As it turns out, magic may not have been better. While riding on Spot further east, my conversation with Johnny showed me that his fucking wish was beyond over-powered.
“Duuuude, when that weird ass high hit, like a few months ago, told me to make a wish, I did! I was like balls deep in some emo hottie after a couple weed brownies and I screamed at the heavens, ‘I wanna cultivate some power!’ right at the end there. And shiiieeet, man, I’mma’ live forevuh!” he said.
When I snorted back a small laugh, he got defensive making his voice go up hilariously in pitch. “Yo! It’s awesome! Trust me, this shit is beyond real!” Johnny crowed as Spot leisurely walked alongside the river. I mean, I know it’s fucking real, mainly because I couldn’t get Johnny to shut up about it.
Teenage loser wished to be like a character in some weird Chinese novel or someone from a show called Dragonball Z. According to his explanation, and it was hard to parse through his ‘surfer-esque’ dialect, a cultivator is a being that internalizes natural energy, some ethereal external power, and uses it to empower himself. He went on to describe going up in power over time, staving off old age by banging hot asian chicks while simultaneously doing some hippie ‘one-with-the-earth’ shit.
Hearing it was fucking funny, but my magical senses showed me that a veritable storm of power was growing inside of that kid. Most of it was some kind of diffuse cloud, but at the very center there was a tiny pea-sized dot of super condensed power that seemed to have its own gravity. Maybe this was the dude Merlin wanted me to get? I mean, probably. He’s annoying, incredibly powerful, long-lived if he isn’t dumb, and very durable, uhg.
“Right, I gotchu’,” I said. “How does it work? That energy you use . . . I mean, I use mana, which is the stuff magic is made of. My soul produces some, I can see that you make some, the earth has rivers of it, the sky has currents, living things produce it . . . Do you see where I’m going with this?”
Johnny moved his head around like a cobra hypnotizing prey. “Bruh, it’s all around you. You just gotta feel it, like meditate, take it in, woosah!”
Let’s try a different track. “So, with my magic, I can conjure, manipulate, and banish a bunch of different elements. What can a cultivator do?” I asked, almost slow enough to be insulting.
“Anything man. I’m like Goku, I just get stronger over time.”
“Johnny, come on now,” I said a little more kindly. “I did just save your ass from Kong and his troop of poo-flingin’ monkeys. Just tell me something. Save the cartoon analogies for later.”
Just as he opened his mouth to answer, we arrived at the clearing in front of the World Tree. I hopped off Spot and faced Johnny. “Better yet,” I declared. “Just show me.”
Johnny didn’t move from his spot.
“I’m not going to touch your banana,” I joked with a straight face. “Nor do I want to.”
Still nothing. Seriously, no reaction to the most obvious penis joke. This fucking fifteen year old didn’t even crack a smile.
Uhg, the Ripple did change everything.
“Spot . . .” I said, to which the big dog bucked the kid right off. Johnny landed far too gracefully, which made that small mean part of me like him even less. Looking at me, then back at the towering canine, the young cultivator walked over to the edge of the clearing and gently set it down.
“You gonna tell me about that banana, or is that another mystery?” I teased.
Turning around, the kid gave me a solemn martial arts bow, his face peaceful. A sonic boom and less than a split second later, he was right in front of me, right foot coming up to punt me right where he shouldn’t. Thank all the stars above that my magical armor engaged a force field way faster than what my unengaged, surprised brain ever could have reacted.
Rationally, it’s a low blow, but technically, it’s a fight winner. We males are given a distinct weakness comparative to females, as we generally are bigger, faster and stronger. The downside is, that if we face another male, we have a level playing field but both sides have a gruesome vulnerability between the fork of our legs. This little fuck, however, was more than willing to hit below the belt.
Johnny’s foot, with all the momentum of his power behind it, smacked into my immovable magical force field that drew its stability from Mother Earth. This caused a beautiful kinetic feedback loop that instead of sending me to the moon or having me begging for mercy, caused Johnny’s foot to be blasted back and forced him into an upward somersault. He landed directly into my shield, his face smooshed against it like a dog smackin’ into a glass door.
“A friendly spar, you dick!” I yelled at him as he shook himself off. “Sheesh, I promise, I mean you no real harm.”
The thin stream of blood running down from his broken nose combined with the lack of words was an answer in and of itself. The friendly portion of the spar was over. The soft blue of the force field rippled every place that the exploding blur which was Johnny touched, and he ‘touched’ with the force of a sledgehammer. Taking a firm grip on Gungnir, I posted up like Gandolf and slammed the base of my spear into the dirt, drawing up some of the residual energy lurking down there. It wasn’t a leyline, but Mother Earth’s rivers leave many pools lying around.
