The|MULTIVERSE

EPISODE 24: Should've Killed You First

Aethenius figured his runites would suffice to some extent that searching for capable tomes alone did not. His competence in the matter had yet to fully wither under the weight of hopelessness that grabbed him by the pride and shook him down into a mental frenzy of bickering thoughts and the stubborn need to learn the unlearned. Suffice to say, they did. His rune stones actually assisted him in the peace of his body, soul, and mind.

And instead of being trapped against his will by a kinky demoness, he retired to the inner core of his conscience, his personal occult plane, and reflected in peace.

Floating in their disc frames of magical glyphs and ornate sigils, his runite stones sat in a gyratory trance within their sigil nodes and subtly vibrated in a hushed hum of raw crackling power. The fibrous power emitted coursed through the magical frame, smoldering with energy, as his hand hovered over the vivid radiation he consumed...like some magical campfire made purely of stone.

There was no hope in this lexicanum. Aethenius lost all faith in the discovery of Cruxhaven's mystical gears within his pile of tomes surrounding his cross-legged perch, not like they were 'mystical gears' exactly, then again, the contraptions behind this great bastion he now called home were extremely bewitching. Hanakin left him to his academic pining, which now turned into a deep moment of arcane meditation, and he gambled with himself that their wild and comical Sepian leader argued against her hardy demands (and most likely had him wailing in a headlock).

As Aethenius perched still, Cruxhaven's taunting power wafted around him, a moderate murmur that prickled his skin in a reminder of its presence, even when it was far from sentient. Its presence vigilant, an old guard so to say; that didn't really do much but ward as designed, and he accepted his obliviousness to its element. There was no shame in admitting that defeat...for now. How Cruxhaven's power streamed through its rock, obscure to mortal eyes, was too untouchable to him, far too vast to grasp; let alone understand. And it was that alone, that weird and uncanny force, that made it extraordinary to him.

What's taking them so long to get here? He reflected while drifting about deep in his mind. Ricven can't be that insufferable.

His diligence at this point as he waited for Ricven's return with that key to the underfoyers was tolerant enough. Not like he had a choice in the matter. Back in Varuna, his home realm, the mage preserved a private lexicanum beneath his rundown shack in Vydiel, the empire city where he was born and orphaned into slum life obscurity until Ricven and Fae discovered him. All before the Vydiel Empire themselves went on a mage hunt—for Aethenius himself was a special exception to a rule that he, by blood, herald above.

Luckily, he managed to procure most of his reading collection from his now destroyed Vydiel slum shack. The moment he and Cornelius discovered Cruxhaven's ungodly archives, that collection of his—like his miserable squalor times in Vydiel—fell into obscurity in his private quarters. He loved this lexicanum. Nose deep in the books for days on end, more than Cornelius! That says a lot.

The peace he found here and its deep pool of knowledge coddled him in solace like the underfoyers to Ricven's 'alone time', and Aethenius could not be pried from these archives unless something dire—like sustenance or the fate of some world on the verge of being bent and broken into with no remorse—overrided his passionate love for academia.

He was worst than Cornelius indeed with that. The desire to learn as much as the brain could hold that is.

But that all came to a screeching halt, for he hit a concrete wall, and instead of busting through that wall, like a young and breezy songstress charging in on a wrecking ball, he slammed against it, face first.

Hence his defeat and self-consoled meditations.

Now, this.

A string of whispers yanked him alert, prying his conscience in efforts to hit him with a breeze of incomprehensible whispers.