Black Magus

Executor Bowen.

First Officer of the 6th Legion.

Species: Human.

Age: 14.

25th of Trescia, 1492.

Enzithl. Central Nytholon Wildlands, Vrurian Empire.

07:30.

***

I felt honored, knowing the several hundred of us followed in the same footsteps as Master Peter. Just as he was a slave, so too were the fifteen of us; and while the Eternal Emperor wasn't directly responsible for freeing him, he was responsible for saving him.

Therein lay the reason for Master Peter boasting one of the highest populations of native Eomen among the Legions; behind Madame Opal and Lady Zakira, of course. But unlike them, we were not pious. Rather, we were eternally grateful for our freedom and sought to make the most of it by learning, exploring, and liberating those once like us. That and another reason was responsible for Master Peter's Doppelganger- Master Retep, as we called him, leading us into the dry plains of the Kasian Empire upon our descent to the Mortal Plane.

The Fighting Empire was strife with war and oppression, which in turn led to the wrongly imprisoned and the enslaved. So too, however, was Kasia home to the oasis Master Peter created last year during his mid-year trials. The winter that had since come made it take tendays instead of days to find. Yet, therein sat an opportunity for us to develop the skills needed to thrive on the surface. Therein lay an opportunity to train in battle and liberate those like us. Therein lay an opportunity to practice the basic aspects of the Monastic Way Master Peter was studying out in Shujen. Once we found the oasis, therein lay an opportunity for Master Retep to raise his tower, for us to build our settlement in a ring around it, and, in turn, develop our arts and culture; and practice.

Therein we became the Keepers, when such a small act grew into one of the most renowned practices in the Empire.

It all started when we began learning about ecology. Just as the Master had done last year, we ventured into the wilds with glass jars to make various types of vivarium. We started small, of course, with terrariums taken from the winter forests, grasslands, and mountains. As time passed, we scaled up more and more, incorporating them into our desks and tables before aquariums, paludariums, and other such structures were being fashioned into the walls of our buildings.

This combined with our knowledge gained from below and the technology gifted to us from above, coupled with the locals we've taken up as acolytes and the information spread across the networks, saw us learn about the peculiar nature of the Bodhi Tree's flora and fauna, and how they tied to the seasons.

In a sense, the Bodhi Tree only experienced summer and winter, which could last from months to years. This winter, however, was brought on by a combination of the jet streams and currents blowing in from the World Sea and Zaraxus forming his lair stone in Shujen Bay. As his deathly cold leaked out into Crater Lake, what was normally a coastline of swamps and temperate to tropical rainforests adapted to an expanse of cold bogs and evergreen trees; the savannas and deserts further in the mainlands turned into tundras and taigas, and all the flora and fauna within adapted accordingly.

By then, a month had passed and it was time to move. The Master shrank the Temple down to the size of a finger ring and led us on an arduous journey north, around the Eastern Kasian Mountains. Rather than take the roads cut into the easternmost mountain, however, we descended into the Redagh Rift to brave 271 kilometers of frigid dry air, mounds of rusted metals, and fields of compacted snow. Just as we did in the frozen desert, we began clearing out an area for the Master to raise his Temple, and then we trained in the more advanced aspects of the Omni-Elemental Way while our clones flocked to find yet more like-minded souls.

The dispersal of our enchanted equipment elevated our craft and culture to the next level shortly thereafter, allowing us to study not only the barren landscape's ecology but also its history. That history was centered around none other than the Republic of Redagh. Poachers were a near-constant threat. And with no need for the weapons and armors of steel they carried, they elected to toss them down into the rift so the travelers below could take them. In the past, they had. At one point in time, however, the scavengers stopped coming and they were left to rust in silence.

A thousand years of such a practice saw the desert be compacted into a badlands, and then further be tainted to nearly a wasteland. That left us little to both recruit or battle, but there were some outliers still; poachers and outlanders living rough where few dared travel. As such, most if not all of our time went toward practicing our various crafts and moving down the paths of our future classes. With the power of enchantments, were were capable of creating more building-sized vivariums that were both heated and cooled to prove the theories born from our studies, and therein sparked the open-ended question from our Legion's Engineer, Kunala, that changed everything.

She wondered what would happen should a wise rock be merged with a vivarium. And so, being as curious as we were, the Master shrank the temple down to a ring and, a tenday later, tossed it inside a desert terrarium.

When the temple reformed, all we bore witness to was the jar increasing to a height of ten or so meters before taking on an opaque hue, almost like marble. The jar that had once been sealed now contained an airlock-style entrance at the top, leading us down into a miniature world with a dome of solid sky. While desert occupied most of the several hundred meters of space within, the center was dominated by the deep oasis the Master created last year, straddled by the temple and ringed by the structures we laboriously constructed.

The end of that second month saw a change in our overall way of life. The Master granted wise rocks to us 15 head acolytes, then pointed us up the mountain with instructions to use manipulated air to ascend the rough terrain. Therein cemented home the benefit of teamwork, allowing us to seamlessly form and finalize the six ranks of subordinates we led. Yet, throughout the journey and after our arrival, it was demanded that we be just as capable on our own. Not just in survival and the Omni-Elemental Way, but in our culture as well.

