The Beginning After The End

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"But this is the first time it’s ever been used,” I said, still speaking to myself. There was no one else to talk to. Not for the moment, at least.

A quick check of the mana reservoir showed that it had been consumed in its entirety, and the Harvester wasn’t yet at full power. That collection had taken centuries to gather. If the Harvester failed, I would not be able to operate it again. Not for hundreds of years, anyway. “But if that is how long it takes, I’ll see it through. To the very end.”

I calculated the collected power and the distance it would allow the Harvester to reach. I examined the expected radius, tabulating the relevant mages and estimating their power by their spellforms. The act did little to settle my nerves.

As the cluster of my senses lingered in the chamber that made up the heart of the Harvester, I had to wonder. The voice that had warned me seemed to know both what would happen to Agrona and about this failsafe. But this was a secret that only my High Sovereign and I knew. Much of it had been designed and implemented just between the two of us. Anyone else involved, for those components or rote physical labor that required more bodies, hadn’t lived beyond the completion of their assignments.

"I am who you speak to when you calculate probability.”

Those were the words the voice had spoken. What bothered me the most was that I should have been much more worried. To have a foreign intelligence present inside my consciousness was a violation, tantamount to losing my autonomy. But I hadn’t felt that way because… the presence was so familiar as to be comfortable.

The djinn had made an exhaustive study of Fate. I should know, I was meant to be our—their?—encyclopedia, or at least the table of contents. I had given myself over, sacrificed everything, to ensure our knowledge survived until a worthy successor could finally make use of it. That successor had, of course, arrived in Agrona.

I felt myself drifting into a tangent. I allowed it. In part, I recognized that this was not a process that could be rushed, but the more djinn part of me was hesitating.

It had been very strange at first, experiencing new beings entering into the—a piece of me held onto the djinn name, but I had long been conditioned to think of it as—Relictombs. That many thousands of years could pass and new people who were so similar and different from the djinn would reappear and discover our encyclopedia was the entire point, a wonderful thing—and, in those early days, also unthinkable.

I’d felt the Relictombs darken in the final days of our species. I knew the trials that awaited any who stepped through those portals, and I relished their obliteration. I hadn’t been a violent woman in life, and the remnant of my psyche now persisting in this housing certainly hadn’t been established as vindictive or vengeful.

And yet…

Something festered within the Relictombs, and so it spread within me.

After thousands of years of isolation and silence, suddenly, I was offered death and blood and sacrifice. A quiet life of scientific devotion and achievement hadn’t prepared me to process the accompanying rush of such stimulation.

It wasn’t until mages began to rip me out of the Relictombs and transport me back piece by piece that I understood what the birth of a new society of mages truly meant.

But Agrona changed everything.

He’d already learned much of the djinn and our genocide at the hands of the dragons. He wanted to use our technology to empower his people, who he would protect from the dragons at all costs. He’d already been experimenting with the intermingling of asuran blood with these new people—humans, I learned. That made them more powerful, gave them a core from birth and a higher rate of awakening into the manipulation of mana.

It was the runes, a continuation or transformation of djinn spellforms that we developed together, that unlocked the true potential of his Alacryans. With the runes, he could directly empower his subjects, circumvent their natural inclinations or abilities, enforce a kind of control that did not break them down but built them up, all while building them into my own natural capabilities.

Tracking spellforms was the primary method by which I maintained and allowed navigation of the Relictombs. For djinn, they were a unique identifier that could quickly be identified even across the sprawling expanse of the Relictombs’ many chapters. For the Alacryans, it became a network with which my High Sovereign and I could closely monitor an entire continent together.

Agrona indeed proved to be a worthy successor, and quickly made incredible use of the djinn’s vast stores of knowledge. His brilliant mind, status as an enemy of the dragons, and his willingness to do whatever it took to protect his people were exactly what the djinn had in mind when they created the Relictombs.

My calculations had remained consistent on this fact for centuries, but numbers rarely lied, and as time passed, my predictive models grew more and more insistent on a single fact: Hedging the future of magical knowledge on a single being wasn’t a sound strategy. And so I’d seeded Sylvia Indrath with knowledge of the physical ruins that acted as housings for the other djinn projections when Agrona’s servants failed to reach them. She’d been a likely catalyst, with her connections to both Agrona Vritra and Kezess Indrath.

That is where the djinn study of Fate ended. Prediction and possibility. We’d seen the potential for manipulation but never the way to reach it, at least not for ourselves.

I let the tangent end and the memory fade. When I spoke next, I was no longer speaking to myself. “Because it was never about manipulating Fate. It seems obvious in hindsight. All my equations led to an answer dictated by you. Because you are Fate. And if you appear as a voice, then I am…your fingers, kneading the world into the shape you desire?”

I knew immediately that my conclusion was oversimplified and missing the point. I took comfort in the fact that understanding the entire workings of a natural force made manifest in magic was not my goal. Fate itself had dedicated what was going to happen.

I activated the Harvester.

Mana erupted from Taegrin Caelum, so thick as to be visible to the naked eye, like light caught and molded into substance. Wave after wave of it rolled away across the mountains. As it travelled, it thinned and spread out, losing its tangibility. I didn’t know exactly what it would feel like to the Alacryan mages, but I knew what would happen when it reached them.

The pulse bore down on the populated areas of Central Dominion like a tsunami wave, moving fast as thought. Only seconds after reaching the first city, it had passed beyond the borders of the dominion. The edges began to fray, the context of the spell woven in mana coming apart. That was my cue.

I reversed polarity, and the Harvester recalled its mana.

