Aldo Za'Darmondiel.
21st of Duotra, 1492.
Rith Tribe Territory, Shujen Kingdom.
5:18 am.
***
I had been uneasy about the entirety of this. Ever since that Bool appeared, I had been. And my little sister knew it.
'Stay focused.' She motioned. But I knew the words were for herself more than they were for me. Not that they failed to serve as a warning.
Aufa Za'Darmondiel was said to be the nicest female in the House. But I knew that to be utterly false. She simply knew a calm demeanor and sharp words were far more threatening than shrill screams and pointed dirks. What was worse, she knew these things whilst being on the brink of her second decade of living.
Her words were her whips. And they cracked silently.
The presence of Matron Etyl of House Za'Darmondiel was even more unsettling. She only came to the surface for raids. Big raids. The only exception was when the Demon Queen Spider demanded it. But I could not see her demanding such a thing for the likes of any male.
Not even Telin's Champion.
It commanded my attention. Much to my sister's ire. But once the Matron and the strange-eyed drow disappeared over the hills, my job became much easier. My thoughts became so much clearer. Or, at least clear enough to put them out of my mind.
The reason being, that this human was remarkable. The other one and the cat were too, but this one impressed me even more. I saw only hints of trepidation when he first faced a drow in combat- far less fear seen by any of his kind, yet he adapted quickly, displaying a tenacious capability to think with haste and to seek perfection in learning.
It was an utter anomaly. We were certain our brutal training regime would wear them down to their knees as it did every monastic acolyte of every species for the last millennium. But alas, it was as if they had been living under far worse conditions for the past year or perhaps more. Utterly stoic in the face of despair, they were.
Utterly magnificent, their Ki was.
Twilight. Mercy. Elements. Death.
As creatures of magic, we could not have been more excited to witness his prowess. Proved by my sister eyeing him up like a cut of fine meat.
"Peter," she said in awkward Common. "A Novice Monk of the Omni-Elemental Way. All marks, exceptional. Able to hold his own against multiple drow monks at once. Remarkable indeed."
"I am humbled." He bowed.
"And he is with manners." She smirked, then turned to point down the snow-packed road. "Let us see what you can do. Hold nothing back. We watch from afar, judging from the shadows."
With another Aufa-pleasing bow, Peter started down the road at a wanderer's pace, knowing nothing of the volatile nature of the rancid creatures that called this place home. Instead, he looked upon the land as if he could see through the waning darkness. Meandering as if there was not a problem in the world, even as burnt foliage began to peer from the snow to watch him pass by.
Naught an hour later came the torches, drums, and watchtowers appearing through the brush and looming ever closer. Yet, Peter strode right past them, pausing only when an arrow landed at his feet.
Then the Hells broke loose.
He took on a firm stance and stomped, lifting two boulders from the ground before he executed a double-palmed strike onto an imaginary target, propelling the massive rocks with the force of a stone giant's throw. The crude piles of sharpened logs may as well have been a stack of crates before a charging minotaur. Snow and wood mixed with viscera and the shrill screams of the dying flew through the night; and through it all, darted Peter.
Covered in the ethereal fires of blue Ki, he skipped and leaped off of columns of air, sweeping his arms out all the while to gather the surrounding snow into twin whips of water, and then he spun. Like an angry beast, he lashed out at the groups of small creatures running forth with rusted scimitars and axes.
They met a swift end through the likes of water whips or ice swords until the last of this goblin party fell in a steaming heap of gore, leaving the horde behind them to rethink their actions for a second too long.
A pillar of air shot Peter skyward, where he danced with the serpentine flames of his ki until he came to his zenith and fell like a broken stalactite atop the scrambling goblins.
We entered the camp naught moments later to see it reduced to scattered piles of rubble, ash, and corpses that were either brutalized, severed, or charred, then left to hiss loudly in protest of the ambient snow attempting to steal their heat away. The only remaining combatant was a feral ogre attempting to charge Peter with a charred beam raised high. The young monk, on the other hand, adopted the snake style to project his stunning strike from afar.
Hissing louder than the ruins around them, a serpent of pure blue fire lashed out at the ogre. Its fangs sank deeply into the grotesque flesh, brightening its veins to a scorchingly azure hue as the blazing venom began to spread.
