Chapter 514: Throne Angel?

The Sacred Mountain of Light

Under the gaze of every sky messenger, Lomier rose from his knees and stepped into the very center of the ritual. He lifted his head to meet the eyes of the King of the Sky Messengers below the altar, then nodded. He was ready.

With a divine chosen and reincarnator as mighty as Duma presiding, his chances were far better than if he had conducted the ritual himself. Lomier could also keep his attention from being divided among other matters.

Even so, few who sought to become apostles would lightly place their lives and their road to apostleship in another's hands. They either entrusted the ritual to someone they trusted absolutely or presided over it themselves.

Inside the temple, the three eight-winged sky messengers raised their hands as one. Ring upon ring of light spun outward from the Radiant Temple and settled over the whole summit of the Sacred Mountain of Light.

"The moment has come, Lomier."

At Duma's reminder, Lomier closed his eyes at once.

A tremendous force slowly lifted his body into the air. It worked upon him from without, driving the power inside him toward transformation, while Lomier guided every current from within.

"Art of God's Grace!"

The sky messengers' Art of God's Grace took hold.

A vast, insubstantial shadow of an angel rose out of Lomier's body. Its shape mirrored his own almost exactly, yet it stood a full thirty meters tall.

This was Lomier's Seal Spirit, a form woven from mental power and seal imprints.

A sky messenger, however, could pour his Seal Spirit back into his flesh and make his body enormous. Such a transformation marked any extraordinary profession capable of wielding the Power of Spirituality.

"The three elements of divine grace. Divine blood, mental power, and seal imprint."

Silently reciting the heart of the Art of God's Grace, Lomier followed the method he had rehearsed countless times and divided his strength into three parts.

"Mental power!" Roused to life, his mental power turned wonderfully nimble and danced through the air like a wandering wind.

"Seal imprints!" Two seal imprints appeared in the air. One was the flawed wind seal imprint every winged person carried from birth. The other came from the sky messenger profession itself.

"Draw out the divine blood." Lomier took a deep breath and began drawing the divine blood from his body.

Flakes of silver light spun away from his body. Life seemed to drain from his frame as it became an empty shell, bit by bit, until not a trace of feeling remained in his eyes.

He looked like a walking corpse.

At the same time, the stone deep within the sky messenger's brow lost its luster and went dark.

In that moment, every part of Lomier's power lay exposed before them.

Silver divine blood, drifting spirit, and the brand that stood for law.

All three shone in the sky.

The steadiness of Lomier's first steps along the road of the apostle showed now. He had laid a solid foundation for every stage of this journey.

His divine blood was pure, his mental power strong, his seal imprints stable.

Now the three avatars of the King of the Sky Messengers acted together.

In an instant, the ritual array surged with power. Every sky messenger poured their strength into it and raised their voices in a hymn, all their power ringing in resonance.

Power borrowed from the Dream Realm, and power drawn from the sky messengers themselves.

The two vast forces fused and bore down on Lomier as a single crushing weight.

An unseen storm sprang up around him, with Lomier at its very center. The pressure crushed down on the three elements of divine grace, trying to smelt them into one.

Anyone else would have had to command the ritual array alone while fearing its power might fall short.

This stage of the transformation also took a long time, and a single careless moment could ruin everything.

Lomier faced no such trouble. In an instant, that mighty force compressed his spirit and seal imprints into a single unit of divine blood. The blood changed at once, hardening into a crystal too small for the eye to see.

The God's Grace Stone.

Once the change began, everything within Lomier followed in a chain reaction.

Vast drifts of silver light streamed inward. The God's Grace Stone swelled without pause until every drop of Lomier's divine blood had been transformed.

"The God's Grace Stone has formed!"

"The first step is complete!"

"So that's a God's Grace Stone. It's not quite the same as an Angel Stone."

Joy swept through the sky messengers as Lomier's God's Grace Stone took form. The first step was complete.

Everyone present breathed easier, certain the hardest step was behind them.

Even Lomier was overjoyed.

His consciousness now hung in the sky, wholly severed from his body, and watched everything around him in spirit form.

