Chapter 678: – Sacrifice |
The teleportation platform sent Zurvanai inside a cavern dimly illuminated by a few enchantments on rough, stone walls. The cavern was open behind her, though the space outside was pitch black, despite it still being daytime in Maradion.
Percy initially thought that they had been teleported to a different side of the planet, though his Sage’s Pond soon revealed a few additional details that made him reconsider that assumption.
A wall of pressurized water was held at bay by an invisible barrier to prevent the cavern from flooding, in a manner not too dissimilar from how the air in the space station had been kept from leaking out.
Letting his senses seep into the dark waters, Percy spotted several misshapen fish with large, fanged jaws, luminescent lobes, and other strange features that would have been entirely out of place closer to the surface. Scanning the cavern more carefully, he noticed a few puddles of seawater trapped in the uneven ground, complete with the occasional crustacean-like critters nibbling on tiny debris.
“Are we at the bottom of the ocean?” Zurvanai asked.
“We are,” the attendant confirmed. “You can acquire the Void Decree deeper inside the cavern, though only one of you may enter at a time. I’m afraid that I’m not allowed to accompany you past this point.”
The female Denyte nodded, turning to the other contestant. The Ollorian returned her gaze with a kind smile, wordlessly encouraging her to go first. Percy thought that it was a really nice, gentlemanly gesture, though the man’s asymmetrical mouth lined with multiple crooked teeth had made his smile somewhat creepy.
“Thanks,” Zurvanai muttered, taking her fellow participant up on his offer. Percy didn’t have any complaints either. The sooner they acquired their prize, the less time there was for something to go wrong.
The cave narrowed into a winding and rather claustrophobic tunnel that seemed to stretch for several hundred metres, though that wasn’t a long distance for a Blue. Percy’s senses had easily reached the end of the corridor before his host had even entered it, though something at their destination appeared to interfere with his Sage’s Pond, preventing him from examining it properly.
‘What the hell?! How did they get such a thing in here?!’ he couldn’t help but ask.
He and his host were inside some kind of ring-shaped garden that was over eighty metres wide. The tall grass and vibrant flowers reminded Percy of Ishkuria’s Decree, making him question whether they had been teleported back to Tanarill.
Most strangely, the stone ceiling was gone, having been replaced by a clear blue sky and a bright yellow sun that illuminated the plants. The stale, salty air of the cavern had given way to fresher scents.
Percy knew that all of this was fake and that they hadn’t left the bottom of the Maradorian ocean, because the sleek, rocky walls of the cavern still surrounded the garden. Despite being able to see the upper edge of these walls, Percy’s senses couldn’t peer above and behind them. He was tempted to try flying over them to find out what would happen, though he understood that he and his host had more important things to worry about.
Both the garden and the blue sky hanging over it were limited to a thick band in the exterior of the room. A couple dozen metres deeper inside, a different landscape unfolded: a pool of molten lava – also ring-shaped – stretching beneath an ominous red sky.
The interruption in the sky made Percy wonder whether the sun would be visible on the other side of the garden. It couldn’t be a real star, but it was unclear whether the illusionary object would follow a person as they circled the ring-shaped patch of greenery.
Deeper still, the scorching sea of liquid rock gave way to a futuristic-looking metallic disk that was densely covered with pulsating runes. The enchantments were individually inferior to the Vault’s magiscript, but the sheer number of minuscule runes that the Void Hand’s deities had packed onto the platform was dizzying to look at. A second disk hovered high above the first, forming a distant ceiling that Percy felt he would never be able to reach, regardless of how long or how fast he flew.
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‘It has to be a Decree,’ Zurvanai guessed.
‘Not just one,’ Percy corrected her. ‘Look at them.’
He gently took control of his host’s right hand to point at a couple of statues. One was standing in the same garden as Zurvanai, albeit at a spot on the other side of the sea of lava. It depicted a male Inimit, his features as smooth and perfect as Ishkuria’s had been before her decision to mutilate her internal world.
