"Thank you, Llestren'vatis." Akvum's giant paws engulfed the man's tiny hand.

Then Kasian took the dragon's grasp, shook his hand with vigor. "Indeed, thank you, Llestren'vatis. We eagerly await your return. You will be dearly missed, you who have spelled out so many of this realm's mysteries."

"You've filled in many of the gaps yourselves," answered the white-haired man. He smiled kindly. "I only acted as arbiter."

"A most highly beneficial arbiter, no less." said Kasian.

Then Llestren'vatis placed a hand on Akvum's big shoulder, though it was a bit of a reach. "Care well for that youngling. You should discover its power in short time."

"Thank you, sir." He bowed his great head.

"Kasian," the dragon continued, "your own should be on the way very soon."

"My own Etherian?"

"Indeed. But make no mistake—" his eyes went narrow, "—they are people. They are not oblique weapons nor sharpened tools. They are living beings with real, pertinent rage, sorrow, and glee. Should you abuse their sincerity, your whole plane should know the mistake."

"I understand. I look forward to welcoming them into my mind."

Llestren'vatis nodded. Then he took his dragon-shape, opened a spiraling gateway behind himself. "So long, Knights."

And just like that, he was gone. The ripping wind of the gateway soon died down, left alone their clothes and robes in the shining desert.

Kasian took a deep breath.

Akvum asked him, "How much heed do we place upon the dragon's words?"

"Are you asking if I am a fool?"

"No."

"The Etherians are not to be underestimated, tool or people. I can't say that I would willfully bind one to my mind for all eternity."

"You plan to be alive for a while longer?"

Kasian paused at that, though Akvum could not tell if it was from being slighted. Then he continued, "I plan to watch the effect that this should have upon the realm."

"Your soothsayer ability?"

Kasian's purple eyes shone from behind his mask. "Yes. I see a new age. The Etherian Age to replace the Age of Hunters. An age in which every man bears his own Etherian kin."

"And? What of the consequences?"

"...The Etherian world will collapse beneath the breeding. The esera will grow thin. The twice-ley will grow dull. That will spawn war. A war which ends all things."

Akvum's eyes widened. "Even our...? Then we should disallow Etherian interference—"

"It's too late," Kasian shook his head. "Llestren'vatis has invited them here to prevent our dissolution of his plans. The first to arrive... Zanthiel, and Azatos to bind him."

"Then, you will take them?"

"Only for purposes of research. Mark from where they arrive. I have some curiosities as to the nature of this place..." Kasian surveyed the desert one more time before he turned back south, toward Azar'kara...

X

"Certainly not the first, but... I doubt this'll be the last time I'm picking myself up..." Cedric heaved as he struggled to his feet. "But where exactly am I?"

The space surrounding him was sparse, with bright clouds and blue sky above, black night and stars below. He stood on a stone platform erected by nothing, surrounded in swarms and droves of staircases which climbed sideways and upside-down and in directions surely impossible. The structure all around him was perplexing, impossible, beyond cohesion. A nightmare?

He looked down to his hands, opened, closed. He felt his chest. He felt his slow-beating heart.

"I can't be—is this Kogar's mind?"

His voice echoed around the strange place.

"Did I supplant myself here just before he..." killed me. Kogar killed me.

Cedric shook his head. "I shouldn't pretend to be surprised by that. He killed Rykaedi. There was no shot that I was ready for Kogar, especially not if he's really Kasian himself." With no particular inclination, he began to climb the staircase straight ahead. "It was foolish to pursue Rykaedi without more preparation... But then, what can I do? How much time can we rest on our laurels? And maybe attacking Kogar then and there in Calamon was foolish, but... No. No, I stopped him before. I've been at odds with him since the first. No matter how much he grows, I'm always just a step behind. That's how I survived in this way. That's how I always survive."

Then he was at the archway at the stairs' zenith. He passed through, wound up walking across a wall with no particular sense of gravity. Through another archway, he was on the ceiling. And though he continued walking through the perplexing space, he found no new sense of direction any path he took. The maze-like path seemingly did not go anywhere at all.

Cedric soon crouched upon the ground, brushed his fingers across the rough-hewn stone below. "Is this it? Is this the eternity I'm subject to, now?"

He turned his head left, right... Then spotted a wooden door. He made a long, drawn-out movement as he stood, lumbered over toward it.

Cassandra's home? Azar'kara? What lies beyond this path...?

The door fell away at his touch. The strange world of Kogar's mind faded behind him as he continued into the dark void beyond...

Soon came a light. A torch flared up ahead. Then candles upon the stone walls beside him.

