Infinite Realm: Monsters & Legends

Trust and Reasons

“The ocean is beautiful,” Erdania said, feeling only slightly awkward.

It wasn’t that she was a stranger to things like this. She flirted and seduced many in her life—and she wasn’t young. But somehow this felt… different. In part because this was the first time that both she and Selia had agreed on pursuing someone actively. And… this was a strange way to do it. In the sect they had grown up and been taught everything they knew, there was an order to things. There were layers and ranks of people who could approach one another. Selia was a granddaughter of the Sect Head, and Erdania had been a ward of a Sect Leader. They were on a higher standing, anyone who wished to approach them would therefore be… hard-pressed to do so. Not without everyone looking into them, not without their worth being weighed against the need of the sect. It was why the two of them had initiated things with others.

At first, their lovers were people that their family would approve of, people that were valuable to the sect. Never someone who could be dangerous, of course, never outside of the sect itself. They were young, and they had a responsibility. As they grew, they changed, and their first true love came from the understanding of how anyone brought into their relationship would impact the sect. Terland was… unimportant, he had no connections to anyone important, and he didn’t have personal power. They had fallen in love with him, but it was the fact that they didn’t need to think about where they stood, how their relationship would impact the sect, that truly allowed them to become what they had. After him, there was never anyone else that came even close to what he meant.

This time, they had gone about things differently. They had chosen someone for reasons that were deeply personal. Because they wanted a third, and because they believed that he suited them. If Erdania was being honest with herself, a big part of their decision was the fact that Selia and he had a connection. It made Erdania uncomfortable, of course. She could see how they interacted with a closeness that did not reflect the time they had known each other. She also knew that Selia and perhaps even Ryun weren’t really aware of it, or at least the extent of it.

They had gotten acquainted during the tournament, true, but they spoke as if they had been friends for a lot longer. Part of the reason why Erdania felt slightly uncomfortable was her own relationship with him. They had met and shared a single night, which was all that it was supposed to be. Now, through circumstances, it was becoming more. She knew herself enough that she could admit that she was attracted to him. He was her type, she wouldn’t have approached him that night if he wasn’t. They were physically compatible, and she didn’t doubt that she could come to like him more in time. Love, on the other hand was something else entirely. She didn’t know how to really go about that part.

With Selia, it had happened over time as they grew up together. As they became as close as one could be with another. With Terland it had been… discovery, and admiration in parts. He was weak, and he didn’t want anything that Erdania and Selia could offer him to grow. It was a soft love, he was a caring man, an emotional man too. He got through to Erdania in ways that not even Selia could’ve.

Ryun was the complete opposite. He was hard through and through, looking almost emotionless on the outside at least. Selia had told her that he kept his emotions from her for the most part, but that that the few times he had let her sense something she felt a deep well of emotions that were… passionate, but still hard. He was direct, in a world where everyone spoke through masks. And he was far too arrogant for his power. He had survived, though, and only gotten stronger, so who was she to judge.

The second part that made her uncomfortable was the status of everything between them. They had used an approach that they never had before. They had just come out and said what they wanted. All those words and expectations were now hanging in between all three of them. They were trying to get to know each other, but there was already this… understanding of what all of this was heading toward. In part, it made her feel in a way that she couldn’t quite understand.

She glanced to her right, where Ryun was standing next to her, looking out at the ocean. He didn’t answer her question, and that made her think that perhaps she had said something weird.

“You don’t think so?” She said after a few more seconds of silence. She didn’t like feeling like she was being ignored.

Ryun tilted his head, his eyes still on the ocean. “I guess,” he answered finally.

“You don’t find beauty in that,” she gestured toward the clear emerald water stretching in all directions around them.

“It is a matter of perspective. To you, it is beautiful, someone else might find it terrifying, others still might look at it and feel nothing at all.”

“I asked you for your opinion, not anyone else,” Erdania pressed.

Ryun’s head tilted to the other side, and his face looked as if he was considering something. “It isn’t that I don’t want to answer, I… can’t really. My way of seeing the world is not the same as yours. It is a beautiful sight to me, but I don’t see the world in the same way as others.”

“Ah,” it didn’t take long for her to figure out what he meant. She and Selia already had some suspicions, it was obvious, in the way that he looked at his surroundings. Often he wouldn’t look in the direction of what most everyone else was. Even when he looked at other people it was as if he wasn’t seeing everything that others could, or perhaps he saw more. It had to be his Ruler’s Eyes. Some could alter the way a Cultivator saw the world.

“So, what do you see?” Erdania asked, wondering if he was going to answer. The thing that they were hoping to build between them required more than just willingness. He himself had said so, and they agreed. Trust, was something that was much harder to obtain. They had it, at least in part. They had fought against near impossible odds together, that had a way of building up trust.

Ryun turned his eyes and met hers, two empty pools of black nothingness surrounded by white bored into her. “I see… Essence,” he answered her.

Erdania blinked, it was not what she expected. She didn’t even understand what he meant by that, but before she could answer he continued.

“I see it as tiny grains of sands, each type made out of a different color or shades of it. I see the air as a thin mist everywhere. The ocean dunes of sand. People as statues crafted out of a countless number of tiny grains. Colors everywhere, melding together in a somehow synchronized tapestry, each one of them representing a different Essence,” his lips quirked into a small smile. “So yes, it is beautiful to me, only not in the same way.”

