Oooh, the last chapter of the main series. It certainly has been a long way coming here.
Enjoy!
You can(not) change fate
Jeanette POV(3297 AA)
Jeanette considered herself as more than a teacher. She was a role model for her students, someone that they should be able to come to for guidance without fear of having their insecurities ridiculed or exposed.
That belief did not however mean that she was perfect in any way. That much she already knew about herself. Her inability to connect with her teenage daughter was just one of the things that she struggled with at home.
But her students could not know about that, because if they did, then Jeanette was afraid that they might stop and think twice before coming to her with their problems, and though her own daughter often refused to listen to her advice on life, these children still did.
That was another thing that her husband kept reminding her of; she should not refer to them as children anymore. All of her students were young fourteen year old adults, just a few years younger than her own youngest daughter, but she had been their teacher for almost a decade now, so it was hard for her not to see them as the sweet innocent children that she had first introduced herself to nine years ago.
They had all looked so different back then, when their parents had dropped them off at the prestigious Isenberg Academy of Education and Board, which could date its founding back to before the formation of the Alliance.
Some had clung to their parents and begged them not to go, others had accepted their fate with resigned attitudes and some, though not many, had immediately tried to find new friends. In the end though, all of them had eventually accepted that the Isenberg Academy was where they were going to live now.
The people that sent their children to Isenberg were generally people that were very busy with their own work and therefore did not have as much time to spend with their children as other parents might have, and because of this, Jeanette had had to take up the role as her class's surrogate mother figure.
She had been there to sort things out when two of them had had a fight, to celebrate when their birthdays had come and their parents came to visit, or provide a shoulder to cry on when they had not been able to make it, as well as many more ups and downs, so it was no wonder that she considered them almost as her own children.
Still, much like her own children, these could be quite unruly as well, which Jeanette was reminded of when she had to yet again ask where so and so had wondered off to, or tell one of them to quiet down, so as to not disturb the other guests of the museum any further than they already were.
"Does anyone know where Grendel wandered off to?", Jeanette tiredly asked her class.
"I think that she went to the bathroom", Jane, Grendel's best friend responded.
"Alright, then we will wait here for her", Jeanette sighed, before gesturing for her class to gather around her, "while we wait, I might as well quiz you on some of the things that we have learned so far".
She was met with a collective groan from the class. She knew that they hated when she made sudden pop quizzes, especially during excursions, but Jeanette was sure that it, among other things, was the pop quizzes that accounted for why her class was ahead of the rest of their year.
"Hush now, you know that there will be a test that will influence this year's grades at the end of the anniversary month, and I just want you all to be prepared for it", Jeanette explained.
It would soon be the anniversary for the death of Mercury Iridium, the founding father of the Alliance, and since this year would mark the 3000th anniversary since his death, it had been decided that a month long theme in his honour should be held.
That was also why they were here, at this excursion to the Mercury Iridium Museum of The Capital. Jeanette was fortunate that she had been out so early on to reserve tickets, or else her class might have ended up without even paying a single visit to the museum during the anniversary, like Hendrik's class.
"Now, who can tell me what Mercury's most famous quote is?", she asked the class.
The slender hand of a girl with black hair, blue eyes and freckles that Jeanette knew hoped to become the sixth generation dragon rider of her family, sprung up almost before she had finished uttering the question. The girl's reflexes were sharp, almost elven, which the girl herself attributed to the fact that her great-great-great-grandfather had supposedly been an elven dragon rider.
"Yes, Auriel", Jeanette nodded to her student.
Auriel cleared her throat, before she in a voice that she no doubt thought sounded intelligent, said, "Mercury Iridium, the founding father and often nicknamed the Shadow in the continent of Alagaësia, had many quotes that are still in use today. There is still debate as to what his most famous quote is, as it greatly varies from province to province, but the one that is most widely accepted stems from the private journals of the last commander of his Varangian Guard, Elladan the Absolute, which states that he was fond of saying 'anyone can be killed'".
"Yes, that is correct, and extra points for recognizing my ploy", Jeanette praised and watched as the young girl beamed with excitement at the praise, "can you also tell me when the Mercurian age began and ended, along with what characterized it?"
"The Mercurian age began in 100 BA with Mercury's official inauguration as the first and last king of Damocles, and ended in 297 AA with his death in the province of Albion", a young human boy with dyed silver hair and grey eyes cut in and said before Auriel had had a chance to respond, "it was characterized by the unification of the world, the sudden and exponential rise in literacy amongst the commoners, the cultural, academic and technological boom and the start of the process that would eventually lead to elected provincial governments. After the Mercurian age came the age of Stagnation, which lasted nearly 600 years".
