Transcendence Keystone
Henrietta Naughton
Transcendence is a keystone passive skill, obtainable only from Militant FaithMilitant Faith
Timeless JewelLimited to: 1
Radius: LargeCarved to glorify (2000-10000) new faithful converted by High Templar (Avarius-Dominus-Maxarius)
Passives in radius are Conquered by the Templars
Historic
They believed themselves the utmost faithful, but that conviction became oppression.Place into an allocated Jewel Socket on the Passive Skill Tree. Right click to remove from the Socket., a unique Timeless JewelTimeless JewelPlace into an allocated Jewel Socket on the Passive Skill Tree. Right click to remove from the Socket..[1] It causes armour to reduce elemental damage taken instead of physical damage, and also reduces your maximum elemental resistances.
Armour applies to Fire, Cold and Lightning Damage taken from Hits instead of Physical Damage causes armour to defend against elemental damage instead of physical damage. Other armour behaviour is unchanged: it only grants damage reduction against hits, and is normally capped to 90%. Modifiers that cause a percentage of armour to defend against elemental hits (e.g. Juggernaut's Unbreakable) are redundant.[2]
Elemental resistances still mitigate elemental hits, and do so before armour's damage reduction is calculated. Additionally, hits that deal more than one element will have each element individually reduced (rather than the sum of all relevant elements) by the armour value.[3]
This keystone will conquer any keystones within the radius of a Militant FaithMilitant Faith
Timeless JewelLimited to: 1 Historic
Radius: LargeCarved to glorify (2000-10000) new faithful converted by High Templar (Avarius-Dominus-Maxarius)
Passives in radius are Conquered by the Templars
Historic
They believed themselves the utmost faithful, but that conviction became oppression.Place into an allocated Jewel Socket on the Passive Skill Tree. Right click to remove from the Socket. jewel with modifier Carved to glorify (2000-10000) new faithful converted by High Templar Maxarius.
These unique items (other than Militant FaithMilitant Faith
Timeless JewelLimited to: 1 Historic
Radius: LargeCarved to glorify (2000-10000) new faithful converted by High Templar (Avarius-Dominus-Maxarius)
Passives in radius are Conquered by the Templars
Historic
They believed themselves the utmost faithful, but that conviction became oppression.Place into an allocated Jewel Socket on the Passive Skill Tree. Right click to remove from the Socket.) have the Transcendence modifier, which provides the same effect as this keystone. Taking the keystone in addition to equipping one of these items will impart no additional benefit.
The abilities taught by the previous keystones had acted as keys to enter this puzzle, but as I sat within the days and weeks of mulling rumination, I grew more and more convinced that they had to be more than just keys.
A cry erupted from my tiny form, and I pulled back, letting time pass as my mother cleaned and fed me, a distinctly uncomfortable experience to focus on. Before I knew it, I was a toddler yet again, already near my awakening.
Tentatively, I reached for Realmheart. My infantile body contained no godrunes, of course, but my real physical body did. If there were times I could see aether, it could only be because some sense of it was bleeding between the mental keystone realm and the physical world.
I began reaching for Realmheart again, more as a meditative practice than any expectation that I would actually make the connection. It was like trying to curl the fingers of a hand that was no longer attached to my body. Sylvie and I remained there for what felt like hours to my disconnected brain and body, but I was certain that my mother would have come to check on me if that were the case.
There was a sudden rumble, and the room filled with an embarrassing smell. I grimaced, and my mother reappeared to clean and change me. I endured the experience, afraid to slip free of the bonds of that moment. When she was done, instead of leaving me to my business, she carried me out of the room on her hip, bouncing me and singing softly.
Slowly, I opened my eyes and gaped at the motes of red, yellow, blue, green, and purple that swam all around me. I took a deep breath, and a little shudder ran down my spine. With Realmheart active, I simply sat and stared. It was beautiful, and it changed everything.
In a kind of echo of my condensing mana, the atmospheric aether also gravitated toward me, through me. Within the pushing force, within my body, within the core that was rapidly forming out of the explosion that leveled our house, the violet motes shimmered and danced around the ghostly manifestation of Sylvie. The force of my awakening rippled outward not only in the keystone space, but it also vibrated through my physical body and the connections I had with my companions.
