Chapter 513: Your Divine Blood Is Not the Same as the Blood of the Divine Race

Lomier led the witch doctor apprentices into the Medical Fortress and up to the mysterious attic.

The sky messenger surveyed the attic.

"This is where it happened?"

The children nodded one after another.

"This is the place. We saw a rag doll come alive right here."

By now, the attic had been searched time and again. It stood empty, and even the hidden hole beneath the floorboards had been sealed.

The rag doll imp seen by the children was long gone. After so many days, Lomier could detect scarcely a trace of extraordinary power in the room.

With his own hands, Lomier drew a Dream Realm ritual across the attic floor. Then, using the divine name little Matafus had heard, he began calling to and communicating with the divine beings within the Star Realm.

"The Lord of the Divine Form above the Star Realm, the God of Creation of the Spirits of Old Things, the Primordial Mythical Witch Doctors born of the power of creation."

Merely speaking the name aloud filled one with unease. Some of its syllables reached far beyond any ordinary conception of the divine.

The six mythologies were unimaginably ancient, their origins lost beyond all reckoning.

The divine name alone set Lomier's heart pounding like a drum.

Yet although Lomier chanted alongside the children, his own recitation of the divine name accomplished nothing.

The five witch doctor apprentices beside him were the ones who mattered. Only by chanting together could they truly reach the God of the Witch Doctors.

Whether a divine being would answer ordinary witch doctor apprentices chanting a divine name was another matter.

A divine being might hear them and still not trouble to respond.

Lomier had little confidence that this would work.

Yet he knew no other way to reach the God of the Witch Doctors. All he could do was repeat the three-part divine name over and over with the young apprentices.

"The Lord of the Divine Form above the Star Realm..."

All at once, the imps within the five apprentices rose into view as insubstantial shadows.

Phantoms of a book, a ring, a pocket watch, a powder box, and a quill revolved in the air. At last, using them as anchors and coordinates, gaze after gaze descended from beyond the sky.

Those eyes passed over the five apprentices before settling on Lomier.

Lomier's chest seized. Even his breath stopped.

He knew at once.

"I am beneath the gaze of the God of the Witch Doctors."

Lomier meant to offer words of reverence, but he collapsed before he could even open his mouth.

A vast invisible hand reached across the boundary between reality and illusion, entered his body, and seized his consciousness.

Through his mental sight, he watched helplessly as his own body crumpled to the floor and his consciousness floated ever higher.

Following the open passage of the Dream Realm, it rose straight above the High Heavens.

At last, it reached somewhere within the Star Realm.

When Lomier returned to his senses, he found himself standing in a dark expanse of void.

He had not received the same treatment as the apprentices. Rather than entering the botanical garden, he hung as a shadow in the air beyond the cliff outside it.

"A kingdom in the sky, the Floating Island itself."

Lomier instantly recognized where he stood. Turning, he looked through the luminous field of the Mythic Domain and into the dark void beyond.

"So this is the world of the stars, the Star Realm itself!"

Lomier had learned the very term Star Realm from the mythical witch doctors' divine name.

One glance into the Star Realm's depths was enough for him to sense something there.

The shadows of the island's masters appeared upon the cliff.

Lomier turned back at once and bowed to the witch doctors.

"Lomier pays his respects to the God of the Witch Doctors."

"I thank you for saving me that day. I owe my survival beneath the power of the Great God, Star of Death, entirely to you."

Six mythical shadows stood upon the cliff, their eyes fixed on Lomier.

They looked exactly as they had when he last saw them, dressed in ancient priestly vestments. Within a circle, the outline of God's Form spread symbol-covered arms, and the mysterious pattern stirred a longing to trace its origin.

Shoulder to shoulder outside the botanical garden's glass dome, the six mythical shadows spoke from the cliff's edge.

"So we meet again, sky messenger."

The mythical witch doctors recognized Lomier. They had also guessed that he represented the King of the Sky Messengers, the winged people, and the Land of Light.

Only for that reason were they willing to see him at all, though they still asked why he had come.

The mythical witch doctors spoke as one.

"You have chanted our divine name. What do you seek?"

With utmost reverence, Lomier replied, "The imp race and the witch doctor profession have appeared one after the other in the Land of Light. The Sacred Mountain of Light welcomes the arrival of this profession, and so I was sent to seek audience with the Great God of the Witch Doctors."

"Should the God of the Witch Doctors wish to establish the witch doctor profession in the winged kingdoms, the Sacred Mountain of Light stands ready to help."

