Chapter Text
How many attempts did this make?
How many times did he need to be taught a lesson? It did not matter how many times he tried, failure was his only option.
His mind was stuck on repeat. He tried. Chaos knows he tried his hardest to change his fate, but it always ended the same.
“Please, stop!”
Despite his failures, he refused to yield. His body screamed in protest. Blood filled his mouth, and his vision blurred at the edges.
Still, Knuckles raised his guard, ready to fight. Another echidna, larger, older, and fueled by fury, charged him. He evaded several jabs and closed the gap, invading his opponent’s space before the warrior could recover.
He pivoted. His fist shot forward and dropped the warrior like the five before him.
Knuckles wobbled. His body couldn’t continue, but the guardian forced it to fight.
Then another warrior caught him off guard. A crack exploded against the back of his skull.
“Stop!”
The word echoed uselessly.
Knuckles staggered but refused to collapse. He threw his arms forward and shoved off the ground before gravity could claim him. He spun and struck the attacker who had blindsided him, dropping him in a spray of dust and blood.
“Tikal, move!” the modern day guardian demanded.
She flinched as another haymaker snapped his head sideways and his blood sprayed to the ground.
She hated this. She hated all of it.
Obeying him, she retreated toward the shrine, stopping at the base of the stone steps, where her watery friend lay waiting.
“Please!” she cried. “You have to help him! My father—he’ll kill him!”
Silence.
Her friend stayed silent.
The Master Emerald did not answer. Nor did the servers of the Master Emerald.
Their ancient will did not bend.
Tears fell down Tikal’s face. “Please!” she begged harder. “Don’t let them kill him!”
“Hold him down, men!”
Tikal spun around, horror flooding her face.
Two warriors seized Knuckles from behind. His arms were wrenched back. He was barely conscious now—face bloodied, breathing ragged.
“No, Father, please!” Tikal screamed, struggling forward.
Pachacamac stepped in front of the restrained guardian, stone spear in hand.
“You dare defy your own people?” the chieftain growled.
Knuckles lifted his head with effort. “You’re making… a mistake.”
“Spewing the same nonsense as Tikal. She must’ve poisoned your mind too.”
“Father, no!” Tikal shrieked, but another echidna seized her arms. She kicked and screamed. “Knuckles! Knuckles!”
Pachacamac studied him more closely now.
There was something wrong about this warrior. He realized the minute he laid eyes on Knuckles. The guardian seemed out of place.
Like he didn’t belong.
The chieftain’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?” he asked.
Knuckles barely registered the question. “The guardian… of the… Emeralds,” he strained to say.
Pachacamac gripped his weapon tight, threatening to break it in two.
“That’s a lie. I’ve watched the Emeralds for decades. I don’t recall appointing someone to guard them. But I know now. I have it backwards.”
He leveled the spear at Knuckles’ chest. “It was not Tikal who poisoned your thoughts.”
His voice hardened.
“It was you who poisoned hers.”
It all made sense. Tikal’s insistence of leaving the Emeralds alone, her impudence against him and their people, and her dream-like wonder as she spoke about the echidna.
Knuckles turned his daughter against him.
The captive strained against his captors. Agony flared through his arms. He was certain they were broken, but the adrenaline kept the pain from registering.
“If you kill me,” he rasped, “Chaos will be angry.”
The words barely carried. Although he was on death’s door, Knuckles did not show fear. It was the opposite. He accepted his fate, like he’s done the last several attempts.
“You do not want to make him angry,” he reiterated.
“Enough!” Pachacamac roared. “You will pay for your insolence!”
Was this it?
Was the echidna race doomed to repeat its own destruction?
He closed his eyes and gave in to his failure once more.
The spear thrust forward. Sharpened stone tore through flesh, piercing his chest, and bursting out through his back.
Pachacamac held nothing back.
“KNUCKLES!” Tikal’s screams shattered the air.
His captors released his limp body, letting it drop to the ground.
Knuckles’ blood poured onto the flagstone. Tikal’s voice faded, the world dimming. He saw her collapsing toward him, her hands trembling as they reached for him. Her tears fell onto his face.