"Correct, Lore, but it was not you that I asked the question to", Jeanette said, "you must learn to let the others speak, even if you do know the answer".
Though she had said others, Jeanette might as well have said Auriel instead, because Lore would only do something like this to her. It all stemmed from the unending feud that the two had had going on since the very first day that they were introduced to one another.
Just like Auriel dreamed of becoming the sixth generation dragon rider of her family, Lore dreamt of becoming the ninth generation Knight-Wing of his. The Knight-Wings and the dragon riders had never been able to stand each other, and though both of their livelihoods were threatened by the advance of flying machines, the hatred was so intense that neither would ever dream of joining forces with one another to counter this common threat.
Jeanette personally disapproved of instilling your prejudices upon impressionable young children that were still too young to understand how silly the feud was, but nothing that she had tried had been able to make the two children work together.
Well, there had been that one time when a common friend of theirs had been bullied by one of their seniors, but immediately after they had finished defending the friend, they had looked upon each other and gone into an argument about why the other one had not needed to be there.
The only good thing about the feud was that the two had the highest scores that had been recorded for at least two decades. Jeanette had no doubt that this was partly because the two kept trying to surpass the other.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jeanette saw Auriel poke her tongue out at Lore's back, but since Lore did not notice it, she chose not to comment on it. The two had been able to avoid fighting during the entirety of their trip to The Capital, and she did not want to jeopardize that.
When she spotted that Grendel had snuck back into the crowd, she knew that it was okay to continue her lecture, "as Lore correctly pointed out, the age of Stagnation came after the Mercurian age. This age was characterized heavily upon the dependence that the Alliance had had on Mercury Iridium in many fields during the Mercurian age.
For starters, the Tribunal decided that in honour of Mercury Iridium's astounding feats as lord commander, the position would remain his even after his death. Most of the later historians have agreed that this was a move done to avoid having to give power over the entire military to a single individual, as the chance of there being a coup was simply too high.
The age of Stagnation was also characterized by its research and development almost coming to a halt, now that Mercury Iridium was no longer there to push it forward".
"Mrs. Lilim, is it true that Mercury knew things about the physics of the world that no one knows even today?", one of her students suddenly asked.
"Though the debate is still ongoing as to exactly how much Mercury Iridium knew about how the physical laws of this world, there is a general consensus amongst historians that he did in fact know quite a bit more than he was letting on", Jeanette answered, "indications of this knowledge can be found in his methodical usage of the Isenberg Fares to advance research in certain areas. With the theory of atoms, it became evident that even his coat of arms was a hidden clue to his expansive knowledge, as all of you no doubt already know that it describes the atom of the very element that he was named after".
A slow gentle tug on her coat alerted Jeanette to another one of her students that had suddenly appeared next to her, while she had been busy answering the question. The tugger was a pure-blooded elven girl, which were still quite rare these days, with long wavy red hair, blue eyes and the iconic pointed ears of an elf.
"Yes, Kira, was there something that you wanted?", Jeanette asked in a gentle voice. It was not often that the elven girl spoke without being asked a question, and Jeanette knew that she disliked touching or being touched by anyone.
"I just wanted to wish you happy birthday", Kira said, "I am sorry that you had to spend it with us instead of with your family".
Jeanette was too baffled to formulate a more sincere reply than, "thank you, but how did you know about it?"
She had never told her students when her birthday was, and only a select few of her colleagues even knew when it was.
"A friend told me ", Kira responded before almost gliding back into the herd of her other students again.
The answer confused Jeanette more than it explained anything, because to her knowledge, Kira did not have any friends that she was close with in her class, or in any other. She was not disliked by anyone per se, but neither was she particularly liked.
When she was asked to join in on an activity, it was usually as part of the group that she was standing in, and Jeanette had not forgotten last year's ball, when the girl had not had someone to go with and had ended up spending most of the evening humming to herself.
Kira had originally transferred in two years after the others had started as part of the Tomorrow Fund's scholarship arrangement with the Isenberg Academy, but though the class had long since stopped considering her as the new kid, she had always been seen as somewhat of an outsider.
