Before taking that step, I slammed the shutters between Arthur's mind and mine. I couldn't explain the river's pull on me, and I feared what it might do to him if our thoughts were still intertwined when I entered its currents. Suddenly assaulting him with indecipherable input while he was fighting off this creature might be his unmaking. Much like I could not maintain our connection while he was under the influence of King's Gambit, I thought the river's draw might overwhelm him.
Even past my mental defenses, I felt him startle as he caught sight of me standing up to my knees in the swiftly moving current. My consciousness was already being drawn away from me, out into the current. It was not taken, not ripped away to become something else, but...extended. I was a child of time. My experience through it had not been linear, and that insight was written across the surface of my core.
The aetheric waters tugged at my legs, and my feet slipped in the silt, but my body was grounded. It was my mind that roamed, but not just down the river of time but up it, too.
I resisted the urge to follow those currents, instead drawing from the river just as it did from me. I needed to understand it before I could utilize it. But there was no time!
I almost laughed at the irony, then suddenly Arthur was on his back, his attacker breathing harsh words into his face. "Life. Hated, awful life. Must end you. Empty...you." Two thin arms grew out from the thin torso, long-fingered hands reaching for Arthur's throat.
Understanding be damned, I clawed at the water. My power erupted out of me, and time lurched to a stop. But the pull of the river pressed against me, an unnatural dam to its motion. Arthur barely got out of the way, and then suddenly my hold over the aether was ripped away from me.
I saw myself, my life, my choices. Birth and rebirth, victory and defeat, shadowed at all times by the specters of my mother and father, and my grandfather, but buttressed in equal measure by my bond-brother and father, friend and ally, master and servant all at once. As I felt the twisting roots of my existence spread up and down through the river, I also felt just how inextricably connected Arthur's roots were to my own. We truly were bonded, even symbiotic; neither of us existing without the other, a living paradox balanced on a single golden thread.
The thought of him was like a tether back to the present.
Claire stood alone before the aetheric apparition. Arthur was preparing to attack. Look! I thought. And then, as sudden as a guillotine, it was over.
The others began to speak, and though I joined in where I found my thoughts needed, most of my awareness was spread out through the river.
Its waters-not water, not really-enveloped me up to my waist. Despite the speed with which it moved, the surface was glassy, interrupted only by the fine ripples caused by my body disturbing its passage. In those ripples, I saw the metaphor of my presence disturbing the river of time, the way in which I'd reached across it, passed over and through it, changed myself to be a part of it.
In the reflection of the smooth water, I saw myself. I was far beneath the surface, my arms flailing, the current dragging me away...
'What are you seeing?' Arthur's voice asked in my mind.
What does the river feel like to you, Arthur?
'Danger. It feels more like the void than the void itself.'
Because it's time. It only flows in one direction. At least, for most people. But for me...
Arthur...
"I can see everything."
My words settled between us like a physical barrier as my sense of present self thinned and my eyes focused in on the drowning, flailing reflection before me. If Arthur answered, I did not hear.
Almost without meaning to, I reached down, took my reflection's hand, and drew myself out of the river. This reflection sat on the water's surface, coughing and choking.
"Breathe. Calm your heart. Take control." The words came back to me like an echo, like a memory, and I said them in the same detached way I'd reached into the water. "This power will swallow you whole if you let it. Take control."
"Sylv. Sylvie!"
I looked up from where Varay, Regis, and I sat with our backs to the...empty, incomplete space that gave me vertigo to look at.
Arthur was standing on the shore, shouting at Sylvie, who was standing stomach-deep in the strange, smooth river.
"Don't worry, she's...all right," Regis said as I started to stand, his words stopping me in place.
Unsure, I watched Arthur, but he'd stopped shouting. It looked like he was nodding, and he took a step back from the shore.
"She's dealing with something pretty heavy, from what I can tell." My brows rose at Regis's words, and he continued. "She's blocking herself from our connection, mostly, but it's a little in and out. Confusing, really. But she doesn't seem to be in pain or danger, and she told Arthur to focus, so..." His lupine shoulders rose and fell. "Anyway, better focus on our own side of things."
"Of course," I said, settling back into the black sand and looking at Varay. Her eyes were closed but darted around beneath her lids, her stoic features fixed in a serious grimace of concentration. "I'm sorry, Varay. You were saying?"
