“So…I heard there was supposed to be some kind of energy poison or something?” I said, gesturing to the islands in front of us. “You guys see anything?” I’d triggered Dantalion, but there was no trace of defenses, or at least not ones I could actually detect. This whole place was pretty much a dead zone to me though, so it would be stupid to ignore any potential hidden traps.
Sable nodded. “Of course. I wouldn’t have come here without something that could help.” Reaching into her ring, she withdrew a small lamp. It had a porcelain white base with intricate blue traceries on it showing scenes of hills and valleys with lifelike trees. The top was a curved glass cylinder, widened at the base with a much smaller lip, and the inside of it burned with a white flame that seemed to purify the air…a very FAMILIAR white flame.
“I got this from a black market dealer, who stole a sample from the Promethean Library. This is an S-rank “Flame of Purification” refined by a Pope of the Red Revenant Church.” Sable sounded smug. “It’s the best possible counter to corrosive dark powers. Granted, this is god ranked corrosive dark, but the god it came from has been dead a long time.”
I just stared at her, mouth ajar behind my mask…and then a whole bunch of shit finally clicked into place.
Why Black Sorrow had given me that pass for my family if I did this, why she’d picked me out of all the possible D-rankers. A whole bunch of little things started adding up, and they added up to one and one and I got two. This fucking place was caked with Enshrining Darkness. Nothing active, or the lamp wouldn’t do shit, just a sort of lingering presence. And I was betting that being Black Sorrow’s bloodline descendant, even if that bloodline was inactive, made me a legacy practitioner and immune to the passive field.
I cursed internally. I’d had leverage over Black Sorrow. She’d needed me to do this, or she’d have had to send Chelsea, and Chelsea was valuable to her. But on second thought, wiping out a blood debt with my family members was a pretty ideal payment. I was satisfied with what I got.
“Do you know if it works?” I asked levelly, pretending I hadn’t just realized that I could stroll over and take all three of those things without a problem.
She snorted, stepping forward, and set the lamp…in midair. It just hung there as she took out a handful of seeds and dropped them on the ground. They grew quickly, twining together, and she took out something I hadn’t seen. A puppet. Like an actual wooden marionette on strings. As I watched, she pulled the strings taught, letting it hang, and controlled the hands to reach forward.
The newly formed golem followed the movements, taking the lamp, and then she walked it to the stone path through the water corresponding to the wreath, and then across to the island.
As it walked, the lamp flared, the purification flame casting a wild light. Flickers of white drove back the dark, and tiny whisps of shadow hissed and steamed around the puppet. Finally, the golem reached the island, and she walked it up to the wreath, setting the lamp on the air beside it as the wooden hands reached down to lift the object.
When they came within about a foot, the lamp flared so bright it was hard to see, and then exploded. The golem, which had crossed unharmed, was immediately consumed in a swirling cloud of corroding darkness, wasting away to dust in moments.
We all just kind of stared at the empty spot where it had been, and Sable swayed, her face white with pain. Apparently the destruction of that golem had hurt her. I wasn’t sure why the others hadn’t, but my guess was that connecting directly to it to puppet the construct made it more effective but was also riskier. In her hands, the wooden puppet in the string had also been consumed, and her hands were withered and sick looking.
Stepping up next to her, I put a hand on her shoulder and flexed Zagan. The enhanced purifying flames of my healing form, especially under the influence of Sammael, were far too much for some unconscious residual darkness to deal with, and her hands quickly recovered, color returning to her face.
Despite that, I felt a serious drain on my reserves, my physical strength dipping as the purification sucked out a massive amount of my power. I’d never seen anything that required that much energy to purify or heal before.
I’d always kind of taken Zagan for granted for its supreme badassery. Made from my grandfathers fire, amplified by Jessie’s life force, and empower by my own Afterburner technique, Zagan was the strongest form I had in terms of raw efficacy, even if it wasn’t much good in combat outside a few specific circumstances.
It was clear now though that Zagan’s absurd effectiveness was due to qualitative differences in energy level, and that wasn’t going to cut it here. I’d have to overpower the taint of the enshrining darkness in a brute force contest if I wanted to cleanse it.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Which would have been a problem…if I needed to do that. As I cleansed the energy from Sable, I felt it try to flow into me, and I also felt it basically slide through me directly into the ground. Because of either my Sammael form or more likely, my unrealized Black Sorrow bloodline, the energy completely ignored me.
“I think I can get these for you,” I said confidently, pretending to be unsure. “But I need you to do something for me. I have a faction of my own I want you to join. I need you to sign contracts to that effect. If you do I’ll get you the wreath, though you’ll need to figure out exactly what to do with it.”
