The Beginning After The End

Chapter 511: Folded Space

ARTHUR LEYWIN

Kezess turned his back on the great wound in the sky, his eyes flashing like lightning as they swept across the other great lords and myself. “Come,” was all he said before his aether started to wrap around all of us.

I felt myself being dragged away and looked down at Ellie. Gritting my teeth, I resisted Kezess’s pull. “What are you doing?”

He scowled as aether flexed around us, visibly warping the air. “There is no time, Arthur.”

I held his eyes for just a second. Myre shifted, resting her hand on Kezess’s shoulder. The other great lords all turned to me, Radix frowning, Morwenna scowling, and both Rai and Novis looking pale and sick.

Regis leapt into me, while Sylvie pulled Ellie back a half step and nodded.

I let go, and space folded around me.

We appeared in a courtyard amid low, carved walls of white stone. Ivy-wrapped pillars rose from the ground, growing progressively taller as they marched toward what must have once been an arch of matching stonework.

Now, though…

Broken pieces of the arch were spread out in a sort of halo, floating in the air. Inside that halo, space itself was distorted, tearing as it opened out into the huge wound in the sky. The tear itself shimmered with an oil-slick of colors, like reflections off the surface of a bubble. The aurora effect was stronger here, staining the sky around the tear like blood seeping out from a scrape.

The other great lords were already moving. Dozens of asuras, mostly dragons, formed a half circle around the two broken stubs that marked where the arch had been. Everyone else quickly found space in the circle, and with Realmheart active, I could not only feel, but also see the mana particles of their spells move around the tear.

They were trying to hold it together.

A few of the dragons worked aetheric spells alongside their brethren’s mana-based magic, their spatium arts serving as a more powerful component in manipulating the torn space. When the great lords joined them, the slow growth of the wound suddenly halted, but the wound itself still shivered in the sky, an apocalyptic slash stretching from one edge of Epheotus to the other.

Regis drifted out of me in wisp form and floated toward the wound. I sensed the point when it grabbed and attempted to pull him through. ‘They’re barely holding it in check,’ he sent back to me, his form flickering like a gas lamp in a hot wind. ‘The pressure is incredible. Enough to slurp all of Epheotus right through.’

With some difficulty, he reversed course, flying down beside me and manifesting his physical shape as a large wolf maned with purple fire.

Through Regis, I had felt something. The torn space wasn’t Epheotus, but it wasn’t the world of Dicathen or Alacrya either—it wasn’t the real, physical space of the world. It was the barrier that separated the physical world from…anything else. Everything else. The aetheric realm, non-physical space, whatever else was out there—the dimension that Epheotus was safely cocooned within, neither fully inside nor outside of the world as we knew it.

It was a border, barrier, and transition all at once. As it ripped wide, Epheotus would be squeezed back into that physical space, with catastrophic consequences for both worlds.

Layers of insight pressed against one another in my mind. What I was seeing was both destruction and correction. When Epheotus was expelled and the bubble containing it had collapsed entirely, the wound would seal back over as if it had never existed—much like what Fate expected for the aetheric realm.

I stepped forward, passing through the half-circle of asuras until I stood right before the shattered feet of the archway. As I got closer, gravity shifted until the force pressing down on me, and the force pulling me toward the wound, were equal. Another step, and the rift would start dragging me through.

My name sounded from behind—Kezess’s voice—but King’s Gambit was slipping away and my concentration fracturing, the dozens of simultaneously held thoughts splintering off and breaking away, like branches too laden with wet heavy snow.

One single bright thought kept the hangover-fatigue back like a bright light in fog.

Core, aether channels, and the pure physical force of my pseudo-asuran physique all worked together automatically; bright streams of the amethyst particles wound through me, down my spine; my new godrune—pure, distilled insight both brand new and utterly familiar—sparked to life against my back.

The shape of the world changed within the lens of my perspective. Not in the way Realmheart aligned my focus so I could see mana particles, or God Step revealed the aetheric pathways, or even in the way King’s Gambit opened my mind up to so many different possibilities. These, in comparison, were so small, so narrowly focused.

Now, I felt…connected. Broadened.

I felt the space around me, how it had been molded and expanded. Epheotus was far too much world compressed into far too small an atmosphere. The asuras’ homeland didn’t exist simply in a physically bound space, as the world of Dicathen and Alacrya—or even my old world of Earth—did. Throughout its eons of history, Epheotus had continued to grow, constantly making more room for the expansion of asuran civilization.

And yet Epheotus did not hold the crux of my attention. The wound in space was bright and clear and horrible when viewed from my new perspective. The godrune didn’t change my physical sight; light didn’t bend any differently, no new dimension within three-dimensional space was revealed. It was more like how my core gave me a sixth sense about aether. I felt the way space unfolded around me, and I knew—because I had to, because the insight that had allowed me to learn the godrune both ensnared and included knowledge of the godrune itself—that I could touch the space, and that I could mold it.

My hands rose, more a ritual than physical necessity, and my mental fingers began to feel for the edges of the tear. The visual manifestations of distorted light that made the tear visible to the naked eye rippled as space itself was reshaped. Slowly, as I grew more confident, I began to pull the edges inward, smoothing them out and willing the spacial barrier closed.

Distantly, although I was unable to process the meaning of their words, I began to hear noises from the asuras. Gasps, pleas, shapeless words in encouraging tones. Then…

Space snagged.

The pressure created by the wound—the force that was pulling Epheotus into my world—was too great to pull the wound’s edges fully back together.

Changing tactics, I began to fold space along the tattered edges of the wound. The folds gripped the wound itself, holding it in place like staples in parchment. The space around the tear trembled, but the pressure was taken off the asuras currently fighting to prevent its continued expansion. At least for the moment.

As soon as I accomplished this, I began to lose my hold over the godrune. The conceptualization of space in this way was alien, and holding the varied and competing insights in my mind was exhausting. I could already feel the tension of fatigue behind my eyes like a building headache.

I sagged slightly as the godrune dimmed.

From behind me, a stern voice said, “What did you just do?”

I turned to meet Kezess’s gaze, his eyes shining like two blood-stained garnets as they reflected the scarlet aurora. “Bought us time, but…I don’t know how long it's going to last.”

“No, Arthur.” He took a step forward, and the world of Epheotus seemed to shift forward with him, contracting toward me. “What did you just do? How…” He couldn’t stop his focus from slipping upward, drawn into the gravity of the torn sky like Epheotus itself was at risk of doing. “You’ve been withholding things from me.”

I felt my brows lifting, my expression one of disillusioned astonishment. “Your world is collapsing in front of your very eyes and that’s the first thing you have to say?” I shook my head, a wry, disappointed smirk curling one corner of my lips. “I’ve only just gained new insight that formed a godrune on our ‘great hunt.’ I can sense and, in some ways, directly manipulate space. I’ve barely had the time to fully test my limits with it yet, and I can’t close the tear completely. Eventually, those folds in space will rip free, and the hole will start growing again.” I did not try to keep the harshness from my tone.

Kezess, to my surprise, did not react. Instead, he turned toward the others. “Focus all your efforts around those points in space, where the edges of the rift seem to pinch together. Buttress these points, and we may extend for ourselves the time Lord Arthur has bought for us.” With the orders given, he turned and began to walk away. There was something in his body language that clearly expressed an expectation that I follow, just as the other great lords did.

I considered simply not following as the other great lords fell into line behind Kezess. There was an incredible weight pressing in behind my eyes, and I wanted nothing more than to return to my family, lie and tell them everything would be okay, then close my eyes for a few hours.

Instead, with a sigh, I began following after the others.

‘Old Man Dragon is looking a little punch drunk,’ Regis noted as he kept pace at my side. ‘Agrona seems to have won this one, if I’m being honest.’

Let’s hope not, I shot back, although I was no more capable of lying to Regis than to myself in that moment.