One dark eye opened to regard me. "I was asking if you are able to feel where the mana and aether collide."
I cleared my throat and straightened my posture, struggling to grow comfortable with the armor wrapping around me like a scaly fist. "Sort of. I can't feel the flow as clearly as you, but can sort of...picture it."
"Explain," she said, her eyes closed again, a heavy pressure emanating from her.
I gave a small shake of my head as I struggled for words, but of course, she couldn't see me. "Cecilia had this ability...she could see the individual particles of mana, both atmospheric and the mana formed into a spell. I can't," I added quickly, not wanting to give her the wrong impression, "but sometimes when I close my eyes and really feel the mana, I can sort of...imagine that I can."
A fine line appeared between Varay's brows as they knit together. "Like Arthur can? Interesting. But this was some aspect of her being the Legacy, not something she gained through Integration?"
"Right." I chewed my lip, thinking. "I wonder...but you're sensitive enough to detect the elemental typing of small pockets of mana, right? How finely can you sense? Individual particles, maybe?"
She didn't answer right away. I felt the pressure emanating from her increase and knew she must be reaching out, extending and focusing her senses in order to answer my question. "All of the mana here is purified, held in the spell. There is no atmospheric, elemental mana."
I frowned. But surely that's not...
My own senses turned back to the mana. As a white core mage, I was far more sensitive than I'd been before my long internment inside my own body, but much less so than Cecilia had been. The mana in this place was shaped and moving, as if constantly being actively cast as a channeled spell. I'd never been anywhere with no atmospheric mana, however, and all atmospheric mana was elemental in nature.
"How didn't I notice that before?" Although I spoke out loud, I was mostly asking the question to myself. My eyes fell to Regis, who was sitting beside us keeping a careful watch up and down the shoreline. "Is it normal for the Relictombs to not have elemental mana?"
His bright eyes sparkled with amusement. "No such thing as normal in here. Assuming 'here' even is the Relictombs. I'm not convinced."
"But if we aren't inside the Relictombs, that means this spell is not a creation of the ancient mages...and yet this cannot be a natural phenomena, as there is no atmospheric mana here. Then, who is casting this spell?"
My eyes fell to my lap as I considered Varay's question, but nothing in Cecilia's insights or the memories of my time with Agrona helped answer it.
Movement ripped my gaze back up to the sea an instant later as something emerged from the water. It formed between Sylvie and Arthur, who quickly threw himself back as Claire's exoform flashed across the beach, her sword held in two massive, taloned hands. The newly formed creature, very similar to the first, stared at Sylvie for a single moment before turning on the approaching exoform.
Claire waited a breath for the manifestation to adopt its focus to her. Its power swung wildly from impossibly strong to undetectable in the moments after it appeared, as its attention settled entirely on Claire. It lunged for the exoform. The massive blade was an orange streak in the dark, and then the thing was gone, never even making it out of the water.
Claire and Arthur convened to discuss something. Sylvie had not even moved; I wasn't sure if she'd even noticed the creature's appearance. Bairon was flying back up the coastline toward the others, wrapped in thunder that, to me, felt like a physical manifestation of frustration.
But past them all, just at the edge of the indefinable wall to my right, I saw it again.
A shifting movement, like a dark silhouette against a lightless backdrop.
A humanoid shape. I thought I'd seen it before, but when I looked again, it had been gone, and no one else had seen it.
This time, however, the longer I looked, the more solid the shape became.
"I...need to stretch my legs," I said uncomfortably.
Varay's only reply was a huff of air through flared nostrils, but Regis stood and padded to my side. I opened my mouth to tell him it was okay, but immediately realized he would likely not listen to me, but also that I would be more comfortable if he stayed with me.
"What is it?" he asked, his voice a low growl. "You see something, don't you?"
I nodded. My feet sank into the sand as we walked along the shoreline past where Arthur and Bairon were speaking. Arthur's eyes followed me, his brows rising slightly, and I could tell he was holding back something he wanted me to say.
"I won't go far," I assured him.
He gave me a tight-lipped, chagrined sort of smile and rubbed the back of his neck.
I laughed softly. "I don't need to be in your head to know what you're thinking."
Regis answered with an amused snort. "Funny, because I am in his head, and I don't understand the princess half the time."
