[Designation: SERAC’S CIRCLET]
[Realm of Origin: TIDEREIGN]
[Trinket Description: That’s some nice magic you got there, Mister. You wouldn’t mind if I just… took it and made it mine, would you? While the Trinket is equipped, transmute the spell [Hair to Hair] into [Voidshot].]
[NOTE: This Trinket’s effect is exclusive to the Wayfarer [Designation: SERAC EDIN].]
[REVOLVER Spell: VOIDSHOT]
[Description: Chamber Three imbuement. Persistent passive effect. Choose to spend Mana to modify any unimbued bullet with one of six [Voidshot] variants. Spend additional Mana and Cartridge to combine two different modifications in one [Shot]. All [Voidshots] deal Primal damage.]
[MP Cost by Variant:
- GRASP - 3
- WATER - 3
- STONE - 5
- AXE - 5
- ASH - 5
- HAIR - 8]
***
At the cusp of her third ascension, Serac Edin had finally reclaimed her Circlet, shorn of the baggage of her Penitent days or indeed any label others might try to slap on her.
The headache was gone completely. No others held any power over [Serac’s Circlet]. Not VOIDLING, not Trippy, not even her third entity. The [Circlet] was hers and hers alone, free to don or doff as she wished. Perhaps, in time, she’d even grow to appreciate its aesthetic value, such as it was.
She’d also managed to imbue it with a powerful Pathsighted effect. But that, of course, came with its proportionate cost in [Burden].
[Burden: 33/38 -> 58/38]
[Wayfarer Status Effect: OVERBURDENED]
Ouch. Some reshuffling and inventory management was in order. All in good time. For now, Serac cast her gaze at her surroundings, alert to any signs of progress in the ongoing Rite of Absolution.
As far as she could tell, the SKY’s galactic appearance had changed little, even after VOIDLING had made its noisy exit. Perhaps the Keeper was taking its time to deliberate on the final judgment. After all, time was something the Keeper possessed plenty of.
And it’d shared some of it with Serac, allowing her a moment to ‘debrief’ with her fellow smiters. Already, Gladiolus could be seen hovering over his Mriga patient, whose wound had re-opened during the fight. Travertine himself set his face in a self-absorbed scowl, even as he fended off his doctor’s attempts to, well, doctor him.
“You. Outrealmer,” Travertine barked as his and Serac’s eyes met. He’d yet to loosen his grip on CROZIER. “Where did you come from and why are you here? And know this before you speak. I’m more than ready for a second bout, should your answer demand it.”
“Come now, fellow,” Gladiolus cajoled, more feather than mountain. “You saw what I saw. Ms Edin helped us smite the accursed Usurper at long last. What cause do you have to raise your hackles so?”
“And you too must see what I see.” The Mriga refused to back down. “That… woman”—as Travertine said this, his cheeks showed an obvious flush—“is not of this world.”
“Well, of course she isn’t. She’s from another Realm.”
“Do not trifle with me, tiger! You know very well what I mean!”
As Serac watched the exchange, a vague sort of smile quirked her lips. It was bizarre. She couldn’t even begin to explain it. Yet, somehow, she felt like a parent watching two grown sons bicker. And the fact they got to bicker at all made her unreasonably happy.
“You two gonna be alright when I’m gone?”
Her question—far too cheerful to be directed at a serial killer and a Pathsight-certified stalker—nevertheless contained multitudes. “You two” wasn’t just “you two” and “when I’m gone” had an even murkier meaning still. But the nuances weren’t lost on tiger and deer—two worldly souls who’d Wayfared in every one of their incarnations.
“Cease your straying and return to your Path, Ms Edin,” Gladiolus said, eyes squinted in warm regard. “Leave Tidereign to us Tidereigners.”
Travertine snorted… which had the effect of just slightly softening his scowl. “As if we’d let another one meddle in our affairs. Begone, outsider… you’ve done enough here.”
