Astral Threads: Epilogue (Patreon)

In the remains of an ancient crater, there was only scorched earth and the damaged frame of a gateway that had led somewhere else. Golden shoots of young grass were already climbing around the base. Nearby, the corpses of almost a dozen bellisagi were strewn across the field, their four arms broken at sharp angles.

Only one was still alive.

He held two dark daggers with his left hands, crossed defensively across his chest as he looked across the field to a patch of grass that looked just a bit healthier than everything else around it, and then he glanced warily into the sky.

He was covered in blood. His right arms and leg were useless, his chest was caved in, and his cheekbones were shattered. It looked like all the bones on that side of his body had shattered from some great force.

Not far away, there was a fresh depression in the ground where the earth had been torn up. All around it, jagged impact points showed where rocks and spell energies had slammed into the ground.

A streak of burning darkness descended from the sky toward him, followed immediately by another. He slashed upward with both daggers, his motion graceful despite his injuries, and blocked one and then the other, diverting the attacks to the side where they slammed into the earth and dissipated.

The daggers returned to a guard position even before the bolts struck the dirt, ready to divert another attack. Clearly, those weren’t what had harmed him.

In the sky, a dark-winged Sky Guard folded his wings and dove toward the section of earth that looked healthier than the rest of the crater. He twisted as he swept past it, scanning for something. When he didn’t see it, his wings curved out and he shot up into the air again, joining the other nine Sky Guard that were floating there.

Many of them were in poor shape, their armor shattered into chunks and their crystalline bodies more silver than black, but they were still flying. They took turns diving toward the earth to scan the area as they sent the occasional blast from a spear down at the chieftain to keep him on his guard.

Hours passed, but eventually their scans became wider and less frequent until they all returned and gathered around Sergeant. There was a desolate aura around them as they hung there, as if they had lost something and weren’t sure what to do.

A shimmer of dark silver cut across Sergeant’s wings as he spread them wide and turned to look to the east. His posture shifted, becoming determined, and then all ten of the Sky Guard disappeared in a blur as they shot through the sky.

Below, the bellisagi chieftain sheathed his daggers and dragged himself weakly toward the edge of the crater. He didn’t take out any healing pills or scrolls. Instead, he hauled himself up on the side with his two good hands and then turned to look at the corpses of his people.

A grimace turned his bony features even harsher than usual. Then he lay back and stared upward, studying the clouds for answers they didn’t have. Slowly, his wounds began to close.

*****

On the Path of Stars

The Void was a streak of silver black all around him. Beneath his feet, the astral thread unfurled, leading him ever onward. Time was immaterial and distance was only an inky black sea swirling away from his sight. It was one eternal moment stretched out to infinity.

For a while, Sam watched the stars pass by in silver streaks, their fires a flicker of life in the dark ocean, but in the end he turned his attention to what truly mattered: the message spell that the Astral Guardian had left so he could contact his family.

As he sat down, a silver disk imprinted with a nine-pointed star appeared beneath him, like a moving platform for him to rest on. All around him, the Path continued to stretch onward.

He already wasn’t sure how long it had been. He would have to hope that the time compression around Aster Fall meant his message arrived before they began to worry.

He began to study the framework of the spell, barely aware of the passing stars and his movement through the Void as a pleasant background to his work. The runes were formed from crystal flame with a purity of intent that he’d never seen before and he examined them one by one, taking his time to understand what they were about.

They were many times more complex than anything he had created and each of them was slightly different, their energies folded and compressed in varying ways. In some, the intent felt purer. In others, the flames burned hot or cold. And in ones further along, there was a strange duality of both heat and cold to the runes that was balanced in harmony.

At first, the sight of them sent a stabbing pain through his mind, but he focused his attention narrowly on just the first one, working to understand it, and it became clear that the Guardian had left him a guide to crystal flame.

Each rune was a different way to think about it or to shape it, which had to be mastered before he could continue on to the next. When he had mastered them all, the spell structure for the message would also be fully revealed.

More than that, the Guardian had left a concept inside each rune, like a puzzle to contemplate. When he echoed it the right way with his own crystal flame, that part of the rune dissolved and flowed into the larger spell structure.

