The Beginning After The End (TBATE)

ARTHUR LEYWIN

I appeared right at the center of the haunting, empty vaults of Agrona’s reliquary. The bodies of Kezess Indrath and Agrona Vritra lay at my feet, spilled out unceremoniously alongside me. Seeing them there on the cold, barren stone of Taegrin Caelum made their deaths suddenly feel more final. Like an ending.
But…it wasn’t.
These two lords of the asura had been threats. To me, to my family, to my world. Both were stuck in a cycle of their own making, and they had lived far too long and shaped themselves too rigidly to learn to live beside the “lesser” races in anything approaching equity. While Agrona had been a constant and active danger, it was Kezess who posed the greater threat, whether it manifested in fifty years, or a hundred, or a thousand. There was no future for my world as long as he existed, and no promise he made could ever have been trusted or fulfilled.

And yet, even with both now dead, the greater existential threat still remained.
Taegrin Caelum was surprisingly quiet. A hundred feet away, Tessia and Sylvie were standing at the djinn projection housing, the only defining feature of the massive, empty space. Tess’s hand was pressed against the housing crystal, her brows downturned over closed eyes and lips pressed tight. Through the sixth sense for mana provided by Realmheart, I felt the mana pulsing back and forth between her and the crystal.
Good, I thought. I will need Ji-ae’s help. If she could find me hidden in a pocket dimension on the other side of the world, then she could run the necessary calculations to stop Epheotus from crashing into the planet.

Sylvie turned, sensing me. Her golden eyes, like a reflection of my own, fell to the lumps at my feet. She touched Tessia, who startled and jerked away from Ji-ae’s housing. When Tess saw me, her face lit up, and she took several quick steps toward me as if she was going to run into my arms. Then her focus fell to the bodies, and her steps hitched.
Regis hopped down from the crook of my arm as I stepped over Agrona’s body and moved to embrace Tessia. I took a moment just to breathe, to ground myself in her warmth. My one remaining hand drifted up into her hair, feathering through the silken strands.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking down at where my missing arm should have been.

I didn’t answer right away, needing a moment to truly consider her question. Was I? Maybe it didn’t really matter. I stepped back, letting my hand trail over her cheek. “Are you?”
Her gaze slipped past me to Agrona. One hand raised to hold mine against her face, but the other balled into a fist at her side. She did not look at me when she spoke. “He was a monster, Arthur. The most horrible man I have ever met or imagined. He didn’t see anyone else as a person. Every time my mind would start to wake inside my body, when I would reach out to Cecilia, he would push me back down. It felt like coming up for air, only to have someone push your head back underwater. Always drowning, but never dying.” She leaned her forehead against my chest. “I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone before, Arthur. But I hated him.”
I let out a shaky breath, wishing I knew better what to say in moments like these. “He’ll never hurt anyone else again.”
Tessia’s arms snaked around the small of my back, and she pulled me in tight.

Sylvie had moved past us to linger by Kezess’s remains. Her feelings were cut off from me, either to let me focus or to keep some lingering aspect of privacy for herself. Likely a blend of both. But when she noticed me looking, her thoughts brushed mine, light as butterfly wings, to let me know she was okay.
Somewhere too close, there was an avalanche crash, and the fortress shook around us, forcing me back into the moment. “I need to speak to Ji-ae.”
Tessia sighed and stood on her toes to kiss me, a quick peck that warmed my chest and cheeks both. “You better hurry. She’s…fading.”

My pulse spiked. “Wait, what?”
Sylvie strode past me, leading the way toward the crystalline housing. Only then did I notice that the reason Tessia had been able to place her hand on the crystal was because the stone rings were no longer orbiting the device. “Just before you got back. It must have been when Agrona died. There was a kind of shockwave that went through her system.”
I hurried to the housing, looking around for any signs of physical damage but seeing none. “Ji-ae?”

Tessia, who had followed me, took my hand and squeezed as she lifted it. “You have to touch the crystal.” She pressed my hands against it.
I felt a surge of awareness, and another consciousness linked with mine. ‘Ah. Arthur L-Leywin. You were successful. You proved victorious. And so, only one path remains to move forward.’ The voice in my head seemed to drag and crackle, creating a stuttering sound. ‘Please. You must complete my primary directive. Do not allow the Rel-Rel-Relictombs to be destroyed.’
The energy stored within the housing was depleting by the instant. Ji-ae had minutes, maybe less. Did Agrona do this?

