Universe's End

Oscuro had been one hell of a ride.

Oh sure, he’d been here once prior, some ten years ago, just a bit after the Founders had originally left Aelia, but that had been reconnaissance, time spent with his stepsister-in-law.

This time had been different. Exploring the dark lands alongside his wife, the love that illuminated his eyes every morning. No darkness could stand before them; she was the dawn that ushered in the radiance to his suns.

Oscuro was a land of endless darkness and twilight with twisted miasmic shadows. Still, within the shallows, it could do naught but fall before them.

And so, the two had spent their time together simply enjoying going on the adventure, making sense of the weird spatial warpages and the other secrets of the early lands. It was actually how Apostolos had learned the spatial distortions were connected; one could travel between linked locations if one just took the time to understand the trick. Having cleared the Trial of Space long ago and being quite the skilled magician in his own right, Apostolos had cracked that code, making travel through the shallows of Oscuro far simpler.

It was from the much faster exploration that he’d eventually caught wind of his niece and her group. It was old, but they’d noticed traces of their group moving outward.

And that was a problem. During his time in Oscuro years ago, he and Marcie had never attempted to push too far out; there simply wasn’t any information about what was out there. At the very least, they’d concluded that things would escalate rapidly past a certain point.

Which, if his hunch was correct, meant that Roxy was in danger.

It had only taken a single conversation with his wife for the two of them to switch courses: no longer leisurely enjoying the shallows of Oscuro and occasionally messing with other groups they stumbled across, they instead made haste toward the outer lands, pushing past the shallows.

Using the linked spatial distortions, the daylight duo rapidly pushed outward, tracking the group’s traces. With each campsite or battle location, Apostolos became more certain.

They were making a mistake. A group consisting of only two peak elites wasn’t enough for the risk they were quickly drawing nearer to.

The threat of a territory alpha.

Faster, they pushed on until, at last, Apostolos could see the mountain pass that divided the first portion of Oscuro from the deeper areas.

And more importantly, he could distinctly sense a barrier had been erected, a separation and lock placed on space itself.

“Shit,” Apostolos had said the moment he felt it, glancing at his wife.

“That’s a strong barrier,” Violet answered, frowning. She was strong, but she wasn’t on the level of a transcendent like Apostolos; however, their abilities complemented each other so well that, when fighting alongside her husband, she sat somewhere between the two worlds. “How long will it take?”

Not if, simply how long, for not a single moment did Violet doubt her husband.

“Can you boost me?” Apostolos asked.

“Of course, my love,” Violet said, batting her eyes at him. Long ago, that might have made Apostolos feel awkward or shy, but now it only filled him with resolve.

After all, how could it not? She was the mother of his children, the light of his eyes, and the matriarch of the grand family Apostolos had never realized he so desperately had craved.

“Then let’s do this,” Apostolos said as his wife placed her palms on his back. Instantly, blue fire began to suffuse his very essence. Rather than burn away at him, it was as if, upon encountering his own solar affinity, the dawnfire melded together with his own solar energies, like two halves discovering they’d always been meant to fit into each other. If Apostolos had to put a feeling to it, it was joy. A sense of utter joy as the energies melded.

Letting that feeling burn through him, warm him to the very core, Apostolos glanced back once, nodding to his wife.

“I’ll catch up,” Violet answered. “Go.”

Everything he needed to hear, Apostolos simply vanished, a yellow flash of light that in a single instant passed through the spatial lock, shattering it completely. Catching the tail end of the exposition, Apostolos stood tall, appearing in front of the worn-out Kai Rong and Flair as they themselves had been willing to lay down their lives for a mere barkeep.

Apostolos might not have been the Chief Protector any longer, but the pride that swelled inside of him at the sight couldn’t be matched. Ehkorrus and its people were his family just as much as his blood was.

“Their worth is not for you to judge,” Apostolos announced, brandishing his trusty scythe.

“All worth is mine to judge,” the monster that had been preparing to kill them said.

Territory Alpha, as if that is any surprise. Level eighty. Complicated.

“You hear that, honey?Better watch yourself, or you might not pass his test,” Violet teased as she caught up after several seconds. The difference between moving the speed of light and moving really fucking fast was still essentially the speed of light.

Appearing clad in dawnfire as she’d increased her speed, Violet stood there, hands on her hips, before turning to look at the exhausted Flair.“Oh, Flair, I’m going to borrow those.”

