Chapter 66: Rumors, Travels, And Possibilities.

Rumors were strange things.

Words that tricked, beguiled. Bits of truth and lie that changed the way men viewed one another...

Rumors and ideas are contagious, and unstoppable, yet somehow so easily made and manipulated.

Yet one who wields rumors should know all the more that they cannot stand against them, for they are an unstoppable tide of thought and speech.

Rumors among an army changed moral.

"Did you hear, about the awakened?"

"Yeah, but he hasn't been on the battlefield has he? We just fight while the mages hurl meteors and create blizzards of icy blades, and we pray we have a mage still guarding our back so we don't die with indignity."

"No, I mean what he's been up to. Haven't you heard?"

"No... what?"

Another man, a Viandros with brown feathers, leaned over with a curve to his brow that showed his smirk, even if his beak could not bend.

"I heard he is a blade in the mist and fog of twilight, and strikes the Sattix in their forts and slaughters them in their sleep!"

So a rumor was born.

And now, months into the war, word was spread of a man who summoned a mist... and death that fell upon all who entered it.

~ ~ ~

"Kire... you ready?"

Kire stood from the altar he had made, like every one he placed at each campsite.

"Yes." He turned, and the stubble of facial hair grown upon him showed the passage of time, and a solemness to his eyes that did not match his far-too-young face.

"The Nameless One watches us all."

Some ignored this, some rolled their eyes, but a few treated this seriously.

After so many times heading out, a young man's faith became harder and harder to refute when shown so strongly.

~ ~ ~

"Junior! Come on! They said we would find the last known location of the Nesphirii at the next oasis!"

Bast ran excitedly, her skin darkened by the sun and her body wrapped in loose cloth bindings, while a brown horse with bits of gold fur snorted.

[You try. Sand in hoof.]

Bast shrugged. "Use air magic to scrub it out. Stop complaining, you're not the only one stuck getting sand in weird places!"

Junior snorted again, a rumble traveled through his throat in acknowledgement, and the small tufts of light-green and brown feathers sprouting on his sides flexed slightly as a burst of wind cleared some sand from his hooves.

~ ~ ~

A group of elves slumped in their chairs at a table, exhaustion and dull expressions on them all.

"We still can't find... anything."

Avaya stood silently, trying to suppress a giggle. 'Don't laugh... don't laugh... it's not funny that all these "higher elves" can't find whatever they've been looking for... it's not...'

Korven wandered the woods next to the sea, practicing and experimenting with light and dark, chasing the possibilities of the experiment he and that dragon had done.

~ ~ ~

This is fucking boring as hell.

I mean, I sorta can roughly use earth magic now. So yay! But not like... fused. Still only have light, dark, and water in that way.

On a side note, I had some fun when I raided that Fenrir...

I had come in, found this dude with a fucking harem of sex slaves, and then proceeded to light his ass on fire.

Was he technically a better spellcaster in technique and knowledge? Probably. In a fair fight I might've lost... but I don't play fair when I abuse my oversized mana pool to choke him out, burn him, heal him, choke him out, and repeat.

At some point he was too delirious to fight back.

Somewhere after 4 hours in I realized I should probably just break all those strange rune-covered collars on the women he had kidnapped and raped.

Then I was about to continue with my electroshock therapy I had switched to, but my fun got cut short when the many females decided to tear him to pieces themselves.

That was... a bloody event.

But, hell. All went okay in the end I guess?

And here I am.

At the mountain where I properly awakened to light, and met Bast.

The place her father died.

And hopefully... my best chance of recovering his soul to be reincarnated.

I made a promise after all, and I might be a murdering, pillaging, sorta stole some shit dragon, but I keep my promises.

I'm a monster of my word.

His soul was here... sorta.

I could sense that now, as more time passed.

Like the tales I told and were spread by Raghen actually changed me.

More white energy gathered within my core, and as it did, souls became... apparent?

Life force was always something light vision could show me, but now I could hear it.

A melody, a tune, a frequency of the soul that sung in one's lifeforce.

And when things die, it returns to the world.

I'd assume when they are born the world creates it anew, but I'm now adding extra steps in this process so souls aren't just something to be consumed and made.

I dunno. Maybe I'm making them more sacred than they need to be? But it's kinda too late now... especially with how much freakin people Kire has ended up putting in that void only I seem to see.

So here I am, spending weeks trying to gather these small ragged bits of a soul to stick together while trying not to accidentally grab bits that don't belong...

Seriously, I don't wanna accidentally reincarnate a mixture of Bast's dad and the monsters who killed him fused together.

I mean... I guess it wouldn't like... change much? They become new people and lifeforms after all... I guess it just would make me feel better about it.

I shook myself, a slight scratching noise coming of the act as my scales scraped against the bark and wood around me, seeing as the patches of gold-white and violet-black scales on the sides of my body had grown larger.

The area around the joints extending from my serpentine body definitely had more scales than the rest of me, but my legs and wings were still mostly furred.

'Huh?'

That's strange... the world is-shivering? Shaking?

It's like the world tilted slightly... oh.

It's an optical illusion caused by a sudden flow of the element particles?

Where is all this magic going?

I've never seen all the magic of the world around me suddenly flow in unison!

I began to slither-walk, following the flow.

I've been chasing down these bus of soul degrading into the environment, but this flow of word energy might pull those remnant pieces too.

My right wing almost caught on a trunk by accident, leading me to trip and fall on my side!

"Grah!" I let out a strange grunt in surprise, and lay still for a second.

'Okay that was embarrassing.'

As I continued up the mountain, I began to feel a strange sense of deja vu.

'Isn't this where I awakened to light?'

Finally I hit the clearing with the bits of ruins in the center.

Okay.

I have NO fucking clue what's going on!

What the fuck?!

The ruins are... reassembling themselves.

And tubes of multi colors that are so complicated and have so many stars formed into constellations for spells that I couldn't even BEGIN to understand what magic this was meant to be!

Whatever these ruins do, beyond somehow fixing themselves for unknown reasons, it's... complicated.

And I could see ALL the 6 elements were involved.

As the ruins affixed themself, chunks and shards of grey stone locking together until a slightly-weathered archway, the many elemental energies surging together here began to compress and interact in curious ways.

The earth element weighed heavy while the fire element superheated water in a pressurized way beyond the physical and into the metaphysical realm that magic particles seem to exist on.

Light and dark mixed while somehow changing the other elements.

'Okay wait! Stop! I have NO IDEA how any of what I'm seeing works!'

I think I just got a massive slap of humble pie pounded into my face by a very sadistic clown.

'Oh I'm a god who's worshipped... but this random architecture uses concepts of magic I can't even ATTEMPT to understand!'

My understanding of magic is basic and felt practically pathetic before this.

It wasn't even because I felt how superior it was or anything silly like that.

I just straight up did not understand how these elements were influencing each other on this fundamental level.

It went... right over my head.

I think my assumption I could catch up with or understand the magic of a world with its own history and research done into magic in less than a year sounds really fucking stupid.

Note to self: arrogance just leads to feeling like an idiot.

But... here's my concern.

What is this archway doing?

I watched as, in the physical realm, a small dot of white light began to form where all the magic was compressed.