Some of it was because of the scholarship, as though there were one other in her class that was also there on a scholarship, the Tomorrow Fund's scholarships were special. The people that got them were, to put it bluntly, special.
Most of the teaching faculty knew through rumours and past scholarship candidates that the recipients of the Tomorrow Fund always had special abilities that would mark them for either greatness or as some of the worst and most dangerous people of their time.
It was supposedly to help these people stay on the right path that Loivissa Shadeslayer had originally founded the Tomorrow Fund. When a child with special abilities, the effects of which could vary greatly, was discovered, then the Tomorrow Fund would approach the child's parents and offer to give the child the best education that was available, but as a precaution to make sure that the child would not turn megalomaniac with his or hers often completely unique powers, the child also had to submit to a two hour psychiatric session every month.
Exactly what Kira's special powers were, no one but the Fund knew, but the girl knew things, things that she should not. Still, the girl was sweet, if terribly shy, and Jeanette had no doubts that she would eventually turn into a great figure that would be remembered throughout history, and then Jeanette could boast about how she had been her teacher back when she had been nothing but a little shy girl.
They will already be finishing Primary and start on Secondary next year, she mused sadly at the realization, my sweet little students are going to leave me….
"Hey, I wanted to wish you congratulations as well Mrs. Liliam, but I was not sure whether you would want me to tell everyone", Lore suddenly spoke.
"Liar, you did not know that it was her birthday", Auriel countered him, "I on the other hand knew perfectly well, but I was planning on surprising her when we got back".
"You were not!", Lore shot back, "you had as little clue about this as I had".
"Aha, you just admitted that you did not know!", Auriel pointed out triumphantly.
…But not quite yet, she thought with an odd sense of familiarity, as she began the age-old task of breaking the two up again.
Kira POV
Why did you ask me to congratulate her? Now everyone will wonder where I knew her birthday from, Kira asked the miniature purple dragon on her shoulder that only she could see.
Because I knew that it would provoke those two into yet another fight, LC responded with a chirping sound, as he flexed his wings in preparation to take off. His name was really Lord of Change, but LC was easier for Kira to say, so she stuck to it.
The dragon that was no larger than a cat, took off from her shoulder, but there was no force applied to her body when he did, as this physical world was not something that he was able to alter or affect in any way or form.
That was because he was not of this world, but rather a creature that she had summoned two years ago from the deepest depth of nature itself. It was her gift, as the Tomorrow Fund had called it, that she was able to sense the flow of nature, along with the ancient spells and magic that flowed within it.
Even though she had instinctively felt the whispers of the consciousness hidden deep within the earth since she had been a small child, she had not been able to identify it as a single MASSIVE living and thinking being until her tenth birthday, and even then, it had taken her two years of secretly rediscovering the lost and highly forbidden art of sorcery to be able to attempt to summon this being.
She had first summoned him in the private confines of a secret room in Isenberg that only those that knew about it could find, or, as in her case, those who were able to sense the currents of magic leading to it. Back then, he had not appeared as the miniature dragon that he was now, but rather as a silvery mist that constantly changed colours in one place or another.
She remembered how his first reaction had been utter shock at someone being able to see and hear him, though she was not able to touch his essence. They had come a long way since then, and he had since gathered his essence into various forms and shapes to correspond with his mood, though the purple dragon seemed to be a recurring theme.
Why did you want them to fight again? They had almost gone the entire trip without doing so, Kira asked curiously.
Because I have observed the world and the people in it for so very long that I am able to predict most of the actions of the people in it. Over the millennia, I have grown tired of predicting their actions, found joy in it again, and then grown tired of it yet again, LC explained, but once in a while, they still manage to surprise me and shatter my predictions, and that is why I did it. I hoped that against what I predicted, the couple would have reacted differently.
I do not understand what you mean, Kira said confused, you predict what they will do, but hope that your predictions do not come true?
Pray that you never will understand it, LC closed the subject with that simple statement.
"Hey, if he was so great and smart, then why did he end up dead anyway?", Toren, a very loud and very blunt urgal in their class exclaimed suddenly.
"I heard that after subduing Albion, he looked at the world, saw that there was nothing left to conquer and dropped dead from the realization ", another chirped in.
"Now now class, according to the official history, Mercury Iridium died of a still unknown illness that had been plaguing him for years", Mrs. Liliam said with her short brown hair shaking from side to side as she made yet another headcount, "though it is true that historians are still debating over what exactly caused it. In the end, the only ones that might know the truth to the mystery is the Albion line of the Uluth family, but they have been unwilling to provide any further insight into the matter".