What flames had lingered, clearly a byproduct of Flair going all out, morphed, turning dawnfireblue.

“So then,” Apostolos said, smiling as his wife took control of the remaining fire, before facing the Temple Guardian. “What was that about you being the one to judge worth?”

“All is mine to judge.”

Apostolos nodded along.

By that, I assume it means you need to clear this monster to be allowed access deeper within Oscuro, and depending on whether you pass its evaluation, it decides whether it even lets you escape. Brutal.

Having felt like he’d gotten a sense of the situation, Apostolos couldn’t help but smirk.

“Then I will be the judge of that.”

It was definitely more of a Rory-ism, but hey, sometimes playing up the big damn hero had its time and place.

Rushing forward— much slower than before, given that he could only hold the light-speed surge in a single straight shot, and only while out of battle—Apostolos clashed against the man-monster M’wana, scythe head glancing and locking against the haft of the monster’s crescent spear.

“Thou overestimate thyself.”

“Perhaps,” Apostolos acknowledged. As powerful as he was, M’wana was still listed as a territory alpha, and while founder-tier combatants were enough to face such a foe in two-way combat, Apostolos wasn’t quite at that level, and Violet definitely wasn’t.

But.

But matchups were matchups.

Flaring his aura, M’wana seemed to stagger back, blinded by the solar radiance shining from Apostolos as blue fire began to circle him like a loyal hunting dog.

“Thought so,” Apostolos said with a wide smile, “You’re just as prone to solar energies as everything else here.”

Having everything he needed to know, Apostolos went on the attack, a blinding flurry of radiant fury, blue flames feeding into him as columns of dawnfire erupted in sudden, twisting explosions across the battlefield.

“Worth acknowledged,” M’wana said within moments of their battle.

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“Oh, that’s not good enough for me,” Apostolos shot back.

M’wana slashed out with his spear, a flat streak of blackness launched forward like a reality-dividing slash. Twisting his body mid-air, Apostolos cleared the darkness blade like an Olympian high jumper clearing a bar. Returning the favor, Apostolos slashed out as a radiant blade of light cut through the air, striking the monster as it staggered, each solar attack hitting with several times the effectiveness than they had any right to.

Realizing that Apostolos was definitely the worst foe to face, M’wana attempted to move past him to target Violet from the background, but shimmering into a haze of light, Apostolos appeared directly in his path, blocking the attempt.

Photon Jump wasn’t on the same level as Rory’s flicker movement, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t effective; it just had a very short range by comparison.

“Incoming,” Violet said as Apostolos felt his grin widen further. Beneath him, a circle of blue fire had appeared, a magic circle that had been building up as the blue flames remained untouched on the battlefield. Having reached maturity, the skill activated as it appeared, draping from his shoulders.

It looked like a cloak spun of blue embers, woven into a singular garment. As it rested upon him, it reminded Apostolos of the comforting feeling of simply holding his wife’s hand.

“Mantle received,” Apostolos announced.

Dawn Raises the Day. In all Apostolos’s time alive, it was the single most unique skill he’d ever encountered.

Mantle, the aura of self, was unique to each person, the very energy that protected them from external magics being cast within oneself or the likes. It was perhaps the most important piece to any battle that wasn’t a direct physical clash. Utterly non-transferable, one could barely even cast their mantle a few inches beyond their body.

Or, that was the rule except for a single outlier case.

Because Dawn Raises the Day broke that rule—two separate, unique mantles, fusing and becoming one.

Apostolos wasn’t the only one wearing something new; Violet had also been cast in a cloak of her own. Except in her case, the cloak looked as if it were woven from sunlight spun into peerless silk.

The main oddity of the skill was that only Violet could initiate it, perhaps a reflection of their history, in which Violet had initiated their relationship to begin with.

Clad in mirroring cloaks of melded mantles, they were far more than the sum of their parts.

“Now then, where were we?” Apostolos asked, smirking at the Temple Guardian.

Roxy had grown strong; in fact, she was easily an elite among tier sevens, trying to reach even beyond that station. She’d learned much over her life, and much like her father, she was quite adept at feeling and making sense of concepts when she encountered them.

Watching Uncle ‘Los and Aunty Violet fight together, there was a single concept that seemed to shine brighter than anything else, demanding all attention.