"So this is the God's Grace Stone I forged."

"An apostle's stone, smelted from the full power of a Wisdom Seed."

The Art of God's Grace took its name from the God's Grace Stone, proof of how crucial this step was. To anyone who had never walked the road of the apostle, completing it seemed almost the same as becoming an apostle outright.

Below the altar, however, Duma studied Lomier's God's Grace Stone with a grave expression.

The stone had indeed taken form.

But it had formed only with the greatest difficulty, at the very limit of what was possible.

It was an entire size smaller than an ordinary apostle's God's Grace Stone.

Without the mighty ritual array Duma had laid down herself, Lomier's gift and strength could never have condensed that stone.

There was no road back from this step, though.

Duma said nothing. A single word now would only shake Lomier's confidence.

Next, Lomier had to use the God's Grace Stone to remake both his Angel Stone and his sky messenger form, raising himself to a more perfect state.

The God's Grace Stone fell out of the sky and sank toward his body.

It met his brow exactly.

Boom!

Lomier's wings beat and his arms flung wide.

At the same moment, a violent shockwave erupted through the air.

His body turned insubstantial in an instant, but the Angel Stone deep in his brow blazed with dazzling light.

Power poured ceaselessly from the God's Grace Stone into the Angel Stone, transforming it into something akin to a Mythical Organ. Within the sky messenger form, Lomier's consciousness, spirituality, desire and memories began to change as well.

Lomier felt his power remaking itself as the essence of his life leapt from mortal existence toward mythical life.

Dense clouds of angel feathers drifted down around him.

Behind each sky messenger feather, the shadow of a sky messenger flickered in and out of sight.

Once Lomier truly became an eight-winged sky messenger, those shadows would step out of the unreal and become his Seal Spirits and avatars.

This was the power of a fourth-rank apostle. One person alone could become an extraordinary legion.

But at that moment something went wrong.

The God's Grace Stone continued to shrink, yet the remaking of his Mythical Organ remained incomplete.

Watching the stone dwindle, Lomier felt a sudden foreboding.

His gift had fallen short. The stone he had condensed was too small, and now that flaw stood fully exposed.

Lomier refused to retreat. Drawing a single breath, he gathered himself and drove his power into the Angel Stone.

"Transform!"

"Transform!"

Filled with hope, Lomier screamed the word in his heart.

The God's Grace Stone dwindled to nothing, yet his Angel Stone still failed to complete its final change.

Starved of power, the Angel Stone began drawing strength from beyond itself.

That change showed itself in Lomier's body as well.

Something had gone wrong with the Angel Stone, and his body warped at once.

The radiance streaming from him died. In a heartbeat, his perfect sky messenger body lost every trace of its luster, as though something inside him were devouring every scrap of strength he had left, devouring Lomier himself.

"Something's gone wrong?" The sky messengers had never taken their eyes off Lomier, and they caught the change at once.

Soon after, Lomier dropped straight down out of the air.

His white and holy wings dimmed in an instant and turned the gray of an ordinary winged person.

He could no longer maintain even his sky messenger form. Slowly, he reverted to a winged person as the marks of his people broke through his skin. Powerful lower limbs and sharp talons emerged.

"Lomier!" The sky messengers who knew him best cried out his name.

"How could this happen?" More of them went white, terror plain on their faces.

Even those who knew nothing of the Art of God's Grace understood what failure meant. To fail at becoming an apostle was to face death.

---

Thud!

Lomier crashed down hard and struck the stone slabs.

An ordinary fall would not have done him much harm.

What terrified them was the Angel Stone continuing to drain strength from his body as he withered before their eyes.

The road of the apostle.

Only forward, never back.

Yet draining Lomier dry would accomplish nothing. His remaining strength was a cup of water thrown against a burning cart.

Strangely, Lomier felt little fear. He had spent so long preparing for this moment that he had prepared for failure as well.

With immense difficulty, he dragged himself upright and knelt.

The other sky messengers moved to help him, but Lomier immediately raised a hand, forbidding them to come closer.

He was a bomb waiting to erupt. Any ordinary sky messenger who approached him would be in danger.

