59 – End of Obscuria

It was only after several seconds that Ishrin finally pulled out his hand from deep within Lucius’ chest. By the time he did, the former regent of Obscuria was nothing more than a shriveled shell, a dried-out husk devoid of magic, vitality and anything that could be passed as life had long vacated the premises. The rush of power flowing into Ishrin, comparable to more than ten times his current level of power, was intoxicating—and he knew that a lesser man would have succumbed to temptation upon tasting the sweet rush of another man’s life into their core. Ishrin was not a lesser man, though, and despised the ritual even though he could not refute its effectiveness.

His power had just made a giant leap forward, the biggest yet, propelling him to the very peak of Tier 3. But it was not all, and in fact his growth in terms of Tiers was the most negligible of gains. The ritual he had used to drain Lucius of his power had been complex and expensive, against most of Ishrin’s principles and certainly bound to be made among the most illegal of things if the Guild ever caught wind of it, but it had been a fitting end for a piece of scum who used pixies to farm for their dust.

The ritual had invigorated Ishrin in every way. His body was stronger, sturdier and denser. His muscles thrummed with newfound power, stolen from the beast of a man that Ishrin had drained. His skin could now harden to withstand blows and cuts he could only dream of tanking before. His core was filled to the brim with power, and all the significant overflow of mana that had not gone into pushing his Tier further had gone into compressing the mana and refining its quality to the extreme. Once more, the gap between himself and the rest of the mages of his Tier had widened.

Yet, the biggest gain was not that. It was his ability to control matter and energy with the ability he had gained with the Touch from Afar ritual. Another qualitative jump brought the ability to new heights, heights he would need to get used to and train in order to exploit to the maximum, but already his perception and power to control his environment had grown by leaps and bounds.

If it wasn’t such a vile ritual, I would have no excuse not to do it more often.

It was perhaps a small fortune that it was a vile ritual, one that not only inflicted great pain upon the victim but also upon the caster. Not only did it consume rare ingredients—that fortunately happened to be within the manor for the most part on this occasion—but that also required great concentration and power of will. All that, and it was still not free of risk, even after it was successfully performed: whoever benefited from the many gains had then to deal with the impurities in the mana flow that came with absorbing another person’s cultivation, as well as dealing with their ghosts. Sometimes quite literally, as the ritual at times happened to absorb a part of its victim’s mind, or soul if the caster was particularly unlucky—and bring it along with the influx of power.

Ishrin could not be sure it had not been the case this time, for soul fragments could hide themselves and hibernate for a long time, to strike when his will was at the lowest and his defenses most permeable.

It was, by all means, a dangerous ritual that was most often not worth considering. But Ishrin had taken precautions, poisoned Lucius both in body and mind, as well as in the soul to make him most malleable, and he also knew that he could win a battle of wills against the lesser, younger and less experienced lizard-man should it come to that, although it was a risk that did not sit well with him for a number of reasons. Being old had made him cautious, and even though the god, the many deaths and the return to adventure sometimes had him act rather rashly, it was when he was alone that he reverted to being meticulous and cautious the most.

It was after Ishrin was sure he could move without his internal energy fluctuations alerting half the city that he finally left the room and moved onto the garden, where the pillar with the strange inscription awaited him. Looting the rest of the manor had happened already in the ritual setup phase, as an almost afterthought, filling his inventory to the brim with materials and reagents for even more rituals he had plans to perform both for himself and for the girls.

Who could have guessed that turning to banditry would have sped up the process this much?

Hopefully, and that was the crucial part, Albert the not-very-nice god wouldn’t be too mad with Ishrin stealing from a person such as Lucius, because he fully intended to do it again should he ever have the chance and the displeasure of meeting an equally nasty individual.

As he was, Ishrin stood in front of the archway in the garden, where a small pillar that had survived the destruction of the old city upon which Obscuria had been built. Beside it was a broken remain of another, even grander pillar that was now lying flat on the ground. And a great stone.

“Lithos mirat, sed eios animum vacuo manet.” Ishrin read. The funny thing, which he had missed the first time he had set eyes upon the inscription, was that not only did he know the language, but he could also spot a couple of grammar mistakes that immediately told him the pillar was a replica. A replica of something that should have never been here anyway, which raised a whole set of concerns he really did not want to deal with at the moment. Matters of Syrma and the Dynasty seemed all too relevant to the case, and those were headaches that could not be dealt with in a night.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Instead, Ishrin pondered for a moment about what to do with the archway, which was clearly protected by a spellfield of some sorts, repelling his attempts at touching it with enough force to almost hurt. He turned his eyes to the inscription again. If, for a moment, he pretended that the inscription was not completely nonsensical—with it being in a language from another universe that had no right to be here—he could imagine it being instead a legacy of a past long gone when the city was a powerful outpost of an empire that was no more.