The outsider’s vague smile widened into a grin. At the same time, the SKY above split open in earnest, fissures spreading into veritable chasms upon the cosmos. The last knot had come undone, that the VEILS might ripple back to their rightful fixtures.
Sensing what was to come, Serac waved goodbye. Or was it also a bit of see-you-again? At any rate, both Tidereigners responded with a farewell of their own. Gladiolus with an exaggerated bow, and Trav with a timeless salute—fists to antlers, then crossed over chest.
The VEILS drooped down and closed over Serac. Not to [Unmoor], nor to fling her across to the other side of the universe. But to keep her exactly where she belonged.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
***
Serac found herself in a stranger’s home.
But that wasn’t quite right, was it? The home belonged to someone who knew her quite well—perhaps, in some ways, even better than herself. Their memory, certainly, was a lot less patchy than hers.
Wavy walls that sharpened Serac’s focus on her every step. Patchy ceiling with holes big enough to let in the sunlight above. Twisted furniture that must look perfectly restful to a soul whose existence was more a M?bius strip than a mountainous slope.
As Serac reached the raised platform that housed the Keeper’s study, her eyes alighted on a pair of umber shades. Two figures deep in conversation, one sitting at their desk and the other leaning lazily against a bookshelf. Serac thought she even recognized the latter—their agile posture, their kingly armor, and especially their palpable arrogance—but the shades faded too quickly for her to be sure.
The umber faded, leaving only one solid figure to keep Serac’s company. The thing showed a prominent slouch as it bent over its desk. Perhaps it too had been agile and eager once upon a bygone Kalpa. But here and now, its slouch was one weighed down by immeasurable age.
“Heya, Mr Keeper.” Serac wasn’t at all surprised to find she’d reverted to the CMV. Wherever and whenever ‘here and now’ was, Trippy hadn’t come with. “It’s me—the latest in a line of Upheavers to barge into your Realm and leave a mess. First, sorry about the mess. And second, you weren’t expecting anyone different, were you?”
The Keeper’s cloven claw paused its tracing of an ancient, wrinkled scroll. Slowly and ever so delicately, it rolled up the document and set it aside. It ‘looked up’ to face the visitor, though its slouch forced its head to be permanently downcast.
Serac swallowed a gasp of equal parts awe and sympathy. The Keeper’s face—neither cervine nor feline yet somehow both—was so gaunt and shriveled as to be all but skeletal. Unlike those of its Realm-sized avatar, its antlers had become so cracked and brittle as to tremble with every slight movement. Its lion mane, once so thick and wavy, drooped as colorless wisps upon its narrow shoulders.
It looks just like the Twicereign Gatekeeper, Serac realized with another pang of sorrow. Except… a million years older. Yet, even as she studied the Keeper, it too had been studying her in turn. Soon enough, it reached some semblance of a conclusion.
“Serac Edin.” The Keeper spoke without moving its shriveled mouth. The voice—clear and strong like that of a hale, young soul’s—projected directly into Serac’s consciousness in words she could readily understand. “Welcome and rest easy; you are exactly the Upheaver I’d hoped to speak to. But first, I ask that you accept my apology for what I’ve just put you through. I myself would’ve perhaps preferred a… gentler method. But alas, even a soul as old as I can be susceptible to the whims of higher powers.”
“Ah, forget it.” Serac waved the apology away, sincere in her forgiveness. “If anyone should understand what it’s like to be jerked around by Devas, it’s me. Besides, it all turned out fine in the end.” Here, she had to pause, only now reckoning with the extensive gaps in her understanding of the assignment—the group project in which every participant had been blind to their fellows’ contributions. “… It did turn out fine, didn’t it? We all passed with flying colors, and now, you have the power to set everything right?”
The Keeper didn’t answer right away—or at all, for that matter. When it spoke again after a pensive pause of its own, it was to launch into a tangent.
