Does one life, lived infinite times, equal immortality? Was it unending life to be born from the exact same template, given the same memories, the same past, the same feelings in a new time, to live and breathe and run and laugh and struggle and die in a new way? Does this imperfect immortality, if we can call it such, matter?
This was the first time his eyes had found this ceiling, just like all of the versions of “him” that came before him. Though they shared the same origin and the same starting point, they shared no memories after their second birth. Each copy was it’s own independent and complete person. Well, as complete as you may call a clone. He thought back on his own past, the past of his people.
Allagan cloning techniques had been perfected in the waning days of the empire, allowing the transference of memories and skills to clones. Previous generations had been much-reduced in efficiency, intelligence and martial prowess but that limitation had been removed as desperate research attempted to claw away forward for the Allagan royalty. The plan was stupidly simple if you discarded the inherently massive undertaking it was. It was just...waiting.
Place the Imperial Princess in stasis, build an elaborate and automated city-system around her, and await the arrival of the future. A selection of ten-thousand Allagans would be placed in stasis beside her, meant to repopulate the empire and conquer the world of Hydaelyn once more. The city would be shielded from detection, from destruction, and maintained by self-replicating automata. Xande had faced the retribution from his hubris, and was destroyed in the burial of the Crystal Tower. This way was better. The peaceful way.
However, a problem remained. Even the most advanced of the Allagan constructs would eventually run up against a problem they could not solve. Something that required the living spark of ingenuity, of that peculiar penchant for problem-solving only an Allagan-born daughter or son could muster.
Someone would have to live through those countless years. Live, die, be reborn again, patrolling an empty city of cold machinery until it drove them mad. Who would make that kind of sacrifice?
The last Royal Guard would.
He had offered himself - his flesh, his blood, his very essence. All of it was in service to his Princess, his future Empress. Though he had a claim to the throne by blood rights, he knew he was not a ruler. He was, through and through, one who fought for the sake of others.
If he closed his eyes right now, he could feel the sundering of his own flesh and the sensation of his mind being ripped from his body by cold machines, indifferent to his screams of anguish. So he opened them, wine red eyes facing forward.
At once, he seemed to understand. The sunlight was so very beautiful, streaming down onto his face. That warmth and beauty brought an indescribable sense of sadness.
His long vigil had ended, and it was all for naught.
The countless times he’d died and been reborn. All for nothing. The sacrifice he made, the life he lost, the tomorrow that would never come. He lives he never lived, the deaths he never suffered. A personal hell built on a thousand versions of himself rendered meaningless by the passage of time and a brand new cataclysm. Oddly removed from it all, he glanced around, slicking back his hair as he rose to his feet, lost in a dream within a dream. A reddish husk slicked with bloodstains was visible a scant few yalms away, looking almost as if it was kneeling in front of the disabled stasis chamber of the Imperial Princess. The chamber was covered in a thick layer of dust and at a glance he knew that it’s occupant would lay dreaming in the embrace of death evermore. If this stasis module was offline, then the rest surely were as well. The complex remained eerily silent other than the machine that continued to create him time and time again. For what reason had it and it alone survived?
Realizing there was no need to hurry, he returned to his birthing apparatus and acquired a change of clothing. Undergarments first, then accessories and gadgetry before his Royal Guard armor. The familiar heavy coat and it’s ablative plating provided him with a sense of comfort, and he mused on it for a moment. What was a protector if all his charges had been slain?
The red stain turned out to be what remained of the previous Indrei, of the previous version of himself. Walking over to his own corpse, he examined it. His skin was burned and cracked, and countless entry-exit points littered his body. He surmised that whatever had happened in the world above had caused the clockwork knights to go haywire, targeting anything “active” as a threat. A long trail of dried blood reached into the depths of the city, and in the distance Indrei could make out the scrapped heaps of rebel automatons. The power lines running through the walls and floors seemed to have been blown out in a massive surge of energy.
Perhaps his predecessor meant to save the Princess, and upon that final failure, chose to save himself. Perhaps she never could be saved, so he died in sweet supplication at her side, like a true knight should. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps he simply perished with neither goal in mind.
But the sunlight was warm, the sky was blue, and the birds were singing. A peace had come to this land. Perhaps fragile, perhaps fleeting, but peace nonetheless.
Did he not deserve this one life, wholly unto himself? Was it not his duty as the last Allagan - misbegotten clone he was - to see the rise of the child races and how they fared if that was what he wished?
Perhaps most of all, did he not deserve to fight once more, for the sake of others?
Indrei stopped by the inactive stasis chamber of the Princess one last time, stooping low to place a kiss on it’s opaque glass. A kiss for the departed. He regarded his own corpse for a moment, still leaning against the machine in eternal adoration. With a soft murmur of thanks, he pilfered the greatsword from it’s back by undoing the manual release on the straps that held it in place. It hummed to life as he swung it, a cool blue hue lighting the chamber until he placed it on his own back. The straps and locks interfaced with it before they clicked automatically, securing it in place.
Though he was quite athletic, there was no way he could escape through the shattered ceiling of the dome above him. The hole was wide and gaping, but the climb was nigh-impossible, given the harshly geometric designs of Allagan architecture. Power was out to the rest of the facility, so the teleporters would be down. The only thing that seemed to have power was his own machine of rebirth.
He could simply scavenge the power unit from his rebirthing chamber and activate a one-way teleport using his administrative override once he provided power to a teleportation unit.
Doing so would most likely destroy the cloning chamber and that part of the city altogether, though. A forced teleport override with the power infrastructure down was tricky business.
There was hardly a moment of hesitation. A few moments of time passed - long or short, Indrei could not honestly be sure - before it was ready.
Was one last life across one reality, one time, truly his to partake?