The mythical witch doctors understood what the Sacred Mountain of Light had in mind. They also understood the winged people, the sky messengers, and their concerns.

"Sky messenger of the Sacred Mountain of Light, you need not worry."

"We have no intention of spreading a faith among the winged people, nor do we need their faith. The imps are the race upon which our road rests."

The true extraordinary practitioners of the witch doctor profession were not people, but imps.

A witch doctor was merely a contract holder bound to an imp and responsible for raising it. Few ordinary people could have seen through such a secret.

The mythical witch doctors continued, "We do, however, need to establish a witch doctor academy in the Land of Light and spread the profession further. This is only the beginning. Witch doctors shall appear in other places as well."

Lomier understood their will.

If they wanted only to found a witch doctor academy and have witch doctors replace the old medical fortresses and physicians, the winged people stood to benefit enormously.

Neither Lomier nor the winged people had any reason to refuse. He immediately expressed their welcome for the mythical witch doctors' arrival.

Lomier said, "The Sacred Mountain of Light is willing to help the God of the Witch Doctors build the academy you require and have the winged people enact the necessary laws. The sky messengers are likewise willing to live in harmony with the imps upon this land."

The mythical witch doctors, however, would not accept help without repayment. Lomier might owe them a personal debt of gratitude, but this went far beyond what any one person owed.

"Nothing further is necessary. If you will establish the mortal world's first witch doctor academy for us, we shall grant one request of equal value in return."

The mythical witch doctors did not wish to become too deeply entangled with Lomier.

Something came to Lomier at once. Throughout the journey to this audience, he had carried a question in his heart.

Beside the affairs linking the winged people, the Sacred Mountain of Light, and the mythical witch doctors, his private question had seemed less important.

Now, at last, he could voice it.

"God of the Witch Doctors, I carry a question and a doubt within me."

"I met one of the witch doctor apprentices once before. At that time, she was a child wholly without any gift."

"Yet when I saw her again, she not only possessed a gift, but one that had risen at a single bound to extraordinary heights."

"Was this, too, a grace that you bestowed upon her?"

Lomier did not mention the trace of Ose he had faintly sensed upon little Matafus. He suspected it touched on the secret of how the God of the Witch Doctors made imps, and such knowledge would do him no good anyway.

What he wanted above all was the means to increase a gift.

The God of the Witch Doctors made no attempt to hide it. Among the races of the primordial age, the power of the Bestowing of Power had never been a secret.

"Through the divine technique of the Bestowing of Power, we allowed the imp to share its gift with her. In a sense, the imp and the girl ceased to be two individuals and became one."

"At the Source of Wisdom, at least, they are recognized as a single individual."

Lomier stared in astonishment.

"A single individual?"

The God of the Witch Doctors nodded.

"Precisely. At the Source of Wisdom, they are regarded as one person."

The witch doctors tried to explain the matter more fully, tracing the change back to its root.

"The sky messengers' Mythical Organ is the Angel Stone, which was modelled upon God's Grace Stone. Your Art of God's Grace descends from the art created by the second-generation Sage of Truth in the primordial age, and among the arts of the Second Era, it remains the closest to the original."

"When you reach the step of the apostle, however, you do not deify your own brain. Instead, you take the Angel Stone directly as your Mythical Organ."

"You should know that all who walk the road of the apostle must possess a Mythical Organ."

"The bond between an imp and its contract holder is similar. It resembles the bond between sky messengers and the Angel Stone, alchemists and the Lamp of Covenant, or beast knights and their magical beasts."

Lomier was stunned. Never had he imagined the bond between an imp and its contract holder was this.

"Then the contract holder is actually the imp's Mythical Organ, or the Mythical Organ it will possess in the future."

"Then would they not..."

Lomier feared that something bad might eventually come of it.

The God of the Witch Doctors shook their heads.

"If the imp cannot break through the third rank, the two will appear little different from an ordinary imp and contract holder. Once they reach the station of an apostle, however, they can merge completely into a single whole."

"An apostle's form has long since passed beyond ordinary life. At that point, the contract holder may seem to have become the Mythical Organ of the imp's God's Form."

"In truth, each has long since become an inseparable part of the other."

The method had a drawback. If the two ever fell into discord or open conflict, the direct clash between their consciousnesses would drive them both mad.

As companions, they formed a single whole.

If their paths diverged and their wills turned against each other, they would fall into something resembling a split mind.

Lomier saw the danger at once.

"What if they should one day turn against each other?"

The witch doctors had foreseen that possibility long ago.

