There may also be some inaccuracies, since English is not my native language.
Essentially, TBATE is first translated from English into my native language — and in that process, some details are already altered to make it more understandable for us. Now I'm taking that adapted (and somewhat distorted) version, revising it, rewriting it, and then translating it back into English.
I hope you'll point out any mistakes in the text that I might have missed.
× × × × ×
From a third person
"Do it, brother! Kill him!" Ada yelled, her voice dripping with malice. As soon as she killed Riah, any impression that this purple-eyed creature was still Ada slipped away, leaving behind a cruel shadow of Ada's innocent enthusiasm.
"Shut up!" Ezra roared, turning to Ada as if he wanted to hit her. Kalon instantly stepped between them, his eyes drilling into Ezra. Granbehl's younger brother quickly obeyed, turning away from everyone and walking over to the broken mirror, staring into the void.
Ada's glowing eyes followed him, her lips twisted into a disappointed smirk. Then she turned to Kalon and put on an innocent smile. "Oh, big brother, please untie me. These ropes hurt..."
Sighing slightly, Lucius shifted his gaze to Arthur and nodded, releasing a wave of aether intent that froze everyone in place, including the false Ada.
"What are you doing?" Kalon asked through clenched teeth, the aether intent pressing down on him like a giant fist.
"I need answers," Lucius said casually. "So, I'm going to ask this... creature... a few questions." He eased the pressure and knelt down in front of Ada. She smiled.
"Who are you?" Lucius asked, wanting to start with something simple.
"Ada of Blood Granbehl," she said confidently.
"How do we get out of this room?"
"You can't," she repeated, the sneer twisting into a vindictive grin.
"The djinn wouldn't have designed a test that couldn't be completed.... Is the ability to manipulate aether required to leave this place?"
Haedrig's gaze, which had been following Ezra to the broken mirror, returned to Lucius with fierce intensity. He took a step forward, his mouth agape, and Lucius met his gaze for a moment before focusing his attention on Ada.
"No." Ada uttered the word with wicked confidence.
"Can Ada be saved from the mirror?"
"No!" replied the purple-eyed Ada with a devilish smile.
"Do we need to use the rune of destruction to get out of here?" Kalon gave Lucius a confused, incredulous look. Haedrig seemed surprised, but this time he tried to hide it.
Ada smirked. "Yes."
Lucius smiled faintly as he looked at Arthur, whose eyes shone with understanding.
"Who is that?" Lucius asked, pointing at Ezra.
Ada rolled her eyes. "Why are you asking me such a stupid question?"
Pointing again, Lucius asked, "What's his name?"
She looked at him angrily. "I don't know."
Ezra turned away from the broken mirror to look. He was about to interrupt Lucius, but Arthur gestured for silence.
"Did you kill Riah?"
"No."
"Do you know who Riah is?"
She looked greedily at the cloak covering Riah's body. "No."
Despite all the stares, Lucius shook his head and took out an original fourth-rank silver dagger with a Denoir medallion. "Is this dagger silver in color?"
"No!" hissed Ada, her face contorted into a disgusting grimace.
Finally, someone other than Arthur figured it out, and it was Haedrig. "Everything this creature says is a lie!"
Arthur Leywin POV
Lucius nodded, shifting his gaze to Kalon. "See? She said Ada couldn't be brought back from the mirror, but everything she says is a lie, even if the answer to the question is obvious. Working in reverse, we can use the lies to get a clear picture of what's going on."
Far from pleased with this revelation, Kalon looked at him as if Lucius were a crazy drunk shouting wild stories on a street corner.
However, Ezra was the first to speak. "Who the hell are you? What are these questions about aether, destruction, and so on?"
"You're not some rookie ascendant from some rural background, are you?" Kalon asked, his gaze hardening as suspicion crept into his mind. "Ezra was right. You two are the reason the first zone was so difficult, and you're the reason we didn't make it to the sanctuary."
There was no point in hiding our abilities anymore, so when a crimson spear appeared in Ezra's hand, glowing ominously, Regis came out of my body and pounced on Ezra from above, knocking him to the ground.
"What are you doing!" Kalon's hand shot out toward me, but I grabbed it and held it tight.
Enveloping my body in aether, I squeezed the wrist of the ascendant in armor. His face contorted in pain as he tried to break free from my grip.
"I feel responsible for what happened to your sister, which is why I did nothing when your younger brother continued to insult and harass me," I said with an icy stare, holding him tight. "But I hope you don't mistake my inaction for fear." After a pause, I sighed, softening my voice. "I have a sister too, and I know what I would do... what I have already done to protect her."
