The Beginning After The End 08

by Turtle Me

  Because I knew that, had he considered this a real fight, I wouldn’t be alive.

  The entire arena shook as the crowd erupted into cheers, pulling me out of my thoughts.

  “It was a good fight,” he said in a low voice as he lowered his hand from my throat. “But you shouldn’t rely so heavily on something you have no idea how to properly use.”

  “Aphene!” the familiar voice of my grandfather rang from behind me.

  The ascender patted my shoulder as he walked past me. “Do you have a name for that spell?”

  “There’s no official name for it in the records,” I admitted weakly, turning my head toward him. “I just call it internal lightning.”

  He looked back with the strangest smile, his golden eyes gleaming. “How about naming it ‘Thunderclap Impulse’?”

  291

  Deep Dive

  ARTHUR LEYWIN

  The nondescript black stone hung in the air just shy of the ceiling before falling back into my hand. I threw it again, like I had been for the past hour, as I thought about what to do with the relic.

  Meanwhile, I could hear the rhythmic thumping of Regis’s tail. He had been sitting beside my bed for about as long, his eyes following the stone like a hungry dog waiting for a treat. The only thing missing from the picture was his tongue hanging out and saliva spilling from his mouth.

  Sentient weapon, capable of mass destruction, bestowed upon me by the asuras to serve me in my time of need… yeah right.

  “I’m not giving this to you,” I said flatly, despite Regis’s subliminal begging.

  “Oh come on! You promised a percentage of all of the aether you consume,” he cried.

  “I haven’t decided whether I’m going to consume the aether from this relic yet.”

  “Why wouldn’t you consume it? That’s something even Agrona can’t do; otherwise he would probably hoard even the dead relics,” he argued, flabbergasted.

  “Dead or not, this is still a relic,” I argued back, catching the black stone in my hand and sitting up on my bed.

  My progress with the keystone—the name I came up with for the cuboid relic—was slow, but it had become increasingly obvious how powerful the knowledge stored inside it was.

  “If I can somehow tap into this relic as well, maybe I can gain insights into a new godrune,” I continued. “Or maybe this thing is actually a weapon or some sort of tool.”

  Regis lowered his ears, dejected. “If Agrona, who has been tinkering with relics for gods knows how long, can’t figure it out, how do you expect to do it?”

  “Utilize my inherent advantages until I’m able to figure it out?” I shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m tempted to consume the aether in here to refine my core too, but I don’t want to do anything I can’t undo.”

  “So what are you going to do with it until then? Mount it on a cane like that old man?” Regis retorted, his eyes narrowing in frustration.

  I smirked. “Maybe I’ll just hang it off a stick and dangle it in front of your face as I ride you around the city.”

  “Rude.”

  I let out a chuckle. “Then stop looking at it like it’s a carrot.”

  With a snort, my mighty steed turned away and curled up in the corner to sulk.

  Shaking my head, I walked over to the large window overlooking one of the main streets of Aramoor. Below our rooms, a wide lane flanked by raised walkways was loud with activity. Carriages pulled by horses or mana beasts rumbled past; chattering, vibrantly dressed Alacryans walked in the shade of the tall buildings; and a dozen different store owners stood outside under their businesses’ colorful awnings, encouraging and inviting passersby to examine their wares.

  Placing my newly-acquired relic into my dimensional rune, I headed toward the door.

  Regis’s ears perked at the sound of my footsteps. “Heading to the library again?”

  “Mhmm,” I answered. “Are you going to stay behind again?”

  “Might as well. I’m going to fall asleep there anyway,” he groused. “At least here, I can take in some ambient aether.”

  “I promise I’ll let you absorb my aether again once we’re back in the Relictombs,” I said apologetically, then headed out the door.

  Once in the crowded street, I looked around. I had made it a habit to take a different route with every trip, not only taking in the sights that the busy city had to offer, but how the people behaved as well. I also wanted to ensure I didn’t catch anyone’s attention by passing through the same area every day.

  Four days had passed since my duel with Aphene and Pallisun. After collecting my prize from the reluctant Cromely and destroying the recording artifacts that he had arranged, I bid my farewell to the small and peaceful Maerin Town.

  Loreni, Mayla, and Chief Mason were really the only ones that I cared enough to say goodbye to. I had assumed that Mayla would be travelling to Aramoor with us, but it turned out that, due to how rare a sentry of her innate ability was, she would be sent to a larger city capable of properly testing her.

  The usually talkative Mayla had barely uttered a word as Loreni explained all of this with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, and I left it at that. The two sisters had been helpful while I was in Maerin Town and I was thankful for them, but that was it.

  Belmun, the shaggy-haired kid that tried to make me take him as my student, came with the group to Stormcove, along with Braxton and an older male from Maerin Town that I didn’t recognize.

  The entire party from Stormcove Academy had been in a foul mood ever since I had beaten them in the duel, but they acknowledged their loss. Thankfully, the trip to Aramoor was short—almost instant, actually. Within the designated landing port on the edge of the academy grounds, Cromely handed me a piece of paper and gave me directions to an inn where I would find comfortable lodgings, then bid me a brusque farewell.

