World Seal, Ch 13: Asenya's Workshop (Patreon)

Silver runes spun through the air around Sam, forming one enchantment after another as he examined Asenya’s blood. After a while, he nodded.

He had a good idea how to use it to track her.

Then he set it aside as he looked at the other vials, debating what to do with them. The realization of what Shattered Skies’s blood meant for his family history was still resonating in his mind.

It made him wonder how his grandfather’s race had changed too, but he had a feeling that the “Other” marker there was something simpler, more like what the bloodline clans had. If he had to guess, his grandfather had infused himself with some other type of energy that had changed his basic nature.

At a guess, it was something from a World Spirit, like the one he’d killed to get his artifact trait. Perhaps it was even from the same one. He’d chosen a different path than Jesai.

As for how she had absorbed this blood...there was one way to find out, now that he had the ability to do it. He sent a thought to the World Core, asking about his grandmother’s bloodline.

After a moment, the answer came.

Humans are constantly manipulating their bloodline, the Core replied. It requires significant resources to keep them from killing themselves. Repairing the forced fusion that Jesai Hastern attempted required more than most.

At the time, she was at the First Evolution and forcibly merging with a Sixth Evolution bloodline should have destroyed her. However, the fusion would have turned her into a powerful Outsider hybrid and threatened Aster Fall, so I stepped in to moderate the impact.

She spent the next two centuries paying off the debt.

There was a thread of displeasure in the Core’s voice, not about the mixing of bloodlines, but about the necessity to fix the damage. It didn’t like shoddy techniques.

Since the Core was being talkative, Sam continued to ask questions, which added more information about how the process had taken place.

I was designed to stabilize energies, including bloodline energy. It is a key component of Classes and Traits, as well as many Abilities. Asenya is a good example.

Her creation was a major project in the early days of Aster Fall, one that I helped to oversee. She has both Astral and Outsider bloodlines, as well as innate abilities from both sides.

You are another example. You are a merger of humanity, Shattered Skies’ bloodline, and an Astral Titan’s bloodline. I helped to rebalance your bloodline twice, once when you encountered the fragment of Shattered Skies outside of Aster Fall, and once when you were reborn as an Astral Titan.

In your case, the spark of astral chaos you encountered enabled many possibilities that could not otherwise have happened. You are a pureblooded Astral Titan, but at the same time you have traits that come from humanity and from Shattered Skies.

Without astral chaos, that combination is impossible.

You are correct in believing that your Elemental Manipulation Ability was related to Shattered Skies originally, but when you became an Astral Titan, it turned into a bloodline Ability that is unique to you. That is also why its name changed to Elemental Mastery later.

Your descendants, should you have any, might inherit that line of powers, although you are likely limited by the same difficulty all Astral Titans face in having offspring. Your nature requires astral chaos to generate new life.

Sam nodded as he tapped his fingers on the surface of the table, tracing out the pattern of the enchantment that preserved the blood. The World Core’s words confirmed his thoughts. They also reminded him to ask about his father and the Bloodline Clans, and how they fit into things.

The creation of World Spirits, Bloodline Clans, and other Racial Evolutions on Aster Fall fall under my purview, the Core said. It is one of the things that makes Aster Fall a unique world. The possibilities here are greater than other places.

Your father’s Bloodline of Frozen Earth is an example. Like you, he had a trace of elemental power from Shattered Skies, as well as an Earth affinity from his class. When he Evolved, it was important to rework that into something of his own. Otherwise, his future Evolutions would be unstable.

In the wider galaxy, that type of change is extremely dangerous, but here I am able to oversee it.

Sam tapped his finger on top of the half-empty vial. The advantages of being on Aster Fall were obvious.

The bloodline of Shattered Skies was probably the reason the outpost by Cliff’s End had responded to him and his father back at the beginning. He’d always wondered why they’d been able to activate it.

It had seemed hard at the time, but from his current perspective, it had practically bent over backward. An Outsider outpost should not have had that reaction to human mana. It made a lot more sense that it had tried to respond to its old master.

The destination it sent him to also made sense. He had landed in the remains of an outpost outside of Aster Fall, the area where the final battle with Shattered Skies had been fought. That was how he’d been able to encounter the fragment of energy from her.

