I waited in the lobby, allowing my eyes to roam over the make of the complex. Unlike Barjol's grand castle keep, this land owner held a single living complex bursting with life and belongings. There was a baby's crib to the side with some sown up dolls, a case of scrolls and books and letters, a stained couch I found more comfortable than ornate, a board game left unfinished, a fireplace with simmering coals, and a desk next to the crib covered in dishware and crumbs as much as papers and documents.

"I apologize for the wait." A newcomer entered the room. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. "But, in my defense, I am diurnal."

Governor Bagon approached me, his hand extended to greet me.

I extended my hand and punched the traitor in the face.

The former general stepped back under the blow and put a hand to his mouth to stifle the blood. His eyes flashed, fully wakened. His servant stepped forward with a hand to his sword hilt.

"Hold! Do not retaliate." Bagon put his hand out and the servant stopped. "First of all, he was your king once, and that means something, even now. Second," Bagon spit blood into his hand. "He caught me offguard, but that will not happen again, even if he wants to."

"But, my lord-"

"Leave us. I will be fine." Bagon insisted.

The guard hesitated, eyeing me briefly, but obeyed and left, closing the door behind himself.

Bagon took a cloth and dabbed his mouth and nose. "For a nobleman, you have a solid fist." Bagon poured water into a dish and cleaned himself. "Now, care to explain or am I to assume you just make a habit out of meeting people at the oddest times?"

"I want an explanation, and if you have any respect for our history, people, or me, then you will answer. I was at a certain place the other day, and there were a great many slaves belonging to him. Slaves used for pleasure of ways I had never imagined, and ones for work. Their treatment made my blood freeze. Worse, they were our people. And, in my search, I found his biggest buyers." I breathed out heavily, seething in barely restrained rage. "Why are you buying our people?"

Bagon stared at me a moment, seemingly putting things together. "Are you this 'Second Adam' I heard about?"

Damn, how far did that spread?

I kept him on the topic, taking a step toward him, "That doesn't sound like an explanation."

He countered, circling around, "And that doesn't sound like a denial."

We stared at each other a moment, our sight of each other restricted by the fireplace. We couldn't see one another in our entirety, partially hidden in shadow and partially illuminated. Where did the truth begin and assumption end?

The facts presented him as a traitor, but our brief engagements gave me hope there is something more, something warranting answers. In turn he heard rumors of me under a title, where my succession of the title is as unclear as my relationships to the titans of the ages.

The world was not black and white, especially in the transition between.

Bagon was the first to look away. He stopped in front of the fireplace and peered in sadly, whether because the fire reminded him of something or he chose it as a distraction I could not say. "It is not what you think. I am not enslaving our people."

"Then what are you doing?"

"Sending them home." He said simply. Immediately my shoulders relaxed and I let out a dizzying breath. He explained further, "When the priceless is exchanged for pocket change, something is wrong. This isn't a handful of cities or villages being raided, its a country's worth. While such numbers give the enemy opportunity, thankfully it has given me the same chances. I had an army, many of whom found their families already taken when they returned home. I may be a governor, but I have the loyalty of men helping me send our people home from within."

"I'm glad it isn't what I feared." I summarize. "So you buy our people in large numbers to send them home. As many as you are saving, shis still validates the enemy. A market goes where people are buying. This won't stop the slavers."

He scoffed, "If I hand a monster an onion to let go of a child, why shouldn't I? I pray to the Ancestors they choke on it."

The silence sets in for a moment while I process this. I can't say he is wrong. He is doing a great deal of good and has resources. He is better than me.

"However," Bagon stepped back from the fireplace. "It isn't enough. For every one I send on the caravan and have to protect all the way there, there is another ten, twenty, or even hundred dropped off the boats."

"You can't send on boats?"

He shook his head. "The pirates raid everything that moves under any flag that isn't their own. This new one, 'The Pain Artist', stirred up the cabal members to war and won the channel. He doesn't even fear the Empire."

"And I'm guessing the thing holding back the Empire's hand is: profit." I muse.

"Not only that, but the Aeterna's will." I looked at him questioningly. "The Aeterna declared that our enslavement was punishment for the Mirrad-Blood genocide. Recently we were given authority to punish raiders restricting Imperial jurisdiction, but it is still unclear who is and isn't acting within the scope of his wishes."

I felt blood leave my face. My legs turned to jelly and I fell onto a couch. 

"To make matters worse-"

"This gets worse?!" I blurted.

 He collapsed on the couch next to me, the invisible weight crushing him down, "The Ne-Blood are catching on to me, and so are raising the prices when I, or anyone acting in my stead, approach. I am trying to fight a war from the inside, one that could get me executed, and they are wilting my power away. Their zeal to the Emperor is complete. After all, he did show up twelve years ago, end their war, unite them, conquer the world, and restore their country from a desert into a paradise of lush grass, overflowing farms, and clear water. And the Soran, quite literally, worship him. Against such zeal and stubbornness I don't know how much more I can do."

We sat in silence for a time, lost to our own thoughts. The difficulty of his task grew apparent in his exhausted features and greying hair. He released the flood gates and explained the gravity of it, and in so doing both shared his burden and allowed his body to come to terms with how tiring it was. 

If the Aeterna was mandating this, then it wasn't punishable. If anything, to seek the opposite was treasonous. He had turned good to evil and evil to good under a simple gesture of 'punishment'. The Empire was no less against us now than they were a year ago.

What can anyone do against such power and will? The Aeterna was the unstoppable force and we were not an immovable object.

But, a thought came to me, neither was he. The Aeterna was unstoppable but not immovable. He had shown he was capable of reasoning a year ago. All we had to do was move him, shift his thinking a tiny bit, and the power of his authority would shift with it.

