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An Otherworldly Scholar - 225
🕑 Added 2025-05-08 05:19:56 +0000 UTCByrne stumbled upon magic in the 1970s after his first business venture went south. Before becoming a real estate tycoon, he was a gold smuggler moving bullion for those eager to evade government control: drug cartels, arms dealers, and paranoid wealthy individuals. Risks were high, but the money was good. Byrne knew the trick to survive was only to dip his toes into society's underbelly. He would never be blinded by the wealth, and he would never let them get a hold of him.
Byrne moved the gold from one place to another, got his cut, and dipped into the next operation. Repeat customers were profitable, but the longer one played the game, the more dangerous it became. Byrne had a motto: if nobody knew you, nobody could connect you to the crime scene. He kept his dealings clean and his hands as far from the mess as possible.
Until he couldn’t.
After a particularly messy operation with a Colombian gang, Byrne abandoned his operations center in New Orleans and moved to the West Coast with a few suitcases full of money. Byrne needed a fresh start—a place out of the reach of the law and his old clients. California was perfect. The sunny beaches and steady cash flow from Hollywood and Silicon Valley made it the ideal place for an eccentric millionaire with dubious wealth to lay low.
In Santa Monica, Byrne moved into a rented house and laundered his money through real estate and an import business. However, he couldn’t lie low for long. Dubious people seemed to attract other dubious people, and sooner or later, he gained a large social circle of the same rotten people he used to frequent in New Orleans. It was during a social gathering hosted by a wealthy casino tycoon that Byrne met the cult.
The group called themselves the Luminary Circle. They were one of hundreds of New Age collectives that plagued the city back then. Like their counterparts, the acolytes of the Luminary Circle dressed in loose, pale clothing, spoke softly, and kept close to one another, finishing each other’s sentences like they were speaking from some sort of rehearsed script.
At first, Byrne dismissed them as wealthy eccentrics with too much money and not enough purpose in life. But they were different from other New Age collectives. Byrne felt they had quite a strange obsession with him.
It all started with a strange interest in his line of work: questions about gold sources, purities, and routes. It wasn’t strange for customers to obsess over the operative details, but this was different. Byrne couldn’t help but compare them to drones collecting information for their queen bee—well-groomed, articulate, and plastically optimistic drones.
Eventually, after a hundred and one invitations, Byrne agreed to meet the queen bee.
Byrne wasn’t sure what to expect, but a lavish manor nestled among the hills wasn’t it. The place looked like one of the luxury homes that plagued that part of the city. However, Byrne felt uneasy. Despite the modern facade, the manor's interior looked like an old Victorian house. The people inside wore white robes and walked barefoot through the gardens.
The leader of the group, a woman named Seraphine—definitely not her real name—greeted him in a study with brass navigation instruments, old books, and taxidermied animals. She was tall and thin, with piercing blue eyes that seemed to look beyond the physical realm. At least, appearance-wise, she looked like a proper cult leader. There was something magnetic about her presence, like she knew something others couldn’t see.
Byrne expected an invitation to the cult with a hefty entrance fee. However, Seraphine was all business. She wanted gold—not in bars or coins, but raw gold. The price was more than generous, and the risk was very low, so he arranged the purchase.
Byrne delivered the gold in a small, sealed canvas bag. As requested, he drove it up the hills to the manor. That day, the peaceful atmosphere at the Luminary Circle had changed. The barefoot cultists who once plagued the gardens were nowhere to be found. All the New Age fluff was gone. Only a few high-ranking acolytes remained in the manor.
Seraphine invited him to witness the ritual.
Byrne replied with a snarky comment.
What if it works?
In the end, curiosity got the better of him, and Byrne was led into the house, past the lounges, soft carpets, beaded curtains, and down a spiral staircase. The scent of incense and myrrh hung heavy in the air. The atmosphere was charged, dizzying. A heavy door opened at the end of the corridor, leading to an old Roman-style bathhouse.
