458 A.C.
Andha Ild’s POV
I remember Joseph’s face as he shouted. I could see how it twisted in-between fear, greed, and hate. Then he spoke… No he cursed me. His curse echoes through my mind. Every word was like an ice-pick digging through my head.
Curse
your
damned
demonic
eye!
Then everything was blue, a pure blue. The blue became sharper and sharper as it consumed me in a brilliant light...
That was the last thing I could remember. The scene repeats in my head, while I float on a sea of uncertainty.
Why? What happened for Joseph to become so afraid of me? I was just asking him to return to his post. I knew that there was something he was hiding. We have known each other for years now. The last time he acted like that was four years ago, when he tried to attend his post without any armor. Yet, what happened… What happened for him to hate me so much?
…
"Wake up!" A voice called out from the horizon, beckoning me, I swam to it. Yet, the sea was vast, and swallowed me once more.
"Wake up!" The guide on the horizon took form as it grabbed and shook my shoulders. My thoughts cleared as I struggled to open my eyes.
Pain, I am freezing, my face, it burns! It is freezing! It burns! Pain!
The loop stops as a pain swept my body. Joseph’s curse seemed to crumble away as the pain grew. It started at my face felt before flowing like a wave through my body. I was frozen then I was set out into the sun only to melt into a painful puddle of goo.
My eyes felt like they were being pulled out from my skull. Yet their sockets felt empty?
I cautiously guide, my fingers to my face. I wanted to know if what I was feeling was all an illusion. Slowly, I touched my forehead. The flowing pain began to evaporate, like it was nothing.
Was my pain just an illusion?
My eyes felt empty, as I tried opening them once more. The emptiness grew as I tried to open my right eye. I couldn’t do it. My hands shook as I, once more, moved my left hand and gently touched my right eyelid. My eyelid caved in yet touched nothing. I opened them and tried again, and felt nothing, truly nothing.
What!?
My eye was missing. Panic consumed my thoughts, until it was gradually replaced with a sense of loss.
I had lost both my eye and a friend. I felt as if I was once more stranded on the ocean. The raft I was pulled to as and storm clouds were obscuring the sun. "You are awake, right?" A voice shouted, clearing my mind once and for all. I was awake.
Where am I? I thought, as I looked around me.
I was in a small room made of tan stone bricks. Between the bricks seemed to be a particular blue-green color, akin to rusted copper.
Each brick had a strange small patterns of magic lines, that seemed to create various formations, carved into their surface. The formations were strange. The formations in this room didn’t seem to agree at all with the modern orthodox for creating formations.
In the orthodoxy to create a formation, you start by drawing the rune for the element you wish to use. Then you use runes to write a runic code for the effect you wish to make inside the first rune. Then you connect the code to itself by using magic lines to connect them together. And then finally, you connect the code to the elemental rune using magic lines.
Here, though, the formations start with the elemental rune,,and then they fill the elemental rune with strange patterns made from magic lines. There were occasional runes floating unconnected inside the magic lines’ patterns.
Due to the peculiarities of the formations, I only recognized three of these formations. One being a dust removing formation, the other being a water repealing formation, and the last being a silencing formation.
There was someone standing to my left. They had short hair and wore a peculiar robe that looked as if it were made from copper. Their eyes and hair were brown in color. With their eyes being darker than their hair, as I was looking around, they began to speak.
"You are now in the last of the arcanist towers, or at least the last I know of. I am Daska Teleftai. I am the only living arcanist on this plane. Perhaps the last in the Void Sea…"
They sighed, as I was shocked and scared.
”You mean the arcanists who started the calamity?! Weren’t they all destroyed when they tried to protect the plane from those demons that they invited?!" I said as I was trying to find an exit.
I should have known I was dealing with an arcanist when I was looking at these formations.
No that is not true. These formations, now that I am looking at them, are different from what historians described?
It is commonly known that the arcanists relied almost solely on magic runes in their formations, but there was almost none here.
I looked back to Daska only to see that they moved. Quickly, I scanned the room, only to find no one.
Now that I was alone, I tried to stand up.My head pounded and spun as I barely managed to stand. I tried to walk, and then fell to the ground.
