” he refused to look at Silas now. He took a sharp inhale, like he wished to say something more, but thought better of it. 

Silas, back in the present, straightened the bump in the rug with his foot. He ought to throw it out. 

~*~

A confrontation with Victor was inevitable. With Rusalka gone, he took it upon himself to organize the Scaldra. As in previous loops, empowered by his own delusions, he pressed the advantage in mid January. Arthur was forced to turn to Silas for help, no way the Hex could hold them off. 

“I’ll go with you,” Arthur said, after briefing, partially motivated by his own ego. 

Silas only nodded. There was no point in protesting, but that did not stop Aoi from speaking her mind. “Are you crazy? Did you even hear what Amir said?” 

Silas let them talk it out, the quiet observer to their quarrel. 

“Yes, he will need back-up,” Arthur folded his arms. 

“You didn't see what I saw. Silas doesn't need back up, he needs us to stay here,” her voice softened, as it did whenever she found reasoning. Silas always respected that. 

“Aoi…” 

She looked at Silas. “Tell him.” 

“She’s right,” he said. “I'm sorry Arthur, but you will just slow me down. If you want to catch Victor flat footed, send me solo.” 

Aoi smiled, and outvoted, Arthur gave up. “Fine, go. But I’ll be listening in on comms. Secure the cache, put a dent in their numbers.” 

As predicted, the dispatched Scaldra hardly stood a chance, many took to fleeing as Silas neared the cache, Arthur’s astonishment in his ear. When the area was secured, Silas flicked the blood off his okina blades. 

He knew the Scaldra would come back stronger as the year went on, their numbers never seeming to diminish no matter how many he killed. February was nearing, he predicted the Roundtable would make their appearance sooner if not later. He was pulled from his thoughts when chatter came over the comms. 

“Arthur Nightingale…” Victor. “Now what do we have here? Your secret weapon?” 

Immediately, something felt off to Silas. The not-so-new commander sounded confident, and suddenly the drifter was unsure of what was about to happen. Yet… the Scaldra had cut their losses, the ones he slaughtered were not run of the mill either. While they did not pose much of a threat against Kullervo, they were tougher--empowered, almost. Silas kept quiet, as he had, and listened. 

“Bugger off the channel, Victor,” Arthur said, slightly annoyed with underlying amusement. “You’ll get your chance again.” 

“Oh I am almost certain I will,” Silas could hear the smile in his voice. A shiver passed over his mind, Kullervo tensed. Suddenly, he felt watched, like he had the other day on patrol. This time, however, no infected Scaldra stumbled out of the buildings. It was quiet, save for the static of the comms channel. 

It did not take long to find the cache, a detail Silas should have found suspicious. Saggen was chasing after mites again, Kullervo was on edge but just like Silas he offered no reasoning as to why. He knelt down to open the cache, as he had hundreds of times over many loops, expecting some small reward for their effort. Instead, he heard a subtle but not soundless click, and was blinded by white. 

It was always strange, when he reset a small segment of time. Turning back the clock a full year was much different than a few minutes. In an instant, Silas was ejected from Kullervo, and crumpled over in pain. His entire body was on fire, a million needle pricks jabbed across all of his skin, the wind knocked out of him as tears streaked his face. He had not died in a while, not to something so violent as an explosion. He heard Arthur over the comms, demanding what had just happened but… he couldn’t pick out individual words. It was too much, and his body gave out.