Prologue Chapter 6

Dusk had no idea what had gotten into Arkyn, but he was not against the wild changes suddenly happening in the human's behavior.

Akryn had spent almost his entire life underground, and the more he talked with him, the more Dusk saw repeating hints of insanity.

Whenever Arkyn got lost in thought and his words wondered, he began telling the same stories over and over again. Dusk had heard about Arkyn's parents, his training, and admission into the Royal Blackguard countless times now. 

Hearing him recount his old life so many times reminded Dusk of how the moles and shrews he hunted in the tunnels would display fits of madness as death approached. It was as if Arkyn was dying like a fatally injured mole, but his death was progressing too slowly for him to even notice it himself.

Dusk also knew that Arkyn's parents died when was young to a huge tragedy during the war and every iteration of the details seemed to worsen his mental state. Arkyn would talk about them and suddenly his forge work would have too many errors that frustrated him to no end.

By the end of day, he'd just torch his projects and walk to the [Heart of the Castle] to soothe his anger.

There seemed to be no easy way for Arkyn to realize his problems. The Fractal snake only hoped that by instigating some uncomfortable but rational thoughts, he could break Arkyn out of his loop. 

It seemed that today was the day that the loop was suddenly broken.

'I can't argue with your dream father, but what do you mean by "take the Heart with us?" Last time you showed me the [Heart of the Castle], it was a massive set of metal doors and it was covered with those strings of magic you always talk about.' Dusk realized an immediate hurdle Arkyn would have to face in his rather generalized plan.

He had lost all of his strength to the point of passing out after just leaving the boundaries for a few minutes. The solution made sense, but there didn't seem to be any simple way to walk away from the castle on the mountain without carrying an entire room on his back.

Arkyn's smirk turned into a light chuckle as he knew what Dusk implied. "You haven't actually seen the true Heart with your little, reptilian eyes. It's different from what you might expect and the arrays keeping us healthy aren't impossible to recreate."

Dusk had no idea what Arkyn meant by that as the human began tapping at the stack of books he pulled out of the wall safe. They were still sitting on the nearby table. "Especially if you have an organized codex of every array ever developed by Odbranian mages."

There were four, thick books sitting at a height that would have reached Arkyn's knees from the ground. Each one was filled with the sum of the Odbrane Kingdom's research in array creation, tool enchantments, machine schematics, and metallurgy. All of them were subjects related to Arkyn's job in the forge.

Even if he spent every waking moment practicing and experimenting, he couldn't just recall every detail of every rune that was required. Magic was a near exact science, so it was typically recorded every step of the way and published after a proven discovery was made.

That meant Arkyn didn't need to reinvent all the arrays keeping him alive, he was going to make an enchanted item to hold smaller versions of the arrays around his person and keep his body alive. All he had to do was modify the size of the arrays to surround only him.

Arkyn started flipping through the pages of the book titled the [Array Grimoire]. He glanced at several different arrays before staring off in thought, eventually exclaiming in excitement as he found the section he wanted. It was almost forty pages worth of arrays just for one purpose.

Most were concentric circles of runes that only affected the area inside itself, but a few were also arranged as a grid of runes instead. Each one was designed with a specific function and when compiled together with other arrays, they made what was known as a 'Matrix.'

"Healing magic is basically a myth, using a single form of energy manipulated with your mind to fix multiple afflictions is not possible." Arkyn said as he began marking down specific arrays he wanted.

Dusk could only sighed as Arkyn started lecturing in a tone that told him this was not going to be a short topic.

"It's no different than telling your body to grow more arms or develop an acid spitting gland.

Mana just happens to be an innate part of our bodies, you can't use it to instantly fix your body and replace the pieces that go missing. The only thing it can do is help your body mend together the busted pieces before they are gone for good."

'I am well aware actually. Not too long ago, you sliced your arms to chunks trying to create some heavy stick with a weird sphere that released invisible blades.'

"Ahh, I remember that prototype. It was supposed to be a mace that compressed air as it moved and released them as blades of wind. I did not expect the runes holding the shape of the spell to explode under such little stress. The pain of having my arms torn apart had certainly knocked me out for days." Arkyn's mind briefly recounted the pain of that failure and merely shrugged. It wasn't the first time a failure occurred, so he continued. "Thankfully, the [Golden Array Matrix] had this." 

He showed a page with one circular array inside of another. It meant nothing to Dusk as he couldn't even read regular words, let alone a collection of strange patterns and symbols. Yet Arkyn continued with his usual excitement.

"The larger array is called the [Binding Array], while the smaller one is the [Mana Compressing Array]. The binding makes your natural circuit of mana hold its most natural shape and the compression helps push the pieces back together so it stitches flesh, bone, and blood together much faster. The duo creates the rather simple [Mending Matrix], one of many within the [Golden Array Matrix]."

Dusk recalled the rather messy events and then thought back to many other instances when Arkyn had accidentally mutilated himself. Blood had gone everywhere and chunks painted the walls. 

After a few hours though, the pieces would eventually put themselves back together like they were alive and capable of simply undoing the harm Arkyn brought upon himself.

'Had you ever thought about making an array that would erase the pain that came with being put back together?'

"Yeah, with so many mages around the Odbrane Castle during a time of war, we scheduled researching pain-nullifying arrays between the reading lessons taught to Fractal Snakes." Arkyn said sarcastically.

It took a dozen mages to bring the [Mending Matrix] to such a level of repair and reassembly. It used every element available while factoring energy usage of the [Heart of the Castle]. Every rune being used to its greatest capacity and asking for more was just downright insulting to him.

"Now magic can't replace everything a body needs to survive, but it can act as a small substitute if you're clever enough." Arkyn continued while going through a few more pages. 

"Enough mana can help the natural repair process of the body to the point that it fixes the damage brought on by hunger, thirst, and even lack of sleep before the damage ever starts."

Arkyn marked all the pages he wanted before turning over to the book on [Tool Enchantments]. Half of the pages were filled with the crafting steps of certain pieces and then the required enchantments afterward. There was a short description of each purpose before every crafting process.

Arkyn only gave a glance to the weapons and kept going until he found the segment involving armors and accessories. 

"I just have to confine the Heart's mana emissions inside my body, let it saturate the area of its boundaries, and that should keep me from losing consciousness like it did before. The added bonus would be that I still don't age hopefully."

'Sounds like it is easier said than it is actually done.'

"It would be if we were starting from scratch. All it will take though is a little bit of scaling to this device right here."

Arkyn turned over the grimoire on a page with amulets and chains of various sizes. At the same time, he pulled out a ceramic tray that was filled with finely grounded sand. He grabbed a splash of oil from a barrel tucked in the corner and mixed them in the tray.

Surprisingly to Dusk, Arkyn didn't immediately leave, he instead grabbed the now barely-hot crucible from the forge furnace and reheated the metal until it was returning to liquid. Dusk watched with mild curiosity, but didn't say a word since Arkyn was actually fixated on the task at hand and didn't lecture for once.

Usually he would ramble on, but there was a focus in his red eyes that the Fractal Snake had never experienced before. It was Arkyn's silence that showed he was serious about the project and had finally awakened from his mind-muddling isolation. 

He was thinking about moving forward, with a renewed purpose now. The purpose of solving the mystery of what happened to his kingdom.