The fatigue from the fight slowly seeped into Edmund’s body, leaving him exhausted. His bones were aching, his muscles cramping, and his stomach felt like he had just ingested a bucket of lava. All this was fouling his mood beyond what was already quite the bad mindscape, one that was dominated by one single recurring feeling: powerlessness. But not only that, for it would be easy to handle compared to how he was really feeling. No, there was more. There was this complex weaving net of feelings about his past, the world he used to live in, and what he saw around him now.

He missed the old world. However, did he really miss the world, or did he crave the unlimited power it gave him, the feeling of being a god amongst powerless ants, the knowledge that he was all that he could be and that the world itself was his to model according to his own wishes?

On the other hand, this place here… it was a blank canvas. It would be harder to write on it, but not impossible, due to magic and all that it entailed.

In the end there were two roads ahead of him, but both of them required him to gain the same preposterous amount of power. He could decide once he got there. It wasn’t the end goal that really mattered, however. No, it was this feeling he was feeling that had to go away. It had to, and it had to go away fast.

Just the thought of what happened to him made him blood boil.

Fuck everything else. I’m going to find them, and make them pay for doing this to me. I am going to become even more powerful than I was before and this time… this time I won’t sit there hoping they don’t bother me. I’m going to find them, and slaughter them all. To the last.

His hand was balled in a fist so tight it hurt. He noticed how tense he was, with all the adrenaline fueled by his anger flowing in his veins, and tried to relax. There was no time to waste. He needed to do things properly, the right way, but waste no time.

There were things in the void, beyond those portals. It was time he got himself the means to finally meet them, and put an end to something that had been going on for more than five thousand years.

***

Edmund was playing with a stick in the fire. He watched its tip catch fire, and used his Hume energy to make the flame consume the whole stick. He smiled, holding the ember in his hands but without feeling the heat, until suddenly his energy ran out and he threw the smoldering piece back in the firepit with a yelp. He frowned, and his mind went to the hateful delayed gratification dilemma of having to postpone his fun so that he could send the energy to the Pylon, and have more energy in the future, versus using it now, without being able to grow in power in return. It was clear that he had chosen the latter, using up a good few hours of energy generation just to play with a stick.

His frown deepened, and he tried to engage in conversation so that he wouldn’t think about it. This is bullshit. It’s not just the power per se, it’s literally me sabotaging my only means to everything I want. What the fuck.

He shook the bad thoughts away, and looked at the mage. “So, to clear things up. This forest went from being completely silent and still to being as dangerous as a C-rank danger zone overnight?”

Toora sighed. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“Sounds odd to me. Is it a normal occurrence nowadays?” he looked interested.

The woman chuckled. “No. No, it’s not. This is beyond strange.”

Indeed, never in her travels had she seen such a thing happen. To be completely honest, she had heard of it happening in the past, and even went to such places to see the consequences of those events, but this was the first time she had seen it in real time. Back at the academy, they had many names for such sudden transformations, but very little in terms of explanations why they happened. It all tied back to the theory of magic, a thing that was as unknown as it was ubiquitous in the present world: if they wanted to understand why some places were getting a sudden and massive flood of magic, they needed to understand what it was and where it came from.

He tapped his chin. “Maybe it was Axiom. When it retreated it restored the area to how it would have been.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “Not that I think you’re wrong. I’m just thinking out loud, you know? I think you are right, in fact.”

Edmund smiled. “Uh, okay?”

“Sorry,” she looked at the orange flames rising from the fireplace. “What I meant to say is that there has to be something hidden somewhere around that’s creating this. Something even stronger than a Ley Line node, or even a Drop of Pure mana. Can you feel the magic in the air?”

He nodded. “Oh yeah, I can feel the little shits molecules of mana try to suck my Humes dry.”

“This is already way above a regular C-rank zone. And it’s still rising fast.”

They chatted for a while longer, discussing random ideas about magic and reality bending. Edmund had his own theories regarding the two, plus some information he wasn’t yet ready to share with anyone regarding what he uncovered in his studies on reality before his world ended all of a sudden. Well, they were more than theories, and just thinking about it made his anger reemerge. However, he still made a mental note to talk about that with Toora when the time was right, because he felt that it could be important down the line. Right now, however, his main focus was getting his hands on one of the artifacts, as they called them, to repair the machines in the Pylon.

Then, one after the others, all pieces of the puzzle would fall in place. It was the getting started part that was the most difficult, it seemed.

As the conversation died down, Lisa finally returned from her wood gathering expedition in the outside forest. She set down the logs on the concrete floor, occasionally feeding one into the fire.

The thick smoke of wet wood expanded like a carpet hugging the ceiling, with barely a faint hidden wind current carrying it away and towards a collapsed staircase that coiled up the height of the parking building. They were spending the night in here, away from the dangers of the forest and its monsters, but they had made good time and they were more than halfway through the journey. If all went according to plan, they should reach the gates of Farcall in the afternoon, giving them time enough to visit the Guild and start asking around for the artifacts.

“How does the guild work?” Edmund asked.

Toora was sitting on the other side of the fire, her face illuminated by the warm light. “The Guild gets contracts from people, governments, nobles, etcetera to do various things for them, and also makes its own, then offers those contracts to adventurers, based on rank. An adventurer can only accept contracts of his rank, both for safety reasons and reliability reasons.”

“I see, yeah. That makes sense.” He nodded.

