Thomas walked down the dusty path through the desert as the sun beat down upon him and his trusty donkey, but he didn’t mind. This was a trip he’d made before, after all, and it promised to be quite profitable.
“You’re mad, you know that? A mere merchant actually getting into Nala’s shrine…can’t make this shit up.” The old mercenary Duncan said with a low grumble. He walked slightly ahead, old but well maintained chainmail clinking with every step.
Thomas allowed himself a small snort. “If being “mad” means I get paid as handsomely as I expect, then I will happily continue as I am.”
Duncan barked a small laugh. “Well, don’t let me stop you. Be sure to spread a little of that wealth my way when we get there, will you?”
“Yes, yes,” Thomas said. He fully intended to reward the loyalty of his bodyguard with a cash reward. He wasn’t an imbecile about these matters, unlike some he knew back at the Silver Aegis guild. You rewarded good soldiers, not shortchanged them.
Yet, he couldn’t admit that Duncan wasn’t wrong. A mere merchant making it into Nala, the birthplace of humanity in the great Desert, the place where the gods themselves once walked? It was absurdity of the highest order, a tale fit for particularly blasphemous jesters with certain crowds.
But Thomas had found a way in, years before. An old merchant he’d befriended mentioned the head priestess of the Nala shrine consistently ordered some luxury items--Serenity Wine from the far north, mostly--and while she remained as youthful as ever, his friend was getting older and wished to return to his estate to live out his last years. Some inquisitive words, flattery, a healthy flagon of beer or three, and bribery later, and Thomas had acquired the man’s courier position, which let him into the sacred citadel for a pittance. Normally, delivering only enough wines to fit into a small pack on a lone donkey would not be worth such a trip, but the vintage the priestess wanted would be enough to bankrupt a minor noble family so he was guaranteed a profit with what he could carry on his back. That this let him make a yearly pilgrimage to the shrine there and gave him a healthy dose of prestige for the sheer frequency of his visits that he could show those snobs back at the guild was a happy bonus on top of the heavy bag of coin and gemstones he always left with.
“Have you ever seen the shrine?” Thomas asked Duncan. Duncan was trustworthy-his track record with the Guild and the bandits he’d dealt with earlier were evidence of that much-but he was still new.
Duncan shook his head. “Closest was a few outpost towns along the desert edge. First time I’m this far in. Blasted sand is everywhere…”
Thomas smiled. “I think in that case you are in for a treat.”
Thomas could not forget the first time he’d seen the citadel for the first time. Delirious from a lack of water because he’d vastly underestimated how much he needed for the trip. He’d crested the treacherously steep hills outside the desert and instantly he’d thought he’d died and entered the Sacred Realms themselves. That was the only explanation for the veritable mountain of silver rising out of seeming thin air from the lowlands surrounded by treacherously steep red rock hills he’d crossed in his delirious state. Reaching for the heavens, the citadel’s walls were monumental in scale, reaching for the skies like the hands of the Divines themselves. Etched into the walls were tens of thousands of holy sigils that pulsed with a power that even he could sense despite his low level of mana refinement Each sigil caught the light, refracting it in a thousand ways that left him half blind from its beauty, but multiplied by ten thousand.
He’d been stumped as to how he missed the citadel’s walls until he was practically on top of them even considering the surrounding, rough terrain, but later learned it was a miracle woven around the place that hid it from far sight until one was nearly on top, a defensive relic of the ancient war against the dragons that now saw little active use.
Now, twenty years since that first visit, he merely smiled as his little caravan crested the hills to see the citadel once more, its image almost shimmering into existence like an exquisite jewel being revealed. The sight was magnificent as the first time he’d seen it, a treasured memory he would never let himself forget, but unlike that first time he could still function. Of course, he wasn’t alone now. While he could make the trip alone, it was always easier to travel with one of the caravans crossing the deserts and it was easier on him now that he wasn’t quite a young man anymore. Soon enough, it’d be time for him to give away this courier position to some youngling looking for a bit of prestige in the Silver Aegis merchant’s guild.
The moment they got within a hundred yards he felt a prickling on his skin as they got close within the demesne of the citadel. The citadel’s defenders had assuredly known about his caravan before, but now the key mystical defenses defenders would know as well. Demenses were far beyond his understanding-he wasn’t an arcanist, after all-but he knew this one acted as both a hostility detector, while it also defended against projectiles. One of the guardsmen had once shown him by firing an arrow from outside the citadel, and a honeycomb wall of light had erupted far from the walls themselves, deflecting the casually fired arrow. These protections were so strong as to even defy the mightiest of natural disasters, as no earthquake had done any damage to the citadel in recorded history. Truthfully, the only being who might be able to so much as scratch the walls would be the same divine hands who raised them.