Her ghostly form spilled out of me, transparent golden eyes wide as she spun around. Momentarily untethered from reality and uncertain what was happening, her thoughts snapped and sparked across the surface of my mind like the scales of the lightning drake. There was a liquid texture to her transparent body as she seemed to shift and reform, aging and then deaging rapidly as she vacillated between the younger, pre-rebirth version of herself and the slightly older Sylvie I was familiar with over these last many months.
My bond gazed down at her incorporeal body, let out a scream only I could hear, then swelled outward, bursting into the form of a dragon. Her broad, black-scaled chest rose and fell heavily, and her long neck twisted back and forth, scanning the environment. Had her very real fear not been pumping directly into me, the sight of this huge, transparent dragon flailing around while my mother and father tended to me none the wiser would have almost been humorous.
Despite being able to see through them, I held her golden eyes. The huffing and puffing of her massive body slowed. One tentative footstep after another, she followed where Mother and Father carried me, their conversation meaningless background noise at this point. Her huge clawed limbs left no prints in the wreckage of the home as she passed.
I stopped, frowning, as a new thought came to me. Almost tentatively, I again followed the distant itch back to my physical body and activated Realmheart. While there was no physical manifestation of the godrune activating on my toddler body, aether and mana swam into my vision.
I plunged back into the rapidly passing time as we once again approached the mountain pass where the attack happened and I was separated from my family. I found myself sitting in the cart with my mother, who was watching the scenery pass while chatting with Angela Rose and paying me no mind.
As expected, the world lit up with particles of aether and mana. And running through them, a thin thread of golden light, leading onward to the site of the ambush and the cliff. Thinner, fainter threads ran back from the glowing aura around the mountainside to each of us, as well as the hidden bandits. Pieces were clicking into place.
The fight rushed by me as if time were sped up, but it was different than when I disassociated from my body and stepped away, letting life play out as it had happened without conscious effort or interference. This speeding up of events felt more intentional, with my mind and location both staying relevant to my place in time. Events still played out the same way, but there seemed to be no risk of me being caught up in the rushing tide of time and the vortex effect I had encountered before.
We sped forward, examining each major turning point in my life, unsurprised to find they were all marked by Fate. It was as Windsom transported us to Epheotus for the first time that I was brought up by an unexpected and rather uncomfortable thought.
I bit back a sarcastic retort and tried to do as he ordered, letting my mind still and go blank. My breathing slowed, as did my pulse. Calling back on multiple lifetimes of practice, I fell into a meditative blankness.
My eyes rolled back into my head as my body bucked. A powerful hand pressed against my chest, holding me flat and preventing me from hurting myself. Not that I could have felt it past the agony of the acclorite.
In picking up from where we left off with Master Chief thrown into the calm meadow once again, he apparently slept through quite a bit of the fight, as he wakes up in a war scene with everything around him practically destroyed, including Kai, who's lying on the ground looking practically dead.
"Chief, I'm okay," is what she's able to barely mutter before he wanders off into the next room to figure out what's going on. There, he encounters Vannak and Riz holding guns to Kai's head (um, how are you seemingly alive and well and how did you get here?).
Chief tells Vannak that they were all kidnapped as kids and had their memories wiped by Dr. Halsey, but he's not believing anything out of Chief's mouth. With the guns turned on him now, Kai chimes in and attempts to get the others to believe him, but it isn't until Captain Keyes walks into the room and backs Chief up that Vannak and Riz come to their senses.
With Makee apparently on the loose with the keystones in tow, Chief convinces everyone to work together towards the main goal: to stop Makee from leaving the premises. On top of that, they attempt to stop Dr. Halsey, as well, who's also fleeing the UNSC base on a stolen ship. Though Kai was able to remarkably make it onto that ship, Halsey was able to jump ship in an escape pod at the last second. Later on, the UNSC locate Halsey and take her into custody. Oh, and Makee was able to get away, which means that the Spartans will have to figure out where the Covenant's base is and locate the keystones.
Halsey is only in custody briefly, dying quickly after losing control of her body. However, Dr. Keyes remembers that when her mother would flash clone the baby-Spartans, they would also die in a similar manner, which means that Halsey flash cloned herself and was not actually the woman in custody.
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