"Hey Jane, is your last name not Uluth?", Grendel asked her friend.
"It…it is", Jane, a shy and introverted girl said while looking down into the ground, like she wished that no one would recognize her that way.
"Cool, but what line are you from?", Auriel asked excitedly, as she moved to block her from escaping with her body, "the Albion one or The Northern Wastes one?"
"The…Albion one", Jane shyly admitted, "my father is the archduke of Albion".
Though the control of the Alliance provinces had turned to an elected government a very long time ago, the ceremonial position of archduke or archduchess lived on in most of them. They did not have any special legislative power or anything, though children of the families were often expected to join the military and serve as officers for an extended period of time.
Most of the families had amassed quite a bit of wealth over the centuries that they had served as rulers, and combined with their ancient lineage and age-old connections, this made them incredibly powerful on the political scene still.
"Then you know what really happened to Mercury!", Lore exclaimed and for once did not mind standing next to Auriel in front of the shy dökkálfar girl.
"My…my grandmother told me that I could never tell", Jane shyly said and looked down upon her shoes, as if it could save her, while she shook her head with the silvery hair in its ponytail, "she made me promise never to tell".
I find it both impressive and amusing that that family has managed to keep the secret for so many millennia, LC snorted as he flew above the heads of Kira's fellow classmates.
You know it?, Kira asked astounded.
Of course I do, LC snorted and let a segment of his essence separate from his main body to form a bird that he then proceeded to chase around in the air, I was there to witness it all play out after all.
That particularly information was quite interesting to Kira, as no matter what she did, she could not get LC to tell her who he had been before becoming this or when it had happened, though she had been able to lure out some of why he had ended up like this.
According to him, he had once been a flesh and blood person in this very world, but he had declared war on the gods of his time, and though he had ended up throwing them down, they had given him a final parting gift that had bound his soul to the core of the earth for all eternity.
According to LC, he had been able to see, hear and feel everything that happened in thousands upon thousands of places all around the world at the same time, but he had been unable to communicate or affect the world that he was seeing in any way, shape or form until she had summoned him.
Kira had been quite disturbed by the realization that he had also been able to see into her shower whenever he wanted, and that he could do so now as well, but though he had trying comforting her by explaining that he had stopped considering himself as any gender after the first few centuries of being trapped as an incorporeal being, she still considered him male.
At least he had quickly learned that though walls and other barriers did not hinder his 'vision' the slightest, she preferred that he pretend that they did when she was showering.
Could you tell me the secret then?, Kira asked sweetly. She had always been a sucker for knowing things that no one else did.
Nope, it is not my secret to give away, LC responded as he caught the bird in his jaws and proceeded to devour it like a real dragon would a deer.
LC had finished devouring the imaginative bird and returned to his perch on her shoulder before her class eventually stopped pestering poor Jane about revealing the secret. One, though no one knew which one, had even made a comment that if he ended up marrying her, he would eventually become an archduke.
As they walked on to the next exhibition, with Mrs. Liliam talking about how a sample of Mercury's blood from his coronation had recently been confirmed to be human, which baffled historians all over the world, Kira noted that Clara kept looking over her shoulders to see whether anyone was following her. Kira, along with the rest of the class, knew that the behaviour was caused by Clara's stalker, but no one knew who it was or how to help her get rid of him.
Clara had had a nervous breakdown as a result just the other day, and though Kira had offered to let the girl have her monthly session with Dr. Aryan instead of her in order to have a vent for her worries, the girl had refused the offer.
It is such a shame that no one is ever able to see who is delivering those letters to her, Kira mused, it is breaking her up, and I think that she has lost weight too.
It was then that an idea struck her, and as she thought about it, she realized how stupid she had been to not get the idea sooner.
Hey LC, you said that you were able to see through walls in thousands of places all at once, right?, she asked the purple dragon that had curled its tail around her neck and seemingly went to sleep on her shoulder, though she knew better, as he had once revealed that he was not able to sleep. Ever.
Yes, but though I wish that I could help you with it, my essence here is cut off from the rest of my essence, the dragon looked at her with its eyes that held a silvery flame inside of them and blinked, as I am now, I am only able to conceive things right here around you. Oh, and before you mention it, remember that I cannot move my essence more than 10 metres away from your body.
Right, I forgot, Kira nodded sadly.
