Chapter 198: Urth Vault II

The runes glowed faintly with a deep dark blue, maintaining the link between this place and the mountains while also enshrouding this hidden area with concealing energy. It was similar in kind to the barrier surrounding the Jotnar hand in Vimur, one that blocked out any outside interference and hid all that was within it.

But beyond this, the Collector could immediately sense the vast quantity of magical energy it had felt beforehand from outside the mountain. A concentration of mana befitting of the core of this twin mountain range.

Said mana source emanated from the only source of light within the room, or the 'Urth Vault' as it was called: a single floating rune fashioned of glowing dark blue, almost black energy. It was suspended in hovering animation in a pillar of holographic, pale blue light projected from two pillars that emerged from the ceiling and ground respectively.

The Collector floated up to the rune, and its sheer size dwarfed the Collector. Had the Collector been in its Jotnar sized form, then everything here would have been appropriately sized, perhaps even rather cramped.

However, the Collector had to save its Jotnar transformation time. The 'stored energy' built up within the transformation was nearing its peak, but if the Collector transformed, even if it chose not to shunt out that stored energy in explosive fashion, there would still be leakage.

The voice of the artificial intelligence the Jotnar employed rung out again, this time from the rune.

"Welcome, Eru Wun Thamir...," began the voice.

A pause occurred, and the Collector remained tense, for it knew that the concentration of magical energy in the rune was immense, and that if any abnormalities occurred such as some form of cataclysmic eruption of power, then it was in risk of undertaking significant damage if it was prepared.

After all, it had been centuries likely since the Jotnar's technology had been maintained. It was entirely possible that defects existed due to the ravages of extended time, even when the remarkable, nature defying phenomenon of magic was involved.

"Protocol: Succession of the End fully initiated," said the voice.

A swell of magical energy crackled out from the rune, and the Collector deftly dodged chaotic waves of shunted out power.

The rune stabilized, however, and from it, a new voice emanated. A male voice, and one that the Collector thoroughly recognized. From the memories that had flashed into its processing unit from the Jotnar core, it recognized this voice as that which belonged to the prior Jotnar successor.

The one known as 'Eru Wun Thamir'.

"Welcome, my Successor. If you have reached this far, then that means you must have taken my Shard. For that, I commend you. This message does not contain anything resembling my consciousness, and it is simply one recorded in await of your arrival, but know that should you be hearing this, you have justified the visions I bore.

You are to succeed where we have failed.

You, an outsider, will bring life back to this world where we could not."

The Collector clicked its mandibles in analysis. This was a pre-recorded message, so there was no point in interacting with it. However, the nature of the message itself was one of note worth. It was one that had expected the Collector's arrival, and at the same time, one that had predicted that the one to bear the Jotnar's Shard would not be one of them, but an outsider.

Whether the term 'outsider' indicated a being not of this planet was one the Collector was unsure of.

"You have taken the Shard I had embedded in my arm," said Eru. "And you have not turned it in to the Common Body. Thus, the Shard has led you here. This is merely the first step of your Destiny, O Endbringer.

As an outsider, it is likely you have questions of our peoples, for if my visions were correct and not a figment of a drunken haze, then it will have been centuries since our disappearance.

The land that it known harshly as the 'Wailwaste' to the Common Body, perhaps the same body that you hail from, is one we Jotnar have made our home since time immemorial. Jotnarhelm as we called it. A land too difficult for Commoners to find life in, but one we Jotnar beheld as the wellspring of all life, where the breath of the White Voice flowed freely.

But you know by now that the World hangs at the edge of destruction. The accursed thing known as 'Undeath' spreads, and though the New Gods try to contain it, convince their Common Body that it is no threat, that it is the cause of some monster or that to place blame, the end of all that is known does not care of excuses.

The White Voice, the will of this world and the source of all life, withers, her breath and voice fading into nothingness, and as she falters, Undeath continues to rise.

We the Jotnar are uniquely blessed to breathe life into dying land, to patch away Undeath, but Undeath is a terrifying threat.

It is not constant. It changes. Shifts. Evolves.

Five hundred years past the convergence, my father, Bel Wun Thamir, first saw Undeath and recognized its terrifying nature. When he saw that our Breaths began to falter against it, he sent our kind out beyond Jotnarhelm, across the realms of the Common Body, to seek knowledge and to teach the Commoners of the nature of Undeath and how to truly halt it.

But the New Gods did not take kindly to this, for it is they who bring this disaster upon the world. It is they who by usurping the World Shards and Converging the Realms, stretch the White Voice's veil of life thin, causing Undeath to poke its ugly head through the thinnest layers, spreading its rot.

In just over one hundred years, the New Gods slaughtered our kind and drove us back to Jotnarhelm, but even then, my father Bel held hope that with the knowledge our kind had sacrificed to obtain, that we could alter our Breaths, perhaps create an Artifact capable of channeling it in a way to directly destroy the Undeath or raise the White Voice to full power.

For otherwise, the fate of the world was inevitable. That which we had thought was mere myth for thousands upon thousands of years became increasingly likely to be reality.

Ragnar-Uruk: the End of the Rock that all life stands upon.