Ancient Pasts - Tbate

The Radical Group

Cathan Leywin Pov

As my vision flooded in a sea of purple, I could feel my mana core slowly draining. As my senses entered the stone cube, I attempted to look deeper inside. It felt like the further in I 'travel,' the more difficult it became. As I wafted through this space, the mud-like viscosity soon thickened and hardened, until eventually, it felt like I was pushing against a brick wall.

Even outside my body, I could feel my breath coming up short and ragged as if I was breathing through a wet cloth. Straining to push through this wall, stopping me from venturing forth, I pumped more mana out of my core until finally, I was able to shift through the wall.

To describe the experience of my mind touching the surface of the cuboid relic into words would be undermining the sheer complexity of it all.

Geometric shapes in seemingly random patterns and movements floated around me. I couldn't see an end to how far these polyhedrons went, but for some reason, I knew that there was a boundary within this chaos.

As more mana flowed out from my core and into this realm, the polyhedrons began to change. I was no longer just observing but affecting these geometric shapes as if my mana was resonating with these things.

I found myself lost in a trance as I tried to make heads or tails out of the patterns, movements, shapes, and sizes of all of these polyhedrons that made up this realm within the relic.

Using the mana within me as the metaphorical limbs, I combined, sorted, and categorized these shapes to understand what this convoluted guidebook was trying to tell me.

I moved these shapes around, piecing them together into a structure. After what seemed like hours, the pieces almost seemed to be presenting themselves to me. As if telling me what to do.

After even more time passed, those shapes began forming a massive rhombicosidodecahedron. This shape almost seemed to be unending, to the point even Azrael could live inside it.

Suddenly, a piercing white light forced me to try and cover my eyes. The rest of the geometric shapes seemed to be piecing themselves together, glowing white-hot themselves, and suddenly I understood.

I finally opened my eyes and stood up as an unbearable pain enveloped my hand, causing me to stop in my tracks. I looked down at my hands to see what looked like runes forming on the backs of my hands. They lingered for less than a second before the runes disappeared from view.

I could feel the runes traveling up my arm like a white-hot ball of iron before trailing down my back and legs before coming back up and pressing on the base of my spine.

Despite my pain tolerance, the pain caused by whatever had happened nearly caused me to faint. However, for some reason, I felt reassured by what had just happened.

I staggered forward, nearly losing balance at the jarring sensation. It only lasted a split second, but I knew the newfound knowledge now ingrained into my brain would last forever.

"...eation," I muttered, looking at my empty hands.

I could feel my lips curve up into a grin. "I understand now."

Lifting my shirt, I looked at my lower back and saw the silvery-white rune glowing on my spine, just above my hip. I raised my arm and gritted my teeth through the pain still lingering.

I channeled mana into the rune, a rich purple color spread through my arm and manifested into a purple flame right above my arm. I uttered a single command, and the fire shot out towards the ground and slowly created an elegant red chair.

Azrael used flames like these, but despite having a similar form, it was the complete opposite. His flames destroyed and consumed everything they touched.