Silver Stars, Ch 22: Lord of Elements (Patreon)

Arcs of astral energy glowed brightly around the relic, highlighting the entire mountain and making the valley gleam with starlight.

He stood on the peak, gathering those arcs of energy and fusing them one by one into the control pillar. The runes on it grew brighter until they burned with a matching light.

Behind him, his Titan Hall and forge glowed as well, the enchantments merging with the mountain peak. 

The moment he activated the relic, he expected all hell to break loose.

Right now, it was only passively exerting an influence on the local dimension and the stability of the World Seal, but once it kicked into gear, that would change.

He analyzed its current status.

Moonlight Relic (High Divine Artifact)

Integrity: 98.7%

Stored Energy: 97.4% 

Auric Charge: 482,991,265 / 500,000,000.

There is sufficient stored energy for core operations and the primary mission.

The Dimensional Anchor is charging.

Thanks to Sam’s efforts, his avatars had managed to bring enough aura from the moons to fully charge it. There were only a few piles of lunar crystals that it still needed to absorb.

The tier of the artifact was recorded as “High Divine”, which was more advanced than his bracer and cloak. They were powerful, but they didn’t have the same scope. The relic was designed to stabilize an entire world indefinitely.

Cerei had used a lot of Fragments of the Primal Void on it.

That was why it had taken so long to repair, and why building a new one more quickly was out of the question, even if he could do it.

The tiers of Divine Artifacts were based on how many fragments they’d been infused with and the power of the laws they held. 

High Divine started at twenty fragments. 

If he had to guess, Cerei had used around 25 for the relic. If she’d used more than that, it would have been more durable.

The World Core had at least a thousand. The Titans had put a lot of work into it, as well as one of the most limited resources in existence. It was why it was so powerful.

Older Vos’Rekan had more fragments than young ones, but it was a staggering number.

His bracer and cloak were potent, but they needed more time and fragments to reach the level of the relic and the world core.

Silverguard was the same. It was sturdy and drew on the Void to recharge itself, but if he could pour another hundred fragments into it, it would be an eternal guardian for the World Core, something almost impossible to destroy.

That was a goal for the future.

The World Core also recorded information about the relic, which was visible to him now, including the most recent addition.

Built by the Astral Titan Cerei 162,420 years ago, two and a half thousand years after the First War began. It was repaired by the Astral Titan Sam Hastern, Lord of Silver Stars and Guardian of Aster Fall.

The Titan Star followed the report with its own update.

Repairs will be complete in 37 hours. The relic will reach its full charge at the same time.

Everything he’d learned told him the echoes of the First War were still present on Aster Fall, and the forces that had broken it had a vested interest in making sure that it stayed broken.

The Titans had won the war, but the fact that Asenya had been captured and the world broken so many times was proof it wasn’t that simple.

Many things were still happening beneath the surface.

There were a lot of things that had escaped from the World Seal and hidden in different corners of Aster Fall, from Outsiders that had managed to sneak through to exiles punished for their deeds, to banished monsters that had found a way and Soul Remnants that had never quite been killed.

The Avatar of Blood was only one of them, if the strongest.

They would not like what he was about to do.

Obviously, he was going to do it anyway.

That was why he’d built so many defenses for Aster Fall, from Silverguard to the World Tree. 

If the relic could do the job alone, it wouldn’t have been destroyed the first time.

He spent a little while creating new avatars, making sure that they had as much power as possible to speed up the final repairs, and then he got to work himself.

Despite all the time he’d spent away, he’d only been gone from Aster Fall for about a week.

Now that he was at both the Fifth Star and the Fifth Evolution, he was able to accomplish many things that had once been difficult.

The relic had been beyond him for a long time, but now they were on the same level. After creating his own divine artifacts, he understood it better. 

On the neighboring mountain of Sky’s Descent, where he’d built the hall for the Conclave of the Moons, he accelerated the dissolution of the buildings, letting them crumble away to silver dust. 

It left the mountain stark and natural again, making sure that nothing would get in the way of the relic’s reactivation.

Eventually, the only thing left on that peak was the matching plateau and the Alter of Oaths, which he’d built for the Army of Aster Fall. It had the ability to create Oathblades for them and to instill some types of knowledge and classes that were critical for the army’s continuation. 

Most of that army was inside the World Seal now, along with the bulk of the Legions of Ice, fighting against Outsiders in the upper layers. 

As word spread, initiates for the army were still coming to see the stone. 

They knelt before it to swear their oath to protect Aster Fall and if they were sincere, the altar channeled energy from the world to create their Oathblade and armor. It also sometimes granted a Blessing or affected their Class, most often telling them they had a new option for their next Evolution.

