The creature towered at roughly three meters in height—imposing, yet eerily still.
Cautiously, Altha stepped closer. The leviathan remained motionless, its massive form wreathed in smoke and slow-burning cinders. He peered into its eyes—twin wells of deep red light.
But beneath their eerie glow, there was something else—something less tangible, a presence flickering in and out of perception, like a thought half-formed, or an echo of some older will.
Drawn by instinct, he raised his hand and rested his palm against the creature's head. The leviathan neither recoiled nor leaned into the contact; it remained statuesque, offering no outward response—at least none that would register as such to the casual eye.
Yet Altha could feel it. Beneath the cool surface of its scales, some exchange passed between them.
When he pulled his hand away, the skin of his palm throbbed—chilled to the bone, the warmth drained from it. But as soon as he'd let go feeling returned to that limb of his, a likely product of the Petalbrand Ring he wore.
"Fascinating..." he murmured.
Driven by curiosity, he slowly began to circle the leviathan, eyes tracing every detail—the layering of scales, the filament-thin veins of ember beneath its skin, the languid curl of smoke wafting from its wings.
Minutes turned into a distant backdrop, consumed by his scrutiny, as the soon-to-be aspiring Scriptic Eidolomancer or Learned Arcane Academic observed the creature's every detail—his mind split between scientific fascination and the subtle metaphysical resonance that seemed to link him, faintly, to the summoned being.
Before he could fall further into reverie, a voice broke the chamber's ageless quiet:
(Task complete.)
(Analysis conclusive.)
(Would you like to view the results?)
Altha blinked, coming back to himself. "Ah—yes..."
(Response received.)
As he scratched the back of his head, he motioned absently toward the great avian fiend. "While that's processing... could you also analyze this creature's biological origin?"
(Certainly, wearer Altha.)
One of the metallic spiders detached from the larger swarm and scuttled toward him, climbing easily up his sleeve to perch on his shoulder. The remainder of the drones advanced on the leviathan, dispersing around it with mechanical precision.
(Estimated time to completion: 15 to 30 minutes.)
(Progress: 0%.)
The small spider on his shoulder projected a soft holographic display before him—a smooth pane of pale light. Text and imagery unfolded in sequence.
"Gravitite?"
Below that heading, the schematic showed a 3D rendered, pale, metallic ore with a subtle prismatic sheen.
Its surface seemed to shimmer as its colour shifted red to blue depending on how it's viewed—red at distance, blue when close.
The hologram also detailed how striations within it glowed faintly when under pressure, as though responding to motion or mass. One picture displayed it in the dark, pulsing in sync with nearby bodies, reacting subtly to movement or gravitational presence.
---
Properties:
Micro-Gravitic Flux: Gravitite emits a localized gravitational field capable of subtly distorting the immediate spacetime within a controlled radius (typically within one meter of unrefined ore). This distortion is slight—sufficient to modulate pressure, perceived weight, or vector trajectories by fractional margins—though its effects amplify considerably when refined or strategically arrayed in greater quantities.
Redshift/Blueshift Reaction: Objects moving relative to a Gravitite-suffused field experience genuine frequency shifts in both light and sound. Motion away from the field induces redshift; movement toward it produces blueshift. These are not mere illusions—the ore bends local spacetime microgradients, replicating astrophysical Doppler effects within terrestrial contexts.
Inertial Dampening: Gravitite can attenuate inertia—allowing objects to appear weightless in motion while preserving or enhancing kinetic energy on impact. A blade inlaid with Gravitite might move effortlessly, but upon striking a target, its velocity would amplify momentarily under the blueshift effect—delivering force far beyond apparent mass.
---
"Fascinating," Altha murmured, brow furrowed. "A strange metal indeed... though I suppose I'd never heard of Enhypen either—until Cecily happened to mention it."
He glanced over at the skittering spiders now extracting micro-samples from the massive avian demon, the Emberborn Leviathan. The surreal image of the mechanical insects dwarfed by the smoldering beast lingered for a moment in his mind.
Turning back, he resumed reading.
---
Use Cases:
Arcanum Devices: Gravitite's micro-gravitic flux is widely employed in engineering applications—hovercraft stabilizers, anti-grav platforms, and directional-shift boots. Refined Gravitite cores enable such systems to maintain precise balance and vertical modulation absent reliance on external propulsion.
Weaponry: Projectiles—arrows, bolts, or specialized munitions—tipped with micro-Gravitite dynamically alter flight trajectories mid-air. The resulting adjustments improve targeting accuracy while enhancing impact force through blueshift-induced acceleration.