My overpowered shield just kept absorbing the barrage of attacks, the runes on my armor soaking up some of the kinetic energy while both portions of Svalinn were greedily devouring the strange energy that Johnny’s attacks were giving off. Reaching out with my magic, I turned all of the earth around me into quicksand while making the quicksand itself repel me. A nice depth of about four feet was more than enough to stop any normal attacker.
“Hey! Hey! That’s not cool!” Johnny yelled as the muck inexorably pulled at his limbs. Grabbing big handfuls of it, he futilely started hurling globs of quicksand at me. “It’s nasty and it’s sucking me in!”
“That’s what he said!” I howled, laughing at his sheer bewilderment. It quickly turned to real fear. “Dude, relax, I just wanted to know what you could do. I’ll even heal your nose, for free.”
“Then let me out!” He yelled, twisting and turning to get out as he started to panic. I felt a small pulse of something come from Johnny as he stood still and closed his eyes, his hands coming together like a prayer. After a second of utter stillness, he placed his hands out and a long, silvery staff took the place of his wooden one. It extended in length to well past thirty-feet, as it dropped an inch into his hands from where it blinked into existence. Johnny placed the staff in front of him in the quicksand and I saw that the two far edges of it were out past the quicksand.
“Haha sucker!” he yelled, grabbing the staff and pushing himself up and out of the muck like a gymnast doing the extra part of a pullup that makes everyone hate them.
Not only was he strong enough to fight the vacuum of quicksand, but that freaky staff was strong enough to hold his weight even though it was only about an inch thick and bent like young bamboo. Like an alley cat, Johnny lightly sprinted down the improvised balance beam.
When he reached the edge, he jumped dramatically to the packed earth, rolling and turning to pick up his weapon. Without taking his eyes off of me, he began to spin and flip the luminescent staff around, faster and faster until it was a blur of silvery light. Suddenly, Johnny went still, his staff pointed directly at me, his feet set with his body sideways to present a smaller target. The silver particles that made up this weapon were even brighter than they were before.
“If you can take my final blow,” he began ominously as I snickered. Seriously, I couldn’t help myself.
“What is so funny?” He yelled shrilly, a slight wobble of his staff let me know that he wasn’t as calm as he was trying to be.
“Come on now,” I giggled, looking around to make sure nobody else found this whole exercise as funny as I did. “You can do better than that. This ain’t no fucking anime show dude. Why in the world would I let you have time to get ready for a final blow?” Mockery dripped from every word. “This is the end of the world as we know it man, and it’s been like this for a while. Trust me, just take a look behind you.”
Johnny snuck a look behind himself. Unbeknownst to him, at my direction, Spot had silently crept up to Johnny, his slavering jaws barely holding in the flaming drool that was nearly as hot as magma. All it would have taken for Spot to have a small human-sized snack today was just one thought from me.
“You act all big and bad,” I continued, “as if you’re the most powerful kid on the block, but in reality, you’re nothing. I am nothing, we are all nothing, even Spot is nothing. I didn’t really want to have a dick measuring contest, but here we are. Spot . . .”
My tank sized canine used his nose to nudge Johnny to the ground and then set one heavy paw right on his chest. Oh so delicately, he reached down and picked up the ‘stick’ with his mouth and looked at me.
“Good boy,” I chuckled. Walking forward, I took the staff and hurled it behind me, to which Spot reacted by bounding after it, bowling me over and smashing Johnny into the dirt.
“See what I mean,” I said from where I was lying in the dirt. as Johnny gasped from being smooshed. “Nothing. That’s all we are.” I turned my head to see the kid struggling for breath, his eyes wide open as he clutched his chest. “A damn dog took both of us out in a heartbeat because he wanted a stick. And I made that dog. Imagine what else is out there that can and might do way worse.”
Using my Flesh Sorcery, I fixed the micro-tears in my muscles and the hairline fractures in my ribs, then walked over and squatted next to Johnny. “Try and relax for a minute, I’m going to heal the rest of you. And then, you’re going to help me.”
Ten minutes later, Johnny was in my under-tree hideout holding a mug of coffee, looking at me like I was some kind of monster hidden in a human skin. “I know you don’t trust me,” I started, “but it only gets weirder and honestly much more awesome in both the good and bad way from here on out.”
