The Plane shuddered as the shepherd took his first step. He swept his head left and right, with a smile full of damnation for all sinners. Everything his burning gaze landed on trembled. The ruins in his eyes shinning like silver moonlight.
The peaceful, comforting radiation of power that was previously present was now gone. In its place was something darker, almost hungry. The force moved feverishly over everything as if it was trying to smother and assimilate anything in its way.
The shepherd ignored the ascendents currently locked in battle with the lesser creatures of the void. The shepherd only had eyes for the two Fayan. The full attention of the old man could be felt physically even by those not associated with its regard. The old man’s gaze was so palpable that it even caused the odd Void beings to stop their creepy bowing.
They turned and looked at the shepherd and hissed. Their metallic pointy teeth glinted from the distant star’s light.
The shepherd put his left hand out, and the tool of his assumed trade snapped into it. He looked surprised at the wooden stick as though he didn’t expect it to be whatever it was. Snorting derisively, a prismatic fire began to roll up and down the crook from where he gripped the thing.
When the fire petered out, what was left was a gorgeous crozier made of metallic runic silver. It was glowing with a feint silver hue. Small ethereal moons appeared at the head of the crozier and began orbiting around it slowly. The staff looked more suited for an Arch Priest than a lowly shepherd, but it suited him all the same.
He said nothing as he slammed the butt of the moonlight crozier down on seemingly empty space. A ripple in the fabric of space rolled out in all directions like a rock thrown into a still mountain pond. As the wave hit the two Fayan, they leaned forward and hissed again in unison.
They were almost pushed back into the tear but the female flared with dark red power stopping them in place at the last moment. That dark power began to billow out from the two covering them in a blackish-red-hued aura. The two made some unknowable decision and surged toward the not-so-simple shepherd.
The old man frowned and began twirling his crozier slowly. The hungry power radiating off him seemed to vanish as a stillness fell over everything in the area. The absence of his smothering power was not comforting. The greater and lesser void beast, more in tune with their baser side of themselves, paused. That primal part of every living creature warning them to be still, that something was wrong. That eminent danger was close, and they needed to stop. They needed to listen.
Everything lay quiet aside from the Fayan and the old man. As if a damn broke, the void creatures began to flee back into the tear in reality. The lesser denizens dying by the hundreds as greater nightmares of the void crushed them in their race to escape whatever danger the stillness seemed to present.
The old man paid little heed to the lesser beasts of the void. His runic eyes burned in feverish silver light as he moved towards the Fayan. His steps weighed heavily on the Plane. Every single step was felt upon the fabric by all in the sector.
Power was building in the spinning crozier, although it could not be felt or seen. Only a thrum of something hummed harmonically through the emptiness of space. Those of the greater mysteries of anima would understand what was happening, but none would dare touch their own power to sense it. It was far too dangerous to do something like that so close to the tear. It could send a beacon out into the void. A glaring challenge to the more significant entities out in the unknown.
The shepherd didn’t care. He was deep in the throws of his own path. A harmony of some type was achieved, and he snatched his crozier from its spin.
The old man began to preach, “And so it was said. The creatures of deepest sin and darkest darkness walked the planes. Their sin infinite and boundless as the void which birthed them. All sinners must repent, but all voidlings must die. So sayith the Lord,” and then he attacked.
He thrust the crozier forward, and the moons shot out like small celestial comets burning with lunar light. As one left the crozier, another replaced it. Tens, dozens, and hundreds. Reality warped above and below the tear and the Fayans as the moons grew to their natural size. Oddly enough, none went directly toward the Fayan as the moons chaotically shot off and halted in random directions.
As it became more populated, the area above and below a pattern became visible. The Fayan’s jumped and chased after any of the lunar objects as they came close like children at play.
Witnessing such epically destructive beings acting in such a way sent shivers down the Sovereign Eternals spine. This was starting to get out of hand, according to his calculations. That boy had crossed a line, but for the love of all the planes, he couldn’t think of how he had done it.
Sighing, he mentally pulled up his system interface. Rapidly he searched through screens. The most important thing at the moment was checking to see if containments on planes best left forgotten had been breached. This being should not be here, and he wasn’t, at least not truly, but enough of him was nonetheless. That shouldn’t be possible. This was something that the Sovereign knew for a fact, as he had been the one to seal away this particular calamity himself.
“How in the ever loving emptiness did this one slip out of his cage?” He Tsk.
“This would happen on my watch. A locked away gods damn Sin Eater, and the wretched moon lover at that,” he complained to no one in particular.
The Sovereign Eternal flipped through screens only he could see as he checked the integrity of the seals. The pages zoomed by in a flicker so fast that mortal eyes would only see a solid light. He paused on a screen showing a 3D representation of the sealed planes.
The illusory structure resembled two impossibly giant arbors mirrored perfectly at their trunks as though it was only a singular tree’s reflection on a dark pond. Their roots buried deep in some fractal distortion in reality, chaotic clouds of multicolored lightning surrounding them. Lines of power surged back and forth from the arbors through the maelstrom that seemingly connected or possibly powered them.
The Sovereign only cared about the bits of light hanging from the branches of the trees like fruit or festive ornaments.
This space was neither planar nor void. It was something different, foreign, and only that man who created it and the two living Arbors understood it fully. A pact long-standing between the two cosmic entities was forged to safeguard everyone else from things not suited to ordered reality.
Although he wasn’t there, the duo was still aware he had peeked at them. Two incomprehensible powers brushed against the Sovereign. He was like a grain of sand next to a star in comparison. It was a simple hello which he returned, but secretly deep in his ascendant heart, he only thought of the gesture for what it really was. A reminder of how small he was in comparison to those ancient of ancient beings. The reminder wasn’t even meant for him but for everyone who knew about them.
He let the thought go. They desired nothing from the ants scurrying around them other than to bring them more collectibles if or win the situation was needed. They were neither good nor evil, for such things meant little to beings greater than universes. They simply were, and that was that.
Also, the top Cosmic arbor said into his mind, “What do you seek little Sovereign?”
Aziz, the bottom Cosmic arbor, interjected before he could reply, “Yes, tell us, little Eternal.”
As a member of his faction currently in active rotation, he often spoke with the entities. They were always pleasant despite being a little eccentric.
“Something is wrong. One of your tenants has slipped out.”
Aziz scoffed, “No one leaves the collection, little Sovereign.”
“Not unless we allow it little Eternal,” Arsu snickered.
“Is that so,” he replied to the duo skeptically.
“Then why is the Sin Eater, the paths progenitor no less, about to release a grand stellar formation working inside a breach zone?” The Sovereign's tone came harsher than he intended. Dealing with this type of mess would put him in reports and meetings for weeks with his compatriots.
He didn’t wait for a reply as he searched for the sin eater's globe. “There doesn’t seem to be any irregularities in the containments, hm, and yet… what is this here,” he muttered to himself as he zoomed in on Azizos’s canopy.
It wasn’t actually the bottom, as there was no real up and down in that place, but a mortal beginning always leaves its mark in little ways. He could speak a countless myriad of languages, but he thought and calculated in his first.
There was a profound truth in that.
The things hanging off the cosmic branches gained more resolution as the image came into view. The fruits of light were now clearly showing themselves as tiny globes. The globes were full of all sorts of things, from entire planes to singular planets. Entire Universes were caged in seemly small marble-sized spheres. The inhabitants proven too dangerous to interact with the rest. Some globes were dark. Their planes snuffed out by the entities contained inside the globes. Some spheres, with solitary galaxies or solar systems, ruled by empires and hive minds, too disruptive to the balance of power.
Other globes radiated with the divine light of a True god. The entity either gone insane or too malicious to be allowed to roam free. It was fine when mortals wanted to see the world burn. Very few had the power to do so, but True gods, born from the desires of billions or trillions of people and empowered by their faith. Well, that was a whole other thing entirely. Many could be reasoned with and served healthy functions in whatever Plane they manifested in, while others, not so much.
The Mantles had been developed for that very reason.
Then there were globes that held odd, maybe not evil, but still perilous individuals. People who had traversed paths that led to unintended outcomes. There were reasons some paths were taboo. Individuals such as the Sin-Eaters were prime examples. The Sin Eaters were a faction of powerful ascendant beings capable of sensing the history of a person’s actions via some soul anima skill related to the Sin Eater path.