The room was lined with old, spotted mirrors framed in oxidized brass and iron. In the center of the room was a pool filled with a few centimeters of water, no more than two or three fingers deep. A waist-high stone platform stood in the pool with a small depression in the middle. The gold had been placed there, shimmering under the faint light of candles.
The cult gathered around the perimeter of the pool, standing in silence. This time, they were wearing midnight-blue robes thrown over their heads. Each held a brass bowl filled with Palo Santo, White Sage, and Sandalwood. The smoke slowly filled the room like a thick mist, and Byrne remained near the entrance where the air was more breathable.
Seraphine entered last. She moved without sound, barefoot, the edges of her white robe blending with the smoke and the marble. With a peaceful, cult-leader smile, she signaled Byrne to close the door. He did, ensuring he could get out if the atmosphere became too hazy.
Seraphine moved across the room, extinguishing candles as the acolytes chanted. The air thickened, and the reflections in the mirrors became muddy and distorted. Then, Seraphine entered the pool, her footsteps creating ripples in the water. She stood behind the gold platform and waited for the water to calm. Without a noticeable cue, the chants grew louder.
Seraphine spoke in a language Byrne hadn’t heard before.
At least it wasn’t a corny spell in English.
Byrne was about to roll his eyes when something changed. It wasn’t the mirrors. It was the water around Seraphine. The surface shimmered, as if it were covered in a fine layer of gold. Then, the gold changed to silver and milk-white before disappearing completely. The pool wasn’t just a pool anymore, but a hole in the ground. Byrne stepped forward, vertigo gripping his stomach. There, he saw an aerial view of a valley at night. He glanced around. The acolytes were unshaken. Their eyes were open, but they saw nothing.
Byrne leaned over the pool’s edge and saw white cities suspended over gargantuan trees. Nobody stopped him. The reflection was sharp, sharper than anything other than real life. Byrne touched the water. It was cold, almost freezing. He leaned closer.
Something moved in one of the white towers, like a shadow in front of a candle.
Byrne felt like he was falling, but he wasn’t. The floor remained solid under his feet, but the picture moved upward. Through the window, Byrne saw a woman of unrivaled beauty with long white hair, dressed in the most exquisite silk dress. The woman moved her hands, and a flame appeared out of nowhere. She repeated the exercise again and again until the flame grew into a basketball-sized, spinning ball of fire.
Byrne gasped, and the fireball disappeared.
The woman turned around and spied through the window. She said words he couldn’t decipher and extended her hand toward him. Byrne extended his hand, but before he could touch her, the picture vanished, leaving only the white marble bottom of the pool. Byrne stood up and retreated to the edge of the room, his heart beating like a hammer against an anvil.
Seraphine asked each acolyte to mark the mirror where they had seen the vision and dismissed them one by one. When only Seraphine and Byrne remained in the room, she didn’t offer him the piece of chalk. Instead, she asked him a single question.
Do you want to go there?
Byrne nodded.
The Luminary Circle was a facade for Seraphine’s real endeavor. The robes, the rites, the ritualistic affirmations, and the talk of inner lights and cosmic alignment were only a useful disguise. Most of her followers were happy burning incense, meditating under copper pyramids, and donating money, convinced they were unlocking new inner dimensions. Seraphine encouraged that behavior. The illusion kept both them and their wallets docile. What she truly sought was the truth buried under layers of religion and mysticism: a system designed to harness supernatural powers.
Seraphine called the source of magical power the Flaming Heart. Most people were too numb to feel it, but there were a few—rare, scattered, and perceptive—that could feel its presence. Those were the ones Seraphine recruited for her inner circle.
The Flaming Heart, Seraphine said, wasn’t a being or a god, but a field. A current. An ancient fire coiled beneath the blanket of reality. Her true work wasn’t about enlightenment but attunement to that source.
