Peaches and Perception

On a windswept plain, in the unclaimed territory near the dragon Elyciune and her Umber Horn Sect, not far from Aergarde nor the lands of the Tower City of a Thousand Worlds, two powers met. 

Darius Rex, the Amethyst Mask, was both more, and less, than many expected. A tall man, at nearly seven feet, with long, slender limbs that gave him the visage of a runner, a well groomed half fade. By all appearances, he seemed to be in his mid thirties, with the only hint at his true age being his hair, which had turned white. The mask he wore was carved of amethyst, a rare resonance that was meant to help inhibit – and store – his power. 

Despite the regality, he wore a travel stained cloak, carried a simple-looking bag – one that none would be able to guess at a look was a reward from his time as an Arcanist in the Elysian Mastery Tournament – and did not use any spellcraft nor leak any mana at all, giving him the countenance of a king who had lost everything, and who had never embarked on the path of the immortals. 

Meadow, the Springbringer, Herald of Wanderers, was likewise more, and less, than many expected. Old and small, her close to two hundred years wore on her, like sand eroding away the ruins of a desert. Her hair was kept on the shorter end, almost an afro, but sagging from weight and age, and it had gone gray-white as well. She wore the sort of frumpy dress that only an old lady would, and her staff was a simple, gnarled piece of wood. 

Despite her humble look, she was powerful. The life flows in her body might have been dimming with age, but the soul within emitted a powerful life mana that few enough beings on the planet could truly match. There was also a certain… weight… to her title, one that few other titles ever achieved. 

As they entered earshot of one another – closer than one might have expected, given the loud wind sweeping through the waist-high grass – Darius called out. 

“Hello, teacher!” 

“Hello Darius,” Meadow said, shaking her head and smiling. “I’ve told you, I’m not your teacher any longer. Each person’s path is unique. After they become an Arcanist, doubly so.”

“You know as well as I do that’s not entirely true,” Darius said with a hint of a smile. “Many of my spells were made by those who came before me, and the Cataclysm stole his pinnacle spell from the Silver Tide.” 

“Bah,” Meadow said, waving her hand, though she couldn’t help but smile some. “Spells and power. There’s more to one’s way than that. But let’s not re-tread this old ground.”

“Before we begin,” Darius said, holding up a hand for her to wait. He slung his bag down, and then started poking through it, then he removed a single peach. It was a pale white, and quite small to look at, as if it had come from a bad year’s harvest. 

To Meadow’s mana senses, it was exploding with the power of death mana, concentrated deeply, with a distinct feel of linking spirit and flesh together, so that neither one may die while the other yet lived. 

Meadow idly wondered what would happen if Malachi were to eat one. The young man’s body and spirit were slowly becoming a gestalt, after all. The peaches of immortality worked for beasts, but Malachi’s spells were a touch different from a beast’s body and soul. 

“Take it,” Darius said, and Meadow shook her head. 

“I won’t, but thank you, Darius. I can’t imagine the effort you had to go through to get it,” Meadow said, and Darius wished he could have gotten angry with her, but she sounded so genuinely touched and almost remorseful that she couldn’t take it. 

“Why not?” Darius said. “You’re getting old. You’re only using fourth gate or lower spells to extend your lifespan. That can’t hold forever. How long do you have left? A decade? Half that?” 

“That is rather the point, dear,” Meadow said with a smile, shaking her head. “I’m a mortal, not immortal. I never wanted eternal life. I wanted to improve the world.”

“And there’s so much left to be done,” Darius said. “I’m only seventy, but…” 

He trailed off and shook his head. 

“Kijani gets official slots in the Elysian Mastery Tournament coming up in a few years. When I was a child, it didn’t even exist!” 

“That was one of my better projects,” Meadow said thoughtfully, nodding. “There needs to be work done on the council binding spells, but that’s not my area of expertise.” 

Darius let out a frustrated sound and shook his head.

“Meadow, you could do so much more,” he said. “If you just accepted immortality, with the two of us working together, we could shatter the Tower City’s defenses and change things. Spark a revolution in Aergarde. We could split Daocheng apart and…” 

Even as he started speaking, Darius knew it wouldn’t work. They might be able to break apart the Tower City, but hundreds of thousands would die, and there would be no guarantee of truly defeating the slippery Space King, and she had her own allies, and her own cards to play. 

Aergarde or Nightflock might be more manageable, though, and the Analyst had his plans for the Storm King. Darius might not be privy to those plans, but he was at least aware they existed.

“I have done what I can in Aergarde, and in Nightflock,” Meadow said. “After Tom’s wife passed, his seclusion has allowed me to operate with less discretion. And Nightflock…” 

Meadow tilted her head one way, then the other. 

“It will sort itself out, I think. She’s cast herself too firmly in the role of a dark queen. A hero will rise to defeat her, and she can’t hide behind her master’s coat tails forever. But read the winds – it’s not my destiny to kill her. Tianzhu nears rebellion against the Storm King, and the Space King is not the one building the corruption in her city. Her apathy has simply allowed it to flourish. There is a reason that I support the library’s distribution of political information there as a more effective method than simply killing the one at the top… If I even could. I doubt it would be so simple.”

