120: A Promise (Phase One Finale)

It didn’t take long for everyone to show up. The downside was that the workshop was feeling very cramped.

The superintendent of the city-school, Professor Konderlacht.

Each of the deans; Professors Resoto, Greene, Powell, Maidess, Peace, and Kull.

Each of the strike force; Jaxie, Alex, Nima, Meghan and Claire.

Each of the tutors (who had yet to actually teach Eris anything, now that Eris thought about it); Bailey, Rachel, Ophelia, Addison, Hima, Rocky, Tatum, and Grace.

Eris’s bodyguard, Charlotte, who had been the primary one dragging all of the current occupants back here.

Professor Dzhemehal.

Elmas.

Dad.

And lastly, someone that Eris was a little surprised to see- Darcie Raneer. The therapist she conversed with yesterday was now sitting quietly in the corner while everyone else filled out the room surrounding Eris, twenty-five to one. Konderlacht was the first one to speak.

“We are all here, as you requested. What happened with your level-up?”

Eris swallowed deeply, then turned her gaze towards the pink-haired encyclopedia.

“Have you heard or read anything at all about ‘Destiny’ skills?”

Dezhemehal furrowed her brow, making the Greed in her eyes flicker. “In what context?”

“In that it’s a skill with a tag beside it that says ‘Destiny’. It doesn’t have ‘Active’ or ‘Passive’ beside it, or even a level. It just has the name, then ‘Destiny’, then the effect.”

A confused tension fell over the room. Dzhemehal seemed to think very hard.

“Records never went into that much detail regarding the skills of previous Echoes, for fairly obvious reasons. If they went into war with each other, Echoes would wish for their own capabilities to be hidden to hold every advantage. As such, there isn’t anything I can recall about any Echoes bearing any skills that hold something similar to a ‘Destiny’ classification.”

“What about Echoes with skills that directly involve one singular catastrophic event,” Eris asked, leaning forward. “If something horrible and awful happened that no other Echo could do anything to combat except for one who single-handedly had the capability to overcome it?”

“Miss Kadell, what is this about?” Konderlacht asked.

Eris ignored her, focusing on the pink-haired woman.

“Any catastrophic events of the past seemed to be limited specifically to natural disasters, some of which were of truly devastating scale that ended hundreds of thousands of lives. As for the Echoes that would often work against those effects, none in particular seemed to be the sole individual capable of resolving that issue where no other Echo could. Any one of them stepped in when needed.”

Eris let out a long, drawn-out sigh.

“The first of my new skills is really simple, and incredibly ironic with the timing.”

Restoration {Active} {Maxed}

You may spend Mana while touching a magical item. The item regains missing Durability based on the amount of Mana spent.

“More than a little bit annoying to get that right after specifically taking time to get a worse version, but what’s done is done. The other skill is the one that’s the problem.

Fate’s Promise {Destiny}

Time is dwindling. The Hollow encroaches. Through a bridging of power and self-sacrifice, you may irreversibly uproot corruption and seal it within a sinful soul.

Every brow in the room furrowed. Eris decided to clarify.

“And yes, before you ask- the skill specifically allows me to purify the trees of the Hollow. Makes it so that instead of corrupting the land, they cleanse it, presumably serving as a kind of barrier against the influence of the Hollow.”

Pretty much every voice spoke up at once- mostly between each of the deans asking for more information or speaking their mind.

“This changes everything!”

“Does this mean we need to deploy Eris to the front lines?”

“No, we need to plan an assault to take back Dural, first. Get a foothold, then bring in Eris to complete the job.”

“She needs to make the equipment for her strike force, first. Get them equipped well enough to complete the job.”

“Those kids? Forget it. Just have her equip the five seasoned soldiers. While the rookies are still learning the ropes, the other five can be the designated strike force, so we can take back the continent as soon as possible.”

It was the plain-looking woman in the corner that abruptly and loudly shouted.

“Hey!”

All of them went quiet and turned towards Darcie, who had her arms crossed with a frown. The therapist sighed.

“Maybe instead of immediately trying to talk about battle strategy and disregarding every single one of Eris’s thoughts on the matter, you can actually try to take an interest in understanding how she may be feeling.”

Professor Maidess narrowed her eyes. “We are dealing with an opportunity to not only take back the world from the Hollow, but cleanse it forever.”

“And if it really was that simple, don’t you think that Eris would have been much happier to explain this information to all of us?” Darcie asked, dropping her arms and taking a step forward. “If this truly was as simple as touching a rotten tree and making it healthy again, why does Eris look like she’s going to start hyperventilating?”

