Walking, trudging, with multitudes of people to the central hill, hemmed in all sides by robes of blue, Elian gazed up at the cool sun streaked with silver and wondered if he shouldn’t have come with Borlen’s group. Probably no need for him to protect them from Naamon and other vengeful red-robed Tellerin. The hills teemed with so many guards that any squabbles would be quelled soon enough.

And they did encounter some fights involving supporters of lesser Champion Penitents.

This day was supposed to be for worship, yet the atmosphere was tense and dense, like the inside of Aether-enhancing vats. But instead of Aether, anxiety and suspicion weighed the air down.

While having dinner last night—it was indeed faeboar stew—the pilgrims shared stories of violence. Two dead and several injured outside the walls of Energy Hill, Casimir had said. Those weren’t followers of Faridar or Tharguras. According to another pilgrim, a camp beside the Road of Penitents Past was set on fire. There was also a leader of the followers of Penitent Melusine stabbed a dozen times inside her tent. Assassinated, more like.

“As if the hills are turning mad after Penitent Faridar’s Tribulation,” said Borlen. “Bad omens, I fear. Tomorrow’s mass hopefully brings guidance.”

“You told me you do this pilgrimage every year,” Elian said. “Was this the same situation the previous year?”

“I’m ashamed to admit there are always conflicts among the followers of Penitents. There shouldn’t be any… but there are many. However, not to this extent. No deaths last year. Injuries, yes. Some serious. But no deaths. This year’s pilgrimage is more troubled than others I can recall.”

From yesterday night to this morning, Elian squeezed memories of his past life, sifting for troubles in western Raelyon around this time. It was just too long ago. If there were any news back then, they didn’t stick with him because the Giants attacking Sarnival was the big deal. Riots were inconsequential next to it.

Could also be that nothing particularly worrisome happened.

The Temples of Tribulation had a surprising number of troops at their disposal. Elian looked up at the mages zipping overhead. If they deployed the Six Paths, they could probably conquer the whole of Raelyon. Use religion and their followers, and their success was ensured. But followers dying and not calling down Tribulations wasn’t in the Magistrate’s interests.

Elian and his pilgrim companions entered Energy Hill and headed for the bridge to the main temple. They were greeted by hulking golems carrying the fist symbol of the Magistrate on their chests. Not very efficient guards because they exacerbated the heavy traffic with their wide and craggy girth.

“What are these supposed to do if there’s trouble?” Elian asked, looking up at a golem. “Squish people?”

“Creations of the Priestess Khalamundi,” Borlen explained. The old pilgrim dyed his beard blue today. “Her eyes and ears throughout the hills. Rock they may be now, the priestess can turn them to inescapable mud, restrict the disturbers of the peace, and harden once again. I’ve witnessed it happen twice.”

“She can control her golem’s composition to that extent?” Though they looked like normal rocks to Elian, he was sure their true structure was something unnatural. The priestess must’ve made her minions look like this to intimidate people with thoughts of mischief. Difficult to start a fight with a stack of boulders looming nearby.

Their steady march slowed to shuffling feet the closer they got to the last bridge to their destination. The golden dome of the temple gleamed the next hill over, but it seemed so far away given their pace.

“I’m sorry for making us late,” Elian told Borlen.

He asked for their help with the Quillhusk and jarlion. They left the camp before the crack of dawn but it took time cutting out what they could sell from the half-eaten bodies. Scavengers got to the carcasses and ate plenty throughout the night, but the valuable and hard parts, like the Quillhusk’s exoskeleton and the jarlion’s crystal mane, remained.

“Don’t apologize, brother,” Borlen said. “Those are valuable beasts you have hunted. I reiterate my view that you should retain most of the proceeds.”

“Half and half like last time,” Elian replied. Going by hunting rules, the one who killed the beast should claim the best parts.

He decided to split them because the pilgrims had reliable contacts in the market. If Elian brought a bag full of jarlion crystals to sell, he would be lowballed by every vendor and their grandparents. He was a no-name here. Technically, Jadewell should have a share too since she landed the killing blow on the jarlion. But she almost got them killed, so cancel that.

“The least I could do,” Elian added, “for delaying us on this important day.”

“No place to fret,” Borlen said, patting his shoulder. “Even if we began our journey as the moon sailed across the sky, we wouldn’t reach the temple square. We’d need to have camped there a day or two prior.”

