Vescrutia: Legacy

Deep within the darkness of the Nogris Jungle lies a ghoulish white stronghold. It members revered it as a holy ground, one sacred to the touch, always emanating warmth divine in a forest of eternal night. The Southern Shadelands always seemed to Zero darker than their name implied, the pitch black darkness cast by the thick canopy only made the ethereal white of the shineoak trees look brighter. The same, white, shining oak the Acolytes used to construct their stronghold centuries ago, leveraging old knowledge shared with them by the Jaidans of the time. As Zero traveled from his Atelier to Sol Gamera, the bright white monastery in the pitch black jungle, he gained a new appreciation for the craftsmanship that the acolytes applied to any project they took on.

He approached the hand carved shineoak doors and raised his hand to knock, or he would have if the pain that shot through his bandaged appendages hadn’t locked them at his sides. Smoky bandages wrapped his hands and fingers individually, coiling around his forearm all the way up to his elbow. His face scrunched in frustration and a throaty sigh rumbled from his mouth.

“I’m baaaaack,” he projected through the door, sure the attendant on the other side would recognize his voice.

A moment of silence passed.

The grand, carved doors slowly and silently swing inward and revealed the realm within the walls clad in Vermeil light, a silvery glow drenching the forms of every individual and item within. The inner sanctum of Sol Gamera was a wide open, flat field with a number of brighter corridors opening and closing, producing and disappearing people of all shapes and sizes. The scene was busy, but not bustling, with each of the people sporting a white sash over their shoulder moving through this space from lanes between destinations in a field that might have gone on forever, or its perimeter was hidden by the foggy field that hid the corners of each inner wall from sight. Zero stepped through the threshold and the doors swung closed behind him, and the doors, walls, and fog all disappeared. It just left the field, now a more recognizable shade of green, glowing with Vermeil more gently, and the people passing through without missing a beat.

One person coming out of a corridor directly in front of Zero emerged walking away from him, but whipped their head around in search of him. They wore a mask, a white rabbit’s face with long ears flapping above their heads, and a large, hooded robe, just as pristine white as their surroundings. The mask was adorned with small, black features that gave it a whimsical character that their small stature reinforced.

“Hey,” Zero said to their backs and they turned around with a surprised peep.

“Oh, wrong way! How’d you do? It wasn’t too cold down there for you, was it?” They asked excitedly. The person in the mask had to look up at Zero, even with his modest, sub 6 foot height. The eyes of the mask made it up to his chest and its ears draped half down their back as their neck craned, but their hands were clasped expectantly.

Zero didn’t say anything, but looked off to the side nervously and held his still burning hands up to let the rabbit get a better view, but he didn’t say a thing.

“What’s this?” The rabbit asked, eyes darting between the two bandaged hands in front of them. “You’ve never had a cold, what happened to you?”

Zero laughed as his eyes drifted back to his own broken hands. “I’ve been on a special string of luck lately.”

“It’s gotta be special for you to wind up like this. Did you at least anchor the Traversing Mirror?”

“No.”

“Whew, good. I thought you were goin— What do you mean no?”

“We didn’t make it.”

“But we told you exactly where it was.”

“Yeah.”

“And you weren’t able to find it?”

“No, we did.”

“So why didn’t you Anchor it?’

“Because we were stopped by a Herald.”

“A Herald?”

“A Herald.”

“Of what?”

“The Horsemen.”

“The Horsemen?”

“Yes, the Horsemen.”

“A Herald of the Horsemen kept you from Anchoring the Traversing Mirror?”

“Actually a bit worse.”

“How much worse?”

“A lot worse.”

The rabbit’s head cocked to the side, “How much?”

“I’ll show you,” Zero said, his eyes squinting as tight as the rabbits neck craned. The pain in his hands waned since leaving Aeon, or he adjusted to the ambient burning cursing his forearms. The corrosive energy sapped energy from him and he shared that unfortunate fact with the rabbit as they took a few strides into the grass and a corridor opened in front of them with a wave of the rabbit’s hand.

They stepped through the portal of Vermeil light and emerged standing in the skies over the island at the End of the World. The rabbit looked down through their feet and got to experience a slice of Zero’s memory with a bird’s eye view.

He got to relive it with a new vantage.

They emerged in the moments after the Herald’s energy took over Zero and Zeik’s opponent and changed their attack pattern.

“What is that?” the rabbit asked, watching the cyborg streak across the frozen battlefield between the fiery giant and Zero’s own glowing sparks dancing on the ice. “That… thing isn’t supposed to be there.”

"That thing had a weapon that it used to destroy the Traversing Mirror."

Zero looked on in frustration , reliving a sweet combo move getting completely repelled by an uninvited Arceneaux guard dog. The weapon it used exuded a strange energy that drew the vitality from the living tissue it came into contact with. His hands felt dry, worn out, and rusty, drawn on by the crimson-grey aura. The guardian seemed to have been sent wit h a single goal in mind, taking the same energy and corrupting the Mirror with it. The rabbit's eyes squinted when the explosion engulfed the island in sinister light and a crimson-grey scar was left painted over the crater that occupied Iden in the aftermath.

"That's insane," the rabbit said looking down at the ominous scene, the glowing scar across the frozen waste's sandy terrain.