This, really, was the incredible part. Bypassing the barrier layer of flesh, blood, and bone was one thing, but recalling so much mana back to a single point hundreds of miles away was the core concept that allowed the entire machination to function.

All that mana shuddered to a stop, then, in an instant, began the homeward rush. Many tens of thousands of mages existed in the circumference of the pulse, and I could sense all of their spellforms and, through that, the world as it existed around them. The mana projected by the Harvester sought out and collected any purified mana it could find—namely, from the cores of those people. All across Central Dominion, mana signatures went suddenly dark.

It didn’t take long for the mana to begin returning, like a net cast out to sea and dragged back aboard ship full of fish. I carefully monitored the collection rate, but my worries proved needless; the rates were well within my expectations. Still, I kept my careful watch as the mana flowed back in over the following hours.

Collection and processing took longer as the mana was absorbed into the Harvester, bringing it up to full power over the next couple days. I was confident now that a second pulse would reach all of Alacrya. Based on the population of mages, there would even be a surplus of mana. I activated several banks of mana batteries, a conveniently timed technology borrowed from the traitor, Seris the Unblooded.

The second pulse took longer, having to spread out across the length and breadth of the continent and missing only the farthest shores of Sehz-Clar.

Purified mana began to pour into Taegrin Caelum. I controlled the currents, directing it first into the Harvester itself to ensure full power, just in case. The rest was channeled downward, far beyond the chambers full of machinery or the vaults containing now-spent relics, mana crystals, and the horns of long dead basilisks. There, in the roots of the mountains, rested an isolated chamber that no one visited.

My senses, the core cluster of my awareness, moved down through the fortress along with the mana until most of me was within that dark chamber.

Lighting artifacts flickered to life, bringing into view a hexagonal room twenty-four feet across and half that in height. The walls were heavily etched stone inlaid with a combination of precious metals, ivory, and charwood layered thick with spells. Hidden within the ground outside the room, each wall continued, coming to six hidden points. No magic, neither mana- or aether-born, could locate this chamber from the outside, and no bombardment could penetrate it. The shifting of the stone and soil wouldn’t crack it, and no burrowing creature would approach within a mile of these walls. The layers of spells were so thick and complex that even if half of them were damaged or decayed with time, the above would remain true.

The chamber was empty except for a single feature.

At the chamber’s perfect mathematical center, a frozen waterfall of bright blue liquid rose from floor to ceiling, ringed by complex patterns of runes inlaid with rust-red metal. A silhouette floated within the bright blue fluid.

Runes along the walls, floor, and ceiling lit up as mana filled them. The rings of symbols around the waterfall were the last to glow, and then bright white motes of mana began floating inward from the top and bottom of the cylinder, turning the blue liquid almost white.

The silhouette absorbed the mana and radiated it outwards, bright even within the luminescent surroundings of the waterfall.

A day passed. Two. I ensured the mana kept flowing and monitored the influx, but the bulk of my processes remained within that chamber. If I’d still had a body, I would have been waiting with bated breath.

I’d been alone in the fortress for weeks. I was eager for my isolation to end.

The figure inside the frozen waterfall twitched. I leaned closer, pressing the extension of my senses toward it.

Then…

The liquid began to part, separating like a curtain. Floating now in the air, a figure unfolded, flexing joints and stretching muscles that had not moved for decades. Fair skin glistened in the cool light while wet locks of hair stuck to a beautiful, sharp-lined face. Blue liquid dripped from expansive horns like antlers, splashing against the stone only to run along countless grooves and back into the sheets hanging to either side.

Slowly, bare feet settled down on the cold stone. Wet footsteps broke the silence. Mana condensed around the lithe body, and a silky black robe tumbled from the shoulders down to the thighs. Slowly, long-unused hands took hold of a golden cord and tied the robe closed. The figure stretched and twisted its neck, eliciting a sharp crack that echoed uncomfortably in this place.

I withheld myself, waiting to be addressed.

My High Sovereign strode casually across the chamber to one wall. With a wave of his hand, the wall carefully unfolded, maintaining the integrity of the layered runes and spells. He stepped through, and the wall closed again. The twin curtains of blue liquid splashed back together, reforming the frozen waterfall, and the lighting artifacts went dim.

His steps were tentative as he proceeded down a long, narrow, barren tunnel. I followed, my senses projected through lighting artifacts and stabilizing spells knit into the walls, floor, and ceiling.

At the end of this tunnel opened a narrow, empty chute, perfectly large enough for his horns to pass through without scraping the walls. The chute continued only twelve feet above him before ending in a ceiling of solid stone.

Unhurried, he began drifting upward. As he did, the solid stone melted away above, flowed down around him, and solidified below, filling the chute back in as he rose. It was a very long way, but he took his time.

I felt like I might vibrate my housing loose. I knew what he was doing, the incorrigible tease, but I played his game. I waited. I followed. I watched.

Eventually, darkness gave way to light, bare rock to worked stone and steel. He lifted into a small, unadorned chamber. Pausing, he gazed around at the walls as if searching for something.

My patience gave way. A hidden door slid sideways, opening into the room where my housing was kept. My crystal flashed brightly, and my orbiting rings whirled.

"Ah, there you are Ji-ae. I was wondering why you left me to wake along in the bowels of the

"You are not, and you have never been, funny,” I scolded, projecting my voice through the crystal matrices.

"I’m afraid I must firmly disagree with you there,” he said, smirking in a self-satisfied sort of way.

I huffed. “Hello, Agrona.”

His smile faltered, and he let out an uncharacteristic sigh. He stepped into my chamber and leaned against the wall just short of where my rings spun. A tense silence stretched between us. When he finally looked my way, his eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “Tell me everything.”

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