ASRIEL

When I was 10 years old my father died fighting a challenge from Boris the Monkey King. In those days the title of 'King' was earned through blood sweat and tears and actually meant something. Only those worthy of the title were known as kings and queens, a testament to their power.

There are tiers to being an Awakened warrior, from novice, Awakened lord, Awakened King to Imperium. Imperium being the highest level of power that can be achieved on Gaia through mana based evolution. Though Gaia the planet is sentient and powerful in it’s own right the very ground trembles when the battle spirit of an Imperium is aroused.

All Imperiums leave this world through one of the Ascension Gates scattered around the world. Imperiums become Ascendants once they leave this world for the world beyond the Gates. They are those who achieve such feats as to be acknowledged by Gaia as being beyond mere limits of mortal creatures and are released into the higher worlds.

It is the burden of every Imperium to find a Gate to Ascend if they seek greater power than can be weilded on Gaia they’ll leave. Be it a scholar mage, warrior or beast all that want more must find a Gate. The tales are many that speak of life beyond the Gates but no Ascendant has ever returned to give an account of what it’s like. All is myth and legend, or it was until that bloody book of tears started making its way around.

Growing up, my family lived in the plains of the Abu Desert amongst the sun baked dunes and soft soiled oasis’ with reptiles, arachnoids and elements for company. King level Awakened don't like to live near each other as the quickest way for a warrior to reach Imperium is through the blood of other Awakened Kings. This has created culture of constant challenge and fights to the death amongst the strongest beings on Gaia.

Life is a constant struggle of survival and only the fittest in their own niche thrive. Or those with really good cheats, the lucky overpowered few.

Father once told me that 'to train as a warrior is not to become a warrior. But to take that first life, that is when you become a warrior, and woe to you for the road ends in death or never ends at all. To stop is to die.' The path of the warrior is endless and I will never stop, thus I will never die. That is my credo.

I sit on the pier of a small nameless fishing village sketching the landscape; there is peace for me in sketching. The sun has been rising from the east the last 5 hours and the light cascades in a perfect mosaic of colours that shift with the passage of time.

The sound of the fishermen on their boats, the smell of the ocean and its vast expanse as I look at the horizon. Everything is utterly breathtaking.

I pull in a deep breath and centre myself at the moment, meditate on the present, be here. I spend the next 5 hours of dusk being in the now and sketching the village and breathing. 'Making a memory.' The followers of the paths call it, and in 50 years from now, I will still be able to remember this exact moment, remember the smell of the salty sea spray, the feelings of awe, wonder and peace I'm currently feeling by tapping into a power known as 'nostalgia'.

When the brotherhood found me I was an angry lost boy who had nothing but hate and despair in his heart. Now I have found balance.

"Asriel." My balance is shattered as a voice I have not heard in a hundred years interrupts my musing and meditation. I look behind me turning slowly and getting to my feet. Not many people can sneak up on me. In fact, no one has snuck up on me in over 25 years; it's something I thought impossible. Shows what I know.

"Is your third eye and crown so powerful that the mere thought of you cannot go unnoticed?" I ask in wonder, resignation and mocking. I am tired of the bloody 'All Seeing Eye' and it's never ending paths. I even stopped focusing on mine's development after only learning two of its skills, 'examine' and 'spatial awareness'. To know my enemy and to see beyond just in front of my nose, necessary survival skills for travelling the wilderness.

"No little brother, the Eye is not one of my gifts it is simply serendipitous that you would be thinking of me. May I ask where you are going?"

Malachi is a 5 feet 6 inches tall unassuming lean man. Very of appearance and height considered short by today's standards. He has aged golden brown skin; slight wrinkles and frown lines that would make him look 60 years old if he were a mundane but feels about 250 years or so to my Awakened sense of him.

He walks towards me in his clean, exquisitely crafted but tattered looking black cloak; his customary wide rounded brimmed hat woven in some type of bamboo and metal fibres. His shoulder-length oily black hair blown into disarray by the breeze. His lose black pants look comfortable, flexible and well made. Nothing can really disguise the superior workmanship that went into making them.

