Elias took a slow breath, a thousand thoughts flashing through his head. He had only survived his last Incursion because of the assistance of the Commander and sheer luck.
She had given him the tool to fight in the space where he had the most strength, but it was not nearly enough. The threat he had faced was many tis greater than his present capabilities, and he could not imagine that his future Incursions would be any lesser.
Power... power... power... Elias wanted power, but the price he was paying for this privilege was high. How long would he continue on this path?
"I was the one who made the call for you to use a Greater Fragnt for your Ascension, but I only did this because I wanted to make sure that the Void Echo that is drawn would be a Supre Echo. I had no idea that you would gain one hundred pools, and so your fate was changed. The Void Echo could have taken your life, but it would not matter, because I need either your presence or its own to sustain the tear in the Heavenly Canopy above."
"You were never going to tell about this. You say I am going to die early, and this is not just because I took multiple Lumina Arts, but because you also know that I have more Incursions in my future." Elias whispered, "I don’t see how the details of my Incursions would have gone against the restraint placed on you by the Heavenly Canopy, and so you risked my life, the very essence of who I am, on the gamble that I would survive four of them, not one, four!"
Yseult’s eyes narrowed slightly.
"Yes."
"Why not tell from the beginning?"
"Because you would have refused."
Elias laughed, short and bitter. It was as if the more he knew of the Commander, the less he understood, or perhaps he understood everything she was saying, but even his mind was not rapidly coming to terms with it. Finally, he said,
"You think so little of ?"
"I think you are eighteen years old, and even though you have a calm mind, there are many things that you still lack," she replied flatly. "And I think you still believe the world owes you fairness due to how much you are willing to give, and in a fair world, that would be the case. I did not have ti to teach you otherwise before the first Incursion arrived. I needed you alive, not convinced."
Elias felt the anger he had been suppressing rise again, sharper this ti. It seed so easy for her to say these words about his fate, but he knew how close he had been to dying many tis before, and Elias’s anger ca from the fact that his survival had depended a lot on his luck.
Despite his talent and intelligence, there were many tis during his trials that the only thing that pulled him through were slight mistakes on the part of his foes.
"So I was never a disciple," he said. "I was livestock, fattened, tested, and led to slaughter if I failed."
Yseult did not flinch at his accusation, and Elias felt a piece of the hope he had inside his chest die.
"You were both," she said. "And you still are."
She stepped closer, close enough that Elias could feel the cold radiating from her like a blade held just shy of skin.
"But you survived," she continued. "You claid the second scroll. You inverted the Echo that should have consud you. And now you stand here questioning instead of groveling or fleeing."
Her silver eyes bored into his new prism ones... eyes that Elias did not even know he had yet.
"That is why I am still speaking to you instead of ending this conversation with ice. Know this, Elias, you have no friends in high places, but I took you as my disciple, and that is the only protection you will have for the ti being... until you prove yourself capable of holding up the heaven when it crashes down upon you. At this point, I am the hand that holds everything up for you and shields you against the rain."
Elias held her gaze, seeing the truth inside them, and his anger vanished. His shoulders slumped a bit as if the pressure of the Heavenly Restriction had grown heavier, or perhaps it was only the weight of her words, and the truths inside them.
He said he wanted the truth, and now the Commander was giving it to him unfiltered, and Elias found himself grateful because of this... his shoulders straightened, and he knew that he could no longer hide from what he needed to do.
"Then tell the rest," he said. "No more half-truths. No more ’you’re not ready.’ If I’m to be the person you need, I deserve to know what I’m ant to beco."
Commander Yseult studied him for a long mont, searching for sothing inside of him, and when she seed satisfied with what she saw, she nodded, "Very well. If you want the truth about my plans for you, then you shall hear them."
She turned and walked toward the far wall of the chamber,
"When the first tear opens," she said without turning, "the Canopy will bleed, and the Void will pour through. This shall happen in a decade from now at the earliest, and fifty years if it is slow. The Great Houses will feel it instantly, and they will send everything they have to seal the breach, perhaps even the Ascendants themselves would rise if the wound is deep enough."
She stopped before a massive circular window that looked out over Stormfall’s night-shrouded spires.
"They will fail," she continued. "And their failure would co not because they are weak, but because the tear will already be growing. The best ti to have stopped the tear was ten seconds ago, but the longer you live and maintain the connection with the void, the more this tear grows to the extent that it cannot be stopped. And now, your action of gaining the chance for three more Incursions has pushed the board further in our favor."
She sighed, "It is a sha that each new Incursion would have to be taken when you reach the limits of each stage so you can take advantage of the Heavenly Restriction, however, every Incursion you conquer would only accelerate the fall of the Heavenly Canopy, and depending on how fast you rise, that is how quickly everything would co crashing down."
Elias found it almost a laughable matter that the Heavenly Restriction he was made to destroy was the only reason he could survive the Fragnt of Divinity, just because the enemies he faced inside the Fragnts would only be one stage higher than him.
aning that, as he was now a Fury Forge, the mont he entered the Fragnt, he would be eting Mist Phantoms as enemies.
Perhaps this was the right thod to use the Heavenly Restrictions, but not in the way the Greater Houses were using it, where even the re thought of communicating secrets that they forbade would lead to death. This was tyranny in its purest form, and as the Commander had just taught him, there was no space for the weak to argue.
’Ah, I nearly forgot,’ Elias thought, ’about the shelter of the weak.’
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