Skyguard: Bunker

Skyguard: the bunker’s messenger

Outside a rocky entrance, a recruit met Granny V. He apologized for his surprise: the Master disliked visitors, and the recruits had been told no one would be there. She reassured him that she knew his wayward Master and asked what could have drawn such a strong young man away from courting. Then her questions became direct. She wanted to know what the Master was planning.

Invidia brought the Hero the resulting warning. Exos was gathering something, although she could not say exactly what, and would need the Hero’s help. She believed he was making his move. The Hero agreed to go: whatever he intended was unlikely to help anyone, least of all the Hero and Captain Stratos.

Skyguard: a disguise for the enemy’s door

The Hero questioned Invidia’s secrecy. If she knew where Exos was, why had she not told Stratos? She pointed to the state in which the captain had left them. Confronting his brother in that condition would put him in danger. As his friend, the Hero needed to help keep him from being hurt when they eventually met. The Hero accepted the argument.

The Hero’s appearance was another problem: Exos would recognize the purpose of an undisguised visitor. Invidia provided a new guise and told the Hero to do what Exos asked, discover his plan, and stop it. Once the arrangement was made, she turned to business of her own. It was time for her meeting; someone would want to hear of her progress.

Skyguard: the aspirant’s supplies

Exos greeted his supposed helper impatiently. The message had taken too long, and now there was work to do before he could become what he wanted to be and make his worth visible to the one whose approval he sought. His instructions were possessive: the resources must be delivered to him alone. In his Beast-Merge-o-Matic shop he would combine them into one creation, but he would not yet say the rest of his ambition aloud.

The first supply assignments mixed animal remains with scavenged materials. Exos demanded five Subrysa skins, five Hootbear beaks, and five pellets collected where the Hootbears had dropped them. He returned Tanned Skin and a Hootbeak Piercer for safekeeping. Another assignment called for three Emu spines, six Koalion claws, seven eggs, and three balls of twine. Its products, an Emu Egg Binder and Medical Twine, also had to be kept until the rest of his resources were ready.

Skyguard: building a Chaos Beast

Exos also sent the Hero to Bloodtusk Ravine for ten fresh Rhison hooves. He turned them into Rhison Glue and ordered the gathered resources combined in his merge shop. With a Bag of Gross Supplies in hand, the Hero could take his next assignment. Exos declared kindness a weakness and demanded three corpses apiece from the Subrysa, Koalions, Tainted Emus, and Hootbears. He intended to build a Chaos Beast.

Looking over the heap of body parts, the Hero joked about a barbecue and suggested inviting the other minions, including the Dreamweaver. Exos recoiled at her name. He dreaded her looking into his dreams and could scarcely decide whether even this helper could be trusted. Yet he insisted that the Skyguard was falling apart and that raising the Beast would complete his power to create Chaos. Then everyone would kneel, and no one could tell him he had done wrong.

Skyguard: a creation without obedience

Exos’s boasting broke into grief and suspicion. He spoke of broken brothers, a sweet sister, and the loss of home, then ordered the Hero to guard the door. He feared the Hero, Stratos, and the double-crossing nightmare-spinner were coming for him. From the other side came bangs, crashes, and a roar. Exos proclaimed Chaos his own, only to demand that the Beast stay back and obey him.

The creation had worked only too well. The Hero expected that killing the reanimated creature would expose the disguise, but would not leave Exos to be harmed before Stratos could see what had become of his brother. Exos pleaded against the intervention: he could not become a Chaos Lord without raising a Chaos Beast, and he did not care that it threatened him. The threat still had to be stopped. The final assignment called for the abomination’s defeat.

Skyguard: fear of the power he sought

After the Beast’s defeat, the Hero found Exos sprawled on the laboratory floor. A loud joke that Drakath had arrived to make him a Chaos Lord produced panic rather than triumph. Exos begged to be hidden. The Hero tried to calm him, reminding him that becoming a Chaos Lord had been his ambition. Exos answered with a bitter progression: power corrupted, Chaos chaorrupted, failure disrupted, and anger erupted.

Chaos should have been his weapon, Exos insisted, but it was already Drakath’s, and he could not let it be turned against him. The Hero proposed finding Stratos and settling the family feud. Exos believed his brother wanted him dead and Drakath would make him dead. He would run, hide, plan, fight, and win. His new cry was to kill Chaos before it destroyed him. With Exos on the run, the Hero prepared to return to the base, find Stratos, and warn Invidia, who might herself be in danger.

Skyguard: the Dreamweaver’s patron

The Dreamweaver saw the outcome very differently. Exos had failed, just as she had predicted, and that meant events were proceeding as expected. Drakath was there to hear her report. He found her plans for this one interesting and remarked on her choice of strange puppets. She addressed him as her lord and answered that planting the seeds of Chaos in new fields could produce unexpected fruit.

Skyguard: an apparition left behind

The Exos left to receive visitors in the bunker warned them not to touch him. This was an apparition, he said, constructed by the Dreamweaver in case anything should happen to him. Something had happened, and he blamed the Hero for it. His demand that the visitor leave was no explanation of where the real Exos had gone; the figure identified itself as his substitute.