Rieren wasn’t the only one who rushed over to see the actual ritual take place. There was something magnetically attractive about the Aryoventos Clanmaster’s ascension. That he was the one who would ascend to the Fated realm and immediately become a Banishedborn was a wild proposition Rieren would never have believed had she not received proof.
She stopped at the edge of the surging power. A distance where she was safe enough to watch what was going on without getting sucked in.
Of course, watching was going to be nearly impossible in the traditional sense. There was too much light. It was almost like watching the birth of a new sun. Stare for a heartbeat and one would burn their very retinas off.
Which was why Rieren, like most of the others gathering near her location, were all using their spiritual sight to make sense of what was going on.
At the very centre of the miasma of Essence was the Clanmaster. He was kneeling on one leg, one arm raised high above him. Essence climbed off his body in a simulacrum of a volcanic eruption, pillaring into the heavens. A wide circle of the same Essence burned the area around him, preventing anyone from getting close.
Anyone, save the old courtier with a strange, oversized shard in his hand.
Rieren’s breath caught in her throat. That had to be the Anchor Elder Olg had been talking about. She could sense its connection to the Celestial Realm even from where she stood.
That was the trigger that was about to pull down the Forborne Emperor.
“We have to stop this!” someone yelled. “He’ll destroy everything at this rate with that much Essence.”
Rieren didn’t know who that was. She couldn’t recognize the voice, though it sounded vaguely familiar. But she couldn’t follow its directive. After all, at one point, she had decided to go along with Starloper’s plan.
Without pulling down the Forborne Emperor, the other Banishedborn weren’t going to appear here. Without recalling the Forborne Emperor to the Mortal Realm, they wouldn’t be able to rid the Elderlands of the corruption of the gods. Sad for Zhouven, but he would need to be the sacrifice to set free his own empire.
And with the Elderlands freed, Rieren could focus on taking the fight to the gods again.
There was some sort of scuffle breaking out. Perhaps the man who had spoken a few moments ago was indeed attempting to stop the ritual.
But he didn’t get far. As soon as he entered the vicinity of the burning Essence of the Aryoventos Clanmaster’s Ascension, he died. The Essence ripped him apart. Armour, skin, flesh, then bones. All shredded and dissolved to nothing in a mere instant. It was as though the man had never existed in the first place.
Rieren hadn’t even gotten a proper look at the fool. She was desperately hoping it wasn’t someone she had known.
The more worrying part was that it hadn’t been the Essence itself that had caused the man’s death. No. the Aryoventos Clanmaster had his free hand pointed where the man had been a heartbeat ago. It was the newest Banishedborn who had flexed his supreme prowess just then.
The old courtier bearing that strange Anchor had nearly reached the kneeling Clanmaster’s position. It was time for them to complete the ritual.
Through the blistering light, Rieren’s Essence-infused eyes made out something strange about the Anchor. It wasn’t just a hunk of rock. There was Essence within it, which wasn’t surprising. But it wasn’t a simple storage of Essence as she would have expected for anything infused with spiritual energy.
This strange, head-sized crystalline substance was alive. That was the only way Rieren could think of it.
The Essence within the Anchor followed specific circuits and routes within it, much like how Essence followed a network of meridians within a cultivator’s body. At its centre, there was even a denser blob of Essence driving the rest through all the meridians. An elixir field. That Anchor had its own elixir field and meridians.
Rieren had no idea what kind of treasure that was supposed to be, but her eyes were dragged to its bearer.
To the old man dissolving just like the would-be interrupter had.
This time, it wasn’t the new Banishedborn exerting his power. It was the Anchor instead. At least, that was what Rieren assumed was happening.
The old man’s entire body turned into pure Essence. She would have assumed he had used an Ascendant’s powers to turn his physical form into Essence, but that wasn’t the case. Bit by bit, his body was shredded into Essence that was sucked into Anchor like it was feeding on the courtier’s soul. The former Aryoventos Clanmaster saw nothing wrong with that.
