Chapter 8

“Unfortunately, there is precious little that we can say of the Old Gods, save that they were the ones to break the First. For while they were indeed Gods by any comparable measure of power, they did not linger long among us mortals, and nor did they demand worship. Instead, from what few ancient records tell us, they simply retreated back to the fabled domain of Elysium, the Ivory City of the First, and sealed it away so thoroughly that both of theirs very existence has fallen away to merely legend.”

—Part Three, The Origin of Incarnation, Gaesen Reed, The Age of Tyrants, circa 3638

So it was Bel that…sent me here, Vincent thought tiredly as he lay in his bed and stared up the ceiling, his mind having awoken racing as soon as the memory had ended. No, he didn’t send me… he reincarnated me, rather. If that blast I felt in my memory was the Seed of Origin erupting…then, well…even at my peak, or what I remember of my peak, wouldn’t have been enough to have me survive that. Nothing would have. Including…including Zera…whoever she was…

The thought prompted Vincent to bring up a hand to tiredly rub at his brow as he let out a defeated sigh, his emotions raging wildly within him. Or at least that’s the only thing that I can think of that even comes close to making a shred of sense to explain what’s happened to me. How I ended up here in a brand new body with my soul ravaged beyond repair…yet still possessing all of my melds from my past life. Melds which have all starved because my soul was asleep, which in turn rived my body.

Yet even with that explanation it didn’t help him come to terms that a god thought lost to time for several millennia had arrived suddenly from beyond the realm, saved him, then conscripted him for a quest that he couldn’t even begin to understand.

It was a thought that had Vincent completely reconsidering the last week of his exceptionally painful convalescence as he painstakingly sliced free meld after meld from his soul, a process during which he had discovered two things. The first being the tattered memory that he had just finished witnessing, having stumbled upon the snarled ball of anima that represented it, quite literally hanging on by a thread, while he had been cutting free his last and final meld. The one that represented the mana channels running through his body, and until that point had kept him isolated from the mana of world, capable of only interacting with it using his Will, but not drawing it into him. Originally he had left it for last because he had thought it the easiest of his melds to shear away, and most importantly, one that would bring him the least amount of discomfort. Unfortunately, Vincent couldn’t have been more wrong, for as soon as he sheared away the last of the riven and dead meld from his soul, which instantly relaxed what few channels were intact and thus allowed him to draw in mana from the world, he found himself choking at the second thing he discovered next.

That being not only the presence of more aspected mana than he ever thought should be around him, but that nearly all of it was dead, almost completely inert.

Hidden from both him and his Insight in terms of scale until he could see it against the few motes of living mana, Vincent remembered how alarmed he had been to first sense himself drawing in shadow mana instead of the aether mana he’d been expecting. Let alone the fact that almost all of the aspected mana was completely dull and lifeless as it flooded into his body. It was a worry that only intensified from there when he realized that there were already large clumps of the very same lifeless shadow and death mana within his stomach. Fortunately, that part was a terror short lived, if at least for what he had inside him, for once he knew it was there, all it took was a particularly potent flex of his Will to unbind them. Doing the same for every one of the clumps, Vincent then recoalesced them into a lifeless mana shard outside his body. It was then, after he had a chance to inspect the dark, dormant shard of glass that he realized that there was something truly and irrevocably wrong with the realm. 

And now that he had reintegrated the lost memory that he had recovered from within his mind, he could fathom a reason why.

The Seed of Origin was responsible for storing and renewing of all the mana in our world, or at least that’s what I can remember, Vincent thought as he continued to rub his head, wondering if at some point that it would just explode from how fast his mind was spinning inside it. Yet before it was destroyed…before Zera destroyed it. She said that something was eating it. Could this have been the corruption that Bel spoke about? Something that was…let into the realm? Did she manage to stop it in time?

Vincent paused in his thoughts to reach out with his senses to consider the dead mana shard he held in his hand as well as what filled the air around him, thoughts swirling all the while. If the seed was destroyed then that means all the mana that it had was likely released all at once, bathing the domain in…well, everything. That would explain why there is simply so much aspected mana in the air around me. So much that it has completely overwhelmed any and all of the Aether mana I’d expect to find around me instead. But then how did all that mana escape the domain and get into the realm itself in the first place? Ugh, this is a useless path of thought, I don’t know enough to even begin to guess at what happened, let alone figure out what Bel wants me to do in order to save it.

That was a whole other topic that Vincent had barely even begun to attempt to wrap his mind around. Everything that the Old God had told him had been surreal beyond any rational expectation, especially in light of where he was now. Had Bel intended to reincarnate him so far into the future? Or had something unexpected gone wrong and it was only now that he had a chance to be reborn? Did that even leave him with enough time to fulfill the cryptic quest that he had been given? 

