The Eternal Sphere

by Xarmar13

Return to the Shrine

In a small corner of the Irisa Fields outside of Aquios, a flash of light briefly radiated throughout the area, catching the attention of every living creature in the area. Once the light faded, those who saw it moved to investigate the anomaly.

The group of thirteen appeared where the flash of light originated. They had to take a moment for their vision to recover from the flash, but that was long enough for one of the monsters in the area to spot the group and alert any of its allies in the area.

Once the group was ready to head out, a large number of proclaimers and enforcers landed in front of them. The proclaimers wore black and white dresses and had a red symbol on their foreheads while the enforcers were dark brown colored.

“I never designed them to look like that,” Twilight said. “Crystal’s virus must be corrupting their programming further.”

“Looks like we’ll have to fight our way through,” Sophia said.

With the number of executioners in the area, they were forced to split up and deal with the monsters. Those who were strong enough, faced their opponents alone while others partnered up with someone to better their chances.

Twilight, who still had full access to her alicorn powers, was able to use her Deletion ability to erase a few proclaimers and enforcers without worrying about using up too much of her magic.

Peppita used her Power Dance to strengthen everyone while Maria and Lyra used Angel Feather symbols to further strengthen their friends.

Albel used his agility to run around an enforcer while delivering deep cuts into the creature’s body with his katana and claw while Roger went for widespread damage by throwing his helmet into the air which unleashed a cage-like pattern of lasers around him before firing a salvo of missiles from his shield.

The group was not without resistance, though. Cliff got hit several times in the back when proclaimers teleported behind him and struck him with cross-shaped waves which pushed him forward. Mirage was blasted a few times by enforcers firing numerous seeking light beams. Some enforcers struck Fayt and Albel from below when they sent tendrils underground.

Sophia put a stop to the enforcers’ underground attacks by sending a number of her own tentacles which clashed with theirs and overpowered them. The hybrid girl skewered a few enforcers and proclaimers that way.

Thanatas added to the underground mayhem when she summoned her skeletal wings and slammed the tips into the ground. Numerous bone spikes erupted from below and impaled a fair number of executioners. She then drew out the blood of the impaled victims and collected it into a large orb and charged it up with some of her dark magic before releasing it against a few of the remaining executioners in the area. The orb splattered on the executioners and had the effect of making them rot from the inside out from a necrotic disease.

It wasn’t long before the executioners in the area were wiped out. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief with the immediate threat dealt with.

“That was some welcoming party,” Cliff quipped.

“I thought the Eternal Sphere was supposed to be on lockdown.” Fayt said.

“It was, at least until we returned to it, but for the executioners to be here in those numbers suggests that they have already begun their invasion.” Twilight figured. “I can only guess that Crystal removed the lockdown earlier.”

“Come, we need to see Her Majesty right away,” Nel said.

The group barely took two steps before a large circular patch of ground in front of them turned pitch black. The telltale glyph of summoning could be seen forming. The group took up battle positions once again in preparation for what was coming.

What they saw emerging from the glyph was the stuff of nightmares. The emerging creature was smaller than the proclaimers and enforcers, but it was much more powerful. It had broken feathered wings, and yet it still flew. It was clothed in a black ragged zipper suit and its head was completely concealed in a black leather mask that had zipper lines all around it. The mask had one hole in it and looking through it was a red glowing eye that showed no intelligence, only a mindless desire to destroy. Its arms and legs were pitch black with the arms extending to its ankles and baring wicked claws and its digitigrade legs were much shorter and ended in hooves. The abomination chittered in a high-pitched voice.

“Destroy! Infect! Erase!” the creature spoke in a voice as if it was constantly breathing in helium.

Sophia sensed the space distorting slightly around the creature. “Is this thing distorting reality?”

“Whatever this thing is, it possesses an extremely high data volume,” Twilight said.

“Convictor!” the creature exclaimed. “Convictor destroy everything!”

“And if I didn’t know any better, that power came at the cost of having the intellect of a foal,” Twilight added with a sigh.