  Belmun had shot me a wide grin before he and Braxton eagerly followed after the representatives of Stormcove Academy. Trailing behind them silently was the older man, a caretaker assigned to them from Maerin Town.

  A light brush against my shoulder brought me out of my thoughts.

  “Excuse me! Watch where you’re go—” The blue-haired woman, whose colorful makeup accentuated her eyes, froze as she gazed up at me. Her cheeks were flushed, but that might’ve just been her makeup. “O-oh, my apologies.”

  “It’s fine,” I replied, keeping my expression deadpan and unreadable.

  I continued walking, ignoring the lingering gazes of passersby. It was hard to admit, but even a supposed small city like Aramoor could give Xyrus a run for its money.

  Restaurants specializing in cuisines of the different dominions were commonplace, as were cafes with outside patios where well-dressed Alacryans sipped their drinks and conversed leisurely.

  “And don’t come back!” a gruff voice shouted from somewhere up the street.

  A well-built old man, face scarlet and eyes half-closed, lay on the ground just outside a finely appointed restaurant. A well-dressed man who looked like he might be the owner was wiping his hands on a white towel hanging from his waste, and giving the drunken man a disgusted glare. Finally, the restaurateur stomped back into his business and slammed the heavy door, causing the whole storefront to rattle alarmingly.

  “Bah! Your rum tasted like chilled piss anyway,” the drunkard slurred, throwing the bottle he had been holding at the door.

  By now, a small crowd had formed around him, and murmurs of judgment and criticism could be heard as he spat on the ground and scratched at his bed of long and disheveled gray hair. The drunkard didn’t seem to mind, or perhaps he was too far gone to even notice.

  He did, however, single me out within the crowd, giving me a glassy stare before walking away with surprising deftness despite his inebriated state.

  Not thinking much of it, I eventually passed the row of restaurants and arrived at what seemed like the clothing district. I debated for a minute wheth
er to purchase some new clothes. Even while wearing the plain shirt and pants that I had taken from Maerin Town, I had been drawing attention to myself, which I wanted to minimize.

  In the end, I decided against it, not wanting to get caught up in frivolous things. Walking past the shopping district, I made my way toward the small building that I had frequented every day since arriving in Aramoor: the library.

  “Welcome,” the attendant, a bored looking teenage boy, muttered, not caring enough to even peek up from the book he was reading.

  Unlike the rest of the city, the library was empty and unembellished, with way too many wooden shelves for the number of books that it contained.

  I wandered between the shelves, looking for any interesting books that I hadn’t already read over the past few days, and I discovered a particularly old book that had been bound in a leather cover. What had caught my eye were the red splotches on the corners of the cover and spine. When I opened it and flipped through the pages, it looked like the words were actually written in blood.

  “Well, this is new.”

  Putting the blood-stained book in my pile of to-reads, I took my normal seat in a far corner of the library. I’d chosen the little table not only because it was out of the way, but also because it was the least wobbly chair I could find.

  Looking at the stack of books, I let out an audible sigh. I already knew what sort of books these would be even without opening them, but I felt compelled to keep trying.

  As a totalitarian continent ruled by what were essentially gods, the books that were available in this library were mostly propaganda and misinformation. They provided an embellished history where Agrona and the Vritra descended upon Alacrya to help the inhabitants and bring about a new age of magic and technology and provide a safe haven from the other gods, who had of course vowed to strike down all lessers.

  These past few days, I had to stop myself from laughing a few times at the sheer ridiculousness of some of the claims contained within the books. Most of them made Agrona out to be a strict but just god that valued and rewarded the strong, while the asuras of Epheotus were gods that hated Agrona for his love and benevolence toward us lessers, and were hell-bent on destroying all of us.

  I had to admit that, while it was twisted in a very favorable way toward Agrona and his clan, there were some truths mixed in—namely, the fact that the gods of Epheotus had been the ones to destroy the ancient beings of old, the ancient mages.

  I was surprised that this was publicly known in Alacrya, and it made me wonder how the tales of the Indrath Clan’s destruction of the ancient mages had avoided spreading throughout Dicathen. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lord Indrath himself had a hand in suppressing the story, but at the same time, had I not learned of the genocide from Sylvia directly, with her story being confirmed by the djinn projection in the Relictombs, then I probably would have seen it as just another piece of propaganda by Agrona.

  In order to find any tidbits of information that would prove useful, I had to continue sifting through fictional history and veneration for Agrona and his Vritra Clan, book after tedious, lie-filled book.

  Hence, me sitting in front of another stack of dusty old tomes.

  Hoping to find something different, I went straight to the book that had been written in blood. Despite its rather insidious source of ink, the content inside might’ve just been written by a passionate worshipper of Agrona. It outlined that the unjust gods hated Agrona for loving us and bestowing the lessers with magic, and that they hated him even more for spreading his blood. It also neatly reinforced why Agrona wanted everyone to get so strong: so that they could protect themselves and help Agrona to fight back against the unjust gods, who simply wanted to kill them for the crime of being born lessers.

  I always wondered why people here referred to family as “blood”, and this book had the answer.

