Chapter 1: Diviner and Regressor

Stars poured into his eyes.

The texture of parchment in his fingertips, the cold touch of the stone on his back, the frigid breeze of the mountain midnight, it all disappeared as his whole being was overtaken by the astral entities.

Constellations became his only sight, information freely flowing across them. The Ocelotl constellation, the Mazatl gathering, the Cauhutli flock. Since time immemorial, his people assigned names to the drawings they saw in the skies. His fellows on the Empyrean would disagree with the names and their shapes, but all sides agreed on their strength.

Then, a slight perturbation on the Cognition. An infinitesimal pulse of change, a variation of the natural order. The stars whispered to him, they screamed impending doom like his theology narrated. But as powerful as the image was, so it was fleeting. His mind was rapidly filled by more typical influences.

The cosmic furnaces that illuminated the night sky were the source of much power, and beyond everything else, knowledge.

Old knowledge. New knowledge. Future knowledge.

Such wisdom was transmitted in many ways, his senses overwhelmed by them. 

His sight was that of many lights; blue, red, white, yellow, even purple. There was no limit for the myriads of colors the celestial bodies portrayed.

His touch was substituted by a paradoxical cold hotness. The frigid nothingness of the cosmos and the searing heart of the stars.

His hearing was presented by a cosmic song of harmonic noises. There was no partiture nor melody to the chant, but certain repetition. Such repetition had been uttered by those ever-burning fires since creation itself.

His olfaction was filled with the smell of metallic undertones and sulfuric wastes, the smell of spaces and stars.

His taste was atrophied, but he could feel the taste of burnt meat in his tongue. Which would likely be his if he continued.

Nolotl gasped as he came back to the Physicality, his mind thought, still wandering in the Cognition. The connection between him and the heavens beyond had been strong tonight.

His body was coated in a thick film of sweat even though he was wearing ceremonial Tezlan attire, which people at the academy would call ‘just a loincloth’. If he didn’t remove himself from the academy’s observatory this instant, hypothermia wasn’t a threat, but a certainty.

With heavy gasps, Nolotl stood up and put his sandals on after he felt the steps of the cold stone in his soles.

“Pulsars!” He cursed at the sudden drop of temperature. “How cold is it now?” The young man asked even if he could instantly know it.

He let his mind wander into the Cognition, pulling his Information alignment and searching for the information he wanted.

“Minus ten degrees?” His whole body jolted awake as the knowledge poured into his brain. “I’m going to die tomorrow from a cold…” Nolotl sneezed and entered into the academy corridors before his prophecy could become real.

Of course, that was an exaggeration. No healer would let an Empyrean die from a cold, but he would likely still suffer from it.

It didn’t matter that Nolotl was on the highest floor of the academy and that it was one in the morning – one thirty-seven to be exact – as there still was activity around him.

This precise tower pertained to no school in particular as Information, Light, and Void adepts wanted to enjoy the facilities of the Observatorium, but most of the deadeyed students walking around were, unsurprisingly, gnosiamancers.

Ah, gnosiamancy! One of the most needed schools of magic and the most underestimated. How could you see your status without a gnosiamancer? How could you send letters to your relatives on the other side of the planet without them? How could you copy books with molecular precision without someone trained in Information?

Everyone depended on them, yet everyone considered them trivial.

And the worst part was that some schools had it worse!

Everyone loved a biomancer and a topomancer, but an akyromancer? Unless you were performing a heavy-duty mining operation, no one wanted to deal with Void magic.

The few gnosiamancers that managed to recognize him – because he doubted most could see a finger in front of them by now with their tired gazes – saluted him as their rightful Empyrean. Not that he cared, that title had served him little so far.

Nolotl carried his dying body across the many corridors as he internally cursed the man who decided to build a magic academy in a series of many towers and only add a few aerial bridges connecting them.

To be fair, the updrafts in Empyrean Mount got really bad during some seasons. A few months ago, he saw a mammoth fly in the air unassisted. The next day there was, mysteriously, mammoth soup on the canteen’s menu.

He knew he was lacking sleep by the sheer randomness of his ramblings. What was he, an ataxiamancer?

“Rambling again…” Nolotl muttered under his breath, crestfallen and hunchbacked. “Ugh, the cutoff from the Cognition hasn’t been clean tonight. I feel like I’m going to puke at any moment.”

Luckily for him, the closest tower to the Observatorium was the Information one, so after only walking a single flight of stairs, he arrived at his dormitory.

With a sway of his hand, the gnosiamancer unlocked the door to the room and instantly dropped asleep the moment he touched the bed.

“Huh?” Nolotl mumbled out with a yawn. “Already day?” He peered at the crystal window, rays of sunlight pouring through. “I’d be damned, I slept so hard that I didn’t even connect to the Cognition.”

