The door opened into a small room with a table at the center. There was a woman sitting on the other side. “So, Eternity. You’re here.”

Jay nodded. “Yes, I’m here. Now let me through.”

The woman stood up. “I don’t think you know truly who Eternity is, or remember your past. Just remember us five, and come to save us. This is a recorded message.”

The woman faded, a leftover illusion. The room disappeared with her, revealing another. A pack of wolves were orbiting them, characterized by blue, oceanic eyes and wavy pelts. One darted at Jay, but Amon was ready, shooting a spike through its head. As it died, more of the wolves leaped at him, right into a Shardstorm, cut to pieces. Drake danced through the wolves, each strike lethal. Catherine’s blows were also lethal, but each one crashed through multiple wolves, the sound of bones breaking constantly audible.

And perhaps the most impressive of them, Crystal killed wolves in swathes with fireballs, lightning bolts, and by simply looking at them. Jay started moving, starting a Song of boiling blood. He moved faster than ever as he felt his blood warm, raging inside him to move and move faster.

The wolves stood no chance as they quickly died. The room faded, replaced by a larger one once again. A hydra was in front of them, three heads to its name, and they leapt into action. Drake cut through the hydra’s chest, but new heads sprung out of the smallest cuts, and he stopped, jumping back. Catherine crushed a head and Jay descended like a god, fire coating the broken neck. It withered, falling to the ground, as more heads turned and snapped at them, one catching Jay and taking a bite out of his side, which knit itself together as his Song reached a crescendo.

All the power he’d been building was let out in a single explosion of fury, fire coating the entire battlefield and melting the hydra almost instantly. Jay’s Song ended, his Note at its end as well.

The room expanded once more and an army rushed at them, humans charging in with pikes. They were completely encircled, and each of them took a fourth of the army, putting themselves in a perfect square. Jay focused entirely on his fight, Amon merging with him. She conjured a massive blade, the length of four people lying flat, and swung it, trusting Jay to keep his balance. Jay held a revolver, firing every moment he wasn’t trying to keep his balance as Amon reaped lives by the dozens. The army soon became a gruesome field of corpses which disappeared with the room when it faded away.

This time, they were in front of a door. ‘The Maze’ read a sign next to it. Jay opened it, not taking a moment to catch his breath, and they were off, running through endless corridors. There were traps, but none strong enough to hurt any of them, so they simply ran at top speed as fast as they could.

As soon as it came, the maze was gone, the group not reaching any dead ends on the way out. As they exited, they found a set of stairs leading down. Glass coated a wall, showing the abyssal, watery depths outside. At the bottom there was a single sentence written on the floor. ‘Are you ready?’

Nightingale sat in a cell in her own mind. She sipped some tea which she’d created, watching the events that were currently happening. She was staring at the Emperor, who, in fact, had a superior, so he wasn’t quite any emperor. He was ordering her to defend the Vision and be the final guardian of the useless thing. She watched herself turn to it, seeing the book. “The Elements of Eternity. Hmph. As if he knew Eternity.”

This was a book written by the Emperor himself on the exploits of Eternity. The Emperor’s name was not Eternity, surprisingly, so he was obviously an expert on what Eternity had done. Enough of an expert to write a book from Eternity’s own perspective on his life, without ever even meeting him.

The Emperor was actually a lower rank than her, and yet he could order her around for she was currently a slave. The only ranking in the Monsters was power, though, so she outranked him. And his superior. And their superior. And the one after that. And ten more, actually.

Nightingale hmphed as her body posted itself in front of the Vision. The first team entered the room, instantly dying to a shadow scythe. The rest of this tower wasn’t that hard, in fact. It was supposed to be, but part of the Emperor’s cost-cuttting scheme was to make the tower quite easy to complete and just put Nightingale at the end to make it impossible.

Another team entered, instantly becoming a second pile of corpses. The pile only grew as time passed, none of the teams even seeing Nightingale.

Then another team entered, and just before Nightingale’s body was about to kill them all, Nightingale grabbed hold of it with all her power. She knew that soul.

