Late Afternoon - Late Fall : The Library of Eternity, Atlas | Bahamut
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*Click*
"Huh..." Jolting at the sound of the locks being undone, Hera stared at the door with wide eyes. *Tink-VWOOOOM*
Covering the ground with another wave of enriched mana so thick it almost acted like a liquid, a crack in the door slowly appeared, letting out more and more enriched mana before Her and I were completely engulfed in it.
*WOWOWOOOM* -Holy.. SHIT...- Feeling the enriched mana easily force its way through my aura and dig into my skin, I felt like I had to start moving or else my muscles would harden into mythril, and had my vision blur before sharpening once more.
It felt truly intoxicating, as if I had just chugged eighty barrels of Piotita.
But after a moment, the fuzz in my senses vanished, and I found myself staring into an unbelievably beautiful space carved entirely out of a single chunk of wood. "Woah..."
At the very center of the library, hidden by countless layers of carved rock, gems, books, and stunning architecture was the trunk of a tree that had long since lost itself to time. -What.. is this...- Reluctantly stepping forward, I poked my head through the door, looking around the beautiful room with walls of bookshelves and artifacts, and a huge padded area in the middle meant for a dragon to lay on.
But.. oddly enough, the room only seemed partially designed for a dragon.
Scattered along the wall opposite the door were all sorts of Acardi relics, old computers, tablets, 3D printers, and weapons.
It was like a small workshop, with a TV, books, and all sorts of other things meant for entertainment scattered around the adjacent area.
The books filling the bookshelves weren't simple either, with every single one sharing the same handwriting, and sharing similarly worded, categorized titles.
But more interesting than anything, sitting in the middle of the back wall was a simple desk, lit by a single light artifact sat on the desk like a lamp, with a single book laying in its light.
Its cover read, 'A Confession of Faith'.
With how dense the enriched mana was, I couldn't use my aura to read it, but as I stepped into the room to get a closer look, I suddenly came to a halt, and glanced back.
Yet to take a single step on the other side of the door, Hera stared at me.
"~Are you okay?~" Setting aside my curiosity for a moment, I walked back toward her, trying to shield her from some of the enriched mana that was still pouring out of the room thinking it could have tensed her up.
But it wasn't that. "How.. did you open that..."
Looking her in the eyes, I hesitated.. and took a moment to think of whether I should be honest. Whether this was a situation where ignorance was bliss or not. "Hera..." Even though I knew what her response would be, I was nervous, but I held my head up to speak confidently, with a slightly warmed, and softened tone. "I'm not just the reincarnation of Nott."
"Huh?" Her expression immediately morphed with confusion. "What do you mean?"
Thankfully, my casual tone helped take the edge off a bit. "I am the result of the combination of three souls. I was able to open the door because I remembered the key."
"W..Wait..." Her tone instantly softened. "So, you-"
Not wanting her to jump to conclusions, I tried to speak quickly. "I am my own independent being, no part of me is separate from the rest.. but of the three souls that were combined to make my soul, Bahamut's memories and ego were by far the weakest." Lowering my gaze, I tried to speak firmly, and be as clear as possible. "Even now, I can't remember much from that life, so don't worry, I'm most certainly not the same-"
*THWACK* Firmly smacking me across the face, my eyes shot open and my whole body tensed up.
Slowly raising my gaze, I found Hera standing over me.
"I'm disappointed."
Her disapproving tone hit my mind like a train.
"Do you really think I'm that stupid?" Raising my head with her tail, she made me look her in the eyes. "The only part of you that resembles that bastard is the way you hold your wings, yet you want to give me reassurance that you aren't him?" Seeing my gaze drift, she jerked my head back. "You saying that only makes me question if everything you've shown me thus far was an act."
Feeling somewhat guilty, I matched her gaze. "It wasn't... Nothing was ever an act, I just know how you feel about Bahamut, and-"
"Just stop. Look me in the eyes." Pausing, she left us to stare into each other's eyes until my gaze started to warm. "I know who you are, and I like who you are, so stop being worried about who you used to be. Just because you have memories of a life you once lived doesn't mean you should feel guilty because of the actions you made in them. Memories are to be learned from, not clung to, so stop bogging yourself down with the guilt of things you can't do anything about. If you want to get it off your chest, I'm here to listen, but you have to be willing the move on in order to do that." Her tone quickly warmed as well. "Now, stop acting all guilty and worried, and speak. I'm not going anywhere, I know you well enough for who you were in your past lives to stop mattering."
Feeling like a mountain was suddenly lifted off my shoulders, I slowly straightened my posture, not breaking eye contact for a single second before speaking more freely. "Then.. I absorbed Bahamut's soul before I was reincarnated."
"And who was the third soul?"