Behind her, the Emeralds began to shine. Ripples in the water began to increase, and a figure emerged from the depths.
He saw him—Chaos.
He saw her—Tikal.
And then darkness.
When he opened his eyes, he was back at the altar in the present day. Nighttime was in full effect, most likely late into the night. The world below his home was sound asleep.
He was the exception.
The Master Emerald hovered above him, radiant and untouched, its green brilliance as steady as ever—as if it had not just witnessed his death for the hundredth time.
“The same dream,” he muttered, pushing himself upright. He glanced at his reflection in the gemstone’s polished surface. Unsurprisingly, he looked terrible—sweat clinging to his fur, eyes shadowed, and breathing uneven.
His chest throbbed.
The pain was phantom, but no less real. He had been beaten, slammed into stone, struck down in countless ways over the years.
But never—ever—had he grown used to the feeling of a spear piercing through his heart. By his own people no less.
“Another brutal death.”
What unsettled him most weren’t the deaths.
It was that they no longer frightened him.
When he first experienced those nightmares, he woke up screaming. After the fifth, he only woke in cold sweat. Once the count reached twenty, he became numb to the feeling, except for his chest.
He forced himself to stand. His body wobbled before steadying, though his chest still burned with remembered agony.
“What does it all mean?” he asked himself.
The incident with Tikal and Chaos ended years ago. He learned from it. Greed was an ugly thing, and the chieftain’s greed was his undoing. The echidna race met their demise because of his actions.
Knuckles did not crave power. He guarded and endured. He honored his kin as the last bearer of their legacy.
He turned toward his charge. The Master Emerald had once been all he knew—fragments of history without context, echoes without a full story—until Tikal and Chaos returned and filled in the gaps. The echoes had faces.
Now those faces were haunting him.
Why?
The guardian placed a gloved hand against the green rock. Energy pulsed outward, surging up his arm in familiar waves.
“Can you tell me why I’m having these dreams?”
The gemstone glistened brighter, emitting a frequency only Knuckles could perceive. They communicated on a deeply personal wavelength.
The visions came next. Chaos rising in fury, his perfect form obliterating Station Square.
Dr. Eggman’s maniacal laughter and wicked grin taunted Knuckles. How many times did the doctor trick Knuckles into doing his dirty work?
Finally, a radiant orb of light followed by a beautiful girl urging him forward.
The images fractured and reformed, cycling through memory and meaning until Knuckles staggered back, breath catching in his throat.
He opened his eyes, heart pounding.
“…Has it already been another year?”
Knuckles never counted the days. Time, to him, was nothing more than a reminder that the universe continued to move forward—whether he was ready or not.
“But I never had dreams about that before. Why now?”
Was it restlessness? Ever since he and the others had defeated Metal Sonic, things returned to their steady, unchanging rhythm. Even Rouge’s visits became scarce.
Not that he missed her.
…Not that he’d ever admit it.
He loved tending to Angel Island. If he wasn’t training, he was watching the altar; if he wasn’t guarding the Master Emerald, he was pacing the grounds of his sacred home.
It was a monotonous life, but it was his. And as long as he drew breath, no one would take the Emerald from him again.
“The echidnas are gone,” he reminded himself and the Master Emerald. “I’m glad I was able to see them, but they got what they deserved.”
He accepted that he would never see his clansmen again. For all intents and purposes, the echidna race was extinct.
Yes, he remained—but what did one survivor amount to? A relic. A reminder. A last page in a burned book.
The most he could do was avoid repeating their mistakes.
But his mind would not quiet. The contents of his nightmare threatened to pull him back into the darkness.
The Master Emerald noticed.
“I’m fine,” the guardian claimed, though the pain on his face betrayed him.
He wasn’t, but no one needed to know. It was how it should be.
And yet, he couldn’t help but wonder: how many times has he died in those nightmares?
How many times had he failed?
Which failure weighed heavier—the one in the past… or the ones in his waking life?
His hand pressed against his chest, fingers curling into the fur there. The pain of being stabbed latched onto him.
‘Don’t think like that.’
But the thoughts came anyway.
How many times had he lost the Master Emerald?
How many times had he been tricked? Outmaneuvered? Brutalized by his own ancestors in those visions?