He continued forward into that unfolding scene, a scene which was ever more familiar with each passing step...

"You can't be serious...!" Akvum protested ahead. They were arguing outside of a prison cell in Azar'kara's dungeons. The same dungeon where Cedric had been locked up after his bout with Algirak.

"We've already seen an example of just how small, how insignificant we are," answered Kasian. "This is the answer. If we deign to discover the truth..."

"Even so... Even if I agreed with this; you'll die. This amount of esera through such a small channel...?"

"Maybe. But my Twelve will live on, you my prodigy. Akvum, Ivalié... Cassandra. You three shall inherit the lands of Azar'kara, Freiya'kara, and Frexa'kara respectively."

"Freiya'kara...?"

"...The temperature will change. The desert where Llestren'vatis first met us will become layered in snow."

"I ask again, Kasian, can this genocide be stomached? Your years have driven you insane!"

Kasian didn't reply. He opened the cage beside them. "Tovas, come."

Cedric shuddered. Tovas Strolcerth...? Then, this is just before the Third Era? The bloodiest era of them all...?

The man who limped from the cell was dark-skinned, ragged and thin, heavily bearded. He looked manic and insane, like someone addled by moondust. He was bone-thin.

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That's all he was... A moondust-crazed lunatic sent to war by his government...

Kasian dragged him away by the scruff of his neck. Akvum only stood there, perplexed. All he could do was bury his head in his hands, groan out in feeble protest.

"Why don't you stop him...?" Cedric found himself asking.

Akvum turned, looked at him.

"Why didn't you stop him?" He asked more resolutely, as though the cat could hear him.

Then the scene was different, they were in that meeting chamber, discussing over that map where they'd first found trace of Llestren'vatis.

"You're too unwieldy." said Akvum.

Cedric looked down. He'd donned the black robes of Kasian.

Akvum continued, "If I attacked you, our powers would clash so greatly that all of our world would be at stake."

"That can't be true. If that's true, why didn't you kill me when you had the chance?"

Akvum tilted his head back in confusion.

"Me. Me. Cedric Castelbre. Lorik. Whatever you call me."

Then he was in a new memory again. His robes had been replaced—he was finally wearing the two-tone armor of Kogar. He'd finally found the interstice where the two people became one.

There was Cedric Castelbre, in that same cage where Tovas had been locked up. The two-tone Cedric approached, placed his hands on the bars.

"This is only a temporary holding for him. We're going to move him to a more secure cage soon."

"...But he'll escape. Won't he?" asked Cedric.

"...Yes," said the cat. "He'll escape. More specifically, the brainwashing will fail when Rykaedi attacks. But you planned for that."

"Planned for that? It was meant to happen this way all along?"

"In some capacity. I suppose it's a question of who's really dealing the cards."

That gave him pause.

Akvum looked up introspectively. "Can ten billion people really be their own gods?"

Next thing Cedric knew, he was running. He was in that desert again, running south past a blaring western sun. He'd thrown his black robes off some time ago. "Cass...! Cass...!"

He fought off the memory. If he wasn't careful, he was sure it would consume him. "She's dead," he answered himself, halted his running. "Cassandra is dead, Kasian. Killed by Rykaedi. Killed by you."

There he was again, in that destroyed home. Just as the memories had begun.

Dreams.

"This is where Talek is born." Cedric remarked. He could no longer tell if it was his own thought or Kasian's. He felt one of the plain walls with his hand, watched it crumble away into the devastation borne from the oncoming war.

"But will this be where Talek dies?" asked an all-too-familiar sultry voice.

He turned to see Rykaedi in that chair where Cassandra had once sat. Now, indeed, Cassandra sat there again, though her robes had become black and violet. It was no secret who really wore her face.

"Enough jumping around, enough jumbled memories..." He shook his head as he walked over, collapsed into the seat placed just beside her. "You're real, aren't you?"

She smirked. "What gave me away?"

"You reek of esera. But you're dead; how did your soul wind up here?"

"We don't have souls, remember? We're not like you. Us Etherians, we operate by a different set of rules." She bit one of her nails while she pondered her next words. "Think of an Etherian as a soul without the flesh."

"Rykaedi, I really don't care to argue semantics with you."

"My, I never did expect to find such big words coming out of your mouth." Rykaedi snickered, made a big motion of crossing her legs.

"Why are you here?"

"Can't a girl just come back to see her lover once more?"

"The love we shared was not exactly fond."

"Better or worse than what you shared with Vleren?"

He didn't answer that.