From the very beginning, however, imps and their contract holders had been two parties who saved each other.

An imp came into the world flawed and in need of a contract holder.

A contract holder came into the world maimed or ill and needed an imp to carry their life onward.

From the outset, each had redeemed and needed the other.

They chose one another in the City of Old Things and sealed their contract together.

The witch doctors answered without evasion.

"A witch doctor of the Second Era is formed from two beings, a contract holder and an imp, who walk hand in hand toward the future."

"They sealed their contract in the City of Old Things, and each became part of what sustains the other's life."

"If they cannot walk hand in hand toward the future, then those two beings who once completed and saved each other shall merely return to what they were before."

"To forms that have no future."

For a long while, Lomier said nothing.

This mode of existence, this profession born from a contract of mutual redemption, filled Lomier with wonder.

He also marveled at the breadth of spirit shown by the God of the Witch Doctors.

Only after some time did Lomier ask his next question.

"O God of the Witch Doctors, am I qualified to receive the divine technique knowledge of the Bestowing of Power!"

The mythical witch doctors nodded. The Bestowing of Power had never belonged to them alone.

For one, Ray, whom Lomier knew, possessed the divine technique of the Bestowing of Power.

"That presents no difficulty. But if you hope to use the original Bestowing of Power to remedy the flaw in your own gift, we can tell you now that it is impossible."

Lomier frowned in confusion.

"Why is it impossible?"

The mythical witch doctors answered, "Because the Bestowing of Power is a divine technique belonging to the descendants of the primordial age. It came from the Creator and from the authority the Divine King of Wisdom granted His sons."

"None save the beings who have survived from the primordial age can use it."

Lomier's eyes widened.

"Neither the winged people nor the snake people can use it?"

The mythical witch doctors told Lomier, "When the Life Sovereign created the winged people and the snake people, She used God's Moon Stone taken from God's Moon, a stone born with its own Seal Imprint. Thus, the winged people and the snake people possess an inborn affinity with earth and stone, and with wind and air. You need no Sun Cup to enter the second rank. You need not even sense the law imprint upon the Divine Cup to enter the third, for the Power of Law has always lain within your bloodline."

"This may appear far more convenient, but your inborn bloodline and gifts fall far short of those possessed by the beings of the primordial age."

"Almost nothing constrained them. They could command every element and wield every divine technique. Unless a divine being bestows another art upon you, however, you are limited to divine techniques of wind and earth."

The witch doctors looked at Lomier and shook their heads.

"Your divine blood differs from that of the primordial beings who directly inherited the divine king's bloodline."

"The Bestowing of Power was created for the bloodline of those primordial beings. It allows descendants of the divine king's bloodline to bestow their power upon one another, provided both sides consent freely."

Lomier's face went blank. An indescribable emotion clouded his features, perhaps loss, perhaps astonishment.

For the first time, he understood the origin of their power. The Life Sovereign had made them from stone taken from God's Moon.

For the first time, he also heard the difference between them and the divine race of the primordial age laid out so clearly by other ancient gods.

The witch doctors continued without pausing for the look on Lomier's face.

"Few ancient beings from the primordial age remain. Even the survivors lost their original bodies long ago."

"Even the bestowing power used by the gods today is no longer the complete Bestowing of Power."

"Our method for creating witch doctors uses only part of the principle behind the Bestowing of Power to let them share their gifts. It is not the original Art of God's Grace."

"In this era, so far as we recall, the only one who truly used the Bestowing of Power was Yafuan."

At last, Lomier heard a name he recognized. He pressed at once, "How did Yafuan, the hero of the Avel, accomplish it?"

The witch doctors gave Lomier their fullest answer.

"He obtained a skull kept deep within the Door of Truth, one that had belonged to a priest from some generation of the Polik family."

"One of the Polik family's ghosts personally gave it to him and bestowed the divine power through it."

"If you could obtain the remains of a primordial being and have that same being personally give them to you, then you could naturally do the same."

Lomier smiled bitterly. What they described was harder to obtain than a road into the heavens.

---

The Oracle Kingdom, City of the Holy Spring

Splash, splash, splash!

Ancient spring water welled from the earth and formed a lake halfway up the mountain.

The old capital had risen around that lake and spring. The same spring supplied the winged people of the city with drinking water.

At first, the city had occupied only the land around the lake and spring halfway up the slope. Now it stretched all the way to the mountain's foot.

Buildings climbed upward layer upon layer, gathering into a single towering city.

Two airship docks had even been built at the summit, where airships could often be seen rising and landing.

