Regin: Then, Now, and Forever

My name was once Reginn. I was a god. Then, now, and forever. But here, beautifully, I’m also just another person. The mysterious Regin Huber. The Great War consumed my brethren in combat. Worse still, my name and my accent made me a target for hatred and ridicule at home. I lost much of the footing I’d spent so much effort gaining over these last few years. Isaiah, the two-faced genius, took it upon himself to scoop up that establishment support. I can see now why Wallace refused him entrance. The man is a political animal. I am no political animal, or truly politically savvy in any way, shape, or form. But I need not be. I am old and powerful and feared. That is what keeps me in charge. Age and strength. They fear me, rightly so. Most, anyways. The infant and the child do not, but the infant and the child only fear one another. Even my Progenitor fears me, despite his agedness. He is one of the strongest among the unliving, in terms of raw power, and yet he fears me. He is too focused on petty his squabble with the knights to know his own power. And so, he is afraid. For I am dangerous. One of the most dangerous. Save two.

Let me tell you about the infant and the child. I have used the infant before. It is why the infant, while he does not fear me like the other, he does respect me all the same. I met the infant back in the elder days. The Huns had come, and I did not move. I was still a god then, to my people. Gods do not surrender. And so, I fought the horsemen to a near standstill. Then, they stopped fighting. No reason I could tell. Carried in a man’s arms, I met the infant. He was coursing with power unlike anything I’d ever seen. Such hunger in a mere babe. I knew in that moment he could conquer the world, given the right structure.

“Child,” he said to me, “Why do you resist the inevitable?” I could tell him my elder from how he spoke our tongue. Even mine own aged accentuation was not as old as his.

“Because nothing is inevitable,” I told him, coldly. I used my best god voice, deep, booming. The man what held the babe was terrified. The babe seemed minorly amused.

“Exactly,” the babe said, “So why do you fight?”

I laughed and drank my mead. “Why, to win, why else?”

He did not fight to win. I know this now, but back then, I was a mere child of a millennium and two century. I did not understand politics. I still do not. The infant laughed. It was not the innocent laugh of a baby, but the cruel laugh of one who has seen the depths of human inequity and found it wanting. “No, you fight because it is all you know.”

I laughed at the ridiculousness of that statement. “I know much. I know smithing and creation as well as I know destruction.” Even as I spoke it, I knew the words false. The infant knew much about many things.

“I know you, Reginn,” the ancient baby spoke, then shifted into my progenitor’s tongue, “Just as I knew your master.”

“The man is a warrior without a war. He is no one’s master, not even his own,” I replied harshly. Do recall, at this point there was no such thing as a Knight for him to slay, so he savaged the countryside in the Norse peninsula. That is why there was no problem when I left his side to pursue a more stationary powerbase.

“This is true, Reginn.” His voice remained calm. “Though, I would not count on it always being the case. He will find his fight.” The certainty in the baby’s voice rang true in my mind.

“Even still,” I replied, “I’ve made a life here of mine own.”

“Reginn the smith, the Dwarf God. I am aware.”

“Then you know I will not allow your men to slaughter my village,” I said to the babe.

Once again, that laugh echoed through the air. “These are not my men,” the babe scolded, “These men belong to Atilla. Nkoci has no men. And you also misunderstand. If I wanted your village slaughtered, they would be dead.”

I grew angry, like the fool I was. “Is that a threat?” I simmered with rage at the implication he could defeat me.

The infant remained perfectly calm. “No, a fact. You would win every fight, but you can only be one place at a time, while this army can be in many. No, the Huns are in need of smiths, and they, too, see you as a god. I propose a joining of forces.”

We worked together to continue the conquest. It was on that conquest that the infant first met the child, though I was not present. It is said that the two instantly became fearful of the other, though I have found no evidence of such. I do know, however, once I met the child, the fear and respect between Nkoci and Marcellus was palpable. That said, I did not meet the child myself until his introduction to the Game, some four-century post.

The child is a half millennium younger than I. I first met him innocently enough. He was a scientist. He did not even have a panel at his first grand game. Even still, he awed many. Mostly from his restraint. Not a capital R, not yet in any case, but his personal control over himself. He did not eat the entire trip. Not once. Even when the blood fountain spewed and all others, myself included, grew to hunger, he did not partake. I could see it in his eyes that he wanted to, that he, too, hungered at that smell, but he didn’t even move to consider it an option. I approached him, after feeding and asked about it. “Greetings, child,” I said pleasantly enough, “How be you?”

He looked up at me, contempt emanating from his every pore at the blood dripping down my chin, and said, “Reginn, child of the North. Dwarf smith. Nkoci spoke highly of you. I see not why.”

I nearly spat in his face. “I am your elder, child,” I scolded, “You should know better than speak to me this way.”

He laughed. Where the infant had a knowing laugh of disillusionment, the child’s laugh is cruel, wicked. Like he’s just seen you die in several ways and is thinking about the most monstrous of them. “You are my elder,” he said, a cruel curiosity in his voice, “Though simply being older does not command respect in my book. From what I can tell, you are a slave to your emotions, to our condition, and to your own past. Leave that behind, become truly free, and maybe, just maybe, I might respect you.”

