Serenity hated doubting the people around him, but there was that moment when he wondered if he ought to accept what Senkovar said. He clearly had some interest in Berinath that he hadn’t told Serenity about. At the same time, at least so far, he’d never lied to Serenity. He’d been wrong and he’d left things out, but he never lied.
Which meant he was probably not lying now, even though he’d definitely left things out. Well, what was the worst that could happen if Senkovar was a little wrong? If it treated him like he was undead and tried to drain Serenity’s Vital Affinity, Serenity didn’t think that would work. His Vital Affinity simply wasn’t touched by Death beyond the fact that he was Death’s Incarnate and Serenity was confident that Death Herself outweighed a local god in every way imaginable.
Well, except possibly in actual mass. Death’s chosen form wasn’t all that big, after all.
Serenity suppressed the smile triggered by the errant thought about Amaia Black and focused back on the rune. There was no way it could remove his Incarnate; he doubted it would even be able to seriously damage it.
It wasn’t very large and the materials felt ordinary, at least if you counted Tier Five as ordinary. Serenity might not know exactly what they were, but he knew that they weren’t high enough Tier to carry enough energy all at once to burn out his channels without also destroying the rune, and he could heal his channels relatively quickly.
The most likely way for it to go wrong, then, was for it to try to pull Death-attuned mana away from him. He could deal with that, too, the same way he’d dealt with the formation even if dropping the rune didn’t work. Which it would unless it managed to freeze him in place the way Elder Omprek mentioned. Serenity could probably fight that off, too, though he wouldn’t be certain until he saw the actual effect.
In short, it was probably not horribly unsafe for him to touch; certainly no more unsafe than entering an on-Tier dungeon he’d never been in before. They could have odd threats too and without information he could be caught by surprise. It wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done, probably, but he’d checked enough of the boxes to know that touching the Echa rune wasn’t anywhere near the dumbest thing he’d ever done.
That meant it came down to whether or not Serenity wanted to touch the rune. He had to admit that it was tempting; it would thoroughly demolish the dryads’ position that he was undead if their own god said he wasn’t. He kind of wanted to see the look on the Elders’ faces.
Did he want that more than he wanted to not deal with the possible consequences of touching a rune he couldn’t completely read but thought was probably overall safe?
Yeah, he did. It wasn’t even close. He might only get the pleasure of their chagrin, but that was worth quite a bit after the hassle they’d put him through. He’d be happy if it made them think twice about others who simply wanted to pass through Berinath as well, but that was probably too much to ask for.
Serenity reached out and picked up the tile with the run on it without touching the rune. He looked over at Elder Omprek. “Anything special I should do?”
The elder shook his head. “No, all that’s required is to touch it. Touching the tile is hit or miss, you need to actually touch the rune.”
Serenity had to admit that that indicated a well-designed rune. It was far easier to set up a rune that interacted at a specific point than one that interacted over a larger surface. Given what he could tell of the structure of the rune, that wasn’t a feature of the runic work, unfortunately; it must have been included in the Intent. That probably explained why it sometimes worked over an even larger area than the rune covered.
Serenity decided to be absolutely blatantly obvious and set his entire hand on the rune. For a long moment, nothing happened, then the rune started to gather shadows around it. Serenity didn’t feel anything at all; the change was clearly coming from the rune, not from him. “Is that supposed to happen?”
“Not as far as they know.” The voice came from the shadow gathered around the rune. Everyone else seemed to be stopped or moving extremely slowly, almost like the reverse of what Elder Omprek had described. He hadn’t frozen in place; everything else had.
Serenity frowned at the darkness. He wasn’t certain what was happening, but there was no feeling of threat at all. That might be false, but if something could fool him enough to make him think everything outside himself was stopped when it wasn’t, he’d already lost. “Are you deliberately trying to be creepy?”
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“Creepy?” The smoke sounded surprised. “No. I want a look at you, as much as I can look these days. You’re interesting; I can actually see you when you touch my rune. That normally only happens with undead, but you aren’t undead. You’re more than that. I can talk to you, too. That shouldn’t be possible.”
“Does that mean you’re Echa? Stojan Echa?” Serenity couldn’t quite believe he was talking to a god that was supposed to be dead or at least “gone,” but he couldn’t think of anyone else who would call the rune his. Maybe the person who carved it originally? Though wouldn’t that be the god?
