Dimensional Descent

The sight of numerous talismans being activated at once was ironically quite beautiful despite the purpose they were meant to serve.

In the Luxnix main family, there were numerous bodies or ’powers’. First there were the Three Arms, then there was the Elder’s Council, the Feather Sword warriors, the Star Order Council, and finally the Patriarch’s Faction.

These seven facets of the family worked in a balance and counter balance sort of way. The Star Order Council, the Patriarch’s Faction and the Feather Sword warriors could be considered the high end of this balance, there were many push and pull effects that dictated the politics.

At the lower levels, though, there were the Three Arms and the Elder’s Council. Of course, these Three Arms were the Wisdom Arm, the Healing Arm and the Speed Arm. These Three Arms were ’overseen’ by the Elder’s Council, a group of seniors that weren’t good enough to enter the true elite ranks of the main family, but still had strength given by their seniority and age, nonetheless.

This was important to understand at this point because it also described the weight of this command token.

The so-called command token was known by many things, but it was essentially a breadth of authority given to those of a certain rank. As a Division Head, a high-level position of the Three Arms, Therin was, of course, given this authority.

With how the Luxnix were designed, it was no surprise that they promoted competition. At the lower levels, this competition manifested in the head butting of the Three Arms. Sometimes this internal struggle would travel up to the Elder Council who had once been part of the Three Arms themselves, but this was much rarer.

Simply put, battles between the Arms was not rare in the slightest. The command token was used when these situations grew to a level that large portions of the Arm would become involved. The call of a Division Head was enough to spring several talents of the Healing Arm into action.

The trouble was that middling talents like Alfin wouldn’t be the only ones alerted.

**

In a corner of the Luxnix family estate, a young man stood in the middle of an empty training field. Beads of sweat poured down his body, yet his eyes were unblinking and his sword was steady.

He was about to take a step forward when he frowned.

He trained topless, but he still had his spatial ring and some ornaments on him. As a force of habit, he never took them off. But, he was still baffled when he saw the pendant swinging from his hip glowing.

’What are these fools doing? It’s only a month out from the Selection and they’ve sparked a faction war?’

This young man was none other than the third youth to have a Bloodline Density of above 0.50, Elody Luxnix. Like Syllar of the Speed Branch and Elaquin of the Wisdom Branch, Elody was the preeminent genius of the Healing Branch and had completed the first awakening of his Healing Branch, [Instant Recovery].

Elody wasn’t in the mood to deal with such things. So much of his time in the last several weeks had been spent on entertaining Orinik and Ganor, the two Galaxy Ranked disciples of the Void Palace. He hardly had time for himself. ​

And yet, now that he finally found such time, some idiot had used the command token?

Elody was of the mind to completely ignore it. He did have a responsibility as the Head of the Healing Branch to show up for these matters when their small internal battles rose to this level, but it wasn’t strictly necessary either way. It wasn’t like any of them could reprimand him.

He shook his head. ’Forget it, I won’t go. What a waste of my time.’

Even as he thought this, Elody hesitated once more. If a command token had been used, it was possible that one of the other Heads was involved. If Syllar and Elaquin were participating, it might be worth his while to spar with them, it had been quite a long time since he did so.

’Hm… I’ll wait… It’ll be obvious soon if they participated or not.’

Elody went back to swinging his sword.

**

Elody wasn’t the only one who noticed the sudden commotion. The flair up of a command token was something designed to be seen by as many as possible and many stragglers of the other two Arms were alerted to the change as well.

In an irony of ironies, a command token meant to be used to signal battle between two Arms was not only sparked by just a single man, but it had suddenly put all three Arms into motion as neither the Wisdom nor Speed Arm was aware of just which of them was going to be attacked.

A surge of Speed Arm disciples rushed for Riah’s courtyard, their gazes practically crimson with pent up energy.

Many of these youths were individuals who knew well that the Void Palace was selecting disciples, but they were simultaneously aware that they would never be among the selected. This sort of existential nihilism, although in just small measures, had been building up among the ’average’ of the Luxnix for the past several weeks now.

Suddenly having gained a target to vent their feelings of inadequacy on, they didn’t even care to consider which Arm they were fighting or if they were battling an Arm at all. Only a few who had witnessed Therin’s tirade earlier that day connected the dots toward what might actually be happening, but even they followed along, wanting to vent that uncomfortable feeling in their hearts.

Soon, over the horizon from Riah’s courtyard, dozens of youths became hundreds. The spectators that had been slowly accumulating grew in number as well.

Leonel stood in silence, the two ends of his spear in hand, still linked by a chain and separated into three. He hadn’t made any move to stop Therin’s commands or the others.

Today, he would flip the Luxnix family estate on its head.