I kind of wanted it, truth be told, at least for Zeke or mom, but I also knew that getting my hands on it directly would be complicated. Disappearing with the ink stone would be hard enough. If I could get Dom or Sable to come under my banner though, I could use that connection to borrow it later, not to mention I’d have two powerful D-rankers with strong backgrounds that would be able to give me a direct introduction to possible strong Ascendants I could recruit.
Though it was anyone’s guess if their ancestors were still around, I could still have Zeke or mom try to make contact. Convincing the Church to extend a welcome to A or S-rankers should be easy, especially once I was able to own up to my parentage, and even if the lines had declined, it sounded like Dom wasn’t the strongest in his family.
Clearly, they understood from my comment that I’d purposefully been vague here. “Show us the contract,” said Dom eventually. “If we don’t see anything wrong with it I’ll sign.”
“Same,” said Sable with determination. “If you can get me that wreath it’ll be worth it.” Her tone made it seem like that comment was more personal than ambitious, and I made a mental note to ask her what that was all about later. In the meantime I withdrew a standard employment contract, rewriting a few sections quickly to match the situation.
Obviously no one would sign a lifetime contract, even for that kind of artifact, but at D-rank, a hundred years wasn’t too much lifespan, so I set the contract for a century. By then I’d either be too strong for it to matter or dead, so I didn’t mind the wiggle room.
After a few minor alterations we settled on the wording, binding them to my service but leaving an out for them to refuse tasks that were morally reprehensible or literally impossible, as well as negotiating for time off. Finally, we finalized the contracts, and I manifested Zagan before approaching the wreath.
I didn’t need the purification, but I didn’t want to tip my hand about that, and it didn’t actually require any energy to keep it going without using it. I flew over the water easily, landing on the island, and strode up to the wreath, barely hesitating before I snatched it up.
Then I flew to the next one to grab the inkstone. It was staggering how simple it was. I could feel the energy flowing through me, feel the concentration of enshrining darkness floating in the air above the water, but it did nothing to me. The Wreath itself didn’t actually contain any, since it wasn’t Strakkenthar’s, but I was pretty sure anyone but me who had tried to move the scythe or inkstone would have died.
When I got to the scythe, I lifted it easily, spinning the weapon a bit. As a staff user, I had a bit of practice with long weapons, but this one felt unwieldy. Still I like the style, and decided I could give it to Callie. She could use it as a Domain seed when she formed her Domain, if she wanted to.
Turning to head back to the shore, I froze. Sable, who was watching eagerly, noticed my stillness while Dom mostly just ignored me, lying down to nap. And behind them…I saw birds.
Crows, actually, and ones I’d seen before. I remembered a comment they’d made before about someone scouting with birds. “Sable, on guard!” I snapped, bringing the girl to attention. She flicked out a few dozen seeds, all of which bound together into a large skeletal golem, or the top half of one, the ribcage acting as a defensive emplacement.
Dom, hearing my tone, snapped out of his lazing and whirled, eyes glowing gold as his body shifted into a more lupine form, though still bipedal. His fur was streaked with silver white, and his body got even bigger, hungry eyes searching.
A laugh carried across the room as the birds poured out of the openings, coming together in a swirling vortex of feathers. A figure coalesced from the whirlwind, a cloaked figure of a familiar stature, and my new companions whirled to face him, clearly waiting for an attack that never came.
“Echelon,” I said in disgust. “I should have listened to Bella. Can’t fucking trust birds. But then, you basically told me that when we first met. Such a stupid thing to lie about. But then, deception is just making shit up, right?”
He laughed happily. “I was wondering if you would get it. I wasn’t going to TELL you, obviously. But clues and hints make the game fun. Impersonating a priest of my Lord’s brother is always child’s play. Just act as stuck up and condescending as possible and throw in a little mystery. It’s what everyone expects.”
Sable, clearly enraged, flicked her fingers, and the colossal wood golem torso attacked, woven root fists smashing down on the cloak, only for the birds to scatter, harmlessly avoiding the attack and coalescing again on the other side of the room.
I wanted to help, but was pretty sure he’d been waiting for me to leave the water portion of this room. He wanted one of the objects, probably the scythe, and if I left, he might get them.
While my new friends might need help, I couldn’t let an enemy get his hands on one of these objects of power. Especially not an enemy god. I’d known something felt off about Raxus, and now I knew why. He’d been involved in this mess since I’d arrived, infiltrating the trials to keep tabs on me. Did he know who I was? He clearly knew something.
I gripped the scythe, wishing I had any clue how to USE the damned thing, but sadly it might as well be a big pointy stick for all the good it did me. What the hell did I do next?