We passed them by, and more details of the shadowy form came into view. I thought it, or rather her, to be a tall woman with blue or maybe purple skin, garbed in an ornate and flowing robe. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. She was floating about six inches off the ground. But even as I noticed it, she seemed to as well, and her form shifted like shadows under water. She was standing on the ground.
"You still don't see her?" I asked, not taking my eyes from the woman in case she vanished while I wasn't looking.
"Her?" Regis responded, looking around.
"She's just at the edge of the viewable space," I answered only to bite off my words as my head swam. I'd looked slightly too far to the right, bringing too much of the wall of nothingness into view.
"And you're definitely not, y'know, losing your marbles? Cracking? Going bonkers? Off your rocker-"
"I get your point," I said, interrupting his litany. "But...I don't think so."
'You should be more confident in yourself,' a voice sounded in my head, stiff and feminine.
I pulled up short, perhaps thirty feet away from where the woman was standing. "Was that you?"
"Yup, definitely losing it," Regis muttered beside me.
'Yes, assuming you're speaking to me.' The woman cocked her head slightly, and I realized that she had runic tattoos all around her face and on the backs of her hands. 'I didn't expect anyone, even you, to be able to see me. A miscalculation, clearly. It must have something to do with the way in which we're entangled.'
Entangled? I thought back, and then, Your voice. I recognize it. You're...Ji-ae. I looked her physical body up and down, and then had another realization. She wasn't physical at all. What I saw was some kind of projection into the Relictombs-or wherever we were. I said as much in my head.
'Right on both counts, as the saying goes,' she answered. 'I am here to keep an eye on you all. In the unlikely event that you ever leave here, I will need to inform High Sovereign Agrona, of course. But you're all also quite fascinating, as is this place. I am ever so curious about how you'll interact with it.'
I looked down and to my left, finding Regis staring up at me with bright eyes. His lupine brows rose, and I copied the gesture. His eyes flicked from mine to my sternum, my core. I frowned, uncertain. His head cocked slightly to the side. I bit my lip and nodded. The large, shadowy wolf became incorporeal and see-through, then condensed, losing his form, before finally drifting into my body as he'd done when bringing me Arthur's armor.
I shivered at his intrusion in my core, and something inside me rebelled at the idea of sharing my body with another presence. But there was also a distinct thrum of power that radiated out through my body, seeming to warm the armor resting snuggly against my skin, which felt comfortable within the alien landscape.
W-what have you learned about this place? I asked Ji-ae after a moment, shaking off the queasy feeling in my stomach. It wasn't the first question that came to my mind, but I'd seen how loyal she was to Agrona. I didn't think there was anything I could say that might sway her to our cause.
'Are you asking because you think I might inadvertently give you some key piece of information that will reveal how to escape?' Ji-ae answered, her voice flat and matter-of-fact.
'Whoa, I can hear her,' Regis's voice sounded in response, his mental voice raspier and a little bit deeper than his audible voice. 'So you're the famous Ji-ae, huh? The encyclopedia lady.'
She cocked her head slightly. 'Fascinating. You are the conscious entity known as Regis, a being born of acclorite, the condensed mana of multiple powerful magic users, the will of Arthur Leywin, and the Relictombs itself. To the extent of my knowledge, none among us ever anticipated such an evolution of aetheric magic. The asura are well- known to craft sentient weaponry and new lifeforms, but you- specifically, the way you are bound to Arthur Leywin, simultaneously a part of him and yet your own conscious lifeform-are truly extraordinary.'
I felt my jaw tightening with nerves as I listened to her speak- think...whatever. I was surprised by and uncomfortable with the amount of information she had.
'Truly Extraordinary is going to be the name of my memoir,' Regis shot back, his emotions rolling out into me. He didn't seem to share my nervous energy.
'And you are amusing, as well,' Ji-ae answered, though there was no humor in her voice. 'I expect your brand of forceful, immature humor is donned as a shield against your fears that, in the end, you are nothing more than a weapon for another to wield.'
Regis' hackles went up, as if ready to lunge. 'You don't know me.'
The woman's face was sharp-lined and severe, her smoky blue skin darkening at the thin, straight line of her lips. 'Perhaps not yet, but I am beginning to. I am, as you put it, the "encyclopedia lady," yes?'
Regis gave a very human-sounding snort. 'Listen, whatever, lady. But if you're going to stand here and mentally undress us, you're going to have to pay for the privilege.'