The gnosiamancer yawned again, his whole body convulsing into wakefulness. He sniffed his armpits and found himself lacking in the scent department. Such was one of the few small victories of living in such a frigid place, it was hard to smell anything.

He stood from bed and stretched his tired arms and legs. “How early is it? It still looks quite dim out…”

His voice was cut off by a frantic knocking at his door. He would have loved to say that it was an uncommon happenstance, but alas, his presence was more solicited than a temple or brothel. Not that there was much difference between the two, depending on who you asked.

“Nolotl, are you awake?” A female voice asked between knocks.

Slowly, calmly, and silently, he walked to the door and opened it in a single swoop, making the woman drop forward from the surprise.

“Now I am.” Nolotl responded calmly.

The young woman looked upward as her face rested on the man’s uncovered chest. She blushed from the awkward posture and separated herself from him, not before stealthily – or so she thought – rubbing her cheeks on the gnosiamancer’s defined pectorals.

“What’s the problem now, Cillin?”

“Ehem.” She cleared her throat and her blush. “We are lacking personnel in the Alignment office.”

“We are always lacking personnel in the Alignment office, this isn’t anything new.” He sighed.

“We are talking about a whole new degree of drought here.” The fellow gnosiamancer explained. “A lot of the scribes normally working there are making their preparations for the upcoming celestial alignment, and a lot more people are coming to the academy because of it.”

“Why do you not, as an idea, formulate a petition to the headmaster to recruit temporary personnel for the festivities?” Nolotl suggested.

“Why does the Information Empyrean not, as an idea,  do that himself?” Cillin replied mockingly.

“Deserved.” He admitted. “Okay, do you want me to do it?”

“No…” She grunted in defeat. “I already have the papers ready, I only need your signature. I actually want you down at the offices to do the readings yourself, you are as effective as ten people.”

“Ah, the curse of being a good worker, when you cannot even laze around like the boss because you are too vital.”

“Or more like you are being paid the salary of a common scribe when you are worth a whole coterie of them.”

“Someone didn’t sleep today.” Nolotl guessed.

“Fuck you man.” He busted out laughing at Cillin’s bluntness. “No one’s working here, and you can do everything I can without batting an eye. Will you do me the favor to snap some sense into the rest?”

That was the problem with Cillin Amoxi – or Amoxi Cillin as they said the surnames before the names in her land. She was a serious, diligent, and intelligent person, but couldn’t comprehend even if her life depended on it that people had different maximums and minimums.

Because she could work twelve straight hours and study at the same time, it didn’t mean everyone could or would be able to support the torture. Only the mentally insane like Nolotl himself could keep up with her pace.

The rest of the gnosiamancers? There was a reason why someone like Nolotl was the Empyrean after all. Gnosiamancy was a very, very demanding field and there were only two ways to stay ahead. Either you were competent, or you were clinically insane.

Cillin had one of those requirements, Nolotl fulfilled the two.

“Gimme.” Nolotl pointed at the waiver on her hand.

The female gnosiamancer hadn’t brought a pen with her, but that wasn’t needed as the man had a little trick up his sleeve – quite literally at that – called traditional Tezlan astromancy. That was to say, he poured mana into his arm tattoos and now his index finger became a fountain pen brimming with ink.

For some reason, people liked to call Tezlans savages for such practices, but transmuting a drop of blood into ink was trivial. And it wasn’t like it was hurting anyone, it was his own ink. In any case, it was better for the environment as he transformed a drop into a page’s worth of expensive ink. 

Well, expensive in any other place in the world.

“Is that all?” He inquired.

“Yes…” Cillin responded tiredly. “Now if you excuse me, I’m going to bring this to the headmaster and catch up on some sleep. I haven’t slept since…” Her eyes became dulled for an instant as she connected to the Cognition. “Ereyesterday?”

Nolotl frowned, “You’ve been awake for more than two days?”

“Someone’s got to work here.” She added defensively. “Please do me the favor of going down immediately. I don’t want anyone knocking at my door today and ruining my sleep.”

The male gnosiamancer couldn’t help but to smile at the irony, but he nodded. After all, he had had around four hours of sleep, more than enough for a student like him.

Some day I’m gonna knock her unconscious and force her to rest. No one in the Information tower respected Cillin, not even Cillin herself, so that forced him to be the one that defended the woman and impeded her from self-destructing.

Whilst he hadn’t yet had a shower, nor breakfast for that matter, Nolotl rushed to the central tower. Where the Alignment offices were.