Stealth & Surveillance: Gravitite-infused garments—cloaks, armor—distort local sound and light, effectively warping perception. Voices elongate into uncanny reverberations; footsteps dissolve into barely perceptible hums, making the wearer exceedingly difficult to track.
Astronomic Lenses: Arcanists, Mages, Scientists and Scholars alike polish Gravitite wafers into precision lenses, which subtly manipulate gravitational fields to adjust optical paths. Such lenses simulate natural redshift effects, allowing real-time observation of distant celestial bodies.
---
Chin cupped in one palm, Altha gazed at the arrow still floating midair—head tilting slightly as his mind raced through implications both practical and theoretical.
---
Possible Origins:
The Earth God otherwise known as "Thorn-Mother" or "The First Budding Vine", was said to have sealed a fragment of the sky deep within a mountain in the Nyrwoods which has ever since become unseelie within that realm of Her's.
It's not entirely known how the ore formed nor how it spread, only that it appeared after that piece of sky was captures or maybe even stolen.
Some say the ore doesn't just manipulate gravity—it remembers motion.
Exposure over time has been linked to temporal disorientation and phantom echoes of past movement—for example a soldier steps into a Gravitite-rich chamber and hears arrows whistling by that haven't yet been fired.
---
To Altha, such descriptions seemed fundamentally paradoxical.
How could one capture that which neither breathes, nor runs, nor thinks? How does one pluck from the sky something so immaterial—unchained by form or substance? Unless it was a celestial body or a group of them....
He exhaled, voice faint. "Gods... what a bunch of weirdos."
Still, curiosity compelled him to read further.
---
Rarity & Challenges:
In the living multiverse, Gravitite is exceedingly hard to come by, but it does exist. It is more common in the Nyrwoods, the domain of the Thorn-Mother.
In its raw state, Gravitite is exceptionally unpredictable—turning denser or attracting and repelling object at a whim—while also becoming dangerously unstable in the presence of intense magnetic fields or rapid acceleration.
Extraction demands an intricate balance of technical craft and ritual. Miners rely on finely-tuned counterbalance systems or gravity-dampening wards to harvest it safely.
Without such measures, the ore is prone to implosive collapse or erratic spatial disruptions.
---
He thought for a moment, playing out the possibilities in his mind.
"Thank you. You may return to the others now," Altha said gently, gesturing toward the arachnid perched on his shoulder.
Without hesitation, the metallic spider leapt onto the orbiting bow, calculated its trajectory with silent precision, and then propelled itself toward its colony gathered atop the demonic avian's form—riding the arc of the bow's inertia to launch midair like a silvered projectile.
Altha allowed himself a faint smile as he stepped forward and plucked the suspended arrow from its stasis.
Channeling a thin stream of Psyche into the shaft, he probed the arcane object's latent metaphysical circuitry—hoping to isolate the rune structures underpinning its anomalous functions. While the gravitational manipulation stemmed from the Gravitite itself, the orchestration of those phenomena, he reasoned, must be governed by a sophisticated array of encoded runes—etched not into surface, but into the microstructure, beyond the perceptibility of the naked eye.
Cross-legged, he sank to the floor, letting the world recede into a conceptual background. He directed the entirety of his focus—every stray thought siphoned—toward unraveling the design embedded within the arrow's internal lattice.
It was elusive.
The arrow's arcane signature proved difficult to parse, shielded by Ether-Circuits intended to guide Ether itself along predetermined pathways in accordance with the user's will. To him, studying this object was akin to trying to observe a star eclipsed within a binary system—there, yet occluded by something just as luminous and complex.
The process was tedious, though not as energetically taxing as forming the arrow had been.
He couldn't sense Ether thus observing the circuits was out of the question and unlike the living he couldn't sense inanimate objects.
So rather than sensing the circuits directly, Altha suffused the metaphysical scaffolding with Psyche—flooding every channel he could access. The regions where his energy was forcibly excluded marked the probable placement of the concealed circuits.
It was a long, frustrating endeavor. But it bore fruit, eventually.
After a long, deliberate search, he isolated a singular rune. With care, he enveloped it in Psyche, mapping its curvature and density. Another followed. Then another.
By the end, he held the mental image of a unified insignia—one whose glyphic architecture eluded all known parallels within his study of Eidolomantic Script. The structure was foreign. Even at a glance, he doubted whether it qualified as Eidolomancy in the conventional sense.
A flicker of frustration rippled through his mind, but the emotion passed quickly—drowned by the weight of fatigue and the dull ache behind his eyes. He was too depleted to protest, his reservoir of Psyche nearly exhausted.
But still, he had seen it. And that would be enough—for now.
His mind returned to the Remembrance's classification: Psyche Resonance — Incompatible.
"Incompatible… what does that even mean in this context?" he muttered, furrowing his brow. "Does it mean I can't wield it at all? Or does it simply restrict certain abilities until I reach the required Alter-Node threshold? I mean—" he gestured vaguely to the arrow still floating before him, "—it responded to my Psyche. So clearly, it's capable of interfacing with it, even if imperfectly."
The contradiction gnawed at him. The artifact had formed the arrow through his Psyche, which meant some functional relationship existed. But the Spire's classification remained rigid—"incompatible." Did that refer to efficiency? Sustainability? Safety?
Determined to force clarity where ambiguity reigned, Altha channeled what remained of his Psyche into the arrow, forcibly reestablishing resonance. He envisioned the unfamiliar insignia he had traced earlier and directed his Psyche into its hidden pathways—straining to stimulate a response from within the artifact's arcane circuitry.
It demanded nearly everything he had left.
For a breathless moment, nothing happened. Then—
With a sudden, deafening crack, a concussive pulse blasted outward, hurling him backward. He slammed into the chamber wall with enough force to crater stone, his Astral-enhanced body sparing him from grievous harm.
Dazed, he slid to the floor and groaned. "Okay… that went better than expected—aside from being launched across the room," he coughed, brushing dust from his shoulders. "But that proves it. The bow can operate without Ether. So then... 'Incompatible' must mean something else in this context."
He winced, rubbing at the sides of his head. A dull throb pulsed behind his eyes, his temples taut with strain. His reserves were nearing critical depletion.
"I may have overdone it again…" he muttered, nearly slurring from exhaustion.
Turning toward the artifact, he froze.
The arrow now hung suspended in midair, anchored not by gravity or motion, but by some ambient arcane inertia. The bow continued to orbit it, locked into a stable pattern of motion. The two artifacts seemed bound, operating within a resonance field that no longer required his Psyche to sustain it.
Altha refocused internally, probing his reserves.
No drain. His Psyche was no longer being siphoned. Whatever autonomous state he had activated—whether circuit-locked or pattern-bound—was now self-sustaining.
"Fascinating…" he whispered.
If true, the trait could prove immensely advantageous. Yet to Altha, it all felt suspiciously elegant—too elegant. In this world, power never manifested without consequence. Gain always demanded sacrifice, a truth enshrined in the axioms of Aethear Conservation.
He remained unconvinced.
Approaching the arrow, he plucked it from its suspended state.
It offered no resistance. The bow, as if leashed by unseen threads, followed in silent orbit. Still, his Psyche remained untouched.
He narrowed his eyes.
It was too convenient.
Deliberately, he funneled a minuscule amount of Psyche into the arrow—barely perceptible to his own senses. And yet, the energy did not return to him. Instead, it was subsumed, drawn into an existing stream of active Psyche already nested within the arrow's structure.
That hadn't been the case earlier during his probing attempts.
Which meant—Psyche was now actively in use.
The bow wasn't maintaining its motion autonomously. It was siphoning from the arrow to preserve its orbit.
"Knew it," he muttered. "No such thing as a perpetual motion system in this universe… or so I still suspect. So then, the real question is—how long until the arrow's reservoir is exhausted?"
He raised his wrist slightly. "Hey, Niobe."
> (Yes, wearer Altha?)
"Could you monitor the time it takes for this arrow to fully dissipate?"
> (Of course, wearer Altha.)
A fragment of the silver bracelet detached, reshaping itself midair into a diminutive metallic spider—noticeably smaller than the others. It scurried up a piece of fractured stone and assumed position, its optic sensors trained on the hovering pair.
Altha blinked. "That's… weirdly adorable."
With a soft exhale, he moved toward the chamber's center. Gently, he released the arrow once more and stepped away, letting the strange device resume its silent performance. Other matters still demanded his attention—namely, escape.
He slumped against a cool wall, activating the bracer again. With a subtle shift of will, he telekinetically retrieved a singular object from it's digital subspace: a journal.
It materialized smoothly, cloaked in a cover of deep, velvety black. He set it down in front of him with care.
Etched along its edges was an ornate border of golden filigree, a mesmerizing lattice of swirling arabesques and floral motifs. They framed the blank expanse of the cover like forgotten verses.
Strangely, it appeared both empty and impossibly full—a paradox of form befitting the knowledge it might contain.