By the next stride, the ogre toppled with a feral scream and managed to look down in time to see his leg charred to dust before the venom spread to his heart. Then the beast turned to see the cold eyes of the human who wrought such pain. The last sight witnessed before the massive creature disintegrated into a steaming pile of dust.
'I like this one.' Signed Aufa, but her slender words halted by virtue of a bell ringing in the distance, and by Peter turning towards his source with a curious smirk.
Skeptical and conniving, we watched him turn to his eyes upon his destruction with empty eyes before they fell to the ground. Emptily. And yet, I had the underlying feeling that he was… remorseful.
A pity, I thought. If only for a second.
"Scavenge what you can. Raise the rest of them. I'm sending the big one up the ladder."
Our brows squinted in confusion, but then they spread and rose higher than possible once a little gray dwarf with blacker than black skin and blue-green eyes climbed from Peter's shadow. Opening the gate, it seemed, for another and dozens more to follow. Leading the way, it appeared for several more zombies and skeletons to fan out behind him, search the dead, and in some cases, raise them as smoldering or bloated zombies and mutilated skeletons.
'They are of Clan Shaleheart, from across the Great Falls.' Aufa remarked as she pointed to the creatures of shadow.
I nodded in understanding. 'It all makes sense.' And yet, it did not. Thus Aufa demanded I project to the Halls to drag a wizard across the frozen plains to have them study the young monk from afar.
He watched for a tenday while I simply gave my instructions and watched him spread chaos with glee. It never got old, seeing him raid camp after party after horde and walk away as if nothing happened, leaving his minions to pick the place clean until not even a good ranger could determine what occurred.
Of course, their ambitions only went as far as obtaining Peter's monastic tradition or this necrotic power and using it to get over on the other high priestesses. That left no room for my input. Likewise, it left no chance of any smugness once the wizard came to the only logical conclusion.
Peter's monastic tradition would be passed on to his acolytes once he made the final step. That was the only way anyone could obtain his omni-elemental power. Likewise, it was obvious that Elg-Horr gave the human the right to use necromancy. His immense power was his own. And yet, there was something else.
'That human is damned. His soul is owned by a devil. He must have made a deal.'
They seemed to drop the investigation after learning that the cat and the other humans were similarly damned. Including the children. Although again, the answer as to who the devil in question was, was obvious. If unbelievable. Regardless, the wizard's departure and Aufa's brooding silence cleared my mind almost entirely, turning my focus to this young human and his fantastic Ki Ponds.
Their formation was the most miraculous event. One I was all too eager to document, for not even the infamous drow of everyone's interest could form a crude Meditation Chamber.
His ki burned a magic circle into the ground beneath him, clearing the snow and ice to show the very geometrical sigils he was scheduled to learn upon his return to the Halls. As I witnessed in those halls, Ki-infused facsimiles of his affinity cores formed around him. Totems, they looked like. A blue-white pillar of fire sat to his front. A miniature twister was to his right. A small geyser was behind him. And finally, a squat pedestal of stone was to his right.
Inferno. Tornado. Boulder. Flood. Elemental abilities of the second-highest order. Though the density of his mana was weak, Peter's Well was as large as a human's could be. With those abilities alone, however, he had the power to shape realms. But with Ki, he would become one with the world itself.
Such a claim became apparent when his meditations saw the earth totem split thrice, others split only once and fell upwards to collide with the stone in a fantastic display of dust and mud and lava, leaving three new totems floating in a crescent arrangement above the monk.
I congratulated him as thanks for the wondrous display but sent him to work immediately. We had much work to do in practicing the higher forms of the monastic arts. But Peter was a fast learner, being as adept in free running as I. Although, it took much practice for him to learn how to scale vertical surfaces with ease.
Several days of chaotic battles later, the third natural Ki Pond was formed, bringing about the third miraculous event naught a tenday after.
The four elements appeared around him as before, this time with the other three poised above him. A surge of ki forced the geyser to sputter, releasing two bubbles that ascended with air and fire and fire and air to merge and form amorphous totems of steam, mist, and a sphere of energy that kept popping without end, arranged with the others in a hexagonal array.