“You mean, like you have? I see you cling to Phonike, still a babe upon her breast.” I was a fool then to challenge him, but such impudence bothered me.

“If that is what you think, then you truly do not understand what you see, either. I will see you next time. Be more interesting, would you?” And he turned on his heel and left. Not even a goodbye, or a bow, or any sign of respect. I went to see young Nkoci after that interaction.

“Wanderer,” I said to the infant in the arms of one of his own, “That impudent whelp.”

The infant looked at me and shook his small head. “I see you’ve met young Marcellus.”

“Can you believe him? He believes himself my better.” I was blinded by fury. I could not see the expression on the babe’s face.

He was sadly smiling. “That is because he is,” Nkoci, in his wisdom, told me.

That statement shocked me back to the present. “What!?” I spat indignantly.

“He is,” Nkoci repeated, “And in all likelihood, you will realize this by the next game. Soon enough, he will be my better, though I doubt he will ever believe that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know why he has not eaten?” the infant asked me.

I did not. That was what I wanted to ask the kid before he spoke in such a way to me. “Why?”

“Because, in the first year of his unlife, he discovered exactly how much he need eat each moon to survive. And that is the extent of what he eats each month.” He paused, then asked, “Do you know why he dresses as he does?”

I did not. It was a strange dress, though I figured it was his native clothes, as many of us wear our kin’s outfits, even when they be not the fashion of the present time and locale.

“No, of course you do not. You probably did not even ask yourself that question. The man dresses that way, because he determined that using such a covering in that way, he can walk outside during the day, for a short time, without burning visibly.” Nkoci gave his man a look, and he passed the babe into my arms and covered his own ears. “Honestly,” the infant spoke quietly as I held him, “I am terrified of what that child will become in time.”

“Did he experiment on himself?” I asked.

He smiled. “At times. And at other times, let’s just say there is a reason Alexios went missing for sixty games, and it wasn’t personal.” Those were the words that made me terrified of the child. Not the fact that the Wanderer feared him. But that he could take a Favored, and elder Favored at that, and make them disappear for so long. It chilled me to my very bones.

The next day terrified me further, as I saw him chatting with Alexios, not as enemies or schemers, but acquaintances, even friends. The child had held the Favored captive all that time, experimented on him, and they were not enemies. I asked the Favored about it, and Alexios laughed. “It’s easy, I realized that it wasn’t personal,” he said.

“But he kidnapped you,” I repeated, “How are you fine with that?”

He looked off into the distance. “Because,” he said slowly, “It was a loophole. He needed to understand our condition’s limits, and he was forbidden to create children to test them.”

“He didn’t experiment on you,” I said, thinking I understood.

I did not understand. “He certainly did. Me, and others. He never would force us make children for his experiments. I never did, either. I wouldn’t subject someone else to his ways. The others, they were not so strong. That is why they are dead, and I am not.”

“Then why did you not kill him? Post him out in the sun, cleft him through and remove his heart? Why does he yet live?” I asked the great man.

He looked at me with confusion. “Do you think I did not try? For decades I furied over his treatment of me. I raged and, on several occasions, I tried to kill him. Every time I came up just short. Then, one time, he asked me why I was attacking him. I thought on that question for forever, but I couldn’t come up with an answer other than revenge.”

“Is revenge not a good enough answer?” I pressed.

Alexios chuckled. “It is,” he said, “But, how shall I put this, his answer was far more intriguing.”

I tried to ask him more about this supposed answer, but all I got was a laugh as the Favored walked away. After that interaction, I once again approached the child. He looked up at me. I smiled down at him. “I may have underestimated you before,” I told him.

“You did,” he replied, filled with contempt.

I leaned in and whispered to him. “I shall not in the future. And while I am permitting your arrogance out of ignorance for now, just as next time you wish me to be more interesting, next time I hope you will be more intelligent.”

“Why is that?” the child asked, curiously.

I smiled. “Because now I understand you may well be my superior,” I told the boy, “And you are aware that I know how to break a superior opponent.”

Marcellus laughed. “Indeed you do, Reginn of the North,” he said with a smile, “While I have not misjudged your boringness, I may have slightly misjudged Nkoci’s opinion of you.”

Nkoci was right. The following decade, I had my people investigate Marcellus, and what I learned made me realize he was, in fact, my better. It took a century, but he eventually surpassed the Wanderer in my mind as the most terrifying of our kind. But, soon enough, he began to see me as I was, with the respect I deserve. All it took was beating my Progenitor senseless after he tried to use the game to force me back into his service. Because all it takes to beat a superior opponent is an understanding of how that opponent thinks, and a willingness to destroy them utterly, piece by piece, not just physically, but socially, mentally, emotionally, and politically. By the time I was done with the warrior Fin, everyone was afraid of me, no one wanted to be my enemy nor my ally, and the so called Knightslayers were so isolated that they no longer even come to the Game. It also made me realize that, living in the old world without any allies was a sure way to get myself assassinated, and so when the opportunity presented itself, I followed my human descendants West, to the French colony of Louisiana. My seat of power, which I held without any real debate from the Game. Then, now, and forever.