Grey Kings Gambit 1

I suddenly understood. It was almost simple, a challenge I had inadvertently been preparing myself for through my training with the aether blades, expanding outward with my consciousness as I controlled and reacted to several inputs at once. Through the effort of all those false deaths as I learned to manipulate and control multiple blades at once throughout a broad battlefield, I had been learning to focus in an entirely new way.

And I thought I could see what it was building toward.

Rapidly, I began cycling through thoughts that seemed to form at the nexus of multiple runic meanings, forging a solid picture and then connecting the opposing runes with attached meanings. It required not only considering opposing ideas simultaneously, but actively splitting my thoughts to see a picture differently from multiple perspectives while holding multiple thoughts in my head at the same time.

Like wielding five blades with two hands.

The insight flowed like an open tap. Two or three at a time, the runes faded and the keystone realm became more empty as my mind seemed to bloat with understanding.

With a suddenness that felt disconcerting, the keystone realm was empty, and I was being drawn back through the wall of purple energy. My eyes snapped open as fine black dust ran through my fingers, spilling into the dense carpet of moss.

A pair of bright yellow eyes met mine, and Mordain took a step back. “Arthur? But what…?”

I clenched my fists and tried to calm my breathing as my pulse quickened.

From my back, I could feel it—the new godrune heavy in my mind. As it had before, a name and history presented themselves to me, centuries of design and purpose and intent woven into the insight like a tapestry.

I reached for the ground to push myself up to my feet, only then realizing I was floating above the mossy floor. The atmospheric aether seemed to be pressing against me, like I was woven into it, holding me up against the force of gravity. Moving as if in a trance, I unfolded and stood firmly on my feet, a sudden sense of nostalgia mingling with the excited confusion of my success in the keystone.

“What happened?” Mordain asked, his voice tight, uncertain. To him, I realized, it must have looked like I’d gone catatonic for a brief time as I floated in the air.

“I solved it,” I answered, my voice rich with disbelief. After the long trials of the first two keystones, I couldn’t have dared to hope that the third could be unraveled so quickly. “I have it, Mordain. The third keystone power, another godrune…”

I pushed aether down along my spine and into the godrune. A golden glow suffused the cave as my mind lit up like an endless web of branching starlight spilling across the eternity of my own thoughts.

“A crown,” Mordain said softly, his gaze focused at the top of my head, where I realized the golden light was primarily radiating from. “A crown of light…”

As I tentatively felt for the emanation he was seeing, I understood. “The King’s Gambit…”

I released the godrune, blinking away the aftereffects of its use, breathless. I would need time to fully understand it and what it could do, but if that brief activation was any indication…