‘It seems that he implemented a hidden failsafe within my connective network. Upon his d-death, a piece of the magic tethering me to the…Relictombs imploded, severing my power source and dam-damaging the integrity of my internal structures.’
I took a steadying breath, one hand clenched into a fist at my side, the other pressed hard into the cold, smooth surface of the crystal. Listen to me, Ji-ae. I know how to stop the aetheric realm from rupturing and save the Relictombs at the same time. But I can’t do that if Epheotus destroys everything first. I need your help.
Using the calculative properties of the final keystone, I had shown Fate how the pent-up aether could be released slowly and over time, avoiding the devastation of life on this world. But the nature of the process—combining King’s Gambit, Fate, and the keystone itself—had made it impossible to absorb every detail. In particular, the specifics of how to reach the far future had been muted and vague in every vision, as I couldn’t see the time around my defeat of Agrona’s simulacrum at all. The severing of Fate’s threads had sent ripples out years afterward.

I could feel the widening rift outside. Without Kezess, his people weren’t able to maintain their hold over it. If all of Epheotus spilled out through that wound and crashed into this world, both would be destroyed and the potential future I saw would never arrive. But I didn’t know how to stop it.
That’s not entirely true, I admitted to myself.
Regis, who had followed tiredly and was looking up at me from the ground, answered my thought with a low, growling hum, noncommittal.

There was a trembling like the mental equivalent of someone struggling to take a breath. ‘I’m afraid-afraid that my mind is…nearly gone. But if you are quick...’
Although it ached to do so, I activated King’s Gambit and leaned into the increased capacity for thought and calculation it provided. “How long do you think we have?” I said the words aloud and thought them to Ji-ae at the same time.
‘I have on-only moments. This world?’ There was a static crackle as she paused. ‘I cannot say-say. An hour. No more-no more.’
I didn’t waste any more time, launching into an explanation of my thoughts in order to get whatever I could from the djinn projection. My first idea was to condense the landscape into a continent that would fit roughly back where it had been.

‘Based on my understanding of Eph-Epheotus, this would require the destruction of ninety-one to ninety-eight percent of the asuras’ homeland, depending on how much of the ocean you were willing to displace. Any mistake could r-result in flooding both Dicathen and Alacrya.’
I nodded, having guessed as much myself. But what about something like a moon? With the spatium godrune, I might be able to reform the landscape into a sphere outside of the atmosphere.
‘An interesting prop-prop-proposition. I see two problems. First, the rift-wound is currently inside the atmosphere of this world, requiring you to relocate the entirety of Eph-Epheotus thousands of miles into a safe orbit. Second, there you-you-you would need to then create an atmosphere around the new Epheotus-moon-moon.’

I moved on to ideas that were higher-concept, less grounded in physical reality as I understood it, ideas too complex for me to fully explore their potential on my own.
Then, Ji-ae stopped me. I had just explained a somewhat strange concept, one I thought was wildly unlikely to work, but had been inspired by some of the djinn’s own designs.
‘That-that-that could save upwards of forty-five percent of Epheotus’s land-landmass,’ Ji-ae answered, the crackling and stuttering getting worse. ‘The calculations are…complex. And I am-am reaching the-the-the end of my power…’

“We need more time.”
“What can we do, Arthur?” Sylvie asked, her tone probing, insistent. Tessia stood behind her, unable to keep the fear from showing through on her face.
Questions were spinning along with the gears of my mind, rapid and grinding and circular, never landing on answers. Could Sylvie stop time long enough to calculate how to manipulate Epheotus into this world without destroying either—or both? Could I use Aroa’s Requiem to hold back Epheotus for a while longer, or bind the wound, or take Ji-ae’s housing back to a state before Agrona’s trap was sprung?

