The Newt and Demon

Theo Spencer,

5th Day, Season of Fire,

873rd Year of Balkor’s Betrayal

Well, the privacy of my writings is no longer in question. No living mortal outside the bond can tread in Tero’gal. Well, just to be certain I’m writing this entry in Axpashi. Yeah, it’s a strange language with many quirks. You can’t really understand it until you understand that it’s tied to the standard language of magic. Super happy I wasted time learning it, since the language of Toru’aun is nothing like this.

Thanks, Xol’sa! Ya damn space Elf.

Elves. I got a lot of those in my life now, and I’m not sure if I care for them. Yeah, alright. I’ll calm down. This whole thing with Zagmon has me feeling spicy. Tresk worked with me to defend against regular threats, but we didn’t see that coming. How could we, though? She said the Zagmon mage was level 100. I can’t imagine what the assassin was. Well, I could. But I don’t want to. He was too damn fast. Too clever.

Well, they’re all dead now. Funny how you think you know a guy. Fenian sold himself as a simple trader, although that was clearly a lie. Turns out, he’s something called a Champion. Tresk said he’s the Champion of two gods, but I’m not sure how that works. It doesn’t matter, though. We need him as much as he needs us. Does he need us? I don’t know. He brought Elves to my town to help with the labor shortage. Beefing this small town up to be something worth talking about in the Southlands.

We’ll have boats soon enough. Maybe just fishing boats but those still count. Laedria Wavecrest is our shipwright. One of those Elves brought by Fenian. All of House Wavecrest seem like hard-working people. Well, besides those trouble-makers. But they’re dead, too!

The magic contracts I force everyone to sign are working. I’d wax on about a person’s free will, but I don’t care after being attacked. That event left no scars, but it pays to be careful. I still think the crime fits the punishment with the contracts, but testing would require someone breaking those rules. It doesn’t seem worth it, when you consider the horrible beasts that came to destroy the Wavecrest rule-breakers.

I suppose I should write more about Yuri, but I just can’t find the words. In the messed up world we left behind, we were something close to friends. He remembered that after migrating to this new world, holding on to whatever we were for an absurd amount of time. His gift comes with no strings attached, right? Sure.

I got a new skill that lets me make golems. They’re great workers, and a constant trickle of experience. I’ll take the skill that lets me deconstruct reagents when I hit level 20, which is going to be awesome. Maybe. It’s vague. My stats are leveling out. More of a generalist approach thanks to my supplementary stats from cores and skills. That was never my intention, and I won’t put more points into the other attributes. My plan is to dump things into wisdom and intelligence so I can understand these inane symbols for my new core.

Yeah, like most of Dronon magic, Toru’aun’s flavor is more like poetry than Axpashi runic magic. The book she gave me is 50 pages for just one symbol. What the hell does that even mean? Queen of Mystery. Yeah, that’s a damn good title for her. But there’s a bright side with the stuff she said. That god wants nothing to do with me! Hooray! I don’t have to sit here and worry about another one breathing down my neck.

Oh! I just had to pause my scribblings to talk to someone. A god? Said his name was Benton, which was a shock. Seemed like an Earth name to me. All the infant realms are nestled against each other, so it wasn’t as though he was a powerful god. Said he ascended at level 100, which just seems wrong. Anyway, he invited me over for a chat in his little realm but the system wouldn’t let me leave. Apparently I’m not a god.

What am I, then? How realms work is beyond me. If I had to summarize them, it’s a manifestation of something on the mortal plane. Alright, hold on. Think of planes as layers of existence. Like an onion? No, that’s a horrible analogy. Like plates stacked in your cupboard. Again, that’s just not right. How about intersecting planes in three-dimensional space. They all converge at some point, either near the mortal plane’s center, or off to infinity. But they share that common anchor point, and never converge with each other.

Planes, realms, holds. Whatever you want to call them, they seem to share the same local space. That segments them into Pantheons. Tero’gal, which is my realm, shares space with the low-level gods. They’re people who were kinda powerful in life, but not powerful enough to play with the big boys. The Prime and Demonic Pantheons are the most powerful ones. I suspect the Prime one is full of Earthlings.

Alright. I’m on a roll here. These heavenly realms intersect with the mortal realm. At those points of convergence, the god’s power can be felt. Yeah, they can influence other places in the world and maybe they can shift where their realm intersects, but that’s the important part. They cannot converge on the same spot. Well, they shouldn’t. That seems to go against the system’s rules. How did I come to this conclusion? Think back, mysterious reader. Tresk, if you’re reading this, don’t think too hard. Your brain might explode.

Drogramath said he could no longer communicate with me. Forget whether that makes sense. He’s never tried to talk to me before, except when he tried to interdict me. The Tara’hek is blocking him out. Because the planes cannot overlap. Meaning he’s ceding control to me. Why the hell would a god bow out like that?

Things are going to get interesting. I’m going to expand my realm. Bathe the entire southlands in this weird power and see what happens. If my suspicions are right, the system is going to recognize my growing power in Tero’gal and give me some upgrade options. How do I know that? Because it’s all upgrades all the time, baby. Look at everything around us. Towns, kingdoms, cores, buildings.

Well, you certainly are a mysterious reader. Coming into my realm and reading my journal. Perverse, don’t you think?

Until next time.

THEO IS A NERD. HE WRITES WEIRD NOTES IN A WEIRD LANGUAGE I CAN’T UNDERSTAND. NERD!

ALEX WAS HERE.

JUST KIDDING IT’S ME TRESK.

LOVE YOU.

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