Every eye turned back towards Eris, and she struggled to keep everything in check. A sniffle whistled through her nose. It helped when Jaxie wrapped an arm around Eris’s waist and pulled her right into the taller girl’s side. No words. Just warmth and the knowledge that Jaxie was there. Eris tried to pull the spiders from her throat as she squeezed words out.

“If nothing else, it’s a pretty clear indication that either I’m inherently different from other Echoes, or other Echoes had skills based off of events happening in the world. After all, they wouldn’t have a skill relating to the Hollow since it didn’t even exist back then.”

“A very important note- yes,” Dzhemehal agreed. “For you to have a skill explicitly for the Hollow and nothing but the Hollow is incredibly intriguing. Not to mention the description barely held information at all. ‘Time is dwindling. The Hollow encroaches’. To me, that doesn’t sound like a skill at all. That sounds like a warning.”

“That was also the exact same thing that the Demeri-ghost-thing said to me during my Gifting,” Eris said. “Word for word. Nothing about the rest of it, but those six words were exactly the same thing. Then, the skill is called Fate’s Promise, the ghost thing literally said my name was a ‘Promise’ in and of itself, Demeri is the goddess of ‘Fate’, and Vojemala is in an Obelisk called the ‘Fate’ of Eternity. Things are lining up way too much to be coincidences.”

“Yes, but what about the skill itself?” Maidess narrowed her eyes. “What do you need to do to purify the trees?”

Eris tensed.

“It’s a lot more complicated than you all think. It’s a full ritual that needs to happen, with a lot of preparation.”

“A ritual, like making that woman pregnant?” Addison chimed in. Eris shook her head.

“No. I mean, kinda? It’s not a Lustful ritual like that one. It’s more like the arcane ritual of Sanctum.”

“Sanctum?” Alex raised an eyebrow. Eris blinked.

“Oh- uhh, I reached level four during that meeting after breakfast and got a ritual called Sanctum. It’s not a Lustful one like Benediction. I just need to carve glyphs and fill them with various materials to designate an enclosed space as a workshop where I get special buffs.”

“And the new one?” Professor Peace, the older gentleman with wrinkles and grey and sin in his eyes asked. Eris swallowed.

“Like I said, it needs a lot of preparation, for every single tree I try to cleanse. The very first thing is… is someone who’s willing to die for it.”

“Pardon?” Kull asked.

“After all the preparations and everything else is done, the ritual can only be completed by taking the corruption from the root of the Hollow and trapping it within someone’s soul.” Eris wrung her hands together. “And not just anybody, either. Only people who are both willing to be sacrificed, and only those who have a soul already tainted with sin.”

“A soul tainted with sin…” Dzhemehal frowned in thought. “Is that referring to other Echoes?”

“Not specifically,” Eris said. “Though they would almost certainly be eligible.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can see who’s been tainted, and by what,” Eris said. “Starting with you, Rita. You’re tainted by the sin of Gluttony.”

All eyes flicked over, but before any words were spoken, Eris continued. She pointed at someone else. Then another. Then another.

“Konderlacht has Wrath. So does Charlotte. Professor Peace has Pride. Professor Powell has Sloth. Greene has Gluttony.”

She then turned away from all of the deans, to people who were a bit harder to point out as sacrifices.

“Hima has Greed. Bailey has Lust. Nima has Pride. And… and Alex has Envy.”

There was a long moment of silence. Eventually, it was the short, black-and-green haired Weaver that softly spoke up.

“I… I put my mother in prison.”

Eris glanced over, but Hima was staring down at her shoes in shame so thick it was practically pouring from her face.

“She was really rich. Like, really rich. I- uhh… I made some fake documents detailing illegal dealings, burned down a rival business, and managed to get Mom arrested for something she never did.”

The end of her braided hair was undone, re-done, then undone again in mere seconds as Hima’s fingers fiddled through her apparent confession.

“Everything she had went to me, just like I planned, but I… kinda lost it? I uhh- I…” She took a few moments to steady herself and took a deep breath. “I joined the Syndicate to avoid the loan sharks I was using to try and pay off gambling debts.”

After a few seconds, the dark-skinned, bald dean of Sector Teer bit his cheek.

“My wife wanted to go to a small banquet, but I didn’t want to go. She asked me anyway because she didn’t feel safe walking there and back by herself. I told her that she would be fine and stayed home while she went.”

He let out a tense sigh. “She was robbed, raped and murdered on the way back. Something that wouldn’t have happened if I had gone with her. But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to go.”

“I got my party killed.”

