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EC Book 4, Chapter 21 - Paradox of Change
🕑 Added 2024-03-20 01:25:21 +0000 UTC"That was a little depressing." Vex stared at the cover of the now-closed book. It had been a remarkably short read, considering the size of it. The rest of the pages were blank, though Vex flipped through them all in the faint hope that one of them would contain... something, Some hint at who had once owned this book—any insight into who this person might have been.
But there was nothing. They hadn't ever thought to identify themselves, or if they had, then perhaps that information had been erased by the Void, and all that remained were the first few pages. Vex somehow doubted that was the case, It wasn't like there were a hundred empty pages between the last and second-to-last entries.
Derivan gave him a sympathetic glance. "I imagine there are many in the past that have tried to spare us from this fate," he said. "The author of this journal is surely brave for trying."
"Yeah, it's just... none of it worked, did it?" Vex stared up listlessly, sliding the book closed. "Um, not that the information in the book isn't important. I think I've got an idea."
"I imagine many of those individuals had varying degrees of success," Derivan said. "We have the reality anchors, after all. Perhaps this person's discoveries were important, at the very least in our iteration of reality."
Vex nodded. "We'd have to talk to Xothok to see if there's anything else about the Far Libraries that we missed," he said distantly, his mind already focused on what he might be able to do with a better understanding of the semerit's capabilities. The description of them in the diary was still helpful—it explained the dragon transformation, for example. He'd been able to tap into the potential contained within the semerit apply that change to himself.
It also implied that that this semerit held a version of reality that had once had dragons. Vex wondered if this was related to the kingdom he'd seen within the semerit. Perhaps that unnamed kingdom had had a relationship with dragons, though he hadn't had the opportunity to see one while within it...
There were still some things that seemed inconsistent here. He'd acquired the semerit within a Far Library in the systemless version of reality within his bonus room, but the kingdom he'd seen had the system. They'd used it.
"I wonder if semerit are universal across realities," Vex muttered to himself.
"I think they are!" Novice spoke up. The other lizardkin had been buried in his own tiny pile of books until now, but he reached out and plucked out a book from the pile. "This one's mostly just a series of myths, but it includes a claim about a Librarian saying something about semerit being full of things that 'never could have been'."
"Vague," Derivan remarked.
"I mean, it kinda makes sense anyway, right?" Novice shrugged. "Why should the semerit just contain changes caused by magic?"
"It depends on how it forms, but I think we don't know enough about how the Far Libraries work," Vex said. "This semerit was created when Derivan and I created new magic—but there's no way the creation of those glyphs caused a kingdom an entire timeline away to be erased. I sure hope not, anyway."
"Perhaps they contain changes the mana deems significant," Derivan suggested. "Or perhaps the glyphs we created did not create this change, but gave the mana sufficient power to record it."
"Either way, we know what's in the semerit," Vex said. "And we know what the semerit is. That's what's important here. I'm thinking we can use that in combination with the translation-aspect magic you've been using and the [Spelldisk]. We were already gonna try this, but knowing what a semerit is helps. I can design a spell to unfold all those changes into reality."
"Awesome!" Novice cheered. "I think I can help. If you want me to, that is."
"Of course," Vex said. "We're going to need all three of us. Raltis, too, if he can make it, but..." He hesitated, glancing at the entrance to the tower library. "Well, we'll figure it out even if he can't."
"We will," Derivan echoed. He glanced over at Vex, then took the lizardkin's hand, and Vex smiled up at him.
Novice just grinned at them both.
—
Knowing what the nature of the semerit was... helped. The Primordial Glyph of Translation was able to take that knowledge in combination with his own Sign of Research, and with that combined spell, he was able to learn more about the semerit than he'd ever been able to before.
[Semerit of the First Library]
Contains Ukaros, the Prime Kingdom of Divinity. Their connection to the divine planes is unparalleled, but they were unaware as their gods were consumed by their Prime Anchor in an effort to sustain their kingdom; as a result, they remained unaware as their kingdom was slowly swallowed up from within. All that remains of Ukaros now is the bare, remnant knowledge that there should be three Prime Kingdoms. The name and its people were lost to time.
The results of this sequence of events were changed and altered by the actions of Vex Ashion, scion of the Ashion House. In interfering with the king's decisions and recommending an evacuation, the people of Ukaros were preserved. They evacuated the kingdom and scattered into the surrounding lands, taking their knowledge and their secrets with them.