Bel had been obviously injured when Vincent had seen them standing just beyond the Door of Eternity, the supposed gate to Heaven and the Beyond that waited even beyond the wonders of Elysium. So it was possible that something could have gone wrong. Especially if he had been caught in an explosion by something as foundational to the realm as the Seed of Origin. However the more Vincent thought of it, the more that he found holes in his line of thinking, especially when it came to his present state.

I can’t remember anything before waking up in that cart, he thought, focusing on the hole in his mind that represented his lost memories. Yet even so, is there anything to remember? Clearly I’ve not made any progress upon the Path in this new life of mine, which leads me to wonder if I was ever in any state to be able to. With the way my body was…is riven…I am starting to think that my physical melds have been riven for quite some time. Perhaps since my rebirth in this realm. There aren’t many other explanations that would account for the ways that my bones formed, my muscles grew twisted, nor the fact that I couldn’t draw in and fully sense all of this dead mana until I carved that last meld away. Even more, there was my Insight. Somehow it not only survived but it had to reach out and integrate itself with the physical half of my mind after it awoke, which meant that it was both dormant and wholly contained to my soul until that moment.

All together it left Vincent with a vague picture as to how his decline could have happened. If he’d been reborn in this world with a fully melded, yet badly wounded soul, then it would have instantly effected his physical development, riving him. Worse too, the more rived he became, and thus became unable to draw in any kind of mana, let alone Aether mana to support its upkeep, then its surviving melds would have gradually begun to decay. Then in turn the further they decayed, the faster his riving would have progressed, until he was trapped in a loop with no easy escape.

But how that might have affected Vincent’s mind however, he wasn’t certain, his best theory being that because of the issues with his melded soul, his spiritual mind and physical mind hadn’t been able to integrate with one another. At least not until his soul was torn wide open by the theft of his mental melds. Not that he could even remember what they were, or how they, and his Insight had managed to survive intact despite also being starved for mana.

Regardless of how it happened however, Vincent was fairly certain that the stunting had rendered him if not exactly simple, then most certainly constantly confused, forgetful, and likely unable to care for himself in any consistent long term way. But the fact that he was alive bespoke to the fact that someone had not only taken care of him, but had done so for the better part of two decades, that is if his guess at his present age was anywhere even close to the mark.

Does that mean I have a family I was born to? Vincent wondered next, the implications of his logic starting to get away from him. Did they keep me alive because they couldn’t bear to lose a child? Or…was I kept alive because they could sense that my mental melds didn’t end up riven? Because despite my ravaged body I had something truly wonderous inside of me? Is…is that why the Shadowed Hand abducted me? Or were they the ones keeping me in the first place? That is until they decided they wanted to…harvest what they could of me and accidentally awakened my mind in the process.

Feeling completely overwhelmed by his endless questions, and only discovering more the longer that he had allowed himself to think, Vincent realized that he could easily spend lifetime unpacking and theorizing all that had happened to him and not actually get anywhere. Right now if he wanted to make progress in understanding anything, however marginal, he needed to act, first in rebuilding his power, then second, to find out more about the state of the realm around him.

For it had changed even more drastically than anything he could have imagined.

Which means that before I do anything else, I need to reform my Nexus, Vincent thought with a slow exhale as he pushed himself up into a seated position on his now exceptionally soiled bed, an entire week of his sweat drenched body lying on it having done it no favors.Fortunately though, there was only one last step left for him to finish. Then he could be on his way out of the room, looking for whatever answers he could find.

Fortunately now that he had finished carving away the dead weight that was his riven melds Vincent didn’t think that tackling this last task of his would take long, or he certainly didn’t expect it to. For while he might have forgotten and or lost the majority of his memories, the secrets of Incarnation, and its infinite paths was not one of them. As such, he expected the actual creation of his Nexus to be a nigh effortless thing on his part.

That is once he decided on just how to form it.

It was be a waste of the opportunity before me to form a traditional Nexus, Vincent thought as he settled in on the bed with his legs crossed, his mind delving into the void that existed between his body and soul. Nor do even one of the supposedly advanced designs seem like they would be worthy of the gift before me. No…I need something truly exceptional…something…unique.

Yet as Vincent looked upon the blank canvas that was his Soul Well, nothing that could be described as such jumped into his mind, leaving him to simply drift. Normally when a neophyte was at this stage, they had few options before them, those of which were largely limited to what support they had when embarking on the Path of Incarnation. Neophytes with limited or even self-taught support, tended to instinctively form a spherical Nexus as they were not only the easiest to create but generally conveyed no negatives or positives to its future potential. It was a safe, traditional, and well-rounded option to choose.

However for those with more backing, knowledge, and thus more time and training to hone their Will, the potential options only grew, with more complicated designs, such as cubic, diamond like, or radiant Nexuses being next most common. These variants, unlike the spherical design had benefits and drawbacks to them, especially when the precision of which they’d been formed with was taken into account. It was these very benefits that Vincent contemplated, weighing each of them one by one in his mind as he searched for a true burst of inspiration. Moreover, it was a contemplation that his Insight picked up on, making a running list of his thoughts so that they stayed at the forefront of his mind.

Baseline Nexus Design:

Spherical:

• Difficulty of Creation: Effortless
• Estimated Quality: Perfect (Grade: A)
• Attributes: 
  • All Core Attributes – Rank B

Advanced Nexus Designs:

Cubic:

• Difficulty of Creation: Effortless
• Estimated Quality: Perfect (Grade: A)
• Attributes: 
  • Total Capacity: Rank A
  • Stability: Rank A
  • Channeling Speed: Rank C
  • Regeneration Speed: Rank C

Diamond:

• Difficulty of Creation: Effortless
• Estimated Quality: Perfect (Grade: A)
• Attributes: 
  • Channeling Speed: Rank A
  • Total Capacity: Rank A
  • Stability: Rank C 
  • Regeneration Speed: Rank C

Radiant:

• Difficulty of Creation: Effortless
• Estimated Quality: Perfect (Grade: A)
• Attributes: 
  • Regeneration Speed: Rank A
  • Channeling Speed: Rank A 
  • Total Capacity: Rank C
  • Stability: Rank C

Could I combine elements of them together maybe? Potentially…create some sort of fractal? Vincent thought as he considered the most obvious choices, and then the less so ones, trying to figure out what appealed to him most. Choosing a style of Nexus was a critical choice in one’s path, for it had the potential to change how one approached not only the path of Incarnation, but their working of magic along the way. As such some chose to specialize right from the beginning, choosing larger reservoirs, or faster channeling speeds, trading off that benefit for a lesser one of another core attribute. However for Vincent’s case, he wasn’t willing to make any tradeoffs if he could help it.

No, that won’t work, he thought after attempting to envision just how he would do that, every mental model that he run telling him that such a Nexus would almost certainly collapse, likely killing him in the process. 

 Something that given all the effort he had just undertaken to repair his soul, he very much wanted to avoid.

So instead he turned his mind in another direction, simply focusing on the metaphysical vastness of his Soul Well and the nature of a Nexus, allowing his thoughts to wander for a time. He wasn’t sure how long he was there in the void, but eventually his thoughts took him back to the memory that he had just witnessed. Yet as it did, it wasn’t to relive the cryptic chain of events that he had little context for, but to rather dissect the people and the magic he saw. A process that he discovered was aided by the absolutely incredible amount of information that his Insight had collected, unbeknownst to him until that moment. Much of it was rote, that was for certain, the minute flows of mana, virtues, and Will through each of his opponents.

But for what little did not fall into that category, Vincent found it more precious than gold, his attention eventually fixating upon the sources of all the magic he saw in his memories, specifically, each of the Nexuses that they’d been launched form. It was an absolutely riveting experience for him to peer at each of their cores as they flared with power, getting an insight as to what others had achieved at their peaks. But as fascinating as it was to see how both Malvis and Zera had chosen to form and advance their Nexuses, neither of them were as fascinating as what he saw within Bel.

It…it is an realm beyond measure, Vincent thought, a headache instantly forming in his mind as he tried to process everything his Insight had taken in during his brief encounter with the god, one that he had been too distracted in the moment to even realize. Yet now, as he sifted through the intricacies of his memories he was able to see what he had missed. No, it’s even larger than that, it’s…it’s as if they took multiple realms…wait, that’s it! That’s what Bel did!

This was it, this was exactly what Vincent had been looking for when it came to inspiration. Moreover it he found it to have a sort of poetry to it. After all it had been Bel who had conscripted him for this quest, so it was only fitting that Vincent used every advantage the god had given him however indirect. That said however, Vincent simply couldn’t just skip to a power beyond even an Avatar, beyond what he increasingly certain he had been in his previous life. Rather instead, he needed to start small and allow himself to grow into that power.

And now that he’d seen what Bel, one of the Old Gods had done, he knew how could do the same.

By not just limiting myself to one Nexus, he thought as an idea rapidly formed in his mind. One that with a little luck could set him on the very same path to achieve what Bel had wrought, beyond even his past life. The only reason why we limit ourselves to just a single Nexus is because the scope of our control as neophytes, and thus our Will, just isn’t capable of creating more. But for someone who has that control…well, why stop at just one?