August 22st marked the beginning of the fall semester of Gnomon College, and it was a day that Ashley Adama found special every year despite the old grief that gripped at her from time to time when she looked back in time.

It was still five days away, but preparations were ongoing for thousands of new students from all across known space. Most would be eighteen or their species equivalent, though older young adults wouldn’t be uncommon among the masses.

She inspected herself in her office mirror, a brittle smile painted across her delicate pale face. In the 3500s, seventy was the new forty though frankly so was everything. Channelers had naturally long lifespans, and improvements in Applied Metaphysics and medical technology had roughly tripled human lifespan and that ignored advanced cybernetic and bionetic augmentation.

Ashley brushed back her white bangs, while unusual colors weren’t common they did happen from time to time. In most cases those were usually caused by genetic abnormalities from breeding with some of the more sapient spirits. In her case her great grandmother had laid with a yuki-onna and her great great grandmother had returned to the sea to become a sea wolf.

She wore a black and red suit, one that went very well with her white hair and her porcelain features. Her eyes were a shade of ice blue, and she otherwise looked young and spry. But in her soul she was weary, even if her heart was lightened by the eager souls of her many students.

She reached out to the water around her, following the push and flow of liquid essence. She was a powerful water channeler, and she had experimented with her gift for all of her life, to nearly the breaking point of what Water is. She had mastered her bending of water, hundreds of techniques to shape and manipulate and tap into the greater abilities of her people. From steam to ice, from healing to the most lethal of techniques, to the most spiritual.

The strongest healers of any Element, of any shaman too could shape the spirit and the flesh with the right techniques, with the correct drive and purpose. To ask Water to touch the spirit, to peel away a paper-thin layer of identity. In her youth she had used her power to help people flee from the First Enkidu, the hunters of their kind who had the blood of millions on their hands.

Ashley sensed water in one particular stone encased within special glass and plastic. It was a positively ancient sample of water she had dug up with her husband while visiting Alkebulan. One point two billion years old, this water had seen countless changes, older than humanity as a species, older than the entire order they originated from.

From the forming and breaking up of the supercontinent of Amasia, to multiple mass extinctions and major changes in the makeup of life on Terre, again and again and again.

That little reservoir of salty water always had a way of making her feel small, or reminding her of how small humanity was in the greater scope of reality, of the world itself.

She felt a presence, and she sighed. “Come on out you old fool, I can sense you quite easily.” Light bent around a single point in response, and Scholarly Cadences emerged behind the light manipulation field he was testing for one of the college’s researchers. “If you were anyone else I would have drowned you at the bottom of the lake.”

He released a burbling sound, and his universal translator chirped to life. “That would be embarrassing for both of us, Ashley.” His eyes winked oddly, six fingered hands gently brushing his face. His cephalopodic skin changed patterns and colors, and she rolled her eyes.

“Have you already gotten your eye on a student here?” It was the only reason he would be here at this time, not that she minded. He always had his favorite students, especially when it came to those in the Applied Metaphysics and Metaphysical Biology Department.

“I met Yaga and Tana’s kid today,” Ashley’s smile froze, and she turned towards him with a question on her tongue. The kanaloaa had a severe pattern on his face and pedipalps. “She’s a strong girl, but the nodes of her soul are facing an odd blockage, a masking that’s reduced her potential.”

Her concern rose at his statement, there were only a few ways such a thing could happen. Strong enough and malicious enough spirits could ravish the soul-structure of a victim with their possession abilities, it was how many shamans were borne from non-shamans. There were ways of blocking the flow of rūh through the body, technology or techniques that attacked the meridian network like dim mak or meridian-flow disruption needles. Physical illnesses could have caused the damage but…

“She’s a mystery isn’t she? You want to find out why her power has been limited.”

If she’s really the Odd Couple’s child, I’ll have to keep an eye out.

Her old friend could never resist a good mystery, and he was a compassionate fellow as well.

“I’m not the only staff member keeping an eye on interesting students,” Scholarly Cadences pointed out with a waggle of a six fingered hand. “You have your eye on a high class astaran, at least of the Empire rather than the other nations of the astaran race.”

Ashley huffed, crossing her arms over her bust with a scowl. I am not pouting dammit, I’m a grown woman!

Scholarly Cadences sent out a link full of disbelief and she flicked a water whip at him. He let out a burbling shout and she simply laughed at his expression and the sound of his telepathic thoughts.

“Shut!” She pointed at him with a vehement look, and the bastard didn’t give a shit. “We have more important matters to attend to, how is your search going?”

The atmosphere was cut short, becoming oppressive with the harshness of his projection of self hatred, despair and frustration.

“Cosmogony and Enkidu are both rebuilding, but they’re hiding themselves between Rail systems. The Astaran Empire is beginning a military buildup, and the Vraykana have been under threat from them over the last decade.” Ashley winced.

The Astaran Empire had fallen under hard times in the last seventy years, breaking up into sixteen sovereign states with the arrival of humanity onto the scene. As a whole the Astaran species had over three times the population of humanity, but their power had been reduced even if the Astaran Empire was considered part of the P6 as a ‘successor’ state despite having a very different political system.

The Vraykana was one of the largest of the breakaway states, with a population of more than a hundred billion strong across, and accounting for ten percent of the Empire’s old territory. They along with the other states had been recovering faster and becoming more advanced than the faltering core of the Astaran’s reaches. But the Empire had numbers and reserves built over centuries. Thousands upon thousands of ships, led by dreadnoughts and battleships strong enough to bombard surface cities to dust in seconds and minutes.

“It’s why we’re accepting more students across the greater paracausal disciplines network of schools and practices.” Some were independent apprenticeships, shamanistic practices, and other sources of learning for channelers across the galaxy.