"A human from a world that's very far away."
Her smile slowly widened as her expression lightened. "What a lucky human. Did you choose him, or was it happenstance?"
-Geez...- She understood what happened before I even explained it. "I chose him because of the way his brain worked, but his understanding of science was a nice bonus."
"Oh?" Getting curious, her posture slowly eased. "So that's where all the crazy knowledge of yours comes from? How fascinating..."
Smiling warmly as she walked a bit closer to me, I finally spoke at ease. "That world's technology isn't nearly as advanced as the Acardi, but all I needed was the foundation of science to then build my understanding of mana off of."
"So you gave up your understanding of mana and magic with your reincarnation?"
Quickly nodding, my posture relaxed. "I didn't have much of a choice though, for much of my childhood, my soul was detached from my body. The body of a hatchling simply couldn't handle it."
"I'm quite curious how you managed to split your soul from your own body.. but maybe we save that for later." Gently nudging my snout to the side with hers, she made me look back into the fourth layer of the library.
-Ah, right... Now probably isn't the best time...- Turning to follow Hera's lead into the nest, I wore a wide, warm smile.
And so did she.
But.. it didn't last long.
"~What the hell are these books?~" Looking around the bookshelves inside the fourth layer, Hera and I read through the titles of books with continually darkening expressions. "~Vasilias.. do you remember anything about these?~" Motioning to the first book she picked up and started turning the pages of with her aura, Hera gave me a worried look.
It was titled 'Global Mana Redistribution'. "~N..no, I don't...~"
"~It details how the mana on the Draconic Continent, what is now mainland Bahamut, is too high compared to the rest of the world, so Bahamut planned to move the mana wells...~" Her expression darkened as she turned the page to continue reading. "~But I don't remember there ever being mana wells in the mainland.~"
Coming over to read the book with her, I read what was essentially a manifesto of what Bahamut wanted to do and why he wanted to do it, detailing how he believed the high mana levels on the continent could lead to a 'gratuitous imbalance of power' in the world, where humanoid life would inevitably be wiped out by trying to fulfill their own greed. "~'In order to protect an abundance of sentient life, the mana wells will be moved to these locations'...~"
Looking at the map, it showed almost two dozen locations scattered around the different continents, and a few clumped up in what is now the Holy Kingdom.
For the most part, they were fairly evenly scattered about, but Hera and I both immediately recognized a trend. "~Aren't these wells the locations of kingdoms?~"
Without exception, every single well had a kingdom planted right on top of it, even Kaelallan. -Those wells must have dried up by now, but...- The trend was irrefutable.
And with the Holy Kingdom being the strongest human nation with three mana well clumped up over it.. there was also a correlation with strength.
But as we moved around the room, reading more and more books, things only got worse.
Nearly every book detailed an atrocity committed toward dragons without them even knowing, from the redistribution of mana, to the culling of soul lilies, driving what once grew abundantly on the Draconic Continent nearly to extinction.
But the worst of them all was something we had yet to read.
Coming from a world with technology, Bahamut knew of things like science and genetics.
Shortly after gathering what he said was a 'healthy number of dragons', he started having ceremonies to bless those who wished to have children, and would use their naivety against them, altering the genetics of their eggs so that a protein-producing gland would overproduce to the extent that it would make them infertile.
In his own words, he wanted it to limit the reproduction of dragons in order to prevent overpopulation, and halt evolution. After having cultivated dragons till they numbered over a hundred thousand, he was worried that at their current growth rate, they would run into mass overpopulation, and need to take over the other continents for more space and resources, which would inevitably create division in the draconic race.
But I wasn't the only one that didn't believe that reasoning. "~To think his value of humans was so high he would risk killing off his own race...~" Hera spoke with a deep-seated bitterness as she gritted her teeth.
And I couldn't disagree.
His reasonings, while perhaps reasonable from the perspective of a being creating a world, tricking himself by disguising his intention left a sour taste in my mouth. "~Everything Bahamut did had secret intentions, huh...~" Finally looking toward the last book in the middle of the far wall, my expression darkened even more.
-But if everything else was that bad.. what is in there...-
The book had loomed in the back of my mind the entire time Hera and I read through the texts, and it only made me more worried.
'A Confession of Faith' by a being hailed as a god by a population of people he didn't deserve to rule, with the power to forcefully evolve or devolve life.
Although not omnipotent, he was certainly powerful enough to act both benevolent and all-powerful in the eyes of those weaker than him.
But instead of aiming his faith at those who put their faith in him, who treated his every word as gospel, he aimed his faith elsewhere.
He, while recounting the idiocy of the draconic and humanoid races, didn't realize he had the same flaws.
Bahamut was not a dragon.
He was a being who stole the fate of someone else.
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