Malachi, The Wanderer, stands an arm's length away from me, barefooted and I am sorely tempted to fully open my third eye and properly Examine him. I was only 15 years old the last time I saw him, I'm actually surprised he even remembers me, let alone sought me out.

He is ageless to my senses, Awakened of the Lord realm with a focus on external energy projection. That’s all my 3rd Eye gets which I know is what he allows to be seen about him by those that have the Eye t see.

"How did you find me?" I ask instead of the many other questions in my mind as I centre myself again. It's not a question as important as why he sought me out, what his plans are, but my curiosity is piqued. I didn't mention where I was headed, I didn't even know where my goal was when I started out.

"I'm good at finding things." He says mysteriously. I tilt my head to the side wondering whether or not that's a good enough response for me to accept.

"I was going on a little boat ride," I say in response to his earlier question. Then remain silent until the silence is pregnant with questions and the pressure of people holding their tongues.

"I can find anything I make." He responds and I am suddenly aware of my unassuming clothes that are also of superior craftsmanship. These clothes are standard in the Hidden Palaces, so much so that I would have assumed a dedicated team of the seamstress' laboured to make them, not a person as prominent as the Wanderer, especially since he hasn't been to Tiba and the Lost Valley in decades.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Unless he made these during his last visit, which would be doubly impressive because when I got these clothes they had never been worn and though I've had them for 2 years, these and another pair in my pack, I've never had to have them repaired.

"I only make the pants." He says and shrugs. The pants for initiated followers of the way are very sophisticated. An elastic band is sewn into the waist and can be tied and tightened at the front preventing the need for a belt. The material is a combination of some sort of silk and a linen interwoven together resulting in flexibility and prevents tearing. The pants are then cured somehow to help prevent staining.

There are two types, the form-fitting ones that can also be worn under armour and then ones I'm currently wearing which bellow silently in the cool breeze.

"I am looking for the Shinobi of the Oriental people. I believe I have much I could learn from them." I say in our final exchange of concise information.

He snorts. "It would be years before they trusted an outsider enough to teach you. Besides, they are protected by the Monkey people. Even you aren't ready to sail into their lands unopposed. How about you help me with a project instead?"

"What kind of project?" Internally I'm ecstatic. I knew they went to the lands of the monkeys! To know you were correct in your next guess after searching for three years is a small consolation though.

"Oh you know... save the world, that kind of stuff." He says nonchalantly as he begins stuffing a pipe.

We sit at the pier and smoke silently for a while. This man was my master's master's teacher way back when. He is rumoured to be over a thousand years old and one of the original discoverers of the ways some 800 years ago when the order of the followers was founded.

"I want you to help me found another hidden village." The Wanderer says after a few puffs and passes me the pipe. I pull and think about it for a moment, savouring the bitter taste of dream-weed in my lungs then blowing out a long clean stream of smoke.

Dream-weed is very good at increasing lung capacity for a few hours, so if you're going to swim or hold your breath for an extended period of time it might be helpful. If you don't kill yourself under its influence that is. It makes a person feel as if they are in a dream, most people in dreams are their baser selves, people in dreams do things they would not usually do or fear things they wouldn't normally fear. It's a surreal feeling being in an awakened dream.

"Aren't the Lost Valley and the Hidden Palaces enough privacy for our people?" The Lost Valley is the name of our settlement in the plains. Very difficult to find as at the time of its founding the goal was both an oasis and a place to hide. The wars had apparently displaced many people and many peoples became extinct and their way lost forever.

The Wanderer and a few others collected some of the destitute and tried to settle in defensive positions, but the wars left very little defender alive and Awakened Kings and Mages were more common these days.

They eventually found refuge inside a hollow mountain with the top open to the sky. This allowed for an ecosystem to develop within the belly of Tiba Mountain, and there the Lost Valley was founded. Mostly by followers of the ways.