Seraphine had studied the Heart for years, and her father even longer before her. Byrne studied her journals. They were dense and meticulous, strip mining every avenue of research for the slightest trace of the Heart. She described ancient religious rituals, planetary alignments, mineral compositions, and even specific emotional states that seemed to ‘thin the wall’ between this world and the other. She recorded all sorts of anomalies: birds flying in spirals above certain spots, ships getting lost at sea, dreams shared between people who had never met. Then, she distilled the experiences into a few, flimsy drops of true knowledge.
“Do you understand now? Do you realize what Seraphine was looking for? Have you seen it?” Byrne whispered despite the [Silence Dome] surrounding us.
I nodded.
“The Flaming Heart is that energy source beneath our mana pools. That white sun floating in the void.”
“Yes! Yes!” Byrne exclaimed, almost jumping to his feet. “The Fountain! That’s the source of all magic! It turns out that the Fountain is closer to Ebros than Earth. That’s why we can use magic here and not back home!”
Byrne laughed like a kid on his first day of summer break. He hadn’t told me a single lie since he started talking. The man-made System, natural magic, Runeweaving, Corruption, the Man in Yellow’s quest—everything was the absolute and complete truth. Only one piece of the puzzle was missing: the part where he parted ways with the System Avatar.
“What happened next? If there are only traces of magical power back on Earth, how did you get here?” I asked.
Byrne cleared his throat.
“We hunted the Fountain for decades with a handful of others attuned enough to mana to sense and manipulate it. Seraphine was a bloodhound. Her gift was finding things; I was the final piece of her machinations. As you might have guessed by now, my gift is teleportation. It took us years of precise preparation, but the alignment was almost perfect. We had one chance, and we took it. I jumped into the Fountain’s world. The proximity to the Fountain recharged my magical powers. I tried to jump back home but ended up in Ebros.”
The story continued with what I already knew. Byrne popped up near Farcrest, had his natural magic sealed after accepting the System, was captured by orcs, finessed his way out of prison, met Mister Lowell, and cultivated his class until the System contacted him with bad news: the code was faulty, and Corruption was piling up.
“At first, I decided to help him. After all, the System was what kept the common folk from living in caves like rats. However, I soon realized Corruption is inherent to the System. It couldn’t be fixed because Corruption is a natural byproduct of magic. You see, Seraphine was wrong. The Fountain isn’t an electric field; it is more like a living being with a life cycle: birth, buildup, and release. The System accelerated this cycle by drawing mana from the Fountain. We have now reached the part of the cycle where the Fountain can’t keep up with the Corruption buildup, so it must die and be reborn again. Don’t panic. This has happened before. Earth’s distance from the Fountain protects it from side effects, but Ebros is a different story. During the release cycle, Corruption skyrockets and available magic plummets. As you might imagine, that would result in the collapse of the System and civilization as we know it. Please don’t panic.”
I did my best to feign surprise.
“I’m not panicking… yet. There is a way of fixing this, right?”
Byrne took a deep breath.
“That’s why I need your help. I have a plan.” He popped the [Silence Dome] and grabbed two cups of wine from a waiter’s tray. He handed me one and summoned the barrier again. “There were other Runeweavers before me—people who stumbled into this world by chance and were employed by the System Avatar to perform various quests. One of them was Baram. He lived a few hundred years ago, Ebros time. His quest was to anchor the timeframes of Earth and Ebros. That’s important because the downside of my teleportation is that I have to see the landing spot, so I used Baram’s anchor points to return to Earth.”
“How would you fix Corruption with a portal?” I asked. “Do you want to bring the military here?”
“No! No, no, no. We can’t disturb life in Ebros. We already messed up Earth with our greed and our wars. We can’t mess up another world,” Byrne said, emptying his glass. “Listen, we can’t stop Corruption just like we can’t stop a hurricane, but we can evacuate the zone. I want to take the people of Ebros back to Earth until the Fountain enters a stable era again.”
