That’s him.

Cedric stared in perplexed awe at the dark-robed, black-masked man standing alone in the wrecked wooden house. The same house where he’d just met Cassandra.

That’s him, right?

The voices didn’t answer. They were no longer free-flowing, now made subjects to his control, to his whims. Serkukan was no longer his own identity. They were now all members of the bronze dragon Cedric Castelbre, Lorik Valenkir. Parts of his scales.

Dragons and their scales, he sneered, o long ago did those words mean such different things to me...

Kasian glanced over his shoulder through the smoldering carnage of the home. When he was sure there was nobody there, oblivious to the ley-concealed Cedric, he fell to his knees with a groaned rasp from his throat.

“...My empire…” he murmured, “...was it all for naught? If you’re to face this fate… can I live with this choice?”

Cedric held his breath, held his thoughts. He merely observed the mourning ritual.

Then Kasian removed his black mask. Cedric’s eyes widened.

Serkukan, can you…? Nevermind. This is my power, now.

But then, it was Okella’s power, anyway, which allowed him power of the dream. His vision shifted as though showing him another angle, showing him the opposite side of Kasian, showing him his face…

But all that was within the space beneath the mask was dark and imperceptible. Cedric returned his vision to his eyes.

He doesn’t know his own face…? These are Kogar’s memories, aren’t they? Why is Kasian even here?

“Do you want me to change it?” came a voice from within the rubble. Then approached Cassandra, paler than she’d been the last time Cedric saw her. Her dress was now black and violet. She had become Rykaedi.

This is after. Then, was the last memory just a dream? Or…?

Rykaedi rubbed Kasian’s chin. The man snapped away with a scoff. He replaced the mask upon his face and stood. “You’re nothing but a mockery, Rykaedi. Nothing you do can undo the damage you’ve caused. There’s something else.”

“Not Redirection?”

What are they talking about?

“Not Redirection,” Kasian answered. He turned his back to her.

“Then what, love?”

Kasian lifted his head up and gazed at the brilliant blue sky through the shattered roof. “Dreams.”

Kogar howled as he rushed his weapon again at Cedric. The tendrils retracted, spun in a ring around the polearm and caught it in place. Then Cedric stood from his kneeling position, faced Kogar close-up.

Kogar was crying. Tears were stricken all across his cheeks.

“What is it, Kogar? What are Dreams? Are you really Kasian? Tell me.”

“FUCK YOURSELF!”

The scythe broke the guard, dug into Cedric’s shoulder. Then would come the Moment—

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR…

But Cedric interrupted it. Kogar’s eyes widened in complete, abject shock. “Antithesis…?”

“I know a thing or two about this power you’re hiding. I know that it’s the real answer to what Dyosius is, isn’t it? It’s not just about human willpower.”

Kogar pushed the blade deeper into Cedric’s chest, into his torso…

Or so he thought—it began to melt away as Antithesis took hold. Cedric’s armor began to melt off.

Kogar whistled, thrust his fingers skyward. “Vekzul, make your mark!”

The sky flared. Down would come a meteor, at Kogar’s command. Would Cedric have time enough to stop it?

I suppose it doesn’t matter. Not if this ability is as powerful as Kasian makes it seem.

Cedric grabbed Kogar’s thick throat in his own hand. The feeling was almost nostalgic—he could barely remember the last time he’d taken a life with his own hands, beyond Serkukan’s influence.

I’ve never been a good person. But all along, I’ve been dreaming of a good person. Of who I could be. Is that all that Kogar is? The mental endeavor of positive regard?

He struck Kogar’s face. Then again, again. The blows were like nothing. The man took the impacts like he couldn’t even feel them. Like he was above them, beyond them, outside of them.

Cedric felt the twice-ley restore itself. Okella’s tendrils made rise again.

“How many times will you enter my mind?”

“As many as it takes to get answers.”

Kogar walloped a blow across Cedric’s face and his legs wobbled. He toppled to the ground. The two-tone man sat on his chest, raised his fists up.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“Killing me must be easy, right?” asked Cedric, licking the spaces where his teeth had once been. “For someone imagined to be unstoppable?”

Another fist came up. Cedric pushed his tendrils forward again. Come on, Okella. Don’t fail me now.

The fist slammed against Cedric’s skull, knocked the back of his head against the cobbles below. The tendrils hit alongside the impact. It was only a prayer in Cedric’s mind that the concussion wouldn’t chase him into the dream.

Faunia's blade caught one of a dozen shining lasers. They all came from the same source: a horrible ring of eyed flesh with a one-eyed rotating disc in the middle. Eight white wings sprouted out from the outer ring, held a menacing shape as it approached from the stairwell.

"Angels are far less beautiful than I thought they'd be." Faunia murmured. "Don't you get it? I'm here to free Evra."

The angel replied only with a charging of brilliant light from the center eye, then the explosive release of a burning ray.

Faunia leapt from its path and let the ray cleave the buildings behind her. Dust scattered into the air as the rumbling snuffed out all other sounds, all the distant screams and panicked shouts of the ruined, razed Calamon.

She made manifest a spear of red ice over her shoulder as her wings took her up, lanced it down at the angel.

Once of the wings kicked up a gust of wind, launched the spear sidelong and split it into mere fragments.

