Mid Afternoon - Late Winter : The Nest
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- Elizabeth Valia ~
"E..li..beth... Eli..abeth... Elizabeth!"
I jolted as I was ripped out of my thoughts by Astren on the horse next to .
"Are you okay?" It hadn't been more than few minutes since we t 'him' at that point, so we were all still rattled. "Ever since 'he' appeared, you've.. not been yourself..."
I gently nodded as my gaze turned away from her. "Y..yeah, I'm fine... I just have a lot on my mind..." My mind was an indescribable ss, with thoughts racing in every direction, to the point that I was beginning to not only question my mories and reincarnation, but my own identity as well.
"What did you guys even talk about? He seed to recognize you... Have you t before?"
I quickly shook my head before looking up at the ceiling. "I never t him.. but he knew who I was..."
With wrinkled eyebrows and a look of worry, she quickly turned toward Michael, who hadn't said a word from the mont we left. "You seed to know him, right? Who was he?"
Subtly looking up at him, I watched him tense with an expression similar to mine, except with guilt woven into it. "I don't know who he is.. but we did indeed et many years ago..." There was a long pause as Arcana and Gale turned their ears to him. "We t back when in Kaelallan.. before it beca an empire... At the ti, he had the appearance of a child, and at first, I thought he was just so foreign noble. He and his 'father' were quite close with the royal family there, and until I saw him actually fighting, I assud he was just an abnormal demihuman child..."
"H..how many years ago was that for you to mistake a fucking monster like that for a child..." Mag spoke up with a shaky voice, riding on the back of Michael's horse.
"T-That was only before I saw him fight... While I was there, applying to beco a nation-rank adventurer, he thwarted an assassination attempt on the king that even I wouldn't have been able to stop right next to ... That event is what made consider the path I was taking in life... " He hung is head as he paused. "But where I drew the line on him being a humanoid species was when.. a dragon appeared in the plaza..."
Arcana instantly twitched as if recognizing what he was talking about.
"He didn't just win against her.. he one-sidedly crushed her with the body of a demihuman child... It wasn't even a fight..."
"Her?" Astren's voice warped with confusion.
"A-Ah! S-Sorry." His words quickly beca fervent. "I was referring to the dragon that appeared. You may have heard of the incident, but it didn't even end there... After he literally beat the dragon to the brink of death, he created these massive tallic bands to keep it from escaping. He even left it there alone for a while.. and if I rember right, there were rumors that he was not only able to talk with it, but was the one to.. dispose of it as well..."
Arcana, finally turning to look at Michael's oddly distraught expression, spoke calmly. "So he was the one behind that incident..."
Michael quickly nodded. "It wasn't just that.. the only reason Kaelallan was able to take so much land was thanks to him... After I left Kaelallan, I even heard rumors about how the Magic Tower in Decia, as well as thousands of upper governnt officials across the entire main continent, went missing in the span of a few days..." He paused as he recalled so bad mories. "At this point, I'd be pretty surprised if he wasn't also related to that Reverse Mana Wave or that field of glass they found near the Kingdom of Zan's old border..."
Arcana quickly chid in with a mix of awe and curiosity in her voice. "Was the reverse mana wave not just a rumor? There was an institute in Voldukirk that claid it was fabricated, saying it was just a really strong mana wave that was misunderstood."
But he imdiately shook his head. "It was a very real event. It sucked mana out of not only artifacts but people. My friend, who is a blacksmith there, had mythril turn into junk iron during the event... The rumor that it made Kaelallan's capital a mana-rich area is true too. Every ti I visit, sohow, the mana feels thicker than the last ti I visited... It's like they have a mana fountain beneath the royal palace or sothing..."
"How fascinating..."
Finally pulling my gaze off him, the turmoil in my own mind quickly resud. "I can at least say he'd certainly be capable of doing sothing like that..."
Turning to , Arcana's curiosity started to show. "You an creating a mana fountain?"
I nodded. "There is nothing I saw in our conversation that said he was anything less than omnipotent..." I anxiously bit my thumb as my mind raced to try and find a flaw within our conversation. A single notion that said he didn't already know everything.
But there was nothing.
Although he said he himself was a reincarnator from Earth, his response about his mories from there threw off, and looking back on it, it felt like he was just saying that to try and get close to . -He knew I was a reincarnator from the very beginning, and even offered to reveal the truth of my reincarnation to ...- aning he already knew the truth himself, likely before we even started speaking. "If he's a god.. what reason is there to place a limit on him?" There was a long pause before I silently mumbled. "To the likes of us, that kind of power may as well be limitless even if it isn't..."
Thinking about his offer again, my gaze fell toward my hands, tightly gripping the reigns of my horse as we raced through the huge tunnel.
No matter how I twisted it, the whole situation felt like a trap. The way he responded when I asked 'what would happen if I refused to beco his apostle' after learning the truth was as if the thing I was going to learn would trap into accepting his offer. -So, if I accept this.. the odds are, I'll have to beco his apostle whether I want to or not...- I honestly didn't know what to think or believe. Whether he was acting, leading into a trap, or whether he was being truthful, earnestly desiring my faith.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringent.
-But.. would being the apostle of such a god-like entity be such a bad thing?-
The mont I asked that to myself, however, my vision blurred, and an image appeared in my mind: the image of a tiny wooden cabin in the middle of the woods.
Nothing about it particularly stood out. I had certainly never seen it before, but sohow, it felt familiar.
Familiar enough for to know exactly where it was.
Without even realizing it, I had subconsciously accepted the god's offer. -How horrifying...- But as I thought that, a smile ca to my face.