"What about Marisol, would you have—" Her voice became stifled as his hands wrapped around her throat.

"Y'know," he said. "I had almost forgotten. You killed her."

"Cedric, I—"

His grip only tightened. "You killed Marisol. My friend, the first person to give a damn about me in this world... And you fucking killed her! Like she was nothing! Dropped her from the sky like an insect! That's all we are to you... isn't it!?"

Rykaedi's eyes warbled as they became wet. Not crying, but choking. Finally, Cedric had amounted some damage against her, some pain, some of his rage had become manifest against her.

Then she lifted a shaking finger, pointed over his shoulder. He looked behind himself.

There was a big wall of white fog there, some kind of memory, or a dream, or... He didn't know how to classify it. A vision, perhaps. A misty view into the world beyond the memory.

And there inside of that white portal was Marisol. Alive and well, smiling. Holding hands with her sister.

"She's..." Cedric began. His grip loosened around Rykaedi's neck.

"Happy. You just can't listen to me."

Cedric fell to his knees to witness the two of them standing hand in hand.

"Cedric—did you think the dream of eternal peace I was selling you was a scam?"

"I didn't know what to think. Why does it matter what comes beyond, if..."

"Perhaps your time would be better spent aside from war. Enjoying the spoils of this realm before it's lost to you forever."

"What, then, is the purpose of this world? Why do I fight to protect it if everything that comes after is bliss...?"

Rykaedi slid down from her chair to meet him upon the floor. She turned his gaze to meet her eyes, held his face in her cold hands. "You live so you can learn to love. And once you've decided what to love, you meet it in the world past our own."

He let her hold him for a while, then gently turned his gaze back to the portal. Marisol and Miriam were swept away in a breeze. The image began to fade.

Cedric felt a choking sensation take him. His own eyes became wet, tears streamed his cheeks.

"You know... she's still around for a while. To talk to."

He turned to her. A sick smile had began across her face.

Bond to me, she seemed to say. Eat my energy, let us become one.

Cedric's perplexed, somber gaze began to harden again. He wiped his tears away. "No."

"...No?"

"That's exactly what you want. What you need to survive. A carrier, another damn pawn to carry you across dimensions of time."

Her smirk began to fall as he spelled out her plan.

"It's not happening this time. You're already dead. I'm keeping it that way."

Rykaedi lunged upon him, her sharpened nails leapt for his throat.

But it only took the press of Cedric's thumb into her forehead for her to be done. Her skin was already cold, but it became glossy at his touch. She was no longer there beside him, replaced immediately by the silver-chained violet necklace which he dreamt to reality.

"Devices... Do devices have the same properties as dreams...?" he asked himself.

And just like that, the door to the home's meager bathroom began to swing open toward another dimension entirely...

X

Devices were something I'd wished Llestren'vatis had enumerated more upon. Etherians are not tools or weapons to his senses, perhaps, but their ability to form components of tools can not go unannounced. By forging one-to-two Etherians together, they may forge powerful artefacts which can be manipulated by any member of our society, twice-ley attuned or not. The first of its kind was an Etherian named Grivonym, who became the Dragonrend Blade. He was a sole black Etherian, forged by my mind into a sharp implement which could be used to immediately sever an Etherian connection to twice-ley, tapping into an intrinsic draconic fear of absorption. Though absorption is not death, it no less creates dread in some members of their kin which can be manipulated through a dark Etherian such as Grivonym or Algirak.

Tirrowin will be the first of the Twelve to be introduced after my death. I've trained him in the art of device-crafting as best I can, given him the blueprints for Axys Amar and Dyosius, as well as a device called ■■■■■■■. I expect none of these should be designed by mortal hands, but having the schematics can be integral to preserving this knowledge eternally. Would that I could get my hands upon the schematics of the Omnestatum, I wonder what such a thing could do to the already-powerful race of men.

To craft a device, one must be a capable dreamer. A lucid dreamer, perhaps even one familiar with ley astral projection, works best. Inherit a meditative state of mind as one would before such an experience is to take place, and summon with it a familiarity of the twice-ley. We should let our minds wander the ley barrier freely, let the shapes of every energy signature wash over us and command us to subtle attention. Then we should focus upon the one which we plan to meld, feel its shape in the same way, but feel also a freedom like clay in its form. This thing is ours to mold. We may move creation itself. Such a wondrous power makes one ponder if changing even reality itself is possible, and not in the insignificant ways that a red Etherian may shape our reality. If all things are shaped in ley as the barriers would suggest, could it truly be as simple as dreaming my own ideas to life?