The ability in and of itself was quite extraordinary, and they flourished in the multi-planar eco-system. They were a trusted and respected faction, and while not perfect, because what is, they were more a power of equitable justice than most.
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Unfortunately, it was later discovered that the ability eventually drove those who chose the Sin Eater path to go murderously insane. As could be imagined, beings of upper ascendant power believing everyone deserved to die for any and all wrong they had done, no matter how little, was not a good thing. Thousands of planets were lost to their righteous need to eliminate all sinners before the powers that be had to get involved.
If the Sovereign had to be honest, the Sin-Eaters were one of the lesser powers contained in the planar prison they were responsible for managing.
Looking closely at the globe that held the moon lover, Endymion, the Grand Elder of the order, sat happily on a stone in a picturesque field of vibrant grass as a flock of white fluffy animals grazed peacefully around him. At first glance, there seemed to be nothing amiss, but upon closer inspection, an impossibly faint thread of something was connected to Endymion’s head.
He combed over the globe, looking for where the thread entered. Tracing it back to an infinitesimal rift of—.
He started cursing.
“This kid was on his way to being on every single watch list that we have. Where the hell did he come from?” He muttered as he stared at a physical manifestation of probability.
It was almost entirely undetectable, and if he had not been here, then he doubted they would have ever known it happened. The next logical leap he made was how often this had happened. Probably more times than he was comfortable thinking about. And this was the lesser artifact he had created.
Dangerous. Bordering on too dangerous.
“See little Sovereign. Endymion is in the dream. As is all our guests.” Arsu said victoriously.
“Yes, Endymion dreams the dream. As do they all.” Aziz's followed in a triumphant tone.
The Sovereign sighed. That was technically true, but It wasn’t wholly accurate. So he pointed it out, “Then what is that inside his globe?”
Amusement flowed across their connection.
“Little Sovereign has eyes?” Aziz said imperiously.
“But yet the little Eternal cannot see?” Arsu cackled out.
“You two have been watching the Jade’s dreams to often… damn insufferable man.” He muttered.
The duo heckled across his mind. Their amusement was evident.
“Well how in the nines did it happen?”
The two sent a mental shrug, but Arsu replied, “Anything is possible, and the pact was not broken.”
Aziz snickered again, “Anything is probable, and with the pact not broken, it was allowed.”
The Sovereign was starting to get frustrated. They were technically correct. Quite a bit of technically’s going on today. A loophole had been found, he supposed. He dismissed his interface aside from the feed of Endymion’s globe and looked back to the battle.
The formation grew to truly titanic proportions. Silver lunar light began to suppress the void noble's aura. The Fayan, although suppressed somewhat, seemed oblivious to the formation burning itself into the fabric of the planes around them.
They responded to the moonlight suppression by linking hands. To what ends the actions could only be guessed. A powerful black and red aura flared out all around them. The Sovereign guessed they were most likely readying themselves to release something devastating to the Plane.
Their void aura continued to flare wildly for a moment, then condensed to a perfectly smooth and controlled outline of power around the two Fayan. The formation finished as the last moon fell into place. The Sin Eater pulled back his crozier at its completion.
It was a masterwork if the Sovereign had ever seen one. Layers upon layers of formations pyramided up from the top and bottom. The two pyramids came together, entrapping the breach. The structure looked like a brilliantly cut gemstone with all the glowing facets of glyphs. They blazed like silver starlight. Each glyph comprised of thousands upon thousands of runic scripts throughout the formation.
The Sovereign didn’t know what it would do outside of containing the Fayan. He could gather that much, but he hadn’t fully paid attention past that portion of its construction. They needed to be appeased or contained and shooed back to their ridiculous court.
These workings were rarely seen outside private sandboxed planes where the damage could be contained. This infantile Plane had yet to develop far enough to look out amongst the stars, and what planets had life were tens of thousands of light-years away. If that hadn’t been the case, he would have already had to step in.
The Sovereign couldn’t for the life of him understand why the Council was allowing this to happen. Doritha had her reasons, he was sure, but it wasn’t the first time their two factions had disagreed.
Not that anyone could do fuck-all if the cat decided to enforce her will upon them. None of this would be here without that man, the cat, the general, and their companions. The Sovereign would still complain fiercely.