The convictor began its attack by creating tornadoes and running around with the razor winds around it trying to hit someone. When it failed, it teleported between Nel, Roger and Peppita and stirred up more winds, knocking the three into the air before they could act. Every now and then it tried to cast symbols but Sophia made sure those never went off. Unlike the Robin Wind characters, the convictor had better control over its winds as it sent tornadoes outward in all directions, catching the group off guard and knocking some into the air while others, like Thanatas were able to defend by putting up walls or burrowing underground, in Sophia’s case.

Sophia counterattacked the convictor by creating a tentacle with a fanged maw which bursted out of the ground and bit into the abomination. The creature’s pained screams were high-pitched enough that the group was sure it could shatter glass. The tentacle repeatedly slammed the convictor into the ground until the abomination shredded the appendage with razor-sharp winds.

“Angry!” the convictor screeched. It then conjured a large number of tornadoes and imbued them with electricity to increase their area of effect. Albel, Adray, Mirage and Fayt all ended up taking some of the electricity.

A pair of hands emerged from beneath the convictor and grabbed it by the hooves before pulling part of it beneath the surface. Thanatas took the opportunity to channel a powerful necromantic spell that caused the area around the convictor to decay. The monster could feel its body rotting and made one last ditch effort by sending an electrified tornado at the undead. A shield spell from Twilight blocked the attack and the Death and Decay spell from Thanatas took hold as the creature fell apart and evaporated.

With the creature destroyed, the group took that time to use healing symbols and other healing magic to restore the damage done by the convictor. Sophia returned to the surface.

“Damn, that thing was no joke!” Cliff said.

Twilight managed to run a scan of the convictor before it was fully destroyed. After a few moments of running through the data, her eyes widened by what she learned.

“My scans have shown that that thing was a viral program. It must be the virus that Crystal was talking about.”

“Do you think there will be more of them?” Fayt asked.

Twilight sighed, “I doubt that she would only make one, but I also doubt there are too many of them since these things require a lot more data to maintain than the executioners.”

“Don’t you guys have some means to get rid of these critters?” Cliff asked.

“We have an uninstaller that could get rid of the executioners, but there’s no doubt that Crystal already has countermeasures set up to prevent the program from having any effect. Crystal might be easily provoked, but she knows how to cover her bases.”

“Let’s get to Aquios before more executioners or convictors show up.” Sophia said.

Everyone nodded in agreement and hurried into the city.

As they walked through the city, Twilight received a transmission from Grape Vine. She sighed as she activated her communicator and received the profiles of three more inventors to recruit.

The first on the list was a spirited young girl about a year younger than Sophia. Meryl believed machines were the wave of the future and would eventually render runology obsolete. She was raised on the mechanical wonders of Greeton but was forced to return to the continent of Gaitt because of family circumstances. Since she couldn’t legally return to Greeton because of their isolation from Gaitt, Meryl chose to live in Peterny which was as close as she could get to the land she longed to return to.

Meryl had no interest in money, only machines. Twilight figured that the only way this engineering prodigy was going to sign a contract would be to give her something that would allow her to build her own machines.

The next entry made Twilight groan as she was reminded about how irritating the Canterlot nobles were. For some reason, Grape decided that Count Noppen, a spoiled nobleman from Airyglyph, was worth recruiting. Through reading about how this aggravating aristocrat had his servants write his books for him, Twilight figured that Noppen was included for the sake of recruiting the real talent that served him.

Last on this list was a blacksmith of legendary skill. Boyd claims to have a sort of sixth sense when it came to weapons and armor and could understand them in ways that nobody else could. Of course, while the quality of his work was some of the best throughout the land, he also needed to take more time than other blacksmiths to produce weapons and armor that only the best warriors of the land were fit to wear.

Twilight had a feeling that she needed a conversation starter to get this smith to talk to her; something that would get his attention.

Once she deactivated her communicator, she returned it to her pocket. “You guys go on ahead. I need to do some catching up on Grape’s project. We’ll meet just outside the throne room.” She then teleported away.