"Think not to underestimate me," Faunia snarled as she landed again. Her longsword came from her hands, swept wide for the wings.

But her impact against the wing only made an explosion of golden light, and her following two strikes did much the same.

She slid back in retreat with her guard poised. Then came the lasers again. Her sword cut the air with precision enough to block every one, though her blade needed regrowth after every successful parry.

"I don't have time for this." Faunia cupped her hand like a claw toward the angel. The earth came up around it, and it could only make one desperate left-right shift of its massive center pupil before the cobblestones engulfed it whole and swallowed it down beneath the ground.

Then Faunia sprinted for the entrance, leapt down the stairs into a white-walled palace, sprinted forward for two more Cassisians without hesitation. Her blade was swept and their lives were ended.

Wait, Faunia.

What, Tir? Even her thoughts sounded like snarls, even as the crimson had ebbed ever-so-slightly from the pale armor.

I know this place. I know where we are!

Faunia stopped in place before the bend in the straight hallway. She could see light reflecting from down the corridor, painting everything in a water-like golden caustic.

Where...?

Cedric grunted as he was thrown into another memory, his back thrust against a stone wall in a very, very dark chamber.

"...Twenty-three hundred. Does that not strike you as odd?" said an all-too familiar growl. It took Cedric's eyes a moment to adapt to the candlelight ahead, to focus on the figure standing over the wooden table in the diminutive war room. There was Akvum, talking to a slouching figure in a dark robe. That same black-masked Kasian...

"Nothing to imply it's more than a petty coincidence."

"It was Ivalié who suggested the theory. Coincidences."

"Could it be so simple? Case Twenty-three. Year twenty-three hundred... And... No, you're right. Two-hundred and thirty men are to our employ."

Akvum growled in satisfaction. "It adds up. Not to mention the twenty-three sightings, the twenty-three bodies in Frexa..."

Kasian held up a palm for silence. He placed his thumb at his chin inquisitively. "Why Frexa?"

Cedric began to creep closer as Kasian continued on.

"Why this place of all of them? Sightings in Azaria, Frexa, but nowhere else. Only is it in the Alisar region of Kylinstrom."

The big cat shrugged. "Who can say? He came from the Northern Barren."

"But he did go straight for Frexa?"

"Mm."

After a brief pause, Kasian stood up straight. "Well, we've got no time to lose, have we? Rouse Alia, she may prove useful through this all."

Akvum nodded and turned to fetch his things from a table obscured in the room's shadow behind him. He threw a jacket on beneath a large bandolier filled with all sorts of trinkets and potions.

He turned for the door,

But then he froze in place. His shimmering jade eyes lingered toward Cedric's position, swam through the surrounding area. They held there for a long moment.

Cedric held his breath, shuffled backward into the sheltering darkness. He thought the big cat just might lunge...

Then Akvum growled. He finally turned to the door, blew out the candle, and exited the chamber.

"...Now just what the hell were they talking about...?" Cedric whispered to himself, still afraid that the memory would somehow harm him.

He approached the map they'd been deliberating over. He reached for the candle and it became lit again.

But as the map shifted before his very eyes, his jaw fell open in surprise.

"These documents... Were these written by Kasian?"

Cedric took the flurry of still-changing documents into his hands, tapped them on the table to straighten them.

Much to his chagrin, he immediately remembered those reading lessons Faunia had once offered him. The offer they'd never quite had time for. He tossed the pages back down onto the table in dejection.

"I guess there's nothing for it, then." He took a deep breath. "I guess I'm following them through... To whichever hell lies beyond."

And he chased out of the chamber after them, into the strange desert just beyond the door...

X

From a document uncovered in Kyrrith, initialed K.K.

AE90

I document at this time what is now known by our cultures about the Etherian ‘people.’ I will be referring to them as ‘people’ throughout this document only out of respect for ■■■■■■■■■■■ and his beliefs, though their purposes have ever been better spent as tools, weapons, and enhancers of a human’s pre-existing capacity. They should be thought of as amplifiers for a human conduit first and foremost, despite my words going forward in this document. I intend to specify here their uses, purposes, and details of their powers, if only for the sake of ample historical record.

We were first introduced to the Etherian people some hundred years ago, circa AH2300. There was a Hunter mission Case#23—a designation which indicated the mission was more than standard fare, and involved heavy documentation as well as preventative methods (similarly indicated missions included exorcising a city-wide haunting, sealing the ghoul epidemic in the Inner Jin, and eradicating the Ilids from the surface world). Akvum remarked the coincidence of Case#23 and the year being 2300. I remarked how it was strange as well having 230 Hunters to our employ. Coincidences, I was informed, are demonstrative of a convergence point in our Ring of Fate. When they add up, it tends to indicate that the timelines are coalescing in one place, and Etherian interference becomes more likely. I have wondered in kind why Etherian interference always centers in Kylinstrom—that much, I have eager plans to study.

Case#23 involved a runaway Frost Dragon according to the early reports. He'd gotten all the way from the Northern Barren to the landlocked peak of the Kylinstrom region, the desert of Abadhar. We sent men from our northmost outpost of Frexa’kara first, but they had no talent for battling such large creatures. Akvum and I made the pilgrimage ourselves with a sizable quantity of our men. We were both shocked upon arrival when the dragon spoke Huntish to us, and subdued but did not destroy any of our missing 23 subordinates...