This contains plot details from 7.0 and 7.1.
What an interesting turn this has taken...
"Consider perhaps a dense book. Everything you can see in the world around you is encapsulated in a couple of pages. Were you to turn the page, you'd find something similar but different. Keep turning and you slowly further deviate from where you began. These are hidden facets of existence that most cannot see, and what I have honed to focus on all my life. Often spirits or the spiritually acute lurk beyond the veil here, including voidsent.
"You read on and on, and eventually you reach a new chapter, a new story. This is a whole new realm, often called a reflection or a shard - within the same book, for all such realms are part of the greater whole. Worlds not utterly foreign to the Source, but their histories are their own. As well as the relative flows of time. Such is believed from where voidsent hail. From where Alexandria originated..."
... And in that regard, Alexandria's world must be exceptional.
When the search for Pakim had stalled, despite scrutiny of the Ohantum Family, I turned my attention back to Origenics and the trail of souls that flowed from there, using that to re-coordinate my friends' efforts. Further south, into Yok Tural. While I couldn't trace those souls all the way to an endpoint, the shinobi did pick up some interesting information through the Landsguard...
The City of Gold.
A common Turali legend that seemed to be considered very real within intelligence.
I shared my findings with Ashelia...
...And she was able to corroborate via an independent source that the City was in fact our destination, and that it resided in Yak T'el, a region that lines up with the souls' trajectory.
Finding the mythical City was believed to be the end goal of the rite of succession, and seems that it was connected to the world from which Alexandria came all along.
To have had an influence as to spur centuries of myth and speculation, the veil to that world must be quite thin indeed. And this, coupled with the process of the Rite, is how Zoraal Ja was able to strike an accord with Alexandria to begin with. How he became its king and arranged a merge with Yyasulani.
The summit of Everkeep was quite unlike anything I had expected... Barring the dramatic throne, it was remarkably featureless. Almost as if the head had been severed perfectly clean from the rest of the body, and I suspect that uppermost reaches of the complex had been left behind in the home world.
It felt like something else used to be there. Maybe it was lost at the time Zoraal Ja was vanquished. Is there a connection, I wonder, with the City of Gold?
I did feel a little bit too assured on information that was largely obscure, I imagine, to the wider Tural. Knowing what I've known, I didn't at the least unconvinced about the City's existence.
Still, I'm of the understanding that its location has been long-sought for a long time, a close secret - and the upper echelons of the Landsguard have been keen on keeping it that way.
I don't doubt Ashe's impeccable connections for a minute, but how would Pakim have known? How did he reach that world to set his plans in motion...?
Living Memory... Yes, that would certainly be fitting, with everything that has transpired...
...!!
"Lazuli, I have a question... There has been a lot of talk, lately, and I have met with many Alexandrians, but I'm afraid it has eluded me -- what, truly, is an Endless?"
"Well, this is mostly hearsay, but... Believe it or not, there is a thriving black market in Everkeep, and the scarcity of the neo-regulators fast made them a ripe target for shady dealings-- a scalper obtains such a device, doesn't register it, and then sells it under the table for the most desperate. Abhorrent, but amidst all of that there have been tonzes of rumors - regarding the Endless, the Cloud, the very nature of the 'Queen' herself, past and present. You see..."
Oh, kami forfend.
