The first of the nexi were incarnated from mortal heroes fallen in battle, reborn as beings of energy to do battle anew. Those ancient kings were slain in turn by the subsequent generation, new nexi reincarnating to fight. For as long as there has been memory, there have been the nexus battles.

After many years, many millennia, rules took form to govern these battles. Rules of conduct, of combat. Rules to govern the victors. Rules to govern the fallen. Heroes rose to defend the nexus born from the ashes of their great leaders.

Eons passed, and the flow of new nexi slowed. Fewer great heroes fight for the honor of their people, instead championing the same nexus their people have served for centuries. Potential power builds, power that releases with the creation of each new nexus.

As new nexi become increasingly rare, that potential power grows too great to funnel into a single nexus upon inception. No nexus may come into being above level 1, so instead, that power fractures. Whenever a new nexus is born, so too are born dozens of echos. These echos serve as fodder for the stronger nexi as they battle for the true prize that all beings of power and energy strive for.

Universal domination.

Universal domination.

It seemed a funny thing, to think that the nexus of Pyrthet, Loreth, might one day hope to vie for such grandness. Pyrthet was barely a nation of its own—one large capital with a half dozen villages surrounding it. The city was powerful, for a city, but the idea that it could compare to just the other nations on their continent Altethia was laughable.

Not that Elzio would ever laugh at Loreth. Loreth had once been a great king, one that the people adored and revered. Loreth now stood among the ranks of the mighty nexi, an entity of pure energy and power. Loreth was a king, a God, the heart of the city.

But Loreth was also a level 3 nexus. Certainly more powerful than any mortal, but Elzio had done his research. He’d read tales of nexi large enough to run networks of planets. How could a single, level 3 nexus hope to someday do battle against the likes of that?

Not that it really mattered to Elzio. Even as a young man himself, nexi played games that lasted centuries. Millennia. Maybe, ten thousand years from now, when Loreth, the Pyrthet Nexus, stood the focal point of the entire universe, people would remember Elzio Shilon, the summoner who had championed Loreth through his early victories, paving the way for him to obtain universal domination. Or maybe Loreth would be eaten some hundred years down the line by a rival country, Deluuth or Genyl, for example. That’s why it didn’t really matter for Elzio. He would get to be a pawn for Loreth and serve his city and his nexus until either the nexus died—and with it, likely its heroes—or until he retired.

It was about as ambitious as a person could get. Fight as a hero or serve on a council. In both cases, you acted as someone managing the country for the nexus. It was, technically, all a very great honor, and it was with that honor in mind that Elzio had enrolled in heroic training.

Had been enrolled. Elzio’s father had started his training at a young age. Almost too young an age. Elzio showed great promise but had leveled up so fast that he risked being too expensive a hero for Loreth to summon. Even volunteered heroes had a base cost, and a level 3 nexus had to be careful with spending its points. They couldn’t risk Elzio leveling up until the nexus did as well.

So for the last three years, Elzio had wiled away his hours researching. Snooping, some might say, but that was a term reserved for young children. At twenty-five, Elzio was far too old to be a snoop.

He preferred the word researcher.

However, it was one early Spring day, during his ‘researching,’ that he stumbled across something that might arguably earn him the title of detective. Investigator, maybe, with the potential to be so much more.

Breaking apart a continent-wide conspiracy hadn’t originally been the plan. Elzio wouldn’t have even considered the possibility of such a conspiracy existed, rather less him having a role in one. But that day would hold a great deal of surprises for him, all of which started with the discovery of something deceptively simple.

A messily scrawled note.

Elzio shouldn’t have been in the personal library of the city’s oldest and most powerful councilor. Sir Thomas Kiernan wouldn’t have approved of Elzio being there, but over the last three years, Elzio had fully used up all the places he was allowed, so he’d had to stretch his imagination. Look in places less obvious, just to find something mildly entertaining. Being a summoner meant he’d been trained to think in ways less straightforward than how the common weaponsmaster or elementalist might think. Summoning was all about using others. Seeing who and what could provide value or interest to him, and exploiting that. As a level 8 summoner, he was more than adept at such things.