The second statue was sitting atop the magma. It had to be heavier than the red-hot liquid, yet it refused to sink by so much as a single millimetre, almost as if the lava itself didn’t dare devour its creator. This one was of a female Ollorian, though Percy couldn’t spot any flaw or blemish on her smooth, voluptuous body.
Scrutinizing the sitting woman, Percy thought that Ollorians looked disturbingly similar to humans from Remior after being freed from their deformities – perhaps a little paler and with facial features arranged slightly differently. Of course, he doubted that they had any true relationship. It was probably through sheer luck that a few species of sapients among billions ended up developing in a similar direction.
Having come across several gods and statues of gods before, Percy could tell that the two in the cavern weren’t mere pieces of art, but actual deities that had somehow been turned to stone. Judging from their calm expressions, this had been a voluntary sacrifice.
‘But how did they get here?’Zurvanai asked again. ‘Inimits and Ollorians shouldn’t be able to set foot on Marador Prime, unless they were born or ascended to divinity on this planet.’
‘Maybe that’s exactly what they did,’ Percy replied with a mental shrug. ‘Or perhaps, the Inimit god cast his Decree elsewhere, turning himself into a statue while creating the garden. Since he was no longer alive, they were able to move him to a different planet, where the Ollorian goddess did something similar. Finally, they were both brought here, along with their creations.’
He was by no means an expert in divine magic, so he couldn’t be certain why the alliance had done this, though he did have some guesses. The petrified titans couldn’t be the main creators of the Void Decree, since they weren’t siblings, yet they could have still participated in the process.
Metatron had explained that casting collaborative Decrees was extremely difficult, but he had also said that the trio of titans responsible for the Void Decree had likely received a lot of indirect help from other gods. This was how they had made up for the rare affinities they had lacked, compared to the Moirais’ triplets.
Perhaps, they had asked other titans to stack certain infrastructure-type Decrees on top of one another, nudging the laws of reality closer to what was needed for the main spell. Percy didn’t know why the others had to sacrifice themselves though. Maybe they hadn’t been able to meet the requirements of their colleagues otherwise.
All of this only served to hammer home the idea that the Void Decree wasn’t just an isolated achievement – like most other Decrees tended to be. It had been a long and purposeful endeavour from dozens, if not hundreds of deities, who had banded together out of sheer desperation.
Percy could almost picture the four or five founding factions – however many had been active at the time – coming together in the aftermath of the war for the World Tree. Realizing that the Moirais’ superiority would only keep growing due to their twin cores, they had decided that the only way to a brighter future had been to imitate their rivals.
And the rest was history.
‘Wow… I wonder how many titans they had to sacrifice during trial and error, until they got everything to work,’ Micky said, though he made sure that only Percy heard him, since they hadn’t bothered to introduce him to Zurvanai.
The female Denyte shrugged, walking toward the centre of the room. Percy didn’t think that she didn’t care about the sacrifices of her ancestors, but she’d probably decided that she would honour them better by inheriting the fruit of their labour than uncovering the mysteries of its creation.
It was a sentiment that Percy shared, though he suddenly felt a little glad that Kassorith had failed to reach this point. Unlike the other Decrees he had claimed from the tournament, he might have felt a little guilty snatching this one without giving something back to the Void Hand, and granting a third core to one of their most talented mortals definitely counted.
Crossing the garden was trivial, and traversing the ring of magma wasn’t much harder. Using their mana and willpower, Percy and Zurvanai shielded themselves from the heat while stabilizing their footing. They also had to hold their breath, to avoid inhaling the toxic fumes that spilled out of the occasional bursting bubble.
Upon stepping onto the metallic platform, Percy scanned his surroundings in search of a hint towards what they were supposed to do, though it soon became clear that the titans had everything else covered. The enchantments on both disks flashed brightly, a tangible, multi-coloured pillar of light linking them together, with Zurvanai trapped inside like a bug in amber.
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