The shepherd just smiled with the pits of some hell shining out of his mouth. He said, “Lunar Reflection,” and the words of power rippled throughout the anima and the formation. The moons crystallized at the six points of the formation, and the silver glyphs began to move like rolling text.
The Fayan finally took notice of the spell form as it locked into place. The two released each other’s hands and shot in different directions. The Sovereign watched the male move thousands of kilometers in the blink of an eye and smack right into the side of the container. He bounced equally as fast to an adjacent side. Something similar happened to the female. And so the two Fayan nobles began to ricochet around without slowing. The formation somehow preserved their momentum.
The old man stroked his white beard like the evil-looking wizard priest he appeared to be and smiled. The smile moved to laughter. No sound waves came from the gesture, but the anima rippled with his joy, conveying his mood all the same. Then he moved.
Endymion disappeared and reappeared at a central corner of the formation, where a crystalized moon was embedded into the formation structure. He flipped the crozier in his hand once. He raised the staff up like a javelin and moved it forward in what looked like a half-hearted throw but was anything from it. The crozier exploded with brilliant power and slammed butt down to embed itself into the crystal moon.
A beam of light blasted from the crystalized celestial object like a laser inside the barrier of the formation. The rays began to refract endlessly. A beam hit one of the Fayan noble's arms, and it was simply gone. It reformed almost instantly, but the beam was not just a pretty light, that was for sure.
But the stakes were now too high that it signaled the end of the visit from the Fayan. The female had gained back some semblance of control and snatched her counterpart by his leg as she shot towards the breach. They both had massive smiles as though they had been having the time of their lives.
They turned around and waved goodbye as they slipped back into the void. The female still held the male by his leg, waving madly. A stray beam took off their arms, but they reformed instantly, and the two never stopped smiling.
He supposed it might have been nothing but fun for them.
Pop in for a nice vacation. Decimate a few civilizations, a planet or six, a solar system or ten, and head on home. Needless to say, all the void court nobles were insanely dangerous.
I hate this job sometimes.
As they finally slipped through the tear in the fabric, the massive continental size hands removed themselves from the opening. The fabric rapidly began to heal itself. Endymion dismissed the formation, and the moonlight crozier materialized in his hand.
“What to do with you?” He pondered.
He reached out to the Cosmic Arbors, “Well how do I stop the connection? I can’t leave him out like this no matter what planar malarkey is going on. He’s too dangerous.”
They both replied in unison, “You can’t.”
As usual, nothing followed. He closed his eyes before they could start twitching in frustration. Did he have to drag everything out of these two?
Finally, he wrestled his emotions in check and asked, “And why not?”
“Probability must have it’s way. Even we don’t dare push on it’s threads without care.” Arsu said
“Yes. It must have it’s way once invoked. It is too dangerous to pluck the threads.” Aziz claimed solemnly.
“Why is that? The kid clearly just played a ballad on the threads.”
The duo hummed in contemplation as he felt their attention move away from him and on to the situation occurring in front of him. The Sovereign saw Doritha look around in surprise but relax after a second.
“Great, now she is definitely going to know I was here,” he muttered in annoyance.
He didn’t need to hide, but he had many cards in play right now, and with the girl appearing basically gift-wrapped to them, he couldn’t afford to be caught up in her games. Unlike the cat, his motives weren’t exactly altruistic.
Tired of waiting, he said, “Well?”
The attention of the Cosmic arbors returned to him.
“The child of Aleph. The legacy bound.” Arsu said.
“The blood line of Aleph. A Mantle passed down.” Aziz said knowingly.
As if that made any sense to him—wait, hmmm, Aleph. He knew that name. A deep pain hit his chest as the comprehension brought on a sadness that rolled through him, but he needed to confirm it.
“The boy has Aleph’s Mantle?” He inquired softly.
“Yes,” the duo replied together.
“So he’s gone,” a complex expression took over his face.
“Yes,” the duo affirmed.
He didn’t shed tears, but his heart ached at the confirmation of the death of a friend. The man had been one of the greats. Why had he chosen to do this? The Sovereign supposed it didn’t matter. There were so few of them left from the beginning. Even less of Aleph’s kind.
