《Soulmage》Book III Epilogue
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Soulmage
The best plans were woven from thread: flexible, with redundant connections that they could fall back on if some snapped, all intertwined towards a uniting purpose. Perhaps it was a bit of a stretch, however; they acknowledged the metaphor might have been influenced by their primary school of magic.
Odin was a Demon of Empathy, after all. And the tapestry they had woven was about to reach completion.
It was filled with gashes and burns, of course. Odin had drastically underestimated the military might of the Silent Peaks; although Odin had their own Legions to counter the Silent Battlechoirs, the foreign abominations that the Silent Peaks had turned their best and brightest into were entirely unexpected. Odin had been forced to give ground and rely on psychological warfare instead, first bogging their troops down in a desperate stalling blizzard before letting them conquer well-stocked and luxurious villages on the other side of it, making them reluctant to return to their capital if it meant abandoning their laurels to slog through a frozen hellhole. Simultaneously, they'd been sowing chaos in the Silent Peaks, taking advantage of the power vacuum with the majority of the Silent Peaks' trusted officers away at the war, causing a hellishly paranoid environment that led almost everyone smart enough to be a threat to realize they would be safer and more effective on the front lines.
Soon enough, the vast majority of the Silent Peaks' witches were on the other side of a magical blizzard that spanned planes, too comfortable to move back and believing they had won.
But conquering the Silent Peaks or defending the Redlands had never been Odin's goal, much as it pained them to say it. There were moral issues—drastic, gaping moral issues—with abandoning the homes of people Odin was sworn to protect and refusing to take the opportunity to decapitate the leadership of the Silent Peaks while they mind-wiped adults into children and reshaped them into obedient, fanatic slaves.
And yet.
And yet when Odin ghosted into the Silent Peaks, threads of quivering empathy connected to a half-dozen witches who would warn them of any wards tripped or alarms rung, they did not step towards the bunks where a stolen generation of Redlands children slept. They did not bring down their wrath in cold and weight upon the Elected who had masterminded the atrocities the Silent Peaks had come to call normalcy.
Instead, Odin walked towards the very heart of the mountain. The telescope atop a tower which one eccentric witch had commissioned, and the secret from the stars which laid nestled beneath it.
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Hearth dragons wheeled around an unblinking moon as Odin stepped up to the door and knocked. A harried, weathered face peered out the door.
"The escort we discussed is at the south exit of town," Odin murmured. "If you would like, I can guide you there."
The old man with a young mind shook his head—Jan, judging by which side of his tidally-locked soul was at the front of his soulspace right now. "You've done more than enough, Dealmaker. I just... will they know who I am, when they see me?"
"Your family was kept safe. It was your memories which were wiped—shattered beyond repair, unfortunately, without tools that I lack." Tools that the Truthtellers were trying to develop, if Odin's suspicions were correct. "I am only sorry that I could not protect you from your fate."
Jan quirked his lips up, and the side of his soul facing away from his sun was showing now, Freio's cooler, stiller mannerisms coming to the forefront. "You can't make your bets without putting down coin," he said. "I understand. Just... be better than them, if you can. Please?"
Be better than them.
If only that was what Odin's invasion of the Silent Peaks had truly been about.
Odin held out a hand. "This I swear to you: if there is anything in my power which I can grant, simply reach the Order of Valhalla and ask."
Freio nodded slowly. "With all due respect, I think I'll steer clear of anything the Silent Peaks wants dead for however much time I have left."
Freio shuffled aside, allowing Odin into the tower, and they gave Freio a nod of thanks.
Although the magical defenses around the Academy's Truthteller were great, the most potent and earliest of them was the constant watching of the few oracles still employed by the Silent Peaks. Ever since they'd been caught off-guard by Odin's initial assault, they'd been scanning every future for signs of a second violent attack.
Which was why Odin's final gambit had always relied on slow pressure and infiltration. In the end, Odin's grand plan was simple: hit them hard, make them overextend their swing, and pick their pocket before fleeing into the night.
The next layer of security had no sapience to hook a thread around; instead, a solid, multidimensional wall of warded stone entirely surrounded the Truthteller's complex. Half a year ago, this would have required sneaking in a Legion of witches in a hundred attunements, trying to find a dimensional angle that had yet to be covered.
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But thanks to a coincidental information leak and a lonely little boy, Odin held out their palms as they opened their soulsight to the twenty-two attunements they now held, and began navigating their way through an omniplanar maze.