My mind lurched back to Regis and the Destruction godrune as the fortress shook from a nearby impact. Epheotus itself doesn’t need to be saved to keep this world from being destroyed.
My thoughts felt like they were spiraling.
Ellie was up there, in Epheotus. Mom. Could I get them out in time? And if I could get them out, who else could I save before I consigned the asuras’ entire world to the fire? And if I couldn’t save everyone else, was there an obligation for me to instead save no one in order to prevent potential violence between the survivors and the “lessers” who were chosen over them? But then, am I really any better than Kezess if I consign the asuras to death?

But another, harder voice answered,
Do I really have any other choice?
When I didn’t answer Sylvie, Tessia stepped forward, her hand wrapping around my fist and forcing it open to lace her fingers in between mine. “I…can give you more time.”

The competing branches of thought, each fighting to be the “primary” thread, all snapped together as my focus shifted entirely to Tess. “What do you mean?”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed heavily. She wouldn’t quite meet my eyes, but there was a look of intense focus on her face. Her fingers tightened around mine, and I sensed a subtle tremble in them. “Her housing is dying, but the mind—all the information comprising her stored consciousness—is still there, right? She just needs someplace else to…be.”
Her suggestion coalesced into meaning, and I instantly felt myself grow tense as I rejected the notion. “No, that's…” But I couldn’t finish the sentence.

One thread of my mind jumped back to the Victoriad, to Tessia looking pleadingly at me, as if asking for death…and she wanted to put herself in that position again? No. Tessia had shared her body for too long with no say in the matter. Yet…in the face of the world’s destruction, of everyone’s destruction, was asking her to do this cruel…or simply a necessity?
My jaw clenched. I couldn’t refuse her the opportunity to help save herself.
But maybe there was another way. “I should be the one to do it. Ji-ae, you can use me as your housing. My body and aether should provide enough power for you.”

There was a pause, and for an moment, I was afraid that Ji-ae was gone. Then, ‘Given time, per-perhaps I could. But you do not know how to accept me in-in-in. I would have to fight you for control, as Cecilia d-did to Tessia-Tessia. Your mind would be a battle-battleground, and everything else would become much more-more-more difficult.’
I closed my eyes and took an uneven breath. “How can Tessia do this, then?”
It was Tessia who answered. “There is room. A kind of…open space, left by Cecilia.” Her hand pressed against the crystal next to mine. ‘If you can transfer yourself over to me, I can let you in.’ The hesitation in her voice was absent from her physical presence and mental projection. Lips set into a hard line, brows turned down seriously, she held herself with a confidence that hardened my own resolve.

‘With the pr-proper spellforms,’ Ji-ae answered slowly. ‘But I will need more time-time.’
I was still hesitant, but Sylvie, her face scrunched up with the effort of following this conversation through the noise of King’s Gambit, lightly touched my thoughts. ‘The weight of every problem can’t rest on your shoulders alone.’
She reached out to touch the crystal. Aether shifted, forming a cage of withheld time around the housing, stopping the continuing degradation of the housing’s power supply. I in turn poured aether into the invisible tether connecting the housing to the Relictombs, utilizing Aroa’s Requiem as the conduit to rebuild it. I couldn’t remake Agrona’s spell, but instead drew the tether to myself so that I became Ji-ae’s source of power.

Ji-ae, her mind carefully free within the housing even though the physical structure itself was frozen, used this sudden influx of aetheric power to push outward.
The space around us went white. Sylvie and Regis were gone, and I stood side by side with Tessia.
“Are you certain?”

The voice was disembodied, but sounded like Ji-ae.
“I am,” Tess confirmed.
A silhouette of raw power, which I saw only as a flicker of light, stepped toward Tessia. Tess’s eyes fluttered and she winced, rolling her neck in obvious discomfort. Ink began to run across her skin in rivulets, forming runes and symbols as the spellforms took shape. Somehow, these designs felt cleaner, less harsh, and more like Tessia than those she’d been marked with as Cecilia’s vessel.

My eyes followed the ink down to Tessia’s hand, which I was surprised to see still clenching mine in this disembodied place. Runes formed from the ink. With a gentle burning sensation, they interlocked with another set that had taken shape across the back of my hand. My eyes fluttered in sync with Tessia’s, and when they stopped, the silhouette was gone, as was the white space.
The crystal housing before us was dark, no longer emitting a hum of mana or aether.
‘Ji-ae?’

