Chapter 412 - Amidst the Valencian Wind V

Claire gave her body a bit of a stretch as she leapt off the castle’s ramparts. It had been a few days since they arrived in Valencia, and she was already sick of being home. Despite her protests, the party had spent two full days touring the castle. It was one of the biggest wastes of time she could have possibly imagined, second only to the activity they had taken on that morning. At Arciel’s request, they had gone up to Augustus Manor, Claire’s childhood home, in spite of the fact that there was nothing to see.

The lyrkress was the only one to have abstained. It wasn’t like she didn’t understand. To them, the boring old sights were neither boring nor old at all, and the Valencian castle was every bit an amusement park as it was a fortress. The rooms were rife with interesting devices and gimmicks that drew the unfamiliar eye. The courtyards and greenhouses were packed to the brim with rare herbs and natural medicines known to the world at large as holy grails. And the great hall always featured the most luxurious food that money could buy.

Most entertaining of all, however, was the game room. It was filled with cutting-edge artifacts created for the sole purpose of entertainment; games and cards that moved on their own, dice that told player-directed tales, and tomes that projected their contents as delusions straight into their readers’ minds.

Still, Claire refused to join them. Leaving Allegra to serve as their guide, she spent much of her time alone. Though she lazed around and tried to unwind at first, she soon found that it was impossible. She couldn’t spend her time with Rubia, courtesy of the differences in their apparent status, and she really didn’t want to be anywhere near her father. She had considered visiting her old associates, but it would be difficult to properly interact with them without revealing her identity. To them, she had to remain as the silent, nameless knight.

She had tried to make do with meditating and working on her magic—practicing with her newly improved circuits—but it was hard to focus while the local intelligence officers kept their eyes upon her. Eventually, she threw in the towel and departed from the castle grounds altogether.

The first two days were spent flying around the city with a particular focus on all of the places that she had never been allowed to visit. The slums were first on her list, but having seen many similar districts in other countries first hand, Claire found the labeling a gross overstatement.

The government was hardly so foolish as to let the less fortunate rot in poverty and squalor. The only few who were unemployed were those who were unwilling to work, and regulations demanded that every job paid a living wage. The rules were enforced stringently, and even a single report could lead to an unannounced investigation.

Of course, while there were any number of ways for an illicit businessman to worm their way out of immediate punishment, the people could always fall back on the rule of violence. Duels were fought to settle disputes, and while there were certainly a fair number of ne’er-do-wells willing to lend their swords for coin, the strongest fighters often found themselves under the government’s employ. Coincidentally, there was no rule preventing a civil servant from volunteering to serve as a civilian’s representative.

It was a risky system that assumed the strongest would have the nation’s best intentions in mind. But at least for the past thousand years, it had proven problem-free. With the number of bad actors far fewer than not and the well-meaning at the head of the ship, all was well in paradise.

Government intervention was hardly limited to policies and their enforcement. In times of peace, the army was often tasked with aiding in construction. Throwing homes together for the homeless was childsplay for the strictly trained mage corps.

With poverty as a concept that only barely existed, the slum was just as ordinary as every other part of town. It was only categorized as such because the type of work available in the surrounding districts tended to pay less than jobs that were further away. Hence the princess’ disappointment.

Claire had known, cognitively, that the slum was just another boring part of Valencia. She had always been able to see it, both from the sky and when they passed through the city, but she had held onto the hope that she would discover the city’s criminal underbelly and find herself caught in a scheme beyond her means. Alas, no such event transpired regardless of how long she wandered.

The rest of her exploration proved just as uneventful. Though the playwrights and bards continued to churn out just as much new work as usual, very little of it seemed to catch Claire’s attention. It made her feel a little off. In the past, she had always wanted to hear about the newest rising stars and their hard-earned victories. True stories, or at least stories based on true stories, had been among her favourites. But as she walked down the streets and heard the hawkers’ promotions, she found her attention uncaught.

Still, she sat in on one such performance and listened to the end. Valencia’s bards were just as engaging as ever—it wasn’t like the quality of the stories themselves had dropped in a way that was immediately apparent—and yet, she nearly fell asleep. Somehow, the heroic legend failed to stir her heart. She was more intrigued by the places featured in the stories than the central characters, though much to her past excitement and present dismay, few singers focused their attention on the curious environments.