I suddenly grew uncomfortable. I knew I was fidgeting and utterly failing to keep my expression in check, but I suspected the djinn projection didn't exactly need to read my facial ticks to understand what I was feeling.
"Lady Eralith?"
I jumped, letting out a little gasp as I spun to find Bairon standing a few feet away. My hand flew to my chest, pressing against my thundering heart as I let out an embarrassed laugh.
He held up his hands, palms out, looking equal parts abashed and concerned. "Forgive me. You've been standing here motionless for some time, and I just wanted to make sure you were well." His eyes slipped past me to where Ji-ae was standing, though he gave no indication of actually seeing her.
"Just...puzzling things out," I said hesitantly.
He nodded. "It seems it will be up to you, Varay, and Arthur to get us out of here, while Claire guards us." A muscle twitched high in his cheek. "I will leave you be."
He spun on his heel, and before I could think to say anything else, he lifted off the ground and flew away, resuming his patrol down the coastline.
'He doesn't see his role,' Ji-ae said in my mind. 'His perception is too narrow to understand the scope of his own journey.'
I waited for her to expand on that thought, but she only stared at me. A worried jolt shot through me from Regis. 'Sylvie...'I half turned toward her when a mental shockwave struck me. I collapsed onto my hands and knees, gasping. I didn't remember being so close to the water, but suddenly the lapping wake was up to my wrists and I was back in Telmore City, watching Arthur kill himself to keep me from Cadell and Nico. Or no, I was in Xyrus, Lucas Wykes dragging me by my hair. And in the Elshire Forest, abandoning my position because I thought I could hold off the enemy all on my own. In Eidelholm, looking up at Nico, realizing that I couldn't escape-
'Easy, just breathe...' Sylvie's voice sounded in my head, clear and clean as a silver bell.
I looked around. "Where...are we?"
Arthur, Sylvie, Regis, and I were standing atop a mountain peak. Below us, I recognized the Wall...or what was left of it.
A large piece of Epheotus had struck it directly, smashing the huge stone wall to rubble. But it wasn't just the Wall. As I turned around to look at the world, all I saw was smoke and ruin. Xyrus, far to the west, had fallen from the sky. The Beast Glades were a smoking black hole. The small glades sprouting up across the face of Elenoir had been wiped away in fire and rubble. Everywhere I looked, huge, broken islands had crushed craters into the ground. Even parts of the Grand Mountains had collapsed.
"Is this...?" My throat constricted and I couldn't finish what I was trying to say.
"No," Sylvie answered. A second voice echoed behind hers, just at the edge of hearing-or maybe in my head. "This hasn't happened. Right now, the dwarves, phoenixes, and exoform pilots are all working to keep it from happening. Asura of every race are desperately clinging to the edges of the wound to keep it from expanding."
She paused, and a weary sigh escaped her. "But this is the future. Or one possible future-a likely one, even. This is what happens if we don't escape. If we don't close the wound..." She trailed off and turned to face it. The rest of us followed suit.
The colossal tear in the sky was no longer raining masses of land. As we watched, it...shrank.
"It's closing," I muttered.
Arthur took my hand. "Epheotus is gone. Now it's just-"
Suddenly the wound contracted from the size of the sky to a single small rift hovering over the Beast Glades like a bright amethyst eye.
Then...
An eruption. A nova of aether, rolling across the Beast Glades before slamming into the Grand Mountains to the south of us.
The mountain range exploded outwards, pieces spreading across the Darvish foothills.
The nova continued expanding, wiping the world clean behind it.Breaking the world as it passed. Destroying everything.
A wall of violet light washed out everything else. We were back in the Relictombs, standing in a row on the beach, staring away from the ocean, into the incomprehensible nothing. I blanched, tried to look away, except...
"The curtain!" The words spilled out of me, choked with tears, which I hadn't even realized were falling. "But how...?"
Arthur stood to my left, Sylvie to my right. Regis was on the other side of Arthur, then Claire beside him. Varay stood beside Sylvie. Arthur and Sylv took my hands from either side, and we all linked hands in a line.
"This is the future too, isn't it?" Arthur asked, looking past me to Sylvie. My stomach roiled. "This isn't...real?"She smiled sadly and shook her head. "But it can be? I can't quite-"
I gasped as someone pulled me back from the water's edge. I scurried backwards like a crab, then collapsed on my side, breathing hard. Regis was trembling in my core. I could tell immediately that he was diminished, but I didn't understand what was happening.
