But I've been here before, thought Cedric. He crossed his legs, crossed his arms, floated at peace within the center of the darkness.

I've been to the Deadworld. I've been ensnared within Zanthiel’s dark bubble.

I only need a dream to grow past this power.

He shut his eyes, not that it much changed what he could see. He focused his imagination, focused on the elements of Calamon he'd noticed:

Red sky,

Bloody cobble,

The corpses,

The smell of iron,

The smell of ash,

The red rain.

He could see it well enough. His imagination was no powerful thing, but it was enough. He was sure of it.

Dyosius was the dreamer in conscious form, was it not? A living element of human willpower, of dreams made manifest—it was the piece which bridged the gap between ambition and reality. Without it, what would a human be?

It doesn't matter. Cedric shook his head. Focus.

Calamon was there in his mind, he could still see it. He did his best not to remember Kasian—at least, to put some distance between them. Then the crack of war drums, a turn of both of their heads…

Dragons, in the sky. Hunters, at the gates!

The western gate of the town, just barely too far to be visible, crashed triumphantly to the ground. A storm of dust and dirt and detritus ripped up into the air. Then came a thousand men, silver-armored all in strict coordination.

Their voices ripped the air. Then, from over that wall, came a storm of dragons.

Importantly—are they mortal dragons? Or are they…

No. They're Etherian dragons. They have to be. I'm a siren—I'm a siren, aren't I? I can make it happen. They'll come to me. They'll feel my dream.

Kasian drew his hands up, compelled the dancing lights to his fingertips again.

Dream—hear me.

A stinging sound ripped the air like electricity. Kasian flinched, then his gaze came up to Cedric in amazement.

“...Antithesis?” he asked.

Then Cedric sucked in a breath—he was back. His dream—-he looked around and everything had remained the same. Nothing had changed from what he'd envisioned, only that it'd become real.

“Antithesis.” Cedric answered, the words sounding rough from his dry throat.

Kasian rushed the boy. Cedric’s evasions and forearm blocks were sluggish compared to how they'd been before. But then, movements always felt slow in dreams. Didn't they?

It didn't matter much. With Dyosius at hand, nothing much mattered besides willpower. And now, with the hordes of Hunters rushing in from the west, more crowding into the eastern road like a wave, and dragons of every color filling the sky, Cedric knew his willpower was greater by a fierce margin.

Just like that, Cedric swung a cracking blow into Kasian’s temple. What remained of his mask flew from his face, exploded like a ceramic plate against the stones.

Then he looked at Cedric. And for the first time, Cedric saw him.

He was… unremarkable. Younger than Cedric had expected, perhaps, but one blessed by eternal life should be. He looked younger than Cedric, even, but his glare held within it some primal rage that not even Kogar had managed. He was like a disgruntled child, an angry teenager. He was not the bold, brash, unassuming man who Cedric had grown familiar with. Not the theory Cedric, and the population of Kylinstrom, had always held of him.

Petulant, Cedric thought. With an ego which far outweighs his power. Even the power of a god—it's no match for what he really thinks of himself.

“You think your armies are so formidable?” Kasian barked, wiping blood from his thin lips. He was pale in the moonlight, but the shade of his skin was closer to Marisol’s by a small margin. Perhaps he was from Ruin as well. Or the desert, at the very least. “You think I haven't an answer to any move you make?”

Spinning vortexes opened all around Kasian, pouring black-red Sylvet out in a sudden riptide.

Cedric didn't flinch. “No, I know you do. I'm just not much afraid of a sniveling child.”

A big, black-plated knight stomped out from the portal. Just as he emerged, Faunia was back, and her lance—white Azatos—ripped through his throat. She twisted, and his neck was snapped. She grinned to Cedric.

Cedric didn't respond with any gesture of his own. The Hunters arrived from the west, slammed themselves against the burgeoning Sylvet horde. The Sylvet had more men than the Hunters down the eastern road—but it Cedric didn't think it would matter for long.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Kasian fell to a knee. He knew it just as well. And without his insurmountable willpower, his skin was beginning to gray.

Cedric held out a hand. Not in help, but in demand. “Tirolith. Hand over that icy one you claimed from me.”

Kasian grit his teeth as he looked up at the boy.

He waved his fingers at Kasian. An order.

But Kasian was no slave.

There warped the darkness around Kasian’s body.

Cedric lunged, his breath caught icy in his throat.

Faunia swept the white lance for Kasian—it burst in half when it struck the side of the shadowy shield which enveloped him.

KRNCH!

The sound of exploding glass cut the air. It killed, snuffed out the sounds of everything else.

For that moment, it was Faunia, Cedric, and Kasian—they were all alone.

