Symphony Book 4: Epilogue

All across Symphony, events were occurring at a rapid pace. 

In the one thousand, two hundred and twenty-two years that Symphony had been without a Creator, multiple crises, tribulations, and calamities had occurred.

The Unending Summit, once the primo and only religion, had faded into obscurity. Its original members had become martyrs, myths, and legends in a world now run by pure strength of arm or volume of currency, rather than heroics. 

In its place had sprung up dozens of new religions, those which often catered to the whims of their leaders, where faith was replaced by coin and followers replaced by dogmatic zealots. As a new religion broke ground, the others would join together in its repudiation, always on the march to being the center of belief in Symphony.

Factions rose and fell, replaced by others who in turn did the same. Territories could be bought and sold, traded, with their citizens pushed along the greasy wheel of mercantile exceptions and noble requirements. 

The greatest of lands still existed, the cities of Independence and Echo’s Crossing chief among them, but some had fallen away to a distant memory, including a once spoken of place in the center of all of Symphony. 

A place once called Eternal, that was now only a forgotten story told in diners and drunken rambling.

The Omniverse had taken Walker Reed’s vision of harmony and war, peace and strength, and given it a sharp upgrade on a sword tipped with the blood of the weak. Symphony had become a vibrant, dynamic world filled to the breaking point with powerful monsters of varying intelligences, egotistical masters, peacocking from one town to another, and experts of all and any crafts one could imagine. 

Skills evolved, oaths were spoken, natural treasures were discovered, and all the while, for over a thousand years, Symphony moved further and further from the hopes of its Creator. The destruction of the Evolvers' Core had released all of the Omniverse’s restrictions, binding not only the Center, but any universe attached to it. Through Walker’s creation of the Ulysses-verse, and the bound and branded tie to the fourth Rendition, those same restrictions had carried over.

But with the loss of the Core, all bets were off. The Omniverse’s systems, of such a higher and more tested grade than Walker’s own, had found something in Symphony that was rare. 

Oathbound soul’d discovered, only a measly hundred years after the disappearance of the Creator, that their status windows had changed. It had shifted from a small window within their overlays to an individual page, one that many obsessed over with bottomless greed and twisted glares at those who found great success. A page that broke down the physical and mental statistics of each entity. A page that held many secrets, which could only be seen by those who truly pushed their limits.

With the changes from the Omniverse, reputation had taken on a physical cast, as the truly powerful knew that favors and abiding by one’s word were the only actual currency in a world of frighteningly powerful figures. Auras, something that once only the truly experimental understood, became common knowledge- A new tool to be trained. A new tool to be abused.

And all along, there was a sense about Symphony. A whisper in the wind that couldn’t be quite understood. A pair of eyes from the greater Omniverse, saying that Symphony must be preserved. This was a place that could be cultured. This was a place that could produce results necessary for the survival of a greater collection of beings than Walker Reed could ever imagine.

It found a paradoxical world of potentially unlimited growth.

A world slapped together with glue that could be hardened with the right push.

A flawed creation built by a flawed Creator who used those imperfections for strength.

And so, Symphony would become a forge and be watched.

Not as a god, looking down from the heavens, nor a judge, to give sentencing in the courtroom.

But as a farmer, finding the right seed to cut at the time of harvest.

Because, somewhere in Symphony’s changing systems, tangled oaths, darkened souls, and darker still creatures, there was something to save. 

Something capable of reshaping everything.

And all it needed was time and a little help.

Time before the red door of the tower opened, and a new cycle begins.

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On Symphony…

Alexander Lewis, Champion of Earth and all-around okay guy, fell out of the portal from Earth.

Physically disfigured, he tried to roll across the ground but was stopped due to the oddly oversized limbs on his body. Instead of his planned acrobatics, he landed with an impact, depressing the ground and knocking the wind out of his lungs as a grunt escaped his lips. The fact that it was soft grass didn’t seem to matter when you fell over a dozen feet out of the sky.

Trying to catch his breath, he rolled over, feeling the tickle of vegetation on the back of his neck as he looked at a new sky, in a new world, in a new universe. It was an odd off-blue color. Almost cyantic. He should’ve expected the sky would be different from his homeworld, but somehow, he hadn’t.

His breath slowly came back as a dozen notifications splashed across his screen, then it glitched, cut off, and turned back on with even greater notifications than before. He rubbed his itchy limbs and back against the grass while groaning to the air.

“Ow…” a quick breath, “Ouch. Walker Reed, you’re kind of a dick.”

He’d taken the gamble of entering the portal, knowing he was leaving the Earth behind. Not that there was much left. The Shadow Apocalypse, the Beast War, as it was being called, had thoroughly ruined their hopes of survival in a world that seemed to reject them. None of them felt like they’d had any choice in the matter. It was either enter the portal or be doomed to slow starvation. 

Sitting up awkwardly, a screech in the near distance had him turning his body to look over his shoulder. Not far away stood a four-legged creature in a half-crouch. Over its head was held a sharp, dripping, and pincered tail covered in a thin exoskeleton. It leered at him with a too-human face he was sure he’d see in his nightmares. And, to top it off, its whole body was black as the night.

“Already?” He asked the sky, “Can’t I get a single-”

He was interrupted as the creature leaped toward him. With a bit of effort, Lex rolled to the side, an oversized arm and opposite leg making the action difficult, then took a deep breath and tried to push off the ground.

He did so, but with unexpected results as he was flung high into the air, looking down at a shocked expression on the creature below him. He fired off a quick identify.

Mini-Manticore:

Tier 2

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What? Lex thought as he felt gravity assert itself on him. Dropping through the air quickly, he lined up his oversized arm, intending to crush the creature below him with utter finality. The Mini-Manticore had other plans as it quickly moved out of the way, but it hadn’t expected the strength of his attack, nor the shockwave of dust and dirt that exploded from the ground.

Lining up the creature with a keen eye, Lex pushed off from his itching but normal leg. But again, he flew far faster and harder than he expected, moving right over the monster before him with wide eyes at his velocity.

Not trusting himself to settle calmly, Lex fell into a roll for a second time, skirting across the ground of this new, strange world. When he finally came to a stop, he looked down at his normal leg, the one that wouldn’t stop itching, and couldn’t believe what he saw.

It was growing.

For more fun times and greater depth to the story, check out the forthcoming novella The Boy and the Stick, as well as the new series starring Alexander (Lex) Lewis, Primordial Poet!