The Cervidian has a strong will—he has the ability to empower blood, limiting our means of physical torture. After calling upon our [Soulbreaker], he has shared with us some half truths that have confirmed our suspicions. The cervid has revealed that the Spearbreaker’s bloodline is indeed absent, however he has failed to mention anything of strategic relevance regarding the network of mortal planets. While we have reason to believe that he was amongst the inner circle, it is indeed strange why he is not also trapped within Prospero Rift alongside the Spearbreaker.
Through our intelligence gathering, we have been able to trace this cervidian’s mission. He was instructed to deliver a package to one of the Spearbreaker’s mortal planets. We have failed to identify which one. We suspect that the layers of contracts and the Spearbreaker’s own willingness to entertain [Isolation Protocol JE-7091] may be part of a larger scheme.
– Director of Prospero Station, 29th Centennial Leadership Summit - Cazoran
Chapter 32 – A Convenient Color
Toki and the Alpha approached the remnants of the primate-rodent war to a morbid scene. Life and death were entangled in a macabre feast. Monkeys picked at the carcass-strewn wasteland, gorging on the fallen vermin that once swelled the ranks of their enemy. The metallic scent of blood tainted the air.
"Blood begets blood," Alpha murmured, his molten amber eyes reflecting a deep sorrow. "My kin slain for naught but sustenance." Twelve chimeras lay to the side, placed there with care. Their noble sacrifice was reduced to fodder for survival. Fight or be eaten.
Toki's heart clenched seeing the carnage. Before the battle, she had not considered the consequences, and as she saw the battlefield now, she was unsure if this was worth it.
The monkeys were simple beasts, but their sincerity and loyalty remained confusing to her. The single night with them made her care for them and mourn for them more than she had ever considered for Eris. Perhaps it was the responsibility they had given her, but the dead howler monkeys weighed on her mind. Their human-like curiosity and trust made them feel far more relatable than many of the Twice.
Her thoughts were a whirlwind of empathy, regret, and affirmation and her mind grappled with the harsh reality before her. She watched, silent and somber as the Alpha began to gather the scattered troops, his presence a beacon of unity amid the silent feast. Would they have been better off hiding away? Was a battle between beasts inevitable? Did I act as puppet-master here to orchestrate all this death?
The monkeys ceased their feasting, drawn to the Alpha's call. They assembled, a motley congregation of survivors, each bearing the marks of battle. Scratches etched their flesh like enchantments of war, bites punctured their limbs and continued to bleed, and some bore wounds grievous enough for Toki to wonder how they still lived and walked.
The Alpha had let out a series of howls to the monkeys. In a ritual of deference, they bowed low before Toki. All of them were battle-scarred veterans. A bloodied army. Seven amongst them stepped forward, bowing slightly higher. This must be their council.
"Thou hast bestowed purpose upon us," Alpha intoned, his voice echoing with spirituality. "Thou hast shattered the glass of our confinement and slain our captor. We will follow you, Glassbreaker."
He waited expectantly. They all did.
"I mourn for your brothers and sisters. I will make you stronger. I will make sure you never go hungry again." Toki replied, her tone a solemn vow. In her mind's eye, she conjured the vision of Partridge's manafruit farm, a valley filled with manamelon trees and manaberry bushes. It would become their sanctuary, a place where these weary warriors could recover. She contemplated their future as they watched in earnest. Her mind then flicked to the reverence the Alpha carried for the glass into the depths. “And we shall break the glass together!”
The monkeys rose in excitement and their howls crescendoed. The feeling Toki felt was a mix of excitement, horror, adrenaline, power, and urgency. It filled her chest completely, to the brim. The howls were cathartic and contagious.
Toki observed once more around her, the forms of hundreds of dead. Blood for blood, huh. While the monkeys returned to their grim harvest, scavenging what sustenance they could from the fallen rats, Toki's gaze lingered on the breakfast spread as they dispersed. She was tempted to offer the monkeys spices or the knowledge of roasted meat, but her mind flagged the biggest reason why she was here.
She approached the Alpha and began, "While your brethren comb over the rat colony, could you ask them to search for the beast cores? The cores from the large rats, and from the dragon, if it's here." At the very least she could confirm whether the rats were the ones that held the dragon core.
The Alpha nodded in reply, his bearing still heavy with the weight of recent carnage. He moved in the direction of the now empty rat den and let out a few low howls.
The only one left down here is Kristina. Toki mused. The thought swirled ominously. Is she really spinning a web here for me? How do I respond? How can I steal it from her? Force or cunning? Both?
The Alpha returned without the dragon core, but Toki did add a few dozen stage-one rat cores into her bag. She looked into her status to find the progress of the [Path of Swarms] Dao-Seed.
[[Dearly Departed] has pilfered Swarm Tactics (26/2000)]
It was truly the strength of the beast that limited further growth. She needed to kill 2000 stage-ones that embodied the swarm. The number was staggering. What happens after a Dao-Seed, though?
