Episode 21: Panoramic

Armor didn’t like the lie being told. She the queen of her own kingdom, had only 6 children. It was her husband who had seven.

This boy, newly named, Sovereign, was not born of her womb.

The child had been taken from his birth mother, Elizabeth Carter. The proclaimed heir of all things illegal. The Keeper of Ikarus, not her.

“I refuse to envy you, Jade, no matter how talented your child seems,” said Armor. In the center of a small island, the Queen of Maelstrom stood alone. She was entirely surrounded by clouds.

The clouds around her displayed many different scenes. All of which held her children, and the proclaimed crowned scion. She decided not to go to the festival with her family. She hadn’t even been interested until her husband decided to attend.

She couldn’t monitor him as she could others, but Arsenal had been seen with her children occasionally within the images shown.

The clouds continued to twist as more and more of the festival filled in around her. As her children explored, more of the location would be available for her to access mentally for a period. It wasn’t until she began to look around that she realized that her husband was right about two things.

One, she should have truly trained the ability more. Half the time she found herself interested in something around her, the sight would disappear before she could analyze the items or luxuries.

While the second was that she should have gone. The place was filled with value and things were incredibly cheap—as far as she could tell.

Her youngest, Alexander, had already spent over a million credits on food alone. The bottomless pit that was his stomach should hold more praise than the amount spent with how affordable the different cuisines made were.

Armor was astonished at the varieties of different styles of foods, as most seemed to be from different cities, countries, and seemingly even different realms.

This was proven by the Celestials of Western Winds, whose food practices were known to be the strictest in nearly all the known realms’ love for one of the food booths. Many other cultures with heavy foreign-based food preferences also seemed to be wrangled into a single food stall or station. Which made Armor wonder if Arson had designed things with all tastes in mind.

This was something that would normally be impossible, but when Armor thought of Elizabeth Aurora Carter, she recognized the potential impossibility of the thought being more probable than improbable.

Her eyes followed Axis, her fourth-born. The girl only had a mind for beauty and fashion. So when she heard that her youngest brother had successfully started his own clothing brand before her, she was immediately interested in how.

Armor had told the girl it was as simple as access and resources, with a pinch of reputation. Arson was an unknown factor, which created buzz, and from what Armor could see about him thus far, he branded himself well.

She’d thought that her normal grains of knowledge would satiate the girl, but it hadn’t, and now Axis was being followed by a train of followers and baggage.

She’d lost herself in the clothes from worlds seemingly forgotten by most. Revived by her youngest brother, the clothes were treasures his older sister would cherish forever. Unlike most fashionistas, Axis actually wore all of her clothes.

The girl changed constantly and had even changed 3 times since she’d arrived at the festival grounds outside the Junkyard of Maelstrom. Seeing how Jade secretly owned the realm itself, it didn’t matter what her son was allowed to do with the land. It was theirs to do with as they wanted.

For their accomplishments, the Dragon and the Phoenix of the previous generation were given control over the realm and ownership over the realm prospectively.

Her husband designated the rule of all societies within, while Jade owned every spec of dirt a Cultivator’s foot could tread, down to the atom or molecule.

The new festival grounds only seemed like a small beginning for the final born son of her husband. Which only further unnerved her.

She had betrayed her husband, and he’d betrayed her in return. A mistake she now paid for, and in which she wondered whether Arsenal took pride.

The image of her son, Auto, hadn’t changed as he hadn’t moved. The boy had been frozen by the Drone station just outside the festival grounds for what seemed like the entire morning.

He was captivated completely. The drones constantly moved around containers full of what Armor assumed was trash. Armor hadn’t known why an organization called BlackHole would buy all of the airspace rights above the Junkyard and Dump, until she saw what occurred in front of Auto’s eyes.

Now when the city’s garbage was brought to be dumped, instead of a careless crop-dust of trash over the grounds, air traffic was regulated.

Different air transport vehicles flew in organized lanes and were now forced to dump their product in large containers based on the various sizes of the trash hauls. Armor could only guess at the point at the new style of trash keeping, but no one else wanted to do the job. Herself included.

Her son could probably tell her more, but Auto hadn’t answered his flatscreen since he looked at the first drone owned by BlackHole. Armor gave up hope on any information gained until she was able to speak to him later.

Then her eyes flickered toward Aura, and her mouth opened slightly in surprise. Her prize fighting champion of a daughter didn’t lose. Ever. But apparently that was no longer true.

She’d now failed to pass a no-mana challenge against a pair of fraternal and nearly identical twins three times now. She was even in a rush to jump back in the line for the challenge again, even as it grew longer.

“By the sparks of the maiden, child, it’s rigged, don’t get back in line,” said Armor as she texted her daughter the same thing on her flatscreen. The message was ignored after a glance and Aura once again chatted with the locals in line.

The objective of the challenge was to beat the twins in a 2-v-1 encounter without the use of mana, which would be nearly impossible as both of the twins practiced circular breathing.

In fact all of the attendants, guards, and even the cooks and cleaning staff practiced circular breathing.

The regeneration of all of the well-practiced was far higher than normal, while even the worst of the BlackHole staff still seemed to work at a higher than normal speed and efficiency.

The twins in the challenge took the breathing exercise to an entirely new level. The cycle of their breaths not in sync, but in flow of one another. One exhaled as the other inhaled.

To make things worse, they not only absorbed ambient mana naturally, which skirted the rules of mana use; they also absorbed the mana expelled and used by the Cultivators they fought.

It was very rare that either twin needed assistance to take down an entry, Aura being one of them, but the holograms of the previous victors gave all who walked by false hope.