Lomier watched his feathers settle on the ground. The moment he reached down to pick one up, it crumbled into a small heap of ash.

He stared at the ash as though looking upon his own end.

"I have failed!"

"It was still not enough!"

On his knees, Lomier bore witness to his own failure. Loss filled his voice, but confusion did not.

At last, he understood what Ose had felt at the end.

Though he had failed. Though he had lost.

Though it still galled him.

Yet seeing the final answer was, in itself, a perfect answer to his life. Even if that life's answer sheet bore nothing but a cross, the mark left a man feeling fuller than a blank page ever could.

Sorrowfully, every sky messenger in the temple watched Lomier inch forward on his knees.

Little by little, he made his way to Duma and knelt below the altar before the threefold King of the Sky Messengers.

Duma's face, so full of divinity, hardly changed at all, but a thread of sorrow entered her eyes.

She had seen generations of sky messengers depart and watched the winged people pass through several ages. Partings and death had long since become familiar to her.

Yet grief found her anew with every parting.

Lomier knelt on the ground and spoke softly.

This was also his final farewell.

"Lady Duma, I have failed you."

Lomier drew a deep breath, and his voice rose a little.

"I cannot become your apostle."

"But my God's Grace Stone has formed. Please use it to forge the embryo of a mythical artifact!"

"I gladly offer you my Life Dream. Fix it forever in the deep sky of the Dream Realm and make it the foundation stone upon your road to the divine throne."

A smile appeared on Lomier's face. It was the same smile he had worn as a child circling Duma's feet and telling her his wishes, unaware of how vast the world truly was.

First make a mythical artifact, then borrow its power to become a demigod and contend for the Wisdom Fruit of the Four Sovereign Authorities.

That had been the substance of a conversation between Ray and Duma, a secret spoken by that ancient member of the divine race.

Lomier had been standing guard outside the temple at the time. He overheard the exchange and had kept it in his heart ever since.

So Lomier had decided long ago.

If he failed, he would forge his own power into an artifact and become the foundation stone of Duma's godhood.

Making the embryo of a mythical artifact, however, was far from simple.

Lomier had conceived a plan long ago and had prepared for it just as long as he had prepared to walk the road of the apostle.

All at once he clasped his hands together in the posture of prayer.

At the same moment, he cried out, "Bestowing of Power!"

He recited the incantation of the Bestowing of Power divine technique, calling forth an art so primal and ancient that words could scarcely contain it.

The knowledge of the Bestowing of Power had not left Lomier empty-handed.

The witch doctors' way of making imps had given him the idea.

He could not cast this primordial divine technique successfully upon another person, but casting it upon a dead thing gave him no trouble at all.

He intended to follow the witch doctors' method, producing the embryo of a mythical artifact that held part of his memories and feelings.

Then, anchoring it with his own Life Dream, he would shape the first rough form of that artifact.

Then, even after his death, the artifact bearing his memories could remain beside Lady Duma and keep watch over the Sacred Mountain of Light.

Just as Ose's book had ended up at the side of his descendant, little Matafus.

The divine technique itself was not complicated, yet as Lomier cast it, everyone nearby seemed to be carried back to the primordial age. The ancient frequency radiating from his mental power evoked the wild lands and primal seas of the First Era.

"What divine technique is that?" None of the sky messengers had ever seen its like.

"I think I can hear a whole crowd praying!" They could hear the prayers, but not make out a word.

"Then what is that sound?" Listening more closely, they found that it did not sound like a voice at all, but like the voice of nature itself.

"I can hear the sea. No, it's more like a sound from somewhere deep in the starry sky." None of them knew what the depths of the starry sky should sound like, yet the sound carried the same unfathomable vastness and age.

Lomier released his power, ready to pour it into the altar before him.

At that moment, the three figures of the King of the Sky Messengers stepped forward in perfect unison and began to turn insubstantial.

Above the Sacred Mountain of Light, vast Power of Spirituality gathered without pause, then swept toward the heart of the Radiant Temple.

At last, it condensed into a single, complete figure before Lomier.