‘I had to keep it out of Eggman’s clutches.’
A lot of good that did. Rouge kept some of the shards for herself, only returning them begrudgingly—in space, of all places.
He growled.
‘But I got them back.’
After being the reason the Master Emerald shattered in the first place.
After letting Chaos gain the upper hand and achieve his Perfect form.
After failing to see that Eggman was just a conniving, evil snake who used his naïveté to procure his sacred artifact.
“Shut up!”
The words echoed off the stone.
He wasn’t fine.
He couldn’t keep pretending he was.
The truth clawed at him.
He wasn’t a guardian.
He was a failure.
That was why the dreams came. Why Pachacamac’s spear found his heart over and over again.
Penance.
He deserved it.
Every time the Master Emerald had been endangered, it had been because of him. His stubbornness. His gullibility. His blind trust.
He should have done better.
He should have been better.
If Sonic hadn’t intervened, Eggman would have taken everything.
And that was his job.
His responsibility.
What had he done instead?
Listened to lies.
Nearly doomed the world.
He swallowed hard.
Sweat slid down his face. His breathing fractured into shallow, uneven pulls. His body no longer felt like his own.
Palms sweaty, knees weak, his arms were heavy. He wanted to vomit. His mouth opened, but no words came out.
“You should have joined your ancestors.”
“No.”
“You should’ve died a long time ago.”
“No!”
KNUCKLES!
He gasped, snapping back to reality. His heart slammed against his chest.
“Was that a panic attack?”
The Master Emerald called to him.
He forced himself to inhale—slowly. Deeply. Again. And again.
Gradually, the trembling subsided. He straightened his back. Squared his shoulders.
As always, he locked the weakness away.
“I’m fine,” he said aloud.
Liar.
The Emerald’s hum sharpened—no longer gentle, no longer patient.
Knuckles stiffened.
The Master Emerald had never spoken to him with that edge before. Never with something that felt so close to anger.
His head dipped. It was his fault the gemstone was mad. Because of his weakness.
When he failed to respond, the Master Emerald whined again. It had watched him since he was a hatchling. It had felt every bruise, every surge of defiance, every quiet victory.
It wanted to help him.
Knuckles turned away. “Do you think I’m a failure?” he asked softly.
The hum deepened for half a heartbeat, or maybe that was his imagination.
Knuckles didn’t have the strength to stand. He dropped down, elbows resting on his knees, staring at the stone floor.
Silence swallowed him, tightening around his thoughts until all that remained was his breathing and the low, steady shimmer of green light.
“As far back as I can remember, I’ve been living on this island, always guarding you from anything that can harm you,” he reminisced. “I’ve failed more times than I’m proud of, but I always bring you back. Right? When everything is said and done, I put you back together and bring you home.”
And the Master Emerald voiced its appreciation.
“I don’t know why I was given this job,” the guardian continued, “why it was my fate. Destined to be here… forever.”
Knuckles crossed his legs. “I know what my mission is, but is it wrong to want more?”
The word lingered.
More? What more did the echidna desire?
“I don’t know. I wanna see the world and uncover more ancient history. What other civilizations are out there that we don’t know about? I guess I wanna be an archaeologist.”
The admission felt strangely small—and enormous at the same time.
“But I can’t leave you and Angel Island unattended,” he lamented. “If my ancestors taught me anything, it’s that no one should have access to such power.”
Chaos was a prime example. He was the response to anyone threatening to misuse his Emeralds.
“But think about it. Imagine how things would be if the remaining echidnas survived? Angel Island would be more lively. Your altar wouldn’t be in a sorry state. I want to repair it, but I don't have the means.”
He was tired of being the last echidna.
“Why did we die out? Did Chaos reduce our numbers too thin? There should’ve been enough echidnas to repopulate.”
A dry laugh slipped out.
“Listen to me. Still stuck in the past,” he clenched his fists. “…That’s the problem.”
A faint vibration traveled up through the stone beneath him.
“Am I being too hard on myself?”
The Emerald’s answer was immediate.
Yes.
Knuckles scoffed. “But if I don’t do it, who will? No one cares like I do. And if there were more echidnas…” He stopped himself. The thought hung there, but something stopped him from continuing.