Regis's deep growl echoed through the room like a low rumble of distant thunder as his dark maw closed in on Ezra's throat.
"Enough," I warned my companion, who had returned to me once more.
Ezra jumped to his feet, trying to increase the distance between us, and I loosened my grip on his older brother's wrist.
"If what you said earlier is true, you should know that Lucius or I are your only chance to save Hades and get us out of here," I said, turning to Lucius and freezing.
The guy was completely ignoring everything, talking to some tired-looking man who was showing him something that looked like a needle.
"I'm speechless," Regis said dryly. "I'm sorry I once said you were tactless and heartless."
Kalon grimaced, rubbing his wrist. "I'm not going to pretend I understand what's going on here, and I'm not going to promise you that we won't deal with this once we get out of the relic tombs, but I'm not stupid. Just save our sister and get us the hell out of here, okay?"
"Brother!" Ezra exploded.
"Calm down," Kalon's voice was tired but commanding. Ezra clenched his teeth but said nothing more.
Sensing the right moment, Haedrig coughed and said, "Maybe you two could go and find mirror copies of Grey and yourselves? And Riah, if there is one."
"And what do we do if we find them?" Ezra asked, looking down at Haedrig.
"Break them," I said. "Just like Haedrig and Lucius. Don't touch them with any part of your body. Only with weapons."
Kalon nodded and led Ezra into the dark depths of the hall, placing his hand on his shoulder. That didn't stop Ezra from looking back and giving me an icy stare before disappearing into the darkness.
Haedrig remained silent while I began questioning the false Ada. Now that I understood the parameters of the ghost's answers, I was able to focus my questions on getting an idea of the mirror room and its rules.
Any ascendant who entered this place would find a mirror with their own reflection, just like us. If an ascendant touched their own mirror, a channel would be created that would draw the ascendant's life force into the mirror, simultaneously releasing the essence of the mirror—I decided to call them phantoms—which would inhabit the ascendant's body.
Like the hall of faces, the room of mirrors required knowledge of a specific edict of the aether. It was difficult to determine exactly what this ability should do, or which branch of the aether it belonged to, but I was able to guess that it would allow me to reverse the effects of the mirror, freeing Ada and trapping the phantom back into the relic.
The problem, of course, was that I didn't possess such an ability.
"But you must know something," Regis objected. "This place couldn't have brought us here by mistake."
"Why not?" I asked bitterly. I sat on the ground a few feet from the fountain, leaving Haedrig to guard Ada while I pondered. "The relictombs are very old. They have been under constant attack from the Agronф and the Alacryans for who knows how long. They are crumbling."
"Grey," a voice from the other end interrupted my thoughts with Regis. It was Lucius, who was walking toward us with a faint smile.
"Judging by the expression on your face, you've realized something," I asked, looking into his multi-colored cat eyes.
"Yeah, all the ascendants who ended up in this zone had one thing in common. Want to guess what it is?" he said, looking around.
At that moment, Haedrig approached us.
"We don't have time for this," I said, feeling my patience wearing thin as I looked at his calm face, as if none of this bothered him at all.
"Oh... well. Everyone who ended up in this zone had something resembling ancient blood relics. Relics that, one way or another, contained aether. Aether is the key to getting out of this zone, or more precisely," his finger pointed at my hand, or more precisely at the storage rune, "the keystone."
The realization thundered in my head. "The keystone! How did I not think of that before?"
Lucius shrugged. "Regis and I will protect you, but you have to figure out what to do yourself."
And although he seemed to have finished, I felt a familiar vibration in my mind. Allowing it to connect, Lucius' voice sounded in my mind.
"And although this area is not quite the same and the author did not describe exactly what to do in this relic, I remember one thing." Lucius' voice became firmer, "Whatever happens, you must not rush to finish the last puzzle, because if you do, you will only get part of the effect of the GodRune."
With that, he broke the mental connection and simply stood next to me.
In agony and regret, I sat down at the stone cube that I had received from the djinn's projection during my first visit to the relictombs. After my early attempts to understand the relic back in Maerin, I spent little time studying the geometric figures inside it because nothing changed no matter what I did.
Nevertheless, my previous interaction with the keystone must have had some effect: the relictombs sensed that I had some knowledge of this edict of the aether and drew us into this zone to test me. Or maybe it sensed the keystone hidden in my extra-spatial rune, and that was enough to bring us here.