Once we were well away from the asuras helping to bind the wound, Kezess came to a stop. When he spoke, his voice churned through the air as if resounding off the distant mountain peaks, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once, a blistering heat that rose up from the cold white stone of the wide courtyard floor. “Lord Leywin, you must return to Alacrya immediately.” A second’s pause, the bare flicker of hesitation, then, “I am tasking you with killing Agrona Vritra.”

As the other lords listened to Kezess, they each looked in a different direction. Morwenna stared at me, while Radix’s flint-hard eyes drilled into Kezess. Rai Kothan watched the sky, peering into the wound as if he could see all the way to the heart of Taegrin Caelum, where Agrona was no doubt frothing with glee at his success. Novis, on the other hand, turned away from the wound, gazing toward the horizon and flickering with mana.

I rolled a response around in my mouth for several seconds before speaking it aloud. “Shouldn’t we focus on your people first? We have to start evacuating Epheotus—”

“Nonsense!” Morwenna snapped, nostrils flaring with a sound like rustling leaves. “We absolutely will not let a single rogue basilisk bring down our entire world—”

Radix turned on her with the speed of a Silver Panther, his own much deeper voice vibrating across hers without effort. “And yet it seems as if he has done just that!” With each word, the titan lord appeared to grow by several inches. “Scrape the bark from your eyes, Lady Mapellia.”

“We have all been blind to the true intent of Agrona’s rebellion,” Rai said, his tone placating. “Now our eyes are open.”

A shiver ran through Novis, and flames danced along his skin and over his clothes. “Are they though?” He turned and stabbed one finger toward the wound. “What in all the blazing fires of the abyss could Agrona’s intent be with that?”

I stepped forward into the middle of the asuran lords, each of their cataclysmic power only barely contained. “It’s pretty obvious.”

All five great lords shifted their attention back to me, their faces expressing varying levels of incredulity. Only Kezess looked as if he understood what I was getting at.

“We don’t have time for this,” Kezess said, cutting off any further discussion. “Lords. We will not allow our people to lose hope in Epheotus, or faith in us. Collect those most trusted by your clans and communities, and return to my castle within the hour. I will make a statement.” For a moment, no one moved. “Go!” he snapped.

Morwenna jumped as if she’d been slapped. Stone cracked as a tree suddenly began to erupt from the ground, its silver trunk extending up over our heads and then branching out and spawning golden leaves. She gave Kezess a stiff bow, then spun and walked into the tree, which opened up to accept her passage. The moment she was gone, the golden leaves began to fall, and the silver bark sloughed off to reveal swiftly rotting wood. In moments, only a bed of leaves remained around our feet, and the entire tree was gone.

In the meantime, Radix had sunk into the ground, vanishing just as completely if less spectacularly. Novis leapt into the air, and his body swelled out into an enormous, avian form covered in feathers the color of fire and ash. He sped away with incredible speed, passing out of sight in just a few seconds.

Only Rai, Lord of Great Clan Kothan, remained. He cleared his throat. “No basilisk yet alive will side with Agrona. He doesn’t represent us, Lord Indrath. You can be certain of that.”

Kezess sneered. “Is Vritra blood really so different from Kothan blood?”

Rai winced, but the exact nature of his expression was difficult to parse. He gave a perfunctory bow, then turned and took a step forward. A black whirlwind sprang up from the stones, engulfed him, and then dissipated. The basilisk lord was gone.

“We should both go,” I said, watching the last of the golden leaves tossed around by the fading whirlwind. “Gather your best warriors. We will destroy Agrona together.”

“No.”

A single word, no thought, not an instant of hesitation. Utterly without room for argument.

I scoffed and threw my hands in the air. “Even now?”

Kezess turned his back on me and strode farther away from the asuras who were still working to prevent the wound from widening. I pressed my palms into my eyes as if I could push down the rising pressure in my skull, then begrudgingly followed. Aether eased down and into the King’s Gambit godrune, and I felt my consciousness explode outward into dozens of different branches, threads, and layers.

“Good,” Kezess said wryly. “Perhaps with your aether art active, you will be able to understand what I’m about to tell you.”

I didn’t have to bite back a retort, as the cold logic of having so many overlapping thought processes took no offence at his sniping. “By all means, enlighten me.”

Kezess did not stop marching forward, nor did he turn around to speak to me. He wove through an increasing density of ivy-covered half-walls, around little burbling fountains, and under archways of tangled vines and white stone. “Twice, I’ve struck directly at Agrona. The first attempt was shortly after he fled Epheotus. When my daughter went after him…” Kezess let out a huffing breath, his shoulders rising and falling in a sharp motion. “The entire Vritra clan followed him, as well as members of other basilisk clans as well, and even a few non-basilisk asuras.”

“You’ve explained this before,” I noted, wondering if he was trying to distract me.

“Of course,” he said, sounding unexpectedly tired. “The battle tore the continent apart, nearly splitting it in two and resulting in the formation of a new sea and mountain range. The attack was meant to be decisive. I sent even more loyal asuran soldiers than I knew was prudent…”

One thread of my conscious mind caught on his phrasing. What does he mean by ‘prudent?’

“Despite killing many of his followers—and many more of his Alacryans—the forces that reached his fortress, Taegrin Caelum, simply vanished. When, many centuries later, I tasked Aldir with assassinating Agrona and thus ending the war between your two continents immediately, half of his team was snapped out of existence in a moment. Neither event provided us with a clear picture of what Agrona had done, or how. In both events, we were forced to retreat from your world.”

The part of me listening and digesting his words fractured into several simultaneous and competing trains of thought. I stopped walking and sat down atop one of the half-walls, my arms crossed. Kezess marched forward for another ten feet or so before stopping and turning to look at me.

Kezess had been careful in his explanation of what Agrona wanted, back when I confronted him after fighting the Wraiths for Oludari. He wove his lies with truth, and hid both within story and legend. But throughout these conversations, Kezess had let slip a few details that now seemed very telling…

“Instead of fighting a cataclysmic war, regardless of our ability to win, I sent assassins, as many and as powerful as I could risk.”

“The attack was meant to be decisive. I sent even more loyal asuran soldiers than I knew was prudent…”

Even during the dragons’ brief watch in Dicathen, Kezess had sent so few soldiers, and mostly young and of limited power…

“Something scares you more than Agrona.” The words came out flat, a simple statement of fact. “I think it’s time to tell me the real reason why you’re afraid to leave Epheotus.”

A muscle in Kezess’s face twitched, and for a moment—for the first time since I’d known him—he looked old. Wrinkles did not suddenly spread across his face like cracked desert clay, but his spirit itself seemed to suddenly flag, like a sprinter reaching the end of their endurance. His power retracted into him. His eyelids fluttered and his lips paled as they pressed into a thin line.

It was so fast and so subtle I doubted I’d have noticed if not for King’s Gambit.

Then he swallowed, and it was as if the fatigue I’d seen had never existed at all, and I had to wonder for a second if I’d imagined it entirely. “Power is like a beacon, Arthur. It shines far and wide, drawing attention from those who would challenge it, bow to it, beg and scrape and plead of it, or even those who would forcefully take it as their own.” A pause, then, “You yourself are from two worlds. You know that more types of magic than just mana and aether exist. As I said before, everything I’ve done has been to keep this world alive, as there are far worse things than the Vritra out in the darkness.”

As he said this last, his gaze shifted to the wound. My own followed, and together we looked into the darkness around the blue, green, and brown surface of my world.

All the many disparate threads of my conscious mind slammed together. I’d never had any reason to consider other worlds beyond Earth and my new home. The fact that there would be other planets populated with different beings who utilized magic not born of mana, aether, or ki seemed obvious in the face of Kezess’s statement, and yet I had entirely failed to consider it.

My King’s Gambit enhanced mind raced toward a dozen simultaneous considerations. I opened my mouth to try and ask a dozen questions at once but cut myself off.

