Chapter 458: Bended Knees

Mortal Shell was an essential pillar of my power system. This Celestial ability had the interesting property of linking my body and soul as one, so that strength could be shared across both.

In the past, Mortal Shell had aided me in pushing through the Acolyte and Adept Tiers, ensuring that I could burn my soul to nothing and still remain sane as my body accelerated the recovery of my soul, and vice versa... This ability alone took me beyond what any mage could endure. For a while now, I had not needed to use it as much as before, due to the ever-increasing strength of my body and soul, but if there was any ability that could break this seal over my soul, it would be Mortal Shell.

It would have been great to have access to my Titles. I had a new Mythic Title, and a Legendary Skill, but I could not access them. Still, I could work with what I had... there was a hole through the seal, and I needed to figure out how to use this window into my soul to excavate another Law Shard.

The moment I deciphered all the Laws of lightning, I would be a Sovereign. I could have been one with just one Law, the Law of Stillness, but my ambitions were so much greater than that.

Hoping that my Eldritch Perception would aid me in this task, I buried myself deeper into myself, and the world was pushed to the background. My soul was like a vast land, and I was reduced to searching through it through a small window... this could take a while, but at least I knew which direction to head in. That was something.

∞

Time slowly passed as I delved deeper into my soul. Perhaps I should have moved from the place where I had just butchered a god, but I was waiting for the warband to find me, and where was a better landmark than the skull of a dead god?

The first thing I heard was the scrape of claws on stone, somewhere up on the rim of the valley, and then the uneven breathing of Drakespawn that had been running for a long time. Then came a voice that could only belong to Thurrim, hoarse and cheerful and much too loud for the size of his body, demanding to know which of his ancestors they had to thank for a day like this.

Somebody told him to shut up, and he told them to make him, and then nobody said anything at all, since they had reached the edge and seen the valley, and I could imagine the sight they were witnessing.

I could have peered into their minds at that moment, but I held back, mostly because most of my attention was focused inside my soul, and only a small sliver of perception was left outside to see my surroundings.

My eyes opened, and I saw the warband strung along the rim against the last of the evening light. Ruggah was at the front, sitting his mount, Battle. Ogg was beside him. The three Shades, and Coin. Thurrim, standing in his stirrups with his arms spread wide as though he meant to embrace the whole ruined valley.

And behind them, on one Drakespawn, two smaller figures sharing a saddle. One of them was holding the other up.

Tam and Ines.

I found that I had been holding my breath, and I let it out slowly. I had not been completely certain that they had escaped the impact of the battle, and it struck me how much of a weight their safety had lifted from my chest.

Why did I feel like this for people I had not known for long? I did a bit of soul searching, and I found the answer.

From the moment I entered the Loop, I could not save those I wanted to protect. My friends had died more times than I cared to remember, my parents, my sister...

It was a good thing, yes, that this time I could stop the threat, and those beside me did not perish.

I blinked and looked down, amazed that at that moment I felt like crying. Stupid Elric, you are a freaking godslayer.

They had seen me, and the warband was moving towards me, urging their Drakespawn forward, even though the beasts did not want to be anywhere near the bones of a god. I was sure it was only their intelligence and ferocity that let the Drakespawn come this close. Any other beast would have fled.

As they neared me, Tam suddenly slid off the Drakespawn. Someone called after him, and he did not listen. He ran towards me on foot, slipping on the glass, falling, getting up with his hands cut, and falling again. Ines stayed in the saddle, with one arm bound to her chest and the other reaching for her brother, but her eyes could not seem to leave me.

There was an itch in my head to peer inside her soul and read her thoughts, but I suppressed the instinct. These were not enemies, and there was just something dirty about looking into the one private place a person has, and it rubbed me the wrong way.

Eldritch Perception might turn out to be one of my most useful skills, but the possibility of being corrupted by this power was high.

The rest of the warband watched Tam, and none of them followed him, and I slowly turned my gaze towards him.

He stopped a dozen paces away, breathing hard, with blood running down both palms from the glass, and he looked at me, and then past me at the skull, and then at the bones stretching away behind it for a mile, and back at me.

I smelled his blood, and it hit me somewhere low in my chest, beside my heart, and my mouth was wet. My right hand opened without my telling it to, and for one heartbeat I was absolutely certain that if I looked down at my palm, I would see a bead of silver and red rising out of the skin, and that with a thought, this bead could enter Tam’s body and collect every single drop of blood in it.

I did not look down. I closed my hand very slowly, and made a fist.

"You’re bleeding," I said. My voice sounded normal. I was quite proud of that.

Tam looked at his hands as if he had forgotten they were his. "Oh," he said. "Yes."

"Wrap them," I said. "Who knows what sort of infection could come from a place like this."

Tam looked at me with his eyes wide. I don’t think he heard what I said, because he went down on his knees, and with the bones of a god behind me and the sun going down behind him, he placed his bleeding hands flat on the ground in front of him, and bowed his head, and his lips were moving.

I could not hear the words, and I did not need to. I had heard him praying before, and I knew the shapes of prayers.

I was about to curse him for being foolish when I heard the thud of knees behind him, and looked up to see the rest of the warband all going down on their knees.