"Despite the many different cultures and peoples of Eden, did you know that there's only one spoken language? This is because long ago the god of Knowledge, in his infinite wisdom decided to impart a singular language of their creation onto all the sapient beings across all floors of the Tower. This was done in order to facilitate the sharing of thoughts and ideals and knowledge across all who resided within Eden."
- From Prof. Beauregard Reginald's lecture on the 'History of Eden and it's gods'.
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Eden Floor 1:
After about an hour of constant walking, interspersed by the occasional small talk, we managed to find our way into a small clearing bisected by a well trodden dirt road.
Pausing momentarily to search for some sort of indication as to which way lead to Weir, I turned to my companions, "So how'd you even end up so deep in the woods?" I somewhat doubted they'd been traveling the void as I had been in my escape from Sola, the void wasn't exactly a hospitable environment, being an unending vacuum devoid of the necessary constituents that allow for life to flourish and all that. If it were safer I'd have been able to take others with me, instead of being forced to flee alone with my tail between my legs, forced to make empty promises in a vain attempt at reassuring those I'd left behind to face their own extinction.
"When Kuro and I stepped through the portal my mother opened it dropped us in the woods." Amelia pouts, drawing me from my increasingly dark train of thought. The clearly noble gear seems to feel a bit betrayed that her mother might have left her to spend several hours wandering the woods instead of sending her straight to Weir.
"I took the EPTS and it still dropped me in the middle of the woods. So I can only assume that maybe finding our way to Weir is a part of the tests?" Ars says a bit uncertainly.
"Hmph, I fail to see how my being forced to do something as banal as hike through the woods like some sort of commoner could serve to test my worth as a Seeker."
"The EPTS?" I ask before Amelia can get herself too worked up over the perceived indignities of hiking. Though despite her complaints, I can't help but notice that neither her, Ars, nor Kuro seem the least bit tired from navigating the forest, thought in the case of the latter I'd be more surprised if the golem ever fatigued. Her wavy golden hair hardly even looks disheveled, and despite her obviously somewhat vain nature, the fact that she's wearing worn-in boots and travel pants as well as a simple leather corset over a loose fitting blouse tells me she wasn't wholly unprepared for the chance of an impromptu hike or some other form of exertion. Perhaps one of her hobbies is horseback riding though, or whatever they have for horses in Eden.
"The Eden Portal Transit System, it's one of the ways people within Eden can navigate to various floors." Ars explains without judgement, still quite content to be answering what most would likely consider to be stupid questions. Maybe he aspires to become a teacher, though with the level of questions I've been asking, it'd have to be for toddlers or the academically challenged.
"Your family couldn't send you?" I question back.
"As if," Amelia scoffs before turning to me and continuing, "It's not considered polite however to bring up the dubious origins of one such as him."
Well that certainly puts an end to that conversation if Ars' now distinctly uncomfortable expression is anything to go by. I turn to look at him for a moment, wondering what it is that prompted such a response from Amelia as well as why he so readily accepted such abrasive remarks. Blonde hair kept slightly messy on top but trimmed short around the sides and back, deep golden eyes, pierced ears, an angular jawline still ever so slightly rounded by youth, freckles dotting his otherwise fair complexion across the bridge of his nose and below his eyes, he's taller than I am though that's not saying much, black joggers and shoes as well as a simple white jacket make him look somewhat lazy perhaps but not at all out of place hiking as we had been. All in all I have no idea what about him would imply that he has "dubious origins".
My best guess is their families maybe have some personal history, or maybe Ars is in a branch family or something. Regardless, I think we'd all rather just make it to Weir than "share our tragic backstories" as Amelia had put it earlier. I decide to stop trying to stall for time and promptly head left along the road, the others still content to follow along behind me.
-o-o-o-
After another half hour of silence, accompanied only by the sounds of the forest and the steady steps of our feet treading the path beneath us, I start wondering if I should've gone right instead. Glancing up, the road continues on into the distance, lackadaisically winding through the forest ahead of us, its existence the sole indication that somewhere in these woods lies Weir.