The pain in his chest resurfaced. Almost absently, he turned toward the Master Emerald.
The Chaos Emeralds were legendary, but even their power paled in comparison to the infinite power of the Master Emerald.
Infinity itself was within his reach. If he harmonized with it deeply enough, he could…
Turn thought into reality.
Rebuild his home.
Restore the echidna race.
Rewrite their bloody history.
“Forget it,” he said quickly. “I’m being stupid. As always.”
He turned his back. Behind him, his charge flickered again—a slow, deliberate rhythm, almost like breathing.
How much was he hurting right now?
It didn’t matter. Pain was no excuse to misuse the Emerald’s power. Giving in to selfish desire would make him no different from Pachacamac.
Knuckles was not that kind of echidna.
“You know what the problem is with being a guardian? No one understands the pressure.”
It didn’t like where this was going.
“Everyone else gets mad when I don’t protect you, but they don’t know how ashamed I am too.”
Knuckles.
He imitated Sonic. “One job. You have one job, Knucklehead.”
Knuckles.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Fastest Thing Alive,” he snapped. “We all can’t run at the speed of sound. We all can’t be mechanical geniuses. I’m doing the best with what I got!”
His voice echoed, frightening nearby animals.
Knuckles!
“We can’t all be blessed. I have to work hard for everything!”
He stomped his foot, creating a dent in the flagstone. Veins stood out along his brow, his fist clenched as though he might split the island in two.
“I have to climb the highest mountain, swim across the deepest river, and walk the extra mile, just to get a fraction of what everyone else gets. But you wanna know what? Even after all of that?”
Knuckles! The Master Emerald whined, but he no longer heard it.
“It’s still… never… ENOUGH!”
KNUCKLES!
His fist shattered a pillar. His breathing came harsh and uneven as the fury boiled over—then slowly ebbed. Awareness returned.
He did it again.
“I’ll never be enough,” he whispered.
The Master Emerald pulsed again, its slow, sympathetic rhythm making Knuckles laugh dryly.
“Pathetic, right? Some guardian I turned out to be.”
His thoughts drifted to Tikal. She was at the forefront of his nightmares. His friend and confidant during those imaginary moments.
They laughed, talked, and shared quiet understanding in those imagined moments. It also pained him to see her distraught over his many deaths.
“Is this how she felt when her father wouldn’t listen?” He sighed. “I wish…”
He stopped before the words left his lips.
“I need to clear my head.”
He rose too quickly and descended the altar steps harder than intended, boots striking stone with sharp echoes.
He needed distance.
Needed to outrun the darkness creeping at the edges of his thoughts.
Knuckles did not return to the altar until the next morning, when he resumed the same routine: train, patrol, guard. Then the next day. And the next. And the next.
He stopped speaking about his dreams, but the Emerald knew they still haunted him. It watched him more closely. Each night, he tossed and turned, battling the demons that plagued him.
He tried to wear a brave face, but the Master Emerald saw through it.
Weeks passed, and he did not improve. He was lost and weary, yet he never abandoned his post. His soul drifted, but his duty held firm.
He clutched his chest more often. The panic attacks came more frequently. He tried to conceal himself during each episode, but the Emerald was attuned to him.
Eggman and Rouge did not break him. His demons did.
He defeated himself.
Then, one night, the routine changed.
As expected, Knuckles stood at his post, though he could barely stand up straight. His mind and body were exhausted. Lack of any good sleep kept the guardian awake. The nightmares worsened.
Knuckles didn’t know how much more he could endure.
He occasionally glanced at the Master Emerald. Something pressed at the back of his mind—words he feared to voice.
He believed the gem was angry with him. It was not. But the massive jewel could not force him to speak.
Tentatively, Knuckles placed his hand against the Master Emerald and closed his eyes. Their energies harmonized. Crickets thrummed in the distant trees, but within the altar’s stone ring, the silence was absolute.
“I have a question for you,” he said. “What do you want?”
An odd question. The Master Emerald demonstrated reactive sentience, not autonomous ambition. It could communicate, but it possessed no proactive will—no articulated desire.
