The Watcher I
Gor'achen
The Aether
Unknown
Stepping outside the Blood Rose Stable, I focus my awareness on the Eidos. A web of Power fills. The Power bears a resemblance to Trinity, but it is something else, two Primal Powers, the Dark and a Power I have never seen before. From what I sense, the second Primal Power should be Order or Law. Both Names are used for the Power, which is probably related to how beings understand its nature. Order is the origin of most of what the beings considered to be natural laws. Whether it was the sentient beings of Earth, Taereun, and the Realms that were once imprisoned in Yggdrasil, Nidhoggr's dimensional battle fortress, they all experienced the so called laws of gravity, time, conservation of energy, and so on. Their comprehension of how the laws worked varied, but they all assumed those laws to be an intrinsic part of their universes. Nothing could be more wrong. Those laws are imposed on the entire metaverse and affect each Realm to varying degrees. The Dark is the source of disease, decay, undeath, and many forms of corruption.
Despite the defenses created around the metaverse by Life and Death, all four of the Primal Powers affect the metaverse in their own way. They always have, and for as long as the continues to exist, I imagine they always will. Realms exist that lie outside the defenses created by Life and death, and in those Realms, everything is tainted by the Primal Powers. Many of the Realms are affected by two Primal Powers. Beings born in those Realms are called by many Names: Demons, Daemons, Devils, Daevas, Asuras, Angels, and countless other Names. The only commonality between them is that they are all eternal enemies to all that lies within our metaverse. Those beings enter our metaverse through gaps in the defenses. Often they bring Primal tainted materials with them. Those beings and materials taint almost all that they come into contact with.
I do not know what created the web of power that I sense. There could be a Primal being behind it, or it could simply be the work of a being from within the metaverse that acquired something tainted by Order and the Dark.
Lurking within the web of Power, a Mind watches me. The Primal Power in the web, especially the Dark, obfuscates it, making it hard to perceive its nature, but the Primal Power cannot hide the awareness that the Mind has focused on me. The taint the Dark and Order permeate the awareness as much they fill the web or Power itself.
From within my Core Realm, I draw out a thick flow of the Od. As it circulates through my Body, Mind, and Soul, my thoughts and reactions speed up. Around me, the world feels like it has ground to a halt, and the air feels thicker than molasses. Separating my Mind from my Body and Soul, I penetrate the web of Power. Immediately, the Dark and Order within the web attack my Mind, but the Od flowing through my Mind retaliates. The Od is more than an Elemental Power, but it is not quite Primal in nature or strength. Even so, it is a Power that exists for the purpose of defending and destroying. The raw volume of the Od within my Mind overwhelms the traces of Primal Power withing the web. As I race along the threads, the Dark and Order are scoured from it.
From the appearance of the thread stretching out behind me, I have the impression that I am perceiving a wire or cable stretched taught through the Eidos. The thread itself is clearly not a part of the Mind that I sense ahead of me. The thread feels like a neutral medium that was created to contain some form of energy. As I pass move from my current thread to connecting threads several times, the threads seems to be connect to one another through nodes. With how easily my Mind moves through the nodes to other thread, I have the impressions that I am moving through switches, like those in a communications network. I am beginning to believe that the web is an imitation of a computer network. Considering that this is the Eidos, perhaps, I should call it the Idea of Concept of a computer network.
The Mind that lurks within the web does not confront me; it flees. As I charge forward, the Mind continually withdraws. If I come near, it dodges into other threads. After I close the gap between us, the Mind accelerates. It no longer tries to hide. Seeming as fast as it can, it only runs away. Jumping from thread to thread, it closes in on the boundary of the Third Layer's pocket realm. Suddenly, it disappears from my awareness. I have the feeling that it is trying to lead me into a trap, but if there is a trap, I will destroy it.
Reaching the point where the last spot that I was able to perceive the Mind, I stop and scan the area, but I find no sign of the Mind. The thread I am on continues only a short distance further on, where it ends at the boundary of the Realm boundary. As the Od consumes the Primal Power polluting the area, I get a feeling that something is not right. The thread does not feel like it actually ends, but I cannot sense what happens to it where it passes through the Realm boundary. I focus my awareness on the point where the thread intersects the Realm's boundary wall and find a distortion in the boundary wall. Primal Power, a mix of Law and the Dark, inundates the distortion. I have the feeling that if I try to press forward, the distortion will open up for me, but I also have the feeling that it would be a trap.
As I rejoin my Mind to my Body and Soul, I feel something within the field of my awareness. I cannot clearly perceive anything; there is just and oddness. To my right and ten meters in the air, a faint unevenness, a disturbance, in the flow of the Trinity that makes up the basis of all Amalgamate Realms makes it seem like something is off. The unevenness is nothing like the web of Power in the Eidos. It exists primarily in the Soma, and as best I can tell, it is not meant as any form of conduit. As I focus more of my awareness on the unevenness, it feels almost like looking at the distortion form a heat shimmer, except there is nothing visible to the eye. With the ability to sense Trinity, I would be completely unaware of the disturbance.