"I hate to ruin this sullen atmosphere we've created for ourselves-" I turn, starting to address my companions before widening my eyes in disbelief at the sight behind me. Apparently at some point while I was lost in thought and just mindlessly walking along, Amelia had decided to have Kuro princess carry her while she sat in his arms eating what looks like grapes and reading a book.
As the silence drags on and she seems to realize we're no longer moving she looks up and sees Ars and I staring at her. "What?? It's a really good book, and it's hard to read while walking you know, but if Kuro carries me then I'm not jostled at all and I don't have to divide my attention between reading and walking," she chokes out, nervously laughing in an attempt to defend herself while also covering the book so that neither of us can see what it is, "W-would you like some grapes?"
"Where did you even get those?" Questions Ars, staring at the dubiously procured grapes now being held out towards him.
"A lady is always prepared," she shrugs back, as if that explains everything.
"Wha-"
"Ahem-" I clear my throat, stopping Ars from going down that particular rabbit hole, "-as I was about to say, and I know this is kind of late to bring up but I actually have no idea if we're going the right way on this road or not, so if either of you wish to split off and go the other direction..." I let the free excuse for them to leave and try their luck in the opposite direction hang in the air a moment, but surprisingly it seems like they're all willing to continue following the path I chose. Though in Amelia's case it's likely just so that she can continue reading her book while we focus on the path, from the glimpse I got at the cover it seemed like some sappy romance novel, or a raunchy one and I refuse to find out for certain.
"Alrighty then, in that case do you know how long until it gets dark out Ars?" I wanted to avoid having to camp out in the woods, ideally we would make it to Weir before it got too dark. Assuming we were even going in the right direction, maybe I should've climbed a tree or something before choosing which direction to go in. Though I guess nothing was stopping me from doing that now, better late than never and all.
"Well if the first floor has days as long as my home floor did then we should have another 5 to 6 hours of daylight left."
"Different floors have different day/night cycles?" I suppose when each floor was like it's own world it wasn't unexpected, but I wondered at the implications if the floors were truly so unique from one another. What kind of wondrous places and cultures would I find as I explored and ascended the Tower? My heart quickens at the thought, my longing for adventure surging within me. According to what Ars mentioned earlier, Eden had been settled for millennia, and the current balance of power within the tower was apparently fairly stable, but still there must have been a nigh infinite number of things to discover and experience.
"Yes, though many of the highly populated floors or floors which thrive off tourism have been switched to standardized days and nights. For example, the floor I come from and the fourteenth floor's days and nights are synchronized with one another."
"My own home as well," Amelia chimes in from Kuro's arms, "as the fourteenth floor is managed by my family, they thought it would be more convenient to have it's days line up with those of our ancestral home's floor." She turns her face up and lifts her hand to her chest before continuing haughtily, "My family is quite well known throughout the Tower, you should consider yourself quite lucky to be in my good graces."
"Uh-huh," I respond with as straight a face as I can manage. She's still being princess carried, and having just squished a handful of grapes against her breasts, it's hard to see her as the haughty and elegant noble that she's trying to come across as.
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Following my eyes to the purple stain now sitting front and center on her chest, realization dawns on her and she at least lacks the temerity to not look embarrassed at her actions.
"I'm going to climb one of these trees real quick and see if I can make out Weir from up top, hopefully in the direction we've been heading." I notify my companions before leaping up into the boughs of a nearby tree and continuing to ascend with several smaller leaps through the crown of leaves before I make my perch at the very top.
Finally, I get a better glimpse at the first floor extending out beneath me. Though the tree I'm on top of isn't particularly tall compared to the rest of the forest, it sits atop a slight hill, so the view from the top is quite expansive. I can just make out the road below snaking in and out from between the leaves as a breeze gently sweeps through the forest below, it winds down into a sloping valley backed by cliffs. A small lake nestles at the end, being fed into by a steep waterfall. It's beautiful in the same comforting way that sunsets and the ocean are beautiful, it's not a sight that can't be seen elsewhere and yet it remains timelessly breathtaking. Most importantly though, I see the telltale geometric shapes of a small picturesque town built up around the lake and even up into the cliffs looking out next to the waterfall.
With a laugh of relief I let myself fall backwards from atop the tree, taking a moment to enjoy the wind whistling through my ears as I plummet before twisting my tail to right myself as I reach out and grab hold of a low hanging branch, letting my momentum swing me forwards and up into a graceful flip before finally landing in front of a startled Ars and Amelia.
"Copycat," mutters Amelia, trying not to look impressed.
I make sure my eyes convey my smirk to her through my mask before telling them what I'd seen. Ars and Amelia both confirm that the town I'd seen from my vantage point matched the description of Weir. It would still likely be another couple hours at the pace we'd been traveling before we reached it but if Ars was correct then we'd still be left with 3 or 4 hours of daylight to get our bearings once we arrived and hopefully figure out what our "test" would be in order to ascend to the next floor. I was also eager to see just what kinds of quests and challenged we'd be able to undertake upon reaching the town, maybe they'd have classes for True Seekers as well. It would certainly be nice to have a source of information designed for people who weren't familiar with Eden, but Ars gave the impression that True Seekers, while not unheard of, were still incredibly rare so I wasn't going to get my hopes up.
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Somewhere above Weir:
Klaus "Stormrider" Wercer, newly appointed Floor Ascendant of the first floor, paces in front of the floor to ceiling window on the bridge of his ship that overlooks Weir from where its floating cloaked above the town, around him numerous attendants parse through all the minutiae of information that constantly floods in through his ships divination sensors. Projected throughout the ships bridge are 32 different scenes of young Seekers navigating through various parts of the forest while blindly searching for Weir in an impromptu test. He once again resists the urge to scratch at the lichtenberg scars trailing down the right side of his face over his one good eye, the lightning within acts up and makes his scars itch when he's agitated, and of course he's agitated. His meticulously planned tests for this group of Seekers had gotten immediately overturned, leading to this farce of a test instead. Several hours ago, his divi-sensors had pinged some sort of "anomaly" on the floor and he'd been instructed to scramble all incoming teleports into the floor, depositing the new Seekers seemingly at random around Weir while local scouts could figure out what the anomaly was.
"How many Seekers do we have on file for the floor?" Klaus asks once again, eyeing a particular set of projections that he'd had magnified, they displayed a purple-haired beastkin that somehow seems to keep meeting his eyes through the projection walking down the path to Weir alongside three others.
"Three hundred and eighty seven sir," one of the attendants behind him promptly responds without a hint of exasperation at answering the same question for the fourth time in as many minutes.
"And how many Seekers are there currently on the floor?" Klaus, glances back to the attendant, ignoring how the beastkin once again seemed to make eye contact with him.
"There's three hundred and eighty eight... sir."
"Dammit," Klaus scratches his scars in frustration before catching himself. "Tch, dammit," he lets out a sigh as he lets his hand drop back to his side.
An extra Seeker in and of itself wasn't a huge deal even if this one was weirding him out, there were several possible explanations, from something as simple as someone having just been selected last minute to something as headache inducing as a True Seeker having shown up. The issue was that the Seekers this go around were, special to put it lightly, and due to their special nature there was a lot more at stake than there usually was. It was why he'd been sent to temporarily replace the previous Floor Ascendant. Simply put, the previous Floor Ascendant wasn't qualified to oversee the Seekers participating this time around. According to Jericho, in the "worst case scenario" a big name like Klaus' would be needed to stabilize things and keep certain interested parties from acting out of hand.
"Tch, this is why I hate politics," Klaus grumbled while glancing down at the messy desk to his right before flipping through the pages once more.
The desk held dossiers for all of the Seekers who could be considered as major players or as being backed by major players that were currently present on the floor. There were 27 scions of the Thirteen families, two for each family as well as a single bastard having been thrown into the mix bringing the total from 26 to 27.
Then there was the daughter of that insane King Allant, the only thing that came close to the potential trouble of a True Seeker was the child of one, Klaus fully expected the girl to be a handful. He just hoped the girls father hadn't personally seen to any of her training.