Kezess took the opportunity to keep speaking. “Listen to me, Arthur. This part—the safety of all asuran kind—is my burden to bear. Epheotus, the world, its place inside the greater cosmos. All the things you blame me for. My burden, do you understand? Right now, no matter how your wheels might spin, you need to focus on a single essential reality: finding and destroying Agrona Vritra is your task. I do not fully understand why, but I believe you have become what you are exactly so that you can now defeat Agrona. Whatever power has stymied the asuras who have gone to face him, perhaps you can counter.”

My jaw worked silently as I filtered through a dozen responses for the right one. I thought of the memories of Sae-Areum and the fall of the Djinn, of the rage felt by the second Djinn projection toward the dragons, at the images of one civilization after another falling. I thought of Fate’s explanation of the aetheric realm, and how it was unnaturally bound. Each of these events opened up before King’s Gambit like pages in a book, their lessons and themes splitting through my mind as I fit them into this new explanation Kezess had offered.

I saw no signs that he was being dishonest. He did not fidget or grow restless. There was no quickening of his pulse or shifting of his eyes. But he was an ageless asura, and I had seen firsthand how he acted when in control, and when that control slipped. I couldn’t recall a time when he was as direct or open with me as he seemed now.

‘You can acknowledge his words but think for yourself, princess. Even his truths are used to manipulate,’ Regis, who had been quiet and retracted due to King’s Gambit, thought tentatively.

I could have smiled. At that moment, Regis and I weren’t completely in line. He wasn’t experiencing the bulk of my thoughts, as neither Regis nor Sylvie could make sense of the aggregate processes powered by King’s Gambit. I could have smiled because I realized what needed to happen. Much could be forgiven, especially if the offender was repentant and willing to change.

“I understand, Kezess,” I said at last. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

Kezess’s brows pinched together a fraction of an inch as I repeated those words, but he didn’t otherwise acknowledge that he recognized them.

“I will find Agrona, and I will end him once and for all.” I looked at the wound and thought, And then I will have to find some way to deal with that. Aloud, though, I continued: “Should I leave immediately, or would you like me to stay for this pronouncement of yours? Either way, I need to gather my clan.”

Kezess crossed his arms and tapped a finger on his chin. “It would be good for you to be there. It is unlikely an hour or two will make the difference regarding the survival of either world, but the presence of all nine great lords will certainly help to give our people a sense of ongoing stability.”

I raised a brow and fidgeted with a vine of ivy. “All of us?”

Kezess gave me a wry look. “Yes, yes. We can’t afford this discord between Ademir and myself to continue. I have no doubt even such a stubborn pantheon as him will be willing to lay aside his rage for a moment, considering what faces us.”

I put on a smile and slid down from the wall. “Let’s get moving then. Unless there’s anything else?”

Kezess hesitated. “Before we return…” He chuckled, an airy sound, just barely audible. “Arthur, thank you. Your actions earlier, against Khaernos, and your efforts here with this wound…” His eyes, settled now into an angry, bruise-purple color, jumped to the sky behind me. “I know you haven’t entirely been able to put your faith in my intentions, but you have been able to see past our…differences and work at my side.”

He straightened and raised his chin. “I’m not blind to the fact that I owe you. Trust that I will return this favor in time. There may be things I have purposefully kept from you over the years, but Agrona’s tearing the veil between worlds may very well have undone millennia of effort to ensure the continued safety of both your world and mine. Everything will come clear in time.

“So,” he said, raising a hand brushing it through the air like pushing aside a curtain. I felt his power move through me and realized he was attempting to break the binding he’d placed on me to enforce our exchange of information for protection of Dicathen.

Belatedly, I released the aether I had bound to imitate his spell, having already broken it myself.

Kezess blinked, outwardly bemused, then let out a single, genuine laugh. “But of course you did.” He rolled his eyes. “Nevermind. Come, Arthur. Despite the challenges ahead, for you and I, at least, I believe this is a new beginning.”

He turned and space began to fold in front of him as his teleportation ability drew us back to Indrath Castle.

In the last moments before the spell took me, I let my expression fall, my gaze cold and sharp against his back.