The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 428

ARTHUR LEYWIN

Aldir looked uncertainly at the iridescent stone in my palm while Mordain sucked in a shocked breath. Avier shuffled across the top of the portal frame and leaned down to peer curiously. Regis’s attention honed in on the others, sensing that there was some understanding about the egg that we lacked.

Behind the others, Wren Kain whispered something under his breath. He had lounged back in his floating rock throne, absently making several stone spheres orbing above his curled hand.

“This is old magic,” Mordain said, unable to take his eyes off the stone. “Do you have any idea what it is that you carry?”

“I know Sylvie is inside this stone, and I’ve been slowly bypassing a series of…locks, I suppose. My hope is that, when I’ve finished, she’ll come back to me…”

Mordain reached gingerly toward Sylvie’s egg. When my fingers instinctively curled around it, he blinked as if waking from a dream and let his hand fall. “There is a legend—a myth really—told as a bedtime story to our children that described a phenomenon like this. True self-sacrifice being rewarded to the brave and genuine. That, though the body may perish, our mind and soul will mold themselves into a physical form and be reborn.”

Wren Kain scoffed as he floated closer on his moving throne to better see the egg. “How is it that beings with world-altering abilities still manage to fall victim to fables of impossible magic? It's mind-boggling that you would think it’s appropriate to bring up a bedtime story in this situation. He’s asking for help, not to be tucked to sleep.”

“Bedtime story or not, Sylvie is inside,” I stated, looking between the two ancient asura. “Regis can inhabit the egg, and I can feel that it’s her. And it just…appeared, after she…” I trailed off, not wanting to relive the moment of her sacrifice. “Somehow I was transported from Dicathen into the Relictombs, and that egg came with me.”

The stone spheres Wren had been controlling fell still as the asuran artificer’s face wrinkled in thought.

Mordain took a shaky breath. “Some members of the phoenix race have learned to control their own rebirth, guiding the soul into a new form, but these old tales describe this as something else. A recreation of body, mind, and spirit, just as it was before…” Mordain’s gaze traced from the egg in my palm up my arm to my torso. “The draconic aspects of your body…she destroyed herself giving them to you, didn’t she?”

I could only nod, unable to speak past a sudden lump in my throat.

“And does Lord Indrath know of this?” Mordain asked innocently enough, but there was an intensity in his burning eyes that suggested some deeper context to his question.

“He does,” I admitted, “but he wouldn’t give me any further details. I…was hesitant to give away my own ignorance by asking too many questions.”

Mordain gave me a wry smile. “Kezess was likely doing the same. Still, if he knows his granddaughter will be reborn…” He trailed off with a shake of his head. “I will have to think on this. But do not let the musings of an old man hold you back from your purpose. You want Aldir’s help with something? What, exactly?”

Instead of answering immediately, I stepped up beside him and activated Aroa’s Requiem.

Bright motes of aether danced down my arm before jumping eagerly to the portal frame, causing Avier to leap off and fly to Mordain’s shoulder. Mordain took a step back, watching with wary interest as the motes flowed into all the cracks and crevices. The portal frame rapidly began to repair, as if time was being turned back before our eyes. In moments, the last cracks had sealed and the final loose pieces of stone were drawn into place.

A dim, purple portal hummed to life within the frame.

Aldir’s single amethyst eye lingered on the egg as if he could burrow down into its core and see the asuran spirit resting there. “I will do what is needed.”

As concisely as I was able, I explained the portal and the Relictomb’s relationship to the “aether realm” in which it existed. Sparing them the details of our fight, I told them how I’d drawn Taci through into that place, accidentally discovering it. I was careful not to give them the impression they could use this technique to breach the Relictombs itself, however, whether it could be done or not. The djinn had chosen to keep even their phoenix allies out of the Relictombs for a reason. I wouldn’t be the one to kick the door in for them.

“Sounds utterly stupid and dangerous to me,” Wren Kain said, catching me off guard. “You did what you had to last time, but it sounds like you nearly couldn’t escape.”

“That was because I was fighting an asura hell-bent on keeping me from escaping,” I shot back.

“Even still.” His baggy-eyed gaze turned to Mordain. “In all the years you sheltered djinn, no one ever told you about this?”

Mordain stepped up to the portal and reached out to it. It responded by projecting a repulsive force, like a magnet pushing back against another of the same polarity. “No, the phenomena Arthur has described was never explained or, to my knowledge, used by the djinn who came to live in the Hearth.”

Avier hopped up onto the top of the portal arch. “Perhaps they didn’t tell anyone because it could be dangerous. For the travelers, the Relictombs, even this world.”