I stiffened, caught off guard by Tessia’s voice in my mind.
Tess?
She turned to me, eyes wide and staring at my mouth. ‘Can you…?’

I nodded, feeling a grin that wouldn’t form through the multitude of competing thought-threads. We were linked, our minds shared in the same way as mine with Regis and Sylvie. Raising our joined hands, I examined the runes interlocked across our fingers.
‘A moment, please,’ came another voice. Ji-ae’s. Stronger now, more consistent, and much more clear. ‘This will take some getting used to.’
Tessia’s eyes closed, but I could still see them flicking around rapidly below her lids. ‘Sorry, Ji-ae. Let me try to make more room.’

I could feel both minds pressing up against each other, pushing and shoving with varying degrees of gentleness as they vied for control over the limited space. But Tess was shuffling, sidestepping within herself, and guiding Ji-ae into the remaining pocket of space.
The fortress trembled again as something hit it from outside. I heard walls cave in and floors collapse as something smashed its way through, descending at a diagonal straight toward us. My aether leapt in response, but only for an instant before I processed the mana signature. The crashing grew louder with each impact until, after several seconds, the far end of the room collapsed. Chul flew in, heedless of the rubble cascading around him, and was before me in a second, hovering above the floor.
“My brother!” he grunted desperately. There was no surprise or even pleasure in his expression, only fear. “The sky is falling, and we can no longer keep up with the bombardment. Your Lances, Varay and Mica, as well as the Alacryan Scythes, are protecting the army and fortress as best they can, but I…” He hesitated, swallowing hard and glancing around, his gaze settling on the nearby bodies. “Agrona is dead?”

I nodded.
He loosened, like tension leaving a spring. “Then vengeance is achieved.” His voice cracked, drawing my head up so I could meet his eyes. Their mismatched color gave the impression that one side of his face was cold and emotionless, while the other burned with intent. “But celebration must wait. What is your plan, my brother?”
I looked from Chul to Sylvie, then Regis, and finally to Tessia. There was a glowing purple ring around her irises. “Let’s see what we’re looking at.”

Regis stepped into my physical body and moved to my core, then, together, we all flew back along the smashed fissure Chul had left in Taegrin Caelum. Outside, the sight was truly apocalyptic.
The sky was almost entirely gone, occluded by Epheotus. A muddle of landscapes and structures were visible as if compressed together, woodlands and mountain ranges and oceans blending to look like a bad topographic map. I saw fields of blue grass and jagged, snow-capped peaks, burning plains and idyllic forests, castles and wispy, floating cities. And all of it, shattering and raining down in huge meteors.
A tremendous outpouring of magic came from Epheotus as tens of thousands of asuras all clutched at the edges of their reality, trying to hold it in one piece as it slid back into the physical realm. It was not enough...

In the valley below, Seris, Varay, and Mica had already organized the battle’s survivors. A powerful barrier of mana filled the valley in which they’d fought, but while it might be enough to ward off a strike from a smaller landmass, no barrier was enough to survive Epheotus fully colliding with our world.
Seris, Varay, Mica, and—I was surprised to see—Scythe Melzri flew over to meet us from where they’d hovered above the army.
“You need to get everyone out of here,” I said immediately. There was no time to explain what I intended or fill them in on the events inside Taegrin Caelum. “As far and as fast as you can. Now,” I ordered when it looked like Seris and Mica might start asking questions.

To Chul, I added, “Go with them. Get back to Dicathen however you can, and tell Mordain what’s happening. His phoenixes need to be ready.”
The big half-phoenix nodded seriously and clapped me on the shoulder, then turned to the others. “You heard him. Let’s go!”
My attention turned back to Tessia immediately. ‘Calculations?’

‘Nearly there,’ Ji-ae responded.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed aether down through my channels and into the spatium godrune, then projected that energy upward. The tears around the edges of Epheotus were themselves a kind of “manipulated space,” and I was able to grab and hold onto the wound itself, tightening it and slowing the continued press of Epheotan land out into the physical world. The edges crumbled, and huge meteor-like masses continued to crash down.
Below, what remained of our army was hurrying through a tunnel in the collapsed rock that had fallen when the two Relictombs portals appeared. I needed them well out of the way of that space. It was a very long few minutes of waiting.

