The smell of the burning street filled my nose. It was a dark, heavy smell that seemed to stick to the inside of the nose and just settle down there. The smell didn’t phase me, it was almost a cold comfort to me. Knowing what I now know, there wasn’t much left in this world that could disturb me more than its existence. Everything in this world would come to ruin, and I took great comfort in this fact.

My void knights, my very own praetorian guards. The forces remaining with me I decided to dub my praetorian guard, made up of the six original voidlings and the first hand. Just like the voidlings, the hand could shapeshift, but unlike the voidlings its transformation was very less pronounced. The void cloud around the hand seemed to harden and soon what appeared before me was a hooded man. Peering into the hood you could see a red-line deep purple mask whose eyes weren’t visible behind them.

“Your loyal hand greets his master…” With a quick bow the hand quickly reintroduces himself. It was still the same harsh voice, one that seemed to be just as unsettling as it was as its old look.

Acknowledging it with a nod, I pointed at one of the voidlings, who shifted into a mixture of its voidling and knight armor. It looked like it did in its original form, but with a complete lack of Void energy. With a quick thought I relayed my orders to this hand.

Its job was to explore and figure out the different religions and cults within the continent, and to do its best to form a Void cult within the outskirts of the empire. It was a tall task, but I knew that it would be able to complete it. While creating a cult and gaining allies was an important task, I needed to delegate it, for I had a much tougher task.

I would need to rejoin the capital high society and seek to gain influence within the emperor’s court. My plan for this was twofold, I would first need to get admitted to the imperial university, where most nobles and a handful of commoners would go there to learn governance. The final part of the plan was to gain the ear of a royal or influential noble while within the university and using that connection to leverage myself into a leading role within the empire.

Anytime I thought about nobles, the capital, or just my previous life in general it always brought up feelings and memories of Aria. We had been friends from a young age, and I had thought we had shared something special, but I was mistaken. I remember the anger I felt after the betrayal. I hadn’t felt much since my rebirth, but my memories of Aria either filled me with a deep and uncontrollable rage, or just deep melancholy.

All this meant to me was there were parts of Adam that had yet to die, but that was no longer my issue any longer. In time, all that would remain would be Amos and everything Adam had once been would be washed away and purified.

But still, I knew that I would need to fight off these feelings of nostalgia and longing for just a bit longer. I would deal with it, and eventually overcome just like I always had. Until then, I would do my best to purge these thoughts from my conscious.

With a turn, I started walking down the street, back towards the fortress Aachen, and back towards humanity. I had never truly decided on what to make my “hero” mask look like. I decided on a simple matte steel color, and consciously left no place for me to see out of. While the mask would still let me see through it all, I wanted to create a situation where I appeared to be weaker than I really was. Not to mention, I had experimented with mask and using my control over the colors of the mask I could right simply sentences on the face of the mask.

Until I formed a psionic link with someone, this would really be my only way of communicating. The easiest way would have been to keep a hand with me, but I wanted to distance myself from them as I wanted them to be the public face of the cult. That way, worst come to worse, they would never betray me, meaning I could restart the cult whenever I wanted.

My praetorians formed around me, with two on each side and the fifth leading the front. While they cut an impressive visage, they all lacked weapons so honestly seemed like a couple of rich idiots who had spent all their money on their armor and hadn’t left anything for their weapons.

My first step would be to gain weapons for my praetorians and to gain passage back to the capital. I could walk back to the capital, but even on horses that was about a yearlong escapade. No, the fastest way to solve both problems would be to get some money and just pay the gold solidus toll at the portals.

From my understanding, it was a bronze solidus per person to enter the fortress, and one gold solidus per group going through the portal. I also wanted to get armaments for my guard, as they were currently unarmed in this form.

I had debated gathering the weapons the grey knights and common soldiery were armed with, or with those elite knights, but I had noticed the engravings in the hilt. This was mostly either a personalized design, or something denoting their patron/the noble house they served. I didn’t need to run into someone who recognized the symbols and then came for my ass because they realized how we had acquired the weaponry. Instead, it was best for my praetorians to appeared to be roaming destitute knights that I had simply bought. The only problem was, I had no money to speak of. My parents had paid for everything before I was shipped here, meaning I had no money, and it wasn’t like I could just waltz back to my parents and ask for money.

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Walking through the slums that were littered just outside the fortress walls, I had literally no idea what to do. My praetorians didn’t stand that much bigger than me, yet because of their armor they draw all the attention from me and my mask.

I could barely think straight, the thought of cleansing and freeing all these poor souls was so badly pounding through my head, running through my brain like a stampede of wildebeests racing through my brain disrupting all thoughts. Following my guards was hard enough, let alone trying to plan to get my hands on some cash. I could feel my emotions overcoming my sense of reason, and I could feel the Void within me reaching out with its tendrils, just waiting for the order to free these poor, retched forgotten souls. The few rational thoughts I had left in my head told me that now wasn’t the time, but these thoughts begun to harder and harder to focus on as the urge to free these souls grew and grew.