Eyes flicked over to blonde-mullet dean; Professor Greene. He held himself in an official stance, but his expression was pained.

“We were going into the Obelisk, and we all knew that, but I decided to spend the entire night partying. When the time came for us to enter, I was so drunk I couldn’t even stand up. They decided to go in without me. They… they never came back. I wasn’t sober for a long time after that, and it took even longer for me to put down the bottle.”

In the silence, Darcie spoke up. “So, if I’m to understand this correctly, a person seems to be ‘tainted by sin’ if they committed the sin in the past. Though, I would hardly count choosing to stay home from a banquet as sinful, so there is a good chance that it also has something to do with the regret based on that action and the burden the individual carries within themselves. However, Bailey-”

She turned to the blonde.

“Do you personally have any grievances stemming from your highly sexual nature, or do you believe that you are eligible purely because you are-”

“-A slut?” Meghan finished the question, earning a hard glare from Darcie.

“That is incredibly rude, Meghan. And the term you should use is ‘sex-positive’, not insults.”

“Nah, she’s right,” Bailey chuckled. “I’m a slut with a capital D, and I’m not ashamed about it.”

Claire furrowed her brow. “There’s no D in ‘slut’.”

Eris realized that it was bait about a second before Bailey closed the trap.

“Not right now, but if you wanna go to an empty room, we can change that real quick-”

“Miss Geriege…” Darcie cut off the grinning blonde with a groan, prompting Bailey to quickly get serious again.

“Sorry, force of habit. Uhh… the only ‘bad’ Lustful thing I’ve ever done probably doesn’t even count. Like, I feel bad for it, but I wasn’t even the one steering the wagon. Plus, I think it would immediately make Leyla eligible, too.”

Oh.

Right.

Apparently sensing the awkwardness of the sensitive subject, Bailey immediately shifted. “So, I think I’m eligible just because I’m a naturally Lustful person. I mean, you can’t invent sex alchemy without being a little messed up, right?”

Darcie nodded, but it didn’t seem to be an answer to Bailey’s question as much as it was to help her gather her own thoughts.

“Okay, so it seems as though eligibility is based either on past events of sin bringing regret, or being attuned with that sin normally. After all, I would certainly say that Professor Dzhemehal is gluttonous for knowledge.”

Every single person in the room nodded in agreement. Well, everyone except for Dzhemehal herself who narrowed her eyes. Before she could retort, Konderlacht spoke up.

“Someone eligible has to die to complete the ritual?”

The question was directed at Eris, who gave a sad shrug.

“I’m trapping the corruption of the Hollow in their soul. At that point, the best thing we can hope for is that the ritual kills them, because having to live with that would probably be worse.”

Eris let out a long, low sigh and wrung her hands together. “And I have to do it to them. I have to be the murderer.”

“Eris, you aren’t a murderer-” Darcie began, but the redhead snapped back.

“Even if they’re the ones choosing to fall forward on the sword, I’m still the one holding the blade in place. Sacrifice or not, their blood’s gonna be on my hands. And since there were at least two corrupted enemies that took root in that attack in Dural, then that means there’s going to be two different trees I need to cleanse, and two different people that have to die for it by my hand. At least. There’s a good chance that there’s more, which means I need to kill even more people.”

The room went quiet aside from Eris’s heavy breathing. After a few moments…

“What- umm…” Alex stammered, the Envy in her eyes peeking through the fear. “What else has to be done for the ritual?”

Eris had to look away from the blonde. She couldn’t make eye contact. Instead, she just looked at the floor.

“For myself, I have to spend ten million points of Desire and Magic Power each, but I also have to permanently lose one skill of my choice.”

Grace’s brow furrowed. “You lose it, like… gone? You can’t use it anymore?”

“Yep,” was Eris’s flat response. “And before you ask, it won’t work with any bonus skills I copy from someone else. It’s only my own natural skills that work for it.”

The mood in the room dropped further. Elmas pursed her lips. “That is… not ideal.”

“That’s not even half of it,” Eris said.

“What else needs to be done?” Professor Maidess asked. Jaxie’s hand gently squeezed Eris’s side in care as the redhead let out a deep breath.

“Well, all of that was just what happens at the end of the ritual, and like I said before- there’s a lot of preparation that needs to happen. One of the ingredients I need is water from the Stream.”

“Well, that one’s easy,” Meghan chimed in. “There’s Waypools all over the continent.”

“But only four natural ones,” Eris said. “Not ones made artificially by introducing water from the Stream into normal water. The water I need has to come directly from the source- from a natural Waypool.”

“That should still be relatively easy,” Dzhemehal stated. “There are four natural Waypools on Kavala, all of which I believe are still well outside of the Hollow’s current reach.”