The entire mountain bore the imprint of winged civilization and flourished far beyond the Matale Principality.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

The sound of second-rank stone demons walking came from far away. The earth shook with every stride of those towering figures.

Now, on one side of the City of the Holy Spring, an academy of spires had arisen.

Six spires rose across the academy, linked by high walls.

The result looked lofty and forbidding.

Lomier had funded the academy himself and commissioned the stone demon construction guild to build it. The Oracle Kingdom's guild had committed its full strength, summoning every stone demon under its command, including several of the second rank and more than a dozen of the first.

The Oracle Kingdom's royal house had also sent its own craftsmen to help.

With divine techniques and the might of the monster race driving the labor, the building rose with remarkable speed.

The main structure was completed in less than a month. Finishing and decorating the interior took several times longer, and the work remained incomplete even now.

Even so, the academy was ready for use.

This also meant that the world's first witch doctor academy was now formally complete.

Standing on a stone demon's shoulder, the king of the Oracle Kingdom and Lomier rose to the academy's highest platform. Flocks of winged people descended behind them to attend the ceremony.

A divine statue stood atop each of the six spires. Some were male and some female, some tall and some short.

Each represented one of the six mythical witch doctors.

The king of the Oracle Kingdom stepped forward beside Lomier and delivered his declaration before the crowd.

"From this day forth, every witch doctor shall enjoy the protection of the Oracle Kingdom's laws."

"Every witch doctor apprentice may come to the City of the Holy Spring and receive the witch doctors' inheritance. The winged kingdom shall recognize them as rightful practitioners."

The witch doctor apprentices stepped forward together and thanked both the king and Lomier.

Among the crowd, little Matafus and her companions stood in their apprentice robes, mouths slightly open as they stared up at the vast, towering building.

The white wings on little Matafus's back stirred gently, making her look every bit a tiny sky messenger. Suddenly, she thought of her great-grandfather Ose.

In his youth, he too had chased the shadow of the Sacred Mountain of Light and longed to become a sky messenger, only to fall one step short.

The regret of that single step had stayed with him until the day he died.

"Great-grandfather, I couldn't become a sky messenger, but I did become a witch doctor."

"But just like you hoped, I'll keep walking this road with all my resolve and all my courage."

At that very moment, the tattoo of a book and a Globe hidden beneath the feathers on Matafus's back shone brightly.

Little Matafus and her four companions were not the only apprentices present. More than a dozen others had come as well.

Many new witch doctor apprentices had lately been born into the Land of Light. Some were young children, some grown men and women, and some already middle-aged.

As soon as they became apprentices, they heard that a witch doctor academy had been founded in the Oracle Kingdom and hurried there.

The Oracle Kingdom did everything possible to bring them to the academy's opening ceremony.

Most of these apprentices, however, knew nothing of medicine and understood not the least thing about divine techniques.

Beyond those dozen or more, plenty of others belonged to the academy without being apprentices at all.

They included many renowned and highly skilled physicians, along with ordinary winged ability users.

"Physicians, here?"

"Why let them in when they aren't even holders of an extraordinary profession?"

"And why bring in ordinary ability users and hire them as divine technique instructors?"

The nobles of the Oracle Kingdom murmured back and forth among themselves.

Someone in the know explained, "The physicians have extensive experience. They can teach the apprentices the foundations of medicine, then serve as the witch doctors' assistants later on."

"The divine technique instructors can teach them the basic theory behind divine techniques. The academy needs that too."

Understanding dawned on the onlookers.

"So there isn't a single real witch doctor in the academy yet? They're figuring out everything as they go?"

The first speaker answered, "No. They have a god."

He looked up at a witch doctor's statue.

"They might have nothing now, but the mightiest existence in this world stands behind them. A divine being."

"The academy holds statues of the divine. They can receive divine gifts and grace at any time."

"As long as those statues stand here, this place remains under a divine being's protection."

At those words, every voice around them softened.

No matter how few the witch doctors were now, no matter how weak, with a divine being behind them anyone could imagine how powerful they would one day become.

The ceremony neared its end.

Lomier watched the assembled witch doctor apprentices stand before the statues of the God of the Witch Doctors and pray.

They chanted the divine name and performed the ritual to the letter.

All at once, light after light flared from the divine statues atop the six spires.

The radiance shot into the heavens, then inscribed a barrier over the academy and sheltered the mortal world's first witch doctor academy.

Immediately afterward, beam after beam descended from the sky and entered the apprentices' consciousnesses.

Each beam represented the knowledge of a divine technique.

