166 - Book 3: Chapter 31: V - Lost Kingdom

166 - Book 3: Chapter 31: V - Lost Kingdom

To say that the hall erupted into chaos would be a bit of an understatement.

It wasn't that anyone attacked far from it. No one seemed remotely interested in attacking Vex, for all that their immediate reaction had been to raise their weapons. Half the priests were whispering amongst themselves, glancing at one another surreptitiously; the other half were staring raptly at the king, waiting for him to give a response.

And the king, in turn, stared at Vex like he had no idea how to respond. "What do you mean?" he said at last. "And... who are you?"

"Who do you think I am?"

It was a gamble. Vex had no idea who any of these people were, and he had no idea where he was. He was betting that the Roads had brought him first to the Solar Lagrange and then to here for a reason, though, if he was even in a physical place maybe this was all still part of the vision. He could still feel the semerit pressing against his hands, the floor beneath his scales.

If this was a vision, it was far different from anything he'd experienced before.

Well, not that he'd had a lot of visions. He'd just read about them in books.

"You are..." the king hesitated, looking nervous. And then he seemed to come to a decision he dipped down to a knee, surprising Vex, who had to withhold his response as all of the priests also dropped to a knee.

They were kneeling.

To him.

"Please don't kneel," Vex finally said, trying to ignore the incredible discomfort he felt at having a half-dozen people kneel at him in a way that was... not unfamiliar. He'd experienced some of this before, when he went out amongst the 'common' folk in Elyra at least until he'd established that they were no more common than he was. They'd seemed grateful to him for that, though.

Not so much these people. "We must, my lord," the king said. "We have gravely disrespected you."

Vex had... only a small idea what was happening.

"Tell me who I am," he prompted.

"A god," the king said. He kept his head close to the ground.

Vex resisted the urge to press a hand to his face. He'd been hoping it wasn't that. Did he look anything like a god?

And what was happening here?

Vex's mind began to crunch through everything he'd seen. He didn't recognize this place, but if this was an echo, it was an echo where the system existed. The runic circle the king had used to cast that deathbolt was proof enough of that, and although [Mana Sight] didn't seem to quite work correctly in this space, he suspected that if he could use it, he'd see the same dead mana that usually floated around in his world.

This was a vision of some sort, but it wasn't a vision of .

That knowledge helped him a bit. Perhaps this was one of the kingdoms from beyond the Outskirts, from a continent that they'd never been to; it would explain the different customs, the different people, the species he didn't recognize.

It didn't explain the king's reaction to him, though. It didn't explain the state of the kingdom.

"Which one?" Vex asked, mostly to give himself time to think. He didn't know what the semerit wanted from him what he was supposed to do here. It was strange that he could interact with the vision at all, but perhaps it wasn't just a vision; perhaps he was being projected somewhere...

Vex found that unlikely. There was no precedent for magic of that kind, nor magic that would allow him to cast his own magic, disrupting the king's. Across that distance, shifted across reality itself?

But it was the best guess he had.

"P-pardon," the king said. He actually stammered a little, and Vex winced slightly; he didn't like this. He didn't want to be feared, and he'd never been a leader. He preferred a role in the shadows. "But I do not know. Istarnokov, perhaps, the God of Silence, but..."

He reached into his pocket, not quite sure if this would work, and slapped a reality shard into the middle of the glyph.

In theory...

He and Derivan had studied the way the system interacted with a person quite thoroughly. They'd worked out how the system's mechanisms were partially Shifted, in order to allow it to be anchored to the person's soul. The glyph he drew now had the smallest hint of Change and Stability, which were new but far easier to incorporate than the previous versions of this glyph.

And it was even more effective. The king fell like a puppet with its strings cut; he waved at the air frantically. "What did you do?!" he asked. "What did you why can't I "

Vex ignored him, and turned his attention back to the priests. They'd been watching him. It said a lot, really, that none of them had tried to interfere in either direction; he saw the fear in their eyes.

All of this was... too similar to home.

But maybe he could convince them to do something different here. Maybe things could go a little bit better, now that he had the power to do what he couldn't before.

When he made his way back to Elyra...

"Pardon me, lord," the priest said. "But what are we to do with him?"

Vex sighed. "I'm not your lord," he said quietly. "I'm no one at all. I don't know how things are supposed to work here... but you shouldn't be listening to someone that doesn't have your best interests at heart."

He wasn't trained for diplomacy. These weren't words that would sway anyone that wasn't already swayed. But a priest stepped forward, the same one that had spoken up against the king originally.

His eyes were surprisingly sharp. "What can you tell us about what's happening to our kingdom?" he asked. Straight to business.

"Your kingdom is being erased," Vex answered. "There is a massive hole in your city, even if you can't see it. Have you noticed anything strange? Transports taking longer than usual, streets more packed because people are forced to travel along different routes?"

"...We thought that was the way it always was," the priest said. His brows furrowed. "But you are right. We would not have built the city that way."

"My best advice is to evacuate," Vex said with a small bow and a slight wince. "I'm sorry that I don't have anything better. But... don't let your pride keep you here, like he was trying to do." Vex nodded at the king the former king, perhaps. "And ask for help if you need it."

The priest grimaced. "I had hoped for something better. A way to stop all this."

"If we had a way to do that," Vex said. "I suspect we wouldn't have this conversation at all."

The priest sighed. He walked over to his king, who seemed to have slipped into unconsciousness; a hand hovered over his body, glowing with a pale light. "He wasn't always like this," he said, half to himself. "Had the gods not abandoned us..."

"The gods, too, have their own dangers to face," Vex supplied. "It is possible you weren't abandoned at all."

"...Then that would explain a lot, and it would mean we have failed in our duty." The priest didn't look away. "But you are right. We have a greater duty: one to our people."

Vex glanced outside. Even now, the void at the center of that city was inching outwards, slowy growing; inch by inch, it would consume more of this kingdom, and he still didn't know where this was. He opened his mouth to ask

but the semerit in his hands glowed suddenly white-hot, and he almost gasped in pain; the vision collapsed, sucked into the three semerit that appeared to have merged into one.

His original spell his Sign of Research completed. The notes it contained were both insufficient and deeply worrying.

[ The New Semerit of the First Library ]

Allows access to divine magics, and contains one temporal paradox.