Similar disappointments played out throughout the rest of her wandering. Valencia was just too familiar, and with nothing having changed in the year and a half since her departure, she found that little but boredom awaited. That was why, on the third morning, she decided to get down to business.

She floated through the air, slowly crossing the massive city as did many of its winged residents, with her eyes on the western border. Though there was a temple street, like the one in Vel’khagan, Valencia’s spiritual institutions were haphazardly scattered about. At a glance, it was a contradiction, but the rationale became clear with a quick glance towards the east, where anyone with eyes could find a veritable district where naught but Vella’s praises were sung.

The goddess’ path, as it was so often known, was a behemoth of a roadway with enough space for a procession as wide as fifteen wagons. Its sides were lined with armouries, ateliers, and training halls—all places that vested their interests in the waging of war. Even the colosseum shared in the war goddess’ space, though the reason was every bit as practical as it was an expression of faith. There was no other place in the city where the roads were quite so wide; the temple and the colosseum were the only two facilities that drew enough traffic to completely drown the streets.

Vella was like no other when it came to stealing the people’s affections. There wasn’t any way for another temple to compete without being stifled by her pressure. Moving to the other side of town was practically common sense.

With Cadria being Cadria, there weren’t too many others worshipped in the first place. Still, the capital was populous enough that the most famous deities had domains to call their own.

Claire had her eyes set on Xekkur’s.

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The death god was popular enough that his local mausoleum was sized like a noble’s manor. The overall impression it gave was that of a dreary hellscape. Its pitch black fences were adorned with large spikes, and the building itself looked like it was made of layered tombstones. All of the weapons scattered across the yard had their blades in the dirt and half-rotten mementos tied to their hilts. Weathered hats, tattered scarves, bloodstained shirts—the last remnants of their previous owners. The trees that lined the property were withered and anyone who inspected the dirt beneath them would find plenty of bone. Not all of the bodies were disposed of in quite that way. Loosely humanoid, bestial, and centaurian bags hung from the branches, the ropes around their necks leaving their ends in no part to the imagination.

Claire felt the usual pressure as she entered the grounds, though that was all there was. The pain was nonpresent, as had been the case since her third ascension. In its place was an unsettling tickle that slowly crawled its way across her skin. She found it difficult to believe that it was the god’s divinity. Perhaps it was better attributed to either the scent of death or the wailing that came from deep within his crypt. In either case, she ignored it and proceeded through the open doors.

The lone monk looked every bit as skeletal as the temple’s decorations, for the man was a lich. From the phantom humanoid form that was overlaid atop his bones, one could surmise that he was likely a halfbreed, specifically an individual whose blood was mixed with that of a blackroot elf.

He briefly glanced in her direction, pointed down the hall, and returned his bespeckled eyes to the book he had in his hands. Though the whole encounter came off as a little unsettling and strange, Claire had no complaints; the less she had to talk, the better.

Surely enough, the hallway led down a staircase and into a subterranean atrium. The altar was made of the same grey stone as the building’s exterior, though in the candlelit darkness, it was far more intimidating.

The last time that she had visited one of Xekkur’s temples, he had instructed her to pay attention to her lack of reflection. At the time, the goal had seemed vague and incomprehensible, but looking back, she understood exactly what he meant. She had completely forgotten the proper use of her strengths and defaulted to relying on the skills granted to her by the system. And while they were certainly potent, so too did she see the many points of failure that stemmed from overreliance. It was ironic, really. Those that left Llystletein were supposed to take precisely that lesson to heart, but perhaps because she had no experience as a true combatant, Claire had failed to absorb it.

Xekkur’s disappointment was inevitable. It had cost an episode of embarrassment, but Claire had finally learned her lesson. An ideal situation was like the one that had resulted in the death of Pollux’s successor—a scheme fully planned out in advance and simply executed in real time.

Reading her foes was only a backup, a contingency that let her stay ahead of them when the plan deviated from its original route.

Since then, she had spent a lot of time thinking about her abilities and the various ways she could use them to corner her enemies. It helped that her vector magic was finally back online, and though she had been reluctant at first, she had even accepted the phantom’s teachings.

