Vic reabsorbed his construct and they continued on their way, walking through the great flower-filled cavern at a leisurely pace as they took in the scenery, with Zefaris taking at least a half-dozen photographs as they went. The closer to the cathedral they got, the more its larger-than-life scale came into perspective, its doors and windows an order of magnitude larger than anything built by and for real people. Even its staircase had steps of a size beyond any practicality, with multiple smaller scales of staircase at the side. Its truly monumental doors opened without so much as a sound, cracking open a passage wide enough for them to pass and no wider. Within awaited a truly vast space, filled with pews and idols to forgotten deities of the Ankhezian culture, all rendered in blackstone and gold. Golden flame extracted from the infant sun flowed through conduits all over the walls and along channels on the floor, lighting up numerous lightgems behind stained glass, as well as a giant sphere hanging far above, giving the appearance of natural sunlight somehow coming into the structure from every direction all at once.
At the cathedral’s other end awaited the blackwall’s great gate, similar in form to the cathedral’s doors, but utterly covered in a sprawling, angular glyph, at whose center sat a giant golden crystal orb.
“We may as well settle down in front of the gate, it will take a few hours before it lets us through,” Jorfr said as they neared the gate. Its glyph lit up at their approach just as the doors in the labyrinth had, golden light flowing through its innumerable angular lines from all sides until they reached the golden core. Rays of concentrated light flashed down upon them from the orb, ceasing after a few moments.
And so, they waited.
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Meanwhile, south of the Boundaryless Forest…
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Tracking her hadn’t been easy, but it hadn’t been prohibitively difficult, either.
Once he found out that they’d entered the Gaullam, it was only a matter of considering that the Long Road North was obstructed and that the naval route just wasn’t practical with a norseman in the party, meaning that they likely took the route through Agartha. A path trod by few, but far from unheard of.
Their unique mode of transport made tracking them easier still, between sightings and physical tracks in places without too much rain.
Though, in truth, he didn’t have to guess.
Von Wickten knew which way she was. Whenever he thought of her, a wrenching ache of desire would shoot through his entire being from her direction. An ache of desire for violence, for murder; retribution. It was the clearest, most brilliant thought in his mind at any given time. When he closed his eyes, he could see her face. When his armor locked up and forced him to sleep, he dreamt of crushing her skull between his metal-encased hands.
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She was now his inspiration, driving muse, his idol of hatred.
“Consider yourself lucky. Your predecessor did not have such a clear-cut, direct cause for his internment in the Armor of Pure Purpose. Hundreds of thousands fell before he found his peace,” the Divine Emperor had said to him.
No, the hard part was finding out how she got there. He had no special knowledge of the secret paths to Agartha, and so he had no choice but to rely upon himself. The Armor made it all too easy, shutting out distractions, steering him back onto the path every time his mind was tempted by depravity. It was a separate thing from what he considered to be himself, now. That sea of writhing tar, lapping at the walls of his mind’s silver castle. Von Wickten didn’t care that he hadn’t built that mental castle, no more than he had cared that the Dragonheart in his chest hadn’t been his, or that the Memory-eater Gu’s power hadn’t been his.
“Power is power, regardless of where it comes from,” he told himself.
What difference did it make if his power was borrowed, so long as he came out victorious? The reason for his defeat hadn’t been anything to do with his logic, but with how far he had taken it. He simply hadn’t gone far enough, he hadn’t scoured the darkest corners, focusing himself too much on the petty vanities of his station.
“It paid off, in the end… All this depravity, all this impurity, it all paid off…” he thought as he effortlessly smashed apart a house-sized River Dozer which had thought to block his path out of the Gaullam.
He imagined that sea of inner tar as a swirling whirlpool surrounding his mental castle, turning the innumerable waterwheels of his newfound strength. Nowhere in his mind was there even the slightest consideration of returning to some approximation of his previous life.
When he reached the edge of the Boundaryless Forest, he at first thought that they had simple gone in, fully prepared to believe that the Smoke Witch would have just guided them through; a courtesy which would doubtlessly not be extended to him, and as intoxicating as his newfound strength was, he wasn’t so power-drunk as to believe himself an equal to a being aged in the four digits and capable of incinerating armies. Not to mention… The tracks told a different tale; they had entered the forest and then left just a short distance from where they had started. Von Wickten was well aware that these mountains held many secrets; myths and wive’s tales abounded about what could be found here, from caves with magic swords to secret passages to Grekuria. He followed the tracks, continuing even after they inexplicably vanished in the mud, using his instincts and his armor’s strange logic automaton to guide him.
Its apathetic voice spoke in vernacular that didn’t quite fit any culture or era. It stunk of otherworlders… But then, the Emperor being one wouldn’t be a surprise. He didn’t mind, anyhow.
In his mind’s eye was a convenient map drawn from the best maps of this area available to Pateiria’s Ministry of State Security, overlaid with a map formed from his own perception… And there was an inconsistency. Not only that, it was an inconsistency hidden by a convenient orchard of trees. Inevitably, Von Wickten’s vastly enhanced senses and cognitive faculties allowed him to discover Jorfr’s hidden mountain pass, and through it he bypassed the Boundaryless Forest.