Despite seeing it so often before, Thomas couldn’t help but find his breath taken away and lingered to gaze upon the walls for a moment-
A hand tapped his shoulder.
Thomas shook his head.“What, ready to move on so soon?” he teased his bodyguard.
Duncan shook his head. His hands gripped his scabbard at his waist tightly. “Land’s torn up. Something happened.”
Thomas' gaze snapped aside and he found himself, for the first time in this trip, confused. All around the barren ground of the citadel were deep rifts he hadn’t seen before, including splotches of darker rock here and there that seemed almost stained. These were definitely new. The citadel had always seemed timeless and unchanging in his decades visiting it, so the changes were perplexing.
“You worry too much, come on,” Thomas said, and waved Duncan forward while giving his up to this point quiet donkey a slap to continue forward. It did so, but only after baying at him.
Getting into the citadel required an initial inspection by some friendly guards and what could only be a cleric of the Sky Mother, given her conspicuous glowing white eyes and white geometric pattern tattoos on her neck. They passed him through without incident once she looked over him while he showed his identification papers stamped with the local archon’s seal so it took little time to actually get in past the silver mailed guards.
“You may pass,” she spoke, voice quiet yet utterly smooth and without waver. “Your bodyguard is limited to the outer circle.”
Duncan tensed. “I-I was hired to protect him, and-“
Thomas patted his bodyguard’s arm and slipped him a silver coin. “It’s fine. Go enjoy yourself. There’s plenty to see and hear. Meet me at the Starlight Inn at evening’s light. I should be done by then. And don’t worry about me-there is no place safer in the world.”
Duncan worked his jaw before slowly nodding. The cleric merely stared, unfazed while the silver armored guards stood around looking intimidating. Duncan spared a look back at Thomas, who just made a shooing motion before he took off for a distant tavern. Thomas watched him before continuing on, paying to stable his donkey and hefting the small pack he’d hauled all this way.
The hard eyed guards and tranquil cleric watched him move on. When he’d been younger, a similar entourage had scared him to his bones. Now, they seemed quaint. The true people of power resided further in, so these near common soldiers in admittedly masterwork chainmail armor that must have cooling charms on them didn’t do much to rattle him. They did remind him of the sheer wealth of this place, however. Few could afford to equip their guardians thusly, and yet Nala spared no expense even for the outer guards.
Nala’s Citadel was, he’d long found, designed to be a feast for the eyes. Passing through the walls revealed less a small town and more what one might see in the most resplendent of temples in the outer walls. Every building was made of marble or other similar quality of stone. Statues of the Divines-the Night Father in his dark cloak, the Sky Mother in her resplendent Robes, the Eternal Scholar, the Transcendent Artificer, the avatar of the Silver Legion, and more, almost littered the citadel’s interior courtyards. Each statue was expertly crafted and fit for any king’s residence, and yet here they were almost as common as buckets. And furthermore, of the three paths leading further into the Outer Wall’s township, two led directly to hostels home to, or next to minor shrines to the various Divines, some more well known than others. He well knew the spectacle, the bright paintings or miracles on the walls, the exquisite architecture, was meant to funnel him toward the various hostels and markets selling trinkets and charms made by the craftsmen of the township and blessed by the Shrine’s clerics. In his first visit, he’d lost nearly half his coin bag before he realized the trap he’d fallen into, but now he walked past the beautifully made signs and statues guiding travelers further into the township.
Yet, as he made his way to his destination, he found his gaze bypassing most of the beauty he’d become used to and instead riveted on the trio of skulls being raised to a far gate that led further into the shrine past the courtyard. Three skulls of absolutely no beast that could exist in this era, and far more like the old dragon skulls he’d once seen as a child on a trip to one of the founding families’ estates-an old trophy. One vaguely ursine skull with razor tusks, a skull similar to the southern river crocodiles but amplified by a factor of ten, and what looked like a horrifyingly large avian skull mixed with a wasp’s mandibles. All were equally massive, looking big enough to swallow a small man whole, and he could only imagine the bodies they were once part of. The crocodile and avian skull were intact, but the huge ursine skull looked caved in at the temple, as if it had suffered an extreme impact from field artillery pieces. The empty eye sockets almost seemed to glare out at the path before them and for a reason he couldn’t explain. Despite himself, he began to feel as if he was filled with dread as a part of him became convinced they were looking at him with disdain.