_{Тhе lаtе?t аnd mо?t рорulаr nоvеl? аt l?ghtnоvеlwоrld?соm}

“Thank you! Finally, someone speaking sense,” Wren said with a scoff. “It sounds like breaking something. And while I may not be a mighty dragon or member of the Indrath Clan, I can tell you that, when it comes to either mana or aether, breaking things is generally pretty bad.”

“It is equally as likely that they knew it was too important to keep this knowledge from Lord Indrath to trust even us with it,” Mordain countered thoughtfully. “Asuran lives are very long, and the last surviving djinn had every reason to expect the worst of the future.”

“You’re all assuming they even knew about the realm,” Regis said from where he was lying in the moss. “No matter how smart these guys were, the djinn were idealists to the point of silliness. They definitely didn’t understand everything that they created. We’ve seen that with our own eyes.”

I recalled what the last djinn remnant had said. “They were fracturing at the end, too, I think. The Relictombs is…a dark place. Out of character with the way the djinn attempted to live—and the way they chose to die. I think they definitely had a pretty grim outlook on the future of our world, based on what I’ve seen. Enough to poison their trust even in their only allies.”

“Perhaps it is for the best that we’ll never see their creation,” Mordain said, stepping away from the portal. His face fell for a moment, but quickly brightened again. “I know you are eager to proceed, so I won’t press you any further, except to ask how long we should expect you and Aldir to be gone?”

Regis joined me in front of the portal before stepping into me and sheltering near my core. We hadn’t discussed if he should come or not, but it felt right having him with me.

Aldir immediately followed, standing just beside me. He was expressionless, neither tense nor placid. Despite my earlier anger with him, I couldn’t help but appreciate his fearlessness in this situation.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” I answered.

With an understanding nod, Mordain rested a hand on Aldir’s shoulder. They exchanged no words and yet still communicated something very clearly between them, even if it was unreadable to the rest of us. When this moment passed, Mordain moved around us to the exit of the small cave, and Avier again flew to his shoulder. Together, they watched in silence.

Wren Kain suddenly drifted forward. “Listen, there is no reason to rush this without a better understanding. That stone or embryo you’re carrying isn’t going to expire. Lady Sylvie isn’t going anywhere. You’re being stupid.”

My brows rose, but Aldir clapped Wren Kain on the arm. “Urgency is a matter of perspective, isn’t it? Why forgo doing now what we may lack time for in the future?”

Wren Kain shrank further into his floating throne. “Well, if you rip a hole in the fabric of the universe and wipe out this continent, I guess that’s on you two.” He focused on Aldir. “Whatever. Just get this done and get back here, all right? If Indrath is sending dragons to Dicathen, we need to prepare.”

“You know I didn’t bring you here to fight a war, old friend.”

Wren Kain blinked and a somber smirk tugged at the edge of his lips. “Yeah… but I was kind of hoping you had.”

Aldir returned the sober smile, then turned to face me.

Each gripping the other’s forearm, we stepped closer to the portal and immediately felt the repulsive pressure meant to prevent an asura from crossing through the portal’s boundary. Aldir’s vicelike grip clenched down hard enough to hurt, and we both leaned into the portal.

It wavered, bending away from us. We leaned farther, then took another shuffling half-step.

The stone of the arch shook, and the purple energy of the portal’s surface flexed farther, trembling.

As before, I could feel the opposing forces within the portal attempting to draw me in while rejecting Aldir, but I kept his arm clamped in mine as we took another small step.

My stomach lurched as I sensed the portal reaching its breaking point, like I had stepped on a rotting board in a bridge.

The portal imploded.

A raging aetheric wind dragged the two of us inward, and the world dissolved into fractals of interdimensional connective tissue. For just the barest instant, I recognized the network of aetheric pathways that I saw when activating God Step, then everything went dark.

I was anticipating the mental backlash this time and managed to retain my senses and intention as the aetheric void coalesced around us. Purple-tinged space stretched away in every direction, broken only by the last of the portal energy that was being absorbed into the aetheric soup and an unknown Relictombs zone floating off-kilter below us.

‘Whoa,’ Regis thought, a mental shiver running through his incorporeal form. He flitted out of me but didn’t take the form of a wolf. Little eddies of aetheric current swirled around the dark wisp as he began to absorb the boundless aether. ‘We’ve come a long way since the days of sucking up millipede poop crystals, haven’t we?’

_{Тhе lаtе?t аnd mо?t рорulаr nоvеl? аt l?ghtnоvеlwоrld?соm}

_{l?ghtnоvеlwоrld?соm fоr thе bе?t nоvеl rеаd?ng ехреr?еnсе}