by Jean C'est Magnifique Try Baptise
Are you ready for drunk history! I bet my editor is not!
So I don't know how Trystwater got arrested, I wasn't there. So let's just write it off as getting caught with tax evasion. That’s not my business.
What is my business is the Subtle Thread. They are a group of Arcaneologists, they work on understanding magic, with an organization as byzantium as their field of study.
You know… I am actually a member! But I haven’t gotten very high in their ranks. It’s because possessing magic affects how you can observe magic, and I have as many curses and afflictions as I have diseases… It’s a high number. Cannibalism isn't actually a healthy lifestyle, I learned that the hard way.
But one thing they learned… is flashbacks, and I am drunk… and you know what.
I have to be for this.
None of these stories are happy tales.
Of course they aren't, you saw how the last one ended…. The death of a universe…
But how do those start?
Well, it turns out, through the power of the delta of possibility, you can learn these things, it's a simple matter of navigation.
And navigate we did! And it was my idea to! To find out where the Risen Kingdom started… and it turns out… they weren’t lying.
The Risen Kingdom was in fact a nation of merchants, from a nation called Gi! Innocent manipulators of elemental magic, barely dabbling in void magic, working very hard to avoid corruption. Hardly a threat to anyone, even if they tried, and they certainly weren't…
But then they weren't to another nation… and I do not know its name, let's call it VoidA. Now, VoidA was a lot like our nation, and like our nation, it had gods. One god in particular. The Dark one (or so they called him then) a master of void manipulation and evil.
But not OUR dark one, no he has a name now, the Fallen King.
The nations of VoidA worked really hard and barely broke through the ranks and killed the god! Hooray!!! Yippie skippy!
And in so many other timelines, thats where the story ends, with happy ending.
But, we don't live in that world do we?
No, because Gi showed up, with void manipulation magic, and wouldn't that be just the perfect way for Fallen Kingdoms strongest soldiers, the void controlling Void Spinners, to create the very elementals their god corrupts to their service?
The world is like music sometimes, Notes perfectly arranged in the right sequences, sounds arranging until… crescendo.
And then… silence.
Sometimes the song is happy. Sometimes it's a dirge.
Gi would never sell their greatest secrets to those who mean their dear friends and business partners ill… but Void Spinners have their ways, and sometimes, choice is a afterthought. Gi died with honor…
But it died.
And no one remembers it.
And VoidA fell, and the King’s scattered spinners got the means to their end.
They had their armies, they had their powers… but… but they did not have their god.
And then, we went through another flashback.
Before…. Before we talk about this, I am in a sentimental mood, cider does that to you, and i need to ask. Do you have a kid, metaphorically? Literally? Does it matter? Maybe, maybe not. But I want you to stop reading, I want you to look at your child, give a good hard look at them, and think, what would you do, to protect your child.
You need to wonder this, because you cant REALLY understand what happens next until you know exactly what was lost….
Maybe i gave too much away. Maybe not.
Heres how the second story goes, it's not a happy tale, but it's not a rare tale.
You see VoidA was not simply a band of random knights and dead nations, it had a group. The Void Guardians, the void guardians manipulate void but with discipline and passionless logic, they used the calm carefulness of Gi to help manipulate the void, not to make but to heal and strengthen…
They were the Spinners, those passionate murderers, greatest enemy. And their greatest had a child, a baby, and that baby held great potential. And that vessel was just as much a mechanism for evil as it was for good. If used in the wrong hands.
I know my lords story, my father’s story.
Sometime’s, sometimes evil just wins.
The parents tried hard, they loved their child, they would give up anything to keep them safe.
It was not enough. Not really.
And when that child was in a circle, surrounded by intoning void cultists, calling upon their dead god to inhabit the vessel of someone who has a full life not yet lived…
Well, I left. I didn’t need to see how it ends. I know my Lord’s work. I KNOW how it ends.
And end it did.
And rise the Fallen King did.
Thats why it's called the risen kingdom. It’s a joke you see, a spit in the eye of dead men.
And that’s the thing, that child, a kid who would have been named Jack, is still out there, trapped in the dreaming, playing games and never growing, never knowing.
But, understanding, and warning…
For that universe we saw fall, the food of Garuk, that warning Jack gave us?
That was VoidA.
It’s not there anymore, not ruins, not dust… not anything.
Not even a gravestone marks the people who mocked the Fallen King, he is NOT a man who can let a loss go.
And thus VoidA did not become the home of the Fallen King, the void spinners moved to the universe that gave them that opportunity, the people whose circle magic can make their armies….
They live in Gi, a wasteland of void corruption.
And with Tristwater gone, Gi’s offensive was neutralized… all that left was a counter attack.
All that was left… was chapter 4
This article is sponsored by… I CAN NOT EVEN!
A award winning series of articles written by the award winning steward of New Verai… ZARINE!
Are you a bad person! Of course you are! But is it because of those orphans you killed? The muddy shoes you tracked into the feast hall or maybe YOU just made cranberry sauce in a can that one time and never got over it?
The only way of knowing is… no not self reflection are you stupid? Its by listening to Zarine!!!
You are feeble! You are stupid! But with her help you can be… BELOW AVERAGE!
Send her fan mail! Send her money! Send her letters begging for forgiveness… get NOTHING IN RETURN! Worms don't get responses!
But you get something better! You get a parasocial relationship with an advice columnist! And isn't that the real treasure?
I think so.