"This will be a different type of settlement."

"How so?" I ask, interested despite myself and all the plans I had for myself spanning the next decade at the very least, but I have time, I'm only 116 years old this year.

Barley middle aged for an Awakened lord.

"For starters, it's going to be hidden from the order as well." Both my eyebrows shoot into my hairline. That I did not expect. "The first hidden village was built out of desperation by refugees. This one will be out of necessity by a preselected few for an even fewer special people."

"Why do you want to keep it all secret?"

"We have opposition, very insidious and very clever opposition that hasn't yet revealed itself in the zenith of its victory after a tireless shadow war. Along one." He says with a sigh.

"What will be our purpose and how will we go about achieving it?"

"Though we may not be made up of refugees, we will provide a refugee. I would like to provide a home, training in the ways, and training in the arts."

"You want to rival the brotherhood?" I ask seriously after considering the implications.

"Without rivals to measure ourselves against we become stagnant. But no, if a rivalry does occur that is not my intention, but at least this 'brotherhood' will have the luxury of not accepting the undesirables." He says seriously.

We listen to the silence as we both think quietly. I know what he means though and some of his ideas resonate with me. The Lost Valley is my home, but sometimes I want to take a break from that place. We never turn away those who find us and seek our truths, but not all are suited for the ways of peace or tranquillity.

The darker ways are not rejected outright, for it is not ours to judge between good and evil. I could use a second home.

"What do you want me to do?" I ask finally as I make my decision. He nods as if he was expecting nothing else, then blows out more smoke.

"The Ancient of Days is with us. He is busy recruiting as I am, as you will soon be, but that is a secondary task for you. You will be tempered in a very painful ceremony that will render your soul and leave you decimated and much diminished."

He gives me a piece of paper from one of his sleeve pockets. "Follow this map to the marked location. If you don't die there you should emerge with a soul-sword, otherwise known as a zanpakutō by those in the know. You know what I'm talking about. There is a secondary location for the location you should direct potential candidates you may discover along your route. Also where you should go after completing your training of controlling your new weapon. It will be where our training camp will be, the location for our settlement is yet to be decided. Good luck." He says as he gets up, dusts himself off and starts walking away.

His pace is even and unhurried, but the distance he covers is huge. I watch his silhouette shimmer the further away he gets.

He turns and looks over his shoulder at me from a distance that's both 200 meters away and several dozen kilometres.

"Oh, and you don't have to be Chaste anymore." He says then disappears.

There is so much information that has me excited and feeling young again in his last few sentences. The Ancient is with us, that is more than enough to convince me I made the correct choice. The Ancient of Days is the original brother. It is said he wonders the world both as a punishment and a gift, he was the first brother. The immortal human that has found such balance that Gaia tolerates him despite his vast power, the power he has never used to take a life.

The first pacifist.

The first Chaste.

The first Silent.

The first to achieve The All Seeing Eye.

It is said as he found a place to rest, even in dry deserts animals would bring him food, rains would quench his thirst and monasteries would be built around him as wise men hung on his every word. That is how the brotherhood of the followers of the ways was founded, by imitating his credo.

But what really has me jumping up and down on the pier is the possibility of gaining a soul-sword, basically a myth in our realm. Spirits beyond, I hope it's all true.

A zanpakutō is said to be a sword that is the manifestation of your soul, which can be used to put spirits to rest. It is said to be a scalable weapon, meaning the power of the weapon increases with experience and the increased power of the user. Rumoured to be a costly gift that places a lifelong burden of having to put all spirits you come across to rest and makes it so you are unable to Ascend through the Gates until you manage to master its true form.

I adjust my gold range robe and red sash tightly around my waist. I unsheathe my elven made double-edged steel dagger. Take a deep breath and centre myself into the moment, meditate and pray to the Trinity for strength and guidance.

I sigh as I look at the map the Wanderer gave me. A long arduous journey, I'm even on the wrong continent. It shouldn't take more than two years though.

Soul-sword here I come.