The World Core had acknowledged the altar and the army’s formation, so its influence was tied into the process too.

After that, he quickly mapped out the last parts of the relic that needed to be fixed. He flooded those areas with astral energy and new greenstone for a base and then followed it with the auras of the three moons.

Runes for starlight and moonlight burned around him as he pulled out massive sections of the relic, reforged the material, and replaced it.

Snow blew around him on crystalline winds, tangling in his hair and drifting across his cloak, and then melted away in his aura. 

Hour by hour, the final parts of the relic came together.

As they were set into place, waves of power began to rumble across the slopes. Enchantments that had been waiting for their final runes began to activate as energy flowed along their engravings.

His parents had been working with their people who had settled at the relic to repair the buildings, but now that the relic had the energy, the self-repair enchantments were reaching outward to the remaining ones under construction.

They would eventually accomplish the task, but it wasn’t fast enough, so he reached out to give it a helping hand.

The power of Elemental Mastery and his Law of Primal Runes resonated, sending runes flaring through his aura that reached deep into the land and sky as he spoke a word. 

“Earth.”

The earth trembled as the slopes began to reshape themselves, taking on a more orderly appearance. Stray stones crumbled away to dust that flowed into broken buildings, where it filled cracks in the stones. 

Stones merged together and flowed upward, forming into walls and roofs. 

Walls began to rise again, separating homes and fields. The edges of the layers that formed steep cliffs became polished and the stairs up them shone in the light. 

The roads that curved around the layers repaired themselves into shining paths with clean edges and stone channels to absorb rain.

The earth of the mountain and Aster Fall itself would be the first defense for the relic, but there were more to add.

“Fire.”

Deep below the mountain, the molten heart of Aster Fall shifted, sending waves of heat toward the mountain peak.

Here and there across the layers, key pylons hummed with runes as they sensed the ambient Fire energy and adjusted it, making sure that the ambient temperature was pleasant for every layer.

Webs of bright red runes merged in the sky, creating a dome above the mountain. There was a hiss of steam as the clouds began to turn whiter and thin out.

Within moments, the grey clouds gave way to bright sun and clear skies, while the air quickly warmed under the touch of the weather enchantments. 

Sunlight poured down on the slopes, making it feel like a warm spring day, and fires ignited in fireplaces, warming the newly built spaces inside.

It had been ages since the relic could operate the way it was intended to and with each new enchantment, a web of connections awoke. 

At the same time, Sam reached out across the world and touched the Heart of Magma in Runekeld, which was linked to Aster Fall’s heart, and he forged a strong connection between it and the relic.

The earth rumbled as waves of heat rose up from it. Each was like the temperature above open magma, a blazing force of mana and heat.

If he left the influence unbalanced, Sun’s Rest might turn into an active volcano, but before it could do that, he reached out to the Gate of Winter above the valley, and forged another connection.

The two elements were anchors for Aster Fall, and now he was bringing them in to protect the relic. Their energy would temper and defend it.

A massive whirlwind of Ice swirled through the sky toward the relic, but when it touched the weather enchantments, the heat from below rushed up toward it.

Clouds of steam erupted from the collision and turned to warm rain, which sprinkled down across the slopes, every drop filled with mana and vitality.

It hissed as it fell on the snow that still covered many of the slopes and buildings.

“Water.” 

The word rang out before the rain could turn to a flood, and everywhere across the mountain slopes, the snow melted away, flowing away in the new channels until each layer had a shining stream running across it.

Crystalline columns of Water runes began to run along the stonework, guiding the water into the proper places, and on the higher slopes, old elemental nodes ignited.

Fountains and pools filled with shimmering droplets, which merged from a thousand streams into sparkling rivers that cascaded over the edges of the layers in bright waterfalls.

Each of the falls was in a different location than the one above it, creating an array of water and light that looked like something out of a distant legend.

His grandparents’ home at Tower Reach had a waterfall above it, but that was child’s play compared to this. Sun’s Rest was a thousand times taller and each of these waterfalls was as large as a city on its own.

The sound of cascading water filled the air, creating a pleasant chime, and the elemental pylons grew bright as energy flowed into them. 

“Wood.”

Vibrant Wood energy mixed with the water and the shadows of green stalks appeared in the lakes and streams, quickly growing into bamboo, lily pads, and lotuses to adorn the banks. 

Fruit trees sprang up around the edges of the water and in clean lines in the orchards, their saplings growing quickly from ancient seeds that had been stored in the relic’s warehouses.