The central tower of the Empyrean academy wasn’t only the biggest, but it was also the only one open to the public. For that reason alone, it held many public spaces like seminar debate rooms, diverse offices, and the teletransportation network. The topomancers always complained about that one because the gnosiamancer could have the Archives and the biomancers the Arboretum for themselves, but they had to share the network with everyone.

Like any gnosiamancer worth their salt, Nolotl abused his magic and connected to the Cognition to formulate the shortest path to the offices in his mind. Sure, he had studied in the academy for years and knew the path, but he couldn’t know in advance if a pathway had been cut off.

And considering the number of explosions, spatial distortions, and whatnot all around the academy, that wasn’t all that uncommon of a sight.

With his eyes closed, strictly following his mind’s eye, the gnosiamancer strolled to the Alignment offices. It was clear the moment he reached the main tower as the surroundings were from the sepulchral silence of shy bookworms to the bustling cacophony of a city.

Many spatial augmentations during the years had made the central tower way bigger than nature would dictate it.

More than one mage jumped from multiple stories up down to the bottom and continued their path as normal once they impacted on the ground. There were many ways to nullify fall damage, none of which are found in gnosiamancy however.

Neither were there any means of a rapid ascent, which was certainly a burden most of the time, today however he needed not go a floor up.

Even if he was one of the nine Empyreans and was also half-naked, most people ignored him. The name of Nolotl Xocoyotzin was known enough to not make a fuss about it. Unlike other Empyreans, he just was above average.

The only thing that had caused any fuss about himself was just his name when he came into his position. Whilst he didn’t consider his own name to be exactly complicated, he was just one of the very few Tezlan students in the academy. The same thing had happened when he applied or in the early days when the teacher soon gave up on pronouncing his surname and just called him by his forename.

He considered the whole events to be humorous as his name was pronounced exactly as written: nolotil shocoyohtsin. That was the phonetic transcription in Celestial, but in Tezlan it was literally identical.

Nolotl entered through the already wide-open doors of the Alignment offices and indeed found himself with long queues and nearly-dead scribes.

“Okay, people! Your saviour is here!” The dark-skinned gnosiamancer announced with a thundering clap and a regal aura. “Those visitors who only want abridged status sheets, please go to the counter all over the left! Those employees who have been working for more than six straight hours, go away! And someone bring me heaps of paper and ink!”

Some of the people in line protested over his pomposity, but the clerks behind the counters looked at Nolotl as divine intervention descended from the heavens themselves.

He technically didn’t need ink to perform the Alignment checks, but he preferred not to be removed from his seat on a stretcher because he passed out from anemia.

Nolotl lifted the board in front of his counter and sat down, some students already flocking to his counter as soon as he did. No academy foreigners did it just yet, but soon they would see why he had the title of Quickfingers.

A darling first-year scribe who fell under his tutelage passed him copious sheets of standardized Alignment sheets, a bottle – emphasis on bottle – of ink, and a fountain pen.

“Draw your hand forward.” Nolotl spoke with the neutral tone typical of a secretary.

The first student complied and he focused his mind, not only in the Cognition, but also on their being to read their Alignment.

Every mage worked with their Alignment, yet the only real way to have accurate and quantifiable evidence of their prowess was with gnosiamancy. No other school of magic was capable of reading the capabilities of other mages, which made the gnosiamancers invaluable yet paradoxically worthless as it was one of the simplest practices in all of the history of magic.

That being said, most mages didn’t bother learning the spells – many of them, mind you – needed to read one’s Alignment.

But that also meant that Information adepts were also the most competent mages on guessing another person’s prowess, which means that they never lose a fight. Because they would never pick a losing one in the first place.

In what took a person with chronic insomnia to blink, Nolotl already had a full comprehension of the student’s being. Partial comprehension. He did quick status readings for a reason, otherwise it would take too long to write them.

There still wasn’t a spell to instantly shape a status into a sheet of paper, but he heard people were tirelessly working to create it. Though there was one to show it to people’s minds directly, mages didn’t particularly enjoy having their minds be played with, so that never took off.

A standard abridged Alignment sheet contained less details than a complete one, but it still was quite the long list. Name, age, and race were a given as they were dictated by law and the Scribe’s Guild, but the actual meaningful contents of the screening were plentiful. Shortened Alignment affinity, boons, blessings, titles, and afflictions lists were the real deal.

Truth be told, abridged statuses only totally ignored proficiencies, but everything else was mostly trimmed down as the earliest boons and titles a mage could obtain were common knowledge. And the only real reason you wanted a quick screening was because you wanted to check the changes in your Alignment, and not if you had obtained a divine blessing or something.

The tattoos in Nolotl’s arms began to glow white with the power of the moon as he wrote down the information pertaining to the student. As flashy as the enchantment would appear, it was only meant to steady his hand.

