The one-eyed cyclops stood before a large gathering of at least 100 students in the open-air Library of Philia. The well-polished brick floor had only small openings of grass growing through an otherwise flawless surface, and the evening hue bathed the scene in vantablack. Fireflies and candles lit the scene, allowing for a comfortably visible lecture. He erected a blackboard, at least 10 Anaxa body-lengths wide and 4 tall in front of the students who sat on the floor, diligently listening, some with notebooks beside, writing down any semblance of valuable information told by the eccentric professor.
"From this deduction, I know that all former Chrysos Heirs have become but pathetic Titans bound by Amphoreus's rules. Within each cycle, the former Heirs lose their memories as they ascend to the role. That is factual." He proclaimed as he scribbled, manifested his thoughts in organized form using the chalkboard, producing a diagram of the Chrysos Heirs and his Nousporist theories synthesized into a cacophony of both text and visual stimulus that allowed the students to peer into the brain of the eccentric Anaxa. But one stood up among the crowd and questioned his authority, and in the candlelit environment, became the target of everyones’ gazes.
“Professor Anaxagoras, but how can you be sure of the identities of those you claim as Titans?”
“The evidence of Amphoreus’s cycles lies within the fact that these recently scattered memory fragments hold memories of past Titans’ conversations. Gnaeus, for example, had manifested before Mydei during his trial of Strife, being one of the individuals we’ve studied prior. This brings me up to an interesting conjecture. If we suppose Titans of the past are to become those that we know today, where do the remnants of the previous Titans go?” He questioned with confidence, his arms crossed as he looked onto the stone floor in an unusually unpretentious contemplation. The diligent students who occupied the room held their breath in silence, awaiting for the professor’s next words of insight. “What if Amphoreus was itself, a cycle, entwined with the Flamechase Journey in essence?” He blurted.
He showed the student wonders beyond the false sky. In a house that stenched of rotting carcasses, with splinters sticking out of the wooden frames, there they stood beside the small window taller than the both of them, letting in slivers of the eternal sunlight provided by the Dawn Device even though the house was covered in tarp. He pulled out a bottle of fluorescent fluid that glowed in the dark with rainbow refractions in their outer edges, and poured it onto the dusty, grimey floor. “Watch. This is a combination of 17 different alchemical ingredients, ground up in a perfectly balanced mix. Enough to repair and restore anything, even in a state as depressing as this.”
Within an instant, all of the cracks and splinters within the floor begin to glue back together, and its effects soon spread to the walls and outer shell of the house, the faded scene becoming once more a livable domicile within what felt like a single minute. And you turn around to a smug smile on the normally stoic Anaxa, the right side of his teeth visible through his grin. “This is what I do. Through these scholarly pursuits, I create results that ordinary individuals may see as miracles, but with enough understanding of the core materials, anyone can reproduce these results. They are not beyond your reach.” He then turns himself to the opposite direction, facing away. “Our excursion today has gone on for long enough. It’s time for you to go home, student.”
But those words, those inspiring words had an entrancing effect on the student, who froze in place like an ice sculpture. Before long, they reached out to Anaxa with slow arms, driven by an emotion they themselves can’t describe. Was it curiosity? A sense of affection? Or perhaps impulse? As he continued to walk towards the exit, his osmium-dense self would never understand the full extent of the lessons learned beyond the mystique and utility of alchemy.