Edward Turner absently glanced at his scrying mirrors, each of which was randomly flitting through the empire’s many different Chaos Founts. A group of Apprentices and a Journeyman were featured briefly in one of the scenes, but the mirror’s built-in circuits had alerted him to a potential treasure.

He waved a hand lazily, a signal for one of the mirrors to remain at the scene, focus on the delvers, and allow sound to record into the attached memory crystal. Then, he returned his main consciousness’ attention to the tomes and grimoires he was currently studying.

Several hundred strands of consciousness worked at the puzzles the grimoires posited, seeking esoteric solutions to his perennial problem. Alas, after several subjective hours of study, he was no closer to finding it. In fact, he felt that he had been set back instead. He was close to Ascension, he knew it, but the path, the methodology, eluded him.

He was making his own, but that required a long, long process of verification, experimentation, and not a little bit of insight and enlightenment. Luck had little to do with the process, but helped with some flashes. If he could find natural treasures, or old records of Ascenders, grimoires, tomes, old artefacts…

It was why he sponsored hundreds of delving groups. The Chaos Founts could show a path, but the chances were infinitesimal. And only when the Chaos Founts weren’t stable. So why did his alerts focus on a normal delve?

Not that those were useless to Edward. Chaos Founts brought wealth, after all. But hardly anything truly new.

So it was with surprise, and not a small amount of elation that his instruments started going crazy. His eyes widened as a rift ripped through the borders of the Chaos Fount’s demesne, and a glowing ball of power popped out right in front of one of the Apprentices, who happened to be at the back of the line. The young man started, then began to reach for it.

Time stopped.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Edward’s subjective time flowed ten thousand times faster than everything else. It was an arcana from the culmination of centuries of study and nearly all thirty-four arcane circles within his core.

He activated a relic gate, set to link with the scrying mirrors, and opened a portal to the Chaos Fount. He walked out, just in front of the Apprentice, who stared blankly at the golden orb. Up close, Edward could feel its incredible power, potent beyond belief, but also, shallow and weakening. He wove his arcana to hold the orb of power, but even as the elemental energies spun into a cage, the orb started to waver, to shake. It was breaking out of the slowed time and entering the same speed as Edwards.

But the source of its power was depleted. Thankfully, it was its quality that Edward needed. To study, to emulate, and to break through his limits. The cage completed, it froze the orb into a timeless space. He could feel it struggling, even there, and if not for all of his relics, the orb would have broken free immediately.

No matter.

His gaze fell on the Apprentice. Two spell circles within the unshrouded core, the first circle coded for force arcana, while the second to duplicate and multiply the first. An evoker then. There were many evokers in the empire, and one would not be missed. He saw the orb, and while it was unlikely for the young man to cause troubles, Edward had not lived for millennia by being careless.

He wove the same arcana that sped him up, but only around the young man’s heart. He didn’t have a natural barrier, nor did he have any relics for defence. The arcana snapped in place and the young man’s heart began to beat. It pushed out the blood already in place, but could not pull the blood yet to enter. Absent of life-nourishing fluid, the heart beat for thousands of seconds, before it seized.

An easy, and painless death. Well, maybe not painless, but quick anyway, and more importantly, unidentifiable. To his peers, his heart just stopped beating. Edward’s arcana faded away, even the residues were cleaned up. No evidence at all.

He walked through the portal back to his tower and headed towards his laboratory, where his most powerful containment artefacts were. He looked forward to peeling away at the orb's secrets and he couldn’t keep the eager smile off his face.

__________

Heron carefully stared at the mirror, paintbrush in hand, and shirtless. His abdomen was covered in silver paint, contrasting sharply with his tanned skin. The pattern he did was simply a placeholder and a guide, otherwise, every time he bathed, or even over time, the pattern would fade. It was the combination of his Animus, Ennoia energies, and his Will, that truly made the pattern.

He carefully kept his mind empty as he drew the pattern. He double-checked with the mirror and the reference sketch he made to make sure every fractal, every twist and turn, was accurate. Once he created the outer reserves to hold eight hundred lumens, he would be ready to advance to Actualisation. His hands trembled and he forced it to still.

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It wasn’t that he was nervous about messing up the patterns. It wasn’t even runescript. It was an artistic interpretation of Animus, the winds, and his desires. He was leaning heavily into his creativity and imagination, and he could only really do it through the medium of paint. He certainly had no mastery of runescript.

Intent and Will should help. He knew a little bit about the fundamental strengths of the Anima and the mind, from what he heard from Yuriko, his father, and the other elder Knights. Intent was mostly leveraged by Spellweavers, Sorcerers, and Knight-Commanders. Knight Captains could leverage Intent too, but mostly as a prelude to advancing.

Heron figured that if that was what was needed to advance later, he might as well start now.