The paradox generated by these two differing timelines empowers this semerit, allowing its wielder to draw knowledge or artefacts from either potential outcome, as well as to visit any point in time within the period contained by the semerit.
"That's a lot," Vex remarked, reading over the results of his magic two more times, just to make sure he didn't miss anything. He wasn't surprised that the semerit contained the third and final Prime Kingdom—he'd been hoping that was the case, but hadn't wanted to voice that hope. It made sense that the Roads had led them to a way to save Ukaros and its people.
"So, how are we gonna do this?" Novice asked excitedly. "Do you need space? Because I don't think there's enough space in Teque to host a whole kingdom. Oh! Maybe if we modified the Roads..."
"That's more magic than necessary," Vex said dryly; he shuddered to think of the amount of mana it would take to conjure up enough space to host an entire kingdom, let alone connect the Roads to it. Granted, he was hoping to cast an even bigger feat of magic, once he had a better handle on things—but he wasn't quite ready to go that far yet. "We can just go to where Ukaros is supposed to be and replace what's been erased there."
"Is that safe?" Novice asked, suddenly worried. "That whole area is going to be half-consumed by Void, right?"
"Nothing is safe, these days," Vex said, glancing at Derivan. "We'll do our best to make sure it's safe, but you're right. We're going to be surrounded by Void, and that place is probably being actively consumed as we speak. But it'll make the magic less draining to perform, and it's probably our best bet to actually doing it. Placing the kingdom in an entirely different place from where it should be is a whole other level of paradox we'd have to deal with."
"I guess you're right," Novice said, wincing a little at the thought. "Um... do we know where Ukaros is? Because I don't actually know where the third Prime Kingdom is supposed to be."
Vex shrugged, inscribing a map of the continent onto the table with a quick flash of mana. "Well," he said. He pointed to where a partially-consumed Elyra was marked, then to where Anderstahl was marked, at the southeast and southwest sectors of the continent respectively. "North, probably."
Up north was a section of the map that was entirely devoid of any markings—no trees, no rivers, no mountains, no towns. Novice stared at it for a moment, then nodded.
"Yeah," he said awkwardly. "That makes sense."
—
It did not, fortunately, take a long time for them to reach the right spot — though they were still miles away from where they suspected the Kingdom was proper. It was hard to tell, but after a certain point it was no longer safe to teleport; too much of a risk of bumping into Void, Derivan claimed.
"It is fortunate that Sev's Blessing of Travel continues to last," Derivan commented. "If only getting around was always this easy."
"We'd be able to get everyone in the convoy to Anderstahl quickly, at least," Vex agreed. "I'm a little worried about them, to be honest. We haven't had any reports of anything bad happening so far, but that doesn't mean much with infolocks and memory-eating hazards everywhere."
"Anyone connected to Misa's anchor should be well aware if something begins to eat away at the envoy," Derivan reassured Vex. "They are as safe as they can be in that journey. The best thing we can do is to continue our path—we must find a way to preserve what remains before it is too late."
"Or more," Vex said, and when Derivan cocked his head curiously at him, Vex shrugged. "We can't just stop at preserving what's left. You met so many people still in the Void, still being slowly eaten away... they're refugees lost to reality. We should find a way to rescue them, too."
"Ah." Derivan smiled at him, then squeezed his hand. "You are correct, of course. I—"
He was interrupted by a shout from Novice. Vex and Derivan exchanged alarmed glances as a burst of nothing erupted from the ground; Novice fell backward from the sheer force of it, yelping as he did.
Vex stared up. There was nothing there. But if he used his version of [Mana Sight], he could see a gaping hole in the mana, shaped like an enormous—
"It's a Void Wyrm!" he called out. He pulled out his magelight, already beginning to run even as he channeled mana into it. The one that Novice had triggered was far from the only one. He could see spots of absent mana all over the field, and while some of them were relatively stagnant—most likely simple empty spots that had been erased—others were actively moving. Reality's interpretation of the Void's intent to consume.
Fighting it directly wasn't a good idea. The system's attempt to interpret those things as monsters was only that. An interpretation. Nothing they did could actually harm an absence of something.
At least, nothing that was meant to harm.
Novice's attempted [Fireball] splashed ineffectually off the Void Wyrm, and Vex completed his Glyph of Transposition, pulling Novice back before the wyrm could attempt to strike him again. Derivan took his place, and the armor didn't waste a second in leaping out of the way, his sword glancing along the edge of the wyrm's hide as he did so.