While I was trying to get back to my feet, I heard footsteps approaching my side. I looked at the source, only to see that Daska had returned, with a big tome.
…
"Our Lime Copper tower never used the demonic runes. We use magic circuits." They said, as they placed the tome on a desk in the corner of the room. They continued to speak while flipping pages in the tome.
"300 B.C. was when we arcanists discovered interplaner communication. Arcanists were a loosely organized independent group of people. They cared more for the survival of their tower than the fall of another’s. So, each tower independentlycommunicated with different planes. Through this our tower, and many others, learned about many things. One of those being the danger of the runes."
While talking, they grabbed my arm, and helped me back into bed. After doing so, they brought me the tome. They began to talk endlessly.
"Runes are made from the soul seals of supremely powerful beings.”
“All beings with a soul have a soul seal. The seal is what allows you to brand and control various energies. For example, when you eat, your body will assimilate some of the food you take in. When this happens, your soul will seal this some of this matter, which becomes part of your body.”
“When you cultivate, your soul seals the energies you capture. The soul seal can change as you grow stronger. When one forms a core, they carve a formation onto it. When they do so, they change their soul seal. The old one assimilates the carved formation. When a soul becomes strong enough, this seal can also be used by others to manipulate energies."
I was baffled, by their torrent of information. I tried to regain my self by distracting them.
"How do we know this?"
"I was getting to that," they wined, "Souls formed on planes are branded with the plane's seal. This seal protects the soul of those on the plane from the plane's spiritual suppression. For example, our plane’s soul seal is a magic hand. When you use it in a spell, you can use it to create life."
"It’s impossible to create life with magic!" I exclaimed, mostly to end this one sided conversation.
"Why? To create a living being, the being needs a soul and a body. So all you need to do is capture a few incomplete souls, mark them with the seal, and then feed them until they become a complete soul. Then you add it to a body."
They responded, with a look of contempt on their face before continuing.
"Now then, stop interrupting me. Where was I? Oh yeah, our Lime Copper tower learned that some powerful beings can sense when their soul seals are used in spells. So, we issued a warning to all the towers... unfortunately, most of them did not listen…. It was when we discovered how to travel between planes, that a powerful being sensed our plane. It sent many of its subordinates to capture us arcanists. We fought back, and resisted for twenty-six years with few casualties, before changed tactics. The invaders started to attack isolated towers. When those towers asked for support, they were ignored. The towers began to ask for help from the planes instead. One by one, towers were destroyed until reinforcements arrived."
"The cultivators?"
"Yes, the cultivators. They arrived and asked for payment in exchange for their help. They rejected rare recourses, and everything else we offered, until we told them of our magic. We sold our knowledge to them, and they were happy with our payment. They quickly went to action and killed or sealed all the invaders. After that, they found the culprit behind the raids on our plane. They fought and sealed them on this world's moon.”
Daska stared at me before saying, “Now, what will you do to pay for this information?"
What?
"Did you expect this to be free?! Not only did I save your life, but I also told you the tower's history, from the calamity! Rule has it that people who hear tower history, would pay us back by working on maintenance for our formations for five years. So will you pay now, or start working for me?"
"What?! That was a rule set more than four hundred years ago, and I doubt your information was worth that much. You only clarified some obscure history. It took less than five minutes!" I exclaimed as I grew angry.
"Do you even know what happened to you? Do you know how much it costs to save you? Your soul was almost destroyed, when you were hit by that soul beam. Not only that, but your core exploded, damaging your body while your bloodline was rejecting your soul. How do you think I healed you?"
They pointed at me crouching down. They stopped when they were eye level to me.
"It took a salve made from five soul berries processed with the roots of a five hundred year old tree, aged for 100 years. To heal your soul. To heal your body, I had to use a 50-year-old health potion, and don’t even get me started on your bloodline."
Their voice became a mumble, while growing in anger before coming to a shout.
"What do you think you should pay!"
I was at a loss, I came from a small noble family, but they could not afford the health potion, let alone the other medicines.
"I don’t have enough money to pay for the treatment. What should I do?" I asked, as a slight smirk appeared on their face.
"Easy, become my apprentice and pass on our legacy to the future generations."
Yo!