The Price Of A God

Empry never left the doorway as he stared at the man that had introduced himself to Rowan. "Impossible. You have died so long ago that none of this should be possible. I can not fathom why Valentine would tell no one that someone was running around using his grandfather's image. Rowan nodded along. He had been just as shocked at the revelation because of the fact that his master had told him many stories about his father in their time together. He told him of the death of his father and why it happened, as well as his resurrection and second death. There was no real reason that Rowan should believe the being in front of him, but there was one reason that he did and that was that Valentine had been here and left this being alive. There was more to it.

Leon slowly walked towards them with a smile that Rowan had seen enough on his master's face. "I will tell you it as it happened. You share my son's memories so you will understand me. When I died and was devoured by my son, I too thought that I was dead. I don't know what caused what happened next, but what I believe after all of these years is that my destruction attunement somehow stopped me from fully dying and since I was already marred with death mana, I simply existed as a remnant. Eventually the Ark would be formed and my remnant would be swept into it. In the process, I would eventually get my first body. A case of a young boy born with no soul. I took a hold of his body but it was not powerful enough. It began to break down. So I knew to survive I had to transcend the human condition."

"At the time, the first of the parasite zombies would be born and whether it be luck or not, I have been able to use their natural abilities to forge an undead body with the means to survive, becoming my true self once more. After that, I sought to right a wrong and in the process, yes, it has given rise to the necromancy association. I didn't mean to, but I needed help to bring back those that also paid the same price that I did. It was too late before I realized that the regular human body could not handle death mana. It warps the mind, but their research allowed me to achieve my goals." Rowan stood there for a moment and took in all the information. "Then what were you paying the price for?"

He was now right in front of Rowan and Rowan could feel a presence no less than his own. "The price I paid was the price of survival. Regius' rise to godhood was a plan contrived by his elders because it was seen that he was the best of us. He would rise higher than any of us. So I was asked to be the hero. In books from my homeworld the hero is always asked to sacrifice the few they love in favor of the many and because I wanted nothing but to be the greatest hero, but the sacrifice cost me everyone I loved but Regius. So in this new life, I sought to right that wrong. My son made a mistake in the making of the ark, by blocking death mana because of his experience. He has caused a break in the cycle of reincarnation that the natural universe follows. It made it easy for me to pull my family from the ruins of our old universe and make this all possible.Since he built the ark on those planes back."

Rowan had more knowledge of the soul than anyone present and even he knew the ramifications of what Leon had said, but more importantly, he had learned the very same thing in his travels in the past year. He had seen birth and death countless times throughout several worlds, and one thing was certain: something was very wrong. People's souls were getting weaker. It was a slow process, but it was happening because the souls of the dead were not being properly recycled in the universe cycle of reincarnation. They would typically feed back into the universe, keeping its cycle of mana running. The birth of new souls was the result of the birth process. A child was born of two people gently shedding parts of their soul to give birth to their child it was a process that was harmless but at the same time when a person dies and their soul disperses the power in that location would get stronger allowing for more concentrated mana output which was also something that was not happening meaning places were getting weaker than were the people, it was a flaw in the ark that needed to be fixed immediately. Because with the souls not fully cycling back into the universe, the strength was not returning or growing and, in turn, it was disastrous.

New souls were being born but the state of life was not being replenished correctly, but allowing death mana to flow as it was supposed to would allow the cycle to fully complete itself. Rowan was about to respond, but it was at that exact moment that all hell broke loose because Valentine did not know just how much his father was not connected to Empry. He could not because he had no guardian of his own yet and so he could not understand the connection. Empry's eyes glowed golden and in a blur of rainbow lighting, a figure came crashing down through the ceiling. Regius had, for the first time in a very long time, come down to the second layer. Rowan looked at the man that he had not seen in quite some time and was prepared to remove himself from the situation when he heard his master's voice. "Your mission still stands, Rowan."

Rowan's eyes narrowed to slits, and he looked at his master. "Excuse me? I know you can tell when most people are lying and through my training in the soul, it's something I've honed. Regardless of how he got here, the man in front of me did not tell a lie. Would you really have me kill your father?" There was an anger that Rowan had never seen on his master's face as he grit his teeth, but for some reason to Rowan, it looked quite odd. "No! My father died hundreds of years ago. No matter what type of entity gained his memories, it does not make him my father." It was at this time that Balthazar walked through the door past Empry and towards Regius. Regius froze in shock because he had realized the same thing that Rowan did when he fought the man. He did not reek of death mana. Death mana clung to all it touched, necromancers and their creations especially, but the revived brother of Regius had in fact been free of it, a fact his aura felt extremely pure. When it crashed over everyone in the room, Rowan realized he was much more powerful than he had earlier displayed when they fought. He did the last thing that anyone expected, though. He wrapped his arms around Regius and hugged him.

"You are no longer alone little brother, I am happy that our sacrifice was not in vain, you truly have become every bit the man we died knowing you could become but now thanks to you we got to have our cake and eat it too and you will need to accept that." Balthazar took a step back and looked Regius in the eyes. You will also have to do what they were getting ready to talk about and fix your Ark. You are weakening your own armies this way, the cycle needs to be in place, or your worlds will not properly build mana. We have a plan for that too." Balthazar went on a rant and pointed out all the holes with the current way things were on the Ark, like he had been waiting to say off of this for so long. Regius stood there weeping because regardless of anything else, he could feel on a deep level that while he had hated necromancy because of everything that happened all of those years ago. It was something he had banned on a whim and after human cultivators that practiced it would become erratic and homicidal, no one ever really questioned it. It was easy to revoke but more than that, Leon looked at the situation with a puzzled look on his face before bursting into laughter and causing the entire room to turn in his direction.

He began to howl so loudly that the whole room turned in his direction, excerpts for the one other person who had also realized something. Empry, instead of laughing, was smiling like a fool. Empry was born a guardian to Regius. Guardians were special entities born from weapons or artifacts of any kind really if they were powerful enough, but a guardian birth also relied a lot on the thoughts and feelings of the creator and Empry was born of thoughts of his father in mind. So they had both been tricked in the exact same way because of Valentine. Who better than the two of them would firmly know what an angry Regius would look like, he had been acting from the moment he arrived which meant only one thing, Regius had known about all of this already and come to terms with it way before this moment.

Empry looked at Regius fondly, almost the same way that Leon was looking at him as despite not being connected mentally, they shared the same thought. The boy who was so filled with hatred and anger had settled and become a man and he was more than capable of accepting change, hell he had been looking for help for years now, just no one was capable and necromancy truly did corrupt the human mind, but the undead mind was unaffected he did not have a solution and now the people he knew he could trust most had finally come together, but first they had to think of a new test for Rowan and at the same time once his dad was done laughing he knew that he would probably want an explanation. All the while there was a tiny Rowan Raid standing in the corner deeply confused at everything that had just transpired, while at the same time he could only shake his head. "What an absolutely odd family."