“The other ingredient won’t be easy, though,” Eris said. “Theoretically, it doesn’t even exist.”

That made a lot of eyebrows furrow. Eris sighed and slumped her shoulders.

“The other ingredient I need is blood from one of the Seven.”

…

…

…

It was so quiet that Eris could practically hear a fly buzzing off on one side of the room.

“You need the blood of a dead deity?” Nima eventually asked. Eris nodded.

“Yeah. Well- not exactly. I need their blood, but I’m starting to think they’re not actually dead.”

Beside her, Eris could see Jaxie’s eyes widen. “Wait, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Eris nodded, then turned towards everyone else.

“Four hundred years ago, the Sundering happened. With zero warning, every single one of the Seven vanished, and the Hollow started crawling over the planet. Nobody knew if the Hollow caused the Sundering or was simply a byproduct of it, just that the evidence suggested the Seven were killed.”

Eris stood from her chair, out of Jaxie’s half-embrace and started pacing in the small space.

“Everyone assumed that the Seven had died, because their influence wasn’t present any longer. When they vanished, any direct power they had on Tonshlur went with them. Their Echoes died. Their familiars died. But not all magic was lost- only those with an immediate, direct connection to them did. Only the magic that existed because of their continued presence in Tonshlur. Pegasi still exist. So do Tallarus. So does the living mountain Kormunja’ar. Self-contained products of magic or the supernatural, birthed from the Seven but not directly tied to them.”

Eris wrung her hands together. “Demeri herself left behind something that continued to bestow the Giftings, and gave the Syndicate the power it needed to fight the Hollow for this long. However, if that really was something connected to Demeri- like a ghost for example, then wouldn’t that have vanished, too, if all the Seven died? However, that one remained. When it spoke with me, that version of Demeri said- and I quote- ‘I do not perceive her. What I was seeing was a shadow cast from a different reality. What I heard was a vibration. The only reason we could communicate was because the Gifting had sent me halfway between Tonshlur and the Stream’.”

Eris lifted a finger.

“Now, the thing about shadows is that they aren’t the thing itself we’re seeing- just the influence they have on the light shining from behind it. So if this ghost-thing, for example, only existed in the Stream, then all it could do was stand in front of a big light and cast an image towards the direction of Tonshlur- an image that I saw and could convey the message. An image that gave the gifts and gave the power to sustain the Syndicate.”

“What is your point, Kadell?” Konderlacht asked with narrowed eyes. Eris ignored the Wrath tucked underneath.

“The point is that unlike every other direct connection the Seven seemed to have, that one was the only one that didn’t immediately vanish. It was also the only one that wasn’t on Tonshlur itself. Now, I don’t know if that’s just me, but that seems to imply that it wasn’t the Seven’s connections that were removed, but rather their connections to Tonshlur itself.”

Eris looked at Dzhemehal. “In your lecture, you described the Seven as being the stem connecting the apple of Tonshlur to the tree of the Stream. Now, what if something happened that didn’t cut and kill that stem, but rather moved that stem somewhere else- perhaps to a different place in the Stream? Now, that stem is still connected to the tree, but not to the apple anymore. That apple is then going to rot and die.”

Eris paused in her pacing, taking a firm look around the room with the many people all staring at her- mostly the ones that weren’t present in the earlier meeting.

“Now, in the conversation I had with Vojemala last night, she revealed that there were thirteen total Obelisks, that she was in one of them, and she wanted me to use the Skeleton Key to reach her. I theorized that there might be thirteen Obelisks, because every single one of them was dedicated towards using the power of a certain member of the Seven by siphoning their Echoes. Now, I’m starting to think that they might not be using that power to collectively trap Akkaru’um and prevent Miknalor like we originally thought.”

Claire went pale. Well, pale-er.

“You think that the Seven are trapped in the Obelisks?”

“They were made with Zhuul Somnere,” Dzhemehal stated. “An alchemical concoction already proven to be powerful enough to put a member of the Seven in a coma. It certainly doesn’t seem to be a stretch of the imagination to think that it may not have been directed towards Akkaru’um, but rather the Seven once more.”

“So what you’re saying,” Maidess let out a breath and narrowed her eyes. “Is that the Syndicate has been searching for a way to combat the Hollow for four hundred years, and all this time there’s been an honest-to-goodness goddess trapped in the middle of Marrix?”

“I don’t know what to think.” Eris slumped back into her seat and held her face in her hands.

“However, there’s someone who definitely knows, and she just so happened to invite me over for a picnic.”