Her pride was not worth a loss of power. And from the moment she sat down in front of the altar, she knew that Xekkur agreed.

He took her into his realm without waiting for her words. It was nothing like the dark temple in which his worshippers had dwelled. Sunlight streamed from up above, filling the rolling hills with an uncharacteristic warmth.

Tiny pale flowers topped the hills and patches of clover filled the troughs. It would have made for a picturesque scene if not for the giant device that dominated the horizon. The largest piece was a pale white cog nearly as wide as the planet. The turning gear was only barely visible; it was translucent enough that she was tempted to squint, but she refrained. Such behaviour was far too unbecoming, especially in the presence of a god.

Opening more of her eyes instead, she took in more of the device. But somehow, even with her field of vision expanded, she found that it remained unchained. The giant gear was every bit as blurry, incomplete, and utterly incomprehensible regardless of how she observed it.

“You look upon the spectre of death. Be glad that it is still faint.”

The deity standing atop the nearest hill spoke in a soft and gentle voice. Like the rest of his domain, he looked nothing like the man shown on the statues around his temple. The sculptures depicted a lanky, towering man who wore a ram’s skull over his face and kept a pitch black cloak draped over his shoulders. Even in his paintings, he was a stick figure of a psychopathic killer whose apparent age was more advanced than not.

Xekkur was certainly quite thin by a grown man’s standard, but his lack of width was more so attributed to his apparent age than his malnutrition. Standing a full head shorter than Claire, he sported short ghastly white locks that glimmered beneath the sky, a pair of horns that rose from his temples, and a layer of skin dyed in the same light-brown tone as Flitzegarde’s.

He wore a bright white robe as disproportionately large as the feathered wings that grew from the back of his body. It was an almost innocent aesthetic, ruined only by the abyss that lay within his eyes. Staring into them was like meeting one’s end. She couldn’t tell where his pupils were or if he even had any in the first place. All she saw was a swirling mass of darkness.

“The spectre of death?” asked Claire.

“Yes,” he said. “It is the end, the final rest that awaits all but the few who have escaped their mortality. And as it approaches, it will shrink and grow clearer. What you see is just the first stage, the shadow that looms from the moment of your birth.”

“I see.”

He paused for a second to look at her before twisting his lips into an innocent smile. “Do not worry. It can appear before you at a moment’s notice. There is never any guarantee that death is anything but a blink and a gasp away.”

“I know.”

“You do,” he said. “And you’ve made some good progress as of late.”

Claire nodded. “I’ve done as you asked.”

“Yes. Yes you have.”

He turned towards her and slowly raised a hand. It was difficult to determine exactly where his fingers were, thanks to his all-too-long sleeves, but it more or less looked like he was pointing in her direction.

A faint energy gathered at the tip of his supposed fingers. Forming a puffy ball, the raw energy rode the spring breeze and drifted its way towards her. It was like a dandelion seed, albeit one that soon sank into her chest.

Log Entry 871341

You have received a blessing from the God of De—

Flux’s words cut out before the proclamation reached its conclusion. It was overshadowed by a sharp ring, an ear-piercing echo that filled her head with pain.

—imilar materials.

But it was short-lived. The rake scraping its way through her mind vanished as quickly as it appeared.

“I do apologize. I did not anticipate that it would cause so much discomfort,” said Xekkur. “As it says in your log, the ability that accompanies my blessing is improved mental processing speed when you perform self-reflection or otherwise study from anything that is even remotely book-adjacent.”

Claire nodded.

“I suspect that you are interested in only the first of these use cases, so I have taken the liberty of modifying the ability such that it also applies to those with whom your mind is connected. For now, this means your lizard and the homunculus named Rubia.”

“Thank you.”

The god raised his head and looked at the gear in the distance. “The greatest show of appreciation would be to use the ability as intended. I’d rather you did that than offer your words.”

“I will,” said Claire.

“Make true on the claim, and perhaps I might offer another reward.” Xekkur smiled. “I would say that not even violating the spirit of democracy is quite what I’d call out of the question.”

The rolling hills were gone by the time his voice faded. She was left in his atrium, where there was nothing to do but consider the difference between the statue before her and the form that he had shown.