Yet, for all the dread he felt on seeing the skulls, he couldn’t deny some sense of curiosity. Such beasts were uncommon to say the least, with the only living rumors being those rare monsters on the far edges of civilization that yet lingered from the Dragon Wars. Thomas approached the guards struggling to pull the skull up the wall to presumably be mounted or transported over the wall and found one an older man seemingly in his fifties off to the side resting. “I know this may be presumptive of me, guardsman, but can I ask where those skulls came from?”
The man looked up, as if from a memory with a jerk, shaking his head as he ran his hand over his trimmed beard. “Those? Guess it doesn’t hurt to tell ya. It was the damnedest thing, they attacked the citadel out of nowhere the other day. They just ripped their way out of the soil outside the demense like a damn reaver from the Dragon Wars. One second we’re having another day, another the entire demense is raining lightning down upon the biggest monsters I’ve ever seen. Fortunately, they didn’t penetrate and once a few Heroes came out they were killed after about an hour, but by the Divines that was the most terrifying thing I think I’ve ever seen. Just glad I was inside when they showed up,” he said, eyes glazing over in memory before he shook himself and suddenly looked at Thomas more closely. “You haven’t seen any on the roads, have you?” he asked.
Thomas stared, swallowed, and composed himself before answering. “If I had seen one, I wouldn’t be here right now.” Duncan was good with a blade, but he was hardly a monster slayer. If even one such beast had attacked his humble caravan, then he’d likely be nothing more than fertilizer to be too obvious to mention. Thomas never pretended to be a fighter. He’d always found there more than enough kids waving swords about hoping to be the next legendary Hero. He’d gladly deal with sales transactions and haggling with stubborn old men instead.
The guard barked a laugh. “At least you’re honest about yourself. Listen, something’s up. I’m not sure what’s going on, but when you leave? Wait until one of Heroes heads out. Safer that way, and they’ll get you through,” the guardsman said, leaning in close before jerking back. He then marched over to help the other guards hauling the skulls into place above the gates.
Knowing a clear dismissal, Thomas left, pondering the man’s words. Minor monster and bandit attacks were always a problem, but nothing on the scale of those creatures. It might be prudent to invest in better security. Duncan was fine, but he was just one ordinary man. Thomas might be able to bribe one of the heroes here to escort him back to civilization, but it’d eat into his profits. It wasn’t an immediate problem as he intended to stay a few days, but he’d have to deal with it sooner or later.
Then, like a clockwork cog clicking into place, Thomas felt his heart go just a little cold as the guardsman’s words echoed in his head and realization bloomed. This was Nala. Of course beasts, even monstrously big as those, wouldn’t do any damage, but a lesser village? A town? Even a minor city would fare much worse unless the local lord had an effective army ready and waiting, or perhaps some Saints or Heroes acting at their behest. Even a Nature Sage might be able to help, although where he’d find one, Thomas only had a guess.
Still, Thomas found himself looking back at the citadel’s silver walls with some anxiety, wondering. Would his home town of Yuna’s walls be strong enough to keep such beasts out? He honestly didn’t know as such matters were normally beyond him, but now the thought of a gargantuan tusked bear breaking down the gates to his home plagued his mind as he walked up the steps to Inner Oasis Gates.
While easily visible, it took a surprising amount of ground to cover to reach the inner gates. Along the way, he passed the working quarters-more plain, but still finely crafted-stone dwellings, likely because wood was a luxury out this far even with the oasis providing some. Regardless, he still felt himself amazed by the wealth of this place. Even the basic maidservants could afford to live in a stone household that most artisans in his hometown couldn’t afford. This applied everywhere, as well, to the extent poverty simply didn’t appear to be an issue in Nala which wasn’t surprising. While it might not mine or have major industry, it was a stopping point across the Dragons’ Desert to refuel even if most travelers were barred from the sacred oasis itself, plus its shrines attracted many pilgrims like himself. This meant there was a constant influx of coin into the settlement on top of donations to the temples, Heroic patronage, and just plain divine favor working together to make this place as near a paradise as he had ever seen and would ever see this side of the Sacred Realms.
Perhaps, given time every other settlement could become like this. Places where everyone had a home and job that could feed them two meals a day, and even the lowliest laborer had extra coins to spend. It was a lovely idea, and one that occupied his mind as he, after showing his identification papers to a surly guard who wasn’t impressed with his plain brown travel clothes, passed him through the Inner Oasis Shrine Gates.
The first thing Thomas felt, just as he had 20 years before on entering the Inner Gates, was a welcome, cool breeze carrying the sweet scent of countless fruits. Opening his eyes, despite having seen it all before, he felt his breath taken away. The outer courtyard was easily the size of a small township and hosted the working class of the Citadel and the barracks as well as housing and hospitality for travelers. The Inner Oasis, by comparison, was a heavenly patch of nature surrounded by beautifully constructed stone palaces with shining stones, and countless windows that were not meant for the average traveler.