Although the djinn were a peaceful people, their methods of protecting and teaching their aether arts were highly questionable. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with the cube on my lap and entrusting Regis and Lucius to cover me, I set to work.
Third-person view.
17 hours later
Everyone was on edge, there wasn't enough food for a long stay here, and the very prospect of just sitting around annoyed the young up-and-comer with below-average intelligence.
Lucius sat stoically, trying again and again to change the form of the aether into something familiar to him from the original.
To claws.
Haedrig cleared his throat, breaking the silence between them.
"So, the aether..."
Lucius sighed slightly and looked at Haedrig.
"This isn't our first trip to the relictombs," Lucius said quietly so Ezra couldn't hear, "although our previous visit can't be called a real ascent."
Haedrig, completely unsurprised by this revelation, gave Lucius an unperturbed look.
"Thank you for finally confirming the obvious."
"I woke up in the sanctuary, half dead with Grey, not remembering how I got there. The first room I entered was full of zombie chimeras, and they almost killed us, but while Grey was fighting them, he and I realized we could use a new kind of magic. Aether."
Haedrig pointed at Regis.
"The wolf?"
"Yes, he was Grey's first manifestation. Then I learned this... teleportation trick, which I used to get us out of the last zone."
When Haedrig just nodded, Lucius turned to meet his gaze. "It didn't seem to me..."
"Didn't seem what?" Haedrig replied, tensing slightly under Lucius' analytical gaze.
"You know," Lucius began, taking out a dagger and twirling it between his fingers, "I have a habit of analyzing and memorizing the movements of every person's body. And your body movements are similar to those of someone I know."
"I don't understand what you're talking about," Haedrig said calmly, although his finger began to tap nervously.
"Of course you don't understand," Lucius smiled faintly, twirling the gold medallion, his eyes looking understandingly into Haedrig's eyes, who looked like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. "But let's say I believe you. Why did you follow us?"
"I knew there was something special about you," he replied, seizing the opportunity to avoid talking about himself. "I could feel it. To be honest, that's why I wanted to take part in your ascent. To see what would happen around you."
After a few seconds of silence, Haedrig decided to continue. "And the djinn?"
"That's what the ancient mages called themselves," Lucius replied honestly. "We found... a spirit, or a manifestation, and it gave Grey this relic."
Haedrig shook his head and looked at Lucius with genuine amazement.
"Let's get back to the topic of aether," Lucius began, his eyes once again hypnotically fixed on Haedrig, assessing his every reaction. "Earlier, when I mentioned aether, you seemed surprised."
Haedrig met Lucius's gaze, then lowered his eyes, allowing his green hair to fall over his face.
"You are observant, Lucius. You... you have placed a great deal of trust in me. If anyone else finds out that your friend obtained this relic, you both could be executed."
There was no hint of threat in Haedrig's words. Instead, he seemed genuinely grateful for the trust placed in him.
"I've studied the aether a little," he continued, "but it's not something I can talk about freely. It's not... a suitable topic of conversation in most circles, and my family doesn't approve. In fact," he added with a bitter chuckle, "my family disapproves of everything I do. They expect me to sit at home like a good little..."
Haedrig cut himself off and glanced at Lucius with embarrassment. Lucius gave him a weak, understanding smile, which made Haedrig turn his head away.
"I'm sorry, but family is a sore subject for me."
"I understand," said Lucius. "No matter how hard we try, we can't be perfect children."
"Yes, we can't," Haedrig replied bitterly. "Perhaps my biological parents would think differently, but I wasn't raised by my own flesh and blood. The home I grew up in... well... they don't value my aspirations as an ascendant."
Shaking his head and standing up, Haedrig said again, "I'm sorry, Lucius, but I'd like to be alone with my thoughts. I'll leave you to your training." After a minute's pause, he added, "Thank you for listening," and then left.
47 hours later
"L-Lucius," Arthur said, finding his voice hoarse from dryness in his mouth.
Lucius's hand reached out with a waterskin, allowing Arthur to take a long drink of water from it, spilling a little on his chin.
"Careful," said Lucius. "Although I gave away some of my supplies, they may not be enough and they will all die of hunger."
"How long?" Arthur asked, leaning back and trying to relax his brain a little.
"It's been thirteen hours, forty-eight minutes, and twenty-seven seconds since you reactivated the keystone," Lucius replied almost mechanically, sending shivers down Arthur and Haedrig's spines.
"Wow. At least I lasted longer this time."