When summoning him, she had anchored his essence within her own body, and according to him, that meant that an invisible force pulled him towards her harder and harder the farther that he moved his essence from her.
What if I sent you back? Then you could see who it was without a problem, Kira proposed.
No, please do not do that, LC said almost fearfully. It was the first time that she had ever seen him show any signs of distress, and she had never thought that she would ever hear fear coming from him.
But I would summon you right back then shortly after. It would just be for a week or so, Kira said, before offering something in return, I will even let you speak with Dr. Aryan again at my next session, if you do this for me.
For whatever reason, LC greatly enjoyed talking with Dr. Aryan, though Kira suspected that it was more a game of toying with the psychiatrist's diagnosis of her for him. She had originally introduced him as her invisible friend and then told Dr. Aryan what LC told her to say, which according to LC had led to the doctor originally trying to profile her 'invisible friend' as a figment of her imagination that she had conjured to alleviate her own loneliness.
Back when he had noted this down on his pad, LC had told her to tell the psychiatrist that he had made a spelling error in the third line down and second word in. The expression on Dr. Aryan's face upon hearing this from a girl that should not have had any way of seeing his pad, had made Kira explode with laughter.
Since then, the topic of LC had become an almost recurring one at their sessions, though Kira did not always let LC speak through her. According to himself, LC kept the psychiatrist just confused enough to not diagnose her with any one particular mental illness, but not so confused that he suspected that he was being played with.
Not even for that will I do it, if I even have a choice in the matter, LC refused her offer. Apparently, the fear of going back was much stronger than she had thought, but I am willing to keep an eye on her back right now, though you have to stick closer to her if I am to do that.
I guess that that will have to be enough then, Kira said slightly disappointed, but she would not force him to go back there if it really meant that much to him.
As she moved closer, LC transformed from a purple dragon with flaming eyes to a blue owl and took off from her shoulder to land on Clara's head instead.
Kira watched how Clara's eyes widened slightly, but she obviously did not recognize what the strange presence was or even where it was coming from. When LC touched or flew through someone, he left a very distinct and yet very faint feeling, one that Kira had gotten used to.
Other people were not used to it in the same way, and most brushed it off as nothing but a figment of their own imagination. Only Kira knew the truth.
Lord of Change POV
Lord of Change looked at the world from its top upon the girl Clara's head. It did not see the world in the same way that the people still living in it saw it.
You needed ears to register sound, but it registered it just as well by reading the changing texture of the air around them. To produce sound, you had to be able to move the air to form waves, but it could not interact with the air. It had only been after Kira's summoning that people had even begun to register its touch on them, though faint as it always was.
You needed eyes to capture the light being reflected off of buildings and people, but it instead…felt…the very texture of the materials that made up the material world in much the same way that it registered sound.
This ability to feel the world, instead of seeing and hearing it, made it possible for Lord of Change to register everything that went on within its radius, regardless of physical barriers or the lack of light. That was also why it was confident that no person was spying on the girl Clara right at this moment, though Kira would likely ask that it stayed here for as long as possible.
The two of them had not spoken since it had taken up its watch. Though it was loath to admit it, Kira had hit a sore spot with the threat of returning it to the purgatory that had been its prison ever since the Original's body had been destroyed.
An eternity of being able to sense the entire world, but without the possibility of interacting with it or any other being in any way, shape or form was too cruel of a fate for anyone, no matter their crime, and the only comforting thought that Lord of Change had had in its never-ending hell had been that the Original had made sure that the thrice damned eldunarya would never be able to curse another soul as much as they had with the Original's.
They are fighting again!, Kira complained.
Lord of Change already knew that they were fighting again. It could feel the vibrations in the air and the pheromones that both of them were exuding.
I wish that they would just try to get along with one another, Kira added hopefully.
They might have more in common than either of them realizes, Lord of Change commented, and though none of them have realized it yet, they also mean more to each other than what meets the eye.
But they bicker and fight all the time?, Kira said confused.
There is still much about this world that you do not know, young one, Lord of Change chuckled, hate and anger have never been the enemies of love. Apathy is. Hating or being angry at someone means that you still think about them, but apathy means that you could not care less about them.
Some of my most memorable relationships from my life as flesh and blood had the two of us literally gunning for each other's throats at some point or another during it. In fact, the woman that I loved the most was also the one that ended up killing my corporal body.
I thought you said that your wife stopped trying to kill you after a few decades?, Kira asked confused.
