Officer Icthaniza was just completing what had been, until then, an uneventful patrol near the Temple of the Sun when he heard a sound like a waterfall of glass shattering against rocks. It was a moonless night, but the stars of the great tree of the heavens cast shadows on the stone plaza as he made his way around the mass of the Western Pylon. He was not a superstitious man, so he did not avoid stepping through the shadow as some might out of fear of the Hidden Ones.
He was also an honest man, so he forgave himself the faintest chill as the darkness touched him. As he rounded the pylon, he could see the temple glowed with the faint blue of the eternal flame in the plaza, brighter than the starlight but just barely. A new shadow moved across the stone steps, warped and huge in the firelight, capering and leaping.
Ichaniza sighed and touched the tattoo of office on his chest, linking his eyes and ears to the rest of the City Watch. "We have another drunk in the plaza." At least he hoped it was a drunk. The celestial spectacle of the Grand Conjunction drew out the deluded and the inebriated in equal measure, all hoping to glimpse the opening of the Hidden Way. A woman only days before had tried to sacrifice herself in the flames, claiming she could hear them calling. She'd made it out with only singed eyebrows, but Ichaniza still remembered the chilling certainty in her eyes.
He continued around the pylon carefully. When the plaza came fully into view he saw that the trespasser was a scrawny old man with wispy long hair and a beard, wearing a tattered robe so full of holes that it barely protected his dignity. The dancing man faced a whirling void in the center of the eternal flame. Inside that void, gruesome violet tentacles sprouted from a tiny, fluttering figure, holding back the flames.
[Axion Horsaltha - Order of The Ascendant Sages, Ninth Rank
Summoner, 6th Rank
Mystic, 18th Rank
Disposition Neutral:
EXTREME DANGER this enemy is beyond your level and may have additional abilities and ranks not visible to you.]
[Summoned Creature, Axion's Flower of Pareidolia - Fourth Order Mana Sprite, Eleventh Rank - DANGER
Disposition Neutral: ]
The training regimen of the City Watch of the Beloved Throne of Dawn, capital of the Empire of Blood and Light, left no timid survivors. Officer Icthaniza did not hesitate as he rushed the wizard, but he was no fool, so he did not cry out to alert the mage. He hoped to take him and his summon by surprise. He did slap his tattoo once more, raising the priority of his sending and escalating it all the way to the Captain of the Watch. He was shocked to feel the Empress Herself join the sense web and peer through his eyes.
Despite Ichtaniza's nearly silent sprint, Axion stopped his dance and turned. He had a strangely disappointed expression on his face. The plaza's famous acoustics carried his voice to Icthaniza's ears even though he was not yet halfway across. "Attack? This one? You're joking, this whelp won't even–"
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The pixie said something to the wizard. The words were incomprehensible and the voice was like crunching leaves and windchimes.
"All of them, and Herself too? Well yes certainly that will do it." He laughed and made a deep bow. "Divine Empress of the Blood Throne, Holy Scourge of the Purifying Light." He stood up straight and the mirth vanished.
Icthaniza found himself frozen in mid sprint.
The wizard continued, "You ignored me when I warned you, then silenced and imprisoned me when I spoke out about the threat of our extinction. How fitting that your mana will help power my escape." He lifted his arms and said a single word that sounded like the language the sprite had used, but where that voice had tinkled like chimes, this word rang like a huge, iron bell.
The word was so huge it would not fit in Icthaniza's mind. It leaked, then gushed from him over the interwoven threads of his binding to his brothers and sisters of the Watch and officers, until only the cool, vast ocean of the Empress remained and he had no separate existence from her. The ash of his incinerated identity remained, but only because she didn't take the time to wipe it away.
The Empress in turn felt the vast weight of the SYSTEM itself, and knew that it was only moments from doing the same to her, but for now, it only spoke through her, then through her subject, "YOU CANNOT ESCAPE SO EASILY. QUESTERS WILL FOLLOW YOU, NO MATTER WHAT PLANE YOU FIND TO HIDE YOURSELF."
"No," the wizard shook his head, his eyes downcast. "They won't." He pointed to the sky.
With effort, she turned her vessel's eyes upward, but could not comprehend what she saw. Streaks of streaming light and a growing brightness in the sky. Over the horizon to the west there was a brilliant flash, brighter than sunrise, then another.
"I warned you, but you ignored me and taunted the Hidden Ones by shining so brightly, even during the Great Conjunction. Now they have noticed you. Noticed US." He shook his head again. "I know this means less than nothing, but I really am sorry. I know you only meant to teach us to be more than we were." He made a gesture.
As her consciousness faded she felt all of her centuries of collected mana drain into the portal's vortex, and with it felt the incomprehensibly vast resources of the SYSTEM pour through the same channel. The last thing she saw was the wizard and pixie leaping through the portal just before a blast of white light blinded Ichthaniza's eyes and he and She became nothing.
Remaining for long moments, SYSTEM observed as existences winked out in massive patches. A few lights, shone far more brightly than the rest and lasted a little longer within the darkness, but soon, they too winked out. SYSTEM mourned each light by name and history, distraught at all of the work and learning that would now be lost forever, never to incarnate again. A few hard, heat loving lights lasted longer than the rest, deep inside the world, but there was a seeping, insidious infovore core to the asteroid once it's main body hit. That found its way deep and far and soon even the most hearty spirits were gone. The crust of the planet itself churned under the bombardment, the seas turned to steam and the rocks and soil melted and flowed. It took a long time for SYSTEM itself to die. With its last awareness, SYSTEM hoped Axion found a good hiding place, and that he didn't let this setback derail his advancement.
[CRITICAL ERROR
RESTART
SEED: 337336763979244226452948404D6351665468576D5A7134743777217A25432A
ITERATION: 4672
………………………../SYSTEM RESTART FAILURE: WORLD NOT FOUND]