Chapter 595: Divinity Manifested

[All right, Nestor… Let’s figure this shit out.]

The dead man’s reply came after a long, pregnant pause. [I’ll be honest here, Leon… You’ve really kicked a hornet’s nest…] Nestor spoke calmly and carefully, but his voice was unmistakably tinged with a deep undercurrent of anxiety.

Leon glanced back at the obliterated staircase, and then at the angel that now mindlessly paced around the plaza, making those same, odd gurgling sounds as it walked between great rows of its skeletal kin. Then his eyes turned upward, toward the great beam of light that connected the two titanic pyramids at the center of the gigantic cavern.

[… I don’t disagree…] Leon replied.

Suddenly, the beam flickered again, but this flickering seemed to have much less impact than the previous two did. It didn’t break the ceiling or revive one of the dead angels; instead, it was followed only by the voice of the being inside, a self-proclaimed God of the Primal Age.

“Why do you resist, young human?” it asked, its voice soft and soothing in Leon’s ears despite the ten or so miles between him and the great pyramid. “I wish not for your destruction, only to liberate you from the fetters that hold you back, just as I did for Jormun…”

Leon thought of the gargantuan horned serpent that Maia had just told him about. He’d thought that was Jormun, but that had been almost too ridiculous to voice out loud. This, however, strengthened his suspicion.

He didn’t respond immediately, even though he wanted to. He was worried that the angel might detect him if he replied, but since it didn’t seem to be able to see him with his invisibility ring active, after second of thought, he decided to risk it to try and pump a little more information out of this thing in the light.

“That serpent up top, that’s Jormun?” Leon quietly asked, hoping his own soft, restrained tones were enough for the creature to hear.

“Yes…” the voice droned. The angel continued to pace and cry out, seemingly oblivious to the exchange happening much closer to the entrance.

“Is that what you want to turn me into?” Leon asked. “A giant serpent? You said you wanted to remake me…”

“No,” the voice replied. “I would use the power in your blood to give you everything you’ve ever wanted. I would remake you into the next Thunderbird. I could even awaken your other bloodline…”

Leon suddenly clenched his teeth as a flood of emotions hit him. The Thunderbird had once told him that the Great Black Dragon was arguably the strongest Divine Beast to have ever lived, but that its power that had been passed down to him was kind of half-dormant. He’d somehow unconsciously tapped into it during brief moments of extreme emotional duress, but it was still out of the reach of his conscious mind.

For the most part, Leon had accepted the Thunderbird’s word that it was beyond his grasp. He felt no small amount of anger and bitterness that there was a power in his blood that he didn’t have access to, but he also recognized that there wasn’t much he could do about it, at least for now.

That made this creature’s offer rather tempting—to give him a power that he’d essentially written off for his immediate future was certainly something that appealed to Leon’s desire and need for power. But he was well aware that no power came without paying a price, and this thing in the light had already stated its demand for him to serve it.

And that wasn’t going to happen.

“You say that you want me to serve you, that you could awaken all the power within my blood,” Leon whispered to the thing before turning his head toward the annihilated stairs, “but what that angel did doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that you’d follow through on that offer…”

“My angel would not have killed you, even if it hit you,” the being whispered back. Leon rolled his eyes, but when he glanced back at the stairs, somehow, without any sound, without any hint of magical shenanigans, the stairs were back where they were before, perfectly intact. Even the skeletons were back where they’d fallen.

“A… neat trick,” he said, though even he could tell that his attempt to sound unimpressed miserably failed. “An illusion?”

“Nothing of the sort,” the being replied. “They were merely… displaced, and then returned.”

“My mistake,” Leon replied. “I guess I’ll up my consideration from ‘neat’ to ‘mildly interesting’.”

“You could learn many interesting things from me, I assure you of that,” the thing seductively whispered, its voice taking on a slightly more feminine tone.

Leon blinked in abject confusion, hoping that what it was suggesting was not what he thought it was suggesting. For the sake of his sanity, he ignored the creature and turned his attention back to Nestor.

[What do you make of all this?]