I looked up into Varay's face, her dark eyes wide, her face even more pale than normal. "What in the abyss was that all about?"
"I'm not sure," I admitted, the words hoarse through my constricted throat.
Sylvie was still standing in the water, though her eyes were now on me. Arthur was picking himself up off the ground and shaking off black sand, looking stunned. Bairon was with him. Claire was moving farther down the beach; another of the manifestations was forming out of the river a hundred yards away.
The source of warmth and energy that was Regis, now small and dark, oozed out of me to pool on the ground before taking physical form. Now the size of a puppy, his normally blazing mane was only a low, flickering flame. "I'm not super stoked about this," he grumbled tiredly.
Varay's brows shot up. "I...figured something out."
We waited for the others to join us. Even Sylvie came to the shore, though she left the river hesitantly, and kept tossing furtive glances back over her shoulder into its depths.
Arthur, Regis, Sylvie, and I seemed to be sharing a fatigue and soul-ache after Sylvie linked our minds and projected us into those potential futures. None of us spoke, instead taking a moment to recover while Varay explained.
"Something is actively working the mana into this spell, constantly and with incredible force. It wasn't cast on this place, and it certainly isn't coming from outside. I don't think it's part of the way this place was built, or designed, or however you want to describe it." Varay paused and looked around at us. "It's the river. The aether. The mana isn't herding the aether, it's the other way around."
Bairon grumbled low in his throat, shooting a look at Arthur before saying, "Do you mean, the things in the river that keep attacking us are casting some kind of spell?"
Varay crossed her arms, frowning with concentration as she searched for a way to explain. Her eyes went to Sylvie for help.
"Aether is semi-conscious. We know that it can retain intention. Fate itself is just that-the concentrated awareness of pure magic."
"But this isn't Fate," Arthur cut in. "It's certainly aware of us, but it's not...here, in any sense of the word we understand. I think..." He met and held my eyes. "I think it's set to get what it wants whether we get out of here or not."
"Fate is an aspect of the greater form of all aether," Sylvie continued, raising her brows at Arthur. "I think this might be another aspect. The body."
Arthur's mouth opened in a small "o" of surprise, then closed again, his entire face scrunching in thought. "What Fate is fighting against is this unnatural constraint. The aether wants to be loose, to move naturally, expand and settle."
"Like sugar stirred into a cup of tea," Sylvie added, her tone suggesting she'd just thought of the connection herself.
"Maybe this is its way of concentrating on some kind of form." "Of maintaining control," Sylvie agreed.I rubbed the bridge of my nose, struggling to keep all this straight while still weak and half sick from what we'd seen of the potential future.
"But how does that help us?" Bairon asked, his and Varay's eyes going from Arthur to Sylvie in turn as they each spoke.
"It explains the pull this river has," Arthur said, staring out into the water. Claire waved from where she had posted up as guard, having quickly defeated the last apparition to appear. "I can't overpower the body of aether, can't even see the interaction in the mana the way Varay can, since the pull on all aether around us is so strong."
I rested a hand on Sylvie's shoulder. "But we saw the curtain, the way out. That was in our future, so we know that we can get out of here."
"That was one future," Sylvie corrected, her words directed to Varay and Bairon. "But just because I saw that Arthur can create a portal back doesn't mean I understand how to do that." She grimaced, then looked past me, staring fully into the vertigo-inducing blank space behind us. Her face turned a shade green, but she did not look away. "But I do know that it's going to take...a lot of aether."
We all understood what she meant: Arthur had already expended a large portion of his reserved power.
And we still have a deity to fight after that.
I stared at the dark purple waters flowing swiftly by. A nearly infinite source of power. But one that he couldn't access.
Suddenly I felt eyes burning against the side of my face, and I faced Sylvie. She was giving me a meaningful look. Knowledge and time shined within her golden eyes. I saw, reflected in them, the end of everything.
What had Arthur said about Fate?
"I think it's set to get what it wants whether we get out of here or not."
Is that what you want, Ji-ae? The end of all life-all potential life-in this world?
There was a long pause, during which I lost track of what the others were saying. When the voice answered in my thoughts, it carried a tinge of finality.
'No.'