Aether Beasts

[Author Note: I am back.]

Elsewhere, beyond the world of Analar, where mages harnessed aether limited by the design of their ancestors, twin moons shone brightly, reflecting the light of the artificial sun that had been placed so long ago when colonization for the world known as LC/0192 had been approved, just before the fourth core war.

The world's destiny numbers had been lost, and its bound fate cracked, leaving it in the clutches of original madness, that which inherently binds and unbinds all existence, what existed before mortals rose higher than the heavens and decided to tame certain laws, to control what should not ever have been controlled.

Between the two moons a lone figure, wreathed in splendent white and with a cloak as dark as the void itself, stood motionless in the vacuum. Its dull eyes watched, seeing far more than any mere mortal or even arcanists of the highest caliber.

"How interesting."

No sound was heard or could be heard naturally within a vacuum like they were in. Their words, soft and melodic, were for themselves alone, and one other. A small diamond-shaped light manifested next to them, glowing with pale red light.

"Scan complete, eleven anomalies detected, otherworld origin."

The figure continued to stare at the world below, processing the information that was now readily available in her mind. Her attached construct was not bound to her, it was a part of her. An extra limb with autonomy of its own, but still connected to her.

With dull grey hair, tanned skin, and green eyes, on many worlds, the figure would have been an oddity, but in her lands, most had similar features. Lazim, the second of her name, was unused to being surprised. Her duties as a keeper in the outer sector of the fourth layer usually meant that she experienced little to no action of any kind or any sort of issue to be solved.

She had few stories to tell of anything. The craziest she'd seen had been a world shard that had been so far gone, that all she'd witnessed was its ashes. Lazim shook her head. Eleven anomalies, on the farthest end of the outer sector and on the fourth layer. It didn't make any sense. Not just the anomalies, but how they'd arrived.

The further you went down in layers, the harder it was for traditional higher transportation, and yet she could see the tears in the world, and the lingering energy used to create them.

"Herin, please repeat your analysis of the energy residue."

It was strange for her to talk to Herin, and others mocked her for it. After all, it was her, and she only needed to think, but she'd spent fifty years with it as a bound construct before fully merging it into herself. It had only been within her for 2 years. Maybe in time, she'd drop the habit.

Others might have just visited a mind manipulator of some kind or something similar, but she had a bad history with those types of powers.

The construct began to go over what it had learned and for the second time, Lazim felt fear crawl up her spine, spread across her body in ways that she hadn't felt since her second ascension.

"Energy makeup and spectrum match indicates the most probable source, with an eighty-nine percent match, to be artificial energy originating from the second court of new flesh. Mixed in is energy source 013-2, origin world IC/042 first layer."

Someone or something had tunneled its way from the first layer to the fourth using energy that should not have been anywhere near this region. It should not ever have made its way to this world, and yet it had.

Not only that, but it might have gone unnoticed if not for her deciding to do a deeper scan which had only occurred due to a harsh word from her superiors after she'd gotten high of low-grade celestial inject pills while on the job.

"Herin, send all gathered information, starting from arrival for a routine scan to current time to higher command. This is far beyond us, me." She was so unused to thinking of them as one being. She wished she had the old Herin, even if she'd been a non-sentient construct.

"Maybe I should invest in a spirit or maybe one of those companion ai, Marsh always goes on about." Sighing, Lazim, decided she would wait before doing anything else. The last needed was for her to go down there and mess things up or…

"Or for whatever came through to find me."

That was what scared her, terrified her to her core. Something capable of this surely had to been powerful, far more powerful than here. She needed tools and external sources for all of her jumps, even from the first to the second layer. And she used the local gates for all third to sixth-layer jumps, not that she ever spent much time beyond the fifth layer.

And she had only been to the sixth layer three times, once after her first ascension, once after acceptance, and once more after her second ascension.

"Just a low-class keeper." She snorted. "Could be much worse."

At least she had ascended, twice at that, a shock to everyone around her, but most to her. Everyone had expected her to remain as she was, considering her too weak and lesser to ascend again, but she had. "But that's it." After the ascension, though Lazim had been happy, she had known she would go no further.

It had literally taken nearly everything to ascend a second time and the chances had been slim. Fate had been on her side, but she had no illusions beyond that.

Eventually, she would be able to retire, and there was always a chance of rising through other means. "Yeah right, I'm barely qualified for this duty."

As the usual self-deprecating thoughts began to plague her mind whenever she considered her position, Lazim waited above the world, her fear steady but rising. She hoped whoever came would arrive soon.

[Author Note: It's been almost two years since the chapter before this. What comes next? Simple. I'm reading over Aether Beasts, refamiliarizing myself with the story, characters, power system, arcs, and everything else. Regular daily chapters should start in a week or so. I'll also be going over many chapters to fix mistakes that should have been dealt with long ago.

I won't bore you with my reasons for having been gone for so long. I had irl issues, they're dealt with, simple as that. I'll have more info and other things for you guys soon and I've got other projects in the works. Thank you for everything, and sorry I left, but I said I would never abandon this story and I meant it.

I always come back - William Afton]