Felix awoke with a start, jolting from laying on the ground to standing fully upright. He reached for his chest, but it was whole and unharmed. His face was no longer leaking blood, and the rot across his limbs was gone.
You Have Your Answer. Ask Your Second Question.
He peered blearily up at the System. “Just…gimme a second. What in the hell was—"
Felix bit off the sentence before he could finish it—he didn’t want to risk the wrong question. He could work out the answers for himself. A ninth god. Where'd they go? There wasn't a moon for them. Were they like Veles with her hidden moon? Did he have a secret threat to worry about in addition to the others and the Ruin?
Felix ran his hands through his hair, and Pit stepped close, nudging him with his beak. Are you okay?
I wasn’t a few seconds ago, I’ll tell ya that. He scratched his friend between the eyes. Did you see all that?
Pit nodded. Couldn’t do a thing about it. I was locked out. Observation only.
Felix grunted. I wouldn’t take it personally. I couldn’t do much, either. I don’t think we’re supposed to.
"Bullshit," Pit spat before glaring at the System.
The apparition looked back at them impassively. Do You Have Your Second Question?
"Yeah," Felix sniffed. "I think I do. That Memory took me back to the First Age, but it was different than I expected." Felix paused, ordering his thoughts. He'd intended on asking about the Ruin next, but this took precedence. "I didn't see a single System notification, and my Unseen Beholder didn’t work on anything.”
What Is Your Question?
"The only answer to this I can figure is that the System, you, didn't exist then." Felix fixed the androgynous figure with the full light of his glare. "How did the System come to be?"
"Felix, is that really the question? What about—"
Question Accepted. Stand Fast, Felix Navarre, And Bear Witness.
Before their last word finished, the world rippled and shattered once more. Colors swirled, reassembling the blue-lit hall with something far different.
The Second Age Began With The Gods’ Rule.
Around him, the world was in chaos. It reminded Felix very much of how things were at the very start of his vision, when the Unbound were enslaved.
They Were Cruel Masters, Punishing Every Slight With Inordinate Force. Some Believed It Was Their Treatment At The Hands Of The Creatures, While Others Claimed They Were Simply Unveiling What Was Always Beneath The Surface.
Crowds of beings rose up, members of a thousand Races Felix couldn’t name, and were immediately cut down. Lightning tore through them, their blood torn from their flesh. The night froze them, and a wild flame consumed what was left. Death, brutal and lingering, was the end for all that attempted to stand against the gods.
They Ruled With Uncompromising Strength. All Who Defied Them Were Sundered And Scattered Into The Ethereal.
It Was The Echoes Of That Savagery That Led The Empyreans Here.
A vein of Desolation split the ancient sky, a jagged tear that opened up onto the confluence of all things. Ships unlike anything Felix had ever seen slipped from the rift, hundreds of them, each the size of a city and bursting with figures across their decks. Magic surged around them in a shell, but it was a broken thing—not a single ship was unharmed, as if they had barely survived a harrowing battle. Listing to the side, the smoking ships crashed into the pristine forests of the Continent.
It Was The Nym Who Found Them First.
The Memory fizzled, glitched, and Felix was suddenly sitting around a fire. Three people sat there, talking inside a simple shelter. A Geist, a dark-haired Nym, and one other. The first two were wrapped in robes of dyed fabric, stitched with intricate symbols and geometric designs. The third was clad in faceted armor and robes of finely spun cloth, embroidered with stars.
That’s an Empyrean?
He looked exactly like the System apparition and Castarius, bearing the same willowy limbs and angular features. More than that, his face was known to Felix. It was the exact same one he’d seen in the Empyrean Halls, the third statue of the Triumvirate.
The Progenitor.
Unbidden, names filtered through his awareness, as if they’d been hand delivered to him. The russet-furred Geist was named Thera, and the Nymean woman beside her was named Jaska. The last was Lascalium, known to ancient record as the Progenitor—though some, the voice in his head insisted, called him the Architect.
"We must take action, or else all will be lost," Lascalium was saying. Clearly Felix had interrupted an ongoing conversation. The evidence of a meal was nearby, set on a low table carved with swirling Elementals. "The gods must be kept at bay to protect the world and future generations."
Jaska leaned forward, the fire limning her face with orange. "Will it work?"
Lascalium laid a hand over hers. "It must."