As important as those realizations were, however, they were about the past. He pushed them aside as he continued to examine the blood. Now that he’d tested it, he was confident in using Asenya’s blood to track her.

Within the World Seal, it should be possible to create a bloodline resonance and link it to the World Tree...with the signature from the tree as one pole and the blood as the other, he could get a rough lock on her position, at least enough to point him in the right direction.

Reaching her might be difficult, but it would help to reveal the path.

As for what else he could do with this blood, that was a different question. All three of them were extremely potent. They only held the imprint of essence, so he couldn’t seize it for his own use, but they had something that was even more important.

Shattered Skies’ blood was at the Sixth Evolution, and he could tell that the Astral Titan blood and Asenya’s blood were too. Until now, he hadn’t been sure if Asenya reached the Sixth Evolution, but her blood confirmed that she had.

All three radiated with waves of powerful energy that was just barely contained by the enchantment on the table.

It wasn’t every day he got a chance to study Sixth Evolution Outsider blood side by side with similarly-powerful Astral Titan blood, and then compare them to another one that was between the two.

The potential insights were steep.

They each had a separate and powerful law of their own. They would be useful as guides to developing his Law of the Void for the Fourth Evolution. Just looking at them now was enough to make ideas bubble up.

The differences between the three were obvious.

If the Astral Titans could have used astral energy for Asenya’s birth, they might have, but seeing the options in front of him now, he could tell it was too unique for that purpose. Astral Titans were the singular expression of that energy in a living form.

It was basically a law of its own, an energy unique to the Void.

Without astral chaos, trying to merge it with something else was futile. If it was added, then like with Sam the result would turn into a pureblooded Astral Titan or be destroyed. It could be infused into artifacts, but that was all.

The Outsider blood was similarly domineering. It had its own potent nature that demanded other things give way. From the first glance, he could tell that trying to combine it with Titan blood would be explosive.

The two would fight for supremacy until one of them was destroyed.

The Titan blood felt like ancient starlight, while the Shattered Skies’ blood felt younger and restless, like a chaotic storm that had something to prove. It was just as strong, but it had taken a different path.

There was a similarity between them in that, like they were two expressions of the greater Void, but it felt like the galaxy where the Outsiders came from was a bit younger than this one, and more raw.

That contrast was why Asenya was a blend of Wild Spirit and Outsider energy. The Wild Spirit heritage was what made it work. Their race had a principle of balance and natural essence to it, one that was much easier to combine with other things, but it was mostly passive.

Then from the Outsider side, she had received powerful active essence abilities. That trace of blue in her blood suggested she had the same bloodline origin as Shattered Skies, the Path of Elements, but she had clearly taken a different route to develop it.

It was full of the natural essence of the Void and it shared some of the characteristics of Outsiders, but it had its own specific signature, the same dimensional energy that he’d sensed around the workshop.

If he had to give it a name, he’d call it the Path of Dimensions. It was very familiar.

The signature was the same as the World Seal.

Without her blood, it would be hard to distinguish her energy from the rest of the World Seal.

He spent a little longer studying the blood and then he sent the three crystal vials through the Void to his main body. He would finish the research out there where he had more time, as well as create the tracking artifact.

After that, he glanced around the entrance of the workshop, but there was nothing else of immediate value except for the collection of books.

It looked like his grandparents had mostly used this as a place to think. It was probably too difficult to open for them to use it all the time.

He walked over to the bookshelves and began to scan each of the volumes, memorizing their contents as he went.

It didn’t take long.

When he was done, he looked at the barrier blocking this entrance zone from the rest of the subdimension. He could tell from old scuff marks that his grandparents had tried to break through, but they hadn’t succeeded.

There was no way for them to tell if there was more to the workshop, so they must have given up, but just because his grandparents had been confined to this area didn’t mean that he was.

It looked like Asenya had left this initial area specifically for her students or an inheritor, but there was a lot more outside it.

He studied the creation of the barrier and then he waved his hand. After a moment, the barrier shimmered with a pleasant golden light and then faded away. Immediately, there was a subtle thrum of energy from the dimensional space and the area farther away began to change.

In one half of the sky, the clouds gave way to sparkling stars in the darkness, making it half day and half night, and on the ground below, mountains rose in the distance across the golden plains.

Trees and snow on the peaks appeared next, making the area more complete. It was like the whole subdimension had suddenly gained seasons, even though they were spread across it in different regions.