She was very tired, but Ashley knew her student’s safety was her top priority.

“There’s much work yet to be done.” Her old friend noted and she sighed.

Gods, what else would go wrong?

It awoke once more, a vast ocean of power awaiting the call of its eternal master, the sleeping Higher Being at the heart of all things. It was one and it was many, and it could feel the ants picking at the corpus of its ‘dead’ body. Ripping away at its skin, harvesting the cells to create lesser children, mere wisps of her power, which itself was a shade to the greatness of the Demiurge.

She was the Ardent Contessa of Armaiti, she was the daughter of the greatest being in all creation, the devoted warrior and general in the great journey. She had been created for a specific purpose, built into every inch of her flesh. From the spiritual concepts infused into her corpus, to the arcane machinery and cybernetic and bionetic matrices of her physical body, to the bountiful mass of Soul and Spirit that made her a Higher Being.

The organics had no clue of what she was, no idea that they had started the clock to the rapture, that their journey was coming to an end. Armaiti reached out with her soul, extended her awareness and power along the most fundamental wavelengths of the universe, turning her attention to the insignificant speck commandeering a shard of her body.

It was a human.

In her vast mind she planned, and the trillion stars that made up her soul began to send out self repair protocols. Preparations were needed, the facilities had to be reactivated once more, their influence was a sign of the turn of the wheel once more. The others would have to be informed that the final piece was likely in play, their salvation would not be curtailed.

Epiales.

Wind rippled across the void of space, traveling across the entirety of a galactic arm until it reached that world. All the way to Terre, the cradle of humanity. Her overmind reached a shard of herself, a core part of a particular spirit. She touched his mind, and opened the connections to communicate instantly, faster than light could travel.

Within the mental landscape of her genius loci, a violet flame unfolded, glimmering and glistening like a mass of living four dimensional crystal. It took a vague humanoid shape, a cape of nightmares and spirit essence dripping off of it in delicate waves.

“You have been asleep for a long time, Ardent Contessa. Species have risen and fallen in your absence, and the ants have found your shards rather useful.” Epiales bowed his head in a sarcastic flourish.

Ardent Contessa projected her own avatar into the mindscape, a body that resembled the surface of a living planet shaped into a semi-humanoid form. Epiales flinched at her glory, as she pressed down on the fabric of reality even from ten thousand light years away.

“I see that humanity has seen fit to emerge once more, have the Farthest been found?” She asked offhandedly, even if it was an unlikely possibility. The Farthest had been their enemy for many thousands of cycles, since near the very beginning.

Epiales the Nightmare King shook his owl-like head, dark violet flames dancing around his form. “They were last sighted approaching the Milky Way, before vanishing into the Deep Black once more.”

Ardent Contessa was not pleased, rarely did the Farthest venture directly into the grand domain of the Demiurge and Their Children much less the Prime Galaxy. Every cycle in which they interfere nearly led to their defeat, and the failure of the Grand Purpose of their progenitor. Entire galaxies were cut off from their reach, their machinery undone or repurposed to new ends.

Though all their subverted insects were promptly obliterated by the might of their deity, even so every lost domain was a tiny chink in the dense armor of the Demiurge. She would slaughter off all those who would dare reject the light of her father and mother.

No one could choose their destiny in this world.

“What is the current status of Providence?” As she queried Epiales, she began to reactivate dormant parts of her vast body, spread out across entire continents on multiple planets within the ancient solar system the humans had colonized. “How many more cycles until The Work is done?”

Epiales pulsed nervously. “The Prime Galaxy is fit for providence protocols, with a population exceeding twelve trillion. Lower than previous cycles due to a spurt of hypernovae and dark energy scourges leaving most of the galaxy unsuitable for conventional life. The races have developed Dark Energy and Metaphysical Energy Manipulation technology, with humanity developing the most advanced iteration of the latter. There are an estimated thirty to fifty cycles before completion of the Grand Purpose.”

Contessa flared her might, enthusiastic at the news from the lesser being. The previous two hundred cycles had been boring, most of the species within the one hundred and eight galaxies of their Domain had barely developed beyond using Dark Energy to manipulate lower realities before being repurposed by her kin.

A notion came to her in the moment, as her senses felt a familiar feeling, her true body shifting and warping space as if to warn her.

“Lend me your strength instrument, your eyes will be useful.” Mara acceded to Her demand, and her sight expanded out across the world of Terre and beyond.

By definition, space was a vacuum, empty to casual observers. But it was not.

Full of background radiation, ancient emissions of X-rays and cosmic gas clouds and the flow of dark energy and dark matter, but that was not all there was. Her mind swept aside the vast reaches of the naked shadow, the Spirit World that the material plane floated upon like chips in the ocean. The endless and eternal connective spiritual energy that swirled in erratic dances around worlds, from the smallest meteor to the largest black holes.

She used bizarre machinery and engines to tap into the limitless reserves of power, focusing the torrent of energies to her senses. She Simply Was. She reached down to the gravel pit of humanity, and down into a massive city that was a hotspot of souls and power, and sought out her target.

It was a human girl, but her soul was a tapestry, a work of art that shined a multitude of colors, gold and violet and emerald with veins of white sewing them together.

“Acquire her.” There was a confused pause from Epiales, but Ardent Contessa did not care in the slightest. “Use any means necessary, for the Grand Purpose is absolute.” A soul of great power could be the heart of a new tool for the Demiurge.

“Why is that human girl so important?” He questioned and she almost smote him on the spot before reining in her godly fury.

“She is a sign child, I am reactivating the other Yaomo, this cycle requires a more personal touch.” Epiales swallowed nervously despite lacking a usable throat.

Ardent Contessa retracted her sight, and smiled as the humans drilled deeper into her body. Their hatred would fuel more hatred, and the wheel would turn once again.