Astaraela sat atop Biolumine's vast back as the giant manta ray flew in the sky.
Her true form was so enormous that the world below looked almost small by comparison. At over eighty meters long and one hundred and seventy-five meters wide, Biolumine was like a moving ocean made of light and grace. Her bioluminescent glow was shimmering through the air. From up there, the battlefield was already becoming a memory.
She lay back against Biolumine's broad spine and stared up at the sky. It was blue.
It was the first blue sky she had seen since entering the Timeless Realm and for a few seconds she didn't speak at all. She just looked at it as if she might lose it if she blinked too hard.
Ninety years ago, when she had made her choice with Ednil, she had taken Omniphage and her Codex, The Ingenious Prince. Those had been the right choices and now that the war was finally over, she could feel exactly why. Omniphage had been her solution for endurance.
She almost never used it in battle unless a soul was too broken to be harvested properly but when she did, it converted what should have been waste energy into raw fuel. It had kept her alive in the worst places. The Codex, meanwhile, had been the quiet masterpiece. The invisibility enchantment alone had been worth everything. As long as she didn't fight, she could remain invisible for nineteen hours straight and that had let her infiltrate enemy camps before dawn, plant sapphire into the ground, sink a wall beneath the battlefield and set her spikes in advance like traps.
Now the reward had finally arrived. All her Aeterium capabilities were back. She could use Limitless, Body Reconstruction and Soul Vision again.
Everything that had once belonged to her before the Immortal Anchor had stripped her down to almost nothing had returned, exactly as Ednil promised when the job was done. Even her Seventh Enlightenment Rank had been restored in the process. She still couldn't use Overwrite. She still couldn't use Divine Transformation, because her Divinities remained sealed but the difference no longer mattered the way it used to. She had spent so long surviving without them that she had already proven what she needed to prove.
The Divinities had never been her foundation after all.
Astaraela lifted one hand and rested it against her chest, feeling the solidity of her own body now that it had returned to something she recognized. She laughed hard enough that Biolumine's great body shivered beneath her.
"You're laughing like a lunatic."
Astaraela kept laughing for another half minute before finally catching her breath.
"I missed being a man."
"That's what you're thinking about right now?"
Astaraela looked down at herself with complete, unashamed appraisal and gave a shrug that said she had absolutely no intention of being dignified about it.
"The female body was useful. Extremely useful, actually. But yeah, I do miss being a man. The breasts were convenient enough, though."
Biolumine made a choked noise that was suspiciously close to laughter.
"You're weird."
"I know. That's why you keep me around."
He lay back again, with one arm behind his head. A hundred years had passed. Ninety of those years had been spent turning the war inside out and somehow it felt less like a lifetime and more like a long, brutal season. Immortality did strange things to time. It stretched suffering but it also flattened triumph. A century could fly by like a few difficult years if the body never truly gave out.
He let out a slow breath and stared upward again.
"I can't believe a century passed this fast. Feels like a few years."
"You're saying that like it's normal."
"It is for us."
The wind up here was clean and almost gentle, brushing over his face and through his long hair.
"I miss them."
Biolumine did not interrupt.
"Phae, Adela, Nari, Asenane Ely, my siblings, friends, daughters and my students and subordinates. Who knew a century would go by like this?"
He lifted his right hand toward the sun. The light shone on his prosthetic fingers. He couldn't feel the sunlight the way a normal hand would but the sight of it alone was enough to make something in him ache in longing. He flexed his fingers once.
"I'm glad I'm not still there. I'm glad I got stronger but I miss them. A lot."
"Do you think they're fine?"
"They'd better be. I sacrificed my life for them to be."
He turned his head just enough to look at the broad world below them.
He had no delusions about becoming a Primordial Deity. That was never the plan. He wasn't chasing the top of the universe for vanity. He had spent too long learning that power was only useful if it was meant to protect himself. He had survived ten years with almost nothing. He had spent ninety more turning that survival into mastery. If there was anything this century had taught him, it was that he could keep going without leaning on the parts of himself that had once seemed essential.
He had never relied on his Divinities anyway. That was the truth of him.
The Overwrite was impressive. Divine Transformation was brutal. Both were powerful but were sealed for now. But they had never made him who he was. They were amplifiers, not foundations. The foundation had always been the same: intelligence, patience, cruelty when needed and the ability to keep moving.
He smiled faintly at the sky.
"I did well, didn't I, Bio?"
"That's your take on annihilating hundreds of camps and ending a century-long slaughter?"
"What else would you call it?"
Biolumine let out a long, fond sigh that sounded like someone who had long ago stopped expecting sanity from her master.
"A disaster."
"A successful disaster."
"Still a disaster."
"Yeah, a beautiful one. So? How did I do?"
"Haha... you did well, Master."
He lay there on her back under the first blue sky he had seen in a hundred years. He was now on a life of adventure, going to the next phase.
------
The sky revealed into a vast ocean above them.
It was the strangest sight Vastarael had seen since leaving the battlefield. Beneath that sight, they found a coastal city tucked below the cliffs and stone ridges. The whole place looked alive in a way the war camps never had.
Biolumine shrunk as they descended, folding her enormous divine body down into a giant white cat about eight meters long. It was still absurdly large by normal standards but now small enough to move easily. Vastarael, restored to his full Aeterium stature, stood at seven meters tall, broad-shouldered and refined. They landed outside the city gates instead of walking straight in. A barrier covered the city so it was hard to enter from above.