An eyebrow rose as he looked at me, then at the unconscious form of Reeanth in the chair behind me. “Yeah, she’s part of it, but that’s only the beginning. So, what do I have to do to make you believe that I’m a good guy, or a good enough guy, huh?”
He took a quick sip of coffee and then sighed. “Ya know, I don’t know,” Johnny muttered. “I haven’t even seen another human since right after it happened, and this seems too good to be true. I mean, don’t Sorcerers sacrifice to demons an’ shit? That dog looks like it’s got some demon in it.”
“First off, I’m pretty much a druid, so demons and me don’t click,” I explained, not wanting to get into the fact that I didn’t know what I was talking about. “And the dog, whose name is Spot by the way, has some dragon in him, not demon. I haven’t even seen a demon that I know of. I’ve seen dragons, deities, zombies, mutant animals and fucked up paladins. I think I incinerated a vampire once, too. Oh, and my wife is a goddamn tree. So, everything is weird, get used to it.”
Johnny stared at me blankly. “Soooo, how’d you get to be this way, I mean, druids are dope but . . .”
“I was drunk when the Ripple hit,” I huffed, crossing my arms. “I got what I wished for. My woman also got what she wished for, but in the most literal of meanings. Sleepyhead over there,” pointing at Reeanth, “is an advanced wizard soldier from the Alpha Centauri Empire, and she macgyvered a Sorcery of her own.”
“And I’m a badass cultivator!” Johnny said smugly, his stupid grin at odds with the glint of street-smarts I saw lurking in his eyes. “Give me enough time, and I’ll be able to do anything. We get stronger and faster and more powerful the older we get. Basically a dragon in human form.”
“Well, how about if I help you grow a bit,” I suggested, leaning back in my chair. “I mean, a Sorcerer can do many things, but what would give you a leg up? Armor? Weapons?”
Setting his mug down, he looked at me a bit funny. “How easy is it for you to heal?” he asked. “And how long can you do it?”
******
The next day was fun for me. I’m pretty sure it was a Sunday, the day of rest, but Johnny and I had settled on a plan the night before where I would help him train himself for a week using my sorceries to cheat wherever possible. After that, he would come with me to find my brother.
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I didn’t tell him all the facts yet, or anything broader about what I’d learned about the world. What I did do was show off my enchanting abilities which had gotten a serious upgrade from what I’m calling my Consciousness Sorcery. It’s close enough as it has most of the elements of ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ and ‘self’. They are all close enough to the same idea that you really can’t have one without the other.
Now, I could partition off pieces of my mind to ‘hold’ an enchantment, which allowed the rest of my brain to concentrate on making a new piece of the enchantment or to fit the pieces together. Up until now, everything has been pretty much on the fly, and I noticed that my own personal gear is showing signs of wear and tear or loss of efficiency.
While splitting up the processing power of my brain wasn’t the most comfortable thing to do, we squishy humans don’t use all of it at once anyway, and this exercise was slowly expanding the percentage at which the mushy sponge in my head could be utilized. I had one section working on ‘holding’ the enchantment, another actively scanning for weaknesses, one testing efficiencies and the rest of my brain working on building the other part. It’s like building a computer but having another person there to hold pieces in place while you do most of the work. And this enchantment? Whew, such a doozy.
And another upgrade via my Soul Sorcery that made my life a lot easier, the ‘intent’ part of the enchantment, the bit that detects the human will and desire, got a lot more accurate. Errant thoughts contain a lot less driving force, they don’t activate the intent circuits strongly enough which then lessens the chance of erroneously activating the enchantments.
I woke up at the butt-crack of dawn to get this experiment done, and I was super proud of it once I finally got it working. Johnny and I had discussed things that would help him progress and get stronger, and he had noticed that after being injured, that part of his body was somewhat more durable. He had bite marks all up and down his arms and legs from his adventures and he told me that after a while, animal bites took longer and longer to worry their way through his skin, almost like it had become toughened leather over time. Johnny also had no issues carrying boulders on his shoulders and could climb trees like a monkey. This kid was literally in better shape than any normal human athlete.
Pulling my focus back to the multi-step enchantment, I examined one of my coolest creations to date. In appearance, I created my own version of a North American stonehenge. Mine was better of course, because magic, duh. The contraption had a circular stone platform base ten-feet in diameter ringed with fourteen-foot tall columns two-feet wide. Each column that stood on it rested at the cardinal directions and another thick stone platform crowned the top of the megaliths to serve as the ceiling.