Why would he, when this was very likely a part of his ritual.
As the Anchor floated on its own before the new Banishedborn, the column of Essence climbing to the heavens intensified. It wouldn’t be long now before the Forborne Emperor appeared. All this brilliant Essence. It was definitely enough to call down even a god.
Instead of a god, however, what came down was rain. Pitch-black rain.
Rieren’s heart sank. That liquid… murky as oil, like darkness given liquid form. She knew that liquid.
The Abyss was Elder Olg trying to do here?
The Dreadflood had begun as a few stray droplets, but it quickly intensified into a proper rainstorm. Now they were all being blitzed by the dark downpour. Several of the ritual’s attendees were retreating as the corrupting effects of the Dreadflood’s form tried to take hold upon their bodies. They cried out as they fell back, panic-stricken as they tried to get rid of the black rain.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Rieren simply shaded herself with her Domain. Her water repelled any of the dark liquid from getting close, especially once she infused the water with Divine-Aspected Essence.
It allowed her to focus on what was going on at the centre of the ritual. The rain was coagulating the strongest at the centre, right on top of the new Banishedborn and his Anchor to the Celestial Realm. It took just a second for Rieren to understand what was going on.
Elder Olg had taken it upon himself to get to the Anchor. He had been seeking it for a while, had even recruited Rieren to find it too. All because he wanted to get to the Celestial Realm as soon as possible. When he had first become the Dreadflood, he had told her his main goal—reaching the world of the gods as the Dreadflood. Of course he would be after the Anchor.
Why he had to get to the Celestial Realm so desperately wasn’t something they had discussed yet, but Rieren figured it had something to do with things shifting in the pantheon.
There might be an opportunity for Elder Olg himself to become a kind of god, Abyssal though he was for the moment.
Rieren tensed. The ritual was changing. The Anchor’s crystalline surface was turning prismatic, its innards becoming dark as more of the corrupted Essence from the dark rainfall entered its depths.
The former Aryoventos Clanmaster was trying to stop it. He appeared stumped, however. Some sort of barrier was forming around him, trying to keep the rain out. But that also meant the Essence column was starting to break apart. In fact, Rieren had already switched to her normal vision. One that finally allowed her to see how the Aryoventos Clanmaster had changed.
Where he had been a fierce man with a big, black beard and the expression of an ox, he now had the appearance of a statue. His skin was pure marble, his eyes dots of burning gold on a malachite face. Yet, despite his stony form, he moved as sinuously as a snake, his limbs and torso moving like flowing water.
All his hair had changed too. No longer strands of black, they were now spiky, metallic growths shooting off the top of his head and under his chin to form a thinner beard. The true forms of Banishedborn were always quite a sight to behold.
The barrier materialized as a translucent sphere around the Aryoventos Clanmaster’s position, but it hadn’t formed fast enough. Even if it was keeping out the rest of the rainfall, the damage had been done.
That Anchor was almost entirely dark. And the new Banishedborn had no way of reverting it back to its old self.
But Rieren did. She started when she realized it, when she saw no one else who remained in the area was making a move. Her heart hammered. She recognized what was going on with the Anchor. Knew it in her very soul. Knew that where the Banishedborn failed, she could definitely reverse it.
Swallowing, Rieren stepped forward. “Forgive me, Zhouven,” she muttered. “But you will not be saved this day.”
She shouldn’t be doing this. There were many reasons not to. The way Elder Olg’s Essence had overtaken that Anchor was eerily similar to the kind of corruption she had seen in Rykion. After all, that Anchor had a network of meridians just like a person. If her hypothesis was correct, she could follow the same procedure as she had with the Karlosyne scion.
In other words, Rieren would need to pull the corruption into herself.
She was tempted to curse as she stepped forward. Hadn’t it been merely a week since she had freed herself from the very Abyss-Aspected Essence she was about to inflict herself with?