Sam chuckled as he watched it, but he didn’t delay. He headed forward, stepping onto the golden plain where no one had trod for ages.

All of the nature ahead of him was real, from the grass to the snow. It looked like Asenya had created her own small world here. Ahead, he could sense other areas where she had left something behind. It wasn’t far, so instead of teleporting, he walked.

In a few minutes, he arrived at a towering forest that reminded him of Alora’s world. Giant golden trunks towered like pillars hundreds of feet into the sky, making a natural hall.

Below their branches, artifacts of a hundred different types were scattered around in partial states of creation and repair. Translucent crystals were embedded into stone pillars, the surface of the tables, and even just tossed randomly into piles around the area.

It was a haphazard arrangement with one thing pushed over next to another, but there was plenty of order amongst the chaos, making it look neat and clean at the same time.

At the far side of the hall, a bed was tucked among the roots of a tree. Blankets were folded precisely on top of it, next to a silver pitcher that still held water.

Nothing had even a trace of dust. It was perfectly preserved in time.

“Now this is the real workshop,” he said with a chuckle. A grin was splitting his face as he looked at all the translucent crystals.

They were all memory crystals. He could sense the distinct emanation of dimensional energy from them that meant they were still in good condition.

Memory crystals were rare these days, but they’d been more common than books when the Astral Titans walked around Aster Fall. They weren’t hard to make, but it took a Fourth Evolution crafter with a fine control of dimensional energy, so they’d become rare after the World Seal was created.

Each of them was about four inches across and they shone with different colors based on the aura of whoever recorded them, but most had Asenya’s imprint.

He was still missing a lot of information about the First War and the later years, as well as about Asenya’s work in general. If he was lucky, these might go a long way to filling him in. Even just some diagrams of the World Seal or other things that she had contributed to would be useful.

Without delay, he walked to the first stack and picked one up. It only took him a moment to scan the contents and then he set it aside, moving on to the next.

That first crystal was a diagram for a Wind-based enchantment. It looked like the same one that had created the clouds in this subdimension. It was interesting, especially since it was rooted in Fourth Evolution dimensional energy, but it wasn’t what he was after.

The next one was similar, detailing part of how the sky here was created with a mix of illusions and real light reflected from other dimensions. He memorized it and set it aside too.

It only took him a moment to scan and record each crystal, but eventually he realized the entire stack was related to creating this subdimension. He finished going through it anyway before he moved on to the next.

It was worth studying, even if it wasn’t what he was after. The crystals explained the mechanics and specific enchantments Asenya had used to create this dimension and keep it aligned with Aster Fall.

All of the information was at the Fourth Evolution or higher, and it was extremely valuable. It wasn’t easy to get access to that level of enchantment. Even though he had some knowledge already, he was happy to add more.

A few minutes later, he moved on to the next stack of crystals, which was a collection of diagrams for reinforcing elemental ley lines and aligning them to natural auras, and then to the next one, which was focused on the natural runes of earth elementals.

It was all useful, and he absorbed it all as he continued his search. Eventually, on a table to the right side, he found what he was looking for.

A diagram of the World Seal.

It was recorded in a dense stack of memory crystals along with a mix of related dimensional enchantments, but it was separated enough to mark out how special it was. She’d set these crystals in their own area and they were of a much higher quality than standard ones.

One by one, he scanned through the diagrams, letting the information filter into his mind.

It was like memorizing a series of enchantments that were layered on top of one another like a sheet of paper. Each of the sheets was a different dimension.

Here, those dimensions were still and easy to see, but in the real World Seal, they were constantly switching places, like the sheets were being shuffled at random.

Eventually, he set down the last crystal and then looked into space. His eyes weren’t on the subdimension around him, but seemed to pierce through the distance, looking at something else entirely.

Plans for how to use his portal to access the World Seal, the path he needed to take, the artifact to create to track her...everything began to come together. Silver starlight flickered around him, filling the space with light.

Finally, he let out a slow breath, and then he quickly searched through the rest of the workshop, memorizing everything in the crystals that he could find as he let his plans come together. When he was finished, he looked back toward the entrance and disappeared in a flash of silver light.

He barely stopped at the entrance. As soon as he was through, he disappeared again, flashing away toward Portal.

He knew what he needed to do.