"Captain of Athena?" Rudra asked, his voice tightening as the pieces began to fall into place. "The one who sealed away Yaldabaoth?"
"The Demiurge," Madison confirmed quietly. She bit her lip, a flicker of pain tightening her face. "Yeah. But… it came at a price. My uncle—Harmano—he didn't make it out."
Riley started, "Wh—" but Rudra cut in before he could finish.
"Human seal," he said flatly. "Yaldabaoth was too strong to destroy, so your uncle stepped in. Offered himself. Used his body as the vessel to cage the Lord of Flesh." His tone didn't rise, but the knuckles of his right hand turned white as he spoke. Blood welled at the creases of his clenched fist, thin and dark against his skin.
Madison's eyes softened, catching the detail. "You were there."
Rudra didn't answer. His stare lingered on the two relics before him—the black revolver and the crimson-edged Talwar, each humming faintly with the kind of power that had once demanded a god's attention.
"These weren't just weapons," he said at last, his voice low, reverent, and bitter all at once. "They were his creations. Harmano forged them himself, back when he still believed humanity could fight gods and win."
He reached out but stopped short of touching the saber's hilt. "Funny thing, though. In the Hunting world, weapons like these are called wands. Sounds almost harmless, doesn't it?"
For a moment, the air in the room felt charged—too still, too aware. Then Rudra's gaze flicked up, distant and haunted, as a single name escaped his lips like a curse remembered.
"Yaldabaoth…"
The light above them flickered once, just once, before the ship's engines groaned deep within the hull—an old sound, or maybe an echo. Either way, the silence that followed wasn't comforting. It was waiting.
The silence stretched too long. The kind that shouldn't.
Rudra stood there, gaze fixed on the weapons, jaw locked. The hum of the ship faded beneath another, subtler sound—like air being strained through invisible heat. Madison frowned, glancing toward the vent as a ripple of warmth touched her face.
It wasn't the ship.
The temperature climbed fast, the cold steel walls beginning to breathe a faint shimmer. A bead of sweat slid down Riley's temple before he even realized why.
"Oi…" he muttered, squinting at Rudra. The air around him had begun to distort—like he was standing at the center of a mirage. The edges of his silhouette wavered, haloed by a dim, rising glow.
"Red," Madison warned softly, her voice careful, measured.
But he didn't respond. His breathing was shallow, steady—but too steady. The kind that came before an eruption. The veins in his hand, still curled into a fist, pulsed faintly with orange light.
Riley caught it then—a flicker, just for a heartbeat. The brown of Rudra's eyes split with molten threads, faint and shifting, the way lava might look if it were trying to hide beneath skin.
"Uh… mate?" Riley said, a half-nervous grin forming. "Your eyes are doin' that thing again."
Rudra blinked, once. The glow dimmed. Another blink, and it was gone entirely—leaving only the soft hum of the Hercules' engines and the smell of heated metal in the air.
He exhaled slowly, shoulders dropping, the fire sinking back into whatever place he kept it buried. The warmth lingered a few seconds longer before fading, leaving only the faint trace of tension and singed air.
Riley gave a low whistle. "Bloody hell. Thought the ship heaters kicked into overdrive."
Rudra rolled his shoulders, forcing his tone back into dry normalcy. "Just… muscle memory."
Madison met his gaze, reading the tremor beneath that calm exterior. "That wasn't muscle, Red"
He didn't reply. His eyes—brown again, ordinary again—drifted once more to the Talwar's crimson edge, and the fire inside him went quiet, but not gone.
Madison's green eyes flickered, her breath catching in the faint haze still lingering in the air. For a moment, she saw it again—the shimmer of heat warping around Rudra, the molten flicker behind his pupils, the restrained violence of something too big for human flesh.
Her mind replayed Captain Pluto's voice, steady and absolute, from that first briefing in the command hall:"He is perhaps the strongest thing on board this ship. Stronger than the cannons, stronger than the hull. Stronger than any of us."
At the time, she'd dismissed it as one of Pluto's dramatic pronouncements—an exaggeration meant to make her cautious. But now, as the last breath of heat left the room and Rudra stood there, expression unreadable, pretending to be human again, she felt the truth of it settle in her chest like a stone.
She could still see faint scorch marks on the metal floor where his boots had been. The air still tasted faintly of iron and ozone.
Riley, oblivious to the weight of it, let out an awkward chuckle and muttered something about "needing an AC upgrade." But Madison didn't laugh. Her gaze lingered on Rudra—on the steady rhythm of his breath, on the too-calm tone he used to hide what was clearly not calm.
And she realized, with a quiet, unshakable certainty, that Captain Pluto hadn't been exaggerating at all.
That moment of heat—that flash of fury—wasn't even Rudra trying.
Madison's eyes lingered on him a moment longer, tracing the faint shimmer of heat still hanging around his outline—then drifted upward, to the single stubborn tuft of hair on his head, the ahoge that refused to sit still. Even now, it swayed faintly, as if reacting to the residue of his emotion.
She remembered Captain Pluto mentioning it once, in that grim, half-joking tone he used when the truth was too heavy to say straight.