His thoughts suddenly pulled up striking memories over the past weeks. The painting he made of Yuriko and Krystal’s stare-off had troubled him greatly. It was eerie and frightening how some unseen force moved another person without being felt or seen. But then, that was the representation of the Threads of Fate, wasn’t it?

Krystal had gone quiet and contemplative and Yuriko admitted that their duel had been an attempt to help Krystal figure out her Ennoia. That he managed to be of material help had felt good. Mikel had quietly thanked him, and in his normal fashion, simply grunted an acknowledgement. The smaller boy was no longer as insufferable to Heron now that Mikel and Krystal were paired up. Ah, it was also Yuriko’s Mien that had pushed him, though he was rather uncomfortable blaming it on his goddess.

Hmmm. Gwendith had planned to advance soon, perhaps earlier today. He had been ready much earlier but he deferred to Gwendith since the woman had been the first amongst the two of them to walk the Ancient’s Way. Now that she’d succeeded, it was his turn.

This was a special advancement, he knew. Perilous, according to Yuriko. But he figured he just needed to be firm and steadfast. Just like how he intended to be with her.

He sighed to himself, and since his hand was no longer trembling, he began to paint on his belly. The memory of seeing Yuriko’s flushed face when he showed off his prototype made him grin and steadied his hand even further.

He glanced at the five whitish scars over his chest. A souvenir from the Hunters back during his first year of Atavism. They had faded somewhat, but since his skin was darker–a nice burnished bronze–they still stood out.

Once he finished his stylized art, he put down the brush, and made sure that the paint didn’t make a mess. Then, he focused, took a seated meditation pose, and infused the art forms with his Animus, Intent, and Will.

The process lasted for some time. The Animus came from his inner storage before transferring to the outer. One of the pitfalls he had to work through was how to get the outer reserves to regenerate Animus without having to charge it with his internal core. The solution he came up with was something akin to using pressure. Once the pattern had solidified into his body and Anima, he would fill the reserves with Animus, squeezing out everything else. Once he uses them up, the vacuum within should pull in ambient Chaos to process into Animus. The way he made the pattern, backflow would be nearly impossible.

He thought of using something like valves, but he didn’t want any moving parts that required his focus. He asked around for a shape, an idea, or a concept that would help, and it was actually one of the Karcellians, Edison Matthews, the middle-aged gentleman who helped them sneak across enemy territory, who gave him the pattern, as well as the seed of an idea for his method.

“Well, here goes nothing,” he muttered. The pattern was completely infused and he withdrew his internal Animus from it. As it drained away back inside his body, the ambient Chaos around him swirled violently before turning into a vortex. It drained towards his pattern, heating the air around him. The mid-Season cold was suddenly blown away, and Heron gritted his teeth as he felt an immense pressure fall upon his body and Anima.

He kept his condensed aura within him, not allowing it to interfere with the process. Soon enough it was filled completely, and after a blink of an eye, he was suddenly elsewhere.

Thick mists covered his body even as he kept to the seated meditation pose. Ah, there was nothing underneath. He was floating in the clouds. Wasn’t something supposed to happen?

All around him, thick golden threads materialised. It entangled his body, his Anima. He felt, more than saw, a thick cable wrapped around his heart, and he could feel a familiar presence within it. He thought to follow, and the next thing he knew, he was seated just underneath Yuriko’s golden shadow.

She was in a seated meditation pose, but her Anima encompassed everything around them. He couldn’t see the end, but he was wrapped up in a protective cocoon. He sensed the connections between them, but then, a violent gust blew away the mists and revealed a greyish space. The golden threads spun around them, and visions assaulted his mind.

Visions so evil, so grotesque that he couldn’t imagine bearing it. He gritted his teeth as his fears came into being. It was not one of monstrosities or indomitable foes.

No, the very worst nightmares that plagued his sleep were not horrors and enemies. It was of himself, making a choice that he would come to regret.

Choices made in pride.

Choices made in anger.

Choices made in pain.

Every choice should be made with a cool head. Calmed emotions and rational thought. He was not someone who could take absolute control of himself. He struggled with his feelings of jealousy for years when all it would have taken to assuage them was to take a step forward.

A step that seemed immeasurably far, almost impossible to take.

If he had taken it back then…then perhaps he would not have struggled for so long.

But the past was the past. No nightmares of his foolish jealousy would deter him.

Even were she to love somebody else…

Even if she was to lie with someone else…

Even if she were to push him away, discard him, throw him, and even end him…

He would remain steadfast. It was what he wanted. Devotion to his goddess.

The image of Yuriko’s shadow and the millions of different threads spinning around her lingered in his mind.

The threads would have entangled a lesser person, but he saw that the threads dared not make contact. They dared not force her hand. They could only guide and prod.

He would be the rock that broke the wave, the wind that scoured her foes.

He swore this oath.

Choice made.