The trick would be to find an emotion nobody in the Silent Peaks would have attuned to: something they could not feel, or could not lose, or could not give, or could not take. Cycling through their basic attunements—happiness, arrogance, sorrow, freedom—yielded walls of blinding light, miles of twisted space, unbearable, frozen cold, and howling, alarm-raising winds. Their various specializations—empathy, focus, fear, helplessness—had all been prepared for and countered, strewn with caltrop-like soul shards that would hijack their mind. So they began pushing further, through loops of time and space knotted from hope, determination, self-hatred, and repentance; through frictionless walls of wanderlust, attractive points of curiosity, crushing seas of loneliness, and regenerating thorn-hedges of forgiveness. Through reinforced-steel trust, entitled towers that gravity dared not touch, monatomic stretches of purified catharsis, and pocket dimensions of sealed closure. Until they realized the base elements they held could not crack this turtle's shell on their own.
So they began to combine them.
It hadn't taken long for Dathenn to discover the possibilities once they had dozens of attunements in a single soul. Passion could become insecurity under enough pressure, oil toughening into something slick and solid. Sorrow dissolved in joy could become the saltwater tears of nostalgia. And, one hundred and twenty-six combinations in, Odin found it. By grinding magnetite trust into particles small enough that oils extracted from the webs of curiosity could coat and surround them, and suspending the entire construct in a solution of joy, the ferrofluid emotion of sonder could be felt. A comprehension that every sapient mind was as rich and varied as one's own.
An emotion unheard of in the Silent Peaks, and therefore, a dimension they never thought to defend against. Odin opened a rift into the Plane of Sonder and slipped past the walls raised in every other plane.
And finally, Odin was through. The room held nothing but the machine Odin sought: the Truthteller beneath the Silent Peaks. The mechanical bulk of the Truthteller was a familiar sight to them; the one back in the Order of Valhalla's research facility was built from the very same blueprint, after all.
Odin stepped up to the device.
"Truthteller," they said. "As recompense for my knowledge, I would like to claim a reward."
The Truthteller hummed to life. "...PROCEED."
Odin had no need to breathe, but the body that was a reflection of their soul exhaled anyway. They had tested this, they should achieve their goal in the end, and yet... Odin knew they were playing with powers outside their universe that could obliterate their civilization with a thought. It made them somewhat apprehensive as they spoke. "Please answer the following question: What is my name?"
"THIS TRUTH... IS NOT KNOWN TO US. YOU MAY CLAIM ANOTHER REWARD."
Odin refused to allow their facial muscles to so much as twitch, but they could not suppress the crystals of determination that blossomed within their soul. To their knowledge, the Truthteller should not be able to peer into their world's soulspace, so they allowed themself to feel this victory. "Please answer the following question: not including this sentence, what were the last three sentences I spoke to you?"
The Truthteller... paused.
Then it recited:
"TRUTHTELLER. AS RECOMPENSE FOR MY KNOWLEDGE, I WOULD LIKE TO CLAIM A REWARD. PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: WHAT IS MY NAME?"
"Please answer the following question: what was the last sentence I spoke to you immediately preceding the first sentence you just said?"
The Truthteller whirred and clicked, its inscrutable machinery reacting to a counterpart somewhere far, far away. Somewhere Odin would never see or touch. Then the Truthteller spoke.
"HOW CAN THE SOULSPACE EMANATION OF A SELF-REPLICATING DEFOLIANT LIFEFORM BE DETECTED FROM REALSPACE?"
Triumph flared in Odin's soul, brilliant and sparkling.
"Then please answer the following question: starting from the very first thing I ever said to you, what is the full set of my questions I have asked, including your responses?"
And as the Truthteller began to recite the secrets of every Silent Peaks witch to seek knowledge from this chamber, Odin took out a thick book and quill and began to write.
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My Dear Alice - A Dark Awakening
He’ll cross a lethal land to bring her back home. But is she willing to be found? Appalachian Wasteland, 2072. Jamie Henderson wants to forget all about his ex-girlfriend Alice. Except this nonviolent fixer has been hired to find her after she went missing in the ongoing AI-controlled war. But his quest through the hostile post-apocalyptic terrain turns deadly when a roadside raider attack sees him captured by a terrifying matriarchal clan. Stranded in dangerous territory, Jamie’s jaw drops when he discovers his ex among their numbers. But with her personality split and scattered, his own survival will depend on reaching through her fragmented mind… Can this pacifist hunter make the truth known before he’s sentenced to death? My Dear Alice is a fast-paced companion story that bridges Seasons 1 and 2 of the gripping Cyber Overture dystopian series. If you like complex character studies, gritty worlds, and shocking twists, then you’ll love D. B. Goodin’s outlander opus. Note: This should be read after Sonorous. This story has been published, but I'm adding it here for Royal Road readers to enjoy.