“Hey, did everyone notice that Twilight kept her hot form when she came into the Eternal Sphere with us?” Cliff asked.

“That’s because we were afraid of Twilight’s powers distorting the data before,” Lyra answered. “With the situation as it is, and with the convictors causing distortions already, we can’t really afford to worry about that right now.”

Meanwhile, Twilight began exercising her power with long-distance teleporting all over Gaitt. She started in Airyglyph and very begrudgingly gave a large sum of fol to the already wealthy Count Noppen. He outwardly balked at the idea of being bribed but took the money anyway and demanded that she find housing for his many servants, not knowing that his demands fell on deaf ears when he blinked at one point and the mare was replaced by a cardboard cutout of herself.

Twilight’s next stop was a store in Airyglyph City. There she found a gloomy-looking man with dichromatic eyes who seemed to stumble on his words. The mare offered the man, Cornelius, a dictionary in exchange for a contract which was accepted before she moved on to the next recruit.

Before she left, however, Cornelius gave her a book that he wrote. It was titled ‘Book of the Macabre and Unbelievable’. Twilight politely accepted the strange book and moved on.

The teleportation marathon continued in Arias where Twilight was informed of the whereabouts of Boyd. She found him in the village’s weapon shop complaining about the poor treatment of the weapons being placed on display. She still needed a conversation starter, but soon remembered the bent magical sword that Sophia won from the bunny races and brought it out of her pocket dimension.

Boyd immediately sighted the blade and requested to examine it. Tears flowed from the man’s eyes as he felt the sorrow of the damaged sword. Twilight got Boyd to sign a contract in exchange for taking the blade to “heal” it.

Since the other inventors were in locations on the way to Mosel, Twilight decided to deal with the rest later and return to Aquios.

The alicorn spotted one of the inventors wandering the streets. This was the writing prodigy, Mishell, who tried to act like an adult most of the time. Since she was beginning to feel the fatigue from the long-distance teleporting, she made the deal with the boy quickly and paid him for his contractual services.

Twilight walked into the castle while surprising the guards at the entrance with her majestic form. They tried not to show any expressions, but failed to hide their blushes as the mare walked by.

On the way to the throne room, Twilight ran into a certain old man who she needed to recruit as well. She didn’t have time to chat with Ansala, but she did show him the philosopher’s stone that Peppita made. While he wanted to take on the young Velbaysian as his apprentice, Twilight managed to convince the old man to take on a different apprentice who she believed possessed the same potential as Peppita. Ansala decided to give the inventor, Eliza, a chance, but he was going to be very strict with her. Twilight didn’t mind that and convinced the sagely man to sign a contract for his alchemical services.

Twilight was out of breath by the time she came up the stairs and regrouped with the others. The teleportations really took their toll on her.

“You look like you’ve been through a workout,” Cliff commented. “Did going up a flight of stairs really tire you out?” The Klausian’s joke was met with a glare from the exhausted mare.

“Maybe you should get some rest and we’ll go retrieve the Sacred Orb,” Fayt offered.

Twilight waved off Fayt’s offer. “It’s alright, I’m just…exhausted from doing…so many long-range teleports in…such a short amount of time. I just need time…to catch my breath.”

“Long range teleporting takes a lot of magic to do,” Lyra explained. “As an alicorn, Twilight has a lot of magic at her disposal, but she burned through a good amount of that in an hour so it’ll take some time for her to regain her magic. I expect she will be ready again once we reach Mosel.”

A few minutes passed before Twilight was breathing normally again. With everyone prepared, the group entered the throne room.

Romeria was surprised by several things the moment they entered the throne room. The fact that the travelers from beyond the stars had returned was surprising enough. To see that Twilight had an appearance and beauty that rivaled her own and carried a majestic air about her was another surprise. She could actually believe that the mare was the ruler of a nation with how she looked. A twinge of jealousy crossed her mind but she quickly crushed that thought and addressed the group. “Well, what a pleasant surprise this is. We never truly expected to see you again.”

“Your Majesty–”

“Please, Princess Twilight, you are royalty and you alone may address myself as an equal,” Romeria interrupted.

Twilight nodded, not in the mood to argue. “Very well, Romeria, I am certain that your people have been invaded by the winged beings that I warned you about.”

“Yes, we have managed to avoid these creatures as you had instructed. However, it has been difficult transporting supplies with the towns surrounded as they have. We hope that you have come to us with a solution.”

“We have, for this task we require the use of the Sacred Orb.”

“May we ask why?” Romeria asked.

Twilight nodded, “This knowledge is not to leave this room.”

“You have our vow of secrecy, now how can our sacred treasure assist you?”

“My knowledge of the Sacred Orb is greater than anyone else’s in this room because I am the one who created it.”

“You dare speak such blasphemy in the face of Her Majesty!” Lasselle shouted.

“Silence, Lasselle!” Romeria ordered, then returned her attention to Twilight. “If what you speak is true, then we have more reason than any for this knowledge to never leave this chamber. But this does not answer my previous question.”

“There is a door in the Ruins of Mosel that can only be opened by the Sacred Orb and only by the one who created it. The source of those creatures lies beyond that door.”

Romeria paused for a moment as she considered the consequences. Despite the warnings, there had been some soldiers who had gone rogue and tried to deal with the winged beings, but were easily annihilated. Airyglyph’s brigades have had the same results. If something wasn’t done soon, she had no doubt that the whole world would soon suffer starvation without food being delivered to the towns. “Very well, we shall lend you the Orb.”

“You have my thanks, Romeria.”

“Be warned, these demons that have invaded our land have negatively affected the guardians of the Shrine of Kaddan. They will be much more powerful and vicious than when you last fought them.”

The group took the queen’s warning to heart and proceeded out of the throne room and down the stairs. They headed toward the castle chapel and entered the tunnel into the Sealed Cavern. While they could have used Thanatas’ method to get to the Orb, that idea was almost unanimously turned down because they didn’t want to experience that nightmare again.

They traveled through the Sealed Cavern once again, except this time the monsters are different from the ones who inhabited the caverns earlier. The first one they saw was one of those clear-bodied floating hydras. This variant was red-colored, like blood.

The creature’s attack patterns were similar to the rainbow monster that Sophia encountered in the depths of Mosel. The others were warned about what the monster could do and acted accordingly. Cliff and Mirage kicked it from above with their Aerial Assault techniques while Sophia, Twilight and Adray buried the creature in rocks with their Stone Rain symbols.

With the hydra taken care of, the group continued traversing the caverns. Using her magic, Twilight was able to locate a hidden door and flip a switch that opened a shortcut deeper into the caverns.

Aside from the hydras in the caverns, there were also zombies burning in purple flames and convictors. The zombies were easily destroyed by Nel and Peppita’s frozen weapon techniques. The convictors were not as tough as the first one they encountered, but they still had to be careful when dealing with its ability to generate tornadoes. Sophia, Twilight and Adray remained vigilant for whenever the abominations tried casting symbols.

Once they reached the last room where they would enter the Shrine of Kaddan, most of the fighters in the group had a sense of deja vu when a familiar summoning circle appeared in the center of the room. From what they remembered, they fought a floating armor with a pair of swords last time.

This time, they would have a much more challenging opponent. This one was a giant floating eye with a gray, scaly body. The iris was red and it had many tentacles around its body. The upper tentacles ended in smaller slitted eyes while the lower tentacles were regular tentacles. There was also a magic circle beneath the creature that followed it where it went.

“Careful guys,” Twilight warned. “Beholders are a force to be reckoned with. They are powerful demons with a number of magical abilities. Crystal is pulling out all the stops to keep us from getting to her.”

Before anyone could ask about that, the beholder fired numerous beams from its many eye tentacles at the group, forcing them to scatter. At first the group tested various symbols on the demon but they had no effect whatsoever on it.

Adray then tried out a symbol that wasn’t aligned with the elements by creating a circle of light around the beholder which was later followed by a cross of holy light smiting the demon. The beholder growled in pain from the spell.

Meanwhile, Lyra jumped on its head and tried to cut off the eye tentacles then leapt off before the beholder counterattacked. Lyra’s efforts were frustrated when the demon regrew its tentacles.

With Cliff, Mirage, Fayt and Roger in melee range of the beholder, the demon then expanded its circle while it turned dark red. Before Twilight could warn the others to get out of the circle, the fighters suddenly had their stamina drained by the demon.

Lyra and Sophia decided to return the favor by using void energies to drain the life from the beholder from the front and the back. The demon screeched in pain and fired its eye lasers at Lyra who was forced to stop draining and protect herself with a psionic barrier. Thanatas further added to the drain on the demon by pointing her sword at it and began pulling its soul from its body. The beholder changed its focus toward the newcomer. This was a mistake because Thanatas blocked its laser attacks with a wall of ice while channeling her sword’s draining powers through it. Lyra was able to lower her barrier and continue draining the demon until its life and soul were ripped from its now dead husk.

The group took a few moments to catch their breath and heal any wounds sustained from the eye demon.

Nel then decided to address the elephant in the room. “When you said that Crystal was pulling out all the stops, does that mean that she is the one creating all of these strong monsters?”

Twilight nodded. “Since she has control of Spiral Tower, she can also create or alter the monsters in the Eternal Sphere. There’s no doubt that she has altered the shrine’s guardians. She knows of the backdoor to Spiral Tower, but that location is one thing that she cannot manipulate. So instead, she is altering monsters and raising their parameters to try and keep us from our objectives.”

“Hah, it doesn’t matter how many maggots she sends at me, I’ll crush them all,” Albel declared.

Adray laughed, “I might actually get a workout after all. I say keep them coming!”

“Looks like everyone’s getting revved up about this,” Cliff said.

Once everyone was recovered and a little rested, the group proceeded into the Shrine of Kaddan.

After proceeding through the first few rooms, they encountered new and old enemies, including an enforcer of a darker shade. Its patterns were predictable so it was easily dealt with.

Some of the new enemies that showed up were strange living geometric shapes. These polyhedrons looked like giant glass dice that were as big as Peppita and they often tried to ram themselves into people. Cliff knocked one into the air and pummeled it with his Acrobat Locus technique before he smashed it on the floor. Mirage rushed another with her Avenger Charge and beat it back into a wall before she shattered her’s. Yet another polyhedron saw what happened to its allies and responded by releasing a bright light all around it. Twilight picked up on what it was trying to do and yelled for everyone to get away from it. The polyhedron self-destructed a couple of seconds later as everyone moved to a safe distance.

In the room where they once fought the black version of the crystal statues, the group instead found themselves facing a trio of black armors wielding giant hammers. Their previous variants were no issue and these guys were not either.

In the next section of the shrine, they saw gold variants of the armors from before as well as blue and yellow variants of the polyhedrons. None of these enemies posed a challenge to the group at this point.

Once they ascended the stairs that would take them to the next section, they encountered a new variant of the crystal centaur. This one was composed of green crystals with its shield, sword, crest, core and joints being of purple crystals. This one started off by firing a beam of light from its sword that spread in three directions. A shield from Twilight blocked the beam that could have hit them. Ice shards formed on her barrier, indicating that the statue intended on freezing everyone and shattering their brittle forms.

The shield quickly fell apart because Twilight was not finished recovering., but the attack ended before then.

“Lyra, do you have any crystals on you?” Sophia asked.

“Just one for emergencies when I’m not near a conduit. Why?” Sophia motioned for the mare to give her the crystal. Lyra handed her the crystal before Sophia pointed one end at the crystal centaur who was preparing another freezing blast.

Using her psychic powers, Sophia reconfigured the lattice structure within the crystal. When the statue fired its beam again, Sophia drew the attack into the crystal where the energy was refracted repeatedly until a large beam of energy emerged from the end pointed at the statue and blasted it with its own attack.

The statue was enraged by this and abandoned its original strategy and simply charged at the group, which was when Sophia used her speed to mount herself on the statue’s back. As the centaur tried to buck her off, Sophia proceeded to perform a series of precision strikes on the crystals that composed the statue. After a significant number of strikes were made within a couple of seconds, Sophia dismounted and returned to her friends as they watched the statue rumble and shatter into crystal dust.

The group soon entered the section of the shrine where they had to face the four individual challenges the last time they were here. Since they didn’t need to explore or do the four-room challenge again, they simply moved forward. Sophia shattered more crystal centaurs along the way.

After breaking two more statues, the group entered a room that was guarded by a darker-colored beholder demon with red and black scales and a white eye with black sclera.

Taking the lessons from the first beholder they fought, the close-ranged fighters were more wary of the beholder’s magic circle this time. They made sure to move away quickly when the circle grew and turned red. They also made sure to move away when it turned light green and white. When the latter happened, the circle sent shockwaves in all directions to knock everyone away while the circle healed the demon.

To keep the battle from persisting, Thanatas decided to end the fight by launching a ball of concentrated frost magic from her mouth. The demon was flash frozen the moment the sphere made contact and it fell to the floor. She then plunged her sword into the frozen beholder and shattered it.

As they headed toward the final section of the shrine, they encountered a number of semi-new enemies, including reapers, malevolent spirits carrying scythes. Thanatas took control of them and had them destroy each other. There were also gold variations of the floating armors with poleaxes as well as stronger variants of witches and wisps, like the ones encountered in the depths of Mosel, and purple variants of the polyhedrons. None posed much of a challenge to the group at this point.

After getting past the two rooms with the semi-sentient demon blocks, the path to the Sacred Orb was clear. Upon arriving at the pedestal, Twilight removed the wards on the orb and picked up the artifact before placing it into her pocket dimension for safekeeping.

“Alright, we need to get to Mosel and get to the door that will open the path to Spiral Tower.” Twilight said. “Expect a lot of strong monsters to impede our progress, she may even be doing this to delay us until she can figure out how the control system works.”

“Can she use the system to bypass the defenses on Project Valkyrie?” Maria asked.

“No, the defenses around the prototypes are independent of the Eternal Sphere system. The bypass codes were never written on any paper or system and the algorithm changes too often for Crystal to figure out any pattern. She needs a cipher key to break the encryption and the key is in the form of my personal magical signature, something that cannot be copied, even by changelings.”

“Sounds like she plans to hold the universe hostage so she can get the cipher,” Thanatas figured.

“We need to get there before she figures out how to destroy the Eternal Sphere,” Twilight took a deep breath and tightly shut her eyes as she internally battled herself over what she was about to ask. “Thanatas, can you take us back to the castle?”

“Aye, aye!” Everyone froze as they knew what they were about to experience once again as the cage of bone surrounded them before they sank into the ground.

While Thanatas could have taken the group to Mosel directly, they needed to stock up on supplies in Aquios and make final preparations before they made the longest journey of their adventure yet.

Author's Note:

It's a little difficult to keep BS mechanics from breaking parts of the story.

They are in for a VERY long journey to Spiral Tower. Since they have a side quest to complete on the way, they have to travel from Aquios -> Irisa Fields -> Peterny -> Sanmite Steppes -> Surferio -> Passage from Parch to Plenty -> Mosel Dunes -> Ruins of Mosel -> Firewall -> Spiral Tower which is going to be ten floors of monsters and puzzles.

Comments

[prism heart]

I'm kinda hoping that Crystal gets the death penalty once they catch her. Thanatas being the one most likely to kill her in my opinion.

[Black--Soul]

Damn... If the don't just reset the Eternal Sphere than their will be a lot of damage to fix.
House Platinum has no future with charges like high treason and genocide...

How long will the restoration of the sphere take i wonder?

8/10 Chance Crystal go for win or death.
2/10 Redeeming via Blueblood route

Sooo... I guess we can ask for a maschine race like the Purificators to help out? Talandar and others seem to be perfect to fight and restore stuff...

[Black--Soul]

Once more a valuable lesson to make more than one copy of important data...