The Beginning After The End

Agrona Vritra

My voice projected out through the networks of psychically resonant antennas, crystalline receivers, and mental projection artifacts interspersed carefully across the continent. The projected images currently being fed into the system froze in place, seizing and distorting just as Khaernos, a hollow visage in my form, was taken through the opening into Epheotus.

"Listen to me now, and listen very, very carefully. The images currently being shown to you are a lie, a bitter fabrication intended to foment fear and uncertainty.”

I let only the smallest flame of my rage—a towering inferno with which I would ignite the skies—leak into the connection. Those who heard my voice would quake and sweat to hear it, but they would know my fury was not for them.

"Instigators within our own populace would have you believe that these images are proof of my defeat, but this is a fabrication. Those spreading these rumors seek only to weaken the foundations of our nation. These are the same betrayers who went to war against their own, who I in turn offered my forgiveness to. They have spurned my kindness, as they have spurned your desire for peace.”

I paused, letting the words be digested.

"I told you before, my people, that I would protect Alacrya—and all those who still call themselves loyal—from the dragons, and I have done so. The forces of Kezess Indrath have been forced back into hiding within Epheotus by the mere image of me. But I know you struggle. I know you are tested daily in your faith. These past weeks have not been easy for you, and you are right to question if I can uphold my vows. I will not hold this against you. Instead, I will show you, so that the proof of your eyes may reinforce the faith in your heart.”

Ji-ae’s consciousness inhabited the mental projection artifact with me, figuratively looking over my shoulder like a nervous wife. I smiled. We were just getting to the good parts.

"But I need something in return. In part, I have already taken some of what I need: the wind that swept across this continent, drawing on your mana and pulling it away. You bore this burden stoically, as I knew you would. I told you that I, your High Sovereign, would guide you through the dangers to come, and you will see this promise fulfilled. I have given everything of myself to make Alacrya the powerful and advanced civilization that it is, but for what is to come, I needed a small part of that power back. You, my people, are more than strong enough to share this burden, I promise you.”

‘We’re currently reaching approximately seventy percent of the continent's magical population,’ Ji-ae informed me as I paused, again letting my words sink in to those listening. ‘As expected, emotions are turbulent and difficult to assess. I’d recommend striking a stronger tone against the asuras.’

"Although I have forced the dragons back, they are still a constant and ever-burning danger to you, my people. Some of you may doubt, but this is only because you don’t understand the full danger that Kezess Indrath represents. Every day, you benefit from the work I’ve done within the Relictombs, the magic and technology left behind by an ancient civilization of mages. But you may not know that it was the dragons that ended that civilization. And why? For no other reason than being knowledgeable and powerful in a way that Kezess himself is not, and can never be. You, my people, pose that same threat to him.

"Which is why, today, we will strike a blow against Epheotus that they will never recover from.”

My words radiated out across the nation that I built and trembled into the bones of my people. My people, who were manifested out of my thoughts and born of my blood.

‘I’ve finished reversing the system’s polarity. It will be fully powered in the next few minutes.’ Ji-ae hesitated. With a thought, I pushed her to continue. ‘I have repeated the calculations for exactly how much power will be required and feel the need to repeat my earlier warnings: this will take almost everything you have. It leaves you in terrible danger

I will be fine, I assured her. Out loud, I continued, my voice still being projected across the continent. “You, though, must recuperate. Rest and rebuild your strength and your hope. I will need more from you soon, and will call upon every one of you to ensure Alacrya stands victorious over all enemies. Turn your eyes skyward, and do not be afraid. What you are about to see is a manifestation of your power.”

I let the connection linger within a few seconds of silence, then disconnected myself from the projection artifacts.

"Your reversal of the rebels’ insistence that you’d been defeated has been effective,” Ji-ae said, her voice audible within the cramped, equipment-filled chamber. “Coupled with today’s show of force, I calculate any further resistance among our own will be minimal. The results are too far reaching to be She trailed off.

I smiled into the air. “Do not be afraid, Ji-ae.”

If a disembodied mind could bite its lip nervously, Ji-ae was doing exactly that.

I shoved my chair away from the artifacts I’d been speaking into and stood tall. My nerves were jittery, and the seething rage I’d been suppressing clawed upward like flames up a dead tree. Momentarily enthused by the process of reaching out directly to my people and destroying Seris’s feeble attempts to win support, my entire mind turned instead toward Kezess and Epheotus.