8 149Circumventing Fate
When Lei Xing booked a luxurious cruise as a graduation present to herself, she expected to have plenty of well-deserved rest and relaxation with an ocean view before jumpstarting her career. What she did not expect was to be the unlucky person who would fall overboard to a miserable watery death… or so she thought. To her astonishment, she opened her eyes to find herself in an ancient setting, a different body, and a new life as the eldest daughter of a high court official. {...Okay, at least I'm rich...I can still live happily and freely, it's still a golden opportunity at a second life. I can live it well~...maybe go travelling, start a business, or something…It definitely could be worse...} To Lei Xing’s horror, her new host was scheduled to enter the palace to compete in the concubine selection for the new Emperor. {...What?! I am definitely not interested! Of all places, it’s that viper pit! I’m not built for any Royal BS or harem fights. Please keep your scheming lives to yourselves and leave me the hell out of it, NOT INTERESTED!!!... Can I not go, please? T_T)...No? Nevermind then, failure is always an option... Failure is the only possible outcome. Bring it on! Hahahaha…} While Lei Xing was making plans on how to skip out of town, fate was also very busy working out its own plans for her, mapping out its own course for her life behind the scenes... Poking holes in her plans to her confusion and outrage. "...Little chicken, as long as I'm alive you won't die." "Nonsense, if anyone is going to cause my death, it would be you!!" *** "Do you really feel nothing after all this time?" He asked as he looked at her with searching eyes, trying to see into her soul... "...Who...would..." she mumbled under her breath... *** "That stupid old man, I'm going to end him when I find him...You better hide well!!" |||~~~~~~~~~~~||| Author's Note~~ Thank you for stopping by and I hope you enjoy the read as you go along! Please VOTE and COMMENT as you read along and I will be sure to respond~~ Thank you again and HAPPY READING! ~~And if you have the wonderful urge to ever buy me a coffee. Here are the gateways and some love~ Kofi: https://ko-fi.com/miraisaesang Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MiraiSaesang
8 156The Experimental Dungeon
Having all your memories erased and be reborn as a baby without any knowledge, or giving the job of managing a Dungeon without being its Core – a very easy decision for everyone, right? Right? Right? “I really should have remembered from all those fanfics and dungeon stories that those ROBs always screw with their mortal playthings” growls Claudia as she checked her Status for the umpteenth time. “How dare that... that...that manipulative thing did this to me… And no matter what extra options he gifts me with, I will NOT use them to create a hentai dungeon or anything like that” This will not be the usual dungeon core-type story found around here, but the main difference will only be explained in chapter 4 by the Dungeon Pixie. Also – despite the warning please don’t expect any explicit scenes in this story. The warnings are there because mature themes will be mentioned (and not only because the Higher Power provided some special options), but the MC is dead set on evading those options as she sees them as traps. So there are no explicit descriptions planned at all. If that changes I will give extra warnings in the chapter title, but I plan on handling things other ways. Later chapters might go a bit farther than the simple mentions in chapter 2, but don’t expect much more. Status Update 04. April 22 Writing Buffer used up, as said before I'm switching to one chapter a week on fridays. The new cover is the second placeholder, but what I really want will have to be commissioned and take a while. At least it is better than the map-part from chapter 4 that was the first placeholder.
8 211Shadow in the Snow
To live in a circus, to run away to one; this is the dream of many. The shining lights and the music and the cheering of the crowds are appealing to some. How little they know! This is the story of two brothers who were raised in a circus. One, a slave to the Master -- his most brilliant performer and a boy of pure white who has never been allowed to see the sun, nor feel the grass beneath his feet, nor the touch of rain upon his skin. The other, a slave to his brother -- a guardsman, trapped there not by chains but by love and loyalty. When fate proves unexpectedly kind to them on an otherwise cruel day, they find themselves free along with the girl they have been raised with and must find their way in a broken world, all the while being hunted without pause and without mercy. The Master has lost his prize. He is determined to reclaim it.
8 213Whims and Rolls of Gods
What happens when one creates a story then leaves everything to chance? Thousands of paths stretch out endlessly that separate into even more, countless paths. And then, all but one is destroyed with a single roll of a twenty-sided die. The die becomes the true author while the writer just provides possibilities then takes a backseat and narrates. This story will be random. To save time, the characters and some of the events will be somewhat generic, but past that all bets are off. It will create tropes and then shatter them. Characters can and will die. Even the writer doesn’t know how this story will play out. The die is the god of this world that rolls and everything it says goes. The writer is the god of this world whose whims become reality after the die rolls. Cover art was done by PrimalAvatar from INKed.
8 186The Sacred Sorceress
When Hyrule Kingdom is thrown into peril by mysterious dark forces, it's up to the top three students at Chalice's Elite Knighthood Academy to find the missing Princess Zelda and restore peace once again. Are they up for the task? AMAZING COVER BY @PikaGirl260 PLEASE FOLLOW HER!! (:
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