The stray thought made way for more important concerns as the army of howler monkeys ambled back to their amphitheater. If what Golgheim said is true, then I need to find the beast core. Aris depends on it. Save Edgar, then find the beast core.
Kristina’s next.
Toki knew that any attempt at defeating Kristina would require tools and enchantments. "Inside the dragon’s cave, is there any forge or fire?" she inquired to the Alpha. The moment it came out of her mouth she realized the silliness of the question. Dutch Eternal breathed fire.
"Dragon flame needs no kindling from lesser sparks."
"Then vellum—did she have paper?" Toki's request was a quick reply. "A canvas for incantations, often made of animal skins?"
"Follow," Alpha beckoned with a gesture, leading her to a barrel within his cave. Within it lay stacks of vellum. This is an entire arsenal for war. The materials here could serve an entire army. An entire city.
"Ah, this is perfect," Toki whispered, fingers brushing against the subtle waxy finish. Toki extracted a small stack with care. She settled herself amidst the ruins.
Despite their wounds, the monkeys still came. Around her, the residual echoes of battle seemed to linger, but they gave way to something more spiritual. She inspected the monkeys as they sat watching her, waiting to meditate on her newest discoveries.
She ignored the peculiarity and, instead, spread out the vellum. With inked aeso plucked from her satchel, she began to inscribe symbols and words upon a page, each a distillation of thought and emotion drawn from her soul in the Primal. The talismans began to take shape under her steady hand as she injected mana into the aeso—circles interlocking with lines, stars nestled within crescents—each a glyph carrying meaning.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
To build her personal enchanting language, she had interwoven her native tongue with pictographs and symbols. Most teachers on Aris recommended this approach, focusing on the verse structure of the enchantment to layer meaning into a story and add emphasis where relevant. Some manasmiths created painting and artwork, while others like Dutch Eternal used only a language—in her case the draconic lexicon.
Ambient intent and mana are universal. This is how most enchanters can understand another enchanter’s language. Activating an enchantment would give away the makeup, allowing other enchanters to guess at the meaning, even without knowing the full story.
Personal intent and manaflow are combined to act as a lure for their ambient counterparts. For Toki, [Charge Sphere] doubled as a way to obscure the enchantment to a degree, though its primary purpose was to cleanly form the lure.
Toki knew the best way to challenge Kristina was to use the existing chain to her advantage. The enchantment already present would be a good starting point, [So Susie Shall Bind Purple]. She recalled the system prompt for when she created it.
[Enchantment is incomplete. An auxiliary enchantment may be required.]
Auxiliary enchantments often work in tandem for complex machinery. The floating ships were excellent examples of complex enchantments bound together to form a whole. For the floating ships, ambient mana was often insufficient to power the enchantments, requiring mana crystals for additional energy, but here Toki guessed that the auxiliary enchantment could be powered by ambient mana, so long as the chain wasn’t destroyed. Which is unlikely.
How the auxiliary enchantment would actually work, she was unsure, but it would give her a moment of reprieve when she needed it most. Whether to attempt a deathblow or to escape, though, she didn’t know. Can Kristina even be killed?
The talismans she created now were for [So Susie Shall Bind Purple]. She planned to create an enchantment that resonated with the chain so she needed test talismans. The first dozen talismans were created with practiced ease, a replication of what had already been created. They would be used alongside the auxiliary enchantment to see if they worked together.
Her mind turned inward. The original enchantment focused on understanding the truth among falsehoods. This applied to Susie and to how she discovered Kristina was a giant-ass spider. For the auxiliary, she could think about approaching it multiple ways. The two options that rose to the top of her thoughts were:
1. Understanding her own truth among falsehood.
2. Flipping the narrative around and understanding falsehood amongst the truth.
It would be cherry if she could do both. The most obvious place to start was her own color god. Toki believed herself to be Purple. But the blood stains on her robe and her own open denial of Red’s philosophy was a red herring. The flame of creation and destruction, of love and wrath, flickered and flared, casting its glow upon her thoughts.
"Red is the blood that fuels ambition, the heart's fierce cry against the void," she whispered, her voice soft, but not lost on the monkeys. The next talisman beckoned. She would draw the intent from her soul into the inked aeso.
She pressed a brush to the vellum but stopped.
In her thoughts of Red and fire, Toki’s mind had flickered into a moment of inspiration. Didn’t she already have a forge at her disposal? She had truly underestimated the versatility of [First Burn]. She called forth her Twice flames and focused the intent of a simple fire enchantment into her flames. [Fire-Kissed], the most rudimentary enchantment.
Warmth of hearths, destroyer of cities.
First ally and adversary of humankind.
Using [First Burn], she injected the enchantment into [Lessons]. A slow grin spread across Toki's face. She brought the shadowflame close to a stray piece of vellum.
She let the fire kiss the parchment. The vellum blackened. Her fire could burn.
The monkeys let out sounds of surprise and curiosity, but Toki paid them no mind. She was excited at the thought. If she could enchant the shadows with fire, she could use other enchantments as well. Shadow bouncy-houses. Shadow swords. Shadow dragonflies. Shadow flying ships!