I could feel the Harvester thrumming within the stones of Taegrin Caelum, urgent and inevitable. My own body harmonized with it, both being full of the mana drawn from Alacrya’s population.

Moving at a quick march, I left the transmission chamber and started toward the heart of my private wing. I stepped over the corpse of a talented young Instiller who’d perished when Taegrin Caelum went on lockdown. My rage was warranted. The destruction of the Legacy was a catastrophic blow to my plans, considering certain aspects of growth were now beyond my reach. But it was not the end, and I was not without a way to strike back at my enemies.

A change of direction was necessary, that was all. Why else have backup plans? I increased my pace. Afterall, an entire continent was now staring into the sky, waiting with baited breath for their lord to show them the future.

"I feel compelled to remind you that our success isn’t guaranteed,” Ji-ae interjected. “Even with you channeling all the mana absorbed to awaken you—and based on known parameters, which leave a large number of variables decided unknown—I can only quantify our chances for success at eighty-three percent.”

"Please, Ji-ae. This is the culmination of hundreds of years of research and development. It’s going to work.” My words smoldered with the same certainty that I’d felt when we finally had a vessel for the Legacy. That had never been a guarantee, either. I reminded Ji-ae of such.

I took the stairs down several at a time, letting myself fly as much as fall, urgency building within me.

"And yet failure there wouldn’t have been quite so catastrophic—or public,” she countered. “Forgive me, Agrona. I did not like the idea of you—or your facsimile—going yourself to find Arthur Leywin, and I regret not pushing harder to make my voice heard. So I am pushing now.”

A sour, squirming sensation wriggled into my anger and eagerness at the mention of Arthur Leywin. “Your inability to calculate the probability around that confrontation was a warning sign that I shouldn’t have ignored. We will both be more attentive to such signs in the future.”

I pursed my lips and blew a raspberry into the air. “Whether he knows it or not, the boy has only made things so, so much worse for his people. Now I clenched my fists, and the stone walls shattered, cracks spider-webbing outward like dark bolts of lightning. “Now, he will see that I was truly trying to be merciful.”

I felt Ji-ae retract. My anger made her uncomfortable, I knew. She was a scientist at heart, and although millenia within Relictombs had darkened her psyche, she did not express anger often. She buried the feelings she could no longer properly experience or understand behind logic and calculations. But, as long as the ends justified the means, she never balked at doing what needed to be done.

Still, Arthur Leywin stuck in my mind like a tick in flesh.

As I rushed through the fortress, I considered what Ji-ae had told me after I’d returned. This warning she’d received, and its mention of Fate, was disconcerting. I’d thought my research into Fate wasted with the loss of the Legacy, but it seemed as if Fate and I were still somehow connected. More discomforting, though, was the question this conjured in my thoughts.

How is Arthur Leywin connected to Fate?

Still, although I had gone far beyond the point where I could no longer consider Arthur Leywin a mere curiosity, neither would I bend to fear of him. When the walls came crashing down, Arthur and Kezess would both be standing under them.

I pushed these thoughts away and began receding into myself as I gathered the vast quantity of purified mana that had been fed into my body to reawaken my dormant mind.

The interface chamber was small and, by necessity, nondescript. Runic patterns were etched into a half-moon shaped table that dominated the hexagonal, domed room. Silver-inlaid lines were carved into the purple sandstone of the walls, drawing focus to carefully calculated points throughout the space. Light through the dome refracted in a way the eye struggled to make sense of. The entire chamber carried a sense of distraction and discomfort, urging anyone who stumbled upon it to turn away.

With the door closed behind me, it became invisible, the silver lines bordering it a part of the overall design.

I stood in front of the table for a long moment, taking in the dazzling array of symbols and shapes. I had designed the spells woven into it myself, a cunning fusion of basilisk ingenuity and djinn understanding of how magic knitted the world together.

The djinn civilization spanned the world and spread into the dimension where they’d housed their Relictombs. As I had learned over these centuries of pilfering knowledge from the Relictombs, the spellforms they covered themselves with gave them a control over mana and aether that even the asura could not easily understand. They knew how to construct and connect all kinds of portals, and they made varied and interesting use of that knowledge throughout the reign of their civilization. The most creative use was with the Relictombs itself.

Because of this, they also had to master a specific knowledge of how to expand, close, and even destabilize the portals they relied on so intensely.