Erdania had never heard about eyes that could see something like that. There were eyes that could see a lot of different things, some that could see into the future, even, other that could do things that were incredible. But… in order to gain something like that… the requirements were great.

“What did you do to get eyes like that?” Erdania asked.

Ryun turned back to look at the ocean, and then just as she thought that he wasn’t going to answer, he did.

“I got my eyes gouged out, and then when I had the chance to heal them, I decided to keep myself blind.”

For a moment she thought that he was kidding, but then she realized that he wasn’t. Keeping such wounds from healing is… hard for people like them. Over time, with the right potions or perks, everything could be healed as if it never happened. Scars remained only on those who had their souls injured. In order to keep his eyes from regenerating he had to have somehow halted the regeneration or… kept gouging them out.

“Why would you do that?” Erdania knew that many in the sects did things like what he did, though few did it to such an extreme. People would keep their eyes blindfolded while they trained, or restricted themselves with weighted clothes. There were many things that allowed one to gain the right perks. She had trained in rooms where gravity was increased, she had been pushed to exhaustion and beyond. What he had done wasn’t unheard of, but few went to such extremes.

“Why? To train, of course, to push myself. Without my eyes, I sharpened my other senses, both physical and… skill based. And in the end, I gained these eyes as a reward. My sight is a price I am happy to pay for more power.”

Erdania studied him for a moment, realizing more about who he is. She had been raised in captivity, taught only how to seek more power. After she was saved, she had continued in the way that she had been taught, training and pushing herself. She didn’t know better. But after she and Selia came together… she slowed down, and then eventually as their power topped out they stopped altogether. They’d gotten soft, she knew. Used to the lives they had, the monotony and the expected.

Ryun was someone different. Selia was already changing based on what the two of them had talked about. His ways of advancing, his thoughts on it had made her change. Erdania could see now how that could be. Sacrifice for power, it was the way of Cultivation. One sacrifice blood and sweat and tears, or time or lives of others. But in the end, the more one gave, the more power was granted in return.

“Why seek so much power? You are young, you have time, you don’t need to rush so much,” she turned her eyes back to him.

Ryun raised an eyebrow. “Don’t I? We are facing a force that could drive us all to our deaths. And who knows what else lurks in this world. Time is not a luxury that you all seem to think it is.” Ryun said, his face turning harsh, showing emotion that she had seldom seen on it. “Time is the enemy, the liar, the unseen killer of us all. It is natural, yes, and it is unbeatable in the end. That doesn’t make it our ally. Time makes us think that we always have more of it. It makes us think that we can grow in power as it passes, that we can afford to take less risks. It lies to us, and we all believe it.”

“That,” Erdania started, not quite sure what to say. She had never quite heard anyone speak that way. But the funny things was, that she did see what he meant. “I understand, at least I think I do.”

Ryun smiled. “As to why I seek power? That is a hard question to answer. It changed as I had changed; once it was all about survival, then enough power to protect, then to kill anyone in my way and protect again. Now… now it is about survival again, in a way,” he chuckled to himself and shook his head. “Until this moment I hadn’t even thought about how it turned a full circle. Yes, survival, endurance. I want to live, and I need power in order to survive. I want to witness.”

“Witness what?”

“Everything,” Ryun said, his voice grave. “To see the stories of those around me, to understand them, and perhaps see something that will help me understand myself more. I am… I am not like others. I cannot sit here with you and talk about nothing, I don’t know how to do that, I never did. I can talk about things that I feel, that I know, that interest me. I can listen, and hear your story. Witness your life through you, all the way up until its end.”

He stopped for a moment, looking away, and then sighed. “I seek power so that I can survive until the end of everything, until the moment when this world dies, when all things die a true death, when time itself stops. I want that, to see and to know the entire journey,” he turned his head and met her eyes. “I can promise you many things Erdania, to you and to Selia. I don’t care for politics, I don’t care for wars and sects and kingdoms. I care about keeping my word, I care about seeing the stories around me unfold, witnessing them at the moment of their end. That is who I am, now at least.”

Erdania nodded her head, not because she quite understood everything he said, that would take time, but because he had decided to share it with her. Him telling her meant that he too wanted more between them, trust, and perhaps a future.

A few weeks later, they arrived at their destination. The coast of lands far beyond the core and everything that Erdania had ever known. The land was… similar and strange at the same time. On one side far in the distance, she could see mountains almost touching the sky, a range that stretched as far inland as she could see. The coast was a long beach, with hills stretching beyond it. Their fleet made anchor just off the coast, and there, on their landing spot they saw a large camp with people waiting for them.

Erdania stood next to Selia and Ryun, with the rest of their team standing beyond them. Vryull stood next to Maleatus and the two wardens next to him. All seven of them were ready to head for the shore.

“I’ll stay here,” Dracael said from behind them. “I don’t know how much I trust them, and I will be of far greater use on my ship.”

Selia turned her head and nodded in the drake’s direction. “We will remain in touch, as much as we are able at least.”

Dracael nodded. “Good. We’ll stay here until you return, or until enough time passes without you sending word.”

The drake was their way home, and while she was powerful, their enemy was in the middle of the landmass. Even if there were rivers that could hold her ships, she was still most powerful on the ocean.

Erdania glanced down at the boats. Dracael’s people had them loaded with their… things, and would transport the seven of them to the shore to meet with their new allies.

“Then we are off,” Selia said.

“You know what to do once you get on land?” Dracael asked as they prepared to jump down.

“Of course,” Selia responded.

Then they were on their way.