Epilogue

  The Tower of Mirrors was, and is, the dream location for any and every light-attuned mage in the System. A massive one-hundred-story tall tower made of thousands upon thousands of enchanted blocks of white stone. The interior was a carefully oriented piece of art made of yet more thousands of enchanted items; mirrors. All set in place to gather and funnel light from the top of the tower to the base.

  It was a hollow structure filled with blinding light focused downward at one location. Entering the tower was a majestic sight, should that person be able to see anything at all. Although it was beautiful in construction and image, its purpose was singular, and it wasn't to appear pretty. It was a light element aether-gathering array of unparalleled proportions.

  Despite all these things; its size, beauty, and potential for cultivating one's core, it was not the reason it was a mecca for light mages. No, that reason was also singular. The sole inhabitant of the tower, and the person who built it in the first place.

  Beldia, the Goddess of Light.

  She had sat at the base of the tower, absorbing the focused light and aether inside for centuries now. Prospecting worshipers and light mages have ventured to the tower in all those years in vain hope of being allowed entry to but gaze upon their goddess. Only very few were ever given that privilege, and even fewer had spoken with her. Instead rings of hopefuls sat around the tower en mass waiting for their chance.

  The goddess of light, the most powerful light-attuned mage, had secluded herself for the last nineteen hundred years. The reason why had been lost and forgotten to most mages of mortal species. Only those in the Sage tier or Supreme Aegis tier even have the life span to have heard the tales. If such tales were spoken of at all. For speaking a god's name was said to garner their attention, and should that attention be deemed as bad-mouthing that very god... well it just wasn't talked about.

  So Beldia sat, and cultivated, and waited. For reasons that only she and a handful of others might know. Her seclusion did not sway her from her duties, she still gave direction and teaching to those of her followers even if those words were sparring and instances of such were separated be decades, maybe more. She did still have her planet in the system to watch over after all.

  A planet that just had a massive amount of magical energy spike on its surface and then vanish.

  This pulled Beldia from her meditation and focused her attention on that spot. Her senses trickled over it, intrigued, confused, and hopeful. Could it be? She thought to herself. No, surely not. I have grown far too desperate in my long years, perhaps. Beldia thought she might have recognized that energy. As she looked now though, she found nothing.

  A random fluctuation by the system then. Beldia thought. Her senses prodded and poked at the area, looking for the familiar. Trees, a town, a river. Just some lowly mortal-tier humans scattered about. A cripple. Nothing that explained what she had felt. An Elf entered her awareness that was rare, but only just. Nothing of what she searched for. Just a random pulse. Maybe someone used some rare Aegis tier spell, nothing more.

  For most others, a spell from a Supreme Aegis tier mage would spell doom for an entire country, affecting millions of lives. For Beldia and the other gods of the elements, it was nothing more than an amusing happenstance. Such were the differences in power in the Aetherios system.

  Beldia was about to resume her meditations when she felt it. It was hidden, hidden very well by all accounts. But she had been searching for so long already, she would not fail to notice. A wash of mixed emotions entered her at the revelation. Happiness, relief, but far more than the others, fear.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I must tell the others , Beldia lifted her hand to turn off her tower and paused.

  No. No, not yet. She looked about inside her tower, the light which would blind nearly any other mage not affecting her vision in the slightest. It had been so long since she really looked at it. Her tower, her prison. She threw herself inside here and ignored almost everything else. Grief did that to people, even after centuries, it was no easy thing to conquer. Redemption was an even harder goal. She thought she would eventually find it inside this tower, confronted by thousands of copies of herself staring down at her in rebuke. But, she had been wrong, and now she knew why.

  No, they wouldn't have noticed. They would have their senses aimed elsewhere. Even if they did turn them here, they probably wouldn't have seen what I had. She realized. She could wait, and watch for now.

  There were things she regretted, things she wished she could take back, undo. She wouldn't let this be another one. She had let fear guide her actions before, this time would be different. Beldia lowered her hand and returned to her mediation. The tower shined, and her heart, once long dead and blackened, sparked with a new light. Things might be different, and the breaking of the stagnant and putrid system that we have built could be possible. Beldia's thoughts rose inside her head, then settled back down.

  "Maybe," She said.

  They were the first words she had spoken in three centuries. Words of hope.

  ***

  Alex's character sheet at the end of Book One: