Ascension

  The Beginning After the End

  Book 8: Ascension

  TurtleMe

  254

  Hello Darkness

  Darkness. Complete, utter darkness.

  I was floating, hovering in a field of reflectionless black.

  There was nothing else—no sound, taste, smell, touch…

  It was peaceful at first. I felt like I was both nothing and everything at the same time. I was a tiny speck in a vast universe, yet nothing else existed aside from me.

  As time passed, though, I recalled more of what I was. I was a human…I had hands, feet, a body…

  I tried curling my fingers and toes. I tried flaring my nostrils, opening my mouth. I couldn’t feel anything. There wasn’t even the sensation of breath in my lungs or the beating of my heart.

  Fear took hold quickly, but even that was ambiguous, with no physiological signs to indicate my panic.

  My panic… I was more than hands and feet…I had a name…I was Grey, King Grey…but I was also General Arthur Leywin, the Lance, son of Alice and…and Reynolds…

  Names spun in my mind, names like Ellie, Tessia, Virion…Sylvie…

  No. I recoiled from the names, pulling away instinctively like a hand from a flame, unprepared for the pain associated with them.

  I tried everything to ground myself to something. I gnashed my teeth like an animal. I clawed at the endless emptiness around me as if I might rip the blinding cover from my eyes. I screamed soundlessly into the void.

  Despite my efforts, I didn’t seem capable of enforcing my will upon the world around me. I simply existed.

  And I grew more and more angry with each subjective second that passed.

  Insanity effervesced, bubbling out to every corner of my consciousness. Like my fear, though, the madness was without substance. None of the symptoms of insanity could be materialized within the nothingness around me, the nothingness that contained me.

  Fear, anxiety, and paranoia gripped my insides—if I even had insides—boiling away all thought, but even the madness and terror couldn’t exist for long in the void, and as all emotion bled out of me, I felt one all-consuming sensation.

  Boredom.

  Time flowed. I could sense it like I could sense my own consciousness, but I had no reference for the time that moved passed me. Had I been in this disembodied state of non-existence for an instant or an eternity?

  It was only when I felt a slight prickle on my arm—yes, my arm—that I jolted out of my stupor.

  I had felt something. A few moments later, I felt another prickle, this time spreading across my chest. Those pinpoints of sensation soon escalated into sharp, piercing pains, and I welcomed each increasingly agonizing round of burning pain that stabbed at every millimeter of my body; the pain was proof that I existed outside my consciousness.

  The void faded into gray light, nearly imperceptible at first, then grew brighter and more solid as my vision returned, then condensed into a single white light, beckoning me, and I realized that I had experienced something like this once before.

  Then it clicked.

  A wave of panic overtook me as I approached the light.

  No. No! Please don’t tell me I’m reincarnating again.

  My eyes shot open; my blurry gaze was level with the ground, my cheek pressed flat against a smooth, hard floor.

  I tried to move, to reassure myself that I was not once again a newborn. I couldn’t start over again, not now. There was too much left to do, so many people I had to protect.

  I struggled to even lift my head, the surges of pain still racking my body.

  The fleshy construct felt foreign to me, heavy and stiff like wearing a suit of armor designed for a much larger man.

  I pried open my lips and forced a note from my throat. “Ah… ahhh.”

  My own clear, familiar baritone rang in my ears, easing some of the panic.

  I gritted my teeth and swallowed. It was like trying to swallow a scorpion, but it revealed something important.

  Teeth! I have teeth!

  Though I didn’t know where I was, why I felt like I had been knitted together from wet tissue, or what the hell had happened in that pocket dimension, at least I hadn’t been reborn as an infant. Again.

  Trying to lift my arms proved just as difficult as if I had been, however. I might as well have been trying to uproot one of the centuries-old trees in Elshire Forest, because my body wouldn’t budge. Every motion resulted in another wave of pain, like dozens of tiny demons were pummeling me with spiked maces that had been lit on fire.