Love. The truest, strongest form, without a single crack. Roxy had met plenty of couples in her time; they weren’t exactly rare, but there was something so deep between her adopted aunt and uncle that it seemed to mock everyone else as mere pale reflections of what true love felt like.

Thanks in part to her empathic resonance, Roxy could glean more from it than most might, and to describe it was to describe the warmth of a fresh-baked cookie, but the strength of the deepest bones that shaped a world.

It was awe-inspiring, and that wasn’t even touching on how they fought as a pair, either. Roxy had thought Flair and Kai Rong were in synch, but Uncle ‘Los and Aunty Violet seemed to act with a single mind, not a single wasted motion between them, Uncle ‘Los the perfect vanguard, Aunty Violet the engine that kept him going.

Yet, with that said, Roxy could also see how, in a world where they weren’t such perfect counters against the denizens of Oscuro, even their perfect synergy would have struggled against the might of a territory alpha. It was like every one of the attacks delivered by Uncle ‘Los was being empowered by Elijah’s Legacy of the Soul, and the same could be said of Aunty Violet’s dawnfire magic.

The oily-black armor seemed to squirm away from the light, the ink-black skin that had seemed so impenetrable now splitting as easily as a child cutting themselves on a sharpened knife.

As her father had explained in the past, matchups were matchups. And Oscuro was no match for the daylight duo.

Even when M’wana managed to land an attack on Uncle ‘Los, his daybreak armor drank in the darkness, burning it away as if it were a mere droplet of water splashing against a raging inferno. The kinetic force of the attacks was still a problem, but that was where Uncle Apostolos’s anima body came in handy; there was no way to physically slow the man down. He always functioned at either 0% or 100%, with no in-between to take advantage of.

Continuing to burn away at the body of M’wana, the man-monster was evidently on the back foot, attempting different castings. A vortex of darkness swallowed Uncle ‘Los, but its hold on him was non-existent as the dawnfire cloak he’d been cast in shone brightly, and he slapped aside the darkness.

Then there had been the summons, a wolf pack that stepped out from the folded shadows, whispering from the corners of reality. They were chalk-white in contrast to the usual darkness. While they were more effective than the usual darkness attacks, they ran into a problem of their own.

Aunty Violet’s fireflies. Blue burning embers latched onto the chalk-like creations before rapidly consuming them as if whatever concept fueled the wolf pack was an especially delicious treat to the blue embers.

With the darkness magic and abilities rendered moot, and Uncle ‘Los more than capable of dancing the dance of death against the ink-black man-monster, M’wana eventually retreated, his body dissipating before reforming out of direct physical range of Uncle ‘Los.

“Defeat is known. Withstand and prevail, and entry shall be granted.”

The man-monster’s spear vanished, as did its armor, revealing its form laid completely bare. It was as featureless as her father’s description of E.O.Ns’ chosen avatars, save for the symbols painted across its body. More importantly, no longer adorned by armor or weapons, the man-monster suddenly brought its hands together, darkness surging like a twister reaching out of sight.

“Noctis.”

Invoking a magic that Roxy failed to understand, between the man-monster’s hands a black star had appeared, only the size of a large pebble, twinkling with inverted light and woven of miasmic shadows darker than any she had seen before.

Whatever the case, it was clear that Uncle ‘Los took whatever was happening deadly serious, his emotions flaring with alarm.

“Need me?” Aunty Violet said as she stepped next to Uncle ‘Los, smiling at her husband.

“Always,” her uncle said, reaching his hand out.

Touching the tips of their fingers together, the two intertwined their fingers just enough so that there was still space between their palms. In direct contact, it was as if their cloaks responded to the touch, swirling around each other until their auras seemed to become one, a tapestry of brilliant blue dawnfire and radiant daylight. From the space between their palms, the two energies of daylight and dawnfire began to twist and swirl rapidly, until what remained was a star of their own, blue and made of radiant dawnfire.

“Fall to Darkness. Night that comes to the Land of Night. Noctis-Oscuro!”

Crushing its palms together, the dark star erupted as a flash of darkness radiated outward. It wasn’t fast, but then it didn’t need to be; it was the inevitable march of darkness, the night to end all nights.

Yet the pair of Uncle ‘Los and Aunty Violet didn’t so much as flinch. Sharing one last look, the two smiled before, in perfect synchrony, they punched forward with their hands loosely clasped around the baby-blue star.

