The Beginning After The End

Chapter 497: To Be Ready

ARTHUR LEYWIN

I left town before the Epheotan sun had even risen over Ecclesia the morning after my visit to Agrona’s husk. Alone, I circled around Veruhn’s home to the World Serpent’s tail, which seemed to take me directly out of the city and into a wilderness of rocky beaches, overgrown forests that reminded me of Earth’s jungles, and a sky half consumed by the purple-black of the aetheric realm.

The atmosphere was thick with aether, which blew off the waves like seafoam and out into the jungle. Sea birds crowed and unseen creatures answered from the depths of the jungle with powerful roars.

Each breath was full of cool, salty sea air and warm, eager aether. I wondered if this place had always been so rich with aether or if, over the millennia, the building pressure of the void had forced more through the rolling ocean border and into Epheotus.

My mind was full and there was so much to sift through. With my thoughts carefully shielded from Regis and Sylvie, I channeled King’s Gambit. My mind splintered into dozens of different stages, each one shining a spotlight on a specific thought.

I directed several of these lights at the problem of the aetheric realm as my gaze lingered on the purple-black horizon. I had been under the effects of King’s Gambit when I discovered the solution, and it was difficult to hold it all together in my mind without the godrune. Other portions of my mind focused on Fate itself, while still others considered the tension between Dicathen and Alacrya, the fate of Epheotus, and my own place as the needle and thread required to stitch it all together.

Despite all these simultaneous lines of thought, I kept a careful watch on the sea and jungle. I didn’t have to walk far before I reached a rocky cove that suited my purpose. There, I found a wide, flat stone that jutted up from the waterfront and sat cross-legged on top of it.

The atmospheric aether answered readily. With my eyes closed, I felt—rather than watched—the aether. At first, there was no intention to the action; I simply experienced it, absorbing and then purging the aether, forming the particles into abstract shapes that flowed in a rough torus encircling me. Like a child drawing patterns in the sand.

Fate’s overriding desire was to release the pressure building in the aetheric realm, allowing the natural process of entropy to continue. Although it had proven heedless of the consequences for our world, its primary reason for escalating a resolution appeared to be avoiding a much greater disaster, one that may have no safe distance in all the known universe.

Only by combining King’s Gambit, the fourth keystone, and Fate’s presence together had I been able to see a solution, but reaching that potential future wasn’t without its own set of barriers.

Foremost among them, of course, was the difficulty in accomplishing what I’d set out to do. Fear that Kezess would destroy the people of Alacrya and Dicathen before my efforts came to fruition was a close second.

I had explained part of my plan to Veruhn, but utilizing aether drawn from the void was only one piece of a complex puzzle.

My eyes opened, and I dropped back down to the stone roughly; I had been hovering several inches above it without realizing. I stood atop the rock for several minutes, motionless. Restless tension built in me until it was like a ripple across the surface of every thought at once. I took in a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. I needed to move—to do something.

Focusing on my core, I began conjuring swords of pure aether. First two, then four, then six. I stopped at eight as the bright violet blades floated around me.

With the conjured weapons in place, I activated Realmheart, bringing the thick haze of mana particles into view. Their greens, blues, reds, and yellows painted the beach like the brush strokes of some clumsy artist. I felt my hair rise from my scalp as the hidden runes across my body burned with aetheric light.

Next, I pushed aether into God Step, bringing the connections between every point clearly into view as well.

Aroa’s Requiem activated next, glowing warmly against my back with the other godrunes. Its purpose in this exercise was primarily to add mental weight, making the use of the other godrunes more difficult.

Additional partitions of my conscious mind broke off to guide each blade, to calculate each trajectory, and to control each godrune.

Using the ability to see the interplay of mana and aether through Realmheart, I formed eight aetheric bubbles, which dipped into the ocean and filled with water before floating back into the air. These targets spread out in front of me, at different heights and distances.

Starting with only one at a time, I launched an orb away from myself, then thrust a sword into the aetheric pathways. The blade appeared from a different point to pierce the orb, allowing the water within to splash back down into the sea. Two more flew in different directions, and I repeated the exercise. Within a couple of rounds, all eight were being launched like sling bullets with one part of my mind, while another part attempted to strike them all simultaneously. Each time, I reconjured and filled the orbs.

The Relictombs were the key. The djinn’s knowledge of aether and how to utilize it on a large scale was written into the bones of the structure. Emptying the aetheric void safely without destroying our world would be impossible without that knowledge.

My conjurations faded away, but I kept channeling aether into all of my godrunes. My feet lifted off the ground, and I hung in the air like a marionette. I imagined my core as the aetheric realm and began absorbing more aether from the atmosphere. Curious about something, I captured a cluster of mana particles within some of that aether.

The mana was drawn into my core, but the organ made no effort to purify it. Instead, the motes of mana floated around amid the increasingly dense aether, just like the Relictombs in the aether realm. How long will the Relictombs survive before degradation and the building pressure force it to collapse entirely? I wondered.

My aether core was surrounded by organic gates that opened out to channels I had forged myself. As I floated there and watched, the mana was slowly pushed, bit by bit, until it was expelled through one of those gates. From there, the water-attribute mana lingered, but the rest slowly escaped my body and returned to the atmosphere.

As my thoughts churned, I continued through a series of exercises, molding and conjuring aether in a variety of ways to enhance my precision and continue the absorption and purging of energy. It was more like meditation than true training, since nothing I did managed to challenge me.

I briefly considered leaving the beach to strikeout into the jungle and battle the beasts I’d heard there. Glancing behind me to look into the shadows beneath the thick canopy, I was surprised to see Zelyna leaning against the base of a tree, watching me thoughtfully. I let my concentration fall away and settled back onto the flat rock. “I didn’t sense your approach.”

“I didn’t wish to be sensed,” she said with a shrug of the leather pauldrons that lay over her shoulders. Bands of leather crossed over her chest and revealed the pearlescent scales of some great beast in the gaps between. The leather was densely stamped with images and runic symbols. She looked like she was dressed for battle. “Not until I had gauged what you were up to.”

“And?” I asked, holding out my arms.

A frown pinched her brows and turned down her lips. “I’ve trained dozens of young warriors, all of them powerful, talented, and motivated. And yet, any one of them could become distracted by just a single irrelevant thought, and a day of training lost. You turn on this”—she drew a circle around her floating hair with her finger—“and you unleash a hundred different competing thoughts into your squishy lesser brain.”

Her lips quivered as she suppressed a smile, and she pushed away from the tree to walk confidently toward me. “My father tells me you trained your body with Kordri of the Thyestes when you were only a boy. Did he teach you to fracture your mind into a hundred pieces to fight?”

I stepped down off the stone. The sand gave just a little, letting the soles of my boots sink into itself.

“I’m thinking, not training.”

“And how far have your thoughts come?” she asked, stopping ten feet in front of me.

“Not very far,” I admitted, not quite meeting her eyes. She waited for me to continue. I hesitated, then eventually said, “I feel…rudderless. I know what I have to do, but all I see are impediments. The goal itself seems so far removed. I’m not sure what I should be doing right now.”

She crossed her arms and raised one brow. “Whether thinking or training, you are doing so for one reason: to be ready. A wise asura prepares to face the unknown. Even in victory, we may face uncertainty. Do not focus on the completion of only a single task.”

I blinked at her, surprised. The words were very similar to those once spoken by King Grey in another life.

Zelyna’s expression hardened into one of intense focus, and she drew a short blade from an extradimensional space. “I would like to fight you. Perhaps that would provide the challenge and focus you are seeking.”

I shifted my right foot back and conjured an aetheric sword in my right hand. The blade was a few inches shorter than usual, to better match Zelyna’s weapon. “I suppose a spar wouldn’t hurt—”

She lunged forward in a sea-green and dark brown blur. I blinked away with God Step, appearing behind her, and thrust the point of my blade backwards, aiming at her thigh. Her body rotated in midair, seeming to defy physics, and her knee struck my wrist. Bone cracked, and the aetheric sword melted away. I God Stepped again, appearing on top of the flat rock holding my broken wrist.

Slowly, she turned her head around to look at me, her body turned sideways in profile from my new position. “Be careful if you employ that technique against a dragon. One strong enough in the aether arts might push back against you.” Her brows crept up as I shook out my wrist, already fully healed.

“You should practice strengthening your muscles and boneswith aether at all times, even when you sleep. You are an asura now. Imbuing your body should be as natural as breathing or the beating of your heart.”

I held my arm straight out in front of me and conjured another weapon into my fist. This time, I moved first, planting one foot on the edge of the rock and burst stepping toward her. An eager grin flashed across her face, and the sand beneath me burst with several jets of superheated water. The world twisted as I moved through the aetheric pathways, reappearing above her. A second weapon shimmered into being in my other hand as

I fell toward her like a diving flare hawk. (tuah?)

Zelyna dove forward into a roll, and I struck nothing but a thick soup of sand and water that immediately attempted to drag me down. Aware only of a green and brown blur in front of me, I God Stepped again, this time creating some distance.

