"Those... those trees are Apostles?" Godfrey found himself stuttering due to the shock. He still couldn’t believe his ears.
"The grave, Young King, is a teacher. And staring right at it, we saw our end if we acted. The order was stretched thin, we are the pass of our knights, they municate with us, we are the reason their abilities work, their anchor. We created them, we maintained them, we strengthened them, but that had a cost. Mana."
The Chief Alchemist looked at the trees with a soft smile. "My name is Zaun. Blessed by the dew of the mana tree, I set out on a journey, moving with visions as my direction. It wasn’t long until I met others and we, average men, set out to transform our world." Zaun smiled like he remembered those days.
"We had stopped being men. Every step didn’t take stamina but mana. What ran our bodies wasn’t stamina but mana. It was used on every single thing we did." He glanced at Godfrey from the corner of his right eye.
"You know... It’s easy to make changes when there’s an apocalypse and the world suddenly has to change. That’s the easiest way to bring about a change. All that chaos is to disrupt the people just long enough for something new to be planted. But we had to bring that change. We could be seen as mad and get beheaded, we could die to wild beasts because despite possessing the ability to see into other worlds, to access knowledge, known and unknown, to peer into the minds of many, to understand the beast and the man, to learn, unlearn, and relearn, the sword of a man could still take our lives with ease."
Zaun exhaled.
"The concept of tiers matters less to us. We were men. We were gods. And at the same time, we were more than both, we were close to a being like the mana tree. A concept that supersedes gods. It was oddly fortable being so unique, yet haunting knowing the burden on our shoulders. So..."
"We forged a lie after gathering knowledge of what we believed the Pathans will surely bow to. We made dreams and men told tales."
"The dream Apollyon had?"
"That was an exception. We left it as something forged by the mind became what it believed."
"Then what killed those Apostles?" Godfrey asked.
"I stated that we did everything on mana. Well, once that mana runs out, there is no ing back from it. These four ran out of mana before we were able to create the Apostles. We are like men on life support and those Apostles are the life support. The farther they are from us, the weaker they get and the more strained our connection is to their mana. Sending out an Apostle meant sending out an Alchemist. We were strained during the Ruination. We had just made ’He Who Must Not Be Named’ a general, the highest amongst their ranks and our hope to conquer the Ruination. But it failed."
"Why?" Godfrey probed.
"Because something else was added. He was elevated from a Fortunate One to a higher status. I believed it was to create the ultimate vessel with the opportunity to achieve what the mana tree wanted, but it affected his mind, turning him against us. He was already weak and had just bee a Hybrid, yet we lost many that day even with the help of our great Flagbearer and healer."
"After that, we still had a world to protect. Our Apostles had held a dome strong enough to keep that knight trapped for our knights to pin him down, and then we sealed him into a vault using a great amount of mana to ensure it would never be broken physically. We needed time to recover, but there were battles to fight. The toll of that battle took hold, Apollyon was the first to drift."
Zaun glanced at Godfrey. "She was the youngest, but by the time the Ruination came, she was just over two hundred. We Pathans grow stronger and better as we age. Even in our late three hundreds, we are still strong, but once we’ve struck four hundred, we die. A strong man can age in just one year and meet his end. This means we are always at our prime until we cross the four-hundred-year deadline. So Apollyon had bee a woman, a great one. From a little girl to a well-respected general. When she drifted away, we knew the reason, and I couldn’t find fault in her."
Zaun faced Godfrey pletely. "There was no judgement, firstly because we were exhausted, but truthfully, they weren’t at fault. We were, and so I and the rest of us realized the end of the order and Pathan had e. We were just fighting an already lost war."
"Two generals died, more left. But it was over before then. When the lies were revealed, it all shattered and the strongest force, a power we were proud of, collapsed in a span of months."
Godfrey was silent, then after a while, he spoke. "It was the mana tree."
"What you said is no different from blaming the waves of the ocean for losing your child. It will do you no good."
When Zaun said that, Godfrey’s face hardened. "How can you blame yourself for something you have no control over?!"
"We didn’t blame ourselves. We only wept that this was our fate."
"It was unfair!"
"Was it?" Zaun smiled softly and slowly covered his head once more. "The Unknown King stands before me. The lies became real and the dead order is once more rising from its ashes. If that didn’t happen, there might have never been you, Your Majesty."
Zaun snapped his fingers, and they returned to the meeting hall.
"If the Golden Order didn’t fall, then we would have never had a need for the real deal. You feel it’s unfair, but you were born from that. Should that unfairness be directed toward you then?"
When Zaun saw Godfrey’s face, he calmly added,
"It can’t. This will be tough, but cease your anger toward the mana tree. You feel attached because she conceived you, but she isn’t a being you can direct hate toward. That is wasting your emotions on something that will never change and you also can never alter."
"Focus on the future. Yours is restoring order and ensuring your world doesn’t fall into Ruination. So, bring me another core and face the trial."
"A trial or a submission." Godfrey’s eyes flickered.
"The being who will emerge from that trial won’t be me."
"You are the Unknown King. If your finger is found on the roadside, does that mean it’s no longer your finger?" Zaun leaned back.
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