Chapter 664

According to Aurerese, the Ethereals were an ancient race with respectable strength, yet they had never exactly commanded much attention.

But the deeper Evenson dug into their history, all the way back to their origins, the more obvious that became.

The Ethereals had almost no presence because, from the beginning, almost nobody had noticed them at all.

They were not natives of the Void.

They had originated in the physical universe.

At the microscopic level, their original bodies had been no different from those of countless other mortal creatures. They were made of ordinary matter.

Their current forms, those swirling clouds of energy bound beneath layers of magical wrappings, were the result of being transformed by the Void.

And the absurd part was that no one had actually targeted them.

Not deliberately.

When the Void Lords first expanded the breach between their realm and reality, they were focused almost entirely on one objective: finding suitable vessels that would allow them to physically enter the universe.

Their attention was consumed by their plans to cultivate the Old Gods and corrupt unborn Titan souls.

Then Sargeras discovered the threat posed by the Void.

He immediately reported what he had found to the Pantheon, only to become enraged by Aman’Thul’s refusal to act decisively.

So Sargeras became a fallen Titan, founded the Burning Legion, and embarked upon his campaign of destroying worlds and slaughtering his own kind.

The result was that the two greatest powers in existence were too busy pursuing their own grand plans to spare even a thought for ordinary mortal races.

The Void Lords didn’t care about them.

Sargeras didn’t care about them.

They simply happened to be caught in the middle.

There was one interesting wrinkle in Sargeras’s story, though.

Something about him seemed to change after the Burning Legion’s first invasion of Azeroth ended in failure.

Before Azeroth, the Legion had never truly been defeated.

Wherever it marched, worlds fell. Wherever it invaded, it conquered. Even Titans had died beneath its advance.

And then Azeroth stopped it.

Sargeras was stunned by the defeat.

It was said that when the portal capable of allowing him to enter the universe had been destroyed, he left a message for the nascent world-soul of Azeroth.

You are not worth killing.

You foolish little Azeroth.

If you want to kill me... hate me.

Hate me. Despise me.

Then live.

Live an ugly, miserable life.

Run. Hide. Survive.

Later, after Kil’jaeden’s defeat at the Sunwell Plateau, the Burning Legion eventually returned to Azeroth after years of silence.

And when Sargeras finally spoke to the still-unborn world-soul again, his first words were strikingly different.

"Why are you so weak?"

"Because your hatred for me isn’t deep enough."

Perhaps, even as Sargeras destroyed world after world and slaughtered countless world-souls, some part of him secretly wanted one of them to defeat him.

To defeat the Legion.

To prove that he was not the most powerful Titan.

That somewhere out there, an unborn Titan existed who was stronger than him, with champions who could surpass his army.

Perhaps, if such a Titan could defeat him, it could accomplish the one thing he himself had failed to do.

Stop the Void.

It was a grotesque contradiction.

Sargeras slaughtered his own people without hesitation, yet somewhere inside, he still hoped that one of them would survive his flames, defeat him, and bring his crusade to an end.

Maybe that impossible contradiction, that agony tearing through him, was what finally cracked the iron body of the Titan and released the inferno within.

It was cruel.

But perhaps that was what made a Titan a Titan.

The willingness to make choices no one else could bear.

And perhaps, beneath the hatred and fury Sargeras had directed toward Azeroth, the unborn world-soul had already begun struggling to grow stronger.

Somewhere along the way, it had somehow produced millions of champions and world-shaking heroes powerful enough to make the Burning Legion look positively understaffed.

But that was getting off track.

The important point was that Sargeras may have changed.

The Void Lords hadn’t.

They still didn’t care about mortals.

And the Ethereals were born from that indifference.

Viewed from a sufficiently distant perspective, the Void’s invasion of reality could be considered a natural cosmic phenomenon. But on the ground, it was catastrophic.

It was not unlike the Great Oxygenation Event on Earth billions of years ago. Oxygen transformed the planet and ultimately laid the foundation for the biosphere that exists today, but it also killed enormous numbers of organisms that could not survive the sudden environmental change.

No one had deliberately targeted them.

The world simply changed, and they couldn’t adapt.

The Ethereals suffered much the same fate.

The Void Lords never noticed them.

But overnight, their world was engulfed by the Void.

Most of its inhabitants died beneath exposure to raw Void energy. Others were killed by powerful creatures that spilled out from the Void.

Only a small number survived.

Through sheer coincidence, they were transformed by the Void rather than destroyed by it.

The matter composing their bodies was completely broken down, but somehow their consciousness endured under the influence of Void energy.

The problem was that they still existed in the physical universe.

Without their original bodies, their minds had nothing stable to inhabit.

So they wrapped themselves in enchanted runic cloth, using it to bind their energy forms together and keep themselves from dissipating.

That was how the Ethereals came into existence.

The Void Lords’ reaction to their emergence was essentially:

Wait.

Where did these guys come from?

