I knew the time would come sooner rather than later. A subtle knock at my door coming with demands for the winds to change.
Like all things, I heard them through the whispers of the vines. As they had done before, many times throughout the ages, the leaves were signaling change.
We were not meant to obscure them.
Though faceless, the vines' mannerisms gave hints to those who would appear before my door. The three first-year instructors. The assessors and the preparers and the teachers. The most important in all of the Bodhi Tree's staff. For it was them who walked the students through the woodline so they could see each Path with clarity. It was them who held the students' hands as they found what they truly loved.
Accompanying them was another instructor. A Paladin who loved light above all else. Even the service he gave to it.
I knew why they were here. The bark itself told me long ago. But like the great tree I was a part of, I would remain unyielding in the face of the storm.
"I assume you all are here to persuade me against Amun's encounter." I began before the lover of light could and immediately felt another part of him fade as he backpedaled to where he was before. It was the love of a sense of power, seen so often in so many humans. Abused and weak their minds and bodies were, so short their lives were, they clung to the most basic of primal desires.
"Then I propose this. You four, Polaris, or any of the southern kingdoms are free to construct or summon something capable of testing Amun. Or." I let the warmness fade from my voice and at once, their heads cranked and turned in worry from the groans of an ancient tree surrounding them. "You could break the rules and fight him yourselves. If you're willing to face the consequences, that is."
"My counter-proposal would be to have Amun fight another creature for his encounter." Titus formally bowed. A painful action by account of his grimace. "He can fight the dragon on his own. Without his peers spectating."
"That would be an amendment to the rules." I coldly blinked.
Titus took a step forward. "He is slated to go outside the Tree's borders. Is that not an amendment to the rules?"
"It is a condition that hasn't been needed for ages." I blinked again. "I won't repeat myself."
Titus was angry His face was incapable of hiding it, but that was of no concern to me. I only stared and waited for another futile plea, but none came. One by one, they hung their heads in defeat and filed out the door.
Save the magic-loving halfling, who retained a smug grin as he trailed behind them.
Eventually, the door shut and my office was as it had been before their arrival. Quiet, sunny, warm, and wet. And quiet. So, so quiet. But never quite enough to soak in the sun and watch and worry in peace.
"Anything to lessen the sentence, is that it?"
The question was aimed at me and the voice was mine. It was weeping. As it should've been. As I was.
It had all been so grandiose in the beginning that the price remained tucked away in the back of my mind. A great tree, meant to become a repository of knowledge for all the realms. The price was an unspoken bargain with an unseen being. A deal I agreed to whilst in the state been dreaming and consciousness.
The last dream I ever had.
Immortality in exchange for being tethered to the tree seemed a paltry price to pay at the time. But like all dealings with Devils, there was more to the fine print. I was to teach more than those who trickled in from the other realms.
'Teach the plagues of Dark. Live shackled, empty, and cursed. Refuse, become Void.'
Like all things, there were many types of immortality. It took centuries to learn what type I had been cursed with.
Biological Immortality. That is to say, perpetual life in the sense of my being having continuity. I remained alive, but I grew unhealthy still. I aged still. I withered still.
Still, I could be felled by another.
Crater Lake was an eternal reminder of that. But that, I could have lived with.
Not to say I had a choice, to begin with.
What I was incapable of living with was the feeling that the Devil in my final dream had planned this all along. That they had foreseen my opening class hosting another Devil. A greater Devil. One who would appear in the flesh to inflict upon me the punishment I deserved for cheating death.
'The plagues come in pairs. Death and death, dark, dark, and void. Void, beckons the end.'
Like the first, the curse was spoken in a language both alien and familiar. A wicked tongue meant to inflict terror upon my conscious mind. That was what I believed, at first. Then the plagues came to the lands. Both north and south, dungeons appeared and darkness loomed. A darkness that loomed till this day.
When the first wave of death came, I realized the gravity of my situation. My flesh was rooted. My soul was bound. No dimension could hide me. No deity would save me. There was no escape from what was to come.
'Hear Raven's promise. When the night consumes the tree. Reap! Harvest has come.'
Like the objects of all great egos, the greatness I dedicated lifetimes towards realizing would meet a fate worse than crashing down before my eyes. I would see it rip asunder. Colonized and tainted by ideals that weren't my own. And then I would be killed. Then I would have my soul split between the Underworld Domains of the Nox to be tortured for all eternity.
Or, I would be voided from existence.
Even if I wasn't to die, though. Even if I were to live for another thousand years beneath the shade of this tree.
'Love is like poison. Sickening and beautiful. Love, it will end you.'
The second wave of death gave me the realization. Nothing of mine was my own anymore. The grand tree I found long ago. My knowledge. My wisdom. My land.