Nestor thought for a long moment, before answering, [You are descended from two bloodlines, are you not?]

[Yes…] Leon affirmed; he’d never really spoken with Nestor about it, though he and Xaphan hadn’t been too careful when they’d occasionally brought it up. For a long moment, Leon thought Nestor was going to ask what the other bloodline was, but instead, he abruptly switched topics unsettlingly quickly.

[From what I can tell, that beam of light is trapping the Primal God within,] Nestor said, his tone carefully controlled. [It appears to be failing, however. Whatever that pirate did has destabilized it, and it’s allowing more and more of the Primal God’s power to leak through. That’s how it’s able to speak to you, and how it was able to resurrect that angel.]

[Is there a way to stop that light from shutting down?] Leon asked.

[I’m sure there is,] Nestor replied, [but without getting closer, I couldn’t say. It’s dangerous, but I would say your best bet for finding a way out of this place would be up at the summit of that big pyramid.]

There was a longing in Nestor’s voice that Leon could pick up on; nothing particularly threatening, but definitely something that had Leon’s eyebrows rising. That longing made some degree of sense, though, given what he knew of Nestor’s studies before his death.

The Primal God had fallen into ominous silence with Leon no longer responding to it, but fortunately, it didn’t seem to be doing anything magical and the angel wasn’t making for him, so Leon guessed he still had some space to figure out his next move.

Leon recalled that Nestor had originally been poisoned by a fragment of the moon that had somehow become so steeped in divine magics that it emitted those magics in enormous quantities. Leon could understand Nestor’s logic that they would have to get closer to the beam to puzzle it out, but he also had a bad feeling that doing so would not end well for him. Instead, he evaluated his other options.

With Jormun somehow transformed by a Primal God into a Great Horned Serpent and wrecking things up top, he didn’t have all the time in the world, but with a glance upward at the cracked ceiling that was still pouring water into the cavern, he wondered how long he might have to wait for it to fill before he might be able to swim out.

‘Days, probably,’ he guessed, and he immediately ruled out trying to swim to safety. He guessed he was deep underneath the bed of the Endless Ocean—how far, he couldn’t say, but the prospect of trying to swim past whatever horrors that called the deep ocean their home did not appeal to him.

Thinking about it, his thoughts turned to how he’d been teleported here. There was a teleportation portal in that abyssal pit below the eighth island, and if he was teleported here, then he could be teleported back. He would just have to find the controls.

Unfortunately, the sheer size of the cavern was working against him in that respect. The controls could be anywhere, and if he tried to use his magic senses to look for them, the angel would more likely than not detect them, and then him. He had almost no chance of finding those controls without raising a giant flag over himself indicating where he was, making him easy pickings for that angel—and he did not trust the Primal God when it said that the angel wouldn’t attack him.

As if he could read Leon’s mind, Nestor said, [Any enchantment controls are likely to be found near the center of the cavern…]

Leon stifled a grimace. Right next to the most important prisoner was hardly the best place for teleportation controls, but given what he could sense about the flow of the enormous amounts of magic within the room, there might be something to Nestor’s suggestion.

At the very least, he couldn’t see anything else with his eyes—the walls of the cavern were largely bare as far as he could see, and none of the pyramids, not even those big ones in the center, had anything remotely resembling an enchantment control console.

He didn’t think that this, for all its risks, was going to amount to much, but he had no other plan. With a deep sigh, Leon whispered back to Nestor, [Fine, I’ll try and get closer to the pyramid. But I’m not going to get too close to that angel.]

[Nor would I encourage you to do so,] Nestor replied, his smile evident in his tone. [Angels are rather powerful beings; a few survived the great war that ended the Primal Age, and every time one pops up somewhere, there’s always a great hunt to bring it down. An enormous amount of force is always required, for they’re tough as nails and have incredible healing powers. If they’re brought down, however, their feathers can be plucked and planted, growing some truly divine fruit-bearing trees.]

[I’ll keep that in mind,] Leon whispered as he did exactly the opposite. The angels could shit gold and piss potions that increase the size of a mage’s soul realm and Leon still wouldn’t willingly approach them. That angel, obviously not even at full power by the state of its wings, rendering the staircase into at least temporary nonexistence had profoundly affected Leon; even if he had his sword and armor, he wouldn’t be challenging this creature to a fight, for he knew he’d lose. He’d just have to live without the feather-fruit trees.

But that still left him with the problem of getting past the angel. He still had his ring of invisibility, but the invisibility it provided was fragile, and he could easily see it breaking when he got closer to that beam of light, or even if he got relatively close to the pyramid and the light flickered again. He needed that angel to move if he wanted to feel at all safe getting closer to that great pyramid.

To that end, instead of immediately making for the center of the cavern, he instead took about ten minutes and went around to several other nearby pyramids, leaving a few spells behind at each one. There wasn’t much he could do to conceal them, but he did his best by applying them against walls that weren’t facing the central avenue and then around corners near the previous spells. By the time he was done, he’d laid at least three dozen spells for the angel to ‘find’, plus a few more to grab its attention.

Only once all of that was finished did he return to the avenue and begin creeping toward the central pyramid.

As he passed the murals on both sides, he went slowly enough that he was able to spare some time to examine them. He couldn’t go into great detail in his examination, and for that, he felt no small amount of sorrow. But Jormun was still up top, transformed into a Great Horned Serpent, and he couldn’t spare the time.

Still, though, the details that he did see were fascinating. He saw scenes of immense, larger-than-life figures slaying each other and lording over others. He saw great works built and destroyed, and other intricate things that were too abstracted for him to understand. At the very least, he recognized images of the Primal Gods and Devils; the former quadrupedal, with human torsos, and a prominent brow that extended past their eyes into a pair of large, curved horns; the latter rather nebulous, reflecting their more gaseous physical nature, with no legs, a head that looked more like a long bump on its shoulders or an extended neck, a single ruby-red eye, and long gangly arms with nine-fingered hands.

He saw many other creatures, too, and not all in familiar shapes. He saw great wolves and lizards, birds and rats, fish and squid, and all manner of things that he couldn’t even begin to describe. Things with hundreds of tentacles protruding from their bodies, things that looked like sentient trees or some other kind of flora, and some that even looked rather human, save for singular characteristics that set them apart, like a human body and the head of a wolf, or a human face but the body of a lion.

It was only about halfway down the avenue that he started to see beings that he could confidently describe as being human in shape, further adorned in monochrome grey paint, and compared to the other creatures depicted on the murals, they seemed tiny, almost insignificant. They appeared, and for a short while, the murals were devoted to them, showing them building crude huts and tilling the land.

Then, as far as Leon could tell, the Primal Beings came, as did several other beasts—the only time he paused as he stalked his way down the avenue was when he noticed one section of the continuous mural that showed seven reptilian beasts flying above a human settlement, each one of different colors, with two pairs of wings and precious gems set into their eyes. He guessed these seven otherwise identical creatures to be the seven Great Dragons, and his eyes lingered on the one made of onyx that had rubies for eyes and a red-orange crystal set into its forehead.

‘My Ancestor, the Great Black Dragon,’ he thought, a feeling of awe blooming in his chest before being smothered by dismissal and rejection. The Thunderbird had told him that it had been affronted that his mother managed to have him with his father, and thus decided to deny his existence, suppressing the power that he would’ve otherwise received after awakening his Bloodline.

As far as he was concerned, the power was in his blood—it was his. Rejecting the legacy of the Thunderbird Clan and make his own way was one thing, but when he thought his own blood being suppressed, when he thought about the choice of using that power or not being taken away from him, he couldn’t help but scowl in anger and frustration.

Leon quickly moved on, casting only one bitter look back at the image of the seven Great Dragons before turning back.

[Nestor, what do you make of all these murals?] Leon whispered to his dead kinsman.

