The Gamer Chapter 1519 – The Purest Interference (Patreon)

John really had to try to keep his staring to the expected amount. As the Gamer, he would have stood out if he had not been ogling Lu Zhi whenever he could get away with it. Between their extended breakfast meeting and the official Divided Gates assembly, she had changed into a tight, sunrise gold Chinese dress. It was several times more ornate than the one she had worn earlier, and her hair was tied back up into the double buns, complete with the little bits of white cloth that covered her greyish black hair.

Almost, the Gamer failed to acknowledge the rest of the hall he found himself inside of.

The imperial court was an elongated room that, unlike many other segments of the truly titanic palace, utterly deserved its size. Rows upon rows of benches and platforms declined in elevation as they got closer to the flat area at the end. All of them were packed to the brim. Depending on where they were, they were packed either with the members of the attending guilds or, closest to the entrance, the public of Rome. Flying platforms overhead allowed individuals of particular importance an even better viewing angle.

The foundation was carved from Roman concrete, light brown wood, and marble. Expansive decorations covered every surface. Depictions of great events throughout history remained in paled paint upon the ancient walls. Most impressive of them all, eternalized in a way that kept its colours timeless, was an image of a certain, curly-haired deity sleeping, half-embracing a sphere of brilliant gold.

What John headed towards, however, was a table. A table carved from mighty oak, standing in the middle of the open space that the entire court was made to observe. Behind the table stood Romulus’ throne, a surprisingly plain thing. It was vacant.

Romulus instead sat at the table. A table carved from ten segments, melded together via magic. Into the old oak wood, polished and cured, were inlaid precious stones and metals, creating the emblems of the nine divided gates in attendance. Each segment of the table had a half-circle cut into it, compromising the otherwise round shape of the table as a whole. In each of those cut-outs sat, on luxurious armchairs, the primary representative of the member guild of the Divided Gates.

None were unexpected. Romulus, Lydia, Lu Zhi, Mengele, Atrahasis, Eglystas and Dangun sat in their respective seats. For the Sons of Odin, Scunnder had been chosen to sit in the seat, something he seemed rather smug about. The Illuminati had elected to send the Aristocrat Celeste.

The expected people also stood right behind their leaders. Sol and Luna, Maximillian, the High Chancellor, Vier and the red cowl, the Wise Council, Eui, the remaining representatives of the countries of the Sons of Odin, as well as the remaining two of the triumvirate of the Illuminati.

John exchanged glances with various people around the table as he approached, Rave, Momo, Nathalia and Nightingale in tow. The rest of his harem stopped at a certain distance, joining the ring of high officials and other people of immense national import that stood in the court, rather than join the watcher’s area.

He was the last to enter and the last to take a seat. His segment of the table was blank, the wood unpolished and carrying the potential for more. He could sense the inbound magic, when his hand glided over the surface. Every preparation was made to turn this into more than a guest seat.

The moment John had sat down, Romulus put both of his mighty hands on the table and rose in turn. “Little more need be said,” he declared out loud. “Yesterday, and this morning no doubt, all exchanges have been had. All had their opportunity to ask questions of all those that would be capable of answering them. For this reason, we shall delay no further. Today we vote on the new member of the Divided Gates, Fusi-“

“Indeed, we do,” Mengele suddenly interrupted the Apex. There was a wave of murmurs and even outright shouts from the back of the room, where the public sat. For everyone else, the only surprise of the Purest Front’s leader’s interjection was how brazen it was. For those around the table, even that was only cause for annoyed glares.

Assigning to himself the right to stand, Mengele folded his hands behind his back and looked around the table. To most of the people, he smiled, including even John in that group. Only Lu Zhi and Scunnder earned a contemptuous scowl.

“You speak out of turn,” Romulus chastised Mengele.

“And you say too much, Apex,” responded the doctor, once titled the angel of death by his ‘patients’. “Today we vote on the new member of the Divided Gates. It could be Fusion or it could be someone else nominated.”

“No others have been brought forth,” Romulus observed calmly.

“Then I shall change that.” Mengele snapped his fingers and the remaining six covered by the crimson cowls stepped forwards. At the same time, Mengele circled around to the back of his seat. “We all understand that there’s many ways to gain access to the Divided Gates. Birthright.” His hand glided over the back of his own chair. “Might.” He passed and touched the backrest of Romulus’ chair. “Inheritance.” Rex Germaniae. “Modernization.” Illuminati. “Wisdom.” Prometheus. “Tradition.” Mandate of Heaven. “Consistency.” Dangun Clan. “Willpower.” Great Sultanate. “Diplomacy.” Sons of Odin. “And Ambition.” John glared at Mengele, who only stopped behind him for one moment, before advancing back to his own, neighbouring chair. “To only name a few paths that, if taken correctly, can lead to power. One mixes and matches, but all have their priorities.”

Mengele stopped behind his chair, grabbing the wooden frame with a huge smile. With a simple gesture of his head, he invited the red cowl next to him to take the seat. Not uttering or making a single sound, the red cowl did. Fluid and yet with an awkward mechanic undertone, the entity sat down. Hands clad in metal showed when he placed them on the armrests.

‘No.’ John narrowed his eyes a bit, Observe’s passive component and the Vision of Calamity contact lenses struggling against the enchantments that kept the entity’s form obscure. ‘Metal hands.’

“There is a saying in the Abyss: history is power. Founded well and truly in fact, as many sayings are. In the Abyss, where historical figures live hundreds or thousands of years, where they can reshape continents not just with orders but their own minds, being one worthy of the history books truly is power.” Mengele reached down and pulled back the hood, revealing a head of shifting grains of blue sands streaming between plates of pure Mithril. “Sometimes, however, history forgets. Especially when something is so far removed, only obscure little references to them exist. Alas, all that is worthy returns to the surface and I was eager to help.”