Mana began to jump and spark around me as I connected myself to the interface. My hands rested on the table, carefully positioned over a series of connected runes and shapes. The interface absorbed my mana, and light flickered through the symbols in yellows, greens, reds, and blues. The artifact itself did nothing to guide the process; only I knew the specific sequences of mana that needed to be imbued into the specific runic arrays that would activate the targeting array.

"Everything seems to be working as expected,” Ji-ae said, her voice emanating out of the air.

I felt my eyes begin to lose focus and turned my gaze upward. Light was spilling across the dome and spraying around the room, painting the walls with jumping, distorted images that quickly melted away before resolving into anything that could be made sense of. However, with each second that passed, the light focused in on the very center point of the chamber, right where I was standing.

I began to blink rapidly. My eyes were rolling back in my head, and it felt as if I might stumble over backwards. Just at the peak of this sensation, I took my hands away from the controls.

My vision changed. I was looking out at the Basilisk Fang Mountains, as if I were standing atop Taegrin Caelum’s highest tower. The view was distorted slightly, foggy and uneven, like peering through stained glass. I felt Ji-ae beside me, despite neither of us having a physical form.

"I’ll help you navigate,” she said.

With a sensation like leaning forward, we began to move away from the fortress. Slow at first, then much faster. The jagged mountain peaks rushed past below, then were falling away as Vechor opened up before us. I slowed, veering left and south. I wanted to see Victorious City, to see all those faces gazing up at the sky in response to my earlier words. As I tried to go lower, however, my vision blurred sickeningly.

"We don’t have a good angle from Taegrin Caelum,” Ji-ae pointed out, tugging me back. “We should stay focused. Literally.”

"Was that a joke?” I asked as I lifted, again speeding toward the coastline.

"Yes. If it wasn’t funny, though, it’s because I got my sense of humor from you.”

I chuckled and felt my physical body move somewhere very far away. The world jolted, shifting rapidly in and out of focus.

"Don’t move,” she reminded me, as if I hadn’t built and designed this whole thing myself.

"Yes, dear.”

Soon the sea extended around us in every direction, the world nothing but a curved blue expanse as far as our projected vision could sense. The speed of it only increased with each passing moment, however, until land appeared in the distance. In almost an instant we were flying above land, the coast of Dicathen was behind us, and we were looking down at the Beast Glades. Our forward motion halted instantly, but there was no momentum behind it. Still, I felt my legs wobble slightly as I instinctively braced for the force.

"I’m matching up the recorded images with the display,” Ji-ae informed me. In my mind, her tongue stuck out ever so slightly between her teeth as she concentrated absolutely on her task. “There. That pattern perfectly matches the treeline from the recording. And there, the ground is completely blasted.”

I focused where she indicated, and our view shifted.

The Beast Glades around where Cecilia had held off the dragons was utter devastation and ruin. Chunks of metal and crystal were scattered for hundreds of feet, while the earth bore signs of all manner of magical attacks. I could still see the ring where our shield projection artifacts had formed the barrier.

My focus adjusted upwards. There was no sign of the opening into Epheotus, but I knew it was there. Kezess may have closed it again, but that didn’t seal it completely. Doing so would cut off Epheotus from the world and eventually kill it and everyone inside. The thought conjured a smirk on my face.

A spectral image of the rift as it had looked in Seris’s recording appeared in the sky.

"Lining everything up. The rift, when open, was exactly there,” Ji-ae said.

I locked in the targeting system, and the image sharpened, color becoming unnatural and the texture smoothing until it felt flat, like the reflection of a painting.

I squeezed my eyes shut hard, not opening them again until I began to see swirling colors and imagined images behind my lids.

I was back in the interface chamber. Slowly, I lowered my head to examine the table in front of me. “Only one thing left to do then.” With a flick of my mana, I activated the sequence.

"You’ll be needed in the Harvester’s core,” Ji-ae reminded me.

"Yes, yes. I am the living battery to make this great work of mine possible.”

Despite my flippant tone, I moved quickly. My feet left the ground, and I flew. The door into the interface chamber slammed open in front of me. A wall in the room beyond folded outward, crumbling as I passed through it to take a more direct route. In moments, I reached one of many shafts throughout the fortress that allowed vertical egress for flight. I plummeted into the dark at speed before flitting out into a cavernous space tangled with pulsing tubes and cables full of mana.

The core of my machine reached out with bright white tendrils of mana and tugged at me. I felt my heart race as the borrowed mana enriching me hummed in response, the resonance I’d felt earlier expanding several times over. Something sparked in my mind, and I was suddenly connected to every one of the millions of Alacryan mages whose mana I now carried with bright lines of golden thread.