Next came that weird pair of twins some mad scientist had created and sent to become Seekers, their existence left Klaus initially feeling a bit conflicted but after reading their dossier he was starting to think they were just very elaborate golems.
Last was a supposed Blessed that somehow became a Seeker, same as anyone else Klaus would have immediately dismissed it as impossible but when he'd already had to warn off two High Priest's that personally warped down to the first floor to keep an eye on the kid, he couldn't help but wonder. At least he got them to promise not to interfere in any of the tests, but the fact there were high priests on the first floor at all was just a mess waiting to happen he felt like.
"31 huh," Klaus muttered to himself. That was the total number of high profile Seekers that would be pitted against one another in order to ascend Eden. " 31 out of 387, gods there's going to be stories and legends about this generation, I can feel it."
"Three hundred and eighty eight sir," one of his attendants immediately corrected him earning a glare in response.
With young representatives of practically every major power within the tower all gathered in one place, the situation was already shaping up to be incredibly tense, his head hurt just trying to guess at the politics that were no doubt already somehow at play. Adding in an unknown that was likely a True Seeker as well as the "anomaly" that'd already disrupted his plans and Klaus was wishing he'd turned Jericho down when he had called asking him to take over as the temporary Floor Ascendant. Klaus was beginning to pity the random nobodies who'd been selected as Seekers alongside all the monsters that would be participating, but everyone knew what was at stake when ascending.
To ascend Eden was to face endless trials as you sought to prove your worth to the gods, and at the end of it all, if your goal was worthy and your desire strong enough then all your wishes would be granted. And if it wasn't? Then you'd find yourself fading into obscurity having lost sight of your purpose, until eventually you settled where you were, died trying to ascend, or the Tower simply left you behind. There were many that got left behind, those so-called abandoned by the Tower, lying inert and forgotten in their own little corners of ignominy. Though they may have once been great, now not even time saw fit to pass in those places in order to claim their lives.
A light started flickering across the bridge breaking Klaus from his reverie. "Answer that," he commanded.
An attendant nodded and hit a few switches in front of their station and with a slight buzz the ships divi-sensors locked onto the signal that had been requesting to open a communications channel with the ship.
"Sir we uh, think we found the anomaly sir," a slightly hazy voice rang out through the ships bridge after a brief delay.
"Well? Out with it, what is it?"
"Well it appears to be a sword sir, we found it lodged within one of the boundary crystals at the edge of the floor."
Klaus takes a moment to glance at the projection across from him before he responds, "Which boundary crystal was it found in?"
The bridge is silent for a moment as the scout team is no doubt cross referencing their locational data in order to verify which sector they're currently at, "It's the boundary crystal in sector Z43608 sir. It's strange though, this sector hasn't been listed in the compiled sector data for centuries, which should mean it's juxtaposed location in it's variant of real space leads to a null zone."
Klaus only has a vague understanding of Boundary crystals as most floors are so large that the chances of ever encountering one is practically zero, they aren't even maintained on most floors as far as he knows. The size and innate stability of most floors within Eden serves the same purpose as a boundary crystals would, though on significantly smaller floors like the Tutorial floor it's still theoretically possible to run into them, which is why there's dedicated scout teams on the first floor that systematically inspect the crystals and compile all the relevant data for them. In short the boundary crystals are meant to act as spatial anchors as well as boundaries, they're one of the things responsible for both allowing the tower to exist across all dimensions as well as keeping everyone inside of it firmly lodged in their preferred dimension of existence and not fractured across the hundreds of thousands of known dimensions.
If the boundary crystals real space location and dimension had been marked off as a null zone centuries ago, it meant it was a zone that had been abandoned by the gods. This was all way out of his field of expertise but as far as he knew dimensions only got marked as null zones if there was zero chance for life to exist naturally within said dimension.
"A sword you say..." Klaus gaze flickers back to the wall with the still zoomed in projection of the purple haired beastkin on it. Slowly drawing nearer to Weir alongside her three companions, he can't help but notice the empty scabbard resting at her side.