Eternity stared at her through the eyes of someone else. He recognized her. Had he found her message? The one she’d left a… couple billion years ago? Or was it a trillion? Never mind. She’d left it in Memory, ready to show itself to him whenever necessary. Her body raised a hand, ready to strike, but she stopped it. To them, it would simply look like she was convulsing in place as her body tried to kill them, but she was stopping it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

It was actually an incredible effort that she was only able to manage because of her examination of the binding mechanism. She couldn’t break it from inside, but she could throw a wrench in it.

Until it adapted.

The team picked its way over the corpses on the ground, approaching her body. Eternity spoke. “You said something about… saving you?”

Nightingale smiled in her mind. Her body simply kept convulsing as she saw him examine her with Thought. Then Amon pulled itself out of his body. “Erin?,” She asked, weaker than she was. A side effect of reincarnation, she supposed. “We need to break the binding mechanism on her,” Amon continued. “But we can’t do that right now. Grab the Vision and leave. We’ll get her later.”

If Amon thought they couldn’t save her, that was definitely true. Nightingale stayed there, vibrating in place, until they touched the Vision and left. Then she released her hold on the body, noting that the binding mechanism had adapted. She wouldn’t be able to do this again. Her body teleported to the Emperor. “Liege, they have taken the Vision.”

The Emperor snorted. “How?”

“My mind bound me for almost half a minute. Enough for them to get it and leave.”

“Was this Eternity and his group?”

A smile emerged in full force on Nightingale’s face as she watched the Emperor’s expression. “Yes.”

The Emperor got right up in Nightingale’s face, staring through her eyes. “I know you can hear me, Nightingale. So you saved him once. But twice? That’s not going to happen. You’ll rot as a slave-king until you accept your destiny.”

Hope had rekindled in Nightingale, seeing Eternity back in the world of the living, and she wasn’t giving it up now.

The Monsters were oh-so-screwed when Eternity remembered who he was.

Jay pulled out the Vision after the mark finished transporting him back to the school. Instantly, Onyx was there. “Anything weird happen?”

“There was this girl who called me Eternity. Amon seemed to know her.”

Onyx shrugged. “Describe her.”

“Raven-black hair, deep blue eyes, pale skin, though not too pale, a pin of a bird on her chest, a single rune carved on the back of her left hand.”

Onyx paled. “That’s Nightingale. Why’d she let you live?”

Jay shrugged. “She just vibrated constantly while we were there and didn’t do anything else until we teleported out.”

Onyx shook his head. “You should be dead. You have no idea how lucky you are-”

Amon created a head on the side of his arm. “Belive me, I am, at least.”

Onyx pointed at her. “You are far smarter than any of them, gal.”

Amon nodded knowingly. “I know.”

Onyx grabbed the Vision. “Now. First order of business. Do any of you want to read it?,” he asked the group.

They all raised their hands. “All right. You get first reads. I’ll have people watch to make sure you don’t combust, but you should be fine.”

Drake grabbed the book, and they all sat down. He dropped it, falling onto his back as his eyes closed. “Don’t worry. He’s just seeing the memory. No one else can read the book until he’s done with it, though. It’s just blank for some reason.”

Jay nodded. “So, the tower. There were lots of traps and such-we took the light path-but it didn’t seem very hard. We kinda breezed through it. There were a few corpses in the final room, though, so I assume Nightingale killed a couple people before us.”

Onyx nodded. “I think the Monsters have some alternate agenda. This specific group never lies, which is why I risked sending you into the tower, but others do, so don’t believe what they say, by the way. Just giving a random group the Vision doesn’t seem like something they would do.”

Jay shrugged. “Well, we got it though, right? So, what’s happening with the Metallics?”

A frown appeared on Onyx’s face. “They’re conscripting random kings’ soldiers and forcing them to fight. We’re just killing all the soldiers except the ones who surrender and join us.”

Jay looked around at his team, who looked wiped from the constant running. “Well, we’ll join the war effort in… a week, you think?”

Drake nodded. “That sounds good.”

Jay nodded. “Give us a week.”

Onyx sighed, rubbing his head. “You’ll have it. This war is a massive headache.”

“I can’t agree more.”