‘Arthur, I have completed the necessary calculations for remolding the Epheotan continent,’ Ji-ae said in the meantime. ‘The power required is…significant. But the design maintains all strategically and culturally important locations and has very little impact on the existing continents.’
How significant? I asked.
Beside me, Tessia bit her lip and winced. I gave her a questioning look, but she only forced on a smile and nodded that she was okay.

‘More than you can safely channel,’ Ji-ae answered. ‘Totalling many times more than you are currently storing in your aetheric core.’
I blew out a hot breath, turning King’s Gambit on the problem. With my mind occupied, it seemed as if only moments more passed before the army was out of the way. I couldn’t wait any longer. We had to start, or it might be too late. If it wasn’t already.
Aroa’s Requiem ignited against my spine, and bright, eager aetheric particles began to spill from me like pollen from a tree. The particles drifted downward in two swirling lines. Sweat sprang to my forehead immediately as I held King’s Gambit, Realmheart, and Aroa’s Requiem all at once, straining my lava-forged aether channels to push enough energy outward.

The particles traced along the edges of the shattered portal frames, collecting in the cracks and along missing pieces. A memory of the snow-covered zone within the Relictombs came back to me, and I suddenly hoped that Caera—down there somewhere with the rest of the army—had fared well in the battle. Without her, what I was doing now might not be possible.
As the godrune reconstructed the portal frames by twisting them back through time to a point where they’d been whole, the portals themselves flickered and ignited, casting dim light across the mountainside.
God Step burned as it also activated with aether. With the spatium rune, I took hold of the pinprick hole at the heart of each portal and began to pull, widening them rapidly. Space around their edges tore, the freshly repaired frames cracking all over again, but I was holding the portals open directly now, and when they reached each other—

Space jerked from my grasp as the two portals surged outward and collided only to warp as they refused to mix or combine, like oil and water.
Above, the air itself seemed to tremble as I briefly lost my hold over space around the wound, causing a miles-wide mass of land to shatter, cascading down beyond the mountains in streaks of fire.
But even as Epheotus fell and the Relictombs portal seethed, a calming ripple of aether spread out over the Basilisk Fang Mountains and beyond. To one side, Tessia gripped my arm, holding me as if she might fall without my support. To the other, Sylvie, channeling an aevum art to slow time, gripped my shoulder and squeezed tight.

I adjusted my hold over all four godrunes, and Sylvie let the spell go. Together, we dragged in a shaky breath.
My focus returned to the two portals. They were inherently different, like two separate tears on opposite sides of a tunic. In that mundane example, the only way to make them one hole was to rip the tunic until they combined. With magic and portals, it wasn’t quite so simple. They technically connected to different places, and although the portals were right next to each other on this side, their destinations could be an unquantifiable distance from one another.
But I didn’t need to reach their destinations. I needed to form an entirely new one.

The first level of the Relictombs was a fixed point, with many portals in and out. With my senses extended through the spatium godrune and God Step, I followed those pathways and threads as they stretched out beyond the portals to the zones isolated inside the void. With the aetheric pathways acting as my thread, I began to stitch the old portals into the fabric of dozens of others throughout the zone. All across Alacrya in Ascenders Association halls, their ascension portals would be snapping shut as I cut them off.
Finally, the two portals in the mountains beneath me bled together into a single massive portal that filled the entire valley.
My breath caught and my eyes rolled back in my head as the weight of it came crashing down on me. ‘Ji-ae…what is that?’

Tessia clung to me, her eyes clenched shut, her face pale.
‘The force of the aetheric realm pushing back against the boundary with the physical realm is significantly higher than it should be,’ Ji-ae thought rapidly.
The portal below, like the rift above, was widening outside of my control. It swallowed parts of the mountainside, causing them to collapse with an avalanche roar and sending up clouds of dust. My senses, woven through the aetheric pathways, rapidly expanded, shooting pain through my skull as I tried to experience the entire width and breadth of the world simultaneously.