“Other than that, the Guild also works as merchants for everything related to adventuring and exploration. They keep their secret close, but apparently they have some sort of network where they can exchange all kinds of resources and materials, for a fee, in any part of the world. You can sell them anything, but it’s not the same for buying: you only gain access to more exotic things as you rank up.”

“Oh, and what if someone needed something but didn’t have the rank or wasn’t an adventurer?” he asked, thinking of shortcutting to his artifacts just with money.

“Many rich and powerful people send their trusted, high rank adventurers to buy stuff for them. That’s one of the perks of being a high ranker: comfortable living and pay in exchange for service to a noble or rich merchant.”

“I see. Interesting. So, in order to get my hands on the artifacts, I either have to become rich or become a high-ranker right?”

“Exactly.,” she said. “I would want to say you’re lucky because high rankers get paid a lot for the high rank contracts, but there’s a problem.”

He cocked his head. Problems already. “Which is?”

“The guild token is magical in nature. It fuses with you and tracks your contracts and monster kills in general. This is because, other than contracts and selling things, the other way to get paid and rank up is to kill powerful monsters, or a lot of monsters in general.”

She seemed apologetic as she said it, almost as if she felt guilty for something that was obviously not in her control. Regardless, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal to Edmund: with his power he could just create stuff and sell it to the guild through them for a quick buck. In any case, the big brother tracking token was an interesting authoritarian twist to the whole guild business.

“That’s oddly specific. Is it because they need to cull the monsters before they become a problem?”

“Yes. Powerful monsters are quirky, and can cause problems. This way, instead, the guild encourages reckless adventurers to challenge them. It’s a win-win for them.”

Edmund chuckled. Toora was not as naïve as he thought. “They either die, this way the guild doesn’t have to deal with a troublemaker, or they kill the dragon and the guild doesn’t have to send a team, right?”

She nodded. “Yep. Very smart.”

“I feel like there might be another reason.” He said, smirking.

“Oh?” she looked at him in the eye.

“Like, think about it. Why all this conflict? Why do monsters just appear?” he teased her, knowing full well that he had more information but she didn’t. It felt… satisfying, having a smidgen of power over someone again.

“High magic concentrations make them appear.”

“That might be true, but haven’t you felt it? You must have. The more magic you use, the more magic seems to just appear out of nowhere.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well… I’m not sure myself yet. Let’s leave the matter aside for now.” He studied her expression, and a little thrill went through his body at seeing how he was making her feel on edge with his teasing. He would tell her, in due time, but for now he was just enjoying the moment. There was no rush after all. “You mentioned that there was a problem with the guild?”

“Oh yes, sorry, the whole conversation went a bit sideways.”

“It happens. Does it have to do with the fact that the guild token is magical and fuses with you?”

“Yeah…” she looked away.

He sighed. “So, no token for me. No kill confirmations, contracts, ranks, and easy money. I guess I’ll have to rely on you even more now.”

She suddenly stared at him, feeling like a fire was within her. “You… would?”

“I have to!” he smiled.

“You’d be willing to trust me with that?” she went red.

“Again, doesn’t look like I have a choice.”

He actually did. And he wasn’t sure if she also knew he did, but he felt like she knew.

“Thank you. It means a lot. I will do my best.”

***

When looking at it from afar, it becomes very easy to see that the Forest of Eternal Dusk was situated inside a large depression in the ground, with at the center the infamous Lightsbane. The depression, which would have looked to Edmund’s eyes like a meteor crater at first, was several miles across and filled almost to the edge with the dense vegetation of the forest. It was home, now that the ever-present field of Axiom had retreated, to numerous monsters and dangerous creatures. It would take Edmund but a moment, however, while seeing the whole place from a considerable distance perhaps, to realize that instead of being a depression caused by an event the forest was something else. It was the only thing that remained more or less the same as it was three millennia ago: it was the rest of the world that had changed around it.

As the earth rose, everything within the protection of Axiom was preserved, and remained unmoving. There were also other effects caused by this overbearing protective presence, and for uncountable years only vegetation had managed to survive the harsh environment. Now, after three millennia, another upheaval was taking place there, as untold and never seen before amounts of magic were pouring in from an unknown source into the forest, creating, mutating and altering everything they touched.

Farcall was a small walled city that once served as a fortress town at the edge of a kingdom. It was built strategically near one of the few chokepoint that allowed entry into the forested chasm, but as time passed it found itself in the middle of a kingdom rather than at the border, and its prestige waned. The forest had always been silent, the terrain impossible to cross for all but the most reckless of adventurers, and as time passed unwavering the only thing that remained was the far away shard of black that was Lightsbane, towering over the sad shadow of a city that Farcall was.

This was bound to change. Already, monsters and dangerous things were wandering out of the forest from the few points of access, and soon what was considered a safe space in the middle of a kingdom was going to become a warzone. A place of last defense, a bastion against the never ending siege of the forces of the beyond, where monsters were thought to be born.

Farcall had already seen two bloody and disastrous battles by the time the party arrived at its battered gates. What little guards, ill equipped and badly trained were of stance here were no match for even the still weak monsters that the forest had managed to generate so far.

In the distance, the tower loomed. At the center of the depression in the ground, overlooking the forest, it towered impossibly tall. No longer was it all black, revealing silvery reflections and glassy surfaces instead. An ill omen to the elderly, who well before the first attack to the city already whispered among themselves about stories half made up and half heard who knows where.

All these years, Axiom of Choice had chosen the path this little patch of Terra had taken. No more.