My Earth Sorcery was more than happy to mold the pieces together to become a seamless whole. God, I love magic. I allowed the edges to visually stand out so that it looked like stonehenge but every piece was perfectly bonded together so that it functioned as a stone cage with large gaps between the columns.
Next, I started the work of layering down the enchantments. The entire contraption served as the Earth’s first strength-based magic training facility, a gravity-focused compressor. The four columns and the two caps could work independently or cooperatively. I slowly enchanted each section of the compressor with runes of solidity, directionally based gravity pushing, and then control runes that registered to the brainwaves of the person inside the compressor. The entire thing working could only be powered by the energy run-off of the person inside of it, simply so that the workout device wouldn’t actually be able to crush the person. But what that does mean, is that the platform drew its power from the person inside so that it could only scale off of the individual’s strength. I added other stuff as well so it will be useful down the road as well but Johnny didn’t need to know about that yet.
For safety’s sake, I also tied a second set of master control runes to my commands on a gemstone, so that it simply couldn’t be used without my express permission. I’m not up for being used for free.
It was beautiful.
The caps, the top and bottom stone platforms, all of it made seamless by the magic, looking to all of the world like the work of a master mason who painstakingly carved it from one solid piece of stone. I was proud. This was also an experiment in mana control for me as I didn’t physically touch the thing while creating it. I sat in a meditative pose for hours with the non-sentient Gungnir stuck in the ground in front of me. I wanted to see how much control I had over my magic in a perfect scenario. I can’t enchant on the fly in the middle of combat, but this exercise proved that if I had time, I could make some truly incredible stuff!
The concentration was beyond draining, though. Laying back after finalizing the finishing touches, I looked at the morning sky. Probably four hours had gone by and I hadn’t even noticed. The only reason I had let myself concentrate in that manner was due to Spot sleeping ten-feet away from me. Bless that dog. No animals even came near my hideout anymore because his scent carried a hint of dragon, and nobody is dumb enough to mess around in a dragon’s territory. By definition, Spot is the perfect guard dog.
Using Water Sorcery, I conjured some water and gave myself an impromptu bath. Being able to banish the water with the grime made showers a fast and pleasurable affair.
“What in the Ripple is that?”
“Well good morning to you too, Reeanth,” I said from my comfortable spot in the soft dirt. “Bout’ time you woke up.”
“My lord, this, this,” she stuttered out, shading her eyes with her hands as she stumbled out into the clearing. “What is that? It’s blinding!”
“That, my dear alien,” I said proudly, “is a magically based personnel compressor complete with self-regulating subroutines. I call it . . . the Compactor!”
Reeanth’s jaw dropped. “My lord, I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but the magical signature that it gives off is bright enough to draw some very powerful things here,” she said, her hands on her hips, as if she were my mother lecturing me.
Turning around, I pointed at the giant fucking World Tree behind her. “And you’re telling me that doesn’t? I mean come on, it’s a World Tree sapling, not even a year old, and it’s actually bigger than a damn cruise ship right now. It grew another three-stories in a week! You don’t think it gives off enough magical power that everyone on this planet knows where it is?! They’re just not dumb enough to come here.”
“Yes my lord, I understand that,” she said, cutting me off as if I were a few screws short of a well made deck. “But it’s not that simple. Natural magic – from nature, from animals, from the cosmos – is easily differentiated from synthetic magic, or magic that is crafted, such as your enchantments. This is part of what makes dragons, griffins, and manticores so dangerous. They give off magical energy, but it tends to blend in with their environment. This, on the other hand, sticks out worse than an emperor banging a whore on the street!”
A little bit of color fled my cheeks.
“And, instead of assuming that some powerful magical creature is guarding a natural treasure, they can reasonably assume that a sentient is here, and if a sentient can get here, then so can ANYBODY ELSE!”
Hmmm, maybe I had fucked up, just a little.
“All right, all right,” I muttered, “I can fix this, uhm, what absorbs magical energy?, uhhhhh . . . “
Then it hit me. “Reeanth, look at Yggdrasil and see if you can tell that there is man-made magic there,” I ordered.
“What? No, there’s nothing there but nature,” she answered, wondering if I really had lost it.
“I’m serious, look again,” I pressured. “At the roots, at the crown, the main trunk - look at the whole thing.”
Her eyes brightened till they were white, similar to what the Angel’s eyes had looked like when it looked at me. After a few minutes, she turned back to look at me, her eyes normal again. “There’s a hint of magic that isn’t the trees, but it’s like finding a particular spark in a bonfire.”
“Haha! Perfect!” I yelled.
