Black Lion

Etan Za'Darmondiel.

***

Eotrom was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. It was a realm of realms. A vast canvas waiting to be painted with matter and energy rather than an endless plane of rock and water. A realm wherein spheres of material drifted in a perpetual dance through the void. A fitting domain for the Weaver of Worlds.

My world was no different. Yet it was unique to my person. It was equal to where Paradise would be on the Mortal Plane. Rotating in silence so that the light of Mani and the Iris formed around it would rise and fall across its skies daily. It was an orb of towering mountains, lush forests, deep canyons, and vast oceans infused with my power to have no power. An ascetic place where time was both infinite and instantaneous. Untamed, save for a single monastery carved in the face of a cliff.

Arcana flowed in the air, snaking through the rivers and melding into the flora and fauna of this isolated world of death made so much like the world in which Amun was raised. But that energy was denied from flowing through people. Including me. But not my clones.

My moons were dissimilar in design. First and foremost, because they belonged to those I brought to Eotrom under my wing. Secondly, because such things were required for my industries.

It is without shame that I admit I copied the designs of Ed and Iris by constructing a ring around my world. For it was there where I built a domain to wind down in luxury. More importantly, it was where I established the Astral Archives. A Dreamscape library, filled with the memories of Eotrom. The place where the tragic tale of Amun's past was stored and kept secret from the unproven masses.

It was also on that ring that I established my business, the Astral Publishing House, for up-and-coming writers or authors with a little spellbinding added into the mix.

Similarly, my subordinates dispersed to opposing sectors of that ring to erect their headquarters while their worlds remained as citadels and wildlands.

Tacnan Gemeye's moon was the most quaint of them. A seemingly barren moon with an atmosphere that made for a deep blue sky. But beneath those mountains and plains were endless caverns and tunnels made in ways deep gnomes would never believe. Then again, he was no longer a deep gnome just as I was not quite a drow. Paragons of our species, we both were. And more.

Regardless, he studied the bardic practices with the mind to found the School of Education. In a never-ending cycle, he'd find a topic that interested him and learn as much as he could. Or rather, he would learn and continue learning until he could explain it to even the most simple-minded individuals.

In other cases, he'd sit with clones of Amun and myself, creating dreamscape tomes of our histories and standardizing the teachings of manipulating mana, the elemental practices, and other mandatory arts such as flight. At other times, he watched the Mortal Plane from above or trained endlessly with my clone, developing new fighting styles for the Legions to use.

My other subordinates, on the other hand, were younger. Children by the standards of their species. Recruited for the same reason Amun recruited Leary, I was certain.

Ginku the ogre was the eldest of them. Not that such a distinction meant anything. Like any ogre would have, she formed a lush world much like mine. Only filled with much more fauna for her to hunt and eat.

Being a paragon with the same sorcery as I, however, made her far smarter and emotionally intelligent than anyone else of her kind. Her sulfurous skin developed purple splotches on her shoulders and freckles along her face. Her flesh became denser, reducing her size by a fair margin while her tusks grew thinner and yet sharper.

Turr, the bugbear was no different. Neither was the hobgoblin, Glok. Nor the goblin, Rimoire. The paragons inherited the nebulous energies of my domain and formed worlds under the impression of being the perpetual rulers of their moons. That mentality stayed even as they were educated, taught to maintain their hygiene, and began their training.

That stopped when we took a trip to Iris. There, they met the Tech Goddess. There, we all augmented our skeletons with the same treated adamantine present in Leary, further augmented with Dimensionite fingertips. Our minds had been upgraded with Data Shards to expand our mental capabilities and grant us a similar version of the 'Eternal Eye' used by Amun, controlled by a neural weave of Biogold.

When we returned to our worlds, all was different. Still, my clones trained them in the monastic arts. But the lessons proceeded a lot smoother and far faster. No longer did I have to teach the four young ones to read, count, and write. The Noctis Archives had copied itself into our second minds. Thus they took it upon themselves to become fluent in half a dozen languages. Then went on to teach others those languages.

No longer were they simple creatures. But they were creatures of the nebula. We were creatures of the nebula.

Most intriguingly, no longer were their moons untamed deathworlds. They were realms that wore the purpose of their rulers on their scabbards. Like the faces of their rulers, the moons all had speckled skies of slate-blue to purple hues sprinkled across a gilded background. Tacnan and I were the only exceptions, with skin the color of their freckles and white hair that was far more voluminous than before.

Ginku took up a form of witchcraft focused on healing the mental spirit and restructured her moon to reflect it. Every landscape from forests to deserts to cities to her very office had been carved and restructured to elicit a specific response from those suffering from mental ailments. Not to punish them, but to guide them through the healing process.