"You got that right" Zero said with a self deprecating chuckle, musing over his extensive new manicure. "It's not bad enough that we didn't get to Anchor the Traversing Mirror, but it looks like there's been an even bigger threat I’ve heard from The Conservatory.”

Upon closer inspection by the rabbit, it revealed a rim of flickering runes that made their jaw drop behind the mask.

"Yeah. There’s this cosmic, infinite or whatever evil that’s supposed to be the end of all evolution on Vescrutia. At least, that’s what the legends say. I’m… SKeptical of their permanence, but we ran into not one, but two of their Heralds on Aeon and walked away unscathed. At least, I think that Akundae was a Herald. He just gave off a vibe, y'know? But that's not even the worst part."

Though his fingers still burned very noticeably underneath his bandages, Zero was able to keep his banter light enough to not bring unnecessary stress to his friend. After the B'halian Empire graced the Jaida Coast with their decree, the region fell into a quiet unrest. The return of a foreign threat pushed many of the residents to consider their fate if the army truly returned as they said they would. The rabbit was from a far off land themselves, so they didn't have a dog in the fight for the Jaida Coast against the B'halian Empire but their history with Zero afforded them the empathy to help their cause.

For a price.

The Siege Weapon that could have been unlocked still teased Zero in the back of his mind, a constant reminder than not only did he not get to use it, but he also was beat to the punch. He came back home with his tail between his legs and arms wrapped up in disgrace. Though he wasn't that hard on himself understanding the importance of the mission, he knew he needed to get back to 100% as soon as possible to prepare for the invasion. But without the Traversing Mirror anchored, the threat of destruction from beyond the grave loomed.

"Hey, you listening?" Zero asked, poking his short friend in the shoulder to break her attention from his most recent defeat. "I've heard rumors that the dead are walking around again and I don't even know what to make of that. I checked on the crew before I came here and they told me literal horror stories of things happening on the Fosfe border.

"So what now?"

The rabbit's eyes nervously met Zero's from behind the mask, but he could also see beads of sweat gathering just above their brow.

"Are you nervous?" Zero asked half chuckling.

"Yes! For you! And for the Jaida Coast! I can't imagine what the Empire would do to Sol Gamera if they successfully invaded Madeira."

"Haha, you're sweating just because the invasion? Have you not seen the worst part about this whole situation yet?"

"Worst part? What could possibly be worst?"

"Oh boy," Zero said, pointing to the weapon the Arceneaux enforcer used against him and Zeik to destroy the mirror.

“I have no idea what that thing is. And I think they still have it.”

The rabbit gasped, their anxious, cornered stare engulfed by the replay of the blast that Zeik was able to transport them from with some relative ease. Watching it from a bird’s eye view gave him a better appreciation for the powers that backed Zeik’s ambition. Without them, they might not have made it as easily to the Strait of Aeon.

The scene faded as Zero gleaned as much as he could from the replay within the corridor of light, bringing them back to the glowing field with acolytes passing through the temple unperturbed.

The rabbit’s chest heaved as they left the mind space of Zero’s latest and first recorded defeat. The rabbit knew him for quite some time, during his tenure as Dragonhead of Levaithan Order they both ventured out on some harrowing missions, and she witnesssed Zero lay waste to entire crews of bandits, ships filled with bounty hunters, armies and militias in possession of Reliqs du Ven, and nothing she saw of him before came close to matching the intensity she saw pour from him and his friend on Iden.

The rabbit felt fear. Not just from the revelationof this world bending threat, but of what Zero showed he was capable of facing an unknown threat to Vescrutia at large. Through those carved out eyes, the rabbit still saw the kind man that she met years before The Fall.

Together, they were scholars, archaeologists, battle monks even. The rabbit’s own combat prowess always paled in comparison to Zero’s, but their shared penchant for the hidden occult is what bound them together for so long, what brought the information to find the Traversing Mirror to them. But the effort she saw, the unbridled killer instinct, the smile that washed from his face, the changes made to a man she thought she knew meant more about the world changed right before her.

“So… even more Bridgeworks are at risk?” The rabbit asked, coming back to reality after dissociating staring at this person she felt nigh unrecognizable. The aloof smile was similar, but this determined spirit revealed someone new to her, someone who might be able to turn back a threat to their whole world.

“That’s what it looks like,” Zero said, shrugging and stretching, wincing when he pulled his arms back too far. “So I got some more work to do. There’s B’halia on the way, some sort of zombies I need to read up on, and I gotta get myself armed again.” He held his bandaged hands up in front of him, wiggling his fingers playfully enough for him to ignore the pain.

“If you could,” he started as he made his way to the entry corridor. “Find us a Vestige with character similar to the Traversing Mirror and I’ll see what’s up. Just because we lost a battle doesn’t mean we’re losing the war.”

Zero walked by the rabbit, still seeming like they’re in shock from meeting a new person, a warlord she might have recognized before if he’d ever needed to turn that ferocity on her. He patted her on the shoulder, winced in pain, and laughed it off before stepping toward the corridor that opens the temple up to the Lucid South.

“Not everybody on the battlefield is a combatant, remember that,” he said, acknowledging the anxiety that bled from her tensed body into the air around them. He wasn’t great at reading emotions through currents like other Venkage, but her disposition and their familiarity y gave him a better understanding of how the rabbit felt.

“I will,” the rabbit said, taking a deep breath and watching Zero walk out of the door into the perpetual blackness of the Nogris Jungle.