This was the grace bestowed on them by the God of the Witch Doctors.

One beam, however, sought out Lomier and entered his mind.

The name Bestowing of Power surfaced at once in Lomier's mind.

At last, Lomier received his reward.

The witch doctors had warned him that the Bestowing of Power could no longer be used directly in this era. First, he would have to find the remains of a member of the primordial divine race, then receive that primordial being's power in person.

Lomier chose the divine technique anyway. Helping the God of the Witch Doctors found the academy had been part of the plan from the beginning. It fostered the goodwill and ties with the mythical witch doctors that the winged people and the Sacred Mountain of Light needed.

Beyond that, he still wanted to behold the one ancient divine technique capable of increasing a gift.

Lomier had no time to examine it. He immediately bowed to the statues of the God of the Witch Doctors.

"My thanks to the God of the Witch Doctors for this gift."

The God of the Witch Doctors did not answer. After revealing themselves and bestowing their grace, they withdrew their power directly into the Star Realm Divine Kingdom.

Night fell.

With his task complete, Lomier did not linger in the Oracle Kingdom. He set out for the Sacred Mountain of Light.

Along the way, Lomier repeatedly turned the Bestowing of Power, oldest of all divine techniques, over in his mind.

At first glance, the technique appeared rather plain, lacking the oceanic and obscure complexity of other divine techniques.

Once he had read it through, however, it gave the impression of pointing straight toward the origin.

Lomier even felt that every divine technique he had ever learned cast a shadow within the Bestowing of Power.

"Did the gods of the primordial age all draw upon this ancient technique when they created their own divine arts?"

Lomier lost himself in the treatise. It held him enthralled throughout the journey, and before he knew it, he had reached the Sacred Mountain of Light.

He had barely returned when bells began ringing from within the Radiant Temple.

Every sky messenger had gathered there to await him.

The beautiful sky messengers greeted Lomier with nods, blessings in their eyes, as if they were awaiting something.

The moment Lomier entered the temple, familiar voices called his name.

"You have returned, Lomier!"

Looking up, he saw three eight-winged sky messengers standing in the temple, each with the same face.

The battle King of the Sky Messengers in her armor, the King of the Sky Messengers in her white divine robe, and the King of the Sky Messengers with her coarse cloth scroll and quill had all appeared at once.

Smiling, Duma looked at Lomier and delivered her judgment on his mission.

"You have done very well. You completed your mission perfectly."

Lomier knelt and bowed his head in devotion.

He bowed before the divine being he worshiped.

"It is my honor, Lady Duma!"

Duma nodded.

She raised a hand. Points of light kindled across the temple, and a vast ritual array stirred to life.

Duma had prepared the ritual array for Lomier in advance. She had only been waiting for him to return.

She asked him, "Lomier, are you prepared?"

"To become an apostle. To become an eight-winged sky messenger."

Lomier did not answer for a long while.

In truth, he was lost. He wanted badly to become an apostle, yet he also feared failure.

He had prepared for years, spending everything he had to gather materials and knowledge while studying every detail of the sky messengers' Art of God's Grace day and night.

He believed he had done the very best he could.

Yet at the final moment, hesitation and doubt still seized him.

That was why he had sought the Bestowing of Power. In the end, however, no art of God's grace could provide the saving straw he wanted.

Strangely, some of that weight now lifted from him.

Sometimes, no amount of preparation was enough. Each day left him a day older as his spirituality and body slowly declined.

He might still look young, but for a mortal he had already begun to pass from middle age into old age.

Decades were a short thing to some, but to an ordinary person they were an entire lifetime.

If he delayed any longer, he might meet the fate Ose had described.

He might spend his entire life wavering and hesitating, only to look back in fear.

Lomier remembered his first meeting with Ose and Ray, nearly ten years before.

He also remembered his final farewell with Ose, his friend clinging to one last breath as he waited for Lomier to arrive.

Ose had waited only so he could smile and tell him this.

"I failed, Lomier!"

"But even now, at the end, I am happy."

"Because I went and did it. I lost, that is all."

"The hardest thing in life is not defeat. It is wanting to do so many things, only to do none of them in the end."

Relief washed over Lomier as he drew a deep breath and released it. He had prepared as thoroughly as he could, and further hesitation would only rob him of his final chance.

He had already waited through one span of ten years. He could not wait through another.

Lomier raised his head to face the King of the Sky Messengers.

"Yes!"

"I have made every preparation within my power."

"Now is the best moment I shall ever have, the hour when the fire of my life burns brightest."