I was afraid, but excited at the sa ti. Anxious about what was to co, but also curious.
I could instinctively feel that what was to co wouldn't be easy, but sohow, I yearned for it.. the answers to the questions that had dominated my mind for years.
However, as my mind raced just thinking about it, the entire mountain started to shutter. *rrrRrRRuUUUMMBLLEE* It was like an unfathomable earthquake, causing several horses to lose balance and fall over before coating us in dust and small debris that was shaken loose out of the ceiling.
It was unlike anything any of us had ever experienced, an earthquake that felt like the planet itself was quivering.
But while we all scread, asking what the fuck happened.. deep down, we all had an idea...
A few hours later, after finally traveling the length of the tunnel, we arrived at the entrance, but instead of only having to push through the thick magic barriers to get outside, there appeared to be a huge boulder blocking the entrance, so I stepped up to break us out with magic.
However, the mont I broke through the opposite side of the rock, a wave of heat blasted over us, and the forest that was previously a beautiful white from being covered in a blanket of snow was nowhere to be seen, with the trees toppled, charred, and stripped of leaves as if an atom bomb had gone off right next to them.
"What the..." As we continued out, noticing the common angle of the toppled trees, I hopped on my horse and trotted out around the nearly two-hundred-ter-wide rock that blocked the entrance and looked up the mountain.
But the sight that t my eyes was not sothing I could do justice with words.
As I simply stared, frozen from awe, the others ca to look as well, but they were all instantly entranced, just as I was.
The only one to speak was Mag, after several minutes of silence, and even he spoke at the volu of a whisper. "We.. really tried to fight that..."
Although no one else said another word, we all instinctively agreed.
'He' was a being not bound by the limits of sothing as fickle as mortality.
'He' was a creature beyond our comprehension.
'He' was a true god.
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- Vasilias Ragnarok ~
(Back a few hours)
*tap...* *tap...* *tap-CRUNCH* Gently poking the secretary's long-dead head as it laid on the ground, the skull shattered like glass the mont my claw pressed into it. -Geez...- She had less crystalline divinity than even the youngest of ancients from what I could tell.
Or at least, that's what it seed like.
Gently opening her mouth with my aura, my eyes settled on her tongue and the three large black artifact-looking objects on it.
I recognized them instantly. -They're.. cells?- Similar to the god's cell I saw beneath the academy several years ago, they were made of pure, crystalline divinity and had at least at one point contained liquid divinity and likely the soul of a deceased god as well. -It looks like she used so of her own divinity to create pathways between them all and her reserve too...-
If my guess was right, when she began moving her own divinity, when her presence grew inexplicably exponentially, she also pulled the divinity out of those cells, absorbing the gods' souls in the process to let her make use of every drop of divinity she had. -I wonder if her absorbing those souls also affected her mind...-
It was a sha I couldn't keep her alive. Had she lived, she would have been the perfect specin for to use to study souls and how they affect the mind. -It's no wonder she neglected her own race so much... I wouldn't be surprised if those gods' souls contaminated her way of thinking in more ways than one...-
If my hypothesis was right, the gods she ate probably also harbored grudges against , likely exponentially increasing her hatred toward , and blurring her own sense of self and pride in her race.
Thanks to her, all that was left was a neglected population of chickens with a handful of powerful figures that she likely used to her own benefit wherever possible. -If they cultivated their race, she and Acanthis could have created a population that could rival the dragons again.- With the way Bahamut head completely lost its ability to grow demigods, the thunderbirds would have eventually caught up with ti. -But beside the secretary, there wasn't anyone here strong enough to even lick Hera's paw...-
Of course, it worked out perfectly for . All that was left was a nation laced with resentnt toward their leader. The perfect population of subjects to conquer.
Looking over my shoulder, I looked out through the hole I made connecting the upper cavern to the sky outside and idly thought to myself. -I might not even need to use fear and strength to rally them under the dragons.-
The only issue was the upper cavern, the prideful nobles. -The ones in the lower cavern I can rally beneath by simply showing them what was taken from them...- But the nobles, the ones who had the freedom to do everything they wished, couldn't be coerced by freedom.
-Though...- Looking into the cavern, I was imdiately t with the gaze of thousands of thunderbirds, so flying while others were perched in tree canopies or standing on the ground. -Maybe fear will be enough...-
But there was no guarantee even that would work. -Maybe It'd be better to just kill the troubleso ones...-
However, as I looked over at Ilios, still proudly touting the superheated chunk of wood, my mind started to shift gears, turning back to face what I just experienced within my own mind. -Right...- Although I didn't have much ti to think about it, and would have been better off leaving it for later and going to speak to Chrysi, I couldn't pull my mind off it.
It was a thod of reading my aura that was on the eve of perfection, turning the environnt around into an infinite number of strings, without any of the fuzzy imperfections from electrons or space mana, while also translating things like particle energy states and stability to values my mind could more easily make use of.
The issue was.. I didn't know where it ca from. It felt familiar, eerily similar to how I saw the world when in my soul form during dragon sleeps, but with so fundantal differences, and felt more like I had simply opened another eye rather than using so kind of technique.
But it felt too incomplete to be sothing instinctual, so at first, I simply assud it was artificial.. sothing I pulled out of Nott's lingering mories...
But that was when I had a thought. -What if it isn't so special technique... What if the reason it feels incomplete isn't because it's artificial.. but because my mind would have really destroyed itself if it opened its eyes all the way...-
I paused before looking down at my paw. “What if I simply can’t yet perceive the rest of it…”
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