Wait, was that the real reason most of the runes had disappeared over the years? Were they all created by Stojan Echa at one point, then slowly used until they failed or were otherwise destroyed? That would make at least as much sense as people putting them away due to the loss of faith in a dead god, especially when they’d been everywhere the way Elder Omprek and World Shaman Senkovar Et’Tart implied.
“Yes,” the shadow confirmed. “That was once my name. Now? Few call on me by name, now. I am surprised you know the name at all. Those who do call on me speak of the Protector, mostly. It is not a name I ever expected. I was a craftsman and magician, not a fighter of any sort.”
Serenity chuckled bitterly. “What others think of you often has little to do with what you think of yourself.”
Serenity knew that many on Earth thought of him far differently than anything he’d have claimed for himself. He was considered everything from Humanity’s savior to a devil that tried to drag everyone to Hell. Fortunately, more people thought well of him than the opposite, but it wasn’t something he could fully control any more than he was able to control what people thought of him when he was Vengeance. He’d never intended to become the boogeyman to the rest of the universe, and in fact he’d rather they just left him alone, but somehow that was what happened.
“True enough,” Echa agreed. “But sometimes those things matter. Are you truly Tzintkra’s Lord? Does the planet still host life, or is the realm of only the dead and those who control them?”
“You can tell I’m Tzintkra’s Lord?” Serenity was shocked at that. It wasn’t something that should normally be obvious unless he did something that triggered an announcement of some sort; he’d relied on that to keep the fact that he was Earth’s Lord quiet. He was lucky that he’d avoided that on Earth, but there had been an announcement when he took over the Necropolis, hadn’t there?
He didn’t think it had said his name. Unfortunately, that was before he acquired Aide, so he had to depend on his own memory, which was far more fallible than Aide’s recordings.
Serenity wasn’t sure how Echa managed it, but somehow the sentient smoke chuckled at Serenity. “I am the last of the Holy. That means I can see what the Lord of the Holy once saw, at least when you are in front of me. Yes, I can tell you are the Lord of Tzintkra, for all that you are clearly no child of the Damned.”
Serenity frowned at that. He could accept that there was some sort of historical reason Echa could tell his title, but he didn’t know how Echa could know he wasn’t one of the Damned. Weren’t they just the opposite force in the past on Tzintkra? He’d assumed that they were the people who settled and controlled the Necropolis. He ought to fit the category all too well as not only a Death mage but the Incarnate of Death. “Why do you say I’m not one of the Damned? Doesn’t that just mean that I use Death magic?”
The smoke didn’t reply immediately. When he did, he sounded concerned. “Is that what you think of us, that we would damn people for something so small? No, they were damned because they stole the power of the gods. When you see a friend’s body turned into a husk that still walks and their power used to empower their killers, you will understand. They started with their own gods and turned them into tools before they turned on everyone else. We knew the Damned were killing their gods. We thought they were weakening themselves for short term gain, so we made certain they did not gain too much land and waited. They hid among the population, especially among those who dealt in the darker magics, and we did not wish to cause the destruction trying to find them would create when they were already destroying themselves. It was a foolish mistake.”
Echa’s smoke seemed to curl up on itself for a moment before he continued. “I believe they started with people and worked their way up to gods, but it was not until far too long after they stole Sharii’s life that we knew something was badly wrong. They’d figured out how to make it work on their own gods before they started on ours. Sharii was a kind soul for all that she was the Lady of Passings. When she began to demand sacrifices of life, we should have known. We didn’t; we thought she’d grown power-hungry. Two of her siblings went to check on her; neither returned, at least not as themselves. They were twisted abominations of flesh, mostly dead but with a beating heart of power that could still call on the faith of their followers, yet they obeyed the commands of the Damned. We were slow to act. City after city fell to the Twins, to Sharii, to the gods we thought were dead yet were kept in a state of horror.”
Echa paused once again, then seemed to turn the topic back to Serenity’s original question. “You ask how I know you are no child of the Damned? You wonder why I talk of their gods and ours, what made them different. The Damned weren’t human, they were Vrak. Most Vrak were not Damned, but the Damned hid among them and led them. They controlled their servants with pieces of their own bodies. It was horrifying. I was the best of the Holy at finding them, yet I could do nothing about them once I found them; I was a god of cycles and they broke all cycles. You have nothing of the Vrak about you, for all that you rule Tzintkra.”