Again, we made terrariums. Only this time, we 15 head acolytes led our many subordinates to different parts of the mountain, where we constructed temples akin to the ones of earth and water we made already. Temples of air and fire; dust, lava, and mud; mist, steam, and plasma. Again, we sealed them in massive terrariums before fusing our wise rocks with them, reducing them to portable sizes. Together, and yet separately, we led our many subordinates back to the monastery to find Master Retep standing amidst the Legion's Prime Lore Skull, Firma.

From Master Retep's eyes came recognition and a hundred other things aimed not at us but the largest 11 woven worlds drawing themselves into a line above Mani, with many more orbiting them still. Pangaea, our home world, was the 6th among them, right after the worlds of brass halls, volcanic falls, industrial rings, divine forests, and undying storms.

From the eyes of Firma came a solid field of light that depicted Master Peter meditating atop a strange glowing symbol in the center of a chamber of glowing roots. Cuts, bruises, and other wounds reminiscent of a life in bondage lined his body, hardly covered by the rags and thick beads he wore around his neck and wrists. Yet, his face radiated utter peace as the ethereal fires of his ki billowed around him. The violet ambiance splashed across the calm of his face was suffused with the blue-white light of a seemingly solid totem pole standing directly before him. Multi-faced eyes, mandibles, and antennae of roiling blue fire stared at him with the calmness of stone, supporting the totems of a lion, a hawk, a cobra, a dragon, and a phoenix atop its head.

Across from it was a pillar of water that ascended and disappeared without end, morphing and shifting as it rose to take the shape of a starfish, crab, sailfish, sea turtle, octopus, and orca.

To his right was a violent twister of spinning totems that spread the squeaks of a bat, the drumming wings of a hummingbird, the caws of a raven, the calls of a crane, the haws of a vulture, and the screech of an owl.

To his left was an earthen totem of an elephant supporting a giraffe, which itself supported a horse, a gorilla, a bear, and finally a badger; all shifting unstably in the tune of the Master's breath.

Beyond that elemental square, the Master's ki dug into the chamber's tiles, drawing a multi-colored hexagon with what seemed to be elemental shrines of fused elements standing at the corners. Capstone monoliths of dust, lava, and mud remained standing despite their constantly flowing surfaces while spherical ponds of swirling steam, churning mist, and roiling plasma dipped and bobbed in place.

Aside from that, there was only the Master himself, sitting as still as undead while the ethereal fires of his ki sank into those totems, monoliths, and shrines as it ebbed and flowed into the beads as something purer.

As the seconds passed to minutes, they began to grow and glow, those beads. First subtly, then with such intensity that it drowned out the violet ambiance and sent the totems into a frenzy. Blue flames licked the roots above while water splashed throughout the floor. The monoliths hissed, the shrines shuddered and the totems spun themselves into a dance; all but the earth and air totems.

They danced atop their points from the energy, tipping their towering tops from their skittering as if they were desperate to free themselves from the circle. They sought to go down and only compressed their totems or distorted their sounds beyond recognition. And so, they ascended above the square, glowing with a gray light as evermore ki ebbed into them, releasing evermore ki to flow back into the Master's beads; until they could hold no more.

The resulting surge of energy seared the chamber with the dull light. Yet, through its radiance, we could witness those totems be separated from their poles and cracked into three shards that reformed under the influence of the turbulent energy. The dying of the light saw those totem poles of air and earth sinking to their former positions, leaving two identical copies of each pole held in the metaphorical hands of the latent energies; and they smashed them.

The totem of earth smashed into the earthen totem as the air totem rocketed into the totem of air, crushing and shearing them in a dazzling display of multi-colored sparks, dancing above Master Peter's head as if they were excited by the violent buzz rattling the chamber, accompanied by howls of wind and the grating solo of stone grinding against stone. Yet still, elements sang. The groans of grating stone shifted to a screeching protest of shearing metal as the earthen mass darkened and compressed into a hardened obelisk. The howls of the wind slicing itself apart arced in pitch to the pops, hisses, and clicks accompanying the blue streaks discharging off the ethereal obelisk's peak.

When Master Peter opened his eyes to gaze upon his obelisks of metal and crystal; lightning and noble gasses, Firma shut theirs, closing the channel on the Net and in turn drawing our eyes to Mani, just as it opened with a divine light.

"Congratulations, Peter." Our Lore skull moved its mouth. But it was the Eternal Emperor who spoke, and in ways that made our spirits stir. "Or rather, congratulations, Imperator Peter Boyd, and the Sixth Legion. The Keepers."

Those words caused a disturbance in reality and our spirits alike. The mana within both condensed. The ambient mana to the density of diamond and the wells in our spirits to arcana itself. Yet both were tame compared to the beacons of divine power that erupted across the Peninsula; and from them- our Imperators, power flowed.

Into us- the first Noctis Legionaries, such power flowed. From the depths of the Darkworld in Shujen, a silent tune rippled to lap against our spirits, awakening within us, the Keepers, the 6th Legion, the powers and abilities of He we were sworn to follow. It was not an affinity core to awaken in us, however, it was closer to a warlock's eldritch ability, the evolution in our spirits, human and non-human alike, that granted us a stronger means to manipulate the elements.

The Omni-Elements.