Turr returned as a Uplifter. A seeker of species deemed 'lesser' by those so often called civilized. A nebulous hobgoblin who sought to uplift feral orc, goblin-kin, Lizalfok, and kobold societies with knowledge and technology. And so it was that his moon was filled with environments befit for such creatures. Empty, for now. But soon to be filled with those slain by his hand and thus taught a better way.

Much more quaint was Glok, who took up a management position at the publishing house. Not as the business runner. As the head of the printing department. His world became a sphere banded by rainforested valleys with caps of boreal mountains. The latter of which became his operations center. Below ground, his mills made everything from minted tablets to data pads and inscribed them for distribution on the surface above.

Rimoire was a Seeker also. But a true Seeker. An unseen agent and a collector. Forever on the hunt for seeds of knowledge to feed to the Archives. Yet, so too was he an analyst. A decoder. A decipherer and in turn, a cipher. As a result, her world was the most grand of all. With learning halls as large as valleys and libraries as vast as lakes.

As for me, I returned to my ring as a student of mental witchcraft. Or, as Amun called it, Psychiatry. But merged with my abilities to look into the true version of an individual rather than only their mind. Naturally, my world was reformed to reflect this occupation. Subtly so.

The deathworld remained. My powers remained imbued within. Time still flowed without passing. Potent energies still flowed within. Powers and abilities were stripped from those who wandered the surface still. Still, it was a sphere capped in oceans and continents frozen solid. Separated, those poles were, by every biome one could think of. With naught but a sole monastery found on its surface.

There were only three apparent differences. The first and most obvious was its ludicrous size, boasting a diameter of 238,000 kilometers. The second was the vast fields of ice and stone trapped in orbit around the world. In turn forming beautiful rings that stretched nearly twice the planet's distance out into space. Lastly, was the artificial ring. Widened and expanded and still just out of reach of the planet's atmosphere but canted to encircle the world from pole to pole.

All of it. The rings. The band. The geography. Every aspect of my domain was carefully manipulated. Each sector of every region was molded to elicit a specific emotion or response in those who wandered the surface. Each square kilometer was placed under surveillance and made bountiful in terms of resources. Raw resources. Attainable only with the power of one's body and mind.

With those changes, my world became a world of testing. A deathworld of suffering.

Beauty. Ruthlessness. Danger. Cunning. Power. It had all the traits of the world Amun was born in and those who dwelled on it. And so, any who landed there would leave with the very traits born in Amun. Including his madness.

It was with this role that my world became the birthplace of the Noctis School of Excellency. And so it was only right if I was to be the first to live and suffer in that world with magic I could not use.

So it was, I landed in a thick rainforest, naked in all regards. Accompanied only by Nalyla, the jaguar I adopted in Chor.

Together, we tasted the pain of a body weakened from starvation. We faced the headaches and nausea born from dehydration. We suffered through the numbing waves brought on by the intense heat. The dreary pains of disease. All of it and more. But we fought on still. For food, we fought. For water, we snuck. For shelter, we intimidated. We got it right in time.

In time, we secured a cove near a water source. In time, I made crude stone or wooden tools to improve my living conditions and grant us the means to hunt larger creatures. In time, I began crafting more. Leaves stitched with vines to make clothes for me. More leaves were used to make a bed for both of us. I made a fire pit for warmth.

Then, the long winter came.

Together, we faced the helplessness born from watching our food dwindle to rot more than it disappeared into our bellies. We met the despair brought on by the biting cold of ingested snow and frozen sweat. We suffered through the debilitating horrors of hypothermia and frostbite. Together, we died. And only then were our mistakes revealed to us.

So it was, I landed in a vast mesa, naked in all regards. Accompanied only by Nalyla, the jaguar I adopted in Chor.

Together, we took the mistakes of our past selves and set out to find water within the lands we found ourselves in. I made the simplest of stone tools, a sharp rock and a pointy stick. I hunted enough creatures to make a decent supply along with some crude clothes. Tasks that were easier said than done. But we managed in time.

In time, I learned to stack chopped wood into simple huts roofed with hides. I made certain to gather enough wood and smoke enough food for winter. In time, I made clay pots to store food and water. I made an outdoor kitchen of clay and stone. I made baubles and toys to drive off the madness of loneliness.

Then came the natives.

Not the likes of humanoids. But animals. Magical animals. Giant animals. Paragon creatures. All out for the blood of a nebulous drow without magic, ki, or the VoidNet. Together, we came to understand the fear of being powerless against the all-powerful. Together, we understood what it meant to rage against a cruel world. Together, we died. And only then did we learn where we went wrong.

So it was, I landed atop a tumultuous mountain to once again live as a being without magic in a deathworld of the arcane, attempting in futility to develop technology with my wits and my flesh alone. I continued for seven decades. Not that time meant anything on the surface. Only the mind could age there. Only the mind could mature. Become humbled, knowledgeable, and wise.

