Zel glanced behind him, at the vast array of tiny effigies, realizing their specific purpose.
“You have explained the reason why Koschei was doing what he was doing. You have yet to explain why you continued using the mask.”
“I… I admit I cannot yet bear with the weight. Obtaining the strength to snuff out the Order lies too far beyond the horizon. In my thoughtscape, I can distort my perception of time to the utmost — I have been using this to attempt, time and again, to create a stronger servitor, a stronger Dawnwolf. But I can’t. My mastery is insufficient — I lack the knowledge to make it function, I lack the raw strength to drive it, I lack the base materials to build it. So, I’ve continued retreating into my thoughtscape. I admit I spend much of my time in escapism, but I also spend just as much meditating on the contents of the Itrian Scroll.”
She sensed that this was not true, but also not a lie. Zel wagered that Victor himself didn’t know whether that answer was the objective truth, but that he also felt as if it was true. She could not blame him. Time, within one’s thoughtscape, flowed much like it did in a dream. A lapse of focus could lead to enormous jumps in dream-time. His conclusion as to how to resolve his heart demon was of sound logic, but it was also too farsighted, set too stringently on the subject of his heart demon. Unsurprisingly, such an issue impeded one’s ability to resolve it. He had set his eyes too far ahead and failed to see the road that would lead him there, overfocusing on the end goal when in truth his turmoil would be resolved by the process of achieving that goal and the sense of progress gained from it. In short, were he to gain the power to exterminate the Order of Six Truths right now, for instance through the sudden arrival of Teutobochus, doing so would not actually rid him of his heart demon. A path of struggle and actual growth would be required to achieve it.
As for his speaking of revenants, she didn’t think it was a delusion. The same ephemeral sensation she had felt from purified revenant aura was also present about him, having surfaced only now that the mask was off.
While Zelsys thought of how she might aid in that process, she asked him a question: “You said the revenants of Eberheim left their lingering will with you. How many?”
Eberheim had been a relatively prosperous city, spared the worst of the war, taken early and without combat — even before the unification, it could not have been said to belong to either Ikesia or Grekuria particularly strongly. All it had taken was some paperwork to officiate the change of hands, and life had gone on mostly unperturbed. As such, it had held one of the largest populations in the country post-war, while its status and proximity to the border had permitted it to forgo significant militarization, inevitably leading to its targeting by the Order of Six Truths. Zelsys had a good idea of the estimated population and estimated casualty numbers, but those could be only loosely correlated to how many revenants actually formed from their sacrifice, let alone how many Victor purified, and of those, how many left their lingering will with him.
The redhead counted for a few moments, then settled on a number: “Thirty-thousand, seven-hundred sixty-three. Of them, nineteen-thousand one-hundred and eight left with me a will of vengeance, wrath, or other desire for the destruction of the Order or their ilk. Fifteen-thousand, seven-hundred and seventy-seven wished to be remembered. Eleven-thousand and three specifically wished to be memorialized in a physical manner. There is much overlap. I believe I can fulfill the wishes of those vengeful who wished to be memorialized physically by building servitors to house their wills. From the vengeful remnants, I may be able to channel strength right away, and those who merely wished to be memorialized will indirectly strengthen me through strengthening Bishamonten. Eventually, their remnant will may naturally congeal to form powerful sacred spirits.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“How many vengeful revenants sought to be memorialized? Do you have any idea as to how many would be most fitting to entomb within a servitor?”
Victor smiled.
“The “Pure Revenants” number ten thousand, one-hundred and one. Yes, I’ve counted and recounted many times to make sure. I have already given this much thought, and Bishamonten has given me much counsel. I mean to channel their vengeful will through Dawnwolf’s successor. I’ve already had to split the armour into smaller sub-servitors due to its vastly increased size and complexity, for many reasons, including the fact the Gate of Fantasy simply would not be able to transport it in its complete state. The restriction will also allow me to render the final armour more powerful, despite how counter-intuitive it might be from a purely mundanist design perspective. I will be able to freely control how Revenant Aura is distributed between individual pieces to maximize performance where it is needed at any given moment, or to alter the distribution in order to compensate for battle damage.”
He was becoming tangled in his own thoughts again, but Zel couldn’t just zap him again. She would rapidly run into diminishing returns and accumulating issues that way, especially without a technique specifically developed for this purpose. She had to give him a clear direction and a beacon to focus on, and make damn sure he stayed on that path until it became wide enough that one step wouldn't make him fall into the metaphorical abyss below.
“Enough. Show me your best prototype.”
“It’s… I- Well, I have one, but…” he trailed off again.
“You have one,” Zel repeated, gripping Victor’s shoulder, just hard enough to be painful but not hard enough to actually hurt him. “So show me.”
“It’s not even functional,” he argued, continuing to do so even as Zel picked him up like a ragdoll. She pointed to a cluster of strange statues and obvious servitors nearby. “There?”
“I only have so much Teutobochus muscle, and I’ve yet to make any kind of dragon muscle work… Yes, that’s it. Anyway, I know that refining dragon musculature is possible, I simply lack the skill, or perhaps the raw power, or most likely both.”
She set him down in the middle of the servitor-group, shoving the Oculus into his hands, placing her own on his shoulders, and staring him in the face from only a few widths of a finger away.
“It doesn’t matter, just show me — assuming you can do it without hurting yourself.”
“I can, yes. The suit can’t do much of anything, and the formation sequence is still too slow, but the basic structure works. In a combat situation, I would use another technique to call the servitors to me directly from the shrine.”
Numerous small servitors, alongside two larger, skeletal ones, sprung into motion and arranged themselves in a circle around Victor as he held up the Oculus. He began a ceremonial dance, spinning the staff in hand as he cautiously yet also quickly moved from one pose to the next. The staff’s secondary rings spun in place and a gap in space opened within its main ring, and through that gap, Zel could see the shining, star-like core which resides within the shrine. A familiar, numinous pressure descended, and with a sound like thunder, a circle was stamped into the ground under Victor’s feet, just like back at Eberheim.
“Grand. Glorious. Gathering.”