Thirty feet away, Zelyna’s blade swept through the air above the quicksand she’d conjured. Her arm carried on farther than was natural for the strike, and then her blade was flying like an arrow. Aether exploded along the muscles and joints of my right arm, hand, and fingers, which closed around the weapon’s hilt. Wind blew through my hair, conjured by the arrested force of the thrown sword.

I flipped the weapon in the air, caught it by the tip of the blade, and held it out. Zelyna wore her lopsided smile as she approached to take it back. “Not bad, archon. You are quick and mobile. But blinking all around the beach is only training you to run. Train yourself to fight.”

Her aquamarine skin darkened to navy, and she began to expand outward, her features stretching and distorting. The leather armor melted away as dark plates and thick scales formed over her skin. Her trunk extended as her legs melded into a single tail. Her arms swelled, growing thick and muscular, and wicked talons grew from her three-clawed hands.

In an instant, she was towering over me, fully transformed. Her elongated head, split by wide jaws that showed rows of teeth like daggers, turned to look down at me through four burning blue eyes, two on each side. In her leviathan form, Zelyna’s head was covered in toothed plates as if she were wearing a helmet. These plates extended down across her shoulders like jagged pauldrons, then further along her spine. The bare scales of her piscine underbelly were the same aquamarine color as her humanoid form.

I rolled my shoulders and adopted a comfortable stance before conjuring an aetheric sword, which burned and winked with violet light. A second appeared in my other hand, then a third hovering near my left shoulder. Finally, a fourth manifested at my right hip. “I guess I’ll stop holding back then.”

Zelyna slithered forward, using several tentacle-like appendages to drag herself across the sand. Each tentacle ended in a broad, leaf-shaped paddle. When she spoke, her voice boomed across the beach, rich and vicious. “I hope you will. I would hate for my victory to be stained with the dishonor of knowing you didn’t give me your best.”

One of the long, tentacle-like appendages whipped toward me. I dodged back as an aether blade moved to deflect the blow. In the fraction of a second it took for the blow to fall, the fleshy paddle hardened into a ridge of bone. My blade was flung aside by the force of the blow, and sand sprayed into the air. The bone blade carved a furrow through the sand where I’d been standing.

I pulled the flying blade back toward me and sprinted to my right. Another limb struck, slamming into the ground just behind me. I sent a blade flying at Zelyna’s exposed underbelly, but a third limb smashed it aside.

Despite her size in this form, Zelyna was still incredibly quick. Her long limbs struck like whips and came from several directions at once. I had to turn more and more of my branching conscious mind to the task of fending off her blows and supporting my blades; without my full power behind them, the blades couldn’t withstand the force of her strikes.

Attempting to take advantage of her proportions, I God Stepped to her back and struck a probing blow against the protective plating. My blade left a faint scratch on its surface, but I barely had time to register it before a clublike tentacle swept past.

Flying up, I narrowly avoided that strike before another came down from a different angle.

I flew beneath it just as Zelyna’s huge head snapped around, jaws wide.

The aetheric paths folded me in and deposited me on the other side of her still-closing maw. Aether hardened behind me even as amethyst lightning rippled down my arms and legs. I pushed forward, launching myself off the conjured wall. My lightning-wreathed fist struck the side of her head.

Zelyna’s huge bulk tumbled sideways, crushing the forest undergrowth and toppling several trees. I waited for her to right herself, wanting to make sure she wasn’t badly hurt.

Her limbs all worked in concert to easily push herself upright. It was difficult to tell, but it almost looked like she was grinning. “I thought you were going to stop holding back?”

Grinning in return, I reached for my armor. The black scales and white bone coalesced around me eagerly, familiar yet foreign. The leviathan lunged, and I drove forward, blades shining.

***

Panting and drenched in sweat, I dropped down to the cool sand. Nearby, Zelyna stepped into the water up to her knees, seeming to take strength from it. She was back in her humanoid form, but her armor had been replaced by a tight full-body suit of indigo scales, much the same way Sylvie’s clothes shifted to match her mood and purpose.

I only realized then that my entire mind, even with King’s Gambit active, had turned toward the fight. Briefly, my attention had been taken away from the aether realm, Fate, Epheotus, and Kezess.

Although physically tired, I felt mentally rejuvenated.

“Thank you,” I said. With my hands behind my head and my ankles crossed, I stared up at the sky, painted a dark blue with the black-purple of the aether realm. “I do feel better.”

Zelyna nodded, not looking at me. Her gaze stayed on the sea. “You’re proficient, when you aren’t lost inside the catacomb of your own brain. This King’s Gambit…you’ve started to see, but do you understand?”