Sir Thomas fell in the category of people or things that could provide interest, or more specifically, his personal research and study. Elzio and the council were all on the same side, right? The directors of Pyrthet, the heroes trained to fight for their nexus, the citizens, they were all working together, right? The worst thing Elzio could find was a personal matter, a family secret or a fraught relationship.

Nothing more, right?

TK

Our patience grows thin. ND grows hungry. The forest echo has been spotted less than a league from Pyrthet. Consume it. Your inactivity has caused us to question your stake in this game, and I will not take the fall because of your weak stomach.

We are watching.

~I/I

Elzio read it over twice, before sliding a paper out of his own folder and carefully transcribed the letter. He would never risk taking it, but he didn’t want to forget a word of it. It rose a harrowing number of red flags for such a short correspondence, and Elzio needed time and space to analyze it, determine if the unsettled nature in the back of his mind was worth listening to.

After shoving his hastily scrawled transcript in his pocket, Elzio ducked out of the study, quickly and quietly, and set about the rest of his day as planned. He was late to no lessons, skipped no meetings, and did not retire early to his room. Perhaps this was all just the whims of a bored student, but he couldn’t risk anyone watching him and thinking he was up to something.

It wasn’t until the sun dimmed outside the massive citadel that served as a castle, school, council chamber, and housing for all affiliated members, that Elzio finally pulled out the note for a full scale dissection.

The ‘forest echo’ had been the next target for Loreth and his heroes to battle. Echos were numerous and easy to fight, and the echo that haunted the forest nearby the castle would be the victim needed to level Loreth up. Each level up provided the nexus with another thousand points to spend on heroes, minions, structures, fortifications, enchantments, and whatever else Elzio and his Professor of Environment could think to spend energy on.

A level 3 nexus should have no trouble against a level 1, like the echo in the forest. With volunteering heroes costing half that of conscripted heroes, it would be child’s play. The forest echo could, perhaps, summon a few level 1 or 2 heroes to its aid, but Elzio alone could obliterate that.

So now, awake in bed and reading by dim candlelight, Elzio had to ask himself the same question as this mysterious I/I.

Why had they delayed so long in fighting it?

A full year had passed since their last victory, and if anything, the battles should be coming faster and faster. They should consume the forest echo, consume the river valley echo, consume the mountain echo, and reach their level 5 power spike. That was when the heroes’ true mettle and skill came into play, now fighting against other true nexi instead of preying on echos like livestock.

Moving slowly and deliberately had its merits, but this had taken longer than was reasonable.

Why had they delayed?

Elzio had, up until now, believed the vague handwaving their instructors and councilors had given to explain. Their Archer, Bereth, was close to leveling, and they needed him to make it to at least level 6. Nance, the Pyromancer, had suffered a debuff during a strenuous training session and needed to rest to drop her mana costs. The forest echo was leagues away, and it wasn’t worth issuing a challenge to something so hard to reach.

May as well wait.

But Nance was a level 7 Pyromancer. Bereth, even at level 5, had specialized enough in accuracy that, with Kia’s enchanted arrows, he could take out any low leveled hero in a few shots. And Elzio was a level 8 Summoner. A level 1 nexus had 1000 points. The very best it could do was summon a level 10 hero. Level 10 was formidable, but with four heroes ranging from level 5 to level 8, Pyrthet could easily defeat that. So why delay?

The ‘explanations’ had all been excuses. All of them

Elzio reclined back in bed, folding the letter up and slipping it into an interior pocket of his robe. Whoever Sir Thomas’s correspondent was, they were impatient. Logically it followed that this person, this I/I, could very well be writing on the behalf of Loreth. He was growing hungry and the councilors were impatient.

But that just didn’t make enough sense. Surely if Loreth were impatient, he would tell Sir Thomas directly. Not task another councilor with writing a letter, which Sir Thomas would then hide.

And the abbreviations. TK. ND. I/I.

Too much was being hidden. Something foul was afoot.