Not that it did anything. All that happened was that pieces of metal were scraped off the sword, forever lost to the Void. But it bought him time—Derivan's existence, especially with his malformed stats, was pure metaphysical weight. The Void was attracted to him.
It turned and chased him, even as Vex began to pulled out the [Spelldisk] and began to draw a second glyph.
"What are you doing?" Novice asked, panicked. "What do I do?"
"Void Wyrms can't be defeated through traditional combat," Vex said tersely. "But that doesn't mean they can't be defeated. The Void is an absence; it's the end. To fight nothing, all you have to do—"
He finished painting the last brushstrokes in the air. With his limited understanding before, he'd only ever been able to turn himself into a dragon; they were one of the creatures that had lived in the kingdom of Ukaros, and evidently he'd managed to tap into that potential and apply it to himself.
"—is fill it with something."
But now he knew what the semerit was. He knew what it contained. He had the [Spelldisk], a complicated construct created by the system for the express purpose of seeing reality the way it was supposed to be; more than that, it was a construct that gave him the ability to find remnant links between reality and what had been brought into the Void.
And last but not least: he had a Primordial Glyph that represented the ability to translate things from one form to the other.
The Void Wyrm, through the activated [Spelldisk], was a hole in reality—but it was a hole in reality through which he could see nearly everything that had once been erased from the world. He saw the people that Derivan spoke about, struggling to survive among one another within the Void, finding comfort with each other when the world had forgotten them.
He saw, further away but closer than ever to this part of reality, an entire community of dragons.
And he commanded the Primordial Glyph to link the two.
The semerit thrummed in his hand as he drew upon the paradox that connected dragons with this part of Obreve. There was a timeline in which Ukaros had never been completely erased, a timeline in which its people had evacuated and survived; that potential surged with his magic and into the Primordial Glyph of Translation.
And then he forced a Change on the result of that Translation:
There was no Void Wyrm here, only the last remaining dragon.
Vex felt a tidal wave of mana pouring out of him, and he gasped, collapsing halfway onto his knees before Novice worriedly caught him; even held in the other lizardkin's arms, the magic kept pouring out of him. Undoing this single piece of Void took so much out of him that he wondered if he could even sustain this change at all. Even with his prodigious store of mana, even with all the ways in which he'd grown—
But before he could doubt himself any more, something else within him responded.
He'd almost forgotten he was holding on to it. The Grand Anchor of Magic thrummed within his tailbag, calling to him insistently.
"Novice—" Vex coughed once. Derivan was too distracted to help him; he was darting around, trying to keep the Void Wyrm distracted. Vex saw more than once the way he faltered every time he tried to wield his sword in his newly replaced hand, and winced when one particular blow knocked the sword out of his grip entirely. But Derivan could handle himself. He trusted him. "Novice, I need you to help get something from my bag."
"I got it," Novice said, kneeling down by Vex and unstrapping the tailbag. He rummaged through it, not the least bit surprised by it being bigger on the inside. "What do you need?"
"It'll be labeled as [Grand Anchor — Magic] by the system," Vex said. He felt a little lightheaded; there was mana backlash happening here. The spell had taken all of his reserves and was now drawing upon the part of his soul that was connected to the mana itself, constantly regenerating his stores. "Need you to be quick—"
"Found it." Novice pulled out the Grand Anchor, then stared at it. "What do I do with it?"
"Just give it to me," Vex said weakly. He took it from Novice's hands as soon as the younger lizardkin offered it to him, and he felt an immediate sense of relief as something within him connected to the Grand Anchor. He hadn't been able to do this before, but it was like something within him had just... unlocked.
This was his. It was supposed to belong to him. There was a part of this Grand Anchor that resonated with his very soul, with the part of him that loved magic and everything it could do.
And right now, he needed to believe it could do what he wanted the most: to bring back what had been lost. The Grand Anchor resonated with that hope. It clung to him just as he clung to it, as if they were two halves of a whole believing and wanting the same thing.
He felt the physical form of the Grand Anchor shatter as something settled inside of him.
[ You have merged with [Grand Anchor — Magic]. ]
A final surge of power erupted from him, stronger than all the others. It was more mana than he had—more mana than he'd ever had. More mana than all the members of House Ashion put together.
In front of him, the Void Wyrm flickered, and emptiness became something else.
