Chapter 84 – Knowing Your Competition

“Just… Let me do it. Please, please…” begged Sythara. The demoness was practically salivating, just staring at the pile of medallions and jewelry collected by the brood imps.

Kairon snorted, running his claws over the haul. Many of the sigils were still missing, but between his call outs and the brood’s scavenging, they had recovered over fifty pieces. The vast majority were signets, but a few other bits like rings and necklaces also had been found. Kairon was hopeful they too might contain traces or stores of source energy.

“Now, now, Sythara. We discussed this, did we not?” he chided. “You tend to be a bit… unreliable around this stuff.”

She pouted. “But child…”

“I said you could watch. Besides, it really isn’t all that.”

The look the demoness had on her face made it clear she felt quite differently about that. Kairon, however, really didn’t.

Sythara was a valuable asset, but not a friend. A budding ally, but still, not yet a true partner. More… An employee to be managed with the utmost care. And this source energy was perhaps the only thing both more valuable and volatile than essence. Well, that and gold, of course.

Buzzing with anticipation, Kairon grasped several of the signets. Holding one up to the light, he found that each was exactly like Elson’s. The same Solaric symbol on both sides, and a small coin shape.

“Ah. Child. If I may…” began Sythara.

“I told you that—”

“No, no. Not that,” she said. “An observation. Did you not just finish battling the golden humans, defeating them after sapping all of their magic?”

“We did.”

The demoness’s excitement began to drain visibly. “Bah!” She threw up her hands. “Then those are worthless! They’ll be entirely drained, will they not? If you had consulted with me, then perhaps we could have devised a strategy that would have left you with more, but as things stand…”

Kairon rolled his eyes. “First of all, weren’t you just expressing how hopeless our situation was just several days ago? Second, you’re right. We did drain all of their magic, which by all accounts stems from these little sigils,” he replied, holding one of the medallions up.

“However,” he continued, “I’ve been watching these paladins. You know something, Sythara. Our scouts told us that whenever they encountered the marching caravan in the mountains, they had their armor on. Heavy, massive golden armor. Full kits, mind you. Gauntlets, shoulder spikes, helmets, torso, knees. The whole get up.”

“So they are fond of their metal toys. What of it?” she asked.

“Do you know how heavy that stuff is? Even a strong human would struggle to fight in it for an extended period of time. Let alone traverse perilous lands like The Spines for weeks with it.”

“That… That does actually make sense,” she agreed. “Then how did they manage to get across all those mountains, hmm?”

“Well, magic, of course! I think they drew upon this power not just for fighting, but general travel. Perhaps it even provides warmth and other such abilities. I don’t know for sure, but what I do know is that the damned stuff is always glowing. And when they crossed into the portion of our domain within my sight, do you know what I saw? Glowing golden men that never once took this stuff off. Not until they slept. And even then, more than a few refused to do so.”

“Look, child, this is all very interesting but I don’t see how it helps us. Great. They probably used magic to travel. But is it not still drained? Aren’t these little sigils nothing more than empty relics?”

“Actually, I noticed something else. Something quite peculiar.” Kairon grinned, dangling the sigil in front of him at Sythara. “Take a look. What do you see?”

“It…” She bent down, getting closer and closer until her nose practically touched the metal of the signet. “It’s glowing. Faintly, but it is,” she whispered.

“Exactly! And some of them even more!” added Kairon. Digging through the pile of signets, he found several that were more visually striking. He pulled them out, holding them up. “Like these!”

“But how… Did the fools not use all their power before they perished?”

“No… I think they recharge.”

“Re… Charge?” mouthed Sythara. “Truly? How?”

“The sun.”

“The… The sun?!” she sputtered. “Why? No—how do you know this? Have you tried it?”

“Ah. I haven’t exactly tried it, but Shiny and the brood imps had these out in the sun all day. I think they soaked up all the energy they could from it. Anyway, we are going to conduct a test. We have a ton of these, so I figure a bit less energy isn’t a big deal.”

Some of her excitement seemed to return, but the demoness was still reticent. “Child, about that. What do you do with all of that energy?”

Kairon waved dismissively. “Oh, nothing so grand. Just feeding it to the tower and seeing what happens. It also… enables those alterations we spoke of.”

“Ah…”

“Now! Let’s see…” Watching closely, Kairon bent over one of the metal grates that had that deep golden glow running through it. Slowly, he let the signet in his claw lower and lower until finally the metal pressed upon the grate. With a magnetic snap, it went flush against the flooring.

And, just as he predicted, it worked. Sort of. Last time, Elson’s pendant had given him over sixty source. This time, he had the sigil of a full paladin of the Solari. Kairon wasn’t entirely sure just how different the Valdren lieutenant was from the paladin in terms of rank and power, but he imagined the paladins had to have significantly stronger power, right?

Moments later, he got his answer. A connection was formed, and energy began to transfer from the sigil and into the moats of the tower. Kairon could see it moving. Like the chains that bound Veron, like the power that coursed through his most special imps, and like the energy that powered his sigil.

A gentle whirring sound filled the citadel. To the city lord’s senses, the ethereal pool of source energy beneath it began to once again expand. From a tiny puddle, to a… Well. Bigger puddle.

Source +10

Source +10

Source +10

Then, to his disappointment, the energy began to wane. A few moments later, one final notification came into being.