A sky messenger with four and a half pairs of wings, nine wings in all, appeared before Lomier. She held back the power spilling from his body.

The divinity about Duma had grown stronger, and the weight of it kept every sky messenger from lifting his head.

Lomier stopped moving entirely.

Still kneeling, he gazed up at the nine-winged form of the King of the Sky Messengers as though he were truly looking upon a divine being.

So towering. So holy.

And beautiful.

Duma, whole again and one, spoke.

"This is the Bestowing of Power you spoke of?"

"The divine technique that only the primordial divine race can cast?"

Only then did the stunned Lomier find his voice.

"Lady Duma!"

Duma stopped him with a shake of her head.

"Have you ever witnessed the end of one who casts such a divine technique? Do you know the price of turning yourself into a Life Dream artifact?"

Without waiting for Lomier to answer, she continued in a long, lingering cadence.

"I have."

"Had you witnessed it yourself, you would understand why death is called a blessing."

"Life after life spent sinking through nightmare and pain. Death forever sought and forever denied. Hundreds of millions of years endured, only to beg at last for the mercy of simply dissolving."

The King of the Sky Messengers gazed straight toward the temple doors as a scene slowly rose before her eyes.

A great hole into the Dream Realm opened above an ancient snake person city. Dragged by the threads of fate, two marionettes were pulled into a dream that had been turning for two hundred and fifty million years.

They could not resist. All they could do was howl in helplessness.

What sorrow, what despair, what agony.

Beside what they endured, such words were feeble. They could not convey even one ten-thousandth of the darkness in their hearts.

Duma had witnessed the tragedy of the Barrow family with her own eyes. When the end finally came for those two puppets after more cycles than anyone could count, she had heard their silent scream.

She knew the pain and despair within that scream. She would never willingly watch Lomier meet the same end.

The tall King of the Sky Messengers lowered her face, and something melancholy came into her eyes.

"Lomier, you may believe yourself grown, but in my eyes, you are still a child."

"Do not let one reckless impulse drive you toward an end you cannot see or a price you cannot fathom."

"There are things in this world..."

"Things you cannot imagine, much less endure."

By now, Lomier's body had withered into the likeness of a dried corpse. He could feel his Angel Stone cracking apart, unable to draw another trace of power.

The Mythical Organ was going to be destroyed before it had ever taken shape.

Panic edged into Lomier's voice.

"But... it has already..."

What Lomier had not expected was that Duma would set a finger against his forehead.

She spoke the four syllables of the invocation.

"Bestowing of Power!"

Lomier's eyes went blank.

An endless flood of white light poured into his mind, sweeping his consciousness into a holy space.

When Lomier recited the incantation before Duma, he had concealed nothing. Part of him had wanted to leave the divine technique behind for her.

Now Duma turned the Bestowing of Power back upon Lomier himself.

Ancient as the Bestowing of Power was, it was a very simple divine technique.

Its requirements, however, were exacting.

No living being of this era could meet them.

Now that Duma had drawn her four parts back into one, she held a portion of her complete power.

Through that bestowal, she gave her own source power to Lomier. In an instant, his Mythical Organ, the Angel Stone, was replenished without the slightest backlash.

Duma's divine blood seemed utterly pure, like the divine blood handed down from the living beings of the primordial age.

His Mythical Organ transformed further at once, and his sky messenger form returned.

One pair of wings became two, then three.

At last, a fourth pair slowly emerged, unfurling through the temple in a blaze of radiance.

At the same time, the King of the Sky Messengers spoke to Lomier.

"Lomier, I shall not build myself upon another's sacrifice and suffering. Nor are you a foundation stone upon my road to godhood."

"The road to godhood is hard. That much is true. Some will pay any price to walk it."

"Some have sacrificed ten million people to become divine beings."

"Some have made foundation stones of everyone around them."

Her voice shifted.

"But if the day comes when I truly become a divine being..."

"I shall do so in the way I choose!"

"I shall become the divine being I wish to be!"

"If I surrender the heart with which I began, then whatever I become in the end will not be the divine being I sought to become."