I fumbled my glass, and it shattered against the floor. A waiter jogged over but stopped outside the [Silence Dome]. Byrne didn’t dispel it. Instead, he gave me an intense look. I thought about the orphanage. The Fountain’s death might not be avoidable, but maybe we can take everyone to a safe place during the Corruption era.
“Is that even possible? I’ve been doing magic for a while now, and even picking a stone ten meters away requires a lot of mana.”
“The amount of energy required is… quite large. Luckily, the System Avatar didn’t strip me of my runeweaving when I decided to go off on my own. We can code a massive teleportation machine that will take everyone to safety before the worst part of the release cycle hits.”
I nodded in silence, the last pieces of the puzzle falling into place.
Byrne’s plan sounded much more plausible than the System Avatar’s quest.
“What happened to Seraphine?” I asked.
“She wasn’t thrilled that I took my time to return. She was even less thrilled when I told her Ebros was a dying world and that I wanted to bring everyone here. She was obsessed with harnessing the power of the Fountain, and I knew that wasn’t possible, so we parted ways. I’ve been working on my teleportation machine ever since. The royals bankroll my whole operation; they believe I’m reviving an old teleportation System.”
[Foresight] told me Byrne wasn’t telling me any lies.
“I’m really sorry to burden you with this, Robert, but the teleportation device has to be extremely precise, so I need someone who knows how to crunch the numbers. Most of the groundwork is done. I need to scale up and aim for Earth,” Byrne said, popping the [Silence Dome] and switching back to the Ebros dialect. “It might have been destiny, but I really need someone with your skill set. Think about it and come see me after the selection exam. I’ll teach you the runes.”
Then, Byrne greeted me and exited the ballroom. A huge question floated in my mind: was he trustworthy? Byrne hadn’t told me a single lie—a far greater courtesy than the System Avatar had offered—yet part of me refused to trust him.
“Would you like to exercise your right of reply?” I asked, to no one in particular.
The System Avatar, however, remained silent.
“That’s what I thought.”
Comments
Ben Bass
TYFTC! Sooo much info, and Byrne ‘seems’ to be telling the truth, however he is also able to hide other things, maybe he has figured out/developed a way to hide his lies from Foresight?
Rod
On the other hand the System avatar at times feels like it goes out of its way to seem untrustworthy, to the point where it's comedic, I've hated its guts since he was introduced.
Rod
As much as I wish to trust Byrne, there's too many things that he listed off as facts that I'd need way more evidence to believe, he has my curiosity, but not my trust. Also, his plan of moving people to Earth is insane, do we even know how long it'd take for the fountain to "reset"?
I Dare Korval
Also Byrne just said he would teach Robert the runes, so despite his status sheet not saying Runeweaver, Byrne knows he is one.
I Dare Korval
"Corruption is a natural byproduct of magic" this is one thing I would never take at face value as it doesn't make any sense. Magic (aka energy) is used to perform an effect (fireball, reshape earth, etc...) this is just a case of magic being converted into the physical normal world. Where is the corruption in energy conversion, and wouldn't everyone who uses magic be suffering from it then?? If the fountain actually goes through a cycle of "birth, buildup, and release" then the System should actually extend the life of the fountain by preventing or slowing the build up to the release state. Also, how could he possibly know this? The cycle is probably over a huge amount of time, so this seems more speculation than a knowable fact. Way too many grand statements and assumptions. Not not mention, even Byrne should know it's not possible (or practical) to move 25 million beings, let alone for it not to cause a disaster on Earth. This reeks more of saving the "chosen few" over the unwashed masses.
Galven Star
Byrne is a moron, he genuinely thinks that bringing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people over to another, magicless, and filled to the brim with concepts they have no frame of reference for world is less disruptive to their lives then just bringing enough weaponry and supplies to ride out the storm? Not to mention that once they are on earth, that would prove the existence of magic to everyone, and the governments of the world would stop at nothing to acquire that power for themselves. Also, Seraphine is still around and doing shit(probably evil shit), I guarantee it.
Makyura
Please stop making everything bold