The Inner Courtyard was less a courtyard and more a region the size of a small city. It housed an oasis that stretched over several kilometers easily, a sea of lush green that grew an endless array of fruits to feed the Citadel and render any siege doomed to failure, plus a vital source of fruit for any travelers heading across the Dragon’s Desert. Surrounding it and where he stood was a colossal, raised stone platform with countless geometric symbols scattered that surrounded the entire oasis. Built into the walls were buildings that may as well be palaces for all their architectural refinement-sloping arches, unparalleled glasses, and more throughout. Some were administrative buildings, some were mere storage houses, others temples, shrines, and quarters for the priesthood that lived here, but the vast majority of the palaces carved into the solid silver wall were reserved for the Divines and their servants should they choose to grace the mortal world. He’d never had the pleasure of meeting an incarnation of the Divines themselves as they rarely graced the world with their presence except in times of great danger, but it was thrilling to know it was a possibility to see such exalted presences. But nowhere else had he seen such a bizarre mixture of such pristine scenic nature enclosed by artificial structures, and yet here it was.
Passing through the inner Oasis of Nala was always an experience, and yet the layout and architecture was but one part. As he headed for one of the many great stairways leading to the Oasis, he heard a whistling sound.
Thomas barely had time to panic before a massive presence landed behind him, a feeling of certain doom overtaking him. He was already moving to run but it was not nearly fast enough. The thing behind him reached out to grasp him, and by then it was too late.
“Thomas! It is good to see you my old friend!” the being bellowed in Thomas’s ear as if he were half a kilometer away.
“Hello, Marcus,” Thomas said, resigned as he was spun around like a ragdoll before being roughly put back on unsteady feet.
The being known as Marcus easily towered over most men, although still not to the extent of a true giant. He was somewhat handsome, with a jawline fit for any sculptor’s muse, and tousled blonde hair to contrast his bronze skin. He was also shirtless and his torso obscenely bulged with muscles, almost like a caricature a child would create if they heard of a strong man without ever actually seeing one.
“What brings you to Nala, Thomas? Did you see those skulls? I killed the bear!” the man cheerfully explained, while Thomas tried not to pass out. It wasn’t the sight of the man that repulsed him, nor was it the man’s musculature as unsightly as it was. No, it was the sheer, unchecked power that rolled off the man that left Thomas dizzy.
Marcus was a Hero, a person who had surpassed mortal limits to such an extent as to begin their steps to divinity. With these steps came power, or so the saying went. In Thomas’s experience, most heroes were just fine to be around and looked normal. But Marcus apparently had no control over his power at all, and constantly let it resonate off him. How Marcus had acquired this power with all the mannerisms and refinement of an excitable child, Thomas had no idea and he’d met Marcus over a decade before. Marcus had practically just shown up one day with his incredible abilities.
He also adored Thomas, much to Thomas’s distaste.
It wasn’t intentional to earn the man’s undying affection. He’d met Marcus at a party once that Marcus was attending and he’d pulled the shortest straw when it came to helping Marcus. Even then, his powerful aura was near unbearable for extended periods; it had only gotten worse. Then in a process of events Thomas had yet to figure out, Marcus won the party’s lottery prize, fought an out-of-control pet wyvern the noble had imported, and decimated the entire estate in the fight. At the end only Marcus and Thomas were left, Thomas cowering beneath a table while Marcus dragged the wyvern’s corpse around. In the aftermath of the party of the century, as it came to be called, Thomas offhand suggested Marcus visit the resident heroes at Nala’s Citadel because they might be able to handle him. Unfortunately, he was right. Marcus loved it here, and the other Heroes of Nala apparently found the man-child’s total inability to control his own power amusing rather than debilitating like common folk found it.
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“It’s...good to see you, Marcus,” Thomas said. He didn’t hate Marcus, not really. Just being near him gave Thomas a migraine and that was factoring in Marcus before he started speaking.
“Are you here to see Natalia? She makes the best tea!” he shouted once more, seemingly joyous to just be talking about tea. Thomas’s temples throbbed in tune with his heart, the nail in his head sinking even deeper with each shout. Really, the uncontrolled power was mildly understandable, but it was the volume Thomas couldn’t stand despite how well-intentioned Marcus was. Marcus was for all intents and purposes deaf, and for reasons Thomas couldn’t understand, never was healed by a cleric, or couldn’t be healed. It meant volume control was a non-existent erm for Marcus.
Thomas just nodded at Marcus’s question, rubbing his temples. This was a mistake.