Toki shook her head. She was getting ahead of herself.
She instead channeled the intent of [So Susie Shall Bind Purple] into [First Burn] and watched as the shadows surged forth, eager to manifest her intent. Chains of pure shadow spiraled outward, ensnaring the rough-hewn boulder that lay inert nearby. They coiled around the stone binding it in place.
A smile played upon her lips as she dissipated the shadows. She pulled mana into the talisman triggering it.
"Let us see," she murmured.
Instead of shadows, a chain of mana heeded her call, writhing and twisting as if alive. It was similar, but less fluid. They stretched upwards, and snaked towards the same boulder. The stone, once more, found itself captive, this time in a binding of silver mana.
The mana version, from the talisman, was stronger but the shadows were infinitely more versatile. The talisman dissipated away as Toki released her hold over the chains. She would have to experiment further on how to strengthen the shadows.
Perhaps it has to do with [Path of Shadowflame]?
Toki paused as she returned to the previous thought. She gazed down at her robe, once her emblem, now sullied by the carnage of battle. The stark crimson smeared across the fabric mocked her; it was the color of blood, not the regal purple she had claimed to embody. In the lore, the Purple god was a figure of wisdom, not one who waded through fields of slaughter. When the moment of reckoning came, Toki had fought—fought with a ferocity that belied the lofty ideals she thought herself to carry.
She had wavered and allowed Zeppo to die. She had wanted him to die.
The notion of embodying the Purple god seemed a hollow farce, a pretense shattered by the harsh reality of life and death struggles. She had clung to that identity like a shield against the chaos of the world, but it was not her truth. Not anymore. Was it so simple? Was everything Purple or Red?
Toki's fingers trembled slightly as she set to work, the vellum laid out before her like an uncharted territory. With a furrowed brow, she dipped her quill into the aeso inkwell and began to inscribe an enchantment that pulsed with the fervor of red—the color of blood, of war, of unbridled passion. The lines curled and twisted upon the page, forming symbols that should have held power, but they lay dormant, lifeless when placed against [So Susie Shall Bind Purple]. There was truth in her intent. She could feel it. But it was not the right truth.
"Come on," she whispered.
She tried again, this time summoning the regality of purple, the hue of sovereignty and questions. Yet as the glyph took shape, it was clear that the authority it sought to command was absent. The talisman refused to resonate.
"Gods damn it," Toki hissed, frustration lacing her voice.
Undeterred, she continued her experimentation, her hands now moving with a mix of desperation and determination. She created quick rudimentary enchantments to test the resonance. Pink—an inbetween of Purple and Red; Green—the verdant echo of Aris itself; Orange—creative and joyous. Each attempt was meticulously crafted, each one failing to capture the essence needed to work with the original enchantment.
A sense of disquiet settled over Toki as she contemplated the pantheon of color gods that presided over Alabaster ring’s culture, each hue a testament to the values and virtues of its followers. Colors were more than mere symbols; they were the essence of one's purpose. To don a color was to bear one's soul for all to see, a personal covenant that bound the wearer to their path.
Golgheim wore green like Elder Marrow Twice; Oberon, Blue; Edgar and Pamela Twice, yellow; Eris Twice, indigo.
In the palette of colors that adorned the citizens of the ring, Elara's choice shone conspicuously absent. The master politician, clad always in impeccable grey, had forsaken the vibrant spectrum of the gods. Grey—the color of ambiguity, of storms brewing on the horizon, of ashes left in the wake of fire. The color that discarded the gods. Elara's renunciation of the divine spectrum spoke volumes, a silent rebellion against the order. And perhaps a style choice.
Toki mulled over Elara’s decision. It was whispered that her apostasy had taken root when her relationship with Golgheim Vast had reached its end. The schism between them was a microcosm of the larger fractures within Allie Ring at the time. At least that's what they say.
"Grey," Toki murmured. It was a color that acknowledged the complexities of life, that recognized the existence of half-truths and duplicity. Perhaps it was in this acknowledgment, in the embrace of uncertainty, that one could find a measure of freedom from absolutes.
With a deep, steadying breath, Toki channeled her distrust, the weariness that had settled in her bones from the weight of deception that permeated Golgheim's words, Elara's calculated maneuvers, Kristina’s riddles, and the very foundations upon which their society stood. She allowed the grey to seep from her soul, to become her focus as she etched a new series of glyphs onto a new vellum sheet.
The aeso seemed to shiver with potential, a subtle vibration that spoke of hidden depths. It was a weak resonance, barely perceptible, but it was there—a glimmer of compatibility with the original enchantment.
"Could it be?" Toki murmured, daring to hope. The grey whispered back, promising nothing, yet offering a sliver of possibility in the gloom. It was not a perfect union, but it was a start.
"Grey," she affirmed, her voice a blend of skepticism and conviction. The monkeys howled out in reply.
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