I openly surmised that opening his Ponds would square his base elements and expressed interest in seeing the results. That, however, would have to wait until our return. Not to say that was a bad thing, for Peter's progress never declined. Human cities. Goblin hordes. Orc strongholds. No matter where he ventured, Peter waited until he was attacked first, then decimated every combatant in sight.
I chalked it up to naivety at first. I assumed he did not want to be the first to shed blood. That he secretly hoped whatever conflict would arise could be settled with diplomacy rather than violence. A foolhardy assumption.
In time, I learned that, like the elements. Peter was uncaring of motives, only actions. Thus he was unbiased in his actions. Like a fire, he would burn anyone who toyed with him. Like a river, he would drown those who tested him. Like the earth, he was unyielding. Like the wind, he was detached.
And yet, he was none of those things. He was playful, in the sense that he experimented with his abilities. He was patient, never allowing his emotions to act for him. He was tolerant, having a mind open to many outlooks. And he was grounded to the Mortal Plane deeply.
With his enlightenment; which again came faster than any student before, came the long-awaited time to return to the monastery. Doubly so in the eyes of Aufa. It had been nearly two months since we departed and she was more than ready to be out of the sun, giving her a sense of indifference that ensured me the perfect opportunity to release the burden of my curiosity.
"You are unlike any human I have ever met, Peter."
"Drow." He said in that detached way of his. "I thought I knew of drow. I thought I knew of devils. And dwarves and halflings and humans. I thought I knew good from evil, order from chaos. And then I came here. I met Amun. A half-drow, half-devil. I learned of perspectives, and how blinding they can be."
That marked the beginning of a long and revealing conversation. I learned, among many other things, that Peter was a close friend of Amun. I learned that Peter was a slave, in Maru, who was freed after awakening his affinity cores. I learned he sought revenge the moment he obtained his freedom; only to be deterred by witnessing Amun's magic reach across the realm. Then, he met him after gaining admission to the Bodhi Tree.
He was in his party at the Tree. There, he learned by training and spending time with Amun, a new perspective. It was Amun who taught Peter everything he now knows. Arithmetic, arts, science. Magic. Fighting. It was Amun who convinced Peter to become a monk. It was Amun who broke him from his shell. It was Amun who freed him from himself. It was Amun who brought out his potential.
So, naturally, he answered Amun's call.
More than all, I learned that Amun was Peter's first friend. And yet, that fact- that relationship could never be extorted, for Amun ensured that anyone who would call him a friend would be as untouchable as he.
That piqued Aufa's interest. And Peter grew almost excited to describe Amun's guild. The Legio Noctis, an… eclectic band of explorers, currently preparing to scour the Mortal Plane in its entirety. He teased us with the knowledge held in Amun's mind and told us of the trials they went through last year in grand detail.
In short, Amun was as ambitious as any drow and then some. But unlike the rest of us, he had the power to realize his ambitions. For, according to Peter and the rest of the Legions, Amun was a God. The God of Moonlight, Twilight, Engineering, And Mana.
Mana.
Such a revelation left us silent until our return, wherein we feigned politeness in offering the human the privacy to catch up with his friends. Meanwhile, we ventured to the far side of the entry hut to exchange information with the other monks and priestesses- our cousins.
Ryda and Nijal told of Rua detailing Amun's prowess as a Grandmaster Artificer but said nothing of the details. Not that it was needed, for we all remembered the fine gear they wore upon our arrival. Sid and Shaenya, however, spoke highly of Veil of Shadow's fighting prowess, yet masterfully dodged any questions regarding his monastic tradition.
When it came our turn, we divulged what they may or may not have already known. Peter and the others worked for Amun. But that was it. Neither the name nor the purpose of their guild was disclosed. We shared nothing about its members selling their souls to Telin's Champion.
And of course, we disclosed nothing about his alleged divinity.
In short, we had the advantage over the other subfamilies of the House. Of course, that was without the Matron in the picture. With her keen eyes personally watching the destroyer, it was a certainty that her pool of information ran far deeper than all of ours combined.
Such thoughts seemed to be punctuated by a burst of arcane energy to the far north. It was nothing special by our standards. Less than average, actually. But to the standards of a human, it was god-like.
Then again, his arcana had something ours did not. Affinities. Thus the horrid sensation of arcane necromancy and ear-shattering explosions that spread from the coast shook even my bones.
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