“Great! I’ll take you there!!”
“Wha-”Thomas began, only for himself to be picked up, slung over Marcus’s shoulders like a sack of potatoes, and then they moved.
Distantly, Thomas realized he was screaming as the palatial outer ring of the oasis disappeared rapidly as Marcus bounded in great leaps that kept him airborne for seconds at a time at a speed Thomas couldn’t guess at but was far faster than any horse Thomas had ever ridden.
Surprisingly, Thomas did not throw up, although being this close to Marcus’s aura was like a nail driven into his brain. It felt like an eternity although he knew it was likely seconds since they began, and then they touched down. “Here you go! Ask Natalia for the tea! See you later!” the cheerful mountain of muscle shouted, and then he was gone in another mighty leap that cleared a building in one go.
Only modestly bewildered, Thomas watched Marcus leave before letting out a sigh, the migraine already receding with every step the man took. He’d been deposited in a clearing in the Oasis before a long, wooden structure. This building was the central Shrine, and he’d never been inside, but it was supposed to be the first building erected by man in the world, at least the first permanent one. It was shockingly simple compared to the rest of the Citadel, but in a way that might have been appropriate. Its simplicity was almost unearthly to the magnificence of the rest of the complex, and gave it a charm of its own. The pale wood was identical to how he’d last seen it, as was most of the clearing, yet something else.
Across from the shrine blocked to all but the Head Priestess was a stone circle raised in the green grass. Sigils were inscribed into the stone, but he couldn’t decipher any meaning in them beyond sensing a vague power within them. Yet, at the center of the stone circle was a sapling. It looked normal to his eyes, yet something kept drawing his attention back to it. It was like he was missing something, a feeling as if he was by something massive on an unbelievable scale, yet he couldn’t quite grasp it.
“Well, I suppose I’m obligated to give you a cup of tea,” a melodious voice began, and Thomas turned with a smile on his face even though the sapling stuck in his mind for some reason. “Marcus is sometimes a bother, I know, but he means well,” the voice continued.
“I know, and to your first offer: Please. I would love some,” Thomas said, taking in the head priestess. That she’d arrived behind him silently was not a concern, as he’d long learned she came and went in the oasis with as much announcement as she pleased.
To say she was a gorgeous woman was an understatement-a full figure in the lavish red robes of her station she wore did nothing to diminish her beauty, nor was there a single blemish on her tanned skin. Her dark hair sunk past her lower back, reaching a length that suited her but he could only imagine being a pain to deal with. But her presence went far beyond the physical and into the transcendent.
None could ever mistake the divine presence upon her, the influx of sacred energies manifesting as a subtly glowing aura about her. But where Marcus was harsh and utterly uncontrolled, even damaging given time, Natalia’s aura was worn like a veil of pure serenity that made him just want to sit and chat with her for hours on end, even if he did have business to attend to. What’s more, he knew she kept her aura toned down for visitors such as himself.Even more remarkably, Thomas could tell she had yet to age a day in the two decades he’d known her.
Thomas found a cup of tea being offered while Natalia was much closer than she was before, to the point he could smell a subtle perfume coming off her. He did not question how she had the tea ready already, or where she’d even gotten it. If asked, she’d just smile mysteriously. It was a personal theory of his, but he thought she found it amusing to an absurd degree to pull such impossible actions on visitors such as himself that couldn’t begin to decode her divinely gifted abilities. That, or she got off on acting mysterious. He never mentioned either theory for the obvious reason that insulting a head priestess of Humanity’s oldest city and divinely favored guardian would lead to nothing good.
He’d first mistaken her for a minor sister of the shrine and asked her for directions to the head priestess. She’d then led him to an actual minor sister of the Shrine working in the Oasis elsewhere, leading to an incredibly embarrassing misunderstanding until Natalia broke into giggles and revealed the ruse.
While She’d yet to age a day, he was firmly into his middle years by this point. Part of him was jealous of her longevity, but he knew she’d earned the divines favor through trials he could scarcely imagine. Besides, it wasn’t as if she was alone in her youth. In fact, everyone who lived at Nala was older than they looked, he’d long found. Even the young guards at the entrance might well be thrice his own age, and the various clerics, paladins, Heroes, and priestesses might well be centuries old by this point. The only one he might be older than outside some of the travelers was Marcus, at least this far into the citadel. That, in truth, was the gift to those who earned the Divine’s favor in this city-a life without end until you so chose to pass into the next world.