Suddenly, an almost cooling sensation washed over me, dousing any thoughts of fire and brimstone in a bath of ice water, not destroying it but cooling it down for the time being. This sensation formed at the end of a sharp gaze, almost reminding me of a needle. Stopping in my tracks, I focused in on this sensation. There was nothing really telling me that I was being watched, this feeling wasn’t the result of some reaction with the Void, instead it almost was instinctual. Something that was caught at the edge of my vision that my subconscious had flagged for me. As soon as this feeling coalesced, it disappeared once again, but at the edges of my vision I spotted an ever so familiar light blue cloak pass into an alleyway not far from here.

Debating whether to investigate, I decided that I was probably safe from attack, and that the gaze was not a hostile one, instead it was one of recognition, which was probably scarier, since there was only one person who could recognize me, the mysterious lady who had killed first squad of grey knights.

Thankfully, something made up my mind for me, as my knights alerted to me a contingent of knights coming towards us from the front and back. Strangely, they weren’t knights clad in grey, instead they wore a dulled silver plate, most likely knights tasked with the protection of the fortress walls. While it was doubtful, they were alerted to our true identities, but shiny gold-plated knights meandering through the slums was probably something that the guard would most likely be alerted to. These were also probably sainted knights too, since, well frankly, my praetorians looked important and well off.

I wasn’t afraid of not being able to escape, but they most likely have already gotten a description of all of us, and I didn’t want to have to change my identity again. Deciding I would contact the knights later, once we had gotten more “sense” into our identities then I would contact again.

Pretending not to notice the knights, I quickly turned around and backtracked into the alley behind me, slipping into the alley with my praetorians moving in step with me, almost like we had practiced this a million times.

Surprisingly, this wasn’t an alleyway, but simply a tiny service hallway between two buildings, which led to another bustling street. Quickly moving through this passageway, I suddenly stop once again. In a little hovel I could see a glowing eye painted above the doors. What was strange about it was that the paint was glowing, it was only after a few seconds of observing it that I realized that it wasn’t something that was painted on the surface but was only something I could see with the mask. A quick check with my praetorians revealed that they could only see was a tiny hovel, with a small completely smooth metal door that seemed to be a service hatch.

Stepping back, the lead praetorian stepped forward, placing his hand flat on the door, he seemed to simply press into it. Instead of buckling or bending away under the pressure, the doorway seemed to be bending towards them, as if it was being sucked into its hand. With a quick grunt and a shrug of the shoulders, the doorway was ripped off its hinges and thrown backwards.

My view into this newly created entrance was seemingly obscured, almost as if there was a layer of fog emanating from within. This fog wasn’t something threatening, instead it seemed to be almost like a comfortingly obscuring fog, like a warm blanket or the smoke from a campfire.

With an order for my knights to guard the entranceway I enter the service hatch…

The Seers of the Unknown

Seers are a class of sainted, unlike the knight who are granted extreme powers and feats of physical might within this plane, seers are those whose patrons have gifted them with the power to control things from not within this plane. What this entails varies from seer to seer and patron to patron, but there are some general traits that all seers have in common.

One of these is communication with their patrons. While it is true that all sainted have some form of connection with their deity and as such can communicate with them it is mostly one sided, meaning they talk, and their patron only responds with gifts and no clear direction. Seers, on the other hand can enter the netway, the space between the mortal realm and the realm of the deities, where direct communication with their patrons is possible.

The rate of patrons varies from deity to deity, but the general rate for this is for every ten knights there is one seer. Unlike with knights, there is a clearer hierarchy between the different seers. There are differing tiers that separate each seer, with the lowest being tier one, and the highest being crowned a saint of your cult. While tier one saints can only have a vague understanding of what their goddess is feeling with a medium, and mid-tier would be direct communication with a medium, and the saint tier means you can hold a lengthy conversation with your patron without a medium. Since your powers come from the favor of your patron, the only real way to increase your tier as a seer would be to particularly catch the attention of your patron.

Another thing all seers have in common is the bounds of their powers. All seers gain their powers from their patron and channel them through the netway. This means that while it is possible for some seers to use their power within this plane, this power didn’t originate from here. An example of this would be summoning a creature from the divine realm or smiting their enemies with divine lightning. Both powers can be exerted in this realm, but originated from the divine realm, and were “shipped” through the netway. While seers have access to the netway everyone has a connection to the netway, even the destitute.

Seers usually make up the higher echelons of the military and important communication roles as communication through the netway with other seers is possible. This was highly utilized in the past, but after an incident with a certain cult, has become more and more difficult to perform.