Why was fate so determined to see her flirt with the same corruption again and again?
Rieren’s options were limited, however. If she wanted this plan to succeed, if she wanted to rid the world of the Banishedborn in one, fell swoop, she would need to step forward and do what was needed.
“Give it to me,” Rieren said, stopping at the edge of the new Banishedborn’s defensive barrier. She held out her hand. It brushed against the hard, translucent shell of Essence. “I can fix it.”
There was no reason for the new Banishedborn to trust her. They hadn’t parted as allies after their last meeting. In fact, she wouldn’t blame him if he nursed a burning animosity for her.
That was probably why he was looking at her like she had gone insane. Like he couldn’t believe that Rieren had dared to suggest that she of all people could help. She had nothing to counter that look with, save her honesty.
Well, the part that she could be honest about, at least.
“Whatever else has happened,” Rieren said. “Your son never deserved to die.”
The Banishedborn stared at her for a while, then flicked a finger in her direction. A small hole in the barrier opened. The Anchor floated over. Ah. It was too big to pass through.
So Rieren would need to reach in and conduct whatever she deemed appropriate. Smart of the Banishedborn. Now she couldn’t run off with it. She had concrete doubts that it could be simply pulled into her storage ring and held there.
But she had no intention of doing so. The opportunity to get her hands close would be enough.
She had those golden threads to count on, after all.
Rieren hadn’t summoned them with her will. They just didn’t respond to it. All she had felt was a need for them, and lo and behold, they had appeared on her hand. They moved about gently, like the feelers of an insect, swishing like worms. Alive with their own intentions.
She sent them into the Anchor. The sensation of the threads making contact with the treasure was strange. They inserted themselves through the translucent, prismatic outer shell of the Anchor almost as though it didn’t even exist. When they touched the inner golden core, they melded to become one with it. Then the connection between Rieren’s meridians and the Anchor’s appeared.
Rieren gasped a little. All that corrupted Essence. This was several times worse than what had afflicted Rykion. At least as bad as what had been within her by the time she had discovered the way to remove it from herself.
And now she would need to take it all in again.
Steeling her spirit, Rieren prepared to cycle her Essence and draw in the corruption. But then the golden threads dug deeper. She didn’t understand how they could insert themselves even further. How was there more spiritual space for them to invade? Rieren didn’t fully grasp the mechanism behind the threads’ intrusion into the Anchor, but she did understand exactly what the golden strands discovered.
The elixir field of the Anchor. The one she herself had noted earlier. A strange, surprising facet of the Anchor, that made it feel almost like a real person. One with their own meridians and elixir field, with their own Essence, with the potential to use techniques and—
She froze. Domain. If the Anchor was spiritually built like a person, if it could cycle Essence and manifest techniques—this whole ritual was simply one, gigantic technique courtesy of the Anchor, wasn’t it—then it was safe to assume that it could create a Domain as well. And what could be the Domain of something so integrally connected to the Celestial Realm?
Rieren closed her eyes and concentrated some more. The connection between her meridians and that of the Anchor formed a link right between their elixir fields. It let her not only perceive the strange simulacrum of a soul that the treasure possessed.
It had also let her make use of the soul within the treasure. That elixir field within the Anchor, it was under her control now, to an extent.
When Rieren’s spirit pervaded deep within the Anchor, she forgot all about her original plan. There was something else she could try now. Something else she was determined to see come to fruition.
Rieren took control of the Anchor’s elixir field and meridians. With it all, she made it summon its Domain.
The flash of light was nearly as blinding as it had been a while back with the new Banishedborn’s ritual. It was so bright that Rieren was nearly forced to close her eyes. Even averting her gaze didn’t help. It was too much. Too brilliant, too radiant, too overwhelming. And then it all came to an end.
When Rieren blinked her eyes open again, she stared. Then grinned hard. Her plan had worked.
They were all in the Celestial Realm now.