"What are you thinking?" Governor Bagon asked, watching me. My eyes lighted with hope and he had not missed it.

"We need someone that can match him, if only a tiny bit." I explain. I spring up and ramble a bit, walking in circles lost in thought, "The concept of unstoppable force meeting immovable objects. He is not the latter, and so if we can just introduce enough authority or power to shift his thoughts, even if only a little, his laws and mandates will change with it."

He watches me still, trying to follow. I continue rambling quickly, "We just need someone who thinks along the same ways as us with enough of his respect to reach him, and who can reason with him."

The governor sat straight and looked at me hard. "Valspear, I need you to be straight with me. Are you the one they call the 'Successor of Adam'?"

The answer was a complex one. I was not the man that was Adam, but I had inherited his will and fight. The man that was Adam by name was Aeterna by title, and both the titles of Adam and Aeterna acknowledged me as the heir to the title of Adam.

"In a word: Yes." I shrugged.

He looked at me a long moment before nodding and released a sigh. His anxiety blew out his lips and he scoffed with a smirk. "Then you might be able to do just that. Wait here a moment." He stood and left the room briefly, but returned quickly with a large triangular coin. 

He handed it to me. The coin wasn't of metal, but something artificial, yet was strong and solid. Its inside was filled with a solid water that was as see-through as glass, but shimmered from within.

"The Aeterna had me press my finger to this when he first gave it to me, and immediately it gave off a glow. Since then I have been given powers in Turris Nelarn to go between floors. All of the governors have one."

"Between the floors?" I felt my heart jump to speed, and my thoughts raced. We voiced the same grief, but if his possession had the authority to give access to the floors, then that would include the top. I asked, "Even the top?"

He nodded. "Yes. So you may go fight the Aeterna in your own way. I have done what I can. Now its your turn."

I gulped and looked at the unusual coin in my hand. It was about the size of my palm and was barely heavier than an tower coin, but for a moment it felt as heavy as the infinite soil Dyson makes its cavern in. My hand shook with the weight of it, threatening to drop it.

I clenched my hand tightly. 

A few minutes later we stood in what looked like an empty servant closet. I had given such rooms no thought as they seemed to offer no purpose. There was a mirror inside the wall and lines of glass running along the rest of the wall interfolded with the tower's construction.

"The Ancestor's greatest achievement." I ran my fingers along the glass. "Its pretty, but little more. Why bring me here instead of the stairs?"

"You really want to walk up a thousand floors? Come, come. This is what the Aeterna showed us. The coin's power works with the tower. Look here." The governor touched the wall just below the mirror, and peering closely there was a thin slit running up. "Press the coin into it."

I touched the corner of the coin into the slit, and to my surprise it the hole expanded slightly, grasped the coin, and swallowed it out of my fingers instantly, expanding just enough to encapass it before closing again with a metallic click. I recoiled back and inspected my fingers.

My companion laughed. "Relax, its hungry for these special coins, not fingers."

"Lets hope so." I murmured. I stopped and gasped.

As we spoke the mirror and glass illuminated from an internal source of light into a glowing green. The governor blew the candle out in his hand. The wall spit the coin back out and grasped it lightly. He took it and passed it back to me.

A Soran-Blood voice spoke from the walls, "Good evening, Governor Bagon. Where would you like to go?"

"To the top." He answered.

There was a brief sound like a bell ringing, and then instantly the room stirred. Nothing changed before my eyes, nor did anything move. Yet there was an immediate sensation of pressure changing directions within the air, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt my hair lifting slightly. Gravity lessened at my feet, and increased above my head. Not enough to lift me off the ground, but it was still disorienting.

There were aspects of it that reminded me of the Cynn-Blood woman's power.

I put a hand to the wall and steadied myself. My breaths came out in gasps.

"You did well, the first time for me knocked me unconscious." The former general smirked. He put a hand to my shoulder and squeezed lightly.

"I've felt this before." I answered. Though he knew of when the woman abducted me from his tent, I didn't think he had experienced it himself.

Bagon put a hand to the door and it opened. Bright light encompassed us, and I shut my eyes against it.  "Good luck." He said. He put a hand to my back and pushed me into the light.

I stumbled into the light, nearly tripping over myself. I put a hand over my eyes, it was so bright. There was the sound of wind, but nothing more. There was no sound of the city, nor of anyone walking, nor of birds above me, nor anything else save wind.  I slowly unshielded my eyes, and found I was standing in front of a window.

I gasped.

I was standing in the center of Dyson. Normally I would be on its walls, from where I could see the other walls of the massive cavern within the Infinite Soil, but here I was not on any of its walls. I was standing suspended in the open space between the world, held down only by the Ancestral walls at my feet, and barely. The gravity holding me was weakened, and another gravity was above me, pulling at my hair and clothes slowly tugging it up.

I stepped back, at once in awe and terrified of the great height. I continued back until my back hit the wall.

Someone's steps grabbed my attention and I looked to see the Aeterna walk down the steps onto the floor, and he blinked upon seeing me.

Immediately, his face lit up, and his eyes twinked. His lips curled into a smile, and he laughed boysteriously. "You aren't the governor! We thought Bagon had come up, but its you! How are you?"

"I am fine." I said, slowly. I wasn't sure what to make of this. It was unlike the last couple times I had seen him.

He approached me his gauntlet outstretched towards me, and my feet took me back. The gauntlet and its terrible power glared at me with its red eye. He stopped, looked down at the gatunlet, took a hold of it, and with difficulty, pulled it from his arm. He breathed out in relief, seemingly having been relieved of a great weight, and approached me quickly. This time I was too slow to react, and he grabbed me in a bear hug, lifting me a bit off the ground despite being the taller one.

"It is so good to see you, my friend!"

There was only one explanation I could find with his behavior. "A-Adam?" I asked. "You're alive?"