Most in the first Era never wanted eternity. They had simply risen to the occasion. The Divinity War pushed everyone to the brink. They had all done things they never wanted to do to ensure everyone wasn’t slaves to mad esoteric existence. Those who were left afterward had either stepped into leadership roles or faded into the background.
“We guided the threads to the little moon. Be thankful. It could have been much worse.” Aziz said.
“Be blessed. It could have been much worse,” Arsu mirrored.
That made the Sovereign pause. It certainly could have been much worse. Some of the things that had popped up had been quite disturbing. He’d only recognized half of the things that had shown up before it landed on the Sin Eater. Which probably meant that those beings were out there somewhere. That made him more uncomfortable than he had wanted to admit.
Another thing to add to the reports.
“Do you know when the rift will close—, Ah never mind.” He said as he watched the rift snap shut and the line disappear in Endymion’s globe.
The Sin Eater popped out of existence, and the ridiculously tall war machine appeared in his place. The chest opened up and ejected a sandy-haired man in a brown leather reclining chair. He hunched over the side and began vomiting rainbow-like light everywhere. It was a scene so ridiculous that he couldn’t stand to look at it, so he immediately ignored it.
What he had thought would be an exciting snoop around turned out to be a trap filled with mountains of reports. He disparately wanted to pretend like he had never been here, but the Cosmic shrubs, the bastards, had prevented that. At least he didn’t have to break cover.
Pulling up the feed of the girl, he snorted at the situation. She was knocked smooth out and covered in her own vomit. It wasn’t exactly where he wanted her, but she wasn’t ready. So it would do, for now.
Nexus was a safe enough place for her to grow, and with her current backing, they could watch from the shadows biding their time. They had already waited so long, and she was useless to them with her current strength. With more of their brother and sisters showing up, it would be a much easier situation to manage.
Before he could look away, he felt familiar spacial ripples beginning to coalesce inside the dorm room. He looked back over at the kid, vomiting rainbows. He would probably believe the kid was faking it if he couldn’t sense the foreign energy the kid was expelling.
“Must be some type of side effect of using the artifact,” he mused to himself.
Seeing that the kid wasn’t going to shield the room from all the peeping outsiders. He audibly Tsk’d and sent a mental message to his associates on campus. An invisible glyph came into light, jamming all the peeping eyes monitoring the situation inside the room. No one needed to see what the kid had in his possession. Something like that would instantly start a war leading to many powerful and influential individuals being silenced, permanently. Possibly finding a home with the arbors.
Several doorways ripped open in reality, and three figures walked out. Their faces were blank of any emotion. He scanned them over and was quite impressed with their progress. They had not exactly been lacking before, but they would have fallen behind the girl without the additional training.
Good, now she has friends who can walk beside her.
He looked back at the descendant of his friend. He could see the resemblance now that he looked for it. The rainbow vomiting was really killing his reminiscing mood. The Sovereign did not miss the fact that the disciple and master were both covered in vomit.
“Karma’s a bitch. Wherever the planes she is now. Shit—” He looked around as a cold sweat seeped onto his back. Realizing she wasn’t anywhere in the area, he sighed in relief. She did that sort of thing. Just showing up the moment you start talking about her. The multi-planner cosmos was both beautiful and fickle. Even he couldn’t be too careless. Chuckling to himself over the near miss, he relaxed and turned his attention back to the kid.
He watched the young mantle finally stop expelling the foreign energies and thought about his friend.
He clenched his fists in frustration as the intense emotions hit him. It was a larger blow than he expected.
“Damn you Aleph. Damn you. Why didn’t you say good bye.”
He knew why, of course. No one could talk him out of it if they didn’t know. He wasn’t the only one of the first-generation Mantles to wander off and do the same. The first-gen Mantles were beyond powerful, but they all came with burdens, one might even call it a curse, and Aleph’s burden was the heaviest of them all.
The Sovereign Eternal sighed in both happiness and regret as he looked out across the stars of the baby universe.
“I am sorry my friend, rest well.”
The Sovereign said farewell to his lifelong friend and wished him well wherever his soul rebirthed. He would keep an eye on his successor. He owed Aleph that much, at least. Especially considering the trouble, he’s caused thus far.