Bowen.
6th Legion XO.
25th of Trescia, 1492.
Enzithl. Central Nytholon Wildlands, Vrurian Empire.
07:30.
***
I felt honored, knowing the several hundred of us followed in the same footsteps as Master Peter. Just as he was a slave, so too were the fifteen of us; and while the Eternal Emperor wasn't directly responsible for freeing him, he was responsible for saving him.
Therein lay the reason for Master Peter boasting one of the highest populations of native Eomen, behind Madame Opal and Lady Zakira, of course. But unlike them, we were not pious. Rather, we were eternally grateful for our freedom and sought to make the most of it by learning, exploring, and liberating those once like us.
That and another reason was responsible for Master Peter's Doppelganger- Master Retep, leading us into the dry plains of the Kasian Empire upon our descent to the Mortal Plane.
The Fighting Empire was strife with war and oppression, which in turn led to the wrongly imprisoned and the enslaved. So too, however, was Kasia home to the oasis Master Peter created last year.
The winter that had since come made finding it take tendays as opposed to just days. Yet, therein sat an opportunity for us to develop the skills needed to thrive on the surface. Therein lay an opportunity to train in battle and liberate those like us. Therein lay an opportunity to practice the basic aspects of the Monastic Way Master Peter was studying out in Shujen.
Once we found the oasis, therein lay an opportunity for Master Retep to raise his tower, for us to build our city in a ring around it, and in turn develop our arts and culture; and our practice.
Therein we became the Keepers, when such a small act grew into one of the most renowned practices in the Empire.
It all started when we took to learning ecology. Just as the Master had done last year, we ventured into the wilds with glass jars and bowls to make various types of vivarium.
We started small, of course, with terrariums taken from the winter forests, grasslands, and mountains. As more time passed, we scaled up more and more, incorporating them into desks and tables before we were fashioning aquariums, paludariums, and other such structures into the walls of our buildings.
This combined with our knowledge gained from below and the technology gifted to us from above, coupled with the locals we've taken up as acolytes and the information spread across the networks saw us learn about the peculiar nature of the Bodhi Tree's flora and fauna, and how they tied to the seasons.
In a sense, the Bodhi Tree only experienced summer and winter, and they could last anywhere from months to years. This winter, however, was brought on by a combination of the jet streams and currents from the World Sea and Zaraxus forming his lair stone in Shujen Bay.
As his deathly cold leaked out into Crater Lake, what was normally a coastline of swamps and temperate to tropical rainforests became an expanse of cold bogs and evergreen trees; the savannas and deserts further in the mainlands turned into tundras and taigas, and all the flora and fauna within adapted accordingly.
By that point, a month had passed and it was time to move. The Master shrank the Temple down to the size of a finger ring and led us on an arduous journey north, around the Eastern Kasian Mountains.
Rather than take the roads cut into the easternmost mountain, however, we descended down into the Redagh Rift and braved 271 kilometers of frigid dry air, mounds of rusted metals, and compacted snow.
Just as we did in the frozen desert, we began clearing out an area for the Master to raise his Temple, and then we began to train in the more advanced aspects of the Omni-Elemental Way while our clones flocked to find yet more like-minded souls.
So too did the dispersal of enchantments elevate our craft and culture to the next level, allowing us to study not only the ecology of the barren landscape but to learn of its history as well.
That history was centered around none other than Redagh. Poachers were a near-constant threat. And with no need for the weapons and armors of steel they carried, they simply tossed them into the rift so the travelers below could take them. In the past, they had. At one point in time, however, the things were left to eventually rust into dust.
A thousand years of such a practice saw the desert be compacted into a badlands, and then further be tainted to nearly a wasteland. That left us little to both recruit or battle, but there were some outliers still; poachers and outlanders living rough were few dared travel.
As such, most if not all of our time went toward practicing our various crafts and moving down the paths of our future classes. With the power of enchantments, were were capable of creating more building-sized vivariums that were both heated and cooled to prove the theories born from our studies, and therein sparked the open-ended question from our Engineer, Kunala, that changed everything.