  After several attempts to push myself up from the floor—and passing out several times from the pain that came after—I gave up, gazing around the room in angry, defeated silence.

  I was in a large circular hall. Smooth white pillars held the ceiling up. A warm ethereal light glowed brightly from sconces along the walls, spaced out evenly every few feet. Familiar but indecipherable runes were etched in between each sconce.

  I pried my gaze away from the lights and focused on the ground—or more specifically, what was on the ground.

  Blood. Lots of it.

  But the blood was dried brown and caked in the corners where the floor met the walls. Still unable to move, I couldn’t investigate closely, but it seemed like this was some sort of grounds for injured people—or injured beasts.

  Vulnerable as I was, the thought of a bloodthirsty mana beast standing behind me caused a painful tremor to shiver through my body. Since I hadn’t already been eaten, though, I had to assume I was safe for the moment.

  I tried moving again to little avail. I still felt like I was in some sort of shell, as if this body wasn’t my own.

  My eyes were drawn back to the details of the walls, ground, and pillars. Due to my limited field of vision, however, there wasn’t much that I could make out, and when I ran out of distractions, unwanted and painful memories began to resurface.

  I remembered my fight against Nico, who had reincarnated into Elijah’s body—or perhaps Elijah had always been Nico. Once, a very long time ago, he had told me how his memories before arriving in the kingdom of Darv were all a blur.

  I remembered Tess sacrificing herself because I couldn’t win against Cadell, the Scythe who had killed Sylvia.

  I remembered harnessing aether to create not only a pocket dimension but a teleportation gate using the medallion crafted by the ancient mages. I had known by then that I wasn’t going to survive. My body had continued to function only due to Sylvia’s dragon will and aether keeping me alive, but I had realized that, once I withdrew Realmheart, I would suffer the full impact of my exploitation of mana and aether, and that the backlash would cause my feeble human body to crumble.

  I remembered my last moments with Sylvie, before she pushed me into the unstable portal. My memory of those moments in the pocket dimension was so clear that I could almost see Sylvie in front of me now. I closed my eyes, but that only made the memory feel more vivid, more real.

  Tears bled out from between my tightly closed eyelids and slid down my cheeks, finally dripping onto the bloody floor beneath me. Despite myself, the memory of Sylvie disappearing right in front of me replayed over and over.

  From the bond that we shared, I knew that she had used a powerful aether art to sacrifice her own physical body to save me.

  I hated her for sacrificing herself.

  But more than that, I hated myself.

  I had been so caught up in trying to handle everything my way—to save Tess, to get my vengeance against Cadell, to confront and defeat Nico—that I took for granted that anything could ever happen to Sylvie, the only one who stood by me through it all.

  I had assumed she’d always be with me.

  Now, she was gone.

  My stomach lurched and my ch
est tightened as I held back a dry sob. I squeezed my eyes shut, grinding my teeth to try and contain myself.

  But I couldn’t. I had lost Sylvie, even though I was supposed to protect her, even though she had been entrusted to me as an egg so that I could keep her safe from the Vritra…I had lost her trying to save everyone else.

  I heaved, my shoulders convulsing as I let out guttural sobs that echoed mockingly across the room. “I’m…sorry. I-I’m so sorry…Sylv.”

  I lost myself for a while, sprawled on the cold stone floor, wallowing in grief and self-pity. In that moment, I wanted to stay that way, consigned to the purgatory of my fear and doubt and grief, but I was abruptly jolted out of my melancholy by the sensation of pin-pricks running up my entire body. It felt as if millions of insects were crawling all over me, beneath my skin.

  A second wave came, stronger and more painful.

  On the third wave, it felt like the millions of bugs underneath my skin erupted out of me, and I lost consciousness.

  By the time I pried open my eyes and felt the cool stickiness of saliva pooled underneath my cheek, I knew I had been out for a while.