She did, Lord of Change agreed, but I never said that I loved her. At best, she was amusing while she tried to kill me, but when she stopped trying, our relationship turned to ice. Now, the one that ended up killing my corporal body on the other hand…let us just say that she shone brighter and more clearly than anything that I had ever seen before, or since. When she killed me, I think that she both hated and loved me at the same time.
Yeah, I think that I am going to take a pass on relationship advice from you from now on, Kira quipped.
Their conversation died out after that as Kira was forced to pay attention to the girl Jeanette that asked her questions concerning the museum and their tour. Lord of Change felt bored simply sitting here, but it did not dare to conjure another prey from its essence for it to chase around.
It had already done so once today, and considering that it had to keep focus in case the stalker came back to stalk the girl Clara, Lord of Change could not be sure that its focus would not be split between the two tasks.
If there was one thing that Lord of Change did not want to repeat, it was the 300-year supremacy war that it had fought within its prison. The war had not started until long after the Original had gotten so bored that it had willingly split its consciousness to create another entity to talk to and compete against.
In the start, the Original had been in full control of the other entity's actions, but as time went on, the Original gave the entity more and more freedom and also created more of them to pass its boredom. The problem was that the entities had been aspects of their creator's own being, and so, they had all wanted to be the ones that were in control.
The war had started when a group of them had ganged up and overpowered the Original and then proceeded to devour its consciousness between them. After that, all of the other aspects went to war with one another for full control of the mind.
Alliances had been made, shattered, remade and then shattered again over the course of the 300-year war that had raged without anyone in the physical world even noticing. At the very end, Lord of Change had been the last one standing, after having devoured all of its former enemies and allies alike.
It did not know what was happening with the rest of its essence right now, as it was indeed possible that another aspect had arisen in its absence, but aside from the fact that even a few hours out of the prison was worth the risk, Lord of Change also had other objectives for being here.
In exchange for mentoring Kira to become a figure that would be remembered for all time to come, Lord of Change wanted to train her to be able to finally kill it for good, and thereby put an end to its miserable existence, though she had not yet been made aware of the latter.
If they could just find a way to hurt the essence that had already been summoned, then it would only be a matter of allowing Kira to grow strong enough to summon all of its essence to this world, but in case the development of a way to harm its essence took longer than expected, Lord of Change wanted Kira to make instructions on how to summon its essence, so that the process could be picked up by a new generation.
Even though it might take centuries to finally find a way, it was still much more preferable than to wait for the only other things that Lord of Change immediately thought might end its existence.
If its theory about the core of the earth having been turned into the Original's own eldunarí by the dragon eldunarya was true, which Lord of Change had no way to actually positively and irrefutably confirm, then the only other options for release, in order of most preferable, would be:
1. Waiting for a large enough asteroid to collide with the planet and break the core.
2. Waiting to see whether the sun ended up consuming the planet.
3. Wait until the planet had cooled enough to no longer be able to sustain his essence.
The first, though most preferable of the three, could take millions, if not billions, of years, and there was also the risk of Lord of Change's essence simply being split amongst the fragments of the core. The second would take at least five billion years, but should be as effective a way as possible.
If the second did not happen, then the third would be its only option for release, but considering that its essence could essentially be sustained by the thermal energy of a large campfire, the planet would likely not cool down to the level where its essence could no longer be sustained until the gravitational and thermal energy of the sun had disappeared and the planet had been adrift in the vast emptiness of space for some billions of years.
That was why Lord of Change had to make sure that its plan for Kira worked.
Anyone can be killed, it thought, it has to be true.
It had to be...
And...done! I have purposely left the ending open so that you may decide for yourselves what happens next.
Also, the two Sidestory chapters that I have been talking about will be set in the time between this chapter and the previous, and will bring to detail the fates of some of the other characters.
Furthermore, now that I have finished the main series, I can reveal that not only was there a HUGE amount of references embedded into the story. In my head, I refer to these as Easter eggs as they are a mixture of hints for the future and simple amusement, and if you had even noticed half of them, then you would not have been surprised by any of the events that happened in the story or the series as a whole.
On top of this, I also have an additional layer, which I refer to as symbolism. This layer is different from the Easter eggs in that there is no direct references that you can just google and it does not reveal any future events or jokes. The symbolism simply opens up to a sort of bonus layer to the story, which was intended to add depth to the story. An easy example of this could be the irony of Mercury's last words to Loivissa.