Infinite Realm: Monsters & Legends

Chapter 477: Ryun

The feeling of True Death called to him from a distance as he left the battlefield and Nayra behind. The last sight of Nayra he had was her looking up at the sky where her brother just disappeared into. He wished that he could stay and speak with her, but the tugging inside of his being called to him.

But, unlike the last time he felt this, there was no sense of urgency. He felt... As if he didn't need to follow the call immediately, as if he would've arrived too early if he followed it now.

That felt strange to him, he had never really felt sensations like that.

"Everything alright?" A voice pulled him back from his thoughts, startling him.

He turned and saw Eerv standing next to him, a spear in hand and wearing dented armor. He hadn't detected him, he hadn't paid attention to anything but what he was feeling.

"Yes," he said slowly. "I'm just lost in my thoughts."

"Seems more than that," Eerv raised an eyebrow.

Ryun sighed. "It is," he said, but didn't elaborate.

"You have grown stronger, a lot stronger. I always knew you would," Eerv said, his eyes turned to look back toward the battlefield. Ryun turned to look in the same direction.

"It was what I had promised," Ryun said. "I am sorry that you weren't there to see it."

"Knowing that I played at least some small part in setting the Sect and my people on that path is enough. Knowing that my son grows stronger with the Sect is a boon."

The two of them had spent some time talking about the past, of the things that happened after his death.

"You've gone through much," Eerv said.

"Only what I had to," Ryun said. "But there is a lot of danger ahead. I need to be ready for it. It's why I came to this place, to learn."

"There isn't anything that I can teach you that would help. You would be better served to seek out some of the older warriors here, not all of them visit the battlefield, though after today I reckon that they will regret that decision. Those six had pushed themselves over the wall that many had spent lifetimes attempting to overcome."

Ryun glanced at Eerv and saw that he was looking at the battlefield with envy in his eyes.

"What was that?" Ryun asked.

Eerv planted the end of his spear into the ground then leaned on it, never taking his eyes from the battlefield. "That is what happens when someone reaches the peak of what it means to be a Warrior. When the Framework acknowledges their worth."

Ryun narrowed his eyes. "Where were they taken?"

Eerv shrugged. "To the next stage, as far as I know. Whatever it is after this. The place that all of us want to reach."

Ryun kept his eyes on the sky, at the place where that Wheel used to be, almost as if he could still see it. He remembered what he felt when he first laid his eyes on it. True Death had woken up, and he had felt an echo of... Anger, a sense of betrayal at what he was seeing, or at least memories of it. But he had also felt something that was a complete opposite. The part of him that was connected to the Framework, that had been him before he took on the Mantle of True Death, that part felt a sense of rightness, of a design.

One part of him felt that the Wheel was wrong, and the other that it was right. He didn't know what to make of that conflict.

The fact that there was something else after the Afterlife changed a lot of things.

"Those warriors, the way that they fought..." Ryun trailed off, not knowing how to put into words what he had experienced.

Eerv nodded. "Just watching your fight was incredible. It has probably pushed my own journey forward by years, more even," he tilted his head, his tails swiping from side to side.

"How?" Ryun asked.

"We can't advance our focuses in this place, but we can still grow in power. We can achieve feats, gain titles, learn and grow. All six of them had achieved the peak mastery of their Aspects, and they had pushed that understanding beyond."

"They were Sages," Ryun said as he realized why elements of the fight had been familiar to him. The way that he felt when Nathan used Fire, as if he was fighting against the very nature of it. It was what he felt when he watched Zach use his Time aspect.

"You know?" Eerv asked.

His question didn't surprise Ryun. Sages were rare, most people didn't even know that they existed. Only a bare handful of them was known and only to a small amount of people. Back when Eerv was still alive, neither one of them knew anything about such levels of power.

"Yes," Ryun said, his mind whirling as he tried to put the pieces together. "I know of a few."

It made sense to him how they could've achieved that here, in a place where they had the freedom to focus on a single thing, where they had no fear of death or need for any resources. They were free to focus just on furthering their knowledge and mastery. Especially if Time moved at a different pace in this place as he had been led to believe. It has been a bit over a thousand years in the Infinite Realm, but here... with people not arriving here that often, it could mean that Time in this place moved much faster.

"I've been trying to achieve the same," Eerv commented. "It has proven harder than I ever imagined."

"How long have you been here?" Ryun asked, wondering how it hadn't occurred to him to ask before.

Eerv frowned. "It is hard to tell, there is no day and night here, nothing really to show the passage of time. But, I feel like I had been here for longer than I had been alive."

Ryun nodded, he had suspected as much. "And you want to do what they had, to leave this place, through that wheel?"

Eerv looked up at the sky. "This place is... Good, but it is a simple existence. I don't need to push myself to improve, I don't need to fight. If I wanted to, I could remain sitting in the forest for all time, never moving at all. I have freedom to do whatever I want. And yet... Most of us fight, most of us try to get better. Because in our hearts we are all Warriors. Not all fight physically, to be a warrior is not just to wield a weapon. We struggle internally, we push to overcome who we were before. And I do want to change, to be better. I've spent too much of my life stuck in place, unable to move beyond. I've given credence to what I thought I knew, what those before me taught me. I failed in that regard, I never took a step that was truly my own. The first time I did was after I met you. I want to continue walking that path, even in death."

Ryun smiled. "I'm sure that you will succeed then."

"I know I will," Eerv matched his smile. "I'll go ahead and see what is behind the Wheel, and I'll wait for you there, to hear new stories that you'll have to tell."

He lifted his spear, then saluted at Ryun before heading back to the battlefield.

Ryun closed his eyes, and let his perception stretch as far as it could go, soaking in every part of this reality. Trying to understand its purpose.