After the End: Serenity

Serenity didn’t answer the Voice. He didn’t really know what he’d done; he just knew that he’d felt like he was being pulled apart and made to be not himself and he hated it, so he’d fought back.

Now, he felt better. Of course, in this case, “better” meant that he felt like he was still a little drunk and the hangover hadn’t fully hit yet. The feeling of being a little drunk increased whenever he tried to move. There were echoes and loops in the connection that made it seem like he was moving each body four times.

Wait. Four. That meant something.

It took Serenity a moment to gather his thoughts enough to wonder if it was because he had four of his own body. Once he had that thought, He closed all of his eyes and wished he could close all of his ears; he needed as little distraction as possible while he concentrated and shifted each of his bodies into his Sovereign form. That form handled multiple inputs far better, after all.

The first form shifted and Serenity felt better. He was only repeating things three times now. Shifting his second form was easier and his third form easier still. That left him with one dragonling sprawled at the westernmost of the four pools he’d altered for the modified ritual.

His pause brought Serenity the time to realize that the echo effect had vanished. He was still feeling each one of the pieces of Lyka’s core, including the bodies that he suspected belonged to the “Legions”, but they no longer made him feel massively off-kilter and drunk. In fact, Serenity could feel something else about them. It’d been there all along, but he’d been unable to see it clearly.

Aeon’s core stood behind Serenity for every single one of the other pieces, supporting his vision. He hadn’t heard a word or felt an emotion from it, but it was the first thing he’d seen through and it was somehow there for all of the others, as if behind him. Serenity wondered if he could talk to it. If he could, there was one thing he wanted to ask. :Can you back off a bit? I can’t handle all of this at once.:

A moment later, all of the extra viewpoints faded. They were still there, but it was like looking at a row of monitors instead of looking out through multiple eyes at once; he could select which, if any, he wanted to see and hear from.

It was a huge improvement. Serenity took advantage of it to check in on his highest priority: Lykandeon. The damaged deity seemed to be asleep now, passed out on the couch in his personal chambers next to Aeon’s core.

The moment after his attention left that viewpoint, all of the others came into focus clearly for a moment then faded. It wasn’t nearly as intense as before; there was no chance of Serenity becoming lost in all of the viewpoints, but there was also no chance that he would miss it. It had to be deliberate, didn’t it?

Serenity hurried his Sovereign forms over to his dragonling form and turned his attention to Aeon’s Core. It wasn’t really even a presence; all he had to go on was the fact that that link was stronger than the others; he couldn’t quite dismiss it completely from his attention, even though nothing was happening. He could only think of one reason that the core would show him the bodies he’d temporarily controlled right after he looked in on Lykandeon. It wanted something.

The question was what.

Serenity didn’t think that what it wanted had anything to do with the controlled soldiers. Serenity couldn’t think of any way they would have hurt Aeon’s core, so if it cared about them, it would be because they’d been affected by greendust. It might consider them to belong to itself but it was clear that if it wanted to control them it could. That couldn’t be it.

Lykandeon, on the other hand, has clearly someone Lyka disliked. More than that, he lived on Aeon, next to Aeon’s core. That implied that either they trusted each other or Lykandeon had some form of control over Aeon’s core. Given Lykandeon’s approach to things, Serenity didn’t exactly want to bet on the trust option. “You want me to kill Lykandeon, don’t you? And you’re … what, offering me something in return?”

The other viewpoints became clearer again. Serenity could guess that that was a positive answer, and that it was showing him what it was offering, but he couldn’t be certain. It really was too bad that Aeon didn’t seem to be able to speak and seemed to be separate from Lyka, who could at least manage informative emotions. “If you do that again, I’m going to take it as you, you want me to kill Lykandeon and that you’re offering me something to do with all those viewpoints in return.”

The pause this time was long enough to make Serenity begin to wonder if he’d misunderstood before the other viewpoints cleared up. They were omnipresent for at least twice as long before Serenity decided he’d better say something more. “I’ve got it, yes, I agree. I’ll deal with Lykandeon.”

That was the plan anyway if it was possible; this was moving up the timeline as much as anything else. If he could get to Lykandeon quickly, moving up the timeline was the correct choice anyway. Dealing with him while he was weakened would be easier than any other time.

Serenity’s other bodies reached him and he shifted to a better array for war: his chimera form, armor, and the sword. Three wasn’t that bad now, especially since the armor and hilt didn’t have that many senses. He could manage them without hurting his progress, and he wasn’t confident his ax would be enough against Lykandeon. It was only Tier Five, after all. His cloak would hide his wings as long as he was careful; this way he wouldn’t need to shift just outside Lykandeon’s door.

The Voice had said he Evolved, and it sounded like it was more than once. Had the other notification been a new Path? Had he somehow completed two Paths without realizing it to allow himself to Evolve twice? Serenity pulled up his Status.

No, he hadn’t. He was still on the Magitech Abomination Path. It’d made significant progress, but it wasn’t done.

Serenity’s eyes skipped to the Core History section. Incarnate of Death wasn’t a surprise, but he was pretty sure the Tier Seven was actually the Voice yelling at him rather than an issue with his Core. The Tier five was Dungeon Deity? What the hell? He wasn’t a god. That didn’t make any sense.

Serenity’s thoughts spun for a moment. All he could think was that well, he was a dungeon, technically, wasn’t he? Maybe that and the holy mana he’d essentially stolen from Lykandeon somehow qualified him? How did that even work?

He hoped it wouldn’t end up giving him more responsibilities. He’d never wanted to be a Planetary Lord, but it seemed like he was stuck with it for now, whether he called it Friend or not. Otherwise, he’d already be home with his wife and daughter.

Serenity conveniently ignored the fact that he’d signed himself up for the task and that he planned to head to Asihanya next to help out Honoria and find out what had driven Raz away from his home. Remembering just how much of a busybody he liked to be wouldn’t have helped his complaining.

Serenity flipped to the Abilities section. Nothing new there other than the two Magitech Abomination Path abilities he’d gained from his levels. Come to think of it, he was already using Skill Integration, wasn’t he? That and the help Aide gave him with managing things for the modified ritual were probably why his Path leveled so quickly.

He needed to do a complete review of his Status.

The biggest real surprise in the General section was the Voice’s message next to Ev. Serenity grinned and chuckled; if the gold mana was the holy mana that had pushed him into some sort of divinity, the green mana must have been what pushed his Core up four Tiers. Some of the energy must have been redirected to Ev. More than some, a lot, or the Voice’s message wouldn’t be so annoyed. Serenity wondered if the section would even stay on his Status.

Perhaps the green mana was really essence? Serenity had thought that essence was what worked on a Core. Or the combination of mana and essence, anyway. Serenity was pretty sure that going up in his Core without a matching Path must cause issues; he couldn’t do it the other way at all, but the one time he’d completed a Core Tier before the matching Path, the Voice had warned him of something called Core Sickness.

Serenity never really found out what that was, but it didn’t sound good.

Serenity took another look at his Core History. He didn’t like the (Not Selected) note next to the Tier. Voice? Can I select that Tier Eight now?

[There are no options available. I do not know why. There should be options available, you haven’t lost any of your previous qualifications]

The Voice sounded worried, but if there was nothing to do about it now, there was no reason to stress about it. Serenity knew he probably would, but that didn’t make it any more productive.

Don’t worry about it, then. I’m sure we’ll figure it out in time. Maybe I’ll even figure out how to repeat what I did for Tier Seven.

[You don’t know what you did?]

Serenity shrugged. I got angry at everything trying to make me not-me and sort of … yelled at the universe? That’s all I can think of. I don’t really think it’s repeatable without the inciting factors.

Serenity paused and frowned. Maybe I should talk to Russ about it. He has a Core and he doesn’t have Paths, but he doesn’t Evolve like a monster.

[I will look at him]

Serenity smiled. It was always nice when people volunteered to make your life easier. He didn’t really expect the Voice to learn much, but it would be nice if it did.

Serenity returned to looking over his Status. His Affinities and Concepts had increased a good bit, especially Magitech, but that was probably to be expected. The more intriguing thing was that his Arcane and Essence Aspects had both improved. Managing the ritual had somehow brought him closer to both, which told Serenity that his guess about the green mana actually containing essence as well was likely correct.

He should have looked for it at the time, but it hadn’t occurred to him. That was dumb; he’d been checking spells and runes for their Essence effects for a while now. Why hadn’t he thought to check for it during the ritual? Sure, it was big and it was a lot of work, but he could have checked to see if any of the ritual setup was actually more for runes than mana. He hadn’t noticed anything during his analysis, but he’d never thought to look, either, and he knew that many spells that handled mana actually handled essence in a sort of second-hand way. He should have checked and then confirmed his findings while it was running!

Serenity grumbled at himself for the oversight. It was the kind of thing he knew he had to expect; learning new tricks in an area where you thought you knew everything always led to either forgetting the new stuff or over-relying on it; he’d made both mistakes in the past and was certain he would in the future.

Nothing else on his Status looked overly surprising, so he snapped it closed and moved onto the next step. :Ita? Hurry back to our rooms. We need to make plans quickly.:

General