As such, it did not know how to answer Knuckles’ inquiry.
Knuckles searched its surface, perhaps hoping for wisdom, but the ancient gemstone had none to offer.
“You don’t know either, huh?” he sighed, dragging a hand down his face. The dysphoria spread. “Figures. You don’t have an ego or anything.”
He shifted. “What if you had a body of your own?”
A terrible idea. The Master Emerald could not begin to fathom the consequences such a possibility would unleash.
“Yeah… let’s not go there,” Knuckles muttered. “If you had a body… I’d lose all purpose.”
He pulled away from the gem and began to pace around the altar.
“That’s the whole point, right?” he muttered. “Guardian. Protector. If you could protect yourself, I’d just be…”
His voice trailed off.
Useless.
The word echoed louder than any shout he’d thrown at the sky days ago.
The Emerald pulsed once.
Knuckles frowned at it. “Don’t.”
Another pulse. Softer.
“I’m not fishing for reassurance,” he grumbled, folding his arms. “I’m just stating facts.”
He looked up at it again.
“When Chaos was sealed inside you, you held him for thousands of years. You stabilize Angel Island. You regulate the Chaos Emeralds. You’ve got infinite energy. Compared to that, I’m just… muscle.”
But Tikal? Knuckles believed she was stronger than him.
Her soul was bound by the same unending weight of responsibility.
What were they supposed to do with fates they never chose?
Tikal showed him the consequences of her failure. She couldn’t sway her father from his greed. Her pleas for mercy had gone unanswered, swallowed by the roar of war and divine fury. What else could she have done? Beg harder? Fight her own blood? No choice had ever truly been hers.
Knuckles knew that pain too well. His duty was inherited, branded into his very existence. To guard the Master Emerald was to bear the loneliness of eternity.
It had to be him. It always had to be him.
When he’s gone, who would succeed him? He didn’t have an apprentice or a child to inherit his responsibilities.
Would he wish that burden on someone though?
Would he condemn another’s future just to ensure the Master Emerald and Angel Island remain protected?
“I wonder what Tikal would think if she saw her home now.”
Tourists wandering sacred ruins.
Fragments of echidna history reduced to myths and museum plaques.
The altar weathered. Cracked pillars. Ivy creeping over carvings once meant to endure eternity.
She lacked his strength but carried a conviction so pure it could humble gods. Knuckles, for all his power, lacked the wisdom she had accumulated.
If the echidnas were still around, he’d love to have her in his life. She was so nice and considerate. …Beautiful. Not just in form but in spirit.
“I wish she was here,” he murmured, half a confession, half a prayer. “I’d like to show her the world.”
A deep pulse rolled through the air. Finally, he said the words that were on his mind.
The ground trembled beneath his shoes.
Knuckles flew into a panic, realization hitting him all too late.
“Wait, I didn’t mean it!” he beseeched the Master Emerald. “You’re taking it too seriously!”
But the glow didn’t fade. The universe was already in motion.
The Master Emerald knew what it wanted now.
The air thrummed with energy, the vibration crawling through Knuckles’ bones. He shielded his eyes.
“Me and my big mouth!” he stumbled backward, tumbling down the steps, landing in a heap.
The light reached its peak. Angel Island was a glowing beacon in the night sky. The noise soon vanished, and silence returned to the sacred land. The spectacular light show ended.
Knuckles lay sprawled comically on the ground. He groaned and sat up, rubbing his head. “Great,” he muttered, teeth gritted. “Now I’ve gone and done it.”
Slowly, he climbed the steps, hoping the events were just an overly dramatic prank by the Emerald.
“You just couldn’t keep your big mouth shut. You just had to say something. Stupid. You’re so stupid!”
When he reached the top, his heart plummeted.
“Oh no.”
There she was in all her grace and beauty.
Tikal lay curled at the base of the gem, as though she had simply fallen asleep centuries ago and was now dreaming her way back into existence. She looked exactly as she had four thousand years ago if not a little older looking—dressed in her tribal garments and adorned with the same golden accessories that shimmered faintly in the emerald’s light.
“Unbelievable.”
He circled her warily. She looked real, too real, but part of him insisted she was a figment of his imagination.