I scooted over to where a thick root of the World Tree bulged out of the ground and laid my hand on it. “Come on little buddy, do some work for papa,” I whispered as I poured energy and intent into it.
With my senses, I could feel the tapered point of the root as it grew in the direction of my contraption. As my mind was somewhat in the root itself and also because I knew what to look for, I could feel the big generator’s power flowing through the circulatory system of the Tree, and I pushed it to bend its shape to my desires. The root grew out slowly, until it touched the earth near my compactor, where the tendrils began to grow and spread out and under in a different shape. Over ten minutes went by as it grew into a circle just wider than the base platform.
“And then up,” I muttered, pouring my own reserves of energy into the root as I watched vine-like tendrils creep up out of the ground and cover my magnificent invention. Thirty more minutes and most of the solid white of the stone couldn’t be seen for the green of the arboreal covering.
“Look now,” I panted, feeling absolutely drained.
“I can’t, it takes too much out of me,” Reeanth explained. “I can only use this ability for a small amount of time.”
“Dude, just a peek,” I said as I pointed at the gently glowing rootlets. “They’re absorbing all of the ambient energy that leaks out, and it looks like they’ll be able to power the damn thing too, if I want. Suck it, aliens!”
Reaching out with my foot, I put the toe of my boot on her leg, allowing my own mana to flow into her. “There, that should help you out for a second or two.”
Using the little boost I gave her, Reeanth’s eyes flashed white for just a second. “How did you know?”
“Trade secret.” My smirk was entirely justified. Yes the Centauri warrior was beholden, sworn, to me, but that doesn’t mean I trust her completely yet.
If the World Tree’s abundant energy signature could cover up the big generator in its base, then it stood to reason that it could cover up the compactor. As I was internally celebrating my genius and simultaneously pouting in my head that only the big generators worked, the door to the bolthole flew open and a Johnny-shaped blur flew out, slipped and slid into the newly ‘greened’ compactor.
“Is this what I think it is? Is this for me? Is it Christmas in the New World?!”
Reeanth’s eyes bugged out of her skull. “My lord, who, what – Who is that?”
“Leave me out of it!” I said, turning my back to them and pivoting towards Yggdrasil. “Introduce yourself.”
By my guess, it was getting close to noon and I was already wiped. So much to do and time is just flyin’. I kept one ear out for what was going on as I used Flesh Sorcery to go through each part of my body and wash away my fatigue. It still amazes me to watch my body . . .
“Hooleeeee shiiiit! You’re tall as shit, lady!” SMACK!
“You will address me with respect, you backward primitive. My name is Reeanth LeTalvis, sword-sworn of the mighty sorcerer . . “
“Yeah, fuck that. I don’t give a shit who the hell you are. Ain’t no messed up alien wannabe Gigantor gonna smack me around. These hands are rated E for everyone!”
Not the best start to a relationship, but I’ll take it. Ignoring the interpersonal shenanigans, I took a few minutes of breathing to alleviate the mental stress from channeling intense flows of mana over a long period of time. I attempted to get my healing abilities to work on my headache and lingering emotional exhaustion.
Channeling magic isn’t hard physically, but it does feel like I’ve been staring at a computer for three days straight working on some last minute college dissertation paper while chugging coffee to keep me going. My Flesh Sorcery was more than happy to wash away lactic acid and repair muscles, but mental exhaustion seemed to be its own beast. The best I could come up with was a temporary infusion of mental energy and forcefully cleaning out the pathways in my brain. It felt like I had gotten a solid two-hour nap in; not perfect but definitely workable.
Coming back to the present didn’t render the same ‘idyllic glade of peace’ that had been present this morning. Turning around showed the new landscape. Patches of grass were bombed out into holes of mud, scarred heartwood was showing on the trees that ringed the clearing, small fires were scattered around and my two companions were facing each other, both of them bleeding from several injuries.
“Stand down mutt, and I’ll show you mercy out of respect for my lord.” Reeanth’s entreaty looked a lot less Imperial as she was clearly gasping for breath. Her bruised face and bloody arms weren’t pretty, while her nano-tech armor was missing entire patches.
“I faced down a twisted lookin wolf-deer thing, a giant spider-bear, a talking green mutant, and then a monkey-king AND beat his homies too! You got nothin’ on me. Your fatass ain’t tough! Besides, you’re two-seconds from passing out!” Johnny’s mocking was as empty as his gas tank. Every part of his body was purple, several teeth were missing and his silvery staff was pulsing softer and softer.