  Peeling my face off of the wet floor, I rolled over onto my back.

  I felt a brief moment of elation at the fact that I could actually move, but this was interrupted by an overwhelming sense of thirst.

  Swallowing what little saliva I had left to moisten my dry throat, I pushed myself up onto my elbows. The motion felt off and my body was stiff and alien, but I was still excited about my new range of motion.

  Sitting on the ground, I was immediately distracted again by the sight of my own hands.

  “Strange…”

  My hands were pale—almost white—and there wasn’t a single flaw on them. The calluses on my palms, accumulated through years of wielding a sword, were gone. The scars on my knuckles were gone. Even the scars on my wrist that I had received from the toxic witch—the first retainer I had fought—were gone, replaced by smooth, unmarked skin.

  It seemed like Sylvie had done much more than heal my wounds from abusing Realmheart Physique.

  My arms were still toned with the muscles I had accumulated over years of training, but they were thinner. My hands also looked smaller and my fingers more delicate.

  When my gaze shifted down to my forearms, more specifically my left forearm, I felt a sharp pang across my chest.

  The mark was gone.

  Panic rose in me once more as I began frantically turning my arm to see if it was on the other side somehow, but it wasn’t. The mark that I had received after forming my bond with Sylvie had completely vanished alongside all of the scars and calluses.

  “Before you get all weepy, look to your right,” a clear, cynical voice said from nearby.

  Turning to my right, I saw a translucent, rainbow-colored stone the size of my palm. My eyes widened, and I dove toward the colorful stone and grabbed it.

  “I-is this…?”

  “Yup. It’s your bond,” the voice said curtly.

  A black will-o-wisp the size of my fist floated into view. Within the ball of dark light, two bright sparks glinted like eyes and a black slash below them made me think of a mouth twisted into a wry smile.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could continue, the will-o-wisp darted closer to me. It dipped, as if bowing.

  “Behold, master. I—Regis, the mighty weapon gifted to you by the asuras so long ago—have finally manifested in all my glory!” the dark orb declared before…letting out a sigh. “Honestly, I wish you’d have been conscious for it. It was pretty damn impressive.”

  255

  The Next Message

  Confusion gave way to surprise, then to anger.

  “Why…?” I ground out through clenched teeth.

  “Why what?” The will-o-wisp’s light dimmed, and it twisted slightly in the air, like a dog tilting its head in confusion. I found the simplicity, the sentience of the expression infuriating.

  “Why?!” I roared, funneling all my frustration, anger, and fear into the dry scream, feeling it tearing at my dehydrated throat but caring little in the moment. I lunged forward, taking a slow and painful swing at the black ball of flames.

  My hand passed directly through the will-o-wisp, and I didn’t have the strength to halt my forward momentum. I toppled forward, slamming my face hard on the smooth, cold floor.

  “Hey, keep your hands to yourself, buddy!” the will-o-wisp snapped. “That is a major infringement of my bodily autonomy.”

  Heaving myself back up into a sitting position, I let my rage seethe and bubble within me as I stared at the spot on my left palm that Regis had come from.

  “Why? Why the hell are you here now? After years of draining my mana, but doing nothing useful, why appear now?” I turned my glare on the black flame. “If you had come out earlier, I could’ve won. I could’ve saved everyone!” My voice cracked as I thought of my loved ones back on Dicathen, my vision blurring as tears welled up in my eyes.

  “Well aren’t you a ray of sunshine. The asuras would die trying to fight over a sentient weapon like me, yet here you are, moping about—”

  “I needed you,” I said, the words hissing past my lips in a bare whisper, tears dripping to the rust-red ground as I clawed at the smooth floor.

  The will-o-wisp shook from side to side as if shaking its head, but remained silent. A small bubble of guilt bloomed somewhere deep in my stomach, but it wasn’t my own. It was clearly Regis’s feeling of guilt at not having been there, and the sting of my rebuke. I sighed. I was angry at Regis, but I also knew I was just using him as an excuse for my own failures.