The crowd was made up mostly of humans, or something close enough to make the distinction inconvenient. Many of them stood two or three meters tall, which meant Vastarael already fit into the upper end of their scale without even trying. A few were tall enough that even he would have had to tilt his head back to look them in the eye. The line itself was thick with travelers, merchants, guards and people who had clearly been waiting long enough to become personally offended by the concept of time. Biolumine stayed in cat form, blinking with feline disdain at the whole arrangement.
Vastarael looked at the line, at the barrier and then at the people standing under it. Since he already knew the language of the Timeless Realm, there wasn't any communication narrowed.
"What's going on?"
He asked the nearest person, a woman about two meters tall who had been fidgeting with the strap of her satchel and glaring at the gate. The moment she turned and saw him, she froze. He was three times her height, outrageously handsome and he was standing there with a smirk. Her mouth parted. Her eyes widened. The answer she was clearly preparing to give him got lost somewhere between her lungs and her dignity.
Vastarael sighed, already understanding the issue before she spoke. His Boon was really an issue. He changed his height.
He compressed his frame down to three meters, enough to make the conversation less ridiculous without giving up the sheer presence that came naturally to him now. Across the line, several heads turned at once. A few people who had been pretending not to stare now stared openly. Biolumine, not to be outdone, shimmered and adjusted her own form until she stood at roughly the same height.
The woman finally remembered how to speak.
"They're checking everyone before entry. There's news of a powerful woman called The Prism Madonna. They say she escaped the battlefield in the north and that this is the first place she'd visit."
"That good, huh? Is she good enough to put an entire city on edge?"
The woman swallowed, suddenly much more aware of him than before.
"She's a monster."
That got his attention. At the edge of the line, a man who had clearly been listening in muttered.
"She killed everyone from our town who got sent to the war."
Vastarael turned his head.
"Everyone?"
"All of them. Everyone who went never came back."
Vastarael looked mildly thoughtful, which only made the woman in front of him stare harder.
"That's strange. I've never heard of her before."
The line went quiet for half a breath. The eavesdropper snorted.
"You're from beyond the sea, aren't you?"
"Something like that, yes."
"Well, that makes sense then," the man said, as though that explained everything and absolutely nothing.
Biolumine flicked her tail, clearly amused by the exchange. Vastarael kept his face composed but there was a faint curve to his mouth that suggested he found the entire situation deeply entertaining. For ninety years he had been a rumor moving through war camps like a disease. Now he stood at the gate of some coastal city listening to strangers talk about the Prism Madonna as if she were a disaster that had escaped containment.
Which, to be fair, she had been.
By the time he reached the gate, the guards had already noticed him. A three-meter man with the bearing of a high noble, a white cat the size of a wagon beside him and looks that made ordinary people instinctively straighten their backs was enough for him to gain attention. The guard at the gate, a stocky woman in polished armor with a bored face and a sharp voice, looked him up and down before pointing at the barrier with all the warmth of a tax collector.
"Entry fee."
"Entry fee?"
"Ten thousand Isuone."
He exhaled through his nose and gave the gate a look that was almost respectful.
"For what? Breathing your air?"
The guard's expression did not change.
"For not making you stand outside it."
A few people in line snickered. One of them immediately looked away when the guard narrowed her eyes. Vastarael reached into Fool's Copy with the ease of someone checking a coat pocket, then pulled out a pouch thick enough to make the guard's eyebrows twitch. The pouch itself was clearly too well-made for an ordinary traveler. He handed it over without hurry.
The guard opened the pouch just enough to activate the count and used some power to verify the amount without emptying it. Her eyes widened a fraction. Then she shut the pouch and nodded.
"That's enough. Welcome to Mariner's Helm."
The people nearby stared. One man in the line actually leaned forward a little. Ten thousand Isuone was not little money. Most of the line looked at Vastarael like he had just casually paid an outrageous toll to enter a city that was, in their eyes, clearly overcharging everyone out of habit.
Vastarael, meanwhile, looked entirely unconcerned. He had hundreds of millions of Isuone sitting in Fool's Copy from ninety years of raiding enemy camps, stealing from supply lines and generally turning battlefield logistics into his private account. Ten thousand was merely pocket change.
He stepped forward as the barrier parted for him. The guard's eyes lingered on him a second too long before she cleared her throat. Biolumine walked beside him. Her present made the nearest bystanders back away a little. The cat's whiskers twitched as she looked around, clearly unimpressed by the city, the gate, the line and the extortion all at once.
Vastarael glanced over one shoulder at the people still waiting behind him.
"You all really pay this every time?"
A woman in line let out a bitter laugh.
"Only if we want in."
"That's robbery."
"That's the city rules, handsome man."
"Right."
He stepped through the gate and into the city entrance. The streets beyond were busy with carts, vendors, laborers and people who looked busy enough to pretend they weren't watching the enormous newcomer who had just walked in and paid enough to buy a week's food in some districts. Nobody knew him here. Nobody would see the man now standing in the city gates and think he was the Prism Madonna. That version of the story belonged to the battlefield he had just finished erasing.
Body Reconstruction had done its work well. Too well, if he was being honest. His body was male again and properly. He touched his chest with mild curiosity, then laughed softly that caught Bio's attention instantly.
"You're thinking weird things again."
"I'm thinking normal things."
"That is never true."
"I really missed being a man."
"You really do say things that sound dangerous when taken out of context."
Vastarael looked down at himself and gave a completely shameless shrug.
"The breasts were good to fondle, though."
Biolumine stopped walking so abruptly that two pedestrians had to sidestep around her.
"That's not the kind of sentence you say in public, Master."
He laughed loud enough that a few people turned their heads.
"Why not? It's true."