Selvin was starting to breathe heavily, as he danced back and forth in great, bounding leaps that covered dozens of feet, sometimes slamming into fighting Speakers and not even noticing, dodging curved strokes of light that the glowing-Named sword was throwing out. Breathing heavily! That was not something that had happened in… Named-God, perhaps not since the Doom had been announced, years ago. This sword was making him actually try.

An inanimate object was making him try! Somehow, the ridiculous thought filled him with rage.

I am neither inanimate nor a mere object. You have made a large mistake, Selvin of the Anadren Line. This will be your end.

The sword had long since left the hand of its royal charge, leaving him to run away from the battlefield as fast as he could. It was floating freely in the air- a deceptively simple arming sword with a dark leather handle and metal cross guard and blade. Its spirit burned like the sun.

I don’t suppose we can agree to a mutual truce now that your charge is gone? Selvin thought, knowing it was listening.

My task is not to merely save his life. My task is to make sure you cannot ever threaten it again.

“A damn shame, then” Selvin called out, loud and angry enough that it carried across the battlefield- the battle was mostly over, he thought, and now the defenders were watching him duel the sword. It seemed he had been enough after all. They’d better pay up.

“You’ll not get another offer of mercy from me, sword,” Selvin finished.

Selvin flashed forward with a burst of speed as it began to respond, before it could read his mind and see what he was about to do. He grabbed it by the blade, knowing it wouldn’t expect it, forcing Named power into his hands to make sure it didn’t cut him. Even then, he felt his skin hanging on the precipice of breaking before the shear cutting identity present in its edge. It really, really wanted to cut his flesh.

But his will was greater than that of a damn sword. And it was about time he proved it. And, he would do it without calling on the Anadren Name. He would do it with his own strength!

Selvin exploded into the air with a leap that rumbled the buildings of Marsaine like an earthquake in the distance, grappling with the sword as he rose higher and higher, the gray-brown expanse below becoming muddled in the background. The sword fought desperately, cursing him, but he kept a firm grasp on it.

Then, midair, at nearly the maximum height of the arc he had set himself upon, he turned midair and launched himself towards the ground- creating leverage in a way he had learned by pulling muscle against muscle in an unnatural motion, as if he were grabbing the very air- and flew towards the ground with the speed of gravity as well as the force of his magic.

The earth rushed back up in seconds, the air a stinging knife in his eyes-

They slammed back to earth, and the world was consumed by heat and sound. His body held out against it, but only just. Pure energy burned against him, but he focused his will, his Named Power; a stern bulwark that would not be defeated by mere floodwaters.

And still, all the while, he kept holding the sword. They stood in a crater together now, but with the sword driven deep into hard stone perhaps a mile under the earth, harder than bedrock. Selvin stepped backwards, grinning.

It was stuck hilt deep. It tried wiggling out, desperate, but he ignored it.

The stone began to crack even hard as it was for the force of its struggles- but it was just a sword after all. Cutting was its ideal, not raw force.

That was all his.

Selvin shunted his body forward with a burst of Named energy, his Speed and Strength enforcing the other, seizing the hilt with his hand and pushing his boot against the midsection of the blade. It resisted, hard, like with the force of a natural purely forged and tempered steel blade, but so much more by being reinforced with Named magic.

It had been years since Selvin had to strain himself like this. He whispered his True Name as he did so, drawing out the entirety of his available power, even lending some of it from his recently-acquired Names and subsequent memories, turning all of it into raw strength that tightened every muscle fiber in his body.

After a few seconds of this struggle, with sweat springing out across his body against his will, an impossibly loud grinding and screeching filled the air, a rumbling like nothing he had heard before.

It would appear, he thought, now gasping, I am causing an earthquake. For real this time.

Slowly, it gave before him, bending the natural length of its steel flexibility, and then further. The stone around it began to crack, and Selvin kept going, forcing it deeper and deeper into the indentation. It was nearly at a full 180 degree angle, turned back on itself, when it began to crack. And when it snapped-

Selvin’s senses couldn’t even react to the magical energy that suddenly shunted out. But he did feel the insanely sharp shards that exploded out in a wave, trying to pierce his body. In that instant, in the black-white rush of nothingness as he felt himself hurtling through open air, his will clashed with the dying sword’s, now increased in the manner of things on their dying path, on the precipice just before the end. With the fervent, last-hurrah strength of a dying man.

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The onslaught upon his senses- the shards of metal, the air and motion through it, the Named energy rushing out in a wave in every direction- suddenly disappeared as his mind collapsed down upon one single facet-

YOU WILL DIE! The sword screamed at him, promised him, demanded him.

A command that could not be silenced. So Selvin instead embraced it.

Yes, he said, feeling his body finally relax. But not on this day. Not yet.

YOU WILL DIE! It thundered across the skies and through the earth, and the certainty of its promise was more enlightening than the sun itself.

Not yet, Selvin responded calmly.