It was something Thomas would never have. For all his small but respectable wealth and prestige in society, he was unexceptional, ordinary. The Divines only gifted the truly exceptional with their power, and Thomas’s business sense was good, but hardly legendary. Unlike Natalia, whose skill with miracles stretched back to the Age of Dragons at Humanity’s dawn, he would never know the youth they enjoyed year by year.
He sipped his tea and tried to quell the envious whisper in his mind. It would do no good. “It’s quite good,” Thomas finally said, the faint citrus taste of the tea rejuvenating him. Perhaps she used local specialty herbs for it? If so, it’d make a good product for sale if he could talk her into sharing the her leaves.
“I would hope so. It’s taken a long time to get to that quality, after all,” Natalia said, guiding him to a nearby stone bench beside the stone circle. As his eyes strayed to the sapling once more, she smiled. “Beautiful, isn’t she?” Natalia’s voice held an emotion Thomas couldn’t quite place at first. It wasn’t quite joy or elation, but seemed to be a combination of joy and...awe? Curious.
“It’s a, uh, nice sapling,” Thomas said. It looked healthy enough, but there was something about it that felt bigger than it actually was that kept bothering him. There was something more going on here, but he couldn’t begin to say what. It was likely just another magical plant she’d taken to cultivating in the Oasis.
Priestess Natalia laughed, a melodious sound he could listen to all day. While intellectually he knew of the power she wielded, that even as she spoke a Divine likely listened in on their conversation, it didn’t bother him quite so much as the Heroes did, and certainly not like Marcus. It helped that she was, while beautiful, approachable. The aura of power that made Heroes so renowned was absent in her, so she was somewhat less intimidating.
“I suppose you’re right, in a sense. It’s just hard to believe she’s here, growing for the first time in so long,” Natalia said radiantly, beaming in the sapling’s direction.
Thomas thought this sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. Hadn’t the major Divine’s followers done some sort of rite recently? He hadn’t paid attention due to the negotiations he was pursuing with a rival trading company back in Yuna’s Point, so it had skipped his mind. Perhaps that was a mistake?
“I seem to be missing some context here. I can tell there’s something special about that sapling, but could you enlighten me?” he asked.
At this, Natalia seemed taken aback. “You don’t know? That’s...expected, actually. A merchant like you has been traveling for weeks, correct?” She shook her head as if she were talking about a strange child. “A week ago, the Divines gave commands to all their followers across the world to perform a ritual in the holiest of holy places. Unified in purpose and voice, we obeyed, and were rewarded. That sapling is the key to our destiny, Thomas. Soon the World Tree will be reborn, and then-well, even someone like you might be able to join the divine. It’s a fascinating thought, is it not?
Thomas smiled. He had no idea what Natalia was talking about, and frankly, he was alarmed. He’d clearly missed something. He knew of the World Tree of the Sacred Realms-the home of the divine-, but it was just that-in the realm of the Divines. To be here…
Thomas abruptly shook off the line of thought as Natalia’s eyes had rather pointedly fallen to his pack. At this, he felt a burst of amusement. Head priestess or not, she had her vice, and this was the most expensive wine on the continent.
Pulling out his pack, he pulled out three bottles of Serenity Wine, a famous brand highly sought after for its only place made was in the Serenity Woods maintained by the Giants in the far north. Hideously expensive to import, yet it was exquisite. Or so he heard, Thomas had never in his twenty years delivering the wine to Natalia had a chance to taste it himself.
Natalia’s eyes gleamed as she saw the wine and reached out for the bottles while he thought of the fat bag of coins he would be receiving when the world exploded.
Thomas was thrown to the ground by a wave of concussive force that came out of nowhere. When he recovered, he could only gape.
Up, far above, at nearly the center of the Oasis directly above the shrine, the sky had split, and a new star fell. Blinding light, brighter than even the sun, radiated off of it as it slammed into the demense in a sparking array of prismatic radiance as the divine protection manifested against the invading force with its honeycomb like structure of solid light. It held out against the star for approximately three seconds.
With a colossal crack like shattering glass, the impenetrable shield around Nala’s Citadel broke, raining shards of rapidly dissipating light in a prismatic rainbow of ruin.
The fallen star fell further into the air until Thomas was certain he and everyone in the Citadel was going to die, but it suddenly slowed, a colossal set of soft, white wings enveloped in golden light hovering far above the citadel like a newly risen sun. Then, a voice spoke.
“Kneel and be spared. Resist and Perish!”
Through the voice alone, Thomas knew a power unlike any he had ever felt before, one that put even Marcus to shame. It was felt just as much as it was heard, echoing inside his head while also resonating throughout the entire oasis and beyond, to every last resident of Nala.
As the being’s light fell upon him, Thomas’s fear, a catatonic panic that had gripped him, faded.