“Please tell me you’re just a hallucination.”
He reached out and moved a dreadlock from her face before pulling back. She wasn’t a projection. She was a physical being.
At his touch, Tikal stirred. Her breathing deepened—a single, fragile breath, as though testing the world’s air for the first time in ages.
Her eyes fluttered open and landed on her fellow echidna.
Knuckles swallowed past the nerves in his throat.
“Tikal, can you hear me?”
She blinked, her gaze searching his face. For a heartbeat, confusion crossed her features. She remembered a face much like his—an echidna younger and wearing the arrogance of inexperienced youth. But this one… this one was different. His dreadlocks hung longer, and his body bore the signs of someone forged by both time and purpose.
He resembled the echidnas of her own era—tall, powerful, proud—but there was a gentleness in his expression that disarmed her, and a weariness in his eyes that made her concerned.
Then, recognition struck like lightning. Memories flooded back: the altar under attack, Chaos’s fury unleashed, her father’s voice lost in the chaos. She remembered awakening then, weak and disoriented, as that same younger echidna helped her to her feet. There was another—a blue hedgehog—and then, just as quickly, they were gone.
“You…” she whispered. “You are… that echidna.”
Knuckles nodded slowly, surprised that she remembered him at all. But her recognition did nothing to ease the tightness in his chest—the shame that came with it.
“I am,” he admitted. “You remember me?”
Her eyes softened, the corners of her lips curling into a warm smile. “You’ve… grown.”
Her strength gave out. Tikal drifted back into sleep, breathing evenly, a faint, adorable snore slipping past her lips.
Knuckles exhaled a long, exhausted breath.
“And you’re as angelic as I remember,” he commented. “I’m sorry I disturbed your eternal slumber.”
Carefully, he lifted her in his arms and carried her down from the altar. He laid her on a soft bed of wildflowers. The moonlight caught in her hair, and for a brief moment, she looked ethereal.
Despite himself, he smiled.
“It’s good to see you again.”
He drew in another steadying breath, then turned and marched back up to the altar. He glared at the Master Emerald as though it owed him a lifetime of rings.
“Why did you do that? Are you crazy?”
A simple hum. Too flippant to quell Knuckles’ ire.
“I know what I said,” he hissed, keeping his voice low. “But I didn’t want you to resurrect her.”
The Master Emerald’s glow shifted, pulsing in a slow, uncertain rhythm halfway between a sigh and a whine.
Knuckles’ eyes narrowed. “What d’you mean she's always been here? You’re the one who brought her here!”
The gem flickered once, as if saying it was the guardian’s fault.
That shut him up.
He had no retort. It was true. His words led the Emerald to this outcome. His big mouth brought Tikal here.
“Great. Just great. Now what do we do?”
Befriend the ancient echidna. It was his wish to see her again after all.
Knuckles felt like bashing his head on the ground. For his own sanity, he repressed the urge.
“And what about her? What choice does she have in this?”
Very thoughtful of him to consider her feelings. Alas, the Emerald has spoken. Tikal was here to stay unless she said otherwise.
“Tch, now I’m glad I never wished to swap places,” Knuckles muttered.
The Master Emerald glowed ominously.
“NO! I’m sorry, please don’t do that!” he begged, getting on his hands and knees. “I take it back!”
The light receded, the Emerald pulsing as if to say, That’s what I thought. Then it gave a single, calm, reassuring pulse.
Everything will be fine.
Knuckles didn’t believe it for a second.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
But the dreadful realizations didn’t stop there.
Tikal came as a pair.
“Wait… where’s Chaos?”
The Emerald said nothing. It was getting late, and Knuckles needed to rest. He needed a lot of rest.
“I’m fine,” the guardian declared. “Now answer the question.
A light beckoned him forward.
Knuckles’ brows knit. He reached out—only for something to seize his wrist.
He jerked back, wrenching his arm free as he dropped into a fighting stance. A shape pushed its way out of the emerald’s glow, possessing two lime-green eyes.
Knuckles felt a familiar pressure wash over him. His neck craned to see the figure’s full size. The same being who ignited his obsession with the Knuckles Clan.
The God of Destruction - Chaos.