In that scenario, the riddle had kept even the greediest of people from gaining access to the riches within, people like Lucius himself who for years had tried to crack the vault open but never managed to even chip the seemingly broken and weathered down rocks that surrounded the forcefield.

Ishrin cracked his knuckles. Conventional means would not work with this stone. What would work, however, was his improved ability to control magical energies. With a frown, squinting his eyes so that they could better see the flow of energy that made up the barrier, he carefully studied its every part and weakness, sorting through them and prodding at them with the slightest magical touch. Then, all of a sudden, as if to almost take the barrier off guard, he shoved himself magically and then physically inside. A small fluctuation, carefully engineered to pull at the threads of the barrier itself, allowed him to slide inside the vault, the barrier sealing itself shut behind him.

It was no problem, because opening such a barrier from the inside was much easier than doing it from the outside. Already a smiling Ishrin was deconstructing the failing energy flow from deep within the vault, through aging magical conduits that fed the barrier. One minor application of his power to parts he could not access from the outside, and the whole flow of energy sputtered and died, taking the barrier with it.

Ishrin walked down the uneven steps, carrying a torch he fished – already burning – from his inventory, stolen from somewhere in the mansion. There were many traps lining the walls, but he marched past them almost as if he didn’t care about them. He was peppered with poisoned arrows, spiked balls, the bones of what must have been serpents a long time ago, magic projectiles and globs of acid. They were deflected, redirected and neutralized, their magic unraveled without even breaking his stride. Most of the traps were long past their prime, but even those that still worked barely posed a real threat to him, who had already detected them before he even stepped on the mechanisms that activated them. Only two traps were a real danger to him and his unusual constitution, crystal tipped darts and arrows that were instead of deflected intercepted by an open inventory window.

The god-given skill hardly cooperated with the defensive use, but Ishrin’s power and will were growing quickly now, and he could bend the rules for a short while. Still, the activity had him sweating and nursing the beginning of a headache he could have done without, and he proceeded with much greater care afterwards.

Air that had not seen the light of day for millennia greeted him at the final chamber. Where, stashed against a wall, was a mountain of treasure. Immense mountains of gold and locked chests, rubies and diamonds, rivers of pure greed in the form of plush sofas made of the best silk, overflowing with items and little treasures filled the cavern to the brim. The grey ceiling of rock and moss was almost invisible through all the treasure that shimmered and glinted in its golden hue at the dancing light of the torch, and glowed like a beacon when exposed to Ishrin’s magic sight.

It was as if time had stilled in this chamber, and all the gold and riches of a nobility of another age had been gathered up in a big pile by a strange underground dwelling dragon. Although mundane, the treasure was sure going to help immensely, and it all went into the inventory, pushing the headache fully into painful territories. Irritatingly, the headache could not be dealt with by using magic. Such was the power of a god, it seemed.

In the end, there was only one thing to be done before Ishrin could finally leave Obscuria and never set foot in it ever again. Mentally selecting the barrels of lamp oil sitting in the strange space of his inventory, he began to pour the slick and volatile liquid straight from the portal. He doused the whole mansion, and then the city, and each time someone stopped him to ask what he was doing he killed them in cold blood, mercilessly. The first kills had been heated affairs full of hatred and necessary, he told himself, to relieve the anger and tension. By the fiftieth guard he gutted, he was pulling cores out of their navels with the strength of his telekinesis alone like he was dealing with a vermin infestation. Detached. Tired.

He wondered, for a moment, whether he was losing his humanity or if, perhaps, the brief venture in Noctis had only been a simulacrum of a humanity he had lost long ago, together with his wife who was not who he had thought she was. But he didn’t care anymore.

The city burned.

By nightfall, the city was back in ruins, just as it was before Lucius had come to call it his own. And he, sole perpetrator of the slaughter, watched from the tallest ruin the last of the towers collapse under its own weight in a blaze of embers. His body was burned and scarred, his flesh molten and the scales that had manifested on it upon taking damage, remnants of Lucius’ powers were cracked, chipped and deformed.

When Ishrin stood, they were gone. His skin was pristine, his clothes spotless, and his posture straight. He jumped off the tower, gliding in the air under his own power, and left. Never turning back, lest his eyes witness the inhuman damage he had caused.

Regretting nothing.