In a haze, he felt himself hurtling through the air in a familiar direction. The Endless Sea was without any landmarks, but one thing that could be used to keep track of where one was was the intensity of the wind. Where he was going, the winds seemed calm, and if his mind wasn't still drowned in the vision, he would have recognized his destination right away.
Instead, he only saw what it was when he looked up at its entrance. The lost city of Angaria was as lost as ever, drifting in the sea in what might look like an aimless fashion at first, but possessing a pattern that could only be deciphered by the system which had established it. All he needed to do was raise his hand to enter it, and soon, he was standing in front of the vault inside which he had first met the being that had told him about the true identity of what had felt like Angaria's greatest threat.
Even the memory of such important things did not affect him in the state he was. All that concerned him was the sweet woman whom he had ignored for so long, so when he raised his hand again and made the vault's door open, his breath caught and he finally understood exactly what his backup plan was.
Initially, the vault had been a small place in which only 20 or so people would have been able to fit, standing. Now, it had been expanded to more than a hundred times that size. Windows were set at its far reaches, showing the place which had been sacrificed for the expansion: the empty city that had been built to house talented Angarians who would hide and train to take back the continent in the future.
'There's gonna be no more continent… what the hell will anyone take back?'
Hopeless thoughts like these kept coming to him, but he tried to push them away while he staggered in a particular direction. All around the room, the walls, the ceiling, and even floating around randomly were tiny droplets of blood that hovered above marble-like objects that glowed.
The glow was different in different marbles. In some, it was intense, and in some, it was so dim that it looked like it was about to go out.
Yet, it was fiercest in a few marbles that floated exactly in the middle of the room, and in their case, even the droplets that floated above them were lustrous and luminescent, as if the held power within.
There were nine of them, and instinctively, Daneel reached his hand forward and caught the one right in the middle. The four on either side of it started to fly in his direction, recognizing who he was, but he turned away from them and only paused to snatch a different one from one end before flying away from the vault.
He finally stopped in a small room in the part of the city that he had not touched. It had a bare stone bed and a window through which a gifted Angarian would have gazed at the city every morning after waking up, but right now, it was empty, and it even had a feeling of misery about it, as if the room could feel that it's intended occupant had died a premature death.
'This is exactly what I need.'
Thinking so, he got on the bed… and curled around the droplets of blood and the marbles, before letting the tears take over.
'My backup plan was simple, and obvious for anyone who would have thought of it… how did Drakos come back to life? All that was needed was a consciousness and a drop of blood… can't the same be done for any Angarians who die if their blood and consciousness are preserved? I thought I was so smart when I secretly took what I needed from everyone… but what did it all amount to? Nothing!'
He knew that this backup plan was one of the many strokes of genius that had come to him, but with the future so bleak, he could not stop himself from mocking it and himself. He had made himself forget that such a thing existed in case he was captured by the Church, but none of that mattered now.
He had understood much more from the vision than Erin could ever have been able to. From that hole in the middle of Angaria, he had felt the vibrations of dimensional magic, which meant that the saints were about to move to destroy them. He didn't know how or why this would happen, but at the moment, that wasn't important.
'Didn't I do everything? I tried so hard… but how can it not matter in the end? I thought I was a World Dominator for whom anything was possible… but look at me now!'
The sobs that wracked him could not be stopped no matter how much he tried. There were too many things to despair about; the deaths of Eloise and Kellor, the deaths that were soon going to happen that he could not stop, the death of Angaria that they had tried so hard to stop… and his death, as he could see no manner in which he could escape.
That pit of darkness that had been looming over him before his breakthrough to the Hero realm was back, and it had devoured him. He sunk into its depths, oblivious of everything else around him, and slowly, the desire to give up began to grow stronger.
Thankfully, the experience of overcoming it once helped him. Yet, it wasn't strong enough to get him out, and when he thought about why this was so, he saw that he did not have a reason.
It was easy to be brave when one saw a path in the darkness that could lead them out…but when everything around them was wreathed in shadow, where else could they look but down, to their damnation?
He still clung on to this thought, and slowly, he realized that he needed to find that path. It was obvious that looking forward would not do any help… so he began to look back.
He looked back to his earliest sojourn into this world of power. He remembered being powerless to change the fate of his family, and the decision that had led to him following the goal of the system, at least to reach his own goals. He had done this sort of exercise multiple times before, but now, he looked at it all with the objective to find something that might have been wrong. Something… that he could blame for the present situation, even though he knew in his subconscious that the blame would be misplaced.
He began to watch himself, judging everything without mercy. Every step, every scheme, every plan that had seemed perfect was dissected, and in this analysis, he was able to lose himself.
He forgot that his original plan could no longer stand as there was not enough Energy to revive anyone. He forgot that with the destruction he had seen in the vision, even Elysium would be unsafe, leading to all hope for the future being snuffed away in one fell move. He forgot all the people who were waiting for him, outside, thinking that they had secured victory, and without them bearing him down, he carried on.
He went over each and every thing painstakingly. He saw himself going against the King of Lanthanor, and ascending the throne. He saw himself taking control of the Kingdom of the Elves and he saw his victory over the individual who had taken over the Black Raven Kingdom. He saw all of the concepts and ideas he had brought over from Earth, and he also saw all the things that he wished he had used, yet had not had an opportunity to do so.
'I thought I would have a chance in the future to…No! Don't think of that.'
He saw the tournament that ended with him drawing the attention of the Big Four, and he saw that moment he found the fantastic might of the Basilisk's Breath when he took control of the sect passed down by Alistair. He saw himself scamming the Sect of Hedon, and he saw his plan that succeeded in stopping Ashahell.
He zipped through his confrontation against Arnold, who had looked like the very embodiment of evil, but had saved them when they had needed him most. He once again felt all of the emotions that had engulfed him when he had fought his elder brother, and he even almost smiled when he remembered that time when he had established the sovereigns of Angaria. He went through his breakthrough using the Bloodline of the Shapeshifter with pride, and the same emotion remained when he witnessed his breakthrough as a mage. All of his actions in the Order were fun to watch, as they reminded him of a time when the world had seemed so simple, but then, when events began to turn toward the war that everyone now believed had ended, he realized that even then, there had been a shadow in the corner, out of his sight, waiting to engulf him if he gave it a chance.
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