She wondered what would happen should a wise rock be merged with a vivarium. And so, as curious as we were, the Master shrank the temple down to a ring and, a tenday later, tossed it inside a dry desert terrarium.
When the temple reformed, all we bore witness to was the jar increasing to a height of ten or so meters before taking on an opaque hue, almost like marble. The jar that had once been sealed now contained an airlock-style entrance at the top, leading us down into a miniature world with a dome of solid sky.
While desert occupied most of the several hundred meters of space within, the center was dominated by the deep oasis the Master created last year, straddled by the temple and ringed by the structures we laboriously constructed.
The end of that second month saw a change in our overall way of life. The Master granted wise rocks to us 15 head acolytes, then pointed us up the mountain with instructions to use manipulated air to ascend the rough terrain.
Therein cemented home the benefit of teamwork, allowing us to seamlessly form and finalize the six tiers of subordinates we led. Yet, throughout the journey and after our arrival, it was demanded that we be just as capable on our own. Not just in survival and the Omni-Elemental Way, but in our culture as well.
Again, we made terrariums. Only this time, we 15 head acolytes led our many subordinates to different parts of the mountain, where we constructed temples akin to the ones of earth and water we made already. Temples of air and fire; dust, lava, and mud; mist, steam, and plasma.
Again, we sealed them in massive terrariums before fusing our wise rocks with them, reducing them to portable sizes.
Together, and yet separately, we led our many subordinates back to the monastery to find Master Retep standing amidst the lore skull, Firma.
From Master Retep's eyes came recognition and a hundred other things aimed not at us but the largest 11 of the woven worlds drawing themselves into a line above Mani, with many more orbiting them still.
Pangaea, our home world, was the sixth among them, right after the worlds of brass halls, volcanic falls, industrial rings, divine forests, and eternal storms.
From the eyes of Firma came a solid field of light that depicted Master Peter meditating in a strange chamber of glowing roots.
The violet color of the chamber was suffused with the blue-white light shed by a seemingly solid tower that held the likeness of an ant, a lion, a hawk, a cobra, a dragon, and a phoenix that dripped a fiery liquid.
Across from it was a pillar of water that ascended and disappeared without end, shifting the likeness of a starfish, crab, fish, sea turtle, octopus, and an orca from top to bottom.
To his right was a violent twister of spinning totems that spread the squeaks of a bat, the drum of a hummingbird, the caws of a raven, the calls of a crane, the haws of a vulture, and the screech of an owl.
To his left was an earthen totem of an elephant supporting a giraffe, which itself supported a horse, a gorilla, a bear, and finally a badger.
Beyond that elemental square was a hexagon of what seemed to be elemental shrines made of fused elements. Capstone monoliths of dust, lava, and mud or spherical ponds of swirling steam, churning mist, and roiling plasma.
Nothing more sat beyond the concentric shapes until the earthen and air totems churned with elemental mana and ki.
The burst of energy saw those totems split and rise above the square, where they surged and split once more. While the originals returned to their former positions, the copies fell back in on themselves in a dazzling display of energy, releasing multi-colored sparks and a violent buzz into the chamber as they compressed into singular monoliths of metallic crystals and crackling electricity.
When Master Peter opened his eyes, Firma closed theirs, closing the channel on the Net and in turn drawing our eyes to Mani, just as it opened with a divine light.
"Congratulations, Peter." The skull moved its mouth. But it was the Eternal Emperor who spoke, and in ways that made our spirits stir. "Or rather, congratulations, Imperator Peter Boyd, and the Sixth Legion. The Keepers."
Those words caused a disturbance in reality and our spirits alike. The mana within both condensed. The former to the state of diamond and the latter to arcana itself. Yet both were tame compared to the beacons of divine power that erupted across the Peninsula; and from them, power flowed.
Into us- the chosen Legionaries, such power flowed. All the way from the depths of the Darkworld in Shujen, a silent tune rippled so as to lap against our spirits, awakening within us, the Keepers, the 6th Legion, the abilities of those we were sworn to follow.
It was not an affinity core to awaken in us, however. It was more like the tune caused an evolution in our spirits, granting us a stronger means to manipulate the elements.
The Omni-Elements.