"That ridiculous piece of hair on his head? It's not just for show," he'd said, lighting his cigarette. "It's a seal. A containment weave crafted by Lady Catylyn herself. Keeps his rage and hatred bottled up—keeps the world safe from whatever's underneath."
At the time, Madison had laughed it off. A seal disguised as a hair tuft? It sounded absurd. Childish even. But now, watching the ahoge twitch subtly in the cooling air, the absurdity felt terrifyingly real.
Pluto's other words echoed back, colder this time:
"He grows stronger with rage. Every time that seal weakens, he becomes something else—something closer to pure, senseless hatred. Without it, Rudra wouldn't be a man. He'd be the personification of the wrath that birthed him."
Madison swallowed, the memory and the sight before her merging into one quiet realization. That strand of hair wasn't just a quirk—it was the only leash holding back a storm.
And for the first time, seeing the faint tremor of that ahoge in the stale light of the armory, she understood that if it ever snapped—no ship, no seal, no god would be enough to stop what came out next.
Rudra stepped forward and cradled the Talwar as if remembering the weight of an old lover. The blade hummed against his palm, a sound like a distant bell. He turned it, testing balance, then let his fingers brush the revolver's cracked pattern. "Needs work," he said, flat and casual, but the words hovered with something like regret.
Riley blinked, mid-grin. "What d'you mean, mate?"
"Seven years ago I was smaller," Rudra replied, thumbing the saber's spine. "Younger hands. Different rhythm."
"No shit, Sherlock." Riley smirked, reflexive.
Rudra's smile was slow and lethal. "Listen, you fucking kangaroo leprechaun—" he jabbed the insult at Riley with a mock salute, and Riley barked a laugh—"I'm saying my synchronization's off. I don't move with them the way I used to. If I try to force it, I won't master them—I'll break them."
He set the Talwar back in its cradle with the care of someone laying a sleeping thing to rest. For a beat the armory held its breath: a man who'd been forged by war admitting the truth that comes with age—skill decays, tools change.
"OK i will call some priest for a refurbushing ritual" Riley replied "I think we would need atleast 7 of em-----"
Rudra bit into his thumb, the faint taste of iron sparking across his tongue as he knelt before the circle. "No need for priests," he muttered, voice low and heavy with old conviction. He dragged the blood across the floor, sketching the mandala's inner spiral, every curve precise, deliberate, a memory etched into muscle.
Copper idols, silver clippings, and blood-stained iron nails—each placed at the cardinal points. At the center, his weapons lay quietly, like sleeping beasts waiting for the master's call. He took the small vial of gold drops and let them fall, one by one, into the heart of the seal.
Then he exhaled, eyes half-lidded, and began to chant—his voice deep, rhythmic, carrying the pulse of something ancient and raw.
"Agnim īḷe purohitam, yajñasya devaṃ ṛtvijam, hotāraṃ ratnadhātamam…
Rudraṃ manye mahābhūtam, yo 'sya roṣam damayet śāntyai,
namas te astu bhagavan, hiraṇyabāho, śitikanṭha, paśūnāṃ patiḥ…"
Riley instinctively stepped back as the sigil underfoot flared to life — first vermilion, then pure crimson, then black edged with gold. The sound that followed was not of metal reforging, but of bones grinding, veins knitting, and a heart starting to beat.
Rudra's weapons — relics of an old self — twitched, cracked, then expanded in form and presence. The hilt of one grew thorns like coral, another breathed faint heat like dragon lungs. The crimson aura flared into a column that scraped the ceiling before collapsing inward, swallowed into the steel as the chanting reached its final verse.
Then silence. The runes still glowed faintly beneath the soot.
Rudra wiped the blood from his thumb with the back of his hand and let out a long, soft exhale; the molten orange that had flecked his irises bled back into ordinary brown. The glow died like a candle snuffed, leaving only the faint iron tang on his tongue and the hum of the sharpened weapons in his palms.
"Refurbishing ritual complete," Riley muttered, half awe, half disbelief, voice low enough to be a prayer. "Seven priests wouldn't've done that. How'd you do it alone?"
Rudra lifted a blade as if testing an old joke—its edge thrummed under his fingers with a caged impatience. His grin went slow and easy, the kind that's never been taught to falsify humility. "I suffer from a condition," he said, casual as a man ordering tea. "It's called being better than everyone else."
The words landed like a slap. Riley's mouth snapped shut, then split into a grin edged with irritation; Madison, the let out a sharp, involuntary curse that sounded half‑admiration, half‑outrage. Rudra's cocky narcissism had weight to it now—earned, dangerous, and impossible to ignore—so their curses came out like small, stunned prayers.
"Cocky little bastard, aren't ya," Madison hissed under her breath, fingers flexing at her sides as if to steady herself against the centrifugal arrogance rolling off him.
Riley chuckled, plotting petty revenge with the focused glee of a man who trusted his hands more than his words. "I'm so gonna leave a floater in his toilet," he said, voice conspiratorial. "Don't think he uses one, though."
Rudra's smile sharpened and held—equal parts amusement and threat—while the Talwar and revolver thrummed like restrained storms. Around them the armory smelled of oil and hot metal and the ghost-heat of things that remembered violence. For a breath, they stood on the thin, dangerous edge where reverence met resentment, and nobody dared move first.