Senior Monk Aldo Za'Darmondiel.
21st of Duotra, 1492.
Rith Tribe Territory, Shujen Kingdom.
05:18 am.
***
I had been uneasy about the entirety of this. Ever since that Bool appeared, I had been, and my little sister knew it.
'Stay focused.' She motioned. But I knew the words were meant for her more than they were for me. Not that they failed to serve as a warning.
Aufa Za'Darmondiel was said to be the nicest female in the House but I knew that to be utterly false. She simply knew a calm demeanor and sharp words were far more threatening than shrill screams and pointed dirks. What was worse, she knew these things whilst being on the brink of her second decade of living. Her words were her whips, and they cracked silently.
The presence of High Matron Etyl of House Za'Darmondiel was even more unsettling. She only came to the surface for raids. Big raids. Against elves. And those were rare. The only exception was when the Queen Demon Spider demanded it. But I could not see her demanding such a thing for the likes of any male. Not even Telin's Champion. It commanded my attention, much to my sister's ire, but once the High Matron and the strange-eyed half-breed disappeared over the hills, my job became much easier. My thoughts became so much clearer. Or, at least clear enough to put them out of my mind.
The reason being, that this human was remarkable. The other one and the cat were too, but this one impressed me even more. I saw only hints of trepidation when he first faced a drow in combat- far less fear seen by any of his kind, yet he adapted quickly, displaying a tenacious capability to think with haste and to seek perfection in learning. It was an utter anomaly. We were certain our brutal training regime would wear them down to their knees as it did every monastic acolyte of every species for the last millennium. But alas, it was as if they had been living under far worse conditions for the past year or perhaps more. Utterly stoic in the face of despair, they were.
Utterly magnificent, their Ki was.
Twilight. Mercy. Elements. Death.
As creatures of magic, we could not have been more excited to witness his prowess. Proved by my sister eyeing him up like a cut of fine meat.
"Peter," she said in awkward Common. "A Novice Monk of the Omni-Elemental Way. Exceptional in all marks. Able to hold his own against drow monks. Remarkable indeed."
"I am humbled." He bowed.
"And he is with manners." She smirked, then turned to point down the snow-packed road. "Let us see what you can do. Hold nothing back. We watch from afar, judging from the shadows."
With another Aufa-pleasing bow, Peter started down the road at a wanderer's pace, knowing nothing of the volatile nature of the rancid creatures that called this place home. Instead, he looked upon the land as if he could see through the waning darkness. Meandering as if there was not a problem in the world, even as burnt foliage began to peer from the snow to watch him pass by. Naught an hour later came the torches, drums, and watchtowers appearing through the brush and looming ever closer. Yet, Peter strode right past them, pausing only when an arrow landed at his feet.
Then the Hells broke loose.
He took on a firm stance and stomped, squeezing two boulders from the ground before he executed a double-palmed strike onto an imaginary target, propelling the massive rocks with the force of a stone giant's throw. The crude wall of sharpened logs may as well have been a stack of crates before a charging minotaur. Snow and wood mixed with viscera and the shrill screams of the dying flew through the night, and through it all darted Peter.
Covered in the ethereal fires of Ki, he skipped and leaped off of columns of air, sweeping his arms out all the while to gather the surrounding snow into twin whips of water to land in a spin and lash at the groups of small creatures running forth with rusted scimitars and axes.
They met a swift end through the likes of water whips or ice swords until the last of this goblin party fell in a steaming heap of gore, leaving the horde behind them to rethink their actions for a second too long. A pillar of air shot Peter skyward, where he danced with the serpentine flames of his ki until he came to his zenith and fell like a broken stalactite atop the scrambling goblins.
We entered the camp naught moments later to see it reduced to scattered piles of rubble, ash, and corpses that were either brutalized, severed, or charred, then left to hiss loudly in protest of the ambient snow attempting to steal their heat away. The only remaining combatant was a feral ogre attempting to charge Peter with a charred beam raised high. The young monk, on the other hand, adopted the snake style to project his Stunning Strike from afar.
Hissing louder than the ruins around them, a serpent of pure blue fire lashed from Peter's snapping hand, racing to sink its fangs into the grotesque flesh, brightening the ogre's veins to a scorchingly azure hue as the blazing venom began to spread.
By the next stride, the ogre toppled with a feral scream and managed to look down in time to see his leg charred to dust before the venom spread to his heart. Then the beast turned to see the cold eyes of the human who wrought such pain staring at some point in the distance. The last sight witnessed before the massive creature disintegrated into a steaming pile of ash.
'I like this one.' Signed Aufa, but her slender words halted by a bell ringing in the distance, and by Peter turning towards the sound with a curious smirk.