Kasian’s black robes took upon a perplexing darkness. The folds were no longer visible—his robes had become darkness itself.

Tirolith—Cedric’s eyes landed on the marble that was once between Kasian’s fingers. There it was, crumbling away. There it was, shards of glass falling between his fingertips.

Cedric screamed something as he stumbled in, off to a clumsy start.

Faunia called Dyosius to her hand in place of Azatos—

Thwip!

That was all it took. A ripping, gentle sound, like an arrow cutting through the wind.

Cedric’s eyes were slow to trail up from Tirolith. His body felt heavy, immovable. His head was aching.

Faunia’s throat was pierced. Blood was gushing out. An arrow had struck her from behind—one of the Sylvet?

But Kasian was even quicker upon her. He moved like a shadow behind her, his hands wrapped tight around her head—

Cedric wailed, screamed, rushed in with blind rage behind him.

Is it a dream!? His mind screamed with blistering emotion. Fix it, FIX it!

He cracked his knuckles with a stiff, awful snap into Kasian’s chin. The man's teeth crashed together, sprayed a stream of dark blood through his pressed lips.

Cedric’s wrist throbbed and dangled loose, his hand was broken in multiple places from the strike.

Faunia stumbled away from the grasp—she was alive. Her throat, as she, too, discovered by reaching up to it, was intact. Was his dream strike not successful? Was it an illusion? Did my willpower supercede his own?

It doesn't fucking matter.

A flurry of blows struck out from Cedric’s fists. His tears still ran. For Tirolith. For Marisol. For Faunia.

Kasian could no longer prevent the blows from breaking across his body. He stumbled back awkwardly from each hit, unable to move fast enough to evade or block.

“Zanthiel—Zanthiel!” he cried.

Kasian was gone.

Cedric slid his feet, spun in a circle. The frenzy of battle had ripped through the city streets surrounding them, soldiers of every creed and color battling without relent in swarms all across the streets.

A dragon swam down close overhead, his wings blasting a gust of wind across them all which knocked soldiers unsteady, sending those with unsteady footing to the ground entirely, letting their enemies pounce atop them like hungry dogs.

More black knights emerged from bubbling, glistening gateways springing open all over, Etherian wielders in their own right. It was at once like the Age of Etherians had never ended.

“Where is he? Where is he!?” Cedric spun with a mix of frenzy and terror. Then his eyes froze upon Faunia, standing there with a distant, cool gaze as the wind pulled her hair out in a long, river-like flow, as the moon made it glow in the pale light as Hunters, then white-masked Ordinators, surrounded her. “Cedric. Tirolith is dead.”

His mouth opened, but he quickly shut it again. That much, he admitted, was true. He just hadn't fully come around to facing it yet.

Faunia smiled grimly. Her whispered voice was all but sequestered by the striking of steel all around them. “I think that's the limit of my power.”

“Faunia—Faunia what about Dyosius?”

She was slow to reply to that, and her cool gaze lowered to his feet. “I don't want to be denied the Deadworld.”

Cedric withdrew slightly. His eyebrows quivered.

“I don't want to change what I am—who I am.”

“Faunia…”

“Tirolith would want it this way. Tirolith would have…”

Finally, her tears ran. Tirolith was dead. And not just her, Marisol was gone.

Cedric reached out as Faunia slumped to the ground in a deep depression. But as he reached, the swaths of soldiers grew between them. The world itself separated them, pulled them apart…

“Yes, boy, you've spilled war upon our city streets, and my Sylvet respond in kind. From the first, they've been my weapon to wield. The Hunters may be the only true heritage upon this blistered world—every other resistance you've ever met has been a relic, a fragment of me.”

Kasian’s sinister grin lit up the night sky.

“But don't worry, boy—I'll save you for last.”

X

Dreams can, and should, be made manifest. It's man's ultimate purpose to fulfil his own desires, however unattainable. That is why the Omnestatum was invented—to make true the Etherian dream of longevity. Dyosius, too, can be thought of as a conduit for human will—or a conduit for dreams themselves.

But some people are beyond that; imagine the painter. Would that their brush were their very mind, if they could emulate creation solely by thinking, by turning lucid thought into tangible reality… With the world as a canvas, the masterpiece becomes all the more beautiful. Is that not how Evra created her world, how Azafel influenced it? Why should man have it any differently? This world belongs as much to man as it does to God. Creation was once hers. Now it becomes ours.

It should be noted that this is not a contradiction by any stretch from our already understood concept of Etherian ley. The red Etherians themselves were formed by Evra's mating with a human. She created the power to bend reality in man and god at that very moment—in that, she created Serkukan. And from that, the first man was given power beyond imagining...