City of Sin Book 7, Chapter 1

Moon Of Pain

As the blue moon replaced the green over Faust, Norland quietly bade farewell to spring and entered summer. Faust, the Sacred Alliance, and even all of Norland were calm, as though the entire plane had lost its fighting spirit and was lazing around.

Mountainsea was sleeping at a window all day every day, basking in the light of the sun and stars. There were occasions where she even forgot to eat for many days at a time, but the floating island never forgot her presence.

Phaser had returned to Faelor to meet with the broodmother, but Tiramisu stayed behind. With nothing to fight, the ogre had returned to his old hobby of cooking, and in other times he just found a big open space and sat down while looking dazed. Still, he was growing bigger and bigger with time; ogres as a race grew naturally, and the bigger one was the greater their strength.

Rosie was still immersed in her workshop every day, working on countless fragmented runes to turn them whole. The pearl of the Mensa Family was a title even she had forgotten at this point, but the young mages serving under her still talked about working for the most beautiful woman in the world.

Asiris had left the Sacred Alliance, heading to Ward's hometown to offer condolences and investigate the situation.

With most of his remaining followers busy training or managing their worlds, Richard had occupied the top floor of the castle and converted it into a practice room, facing the setting sun while meditating calmly in the same place Gaton liked to occupy. The butler had said that Gaton sat here for an entire day before going to the Rosie Plane, and whenever he sat here he thought about what that man would do in his situation.

The original floor-to-ceiling windows had been torn apart completely during the renovations, leaving an open ledge that felt as though one was upon a cliff. Richard liked to think that he was sitting in the arms of the world.

He sat and meditated for an entire month. The environment wasn't particularly silent— Mountainsea's lion-like grunts resounded through the place— but that only added to his inner peace. His life was moving like clockwork, where he went down once every seven days to read through the reports from his private planes. There had been no issues in this time.

Having finished mapping out the fourth orbit, he had spent all this time trying to capture a fourth star. He wanted to try and complete that process here in Norland instead of a lower plane, taking advantage of the more complicated and powerful laws here. He had found many special celestial bodies meditating in Faust, but few of them would even budge at his behest.

One question had plagued his mind all this while— why was it that a plane like Norland was so special? However, there was no answer to be found. Faust hadn't been built by humans, the city of miracles coming from a time before recorded history. Even to this day, there were many mysteries in this city that people had yet to discover.

He'd stopped keeping count of his failures after the hundredth. These powerful stars were extremely difficult to just push around, and angling them properly so they would take to orbit was an enormous task even with his blessings. There was no lack of incidents where he had gotten most of the way there but lost control. Still, he had only grown calmer with his failures; the more difficult it was, the greater the rewards.

In the blink of an eye, he approached the thirty-first day of his meditation. He didn't understand why, but there was a great sense of restlessness within him as many past events sprung to mind. Most of them were from a distant past life, where he was just a mountain boy learning how to be a good young man from his mother. However, every memory ended with the same raging flames, an image so vivid it could have happened only a few moments ago.

Even after so many years, he had failed to fulfil Elaine's wishes. Although he was now the patriarch of the Archerons, holding full control over the family, he still felt an obstacle between himself and the right to control that volcanic cemetery. Even with his accomplishments, he just didn't believe he had reached the heights of Gaton Archeron.

But there would be a day he did. One day, he would retrieve Gaton's body from the depths of the abyss and bury it at the peak of the family tombs. Right next to it would stand a tombstone that read Elena Moonsong; that was the only way he could believe he had properly fulfilled his mother's wish.

Richard was snapped out of his memories by a vast amount of blue filling his sight. An enormous star came into view, but the energy it exuded was extremely familiar. Quickly realising that it was the power of the blue moon and stuck in a state of meditation where he didn't know what was real and what wasn't, he subconsciously pulled upon the blue body just like he would anything else.

He didn't expect to succeed at all, or even get close, but the energy felt extremely subservient in his control. The enormous blue body quickly entered the fourth orbit with no issues whatsoever, and by the time he even comprehended the situation it was floating around him. Feeling the pure blue moonforce within it, he felt his heart crunch up in pain.

Secret sword of Silvermoon, the blue moon: Annihilation. The one move Gaton had seen his mother perform in person, the one move his father had taught him perfectly. This was the sword that Elena had pierced Gaton's heart with. To this day, Annihilation was the strongest of his six secret swords. The blue moon was the one he felt closest to amongst the entire rainbow.

As the blue moon finished an orbit around him, it pulsed and released a star-shaped packet of energy that headed towards him. However, this moonforce didn't integrate into his moonforce affinity tree as expected, instead falling towards the dark red web of the Archeron bloodline. Richard instantly felt a cold shock as indescribable loneliness overcame him, almost driving him to tears from the sheer desolation.

However, as the wave of depression passed, a new realisation appeared in his heart: wasn't this another kind of destruction?

Golden light flashed as the symbols of his truename emerged from the lava, Dizmason quickly expanding into a number of other symbols. The new name still meant the same, destruction, but it was more powerful and complete. There seemed to be infinite things in every symbol, almost as though he was a deity creating a new plane. There were countless mysteries to explore, different types of laws that formed fogs, strips of light, chaotic bubbles, and many other building blocks for an entire machine.

Every symbol represented a law, a force, a certain element of power. One could consider them the basic units of existence that made up a law. However, these laws themselves could combine to form new symbols, a neverending spiral of power with no top or bottom. Exploring upwards was the formation of new laws with the existing symbols, and downwards was to analyse the laws within the symbols he already had. No matter whether one went up or down, it was possible to break away from one's ties to the world.

Richard didn't know which section of this spiral he was in, nor if the spiral even had any ends. However, he could feel that every step taken would grant him earth-shaking power. Even so, the transformation of his truename wasn't done yet; a long string of symbols gathered together and pulsed, slowly merging into each other to form something new. The blue moon released another burst of moonforce in the meanwhile, making these symbols brighter and speeding up the process.

Every symbol was a major world, and every major world contained countless minor ones. Their fusion broke apart the laws within and rejoined them, building a new world with mysterious powers. Richard immediately understood that this was an unparalleled opportunity, more precious than the advancement of any tree of life. Quickly activating all his minds and blessings, he started recording the entire process.

However, this fusion was just far too complicated for him to understand. Each symbol represented myriad laws, and during the reconstruction some of those were destroyed while new ones were formed out of thin air. These changes constantly made it more complicated, and despite his multiple minds he didn't have the time to actually analyse things. Even remembering the entire phenomenon seemed nearly impossible; he could only try to retain as much as he could.

This evolution was long and complicated, and Richard devoted himself to the world of laws and cut off all concerns about his surroundings.

However, the calm of Faust was broken.

Chapter end