Armor could tell that the children in the video weren’t younger, but they had been far less trained when the previous victors had accomplished the feat.

As Armor watched, she realized that the challenge was more of a benefit to the twins than anyone else. They got endless challenges, and for each loss, half of the credits given by each defeated entry went into a jackpot that could be won by the next victor. Yes, someone incredibly powerful could eventually come and win by a difference in Cultivation levels, but that would be seen as beneath any that Armor saw doing it easily.

The twins fought many different styles of martial forms and variant skill sets, and the grace shown in each victory they gained was honorable. They learned from every fight, and the line was now nearly as long as the one to get into the festival grounds.

When Armor’s eyes found, Amethyst, her eldest, she frowned but then tilted her head in confusion. She hadn’t seen her face at first, and both the girl’s position and recent disposition had given her a moment of fear.

Amethyst sat atop a very tall tree. The realm’s tallest tree species in fact. Most were taller than skyscrapers, but this one was merely half that height.

The perch gave her an unrivaled view of not only the festival grounds, but also the dump.

A dump that both Armor and Amethyst were shocked to see was being converted into a garden.

Trash was lifted and moved, and others worked the land. Some Cultivators used basic techniques known by even the most basic of farmers, but the magnitude of available workers was unmatched, which exponentially increased the quality of the renovations.

Amethyst smiled at the work being done, while her younger sister Ash obviously felt different.

When Armor finally settled on her second born, the only other child as driven as Arsenal, Ash, her heart skipped a beat.

Ash was in the clouds above a flying limousine, filled with the core members of BlackHole. The bomb she held of Auto’s design could have only been completed with the help of many of her other siblings. That same bomb that Armor couldn’t help but smile when she saw.

The smile only got wider when Ash, and a few others in hoods landed on the roof of the limousine as it flew toward the festival grounds.

“Good luck little Arson. You have met a flame grander than your own.”

…

Arsenal chose to hide his crown as he sulked through the festival. He’d originally been in a grand mood, but the more he saw of his unknown son’s accomplishments, the more his mood soured.

Arsenal had long had a problem with his children. Not that he didn’t love them all, more that none of his children were as versatile as himself, his wife, or any of the more refined ancients who held significant power within the CityNation of maelstrom, and or the Archon family.

His youngest son, on the other hand, had managed to gather both power, notoriety, and even an obvious wealth that made the man’s frown deepen. All his other children would have struggled to create the festival around him with the support of one another, let alone with orphans older than themselves without the privileges of being an HonorBorn.

“The Maiden plays us all for fools sooner or later.”

He felt anger build in his chest and had to force down the flames that began to leak from his pores. None of these people had taken his son from him; so their deaths wouldn’t help or bridge the gap between him and Arson. Far from it.

The best candidate for the throne, can never claim it…

The food was good. The people who catered to the public, were well-trained and precise in their duties. Even other high nobles that the king had spotted, who must have also snuck in to scout things out, seemed surprised by both the service and to realize the king was present and also incognito.

Arsenal found himself not only excited to see what was next, but also wondered if there was any way to change the fate of his family.

“I may be a fool being used by you, Maiden, but we will see who laughs when my will cracks the heavens and defies all reason. I will choose as I please, laws of the realms be damned…”

... End Volume 1...

Epilouge: The Will of Ikarus

Jade walked through the dump with the sounds of celebration in the background. She smiled at the thought of her son and what he’d done in such a short time.

With his return, her life had changed. Not only for the better. It had also become more difficult, which had only surprised Jade.

She’d learned to live with the cares of very few people but found herself more and more wrapped up with the village that was attached to Arson.

Her son must have been a leader even before even he’d known it, as Jade believed that his current group of friends wouldn’t have been so quick to follow a seven-season-old child, potentially wealthy or not.

Many scions had wealth. Even more had unfathomable power in the day and age in which they lived.

Their realm was near to heaven, and only two realms could claim to rival the amount of mana or Univers found within their realm.

One was the realm of the 21 families of Omni and Omen—Endless— which was once said to rival heaven itself. The other was her home, Cloud Lake City, a place she missed but could never return to. Something she hoped to be able to change one day with the aid of her son.

Finally she came to the black hole nearest her home and jumped in. Darkness enveloped her until gravity shifted and she was forced to turn her dive into an upward assent.

When she emerged a new landscape was revealed. A land lost to time and space. The dead world of magic and creation: SunSpire Citadel.

“If Arsenal knew I could come back here whenever I pleased, he’d spark his own pants,” said Jade as she landed. She had one destination in mind and was excited to complete her task.

There was only one way she knew of to speak with the guardian of Endless, and that was through the only Mirror of Univers she’d ever managed to find. The path was long, but she was patient and in no rush, and managed to find the mirror inside a building large enough to block out the 7 multi-colored suns above.

Once inside, she flew to the top floor, which took longer to reach than her entire trip had taken her to travel. She walked into a room with a stadium-sized pool and no walls but pillars. The space was only reachable from within, and after the Construct Tower’s trials were completed. A feat she managed while pregnant.

“Hello, PRO.”

Once in the middle, the body of a beautiful woman formed from the water and smiled at Jade before she spoke.

“Ahh, hello my favorite. Are you here to ascend and finally complete Heaven’s Tribulation, Elizabeth? You know I still believe you are the one the Fates speak of. I’m excited to see your return to the Towers of Endless,” said the beautiful woman.

Jade merely shook her head and smiled. “No, PRO. I actually need to cash in that favor you owe me.” The woman smiled and nodded before she spoke.

“Oh, and what may you have the teachers of Origin do for you, my darling?”

Jade didn’t flinch as she spoke her mind. “I need you to kidnap my son.”