Darius sighed, a long, weary thing. 

“I believe more decisive action would still help people,” he finally said. “But I acknowledge your points. I know that you’re never going to be immortal, but… I had to try. You could help the world.” 

“No,” Meadow said simply. “I couldn’t.” 

Darius nodded, then held out the peach. 

“Take it, give it to someone who needs it,” he said. 

“I do trust you to do that,” she said. “Your fondness for me clouds your eyes here, but you see things quite well.” 

Darius chuckled at that, and placed the peach back in his bag, then pulled it on again and straightened. 

“Well, I suppose we should move on to business,” Darius said. “Four. I’ve found four beings, fallen from the sky, warped. I suspect there are more, too. I’ve felt hints of another resolve, but… Obscured. Hidden entirely.”

As he spoke, he removed a series of small, round spheres of amethyst. Each and every one, the prison for a warped being. One of resolve, one of fortune, two of destiny.

Their strength was… hard to gauge. The clearest was the resolve being, which radiated eighth gate mana. The others were all somewhere in the second through sixth gate range. It was, at times, difficult to tell, given that their own advancement didn’t seem to work quite the same as their own.

All of them were warped, though, their wells in deep debt, their purpose unable to be fulfilled. The eighth gate one, in particular, seemed to have given into the raw hunger that resolve mana held, the endless appetite.

Meadow almost felt bad for the thing.

The other three stood a real chance of recovering, however, being able to live as normal, if strange, beings. Darius could nurse the two destiny-warped back to health, and Meadow fed the fortune-warped a few small drops from her own well. It was running dry – spending so many drops for Dusk’s creation had set back her own growth, though she didn’t regret it in the slightest. Nor did she regret what she fed now, as the orb of amethyst cracked, and a creature that seemed to resemble a semifluid living crystal, shimmering with rainbow radiance, fled, fearing her and Darius’ power. 

“Four,” Meadow said, shaking her head. “Four living beings that have survived the impact. Things are stirring.” 

“Are you sure it’s not just a mark of your eventual passage into death?” Darius asked, and Meadow considered. 

“Not entirely,” she said. “That is possible. But… There is something we cannot see here. We should be on guard. It’s rare for any of the deep manas to allow for a being to survive a fall. Or a rise, for all that Tom, Atsila, and Ama bicker about reaching another planet.”

Darius removed several more things – twisted bits of metal engraved with spell formula that didn’t work at all, stones that radiated strange powers for composites of mana that Meadow didn’t recognize, fragments of the infinitely dark lunar mana that swam through space, and even a Brightstar seed.

That caused Meadow to frown even harder. She’d been shocked when Malachi had found a Lushloam seed, but he’d gained the favor of the small folk, and they tended to gather things from the heavens, just as Darius liked to, even if they were unaware of their power. Malachi had also clearly begun to touch upon the favor of fortune, and those two facts had reassured her that it was a coincidence – many seeds fell to Ddear’s surface. They were, perhaps, the single most common thing that landed, save for simple mana sources.

Indeed, she wouldn’t have thought twice about Darius finding a Brightstar seed but…

There was something else. She could feel it in her bones, even if the winds of fortune, destiny, and resolve, weren’t telling her what it was. 

“Interesting,” Meadow finally said. “Have you found what you needed?” 

“I think so,” Darius finally said. “After fighting to capture the Stranger – ah, that’s the eighth gate one – I think I figured out the last hurdle. Just about got everything I need to ascend.” 

“Good,” Meadow said, grinning and poking her old apprentice in the ribs. “Maybe once you do, it’ll be a hop, skip, and jump to Magi, and you can take my place.” 

“Don’t even joke about that,” Darius said. “But I will do what I can for people with my new power.” 

“You always have,” Meadow said. The Amethyst Mask was a hero who protected people. “Do you have the mana for the break-through ready?”

Procuring enough power for the breakthrough to eighth gate was a considerable challenge, though admittedly, it was likely the least of the challenges needed. Advancement became stranger and stranger with each stage, and some things were simply impossible to transfer or explain. 

“I’m about ready,” Darius said. “I’ve been filling the crystal cove with mana in preparation to drain it all into myself.” 

“If the timing is right, I’d like my newest apprentice to have the opportunity to witness it,” Meadow said. “It may make certain things clearer to him, though truthfully, I think he’s likely to be able to complete it without the help. His clarity of purpose is forming.” 

“Of course,” Darius nodded. “I suspect several will want to, but I’m only going to be allowing friends and family. My niece is struggling with her breakthrough to the second half of fourth gate, if she can get things done in time…” 

They spoke about things for a while longer, then as night fell, they turned their eyes up to watch the sky, with the burning bright stars, shimmering strings of constellations, and empty void behind it.