With one tug, Mengele ripped the cowl off, revealing an impassive human face, shaped entirely out of metal and sands. Silver rings sat amidst blue eyes of intense, arcane blue. Two silver rings in each eye, one thin, the other consisting of six disconnected dots, circling slowly around the white iris.

The eyes of a human god.

“The Purest Front sponsors the Azure Tribe for a seat among the Divided Gates, led by Arkan, the Father of Arcane!” Mengele shouted triumphantly.

The entire room broke out into chaos. Words exploded, gradually growing louder, as everyone tried to overpower the general volume, until the cacophony of voices was so utterly all-encompassing, that even John found his capacity to think compromised. Several hundred people’s words, all intermingling, and underneath them all, the constant sound of the members of the Purest Front clapping and beating the floor with the heel of their military boots.

Around the table were the only reactions that mattered and, to a fault, from Lydia, over Atrahasis, even including Romulus and the Horned Rat, none of them could hide their surprise. All stared at the red-robed entity, sitting underneath Mengele’s mocking, smug grin, of metal, sands, and rings, radiating power that made the claim of the leader of the Purest Front just believable enough to be taken seriously.

Only John felt not surprise but the empty void of the least wanted opportunity coming to pass.

‘And in the era of monsters, the seventh crosses the line,’ he remembered the final line from the Achievement he had gotten for learning the name of all the elemental leaders. There sat, eyes trailing without a care, a creature that very well may have been first of the arcane elementals. The absolute powers of his peers, he did not have, for this was not his Kingdom.

It was Romulus’ reaction that let John know that this was genuine. The Apex walked the Earth in the time before the elemental planes had been separated from the prime material. Back when Fade, Plasia, Wylus, Abyssia, Tempesta and Tecta were as free to wander the world as any other Abyssal entity – no, freer even, as it was before the divide of mundane and magical.

“The Empire of Blue and Purple Sands,” John raised his voice and finally the cacophony decreased. All eyes shifted to him, just as he had wanted. If nothing else, he could use this situation to project the strength of his character. “That is the name I became familiar with. I must assume then that it was a mistranslation?”

“Arkan, why don’t you answer him?” Mengele suggested, his smile turning slightly sour. The Gamer had spoiled his fun. John took solace in having done that much.

“We were known as ‘Many Tribes and Makers of the Blue and Purple Sand’,” answered the so-called Father of Arcane. His voice was synthetic and yet not. It was as if several thousand voice samples had been evened out into one plain, masculine voice. It was confusing in how normal this entity sounded, while his lips moved from a combination of stretching metal and grains of azure that seemed to act as muscle fibre and sinew, simultaneously. “In our time, we had no concept of empires or kingdoms. We are the Azure Tribe.”

He ended there, continuing to take in the various reactions around the table. Not satisfied with just this level of grandeur, Mengele continued, “Several thousand years ago, long before the divide became absolute, long before any of us, before even the Sons of Rome and the Mandate of Heaven, deep in what is nowadays the Sahara Desert, the Azure Tribe lived in a location that we, nowadays, call the Richat Structure.

“There, they researched the arcane. They basked in it. Worshipped it. The mundane were at the bottom and those that could wield power properly rose to the top. Mercilessly, they forged ahead on human progress.” Mengele shook a raised fist, then caught himself and ran a hand over his slicked back hair, to make sure it sat correctly. “Unfortunately,” he continued in a calmer tone, “the powers that be would not agree to their righteous pursuit of absolute power. The Mother of Air one day found her young plane disturbed by an experiment of the Azure Tribe. They ripped open a hole. A stable Kingdom connection, entirely artificial. For that, they were eradicated. The Mother of Air led her kin and turned the prosperous civilization of man into glass.” Mengele stopped for a moment and let a conspiratorial smile creep on his face. “And that was when this unthankful creation of our minds accidentally gifted us with a new opportunity.”

“We were the makers of the blue and purple sands!” Another one of the red cowls suddenly stepped forward, his voice erratic and half-mad with excitement. “The very essence of arcane, bound into particles as fine as the finest grains of the desert! Through lightning storms, she made every last inhabitant of our city one with our very own magnum opus!”

“And the strongest wills survived!” Mengele took right back over, facing the crowd as much as the rest of the table. “For thousands of years, they slumbered within the glass, the sand, and the quartz of their own home! Glass shattered and returned to sand! Still, they endured! Wills of unquestionable strength, slowly learning about their own condition, and then, three years ago, we found them! We used my brilliant methods to give their souls shape once more! We extracted them and gave them new bodies! Allowed their changed nature to manifest, steeped in elemental energies, bound to the very seventh element they worshipped! And now they are ready to reclaim their rightful place, both in Africa, and in this world!”

Then, there was silence.

Mengele returned to his chair, stood beside it, his right arm extended over the backrest as if he was standing above a particularly well-raised dog. That, likely, was exactly the kind of respect he had for his ‘creation’.

His tale lacked many details, details that John was certain he would not divulge. Were those seven the only wills that had survived? Had the extraction been clean? How strong were they? What claim to the African land could they make after practically not existing for several thousand years?

It didn’t matter because they were strong. Strong enough that the next step was inevitable.

“…The candidate for the membership of the Divided Gates is acknowledged,” Romulus reluctantly declared, to no one’s surprise, and few people’s enjoyment. This was not a league of friends. It wasn’t supposed to be a league of friends. It was a forum where the powerful acknowledged one another and therefore the only thing that mattered for the admittance was power. Romulus refusing this candidacy would have invalidated the entire reason behind the Divided Gate’s existence.