After a few moments, the shimmer becomes visible to the eye, and a window appears in midair. Through the window I see the mirror room on the Night Raven and a naked Meili. Looking at the window hanging there, memories from my time in the Blood Rose Stable stir. It was a time when I was even weaker than I am now, and a SvartAlfar gladiator had sensed the mirror's focal point. As an Alfar, he should not have been able to properly perceive Trinity, but he had still noticed when I was watching him. The way in which the mirror works obviously has weaknesses. I need to better understand how it functions, and it would be best if I could figure out how the SvartAlfar sensed the focal point.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Meili stares at me with a neutral expression, and her thoughts reach with a complete lack of any emotional undertrones. *You left without me.*
*This place is tied to my past.*
Meili shows a very faint frown. *That tainted Alfar slut was not worthy of you.*
I have seen the jealousy of women, who think another woman has something that belongs to themselves, too many times, and a wave of irritation rises from my Soul. Keeping my memories of Elan'fer'sha that lurk just below the surface of my Mind to myself, I shrug. *I'm going to deal with what I find here by myself.*
For an instant, Meili looks unhappy, but almost before I identify the emotion, her expressionless mask returns. *Do not get yourself killed.*
*Open the gate.*
"Skinner, get over here!"
Lurking in the shadows inside the gate of the Blood Rose Stable, the Orc tenses. A flash of surprise flickers across his face, but he quickly schools his features into a stoic expression. Walking through the gate and across be boundary between the pocket Realms of the stable and the Third Layer, he kneels and bows his head, showing me the back of his neck. For most of the species of Beastmen, showing the back of their neck is no different from an animal showing its belly: submission to a stronger being. "Master, White Eye is dead."
Despite the Skinner's apparent submission, it is just and act. Hiding deep within his Mind and Soul, there is an iron core of determination, the determination to survive. He has survived for centuries by never showing his true self to anyone that he will let survive. He may only be a Beastman, but I respect those that are determined to survive. Even if I was planning to kill him, right now, I would still respect that determination.
I point to the mirror's dimensional gate. "Go through there! Obey Meili!"
"Yes, Master." As the Skinner rises and turns toward the mirror's gate, for a moment, he freezes in place and stares at Meili. A mix of thoughts and emotions flicker across the surface of his Mind and Soul, with awe and lust eventually dominating. After visibly regaining his self-control, he springs into the air and through the gate.
On the Night Raven , the Skinner drops to his knees into a position of submission. "Mistress, what is your command?"
Looking at me, Meili raises one eyebrow. *What do you plan to with it?*
*Teach it how to properly Coalesce and use it as a thief and assassin.*
Meili smirks. *Your love of fighting makes it interesting to watch you assassinate someone.*
*Blow me.*
Meili's smirk changes into a grin. *Finish up with cleaning up the garbage in this decrepit dump and get back here. I'll take you back to paradise.*
After enjoying the view of Meili for a few more moments, I step through the Shadow of the Od and shift the entirety of my existence into the Eidos. Just because the Body and Soul were never meant to exist within Eidos, it does not mean that they cannot, but the Eidos does not follow the same rules and laws as the Soma. For one, there is no air to breath, but the my connection to the Od, I do not need air. By using the Od, I can replace any need for air, food, and other things with raw Power.
Free from the constraints of gravity and inertia, I cross the majority of the Third Layer in a few steps. Standing, if you can call existing in the Eidos with nothing solid under your feet standing, once more before the distortion with the thread from the web of Power passing through it, I examine it.
The Realm boundary has been altered, and the Dark, which was woven into it, still, obscures the distortion where the thread from the web of Power passes through it. Weaving a web of the Od into my awareness, I probe the obfuscated area. While I cannot burn away the Dark without tearing apart the Realm boundary, the Od slices through the Dark's obfuscation. Hidden behind it, a thread of Order delineates an area in the shape of perfect circle surrounding the thread, and radiating out from the thread, more threads of Order divide the circle's interior into nine equal segments. Using my Mind, I directly apply a little pressure to the circle, and the nine segments begin to separate, revealing a region of darkness on the other side of the Realm boundary The distortion is a gate of sorts, but it only opens inward to whatever is on the other side. While I cannot be certain, I do not believe that it will open from the other side.
Unlike natural Realms, the the pocket Realms comprising the Layers of Gor'achen Citadel can only be penetrated at their borders: the top, the bottom, and the outer rim. Expanding on the web of Od that I am using, I use it to sweep across the Realm's boundary wall for hundreds of meters in all directions. The are several points where the web of Power appears to penetrate the Realm's boundaries, but I have no way to tell if those exits and this one connect to the same location.