Symbiotic Ascension : A Progression Fantasy Adventure

It had been a bit of a disappointment to find the Guardian's dwelling destroyed. Glenn had to admit he did want things to be easy to deal with, but it just seemed like the world refused to serve him an easy-to-chew meal.

"The demons' bastion, the Last City, should be in this direction," Milena said, pointing north of their position while reading her Observer's map.

Lucian rubbed his hands together, his face breaking into an excited smile. "I can't wait to talk to the demons again! Last time, the Occult Wanderers interrupted us, so we couldn't get to the bottom of what they knew."

"Hopefully they interrupt us again," Sahro grumbled, clenching his bio-prosthesis hand. "I'm itching to take down more of these slaver ahmaq!"

Glenn rubbed his chin, smirking. "Only Lucian is a Newborn Ruler among us, yet none of us are afraid of taking down more of these bastards. Imagine when all ranks are up. Nothing will be able to stop us."

Liara glanced at the eye-filled sky, frowning. "I am not certain this confidence is good to have..."

The group rode Pebble and Whitey again, flying through the Beyond as fast as they could. The general sentiment was that the less time they'd spend in this hellish world, the better it would be. That sentiment crumbled when they found the Last City, or rather, what was left of it.

Which meant nothing.

The walls that protected the demons' bastion hadn't been impressive, but they had held against repeated monster onslaughts and the Occult Wanderers' constant harassment. Now, they were gone, just like the rest of the city—a massive crater, as if a massive bomb had exploded right in the city's center. The ground was burnt black, lava flowing through the cracks.

"What the fuck...?" Glenn muttered, jumping down Pebble's back and kneeling at the edge of the crater. He grabbed a bit of dirt, cold to the touch. The young man looked up and activated his Mana Sight. There were traces left of a powerful fire, Mana covering the area, mixed with countless weaker scents.

"Oh-ho, this looks like the sort of spells you usually cast," exclaimed Diamanes. "A good ol' city-destroying war spell! Maybe you'll be able to trade pointers with the guy who destroyed the city."

Sahro clenched his teeth, surveying the destroyed land. The crater was spreading as fast as they could see, and nothing living was walking across it.

"If I come across the monster that did this, I won't only be trading pointers with him," he hissed. "Their lives for the demons."

Liara pressed her lips together. "Many demons were living here back when we first visited this place. I can't believe they were all killed..."

"I doubt the Guardian would have allowed that to happen," Lucian said with a frown. "And there's no corpse, nor blood. While it might be a little optimistic of me, I'd like to believe they escaped with their lives before the city was destroyed."

"Or they were all annihilated by the city-wrecking spell, blood and bones," said Milena with a grim look.

The group stared at the crater for a short while, pondering what to do next.

'The Guardian's home has been destroyed. The Last City is gone too. Where else can we look?' Glenn asked himself, his eyebrows creased.

"Wait," Liara squinted, peering down the crater. "I see-feel something." She jumped down, inviting the rest to do the same. Pebble and Whitey, as was their habit, patrolled the skies to alert them in case of any incoming threats.

The crater was quite deep, but nothing hard to navigate with their powers. They quickly reached the bottom, finding what Liara had discovered with her keen senses. The elf Queen waved her hand, blowing out ashes, dirt, and stone out of her way and revealing a small pedestal made of white crystal. It looked brittle, but that obviously wasn't true, considering it had survived whatever spell had destroyed the Last City.

Liara ran her finger on the white crystal, frowning. "I can't recognize the material," she muttered.

Glenn stood beside her, his arms crossed. In the center of the pedestal was a circular hole, like a receptacle for liquid or a ball-shaped object. 'Probably the former. Some sorts of mysterious elixir?'

"Uh, Glenn, can you look at the pedestal's base?" Diamanes asked nervously.

Glenn did as complied, kneeling to study the base.

Runes. Black runes, carved into the white crystal. Invisible if not looked for directly.

The young man's eyebrows creased as he tried to read the runes. "That's not Ancient or Common Tongue... And not Black Heir - I should say elvish - language. Liara?"

The elf Queen kneeled and studied the runes before shaking her head. Lucian's face brightened, and he pushed them aside. "Let the pro take care of this!"

A few minutes later, Lucian was rolled up in a ball, rocking back and forth. "What the hell is this thing...? I have never seen this before. That can't be. I have read more books than Exan himself. I can't not know something. What is this? What is it? I'm going to go insane. What is it?"

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Milena patted the Prince on the shoulder with an apologetic expression. "If that can reassure you, I don't know what it is either. Sahro, any input?"

The dark elf looked at her, looked at the crystal pedestal, and unsheathed his katana. "Want me to try to cut it?"

The Duchess of Dela Luna blinked, digesting Sahro's suggestion before hastily putting herself between him and the pedestal. "NO! You damn monkey, why do you want to destroy everything you see?!"

Sahro shrugged as he sheathed his blade. "If it's tough enough to resist a city-destroying spell, that means it's worth slicing."

Glenn cleared his throat, awkward. "That might seem a little bizarre to you, guys, but I feel like I've already seen this somewhere."

Lucian's head snapped up in his direction, bloodshot. "WHERE?!"

"I don't know." Glenn shook his head and gave the black runes another look. "But I'm almost certain I've already seen this somewhere else."

"Yeah, that's because you did," Diamanes chuckled nervously. "It's been a long while. Remember the place where you found me? The Still Peak's ruins?"

Glenn froze and pointed a finger at his left, purple hand. "Shit, you're right! That's the same runes that covered the walls of the ruins back then! I remember reading the journal of Baron Howard's son, Jefferson Howard!"