Source +2

After that, a faint sizzling sounded in the tower. A tiny wisp of steam slid up from the sigil to the ceiling. With a pop, the medallion shot upwards, landing with a series of tinks and jingles on the other side of the room.

Kairon decided he could share at least some information with the demoness.

“Half,” he stated.

“Half?”

“That,” he said, pointing in the corner of the room where the charred sigil had gone off to, “was about half as much energy as what the human had. Half.”

“So then… You were right? They recharge?”

“It seems so. Although, I really hoped that even drained, it would be more than that,” he sighed. “Well! Nothing to it. Let’s test that recharging theory out. Actually. Let’s test one more. Just to verify if the brightness of the light indicates the amount of source energy.”

He dug out one of the dimmest sigils in the pile, and slapped it onto a metal grate.

Source +4

Payload transferred, the little sigil too blasted off, this time ricocheting off the wall and rolling outside.

Kairon winced. “Yeah… Light does correlate to power. That one was practically useless.”

Sythara eyed the pile of mostly dim and dull sigils. “Which means they mostly are,” she muttered.

“For now! All we need to do is just leave these outside tomorrow and allow the sun to charge them back up!”

“Is it that simple?”

Kairon shrugged. “Hopefully.”

In the meantime, today’s testing already put him at 48 source. Meaning he was once again free to begin moving his sigil around, should he choose.

***

The next day, Kairon set all the sigils out in a sunny spot near the stairs of the citadel. He gave strict instructions for none of them to be touched.

In the meantime, he had one more test to operate. One he hoped would teach him more both about the source energy and the signets that stored it.

Being the brood imps were fully on corpse hauling duty today, they’d already set off before he got up. A quick glance revealed they were approximately a few hours distant from the crater still. Plenty of time for a little experiment.

Making his way over to one of the feeding pits, he craned his neck to look inside the giant maw. This was one of the few times the pit was empty, no sounds of chewing or rumbling filling the district around him.

With an excited grin, Kairon tossed one sigil inside the feeding pit. He honestly had no idea what would happen.

“It’s actually processing it? That’s highly irregular. I didn’t think it’d do that. I mean I hoped it’d do something but if it is actually processing it…” The implications were… significant.

As far as Kairon understood, the pit only had two functions. First, it multiplied base food products. He theorized it fed upon the brood corruption within for a specific purpose, but that was strictly theory at this point. Nothing more.

Second, the pit ate corruption. At its most fundamental form, it was feeding upon it.

It consumed the corruption from the tainted wood, returning gold. For an entire corpse, it did the same, only instead it took three times as long but in return provided far more gold. Twenty to forty on average. The only other substance Kairon had gotten the pit to actually process had been corrupted water. When it was inserted, the pit almost instantly spat it back out—purified and entirely clear.

So in this case, if the pit was actually processing the signet from the paladin, the conclusion was clear. It had to be from the second function. Which meant….

The sigils contained corruption. The very same sigils that every golden paladin wore. Sigils that provided him source.

And from that, he could deduce that source itself was, at least in part, corruption.

He let out a low whistle, letting that settle in his brain.

“Huh. They’re not so different from us after all,” he snorted. “The damn paladins are using corruption, aren’t they?”

But how?

“If the paladins are utilizing corruption, why is it so fundamentally different from our own? And the golden color… It doesn’t really line up with the other colors I’ve seen for corruption,” he thought aloud.

Or was it.

Each district had its own color. Kairon recalled the totems that represented each in the research basin.

Brood was green, wrath red, void purple, pact blue, and forge orange.

That last bit stopped him mid-thought. Forge. Orange. Forge is orange. “That makes so much sense…” he breathed. Why hadn’t he made this connection sooner? The wood of the tainted trees had orange veins. Not any other color. So the plane was reshaping and forging those trees upon his domain’s insertion into the realm. And the brood rookery. It had those same veins. That gave credence to his other theory that these districts and creations were a mix of more than just their base aspect.

All of that was a fascinating deduction. But in regards to source… What had he been missing all this time? Universal. Its totem was grey and colorless.

And source was gold.

Was source akin to universal?

It was an interesting chain of reason, but one that didn’t fully hold up. The primary five districts represented five sins. All but greed and lust.

Source could really only be universal if both of them were somehow the culmination of greed and lust which…

Which if true, well. Kairon would need to ponder on just what those revelations meant. Both for himself, and his city’s future.

A future that was still quite tenuous.

The paladins would be coming now. They’d just demolished an entire army of theirs. And The Bureau wasn’t far behind. Kairon still hadn’t fully come to terms with what to do about the 27-B. What he even could do.

And, as he made his way back to the citadel and pressed his claw to the vault, he was once again reminded those two issues could wait.

One was fast approaching.

The demon let out a long sigh. Troubling times. Troubling, but also exciting.

“Though this newest revelation does mean one thing. My little theory is probably wrong about the sun simply recharging the signets. There has to be more to it…” he thought aloud.

For now, he decided to let the experiment with the signets continue today uninterrupted. He was in no rush with that. Besides, Kairon had more pressing issues to chew on.

With a mental command, he ordered Hush and the void imps to come join him. It was time for another calling. One he hoped would help Shiny and the brood imps with harvesting all the corpses.

And if they could...

Kairon pulled up the third ring notification again: