Novel Full Chapter 1082: Vessels of Gods
Chapter 1082: Vessels of Gods
Senithe did not move. Beside her, the Dark Regent had gone absolutely still, a statue of living shadow. Maiden, on Senithe's other side, had stopped breathing entirely.
{The other was at my veil,} the Eye said again, slower, each word a hammer of ancient gold striking against the dark, {and pressed it. And pressed it a second time. And pressed it a third. And my Divine Essence — which has once held back oceans of gods since before her kind had a word for gods — did not stir.}
The chamber dimmed.
Dimmed — in the presence of an Eye whose very nature was catastrophic brilliance, whose essence poured forth in rivers of molten gold — the light actually receded, as though the god behind the Eye had drawn inward into the oldest dark of its own memory and found something there it did not like.
{That has not happened.}
Not is not possible. Not cannot be. Has not happened before.
The weight of that tense was worse than any denial.
{Not since the old realms fell. Not since I was small god and still realizing my powers. Not since the hours before I was seated upon this throne. Beings whose names mortal tongues have long since lost have come against this might ME, and every one of them HAS died upon touching even residual of my ancient Divine Essence.
{This one did not even flinch or alert me. This one laid her hand upon my wall, took the full weight of essence barrier into her palm… and withdrew. And my wall spoke to me of nothing.}
The Dark Regent lifted his head fully. When he spoke, his voice was low, careful, and stripped of every layer of composure he had worn all evening.
"My Lord. If the hand that laid that mark was hers—"
{Then you have not been watching her.}
"My Lord."
"We have been watching the shadow she has cast for us to watch. We have been weighing her by the light she has permitted us to see. And the light she has permitted us has been, it seems, the smallest coin of what she carries. We are not capable of watching her even with everything we've got."
A silence fell that was not empty but crowded with every assumption the Eye had made about the Valkyrie in the handful of days since she had drawn breath in her new flesh — every measurement taken, every growth-curve noted, every appraisal offered with the amused patience of an elder watching a young thing learn to stand — and all of it was being dragged, in terrible silence, into the Eye's full attention and weighed again.
Senithe could feel it happening in her bones. She could feel the Dark Regent feeling it beside her. She could feel even Maiden — irreverent, untouchable Maiden — bow her small head lower in a way she had not bowed at the beginning of the audience.
A thing they had been calling young had reached through their shroud, found they're location and laid a hand upon the veil of a seated god, and the god had not felt her.
That was not a something the chamber and its occupants recovered from quickly.
{I cannot rule her out,} the Eye said at last. {I also cannot confirm her. Investigate. Discreetly. I want to know, within a tenday, whose hand laid that mark. If it is hers — we will have to adjust our estimate of what we are building against. If it is not hers — we will have to reckon with the fact that a third player has entered the board without announcing itself. Which is, as ever, the worst possible category of player.}
"Yes, my Lord."
***
Somewhere, very far above the chamber, in a high orbit over the Pacific where she had already completed the climb back toward the veil between spheres, a Warden of Purity would have been quietly, righteously offended had she known any of this.
"They sensed me," Seraphiel would have thought, in the part of her that still permitted small wounds. "They sensed me and they did not sense her. She was right above the island as openly as a moon. And they speak of her as if she might have slipped past them, while I — who cloaked myself to the edge of my own capacity — am the one they registered without effort?"
"Were they implying that the Abomination was stronger than me? Or perhaps more careful even when she'd recklessly floated above the island? Or is it just because the Abomination is just undetectable to them?"
She would not have been able to answer the questions herself, because she was not in the chamber, and she did not know the conversation was happening, and the Eye did not broadcast its councils outward for the benefit of its enemies' dignity.
So, the questions, unasked, received no answers.
Above the Pacific, she climbed.
Below the island, the Eye moved on.
{One more matter, before you rise.}
"My Lord."
{The vessels.}
The Dark Regent, Maiden, and Senithe all inclined their heads in the same instant.
{Bring them forward faster. The hour we had set for their rising was an hour meant for a slow awakening of the Prince. That hour no longer suits the world. The Warden is on this sphere. The Source is moving. We need our vessels as gods before the other gods of this world discover what is being built here and decide they have opinions about whom those elements should have gone to.}
The Dark Regent lifted his head more fully now. "My Lord. Some of them are not yet ready. Their bodies have not finished taking the shape the rites require. If we bring them forward now, the investiture will scar them more than it need have."
{They have been told this. Every one of them, at the moment they accepted, was told what the path would cost and what it would return. I have no pity to spare for discomfort that was contracted for in full daylight with full understanding. The men signed willingly. They will now walk their contracts at the pace the hour requires.}
"Understood."
{Move them along. All of them. I want the first four invested with their godly elements within the next mortal's month. The others within two. By the Prince's full awakening, I want my nine or more gods in the field, in their full forms, in their power. I will not be caught with a board half-played.}
"Yes, my Lord."
{Rise.}
They rose.
Senithe stood first — tall, dark-robed, composed, her face betraying none of the reckoning her interior was still working through. The Dark Regent rose a beat after her, straight-backed and regal in the quiet way he had always been regal. Maiden rose last, stretched like a cat, scratched the back of one calf with the heel of the other foot, and gave the Eye a small, informal nod that any other being in the room would have been incinerated for — and that the Eye, for reasons none of them had ever understood, permitted her alone.
They turned.
They walked toward the edge of the chamber — which became a doorway only when they approached it, and had not existed at any point during the audience.
Behind them, the Eye narrowed to a slit of contemplation.
And in the golden tendrils that bled from its edges into the black void around it, the pulse in its center beat once — slower than before — with the patient, terrible satisfaction of a god that had decided exactly which of its pieces to move first.