Which was badly needed as he was writing faster than his eyes could see. If it weren’t because of the developed quick-drying ink by the biomancers at the Life tower, such lightning-fast status readings wouldn’t exist.

Stars bless the veritas ink. Nolotl dedicated a prayer to the starsent of an ink. Not only it stuck to vellums, but it was basically unlimited as it came from a highly specialized type of succulents that produced ink instead of sap.

His mind fully connected to the Cognition, leaving the Physicality behind, focusing instead on what he wrote in the standardized sheets. Information ebbed and flowed with him as the medium. He knew everything about the person holding his hand, though he couldn’t care less about it. The existence of the unadulterated knowledge out of itself was enough for him.

In a minute he filled the sheet and pushed it forward, without removing his eyes from the counter, he reached for another sheet and shouted “Next!”

People grabbed his hand, stood still for a few seconds, and suddenly got their Alignment sheets written. Official ones at that if they needed it for some expedition, though abridged ones were only needed for lesser inquiries. Important things like job interviews would require a complete one.

The queue in front of the desk quickly dwindled. Nolotl knew this not because he had risen his head once, but because the local Cognition became more relaxed with the presence of less and less mages. This had the byproduct of making his readings faster as his magic found less resistance.

His right hand started to hurt, so instead he extended it and began writing with his left one. Ambidexterity was a good proficiency to have as a scribe. Or a ritual mage. Which he wasn’t.

At some point he had closed his eyes, after all, with his perfect cognitive sight, he had perfect recreations of the Physicality in his mind. Once he was concentrated enough, sight was but an obsolete sense.

Most were to an gnosiamancer.

Nolotl was a maelstrom of ink and information, but his mana was running out quicker than his stamina, which wasn’t that far away from depletion.

As soon as he was about to call a rest, the status before him unsettled him. The gnosiamancer opened his eyes and looked at the person before him. Radiating power, the Empyrean of Time stood before him.

There was something different in the man. Normally he was withdrawn from everyone, not that Empyreans were paragons of socialization, but Enantyum Dei was one of the most withdrawn along with the Empyrean of Void.

And the reason for his apparent brightness was the very status sheet Nolotl was writing. Normally he would have ignored their contents, deeming the information in them useless, but this one was different. 

It read as follows:

Name

Enantyum Dei

Age

122

Race

Celestial

Most Used Resource

Mana

Resource Deposit Size

936.47

Top Alignments

-          Time: 98.02415

-          Light: 1.02353

-          Arcane: 0.40234

List of Titles

-          Empyrean

-          Regressor

-          Magnicide

List of Boons

-          Temporal Erasure

-          Immunity to Decay

-          Alignment Obfuscation

List of Blessings

-          Aligned With Time

-          Star Touched

The sheer number of wrong things with Enantyum’s status was inconceivable. First, he had the Alignment Obfuscation boon, which blocked any screening from showing more than three points of information in any category. If you were going to have your status taken, it was a given you would deactivate it. Unless you wanted to hide something.

And that was the problem. What could he want to hide when his status was this outrageous?

Not only did he have two blessings when most people didn’t even have one – Nolotl had also two, but considering he was royalty, one was to be expected – but he also had a problematic title.

Regicidal? Nolotl’s eyes locked into that title. But the problem he had wasn’t with the clear connotations of murder, but of the target who had been killed. If he had killed a king I would have known. The gnosiamancer meditated ever-so-pragmatically. Also, what is this Regressor title? I’ve never heard of it.

And even ignoring murder, that wasn’t the weirdest issue with the status. No, two greater ones remained.

First, for some reason Nolotl had made a mistake when writing Enantyum’s age. That had never ever happened. He operated with true knowledge directly extracted from the Cognition, yet somehow, his mind had thought for a split second that the man’s age started with a 1 instead of 2.

Such a mistake shouldn’t have been possible under normal circumstances, not even under the effects of Alignment Obfuscation. Something was amiss.

Last but not least, the chronomancer’s outrageous Alignment. Nolotl had never seen an Alignment that high. Even himself, who had forgone every other school of magic to focus on Information and had the bonuses of the Empyrean title, had only recently reached the 70% mark. And that was ignoring the outrageous amount of mana the chronomancer’s body was holding.

To shift one’s Alignment to such a degree, totally wrecking one’s internal balance at such a young age, was unheard of. What type of hellish training had he endured and substances had he ingested to reach that point?

It was called Alignment for a thing. Enantyum Dei had forgone every other aspect of magic, it was as if he was Time itself.

Then the chronomancer directed at him.

“Is there something wrong?” The Empyrean of Time’s eyes shone with the weight of decades and the knowledge of archmages, and his own mind throbbed with a feeling of familiar impending doom.