He held his head in disbelief. "How the hell did the same runes that were in the Still Peak find their way into the Beyond of all places?!"

Lucian grabbed Glenn's shoulders, staring with a hungry look at his purple hand. "Diamanes, can you translate them? The runes?"

Diamanes remained silent for a moment, with Lucian increasingly tensing up with every passing second.

"Not all of it," he finally said. "There's only one word I can recognize, because it was everywhere back then too."

"That rune that looks like a broken half-moon? It means seal."

Lucian greedily copied the runes on a piece of paper and applied the translation next to the broken half-moon. "Seal... Damn, a new language. The Seekers will be overjoyed to realize there is even more stuff to discover in the world." He turned to Glenn with hopeful eyes. "You mentioned having a journal of a fellow Seeker, Jefferson Howard. Do you still have it?"

Glenn shook his head dejectedly. "I tried to use it as a bargaining chip with Baron Howard and lost it in the process. Sorry."

Lucian quickly deflated, looking at his sheet of paper with a decrepit expression.

Milena looked at the runes curiously. "I didn't know you were a member of the Seekers, Lucian. I always wanted to be part of them too, but I never got around to it."

The Crowned Prince shrugged as he bagged the piece of paper. "It's not like they could say no to their Prince. I'll get you a spot in once we're back in King's Rise, if you want."

The woman's eyes shone. "That's... Thank you. It's very thoughtful of you."

Glenn clapped his hands together. "Guys, it is great to try to learn more about the world, but that doesn't help us in deciding what we should be doing now."

"I disagree," Liara muttered, her eyes looking at something visible only to her. "I can feel another energy here, something familiar. I think that's the Guardian's."

Sahro grunted. "Thank the Ancestors. I can't bear to wait any longer. Where?"

The elf Queen frowned. "That's the strange part. It's all around us, like it never left."

Glenn frowned. "What? What does that mean?"

"Oh." Diamanes laughed. "I think we're going to now very quickly."

The burnt ground around the crystal pedestal trembled as the eyes in the sky turned their fleshy gazes towards them. Glenn felt an itch under his skin, pushing to try and scratch to uncover what's underneath, but he willed the compulsion away. A glance at his friends informed him that they all resisted the mind hex similarly.

White, slightly yellowish dust rose in the air, compressing into bones right before their eyes. Flesh and muscles grew on the bones, skin as purple as Glenn's left hand covering the whole. Finally, plates of black metal sprouted from the ground and stuck themselves to the regrown body with a loud clang, forming a familiar armor.

The Guardian stood up, his red, crimson eyes glowing under his skull-mask helmet. The ground trembled once more, slightly this time, and a sword flew out of ashes into the Guardian's hand. The latter turned the blade towards them.

"More... Humans?" He croaked. "The Seal... Occult Wanderers...!"

Glenn raised his hand in a placating manner, prepared to cast a spell at a moment's notice. "Do you not remember us? You helped us against the Occult Wanderers!"

"Helped?" The Guardian repeated, puzzled. His gaze slowly drifted to Glenn's purple hand, and a light of understanding appeared in his eyes. o

"You... I remember now," muttered the Guardian as he fell to his knees, exhausted. "My... Apologies. I need some... Rest."

He fell face first, collapsing in a heavy clang. A short, silent minute passed before Lucian eventually cleared his throat.

"Well, that was weird."

Glenn glanced at the sky. The eyes filling it had turned their attention away, not interested anymore in whatever happened with them. 'The Guardian's resurrection must have triggered something with them. The ancestors of the demons, all Rulers... Glenn shook his head. 'I don't like it one bit. This smells of shit and blood all over again.'

Sahro hoisted the Guardian onto his shoulders, nodding at them. "Where do we go now?"

***

Glenn dutifully ignored the stares of the Black Knights guarding Munirp's outpost in the Beyond and brought the Guardian into an empty tent. They all sat in a heavy silence, waiting for the Guardian to wake up. Diamanes did suggest looking at the face hidden beneath the skull-mask helmet, but everyone agreed it probably wasn't a good idea. Angering some sorts of immortal entity seemed like a recipe for disaster, even if they could probably annihilate his soul by calling on Nelg or feeding him to Raijin.

'I'd rather not come to that, of course.' Glenn rested his chin on his closed fist. 'But it's reassuring to know that we're not completely hopeless, even in front of powerful and immortal entities like the Guardian.'

"I've been thinking for a while," Lucian suddenly said, breaking the silence. "Don't you think the way he came back to life was a little similar to the Corpse's way? Back in that undead castle over at the Dead Lands."

Milena nodded. "I've also realized that, but I wasn't sure. Do you think they're connected?"

Glenn sighed. "Maybe. The Corpse... I am almost certain he was the King of the Dark Elves, back in the era of the First King. His katana was the same. As for the Guardian, who could he be?" He rubbed his chin, thinking. "The first time I met him was when I accidentally helped Laurance with his plot. Back then, Laurance had used Redan's blood as a sacrifice to draw out the Guardian, because..." His eyes slowly widened. "Because Redan had dragon blood, which allowed him to use both Aura and Mana. And that dragon blood angered the Guardian incredibly so!"

He felt like the truth was eluding him right when he almost got it.

"You're right," croaked the Guardian, startling them. "I knew the... Corpse, as you've so correctly called him."

"He was my friend," he whispered. Glenn could almost imagine the Guardian smiling dejectedly under his helmet. The weight of thousands of years crashed on his shoulders as the Guardian raised his glowing red eyes.

"And I forgot his name, like I forgot mine and the rest."