Skeptical and conniving, we watched him turn to his empty eyes upon his destruction before they fell to the ground, still empty, and yet in a way that made him seem... remorseful. A pity, I thought. If only for a second.
"Scavenge what you can. Raise the rest of them. I'm sending the big one up the ladder."
Our brows squinted in confusion, but then they spread and rose higher than possible once a little gray dwarf with blacker than black skin and blue-green eyes climbed from Peter's shadow. Opening the gate, it seemed, for another and dozens more to follow. Leading the way, it appeared for several more zombies and skeletons to fan out behind them and search the dead, or in some cases, raise them as smoldering or bloated zombies and mutilated skeletons.
'They are of Clan Shaleheart, from across the Great Falls.' Aufa remarked as she pointed to the dwarven creatures of shadow.
I nodded in understanding. 'It all makes sense.' Yet, for Aufa, it did not. Thus she demanded I astrally project to the Halls to drag a wizard across the frozen plains to have them study the young monk from afar.
He watched for a tenday while I instructed Peter in the intermediate uses of ki and watched him spread chaos with glee. It never got old, seeing him raid camp after party after horde and walk away as if nothing happened, leaving his minions to pick the place clean until not even a good ranger could determine what transpired. Of course, with Aufa and this wizard's ambitions going as far as obtaining Peter's monastic tradition or this necrotic power to use as leverage against the priestesses, that left no room for my input. Likewise, it left no chance of showing any smugness once the wizard came to the only logical conclusion.
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It was obvious that Peter's monastic tradition would be passed on to his acolytes once he made the final step, along with Rua, the Cat, and Amun. That was the monastic way, after all, for the student to become the master. Likewise, it was obvious that Elg-Horr, being from that Clan, gave Peter the right to use necromancy. His immense power was his own, and yet there was something else. Something wicked.
'That human is damned. A devil owns his soul. He must have made a deal.'
They seemed to drop the investigation after learning that the cat and the other humans were similarly damned, including the children. Although again, the answer as to who the devil in question was, was obvious, if unbelievable. Regardless, the wizard's departure and Aufa's brooding silence cleared my mind almost entirely, turning my focus to this young human and his fantastic Ki Ponds. Their formation was the most miraculous event. One I was all too eager to document, for not even the infamous drow of everyone's interest could form a crude Meditation Chamber so easily.
His ki burned a magic circle into the ground beneath him, clearing the snow and ice to show the very glyphs he was scheduled to learn upon his return to the Halls. As I witnessed in those halls, Ki-infused facsimiles of his affinity cores formed around him. Totems, they looked like. A blue-white pillar of fire sat to his front; a miniature twister was to his right; a small geyser was behind him; and finally, a squat pedestal of stone was to his right; all carved with the likeness of various creatures.
Inferno. Tornado. Boulder. Flood. Elemental abilities of the second-highest order. Although the density of his mana was weak, Peter's mana well was as large as a human's could be. With those abilities alone, he had the power to reshape the realms as he saw fit, but with Ki, he would become one with the realms themselves. Such a claim became apparent when his meditations saw the earth totem split twice. Others split only once and fell upwards to collide, crash, and smash against the newly formed stone, pulverizing, soaking, and heating them into totems of dust and mud and lava left floating in a crescent arrangement above the monk.
I congratulated him as thanks for the wondrous display but sent him to work immediately. We had much work to do in practicing the higher forms of the monastic arts. But Peter was a fast learner, learning to keep pace with my free running through the forest within days. Although, it took much practice for him to learn how to scale vertical surfaces with ease. Several days of chaotic battles later, the third natural Ki Pond was formed, bringing about the third miraculous event naught a tenday after.
The four elements appeared around him as before, this time with the other three poised above him. This time, however, the fire totem surged and produced two copies of itself, allowing two of their reaching whiskers to flow into the bubbles of water and air while the remaining one slowed, fell back into itself, and imploded into an amorphous totem of... energy. Fiery and blazing in ways unlike fire, and dissimilar to the totems of steam and mist completing the hexagonal array.
I openly surmised that opening his Ponds would square his base elements and expressed interest in seeing the results. That, however, would have to wait until our return. Not to say that was a bad thing, for Peter's progress never declined. Human cities. Goblin hordes. Orc strongholds. No matter where he ventured, Peter waited until he was attacked first, then he endured the rusted scimitars, oversized axes, swords, and spells until every combatant in sight was decimated.