The Memory froze, and Felix started. It started to dissolve, shifting as a new scene was laid out for him. A stutter shook the Memory, and the dissolution halted.
What the hell?
Give Him The Whole Story. A new voice spoke instead of the System, one that sounded unsettingly like Lascalium himself. Felix stared at the man's face above the frozen fire, yet his lips did not move. We Stand At The End. Let It Be Known.
The System appeared in the periphery, their frame glitching at the edges. Felix could barely see them out of the corner of his eye, but their brows were drawn down. He couldn’t get a read on their Spirit, though—were they mad, frustrated, or merely focusing?
Very Well.
The Memory flashed. Some were incompleted, structured with patchwork guesses that filled the frame with irregular artifacts and patches of fuzzy inconsistencies. Figures appeared, flickering around Felix in row after row, each of them outfitted with faceted armor and fine robes, much like Lascalium.
The Empyreans, the System said, their tone once more unaffected. Exiles From A Realm Lost. Masters Of Will And Mentors Of The Nym.
The vision changed again, moving ahead rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. The Empyreans in all their impressive armor left their damaged ships and joined with the local communities—a people that Felix knew increasingly well. The Nym bore armor of their own, though it was several orders of magnitude lesser than the Empyrean’s combination of magic and technology.
Time advanced, faster by the second, as the two peoples joined together as one. Communities rose up, villages that swelled into fortified towns, protected by both Races with impressive weapons that gleamed with Mana. In just a few seconds of rapid fast forwarding through the timeline, Felix gathered that the Empyreans excelled at wielding Authority—a fact that did not surprise him one bit, for someone described as Masters of Will. What did surprise him was the Nym. While they were powerful and easily faced down the monsters that constantly assaulted their settlements, it was clear that most of the Nym were warriors of one stripe or another.
Not one of them was using magic.
How’s that possible? I thought the Nym were all about magic?
Rare Talents Rose Within The Nym, Those With The Natural Intent To Enact Their Will Upon The World, But They Lacked Guidance. The Second Age Was As Chaotic As The First, And Though The Nym Survived, They Did Not Thrive.
Not Until The Empyreans Chose To Teach Them.
Wielding Powers Unlike Anything They’d Ever Seen, The Nym Soon Learned The True Meaning Of Authority Under The Tutelage Of Lascalium And His Magi. A Single Choice That Affected The Fate Of An Age.
Flicker.
Together They Built Araska, The First City.
Time leapt forward what seemed like hundreds of years. Monsters accosted walls of gleaming metal and complicated wards. Nymean magi bound in faceted armor and inscribed robes flung them back, their weapons flashing with unspent Mana, while others Chanted a deep song. A spell rose up between the strains of it, fire and shadow together, before surging into the horde and sundering the very earth.
Taken from Freewebnovel, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Together, They Raised Themselves Above The Monstrosities.
Flicker.
It Was Not Enough.
More time passed, and the world had been drenched in blood. Felix swallowed, his throat dry and his breathing rough. The metal walls had collapsed in dozens of places, and the evidence of a great battle was everywhere. The city—for it had grown beyond a town long ago—was aflame.
The Nym and Empyreans both were cornered. Their burning streets had been filled with thousands of misshapen creatures, formed of blood, corrupted flesh, and even the spark of true flame itself.
Godslaves. Felix would recognize them anywhere.
They Could Not Be Stopped, Felix Nevarre, the System told him. There was no sorrow in their voice, but something told him the System did not want to show him this. On This Day, The First Of Harvest, The Skies Blackened, And The Gods Struck The First City From The Map.
A blinding flash of blue seared across Felix’s vision, scattering afterimages across his retina even as a cloying, freezing darkness followed. The world froze in the shadow, seizing until stone and metal splintered—only to be crushed by a cataclysmic pillar of metallic blue.
The First City was gone, as were all those within it.
The Nym and Empyreans fled as the Memory shifted again. Felix saw old paths hidden among the mountains and layered with concealment and discombobulation arrays, hazing the lands with an impenetrable fog. The survivors of the First City fell back to caverns beneath those mountains, a secret redoubt that was piled with enough Authority to all but disappear from the Realm.
Yet even that fortress shook.
"We are not yet found, but I cannot say how long that will last.”