I considered. My godrunes had faded, but I still channeled King’s Gambit partially. In part, to stave off the crushing aftereffects of the godrune’s use, but also—I had to admit, even if only to myself—because I no longer felt like myself without it. “I was more focused. Using multiple branches of thought, but honing in on the battle specifically. I wasn’t thinking about everything else at all.”

“When transformed, a leviathan is large and has many limbs. These limbs do not all work individually, but in concert. To swim, to fight. Your power is a tool, but like all tools, there are many ways, both right and wrong, to use it.”

“You’re pretty perceptive. And straightforward without being blunt.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Well, I am almost a thousand years old. That is another thing you shouldn’t lose track of: most of your opponents in Epheotus have lived longer than your entire civilization has existed.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, although I wasn’t likely to forget the fact. Memory of the dragons destroying civilization after civilization will always be just beneath the surface of my thoughts, as well as the danger Kezess still posed to Dicathen and Alacrya.

Standing, I stretched and looked back the way I’d come. With a clear mind, I opened myself back up to Regis and Sylvie, eager to speak with them. I need to talk. Where are you two?

‘Where are we?’ Regis answered instantly. ‘The nerve of this guy. Disappears for hours, no note or nothing.’

The amusement in Sylvie’s thoughts were clear as she chimed in. ‘At the pier with Veruhn. He’s regaling us with tales of ancient asuran heroes.’

Zelyna and I continued to chat about our training as we walked back. She reminded me quite a lot of Kordri, although he had never been as open with me as she now was.

It wasn’t long before the World Serpent’s tail came into view. Veruhn was standing at the beginning of the skeletal pier. Regis loped back and forth along the spine bones, and Sylvie stood up to her waist in the water, rocking back and forth with the rippling waves that constantly brushed up against the shore. The aether danced and twirled around her like glowflies.

Zelyna broke away before we reached the others. Speaking back to me without breaking stride, she said, “Aldir thought you worth his sacrifice, Arthur. I hope you will prove him right.” She walked away, passing out of sight as she entered Veruhn’s tidal pool garden and the pearl-walled house.

I watched her go from the corner of my eye as I approached the others. This proud leviathan warrior-woman was still a mystery to me, and so were her motives. She had caught me off guard with her words when I’d returned from seeing Agrona, and she’d surprised me again today. Although not entirely sure where the feeling came from, I couldn’t shake the thought that she was, somehow, essential to my success in Epheotus.

“Ah, Lord Leywin, you have returned,” Veruhn said pleasantly. “I was just educating Lady Sylvie and young Regis here on the tale of Aquinas, the World Serpent, and its defeat at the hands of Antioch of Clan Eccleiah. A rousing tale, if somewhat cautionary. I hope you’ll excuse me, but I’m afraid I need to speak to my daughter and don’t have time to recount it again just now. Later though, if you’d like.”

The old leviathan gave me a respectful nod, repeated the gesture to Sylvie, winked at Regis, and then walked slowly back across the beach toward his home. I watched him go, wondering what was cautionary about Aquinas’s defeat.

“I don’t know,” Regis said after he was gone. “I kind of faded out there, just for a second.”

Sylvie was silent, frowning. Her thoughts were troubled.

“What is it?” I asked, moving to the point where the skeletal ribs and spine first protruded from the sand. I rested one leg up on the high point of the curving rib.

“There is…so much noise here.” She stared out into the water as if it were an Alacryan projection crystal. Giving herself a little shake, she wrenched her gaze away to focus on me. “It’s like…there is something happening—something big—but it's just beyond the edge of my sight, so I can’t quite make out the details.”

I kicked off my boots, careful not to get them full of sand, and stepped across the ribs until I was level with Sylvie. I eased down to let my feet soak in the water. “Is it your power? Maybe…another vision?”

She shook her head but bit her lip uncertainly. “It doesn't feel like a vision.”

I bit my tongue, eager to talk about my unfolding thoughts, but Sylvie was rarely pensive; clearly she needed my full attention.

Connected to both Regis and her, I felt myself pulled in opposing directions by their emotions. Regis was at ease, having enjoyed his time in Ecclesia and feeling no rush to move on. Sylvie, though, was standing in the eye of a hurricane of apprehension and contemplation. Probing these thoughts reminded me of what it felt like to be under the effect of King’s Gambit, except she had only a single train of thought to contain it all.

She felt my prodding. “I can sense it out there, in the ocean.” There was a short pause, then she clarified, “Fate. This ocean, the connection to the aetheric realm…it’s like Fate is standing just behind me, its breath on my neck.”

“Creepy,” Regis said, lying down beside me.