At last, Duma spoke to Lomier with the utmost seriousness, though her words seemed meant for herself as well.

"I wish to become a divine being."

"The divine being that lives within my heart."

When she finished, the light of the Bestowing of Power slowly faded.

Duma lifted the finger from Lomier's forehead at last.

In that moment, a wholly new eight-winged sky messenger stood within the temple.

Kneeling before the nine-winged King of the Sky Messengers, Lomier felt his consciousness gradually return to his body. Life flowed back into his empty eyes.

He remained on his knees, head tilted back as he stared in bewilderment at the nine-winged sky messenger before him.

Then he lowered his gaze to his transformed body, shaken to the core.

"I succeeded!"

"I am... an apostle?"

His head came up again at once, his eyes fixed straight on Duma.

"No. Lady Duma did this."

"Lady Duma, through the Bestowing of Power, you gave a portion of your own source power directly to me."

Lomier did not understand how Duma had been able to cast the Bestowing of Power successfully.

The Gods of the Witch Doctors had said it plainly.

Only beings surviving from the primordial age could cast it, the gods among them.

Even gods did not lightly give their source power to another. Most granted no more than a power seed, and only a chosen few, the divine blessed ones, might receive such grace at all. Even then, a god would almost never raise anyone directly to the station of an apostle.

Then Lomier remembered a name passed from mouth to mouth in the snake people's kingdom, one Ray seemed to have used as well.

Divine Child Duma.

He had never given the matter much thought. He knew Duma was the offspring of the first Lord of Radiance, but had never wondered what distinguished a god's offspring from an ordinary living being.

None of the snake people, winged people or lizard people of the Second Era could use the Bestowing of Power. Duma, however, had never been a winged person to begin with.

She did not even carry the wind seal imprint hidden within every winged person's body. She had been born a sky messenger, already bearing the mighty power of spiritual radiance.

No one quite knew how to define a Divine Child born out of Xiao's Sea of Spirituality.

At the very least, she was not one of the living beings made from God's Moon Stone.

Her power and her bloodline resembled those of the living beings of the primordial age very closely.

Even after the Lord of Radiance fell from the divine station, she retained her sky messenger form. More than that, she had become the source of the sky messengers themselves.

She was the first sky messenger this world had ever known, a child and a descendant born of primordial myth.

With that realization, Lomier sank into deep self-reproach.

"Lady Duma, you should not have spent your precious source power on me. I have burdened your own ascent to myth."

Duma seemed to see the reproach in him.

Not only had he failed to help her become a divine being, he had become a burden to her.

"Do not worry."

"When I chose this road, I resolved to walk it alone."

"I do not need this of you. Nor do I need to make stepping stones of others' sacrifices."

Duma's figure looked tall yet somehow thin. Her lonely voice was touched with feigned coldness.

"I was born with the wings of the sky. I can soar through it alone."

When Duma had finished, the nine-winged form scattered once more.

The single figure split into three as the vast Power of Spirituality unfurled once more and settled across the Sacred Mountain of Light.

The barrier covering the Sacred Mountain of Light overlapped with a mental domain, and that domain belonged to Duma.

Words passed through the temple and echoed between the dome and the pillars.

"From this day forward, Lomier, you shall be the sky messenger who guards the divine throne. You may come and go freely within the Radiant Temple."

"When I am away, you shall guard the divine throne within the Radiant Temple and preside over the affairs of the Sacred Mountain of Light."

While those words echoed on, Duma's three figures faded into nothing and vanished into the air.

Sky messengers crowded in from every side, their gazes fixed on Lomier's four pairs of wings. He was the first true eight-winged sky messenger born among the winged people in centuries, the first since Queen Melde hundreds of years ago.

"Lomier!" One sky messenger stepped forward to greet him, far more reverence in his expression now that Lomier had attained the station of an apostle.

"Four whole pairs of wings!" another marveled.

"The sky messenger who guards the divine throne?" The others pondered the new office, trying to grasp what it meant.

Lomier stood straight before the divine throne. A moment later, the bewilderment in his eyes hardened into resolve.