“Tell me, Upheaver. Have you ever pondered the cyclical nature of our existence? Respiration. The Tides. The Seasons. Death and Rebirth. Day and Night. The afterlife by its very nature is a perpetual cycle with no discernible beginning nor definable end. It’s something I myself think about often. Perhaps only inevitably so, having watched from ‘the outside’ as I’ve outlived countless Kalpas of such cycles.”
The six chambers of REVOLVER, Serac nearly blurted her own intimate example to add to the list. Somehow, she doubted the Keeper needed to be thusly educated.
“Um,” she instead gave an honest attempt at an answer, “it’s probably something that pops into my mind now and then, but I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it deeply. And maybe that’s only natural for someone still trying to make the most out of one cycle… in the present tense.”
The Keeper was perfectly still for a moment. Then its antlers shook and the wisps of its mane swayed, so precariously that Serac nearly rushed over to ‘help’.
“Yes,” it said, voice containing no sign of disturbance. “I suppose that is the correct answer. The only answer I could expect from my people. You see, Upheaver. The reason I ask… is that I’m dying.”
The Keeper’s pupilless eyes blinked once. So slowly as to be a cycle unto itself. Serac held her gaze, even as the back of her mind recalled a rather similar conversation from one Realm below.
“I can feel it. You could perhaps see it. I’m not long for this world… and for the first time in my existence, I wonder what might happen after I die. Would I be beholden to the cyclical laws of the universe—Slouch heavenward to be Reborn, as another outrealmer once put it? Or would I simply cease to be, leaving my people—for the first time in their existence—bereft of that which has kept their memories, stories, and selves for all time?”
Slowly but surely, Serac began to see the thread. So fragile as to fray and tear beneath the weight of a whole VEILED SKY.
Perhaps a Serac of even one ascension ago would’ve been utterly lost before the meandering, self-indulgent babbling of an ancient soul. Yet evidently, her ‘cycle’ had matured to the point where she could even offer wisdom to one who’d lived countless Kalpas longer than her.
Wisdom born of youth. Wisdom that burned at the heart of foolish ambitions.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said in a tone that might’ve come across as flippant, were she not so deathly serious about every word. “Your people… I’ve met them. Here, there, everywhere. They’re made of sterner stuff than you give them credit for. Maybe in part thanks to the memories, stories, and selves you’ve kept for them. Something for them to keep building on—if only you’d give them the chance.”
“And if another should come along?” The Keeper asked, voice showing the first sign of apprehension. “Another Upheaver. And make no mistake; they’re not all fair of heart like you, Serac Edin. If another tyrant should come along to enfold all in its Path, what then? What will become of my Tidereign?”
“Two things.” Serac’s response was prompt and stern. “First, it’s not your Tidereign, is it? Never was and never will be. Especially after you’ve passed on the torch and whatnot. And second: what better way to repel a tyrant… than to let your people drive each other to greatness? Whatever you think you did to coddle and protect your people didn’t work. It only made them more divided, more lost than ever. Maybe try a more open-ended approach next time? Set your people into the Gloam and leave them to find themselves—find each other.”
The Keeper remained still and silent for a while. Long enough for Serac to lose track of time. Somewhat out of impatience, but also plenty out of a sense of duty, she decided to make one more push.
The outrealmer, in all her arrogant yet righteous sincerity, urged: “You’ve done a lot for your Realm, old-timer. Maybe it’s time to entrust it to the souls you’ve known and loved for so, so, so, so long. Maybe… it’s time to let go.”
The old-timer, holding the fragile hope of the timeworn and finite, nodded its answer—its final judgment.
And in that infinite moment, across the contiguous fabric of an entire universe, a message played to all worthy souls. Souls who’d answered the call—to stand and fight for their place in the here and now.
[Ascension Mandate awarded.]
[EXALTED FEAT accomplished: Untangle the Gloaming VEILS.]
[300,000 ?]
[TIDEWATCH: The cycles have been restored. A new cycle begins. You now have 24 hours to affirm your Oath.]
four chapters to go until the end of Book 3.
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