"Then the Ethereals aren’t actually one species originating from a single world," Evenson said slowly. "They’re survivors from worlds consumed by the Void?"

Aurerese was currently holding a thick history book in both hands.

She had even put on a pair of black-rimmed glasses.

Combined with her restored human appearance and professional business attire, she looked less like a demon and more like a professor who had arrived to administer a particularly serious history exam.

"Exactly."

She adjusted her glasses with one finger.

"Modern Ethereals are considered a single race, but their ancestors came from many different worlds. Their shared experience under the Void is what ultimately made them what they are today."

"That explains the divisions between them."

Evenson rested his chin on his hand and deliberately looked away.

It was safer that way.

"Take the Consortium and the Ethereum. They’re both Ethereals, yet they can’t stand each other."

"Of course not."

Salorath was dressed almost identically to her sister, though her outfit was a much darker shade of purple.

At some point she’d acquired a pointer as well.

She waved it through the air like a teacher preparing to explain a particularly embarrassing mistake.

"Although the Ethereals survived that catastrophe, most of them had no idea how to deal with what they had become."

"Some decided to accept reality. If they had become creatures of the Void, then they should simply embrace it and submit to the Void."

"Others could never forget what had happened to their homeworlds or how their bodies had been forcibly transformed."

"They wanted revenge."

"Revenge..."

Evenson repeated the word.

Then his eyes widened.

He looked directly at the Eredar twins.

"The Ethereum? They’re actually fighting the Void?"

"What else would they be doing?"

Aurerese gave a tiny shrug.

"You’re not still making the same mistake that inexperienced Outland adventurers make, are you?"

"You know, assuming the Consortium is on your side?"

"They’re the ones who accepted the Void."

Evenson stared at her.

"I..."

He honestly wasn’t sure what to say.

Back in the day, he’d gotten along perfectly well with the Consortium. Friendly, even.

"But the Ethereum attack everyone they see. The Consortium was much easier to deal with."

"Of course they were."

Aurerese rolled her eyes.

"The Consortium is pleasant because they have something to sell you."

"They offer gold, technology, equipment, all sorts of useful things. In exchange, they take valuable materials from you."

"But have you ever considered what those materials actually mean to them?"

"They were once ordinary physical matter, just like everything else."

"After the Void transformed them, both their environment and their own bodies changed fundamentally. The things they sell you have almost no value to them in their original form."

"What they take from you, however..."

"Whatever you think those materials are worth, once they’re broken down into their most basic components, they can become material for the Void Lords to construct physical bodies."

Evenson grimaced.

"So that’s why the Ethereum always try to kill me on sight."

He sighed.

"They see me trading with the Consortium and assume I’m some kind of Void collaborator."

"Exactly."

"But the Consortium helped kill Dimensius."

Evenson frowned.

"That doesn’t make sense. If they’re effectively aligned with the Void, why would they plot against Dimensius the All-Devouring?"

"Dimensius?"

Salorath snorted.

"You’re giving him far too much importance."

"He was certainly a powerful Void creature. But in the eyes of the Void Lords, he wasn’t even worthy of being called a hunting hound."

"He was just a rat that slipped through when they were widening the breach."

"And an especially foolish rat at that."

"He never secured a proper vessel. Because of that, his power steadily weakened until he was barely a shadow of what he’d once been."

"An utterly worthless existence."

"So the Void Lords didn’t care whether he lived or died."

"And Dimensius really had destroyed the homeworlds of much of the Consortium."

"Killing him was hardly a problem."

Evenson silently nodded.

Then Aurerese added, "That still doesn’t mean you should become friendly with the Ethereum."

"Their hatred has consumed them."

"And once hatred burns hot enough, it doesn’t care what it consumes."

"The enemy of your enemy isn’t necessarily your friend."

"Much like the Burning Legion and Azeroth."

"We’re both enemies of the Void."

"That certainly doesn’t make the Legion and the people of Azeroth friends."

"Depends on the circumstances."

Evenson rubbed his chin.

"No rule works in every situation."

He thought for a while before raising another question.

"So what about the Locus-Walker who’s currently on Earth? He’s supposed to come here soon and teach Cleya how to use Void energy."

"Which faction is he from?"

Evenson had already been considering rejecting the entire idea.

If Cleya studied under the peaceful Consortium, there was always the possibility that she might eventually embrace the Void.

But if she learned from the far more radical Ethereum, things probably wouldn’t end well either.

Neither option seemed acceptable.

So why bother?

"He’s a third party, just like this little stray cat."

Aurerese couldn’t resist taking another jab at Cleya.

Cleya immediately shot her a murderous glare.

Who are you calling a third party?

She had been the one to establish the relationship first, thank you very much.

"The Locus-Walker opposes the Void," Aurerese continued, "but he’s not like the Ethereum. He’s far more rational."

"And although there aren’t many of them, the people who follow his path are extremely powerful."

"Some are even stronger than we are."