His Hand of Blessing ability mixed with the Wood energy to accelerate their growth, sending the fruit trees toward their first harvest. 

The trunks of the trees grew gnarled and thick and strong branches stretched outward with apples, plums, and cherries, all seasons mixing together into one.

Flowers and herbs sprang up along the walkways, in the gardens of homes, and in the parks on each layer. Wisteria and lilacs grew lush from pagodas beside the lakes and hung over doorways and arches. 

Grapevines grew wild along the hills, following a natural pattern, and grapes filled them.

Then he reached out to the World Tree and shaped another conduit across Aster Fall as he connected it to the relic. The tree had all elements in it, but it was Wood itself.

It would form the fourth pillar of the relic.

In the future, if anything wanted to damage the relic, it would have to break all of its defensive nodes at once.

It would no longer stand alone. 

It would be part of everything.

As the tree’s energy rushed through the relic, a pleasant sense of harmony infused the world as the elements began to hum.

The fruit trees and grasses grew brighter, basking in the connection.

His work took some time and eventually the sky turned to dusk. He looked up to where the three moons were just beginning to show on the horizon. 

“Metal.”

Intricate inlays of metallic runes appeared across the stones, bracing arches and doorways, and metal ore of a thousand kinds appeared, filling the crafters’ tables and forge bins.

Door latches, axes and other tools, and various metallic fixtures filled the buildings, each of them returning to the places they’d once held.

He had no anchor for metal, so he reached into the World Seal and found the ancient subdimension where the Titans had channeled elemental energy for Metal, and he forged a new connection. 

Metal was the sharpest element and if left to its own devices, it would try to cut through the others, but with his guidance, it reinforced them instead.

At the center of the relic, deep beneath the Fifth Layer, a sphere of gleaming metal took shape. It was a brilliant silver-white and glowed with runes along its surface, which shifted moment by moment. 

He connected the new Metal core to the elemental pylons of the relic, as well as to all of the homes and crafting chambers. Its blessing would ensure that the weapons and tools here were never dull and would never rust.

Then he connected each of the other elements to the subdimensions that corresponded to them, adding similar cores as necessary throughout the relic to create a harmony between them.

“Moonlight.”

Throughout the greenstone, the moons’ blue, green, and purple auras flowed like an internal river, giving rise to wisps of energy that floated up from the stones and drifted through the air, lighting the day with moonlight.

Some of those wisps turned into spheres of light and lit the interiors of houses, while others fixed themselves to the walls, but most floated free, flowing through the streets and giving an air of ethereal beauty to everything.

The moons’ energy formed a sixth anchor, stabilizing the operation of the relic.

“And the Crown of Stars as the seventh and final anchor.”

He looked into the Void above Aster Fall, where the new fortresses he’d built gleamed like silver stars in the sky. 

They were directly above the relic, at the center of the night. 

Six of them were close by and spaced equally to create a crown above the world, while Silverguard was a more distant but brighter seventh star at the top of the arc.

At his command, lines of astral energy poured down from each of the fortresses, heading for the peak of the mountain.

The six lines sank into the six elemental cores he’d created and merged with them, and the seventh line of starlight struck the peak, fusing into the control pillar of the relic.

The relic and Silverguard were both divine artifacts and as their energy merged together, a resonance was created, one that strengthened both sides.

The fortresses shifted slightly, taking up their positions in a defensive array around Aster Fall.

Layers of stabilizing force from the relic reached up to them and a vast hum of power echoed in his mind as he felt them lock into place.

It was all one vast enchantment.

As each layer interlocked with the next, they created repeating patterns of defensive runes that spiraled to infinity, like light refracting through the center of a gemstone. 

The relic was at the heart of it, defended by everything else.

“Seven stars to guard the skies, five elements to support the world, three moons to guide the night, and one relic to stabilize the earth.” 

He looked over the result and then he turned to study the peaks of the Western Reaches, which stretched into the distance across the horizon.

Cerei had intended there to be sub-nodes for the relic on each peak and to circle the world, which would add the final stabilization for the World Seal. 

That was the last thing he needed to finish before activating it. 

28 hours remain until the relic is fully charged. The Titan Star announced when he asked. It will be tomorrow night, when the moons are full and bright.

“Just enough time,” Sam replied. His tone was serious, but then he smiled. “But first, let’s go see how my family’s doing.”

His avatars had been around Aster Fall, so he’d visited them every day, but seeing them with his true body was different.

He had a lot of things to tell them, including about the new teleportation gate.

The things he’d hoped for, including offering Altey the chance to attend an academy in the settled galaxy, were open before them.