LEVEL 0 IMMORTAL

Mira found Elias sitting cross-legged in the empty room at the end of the corridor. He was naked, and she glimpsed the nine marks on his chest pulsing and she looked away.

There were times that she believed that Elias, for all his beauty, was still human, but seeing those marks on his chest pulsing with his breathing was a stark reminder that the man she served was something more... In the old stories, beings like these were called Ajin, for they walked between the divine and the mundane, and there were many places in the desert that worshipped the Ajin, even in the oasis, there were many believers.

Pushing away these thoughts, she hurried to get a large towel and readied a new set of clothes, Mira expected that Elias would be wanting to take a bath very soon and being ahead of this matter was what a good maid was expected to do.

Making sure that the water for his bath was heated, she knelt by the side and waited for him, and more than thirty minutes passed before that happened.

"The message?" Elias suddenly asked, and maybe because he was focused on other things and did not bother with hiding the hidden bass of his voice, Mira trembled because it was almost as if she just heard the voice of a god speaking to her.

After a second, Mira hurriedly bowed, "The message has been delivered," she said. "Your teacher, the dwarf, Gideon was hard to find," she chuckled nervously, "but I followed your instructions and found him in the deep forges, below the armory."

Elias said nothing, waiting for her to continue, he had noticed that Mira was prone to overexplaining, but he did not mind, and he was learning information that may be necessary in the future.

"After giving him your message, he told me to read it out to him, and maybe it was because I was shocked because I thought you made a mistake but I kept hesitating before I told him what you wrote, and he was just quiet for a while before he said... " She paused, remembering the weight of the dwarf’s voice, even while she was panicking that Elias may have made a mistake in what he wrote, "He said, ’The boy wants to carry a mountain.’"

Elias’s lips curved, the barest suggestion of a smile. The dwarf was one of the most favorite of all the members of the Order, and Elias had known that if he really wanted to excavate the potential of Stone Skin, he would need his help.

He expected that he would reject his request and Elias would have to go to him personally. Sending Mira was just a way to understand the mindset of Gideon. What should he carry with him when he goes to visit? What would a dwarf like Gideon want?

"He said yes, but he would need three days to gather all of the materials and then another three weeks to forge it, and it would cost you."

Mira presented a burnt paper to him, and Elias blinked as he took it. " He said yes?"

Elias looked at her, especially at her stature that was shorter than average, ’Was it possible that he just found a way to get through the gruff and silent exterior of Gideon?’

Mira noticing the surprise on Elias’s face, she smiled and nodded at his question, stood up and she was at the door when his voice stopped her.

"Mira."

She turned and found Elias’s eyes were on her.

"Thank you," he said.

She nodded, "Your bath is ready, call me if you need anything."

㉧

Veyris found Calyx in the eastern solar, a room that carried the weight of ancient unknown history. The walls were lined with tapestries so ancient their colors had faded to ghosts of what they once were, scenes of battles fought before there was a city to fight for, or when there was a continent to hold them.

The battle scenes were extremely strange because it showed unknown combatants with vast bat-like wings and others that seemed to be made out of stone, even light itself, but the one thing that was consistent in all of these scenes was that the scale of the battle was terrifying as a single tapestry could show a scene of millions of combatants, each of them drawn in detail although they were smaller than ants.

Only the eyes of the Lord Protector and others of his level could glean the mysteries behind these images, but to even go through a single of these tapestries was something that would take years, even decades of study.

Except for the Ascendants and very ancient Angels, most Siphons did not know the true nature behind the past and this was not a strange thing, because this world was old and vast, and its mysteries were endless.

It was said that the gods could cross continents in a single bound, and therefore their domain was vast beyond reckoning. How could mere mortals, even given the longevity of the Siphons, know what could have occurred a million years ago?

The buildings left behind by the gods were nearly as ancient as they were, and they had lasted for so long, yet their secrets were hard to uncover.

The Lord Protector stood before the largest of them, his back to the door, his hands clasped behind him. His eyes were fixed on the images he could see, and for over twenty years, he had come here to slowly understand the detail behind this battle etched on this material.

Veyris stood beside him for almost an hour as he was also enraptured by the scene portrayed here, which showed two armies on vast ships clashing on an ocean of flames and lightning.

After a while, Veyris sighed and removed his eyes from this unknown tale from the past, before he looked at his brother.

"You have been busy," Veyris said.

Calyx did not turn. "Brother. I was wondering when you would come. I heard you have been busy running through the tunnels, as you can see, everything is in order in that section, and more Lightning Cradles are being created, I wager more than most cities of my size."

Every city under the dominion of the Storm Ascendant must have these Lightning Cradles which took the shape of Asulon Statues running either underneath their streets or out in the open.

The designs for these statues were etched inside special Alchemistry Crystals distributed by the Central Royal Family, and one of the metrics used to measure the proper governance of a city was the number of Lightning Cradles they had.

Veyris shrugged, "The number of Lightning Cradles depends a lot on the number of citizens you have in this city, and I hear that the lower districts are burning, and a lot of people are trapped in a wall that you have raised."

Veyris stepped away from the tapestry, his boots silent on the ancient stone. "I have seen cities fall, Calyx. I have watched them burn, and I know that it takes the smallest spark to start a fire that cannot be put out."

Calyx laughed, "You think I do not know what is happening in my city? Or did you think I raised that wall because I did not care?"