My breath caught. It was like being back in the targeting apparatus, like looking down on the world from above as a true god, all my people laid about before me, their mana given to my like prayers as their faces turned up toward the sky, waiting to view my will made manifest.

"I see,” I breathed, the epiphany soothing my righteous anger. “This is always how it had to be.”

I stepped close to the core, a giant white sphere condensed from natural mana crystals and based on the design of an organic mana core. It pulled harder, eager to absorb the purified mana I held in my body. I knew I could withhold it—the core wasn’t strong enough to rip it from me—but this was my reason for being here. Although the image of the golden threads had vanished even more quickly than it had appeared, I could still see their echo in my mind’s eye, connecting me to all of my people. I knew this was to be the end result of the entire Alacryan experiment.

I pressed both hands against the rough exterior of the giant core. It was warm, and the mana contained within surged at my touch like a quickening heartbeat. “Go on then. Take it.” I released my hold over the mana.

Coiling loops of white energy connected me to the core as the Harvester did its work, reabsorbing all the energy it had fed into my body to awaken me. The sphere grew brighter and brighter until I was forced to close my eyes, then brighter still. Even through the lids, it was blinding. I began to sweat and shake. My teeth ached as I clenched them. The ground cracked beneath my feet.

"Slow down!” Ji-ae warned, her voice a silvery chime through the crackling of mana. “Several subsystems are starting to overload, andthere was a faint clink, like the cracking of glassthe core itself might rupture if you’re not careful.”

Trembling, I focused on simply breathing and maintaining consciousness. With grim amusement, I realised this must have been how my subjects felt when the Harvester drew this same mana out of their own cores. I extended my will, forcing and guiding the process of absorption in equal measure. As my body weakened, my will only grew more steeled in its determination. I’d lost my first opportunity with the Legacy, at least for now. I would not fail here. There was no path forward without this power.

Seconds dragged past like hours. The Harvester emptied me utterly, squeezing every last drop of gathered mana from my body. With each passing instant, I heard the quiet splintering of crystal. It was now or never.

Eighty-three percent, I thought wryly to myself.

The concentrated mana of millions of Alacryan mages was condensed upward through Taegrin Caelum’s tallest tower. Very distantly, I heard the rupturing of stone.

"The outer walls are collapsing. The tower can’t support this density of mana. The central structure remains intact. Transmission of mana at…one hundred percent.”

As Ji-ae’s voice sounded in my ears, I felt a tug from the Harvester. Its polarity had been reversed, causing it to gather all its collected mana into a single point. I had, of course, already locked in the target. “Show my people what their power has wrought,” I commanded.

Ji-ae pulled the trigger.

My consciousness was ripped from my body by the pure force of the released mana. I was above the fortress again—within the mana itself, a part of it, shining brighter than the sun above Taegrin Caelum—as a beam of pure, truly white light carved across the sky. A nearby mountain top exploded, the shrapnel of its destruction scattered as far as the plains of Vechor a hundred miles away.

Instantly, the beam charted the same path I had set within the targeting array. It crossed the ocean in a single second. My eyes snapped back open as I returned to myself at the point of impact. I was lying on my back, my horns clattering against the stone floor with each small movement.

"I must…see I said weakly, rolling over and struggling to stand. Much of my own mana had been ripped from me in that final second, when my consciousness was dragged along with the beam.

"Easy, Agrona. This has left you more depleted than we’d calculated

"I have to see it!” I barked, scrambling forward on all fours as I tried to stand. My feet slipped out from under me and my knees struck the ground, but I hardly felt it, only pushing more desperately.

At the shaft leading up, I had to pause and collect myself. I couldn’t fly on wings of desperation and desire alone.

"Oh, Agrona Ji-ae said. I felt her attention looking upward, to the sky. Like the rest of those loyal to Alacrya and to me.

I breathed deep and sought the well of my power. My feet left the ground. I wobbled slightly. My fists clenched. I stabilized.

I began to rise up the chute. Not as fast as I’d have liked, but it was enough. “Don’t tell me. Don’t say a word. I have to experience this for myself.”

The chute took me high enough that I could leave the fortress by a balcony window in my private wing. I half flew, half pulled myself up the outer wall to a lower, parapet-ringed rooftop. There, I finally had a clear view of the sky in the proper direction.

I stared in awe, and I wept.

"Let the curtains fall.”