It was a way to teach spell concepts that was more effective than anything he’d seen before, on par with the training rooms in the Moonlight Relic, but the true advantage was that it was only a model. He could feel that there were even more ways to use crystal flame than the Guardian was showing him.

This was something like a basic primer that was intended to open his mind to the possibilities. It was showing him the first step to dozens of different methods, which let his imagination run free with ideas. It wasn’t easy, but without anything else to draw his attention, he was able to focus on the spell without distraction.

In time, although he wasn’t sure how long it had been, the angles and curves of the first rune became familiar and it floated in his mind like an old friend. With that success, he moved on to the next rune. Eventually, he unlocked it as well.

One by one, he worked his way along the exterior of the spell, studying the runes as the stars floated by. His essence was still unbalanced, but there was so little to distract him here that it didn’t matter, especially when he was moving along the path. Whatever urges arose within his chest, they were satisfied by the sight of the stars flickering by and it left him free to think.

Perhaps that was why Astral Titans traveled the Void.

It was their home and the place they were most comfortable. All the distractions of the world and its pressing concerns were absent here, leaving him with just his thoughts and his craft.

If he went back to the world right now, the essence imbalance would be exaggerated by the presence of the auras there, each of them pushing him in a different direction. He hadn’t considered it before, but the Void felt like the safest place for a Titan to be.

Here, he was centered and at home, no matter what else was happening.

As soon as that thought came, however, he dismissed it with an annoyed shake of his head. His home was on Aster Fall and he was going back to it as soon as possible.

“Natural Charisma growth...” he murmured to himself as he turned his attention away from the spell and out to the stars all around him. “There has to be a way to accelerate that or gain a Trait that helps.”

There was no one else to talk to except the Guardian Star, which was humming quietly on his hand. It felt like it was asleep, either due to absorbing the Guardian’s message gem or, more likely, as a feature of the Path. He could probably wake it up if he wanted company, but right now it was peaceful on his own.

Before long, he returned to working on the message spell. Time might pass more slowly on Aster Fall, but the sooner he could tell his family what had happened, the better.

One rune turned into another as he familiarized himself with the concepts and his understanding of crystal flame deepened fragment by fragment. Images of frozen crystal and burning flames in a thousand shapes filled his mind until it felt like he was a raw gem beneath the earth, experiencing heat and cold as he was slowly polished over the eons.

The stars passed by and the Void remained as welcoming as ever.

There was no sense of hunger or thirst, nor any need to sleep. Whether it was a feature of the Path or just being in the Void, a constant stream of energy flowed into him, almost like an echo of his Evolution where he’d been a star flaring to life.

It might have been months or a year as he continued on the Path, but eventually the last rune in the spell structure disappeared, leaving a glowing structure in his mind.

He didn’t know what tier it was, but it was far beyond anything he’d seen before. It was made up of twisting rings of runes that interlocked around a central diagram, each of them bending at a strange and difficult angle as if they didn’t quite fit within this dimension. Here and there, parts of them twisted away, connecting to something else.

The base was easier to understand. It was a series of triangles oriented outward around a central circle, inside which there was a spiral of crystal flame. That was where the message went.

If he’d had to create this spell on his own, he wouldn’t have known where to start. He could see some features of dimensional enchantments in it, including ones to orient the message through time and space, but the meaning of the whole was more complex than he could take in at a glance.

Fortunately, his study of the runes was enough to let him recreate it, although it would take a while to balance all of the rings.

Time felt slippery, days sliding into weeks and weeks into months as he began to assemble it. Now and then, he had to correct something, which required him to tear down the entire spell structure and rebuild it, but each time was faster than the one before.

Slowly, a spinning enchantment of crystal flame took shape between his hands.

Sapphire rings orbited the central diagram, thirteen of them spinning in various directions and at different distances from the center. It felt like there shouldn’t be enough space for all of them to fit, but the inside of the spell structure was somehow larger than the outside. Where the runes would have touched, they instead bent past one another, creating those odd twists in space that he’d seen from the model.