Deciding to take a short break, Arthur began talking to Haedrig and Lucius, focusing mainly on Haedrig, continuing the conversation that Haedrig and Lucius had had earlier.
After resting a bit and understanding Haedrig's reasons, Arthur smiled and shook his head, returning to meditation, preparing for another attempt to get to the heart of the keystone.
A couple of days flew by in an instant; everyone sat quietly, going about their business. Arthur was in the keystone the whole time, Lucius sat nearby and practiced with his aetheral claw and aetheral paths, and when he wasn't doing that, he practiced Kordri's movements over and over again, spending five hours at a time on it.
Haedrig joined the sparring a couple of times and, after receiving a couple of tasty blows and realizing that at this rate he would starve to death, decided that after they got out of this zone, he would find Lucius again and ask him to teach him more.
Everything was tense but tolerable until one moment. Everything escalated too quickly.
Vision from the Keystone
Ezra paced back and forth in the corridor, while Regis crept behind him like a deadly shadow. The boy looked nervous and furtive: his hands were shaking, and he kept looking around, as if expecting an attack at any moment.
Haedrig sat on the edge of the fountain, his feet dangling in the salty water. Kalon checked the ropes on the fake Ada, something we often had to do to prevent the phantom from damaging the body.
Lucius sat next to Arthur's motionless body, a strange purple blade appearing and disappearing in his hand, the sight of which made the eyes and brain ache, as if the human body was incapable of understanding what it was seeing.
When Ezra approached the fountain, his nervousness turned into grim determination. Suddenly, he stepped sharply to the side and activated his crest.
An explosion erupted from Ezra, throwing Haedrig headfirst through the water and smashing him against the edge of the fountain. Kalon was thrown back so that he could no longer be seen, and even Ada was jerked violently in her bonds.
The mirrors around Ezra shattered, and to Arthur's horror as he watched through the keystone, Regis was thrown through the open frame and disappeared into the void on the other side.
(Error)
Kalon struggled to fight off Ada, who had broken free from her bonds. She scratched and bit him with fierce, savage force, but he moved as if afraid to hurt her.
Haedrig climbed out of the fountain, moving slowly, as if concussed. A trickle of blood from his ear spread across the water, staining his cheek and neck red.
Almost all of the mirrors closest to Haedrig and the fountain were broken, and now only emptiness could be seen behind them. Ezra ran down the hallway, dragging Riah's dead body behind him.
Regis was nowhere to be seen.
On all sides of the cube, Haedrig clumsily rolled away from the fountain and stumbled toward Ezra. The young ascendant jerked his arm back as if to throw a spear at the green-haired ascendant, and Haedrig fell to the floor, but it was a feint.
This trick gave Ezra the time he needed to drag Riah's body to the horned ascendant's mirror.
In the mirror, the ascendant of Vritra's blood grinned ominously. Then he disappeared, and purple mist seeped out of the mirror and flowed into Riah, just as when Ada touched her own reflection.
Riah's eyes opened, and two black voids stared at Ezra. With one hand, the boy fended off Haedrig with his spear, and with the other, he reached out to Riah. When she grabbed it, Ezra flinched, almost recoiling from her, but Riah's swollen, dead hand squeezed him so hard that it felt like his bones were cracking.
Haedrig lunged forward, grabbed the spear, and pushed it back and up, hitting Ezra under the chin with the shaft and knocking him onto Riah's body. Ezra exploded with energy, pushing Haedrig away and shattering several nearby mirrors.
Riah, or rather Mifelias in her body, was the first to move. As he rolled over and began to rise, the flesh around the stump of his leg began to bubble and grow, forming a black gangrenous foot.
Next to him, Ezra began to writhe in pain. Spreading from his arm, black boils grew on his flesh, the skin around them turning grey. His face contorted into a pained, frightened scream as the plague-like growths quickly consumed his body until nothing remained but a twisted, Ezra-like lump.
Suddenly, Kalon flew past Haedrig, his spear flashing before Mifelias.
Rolling away from the attack, Mifelias jumped to his feet with Ezra's spear in his hand and immediately launched into a flurry of strikes and slashes that forced Kalon into a defensive position. Even then, he seemed barely able to avoid the lightning-fast attack.
Mifelias continued to press Kalon, while Haedrig found himself behind him. Either he wasn't watching the green-haired ascendant, or he underestimated Haedrig's abilities, but Mifelias was completely focused on the last of the Granbehl — that's when Haedrig struck.