  “Interesting,” I whispered to myself as I read through the latter half of the blood-scored book.

  It highlighted the importance of how rich your blood was with the Vritra lineage. Apparently, Agrona and the rest of his clan had gotten fairly friendly with the Alacryans of old while they were experimenting.

  Of course, the book outlined this as High Sovereign Agrona and his Vritra Clan “falling in love” with the people of Alacrya and sowing their “seed” so that Alacrya would flourish.

  How disturbing.

  Thankfully, the next book contained some new information that didn’t have to do with asuran reproduction.

  It detailed the layout of the continent, but went into detail in areas I hadn’t seen mentioned before. Apparently Agrona, as the High Sovereign, resided in a towering spire situated neatly in the middle of the central dominion. The central dominion, unlike Truacia, Sehz-Clar, Etril, and Vechor, the northern, southern, eastern, and western dominions respectively, had gone unnamed since the founding of Alacrya. No reason was given for this, but the author seemed to suggest that the central dominion, as the seat of Agrona’s power, was somehow beyond the application of anything so mundane as names.

  Reading on, the author wrote, “Aside from the High Sovereign that resides in the mysterious”—here I had to squint to make out the words, which had been slightly smudged—“Taegrin Caelum, there exist five other Sovereigns that protect and watch over their respective dominions.”

  According to the author, these five “Named Sovereigns,” even as gods themselves, were much more intertwined in the lesser affairs of their dominion—playing king while answering only to Agrona, the High Sovereign.

  The book eventually trailed off into a tangent describing the various great deeds of Exeges, the Sovereign residing over Etril, which was the dominion of the author’s birth.

  After finishing the book, I took a moment to digest its content. I had thought about what the books had taught me. While factually wrong, it shed light on the culture of this continent, and, more importantly, what the people here believed in.

  I whiled away a couple of hours engrossed in the books in front of me. While many were basically different authors’ renditions of Alacrya’s glorified history, the time wasn’t completely wasted.

  An interesting tidbit of history contained within a book titled “Rise of the Ascenders” was that the term “ascender” was coined only seventy years ago. Before then, practically anyone was able to delve into the Relictombs. Because there were so many mages willing to partake in the ascents to try and get rich, but the Relictombs proved so dangerous, the death rate among adventurous young people was catastrophically high.

  “It’s a lot like how the Beast Glades were responsible for most of the deaths in Dicathen,” I muttered quietly.

  According to the book, while measures had been taken by the Vritra to restrict the Relictombs to only those who passed a rigorous test, this only applied to those who wanted to go deeper than the second floor.

  Apparently, the first two zones of the Relictombs were an interconnected underground expanse filled with valuable natural resources and very few beasts.

  The author didn’t seem to be an ascender himself, because he never went into further detail on the deeper levels of the Relictombs. However, the first two zones only had weak monsters, and were prime places to train even without an ascender’s badge, so anyone was allowed to go in.

  The book went off on a tangent, focusing on the mages who had survived several ascents before the test was mandated. These mages had made a name for themselves from the riches they gained, and become the first of the named bloods.

  Basically, they were nobles, but socially were still one tier below the highbloods, who were considered true nobility based on their lineage tracing back to an actual Vritra.

  The author went on to applaud the efforts of the named bloods and highbloods that soon built academies to forge talented ascenders and teach a new generation from their own experiences, allowing them not only to survive, but to gain their own fame and wealth in the Relictombs.

 
; I couldn’t help but note that this was the first instance that an author had praised someone other than the High Sovereign.

  Even under the embellished prose of this particular writer, ascenders were just glorified tomb raiders. To the masses, they were seen as heroes, but this was largely because of how Agrona himself placed such importance on it.

  The author even wrote that there had been many times where Agrona himself said that his biggest regret was not being able to enter the Relictombs. That was because the ancient mages had designed them so that the vengeful gods of Epheotus would not take advantage of the secrets within and use them against the Alacryans, thereby preventing the Vritra from entering as well.

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes as the author stressed how Agrona and the Vritra wouldn’t go inside the Relictombs, out of fear that their presence would destroy the place, rather than stating they couldn’t go.

  In the end, the ascenders were basically marketed as heroes risking their lives for the betterment of all Alacryans by collecting the treasures of the ancient mages—treasures that would ultimately help the Sovereigns fight against the other gods and protect the people of Alacrya. This brought the book full-circle. It was tidily done, even if it was complete bullshit.

  “Watch it!” someone yelled at the front of the library.

  I turned to see the bored teen up on his feet, angrily glaring at the drunkard—the same drunkard from the restaurant—who had managed to spill his drink all over the floor.

  “Oops! Sorry about that, kiddo,” the drunkard said with a hiccup. He sauntered inside the library, teetering on his feet but never actually losing balance.

  It wasn’t until his bloodshot eyes locked onto mine that his expression brightened. “Aha! I knew you’d be here.”

  He knew I’d be here?

  While annoyed by both his interruption and his foul stench, my curiosity got the better of me. I remained in my seat and waited for the drunkard to make his way to my table.

  He practically fell on the seat across from mine as he slammed his beverage on the table, liquid splashing on the books.