YOU! WILL! DIE! TODAY! RIGHT HERE AND NOW! THIS IS YOUR END! THERE IS NOTHING-

Selvin seized its will, the entire expanse of its identity, and felt its True Name alight like words of fire in his grasp, and knew it utterly. And how small it really was. Sapient it was, but its entire life and purpose was dedicated to a single purpose. It had seemed strong at first because of the length of its life… but it was a life of a singular design, a single path. Restricted. Minute.

Disappointing.

No, Paleafaleansta, Selvin remarked softly in his mind. This is not the day I die.

The winds bent around him, hearing his will, and he knew it would be done then and there.

And so did Palea, the Sword of the Prince’s Brother.

And it was stunned to silence. How could this be? How could one soul, one moving life, one single spark, alight the very meaning of the sky?

Selvin’s vision returned. He was many miles above the ground, so far up the clouds were distant things below, and the sun seemed within his reach. Aloft in the air, floating on latent flows of Named energy, he idly brushed aside glistening metal fragments just-barely stuck across his forearms and torso and legs. He watched them fall back to earth, fading away into the blue-white expanse below.

Selvin breathed, looked out around him, and saw the sword Palea’s Name, his life’s soul and blood, floating around him, anchored to him, as he was its master.

And he made it is his own, as surely as if it had always been. Names, identity, will- they were all different iterations of each, all different forms of the same state of existence:

What was real, and what wasn’t. And he was more real than anything else in the city below him.

The intoxicating rush thundered through him, the certainty of his own power as he aligned himself ever better with the flows of existence itself- and thoughts of arrogance and supremacy, thoughts that scarcely seemed his, rushed in his mind-

Every wretch in that city below, just ant-specks, dust in a pile I could blow away at any time I so chose-

Lives that could be better spent in my service- kill them all and make their power your own to save the rest-

You are God! You stand above the clouds, the light of existence and creation guiding your palms and minds, and the sun as your crown! Look at them! They cannot stare at him! Only you!

They are NOTHING!

YOU ARE GOD! Only you can defeat the Unnamed! Do it! Lay waste to them! Suck them up like little morsels of power-

But his will finally reasserted himself, and it felt like he was finally standing straight again.

“Sweet Aiena,” he muttered. “Was that the sword? Or was that me? Or the power… or…”

Honestly, he would rather not know. He felt better. Himself again.

He looked down at his palms and saw that they were streaked with ever-so-lighter lines, as if rays of sunlight fell across them. The insignia of the Lions. The Third Memory of Aiena, the Seventh tier of Speaker on this planet. Above him, he felt his Shroud burning:

Strength: 7

He stopped focusing on his Attributes after that. That 7 was all that mattered. It had taken him to the next level.

The Memory, what came with the "upgrade," was a burst of insight that only Seventh Tier Speakers were able to understand. It was common to mighty warriors and contestants of the Ignia Stellas, of the Demigod-Nations on the continent of Deminiea- the Memory that let him remember something very simple, something once known to the Named God Aiena during his mortal life in the Named Places.

A fragment of the Name of Humanity itself.

That was what made it so common to those that ruled the many more mundane lands of Elcasia aside from the Demigod-Nations. Many a wise king and queen and ruler had reached it eventually at the end of their life and were considered all the wiser for it.

“Ah,” Selvin said quietly. “So that’s what it is.” He had reached the “Seventh” tier while speaking the Anadren Name many a time- but as so often with Else-Calling, it was inferior to reaching that level with your own Name. He had never heard the whisper of the Name of Humanity that came from walking the… proper path Aiena had set.

Alone in the sky, he spoke it up to the sun, staring directly at the blazing ball that gave life to all below it.

Was it Aiena himself? That glowing ball of power and life, up above the world oh so high… is it the One God?

Nonsense, of course. It was merely a star, like those that every Named World orbited. But he couldn’t help but think… Such a thing. For some reason.

“Not to be impertinent, of course,” Selvin said, lowering his gaze. “Forgive me if I’ve given offense, Named God."

And he sent himself back down to Elcasia with a flourish, feeling elated and brimming with the energy of his recent ascension. The skies full of cold and ancient winds bowed before him, bringing him down to earth on gusts of air light as feathers.

“I’m really doing it,” he breathed into the winds. “I wasn’t crazy after all. Take that, Jerm. Take it all of you. My plan is working, and if it reaches the end, I can duel the Unnamed himself to death in the stars. I can save the whole world.

I’m doing it, Father! I will reach the stars themselves!”

Named God, they seemed distant. But he had to do it anyway. He wanted to live.

More than just that, though…

He had never seen the Named Places. He had never left Elcasia. He hadn’t even seen every place on just this planet…

Aiena, he was only twenty years old this summer. What a waste it seemed for his life to be dashed away on the whims of a dark god.

He wasn’t done yet. Not yet. Not even close.

He’d go to the very end and then some.