Reaching the other side of the bridge, they didn’t climb the ramps snaking up the spacious tiers ringing Temple Hill. Impossible to go that way because they’d meet a solid wall of bodies. Their group descended three levels down, almost to the base of the hill. It became less congested the lower they went.

Borlen led them to one of the many fountains on the level. Instead of the arcs of dancing water, the fountains sprayed them upward into a fine mist. Light shot upward into the cloud of water and projected a three-dimensional image of a robed man speaking. This guy was probably a priest up there at the temple. They were really prepared with the logistics of the event.

Magically enhanced voices uttered litanies, spreading through the entire hill without echoes. The pilgrims responded between the breaks. The prayer wasn’t in Angloise or any language Elian had heard before.

“It’s in the tongue of worshippers of the Magistrate long ago,” Borlen earlier explained. “Builders of the ruins we passed on the way to the Quillhusk and jarlion.”

This is the language of the cat people? Elian expected it to be high-pitched, involving a lot of hissing. Was it racist to assume they spoke that way? The prayer was aggressively guttural and rolled words.

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Borlen had also told him they didn’t understand the words they were saying, same as they couldn’t read Kymorathi script. Pilgrims simply repeated the sounds of the ceremonies. Elian didn’t ask if they weren’t worried about following the practices of a fallen civilization. Seemed morbid and also dangerous to do so. Were none of them concerned of meeting the same mysterious fate of the cat people?

The projection changed to a wizened man with a flowing beard dressed more elaborately than the previous person. This priest, for what else could he be, had skin the color of copper, leaning more towards rust but seamlessly shiny. The lush beard carpeting his chest was the same color, as well as his eyes. Elian must’ve mistaken him for a statue dressed up in the Magistrate’s religious robes and placed on a marble chair, were it not for his mouth moving ever so slightly as he talked in the cat people’s language. He was more akin to a puppet than a man.

“The High Priest Ambrose Tolland,” Borlen said. “The Seven may be equal in the eyes of the Magistrate—”

That hand doesn’t have any eyes, Elian amusedly thought.

“—but they saw fit to choose a leader among themselves. Ambrose Tolland was the logical choice, having walked the path of the Penitent for over a century and a half before pledging himself to the Magistrate’s service until the end of his days. Much of our practices came from his research of worshippers long gone.”

“That includes the prayers, I bet,” Elian said. This Ambrose Tolland person could be making up words and no one would know.

The High Priest must’ve been a powerhouse in the past, but he was a sorry existence at present. Though the projection was blurry as the wind disturbed the mist, Elian noticed golden veins creeping on the High Priest’s copper exterior. They were most prominent on his stiff beard.

Those weren’t supposed to be there.

“Are you wondering about the color of his body?” Borlen asked. “It’s an ancient body tempering technique the High Priest discovered in his travels, or so I’ve heard. He’s the only one who could use it on all of Fellenyr. Think of it as Steelskin but on a different level.”

Elian nodded, choosing not to correct Borlen. An ancient technique, as the blue-bearded old man believed, its origins were said to be traced back to the Giants.

But it wasn’t body tempering like what the War Monks and other Health-centric fighting styles used, reinforcing their skin and flesh with life force from the Health Attribute. It leaned more into transformation than tempering. The better comparison was a Barkskin symbiont changing the host’s skin and flesh.

Borlen was also wrong that only High Priest Ambrose could use it.

Tarnished Transcendence Body—this was what the royal guards of the Ruton Dynasty called it. When the Giants attacked the Far Eastern kingdoms beyond the Great Chasm that divided Fellenyr, the Solvi Empire came to their aid and Elian was there tagging along. He wasn’t a big-named hero nor was he strong enough to be one, so he wasn’t assigned to where the fighting was heaviest. But he did glimpse some of it, with the Ruton royal guards gleaming copper, defending their mountain cities from dozens of Giants climbing up to attack. Incredibly strong they may be, the Far Eastern kingdoms were eventually lost and only one royal guard survived to join the retreating forces of Solvi.

“The next we clash with the Giants,” Elian remembered Royal Guard Zhengjin, his body turned copper, telling the Great Hero Salvinor in labored Angloise, “I will stay on the battlefield until the last drop of blood leaves my body.”

“Waste not your life in such fruitless endeavor,” Salvinor replied. “We require everyone who can fight a Giant, and you can take on several.”