[As far as I can tell, they seem to be telling the story of the universe,] Nestor explained. [At first, there were just the Primal Beings: the Gods, Devils, and Divine Beasts. After a while, other life began to appear, and gained power. These forms of life became the Ascended Beasts, and began to upset the natural order of power that existed in the universe. This upset was light and minimal until the advent of humanity. The Primal Beings sought first to subjugate humanity, but eventually, under the leadership of the Great Lord Khosrow, humanity managed to cast down the old order and build a new one in its place.]

As Nestor narrated the familiar story told to him years ago by the Thunderbird, and more recently by Justin Isynos, Leon paid a little more attention to the murals. He saw the Primal Beings raising up humanity, teaching them to build better and grander, but for the most part, this building seemed designed to extol the virtues of the Primal Beings, with humanity building not homes and farms, but great temples and statues. Then, after a while, the scenes shifted, showing humanity making great sacrifices to and for the Primal Beings. It wasn’t entirely clear on the mural, but it seemed these sacrifices came at great cost.

The murals then showed the Primal Beings killing humans in great numbers and razing their settlements to ash. It only ended when one human, depicted in gold instead of grey, led humanity against the Primal Beings in open rebellion.

[What do you make of it?] Leon wondered.

[This plane is the Divine Graveyard, and this place is one of the places where the Primal Gods were interred,] Nestor said. [I’d think that these murals were created to show what was being kept here, and why. It shows the beginning of time, and the abuses of power committed by those who preceded us. It’s a justification and a warning, I think.]

[A warning against this one,] Leon said as his eyes drifted back toward the beam of light for a moment before going back to the mural, which showed in a place of great prominence and detail, a group of humans carving apart one of the centaur-like Primal Gods. [Wonder why they didn’t do to this one what they did to the others.]

[Maybe they couldn’t kill it,] Nestor hypothesized. [The Primal Beings are strange and far more connected to the universe than we could ever hope to be. Perhaps, for some of them, killing was simply out of the question. I wasn’t there, I can’t say anything more than that.]

[Mm hmm,] Leon grunted back.

With the thought of what was going on back on the surface spurring him on, Leon kept moving down the avenue, not sparing the murals too much more thought. It was only when the countdown he was keeping started getting low that he jumped back over the mural and started moving over pyramids again.

Only a few minutes after that, an explosion rocked through the cavern, though the sheer distance and the sounds of water pouring in muted it somewhat; about three miles behind him, Leon could see a great column of orange flame bathing one of the smaller pyramids. He doubted that would be enough to actually damage it, but the explosion had its intended effect—the angel paused in its pacing and turned toward the fire in the distance. It shrieked loudly enough that Leon had to cover his ears even where he was, miles away, and then it began sprinting down the avenue toward the fire faster than Leon was expecting. It blew past him and kept going, moving so quickly that it would reach its destination before he could reach the plaza.

Leon silently swore and began moving again. At the speeds it was moving, it could probably verify that he wasn’t around those pyramids and be back in the plaza in less than ten minutes, so that was how much time he had to investigate the great pyramid and see if Nestor was right, and the enchantment control consoles were around there.

He jumped back down into the avenue and began running as fast as he could without completely abandoning all attempts to remain stealthy. His heart raced with panic, knowing that it would only be one mistake before the angel would be on him again, and he didn’t think he’d be able to get away a second time. Even when he stepped into the plaza, he neither slowed nor calmed down, he just kept running for the long stairs that ran from the foot of the pyramid all the way to the flattened top.

Leon hit the surprisingly human-sized stairs that led over the pyramid’s huge stone bricks and started ascending as quickly as his lightning-enhanced legs would allow. Behind him, he could hear other muffled explosions as the angel tripped his traps, but he didn’t dare turn around or project his magic senses to see. He doubted that his traps would work that well on the creature, but if they bought him even a second, then they were worth setting up.

He slowed as he drew closer to the top, but the light that was emitted from the pyramid lessened as he ascended. It was nearly blinding from the base of the pyramid, but as Leon neared the top, it dimmed until it nearly vanished completely, reduced to little more than a thin beam emitting from the simple stone altar at the top of the pyramid.

However, the beam of light and bare altar were the only things of note at the top. There was no furniture, no control consoles, nothing else that he could see that could be of any possible

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