“Good enough,” he said quietly as he studied it and confirmed that it was ready. He hadn’t spoken in a while, perhaps since he’d managed to form the sixth ring, which was more than half of the process before. His voice was rough from being unused.

It was hard to tell how much essence he’d poured into the creation of this spell over time, but it was well above a hundred thousand, perhaps a million or more. It was enough energy to reduce a mountain to rubble.

He touched the central spiral of crystal flame with his essence as he began to speak. He’d thought long and hard about what to say, but in this case, eloquence failed him and he just spoke directly about what was on his mind.

“I love you all and I’ll return as soon as possible. Please don’t worry too much about me. I will be fine, even if it takes me a long time to return. I’ve been pulled away by my race’s birthright and I need to find the answers to it before I can safely come back to Aster Fall. It’s a price I wasn’t expecting, but I’ll make sure it works out in the end.

“There was an Outsider invasion artifact on the Storm Plains, which is what caused most of this trouble when I got careless. I absorbed too much energy and I need to find a way to deal with it before I return. The World Core is helping, but it’s sent me away until I can solve it.

“I am sorry I’m not there to keep you company and to work on the relic. I’ll be back as soon as possible, faster than anyone has ever completed this journey before, but it might take a while. Years, even. The Dimensional Convergence is coming, but hopefully, there are a few years before it gets to be a problem. The relic’s defenses and the Sky Guard should be enough for most things and I have a feeling that the Ice Sylphs still have many ways to defend their home.

“Remind Garild to behave and to bulk up the city guard. It will be needed. If he doesn’t want to, you should ask Siwaha to deal with him. She’s far more frightening to the city council than I am.

“Krana, Ayala...my apologies for leaving you in Runekeld and not returning. I wasn’t expecting to be blocked from coming back. I hope the golems return to you. They should have been able to sense the two you still have and that will be a good escort for you to go wherever you need to, even if there are Flaws on the way. The relic would be the safest, though.

“Lenei, I don’t know what will happen with your Call while I’m gone, but I think the World Core will arrange things so they work.

“As for the bellisagi, I found them on the Storm Plains and they did not enjoy the experience. Unfortunately, the chieftain might have escaped when I was pulled away. Hopefully he doesn’t cause any more trouble, but he did overhear the name of my race. If the golems managed to finish him off, good. If not, I’ll find him when I get back.

The spiral of crystal flame was beginning to press against the edge of the rune circle containing it, which meant that he had to wrap up his message, so he concluded with the last thing he had to say.

“Mom, dad...try not to worry too much. Altey, I’ll do my best to be back before your next birthday. I wish I were there to teach you more runes and keep you company. I’ll try to make up for it when I get home.”

With that, the time was up. There were many more things he could have said, but those would have to do. All the effort in creating this spell had only given him a minute or so to speak.

A pang went through him as he thought about his sister. She looked up to him and if he wasn’t there to show her the marvelous parts, her view on magic might not be as bright.

Hopefully, she would find some friends with the younger ice sylphs and anyone who started to come to the relic, so she wouldn’t be lonely. He could probably count on Siwaha and the hunting team to keep her sense of wonder going...hopefully.

The thought was pulling his attention away, but since he couldn’t waste all the effort he’d put into the spell, he activated it and watched as the rune circles spun faster, tightening down around the central message like the curving walls of a sphere.

The structure shrank until it was a tiny sapphire sphere and then it blinked out of existence, teleporting away.

Beneath his feet, the Path stretched into the distance, its silver-streaked view a soothing distraction. He looked into the Void and then down at the silver platform beneath his feet, and his expression hardened as he urged it to go faster.

A wave of astral energy rose up from him and poured into the platform, following the lines of the nine-pointed star on the surface. He searched for the enchantment that was powering it, but all he could feel there was the emptiness of the Void and the single streak of a star that was burning a path across it.

Nevertheless, that didn’t stop him from trying. He flexed his hands as he poured out even more essence and sent it into the platform, continuing the search. His eyes blazed with determination.

“I may not know what lies at the end of this Path, but my footsteps will cross a galaxy."