The campfire returned, flaring up before Felix to reveal Lascalium, Thera, and Jaska seated on carved boulders. The Geist was talking, and she stared up at the quaking cavern ceiling with no little fear. “The gods are filling the valley with their monstrosities, and the scouts have reported a number of the Elemental Lords have joined them.”
“Of their own Will?” Jaska asked sharply.
“Uncertain.”
“Doubtful.” Lascalium folded his elegant hands. “The Elemental Lords have all but fled the Corporeal. Those that remain are too weak to face down the nine.”
Laska closed her eyes and swallowed, but when they opened again, there was a firmness to her gaze that Felix recognized. Hard as it was, a choice had been made. “Then our only chance is your plan.”
Lascalium reached out to both of them, his long limbs parting the fire without flinching. He took Thera and Laska’s hands. “Our plan.”
Flicker.
Felix was surrounded by stars.
No. Not stars. Those—his eyes brightened, blue burning from them as he grinned—that’s sigaldry.
Inscriptions filled the sky, etched into a cavernous ceiling so high it vanished into clouds. The sigaldry spread across it, filling not just the roof but the walls and floors. Power moved through it, Mana and Essence both, twinkling through constructs well beyond his understanding. It was beyond anything he’d ever seen, and he simply stood there in its center, unwilling to do anything but marvel at it.
More complex than the Seats and Seals by several orders of magnitude, the longer he viewed it the more he saw, yet his Magus of the Grand Design couldn’t parse a single moment of it. Glyphs and sigaldry spread out in orbital patterns, circles that radiated into new glyphs that modified multiple directions at once. Layers were employed, sheets of earth, stone, metal, and air itself each inscribed by a masterful hand. With every layer, the cavern gained a new, terrifying depth.
The song of it thundered through him, an insanity that bordered on ecstasy. It threatened to shake Felix apart until his temple hung heavy with a Crown. It blazed, and the song dimmed, tossed back from Felix's Mind by the Empyrean Regalia.
Felix blinked, coming back to his senses.
It Was A Work Of Centuries, the System said, bodiless again. A Time In Which The Gods Reduced All Opposition To Nothing. The Nym And Their People Hid Among The Empyreans, Though It Cost Them A Great Deal Of Their Pride To Cower In Those Caverns. All Faith Was Put Toward The Empyreans And Magi Of Allied Races, Joining Together In A Plan That Must Succeed.
The Empyreans Were Weakened by Their Exile. The Desolation Had Taken Much From Them, And Only Through The Nym And Their People Could Lascalium Enact His Vision. Knowledge Was Passed Down, Magi Raised Up Among The Continent, And Together They Worked On The Compact.
Felix swallowed. His tongue was leather, and his throat was glass. "What is the Compact?"
Lascalium Called It A Translation Of The Grand Harmony. To Him It Was A Tabulation Of All Things As Interacted By Authority. A Construct Of Such Mighty Portent That It Would Restore The Balance Of Power In The Realms. One That Would Give Even The Weakest The Ability To Survive. To Thrive.
In Later Ages, Others Would Give It A New Name.
“The System,” Felix said, the words charged enough that his teeth vibrated. He could feel the heavy weight of the knowledge around him, trying to crush him. He stood tall, firming his stance. “Holy shit, that's the reason for it."
Felix had been told the system had always existed, but they made it. "That's insane."
More Than You Know.
The deeper voice had returned. Lascalium’s voice. It vanished again when the System appeared, gesturing with a graceful limb.
The Memory shifted again, and now the Nym walked the world. In clandestine groups of nine, they spread out amongst the hills and dales of the Continent, and Mana flowed with them. Rivers of it surged through the landscape, far more than Felix had ever witnessed. It gathered in pinch points atop mountains, in the deepest trenches, and skirting atop lakes teeming with life.
Abundance was everywhere, despite the Divines’ iron fist, and the Green Wilds sang to Felix in a thousand-throated chorus. It was chaos, but not the kind that dominated the First Age. There was an order to things, though it was barely kept—a tiger in a paper cage.
The Nym Learned Well From Their Mentors. But Not All Of Their Talents Were Empyrean Borne.
Where the Nym walked, gold and silver was inscribed into the fabric of the Realm. It cut through everything and nothing, sinking deep without leaving a trace as their Authority wove into the Corporeal, the Void, and the Ethereal all at once. It bound them together, not tightly with fear and blood, but by a wide grip offered by a friend.
