SANCTUM'S END (I)

Hannah watched from a window of a tall tower overlooking the vast swath of the Empyrion as the countless ma.s.ses began marching toward the teleportation arrays and toward the s.h.i.+ps, embarking on a journey that would become the last spark to change the current makeup of the world.

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Aaria and Cae stood by her sides, former watching with faint amazement and curiosity, while the latter still retained a rather tired expression on his face.

"--Uncle Ion... is leading all of them?" Aaria asked, glancing at Hannah.

"Yup," she replied, smiling at the girl. "Isn't he amazing?"

"... tche..." the young girl clicked her tongue, her mood souring. "Then anyone... could do it..."

"Oh? So you could do it, too?" Hannah asked with a cheeky grin.

"O-of course!"

"My, my. I should probably call Ion back, then, and have you take his place."

"E-eh?!" Aaria exclaimed, backing away a few steps, her expression fearful.

"Pfft, ha ha ha ha..."

"Y-you meanie!!"

"... should you really be teasing her that much, Auntie?" Cae asked with a bitter smile as he watched young Aaria storm away and into her room, snapping the doors close.

"Eh, it's good for her to learn she can't always have her way," Hannah shrugged. "And don't you start pointing at yourself here. Remember, she's Lino's and my kid. You're a product of two, essentially, sane people."

"Essentially?" Cae quizzed, arching his brow at Hannah.

"... eh... they have their moments." Hannah shrugged, turning back toward the ma.s.ses that had begun thinning out.

"They'll win... right?" the young boy asked.

"Hm," Hannah nodded. "It's just a matter of time. Don't worry about them."

"Right, where's brother Lino?" Cae asked. "I haven't seen him in a few days." Hannah's memory flashed briefly to the simple message she'd gotten from Lino a couple of days ago -- 'Will be off for a while. Don't be missin' me too much. And, if you do, I've left a special rod just for you under the bed'. A bitter yet sweet smile emerged on her lips as she sighed, shaking her head.

"He's off doing something," she replied in the end. "You know him. A day cannot pa.s.s with him sitting calmly on his fat a.s.s."

"... is he really okay?" Cae asked again, his tone somber, as he recalled the day he stormed into the Hall. "He seemed... out of sorts."

"I'd wager he's never in the sorts," Hannah chuckled, ruffling the young boy's hair and getting a grunt out of him. "You're too young to be worrying about the old bones of ours, Cae. Go out a bit; look for some fine ladies and begin courting them. I've no doubt El' and Eggor are expecting a grandchild any of these days."

"W-what?! I--I'm thirteen!!!" the young boy exclaimed, his cheeks flus.h.i.+ng in deep crimson. "Y-you really are a meanie!"

"Oh, my bad, my bad; it's just that you act so serious all the time I figured you were already two hundred years old."

"... tsk..."

"Ah, would you look at that," Hannah giggled mischievously. "I managed to frustrate even the ever-calm Cae. My, my, I'm quite proud of that one, to be honest."

"... I'm leaving." Cae mumbled, still rose-cheeked, turning around and walking away, leaving Hannah alone.

"... are you sure he doesn't need me?" Hannah asked the silence after a little while. "Seems a bit anti-climactic, I gotta say."

"Not yet, anyway," Astrum replied. "It seems Ataxia and he worked something out. Though I sense a discord of sorts, there is no battle intent present among the two. Rather, they're sitting cross-legged across from one another in complete silence. If I had to take a wild guess, Ataxia is showing him something."

"Ah, those two and their wild bouts," Hannah shrugged. "Leaves the woman wanting, doesn't it?"

"--perhaps he was right to leave that rod, after all."

"Oh, shut up," Hannah rolled her eyes, turning away as the last of the soldiers from the ma.s.s vanished from her sight. "Don't make me use it on you."

"I'd love to see how you'd be able to do that."

"So would I."

"So let's not."

"Where did the courage go, Astrum?"

"What courage?" the Writ replied in a hum, causing Hannah to chuckle.

"Oh well. I guess I can patiently wait. This isn't the first time the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's making me..."

**

Lino was currently staring at a star-stunning sight, a marvel of unifying shapes splintered into blocks that ravaged his view. Smoothed, sand-dyed, yet not sand-made, buildings of sorts grew like mushrooms after the rain from the earth and toward the sky. Their fronts, universally, were triangular, yet flat, blowing back into a full shape like ma.s.sively oversized and overbuilt tents.

Yet, there was a certain sense of solidity to them, with uniform, patterned windows decorating the fronts and the sides, a gigantic network of strange cables weaving in-between, through and above the buildings. Each was at the very least two hundred meters tall, entirely entrenching the streets down below in a perennial gloom -- or, it would have, had it not been for the fantastically-carved lampposts spread out every ten meters or so. Each shone a pleasant and cool shade of blue onto the streets which were made of a material Lino was unfamiliar with. It had a deep, dark shade of gray to it, yellow and white lines cutting through the streets two and sometimes three to four times.

Besides the ground-level streets, nigh every single one also had a ma.s.sive bridge overhead, or at least what Lino a.s.sumed to be the bridges, that were upheld by strange-looking pillars seemingly made out of thick alloys of iron.

A lot of what he saw reminded him of the G.o.ds' style of life back on Noterra, except far more advanced and polished --he couldn't quite put it into words.

The sides of the streets were swarmed with people -- each was at the very least two and a half meters tall, draped in one strange garb after another; from wholly transparent cloth revealing virtually everything, to flamboyant set of shapes and colors that hurt the eye, and all in-between, there didn't seem to be some sort of a social restriction on what one was supposed to wear.

"This is my home," a voice next to him spoke; the two floated midair, invisible to those beneath them, as this was simply a distant memory. "Or, well, was my home. As far as we knew, we were the most advanced species in our small quadrant of the universe. Though we'd occasionally run into some other rather advanced ones, never quite on our level. It made us conceited. Terribly so."

"..."

"We practiced our own form of magic," Ataxia continued, pointing at one man -- or what Lino a.s.sumed to be a man, at least -- standing on the corner, performing some sort of an act. He was wholly naked except for a pair of tight shoes and was currently standing on one leg, the other bent inwardly. "We called it Augmentation," the man slowly lowered his arm as the s.p.a.ce around it wiggled, the fire soon exploding from the sides of his arm, thinly so, out into the world. "Unlike Noterra, we had no Qi to rely on, so we created a technology that allowed us to manipulate the base forces of our planet. Though the limitations were plenty, and restrictions even greater, we came far with it. Never quite to the point, though, of Augmentation being more viable than our other technology during the wartime."

"... how far is this place from Noterra?" Lino asked.

"Hmm, around six million light-years, give or take," Ataxia replied. "Not that far, eerily enough."

"..." noticing Lino's blank stare, Ataxia chuckled, explaining.

"The distances in the universe are too big for the standard measurement, so we settled on using the distance the light travels in a single year -- hence, light year. In that case, one light-year is roughly equivalent to six million million miles."

"... oof. Close my a.s.s." Lino shrugged.

"Oh, trust me, in the grand scheme of things," Ataxia said. "It is beyond lucky and coincidental that Noterra was so close. Usually, you can go for tens of thousands of light-years without encountering a habitable planet. In effect, we had roughly two hundred thousand light-years around us entirely charted; beyond that, we at the very least had a rough sketch of what the things were like. We had ma.s.sive planetary defenses, several systems dedicated entirely to training our army. Yet, in the end, all of that was quite useless."

"..."

"Let's go then," Ataxia glanced at him, smiling faintly. "On the tour of my life. The last six months before Adur was to disappear... with almost everyone on it."