I threw myself into King’s Gambit, and every branch of my mind sprang into two, then four, eight, and more, many more.
I saw the army heading south, flying on barges of ice and stone. The city of Victorious, a smoldering ruin, had little left but craters full of Epheotan mana beasts. The village of Maerin, its mages all working together to wrap the town center in shields as they watched meteors fall in the distance. A tidal wave rushing toward distant shores, kicked up by falling islands. Xyrus, wrapped in a fiery shell, a rain of boulders exploding all around it. The Elenoir Wastes, a copse of small trees flattened and burning.
It was too much. I couldn’t take it all in, couldn’t process it. My mind was being ripped into tatters.

‘So let it go,’ a voice said, or multiple voices. So many voices in my head now besides my own…
But I listened. I stopped trying to take it in and just let go. It was like floating free of my body as my mind, a wild and messy knotwork of threads, separated from the physical pain. The web of sense and sensation was there, but it was just background noise. I could keep going, repercussions be damned.
“Arthur!” the voices screamed, inside my head and out.

My eyes snapped open, and it felt like I was looking down on myself from above, my body hanging between Sylvie and Tessia. Blood covered my lips and chin as my body wracked with coughs I didn’t feel.
The combined portal had continued to expand, now half the height of Taegrin Caelum. In moments, it would swallow the fortress whole.
I released my spatium hold over the wound.

King’s Gambit struggled to unknot the threads of my conscious mind, my thoughts a confused muddle instead of dozens of clear, separate ideas. I’d been mindlessly channeling the maximum amount of power my physical body could handle. And it wasn’t enough. I needed to focus.
‘It’s going to expand into the rift above,’ Ji-ae warned in her cool tones.
And when it did, the aetheric realm would burst, and all would be lost.

We’d miscalculated. The pressure of the aetheric realm was ten—no, a hundred times what it should have been. Something was pushing back against us.
And then it hit me. The river. Time. Fate. All that building pressure.
“Damn it,” I growled, drawing back a fraction of power from my godrunes to reinforce my body and fly up higher, dragging Tessia and Sylvie with me.

“Art…” I looked over at Tessia. Her face was smeared with blood from her nose, and her eyes °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° were nearly as red as a Vritra.
The strain of making herself a conduit for so much raw processing power in Ji-ae was tearing her apart.
‘We must stabilize the portal and the wound,’ Ji-ae urged. ‘You need more aether. A significant amount.’

Aether was pouring around the edges of both breaks in the fabric of space. I reached for the relic armor, uncertain of its state after Kezess’s attack, but it answered, feathering across my body as expected. Immediately, its draw toward atmospheric aether took effect, pulling some of the streaming aether toward me. But even absorbing it as fast as it reached me, it just wasn’t going to be enough. Not nearly.
I thought again of the river, how it had blazed through me with such rushing force that I’d formed a new core layer in moments. If only I had so much aether now…
My insides went cold. Was that possible? Could it work? Would it even be enough if it did?

With a shaky breath, I looked at Sylvie. “I need a second.”
She nodded, expression grim. Her eyes fluttered, and I felt the pulse of her exerted control again, spilling out across the mountains.
Each layer of my core was nothing except condensed aether hardened into a physical form. Theoretically, all the aether that had formed each layer was still there, just inert, its form focused into a specific shape. The layers strengthened my core, allowing more and purer aether to be stored within it, but they themselves represented an incredible reservoir of aether, if only I could access it.

Reaching inside myself, I felt for the edges of the fourth layer, wrapped tightly around the others, which in turn contained the broken fragments of my mana core. Instead of reaching into my core and opening the gates connecting my channels that allowed aetheric particles to flow in and out, I tapped the core itself, attempting to utilize that inert aether. To wake it up, direct it.
It was like carving granite with a fingernail. The layers had been forged with desperate intent, hardened and imbued with a purpose until they could resist an impossible internal pressure.
No. I couldn’t scrape the layer away. I had to release it. It was power. It could be redirected.

Woven through dozens of separate branches of my conscious mind, I formed the picture of what I needed. My own aether redirected, pouring out of my core only to surround and press back into the outer shell. This was my aether.
My will, forged into a fist within me, wrapped around my core and clenched tight.
The fourth layer shattered.

My channels couldn’t contain it. The aether, once so completely controlled, rampaged within me.
From above, I watched myself rupture, my body swallowed into a red and purple mist as Sylvie and Tessia screamed.