“This is not what I meant!” My bark cut through the stand-off. “Seriously, Reeanth, lighten up. This kid is gonna help me find my brother. He needs me to help him out first, though. And Johnny, dude - she’s a battle wizard with some high-tech shit neither of us have seen yet. I think she’s taking it easy on you.”
Stomping over to the bloodied combatants, I stood between them with my arms crossed. “Shake hands.”
Glares crisscrossed the clearing, but Reeanth’s actually held some heat. “Do it, or I won’t heal you.” The threat of having to bear the injuries for a while got their butts moving. Johnny’s hand glowed silver as he gripped Reeanth’s nano-tech gloved hand. I heard the creak of straining bones as their respective abilities warred for the two-seconds that they were shaking hands. Grabbing both of their forearms, I reached out and fixed the worst of their injuries.
“There,” I said. “Mostly better. You can heal the small stuff on your own because of your bad attitudes.”
Wheeling around, I took Johnny by the elbow and led him over to the compactor. “See this? This is your new best friend.” I took his puzzled look for what it was. “Yes, it’s the compactor thing we talked about last night. You get in it, and the more you meditate or cultivate or gather energy or whatever it is that you do, the more that it will blast you from all sides with concentrated gravity fields. Oh, and here.”
Remembering the other present, I pulled out a two-foot long stone spike with a sliver of jade on the blunt end. “This bad boy, stick this in the earth, and when you’re done getting compacted, put your hand on the green part. It will draw energy from the Earth and heal you. Part of it will accelerate your own healing process, and the other part will simply pump you full of natural healing energy.”
The puzzled look of the young idiot morphed into joy as he put the pieces together. “So I can just, and like go in there, and then, BOOM, and . . . do it again!?”
Good thing I used to be not that smart, because I understood what he was trying to say. “Yup, you sure can,” I chuckled. “You can get it up multiple times, haha. But you’re gonna have to feed yourself. Your calorie requirements are going to shoot through the roof. I recommend hunting something big and cooking a lot of it before starting this. Your body is going to need a lot of raw material, and I ain’t doin’ that for ya.”
After showing Johnny how to use the setup, I walked over to Reeanth and looked up at her. “Did ya have to play that rough?”
She cracked her neck. “My lord, young cultivators are usually imbeciles. The power goes to their heads and then they forget to use their brains or how to use their strength effectively. Besides, I’ll have to spar with him after every healing session for him to get the full value of it.”
I looked at her as her implacable gaze fixated on the energizer bunny that was Johnny as he whooped and bounced off into the woods.
“Uhhh, there somethin’ you wanna tell me?”
“Cultivators are not to be taken lightly, my lord. They may start out simple, but they do not stay that way.”
I raised an eyebrow as I sipped at a cup made of conjured ice and filled with water. “Well that was incredibly unhelpful. Care to elaborate?”
She stared off in the direction that Johnny disappeared with a worried slant. “Cultivators grow in strength, in power, and in capability as well, but it does happen in stages. Some leap forward and vanish into the depths of the infinite universe while others sit for millenia undisturbed on a rock as life simply goes on around them. Their only saving grace is that they are rare, so rare in fact that the Centauri Empire has only come into contact with three new ones. Two of them we put to death, and the last one broke us before we managed to send him into the Great Hole.”
“Broke you? So you’ve met one before?”
“No, it broke our Empire. The cultivator annihilated our space-faring navy, crushed the two royal moons, and then savaged multiple worlds before Merlin intervened.”
The sounds of a young boy’s joyful hunt faded as I reconsidered, well . . . . everything.
Epilogue - 2,374 A.R (After the Ripple) - (4,394 A.D) - Distant Future
“Was it really so bad, sire?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer Illium. Solemnly, I placed the memory crystal back in its stand and shuddered as I relived the thoughts of my younger self as if it were yesterday. Looking up, I glared at Johnny’s silver weapon where it hung from obsidian hooks above the pristine fireplace. The light from the fading sun blazed off the whorls and sinuous sigils that never sat still, always catching the unprepared eye. He told me himself that his weapon was a descendant of Sun Wukongs ever-magical weapon which was actually the crystallized body of one of Jormungandr’s spawn, its spirit trapped inside the blessed remnant from the Ripple.
Our last meeting hadn’t gone so well. Regret didn’t eat at me the way it used to.
And it shouldn’t.
Absolute power does corrupt absolutely. But how do you tell if its you or your friend that was corrupted?
“I . . . I’m not sure,” I answered haltingly. Forcing my hand not to shake, I picked up the memory crystal again and squeezed.