The gods and the humans might not understand, disconnected from the White Voice as they were, but the world would not last like this. There would come a time when the great end would near, when the empires the gods had created with the great sin of stealing from the world would come to haunt them.

Everything would collapse. Everything would return to one.

​​

Thus, the Cyclic Slumber.

The Jotnar of Thamir would rest, deep within the earth, within the waters between the realms where no gods nor men could reach, until this cycle ended, when everything returned to one. Then, they would emerge once more, seeding life as they were meant to.

Eru himself had proposed this plan when he saw that the other clans fell to the Draconids. But he could not shake off the feeling that this was simply the coward's way out. He would leave the remaining Jotnar to fight against the Draconids and inevitably fall. He would leave the countless lives of the Common Body to face endless war and destruction.

And he could not shirk the memories he had made with the humans.

They were lives born and raised on this world too. Corrupted by the gods, yes, but still of this world, and Jotnar were meant to respect all life nourished from the womb and breath of the world.

Eru did not know of a way to reverse the end of this Cycle, but he held out the last embers of hope within him that there was someone else that would.

Perhaps one of the remaining warrior Jotnar would find a way. Perhaps a human uncorrupted by the gods would find a way.

Somewhere, something – this vagueness was what Eru hoped would save this world, and yet, it was the best he could do.

Thus, Eru left his Shard embedded within his arm, guarded with Jotnar runic magic that no god could ever hope to pierce, not in this Grain, not in that deep place so charged with remnants of the world's life.

Eru had not heard the White Voice for a hundred years now, but anything or anyone that could would be worthy to take the Shard from his arm and make better use of it than he had. To find him and his brethren in the waters between the realms and tell them that there was still hope for the world as they knew it.

Eru yawned, feeling drowsy from preparing for the Cyclic Slumber. All that was to be thought about later. Now, he let his eye, a ball of gleaming blue light that trailed a small comet tail of faint white with its movements, settle on the human corpses.

They had attacked Eru when he was weak, after he had spent his mana on the ritual and torn apart his arm, but he was still Eru Wun Thamir, the Fist of Winter, and no simple human was ever going to end him.

However, he did not relish the feeling of ending these lives. There had been far too much death already, and the Jotnar were not a people meant to kill, they were a people meant to raise and give life.

Eru took in a deep breath, large wind currents streaming into his stony, statuesque face, causing the stiff hairs of his long beard of ice shards to quiver. Spiral patterns of dark blue around his chest and body began to glow.

Potential.

This was what Eru believed in.

Every living thing had potential beyond their means. Beyond the physical capabilities they were given or the circumstances forced upon them. These humans, too, though they had struck at Eru, though they, like all Common lives like them, were slaves to the whims of the gods, had the potential to be more.

They also had the potential to be less. To waste the lives that Eru would grant them.

But Eru was more optimistic than most. He believed that mercy brought out the best in others. That with mercy, you came to understand what you had to lose and how with the chance you were given, you could stand to achieve so much more, to have the potential to be so much more.

Eru channeled this mercy and breathed-

==

The Collector found itself abruptly placed back into its own body, analyzing what had occurred. By opening the Jotnar core, it had been given access to an embedded memory within it.

The Collector had initially thought the core incomplete in the sense that it had not directly devoured the heart of the specimen, and thus would not have included any direct psionic profile material within it such as memories.

However, such was not the case.

In lieu of the memories it had assimilated, the Collector could ascertain that this was because when the Jotnar in question had sacrificed its arm, it had implanted within it a vast portion of its magical energy along with a 'Shard of Succession' that the Collector identified as the very same shard that manifested as a diadem of white energy crowned above its head.

The magical energy that the Jotnar infused into its arm essentially retained a blueprint of its core and a vast amount of its original essence. No, to be more precise, the Jotnar had essentially transferred its core into the arm, meaning that shortly after that memory, it likely had expired, rapidly losing its memory, proper circulation of mana, and facing heart failure.

Even then, the Jotnar had utilized its last moments to breathe in life to humans that had been its aggressor.

The Collector began to understand the Jotnar's conception of mercy better now.

The Jotnar believed that mercy was a means to grant another a chance to fulfill their purpose. A chance that could be utilized or squandered, but a chance none the less. The giant had felt compassion towards the lives it granted mercy to because they were misguided in striking it, and it felt forgiveness for them because they had the potential to be more.

This, the Collector could begin to understand by trying to relate to it with its own memories and experiences. It could feel this very same mercy towards the goblins.

The Collector already granted these goblins mercy.

Mercy such that they were not utilized as mere pawns for bags of flesh to soak damage. In part because the Collector desired to utilize them at full operational capacity without a chance of dissent, but also because the Collector had felt it was right to some fundamental degree that it could not have grasped before.

Now that the Collector had felt the Jotnar's emotions, it came to understand what this fundamental degree was. It was in some small measure the idea of compassion, though of a far more muted level than that which the Jotnar felt.

But enough for the Collector to relate, and because it could relate, it could regulate the Jotnar core far better, taking down the searing heat within it into a manageable warmth.

The Collector would grant these goblins mercy to save them from death, for as the Jotnar had felt the potential of life, so too did the Collector feel that the goblins possessed the potential to fulfill their yet unrealized purpose.

They had followed the Collector only for short time, and they had now just begun to grasp their purpose alongside the Collector.

It was not their time to expire. They had yet more time to stand beside the Collector in unified purpose.

The dark blue spiral patterns around the Collector's chest glowed deeply, and then the Collector exhaled. A cloud of misty frost pooled out from the Collector's maw, forming a network of crystalline glints that quickly washed over the goblin corpses.

As these sparkling glints rested on the corpses, they collected on their wounds. Flesh began to knit back together as mana charged, life giving mana crystals embedded into damaged cells or formed entirely new ones.

New muscle fibers formed, but instead of being comprised of ordinary, red and raw flesh, they were nor chords of hardened yet flexible ice. As the new artificial flesh formed, they pushed out bullet casings out and scattered them across the snow.

Blood vessels became charged with the ice crystals, and they began to stimulate the flow of movement, pumping blood now icy into hearts, circulating the crystals further throughout the body.

The goblin corpses shuddered and began to twitch and convulse as their hearts beat erratically, adjusting to the sudden overflow of magical energy. Their bodies altered, their white skin becoming instead a pale blue as their wounds healed and crystal formations of ice began to sprout out from points in their skin.

Their eyes became a deep, dark, almost gemstone blue, widening as they opened and started to light up with life.

"Arise, my swarm," said the Collector as it pumped out magical energy of its own to accelerate the process, its blue aura of Unity type mana meant for creating and healing fluxing outwards into thin, snaking paths that latched onto every single goblin specimen.

The three goblin elites were the first to begin moving, stiffly starting to raise themselves to seated positions, though their blank expressions indicated that their minds had not yet fully been restored yet.

"Once more, will you join me in our Great Purpose."