In doing so, I did not study these crafts. I did not learn these skills. I lived just as my God's people lived, dedicated to moving through the ages of technology in the same way my God had done in our world of magic.

In doing so, a profile of my psyche was created by Ginku. And later, one of my mind was made by Iris. Both were encoded by Rimoire to be stored not in the Archives within the artificial ring. But the one in the core. For it was so that each event was the effect of my realized dream.

It began after my world and moons were formed for the first time. As Amun did, I sent clones to each member of the Troupe. Including Amun. Meanwhile, my physical body remained in my temple with a facsimile of Amun, who gave me some introductory lessons in the study of matter and energy he called physics.

A fascinating field of study, without a doubt. Yet, it was put on hold in favor of me helping him construct the Core Annex. More specifically, for one of my clones to help him while his true self accompanied me. And with him at my side, I turned my focus to the prize we uncovered in Redagh.

I had no worries venturing into the Astral Plane with him. Not by virtue of him being a god. But by virtue of him being the void. From birth, his mind could be far emptier than mine or even Abbot Eiriol's could. Resulting in the most relaxed I'd ever been when attempting to detach.

I needn't even assist him in astral projection. As I turned out, he faced the cruel way of learning. Wherein his spirit was forced from his body via an outside force- the Necro King. It was a surprise to learn he had never used it since. Though I could hardly blame him, being born with the means to both become like a wraith and slip into the Shadow Realm at will.

The Astral Plane, however, was different. It was what the Plane of Shadow was to the Wilds of Fae. The dark mirror of the Spirit Realm. A place where thoughts and dreams reigned supreme. A graveyard for the creatures both inaccurately and rightly called divine, as opposed to their sanctuary.

Even reaching it was akin to venturing into the Shadow realm. One Astral Projected. Then ascended. Once past the sky, the Mortal Plane disappeared and all became a realm of gray. Cloud-like. Incorporeal, like our bodies. Mostly, at least.

Most things were as formless as our projections. But several structures of planetary scales were said to be scattered across that infinite realm of thoughts and dreams. Namely, the corpses of spirits and the cadavers of deities. The petrified bodies of their servants- like their sphinxes.

Like Ari-Zmon.

The summoning was hardly eventful. Amun's perks only described its existence. Yet the slightest thought of that ancient name spawned a mass of stone that put my world to shame. A mere optical illusion, I knew it to be. So after a slight moment of surprise, I only saw it as a large rock.

The resurrection, however, left us both speechless.

By simply thinking of the result, Amun teleported the colossal husk to my world. And upon our return, we found it drinking the energies of the realm. Both mine and his. Therein we learned the most astounding fact. Ari-Zmon was not a sphinx. Ari and Zmon were sphinxes. A bonded pair.

We needn't even try to bring them to our cause. First grateful to be freed and second reborn from our power, they immediately took on the role of guarding Amun's most dangerous secrets of technology and war. Or, as they called him, Zefroth.

We needn't even explain our black ops project. Knowing all- perhaps more than we- they tasked me with reforming this world into a testing ground. The World of Excellency. A dual-purposed world.

It was decided that this would be the world where Legionaries would come for their schools of leadership. So it was dictated that I would build structures appropriate to mold troops into leaders and commanders.

It was decided that this would be the world where Legionaries would be trained to become Non-Commissioned Officers. Where they would return for the Officer Candidacy Crucible. Where they would return once more to become Field Officers, and again to become Staff Officers, yet again to become Command Officers, and yet again to become General Officers.

It was decided that Ari would scour the planes of existence in search of those with worthy potential. She would bring them to my world to be tested openly by me and privately by Zmon. It was decided that Zmon would gaze upon those in my world and summon those who were worthy to him, in the core.

Here, on this deathworld without magic, was where the Troupe's special operatives would be recruited; including operatives for the members we had yet to recruit.

My brother's arcane terrorists. Iris' elite augmented soldiers. Blude's mafia of nation topplers. Geri's combative rescue squad. Freki's assault force. Wilson's chemical army. Rickley's spies. Reina's Children. Leary's mechanized band of militant goblin paragons. All of their recruits would be recruited or at the very least trained from here, it was decided. However, it was decided that only those chosen for my organization would remain here.

Only they would be stripped of their names and titles just as their memories would be stripped from the minds of mortals. Only they would be unshackled from the bonds of time and death. Only they would follow in my steps, living lives of suffering and awe as powerless beings in this arcane world. Only they would roam this world as scholastic warriors from childhood unto death, learning until their decades came to an end.

Only they would then be reborn as an angel of destruction wielded by our God. A Zed Force Operative.