Authority Came As Second Nature To The Nym, And Their Magi Excelled At The Task They Were Given.
The Green Wilds responded, and the song changed. The chorus tempered itself, its strains measured if not even, a chaos made aware of itself. A fractal design was stamped into the Realms, a folded Authority that connected the Nymean no matter where they roamed. A design that Felix knew intimately.
The Links Were Made.
The original Seat and Seals.
Yet Despite Their Work, It Was Flawed. Incomplete. It Lacked the Very Thing They Sought To Bind Most Of All.
“Bind…?” Felix’s heart hammered in his chest. His pupils dilated as Memory filtered through him, gathering against his Mind like the remnants of a sieve. “Ouranic Law. They were planning to advance people and bind the gods.”
Above him, despite the darkening sky, there were no moons.
To Be Complete, The Compact Required Compromise.
Flicker.
Felix stood within one of the cavern fortresses, yet it was one he did not recognize. There was no glitter of sigaldry or deep secrets toiling below. Instead, it seemed the place had been half abandoned for centuries, and only now did people inhabit it. An outpost? Why am I—
The Nym, Geist, even Theron and Minotaurs surrounded him. No. Not me. His gaze flicked to the center of the fortress, where a man stood among the allied Races. Him.
It was the Pathless. He glowed with unblemished sunlight, obscuring all but his hands and feet with an unending gold.
Felix bared his teeth and lowered his stance, but the god didn’t so much as glance at him. The magi and warriors around him did not seem as poised to kill, but the Threnodies of War gathered in the air like knots of bated percussion. A drumbeat waiting to sound.
Without reason or warning, the Pathless dimmed. The gold around him faded until it revealed his true form—yet it wasn’t the one Felix had come to know. Instead of scars and deformities marring every inch of flesh, this Pathless was a handsome Human man. Mid-thirties, with flecks of gray in his brilliant blonde hair, his smile was nervous as he approached the leaders at the center of the fortress.
See? You Can Trust Me. I Won’t Even Veil My Spirit.
"You offer nothing but trivialities, Divine,” a Nymean woman spat from the far side of the courtyard. She wore simple armor covered in enchantments and a cloak of hide that seemed to shimmer in and out of view. Her voice commanded an easy Authority, and while Felix saw no crown on her head, she held a familiar, hooked blade in her hands. “Give us more than words and light.”
The Pathless ignored her in favor of fixing his gaze on Lascalium and his kind. The Empyreans Have Cost Us Much. Far More Than The Divine Have Ever Lost Before. The Bonds Of Fellowship Thin During This Interminable War, And We Have All Felt The Sting. The Others Don’t Care. My Family—the Pathless paused, shaking his head—They Are Obsessed With Control. The Twins Most Of All. I Care Not For Rule, Only That I Retain My Power. It Was Hard Won.
"It was stolen!" a Geist shouted.
The Pathless grinned, and it was annoyingly charming. So It Was. So All Authority Is.
"No." The Nymean woman took a step forward. "Authority is freely given by conscious choice. It is not a thing to be taken by force.”
Naïve.
“Perhaps. Yet my naïveté hampers your power, does it not? Which taxes you less, the power to choose or the iron fist of control?"
The Pathless sneered. Control Is Necessary. The Continent Is Chaos Incarnate. Always Has Been And Always Will.
"The Continent is in chaos because of you, Divine. Control isn't seized, it's given."
Ha! The Words Of The Weak. You—
Lascalium lifted a hand. There was no flare of power or Authority, but the conversation died instantly. "This argument could go on forever. It is not productive." The man's voice was weaker than the last time Felix had heard it. How many thousands of years had it been since then? "Why are you here? Do not regale us with lies of your better nature. We know you, Eredon—The Boy Who Would Be The Sun."
The Pathless—Eredon—snapped his mouth shut. His handsome face twisted like he'd tasted a lemon. I Learned Of Your Compact.
The crowd was silent, but their Spirits quivered with barely restrained fear. Eredon lifted his hands, palms down. I Told No One. I See The Writing In The Sky. Our Fight With You Has Gone On Too Long. The Depths Of Your Power Are Beyond Anything The Divine Can Envision. Our Might Is Not Clever Or Ingenious. It Is The Brutish Strength Of The Realm’s Fundamental Laws.
He took a breath. It was shaky. Fearful.
I Wish To Help You Bind My Family.