It was not a holy light. It held nothing of the certain serenity of the Divines’ temples or their sacred followers. Even Natalia, whom he noticed was standing straight and glaring upward while he could do little more than stumble backwards, gave off nothing resembling this presence. It was glorious. It was vast, a power beyond his comprehension in a way he couldn’t even remotely quantify. If it wanted, he would crumble to so much ash before this presence. Yet, this all-encompassing light, this pure radiance, enveloped him, held him like a long lost friend.
Unbidden, a memory came to him, one he’d nearly forgotten. As a child, he’d fallen in a frozen lake. He’d sunk, the light beyond his grasp yet so close, until a hand broke through the ice, and pulled him up. It was his father. The feeling of his armored form holding him was unforgettable, the sheer warmth of his embrace enough to penetrate the numbness of his skin with a wondrous warmth.
At that moment, Thomas had one resounding thought. I’ve never felt this from the Divines…
Slowly, Thomas fell to his knees, staring upward. He heard a snarl from nearby, but did not, could not, pay it any mind, transfixed by the newly risen sun above.
Someone nearby let out a cheerful laugh, but it was strange, as if from far away and yet up close. Moments later, to the north, a veritable explosion of dust and debris enveloped that part of the oasis as an immense power flared that could only belong to one person.
Marcus flew like an absurd arrow, reaching far into the sky at a speed Thomas could scarcely follow. Belatedly, Thomas realized for the first time that Marcus had been holding back every time he’d met him. The aura of power from before, the feats of speed he showed, were Marcus holding back. Should Marcus reach the sun, he somehow knew the impact could devastate a normal castle, yet just as he knew how dangerous Marcus as a living missile was, how willing, even gleeful he was to throw himself into the unknown, it wouldn’t be enough.
There was only a slight flaring of the light, but it was enough. A thunderous crack tore the air and Marcus reversed direction, falling to the ground like a missile. He slammed nearby, digging a long trench into the ground, snapping trees in half and throwing clouds of debris into the air but stopping short of the shrine itself. A single sword of light like none Thomas had ever seen was embedded in Marcus’s chest. Marcus gave one choking gasp, and to Thomas’s bewilderment he even heard a chuckle, before Marcus went still.
That death was the signal. All across the citadel, a thousand enraged voices rose to match the fallen sun hovering in its wings of light far above.
Thomas saw magic circles within circles concentrate mana to a density he thought only possible in certain technology from the Giants and launch it as a wagon sized beam of destructive, crackling energy. Lightning shot upward from dozens of sources, burning balls of flame of every color surged upward, countless blasts of concentrated mana he couldn’t even begin to name surged, all the while thousands of arrows equipped with explosive heads shot upward at sonic speeds.
Beside him, he heard Natalia chanting.
“When the serpent rose from the abyss, HE knew no Fear, for it was the duty of the first Hero to face the Serpent. With but a single strike with all his might, he rose and struck down the vile beast-” she said, a palpable aura of divine energy enveloping her.
Then, out of a silver magic circle, a glaive he had never seen before emerged. White gold, intricate sigils were engraved up and down the blade, while the haft of the blade itself was a curiously dark wood. The glaive, size fit for a giant, hummed with a quiet, certain power that left Thomas convinced he would die from the merest graze. It launched forward unerringly true, dwarfing the speed and power of all the other projectiles launched before.
None made it. The arrows, the spells, the thrown weapons, the blasts, things he could not even begin to name, all failed. They did not so much as make the fallen star waver. Natalia’s miracle pushed her further than the others, which made the sun react. A beam of pure, white light enveloped the glaive as it fought against an unyielding shield of radiance. It hung there, energies and light cackling around it in midair for an eternal moment. Then, the glaive cracked, and the sky was enveloped in a colossal explosion that would have killed an entire army without any difficulty.
The aura of light took every attack and knew no weakness. The sun spoke once more. “You have made your choice. I shall honor your resolve.”
Within the next ten seconds, Thomas was witness to something that no one, certainly no human alive, had ever seen and certainly not seen in over ten thousand years in this world, not that he or anyone else was aware of it. Swords of light just like the one that impaled Marcus appeared from the fallen star. First a dozen, then a hundred, then a thousand more formed from the sun’s impossible light. Blades no human had ever touched, no smith could craft, made from the purest radiance Thomas had ever seen. They hung in the air in an array around the sun, held by an unseen force. Then they fell with a thunder-crack. Nala died.
Shields shattered; cover disintegrated under the onslaught. Thomas saw multiple heroes take to the air, some in mechanical wings, others following a strange staff in elaborate maneuvers. Some blurred, some blinked in and out of reality, while others took mundane evasive action, if at extreme speeds. It didn’t help. For every sword dodged, another twelve found them.