My body.
My soul.
My love.
None of it belonged to me.
Not anymore.
I signed that away with my soul around 1,390 years ago.
And more. More than my ego. More than my prominence. I sold away more than power, even.
'This land is a den, foul beasts of the night roam it. Only they own it.'
I signed away the very safety of the people who helped me achieve my dream, the first Devil aside. Their lives and the lives of their families were anything but peaceful. Yet, they honorably upheld their end of our deal.
Or perhaps the deal of another. Unlikely though that may have been.
'The wealth of this land. Vanishes in the darkness. Splash, into my hand.'
Even they lost things. Brybs the most. A once prospering monster community was now reduced to a sunken coast filled with dozens of slum cities and a single prosperous castle. All because of a single man. The second Dark Plague to come my way.
And now, the second Plague of Void was upon me.
"It was just as you said, Cole." I sighed, bringing my mind back to my office and my focus through my window. To a vast lake that separated the Bodhi Tree from the rest of the peninsula. "I have nothing left to give now. Only the Bodhi Tree.
"Only my life."
***
Doyle
***
"That wasn't what I expected."
Titus gave the only response. An affirmatory sigh that was filled with nothing but contempt and displeasure. "It is a lost cause."
"Can't you speak to your Polaris friends?" Olga asked with innocent enthusiasm.
Thankfully, Titus was too bent to respond in his usual manner. He only grunted again, this time disapprovingly. "No one gets through to Sir Morningstar. His decisions are final. All we can do now is wait and hope for the best."
Saying no more, Titus stepped off towards the stairs. His head poised to the right as he stared intently at a certain something.
Realization as to what that something was didn't come until after I stepped after him. Not to tail him per se- we were all heading to the same place, but to study him intently all the same.
At the end of his gaze, far across the room, were the elves. Corym and Indra had the same benign expressions they usually held in such a political landscape. But even I could see they were forced at the moment. And Eiriol, of course, was eerily satisfied. Though her face proved the opposite.
Obviously, Titus was pissed.
While foreign to our ears, their conversations died down as we passed and hardly picked back up once they trailed behind us.
The Cap was as packed as it was at the start of any other day. But the atmosphere had changed. There was no more eager discourse precluding today's encounters. Only the soft ripples of hushed speculation pierced the otherwise probing silence.
Too many horrific miracles in too short a time, I assumed. And looking at the young man on screen made me assume another was to come. Nowhere near as remarkable as Jaimess' match, but remarkable all the same.
"Ahem." I cleared my throat to needlessly gather the room's attention. The attention had long-since been on me since the moment I entered. I was their savior from the fear poking at the back of their minds.
"Edward Pascal is exceptional in all remarks," I said. "Though, he keeps attention away from himself and doesn't fight. Not because he's timid or cowardly. Contrarily, he's been shown to go overboard in the few battles he's been in. Ending them as quickly as possible. Due to that, he has yet to showcase his full combat ability."
And I doubt he would today. Even against a Naga.
In fact, he didn't. He reached his hand out the moment he stepped through the portal, enveloping the swamp in which he found himself in a cloud of thick smoke that occluded nearly every viewing perspective.
We could only see his domain from above. The Naga was somewhere off-center towards the top of the screen, hundreds of meters away from Ed, but he located the naga in an instant and compressed the smoke around its body at once.
As the perspective shifted to a closer angle, Ed swept his free hand and the serpentine body of the Naga slammed down as if it had been stomped by a giant.
Which reminded me.
"Ed was born with Smoke and or Ash Magic. The same thing, according to him." I hurriedly explained. "Additionally, he was given Force Magic, Torch Magic, and Tungsten Magic."
As if he'd been waiting for my explanation, Ed spawned four pillars of screaming white fire around the beast to set it ablaze from all directions.
The Naga's scream somehow pierced the shrill howl of Ed's flames, but Ed was unconcerned. Almost looking away with his mind on something else while he spawned a massive hammerhead of the dull silvery metal that was tungsten and let it fall on its own. Down and down, the Naga crumpled without resistance into the ground, then down deeper into the earth with a dull thud that shook every broadcasting point in the region.
When the dust cleared the Naga was but an afterthought. A small, unseen stain on a colossal metallic boulder partially embedded into the ground.
It was another unexpected round. But not so much as to invite a state of panic into the Cap. Instead, many of the Regni was making open observations of the obvious. Stating that Ed was one who didn't like to fight, but wouldn't hesitate to do so if the need came. Declaring that it made him a prime candidate for recruitment without understanding his inability to be recruited.
Edward Pascal was now an interest to the Regni and thus a potential threat if he didn't join.
And he wouldn't join.
Because he worked for Amun too.
'We're fucked.'