  As my tears ran dry, I became more aware of the burning in my parched throat. I needed to find something to drink.

  “There’s a pool of clean water here,” Regis said. “Drink something before you cry yourself into a mummy.”

  I hesitated, distrustful of both the will-o-wisp and the water, but also angry at myself, angry at the dark place in my heart that was telling me to curl up in the corner and wait for the end. What was the point? I had failed, and had lost everything. Again. Then the small iridescent egg glistened in the corner of my eye.

  “Yes, that’s it. You can do it! Do it for that rock!” Regis said, bobbing up and down excitedly.

  Pushing aside all of the emotions that weighed down on my body, I dragged myself in the direction Regis led me.

  My milky, pale arms looked foreign to me as I crawled across the room. I still felt like I was in a full suit of armor despite being almost bare.

  “Come on, that’s a big strong boy now, almost there,” Regis taunted, hovering around me like a fly I couldn’t swat.

  “Shut…up…” I wheezed, my lungs aching with the effort.

  I focused my attention on the marble fountain beckoning to me, the water running so clearly and silently from the top that it looked like glass.

  It required a herculean effort to pull myself up over the rounded base that held the water, but, still thinking of Sylvie, I heaved until, shaking and sweating, I could see down into the clear water. I immediately buried my head inside.

  It felt like I had slammed my face into a wall of ice. I opened my mouth and gulped it all in, the water crisp and cool as it rushed down my throat.

  I continued to swallow mouthfuls of water until I couldn’t hold my breath any longer.

  “Gah!” As I pulled my head out, gasping for breath, a curtain of beige covered my vision.

  I brushed my hair out of my eyes, then grabbed a strand and stared at it incredulously. Regis chortled behind me.

  “You’re acting like a pup seeing its own tail for the first time.”

  Ignoring him, I looked down, seeing my reflection for the first time since waking up. My eyes widened.

  The face staring back from the icy depths looked a lot like me, only a bit older, with sharper features and skin the same milky white as my arms.

  The red scar around my throat, which I had also received from th
e retainer I faced at the Battle of Slore, was no longer there, showing only a smooth, long neck and Adam’s apple.

  But what shocked me the most were the changes in my hair and eyes. My eyes were a piercing gold and the color seemed to have been completely washed out of my once-auburn hair. My head of deep reddish-brown was now a pale wheat color, even lighter than Sylvie’s hair in her human form.

  My chest tightened at the sight of my reflection, my own hair and eyes now a constant reminder of my bond’s sacrifice. This was accompanied by a pang of loss, however, like I’d become yet another step removed from my loved ones. The features I’d inherited from my parents were gone.

  “I don’t understand. What—” Searing pain ignited inside me, as if my mana core had suddenly caught on fire, and a scream burst from my throat.

  My vision doubled and became hazy, then I heard a voice. It was one that I hadn’t heard in a long time, but one I could never forget.

  “Hello, Art, this is Sylvia.”

  My heart pounded against my ribs as excitement rose up to replace the burning pain in my core. “S-Sylvia?”

  “I’m recording this at the same time as my first message to you, but I suspect that, for you, it has been quite some time since you’ve heard my voice. I suppose I should say that it has been a while.”

  I let out a laugh as I felt fresh tears stream down my cheeks.

  “I’m conflicted to know that you’re hearing this message. On the one hand, I’m proud that you’ve been able to get to where you are now. But the fact that you’ve had to push yourself to this point means that life has not been easy for you, perhaps even more difficult than your previous one.”

  Her tone had grown somber, her words heavy.

  “Having gotten to this stage means that you’ve had to fight for your life against foes much stronger than you, and that could only be Agrona and the Vritra that serve him.”

  I bristled at the mention of Agrona’s name, but Sylvia’s voice only seemed sad…almost heartbroken.