“Fusion Art: Blue Star Pulsar!” The two spoke, voices melded perfectly.

Had it not been for Roxy’s witnessing her father and the Spear launch two conceptual projections at one another and the resulting explosion of power, she would have, without a doubt, declared the magic meld of her aunt and uncle the single most powerful attack she’d ever seen.

The final darkness crashed against the eruption of radiant dawnfire as the two forces clashed, each seeking the upper hand. It was clear that M’wana had been serious about making this its final attack; it had evidently put everything into it, the only reason the darkness, with such a disadvantaged matchup, was capable of holding its own.

But holding its own and winning were different things.

As a child, Roxy had once asked her father about the twin suns that rose in the morning and set at night, curious if there was anything brighter out there. Her father, being the man he was, had launched into several tangents about space, always buffering them with an explanation that some of what he was sharing was ‘subject to change,’ something Roxy had never quite understood. Still, her father was an odd man at times, and so she had never questioned it.

The main point, though, was that during his lecture on the oddities and interests of space, he’d explained how out in space, the brightest and hottest stars were blue stars.

And that’s exactly the force that Uncle ‘Los and Aunty Violet had invoked with their fusion art.

The fate of night’s darkness was well known: to fall to the light of the rising day, and even within the belly of Oscuro, that fate did not change. Overwhelming the darkness at last, the Blue Star Pulsar raged forward all at once, bringing daylight to the land of darkness for one brief moment. As the light faded, Roxy squinted. Where M’wana had stood, now only a black wisp remained.

“Worth, excellent. Access to Oscuro-Noctis, Granted.”

With that, the dark wisp shot away toward the temple the monster had guarded.

Several seconds passed before it was Uncle ‘Los who spoke up.

“Well, that wraps that up. Let’s get you all somewhere safer.”

No longer crushed under an invisible force, Roxy gingerly rose to her feet.

“What… what happened?”

“Oh, at the end there?” Apostolos scratched at his chin, his skin like polished mahogany, unmarked as always. “I’m guessing that M’wana monster shot off to reform. It wasn’t a ‘true’ monster, so much as it was a test from Oscuro itself.”

“A test for what?” Roxy asked; even though she’d heard what it had said, she wanted to make sure she wasn’t mistaken.

“Well, to travel into the real parts of Oscuro,” Uncle ‘Los chuckled. “These ‘shallows’ are just a playground, where a tier seven can participate and still be useful. But Oscuro was always advertised as a place for those of tier eight and above. I’m assuming that beyond the mountain pass, when you enter Oscuro-Noctis, the average monster is probably only a little below that M’wana.”

“Will you head there?” Roxy asked.

“Hah, not a chance,” Uncle ‘Los said. “Violet and I had to use up our mantle meld there. That takes a long time to regain. The more time we spend simply appreciating warm moments together, the faster it recovers. Here in Oscuro? We’d probably be looking at a full year.”

“So, what then?”

“Well, if we’d come here with a true team, for example, Marcie, Tsarina, we still might not attempt it; we’d need a support member of that level. But we didn’t come here with that sort of organization or goal. So, instead, we will escort you all back to the safer areas, and we can spend the rest of our time here butting heads with the other teams. E.O.N. knows there has been enough of that; your crew just decided to beeline to the far edges of the shallows.”

Roxy glanced at the temple in the distance, frowning to herself.

“So… it just goes untouched?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Violet said, taking her turn to speak. “After all, you’re forgetting something.”

“What?” Roxy asked.

“Aelia isn’t the only planet with access to Oscuro,” Violet laughed.

“Oh,” Roxy said, feeling a bit like an idiot.

“Excuse me? I’m not sure I follow.” Elijah had finally found his voice, looking rather confused.

“What she means,” Apostolos said, crossing his arms. “Is that while the cycles of Oscuro entry might have been a bit off due to it only just starting up, there is now another planet to consider. A planet with folks who are stronger than us.”

“Dad and the others,” Roxy added.

“Mhmm,” Apostolos nodded. “So, while we might stick to these shallows, to ‘our’ Oscuro, that isn’t true for them.”

Pointing at the temple in the distance, Apostolos shook his head, looking somewhat amused.

“That’s the version of Oscuro the Founders will take by storm.”