The thin blade pierced Mifelias' back slightly to the left of his spine, then tore through his side, cutting halfway through his torso just below his ribs and leaving a horrible gaping wound. However, before I had time to rejoice even a little, the flesh began to boil again, and a hard black scar formed over the wound.
Turning around, Mifelias slashed Haedrig's ankles with the tip of his spear, then let the spear's momentum carry it around his body, directing it for a strike to the heart, which Haedrig barely dodged.
Crack crack crack.
The sound of cracking filled Arthur's entire vision, and under his incredulous gaze, all the facets of the past, present, and future came together before him, and in a second, Arthur Leavin felt his consciousness return to his body.
Arthur Leywin POV
"Arthur!"
It took some time for Regis' voice to break through my foggy consciousness. Was it coming from the past, present, or future? I felt that time itself was meaningless, and wondered vaguely if this was how the ascendants trapped in the mirrors felt.
'Trapped ascendants...' the thought haunted me. I saw them in images of the future... or was it the present? And then there was the ascendant of Vritra's blood, Mifelias... Had he already broken free... or was he just about to? I couldn't tell the difference.
The room shook as Kalon unleashed his electric spell. The sparkling energy struck Mifelias from several angles at once, nearly burning Riah's body to dust and imprinting jagged, burning afterimages on my retina.
I blinked rapidly, the overwhelming feeling that I had to do something breaking through my confusion.
Kalon lunged at Mifelias, attempting to use the aftermath of his catastrophic attack to drive his burning spear into the heart of the rising blood of Vritra. At the same moment, Haedrig struck low, intending to sever Mifelias' leg at the knee.
He was ready for it.
The leg around his knee bubbled and then hardened, trapping Haedrig's sword in a knot of lumpy black flesh. Ezra's spear in Mifelias' hands swung with the force of a battering ram, catching Kalon in midair and throwing him aside like an insect.
A rush of adrenaline hit me like lightning when I saw Kalon fly sideways, crash into the frame of one of the mirrors, and fly into the void. He was gone.
"Looks like you're awake," came the familiar, eternally calm voice from my left, "and how much do you understand?"
Riah's face looked mockingly at Haedrig "As if you, insignificant scum, could really fight back," the words came out of her hard, blackened lips, and their sound was nothing like Riah's. "You can't even understand what an honor I'm giving you. In my time, only the greatest warriors died by my hand..."
"Arthur!" Regis shouted again in my head. He was inside me, I realized. I could feel his faint presence, his mind, and his wild panic. And I felt the rune of Destruction raging like a forest fire, begging to be released and destroy the last remnants of my confusion and uncertainty.
"Not enough," I muttered in frustration at my failure and Lucius' inaction. I was angry at him; he could have intervened, prevented everyone here from dying, but he didn't, and I knew why.
I was his key to returning home, so he put my safety above everyone else's. He watched the whole slaughter but did nothing except stand next to me like a guard, afraid that I might die and then... he would never return home.
...
I saw Mifelias casually walk towards Haedrig, who tried to jump back but slipped on a pool of blood and fell to the ground with a groan. To his credit, the experienced ascendant seemed calm even in the face of imminent death.
"Well, since you've come to your senses," Lucius began, leaning forward slightly, "I suppose I'll take action."
As soon as his words disappeared, Lucius' body appeared in front of Mifelias with astonishing speed. Lucius charged the dagger with aether and immediately slashed at Mifelias' body, cleanly cutting him in half.
Looking at the aether dagger, which was barely larger than my middle finger, I could only mutter in shock and try to comprehend what I was seeing, "It's beautiful."
But I realized how wrong this dagger looked, and it seemed to warp space with its very existence.
Mifelias' eyes widened in surprise, still focused on the spot where Lucius had been just a moment ago, then he tried to turn around, clearly not noticing that his body had been cleanly cut in two.
Instead of moving, the upper part of Mifelias' body fell to the floor with a loud thud due to inertia.
But instead of the expected fear or confusion from such a quick death, he shouted, "I am Mifelias Dresdium, son of the Sovereigns... and I... refuse..."
Before he could finish, the white dagger disappeared from Lucius' hands, and before my eyes, a faint purple and iridescent aether dagger appeared in his hand.
Clutching the dagger, Lucius delivered dozens of blows that resembled a dance, chopping and slicing through armor, flesh, bones, and mana itself as if it were butter. In a matter of seconds, Mifelias was reduced to mincemeat, his mana unable to withstand the aether dagger.
Mifelias was dead.