Natalia, the head priestess of the Citadel since the Age of Dragons and well over a thousand years old, fell dead at his side, two dozen swords of light impaling her form from every angle.
Then, for the first time in a thousand years, Nala was silent but for the faint echo of the desert winds.
The star descended to the shrine. Thomas trembled. The radiance shifted, losing its blinding edge as a vaguely feminine form descended on soft on soft, moth-like wings. White fuzz and chitin covered parts of her form while flawless, if pale white skin covered more in a strange, but striking combination as her white hair flared out behind her. She walked by him, and paused, looking direct at him, her eyes’ pupils completely white while the surrounding eye was a solid black.
The focus of her stare should have driven him insane. Maybe he was insane, and he hadn’t realized it, yet all he felt was power and comfort, a strange combination he had difficulty fathoming.
“Do not fear, you are in no danger, least of all from me. I have business with the parasite,” she said, her voice gentle in its resonance. She walked past him with a curious air until she stood before the sapling.
Something in the air, invisible, unseen, unheard, but felt, a colossal presence seemed to coil, twist, tense in anger at her approach.
The being held out her hand, so like a human’s but so different, covered in white carapace and soft fuzz, and gathered energy. The sapling seemed to scream, not audibly but in a way felt by every living being in a hundred miles. Thomas’s eardrums ruptured, and blood vessels burst in his eyes as he collapsed. Then the sapling was no more as the oasis ceased to exist. A flare of light, visible on the horizon from the nearest villages, marked the total vaporization of Nala. The inner oasis, the palatial inner district, the ancient shrine, the outer township, the shrine, the castle, the barracks, the servant quarters…
None were left. The outer walls, so mighty, withstood the blast, but barely. The walls buckled, stones displacing, cracks spreading up and down as the stone itself was scorched, sigils burnt out.
Thomas breathed, and rose, his injuries gone as the light seemed to seek him out and envelop him in a comforting warmth. In the distance, he saw a few other humanoid shapes rising from the dust as seemingly bewildered as he. As the dust cleared, he found his gaze fixed on her, watching as she examined the ruined citadel impassively. Finally, a maelstrom of emotions, thoughts, worship, awe, fear, delight, and more coursing through him, he asked the only appropriate question.
“Who-who are you?” Thomas asked.
At this the being turned to him, head tilted slightly. Her wings spread out behind her, like a royal’s cape, backlighting her against the other sun setting on the horizon and painting her in a soft, warm glow. “Who am I?” she repeated, as if tasting the question for the first time before, with a small, kind smile, she spoke.
“I am the First Titan, Celestia, and I have returned.”.
* * *
One Week Later…
“What farcical story are you selling, old man?”a priest demanded of the lone merchant, the last known visitor to Nala’s Citadel since it had gone dark. No one could make contact with the holy city. The merchant before the council of priests and priestesses was the only one confirmed to have been there in the past two weeks.
“I tell nothing but the truth, my friends,” the merchant said.
“Yes, we believe your nonsense about a being of such majesty and power as to destroy humanity’s origin and its army of Heroes and get past the divine defenses, past the great priestess herself even to destroy an Arch Root is completely reasonable,” one Priest, Brother Cornelius said in open disgust. Many others grumbled, voicing their agreement. “Perhaps it’s time we enforce a truth spell on this charlatan and find out what truly happened?” Brother Cornelius suggested.
At this, the merchant smiled sadly, shaking his head, and closed his eyes. “I see you need more convincing,” he said. To their shock, he began to radiate a light unlike any other, not divine but somehow just as majestic. "Can't you feel her? This light, this promise, is hers. Even now she watches us, warms us, and fills us with life. She doesn't hate humanity." His clothes caught fire and burned, but the man's skin was intact—though it reflected with radiant gold
Tilting his head up, the man looked at the shocked priests who'd heard his tale. "You don't have to be afraid anymore. We don’t have to fear anymore, don’t you see? The Divines, they offer promises, but it’s nothing but sweet lies.” Behind him, a huge set of delicate, moth wings spread as the merchant made the most beatific expression. "You just have to stop worshiping these false idols and foll—" His eyes widened.
"No more heresy." Paladin Gloriosa's axe bit into the flagstones. The merchant fell in a spray of blood. Her midnight black armored steps echoed in the hall. "The Night Father will not stand more of this blasphemy."
Far away, in a deep forest, a cocoon formed out of nothingness. A golden hand brushed it a moment before perfect lips kissed new life into the soul within. "You spread my words, as I'd asked. There will be no fear in your next life."