“It’s watching, I’m certain of it,” she continued, finally turning toward me. “I’ve been trying to capture some of what we had in the keystone again. There, that power—the aevum arts—felt right. Here, it is still distant, difficult to grab hold of.” Her gaze returned to the water. “I feel like Fate—or something, anyway—is just there, reaching for me. It wants me to understand.”

“Fate?” I clarified.

“Yes…or no?” She shrugged, her pale blonde hair flowing over her shoulders. “Something. Do you think…” She trailed off.

Her thoughts trickled through our connection, only partially formed. “The Relictombs. The presence that saved you?” I asked, trying to follow along. “You think it might have been Fate?”

“I don’t know.”

We sat in silence for a minute or two. The sun overhead conjured a pleasant tingle in the bare skin of my arms.

“How are we going to do this, Arthur?” Sylvie asked at length.

I kicked my feet back and forth. A small, luminescent silver fish swam up to my toes, bobbed around for a second, then vanished back into the depths. “One step at a time,” I answered, our shared connection confirming what she was really asking. “There is a lot to do before either world will be ready. First, we need to secure our standing with the other clans. We can’t do this without allies.

Tomorrow, Veruhn will accompany us to Featherwalk Aerie, home of the Avignis clan.”

“Tomorrow? So you’ve decided? You’re definitely going to refuse Kezess?” Sylvie’s eyes burrowed unblinking into my own.

I held her gaze. She could hear my thoughts, so she was only asking to hear me speak them aloud. “We can’t give in to Kezess in this. His reasoning is petty. This is more about depriving me of a valuable resource than about Agrona. Absolutely nothing good would come of reviving him, if the pearl even worked.”

“Good,” Sylvie said viciously. “He is gone. Irrelevant. That is truly justice for Agrona. Striking his name from history is a far more fitting punishment than carving his infamy across Epheotus one last time.”

“When that is done, we need a method to begin teaching people,” I continued. “We can’t assume others will be able to create an aether core, but spellforms allowed djinn to work with both aether and mana. The Relictombs are the key.”

Regis lifted his chin from his paws, his lupine brows rising as he read my intentions.

“The Relictombs can’t stay in the void. It’ll be destroyed, either by the rising pressure or the void collapsing, just like Epheotus. We need to bring it into the physical world.”

Sylvie was nodding along. Her hands continued to play across the top of the constantly rising and falling water. “That way, people can study them properly, not just fight the monsters inside them. Without the aether realm to pull from, the monsters may even stop forming.”

“Will that screw something up?” Regis asked, looking between us. “Each zone is like a chapter in an aether encyclopedia, right? Maybe losing access to all that aether would be like…pages in a book getting old and brittle. Falling apart and stuff.”

“We’ll have to figure out a way,” I answered.

“Maybe the djinn remnant in Agrona’s fortress can help. Ji-ae, Tess called her.” I decided that next time we left Epheotus, a visit to Taegrim Caelum would be necessary. It would also afford time to check in with Seris and Caera.

“If Grandpa Kezzy lets all this happen, of course,” Regis said. “He’s the real stick in our collective craw here.”

“Ugh, don’t call him that,” Sylvie said, splashing water at Regis.

Regis shook out his burning mane, his tongue lolling.

I stared down into the water, heat rising on my neck and a flush going to my cheeks. “Kezess won’t repeat his past crimes.”

Sylvie’s thoughts bounced back and forth between Kezess, Myre, Agrona, and Sylvia. Her family, such as it was.

“Thank you, Sylv. For doing this. For…being at my side.” I couldn’t pretend to understand what it was like for her, not really. I was fighting for my family, but her father and grandfather were our two most dangerous adversaries. “I know this is difficult.”

She tossed her hair and gave me a bright smile, her melancholy falling away. “Since it turns out I was the one that dragged you to Dicathen, I can’t exactly abandon you now.” More seriously, she added, “I wouldn’t be anywhere else, Arthur.

Together, we’re going to change the world. Make it better. That is how I’ll heal the wounds my family has left on me.”

As we both thought of our family, Tessia came into my mind. So many of those who had traveled with me, fought beside me, and supported me were now left with nothing to do but wait and hope back in Dicathen and Alacrya. I wished then that she, at least, could have come with me, but I knew why she couldn’t, and I supported her desire to be with her people. After everything that had happened to her, she deserved to get exactly what she wanted.

But I couldn’t help but daydream, just a little. I imagined her traveling at my side in Epheotus, standing shoulder to shoulder with asuran royals. She would be training with me in place of Zelyna, and with my help, she would reach the Integration stage again. Then—a small smile came to my lips—I would teach her to wield aether as an archon, queen of the Leywin clan…

It was a beautiful daydream.

But there is much to do, if it is ever going to be anything more than just a dream.