Zhenjin showed them his arm, branching veins of gold coating it. “I’ve burned my life force molding the Tarnished Transcendence Body. A dead man walking—that is what I am. Returning to my normal body is death. I’ll expend the last of my strength before rejoining my brethren in the Final Cycle.”

From the little Elian understood of the technique, he guessed that High Priest Ambrose barely survived his last Great Tribulation. Similar to Zhenjin, Ambrose could no longer return to his human body and was on a timer. Instead of choosing a way to die, Ambrose somehow stretched the last of his energies to live up to the present.

“With this technique,” Borlen said, “stories relay that the High Priest in his endured Greater Tribulations on his lonesome. People called him Ambrose Tolland the Transcended Immovable.”

He’s very much immovable, alright. A statue with a moving mouth. No sensation in his metal body. Elian could only marvel at the resolve of Ambrose. There was also an existential dread creeping up Elian’s neck. He’d never agree to something like this. He’d go the way of Zhenjin if this ever happened to him.

Half an hour of leading prayers later, a different priest swapped out Ambrose. That must be the energy expenditure quota of the High Priest for the day.

“He’s huge!” Elian exclaimed at the projection. He hurriedly covered his mouth. “Oh, I meant no offense. Just surprised.”

“No worries brother,” Borlen said with a chuckle. “An understandable reaction when seeing Priest Ihadir for the first time.”

The new priest was so massive his projection couldn’t fit the globe of mist the fountain sprayed. Three times bigger than the quite imposing Tharguras, Priest Ihadir was more mountain than man. His arms, straining against the sleeves of his robes, could be mistaken for concrete columns. Back muscles were humps pushing him down to stoop. His regular-sized head, fully covered by a golden mask with no holes, looked out of place on his humongous body.

To Elian’s surprise, the voice of Priest Ihadir was calm and soothing, carefully enunciating Angloise words as he delivered a message of peace to address the growing unrest among the pilgrims. Elian would’ve thought a highborn scholar was talking. Was this a fake voice?

“Priest Ihadir is an Itzirean Alchemist,” Borlen explained.

The island state of Itziri? Elian had heard of the name but didn’t know much about the place because it was far from the mainland. It was rumored to have been destroyed in the third year of the war with the Giants. Itzirean alchemist were famous—or rather, infamous—for sprinting far past the line of morality when it came to human experiments.

“Using his unparalleled concoctions,” continued Borlen, “Priest Ihadir sculpted his body into a bulwark that absorbed Greater Tribulations. He was said to feast daily on elixirs and pills when he was an Enlightened Penitent. He also invented metaphysical metals that he melded onto his flesh, covering the scars of sigils branded on his skin. Admittedly, his appearance is… intimidating. But that is proof of his resolve to push the limits of his journey.”

“Very impressive resolve,” Elian said. In good ways and bad, he added in his thoughts. If he were to choose between the life of Ambrose or Ihadir, he wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t choose.

Appalling and dread-inducing the lives of these two priests may be, they gave Elian a few ideas. He didn’t know that the Tarnished Transcendence Form could tank a Greater Tribulation. He should expand his horizons.

Elian was prepared to do almost anything to save Fellenyr, his second home, but the way of this Itzirean Alchemist was too far. Potions wouldn’t work well on Elian anyway, only at a fifth efficacy because of the Abyssal Eye’s Curse.

He scratched his chin, examining the hulking form of Ihadir. Each time the priest raised his arms, the end of his sleeves rolled down a couple of inches, exposing scaly skin.

If potions don’t work well on me, maybe I could avoid the worst effects while gaining some advantage? Still might be a bad idea to drink anything Itzirean made.

But it opened Elian’s mind to the possibilities. When he planned during his previous life for this next one, he focused on Divine Bestowals, skills, equipment, the whole works, that he could research. Not only were his plans inadequate—well, they were really useless now because of the Elder Giant’s Curse—but his knowledge was severely lacking. Plenty of information was out of his reach then, like the magic of the Far Eastern kingdoms, the alchemy of Itziri, and so much more.

While at the Temples of Tribulation, he should spare time to research. It wasn’t like the Path of Immaterial required attendance in classes or else they’d kick him out. Students came and left. And before Elian would eventually leave this place, he should have his shopping list ready.

Here was someone who might point Elian in the right direction. In the middle of their group, as if popping out of thin air, Priest Thalman materialized.

“Greetings, brothers and sisters in penance,” said Priest Thalman. “May I disturb you for a moment?”