I chalked it up to naivety at first. I assumed he did not want to be the first to shed blood; that he secretly hoped whatever conflict would arise could be settled with placating words rather than might and blood. A foolhardy assumption. In time, I learned that, like the elements. Peter was uncaring of motives, only actions, thus he was unbiased in his actions. Like a fire, he would burn anyone who toyed with him and destroyed indiscriminately. Like a river, he drowned those who tested him and continued his flow unabated. Like the earth, he was unyielding, both in stature and emotion. Like the wind, he was detached, yet carried a demanding presence. And yet, he was none of those things. He was playful in the sense that he experimented with his abilities. He was patient, never allowing his emotions to act for him. He was... tolerant, having a mind open to many outlooks, species, and cultures, and he was grounded to the Mortal Plane deeply.
A strange state of mind for the likes of us, to say the least.
As with the rest of us, his enlightenment brought about the long-awaited time to return to the Halls. Doubly so in the eyes of Aufa. She could count her surface ventures on one hand, and this one had been nearly two months. She was more than ready to be out of the sun, giving her a sense of indifference that ensured me the perfect opportunity to release the burden of my curiosity.
"You are unlike any human I have ever met, Peter."
"Drow." He said in that detached way of his. "I thought I knew about drow. I thought I knew about devils. And dwarves and halflings and humans. I thought I knew good from evil, order from chaos. Then I came here. I met Amun. A half-drow child of the Nox. Beings people sing songs about to warn children at the earliest age. Night Devils. From him, I learned about the importance of perspective, and how blinding it can be."
That marked the beginning of a long and revealing conversation. I learned, among many other things, that Peter was a close friend of Amun. I learned that Peter was born a slave in Maru, and was freed after awakening his mana cores. I learned he sought revenge the moment he obtained his freedom; only to be deterred by witnessing Amun's magic reach across the realm. Then, he met him after gaining admission to the Bodhi Tree.
He was in his party at the Tree. There, he learned by spending time with and training under Amun, a new perspective. It was Amun who taught Peter everything he now knows. Arithmetic. Arts. Magic. Fighting. It was Amun who convinced Peter to become a monk. It was Amun who broke him from his shell. It was Amun who freed him from himself. It was Amun who brought out his potential. So, naturally, he answered Amun's call.
More than all, I learned that Peter was not simply a close friend of Amun. I learned that Peter was the first friend Amun made who wasn't his vassal or royal equal, and Amun was Peter's first-ever friend. Friendship was already alien to me. What was stranger was the fact that their relationship could never be extorted, for Amun ensured that anyone who would call him a 'friend' would be as indomitable as he.
That piqued Aufa's interest, and Peter grew almost excited to describe Amun's guild. The Legio Noctis, an… eclectic band of explorers, who were currently on a recruiting spree as they prepared to scour the Mortal Plane in its entirety. He teased us with the knowledge held in Amun's mind and told us of the trials they went through last year in grand detail to obtain it. In short, Telin's Champion was as ambitious as any drow and then some. But unlike the rest of us, he had the power to realize his ambitions, and they were not for the sake of a cruel Goddess. For, according to Peter and the rest of the Legions- and perhaps the Matrons- Amun was a God. The God of Moonlight, Twilight, Engineering, And Mana.
Mana.
Such a revelation left us silent until our return, wherein we feigned politeness in offering the human the privacy to catch up with his friends. Meanwhile, we ventured to the far side of the entry hut to exchange information with the other monks and priestesses- our cousins.
Ryda and Nijal told of Rua detailing Amun's prowess as a Grandmaster Artificer but said nothing of the details. Not that it was needed, for we all remembered the fine gear they wore upon our arrival. Sid and Shaenya, however, spoke highly of Veil of Shadow's fighting prowess, yet masterfully dodged any questions regarding his monastic tradition. When it came our turn, we divulged what they may or may not have already known. Peter and the others worked for Amun. That was it. Neither the name nor the purpose of their guild was disclosed, we certainly shared nothing about them selling their souls to Telin's Champion, and of course, we disclosed nothing about his alleged divinity.
In short, we had the advantage over the other sub-houses. Of course, that was without the High Matron in the picture. With her keen eyes personally watching the Destroyer, it was a certainty that her pool of information ran far deeper than all of ours combined. Such thoughts seemed to be punctuated by a burst of arcane energy to the far north. Such arcana was nothing special by our standards. Less than average, in fact, but to the standards of a human, it was nigh god-like. Then again, the arcana of Telin's Destroyer had something ours did not. Affinities. And so, I felt even my bones shake as we felt the horrid sensation of arcane necromancy radiate from the Shujen capital, I felt trepidation when the sun seemed to rise on the northern horizon and outshine Tiatus to the south, and I heard the echoes of what was to come as the ear-shattering shockwaves rippled from that distant battlefield.
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